A Haven in Ash

by Robert J. Crane

  Minutes ticked into a quarter of an hour, then half. That doubled, tripled …

  The sun lowered. The sea came closer and closer.

  “Another half hour,” Shilara murmured. “We’re almost there.”

  “We’ll make it?” Alixa asked.

  “Mm.”

  Jasen spared a sad look behind him.

  The mountain’s noxious spewing cloud was increasingly difficult to make out against the darkening skies. Sun dipped low enough to cast the mountains, and Terreas, in shadow, turning the sky into a bruised sort of twilight.

  The magma, though … Jasen could see that. It still glowed hot orange, like forged metal, burning bright against the darkness. From here it was slow to change, but Jasen would never forget it up close, the way the molten rock moved, glowing reds and yellows turning to black as it hardened, then cracked and spilled a fresh wave of heat through.

  That it was still aflame now, and visible from so far, stamped out any lingering hopes that Jasen might have. The village, and its people—it was all gone.

  Goodbye, Terreas, he thought.

  Goodbye, Father.

  He closed his eye on a fresh wave of tears—

  And then he smelled it, the scent flooding into the back of his nose, shoving its way into his throat and nearly making him gag:

  Death and rot.

  The scourge were back.

  31

  “Scourge,” Jasen warned. His voice rose with a note of panic he didn’t realize he felt, one which the smell of them had brought on—

  And then he saw the thing, and that panic reached a new plane entirely.

  They flooded out of the landscape behind them. A woods had not long passed, short, but it had given the scourge plenty of cover as they picked up the scent of their targets again.

  It had also given time for more of them to mass.

  The things must’ve had some way of communicating, some shared language between the beasts that they could use to corral themselves into groups, for this … this was ridiculous. It was as if every scourge alive on Luukessia had collected into one huge, surging wave. And perhaps they had. Terreas had fallen. Now the only people left alive here rode this cart, the last three humans remaining on Luukessia … and the scourge meant to have them, meant to snuff out all three. Decades of destruction, and now the job would finally be finished.

  The roiling mass was like a wave. It flooded down the hillside, this final stretch of open terrain, dotted with only a few bushes and trees in the run of unkempt fields laid out before the beach, and the shore, and the boat and all the promise it held. And Jasen very much wanted to take up that promise, now he saw the things again, now he saw so many of them, leathery and wrinkled and awful, smelling like a thousand corpses piled high and gone to rot in the summer sun, alive with maggots and flies, worming their way through rancid flesh—

  He had to live. Being eaten by those things was not the way to go.

  Alixa and Shilara must’ve turned, for Alixa shrieked a cry. At the same time, Shilara cursed.

  “Blasted things,” she griped. Then: “Blasted—Milo!”

  The horse must have caught wind of the vile scent of the hundreds of scourge surging behind them, for he tried to bolt sideways. Without the weight of the barrels any longer, he might well have managed—but the horse had been run so hard and so long, up the mountainside and down again, fleeing these beasts for how many hours now? Eighteen? Twenty? That he had any strength left was a miracle.

  Shilara tugged the reins, trying to pull Milo under control. “Hold, damn it! We’re almost there!”

  “Ohh,” Alixa said. “There are so many of them …”

  Scourgey cast a look back along her flank. Weighing up whether she might fight them off, maybe. Unlikely—and however her mind worked, she must have come to the same conclusion too, for she whined and picked up her pace to hurry alongside the cart rather than lagging as she had done much of their journey to yet.

  “Will they catch us?” Jasen asked.

  “Shouldn’t,” said Shilara, “if Milo could just keep—pace—would you stay on course, you bloody dumb beast?”

  “He’s tired!” Alixa moaned.

  “He’ll be minced meat if he doesn’t point where I want him to—oh, oh—no, no, no—”

  Milo slowed. The cart juddered along behind, carried as its wheels kept turning on this last little slope leading to the sea. It caught up with Milo, knocking him in the backside—which should have incited him to speed along. But he only slowed further, and Jasen watched in horror as—

  Milo collapsed.

  The cart rolled across him—

  Alixa screamed.

  The horse’s body acted as both a weight and a hurdle, arresting the cart’s speed in a moment.

  “Noooo,” Shilara said. It was a distinctly Alixa sort of noise, and for a confusing moment Jasen was not entirely sure that his cousin hadn’t made it. But Shilara had climbed down from the cart, squatting beside the downed horse. Side on to Jasen, he could see: those were her lips moving. That whine had come from her.

  “Is he dead?” Alixa stammered. She was close to tears, perilously so.

  Shilara shoved at Milo, the way Jasen might try to rouse a particularly deep sleeper. Or, perhaps, the way a put-upon wife might fight to wake her drunken husband at a time when she truly needed him. They were hard, forceful shoves—and Milo did not move an inch.

  She pressed a hand to the horse’s midriff.

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s dead.”

  “Then what do we do?” Alixa demanded.

  “What do you mean, what do we do?” Shilara spat back. Her hackles were up, and she flashed a fiery glare at Alixa.

  “I mean, what do we do?”

  “What do you want us to do? I’ll just put the bloody horse on a set of strings and puppet our way to the shore, shall I?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “Then don’t ask stupid questions!”

  “Please,” Jasen began—

  Everything had broken down. Here, on the hillside, this last stretch of land before the shore that promised a way off this forsaken land, Shilara and Alixa were going to pieces with the scourge just minutes away—and closing in every damned moment.

  “Well, what do we do then?” Alixa asked. “Do we run?”

  “Do you think you can outrun those?” Shilara demanded, jabbing a finger back up the hill.

  “Then what do we bloody well do!?”

  “Please,” Jasen began again, holding up hands—

  Shilara opened her mouth to the heavens. “I DON’T—”

  Scourgey leapt into the space between them, cutting her off.

  Shilara rounded as if stung, ready to defend herself. Her face contorted, and Jasen knew exactly what she thought in that moment: that this scourge was an intelligent one after all, and it had led them on to trap them, to give the scourge a hunt. She had been outwitted, drawn into trusting a beast she had sworn she never would, and now, here, this dastardly monster’s plan had come to fruition—

  But then Scourgey sunk low. Worming her head across Milo, she opened her mouth to bite at the reins. Gently, eyeing Shilara, she pulled them.

  “She wants to take us,” Alixa murmured.

  “Ancestors,” Shilara said. Her voice was far-away. “I don’t—”

  Scourgey made a breathy, strangled sort of noise.

  “Quick,” Jasen said, suddenly leaping down and into motion. He grabbed at the reins, ripping them out from where they’d become tangled under Milo’s head. “Hook her up.”

  Shilara unstuck herself. Squatting on the other side, she, for that moment, forgot all the disgust she felt at the scourge. Her hands flew, fingers prying at the reins, loosing them from Milo. Then she slung them about Scourgey, rearranging as best the strange beast’s elongated, misshapen anatomy would allow.

  The scourge almost fastened, Shilara ordered Jasen, “Up on the cart. I’ve got this. Now!”

  He obeyed, clam
bering aboard.

  Without the mass of barrels obscuring him, and the rear panel of the cart broken and lost, he had a clear view up the gentle rise leading inland.

  The tidal wave of scourge—that was what they were, Jasen thought, a grand wave the likes of which he had never seen, enough to displace probably half the ocean in its thunderous swell—was less than a minute behind them.

  “They’re almost on us!” he cried.

  Shilara leapt up. “Go, beast!” she yelled.

  Scourgey broke into motion. The reins went taut, and the cart jerked under the sheer, sudden force of it. Alixa yelped and toppled—Jasen caught her before she fell over the edge in a repeat of last night, only a thousand times worse—

  Then they were hurtling down toward the beach.

  The cart bounced violently. Something about Scourgey’s body shape, and the way she imitated Milo’s gallop, made the whole wagon judder up and down in a sickening, unpleasant wobble. It seemed to be in the air more often than its wheels touched dirt. Every impact slammed a bolt of pain up Jasen’s spine. The cart groaned, rattling madly under each impact—

  “Can’t control this damned thing,” Shilara grumbled.

  “She’s not a horse!” Alixa cried.

  “She’ll break the bloody cart in two at this rate.”

  “Let me do it!”

  The look on Shilara’s face said she considered a retort. But then she said, “Fine.” Thrusting the reins at Alixa, she moved aside, crawling backward over the cart’s base. “You’ll get better results anyway. Jasen, with me. You’ve a sword?”

  “Uhm …”

  Shilara had already found it, thrown haphazardly among the scant possessions they had left. She held it out for him, and he took it as she rooted around for her spear—

  “What are we …?” Jasen started.

  “Rear of the cart with me,” she instructed.

  “But why—?”

  “If a horse with a cart can’t outrun scourge, then this scourge can’t, either, not with a cart weighing it down. They’re gaining.”

  Jasen’s stomach flipped with panic. She was right. The army of grey beasts flying in their wake was closing in. Unlike Scourgey, they were unencumbered; they could speed without weight on their backs. In fact, the mass was a slave to its own staggering swiftness. The rear pushed the front of the army forward, and if those scourge there were to trip, it mattered not; their bodies would be carried forward until they finally rolled under the feet of those behind, and a new front line formed.

  “Speed her up, Alixa!” Jasen called behind.

  “I’m trying!”

  “And get her to run a bit bloody smoother while you’re at it, will you?” Shilara griped.

  The cart shuddered violently in apparent response. Shilara bit off a curse word, grunting to herself.

  The scourge onslaught drew nearer, and nearer …

  Jasen cast a frightened look over his shoulder. The sea had to be a good two miles away yet.

  We’ll be overrun before getting there, he thought.

  The knot in his stomach tightened.

  He had to buy them time as best he could.

  Leaning forward with Shilara, belly pressed flat to the cart, he steeled himself as best he could. Gripping tight to the base’s rear, ignoring the splinters needling him where the back panel had been so violently ripped loose, he squeezed the handle of the blade Shilara had thrust at him. His palms were both sweaty—but it would have to do.

  Ten meters of space between them now.

  The thundering of their feet was terrific. So vast in number, the footfalls of the pursuing monsters were so loud that the rattles and bangs of the crashing cart disappeared into the fray.

  “Ready?” Shilara asked.

  Jasen swallowed. Nodded. “Ready.”

  He took deep, calming breaths—but the scent of rot was overpowering, so many of them surging all in one seething, roiling mass—

  “DIE!” Shilara shrieked—and she thrust out with the spear as scourge drew within stabbing range.

  Jasen followed. His movements were clumsy; he’d had practice with daggers, same as Alixa, but he never took it as seriously as she had, and in any case he didn’t think any amount of practice would have adequately prepared him for this. But he thrust out again and again, stabbing the blade at anything within reach—an eye, an open mouth, the exposed neck of one of the wrinkled beasts. He nicked them, and they flinched away, roaring—

  Ancestors, their breath!

  —and he had to tighten his slimy hold to prevent the blade from being yanked out of his hand by the scourges’ movements. It did not go, but it did try, and every tilt of the blade that Jasen did not command sent a pulse of fear through him. If he lost this sword …

  A particularly voracious scourge with ebony eyes leapt through the throng of its fallen comrades. Its teeth were bared, and Jasen was again reminded of a dog, snarling, on the attack—

  Shilara stabbed for it—

  But the beast was faster, would reach her arm before the spear spun around.

  Jasen yelped. He swung the blade sideways, hoping, closing his eyes though he knew he shouldn’t—

  It sunk into flesh.

  The scourge hissed, and recoiled—

  The blade was jerked out of Jasen’s hand. He almost followed with it, arm almost wrenched from its socket—

  He dared open his eyes.

  The scourge had fallen back … and with it, again like a chain of dominoes, the marching army collapsed. Onslaught slowed by the tumult of fallen bodies at the front finally amassing enough weight to cause problems, the scourge began to fall back—and as if she knew, Scourgey picked up her pace, widening that gap.

  “Yes,” Jasen breathed.

  He turned to look over his shoulder at the sea—

  “We’re close,” he said.

  Shilara nodded haggardly. “I think maybe a mile—”

  The cart slammed the earth hard. It rose skyward, sailing in an arc through the air, Scourgey leading the way with her body—

  It landed on its front wheels only, and hard—harder than any impact before.

  The front axle snapped.

  Jasen had a moment to register the force of the impact, and the snapping sound that came with it—

  Then he was thrown into the sky, over the cart, over Scourgey—and headfirst into packed, unyielding sand.

  32

  Pain overloaded every one of Jasen’s senses. It came from everywhere, an all-encompassing roar. His back, his ribs, legs, arms, head. There was no choosing which of these things was most painful, because it all felt like fire, burning its way back into his consciousness as the woolen feeling in his skull began to dissolve.

  Grit had gotten into his mouth. There was a metallic taste to it, dull and unpleasant.

  Two realizations came to Jasen at once as he burbled, spitting it out. First: the grit was sand. And second, the metallic taste did not come from that sand, but from a split bottom lip.

  Doesn’t matter, he thought at almost the same moment. His body was a broken heap and he’d never get up. Let the magma find me; I’m dead anyway.

  Except all this pain was testament to the fact that he was not dead, not yet—

  And there was noise behind him.

  Someone was shouting his name.

  His eyelids twitched, the way they did when his father roused him from sleep and he did not want to go.

  Father, he thought dully.

  But Adem was dead, along with everyone back in Terreas.

  And Jasen was alone.

  “Jasen!”

  No. Not alone.

  Alixa. Shilara. They were here too. They’d survived.

  The beach. That was where Jasen had fallen. Less than a mile from the shore, if that, the waters promising salvation from the scourge, from the ruined hellscape that was Luukessia.

  They could still get out of this. They could still live.

  It just meant moving first.

&nb
sp; Jasen forced himself into motion. It was slow, and the pain seemed to ignite, swaddling his being, increasing as he stretched. But his body obeyed. He untangled the pretzel shape he’d fallen into. Newly formed bruises screamed at him, and muscles groaned in agony.

  But the pain in his head was worse, he decided. It swam and a dense fog filled it. Every thought came just a little too slow, not properly attached to the one before it, terminating instead of leading smoothly into the one after.

  Was this what drunkenness was like?

  Someone cried his name again.

  He pivoted toward the sound, blinking in confusion.

  Alixa. She staggered to her feet. Tears streaked her panicked face.

  The cart had tumbled some way back. Jasen had been thrown the farthest. How, he wasn’t sure; Alixa and Shilara had been downed right near the front of the thing. It lay diagonally, fallen to one side toward the front where the axle had snapped. A spray of sand had been thrown up from its violent loss of momentum, and the fallen corner had embedded itself in a fine mixture of sand and dirt, the last feet of which blended into the beach.

  Scourgey had fallen too. She was half crumpled in a heap, sprawled to one side where the cart’s sudden cessation had tugged her around in an arc. One of the beams she was affixed to now jutted across her body, pinning her to the ground.

  But they were all trapped. The scourge were not far behind. The flatlands were open enough to see the way Luukessia rose all the way to the mountains that cradled Terreas—or the ruined slag that remained of it. An army of the things drove this way even now. Not deterred by the lead Scourgey had been able to provide, they surged toward the beach—how far away?

  Shilara was slower to rise than Alixa, who lurched for Jasen. Her face was tight, and she winced as she found her footing.

  “Jasen!” Alixa cried, and she slammed to her knees at his side, spraying up more sand. She gripped him. “Are you okay?”

  “Hurts,” he moaned.

  “Is anything broken?”

  “I don’t know.” His head, most likely. It wasn’t working right at all.

  “Ohh …”

  “Help him up,” Shilara told Alixa. Her voice was hoarse, as though she’d spent half a day shouting at the top of her lungs.