Hurley's Heroes Collection 2015-2020, page 81
Nev waited longer, taken in by the view of the vault. When he had first seen it, the spires were new, beautiful things lined in marble and tipped in gold. Generations of wind and rain had worn them down, taken away the gilt and smoothed the marble. The supporting stronghold had also contracted. There had been a city here, a shining city, one of the largest in the empire… the old empire, what was it called? They had been passing signs of it for days, the broken mile markers, the snarl of ancient trees lining the old roads that existed now as curious, disjointed clusters.
The Vault had housed him, fed him, trained him, and raised him up as a member of the Body Mercenary Guild, when there was still such a thing. He had no fond memories of this place, just old ones.
He joined Tiana, picking up the pace in an effort to catch the caravan before they arrived at the stronghold.
“Do you have a plan?” Nev asked.
“I’ll kill them all,” she said, grimly.
“You had weeks to think of something, and that’s what you have?”
“I was trained—"
“So were those soldiers, likely,” Nev said. “You didn’t think we’d make it.”
She rounded on him, furious. “You have a plan, then, corpse jumper?”
He nodded at the jagged, rocky goat path that wended down the mountain, bisecting the road. “We take the goat path and arrived ahead of them. We wait for them at the entrance to the Vault. I approach the entrance, create a distraction among the guards, and that will halt their progress into the Vault. They say there’s only a dozen of them. You stay above, fire a couple of crossbow bolts. That many children, they will be confused. You can sweep in, grab your child, and flee via the river. That’s how you got out last time, isn’t it? Floating down the river.”
“I did,” she said. “It’s still there.”
“Good. “
“We leave the other children, then?”
Nev turned off the road and started down the precarious goat path. His llama balked, but he spoke a few soothing words, and eventually it came after him. Loose rocks cascaded down the incline all around him.
“Did you hear me?” Tiana asked. “The other children?”
Nev did not answer. Could not. He stared straight ahead. She did not ask again.
Two hours later, they arrived at the outer boundary of the stronghold, well ahead of the caravan. Nev gazed up the road. It was a massive group, at least fifty children, a dozen soldiers. They carried strange weapons; great blue-black cudgels carved with faces. Those were likely the weapons the old woman had spoken of, and how they kept watch over so many children.
“Go up there,” Nev said, pointing to a stand of brush and stone overlooking the main entrance to the stronghold. “I’ll raise my hand like this, and then shoot all the soldiers you can,” he said.
Tiana nodded and forged back up the ridge.
There had been times in Nev’s life when he had committed terrible crimes. He didn’t like what that made him. Violence was often unnecessary. Violence was often the easy way. Few things could be solved with it.
Nev walked up to the big stronghold gate and called up at the guard. “I request entrance!”
“Who are you?” the woman called.
He sighed. “I have word of a corpse jumper, Nevarius Lesh. He’s one of yours. I request your aid in retrieving him. The Vault is required to handle them, isn’t that right? It’s a crime not to report one.”
“Stay there,” she said. The fact that she didn’t call him out as some trickster or troublemaker told Nev that the Vault was well aware there were still people like him alive. They were still looking for him, after all this time. The recorder would know that name.
He gazed back up the road at the approaching caravan. The soldiers had noticed him. The one at the front rested her fingers on her weapon. It would take at least an hour for her to find anyone to make a decision based on what he’d told them. They would have to consult some very old records.
Nev stood to one side of the road, shoulders hunched, gaze downcast, making himself appear unthreatening. He had such long practice with it. The cries of the children reached him, wails and coughing and exhausted, fearful tears from the newest additions. The clip-clop of the great war horses. The sting of dust in his nostrils.
The soldier at the front raised a hand to him. “Who are you?” she asked.
Nev raised a hand. “A moment, a moment,” he said, keeping his head bowed, and approached her. She loosened her weapon. Nev placed a hand on her boot and held out his closed fist to her. “For you,” he said, “from the Vault.”
She reached out to him. He grabbed her bare wrist, ensuring his flesh had touched hers.
The soldier took up her weapon and swung.
Nev signaled for Tiana to fire.
The blunt weapon crashed into his skull. His body crumpled.
Everything went black.
#
A long run of darkness.
The pooling nothingness of existence. The place between bodies, a long and anxious tangle. I waited too long, he thought, too long. I should have had another body. I should have… I’m going to die. Really die.
An explosion of feeling. Tingling in his fingers.
Nev gasped and sat up. He lay on the ground beside the screaming war horse, a crossbow bolt jutting out of his chest just over his heart. Nev jerked out the bolt and tossed it away. Vault trained, Tiana had said, and made good on it. She was an excellent shot. Thank every god.
He got to his hands and knees and vomited, retching as much as he could before grabbing the weapon on the dirt beside him and hauling himself back into the saddle. The children were screaming anew, their faces smeared with dirt and tears. Only two soldiers had range weapons, and they were speeding toward Tiana’s roost.
Nev coughed up blood, spitting to clear the coppery taste from his mouth. His vision swam. The body shift this time was even more difficult; women’s bodies always gave him a profound sense of dissonance and dysphoria, even after his second wind. He heaved pointed his weapon at the soldiers but couldn’t figure out how to operate it. He supposed bashing in heads with it would work just as well as whatever its stunning power would do.
He hammered the nearest soldier in the back, dismounting her, and whirled around and struck the other just as the rattling heat of his second wind filled his body. The shoulder shattered beneath his blow. Nev brought the war horse around again, driving back toward the other soldiers just as Tiana broke from her cover and ran into the mass of children.
Nev came up with his weapon and smashed in the face of his nearest pursuer. The soldier tumbled over. That’s three, he thought, this body is four.
The guards at the top of the wall had begun to stir but held their fire. The confusion about who was killing whom below was exacerbated by Nev’s leap into the soldier’s body.
Nev yelled at the children, herding them away from the gates, out of range of potential fire. A blistering blow struck him in the back. He swore and swung, connecting with the shield of the soldier who had hit him. Nev launched himself from his mount and onto the soldier’s. They both went tumbling to the ground. Nev pummeled him, still blazing with his second wind, knowing it would be over soon, knowing he could only be nigh invincible for a few minutes more.
A shriek from behind him.
Tiana stood on the other side of the road. She shot two more soldiers.
Nev grabbed at the wound on his back, finding a knife wedged there. He cast about for another body and took hold of the wrist of the soldier he’d just pummeled. He slit the soldier’s throat, and then slit his own.
Blood gushed. Darkness.
A burst of consciousness.
Gasping. Gasping.
The throat was the worst.
Nev jerked up in his next new body like a tangled marionette. Tiana stood over him, crossbow in hand. “Don’t!” he gasped as the wound in his throat began to close.
“Abomination,” she said.
People always betray you, he thought.
He could not move, could not react. He was still bathed in the soldier’s own blood, his soul still repairing the wounds, still adjusting to the jump.
A hiss from the ramparts. Two arrows struck Tiana’s body, throwing her to the dusty ground.
Nev’s stomach cramped. He turned onto his side and vomited. This was all very bad. He let himself have a few more breaths, let himself wait, this time, for the second wind. When it came over him, his body fairly hummed with adrenaline. He struggled up, finding his bearings more quickly now.
The crowd of children had broken apart, some fleeing back up the path, others running toward the river.
But one child sat over Tiana, weeping. Tiana was not yet dead, still gasping, wincing, clinging to the child, her daughter. Carlov’s granddaughter. All this way, only to see this end.
Nev could not watch them embrace. He stared at his hands instead, marveling at the knobby knuckles, the fine scars, the evidence of a hard life some other soul had endured in this strong young body. He threw up one more time, then approached Tiana where she lay panting in the dirt, her young daughter weeping over her.
Tiana’s wide eyes sought his. For a long moment, they watched one another in silence. Blood dribbled from her mouth. “Papa,” she said. “Please look after them, Papa.”
Her eyes went glassy. Her soul left her body.
Nev stepped away from the sobbing child and the dead woman. Surely, he had done enough. Surely, he had atoned. Fulfilled his promise to her. It was more than she had done for him. But then, could he blame her? He had stolen her father’s face.
The guards yelled down at him. “Was that the last of them?”
“Yes,” Nev called back, his gaze sweeping the ruined swath of soldiers bleeding and dying and dead.
The great gate opened. Foolish, Nev thought, very foolish. He flexed his hands again. Gazed at the weeping child, recognizing the girl he had been, the screaming girl they had dragged through these same gates, back when they were shiny and new as his memories.
He picked up the weapon he had discarded while in the other soldier’s body and rose to meet the guards coming out of the stronghold.
Nev did not like killing, not at all.
But sometimes it was necessary.
BLOOD DESERT
A CRY SOUNDED from the gaggle of ladies at the rear of the caravan as the high, hot sun baked the gnarled red desert. Narala suspected the caravan had been infiltrated, but she only bowed her head, trying to minimize her own shadow. Foolish, for her clan sisters to come after her. Foolish, and admirable. But Narala had made her choice.
“These aren’t ladies!” The woman at the head of the caravan, Malia, yelled. Malia held Narala’s blood debt but was nearly young enough to be her daughter.
Malia leapt into the stir of ladies and fished one out, throwing dust and sand. She yanked off the red robe of one, and the body beneath was the sinewy, desert-dark body of a woman, not a soft lady. Narala knew that woman, would know her anywhere: Hasina, her own clan sister. “These are women!” Malia yelled. “These are fucking clan women!”
Malia raised her blade.
A shiver of icy fire ran up Narala’s spine. She could not watch her own kin killed, no matter what they had done to her.
“Hasina!” Narala cried, throwing off her own cowl, unconcerned with the sun. She had dreamed of Hasina the night before, the night she left Hasina’s clan circle. In the dream, Hasina died over and over on the sand at her feet, reaching toward her with her long, lean arms. For salvation? Forgiveness? Narala had neither to offer. “You should not be here, Hasina! This is my burden.”
“No longer,” Malia said. “They used you, Narala, to infiltrate my caravan. They could have paid your debt. They sold you off instead.”
“Let her up!” Narala said, but Malia still had Hasina by the hair.
Narala grabbed at Malia’s wrist.
Malia laughed and twisted away from her. “You protect coward women, Narala?” she crowed. “Why did I buy your contract, then, if you’re going to act like some lady instead of a woman?”
“You claim this woman?” Narala snarled. “Because if you claim her, you know what my response will be.”
The women behind Malia were all screaming now, but they did not move toward Malia or Hasina. Ten male fighters stood within a step of them, and sixty more within a few strides. They dared not move. This was women’s business.
Narala caught Hasina by the arm and pulled her away from Malia’s dagger. Narala held Hasina in her arms like a child, and in her arms Hasina seemed so much smaller than she remembered. Why had it come to this? Narala thought. Why are we left fighting each other, when we should have supported one another?
“Foolish woman!” Hasina said. “Your friend is right. We nearly had her ocean man in our grasp. You are a terribly easy distraction to employ. Everyone wants a blooded woman like you in their caravan. You know how to call the sand.”
“These are coward women, Narala,” Malia said. “You mourn the women that threw you from their circle. They would not buy out your debt, but I would. What do you care for them?”
“I was not thrown out,” Narala said. “I walked of my own will. I would not ask them to carry my burden.”
Malia turned to the fighters escorting the women-dressed-as-ladies. “Hanif will want these. Tell him I’ll mark them and stake them up in the sand tonight, to show any others what happens when they try and thwart the ocean men.”
“No,” Narala said. She let go of Hasina and stood.
“Narala, you’re being a fool,” Hasina hissed. “Leave us to our fate.”
One of the other women wearing red grabbed Hasina and pulled her back into the stir of women-dressed-as-ladies.
“Your place is sworn to me, Narala,” Malia said. “When we bind that oath at Bomani, you’ll better understand it. Like me, you will serve Hanif, and all the men from the north.”
Narala looked at the other disguised women, recognizing them now that their hoods had been removed: Fahra, Kanika, and seven adolescent girls, two of them daughters to Kadife, her old clan aunt. Narala’s mother had killed two clan mothers this way, leaving women disguised as ladies to be taken up into a clan mother’s tent. The ruse never lasted long. Once the dresses came off or the men pulled back the unbound hair from the women’s faces, they knew they had not acquired docile ladies. Hasina and her women could have easily made it into Malia’s tent, or the tent of her master, Hanif.
“Do you still walk by desert rules?” Narala asked Malia.
Malia eyed her sharply. “What?” But her body had tensed, the lean little woman’s body scoured to rough leather by gritty wind and sun. How long had it been since Malia was challenged by desert rules?
“If you walk by desert rules,” Narala said, “what remains of clan Hasina is yours, as you have claimed Hasina as yours, and she has not disputed your claim. Your clan has bested hers. You own her women. You are the clan mother of the former clan Hasina, and per desert practice, I challenge your right to it.”
“You what?” Malia said.
It was Narala’s turn to laugh. “Haven’t you ever been called out, woman?”
“Not since I was asked to walk away from my own clan,” Malia said. Saying the words seemed to break her from her indecision. She reached up and pulled off her robe, let it heap upon the sand at her feet. Beneath the robe she wore a short sleeveless tunic. Her loose brown trousers barely reached her knees. She stepped out of her sandals and waved off the fighters.
“Women’s business!” Malia said to them. “Truss these women and leave them here. I have been called out.”
Narala unsheathed her sword, thrust the blade into the sand in front of her, and pulled off her sheath and robe. She pulled the blade from the sand.
Malia’s husband strode over to Malia, voice low and urgent. “What is this, Malia? You’re not pissing here, not after—"
Malia reached out a hand and thumped him in the chest, hard enough to make him stumble back. “Women’s business, Jaren,” she said, and stepped toward Narala.
Narala looked out at the fighters around her, all men and unblooded girls. They had to have women among them, though, if they were preparing to stay the night on the sand. Only women could draw circles.
“Who will draw our circle?” Narala called.
The fighters began to stir. Narala saw a commotion at the big hide tent erected for Hanif, the old ocean master. A big, muscular man appeared at its entrance and gazed out at them, briefly. She thought she heard him say, “Fucking women,” before he disappeared back inside the tent. She could not blame him. Fucking ocean men.
A cry finally came from within a stir of green-clad fighters. “I’ll circle you!”
Narala looked to see a broad-hipped woman making her way through the green-clad fighters. The woman’s black hair was caught back in one long braid, like most of the fighters. The woman drew her blade and asked, “Where do you want me to circle you?”
Malia gestured to the open sand at the other side of the ocean man’s tent. “Between the bodies and the tent,” she said.
Narala, Malia, and the circle drawer walked to the space. Narala positioned herself opposite Malia. The rest of the fighters followed them, their voices a low murmur.
“Malia!”
It was her husband again, Jaren. Narala frowned at him. He dared not touch Malia as she stood ready for the drawing of the circle, but his words were loud.
“Are you a fool?” he said. “Look at these bodies, look at what they spilled here! You want to spill more?”
“I killed none of these,” Malia said.
“Fuck!” Jaren said.
The circle drawer stood between Malia and Narala.
“I am Chione,” the circle drawer said, “formerly of clan Lhes, now clan Kiya. I am a desert walker, and I ask your permission to draw your circle.”
Narala held out her right palm.
Malia held out her left palm.
She will come at me right-handed, Narala noted.
