Among the Fallen

by NS Dolkart

  “And what if they don’t open their gates?” Criton asked. “If they shoot arrows at us, and throw rocks, and never open the gates? What’ll we do then? We’ve won our battles so far, with the help of God Most High, but we’ve won them by making our enemies flee us. For those in Ardis, there is nowhere to flee. I’d love to think that they’d surrender to us, but we can’t afford to assume they will.”

  “What do you mean to do, then?” Belkos said. “Give up on Ardis? Settle in these lands and worry about them attacking for the rest of our lives and our children’s lives? Let them laugh at our God, and say that He was unable to overcome a stone wall? We can’t do that.”

  “You can,” Bandu pointed out, burping Goodweather.

  Belkos pointed at her angrily. “Why is she here? She’s not one of us; she doesn’t represent any clan of Dragon Touched or plainsmen. Who does she speak for?”

  “I value her judgment.”

  His cousin snorted. “I don’t.”

  “It was her idea that won us the fight against Xytos’ army!” Criton cried. “How can you say she doesn’t belong here?”

  “We didn’t win on your wife’s tactics,” Belkos said. “We won because God Most High willed it. She doesn’t even worship Him! Consult with her in the bedding of your tent if you feel the need, but she doesn’t belong in this council. Think for yourself and speak for yourself, cousin – God Most High named you our leader, not this girl wife of yours.”

  Criton looked into Belkos’ eyes for a long time, while Hessina, her son, and the elders of the plainsfolk all stared at Bandu. Their gazes made her angry. Why shouldn’t she be here? She was no less a leader than Hessina’s timid son, and she had done as much as anyone to help these people win their stupid war. What’s more, she had had to beg Iona to watch Delika for her – or really for Criton, but he was always ready to foist the girl on Bandu for these sorts of occasions – so that she could come to this meeting and be heard.

  She secretly hoped Criton would lose control and yell at his cousin, maybe even threaten him. She knew from experience how frightening it could be when Criton lost his temper, and Belkos had insulted both of them, on purpose. He deserved to be scared.

  Instead, Criton just sighed. “You’d better go, Bandu.”

  “No.” He had promised to listen to her, after the pigs. He had promised!

  Criton’s eyes flashed. “Go, Bandu.”

  Bandu stood up, barely able to contain her shock and her fury. “You are sorry later,” she said.

  “The longer it takes you to leave, the sorrier I’ll be.”

  27

  Criton

  Hessina was the first to speak after Bandu left. “You need a new wife, Criton. A Dragon Touched wife. Bandu presumes too much.”

  Criton resisted telling her to mind her own business and tried to turn the conversation back to Ardis, but the others would not let him. “Your high priestess is right,” said Endra, an elder from one of the larger clans of plainsmen. “My first wife was like yours: she thought she could control me. Take another wife, and she’ll realize she has nothing you couldn’t find elsewhere.”

  Another elder, Kana, added, “She’ll hate your other wife for it, though. Two is not enough. Two wives will become enemies, and their rivalry will consume all your happiness. Take at least a third, and maybe a fourth. They’ll learn to live together and be kind to you when they realize that a fight between two of them will only benefit a third. Take several more wives, Criton. The Dragon Touched have married all their older girls away already – take a few from among our daughters while you wait for your own to mature.”

  Criton shook his head. Their advice was all self-serving, besides which, it was horrible. Criton had promised. These men just wanted to weaken Bandu’s influence, and to raise their own. They wanted to bind their families to the leader of the Dragon Touched, to strengthen their positions and claim a larger say over the decisions of the group.

  But then, what was wrong with that? A handful of plainsmen had already made marriage pacts with the Dragon Touched for after the war, and a good number had pledged themselves to God Most High and begun abiding by Hessina’s rules for them. Perhaps the time had come to cement these alliances, to call the plainsmen Dragon Touched as well and stop treating them as if they were lesser allies for their lack of claws. Even if it meant sacrificing his promise to Bandu not to take another wife, might it not be worth it? He was the political leader of his people. Could he afford to be so selfish?

  He could see the disapproval in Hessina’s expression – she didn’t want him to marry outside his kin. But she was letting her prejudices get the better of her: the political benefits of accepting the plainsmen’s offers were unmistakable. Right now, this alliance was held together only by the common enemy of Ardis, and by the fear that otherwise the Dragon Touched would maraud across the plains themselves. If Criton cemented his alliances with a few marriages, he could then call the northern plainsmen a part of the Dragon Touched. Then his people would not even be so many fewer than the Ardismen.

  Besides, what if the elders were right? What if the addition of wives could actually improve his relationship with Bandu? There had been tension between them, always. The other women could help with Delika and Goodweather, and make the times when Bandu was angry with him more bearable. And if that made him more patient, might it not be worth it for her too?

  “I’ll think about it,” he promised the clan leaders. “Now can we please get back to the question of Ardis?”

  “So long as God Most High takes our side,” Belkos said, “we can’t lose. Everyone knows how Bestillos took Anardis without the loss of a single soldier. It was the fear of him that opened the city’s gates, not the strength of his army. What has given us our victories over the Ardismen time and again? Their fear of us.”

  “Their fear of God Most High,” Hessina corrected him. “It is the God Above All who granted us these victories, and set His terror upon the soldiers of Ardis. Do not take our God for granted, as our ancestors the dragons did.”

  “We shouldn’t doubt Him either,” Belkos countered. “You think you know better than He does whether we’re worthy of taking Ardis? Let our God judge our readiness. If He favors us, we can’t lose.”

  “But if He doesn’t favor our attack,” Criton pointed out, “we’re unlikely to get a second chance. If we assume that God Most High wants us to conquer the city and we’re wrong, the Ardismen might easily take advantage and annihilate us entirely. Our God hasn’t actually told us we ought to take Ardis, and we’ve been wrong about His wishes before. All Salemis said was that if we followed God Most High, we would be safe. But for that, we need to know where He’s leading us.”

  “Where to, then?” Belkos said. “If not Ardis, then where?”

  “To the Dragon Knight’s Tomb,” said Hessina. “We will pray for guidance in the holiest place we know, and camp at the base of the mountain. It is near enough to Ardis to show them our lack of fear, and defensible in battle should they choose to risk another confrontation. We can stay there until God Most High lends us His guidance.”

  Kana turned to Criton. “What say you?”

  “I say she’s right,” Criton answered, standing up. “Now I need to go and speak with my wife.”

  “Will you follow our advice?” asked Endra. “Will you marry a daughter of the plains?”

  “Or several?” Kana put in.

  Criton sighed. “You can put together a list, if you like. Women whose marriage to me would satisfy everyone here. I don’t promise I’ll take any of them.”

  He went back to his own tent, where he found Goodweather asleep and Bandu pretending. She hadn’t bothered to go get Delika back – the girl must have been asleep in Belkos’ tent by now.

  “Bandu,” he said, putting a clawed hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t talk to me,” she snapped.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But that meeting was necessary, and you weren’t helping.”

  �
�Don’t talk,” Bandu repeated. “I don’t care.”

  “Don’t stop talking to me over this,” Criton said. “That’s not going to help either of us.”

  Bandu said nothing.

  “Bandu, you can’t keep doing this to me.”

  Silence.

  “They want me to take more wives,” Criton said, “and I have half a mind to listen to them.”

  He’d expected that to make her turn around and look at him at least, but she only stiffened and kept her face turned away from him.

  “It makes sense,” he said. “If I do it, it’ll signal to the rest of the Dragon Touched that the plainsmen aren’t just allies, they’re brothers. Our people will intermarry and we won’t be a big conglomeration of allied clans with the Dragon Touched at the top. We’ll be one people. Bandu, are you listening? It makes sense, and the only thing stopping me from doing it is you. If you don’t want me to take other wives, you have to say so. You have to talk to me.”

  Bandu did not turn. Why did she have to be so stubborn? They both knew that she hated the idea – if she had changed her mind, she’d have said so. Had she resigned herself to his doing whatever seemed right to him? Her body language didn’t strike him as resigned.

  Well then, it was her job to dissuade him! He wasn’t going to spend the night arguing with himself.

  “Fine,” he said, “we’ll talk about it in the morning, when you’re ready to act like a civilized person.”

  He hated going to bed angry, but there was nothing for it. He lay down beside her, facing the opposite way, and went to sleep.

  When he awoke, Bandu was gone.

  28

  Hunter

  They stumbled back the way they had come, toward Karsanye and toward their enemies. Phaedra led them in a prayer to God Most High which she seemed to have composed herself. Hunter and Atella repeated the words after her as they shuffled down the road, trying not to collapse in their exhaustion. After a couple of times through, Phaedra realized that they could set her prayer to a tune that had once been popular at Tarphaean dances, so they sang it instead. Hunter was not very tuneful, and Atella was altogether unfamiliar with Tarphaean music, but Phaedra was very musical herself and her voice was clear and precise, so they soon caught on nonetheless.

  Hunter kept his eyes down, watching his feet move, because whenever he looked up at the way ahead, his eyes blurred and he became dizzy. Even with his head down, he kept seeing things moving at the corners of his eyes, things that clearly weren’t there. Stars shooting past. Giant insects. The disembodied heads of men he had killed.

  He focused on the road.

  If they were bound to be caught anyway, he wondered, why couldn’t they just go to sleep? They’d had a sunny day or two now, and the dusty road looked like a perfectly good place for it. He imagined lying down with his head on that rock over there, and he nearly cried for wanting to. But no: if they slept, they could not pray, and they needed the prayers more.

  Besides, the rock was shuddering. Gods, he needed to sleep.

  If people had free will, as Phaedra was always insisting, then what good would all their prayers do them? God Most High could not force Mura to let them go, nor could He make them merciful. Could He? Maybe he could. Phaedra was very knowledgeable about these things, but she wasn’t infallible.

  Hunter chose to believe that the God of Dragons could do anything. It was easier to pray that way, and easier to stay awake too. To stay awake, and pray.

  He thought he might be losing his mind.

  Phaedra led them through repetition after repetition of her prayer-song, and Hunter began to grow impatient for Mura’s men to meet them here already. What was taking them so long? They ought to get on with it, so he could see if God Most High would really answer their prayers. Did he dare to look up and try to spot them?

  He chanced it, lifting his eyes from the road and willing them to focus, focus on something. He blinked. He stopped walking. He slapped himself in the face.

  “Phaedra,” he said.

  Karsanye was standing before him, not half a mile away. He knew those ruined buildings. He slapped himself again, blinked again, again, again, again. His foolish eyes wouldn’t stop seeing the city.

  “Phaedra,” he repeated, and the girl stopped and looked up.

  “Karsanye?” she said. “How is that possible?”

  Hunter fainted.

  * * *

  It was night-time when he awoke, still lying in the road. Phaedra was asleep beside him, with Atella softly snoring on her other side. They had apparently decided to sleep instead of rousing him, a decision for which he was extremely grateful. In fact, he thought he might sleep some more if he could – he had a bit of a headache still. He’d had the headache since sometime yesterday, he thought, but it had been so low on his list of problems that he’d barely noticed it before. Now he looked at the road ahead, saw that Karsanye was still there, and went back to sleep.

  He woke to rain falling on his head. He groaned and sat up, wiping the mud off his cheeks and looking around. It looked to be dawn, though he couldn’t be sure. The clouds were dark.

  “How long have we slept?” Phaedra asked in a panicked voice. “We should go!”

  “We should,” Hunter agreed, rising to his feet and shielding his eyes as he gazed toward their ruined city. “How did we get here?”

  “God Most High brought us here. He shortened our path somehow.”

  “I know, but how? Or why?”

  Phaedra frowned. “I wish I knew. He’s sent miracle after miracle, and I can’t believe that it’s because He wants me to learn magic. We must have something big we’re supposed to do, He just hasn’t revealed what it is yet. Let’s find some shelter. Maybe Psander will know.”

  Psander. Would they truly be seeing her again, just a few short months after her departure from this world? He had hoped never to see the world of fairies again, and with that hope had come the assumption that he would never see Psander either. Wrong and wrong.

  They took shelter under a tree until the rain lessened from a downpour to a steady patter. If God Most High was protecting them here, would He be able to do so in the world of the elves? Bandu had said – and everyone who knew anything about it had agreed – that instead of a mesh between the heavens and the fairy world, God Most High had built a wall. The Gods no longer had influence in the world of the fairies. If Hunter and Phaedra found themselves endangered there, there would be no miracles to rescue them.

  At least it sounded like Psander was still alive, for now. That had hardly been guaranteed when they had helped her transport Silent Hall to the other world.

  “Well,” Atella said, “whatever reason your God has saved us, I’m very grateful to Him. I’d make a sacrifice, if I had an animal.”

  “Pray to Him,” Phaedra suggested. “It’s not much, but it’ll have to do.”

  The girl nodded. “What do I say?”

  So Phaedra led them in a thanksgiving prayer and they resumed walking toward the city. Atella tried to follow her map, but she needn’t have: Hunter and Phaedra both knew where they were going. The only remaining patch on Atella’s map belonged to Criton.

  Up until he had joined them on the last boat out of Tarphae, Criton had lived with his mother in the prison of his father’s house. Criton’s father had hidden him from the world by claiming that his wife was deathly ill, and that only he could tend to her. Knowing Criton’s side of the story, it hadn’t taken them long to guess who his father had been. And that meant they knew where he lived.

  It had been a two-storey house, but the earthquake had reduced it to two walls and a pile of rubble. Phaedra steered them to the door that still stood in one of the two walls – Criton’s mother Galanea was bound to be somewhere in that pile of rubble, undevoured by scavengers who could not shift stone. There would be more of her than bones, and they had no desire to find out how much more.

  But the door was locked, a sad irony that did not escape Hunter. So they went around
after all, picking their way over the wet stones and hoping to find something that would represent Criton’s essence, besides the corpse of his mother. There were plenty of objects in the rubble, so they collected as many as they could – the leg of a chair, the remains of what might have been a tapestry, feathers from some pillow that must still be trapped beneath the stone. But once they were a few feet from the house, the last corner of Atella’s map always came back to life. They hadn’t yet found what they were looking for.

  “I sure hope…” Phaedra said, and didn’t finish. Hunter knew what she was thinking, even if Atella didn’t.

  “It’ll be some object,” Hunter insisted, in an attempt to reassure the both of them. “It has to be.”

  Atella raised a hand to stop them. “Do you hear that?”

  Someone was whistling.

  They scrambled to get behind one of the walls, praying that no one would find them. “Mura’s ship is still at the docks,” Phaedra whispered. “There must be some sailors around here.”

  They waited until they couldn’t hear anything but their beating hearts, and then waited some more. When they felt the danger had passed, they left Atella as a lookout while they continued their search. That cut their manpower by a third, but at least Atella was still able to make runs back and forth away from the building to test each item they found. But every time she left them, the map came back to life.

  The clouds passed, and the sun came out. Eventually Phaedra gave up her part in the search and sat down on the ragged edge of one of the walls, resting her uneven and aching legs. Hunter was left to pick through the rubble on his own.

  “Try over there,” Phaedra would say now and then, and Hunter didn’t know if she had any special reason for indicating the spots she did, but he obeyed anyway.