The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

  “That is up to her husband and her sisters. But I would not want to be in her place. She is a disgrace to her lodge. She will be more of an outcast than she was before that beast Zhurn tried to use her. I honestly had sought to protect her, had felt sorry for her. Juhn even tried to warn her, but she would not listen. I can do nothing for her now.”

  “I have to go,” Cary said and turned to the door.

  “You certainly do,” Nyel laughed behind him. “And do not ever enter our passages again or it will be your life.”

  “I must take my leave as well,” Cary heard Juhn say as he went through the door. He did not think anything more about it. He had to find Noé. Seducing her was the last thing on his mind. His only hope now was to find her alive.

  #

  Noé was alive, barely. Cary watched her from the slat to be sure she was alone and breathing. She laid on the bed, naked. The sheets had been stripped. Her dress was torn apart, two shreds laying on the floor. Her face was buried in a pillow, legs pulled up, back bent round. Welts and bruises lined her back, rear, and thighs, rising red and purple and angry. Her breaths oscillated between pants and moans. Her muscles twitched involuntarily. Blood was everywhere. The bed was streaked with it. The pillow splattered, a pool forming around her face in the center. But most of all it seeped from between her legs, spreading across the sheet in a great wet pool.

  A second later, Cary was at her side. “By the Order, what did he do?” He could barely form the words as he scanned her broken body, as images of his sister came unbidden to his mind, her tiny body splayed out on a bed much smaller than this, bruised and battered just the same. Tears came to his eyes. How did this happen? he heard himself say all over again. How could you let him do this to you?

  He loves me, he heard Allysa say. Please don’t tell. Please don’t ruin it.

  “Leave me,” Noé cried from the pillow, bringing him back to this moment, to this girl. “It’s my fault. I failed him. I . . . .”

  “No!” Cary would not hear it again. He couldn’t. He had run away too often. He had used girls like Noé too often, had preyed on their insecurities just like the bastard that beat Allysa. He told himself that he was different because he was kind to them, because he tried to make them happy for a night. But he knew that when the sun rose he was gone and they were still alone, still rejected, still easy pickings for the next bastard to come along. “We have to do something. We have to tell someone.”

  “No!” Only the pillow muffled the sound of her scream. She sobbed into it after, body shaking.

  Cary stood over her, tried to pull her face to him. “Please, Noé, please let me help you. You are bleeding. You need help.”

  She turned to him, teeth bared, and pushed him away. The shove was hardly necessary. Her face was enough to send him reeling. Her eyes were swollen nearly to shut. What shown through was red instead of white. Her nose was bent, clearly broken blood seeping from it and splattered across her face and hair. The same blood marked her teeth and ran from a split in her bottom lip almost as harsh as the deformity in the top. Her cheeks were swollen and blue, a ragged cut rising from one. Her throat was swollen and red, the damage running all the way around her neck. Cary could not help but imagine Zhurn’s big hands around that thin neck, squeezing until her eyes rolled up and closed.

  “Get away from me!” she yelled. “Leave me alone!”

  Cary returned to her. He would not give up this time, would not run away, would not come back six months later to stand in a dress uniform as they put her in the ground. “I’m getting you . . . .”

  Noé started screaming, ear-splitting, blood-curdling, rafter-shaking screams. She brought her hands to her eyes, looked at the blood covering them and screamed. They returned to the space between her legs, came back with more blood, and the screams grew.

  The door burst open. Cary, standing over Noé, hands on her naked shoulders, looked back and saw Zhurn. His big grey lips twisted into a smile that showed crooked yellow teeth. Beside him was Juhn. Behind were women. Help had arrived, but not the kind Cary had hoped for. And Noé screamed.

  “Guth abadat!” Zhurn yelled. Cary did not know the word, but he was pretty sure the crime being named carried a sentence of death. “Abadat! Zehn clarach!” Rapist! Kill him! Cary guessed. And what else would they think. He, an outsider, stood over the Mother of a lodge. She was naked, beaten nearly to death. Her clothes had been torn from her. He was splattered with blood – from her and the horse he’d killed. Everything her bastard of a husband had done would be blamed on him. And they would kill him. He’d be lucky to live through the day

  He looked down at Noé a last time. She seemed not to even remember that he was there. Her entire attention was locked on her blood-soaked hands, as she mumbled words that could only be, “my baby, my baby.” At least the women will help her, Cary thought as he looked at her battered face. At least, she will get help.

  Then he was away. He took three strides from the bed and rolled to the ground. Zhurn’s great hammer of a fist whistled over his head. The big man had put so much into the blow that he spun past his diminutive target. Cary found his feet with more dexterity than he knew he possessed and slid through the waiting passage before Zhurn had brought himself back around. The door slid shut behind just in time to be splintered by the big man’s fist. A barrage of curses followed Cary as he ran down the dark passage, mind racing, fear building. What have I done? he asked himself over and over. By the Order, what have I done?

  Chapter 54

  The 44th Day of Summer

  For all that Jaret had put the plan into motion, Lius was more than aware of the part he played in making it possible. And in a few minutes, he would have to watch it play out. He would have to hear the screaming, see the brutality, feel the fear, suffer the consequences if it all went wrong.

  Feeling the emotions creeping into his meditation, Lius identified them, isolated them, and pushed them away with a long, slow breath just as he’d been taught in the Hall of Understanding. Emotion obscured the ability to see the Order, so monks like him, those who dedicated their lives to learning the Order’s secrets, spent hours each day in deep meditation, feeling the Order around them and aligning themselves to It in hope of seeing Its will. Until a month ago, Lius had thought that epiphany would come through quiet reflection, that it would involve some new way of helping people understand the Order and align their lives to It. He had never considered that it would happen after witnessing the Xi Valati’s murder, while he was running from creatures out of a nightmare, during a moment of absolute terror, that it would involve seeing – actually seeing – the strands of the Order around him and being able to manipulate those strands. And more than anything, he had not considered what a horrible burden that insight would be, had never thought that achieving perfect understanding of the Order would lead to him doing such terrible, Order-defying things with that understanding.

  Beside him, the man who was the Order’s final arbiter far more than him gripped a bow, arrow already notched. Jaret showed not the slightest emotion as he stared down at the frightened clump of wounded men in the camp below. The survivors of that morning’s battle, many of them could barely stand or hold their weapons. Jaret had told them that he was taking Joal’s spearmen to find and kill the creatures. He had left ten of the least certain to protect them and never returned. Though it was closer to dawn than sunset, not a one of those men slept. A ring of torches illuminated their stoic faces as they watched the trees, reacting to every whir on an insect or scramble of a squirrel. Yatier had formed them into a crude defensive formation, but they knew what it meant that their commander had not returned. They knew what was coming, could only imagine that the creatures had already killed their comrades, that they were alone in facing the horrors that had already defeated them once this day. And their emotions had risen accordingly as the night stretched on and Jaret failed to return. Now, it radiated from them like a fire. It disrupted the lines of possibility emanating from them, ma
de their actions hard to predict. But then, they didn’t really matter. As long as the bait stayed in the cage, it didn’t matter how it paced.

  And fear was the goal. Everything else had been a lie. The spearmen who were supposed to be hunting the creatures were asleep. They had been told that nothing was out of the ordinary. They had been sent to their beds spread across both sides of the stream that defined the Camp and told to sleep. Lius had helped them on their way, had subtly manipulated the forest around them to make their sleep deep, dreamless, and undisturbed even now.

  With another slow breath, Lius released his emotions – the risk of them now was not theological, it was to his life and that of every person here – and focused on the Tapestry around him, on all the strands of possibility that made up the Order. The creatures were close and coming straight at them. They descended on the two men who had been set to guard the final bridge leading into the Camp. In a profound betrayal of the creature’s nature, only the slightest gurgling cry escaped from those men as they died. The things lived for pain, fear, hate. They fed off of raw emotion, sought to create it above all things, but here, they killed quickly, silently before the men knew that they were even near. Because, they serve a higher power, Lius realized. Someone was commanding them, and they obeyed. Even though it was counter to their nature, stealth was what they needed and that is what they provided. It did not serve Lius’ plan.

  “Now,” he whispered from his trance, careful to remove any emotion.

  Jaret released the arrow he had been holding then followed it. He yanked a helm onto his head, adjusted the breastplate he wore, pulled his swords, and charged down the hill where he had been waiting.

  The arrow hit the youngest, simplest, most terrified of Joal’s spearmen in the thigh. What kind of monster shoots his own men? Lius wondered as the boy started screaming. He howled to the heavens as his every fear was suddenly realized. The murmurs of the men around him turned to shouts as they searched for the source of the attack. At the same moment, thunder roared across the camp and rain started to fall. Big, cold drops hit the men sleeping in the forest, directed by Lius’ weavings to disturb their sleep if the screaming were not enough. And in seconds, four hundred men were awake, were listening to one of their fellows scream, and were afraid.

  The creatures, already flowing across and around the narrow bridge into the Camp, paused as they sensed another set of men – the spearmen camped on their side of the stream – come alive. Their fear like the scent of blood to a jackal, they hesitated, torn now between two targets.

  Jaret hit them in their moment of doubt. A man without emotion, they had not sensed him, did not even know what to make of such a creature, and he made good use of that surprise. He slashed and chopped and stabbed his way through them until he stood between them and the bridge that lead to the Camp. He made his stand there, seeming to defend the bridge, yet to Lius watching it all through the lens of possibilities, Jaret was not defending the bridge as much as he was choosing which of the creatures would be allowed to pass.

  Despite or because of Jaret’s effort, dozens of the creatures flowed into the Camp and the wounded men waiting there. Yatier rallied his charges. He shouted orders over the thunder and rising wind of the storm. The men responded. They lifted a crude palisade that they had constructed from sharpened branches just as the creatures hit them. The trembling spearmen who had been left to guard them formed around the palisade as Yatier, hobbling on bandaged feet, screamed for them to hold. Behind those, the knights and legionnaires who’d survived that morning’s encounter tried for all they were worth to hold weapons despite hands that were mangled and broken, to stand despite decimated feet, broken ankles, disjointed knees and hips. Their armor had been stripped. They were tired, frightened, in pain. The only capable men among them were boys who’d never fought in their lives. They had no chance.

  The palisade and spearmen took down the first wave of creatures. Those creatures were varied, large, small, serpentine, insectoid, nearly human. They drove themselves into the palisade until it fell, threw themselves on spears and took the men holding them to the Maelstrom with them. They consumed the only strength the wounded knights and legionnaires could muster, leaving easy pickings for the second wave. And thanks largely to Jaret, that wave consisted almost entirely of black humanoids with oily fur and enormous mouths lined with needle teeth. The cousins of the thing that had tortured Jaret in the Emperor’s care, he knew well the pain they could cause but also the benefits it brought with it.

  The rain fell harder, building to a downpour, and Lius manipulated it. As the creatures drove into the wounded with swords, axes, and knives meant to kill, the men slipped away, falling in mud, buffeted by sudden wind, or cast back by blinding flashes. And when their weapons missed, the creatures turned to their nature. They bit. Gaping maws opened and flashed down into shoulders and arms and necks. Men screamed, howling in pain as the poison hit them. The creatures reveled in that pain as rapture took them. They lost their purpose and bit again, too overwhelmed by the ecstasy of it to finish the men before them.

  Lius turned his attention to the stream. There were fewer of the creatures there now as the majority had turned toward the easier and more tantalizing opportunity presented by the frightened spearmen on their side of the stream. Their screams soon added to the turmoil, echoing through the pounding of the rain and rumble of thunder, drawing ever more creatures to them.

  But it was not going to be enough to save Jaret. Despite the dwindling number of creatures and every advantage the Order could afford him, he was nearly overwhelmed. He was covered with gashes delivered by the creatures even faster than Thagas’kuila’s poison could heal them. He limped and staggered as a small lizard thing clamped onto his calf with its razor teeth. Blocking a serrated sword on one side, he missed a jagged club that smashed his arm on the other, sending it limp to his side and taking him to his knees. His eyes turned to the stream behind him, searching for the moment of his escape. It was supposed to have happened by now. The pattern should have delivered him, and if it didn’t come soon, even Thagas’kuila’s gift would not save him.

  Lius broadened his view, looking out over the pattern he had created. It was a delicate thing, created in only a few harried hours. And it had already changed. Some of the strings had moved ever so slightly – a squirrel darting the wrong direction, a rock rolling an inch too far, a fly missing a spider’s web. It was enough to create a ripple in the fragile pattern, enough to ruin everything.

  Lius strained to connect those possibility, to understand what had gone wrong, what he could do to fix it. He had seen this storm coming. It had dumped torrents of rain, had swollen the stream north of them to bursting, but that water was being held by a beaver damn a mile away. Lius’ manipulations were supposed to result in that dam breaking. It was supposed to have happened already, and if it didn’t soon, Jaret Rammeriz was going to die. Panic pushed into the calm of Lius’ meditation, but there was nothing he could do now. A creature looked toward him on his hill, sensing his growing fear. It would have him in a second, would be on him. But there was nothing he could do . There was no time, and the one thing a Weaver needed was time. He opened his eyes, looked out over the misery before him, and felt his control crumble.

  The wind, rising to a howl dislodged an ancient, nearly hollow cottonwood near where the stream split around the camp. It took a pair of pines with it. The crash of its fall was deafening even over the pounding of the storm. The ground half a mile away shook as it struck. A small creature with impossibly long arms abandoned its attempts to get through Jaret and ran instead toward Lius’ hill, tracking the line of the stream straight at him.

  Lius let out a long slow breath and said a prayer of thanks.

  The water came. It slammed into the fallen trees, was blocked from the western side of the split and rushed in its entirety to the east. It burst over its banks, surged down the hollow, and crashed toward Jaret, who was at the creatures’ mercy.

  Too
late, Lius thought. By the Order, it was too late. A ten foot tall creature smashed Jaret to the ground with a mighty backhanded blow and followed with a mouth like that of an alligator. Jaret’s injuries were too much even for the poison to heal. The small thing still clung to his leg, shaking its head to keep the wound open. One arm hung limp. Those alligator jaws would take the other clean off, and no amount of healing poison would fix it. And only twenty paces away the creature that would kill Lius was coming. It had him in its sights, and there was nothing that the monk could possibly do to stop it.

  Jaret’s broken arm came up. Healing just in time, it shot up and planted a dirk in the creature’s throat as the jaws slid to the side. With a mighty cry, Jaret swung down with his other hand. The sword cleaved the creature on his leg, sent it and a chunk of his calf spinning into the stream below. And with all the power he had left, Jaret followed. He sprung to the bridge, bound across it in staggering strides with three of the things close behind.

  The water hit just as he leapt the final feet. It caught him, spun his small body, and threw him into a tree with a force that would have shattered his ribs if not for the breastplate he wore. The bridge, a simple construct of wood and rope, was swept away along with the creatures that had been upon it and the opposite bank. The thing that was coming for Lius was caught in the ropes of the bridge, tied and dragged under the current as the water heaved up the side of the hill. And the few remaining things on that bank gave up. They turned and fought through a hail of falling branches and howling wind toward where their fellows were butchering the spearmen who had been camping on that bank.

  At that same fortuitous moment, three hundred other spearmen ran in from the west. They tore into the creatures caught in the rapture of torturing the defenseless men who had been left in the camp for that very reason. They panted spears in the creatures almost before they could pull themselves away. Yet the men they’d saved only continued to scream, to howl and writhe in pain that shook the spearmen to their cores. Their wounds closed, bones stitched, tendons reconnected. But the cost of that healing was the most intense pain any man could ever know, and they had no choice but to express it.