Savage Legion

by Matt Wallace

  All those things are why Brio didn’t question their decision to turn Ashana away, deeply though it panged him as a child.

  Now, after everything he’s been through in the past few months and seeing her willingness to go to such lengths on his behalf, Brio wishes he’d protested when it mattered. He will never stop revering his father, but he’s past viewing the long-deceased man as infallible. Brio knows now that his father was wrong about her.

  “I shouldn’t have let them turn you away,” he whispers suddenly in the dark. “It was wrong. I knew that.”

  “You were just a boy,” Evie reminds him dispassionately.

  The lack of emotion in her voice surprises him. “How can you say that so easily? How is it you don’t hate all of us? How can you not hate me for what happened? Why would you even agree to risk your life like this for me?”

  At first Evie is silent.

  Brio can scarcely make out the lines of her face, let alone read her expression.

  “I was angry at the time,” she finally says, her tone more thoughtful than anything else. “And for a long time after. I was furious.”

  “What changed?” Brio presses her.

  “Your Gen plucked me off the streets, Brio. They fed me, clothed me, educated me. They gave me a way into a world I never would have found on my own. They didn’t owe me anything. None of you owed me. If anything, I owed all of you for what you did for me. Your father had every right to put me out. His reasons were his own, whatever I think about them. I made my way, didn’t I? What do I have to be angry about now?”

  “That’s very enlightened of you,” Brio says with irony.

  “It’s the truth. Besides, holding on to that little girl’s anger would only hurt me now, wouldn’t it? Your father is beyond feeling remorse.”

  “I’m not,” he reminds her.

  “I can see that. This isn’t a place or the time for those feelings, Brio. We’re in the middle of a war. We’re trying to escape captors who look at us as little more than animals fit for slaughter. The past is the least of our problems. If we survive, then we can talk more about feelings.”

  Brio is unconvinced. “I still want to know why you agreed to do this. If you’ve let go of the past, why are you willing to die to save it?”

  “I have no plans to die,” Evie assures him. “And I said I’ve let go of my anger. I didn’t say I’ve let go of the past altogether.”

  Brio wants to ask what that implies, particularly about her feelings for him now.

  The desire to ask that brings thoughts of Lexi, and with those comes guilt.

  “Go to sleep, Brio,” Evie urges him.

  Exhaustion more than anything else puts an end to Brio’s questioning. Without the hungry quaking in his gut and the constant gnawing of his leg wound, not to mention feeling almost safe for the first time in three months, Brio soon drifts off to as peaceful a rest as he’s known outside the Capitol.

  LATE-NIGHT CALLERS

  EVIE REMAINS AWAKE UNTIL SHE’S sure her first love and current charge is out. She studies the lines of his face, or at least what she can discern of them in the darkness. He hasn’t changed all that much, at least to her mind. He still looks youthful, handsome, and kind, despite what he’s been put through recently.

  She spent so much of her childhood thinking about how the two of them were different, and how it kept them apart. Their differences weren’t relegated to where each of them were born in the Capitol, and the social status attained (or, in Evie’s case, not attained) by their respective families. The two of them looked different, clearly descending from different ancestries. Brio and Lexi matched. Brio and Evie did not. Evie didn’t share the fine, sharp features of their families’ faces. Her features were far wider and more rounded. Neither did she share their straight, silken hair, though hers was just as black. Evie’s locks were far coarser and grew in springy curls.

  Brown skin and coarse curls were not why Evie was ostracized from Gen Stalbraid, but she always knew they further set her apart.

  Brio always seemed blissfully ignorant of those physical differences and their impact, but those not treated as the other in the room had that luxury.

  When Brio’s breathing becomes deep and even, Evie allows her eyes to close and her body to go slack. She soon finds that restful, sunken place in her sleep.

  Evie told Brio she’s let go of her anger, if not the past. That much is true. Her thoughts of the past are no longer angry ones, but she does still dwell there in her mind, particularly in her dreams. When Evie dreams of Brio, as she does now, she sees him as the boy he was. She sees them playing as children in those small towers that seemed at the time like the whole world to her. She feels the way she did as a girl, and the piece of that girl which remains with her even now wants back what she lost, and what she never allowed herself to feel again after she was put out of Gen Stalbraid.

  Perhaps it was that more than anything that moved Evie to answer Lexi’s call and accept her current mission. Perhaps it had something to do with how bored and restless Evie was with guarding well-to-do children who didn’t need guarding.

  However, she did truly sympathize with Lexi. Evie could plainly see the genuine love and concern Lexi had for Brio, and it stirred all the feelings she hadn’t let go. She never asked why Lexi chose her, or what made the woman think of Evie for this task. Evie supposed it was because Lexi wanted to appeal to someone she knew loved Brio as much as she did, even if it had been long ago.

  The hollering of the Savages wakes her. They sound like angry dogs being taunted through a fence, barking somewhere very far away. Evie crawls over Brio’s snoring, motionless body and a moment later her head is birthed through the flaps of their tent. The first things she sees are the backs of several dozen Savages running toward dots of light in the distance. Evie has to squint to see clearly through the dark of night between her and those lights. It takes her only a moment to realize they are small fires on top of tent roofs, where small fires very definitely do not belong.

  Then Evie hears the first screams, not of warning or panic or orders being called out, but the wholly unique and singular screams of pain and death-fear.

  Her mouth opens to yell for Brio to wake when a warning issued from the corner of her eye causes Evie to drop low defensively. The arrow has struck the ground half a dozen feet in front of her, its tip aflame and scorching the already-dead grass trampled sparsely there. Several other fiery arrows follow, falling closer and closer to where she crouches. She sees others piercing the tops of tents in the distant, the flames they ferry spreading quickly.

  Evie retreats within the tent and grabs Brio by his shoulders, shaking him none-too-gently.

  “Wake up!”

  “What?” he croaks before his eyes have even opened. “What is it?”

  “The camp is under attack!”

  She’s still staring into Brio’s confused and sleep-addled eyes when she hears the blade cutting through the fabric of the tent. By the time Evie looks up, the black-clad figure is already slipping deftly through the tall slit they’ve made. Their face and head are hidden beneath a pitch hood, the barest sliver cut away to reveal only hints of dark eyes. The grip of their gloved hand is reversed on the tsuka of a short sword, the tip of its curved blade pointed at the ground.

  Evie quickly stands, stepping over Brio to shield his body. Her stance widens and she rubs her palms and fingertips against the thighs of her trousers, wiping away the dirt smudges and drying the natural oils there to keep as much purchase in her grip as possible. The black-clad figure takes one step forward and swipes at her with their upended blade. The strike is fast and powerful and skilled enough to separate her neck, but Evie bends her knees and ducks. The razor edge of the blade slices away several dozen tiny threads of her hair, each wisp still hanging there in the air as the black-clad figure brings their arm back for a stabbing thrust.

  Evie sidesteps the blade and traps their arm, twisting her body into them and flipping her attacker onto thei
r back. The point of the blade is now angled above its owner’s chest. She quickly leans all her weight against the bottom of the sword’s tsuka, driving the blade down deep into the black-clad figure’s heart.

  Evie turns her head away from the sight of the dying enemy beneath her. She feels heat on her face. Opening her eyes, she sees that the roof of their tent is now ablaze.

  “Shit” is her only comment on the current situation.

  There’s no time for further contemplation. No sooner has the body gone limp than a second attacker slips inside the tent, also draped head-to-toe in black, also wielding a short sword in one gloved hand. Rather than invest precious moments into wresting the blade buried in the first attacker’s chest from their death-locked hands, Evie abandons the body and draws the push dagger from her boot, the one she took from the Sicclunan agent at the Revel. Behind her, Brio does his best to roll out of the way, dragging his injured leg with him against the wall of the tent.

  The second attacker is on her, slashing with their short sword, almost before Evie can square her posture. She reacts without thinking, feinting and ducking the first volley of strikes and using the push dagger’s blade to deflect the blows she can’t outmaneuver. Her heart is racing and that curved short sword seems to find less and less air between them with each stroke, yet she trusts to her training, the years of endless repetition until her body responded to assault from any angle without the need of conscious thought to guide it.

  Evie awaits an opening. She ducks under a slightly too wide, slightly too frustrated swipe of her enemy’s blade and launches a shin up into their groin. The momentary recoiling of their body is all the time she needs to grab the wrist supporting their short sword. Evie thrusts the point of her dagger into their forearm, twice, then aims it at their neck. By the time the black-clad figure’s other hand moves to stop her, the push dagger’s blade is already deep in their throat.

  Evie watches the cloth of the mask over their mouth soak through with blood as they sink to their knees. She moves with the body all the way to the ground before extracting her blade. A single hot spurt of the darkest red streaks across her neck and chest. The black-clad figure collapses onto their right side, leaving Evie kneeling above them, her breathing shallow and ragged. She remembers Brio and looks for him in the light of the burning tent above them.

  He’s staring at her with wide eyes and a half-gaping mouth.

  Evie looks down at herself, the enemy blood decorating her dirty, tattered clothes.

  She nods. “That’s right. I’m not that little girl any longer. Now, get on your feet. We have to move.”

  Evie pries the short sword from the death-clawed hand of the body at her feet. She turns and rips the other sword free of its victim and former owner’s chest. Kneeling beside Brio, she leans down to allow him to slip an arm around her shoulders, at the same time shoving the tsuka of the sword against his stomach.

  “Take this,” she instructs him. “Slash at anything in black that comes near you.”

  Brio obeys, holding the sword away from his body as if it were a lit torch.

  Evie shakes her head, but there’s no time for further instruction, let alone reprimand.

  “We’ll have to run,” she warns him.

  “I’ll do my level best,” Brio says, a distinct mock-optimism in his voice.

  Despite the last few moments and the dread of what’s to come, Evie finds herself laughing.

  They exit the tent seconds before the blazing curtain overhead collapses it behind them. She sees the rest of the camp is also on fire now. She sees Savages fleeing the interior of burning tents on their hands and knees only to have their throats cut or heads lopped off by the blades of pursuing shadow warriors. She sees a stray Skrain soldier in blood-splattered armor, weaponless, running for his life through a camp upon the ground of which his kind ordinarily wouldn’t deign to piss.

  They must’ve hit the Skrain encampment first, quietly slitting sleeping throats, before the flaming arrow volleys began.

  Evie breaks into a run, pulling Brio along as needed. He half hobbles, half skips to keep up, grunting through ground teeth without complaint. She deflects the blade of a black-clad warrior who rushes them, and opens his flesh from neck to shoulder with a swipe of her own. Her plan is to flee back through the Skrain encampment. Her hope is that the night force deployed by the Sicclunans has moved on, and she and Brio will be able to escape if they can just make it past the slaughter and razing of the Savage tents.

  Both her hope and her brief plan are dashed upon the rocks as Evie halts Brio in midhobble.

  If it weren’t for the firelights they might have continued melting in to the shadows, but the rippling amber reveals an entire battalion of the black-clad warriors marching toward them in formation from the remnants of the Skrain encampment. Unlike their stealthy vanguard, each of these soldiers has long swords sheathed at their hips in addition to a short sword. Held aloft and at the ready are wicked-looking double bladed battle-axes and horse-cutter spears. Whether the Savages before them attempt to flee or are foolish enough to attack head-on, the masked battalion never breaks rank as they cut down the enemy.

  If she weren’t cradling Brio directly in their path, Evie would have to admire the tactical precision of it all. The Sicclunans are not only tearing a page from the Crachian war manual, they’ve improved upon it. The fiery arrows and two-warrior tent incursions created the same chaos caused by the Savages, yet with far more bloody and lethal effect. Now their main force is sweeping through the camp to clean up anything and everything that’s left.

  Evie turns just in time to glimpse Lariat, several yards ahead of them, uncross his arms and decapitate a black-hooded head between the triangular blades of his matched katars. She briefly and frantically looks around, searching for other members of the Elder Company, but there’s no time even to call to the old man standing over the newly headless corpse. Evie can only hope Spud-Bar’s wagon made it clear of the camp without encountering the night force.

  She grabs Brio by the arm and forces him into a half-burned tent that’s been extinguished with water from one of the horse troughs.

  “What’re we doing?” he whispers breathlessly at her as she practically stuffs him inside the foul-smelling wreckage and crushes her body atop his on the ground.

  “The only thing I can think of that might not end with us watching our own bodies fall from a distance,” she hisses at him. “Now shut up and stay still!”

  Evie kicks out with one foot and shatters the burned husk of the nearest tent post. The other posts and what little charred cloth still flaps in the wind collapses atop them. Evie presses herself flat beside Brio, digging into the cold, hard ground beneath them as best she’s able. If the remnants of the tent appear flat enough, they might just get away with it.

  She only hopes that, at a glance, they won’t be visible through the wreckage.

  “You shouldn’t have come after me,” Brio whispers to her, the guilt beneath his words totally unmasked. “My life isn’t worth yours.”

  “That depends on whom you ask,” she assures him. “Now, I told you, be quiet and stay still.”

  “For how long?” he asks.

  Evie closes her eyes and tries to block out the sounds of clashing steel and bloody screams rising just above their heads.

  “As long as it takes,” she says.

  THE MATING CALL OF THE CRACHIAN WIND DRAGON

  THE BELLS RING THREE TIMES, summoning Dyeawan and her tender to Edger’s office.

  It’s the middle of the day, and the hard, wiry muscles of her arms, as strong as many a grown man’s from years of pulling the rest of her along, are feeling unusually strained from cleaning and her deliveries. She wonders if the miraculous ease of the paddles that turn her wheels is actually a double-edged sword; perhaps using less effort has weakened the upper part of her body.

  Or perhaps she’s recently become bored and restless with sweeping floors and ferrying hastily inked message scrolls.r />
  She’s never been summoned to Edger’s private office before. As she thinks about it, Dyeawan realizes she’s never before been summoned to his public office, either. She had thought the room in which she first met him was his private space, but it turned out to be just a reception area. Whatever Edger actually does and wherever he actually does it, he has yet to make use of Dyeawan’s spirited heralding services.

  It’s a door like any other in the Cadre, left open as Dyeawan wheels in front of it. A chorus of reeds whistling a soothing melody in perfect harmony greets Dyeawan. It’s dark inside. A long, thick tapestry has been hung over the window. Edger is reclining in a luxurious lounging chair in the middle of the room. His head is tilted back, and he turns his expressionless face toward her. He raises one of his masks, its features molded into a broad welcoming smile of greeting.

  Quan, the gaunt, impossibly tall brown-robed attendant, is practically doubled over Edger. Permanent bite and claw marks are deep, red grooves in the flesh of Edger’s throat. Quan is gently applying a salve to each of those deep grooves with a square of silk. The creature that made them, Ku, is conspicuously absent from the man’s neck; it’s the first time Dyeawan has seen him without the wind dragon that allows him to speak affixed there.

  “Good day, little Slider,” Quan warmly greets Dyeawan.

  “Hello. Did I hear the bells wrong?”

  “No, no, you were summoned. I apologize. I should have had him cleaned up by now.”

  “Where is Ku?” Dyeawan asks.

  Quan, continuing to treat Edger’s scars, points with his free hand at the far corner of the room.

  Dyeawan leans over the side of her tender and peers around them both. Behind thick glass erected on a stone dais, Ku’s scaly green body is wrapped around the pale pink form of another wind dragon. Their hollow, bony protrusions are all vibrating in unison, the source of the soft music Dyeawan first heard upon entering the room.