by Leigh Evans
I didn’t have to ask whom he meant by “them.”
Who runs while others ride?
I lifted my nose to the catch the breeze, testing the sweet Merenwynian air for confirmation. I got woods, and Fae magic, and the pungent, fox-astringent scent of Trowbridge’s stress, and then …
“Wolves,” I said.
“Not just wolves.” Dry despair in his whisper. “The Raha’ells.”
* * *
My breath caught when the Raha’ells came hurtling out of the woods. There were people—that’s how I saw them at first. Not as feared warriors who might wish to kill my mate. Not even as wolves in human form. I just saw them as people.
Women, children, youths. Twenty or more people running for their lives.
I leaned forward, my fist going to my mouth.
The fastest runner of Trowbridge’s old pack was very young, not a teen, but a boy. Ropes of hair streamed behind him as he burst through the trees at top speed. He was armed with a bow, and a quiver of arrows that bounced on the small of his back as he ran.
Merry tightened at my throat, her heat flaring.
Hot on his heels came a woman with hair the color of sunset. She sprinted with a bow gripped in one hand, the other tightly cupped under the round bottom of the child she balanced on her hip. The woman shot a hurried glance upward at the cloud spitting sparks, then sped up, tearing across that field for the shallow crossing, legs pumping.
“We have to warn them,” I said, starting to rise.
He shoved me down hard, his hand splayed on my back. “Stay low!”
“We can’t just watch this! We have to do something.” I pushed his arm away and surged to my knees. “They’re nothing but kids and women; we have—”
He threw himself on top of me.
“Let me go!” I bucked under him.
“Stop it!” he hissed in my ear. “These are Raha’ells! They’ll smell the horses soon and they’ll cut back into the forest. My warriors will be in the rear of the retreat. It’s our way.” His thighs were weights on mine, his arms steel brackets, his jaw a hard pressure on my neck. “My pack knows these woods better than I know Creemore.”
My gut dropped at his use of the possessive pronoun.
It plunged further when a moment later the tail of the Raha’ells came crashing through the undergrowth. Contrary to Trowbridge’s words, they were no brawny warriors bringing up the rear, and the pack did not as one veer off into the woods again. Instead, they ran for the river and certain ambush.
“Jesus, where are they?” Trowbridge’s tone was raw as flayed skin. “Where are my warriors?”
Dead, I thought in sudden instinct.
I huddled into myself, my lover’s weight a stone upon my back.
* * *
Alone, unburdened by children or loyalties, I suspect most of the women could have easily outpaced the menaces behind them. But it was apparent that for Trowbridge’s old pack there was no such thing as every woman for herself.
Nobody outran the kids.
Those little wolves who could sprint on their own were doing so. But on either side, they were flanked by mature female warriors. Behind them, more women, shouting encouragement and threats. Their words were spoken in a tongue foreign to me, but I understood them. “Don’t look behind you. Don’t look up at that cloud. Hurry. Run.”
Pinned beneath Trowbridge’s taut body, I could taste the sour spike of his scent on my tongue and feel the suppressed violence cording his muscles. His growing anguish only added to my own swelling sense of claustrophobia.
I was deeply angry with him. For protecting me when he should have been protecting them. For not being the fearless, brave guy I’d thought he was. For proving himself to be a smart man instead of a heedless one.
I wanted a hero.
And I wanted him off of me.
Because I was going to be forced to watch and bear witness and doing so was going to be a very bad thing. It was going to push me across some threshold that up to that minute I hadn’t known existed. And I knew in my guts that I wasn’t ready for it. My life in Creemore had been piss-poor preparation for whatever I was going to see.
I could hear the drumming of their horses’ hooves getting closer.
Any second now …
The Fae erupted from the forest.
* * *
The full visual impact of a cavalry charge can twist your bowels. Anyone in the path of that incoming of violence would have to be either an idiot or a very brave woman not to scatter in the face of it—it’s a wave of death pouring toward you.
If I live to be ninety, I’ll never forget the spine-chilling calls those riders made as they thundered across the field—mocking hoots that sharpened into high yips as they bore down on the pack.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” said Trowbridge, turning the swearword into an obscene prayer. A few of the mounted men carried spears, but most carried cavalry swords; the latter being long, thin, and slightly curved.
No one can be “born ready” for this world.
I need to go home.
The bulk of the Raha’ells running from the horsemen had reached the Penance before the horsemen had covered half the clearing. As the women waded across it, they held their children high and leaned forward against the current’s pull. I scanned the trees on the opposite bank. I could see no sign of the archers who I knew waited on the other—the safe—side of the river.
I started silently praying, Don’t kill them. Please don’t kill them.
For those on the run, it must have felt like a moment of false reprieve before the axe’s fall, because just short of the water their pursuers reined in their mounts sharply and came to a wheeling stop.
The last to enter the river was an old man who ran with a jerking two-step that set his grizzled dreads dancing. As he splashed into River of Penance, he turned to look behind him.
I saw relief spread across his face.
He thought the horses weren’t going to follow them across the river.
He was right.
* * *
He lived with the hope of freedom for another four or five staggering feet before the archers stepped out from the opposite bank’s tree line.
“Don’t kill them,” I repeated. My lips moved against clenched fist, and my breath bounced back to me. It was warm and scentless for we Fae have no scent.
Inside me, my wolf began moaning.
Down in the river, there was much wheeling in dismay and aborted dodges. Two women started splashing downstream, but a rider cut off their retreat, herding them back into the center of the shallow crossing. I had my own instant of false hope then: for a second, I let myself believe that it was going to be a bloodless capture, a comfort that was swiftly shattered when the fleet-footed youth who’d led the rush into the plain raised his weapon.
His bow was taunt, his arrow pinched between his fingers.
“There’s too many of them, Varens,” I heard Trowbridge’s despairing whisper.
Oh, Goddess, don’t make me watch this. Don’t make my mate see this.
The boy let loose his arrow.
His aim was off. His missile grazed the Royal Guardsman’s horse high on the shoulder. As the animal reared, front hooves flashing, back legs dancing, Varens scrambled to pull another arrow from his quiver.
Not fast enough.
A javelin whistled through the air.
What followed—the boy wavering, then falling in slow motion to his knees, the cavalryman nosing his horse to his victim intent on spear retrieval, all of that—played out in a dreadful slow motion for me.
A woman let out a keening cry.
The youth fell sideways, the long spear still sticking out of his mid-section.
And with that, I stopped feeling. With a paid observer’s detachment, I noted important details, which later I’d replay in an endless loop. Like how quickly the current pulled the ribbon of red down the river and the fact that Trowbridge’s back had arched as if that spear had gone thr
ough his gut and spine, not the boy’s.
This was the Fae? I thought numbly. These were my mother’s people? Oh, sweet heavens … my people?
Suddenly the old man lurched sideways. He threw himself at the leg of a rider, grappling to unseat him. The Fae cut him down with two slashes of his blade.
The other riders surged inward, squeezing the people into a tighter knot. An arrow whizzed harmlessly through the air, blades flashed, and another body dropped facedown in the water.
It was going to be a massacre.
I pressed my fist so hard against my mouth I tasted copper.
* * *
The low cloud hovering over the scene let out an earth-shaking rumble. It was an unnatural noise, too deep for a thunder roll, too loud for a storm clap. One of those children let out a terrified shriek.
And damn me if that cloud didn’t respond.
It let loose another hellish grumble.
The young ones started crying en masse then, and with each sob and terrified cry the murky nebula visibly swelled and darkened, seemingly gaining nourishment from the anguish within each terrified howl.
One of the Fae shouted something, at which a few of the Raha’ells dropped their weapons. But some held on to them, their gaze moving to the redheaded woman.
She stood tall, a toddler on her hip.
Her free hand held her bow.
The lead horseman shouted again. His meaning was clear, for he jerked his head at her weapon. She stared him down. Red-faced, he shouted another order, this time shorter and more compact. The redhead turned her hip slightly, so that the child who rode it wasn’t in direct line of his fury.
“Drop it, Ophelia,” whispered Trowbridge. “Don’t be stupid. Drop it.”
Then, a lone rider emerged from the dark woods.
“Fuck,” said Trowbridge.
I knew the man on the chestnut stallion, though I’d only seen him though borrowed dreams and nightmares of my own making. And each time he’d filled me with enough fear and rage to justify murder.
* * *
In real life, the Black Mage was all about discrete menace. His clothing was all shades of black, from deepest ebony to pearl gray. His boots were glossy, his jacket tight against his body. His hair was a long sheet of straight dark silk.
He rode well, sitting in the saddle as if born to it.
Arrogance set in the downward curl of his lip; the mage urged his mount into the water. His horse fussily picked its way through the pebbles, tail lifted.
“He’ll kill them,” I murmured with awful certainty.
I felt Trowbridge’s jaw flex. I didn’t think he’d answer, but he did. “No,” he said flatly. “He’ll want them for the Spectacle. We still have a chance to free them.”
The self-titled wizard made his way to the rider whose horse had been injured by Varens’s arrow. The skittish mount wasn’t buying any of his rider’s efforts to soothe him. He was hock deep in a busy river, and he had a cloud over his head and the scent of blood and predators stinging his nostrils.
“Wild-eyed” did not even come close to describing that horse.
Mouth pulled down, the Black Mage studied the blood oozing from the shallow gash on the wounded creature’s shoulder. The mage removed his riding glove with short, tugging jerks. Then, leaning sideways in his saddle, he placed his hand flat on the quivering animal’s injury.
He began to talk, his tone a soft croon.
It took the Black Mage all of eight seconds to heal the wound.
Once finished, the mage bestowed upon the animal a few comforting strokes, then straightened in his own saddle. He spoke to the rider, deliberately raising his voice so that all could hear him. I didn’t know what he was saying—the language barrier prevented me from following—but Trowbridge sucked in a hard breath at his words.
“What did he say?” I whispered.
My mate didn’t answer.
The mage’s words had vastly cheered the rider of the injured horse. He handed his reins to another and splashed his way to Varens’s body. There he unsheathed his knife, then sank to a crouch beside the corpse.
I wanted to close my eyes. I couldn’t.
I had to see.
The cavalryman lifted his arm high, poised to bring it down in a strike. He held the blade in a grip better meant for hammering than for scalping.
Sweet heavens, he’s taking the boy’s teeth.
I whimpered in horror and Trowbridge’s arms tightened around me painfully.
Once finished with his gruesome task, the Royal Guardsman straightened, pocketing his tokens with a satisfied grin. He cast a question to his mage, whose response was a languid wave in the general direction of the rapids. The rider put a boot to the boy’s body and pushed him in the swifter-moving current.
I closed my eyes.
A droplet of warm water splashed on my cheek and dribbled to the seam of my mouth. I licked it away and tasted the salt of Trowbridge’s tear.
And I forgave him.
For not being my white knight on the white horse and for being rational in the face of danger, instead of recklessly courageous. For crying silently as he held me in a punishing grip.
I nudged his hand. He wrapped his fingers hard over mine.
The River of Penance accepted the Fae token and carried Varens downstream. With stunned disbelief, I watched that boy’s progress over rocks until he was carried around the bend of the water. Then, I looked down to Trowbridge’s hand, tightened so rigidly into a fist around mine that the veins on the back of it stood out in angry relief.
One of the archers began yelling at the group, repeating the same phrase.
“What is he saying?” I asked.
Trowbridge’s voice was rough. “‘Drop your weapons.’”
The redhead appeared to be deliberating the wisdom of doing so. And to me, it seemed that as long as she held up the rest would too.
“Let it go, Ophelia,” Trowbridge said. “Be smart. I’ll find you. I’ll find all of you.”
The Black Mage cocked his head at the redhead and clicked his teeth, and within a splash or two he and horse were a monument of arrogance parked a hair’s breadth away from the redhead’s arrow.
Flickers of reflected red light dappled his face.
He studied the woman for a long, long moment. Then, without breaking eye contact, he pointed upward to the cloud seething overhead. Lazily, he sketched a wide circle with his finger. Immediately the dark mass started to turn—its movement sluggish at first, though it gained momentum with each circuit.
When the cloud swirled like a whirlpool in search of a likely sinkhole, a nubbin appeared at the bottom of a mass. This button sprouted a tail, which in turn became a directionless thread of twisting wind.
The Black Mage turned his hand palm up.
A rumble of thunder, a protest of magic being condensed and compressed, then the whole twisting funnel streaked downward like one of the archer’s arrows. It landed square on the center of the wizard’s palm.
Was it showmanship? Or did the magic need to lick his life lines and test the shallow depth of his heart line? The twister of wind danced upon the mage’s skin for four long seconds.
Then he flicked his head and the entire cloud of magic and thunder simply poured itself downward, like oil poured through a funnel, to disappear into the wizard’s open hand.
A cruel smile tweaked his mouth.
He made a fist, then nudged his horse forward toward the woman who’d dared to defy him. She stumbled backward until she and her toddler stood perilously close to the foot of the rapids. She could go no farther, though she kept her arrow primed on the mage, who smiled down at her from his mount.
Cool as ice, the Black Mage leaned sideways in his saddle. He stretched to hold his fist—the one that had swallowed that terrible cloud—over the head of her child.
The boy looked up and wailed.
The redhead’s resistance snapped. The Raha’ell woman turned her bow horizontal, and with defeat we
ighing her shoulders, she dropped it. A moment later, the rest of the Rha’ells followed suit.
The Black Mage threw back his head and laughed.
Then he opened his fist.
It was empty.
Chapter Three
The Black Mage departed soon after, leaving the tiresome duty of prisoner patrol to those lesser beings.
It took some time for the guardsmen to rope the captured Raha’ells together—a perplexing problem when there were so many staggered heights—and took longer still for the Fae to retrieve their gruesome bounty from the dead. But eventually, the place of the Raha’ell ambush was empty, except for the floating detritus of forfeited bows and arrows.
When the sounds of the forest resumed, Trowbridge rolled off me. We didn’t look at each other. We did not speak. There was too much to say but no useful words to fit the complicated emotions stirred. I’d lost some faith in Trowbridge and found most of it again, but I’d never see him quite the same way. But then again, I suspected I’d never see anything in quite the same light again.
It’s not every day you witness a genocide in process.
That’s what it had been, even if my brain had difficulty accepting it.
I want to go home.
* * *
We waded into the River of Penance. The first body was the old man’s. His mouth was bloodied and open, his missing canine teeth an affront. My mate bent over him. Trowbridge murmured something—his tone too low for me to catch it—then closed the man’s eyes.
He left the old man’s body where it was, then turned for the next.
A few feet farther downstream, a woman’s body lay lodged in some bulrushes. Trowbridge didn’t reach out to touch her as he had the first body. Instead, he squatted on the backs of his heels, arms resting on his thighs, his shuttered gaze fixed on the quill embroidery work on her quiver of arrows.
Girding himself, I thought.
Who was she to him? A friend? Or worse—a lover?
Oh, please not that.
Sickness washed over me as I crouched beside him.
The dead woman’s dreads were long and the river’s current strong. Undulating ropes of hair streamed over her face, offering brief glimpses of a cheek, a nose, a sharp chin, and a defaced mouth. The angle of her head was wrong; I thought her neck might be broken.