Chapter 8: A Promise of Death

Ayla Rúth Harya

I hold the rifle steady, my hands adjusting to the weight, the stock braced against my shoulder and cool against my cheek, where it rests firmly—always touching the same place, like drawing a bowstring to the corner of my lip. I smell the faint scent of gunpowder.

I line up my sights—front and rear, and the target. I take a deep breath then release it, then halfway through the breath I squeeze the trigger.

Click. I cycle the bolt, keeping my sight picture steady, but the dummy round jams. “Damn it!”

It’s the third day of our journey traveling in the wagon with Marcus and his company. We are camped inside the hollow of a mountain. Around us loom the ruins of the Inverted Spires, once the glorious city Altatorri, now mined dry of relics and abandoned.

The sunset light casts dancing shadows on the upside-down buildings that hang from the ceiling like stalagmites and columns.

It was a surprise to me when Jace offered to teach me to fire his rifle. His left arm would need at least a couple of weeks to recover, even with the healing grease he’d received and the accelerated healing he boasted. Initially I refused, hating the idea of soiling my hands with a human weapon that had likely killed so many of my people.

As if he’d read my mind, Jace had said: “I had this rifle custom made a few years back. Neither my gun nor my rifle has ever taken an elven life.”

I stared at Jace for a long time. His eyes never wavered. Ultimately, what made up my mind was thinking about how my people’s stubborn pride had been their folly. If we’d learned to advance our technology, would things have ended up differently?

“Don’t be hard on yourself. You’re doing better.” Jace snaps me out of my thoughts. “You have a good lean, your stance is solid, and your breathing…” He gives me a thumbs up. “You rushed the cycle. Practice that and reloading for a bit. You remember how to use the stripper clip?”

I nod, adjusting a loose fold in the head wrap Jace gave me to hide my ears. The others already know I am an elf, of course, but he does not think they need constant reminding. Also, when we reach Tempest, it will make things less complicated.

Overall, Jace isn’t a bad teacher. He reminds me of my bow instructor. Patient, and precise in his instruction, without being overly critical, and providing ample opportunities to make my own mistakes. Tharon. I have not thought of him in ages. I wonder if he's even alive now. Probably not.

“Good.” He says. “Practice the three positions: kneeling, standing, prone. Tomorrow we’ll start you on live rounds.”

He leaves me to practice on my own, then joins the others around the campfire. I take the prone position, then aim at one of the three empty amber bottles laid out for me on a rock. When it gets too dark to see clearly, I also take my place by the fire.

Marcus is in the middle of telling a story. That’s how it’s been every night since we left the goblin trading outpost. Our days are slow going in the back of the wagon, along trails and paths that were never on Jace’s map, but which Marcus ensures us are safer and easier going. It proves to be true. We don’t run into any monsters on our way.

“…so smitten that he couldn’t get his head on straight. I bet he thought of her at night when he was alone in his cot.” Marcus made a lewd gesture with his fist stroking up and down.

Jace throws a rock at Marcus that the man deftly dodges. “You know it’s true, man. I don’t even blame you. Sergeant Mira Stormweaver. Baddest bitch in the whole army, if you ask me—and a fine piece of ass to boot.”

“So what happened?” Callum, the youngest member of the Adventuring team, is leaning forward on the edge of his rock.

Callum is the one most eager for these stories and bugs Marcus every evening. Jace is always apprehensive, but he seems to relax around Marcus, so long as the stories stay light. Most of the stories so far have been about bar fights or recalling anecdotes of notable people whose names the others recognized but I’d never heard of.

“What happened next?” Marcus dons a devilish grin. “I decided to help Jace along in his romantic pursuits.”

“Fuck you.” Jace says, the corner of his mouth twisting into a crooked smile. “This bastard wrote a love letter to her and signed it on my behalf. I got thrown into the brig for two weeks for attempting to fraternize with a superior officer.”

The party breaks out laughing. Lars points at Jace and slaps his knee, laughing in his strange high pitch, harder than anyone.

Marcus takes a swig of his wine bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then wags a finger at Jace. “I did you a favor. That letter put you on her radar. Don’t tell me she didn’t wind up falling for you.”

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It is meant to be a joke, but a grim shadow passes over Jace’s face and the atmosphere suddenly changes. I know that face. I’ve seen it in the mirror many times. It is the face of someone who lost something irreplaceable.

No. I can’t believe it. I am empathizing with a human. Memories of the indignancy of having to wash that same human, to soil my hands and betray the ghosts of all the fallen by helping a person who certainly killed many of mine.

I try to hold on to that anger, to stoke its fires inside me. It’s no use. The image comes to me unbidden, of Jace bowing to me in the Old Way to express his gratitude. My anger has no bite, and I don’t know what to do.

By all appearances, Jace acts like he trusts Marcus, and by extension the others, but I’m sure that to some degree he is wary. Of what, I don’t know. I am beginning to trust Jace, but I have no intention of extending that trust to the others.

I’ve felt their eyes on me when they think I am not paying attention. I know those eyes. Even among my kind, whose female population is so scarce, I have felt those eyes many times.

Have I felt those eyes from Jace? My eyebrows scrunch up as I scour my memory. I have caught him looking at me, of course. I believe he wasn’t lying when he said that night that he thinks I am beautiful. He only looks at me that way—which makes me uncomfortable, but in a different way and for different reasons.

He has never once looked at me with that kind of lust–the kind that cares for nothing and no one but self-gratification.

“You remember that ruby hilted dagger that she had?” Marcus says, and my ears perk up at the mention of a dagger. Now I’m definitely interested in the conversation. “You know, the sergeant was some kind of heiress or something. She had this relic. A dagger coated with a bunch of these refined mana crystals. Shiiit, I once saw her stave off a kill squad of darklings alone to cover our retreat. Baddest bitch in the army. Actually, come to think of it, I think that was the last time I saw you or her before we all got split up. Everything went to shit right after.”

Marcus’s words are slurring now as the wine takes effect; he’s had more than a few swigs of that bottle. For once he isn’t paying attention to Jace’s darkening mood. There’s an intensity about Jace that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. The others are too involved in the war story to notice.

Jace reminds me of a feral animal going deathly still the moment before clawing out its enemy’s throat. He stands so suddenly that for a moment I think he means to do just that. Now everyone else notices him, and I think they feel it too. No one says a word when he turns his back to the fire and stalks off into the darkness.

That night my dreams take me back to Verdanveil before we are driven out by the Reavers. It’s as green as I remember, a literal oasis hidden in a dormant volcano. Fruit trees and crops intertwine seamlessly with towering trees, appearing ancient despite the fact they haven’t been there ten years.

The elven architecture, grown rather than built, blends with the landscape, each home nestled among the flora as if it had always been there.

I pick a fig from a nearby tree and bite into it, the juices spilling down my chin. The sweetness turns bitter and metallic, and the taste of blood floods my mouth.

Suddenly we are all in Danu’s Glade. There, the priestess gathers us to announce that the Reavers are coming. That, once again, the remnants of so many fallen enclaves who have toiled and sweated to heal the soil and grow a new home, must choose between dying to defend what we can’t, or flee with our broken pride.

From the hole in the ceiling where we get our sunlight, I spot a figure.

It is Jace at the tip of the spear, leading the band of Reavers falling from the sky like chotgor—those winged abominations created by fell elves.

Jace lifts his ruby-encrusted dagger, and frothing at the mouth with hate, he screams: “It is all your fault!” and casts a terrible high working.

It is just as it was at the Shattering. The sky splits open and fire, hail, and lightning fall in a relentless storm that rends the land. The ground erupts. Magma flows through once beautiful rivers. And the enclave is no more.

I awake before dawn, sweating.

Jace is seated on a rock at the opening where miners caved in the side of the mountain to access the Inverted Spires. I climb up there and join him and find him studying his broken dagger, lost in thought. When he becomes aware of my presence, he wraps it in a cloth and tucks it behind his belt, then gives me a wry smile.

The sight of the dagger reminds me of my dream and I find my anger and despair flare, and I know that Jace can see it. “Ayla, are you alright?” Whatever was on his mind a moment before disappears and it is replaced with obvious concern for me, which only makes me angrier.

“I am perfectly fine, human.”

He looks hurt. I haven’t called him “human” for some time. I don’t care. I walk down the slope of the mountain, no direction in mind. I just need to move.

When I get back to the wagon, the others have finished packing. Sapp—the black haired human missing one ear and several fingers—is the first to see me. “Oy! Marcus, Jace’s elf is back!”

Jace turns the corner from where he’s been loading gear in the back of the wagon and looks relieved to see me.

Marcus shoots me an irritated glare. “Okay folks. We’re out. We’ll be splitting in two teams and taking turns legging it alongside the wagon to lighten the load. We need to cover a lot more ground if we’re gonna stay ahead of the Reavers.”

I feel a shock of vertigo. Reavers? My dream? No. My nightmare. Is it coming true? I instinctively back away from Jace as the image of his frothing face accusing me flashes in my mind.

Jace approaches me, noticing my reaction, but not commenting on it. His voice is reassuring and calm, but has the flavor of a soldier issuing an order. “You’re taking the first shift in the wagon. It’ll take the Reavers a few days before they catch up to us. Marcus spotted them on his spyglass after you left.”

“Are they…” I don’t know how to ask the question. But Jace’s ability to read my thoughts is uncanny.

He leans in and whispers so the others don’t hear. “Aye. They’re from the batch we faced before, likely the same ones who raided your enclave.”

He speaks gently, and I’m sure he says something else, but I’m no longer listening. Fear, despair…then an unquenchable anger that no longer has no doubt as to where it needs to be directed.

“Jace. Promise me we’ll kill them all.”

He hands me his rifle. “Aye.”