Marina Dyachenko - The Scar

Their enemy, enormous and bleeding, with two swords in his muscled hands, faced them unafraid.

“What did the Magister promise you? That you would remain alive, even after the city was destroyed by the Plague?”

And both his blades started to move like fish thrown out of the water onto the ground. The two swords looked like human creatures; they were extremely angry, they wanted fire and blood. But the Servants of Lash overcame their initial confusion. Two swords were confronted by two dozen blades, with many more behind those.

The whole scene was sparkling. Two acolytes leapt forward to attack and one of Egert’s swords knocked away a dagger; with the other hand he repulsed the other’s strike. And Egert, swift as a lion, swung his claws, one after the other, and there were two howling bodies on the floor.

“Did you hope to hide yourself behind your walls?”

The fighters in gray robes scattered in a semicircle. Soll was in the center of their ring and he was swinging as a reckless wasp with two stings. The air was howling, and the courtroom hadn’t witnessed such a scene for centuries.

“When you were digging into the hill…”

Strikes, sparks, howls.

“… did the Magister tell you that Lash would protect you?”

Strike. Gnashing. Ringing.

A dagger whizzed by his ear like a bullet. From the corner of his eye Egert noticed another one flying toward him—and at the last moment he bent down and let the death pass him. A follower of Lash behind him groaned—the knife deep into his shoulder.

Egert bellowed: “So let Lash protect you now!”

And he rushed into the attack, one man against dozens of skilled soldiers.

“For Luayan!” A heavy-built man in a gray robe fell, gripping his chest. “For Toria!” Another was skewered and fell down to the feet of his fellows. “Let’s punish them!” A chopped-off hand flew in the air. “Let’s punish them!”

“For Fox!” young voices chanted like a choir. The judge’s heavy armchair, raised by three students, fell on the gray-robed heads.

“For the city! For the suburbs! For what you have done! You wanted power? You wanted worship? You shall have it!”

Encircled and forced to defend himself, Soll managed to force Lash’s soldiers back. And then a strange thing happened: Lash’s army, which had always seemed to be solid, unbreakable, and faceless, hesitated, their confidence broken. The hoods of many of them had been swept off their heads during the frantic battle … and now their faces appeared; the faceless robes of Lash turned into people.

Frightened. Embittered … even ashamed. For years they had inhaled the heavy incense of their rituals. They had admired Fagirra, thought him to be eternal … and now he was dead. They had idealized their Magister and now they were doubtful about him. Young, old, bald, mustachioed, squint-eyed, pale, it seemed they saw one another for the first time. It seemed they saw the people around them for the first time.

One of Lash’s followers screamed, “We cannot abandon the Magister! We must do what Lash wills!”

“The will of Lash!” chanted the frenzied voices.

“The End of Times will come!” A plump fellow with sagging cheeks shouted at the top of his voice, and Egert suddenly recognized him: the clerk’s shy son only recently was a student. “Lash will hide the believers!”

“His will…”

With renewed energy, they rushed into the attack again.

“Lash!”

“Lash!”

“This is the will of Lash!”

But their will and their confidence had been broken, and the students beat them down everywhere, with Egert Soll, once a coward, at the forefront of the fighting.

“Watch out, Soll!” someone shouted from the crowd.

Egert ducked, and a knife whistled above his head; he moved to the right, and another slashed down where he’d just been standing. Twirling around, as if in a dance, he repulsed two blades at a time—from the top and from the bottom, he struck the young servant’s chest with his foot, forcing him to drop his weapon, he twisted around and saw his other adversary running away. It was the clerk’s son running out of the courtroom—limping and trying to strip off his robe and hood.

“Hold him!”

Two or three students started to chase him. Soll realized that the ring of enemies around him was gone: someone motionlessly lay on the floor, someone turned moaning, someone stepped back, someone tried to hide. The battle was over.

Egert found Toria with his eyes. She remained standing where he’d left her—motionless, frozen, her face white. He nodded to her, encouraging and calming. He looked around; the room was still crowded, and strangely quiet. The city dwellers stood shoulder to shoulder—the ones who cursed Toria and her father, those who broke windows at the university. There were many strong men among them; Lash’s servants were mixed in this crowd. The silence was more terrible than any roar: only puffing, moans, and rare curses, and shoe soles on the worn stones.

Students supported their wounded fellows. Almost all of them were covered in blood.

Suddenly a commotion started at the doors. All heads turned simultaneously. The guards were marching in, swords raised. There was a great number of them, all heavily armed; the crowd made room for them.

The gray-haired officer who had tried to arrest Egert stopped. Egert silently waited; would the guards dare to wound or even to kill random witnesses? His heart worked as a metronome, pacing the rhyme and time of the forthcoming fight.

Even the wounded ceased to moan. Egert looked into the eyes of the officer; strange, now there was no fear in the eyes of the guard. There was something new, what Egert did not understand. The officer straightened up and slowly raised his blade, saluting. The other guards repeated his motion like shadows. For several seconds none said a word.

Egert could hardly stand on his feet. He crossed the room, and the crowd respectfully made way for him; he went up to Toria, and took her tightly under her arm, letting his swords drop.

She leaned on him, pressing him but holding her back upright. People silently looked at them; the guards in red-and-white uniforms stood several steps away, as if expecting something.

“Arrest the servants of Lash,” Egert said in a hoarse voice. “Don’t let anyone in a hood leave. Gather them here for questioning. Do not use force: let them talk. Don’t let anyone out, but the main thing is to find the Magister!”

The crowd stirred. The officer of the guards nodded to his people and he looked again into Soll’s eyes: “Yes, Captain.”

Spring came.

Climbing up the hill would have cost Toria too much effort; she was weakened from her lingering wounds. He carried her, treading firmly across the dampened loam, and not once did his legs slip.

On the summit of the hill was a grave, covered by the unfolded steel wing as by a hand. They stood, bowing their heads. Clouds shifted above, white on blue. Neither Egert nor Toria needed to speak about the man who now slept forever beneath the wing: even without that, he abided with them.

They stood, nestled against each other, just as they had on that distant winter day, except that their entwined shadow lay not on sparkling, clean snow, but on moist, black earth, overgrown with the first grass of spring. Egert flared his nostrils, catching the strong smell of green life, and he could not decide if it was the scent of Toria or the aroma of bulbs fighting their way to the surface.

A bright, gold disk on a chain hung from her hand as if Toria wanted to show her father that his bequest was intact.

Far, far away, in Kavarren, an old man read a letter to his wife, and the old woman listened to him, having sat up in bed for the first time in many days. The letter was signed by the burgomaster and the Guard’s chief; in it Egert Soll was called a hero and a savior of the city. The elderly man cried, tears fell from his chin, and the woman understood that she wouldn’t die soon.