by wildbow
He was standing in front of us, watching. The crowd watched both us and the man who led them.
“You tried to burn me alive,” he said, his voice carrying. “Good soldiers died in that fire. Good work was undone.”
I opened my eye. I met his gaze.
Every inch of me wanted to reply, to retort, to engage him in a duel of words.
Silence, though, had its own power.
“Every time I see you, people die, things fall to pieces, and the old order falls back into place,” he said.
Silence. I couldn’t reply now. If it came down to an exchange of words, I would lose. I knew that.
“The manipulative snake, the boy with the perfect memory, and the Academy’s pet who keeps the monsters alive. There are more, I know. Are they circling around, trying to free the primordial warbeasts?”
His voice had such power to it, it sounded like it belonged here, amid the noise of the crowd, the distant shouts, the crackle of fire, the gunshots.
“Dead,” I said. My voice had none of that power. “My friend and brother. The dog that worked with him. The others are in another city.”
He stared me down, trying to find the lie.
“The blond one,” he said.
I nodded once.
“Good.”
I couldn’t maintain the eye contact, hearing that word from his lips. I clenched one hand.
“The nobles, you said?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Explain.”
“They’re out there. They’re probably even listening to this dialogue between us. They’re that close.”
“And you want to work with us to stop them? Shall I commit some of my best soldiers to hunting down this phantom enemy and expect them to return alive with the heads of the nobles? Or should I learn from past mistakes and assume this is a trap?”
There were so many loaded guns pointed in our direction, but they were Mauer’s men. The civilians were watching, taking it in. So many of them were altered. Framed by the fires, they looked like the legions of hell, in raincoats and the thick, coarse clothing of sailors and laborers.
I felt Lillian’s grip get weaker by the moment.
“I’m expecting that you’ll kill me. I’m hoping, I’m—I’m counting on the fact that you’ll spare her, spare Lillian because she’s human, because she has parents to go back to. Take her, keep her prisoner, but let her live.”
“And the other one?”
“The other one, Jamie, the Nobles let him live. They took my damn eye. They killed our dog. They left her dying and almost killed me, but they didn’t act against him. When he was going to come with us, they tried to keep him. You can probably keep him prisoner and barter him back to the Academy. Or use him against them. Me? I’m not that valuable.”
“And the blond one? You left that out.”
“The Academy killed him,” I said. “Not the nobles. In the midst of all of this, his heart gave out.”
There were distant shouts. Mauer turned to a lieutenant, giving a set of short orders that I couldn’t make out with the distance between us.
“You’re willing to die, but you want me to save those two,” he said, returning his focus to me.
Again, there was no answer as good as silence. Surrender.
“It doesn’t add up,” he said.
Still, silence. I couldn’t respond.
Mauer approached, gun in hand.
“Let’s hear from you, instead. The one with the glasses. You, be quiet.”
I shut my mouth.
“Yes, sir,” Jamie said. His voice sounded hollow.
“When I kill him, am I supposed to believe you’ll be okay with it?” Mauer’s words had such a ring of finality to them. That you’ll cooperate?”
“Okay? No, never. But that’s the deal we made. That we can only sacrifice ourselves if it saves two others. I know our history, Reverend. I won’t hold a grudge if you do it. It’ll hurt, I’ll remember it all perfectly, but I won’t hold a grudge.”
Mauer drew closer to me, pressing the gun to my chest.
The situation was so desperate that he could shoot all three of us, and the crowd would forgive it, because Mauer gave them a chance.
He was weighing the odds, trying to discern the ruse.
Yet I’d never been more honest.
“It doesn’t add up,” Mauer said, to me, not to the crowd. I wasn’t sure they could even hear.
“They took my eye, they killed our dog, they hurt her. I don’t have a way to save her. I don’t have a means of retaliating against them. Standing here with you and your army pointing guns at us gives us better odds than being out there, free, not a gun in sight, with them. Shoot me, seal our blood pact so you get your justice and I get to save those two, Jamie will tell you the particulars of the enemy you’re facing.”
“The twins,” Jamie said. “The Baron Richmond, too. The Duke is your enemy on this battlefield.”
“I knew that already,” Mauer said. His eyes were so dark, with the angle of his head keeping the light of the fires from reaching them.
My voice was keyed low, for Mauer to hear, not for the crowd. “Hurt them. Make it bad. Unleash the primordials if you have to, to make it as vicious and costly a fight as you can.”
“What changed?” Mauer asked.
“If I told you, it would sound manipulative,” I told him. “It would hurt my cause more than it helped. Please save her. We’re running out of time.”
“I know you’re running out of time,” Mauer said. “If she expires naturally, I don’t have to shoot her.”
A full-body chill took me.
He went on, voice a purr, “It makes the remainder palatable. Doesn’t this move the conversation along, add to the pressure? I want you to tell me the truth. Tell me why you’re really here.”
I couldn’t answer. If I told him, he would laugh in my face. Too transparent, too obvious a manipulation. Worse, it was honest, and honesty was the shovel I used to dig my own grave, every time.
I clenched my jaw and averted my eyes.
I’d made a bad gamble. This was it. Maybe the other Lambs would find out from rumor and hearsay, piece together our history.
“She’s dying,” he said.
My eye inadvertently went to Lillian. She was leaning against the wall, nodding off. She’d stopped talking some time ago. Only Jamie’s support kept her from collapsing altogether.
The barrel still pressed against my chest, over my heart.
Shoot me, I willed him. The crowd will see. Then, at least, there’s a chance you’ll spare the others. You have reasons to. The others have heard those reasons, and the danger they pose is so minor, the possible advantages to be gained too great.
Be a hero, save the dying girl. Use Jamie to get information on the enemy.
Shoot me!
With that final thought, I reached for the gun he held to my heart, for the finger on the trigger.
He was faster than I was. The gun pulled away, then struck me in the eye socket that was still swollen from the loss of one eye.
I fell, my wits dashed, and he took advantage of me being stunned to reach down with his monstrous hand.
It was supposed to be useless, but I supposed he’d surrounded himself with doctors, giving him some limited mobility and strength.
He lifted me clear off the ground, my legs dangling. Like that, he held me so the bonfire was a matter of feet behind me.
“The truth,” he said.
“I can’t,” I managed, voice straining with the pressure on my throat.
“The truth,” he said again.
“Please. Save her. Spare him.”
“Last chance.”
“I can’t,” I said, again, working to get the words out. With the words, I felt all of the thoughts and emotions I’d been burying emerging, tumbling out, too real and too sharp. “Can’t watch another Lamb die.”
His grip shifted so I could breathe. His eyes stared through me, now reflecting the
flames where they’d been so dark. The heat of the fire roasted my legs, made the cut in my calf prickle, my shoes too hot. Literally held over the fire.
I went on, “And I know it sounds manipulative, because I know you saw your comrades die and it’s why you fight now. I know it sounds bad, to say it’s about faith, that I believe in your humanity more than I believe in them, now, when you used to call yourself the Reverend.”
“Fray said you were almost ready to turn on the Academy that made you,” Mauer said. The people closest to us in the crowd could hear. “Are you?”
Say yes. One word.
I turned to silence instead.
He stared at me, uncomprehending.
“Why not?” he asked. “The leash has been loosened, the people at the top have betrayed you, taken your eye and your pet, wounded your teammate and are now actively after your life. The people who made you have thrown away your lives for the sake of advancement. They perverted you, made you something dark and twisted. Why wouldn’t you turn your back to them?”
The fire burned hotter beneath me.
“Take away what they gave me, what they made me into, every place I really know, the people I love and the people I hate, and I’m not sure what’s left,” I said.
He moved me to the side, and let go, dropping me to the ground by the bonfire.
He could have said so many things, explaining the decision, driving a poignant word home. He had the ability to control what he said and how he said in so many masterful ways.
He chose the damning silence instead.
Previous Next
Counting Sheep—9.10
The blades of bayonets prodded me, keeping me in a place where I couldn’t reach anyone or anything. If I moved too slowly, I got jabbed. If I moved too fast, I got jabbed. Let my elbows drop any lower than my shoulders, and I got a sharp prod in the armpit or the more sensitive flesh of the upper arm.
At least two of the prods had been sharp enough to pass through my raincoat and clothing. I could tell I was bleeding. One of the slices was near the elbow of a raised arm, running down to my side. A little to one side and they might have jabbed the artery.
I was led past the gauntlet of onlookers and soldiers, past fire and rubble and shadows shaped like people. Some of the onlooker’s faces were familiar or familiar-ish, but my thoughts were nowhere near the state where I was going to come up with names and identities.
Jamie was in front of me. Lillian was being carried or held somewhere behind me. Not that I was allowed to turn around to check.
Mauer had circled the wagons, literally. The wagons were heavy constructions, solid and reinforced enough to take a hit from a small bomb. The chains that stretched between them bound the primordial creatures that the crusty old asshole had put together. I wasn’t sure if it was imagination or not, but they seemed bigger than I remembered them being, and all of them were occupied devouring the bodies of cattle that had been supplied to them. Beaks and gaping mouths cracked bone, tearing and sucking at meat. The crowd that was still getting outfitted and ready to push into the crowd and join the front line was gawking and staring from a distance.
Mauer’s war camp was in the dead center of the circled wagons and primordials, which were in turn surrounded by the bulk of his actual soldiers—not the simple rabble of Lugh that he had conscripted, but people with proper guns and the dated uniforms, dyed black with all Crown and Academy affiliations stripped off.
The shepherd walked well ahead of Jamie, approaching a group of soldiers, leaning close to give orders that could be heard over the hubbub of the camp. All confidence, without a trace of fear apparent in his body language. Soldiers broke away from the perimeter around the primordials, hurrying to manage the tasks they’d been given.
The soldier in front of me who had his bayonet sticking back in my direction stopped. I stopped a fraction of a second later, and felt the blade tip prick my sternum. Jamie was just in front of me and to my left, handspan out of reach, or he would be if I was allowed to stick my arm out instead of holding my hands above my head.
Mauer turned back to face us, as if we’d been an afterthought until now.
There were hundreds of people in the streets around us, but a natural clearing had formed around Mauer’s encampment, thanks to the creatures that had been chained up between the wagons. Each of the hundreds of people were raising their voices, trying to communicate with one another by speaking louder than the rest. The fires were too bright compared to the darkness, and anywhere I looked, there were people being carried back and away from the fighting, bloody and injured to gruesome degrees, and there were others who were summoning the courage to go fight.
In the midst of the chaos, Mauer was very still and poised. In the midst of the noise, it didn’t even feel like he raised his voice to be heard.
“Take the girl back. Ensure she gets prompt attention from our best,” Mauer said.
I saw only a glimpse of Lillian being carried past me.
“You were willing to die for them. I’m going to assume that as long as we have her, I don’t need to worry too much about you?” Mauer asked.
I shook my head.
“I need a proper answer.”
I spoke, and the noise around us swallowed up my voice. I had to raise my voice to be heard. “I won’t do anything.”
“Go back to the front,” Mauer instructed the men who ringed Jamie and I. “Look for the places where courage is failing, give them purpose. Don’t retreat—that will look bad. Take them out to either side of the battlefront. Scout, see if there are any positions we can hold.”
“The Twins,” I said. Again, I had to raise my voice. It was somehow hard to put words together. I felt emotionally shaken, and while I could use Wyvern to center myself and bring myself to a point where I felt like the usual Sylvester, it bothered me that I had to. The more I looked at Mauer, the harder it was. Still, I managed, “We were running from them. The Twins have pet weapons that are fast, they stalk, pick off the weak or tear through an entire squad, and then they leave. They’re accompanied by Crown soldiers, and they’re absolutely, one hundred percent confident that they can take what you throw at them. If you send your men out to the—”
“The northeast,” Jamie said, pointing.
“—Then those men are going to run into the Twins, and they are going to die.”
Mauer took that in, I could see him processing the information. Then he spoke again to the soldiers, crisp, authoritative, “We’ll believe them. Triple-down on the soldiers you take with you. Nobody even urinates without five others watching their backs and flanks. Make it clear what they’re up against, that it’s a hunting-the-hunter scenario, and anyone who puts a bullet through a noble or a noble’s monster will earn five year’s worth of wages, paid from my pocket to their hand. That does include you.”
He was referring to his uniformed soldiers. The men nodded, not even cracking smiles at the prospect of the money before they hurried off. I no longer had blades pointed at me from every direction.
“Stanley, Gene, with me,” Mauer said. “Bring those two.”
A hand seized one of my shoulders. Better than being led by a blade.
The door of one wagon slid open on rollers, running along the side of the wagon. The far side was already open. It served as a kind of gate by which we passed between two of the chained primordials, each kept a fairly healthy distance away by the chains and the meals they’d been given.
The inside of the wagon, I noted, was packed with weapons. Nothing explosive, the ammo seemed to be stored elsewhere, but there were whole stacks of rifles that hadn’t been provided to the people on the front.
He was such a callous asshole. To have people fighting with what they could scrounge up, some with sticks and hatchets, against people with guns, when he could have armed them?
He was so capable when it came to raising morale, inflaming passions and speaking to the heart, but that belied a terrible coldness. Tactically, there were probab
ly reasons, but in terms of decency, I had to wonder.
I very much suspected that the only true glimpse I’d had of the man had been when he’d been holding me over the fire, challenging me to give him an honest answer.
We passed through the wagon-gate to the interior of the ring. Makeshift walls and criss-crossing chains kept the primordials from moving in this direction or even seeing within. It served as a sanctuary, almost. The only light came from lanterns and flowed under wagons and through the wood and metal slats of the erected walls. The noise of the crowd was muted slightly, the hard edges of words blurring into a more general noise.
In the center was another wagon, with steel plates held in place by grown wood branches. We approached, and a shape moved.
Primordial, I thought, my heart nearly stopping, before I saw the shape more clearly.
White, large, and composed almost entirely of thin white spines, it had the grace of a cat, but it was headless, only a blunt, rounded end at the front. It peered around the edge of the wagon at the center of the clearing before settling down.
What did we call it, again? I asked myself. It took a moment for the name to come to me. Whiskers. He still has it?
Mauer ignored the creature and led us within the wagon, taking a seat at the far side of a table at the wagon’s center. I’d expected to see a map, but it was littered with papers marked with handwriting.
Stanley and Gene pushed us, so that Jamie and I were positioned in the wagon. Me at a seat just inside and to the left of the door, Jamie taking a seat just inside and to the right of the door. The two soldiers stood in the doorway.
“The people who obey orders well have already formed groups and are nervously waiting their turn at the front. The ones who didn’t or couldn’t sort themselves into groups as they were instructed to do have formed… only rabble. They’re the ones doing the fighting right now. Anywhere from ten minutes to an hour from now, that front line will break,” Mauer said. “Stanley, Gene, and the other soldiers I’m on a first-name basis with know this.”
Cold, I thought again.