by L. W. Jacobs
“Forward!” Karhail roared. They charged, Weiland zipping to trip up the front line. Karhail and Theron waded in, and Tai took up the Galya emblem again, starting his spin as he flew over their heads. He dropped in like a summer tempest, slashing and scattering the heart of the formation.
Tai spun out the far side, slowing to assess, and saw Beal clutching a spear through his shoulder, lone soldier bearing down on him. Tai shot forward, driving iron arms of the squid into the man, and caught the wounded wafter. He pushed them up to a rooftop porch.
Beal was pale, confused. “Tai?”
Tai looked behind them to see painted Councilate faces wide-eyed behind a glass door. “We may not always have gotten along, but you’d have done the same for me. Keep the spear in. We’ll come for you.”
Beal nodded, clasped Tai’s hand. “Thank you.”
Tai shoved off, spine aching, bends threatening—
—and fell to a lower roof, uai spent. “Meck,” he cursed, digging in his belt. He pulled out a blood-soaked mavenstym blossom and began chewing as the bends hit, spinning nausea twice as bad as his attacks had been. He groaned, trying to hold his stomach and the mavenstym down, sounds of his friends fighting loud in his ears.
As the bends eased, he noticed his foot was aflame. There was an arrow in it.
The battle in the street raged, Karhail and Theron appearing through gaps in the soldiers, Weiland buzzing in and out. Another wave of soldiers rolled from the street behind them, some running to open the gate, others to join the fight. Tai groaned. He tried to get up, couldn’t walk. Tried to strike resonance, too—nothing.
“Work, shatter you,” he growled at the sour mouthful, chewing.
Theron broke through the ranks, booting a man off his blade. He spun to block an overhead chop, then smashed a fist into another man’s face. He was a one-man army, slashing an axe aside to jab through a man’s armor—
A sword caught him across his exposed throat, and blood sprayed. “No!” Tai yelled, jumping to his feet. “Theron!”
The bulky Seinjialese was cut down a moment later, and Tai glimpsed Karhail hemmed in by men, Weiland nowhere to be seen. They were being overwhelmed.
“NO!” Tai started running, arrow breaking in his foot, willing uai to return.
It did. Tai slammed forward, barreling men aside, caught Karhail under the shoulders, lifted him out. Weiland appeared, clinging to his side. A lance came flying after them, and Tai dodged it too, uai roaring inside him. “The gates!” Karhail yelled.
“We need more men!” Tai yelled back, shaking his head. “The walls!”
“The walls, then!”
They shot above the rooftops, enclave walls spreading in a ring around them. The ramparts were chaos, brawlers fighting slips and wafters, men plunging wailing over both sides, no side in clear victory. Beyond them, the dam diversion had failed, soldiers pounding down the plateau after Lumo and the others in full rout.
“Drop me in!” Karhail shouted.
Tai did, finding a clear spot to drop them. Weiland sped one way, Karhail running the other. Tai shoved himself up, speeding at a distracted wafter, then veering away as he recognized the green scarf. Rebels were still massed below the walls, the launching system working well. But there were so many fighters on the walls—far more than usual.
“They knew,” Tai breathed, slowing. “They knew our plan.” His back knotted, thinking of Theron cut down under a mass of men, of Lumo in full rout. But how did they know?
A traitor. Anger rose in him, a fury that cared more for justice than life. The Blackspine. “Traitors!”
Tai scythed down, smashing a mercenary from the wall. Back again, slamming into another, body stiffened with uai. Tai smashed through the lines like a pendulum, knocking fighters to their death, seeing red, knowing only anger. How had they known? It didn’t matter. He would kill them all.
The battle then was darkness and rage and screams and blood, Tai a fury at the heart of it, knowing only power and pain and death.
Hunger found him sometime later, a deep, gnawing hunger in his spine. Then fire, a second arrow lodged in the meat of his leg. Tai shook his head, feeling bruised all over, exhausted.
“Tai!” a voice came over the din.
He spun. Karhail, waving his arms. Tai pushed over, realizing the walls were emptying, enemy soldiers cut down. They’d taken the walls, despite their betrayal. He pulled a bloody blossom of mavenstym and chewed.
“We have to go!” Karhail yelled. The Seinjialese was covered in blood, armor battered, bleeding from a dozen wounds.
“What?”
“The city!” he yelled, pointing down. “We’re outnumbered!”
Tai looked—the streets were swarming with white coats, mercenaries and soldiers, clustered around the battlement stairways. “Prophets.” He looked to Karhail, holding his resonance against a building nausea. “We were betrayed.”
“Aye,” the Seinjialese growled, face a mask of gore. “And we’re trapped up here. They don’t have the air power to take us, and we can hold the stairways for days, but even then, it’s only a matter of time.”
“Shattermeck.” A rebel groaned on the walkway near Tai—one of the ghosts from the mines. “Isn’t there a way to retake the town?”
“No. We’re done, Tai. Soon enough, they’ll have men on the outside too, and we’ll really have no escape.”
Tai thought desperately, trying to see a way out. A fire. A flood, to wash the soldiers away. Stones dropped from the sky. An attack of air. They all ended the same—soldiers holed up in buildings, or the entire population fled. And they needed the population, or taking Newgen meant nothing.
Karhail was already shouting orders to other wafters. “Tai! Go!”
With a curse, Tai went, latching on to a group of fighters, two wounded, wafting them off the wall to the ground below. They ran. He bounced up for another, two women and a man with a stomach wound.
It was grim and bloody work, defeat and urgency mixing in the rebels’ weary faces. Soldiers began coming around the side curve of the walls, retreating rebels engaging them there as others fled. Eyna wafted next to him, the woman’s red-and-black hair matted with blood, a determined look in her eyes. The line on the wall broke and people began jumping, Tai zipping back and forth to catch them.
It was a full rout. They’d failed. Karhail stayed on the wall till the end, Lumo next to him, holding off one arc of soldiers as Hernst and a Yershman did on the far side, weak and wounded escaping. “Kar!” Tai called, exhausted, hunger again gnawing his spine. “It’s time to go!”
“Take the others!”
“It’s only you! Now come!”
With a powerful slash, Karhail beat back his opponent and leapt. Lumo went a moment later, and Tai caught them in air, dropping under their weights.
“Fly us back!” Karhail called.
Tai lurched in air, bone-weary, flying them over a stream of retreating rebel fighters. They cut a clear path through the fields toward the forest hideout. “They’ll follow us,” he said, mind struggling to sort out the implications.
“Aye. They have more soldiers than we’d planned. The Arbiter kept his forces hidden.”
Lumo coughed, blood coming from his lips. “We have to retreat. Fall back and rebuild our forces.”
“No!” Karhail tensed under Tai’s grip. “It’s now or never! We regroup!”
They came over the trees to a fresh scene of slaughter.
Bodies lay in heaps, Councilate archers high in the trees cutting down fighters as they came. Too late, rebel wafters returned fire with their own bows. The hideout was razed, carts overturned, the fort a smoldering ruin. People wandered it or lay wounded, dead.
Fear struck deep in his heart. The kids. “I’ve got to go,” he said urgently. “I’ll drop you outside.”
“Tai, no! No one’s left in—”
He dropped them and flew through the trees.
The longhouses. These were a ruin, some just ashes, others sti
ll ablaze. Third from the left, one up. There. The house was in pieces, half-burnt and smoldering, bodies and signs of fighting all around it.
“Curly!” he called. “Pang! Fisher! It’s Tai! Are you here?”
The house was a charnel ground, beds and bodies half-burnt, moans escaping from some. One small figure still clung to a sword, and with a lurch, Tai dropped to the ground.
“Curly. Oh, Prophets, Curly, what—” A wafter came at him, bow firing, and Tai did something with air, the man’s bones snapping. He dropped, Tai already forgetting him.
The boy drew a ragged breath, eyes fluttering open.
“Oh, thank the ancestors,” Tai said, clutching Curly’s thin frame to his chest. “Fisher? Pang? Are they okay?”
“Ran,” Curly said. “I stayed to—”
He started coughing and Tai felt something warm and wet on his hands. Blood.
Ancestors. Tai shot up and out of the ruined camp, battle and rebellion forgotten in sheer determination. Too many people had died today. Because of him and his decisions. He wouldn’t let Curly be one of them.
He landed on the road outside Marrem’s house, door already open, with wounded fighters inside. The matron said nothing, taking the boy with bloody hands and snapping orders at her daughters.
She didn’t need to. Her eyes were accusation enough.
35
It has become clear, as the glory of Councilate spreads further, that religiosity is related to hair quality: the darker, the thicker, the more superstitious. Thus, we find tales and worship of the Prophet strongest in the south, among the Yati and Achuri, whereas among the Councilate and upper class Yershmen, it has waned to a collection of festivals and wives’ tales.
—Eglen Fetterwel, College Papers
The caves rang with the wails of the wounded. Tai sat on the scree floor of a storage chamber, an unfamiliar man binding his foot, exhausted. The rebels had retreated here, what was left of them, though they’d beaten a clear trail to it across the fields. He’d searched the forests until dark, looking for Fisher and Pang, then come here because he had nowhere else.
“How are the stairs, man?” Tai asked. “Any news?”
“So far as I know, they hold,” the rebel replied, bandage around his arm proof he had been in the fighting too. “You gave the Houses a hard lesson today, sir.”
“I gave?” Tai hissed as the man rubbed salt into the wound—they must be out of hardenswort. “I would say we all fought bravely.”
“Aye,” the man agreed, “but you’re the one who saved the wall. I was nearly cut down myself before you knocked the man from the wall.” He touched the bandage on his arm.
“You’d have done the same for me.” Tai hardly remembered that part of the fight—it was a blur of white coats and gray steel and blood. What he remembered was the hot wash of Curly’s blood, the long hours as the light failed, looking for Pang and Fisher. Ancestors send they’d survived.
Shouts sounded from the next chamber. “Is someone yuraloading over there?”
“Aye.” The man knotted the bandage around Tai’s foot, sending another spasm of pain as he pulled it tight. “Karhail’s orders: all those who haven’t overcome are to do so now. Says we’ll need ’em for the next fight.”
“Like hell,” Tai growled, getting up. He winced.
“You’ll want to go easy on that foot for a while, sir.”
“Right.” Tai struck his resonance, gliding over the ground, looking for Karhail.
The Seinjialese was in the main chamber, wrapped in bandages, sharpening his sword. Lumo was there along with a crowd of relatively fit-looking fighters. They would be the first-response team if the Councilate did attack. People looked up as he wafted in, breeze washing over them.
“We’ve got to stop yuraloading,” Tai said.
Karhail looked up, eyes haunted. “It’s the only way, Tai. We’re outnumbered. If the Councilate hits now, we need every edge we can get.”
“There are enough dead without us killing our own. We need a strategy, not just more fighters.”
“We had a strategy. Someone betrayed it.”
“Because we recruited star and sun. Who knows how many traitors we had in our ranks? Still have?”
“If they were among us, they were willing to die for it in yuraloading.”
“And those who survived will have brought the secret back to the Councilate. They are probably forcing their own recruits to load right now. We need to be better than that. Starting with this.”
“That’s not how war works, Tai. Think where we would be if you didn’t waft like you do—we would have been lost long ago.”
“It is true,” Lumo said. “The archers would have cut us down out there if you hadn’t stopped them.” Others nodded.
“Without yuraloading, we are no better than the Councilate.” Karhail spoke as if it was agreed on.
“With yuraloading, we’re no better than the Councilate!” Tai slashed his hand through the air. “We didn’t even save our wounded back there! Beal is still on a rooftop in Newgen and Theron is still dead!”
“That’s war, Tai,” Karhail growled. “People die.”
“Then maybe we need to stop making war. Maybe it’s the whole reason the Councilate’s corrupt, is they think so long as their armies are bigger that they can force their system on other people.”
Karhail sighed, looking exhausted. “So, what then?”
“Something different! Anything! These people are not our enemies—look at how many mercenaries are fighting with us now, who used to work for the Houses, or lighthairs who used to be my enemies on the streets. It’s insane that under other circumstances, we’d be trying to kill them.”
“They’re the enemy.”
“No! That’s how the Councilate works. The idea that money and power come before people, that’s our enemy. These are just people caught up in it. Like us, unless we find a new way.”
Karhail spread his hands. “You’re still here. We’re still the best thing going.”
Tai spat. “Our best could be a lot better. And I’m not sure I’m staying.”
A shocked silence followed, but the words felt right. “You can’t leave us,” Lumo said. “You are the reason we’re winning.”
“The reason we had a decent strategy to begin with,” Weiland put in. “If you go, I go.”
Karhail stood, neck working. “Don’t try to take leadership from me, Tai.”
Tai tore the green scarf from his neck, anger and grief warring inside. “Take it? I don’t want it.” He limped for the door.
“What are you going to do?”
“Something better. Anything.” Sounds of protest rose from the crowd.
A crackle filled the air, Karhail’s resonance thrumming to life. “Leave and I kill you.”
Tai turned, suddenly angry, suddenly not caring, his resonance roaring. A wind rose behind him, whipping the ends of his cloak. “Try it.” Pebbles picked up in the breeze, air howling through the caves. People threw hands up, shielding themselves from debris. “I dare you.”
Karhail backed away, an emotion in his eyes Tai had never seen there before: fear.
Tai turned and flew up the stairs.
The star was up, casting the churned fields in pale blue. Tai shot toward it, anger driving him higher and higher. Anger that they’d failed. Anger that he’d tried so hard. Anger that it still hadn’t helped his kids. And anger that he didn’t know what to do about it. That as much as he wanted the Councilate out, he didn’t want the rebellion in anymore. Not this rebellion. Not like this.
Marrem’s words rang in his ears—So, you’re going to go and kill more people to make sure others don’t die? What will that change?
She was right—whether they had taken Newgen or not, no one won when so many had to die. This whole thing had been a mistake. Still, Ella was right, that so long as the Councilate was in Ayugen, they wouldn’t be safe. From here, they’d spread to the villages, to the ice sheet, swallowing everything like the
y had further north. If he ever wanted to live in peace, or make a place where his kids could grow up free, they had to be stopped. And that meant before the legion arrived. But how?
There’s no other way, Tai. I tried to warn you. This is war. It was Hake’s voice, as sure as if he’d never left. As if he’d never been fake.
“No. We need to stop fighting wars.”
Or maybe you need to. There’s nothing for you here anymore. The Councilate won. There is no shame in leaving.
He slashed his hand in the whistling air. “The Councilate has not won. My kids are out there somewhere, the rest of the city’s still in the prison camp, and now half my friends are wounded or dying in a cave, waiting for the Councilate to come kill them.”
That’s what I said. It’s time to go.
“Where? Where could I possibly go?” Grief still clutched him, and worry, but he could feel determination rising through it. He wasn’t going anywhere. This was where he made his stand.
You don’t have to die for this. This isn’t your fight anymore, Tai.
“It is my fight. Because no one fought for me, when I was Fisher’s age. Because if no one fights, this will just keep going on.”
In the end, you can only protect yourself. And me.
It was tempting. The thought of just going. Of dropping it all. Except this wasn’t Hake. It was a revenant. He was alone. And his real friends were in trouble.
“I don’t need to protect you,” he said, but his mind was already elsewhere, spinning. Maybe there was a way, if he did it alone. They could still take the Councilate hostage, still force them out, but they didn’t need to attack Newgen, didn’t need to kill all those people—
Tai. No. You’re going to get us killed.
“You have no say in this.”
You’re going to get me killed.
“You’re already dead. And I know what I’m doing.”
No, you don’t—
But he was already dropping toward Newgen, clouds flitting past his face, unearthly blue in the light of the setting star. He took a deep breath of the rushing air, feeling a huge weight drop.