by Morgan Rice
Its strength was terrible, far too much to match. Ceres felt as though her ribs might burst with the pressure of it, the breastplate she wore creaking under the creature’s strength. She felt its claws raking at her back and legs, agony searing across her.
Its hide was too thick. Ceres struck again and again, but she could feel the tip of the spear barely penetrating its flesh while it tore at her, its claws ripping across any exposed skin.
Ceres closed her eyes. With all she had, she reached for the power within her, not even knowing if it would work.
She felt herself surge with a ball of power. She then threw all her force into her spear, thrusting it up into the space where she hoped the creature’s heart would be.
The beast shrieked as it reared back away from her.
The crowd roared.
Ceres, smarting from the pain of its scratches, scrambled out from under it and stood weakly. She looked down as the beast, the spear lodged in its heart, rolled and whined, making a sound that seemed far too small for something so large.
Then it stiffened, and died.
“Ceres! Ceres! Ceres!”
The Stade filled with cheers again. Everywhere Ceres looked, there were people calling out her name. Nobles and ordinary folk alike seemed to be joining in the chanting, losing themselves in that one moment of her victory.
“Ceres! Ceres! Ceres!”
She found herself drinking it in. It was impossible not to be caught up in the feeling of adulation. Her whole body seemed to pulse in time with the chanting that surrounded her and she spread her hands as if to welcome it all in. She turned in a slow circle, watching the faces of those who hadn’t even heard of her a day ago, but who were now treating her as though she was the only person in the world who mattered.
Ceres was so caught up in that moment that she barely even felt the pain of the wounds she’d suffered anymore. Her shoulder hurt now, so she touched a hand to it. It came away wet, although her blood was still bright red in the sunlight.
Ceres stared at that stain for several seconds. The crowd was still chanting her name, but the pounding of her heart in her ears suddenly seemed far louder. She looked up at the crowd, and it took her a moment to realize that she was doing it from her knees. She couldn’t remember falling to them.
From the corner of her eye, Ceres could see Paulo hurrying forward, but that seemed far too distant, as if it had nothing to do with her. Blood dripped from her fingers to the sand, darkening it where it touched. She had never felt so dizzy, so light-headed.
And the last thing she knew she was already falling, face-first, toward the floor of the arena, unable, she felt, to ever move again.
CHAPTER TWO
Thanos slowly opened his eyes, confused as he felt waves lapping at his ankles, his wrists. Beneath him, he could feel the gritty white sand of Haylon’s beaches. Salt spray occasionally filled his mouth, making it hard to breathe.
Thanos looked out sideways along the beach, unable to do more than that. Even that was a struggle, as he drifted in and out of consciousness. In the distance, he thought he could make out flames and the sounds of violence. Screams came to him, along with the sound of steel clashing on steel.
The island, he remembered. Haylon. Their attack had begun.
So why was he lying on the sand?
It took a moment for the pain in his shoulder to answer that question. He remembered, and winced at the memory. He remembered the moment the sword had plunged into him, lancing into his upper back from behind. He remembered the shock of it as the Typhoon had betrayed him.
The pain burned through Thanos, expanding like a flower from the wound in his back. Every breath hurt. He tried to lift his head—but he only blacked out.
The next time Thanos woke, he was face-down on the sand again, and he was only able to tell that time had passed because the tide had risen a little, the water lapping at his waist now rather than his ankles. He was finally able to lift his head enough to see that there were other bodies on the beach. The dead seemed to cover the world, stretched out on the white beaches as far as he could see. He saw men in the armor of the Empire, sprawled where they had fallen, mixed in with the defenders who had died protecting their home.
The stench of death filled Thanos’s nostrils, and it was all he could do not to throw up. No one had sorted the dead into friend and foe yet. Such niceties could wait until after the battle was done. Perhaps the Empire would leave it for the tide to do; a glance behind showed blood in the water, and Thanos could see the fins breaking through the waves. Not large sharks yet, scavengers rather than hunters—but how large would they need to be in order to devour him when the tide rose?
Thanos felt a wave of panic. He tried to haul himself up the beach, pulling with his arms as though trying to climb across the sand. He cried out in pain as he pulled himself forward, perhaps half the length of his body.
Blackness swam in his vision again.
When he came to, Thanos was on his side, looking up at figures who squatted over him, close enough that he could have reached out for them if he’d had the strength left to do it. They didn’t look like soldiers of the Empire, didn’t really look like soldiers at all, and Thanos had spent long enough around warriors to know the difference. These, a younger man and an older, looked more like farmers, ordinary men who had probably fled their homes to avoid the violence. That didn’t mean they were less dangerous, though. Both held knives, and Thanos found himself wondering if they might be as much scavengers as the sharks. He knew there were always those looking to rob the dead after battles.
“This one’s still breathing,” the first of them said.
“I can see that. Just cut his throat and be done with it.”
Thanos tensed, his body getting ready to fight even though there was nothing he could have done then.
“Look at him,” the younger man insisted. “Someone stabbed him in the back.”
Thanos saw the older man frown slightly at that. He moved around behind Thanos, out of his line of sight. Thanos managed to keep from crying out again as the man touched the spot where blood still flowed from the wound. He was a prince of the Empire. He wasn’t going to show weakness.
“Looks like you’re right. Help me get him up where the sharks won’t get him. The others will want to see this.”
Thanos saw the younger man nod, and together, they managed to lift him, armor and all. This time, Thanos did cry out, unable to stop the pain as they pulled him up over the beach.
They left him like driftwood, past the point where the tide had left seaweed behind, abandoning him on the dry sand. They hurried away, but Thanos was too caught up in the pain to watch them go.
There was no way for him to gauge the time that passed then. He could still hear the battle in the background, with its cries of violence and anger, its rallying cries and its signal horns. A battle could last minutes or hours, though. It could be over in the first rush, or keep going until neither side had the strength to do more than stumble away. Thanos had no way of knowing which this was.
Eventually, a group of men approached. These did look like soldiers, with that harder edge that only came to a man once he’d fought for his life. It was easy to see which of them was the leader. The tall, dark-haired man at the front didn’t wear the elaborately worked armor that a general of the Empire might have, but everyone there looked to him as the group approached, obviously awaiting orders.
The newcomer was probably in his thirties, with a short beard as dark as the rest of his hair, and a spare frame that nevertheless held a sense of strength. He wore a short, stabbing sword on each hip, and Thanos guessed that it wasn’t just for show, judging by the way his hands hovered next to the hilts automatically. His expression seemed to Thanos to be silently calculating every angle present on the beach, watching out for the possibility of an ambush, always thinking ahead. His eyes locked on to Thanos’s, and the smile that followed had a strange kind of humor behind it, as though its owner had seen someth
ing in the world that no one else had.
“This is what you two have brought me out here to see?” he said, as the two who had found Thanos stepped forward. “One dying Imperial soldier in armor too shiny for his own good?”
“A noble though,” the older one said. “You can see that by the armor.”
“And he’s been stabbed in the back,” the younger pointed out. “By his own men, it seems.”
“So he’s not even good enough for the scum who are trying to take our island?” the leader said.
Thanos watched as the man moved closer, kneeling beside him. Maybe he intended to finish what the Typhoon had started. No soldier of Haylon would have any love for those on his side of the conflict.
“What did you do that your own side would try to kill you?” the newcomer asked, quietly enough that only Thanos could hear him.
Thanos managed to find the strength to shake his head. “I don’t know.” The words came out cracked and broken. Even if he hadn’t been wounded, he’d been lying on the sand a long time. “But I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to fight here.”
That earned another of those strange smiles that seemed to Thanos to be laughing at the world even though there was nothing to laugh at.
“And yet here you are,” the newcomer said. “You didn’t want to take part in an invasion, but you’re on our beaches, rather than safe at home. You didn’t want to offer us violence, but the Empire’s army is burning homes as we speak. Do you know what’s happening up that beach?”
Thanos shook his head. Even that hurt.
“We’re losing,” the man continued. “Oh, we’re fighting hard enough, but that doesn’t matter. Not with odds like this. The battle still rages, but that’s just because half of my side are too stubborn to recognize the truth. We don’t have enough time for distractions like this.”
Thanos watched as the newcomer drew one of his swords. It looked wickedly sharp. So sharp that he probably wouldn’t even feel it as it plunged into his heart. Instead, though, the other man gestured with it.
“You and you,” he said to the men, “bring our new friend. Perhaps he’s worth something to the other side.” He grinned. “And if he’s not, I shall kill him myself.”
The last thing Thanos felt were strong hands gripping him under his arms, yanking him up, dragging him away, before he finally lapsed back into darkness.
CHAPTER THREE
Berin felt the ache of longing as he trekked along the route home to Delos, the only thing keeping him going, thoughts of his family—of Ceres. The thought of returning to his daughter was enough to make him press on, even though he’d found the days of walking tough, the roads beneath his feet rough with ruts and stones. His bones were not getting any younger, and already he could feel his knee aching from the journey, adding to the pains that came from a life of hammering and heating metal.
It was all worth it, though, to see home again, though. To see his family. All the time he’d been away, it was all Berin had wanted. He could picture it now. Marita would be cooking in the back of the humble wooden home, the scent of it wafting out past the front door. Sartes would be playing somewhere around the back, probably with Nasos watching him, even if his older son would be pretending that he wasn’t.
And then there would be Ceres. He loved all his children, but with Ceres there had always been that extra connection. She had been the one to help out around his forge, the one who had taken after him most, and who seemed the most likely to follow in his footsteps. Leaving Marita and the boys had been a painful duty, necessary if he was to provide for his family. Leaving Ceres behind had felt as though he’d abandoned some part of himself when he left.
Now it was time to reclaim it.
Berin only wished he brought happier news. He walked along the gravel track that led back to their house, and he frowned; it wasn’t winter yet, but it would be soon enough. The plan had been for him to leave and find work. Lords always needed bladesmiths to provide weapons for their guards, their wars, their Killings. Yet it turned out that they didn’t need him. They had their own men. Younger, stronger men. Even the king who had seemed to want his work had turned out to want Berin as he had been ten years ago.
The thought hurt, yet he knew he should have guessed that they would have no need for a man with more gray in his beard than black.
It would have hurt more if it hadn’t meant that he got to go home. Home was the thing that mattered for Berin, even when it was little more than a square of rough-sawn wooden walls, topped with a turf roof. Home was about the people waiting there, and the thought of them was enough to make him quicken his steps.
As he crested a hill, though, and the first view of it came, Bering knew that something was wrong. His stomach plunged. Berin knew what home felt like. For all the barrenness of the surrounding land, home was a place filled with life. There was always noise there, whether it was joyful or argumentative. At this time of year too, there would always have been at least a few crops growing in the plot around it, vegetables and small berry bushes, hardy things that always produced at least something to feed them.
That was not what he saw before him.
Berin broke into as much of a run then as he could manage after so long a walk, the sense of something wrong gnawing away at him, feeling like one of his vises clamped around his heart.
He reached the door and threw it wide. Maybe, he thought, everything would be all right. Maybe they had spotted him and were all just ensuring that his arrival would be a surprise.
It was dim inside, the windows crusted with grime. And there, a presence.
Marita stood in the main room, stirring a pot that smelled too sour to Berin. She turned toward him as he burst in, and as she did, Berin knew he’d been right. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
“Marita?” he began.
“Husband.” Even the flat way she said that told him that nothing was as it should be. Any other time he’d been away, Marita had thrown her arms around him as he’d come in the door. She’d always seemed full of life. Now, she seemed…empty.
“What’s going on here?” Berin asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Again, there was less emotion than there should have been, as though something in his wife had broken, letting all the joy out of her.
“Why is everything around here so… so still?” Berin demanded. “Where are our children?”
“They aren’t here right now,” Marita said. She moved back to the pot as though everything was perfectly normal.
“Where are they, then?” Berin wasn’t going to let it go. He could believe that the boys might have run down to the nearest stream or had errands to run, but one of his children at least would have seen him coming home and been there to meet him. “Where is Ceres?”
“Oh yes,” Marita said, and Berin could hear the bitterness there now. “Of course you would ask after her. Not how things are with me. Not your sons. Her.”
Berin had never heard his wife sound quite like this before. Oh, he’d always known there was something hard in Marita, more concerned for herself than for the rest of the world, but now it sounded as though her heart was ashes.
Marita seemed to calm down then, and the sheer speed with which she did it made it suspicious to Berin.
“You want to know what your precious daughter did?” she said. “She ran away.”
Berin’s apprehension deepened. He shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”
Marita kept going. “She ran away. Didn’t say where she was going, just stole what she could from us when she left.”
“We have no money to steal,” Berin said. “And Ceres would never do that.”
“Of course you’ll take her side,” Marita said. “But she took… things from around here, possessions. Anything she thought she could sell in the next town, knowing that girl. She abandoned us.”
If that was what Marita thought, then Berin was sure she’d never really known her daughter. Or him, if she thought h
e would believe such an obvious lie. He took her shoulders in his hands, and even though he didn’t possess all the strength he’d once had, Berin was still strong enough so that his wife felt fragile by comparison.
“Tell me the truth, Marita! What’s happened here?” Berin shook her, as if somehow that might jolt the old version of her back into being, and she might suddenly return to being the Marita he’d married all those years before. All it did was make her pull away.
“Your boys are dead!” Marita yelled back. The words filled the small space of their home, coming out in a snarl. Her voice dropped. “That’s what’s happened. Our sons are dead.”
The words hit Berin like a kick from a horse that didn’t want shoeing. “No,” he said. “It’s another lie. It has to be.”
He couldn’t think of another thing Marita could have said that would have hurt as much. She had to be just saying this to hurt him.
“When did you decide that you hated me so much?” Berin asked, because that was the only reason he could think of that his wife would throw something so vile at him, using the idea of their sons’ deaths as a weapon.
Now Berin could see tears in Marita’s eyes. There hadn’t been any when she’d been talking about their daughter supposedly running away.
“When you decided to abandon us,” his wife snapped back. “When I had to watch Nasos die!”
“Just Nasos?” Berin said.
“Isn’t that enough?” Marita shouted back. “Or don’t you care about your sons?”
“A moment ago you said that Sartes was dead too,” Berin said. “Stop lying to me, Marita!”
“Sartes is dead too,” his wife insisted. “Soldiers came and took him. They dragged him off to be a part of the Empire’s army, and he’s just a boy. How long do you think he will survive as a part of that? No, both of my boys are gone, while Ceres…”
“What?” Berin demanded.
Marita just shook her head. “If you’d been here, it might not even have happened.”