The Burning Isle

by Will Panzo

  “Easy to learn. Difficult to master. Again, a sword has few movements: Stab. Slice. Parry. I could teach them to you in a day. It doesn’t mean you would be a great swordsman. It is the same with spellcasting. You must learn to use your spells in conjunction with one another, learn progression and diversion, trapping maneuvers, when to counter and to feint, how to predict spells by sensory clues.”

  “I suppose,” the Yoruban said.

  “You can have two gauntlets full of jewels, but if you don’t know how to fight, you’re just an easy target for a trained killer.”

  “This is true. But at its heart, Antiochi magic is about taking. You take arcane secrets from other cultures and make them into runes. You transfer these runes to jewels, then you try to take the jewels from one another. I don’t mean to offend you, or disparage your art. It is my art, too. But this is the nature of our magic.”

  The Yoruban sprinkled a few drops of the green liquid on his fingers. He rubbed the liquid over the lump on Cassius’s head, and the skin there tingled and grew cold.

  “So why become a healer?” Cassius asked.

  “A killer’s life is endless strife. He fights to acquire his spells, and in acquiring them, he becomes stronger. But being stronger makes him a bigger target. So he has to grow even stronger to keep his enemies at bay and maintain his power. It continues like this until one wrong move in a fight gets him killed. Then his gauntlets are stripped by another spellcaster, who will one day meet the same fate. It’s not for me.”

  “Do you like helping people?”

  “I do.”

  “Did you ever kill anyone?” Cassius asked. “Before you became a healer, I mean.”

  “I did.”

  “Do you think the good you do now makes up for that?”

  “This is not for me to judge,” the Yoruban said.

  “Then who will judge?”

  “The gods.”

  “And if a person doesn’t believe in them?” Cassius asked.

  “Then you must make your own code, and you must live by it,” the Yoruban said. “A wolf kills, but you wouldn’t jail him for it. It’s his nature.”

  “And it’s mine as well? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Wolf or killer, what’s the difference?”

  The Yoruban wiped his fingers on his wrap. He patted Cassius on the shoulder.

  “I’m afraid that is all I can do for you,” he said. “I don’t have a spell to reduce swelling.”

  “That’s okay,” Cassius said.

  “I wish I could offer more help.”

  “You helped enough.”

  • • •

  After dinner, a troop of men gathered in the plaza before Piso’s hall and made a show of dressing for their patrol. Fifteen men in total. There were two spellcasters with them and also two mastiffs. A crowd gathered. Cassius watched them from the window in his room.

  The men left the plaza in loose formation, and a few hours later, five of them returned. No spellcasters. No dogs.

  The men were bloodied and stripped of their weapons, and one man had a terrible stomach wound.

  That night, Cassius lay awake on his cot, his chest tight from the effects of the Garza root, and thoughts of sleep so distant, he began to think the condition unreachable. He listened to the men at play with dice in the downstairs room for hours; and then he rose and dressed himself. He scratched at his belly absently and winced as he pulled a stitch. He lifted his tunic and looked down to see that the area around his stab wound was inflamed. Red and swollen, and the lips of the wound a deep wine color.

  The men cleared a place for him at their table. They stood over him and told him filthy jokes and poured him wine. The first drink of wine he had accepted from his enemies. He choked as it slid down his throat, settled in his stomach like a fist. They laughed when he rolled poorly, their hands rough on his shoulders.

  Some man had produced a lyre and begun to play and there was dancing and the floor groaned under Hoka’s leaps. Cassius lost fifteen silver pieces and stood to leave and accepted the last glass of proffered wine and smiled and drank it in a gulp and smiled and shook hands and laughed and smiled.

  Later, in bed, he lay awake and whispered to himself a passage of the middle verse of the epic of Aemillius Attus. The hero at rest in the Proncius Pass, asleep amidst wolves.

  The horizon through the window was orange, a false dawn of a tenement fire.

  EVERY ENEMY IS A RESOURCE

  On the road to Rocino Novi, they called him Drussus. A boy of thirteen, he had paid for the trip with everything of value he could muster. One Fathalan silver embossed with a wolf’s head, six bare coppers, a chipped amethyst, a leather belt with a brass buckle, two pouches of Gaspian tobacco. No large sum, but it had taken the better part of a year to save it. He was happy to pay, though; happier still to leave everything behind.

  He rode in a flatbed wagon, his rucksack tucked under him for cushion. Three other passengers journeyed with him, an old man with a crooked back and two women veiled and dressed in black as befit mourners. The women rode up front with the driver, but the old man settled in the flatbed with Drussus, and side by side, they sat facing backward and watched the road as it stretched behind them.

  Drussus pictured the road as a river carrying him downstream. He liked the feel of moving, especially the feel of moving toward something. Before this, he had traveled frequently but never with a destination. He had moved only for the sake of moving, his journeys trips of opportunity. He was getting older now, though. He needed a plan.

  He knew no one in Rocino Novi. Only the legion waited for him there. At thirteen, he was old enough to sign on as an auxiliary troop and learn to be a scout or runner or slingman. He had no love for the life of a soldier, no love for the legion in particular, but serving the Republic meant three rations of food a day, a roof over his head, clothes enough to keep him warm.

  It meant also a sword and the training to use it.

  The dreams drove him to Rocino Novi, more than anything. They had troubled him as a boy, gave him fitful rests and kept him awake with fear of what waited in the dark. All boys had nightmares, but Drussus had only one nightmare, had it most every night.

  He was alone in the dream, running through a damp, dark jungle while legionnaires in full battle gear gave chase. The soldiers had hounds with them, and the sound of dogs barking made his heart race. Behind his pursuers, a wall of fire devoured the jungle. The heat from its flames burned him like fever.

  He ran with heavy legs, his feet sinking into warm mud. The legionnaires gained ground with every step until, finally, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find a terrible beast reaching for him. Red-limbed and fanged and covered with steel.

  In all the years he had had the dream, Drussus never once made it out of the jungle. The beast caught him every time.

  As he grew older, the dream lessened in frequency until even his memories of the dream faded. Then last summer, a heat wave swept the city, and most nights saw Drussus sleeping on rooftops for cool comfort, sweating in the dark. The dream returned then, the chase and the legionnaires and the hounds and the beast in all its horrific splendor.

  He was too old for such dreams, he thought. Too tired to run anymore. It was time to face his fears. But first he needed to grow strong.

  Rocino Novi stood two days’ ride from the Ox, the great river that marked the edge of the Republic and the beginning of Fathalan land. It was a fort city, little more than a legion garrison with a surrounding civilian camp. Old Rocino had been different. A proper city, modest for a provincial settlement but large for a frontier post, until the Bloody Dervish Nasr ibn Ya’qub put it to the torch last winter. Now its walls were charred husks, and not even carrion birds called it home.

  “Shame of the Republic,” the old man said. Here the road drew within a dozen leagues of the old city�
�s outer gates.

  They had ridden for five days without much talk, but something about the walls had stirred the old man.

  “Wouldn’t have stood for it in my day.” The old man sat with his head cocked, his eyes squinting against the setting sun, which painted Old Rocino in blood-red light. “We had Mad Malleolus in the senate then. The Hammer of the West, the desert folk called him. He would have ridden across that river and brought those jackals to heel after something like this.”

  “Is that right?” Drussus asked.

  “You better believe it.” The old man turned to Drussus. “These senators treat the legion like it’s a plaything. They need to let the generals do what’s right.”

  “And what’s the right thing to do?”

  “We should be watering those deserts with Fathalan blood.” The old man gripped his cane tightly. “Kill them all. Women, children. Line every avenue in the Republic with their crucified dead.”

  “You’d have the legion kill innocent women and children?”

  “I’d do it myself if I were thirty years younger.” The old man sneered at Drussus. “And there’s no such thing as an innocent Fathalan. They have blood on their hands going back hundreds of years. It’s time we put an end to them.”

  “To all of them?”

  “Is there another way?” The old man pointed toward the walls of Old Rocino. “You see that city? They burned it to ash no more than a year ago. We already have a new one built. And if they burn the new one, we’ll rebuild that one in a year. There’s no end to it. Not until we die or they die. Remember that when you swear your oath to the legion.”

  At Rocino Novi, the legion recruiter made his office in a dusty guardhouse, stockpiled with broken armor and rusted weapons, crates of old linens, carpenter’s tools, great scroll racks covered in dust. The recruiter was middle-aged and trim, beardless, with a shaved head and a neat uniform. He greeted Drussus with a wide smile and an easy handshake, but his charm could not hide the hunger in his eyes. He was a butcher, after all, a man who traded in flesh. He needed meat to fuel the Republic’s great war machine, blood to grease its gears, and Drussus had just offered himself for slaughter.

  The recruiter made Drussus walk twenty paces, checking for a limp, then made him run a half mile. He had the boy strip naked, bend at the waist, bend at the knees, flex and extend his arms. He noted the scars on his body, the condition of his teeth, tested his vision for nearsightedness and farsightedness. Finally, he asked if the boy could spell his name.

  “I can read and spell most anything,” Drussus said.

  The recruiter eyed him curiously. “Who taught you to read?”

  “Old men who gathered at the orator’s square. I would listen to them for hours. They took a liking to me.”

  The recruiter fetched a scroll from one of his many racks, unfurled it, and placed it on his desk. He called Drussus to come closer and pointed to a line of text on the scroll.

  “Read this,” he said.

  Drussus scanned the words. “Four dozen chickens, two hundred eggs, nineteen lambs, forty sacks of barley, eleven casks of beer.”

  The recruiter nodded, rolled up the scroll. “You should have said something at the start. You’ll be a good fit for the supply corps. We don’t put those boys through the normal paces. No one cares if you can march so long as you can read.”

  “Supply corps?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t want to be in the supply corps,” Drussus said. “I want to be a soldier. I want to learn to fight.”

  “We have boys who can fight and boys who can read. We don’t mix the two. The supply corps is a good appointment. Plenty of those out drilling under a hot sun right now wish they were supply corps.”

  “I’m not one of them,” Drusus said. He had paid every coin he owned, left behind every friend he knew, and ridden for a week in the back of a rickety wagon to reach this place. He wanted to become a great warrior, not a bookkeeper.

  “Be honest with yourself.” The recruiter’s warm smile had faded. “You’re no fighter, and you’re certainly no soldier. You wouldn’t survive half a day of legionnaire training. But you can still serve the Republic.”

  Drussus made to respond, but the recruiter silenced him with a raised hand.

  “Take a minute to think it over, boy.” The recruiter moved toward the door. “I need to find a fresh copy of the supply-corps contract. I’ll take your answer when I return.”

  The recruiter left, and Drussus was alone in the guardhouse. He felt gut punched, weak in his legs. He had come so far only to find himself stranded on the edge of the Republic, in some godforsaken fort city where no one knew his name. He would be back to stealing his meals and sleeping in alleyways by nightfall.

  It wasn’t supposed to end this way, he was certain of that. But what choice did he have?

  On the far side of the recruiter’s desk, he spotted a rusted gladius placed longwise across a scroll. The sight of it filled him with a sudden urge to hold a blade, if only to see if the recruiter’s words were true. He thought himself a fighter at heart, but maybe he was delusional.

  He circled the desk. Next to the gladius rested an old, iron gauntlet. He donned the gauntlet and took hold of the sword’s hilt, then hefted the blade, slicing it through air a few times. The movements felt natural enough to him. Was there something else he should be feeling?

  He set the blade back on the desk, unfurling the scroll so that the blade rested in its original position. The scroll bore a single symbol, unlike any he had seen before. It was five lines, arranged in a pattern that nearly recalled a star. It wasn’t a word, at least not one he recognized. Drussus had seen many languages, even the picture-words of the men from the East, but this was not the same.

  He set his hands on the desk and leaned down, trying to decipher the image before him, when suddenly he felt a rush of warmth up his spine. The sensation of pins and needles crept over his hands. He noticed that a single jewel was set in the dorsum of the gauntlet, and the jewel now flared red.

  “What are you doing over there?”

  The sound of the recruiter’s voice startled Drussus. He stumbled back from the table, reaching out with his gauntleted hand to steady himself on a nearby shelf, and caught sight of the glowing jewel as it streaked through the air, like a falling star, like some terrible portent.

  10

  The morning sky was cloudless, and the sun rose white and small. The city steamed. Great swirls of mist curled up from the streets, from the roofs of decaying huts and tenements. The air still smelled of last night’s rain, and to the north, the smoke from the fires had faded. Cassius sat on the stoop of his barracks house and waited for the city to stir to life.

  His eyes itched. His body ached from lack of sleep.

  The plaza was mostly empty. In an alleyway nearby, a gaunt beggar sat warming scraps of rat meat over a fire of twigs and weeds.

  Hoka emerged from the doorway behind Cassius. He was three paces into the plaza when he vomited, the sound of his heaving loud in the quiet morning. Green stew pooled on the hard-packed earth, washed over his bare feet. He spat and blew his nose. He wiped his face, looked over his shoulder at Cassius.

  “Come, boy,” he said. “Time to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Cassius said.

  Hoka cupped a hand over his ear, feigning as though he had not heard. He walked back to the steps of the barracks house, stood looming over Cassius. He stank of liquor, his eyes bloodshot.

  “That’s your problem, boy. You never eat, and so you look like this.” Hoka jabbed a finger into Cassius’s side. “Eat, and you’ll grow strong like me.”

  “I’m stronger than you.”

  Hoka laughed. “Tiny, soft mainlander. I’ve been killing your kind since I was a child.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I was fifteen the f
irst time. That was a knife fight. And him a grown man.” Hoka dragged his thumb across his midsection and made a wet noise through pursed lips. “Spilled his fat guts in the street. Before I hadn’t even made it with a girl yet.”

  “Why?”

  “He called me a monkey.”

  “And that was during the Uprising?” Cassius asked.

  “What do you know about the Uprising, mainlander?”

  “Only what I hear in the street.”

  “No one recalls the Uprising. People in Scipio are famous for their short memories.”

  “What about your memory?”

  Hoka spat.

  “Did you fight for Piso then?” Cassius asked.

  “Piso and Cinna. There was no difference then.”

  “And what of your people?”

  “I’m a half-breed. I don’t have people. And you should know, boy, talk of the Uprising can get you hanged to this day. I’d mind my tongue if I were you.”

  Hoka made to leave, then stopped.

  “You see that man there?” Hoka pointed to the beggar roasting the rat. “In the afterlife, the soul of every king who once walked the earth would trade places with that miserable bastard in an instant.”

  “Does that mean you fear death?”

  “I’m alive.” Hoka slapped his chest. “And I wouldn’t trade places with those who died. None of them. But I don’t fear anything.”

  “Why won’t you talk to me about the Uprising.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “Because I worked for Cinna?”

  Hoka threw wide his arms. “Because I don’t trust any man who won’t eat with me.”

  • • •

  “Why the sudden urge to fight?”

  Hoka scooped the last clumps of oatmeal from the bowl with his fingers. He licked each finger clean, then wiped his wet hands on his tunic. He set down his bowl and reclined on the steps of the barracks house, resting on his elbows, and loosed a massive belch.

  “Just thinking about something Piso told me,” Cassius said. He tossed a small green pear hand to hand, his breakfast this morning although it remained unbitten. “About doing the job I’m here to do.”