Crimson Valley

by Hausladen, Blake;

  Natan went and Evand waved Wayland close and took his arm. “As soon as Natan has secured the ships in the harbor I need you to find the fastest ship and fastest horses Alsonelm has to offer. I will have a letter ready shortly that must be taken with all speed to Admiral Soma in Aneth. Go.”

  He vanished and Evand said to Liv, “We’ll need to get hold of the city’s nobility, especially those that sided with the Corneth or lost their fortunes to the rate change.”

  “Nace knows their names,” she replied, and waved the banker over. “I’ll assemble a staff and send invitations for them to meet us and voice their concern. The Grano will need some handholding.”

  “How so?” he asked before he remembered Phost. “You didn’t kill my uncle did you?”

  “No, but I shattered his jaw and sent him and those close to him to Bessradi with Avin. I’ll invite Ellyon and a few other Grano officers.”

  “Don’t forget to remind them it is the green of the Grano the 7th will wear on its sleeves,” Evand said. “I will never understand how you had the foresight to use my family’s color as backing for the new insignia.”

  Liv and I shared a look. Green was the only color she’d been able to find at the time. The happy accident would remain our secret.

  “Are we staying here or moving to the Corneth Keep?” Liv asked.

  “Here,” he said and all three of us looked around, our mind rushed to follow the actions of our friends. For a long moment we were bent by the desire to join and help them. Already though, desperate people with hopes and demands were moving toward their new king and queen from all over the city, and I could feel the need for us to look beyond. Information from very far away would be needed, and I slowly let go of the desire to be moving.

  “Let me find some real sleep,” I said to Evand, “And I’ll get to work looking for Vesteal and Hessier.”

  60

  Sikhek Vesteal

  The roof creaked loud enough each sunrise and sunset that I could hear them all the way down in my bony pit. For three days this distant groan was the only thing I heard, save my own breathing and the clatter of bone when I shifted. I thought I should be hungry or thirsty, but no real wants occupied my mind.

  A rumbling and a long terrible scream reached me the next day, but nothing else until the nightly round of creaking rafters.

  Footsteps a day later, heavy and regular, had me searching for Geart’s touch. The trapdoor growled like a beast opening its maw and a blazing light appeared.

  “You down there, sir? Minister, I mean,” a man asked.

  My throat was dry, but I managed to speak after a single cough. “Wish that I wasn’t. Who is asks?”

  ”How do you say your name?” the man asked the shape next to him in the blaze of lantern light.

  “Mika,” she replied.

  “Mica?”

  “Stand aside, man,” she said. “Minister, it is Mika Nuar from the Savdi Valley. Get up here, you great fool.”

  The end of a rope slapped the bones beside me with a sharp clatter. I snatched it and did my best to climb.

  “Pull,” the man said. The rope hissed and sent a cascade of fiber and dust onto my face. I coughed, held on, and scrambled through. The group hefted me up and tugged me toward the stairs.

  I took one look back at the entrance to the hell I had created. It was only one of a thousand places like it.

  It was the dark of night above. I thought at first that they had snuck themselves into the palace to free me, but the place was a deserted ruin, and we reached the dining hall with the fine map of the East. Another group of gawkers waited for us there amidst broken furniture and bloodstains. One of the room’s tall windows and its entire frame had been stove-in and its double doors were smashed outward. Claw marks gouged the floor. Planks and tools littered the hallways beyond as though they’d started too late to board the palace up.

  Some of the people in the crowd began to look familiar. The man was the doorman from the whorehouse. Others were the whores, staff, and guards. There was no sign of the brothel’s owner. Mika stood out, the savage bear tattoo upon her face and many piercings. They seemed in common company.

  A wet and jagged animal snort from somewhere outside reminded me of my folly.

  “We cannot stay here,” I said to Mika. “Did you bring any iron vessels?”

  “None,” she said. “Not something you carry around. I am one of many searching the coast for you. I heard a tale about a singer at the Battle of Yorn Valley, and another of a man who walked away from a thirty-day adventure at whorehouse with a knife in his liver. The entire valley heard you sing to the ghosts beneath the palace.”

  Mika pointed at an attractive redhead. The woman said, “You tried to convince the Arilas to gather up the city and escape north. Can you still get us out?”

  Had the redhead been in the room when I spoke to the Arilas—the same one I’d tumbled with for all those days at the brothel? She looked at me like I’d come to the palace to save her. The last thing I needed was to be someone’s hero. Barok was already a thousand times more than what the world deserved from the Vesteal.

  “What happened to the Arilas?” I asked.

  Mika said, “When the caribou started bashing at the city’s gates he sent his pikemen down. Every man who went was killed. The Arilas fled to his keep by the river, and the creatures tore through the city until those things had knocked in every gate and doorway. Now they roam the city and surrounding fields killing anyone that tries to leave.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “Thirty caribou, a couple hawks, and a great bear. Are they Hessier?”

  “Like Hessier, yes.”

  The group gawked harder and the redhead said, “Can you save us or not?”

  I’d not commanded a poorer army, and never had I faced such a foe. Still, it was a better position than waiting on a bone pit for Geart to dissect me.

  “Who here can swing a hammer?”

  The redhead volunteered and this did not please me either. She was preceded by a million others who had hoped to win my love or favor over the centuries. I snatched her by the arm, grabbed a hammer from the pile of tools, and walked us out into the moonlight. A lone caribou mare stood a stone’s throw away upon the lawn. A distant cough at the bottom of the long hill was the only other sign of them.

  “I can keep away the creature’s dark touch,” I said. “Walk straight toward it and hit it between the eyes as hard as you can. Do not stop hitting its skull until it quits moving.”

  She tied back her hair, took hold of the hammer in both hands, and went without any of the dew-eyed weeping or blathering that I’d expected. She made it across without balking, and the stupid beast did nothing but look at her until its forehead was caved in. It managed to leap aside but immediately fell. The girl pursued it with a bravery I did not understand and beat its head flat. She screamed once at the motionless corpse and the marched back to us while trying in vain to wipe the gore from her arms and face.

  The group was too shocked by the demonstration to celebrate her small victory.

  I’d learned what I needed to from the experiment. Geart had the beast there to keep them from leaving, not to kill them. The rest of the city’s many thousands would be alive.

  “She might be the most capable of the bunch,” Mika asked. “Can we get them trained in the next couple days?”

  “You misjudge the time we have. The downed mare will be seen come the dawn and they will get new instructions. We don’t need bravery like hers or any measure of training. All we need is numbers.”

  “Numbers we can get,” Mika said. “The entire valley is ready to quit Yudyith to be away from these things.”

  I could not help but imagine Barok racing through the city and all the surrounding towns trying to save every person he could. The notion was so distasteful that I considered making an escape without them.

  The angry redhead gave up trying to brush away the stink and hefted the hammer. “Are you going
to help us or not?”

  She meant to hit me with it, if I said no. The moonlight caught her eyes and those deep blue pools seemed almost to glow.

  I nodded, but it was not for the same reasons Barok would have.

  Mika led us through the narrow streets and we emerged onto a plaza along the river banks carpeted by thousands of sad people they Caribou had trapped there. The girls did all the talking while the dawn began to warm the sky. Pieces of the crowd stood and moved toward us.

  I did not let this momentum go to waste and started toward the gates before they fell to debates and discussions. Enough of them followed.

  We encountered two caribou as we marched down the hill. I pushed away their dark touch, and the angry crowd hacked them to pieces. The victory doubled our numbers.

  At the bottom of the hill we found the wrecked gates and trampled regiment of pikemen. The beasts that had done it roamed the fields outside. They were in poor shape but better than the first bull I had encountered. The bear was there, too, sitting in the center of the road wearing the post of a window frame through its hip.

  Geart’s power was growing. He knew something I did not. I would have his secret, if I had to distill it from his corpse.

  “Loot the pikemen and open these foul creature’s skulls,” I said. “Swarm them, and we can escape the city.”

  They stood in place like so many sheep, and I considered abandoning them again until the girls stepped forward and began to loot pikes from the carpet of metal bodies.

  “Come on, I’m not dying here,” one of them shouted.

  Others started forward and the momentum got the thousands moving through the broken gates and out toward the caribou.

  Mika and the redhead appeared at my side while I worked to push away the creatures’ touch. Mika asked, “Should we send word to the keep that we are breaking out?”

  “Think numbers, not rank or weapons. The more bodies we get free of the city, the better off we will be. This city’s nobles and their soldiers are more trouble than they are worth.”

  Something of a charge started then, only to stall as the bear roared, sick and ugly.

  I gathered up the layer of the Shadow’s power lingering there and cobble together a small song that had no business being sung.

  tongue swell

  The crippled bear swung its head from side to side and its roaring ceased. The people of Cyaudi gained fresh momentum and swarmed the undead animals. It was messy, and the Shadow relished the pour of souls across the grass. A bull caribou galloped around the side of the city and charged through them. A wall of bodies went down, but the unthinking creature tripped over the wet pile and broke a leg. While it floundered, a pike cleaved its head open. The bear fought on and on while the last of the caribou were hacked to pieces, but with a mouthful of tongue and a shattered hip the thing was more of a carnival act. They smashed its shoulders, and finally its skull.

  “West along the tithe road?” Mika asked.

  “No. We must get down the valley and out to sea before they reach us in numbers. Those that can make the walk might survive, the rest will die.”

  The doorman and the girls had stayed clear of the melee after taking credit for inspiring the charge—leader now of our mob of an army. The city and the valley heard the battle and the resulting absence of the dark touch. The city emptied toward us and thousands more started down out of the hills. Many dragged their belongings along in carts or upon their back. One man carried a dead baby and a chair. The most foolish of them though, was a uniformed officer from one of the great Yudyith families who thought that he should start giving orders. The redhead struck him on the neck with a wicket chop of her pike and stripped the medals off his chest for the leader of our band to wear.

  We numbered 135,000 when we got them moving north. The man with the chair and baby sat down upon it and was left behind. Others fell from their wounds or tired of their possessions and we began to leave a trail of bodies and garbage.

  “Burn those that fall behind,” I said.

  “We don’t have time for the dead,” the redhead said.

  “The dead and the living. The darkness wants their bodies and their souls. Leave nothing alive or dead behind us, animal or otherwise.”

  This news fell hard upon them, and it took only a bit more daylight before the hawks began to shriek and dive at us. Drawn by the bird, caribou began to rush us in ones and two. The casualties were many, but nothing compared to the numbers that poured down from the villages and towns of that long and lush valley. The center of my mob was the only place I kept entirely free of the shadow, and like water into a rag, the Yud were drawn toward me.

  When we stopped the next morning along the river’s edge, we numbered 400,000. They were hungry, but were able to water themselves from a clean tributary. It was enough to get them up and moving as they suffered the march down to Soulenti.

  A hundred caribou tore up our back side as we approached Soulenti the next day, but it was better for the Yud that it happened, despite the 80,000 that died fighting them. There was no debate left in them when it was done. Every soul in the city joined us and we were a half million when we I got them moving down to the city’s harbor. It looked like a prince’s bathtub, so full of ships you could not see the water. The crafts had belonged to the poorer sailors of Havish, Dahar, and Aneth, and the people of Yudyith owed their salvation that day to the greed of their corsairs more than to me.

  They needed no encouragement and the many thousands of idle ships filled with people. Mika and rest of the leaders joined me aboard the largest ship in the harbor, and I became the admiral of that strange armada. Every able ship followed us north despite the approaching twilight, the poor tide, and lack of provisions. Many thousand were undoubtedly left behind, but I’d done enough already.

  I expected merriment as we sailed. They had escaped their blighted land, feckless leaders, and beast Hessier. They wept instead, and I was forced to suffer the sound of it. The peaches and purples of a magnificent sunset went unobserved while they looked south and wailed with sorrow. I did not understand it, and I was glad when the growing darkness got them all busy lighting lanterns to try to keep the man ships from sailing into each other.

  When we moved out over deeper water I felt the Spirit of the Vastness once again. It was welcoming this time, and I could not abide it.

  I would not be its champion.

  Still a feeling of satisfaction and wellness overcame me. Numbed flesh tingled and then woke. My stomach felt full and my pulse quickened. I stretched my back and everything popped. My eyesight sharpened and the clattering of voices and noises aboard became clear.

  As though I was a young man, I stood up straight and grinned stupidly at the moonlight. I tugged at remade teeth, laughed, and danced to the sound of it.

  “My,” Mika said and took my arm. “What happened to you?”

  The degree of the change was not clear to me until she took hold of my backside and pulled me close. I was muscled and firm, and when she kissed me I tasted her salty lips and the tang of wine upon her tongue. Perhaps there was someone aboard capable of celebration.

  “Are you the Shadow’s man again?” she asked.

  “Another has taken hold of me.”

  “Someone stronger?”

  “I don’t know yet. This seems a reward for getting everyone away.”

  “Sounds better than the business of Hessier.”

  “They are the same, I think.”

  “Are you like Soma now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She is something different, too. We’ve felt her magic.”

  “No. She was made by the Earth to kill the Hessier and their servants.”

  “I like the sound of that. Can we make more like her?”

  “I would not want more like her around.”

  She shrugged and kissed me again. Her hands moved inside my clothes. “You’ll keep it in mind, though. Imagine a girl like me with power like hers.”

&
nbsp; I did like the sound of that. I tried to kiss her again, but she took my hand instead. She led me down through the mournful press of people to a narrow space between the hull and a wall of barrels. She leaned me back onto the steep slope of the hull planks, pulled away our clothes, pressing her long body upon me. I lost myself amidst in the tumble of her—warm and welcome. We made love while the Vastness rushed by beneath us.

  “I am not a hero,” I said to the Spirit.

  “Good,” she replied, “It’s a killer I’m in the mood for.”

  Her soft lips and eager hands pressed upon me again. We nested into that space, and I was quickly lost to all the sensations and drifted up into nothingness.

  Something shifted. All at once I had the view from far above Zoviya that the Vastness enjoyed. I could see every flickering soul upon the earth, and their every quality and sadness, every friendship and enmity.

  I spotted Dia first in Pashwarmuth with two Vesteal children instead of the one. She’d gotten away from Geart somehow, but had been taken prisoner by Blemish slavers and was moving north toward the Halberdon. A tidal wave of caribou flowed toward her they could never hope to outrun. Barok was nearing the Kaaryon, too, his brothers each in command of their own forces in Bessradi, Alsonelm, and Courfel. They angers were aimed at each other and none of them were looking at the darkness that tumbled out of the Berm.

  Geart’s black host would soon outnumber them all. He was harvesting every man and animal in his path and would carry over Dia and then all of Zoviya’s petty soldiers.

  ‘Hey, stupid,’ I said across the vastness and flicked Geart soul. ‘Zoviya is mine. The mercury is mine. If you want it, you will have to kill me first.’

  I thought I heard a scream as all of Geart’s beasts turned toward me.

  Someone kissed my eyelids. “Where did you go?”

  “A quick nap,” I said.

  “You deserved one,” she said hugged me close.