Children of Earth and Sky

  He seized a fallen branch. He left the small metal artifacts and he took a weapon with him. He left the glade but stayed among the trees, passing behind Danica, across to her far side. Marin had gone after the soldiers in the grass. Pero was afraid for him, but that wasn’t going to help much, was it? He could try to protect Danica. He didn’t think he’d be too useful against soldiers, this wasn’t what he did, what he’d ever done. Tavern brawls in the tannery district weren’t . . . this. But he didn’t want to crouch passively in the woods and just watch.

  It occurred to him she might hear him behind her and think he was an enemy. He was about to call her name, let her know he was here, when he saw something ahead of him.

  He moved then, as fast as he could, running through trees and then out of the forest. Almost in time. Nearly so.

  —

  DAMAZ REACHED THE EDGE OF THE WOOD. The Jaddite archer was looking the other way, arrow to string, watching his guard, who had gone after the two soldiers remaining in the grass. The third of their men had an arrow in him down there. He was moaning in pain. Damaz could just see him. His name was Giray. They had shared a tent for two weeks. He had a torn ear and a small son and he told good jokes. He was dying in the wet, bright grass.

  The Jaddite guard killed another warrior with his sword. Damaz saw it, a coward’s blow from behind. Their last man rose up to engage the infidel, screaming in fury—and the archer killed him, even as he stood.

  The Jaddite down there would die, Damaz vowed. But first would be this archer who had ended so many lives. Who needed to be killed.

  Damaz stepped forward. The archer didn’t see him, and his dog was also looking the other way. Damaz nocked his own arrow to his own bowstring. He seemed to be hearing a faint buzzing sound, almost a voice in his head—first battle fears, most surely. That could happen. A man could admit to those, without ever, ever yielding to them.

  Children! the voice said then, clearly, in his mind. He was no child!

  The Jaddite in the grass below had seen him now. It didn’t matter. He only had a sword. The man pointed, cried a warning to the archer. Cried a name, in fact. A name Damaz even knew, having remembered it.

  Not in time, that cry. Not in time, in so many ways.

  The archer wheeled to face him, bow rising. The dog snarled, started forward. Damaz was already releasing. It wasn’t far and he was a good bowman, had been from the first time they were given bows and arrows to learn another way to cause an enemy to die.

  His arrow struck the archer in the heart, exactly where he’d aimed, having seen that the Jaddite bowman wore no armour. He saw his arrow hit.

  Then the shouted name registered fully, and his mouth opened, and in that same moment Damaz felt pain explode like a shattered wheel of bright colours. He pitched forward, having been struck hard in the back by someone wielding a club that knocked him flat, his bow flying free.

  His head hit the ground. He was dazed, gasping to breathe. There had been a name. Shouted. He knew that name. He knew—

  A second blow came, and Damaz lost the sense of everything except for—so strange as a last awareness—sorrow. It was sorrow that entered into him, of all things, before the crashing down of darkness under the bright sun, but also Ashar’s stars that were always in the sky, as they were taught.

  —

  CHILDREN! DANICA HEARD, ringing clear as her grandfather’s voice always did, in agony—as he never was.

  Oh, zadek! she thought, turning. She had time for that. To see him.

  “Neven!” she cried. Or tried to cry, wanted to but failed, as the arrow struck, over her unguarded heart.

  —

  IN OLD TALES (and some of these lingered, told to children mostly) of the goddess or god of the hunt—before Jad came, bright as the sun, driving the sun—lovers or acolytes of the gods might be raised from the dead by the deity they honoured. The pagan gods had held such power, or had been believed to do so.

  In Sauradia, in the wilderness of it, in the days and years after the fall of Sarantium, in a time of war between the newer faiths of sun and stars, this was understood to not be so any more. Those gods had gone.

  Jad guarded his children, yes, battling under the world every night, but someone who died did not come back. Was not caused by an immortal to rise again, woundless, unharmed, alive. After all, the god’s own beloved son had not come back when he fell from the sky, had he?

  The age of such miracles, or belief in them, was past. It was understood by the thoughtful and the wise that the old tales spoke to longing, and longing was endless. Men and women, lovers, friends, almost-strangers holding a tree branch above a fallen man (fallen boy, it appeared)—all knew they lived in and endured a hard world between their birth and dying. Children slipped away, struggling to draw breath. Fathers and brothers died, lovers were murdered, women passed from the world in childbirth, soldiers fell in war, villagers in raids lit by fire.

  If an arrow flew through morning light above spring grass beside an ancient forest and struck you in the breast as you turned to face the archer, you would die.

  You would not rise to stand again in that sunlight, however brave you had been, however defiant, however achingly wrong it was seen to be by others that you were gone so soon. The old beliefs, insofar as they were ever thought to have been true, were also gone. They were only stories, told to push back our certain knowledge of the waiting dark.

  CHAPTER XVI

  It was quieter now, down on the road. Pero made himself look that way. It did take some effort, but if things had gone badly there, they would all be dead, not just Danica. The Asharites would have seen him here, and Marin.

  But on the imperial highway the only men still standing or on horseback were Skandir’s. They were, he saw, killing the last of the Osmanlis. They were not in a place for hostages or prisoners. This was a lonely part of the world, a road, loggers’ cabins, a forest, fields on the far side, a place where death had situated itself this morning.

  The carnage on the highway, Pero thought, was not like any of the battle paintings he knew. Those had spears and banners aimed carefully at the vanishing point. Grace and harmony of composition in a crowded, colourful canvas. He had admired some of those greatly. He wondered if he ever would again.

  He saw Skandir on his grey horse surrounded by seven or eight of his band. All that were left, it appeared. Even as Pero looked, the last Osmanli, pleading, his voice faint from far away, was killed. There was real stillness then. You could hear birds, the shuffling sigh of wind in the trees behind him, their spring leaves.

  He thought he’d heard a voice before. Before death came by the forest. Crying Children. And he had no idea if that was a true hearing—or who it had been, if it was something true. He was remembering, for some reason, the figurine he’d touched in the glade. They had come to a strange place, Pero Villani thought.

  At his feet the Asharite who had made his way up here to kill, and had done so, moved a little and made a sound. Pero didn’t have a life on his conscience yet, it seemed. He imagined Skandir or one of his band would deal with this one. Or perhaps Marin Djivo, still rooted like a tree in the field, halfway to the road, looking back this way. Marin held his sword as if he’d forgotten he had it. The point was in the grass at an awkward angle from his body. You could paint that, Pero thought. He looked west and saw the other merchants and their guards and animals now beginning to come out of the woods. Tico was by Danica where she lay. He was urgently licking her face. It was sad beyond words. Pero thought he might weep.

  One of the Seressinis cheered, a thin, strange sound. It faded. Birds and wind. The Osmanli at his feet stirred again. I can’t even hit a man hard enough to knock him unconscious, let alone dead, Pero thought. Bitterness. He had nearly been in time, he had been doing the right thing, rushing here, he just hadn’t done it.

  He had hardly known Danica Gradek. None of them had.
It was such a little time ago he’d boarded the Djivos’ ship in Seressa. There were others dead here, not just her—on the road, halfway there, three Osmanlis in the grass. He realized that Marin must have killed the wounded man, the one who had been crying in his pain.

  In the paintings he’d seen, battle scenes were celebrations. The chaos, the spilling intestines of a life ending did not hang on walls in palaces. You didn’t commission a scene where your ancestor died screaming, holding in his guts with both hands. Nor did the triumphant warriors of one’s line ever behead pleading, surrendering men. Triumph required artistic balance. A vanishing point. An amount of blue and gold (expensive!) agreed upon in a contract.

  He was not, Pero decided, thinking coherently. That was his thought. That he wasn’t thinking clearly.

  —

  HE IS IN A FIELD. There are wildflowers. He holds a sword. He has killed a man. Others are dead in the road, a great many. Danica is dead up there. He had been guarding her. He has failed. She had been leaving. She’d said that. Was going with Skandir. Whom Marin remembered from childhood. A rebel, hero. In Senjan they called themselves heroes. Others called them raiders. Others called them worse things.

  He had been guarding her. Had taken that upon himself. Ban Rasca, Skandir, whom he remembered, had asked if he could do it. He had said yes he could do it. He needs to walk up to her, to where she lies in the grass. He will kill the Osmanli in the grass if he’s not dead yet, then the one Pero struck down.

  I should want to do that, Marin Djivo thinks. He looks at his sword, which feels strange in his hand. There is blood on the blade. He is a merchant. He looks towards the forest again.

  —

  I AM TOO OLD, the man called Skandir was thinking, not for the first time. There were too many dead men among his own. He had never shied away from losses in his long war. There were always losses in a war, even if it was more harassment and defiance than true warfare. They were never going to win this. Not in his own time. The Osmanlis had most of Sauradia and Trakesia. Yes, they had difficulties where his family had ruled, but difficulties were only that—and they didn’t actually care much about occupying the lands where the Tripons had governed before the fall.

  A hard truth, but a truth. It was a harsh, unrewarding place. It bred harsh men. Independent, yes. Defiant. Implacable. I am implacable, was his thought. And he had just killed most of his current band here.

  He had made a mistake. The Osmanlis, Jad curse them all to ice and dark, had sent more men than he’d ever imagined they would. Even with his ambushes laid along the highway, even with the archer they’d found, there had been too many.

  He had won, yes. The Asharites were dead—the last one just now to his own heavy blade. But a victory could cost too much. He looked around, counting. Seven men standing or on horse, three wounded who might live. One wounded who would surely die, the sword thrust too high, into his groin. You died badly of that. It might not take long, or it might, which was worse. He had dispatched many of his men over the years with wounds like this one. You called it mercy, knew it was, found a sanctuary in which to pray, after. He did pray, often. He felt a heart-deep terror of the god. Also a duty owed to him. A duty and his life, all the days and nights of it. There was no space for love.

  He had made an error. An old man’s carelessness. Or was it just too unexpected that an Osmanli serdar would send fifty men after a band of raiders being a nuisance with his supply train?

  If they had not encountered these merchants and discovered a very good archer—a woman—he and all his men would be the ones lying dead here, their heads being cut off right now. His would have been carried to Asharias. He was a prize. The man who killed him would have his fortune made.

  It would have happened this morning if not for the woman sending arrows from the trees. It was hard to be certain, but Skandir guessed she’d killed or wounded eight or ten of the Osmanlis before the two forces met and she’d had to stop. That was the difference between victory here (a kind of victory) and being someone’s eternal glory in the Osmanli ranks.

  A bad mistake, any way you looked at it. Saved only by great good fortune. You needed luck in war, you didn’t want to depend on it.

  He dismounted and went over to the man with the sword wound in his groin. It was Ilija. Not young, either, that one. Bald, half his teeth gone. One of his band from the beginning, after Sarantium fell. His brother had been with them too, until he died of flux five years ago.

  On his back, Ilija looked steadily up at him. The wound was mortal. He was breathing shallowly but not moaning or crying out, though his pain would be massive, vast. So much pride. Their eyes met. More than twenty years, this hard life together. The man lying on the road nodded. Pain was carrying him.

  “Farewell, lord,” Ilija said. “Freedom,” he said, looking up at his leader. Who had done this to him. He had done that to others, through many years of this. It came with what they were, the world they had.

  Rasca nodded. “With Jad in light, friend,” he said. And killed his man in the road with his sword. It hurt. It always hurt.

  He looked towards the trees. The woman, too, was down, he saw. Another mistake, letting a merchant guard her. But he’d needed every man here, hadn’t he? Didn’t have many left. They would have to go south, take refuge, recruit again. It was harder to recruit every time. He’d be no factor in this spring campaign, not any more.

  But he would regroup. He was too old to stop. What would he do if he wasn’t fighting for the god against infidels? What were you, if you stopped? He was very likely going to die in one of these fights. Not yet, though. Not today.

  In fact, he was not to die in battle, Rasca Tripon. His severed head would never be a trophy carried east. He would, unexpectedly, end his days lying in a good bed, two women sitting by him, holding his big, scarred hands, a cleric chanting prayers for his soul. He would give one of them his family ring to take away with her. Men, holy and otherwise, would burn his body on a pyre that same night, both moons in the sky, that the infidels might never find his grave to despoil it. He had been a lion in his time.

  On a spring morning he looked around him. Fifty Asharites were dead, strung out along on this stretch of road. Word would filter, like water through rocks. It would spread through Sauradia and beyond. It would overtake the army of the khalif, run before it. Not just any infidels beaten, either. Djannis and red-saddle cavalry of the army of invasion. Tricked and trapped. By Skandir. By Skandir again. Destroyed to the last man.

  The last man might still be alive up there. The old warrior turned with his sword and started towards the forest. He would do this himself. Down into the wet ditch and up, heavily, leaning on the sword (he was weary, not wounded) and then steadily across the grass, his eyes bleak. Implacable.

  He had come up beside the Dubravae merchant, Djivo, when the story changed. Stories do change. We do not understand the world. We are not made that way.

  —

  DANICA STOOD UP.

  She was aware of each individual movement involved. Of breathing, out and in, and again. Tico was at her side. She reached a slow hand down, touched her dog’s head.

  She had taken an arrow at short range in the heart and she was standing. The goddess of the hunt was gone from the world, had never been, the clerics taught. A story for children, they said, for the credulous and ignorant, for village hearths on winter nights. And still—she stood up.

  There was tremendous pain. It hurt to breathe. She was breathing. The arrow lay in the grass beside her. Danica bent, carefully, and picked it up. She looked at it in her hand. There was blood on it, but only a little. Tip of the arrowhead.

  She was standing. Alive. She looked at the artist, Pero Villani, who had seen everything that happened. His mouth was open, she saw. His face was white. He looked as if he would kneel, or fall down. She also felt that way. Her breathing was shallow, it hurt otherwise. There seemed to
be more light than before, but that was surely an illusion, confusion. Something of the sort.

  Zadek? she said, within. What just happened?

  There was no reply.

  Zadek? she said again. Again, no response.

  Zadek!

  A cry, that third time, from within the wound of her heart.

  But she already understood. Or enough, she understood enough. She was going to weep, and she refused to weep, here in sunlight, among men. She pressed hard at both eyes with the back of a hand. The hand trembled. That wasn’t her, either.

  Zadek, please?

  But she knew now, there was no way to not know how it was that she was still alive. She was remembering the ship, the morning of their raid, when Leonora had been walking towards her death at the rail—and had been stopped. Stopped. Danica knew what had pushed her back. She knew from him. From her grandfather. Zadek, she’d called him from earliest memory, from long before the fires and their flight.

  And if he had done that for a stranger, a hated Seressini, someone he did not know at all, what wouldn’t he have done for her, his grandchild, whom he loved beyond death?

  He had died in Senjan. And he had been within her, with her to this day, shelter and guidance and care. Making it so that she was not alone in the world after all.

  Now she was. She did not call again. The silence within her was enormous. But an arrow had been stopped. That she might not die. She wiped at her eyes again. Only the artist had seen her fighting tears. Only he had clearly seen the arrow strike, because of where he’d stood.

  Well, no. One other had. Danica drew a breath, carefully.

  “Is he dead?” she asked, looking at the boy on the ground by the trees, bludgeoned.

  Pero Villani shook his head. He looked terrified. How could he not? Truly, how not? And as he stared at Danica—seeing her hold an arrow that had struck her in the heart—the boy on the ground below him stirred and looked up, and saw her there.