Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

‘Perhaps you are asleep. Perhaps this all just a nightmare.’

The man blinked as though coming halfway to his senses. ‘ End. My. Shame.’

Che sighed, and frowned, but didn’t move.

‘ Beg. You,’ croaked Lucian.

Che reached a hand out and plucked the leaf from the man’s cheek. The flesh was cold to the touch. With care he settled the head into the jar of Royal Milk. The man’s eyes watched him as they slipped beneath the surface.

He stood there for a moment, observing a few bubbles rising to the surface. Slowly, with great relish, he licked the ends of his fingers, and stood humming with the sudden rush of it, the vitality suddenly burning through him.

Che turned and left the jar sitting there, deep in shadow.

Ash sat alone in the night, gazing out over the tents of the baggage train and the encampment of the imperial army at the ruins of Spire still burning.

The men of the army were loud tonight, intoxicated by the action of the day and the plunder they had gained from the sack. Already, they were trading their goods with the prostitutes and merchants of the baggage train; slaves too, which were being led in silent lines to the slave traders and their caged wagons.

Ash pondered at the defiance of the town. It had seemed senseless to him, for they’d clearly stood no chance at all against the cannon of the imperial army. Yet still, the small contingent of soldiers in the town had manned the walls and fought on as long as they had stood.

Perhaps they’d simply hoped to slow the advance of the invaders for a day or two. Perhaps with their deaths they bought time for others: for the townsfolk fleeing to the west; for the Khosian army already rumoured to be marching hard to meet them.

The towns of the People’s Revolution had done the same once, some of them at least. They had tried to hold off the advancing overlord forces while the Revolutionary Army mustered for the final battle in the Sea of Wind and Grasses. In the end, though, their sacrifices, their long war of resistance, had been in vain.

‘ In vain,’ Ash grumbled aloud, shaking his gourd at the gutted settlement.

He gnashed his teeth drunkenly and sat back, trembling. Close by, the black night waters of a stream rushed along their rocky course. The Sisters of Loss and Longing were full tonight. They hung fat with blood above the burning town. A bad omen, he thought.

Ash held a deep admiration for what they had achieved here in the Free Ports. They had far surpassed anything that the people of Honshu had even dreamed of attaining. Yet part of him had always known that sooner or later this day would come to them. He was too aware of how fragile freedom truly was; a lonely flame cupped in the hands of a child, in a world where darkness preyed upon the light.

A throb filled his head, and he gripped it with a snarl. The pains had returned to him today with the sacking of the town, and with them the tremors in his hand. Before he’d retired to this grassy bank next to the stream, Ash had paid a small fortune in coin to buy a flask of Cheem Fire, intent on keeping himself warm and dulling his aches.

He took another long drink of it, and watched the stars above the lesser constellations of campfires in the valley. The Eye of Ninshi shone hard and red within its hood, unblinking.

He thought of Nico, on a night like this one, high in the foothills of Cheem. He thought of them getting drunk together around a fire.

Ash drank some more.

Silent Valley

Che had risen early that morning, and he huddled in his tent while he lathered some his mother’s chamomile ointment over the rashes on his arms. He hadn’t slept well – too many things on his mind – and with a stiff neck he gazed out through the open tent flap, desiring the meagre daylight of dawn and the view over the snow-blanketed valley.

There was no hurry. In this weather, it would take the army and camp followers an eternity to ready themselves for the march. Outside, the bitter wind tore at the canvas tents of the encampment. Leaves and debris tumbled through the air. The zels were jittery, jostling together in their corrals as they tried to find a place in the warm and sheltered hearts of their small herds. A few people padded through the snow to the latrines, holding hats or hoods over their heads.

Through the open flap, he saw Swan and Guan stamp past. Guan glanced at him without expression, cool now. Swan, though, looked in and offered a brief smile.

Che placed the jar of ointment on his bed and rolled down his sleeves. He sat there pondering for a few moments.

He checked the knife in its scabbard around his ankle then rose and stepped outside. He spotted the twins entering one of the corrals. Their tent wasn’t far from his own. When he reached it, he swept inside.

He looked about the orderly space, then pounced for the backpacks perched against the two cots. In the first pack, he found civilian clothing tightly bound in twine, a copy of the Scripture of Lies heavily annotated, and a journal with drawings and observations of Khos. He drew back when he found the small wooden poisoner’s kit at the bottom of it, a kit identical to his own.

Che glanced back to make sure he was still alone. Quickly, he rifled through the other pack. His hands drew out a canvas bag and within it a small vial. He took it out and held it up to the daylight. A thick, golden liquid was within. He pulled out the stopper, took a tentative sniff.

Che clasped the vial in his fist and hurried outside.

They were still at the corral when he went to confront them, rubbing down the backs of their zels with handfuls of grass. Guan muttered something to his sister when he saw Che approaching. She smirked, then made herself serious again.

‘I know what you are,’ Che snapped, tossing the vial into Guan’s hand. The man glanced down at it, then looked across at his sister.

With a laugh she grabbed a fistful of her zel’s mane and leapt onto its bare back. A moment later, Guan was doing the same.

‘Come for a ride with us,’ she said down to Che, and before he could reply she kicked the animal’s flanks and took off, clearing the fence of the corral in a leap, her brother just behind her.

Che growled deep in his throat. He grabbed the mane of the nearest zel and jumped onto its back, then spurred it forwards so that it jumped the corral fence with a double clip of its hooves. He gave chase as the twins raced out through the palisade and the Acolyte camp around it, clods of snow flying from their mounts’ hooves like birds scattering in their wake.

The land was good for riding beyond the camp, though the wind was strong enough to smear tears across his cheeks. Half blinded and head low, he kicked for greater speed, surging after them as they entered a small wood. His hood fell back to expose his head. He ducked down further as he wove between the gnarled trunks of trees and felt the scratch of leaves and twigs against his face. Ahead, the twins leapt a spring and turned and followed along its bank. Che veered left to cut them off. He forced his zel over the water too and tucked in close behind them, racing at full gallop.

His thighs were burning by the time he came alongside Swan. She lashed at him with a broken branch, laughing again as he fended her off with his hand.

And then from his left came Guan, veering towards him with a branch in his hand ready to strike at his head. Che ducked and felt the breath of it cross the stubble on his scalp.

He pulled hard on the zel’s mane until it reared to a halt. It skittered a few steps and then settled, the steam shooting from its nostrils. There he sat unmoving, while slowly the twins circled back towards his position, moving in separate orbits so as to remain on either side of him.