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Snap.
I opened my eyes, dispelling the red glow of my lids; my lips parted and my mouth gaped at the golden hour’s light and sweet summer air. The last glow of the day shone across the oceanic waving of the open meadow. The lush hills rolled over one another and the grass swayed in the honeysuckle-laced breeze. There, beyond the shaded line of trees and cresting the largest of the hills ahead of where I'd settled, stood a proud steed; ethereal white, as bright as a morning star. As I gazed upon it in reverent wonder, a second horse rose over the mound and met the first at its side. Its russet coat and matching mane shimmered in the sort of red that blazed like fire under the touch of the setting sun, glittering and gleaming as the wind coursed by, and this second horse indeed was as magnificent as the white one. Together, they stood, mighty and unyielding, upon that hill. Neither showed signs of startle or notice as a third horse appeared, leaner than the others but still carrying a deep muscular form, and stopped farther back. The whirl of the wind caught up the inky black hair of its thickened mane as the steed lifted its long face to smell the air as it rushed by. This horse, unlike the others, was darker than night like a silhouette come to life. It turned to look upon the two horses ahead, disrupting my view of its features, and trotted with extravagant pride to the white horse. It stopped a few steps behind, opposite where the russet horse stood, the two, russet and midnight black, exchanging a glance before turning to survey the field.
It was rare to see one horse roaming free, but to see three was unheard of—at least in the wild, anyway—and even more so since the need for horses had turned from desperate to dire. I swallowed hard, heart racing, afraid to move and startle the magnificent beasts. If I could have stayed in the placidity of this place for a thousand years, basking in their majesty and the warmth of summer’s midmorning, I'd likely have stayed for no other reason than to watch the horses and admire the peace of the meadow’s gentle hills and the lazy long grass, drinking in the breeze without a single care. The quiet bliss that swept over me, caressing my sun-warmed skin, was not one I would soon forget. Then, as the air stilled, another horse with a sleek, long, and narrowed form, and nostrils flared above thin lips pulled back into a grin, unlike the horses before, exited the trees. All its features appeared stretched thin and long, from its ears to its legs. The upturn of its large eyes was unique from the other three, who turned to give an obligatory nod. It stood smaller, slight by comparison, from its narrow chest to its low set tail, yet this fourth horse displayed a strange sort of power emanating from its deceptive size. It stopped the farthest back, standing only high enough on the hill, outside the edge of the shadow of the trees, for the sun to touch its iridescent coat. It shone as if made of mother-of-pearl and reflected a specter of pale colors.
There they were, the four horses on the hill.
When the warm breeze came through again, my gaze shifted from the mighty three and transfixed on the last horse. Its mane rippled in the wind, and a strange shadow lurked behind it. The horse didn't move or shy away when the wandering shade swept over its long face and then receded with the wind, a fleeting wisp of smoke rolling in from distant fire. I sank back on my arms, splayed wide at my sides, and kept out of sight in hopes of enjoying their peaceful peregrine a while longer. As I sank low, content in my decision to stay, a hand pressed soft and light on my shoulder. His warm breath wisped against my cheek. Startled, the deep vibration of whispered words filled my ears.
“I found you,” he said.
“I wasn’t hiding,” I hissed back.
“Slacking off again?” He chuckled as he sat down beside me. The golden light danced over his tanned skin and illuminated his olive-green eyes. Deep red hues gleamed beneath the rich auburn brown of his hair as he raked a hand through the tangle of long, loose waves.
“What do you want, Milo?" I glared at him, expecting the worst after another failed job in town when there wasn’t enough work to earn enough money to keep food on the table between the two of us. It wasn't my fault the instructions I'd received were clear as mud, and I hadn't sorted out how to explain my less-than-reputable response to their dismissal when they were already so short-handed. They needed me, even if I didn't know any more about bread than the taste—and in my hunger-induced borderline delirium, they should have told me the unmarked sacks of flour couldn't sit by the water basins, especially when it was the primary source of drink for their animals. I crinkled my nose and curled my lip at the thought of it, made worse by how annoyed I was that Milo would intrude, bothering me about my shortcomings and ruining such a serendipitous scene. This was my Elysium, the only paradise I knew, and he was spoiling it. Again. And for what? To remind me that we hadn't eaten since yesterday morning, money was running out faster than we could earn it, and the choking smoke coming in had driven off what few prospects for food remained? None of that, as far as I saw it, was worth robbing me of the only peace I'd found and afforded in longer than I could remember, which was, albeit not very long, about a handful of stagnant years. "Or did you come to start another fight?”
“Fight you? Always,” he smiled, though it was faint and failed to push much more than the corner of his lips into an upward tilt.
My bitterness faded, if only for a moment. It seemed Tristan hadn’t told him about the chickens and how I hadn’t locked them up the right way, and they’d escaped. Again. Or what Lawrence Baiter had to say about the job I did, or didn't, do at the mill—including his colorful commentary on my ignorance about flour. Those were the third and fourth jobs I'd lost in two days. Milo picked at the grass as if searching for something to say and coming up empty-handed. I huffed a sigh of relief and leaned further back on my arms, staring up into the vast clear sky. At least he was honest. Milo didn't sugarcoat the truth, and for the most part he didn't hide it from me, either. When he was angry, I knew and he had plenty to say to make sure I understood and learned something from it. More often than not, it had to do with first aid or survival. Those were not my forte. And in his persistent silence, I was thankful for nothing else if not only that he wasn’t here to have another talk, more like lecture, about being careful, not trying too hard, and keeping my head down. Stirring up trouble and falling back on the excuse of ignorance incompetence was for kids, he'd say as soon as he found out about the latest lost work, but for now, he was quiet. That was something. I’d take his pointless arguments about who got to sit on the ground and who had the privilege of planting themselves on the only good chair we had left over his borderline insulting lectures any day. Besides, Milo and I rarely agreed on much of anything, and arguing was our secret language. It was the only way we understood each other, and it made me think maybe we were natural opposites from beginning to end—stuck with each other, doomed to knock heads forever. It wasn’t all bad, though, and by some miracle, despite how it seemed, we managed to get along fine. Most days.
Milo’s smile dimmed as he gazed out across the open meadow. The horses were nowhere in sight. “I heard the Razen are closing in. It won’t be long until they make it to Ternbrick, and when they do, we’ll have to move. There won’t be a lot of time.”
“I know.” My breath caught in my chest. Ternbrick was the next town over, and there were only a few modest farms and unclaimed stretches of land between them and us. Most people from town had already evacuated and fled to other towns, or made the trek to the sanctuary city to the south if they could afford it. There were few places left to go or hide from the Razen, the deadliest army the world had ever known, unstoppable and cruel, and bent on destroying anything and everything in their path. Humanity was dwindling faster with each passing day, and the world had long since burned through bombs and warfare in the desperate campaign to stop the army of soldiers masked in gold decades ago. It was all for naught, and had reduced the world to swords and shields as the only means of defense. The ever-present orange hazy glow to the north, which grew brighter and more dusty in its sepia cloud every day, continued to drift closer. The smoke hadn’t reached us by the grace of a steady wind drawing it east, yet the faint scent of burned everything put my nerves on edge. They were close. They were coming. And there was no stopping it.
“Where are we going to go? I’ve heard bad things," I dared ask.
“There’s a lot of bad out there, Ash,” he lifted his thumb to his lips and gnawed on the skin by the corner of the nail. His eyes narrowed into slits, and his brow furrowed, lost in contemplation. “Our best bet is to get to the city. There are a lot of safe places there and the Razen haven’t been able to even touch the walls yet. If we go to Kitteron or Terrance, we won’t be able to stay there for very long. A lot of people have already taken refuge in both places. I don’t know how they could take in any more people and still have enough supplies to go around. Food’s getting scarce everywhere. Besides, there’s no point in wasting our time town-hopping when we’ll end up heading toward the city either way.”
“We could at least stop in Kitteron, and then in Bairdsville. They’re so much farther south, and they have the lake; we could get all the supplies we need before we get to the city,” I offered.
“Our best bet is to head to Sussen.”
“I hate Sussen.”
“I know.”
I stared at the field while the sun sank low on the horizon. Cicadas rattled in the trees. The neighs and whinnies of the horses were distant now. I didn’t know where they went or why they left so soon, but it was good of them to go. We should have gone with them. I hugged my knees close to my chest, a foreign, almost tight feeling like desperation twisted in my gut. I wished with every part of myself that I could catch my breath and put a name to the eager yearning crawling under my skin; for what, I didn’t know. Then, with any luck, I could find the right words to convince Milo not to take us to Sussen.
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There was nothing morally good left there. The buildings were crumbling and dilapidated, graveyards had become camping grounds, and refugees flooded the streets in makeshift tents drenched in filth and fear; but sitting high on a hill, Sussen had an advantage over anywhere else we could have gone. With the wide view, they had plenty of time for those passing through to escape and residents to evacuate if the Razen came too close. Still, for all it offered, it didn’t make it safe. That much traffic and attention brought out the worst sorts of people. Criminals, traffickers, thieves. Travel light through Sussen, that’s what we'd heard. Don’t meet anyone’s eyes and sleep in shifts. People who were afraid were quick to abandon what they believed in for the promise of better even if it was only a dream.
However, even before the Razen made it this far east, Sussen was unpleasant. The sort of people who lived there had a habit of looking down their too-long noses at every passerby and stranger as if they sat aloft, apart and above those who had less. Then, in their self-righteous demur, they turned those long noses up so high that if it rained, they’d damn near drown and grumble over the inconvenience of the weather. They’d pull their coats tighter and cross the street, disapproving of what they saw. Anything unfamiliar, they didn’t like; and if they didn’t like it, it was too far below them to afford any dignity. The people of Sussen loathed outsiders as much as they loved themselves—a love only equal to how much they loved their wealth. Generations of economic fortune built their reputation of old money and greed. Too rarely did they allow outsiders to bring in new business or inherit the ones that existed in favor of financial hoarding. It wasn't that they thought newcomers faced nothing but the doom of failure or were incapable of success; they, contrary to any evidence to suggest their opinions were in error, viewed outsiders as lacking the necessary pedigree and legacy worth Sussen’s valuable time. Reputation and worth built by the father mounted into generational wealth and passed down to the son in steadfast tradition like a gift of time only rapacity could afford.
If it were up to me, we wouldn’t go anywhere near Sussen, but Milo was right. As much as I hated it, it made the most sense to head there from where we were, north of the great lake—that was great only because it was plentiful with fish—and the last viable trade post we could get to in a day and only need a day to get back from, assuming I wasn't the cause for us to pay off debts. In my defense, it only happened twice, and it was surmisable that it was only a slight miscommunication as to whether or not I'd paid for the food... Regardless, Hattis was a popular trade post, and, no matter how I favored it over the alternative, Sussen was farther south and its walls had yet to fall to the might of the Razen. Kitteron was due south but sat to the east and would add on an entire day of travel around the lake with no promise of sanctuary. If anything we'd have to resort to following old train lines farther south to places like Dale that were more of militarized fortresses than towns, or at least that was what I'd heard. I didn't know for sure, I'd never left home before, but I did know time was too precious to waste going in the wrong direction.
“Do you think we could make it to the city without stopping?” I leaned my head to rest against my arms.
“Maybe,” Milo drawled, his accent faint and distant as though he'd lost most of it over the years. I wondered where it came from, where he'd come from, but it wasn't worth asking. Milo wasn't much for talking about his past. He shifted and kicked his heels into the dirt with a humph and combed his hand through his tousled hair. He’d been doing that a lot lately. I figured it had something to do with the dwindling supply of water, which led to fewer baths and itchier heads, or it was nerves. Maybe both. “It’s not worth walking for two days straight, no breaks and a quick pace, assuming we don’t have any trouble on the way, only to stand outside of a wall with no way in.”
“I thought you said you’ve been in the city before.”
“Yes, but that was years ago,” he stared into his lap, “and things were different back then.”
“There were cars,” I said. If I could remember cars the way Milo did, I would have missed that sort of thing, too; but that was so long ago, it was a wonder he had any memories of cars at all. He had to have been a little kid back then for what they'd become. I'd only seen a handful of them, shells of metal overgrown with plants or turned into shelters when the weather was bad and those traveling needed a reprieve from the rain or snow; never the sweltering heat, though. Those old cars were like ovens during the peak of summer. There was something eerie about them, ghosts of an almost forgotten past, that I didn't like and I made a point of keeping away from them. What was gone was gone, and needed to stay that way as far as I saw it. My lips puckered as my curiosity raced down the list of all that was and wasn't anymore. I turned my head sideways to look at him. “There used to be electricity, too.”
Milo chuckled. His smile was bright enough that the coming darkness seemed a little lighter. Twisting a bit of grass between his fingers, he bobbed his head. Even his eyes curved as the memories washed over him. “My brother and I used to plug in Christmas lights and string them through our bunk bed. We thought our parents didn’t know, and we would stay up late goofing around and making all this noise.” He sighed, and the corners of his lips sagged. “They always knew. Of course, they always knew. We were just kids.”
I said nothing. There was a strange beauty in the sadness of when he spoke about his family. It was both when he smiled most often, and when the greatest weight of the world bore down on him, and in those brief moments, I wondered what it must have been like to know him then when he'd had a family and been happier. His long lashes beat in slow blinks as he held his fascination with twisting the overgrown grass. Milo had come from somewhere west of Holzberg, a five-day journey by horse at least based on what he told me, which wasn't much to go off; and the way he talked made me think he’d traveled even farther than that alone. I never asked about his travels when he looked so forlorn when he brought it up himself and I doubted he would ever tell me or anyone else about where he'd been or what he'd seen--never mind where he went or stayed on the occasional trip to markets with Tristan. Besides, if ever the questions arose, he’d roll his eyes and shrug, say it didn’t matter, and change the subject before anyone could press him further about it. That place he held close to his chest didn’t exist anymore, at least not the way it did before the Razen, and it wasn’t as though he planned on traveling back to it anytime soon, or again, so the way Milo saw it, there was no point in talking about it.
Milo lifted his gaze to meet mine. “Anyway, we should leave before nightfall tomorrow. When they get to Ternbrick, we should already be halfway to Sussen. The more space we put between us and them, the longer we live.”
“How will we know when they reach Ternbrick, and why do we have to wait for them to get there?”
“We won’t know when they get there because we won’t be here. If we leave too early, we end up with the starving caravans and become easy recruitment targets. If we wait, we can have a better idea of where the Razen are going and can avoid running any more than we have to, if we're lucky. That fire’s way too close, but I haven't heard anyone talking about soldiers in the area yet, but every time I go up to the farm, the smoke damn near chokes me out now. Tristan’s family is leaving Ternbrick in the morning. If it were entirely up to me, I would have had them go by now.” Milo sucked in a breath and straightened his back. On the exhale, his shoulders slumped forward. “We should have already left by now, too.”
“Why doesn’t anyone ever fight back against the Razen?” I asked.
“There’s no point, they have supernatural abilities.” He pushed himself up onto his feet and stretched his arms and then his back. “And the Razen is the least of your worries. Some people say that when they first appeared an entire army fell with the rise of a hand and nothing else. I haven’t exactly seen that myself, but I saw some things. A lot of things. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes... The Razen are scary, believe me, but they’re only foot soldiers. I don’t like to think about who and what they take orders from.”
“What do they want?” I followed his lead, taking to my feet and dusting off my lap and backside.
“In the grand scheme of things, aside from unabashed destruction? Who knows,” he said, “and who cares? They’re more powerful than any army that’s ever existed. And to make matters worse, no one knows where they came from—heaven, hell, or somewhere else—and how their abilities work is about as much of a mystery as how any others work. The thing about them is that they're harder to kill than your average soldier, Ash, and they'll keep going until they're killed. It doesn’t make sense and calling it magic is a cop-out, but here they are, so it doesn’t matter. The fact is, if you want to live longer, you don’t ask questions and you don’t go looking for answers.” He plopped his hand on my head and ruffled my hair. A faint smile tugged on the corner of his lips, but failed to reflect in his eyes. He was tired. So very tired.
I looked up at the sky, the hues turning darker by the minute, all except that hateful orange glow in the distance to the north. For a short time, it seemed like there were two suns in the sky. Then there was only one light, the light of death and violence marching ever closer. That horrible army donned white uniforms like robes of antiquities and hid their faces behind shining gold masks. Despite the meager efforts of the ragtag militia, the defenders of peace, or so they called themselves, and the Resistance, the Razen ranks grew in unyielding, exponential number. With every swing of their swords and ram of their shields, more people died. Their bodies filled streets and towns. Their names became lost in the howls of agony in the slaughter. And those pristine white robes turned blood-soaked, with thick red stains splashed across them like heavy wine. I could see it in the darkest corners of my mind, haunting images of senseless killing and indiscriminate violence. While I could only conjure dreadful ideas of what it looked like, I knew some had seen it for themselves. They trembled whenever they described it, and my stomach twisted into a strange and uncomfortable knot at the thought of such brutality. No one could defend themselves from the Razen. They had to have known that. Still, some chose to fight, even when they left no survivors in their wake, if they could help it.
I sneered to myself, “There’s got to be some way to stop them, to stop all the killing.”
“When you find the way, you let me know,” Milo said as he stepped around me and headed back toward the house.
“Maybe I will!” I turned on my toes and chased after him. “Maybe I will, and I’ll bring an end to all this.”
“If that’s your dream.” He shrugged and checked over his shoulder to ensure I was following close behind. “You go ahead and charge into battle, conquer this world, and bring it to its knees if that's all you can do."
“I said I wanted to stop the Razen, not be King Arthur.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Shut up.”
“Never.”
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