Savage Legion

by Matt Wallace

  Daian knows the Ministry too well to be surprised by such a revelation.

  “Thank you for your help,” he says to the husker. “You did nothing wrong, under the circumstances. You can forget all about this.”

  That last Daian says pointedly, emphasizing the “forget” element.

  Even the dim-witted young man is able to recognize the implications in the Aegin’s words.

  Daian leaves The Dry House, waiting until there are closed doors between him and the husker to once again examine his discovery. He holds the coins up to the light of the afternoon sun and squints, eyeing every detail.

  Eventually he gives up. Daian has to accept the coins themselves have told him all they will.

  Fortunately, he knows someone who speaks far louder than burned copper, and that individual owes Daian several favors.

  SCATTERING THE ASHES

  SHE’S FELT THE WARMTH OF dawn seeping through the charred holes in their prolapsed tent for nearly an hour, but Evie insists they remain in hiding. The abject silence has lasted even longer. Not even the chirping of birds or the scuttling of insects underscores the morning outside. They never heard the Sicclunan night force march out of the camp; the chorus of clashing steel simply stopped, followed by the slow waning of tortured moans and agonized screams. They heard the final death throes, no mistaking the sound or what it heralds, several hours ago.

  “Ashana, they’re gone,” Brio insists. “We should be using this time to our advantage. Let’s go now! Please!”

  “Evie,” she reminds him, ignoring both his pleas and the logic of them.

  Brio’s voice rises in frustration. “What difference does that make now? Everyone out there is dead!”

  “Be quiet!” she hisses in his ear.

  With a growl that’s far more Savage than a Gen-raised pleader, Brio wrests himself free of the hold she’s had on him all night and begins clawing through the remnants of the tent cloth camouflaging them from sight. Evie tries in vain to pull him back down to the ground, but Brio persists. She has no choice but to follow him out, if only to protect him, and then only so she can knock some sense into him herself. The sudden light slices into their night-laden eyes, stinging them. Brio and Evie both raise their hands to shield their gaze from the blinding sun.

  The atrocity of what they see can’t be blunted by such temporary shadows.

  The entire camp has been razed. Every tent is a flattened pile of what look like burned-black leaves fallen from some gargantuan dead tree. The only noticeable movement comes from the wisps of white smoke rising like escaping spirits from the ashes. The bodies of Savages are strewn everywhere, open throats and severed necks feeding scores of carrion flies. There are more heads decorating the field than boulders. The blood fouling what’s left of the grass is already turning yellow, but far worse than the smell of decay is that of bowel and bladder spilled in death.

  “We shouldn’t have survived this,” Brio says, the horror overwhelming most of his senses clearly etched on his face. “We shouldn’t have—”

  “But we did,” Evie reminds him. “And we’ll keep surviving. Keep all this outside you where it belongs. Don’t take it in. You don’t have room for it. Trust me.”

  Evie tries not to see the faces of the dead. She tries not to remember the old, the infirm, and the simple folk of the Bottoms who never belonged on a battlefield and committed no crime meriting this kind of execution. Still pictures of their faces, sullen and accepting of their fate around a table at the Revel, flicker and are banished from her mind. She tries to dismiss these butchered bodies as the condemned, as strangers unremarkable and unrelated to her. Above all, she refuses to remember that most of the night’s victims were just people, like her, with others waiting and weeping and praying silently to the forgotten God Stars for a return that will never come.

  “All these people—” Brio begins, only to have Evie shut him down immediately.

  “We’re pushing the Sicclunans to the edge of annihilation. They’re desperate, dying. They can’t be blamed for this. Conscribed or not, the Savages are one of the fiercest weapons being used against their people.”

  “Such a waste…”

  Evie only nods, saying no more.

  She wanders through the burned camp, forcing the grief and revulsion gnawing at her guts to subside, at least for now. Evie’s eyes, adjusting to the light of day, search through the human and material wreckage for anything usable the Sicclunan night force might not have scavenged after their assault. She and Brio need food and water if they have any hope of surviving an extended journey on foot, not to mention weapons other than the pair of short swords Evie appropriated during the attack.

  She sees nothing but burned wood and bloody, torn rags clinging to the dead, all of them in even worse condition than the filthy garb in which she and Brio are clad. Evie wonders if they’ll fare any better in whatever’s left of the Skrain camp, although the thought of running across any surviving Crachian soldiers gives her pause.

  “Evie!” Brio hisses at her back. “People!”

  She turns, fist already closed around the tsuka of the short sword tucked under her tunic belt.

  “Little Sparrow!”

  A jubilant voice among such carnage sounds as out of place as laughter in a charnel house. That voice issues from beneath the broomlike mustache of Lariat. The barrel of a man is trampling the husks of tent poles and bones alike as he ambles toward them. The series of leather straps that fasten hooked blades to his every joint creak loudly with every step; both steel and leather have been soaked through with blood. The matched katars that transform his fists into short swords are sheathed awkwardly and dangerously through his belt.

  Mother Manai and Bam, the rest of the Elder Company, follow closely behind him. Several of the steel “fingers” protruding from the leather-wrapped stump of Manai’s right hand have been bent in battle, and all five blades are crusted with Sicclunan blood. In her remaining hand she holds the wooden handle of what looks far more like a large kitchen cleaver than any kind of ax belonging on a battlefield. Bam looks no different from the first time Evie laid eyes on him, with the hood of his sleeveless cloak pulled low over the bulbous features of his face. The haft of a giant mallet is slung over his shoulder; what’s happened to his equally giant scythe or where he’s acquired his new weapon she can only guess. Both heads of the mallet’s wooden hammer have what must be brains clinging to their worn surfaces, drying in the sun.

  “You’re a wily one, Evie,” Mother Manai compliments her. “A woman after my own heart.”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” Evie says, and it is, though it’s difficult to feel it, or anything else, at that moment.

  Lariat laughs, heartily, obviously suffering none of her qualms. “Yer just fulla surprises, ain’t ya? Here I wouldn’t have thought you’d live to see your second battle, and you go and survive a dust-’em-up like this’n without a scratch! Though it looks like they tested ya, eh?”

  Evie looks down at her hands, unable to distinguish dirt from dried blood. She stares at the streaks of both across her chest, rubs at the same grit suddenly itching her neck.

  “Life is a test,” she says quietly.

  Mother Manai laughs. “And death’s the only real answer.”

  “Made a new friend there, have ya?” Lariat asks, sizing Brio up with a hard gaze.

  Evie glances back at him. “This is… we knew each other in the Bottoms, back in the Capitol.”

  “Ah. Capitol boy. We won’t hold that against ya none.”

  “Did anyone else survive?” Evie asks.

  “The dozen’er so B’ors that were in camp, they all came through,” Lariat informs her. “They’re havin’ a rest in back the weeds, where we were hidin’ out, but I wouldn’t count on ’em stayin’ long. They’ll take their chances runnin’. Hardheaded bastards, the lot of ’em are. They’d rather deal with coin hunters on one side and Sicclunan soldiers on the other, and the Sicclunans don’t like B’ors any more
than Crachians do.”

  “Other Savages? Skrain soldiers?”

  “A few stragglers who took to the brush with us when the Sicclunans marched on the camp in force,” Mother Manai says. “No Skrain that we’ve seen.”

  Lariat snorts through his mustache. “They picked the Skrain camp clean of armor, weapons, supplies, anythin’ worth taking. We looked.”

  “Of course,” Evie says ruefully.

  “If you wanna keep surprisin’ me by livin’, little Sparrow, you’ll come east with us and hope we find the Skrain before the Skrain or the blood coin hunters find us.”

  “I suppose it won’t matter to them that our only crime was surviving an ambush in the night.”

  Lariat shakes his head. “A Savage outta camp is fair game, reason don’t matter. They ain’t so good at listenin’ to us.”

  “That’s assuming the Sicclunans haven’t pushed the line back and are holding it,” Manai offers helpfully.

  “Right,” Lariat says. “In that case we’re behind enemy lines and they’ll be happy to kill us themselves. Won’t care about the reward.”

  “There’s something to be said for denying the coin hunters their due,” Mother Manai remarks, actually sounding delighted.

  “I can’t let my friend be returned to the Legion,” Evie insists.

  “Why, ’cuzza his leg?” Lariat asks. “It’ll probably haveta come off anyway, from the look. Might as well let a surgeon—”

  “It’s not that.”

  Evie again looks to Brio, this time holding his eyes with hers, a silent question passing between them.

  He only shrugs, looking as weary as she’s ever seen him.

  Evie turns back to the Elder Company. “I did not come here by accident. I’m a retainer serving Gen Ultimo in the Capitol. This man’s name is Brio Alania. He’s the head of Gen Stalbraid and pleader for the Bottoms. He spoke out openly against the Legion. Then he found evidence of the crimes they’ve committed. He was illegally detained and sent here among you. I wasn’t sentenced to the Savage Legion, I came here to find him and bring him back to the Capitol to put an end to this, for all of us.”

  They’re silent at first, then, as Evie might’ve expected, both Lariat and Mother Manai begin laughing uproariously.

  “What was your crime, Mother?” Evie asks Manai, speaking over their reverie.

  More than anything else, it’s the weight in her voice that silences Mother Manai’s laughter. She stares oddly at the younger woman.

  “My eldest took ill. I stole a pork shoulder to feed the grandkids.”

  “Only the condemned are supposed to serve in the Legion. The councils and the Gens don’t know what’s happening here. The Protectorate Ministry is conspiring with our taskers to conscript not just petty criminals, but all those without homes in the Bottoms and every place like it in every city in Crache. They’re doing the same to anyone who speaks out or looks into what’s really going on here, including Gen members. Brio has proof back in the Capitol. If he presents it in open session in front of the Arbitration Council he can put an end to this. You can all go home to your families.”

  She can feel Brio’s eyes on her in that moment, concerned she’s overpromising, but there’s nothing to be done as she sees it. If the Elders and other Savages aren’t with them, they will never make it.

  More silence, yet this time it isn’t followed by laughter.

  “We don’t know where any of the Skrain or Savage encampments are,” Mother Manai points out. “They don’t exactly share strategy and troop movements with us. Whatever we do we’re like to end up stumbling on one.”

  “We’ll stay away from the main roads and hike over country,” Evie says. “I can’t believe this camp was the only one hit in the night. That wouldn’t be a strong enough move for the Sicclunans. I’d lay odds their night soldiers struck every Crachian post, all the ground they gained in these last battles. They’ll all be scrambling to recover. We can use that.”

  “Little Sparrow, I promise ya, we’ve all ’eard these notions before,” Lariat says, sounding like a gruff father placating a child. “I tell ya they’re just daydreams. Only they’re daydreams that’ll see your head on a spike if you take up chasin’ ’em.”

  “What about the blood coin hunters?” Mother Manai asks Evie, ignoring Lariat.

  Evie briefly studies the older woman. She sees an earnestness in Mother Manai’s expression, in the way she’s regarding Evie. It occurs to her in that moment that Manai is the only one taking her seriously, willing to see what Evie sees in their current circumstance.

  “That’s why I’m telling you all this,” Evie says, holding Manai’s gaze. “We have a better chance together, small enough to slip through the line but with enough force to defend ourselves if need be. It’s not a daydream or a fantasy. It’s an opportunity, perhaps the only one you’ll ever have.”

  “You tell a fine story, little Sparrow,” Lariat commends her. “Yer a finer speaker than any Savage I’ve yet known. So I’m sure yer smart enough to know we can’t put any stock in it.”

  “I can only offer you the truth. It’s your choice to believe it. Brio and I are headed east, but we’re not giving ourselves over to the Skrain. I will see this man returned to the Capitol or I’ll die in the attempt. It’s that simple for me. Whatever you have to do for yourselves, I understand, but will you answer me one question, and answer it with absolute truth?”

  “I always tell the truth,” Lariat mockingly protests. “Except when I lie.”

  “Ask your question,” Mother Manai bids her, far more serious.

  “Do any of you truly believe you will ever see your families again?” Evie asks them all. “Do you truly believe you will survive long enough to earn your reprieve, and that it will be granted if you do? Do you really believe you will ever be allowed to leave the Savage Legion?”

  Silence answers her.

  Even Lariat doesn’t quite seem to know what to say to that.

  Evie waits, somehow knowing not to press them in that moment, to let them sit with the weight of her questions, with the answers the Savages don’t wish to speak aloud, and the futures those answers conjure whether they want to see them or not.

  “No,” Mother Manai says at last, quietly. “No, of course we don’t.”

  “Then I will ask you one final question,” Evie says. “What difference does it make? You can die in your thirtieth or even fortieth battle, and it will be no different than if you died in your first. What do you have to fear by escaping? By trying? At least you’ll have a chance, a hope. And even if you’re right and it’s futile and we’re captured, you’ll have died trying to get back to your people instead of fighting for the ones who forced coins down our gullets and hurled us at enemy shields with rusted weapons. You’ll have died fighting, truly fighting, instead of submitting.”

  Unnoticed by the others, Bam slips a hemp-wrapped hand beneath his hood and it pushes it back over his long, stringy hair.

  Evie stares past Lariat and Mother Manai at the silent juggernaut of a man. Bam has the face of a sad hound, but his eyes are suddenly boring into her with a fiery light that she’s neither seen nor would expect from him. After a moment the other members of the Elder Company look back at Bam as well, and the surprise is evident on both of their faces. Evie opens her mouth to speak, but she’s unsure of what to say, or what his gaze is saying to her.

  Fortunately, when the silence threatens to become unbearable, Bam raises his hood and lowers his face into its recesses once again. He strides forward, past his compatriots, and joins Evie and Brio. He stands beside her, hugging his huge arms around the haft of his mallet, seeming to wait.

  “Well, that’s a new thing,” Lariat grumbles.

  Mother Manai grins. “Fair enough, Sparrow, or whatever your name is. If Bam’s convinced, I won’t be the one to disband our company. And in truth, you’ve almost convinced me, as well.”

  She looks up at Lariat, who sighs deep enough to bristle his mustache.


  “We’d do better with the B’ors on our side” is all he says in the end. “Can you convince ’em the way you convinced Bam here, Little Sparrow?”

  Brio leans in over Evie’s left shoulder. “You’re a better pleader than I’ve ever been, it seems,” he tells her quietly.

  Evie drops her head, the grin that comes to her lips devoid of anything resembling joy.

  “All right,” she says, lifting her chin to regard Lariat with a hard stare. “Take me to them.”

  THE JEOPARDY ROOM

  THE BELLS SUMMON DYEAWAN TO Sanitation on the third level. She’s been there dozens of times before, and aside from the smells she always finds it as fascinating as any level in the keep. It’s there that the Cadre tests different means of disposing and even utilizing waste, from rotting food to fallen leaves to filthy water to every resident’s supper from the night before. The last time she carried a message there they were working on a new kind of cistern that used a combination of potions to turn solid refuse into liquid waste so it could be more easily drained.

  The assemblers hadn’t quite perfected the balance of potions yet, but just the idea of such a thing lit a fire inside Dyeawan’s head.

  She rows her tender through the circles of stone that have become so familiar to her in such a short time. She’s not certain when these corridors began to feel like home, or even when “home” became an idea she both accepted and even craved, but she’s never felt more safe or welcomed or content in her entire life. The door to Sanitation is open, as most of the doors in the Planning Cadre are. Dyeawan begins to purposefully breathe through her mouth rather than her nose, and wonders what sort of invention she’ll witness today.

  The part of her mind that seems to know things before she does recognizes what’s happening as soon as she rolls through the door. It takes the rest of Dyeawan only a moment to catch up.

  Sanitation is gone. There should be a wide-open workspace filled with dozens of assemblers performing at least half that many tasks. Instead Dyeawan finds herself in a cramped antechamber no larger than a closet, staring at the entrance to a narrow corridor so long she can’t truly distinguish where or how it ends. A single torch in a single stone sconce lights the space. That becomes even more important in the next moment when the door behind Dyeawan slams shut.