by Kaleb Schad
Anaz reached for the purse and couldn’t stop his fingers from touching hers when he took it.
“He’s wrong, you know,” Anaz said.
“Who?”
“Your father. With those Wretched. I didn’t save your life. You saved mine.”
“I know,” Isabell said and gave him a crooked grin.
45
Anaz crouched on the gangway at the top of the city walls. He tied a rope around one of the wooden logs that projected higher than the others—a type of makeshift merlon that the soldiers might use for cover when the fighting reached them.
It was a hot night. Anaz was already sweating, though he’d given up trying to figure out whether it was the heat or fever. A full moon blasted far too much light onto them and he couldn’t help but think the stupid bats that were buzzing past them were simply trying to draw every guard’s attention their way.
Crouched behind the other merlons were Anaz’s charges that night: Lulea and Varten Rhinestand along with Zenterra Finn and her four children. The Rhinestands were the parents of Isabell’s handmaiden. Looking at them, he’d known that even before Sunell had told him. Sunell had brought the group down into Henley’s cellar and that’s where Anaz had met them. He’d spent as much of the evening resting as he could, desperate to purge this sickness from him, yet unsuccessful. In some ways, he thought he actually felt worse after the short sleep.
“How will I get Roan down?” Zenterra whispered. Anaz hadn’t realized how young her children would be. When Isabell had said a single mother and her kids would be joining them, Anaz had imagined William Fentin’s age. Yet, at eleven summers old, only Zenterra’s oldest son, Cartent, was old enough to be helpful tonight. The others, a nine-summer old girl and her two younger brothers, six and four, were going to slow them down.
At least at the moment they seemed to be listening and staying close. The older boy held the little girl’s hand while kneeling behind their mother.
Slow us down and make noise. It was hard to convince a four summer old that his life depended on him staying absolutely silent.
“We can tie a sling for him,” Anaz whispered. “Strap him to your back. Keep your belly open so you can climb down the rope.”
“Did he say climb down the rope?” Lulea whispered to her husband. She was in her late fifties and Anaz could see one hand was palsied, shaking and curled in on itself.
Anaz sighed a deep breath. It was going to be an exhausting night. Gods, what is this sickness? “I can lower you. You’ll just have to be able to hold on long enough for me to lower you over.”
He finished cinching the knot around merlon. He gave it three sharp jerks. It would hold.
He reached into the pack Sunell had given him and pulled out a second rope. They hadn’t known for sure how much he’d need and had provided him a good pack of supplies. Ropes and two knives, a blanket, flint and stone and trail rations of nuts and dried meat and cheeses.
He handed the rope to Zenterra. “Loop it around your shoulders. I’ll tie the sling in the back.”
They had to hurry. Isabell had timed the routines for the evening soldiers the night before. As long as they stuck to their same pace as last night, they would have a quarter of a sand’s turn between the guards walking below the walls on the ground outside would pass and before the guards walking the top gangway would come through. By Anaz’s guess, they’d need every minute of that to get nine—ten counting himself—people down the walls and far enough away to disappear in the night.
“He’s coming,” Varten Rhinestand said. His fear pushed his voice a hair above whispering.
Anaz peeked between the crenellation. Based on Isabell’s description, it was the same soldier as last night. A young boy, red hair with so many freckles on his face it was hard to tell what his natural skin color was besides red. He wore a simple helmet with metal rims and carried a wooden spear.
“Okay,” he said. “Miss, get your—”
“Rend!” hissed Zenterra. She was looking past him.
Anaz turned to look behind him and saw the six summer boy several yards away. Near where the soldier was passing. He climbed into one of the crenels.
“Shit!” Varten Rhinestand said.
Anaz leapt to his feet. He looked at the boy, then over the wall. The soldier was immediately below him. The boy leaned out and looked down at the solder. He giggled and waved.
He’s going to fall. Anaz didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. Something in the kid’s weight, the way his hand was stretched too far, his head too big for his body, too heavy. Or just because that’s the way the hsing-li treated him lately.
There was no time to think. He had to do what he had done for years in the Pit—trust his gut and the hsing-li. Without hesitating, he wrapped the rope around his hand and leapt over the wall.
Zenterra gasped, clasped her hands to her mouth to keep from screaming.
“Great Airim,” Varten hissed.
Anaz pulled on the rope and landed against the outside of the wall, then started running, shoving everything the hsing-li offered him into his legs. Pump. Run.
The guard was a good sixteen feet below them. Anaz ran on the tips of his toes, silent as a breath, barely touching the wooden logs, terrified of breaking away even a single shard of bark, anything that might fall and alert the guard to look up.
And then it happend.
Roan tumbled out of the crenel.
It unfolded so slowly, the way his hand waved, then grasped, the fingers splaying wide. The way the shock bloomed across his face like a sunrise. Or a lightning strike. One second he was perched on solid wood, supported by gravity and the next he was suspended in a void, waiting for gravity to plunge him to his death.
Whether it was shock or some unexpected moment of clarity and remembering his mother’s urgent commands to stay perfectly silent, the boy never screamed.
Anaz sprinted. He played out the rope, doing his best to ignore the searing burn, and never, not for a moment, took his eyes from the child.
He wasn’t going to make it. Gravity was faster than Anaz’s running.
He reached out with the hsing-li, grasped as much of the air around and under the soldier as he could reach and used it to open a wind whip. A gust of air blasted skyward from the soldier’s feet. All sorts of debris, from pine needles and dirt and leaves to small stones and even thicker sticks, shot up into the soldier’s face and into the neck of his armor.
The soldier cussed and turned his head, squeezing his eyes shut. He dropped his spear.
The wind caught the child, flipped him over, but also slowed his fall.
Anaz reached out a hand.
The child kicked. Began falling again.
Anaz grasped one of the boy’s ankles. He flung Roan up, turning him in midair, then caught him again, this time with his arm wrapped tight around the boy, his hand covering Roan’s mouth. He planted his feet wide and stayed there. Stuck. Standing out from the wall like a branch on one of the logs, using the rope to hold himself levered still.
He panted and tried desperately to slow his breathing. Quiet. Quiet.
The guard was still cussing. Anaz thought he should try to cover the boy’s ears, but sometimes you had to pick what to worry about and what not to.
Above the wall, back on the gangway, Anaz heard someone moving. It was Zenterra. He shot her a look, freezing her in her tracks. It would all be undone if they were seen now.
His arm holding the rope shook. His hand was slippery with blood or pus from the rope burn.
He was sweating. A drop strolled down along the crown of his head, to his forehead.
The soldier ground his gloves into his eyes. He blinked and squinted and tried looking out away from the wall, then had to close his eyes and wipe at them some more. “Gods, mother fucking wind piece of…”
The bead of sweat rolled down Anaz’s forehead to his brow. Please stop.
They were directly over the soldier, maybe only six feet above him by the time Anaz
had reached the falling boy. Anything that fell from them now would hit the soldier. Would cause him to look up.
And then Anaz would have to decide what his oath was worth.
The soldier unbuckled his helmet and took it off. Shook out his red hair. Turned the helmet upside down and rapped on it.
The bead of sweat slowly, slowly, trickled down the bridge of his nose. Caught at the tip.
Anaz’s arms felt as if the furnaces of hell had opened within them. Every muscle twitched, seized under the strain.
The rope slipped in his grip. The kid spasmed at the sudden fall. Anaz clenched the rope tighter. Stopped them.
The soldier examined the inside of his helmet, then put it on his head. He buckled the chin strap.
The sweat bead swelled out from Anaz’s nose. Fat. Heavy. Ready.
The soldier bent and picked up his spear.
Then, like a sparkling star in the moonlight, the bead of sweat broke free and tumbled away from Anaz.
The soldier took a step.
The sweat droplet landed behind him with a tiny pat.
Anaz waited until the soldier was a good twenty paces away before he exhaled. He turned himself over and started the climb back to the gangway.
Zenterra snatched up her son the moment Anaz cleared the crenellations and began hissing recriminations into Roan’s ear with that bizarre combination of relief and fury only a parent can have with their child.
Anaz slumped against the wall and laid back. His head throbbed, black and white pulses at the edge of his vision, even with his eyes closed. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand again. He sat and breathed and he tried to remember how he got himself into this mess.
He wasn’t going to make it this time, he decided. It all just felt like too much. He’d used up all of his luck and blessings back in Abaleth. It was too much to think he would have anything left for Humay.
“Mr. Anaz?” Varten Rhinestand touched Anaz on the shoulder.
He opened his eyes and looked at the man. Fear. Of Anaz or the soldiers or the wretched, Anaz couldn’t tell. Did it matter?
“We don’t have much time,” Varten said.
Less than you know, Anaz thought.
The moon had long set by the time Daveon made his way home. He’d worn his sword into work tonight just as everyone was expected to. One of the guards—a boy Daveon had never met before—had stopped him at the gate on the way out, forcing him to answer five different ways why he was leaving and by who’s authority before he’d finally relented. The boy had been covered with mud, his tunic more brown than red, with crusted dirt ringing his face in the hairline as if he’d been sleeping face first in a mud puddle.
The unfair interrogation along with yet one more day passed without the king’s stable master had Daveon fuming. What if they didn’t come? What if they were dead or had been diverted? When would he make the hard choice and take his family and run? These were his thoughts, there, at the top of the last ridge before his home when he saw his barn.
A lantern flickered behind the door.
Someone was inside of it.
He started running.
His first thought was Fennel. She was dying and Alysha was up with her or maybe she was foaling and Alysha was keeping watch to make sure it went okay, but those thoughts quickly gave way to darker ones. What if it was a thief? What if someone was stealing his horses just before the king came to collect them? He couldn’t afford to lose even one…
As he reached the front of the barn he slowed to a jog and drew his sword, tried to steady his breathing. His palms sweated, making the hilt slick.
He pressed his back against the wall and sidled up to the door.
He reached for the handle.
The door opened and a figure stepped out. Light exploded from the opening, silhouetting the man.
Daveon yelled and slashed at the figure’s face. He turned the blade sideways, hoping to hit whoever the thief was with the flat of the blade and knock him unconscious or at least stun him long enough for Daveon to pin him. Nothing of the sort happened.
Instead, the figure ducked under the blade, whipping his hand up into Daveon’s arm, the top of the man’s wrist batting hard into Daveon’s knuckles. The sword bucked high and thunked deep into the wooden door, sticking there.
Daveon tried to yank the blade free, his mind scrambling. How’d the man move so fast? How’d he know Daveon was there? The man lunged and drove his open palms into Daveon’s chest. He flew backwards, his feet fully off the ground. He hit the dirt and toppled backwards over his head and sprawled onto his belly. His scabbard wrapped itself between his legs and jerked his belt and trousers down around his thighs.
The figure coughed and leaned against the barn, then half-sat-half-fell backwards onto his butt.
“I’m sorry,” the figure gasped. “I’m sorry.”
Daveon recognized that voice. He squinted against the glaring light.
“Anaz?”
The barn door opened further and he recognized the silhouette that stepped out instantly.
“Alysha?”
“This isn’t starting well,” she said.
Seven of them, in one of his stalls. The other horses had been brought in and they were looking at the strangers hiding in his barn with that calm suspicion horses had. Fennel coughed and snorted a wet glob of black snot.
Seven. Lulea and Varten Rhinestand, both well into their fiftieth summer, her with white hair and blue eyes, him with no hair whatsoever except the few sprouting from his ears. Daveon didn’t know them well, but he knew their daughter had been taken on as Isabell Blackhand’s handmaiden and they’d never stopped being proud of her for rising so high.
Daveon knew the others, though. Knew them well. Zenterra Finn and her four children. Daveon had been close with her husband, Rikton, and wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d wept for three days when the man was taken by the Rot. And, like so many others, it hadn’t stopped there, taking his oldest son and his youngest daughter, only six months old at the time. Zenterra had never fully recovered, as if that was something from which recovery was even possible.
Cartent Finn, the oldest boy at eleven summers, had stepped into his father’s shoes. Daveon didn’t like how much of Nikolai he saw in that boy as he stood there, next to his cowering mother, shit-stained straw scattered beneath them. His crust of defiance did little to hide the boy’s fear.
Most of them held cups of warm pine tea Alysha had brought out for them.
“Let’s speak outside,” Alysha said.
Outside, Anaz said, “I’m sorry. This isn’t fair, but I didn’t know who else to bring them to.”
“It’s fine,” Alysha said.
“What in Airim’s name is going on?” Daveon said.
“They’re going north to Earl Ventner’s,” Alysha said. “They needed horses to get through the passes and Anaz hoped we might be willing to help. I said yes.”
“What? No!”
“Daveon—” Alysha said.
“No! Alysha, for the love of the gods, no!”
Anaz coughed and closed his eyes and leaned against the stable, then nodded. “It is okay,” he said. “I will take them. We can walk. We’d hoped the horses would make the mountain passes easier and I’m not familiar with these ranges here like you are. I’d hoped to be back before sunrise is all, before the guards would see me returning, but it’ll be okay. It’s not fair of me to ask this of you. I’m sorry.” He pushed himself upright.
Alysha put a hand on Anaz’s shoulder. “You’ll stay here. Daveon can take them.”
Daveon hadn’t seen Anaz since he’d been put into the baron’s prison, but he didn’t look good. His face was a medley of bruises and cuts and he seemed to have a hard time breathing. Daveon wasn’t so certain he could take another fifteen steps, much less fifteen miles up and down a mountain.
“Daveon,” Alysha said. “That’s Zenterra in there.”
“Can we talk inside the house?” he said to Alysha. “Alone?”
“Are you insane?” Daveon hissed, trying not to wake the children. He paced the room, looking at her.
Alysha sat at their table, calmly sipping her own mug of tea. “Daveon Therentell, that woman needs our help. Her kids need our help. The Rhinestands need our help.”
Daveon scoffed and rubbed his face. What in the hell was going on with everyone? His wife doesn’t say three words to him since he returns except to beg for them to run away and now all of a sudden she’s sitting across the table telling him why he should leave her and risk his family for strangers? Well, not exactly strangers, but still.
“We need to lay low, Alysha. Just stay out of everyone’s eyesight until the king’s men come and then we ride as fast as we can before the baron or anyone knows we’re gone.”
“We’re the only ones who can help, Daveon.”
“I’m sorry for Zenterra, I really am, but her best bet is to stay in town. She’ll be protected there.”
“Don’t patronize me, Daveon. You know better than anyone what will happen to Fisher Pass when that wall reaches us.”
“Alysha, we can’t. You don’t understand. I’m not putting you and our kids at risk for someone else. Never again. The baron has ordered everyone to stay in town. He says the king has ordered Fisher Pass to fight.”
“I know.”
“He says anyone caught leaving is a traitor and will be executed.”
“I know.”
“Gods dammit, Alysha! Then you know why they need to go home! Anaz needs to sneak them back into Fisher Pass however he got them out and we all need to pretend none of this ever happened!”
“I saw them, Daveon,” Alysha whispered. “The Fentins.” Her eyes welled up.
“You…”
“Miria and I went to see Mrs. Summers and I saw them. Daveon, he’s a monster. The baron is a madman.”
Daveon crossed the room and dropped to his knees in front of his wife. He clasped her hands in his. “Then you know! We can’t—”
“But I will not hide here and watch my friends and neighbors wait to die when we have the power to help them. I don’t know why this man Anaz came to Fisher Pass when he did, but I have to believe Airim has put him in our lives at this moment for a reason. He’s risking his life for complete strangers, Daveon. Yet, we aren’t willing to do the same for people we’ve known for as long as we’ve been alive?”