Jeff Salyards - Veil of the Deserters

“Aside from spewing my guts out, you mean?” She laughed, though I suspected at least partially forced. “Well. Thank you. And you’re right-I’ve never done anything like that before. And hope never to again. Finding those memories, of the men he killed with that thing? That took the most time, but was the easiest part of it really. Taking them into myself though, ridding him of them. That…” I couldn’t see her face. She paused, and possibly shuddered, though it could have been a trick of the night. “That was painful. And difficult. Every part of me rebelled against doing it. I’ve taken memories from someone before, but they were always his own. Completely different. These… the woman in your company described it as poison, right? And that is accurate, to a point, but…”

It hung there for a bit, and then I did approach closer and lowered my voice. “But?”

“But, it was more than that. Worse than that.”

I almost didn’t want to know. “How so?”

After pausing again, Skeelana said, “Poison is dangerous, deadly even, but natural. It isn’t malicious. But those memories? They were unnatural, but more than that. And not just the fact they were foreign, and didn’t belong, though that accounted for some of it. But some residue of something… worse. A taint of some kind.”

I was confused. “A taint? Of what?”

“Bloodsounder. The captain didn’t steal those memories. The weapon did. And there was some malice, or maybe worse, involved. It’s hard to describe, and even saying it out loud…”

She searched for the right words and shook her head. “Preposterous. It sounds preposterous, I know.” Skeelana sounded tired, and somewhat spellbound as well, as if she’d been walking up the stairs of an incredibly tall tower, trapped in a dizzying spiral, exerting herself to the fullest, only to reach a landing and look out over an expansive, and perhaps terrifying, landscape. “Being bombarded by those memories, incredibly intimate reminders from the men he killed. It was like talking with ghosts. But even that isn’t quite right. There was something about each memory I absorbed from Killcoin, took on myself. It was as if I could feel Blood-sounder behind me. And it was…” She shook her head. “I know how ridiculous it sounds. But there was rage, a silent rage there. The flail didn’t want me to drain those memories from him. It would have fought me off if it could have. It wanted to.”

She looked at me, the rings in her nose and ears catching the moonlight, and I could feel her searching, measuring my reaction, tense, as if expecting me to laugh or call her a fool. Instead, I was trying to decide which questions I could ask while I had the chance, without taxing her too much. “Soffjian didn’t look as… surprised as I would have guessed. When Hewspear and the others described what had befallen or bedeviled the captain. In fact, and this might not be generous, she seemed as if the words confirmed something she already knew or suspected. This isn’t the first time Memoridons have encountered something like this, is it?”

Skeelana didn’t reply right away, and I was afraid I’d overstepped, but she didn’t curse me or so many of the things everyone else seemed inclined to do when I started asking questions, so I took that as a good sign. Finally, after looking around to be sure no one had crept up on us in the dark, she said, “Not like this. Not exactly. But we have discovered weapons of a similar nature before. Only they didn’t quite… work.”

“Work? You mean, they weren’t cursed?”

“I’m not sure cursed is the right word. My sense-and I fully admit, I could be wrong-but I think Bloodsounder does exactly what it was intended to. Only we don’t understand what that is. But I’m not sure inflicting damage on the wielder, or punishing him, or cursing him, is any part of it. I just think we don’t know exactly what it does, or why. But it does function. It does work. And that we haven’t seen before. Not like this.”

I recalled the edge in Soffjian’s voice as she asked her questions, quickly, but precisely too. It wasn’t anxiety. It was excitement. “She wants to study it, doesn’t she?”

“Of course she does. Why wouldn’t she? This is the first weapon we’ve seen that actually bonded.”

“Well,” I replied, framing my words carefully, “I can see that, from your perspective, this would be a find of some kind. But I suspect the captain doesn’t particularly welcome the idea of being studied or experimented on.”

Skeelana seemed genuinely surprised. “Perhaps not. But cursed or not, it grieves him, and might be doing far worse. I went in to do one thing, which I did. Mulldoos looked really eager to chop someone in half with that cleaver of his. So I got in and out. But if we can unravel how it works, we can probably show him how to use Bloodsounder, rather than the other way around. At least, there’s a chance we could. But we would need to study it.”

“And him.”

“And him. The bond. Yes.”

I leaned against a gate that seemed unlikely to support my weight for long. “You mentioned Bloodsounder had awareness of a kind. And hostility. You said it would have rebuffed you if it could. What if it doesn’t particularly welcome any attempts at unraveling?”

She gave that thought and replied, “Aware or not, it is an object. And it can be manipulated. All objects can be manipulated. This might just be trickier, is all.”

“Perhaps. But the captain? He is not likely to sit still for any manipulation, no matter what kind of rhetoric you couch it in.”

She nodded slowly. Then, either tired or sad or both, she replied, “He might not have much choice.”

I thought about that. And the night suddenly got much colder.

Skeelana seemed to feel it as well, and hugged herself. “You should get some rest, Arki. We’ll be leaving early, I imagine. Captain Killcoin might begrudge us helping him, but I’d wager he feels better now than he has since he first picked Bloodsounder up. Night.”

She turned and headed back toward the house I assumed she was sharing with Soffjian. I wanted to call out something as well, but the moment was past, and she was swallowed up in the night.

I headed back toward the inn, wondering at the wisdom of mentioning Soffjian to Braylar’s men, encouraging them to solicit her aid. Skeelana had doubtless helped him, maybe even saved him. And probably more cleanly than Lloi had ever managed.

But calculating the cost was something else altogether.

As Skeelana predicted, Braylar didn’t waste any time the next morning rousing his troops before dawn. It felt like I’d barely closed my eyes, and every muscle seemed stiff. Even the bowed and beaten beds in most road inns were preferable to the cold ground. But I wasn’t about to stumble about in the dark and check rooms for occupants. And there was something that just seemed more… plaguish… about a bed in this village. So uncomfortable floor it was.

I rinsed my face in water, rubbed my eyes, grabbed the nuts and dried fruit that was offered, and followed the other Syldoon out, noting that they were grumbling a bit as well, even as inured to such things as they were. That helped. A little.

The wagons had already been brought out of the barns, and no one risked a sharp rebuke from a commanding officer by dawdling. Horses were saddled immediately, and it didn’t take long before our small company was on the move again, me sitting in the wagon, Braylar on the bench at the front, and the rest of the Syldoon riding.

I lifted the canvas flap and looked out the back as the village behind us was suddenly completely deserted again. While I’d never considered myself bound to one spot, I’d done more traveling in the last two tendays than I had in most of my life prior. Even leaving a plague-ridden dead village gave me a slight pang.