by Kevin Hearne
But they have done their work in the meantime, and the corpses outside the walls are mostly rags and bones now. If there is any mercy here, at least the faces are gone. This is an anonymous resting place, the victims mysterious and possessed of a certain distance without the substance of their flesh. I won’t recognize anyone we traded with once. I can pretend for short periods that they’re merely skeletons instead of former people, relics of the landscape who never laughed or cried or loved or shouted in anger.
I still think we should set the whole place on fire. Erase this excrescence from the earth, if not our memories, and let us build again, however long that takes, so that people will laugh here again instead of weep and mourn.
But I am only a trader’s daughter. No one will listen to me. I think that instead of joining this clave or that, I would primarily like to become someone people will listen to. There is no clear path to that summit, however. Unless you count becoming one of the blessed. I am often amazed that Pelenaut Röllend spent part of his youth as a fish head in the dank alleys of Pelemyn. But just jump into Bryn’s Lung, somehow survive to become a tidal mariner, and you, too, can leave behind your impoverished history and grow up to rule one of the world’s largest countries!
Though I suppose we are not so large anymore. We are much reduced: the great cauldron of our people, once a mighty reservoir, has steamed away to a mere puddle.
Our caravan has paused for a while some distance away from the walls, allowing me this time to write without danger of a spilled ink pot or a scribbled word as a result of wagon wheels over rocks. The company of mariners sent with us by the quartermaster is scouting ahead, entering the city to make sure there are no traps or Bone Giants around.
I am sure they will be doing some discreet looting in advance of the rest of us to pay themselves for the danger. I am of Mother’s mind in this regard: robbing the dead holds no attraction for me no matter how shiny the gold. Robbing the absent Bone Giants of a ship or five, however, sounds perfectly justified. I am not sure if that is morally defensible, but I feel it anyway. Perhaps it is just as well that no one listens to me.
We can see the silhouetted fleet anchored in the harbor from here. Father is trying to determine which ships might be in the best shape from this impossible distance and speculating aloud. Mother is ignoring him. Jorry has found a pretty girl to flirt with a couple of wagons behind us, and her parents have put him to work under their watchful eyes. The girl is extremely conscious of being the subject of a public mating ritual and uncomfortable with it as well. She’s tolerating him only to be polite, but Jorry isn’t picking up on any of those signals. He is little more than an ambulatory boner.
A mariner scout has just come from the west on horseback to warn us that there are small raiding parties of Bone Giants roaming around the outlying farms. “You should all head back,” he said. “It’s not safe.” He has blood on him—not his own, though.
The men challenge him: Is this an order? Does he even have authority to order us around? How many parties of Bone Giants did he see? How many in each party? Were they actually headed this way or farther into the country? What if we head back now without the mariners in the city and these parties find us along the way?
“I’m going to report to the gerstad now,” the scout said, making a visible effort to be patient. “Do as you like. I’m merely informing you that there are giants in the area and it’s not safe. We may have to head back.”
The father of the pretty girl Jorry was flirting with said, “Won’t the mariners in the city protect us?”
That caused the scout to shed his thin veil of professionalism. His eyes grew to the size of chicken eggs, and he bared his teeth. “No! No, they won’t. Bryn drown us all, I was in a party of five, you understand? Five men on horseback! We came upon three of the Bone Giants, and I am the only one who escaped. Do you see? We can’t fight them. They’re too big. Their reach is inhuman. If you get one, the others take you down—that’s exactly what happened. We got one of them, and they got four. Blows coming from angles you can’t predict, from distances you think impossible. One of them shattered my shield—” He broke off, realizing he had lost control. “But you can stay here if you like.” He trotted off to the city, men shouting after him to come back and answer their questions. And once it was clear that he wouldn’t stand there and be a target for them, they began to argue amongst themselves about what to do. Except for Father. He asked Mother what she thought.
“To the deep with what these others think,” he said. “What do you figure we should do?”
“I think we should get on one of those ships right now and sail back to Setyrön,” she said. “We’re dead if they find us here. And if there are more than a few of them, then those walls and the mariners inside them won’t make much difference. They didn’t make any difference to all the rest of those people.” She shook her head. “We never should have come down here, Lönsyr. We need to get away as fast as we can. And taking a ship was the whole idea anyway. Let’s go.”
He didn’t argue. He nodded once and whipped the horses. I had to call to Jorry to tell him we were leaving, and he was forced to run to catch up with us. Or jog, anyway; we weren’t moving all that fast.
We weren’t the only ones to move. Some families decided to head for the city gates as we headed to the harbor. Some of them turned around. Some remained where they were.
Writing as we roll now, and this road we’re taking is ill maintained and rough going. But Mother was right: we both need to get away and never should have come. The Bone Giants are here. Now. Coming out of distant tree lines like the pale wraiths of the Mistmaiden Isles, running across the dead fields of once-green farms. I knew that these wouldn’t be like Motah, mostly naked and trying to appear harmless, but they were even more horrifying than I expected. Clacking bones and painted faces, white butchers who feed the blackwings, strange swords in their hands to slaughter us like animals. Which makes me wonder: Are we even human in their eyes? Are they in mine?
The scout is streaking for the castle, whipping his horse in panic. He has a chance to make it, I think. But the families that were headed that way behind him have largely rethought and are trying to turn their wagons around to either head for the harbor or simply go back. The ones who remained where the scout found us are definitely turning back for Setyrön. I can see some mariners up on the walls with bows. But there are more giants than archers already. They just keep coming. That mariner scout might have found an isolated party of three, but this is no isolated raiding party foaming out of the country like wave breakers. I think it must be the army come back to claim their fleet or at least occupy the city now that they’ve sacked Hillegöm and the interior villages. It’s the tide rolling in, except it’s no gentle progression of curling waters but one huge menacing whitecap, and I hope we’re not on the beach when it hits.
The outcry when the bard dismissed Kallindra’s seeming was swift and loud.
“Don’t worry; the story continues,” he assured everyone. “But I’m going to let the Kaurian scholar Gondel Vedd take it from here.”
I really shouldn’t eat while angry. Reinei found a way to remind me that peace is a better garden to cultivate in the mind. Ponder and I were eating breakfast at an outdoor café in Setyrön, and the people at the next table made clear through their expressions of disgust and muttered comments that I had committed a culinary crime by slathering my smoked moonscale with mustard. While I paused to glare at them, full fork raised and suspended before my mouth, a gust of wind from the sea blew that glorious mustard-covered bite right off my fork and onto my lap, beginning my day with a fresh mustard stain. The Brynts laughed at me and I laughed with them, but not for the same reason.
“Oh, no, Gondel!” Ponder said, dipping his napkin in water and offering it to me.
“No, thank you, I’ll be fine. It’s a gentle lesson from Reinei about what can happen when you don’t maintain your peace of mind.”
I had already sent a let
ter to the mistral on yesterday’s ship to Kauria and a longer one to my husband in hopes that he’d forgive me for my sudden disappearance and an absence that may stretch out for months. I could not in good conscience return yet; there had to be a way to get ahead of this and save Kauria from an assault like the ones Brynlön and Rael suffered, and right then Brynlön was my best hope of teasing out more information from the Eculans. Saviič could help me translate the blank spaces in Zanata Sedam, but could not tell me any more about their plans.
Ponder agreed that we would be better off doing most anything else than trying to approach the entire army occupying Göfyrd in hopes they would opt to talk instead of kill us on sight. So it was back to Möllerud for us, where there was a fleet that we could examine for clues on how they crossed the ocean and perhaps there would be some written orders left behind in the city. That large party of people we’d passed on the way to Setyrön was more than enough to handle that small group of Bone Giants we had run into, so it should be a safe place to conduct our investigations.
For a couple of days as we traveled down the coast on foot, we could forget that there was a war going on and we were in a land beset by invaders. The wind blew soft and peaceful upon our skin, carrying a pleasant tang from the ocean and a gentle rain on the second night. I noted aloud that I enjoyed being outdoors for a change instead of in a library or a musty dungeon. Ponder grunted and smiled but offered little else. I thought he must have very little on his mind since he rarely spoke, but a simple question dispelled that notion.
“What occupies your thoughts as you walk along with me on this boring duty?” I asked him.
“It’s not boring at all. The air here is different, and it speaks to me. I sense things you cannot because of my blessing.”
“Oh. Like pressure and moisture and precise temperature?”
“Yes, but much more than that. Ghosts and voices in the wind.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He cast a worried glance at me, hoping he would not have cause to regret giving his thoughts breath. “It’s not something we tempests speak of very often. Cyclones don’t perceive them. And I wouldn’t have said anything except that you asked and this is extraordinary. There are many unhoused spirits out here.”
“I guess there would be wherever humans have lived.”
“No, I don’t hear this kind of noise in Kauria. Most people tend to die at peace there, and their spirits become the wordless breath of the wind. But here, where there has been so much violence, the air is restless with anger and loss and yearning. Much of it ahead of us.”
“I’d expect so. Do you hear actual words?”
“Sometimes, yes. Mostly it’s just faint screams and roars.”
“And what do you see?”
“That’s difficult to explain—begging your forgiveness, Scholar. It’s like asking me to describe yellow to someone born blind. But there are spirits collected in this area. Nothing that you would be able to see and nothing that will harm us. But violence leaves its echoes.”
Indeed it does. On the third day, I felt out of sorts and the sky wore a somber gray skirt with dark folds of resentment pleated throughout, refusing to rain and refusing to let the sun shine through. Ponder felt it, too—more so, I’m sure. We hardly spoke the entire day, traveling in silence and our thoughts roiling like the desultory vapors above. If this was the invisible effect of the spirits he spoke of, how could anybody breathe peace in this part of Brynlön ever again? Could anyone be truly happy in close proximity to the site of a massacre?
The sky continued to churn with dark omens on the next day when we returned to Möllerud. There was supposed to be industry there if I had my facts straight—a cleanup in progress and a refitting of the anchored Eculan fleet for Brynt purposes. What we saw did not match expectations.
There were only more bodies and more blackwings gorging themselves. The remains of the caravan of wagons we passed on the way to Setyrön were now scattered outside the walls. The air was thick and sour with death, the peace of Reinei stilled on the killing field.
“I think they found more than just a few Eculans when they got here,” Ponder said.
“Oh, no. That family.”
“Which one?”
“The one I spoke with for a while. With the young woman who showed me her journal. I don’t see their wagon.”
We scanned the carnage in silence until Ponder pointed toward the port. “Over there. I think that might be theirs.”
“Ah, by the ships! Yes, that’s excellent! Perhaps they escaped. I’d like to check on them if we can.”
Ponder squinted at the walls before replying. “I think the Eculans are in there now. I’m pretty sure I see a sentry. But we can try and leave quickly if it becomes necessary.”
“Yes, let’s try, please.”
Hope built within my chest as we approached. I didn’t see any bodies around their wagon except for the half-seen corpses of the horses. The Eculans had slain them all in their harnesses, a tremendous waste of resources. Did they not know how useful horses were? Perhaps their stature made riding horses impractical. Still, did they wish to operate plowshares on their own or pull their own wagons? It made no sense.
There were far too many ships at anchor in the bay to determine if one was missing. We had to see if we could locate the du Paskres and, if we could not, hold on to the hope of their survival.
Shouts and a familiar dread clacking pursued us before we could get there. The Eculans had spied us and sent out a party to deal with us. Seven of them, armed with both spears and swords this time.
“Ponder?” I said.
“It will be all right if that’s all they send,” he said. “Keep going.”
I urged my ancient legs to a quicker pace, a sort of gliding half jog that would reduce stress on my knees. Appearing to flee would give them confidence and convince any officers watching from the walls that they didn’t need to send anyone else to deal with us.
The Eculans steadily closed the distance between us, as they were running at nearly full speed and had a much longer stride. Ponder turned to face them, keeping one hand on my shoulder for some reason, and jogged backward. The reason for the hand became clear when he clutched my shoulder and said, “Stop!”
I did and turned to see what he was reacting to. The Eculans had decided they were close enough to hurl their spears at us in high arcs. Ponder shot a hand into the sky and uttered a simple denial at them, whipping his hand to our left as he did so. A powerful gust of wind blew the spears off course to fall harmlessly to the turf. And then he reached out with the same hand to the attackers and clenched his fist in a familiar gesture. The Eculans discovered they had no more air to breathe and collapsed after a few steps.
“Go,” Ponder said. “This is under control. I’ll follow behind.”
Resuming my awkward and unforgivably slow top speed, I hoped to have time to discover what had happened to the du Paskres. If there were watchers on the walls, they would definitely respond to the sight of their sortie brought to its knees.
The back door of the wagon gaped open, but I could see nothing, shadows preventing me from determining if there was anything inside at all. I altered my course once I drew closer, taking an angle to see if anyone was in the front seat. My heart dropped when I saw two bodies slumped against each other. It was the father and mother I’d spoken to only briefly, large bloody gashes on their torsos, their eye sockets plucked bare, and their heads crawling with blowflies laying eggs. They obviously had never made it to the ships. That meant …
“No, no, no.” I hurried to the back of the wagon and placed my foot on the wooden step that would allow me to peer inside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom inside, but I could see right away that it wasn’t empty. There was a mess of things inside. An overturned ledger, pots and baskets, scattered pieces of clothing and sachets of tea, a burst container of dry beans. And at least one body, facedown. The flies would have told me that if nothing else. The
feet were near me, and I pulled up the pant leg for a clue—muscular, like a man’s. I didn’t know who it could be, but it wasn’t Kallindra. I checked behind me, and Ponder was only ten lengths away. He made a gesture with his hands to indicate that we were still okay and I could continue. There were no visible Eculans behind him; they must be prone and unconscious.
“I’m going in,” I told him. “I can’t see enough.”
“Fine. I’ll keep watch.”
Grunting with the effort, I hauled myself up into the wagon and saw a knob on the left wall. There was a matching one on the right. I pulled and shoved and twisted on one until something moved—it was a slot that allowed some light to enter the interior. I did the same on the other side and reevaluated the scene. That was definitely a man sprawled facedown in front of me, but a young one. His left arm was splayed out, and there was another one underneath it, light-skinned palm up. That didn’t belong to him, and the fingers were thin. Between him and the rest of the mess in the wagon I couldn’t see who that hand belonged to.
More grunting to move the young man away, roll him over on his side. I expected the body to be stiff like a board, but it wasn’t. He had been dead long enough for the muscles to relax again. This had happened days ago, perhaps while we were still enjoying the comforts of Setyrön.
I tossed aside a tunic and a random sheet of paper to reveal the other person underneath, and my breath caught when I confirmed it was Kallindra. I had difficulty taking a new breath after that, as often happens when peace abandons us and we are besieged by storms. I blubbered and gasped and shut my eyes to the horror of her vacant expression and open lips past which no wind moved. When strangers die, you let that knowledge flow around and past your mind, perhaps thinking “How sad,” or “What a tragedy.” These sympathetic thoughts never affect your breath. But when someone you know personally dies, it is like a thunderclap in the heart. And the manner of Kallindra’s death was nothing more than a result of unreasoning hatred. It’s an airborne poison, hatred is, for I felt it filling my lungs and contaminating my thoughts. It is how violence thrives and peace withers. I caught myself hoping that Ponder had made a mistake and withheld breath from the Eculans a few seconds too long. Unworthy and wrong of me but nonetheless fervently wished in that moment. And I remembered the words Jubal spoke to me, that once I saw violent death, it would change me, make me capable of violence myself. I hoped he was wrong, but my thoughts suggested he might have been right.