Reaping the Aurora

by Joshua Palmatier

  Marc sniffed in disdain and returned his attention to the village. “I don’t see any movement at all. Whoever did this has already left.”

  Cutter took a closer look at the land surrounding the village, noting the rough markings of a dirt road winding close to the river, heading north and south. It faded the farther it got from the village, but it was obviously worn into the earth by wagons like the ones they’d seen earlier. The texture of the plains changed to the east, where scattered trees dotted the grassland, a verge of darker forest beginning not too far from the village, the likely source of the wood used in the stockade.

  But what caught his attention was the trampled earth that angled into the village from the southwest. He didn’t see another path leading away, which meant whoever had attacked had retreated along the same route. He wouldn’t be able to verify it unless they took a closer look.

  “Larrin, go get the others.”

  The youngest enforcer nodded reluctantly and retreated.

  The smell of charred flesh struck them first as the wind shifted and blew the smoke toward them. The other two enforcers gagged, one falling to his knees and vomiting into the dirt road. The horses grew skittish and backed away, nostrils flaring. The smoke burned Cutter’s eyes, and he coughed and pulled the collar of his shirt up over the lower part of his face to filter out some of the ash, but he continued forward, dragging his horse with him. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he rounded the edge of the pine-scented wall where it had been pulled down and the heat from the fire hit him. Wood hissed and spat as it burned, reeking of boiling sap. It hadn’t been cut that long ago. He squinted and shaded his face with one hand, but the fire was too intense. He backed away to where the others had halted.

  “We won’t be able to get any closer,” he said. “Not until it dies down, and I don’t want to wait that long. But the stockade is relatively new. It hasn’t been here long. Let’s check out that trail.”

  They circled away from the blistering heat, around the remains of the collapsed wall, and halted, stunned into silence as they stared out at the slaughtered villagers. Cutter had thought they’d simply been gathered up by whoever had attacked and then cut down, but it was far worse.

  Far worse.

  The bodies had been mutilated, eviscerated and hacked apart, arms and legs chopped off, heads severed and thrown aside, to the point where there would be no way to identify individual body parts to piece them back together again if they tried. The grass was soaked with blood and entrails and gore, all of it cloaked with the glistening bodies of the feasting carrion birds.

  Marc swore, then clamped his jaw shut, his muscles rigid with outrage. Larrin had hung back, but the stench was overwhelming and he succumbed to another bout of retching. Cutter’s own stomach rebelled, and he was forced to crouch down, head bowed, sucking in deep breaths through his mouth to keep control. Tears not caused by the smoke pricked his eyes, then coursed down his cheeks.

  Behind him, one of the other enforcers muttered, “They didn’t even spare the women or children.”

  Cutter’s fingers dug into his own flesh where his hand rested on one knee. With effort, he controlled himself and stood, turning his back on the carnage. “Let’s go.” His voice cracked. He didn’t bother wiping the tears as he stalked away.

  “Who did this?” Marc asked through clenched teeth as Cutter passed him.

  “Someone filled with rage. With hate.”

  “But who?”

  Cutter could think of only one group that would have cause for such hatred, but he simply said, “Let’s find out.”

  The attackers had left a clear path, the earth churned and trampled into thick mud. Cutter knelt at the edge and examined the tracks before edging out further. The others followed, spreading out. Marc stayed close to Cutter, watching intently as he shifted from one set of footprints to a section closer to the splintered, fallen wall, where the mud had been gouged with deep grooves. Here, clear imprints from horse hooves littered the area. He grunted and stepped to the remains of the wall, partially embedded in the mud. The heat from the fires within the stockade boiled outward, already baking the mud solid, but it was the top of the collapsed wall that drew him. He knelt again and traced out freshly clawed gouges in the tree bark beneath the sharpened points of the ends of each log.

  “What is it?” Marc asked.

  “Something bit into the wood here, like a claw.”

  Marc scanned what remained standing of the stockade. Something inside the enclosure cracked and part of a building collapsed in a shower of sparks, striking and knocking over another section of the wall. “Grappling hook,” he said, then motioned to the deeper trenches dug into the earth beside him. “They hooked the wall, then pulled it down with their horses.”

  “From the tracks, I’d say the force was small. No more than fifty.”

  The muscles in Marc’s jaw twitched. “Fifty. And they did all of this.” He waved toward the slaughtered villagers.

  Larrin suddenly shouted, causing both of them to turn. He stood a hundred yards away, off to one side of the trampled path, waving frantically.

  “We’d better see what he’s found,” Marc said.

  They headed toward the young enforcer, the two others moving to join them, abandoning their own search.

  Larrin stood over a body stretched out on the grass. He rested about ten feet from the edge of the main set of tracks, nestled inside a natural depression in the earth. He wore familiar armor, the mail gleaming in the sun where it wasn’t splattered with dried blood. His hand still clutched a distinctive curved sword.

  Cutter grabbed a shoulder and rolled the body onto its back. Thin darkened features stared back at them, the thick beard braided in a complicated knot, tied with colored string. More dirt and gore caked the front of his armor and face, some of it from a wound he still clutched at his left side, beneath his armor. His entire left leg was sheathed in blood, still damp, having been trapped between his body and the grass where he’d collapsed.

  “Gorrani,” Marc spat, kneeling at the man’s side. He pulled the man’s hand away from his side with a jerk and examined the wound. “Knife wound. Deep. Not that wide. It could have come from a kitchen knife rather than a dagger. He bled out. Probably didn’t think it was that serious.” He did a quick search of the rest of the body. “No other significant wounds, only scratches and nicks.”

  “At least someone fought back,” one of the enforcers muttered.

  “There had to have been other casualties,” Marc said, standing again and gesturing toward the stockade. “A wall like that doesn’t come down quickly. They would have had time to pelt them with arrows and form a line of defense inside.”

  “You’re assuming there were more than simple villagers here,” Cutter said. Marc bristled as Cutter continued. “But you’re right. There must have been other wounded, if not dead. They must have taken them with them, gathered them up before setting the fire and butchering the villagers still alive.”

  “How’d they miss him?” Larrin asked.

  “He stumbled off the main path and fell in this ditch, probably when they were retreating.”

  “Thank Korma,” Marc muttered, genuflecting. “Otherwise we might not have found out who did this.”

  “But why?” Larrin asked. “They didn’t take anything. They just destroyed everything and left.”

  “Revenge.” All the enforcers looked at Cutter. “We killed four thousand of their warriors at the Needle with the ley. Four thousand dead in the space of a breath, not even their bodies left behind.” He let that sink in before adding, “Look at how we reacted with a few hundred villagers slaughtered here. Now, how do you think the Gorrani feel?”

  He saw the realization dawn in each of their faces, confusion slowly seeping away to fear. All except for Marc. His expression settled into grim determination edged with anticipation.

  “
They’re going to attack everyone who isn’t Gorrani,” he said.

  Cutter didn’t know how to respond to the look in Marc’s eyes, so he turned and headed toward his horse.

  “Are we going to follow them?” Marc called out from behind.

  “No! We’re going back to the Needle. We need to warn them about the Gorrani threat.”

  “It’s not that deep,” Morrell said, folding the fabric of the man’s shirt back from the wound. He hissed as it pulled at the already coagulating blood matted to the cloth.

  “It hurts like hell,” he grumbled.

  Morrell grabbed a clean cloth, wet it, and began to dab at the wound, trying to get most the blood clear. “I’m certain it does. How did it happen?”

  The man—in his early twenties with a three-day beard and dark bruises under his eyes, smelling faintly of alcohol—shifted nervously on his cot. “Stupid enforcer sliced me with his knife.”

  Morrell frowned, only half of her attention on what the man said. The wound had been exposed, a slash across the man’s bicep, no more than two inches long. It looked clean, but she poured water from a small pitcher next to her over it, the man gasping at the sudden pain. Her fingers unconsciously dug in deeper to keep him from jerking away from her. It was certainly a blade wound of some type. No jagged edges. No ragged skin. Although she doubted it had come from an enforcer.

  As she touched the flesh around the wound, her own skin prickled with a now familiar sensation, like an itch, only somehow more pleasant. A wisp of colored light, like the auroral lights that drifted across the plains, wrapped around her fingers, but she held it in check. She’d learned some nominal control of it since leaving the Hollow and coming to the Needle to join her father. And she’d learned that she didn’t need to heal every patient.

  Sitting back, letting the prickling sensation fade, she said, “It’s deep enough that it will require a few stitches. I’ll be right back with a needle and some thread.”

  As she rose, the man grabbed her arm and halted her, his grip too tight. “I thought you were that girl . . . the one who heals people. Aren’t you going to”—he lifted his wounded arm with a wince and wriggled his fingers—“you know, heal it?”

  She pulled out of his grip in disgust. “I don’t heal everyone that way. Only the more serious cases.”

  She walked stiffly to the side of the long room lined with beds for the wounded, although most of them were currently empty. Four other patients waited to be seen, two of them with obvious flus or colds from their haggard expressions, one with some type of rash, and another with what might be a broken wrist. They were being seen to by healer Freesia—a thickset woman in her mid-forties with a mild manner but a steel spine when riled and wild hair that would not be tamed no matter how much she tried—and two other assistant healers. Morrell had been afraid of how she’d be received when she arrived, knowing how Logan in the Hollow had initially balked at accepting her mystical talents, but Freesia had been awed rather than fearful. When one of her assistants had made some disparaging remark under his breath, Freesia had slapped him and told him he could leave her hospital at once if he truly felt that way. The young man, Cerrin, only a few years older than Morrell, had rubbed his already reddening cheek and shook his head. Only Morrell had seen the resentful glare when Freesia had turned away.

  As she snatched up a needle and some thread from the supply cabinets along one wall, movement from the far side of the room caught her eye. Drayden—the Wolf she’d transformed back at the Hollow and now her self-proclaimed bodyguard—had shifted forward in concern, but she waved him back and returned to the man with the knife wound, plopping down into the chair by the bed without looking the man in the eyes. Most of her initial disgust had died while fetching the materials, but as she pulled his arm toward her, he said, “But won’t stitching leave a scar? I’ve heard that when you do it—you know, without the thread—that there’s not even a blemish.”

  She met his gaze, saw the look of hope and excitement there, and her disgust flared back full force.

  She smiled sweetly. “That depends on how much you struggle when I’m stitching this up.”

  His look of shock sent a warm thrill of satisfaction through her. She grabbed his arm and said, “Now hold still. This will only hurt a little.”

  He groaned and writhed slightly as she jabbed him and pulled. She’d intended to make it hurt, but the innate healer inside her refused to cooperate and she stitched the wound closed with precise efficiency, tugging the thread taut and biting it off the way Logan had taught her. Then she wrapped a bandage around the man’s arm and led him to the door. She may have shoved him a little harder than necessary to get him moving when he initially resisted, a protest half formed on his lips.

  As soon as he was out the door, she sighed. But then Freesia called her over to the woman with the hurt wrist.

  “I can’t tell if this is simply sprained or actually broken,” Freesia said in exasperation. “Could you take a look?”

  Morrell nodded, taking Freesia’s place beside the dark-haired woman, who glanced back and forth between the two of them with a slightly fearful look before settling on Morrell.

  “I tripped and fell down the stairs inside the temple,” she said, extending her arm.

  “Can you move it?”

  “A little. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “But if she turns it in just the right way,” Freesia supplied, “she says she gets light-headed.”

  “That’s why I came in to have it looked at.”

  Morrell had already touched the woman’s skin, the prickling sensation returning, along with the wisps of light. The woman gasped as those lights strengthened, Morrell reaching out with her senses. The woman’s blood rushed through Morrell’s ears as she sank beneath the skin, through muscle and tendon and tissue to the bone. The flesh was bruised in places, both here at the wrist and in the woman’s hip and shoulder. There were a few minor scrapes as well. But Morrell focused on the many tiny rounded bones at the wrist.

  “Two of the bones here are fractured,” she said, her words sounding loud in her ears. Her senses were heightened when she worked with the aurora—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures sharper. “When you turn your wrist the wrong way, they grind against each other.”

  The woman shuddered. “Can you fix it?”

  Morrell hesitated. It wasn’t that significant or life-threatening. If the woman bound the wrist and kept from using it for a few weeks, it would heal on its own. She didn’t need to heal it herself.

  But she was already wrapped deeply into the woman’s body, their breath synchronized, their pulses thudding in tandem. She’d wound herself into the intricate and delicate balance of her body, could sense her heartbeat, the contraction of her lungs, the minute shifts in muscle as she fidgeted on the cot. All it would take would be a little nudge—

  The auroral lights surged brighter for a moment, and heat washed from Morrell into the woman’s wrist. The woman gasped as a tingle ran up her arm and into her chest, a tingle Morrell experienced through her. At the same time, a wave of weariness washed through Morrell’s own body. Nothing too significant, but as she pulled her hands away from the woman’s wrist, the auroral light dying out, the weariness didn’t completely fade.

  “You should be fine now,” Morrell said. Her voice had a faint tremor in it, but she steadied it. “Go ahead, move your wrist around.”

  The woman’s brow creased in consternation, but she tentatively began rotating her hand. When there was no dizziness, her eyes widened. “You’ve . . . you’ve fixed it. I don’t understand how, but . . .” She laughed, a short, sharp, disbelieving sound, then stood. “Thank you! Thank you!”

  Morrell suddenly realized the woman hadn’t known about her healing powers. Unlike the man before her, she’d simply wanted Morrell to reassure her, bandage it up, and send her on her way.

  Mor
rell smiled and sank back in her chair, unaccountably grateful. She hadn’t even realized her shoulders had been tensed up . . . or that she hadn’t smiled when she’d finished healing the woman.

  “This way,” Freesia said, bustling the woman toward the front of the chamber. Morrell could hear the woman speaking to the healer as they went, but she didn’t listen in. The incredulous tone told her enough.

  “It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it?”

  Morrell jerked in her seat and spun around, her heart thudding once painfully in her chest before she recognized the voice. “Hernande!” she exclaimed, jumping out of the chair and hugging him tightly. He oomphed as she squeezed him, but chuckled, giving her a tight hug himself before she pulled back.

  “How are you feeling? It didn’t take that much out of you, did it?”

  “No. I’m being careful.”

  “She still shouldn’t have done it,” Freesia scolded, coming up from behind Hernande. Her expression was stern, but it didn’t quite touch her eyes. She waved her other assistants toward three new arrivals. “That woman’s wrist would have healed fine on its own. There was no need for you to bother with it.”

  “I know. But it was easy.”

  “And what would you have done if someone with a shattered arm or a crushed leg had come in and we’d needed you for that? If you burn yourself out on these unnecessary, petty things, you won’t have the reserves for anything more significant. Just because you can heal, doesn’t mean you should.”

  “I didn’t heal the man before her.” It came out more petulant and defensive than she’d intended.

  “And what was his problem?” Hernande asked.

  “A knife wound on his arm that only required stitches.”

  “And why didn’t you heal him?”

  “Because he was being an ass,” Freesia said before Morrell could answer. “Don’t think I didn’t overhear.” Then, to Hernande: “He wanted her to heal him, like she did the woman. I wouldn’t be surprised if he cut his own arm, just to see her do it.”