Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2)

by J. C. Staudt

  I thought you were going to kill my family, Lizneth was too frightened to say. Who would’ve tended the fields then? “I was able to salvage a few bushels of mulligraws,” she said calmly. “Your keguzpikhehn will be fed tonight.”

  “And what will they eat when the harvest season ends?”

  Rotabak stood off to the side, pretending not to pay attention. He could’ve stepped in at any moment to clear this up, to admit it was he and his half-witted buffoons who’d slashed the fields to ribbons. But Lizneth suspected Rotabak was just as afraid of Sniverlik as she was.

  The Zithstone Scepter was swinging on a loop in Sniverlik’s belt, its stone shrouded beneath a leather drawstring pouch. Lizneth wondered whether Sniverlik was as susceptible to its effects as everyone else. It’s so close, she thought, and it isn’t the first thing on his mind. If I could just get a hand on it…

  A voice snapped Lizneth out of her momentary madness. “Sniverlik. The calaihn are coming,” said a heavy-set roan with dark gray patterning.

  “Already? Are you sure?”

  The roan nodded. “The scouts have reported. It’s sooner than we thought. They are moving fast.”

  Sniverlik cursed. “I will deal with you when the battle is done,” he said. “If you live.”

  The alarm was raised. Orders were given. Buckets were filled from the river, and the villagers took their places behind the Marauders. The size of Sniverlik’s force combined with Rotabak’s was enough to clog Tanley’s streets, so he sent detachments down every side tunnel to flank the calaihn when the time came.

  Lizneth saw an open spot behind the small roofless stall from which Tanley’s peddler, Bruck, sold his wares. The sword was so heavy she had to drag it behind her, leaving a furrow in the dirt. A few ikzhehn almost tripped over the blade in their hurry.

  The stall shook when Lizneth slumped over behind it, rattling dozens of hanging trinkets on their hooks. The noise startled her; she closed her eyes and put a hand to her belly, breathing deep against the queasiness. Her belly felt firm and full. Haven’t I been working hard enough to keep myself in better health than this? she wondered.

  Chitt and Wyrda, young brother and sister agoutis whose family kept the village tavern, darted behind the stall and crouched next to Lizneth. “They’re making you fight, too?” Wyrda asked, concerned. The young doe was wearing an old eh-calai helmet. She was holding a cracked shield made of clear plastic in one hand and a set of wrist-mounted claws in the other. Her brother held a sling and wore a leather pouch fat with riverstones.

  “Yes,” Lizneth said, “although I can’t imagine why. I’ll only end up getting in the way.”

  “Sniverlik enjoys putting us in danger,” Chitt whispered. “I think he gets a measure of personal satisfaction from watching us blunder around.”

  “He is very rude,” said Wyrda.

  Chitt hushed her. “They’ll hear you.”

  “That’s okay,” Wyrda said. “I want them to.”

  “You think you’re so tough because you didn’t cry red when they cornered you.”

  “I haven’t cried red since I was a new-birth,” she said.

  “You do it all the time.”

  “No I don’t, fibber.”

  “Cuzhehn,” Lizneth said. “We need to quiet ourselves. Make enemies of the calaihn, not one another.”

  Chitt twitched his nose and grumbled, but that was the end of it.

  When everyone was in place, the Marauders quieted the villagers until the entire cavern had gone silent. Now it was only a matter of waiting. It was a long time before Lizneth sensed the calaihn approaching down one of the wide eastern tunnels. There was no torchlight this time; no pounding footsteps to indicate a hurried march.

  They’re trying to sneak up on us, Lizneth realized. She almost laughed. Do they not know we can scent them? That we can feel them coming with our whiskers? That our hearing and our sight in dark places exceeds theirs tenfold? It was no wonder the calaihn were losing this war. She assumed they were losing, at least, given their last attack on Tanley. Such uninformed adversaries were doomed to fail.

  The calaihn advanced until she could see their dark shapes creeping down the tunnel. She imagined herself trying to move that way through the blind-world, hoping a crowd of calaihn wouldn’t notice her in the daylight. They must truly be as simple-minded as they look. This was going to be another easy victory for the ikzhehn. The calai force was larger than last time, but their sensory disadvantages negated any edge their numbers might’ve given them.

  A scent came to Lizneth, borne on the breeze across the cavern hollow. It was the smell of hu-man sweat, but one such scent in particular was as familiar to her as any haick. It was only there for an instant before she lost it.

  Lizneth heard sparkstones being struck. Fires glittered to life. Pellets of flame burning black tar smoke appeared in the hands of the calaihn and began to sail over the rooftops of Tanley. They landed on thatching and shingle alike; they stuck where they fell, or skittered down the narrow streets and came to rest against the sides of buildings.

  These calaihn aren’t foolish at all. They know exactly what they’re doing.

  The fires spread quickly. The villagers tried to douse them, but a few dozen buckets did little to stop the progress of a hundred flames. Soon the cave was as bright as midday in the blind-world. The calaihn flooded the village without stopping to speak with anyone. They cut down every undefended villager they saw and dispatched those brave enough to fight back.

  The Marauders and Bolck-Azockeh conscripts rose to join the battle, but this fight had already begun to look very different from the last. The taller calai warriors wielded their razor-sharp steel blades in both hands, hacking through the tide of ikzhehn with practiced ease. Their barbaric battle-screams filled the cave, frightful omens of the coming death.

  Sniverlik appeared from some hidden place, tall as a hu-man when standing to full height. He waved a heavy black arm to bring Marauders hurtling from the side tunnels. Then the Zithstone Scepter was in his hand, catching the firelight and scattering it along dark liquid bands, diffusing it like a braid come undone.

  If only that scepter could diffuse the fire itself, and not just the light, Lizneth thought, watching the village burn. Most of its doors and crossbeams were made of ironwood, but the slats and panels covering many of the walls and roof linings were of softer wood that took flame more easily. The cavern was getting so hot it was hard to breathe.

  The calaihn made a brutal advance down the central street, wading through the Marauders as if brushing aside some pest. They were a long distance yet from where Lizneth crouched behind the peddler’s stall with Chitt and Wyrda, and Sniverlik was in their way. Lizneth had never seen so many zhehn in Tanley before—not even during the harvest festivals, when huge troupes of traveling merchants and performers from the metropolis came through. She’d never imagined the village could fit them all, let alone allow them room to fight.

  The bodies began to pile up. Clever ikzhehn used them to grow a few inches, scurrying over the heaps and leaping down to assail the calaihn from above. Sniverlik was holding off the bulk of the calai force using only his lash to drive his keguzpikhehn forward while his great notched blade sat in its sheath. The Zithstone Scepter’s influence was limited, yet it enfeebled any hu-man who tried to get within striking distance of him, leaving them easy prey for his guards. A circle began to develop around Sniverlik’s position, stalling the calai offensive.

  The calaihn had faced the scepter before, however. They had found a way to fight in the darkness, and the scepter was no different. As soon as the last of their main force cleared the tunnel, a detachment armed with short double-recurved bows stepped into view. With their sword-wielding allies forming a barrier around them, they stepped into the pocket and began picking their targets. Sniverlik made an easy one—even the greenest archer could’ve found his hulking mass amid the chaos.

  They lit the heads of their arrows and began to shoot, not in organize
d volleys, but each archer for himself. When the arrows began to land, Lizneth discovered that their heads were bound with the same tar as the firebombs they’d lobbed at the village. Each time an arrow struck fur or flesh or armor, it stuck.

  A pair of arrows struck Sniverlik’s chest, spreading ripples of flame over his banded copper armor. He stumbled back a step, tore both arrows free with one hand and flung them aside. The gummy black residue that remained was still burning.

  Arrows began to fell Sniverlik’s guards one by one. Sniverlik held his ground even as his breastplate and champron sprouted new fires, but most of his Marauders were not so brave. The arrows lit into wood and leather and flesh, shedding black smoke and sending them screaming for the river.

  The Bolck-Azockeh conscripts were the first to flee. They fled for home, not only because the tunnel basin led to the metropolis, but because it was their only route of escape. After the conscripts broke, it didn’t take the Marauders long to foresee their imminent defeat. Cut off from the eastern tunnels with nowhere else to go, they took to the basin as well, ignoring Sniverlik’s protests in favor of escaping the fiery arrows swarming at their backs.

  Chitt and Wyrda fled along with them, leaving Lizneth on her own behind the peddler’s stall. Scared though she was, her first thought was not to flee toward Bolck-Azock. It was that her family’s cottage lay in the opposite direction, beyond that seething mass of calaihn, and that she had to get there somehow so she could warn them.

  When Sniverlik lowered the scepter and ran, the tide of hu-mans broke loose over the village like water through a collapsed dam. The victors raised a triumphant shout as they swept in and began taking captives. Many sheathed their weapons and wrestled the defenseless villagers to the ground. More calaihn came behind the archers, carrying solid wooden chests from which they produced iron manacles and lengths of heavy chain. This can’t be happening, Lizneth told herself as she watched ikzhehn she knew succumb to the invaders. Neacal did lie to me. They never came here to liberate us from Sniverlik’s tyranny. They’re here to make slaves of us all. Lizneth had seen what slavery was like. She wasn’t going back, and neither was her family.

  She tried once more to heft the iron sword, but it was too heavy. She let it clatter to the ground and drew her dagger, then scanned the street ahead for a pathway through the gauntlet. I’ll never make it past them all, she despaired. She couldn’t stay here; the tavern behind her was thick with flame and threatening to collapse at any moment.

  If she hugged the cavern wall and stayed behind the burning buildings, there was a chance she could make a dash from the edge of the village to the tunnel entrance. First she’d have to make it past fallen timbers and burning debris. Her other option was to sprint down the main street heading straight for the tunnel, but the calaihn would notice a scearib in their midst. All it would take was for more than one calai to get his hands on her and she was done for.

  I would rather burn than be a slave, she decided.

  The gap between the cavern wall and the row of burning buildings was less than a fathom in some places. In others, the cottages and villas were built directly into the stone to make use of some small niche or crevice as a den or storage room. When Lizneth came to the first of these she considered turning back.

  Stay the course, she told herself as she rammed a shoulder into the building’s rear door, which had yet to take flame. Pain stung through her shoulder, but the door held fast. She tried a second time, then a third. The door wouldn’t budge.

  She found a low window, still intact. There was nothing around with which to break the glass, so she tried stabbing through it with the dagger. The windowpanes were thick and irregular, and the tip of the blade scraped uselessly along the surface. She reversed her grip and cracked the glass with the hilt, but she couldn’t shatter it.

  She tried the door again, slipping the blade into the frame beside the handle. After a little levering, she felt a click. The door creaked inward. Smoke poured out, stinging her eyes and burning in her lungs. She took a breath and plunged inside.

  She found herself in a small kitchen teeming with fire. Shielding her face with an arm, she ducked under the sagging ceiling and hopped over a burning brand to reach the door on the opposite side. Unlocking it, she stumbled out into the street again.

  After another series of buildings—most burning, some not—she made it to the last, a colossal inn that was the largest in Tanley. It had been one of the first buildings lit and was now more fire and ash than untouched wood. She could try the back way and emerge beside the tunnel, or dart into a dangerous street full of calaihn.

  Around the back of the inn, she found a narrow gap in the rock beneath two stories of burning timber. I can fit through there, she decided. A calai stopped to stare down the alley at her. He shouted something, then burst into a sprint toward her. Lizneth made a mad dash for the burning gap.

  Before she could get there, a dense snapping sound came from above. The inn’s rear section gave out, dumping a flurry of spitting logs, furniture, and crumbling wattle into her path. She skidded to a stop and scrambled backward as a spray of embers erupted from the flames. A pair of feet bludgeoned her in the head and shoulder; the pursuing calai tripped over her and stumbled toward the blaze.

  Lizneth could only watch in horror as the inn’s roof slid free of the pile and crushed the helpless calai. White flames hot on her fur, she continued her backward crawl, fearing the calai might pull himself out. A thick ceiling joist crashed down on the overturned roof, settling her fear in an instant.

  She picked herself up and ran for the street. Calaihn were stampeding like animals, dragging ikzhehn aside as if trying to clear a path for some coming atrocity. When Lizneth squeezed out from the alley, she saw something that terrified her even more than the collapsing building.

  Neacal Griogan was coming down the street, carrying a weapon attached by a hose to the tank on his back. His was the sweat I smelled, Lizneth knew. Neacal’s eyes danced with crazed glee in the firelight. When he pulled the lever on his weapon, flames spouted forth like a fountain to bathe the nearest building in fire. He paid Lizneth little attention as she raced to avoid him, appearing more concerned with burning the village to the ground than killing ikzhehn. The other calaihn were running too, jostling one another out of the way as if afraid of Neacal’s enthusiasm for the task.

  Lizneth skirted the inn and slipped into the mouth of the tunnel without further interference. She looked back from the shadows to see Neacal unleashing blast after blast from his weapon, soaking every unburned corner and rooftop. His back glistened with sweat; she could see the ridge of bone along his spine and the slabs of muscle behind his shoulders where his weapon’s metal tank ended. She clenched her dagger, thinking as she had with Sniverlik a few weeks previous, how easy it would be to rush out and drive the point into his flesh.

  It would be easier now than with Sniverlik. Neacal was closer. He was preoccupied with the burning, and his back was turned. For one heart-pounding moment, Lizneth stood considering. There were too many other calaihn around him, and getting home to Mama and Papa was more important.

  Lizneth sheathed her dagger and slipped away into the tunnel darkness.

  The family cottage was still and quiet when Lizneth arrived. It was never this quiet, and she wondered with dread if the calaihn had already swept the outer tunnels and taken them away. But when she burst through the door she found her siblings full and napping, her parents rocking in their chairs beside the hearth. They both snapped their heads around to look at her.

  Mama put a finger to her snout. “Hush, Lizneth, my dear. The cuzhehn are sleeping.”

  “Mama, Papa, you have to come now. We have to leave. The calaihn attacked the village again. Everything’s gone, it’s all burned—”

  “Don’t you worry, my child,” said Papa. “Sniverlik will protect us. He always has in times like these. We pay him levies for a reason.”

  “It’s all over, Papa.” Lizneth couldn’t get t
he words out fast enough. “Sniverlik is defeated. He brought conscripts from Bolck-Azock. They ran. The calaihn came with fire and drove them out. The village is gone. It burns.”

  “Are you sure, cuzhe?” asked Mama.

  “Am I—I was there, Mama,” Lizneth shouted.

  Mama hushed her and continued rocking, as if Lizneth had told her there was a fly in the porridge. “The calaihn fare poorly in the below-world. Sniverlik will win the next battle, I’m certain. The villagers will put out the fires and repair the damage done.”

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  “Lizneth.” Mama raised her voice. “I’ve asked you to be quiet. Now if you can’t speak to your papa and me in a respectful tone, you’ll need to wait outside until you can calm down. Look—you’re already waking up the nestlings.” She flung a hand in exasperation.

  “This is no time to be calm and quiet,” Lizneth insisted. “Everyone, wake up. If you won’t take the cuzhehn away from here, I will. The calaihn didn’t just raid the village and leave. They’re not chasing Sniverlik. They are razing Tanley to the ground and taking to slave every ikzhe who doesn’t flee. We’ll be next unless we find someplace to go. They’ll spread out into the countryside and—”

  “Okay,” said Papa. “Okay. I hear you, Lizneth. Mama, this sounds more serious than we might wish to believe. Let’s take Lizneth’s advice and go somewhere. Just for a short while.”

  “What about Thrin and Raial?”

  Papa shook his head. “You know as well as I… they are Sniverlik’s now.”

  “They’re so young…”

  “I know. I know, cuzhe. Now, we must decide where to go. Perhaps we could visit your sister in Ocklahz.”

  “She doesn’t have the room, Halak,” said Mama, who only ever used Papa’s name when she was upset. “Plus, Ocklahz is too far from here.”

  “The calaihn stand between us and the basin,” Lizneth told them. “We’re cut off from the border towns to the south and west. We’ll have to head either north or east.”