The Dead Seekers

by Barb Hendee

  The animal’s eyes widened with insane fear. It screamed but stumbled back, kicking and twisting to get away from him. A sudden splash blew up over Tris, startling him.

  Mari rose with a loud gasp, soaked through but with the child in her arms. Before he could reach her, she spun in the water, looking every direction. He knew what she sought.

  There was no sign of the woman, not even by a spear’s haft sticking up above the stream.

  Tris heard Stàsiuo shout something he could not understand. He did not care and struggled to reach Mari. Guardsman Farrell crashed past him, through the stream, and to the slope. The downed rider was not moving, but Farrell still rammed a spear into the man’s chest. He jerked the spear out as he charged up the far slope and into the grass field beyond sight. And the captain was still shouting.

  Tris grabbed Mari’s arm, the dagger still in her same hand.

  She whirled on him, as if to slash at him, but then turned farther, looking all about again.

  “She is gone,” Tris half shouted at her. “The mother is gone!”

  Other refugees now scrambled, tripped, and tumbled down the far slope toward the stream, trying to cross as more Warlands riders bore down on them from above. Shouts everywhere made it hard to hear any one voice. Nearly half the Soladran guards were in the water, and more noise came with them. Still, the riders surged over the far crest, no matter how outnumbered.

  Tris yanked Mari’s arm to drag her out of the mayhem. He noticed one noise was missing. Not a sound came from the soggy, bundled infant in Mari’s other arm.

  Could it mean another death—and again, he was in the middle of all of it?

  “Get the child out of here!” he shouted at her.

  Cold and shivering, Mari appeared too numbed to react. Tris dragged her on toward the Soladran side of the stream. Whether the child still lived or not, at least this would get her—and himself—away from the slaughter.

  So much death at once in Tris’s presence could bring something far worse by nightfall.

  —

  Mari sat shivering by the common room’s hearth, even though wrapped in a wool blanket. Once Tris had shoved her through the front door, he’d run off into the barracks and come back with two wool blankets scavenged somewhere. She was now wrapped in one and the other was for the little boy in her arms.

  Three years old at most, at least he lived; his mother had not, though Mari didn’t really know if the woman lost in the stream had any connection to the boy. He lay sleeping in her arms with shallow breaths, another child orphaned like her. She looked up.

  Tris paced the room, stopping only to peer—stare—at her, again and again.

  She had no idea why, but this went on so long that she began to ignore him, growing tired as the warmth from the hearth finally sank in. Her eyelids and head began to drop, and she lost all sense of time.

  The outer door burst open, startling her awake.

  Outside, daylight was beginning to wane. Winter days were short here, and the remainder of the afternoon was nearly gone.

  The chaos of shouts made her flinch and rise as soldiers hauled in the wounded: their own or refugees. Some who’d escaped across the stream were still on their feet but soaked through.

  She hefted the boy and tried to get clear of the hearth. Others now needed heat more than she. Tris stopped pacing as the bleeding, broken, and weeping flooded the common room. He just stood there at the food table’s inner end staring blankly, as if every face he saw held a threat.

  In his expression she saw fear on the edge of panic.

  He’d faced—no, commanded—the dead, and likely seen more death than she had, at a guess. He was the Dead’s Man, so why did all of this frighten him now?

  Captain Stàsiuo came striding in among another cluster of wounded and refugees. He was drenched and one side of his face was badly bruised. Sergeant Orlov was right behind him, carrying a middle-aged woman.

  “More blankets!” Stàsiuo barked. “Anyone on your feet, move, now!”

  Mari ducked aside as two more guards ran by toward the bunk rooms, and almost stumbled into the captain’s back. Both men were bloodied and wet, but neither acted as if badly injured. The sounds of crying, prayers to whatever gods, and pleas for the missing filled the place and her ears.

  Mari felt her own panic rise as she clung to the boy.

  “Orlov,” the captain half shouted, and then lowered his voice. “Gather an able team.”

  She looked back to find Stàsiuo gripping the sergeant’s arm in close talk.

  “Gather the six bodies of those Warlands riders and get rid of them,” the captain said. “Have another team get their horses out of sight and in the stable for now. Move!”

  “Yes, sir,” Orlov answered with a curt nod.

  Mari absorbed this. So, all six of the riders were dead, and now the captain was trying to hide what had happened.

  “And, Sergeant,” Stàsiuo said through clenched teeth.

  Orlov looked back.

  “When you’re done,” Stàsiuo finished, “find Bródy and arrest that coward for questioning orders.”

  Orlov nodded with satisfaction. “Yes, Captain,” he answered, and headed for the door.

  “Tichen?”

  Mari spun at that panicked plea. A young woman with one arm in a crude sling turned about in the crowded room looking everywhere.

  “Where’s Tichen?”

  One old man in soaked, tattered, and soiled clothes pushed through others but stopped short upon facing her. His wrinkled lips parted as if he was about to say something, but he only shook his head.

  Tears began to fall down her stricken face. She looked vacantly about the room and finally fixed on the captain.

  “You!” she cried at him. “Why didn’t you do something sooner? You had archers . . . could’ve saved us all!”

  Stàsiuo didn’t answer. He dropped his eyes, the muscles of his jaw tightened, and he turned away.

  “Get the rest of the rescued in here now,” he snarled at his own men.

  The woman started after the captain, fingers hooked like claws.

  Mari thrust the bundled boy into the arms of someone else and lunged in to grab the woman’s wrist.

  “Don’t,” she whispered.

  The woman turned on her.

  For an instant, Mari thought this one might come at her, at anyone, in anguish. She knew fury seeded in agony, but the woman only sagged and crumpled. Mari had to catch her, though they both dropped to the floor.

  “Tichen,” the woman whimpered.

  She had lost someone. No one had been there for Mari on the night she’d lost everyone who mattered, so she held on as the woman choked in silent sobs. How long they remained like that she didn’t know or care. Then someone’s wet, ankle-high boots slapped the floorboards next to her. She looked up into the vacant eyes of the same old man.

  He didn’t say a word amid the noise in the common room and crouched down with pained effort. Reaching out, he gripped the young woman’s shoulders with his worn, gnarled hands.

  At first, Mari didn’t want to let go, not until the old man whispered, “I ’ave her, miz. It’s a’right. See ta’ the others.”

  It wasn’t all right; nothing was. Just the same, Mari let go, rose up, and looked about the room. At first, all the misery and loss crowded into this place hid one change from her. Then she realized.

  Tris was gone.

  —

  Tris met no one as he strode through the barracks; everyone, including Mari, was too busy with the battle’s aftermath. When he reached the room he shared with her, he entered and quickly shut the door. He fixed on that one shuttered window in the far wall between the beds.

  He had to get out of the barracks—and the city—before full darkness set in, without being followed. What was coming would not care who got
in its way. His satchel and other belongings still lay on the chest at the foot of his bed, though he did not touch any of those. If someone noticed him gone from the common room and came looking, they would eventually come here. Better to leave all possessions behind and let others think he was here somewhere. In the end, he would not need anything—except perhaps the cloak.

  Tris grabbed his cloak, about to hurry to the window, but then paused and turned back. There was one more thing he needed.

  Digging into his satchel, he pulled out the small knife he used when making camp during a journey and tucked it into his belt. Then he hurried to the window, shoved the shutters open, and climbed out.

  Quietly, he closed the shutters before slipping away in the night.

  —

  Mari hurried through the barracks, pausing here and there only to see if Tris had gone into one of the bunk rooms. All she saw were guardsmen scavenging blankets or settling their wounded into bunks. Ducking aside as two of the guards jogged out into the passage, she ran on for the room she shared with Tris and burst in.

  He wasn’t there.

  All of her and his belongings still lay on the chests. At this sight, she ran back out and down through the rest of the barracks, even opening doors to other rooms, but she never spotted him—never smelled him.

  He couldn’t have doubled back without running into her, unless he’d gone out some side door, but why? He shouldn’t be overwhelmed by anything that had happened beyond the city wall—and which was now spilling into the common room.

  He’d seen more death than anyone here, even her, given what he was.

  Mari’s thoughts drifted to second-guessing.

  What he’d seen would’ve always been after death. Not while it happened, not like she had, one night in the Wicker Woods. Or had he? Had he been there as well in those woods, just as she’d once thought?

  Yes—he must have been there. Who else could it be?

  She doubled back to the room, its door left wide-open. Entering, she stood between the beds and drew air deep and long through her nostrils. He wasn’t here, but his scent was strong, though that might be from the bedding.

  She looked about the room one more time.

  Something was wrong. Even with a risen tinge of her other flesh, it didn’t take heightened smell or sight to catch one more detail in the dark. Something was amiss here. Then she saw it.

  The window shutters were closed, but the hook latch dangled open.

  She hadn’t done that.

  He hadn’t done it earlier in the day before they left, and she’d never opened those shutters even once since they’d first arrived. Even if so, he wouldn’t have left them unlatched.

  Someone had gone out through that window, unable to close the latch from the outside.

  Mari kicked the shutters open, climbed out, and sniffed the air.

  —

  “I must leave—now,” Tris ordered. “Open the gates!”

  All four guardsmen fidgeted before the closed northern gate. He did not recognize any one of them, though this did not matter. None were officers that he could see, not even a corporal or a sergeant. They exchanged panicked glances at a lord’s order, and one man shook his head at the others.

  “Sorry, m’lord, but . . . ,” that one began. “We can’t, m’lord. The gate stays closed tonight. Captain’s orders, m’lord. It won’t be open again until daylight, when the guards on the wall can see out into the field.”

  Following just enough to understand their meaning, Tris stared at four bewildered, suspicious, cowed, or panicked faces that might soon pale in death. That was all that would be left of anyone within his sight if he did not leave this place.

  It would be pointless to run for another city gate. He would not have time to reach one, and it seemed the northern gate was locked tight in fear of reprisal from some petty tyrant across the border stream in the Warlands.

  Neither this wall nor the gate could protect anyone near Tris this night.

  He glanced up to the city wall’s top, turned without a word, and ran toward the back of the barracks, leaving the four confused guardsmen at their post.

  —

  Mari lingered behind the barracks’ back corner, peeking around with one eye to watch. Her ears caught everything said, every harsh breath, especially strained words from one guard denying the command of a noble “lord.”

  Why did Tris want out? There was only the stream, its banks, and the field beyond, all recently cleared of corpses.

  Could that be why?

  A fresh lot of dead; fresh spirits perhaps easily called by the Dead’s Man. Another host for another slaughter in the night, like what had happened to her family. But why? What would it gain him?

  Mari didn’t care. It wasn’t going to happen, not to those refugees in the barracks suffering for ones they’d just lost.

  Tris turned from the gate and ran into the darkness between the barracks and the wall.

  Mari backed around the corner, tracking his footfalls by sound. From what she’d seen and heard, she couldn’t get out of the city either. If she killed him now, she’d need somewhere to hide the body where it wouldn’t be found for days. Then again, she’d be gone by the time anyone found his corpse.

  He’d shown his intentions this time, no matter the strange things about him that’d given her doubts, over and over. She’d watch him die in agony for everyone he’d taken from her.

  Tris bolted by, never looking her way; Mari readied to sprint, spring, and take him down.

  He swerved toward and into the barracks’ stable out back.

  Mari’s breath caught. He was making this too easy, which was suspicious for someone—something—like him. She ran quiet as a cat to hide to one side of the bay doors and peeked in.

  Tris ran from one stall to the next, even around two horse carcasses piled off in one corner. Horses in the stalls began rearing, kicking, squealing in trying to get farther away from him. They didn’t like him, and maybe he didn’t like them. Maybe he was even afraid of them as well, but he didn’t show it.

  The stench of fear in the stable became thick.

  Mari looked back toward the barracks and the corner where she’d hidden. All this noise would soon attract attention. If he was doing all this in secret, then why a racket and rush?

  When she peeked back in, Tris held coils of gathered ropes, and she knew what he was going to do. There was only one other way out of Soladran: over the wall. Did he need to be out there, where death had come for so many? Good enough. What better place for him to die? And better for her before a horse’s screech called someone else.

  As he ran out the other end, Mari sped through the stable. Again, horses reared, bucked, and snorted, this time stomping at the scent of a predator come too close.

  She followed the sound of his flight, lost track of him for a moment, and in that pause heard the echo of steps on stone. That sound came out of the open arc of a half tower in the city’s wall, and she followed it.

  Mari lingered inside the tower stairwell’s base, listening to every sound carrying downward over spiraled stone steps. She’d heard his hurried footfalls pause somewhere above and didn’t dare take him until sure he was alone up there. Maybe he’d stopped to check that the way was clear. Or he’d second-guessed trying to get over the wall and out.

  Waiting ate at her, until she heard him take another step . . . and two more. The sound changed. It no longer carried down the stairs. He was out atop the wall.

  Mari rushed upward but stalled at the top, keeping back out of sight.

  She could see one far-off guard walking away to the east, and she risked a careful peek the other way toward the gate—no guard that way, and so she stepped out. There was no sign of Tris, but it took her no time to spot a rope looped over one of those raised parts of the outer wall. She hopped up between those stone protrusi
ons and looked downward.

  The rope still wavered slightly against the outer wall, but she didn’t see him below. Her hearing sharpened on instinct, and she caught footfalls, strangely staggered, two steps separated by longer pauses.

  Had he injured one foot or leg in a final drop? Then came the sound of splashing.

  Mari spotted his dim shape wading through the stream, though it maddened her that he’d gotten so far out of reach. She grabbed the dangling rope, swung out, and scrambled downward.

  The rope ended more than a man’s height above the ground, but the drop into a crouch was nothing to her. Splashing sounds from the stream ended.

  He was already across and out.

  Mari ran for the stream toward the last sounds that she’d heard. She slowed before stepping into the frigid water to avoid splashing about and attracting his attention. Drenched again to the waist, she waded out on the stream’s far side. She needed to catch him unaware, not the other way around.

  Shivering, she crested the far slope. Her feet were already numb, and it was getting even colder. She’d have to do this differently than she’d planned over the years.

  Mari began stripping off her clothes. She piled everything out of sight in the tall grass beyond the slope’s crest and dropped on all fours. She even left the long, narrow dagger as well, her one and only visible weapon.

  A quick, silent kill might’ve been safer. For all his deceptions, confusing her over and over, she wanted more than that now. But she’d make sure he didn’t—couldn’t—scream.

  Mari shuddered on all fours and not from cold this time. Bones shifted, but that pain brought a welcomed freedom. Fingers thickened and then shortened as claws extended, piercing the ground. Her eyes rolled up as her jaws clenched with other teeth, and when those eyes rolled down . . .

  Night brightened, even under a quarter moon.

  Her sight took in thickened forepaws fully furred.

  She wanted to run, charge, hunt, but she didn’t.

  Mari skulked through the grass, silently tracking her prey.

  —

  Tris huddled down in the grass, positioned where the battle site was directly between him and Soladran’s northern gate. This was as close as he dared stop within sight of the city but close enough for what would come. Though he pulled his dark cloak tighter about himself, this did little to stop his shivers.