by Kaden, John
“My offer stands,” he tells her brittle alliance. “Would anyone else like to join her?”
Karus hobbles back and the housemaids turn and scurry down the hall.
One steps forward.
“I’ll go,” says Eriem.
“Here,” says Hargrove, “let me hand it up to you.”
Jack reaches down, grabs the scope, and lays it gently off to the side, then offers his hand back to Hargrove. He grips it and pulls himself onto the rock ledge, his hands shaking slightly.
“Getting old,” he says.
Sajiress and Denit have already moved ahead, perching on a thin trail that leads to the top of the rise. Jack slings the case over his shoulder and claws his way up the densely grown path, Hargrove following after, taking his time and picking footholds carefully. When the grade flattens, they crawl prone on the ground through the bushes and weeds, looking for a clearing.
“Ellah,” says Sajiress, flagging down the others.
They shimmy over to the alcove he’s found and nestle in beside him. The rear corner of the Temple juts out from the low hill where the amphitheatre lay, still hazy in the morning fog.
Hargrove’s eyes light up, lost in the bizarre beauty of it. He sees his brother in every line and detail.
“All right,” he sighs, “let’s see what we got here.”
He takes the case from Jack and unscrews the end cap and withdraws his telescope. Denit makes a canopy of low-hanging branches to shield the reflection, then Hargrove hunches down and lines up his sight. Through the circular lens, he sees simple folk muddling about the grounds, coming and going through the Temple’s broad door. He scans past the edge of the reflecting pool, off toward the ruins, and narrows on the line of warriors guarding the perimeter.
“Here,” he says, and passes it off to Sajiress, then draws from his jacket the folded map that Jack drew. He compares the map’s features to the landscape surrounding them and finds it accurate. “Arana lives at the top?”
“Yeah, up there.”
“That’s the chimney you used?”
“The one on the corner. You can’t see it from here.”
“Ah. They’ll have it blocked off by now, anyway, if they’re smart.” Hargrove drums his fingers and traces his eyes across the crooks and lines, deep in study, jotting down notes and symbols on the map. “Is there a quick way to get down into that valley?”
“Have to hike the hill behind those homes over there.”
“Mmm. Not much cover.”
“It’ll be easier at night,” says Denit.
“Yeah, I think so. We’ll set up down there, down in the rubble of that old town. You remember what we talked about, Jack?”
“Yes.”
“We can draw them out, and we can get you in, to a certain point… and then it’s up to you. You’re the only one that knows his way around in there.”
Jack nods. He looks down at his hands and finds them trembling.
“We’ll go at sundown,” Hargrove says finally. “Let’s get ready.”
They hike down the small hill and head back to their camp. Denit and Hargrove break off with the men from the outpost and begin dividing up the black powder from Denit’s saddlebag into polite little mounds on the surface of a flat rock. Jack sits on the ground with Sajiress, circled around by the fighters from his tribe, and he proceeds to lay out the plan in miniature using found objects and lines drawn in the dirt, looking like they’re playing out some minor children’s game for amusement. One of the tribesmen mechanically strops his blade against a stretch of leather, diligently watching the little game of chance take shape. Jack moves their tiny rocks with cold deliberation, his heart pounding.
Sajiress takes in the crude depiction of their strategy, then looks at Jack and points to his head. “Eyah.”
In Jack’s mind he sees spirit eyes, and he scolds himself for ever cowering in their presence. He has known the truth throughout, only lost sight of it for a time. These are not supernatural wraiths he will face, manifesting from thin air—they are mortal men who bleed and die when shot through the heart. Jack has known this since the age of twelve.
The tribesman places the freshly sharpened blade in his hand, the one Lia had given them, and he rises and moves down to the water’s edge. Sajiress and several of his men follow suit. They stand in a line looking out at the peaceful bay. Jack scoops his hand down into the water and splashes it on his head, then works his fingers through his wet brown hair and begins to saw off great clumps of it with the knife. When the length of it is trimmed, he drags the blade across his scalp and pares off the stubble, then turns to Sajiress and hands the knife to him. Sajiress kneels over and studies his shadow on the ground. His head is so abundant with hair that he hardly knows where to begin.
Lia gallops alongside Marikez, a long metal-tipped spear braced against her saddle. She looks longingly at the river, remembering the times she spent there as a child, when her family and close neighbors would journey away from the village and camp out under the stars.
“Are you okay?” asks Marikez.
“I’m fine. Just thinking. My old home is near here.”
“The home you lost?”
“It’s just over that hill, in the forest.”
Marikez looks to the west, where the redwood forest looms nobly, rising out of the foothills like a drove of aging sentinels.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“You miss it?”
“Every day.”
“I can’t imagine…”
“I hope you never have to.”
“It will happen. We’ll lose our home someday, too. Though for different reasons.”
“Why?”
“Our river is dying. Without good trade, we wouldn’t eat. We have two more good decades, maybe three. Probably we should have moved long ago, but we have very old roots there. My mother, Maya, she was a good woman, but stubborn. Refused to give it up, even the years when our water ran dry.”
“Where will you go?”
“This valley doesn’t seem such a bad place. Maybe here. I don’t know, really. It’s up to our people.”
They trek through the lonely cities along the bank, where flocks of birds use the tilting gridiron as enormous aviaries, their squawks and chirps echoing through the hollow of the boulevard upon which they ride. Marikez turns his attention to a strong-looking woman named Rosa, planning out their next stop. Lia rides forward and takes the lead. The wind whips braids of hair across her face as her horse beats the path ahead.
The trail slips away from the river and cuts left, through a cavernous runway of sinking skyscrapers. She looks back at the resilient people who’ve joined her cause, feeling a heavy responsibility for each of their lives.
Ahead, a metal framework lay sprawled across the roadway like the fossilized spine of some prehistoric leviathan. They slow their progress and start single file up the easiest path over the blockage. As Lia’s horse minces down the other side, a scream rings out behind her.
She canters ahead and turns her horse, and back across the fallen wreckage one of Marikez’s men slips off his mount with an arrow in his chest. Marikez and Rosa bound off the rubble next to her, then wheel around to see the rest of their caravan bunching up at the mouth of the slender passage.
“Take cover,” shouts Marikez.
More arrows zip through the air. One punches into the ground at the feet of Lia’s horse and it rears back frantically and she fights to settle it.
“Over there,” she cries, and bolts across the roadway toward the slanted opening at the foot of a great structure. She ducks beneath the fallen pillars and shelters inside, Marikez and Rosa right behind her. Outside there is another scream and the commotion stops suddenly. Marikez drops off his horse and creeps toward the opening, then risks a look back toward his riders. Three lay dead a ways down the road and the others are absent from view. He draws his bow and trains it along the black window openings, waiting for motion or
a sign from their attackers. The horses snort and shuffle into a corner, seeking a way out.
The street falls deadly quiet. Lia grips her spear with both hands and crouches forward with Rosa.
“Expecting us,” says Rosa.
She takes her bow next to Marikez and aims down the opposite way.
Time passes.
Sweat dampens them and their arms begin to shiver on their bows.
“Here they come,” says Marikez simply.
He lights off an arrow and slips another against the bowstring. Rosa steps out from cover and fires a quick shot, then ducks back as a hail of arrows whizzes past.
“Come on,” says Marikez, “they’ve seen us.”
They press farther back into the dreary recesses of the abandoned lobby, a virtual terrarium, overrun with weeds and creeping kudzu. Marikez ducks behind a large column and Lia finds cover with Rosa behind a long marble counter. They sit still and wait.
After an agonizing minute of silence, Lia crawls on the ground and peers around the corner. Two of them stand in the center of the space, slinking toward her. She fetches a rock and chips it off a far column, then skirts around the other side of the counter with Rosa.
The warriors split off to the edges of the room. Rosa rises slowly and peels off an arrow, skewering one through the neck. As she lines up another, the second man rushes her. Marikez lofts a shot and it goes wide, just missing him. Rosa stumbles backwards and the warrior raises his blade. Lia slides onto the surface of the cracked marble, levers herself to her feet, and pushes off the edge of the counter with her good leg, throwing herself through the air with her spear thrust forward. The tip sinks in just below his shoulder blade and they tumble to the ground. Lia keeps her grip and shoves the spear tip deeper. He drops his machete from his lamed arm and tries to snatch it back with the other, and she withdraws the bloody spear and plunges it down again, running it through his belly with sickeningly little resistance. He shudders and locks eyes with her.
She watches him die. He was Calyn’s boy.
Marikez is back at the opening, scanning the street, and Lia and Rosa rush to his side. A one-armed man on horseback bursts past them, racing down the street, leading his small army over the twisted metal obstruction. Lia knows the horse at once and hot anger flushes through her, seeing the monster that now rides Balazir. Rosa raises back her bow and Marikez stills her.
When the Nezra warriors have surmounted the rubble-strewn pass, the counter-attack begins. They hear it more than see it, and the uproar soon reaches a fever-pitch.
“Now,” says Marikez, launching from the opening and sprinting toward the mangled pile that divides the roadway. He clambers up and surveys the battle. His fighters, some mounted, some on foot, engage the bloody warriors as they descend the tight passage. Marikez and Rosa start firing on them. Lia huddles behind, tightening her fingers with nervous tension. The Nezra scatter wild, abandoning their horses and diving for cover.
Rosa lets go another shot, then bucks forward as an arrow tears through a chunk of her thigh. Lia spins and sees two warriors stealing away behind a concrete wall. She calls to Marikez, then works herself down to street level and hides in a vine-covered niche. Rosa leans back against the rusted iron beams, ripping her robe and tying a quick tourniquet around her leg while Marikez covers her.
One of the warriors steps out and lobs a shot, then shirks back. Marikez fires and misses. When the warrior steps out a second time, Marikez is ready and his arrow lodges in the man’s ribs. He stumbles back and falls, and two more arrows follow in quick succession, striking his leg and back.
Across the barricade, a stillness has settled, both sides shielding themselves from view. Unseen archers fire on Rosa and Marikez. They stumble over the beams and lurch down the other side and run toward shelter.
Lia reaches to her side and withdraws the knife she took from Marikez’s armory, short-bladed with braided leather around the handle. She pushes her head through the vines then swiftly pulls it back. A warrior treads fast along the outer wall. As he passes the shadowed niche, Lia swings her arm through the tangle of vines and runs her knife into the soft hollow of his chin. He seizes onto her arm and bucks to the ground, and she keeps pushing until she sees the blade rise between his teeth and puncture the roof of his mouth, and further still until his eyes flicker out and his body jitters to a stop.
She scampers out and runs to join Marikez, picking her way over the pile. An arrow thumps off the trunk of a sapling growing out the mound, and Lia rolls to her side and nestles herself amidst the flaking metal beams. She crawls under the snarled mass of junk and edges closer to the other side of the street. Bodies are strewn haphazardly, some still moving. Beyond that, it is vacant.
A short distance separates her from Marikez’s hideout. She takes a deep breath and rushes across, loping awkwardly on her wounded knee. An arrow strikes neatly in the ground before her and she flinches back. Marikez steps out and shoots toward the source of the attack, giving her enough time to cover the distance and join them under the fallen wall. A smattering of arrows chocks off the concrete.
The outnumbered Nezra have vanished. Birds chirp dulcetly from the slanted rafters of the slowly listing buildings. Marikez looks from window to window, searching out their archers. He sees one on the forward corner, across the street.
“I have to find the others. Rosa, can you shoot?”
She nods. Lia takes her hand and pulls her toward the edge of the wall, then hands her the bow.
“Watch there,” he says, pointing up toward the corner, then he steps out and hoists himself atop the wall and runs down the other side.
He dives in an open storefront and scans around. A whispered call issues from the darkness and five of his men step forward. He beckons them over and motions across the street.
“There,” he says, “on the second level.”
“Jivann is there,” says the man to his side. “On the ground.”
Marikez stares into the shadows, then risks a call.
“Jivann.”
A lean young man shies his head out and locks eyes with him across the boulevard. Marikez points to the floor above him and Jivann nods and disappears through the interior of the building.
They stiffen their backs and watch the window. Out of the blackness, a body hurtles through and crashes to the ground.
“Quick,” hisses Marikez, tearing out onto the street.
They careen around the corner, drawing a weakening barrage of arrows, and slip into the adjacent structure. Three young warriors stand flat against the wall, out of arrows, gripping their machetes with sinewy arms. One slashes at Marikez, the blade grazing along his arm. He parries and beats the blade away, then lunges in for his own attack. The warrior counters with a flash of swordplay and the clanging of metal on metal erupts in the confined space, Marikez beating his sword down repeatedly on his stiff-armed opponent, driving the man’s blade lower and lower until Marikez lands a blow to his forehead and cracks a seam into his skull. He falls limp, and Marikez spins to his back and sees two fallen Nezra, draining blood into the dry ground. One of his own lies next to them, with a rough slit open at the base of his sternum.
Marikez steps to the open frontage. Quiet. He signals and they bolt around to the next building, nearly collapsed, with no point of entry. They keep moving down the way, expecting a hail of arrows that does not come.
“Is that all?”
Pounding hooves drone louder and Taket flashes past in a blur, making straight for Lia’s little hideaway. He rides with a knife between his teeth, gripping the reins taut with his only hand.
Marikez drops his blade and unfastens his bow, fumbling for an arrow. Two of his men flank him and loft an arrow apiece, both missing. Marikez finally gets off his shot and it goes off-kilter, wobbling through the air and bouncing off Taket’s back.
Lia perches behind Rosa and feeds her an arrow. Taket rumbles toward them, releasing the reins and gripping the knife out of his clenched teeth. He lea
ps onto the wall and jolts toward Rosa and she pierces him in the hip joint with a quick arrowshot and he falters and skids to a halt. Lia reels backwards as he swings his blade through the air, prone on the ground and shoving forward with his legs, missing her face by a hair’s breadth. Rosa draws on him, narrowing in for the kill.
“Hold,” shouts Marikez from down the way. “Don’t kill him.”
They skulk back along the fallen trusses and look around at the body-strewn street. Marikez waits, watching for more warriors, then slowly steps out and makes his way toward them, his men countering behind, sweeping their bows across the rows of jagged window openings.
“I want to see what he knows,” says Marikez, drawing near.
They stand in a loose semi-circle around the struggling Taket. He sits up, facing them, maimed, and with only his knife to defend himself. He leers at Lia with pure contempt in his eyes, then raises his blade and opens a thin red slash along his throat.
Marikez throws up his hands, then turns sorrowfully to take stock of his injured and dead. Rosa limps down the street, joining the others, and they move from one recess to another, collecting the fallen arrows and rounding up the horses.
Lia steps gingerly away, patting her hands on her hips. “Balazir,” she calls out sweetly.
He comes to her at once.
Night falls on the Temple. Solemn commoners retire early to their cottages, awaiting good tidings from the field. Long days these have been, anxious for their brave Sons to return. One by one, their candles snuffed, the humble little cottages blink out and join the peaceful darkness and the provinces fall to slumber.
Alone on the high terrace, Arana watches over them. He glimpses the quarry road, winding off to the north, where a younger Arana once walked with his father to see the unearthing of the great stones that would become his Temple. Simpler days, to be sure, but he can no longer remember if they were better. He tilts his mug and drinks bitter wine.