Well of Sorrows (25 page)
Authors: Joshua Palmatier
Arten didn’t respond, but he did pull the rags back from the wound and let Tom dribble some of the liquid onto the cuts.
Nothing happened at first, the pinkish water mixing with the blood, diluting it. Arten shifted, ready to start pressing the already saturated rags against the wounds again, but Tom halted him. “Look. It’s stopping.”
The flow of blood had grown sluggish. Tom poured a little more of the fluid onto the wounds, held his breath, then exhaled as the bleeding stopped completely. Both wounds were still there, on the chest and beneath Brant’s armpit, but they had clotted, and no new blood flowed from them.
Arten dipped his hand in the water from the bucket so he could wash the excess blood away from Brant’s wounds, but Aeren said something, clearly a warning, and he stopped.
“Maybe the water will wash away whatever this pink stuff is,” Tom said. He sat back, stared down at Brant’s slack face. “Bind it. And take him to Ana.”
Then he stood, noted with a troubled turn of his stomach that the rest of the Alvritshai were gone, then stepped toward Aeren and his two guards. “Thank you for this.” He motioned with the small bottle, tried to hand it back. There was still liquid in the bottom of it.
Eraeth frowned, said something with scorn in it, as if he’d been insulted, but Aeren shook his head. He pushed Tom’s hand back, closing Tom’s fingers around the bottle. “Keep.”
Tom nodded, and Aeren turned to survey the surrounding grass.
Where the dead lay.
Tom swallowed, gaze flicking from body to body. Flies were already gathering, buzzing in small clumps around the drying blood, the gaping wounds. He felt sick, skin flushed, as he counted nine men dead. Ten, counting the young man who’d foolishly raced after the escaping horse.
No. Eleven. The man he’d seen impaled by the spear before he’d even arrived at the wagons had been dragged into their circle by two of the women.
And then there was Clara.
He closed his eyes, bowed his head a moment to steady himself, then turned his face to the sky so he could feel the sunlight on his face. He breathed in the scent of smoke, of blood, of death, but also the grass, the earth, the trees.
He opened his eyes when he heard horses pounding toward them, and he saw Walter and the rest returning, driving their mounts hard. The anger that rose when he heard them stilled when he saw the panic on Walter’s face.
“Get everyone on the wagons,” Walter barked, his mount skidding to a halt before Tom and Aeren, the other riders not stopping, heading toward the wagons, shouting for everyone to move. “We have to get out of here. Now. As fast as possible.”
“What is it? What did you find?”
“The dwarren.” He flicked the reins in his hands, his horse skittish. Walter’s gaze darted across the open plains, searching, not resting on any one location. “That was only a scouting party,” he said. “They have an army, headed this way. And from what we saw, they could come at us from anywhere.”
“How?” Tom asked, his anger touching his voice. Behind him, he could hear the others driving the rest of the wagon train into panicked motion.
Walter held his gaze, his face as serious as Tom had ever seen it. “Because they live underground.”
Tom frowned. “Show me.”
“We must leave them. You have done enough. They can fend for themselves.”
“As the others did?” Aeren glared at Eraeth. His Protector’s flat but forceful statements infuriated him. “No. You saw what happened to the other wagons, what the dwarren did to them.”
“You approached this group against my advice. You tried to warn them back, to get them to return to the lands below the Escarpment, where there is relative safety from the dwarren and the plains. And when they would not listen, you led them to the burned wagons and the dead in hopes that they would return then.”
“The warning came too late!” Aeren spat. He stepped away from Eraeth and his other guardsman, ignored the look that passed between the two. He watched the settlers instead, the group of men racing about, gathering together a small scouting group while the rest prepared the wagons for travel. Women were salvaging what they could from the burned wagon and gathering up the wounded, loading the man that had taken an arrow in his shoulder into the back of one, some of the smaller children in the others. He had never seen so many children at once. Alvritshai children were rare and precious. They certainly would not have been allowed onto the plains at such a young age. The robed one, who appeared to be an acolyte of some kind, moved among them all, parents and children alike, comforting them, leading some in short prayers while they clutched the strange pendant he wore. A few were gathering up the dead, laying them together to one side.
Aeren felt something dig into his chest at the sight of the bodies. “It came too late,” he repeated.
Eraeth moved to his side. “Yes, and you ordered us to help defend them against the dwarren scouts. But if there are scouts, then the army will not be far behind. You know they cannot defend themselves against the dwarren armies, even with our help. And it is doubtful they will be able to outrun them.”
“Except that the dwarren army isn’t interested in them.” Aeren turned to Eraeth, saw his Protector scowl. “The dwarren scouts weren’t looking for these people, they were looking for their own kind. We’ve stumbled into one of their tribal wars. If we can determine where the other dwarren tribes are coming from, perhaps we can elude them.”
Eraeth’s eyes narrowed. “You are correct. The dwarren are not interested in the human wagons. That does not mean we should risk our lives—Alvritshai lives—for these . . . these savages!”
Aeren’s brow creased at the venom in Eraeth’s words. He held his Protector’s gaze, then asked, “When will the other Phalanx members return with news of the other dwarren’s whereabouts?”
Eraeth hesitated. “Not for some time.”
“Then we have time to help them further.”
Anger flared in Eraeth’s eyes. “No. You have risked yourself and the rest of your Phalanx already by simply contacting these people, let alone aiding them against the dwarren. And now you have given them the Blood of Aielan, the proof of the success of your Trial, all to save one man’s life? A man you did not even know! You have more than satisfied your obligation to these people. I refuse to allow you to continue. You will rejoin the House contingent waiting to the north and return to Alvritshai lands with us. Immediately.”
Shock coursed through Aeren at the tone in his Protector’s voice, even as Eraeth turned away, toward the other Phalanx guardsman. He’d spoken to him as if he were a child. No, as if he were a
student
.
But he was no longer Eraeth’s student. “Protector!”
His voice cracked across the grass, loud enough and forceful enough that even the group of humans paused in their activity. Eraeth stilled, back stiff, then turned.
Aeren closed the distance between them in two short steps, stared hard into Eraeth’s eyes. “I have passed the Trial. I am now a full member of the House, with all of the rank and privileges and responsibilities that such entails. And whether you like it or not, these people are our responsibility. It began when we shared our food and wine with them. Or had you forgotten? We entered a bond with them then, and I intend to see that bond fulfilled, for the honor of my House.”
Eraeth held his gaze, unflinching, although the anger and defiance in his stance had abated. Something else flickered there instead—pride, regret.
Resignation.
He let out a low breath, then nodded. “Very well.”
The tension in Aeren’s shoulders relaxed, and he found himself trembling. He caught the other Phalanx guardsman’s gaze, then turned toward the group of humans. Tom had stepped forward, concern on his face, but Aeren motioned him away. Tom hesitated, then returned to the group of men ready to mount their horses.
“We will help them,” Aeren said, “for as long as we possibly can.”
Like fucking prairie dogs.
Paul’s words came back to Tom as he lay on a ridge of ground, Walter, Arten, and another Armory guardsman to the side. Eraeth had crawled up to the ridge with them, but Aeren and the other Alvritshai were behind, hidden from sight in the depression behind the ridge, along with the horses. Tom hadn’t thought the Alvritshai would be able to keep up with the horses on foot—and they hadn’t, but they hadn’t ,been that far behind them either.
Below, in a large, flattened portion of the prairie, a hole gaped in the ground, a cavernous opening that slid into the ground in a gentle incline so wide it could hold at least three wagons side by side. The opening was shaded by a huge multicolored tent, the material bent and twisted around thick poles driven into the ground, the entire edifice practical but at the same time strangely artistic. The curves of the tent, which billowed out in the wind from the plains like sails, flowed from one stretch of cloth to another, the colors blending into one another, shades of tawny gold and muted blues and greens. They all seemed to flow to a vivid red center.
The large tent was surrounded by hundreds of smaller tents. They spread out from the central tent in a haphazard fashion, as if they weren’t permanent structures, although none of them were set up before the entrance to the burrow.
The entire tent city teemed with dwarren and gaezels. Men charged back and forth from the entrance to where nearly a thousand others had gathered on the plains before the burrow, divided into ranks of twenty. Most of these divisions were on foot, but a few were mounted on gaezels or held the fleet animals in check to one side.
As Tom watched, a sickening pit opening up in his stomach, a few more divisions emerged from the burrow and formed up near the back of the group.
“Diermani’s Balls,” the Armory guardsman said to one side, his voice low. “There’s more than a thousand of them now.” At Arten’s glance, he added, “There were only a few hundred when we were here before.”
“Did they see you?” Arten asked.
“I don’t know. We charged up the ridge, following their trail in the grass, but as soon as we saw them we turned and headed back.”
“Saw,” Eraeth said, succinctly and with conviction.
Tom and Arten turned toward him.
Arten grunted. “It doesn’t matter. Their scouts know we’re there. And it looks like they’re headed in our direction. Let’s hope Paul and Sam managed to get the wagons loaded and headed out, although I’m not sure where we can run.” He frowned. “I don’t see any wagons. Or women.”
Eraeth grunted and motioned to the gathered force, the air, the tents, and the ground. “Dwarren above, wagons below.”
“They supply the army from belowground?” When Eraeth nodded, Arten said, “Then they must have more entrances like this.”
“So what do we do?”
Arten turned to look at Tom, his face grim. “We run, and hope that they don’t find us.”
Eraeth slid back from the ridge, moving to Aeren’s side. Aeren listened to what he had to say, then instantly turned to the other Alvritshai guard and gave him orders. The other guard tore out across the plains, heading in a straight line, but not toward the Andovan wagons. Instead, he angled slightly away from them, east and north.
“Where’s he going?” Arten asked.
Tom wondered the same thing. He began slipping down off the ridge, the rest following. That hollow pit in his stomach had expanded, and he found he couldn’t focus on anything. He kept thinking about Ana, about Colin. He’d dragged them to Portstown, had forced them to stay, then drafted them into this expedition onto the godforsaken plains.
“Where are you going?” Arten asked, as Tom slid into the saddle of his horse.
“Back to the wagons,” he said, and heard the roughness in his voice, the rawness. “Back to my family. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”
He spun the mount and kicked him toward the east, toward the heat-blurred horizon, not waiting for the others.
10
OLIN HALTED AND TURNED AT THE SHOUTS, Karen doing the same beside him, edging a little closer as the wagon they trailed continued on ahead. Neck craning, he saw horses tearing toward the wagons through the grasses of the plains. Something caught at his throat, made it hard to breathe, and he reached for Karen’s hand.
“He’s there,” Karen said, her voice strained as she entangled his fingers with her own. “They’re all there.”
Colin didn’t relax until his father charged past them, heading toward the front of the wagons, where Sam and Paul steered the wagon train east. Arten and the others sped by on their own horses a moment later, none of them sparing anyone in the wagon train a glance. They were followed by Aeren and Eraeth on foot.
All their expressions were grim.
Colin felt the pressure around his throat tighten. “They look worried,” he said, catching Karen’s gaze. Her eyes were slightly widened. She glanced back toward the west, where the riders had come from, and bit her lower lip.
“Whatever it is,” she said, turning back, “we’ll outrun it.”
Colin nodded, even though he heard the doubt in her voice beneath the forced conviction.
One of the Armory guardsmen, still on horseback, suddenly skidded his mount to a halt beside the still-moving wagon. “We have to pick up the pace,” he gasped. “We need to move!”
He made to turn away, but Colin halted him with a shout. “Why? What is it?”
“The dwarren,” the guard said, irritated. “Hundreds of them, headed this way. A war party. So get these wagons moving!”
Before Colin could respond, he kicked his horse, the animal leaping forward with a snort, head lowered as it charged toward the next wagon.
“Help me,” Karen said, and Colin turned to see her herding the children nearest to them toward the back of the wagon. “Get them up inside. We’ll want to push the wagons as fast as possible, and we don’t want the children to slow us down.”
Colin hefted a little boy up from beneath the armpits, the boy instantly bawling. He handed him off to the boy’s older sister, already inside the wagon.
“Where’s our mom?” the girl asked, voice trembling.
“I don’t know, Lissa,” Karen said. “I’ll try to find her. Just take care of your brother for the moment, please?”
Lissa nodded seriously, hugging her wailing brother closer, her eyes as wide as saucers.
As soon as Karen hoisted the last kid in, Colin slapped the wagon’s back and shouted toward the driver. The wagon lurched forward, trundling over the rough ground, bouncing and rattling. One of the kids cried out as they were thrown from their perch, but then all of them hunkered down beside the supplies. Colin and Karen broke into a trot at the wagon’s back. Colin could see Lissa’s terrified face over the back of the wagon, her eyes watching him, almost pleading. He swallowed against the bitterness in his own throat and looked away. He could think of nothing to say to her, nothing that would make things better.
They ran, the entire wagon train moving far too slowly across the open plains. The initial surge of adrenalin and fear pushed them through the evening hours, but then it began to wear off. Wagons began to lag, people to falter. The Armory rode back and forth along the train, urging everyone forward, but as darkness settled, clouds beginning to move overhead, obscuring the emerging moon and stars, even the Armory began to flag. Lightning flickered in the distance, the ethereal purple lightning of the plains, but they heard no thunder. The storm was moving toward them though. Colin could taste it on the wind, metallic and cold.
When one of the wagon wheels cracked, the driver plowing into a stone he couldn’t see in the darkness, Colin’s father reluctantly called a halt, and the wagons broke and made camp for the night. Tensions were high, men and women snapping at each other as food was prepared, as Paul and the others worked late into the night repairing the wagon wheel, cursing everything and everyone in sight. Colin and Karen settled down near one of the wagons on the grass, both ordered to try to sleep by Colin’s mother as she bustled from one end of the camp to the other. They stared up into the black, featureless sky, listening to activity on all sides—the cursing, the pounding of tools, the sharp cry of a child hushed harshly by a woman’s voice—until Colin heard Karen shift in the darkness, rolling onto her side, elbow propped on the ground.
“Are you scared?” she whispered.
Colin almost lied to her, the words instinctive. But then he thought of the gallows, of the horror of watching the wagon crash down the Bluff, of the terror of hearing the dwarren attacking, of fumbling with the ties on the wagons and smelling the smoke as the people inside cried out and scrabbled at the hides that trapped them.
“Yes,” he murmured and was shocked to hear exactly how scared he was in the roughness of his voice. His could feel his heart beating, faster than usual, and he couldn’t seem to make it slow down.
He jumped when he felt Karen’s hand come to rest on his chest, as if she could hear his heart as well. But then he realized she’d laid her hand over the pendant she’d given him, the vow.
His heart faltered.
“Colin,” she started to say, and Colin heard the question in her voice.
Before she continued, he said, without hesitation, “Yes.” He didn’t know when they’d have time to make the vow, but he knew he wanted it. They’d need Domonic to bind their blood together in the vial of the vow, to marry them in Diermani’s eyes. As a priest, he was the only one in the wagon train who could do it, the only one who had the power.
Karen was silent a long moment. He thought she was crying, but he wasn’t certain until she laid her head down on his chest and he felt the tears seeping through his shirt. He raised a hand tentatively to her head, and as he stroked her hair she nestled in closer. He could feel her trembling, could feel her silent sobs.
Eventually, he felt her grow still, heard her breathing slow. He began to drift off himself, but his mother’s and father’s voices drew him back.
“We’ll never be able to outrun them, Tom!” His mother’s voice was bitter, hard, but practical. “Not if they truly want to catch us. We’re being slowed down by the wagons, by those on foot. The dwarren have gaezels. And if what you say is true, they don’t have to worry about lugging around all of their supplies.”
“What do you expect me to do, Ana? We can’t just stop and hope to hold them off. Look at how many died when it was just a scouting party attacking us! Eleven men! Eleven! And this certainly isn’t a scouting party following us now.”
“What do the Alvritshai say? They seem rather calm about all of this.”
Colin’s father snorted. “They tried to warn us away, remember? They told us to head back west as soon as they found us. But no, we were too stubborn to listen to them.”
“Walter is.”
Colin tensed at the accusatory note in his mother’s voice, felt the same taint of hatred in his own chest. Karen stirred in her sleep as if troubled, then settled.
Colin’s father was silent a moment. Then: “It wasn’t Walter’s fault. And it wasn’t the Alvritshai’s fault either. None of us wanted to go back. We got ourselves into this mess because none of us has anything left to go back to in Portstown.”
Colin heard his mother sigh.
“What do they say now? Do they know what’s going on? Are the dwarren coming after us, as they did the previous wagon train? Gathering over a thousand men seems a little extreme to take out those of us that are left.” Bitterness had entered her voice again, and it made Colin shiver. He didn’t think they knew anyone could hear them. Their voices were soft, but unguarded. And he hadn’t moved since they’d arrived, hadn’t even opened his eyes.
Colin’s father didn’t say anything for long enough that Colin thought his parents had drifted asleep. But then: “If I understand Aeren, there’s more than one group of dwarren. This group isn’t really after us. Apparently, the groups are at war, and we’ve accidentally stumbled into the middle of an upcoming battle. We’re trapped between three forces—the dwarren we saw to the west, another group coming up from the south, from across the underground river, and a third coming down from the northeast. From what Aeren says, the dwarren have been fighting each other—and the Alvritshai—for years.”
“There are more Alvritshai out there?”
“Apparently Aeren is leading a small scouting party of his own, some kind of trial. He’s sent the others back to warn the rest of the main group to the north.”
“Why didn’t he go himself? Why didn’t he just abandon us?”
“Eraeth’s been trying to convince him to do just that, but I think he feels responsible for us. He led us to the previous wagon train, right into the middle of the upcoming battle. He intended for us to see the burned out wagons and turn back west, but he didn’t know the dwarren were gathering, didn’t expect to run into their scouting party. He’s made some type of vow to get us out if he can.”
Before Colin’s mother could respond, a low grumbling roll of thunder came from the northeast. The grass rustled as both his parents shifted position, and then his father swore.
“The storm’s going to pass right over us,” he said. “It’s going to slow us down even more.”
“But if the dwarren are fighting their own people, or they’re gathering to fight the Alvritshai, they probably don’t care about us,” Colin’s mother said. “We should be able to escape them.”
“Not if we can’t get out of their way. And right now, according to Aeren, we’re caught neatly in the middle of them all. Our only chance is to head east, as fast as possible.”
As if in answer, lightning flared, bright enough and close enough that Colin could see it through his eyelids. Thunder followed, but not closely. The storm was still distant.
“We’ll have to move as soon as the wagon wheel is repaired,” Colin’s father said when the thunder had growled down into silence. “If we hope to have any chance of escaping, we’ll have to travel all night, storm or not.”
Colin heard his mother shift, knew she had stood by the sound of her voice. “I’ll spread the word. You go check on the repairs.”
He must have dozed after they moved off, because the next thing he knew, his mother was shaking him and Karen awake, and the storm was almost on top of them.
“Get as many of the kids into the wagon as possible and then head out!” she shouted over the wind. “Stay close to the wagon!” In a flash of lightning, he saw his mother’s face, the lines of age he’d never seen there before stark, the gray in her hair he’d never noticed glowing silver as the wind blew it into her eyes and she pulled it aside in annoyance. The resultant crack of thunder shuddered in Colin’s skin as he scrambled to his feet, Karen beside him. And then darkness descended, so complete he couldn’t see his mother anymore, could barely see Karen’s face though she was standing right beside him, her hand closed about his upper arm.
“What about the storm?” Karen yelled. “Shouldn’t we wait it out?”
“There’s no time! We’ll have to weather through it!” Ana replied. Her voice came out of the night, torn by the wind, but they both knew she’d moved on to the next wagon.
Without a word, they stumbled to the back of the wagon, where two others were throwing supplies and children into the back, the older kids already inside shoving the supplies out of the way as fast as possible, the middle kids trying to quiet the younger ones, all of their faces suffused with fear in each flare of light from the storm. Lightning sizzled and crackled around them on all sides, thunder shuddered through the ground at their feet, and the wind tore at the flaps of the wagons, at the hides, at loose clothing and hair. Colin began heaving boxes and crates and pots into the wagon, while Karen helped with the kids. The only illumination besides the lightning was a single lantern sheltered inside the wagon, held by a boy who couldn’t have been more than eight. At every crack of thunder, every flare of unnatural light, the lantern’s flame seemed to dim, almost guttering out twice. The boy held the lantern as far from his body as he could.
And then the last of the wagon was packed, and suddenly a guardsman was there, on horseback. Seeing everything was ready, he bellowed to the driver, “Go! Move out!” and then he turned to peer out into the storm, into the jagged purplish lightning as it pummeled the plains. Colin saw three other wagons, saw the fourth already headed out, but they were all instantly lost as soon as the lightning ended.
“How are we going to stay together?” he shouted toward the guardsman.
The man gave him a sidelong look as the wagon began to move. “We’re not even going to try. We’ll head east, or as close to east as possible in this storm, and regroup once it’s passed.” He turned his attention to everyone, raised his voice to a shout. “Stay close to the wagon! If you lose it in the darkness, you may never find any of us again!” Then he spun his horse and trotted toward the front of the wagon.
“Colin,” Karen said, her voice sharp with warning. She grabbed his arm and pulled him closer to the wagon, already beginning to fade out of sight. The rest of the women and men in their group edged closer to the wagon as well, some of them linking arms and hands, a few keeping hold of the back of the wagon itself.