Steven Savile - The Black Chalice

He couldn't see anything beyond a few blurred outlines.

The shadows were alive, dancing and gyring to the whim of the flames.

He crawled forward, calling out, "I'm here, I'm here," over and over to give whoever was trapped behind the curtain of fire something to focus on. Not that they could have heard him above the roar of the flames, which crackled and spat and hissed, filling the silences ahead of them with their implacable hunger.

The air was so thin that he needed three breaths to swallow what amounted to a single lungful of air. It tasted foul. Bitter. Acrid.

But the noise was the worst of it. It was like a thousand madmen had crawled inside his brain, cackling and laughing, intent on making him one of their number.

Above him, something cracked with a sound like broken bones. He started to crawl back, pushing desperately at the hard-packed dirt, but as a single shaft of light speared through the collapsing roof, he saw them hunched up against the furthest wall — a mother cradling her child in her arms — and threw himself forward. An instant later the ceiling joist gave way, splintering through the heart as a dozen cracks tore through the rings and the dry wood caved in beneath the load it bore.

Alymere threw himself to his left, rolling away from the burning beam as it thudded into the ground where his back had been just a heartbeat before. He didn't have the luxury of celebrating his fortune; breathing hard, he rose to his hands and knees, and then into a crouch, and shuffled forward. The smoke had blackened, but with the roof gone it billowed up freely into the sky. That should have provided some small relief for his lungs, but it didn't. As the roof collapsed the flames leapt higher with more air there to feed them.

Alymere was on the wrong side of the fire now, but there was no way he could retreat. The flames filled the door and all of the space between. They were insatiable. Everything would burn, including him. There was no way back. All he could do was fight his way deeper into the fire. He couldn't allow fear into his mind. It would sear his strength away and finish what the smoke had begun. No. He had to reach the woman. His world was reduced to that simple necessity. He had to reach the woman.

He felt his skin tightening where the heat drew every ounce of moisture out of it.

He licked at his lips. It didn't help.

He ducked his head, gasping at the dead air, then plunged on, fighting his way to the woman's side. All around him the fire raged on, gathering intensity as it found fresh fuel to burn.

Alymere knelt beside the woman. Her head was down, her chin resting on her breastbone, and there was no strength in the arms holding her child. He placed his hand against her cheek, but there was no way of knowing if her warmth sprang from life or the fire. Her face was at peace which, given the maddening noise and the sheer overwhelming heat of the fire, was damning.

Alymere tried to wake her, but it was hopeless. He clutched at her shoulders and shook her — and then again, more forcefully — but failed to elicit so much as a groan.

Her hand fell and lay limply at her side.

The fire was only feet away. It had raced across the bed and spread to the blanket box at its foot. The family's few clean linens burned. And the more the fire was fed, the thicker and less breathable the smoke became.

He had to get them both out of there.

Alymere pushed himself to his feet and looked around.

There was no way out.

It was as simple as that.

The flames closed in around him, darting toward him again and again, and his cloak caught. The fire raced up his back toward his hair. Alymere couldn't breathe; his head swam and colours sparked across his vision. He fumbled with the cloak's clasp, his hands trembling. The metal clasp broke between his fingers and he threw the cloak into the fire before it could spread to his other clothes.

Gasping and coughing, Alymere stumbled forward and lost his balance. He reached out blindly for the wall.

He knew that if he fell, he wouldn't get up again.

The fire had done so much damage that he punched clean through the thin wattle wall as he tried to steady himself. He wrenched it free, the jagged edges of broken branches cutting into his wrist as he did, and then started kicking and punching frantically at the wall, trying to batter it down.

It splintered and split beneath his furious onslaught, and smoke streamed all around him, pouring out into the clear blue sky above. He didn't stop. He lashed out over and over again until his lungs threatened to seize up on him, and doubled up in a fresh coughing fit. This time he couldn't clear his lungs. The bile and black stuff flecked his lips and stained his tabard. When he finally stopped coughing long enough to see through the smoke and spots swirling across his vision, Alymere could see a narrow shaft of daylight where he had torn through the binders and the branches beneath. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the black soot across his face and looked around for something to use to make the breach wider, but anything that might have been useful was already burning. Now that he had opened the wall, the flames had a way into the wood beneath the daub and the whitewashed lime and the fire was in, devouring the brittle branches and the weave of dry twigs. Alymere could hear the sighs and groans as the timbers within the walls shifted. In a few minutes everything was going to buckle and fold as the walls came crashing down.

Alymere threw himself at the wall, using his entire body weight to drive the wattle back. It splintered further, parting around him and, in some grotesque parody of birth, he stumbled out into the snow on the other side. His momentum sent him stumbling and sliding to his knees, skinning his palms as he fell face-first into the snow. The cold hit him, hard, driving what precious little breath he had out of his lungs. He lay there for a moment, face-down and gasping for air. The snow felt so good against his skin, offering the briefest of respites from the heat of the conflagration, but he couldn't savour it, not with the woman still trapped inside the burning building.

Alymere pushed himself back to his feet and turned. There were people around him, battered, bruised, lost in shock. None of them spoke. The silence they shared between them was the quiet of desperation. There could never be words enough to fill it. He turned his back on them and stumbled toward the building.

His legs tangled and betrayed him less than five steps later. He fell to his knees, and then forced himself up again, gritting his teeth against the agony suffocating his lungs. Tongues of flame licked out through the wall. He couldn't see anything beyond them, but that didn't stop him. She needed him. He would not let her down.

Every subsequent step was harder. The scorching heat engulfed him. The smoke was so thick now that he was essentially blind and forced to find his way by memory and touch — where he could bear the contact with anything within the blaze.

He fumbled his way toward where he remembered her being.

She hadn't moved.

Sure that she was dead, Alymere dragged the woman out.

People rushed to help him.

He felt their hands steadying him and heard their voices, but couldn't make sense of anything they said. Alymere could barely stay on his feet. He saw his uncle striding toward him, face grim. He was carrying another body in his arms. Alymere laid the woman down in the snow and sank to his knees beside her.

One of the women came forward, reaching out for the baby.

Tears and soot stung his eyes as the woman took the tiny infant in her arms and cradled it to her breast, soothing it and stroking the fine wisps of hair back from its scalp. She slipped a small finger between the baby's lips, hoping it would suckle. It didn't. Next, she pinched the baby's cheeks, hoping the nip would succeed where the suckling instinct had failed. It didn't. The woman's expression didn't falter. She swung the baby around in her arms and delivered a sharp smack to its bottom, once, twice, and on the third the baby's cry filled the silence.