Killers, Traitors, & Runaways

by Lucas Paynter

  As they continued through, Zaja eyed the snowy patches uncomfortably. “Do you think it’s going to get colder up ahead?”

  “It might,” he replied. “Not very comforting, I’m sorry.”

  She nodded in acceptance. Poe knelt down to examine one of the broader patches, placing his gloved hand in it curiously. He paid no mind to the soldier half-buried nearby.

  “In colder climates, this falls from the sky in lieu of rain?”

  Poe jerked forward as a snowball struck him in the back of the head. Jean was standing several paces back, rolling a second snowball in her hands with a toothy grin. Flynn said nothing when she hurled it at Poe, who shielded himself with his cloak, but there’d been a streak of red mixed in, likely from another corpse near her feet.

  After a long hike through the dead, they came to the other side unhindered. They would not encounter such a clash again for a time, instead running afoul of smaller skirmishes before their journey brought them up a mountain pass. As the trail climbed and the air grew colder and thinner, they had a commanding view of the lands beyond. The valley below was craggy and textured, and appeared to host squat trees and other low-growing forms of plant life. It would be many miles before the terrain livened up again.

  “Soldiers advance from afar,” Chari observed through the scope of her rifle. She swung around to the other direction, and went on. “None in that direction, so far as I see. They may simply be passing through, or headed another way entirely.” She looked at Flynn, and suggested, “We could make encampment here. Wait, to be certain.”

  “We’ve already stopped too many times,” he replied.

  “It would be safer.”

  “And slower. Poe’s worries aside, the longer we take, the more things could go wrong. I don’t want to feed his insecurities, but Renivar may indeed find a candidate loyal to his cause. Or a sacrifice of Zella’s caliber with none of her reservations.”

  Chari’s mouth soured with an unspoken rebuttal. She turned to admit, “I may be in less a hurry than our companions would like. Barring absolute failure at Thoris, our resolution means finding passage to the one place I wish never to return.”

  “You were happy to have left,” he remembered.

  “That’s how you remember it?” she asked with a smile. “I wept tears of joy, didn’t I? A peaceful, protected life, and I cried with joy to be free of it.”

  “It wasn’t your life. No one knew the real Chariska Jerhas.”

  She smiled, but it soon faltered. “Am I the real Chariska Jerhas?” she asked. “Staring down the ends of a battlefield, having lost tally of how many I’ve killed to cross through?”

  Flynn didn’t want to answer. He didn’t even want to give her a choice, for fear of the real chance she might choose against him. Even so, he gave a simple offer. “You don’t have to follow us.”

  “You’re my savior, Flynn,” she reminded him. “So long as we’ve no plans to stay, I’ll follow you through Hell. I’ll brave it for you, for Jean, for…” She faltered. “I’ll brave it.”

  Chari pardoned herself, and Flynn took one last look at the horizon. Thoris was in the furthest distance, barely a cap beyond the ocean waters. But there was something familiar that way, something Flynn recognized but couldn’t put into words. It was something he hadn’t sensed in months.

  * * *

  The northern base of the mountain provided a broad view of the field ahead. It didn’t grant the perspective of the peak, but at least from here, Flynn could confirm that they were safe in both directions before they left the security of the pass to begin crossing inward. The greenery was vibrant here, the cliffs caked with moss fueled by a slender waterfall. As Zaja refilled her canteen in the icy flow, she glanced at Flynn to say, “At least it’s warmer down here.”

  “We are prepared to carry on, yes?” Poe asked impatiently.

  “We’ve got no reason not to,” Flynn replied.

  As they embarked across the vast, craggy valley, the wind picked up in intensity, whipping noisily through the gaps and fissures in the terrain. Their passage rose and fell ever so slightly, often obscuring any significant view of their surroundings. A sense of unease crept over Flynn, like an exposed nerve waiting to be stabbed. They had come several miles inland when they climbed a mound in the dead center, and finally saw just what they’d gotten themselves into.

  “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” Jean groaned, reaching for her mace.

  “We have come too far to retreat,” Poe followed, drawing the Searing Truth. “More, this may be beyond my skills.”

  “May be? Goddamn egomaniac.”

  Two armies were converging on the center of the field, armed with sabers and pistols, muskets fitted with bayonets, and riding horned steeds like those seen on Tryna, though far fitter and livelier. Both fanned the length of the valley, and retreating was no longer an option, for they were charging with such ferocity that the noise of their advance overpowered even the deafening winds. All objectives vanished from Flynn’s mind, save for one: keeping everyone alive.

  “RUN!” he ordered.

  The seven raced frantically as the two sides closed in on them. Even as the terrain lowered, providing momentary safety, Shea suddenly yelled out, “Drop! Now!” before grabbing Flynn and tackling him to the ground. He felt the scrapes and bruises of the collision, but they were promptly forgotten in the volley of gunfire erupting overhead.

  “When do we move?” Zella begged.

  Shea shook her head, watching up above. “Not yet.”

  A second volley. Flynn closed his eyes and listened: he could hear bodies dropping, but a great many more were still advancing on the field. Chari attempted to creep forward, before Shea caught her by the wrist. “Wait,” she ordered. Chari nodded in uncomfortable agreement and began to settle back in, clutching her rifle tightly. Shea looked to Flynn and confided, “Last place I fancy being.”

  At the fourth volley, a soldier from the westward side was struck in his advance and crashed into the recess where they were hiding. While the soldier’s comrades vaulted above them to engage the enemy, the intruder looked at the huddled seven, and weakly reached for his weapon. Shea shot him without hesitation. “Time to move.”

  They charged onward and emerged outside as the westward army collided with them. The easterners had not stopped firing, but enough of the opposing side had closed in that they were soaking up the majority of the shots. Even so, Flynn felt something graze his arm as he released his claws in time to catch a soldier who was set to spear him with a bayonet and tear the man’s throat open.

  “They see us as the enemy!” Zella cried as she spun around in disbelief.

  “Ain’t wearin’ the same colors as them!” Jean yelled back as she smashed another attacker down before pressing onward. “Like they got the time to pick us apart?!”

  Every meter they tried to advance was made in desperation—there was no way to pick their battles, for every collision was violently forced upon them. Killing the western soldiers had only made more enemies, as their comrades were deviating to hunt down the nearest aggressors. By now, the eastern army had collided fully with the west, and the seven were now sandwiched between the two sides.

  “Jean!” Flynn yelled as he charged to intercept a soldier preparing to stab her, colliding in a shoulder strike that sent them both tumbling to the ground. While his target landed on his back, Flynn tumbled to a crouch, and was able to pounce for the kill before he could recover. As the strangeness of killing someone who so resembled what he had become sunk in, Flynn felt a swiping motion overhead. Jean had dispatched an attacker in return, then promptly turned back to cover Chari, who’d been forced to crouch as she reloaded her rifle.

  “You have my gratitude!” Chari yelled as she rose up, firing sparingly to ward their attackers away.

  “GUYS! KEEP STEADY!” Jean bellowed. She dropped her mac
e and slammed her palms to the earth. The field shook with a violent, jarring motion—it wasn’t enough to end the war or repeat the incident at the canyon, but it was enough to bowl over the closest soldiers and breach an opening through them.

  Shea was spearheading the group, desperate to escape. She pulled her second pistol and tried to fire at the advancing wave, but missed and tripped, crashing to the ground. Zaja was the first to her aid, lashing her whip around the neck of a would-be attacker and slamming her, face-first, into the craggy earth. Poe lent Shea a hand to get to her feet, using his free hand to disembowel an attacker in the process.

  “You okay?” Flynn asked.

  “I’ll live,” she replied tersely, then charged on. Flynn was about to advance, when Jean caught him on the shoulder.

  “Where’s Zella?”

  Flynn looked back the way they’d come to see Zella wading through a maelstrom of bodies, desperately searching for an opening.

  “Keep moving,” he told Jean before charging back, trying to break through. He ducked when he could as gunshots continued to fly around him, all while studying the movements of the crowd to learn the way to best slip through.

  Zella was struggling with a soldier who’d tried to spear her with a bayonet. Her sleeves had been shredded in the struggle, exposing the runic scars carved into her arms. Flynn stumbled when he saw the writing, but her attacker seemed oblivious to it. As Flynn averted his eyes, she caught the barrel of the bayonet and was trying to jerk it free, but the soldier managed to stab her in the leg and fire his weapon. She screamed in agony at the injury, and Flynn seized the moment to kill him from behind.

  “You came back,” she said in disbelief. He draped her left arm across his shoulders as she squeezed her right thigh, desperate to stymie the bleeding. “For all this, I would be more useful to you dead than alive.”

  “Yeah, well…” Flynn had no concrete answer. His focus was getting her back to the others, who had made little headway in the intervening time. They were limping, and survived only because not everyone was actively seeking to kill them. While many of the soldiers saw them as equal threats or valid targets, a few recognized that they were not part of this war and ran on by. All the way, Zella clutched the weapon that had injured her, holding it by the barrel.

  They found the others locked in a holding pattern—Poe was clutching his left shoulder where he’d been blindsided by several bullet wounds. Chari was out of the fight, desperately working to heal him before he could bleed out, flushed from the pain she inherited in mending him. Jean, Zaja, and Shea had triangulated around them, fending off any who came near.

  “’Bout bloody time!” Shea barked as Flynn and Zella returned.

  Zella stumbled to her knees in the protected space while Flynn joined the three defenders. Though Chari only needed minutes to finish the job, time seemed to crawl now that they were locked in place. In the frantic battle unfolding around them, Flynn saw a gun arm raise in their direction. Before he concluded just where it was aiming, Jean staggered from a shot in the hip.

  “Jean!” he cried out.

  She shrugged it off and singled out her attacker, raising her mace and hurling it through the air. A soldier in the thick of it toppled over, the spikes of Jean’s mace buried in her head. Jean gave a sick, self-satisfied smirk and muttered, “One more time.”

  The battlefield shook again, less fiercely than before. As Jean broke from the group to retrieve her weapon, Poe was getting back to his feet. Unable to spare the time for Zella’s injured leg, Chari let Flynn help her up and they began to struggle once more toward the edge of the battlefield.

  Just as an opening appeared, still many meters away, something struck Flynn, and all at once the strength seemed to leave his body. As he crashed down, Zella went with him, and everything turned white. Within moments his consciousness faded back in, the voices of Zella and Zaja crying his name. Chari was hurrying over to tend him, before a sudden volley of gunfire in her direction forced her to kneel, turn, and return fire.

  “Fuck,” Jean said at the sight of him. Her worry was clear as day to Flynn, who looked down and tried to find his injury so he could cover it—it was somewhere in his stomach, he was certain, but shock had dulled the pain, and there was too much blood to tell.

  “We need to get out of here,” he wheezed, but he spoke so softly that he wasn’t certain anyone could hear him. He tried to stand, but could barely move his legs.

  “Come on, we’re almost home free,” Jean told him as she lifted him into her arms and carried him to safety. When they’d first met, he was certain she’d had blood mixed in her red hair. Now it was all blood, all over her, all over them. It was their blood, and the blood of the warring soldiers, whose desperate battle would drown every crag of the valley they left behind.

  * * *

  Zaja was curled up against the base of a tree, trembling. It wasn’t from the cold, for she still felt the heat of battle soaking into her skin. She was dirty and bloody and angry, and trying desperately to remember the mess she had survived. Her body had moved as needed, as she’d trained for, and she still lived, but at what cost? Chari had mended their bodies, but their spirits—her own spirit, at least—was not ready to face the world once more.

  Her hand shook as she pressed it against the soft amber bark of the tree, and she had to grip it firmly to find the strength to stand up. She walked with an exhausted gait, fighting just to keep balance on the gentle slope they’d collapsed on. The sounds of war still carried in the distance.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Jean was lying on the soil and staring up at the fading sky. She blinked hard, her eyes red. She sounded as if she were about to cry. “Just glad Mack ain’t here.”

  Zaja’s reluctant nod turned to full agreement. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

  “We gotta keep goin’,” Jean replied hollowly.

  Zaja didn’t have the strength to fight. She trudged along, until her foot accidentally kicked something. Buried in the leaves was a musket, with viscera on the bayonet, and a bloodied print on the barrel to match.

  “It’s mine,” Zella said. She was leaning against the trunk of a tree, looking down at the abandoned weapon. “I thought if I had it, I could … I don’t know, defend myself?” She shook her head resolutely. “I don’t want it.”

  Weakly, Zaja bent over and picked up the weapon. She studied it with sympathy; she’d trained to defend herself, but had only wanted to use those skills to help find a more honest living. She hurled the musket as hard as she could, and it splashed into a river downhill. Zella smiled in gratitude but could say nothing more.

  Zaja walked on as though in a dream, guided by the gentle glow emanating from the amber trees. She passed Chari, unconscious from pain. She met Poe, who was cleaning the blade of the Searing Truth, though it didn’t have a spot on it.

  “How’s your shoulder?” she asked.

  “Every near fatal setback I suffer teaches me something new of battle,” he replied. “One day, I shall be a warrior of unmatched prowess.”

  “That’s … great for you,” she said unconvincingly. Poe’s love of battle was one Zaja now understood she could never share; for him, every life taken was an affirmation of his own. For her, it was a reminder of something she was trying futilely to escape. “Not the same as when you fought the Reahv’li?”

  Poe shook his head. “Whatever our conflicts, the great many of them are gentle at heart. They lack the necessary killer instinct.”

  He had named the thing Zaja now knew herself to lack. She could have stayed in Yeribelt, but now the things she had done had changed her, and she had no welcome place in that haven. And yet, she wasn’t certain she could stay here either.

  “Have you seen Flynn?” she asked at last.

  “Downhill, by the stream,” Poe replied.

  She nodded her thanks and stepped caref
ully down. Sure enough, not far away she saw Flynn and Shea, the latter sitting on the ground, resting her bare feet in the water, arms crossed around her body.

  “You get why I ran,” Shea said. She closed her eyes and pinched her fingers on the bridge of her nose. “Every day, like that.”

  “It’s too much,” Zaja agreed as she approached them.

  “Zaja,” Flynn said. “You did well back there—we might not have made it through without you.” She was prepared to object, diminish her part in things; she had never felt as ashamed as she was for surviving that bloody affair, and loathed any praise she might receive. “There was so much going on, but I saw how you defended Shea, how you covered for Chari when Poe was down. You worked hard, and it made all the difference.”

  She smiled slowly and involuntarily. Her shame had not diminished, but pride nonetheless came in at having contributed, and having been recognized for it. I’ll stay a little longer, she concluded. And maybe we’re free, maybe there are no more wars to come. Maybe there’s still something better, waiting for me.

  “So what’s next?” she asked.

  “I’ve been feeling something since the mountain pass,” he replied. “Maybe before that, even. It’s a detour from our destination, but I don’t think it will hurt us in the long run.”

  “One of those passages?” Shea asked. “Other worlds and such?”

  Zaja hoped it was. She wanted to escape Keltia and never see it again. For one moment, she even wanted to return to Oma—she never hated the idea of living in the bleak, icy landscape of her home world; it was her body that couldn’t keep up with it. But Flynn shook his head, and she had to accept that they were staying a while longer.

  “I think it’s a god.”

  Shea looked up at Flynn in surprise, but Zaja knew her own expression was more peculiar. She had met a few gods several months ago—Scytha, Mystik of Death, and Roxanne, Mystik of Love. And Taryl Renivar, of course. But to find another out here, amidst all this suffering? Zaja had been prepared to say goodbye and go her own way; gods, she knew, held promise.