Written in Blood

by Span, Ryan A.

  “The mountains must be terrible indeed,” wheezed Aemedd, “if this is the better way to travel.”

  Sir Erroll shot him a venomous look. “You'd know. You've probably been there before and forgot to mention it to us.”

  “Perhaps.” A self-satisfied grin bared Aemedd's teeth up to the lifeless grey gums. “But as before, no one bothered to ask.”

  Murderous energy crackled between them. The scholar's poor health was the only thing that kept the knight from pummelling him to death. For all his failings, Sir Erroll still followed most of the precepts of chivalry.

  I cleared my throat, threw caution to the wind, and opened my mouth. “Why don't you share some of your thoughts with us, Professor? Surely you don't believe our bronzes are chunks of a dead god.”

  “My dear Byren,” he chortle-coughed. “I have heard that story twice now and I put as much stock in it as I always have. Why, if the Church were ever to hear of it...”

  “See that they not,” Racha growled over her shoulder.

  “I bear your people no ill will, Daughter of Rogald. I'm simply stating a fact. There is only one God, and we know Him through His Saints and servants. He did not forge these pieces. They were made by the hands of men. Perhaps a smith from Kassareth. We may find the fellow's workshop when we arrive.”

  Racha smoothed out her frown one wrinkle at a time. “We find what we find.”

  We made our wary way around a large gap where half the bridge had fallen away. A long, ragged crack on one side showed where the rest of the walkway used to be, now a sharply-angled slide into the black abyss. Hooves and feet scrabbled along the narrow path in an anxious attempt to keep our balance. Only Mudden dared to lean out over the chasm. He hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat down. If it landed on anything, it didn't make a sound.

  “Strewth,” the Ranger muttered in morose awe. “I been around and I never seen anything like that.”

  “Take a closer look if you like,” Sir Erroll added nastily. For once, Mudden didn't rise to the bait.

  Further up, little puddles and trickles of water darkened the stone and made it slippery as ice. We had to watch our every step to avoid a headlong dive off the crumbling, unguarded edges. It slowed our progress to a crawl, so that after hours of wandering we still couldn't see the far edge of the chasm. Occasional brushes of faint, whistling wind stung my uncovered eyes, as bitter-cold as the mountaintops above us. It raised warm tears which ran down to wet my mask and scarf.

  It became more and more obvious we couldn't make it to the other end without rest. Nobody liked the idea of camping on the bridge, but between the treacherous surface and fatigue taking its toll, we didn't have a choice. We found a part of the bridge that was mostly intact and sat down with our backs to the nasty breeze.

  Somehow I found myself next to Yazizi again. She shivered even through all the layers of fur and linen. The cold plagued her, turning her skin dull and oily. She kept her eyes down and sniffled. From time to time she tore another strip of dried meat and gnawed at it with joyless, mechanical determination.

  “I can see you staring,” she muttered.

  “I am not 'staring.'“

  Her teeth bared into an angry grimace. “Don't lie. You didn't stop wanting to fuck me. You just let your petty jealousy get in the way.”

  “Who I want to fuck is my business and not yours,” I said hotly. Then I bit my tongue in frustration. This was not how I wanted things to go. “Yazizi... You love him. You can't hop into my bed every time you two have an argument.”

  “I am Harari. Whom I 'hop into bed with' is, as you say, my business and not yours. I am not married to either of you.” She worked up some saliva and spat on the floor. “Forget it. Your noble Rangers have been looking after me well enough when I wanted a proper man, not a couple of sullen, simpering boys. Even your knight seems to have tired of beating me.”

  That annoyed me, but by an effort of will I made myself let it go. There was too much fighting around already. I put my tension into a deep sigh and let it flow out of me.

  “I wanted‒ I wanted to ask you something.” I had to clear my throat before the heavy question would come out. “You know something about the Brass Men. Something you've kept quiet about. That mausoleum on the steppe, you called it holy ground. I didn't think too much of it, but then in Brunoke, you'd heard the name Kassareth before. I don't care what the others think. I want to know what you know.”

  “What I know will do you no good, my unbeliever.” Her face softened for a moment. She was already trembling, but something else rippled through her, colder than the wind. “My people have a long memory. I told you about the warstones. I told you about Garta Azhar. The Brunokes are blasphemers, ignorant and confused, but they are right about one thing. There was a war of the gods. A terrible war. We mark the graves and the battlefields with stones and faith.

  “Why they fought, who can say? Who can know the mind of a god? What is known is that all the peoples of this land suffered under it, Harari and Brass Men and Feldlanders alike. We rode hard and fast to stay away from the bloodshed. The Feldlanders endured and outlasted it. But the Jul Denozhet, who you call Brass Men... They were many, and brave, and strong. They refused to run or stand idle. That's why they were cursed. Cursed and smashed and broken, because they were proud men who dared to make war on the gods.”

  “Make war on the gods? How?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Who can say?”

  “So the mausoleums, and Kassareth...”

  “Holy ground of the worst kind. To linger there is to invite the gods' curse upon us. Even to speak of it is bad luck.”

  I nodded, and let the matter drop. Bad luck was something we could do without.

  How I slept so much as a wink on that bridge, I would never know. The hard, freezing stone sapped my body heat as fast as I could replenish it. The icy draft keened in my ears without a moment's rest. By some miracle I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again people were up and about, getting ready to march. I shook some of the cold out of my bones and followed their example. Yazizi was back to ignoring me, as was everyone else. Nobody spoke.

  Our slog across the ancient granite obstacle course continued. Picking our route around crumbling edges, fallen blocks, or great big holes in the floor. I fumbled in the dark with my barely-sufficient torch and stubbed every toe on my poor two feet. My skin prickled all over with fear-sweat every time I forgot not to look down.

  We didn't sight the other end of the Sea of Stones until the next 'day' had come and gone. The lifetime of our torches and lanterns was our only indication of time passing. When our light finally touched on the great, carved colonnade that signalled our return to solid ground, a collective sigh of relief went up. There was even a ragged cheer. We pushed on through the exhaustion and didn't stop until we were off the bridge, safe and sound, in the heart of the great mine.

  “What is this place?” asked Descard. He gazed up and down the rows of tall, stately columns, carrying on far into the darkness. They were massive beyond measure, thicker than I was tall, and utterly seamless. Not built up but cut whole from the solid rock. Delicate, spiralling hammer and tong motifs ran around the tops of each column, with anvils around the bottoms and endless twisting curls in the middle. Spiral reliefs ran all along the walls too, the same impossible-to-read pictograms of things which eluded my eye. Everything gleamed with flecks of metal as if the Brass Men had cut this passage out of a huge vein of iron ore.

  Racha shrugged her shoulders. “No idea. My father's notes mention nothing until we reach the Crossroads.”

  “It is a temple,” Aemedd declared. His small, gurgling voice almost faded to nothing in the huge space. “The least part of one. An entrance, if you will. This symbol here,” he pointed to one where a smaller spiral was being overwhelmed by a larger one, “near as I can decipher it, is the marker for bronze, and iron, and war. It is all over the walls. I expect there is a rather larger chamber up ahead, containing whatever pagan para
phernalia these people once used for worship.”

  Descard nodded vigorously. “Interesting! A soldier's shrine, perhaps? A last stop on the way to war?”

  “My dear Lord d'Ost,” the scholar replied with surprising warmth, “I had no idea you had a passion for archaeology.” He hacked and hemmed so much through that sentence, it was hard to tell whether he was being sarcastic or not.

  “I'm passionate, Professor, especially when I'm inside of it.”

  We camped and burnt the remains of our old torches as a campfire. It felt good in the draft and cold. We made tea and ate a hot meal. I laid down to rest much happier than when I'd got up.

  The next morning, just before we were about to set off, Aemedd got my attention with a violent cough and beckoned me closer.

  “Byren,” he wheezed, “can you read or speak the holy tongue?”

  “I‒ No.”

  “Perfect. Then I hereby bequeath you this.” Trembling fingers pointed to a heavy sheaf of papers in his saddlebag, bound with string. I lifted it out of the bag and held it gingerly in both hands. “It is a copy of all my notes and journals since we left Kingsport. The Academy already has the rest of my research, but if something were to happen to me... I must know that this will reach Scholar's Hall in Farrowhale.” He unclenched one skeletal hand in a pleading gesture. “You'll see to it, won't you? You are a man of honour.”

  I looked at the heavy vellum and swallowed. All of his notes. All. I croaked, “I will.”

  He nodded thanks and rode away. I stood holding the papers for a minute before it occurred to me to put them in my pack and march. This was the last place in the world where I wanted to be left behind. I'd take a lifetime beaten and starving in the streets of Saltring over a lonely, forgotten death in this pit.

  The colonnade was even longer than it looked. After an hour's march we were still passing more huge pillars, two by two by two. Then I got the sense of something large looming ahead of us. I was not disappointed.

  The inner heart of the temple was cavernous, massive beyond comprehension. Castles could have fit comfortably inside it. Maybe even Winter Court. Great concentric circles of columns, each ring taller than the last, rose up to support a vaulted ceiling so high the eye couldn't reach its top. Endless spiral patterns decorated every surface. A large greenish stain in the centre marked the spot where a bronze altar had once stood. Everything, absolutely everything that had been here was gone now, rotted away or stolen in ages past. The only objects larger than a dust mote were our horses and us.

  “This isn't a place of worship,” Sir Erroll said contemptuously. “It's a tomb.”

  Mudden shivered and drew a cross over his heart. “We shouldn't be here. No one should be here.”

  “Don't piss your breeches, Mudden.” The superstitious Ranger nearly jumped at Faro's sudden, sour contribution. “You whinge like a woman.”

  It all happened in the blink of an eye. Mudden's face went purple with rage. He grabbed his big Ranger-knife and yanked it free of its sheath. From there, things gathered momentum with the awful inevitability of an avalanche. The hiss of drawn steel filled the air, and then it was two against two. Sir Erroll took his squire's side without a moment's pause while Descard stood with Mudden. Only Racha and I held back, our weapons out but unsure about where to point them.

  Mudden was as livid as I'd ever seen a man, white knuckles clenching the hilt of his knife. “You little shit. I'll cut your balls off!”

  “I'll handle this, Mudden,” said Descard. “Put your weapon down.”

  “He insulted me, Commander. I want satisfaction.”

  “He's a little boy. Put it down.”

  “I respectfully decline that order, Commander!”

  “I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, Mudden.” The Baron's voice had gone like ice. The last thing he wanted was to execute his last remaining soldier for desertion. He turned to Sir Erroll, almost pleading. “For God's sake, man, don't let it come to this!”

  The knight kept his feet planted and his point aimed at Descard's throat. Faro gripped his sword in shaking hands. Sweat glistened on his forehead. I motioned him to lower his weapon, but he shook his head in response. He was afraid, but he wouldn't be the first to back down. Honour was at stake.

  Then the woman strode into the fray, pushing blades away with her bare hands. The tension shattered. “What in the name of all that's holy do you think you're doing? Get a hold of yourselves! Are you men or a pack of quarreling dogs?”

  “He pulled a knife on us, Milady,” said Sir Erroll. It was the dispassionate tone of someone describing the contents of his sock drawer. He would've killed the Rangers in the same way.

  “And you gave him cause!” The full fury of her weapon-strength gaze hit the knight, and he withstood it for barely a second before he dropped his eyes and sank down to one knee. Faro and Descard followed suit. Even Mudden was cowed, by a woman whose forehead was barely level with his chin. “I won't hear another word of this. Gentlemen, keep your underlings in line or I will have you flog them. I expect to remind children of the rules of good conduct. Children throw tantrums and careless insults, not grown men.”

  No one dared to offer justification or excuses. The idea of another humiliation by her wicked tongue was unbearable. She let her words hang in the air like leaden weights, then nodded to declare the matter settled.

  That was perhaps her greatest skill. She knew how to shame people into line.

  “Pick yourselves up and march.” She gestured Racha to lead the way, and all was done as she wanted it.

  Nobody talked on this march, even those who could still tolerate the sight of one another. The fresh dose of humility kept the peace, it held everyone to a higher standard than they held themselves, but the civility didn't go more than skin-deep. Inside, lingering resentments continued to fester. One unexpected benefit was that Sir Erroll now concentrated most of his animosity on the Rangers. To me, he became almost polite again.

  At the far end of the altar room, a good fifteen minutes' march away, we found another colonnade. It was identical to the first except for a small font of water standing at its mouth. The water, heavy with minerals, poured from a long J-shaped spout which hung down from the ceiling. I guessed the spout must've looked like something once, but the ages had worn it away, and now much of its contents dribbled down the wall instead of arcing into the basin. Our lanterns made the streams sparkle with different colours where they caught the light.

  Racha collected some of the water in her cupped hand and sipped, then spat it out. “Safe for washing, but drink not.”

  “I have to concur,” gurgled Aemedd. His voice sounded wet and strangled, like someone speaking under water. The stale air wasn't doing him any favours. “Underground streams are... are often full of poisonous metals.”

  It was welcome news all the same. We hadn't seen any open water in weeks. By ones and twos, we lined up to rinse the sweat and travel-dust from our face. I couldn't remember when I'd last felt so clean. I probably took a little longer than was strictly polite, but I enjoyed it to its fullest. Better than scrubbing myself with snow.

  By the time I was done, I actually felt optimistic, considering I'd spent the last three days underground without the barest hint of sunlight.

  Some of the tension was gone when we left the font. Under the watchful eye of his betters, Faro mumbled something like an apology to Mudden, and Mudden returned it. The matter was properly closed. At the woman's urging, everyone agreed to set aside our petty differences to stay alive. And if they didn't really mean it, well, who was going to level any accusations against the short tempers of Mudden or Sir Erroll?

  The end of the colonnade consisted of a small round room leading into three tunnels. All three were smooth-floored and square, designed for humans on foot, not mining equipment. It seemed this part of the mountain was less industrial and more ceremonious. One of the three passages plunged sharply downwards, one veered off to the left, and the other was blocked by a cave-i
n several yards down. Racha counted off doorways, double-checked her sheaf of papers, and picked the left.

  A brisk walk later, the passage split into two huge archways. On the right, the bottom of a spiral staircase, complete with a giant central winch for hauling loads up and down. What remained of it, anyway. Rubble from the winch and the ceiling to which it had been mounted choked the arch and blocked any way upwards.

  The left arch was boarded up with more red-stained wooden beams. Peering between them, we saw a multi-level pit built to dig out a rich metal deposit. A gasp went through the group when we realised what kind of metal. Whole nuggets of shiny, sparkling gold were still embedded in the walls.

  “Holy God and His Saints,” said Sir Erroll. “There must be thousands of sovereigns' worth of gold in there. Why would they close it off?”

  The woman gave him an amused quirk of her eyebrow. “Most likely because they did not think it worth mining, Sir. The Brass Men didn't place as high a value on gold as we do.”

  “Or the mine could be dangerous,” I pointed out. “Or both.”

  “I promise we'll be cautious, Master Byren. Everyone keeps their eyes open for the first sign of a cave-in, yes?”

  We all acknowledged her except Aemedd. All eyes turned to him. He sat slumped in his saddle, staring absently at some of the spiral designs on the side of the archway. The woman cleared her throat. Even that didn't catch his attention.

  “Professor? Is everything alright?”

  “Oh, yes, Milady. I was just looking...” He made an ineffectual gesture. “There is that symbol again. Bronze, iron, and war.”

  “What do you think it means, Professor? A marker? A warning?”