The Things We Bury

by Kaleb Schad

  Malic kicked open the door and grunted as he dragged his saddle bags into the Stop. Alysha heard the clink of coins inside the wet leather.

  He shoved the door shut, muffling the constant screams from outside.

  “You can’t spend senits in hell,” Alysha said.

  A long tail of mud and cleared sunflower seed husks smeared out behind the bags as Malic dragged them. He crossed the hall, towards the kitchen.

  “You’re going to die tonight, Malic.”

  “Shut up,” he said. He let go of the bags near the bar and stretched his left hand, trying to loosen the clawed fingers.

  “Evan Malic,” Alysha said, her voice calm, firm. “Look at me.”

  He lifted his head. Met her eyes.

  “Prepare your soul, Evan Malic,” Alysha said. “Tonight, you will die.”

  There was a long silence as he watched her, maybe measuring her, maybe gauging her portents for fear or for prophecy, reading the will of her god—not his, never been his—in her words. His look told Alysha he liked not at all what he found there.

  The door flew open. Two Fingers poured into the room, then slammed his back against it and stayed there, his shoulders hauling up and down with each breath. Rain dripped from his long ears and dribbled down his arms, blending with mud and blood from a half dozen cuts and bites.

  “We’ve been in some jams,” he said after he’d caught his breath, “but ain’t never none like this.”

  Malic slowly pulled his look away from Alysha toward the half-orc. “Barricade the—”

  Two Fingers hollered in surprise as the door exploded open, nearly separating from its hinges. The half-orc crashed to the ground, his greatsword pinwheeling across the floor.

  A massive warhorse, a piebald, birthed the opening, its rider ducking under the head jam, a sword in his hands. Rather, one of its riders had to duck, but the other was so small he had no need. A second horse followed behind the piebald.

  “Fucking hell,” Malic screamed, crouching.

  Alysha was seeing, but she wasn’t understanding. It took a long moment before she trusted her eyes. Daveon. Elnis. Nikolai and Miria. Her children. Her beautiful, beautiful children.

  Daveon turned the piebald and pulled it to a halt. Red followed his lead with Nikolai and Miria on him. Nikolai held Daveon’s dagger.

  Daveon found Alysha’s eyes and never looked away for even a moment as he dismounted. He moved slowly, one of his legs gimpy. Blood soaked through his shirt and pants and Alysha could see torn fabric on his side where he’d been clawed. He limped forward, swaying, but his sword was steady. It hovered certain in her husband’s hands. A steel promise.

  He looks different. She didn’t know what it was, but the husband who’d left her wasn’t the husband before her. He didn’t move like this. Didn’t look so…dangerous. Those eyes…

  “Hey, honey,” he said. Rinwater coursed out of his matted hair, down his cheeks and neck.

  “Airim’s breath,” she whispered.

  “Therentell,” Malic said.

  To Daveon, it seemed as if he tested the word, unsure of anything.

  Two Fingers grunted and stood. He brushed sunflower husks from his chest and belly and pants. He walked over to his sword and picked it up. “Coulda’ knocked,” he grumbled.

  “Therentell,” Malic said again.

  Daveon couldn’t stop looking at his wife, the way she was tied to the table. Like a dog. His wife. He could feel something hot inside of himself, a blooming inferno climbing from his feet to his head.

  His wife.

  Tied.

  Like a dog.

  “Close the fucking door, you idiot,” Malic said. He walked towards Daveon, a hand going to his rear, massaging the stab wound. His shortsword bounced against his hip. “Case you didn’t notice, Wretched are about tonight.”

  Nikolai dismounted. He shoved the door closed and as the noise of slaughter from outside faded a coiled silence remained.

  Daveon limped towards Alysha, dragging his left leg.

  “No, no, no,” Malic said. He scrambled and blocked Daveon from reaching Alysha.

  Daveon stared at him. He raised the point of his sword level with Malic’s belly. “I have something for you, Malic.”

  “She’s mine.”

  “Careful what you wish for, Evan. This may be the first time in your life you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. That fine lady right there, she’s half of something that can’t be separated. You take her, you get all of me.” He rolled his sword in his hand and watched the black Wretched blood creep down the blade. He looked up from under his brow at Malic.

  “Now?” Two Fingers asked. He stepped towards Daveon.

  “Now,” Malic said. Then, to Daveon, “Looking at you there, I could almost believe all those stories you spun.”

  “Don’t. They were all lies.”

  “I know.”

  “This one won’t be.”

  “I know.”

  The half-orc stopped in front of Daveon, a grey wall of muscle. He balanced his greatsword across his massive shoulders.

  “I’m glad you survived,” Daveon said to the half-orc. “I saw you fighting those Red Tails. Couldn’t bear the thought they might get to kill you before I did.”

  “I gotta’ say, for myself,” Two Fingers said, “I like this new Therentell. We coulda’ had fun these last couple months, you’d a bringed this attitude around here.”

  Daveon looked back at his wife. She watched him watching her and she didn’t smile and she didn’t say anything, but only held his eyes, and yet he heard her all the same, the words that came from her in a language even maybe Airim himself couldn’t hear. And for maybe the first time in his entire life, he felt the tuning fork of his soul hum true. She was it. She was all of it. How he’d been so blind to it, he didn’t know, but it didn’t matter because he could see now and not even death would blind him again.

  “Alysha,” Daveon said. “I’m sorry.”

  “We can talk about that after you kill them,” she said.

  70

  By the time they had circled their way into her father’s chambers at the top of the tower, Sir Calinat had wrested Isabell’s sword from her.

  “Lords, girl,” he hissed at her. “We’re on the same side here.”

  Once inside, six knights began dragging a stone-legged table over to barricade the door. Isabell stood barefoot, the damp stone cool on her feet. Lelana’s scream seared inside her.

  The baron walked to the window near his hearth, a grand mahogany bookcase stretching to twice his height next to him. Isabell moved next to him and looked out. The rain continued, but it was as if it were pouring fuel on the fires below. Everywhere inferno. The village burned and even here, hundreds of feet in the air, she could hear the dull ache of screams from below, could hear the struggle of soldiers and knights in the baileys, rising up the tower beneath them. There were no numbers for what was lost today. This was not a loss to be measured in numbers.

  “Look what you have fashioned,” she said.

  For a long time he said nothing and she thought he might never reply, might be too stricken to speak, when he said, “Great things require great costs.”

  “And what costs have you paid?” she said.

  He turned to her. “All of this.”

  “They were innocent people.”

  “They were my people. Mine. Their only value is to my ends, Isabell. You’ll learn that as queen.”

  “Even now.”

  “What?”

  “You actually believe we’ll leave this tower.”

  He looked back out the window. Lightning split the horizon, revealing the white of the bone wall as it rolled over a copse of pine on the edge of the village and the sounds of the falling trees mixed with the thunder. A haze of mites and Wallwraiths moved up and down it.

  The door crashed and several knights yelped, then danced away from it.

  Isabell turned and felt her father’s hand on her back as he push
ed her in front of him. The soldiers formed a half-moon shape of steel armor and shields around her and her father.

  The door crashed again. Isabell thought she saw the wood warp inwards, then wobble back solid. The stone table moaned as it moved across the floor.

  This was it. They were here. Isabell looked to her father’s bridge, the one that spanned between his tower and the chapel tower and thought about running, but what was the point? They would be in that tower too. She could throw herself from the bridge. It would be a more merciful death, at least. She took a step toward it.

  The door crashed again and the table screeched and what came through the door was the living dead, but not the Wretched. Isabell’s eyes flooded and she had to blink to clear the tears to be sure of what she saw.

  Anaz.

  Sunell.

  He slipped through the opening, a blackened sword in hand and pulled Sunell in behind him.

  “You!” the baron said.

  Sunell tried feebly to shove the table back against the closed door. Four of the knights broke from the shield wall to help her.

  Anaz came into the room and stood where the desk had been and looked at Isabell. His body and clothing spoke of long violences, but his eyes, they spoke with a clarity and lightness Isabell had never seen before.

  “I was just on my way to see you,” she said and smiled at him.

  “I got bored waiting.” He returned her grin. “Thought I’d see what was taking so long.”

  Anaz didn’t try to suffocate his thrilling heart when he saw Isabell. He let the gratitude and relief work its way through him, carried on a wave of hsing-li and he thought this was right. This was the right feeling the hsing-li wanted him to have. She was alive. She had survived the poison, survived the Wretched and now they were here. Together.

  He coughed and squeezed his eyes shut against the tumbling world, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

  “Where’s Nattic?” the baron demanded.

  Anaz raised Nattic’s sword.

  “Kill him,” the baron said.

  The front soldier, a man whose helm had been split across the crest and long blond hair had wired its way out of the opening, walked towards Anaz.

  Anaz held out his hand to stop the soldier. “I have no wish to hurt you, but I—

  The soldier was fast, but not Ascenic fast. He lunged with a straight thrust towards Anaz’s belly, but Anaz rolled sideways up along the blade, caught the man’s grip in his hand and twisted it. The soldier’s flipped head-first onto his back. His broken helmet skated across the stones. Anaz, almost tenderly, took the sword from him.

  “But I will not yield,” Anaz finished. “Not anymore.”

  And that’s when the door splintered and the windows moved.

  That’s when the Wretched reached them.

  Daveon thought he should be more afraid. Two Fingers stared at him, his greatsword, that broad slab of steel, nicked and stained from use, floating so lightly in the half-orc’s grip. Here was a creature two heads taller than Daveon and five times as strong and who’d been in who knows how many scrapes and he was about to bring to bear all that violence into Daveon’s life, yet Daveon felt nothing but the slow swell of savagery inside himself. If this half-orc thought he’d seen the worst in life, well, Daveon was glad to bring a little surprise to the half-orc’s last night.

  Two Fingers tilted his head and regarded Daveon. Blood dripped from his hand into the sunflower seed husks. Lightning tore at the darkness outside. A rending sound in the heavens.

  “I like it,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Daveon asked.

  “I’ve seen a lot of men standing where you are right now. Knowing what you know is going to happen. Can’t say all of ‘em had the stones you have right now. Can’t say I ever thought you did, either.”

  “Two Fingers, this is going to be a one-sided pounding and I’m swinging the hammer.”

  Two Fingers chuckled. And then he moved.

  Even having seen Two Fingers going against the Wretched, Daveon wasn’t prepared for the whistling sound the blade made as it scythed straight for his face.

  He raised his sword just in time to deflect the greatsword up and over his head. The razor edge clipped along the tips of his hair.

  He wouldn’t be caught by surprise again. He crouched and his left knee wailed, but he didn’t mind. It reminded him he was in this for pain, that pain meant he was still alive. He lunged into the half-orc, his shoulder driving Two Fingers back, two, three, four steps, until they slammed into the hearth. He brought the top of his head up under the half-orc’s jaw, felt Two Fingers’s tusks crack against each other, heard him grunt.

  Daveon rolled across the half-orc’s broad chest and pinned the man’s sword arm back against the brick while dragging his own blade across Two Fingers’s belly. It hoed a red trail behind it.

  “Mother—” Two Fingers swore.

  In they poured, a black murderous ichor, nothing holy, creatures shaped in a hell unfathomable to mortals and gods. Fletchers and Wallwraiths. They dragged chains and ropes and intestines and half-eaten villagers. They brought with them brittle cracking sounds and wet sucking sounds and laughter. And when those with eyes scanned the room and saw souls left unharvested, they raised a clamor that assured every man and woman in that room that they would never again see the sun.

  Anaz felt Sunell press against his back, wrap her arms around his waist. He looked down at her and smiled. “It is okay,” he said and gently opened her arms. “What will be will be.”

  The Wretched crept forward, flicking rotted green and yellow tongues, savoring the terror in the room.

  The baron gave a low moan, his head swiveling.

  Isabell stepped between two of the soldiers forming the shield wall and she and Anaz held one another’s eyes.

  “And in the meantime,” Anaz said, “we will help the gods to return these creatures to hell.”

  “Isabell,” the baron cried. “Back!”

  Anaz winked at Isabell. “Ready?” He tossed her the soldier’s sword.

  Like a rope too taut giving way, the room snapped into movement.

  Anaz moved like a nasa dancer, spiraling around Sunell, kicking, slashing, his sword a blur. He opened a wind whip and threw a Fletcher back into a Wallwraith just as the wraith loosed a necrotic energy blast. The blast sizzled wide of them and crumbled through the far wall, opening a hole onto the bridge between towers. Dust from the rafters drifted down.

  The shield wall surrounding the baron broke almost instantly. The combined weight of a dozen or more Fletchers crashed into the men, sending several onto their backs, leaving the others to choose which way to face.

  The baron stepped through the opening with a roar and hacked his sword into a Fletcher’s head. Black blood sprayed across his chest.

  “Anaz,” Isabell shouted. She leaped over a thrashing knight on the floor, using his back as a springboard and launched herself into a Wallwraith only moments from striking him. He dropped to his knees and hacked at the monster’s legs.

  Isabell followed through her tackle, tucked into a somersault. She rolled up onto her feet and used the forward movement to plunge her sword, hilt and all, into a second Fletcher’s chest.

  “She’s good,” Sunell whispered to Anaz.

  “In every way,” he said.

  White wrapped his vision when he stood and he put a hand on Sunell to steady himself. A black blur blinked from his left to his right and before he could focus on it, he felt claws rake across his belly. He sucked in a breath. His vision cleared. A Fletcher with a hard carapace where the face should be stood in front of him. It snarled with two mouths, each offset from the center, distended joints where they met.

  The creature lunged at Anaz and he leaped backwards onto the baron’s desk. Papers skidded under his feet and he windmilled his arms for balance. The creature moved with a jerky side-to-side action, mucous strands ribboning away from its mouths. It leaped at him. He reached out with the hsing-
li, snatched up the baron’s chair and catapulted it over the desk and into the creature, the two colliding midair. The chair spalled into a shower of splinters. The Fletcher, careening sideways, fell into a second Fletcher chewing on a soldier. Anaz vaulted from the desk and landed on the two of them, his sword driving through the first and deep into the back of the second.

  On it went, the baron and his men pitching their lives into a melee they had known could come since the day they were old enough to know anything—the price of living in the shadow of a wall made from their dead. Everywhere breath was loosed in grunts and cries, in the called names of friends, the names of parents or past lovers, in curses and calls for Airim.

  For Anaz, the struggle was multi-fronted. He chased across the room, racing along the walls and bookshelves like the sand lizards of Anathest, dropping down to shield Sunell, opening wind whips to throw himself to Isabell. He let the hsing-li pull him. He couldn’t sense the Wretched, but he could sense Isabell and Sunell, let the urgency in their movements guide him on where to be. All the while, he battled within himself, warding back pain and fever. He could feel the hsing-li, full, a torrent of energy tearing through him and he knew he couldn’t keep this pace for long.

  71

  Isabell’s shoulders flared, sweat and blood and black, Wretched filth smattered across her face and neck and she felt full.

  Between strikes, she watched Anaz. He moved like a ghost, impossible to pin to a spot, whisping around, over and under attacks. He moved like beauty itself. Yet, as the battle wore on, she saw him slowing, saw the way he had to let an opening go without striking, too weak or too slow to take advantage of it.

  A bookshelf exploded as a spell vaporized a knight and the wall behind him. Burning pages filled the chamber, fluttering like paper petals.