by Arden Ellis
Self-consciously, his good arm reached up to cover the mark, rubbing at it as if it still ached. "This happened during a foray onto Lord Wroxton's land; I reached for a text on a dark shelf without checking for any sign of the curse first. I was lucky to survive. Though I did not feel so, during the long months I spent teaching myself to write left-handed."
"Some would take that as a sign to find a new occupation," Kai said.
His hand clenched the can of godsfood, the motion stiff; a ghost of pain sprung up in his eyes. "I gave my good arm for this cause, ser—I would have gladly given my life. Nothing is more important." After a moment he seemed to come back to himself. Smiling ruefully, he passed the can of food back to Kai. "Besides," he said in a lighter tone. "I'm certain warriors such as yourselves have their share of marks to brag of."
"Well, now that you mention it..." With a broad grin, Kai rose and planted one boot on a rock—with a flourish she yanked back the cuff to reveal a scar of her own, narrow and long, sliding up the length of her shin. "Tripped over a piece of rubble in an old godsruin we were exploring—if I hadn't gone sprawling ass over tits, it probably would have eaten my leg off."
Preston let out a low whistle of appreciation. His hand had fallen from the old scar, his self-consciousness forgotten. "Very nice, ser. Though I once met a fellow alchemist whose entire leg had been marked by the curse, and yet she could still outpace me in a footrace."
"Is that so? You'll have to introduce us. I do love a woman with scars." Kai's shot Wright a smirk. "What about you, ser? I'm sure you're hiding all sorts of thrilling bodily harm under all that armor."
With a snort, Wright bent to gnaw off another chunk of dried meat and conveniently avoid Kai's gaze. "You'll have to use your imagination."
"Don't mind if I do."
Wright did not deign to respond to that. As Kai spoke, the sun slipped behind the jagged spires of the distant city. Against the haze rising off of the ruins, the horizon became as red as blood gushing across the sky. She hefted the can of food to the long-dead city.
"Here's to the gods," Kai announced. "Thank you for the curse! Without it, what would we have to talk about?" Tilting her head back, she took a long draught of the liquid in the can. When she passed it back to Preston, his expression had grown thoughtful.
"They weren't really gods, you know. I've studied them all my life, read their words—they were never anything more than people. People who made terrible mistakes."
"They nearly ended the world, didn't they?" Kai said, wiping her mouth with her hand. "Anyone with that kind of power is as good as a god to me."
"And if we should find the Counteragent and use it ourselves, banish the curse forever? Will that make us gods too?"
Kai only shrugged, tossing the empty can of godsfood into the darkness over her shoulder. "Counteragent or no, I suspect my life will remain largely the same. There will always be lords above the rest, and they will always have need of someone good with a sword."
Preston rose. The rising moon illuminated the brand of knowledge on his shaved scalp. "Perhaps you are right, ser. I choose to hope for better."
Without another word he inclined his head and moved to the other side of the clearing, sitting down on his bedding and spreading a scroll over his knees to catch the dim light. Silva glanced at Wright before standing up as well. "I should compare our maps with his research, to ensure we're on the right course."
Wright nodded as she rose, leaving her and Kai alone. The silence stretched out between them. For once Wright wasn't content to leave it alone. She fiddled with a blade of grass in her fingers, pulling it apart into thinner strips and thinner still, thinking over Preston's words. "Do you really believe that we're going to fail?"
Kai looked up in surprise. "I don't believe we're going to fail. Our mission is to get the alchemist to his godsruin and back in one piece. Whether he will succeed in what he intends to do is not my concern."
"But if the curse is gone, perhaps things can go back to the way they were. The way the alchemists say they were before there was a curse."
Kai chuckled. "Paradise restored? I don't believe in paradise. Even if there ever was one, think about what the cure will mean. If the ancient cities are cleansed of their poison, that will just mean more land and resources for the lords to squabble over. The curse may end, but what kind of war will that lead us into?"
"Do you ever get tired of being so defeatist?"
"In the hour of darkness, I will not await the sun." The words of the oath resonated in Wright like the vibrations of a bell, but in Kai's mouth they sounded toneless. "Sounds pretty defeatist to me."
"Don't twist the oath that way." Wright turned away from her. "The line after that is, I will ride out to meet it. I suppose it's lucky you remembered any of it at all."
In the beat of silence after she spoke, Wright thought Kai had reached her breaking point. But when her answer came, it was with a snort. "Lucky indeed," Kai said. "I was so drunk when I took the oath I could hardly raise my sword."
Wright swallowed her fury at Kai's mockery and said nothing more. The evening air was filled with the gentle clicks of Kai cleaning her gear, the distant munching as the horses cropped the grass. It might have been peaceful, were it not for the anger which hummed like a plucked string tied between her and Kai. Already the chill in the air was deepening. It would be a long, cold night, and a sore awakening.
*~*~*
They picked up a cracked godsroad early the next day, Silva guiding them on a route she knew to be safe. Sometimes they would pass a car by the side of the road, the ground near its rotting tires stained with whorls of shifting darkness, the only indicator of the dormant curse beneath.
The sun was centered at the top of the sky when Silva, at the front of the column, held up a fist to signal a swift halt. She dismounted and slipped off the road into the trees before Wright had time to ask her what she had seen or heard. Kai shot Wright a look with one eyebrow raised, one hand moving to the hilt of her sword. Wright forced herself to wait. She was no longer convinced that Silva was waiting for the moment to betray them. It wasn't quite trust, but it served the same function.
It was some time later when Silva reappeared. "We'll have to go around," she said.
"What is it?" Kai asked, her hand still rubbing her pommel.
"Bandits," Silva said. "Or their leavings, at least. Two wagons ransacked near an outbreak of the curse, and I doubt the culprits are far."
"Were any left alive?" Wright said sharply.
"The bandits drove them in among a group of automobiles. To my eyes, there were some that lived—but the curse was all about them."
Kai's face was hard. "If the bandits are near, they will be distracted with their spoils. We can pass unseen."
"No." Wright's voice was sharp and clear. "We have to help the survivors."
Kai stared at her with incomprehension. "Are you mad? What will you do if the bandits come back? Or if one of us is taken by the curse?"
"Even if you should succeed," Silva broke in, "the survivors may well inform their lord of our presence in his lands."
Wright stood firm. "It's our duty."
"Duty," Kai scoffed. "Getting yourself captured or killed is hardly—"
Before Kai could finish speaking, Wright dug her heels into Farstride's sides. He was off at once, leaving Kai's exclamations behind them. The bend in the road that had hidden them from sight was just ahead. As Wright plunged around it she yanked on Farstride's reins, her heart in her throat.
Blood stained the road, splotches of it leading to a pair of wooden wagons that had been pulled up short before a group of rusting cars scattered haphazardly across the cracked surface of the road. There were no horses in sight. A bundled figure lay in the road; flies spun idle circles in the air around it. Among the motionless cars beyond, Wright saw flickers of movement. Some were people. Others were not.
It appeared as strands of mist rising off the pavement, but shimmering with the iridescence o
f oil. It hung heavy and motionless until the wind caused it to shift, leaving a coating of oily residue on everything it touched. The air around it seemed to ripple as if from some terrible heat. This pocket was sluggish, old; if left undisturbed for much longer it might have condensed into its fully liquid form. Wright had seen gas preserved in the safety of a sturdy house roll out the door and over the heads of fully grown men with all the ferocity of water from a dam. But even the weakest curse would burn and cling to any exposed skin. From the looks of it, the ground here was saturated with it.
She dismounted, leaving Farstride to pick her way through the cars, avoiding any ground that looked dark or carried a haze like the heat of a fire. Every time she set a foot down she waited for the curse to come hissing up from beneath her heel. She was careful, and she was lucky; the ground was steady and the air clear. In such a way she made her way to the bedraggled band of travelers huddled among the cars.
From the moment they saw her many of the travelers looked ready to bolt. Wright counted three adults and four children, huddled together as if trying to stand as little ground as possible. One woman was prone with her back propped against the door of a car, a cloth thrown over her legs. An older man leaned on a cane nearby, staring into nothing with haunted eyes.
Wright raised her hands in as nonthreatening a gesture she could manage as an enemy knight armed to the teeth. "Don't be afraid. I'm here to help."
A young woman in a healer's tabard stepped forward from between two cars, holding a makeshift club carved from a tree branch. Her eyes darted to the injured woman, and then to Wright's breastplate. Though the colors were faded with the grime of the road, the woman clearly recognized the insignia of an enemy lord. Her eyes narrowed. But after a moment more, she lowered her weapon.
"They came on us so fast," she said hoarsely. "They killed all who wouldn't risk the curse."
"Is this all of your number?" Wright asked.
"All that's left." The woman looked ready to collapse with exhaustion, but her grip on her weapon did not waver.
The sound of hoofbeats from the road behind had Wright's hand flying back to her sword. But it was only Kai and Silva with Preston trailing behind, his eyes scanning the tree line warily.
From her vantage point Jolie's back, Kai circled the cluster of cars. Her eyes raked mercilessly over the scene before meeting Wright's again. "The old man and the wounded are a loss," she called out. "The rest can escape into the forest."
The healer seized Wright's arm in a bruising grip. "That 'old man' is my father," she said. "I won't leave him behind."
Whether Kai heard or not, the message was clear. Wright could read Kai's answer plainly on her face: Then we leave them both. "We leave no one," Wright said, and Kai jerked Jolie's reins with a snarl of disgust and moved off to scout the road ahead.
Wright knelt beside a small girl tending to the woman with covered legs and offered a smile. "How bad?"
Wordlessly, the girl lifted the sheet. Wright felt her stomach drop. The woman's boots and breeches covered in a thick black coating that melted them straight into the flesh beneath. It was an all-too familiar sight. Anything the gas touched would be coated with such a residue, clinging to anything it touched and eating it away like acid. The smell was unlike anything—almost sweet, but artificial, and nauseating where it mingled with the reek of blood. Wright glanced up at the woman's face and saw she was staring at the ruin of her own legs, her eyes wide with blank terror. Wright quickly replaced the cloth.
"She stepped in it," the little girl said quietly.
In a moment Silva made her way through the deadly maze of cars and hurried to kneel at the woman's side. She took one look at the wound and withdrew a pack of bandages from within a pouch on her belt. "This is futile," she said to Wright, "but I suppose such sentiments are useless now."
"Just tell me what our options are."
Silva began binding the cloth around the woman's legs so there was no chance of anyone accidentally touching them. The woman's moans became higher in pitch, but she was too weak to struggle. "There is a guard post an hour's walk from the bridge we crossed a short while ago. We can escort them within range of its patrols. Assuming the bandits do not return for a second attack."
"Let us hope they don't." Wright stood up to scan the area. No sign of movement from the trees or road; she was glad to see Preston talking to the children, trying to calm them. "They'll need our help to transport the wounded. We can lead them away from the curse, and hitch one of our horses up to the wagons."
As Wright stepped out from between the cars and headed for the wagons, Kai thundered down from the road to draw Jolie to a halt in Wright's path. "We don't have time for this," she hissed.
Wright met Kai's gaze coldly and stepped around Jolie's head. "This is what we are here for," she said, and set to work.
*~*~*
It was some time later when they led the last of the survivors off of cursed ground, carrying the wounded and children. Despite Kai's protests that Jolie was no carthorse, they secured her in the wagon's harness and loaded the injured travelers into the back. There was no sign of the bandits as they set out, leaving the blood and the bodies behind.
They rode for what felt like much longer than the hour Silva had promised, constantly casting looks over their shoulders for the horde of bandit riders that could come pouring out of the woods at any moment. None came. The dust from their wheels rose unbroken until Silva called a halt.
"The watchtower is near," she said. "A patrol should come by very soon."
Kai leapt down and immediately cut her horse free from the traces. Wright watched as several pairs of eyes peered past the ragged curtain on the back of the wagon, staring at her curiously. Her insignia burned like a brand on her chest.
The young healer was the last of them to turn away. She stood in the road by the wagons, eyes traveling to face to face—her gaze was wary, but she faced Wright with cautious respect. "What is your name, ser?"
Surely a name could do no more harm than the sigil on Wright's breastplate had already. "I am called Ser Wright, my lady."
The healer touched her chest in one of the old gestures. "Tavir of Witheridge Holding. If you find it satisfactory, I will bear the debt which all our company owes you."
It was no light thing that she said, and Wright would not take it lightly. She bowed her head respectfully before she spoke. "I did no more than my duty; there is no debt to repay."
Tavir looked at her in surprise, but after a moment she inclined her head in turn. While the rest of their party turned in the direction of the watchtower, she stood in the road and watched as Silva led their party swiftly into the forest on the opposite side of the road they meant to travel on; they doubled back out of sight of the survivors and headed back on their true course.
"You could have asked her to return the favor by not telling her people which insignia you wear," Silva commented in the silence.
"The choice will be her own. Certainly, if I were in her position, I would inform my lord of our presence immediately." Silva shot her a questioning look, and Wright shrugged. "It is most important to do good when it does not work towards your own interests."
"I am not certain I agree with you, ser knight."
"That is why I am a knight, and you are not."
To Wright's surprise, Silva tossed her head back and laughed, baring the gap in her teeth. "Perhaps you are right about that. But I have never needed a lord or a Code to tell me what is right." She spurred her horse on before Wright could reply. Behind them Wright felt Kai's silence weigh on her heavily. But for once, the knight said nothing at all.
CHAPTER SIX
They traveled the rest of the day with no sign of enemy riders dispatched on their heels. When the sun went down they stopped only long enough to wait for the moon, the risk of losing a horse to a fall in the dark worth putting more distance between their party and the chance of pursuit. It was full night when they finally stopped, and Wright was exhausted.
Her muscles ached with tension, and she longed for the warmth of a fire and a cup of hot tea in her hands—luxuries they could not afford.
They did not make camp so much as collapse on top of their bed rolls, Preston and Silva going still with sleep the moment their heads hit their travel sacks as Wright positioned herself to take first watch. The small meadow where they had stopped was surrounded by a dark wall of trees on all sides; the feeling of security they provided was artificial at best. An enemy could step out from between those trunks at any moment.
As tired as she was, Wright was far too restless to sleep. The moon was near-full, bright enough to easily scan the edge of the trees as her thoughts tangled themselves into a snarl. She kept turning over the events of the day, her decision to reveal their presence to Tavir and the other travelers. When Wright thought of what would have happened if her party had turned their backs, all her doubts smoothed away. It was not that she made the right choice; there had been no choice at all.
Silva and Preston fell asleep almost immediately. The only movement in the camp was Kai, stripping off her armor. Her movements were careless and brash as they usually were, none of the quiet concentration of her morning ritual to be found. The sound of her fumbling with the straps grated on Wright's nerves. She crossed her arms over her chest against the chill of the night and did her best to pretend Kai wasn't there.
"Could you brood a little quieter?" Kai's voice cut out of the darkness. Quiet, but filled with condescension.
Wright should have known better than to think Kai wouldn't sense her irritation. "I wasn't saying anything."
"I can hear your thoughts turning. What's bothering you, ser?" Kai's smile was as mocking as usual, but tonight there was an edge of something sharper beneath it.
Wright wanted to turn her back, but she found she could not look away. "I don't have to explain myself to you."
"Ah. It's the wagon-folk, then."
Wright gave her a hard look. "I suppose it's nothing to you. You would have left those people to their fate and slept soundly tonight."