The Things We Bury

by Kaleb Schad

  He cocked his head at her, confused.

  “For what you’re doing. Every night. These people are counting on you, praying you’ll help them and every night you work at the Stop, then you ride out there and face those animals and those cliffs in the dark and I’ve never heard you complain once. And what you’re showing our son…I’m proud of you.” She knew she was tearing up, but she didn’t mind. Let him see it.

  He smirked at her. “Eh. I’m still waiting for the real work to start.”

  “Well, tomorrow the Hero of Lindisfarne gets to be the Hero of the Therentell family.”

  His smile evaporated. What did I say? How quickly the room shifted…she wouldn’t let it end like that.

  She gave him a kiss. He was stunned as she leaned forward, not quite believing what she was doing. After a short, gentle moment they broke and she smiled at him and he smiled back at her. They kissed again, longer this time. She felt something reacting under her. Something in Daveon’s lap.

  …feel that?

  She stood up abruptly. Coughed and straightened her dress to hide her embarrassment.

  She hadn’t let him touch her since returning. It wasn’t his fault, she knew. He’d been gentle with her, not pushy, only asking what was wrong. She hadn’t been able to tell him. And now you tease him like this…

  “What’s—” he started to ask.

  Miria came running out of the room holding a horse bit in front of her face, two long leather cords tied to it like reins. Elnis laughed and followed behind. The girl crashed into the chair next to Daveon, shoving it into his legs. He yelped, gripping his knee. He stood and turned to the kids, who pulled up short.

  “Elnis!” Alysha shouted.

  Miria stepped back and the bit floated out in front of her, as if her own hands had betrayed her and she’d found herself holding it without knowing how it got there. Elnis’s eyes shot from Alysha to his father.

  Alysha lurched forward. She darted a look at Daveon. “Elnis, you know—”

  Daveon put a hand on her shoulder. He gave Elnis a small smile and said, “Just put it back where you found it when you’re done. We’ll need it tomorrow night when we leave.”

  49

  Isabell sat at her vanity, wearing only her sleeping gown, the middle of the night still much too warm for a robe. Lelana stood behind her brushing out her hair. She looked at her handmaiden through the broken mirror pieces and marveled at her strength. Neither of them had slept much, this last week, what with more and more families begging to sneak away with Anaz. She felt certain of the loyalties of everyone they’d spoken to, so far, sure they wouldn’t betray anything, but now with so many asking to leave, could she be as sure?

  “Sunell said she can’t move around town anymore without someone whispering for her to help,” Lelana said. “We need more horses at the Therentells. And Anaz will have to take larger groups.”

  “Did you see him tonight?” Isabell asked. “He could barely stand after drawing in that fog.”

  “It worked, though,” Lelana said. “Every night he’s made it work. Even tonight, with the extra guards.”

  Isabell laughed. “Did you see that one guard? The way he flopped on his face with the tangle weeds?”

  “That was the Biven kid,” Lelana said. “He deserved more than a bloody nose.”

  Isabell stood and shook out her hair. She loved how Lelana always found the knots, like brushing silk into her hair. She looked out the window, to the west, where Anaz would be coming back. By now the Therentells would be well into the mountains and Anaz would hopefully be home soon.

  She stopped. Turned back to the window.

  She was looking east. The sun sets in the west and it was the middle of the night anyway. So why was there an orange glow on the horizon? Out where Anaz should be.

  At the Therentells.

  Alysha sat at her table watching her tallow candle burn. Sitting here like this, alone, with nothing but the wind outside and the slight snoring sounds of Elnis and Miria in the bedroom, she could feel her worries drag jagged edges around inside of her.

  How much more could they take? Lose her parents to the Rot two years ago. Lose Daveon’s folks. Two of her sisters dead and a brother. All of her friends that she’d been close with dead. Then the horses. Dozens of their beautiful animals dead. And now the Wretched.

  Through it all, she’d told herself to hold on. Hold on. You still have Daveon. Your boys. You still have your family. But did she? He’d come back in body, but something of him was still out there chasing Wretched.

  It terrified her, but she felt she could understand the Valinces’ decision. When Fisher Pass was in the throes of the Rot and it looked as if the entire world were to die in painful, slow pieces, Argon Valince and his family did the unthinkable. They locked themselves into their home, began singing the Ballad of Airim’s Bride, and set their home on fire. All twelve of them.

  She sat there imagining what that would be like. To hold your children while the fires licked at your life, suffocating smoke like a sooty blanket. Waiting.

  She could even smell the smoke. She tried to pull herself back. It was getting too real.

  Then she realized it wasn’t her imagination.

  She could smell smoke.

  Fennel kicked at her stall. Even through the scream of the flames, Alysha could hear that. She sprinted out of her house, throwing the door nearly off its hinges and stopped in the field between house and stable. The front doors were gone and what stood was a hateful wall of flames. She felt the heat from here.

  The horses. There were three of them left tonight: Thatchhoof, Willow and Fennel. Inside. She couldn’t let them die. Not now. Not when they were so close. If even one of them died, they couldn’t meet their contract…

  She vaulted over the fence for the turnout field off the west side of the barn and her dress caught on the post and ripped and sent her sprawling. She felt her elbows skid along the dry ground, stones slicing away at the skin. Up. Ignore the sting. To the doors. She pulled, but they wouldn’t open, mockingly bouncing against the cross bar that had been dropped to lock them. Had Daveon locked them? Why would he do that?

  Fennel screamed and kicked at the wall. Thatchhoof whinnied, his deep angry call.

  “I’m trying,” Alysha cried.

  The fire was at the back side, too. How did the fire start at both ends at the same time? Had sparks carried it fore and aft?

  She looked around and found a rock the size of a pumpkin and hefted it and threw it at the bay doors. It barely made a sound and fell with a fwop in front of the doors.

  “No,” she whispered. Not now. Not when they were so close. Fennel was supposed to give birth tonight. This was going to be the night they made it.

  She looked at the wood pile, where Daveon had been chopping wood.

  The axe.

  50

  Daveon was almost asleep in his saddle. He hadn’t ridden this much in years and he found the sway of Syla’s gait to be too smooth, too sure, too comforting. He didn’t hold the reins anymore. Why would he? She was an extension of him and he of her. Two races separated by the gods, but somehow of a kind. Daveon thought he could maybe understand why his grandfather had said there wasn’t a thing a man couldn’t do once on the back of a good horse and if Syla was anything, she was a good horse.

  “Pa,” Nikolai said and something in his voice ripped open Daveon’s eyelids.

  Was that smoke?

  They dropped out of the white pines and speckled suckerbrush and Daveon squinted and saw grey smoke on a grey sunrise rising over Cook’s Hill just north of their home. Ash in the air and a stench Daveon had smelled not nine months ago. That of burning lumber and hay and horse manure.

  That of burning dreams.

  Before he could even spear his heels into Syla’s belly, she was at a gallop.

  Where once stood a barn—a new barn, an expensive barn, a barn that they were still struggling desperately to get out from under—now stood two walls and a gl
istening bed of embers. A rapid, rippling pattern of orange on black coals. Ash floated upwards like an upside down snow rising from hell.

  “Alysha!” Daveon screamed.

  The horses. Thank Airim. The horses were in the southern pasture. But there were only two figures, silent, watching the world turn over on the Therentells and do its damnedest to crush them all.

  “Mom!” Nikolai called.

  “There,” Daveon shouted to his son and pointed.

  She came from behind the house, up from Parmenter Creek, four buckets suspended from a pole bowing on her shoulders. Water dribbled behind them. Her dress was torn and her hands and elbows were a scattered mess of ash and blood and seared skin. She looked at Daveon and then back to the barn and she didn’t stop moving, looked as if she might never stop moving.

  Quick on her heels came Miria and Elnis working together to carry another.

  Daveon leapt off of Syla and ran to his wife.

  “Nothing,” Alysha said, “No torch. No lightning. I was sitting there, at the table, and I smelled smoke and came out and the barn was half gone already.”

  She struggled to hold back her tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Thatchhoof. I got the others. Fennel and then Willow and when I went back for Thatchhoof, I couldn’t reach him. It was too hot. I tried, but my dress caught fire and I had to run and I—” She couldn’t hold it any longer. Her tears overwhelmed her. Jagged sobbing. She buried her face into Daveon’s chest. He held her and let her cry.

  “It’s okay,” he said. It won’t be okay. “We’re going to make it. We’ll figure something out.” We’ll never make it. There’s nothing left to figure out.

  He’d have to sell like hell and convince the stable master to take Fennel’s foal as one of the horses. Fennel, a horse dying of the Rot, and her foal along with Ember’s foal from a couple months back. He knew exactly how that would go over.

  They stood over the still smoldering embers, faces black like wraiths themselves. The grey sunrise drifted to a dirty orange and white gauze and the line of timber behind their pastures towered in blue silhouette.

  “You didn’t see a torch when we left?” Daveon asked Nikolai. He only shook his head and looked back at him, that same pinched, piercing look he’d had when Daveon had first returned with Miria. Elnis was clinging to Nikolai’s hand.

  How could this have happened? After everything they’d been through. Could someone in tonight’s crew have started the fire? Could they have left behind a lantern or a torch Daveon and Nikolai hadn’t spotted on their way out? Nobody would have done this on purpose, would they? His neighbors? Those he was helping? That was madness. Daveon knew he wasn’t thinking clearly, that the magnitude of this was too large to wedge its way into his consciousness, like seeing all of heaven’s stars in one glance. He wanted to laugh. He could feel it bubbling up inside of him, liquid madness gurgling its way up and Daveon didn’t think he wanted to stop it. He coughed, the corners of his lips twitching.

  “Think Malic will take the barn back in exchange for the debt?” he said and he laughed.

  Alysha sat on the grass, a mournful soup of ash and water and mud under her, and she shuddered against her tears.

  Nikolai watched, his face paler than the sunrise.

  “Uhh,” it was an odd sound. A girl’s voice, but raspy, as of a voice that had been lost, but wasn’t yet ready to be found. He reined in his laughing and wiped his eyes and saw Miria looking at him, pointing to something. He followed her hand. Out in the southern pasture, where the horses were, only one remained standing. A shadowy lump lay in the middle of the field.

  Fennel.

  Alysha looked up and screamed.

  “Pa!” Nikolai yelled and started running.

  Daveon outpaced his son, leapt over the fence and sprinted to the horse. She was on her side and Daveon thought maybe, just maybe she was trying to birth the foal, but somewhere inside where he kept all the awful honest secrets of his life, where truth cannot be masked, he knew she was dead.

  Nikolai reached the horse and dropped onto his knees. Tears dribbled down his cheeks as he laid his head on her belly.

  She’d been so close. Tonight was going to be the night when she’d drop the foal and then, even if she died, they’d try and sell the foals to meet the contract and he’d be able to keep Syla and they’d ride out of here and never look back. Together. Across Tear Gully Pass and Marcen’s Hill and no question of whether they could make it because they’d have Syla. But not now. Now they’d have to sell Syla. And for what? Pay off Malic, keep the king’s justice from killing them, but leave them so slow on foot that the Wretched would do for them what the king’s justice should have.

  He threw back his head and screamed.

  Willow swished her tail and stepped sideways.

  “Cut her,” Nikolai said. He lifted his head and started pushing on Fennel’s belly.

  “What?”

  “Cut her open.” He looked at Daveon. His tears lingered on his cheeks, but his eyes showed weathered granite. “I can hear the foal. It’s still alive.”

  Daveon drew his long knife.

  51

  Bacon this morning. Bacon and several dozen duck eggs that he’d traded for at market day and some buttered corn bread. Malic had planned on keeping those duck eggs for himself, but he was in such a good mood he was going to share with his overnight guests. All those poor folks rounded up by the baron and forced to come into town. Probably missed their homes, but that was okay. Malic would make them a homestyle breakfast to feed an army. He thought he might even let that slant-eyed freak have one. Maybe.

  “Like matchsticks, you say,” he said. Two Fingers picked a piece of bacon out of the pan, his thick-skinned fingers immune to the sizzling grease.

  “What I don’t get,” Two Fingers said, his tusks shiny with bacon fat, “is where all the horses were. Only three in the barn and one of ‘em that sick mare of his.”

  “Three?”

  “None in the fields I could see either.”

  Malic used his fork to flip the bacon examining the floppy, grey fat and thick strands of muscle. What would Daveon have done with his horses? The question scraped around inside of Malic. It was impossible not to notice the missing families every morning. Every night more and more were slipping away, despite the increased guard. Malic had no faith in the ass warts Baron Blackhand had enlisted into his militia, but even those morons would have noticed horses leaving town. So if the families weren’t mounted when they left, where were they going and how were they getting there? Therentell was a lot of things, but there was no way he was dumb enough nor brave enough to betray the baron was he?

  Not that it mattered too much so long as even just one of those three died in the fire.

  “But you locked it up before setting the fire?”

  “No way they got them out in time.” Two Fingers said. He stopped chewing and turned his head toward the front of the inn.

  Malic heard it too. Shouting. Lots of it. And a sound Malic knew all too well. The chiming of armor.

  There were twelve of them. All wearing full plate armor, from helm to boot. They wore purple capes and white tunics, the tunics tied at the waist with thick, ornate belts. A slew of weapons from greatswords to longblades to halbreds and other polearms. Silver lances stood upright and resplendent from their saddles and the front soldier flew twin flags. Embroidered on the flags flew an eagle carrying a lance in its talons, the rays of the Sun God, the Almighty Fire, Airim, blazing behind it.

  One, a girl maybe fifteen, sixteen summers at most, with sweeping black hair pulled back in a ponytail rode an ursanine, it’s bear-like snout swiveling left and right, testing the air. Malic had never seen one in real life, but felt his balls tighten when the beast looked at him. It was massive, bigger than any grizzly bear he’d ever seen, but with dog-like features in the face and paws, all of its mass carried in the broad chest. It sniffed the air and let its mouth hang slack and inside stood teeth sharp
enough to flay muscle from bone with a mild scrape.

  The girl wasn’t in full plate like the others, but wore a breastplate that had the ahnklin swirl of a Daughter of Airim engraved into it. Yet, the symbol was upside down.

  It hadn’t been a lie. They were coming. They had come. The king’s finest.

  “The Airim’s Lances,” Two Fingers said and Malic could hear in the half-orc’s voice the same fear that sluiced its way through his own guts.

  Marcen watched the Airim Lances stream under the gatehouse and into his inner bailey, their namesake lances sparkling in the morning sun, purple cloaks pillowing in the breeze and he felt something chew at him. Not worry. Jealousy? That couldn’t be it. A Blackhand couldn’t be jealous of common soldiers. Common? That girl is a third of your summers and rides an ursinine, for Airim’s sake. Is that the mark of the Daughters of Airim on her chest? It was upside down. And her look said nothing about healing.

  It was true. They were an impressive lot—even to a Blackhand. And why not? Hadn’t every boy grown up wanting to be a knight of the Airim’s Lances some day? Even his own daughter had foolhardy dreams of donning their cloak. The idea that she’d rather wear the king’s colors than her own family’s galled him.

  His own soldiers poured into the courtyard, circled out behind him.

  If Marcen was looking for ways to wash away the hero-envy, the lead knight tossed an extra splash of cold water on it when he said, “What the fuck is everyone still doing here?”

  Just like that. In front of everyone. The troll’s ass hadn’t even dismounted.

  Marcen worked his jaw, letting the blood drop back out of his face before answering. “Where I come from, someone of your stature, when speaking to someone of my stature, first kneels and receives my honor.”