The Silent Isle

by Nicholas Anderson

Dane shouted up to Tanlin Hall, the sentry. “Close it as soon as we’re through.”

  Tanlin stood as though he’d been turned to stone until Dane and Bax appeared on the other side, then he took the stairs in the three bounds and slammed the gate.

  Dane headed for the beach. He remembered Mirela lamenting being so close to the sea and not being able to visit it. They reached the beach. The ruined hulks of their ships listed lopsidedly in the shallows. There was no sign of Mirela.

  “Maybe we should split up,” Bax said.

  “Good idea,” Dane said. “Otherwise I might kill you.”

  Dane went to the left and Bax disappeared into the woods behind him. He scouted the whole eastern side of the harbor. The woods were thick here and he shouted her name, but the trees seemed to throw it back at him. He reached the end of the peninsula and doubled back along the eastern edge that faced the open ocean. Here steep cliffs dropped onto jagged rocks and the booming breakers. He remembered her words about death seeming more bearable than her current existence. He wondered how much she had meant it. He forced himself to step to the edge of the cliffs several times and scour the rocks below for any sign of her body. He did not know how long he’d been searching, but at some point while he was on the peninsula it began to rain. It rained hard. He tried to keep his bow under his cloak to protect the string but after a few minutes he knew it was useless.

  He worked his way back to the beach. He intended to cross it to the other arm of the harbor, but partway across he came upon a stream that ran out of the trees and into the harbor. He guessed it was the stream which flowed past the settlement. He splashed through it but then stopped. Something about the meeting of these waters seemed symbolic to him, as though it might be significant to her. He moved upstream, delving into the forest.

  ***

  Once Dane left the compound things happened fast. Bailus was crossing the courtyard when a dog began to bark. He recognized its bark as Dioji’s. The other two dogs joined in. Josie, who had just laid a mountain of table scraps before the dogs, which they were ignoring, bent over Dioji and spoke to him and scratched him between the ears. The dog licked her hand and began to run in circles, wagging his tail and barking excitedly.

  “Sir,” Rawl said, moving quickly towards Bailus from the gate, “Have you seen Dane?”

  “Not since lunch,” Bailus said, but his voice was drowned out by Tipper drawling down from the west wall. “Uhh, sir, I think you had better come and take a look at this.”

  And at the same time, Pratt shouted down from the east wall. “Sight. Sight! Holy Kran, where is everybody? Get your asses up here.”

  Bailus was closer to the east wall. He climbed the ladder and looked over the battlement beside Pratt. “What am I supposed to be seeing?” he said.

  “They were right there, sir,” Pratt said. “Running just inside the trees. There must have been two dozen of them.”

  “You coming, sir?” Tipper said, with the slightest hint of anxiousness in his drawl.

  Bailus patted Pratt on the shoulder and slid down the ladder (not an easy thing to do when you’re holding a giant hammer). He climbed the ladder on the west wall and joined Tipper in looking out at the meadow that stood on the western edge of the settlement. “Huh,” he said. “Well, doesn’t that beat all?” He turned to face the courtyard. “Alright, boys; this is it. Welcoming committee to the top of the wall.”

  There was a mad dash for weapons and then for the stairs. Rawl was at the front of the surge of men rushing up the stairs at the south gate when he stopped. He was pushed from behind and jumped off the stairs into the courtyard. He ran for the infirmary. Josie and Leech were there, standing near Elias’s bed. “We’ve got to move him,” Rawl said.

  “Where?” Leech asked.

  “To a place without any windows. Leech, help me get him on a litter.”

  Josie grabbed her crossbow and strapped on her quiver as the men carried Elias through the door.

  “This way,” Leech said.

  He led them to a room set in the opposite wall. It had no windows and the door opened inward and was secured by a heavy latch. As they set Elias on a table against the back wall, Josie ran back out into the courtyard. Rawl called after her but she was already gone. Leech yanked the draw-cord through the door so that it hung limply from the latch inside. Josie returned with Molly and the boy.

  “Is your magazine full?” Rawl asked.

  She nodded.

  “As soon as I’m gone, barricade the door. Push all the furniture in front of it that you can. I’ll come back for you as soon as the fighting’s over, but I’ll call to you; I won’t knock. If anything pounds on the door, load your bow. If anything opens it so much as a crack, shoot it dead. Don’t hesitate. You won’t get a second chance.”

  He turned for the door, but she caught him by the hand and pulled him towards her, and she was kissing him as he’d never been kissed. He was surprised by how strong her grip was, by how strong her body was. Then she let him go, and he turned, slightly dizzy, and ran for the stairs.

  As he ran, he realized how wrong he had been. All his life he had thought love was something you earned. If you were brave enough or noble enough or rich enough or good enough, love would find you. But he realized as he climbed the wall it was just the opposite. Love was a gift. But when you received it, it made you brave, it made you noble, it made you good. Love made you a king.

  As soon as he reached the wall-walk and took his place beside his brother he had other things to think about.

  Bailus had done the best he could with what he had. He had 16 men under his command at present, including Fish, the cook. He’d put them in pairs so that if things got really bad, each pair could become its own island, fighting back-to-back until the end. He put a pair on either side of each gate, where he thought the fighting would be fiercest and two each on the east and west sides of the wall. Bailus was the odd man out and the reserves. He had no partner. He would go wherever the fighting was fiercest.

  The dogs were on the wall also. Their presence gave Rawl a measure of comfort. But what held his attention was outside the wall. He joined his brother overlooking the western meadow where they had an unobstructed view of the figures gathering there. Rawl stared for a moment in silence. “What are they?” he finally asked.

  “Well, I figure they’re what’s been plaguing us,” Paul said.

  Rawl glanced at his brother and then back to the meadow. “I know that, brother. But what are they?”

  Paul shrugged. “Got me.”

  ***

  There was no path along the stream and the going was difficult. Dane fought his way through thorns and the tangling undergrowth. He never stopped calling her name. He used her true name. He had never used it out loud or in front of other people, but he felt somehow now it was the right thing to do, as though it had more power to call her back.

  He came out suddenly into a little clearing. There was a strange chill in the air and a faint smell of burning mingled with the damp-earth smell from the rain. A sudden movement to his left caught his eye and he swung towards it. He froze.

  His first thought was to doubt whether he had ever woken up this morning because the whole day felt now like a fever dream – Bax needing his help, this nightmare search for Mirela, and now, this thing that stood before him between the trees. He doubted what he saw because it was an impossibility, an absurdity, an image from one of the death cults. But there was a certain weight to the feel of everything, even the damp clothes clinging to his skin, that made him know he was not dreaming. And he knew, without needing anyone to tell him, that this thing that watched him from the clearing’s edge was everything a Tiran held in mind when he spoke the word (or more likely, refused to speak the word) ‘shriken.’

  Dane paused only for a moment. Then he remembered himself. He raised his crossbow at the creature with a shout and at the same moment remembered the string had lost its power. It mattered not. The thing turned and disappeared into the trees. Dan
e stood staring at the place where it had vanished. A strange noise startled him, and he turned back towards the clearing. He found himself staring into Bax’s eyes.

  Bax stood at the other side of the small clearing. His spear lay at his feet and he was holding something red and pink and slick in his hands. Dane felt a strange surge of euphoria. Mirela had delivered a healthy baby and Bax was holding it and everything would be alright. Then his dream-daze entered the heavy world of reality and came crashing down and shattered to pieces and Dane knew what he’d really known the instant he saw Bax.

  Bax was not holding a human infant. He was holding his own intestines.

  Dane wanted to move but felt like the earth held his feet in an unbreakable clutch. Bax sank to his knees. His eyes were pointed at Dane, but he did not seem to be seeing Dane at all.

  “Mother,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Then he fell forward face-first. With his cloak drawn over his head, Bax’s body looked like a shapeless mass, as though it were melting into the mud in which it lay. Dane did not know when the rain had stopped but he noticed now that it had. He stood there, staring at the body before him. Wasn’t it just like Bax to go out like this? Without giving him a chance to speak. Without giving him a chance to apologize. Not for his last words. Not for the last 29 years.

  Dane finally found the will to move his legs. He turned Bax over and dragged his body out of the mud onto a higher bit of grass. He covered his face and his horrible wound with his cloak. He was about to continue on when he remembered the spear. He laid his crossbow on the grass by Bax and picked up the spear and dove into the woods once more.

  He came to a fork in the stream in which a smaller stream ran out of the one he was following towards the west. There, in the fork, between the arms of the Y, he found Mirela. She was kneeling with her back to him as he came up. He called her name. She turned towards him slowly and rose. Her eyes were red and there were dirty streaks on her face. She was holding a small gardening shovel and her skirt was caked with mud from the knees down. All these things he took in in a moment and in the next moment his arms were around her. He lifted her off the ground. They both buried their heads against the other’s neck. He realized then that all the anger he’d directed at Bax was terror at the thought of losing her.

  He set her down but kept his hands on her shoulders. “What are you doing out here?”

  She glanced over her shoulder to a patch of freshly turned earth. “I wanted to bury the child.”

  “But…,” he began.

  “I know,” she said. “None of this was what I wanted. But it was still a part of me.”

  He nodded. “Bax is dead.”

  “That’s not what I would have wanted either,” she said.

  His eyes strayed to the little grave. It sat between the arms of the stream. He looked her in the eyes once more. “He was worried about you. I think he wanted to make things up to you; he just didn’t know how.”

  She said nothing.

  “Can I help you here?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’m finished.” She pulled away from him. “We must be getting back. Bax isn’t the only one who may lose his life today.”

  “You mean you think they’re headed for the settlement?”

  “No, Dane,” she said. “I think they’re already there.”

  XXII

  An Honest Day’s Work

  Rawl thought they looked most like birds. Their heads were like birds’ heads, with long, pointed beaks. Their legs also were like those of birds, long and slender and scaly. But their bodies and arms were more like men’s, although they were much too slender. And too tall. Rawl guessed the shortest of the creatures mustered in the field was taller than the tallest man in Dane’s company. They were entirely black. The kind of thing you imagine to be engraved on the altar of a blood cult. Something about the way they moved made Rawl queasy. Watching one of them walk in profile taught him why. Their legs bent backwards at the knee instead of forwards like a man’s. This also made him think of birds. But he saw they had arms and hands (clawed he thought, though he could not see clearly for the distance) instead of wings. Their bodies from the legs up were covered in coarse black, but he did not know if this were feathers or hair or spines. Each creature carried a flail in its left hand and a sickle in its right.

  Rawl spotted one creature in the center of the meadow which was different from the others. It was shorter and squatter and its head was naked like a vultures. Draped about its neck were tattered pieces of cloth. Had Rawl been closer, he would have seen the cloths had beads and bits of bone knotted into the ends of them. This creature held no weapons but was writhing and moving its arms up and down in sporadic jerks.

  “It’s been doing that since before you got up here,” Paul said when Rawl indicated the creature.

  The other creatures stood in silence, watching the wall.

  Bailus was watching the writhing creature, too. When he had called the men to the wall, he had turned back to the meadow and found he was looking straight into its eyes, as though they were standing right next to each other. And then it had spoken to him. Not in an audible voice but inside his head, and he knew it was the creature and that this vulture-headed thing was the leader of the others.

  Would you like to know what happened to those who walked those walls before you? the voice said. Would you like to know how they died? Would it surprise you to know their women and children endured more than the men? Lay down your arms, gray-head, and you need not know the pain they endured.

  Bailus was no mystic, but he knew in that moment how to respond to this thing. He thought back at it. Go to hell.

  The thing in his head laughed. Old dirt-son, where is it you think I come from?

  Bailus broke off his gaze, and when he looked back at it, the thing had begun to writhe.

  “They don’t have any ladders,” Paul said. “I wonder what they plan to do with the walls.”

  “I wish we had the ballista from the ship,” Rawl said. “That would push them back to a respectful distance.”

  Paul kept his eyes on the creatures. “I’d swap ten such ballistae to have you at my side, little brother.”

  “Well,” Rawl said, “I’d rather catch it like this, facing them in broad daylight, than get shot in the back when I stop to take a leak on patrol. And having you beside me isn’t so bad either.”

  Paul smiled. Then he spotted something moving into the meadow and his smile evaporated. “Look at that.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Rawl said.

  Rundal, Crane, Smith, and Gundar stepped out of the trees on the north side of the meadow and joined the ranks of the creatures.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bailus said.

  “I think they’re sending us a message, sir,” Paul said. “If we surrender, they’ll spare our lives.”

  “Spare our lives?” Bailus snorted. “I wouldn’t surrender to these things to save my soul.” He turned to Rawl and Paul. “Look, these ninnies can dance around all they want out there, but as soon as they come in range, you send them screaming into the abyss.”

  “Yes, sir,” the twins said.

  And that was when Rawl felt the first rain drop. It was a huge, heavy drop that struck his arm, which rested on the battlement before him, and splattered his face. Then the skies broke loose. Paul had taken off his oilskin cloak and set it against the wall at his feet. He quickly tucked his bow under it. Rawl had no cloak and so no way to protect his bowstring.

  “You don’t think he was…”

  “Doing a rain dance?” Rawl finished.

  Paul moved closer to his brother. It was hard to hear over the downpour. “I never really believed that stuff. But we haven’t had a drop since we’ve landed and this is awfully bad timing.”

  “He’s almost as good as Elias,” Rawl said grimly.

  The shaman, for Rawl was now quite sure that was the role of the vulture-headed creature, had stopped moving.

  The rain fell u
ntil water stood in the ruts and low places of the courtyard. The planks of the wall-walk were slick and shining. And then, as suddenly as it had started, the downpour stopped.

  The shaman creature was moving again. It was thrusting its hands over the field in sweeping circles with its palms down. Then it would close its hands and raise them towards the sky. It repeated this several times.

  A very strange thing began to happen. It seemed at first that the ground of the meadow was vibrating or shaking or even boiling. Then small dark objects began to rise from the grass. They rose first around the shaman’s legs and then all over the field. Some were small, the size of hen’s eggs, others the size of a man’s fist, and others bigger still.

  “Are those stones?” Rawl asked.

  “Rawl,” Bailus said, “Check the armory for any spare bows. The ones up here are wasted now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rawl said and ran for the stairs.

  Paul continued to watch the vulture-headed leader. The creature began to make squatting movements as though performing calisthenics. It would crouch, and then slowly, as though with great effort, rise up, raising its open hands above it as it did. It did this many times and each time the stones rose higher above the field. When the stones disappeared against the dark sky, the motions ceased but the creature’s hands remained extended above its head. The shaman then made thrusting movements with its hands towards the wall, palms open. It would quickly draw them back to its body and repeat the pushing movement. The shaman gave one final thrust of its hands and then its arms dropped limply to its side and it staggered forward. Two of the warriors caught the sagging body before it hit the ground.

  “Well,” said Paul. “That was the darnedest thing that I ever did see.”

  Even as he spoke, the air filled with a humming, whistling whine. Bailus grabbed Paul and shoved him roughly down and against the wall. “Cover,” he shouted.

  ***

  Rawl turned the armory inside out but only found a single spare crossbow. In searching for others, he did find a hip quiver full of bolts. He strapped this at his side and ran back into the courtyard. He heard Aaron shouting from his cell. “Let me out. Please let me out of here.”