Shadows of sacrifice, p.2
Shadows of Sacrifice, page 2
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Roderick walked through Brownmere, the cramped alleys of crumbling stone homes resembling many other districts in Lochton. There were no cobbled streets in Brownmere, though – Roderick squelched through sloppy mud and deep puddles instead. He did so with a deliberate slowness, dreading what he’d see when he made it home. The kids would’ve been by Moira’s bedside all day while he mined. They would’ve tried to keep her comfortable. They would’ve told her that Papa was coming, and that he’d have medicine. He wanted to curl up in the mud. The sorrow within was too heavy.
He reached his house. Gaping holes in the stone robbed his family of privacy and warmth. The wooden roof was half black, rotten from years of rainfall.
“Papa,” came the soft voice of little Rylee as the door creaked open. “Did you get some?” Her eyes met his. They were large and watered.
Roderick sighed and placed his hands on the dainty shoulders of his six-year-old daughter. Her scruffy brown hair looked like her pa’s beard. “Not today, Ry. Perhaps tomorrow.” He felt sick just saying it.
“She ain’t good, Papa.” Tears trickled down Rylee’s freckled cheeks.
He squeezed her, his eyes shutting just as tightly as his grip. He closed the door, dulling the rainfall and trapping the musty linger of the decaying roof. At least two or three more pans lay on the floor than when he left that morning, new leaks pattering inside. As he walked across the bare room, a whistling draught pimpled his arms. He stepped across a crimson rug, the only colour in the home, which lay ragged by a fireplace only managing a paltry flicker of orange. He drew back a curtain that led to a smaller room.
Roderick immediately caught the hopeful eyes of his nine-year-old son, Matfrid, perched on a stool holding the frail white hand of his mother. She lay in darkness, wheezing with every breath, covered by only a thin discoloured sheet. Her eyelids laboured to part slightly, and a small smile came across her withered face. “My love,” she said. “I missed you.”
Roderick’s heart sank. He’d never felt more like a failure. He stroked Matfrid’s thick hair, trying to find the strength to look his wife in the eye. When he did, all he could do was shake his head.
“It’s fine.” She closed her eyes once again. “You’ve done all you can.”
Roderick held back tears. He knew that wasn’t true.
“I can become a real letter runner, or even a goods carrier,” Matfrid said. Freckles dotted his cheeks, much like his sister. “They pay good coppers for that.”
“They won’t let you run letters out of the city ’til you’re much older, Mat,” Roderick replied. He also knew that the dangers of delivering letters and packages across the Isle weren’t something Moira would want on her mind.
“Please, Mat,” his ma said, “go take care of your sister.” Matfrid kissed Moira on the forehead and left her bedside, passing through the grubby curtain.
Roderick took his place on the stool and held his wife’s hand. It was icy and fragile. He remembered when her face used to be creased with laughter rather than scarred from boils. Her eyes, now a pale grey, used to be as blue as the sea. She had made that stone shack feel like a palace – a proper home for Rylee and Matfrid to be born into. Now, whatever demon had infected her, it had stripped it all away, leaving just a shell. But her resolve still lived. Most would’ve given up by now, succumbed to the agony and passed to the Kingdom Beyond. Moira fought. She did it for Roderick, and for Rylee and Matfrid. What was he doing in return? Roderick asked himself. He took a gulp and tried to steady his voice. “With the mining, and the kids’ work, I ought t’ be able t’ get you a dose within a fortnight.”
Moira slowly brought her other hand over and placed it on top of Roderick’s, barely enough strength to show she understood. If she made it two weeks, she surely wouldn’t survive another such wait. She pulled her hands away and turned towards the mouldy wall, a pained grimace plaguing her face. She clutched the sheet and held it as tight as she could. Roderick’s head dropped as he looked back towards the curtain. He saw his kids huddled by the fading embers. He closed his eyes, hoping the blackness would stop the hollow sadness within. But instead, his mind pestered him. What more can I do for her? Work longer and harder? There are not enough hours. Ask the kids to work more? They’re already pushed to their limits, and both so young. Steal? I couldn’t do it when the crate lay open in front of me. But I need to do something. Anything.
Moira smiled at him. The cloth on her head was gone, and her long, twinkly brunette hair waved in the breeze. The sun turned her skin a beautiful shade of pink, and she laughed… my, did she laugh. It was child-like, and infectious. Roderick’s entire being felt fuzzy. Their own little pocket of paradise in a world of grey, she called the park. And it really was. The grass tickled Roderick’s bare feet with a warmness. The flowers possessed more colour than all Lochton combined – vibrant blues, purples, yellows, reds, whites. They formed the most majestic mosaic of beauty behind Moira. Her long eyelashes gently came down, she puckered those shiny lips of hers, and she leaned in.
“Papa, wake up! Papa! Papa, please!”
Roderick’s eyes shot open. Rylee shook him vigorously, her freckled face soaked and terrified.
“Papa, help her!”
Moira’s body convulsed. Her eyes were open but had rolled to show only white. Her jaw was clamped, and dark veins shot down her white neck. The bed bounced up and down, the metal legs clanging against the ground over and over. Matfrid clutched her arm, trying to stop the frenzied shudders.
Roderick leapt to the bedside. “Let me in, Mat.” His stomach twisted; he wanted to be sick, but he had to act. He massaged his wife’s shoulders, but her jolts were so violent. Bang, bang, screamed the bed.
“Pa, what’s happenin’?” Matfrid cried.
“Mama,” Rylee sobbed.
“Just… hold on…” Roderick rolled Moira onto her side. His fingers went between her ribs, farther than they ought to go. They felt like frail twigs in a hurricane, moments away from snapping. “The pillow, Ry, please.”
“Is she hurt?”
“Rylee, please, the pillow!” Moira’s spine thudded against Roderick’s palms as the bed banged more.
Rylee rushed to her father with the pillow. “Please don’t go, Mama.”
Roderick lifted Moira’s head, her neck so stiff it would barely move, and slid the pillow underneath. “Come on, Moira,” he mumbled under his breath, feeling his own body tremble.
“Pa?”
Roderick turned to the kids. Their eyes were red from crying. “She’ll get through this.” He stroked his wife as if taming a wild beast within her. “Please, Moira, I need you.” Her arms and legs went limp, only her head and back offering a few final judders. Then they stopped too. The bed no longer clattered the floor. Moira was still.
“Is she…?”
Roderick placed his hand next to his wife’s mouth. He pleaded for it – just a trickle of warm air, please. He watched for a wisp of a cloud. Nothing. He felt for a pulse. Nothing. “Please, Moira. I’ll do anything.”
Roderick II
Roderick cannoned his pickaxe into stone, shattering it into a dozen pieces. Every swing released some of the overbearing worry, only for it to clamber back onto his shoulders within seconds. No matter how hard he swung, he couldn’t get the previous night out of his mind. Seeing Moira like that… her poor, brittle body shaking so violently… He smashed the pickaxe into more stone. The shudders up the bones of his arms only reminded him further. It fuelled a sickness filling him to the brim. Moira.
Some of his chiselled stone rolled near another miner. Roderick only looked at him, and it stopped the miner from trying to claim it as his own. Roderick’s face was taut – it had to be to keep everything locked inside – but he didn’t realise it was enough to make a man yield. He brushed the rain from his brow, spat it from his lips, and took a breath. But then the previous night came back to him. The kids had to watch that happen to their ma. They saw it all. And just the next day, they’d been left to deal with it alone. Roderick had to work. They still needed feeding. But mining just wasn’t enough any more. The previous night proved it. A dose of medicine just one day earlier, and maybe it wouldn’t have happened.
He mined until it turned so dark only the torches from the quarry and along the Lochton city wall offered any light. The foreman called an end to the day and the dozens of miners gathered their carved slabs of stone, loading them into separate barrows. Roderick bent over and his back cracked with a stiff ache. Rain dragged stinging sweat into his eyes as he packed his barrow, then he joined the torch-lit queue up to the foreman. The toils of the day gave off a foul, salty stench from the men. Waiting wasn’t what Roderick wanted. His mind turned to what lay ahead at home. His failure. What was he to do? It needed more than this job. Trying to keep his values in such an immoral city as Lochton wasn’t the making of a good man, but a weak and scared one. Roderick removed a hand-sized fragment of stone from his barrow and concealed it in his pocket. Moira would understand.
Once at the front of the line, Roderick turned over the barrow for the foreman. The foreman examined the amount, reached into his satchel, and paid Roderick a handful of coppers – though not enough for what King Erald had turned Lochton into. Roderick pulled a cloak heavy with water over his clingy top and trudged past the jagged crown banners, back within the city walls. The men all walked in silence, like the undead as they swashed through muddy puddles. No doubt they each had problems, but Roderick’s were the ones making him too sick to eat, and too heartbroken to sleep. What he planned to do… what he had to do… it wouldn’t affect others too much… would it? Was he being too selfish? Moira’s glazed eyes and hoary skin haunting him from the previous night drove him to answer, No. The tears of his children told him, No. It was about time he rose for them.
He reached the apothecary on the edge of Brownmere and checked both ways down the street – it was pitch black. And not a person in sight. So, he entered. Only the doctor was inside. All the shelves were empty.
“Ah, Rod,” the doctor said with a smile. “I thought you’d be comin’ over tonight. I was ’bout to close up.”
Roderick licked his lips and swallowed. His mouth was so dry. “Tha… thank you for waitin’, Doc.” He toyed with the coppers in one pocket, and the chunk of rock in the other, his fingers and palms moist.
“’Ow’s Moira?”
“She… she’s not good, Doc. We almost lost her last night. It… it’s gettin’ rough.”
“Sorry t’ hear that, Rod. Two vials, is it?”
“’Av t’ be just the one this time.”
“Of course.” The doctor turned to a trunk behind him and removed a padlock. “Your little ’ens dropped off their coppers earlier.”
Roderick bit his bottom lip. Matfrid spent every day running letters around the city for coppers, whilst Rylee scrubbed floors in the castle. It’s not what Roderick wanted for them, but to keep Moira alive, they had no other choice. Just as Roderick didn’t now, watching the back of the doctor’s head bowed into the trunk of medicine vials. A collection of those containing Moira’s maroon-coloured drug danced and waved at Roderick, clinking off each other like they were calling out. He pulled the stone from his pocket. One hit to the doctor’s head and all the vials would be his; medicine to keep Moira sustained for weeks, maybe months. One whack. That’s all it would need. It shouldn’t kill him. But then if it didn’t, he’d know where to send the soldiers. Roderick’s heart raced. Maybe if he just threatened the doctor instead. Again though, it could see him locked up. Then what would Moira and the kids do? It would kill them.
The doctor turned around. “Here you go, Rod.”
Roderick let the stone slip to the bottom of his pocket, and he took the vial. His shoulders sunk.
“I don’t mean t’ pile on the bad news,” the doctor said, his smile having faded, “but there’s word of Tannenbay doublin’ the prices again soon.”
Roderick’s gut churned. His hand tightened around the rock once more. That would be Moira’s end. But this isn’t me. His fingers went limp and released the stone. He paid the doctor as he always did and left the apothecary. He knew what he had to do. It was something he’d considered for a while, yet was always too afraid. Moira and the kids would never agree to it. They’d see it as cruel, maybe even evil. They’d think him giving up on them, but that wouldn’t be true. It would be a kindness, but they’d have to see the intention to know that. He wasn’t sure they would.
Rylee and Matfrid opened the door to Roderick, their glassy eyes and freckled faces meeting him with the same stab to the heart as always. They took the medicine and rushed to their ma’s bedside. Roderick dabbed himself with a scratchy blanket from the armchair, then followed them through the curtain. Moira was barely awake, her grey arm hanging out of the covers. The kids said nothing as they loaded the syringe with some of the medicine. The pitter-patter of leaks into pots counted down the seconds of their ma’s life.
Matfrid pierced Moira’s rubbery skin with the needle and injected the drug. They were used to it now. Rylee cried the first time she saw her mama stab herself. Matfrid held a firm face, but he too turned white and looked away when he could. Moira made the kids watch every day, numbing them to it, like she knew they’d be needed eventually. Then it shattered Roderick’s heart the first day Moira was too weak to inject herself. The syringe fell from her grasp like it was the heaviest thing in the world, and she panted like she’d been running for hours. Roderick went to do it for her, but Matfrid stepped in. Roderick’s eyes welled, equally proud and saddened. From then on, the children did it every day, helping their mama the only way they knew how.
The maroon liquid vanished within Moira, and she gave Rylee and Matfrid a hazy smile. It would be better for her in this state, Roderick thought, his mind still churning through what he needed to be do. The kids were to stay too. But where to start? What to say first? Rylee and Matfrid climbed into Moira’s bed, and each nuzzled an arm no thicker than the reeds growing in the lochs outside the city. Roderick lifted Moira’s limp hand. It was as cold as stone. Then his words left his mouth before he knew it. He just had to get them out. “I’m leavin’ Lochton.”
Anya I
Another attack from the savage tyrant was imminent, but this one felt different to Queen Anya Rawson. Her and the king’s prisoner had defended the kingdom well so far, but her motives were too unknown. Had she had enough of helping her captives?
“They’re coming,” said Queen Anya, rising from the sofa again and circling the royal chambers for maybe the dozenth time.
The squire fastened the second pauldron over King Ulrich’s shoulder. “Let them come,” said Anya’s husband. Ulrich stood at the window as the squire armed him, looking over his city towards the gates. His powerfully straight stance and his words should have been enough to calm Anya, but they did not leave his mouth with the conviction she wanted.
“They think we know their secret,” the queen said. Embers within the grand fireplace crackled in the brief silences between her hurried brushes across the carpet. “It is just like it was back then. They are ready to kill for it. But we do not know their secret. What if their secret is horrific? We need to know it. They think we do already, but we do not.”
“Please Anya, enough.”
I cannot help the way I think, Anya wanted to reply. I need your patience now more than ever.
The squire slid silver rerebraces up the king’s arms and latched them into place. “That was over four hundred years ago,” Ulrich said. “We know why they are coming. It is the same reason they always do. They want our lands, and that vile king wants his misguided revenge.”
The young squire fitted steel vambraces to Ulrich’s forearms and the king bounced them together with a clunk that echoed within Anya’s head. It made her shudder and think of her husband facing the horde that was coming. She rested damp palms onto the side table, then went back to the sofa, sat, rose, then returned to the table. “They do not stop though, Ulrich. We need to end it. End it for good.” She looked at him, his thick blonde locks shimmering in the sunlight almost as much as the golden crown atop his head. The sight always warmed her, even at these most difficult times. Why must he remove it and fight?
“We defend our city and our people because we can. We will not burn Lochton to the ground just because we also have that capability.” The king’s spine was as straight as the great oak tree depicted on the Verduran banner that hung within the chambers. The deep Verduran green was rooted in most of the lavish furniture, ornaments, and wall decorations within the room and castle. So too the dress that Anya wore, and the doublet that peeked out beneath Ulrich’s silver armour.
“We would be within our rights,” the queen said. “Nobody on the Isle would deny us that. There would be no consequences from the capital. We would be seen to be just. Not like them.” She returned to the sofa, her square jaw clenched so hard her teeth cracked.
