by Kim Wedlock
Eyila remained at the lead. She set a purposeful pace, keen to cover the last stretch of open ground and finally reach the village, eager to end their association. No one could say she was being unreasonable. After two weeks, two of her charges were revealed to be far from what they'd seemed - not even 'cityfolk' would expect to be in the company of a cultist or a monster, and a tribal girl with little contact with civilisation, unaware of its gossip or the extent of its corruption, could never have prepared herself against it.
But she had insisted on coming along without deigning to learn a thing about them first. Whether they would have shared such secrets upon questioning or not, it was her own foolish mistake not to try.
Matching her pace, Rathen limped at the rear, wincing in pain from time to time while Aria helped him along, her young face aged in concern. Kienza's care must have been so complete that she'd never seen him in such a state, and while Eyila's healing skills were just as surprising as the sorceress's, they were far outmatched. She'd done what she could, but he was still left to suffer from his bone-shifting transformation. And it was for that second bout that he secluded himself, burying his attention in the translations in the hope that it would be enough to prevent it from happening again, and kept his face twisted in forced concentration when pain wasn't controlling it to discourage anyone from approaching him.
But Garon could see the shameful depth to the lines around his eyes, especially when the mage dared a glance back towards him. Rathen was fully aware that he'd injured him - how could he not have? - but not of the extent. Garon had made it quite clear to both Petra and Eyila that they weren't to tell him a thing, certain that it would be the final mark before the mage finally withdrew his tenuous services. Rathen had surely asked, but however they'd answered, he was clearly unconvinced that it had been the full truth. So he looked around briefly from time to time, trying not to catch his eye while searching silently for the damage himself. Fortunately he was too ashamed to ask directly, and his left hand was an easy matter for Garon to hide.
Anthis, however, strode along near the front, just as oblivious to his company and surroundings as usual, his nose glued in his few remaining books. He'd confirmed when Garon had asked at breakfast - the tensest meal any of them could ever recall having, and more or less the only verbal exchange in the duration - that the most important pieces from the ruin had been left unscathed, safely inside his tent for reading, presumably when he'd wrapped up his other 'activities'. But while that was a relief for all of them to hear, he'd still spent every moment that morning juggling the texts, notebooks and pencils trying to scribble down anything he could remember from what he'd lost, relevant to their task or not.
"He'll never get it all," Petra had spitefully remarked, but Garon wasn't so sure. Anthis was, after all, very passionate about his subject. So passionate, in fact, that he'd been so broken by his loss that he'd been entirely unaware of the night's subsequent drama, even as it happened. His intense concentration to reverse that loss masked any hint of disgrace, though Garon silently suspected that, unlike Rathen, he felt none at all.
But regardless, very little sympathy had been spared for him in turn, particularly on Petra's part, who watched him like a hawk as she marched along behind, more comfortable turning her back to Rathen than to the once harmless academic.
Above everyone else, Garon found his eyes drifting onto her the most, and his thoughts always turned in the same direction.
Nothing had been said about the kiss.
She had barely spoken to him at all that day, and the fact that he was unsure if he hadn't simply dreamt it irritated him. But he found himself unable to step forwards and raise the subject to find out, and that irritated him even more.
But above both of those frustrations was the distraction. He should have been more than capable of ignoring such a triviality. He was a professional; there was no room in his life for such useless levity - so why was his mind filled with circling thoughts of such little substance every time he discovered his eyes on her? It was as if his brain was stammering, getting stuck on the same senseless meanderings rather than focusing on what was important.
He rotated his left shoulder and flexed his arm and fingers.
Perhaps he'd hit his head. Perhaps he had imagined it, and she hadn't said anything because there was nothing to say. Dreams had their way of embedding themselves in the mind like a tick, and contrary to popular belief, more often than not, they meant absolutely nothing at all. They were just the chaotic roamings allowed by a dormant mental state, when reasoning was abandoned because there was no need for it, because nothing that happened in a dream could truly affect its author.
He straightened, a little more self-assured, and pushed it aside for the eighteenth time to survey their surroundings instead.
His gaze shifted sharply back onto her as she moved around Anthis, casting him a glare, to fall in beside Eyila.
The tribal girl smiled.
"That was convincing." Petra sighed and shook her head sadly. "I told you not to feel guilty, didn't I? Garon is an inquisitor. He's a stronger man than either of us can imagine. He's driven, and he's intelligent - he'll adapt, he won't complain; he'll accept the situation and make do." But the girl's pale blue eyes, their colour made more shocking for the unbroken streak of black painted across them, only deepened in doubt. Petra sighed again. "You did your best, Eyila."
"But it wasn't enough."
"You did more than anyone could have done for him. None of our medics could have repaired half of what you did. You saved his life - and he realises that."
"He can barely use his arm."
"He will work around that." Petra smiled reassuringly, her eyes intense, hoping that the weight of their promise would convince the girl to believe her. But Eyila's fret still didn't diminish. Petra shortly sighed again and looked towards their heading. "I expect you'll be pleased to get home. You'll probably never leave the village again."
The girl breathed a laugh. "Perhaps not for a little while."
"Look, let me apologise for all--"
"You have nothing to apologise for. I..." she looked up and smiled, but this time there was a glimmer of honesty mingling with her regret. "I did enjoy this. It's more excitement than I've ever had in my life. More than enough to last...well, 'a little while'." But that glimmer fled as she returned her hardened gaze forwards. "But I didn't come out here to make friends or take the first steps towards bridging our people. I came out here because I want, more than anything, for Ut'hala to be restored. And I think - I hope - that I have helped towards that end."
"I'm sure you have. Anthis has learned a lot from the ruins, and Rathen from you. In fact, you've helped us more than any of us thought you could. We owe you--"
"Return and restore Ut'hala, and we will call it even." She smiled impishly, and Petra laughed.
"Deal."
The group walked on, leaving the road and stepping back out onto the sands, climbing the gentle dunes which were each just high enough to conceal the forward landscape from the top of the last. When smooth stones started dotting the slopes, marked with the same dyes and clays that Eyila used to paint her skin, they knew they were getting close.
But when Petra turned to observe the relief of familiarity on her face, she found instead a deep unease.
Her stride slowed beside her. "What is it?"
Eyila shook her head, her straight, white hair flicking with the sharp movement, but her wide eyes remained fixed to the hidden horizon. "It's..."
She didn't finish. A light breeze sent a sudden dread flashing across her face, and she bolted forwards, darting through the sand at a frantic speed, leaving the rest of them behind. Petra raced after her in a heartbeat, following as close as she could while Garon's voice rose from the rear, ordering the others to hurry after them. She struggled with every footfall while the tribal covered the ground with ease, but she pushed on harder to make up the increasing distance yawning between them, panicked by the girl's abrupt
ness. But just as she crested the final dune, tracking through the sands Eyila had sent cascading behind her, she caught a chilling scent on the breeze. A scent that caused the same dread to freeze her in place.
Until a heart-stopping wail pierced the air.
Petra surged forwards, leaving the others just cresting the dune. She skidded down the sand with her heart in her throat, one hand wrapped tightly around her sword's hilt, the other on its sheath. But she didn't draw. Though she clung to a desperate hope, the depths of her gut told her there was no need.
The tribal village stood ahead, across a flat expanse of sand marred only by Eyila's footsteps. But even from this distance Petra could feel the eerie stillness left by the startled birds, and she soon saw the edges of the destruction flattened beneath it. But it wasn't until she levelled with the first sun-baked mudhouse that her frantic pace finally faltered, and she was forced to catch herself against a clay window frame to stay on her feet.
She could hear Eyila sobbing. It was a terrible, heart-wrenching sound for such a melodious voice to make. She knew she should call out, say something, offer some kind of comfort, but she found that her own voice had caught in her throat, and her legs had turned so rigid she felt she was no longer connected to them.
Three paces away, a bronze body lay in the sand, perfectly motionless, hidden from the rest of the village by the shadow of her own home. Her white hair covered her face, and though her animal skins were torn at the seams and left only partially concealing her modesty, the dark blood that had dried over her arms, legs and chest, and spattered across the ground beside her to form black clumps in the sand, drew the eye away. Uncountable lacerations criss crossed her body, freeing the blood from her veins to the thirsty land and scorching sun. These were wounds that could only have been inflicted with deep hatred, but it was impossible to tell from the dried up pools just who had delivered her such a fate, nor indeed when.
But it had certainly been too soon. What clear skin could be seen was smooth, and still seemed to shimmer slightly even in the shade. She was young - younger, perhaps, than herself. Too young for such a brutal death.
Petra didn't notice the ache in her jaw from the strength behind her clamped teeth. Her eyes roved over the body, the blood, the wounds, flicking from one to the next as rage bubbled inside of her. She wanted to turn away, to close her eyes and hide from the sight and the memories they conjured within her, but a greater part of her forced her to keep looking, to stare, and to remember.
A jug lay broken beside the body, one similar to those they'd seen next to a makeshift well a few days ago. She must have been on her way out to collect when the assault had happened. So she had been defenceless. There was nothing in the black, mottled sand to suggest she'd fought back, and the fragments of the pot were too close together for it to have been used as a weapon either for or against her.
But as she spotted the jug, so too did she notice another glimmer of bronze skin, just visible from around the corner of the hut. Though she begged her legs not to, especially while Eyila's nearby cries became more dreadful, they carried her one step forwards, and her rage burned anew.
She was only vaguely aware of the arrival of Garon and the others, of their immediate curses and of Rathen telling Aria, very firmly, to 'stay right here'. He would have been very well to tell himself the same thing, as when he stepped up alongside Petra and set eyes upon the child who lay just as bloodied and motionless at the building's door, he choked a peculiar sound in place of a strangled curse and staggered against the stone just as she had.
From that single step, the village had become painfully unobscured. As far within its boundaries as the four of them could see, the sand and walls were flecked with sun-baked blood. Some of the small, square buildings were damaged, their walls brought down, thatched doors torn and painted markings defaced, and every wind chime that had been hung outside had been thrown and trampled into the ground without exception. Bowls, large and small, lay upturned beside their pedestals, their coloured, powdered contents spilled cross the sand. A gentle wind whipped up and billowed what the sand didn't weigh down, sending soft plumes of neutral colours up and across the countless corpses that littered the village grounds.
Garon took the first solemn step forwards. Petra's legs moved on their own again, leaving the others to stare in the same sickened shock that had paralysed her.
Looking around, it was difficult to tell what was blood and what was paint, but the wounds themselves were all too clear. Each body had been brutalised in the same way as the first, and the only people who seemed to have been armed were the hunters. But the deeper they moved, the denser the litter of corpses, and the worse those inflictions became. Deep holes had been gouged where the skin was bared, and in many cases the holes equated to bare ribs and such gore that Petra had to fight herself not to retch. The stench didn't help.
"Scavengers," Garon grunted without stopping for a closer look. Petra was surprised to find that his face seemed a shade whiter, but she expected her own far outmatched it. She wasn't prepared to confirm his assumption.
She turned her eyes away, keeping her gaze now no lower than the horizon. Her heart lurched when she realised that Eyila's plaintive cries had fallen silent.
Ignoring Garon's order, she hurried off again, choosing a path through the bodies as carefully as she could without looking, heading in the direction she'd last heard the girl's broken voice. She slowed only when the village widened around a corner, opening up before the chieftain's longhouse. Where the body count became even higher. She stumbled to another horrified stop, and all she found herself able to think was that she'd had no idea the tribe was made up of so many.
Had been made up of so many.
She swallowed hard and forced herself onwards, scanning over every one of them without daring to linger for too long, but it was difficult to pick out any identities among the tangle of bronze and white. It was frighteningly silent, but just as she was about to attempt to call out, unsure if her voice would actually respond to the demand, the briefest motion caught her eye.
While other bodies lay, one sat upright, just as still as the rest but for the sideways slump as she slipped off of her heels.
Petra made clumsily straight for her, cursing in relief, but the girl didn't respond to her shout. She skidded to her knees beside her and stared up into her eyes from beneath, unsure with a rattling heart if she hadn't died of shock, but the blink and slight rise and fall of her hunched shoulders as she breathed eradicated the thought. But she didn't look up. She didn't even notice she was there.
But of course she didn't. Her eyes stared into a world Petra could only imagine, even as her absent gaze rested heavily upon the mutilated bodies. But as Petra foolishly followed the line of her eyes, that world suddenly became quite clear.
It was easy to recognise the respected woman who had spoken out for them when they'd first arrived, even with her throat cut, blood smeared across her face and her light-coloured skins and feather mantle stained crimson. Even in death, there was an air of elegance about her, one they had once thought inappropriate for a tribal barbarian, and her face seemed more peaceful than the others', as though she knew with absolute certainty that death would take her to no dark place.
The girl who lay beside her, however, though she wore the same ceremonial garb save the mantle, didn't appear quite as accepting. A small knot remained in her young brow, and Petra knew she couldn't have been older than Eyila. Perhaps they'd been friends. Perhaps they'd been family.
The body that lay directly in front of her didn't draw the eye for any reason other than the concentration of wounds he had sustained, but Petra's eyes passed over him anyway. Over the white triangle painted upon his forehead, fading above the bridge of his nose. Over the black lines that reached up from his jaw to his eyes. Over the remains of several lengths of coloured leather tied about his torn biceps.
Petra's blood ran cold, and Eyila's breath caught for a moment in a haggard wheeze.
"I'm sorry." They were the only words Petra could find to say, and she deeply resented having done so. She knew how useless such a statement was. But she couldn't simply say nothing... She frowned as she noticed something in Eyila's bloodied hands, several strings of feathers, every one of them bent, their barbs split and torn. They had been, she recalled, tied among the chief's leather.
"Who did this?"
The sound of Anthis's voice immediately boiled Petra's blood, but as she turned where she knelt, acid ready on her tongue, Rathen had already whirled on him.
"Did you do this?!" He demanded, spitting his own venom while Garon snatched his hand away before he could grasp Anthis by the collar.
"He didn't."
They turned back towards Eyila, surprised by the strength in her voice. She raised the feathers in her hands and finally lifted her eyes. They were hard. Furious. Heartbroken. The running streams of black paint made her appear only more vengeful. "It was another tribe."
Garon nodded slowly. "It was a religious strike, wasn't it?"
They frowned at him in puzzlement while Anthis took the opportunity to put distance between himself and Rathen, but he couldn't keep his own eyes from staring in horror at the violence that surrounded them.
"The leather," Rathen said thoughtfully, forgetting him as he looked back between what remained of the strips and the feathers. "The strips were the mark of the chieftain...and the feathers, birds...the wind..." His shoulders dropped in woeful understanding. "But who did it?"
Eyila turned and pointed towards the building behind her, staring at it with the same vengeful eyes. The longhouse. The very building in which they'd met with the chief under tribal ritual and courtesies had suffered the worst of the architectural assault. But beyond the broken walls, door and shutters, the torn hides and shattered effigies, were the paintings. Where the white emblems had depicted fluid winds, now were what appeared to be images of brown, tangled trees.