“Jean!” Flynn yelled as he charged to intercept a soldier preparing to stab her, colliding in a shoulder strike that sent them both tumbling to the ground. While his target landed on his back, Flynn tumbled to a crouch, and was able to pounce for the kill before he could recover. As the strangeness of killing someone who so resembled what he had become sunk in, Flynn felt a swiping motion overhead. Jean had dispatched an attacker in return, then promptly turned back to cover Chari, who’d been forced to crouch as she reloaded her rifle.
“You have my gratitude!” Chari yelled as she rose up, firing sparingly to ward their attackers away.
“GUYS! KEEP STEADY!” Jean bellowed. She dropped her mace and slammed her palms to the earth. The field shook with a violent, jarring motion—it wasn’t enough to end the war or repeat the incident at the canyon, but it was enough to bowl over the closest soldiers and breach an opening through them.
Shea was spearheading the group, desperate to escape. She pulled her second pistol and tried to fire at the advancing wave, but missed and tripped, crashing to the ground. Zaja was the first to her aid, lashing her whip around the neck of a would-be attacker and slamming her, face-first, into the craggy earth. Poe lent Shea a hand to get to her feet, using his free hand to disembowel an attacker in the process.
“You okay?” Flynn asked.
“I’ll live,” she replied tersely, then charged on. Flynn was about to advance, when Jean caught him on the shoulder.
“Where’s Zella?”
Flynn looked back the way they’d come to see Zella wading through a maelstrom of bodies, desperately searching for an opening.
“Keep moving,” he told Jean before charging back, trying to break through. He ducked when he could as gunshots continued to fly around him, all while studying the movements of the crowd to learn the way to best slip through.
Zella was struggling with a soldier who’d tried to spear her with a bayonet. Her sleeves had been shredded in the struggle, exposing the runic scars carved into her arms. Flynn stumbled when he saw the writing, but her attacker seemed oblivious to it. As Flynn averted his eyes, she caught the barrel of the bayonet and was trying to jerk it free, but the soldier managed to stab her in the leg and fire his weapon. She screamed in agony at the injury, and Flynn seized the moment to kill him from behind.
“You came back,” she said in disbelief. He draped her left arm across his shoulders as she squeezed her right thigh, desperate to stymie the bleeding. “For all this, I would be more useful to you dead than alive.”
“Yeah, well…” Flynn had no concrete answer. His focus was getting her back to the others, who had made little headway in the intervening time. They were limping, and survived only because not everyone was actively seeking to kill them. While many of the soldiers saw them as equal threats or valid targets, a few recognized that they were not part of this war and ran on by. All the way, Zella clutched the weapon that had injured her, holding it by the barrel.
They found the others locked in a holding pattern—Poe was clutching his left shoulder where he’d been blindsided by several bullet wounds. Chari was out of the fight, desperately working to heal him before he could bleed out, flushed from the pain she inherited in mending him. Jean, Zaja, and Shea had triangulated around them, fending off any who came near.
“’Bout bloody time!” Shea barked as Flynn and Zella returned.
Zella stumbled to her knees in the protected space while Flynn joined the three defenders. Though Chari only needed minutes to finish the job, time seemed to crawl now that they were locked in place. In the frantic battle unfolding around them, Flynn saw a gun arm raise in their direction. Before he concluded just where it was aiming, Jean staggered from a shot in the hip.
“Jean!” he cried out.
She shrugged it off and singled out her attacker, raising her mace and hurling it through the air. A soldier in the thick of it toppled over, the spikes of Jean’s mace buried in her head. Jean gave a sick, self-satisfied smirk and muttered, “One more time.”
The battlefield shook again, less fiercely than before. As Jean broke from the group to retrieve her weapon, Poe was getting back to his feet. Unable to spare the time for Zella’s injured leg, Chari let Flynn help her up and they began to struggle once more toward the edge of the battlefield.
Just as an opening appeared, still many meters away, something struck Flynn, and all at once the strength seemed to leave his body. As he crashed down, Zella went with him, and everything turned white. Within moments his consciousness faded back in, the voices of Zella and Zaja crying his name. Chari was hurrying over to tend him, before a sudden volley of gunfire in her direction forced her to kneel, turn, and return fire.
“Fuck,” Jean said at the sight of him. Her worry was clear as day to Flynn, who looked down and tried to find his injury so he could cover it—it was somewhere in his stomach, he was certain, but shock had dulled the pain, and there was too much blood to tell.
“We need to get out of here,” he wheezed, but he spoke so softly that he wasn’t certain anyone could hear him. He tried to stand, but could barely move his legs.
“Come on, we’re almost home free,” Jean told him as she lifted him into her arms and carried him to safety. When they’d first met, he was certain she’d had blood mixed in her red hair. Now it was all blood, all over her, all over them. It was their blood, and the blood of the warring soldiers, whose desperate battle would drown every crag of the valley they left behind.
*
Zaja was curled up against the base of a tree, trembling. It wasn’t from the cold, for she still felt the heat of battle soaking into her skin. She was dirty and bloody and angry, and trying desperately to remember the mess she had survived. Her body had moved as needed, as she’d trained for, and she still lived, but at what cost? Chari had mended their bodies, but their spirits—her own spirit, at least—was not ready to face the world once more.
Her hand shook as she pressed it against the soft amber bark of the tree, and she had to grip it firmly to find the strength to stand up. She walked with an exhausted gait, fighting just to keep balance on the gentle slope they’d collapsed on. The sounds of war still carried in the distance.
“How are you feeling?”
Jean was lying on the soil and staring up at the fading sky. She blinked hard, her eyes red. She sounded as if she were about to cry. “Just glad Mack ain’t here.”
Zaja’s reluctant nod turned to full agreement. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”
“We gotta keep goin’,” Jean replied hollowly.
Zaja didn’t have the strength to fight. She trudged along, until her foot accidentally kicked something. Buried in the leaves was a musket, with viscera on the bayonet, and a bloodied print on the barrel to match.
“It’s mine,” Zella said. She was leaning against the trunk of a tree, looking down at the abandoned weapon. “I thought if I had it, I could … I don’t know, defend myself?” She shook her head resolutely. “I don’t want it.”
Weakly, Zaja bent over and picked up the weapon. She studied it with sympathy; she’d trained to defend herself, but had only wanted to use those skills to help find a more honest living. She hurled the musket as hard as she could, and it splashed into a river downhill. Zella smiled in gratitude but could say nothing more.
Zaja walked on as though in a dream, guided by the gentle glow emanating from the amber trees. She passed Chari, unconscious from pain. She met Poe, who was cleaning the blade of the Searing Truth, though it didn’t have a spot on it.
“How’s your shoulder?” she asked.
“Every near fatal setback I suffer teaches me something new of battle,” he replied. “One day, I shall be a warrior of unmatched prowess.”
“That’s … great for you,” she said unconvincingly. Poe’s love of battle was one Zaja now understood she could never share; for him, every life taken was an affirmation of his own. For her, it was a reminder of something she was trying futilely to escape. �
��Not the same as when you fought the Reahv’li?”
Poe shook his head. “Whatever our conflicts, the great many of them are gentle at heart. They lack the necessary killer instinct.”
He had named the thing Zaja now knew herself to lack. She could have stayed in Yeribelt, but now the things she had done had changed her, and she had no welcome place in that haven. And yet, she wasn’t certain she could stay here either.
“Have you seen Flynn?” she asked at last.
“Downhill, by the stream,” Poe replied.
She nodded her thanks and stepped carefully down. Sure enough, not far away she saw Flynn and Shea, the latter sitting on the ground, resting her bare feet in the water, arms crossed around her body.
“You get why I ran,” Shea said. She closed her eyes and pinched her fingers on the bridge of her nose. “Every day, like that.”
“It’s too much,” Zaja agreed as she approached them.
“Zaja,” Flynn said. “You did well back there—we might not have made it through without you.” She was prepared to object, diminish her part in things; she had never felt as ashamed as she was for surviving that bloody affair, and loathed any praise she might receive. “There was so much going on, but I saw how you defended Shea, how you covered for Chari when Poe was down. You worked hard, and it made all the difference.”
She smiled slowly and involuntarily. Her shame had not diminished, but pride nonetheless came in at having contributed, and having been recognized for it. I’ll stay a little longer, she concluded. And maybe we’re free, maybe there are no more wars to come. Maybe there’s still something better, waiting for me.
“So what’s next?” she asked.
“I’ve been feeling something since the mountain pass,” he replied. “Maybe before that, even. It’s a detour from our destination, but I don’t think it will hurt us in the long run.”
“One of those passages?” Shea asked. “Other worlds and such?”
Zaja hoped it was. She wanted to escape Keltia and never see it again. For one moment, she even wanted to return to Oma—she never hated the idea of living in the bleak, icy landscape of her home world; it was her body that couldn’t keep up with it. But Flynn shook his head, and she had to accept that they were staying a while longer.
“I think it’s a god.”
Shea looked up at Flynn in surprise, but Zaja knew her own expression was more peculiar. She had met a few gods several months ago—Scytha, Mystik of Death, and Roxanne, Mystik of Love. And Taryl Renivar, of course. But to find another out here, amidst all this suffering? Zaja had been prepared to say goodbye and go her own way; gods, she knew, held promise.
“When do we leave?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Eye of the Storm
There was a boy standing on a distant road. Chari had seen him from afar and was watching him through her rifle’s scope. A messenger? she wondered. A spy? He seemed to glance in their direction, but turned away soon after. Has he seen us?
It had been several weary days. They were walking through the snowy plains, all racked with lesser bruises. Chari was already hurting, and healing everyone would hurt more; she needed respite. As the days went on, it seemed like they were waking from a bad dream—senseless skirmishes faded to bitter feuds, faded further to bloodless quarrels.
The air had been silent lately. She couldn’t even hear gunfire.
Still, that boy waited in the distance. If he saw them, he might pass the word along. Others might see her company as enemies.
Better to deal with it now, Chari decided, and her finger moved toward the trigger. Before she could commit, a hand clasped her shoulder and Chari came back to reality, and the horror of what she’d almost done.
“They’re not all hostile,” Zella reminded her. They had fallen behind the others, and Chari increased her stride to catch up. “You followed the Saryu faith once, didn’t you?”
“I was High Priestess,” Chari replied bitterly. “As was your father when he was mortal.”
“Saint Renivar,” Zella recalled. “Tell me: Don’t the Saryu have edicts against killing?”
“They do. They’re oft conveniently ignored when the nonbelievers prove stubborn. My mother was an Inquisitor, my father a Crusader. I could have inherited the knack from either of them.”
Zella seemed pained to hear that. “Be that as it may, the sanctity of life is a virtue worth recalling, regardless of your faith.”
“Bloody hard to when trying to save your own,” Shea cut in. She looked ahead at the mountain on the horizon, looming large and lonely, its slopes staggered with gray stone. “We really to meet a god?”
Zella’s “Yes” and Chari’s “No” came almost simultaneously. The latter looked at her companion in irritation, but Zella came back with a patently serene smile.
“Call them that if you will,” Chari said to Shea. “I care not to grant such satisfaction.”
“Met one, then?”
“I’ve beheld several—one twisted the fabric of the chamber in which we stood,” she replied, glancing at Zella. “Another turned a man’s own heart against him. I cannot deny what power they possess, but both were successors—as human once as you or I.”
“Be something, being a god,” Shea mused. “Tell all the bastards to stop fighting, kneel in worship.”
Chari shook her head in disgust. “Mere ascension would not entitle you to worship,” she chastised.
“Right, back to fighting then. Alicea the Terrible seeks amusement.”
Chari was set to argue, but realized Shea wasn’t taking her concerns seriously. It came as no surprise—there’d been no sign of a church in Tryna or anywhere else on Keltia. If they held any faith, it was kept closer to the heart. Shea hadn’t known oppression as Chari had; her problems were distant, matters of easy jest.
“Worship is divine right,” Poe said, interrupting Chari’s thoughts.
“Were there any right to it, it would come earned,” Chari objected. “By great works, not divine nature. What right have these gods—any of them—to demand our adulation? And to condescend to us in doing so?”
Poe seemed amused by her protests. “They are makers of reality, able to smite those who fall short of their expectations without consequence. But worry not, Chariska—I crave neither prayer nor homage; only to sow fear in the unrighteous.” His ambitions nonetheless sickened her. She was debating a rebuttal when Flynn called her from the fore.
“I think I see someone up ahead,” Flynn told her. “Can you take a look?”
Chari nodded, and knelt to peer through her scope. The winds were tranquil, and if she took a shot now, it’d be clean.
Two Keltian women stood side by side at the maw of the cavern at the base of the mountain; both were dressed as soldiers, but their armaments were impractical, forged to enhance their feminine qualities rather than protect them. Chari stood back up and looked to Flynn. “Neither seems dangerous. Do they stand in our way?”
He gave no response, merely stepped forward and held his arm out like a divining rod. He closed his eyes and walked to one side, but his arm still pointed in the same direction. “Whoever I’m sensing hasn’t moved in days. They’re in that cave, I’m sure of it.”
“In our way then,” Chari confirmed. It was tempting to dispatch the two guards now, rather than risk them posing a problem later. It sickened her that her thoughts had come to this. “We’re still to proceed?”
In answer, Flynn walked on, and Chari followed.
It was not long before they neared the mountain’s base, and the sentries took notice. Chari found it curious that they showed no alarm at the group’s approach, as no effort had been made to conceal their appearances. The guards remained composed, even as Jean bellowed, “Yo!” in greeting.
The one on the left stepped forth. “The sacred mountain of Chot Vot welcomes you, travelers. We see you have suffered an arduous journey—”
Zaja gave an abrupt chortle, which she hastened to suppress. “Sorry. Sorry.”
“—ah … suffered an arduous journey,” the guard stammered. “But you have felt His call, and so the God of Peace welcomes you.” She spread her arms in a gesture of welcome.
Chari looked at Zella, who shook her head and shrugged. It seemed this was not a god she’d heard of.
“You may abandon your armaments here. You will have no need of them in Chot Vot—”
Jean interrupted with a derisive laugh, but it was Poe who spoke. “If that is the price of admission, then it is impossible that should I pay. Nonetheless, I would meet with your god, as we are to be future contemporaries—”
“Selvi?” the other guard addressed her companion. Neither had paid Poe serious mind, but both now seemed to be looking right at Chari. Or at least so she thought, until she realized they were looking past her. Zaja, who’d been at the tail of the group and obscured by the others, had carelessly shown herself. “Behold her visage!” the guard continued in a low voice. “She is like Him! She is a divine being!”
“I am?” Zaja asked dumbly.
Chari knew the opportunity for what it was, and grabbed Zaja by the wrist, yanking her forward. “Convince them,” she hissed in her ear.
Zaja stumbled to the fore, now the center of attention. She started to open her mouth, then stopped, raised her hand, and gave a little wave. She glanced back at the others for support, found none, and returned to her bewildered observers. Finally, she rolled her shoulders back and confidently said, “Take me to your leader!”
*
As Flynn and his allies were led down the torchlit tunnels breaching the heart of the mountain, elsewhere, on the distant world of Terrias in the shanty city of Yeribelt, Crescen DuMear had just received his bowl of noodles. Before he could take the first bite, though, the proprietor of the Noodle Shack, Vestus, thrust a small shaker filled with red shavings onto the counter.
Crescen picked up the shaker and examined it for a moment. “I concede your game, Vestus. What is it?”
Killers, Traitors, & Runaways: Outcasts of the Worlds, Book II Page 28