This is just what he had said, she remembered, What he said to me. How can so many of those around me seem so right, and be so at odds with one another?
Adria watched her uncle’s army — her army — as their voices grew hoarse, their arms pierced the sky with swords and spears and arrow-points, waves of sharp Moresidhe steel. The ceremonial was complete, and for the first time, he had truly named them, in the way one would name a child, a man, and a Hunter. He had summoned them to him, one by one, and now they became his tribe.
“Shíme Kóneya Nistewela,” Adria whispered. “The Hunters of Men.”
And when he at last turned back to the enemy, and raised his spear to the stars, it seemed to Adria almost a banner. Though no pennant colors flew below its point, the Hunters would follow his standard nonetheless... in lines four deep and a hundred wide.
And then by thousands… and then by tens of thousands until the forest is emptied onto the world. Adria closed her eyes in the moment of silence before the order was given, praying, somehow, that time would stop — that her moments with Tabashi had not drained her so.
He gave the command to draw, and the rear ranks set their arrows and held.
Please, Adria prayed. Spirit Helpers of the night and the wood and the stars and of everything... once more…
Please, all my ancestors and the ancestors of all the People and the Aeman... once more…
Please, White Wolf Woman and First Spider and even... even the One-who-Comes to end all wars... please, help me still the world again, just… once… more...
…for what? she answered herself. Even if I can slow the river, their arrows and their hearts are set. I would not have to change time alone. I would have to change four-hundred hearts of fire…
“No...” she whispered, envisioning Preinon’s arm begin to lower. “Four-hundred and one.”
Adria counted her heart as it beat, matching her shallow breath. Beside her, she could hear the breath of her uncle, steady and slow. And behind her, to her sorrow, she heard the breath of the Hunters of Men, the crickets of the field and the night birds and wind in the trees. Everything was still but that which mattered most.
Time.
Then the order came, and Adria opened her eyes, all her fear and guilt and anger loosed with two-hundred arrows.
“…once more for the crows.”
Above the droning shanty of Josson and the crew, there was a crack of wood as the onager released, and then a cry from the top castle, “Stone... stone...”
“Bear a’port...” the captain shouted, turning the wheel as the sailors manned the ropes to bring The Echo about.
As the vessel lurched, Adria braced herself, thankful she was in the corner. Knights careened onto knees or elbows, arrows skittered across the wood, and Adria could not understand how the sailors kept their legs at all.
At the helm, Falburn leaned expertly with the motion as he turned the wheel, hand over hand over hand. His shield boy went to his knees, and jerked Emoni down beside him, to her mild surprise.
For a moment, Adria nearly forgot the present danger, as its direction changed dramatically. The galley now lay ahead and off the port bow, and above and between the two ships, the onager’s shot seemed strangely idle, wandering across the cloudless sky.
As The Echo’s sails gathered their full wind again sails full out, all eyes aboard watched the stone as it rose to its full height, then picked up speed as it fell the distance. Most held their breath, but those who knew how such things flew nodded in momentary satisfaction.
It cracked into the sea a dozen yards astern, sending a jet of water over the railing and onto the deck. While all others exhaled their relief, a Knight at the aft starboard was soaked, and cursed his luck.
You think that ill luck? Adria thought, imagining if The Echo had been a bit slower to react.
Beside her, Hafgrim finished the thought. “Better water than stone, Sir Aylard,” he nodded, walking over to the Knight and clapping him on the shoulder. Though a grim joke, it nonetheless produced some laughter, and Adria favored her brother with a small smile when he turned back.
Is he confident, or only trying to hide its lack with humor? The time we have spent apart is telling... I can no longer tell the source of his mood for certain.
The Echo flew almost with the wind now, a much greater speed than before she had turned. Falburn wasn’t aiming directly at the galley, but was on a course to intercept. Adria guessed, though, that if the wind arose a fair bit, The Echo could yet use it to outpace the galley. Still, we’re closing quickly.
“Not long before bow range,” Elias nodded.
“It’s hard to tell, with the wind and motion,” Hafgrim said. “We’ll look foolish if our first volley finds only fish.”
It took some time for the galley to reload and adjust for a second shot, and Adria could see that with the pace The Echo was making, the enemy would not likely manage more than three or four all told — at least in a single pass.
I should count the time it takes each shot to reach, Adria thought as she heard the second thump, louder across the closing distance. She watched with a little surprise to see that the prow of the galley dipped precariously into the sea with the force of the onager.
Perhaps the machine will loose its ties and roll over onto some of the rowers. But then she realized that the rowers were probably slaves, and she regretted her hasty thought.
Even as the second warning cry came, Falburn turned the ship again, outward to starboard this time, but not nearly so extreme as before. Adria watched the path of the stone, unsure for a moment, but when it fell in its arc, she was again relieved. This one was short, and struck the waves to port, far short of the ship.
There was an even longer pause, and no shot came, but still they were not in bow range.
“Perhaps they carried only two stones,” Hafgrim grinned slightly.
“They’re readjusting a bit more carefully this time, trying to second guess our captain,” Elias said. “The machine is powerful, but unwieldy at sea. Still, a single shot could cripple us, if aimed true.”
Adria eyed the distance between the two ships thoughtfully as Falburn turned The Echo a few degrees, and then again, trying to make their trajectory less predictable, but still keep it open to quick adjustments.
I wish I could read the wind like Mateko, she thought. He could smell changes in the weather long before they happened.
With a slight smile, she thought of her last moments with him, and in a burst of inspiration, she unshouldered her pack and dug inside to pull out a bundle of black and violet — A Knight’s tabard.
She unbound it and let the wind catch it, then looped it over her head and tied the cords on the side. Its colors parted on her right shoulder and diagonally to well below her waist. It looked ridiculously large, and strange against her furs and leather. And the stitching where her arrow had pierced the tabard, almost at the center of her father’s silver hexangle, was still obvious at close distance.
When she looked back up, Elias’s face was impenetrable. Hafgrim’s, however, bore obvious surprise.
“Let them know all our colors,” Adria said, evenly and quietly. “The sea may not be under Heiland law, but The Echo is, and every life aboard is under the protection of the Crown.”
They might doubt my loyalty to their order and their faith, but they cannot doubt my blood. For all my rebellion and all my trials, my father’s colors are my own, as my path has been by his will.
Adria squinted across the sun-drenched water. She measured the distance to the enemy, the relative motion between the ships. She could see faces on the castles, individual but indistinct. She measured the apparent wind on her face, and the truer wind in the sails and the topmost flag, which she had studied now for days.
Adria rose to her full height, tested her bow at half draw a few times more, and drew bearing. Ignor
ing the looks of those around her, Adria prayed, as a Hunter and as her father’s child, her eyes half open, and the muscles in her arms fully taut.
“Friend, I am a Hunter who knows your worth, and I wish to give thanks for your sacrifice. May your Ancestors receive you in the Great Spirit as one of their own. You did not ask for your death, and I did not ask to be a hunter of men. But we are not enemies. We are part of the same. Do not be afraid, for this is a good day to die.”
She paused, and waited for the still between the wind and between heart beats.
It has been decided, she assured herself, her arrow, and her enemy.
I have decided.
“Once more for the crows,” Emoni said, even as Adria released.
Preinon gave the order, and Adria opened her eyes, and all her guilt and fear and anger loosed with two-hundred arrows.
“This has already happened,” she whispered.
And then she didn’t pray anymore. She didn’t think in words or at all.
She ran.
The whistle of the arrows grew lower, like the rushing of the water beyond and below, and then quieted, even as she began to outpace them.
She was a third of the way down the field when they found the top of their arc, where they wandered against the still-dancing stars. She was another third of the way, and they were directly above, irrevocable on their convergence a dozen yards before her.
She passed the Knight and his squires, their shields raised above them, their bodies hunched in their saddles.
Beyond, the three or four dozen men and boys of the village were not so armed. They stood, almost frozen in time and in their fear, or hunched down with their arms and hands raised feebly to the stars and to the arrows birthed by stars.
I am sorry, she whispered as she ran among them. But you are already lost.
But then she came to the last of them, a boy of twelve or thirteen years stood, his father’s rusted helm from some older war upon his head, the hay fork he had held in his hands tumbling to the ground. His face was stained with tears, his shoes were soaked with river water, and the chausses on his legs were wet with his urine.
Time is a river…
Veering just a little, Adria grabbed him by his tunic, and pushed him out of place, dragging him as best she could along with her, down to the river’s edge where the arrows were unlikely to fall. She stopped and leaned down only a moment, and placed the gold coin she had won from Tabashi in the boy’s palm, and whispered into his ear, even as she heard the first arrows fall behind her, “Run...”
Just as she reached the bridge, where the ghosts of fog continued their dance, Adria turned back once to look at what she had just left behind, and for a moment held her breath. The pain in her limbs and chest and head had grown and pulsed and swollen until it seemed to fill the air around her, white heat red-tinged, a wreath of flame which pulsed with every heartbeat.
But she held, though she felt as if her head or her world were going to collapse upon itself, and she could not even bring herself to move — not as if she were underwater, now, but within stone. Irrevocable.
Half the Aeman men were already falling, arrows piercing metal, hide, leather, cloth and flesh as easily as one another. The blood, frozen for that moment, seemed more a horror, in the knowledge she could not hold her breath forever.
Does time slow when you near death? she wondered, and not for the first time. How long before I drown? Like my… like my father.
Beyond and now above the arrows falling, she could still see the white and red colors upon the Hunters of Men. And at their center she could see Preinon, his spear still set before him, as if it had sent her forward instead of the arrows.
Are you thinking in words, Atuteko? She wondered. Do you even know that I have failed you?
And I am thinking in words, she realized. But it doesn’t matter now.
Her heart and head thundered, red storm clouds and white lightning, her eyes wandered further upwards, above the still black tree line, to where a bare rocky hill arose above it all against the stars. She almost thought she could see a fire there, a tent and a woman. Is this your prayer I answer, Imatéli... too little and too late?
Adria prayed again, even as she turned away. She prayed for blindness. Like her earlier prayer, this one remained unanswered. She turned back to the bridge and to Palmill... and exhaled.
She traveled with the arrow, almost, at sickening speed and to dizzying heights, as if carried by a bird across the sun silvered waves.
But Adria blinked the vision away as she turned her head to Emoni, whose voice still echoed in her ears.
It was clear, even across the water, that one among the enemy fell. There was a cry from the galley, and then there was only silence on both decks, even Josson had faltered in his song.
“Overbold, Sister,” Hafgrim said quietly. “The purpose of firing as one is to bring fear to the enemy with a rain of arrows.”
“And a lone arrow, accurate across such a distance, does not?” Adria replied, turning back form the unblinking eyes of the Novice. “Discipline has its uses, I have no doubt, but what of absolute assurance? When the first man falls, they know exactly what we bring to them.”
Sailors and Knights alike had regained their focus, many calling out or whistling their appreciation of the rogue shot.
Soon after, Falburn turned the ship once more, and now he had the port bow fully facing the galley. On the forecastle, Josson called out a ready command, while on the main deck Wolt raised his arm and gave the Knights the order to nock their own arrows.
Adria drew a second arrow to join them, but knew she could not focus on their command. Whatever gave her such precision — or such fortune, seemed to have its own time. There is time, she thought vaguely. When I truly need it.
A strange rhythm began, then.
Instead of calling out a command, Chief Mate Josson started a new shanty. He sang the first line in time with the enemy drums. Where their beat might have intimidated before, it now steadied and bolstered the sailors in their own battle. When the sailors answered Josson’s verse, they let their arrows fly on the final syllable of the refrain.
“Oh, ‘er sails’re aluff but ‘er worth is an ‘aye,’”
“So I wink at ‘er wear ‘n ‘er siren cry.”
Keeping the pace, Captain Wolt lowered his arms and cried, “Fire...” The Knights launched their shafts up at the sun, a flock of violet and black.
And even as the twin sets of shafts rode up and across the sky, wind-tossed about, the onager fired its third shot.
“Hard a-port,” Falburn cried, turning the ship again. When he gained maximum wind and a near-straight shot on the galley, he finished, “Easin’ the helm.”
The sailors adjusted the sheets, and all watched the arrows and the stone fall. The archers’ first volley had already found surface — most in the water, most of the rest on planking. A man on the galley’s forecastle fell overboard, and others were likely hit among the rowers.
But then the stone began to fall. In the corner of her eye, Adria could see the captain twist the wheel quite suddenly, shouting, “Ahoy, starboard...”
It’s always the third one, she thought as she braced against the sudden turn and the impact which would follow. Many were shouting now, or falling against the deck or railing, or trying to adjust lines mid-turn.
“We’ll pay for this one,” Elias said, and then the stone came with a whistle and thunder. It hit mid-deck, just inside the railing, and shot fragments of splintered wood high into the rigging. No one was harmed by the impact, it seemed — no one but The Echo herself.
“’Tween wind’n water….” The sailor nearest the hole cried as he looked down through the hole.
“Pump the bilge,” Falburn called out in answer. “Heel to port.”
When he saw the look on the faces of the Knights, he raised his
chin at Wolt and said, “Hold yer stations, men. The sound’s worse’n the pain. We’re nae lost yet.”
Fully half the sailors opened the hatches and went below, to pull water out of the bottom of the boat and shift ballast, so that the ship ran a bit on its side, to keep the hole the onager had made above the water line. Despite this, Falburn kept up his maneuvers, and soon turned to give the Knights and sailors their next shot.
“The Echo is nimble, for certain,” Adria said, with some surprise.
“Even more,” Elias nodded. “Her captain has a nimble mind.”
Just then, Adria caught a glimpse of Emoni peeking out from behind her shield again, eyes wide. But from the set of her lips, Adria could see that she wasn’t frightened at all, but... excited.
She’s enjoying this... Adria sighed. Like a ghost among the living who only wait to be damned. What... does she see?
Palmill left no rear guard, Adria noted. But then they fielded so few in the first place.
The buildings were closed up, of course, and Adria could see no light beneath the doors or through the cracks of shutters. Only the fire of several torches on posts along the dirt paths of the village stirred with life.
She cried out to the women and children, just as she had to the boy, but no one answered.
“Run…” she cried again, to no effect. My voice has become too strange, she thought. Too like their enemy, perhaps.
She glanced back across the bridge reluctantly. She could not see how many remained defending, and could not make out if the boy had escaped harm, but the Knight stood proud upon his war horse, holding as the Hunters of Men descended the hill with their spears and swords.
Adria turned and rapped upon a nearby door, then upon the window shutters, but no one came or seemed to stir within. She ran to another house nearby, and did the same. Still, no one.
Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Page 58