Novels2Search

Chapter 58

Roots. Mirk tried to think of roots.

Roots stretching far into the cold, hard ground, curled around rocks and intertwined with those of neighboring trees, holding strong against wind and snow. Drawing up life despite the death behind and before him. The tree he’d wrapped his around was solid. Alive, its warm core drawn down deep until spring returned and coaxed it back out again into buds and blooms. Mirk pressed his cheek against its bark, trying to ground himself by studying its rough texture against his numbed skin.

It didn't work. His arms fell from around the tree's trunk and he reeled off to one side of it, heaving again. But he'd already thrown up everything left in his stomach. He'd been stumbling around gagging and coughing ever since he'd first stepped through the parade grounds transporter back in the City of Glass and reemerged in the middle of the thick, silent forest unfathomable miles away.

"You didn't have to come, Mirk. Yule didn't."

Mirk did his best to compose himself before turning to face the tired voice from behind him. Emir. The commander of the Twentieth stepped off the iced-over dirt track that connected the transporter to the distant funeral pyre, curling an arm around him. He supported most of Mirk's weight for him until the latest wave of nausea passed.

"I wanted..." Mirk trailed off, swallowing down another heave that brought up nothing. Though he hadn't been working alongside the other K'maneda, he was breathing hard, the sweat freezing on his face from the icy wind. Mirk scrubbed it off with the sleeve of his robes as he searched for a way to explain. "I wanted to see the Festival with everyone else."

"Not many people from the Twentieth ever come. Living or dead."

Mirk had seen that himself when he'd first come through the transporter. The sole division that'd gone through the transporter ahead of them, the Twenty-First Assassins, had dragged two sledges full of bodies to build the base of the pyre deep in the heart of the woods. The Twentieth Medical, on the other hand, only contributed six bodies, unidentifiable under the heavy white sheets they bundled all the dead in before sealing them away in the basement. They were healers who’d gone to practice for the guilds decades ago, Emir explained. They’d returned to the K'maneda at the end only because they had no family to mourn them and no gold for a grave that'd be safe from looting by necromancers.

Though Mirk was doing his best not to lean too hard on Emir, the solid feel of his mental presence and the security of his arm and the faint, familiar smell of whatever the head of the Twentieth smoked in his pipe was hard for him to resist. "I know I didn't have to come. But...methinks I owe it to everyone, at least once."

"Why didn't you have Genesis bring you?" Emir asked, as Mirk finally summoned the will to straighten up and politely duck out from underneath Emir's arm. "You seem to have less trouble with his magic than you do the transporter or the teleporting mages' spells."

Mirk shrugged. "He was busy with his men. I didn't want to be a burden to him."

Emir's pity came through clear to Mirk despite both their shielding, as the head healer repacked his pipe for what seemed like the tenth time that morning. A true testament to the strength of it — very little emotion ever made it through the thick walls around Emir's mind, honed and strengthened by angelic training. "You really don't belong here."

"Hmm?"

"Nothing." Emir glanced back toward the grim procession shuffling through the transporter. A dozen men were struggling with an overloaded sledge, half of them too drunk to know what they were doing and the other half too tired or indifferent. "The rest of your friends should be coming through soon. That's Eighth Cannon now. You'd think that lot would have a better grasp of physics..."

"Should we go help?"

"Save your strength," Emir said as he walked away, lighting his pipe with a flint fished out of the sleeve pocket of his robes. "I'm sure the Seventh's sledges won't be much better."

If the Eighth was coming through, that meant Mirk had been wandering around the forest near the transporter for hours, hugging trees and sniffling in the cold. It was hard to tell what time it was out there. The canopy overhead was thick, mostly pine, and what snatches of sky Mirk had glimpsed were clouded over so thickly not a hint of sunlight made it through to the ground. K'aekniv had said that the sun rose a few hours later in the forest than it did in the City that time of year. When Mirk had left the parade grounds with the Twentieth's sledge, it had been well before dawn, around four in the morning.

K'aekniv had drawn him a map of the site where the K'maneda's dead were burned each year, but Mirk hadn't grasped how distant it was until he'd gone through the transporter and felt it in his bones. The rough sketch K'aekniv had made with a bit of charcoal on the back of the torn apart remains of a spell paper had England and the City of glass at one edge, the Festival site on the other, and a lot of empty space between. The only definite place K'aekniv had known from memory was the position of his home, to the north of both the City and the Festival site and sort of in between them, on the edge of an ocean neither he nor K'aekniv knew the proper name of. But the half-angel had been able to provide Mirk with his own rough brand of measurements. If you walked from London to Kamenka, the place he was born in, K'aekniv had said, you'd be about a third of the way to the forest, which was near a river called the Lena. Mentioning it had only set K'aekniv off on reminiscing about Lina, and another girl who shared the name of the river that he'd known from the nearest village to Kamenka.

It all made Mirk feel very small and alone. He'd thought the gap between Nantes and London was vast, insurmountable. But now he was halfway around the world, or at least that's what it felt like. Only instead of crossing an ocean of salt water, like the mages who were off exploring the new world across the sea to the west of England, he'd crossed an ocean of trees.

He might as well have been in a new world. The forest around him was ancient, Mirk could feel, untouched by the hands of either mortal or mage, the voice of it unfamiliar and wild when compared to the ones he'd been in at home. And above it all was a silence that was more unnerving than peaceful, though perhaps that was due to everything being blanketed in snow that rose to the level of his knees the instant he strayed from the track connecting the transporter to the pyre.

No one else seemed particularly bothered by the distance or the silence. Then again, he supposed that new places must not have been so disorienting to those who weren't connected so strongly to the Earth. And all the other K’maneda went off on contract every week too, roving about realms Mirk would never set foot on to do their bloody work. It all must have seemed mundane to them, a hassle due to the cold and the ice, but nothing special. To Mirk, it felt like he'd been uprooted. If he ever tried to cross onto another realm, he'd surely die the instant he arrived.

Even though he was still on Earth, it still felt like he was dying. Mirk coughed, squaring his shoulders and following after Emir. He needed to stop being so dramatic. He joined Emir on the edge of the track to watch the procession of sledges and grumbling fighters, flashing the head healer a smile to reassure him that he was doing all right, despite his doubtlessly bedraggled appearance. "Thank you for looking after me, Comrade Commander Emir. I'm very grateful. If there's anything I can do for you at the infirmary when we get back, please let me know."

Emir managed a faint smile in return around the stem of his pipe, though his pity for him was still a gray pall against Mirk's mental shielding. "You can stay out of trouble, for starters."

Laughing weakly, Mirk gave another helpless shrug. "Well...methinks I can try my best, but..."

Abruptly, the hushed forest air was pierced by the sound of singing. The Easterners had arrived.

Their sledge was piled high with dead men, just like those of the Eighth, but the Easterners had the sense to lash them all down with ropes to keep them from rolling off. Three of the strongest men in their company, Slava at their lead, were hauling on a rope attached to the right edge of the sledge. And on the left was K'aekniv alone. He was the one singing, the only man able to suck in enough air to carry a tune while towing the sledge. A wave of relief washed over Mirk at the sight of them. There was something reassuring in their presence; it brought life into the forest, somehow, despite the pile of dead men they brought along with them.

Mirk hurried over, sliding in his useless clogs on the packed-down ice covering the road as he went. Luckily, he'd recovered enough of his strength not to fall on his face like he had several other times that morning. "Niv!" he called out, waving to catch the half-angel's attention.

K'aekniv perked up at the sound of his voice, his song cutting off mid-refrain. "Oh! Mirgosha! Where are all your healer friends, huh?"

"Comrade Commander Emir said not many come since we don't have so many...euh...people," Mirk replied, gesturing at the sledge. They continued down the track that'd been cut through the forest as they talked, K'aekniv adjusting the rope on his broad shoulder, wings flared out for balance.

"We brought enough to make up for it," K'aekniv joked, without looking back. "Not so bad this year. Forty-five. Some years we need to go steal another sledge from the Supply Corps."

The mound of half-frozen, sheet-wrapped bodies was nothing more than the quiet, mundane sort of tragedy that haunted everyday life among the K'maneda, at least for the men of the Seventh. Mirk wondered how many of them K'aekniv had personally recruited from their villages and brought to the City. Mirk tried to put it out of mind, focusing on the living instead. "Where's Genesis?"

"With his new people," K'aekniv said. "That bastard Jenks fucked off all the way. Didn't even come back to help them carry their people. So, Gen's doing it." The half-angel heaved a great sigh, looking up into the branches of the pines that formed a canopy over the track for guidance. "I feel sorry for them. Everything is so cold with Snegurochka. Dying for duty and honor and all that shit. Those people had families. That's the kind of thing you need to think of when you talk to them today. But Gen doesn't know what family is."

Mirk fell into step beside K'aekniv — for once, he didn't have to struggle to keep up. K’aekniv had a point. Even if a man wasn't married with children, he might still have parents, along with a whole host of brothers and sisters and cousins. Genesis had none of that, though presumably he must have come from someone, even if he didn't ever speak of his kin. Genesis only had himself and his fighters and the sparse handful of others he let into his austere life. For the most part, Genesis was alone. Alone against the war machine and the steady march of time.

When looked at from another perspective, though, that also meant that the K'maneda was the only thing approaching a family that Genesis had. In that way, every dead fighter was a lost brother. Mirk shook his head. It was hard not to brood over that kind of thing, considering the situation, but he needed to put a stop to it. It was making his headache and the churning in his stomach worse. "What's the Irish company like? I haven’t spent much time with the rest of the Seventh…"

"Eh, they're all right. Good people, all poor men from Ireland and up north. But they need some training. All skinny and sick, you know, from not eating right. But they're used to hard work. I'm sure Gen will have them going soon enough."

They were approaching the clearing in the pines where the pyre was being constructed, lifeless body by lifeless body. The quiet was broken by the sound of men calling back and forth to one another as they stacked the dead atop one another. When the unlit pyre came into sight, Mirk felt like vomiting again. The pyre had been nothing more than a wide circle of dead men on the ground when he'd gone there with Emir to arrange the Twentieth's dead, a ring of assassins with their bodies crossed over one another, all linked together in death in a way they would have resented while alive. It'd grown since then to a narrowing pile that was twice Mirk's height.

It was easy to forget how many K'maneda died over the course of a year with the bodies all hidden in the infirmary basement. The place was a giant warren of cubicles cut into the stone blockwork of the building's foundations, the air damp and heavy, lit only by dim grayish magelights that prevented the living visitors to the basement from fully appreciating the vastness of the network of passageways. Mirk always kept his visits short, scrambling back upstairs the instant he'd finished confirming the death of some unfortunate former patient. With fourteen divisions' worth of dead dragged out and stacked, the amount of suffering the K'maneda had endured over the past year was impossible to avoid.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Mordka!" K'aekniv shouted back at the train of Easterners who'd been following their sledge. "Quit trying to get your dick hard and get up here!"

A minute later, Mordecai appeared, looking a little annoyed, though Mirk could feel the remains of lighter emotions clinging to him. "You shouldn't talk about my wife that way," he grumbled, as he scrambled to help the others untie the ropes securing the bodies to their sledge.

"She's not your wife yet," K'aekniv countered, leering down at Mordecai.

"Shut up and do your own work, you asshole."

Mirk shook his head, laughing under his breath. There was no ill intent in K'aekniv's goading. It was simply the way things were among the Easterners: everyone who came into a bit of good luck had to be given a hard time about it at every turn. Not out of malice, but to ensure that they didn't lose their luck along the way, somehow. Mirk watched them add the first bodies to the pile — K'aekniv was the only man tall and strong enough to stack them directly, the rest having to depend on Slava and the other strong men to unload, while Mordecai used his teleportation magic to help boost the bodies high enough. Then he went off toward the rear, in search of Danu.

She had to be there, considering K'aekniv's comment. He found her near the edge of the clearing, a large pack slung over one thin shoulder that a woman without her inhuman strength wouldn't have been able to carry for more than a few feet. Mirk greeted her with a smile and a wave, which she returned with a breathless nod. "Can I help you, Danu?" Mirk asked.

Danu shook her head, adjusting the pack on her shoulder. "I didn't expect you to come."

"I didn't know you were coming either." It was technically true, Mirk supposed, though it was increasingly rare to encounter Mordecai without Danu lingering somewhere nearby, even while at work in the infirmary.

"It's not much, but the Festival is as close as we get to a holiday. And Morty felt like celebrating," Danu said, smiling to herself. Her hope was a faint warmth among the tired and melancholy minds of the fighters, a spark of light ghosting past Mirk's shields. "He made me haul out a whole kitchen set, practically..."

"I didn't know Mordecai liked to cook."

Danu laughed. "Morty? No, he's useless at it. It's all up to me and Niv. Morty says it's tradition where he's from to have a feast for all your family and friends when you announce your wedding. We decided the Festival is as good of a time as any."

Mirk glanced around the clearing and the woods beyond, at all the tired and dismal faces. He avoided looking back at the growing pile of bodies. "...really?"

"It's only like this before the ceremony. Afterwards, it's...well, it's the K'maneda. Everyone gets drunk all night, or at least the fighters do. And usually all of Fatima's girls sneak through the transporter. You can sort out the rest."

"At least they get to have fun once a year, I suppose," Mirk said. Though it seemed like a grim occasion to celebrate.

"Emir will probably send a half dozen teams through tonight to handle all the fights. There's no hard feelings, though, it's just how K'maneda are when they get drunk. You patch them up and they're right back at it like nothing happened."

"That's as good of a reason as any to stay," Mirk mumbled, mostly to himself.

"But why did you come in the first place?" Danu asked. "I know traveling is hard for you, especially this far."

"Methinks it's only right for me to learn more about you all," Mirk said. "It's no trouble, really."

Danu stared at him for a moment. Then she looked away, back off toward the Easterners, chuckling under her breath. "Genesis will be through the transporter with his new company soon. He might already be here. He was out on the parade grounds giving the captain and his second an earful about the best way to stack bodies when I left. Not the best way to start things off, but at least the lads will know what to expect from him now."

Mirk felt himself go red in the face, though he pulled up the hood of his cloak fast to try to hide it. Was he really so transparent? Yule had sworn himself to secrecy about everything they'd discussed when Genesis had nearly died in the wake of the Easterners' last contract, and Mirk trusted him. But it was hard to hide something so emotionally charged from another empath, especially one who he worked close beside every day. Mirk decided to let it go, telling Danu to come look for him if she needed help preparing for her wedding feast before trudging off down the track back toward the transporter.

There was no one there, not at the moment. Just as Mirk was about to go find a tree to lean against while he waited, the transporter crackled to life.

It was all very fitting, Mirk thought, dramatic and dark, though doubtlessly Genesis hadn't intended for things to be that way. The commander led the next group of men through the transporter empty-handed, long tendrils of shadow trailing behind him. Though the men following him with their sledge were all pulling hard, five on either side, the strain plain to be seen on their faces, the shadows were hauling along most of its weight. The pile on Genesis's new company's sledge wasn't as high as the Easterners' had been, but a moment later, a second sledge came through the transporter, the shadows helping that one along as well. The men of the Seventh's Irish company had suffered that year much more than the Easterners had.

For a moment, Mirk debated whether or not it'd be a good idea to join them. He ultimately decided to give it a try. The worst Genesis could do was ignore him. "Messire!" Mirk called out, as he headed down the track toward him. "Can I help? Is everything all right?"

Genesis didn't look down at him. But he did nod. "You didn't need to come here."

"I felt like I should." Mirk decided to change the subject right away — the last thing he needed was to get in some sort of philosophical argument with Genesis. "Are these your new fighters?" K'aekniv had been right. The men trudging along behind Genesis were much smaller than most of the Easterners, sickly and pale, half of them coughing into their sleeves. While everyone in the K'maneda had technically been through a war recently, the men Genesis led really looked it.

Genesis sighed. "Yes. But they are not...mine. They are no one's but their own."

"Their last commander must not have been very kind to them, methinks."

"Jenks was unconcerned with anything other than his pay. And...purchasing higher ranks with it."

"Are all the other companies in the Seventh like this?"

Genesis shook his head, once. "Predictably...Dauid gave me responsibility for the...ones he values the least. But they will recover. In time and with effort."

Mirk glanced back over his shoulder at the Irish fighters. While everyone who'd come to the forest that day was a little downcast, the Irish fighters looked truly miserable. They'd piled on every sweater and cloak and overcoat they'd owned, but most of them were still shaking from the unrelenting cold. "Maybe once all the...euh, people from the basement are taken care of, I can help some of them feel a little better. There's not much else for me to do here."

"It is not...necessary."

"No, but it can't hurt either. I've been resting for a few weeks now. Besides, messire, I could say the same thing to you," Mirk said, nudging at one of the tendrils of shadow that'd come to investigate who was disturbing their master. It was wrapped around his arm, probing his magic, though it wasn’t squeezing him. Perhaps it recognized him, somehow. That person who was always annoying Genesis, but who didn't pose him any threat. As soon as Genesis looked down at him, the band of shadow retreated. "It's kind of you to help them all," Mirk added, to emphasize his point.

"They would have preferred to handle it themselves. However, it would have...strained them unduly."

"I suppose these are all their old friends. They must feel like they owe them this much."

"These bodies are merely...shells. To be returned to the chaos from which they came. It does not matter who carries them."

Mirk wasn't surprised Genesis had that kind of cold perspective on the dead. But he also suspected that if the body in question was that of one of his oldest friends, K'aekniv or Pavel, he'd be carrying them to the unlit funeral pyre by hand. Mirk quickly pushed the thought from his mind, refocusing on the track ahead of them. Though the silence of the forest pressed in thick around him, it felt more bearable now that Genesis had arrived. The commander's own, deliberate sort of silence helped. And so did the hissing feel of his magic against Mirk's mind.

Once they reached the clearing, Genesis's new band of fighters were granted a reprieve as they waited their turn to heap their dead upon the pyre. Part of it had become unbalanced while Mirk had been down by the transporter, and K'aekniv and the rest were scrambling to put things right before the whole thing could topple over. Genesis joined in without prompting, lecturing the Easterners on proper technique as he used his shadows to nudge the stiff, sheet-wrapped forms this way and that atop the pyre. Mirk took it as his sign to withdraw, falling back among the men of the Irish company as they watched the arguing going on at the base of the pyre with blank expressions and unseeing eyes.

Bracing himself against the inevitable pain, Mirk lowered his mental shielding partway, examining the men with his magical senses rather than turning around and staring at them. His initial thoughts had been right: most of the men's magic felt unsteady, weakened, their life-giving cores wavering under the strain of coughs and infections or sheer exhaustion. Though he didn't turn all the way, Mirk surveyed them out of the corner of his eyes, to try to get a sense of their ranks. Most of them all wore the same things, the standard issue Supply Corps black uniforms and overcoats, although most had woolen sweaters and hats and mitts as well, handmade and adorned with thick cabling by a left-behind wife or mother. But two of the men, standing near the front, had better boots than the rest. Mirk got the impression that they'd chosen to put themselves between the others and the Easterners, just in case. And between the rest and Genesis.

Mirk went over to the pair, going to the nearer and taller of the two. He had a ruddy beard, much like Dauid's, though his was tidy and clean despite the appalling condition of most of his clothing. And the horrible infection Mirk could feel brewing in some injury that was hidden by his shirtsleeve. He stepped into the man's line of sight, dipping his head rather than performing a full bow. "Excuse me, comrade. I couldn't help but feel that your arm is hurt...if it's no trouble to you, I can heal it for you, if you'd like."

The bearded man stared at Mirk for a moment, then turned to look at his friend. All the other man did was shrug, still watching the chaos happening at the base of the pyre. K'aekniv was scolding Mordecai for "thinking about his dick too hard instead of his work", while Genesis was meticulously straightening every last body on the pile, brows pulled down in concentration. Now that Genesis had arrived, most of the Easterners and other fighters still working on the pyre took it as their cue to rest, knowing full well that no matter how careful they were, their work wouldn't be nearly as meticulous as Genesis's. Though the commander still allowed the men to unload each of the bodies from their sledge and offer them to the shadows themselves, Mirk noticed.

Mirk knew it might be better to leave well enough alone. But he tried a different tactic instead of withdrawing. He took his bag off his shoulder and rummaged inside it, finding a fresh roll of magicked bandages and a potion that was good against infection, though it wouldn't be nearly as effective compared to Mirk pulling the sickness out himself with his own magic. He offered them both out to the bearded man, that time with a proper bow. "Please, comrade," he said. "It's important that you look after yourself. Your wound is infected, and in this cold, methinks it might only get worse if it isn't seen to..."

Again, the bearded man looked to his fellow. But that time, he spoke to him as well, in a lilting language that Mirk didn't understand, though he recognized it from when Danu and Yule got into particularly heated arguments. His fellow — shorter, thinner, bare-faced, with pale hair and eyes — sighed, finally acknowledging Mirk standing in front of them. "We don't need your pity, comrade healer," he said, in a low, heavily-accented voice. Mirk should have brought his translation charm.

"It's not pity, comrades," Mirk said, with an apologetic dip of his head. "I'm only doing my work, just like you are. And I also know Comrade Genesis. Methinks you'll all find him less...euh, troublesome if you're well. He's...hmm. Well, methinks he isn't the most understanding man on the best of days. And today is hard for him, just like it is for all of you. I only want to help make it easier however I can, if it's not a bother." Mirk paused, then offered out the bandages again. "And there's no price to you, of course."

The two men both relaxed then, though what caused it — his mention of Genesis or the assurance that he wouldn't try to pry any gold from them — was unclear to Mirk. The shorter, pale man squinted at Mirk as the bearded one unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeve, revealing an angry, oozing cut down the length of his forearm. "Oh. You're Genesis's healer, aren't you? The foreign one? I've heard about you 'round the tavern. Mark something," the pale man said.

Mirk smiled and nodded. "Mirk, yes."

"Sorry about that. Didn't know. Thought you were some noble bastard trying to scam us out of our gold." The pale man worked up an attempt at a smile as he extended his hand. "Sean, I'm the captain. And that's Conall, my second. Doesn't do English too good yet, same as most of us. Why bother, right?"

He shook Sean's and Conall's hands in turn, trying not to be too put out by how easily they'd recognized him as high-born. He hadn't worn his nice cloak, even, though that one was warmer. But he supposed that they were as good as reading the small signs of rank and privilege as he was. And he'd recognized both of them as officers by their boots. "It's a pleasure, comrades. I'd be more than happy to help everyone who needs a little healing while you wait your turn," he said, glancing back at the pyre. Things were in full swing now, with Genesis and K'aekniv doing the majority of the work, the commander with his magic and the half-angel with his inhuman strength and height. "Though, euh...well, methinks you'll get a little help now that Genesis is here. He's very...euh, particular."

Now that their leaders had relaxed, some of the other men were drifting closer too, especially the worst off among them, the ones who were coughing and limping. Mirk gestured to Conall's arm with an encouraging smile, and he held it out to be healed rather than taking the bandages and potion from Mirk. Which made him feel a little better about things.

"I don't need any healing, but I'd appreciate you telling me what you know about him," Sean said, jerking his chin at something behind Mirk. Presumably Genesis. "Tough nut to crack, that one. Can't decide if wants to kill us all or help us. Need to make sure the lads are protected."

Mirk nodded as he put down his supplies and started work on the cut, taking Conall's hand in his own and pressing the other down on the cut as lightly as he could. "Bien sûr, Comrade Captain Sean. I'd be happy to answer all of your questions. Though methinks you really have nothing to worry about. Genesis really does care. It's just...hard to tell, sometimes."

That and he was unfairly biased toward being more forgiving of Genesis’s oddity than anyone else. But no one needed to know about that half of things.