Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

Bahn stumbled after them.

Yes, he thought to himself. They’re playing with our heads. They’re making us dream this night, and when I wake I’ll be back in that hole, waiting to die.

He looked about him, and realized they had left the camp behind them, that they were stumbling out onto the open plain. The darkness there like an embrace.

Bahn bumped into the back of Chilanos, for the man had stopped dead in his tracks. He peered ahead through the rain and saw that Gadeon had stopped too, and the man before him. Bahn staggered forwards around them, not wanting to stop now. He saw the dark form of Bull with his hand held up for silence. The big warrior’s head was scanning slowly left to right.

‘Halt!’ came a voice through the darkness ahead of them, and then sound of footsteps squelching through mud. ‘Declare yourselves!’

Steel rasped against leather. Bull vanished into the night.

Two blades struck each other. Another shout sounded from their left. ‘Sound a report!’

Footsteps running towards them. ‘Report, I say!’

This is real, Bahn thought. This is no fantasy.

‘ Go,’ urged Bahn to his comrades in a sudden rush of panic. He grabbed a man and shoved him forwards into the darkness. ‘ Go,’ he said again, trying to get them all moving. They started to run for it, the whole huffing shambling group of them.

They passed Bull in the darkness. The man whirled away from something and waved them on.

‘Sound the alarm!’ a man was hollering. ‘Sound the alarm there!’

The men gasped as they splashed through the gully of a stream. They helped each other to their feet and up the other side of it. Bahn fell and swallowed a mouthful of muddy water. Rain splashed off the flowing stream. Retching, he got to his feet and clawed his way up the other side.

He turned back for Bull. The man stood on the bank of the gully silhouetted by the campfires. His back was to them, a naked sword in his hand.

Someone was trying to tug Bahn along. He turned and followed in a hopping skipping run. They ran until their hearts were fit to burst and kept on running, scattering into the night like phantoms.

A Mother

Smoke tumbled from the chimney of the cottage and from the roof of a rundown shack at the back. Against the side of the cottage rested a lean-to of rotten planks, its floor strewn with hay that had spilled out into the muddy yard where chickens pecked at scattered corn. At the edge of a fenced enclosure, an old zel ambled lazily, chewing contentedly and swatting its tail at the late autumn flies. Beyond, in the far distance, the southern mountains rose with silver falls of water shining on their flanks, catching sunlight.

Nico’s mother bustled from the kitchen doorway. She selected a few small logs from a pile that leaned against the whitewashed wall of the cottage, then made her way quickly to the smoky shack with the dirty hems of her skirts dragging across the ground. Her red hair was tied back this morning; it shone with a deep lustre.

Ash saw her as walked up the dirt track, and stopped as though he had walked into a wall. His heart started hammering inside him.

He came up to her as she left the smoking shack, wiping her empty hands.

‘ Oh!’ Reese exclaimed and clutched her chest in fright. She relaxed as recognition came to her. She glanced behind him for Nico, and her face tightened when she failed to see him.

‘Mister Ash,’ she managed.

‘Mistress Calvone.’

He could see her taking in his ragged, unkempt condition. A tension was slowly settling upon her pretty features. ‘My son. Where is he?’

Ash’s eyes closed of their own accord, wanting to spare him from her distress. He lowered his head in shame.

‘No,’ she whispered in realization.

How could he say what needed to be said? Ash forced himself at least to meet her stare.

‘The boy…’ he began, and it took all the force of his will to continue. ‘Miss Calvone. I am sorry. He is gone.’

‘No.’ She was shaking her head, a hand clutching at her throat; her skin had flushed a vivid crimson.

Ash fumbled with the small clay vial of ashes about his neck until he held it outstretched in his hands. He saw how pitiful it looked. More pitiful even than the urn of ashes he had given to Baracha for safe keeping. But it was all he could offer her, and he had a need just then to give something of her son back to her.

‘I… I am… deeply sorry.’

Reese glared in horror at the tiny vial as though he held a stillborn foetus in his hands. In that moment, it was true self-loathing that possessed him.

She slapped the jar from his hands and it went spinning across the yard, where it struck the wall of the cottage and shattered into pieces. Reese launched herself at him, swinging her fist across his face. It was a solid blow and he swayed from it, and then her rage fully unleashed in a torrent of punches and kicks.

‘You promised!’ she screamed over and over again. ‘You promised you’d protect him!’

Ash didn’t try to stop her, not even when she blindly grabbed at a spade and laid into him with the full weight of its metal head. He fell, sprawling in the dirt with his hands raised over his face. Vaguely, he was aware of the torrent of words rushing from her mouth, words of accusation, every one of them justified, each one true.

He could barely see with the blood coursing into his eyes. He heard the shouts of a man, felt strong hands grabbing him. Ash blinked his eyes clear, saw the looming face of Los peering down at him. Reese sat on the ground amongst her piled skirts, sobbing inconsolably, slapping at the earth and wrenching handfuls free with her fingertips.

‘You’d better leave, old man,’ advised Los, his hands helping Ash to his feet.

Ash stood and swayed on the spot. He wanted to say something to her, try in some way to lighten her grief. But he knew there was nothing in all the worldhe could say that would do that. He left her in pieces, like the clay vial scattered in the dirt.

Clouds gathered overhead, darkening the autumn sky with a promise of more rain. Ash passed carts on the road laden with goods or families; individual travellers carrying packs on their backs; herds of livestock driven by dour, pipe-smoking herders. By early afternoon he crested a rise of ground and saw the Bay of Squalls and the city of Bar-Khos spread out before him.

It felt as though it had been years since he’d visited this besieged city of the Free Ports. Yet it had only been a handful of months ago when he had stopped here with the Falcon for its much-needed repairs, and encountered Nico for the first, fateful time.

A stiff sea breeze blew across the rugged edge of the coast, beyond which heaved the white-capped waters of the bay. He could see the Lansway running out into the bay, with the dark walls of the Shield shrouded in a haze of smoke, brief flashes in the midst of it that were the belches of cannon fire.

Of all the cities to be returning to, he thought. It should be Nico coming back here, with a few scars and a dozen stories to tell, not you.

Ash plodded down the busy road towards the eastern gatehouse. To his right lay the city skyport with its fluttering windsocks and sprawling warehouses. Half a dozen skyships lay berthed on the ground with their envelopes deflated, repair crews swarming around them.

As the gatehouse grew nearer, he could hear above the noise of the traffic something different now – the distant din of battle on the Shield. They could all hear it, everyone who was trying to get through the bottleneck of traffic at the open gates, where each cart was being checked by a soldier before being allowed through.

Ash was carried through the bustle without inspection into the streets within.