She was nearly at the ledge when a helmeted head appeared and a hand extended towards her. She grasped his wrist and with a sudden motion was dragged up and over the edge of the cliff.
Maja collapsed onto her back and uncontrollable laughter shook her body. It felt so good to have firm ground beneath her. The world stopped tilting and spinning. Everything was solid again.
The man slipped his helmet off and tucked it under his arm.
“Wayan!” she said. “I didn’t think I would make it. We made it.”
He stared unblinkingly.
Maja rolled onto her hands and knees. She felt such relief. “But they will come for us. I need you.” She nodded over the edge of the cliff. “Help Sri up and over, too.”
Wayan shook his head. “He’s not coming.”
“What?” Maja crawled over to the edge, getting lower to the ground until she was slithering forward on her belly, and she peeked over. The cliff was empty. Sri was not on the wall. He was not climbing. He was at the bottom of the cliff surrounded by the soldiers in yellow. Towering among them was Khirtan who looped a rope around the boy’s neck and knotted it firmly.
Then she saw the others. Hanu, Gima, and Arimanu, bloodied, on their knees, their hands bound behind their backs. Her companions, those who had waited for her, had been captured while trying to buy her time.
Maja wanted to shout, to curse, at the fiend below. But the words stuck in her throat and the world spun so wildly that she felt as if she were about to be flung from the ground and into the heavens.
29
MAJA CLUNG TO the trunk of a tree and watched the sea from Land’s End.
She stared through her tears at the boat coursing to the north. Its sails ballooned with the wind and it raced across the white caps, water exploding as its bow slapped against the waves. Yellow-armored men and women worked the deck and the rigging but there was no sign of Sri or the captured Fallen. She imagined them below the deck, the torturer meticulously laying out his metal instruments while the boy blubbered and cried. No one deserved the pain Sri was about to encounter. She imagined the horror that Hanu and the others must have felt to return to the clutches of Khirtan.
“A nightmare.” Maja turned to the sound of Wayan’s voice. She had not heard him cross the courtyard of the compound.
“I failed,” she answered.
He absently ran his fingers over the scars twining his arms. “They are returning to the nightmare.”
“I should have gone back down. I let them put him on that boat. I broke my promise to protect him.”
“It’s more than just Sri. Gima, Arimanu, and Hanu.” He had removed his helmet and held it tucked beneath his arm. The light of the fading sun made the scars stand out on his face, as if they swelled in anger.
“Khirtan’s going to torture and kill him,” she said.
He nodded with pressed lips.
“We can’t just let that happen.”
“We let our brothers down.”
The boat slid across the sea, north towards the Duke’s castle, north towards the mouth of the river that led to the capital. She remembered the smell of burnt flesh, the screams of her companions that made the hair on her arms and neck stand up, the pain that shrunk all existence to a sharp piece of metal.
“I’m going after him,” she said.
“You? Against an army? Back into the Hellhole? Are you crazy”
“Not just me,” she said. Maja released her grip from the tree and walked back towards the former temple where the Demon Guards hid in the shadows.
“You’re mad!” shouted Bui. “What you propose is death!”
Maja stood in the gathered semicircle of Demon Guards. The shadows of trees stretched long. The campfire crackled and flared with new wood.
“Staying here is death,” she said. “Look at you all. Shattered reflections of who you once were.”
“Can’t unshatter this shit,” said Bui, rapping against his mask with his knuckle. “You act as if you aren’t as broken as we are. I saw what they did to you. I saw those blades driven deep. That not-yet-a-child torn from your belly.”
Maja bit down hard on her lower lip. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. “Yes, we’re broken. Held together with scars. But does that mean we hide at Land’s End? Is this our grave? Are we resigned to never leave?”
The Demon Guard shifted uncomfortably. Giant Trilli ponderously shook his head. Ji whispered something to Bui.
Maja looked to Wayan. She wanted him to speak up on her behalf. But he held his tongue as if it was him and not Arimanu whose tongue had been removed.
“Leaving is one thing,” said Bui. “Rescuing some fake heir is another thing.”
“You’re a coward!”
“The Hellhole! You want us to willingly go back! You are fucking crazy!” He slammed his fist on the low table next to him and a bowl of rambutan bounced off the surface and onto the floor, the round fruit rolling in the dirt.
“I’m scared, too,” Maja whispered. “The boy is an innocent. How can we live with ourselves if we let someone else be forced under that demon’s hand?”
“Not our business.”
“It’s our responsibility. We need to go the Hellhole, rescue the boy, and drive a blade through Khirtan’s black heart. If we don’t, we’ll never truly be alive again. We’ll never be free.”
“Who cares about the boy?” asked Bui.
“And we leave Hanu and Gima and Arimanu?”
“You only care about the boy. I can see through you.”
“We return for them all.”
“I’ll go,” said Wayan.
“Oh, don’t be a bloody fool,” said Bui, his bared teeth visible through the slit in his mask. “We’ll die there. We’ll have escaped for nothing.”
“Better to die with swords in our hands, fighting for something good, than to wallow away in sorrow and misery. Time for the Fallen to rise again.”
That night, despite the troubles of the day, sleep did not come easy for Maja. She lay in her gently swaying hammock, a light sarong draped over her. She drifted in that territory between wakefulness and dreaming, the line blurring and constantly moving. But the sleeplessness allowed her the time to think about all that had happened in the few days since she and the pirate crew had landed on that island. They had leapt onto that sand, laughter and jokes filling the air, and then less than a day later, all of the pirates, all her companions for the past several years, dead. Murdered by Khirtan.
The worst was losing Captain Pak. A friend. One who promised peaceful days ahead. The life she could have chosen. He had been murdered, betrayed by Garu, right before her eyes. She winced at the thought of not having turned back to save him.
And that was just the beginning, since that arrival in the village, she had been running, risking her life trying to save a boy she knew nothing about. Her flight led her back to Yavasa and back to the Fallen. And with that came the sorrow and regret at having abandoned her companions to deal with her own pain. Then she discovered that Sri was the lost heir to the throne, the one chance for the bloodline to remain unbroken. When she thought she would be able to deliver him into safety, she was met with deception and in the end the boy was stolen.
She needed to get him safely to the capital. Not just because he was the heir to the throne, not just because his return might win her the graces and forgiveness to serve in the capital, but also because he was a child whose life was threatened and in this moment Maja could protect him when her own child she could not.
She rose out of dream to a pale gray sky against the dark slumbering sea. Already others were up. They assembled their swords and strapped on their armor. After all this time the Demon Guard rose again.
Wayan sat in the hammock next to Maja. He rubbed at the sleep in his eyes. “They whispered long into the night. Black words were spit out of their mouths. But in the end, they sail with us. We sail north to the Hellhole. Never thought I’d see this day.”
“They know w
hat they risk?” asked Maja.
“No turning back. But I think they’ve realized that Land’s End was always meant as a tomb for them. This isn’t going to turn out well, Maja. You know that, don’t you?”
“It’s the right thing to do. The only thing to do.”
“Sometimes the right thing to do is the wrong thing. And, by the gods, it’s going to be a bloody affair.”
“Wayan, we’ll survive this. We’ll arise glorious on the other side. The God-Emperor will spill his tears in gratitude.”
“One of these days you’re going to wake up from your dream, girl. He shits and pisses just like the rest of us. We only join you for our lost brothers and sister. Not for the heir. Do you not see who we owe our true loyalty to?”
“When we arrive at the capital, everything will change. You’ll see that. You will.”
He snorted and then spit into the dirt. He swung forward in his hammock until he was able to slide his legs out and onto the ground. “Get some food. They want to leave soon. Maybe catch that ship before it reaches the Hellhole. But I doubt that’ll happen. That’s not the way our luck runs.”
Maja rose out of her hammock and prepped her armor and weapons.
Ji was rolling a barrel of water towards the ledge. Ceramic pots and hemp sacks were stacked there. A winch had been dragged out from somewhere in the compound to lower supplies over the edge towards the boat below.
Bui, his face hidden behind his helmet, was strapping metal claws onto Trilli’s giant forearms, the long blades of metal replacing the fingers that Khirtan had chopped off and fed to his dogs.
She heard the clang of metal from within the compound and turned to see Wayan. He was suiting up. He slipped a hardened leather armor tunic over his head and carefully cinched the side. He winced with the tightening of the armor against his scarred flesh. Then he looped his belt around his waist and adjusted the sword scabbard. He had lost his Sun Sword and relied only on the Moon Sword. Then he picked up his helmet from his feet and slipped it over his head.
The helmet had been forged into the face of a demon, features exaggerated, sharp teeth emerging from snarling lips, and short horns popping out of his forehead. Once the mask had been painted in brilliant red, white, and gold. Now the colors had faded and the paint peeled back so that the dull black metal showed through like scars across his face.
When he was done preparing, he scuttled out of the compound and glanced towards Maja. She hoped to see some encouragement in his eyes but they were lost to the dark shadows within the mask.
She wanted to call after him to ask him why he stood up for her the night before, to learn why he had changed his mind. But he moved quickly to the ledge, shouted a few words to the others, and then backed over the cliff and began his descent.
Maja finished securing her swords and then shuffled towards the edge of the cliffs. Even more than a dozens steps away from the face, the ground heaved and spun beneath Maja’s feet, and she felt as if a small invisible hand drove her towards the precipice. She fell to her knees with a groan and dug her fingers into the earth.
Ji, cinching ropes around the barrels and sacks, looked up.
“Lash me on, too,” said Maja. “Otherwise I’ll never make it down. The heights.”
Ji shook her head. “How you got this far, I’ll never know. Come to me.” And she extended a hand.
30
THE SUN HAD already fallen behind the distant interior volcanoes and still Maja and the remaining Fallen had not even caught sight of the sails of Khirtan’s fleeing vessel. She huddled on the prow of the ship wrapped in a sarong against the sea spray and the burgeoning wind. Far to the east, a storm smeared the sky. She watched it tumble towards the south. She was not ready to face another storm, and hoped that this was just the first in a string of lucky events. Everything had gone so wrong over the past several days. She needed things to swing in the other direction.
“We’re not going to catch them,” said Bui. He had crept forward without Maja hearing him. That bothered her. She hardly ever allowed anyone to sneak up on her. She wondered if she was losing her touch.
“They might pull to shore for the night,” she said. “We can be on them before they know it.”
“They’re not going to do that. The boy is too valuable. The fucking heir to the goddamned throne.” He tugged at his mask with a finger, exposing the scarred flesh of his cheek for a brief moment.
“Don’t be so hard on him. What he’s suffered. He’s just a boy.”
“And you think he should sit upon the throne?”
“By the gods, he’s been through a lot. Abandoned by his parents. Struggling on his own among strangers. Fiends trying to kill him.”
“Is that what this is?” Bui clung to the ropes at the front of the boat leaning into the chop of the boat fighting the waves as if he were riding a galloping water buffalo. “Do you even care about rescuing our companions? Your brothers and sister? Or is it only about the boy? Have you become so cold-hearted?”
“The boy deserves someone to look out for him.”
“You see yourself in him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Bui laughed above the cracking of the waves against the bow. “A child abandoned. In a land of hostile strangers. A child in need of rescue. A child who could rise. Your own story. You can’t change your own history. You can’t roll back time with a good deed.”
“I may never return to my own parents, my family, but Sri doesn’t have to suffer through what I did.”
“He’s a little shit, Maja. He’s nothing. And he’s nothing compared to those who fought alongside you for all those years. Those who put their lives on the line to stand with you.”
“He’s a child.”
“The rot is there already. He’s one of them. Not one of us. We should leave well enough alone. No need to rescue him. Just our brothers and sister, and then we should turn east. We can be free of this miserable empire of mold. There’s land out there east. A great continent. We can start over. Become what we were always meant to be.”
“The boy needs to be rescued.”
“Look around you,” he waved his hand to the others on the boat. “Look at us, the scarred, the mutilated, the once proud and strong, now broken. We need to be rescued more than the boy does. Give up the chase. Let’s get our companions and turn the boat east. We’ll disappear into the rising sun. We deserve this more than anything else.” He swung around on the rope and brought his masked face close to hers. “Because you know this can only end one way. In death and blood. Are you willing to sacrifice us, your blood brothers and sisters, for a child you don’t even know? In the end, you’ll have to decide who it is you are willing to stand for. It can’t be everyone. You will need to choose.”
The eastern sky had darkened. The wind skirted across the waves, making white caps lift from the depths. The coast would be dark. It would guide them safely north, closer by the moment to Sri.
“He’s a child,” said Maja. “I can’t abandon him.”
The ship coursed north through the night. Ji held the wheel and guided them through the waters, the coast a dark blob on their left. The wind had died to a gentle kiss against Maja’s cheeks, but somehow with the barked orders of Ji, the others adjusted sails enough to keep them moving at a steady, slow pace.
The wall of storm clouds to the east had traveled south avoiding them. Maja was relieved that they would not need to deal with that as well.
She heard soft steps on the planks and turned, expecting to see the shadow of Bui. She thought he came to chastise her again and tell her she needed to decide between the boy and the Fallen. But she recognized the hunched shape of Wayan. She smelled him, too, the familiar scent of the forest, a musky smell that brought her back to being wrapped in each other’s arms so long ago.
He perched on the gunwale of the ship, quiet, staring out over the stars reflected in the sea. The waters were calmer now and ten thousand sparks of light bent on the surface.
“We may not catch them,” he said. “We may lose them.”
Maja wished he would come closer. They had been so close to each other now for days but had not crossed the border to intimacy, even if it were simply the intimacy of being within the warmth given off by each other’s bodies. He had not allowed that. He had maintained a distance.
“We will find them one way or the other. They will not kill the boy. He is too valuable,” she said.
“We can only bring them so far,” he said. In the dark, he nodded back towards the others. She wished that she could see his face. She wanted to see how his eyes looked at her. She wanted to see if he too held tears back.
“Why did you change your mind?” she asked. “Why come after the boy?”
“You are a fool to return to the Hellhole. The boy is not worth the risk.”
“But you risk yourself for him?”
“For the others. I know where my loyalties lie.” He held his breath for a moment. “And for you, you idiot.”
Maja’s words caught in her throat, and she wanted to answer but she felt as if she would just blubber.
“We lost so much,” he continued. “Haunts me every night. Not just what Khirtan did to me. But what he did to you and to our child. He stole the future from us.”
Maja swallowed hard, sucked in a deep breath, her lips trembling. “I often imagine what our life would have been like if that fateful day never happened. We never should have failed in our duty.”
Wayan suddenly slammed his fist against the side of the boat. “Still this?! This is what drives me insane! We failed in nothing. We protected the heir. That was our charge. The Duke’s son sipped the poison. If anyone failed, it was the God-Emperor for not standing up for us. He is a stain on this world for his treachery.”
The Rise of the Fallen (The Rotting Empire Book 1) Page 18