Eloy's Challenge

by Kara Timmins

  The deliverer who had taken the coin opened the lid of the wooden box. Even from a distance of thirty strides, Eloy saw Anso’s face drop. The look of disappointment moved aside for anger. Anso yelled at the deliverer and pointed at the man’s chest. The deliverer reached into the wooden box and removed a small pouch, no bigger than a fist. He grabbed Anso by the throat. Rivers of blood dripped down the fabric next to the deliverer’s ears as he wrestled with Anso, but whatever power Anso had was weak now. The deliverer pulled Anso toward him and emptied the small pouch of erum into Anso’s mouth. A wisp of green powder curled in the wind. Anso coughed against it, then heaved, all while yelling through his clogged throat. Blood trickled from both nostrils, then gushed. More blood leaked out of his eyes, then flowed.

  Anso writhed in the deliverer’s grip at the center of erupted chaos. As soon as the deliverer had grabbed Anso, Anso’s fighters moved into action. Some tried to save their leader, but most lunged for the box that was supposed to contain the erum that would save them. The other three deliverers had their spears ready.

  Some of Anso’s fighters had their swords out and readied but many dropped to their knees and pulled at the robes of the deliverers. The sound of the fighters’ pleas was loud enough to reach the storage tent. The sharpened spears cut through the battle-ready and desperate alike.

  Anso convulsed and went still. The deliverer holding him by the neck let go.

  Anso was dead. Eloy could almost forget that the man he had just seen die had controlled the reigns of a chariot of destruction for longer than Eloy had been alive. Anso could have been just another farmhand. He could have been Roch. The army Anso had spent a lifetime building was now as useful as a horse with four broken legs.

  It seemed too simple to have such a great force cut down so easily, but each death was as simple and quick as the kids who had fallen at the Bowl, like the scrawny boy Eloy had wanted to save but had ended up on the rack with a cut throat. There had been so much power in Anso just days ago. The command that had been contained in his body was gone, a curling mist after the crash of the waterfall.

  “What going on?” Malatic asked, his patience thinning.

  Eloy hadn’t realized he had been breathing heavily until he looked at Malatic and Goodwin and saw their fear.

  “They killed him,” Eloy said. “The people with the erum killed Anso.”

  “No. That’s crazy—” Malatic started saying more, but Neasa cut in.

  “Eloy,” she said. “Look.”

  Eloy put his eye back up to the cut in the fabric in time to see the deliverers start their crusade through the crowd of people still begging for a reprieve. The four deliverers broke apart for the first time and killed every person around them with flawless efficiency.

  “What’s going on now?” Goodwin asked.

  Eloy jumped down from the perch and took Goodwin by the shoulders.

  “Shhh,” Eloy hissed. “They’re going to kill everyone in this camp. We have to hide ourselves. We have to take the boxes and sacks and make them look as close to a regular storage tent as we can. Hide yourself inside of it and be quiet.” Eloy’s heart beat fast and hard.

  Neasa and Malatic were already moving the sacks around by the time Eloy let go of Goodwin. They worked as quickly as they could while trying to keep their presence in the tent secret. Eloy made sure the other three were tucked away and hidden before wedging himself in a dark crevice.

  He tried slowing his breath as the heat of it filled the small, dark space. The whistling of the air through his nose seemed too loud, loud enough to betray that they were there, so he closed his eyes and took each breath slowly.

  The flap of the tent swished open and held. Eloy imagined what was going on inside the tent. A bloodied spear coming through the weak defense of the grain sacks played over and over in his mind. Who would it hit? Neasa? Goodwin? Would it cut into his stomach or throat? Eloy wondered if Malatic would break from his hiding spot and fight the deliverer scanning the supply tent. The confinement of their hiding place put them at an additional disadvantage.

  But he didn’t hear a sound from his companions. The tent flap swishing closed, and the crunching of retreating footsteps was euphoric. The pleasure was short-lived. The tent walls were too thin, and the supplies weren’t enough to block the sounds of what was going on outside.

  The noises of death reverberated around them like being caught in a wind tunnel on the other end of a torturous other world. Even without the advantage of sight, Eloy could tell that the deliverers were able to maintain a level of efficiency in their death dealing.

  The sounds faded like a receding wave, but Eloy and the others didn’t move from their hiding places. They waited for the stretch of silence that meant the massacre was over. Eloy was the first to emerge. Going by the light filtering through the cloth of the tent, the day was much darker than it had been when they took cover. The others left their spots.

  “Are you okay?” Eloy looked at each of their faces.

  “Yeah,” Neasa said.

  “Better than others,” Malatic said.

  Goodwin nodded. Even in the dim light, Eloy could see that Goodwin looked sick.

  “Here.” Eloy pulled out his water pouch and handed it to Goodwin. “Drink something. Do you need to sit?”

  “I don’t think I want to ever sit again.” Goodwin took a deep pull at the water pouch. “It’s so quiet now.”

  “Quieter than it’s ever been and a quiet it always will be, my friend,” Malatic said. “I can’t believe he’s dead. It’s done.”

  “This part is done,” Eloy said, “but it’s not finished. I’m going to find out what’s going on. Malatic, you told Nicanor you would see this through and you have. Goodwin, you can go back to your family. But those people are just as much of a problem as Anso. They’re just as much a threat; they’re the disease. Why did they come back when they knew Anso would die without erum? I think they wanted to make sure he was dead. They planned and destroyed both Nicanor and Anso, and I want to know why.”

  Malatic looked at Neasa. “I want to know where those people come from too. There’s something really dark about this whole thing, and I’ll bet my sword hand that things are about to get a lot worse for a lot of people who are better than the ones who died today.”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen from here on out,” Eloy said, “and I want to be sure you’re okay with that.”

  “You didn’t know what was going to happen when we came here either,” Malatic said.

  “I had some kind of idea,” Eloy said. “I had seen enough of Anso’s fighters to make a guess. I have no idea who these people are. The only thing I know is that they come from a group that is more strategic than Anso. That’s scary.”

  “So, we all agree that we’re going to figure out who these people are and where they come from,” Goodwin said. “But what are we going to do right now? We can’t stay in here forever.”

  Eloy nodded, but the idea of going outside had a nauseating aftershock.

  “Anso isn’t in his tent anymore,” Malatic said. “He had been doing deals with this group for a long time. There might be something in there that can tell us something.”

  “Good idea,” Eloy said.

  Malatic, Neasa, and Goodwin looked at Eloy and waited for him to move, ready to follow him whether he walked to Anso’s tent or through the front gate and out of the notch in the mountain that was now a tomb. Eloy took a few steps, powered by their expectation, and stopped at the flap. He didn’t want to see what he could already smell on the other side. The reek of punctured bowels and metallic blood was enough, but the presence and expectation of the others pressed against him. He couldn’t avoid seeing what was on the other side of the veil of fabric, so he pushed it aside and went through.

  43

  The scene outside the tent was worse than Eloy imagined. Bodies were piled
upon one another and scattered like crumpled insects below a broken hive. An unnatural red vibrancy washed over the terrain. Flies, already so numerous from the growing number of dead, were buzzing around and filling some of the cuts with their iridescent blackness.

  Eloy heard Goodwin retch behind him. Neasa stood next to Eloy, and even she was breathing through her nose and out of her mouth to keep her composure.

  “There are so many of them,” she said. “It happened so fast. I can’t believe they were able to do all of this in such a short amount of time.”

  “You know,” Eloy said, “that’s not the first time I’ve had to hide while so many died around me, but it’ll be the last.” Eloy’s mouth tightened as he scanned the wreckage.

  Malatic sidled up to Neasa. “I’m not saying this is a good thing, but isn’t this good for us?”

  “It shouldn’t have happened like this,” Eloy said.

  “No, you’re right,” Malatic said as he looked out.

  Once they coaxed Goodwin from his hunched position, they made their way to Anso’s tent. The four did their best to avoid the litter of bodies, but the closer they got, the more dense the slaughter became. Eloy tried to spot Anso’s body in the mass, but he couldn’t tell the difference among the tangle of corpses. His body was lost in the mess.

  They were almost at the entrance of Anso’s tent when a sound made them stop. A low, casual singing hummed from inside. The four withdrew their swords and looked at each other for confirmation that they were ready to go in. It didn’t seem likely that one of the erum deliverers would be inside of Anso’s tent singing, but they hadn’t anticipated a lot of other things about the day either.

  Malatic was closer to the entrance of the tent, and he went in first. His quiet advancement was a reminder of how skilled of a tactical fighter he was. Eloy went in after Neasa before he motioned to Goodwin to hold back long enough to give him room if he needed to swing his sword.

  It took a moment for Eloy to adjust his eyes to the darkness, just as it had the eight days before, as if night reached the tent first. A bloom of firelight next to the bed in the back right corner cast shadows around the blood-blotted dirt floor.

  Neasa was still close to the entrance, but Malatic was already moving toward the man going through the drawers full of Anso’s things in the stand next to the bed. The singing man didn’t hear Malatic until he was within striking distance. The stranger spun around with an agility that matched Malatic’s. Whatever Malatic saw was enough to stop his blade.

  “Look who it is!” the strange man said before putting a piece of fruit in his mouth with his free hand, the muscles at the side of his square jawbone bulging with every bite. “Malatic, my friend, it’s like seeing a ghost! Am I seeing a ghost? I thought for sure I made out of this siege alive, but you’re making me doubt.”

  Malatic straightened out of his fighting stance, but he didn’t put his weapon away.

  “As far as I know,” Malatic said, “we’re both alive. And if we’re not, I’m disappointed by the afterlife, but not surprised.”

  “Where’ve you been?” the man asked.

  “I’ve been fighting for Nicanor,” Malatic said.

  “Good call,” the man said. “If you weren’t killed before, you would have been after today, eh?” The man laughed through a mouth half filled with food.

  Eloy moved next to Malatic.

  “Everything okay?” Eloy asked.

  “Not sure yet,” Malatic said without looking away from the man. “Better than what we thought. Not as good as I would’ve liked.”

  “Ah, you’re fine,” the man said. “I think everyone has had enough fun for one day, don’t you think?”

  Eloy lowered his sword when he sensed Neasa and Goodwin move up behind him. Even if the strange singing man was one to fear, they had him outnumbered.

  “This is Emil,” Malatic said. “He and I used to go out on tasks together.”

  Emil and Malatic could have been cousins with their dark hair and pale skin, but Emil looked as if he had been cut with crude carving tools by a sculptor prone to sharp, square edges.

  “We did until you disappeared,” Emil said. “Thought for sure someone got you. Have to admit, I was a little sad.” Emil sat down with a hard thud on Anso’s bed and put his sword down next to him.

  Eloy assumed Emil had fighting skills that went beyond his sword, but having his hand off the hilt helped all four to relax. Emil ran a hand across his forehead where it caught on the front-knot of his red scarf. He pulled it off and tossed it aside.

  “What’re you doing here anyway?” Emil asked as he examined their clothes from top to bottom. “Your clothes are beat to hell.”

  “We came here to deal with Anso,” Eloy said.

  “Well,” Emil said. “Congratulations on your accomplishment. You came all this way for nothing. To think, of all the days to come through.”

  “We’ve been here for a few days already,” Malatic said.

  “You’ve been in camp wearing those?” Emil said. “You’re lucky everyone else was out of their minds. You would have been skewered within moments otherwise.”

  “Are you going to tell us what’s going on here?” Malatic asked like a scolding parent. “What happened? Who were those people? Why are you still alive?”

  “Hey now,” Emil said. “One question at a time. What happened? Everyone died. That one was simple enough.”

  “And the people who brought the erum?” Malatic asked.

  “Look at you,” Emil said. “You already know some of it. Good for you. Those are the Vaylars.”

  “What are they doing here?” Eloy asked.

  “I think they just did it.” Emil took another bite of his fruit.

  “That can’t be the only thing they were here to do,” Eloy said. “There has to be something more to this.”

  “Maybe.” Emil shrugged. “I didn’t ask, and no one told.”

  “That leads us to the last question, then,” Malatic said, the muscles around his eyes tightening. “How are you alive?”

  “Some months ago,” Emil said, “a couple of the Vaylars snuck up on me when I was out watching some of Nicanor’s fighters. You can imagine I was pretty surprised and impressed that they were able to get so close without me noticing, and more than one of them at that. So, they had my attention. They asked if I would be interested in connecting them with Anso to sell some of their product. They gave me some erum to try, which I didn’t really like, thankfully, and I agreed. Anso was all about it. He loves . . . sorry”—Emil held up his hands and gave a small laugh—“loved the stuff. He got enough for everyone when he saw how much it improved fighting. We took every battle we had. Every new person became top fighters almost immediately.” Emil lay down on Anso’s bed and crossed a leg over his propped-up bent knee. “But I knew something was up. No one who was just interested in selling some kind of ground-up plant could sneak up on me like that, so I stopped taking the stuff and got pretty sick for a few weeks, which was telling. I got back on my feet and decided I would watch and see what happened. I could tell after a while that the Vaylars weren’t using it like Anso and the others were. Interesting, right? If their stuff was so amazing, why wouldn’t they take it themselves? After a while, my curiosity got the better of me, and I followed them out. I’m guessing one of them was the one who approached me at the beginning—hard to tell, you know.” Emil waved his hand over his lower face. “But they talked to me. I don’t know where they’re from, but they don’t talk like anyone I’ve ever heard before. They told me they were there to kill Anso. That was all they said at first before they went back to wherever it is they come from. I think they wanted to see if I would say anything to Anso, which I obviously didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Malatic asked.

  “I don’t know,” Emil said. “I thought about it, but I wanted to see what would happen
. I knew what would happen if I told Anso; he would kill them the next time they came. I didn’t know what would happen if I didn’t say anything, and that was more interesting.”

  In the corner of his eye, Eloy saw Neasa roll her shoulders back in revulsion.

  “What happened after that?” Eloy asked.

  “The Vaylars kept coming, and they kept bringing their erum,” Emil said. “They started bringing more and more, which the people here always managed to get through. When they saw that I hadn’t said anything to Anso, they told me more about what was going to happen. They said erum was made from a tree bark from the place they came from and that it’s supposed to be taken as a mixture with a dried leaf. Without the leaf, the body becomes too reliant on the erum for getting blood to move through the system. If someone takes erum for a long time without the leaf, their body will lose the ability to sustain itself on its own. You have to admit, that’s pretty interesting.” Emil turned his head and looked at Malatic.

  “Fascinating,” Malatic said, his voice filled with more disgust than interest.

  “Whatever,” Emil said. “With that information, I just assumed they would stop coming and let everyone die off. The poisoned batch was a surprise—more showy than I expected from them, but it was a sight to see. Gruesome.” Emil laughed. “Well, I guess you saw today, right? It happened the same, only the first time had the element of surprise—the ones who took it first, especially. I could tell Anso was starting to lose it when he realized that what he had built was coming down like it had tree rot. That just made him take more erum. Then I just had to wait. And now it’s all done!”