Морган Райс - Victor, Vanquished, Son

“He struck at me,” Jeva said. “He was not as fast as he thought.”

The others there nodded. Such things could happen, in these harshest parts of the world. Jeva let none of the guilt she felt show on her face.

“You have come to ask us something,” the Speaker said.

Jeva nodded. “I have.”

“Then ask.”

Jeva stood there, collecting her thoughts. “I ask for aid for the island of Haylon. A great fleet attacks it, on the orders of the First Stone. I believe that our people can make a difference.”

Voices called out then, speaking at once. There were questions and demands, accusations and opinions, all seeming to blur together.

“She wants us to go to die for her.”

“We’ve heard this before!”

“Why fight for people we don’t know?”

Jeva stood there, letting all of it wash over her. If this went wrong, there was every chance that she wouldn’t be walking out of this room. Given who she was, she should have felt a sense of peace at that, but she also found herself thinking about Thanos, who had saved her at risk to himself, and about all the people who were stuck on Haylon. They needed her to succeed.

“We should give her to the dead for all she’s done!” one called.

The Speaker of the Dead stepped next to Jeva then, holding up his hands for quiet.

“We know what our sister is asking,” the Speaker said. “Now is not the time for talking. We are just the living. Now is the time to listen to the dead.”

He reached down to his belt, pulling out a pouch of the sacred powders mixed with the ashes of the ancestors. He threw it onto the pyre, and the flames leapt up.

“Breathe, sister,” the Speaker said. “Breathe and see.”

Jeva breathed in the smoke, taking it deep into her lungs. The flames danced in the pit below her, and for the first time in years, Jeva saw the dead.

It started with the spirit of the man she’d killed. It stood from his burning corpse, walking through the flames to her.

“You killed me,” he said in something like shock. “You killed me!”

He struck her then, and though the dead shouldn’t have been able to touch the living, Jeva still felt it as surely as if he’d slapped her while he was alive. He struck her, and then he stepped back, looking on expectantly.

The rest of the dead came to Jeva then, and they were no kinder than the young man she’d slain. They were all there: the people she’d killed by her own hand, the ones she’d led to their deaths on Haylon. They came to her one by one, and one by one, they struck out at Jeva, in blows that left her reeling, knocked her flat, reduced her to something holding herself on the ground.

It seemed to take forever before they stepped away from her, and Jeva was able to look up again. She found herself looking at Haylon, the island surrounded by ships, the battle raging.

She saw the ships of the Bone Folk slam into those attackers, punching a hole through, their warriors spilling out onto the shore. She saw them fighting, and killing, and dying. Jeva saw them dying in numbers that she had only seen once before, in Delos.

“If you take them to Haylon, they will die,” a voice said, and that voice sounded as though it was composed of the voices of a thousand ancestors at once. “They will die as we died.”

“Will they win ?” Jeva asked.

There was a brief pause before the voice answered that. “It is possible that the island might be saved.”

So it wouldn’t be an empty gesture. It wouldn’t be the same as on Delos.

“It will be the end for our people,” the voice said. “Some will survive, but our tribes will not. Our ways will not. There will be so many more joining us, waiting for you in death.”

That brought a flash of fear to Jeva. She’d felt the anger of those who had died, felt their blows. Was it worth it? Could she do it to her whole people?

“And you would die,” the voice continued. “Announce this to our people, and you will die for it.”

Slowly, she started to come back to herself, finding herself on the floor before the pyre. Jeva put a hand to her face and it came away bloody, although she didn’t know if that was the strain of the vision or the violence of the dead. She forced herself to stand, looking out over the assembled crowd.

“Tell us what you saw, sister,” the Speaker of the Dead said.

Jeva stood there, looking at him, trying to gauge how much, if anything, he’d seen. Could she lie in this moment? Could she tell the assembled crowd that the dead were all in favor of the plan?

Jeva knew that she couldn’t lie like that, even for Thanos.

“I saw death,” she said. “Your death, my death. The death of our whole people if we do this.”

A murmur went around the room. Her people had no fear of death, but the destruction of their whole way of life was something else.

“You have asked me to speak for the dead,” Jeva said, “and they have said that in Haylon, victory would be bought with our people’s lives.” She took a breath, thinking about what Thanos would have done. “I don’t want to speak for the dead. I want to speak for the living.”

The murmurs changed tone, becoming more confused. Becoming angrier in some spaces too.

“I know what you think,” Jeva said. “You think I am speaking sacrilege. But there is a whole island of people out there that needs our help. I saw the dead, and they cursed me for their deaths. Do you know what that tells me? That life matters ! That the lives of all those who will die if we don’t help matter. If we do not help, we allow evil to stand. We allow those who would live in peace to be slaughtered. I will stand against that, not because the dead require it, but because the living do!”

There was uproar then in the hall. The Speaker of the Dead looked at it all, then at Jeva. He pushed her toward the door.

“You should go,” he said. “Go before they kill you for blasphemy.”

Jeva didn’t go, though. The dead had already told her that she would die for doing this. If that was the price of gaining help, she would pay it. She stood there as a point of silence in the middle of the arguments in the room. When a man ran at her, she kicked him back and kept standing. It was all she could do right then. She waited for the moment when one of them would finally kill her.

Jeva was quite confused when they didn’t. Instead, the noise in the room died down, and the people there stood in front of her, looking her way. One by one, they fell to their knees, and the Speaker of the Dead stepped forward.

“It seems that we will go with you to Haylon, sister.”

Jeva blinked. “I… don’t understand.”

She should have been dead then. The dead had told her that it was the sacrifice they wanted.

“Have you forgotten our ways so completely?” the priest said. “You have offered us a death worth having. Who are we to argue?”

Jeva fell to her knees with the others then. She didn’t know what to say. She’d been expecting death, and had life instead. Now, she just had to make it count for something.

“We’re coming, Thanos,” she promised.

Irrien ignored the pain of his wounds as he rode south along tracks already turned to mud by the passage of his army. He forced himself to stay tall in the saddle, not letting any of the agony he felt show. He didn’t slow or stop, in spite of the many cuts, the bandages and the stitches. The things that lay at the end of this journey were too important to delay.

His men journeyed with him, making the ride back to Delos even faster than they had pursued their assault on the North. Some of them were moving slower, shepherding lines of slaves or wagons of looted goods, but most rode with their lord, ready for the battles that were still to come.