She helped him to lie down in the clearing, though it was wet. She cupped some water in her hands and brought it to him, but he knocked it away. “The queen,” he said. “She must be told…” He coughed red blood that spattered over her dress.
Violet held his hand and waited. Soon, he began again. “Ships at Thunder Bay. Siege weapons…men…the east is a trick. She must send the troops…” He pushed himself up on an elbow. “Take my horse.”
One glance at the horse told Violet it could not go any farther that day. “Rest now,” she said, the tears on her cheeks blending with the rain. She brought him some more water.
After a moment, he moved again and said, “The Martyr put you here in the forest.”
“No.” She shook her head. “It is all misfortune and foolishness. I am changed, and live outside the Martyr’s blessing now.”
“You were changed, or you changed yourself?” It was the last thing he said. Violet sat by him until the sun went down. The messenger took his last shuddering breath as full night fell. Violet stayed with him.
As soon as the horse was ready, she would carry his message. It did not matter that they might not listen to a ragged girl with no Circle. It seemed absurd that she had lost everything, never finding what she was looking for and met the messenger instead. Yet the message gave her a purpose the like of which she had never felt. She would fulfill it. For now, she said goodbye to the peaceful lands beyond the sea. To the gentle lowing of the cows and the warm rain. To the clatter of a young boy’s shoes and the taste of her mother’s apples. Goodbye to the tender care of the Martyr’s welcome. Goodbye at last to Thia. She saw them all fade away behind her eyes, until all she felt was cold as she waited for morning.
Violet rode a horse, a good horse, dependable. She had ridden Star since she was fifteen years old. Her gloves were wet from the rain, so she pulled them off. She pulled her hood up and looked back to a city of white. No, she thought. Not my hood. Simon’s. She pulled away and looked at him. Hair plastered to his head, rain dripping from his nose. Hope surged in her chest, vital and unexpected.
“Simon,” she said. Her voice was thin and weak. “Simon.”
He turned and looked. “I’m coming for you.”
“You mustn’t.” She told him about the ships, about the feint.
Simon hesitated, one hand on his reins.
“Trust me. Simon, please.” She could feel herself growing stronger, feel Simon’s magic flow over her like his warm cloak, warm and inviting.
“So we are two.” He turned his horse back toward the city.
They saw everything, eye to eye, like this, the old man on the road had said to her. She smiled, finally understanding. Simon had not taken anything from her, he was the thing. Her partner.
But another magic, oily and nauseous, rose around her, winding along her skin. Simon’s image flickered and faded in her mind.
“Simon…”
The magic crawled along her flesh in cold ripples, rushing into her ears and darkening her vision. Violet tried to rake it away with her fingers, but it inched forward, heedless, probing. It parted her lips with its cold, phantom fingers and slithered down her throat. Her lungs filled with icy fire. She screamed, scratching at her neck. “Simon!”
The green-coated man stepped forward in her mind, his smile proving his satisfaction with her pain. He brought his hands together and pushed. Power scraped at her, shards of cold that twisted her insides, threatened to rip her apart. She could feel his desire to destroy. He was a Peresine sorcerer, and she was a mage.
A mage, she thought, with nothing left to lose. She threw her senses out, grasping.
Simon’s magic remained. It stirred everywhere around Violet. It had been there all along, even when she had felt the loss of it, following her from the farm to this clearing like her own hair, trailing behind her. It moved along the ground, danced along the waters of the stream, and rustled in the leaves overhead. As she felt it and reached for it, she understood it was not Simon’s magic. It was her own, twined with his like sleeping fingers.
Violet drew on their strength and pieced herself together. She searched for every smell and sound of the clearing, the living warmth of the messenger’s horse, and the light of the sun. She wove them into bright, strong armor. The sorcerer battered against it, tried to find a crack, searched for any way to get through to her again, but she kept him off. Her mind was clear. She had nobody and nothing to defend, no other duties to attend. She was free. She had made herself free. She returned his power against him. I have defeated you already.
His image wavered, then disappeared. Soon, the armies of the queen would descend upon his position. It was no longer her concern. Violet opened her eyes to the sunny clearing and got to her feet. She walked to the road, making no attempt to wipe the mud from her clothes and hair. She would look even worse, she thought, traveling with the army.
It would be two weeks to walk to Korban, but she would not be walking. The mages would come for her. She took a step and felt dirt under her foot. One of her shoes had come off, somewhere in the muck. She kicked off the other and continued down the road, feeling the world alive against her skin.
The Two Faces of War
Rob J. Hayes
Green fields stretched out before Bolin. They weren't suitable for camping, the ground too boggy and infested with leeches, but they looked peaceful from a distance. A sea of emerald rippling in the breeze, muted by moonlight and a sour state of mind. Bolin pulled the cork from his bottle and took a deep swig, wincing at the taste. He put the bottle down next to him and waited.
Heavy footsteps warned him of approach. He'd come to recognise the sound; ceramic armour clinking together, not quite rhythmic. Jun was limping again, his right knee always aching from the cold and the effort. Bolin didn't turn to watch the approach, nor give any sign he had heard the man. He just stared out towards the grassy expanse that lay beyond his little hummock.
Some warriors flowed like a stream over pebbles, some warriors crashed like a waterfall onto rocks. Jun did not sit gracefully, but collapsed in a barely controlled fall. He grunted at the impact, and then let out a loud sigh that was accompanied by his armoured plates settling against themselves.
Still, Bolin didn't turn to look at the old soldier but, instead, reached out a hand, and with a single finger, he flicked the bottle that sat between them. Jun reached for it and swallowed a mouthful, letting forth a sound that was part groan of distaste and part sigh of pleasure. Medicinal alcohol did not make for good drinking, but it did get you drunk. That was a big part of war, the ends justifying the means.
For a long time, they sat there in companionable silence, just watching the wind make snaking patterns in the long grass. Bolin picked at the dried blood under his fingernails and wiped his hands on his apron. It amazed him how he was always covered in other people's blood, yet Jun was nearly spotless. Some men carried the stains on the outside, and some men were drowning within.
Jun was the first to speak, his voice heavy and tired. He had a slight rasp on both his Ss and Ts, the product of an old shot to the throat that had never quite healed the way it should.
“I was in the thick of it today. A cavalry charge made a mockery of the shield wall, scattered bodies left and right, then pushed through. They opened up a hole, and the regulars filled it. We might have lost the battle there and then if not for my unit.” His helmet thudded as he placed it on the ground next to the bottle. It was an ornate thing, the crest of the Praying Mantis on the forehead. Jun had once said it was passed down through his family, and now he was the last who would ever don it.
Bolin plucked the bottle from the ground and swallowed a mouthful of burning spirit, then he put the bottle between them before speaking. “Arrow wounds are one of the first things they taught us how to treat. Cut it out or push it through. Ignore the screaming and the blood. Let the brutes hold the patient down until it's done. Or until the patient is done. They never told us what to do when the arrowhead s
hatters inside the body.”
Jun nodded at that, stretching his legs down the hillside and wincing at the pain in his knee. “Time loses meaning in the melee. Moments feel like eternities, hours pass by in a blur. The world recedes around you to a fine point. There's just you and the man in front, the one snarling at you over the shields. Stabbing, slashing. Crimson droplets flying all around. And the burning agony of keeping your shield up, arm shaking from the exhaustion. But you know… You know if you let the shield drop, even for a moment…it's not just your own death, but the man next to you as well. Hours or minutes, I don't know. Couldn't tell. And over all it, the captain yelling at us to keep our damned shields up.”
Bolin tore up a handful of grass and crushed it as hard as he could in his fist, then opened it and let the breeze take the blades where they would. “It took four men to hold him down. Barely more than a boy, not even old enough to grow a beard, and four grown men pinning him to the table. I shoved a thong in his mouth and he glared at me, hatred in his eyes like it was my fault. As though it were something I was doing to him rather than saving him from. The others said it's often like that with arrow wounds. The patient never sees who kills them, or tries to, so they blame the first face they can. The first face they see.”
Jun grunted, a sound that said he knew just what Bolin meant. No doubt the old veteran had taken an arrow before. No doubt he knew exactly how the boy had felt. “There's a feeling to a sword biting into flesh. Not the receiving end, mind you, that has a feeling all of its own. But holding a sword, swinging it and feeling it connect and sink into a man's body.” Jun paused and let out a ragged breath. “The way flesh accepts a sword, pulls at it, almost sucks it in. It's sickening…and satisfying.”
There was shame there, that much was obvious. Jun had been a soldier almost all his life, and judging by his greying whiskers and deep lines, it had been a longer life than some. Bolin had no idea how many times Jun had felt a sword part flesh. It was a number he had no wish to know and doubted the soldier knew himself. It was certainly enough to become good at it, enough to enjoy the sick feeling of power it gave. Pride and shame so often went hand in hand on the battlefield.
Bolin pulled the bottle close again and swigged from it, then passed it to Jun over his helmet. “I had to cut open the wound as the men held my patient down. He screamed so loud my ears popped. They say the thigh is good place to take a wound for the amount of muscle there. Less chance of hitting anything vital. But there's so much blood. I had to cut open the wound and reach inside, and it welled up and pumped out. So sticky and wet and coating everything.” He looked down at his apron and the red stains there, some old and some new. “So much blood.”
“I thought I was dead when the cavalry hit us the second time.” Jun turned his helmet to face Bolin and ran a finger along the cheek plate. The metal was scored and dented, stark white underneath the flaking blue paint. “It was all the crush of the melee, and then it stopped, the enemy pulling back just seconds before the horses crashed into our lines. We lost a lot of men right then. Some I knew. Tengfei I'd known since we were kids, stealing apples from the market just to get through another day. Gone in a moment. Just gone.” He paused and shook his head sadly. “I took a spear to the face right there. It knocked me off my feet, pushed me out of the front line.”
“Are you injured?” Bolin asked, turning to look Jun full in the face. He had some purpling on his right cheek, spreading from below his eye all the way down to his chin. It looked like it hurt, but the old soldier smiled around the swelling. “I can look at it.”
“Yes, I'm injured. But I've had worse. It could have been worse. The helmet saved me. It's just bruising, nothing is broken this time.”
Bolin nodded at that. He knew often times the full extent of an injury only became apparent long after the fact, but Jun wasn't there for a consultation. Instead, he poked at the dinted face plate on the helmet and wondered at how such a thin piece of metal could have saved his friend.
“How's your neck?” Bolin said, turning back to the emerald fields ahead, but watching Jun out of the corner of his eye.
The old veteran stretched his neck first to the left, and then to the right, wincing and letting out a groan. “Fine. It's your turn, lad.”
Bolin swigged at the bottle again before handing it across and continuing. “I had to dig into the wound. When we pulled the arrowhead out, half of it had broken away. There were shards of it in the man's leg still, and you can't leave it like that. The body won't allow it. It…sours and festers around the wound. So, I had to dig into his leg, holding the wound open with one hand and reaching in with the other. Pushing my fingers deeper into muscle while blood oozed up and…” Bolin felt a tap at his arm and looked down to see Jun holding out the bottle. He took it gratefully.
“It took me a spell to come to. A good whack to the head will do that to you, helmet or not.” Jun rubbed the bruise on his cheek and grunted. “I can't even remember who picked me up. It was all a bit fast. The front lines were crumbling. A good cavalry charge is bad enough, but horses in amongst the fight… Nasty things, horses. Big enough to shove through a shield wall, heavy enough to trample of man to death, and the teeth… I've seen a horse bite a man's hand clean off before. By the time I rushed back in, our lines were strained to breaking. I pulled one lad from his horse, don't know what happened to him in the chaos. Then the horse went mad, kicking and stamping. Biting. I just hid behind my shield as it thrashed. I felt the thud as it went down, though, three spears buried deep in its neck.” Jun fell silent and shook his head. Bolin handed the bottle back.
“He struggled the whole time,” Bolin said. “Screamed and struggled. I could see the men were having trouble holding him down. I pushed deeper into his leg, following the mess the arrowhead had made, feeling with my fingers until I touched something sharp. I brushed against it and the screaming stopped. That was worse. The moment the screaming stopped, giving way to wide-eyed panic, I knew his time was running out. I pushed harder, widening the wound until I could grip hold of the shard, and then I pulled it out.” Bolin paused just to breathe and dug his hands into the grass again, crushing it in his fists. “I lost hold of it twice, my fingers slipping in the blood, before I finally pulled it free.”
A strong breeze rolled in, and Jun closed his eyes, raising his bruised face to the wind and smiling. “In the wake of the horses, the infantry hit us again.” He shook his head, eyes still closed. “We had no time to reform and the lines were shattered. They were in amongst us and we were in amongst them. I barely remember it, just…swords clashing, wet thuds as they hit bodies. Screams, both from the dying and those doing the killing. Then he arrived.”
Again, Jun fell silent, composing himself for the next part of his tale. Bolin filled the void left by his friend's words. “I had to go back in twice more, poking around inside the soldier's leg so I was sure I had all the shards. I did. I mean, I think I did. I felt his pulse slowing. The blood welling up out of the wound less and less. I felt him stop while I still had my fingers inside.” Bolin wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Just as our lines were breaking, the Crimson Tide appeared. He swept in like a storm and I felt him pass. I was on my knees, hands wrapped around another man's throat, squeezing. I don't when or how I lost my sword, only that I was fighting for my life with everything I had. When I looked up from the body, I saw him. His cloak was as red as his name, fluttering around him and twisting in the wind. He had a sword in each hand and every strike cut one of them down.” Jun let out a sigh and shook his head. “I've never seen anything like it, and this morning, I woke thinking I'd seen everything. He turned the tide all on his own, beat the enemy into a retreat. I think he might have chased after them, but the captain called him back to help out another section of the line. It put an end to the fighting, though, at least for today.”
Bolin waited until Jun grunted and nodded his head. “In training, they said never to give up on a patient while the skin
is still warm. So, I didn't. Even though I couldn't feel his pulse, and the blood had stopped. I pulled free the last shard of metal, and closed the wound as best I could. He didn't move after that. Even those holding him down gave him up for dead.” Bolin paused and smiled. “But he was alive. Faint though it was, he held onto the spark and I didn't give up on him.”
Jun let out a chuckle, and Bolin looked over to see his friend smiling back. Jun picked up the bottle and gave it a little shake, sloshing around what was left. He pulled free the cork once more and swigged, grimacing as he did. Then the old soldier held the bottle out to Bolin, who took it and finished it off. When it was empty, he threw it down the little knoll, watching it bounce and roll to a stop amidst an easy dozen just like it.
“Best get back, lad,” Jun said. The old warrior, groaned as he pushed to his feet and placed his helmet back on his head. Then he held out a hand and helped pull Bolin to standing. For a moment, they stood there, hands clasped, staring at each other.
“I hope to see you again tomorrow,” Bolin said.
Jun nodded. “I hope so, too, lad. I'll find us something better to drink.” With that, Jun turned and walked away, back towards his camp.
Bolin watched him go for a few moments before calling out. “Do you ever wonder what it's all for?”
“What's that?” Jun stopped and turned back.
“Every day, you go out and fight. You swing your sword and people die. Every day I patch men up, sow shut wounds, and get them back on their feet. All so the next day they can go back out there and swing their swords so more people can die. Don't you ever wonder why? What is it all for?”
Jun smiled, his mouth just visible underneath the dented plates of his helmet. “The answer to that question is the same as it was yesterday.”
Bolin was almost afraid to ask. “What's the answer?”
“I'll tell you tomorrow.” Jun chuckled and turned away, heading back to his camp. turned his feet in the other direction.
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