Jean Lorrah - Flight to Savage Empire

“Vortius?”

“No. I don’t know who-”

Three score of men were setting fire to the wooden huts of people who could barely fight back. She saw a young girl carried off by an ugly brute who laughed at her terrified screams.

An adolescent boy snatched up a sword and ran at the man, only to be cut down from behind by another raider, who laughed, “Gotta share her now, Yorgo!”

Astra screamed at the boy’s death agony, and withdrew into herself, separating her mind from the pain.

Zanos touched her shoulder.

“I’m all right,” she said tersely. “But those people are being slaughtered!”

The gladiator looked to the east, then back at the smoke column. His indecision lasted only for a moment. “Come on!” he said, kicking his horse to a gallop.

Astra slapped her horse’s flank and took off after Zanos, the sword slapping against her thigh.

They rode into a scene of devastation. Bodies littered the ground, the cries of the dying mingled with the crackle of flames. Astra Read a handful of survivors as she and Zanos dismounted.

“Which one first?” he asked, eyeing the bleeding bodies.

Astra ran to the side of a girl of about twelve. She lay unconscious, a large gash in her right side. Even with her limited medical training, Astra could tell that no Aventine healer could stop that bleeding- but…

“Zanos-?”

He knelt beside her, placing his hands over the wound. The bleeding stopped almost immediately, and the girl drifted from unconsciousness to healing sleep as her severed flesh drew together.

As Astra began Reading other survivors, Zanos suddenly exclaimed, “This one!”

She whirled at the intensity of his voice, to find him kneeling over a leather-garbed man who writhed in pain. Her husband gripped the man’s upper right arm in anger, not concern.

“He’s one of the raiders, Zanos, not-”

“I know that! Read him for me!”

Startled at his tone and manner, Astra nonetheless complied. “Internal bleeding, and severed tendons in his upper calves.” She guided Zanos in stopping the bleeding and reconnecting the tendons, but in the midst of it their patient suddenly passed out.

“There,” Zanos said with satisfaction. “He’ll stay unconscious until I can question him.”

“Question him about what?” Astra wanted to know.

“Later. Right now there are his victims to help.”

With Astra’s guidance, Zanos used his healing powers on two other severely injured villagers, then asked,

“Are there any others in danger of death?”

“No, but-”

“Good.” But as he turned back toward the unconscious raider he coughed. Their eyes watered in the acrid smoke. “Maybe some of their homes can be salvaged,” said Zanos-and where he looked, the flames died away, revealing that several dwellings might be made habitable.

But Astra saw that Zanos’ efforts were depleting his strength. “Please,” she told him, “use your powers for healing.” There were still an old woman with a skull fracture and concussion, and a young man with a broken collarbone. Zanos worked on them while Astra Read the others-but when he joined her at the side of an unconscious middle-aged woman, he staggered against her, breathing heavily, close to exhaustion.

Just then a scream from behind them caused both Reader and Adept to turn. From the other side of the village came a young woman, hair loose and disheveled, shrieking an attack cry as she charged them with a sword.

The moment of surprise brought Astra’s Reading wide open. She could sense the girl’s frenzy and Zanos’

weakness in the same moment.

Instinctively, Astra jumped to her feet and stepped in front of Zanos-

Within five paces of Astra, the girl suddenly seemed to trip and fall. She landed at the Reader’s feet, unconscious.

With a sigh of relief, Astra turned to thank her husband, who was sinking back on his haunches, barely able to stay awake-

And only then did she realize that she had drawn her sword, and was gripping the hilt tightly with both hands.

Zanos woke to find himself lying on a straw mat in one of the huts he’d saved from the flames. Astra sat tailor-fashion not far from him, cleaning her sword with an oil-soaked rag.

“Good morning,” she said as he sat up. “How are you feeling?”

He almost replied, “You’re the Reader-you tell me,” but remembered that they were in a land where Aventine Readers were feared and killed. Looking around warily, he asked, “Did I pass out? The last thing I recall was… stopping someone from attacking you.”

“You expended all your energy saving the villagers, putting out the fires, and then saving me-again,” she told him. “You hadn’t had time to recover completely from the white lotus, either. But you didn’t pass out; you went into a kind of trance. After I straightened things out with Trel, we got you into this hut, where you fell asleep.”

“Trel?”

“He’s sort of the village elder. He and Kimma- the woman with the sword-were returning home when they saw the smoke, just as we did. When they arrived and saw the destruction, Kimma assumed the strangers she saw here were responsible. That’s why she attacked. But when Trel saw you put her to sleep

rather than kill her, he wasn’t so quick to assume we were his enemies.”

“But how could you communicate?” asked Zanos. “You don’t speak their language-”

“No, she doesn’t,” said a voice from the doorway, “but I still speak Aventine.”

Zanos looked past Astra to the gray-bearded man entering the hut with a tray of food. This had to be Trel, a tall, thin man of more than sixty years, but with the stride and bearing of a younger man. His most striking feature was clear blue eyes. They seemed to take in everything, revealing little. The eyes of a hunter.

“In fact,” Trel continued, “everyone in the village speaks at least a little.” He gestured Zanos to remain seated, handed him the tray, and sank to a sitting position. Smiling, he held out his hand. “I welcome you to my home, friend Zanos, and thank you for what you did yesterday. “

Zanos and Trel grasped one another’s forearms as a sign of newfound friendship. It was a long time since Zanos had done this with sincerity… not since he had befriended Ard. He pushed away that memory as their host bade them eat.

“One of the people you saved is Deela, my wife,” Trel added. “Astra told me when she Read Deela this morning-”

Zanos stared at Astra in astonishment.

She said calmly, “No, I didn’t tell them I’m a Reader. I didn’t have to.”

Trel chuckled. “You missed the sight of your wife holding me at bay with her sword. The moment she spoke, I knew she was Aventine, and well educated. But she doesn’t have the arrogance of the highborn.

She was more than a little surprised when I assumed she was a Dark Moon Reader.”

“And when did you escape from the empire?” Zanos asked.

Trel’s smile faded. “I didn’t. Thirty-five years ago, this area was part of the Aventine Empire. My family had a small farm in the lowlands. Then Drakonius pushed the border back a few miles-right over our land. We and some of our neighbors fled into the hills, and survived by staying out of Drakonius’ way.

Our village had a Reader, which made it much easier for us.

“Eventually we settled here, fighting off the roving bandits until our rights were respected. Then we found we could trade with them.”

“You never tried to get back into the empire?” Astra asked.

The old man snorted. “From what I’ve heard, the present Emperor is no better than the one who ruled when our lands were lost. If there was justice in the empire, would you two have run away? Here, we enjoy a good measure of freedom… or we did until recently.” He continued sadly, “Many of the clans call these the Red Hills, for all the blood that’s been shed in them. Robberies, raids-not to mention feuds between clans. Our village was always the calm within the storm-until yesterday. We’ve paid a severe price for becoming lax and overconfident. Yesterday morning we were nearly fifty. Now we are fewer than twenty.”