Voice of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  Marek eased his lips into a smile. It was odd to feel happy, after so many days of conflict and sorrow. Tomorrow he would return home, battered but victorious.

  A scarce breeze blew over his body, cooling him and bearing a thousand scents of the forest he knew so well.

  He sat up. One of those scents didn’t belong here. One of those scents should have been a week’s journey away from Asermos in the other direction by now.

  He peered upriver. Nothing.

  “What is it?” Rhia whispered.

  He put a finger to his lips and closed his eyes. The human in him wanted to see to be sure, but the Wolf knew better. Truth lay in sounds and scents. The humid air hung heavy with the latter, carried by the fading wind. As the leaves on the trees hushed, the noise came to him.

  A rhythmic slapping against the water, too precise and regular to be a leaping fish or frog.

  He opened his eyes to check the riverbank beside them. No time to reach it without being spotted. He hid his bow and arrows behind a bulge in the rock, then slid soundlessly into the water.

  Rhia gasped. “Marek, your bandage—”

  “Shh. Hold still.”

  He stood behind her and wrapped his arms tight around her body.

  Then he turned invisible, and Rhia with him.

  The ship appeared around the bend upriver, near the middle of the waterway. It was long and low, its sails sagging in the dead air. Rows of oars protruded from the side like the legs of a centipede, but these limbs moved as one, back and forth, pushing the vessel through the calm waters. It floated past, for a moment blotting out the dim, distant view of the river’s opposite shore.

  Another ship appeared, identical to the first, then another. Nine Descendant crafts floated past as Marek and Rhia stood, unseen and unbelieving.

  The enemy was leaving a place it never should have been.

  Kalindos.

  His home.

  02

  Marek clutched Rhia’s waist and struggled to stay on the mare’s back as they careened through the dark woods. Dripping branches hung low over the trail, making him dodge and duck at each turn.

  Ahead of them, Alanka rode with Adrek, the Cougar’s night vision leading them all. Elora hurried behind them on her own pony, and behind her rode two Wolverines, two Bobcats and a Bear on the other three horses. At their current pace, they would reach Kalindos by daybreak—less than an hour—but it couldn’t be soon enough for Marek.

  The rest of the Kalindons were following on foot, in two groups: one who could hurry and would reach the village by late the next morning, and one consisting of the wounded and their caretakers.

  Soon the hill steepened, and they slowed their pace to an urgent walk, the ponies huffing from the effort. In the predawn glow Marek recognized the southernmost boundary of his hunting grounds. He knew each branch and rock as well as he knew the corners of his own tree house. The thought of Descendant swords polluting his peaceful forest home made his chest burn with rage.

  The wind shifted, carrying the scent he dreaded.

  Blood.

  “Hurry!” he shouted.

  They urged on their exhausted ponies. The path to Kalindos widened, then opened into the outskirts of the village as the sun’s first scarlet rays oozed over the mountains.

  They rounded a large boulder and pulled up short.

  Shreds of tree houses lay like kindling, covering so much ground that it seemed as though the forest itself had fallen. The walls of nearly every house bore gashes and gaps, making the homes look like mouths with missing teeth.

  No one peered from behind the busted walls. No one hurried down ladders to greet them. No one shouted or moaned.

  No one lived here anymore.

  “Let’s go,” Rhia said.

  She and Marek took the lead, Adrek and Alanka following. Though Marek no longer had immediate family in Kalindos—his parents had died over a decade ago, when he was ten—his gut twisted in fear for his mentor, Kerza. The invaders wouldn’t spare an old woman like her. Though they worshiped human-made gods instead of the Spirits, the Descendants understood how magic worked among people of the villages, how it peaked with grandparenthood.

  The riders picked their way around the village’s rubble, shouting names of their loved ones. The fog swallowed their voices and muted all sounds except the muffled thump of hooves on pine needles. Not so much as a sparrow’s twitter or a woodpecker’s rattle responded to their calls.

  Elora rode up beside them. “Maybe everyone escaped.”

  “No,” Rhia whispered.

  The Otter pushed back a damp strand of ash-blond hair and turned to face the village before them. She shrieked her sons’ names again, her voice echoing against the hills and bouncing back, unheard.

  “Wait.” Rhia halted the horse and motioned for Marek to dismount. As soon as he did, she slid off and hurried into the trees. Marek handed the reins to Elora and followed as fast as his injury would allow. With a rush of scent, he understood what Rhia sought.

  About a hundred paces off the path, a Descendant soldier lay pitched back in a clump of mountain laurel, as if he had decided to sit and rest awhile. The fingers of his left hand looped around the arrow protruding from his windpipe. He stared unseeing at the forest canopy, which dripped a steady stream of dew onto his forehead.

  Rhia knelt beside the dead soldier. Marek wanted to yank out the arrow and plunge it again and again into the man’s lifeless form.

  With a steady hand, she shut the Descendant’s eyes. Marek bit back a rebuke for her humane treatment of the enemy. They wouldn’t have done the same for her. But she couldn’t turn away from the dead any more than she could stop breathing.

  “We should move on,” he said. “There must be others.”

  “There are.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes—for the prayer of passage, no doubt.

  A howl of anguish erupted from the far side of the village.

  Adrek.

  “Go.” Rhia kept her eyes shut. “I need to finish here.”

  Marek forced his injured leg to run. His bow and quiver of arrows slapped against his shoulder blades, and he wondered if he should be ready to fire, if danger yet lurked in Kalindos. Then Morran joined Adrek’s cry, clearly not a warning, but a lament.

  Marek’s feet flew over the rocky terrain, and his hands fought back the underbrush that tore at his shirt. He followed the sound of the multiplying cries, and soon he burst into the small clearing that held the ponies’ paddock.

  He stopped and stared, his eyes trying to convince his mind that what lay before him was real. The morning mist shrouded everything but the three bodies in front of him.

  Two men and a woman were tied to the paddock posts, throats slit, shirts blushed with the dull brown of dried blood. The hairs rose on the back of Marek’s neck.

  At the corner of the paddock, Adrek knelt at the feet of a fourth body, with a wide gash across its abdomen. His father.

  Marek forced his ice-cold feet to move, circling the fence. The mist revealed more bodies tied to more posts. Zilus the Hawk, the village Council leader—dead, his throat slit. His wife, Dori, dead. Two more Council members, dead. All of the slaughtered were old.

  Elora stumbled past Marek, perhaps searching for a spark of life she could fan into a flame. He scanned his neighbors’ corpses for the long white hair of Kerza.

  The Descendants had dispatched the most powerful villagers first. But where were the young people his own age? Where were the children?

  A fury grew in him as he saw the grisly results of each death. These people had raised him, taught him how to survive in the unforgiving mountain forest. He had sworn to defend them. Instead he had abandoned them, and convinced the best Kalindon warriors to follow him to Asermos to fight in someone else’s war.

  A war that had come home.

  Rhia ignored the stitch in her right side as she ran through the village. Shrieks of anguish filled the air ahead of her, but they all belonged to the living. Cro
w’s wings were silent in Rhia’s mind. He had passed Kalindos hours ago, taken what was His, and returned to His realm on the Other Side.

  She forced her feet not to slow as she neared the paddock.

  Elora stepped toward her out of the mist. “There’s nothing left. Nothing for me to do.” The healer’s knees bent until she sat on the ground, head in her hands.

  Rhia moved on, sealing herself into the same shell that had protected her during the battle. After so many had died in front of her, how could this be any worse?

  It was worse.

  The Kalindon elders dangled pale and purple from the tall paddock stakes. With cold hands she pushed the hair out of her eyes and examined the body of Zilus. His throat had been cut, but no blood pooled at his feet, which meant he’d been killed somewhere else and dragged here to be mounted like a trophy. The sight curdled her guts.

  Her last moments with the old Hawk had been rancorous, for he had refused to send aid to her village of Asermos when they needed it. In a bitter twist of irony, those Kalindons who had defied Zilus’s decree and fought the Descendants were the only ones left alive.

  After speaking the prayer of passage, Rhia moved to the next body, another male elder. She wondered how her own mind could handle such a spectacle without shattering. Another of Crow’s “blessings.” With a few whispered words and an unflinching touch to the man’s slick forehead, she released another soul to the winged Spirit.

  Beneath the keening calls of the newly orphaned, someone spoke her name. She jerked her awareness back to this world. Marek stood at her side. He reached to touch her arm. She flinched, and he changed his mind.

  “Adrek’s father,” he said. “Morran’s, too. Twelve in all. Every third-phase Kalindon except Kerza, and she’s not here.”

  “Where are the rest?” she whispered, dreading the answer.

  “Gone. Maybe they escaped, or—wait.” He drew a deep inhale through his nose. “Someone’s alive.”

  They looked at the stable inside the empty paddock. It was large enough to shelter the seven Kalindon ponies, six of whom had gone to Asermos. A rope was tied to each of the paddock’s four corner poles. The ropes led to the stable, disappearing under the door. Suddenly one of the ropes shifted in the dirt.

  Rhia and Marek shouted, then hurried to open the paddock gate. Alanka followed. The two Wolves shot ahead of Rhia into the darkness of the stable. She stopped inside the door and waited for her eyes to adjust.

  “It’s Thera,” Marek called from the middle stall.

  Rhia stepped forward. The young Hawk woman’s neck, wrists and ankles were bound by the ropes leading to the paddock posts. The Descendants had tied her up like a wild beast.

  “Let’s get her out of here.” Marek spoke gently. “Thera, can you stand up?”

  Rhia checked the other stalls and found nothing but the remaining pony, who snorted and shifted its feet, looking frightened but otherwise unharmed. Marek carried Thera out of the stable and lowered her onto the ground of the paddock. The young woman’s hazel eyes stared into the distance without seeing, and her slack face seemed almost dead. Yet Crow’s wings beat nowhere near—her life’s essence was strong.

  “Thera!” One of the other riders, a blond Bear man named Ladek, rushed into the paddock with Elora. They knelt beside Thera. Elora lifted a water skin to the girl’s lips, but the liquid dribbled down her trembling chin.

  Ladek took Thera into his arms. Rhia remembered, as if from another lifetime, that he was the father of Thera’s three-month-old son, who was nowhere to be seen. She hoped the Hawk had answers, and would be able to speak them.

  The young woman seemed not to notice their presence, but sat limp in her mate’s arms while Marek cut the ropes that bound her. Elora stroked Thera’s shoulder-length dark red hair.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” the healer whispered. “Where is everyone?”

  Thera nodded, her gaze distant and blank. The others had gathered outside the paddock, waiting to hear her story, but Thera just kept nodding, with short pauses. Rhia realized the Hawk was listening to voices in her own head.

  “Give her time to come back to us,” Rhia said.

  “We don’t have time,” Adrek snapped. He gripped the fence post beside his father’s body. “She might know where we can find the others, if they escaped, or if they were taken. We need to start searching.”

  “He’s right.” Ladek cupped Thera’s chin in his thick fingers and turned her face to his. “Where’s Etarek?” he asked her in a soft but urgent tone. “Where’s our son?”

  Thera didn’t speak. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye, down her cheek and onto his fingers.

  “No…” He pulled her closer, though she seemed as oblivious as a rag doll. “I never should have left you.”

  Rhia turned to Marek. They shared a look of remorse, then his shoulders stiffened. He moved to the edge of the paddock, his eyes gaining a faraway look.

  He took a quick, deep breath. “Kerza!”

  A baby’s cry cut the air. A moment later, a white-haired figure appeared from the surrounding trees. Thera’s aunt Kerza stumbled into the clearing, clutching an infant to her chest.

  “Etarek!” Thera tried to stand, wild eyes fixed on her son.

  Ladek leaped to his feet and dashed out of the paddock, nearly knocking the gate off its hinges. He took the squealing baby from Kerza and pulled him close, then delivered him to Thera’s arms. She moaned as she laid the child’s head against her shoulder, tears flooding her face.

  Marek helped Kerza sit on a tree stump outside the paddock. Rhia moved toward them, listening for the rush of Crow’s wings, which never arrived. The old woman was exhausted but strong.

  “They came,” Kerza said with a gasp, “in the dead of night. Our scouts called the alarm, useless against so many.”

  “How many?” Marek asked.

  “At least a thousand. Almost ten of them for each one of us.” She took a grateful gulp of the water Rhia offered. “Knew I couldn’t fight, could only carry and cloak one person. No time to get food or water or put him in a sling. I came back hoping the soldiers would be gone. Couldn’t watch him starve in the wilderness.”

  “You saved his life,” Marek said.

  “What about the others?” Kerza sat up straight. Her thin skin flushed, then paled when she saw the ghastly display. “Oh, no.” She rose on unsteady legs and took a step toward the paddock. “This can’t be happening. In all my years—”

  “Get away from me!”

  Rhia turned to see Thera scowling at Alanka, who stumbled back and put a hand to her paling cheek as if she’d been slapped. No doubt she was reaping the fruit of her father’s treachery. Rhia entered the paddock and put her arm around Alanka’s waist to comfort her and show her loyalty. The Wolf’s chin trembled, and she rubbed it hard.

  Elora stroked Thera’s hair. “Your baby’s safe now, and he’ll be fine, a little dehydrated, that’s all.” She paused. “Can you tell us what happened? Start wherever you need, but we must know if we can save them.”

  Thera shuddered, then took a deep breath and wiped her face dry. In a few moments, her demeanor calmed as she went into a memory trance. As a Hawk, she could recall everything she had seen and heard, whether she wanted to or not.

  “They came at midnight,” she said matter-of-factly. “Our scouts sent out the alarm. Cougars and Bobcats shot a few, but there were too many. We surrendered. They gathered us all in the big clearing, where we have our celebration bonfires. They brought out the elders and slit their throats. The ones who struggled were stabbed in the gut instead. They died a lot slower.” She rattled off the details as if recounting the weather. “The ones who healed up right away, like Orias the Butterfly, they had their heads bashed in. We tried to stop them, but they restrained us.”

  Thera paused with her mouth open, as if waiting for her memory to catch up. “They brought the bodies here and tied them up. They asked for a Hawk to give their message, said everyone else woul
d be taken away, so I volunteered. They tested my memory to see if I was lying, then they tied me up. They took everyone else—the children, the young people, the fathers and mothers—and they marched them to the river. They said they were taking them back to Leukos as prisoners.”

  “The White City,” Rhia whispered. Next to her, Alanka shuddered.

  “They said it was in revenge for helping Asermos,” Thera continued. “They would have left us alone if we hadn’t sent soldiers and archers to defeat them there.”

  Rhia’s stomach went cold. Her worst fears had come to pass. This death and destruction, this decimation of Kalindos, had happened because of her.

  “It’s not true,” Alanka whispered, bending her head close to Rhia’s shoulder. “They would have come here if they’d won or lost. Nothing would have stopped them.”

  But Rhia could feel the others’ judgment, as heavy as a stone.

  “Maybe some escaped.” Adrek picked up his bow and quiver of arrows. “Maybe the Descendants couldn’t keep track of all the prisoners. Or—or maybe they left behind the ones who couldn’t keep up. Some of the children…” His fierce gaze darted among them. “We have to search.”

  Alanka was the first to shake the shock of Thera’s story. “I’ll go.” She left the paddock and sprinted into the forest with Adrek.

  Rhia turned to Marek and motioned to the corpses that surrounded them. They had to remove the gruesome spectacle before the others arrived. Marek pulled out his knife and reached for the rope binding the closest one. She glanced down to see a splotch of blood soaking through Marek’s trouser leg.

  Rhia looked at Elora, whose eyes were also focused on the reopened wound. The healer stood and approached Marek, mumbling, “At least there’s one person I can help.”

  On her way out of the paddock, Rhia gave a last glance at the baby Etarek, quiet in his mother’s arms. He had been named in memory of his grandfather, the first casualty of a war that had only just begun.