Iron Hearted Violet (19 page)

“It wasn’t my—”

“Of course it was, Nod, dear. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that we do, indeed, need the boy. Go get your uncle. We’ll all of us visit the child tonight.”

By the time Demetrius returned home, the world he thought he knew seemed to be shattering to pieces. Violet, first altered and now gone. A nation, once peaceful, gearing up for war. You must understand, my dears, the early millennia of my world were rather similar to your own—tribalism, infighting, wars over land or water or power or beautiful maidens. But that was in the past, you see, and while there were still
stories
of war and
stories
of battles, we had not had even the inkling of polished swords and distant drums for five hundred years. And while each nation in the mirrored
world kept standing armies and knew well the techniques and theories of warcraft, there is a great difference between the
theory
of warcraft and war
itself
.

What Demetrius found was chaos.

In the weeks after the dragon’s arrival—after the brazen capture and then release of the King—the castle and the surrounding city had been a thicket of activity. War was in the air—no matter what the council said—and people from the countryside had been gathering within the castle walls. Militias formed, pantries were stocked, and ad hoc training exercises became common in the city squares and in the yards.

The announcement of the Mountain King’s act of aggression had sent a worrying population into action.

Messengers had been dispatched into the towns and villages throughout the kingdom, announcing the imminent war and calling for all men and women of able body and spirit to come with horse and bow and sword in defense of their country. Demetrius slowly made his way home, jostled by the crush of people.

Once he reached the stable yards, he saw his father calling orders to a group of youths whom Demetrius didn’t know. The horses, susceptible as they were to the
fluctuations in emotion of their beloved masters, were in a terrible fright. They reared and whinnied and kicked, and no amount of shushing or pulling on the part of his father or the new helpers could soothe them.

“You, in the green!” his father called. “Lead your mare this way into the run. And what’s your name? Gherta? Girl in the red. The chestnut trusts you, see that? Lead him into the side pasture. Those others will follow once they see him moving. We just need to break up this mob a bit, and they’ll all calm down.
Demetrius!
” He spied his son, and his face went from gray to pink. “Thank the gods! Come over here and take hold of this fellow here and bring him into the stables. He needs to be rubbed down, but he can’t be when he’s this worked up. Quickly now!”

Demetrius, his head spinning, did as he was told. The horse, a stallion so black he was nearly blue with a sharp white star on his forehead, pulled at the reins. His nostrils flared, and his eyes bulged. With each jerk of the horse’s head, Demetrius slid a few feet forward, his legs flailing out from under him momentarily, before he could whip them forward and right himself.

“Hush, beloved,” he whispered, blowing gently toward the horse’s face as his father had taught him. “Hush now.”

The horse, his ears laid back and his eyes overly wide, submitted himself to be led, though he still gave the occasional pull, as though wanting to let Demetrius know who,
exactly
, had the upper hand.

“Yes, yes, beloved,” Demetrius soothed, “you could certainly throw me aside like a rag doll and trample me into a bloody pulp. But I trust you, you see? That means you must trust me. Fair’s fair, after all.” The horse snorted with a shake of his head. Still, his ears came up, Demetrius noted with some satisfaction. He led the stallion into the stall and carefully, making his movements as slow and deliberate as he could, fetched the brush. “I know you’re feeling poorly,” he said, slowly laying his hand on the animal’s belly, “and this will make you feel better, I promise.” And with that, he started brushing.

His father was deep in conversation with two men from the army and a woman whom Demetrius recognized instantly. He smiled at her, but she didn’t see. She was clad entirely in leather and had a variety of tools and weapons attached to her belt and an archer’s quiver slung around her back. Her leather hood had been replaced by a helmet that had already been dented and scratched. Her name was Marda, Mistress of the Falcons and now Captain of the
Front Guard. She scanned the stable, and her eyes narrowed on Demetrius.

“Why is he not training with the front guards? We need everyone we can get.”

Demetrius’s father choked a bit and stepped backward, as though trying to right himself. “Excuse me? Do you have any idea how young that child is?”

“Demetrius,” she said, ignoring his father. “I know you can throw a punch, and I certainly know you are an excellent rider. But can you lift a sword?”

He looked at his father, who mouthed,
Say no
. Demetrius shrugged. “I’ve had some practice. I’m not bad.”

“And can you shoot a bow?”

“Yes,” he said. “Very well.”

She gazed imperiously at Demetrius’s father, who shrank before her. “He’s not strong enough to arm the horses, that much is clear. He’ll break his neck as sure as he breathes. He’s no good to you here. Send him up to the guard. They need fighters who are quick and small and good shots. This war may be nothing but a spoiled brat shaking his spear, but we need to be ready regardless.”

“But if the Mountain King attacks, the boy will be killed.” His father’s voice was as light as ashes.

“Better dead than enslaved,” Captain Marda said, and the two lieutenants nodded grimly. “Boy, run to the main gates. And follow instructions.”

Demetrius couldn’t move. He stared at his father.

“
Now!
” the woman yelled, and Demetrius turned and ran as though burned.

As he darted through the narrow gap between the stable and the forge, he heard his father say, “But he’s my only son. He’s the only family I have.” And the old man’s sobs echoed strangely on the old stone walls.

But tears were useless now. War had begun.

The first attack happened that night, along the wooded border—small scouting parties coming upon one another by accident, and surprise giving way to skirmish.

The dead were few, the injured many, and the cloud of war pressed heavily on the city.

Demetrius worked hard, avoided sleep when he could, and tried to prevent himself from thinking. Thinking, he discovered, was dangerous and led to fruitless worry that did nothing but fill him with a sense of impotent rage and despair.

Still, even in the din of warfare, his thoughts wandered.

Where is Violet?
he wondered again and again and again.

What were those creatures?

And most troubling:
Why now?

Indeed, my dears,
why?
It was a question that I myself was troubled with, and if it had not been for the necessities of our respective circumstances, perhaps Demetrius and I would have been able—but no. No. The damage was done.

By the fourth night, the fighting was still far away, but as Demetrius stood watch at the northern section of the western wall, he could see the first ripples of red light spreading across the horizon, bleeding from the land into the mirrored edge of the sky. The land was burning. And whether it was a farmhouse or a wheat field or a grain silo that was the original target, the result now was the same: a broad swath of burning earth raging as the battle raged. As though the ground under the soldiers’ feet, too, had become an adversary.

“Captain? Captain!”

Captain Marda appeared from a makeshift tent below. Her eyes flashed in the dark.

“Speak,” she said.

“Fire,” Demetrius said, pointing northward. He returned
his gaze to the horizon and saw with a sinking feeling that the fire had spread.

The Captain shook her head. “That’s all we need. Stay at your post, boy. I’ll send out the alert. We’ll need a crew to dig a fire line. And this on top of everything else.” She sprinted down the narrow walkway and out of sight.

Demetrius turned back toward the widening fire. It wasn’t as though he had never seen a fire before. He had. Not two years earlier there was a terrible fire in the western wastes, and he had traveled with his father to lend their skills in the care and healing of the many displaced livestock and other animals. The fires raged while they corralled and soothed hundreds of beasts, salving their burns and tearfully easing the dead into pits, where they were buried. As a child, he was terrified of fire—it was a fire in the stables, after all, that had killed his mother—so terrified that he could hardly bear to look at his own home’s bright hearth, and even the smells of bubbling stew and baking bread filled him with horror and grief. Now, though, as a youth, his fear had been replaced with awe. Fire was, Demetrius knew, a transformative force. A fire did not
destroy
; it simply
changed
. His mother, after shooing her son, all the goats, most of the cows, and half of the horses out of the barn, only to find her own exit blocked, was ushered out of this world and into another.

Still, this fire was different. Though uncannily bright, and so hot it bent the light above it, the fire made no smoke. Instead, a strange, unnatural smell wafted over the field. Everyone shuddered. The fire shimmered and swelled—more song than flame. Demetrius curled his fingers around his eyes and squinted, trying to extend his vision as far as he could. It was so far away, and yet he could have sworn that he saw thousands of tiny glints scurrying through the flames. He shivered, and though the night was chilly and damp, he realized that he was sweating uncomfortably under his leather-lined tunic.

“Don’t like this,” grumbled a voice he recognized. “Don’t like this at all.”

Demetrius gasped, whirled around, and nearly fell off the wall. “Who’s there?” he demanded.

“What are those things, Auntie? What’s wrong with their eyes?”

“I’m warning you,” Demetrius said, noting with humiliation that his voice was squeaking like wet fingers on clean glass. “I’m armed.” He attempted to add some gravel to his voice, but that just made it worse. Someone, somewhere in the darkness, snickered.

“We’re not about to show ourselves to you, dear. Remember what happened last time?”

“There wasn’t a last time,” Demetrius said. “I was tired and worried and starting to see things. It happens. In fact, it’s happening now, which means there’s no
this
time, either.”

“He does have a point, Auntie.”

“Hush, Nod.”

In the dark, somewhere near his knees, there was the sound of a quick, sharp smack and a cry of pain.

“Demetrius, dear, there isn’t much time. If they reach the castle—”

“I know, I know. We’ll all be slaves to the Mountain King.”

In the darkness a very old woman clicked her tongue and sighed. “My dear child,” she said, “the Mountain King is the least of your worries. The being behind this mess is more powerful than you could possibly—”

“You! Boy!”