Mercury Mind (The Downfall Saga Book 1)

by Chris Mccready

  “Send any wounded to a red brick warehouse, about six blocks that way,” he said, pointing back the way he had come.

  His response was lost in a screamed coming from their left. Three of the invaders came charging at them, swords shining in the sun. They cut down the first soldier who didn’t even have a sword, but he bought the others enough time to find discarded weapons lying on the street and join the fray.

  The fight was quick and bloody. Kort disarmed an opponent before one of his comrades ran him through. Despite Kort’s attempts to prevent killing, only he survived the skirmish.

  It was so pointless. He’d just brought three men back from near death so that they could take another three with them. He shook his head, and turned around to go find the warehouse.

  The stench hit him well before he neared the infirmary. He was approaching the warehouse from the backside. A small door led inside, propped open with a rock. Corpses lined the side of the building, stacked side by side and three rows deep. White cloths concealed most of their faces, but a murder of crows had descended and were tearing into the carrion.

  Kort had seen many unpleasant sights on the farm, and smelled even worse, but even his stomach lurched at the sight. He took several slow breaths through his mouth, trying to ignore the taste, until his stomach settled down.

  He quickly made his way past the bodies, and slipped through the door. He paused and took a deep breath and nearly retched as he was assaulted by the smell of burnt flesh, soiled linen, and vomit. Despite the open doors, the heat was sweltering and the interior dim.

  As his eyes adjusted, he made out row upon row of wounded spread out on the dirt floor. Whatever had been stored in the warehouse had been removed, and all that he could see was waves of desperate people. The clash of steel and roaring flames were replaced by the moaning wounded, buzzing flies, and the lamenting screams of the survivors.

  His vision began to narrow. He braced himself against the wall and nearly fainted. The horror in front of him was much worse than any battlefield, but he could do things that no one else in this room could do and they needed him.

  He plunged into the room, careful to avoid the people spread all over the floor. “Is somebody in charge here?” he yelled overtop of the noise in the room.

  “Over here,” came a commanding voice.

  He followed it to its source and found a girl, barely older than him, wearing a once white apron. In different circumstances he would have found her attractive and given her his most winning smile, but the only thing in his mind was trying to help these people.

  “Hello, I’m Kort.”

  She was bent over a soldier, sewing up a deep cut on his chest. Despite the surroundings, she’d managed to keep the area relatively clean. “Kim,” she said, not looking up from her work. “What do you want?”

  “I’m here to help. I’m a ... wizard.”

  “Then make yourself useful.”

  “Where are the most seriously injured? I’ll focus on the ones which can’t be helped through normal medicine.”

  “They’re everywhere. Knock yourself out.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  Kort gave his surroundings a quick skim and saw more people who needed his help than he could possibly heal. He saw a young man, alone on the floor, roughly the same age as his brother Kean. He looked emaciated, and much of the meat which he’d had on his bones had been roasted off in a fire. Half of his face was badly burnt and you could see his teeth through a hole burnt in his cheek.

  Kort gave him a quick visual examination before laying his hand on the man’s forehead. He used his Gift to slowly probe his body to determine the extent of his injuries. Blinking back tears, Kort turned away to find someone else to help.

  The next hour was a blur. He went from person to person, healing only their most serious injuries. He became aware of a little girl following at his side, giving him a drink when he needed it and guiding him by the hand to the next person who needed his help.

  He was so exhausted that he didn’t realize that an argument was happening five feet away from him until he heard his name.

  “Kort is healing the most seriously injured people who couldn’t be healed otherwise,” said Kim. She looked nearly as tired as he felt.

  “We need more soldiers, not liabilities,” said a handsome man in his twenties, wearing a pristine uniform that hadn’t seen any fighting.

  “What’s ... what’s going on?” asked Kort, wearily.

  “Ensign Leaf here wants you to only help his soldiers,” said Kim.

  “We need to help those in immediate danger first,” said Kort.

  “No, Kort,” said Ensign Leaf, his voice full of contempt. “We have a battle on our hands and we need to focus all of our resources on protecting this city. Those resources include you.”

  “I’m not a smith’s hammer, and you can’t tell me what to do.”

  “I can and I will. Now am I going to have to make you obey?”

  “I’d hate to see you dirty your uniform.”

  “I have no issues staining it with your blood.”

  “That would help nothing. Now why don’t you make yourself useful by joining the fighting and leaving us to do our work?”

  It looked like Ensign Leaf was about to blow up and cry at the same time. His face turned a fiery shade of red and a single tear escaped his eye, before he fled the building.

  Kim gave him a weary smile before heading back to work. Taking her lead, Kort followed suit.

  The wounded continued to flow into the warehouse. They helped as many as they could, but more ended up stacked behind the warehouse than managed to walk out. The floor was covered in blood and vomit, and Kort struggled to make his way to his next patient.

  Finally, there was a brief lull in the critically wounded and Kort slumped against a wall to rest, not caring what he might be sitting in. Someone placed a sandwich in his hand and he ate it without tasting it. He mechanically drained a cup of water before leaning his head against the wall and closing his eyes.

  He dozed for a while before going back to work. He made it halfway around the room, checking on the injured, when a group of soldiers burst through the doors, carrying two wounded soldiers between them. They set the two soldiers on an open area near the middle of the room as Kim and Kort converged on them.

  “You have to get out of here,” said one of the soldiers.

  “In case you didn’t notice, we have a lot of wounded here,” said Kim, checking a deep leg wound on the first wounded soldier.

  “It’ll be worse if you don’t move. There’s fighting only a few blocks from here.”

  Cries of panic arose at this news. “Everybody needs to calm down,” she roared.

  “Where?” asked Kort, checking on the other wounded soldier. He had a deep stomach wound that looked putrid despite its newness.

  “When you leave that door,” said the soldier pointing his head towards the mains doors, “they’re a few blocks to the left.”

  “You get the people out of here while I tend to these two,” said Kort to Kim.

  Seeing that their comrades were being tended to, the soldiers headed back to the fight.

  Kim began barking orders, sounding like a grizzled veteran despite her young age. She posted runners outside to warn them if the fighting got to close. They began ferrying the wounded out of the building and down the street. A couple of boys began collecting debris to barricade the doors, in case it came to that.

  Kort took care of the leg wound first. The cut was deep and the soldier had lost a lot of blood, but it was a rather simple process to close the wound. The soldier was weak from blood loss, and fell asleep as soon as the pain had dissipated.

  The second soldier was a different story. Infection had already started to set in and Kort wasn’t sure if he had enough energy left to help him.

  “Everybody get out!” screamed one of the runners, bursting through the doors.

  The coordinated evacuation of the wounded descended in
to chaos. The wounded were dropped and forgotten and people tried to fight their way free of the confines of the warehouse. It reminded Kort of a recently stepped on ant hill, and all that he could do was shake his head and focus on his patient once more.

  The boys began stacking debris in front of the main doors while the evacuation continued out the back.

  He numbed the soldier’s pain, and began tending his injuries when the first bang came from the door. He mutely watched the door as something heavy hit it a second time. If he abandoned these men now, then he thought that he could make his way out before the door was broken down.

  He glanced longingly at the rear door before turning back to the soldier. He used the last of his reserves to close his wounds. Looking up from his knees, he saw the doors burst open. People surged into the room, scimitars held high. Kort didn’t even have the energy to raise his arm to protect himself as they closed in and took him apart.

  Chapter 14

  Ravyn gazed out an open window towards a large castle surrounded by a high wall. She could see men patrolling the walls and a large group marshalling behind the walls. The air was hazy and sour. She pressed her arm over her face to block the smell. Screams filled the air. Glancing around she saw that she was standing in a small room on the upper level of a tall building, a large bell hung from the ceiling behind her. Perhaps it was a church, she thought to herself. Sticking her head out the window, she saw that she was in a foreign city that she didn’t recognize, roughly the same size as Chaylse where she grew up. A section of the city to her right was burning and she could see people running every which way in the streets.

  “Help me!” came a high pitched voice from below. A young boy, of perhaps twelve, was running down the street below the window.

  “What is going on?” she yelled to the boy, but he ignored her and kept running.

  Two men wearing dark vests, with a piece of red cloth tied around their right bicep, and armed with scimitars chased after the boy. Glancing down he saw that she was dressed in a military uniform different from the men below, a tight fitting coat with a gold emblem of a lion on the breast and dark pants. Checking her belt she saw that she was unarmed.

  “Hey!” she yelled at the two men, “leave the boy alone.”

  “Don’t you worry, Miss,” said one of the men, “We’ll finish him quick, and then come up there to see you. Don’t you worry, we’ll finish you real slow. I’ll have a go at you first, then my friend here will take his turn.”

  “Hey, why can’t I go first?”

  “You take care of the boy, then join me up there.”

  “There’s enough of me to take care of both of you,” said Ravyn, shooting a bolt of lightning at both of them. The bolt struck them in the chest. A spasm shook their bodies for a moment before they fell to the ground, and lay still.

  Ravyn exited the room and made her way out of the building. The boy was examining the two bodies.

  “That was amazing,” said the boy in a wistful tone. “Are you some kind of a wizard? If I was a wizard then I’d have fought off the Sibt all by myself.”

  “What is happening around here?” asked Ravyn, bending down to pick up one of the fallen swords.

  “The Sibt,” said the boy. “They came out of nowhere and were over the walls and burning buildings before the alarm even sounded.”

  “Is the fighting off that way,” asked Ravyn, pointing towards where she had seen the most activity from the window.

  The boy nodded. “But you can’t go that way. The orphanage is on fire. You need to help get them out.”

  They locked eyes and Ravyn waited a moment before breaking his heart. “I cannot. The invaders, the Sibt, will kill many more people if they are not stopped. You’ll” —her voice broke momentarily— “You’ll have to find someone else to help the children.”

  “You’re going to let my friends die?” said the boy, tears streaming down his face.

  Ravyn turned her back on the boy and headed towards the fighting.

  She was in a more affluent part of the city. Many of the buildings were multiple stories tall. The streets were broad and well-tended. She left the rich district and entered a commercial district. The buildings were still well-maintained, but smaller and simpler.

  A group of soldiers raced her way, dressed the same as she, but unarmed.

  “What’s happening ahead?” she asked, moving to block their paths.

  “Run and hide. It’s hopeless,” said a small rat like man.

  She grabbed his jacket as he tried to run past and swung him around in front of her. “I asked you a question.” The rest of the soldiers parted around them and disappeared down the street.

  The man took furtive glances all around, as if he was expecting an attack at any moment. When it became apparent that Ravyn wasn’t going to release him, he finally answered, “The Sibt are attacking. We’re all going to die.”

  “How about you try that again, but this time tell me something useful,” she said icily.

  He looked her over, trying to size her up, but her glare brought him up short.

  “They attacked maybe an hour ago. Over the walls without warning. They were so quick that we barely put up a defense. They started burning buildings on the north side. I was one of the people sent to see if we could stop the fires. We didn’t see them coming. They were on us before we knew it. I was one of the few to get away.”

  “I’m sure that you bravely fought your way out.”

  “Dropped my sword, pissed my pants and ran,” he said with no trace of shame. “Not necessarily in that order, of course.”

  “What’s going on now?”

  “The square. Joran’s square up ahead. Our men have setup barricades and are trying to hold them off in the open square.”

  “Why aren’t you helping them?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Because I’m not cracked up for fighting. It was join the military or rot in a cell, and I chose the fresh air.”

  “Worthless cur,” she said, shoving him away.

  She continued heading down the street, the screams of men and clash of swords growing with every step. The buildings around her were eerily silent. Hastily abandoned when the fighting started, many of the doors stood ajar, but the proximity of violence had kept the looters away for the moment.

  She experimentally swung the scimitar in a series of slashing motions, surprised by how smooth and well-practiced the motions seemed when she had never held a sword before, yet she felt like she’d spent years learning its use. She had no recollection of learning its use, but had to shrug it off because clearly she was the only person who could stop the invasion.

  She kept a slow, measured pace. She wanted to run and join the fighting as soon as possible but knew that tiring herself out wouldn’t help anybody.

  The smell of smoke and death hit her whenever the wind blew from the north. Stopping at a seamstress shop, she cut off a piece of fabric from a large roll and tied it around her head, covering her nose and mouth.

  She paused in the shop, thinking about what she was planning on doing. She was about to go charging into a heated battle, and for what? She didn’t know the people in this city. She didn’t owe them anything. Why should she throw her life away? What would her parents think if they could see her now?

  She almost turned around to find a place to hide, but what purpose would that solve. People would still die. If the invaders were victorious, then she would eventually be found. No, she couldn’t abandon people in need. She had the Gift for a reason, and she couldn’t squander it by being selfish. She had to use it to help those in need, and there was only one way to do that, stop the invasion.

  Shoulders pressed back, she left the shop, a lioness on the hunt for her prey. Stalking down the street, she ran in a half crouch, keeping close to the buildings on one side.

  She saw the square ahead of her. Two rows of archers stood behind up turned carts, blocking the entrance. Four marble fountains occupied the corners of the
square, their waters turned red from the bodies floating in them. The middle of the square was a mess. The ground turned muddy from blood and other bodily fluids. Bodies lay sprawled in the dirt, alone and in groups, many had been hacked to pieces. A quick glance showed her that most of the bodies were theirs, and the invaders fighting throughout the square outnumbered them at least two to one.

  “Who’s in charge here?” she asked coming up behind the archers.

  “No one,” said a grizzled man to her left. “The orders stopped coming a long time ago, so we dug in here to wait.”

  “You’re in charge of this squad now,” she said, deputizing him when she doubted that she had the authority to do so. “Are things as bad as they look?”

  “Worse probably. We’ve managed to hold them here in the square, but we need the King and his cavalry if we have any hope in beating them.”

  She studied the fighting while he talked. The archers in front of her all seemed too old or too young to be soldiers. They held their bows without confidence and it showed in their aim. They didn’t risk firing arrows at the invaders engage with their own forces for fear of hitting their own men, but instead waited for opportune shots at lone men.

  “Why aren’t they rushing our position?” she asked. “Surely they have enough men to engage the men in the square and break through our lines.”

  “Why would they? They know that most of the men at the barricades have never seen a battle before this, or have seen too many in their long lives. The real battle is out there, and as soon as they win it, then they will overwhelm us.”

  “Why are we fighting out there? Shouldn’t we be using the terrain to our advantage?”

  “The last order that we received from Adolphus,” he paused to spit on the ground, “was for the infantry to charge into the square while we provided cover. Adolphus,” he spat on the ground again at the mention of his name, “was very clear in his training. Do what he tells you to do until he tells you to stop, or he will make sure that something even worse happens to you. Most of the men out there are more afraid of what he would do to them then what the Sibt are doing right now.”