The coming darkness, p.25
The Coming Darkness, page 25
part #5 of Nightfall Wars Series
Larin knew they needed to leave, to make for the castle. The crowd was growing restless, those eager for bloodshed beginning to think they would be cheated of what they had come to see, and muttered whispers had broken out among them as they eyed the Ekirani with undisguised hatred. He knew that to take the tattooed man to Alesh was the right thing—the only thing, really—yet knowledge of what would happen when he did caused him to hesitate, a hesitation that the Ekirani seemed to pick up on.
“A man must always pay his debts,” the tattooed man said softly. “One way or the other.”
At first, Larin thought he must be speaking to Sonya, trying to comfort her, but then he realized the man wasn’t looking at the little girl at all but at him, in his eyes something that could only be described as understanding and, more than that, forgiveness. He forgives me for what comes, Larin thought, a shock running through him. Oh, gods, Brent, but we need you, I need you, now more than ever. Tell me what to do—what is the right thing?
But Brent Olliman, his friend, was dead and gone and could not answer. Yet, thinking on it, Larin understood the man had answered already, long ago, during a drunken night—drunken for Larin, anyway, for, as with all things, Brent had only drank in moderation—when he had questioned their course, his course. He had been worried about it, doubting himself and the army and their chances, when Olliman had only smiled. Do the best you can, Larin. It’s all any of us can do. Two sentences, simple enough, but in that he had given an answer not just to Larin’s troubles of the time, but to his life, though he had been too drunken—and too foolish, anyway—to have noticed it then.
Okay, Brent, he thought, taking a slow, deep breath. Okay. “Let’s continue to the castle,” he told the sergeant. “You were right—Chosen Alesh needs to know of this.”
The sergeant bowed his head, motioning to his fellows and, in moments, they were pushing their way through the crowded streets once more.
Larin moved to walk beside Sonya, seeing a troubled look on the young girl’s features, disturbing on one so young. Children, he thought, should be allowed to be children, their biggest worries about how to avoid becoming “it” in the next game of tag or which toy to play with. They should not have to worry about watching their friends die, watching their friends killed. In a perfect world…but no. Larin cut off the thought. The world was what it was, and wishing it different would not change anything. Wishing never did. Pain might be a catalyst of change, the gods knew it was, but it wasn’t the only one. Courage, faith, kindness. Those things too could change the world, could change hearts. Or so he had to hope.
“Will Alesh understand, Uncle?” Sonya asked from beside him as they walked, her voice so low he could barely hear it. “Or will he…” She trailed off, rubbing an arm across her nose and visibly holding back the tears that threatened. Larin met her eyes, met the eyes of the other youth, the one she had named Pierce, who also watched him, seemingly as intent on his answer as Sonya.
Children should not have to worry, he told himself, putting on the most confident expression he could manage, giving the two children a small smile. “Alesh is a great man,” he said. “It is no wonder Brent chose him to be his successor.”
It wasn’t an answer, and the two children knew it, sharing a look before turning back to him, wanting, needing more. “What happens…if he doesn’t?” the boy asked.
“He will,” Larin said, careful that none of his uncertainty and doubt showed on his face. “We will make him understand.”
He looked away from the children then, scared that they might see some of his worry in his eyes, and his gaze locked on the Ekirani who was watching him. The man gave him a small smile and inclined his head, as if he knew the truth all too well and approved of Larin’s words.
He’ll understand, Larin thought again as he turned back to the road, and if it was a lie, this time it was one told only for himself. He has to.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Fermin walked beside Marta as they followed the bloody-nosed man through the woods, doing his best to appear confident and calm, to appear mean as Marta had told him. It was no easy task considering he’d spent his entire life serving others and had been glad to do so. But not just glad, comforted. Few people understood that about servants, couldn’t see past the dirty clothes they washed—not their own—or the dirty dishes they cleaned—also not their own. All that they saw was a person who spent his life tending to the needs of others, saying “yes, sir,” and “no, ma’am,” and smiling as he did it.
But what they didn’t understand, what, perhaps, they couldn’t understand was that, for the right type of person, serving someone else wasn’t a chore—it was a blessing. After all, when someone else was making the decisions, when someone else was choosing what was important and what wasn’t, there was no need for a man to worry about it himself. That ability to let it all go, to live in the moment and not concern yourself with great matters, was part of why Fermin loved living a life of service. Part of it—but not the greatest part.
The greatest part was that, quite simply, he enjoyed it. He enjoyed knowing that the clothes he set out for Lord Tirinian to wear were as clean and as pressed as he could make them, enjoyed watching the lord and lady eat a meal he had prepared. When a man put someone else’s problems, someone else’s desires and needs, before his own, how, then, could his own not seem weaker, smaller by comparison?
For Fermin, service to a good master and mistress was a blessing few others could match. And not just a blessing—a shield. A shield that protected him from life’s difficult questions, protected him from pitfalls like ambition and greed, for he was too busy seeing to the welfare of his master and mistress to worry much about his own. It was a shield that had served him well, one that had protected him from many of life’s troubles. But it would not protect him now.
As he followed the bloody-nosed man—who was busy grousing, muttering words too low to hear—Fermin realized that, for the first time, he was not standing behind the shield. He was the shield. Not just for himself but, more importantly, for the young girl walking beside him. Perhaps she would not have seen it that way. Perhaps it was even arrogant, foolish of him to think so, but he did. Certainly, Marta had many gifts Fermin did not. She was the Chosen of a god, Alcer, but that was only the smallest part of her gifts.
More than that, her life had taught her many things that Fermin’s sheltered existence had not shown him, and it was those lessons which had served her so well. Yet, for all her street-smarts, for all her cunning and guile, she was still a child and children should be protected. So Fermin had been taught, and so he believed.
So, when the man led them into a large clearing covered in tents and fires where thousands of men and women ate or laughed or shouted, Fermin felt a moment’s panic, not for himself, but for the girl beside him.
Their guide, perhaps mistaking his hesitation for awe, smirked. “A sight, ain’t it?”
It was that much, Fermin decided. The people in the camp were all filthy, it seemed, and those closest looked on him, Marta, and their escort with suspicious, appraising glances. Fermin wanted to avoid those gazes, those questing looks, but doing so, he knew, would be all the answer they needed, so he stared back, doing his best to mimic the expression he’d seen on Alesh and Darl’s faces from time to time—and perhaps not doing too poor a job of it, as those who met his gaze turned away readily enough.
When he didn’t answer, the man grunted. “This way—the captain’ll want to see you, tell you where you’re to be assigned.”
Fermin glanced at Marta who inclined her head the slightest bit. “Show me,” Fermin said, trying to sound tough but just glad his voice didn’t squeak.
The sentry nodded, gingerly touching his bloody nose in a seemingly unconscious gesture. “It’s that tent over there,” he said, motioning.
“Fine,” Fermin growled, staring at the man until he finally got the hint and walked off, grumbling something under his breath.
Once he was out of ear shot, Fermin took a slow, deep breath, glancing at Marta who was staring at him strangely as if seeing him for the first time. “Well,” he said after a moment, fidgeting uncomfortably under her stare, “we’re here.”
Marta blinked and gave her head a slight shake. “Right,” she said, her gaze sweeping across the field and thousands of tents spread out before them. “Lotta good it’ll do us. It could take us months to search through so many people. Even then we might never find her, not if they’re movin’ her around.”
“So what do we do, then?”
Marta grunted, gesturing to the tent their erstwhile escort had indicated. “I guess we ought to go and get us a job, what do ya say?”
Fermin frowned. “I don’t follow, Lady Marta. Why—”
“Because,” Marta interrupted in a tone that seemed to say it should be obvious, “having a task’ll give us an excuse, help us move around the camp freely without someone takin’ it in mind that we’re, I dunno…” She leaned closer and spoke in a whisper, “spies from Valeria. Wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Fermin had never been tortured before, had never seen another be tortured either, but he’d read about it in books, and that was just about as much experience with it as he was interested in, so he shook his head. “No,” he said, his mouth going suddenly, terribly dry as once again he was forced to confront the danger of what they were doing and the likelihood that it would end in both of them being killed horribly. Quite a change for a man whose greatest worry was normally that his master’s tea was sweet enough or his bath warm enough. “No, we don’t,” he repeated. “But, Lady Marta, if we are busy working for the army, how will we find Lady Sonya?”
Marta shook her head, clearly frustrated. “One thing at a time, Fermin, alright? For now, let’s focus on not having someone play jumping rope with our guts for the next few hours.”
Fermin thought the analogy needlessly vulgar—and quite terrible, actually—but he was forced to admit that it got the girl’s point across well enough. “Lady Marta,” he said quietly, “I’m afraid.”
Marta snorted. “Can’t imagine why.” She must have seen some of his worry writ plain on his face, for she sighed, shaking her head. “Look, Fermin, I get it, that you’re scared, I mean. You’d be crazy not to be. But you’ll be okay, alright? We just have to hold it together a bit longer.”
Fermin frowned. “It’s not me I’m worried about, Lady Marta,” he said. “It’s you, and Lady Sonya. I’m not scared that I’ll die…well, I am scared but that’s not the main reason. I’m scared that…that I’ll fail.”
Marta blinked at him, then slowly shook her head in apparent wonder. “I believe you mean that, Fermin. Well. We all do the best we can and, you ask me, you’ve done a damn fine job so far. You had that sentry fella lookin’ like he was about to piss himself.”
Fermin opened his mouth to scold her about her language but then closed it again deciding that, under the circumstances, a lesson in proper decorum could wait until they were a bit less likely to be murdered. “We go to the tent then?” he asked.
“Yes,” Marta said. “And remember, Fermin—be mean.”
He sighed heavily. “Very well.” With that, he turned and started toward the large tent the man had indicated, Marta trailing a step or two behind him the way a slave would be expected to.
As they walked past campfire after campfire, it seemed that every man and woman marked their progress, that they somehow knew he and Marta were frauds and were only waiting for them to stumble too far into the trap to have any chance of escape.
In time, they made it to the tent, which looked bigger than some houses Fermin had seen. When they followed the line of at least thirty people through its open flaps, he immediately saw why. A small platform stood at the back of the tent. On the platform stood three men in uniforms marking them as soldiers. Two stood with their hands on their swords, eyeing those entering the tent suspiciously, while the third looked them over with a sneer of disdain. This one had a haughty, self-important manner and this, coupled with his uniform, marked him as an officer in the army, likely the captain the sentry had told them about.
But it wasn’t the captain who drew his attention. Instead, it was the mass of humanity packing the tent. At least a hundred men and women, perhaps more, were crammed together, so close they could barely move. The heat of so many bodies packed so tightly together was nearly unbearable. To distract himself, Fermin glanced around at the crowd. There seemed to be no uniformity to them. Here, a gray-haired woman who looked to be in her seventies, and there, a youth who might have passed for eighteen or nineteen years. The only thing they all shared in common was the raggedness of their clothing and the desperate gazes with which they studied the captain standing on the stage.
Fermin was so engrossed in studying the crowd, so distracted by the unbearable heat, that he didn’t hear anyone come up behind him until he felt a hand on his shoulder. He let out a squeak that he hoped was inaudible over the din of conversation between those waiting and spun to see a man standing before him, one hand on the hilt of his sword. He, like the other two guards on the stage, held a sword, and Fermin didn’t need to be told that he was another guardsman. He felt his heart quicken in his chest, threatening to beat right out of his rib cage.
His fears had been right, after all. Somehow—he didn’t know how, and it didn’t matter, in any case—the army knew they didn’t belong, were only waiting for them to come here, to this place where they were surrounded and had no chance of escape, before they sprung the trap. Fermin thought it all too likely that it was his fault, somehow, something he had done or not done, had said or not said, for Marta seemed to know well enough what she was about. They were both going to die, then, and it was his fault. I’m sorry, Marta, he thought. I’m sorry, Sonya.
“Just come to the army then?” the guard asked.
Like a cat playing with his food, Fermin thought. But the guard hid his own malicious amusement well, appearing to study Fermin with genuine curiosity and nothing more.
“Y-yes,” Fermin managed, his voice husky with fear.
The guard nodded. “Captain’ll be askin’ around soon, figurin’ out who’s skilled at what.” He grunted. “Fact is, we need about everythin’.”
“Th-that’s why I came,” Fermin said. “Y-you know. Th-the work.”
“Sure, sure,” the man said. “And this here,” he went on, glancing at Marta appraisingly, the way a farmer might inspect a cow he was considering purchasing, looking for any hidden flaws or weaknesses. “This your slave?”
Fermin felt offended for Marta for a moment before he remembered—just in the nick of time—that, in the fiction Marta had created, she was his slave. “That’s right,” he said, doing his best to sound casual, the way he thought a man who owned a slave probably would be, though the gods alone knew what that might sound like.
The guard grunted. “Well. Can’t have her in here. She’ll have to go with the rest of the slaves.”
Mean, he thought, be mean. He met the guard’s eyes in what he hoped was a challenging way. “My slave stays with me,” he said.
It was the guard’s turn to frown then. “Then you and your slave can get the fuck out of our army, eh? Commander’s orders, everybody’s got a job to do, and those as bring slaves donate them to the cause, at least temporarily. Don’t worry, though,” he went on, giving Fermin a wink, “you can get her back nights, once she’s done her shifts in the cook tents or wherever else they place her.”
The thought that this man believed Fermin the type of person capable of taking advantage of such a young girl was sickening to him, but he didn’t dare correct him. Better to be thought a pervert, he supposed, than to be discovered for what he was and get both himself and Marta killed. “Well,” he said gruffly. “Guess that’ll have to do.”
“Figured it might,” the guard smirked. “Alright, girl,” he said, gesturing toward the tent flap with a thumb, “come with me—I’ll show you the way.”
Marta complied, putting on such a good act of the beaten-down slave that Fermin felt his heart go out to her as she shuffled toward the tent flap, her head down, her shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow at any moment. A thought struck him, and as the guard started to turn to follow after her, Fermin caught his arm. “She’s my property,” he growled at the guard, “bought and paid for. Anything happens to ‘er, I’ll kill the man responsible and make sure to do it slow. Understand?”
The guard’s eyes went wide in surprise, then they narrowed, and Fermin could see his mind working, considering whether or not the man before him was bluffing or the type of man to be taken seriously, considering, maybe, jerking his sword out of its scabbard. Perhaps, what kept him from it in the end was the thought that Fermin might just be as hard and as dangerous of a man as he was pretending to be—but the manservant thought it more likely that the guard didn’t want to go through the hassle that would be in store for him if he cut down a man showing up to serve the army.
Either way, the guard finally grunted. “As you say, she’s yours. I wouldn’t dream of touchin’ her.” A lie, of course, for it had been obvious what the man had been thinking by the way he’d looked at her, but Fermin thought he’d done what he could. Besides, Marta had shown on numerous occasions that she could more than take care of herself, and if the guardsman did try to bother her in any way, he didn’t envy the man the misery that would inevitably follow.
Fermin watched the two of them head toward the tent flap, doing his best to remain calm as they disappeared through it. Then a horn blew within the tent, cutting over the din of conversation, and everyone present grew silent as the captain stepped forward on the stage, eyeing the crowd with undisguised disgust.
“My name,” the man said, somehow managing to retain the sneer on his face even as he spoke, “is Captain Filder. And you,” he continued, gesturing at the press of bodies packing the tent, “are all worthless pieces of shit. But, there is hope for you, all of you. You see, the Goddess of the Wilds, Shira, is not without compassion and she rewards those who would serve her. If you stay, you will have a chance to achieve glory and power in the coming struggle, a chance to serve our goddess and be among her favored people, protected when those fools in Valeria and the rest of the world who follow the deceitful teachings of Amedan are destroyed.”
