by Matt Wallace
She never hears Laython give the order to charge. One moment there’s silence, and in the next the bloody screams of the Savages around her fill her ears and she sees dozens of them streaming down the hill.
Evie allows herself one deep, steadying breath, and then she joins them.
She can scarcely feel her legs sprinting beneath her, but she knows that’s just the fear and anticipation coursing trough her body. Twenty yards from the Sicclunan line, Evie feels a shadow overtake her and hears a fierce rattling above her head. She looks up, midrun, just as one of the suicide tumblers careens overhead, rotating in a slow arc. The Savages on foot are ten yards away when the first tumbler crashes behind the Sicclunan front line.
It’s impossible to see beyond the wall of shield and spear and ax and armor, but Evie watches large pieces of the wooden octagon fly into the air after impact. It must be designed to break apart behind the enemy’s front line, releasing its human cargo into their ranks, or at least the ones who survive both the impact and avoid being pinned to the ground or hacked apart by Sicclunan blades, anyway.
The name “suicide tumbler” suddenly makes all the sense in the world to Evie.
There are three men directly in front of her when the first of the Savages crash upon the Sicclunan shields. Evie turns to her side and lets her lead foot skid through the muddy grass, stopping her momentum and halting her before she becomes part of the pileup. She bends her knees and raises both ax and long knife, staring through her reforged helm at a rioting curtain of shoulders and necks.
A sharp scream and a spray of blood across her faceplates cause Evie to back up a step in alarm. One of the bodies massed in front of her turns around and slumps forward, cradling a hole in his guts spilling gore down his legs and onto the grass. Evie looks down, knowing it’s a mistake to do so, but unable to take her eyes off the twitching body of the impaled man until he stops moving and his eyes go glassy and vacant.
The spell broken, Evie faces forward to see that the bodies directly in front of her have been cleared. There’s a hole just big enough to frame a single Sicclunan shield. It looks like a closed door marked with sacrificial blood as some type of warding ritual. It hovers there, perfectly still, the soldier holding it completely obscured from view. It’s an almost hypnotic sight, even in the chaos and carnage of the moment exploding all around her.
Evie steps over the corpse at her feet, keeping herself crouched low. Her gauntleted grip on the long knife is reversed, its blade running the length of her forearm. When she steps within three feet of the shield, the largest spearhead she’s ever seen emerges from behind the wall of wood and steel. Evie swings blade and gauntlet, batting away the thrust aimed at one of her main arteries.
Rather than hack at the shield with her ax, Evie leaps up and hooks the top of it with the underside of the blade. Feeling it snag, she hurls her body full force into the shield, hoping to throw the bearer off-balance. With surprising strength for her size, she grips the haft of the ax with both hands and pulls down, letting the entire weight of her body add to the power of the motion.
The shield dips forward from the top. Evie manages to yank it down to just above her waist. She doesn’t wait for the armored figure on the other side to react. She hasn’t even fully taken them in when she reverses the momentum of her ax and thrusts its spiked crown up into the shield bearer. Evie feels metal strike metal, and then penetrate it. The spike stops when it hits something solid, as if she’s pierced the hide of a tree in winter.
Evie looks up to see that spike buried in the shoulder of the Sicclunan solider, just above his heart. She sees his other arm rise, spear shaft still held by his gauntleted hand. Frantic, Evie attempts to retrieve her ax only to find it firmly anchored in the soldier’s armor. Evie reverses her grip on her long knife and drives the blade up into his abdomen, under the plates of his armor. The blow freezes his spear arm and the soldier spits blood onto the top of her helm.
She feels his body begin to topple over her. Rather than allow herself to be trapped in the Sicclunan front line under a man twice her size clad in full armor, Evie steps back, and with a determined shriek pulls the soldier’s body with her, ripping him from the line. She feels them falling against and then through the bodies of the Savages gathered around her, and then there’s only the wet ground welcoming her spine.
There’s a brief panicked second in which Evie considers remaining like that, hiding beneath the Sicclunan soldier like a crustacean claiming the armored shell of its dead brethren. Then she hears a wet growl directly in her right ear and he begins wriggling atop her anew, still very much alive.
“Are you serious?” Evie spits in frustration.
Before she can react further, he’s somehow managed to free his arm from his shield and grab her by the hair, thrashing her head about in the mud. Evie growls right back at him, twisting the long knife in his guts until the soldier shrieks and his body seizes in agony. Even with the leverage of her weapons buried in his armor and flesh, it takes every ounce of strength she has to move him from atop her, turning him over onto his back with her astride his breastplate.
Evie releases her grip on her embedded ax and reaches for the chinstrap of his helm, using it to force his head back into the mud. She pulls her long knife free of his guts and presses the edge of its blade against the soldier’s exposed neck. Pulling his chin in the opposite direction, Evie presses down hard on the blade and drags it across his throat, a guttural sound that might belong to someone else escaping her mouth as she opens the Sicclunan’s veins.
More blood splashes the faceplate of her helm and Evie leans away from the soldier in disgust. She can no longer see through the slits in the steel over her eyes. Evie reaches up with her free hand shoves the helm up over her face. She shakes her head loose of it entirely, breathing like a drowning woman who has just broken from the surface of the water.
Evie’s gaze shoots from side to side, disoriented, trying to assess her bearings and any incoming threats. The Sicclunans are holding the front line just a few yards from where she’s straddling one of their fallen comrades. Years of resisting volleys of Savages has obviously taught them discipline. Yet no shield has replaced the one borne by the soldier beneath her, and she can spot several other holes in the line where identical shields should be. Evie can’t be certain, but through the continuing assault she thinks she sees fighting well behind the line, as well.
The bodies of fallen Savages are laid out three abreast in the mud up and down the line, and in many places they’ve begun to pile up. Evie turns her head and her gaze away from them, and from the broken wall of shields. She looks ahead to see dozens of other skirmishes taking place between her fellow Savages and the Sicclunans they’ve drawn from the line.
Through them all her eyes fix on Lariat, the old man with his walrus mustache. He’s kneeling over a prone soldier after removing the man’s helm. He rains left and right fists down on a thing that’s barely a human skull anymore in alternating, unbroken succession.
His breathing isn’t even elevated.
A furious howling shocks Evie’s attention back to the line. A Sicclunan footman is charging out from the hole she’s created among the shield wall. The sweeping, flared blade of his poleax is held high above his head, the entirety of the dawn seeming to be caught within the highly polished steel.
Evie has no time to extricate herself or her ax from the soldier beneath her. All she can do is reverse her grip on her long knife and hold it and her gauntleted forearm above her head, her other hand bracing it for support. She’s gritting her teeth hard enough to sting her jaw, and her eyes shut of their own accord, refusing to obey her commands to remain open. Behind her eyelids, Evie watches herself being split down the middle several dozen times in bloody succession.
She doesn’t see Bam’s giant scythe cut the footman in half just above the waist, but she hears the sound the Sicclunan makes when the news of what’s happened to his body is reported to his brain. It’s that inhuman soun
d of shock and agony beyond belief that snaps Evie’s eyes open once again. She’s still holding her knife and gauntlet aloft protectively as she looks down to see the soldier lying in the mud in two separate parts.
Bam, the Elder Company’s silent battery, is standing between his victim’s legs and torso. His sleeveless cloak is a tableau painted in blood and entrails. He pushes back his hood, stringy curls sweat-pasted to the bulbous features of his sad puppet face, and Evie sees his eyes for the first time. She’s surprised to find no malice there, nothing steeped in bloodlust or rage or even the violence he’s performing.
If anything, he just looks tired.
Evie lowers her knife. “Thanks.”
Bam nods once, then points at his large brown eyes with his middle and forefinger. He then stabs those digits in the direction of the Sicclunan front line.
Evie nods, the implication clear to her: Never take your eyes off the line during a battle.
The sound of Crachian horns fills the valley behind them. The next sound Evie hears is one like a single clash of thunder. It’s the entire Sicclunan army standing at attention, midbattle. As she watches, their front line begins to recede, every remaining shield bearer and supporting soldier backpedaling in unison.
They’re retreating.
Evie looks up at Bam in confusion. He calmly motions behind her with the dripping blades of his scythes.
She looks over her shoulder to see the Skrain pouring into the valley, charging headlong toward them.
Before she can turn around, Evie feels Bam’s huge hand grab her by several layers of shirt and haul her to her feet. He begins pulling her along, walking quickly and in broad strides toward the full charge of the Skrain.
“What’re you doing?” she demands, running to keep up with him.
He doesn’t answer, but a moment later the shadows begin to streak across her face and Evie looks up at hundreds of arrows flying through the air. When they begin their descent she looks back, watching several pierce the body of the soldier whose throat she slit.
“Oh” is all she can think to say.
Evie can’t imagine a scenario in which they aren’t trampled over by the Skrain, but every soldier in their charge simply sweeps around them harmlessly as if Evie and the rest of the surviving Savages aren’t even there. For a moment she’s almost convinced she isn’t anymore, in fact. Perhaps she didn’t survive the battle, or perhaps the anonymity of her new station in life has spread that idea to every corner of her flesh, rendering her detached from the earthly plane.
Those lofty thoughts abandon her with the passing of Crache’s elite soldiers, the last of the Skrain running around them as if they were obstacles on a training field.
The last riders into the valley are Laython and his taskers. The black-clad freemaster of the Savages holds his mace high like some deathly victory scepter.
“Survivors, form on me!” he thunders across the valley. “Form on me if you’ve still got two legs!”
Evie peers around Bam’s hulking form. She counts perhaps two or three dozen Savages still upright, including Lariat and Mother Manai, and most of the B’ors tribe.
Though she never took a proper count, three or four hundred Savages must have charged the valley.
“So the sparrow survived her first battle!” Lariat calls to them in a voice like a gravel quarry at midday. “I should’ve ’ad my money on you, girl.”
He’s retrieved both of his katars, and there isn’t a single blade on his body harness that isn’t darkened with Sicclunan blood.
“Why didn’t you?” Evie asks.
“Not enough hips,” he answers without hesitation. “I never bet on a woman who hasn’t passed at least a few pups.”
“And I keep tellin’ him he’s a moron,” Mother Manai says, joining them.
“I’ve never once disagreed,” Lariat points out, laughing.
Evie’s almost inclined to join in, but something distracts her.
“Hey,” she says, pointing across the field. “What are they doing?”
Several of the B’ors warriors are carrying dead Sicclunan soldiers across the mud.
“I thought we weren’t allowed to take trophies.”
“That’s not what they’re doing, Sparrow,” Lariat assures her.
“Then what?”
“The B’ors look at their enemies a lot different from Crachians,” Mother Manai explains. “They honor the strongest of their opponents defeated in battle by giving them a proper burial.”
“Makin’ ’em part of the earth where they fought or some such thing,” Lariat adds.
“If I can persuade you children to end your prayer meeting early,” Laython cuts in from atop his perpetually snarling beast, “It’s time to collect the maimed and deal mercy to the mortally wounded.”
“I’m not a doctor,” Evie objects. “How do I know the difference?”
Laython talks patiently down to her. “If they can get up, they’re wounded. If they can’t, they stay here. Is that simple enough for you? And d’you think you can manage it without puking your guts out?”
He rides off without waiting for an answer, although Evie had only a scowl to offer him, anyway.
When she looks back at Lariat, he’s in the middle of drawing a small cut in his forearm with the edge of a katar.
It’s one of many small cuts, the rest fully healed.
“Sixty-eight more to go, then,” he mutters beneath his mustache.
Evie can’t be sure whether the old man truly believes it, but lie or not, the cuts are very real.
ON AND OFF
THE OCEAN SINGS TO HER every night, and it’s become one of Dyeawan’s favorite things about life in the Planning Cadre.
It’s after dinner, and she’s retired to her room for the evening. She’s folded her legs beneath her on the floor beside the reading chair in the corner, and though there are books piled beneath her bed, it’s not reading with which she’s occupied tonight.
There’s a knock at the door, stronger than Quan’s and less timid than Tahei’s when he dares to visit. Dyeawan guesses it must be Edger.
“Come in,” she calls.
It’s him, that cordial smile frozen in oil and silk held over his face.
“Good evening, Slider. May I come in?”
“Of course.”
Edger steps inside and quickly stops short. The mask lowers from his face, and Dyeawan knows he’s taken aback. It’s not difficult to understand why. Tools and tubing and spools of twine have overtaken Dyeawan’s small room. There are raw building materials of wood and steel and iron, and she’s even procured a hand torch, the flame of which is lit and wafting in the ocean breeze from the window.
“What’s happened in here?” Edger asks.
“Oh. I’ve been… it’s just… a project. I’ve been working on something. An invention. On my own. In my own time, I mean. It hasn’t interfered with my duties.”
He sees that she’s constructed some type of apparatus by joining two lamps together, removing the glass panes from one side of each and melting their metal frames together with hot flame. There are luminescent insects coupling inside one of the lamps, lighting it brightly. The other lamp appears empty. A blacksmith’s bellow is held between the grips of a vise beside the lamp housing the insects. The bellow’s mouth is protruding through a delicate hole cut into the glass.
Several thick cables running to an iron box tether the entire contraption. There are two short levers attached to the box itself, which rests on the floor beside Dyeawan.
“Where did you obtain the materials and tools?” Edger asks.
“From Tahei, the builder. They’re all extra tools and spare parts, he said.”
“I see.”
Dyeawan’s features darken. She begins to suspect she’s done something wrong.
“Are you upset?” she asks. “Is this against the rules?”
“Not… strictly speaking, no,” Edger answers, then seems to remember himself and replaces the mask ove
r his face. “I’m not upset with you, not at all. I’m intrigued.”
That brings a grin to Dyeawan’s face.
“May I show you how it works?” she asks.
“Please do.”
Excited, Dyeawan snatches up the box tethered to the conjoined lamps by those cables.
“There’s a small portcullis separating the two compartments, you see.”
“I do.”
She pulls one of the levers connected to the box and a small wooden panel is drawn up from between the two lamps.
When Dyeawan pulls the box’s second lever, the vise grip bracing both sides of that blacksmith’s bellow tightens, compressing the accordion folds of the bellow and spitting a puff of white dusty power into the lamp.
Whatever the compound is, the moment it hits the insects they uncouple, their light dying as they flit as far and as fast apart from each other as possible. This sends one of them careening into the glass and the other through the open slot between the two lamps.
When that happens, Dyeawan reverses the first lever on the iron box and the portcullis lowers, trapping the bug inside and separating it from its mate.
“That is… quite remarkable,” Edger observes.
“But wait!” Dyeawan pleads. “That’s only half of it. You see how the little ones can’t bear to be separated?”
Indeed, the insects are both digging at the portcullis sectioning off the two lamps, desperate to return to each other.
Dyeawan again pulls the first lever. As soon as the portcullis opens the two insects return to their primal instincts and couple, lighting the lamp anew.
She closes the portcullis and beams up at Edger. “You see? You can turn the lamp on and off with the flick of a switch! It saves energy and prolongs the lifespan of the creatures, and allows you to control the light in a room or corridor much easier than separating or replacing them by hand.”
Edger lowers his mask, sheathing its handle through his belt and drawing another.
It’s his surprised expression.