Caelum Faulkner would be the last person to call himself religious. Sure, he had grown up going to the temples with his family on festival days, and his mother made sure he knew the proper prayers for just about anything you could ask of the gods. But after he’d lost most of his hearing from a fever and was told it was the gods’ wrath, he was less interested in appeasing any deity that saw it fit to punish an eleven-year-old. So no, Caelum Faulkner wasn’t religious. Yet, as he sat on a hard oak bench in the hall of the Command Building in Uzhberd, he said a prayer to whatever god might happen to be listening.
His heel continued to tap on the worn fibers of the ugly red carpet as his fingers drummed a separate rhythm against the hard seat. A hand on his shoulder caused him to turn and the receptionist, the pretty blond with the electric eyes, was talking gently. Her red-coated lips would have entranced any man, but the color curled around the words delicately as he watched them to hear her.
“No, I’m fine, thanks,” he replied to her offer of coffee, giving his most charming smile. Her eyes darted up behind him and he saw sweet kindness melt into her best temptation—Dorian had come out of the door then.
Caelum turned to look at his best friend and future brother-in-law. Captain Bronson was serious as he exited the Colonel’s office, giving the flirtatious blond a curt nod and gesturing to Caelum to follow him. He trailed through the halls after his commanding officer silently, waiting until they landed on the busy main street of Uzhberd once again.
“What happened in there,” he asked as they continued up the street next to each other.
“They aren’t going to do a damn thing,” Dorian said, hands moving to sign along with his words. Nearly two decades of friendship meant the taller man knew to sign when they weren’t facing each other, though it was practically second nature to do it any time they were together.
“Why not?” he asked, alarmed. “She’s been missing for almost a month!”
Dorian’s anger at the Khaantul Command was clear in his sharp gestures as he explained what he had been told.
“Apparently the area is known for Vadek attacks and sending in more units for one soldier, even a medic, isn’t worth it to them. They practically told me to just forget her.”
Caelum swore at the revelation, dodging a large puddle in the cobbled street as he tried to match Dorian’s furious pace. They turned down the side street towards the row of officer’s quarters.
“So what is the plan to find my sister?” he asked.
For as long as he had known Dorian, there was always another plan, a way to get what he wanted. His dogged determination had won them the battle of Trigan Minor after four days under siege and had made Gideon Harkin eat his tormenting words in secondary school.
Dorian waited until they had entered his small flat, leading Caelum to the paltry kitchen. He began rummaging through the cabinets, grabbing items to stuff into a brown canvas store bag. From his seat at the dingy table, Caelum called to his friend. While he would follow him to the ends of the earth, he at least wanted to know how they were getting there.
“Right, sorry,” Dorian signed after setting the bag down on the yellowing countertop. He signaled for patience and dashed out of the room, returning with a rolled up parchment that he spread across the round table before them. It was a map of the Empire’s eastern region.
“As of today, we are taking our month of leave. They can’t stop us from searching for her on our own and we’re going to follow Meira’s unit from where they last had contact,” he dropped his finger onto a town in the foothills, drawing it up into the rendered mountains as he continued, “and search the area they were scouting.”
“But that’s got to be at least 50 miles of the Hegyks,” Caelum protested gently.
“It’s not though,” Dorian said. His expression took an edge to it Caelum had never seen before—desperation overriding the calm confidence he always seemed to exude. His bronze fingers circled a smaller region.
“Look, her unit was specifically scouting until the head of the Tantalus,” he tapped on where the blue lines of the large river came out of the rendered mountains. “They should have checked in at the outpost near the edge of Juri’a Territory, about halfway through the mission. They never did.”
Fear spiked through Caelum.
“We only have to search the area between Cerilaig and the outpost.”
Dorian’s certainty had returned, and he rolled up the map, unceremoniously stuffing the paper into the bag he’d been filling.
“Go home and get what you need,” he signed to Caelum, who still hadn’t said anything, the anxiety squeezing his vocal cords. “We’ll leave at dawn.”
***
Somehow the settlement seemed smaller than on the map. The cropping of a dozen red buildings on the golden plains was infinitesimal after leaving the ever-busy streets of Uzhberd. A wave of relief washed over Caelum as Dorian signaled to head for the town and give the horses a break. His seat ached from the canter they’d spent most of the day doing as they raced towards the mountains that loomed in the distance.
Pulling to a stop near the large well at the base of the settlement, both men dismounted and gazed up at the people peering out of their homes dotting the hill above them.
“Get them rested,” Dorian signed about the horses after handing the reins to Caelum.
The horses drank greedily from the buckets of water he pulled from the well. Their long sighs matched Caelum’s own as he waited for Dorian’s return. The man had stalked up the hill nearly twenty minutes ago, but his silhouette had yet to reappear against the sun’s rays. He was stroking the mottled blonde neck of his steed when a shadow jumped across her stout body. Turning to look, Caelum caught a flash of orange as the child tried to dodge him. His arms darted out as the gangly young man stumbled, his crutch falling to the ground between them.
Large brown eyes stared up in fearful suspense as Caelum unwound his hands from the child’s biceps. The soldier kneeled down, righting the crutch beneath the youngling’s arm again before letting go.
“Did you want to see the horses?” Caelum asked as the silence lingered between them, marred by the near palpable fear with which the child seemed frozen in place.
His dark eyebrows furrowed, and he said, “Q’ae?”
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What?
Caelum realized the child didn’t speak any Khaantul, and discomfiture colored his cheeks.
“The horses. Do you want to pet?” He tried to emphasize his words with matching gestures. Relief washed over him as the dark, watching eyes of his companion lit up in understanding, a small smile slipping past his sudden bashfulness.
With a hand on the boy’s shoulder for support, Caelum helped him hobble closer to Josie, his mare. She turned a lazy gaze towards the hands gently petting her shoulder, then returned to the grass near her hooves.
The child talked to himself low in Juri’a, chattering excitedly as his fingers stroked across the horse’s golden coat. Occasionally he would look shyly up at Caelum, who only nodded in encouragement and smiled at the boy’s excitement. He remembered the joy of seeing his first horse.
The hand that clapped his shoulder made Caelum jump from his reverie.
“We aren’t here to babysit,” Dorian signed roughly. He grabbed the boy’s hand and pushed him away from the horse, making it clear he was no longer welcome.
“What happened?” Caelum pushed.
Dorian ran a hand down his forehead and across his thick blond mustache.
“Only one person in the village speaks Khaantul. He remembered a scouting party about a month ago. Said a medic helped some villagers before they headed into the mountains.”
“She was here!” Hope bloomed in Caelum’s chest, replacing the fear for a few breaths.
Dorian moved to his horse, mounting up as his partner did the same.
“We know they were headed south, and likely went high since they were working on scouting the borders. We’ll start there.”
***
A tracker would have been useful, Caelum thought as he glanced at his partner. Dorian was a statue, staring at the compass in his hand. It held a picture of Meira and him at the last social dance, their beatific smiles visible from Caelum’s perch on his horse.
“We should head higher. Anton liked to hold position next to the borders,” Dorian said, signs fumbled slightly as he dropped the compass back into his pocket. It had been three days of this: trying to find signs of a path that the forest had reclaimed.
“We’re already near the ridge, though,” Caelum said. “If they got captured, shouldn’t we be careful about following too—“
A scream pierced the end of his sentence. Even with his fractured hearing, Caelum could sense the unrelenting despair in the noise that echoed across the trees. The men pulled their rifles and jumped from the horses in sync, running up the ridge to the source of the noise.
Caelum dropped onto his stomach next to Dorian’s position behind a tree, observing a small girl wailing under a large evergreen. She yelled and screamed while she scanned the trees in the clearing around her.
The spray of red from her leg surprised Caelum almost as much as the snapping of the bear trap, and it took him a moment to realize what had happened. He turned to Dorian, the last puffs of smoke dissipating from the sniper’s gun in the cold air. As Caelum moved to speak, his companion motioned for silence, and they watched as the girl’s shrieking continued. Theatrics dropped, her wails cut into Caelum’s core as he watched the blood paint the snow below her. One man dropped from the tree above her, the horror clearly painted across his features.
“I knew it,” Dorian signed, but didn’t make a move. The two Vadek spoke for a moment, the larger man struggling to get the girl out of the trap
Dorian had sprung to no avail. A few more desperate gestures and the man ran off, likely to get help.
“Now!” Dorian said as the man disappeared out of the clearing. He pushed up from the ground and ran towards the sobbing girl. Caelum felt powerless to stop the tidal wave of a man running ahead of him through the snow.
This child, no more than ten, moved to scream again as Dorian rounded upon her, but the blonde titan in his military brown clutched her throat, bruising rage stopping any noise except her whimpers.
“What did you do to them,” he demanded. When he received no answer, Dorian pushed her further into the snow, grinding out the words, “What happened here?”
“Dorian, let her go. She probably doesn’t speak Khaantul.”
“She knows something,” the blond growled, fingers tightening.
Caelum touched his arm, pulling when his fear-stricken friend didn’t move. Finally his grip released, and the girl under him coughed harshly, terror fresh in her eyes.
“Vud Hekinin,” Caelum tried crudely, remnants of the military’s Vadek language crash course returning from the cotton of his memory.
The girl spoke her native language rapidly, gesturing to them, the tree they were under, and further across the clearing. Caelum was a skilled lip-reader, but the foreign words laced with panic meant he could only get a few words to paint a grim picture. Something had happened here. Something with a woman and witches. He explained what he had learned to Dorian, who had taken to pacing nearby during the girl’s frantic speech.
The second bullet surprised Caelum as much as the first. Though he supposed it shouldn’t. Dorian crossed the clearing in the direction the girl had pointed, but Caelum could only stare at her limp form. His hand twitched out, aching to relieve the pain she had endured. The guilt soured his stomach.
A shout from Dorian drew his attention across the circle. His steps felt heavy as he approached the frenzied man. The Captain was kneeling near piles of snow, brushing at them with trembling hands. The familiar browns of the military uniforms contrasted sharply against the snow as Caelum drew closer. He dropped to his knees and began clearing snow from the heads of the bodies, terror locking each movement as he waited to find familiar gray eyes. They didn’t appear.
“She’s not here,” he said, a shiver of relief drawing down his spine.
“But she was,” Dorian replied. He held up a familiar scarf, coated in blood. The bitter taste of loss and anger filled Caelum’s mouth. It had been Caelum’s gift to his sister for her birthday only two months prior. He stood again, walking away from the bodies to calm the rapidly rising emotions.
“Why did you shoot her,” he ground out after he had breathed his fear and anger back into place below his ribs. Dorian’s blank stare made him gesture to the child under the tree. “She could have helped us find Meira.”
His companion rose, face coolly placid for their situation.
“She said Vuska, right?”
Caelum nodded.
“Then she couldn’t have helped.”
Dorian’s certainty stopped Caelum short. He watched the man slowly re-cover their comrades as Caelum played through the rest of the stilted conversation with the girl to find whatever Dorian seemed already to know.
“How—"
“The Vadek only call one group of people Vuska,” Dorian answered before Caelum could finish, a hungry rage settling across his features.
The truth dropped on Caelum in an icy crash. Dorian finished covering the last man, dropping a prayer to the God of Death, before walking to the wary brunet.
“We need to go south, check all the Juri’a villages. They are holding her hostage and we’ll find her.”
“How do you know they are holding her hostage,” Caelum asked after a few minutes as they dropped back over the ridge to their horses.
“She’s a Khaantul medic. The spineless halfwit in Cerilaig kept gushing about her healing abilities. The heathens need her and are going to keep her alive.”
“Dorian, come on. We can’t possibly just go to every village and demand Meira. We don’t even speak Juri’a.”
The man paused as he mounted his horse, dropping his foot back to the earth and turning back to Caelum with a ferocity the latter had never seen directed at him.
“I promised her, Caelum. I promised to protect her and care for her.” Desolation poisoned his voice. “I have to find her.”
Love coursed through Caelum’s fearful heart as he felt the passion his best friend held for his sister. He put a hand on Dorian’s shoulder for a reassuring squeeze.
“We’ll find Meira, okay. We just need to be smart about this. We can go back and coordinate with the leadership in Uzhberd. We can find someone to translate.”
“There isn’t time,” Dorian said, sharp gestures brushing off Caelum’s hand. As if to underscore his point, they heard yells from the mountain’s rim behind them. The Vadeks had found the girl.
The men mounted, riding hastily from the violent ridge. When enough distance was between them and the scene behind, they slowed their pace. Dorian tilted the reins, drawing his horse down a path leading south. Caelum said nothing, matching the movements in acquiescence. Shadows crossed Dorian’s clouded face, and Caelum released another silent prayer into the universe.