“The airship’s back,” said Andor.
“Shit.” Farisa looked in the direction of the others. “Should I go—?”
Andor crouched behind a mudbrick wall. “We help the most by staying hidden.”
“I’d like to—”
He put a hand on hers. “I know.”
Though she knew all lines of sight went two ways, she struggled not to peek. Five of the people she cared most about were, in a literal sense, under crisis. To give herself a minute of distraction, she placed a tough elastic band over the prongs of a forked stick that she handed to Andor.
“What’s this for?”
“These.” Farisa had made twenty-three Liths of Sophya. “You’ll each have three. The stones seem to be the only thing that kills a ghoul, right? The problem is that throwing a tiny object at a fast-moving enemy isn’t easy. There’s too much air resistance. They’re too irregular for any kind of gun.”
“Where’d you get the rubber?”
“That is why I had Saito dig up blackrue roots.” She broke one she hadn’t used, producing a milky latex. “For coagulation, I used the last of our vinegar. The yellow rocks I had us all collecting were—”
Andor smiled. “Sulfur, to harden it.”
“Correct. We’ll each have a slingshot.” She set a pebble in the band, pulled it back, and launched the stone five times farther than she could have thrown it. “If we encounter something like a ghoul again, it will help.”
The rest of their time, they waited, hidden from the airship’s sight by earthen walls that must have belonged to a wine cellar or granary. Farisa twisted the ydenstone ring she’d found in Switch Cave. She had never thought herself the kind to wear jewelry, but she liked this piece. Diamond or sapphire could be bought; this ring had a story.
Ydenstone. Ydenja, Lyrian, winter—more rarely, ice or snow. Winter stone? Snow stone? Appropriate for the month of December, although there is no winter here. She missed cold—true cold, the crisp frost of a Tevlaon night.
She leaned back and rolled her head against a dirt wall. “Why do the Globbos even want me? Hampus Bell has all the wealth and comfort a man can need. He must have thousands of rings just like this one on my finger, buried in some vault he’s never even visited. He has power over every man and woman who has ever spent a grot. What is left?”
Andor stretched out his legs and looked at his shoes. “Immortality, I suppose.”
Farisa laughed. “I can’t help him with that.”
She looked up at the darkening sky.
“I suppose it frustrates him to know that, if there’s any winning or losing of this game we’re all in, we don’t learn which was which until it’s all over.”
“If we ever do.”
She picked up a gray stone and tossed it down the eastern side of the grass mound. “One who lives forever can’t ever lose, but also can’t win.”
“I’m in no hurry to leave this life,” Andor said. “I must admit I don’t have much belief in any of that.”
“Does the existence of magic ever...?”
“Make me believe in deities? No. That the dead can live, I have seen, but in no form I would prefer over oblivion.”
“I see.”
“Not that any of it seems to be a choice.”
“Faith is hard for me,” Farisa admitted. “Let’s say there’s a God. Why did She—my people believe it’s a She, but who knows?—give this world, Her prize creation, over to its worst people?”
Andor looked away. “I can only say why I lost belief. I learned too much. I studied a hundred world religions, and each one insisted all its gods were real, while each other religion’s gods were either primitive myths or, worse, agents of evil. The fairest conclusion seemed to be that all are equally false.”
“That doesn’t refute the existence of a god. That’s merely a modeling principle.”
“Very true. To be fair, I didn’t study all faiths. Mostly Teroshi religions, which are all Matra faiths.”
“Like the Vehu.”
“Precisely, but they’re unusual among Matra religions because they only have one God, while they blame human misunderstanding for evil’s existence. Most of those doctrines have a benevolent God and a malicious, lesser and false, so they refuse to call him a deity at all, diminishing him with names like... Imp, Devil, Fiend. Priest of Maggots, Lord of Ifnyri.”
“The Beast,” Farisa said. “The Monster.”
“The Dark Man is my favorite.” Andor laughed. “A thousand names for the same guy. A shared contention among these faiths is that this world, the material plane of wealth and station, belongs not to the true God but the evil one.”
“That seems credible. If the world already belongs to the Devil—”
“No, Farisa.” Andor’s voice took a sharp edge. “Nothing gave money nor power to the worst people before there were people. The Geese—the Globbos, as you call them—take those things. This makes you wonder about the supposed best people. Why do we let it happen?”
“God must be angry at us,” Farisa said.
“He—”
“Or She.”
“—may be.”
“Sometimes,” Farisa confessed, “I consider that my existence might be an expression of Her anger—that I am a storm that would not exist but for an electric fury in the vapors.”
A flash came from the northwest.
“You’re a talented woman, Farisa. Believe in gods or don’t, that’s not my call. If, for some reason, we were never to speak again—if fate forced us to part ways—I’d ask one thing of you: never make yourself God. There’s too much of that in the world.”
Farisa nodded.
The interval between the first flash and the low rumble indicated that the explosion was more than a mile away; she couldn’t help but peer over the wall to see that the airship had caught fire.
She and Andor looked at each other and her mind simulated a dialogue. This isn’t the end of the danger, is it?
Hell no. They’ll have parachutes. They’ll have time to get off. There’ll be survivors.
So we better prepare for battle, right?
Right.
She opened her arms to hug him. “In case... you know, in case.” She stepped toward him. “It has been a pleasure to know you.”
“Likewise.”
They hugged. She could tell that Andor didn’t do that often.
Some distance away, Mazie and Claes and Eric and Saito and Runar and their animals were running for their lives. The airship, rather than drop like a rock after its explosion, had come down slowly enough that a person with his wits about him could have survived by a well-timed jump. They could also hear the whoops of hungry orcs behind them.
Between breaths, Claes asked, “Have you seen any crew?”
Mazie looked over her shoulder. “No, but that doesn’t mean much.”
Runar said, “I still feel the presence of evil. Worse than orcs.”
Once they were gathered at the top of Lethe Tell, covered in a mix of grass and low brush, the orange sun had cracked itself on the horizon and was slipping off the sky.
“Where’s Farisa?” Runar asked.
The mage emerged from behind the Tell’s single tree. “I’m here.”
Mazie embraced Farisa. “God, I missed you.”
Farisa pressed her forehead into Mazie’s collarbone. “I know. Me too.”
Mazie planted a kiss on Farisa’s perfect lips, and Farisa kissed back. No tongue, no time for that. Runar and Saito offered profuse thanks to Andor for having kept her safe; he replied that she had done as much for him. Farisa noticed Eric’s bandaged arm and asked if he needed her to heal him. “I’m good as new,” he said as he swung a small sword.
“We’re all alive,” Claes said. “Seven out of seven.”
Farisa said, “The animals?”
Ouragan, two untas, and one husker had survived.
“They killed one of each,” said Mazie.
Runar said, “Unfortunately, we’re thick in flashfire.”
Andor said, “The ground is dry.”
“It is, but I can see the vapor. I wish I had recognized it the last time.”
“No guns,” said Claes.
“No fire spells,” Farisa said to herself.
Claes said, “Are you sure a fight’s coming to us?”
Runar pointed in the direction of an aura only he could see—the mustard color of hunger could have belonged to something wild, but no animal clustered so tightly, and the sharpness of the miasma’s swirl suggested a few humans or humanoids were among them. “There. It’s wave upon wave of malice.”
Mazie looked in the same direction Runar had pointed, seeing only grass and darkness. Anxiety tightened the cords in her neck. The roar of the flaming airship had quieted and disturbing sounds rose. Her chest hurt; her heart’s electricity was spreading through her torso. No guns, for flashfire. My right arm’s gone. What use will I be?
Farisa said, “We need to talk.”
“I imagine we do.”
They walked over to the eastern side of the Tell and tucked themselves inside a waist-high passage.
“We all owe you many thanks,” Farisa said.
“You know.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Hours of study—and a lucky guess. I didn’t think Flare Powder was real, but...” She shook her head.
“You’re upset.”
“Upset? Not at all. You saved our lives, Mazie. I’m... worried.”
“You think I’ll get the Marquessa?”
“Magic and the Marquessa are the same force. You have danced with her, and she decides when the music stops.”
Mazie leaned against the rock wall. “I feel no illness thus far.”
“I hope you never do. When you use magic, though, it can create entanglements. You did the right thing.” She put a hand on Mazie’s bare shoulder. “You absolutely did, but if you see or feel anything worrying, tell me. We’ll figure this out later.”
The ground’s rising shadow continued to take color from the sky.
Mazie said, with her eyes deepened by fear, “I’m sorry, Farisa. I’ve never been scared like this before. I’ve never ’ad anything to lose, but now I do.”
“I’ll be with you the whole way, no matter what. I love you, Mazie. I love you so fucking much.”
Claes shouted, “Orcs are coming!”
The two ran back and joined the other five.
Farisa counted her Liths of Sophya—twenty-three, still twenty-three, three sevens plus two—and handed a slingshot and three stones each of them. “Finest rubber this side of Portal.” The noise of the orcs, now visible on the flat plain, was akin to a locust swarm. “If you see a ghoul, use one of these stones.”
Claes handed Farisa a shortsword. “Since you’ll have to hold your fire.”
She nodded.
He addressed the group. “Because of the flashfire, this is going to be some old-style fighting—shields, swords, hammers. Saito can use his crossbow. There is one rule—don’t blow us all into the sky—and no others. No commands, no restraints. Don’t die. Keep yourself alive, keep each other alive, keep our animals alive. That’s it.”
Claes swallowed and looked downhill.
“Let’s size up our position.”
The northern flank of the Tell had a mudbrick wall that could be scaled, though even a fit person would require a minute or two to do so. The east, partially excavated, had a maze of boulders and old walls that would force all advances into a single channel, which Andor and Farisa had already blocked earlier that day. The southern side of the hill, steep in addition to being covered in thick, tall brush, demanded caution but would slow their adversaries considerably, leaving their western slope most exposed. All of them donned twenty-pound leather jackets. Farisa pulled the animals to center—she had found a depression on the hill that would keep them out of view—and practiced control of her shortsword on the weeds. Mazie donned a device Andor had made that affixed an iron shield to her half-long arm, and grabbed a war hammer for the other one. Eric gathered heavy stones and add them to the pile Andor and Farisa had built at the northern wall. Saito, Claes, Andor, and Runar, weapons drawn, formed a shield wall facing west as the orcish noise of the darkness grew.
Claes said, “There’ll be hundreds of dead bodies here tomorrow morning. Let’s hope none of us are among them.”
Farisa looked down to see Ouragan at her feet, tense and purring loudly, but this was the purr of distress, not contentment.
“You,” she said as she picked the cat up and put her atop an unta. “You stay safe with the other animals.”
Farisa rubbed three Liths of Sophya together in her left hand; she looked at the ydenstone on her right ring finger and tried to pray in silence but struggled to form words, even in her mind.
“The Geese are leading the orcs,” said Andor. “I see one.”
Claes raised a spyglass. “Where?”
Andor pointed. “He’s carrying that two-handed lance with a rather... macabre decoration.”
Mazie said, “It’s that severed torso that was hanging from the airship. Orc bait.”
“Sick fucks,” Claes said.
“He gets no closer,” Saito said as he fired his crossbow.
The Globbo, bleeding from the chest, stumbled. His lance fell over and a second Globbo tried to retrieve it, but both men were surrounded by orcs, who did not care about rank or orders when it came to the taking of a meal. A third Globbo, to dispel the frenzy and recover the morbid banner, fired his pistol, setting off a yellow fireball that consumed him. An ogre, gleaming helmet sixteen feet above the ground, slammed a massive club into his side, shattering his spine and ribs, then stomped out the wrecked body’s flames as if it were a rug.
The first of the enemy to arrive was a stout orcling; Claes swung his sword, decapitating it. Runar lopped off the arm of a slender, tall orc, then brained the assailant with his shield, causing it to fall and roll down the hill. Saito’s crossbow bolt opened the throat of a probably female orc whose mouth dripped with fresh blood. Andor, driving forward with his massive legs, smashed his shield into a charging orc with such force Farisa heard its bones break. An orcling grabbed Eric’s arm and tried to bite him, but Mazie’s hammer crushed its neck; a second blow left it seizing on the ground. Claes eviscerated a tall, thin orc that rather ineptly swung a chain mace. Saito’s fire struck an orc in the right eye, causing it to fall backward on the ones behind it. Runar half-sworded an orc that had come upsettingly close. Farisa sliced a rushing orc’s chest open, and Mazie’s hammer blow killed it. Runar took a sword blow, but his leather armor deflected it, giving him an opening for a fatal wound. The orcs, realizing the people on the hill were formidable, seemed to advance slower, and Mazie realized that a number of them had broken off and would try to scale the northern wall.
“Eric and I will take the rear,” she said to Claes.
“Good idea.”
A club-wielding orc had come through the southern brush, circumventing the men’s shields. Farisa, having hidden herself behind a boulder, sliced its upper thigh with her shortsword. Blood flew everywhere; the air smelled of it. The orc, not fallen yet, swung its bludgeon—Farisa dodged, and the club shattered into splinters against a rock. She scored another wound on the orc’s other leg, this time exposing bone. The orc jabbed at her with the splintery remains of its club failing to pierce the padded leather of her chest but striking her just below the heart, causing breath to skip out of her. Her knees weakened. Andor, just in time, turned around and swung a greatsword, removing the orc’s weapon hand. Farisa, saved by this assistance, drove her sword into the assailant’s guts and watched as its eyes went vacant.
Eric yelled, so she ran to the northern wall. Orcs had been trying to scale the mudbrick, and he had been dropping stones on their heads, and this had worked nine times out of ten, dislodging and often killing them, but a gangly one, with a spider’s speed and dexterity, had evaded him. Mazie swung her hammer at her knee, breaking it, and pushed him over the wall, but a second one that moved just like him followed. Farisa swung her sword at it, but it grabbed the blade and jerked it out of her hand, unhindered by pain in his own bleeding palm. A wave of dread erupted from Farisa’s lower chest; she stomped on its bare toes. Eric’s thrown stone collided with its head, causing it to snarl and flare its nostrils, but it did not lose balance. She stepped back, but her boot got caught in a wedge between two rocks and her foot was stuck. She did not want to use the blue, but she did not want to die. The orc reared back for a punch, but Mazie’s hammer blow to the back of its head knocked it out. To be sure it was dead, Farisa severed its neck.
Claes screamed, drawing her back to the west. The men at the wall had slain about thirty orcs, and the wall of dead bodies was slowing the advance of the living, but they were visibly more tired than a minute before. The man’s forehead had a red gash on it; he was struggling to keep balance, reliant on Runar to hold him up. A second stone flew overhead. A third grazed Farisa’s upper arm, tearing the leather of her jacket.
Farisa’s eyes met the slinger’s; he was an orc-child, but the size of a grown human, and was riding a husker. “Saito! Scare his mount!”
Saito’s crossbow bolt grazed the husker’s temple—doing no harm, but enraging it. The animal’s low vibrating sound reminded Farisa of a door being slammed over and over again in succession. The animal bucked, then trampled its orcish rider; it escaped the throng in a hurry, goring five or six orcs with its heavy horned head on the way out.
Claes regained his balance and swung back into the fight. Farisa could hear Eric and Mazie shouting; she looked back to see that pressure had increased on the hill’s back side. A pack of orcs was about to break through.
“Runar!” she shouted. “Guard the rear!”
She took his place in the front wall, holding his massive shield and stabbing orcs as they attempted to get around. Her arms were sore; the force against her shield rattled her, every blow filling her stomach with nausea and hatred, and she knew her bodily strength would not hold out forever, but she had no choice. The orcs were now coming in waves, just as rain in a heavy squall formed sheets, and two giant hailstones of ogres—twice a man’s height, matching a human sprinter’s speed on their stride alone—had also worked their way to the front.
No human force or weaponry or formation would stop creatures fifteen feet tall, and one club blow, even with armor, would be lethal, causing Farisa’s fear to act before the rest of herself. A glowing yellow spot had appeared in front of her and she found herself, with desperate exertion in light of flashfire’s presence, directing the pink-white matter into the ydenstone on her finger, as if stuffing a sack with too many leaves, and to her amazement the gem turned purple and the spell changed color—to bluish-purple—on exit. The air snapped frozen, a jet of fog slammed into the ogre’s chest, and it collapsed, dead of frost.
And there is my spell for ice.
The second ogre did not die, but was slowed enough that the two orcs behind it were able to take out its legs; they toppled it, then one slit its throat to kill it, and they began to feed.
Claes, Saito, and Andor continued to kill the orcs that tried to breach their defenses, but an orc broke through their shield wall. Farisa slashed the orc’s back-heel tendon with her shortsword, causing it to tumble, and then drove the blade through its chest, slicing its leather armor. To her surprise, this did not kill it. The orc slammed its fist on Farisa’s knee, causing her entire leg to whiten with pain. Claes, who had fallen back from the frontl, delivered a sword blow to its neck. It slumped over, stripped of the will to fight, and bled out. Claes and Farisa traded glances; he was growing exhausted. The enemy continued trying to spill over their flank, trying to rush them, trying to take the southern approach. Farisa’s sword arm hurt with every strike. Saito, alternately ducking behind his shield and peering over it, reloaded and fired his crossbow—one-handed firing, with the other holding the shield—at remarkable speed. Some orcs died silently, and some squealed as their skin tore open and their innards spilled out; some died motionless, while others twitched in the bloody grass. At least a hundred had been killed—some had become distracted by the edible flesh of fallen comrades, but others were intent on the delicacy atop the hill. Farisa, her shoulders tiring rapidly, feared the battle was not one-fifth over.
The three men standing between her and violent oblivion needed relief, in any amount.
“Mazie, can you spare Runar?”
“We can!”
“Come back!”
He did. To give these men better defenses, Farisa went into the blue and—eyes closed, point-of-self about forty feet beyond her body—gathered as many orcish swords as she could, twisted them around each other in pairs, and scattered caltrops across the field. The mob of orcs continued to press forward, but the frontrunners’ faces contorted in agony as the blades tore their legs and feet open; their own terrified hesitation sent waves of dread—battlefield back pressure to induce a rout—through the advancing throng. The battlefield stung of blood and sweat and shit—but also stomach acid, as if cannibalistic hunger could itself fill the air. A hunched-over, smallish wrinkled orc crashed into Farisa’s shield. She slashed its belly with her shortsword. Its mouth opened in shock and its teeth were gray; it had probably been an elder of sorts. It fell over backward.
Another ogre charged the mound; it had struck six or seven orcs with its mallet before getting halfway up Lethe Tell. Saito’s crossbow bolt struck its pelvis, but no blood came. Once it was looming over the men and their shield wall—a pathetic sight, in comparison to its massive figure—Andor thrust his sword up into its belly. The ogre lurched a bit and Farisa heard the blade scrape its spine. Andor was unable to get his sword out in time, so the ogre swung its mallet low, breaking his thighbone. Andor shouted in a foreign language and buckled as the bones in his leg shattered like glass. Claes drove a sword through the ogre’s groin, slicing the femoral artery, unleashing a geyser of blood that painted the man’s face red. Runar distracted the ogre with a feint to the same spot on the other leg, and Saito’s thrown knife landed squarely in the ogre’s chest.
Andor, face crushed into a grimace of pain, shouted. “I need the tripod. From right of the husker carriage.”
“I’ll get it.” Farisa said. The device—a heavy, crank-powered weapon on three short legs—came with a satchel of bolts. By the time she got to Andor, he had laid down on his stomach, shield turned horizontal to protect him even though he was prone.
“I can do something for the pain,” Farisa said as she placed the tripod at Andor’s eye level.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Pain? Pain is for later.” He put a bolt in the weapon’s chamber, cranked it, arched his back to lift his shield, and pulled the trigger, hitting an orc between the eyes. Then he lowered the shield, loaded a bolt in the device, and again started cranking.
Runar changed position to guard Andor. An orc attempted an overhead club blow on the downed man; Runar severed its knee. Saito, rushed by an orc who had evaded his crossbow fire, took a cut from a rusty dagger before grabbing one of his razor-sharp, pointed bolts and, rather than loading it in the bow, used it by hand to stab the enemy’s eye. The orc’s body shook violently; it collapsed. Claes, with his shield, bashed an orc with such force that it rolled down the hill, taking out another’s legs. Steel clashed on steel, curses flew in alien languages, bones crunched and bodies collapsed; the world smelled of endless, slavering hunger that inspired nothing but hate.
She heard Mazie shout. “We need help!”
Andor said, “I’ll be more useful back there.”
Farisa looked back. “You’re right. I’ll help you walk.” The man got up by the use of his shield. She carried the tripod weapon and let him lean on her, though he winced as the pain worsened. Once there, he nodded in thanks, laid himself down, and took aim on the increasing number of orcs chancing the rear ascent. He could not crank and fire bolts fast enough to get them all, but his fire drove the survivors into positions where Mazie and Eric could brain them with falling rocks.
Farisa returned to the front, slashing orcish thighs and bellies with her shortsword, bucking against massive bodies with her shield, praying that the jostling and force would lessen or cease, because the forces of these collisions were sickening. It would only take one slip to end her life. The odors of battle were beginning to make her retch; as it had in prior fights, the black curtain of fatigue was coming on. Every time her sword entered an orc’s body, every time her shield blocked a mallet or blade, her legs tensed up in terror of losing balance. She screamed in rage as she slashed open an orc’s back leg tendon.
A fast-running figure had flanked them from the wooded south; she had failed to notice it until it had reached their animals. It slew an unta—“Fuck!”—but had no time to feed, because the husker bucked the unarmored miscreant twenty feet into the air. The body broke when it landed.
Twilight had waned; it was fully night. One could no longer see the battlefield’s extent, and although ogres were thankfully rare, there were figures among the orcs with ten times the dexterity of anything else, zipping around to dine on the fallen orcs.
“Ghouls!” Farisa yelled.
She readied her slingshot and fired a Lith of Sophya as a fiend bolted toward. She scored a hit, and it disintegrated into a smoking black sludge that slid down the hill. Claes did the same. Saito fastened a Lith to a crossbow bolt and fired, killing a third ghoul. The fluid did not catch fire, thankfully, and a few of the orcs slipped in the stuff as they tried to come up the hill.
Runar yelled, “Farisa, hide!”
“Hide?”
Unimpeded by corpses and caltrops, a tiny orcling clambered like a mutant land crab, seeming to slip between Saito’s crossbow bolts and the men’s blades. Runar slammed his shield into the thing; it bounced away, uninjured. Claes cleaved the menace at its trunk, painting the grass with its gray-black guts. To be sure it was dead, he slammed his shield into its neck, severing a misshapen, water-heavy head with vacant eyes. Flesh had rotted off its ribs before it had even got here, indicating it had been long dead.
No orcling. Ifnyr.
She remembered Saito’s warning about ifnyri and their ability to enter mages. (“We’d be fighting Farisa.”) She was endlessly thankful that it had not come close to her. Claes had broken formation to kill the thing, so an ax-wielding orc had come through the shield wall and charged Eric, to take him from behind. Farisa, in the blue, jerked the blade away. The orc held on with desperate strength, but had lost balance; Mazie took the opportunity to drive a dagger into the back of its knee, causing it to buckle. Once it had fallen, Farisa stomped on its exposed neck, causing it to twitch and choke. She decapitated it with her sword, then—never to let a good weapon go to waste—crashed the head onto the face of a north-wall climber, causing it to lose its grip and fall to the ground.
The men up front had reprised their formation during a lull in the orcish advance. The enemy had made way for four ogres, all in heavy plate mail, each of them wielding a club as broad as a young tree. The ground thundered under their massive feet; in spite of plate armor half an inch thick, the ogres seemed unhindered by the weight.
“I’ll hit one of the ogres,” Farisa said to Saito. “Then you hit it. Got me?”
Saito nodded.
Farisa forced herself into the ydenstone, and its chilly crystalline corridors seemed to resist her heat of battle—she had not felt this the first time—but, refusing to be spurned, allowed it to stretch her sense-of-body to a million icy points—the wintry stasis made her scream, as if she were sinking into a white mirror—but, when she regained her senses, own shouts loud and alien, she had just enough time to redirect that blue-green bolt of supernatural cold into the front-running ogre—a giant, twenty feet tall and equally wide. The obese figure looked down in shock as its armor turned tin white. Its shaggy hair thickened with rime ice and its skin lost all color.
“Hit him!”
“He looks dead enough!”
“Dammit, hit him!”
As Saito’s crossbow bolt flew, Farisa accelerated the razor-pointed missile to ten times its original speed, causing the flash-frozen ogre to explode with a loud adipose crack. Shards of ice-fat, sharp as ceramic, blasted the ogres and orcs. The ogre just behind, torn asunder by shrapnel, melted into a slush of blood. The third ogre’s head snapped off its neck as an icy scrotum slammed into it. The fourth one, the lone survivor, had taken hundreds of cuts in the explosion, but was still coming. Claes used his steel shield to block its gargantuan cudgel. The club shattered and Claes’s shield bent, and the man fell. Saito, still loading his crossbow, would not strike the ogre in time, and Runar was too far away, so Farisa held her mind in two places—one piece of her would stay here; one would enter the blue. She lunged and ripped open the ogre’s gigantic calf with her shortsword—she had no illusions, given the adversary’s size, that this wound would do more than annoy it—while the other half of herself, the half in the blue, put so much electricity into the blade that the ogre’s nerves ignited in ferocious pain, causing it to fall over, face twisted in agony. As the fourteen-foot monstrosity curled into fetal position, Runar killed it.
Fighting continued. There had been no rain, but enough blood had spilled to turn the hill’s soil into muck. Farisa stepped back, woozy. She had dug too deep into herself; she could feel the saccades of nausea and inattention; they were getting longer. A sense of displacement swept through her body; she was vaguely aware of Runar catching her, carrying her off somewhere, and desperately wanted to get back to the place where in fact she was, as not one of them could afford a moment of rest, but she had left herself no choice...
(A little girl runs across an infinite snowfield. She’s bundled up, but she’s very cold.)
Andor’s head throbbed. His leg was too damaged, his body too shocked, for him to feel pain in its hot, ordinary form, so instead he felt only an excruciating tightness in his whole lower body, though his stomach had taken true stock of his physical state, allowing nausea to climb up in him like cloudy yellow milk. He kept fighting; there was no choice. He cranked his spring-powered gun and fired a bolt at an orcling, hitting it in the chest. The scared creature tore the bolt out—great idea, stupid asshole—and bled profusely, losing its grip before it reached the top of the wall. It collided with a second scaler on the way down, causing an additional falling death.
There was no glory in any of this; they were winning, but only by virtue of superior weaponry and high ground. On the northern face, the orcs were almost manageable—far more unsettling were the ghouls, zipping from one corpse to the next. Andor heard a rustle as one, unimpeded by vegetation, rushed their eastern flank, and he could not in his downed state turn around to deal with it, so he called for Mazie, who used her teeth to pull the elastic band of her slingshot. The ghoul shrieked, scurrying down the hill, turning into a sludge as it ran, spewing white sparks all the way down. At the bottom, flashfire was thick enough for it to ignite, setting aflame a trio of charging orcs.
Andor spat out the acrid puke that had welled up in his throat, then loaded another bolt into his gun and turned the crank. How much longer could he last? It didn’t matter; so long as orcs were coming, he would kill them as long as he could. If he ever got too tired to fight, he hoped he wouldn’t know.
A quick glance backward told him that Farisa had exhausted herself and fainted. Shit. We’re still going to need her.
(Birds are chirping. It’s spring. Elior XVI is standing there, just standing there. I’ve lost my job, my home. I have nothing to lose. The proximate issue could be settled quickly. She knew a glyph; she knew it would work. To do it would drive me mad, though, and I’m sure he knows this, and so he knows I have no power. It doesn’t matter. I’m sure half of Cait Forest already knows I’m fired. I’m banished. I’m expelled. I’m the one no one wants, always that and nothing more.)
Orcs, Eric had read in one of Farisa’s books, had superior nighttime vision straight-on, but a limited sense of their periphery, especially in the lower half of the visual field. In the odd circumstance of an orc dodging his and Mazie’s falling stones as wella as the bolts from Andor’s weapon, he could use a crouched position, as terrifying as he found it to be in one, to his advantage—he would slice the back of the orc’s leg, an inelegant move, surely, but one that had thus far been effective.
Mazie, he could see, was getting tired. She was carrying heavy stones against her chest with her sole handed arm; she replenished their pile before reprising her position. They no longer spent the energy to slam stones down on orcish faces—they simply dropped them.
An orc had scaled the wall and the expression on its twisted gray face seemed to be surprise as Eric drove a knife across its thigh, splitting the leg open. He tried to shove it off balance but failed; Mazie’s assistance—a head-butt to the chest—achieved that. They dragged the stunned orc by its ankles and rolled—their arms had grown too tired for throwing—it off the cliff.
A bad dream. Was Eric here for the first time, or reliving the battle from some point in the future? Had he won or lost? I’ll get nightmares, for sure. I’ll have... no, I want to have nightmares about this. That will mean I survived.
The endless violent night pressed on. Noises and smells took color and deprived the world of its peaceful blackness. The shrieks and shouts of orcs, as they continued to die at the cost of great effort, often sounded human.
(Fay bobs in the clear tropical ocean. The water is warmer than any blanket. The light-skinned woman wears water slippers even though she doesn’t have to. The dark, handsome man is laughing. They love me, Fay realizes. They won’t let me drown, they’re teaching me to swim. I’m safe.)
Mazie was thankful beyond words for Andor’s ingenuity; the shield fastened to her shortened arm had saved her life many times tonight. The orcs were strong, but she was quicker; with deft maneuvers, she had outfought two-handed assailants with swords and clubs and hammers, and only on one breath in twenty did she really feel the loss of her forearm—when she did, though, the missing limb would twinge so hard a current of pain crossed her heart. These impulses, as fatigue mounted, were worsening; they were coming, maybe, once in fifteen breaths now—once in ten—and they caused her to wince.
Harder to ignore was the nebulous pressure behind her eyes. The damn Marquessa. She would find herself, for a tenth of a second, in Exmore on a summer night. I've never been here before and I don't belong here and the city police are coming. Who are all these people? The confusion would pass and she would return seamlessly to time in the order of moments it deserved. Stay here. I must stay where I am, not go elsewhere.
A screaming orc scrambled up the hill, climbing the cliff as fast as a staircase and reached the top. As its cudgel swung for Eric’s head, Mazie's instinct took over. She slammed her shield into its body, causing it to lose its footing. Eric slammed a rock into its knee. When it fell, they lifted one leg each and hurled it over the wall.
I know these people. I’ll fight for them, even if I have to fight forever. She was good at fighting. Even missing an arm, she was good at it.
(Farisa watches as the forty-eyed Monster consumes its first victim. I caused this. I’m so sorry. I never wanted it to happen this way.)
Saito’s satchel of crossbow bolts was losing its heft. Of the three hundred he’d brought to this new continent, he’d lost less than a score on the trail, because they could be reused, but this battle had used up so many, he was dreading the moment his fingers found only canvas, the empty reach that would surely come if the battle continued much longer. Night’s full darkness had fallen, so he couldn’t tell how many orcs were remaining.
To conserve fire, he switched weapons. He swung his bluesteel sword at an orc’s leather-clad arm, but the blade got stuck in tough muscle and as he pulled it out, he felt a tug on his ankle. A whip had swung around his leg, and he was a split second from losing his balance when Runar severed the attacking orc’s weapon arm.
Thank you, Runar. You saved my life.
(A snowy night wind howls as Fay lies awake in a doubled-up sleeping bag. Her hands and feet cannot get warm. She wants to call for Claes, but he's busy with the two other men outside the tent, and big girls don’t cry. She blows into the palm of her hand. She misses the old house, the one under the purple tree. It never gets cold there.)
Claes half-sworded an orc under its bottom rib. He smashed a shield against a faceless enemy. Every joint in his body ached. Forty-five was too old for this. He had been inordinately lucky to have made it this far, but he knew that luck runs out.... He swung with his whole body, blood of war a million flags hot, to strike a killing blow.
I must not be so foolish as to believe fate shall favor us. Just like the orcs, we are animals, struggling to survive on an indifferent plain.
He pushed the dead armored orc with full force and down the hill.
Andor and Runar and Saito were still fighting, shouting in anger and pain, but where was Farisa? Had she fallen? He looked back and did not see her.
(April 26, morning. Quiet, like dawn after a night of snow, but too warm for snow. Ash to the horizon, smoke still rising. I hear my own voice. I’m talking to myself, to harden memories, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good. Where was I six minutes ago, six hours ago? I know I’m a witch, I know I’m a bad person, I know they were right to reject me. The ground was thick and coarse and covered to the death of features. Ash the whole way down. This is the wasteland I created and of which I am queen.)
Runar had lost count. Blows taken, blows given, orcs killed... it mattered little, as survival was about the present state, not thirty seconds ago. The thick muck of fatigue was building in his body, though. His limbs were stiffening and his heartbeat hurt. He fought with no expectation of victory; he fought to have a chance at all—he had beaten the odds thus far. So long as my knees are knee high.... He belted out a primal scream as he cleaved the trunk of a hammer-wielding orc; he had never been capable of such hatred until he had seen their slavering mouths—their ruinous hunger—both so close and in such number; it was hard, emotionally, to kill a single enemy, even an orc, but easy to end the lives of such hungry creatures that all looked the same. An orc slipped in mud coming up the hill and lost its weapon in the fall, but Runar slew it as if it had been armed—there was no honor in war; one survived, or one did not.
A dagger-wielding orcling had come through the southern brush; the corner of his eye caught its motion, too late for him to take action, so he shouted, “Farisa! Protect Farisa!”
Saito seemed ready to step back, but could not do so without causing their formation to collapse. Instead, the unta intercepted the charging orcling, rearing up and kicking with two powerful hoofed legs. Struck in the chest, the squealing orc landed on its back. A husker stomped on its head, which exploded.
Claes asked, “Is she hurt?”
“No.” Runar impaled an orc’s belly with his longsword. “She’s back there. Spent, I think.”
“Fuck.” Claes, as he dodged a mallet blow, spat. “This battle’s not half over.”
Saito said, “We still need her.”
(Farisa lies across her bed, in her Cait Forest cabin, on a sunny winter morning. A beaker and a book have fallen off the thin shelf fastened to her wall. The book is intact, but the beaker has shattered on the floor.)
Ouragan ran over to Farisa and nudged the mage with her nose.
(She walks barefoot—it’s early morning, so no one is here—around Cait Forest’s clock garden. The plants return to life. Between the ten and the twelve, a few flowers dare to bloom: coral-colored camellias and yellow-limbed mahonias, defiant of December’s chill. The winter kale along the brown gravel path is doing well, as if the fire had never happened. The Old Schoolhouse springs back into being; ash became wood, the planks pulled together. “Good as new,” she says to herself. “Good as new.”)
Ouragan stood on Farisa’s chest.
Farisa’s eyes opened. The cat slow-blinked at her. She had fallen unconscious in the midst of battle. How did I let this…?
Seeing no time for hesitation, she climbed Lethe Tell’s solitary tree. Up there, it seemed that all this orc-killing had made no difference, as hundreds more were on the way—not waves of hunge,r but an inundation from the edge of the sighted world. In the blue, she could see flashfire. The mustard-colored vapor, at first, seemed to have clung to the ground, a serpent coiled in every column of place, flowing around with eddies and curtains like a flammable mist, with occasional pockets of low density.
We’re on a hill, and that’s to our advantage. If I’m right—if I’m right.... But if I’m wrong? We all die. If I do nothing, the result is the same.
“Saito!” she yelled. “When I say now, let’s light these fuckers up.”
“A fire?”
She looked around. Runar was swinging his sword with his bodily last. Mazie and Eric and Andor were putting up excellent resistance, but would not be able to block the rear ascent forever. Claes’s fighting had slowed and his face had aged ten years in a night whose first hour was not half finished. There were no other options... she just had to wait for the mist to shift... “Now!”
As Saito struck a crossbow bolt on a piece of flint, Farisa forced her mind into the ydenstone, swaying with the crystal’s tiniest vibrations. She and the ring and the night air became a pale green placeless cold; a pressing sphere, a bulwark against the roiling blue and yellow flames, an invisible shell deflected the fire’s heat away and down the hill. Mazie and Runar and Claes’s teeth all chattered, in air colder than winter’s worst, while an inferno fifty feet below them lit up with flaming orcs.
The ydenstone cracked. A fault visible only by a jeweler’s scope doubled in length. The blue, Farisa’s blue, simply left her body—the spell had been too strong. The protective bubble of cold collapsed; a wave of fiery heat struck her face; white light was everywhere, blinding the whole world, and she smelled sunburn...
Her forearm was reddened, but not destroyed. None of them had ignited, though orcs shrieked in rage below as their lungs disintegrated. Scorched ogres fell. Grass burned on an outward-moving circle and the undersides of clouds yellowed. For a moment, one could even see the Globbo dirigible’s skeletal silhouette, ravaged but still menacing, against a background of pyretic night sky.
Farisa, knowing she could lose consciousness at any time, descended the tree. She had killed nineteen out of twenty assailants, but the survivors were coming with renewed fury. The fires had destroyed enough brush to leave their southern approach exposed, so an orc, dodging flaming branches, charged. Farisa narrowly escaped its rusty blade—the flash-blinded assailant had misjudged her position—and she used the moment to drive her shortsword into its groin, causing its face to twist in shock.
So many had now died on the hill beneath them, the living stood out, could be numbered and spotted. Many fled. A small figure, clad like a child, clambered over the fallen bodies at the speed of a yearling horse. What the…? Runar, breaking formation, rushed downhill to kill it. “Ifnyr!” he shouted back, before reprising his position.
Surviving orcs were few and spread apart, but ferocious in their anger, while in the flickering orange distance, Farisa noticed there were more of the fast-moving figures that seemed to move unharmed, in spite of the flames—ghouls, attracted by the copious dead feast.
“Saito!” She didn’t need to say more. Spotting the ghoul, he used one of Lith-carrying crossbow bolts to dispatch it at a distance of seventy feet. Runar, using Farias’s slingshot, took down a ghoul at half that distance. Claes was too busy fending off remaining orcs to notice that one had come upon him until it was within sword distance. He blocked its charge with a shield and severed its trunk, but the blow failed to interrupt it, and its teeth dug into the man’s arm, causing a scream of such agony and terror it sounded like a scared woman’s. Runar’s overhead sword swing severed the ghoul’s head, which he caught in midair and threw down the hill. Farisa fired a Lith from her own slingshot, hitting the body’s center mass. It flung itself downhill, as if chasing after its thrown head, before erupting in white flame.
Claes’s teeth were chattering as he looked at his arm, where the ghoul’s bite had gone through leather armor as if it were made of butter, exposing a three-inch gash of red bloody muscle. “How many of these fuckers are out there?”
More. Too many more. The flashfire had mostly burned off, so the ambient firelight was low again; the ghouls were zipping around, consuming orc flesh with unconscionable speed, too fast to be counted. As fast as they could eat, liquid excrement poured out of their rear ends.
“Thirty,” Farisa said. “At least thirty.”
“Goddamn it!” Claes yelled.
They had come all this way, and it had not been enough. She had made twenty-three Liths; they probably still had ten or fifteen left, but the ghouls’ number exceeded that.
(I will die of my injuries, that is clear, but why is it taking so long? She had been crippled by, but survived, the ten-yard fall. She had lingered here in shaking cold misery for a day and a night. “Witch! Witch!” Had she been one, she would have stopped that self-appointed prophet’s heart. She would have turned the pompous man’s lungs inside out and watched him cough them up. She would have turned his balls into a cunt and raped him there with his own dick. That’s what she would have done to that cowardly man, had she really been a witch, but of course such people as he knew better than to trouble a real one. The kids tossing chalk-rotted vegetables and shouting taunts from the rim of the well? A witch would have melted their brains rabid. Were she a witch, this whole town would be on fire. Maybe, in a future life, I’ll be a sorcerer so that, if I’m treated this way, I can throw it all right back. Not in this life, though. This life was over; she wanted only a swift death.)
“Farisa?”
(Matanya hears a scraping sound as the children, their voices thirty feet above her, drag the well’s wooden lid to block out the last light she’ll ever have. “Do it! Cast me into the dark! I’m already dead—I might as well get used to it! If there’s a next life, though, see what I become! Some hundreds of years from now, you’ll have forgotten me, but I’ll be a mage for real—I’ll be pure fire! I’ll burn all of you alive from the inside out!” The echoes of her own voice grow louder as the well cover bounces her cries back. The off-white winter sky turns to a crescent moon, then a sliver, then a point of light, then nothing at all.)
(On the lids of her shut eyes, she can still see the inscription that was on the well cover’s underside.)
(Farisa says, “That was me?”)
(“No, she’s mine,” says Ilana. “Matanya Arou. Arou, Harrow.”)
(“I was that woman.”)
(“I still am.”)
(“Not really,” Farisa says. “One half of one half of one half of one half... it gets pretty close to zero after who knows how many generations.”)
(Ilana scratches her face with a bony finger. “Do you remember the story we wrote together, R?”)
(Don’t call me Rissa. “It ended in a fire, didn’t it?”)
(“You told us a good one, Riss. Who was that other woman?”)
(The Monster’s tongues are scraping terror sweat—it tastes like dirt and sex and power—from the dying woman’s skin. “I don’t... remember.”)
(“You wouldn’t.” Ilana sneers. She waves a hand. “Someone’s going to die for your sins. Too bad, so sorry, thanks for the fifteen pence.”)
(Forgive me, Ilana. Please forgive me. There has been too much death already.)
(“Your mind is not a toy, you know.”)
(Your mind is the place you...)
(...make it?)
(Please, Ilana. I swear I’m not a Monster, I swear it, and I never meant to—)
(“Do you remember the story we wrote together, R?”)
(Don’t call me Rissa. “It ended in a fire, didn’t it?”)
The fighting continued—Claes and Runar and Saito bashed and stabbed and bucked orcs down the front slope; Mazie, Eric, and Andor—the large man supine with his bolt gun, cranking and firing—defended the rear. Farisa’s face tingled so much she wanted to rip it off. They are fighting; what am I doing, locked in my own mind? The orcs had thinned out to a vapor, but there were ghouls now and there were far too many to do anything about them.
(Matanya, trapped forever in darkness, still sees with her last ancestral light the inscription on the well cover’s underside...)
Runar, screaming in anger, broke all semblance of formation as he ran down the mound.
Farisa, returning to herself, shouted. "Runar, don’t!”
“I have to keep you safe!”
He swung his greatsword into an abomination that looked like a ghoul but was not one—when the flying blade cleaved its trunk, it stayed dead. Another ifnyr. Runar stepped back from his kill, looked up as he prepared to rejoin the others, and jerked to the side as a stone the size of a melon collided with his head.
Saito’s crossbow bolt destroyed the orcish slinger’s knee. The second stopped its heart.
Runar, dazed, looked up the hill again. Farisa saw, for a moment, uncertainty and suspension—thirty vertical feet were between them, but the rolling of the world and the throbbing of his head made it seem like three thousand—before he collapsed.
Claes yelled. “Saito, guard me while I get him!”
Farisa shouted. “Eric! The front needs help!”
Claes yelled, “Stay back, Farisa!”
Ghouls and possibly worse were still out there; Runar had fallen. Farisa reached into herself, reached into the blue. I will save your life, Runar. She was so spent, the blue was nearly inaccessible. Then I’m coming down. I’ll help you the mundane way. She saw worry on Claes’s face when he reached Runar. I will pound your chest until it starts again, I will give you my breath. Farisa arrived and her whole body shook. “Runar! Runar, wake up!”
Claes lifted Runar’s body by the shoulders. They might all die tonight, but while they were alive, they would not allow even one of their own, alive or dead, to face the darkness alone.
“Claes!” Farisa saw two ghouls running toward the man. “Look out!”
She drew back the band of her slingshot, but saw immediately the futility of fighting these ghouls, as more were right behind that pair, so she forced her mind—almost unaware of whether she was in the blue at all—through a glyph, Matanya’s glyph, as seen on a well cover’s underside.
Farisa tucked her head to protect it as she lost balance and fell. She was panting and spastic as a wavering sound scaped her lungs. She could barely move, but forced her head up, body propped up on both elbows, to see that the spell had worked—a woman thirty feet tall, with large feathered wings and an aura of all the world’s colors, had appeared over the sky. Her skin was dark and she had the scarred, thin face of a hardened warrior, but was unarmed. The angel put her hands together and bowed her head.
The ghouls erupted, each one of them, in brilliant white fire. Orcs and ogres, consumed by their own evil intentions, shrieked as well as their bodies dissolved. Farisa, wanting with everything she had to stay alert, bit her lip so hard her mouth filled with the taste of iron. She grabbed her shortsword—the battle was still raging, and Runar could perhaps be saved—but as soon as she lifted her head, the oblivion of sleep pulled her back in.
Hours passed.
In her almost delirious sleeplike state, she heard the battle end. The others were not exactly safe, as no one was in a place like this, but acute danger had ended. She heard others’ shouts, mostly false alarms but occasionally the address of a solitary orc or pair that had come expecting a meal. She heard Mazie confirm that one unta, one husker, and her cat had survived. She heard Andor muffle moans of pain as Saito set and splintered his busted leg; he said there was an eighty percent chance it would require amputation. Claes’s arm had taken severe damage from the bite, and Saito advised him not to use it until it healed. She heard discussion of whether to cremate the fallen unta’s corpse, so nothing would be attracted to it, but with Runar and Farisa out of commission, they could not be sure if the flashfire had returned, and decided not to chance it.
She heard a voice. My body will live an hour or two longer, but I am already gone. I love you all; make sure the others know that. May we meet in the life between lives.
Claes and Mazie told their favorite stories about Runar, on whose welfare they checked throughout the night. Around three or four in the morning, she heard Andor Strong—six-foot-six and 240 pounds, once chair of philosophy at the University of Salinay, two-time southern world record holder, survivor of a squibbani attack, and—last but not least, Dark Man of the Desert—break down in tears when Saito told him Runar’s breath had ceased.
Dawn light collected lifelessly. In Lethe Tell’s morning shadow, millions of flies pestered a half-thousand dead, strewn across the charred grass. Farisa’s eyes opened and it almost surprised her that her body could move. Combat had ended; they had achieved victory, but there was no sense of glory. Runar was dead and Andor, although he could walk for a dozen yards or so with Saito’s splint, would likely be crippled for life. Mazie, too, seemed to have taken some kind of psychic wound—she had not said a word since the fight, and confused terror would, for too short a time to question it, sweep across her face.
“We are alive,” Claes said. “Six of us.”
Andor nodded. The fact that he hadn’t winced suggested that Saito’s painkillers were working.
“Runar’s people cremate,” Claes said. “When it’s safe to make a fire, we’ll give him the honor.”
The husker bowed its head upon seeing the body it would have to carry.
“I’m sure none of you feel eager to make miles today. I sure don’t. The condition we’re in would merit time for all of us in the hospital, where we’re from. But we have to. This place’ll be a festering yard of disease by noon.”
Orcish corpses, even this early, had absorbed enough sunlight and humidity to bloat and would rupture, some explosively, soon.
“I won’t push, but let each of us go as far as we can. If we can make five miles today, it’s better than four, and four is better than three.”
Two vultures had already settled on the corpse of the emaciated orc, probably a teenage one, that had slain Runar.
“One of the greatest men I’ve ever met,” said Farisa. “Struck down by a no more than a stone.”
“Such is war,” Claes said.
They all took turns stomping on the neck of the one, cursed sling still in hand, that had taken Runar from them. Fifty feet north of it lay the thing Runar had come down here to protect Farisa from—to protect all of them from: an ifnyr, sure as death’s stench, supine in the pale grass with a cruel grin on its lips. Its body had shrunk to the size of a child’s and its feet and lower legs were already missing most of their skin. Its face was gray and covered in maggots; it had gone so far in decay, one could barely tell who it had been in life.
Mazie said, “I think it was Kanos. Runar knew his brother, even after death, was coming for us.”
Saito tilted his head slightly, as if a different angle would resolve the question. “Maybe. We might never know.”
They walked in silence that day.