Revolutionary Veins

by Rey Balor

  Everyone knew who the pack leaders were.

  There were ten wolflings total that had come to do battle, and each had their role to fulfill. The ones who remained nearest to the Queen’s soldiers were the leaders themselves — an invisible red string trailed from Illias’s wrist to Olena’s wrist, and it forbade them from parting in battle. Even as the camp scurried to grab their medieval weapons, the pair walked forward with little fear. There was no room to be afraid when their hearts pumped with liquid moonlight.

  “First one to grab the flag, eh?” Olena notched another arrow on her bow and let it fly before gesturing toward the tallest building in the encampment. It was a sprawling tent near the middle, and attached to the top, there stood a proud flag for all to see. The blazing star of the five Queens fluttered in the breeze. Take that, and they showed the chained-folk11 all they would need to. “What are we betting this time?”

  Men and women grappled for their weapons and lurched forward with unpracticed steps.12 They were clumsy; Illias was not. A step, and he thrusted his spear toward the first opponent. It impaled his target, and Illias pulled the long weapon from the coughing, flailing man. The spearhead was trapped halfway inside the other’s stomach. No time. Shrieks filled the air. Another false soldier snarled, spit flying, and rushed the wolfling. No thought. A twist, and he rammed the end of his spear against the new threat. The false soldier fell, landing in a pool of her fellow soldier’s — oh. There was a pit in his stomach. Illias turned away, licking his lips. Salt, he tasted salt.

  The fight lasted less than thirty seconds, and by the way the two on the ground moaned, it was clear there were no immediate casualties.13 A headache sprouted, pulsing in time to the ache of his muscles, and all around him blurred. Olena was the only stable element, and he found her easily — a man lay at her feet, hacking up thick, red-black mucus.

  “Honor’s never enough for you, is it?” He shouted back, his spica’s battle mood less than contagious. She smiled, and his lips moved upward automatically to mirror her all the same. “There’s one fresh apple of the year left. Winner takes it.”

  “In that case, we might want to hurry. Damn Theo’s already close.” Olena pointed in the distance, where a form could be seen crawling on the top of that sprawling tent in the middle of camp. From what the pair could tell, there was a small crowd gathering around her, waving their weapons as if that would convince her to come down.

  “Damn Theo’s blind — how is she so close?”

  “I think I’m in love with that woman,” Olena returned with a sigh.

  Those who tried to stand against the pair were quick to fall, but still, none died half-deaths by Illias’s hands. It was only when they came across his spica that their blood poured from them at a rate faster than their wounds could heal, and Olena stepped into the crimson color with little regret. Stained ruby, Olena certainly appeared the part of a hunter, and it made Illias’s stomach curl as he tried to remind himself that there were other colors to the world besides red. It was with an ease that they pushed through the ranks of false warriors. Olena suffered a blow to the side and Illias suffered two arrows to his back, but the Erie-folk were said to be more wolf than man. The only pain wolves felt was when they had to chew off their own legs for a final taste of freedom.

  As the warriors made their way to the center of the vanquished encampment, past all the tents and campfire remnants, they shone with cheer. Some of their opponents allowed their fear to guide their reason and met them, not with swords or fists, but with a simple question of why? The answer was simple, embarrassingly so: to stay alive. The beat of their hearts wasn’t enough. The flush of their skin wasn’t enough. Surviving on the run from tyrants wasn’t enough. Those of the Citadel who believed themselves to be better had twisted a peaceful people to the path towards war, so now, it was the determination to live — truly live — despite it all that drove them.

  In a world so lacking with death, sometimes it was all they could do.

  The defeated ran off, whether to abandon the fight altogether or live to fight another day. The Erie-folk would take no prisoners in the skirmish, and the dead would be dealt with accordingly. In the end, it was a quick fight, and the warriors found themselves almost disappointed by it.

  Olena reached the tent after Theo, but as she tried to pull herself up beside her friend, Illias caught her around the waist and yanked her down. Her expression was worth ten fights, and he ruffled Theo’s wild mess of hair as he passed her to grab hold of the flag.14 Another enemy arrow made a half-hearted attempt in his direction, but it only fueled his victory.

  “For the stars in the sky!” he called, ripping the flag off at its seam. They would burn it in a great fire that night, and he could already hear the crackle of flame. He could also hear Olena’s wide variety of curses from the ground, and the sound of withdrawing footsteps was almost as sweet of music.

  “You’re an ass, Illias Rivers.”

  He jumped down and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  The camp seemed almost eerie without the small group who had tried defending it, but regardless, none of the Erie-folk wanted to stay long. They came only to do what they believed must be done, and then it was time to leave the ruins behind. Red’s Night meant blood, and there was no more that could be shed here. They just had one final sacrifice, one final monument to the cosmos.

  Without a word between them, they began to tug off their skins and boiled leather from their torsos. Some wore simple slips beneath them; others wore nothing at all. Above the left side of each of their chests, however, every one of them had pale lines that marred their skin. Illias had more than twice the number of the others, Olena had twice as many as him, and they were both the first to remove daggers from their boots15 and drag the tips along their skin to add another.

  It was a quiet moment in the middle of an endless cacophony of sound, and the scent of red came sharp into the air with it. With their success marked, the small band began to drift apart, eager to leave but content to explore all the same. Olena began the fire for the bodies, and Illias pulled himself back up onto the tent for a moment’s quiet. The usual post-battle thoughts had begun to sink into him, but they were accompanied with something greater this time.

  The tent’s top sloped precariously, and a few twisted statues were visible standing proudly around the camp, their eyes wide and vacant in worship of some long dead god. Illias remained stretched along the slope, squinting above the flames of light from the small fire in an effort to see the sky. The others were trapped looking below; he was trapped looking above once more. There was a world of guilt trying to pull him down, but he closed his eyes suddenly against it, breath turning shallow in an effort to control it. He was not one to regret things, for regret was often another word for shackles. It snapped around one’s ankles, locking them into a pit they could never quite claw out of.

  What was this feeling then?

  The smell of revolution was heavy in the air, and it was a smell he knew well — but he had found his mind drifting far from it. Dethroning the Queens had never been his priority; he only wanted peace between the Erie-folk and the Citadel. The Queens called them wolflings, but they did not truly understand what that name meant. Teeth bared in the cold of winter, hearts singing beneath the darkened sky, as ghostly as the wind. Now? With such a scent, peace was hardly an option, but anything they attempted would result in another Queen, another dynasty, and another foolish ruler who looked at the forests and saw only wood to be conquered.

  Olena had promised them all freedom if they managed to smash the thrones, but freedom was not something that could be given. It had to be earned and fought for in the simplest way. People had to want freedom, and from his perched spot, he could hear the cries of the town nearby as they tried to regroup themselves and launch an attack of their own. They didn’t care about freedom; they didn’t care for the reasoning behind wolfling raids. They only saw enemies reflected in the dark of their eyes.

  In their ti
me, neither Olena nor himself had wavered from their goal. His spica, his sister in all but blood, had been born wild; he had adopted it to his own. The Erie-folk were his family, and their world was his home, but his mind was not occupied with thoughts of them that night — with this anger taking hold of so many around. It was filled with the color blue: of the sky above the ash, of the wind, of the promise of freedom through another means.

  He let out a small sigh, one filled with a thousand thoughts he found so hard to form, and opened his eyes once more. While his way was frayed, it was not torn, and he would remain fiercely loyal to his own, regardless of the paths they chose. Olena had seen the tips of his soul; his adopted parents had seen the starved animal behind his gaze; the rest of the clan had extended their hand of friendship to him as well. If it came to it, he knew. He knew in the same way he had known what words to say in prayer over his first kill or in the same way he had known which trails to follow to survive. He knew they had carved themselves onto his very bones. Instinct. Instinct had guided him into their lives, and his dead devotion kept him there.

  Fate, the world called it.

  Illias knew it by another word, one he wouldn’t say while sitting so high in the sky.

  Laughter plucked him from his thoughts, and he slid off his spot on the tent to join the others around the growing fire. If those they had attacked planned on returning, it would not be that day. Today, he could sit by the heat and pretend they marched toward peace. It was a half-hearted illusion, as the dried blood on his spear glimmered with a haunting glow and the crackle of burning flesh sounded, but it was his.

  SPICA:

  Olena hated days such as these, when her spica pulled into himself and she was left to her own thoughts. The group was gathering any supplies they could carry,16 and she barked commands as was expected of her. This was her element. The very earth beneath her feet rose to meet her thundering footsteps, and the air around her buzzed with electricity from her speeches. She thrived on the chaos gripping them — a leader for wartimes, not peace — but while red was a color that suited her well, filling her sight with only its glow, she could not help but notice that it caused Illias to struggle.

  In a very loud way, that pissed Olena off, and she made it a personal goal to ignore it. If she forced them both to continue forward, they could focus on the goals that had shaped their lives since birth. Fate, the world called it, but Olena had a different title for it: grabbing destiny for themselves, choice, endless freedom. She tossed a bag of dried meats over her shoulder and nodded for the others to finish their scavenge. She had no doubt that there would be more encampments to ravage soon, and her grin promised them each a taste of it.

  “You ugly wolves ready to march?” She slapped Illias on his back as she gave the call, and he rolled his eyes in answer. Not all was lost. They could continue, she was certain of it. The small group followed behind the spicas, chatting quietly amongst themselves, and despite the apparent ease in which they moved, they listened closely to the tells of the woodlands around them for any hint of further intruders. She liked to believe the trees were on their side of this eternal battle, but they rustled without a care as the group slipped among them once more. “Make sure all the bodies are burned before we go. They’ve earned a right to rest well.”

  It was only when they neared the remainder of their home pack that she opened her mouth again, and a song erupted from her, loud and off-key. It was a song that was usually reserved for the end of a successful hunt, but wasn’t that what these runs had become? They hunted the heart of their problems, and while that heart rested leagues away, they would strike at the outlying limbs. The others joined in, slowly at first, but the folk songs brought a chorus from her group that was a hard call to resist.

  “My body’s a battleground for you,” she began, a mixture of yelling and singing. “I took my weapon and slew; oh, my body’s, my body’s a battleground for you. Plant me in the ground, watch me grew. My friend, my body’s a battleground for you.”

  When she heard others join in, she knew they made it back to their army — their traveling home. The concept of sanctuary varied no matter whom one asked, but for the Erie-folk, it always remained simple. The place of family, where there was food and shelter, however temporary, was home. Olena simply had to glimpse the familiar sight of smoldering fires and gray furs that matched her own to show that she was there. The smiles of her Ma and Da only reaffirmed it, and they took turns embracing both her and Illias as they settled into the only form of safety they had ever known.

  “Did you know there were twice as many in that camp as the last,” she reported to her Da, to the chosen King of the Erie-folk, and the casualness of her voice attempted to downplay the shift in the expected situation. Being given command was a privilege earned, and she did not want to see that privilege taken away due to a disagreement about whether or not the risk had been worth it — which, clearly, it had been.

  Illias left to speak to their mother, leaving Olena to face King alone. She tilted her chin upward, and she knew she was a fearsome sight to behold. With her dark hair braided into intricate designs, the kohl around her eyes smeared red, and the wound at her side still visible, she had all the signs of a successful warrior. She knew he was summing her up, but she also knew that for every time he had summed her up in the past, he had left more proud.

  “What happened to them?” he asked softly. For as imposing a man as he was, his voice could go from a whisper to a loud battle cry in a matter of moments, but for his kin, he retained the quiet respect owed to them.

  “Dead, mostly. It’s a load of shit to leave ‘em alive, if you ask me — not out of hate that I say it either.” She shifted in her stance, trying to remain as straight-backed as he was. “They deserve good, pure deaths, but if we leave, and they’re alive… Who’s to say the Queens won’t make an army out of them? They think we’re a bunch of unorganized heathens, but the minute they find out we’re gathering together, you can bet your ass they’ll be setting their sights on destroying us.”

  He nodded along, much to her relief. Even if he didn’t agree, even if worry and exhaustion seemed at war on his weathered features, he weighed each of her words carefully. The marks of a good leader, she noted, a bit perturbed over the fact she hardly carried the patience for such a trait.

  “I say we’ve waited long enough,” she continued, lack of tension leaving the words flat.

  “You’ve done good, Ol, but I’ll repeat what I’ve said time and time again: there’s still a chance to put this war behind us. Vengeance is a powerful entity, powerful enough to unite even the freest of people — but it festers, killing those who called it into being and replacing them with something cruel.” Although he was young by the status of those in the Citadel, he was an elder to the Erie-folk.17 There was wisdom in his tone, and it was a wisdom that would not be ignored, even by her. “Just be careful, you hear me? You start talking like that, and you’ll get what you want. You’ll earn a hundred damn marks.”

  “We’re at war, aren’t we? A hundred marks seems worth it if we make it through.”

  To that, he could only give a small shrug and motion to her Ma. “She’ll be wanting to talk to you next, girl.” It was a dismissal, but she hadn’t expected anything else. Why waste breath on things that had already been said? It was far more difficult to prove what one believed through action.

  Olena crept up behind Illias, slipping her arms around his waist and resting her chin against his shoulder. He was only an inch taller, a fact he never let her forget, and Ma smiled at the sight of the pair next to each other. It was an involuntary reaction to the burning light of the spicas; it was seeing something revolutionary in the truest sense. No, Olena did not quite feel calm beside Illias, but she felt a safety so rarely provided by the wild, and by the way he paused in his speech and gave her arm a small squeeze, she knew he could feel such sanctuary as well.

  “We were talking about the next village. It’s the one we were born in, Ol,�
�� Illias said it as if it made any sort of difference. “I know you mean to take the area back next. It might be easier for just the two of us to march in than with a group of warriors. We can get the innocents out, and do what needs to be done with the rest. I’ll even bet you who can do it the quickest.”

  It took her a moment to recognize what it was he was suggesting — to leave behind their careful plan of movement in order to rescue a few chained-folk? She didn’t understand the strategy behind it, and she moved away from him to take her spot by his side instead. Here, they could eye each other as equals, and Ma pursed her lips at the seriousness of it when Olena crossed her arms over her chest. The two were conspiring, that was the only explanation.

  “Is that how you want this to happen? We’ve got a plan, Il. You want us to go off course to chase down what exactly? We can go around them, if you’re so against my idea, but we’re going either way. It’s time to move forward.” Stubbornness met stubbornness, an unstoppable force met an immovable object. Mother and son exchanged a look, and Olena let out a frustrated sigh. “Saving a few innocent—” The word slipped through clenched teeth. “—lives isn’t worth ruining the element of surprise we have as we get closer to the little queens. We don’t owe that village a damn thing. It doesn’t matter where you’re born, you should know that more than most. It’ll be better if we just continue on as planned, and once freedom’s returned to the land, they’ll be happier for it. We kill the Queens, and they’ll be happier for it.”

  “Some scouts have seen large numbers gathering close to the village. Don’t you think it’s some sort of sign? First, Red’s Night, and now, our birthplace? It means something’s changing. You aren’t curious to see what?”