by Matt Wallace
“I think I should like to visit Rok one day. I would hope to see you there.”
Captain Staz bows her head. “I wish for a world in which this would be possible.”
Taru raps gloved knuckles against their leather breastplate, feeling the binder beneath shift subtly.
“It is coming.”
MARCHING TO A HEADLESS DRUM
THE WASTELANDS ARE TURNING LUSH and green beneath their marching feet.
“Clearest sign we’re nearin’ the Crachian border,” Mother Manai remarks, reaching down to pluck several blades as rich as jade from the ground and rub them between her fingers. She lets the wind take the remnants and inhales against her stained fingertips gratefully.
Evie is marching alongside the Elder Company at the head of a Savage snake composed of blue-runed faces. Their B’ors counterparts follow, silent and stoic and never losing pace. The Sicclunans, on foot and on horseback, round out the column in front of the rogue Legionnaires. A company of Sirach’s outriders and the best of the B’ors scouts have been sent ahead, while more of her stealth warriors flank them from cover to guard against any trace of an ambush.
“The border doesn’t move, does it?” Evie asks, although it’s clear she’s already discerned the answer.
Mother Manai smiles ruefully, shaking her head. “Not since before I was born, I imagine.”
A stallion whinnies and Evie turns her head to see Sirach astride her mount, falling back to join them.
“Continuing to unravel that shiny Crachian tapestry, are we, General?” the Sicclunan captain asks Evie, invoking her unofficial title with relish and a grin.
“They keep taking land and territory, but they’ve stopped extending the border.”
Sirach nods, the expansive brim of her hat nodding along with her. “They’ve pushed as far as they can while continuing to sustain the divine paradise they’ve built for their citizens.”
“And they sustain it by stripping everything beyond the border, right down to the bones of the world, and feeding it all to the cities.”
“You can’t argue with the results,” Sirach says, only a drop of bitterness poisoning her jovial tone.
“I didn’t notice any of this when they were carting us to the front,” Evie marvels.
“You’re seeing a lot you never saw before,” Sirach reminds her.
With that, the Sicclunan warrior puts heels to her mount and takes off at a gallop, riding up the column and eliciting a barreling wave of cheers from her soldiers.
“That girl is something,” Mother Manai says.
Evie nods. “Of all the things she could be, yes, she is indeed something.”
“I think in spite of all that brash, she’s soft on you.”
“Maybe she is.”
“And you?” Mother Manai asks.
“My love life is complicated enough as it is,” Evie dryly laments.
It was strange enough for her to part with Brio after making finding and protecting him the center of her life for so long. It was agreed between everyone, except him, that Brio belonged back at the Sicclunan’s hidden camp to await the outcome of the border battle. Evie had to remind him that even if he still possessed both legs, he was no warrior to begin with, and in the high likelihood the rest of them were killed, the Sicclunan leadership would need someone like Brio who knows the Crachian mind and bureaucracy from the inside.
Evie admires the man he’s become. She once truly loved the boy, and she’s found it difficult separating the two.
Bam continues his new habit of perpetually flanking her protectively as they march toward their fate.
“Why do you keep that hood pulled so low all the time, Bam?” she asks.
Nothing at first, and then his deep hound dog voice murmurs, “They said my face scares the children.”
Evie’s brow furrows. “Who said? What children?”
Bam motions with the hammerhead of his mallet at Lariat and Diggs who’ve been keeping their own Council on the march, laughing at war stories and foul jokes.
“I fought with Lariat in the alleys before the Aegins took us. That’s why m’face looks like this. The man who ran the fights told me to keep my face covered because it could scare children in the street.”
Evie frowns. “He sounds like a man who needs his ass kicked, and he was just teasing you, cruelly. I like your face. It reminds me of a sock puppet I had when I was a girl. I always smiled when I looked at it.”
Bam tilts his head toward her. He doesn’t raise his hood, but Evie glimpses a fleeting smile on his thick, scarred lips.
They march an hour past dusk and then make a cold camp. No tents are erected or wagons unloaded; the Sicclunans have only a few wagons, and they’re all reserved for pilfered Crachian supplies, and their armorists and surgeons. Fires are built and everyone is watered and fed with the barest amount of dry rations, save for the B’ors, who refuse without explanation (Evie has learned no member of the B’ors is fond of explaining themselves or their actions, at least to outsiders) to eat or drink anything offered to them by the Sicclunans. They draw their own rations and water from pouches and skins carried by each warrior, their food consisting mainly of roots and dried berries, and the occasional piece of jerked animal flesh.
The three forces naturally group with their own kind, keeping to their own fires and eating and commiserating among themselves without breaking ranks.
Sirach is the only exception. Evie has settled around a small campfire with the rest of the Elder Company, reclining on the cool, thriving grass and reveling in the feel of it. She lets her eyelids rest for only a moment, and when she pulls them back her Sicclunan counterpart is sitting cross-legged beside her, sharpening one of her crescent-bladed daggers with a worn whetstone.
“Shunned by your own?” Evie asks.
Sirach grins, eyes transfixed on the edge of the blade she’s refining. “I’ve put all my children to bed and tucked them in. I thought I’d make certain your rough and tumble brood were enjoying the accommodations.”
Evie inhales deeply. “I’m certainly enjoying the air.”
“Yes, it does lack the acrid undercurrents of our rolling wastes.”
“You spoke of building your ‘last home’ in the treetops. Is it still lush there?”
“Oh yes. Everything is green and alive. It’s near the water. And it has yet to suffer a single Crachian boot print. We could really make something of it if we weren’t constantly defending it from the likes of you.”
There’s no malice in that final accusation, just one of her usual jibes.
“You deserve that chance,” Evie says.
“We deserve a lot more than that, but I’d take it, gladly.”
They hear voices rising only a few yards away, and then see legs rushing past them toward the source of those voices. What begins as excited chatter soon escalates into a mangled chorus of angry shouting.
Sirach sighs. “Well. I wondered when this would begin. I almost thought we’d make it to the real battle first.”
“What?” Evie asks, not understanding. “What’s going on?”
Sirach is already on her feet and turning toward the commotion. Evie quickly springs up and joins her. The two of them soon have to push their way through a crowd of packed shoulders, all of them facing the same direction.
One of the Sicclunan infantry soldiers and a B’ors warrior are circling each other while a larger circle of their peers goad them on toward clashing. The Sicclunan has drawn a short sword, while the B’ors brandishes a long stone knife with a jagged blade.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Evie demands.
The B’ors warrior is practically frothing. “She killed my sister!”
“It wasn’t me!” the soldier insists.
“I remember your face! It was the Fight for the Fruit of the Last Trees! My sister was fleeing with a wound and you cut her down from behind!”
“I wasn’t even part of that battle! I never touched her!”
“Then
you wear the armor of the one who did!”
“Empty your hand!” Sirach orders the soldier.
The infantrywoman looks to her silently, obviously unwilling to directly disobey Sirach, but also hesitant to stand defenseless in front of an angry B’ors.
Evie searches out Yacatek with her eyes, finding the woman standing silently only a few feet away at the edge of the spectating crowd, watching without expression.
“Yacatek! Order this warrior to sheath their knife!”
“Why?” the Storyteller asks, genuinely incredulous.
Evie sighs. “Because we have a bigger war to fight. Together.”
Yacatek shrugs. “This fight is theirs. Let them have it. We will know who is right when one of them is left standing.”
“I have no fight with your people who bear the blue marks!” the B’ors warrior shouts at Evie, his eyes never leaving the Sicclunan soldier. “We have banded with them and suffered the same whip at their side! But this one is no different from the Skrain, than all the steel serpents who hunt my people!”
“We have never hunted your people!” Sirach fires back at him. “We’ve fought over the scraps we’ve been left by Crache and their Skrain, and you’ve killed as many of us as we’ve killed of you!”
Evie steps between the two opposing fighters. “We’re marching to kill Skrain, and we can’t spare either of you. If you live through that battle, you can turn your blades on each other and whomever else you like. But not here and not now!”
She holds the eyes of the B’ors warrior as she speaks that last, knowing any sign of weakness will render those words hollow.
The warrior looks from Evie to Yacatek, who offers him nothing.
Behind Evie, the Sicclunan infantrywoman slowly lowers her sword and relaxes her fighting posture.
Watching her over Evie’s shoulder visibly takes some of the fight out of the B’ors warrior. He stares into Evie’s eyes, his own still burning with the pain of great loss, although beneath that there’s an even greater sadness. He takes a step back and slowly sheathes his stone knife.
Evie bows to him respectfully to show her gratitude. After he’s walked away, she turns to the infantrywoman and nods to her gratefully as well.
The crowd begins to disperse, some relieved and others loudly disappointed. Evie looks for Sirach.
One of her Special Selection soldiers is whispering something privately in her ear. She listens without a change in expression, then nods to the soldier, who quickly turns and jogs away.
“What is it?” Evie asks.
Sirach sounds genuinely intrigued. “We have a visitor, it seems.”
“Should I be worried?”
Sirach arches a brow. “Was there any particular reason for you to stop worrying?”
Before Evie can press her further, a fresh commotion arises as bodies part to permit a trio through the camp.
Two of Sirach’s black-masked warriors, stationed to guard the perimeter from the shadows, bear a Savage between them clad in ratty furs. The coin poisoning his blood has raised blue runes only on one-half of his face. The Savage needs both hands to support the twisted-up end of a bulging and dampened-dark sack held in front of his body. It looks like a rat catcher’s sack, viscous-soaked and rancid and drawing flies even as he moves.
The Sicclunans march him before Evie and then stop. Their charge doesn’t appear frightened, just weary and confused.
“He says he’s a messenger,” Sirach explains. “He was sent here from the border garrison, by an old friend of yours.”
Evie’s eyes are full of questions, but she keeps them to herself as she watches the Elder Company forming around her, staring at their visitor suspiciously.
“Who sent you here?” Mother Manai asks the man directly.
“Laython,” he says in a shrill voice. “I’ve a message for the… the uh… Sparrow General.”
Evie shoots a glance at Sirach, who shrugs with that devilish grin of hers as if to say, I tried to warn you.
“I was kind of hoping you’d killed him,” Evie all but grumbles under her breath.
Mother Manai laughs. “He wouldn’t die that easily. I’ve no doubt he chased after the Skrain who fled.”
“Why would he send a Savage to us?” Evie asks.
Diggs shrugs. “Why would the Skrain waste a trained soldier or page? Savages are disposable. If we keep the boy it’s just one more piece of fodder they’ll have to sweep away.”
“I want to join you!” the messenger quickly yelps. “I want to stay! Please don’t send me back.”
“What’s the message, boy?” Lariat demands. “Let’s have that first.”
The Savage swallows. As he speaks it’s obvious he’s not reciting a speech he memorized as much as remembering the important facts he was issued.
“Laython says the price on all yer coins is doubled. He says don’t expect no more Savages after me to join your side. He says I’m the last one you’ll get.”
“He sent you all the way here just to tell us that?” Biggs asks, dubious.
“The sack,” Lariat says. “What’s in the sack, boy?”
Evie looks up at the broom-mustached elder Savage. The expression on his face is unusually serious.
The man glances between the black-masked warriors holding him.
“Let him go!” Lariat barks.
The warriors stare at him through the thin eye slits in their hoods with obvious contempt, then they both look to Sirach.
She nods, and they release their hold on the Savage.
Laython’s messenger steps forward, cautiously. Without another word he untwists the top of the sack and upends the putrid bulging burlap.
Instead of dead rats, the severed heads of half a dozen men and women tumble from within. They’ve already begun to rot and several of them crack like eggs when they hit the soft ground. The smell that’s unleashed in their wake is enough to gag spectators several dozen yards away. Everyone gathered around the messenger can make out the faded runes on what’s left of their faces.
Savages, all.
“Who are they?” Evie asks with a hand clamped over her mouth and nose.
“Us,” Mother Manai answers her in the coldest tone Evie has heard the woman invoke.
“They’re the rest of the Elder Company,” Diggs explains calmly, though it’s clear from the way his handsome features have dropped he’s as shocked and repulsed as the rest of them.
Lariat approaches the messenger slowly, almost tentatively. Evie has yet to witness such somber and delayed behavior in the perpetually raucous man.
“You knew what was in the sack?” he asks the messenger in a quiet voice that might belong to someone else entirely.
The Savage nods.
Lariat launches his right fist with an awesome speed and power that defies both his advanced age and rotund frame. When that fist collides with the messenger’s jaw he collapses onto the ground as if the hand of a God Star itself pressed him to the earth. Lariat takes one step over the messenger’s crumpled form and drops to his knees, mounting the already dazed Savage on the ground.
“Lariat—” Evie begins, striding forward only to have Mother Manai roughly grab her by the shoulder.
She looks back at Manai and sees the many lines of the older woman’s face hardened into a warning expression. Mother Manai shakes her head, slow and definite.
Evie watches helplessly as Lariat begins pummeling the messenger’s face. The Elder Company’s champion pugilist isn’t wearing the barbed leather straps over his knuckles, so he uses the points of his elbows, alternating between them like pistons. No one speaks and no one intercedes. There is total silence as Lariat brutalizes the man beneath him, chopping away with bone at the man’s rune-stained features until blood and gore overtake them all.
No one stops Lariat, he simply runs out of momentum on his own, like a machine wound to perform a specific task. When his elbows stop falling there’s no distinguishing the messenger’s blood from Lariat’s own juices
up and down his arms. His face is passive, almost calm, except for the heavy exertion of his breathing. What’s left of the messenger’s face is no longer recognizable as human, Savage or otherwise.
Lariat slowly rises, his knees creaking loudly in the abject silence of the camp.
The first pair of eyes his meet belong to Evie, who is still watching him with that needless expression.
“Was he the one who deserved that?” she asks him seriously.
When Lariat speaks, again so contrarily soft in tone, he sounds far more sad than angry. “He rode near a hundred miles with that sack in tow. He coulda buried ’em. He coulda told us what happened in private, like. What he didn’t need to do was dump ’em infronta everyone like this. He wanted to join us, but he was no Savage. He was a Skrain with a coin in his guts, whether he knew it or not, no better’n a trained dog.”
“This was an attack,” Yacatek adds, and it’s clear she’s seconding Lariat’s position. “This man made himself culpable in our enemy’s attack. We cannot bear such betrayal among our own band.”
“Not all traitors carry knives in the dark,” Sirach says to Evie.
Evie looks back at Mother Manai, whose expression remains unchanged. Evie realizes why the older woman stopped her. Gazing around at their three separate forces, she sees them all galvanized in that moment, each one, whether they be Sicclunan or Savage or B’ors seeing themselves in Lariat’s actions, and their enemy in the mangled face of the corpse at his feet. Rather than becoming demoralized by the sight of Savage heads rolling across the healthy green grass of the Crachian plains, their rebel army is hardening like a quenched blade forged from several different billets of steel.
Lariat bends down with a quiet groan and retrieves one of the heads from the ground. He holds it aloft by the hair, turning so all three forces can see its face.
“Take a good look!” he commands them. “Remember this well, ’cause every shittin’ ass in this camp owes me ten Skrain heads fer erry one they sent us tonight! Do you hear me? I want ye to dump ’em at my feet when we hit that border! Ten Skrain heads fer erry one of ours!”
A thousand voices answer him in unison, crying out their promise to deliver those enemy skulls.