The Echoes of Sin (The Kinless Trilogy Book 3)

by Philbrook, Chris

  They broke the kiss to get their trousers and underwear off, and once fully naked, they dove onto the lower bunk bed, Mal atop Chelsea, his body pressed into hers. Their fingers traced each other’s bodies lovingly as they kissed and nuzzled, exploring along the scars they both bore. Both had seen violence far above what should be normal, and their bodies showed all the proof of it. Tested warriors, both.

  “Are we in love?” Mal asked her abruptly, looking up from her chest and into her dark blue eyes. “This feels like love to me.” He leaned in and kissed her before she had a chance to respond.

  She returned his kiss, and pushed him up and away so she could look in his eyes. “Can we afford not to be in love right now?”

  He laughed; a sweet and innocent sound that made her laugh too. “I don’t think so. You should know I love you Chelsea. Have for awhile now.”

  She curled her fingers around the nape of his neck and they locked eyes. “I love you too Malwynn Everwalk.”

  And with that, Malwynn’s haunting feelings of loneliness faded away, replaced with a filling warmth that he’d missed for so long.

  He leaned in, and they didn’t worry about the war, or necromancy, the strange black key in James’ pocket, or the rest of the world for several hours, and it was a beautiful thing.

  After passing through the eruptions of stone known as the Akeel Mountains, the nation of Farmington awaited. A full day of travel was still required over land that had fewer geographical deviations than a pool of standing water on a calm day. To say Farmington was flat was to do the description flat a disservice. All that existed for hours upon hours was a sea of bright green grasses, a cluster of trees here or there, and the occasional Plainswalker, dipping its leathery, elephantine body down into the vegetation to feast with its gut-mouth. The twins looked at the horned, tailed, and lone creatures with a fondness that reminded them of a few bruises they’d gotten at the hand of one a time ago.

  When the first signs of the capital city came into view as they woke, it was a welcome sight. They had to stick their heads out of the windows of the train to see the city. At first all that was visible was a tiny spike over the horizon. A pinnacle of a large building that James and Chelsea claimed was the Cathedral of Donovan; the unofficial center of Elmoryn’s Church of Souls.

  As the train closed the gap and the sun continued to rise, the tip of the Cathedral grew taller and taller until it rose from the center of the plains like a massive spear, surrounded by a sprawling forest of buildings. Parallel to their own rail line other trains surrounded them, passing them as they brought people and things to other places. The rail yard of Farmington was second to none, larger even that Daris’, and was supposed to be complete with a hundred loading docks for the mountains of grain and corn that grew in the breadbasket of the world. Freight trains sped past them heading north to Daris to deliver foodstuffs, permitted to move at almost double the speed of passenger cars to get their task accomplished. They looked on with envy.

  “That’s what we do,” Umaryn said after setting her text down on her pillow. She had taken a short break from studying to look at the trains passing, and the growing hustle and bustle of the city’s edge.

  “Are you suggesting we turn around and head north? Defeats the purpose of this trip, doesn’t it?” James said. He too was reading a book. It was a leftover romance novel from a prior passenger. It was torrid, and James was thoroughly amused by it. Below him Chelsea and Malwynn had taken a break from their own torrid affair, and were fresh asleep in each other’s arms.

  “No. I mean instead of buying tickets for a passenger train to Eden Valley, we see if we can get a berth on a freight train instead. It’ll go twice as fast.” She squirreled her face up doing a calculation. “I think we are six hours ahead of schedule. We’ll be arriving in the city just after breakfast based on my math. If we take the next regular train, that’ll put us at New Falun around sunset, maybe a bit before or a bit later. However, if we can scam our way onto a freight car, we’ll arrive somewhere around dawn. I’d much rather have all day to prepare for what awaits us at New Falun, than show up as the sun was setting in an area where we know there to be undead that are active at night.”

  “That would be terrific. Do you suppose we could ‘scam’ our way onto a train? I’m loath to imagine any more deception and ill deeds on our part Umaryn.”

  “I’m a Fabricator in the Guild, James. That’s not insubstantial. I think I can pull some strings if I put my Guild robe on and get us on a freight train. It might not be comfortable, but dealing with a little discomfort is better than being a little bit dead.”

  “Spoken like one who has been a little bit dead my friend.”

  Umaryn debated the truth of the Apostle’s statement, and then hopped off to get out her gray robe with red trim.

  —Chapter Five—

  A THOUSAND FALLING STARS

  For hours though the endless night flaming death fell from the heavens, and matching each of those terrifying hours, the men and women inside Ockham’s Fringe fought against them.

  The Knight Major’s investment in the street-covering shelters proved a miraculous invention. To estimate how many lives the simple layer of wood and shingle had saved just that night alone would be impossible. Enough arrows speared the wood above to kill every citizen and soldier in the village ten times over, and yet less than a score met their end that first night. A victory without doubt.

  The night did not pass without some losses.

  The wind turned foul in the darkest hours of the night. The strong breeze that blew north to south early in the siege wasted away until the air stood still, humid and stagnant. The arrows that required skill and concentration to finagle through the earlier environment now flew true and straight, hitting inside the walls where they were aimed with no effort. It helped the Queen’s bowmen that their target was so large, and their care for where their arrows landed so indiscriminate. This callous gift allowed the ranks of Empire archers to fling their arrows twice as fast, and it meant the Darisian bowmen came under heavy fire.

  Privates Willem Henderson and Aubrey Leaf were the two archers in the north eastern tower. When the runner came and yelled up to the soldiers to return fire, they eagerly nocked their arrows, and obeyed the command. The strong thrum of the released string vibrated hand and arm, and signaled the end of someone or more likely some thing dangerous outside the walls.

  Aubrey’s keen eyes and years of experience hunting rabbits on her family farm near New Laysara in the south made her arguably the best archer in all the Ghost Makers. When she freed an arrow from her bow after tying her long brown hair into a tight bun, it was sent precisely to where she wanted it to go. In a drunken dare after a long day’s training she’d put two arrows through two small dinner rolls thrown in the air at ten paces. She counted her winnings and ate the rolls after, right off the shaft.

  This was far different than the exhibition she’d put on. Through the initial night’s barrage she and Willem stood side by side, launching poor quality arrows into the darkness at a sea of tiny flames. She could see the large fire cauldrons and the lines of archers fanning out from them, and she knew that was where she needed to fire, but in the darkness when she set her arrows free, she couldn’t see where they were landing. It was akin to skipping rocks while wearing a blindfold. You knew the rock landed in the water, but as for where… It was fortunate though that even an errant shot would hit something in the Empire force. A dominated dead body most likely, but still, it was something.

  “I can’t see what I’m doing,” Willem said to Aubrey as his fingers opened and let the string fly, sending another arrow out at the roiling mass of enemies below.

  “Keep firing slow and steady Willem,” Aubrey said, “we’re killing something. Just mind your rate of fire. Tonight we serve to slow them down. We are the mosquitoes in their eyes. Tomorrow when we can see better, we shall be hornets, and make them pay.”

  “By what? Killing one of them?” Willem’s bow
twanged as he sent another pestering arrow out. “They’ll just have their damned necromancers raise them as undead and we’ll have to kill them again.”

  “Why do you think we have so many arrows?” Aubrey joked as she too let loose an arrow. Incoming missiles, each lit aflame sailed past them all around and descended into the village, hitting the soaked roofs and the wooden canopy that covered most of the streets. Each arrow that landed was quickly attended to by someone who grabbed it out of whatever it had hit before it could take, or quenched its flame with a fast bucket of water. With a rattling bang one of the flaming arrows hit the side of their tower just below the lip of the retaining wall that provided them with fairly minimal cover. The laughed at each other, scared by the near miss for a second.

  Aubrey grunted in disapproval and leaned over the rail. The arrow was embedded in a plank and the flaming tip firmly seated and blackening the wood. They did not have enough water at the top of the tower to waste on putting it out, nor the time to summon a single cup or bucket, so the private set out to remove it by hand. She reached down and carefully see-sawed the arrow until it came free.

  “Ha-ha!” she exclaimed triumphantly, holding her prize up for Willem to see.

  “Send it back! We don’t want it,” he said laughing, and Aubrey did just that. She spun it with a flair of dexterity and drew it on her own bow. She held her draw for a moment, gauging the shot with the heavier arrow, and then sent it out towards the row of darkened and distant archers. The missile’s fiery tip illuminated the entire trajectory until it struck something moving near one of the coppery red brazier of flame. It looked like a comet falling into a distant sun. The two archers celebrated as the flame moved a bit, and then collapsed behind something.

  “I hit something! Finally a confirmed kill!” Aubrey celebrated. Willem joined her enthusiasm by sending out an arrow roughly to where she’d sent the Empire arrow, but they had no way of telling where his landed. A larger spot of flame took root where her arrow had landed; signifying that someone or something had been set aflame.

  Suddenly the sea of tiny flaming pinpricks heaved up. To their eyes it seemed like the entire row of enemy archers had vengefully launched their arrows all as one, and they rose through the sky past the horizon and then above until they loomed high against the red and blue twin moons. A thousand falling stars came together into a bright orange lance of death, set out to murder them for the arrogance of their defense.

  “Shit,” Willem said. The two soldiers collapsed to the floor of the tower as the arrows reached and passed their killing zenith, and came crashing down on their position. It sounded like an army of lumberjacks assaulting their scant walls with countless axes. With each bang and thud another arrow stuck itself into the tower, and shook it. The impacts came so fast that the entire structure vibrated and wobbled, pushed back from the force of so many projectiles. They hit the short wall and soared over it too, hitting the interior of the archer’s nest just feet away from their legs.

  Willem and Aubrey screamed powerlessly against the onslaught, unable to do anything about the piercing daggers that came after them in an endless surge. They cried, and screamed together until one of the arrows found Willem’s flesh. Its feathered shaft appeared in his upper chest in a flash, and as Aubrey watched her friend’s red blood quenched the flames of the arrowhead lodged deep in his flesh. The light diminished in his eyes fast, and his final scream faded away and turned into a wet, bloody gurgle. In the black of the night Aubrey watched as red foam ran down his chin. The insult of a dozen more arrows impacted the tower.

  Aubrey stared at his face as his muscles relaxed, and he slumped against the small wall they hid behind; now only a corpse. A burning arrow hit the floor near to where she was curled up against the wood and the noise and fingers of flame brought her wits back to her. She screamed again, but for something different now.

  “Apostle! Apostle! A soul needs tending!” She prayed to her dead grandparents the Apostle made the climb up the tower before Willem’s soul went rotten, and she had to destroy his body, destroying his soul in the process. He deserved better than that. He deserved an afterlife with the spirits of his family.

  Hopefully the priest brought water, because the tower had nearly caught flame as well.

  Corporal Beckett had his hands full.

  Despite the fervent efforts of the men on his fire team to spray everything down with fire defeating water, and yank every arrow they saw drop from anything flammable, there were places they had missed, and with the unbelievable volume of comet-like arrows dropping into the village of Ockham’s Fringe, it was only a matter of time before one of them hit pay dirt before they could attend to it.

  A rushing vacuum and a loud whoomphing noise alerted them that something terrible had happened. Beckett’s eyes didn’t have to look far to see that a corner of the thatch on a three story building near the center of the village had caught on fire. The conflagration was already eating away the corner of the roof, and crawling down the edge of the building along the support posts. If they didn’t get to it quickly, the entire structure would be lost, and many more would likely follow with it.

  “Quick! Douse low! Douse low!” Beckett pointed at the wall where the flame was trying to walk down to the street level slowly. The tired, sagging building was catching fast. They needed more water. They needed another pumping engine and they needed it right now. Beckett grabbed a man who he knew lived in the village that had volunteered to help. He had wild eyes, and a soot covered face. “The other engine is near the forge and the tanner! At that large stable! Go get them! Tell them we’re about to lose a building at the heart of the village and we need them now! GO! RUN!” Beckett screamed, gesturing in the direction the man should run.

  “Old man Druck’s stable! I know it,” he yelled back, nodding emphatically. The man dropped his hose in a puddle and took off sprinting at full speed, splashing his way through the mud and dodging the arrows that were lodged in the dirt.

  Beckett prayed the man made it safe, and that the engine came fast. Heart and lungs heaving, the corporal grabbed up the hose the man dropped, and helped his team push the engine into the uncovered streets nearer to the burning building. A flaming arrow smashed into the metal machinery of the pump and snapped in half. It tumbled to the ground and Beckett stepped over it. There was no time to duck. He pushed the danger out of his mind and left his fate in the hands of powers greater than him. It was simple; if the ancestors wished him to survive this, then he would. If not, then he would join them in the afterlife, and celebrate a life lived well.

  “Push hard boys! There’ll be no tomorrow for us if we don’t survive tonight!”

  His men responded with a roar, and the engine’s speed picked up.

  So did the fire.

  Marcus let the salty, stinging sweat run down his forehead and into his eyes. He couldn’t wipe it away; both of his hands were latched firmly onto one side of the man operated piston that powered one of the fire pump engines alternating between shoving downward, and pulling upward. He couldn’t stop his motion or the pressure in the hose his pump fed would falter, and the water wouldn’t reach the stable that had caught on fire fast enough. The Knight Major had scurried down from his position high in his archery tower when he saw the stable catch fire, and one of the men in the fire control team out in the open go down with a burning arrow in his leg. He had screamed loud enough to wake the dead. There was little the seasoned warrior could do in the tower. He wasn’t the finest archer, and there would be few commands to give if the village burnt down. The Sending had been made. His people only needed to hold the city until noon the next day for them to achieve victory. Knowing that, he decided to join the fight against the flames.

  When he and Dunwood arrived down below at the scene of chaos Marcus was positive the man would survive after an Apostle saw to him, but he wasn’t sure about the stable. The horses had already scattered. Five of his soldiers and several locals were running after them in the village t
o corral them and bring them to another stable. As long as the beasts stormed about, frightened out of their small animal minds, people were in danger of being trampled, and that was a worry Marcus didn’t need.

  Dunwood was across from him atop the wagon operating the pump. He and his sergeant were larger and stronger than the men who were in the group of soldiers fighting the fire. Their largest man was the one still yelling in pain that took the arrow, so they jumped onto the engine and started to pump as hard as they could. It was simple enough; one man pulled up while the other pushed down. There was an immediate effect.

  The contraption siphoned water straight from the well nearby and pistoned it out the hose with tremendous force with them pumping. Marcus blinked hard and watched as two of his men struggled to rein in and aim the hose that threatened to escape their grip like a wild snake from the jungles of Oakdale, or the sandy, poisonous hills of the Plague Dunes. He laughed hard and Dunwood looked over his shoulder to see why. It was comical to watch the men wrestle.

  The two leaders slowed their frantic pace slightly, and the soldiers capitalized on it, and focused the spray of water into the worst of the flames at the rear wall of the stable. The orange tongues of destruction lapping at the ceiling of the stable shrank immediately, and started to die out. The Knight Major hooted and hollered in exultation as they turned the tide of this battle. Within a few seconds more, the blaze was all but dominated and destroyed. They didn’t need him anymore.

  “Come here private, take over for me,” Marcus hollered into the dark to one of his men. One of the soldiers who had been moving hoses climbed up into the back of the engine as Marcus jumped down. The Knight Major finally wiped his eyes clean and caught his breath. Underneath his plate mail Marcus’ muscles up and down both arms and across his shoulders and chest burned with exertion. It felt good. It was the comfortable searing of hard work and achievement.