Alexandria

by Kaden, John

  “Run!” Jack screams, and he launches himself off the concrete outcropping just as an arrow whizzes by his head. He lands with a thud, pumping his legs frantically, and the tribesmen take up their arsenal of spears and blades and give chase. Lia clambers down and manages only a couple long strides before they latch onto her. She kicks out, growling at them, and they seize her flailing legs and pull her to the ground. Jack barrels straight ahead with his knife drawn, sorely missing his bow and arrow. The men pin Lia down and hold a curved metal disk to her throat, scalloped with razor-sharp teeth.

  “Nadannak,” they shout. “Nadannak!”

  Jack skids to a halt and drops his knife, shrieking for them to stop. The men of the tribe engulf him and he feels many hands clasp onto his body and drag him back toward the lean-to.

  “Liiaaa!” he yells, and his brain electrifies with panic when she does not respond.

  The tribesmen stop suddenly and look curiously toward the ridge. The wind ripples around them, snapping their hides and rags about, and when it swoops in at just the right angle they can hear the nearby baying of wolfmongrels and the increasing rumble of pounding hooves.

  Feiyan and his two searchers thunder across the highland with the mongrels sprinting lithely alongside them. They sent the call and rode ahead, allowing for the other detachments to find the trail and catch up on their own, after Feiyan and his crew have cinched the hunt.

  The wolfmongrels dart straightaway for an angled shelf and the horsemen follow suit, clicking briskly down into the valley. They see the smoke and reckon it belongs to the runaways—there is no one else in sight. Tight smiles play at their lips as they close in on their target. They ride single file, with Feiyan in the lead, and as they reach the halfway point of their descent a flaming arrow screams out of the ruins and lodges into the left haunch of the forward steed. It bucks wildly and throws Feiyan to the ground, then slams into the wall of the escarpment as the flames scorch its hide. In a mad frenzy it loses its footing and plunges down the rocky drop-off and breaks itself to pieces.

  The rearward horses stomp crazily down the ledge as more arrows fly and the riders fight to hang on. Feiyan draws his bow, searching for the source of the attacks, and sees only grown-over storefronts and piles of rubbish. He hunkers down behind a bank of foliage and waits for another flurry to come, and soon it does. A fiery arrow flies into the bristly shrub he hides behind and it lights up quick and furious, drawing him into the open. He doubles over and makes a crouching sprint for the cover of the ruins.

  Jarrik struggles to regain control. He snaps the reins and his horse rears back on its hind legs then blasts forward, riding toward the source of the flaming volleys.

  Cullen, the last member of their team, bolts down the ramp and gallops toward the commotion. A slick shot pierces his horse through the side of the head and they both keel to the ground, the rider’s leg pinned under the threshing hulk of his mount. He works himself free and scrambles along the ground, seeking refuge behind a nearby structure with his machete drawn. Two tribesmen emerge from the shallow hidden nooks and try to collar him. He swipes out with the blade, slicing one of them across the torso just as the other spears him through. He gurgles blood and cants over, dead before he touches the ground. One of the mongrels dives forward and clamps down on the spear-carrier’s leg, gnawing and thrashing its head. They plunge the spear into its neck and cast it away.

  Jarrik guides his horse through a cluttered alleyway and comes up behind the tribe’s nest. Several archers slink behind the stone wall, with another holding a torch around to light up the pitch before they fire. Jarrik shoots one of them at distance then canters back for cover. The tribesmen surge forward in a rush, levying a hail of arrowfire at Jarrik and his mount. He lobs off a couple more shots but they overtake him in an instant, skewering him through the neck. Melted tar runs down his chest and the flames encase his head. He slumps over and his horse sets off, bucking and threshing as its hide lights up with bright, demonic fire. Horse and rider go caterwauling across the ruins, smoldering and screaming, both spiked through with a dozen burning quills, looking like some bleak harbinger of doomsday come to warn of the apocalypse several centuries too late.

  Feiyan wanders through the side streets, holding fast to the rubble, and when he reaches a forked intersection he realizes despairingly that he is surrounded. A menagerie of filthy tribesmen with ropy, knotted hair marches toward him from all directions, their spears thrust out, their eyes steeped in icy hatred and their sadistic grins reeking of utter and profound bloodlust.

  Jack and Lia fight nasty flashbacks as they huddle in the crawlspace with their ankles and wrists bound up, spears leveled on them starkly. The women and children of the tribe sit across the dim space, holding on to each other, regarding the young trespassers with suspicion. The riot outside ceases. Footsteps and scraping sounds approach the holdout. Jack doesn’t know whether to feel relief or terror when it is the tribe’s leader that appears at the misshapen doorway, and not the Nezra.

  “E’stranna maan,” he says.

  Jack is lifted to his feet and carried into the alleyway. The tribesmen stand in a semicircle around Feiyan, several others keep him pinned to the ground with his arms and legs drawn out. They march Jack straight to his prone, struggling form.

  “Jack…” he moans. “What’s happening?”

  Jack says nothing.

  “Tah eh kine tondessa?” the leader asks, his voice a throaty growl. “Kine?” he repeats, and gestures back and forth between Jack and Feiyan.

  The tribesmen watch Jack expectantly. He is not certain what they want from him, but he gets the notion that he’d better do something quick. He lowers his head and works his jaw around for a moment, then lifts his face and spits on Feiyan. This elicits a reaction and the men chatter vigorously in their unknown tongue.

  “Enah kine? Mah sikelern des maan, des e’stranna?” The leader hovers the spear over Feiyan’s head then nods to Jack’s captors and they release him. “Tah sikelern e’stranna…”

  “Jack? Jack, what is this?” Feiyan croaks.

  “Sikelern.” The leader places the spear in Jack’s hands.

  “I think he wants me to kill you, Feiyan.”

  “He’s crazy, Jack. Don’t do this.”

  Feiyan pleads with such pathetic helplessness that Jack ruminates briefly on the nobility of killing an unarmed man held to the ground—and then he thinks on Lia, and his lost family, and the home that he will never see again, and he raises the spear above his head and plunges it down into the center of Feiyan’s chest. Everyone steps back and watches the warrior quake on the ground, the spear shaft trembling in the air as he spasms. When he is still and dead they rush forward and kick his corpse and run him through with a broad assortment of sharp instruments.

  “Tonaa. D’estranna sahl lah cherreth.” He walks to the crawlspace and takes the hand of a little boy and leads him to Jack. “Lah cherreth.”

  His words are unknown but the meaning comes clear in an instant—Men like these stole children from us. He bows his head and raises his palms, and without thinking Jack returns the gesture. Two men come forward and present him with his bow and knife, and soon they all crowd around him, chattering and touching him.

  “Sajiress,” the leader says, gesturing to himself.

  “Sajiress?”

  “Eyah.”

  Lia rushes from the underground hideout and bursts through the circled tribe and throws her arms around Jack’s neck. “What happened?”

  “I’m not really sure, but I don’t think they want to kill us anymore.”

  Droplets of cool mist speckle Cirune’s face, precursors of a more wicked storm rambling across the horizon. The others have ridden ahead, Halis figures, and he bristles at the loss of finding the boy himself. Still, if all goes without a hitch, they should have the dead boy and the live girl back at the Temple by nightfall.

  The damp air sharpens the scent and the mongrels run in a tight, undeviating line toward a
tendril of rising smoke. Cirune gives his horse a swift heel kick and spurs it to a full gallop across the high ground, then jerks the reins and they trot along the ridge toward the sloping concourse angling into the valley.

  It smells of burnt meat.

  They click down the uneven ramp past the scorched shrubbery, still hissing and steaming in the light drizzle. The horses neigh and become hesitant and their riders urge them forward. Cirune glances uneasily at the remains of the old coastal town and the eerie stillness therein. Through jagged doorways and broken windows they scour for any sign of movement, and the only activity they see is the circling of gulls on the far side of the confined valley, diving and squawking, devouring something.

  Cirune grasps his blade and steers his horse around standing piles of old junk and concrete, heading toward the bonfire hidden around the next wall. Their formation tightens and they clip forward steadily, the horses chuffing and dipping their heads as they approach. Cirune rounds the corner and draws up on the reins.

  Three men hang upside-down from the eave of the lean-to, lashed at their ankles, swaying gently in the pulsing wind, and their limp, dangling fingertips trace curvatures on the ground as they rock back and forth. One is burned to a husk and his melted skin sloughs off onto the ground, and the others are so coated with gore they cannot tell one from another. Only their scant remaining attire shows them to be members of the brigade. The hungry mongrels swarm them and begin tearing chunks of meat off their forearms and faces.

  Cirune turns to his back and is met with cold, trance-like eyes as the rider behind him slumps over and falls off his horse, an arrow sticking pertly out of the base of his skull, black liquid boiling down the nape of his neck.

  “Get out of the valley!” he shouts, and he charges for the inclination that will lead him back to high ground. Halis and Gallat scatter wild, bearing down on their fitful steeds and galloping past the ruins at breakneck speed.

  The first slew of arrows flies quick and silent from the darkened interiors and Gallat is struck and thrown to the ground. His horse lights off in a hurry, racing headlong back toward its native pastures. Gallat rolls on the ground to tamp out the burning arrows, then snaps off the molten shafts and flings them aside and shambles down a deserted side street for cover.

  Halis rears back and reverses direction, following Cirune as he cuts across the center of the valley. Up ahead, a small pack of tribesmen crosses the thoroughfare and disappears into the ruins.

  Halis angles away, taking a circuitous route in an attempt to come around behind the tribe, and Cirune sets off to regain the straying brood of wolfmongrels.

  Jack watches in despair as Gallat’s horse sprints toward the foothills. He had warned them away from shooting the horses because he had hoped to collar one and ride it out of this place. He crouches with the tribe’s archers on the second story of a ragged heap. The ceiling caved in long ago, taking most of the floor with it, and they cling to a thin ledge that runs the inside perimeter, with a twisted mess of scrap metal spiking up from below.

  Jack and a few others make a slow, heedful climb to ground level and steal out onto the mulched-over street. The way is clear, but the barking of the mongrels fast approaches. Their little unit disperses, fanning out through the narrow channels that run between the dilapidated buildings. Jack partners with a wily-looking troglodyte with matted, filthy hair and they proceed down a slender alleyway with their bows grazing from side to side.

  Halis rides around a corner just ahead and Jack lets off a shot. The arrow sticks into a tangle of ivy and Halis spurs forward and disappears.

  “En’ota carissa,” the primitive whispers, and motions Jack to follow him through a jangled, rusty framework that leads to the next side street. One of the mongrels fixes on Jack’s scent and scrambles in after him, bolting under the collapsed beams and zeroing in. He wheels around and raises his bow just as the creature is diving for him. It locks onto his arm and sends his bow clattering to the ground, then commences shaking its mangy head and rending the flesh on his forearm. His partner tries to set his aim, but can’t get a clean shot without the risk of hitting Jack. He smashes his fist down on the mongrel’s head and it releases Jack and goes for him instead, snapping at his hands with dripping canines. Jack slides out his knife and stabs it in the throat and finally it relents.

  “You okay?”

  “Eyah. Oh-kay,” he replies, just before an arrow thunks into his eye socket. Halis.

  Jack nosedives under the metal beams and shimmies back the way he came, dragging his bow behind him, and when he reaches the alleyway he speeds away as fast as his legs will carry him and cuts left at the next corner. Cirune sits atop his horse and looks off down the length of the avenue. Jack creeps along the rutted contours of an old shopfront and trains his bow and fires. The arrow chocks into the meat of Cirune’s thigh and he startles on his lead, sending his horse skittering off to the side.

  Jack ducks back and takes cover. Cries and screams burst from the opposite side of the valley and he breaks for them, his arm dripping a crimson trail. He meets up with several tribesmen and they race around the bend just as the remaining mongrels finish rousting the women and children from their hiding place under the wreckage. They lunge for Lia, and the boys and women crowd around her protectively and strike out at the mongrels with bloody fists. The rain quickens its pace and turns the scene into muddy, writhing confusion. Jack pushes his way through the horde and jabs at the mongrels with his knife blade. Two others creep around behind and spear them through and they yowl and shudder and die in the crimson mud.

  The tribesmen usher the women and children into their hideout, then form a circle with their backs to one another, facing out. All around them nothing moves, only the steady patter of rainfall. The circle expands as they trod outward, searching.

  Away past a distant intersection Halis and Cirune ride by in a flash, pierced and bloodied, but alive and on the move. Jack and the others pursue them but they recede too quickly to ever catch up on foot. After a vigorous sprint they simply stop and watch them go.

  The rain washes away the blood from his forearm and Jack inspects the cluster of frayed punctures left by the wolfmongrels. He tightens his hand to a fist several times then holds the arm up against his chest.

  They turn and start to limp back. Gallat, wounded and left to fend for himself, jumps from a rock wall and tears off after Halis and Cirune. This last one seems more an annoyance than a threat and they grudgingly round him off and dispatch him coldly, then drag his carcass back to be strung up with the rest.

  Chapter Ten

  A quiet gathering sees Braylon’s body laid to rest in the gloomy afternoon. Warriors in ceremonial cloaks lower the enwrapped form into the slender trench dug for a grave, then solemnly take up shovels and cover him away. The men Braylon worked and fought with stand to one side, and his friends from the old village occupy the other. Keslin hovers around, working himself up to the task of speaking over the deceased, as he does for all those slain in action. His old, arthritic knuckles are swollen and sore from laying into the trespassers and he fumbles with the scrap of notes he’s written for the occasion.

  “Friends and fellow soldiers,” his recital begins, “here we see a brave young man off to the safe refuge of the Beyond. Braylon gave his life protecting others, and now will be safeguarded himself, for all time.” Keslin drones on mournfully about bravery and honor as eddies of gray drizzle swirl around them.

  Jeneth swaddles Mariset more tightly in her blanket and bounces her impatiently as Keslin speaks, a deep uneasiness mounting inside her. She wants to leave, to run back to her cabin, bar the door, and huddle inside with Mariset and never come out again. Usually it is a joy to see her old friends, but as they stand in a crooked line around Braylon’s grave she finds she can barely look at them. It is not the cheerful reunion she had longed for, what with one of their lot dead and two others gone missing.

  Keslin finishes his remarks with gratitude for the warrior cla
ss and a timeworn promise to defend the Temple, and establishes that Braylon’s valor will never be forgotten. To those who knew him well, they sound like empty words.

  “Have you heard anything about Lia and Jack?” Haylen asks quietly as the funeral disbands.

  “Same as you’ve probably heard,” Jeneth says. “Missing is all I know.” Eriem gives her a tight squeeze and a peck on the cheek, then saunters off to chat with the men in his brigade.

  “I heard they’re dead,” Haylen says soberly. “It’s what everyone is saying.”

  “Don’t believe everything that goes around.”

  “If they’re not dead, where are they? Why don’t they come back?”

  “I don’t know, Haylen. Maybe they’re lost.”

  Jeneth swallows hard and fights the urge to tell Haylen everything she knows about that night. The warriors know the truth and Eriem has more than hinted at it. Jack and Lia have run, she knows, and abandoned her and everyone else. Some say they’re dead, killed by the spies that got Braylon. Others spread much darker rumors that they were in league with these intruders, and perhaps helped them gain access to the Temple’s secrets. Every person she talks with offers a different story, and the official line from the upper echelons has changed several times in the telling. They have run, this much she believes, but why they would do such a thing eludes her. Just when they were starting to find happiness here.

  “Calyn thinks those men had something to do with it. She thinks they stole them away to teach them spywork. Says they’re probably living with a band of thieves in the forest by now.”

  “Well… maybe…”

  William has been listening, and he leans in to offer his own twist. “They fell in the ocean trying to save Braylon. It’s the only thing that makes sense. That’s why there’s no bodies.”