The Queen of Crows

by Myke Cole

  She crawled along for what seemed an impossibly long time, her heart thudding in her chest, the fear finally seeping in now that the immediate danger was past. The ground sloped farther down, and the thicket grew denser above them, the bases closer and closer together until Samson had to shove Barnard through the gaps between the bushes.

  The water grew deeper and deeper as they went, until at last Heloise was half-crawling, half-paddling, lifting her chin to keep her head above the water. At last, the soles of Leahlabel’s feet disappeared, to be replaced by the backs of her heels as she stood.

  “Stay low,” the Sindi Mother whispered as Heloise emerged into a mire dotted with the stumps of rotted trees. Leahlabel’s hand on her shoulder kept her crouched, but she could see the thicket shivering a long way off, could faintly hear the curses of the enemy and the thwacking of their blades as they tried to cut through.

  She knelt to help drag Barnard out of the gap in the brush. The huge tinker merely crawled forward on his hands and knees and collapsed in the muck. He turned his head to keep his mouth clear of the brackish water at least, and Heloise felt a surge of mad hope that he would live. Samson burst through a moment later, racing to Heloise’s side, running his hands over her, his eyes searching for any sign of injury as he whispered fiercely, “Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right.”

  She was still trying to calm him as Onas emerged a moment later, his knives bloody. “Killed one in the entry,” he whispered, “wedged him in good. Took them a moment to drag him out. They don’t know the way if they’re not following us. If we move quickly, we can lose them.”

  “A moment.” Leahlabel knelt by Barnard’s side, rolling him over onto his back. The wounds in his arm and side were puckered and gray already, the blood oozing slowly. She lay her hands across them, shut her eyes. Heloise waited in silence, felt Samson straighten beside her, crouching again at a hiss from Onas. A moment later, Barnard gasped, his eyes opening, some of the color returning to his face.

  He stared at Leahlabel, his eyes terrified. The Sindi Mother was sweating, and she rolled her eyes at his revulsion. “I’ll take that as thanks, you great pill. Now, get up, stay low, and follow me.” She withdrew her hands, and Heloise saw Barnard’s wounds had closed into shining pink scars. Leahlabel took off in a crouching jog.

  Samson helped Barnard to his feet, slinging the tinker’s thick arm around his shoulders. Heloise ran to this other side to give what support she could. Barnard looked even more horrified that the man he’d knocked on his back just two days ago was holding him up. “… Thank you,” the tinker managed.

  Samson spat. “I should leave you to die, you horse’s ass.”

  Barnard managed a weak smile as he limped along. “Why don’t you?”

  “No heroes in a pike block,” Samson grunted. “We stand and fall together.”

  Heloise remembered hiding outside the gathering hall what seemed like a lifetime ago, listening to Sigir speak the same words to her father. Oh Sacred Throne, Sigir. They had to go back for him, they just had to.

  “They were waiting for us,” Samson said, as Leahlabel led them splashing through the mire and behind a low ridge of gray stone, the sounds of pursuit finally cut off entirely. “They must have found the machine just after we pulled Heloise out of it. So much for your outriders.”

  “No scout is perfect,” Leahlabel shot back. “Those were not Pilgrims.”

  “No,” Samson said, “those were the Black-and-Grays. We had some attached to us during the Old War against Ludhuige and his Red Banners. If the Order are the Emperor’s Hands, then the Black-and-Grays are his Eyes. They’re for moving quickly, and for seeing. The Order must have sent to Lyse for them as soon as we were driven off.”

  “They didn’t move quickly enough,” Onas said.

  “Quickly enough to bleed me,” Barnard said, “and to take the Maior. We have to get him back.”

  “We do,” Leahlabel agreed, pausing for a moment to lean against the rock before pushing off and angling deeper into the woods, moving as fast as Barnard could hobble. “They know where we are now, or close enough as makes no difference. If they make it back to their fellows, the Order will be upon us before we can move the camp.”

  Heloise’s mouth went dry. She’d been too focused on Sigir to think of that. “How do we stop them?”

  “We move quickly, and we cut them off. They are fumbling through unfamiliar woods. We have camped here our whole lives.”

  “But there are so many of them,” Heloise said. “Do you have enough—”

  “We do not need numbers,” Leahlabel said, gesturing at Onas. “You have seen the knife-dance now. All Sindi boys are raised to it. And we have Giorgi.”

  Heloise remembered Onas’s incredible balance, the spinning arcs of his knives. Still, they would need many just like him. But she also remembered Leahlabel’s words when she’d awakened in her wagon. There are no portals with me, Heloise. Or with Giorgi.

  She opened her mouth to ask about Giorgi, but Leahlabel picked up the pace. “Tinker, you will have to find the strength to run. There’s no time, and I will not have my people overrun. Come on!”

  “You’ll have to do your best, Barnard,” Samson said, picking up the pace to match her.

  “By the Throne,” Barnard said, “I’ll damn well drag you.”

  5

  STANCHING THE WOUND

  They curse the village ways, saying that fixing one’s home makes a man a slave. They call all those who sign the village rolls “The Caged,” and see them as weak. We must teach them what strength there is in settlement. A fortress is fixed, as is an army, when it is dug-in.

  —Letter from Brother Witabern to Lyse Chapter House

  They ran at a limping pace that made Barnard’s face nearly as pale as it had been before Leahlabel healed him. Heloise stayed with the tinker, partly because he was one of her own, and partly because there was no way she could keep up with Onas and Leahlabel, who seemed nearly as fast as horses. The distance between the villagers and the Traveling People stretched, until Onas had to double back to them three times to make sure they were going the right way.

  At last, panting and gasping, they broke through a treeline and into the Sindi camp, buzzing with activity as the Traveling People and villagers alike crowded around Leahlabel and Onas, all of them talking at once.

  Barnard fell to his knees, Chunsia and Guntar rushing to his side. Samson stood, hands on his knees, shoulders heaving. “What happened?!” Leuba rushed to him.

  “They … took … Sigir,” her father managed.

  “Heloise, are you all right?” Leuba asked.

  “I’m fine, Mother, we need to—”

  But Leahlabel was already turning. At least twenty of the Sindi men were behind her now, loosening their knives in their sheaths. At their head was a heavy man with a bushy gray beard and bright red cheeks. He alone wore no knives, and his face was open and smiling despite the grave looks all around him.

  “Well, now.” His voice was unworried as he called to Heloise. “You are our villager saint. I am Giorgi. They tell me you killed a devil, and Pilgrims besides.”

  Heloise’s breath was coming easier now. The burning in her legs subsiding. The warmth in Giorgi’s eyes chased the fatigue from her, made the world seem … brighter somehow. Clodio’s eyes had done the same thing. The world is wide and wonderful, and I am glad you are in it.

  “Some,” she said, looking up.

  “Some devils?” Giorgi turned to Leahlabel, a look of mock confusion on his face. “I thought it was just the one.”

  Leahlabel rolled her eyes. “There’s no time, Giorgi.”

  Giorgi waved a hand, walking to Heloise’s side. “There’s time,” he said to Leahlabel. “If they found the machine in the wash of the argint, then they came by way of the long meadow. They’ll tend to their wounded and go back that way. We’ll catch them in Wind’s Teeth. It’s the only way in or out of there if you don’t know the ground, and they don’t know th
e ground.”

  He turned back to Heloise. “Well, then, I suppose a devil-slayer could do a bit more running? We’re going to need you to move that machine.”

  “We knocked it over,” Heloise said. “It might be broken.”

  “We’ll repair it, if need be.” Giorgi waved his hand again.

  “Repair…” Barnard managed. “It’s tinker-made.”

  “Every one of the Traveling People is at least half-tinker.” Giorgi laughed. “We’ll get your Maior back, Heloise, but we have to go right now.”

  “No.” Samson rose to his knees. “I’ll come and…”

  “You’re an old man and all run out,” Leahlabel said, “you can’t keep up. She’ll have twenty Sindi knife-dancers around her. No harm will come to her, I swear it.”

  “I am coming!” Samson staggered to his feet, hawked, and spat.

  “There is no time!” Leahlabel was already leaving camp, the knife-dancers, with Onas and Giorgi at their head, filing out behind her.

  Heloise’s stomach was boiling with the strain of the run, with worry over Sigir, with fear of what it meant that the Black-and-Grays had discovered them.

  “Heloise!” Samson lurched to his feet. “I’m coming with you!”

  “Certainly,” Leahlabel called back, “if you can keep up.”

  He couldn’t, his cries fading in the background as the Sindi ran flat out, making straight toward the brook they’d crossed when they’d first gone out to retrieve the machine. Heloise ran with all she had, but she had had scant time to rest, and didn’t have the sound of the Black-and-Grays on her heels to drive her along. She was younger than her father, but like him, she was no runner, and within moments the burning in her chest and her legs was more than she could endure. She tried to swallow air, but it seemed her throat had closed. She slowed, the line of the Sindi men racing past her.

  Onas fell back to jog along at her side. “Come on, Heloise. It’s not far.”

  “I … I can’t…” Heloise couldn’t get enough air to speak.

  Onas put his hand in the small of her back, gently pushing her forward. “Yes, you can. You killed a devil. You can do anything.”

  The words didn’t give her more air, or dispel the agony in her legs, but the touch of his hand on her back, the gentle pressure of his arm, propelled her along. Her stride lengthened, and the line of Sindi men grew, not closer, but at least no farther away.

  Heloise stayed with them as they splashed through the brook and angled in a new direction, taking them through a thin copse of trees and down into a gully cut by an old stream bed long since run dry.

  Here, Giorgi at last raised his hand, and they halted. Heloise collapsed gratefully against a rock, panting and mopping sweat from her brow. Onas patted her shoulder. “You did well.”

  “She did,” Giorgi said, “and now the hard part is before us. Are all ready?”

  The men nodded, drawing their knives, as Giorgi knelt and produced a short torch and a flint on a leather cord. He struck the flint against a rock, caught the sparks on the torch’s head, and gently blew the embers until tiny peaks of flame were flickering. Heloise glanced up at the strong sun, mostly blocked the canopy of leaves above them, but still bright enough to make torchlight unneeded.

  Giorgi smiled at her and stood. “Slowly now,” he said.

  They crept forward, keeping low and quiet, down the gully’s end and out, along a low ridge of raised stones that rose high and sharp enough to stop a man from climbing over them without difficulty, until they came to a gap in the rock. The wind whipped through the crevice, sending the branches dancing to either side. Giorgi motioned them to halt, and stood, listening.

  Heloise pressed herself against the rock face, straining to hear something more than the wind whipping through the gap in the rocks, but the wind stirring the leaves shut out all else save the pounding of her heart, roaring in her ears.

  But Giorgi seemed to hear something; he stepped back against the rock face and signaled to the men around him. They crouched, ready.

  The first man through the gap was still wreathed in the sable he’d worn when he’d attacked Heloise, but he’d lowered the cloth over his face. He was young, scarcely older than Onas, with wary eyes and thin lips. Seeing his face made him look smaller, less fearsome. A man in black, rather than a creature of spun shadow.

  One of the Sindi leapt for him, sinking his knife into his chest to the hilt. The man shouted, chopping the Sindi’s wrist and pushing him back. He turned, silver handle still sprouting from his chest, and turned back through the gap. His voice gurgled from the wound, but it was loud enough. “Ambush! They are upon us!”

  Onas leapt past the man who’d lost his knife and cut the enemy down, throwing himself through the gap without breaking stride. The rest of the Sindi followed him, Heloise coming behind.

  On the other side of the gap, Heloise could see the other Black-and-Grays freezing, drawing their weapons, stepping carefully back as they took in the numbers of the Sindi boiling out from the opening in the rock. After a moment, one of them clearly assessed that the battle was not in their favor, and the enemy bolted back the way they had come.

  Onas raised the shout and the Sindi raced after them. Heloise gulped a breath and ran as fast as she could. They pelted up rising ground, Heloise searching for Sigir with every step.

  At last, she saw him. His hands were unbound, but one of the enemy had him by the arm, pushing him along as they ran. Before long, Heloise spotted the fallen machine, the pinpricks of sunlight penetrating the tree cover glinting off its metal shoulder. It looked intact, and she said a silent prayer to the Emperor that it would still work. The thought of being back inside its armored frame gave her the strength to keep running.

  The Black-and-Grays were slow in their soft leather boots, carrying their long blades. The Sindi gained, and before long the enemy gave up running and turned to fight. The first of the knife-dancers reached them, spinning their blades into a blur, striking and dodging in perfect accord, one slashing high while another stabbed low in silent conversation, as if the battle had been a thing they had planned.

  Two of the enemy fell instantly, but the rest rallied and threw themselves into the attack. Their fighting was nowhere near so fluid and beautiful as the Sindi knife-dancers, but it was brutally effective, their long swords giving them a reach the short hooked knives could not hope to match. Heloise cried out as one of the Black-and-Grays cut through the whirling arc of blades, burying his weapon in the shoulder of the man behind them. He didn’t pause, ripping the sword free and bringing it around over his head to hammer into another dancer on the backswing.

  The Sindi losses gave the enemy heart, and Heloise watched them fan out in front of the machine, waving their weapons. “Heretic scum,” one of them rasped, “go back to your holes and await the Throne’s justice.”

  “Oh, no!” Giorgi laughed, waved his torch in a wide arc. “We are done waiting,” and then his smile was, at long last, gone.

  The fire trailed from the whipping torch, but Heloise gasped as it stuck to the air, like paint left behind by a passing brush. The flames thickened, then crackled, spit. Two orange peaks rose, like drops of oil floating on water, dripped themselves off the fire’s body. They spun, thickening, the colors giving them life. Red, orange, blue, yellow, and white. They shivered, sprouted arms and legs, and set down to either side of Giorgi.

  The flame-men crouched, burning arms spread.

  “Wizardry!” the Black-and-Grays shouted. “Heresy!”

  “More simply put,” Giorgi said, “fire.”

  The flame-men sprang. One of the Black-and-Grays slashed at them, but his blade cut through the fire, the flames parting briefly, only to reunite as soon as the steel had passed. The burning men embraced him, and he erupted in smoking fire, his screams going higher and higher as he rolled on the ground.

  The Black-and-Grays backed away at that, and the knife-dancers pressed forward. One of the flame-men stayed with the burning enemy,
keeping its arms around him, ensuring that his frantic rolling on the ground did no good, while the other sprinted forward. The enemy gave it a wide berth, and the flame-man darted this way and that, trying to come to grips with an opponent. At last, one of the enemy shouted, “Water!” and went sprinting for the downed machine.

  The waterskin, Heloise thought. It hung beside the seethestone, ready to squirt into the engine to start it running. She fumbled around for a weapon, settled on a good-sized chunk of sharp rock that lay tumbled in the grass, circled around the knife-dancers. She didn’t know if the flame-men could be put out like a normal fire, but she doubted the enemy would be looking for a girl with a rock. She knew the Sindi would want her to stay out of the fight, but surely they would understand if she did this one thing. If she could get close enough …

  But no sooner had she skirted the fighting and spotted the man, on his knees now, lifting the waterskin from inside the machine, than he looked up and straight at her. “It’s the girl!” he shouted, dropping the waterskin and running toward her.

  Heloise backpedaled, terror spiking in her gut. She had no machine now, and she was suddenly aware of how small she was, how short the reach of her rock. The Black-and-Gray raced toward her, sword raised above his head, grim and silent save for the crunching of his soft-soled boots across the dead leaves.

  She fumbled backward, the ground around her suddenly far too vast, the Sindi too far away. She tightened her grip on the rock and crouched. He was too fast, and by the time she turned he would be upon her. There was no point in running, if she could dodge his first blow, then maybe she could—

  She saw a flash of scarlet and he was toppling sideways, a slim knife protruding from his cheek, angling up into his skull. “Heloise!” Leahlabel paused only long enough to rip her knife from his face before running to her side. “What are you doing? Are you all right? Get behind—”

  A sword pommel crashed against the side of her head and the Sindi Mother crumpled. Heloise scrambled toward her only to have a boot crunch down on her arm, pinning her to the cold ground and sending the rock tumbling from her hand.