Construct

by Luke Matthews

  Pare pulled down his mask and leaned close to her. “They’re gaining,” he said, yelling over the howling wind.

  “How is that possible?” Jacob asked.

  Pare’s look was exasperated. “How am I supposed to know?” he said. Jacob just looked back across the expanse.

  “They’re going to catch up,” Eriane said.

  “We need to find a way to slow them down,” Jacob said. “How close are we to the Kelef road?”

  Pare leaned around Samuel and looked ahead. “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. “Especially in this…” He gestured up at the sky and let the statement hang.

  “Then the best we can do right now is pick up the pace,” Samuel said. “We can’t defend ourselves here. Maybe there’s something up ahead that can help us against them.”

  Eriane wasn’t even sure what to make of the conversation. Their discussions had shifted from pushing through to Kelef to finding a defensive position in the pass. All the thoughts she didn’t want to have came tumbling through. Where did you think all of this was leading?

  “Come on,” Samuel said. “Stay close behind me and keep up.”

  Samuel set off at a trot, blasting the snow away as though he didn’t even notice it. Eriane focused on his feet and powered on, thinking of nothing but keeping close to him. She could hear the metallic clank of his feet and knees as they came down hard in the snow, even over the sound of the wind. She couldn’t hear the others behind her, but at this pace she dared not look back, for fear of losing her footing or one of them running into her.

  Their path had been a steady uphill climb all day, but the new tempo brought that climb into sharp focus. It wasn’t long before the muscles in her thighs burned, and when she shifted her gait to compensate, her calves followed suit. Even breathing through her scarf had begun drawing frozen air, chafing her throat and nostrils. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t stop, couldn’t let up. She couldn’t let Samuel down, especially not now. She blinked some of the cold out of her eyes and gathered her second wind.

  They passed under a large outcrop and, for the first time all day, she saw a few scraggly trees above them, growing out of a crack in the rocks on the incline. The ridgeline was much closer now, only about fifty feet above them. A sharp whistle over the gale pulled her and Samuel up short. Pare and Jacob had stopped just past the outcropping, and were standing against the cliff wall talking. She couldn’t hear what they said, but Pare gestured toward the trees and the ridgeline. She looked back at Samuel and waved for him to follow her back to Pare.

  “What’s going on?” she asked as she approached.

  “I’m not so sure about this, Pare,” Jacob said.

  “We don’t have a lot of choice,” Pare said. “If they’re gaining at that rate, they’ll be on us soon. Can you do it?”

  Jacob stepped out away from the rock wall, looking up at the top of the ridge. He moved up the road a ways, still examining the same spot. Eriane just watched him, confused, until he returned to the group. “I think I can, yeah,” he said to Pare.

  Pare looked back up the road, into the snow that had become a whiteout in the pass. He took a deep breath and looked right at Jacob. “Then do it.”

  Eriane looked back at Jacob, who nodded without responding. “What are you doing?” she said, looking back at Pare.

  “We have a plan,” Pare said, the wind over Eriane’s shoulder blowing back his hood.

  “What plan?” Eriane said, turning back to Jacob.

  But he was already gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  * * *

  Colton spurred the mercenaries before him, giving them a subtle boost that kept them at a steady, high pace. They were close enough the tracks left by their prey hadn’t snowed in. The groove cut by the group ahead made going easier, but not by much. The sellswords were heartier than Colton expected, and driven by their goal and the payday that would follow. Luckily for Colton, none of them would realize how far past their limits he had pushed them until it was too late.

  As usual, Bales was on edge, insistent they move faster, pacing at the back of the group like a wildcat held back from a kill. His cheeks had swollen and turned a nasty shade of mottled purple and yellow, but his bloodshot eyes were still wide open, unblinking.

  “Can you feel them yet?” Colton yelled over the gale.

  Bales glared over his shoulder. “No,” he snapped. “And if you ask me again, I’ll teach you how to fly.” His face was still covered in blood, and any exposed skin that wasn’t purple was turning red and chafing in the chill. The effect would have been comical had he not looked so feral, but Colton was still taking joy in Bales’s earlier defeat.

  “Look at the tracks, Bales,” Colton said. “Less and less snow as we go, and now we’re close. We need to know how close.” The mercenaries slowed their pace.

  Bales looked back again, then turned forward and bowed his head. A muffled grunt escaped his lungs and he drove the heel of his hand into his temple. A new trickle of blood escaped his nose, and his eyes snapped open. “I can’t. It’s too much.”

  “I don’t like going into this blind,” Colton said. “You can’t break one of them?”

  Bales rolled his eyes. “You’re asking a man with two broken arms to swim,” he said. “I can’t even find them, much less”—his eyes closed in pain and he turned, staining the pristine snow with a dark red clot from one nostril—“much less try and break anything.” He pinched his nose with his forefinger and thumb. “I think that little sot physically broke my nose.”

  “I guess we do this the old fashioned way, then,” Colton said. Again, the mercenaries slowed their pace. When Bales noticed, he spun on Colton, grabbing his cloak and forcing a forearm into his chest.

  “Don’t you dare slow them down,” Bales said. “You keep them moving until they drop.”

  “They’re no good to us if they don’t make it, Bales,” Colton said.

  “Then you keep them standing as long as you can. I want this over with.”

  Colton gave Bales a little shove and nodded forward, indicating how far ahead the mercenaries now were. Bales sped to catch up, with Colton taking the rear. They rounded the next corner and the whole party came to a halt. It looked like Bales would get his wish.

  Ahead of them in the road, a cloaked figure knelt in the snow, tending to another, smaller one who sat against the rock face, holding a knee in both hands and rocking in evident pain. Bales reached back and grabbed Colton’s shoulder. Colton could feel him shaking. Right behind the two in the trail stood an ancient-looking construct, clad in armored plates that made it look like some sort of archaic war machine.

  “That has to be it,” Bales said, almost a whisper.

  Colton nodded. “Then let’s end this and get back to someplace warm, shall we?”

  Colton’s thugs advanced and the kneeling cloak stood up, wheeling about in the road. The other also stood and moved back behind the construct, who stepped up, taking a protective stance. The one in front made a circular motion with both hands, the snow in front of him swirling as though caught in a vortex that grew and grew until it cleared most of the powder from the path.

  The mercenary in front broke rank, drawing a smallsword and rushing forward with an idiotic scream. There was only so much control Colton could exert before being found out, and the exertion of controlling this many in any meaningful way wasn’t worth the effort, so he let the man go. The whirlwind swept forward, slinging the man outward over the chasm before pulling him back around and slamming him hard into the rock wall, where he slumped unconscious into the snow. The display surprised both Colton and Bales.

  “Hold, men,” Colton said to his posse. He stepped forward to address his opponent. “Well done!” he said, sounding something close to genuine. “There is no need for this to escalate, though. Give us the construct and we’ll be on our way, and you can be on yours.”

  A pause. “Yeah? Is that all it would take?” Colton heard from the cloak, an
d was again surprised; it was just a boy.

  “Let us have him,” Colton said, “and we’ll help you and your injured friend back to town.”

  “Well,” the boy said. “That is a very interesting offer. How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

  Colton nodded. “A fair question, simply answered: I have no quarrel with you, or your friend. This construct has committed a grievous offense, for which it must atone.”

  There was a gap of silence, filled by whistling wind. The boy looked over his shoulder at the construct, contemplating, and his companion stepped out.

  “No, you can’t!” The voice was delicate—a young girl. The surprises just kept piling on.

  “The two of you don’t have any idea what you’re wrapped up in,” Colton said. “You can still step away from this, unharmed. This construct has to pay for what he has done.”

  Another silent breath, the boy mulling over his answer. His head waved back and forth, contemplating his construct companion and Colton’s crew, appearing to weigh his options. The young girl just shook her head. The construct didn’t move.

  The boy turned back to Colton. “For what he has done,” he said, “or what he has seen?”

  Colton shook his head, lowering his eyes to the snow. “That, my young friend, was a mistake.” Every man in front of Colton was stretched taut, about to snap. Bales seethed at the back of the pack, his chest heaving under heavy breaths with his quarry in sight. Colton raised his head and the mercenaries began to advance when a movement caught his eye. A small rock bounced down the cliff face from an outcropping above.

  “Back!” Colton yelled. Throwing his power outward he clenched his hands and pulled, the entire group sliding toward him in the snow. A rock the size of a man’s torso slammed into the road and broke in two, the pieces bouncing off into the abyss. The whole group looked up to see where it had come from, taking their eyes off the boy and his companions.

  In that moment of distraction, the man in front screamed, impaled in the thigh and hip by thick icicles. The boy across the way loosed another volley and Colton stepped up, sweeping the projectiles aside with an impertinent gesture. “You’re out of your depth, boy,” he said, twisting the last word. “Even with your friend up top, we’ll get what we want.”

  As if on cue, a hail of fist-sized rocks came down on top of the hunters, but stopped short by an unseen barrier a few feet above their heads. Bales grunted with effort, his barrier having done its job but having also taken a toll.

  One of the mercenaries drew a mafi-stick and lifted it before his face, light twisting from beneath the cuff of his coat and into the thin black rod. He hauled back over his shoulder and heaved it forward. Instead of tumbling end over end like Colton expected, the baton shot straight and true, like a fired arrow only twice as fast, and struck the construct square in the chest, knocking him onto his back with a great plume of snow. The mafi stick returned to the man’s hand with a slap.

  “Samuel!” the girl screamed, rushing to the construct, who was trying to pull itself up to a sitting position.

  Colton turned to the mercenary. “Nice throw,” he said. The gruff man grinned. “I knew I was paying you imbeciles for something.” The smile drained away at Colton’s backhanded compliment.

  Bales turned. “Samuel.”

  Colton nodded. “Move forward!” he yelled. “And don’t worry about falling rocks.” He looked at Bales, who gave a curt nod and, with straining effort, raised another bump field.

  The group started moving again, eyeing their downed companion against the rock wall. Even the man who’d been hit by the icicles made his way forward, prodded by Colton a little harder than the rest. A few more rocks came down from above, creating sparkling blue flashes as they struck Bales’s overhead shield. The boy made another attempt at drawing the wind, but with a simple gesture, his effort was broken apart by Colton’s counter. A rain of dirt and needles deflected harmlessly away above them, and Colton began to wonder if it could really be this easy.

  The thought had only just formed when Bales let out a grunting cry, and the forward end of his field was torn apart by the weight of an entire fir tree falling upside-down from on high. The top of the tree struck close to the wall and it toppled over the two men at the front of the party. Soil-laden roots carried the tree over the cliffside with the two men still tangled in the branches, screaming as they fell away into the chasm.

  As their howling faded, the boy, fingers curled at his sides, made a pulling motion and the next two men lurched forward, falling on their faces in the snow. Bales was on his knees panting. Colton tried to raise his hands to offer up another counter, but found them pinned. Then, the whole world came crashing down the hillside.

  • • • • •

  Their plan had gone almost exactly as Pare had told her it would.

  Even as the ruse played out, Eriane had been unprepared to confront the scarred face of the silver-eyed from Samuel’s visions. His stature exuded menace, even at this distance, and Eriane had no interest in finding out what else he was capable of. The others all looked like hired hands, the kind of men who would drink and do business in the parts of Morrelton Pare and Eriane were told to avoid. Pare smirked when he saw the man in the back, his face swollen and covered in dried and frozen blood. “That must be their breaker,” Eriane said. Pare nodded.

  When the first rock came down, their enemy was caught off-guard but it missed its target, and their breaker raised a bump field to cover their advance. The hurled mafi-stick took them all by surprise, especially Samuel, who lay on his back in the snow trying to recover. Even after the unexpected attack, Pare still held back, drawing only on the nature around him for simple constructions of wind and ice—things Eriane knew he could do in his sleep, especially in a place with those two elements in such abundance. It was his way of feigning weakness, and it worked to draw the group in, further under the outcrop.

  It seemed almost too simple to Eriane, the idea of just dropping rocks and debris down onto the advancing party as they stepped into the danger zone. Pare had kept something from her, though, and she had no idea what to expect when the tree came down, shattering the bump field and taking two men with it over the side. Pare and Jacob’s combined efforts had managed to take out three of the men, but four more still stood, the falling tree causing them a moment’s hesitation.

  Pare’s muscles tensed and Eriane saw the men at the front of the pack fall forward into the path. The others stood frozen in Pare’s clutches but didn’t fall, and she saw Pare struggle to keep his hold. His feet slid forward in the snow just as the loudest CRACK she’d ever heard split the air apart.

  Rocks and debris rained down from the cliffside, and to Eriane it seemed like time slowed to a crawl. A huge boulder came down on top of one of the downed men, rolling away covered in red and leaving little recognizable beneath. More and more kept coming, striking closer and closer to Pare. He kept his hold; wouldn’t give in. The others tried to break away as more debris came down between them. Eriane looked up to see the outcropping—the whole thing—tipping away from the cliff-face, an entire mountainside about to come down on top of them. Pare wouldn’t release his hold. Eriane’s feet slid as she rushed to his side, pulling around in front of him.

  “Pare!” she screamed. “Let go now!”

  Blood trickled out of his nose and one ear from the strain. He shook his head. With no time to think, Eriane rushed him, burying her shoulder into his stomach. Fueled by panic, she threw up a bump field just as the impact of a huge pile of rocks and soil and brush blew her forward in a blinding blue flash. The two of them crashed to the ground, detritus sliding away from them to fall into the chasm. Eriane flipped off of Pare and felt herself grabbed by the collar, both her and Pare sliding backward on the road as Samuel pulled them further out of harm’s way.

  The second crash was more deafening than the first, as the entire bulk of the outcropping struck the road. Rather than disintegrating into a heap, the outcropping kept its sha
pe, the force of its strike crumbling the road beneath it. The noise of it was extraordinary as rocks and trees continued to slide down the hillside, not piling up in the road but instead falling away into the space where the road used to be.

  The noise echoed through the chasm for some time as the rockslide continued on below them. When it all finally subsided, the entire space of road between where Pare had stood and where the breaker had held up the back of his group was a yawning void, framed on either side by piles of dirt and rocks. The echoes died down in the swirling snow, punctuated by the occasional clatter of a tumbling rock.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  * * *

  Snow settled back into the space where there had been only chaos moments before, and the world calmed back down to a cold winter day in the mountains. Pare and Eriane lay on the ground in front of where Samuel sat, both of them panting with their eyes closed, the snow alighting on their faces.

  “Are you okay?” he said to them.

  Eriane answered first. “I think so.”

  “Yeah,” Pare said. There was a pause, and then he continued. “Thanks.”

  Samuel looked out at where the road used to be. “Was that the plan?”

  “Not exactly,” Pare said, pushing himself up to his elbows.

  “Seems to have done the job,” Samuel said.

  Pare pushed himself up further and Samuel got to his feet, offering help which, to his surprise, Pare accepted. Eriane knelt beside the cliff wall trying to catch her breath. Pare and Samuel stepped as close to the edge as they dared, loose dirt sliding away in front of them. What once had been a path carved into the mountain was now just a continuous hillside through a huge gap, with piles of flotsam on either side. Samuel could only see one body across the expanse, but the rubble blocked most of his view of that part of the road. Nothing was moving.