Steadfast

by Michelle Hauck

  Should he venture toward Crueses or Aveston to find his father? Where did he go to turn himself over to the authorities for his desertion? The cities were in the opposite direction from one another. The figure from his dream had been no help in making a choice. There’d been no hint at all where to start his quest to stop the Northern god Dal from killing every living creature on the earth. Crueses seemed the more likely place to head to find his father and his fellow soldiers, but Aveston was the closer option. In the end, he took the way fellow soldier Alvito would have suggested and flipped a coin. It was as good a reason as any—until he saw the smoke rising ahead of them as he got closer to Aveston.

  He’d circled Sancha around to the opposite side of the city from the smoke and approached through the olive groves, avoiding the roads as he’d done the whole journey. The dark stain in the sky hadn’t looked big enough to proclaim the death of a ciudad-estado the size of Aveston, but it stank of human flesh, enough to choke him for hours, though God knew he’d encountered worse in the last days.

  “Rest and wait here for me, girl.” Sancha nuzzled his shoulder as he stroked her jaw and then down her neck. He leaned against her for a brief moment, afraid of seeing another shell of a city when he left the trees and finding that Aveston had joined Colina Hermosa and Zapata in death.

  Whether that was true or not, he still needed to use caution. Like his armor, Sancha’s dapple-gray coloring would give him away as a soldier of Colina Hermosa to anyone with half a brain, making it only common sense to leave both as he scouted. He wore his breastplate under a cloak, but the rest of his armor remained on his horse. He’d rather not be seen by Northerners at all, but if he was, he wanted to be underestimated.

  Ramiro gave the mare one last pat and headed through the trees in a crouch. Going forward alone might be common sense, but that didn’t make him like leaving his horse any better.

  Nothing he’d done in the last sevenday had been happy or by choice, with the exception of befriending Claire.

  And with that thought, he touched his breastplate over his heart—the spot where an ache had appeared when he left Claire behind in the swamp. Ever since they’d been apart, a niggling little patch of emptiness had dug its way inside him and taken up residence with the raw wound that was his brother Salvador’s death.

  He pushed that twisted pain aside less easily than the olive branch he bent out of the way to kneel at the edge of the orchard. To his relief the city remained whole, but he didn’t have to guess at who held Aveston now. Yellow-and-black uniforms congregated in a sprawling camp outside Aveston’s wide open gates, taking up much of the plain before the city. If there had been a battle here, his side had lost. The Northerners held Aveston. And something more.

  The smoke rose, not from the ciudad-estado, but from the empty field surrounding Aveston. A huge pile of blackened and charred shapes had been fired and now burned itself out slowly.

  Bodies.

  But whether from a battle or civilians inside the city, Ramiro couldn’t venture a guess. One thing he didn’t have to guess: Whoever the dead were, his people were treated with absolute disrespect. Not allowed a burial as Santiago taught, and so not allowed to reach the afterlife. Treated like so much meat.

  Barbarians.

  His hand curled around his sword hilt as he stood.

  “This is our land, invaders,” he said quietly to himself. They’d sweat on it, died on it, been buried in it for centuries. Loved every inch of soil as kin. “You can’t have it. I swear it by Santiago and all the saints. I won’t let you!”

  Several moments of deep, slow breathing gradually crushed the fury in his chest, enabling rational thought again. To rush forward to avenge a wrong he couldn’t fix was suicide. He had to focus on the mission assigned to him and wait for the time of vengeance to come.

  No one had heard or noticed him. Life went on as if he didn’t exist. But his vow burned in his chest, partially filling the hole that was his pain and loss, a reminder that he’d see the promise through.

  So many things to do: bring a warning to his people of Dal, hand himself over for leaving without permission, rid the land of Northerners. Each goal conflicted or overlapped with the next. He didn’t want to think about them now, though, so he refocused on the scene before him.

  A steady stream of civilians with the same brown skin and hair as himself emerged from the gate, moving unmolested down the east road in carts or wagons or afoot. All loaded with provisions and possessions. Not a single Northern soldier slowed the tide from the gates or attempted to stop the egress.

  Were his eyes blinded by dirt? He blinked and checked again, but the scene remained the same. The Northerners let the people of Aveston leave freely. Was this some kind of twisted kindness?

  Impossible—no such impulse beat in the breast of their foes.

  Yet he saw what he saw. And more, such as Northern soldiers entering and leaving the city as well—those coming out wobbled much more than those going inside. Drunk, he noted incredulously. The refugees gave the soldiers a wide berth, but they didn’t look scared of being attacked.

  A woman’s scream came from the sprawling army camp and quickly shut off. Ramiro’s hackles rose. Apparently not everyone was allowed to flee.

  A quick study of the Northern camp showed no sentries and little organization. Half of the tents sagged, their ropes not secured tightly. Instead of being placed in neat rows, the canvas structures were scattered haphazardly. A Northern soldier lay on his back at the perimeter, either dead, drunk, or asleep. Crates and tins lay scattered outside a supply wagon as if thrown. Most damning of all, no white-robed Northern priests moved about the camp. This disordered mess was not what he remembered of the Northern army camp when it lay in siege outside of Colina Hermosa. Then, they had been focused and structured.

  This anarchy was more than the loss of their priests, then—if their absence even meant their loss. More than the death of a commanding officer. Commanding officers and civilian control could and would be replaced without a loss of discipline. No, something more was happening here. This change implied the soldiers knew Dal had returned, killing and shredding humans into lumps of confetti, and that knowledge had taken the heart from the Northerners.

  Here, at last, could be a stroke of luck. Perhaps they didn’t have to fight Dal and the Northerners. Perhaps the Northerners had lost their spirit.

  The refugees at the gates scattered in all directions, capturing his attention once more. They moved to escape a large party in white emerging from the city. The priests. So not lost, he thought with consternation, but holed up inside Aveston. Twenty-five or thirty of the devils. People dropped dead as the Northern priests wielded their white weapon sticks called Diviners to clear a path, touching men, women, or children indiscriminately, all just to make room so they wouldn’t have to slow. Ramiro’s vision blurred and his hands tightened into fists again, but he held himself motionless.

  In the center of the group, more priests carried stacks of the killing rods in their arms like they cradled babies. The priests turned away from the flow of refugees as they exited the gates and marched through the Northern camp, still easily spotted among the tents by their hurry and the directness of their path. They took a straight line toward the smoldering pile of bodies. Ramiro watched as they held out their Diviners and marched around the far side of the pyre, hidden by the smoke. They came back into sight by the count of twenty, now carrying weapons turned from the yellowish-white of bone to the crimson of blood—exactly like the Diviner he and Claire had been lugging in his saddlebags—

  The one that had turned red after Dal had slaughtered near it.

  The priests obviously manipulated their weapons from one color to the other on purpose and not by accident. But why? What did the change to red signify?

  As he looked closer, Ramiro took note that one in three of the Diviners remained white. Not all had changed color. A priest pointed to a group of the white ones and shook her head. Five or six of them spok
e together, their motions indicating disappointment. Again, people scattered as the priests swept into the city and vanished beyond the gates, taking death with them.

  Ramiro waited around a little longer, but no more priests emerged and the scene remained the same, with only the addition of a scuffle between two Northern soldiers over a bottle of liquor—quickly broken up before blood could be shed—and another group of soldiers looting the cart of a refugee, while the civilians stood dully and let them take what they wanted. There would be no fresh answers here.

  When he returned to Sancha, he threaded his fingers through her mane as he puzzled about what he had seen. The Northern army might have lost heart, but they still had overwhelming numbers and it didn’t seem the priests had given up. Questions remained on how they’d taken the city, who were the dead—and did his father know? As alcalde of their people, Julian would want all the information Ramiro could discover. He’d also need to know about the priests’ behavior and who might be in charge of the army.

  So where were the Northern equivalents of captains and alcaldes?

  Rather than head to Crueses, Ramiro should try to scout a bit more, accept the risk of being caught, and see if he could learn anything else or merely confirm his suspicions.

  Fortunately, he had just the place to start.

  A click of his tongue brought Sancha around to walk with him through the trees until they got a sufficient distance from Aveston, then they cut over to the road to intercept the stream of refugees. The people looked at him with exhausted faces and closed-off expressions, shoulders hunched and backs bent, already beaten down by whatever they had suffered. He knew the look all too well—it was the same his own people had worn after the burning of Colina Hermosa.

  Would it be worse to see your homes and family taken by the enemy for their own use or to helplessly watch them consumed in fire?

  He stood all the straighter to compensate for their misery, refusing to give in to his own. At least Colina Hermosa had beaten off the Northerners for a time, thanks to Claire’s magic. He had that small victory to warm him, even as their downtrodden faces looked to sap it from him.

  “I need information,” Ramiro called to the packed road.

  “Damn your needs,” a man said.

  Ignoring him, Ramiro pressed on. “Was there a battle? How did your city fall?”

  An old woman on a wagon pulled her shawl higher, and spat. “With barely a whimper.” She flapped her reins at her mules as if urging them away from Ramiro.

  A thin man with a bundle on his back at the verge of the road said, “There was a battle. We lost every man of our pelotónes. Every gate guard. Alcalde Martin had no choice but to open the gates when the second army arrived.” His face twisted. “They took my wife. My daughters.” He stopped, gaze turned inward, a look of loss and heartbreak taking over. A single tear slid down his cheek, then he walked away, vanishing into the pack of escaping people.

  “A caballo de guerra.” A man with arms like a blacksmith’s set down his handcart loaded with small children to point at Sancha. The children jostled each other for the best view, and Sancha pranced her feet and lifted her head high under their silent scrutiny. “Colina Hermosa was here,” the man offered. “Outside the gates, I mean—fighting. I saw their troops in green and gray, their gray horses, from atop the walls. We were winning. Winning. Before it all went wrong.”

  “Winning?’ Ramiro urged, drawing closer. “Our people fought together?”

  “Aye. And Suseph. We pincered the Northerners between us when our men came sweeping out. Then they all started . . . dying. Us and them. Not a man left. At first, it seemed a necessary price to pay for our freedom . . . until the second army of them arrived.”

  “Dying? What do you mean?”

  “I mean ripped apart. Nothing there. The wounds just appeared.” The man touched head, heart, liver, and spleen. “I went to see the bodies before the second army arrived. The saints turned their back on us that day.”

  “Dal,” Ramiro said, the word like a curse on his tongue. He’d guessed as much from the actions of the Northern priests. But the man must be mistaken about one thing: How could the soldiers of Colina Hermosa be here? “You’re sure you saw green-and-gray uniforms? How many troops dead? How many pelotónes?”

  “Thousands. I know not the details.” A woman came and put her hand on his back, and the man took up the handcart full of children again, moving off.

  “The Northerners let you leave the city?” Ramiro called after them.

  “They seem to care not if we stay or go,” the man shouted. “We decided it was safer to go.” And then they were swallowed up into the crowd.

  “Many of them deserted,” a girl in a carriage said. A bruise stood out on her cheek, a purpling mark on her dark skin. “The barbarians. They put down their weapons and ran away after looking at the bodies. The rest are animals. Animals! Animals! Animals!” She screamed the word over and over. Her mother shushed her and her cries eventually shut off.

  Ramiro stood, letting the people jostle around him. Dread rose in him, stifling his tongue. It seemed the warning he brought of Dal’s viciousness was unneeded here. As he’d assumed, the people of Aveston had already discovered the way the demon god killed.

  It bothered him, though, the news about Colina Hermosa’s army. Were they right? Was his pelotón here and Dal had butchered them? His mind raced and his limbs felt weak. How could they stop Dal without soldiers? It couldn’t be true.

  Yet the evidence was all around. The burning bodies. The streams of refugees. It was almost too much to bear, and he feared each massacre made Dal a little stronger, until the dark god would be able to strike at night and through city walls. There had already been one such butchery at Aveston.

  How many more until Dal couldn’t be slowed?

  A wiry little man, with a beard cut close and scraggly enough to show flesh through the hair, stumbled into him. “You look lost, brother,” he said with a knowing look.

  Something was pressed into Ramiro’s hand.

  “Those seeking like minds and the will to fight go here.” The man moved off as swiftly as he’d appeared.

  A scout, Ramiro realized too late. He managed the presence of mind to take Sancha into the trees before investigating the slip of paper, but only just. In cramped and hurried writing, it read,

  north fork

  Santiago monastery

  He didn’t hesitate as he urged Sancha forward.

  Chapter 3

  The words on the note from the scout were no great mystery or cypher to decode for Ramiro. North branch could only be where the road between Aveston and Colina Hermosa split. One section headed north before veering west again for Aveston and rejoining the other road. That north branch ended at the same destination, just after following a more roundabout path.

  He’d passed the monastery dedicated to Santiago often enough. Its wrought-iron gates stood alongside the road—a place for weary pilgrims or travelers to stop for a night of hospitality with only a minimal donation to the monks. It was the only lead he had, and if there was someone there who could either help him find his people or were continuing to fight, it was worth investigating before turning to Crueses.

  Sancha took him there in a few hours. Like the rest of his journey through his people’s lands, most of the places Ramiro passed had been torched. Only a scattering had been left standing, as if the Northern army had randomly decided to spare the structures. Those still erect had been robbed of anything worth burning and any metal. Farms, orchards, craftholds, or homes, it seemed to matter not. Ramiro could pick out no pattern to the destruction. Foodstuff was burned as often as spared.

  The north branch itself remained deserted—no one willingly took the longer route to anywhere in this time of trouble. The eerie quiet sent the same chills up his back he’d suffered around Colina Hermosa. Even birds had no heart to sing nor lizards and small animals to rustle in the sand, as through sensing the death waiting to pounce.

/>   When they arrived at their destination, the gates of the monastery had been ripped from their posts, leaving torn places where the hinges had resided, but the scattered buildings still stood.

  Whistles came from the usually carefully tended pecan trees along the roadside—the monks’ pride and joy—and Ramiro looked up to discover boys hidden among the leaves. The first sign of life he’d seen since parting from the stream of refugees. An early warning system of some kind, though the lack of sentries at the missing gates made him hesitate. But Sancha swished lazily at flies, showing no worry, and the boys were as brown of skin as himself, so this was obviously no Northern trick.

  The monastery buildings, covered in rich, creamy stucco, looked almost untouched. Just the metal bars and ornamental scrollwork had been stolen from doors and windows. He followed the short ride to the courtyard, where a boy came trotting to take his reins. A most familiar-looking boy, known yet never met. Ramiro had seen his type thousands of times, one of the many hangers-on with the pelotónes. The small army of helpers acted as squires and grooms. They came and went—some stuck around long enough to join a pelotón themselves when they were grown, and others took jobs in the stables. Ramiro had once been such a boy himself, not so long ago, doing whatever work needed doing in exchange for a little training with weapons or horses, tagging on his brother Salvador’s heels.

  “Sir,” the boy said eagerly, his open face beaming with worship. “You survived.”

  He handed over a water skin, and Ramiro drank quickly. “Hi-ya. And the rest of the pelotónes?” A tiny hope remained in Ramiro’s breast that his fellow soldiers were out on a mission, but the emptiness of the courtyard put dread in him. They wouldn’t take every available man. Someone would be here as a guard if this were truly a sort of headquarters.

  The boy hung his head. Ramiro managed to give the boy’s shoulder a squeeze. These children had only survived by being out of Dal’s range with the baggage train and supplies—much as Bromisto had been spared in the swamp because he stayed with the horses. “All of them?”