The Heron Kings

by Eric Lewis

  “I’m sorry,” said Alessia, not sure she’d heard right, “did you say…oh, towns.”

  The woman gave her a quizzical look. “Aye, tahns. What else? Stick to the roads though – godsdamn bandits make as much trouble as the soldiers. No real difference, really.”

  “Aye,” agreed the travelers.

  Alessia ate her meal and tried not to think of bandits.

  Sometime later that night she woke to find a body on top of her and a hand over her mouth. Panic shot through her. Bandits!

  “Ssh,” said a whisper somewhere above her. “No troubles, sis, jus’ a quick ’un, eh?” It was cold and the fire was out. Nearby, dark shapes huddled together, breathing, snoring. None of the other travelers stirred. The hand that wasn’t covering her mouth pawed at Alessia’s gown. Down, down toward the hem, up under it.

  No! she tried to scream but couldn’t. She opened her mouth to bite and tasted the salty stink of her attacker’s fingers, then blood.

  “Ah!” The figure shrank back and Alessia wrenched her knee upward. He went tumbling to the side. “Godsbuggerit!”

  “Oh, give it up, sis,” mumbled another tired voice. “It’s jus’ a tumble. Fair trade for a bowl and fire, and these ol’ bones need they’s sleep.” It was the old woman! Alessia placed her attacker now – the man who’d drawn her into this company of strangers. Lucky thirteen.

  “Aye,” agreed the others who’d awakened.

  What horror had she walked into? Alessia staggered to her feet, almost tripping over her rucksack, which she’d used as a pillow, the bow lashed to the side of it. She hugged it in front of her like a shield, and then felt something inside poke her hand. Something small and hard and sharp. She fumbled at the top flap while backing away.

  “Hey now,” said her would-be rapist, sucking at his bitten finger, “don’t be like that! Come on back, let’s all just—” He leaped at her.

  Alessia whipped an arrow out of the sack and swung. The head sank into the man’s cheek, through the meat and straight out the other. She turned and ran in no particular direction, leaving the man howling with a yard of good temple ash skewered clean through his mouth.

  When she’d run her legs out and her throat burned with desert dryness, Alessia collapsed in the dark, still hugging her rucksack, weeping silent thanks for Tanusia’s final order.

  * * *

  What just happened? What did I just do? What just happened? She asked herself the questions over and over in a daze, in a gray place half a league west of sleep. When at last the sky lightened, she stumbled to a brook at the bottom of a gully. The face reflected in the water bore uncounted cuts and scratches from her flight through the brush, reddened eyes and a trace of the same deadness she saw in others.

  She rinsed her wounds, dared a few sips of brackish water—

  Ack!

  —then looked around for the road. How far did I run? Which way? She climbed a nearby hill to get a better look. Should I go back? What if those…people are still there?

  She made her way east, parallel to the highway but well away from it. It was slow going through the brambles and she soon had new scrapes to match the old. Around noontime the first pangs of hunger hit her all at once. In the temple they’d eaten simply but none starved. Thus this new pain brought some alarm.

  Alessia felt through her sack for the rough flatness of her remaining hardtack. She didn’t find it. Annoyed, she dumped everything in a pile on the ground. The last thing to tumble out was a sparker. “Oh, no….” She rifled through everything. Fallen out or swiped, it wasn’t there.

  “Chthonii,” she breathed, painfully aware that no one was around to report her foul mouth to Mother. She instinctively reached for her neck, for her Polytheon star, but it wasn’t there either. She’d cast it away.

  “All right,” she said to herself, “don’t panic. Uh….” There were hills all around, and that meant ravines and probably water at the bottom. But food? Her eyes rested on the pile before her – clothes, some coins, her physic kit, needle case, eating knife— Ha! No use for that now – sparker, bow…

  The bow, still in one piece and strapped securely along the edge of the sack. She’d not wanted to take it at first, but an arrow had already saved her. What else could she accomplish?

  * * *

  Alessia’s total archery experience added up to a few laughing, fumbling attempts at market fair games, and it took her almost twenty minutes just to string the thing. She became terrified of breaking it as she bent it back to its full tension. “This can’t be the right way,” she whispered more than once before giving up to let her aching arms recover. Somehow she managed it without getting her fingers caught in the nocks. What an idiot I must look, she thought, unnerved anew at the notion of being watched.

  She drew an arrow from the quiver and notched it, the gray goose-feather fletching tickling her fingers. She picked out a large nearby oak tree, an easy target certainly. She drew the string as far back as she could manage, clenched her throat to hold her breath and let go.

  “Ah!” Pain exploded across her arm where the string smacked and her fingers buzzed. The arrow was nowhere to be seen, and had certainly not hit the tree. This wasn’t going to be as easy as it looked.

  The next day saw Alessia hungrier, and motivated to try the weapon again. Slower this time. She wrapped cloth around her arm and fingers, tried a few aching practice draws, aiming and relaxing. At last she built up the nerve to try another shot.

  This time, it hit the tree. A glancing strike that made the arrow twist around then fall to the ground, but a hit all the same. Alessia let out a whooping cry at the small victory. She tried another shot, and another and another until she could hit the target nearly half the time.

  That night Alessia dined on a hard-gotten feast – a pigeon and a squirrel. It cost another arrow broken on a stone, but it was a trade gladly made.

  Chapter Five

  Everything Breaks

  Plisten village proper had taken only a swipe from the reavers as they’d passed through, like it was an afterthought. It was the farmland that mattered after all, the farms that fed enemy armies. Most of the buildings were blackened on the outside but there’d been no concerted effort to erase the place for all time, so when the smiths, millers and carpenters started creeping back from wherever they’d hidden there was cause for, if not quite celebration, then at least relief.

  Ludrig poured Bedegar another strong ale. The underground taphouse was overlooked and untouched but for a bit of soot and some burst kegs, and the survivors gathered there either to mourn their losses or celebrate their undeserved luck. Looking around the space you could almost think nothing had happened, except that it wasn’t so full now. Nineteen plots of the county had been wiped out, no doubt with more to come. Nineteen families torn apart, all known to each other, more or less. But the sole survivor of one sitting silent among them weighed heaviest.

  “How is he?” Sally set a trio of empty cups onto the bar, clumsily knocking one over.

  “The same,” Bed replied, following the young woman’s gaze to the pitiable figure in the corner. “Poor fellow. I knew he was out of his mind when we found ’im, but how long can a man stay that way?”

  Sally’s mouth twitched. “He must eat though, or he’d be dead by now.”

  Bed shrugged. “He eats on occasion, drinks what I put in front of him, goes where he’s led. Doesn’t really sleep. Manages not to piss himself, thank the gods. But he ain’t said a word since we dug him from that black hell.” He shook his head. “Those poor lasses…terrible. No wonder his noggin shut down. I’m not sure what we can do. Either he’ll find himself again, or he won’t. Imagine the temples all got their hands full without a lackwit to look after.”

  Lackwit was an apt description. Ulnoth hunched over a crate used as a table, eyes open but glazed and staring at nothing. The slow rise and fall of his ches
t was all that marked him as a living, breathing man. There were stories from traveling merchants about nobles in Thazov and Porontus who would have the corpses of slain enemies or beloved relatives hollowed out and stuffed like beasts taken in hunt. Their blood was drained and replaced with some chthonic concoction that prevented decay, limbs arranged so that it seemed they lived still but frozen at a single moment to spend all eternity on display. In his current state, Ulnoth could well have been taken for such a horror.

  “Then we will,” said Sally finally, “long as we have to.”

  “Aye. You got any family to worry over in all this?”

  “Not no more. Been on my own for years. Seems a blessing now. You?”

  Bed nodded. “A niece. Husband’s a woodsman, gods be thanked. They’ve a cottage tucked away in the sticks. No one bothers ’em there.”

  “Maybe we should all become woodsmen. Just take to the trees and disappear. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Bedegar laughed into his cup. “I doubt the lords’d hold well with that. Born a peasant, die a peasant, says the law. ‘The harmonious choir of the gods translated unto the kingdoms of the world.’ Or so the temples preach.”

  “I could imagine a few good men – or women, for that matter – with sharp knives might contest that.”

  Bedegar looked hard at Sally. “Hey now, don’t you go even joking about that kind o’ thing. Heads’ve come off for less, the wrong type hears it.”

  “Who’s gonna hear anything down in this—”

  “Ahem. Him, for one.” Bed jerked his chin toward the entrance. He was a nondescript thirtyish man dressed in a padded gambeson with Engwara’s coiled snake emblem sewn to the front. No helmet, sword or spear, but a long knife was tucked into his belt. The whole place stilled. In the corner, a pregnant woman strumming a theorbo fell silent.

  “Ah. I heard ’bout this place. Didn’t believe it but here it be. Ain’t exactly on the up an’ up, eh? No worries, the laws o’ that pretender from Thoriglyn are no more.” The man raised his voice to reach every ear. “This county is now under the tender care of Her Majesty Queen Engwara. Rejoice in your fucking liberation.” He sidled up to the bar. “Gimme whatever you pour around here.” Ludrig only gawked at the man for a few seconds before absently reaching for a cup and filling it from a small keg. The man took a long drink, then turned around to face the room. “Heard there was a bit of trouble lately, eh? Queen’s partisans got a bit overzealous in their campaign. Pity about that. Still, one does what must be done. Fortunes o’ war, eh?”

  Bed rose from his stool and steadied himself against the bar. “If you’re here to recruit men, you won’t find any today. We got enough war stories to go round for now.”

  The man turned to face him with a maddeningly carefree grin. “No, I can see the bottom of the barrel’s been thoroughly scraped. No men to be found. None of use anyway.” His gaze shifted to Sally. “Now, you on the other hand….”

  Sally rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you just drink your drink and be gone? Red or green, neither’s got much love here.”

  “Ohoho, now that sounds mighty close to sedition. You know that word, missy? It means speakin’ against your rightful queen—”

  A ripple of hateful snorts wove its way through the small crowd. “Rightful?” someone said. “I buried my brother yesterday. Tell me some more ’bout rightful!”

  The soldier shifted on his stool. “Who said that? It’s war! That’s what you dirtfuckers fail to grasp. Bad things happen. Get over it.” He took a too-big swig and spilled some down the front of his padded gambeson. “Ech, dammit. You don’t like it? Get your baron to come over t’ the right side. Why, even old Lord Tarleston seen the light just last week. ’Course,” he chuckled, “we had to relieve him of a few fleshy bits to get ’im to come around. Then there was Everwest….”

  Bedegar gave Ludrig a hard look that contained an unspoken question. The brewer shook his head, just enough to be clear. Bed shrugged as the soldier went on with his bloody boasts. And on, and on.

  “…and the idiots tried to hold us off with mattocks. Mattocks, can you believe it? Well, we made short work o’ them as you can imagine. Lots o’ loot you might be interested in, actually – farming shit and the like. Also took some nice pretty lasses into our, uh, protection,” he cackled, downing another cup. “Not so pretty as you, though.” His eyes rested once again on Sally, who was bringing another tray of empty cups to the bar. “Might be I’ll have to bring my lads back this way, pay you all another visit. All for the glory of the queen, o’ course….”

  During this intrusion no one bothered to look in Ulnoth’s direction. What was there to see? He’d become a fixture in the place, unmoving, unchanging. So no one reacted when Ulnoth slowly got up from his seat, making no sound as he crept across the sawdust. He came up behind Sally and swept up one of the clay cups. In the space of a heartbeat he stepped around behind the soldier.

  “Wha—?”

  Ulnoth suddenly smashed the cup onto the man’s head, sending broken shards in every direction. Everyone in the room jumped, some screamed.

  “Gyargh!” The soldier leaned over the bar, clutching his bleeding crown. “What the—” Ulnoth plucked up one of the bigger fragments of clay. A sharp one. As easily as he would swing a sickle at harvest he sliced into the soldier’s neck, a stretch of wet hair wrapped around one fist, tearing and stabbing, stabbing and ripping and digging. Blood went everywhere. Bed, Sally and everyone froze as they were coated in hot red splashes. The soldier made awful choking sounds that became gurgles. Through it all Ulnoth kept on hacking and came near to taking the head clean off.

  How long the whole grisly spectacle went on Ulnoth didn’t know. It was only when the twitchy, pulpy mass atop human shoulders slumped to the floor with a revolting squish-thump that time resumed. Ulnoth looked down at his handiwork—

  Give my regards to the queen!

  —and for the first time seemed conscious of where he was, who he was, and perhaps what he’d done. He dropped the bit of clay to the floor where a fountain of blood soaked through the sawdust and looked at Bed and Sally. “What—?” he mouthed. He looked around at the horrified faces, down at the body. Then he turned toward the ladder and scrambled up, painting each rung in red.

  He ran. Out, across the road, into the forest without destination. What have I done? He thought it over and over again. Oh gods what have I done?

  Chapter Six

  Sandcastle

  Alessia walked into Firleaf with only eight arrows but a full belly and more or less unmolested. It looked a dull but peaceful place, dominated by a rectangular green sward of earth ringed with low wooden buildings. Farther out, humble houses sat on the edges of plots claimed from the forest. Then she noticed that most of the plots lay blackened, dead. Not so peaceful, then.

  There didn’t seem to be much of a common gathering place in the village beyond a ramshackle longhouse with a trough in front that fed and watered animals. One side of the building was smeared with soot. She went in.

  Down the length of the building a row of horse stalls went mostly unoccupied. At the near end a few grim-faced peasants sat around one of two tables. Conversation halted and heads turned in her direction. She realized too late how odd she must look: a dirty, lone wild-haired woman in a traveling gown with a strung bow across her shoulder and half a quiver full at her waist. “Ah, um. Hello.”

  “Ay.” A short, broad-boned woman waddled out from a stable, looked her over once, and nodded. “Horse?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no. I’m on foot.”

  “Drink then?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Siddahn.”

  Alessia sat at the empty table, only then becoming fully aware of the aching in her feet and thighs. “Oh….” She shrugged the rucksack onto the floor and laid her bow beside it.

  “Whatchye huntin’?” asked one of the peasa
nts with a furtive glance.

  Alessia’s hand flinched toward the eating knife she now kept close at her hip. Calm down. “Hunting? Whatever I can catch, I guess.”

  A round of grunts. “Yep, that’s just abaht what we’s brought to, seems.”

  Alessia shook her head. “I’m no hunter though. I was traveling from Argovan and I, uh, got separated from my group.”

  “That’s some bad luck. And you ain’t found ’em again after all this way—?”

  “I didn’t enjoy the company,” Alessia replied more sharply than she’d intended.

  The woman set a cup and a jug in front of her. “Small beer’s all there is, sorry.”

  “That’s fine, thank you.”

  “Well you can thank me with a cop.”

  Alessia dug through her sack and came out with a copper disc struck with the outline of a boar. “Um, will you take ’Vani coin?”

  The woman shrugged. “No difference t’ us.”

  “Is there anything to eat? Pigeon gets old fast.”

  “I can believe ’at. But there ain’t been feed fit for none but beast since the reavers come through.”

  “Reavers?” Alessia guessed the woman’s meaning before she even asked, but was sad to hear the answer. The description was dreadfully familiar.

  “No food for the soldiers means none for us. I guess yinz got ’em over on yer side too,” she said, a bit uncertainly.

  “I don’t have a side.”

  The woman laughed, loud and bitter. “Ha! That ain’t allowed no more. Just ask arahnd. Hey, anyone still got their farm alraht?”

  One peasant perked up. “I got about two acres left, not good for much. Hey Rhea, fill me up again.”

  “Well, I still don’t have a side, I’m a—” Alessia stopped herself before finishing. Temple sister? Not anymore I’m not. “I’m a physic.”