21 – 4
My hands stick to the crossbow's wooden stock, glued there by tacky, drying blood and a white-knuckle hold. The sick thrill of holding it – the weight of it and the power it holds – is pierced through, brought to utter ruin by the fact that there is no bolt. An old, familiar dread comes to take its place, seizing hold of my eyes and forcing them to see nothing but that which will kill me. It was there for the fire, for the plumes of smoke choking the night sky; for the bramble-beast, cruel and clawed and cutting; for the tunnel-thing, silent and seeking; and now it is here for an empty crossbow, strangled in the bloody-handed grip of an idiot girl.
It's funny, really; one of the only times I can bear to be near this thing – let alone touch it – and its worthless, absolutely pointless. I'd laugh if I could breathe.
I hear the last rasping, gurgling moments of the dying Windrunner. I hear Fishy, shuffling and uncertain, hissing breaths through his broken nose. I hear the crossbowman, speaking to me like I'm a spooked horse. His blurry form looms as he backs away in a slow roll of steps. His hands are up, palms pointed forward. There's care and caution in him, wariness in his every line. Realization strikes me like a fist; he's afraid of me.
He's afraid of me.
It doesn't matter that the crossbow is empty, its bolt lost. It doesn't matter that I'm so terrified I can barely see him, or that I can't see Fishy at all. It doesn't matter that I'm a girl, or young, or Royah.
It matters that Connall disappeared, gone without a trace. It matters that a Windrunner breathes her last behind him, slain before she knew it. It matters that I appeared as if from nowhere, covered in blood and half hidden from lamp-light.
Does he see a talon, long and curved, when he looks at my knife? Does he find my eyes when he searches for them, or have they been replaced by pits of pitiless shadow? Have I a ram's curling horns or a mouth of jagged fangs? Am I to him what the bramble-beast is to me? Am I your first monster, Windrunner?
A plea, plaintive and nasal. “Do something, Loren!” Fishy – beaten, drunken Fishy – stumbles over his heels, knocking into bottle-laden tables and long empty chairs. He leaves a trail of falling, breaking glass in his wake. “Do something!”
The rangy one – Loren – takes his eyes off me for but a moment, one he uses to glare at Fishy, his face twisted by fury and betrayal. “Fischer! Fischer, you rat bastard, get back here!”
His glare goes unseen and his words unheard. Fischer the coward climbs through one the broken windows, tearing clothes and skin on jagged shards of glass, and flees into the night. His babbled promises to return with help fade into silence. Poor, abandoned Windrunner, alone in the fading lamp-light with his first monster and a dead friend. She's over there, in a pool of her own blood. She drowned on it, I think. That's what it sounded like.
I should have made you watch, Windrunner. You made me.
You made me.
I stop aiming the crossbow. Let my arms fall, let it swing from a knife-empty hand. It catches Loren's attention, pulls him out of whatever thoughts might swim through a Windrunner's mind. The anger's gone from him, the fear with it, but betrayal remains, joined by resignation. “Don't suppose you'll tell me why, at least?”
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Why did Merigold do it?
Why did Pike?
He shrugs, “Had to try,” and lunges; not away from me, but at. He's fast; but I, who've always been swift, have been made only swifter by this miserable road I've walked. I swing the crossbow like a knotted club, the thin point of its metal limb scraping skin and bone just beneath his eye before burying itself into his nose. It catches there, stopped by thick flesh and cartilage, and his own momentum punches the stirrup between his eyebrows.
The stock jams into my breastbone, my wrist twinges and buckles, and I let it go. Twist away as it falls and lash out with my knife. I hit something, feel it part under the keen edge, and then I'm struck in turn. His fist collides with my hip, a blow with an oddly sharp pain that I don't understand until I look down.
A crossbow bolt protrudes from my side. I stare at it in shock, drawn from the bizarre sight of it in me by the sound of Loren's gruff cursing.
A long, thin line traces over his cheek, down the line of his jaw, and ends just before his ear. A red knot swells on his brow, and a hole bleeds sluggishly where the tip of his nose once sat. He gently touches it, winces, and looks at his stained fingertips. He looks to me, and I look back; both of us waiting for the other to move.
Then comes Jeremiah Morrow, blue-eyed and towering, an earth-marked spade held in hand.
- - -
Several things happen, all of them at once: first, eyes already narrowed by nature thin to blue-dark slits. They take the taproom in, pausing on the dead Windrunner, her red-painted killer, and the one still standing, his face marked by a thin, weeping cut. The anger in those eyes, ever-present and born of vast grief, ignites into rage. Jeremiah breathes in, short and sharp through his nose.
Second; Loren opens his mouth, the beginnings of a lie on his lips. In pantomime of sheer relief he breathes, “Oh, thank the Goddess you're here!” and says nothing after. That short, sharp breath in kills the words on his tongue. I think he meant to turn Jeremiah loose on me, to use that distraction to follow in Fischer's footsteps. More fool he.
Thirdly, finally, I seize the bolt embedded in my side and, with a cry, pull it out. I had thought myself acquainted with pain, that I knew it well by the scars that mar my body. I was wrong. The agony that results from that act is enough to wash away the world, leaving me adrift and insensate in a blind fugue.
The tide ebbs. My sight – and the world – returns. I'm on the floor, my legs folded up underneath me. One of my arms is outstretched, my knife a few inches from the tips of my curled, blood-stained fingers. The other lay limp across my stomach, soaked from elbow to wrist. More blood. Mine, this time. I don't know where the bolt is.
Sound comes next. My own breathing first, then my pulse's rush through my ears. Beyond that, the sounds of a fight: stomping feet and wordless shouts, falling fists and crashing wood. Loren comes into view, scrambling to put a table between him and Jeremiah's spade. He wields it like an axe, the flat edge humming as it splits the air, stopping only to throw the table aside. He hurls it from his path with one hand, storming through the gap with a thunderous fury in his every line.
They're coming my way. The realization comes slow, like the crawl of ice over still waters. Loren is, at least. I don't understand why. There's nothing here that could help him.
Oh.
Right.
I'm here.
He must mean to either take me hostage or use my knife against Jeremiah. I can't allow that. I reach for my knife, willing my fingers to cross those scant inches and wrap around the sticky, stained hilt. It's hard; my uncooperative hand shakes and fumbles. I brush against it once, twice, and on the third try curl my fingers over and scoop it into my palm.
Just in time. They're here. Loren's heel drops onto my outstretched arm. I don't feel it. I don't feel anything. I know this feeling, or lack thereof. It's as familiar as the dread that paralyzed me before. I'm in shock.
“Wait!” Loren's voice is pitched high, hoarse with exertion and desperation. “Just – just wait, alright?! We can talk about this, can't we?”
No, Jeremiah's silence answers.
So Loren tries again. “Is this about the windows? The drinks? We didn't know you still owned this place, it was empty!”
Jeremiah breathes like a storm-herald wind.
Once last time, Loren tries. “Look, I have – ”
He starts to, at least, before I stab him in the calf. It takes every last ounce of effort that I can muster to rise up on an elbow, take the knife from my pinned hand, and drive it through his leg. It cuts through canvas trouser and skin, sinking a quarter of the blade's length before stopping. If its edge weren't so keen, I doubt I'd have gotten that far.
Loren looks down, away from Jeremiah's approach. What does he see in my eyes? Cruel joy, pitiless shadow, or something else? Whatever he finds, he takes it to his grave. The spade's iron blade flattens his face and knocks him to the floor. He's stunned, lips split, teeth shattered.
He stares glassy-eyed up at Jeremiah, who brings the spade up over his head and down with a snarl.
Crunch.