by JDL Rosell
“I’ll be sure you will.” Then, without waiting for a response, she pulled him towards the door.
But Erik pulled back. “Hold on a moment,” he said, hating when he pulled his hand away. “Wait upstairs, I’ll be right up.”
She looked put off, but went away all the same. When he was sure she was gone, Erik drew out the surinx from a corner and quickly filled it with elixir, trying to hurry as much as he could. He pushed in the needle, barely flinching now, and quickly let it into his bloodlines.
He blinked, then smiled as he withdrew it. Ilyse waited for him.
They were running through the fields surrounding Zauhn, the tall barley stalks whipping against their swinging arms. Erik followed behind Ilyse, trying to keep track of her as the dark world reeled and keeled. They’d found a jug of barley wine nestled into the bank of the Fost’Fluum and had taken several healthy swigs to get them properly in the spirit of Dead Army, then started to run, unsteady as fawns, nearly falling into each other to stay upright. Every time she touched him, he thought his heart would fly away to the half-lidded moon.
He should have been watching where he was going instead of caught up in his head, and he tripped and fell hard to the ground. Still, he laughed, even though he tasted a bit of blood in his mouth from biting his tongue. Not rising, he flipped onto his back and looked up at the thousand bright Maidens scattered across the sky, winking in and out with the tide of the Void. He thought he heard them whisper secret, ancient songs to him as he lay there.
“You okay?” Ilyse whispered from nearby. He heard the dry grass crunching as she searched for him, getting closer.
A sudden impish urge seizing him, he reached out and grabbed hold of her ankle, somehow knowing just where it was by the sound alone. Ilyse gave a satisfying yelp, and Erik leaned his head back and laughed.
“Not funny,” she protested. The grass shifted gently as she stepped closer to him. The laughter stopped, and his breath caught as her dark shape loomed over him, blocking out the stars. He gently moved his hand, still resting on her ankle, up her leg and around to her calf, his chest tight with his daring. His hand was already slightly above the hem of her dress, touching bare skin.
“I always wondered,” he said softly, letting his fingers linger gently on the small, soft hairs of her leg.
She knelt, and his hand inadvertently shot further into the folds of her clothes. As he retracted it with shock, he felt her body shiver.
Her hand settled on his face, and he could just make out her eyes peering down at him. “You’ll never hurt me, will you, Erik?”
“Never,” he said, leaning up on an elbow and gently pulling her down to him. “Never, never, ne—”
Their lips met halfway between him speaking and entwined. It was warm and wet and strange, but something became quickly apparent. Neither of them knew how to kiss.
He heard her giggle nervously as they pulled away. “That was…”
“Weird?” Erik offered.
She laughed low this time. “But right.”
He pulled her again towards him. “Then let’s make it better.”
They pulled away when they heard shouting in the woods. Erik reluctantly removed his hands from the places they’d wandered to, and Ilyse did the same.
“Blighted boys,” Ilyse whispered with disgust. “Just like them to ruin a good thing.”
A broad smile was on his face, though, and not just at her cursing—it would take more than an interruption to dampen his euphoria. He stood and held a hand out to her to do the same, and she took it. As she stood, she ran a hand boldly along his pants, and he shivered in shock and pleasure.
She pecked him on the cheek. “To remind you,” she whispered in his ear. “For later.”
He wished later could be now. Oh, how he wished it.
But the orange light of a torch emerged from the looming trees not far off, illuminating three pale faces still too far to identify. The figures halted at the tree line.
“Hail!” one of them called. “O, Dread Deadmen! I knocked twice on my mother’s noggin and clapped thrice on a kit’s paw, so you needn’t tie your entrails in a knot. Just here for a blissful night of Dead Army, deep in the dark, dark woods.”
Quite the poet, Erik thought with sudden and sharp disdain. He suspected it was Feld, son of District Nord’s high tax collector. No one else liked to hear themselves talk half so much.
“You’ll not get half a piece of peace from us!” Ilyse shouted back, startling Erik. She wasn’t usually one to shout, much less rhyme.
“Then I’ll give you a blade to lick, you knave!” Feld called again. “Ready the charge, men!” With that, one figure rushed out of the torchlight and towards them.
Though he knew it was in jest, Erik still felt a stab of fear run through him. The jug of spirits had been quite empty when they’d gotten to it, and he didn’t like to think what they might do with soaked heads, so he reached forward and grabbed Ilyse’s arm to pull her away.
“Hey!” she objected, but let herself be pulled back into his arms.
The night-shaded Feld leaped before them, his extended arm barely visible in the moonlight. The glint at the end of it, though, was all too apparent. “Surrender, curs. Your nights of belly-crawling and moon-wailing are over.”
“Put that away,” Erik found himself barking. “Someone could get hurt.”
Ilyse extracted herself from his arms, and he felt embarrassment wash over him at realizing they’d been so close in front of others. But the potential danger quickly suppressed the flush back.
“It speaks! But can it only speak craven words?” Feld moved closer, wiggling the sliver of moonlight at them. “Speak again, creature of the Void, and tell me: will you duel, or die a lamb’s death?”
“I said put it away,” Erik said in as low and threatening a voice he could.
“Spoken like a true—”
The other two figures approached, and Feld cut off. The shadows fell back from the torchlight so that Erik saw all three of their faces. The first was Feld as he’d supposed, his narrow face framed by thin blonde hair that looked especially ghastly in the darkness. The one bearing the torch was Jerem, son of a freeman landowner nearby, though his stocky Dagathode stature and dark curls were more suitable to a common farmhand than aristocracy.
The last was Oslef. He was in a garb unfamiliar to Erik, a cape draped across his shoulders and fluttering out of the light, golden tassels tying it together under his throat. His clothes were similarly ornate, with a vest the orange of the sky just before the sun dips under the horizon, and the tops of fine leather boots apparent, though they were bound to be ruined from tramping about in meadows and woods. Altogether, he looked fit to be heir to the Vestorian throne itself. Still, Erik tried smiling at him, but Oslef didn’t seem to see as he didn’t return it.
Feld, usually talkative, looked back at the other two, as if awaiting their permission to proceed. Finally, Oslef said, “Look at what we have here. Two of love’s doves, wandering the meadow alone.” His words were deep and throaty and seemed to resist being spoken.
Erik didn’t back down. “This is Dead Army, isn’t it? We were just joining.”
Oslef snorted. “Which is why we found you.”
Erik looked at Ilyse, but she seemed to have drawn within herself. It wasn’t hard to guess why. The daughter of a tanner and a mere beginning seamstress herself, most of her interactions with nobility had been servicing them with clothes and other items. A commoner like her—and himself, for that matter—were supposed to keep a respectful distance and remain silent until approached. Though they’d grown up playing and getting into mischief with Oslef, the rules of interaction remained: defer, or be cast aside.
But Erik never had laid much by such expectations, and it had worked out for him so far. They were just men, or boys, like him, the only difference being their fathers had money and titles or their mothers were high within the Font. They didn’t deserve his respect until they earned it. And this
was Oslef. They’d rolled around in the dirt when they were young and fought over who got to keep lunegazers they’d trapped. How did he deserve more respect than Erik or Ilyse?
“Where are the others?” Erik asked to break the silence.
Jerem started to answer—though he looked intimidating, he was often considerate—but Oslef interrupted him. “So you can dodge around them? No need. Your fek-skin will help you fit right it. Just have to spread some mud on your betrothed and you can sneak off to the swamp and spread your little frog eggs around.”
Erik stared hard at him. “You got a problem, Os?”
The count’s son threw his head back and guffawed, loud and exaggerated, though he had to take a step back to steady himself as he did. “A problem? Yes, I have a problem. I have a problem with proud fucking commoners like you thinking themselves big and important and above the order around here.” He took a step forward, and Erik saw the glass jug in his hand for the first time, a bit of spirits still sloshing around as he moved. With his other hand, Oslef pointed at him. “Especially when they’re a Void-worshipping, scud of a mire ‘fidel like you.”
Erik swallowed. His face, arms, and chest had grown hot, and his head ached with terrible pressure. “You’ve got one chance to shut the hell up.”
Jerem put a hand on Oslef’s arm, but he shrugged it off angrily and took another long swig of the brown liquid. Then, the jug almost empty, he threw it against a nearby tree, the shattering loud in the silence of the night, and Erik flinched before he could stop himself.
The count’s son raised his arms and sneered at Erik, his eyes half-lidded. “That was my chance, tar-cock. Show me what you’ve got.”
Erik stepped forward, but Ilyse put a hand on his arm. “Erik,” she said, dangerously enough that he looked at her. Her pink eyes caught the torchlight and seemed afire. “He’s soaked through. Don’t bother—you know Oslef wouldn’t say anything like that sober.”
I don’t know that, he thought, remembering the casual remark he’d made earlier that afternoon. Still, he stepped back and held up his hands. “Take it easy,” he said to the swaying noble. “Let’s just go have a good time.”
But Oslef had already stepped forward and grabbed Ilyse’s arm, pulling her roughly to him. Though Erik tried keeping hold, he was too afraid to hurt her, and Ilyse let herself be pulled over, her face a blank mask. Erik watched her, twin vines of anger and jealousy twisting around his neck. She wanted him to pull her away, some part of him said in his head. She’d rather be with him than you.
“All right,” Oslef said to Ilyse, leering at her up and down. “Let’s go have a good time, honey.” He sniffed at her hair and grinned at Erik.
Heat spreading through his face, Erik grit his teeth and stepped forward. “Let her go.”
“Make me.” Oslef was all bright teeth.
So Erik did. He punched that blighted toothy smile, those pig-eyes, his padded sides. He knocked him to the ground and tried pinning him with a knee to give him some more as his knuckles went battered and bruised, but he hardly cared. All he wanted was to pound that stupid smile off his face.
But Oslef, though shorter, was thick and furious with alcohol. He threw Erik off, spinning him to the dirt, and got on top. Then it was his fists pounding down. Erik’s nose crunched beneath a blow, choking him with a splash of blood. Even as he gagged and coughed, his head slammed back against the earth, stars popping in his vision, again and again.
He found a grip on fabric and pulled hard, and felt the Oslef twist up against the pressure. Through the blood running from his brow, he saw the gold tassels of Oslef’s cape pull tight against his neck, choking him. So Erik pulled harder, bunching the cloth into his hand, and felt the pressure ease up on him again. Oslef half-rose and tried twisting away, but Erik had a grip on him now. His head ached, horribly ached, and his chest fluttered inside, like a thousand hummingbirds were caught and frantically trying to get out.
“Erik!”
He blinked at Ilyse’s voice, coming back to himself, and let go. Oslef collapsed, coughing over and over again and grasping at his throat. Feld and Jerem stared at him, horrified. Erik didn’t dare look at Ilyse.
Erik stood. “Had enough?” he panted, spitting out a stream of metallic tasting saliva. He could barely see for the blood dripping in his eyes, and it was all he could do to not bend double with the pain and lightheadedness.
“You’ll fucking pay for that,” Oslef said hoarsely when he could, coughing and spitting himself while he rubbed his throat. “I’ll fucking make sure of it.” But he wouldn’t do so now, and he didn’t resist as Jerem and Feld led him away, taking the torchlight with them, and leaving Erik and Ilyse in the dark.
Erik finally met Ilyse’s eyes, now that they were shadowed over. “I…” he started, but he didn’t know what to say.
“You look like a half-rotten lurcher,” she said, lips twisting into a half-smile.
He gave a weak laugh and let himself lean over. “I feel like one.” His ribs ached, and his head throbbed. “Sorry about…” He didn’t know what exactly. From where the evening had begun, to where it had ended, the contrast seemed criminal, or sacrilegious. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “Fighting with Oslef… Will there be…?” She let the implication hang in the air.
“No,” Erik said, wiping at his eyes, and blinking as they stung. “The count is as like to beat him as me. Os told me his father said he’s getting too like his uncle and had best put the drinking away. I don’t think our Twice-Late Viscount will want to encourage that view.”
Ilyse smiled hesitantly, and Erik returned it, hoping to reassure her. Though with blood between his teeth, it probably wouldn’t.
Yet, eventually, she seemed to relax, gently taking his arm and leading him away from the field. He smiled still, but grimly. A’Qed was undoubtedly somewhere very pleased with how the night turned out. The dead did not have to rise for him to wreak havoc.
Sixteen
Erik watched two men fall to the floor, wrecked ships folding into the sea.
He stared at one of their faces. He knew that face. He knew what emotions twisted across it, knew every one of them: the surprise, the anger, the hate, the pain. He knew that face. It was his own.
He stared into his eyes, his dying eyes, life drifting from them, curling up like smoke. It was his pure essence falling apart, a moth-eaten blanket.
He was nothing for a moment. Then his senses flashed back, and he floated above the two fallen bodies. He could see everything in the room at once; could smell the blood, the acridity of formulae, the screams burnt into the stones. He could hear the other man moving on the floor, moaning faintly as his own body grew cold. He was above, but with a thought, his incorporeal form took him next to his murderer’s ear.
That noble’s son, dressed in his foreign clothes, ordained with lye-dyed braids, sporting a velvet half-cape. That man who murdered him—for what? What boon had been paid for the crime, and by whom? He hated him, though he could not remember his name. He would ruin him all the same.
Erik put his ghostly lips next to his ear and whispered. He knew not the words he spoke, but they carried him inside, inside the man’s mind. The murderer’s fear pushed back, insistent but weak, and he forced past it, around it, filling his mind like a noxious smoke. He felt the dying man choke, and his laughter was a gale.
Then a door opened, and he flitted away, startled. What man is this, entering upon twin murders? Why does he come so fast? Why does he kneel and check my murderer’s breath, but not mine? He knew this man. Erik reached back into his memory, trying to place him. An emaciated man, descended of a jungle island people, with wisps of white hair clinging to the crown of his skull, clad in loose gray robes. But recognition was as far as he could go. This man’s name, too, escaped him.
“Oslef,” the man said in an accented voice, the words too clipped and proper, and shook the murderer’s shoulder once before releasing it. H
is eyes trailed to the knife erupting from the young man’s chest.
I killed him. I am a murderer as well, but his hand forced mine. His resolution was as unsteady as his gaseous form.
The thin man looped his hands under the murderer’s thick arms and heaved. He had a slow start, but after several pulls, he managed to move him one inch, then another. But it was barely a body’s length before the old man panted and wiped at his brow.
“Where is that blighted man?” the thin man muttered. “He should be here by now.”
Was it just the next moment that the door swung open? Time worked in fits and spurts, and Erik couldn’t keep track of it. But time seemed to stop when another man walked in. He was the opposite of the first in many ways: broad where the other was narrow; bronze where the other was coal; his eyes warm chestnut to the other’s urine yellow. There was something about his bearing that was reassuring, familiar.
There was another difference between the two men. The latter walked in, looked, and Erik felt his essence tear once more.
First, he fell next to the body by the door, Erik’s body. He cried out. He knelt his face to his murdered body, shook him, but the body remained limp. Erik floated above, detached, too far gone to come back.
Then the thick man rose, stalked over to the skinny man, and grabbed him by the collar.
“You killed my son?” the man asked in a familiar accent. “This is what you brought me here for? To taunt me?” He shook him again.
The robed man didn't struggle. “You knew this was coming, Tacitus. We’ve worked towards this. I spared you the pain of knowing when, but we both knew it would happen.”
“Not this,” he panted with anger. “Not. This.” The thick man held him there, thrust against the wall. But a moment later, his arms drooped, and he let his opposite sink to the ground, stepping back, his arms out to the side.
“He was all I had,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “All the world could give me.”
The thin man slowly stood, aches and pains apparent in his rise. “Then we had better bring him back.”