The wilderlands, p.16
The Wilderlands, page 16
Seeing what happened, Dhorena acted quick-like, finding those secret armor folds in the soldier whose neck was still working right and saw to it that his kidneys didn’t.
And nine men still swooped down on them
The three to their back were coming up fast and the five to the front saw Knalc was ground-bound for the moment and rode at the chance to slay him.
Dhorena saw this blood-hungry charge and drew her knife and sword-blade and leaped to battle with both brandished. Knalc saw the men who lusted to kill him and her and took two halves of the broken spear and vaulted to his feet, waiting for them to come to him.
With wood and steel and tooth and flesh, they fought off their attackers.
Oh, better than fought them off, children.
You ain’t never seen blood run the way it did that day—turning the Road red as rubies in the sunset. If you wandered by the old spot, you can still see the stain where they fought. So much blood was spilled there that even Grandma Dirt can’t lap it all up and grass grows red around it.
I could tell you that each of those men fought hard and long, fought for the one who warmed their bed back behind the walls. I could tell you that when Dhorena’s steel sliced through skin and shields of the soldiers who had once protected her, she found the killing hard even as her knife moved easy into flesh and her sword severed bone with bliss. I could tell you Knalc thought of some of the men as coywolves and that made them easier to slay; some of the men he thought of as himself, and they were dead afore he could do all he wished to them. I could tell you the last man was Chirsic Holland—Dhorena’s godfather—that she did not recognize him in his thick blue armor and he, mayhap, did not recognize her with the filth of the Wilderlands clinging to her and the blood of her kin painted on her face; I could tell you that Chirsic fought her and him and would have killed ‘em both if Dhorena hadn’t recognized a tricksy sweep he’d taught her and she’d replied with a muscle move that killed him and she only noticed her own knowing when she was already pulling her father’s blade from his neck.
I could tell you anything you like and who’s to correct me? All of them who might fact-fix me are dead now. But I’ll tell you true and I’ll tell you this—the ending stays the same: no men stood against them once they were done.
At least for a few breaths.
As they stood there, red, bleeding, and panting hard, they heard more horse-hooves coming near on the Road.
Both the blood weary fighters turned, ready to melt back to battle-minded things. The blood that covered ‘em faded from thought, the bones around ‘em crumbled from memory. They were not blade or body or bloody aim, they were creatures fighting only to breathe now and breathe again.
“Dhorena?”
She faltered, her eyes narrowed but her blade did not go lower. “Yes. I am Dhorena.”
The man on the lead horse held a hand to his chest. “Captain Calium. I served … under your mother while she was Mayness. Your caravan is many months overdue.” The silence you only find out of the Wilderlands filled the dead air between ‘em. “What are you doing?”
She looked down at the bodies at her feet. Kin killed.
She looked up and saw Captain Calium looking at her, a dozen more men at his back—horror-slapped.
“We saw the fighting back from the wall and were dispensed to aid,” the captain said. He then looked at Knalc—huge and heaving as he was—blade and brow both bloody and brutish from the burden of his work; Knalc traveling with a girl who had had a family and now had nothing but sword and knife. “Dhorena. Come away from him.”
The men and their horses began to ease around them now, all ready with spears. Knalc and her too battle-spent to hope to fight them off, even if they thought different.
“No,” Dhorena said. “Listen to me. Take me back. Let him go, understood?”
The captain shook his head. “He is responsible for killing some of my finest men. By rights I should kill him now where he stands as satisfaction. No, we’re bringing him with us. Both of you.”
One of the soldiers slid from his horse and walked toward her, reaching to take away her sword.
She flinched away and made sure he got a better view of her steel. “Come closer! I’ll gut you like an uggerfish.”
He held his arms up and looked to his captain for guidance.
“I’ll chalk that up to some sort of Wilder-sickness. Please, my girl, be compliant.”
She shook her head. She might have lost her wizard-green, but the Wilderlands were bubbling inside her. “I keep the sword. It was my father’s.”
Captain Calium cringed. “You have no father, dear.”
For a flicker, she considered throwing the sword through his neck, instead she burned hatred toward him after he spoke so hard he must’ve felt as if there was a blade aimed at his throat.
“I keep my sword,” she said slow-like. “And my knife. I won’t hurt anyone else, but the first one who tries to take either of those from me—or to kill this man—answers to me and my blades.”
The captain chuckled as if to show his men how silly small girls can be—but from the way he glanced and tugged at his armor, he had half a gulp of fear in his gullet.
“If you must,” he said—chortling too much.
“I will,” she said, keeping her steel brandished.
“Very well, you will ride with me, and that mongrel—”
“No,” she said.
The captain stopped—he cleared his throat. “Pardon?”
“The mongrel and I,” she explained, “will be given a horse by you, which you may lead if you wish.”
Oh, that captain didn’t shine well to that idea. “We would, my dear,” he said, then motioned to the dozen horses dead and dying on and ‘round the Road. “Except if we trusted you near another horse, we’d be rather worried you’d kill it.”
She didn’t even look at the beasts around her whose blood painted her the color of hate and lust, the color of fire and clay. “We won’t. And we won’t leave. If we do, you’ll be able to catch us and bring us back.”
“This will not be acceptable,” the captain chuckled too much again, looking at his soldiers as if this look could make false words true. “You will both be sharing horses. More specifically, you will share my horse and this creature you picked up will be bound and led behind.”
Dhorena didn’t flinch and didn’t hesitate. “You will give us a horse which we will both ride back. This is what will happen if you want me to come quietly.”
The captain growled lightly and narrowed his eyes. “Are you threatening me?”
Her voice was still as winter-water. “I am observing how events will likely transpire under a variety of circumstances and sharing my insight with you. You’re welcome.”
The captain mulled that over for a mite, then nodded to one of his soldiers. “Bradaal—off your horse.”
Bradaal, less man than boy, turned pale. He took a look back at the cast of soldiers and then to his commander. “Sir?”
“You heard me,” Calium said.
“I’d be walking all day to get back, sir.”
The captain gave him nasty eyes and a stonewalled mouth of teeth through which he hissed. “Then you best get off now and start walking so that you get back behind those walls before sunset.”
With the zeal of a scorned child, Bradaal slunk from his saddle, walked his mount over to Dhorena, and started trudging horizon-ward to those walls.
Trying as best she could to not look away from the captain, Dhorena got saddle settled, then motioned to Knalc to do the same.
The Wildman still had his blade drawn, still was ready to—at a breath—lurch into a kill-shower.
“Come on,” Dhorena said—she hung her blades from her belt and held out a hand to him. “Please.”
Knalc fingered the cracked clay sphere hanging ‘round his neck—the albatross that kept him breathing. The thundering of his recent fight was still making a racket in his chest, truth be told, but the contents of the clay were smooth and calm. Slow-like, he put his own blade to belt and got on the horse behind her.
“We’re ready,” she told the captain—who snorted, but didn’t sass none. He pointed four of his men to ride behind Knalc and her, while he and two more led the way.
They took off toward the walls, passing Bradaal in a hand-set of hoof beats.
Knalc and Dhorena whispered to themselves some as they went.
“We should have fought them,” Knalc said. “Found another way in after-wise. We already slain a smattering of them, they’re like to kill us for that.”
“They ain’t gonna kill me,” she said. “And I’ll see to it they don’t kill you either.”
Her tone was so even it almost made Knalc think she was telling him true.
“Why you say that?”
“Because of who I am,” she said. “I’m the daughter of two former Maynes, they won’t kill me unless I do something horrible.”
Knalc had to keep from laughing there. “Because of who you are? Maybe it’s just you ain’t viewed yourself in your fancy Valforian glass late-like, but you’re looking more Wilder than Valforian these days. Anyone in there taking passing glance to you would mark one more of my kin than theirs. ‘Who you are’ is a misguided girl.”
She shrugged. “The blood that’s in me beats out the blood on me.”
Hearing those words, Knalc began to suspect she was telling him right. “I don’t think I got quite as fancy blood in me as you do.”
“I’ll talk to them. I’ve got blood enough for both of us. Do you still have it?”
His fingers closed again around his clay. He held it close to his chest—the ashes within it as cool and calm as ever.
“Yes.”
They kept their route to those walls.
Those walls—ooh, imagine them now.
Many of you have seen their like. One of you has seen them true, I know you have—I had to hold you in my arms ‘cause you were scared when we neared them—scared to walk in their shadow. You thought they would fall and flatten you. You’re blushing now, but I’ll grant you, them walls can be mighty frightsome. ‘Course, to look at the walls now, you see only their crumbling skeleton. You see stone stacked as high as the tallest tree, broken only by a slouch or ravagers looking for good rock who don’t know you lose more trying to mine pieces from that wall than you gain in the getting—unless you found a silver ring or a gold tooth while you were rummaging through those ruins.
Back when all I’m telling was still unfolding, them walls weren’t just mighty—they were indomitable. Indomitable in breadth; if you put a hand to that wall and started walking, you could keep on walking and die of thirst before you came back around to where you started and barely find crack, crevice, handhold, or hollow. Indomitable in depth; it’s said that, at its thickest, if you station one man at the top of the wall, looking out at the four-faced god and Hush-bee Mountain, you could line twenty more men behind him, loin to ass, and the last would still have farting room. Indomitable in might; Valforians have killed many Wilderfolk—in the Wilderlands, probably ‘bout as many as Wilderfolk have killed Valforians—but in the shadow of that wall are graves so prolific no teller could sing the tales of all the Wilder-souls that suffered and perished in that shadow; no matter how well sung or long winded the teller, even just to sing all the names would take a life-time and that ain’t even taking in the names of Wastefolk or the wizard army of Ammign who died against those walls.
Now it’s ruins; but this story ain’t happening now. Back then, it was something that could never have succumbed to magicks or the rot of ages.
Dhorena was born ‘hind those walls in their prime. There was a time in her life when she’d wake and see grey stone more than she saw Pappa Sun. She’d known how to fear the wall for the tales she was told to frighten her about souls being sleep-called to curl up in it before turning to stone—but she’d never known how to fear it for the utter mass of wall there was to witness.
But now, after so long abound in the Wilderlands and without her wizard learning hiding her, she shook a little in fear as they neared that wall which—even ‘cross from the visage of the four-faced god—seemed like a deity in its own right.
“Tell me, what’s it like ‘hind that mighty stone?” Knalc whispered to her, some flavor of fear leaking into his voice.
“You won’t like it,” Dhorena said.
Knalc clutched his clay tighter as he looked up at the walls, grey like cliff sides.
As they neared, the wall split open for them, the grinding of grates and gears and other ghastly crafts pried open an entrance, gaping like the mouth of a massive silver tip.
With soldiers leading them and soldiers at their rear and soldiers unseen on walls above them, they went through that gate. Like water over rock—one barely would have thought them prisoners to see how easy they flowed through.
Struggling and tantrums don’t divert it. All things move toward their end.
This will be my last time telling this tale. Call that notion another bone-hunch of mine.
I know it’s late in the telling to thrust that on you all—but I don’t reckon I’ll have it in me to tell this story again. My tongue is growing thick, my words thin.
I’m not sure I’ll have the fire in me to tell anymore stories at all after this one.
So mark my words well in your mind; maybe if some of you find some precious paper and ink, you might remember enough to mark it down there.
But don’t mind my rambling. All tellers retire or die and often as not their words are lost or twisted—oftentimes even before they die their stories have been wrecked or warped. I don’t expect to be any different. I’m old, tired—this tale always takes a chunk out of me.
I remember where I was.
Going through the gates of Illmiv to whatever waited behind that wall. The gate Dhorena and Knalc went through opened fast and closed faster, and they found themselves marching down a short, man-hewn tunnel.
As they did, Knalc had a quaking in his bones. Most of us get it once before we die: a moment where—without being bound to time or flesh—we see, clear as mountain air, the rhyming of things. Knalc was seein’ just so.
As they passed through the tunnel—sneak-like—he pulled his clay from around his neck and put it around Dhorena’s. She felt it happening, but didn’t move to stop him.
“What’s this?” was all she asked, knowing sure as sin what it was.
“No matter what happens,” he said. “I want you to crack that in the wind at the highest part of the city. I won’t be able to get up there.”
She didn’t say another word, just pulled that clay snugsome ‘round her neck, making sure no harm would come to it while it was in her care.
A silent contract was sealed, and they emerged into Illmiv proper.
There wasn’t a lick of green or honest brown behind those walls—just the grey of storm clouds and dead things. What colors there were had too bright a bend to them not to be false and poisonous. But the humans there must have been enough to make up for every animal their stone lives lacked. No wonder all attacks against those walls were fated to be broken. If Valforians ran out of the steel wielding type of man, they had more men of brawny-bod to snatch from their towns—they weren’t left to pick from babes who couldn’t even hold the word “blade” on their tongue. There were more men and women Knalc saw in his first few dozen gasps behind those walls than he had seen in any camp or battle-troop in Wilds, Wastes, or Road.
There were no Wilderlands there, but this stone and human habitat had a hum to it too. I suppose you could call it a lifesome hum too … only human yammering and the happenstance of barking or squawking from some bird and tame-dog.
Dhorena didn’t flinch even as she heard people point at her and whisper her name. She’d forgotten, in all honesty, the clutter of human life inside the walls. She’d been born into it but after the long trek through the Wilderlands, this seemed a strange place. The faces of people—people she knew—like a forest around her. After so long outside the walls, her mind told her to suspect treachery, the work of wizards or tricksy gods. But no, all that she witnessed was the treachery of humans who’d holed up from gods and the rest of us.
Over cobble and brick, rock and mortar, they were led through crooked streets, past buildings sturdy as a thorn-horn’s legs and a dozen times as tall. Buildings that would war well, but were used for bread baking and mead making and likewise things—most were just for living in, stony and impenetrable as they were. A fortress made by the gods themselves would be hard pressed to rival the work of meager man here—and though gods are made of mightier stuff than man, it shook Knalc to know what man might muster.
As they went on, he saw it: the Sword Tower.
Glass and stone reaching up and up and up, looking ready to scrape out the heart of Mamma Moon or Pappa Sun if one of them ran too close in their shifting. A sword that could kill a god were it not for the fact it was made for something as idle as men ruling over other men. Even from outside the walls, the tower could be seen—pointing toward the heavens like a challenge to the gods, none of whom would strike it down for fear their flesh would be rent in the effort.
By the time they were in the shadow of that edifice, the hum of humans had grown to the point of being almost unbearable to Knalc as he looked about him, overwhelmed by the spectacle of flesh on display—copious, unending, and hateful of him.
From the Sword Tower, a man emerged, walking toward them as the crowds gathered for the arrival of Dhorena and Knalc.
This man was Zacharie Reggil and he was a man of simple extravagance. If you’d just given him a walking-look, you wouldn’t think he had wealth hoards more than many a man there. The simple band around his head was a gold purer than sunshine. His clothes were a more perfect purple than a dusk sky, but one would think them merely a flavorful black in passing. Rings adorned his fingers, but though the shape of those rings was not extravagant, the make of the metal was difficult indeed: platinum, silver, even sapphire, all magic-bent to be a perfectly smooth ring.
