Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  She stamped out the sparks the torch had spread in the grass, picking up the brand after sheathing her knife. She held the guttering light over the bodies. One was a greenhat with the side of his head stove in, his identifying cap soaked in blood. The other was a thin man with a nasty wound on his side and bruising on his forehead and his bearded cheeks. She was about to move on when he took a ragged breath.

  She dropped to a knee and let her bowstave fall out of her hand. “Easy, easy,” she murmured. She drew her knife again, used it to cut ragged strips off one of the dead greenhat’s cloaks, and began to staunch his wound with them.

  “Stop, stop,” he croaked. “I’m done. I know it. Another wound like this’sun in m’back. I did time as a soldier,” he added, his voice rasping and growing fainter. “Nothin’ t’be done.”

  She pressured the wound anyway, and he feebly slapped at her hands. “Not helping. Save t’others.” He coughed, his breath rattled in his throat. “I got the bastards though, didn’t I?”

  “You did. What’s your name?”

  “Gend,” he wheezed. “Tell Shary I died sober, eh? For her. For the Mother, I guess. Leave me here. Go.” His were words barely audible now.

  “The Mother doesn’t want you dying for her, Gend,” Idgen Marte whispered. “She’d rather you live for Her, for Shary. Come on. Stand up, I’ll walk you back.”

  He didn’t answer; his hands fell limply to his sides.

  She slid her knife back home, collected her bowstave, and pushed painfully back to her feet. Pursuit seemed to have lost her or broken off. Or I killed enough of them.

  She looked down at Gend’s cooling corpse. “I can’t carry you. And I can’t stop to bury you. But they’ll know what you did, and what you said. I promise you that.” She turned to leave, then turned back and knelt painfully to the ground. She placed a hand over his forehead and gently closed his eyelids.

  Then, searching for words she expected to be difficult and remote only to find them ready to hand, she whispered, “May the Mother find you in the next world, may Her hand guard you, Her tears wipe away your burdens, Her love free you of all your pains.” She turned and started to limp away, muttering fiercely, “He died for you, Mother. He best not have died in vain.”

  Even as she said the words she felt, as much as heard, some tiny ringing note in the chill of the night.

  * * *

  She caught up with the rest of them not even a quarter of a turn later, dragging herself down the road at as fast a walk as she could make, ignoring the pain, forcing it into a part of her mind she could ignore. Lucky Cold-damned shot anyway, she told herself.

  She heard the tired plod of her horse’s steps, heard the quiet, fearful muttering of the folk, heard a calmer voice telling them to quiet down and keep walking. They were shadowy forms, indistinct in the darkness, except for one that kept moving from the back of the group to the front, every point in between, and back. Shary, she thought. Mother, I hope she’s as tough as she seems.

  She called out softly, “It’s me. Idgen Marte. The Shadow. I think I’ve shaken the pursuit.” I think I murdered them all in the dark, actually, but I oughtn’t tell you that. The group stopped as soon as they heard her voice, but she could hear the sighs of relief, the quiet murmurs of thanks.

  Idgen Marte called out again. “There’s a lantern and oil in the saddlebags. I think you can risk it now.”

  As the others halted the horse, pulled exhausted children out of its saddle, and began rummaging in the bags, Shary came towards her with a determined stride.

  “Gend? Did ya find him? He stayed back to hold the bastards off…”

  Idgen Marte wiped her free hand on the back of her trousers, unsure how much good it would do. Then she touched Shary’s arm. The girl’s exposed skin was pebbled with the cold, and shook slightly. “I found him,” Idgen Marte whispered carefully.

  “Then where is…”

  “They found him too, Shary. The soldiers. He wanted you to know that he died for you. For the Mother. And that he did it sober.”

  Even in the dark she could see the girl’s features start to scrunch up, and then saw her fight back the grief, swallowing it, clawing herself free. Idgen Marte recognized that process when she saw it; she’d done it enough herself.

  “And the men that killed him?”

  “Both are dead,” Idgen Marte softened her voice as she went on, but it was like a file against steel no matter what she did. “He’d fought them. Killed one, hurt the other, but he’d taken a wound himself, too big and too deep for me to staunch.”

  “You killed the other?”

  “I did.” She paused. “It’s no small thing, an unarmored man with a truncheon taking on armored men with swords.”

  “Gend was a pretty small man,” Shary replied in a voice that wavered between bitter and sorrowful.

  “Maybe he was once. Not anymore.”

  “Don’t make him into some kind of hero.”

  “I’m not,” Idgen Marte said, casting an eye towards the people fumbling in her saddlebags in the dark behind them.

  “He was a thief and a drunk, and I’m a fool for…” She stopped, bit her lips closed.

  “If he was a thief, or a drunk, he came to the Mother in the end, and he’s earned something for that.”

  “We should go back, bury him, or take him with us,” Shary said, starting to brush past Idgen Marte, who tightened her hand on the girl’s arm.

  “No,” she insisted. “Just because they’ve gone for now doesn’t mean they’ll stay gone. We’ve got to press on. If they come at us in numbers again, I don’t know if I can stop them. We need to make Thornhurst as fast as we can. And I need you to lead these people there. I gave him a benediction when I left him…”

  “A what?”

  “A blessing. A prayer. The Mother will see to his soul, Shary. I promise you.”

  The lantern sparked to life. Shary turned, pulling her too-thin cloak over herself, and softly clapped her hands together. “Enough standing around,” she said, her voice hushed but urgent. “We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

  Idgen Marte followed Shary towards the crowd, seizing her horse’s bridle and leaning on the animal’s weight a bit, to help her walk. She heard some hisses of indrawn breath when she came into the light. She saw her own hand on the bridle, saw the wet stains there on her fingers, her wrist, climbing up the sleeves of her jacket to her elbows.

  She let go of the bridle and retreated to the shadows outside the lantern’s light.

  Chapter 31

  Interlude

  It was good to finally feel proper cold, even if it was a month later than it would’ve been at home. Nyndstir hadn’t seen home, of course, in almost a decade, but he still compared most everything to it.

  And right now hireling work in the baronies was freezing dismal, mostly because he hated being near the glowing-eyed bastards in robes.

  Glowing eyes, glowing mouths, glowing Cold-damned skin. Un-freezing-natural, he thought, as he spent the greyest part of dawn trudging along with other swords-at-hire while one of their employers rode in a large, boxy wagon behind them.

  He started to feel uneasy as soon as they came upon the bodies. Not because they were bodies. Nyndstir Obertsun had seen enough corpses, made enough, woken up next to them, spent time on ships with them. The form of a man that had once been quick and was now gone to the Cold had no effect upon him.

  Nyndstir felt fear because he knew what was coming.

  The wagon creaked to a halt and the hirelings spread out along the road. An odd lot: barony men, one other Islandman, a smattering of dark-skinned Concordat, fair-haired Keersvasters. Only about a dozen men. Not counting what’s in the wagon, he thought. If they’re still men.

  The sound of the steps lowering, the soft footfalls as the sorcerer made his way to the front of his men, the sound of the conten
ted sigh as he looked upon the bodies. “Three more for our cause,” he said, almost brightly. “Strip them.”

  Two were greenhats, Barony Delondeur’s guardsmen in cities and towns big enough to need them. Quickly the mercenaries pulled off their armor, their weapons, laying it all carefully aside. The third was a thin, wiry man, probably in his thirties but looking older, with a nasty wound in his side. One of the greenhats had his head bashed in, while the other looked like a spirit of the night air had grown claws and ripped the side of his neck and top of his shoulder open.

  Nyndstir didn’t assist in stripping the bodies. There was a hierarchy to these things. Men with his experience didn’t pull the shit jobs. They stood around till there was something to kill.

  He made himself watch as the sorcerer drew signs over the bodies, the sickly yellow runes hanging in the air. He’d seen this once already, and found it made his stomach uneasier than the worst sea voyage he’d ever had, but he’d be damned before he’d turn away from it.

  The sign drawn over the thinner, unarmored man dissipated like smoke.

  The sorcerer frowned, leaned over the body again, and drew his hand through the air. Nyndstir heard words on the wind, an obscene whisper he didn’t want to listen to.

  Then a tiny chime, like some silver bell on a dancer’s scarf, and again, the sign vanished, carried away as if by a breeze.

  Nyndstir worked awfully hard to keep a smirk off his face, but he found he liked seeing the sorcerer failing. He just knew better than to be seen liking it, so he stared hard at the dirt while he felt the tension around him thickening.

  “What trickery is this?” The sorcerer ‘s whisper was barely audible, yet something about it raised the hair all down Nyndstir’s neck.

  The sorcerer, a slight figure who hadn’t lifted a hand at real work that any of the men had seen since he’d been hired a few days hence, knelt on the ground. He extended one finger, a tiny beam of light projecting from it, and used it like a hook to rip the shirt and coat straight off the corpse. It came away like paper.

  But where his finger touched the dead man’s flesh, nothing happened.

  He spread his fingers wide, and the glow around them intensified. He began muttering in a harsh and guttural language, and the world seemed to vibrate as the words spilled into it. Yellow light gathered in a cloud around the body as he spoke. He brought his hand down, smacking the flesh of the dead man’s chest.

  And once again, his power vanished like morning mist.

  He stood up, squaring his shoulders. “You,” he said, suddenly whirling on Nyndstir. The Islandman reflexively hefted his axe. He’d seen the sorcerer do terrible things, but he wasn’t going to stand around with his hand on his stones while they were done to him. “Hack that body apart. Spread its pieces where you will as I attend to other business.”

  Nyndstir stood still for a moment, hands wrapped around his axe haft. “I’ll take it off there,” he said, jerking his head to the side of the road behind him, where a copse of pine stood in the near distance.

  “No. I want it done here. I will not ask you twice.”

  The Islandman stood on edge for a moment. I’ll die someday. Maybe soon. But not out of sight o’water, he thought to himself, and so he nodded, spat in his hands, and wrapped them around the haft of his weapon, the smooth, familiar hardwood worn into grooves where his fingers sat.

  He looked down at the body, thankful, at least, that it spared him the sight of the other bodies, and what was happening to them even now. He heard it, the sick, impossible sounds as the sorcerer did his work, the ripping of flesh, the grinding of bone, the squeal of metal. He focused on the body before him. That wound in its side was gruesome; what swords did to unarmored flesh was never pretty. Nyndstir decided that this one must’ve killed the other two men, though he wasn’t sure how. But the thought comforted him.

  I don’t know who you were, you poor bastard brother of battle, Nyndstir thought as he lifted his axe, but you’re better off than the frozen sods you took with you. He raised his axe.

  Chapter 32

  Homecoming and Guests

  Allystaire sat atop Ardent, his and the destrier’s breath both blowing out in great clouds, even now at midday, the few turns ride along the northern track towards the High Road and the Oyrwyn border having left both of them sweating even in the sharp cold. Overloaded saddlebags rode on the horse’s rump, along with an enormous bedroll, and a half dozen wineskins were tied to his saddle’s pommel.

  I hope the boy’s scouting was right, he told himself, not for the first time. Then, aloud, he snorted. “Of course it was.” And in truth, it wasn’t long till the ragged party came into view: one horse, perhaps a score of people walking around it.

  He gently nudged his heel into the grey’s flank, and the massive horse started a deliberate walk up the road to meet them.

  She’s in rough shape, he thought, as Idgen Marte, leading her horse, which bore three exhausted children on its back, came into focus. Her left arm was hanging nearly limp, and sweat had plastered her hair to her scalp, but she walked purposefully. It took even him a moment to realize how she was leaning on the bridle of her horse. He dismounted and came forward to meet them, only to hear her voice in his head.

  Don’t you dare. Them first. I’m walking every step of the way back to Thornhurst on my own. I’ll cut you if you try.

  He pulled his heavy studded glove off his left hand, and saw her eye narrow as he did. “Are any of you hurt?” he asked as he came forward.

  “Just exhausted and footsore, I think,” answered a girl. At least, he labeled her girl but her age was hard to guess. She was thin, and her face looked young, while her eyes did not. Her thinness had the spark of urgent vitality about it, as if she used so much more energy than those around her that her body couldn’t keep up with demand. Indeed, she walked straighter, spoke louder, and met his gaze more evenly than the rest of the crowd.

  “Well, your journey nears its end. Thornhurst is only a few more turns. I brought bread, hot wine, cheese, and warm milk for the little ones.” He lifted the wineskins—which were, indeed, quite warm to the touch—and passed them out, then opened his saddlebags and handed out wrapped bundles. “Blankets as well.”

  “How’d you keep it warm?” The girl who’d spoken earlier had seemed to instantly take charge of the food and drink, passing it where it was needed.

  “What is your name, lass?”

  “Shary. Don’t call me lass. I’m older’n I look,” she replied, her jaw jutting with lightly wounded pride.

  “My apologies, Shary. In answer to your question, I did not keep it warm. If you want to know how it was done, ask the dwarf when we make Thornhurst.” Allystaire paused a moment, then added, “I do not exactly recommend that you ask unless you have a spare quarter turn and a stomach for being told in advance how little of it you can understand.”

  “Eh?”

  “Sorry. There’s a dwarf who did it. Name of Torvul—if you ask him how he did it, he will answer. At length. With a great deal of insult thrown in. I was merely…” He stumbled while looking for the word, and Idgen Marte cut in.

  “Stop tryin’ t’make jests. You’ve no tongue for it. And we’ve not the time to waste standing around, either. Eat and walk.”

  Allystaire sidled up to Idgen Marte as they began to walk, dragging a reluctant Ardent behind him. He slipped his hand onto her shoulder, felt her tense and start to pull away, but it was too late; the Goddess’s song filled his limbs and he pushed the energy into her, like a stream diverted into a dry dyke. He felt her body soaking up the energy, knitting itself, healing, with almost no direction from him.

  Idgen Marte straightened up as if a weight had been taken off her back, let out a small sigh of relief, and shrugged his hand away. “Good enough,” she muttered. “Save it for them if they’ll need it.”

  “Your shoulder was badly mangled.
There was hurt done to the bone, and it would only have gotten worse.”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  Allystaire hmphed and then was silent. “Eventful trip, then?”

  “How’d you know t’look for us? How’d you know I was bringing folk with me?”

  He was silent a moment. “Gideon.”

  “I would’ve guessed Mol.”

  “No. In fact, she says it is getting harder for her to hear…well, we will talk about that at home. About many other things as well. We have guests.”

  “Guests? Who?”

  “I would rather show you than explain,” Allystaire said. “Now mount up on Ardent for the rest of the way.” He stopped, holding the huge grey still. Idgen Marte stared flatly at him for a moment, then turned and walked on.

  “Every step of the way,” she muttered.

  * * *

  “It is hardly Wind’s Jaw keep, which has broken every army that got as far as its towers,” Allystaire said as they approached the newly walled edge of the village of Thornhurst. “Yet it is something, at least,” he said, to Idgen Marte and to the folk that followed them both. The Ashmill Bridge folk seemed palpably relieved to be within sight of a friendly town, and much invigorated by the food shared with them.

  It wasn’t a proper gate, of course, to Allystaire’s thinking. What was needed was stone, and a lot of it, a barbican and flanking towers to give archers good angles, a curving path uphill to a real gate, barred by an aged and fired oak and iron portcullis.

  What they had were lashed timbers and fittings of what iron Torvul could spare, but it swung open and closed and was barred shut with thick, iron-bound planks from the inside. When they passed through it and heard it close, Allystaire felt a tiny buzz of energy, perhaps heard a chime.

  “When did you finish that,” Idgen Marte asked, eyeing it professionally, mouth quirked to one side.

  “Just this morning. Torvul says he is not quite done, that there is something more he must do at sunset. Which, come to think on it, cannot be long.”