Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (59 page)

And still, they leave no sentries,
Adria frowned as she stilled, finding her place not far beyond the clearing’s edge.

Wait for the call…

From the edge of the wild, Adria numbered violet tabards with their star emblems. There were seven Knights that she could see, though this was obviously more than she would have to contend with.

She looked to the one nearest her, then found the two or three to the left.
These are mine to overcome…

Wait for the crowing…

And then her eyes fluttered down, and she saw the first body, a young Aesidhe man, his stomach opened and his knife fallen from his hand. And nearby, an elder, unarmed, his eagle feather-entwined hair matted in the blood on his face.

She heard an Aesidhe voice cry out in pain, and another, and then again.

Wait for the crowing
, she reminded herself, forcing her eyes upon her first mark, ready to draw her bow or her blade. 
We must attack at once, when everyone is in place, or we risk too much.

How long has it been?

She had lost count, having started over by counting her heartbeats, as if she were underwater. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the sound she knew must come. There were more cries, now, and still she did not hear the signal, and she repeated to herself, 
Wait for the call
.

And then she remembered the dead and the dying after the attack of the Shíme Hoshegi Bobeya. She remembered the sight of blood, the smell of burned flesh, and spirits straining for release.

Did I… did I miss the call?
She wondered.
Did it mingle with the cries?

She tasted something bitter upon her tongue. Her hand absently moved to the scar above her breast, and then continued on to the bow upon her back.

Wait for the crowing…

What if Mateko… what if he has fallen, and cannot give the signal. How many… how many more must fall?

The plan is a circle,
she heard Preinon remind her.
Wait for the call.

It has been decided…

“There is no plan,” Adria whispered, opening her eyes, drawing back the string along the shaft of her first arrow. Her vision widened, and everything around her slowed, as if sunken underwater. Tainábe
.

“There is only the living and the dying…” She leveled her bow upon the nearest Knight to her left, upon the very center of her father’s star. She gave a raven’s call, twice, and let her arrow fly.

“
...once more for the crows.
”

The first two fell before any of the Knights noticed her. And still, the others could not turn quickly enough to mark her, much less to trade their sword for a weapon that could reach her across a distance. They fell, one after... one after... one... after...

To her left and her right, she cleared a path to the nearest tent where Aesidhe cries could still be heard. She dropped her bow, drew her Moresidhe blade with her left hand, took up a fallen Knight’s sword in her right. She had just enough space to test its balance with two swings before she entered the tent.

An Aesidhe man lay dead, a woman nearly so. The Knights standing over them never knew she had entered.

May the crows never find you,
Adria thought or whispered, cursed.
May your spirits wander this camp forever, never knowing that you have died.

“The ghosts of Heiland outnumber the living...”

It was mostly quiet now, and Adria found her breath again, as she looked over the four bodies at her feet, the People and the Others, blood rolling upon the dust, rivers and lakes of growing red beads.

She heard a whimpering nearby, and through her half-closed eyes could see a form of blue-white light, a life, hidden among a pile of furs.

Adria lowered her blades to the ground, and knelt beside, and took up the shivering bundle of a child in her arms. Holding her, rocking her, shushing her over and over as they wept.

Her head filled with bursts of light, as if it had begun to crack in several places. Like the night sky breaking.

Pain came with the lightning, and the silhouette of branches shimmered and blurred. Each step she made sent throbbing waves along her skull and down her neck into her body.

She would not release the child, and they would not slow their pace, and so she simply defied her body’s growing insistence for rest. She maintained a hazy memory of entering the Runner camp, of the sound of crows, of marching, but she did not remember sleeping.

And when she awoke, she found it dark again, but with the sound of crickets and a low fire. She was huddled in her cloak, and her arms were empty.

“
I slept all day?
” she asked Preinon as she rose to find him tending the fire alone.

“
You were exhausted,
” he answered, smiling a little as she sat upon her haunches beside him, moving somewhat more slowly than normal. He offered her his water skin. “
We made it far enough to rest. How do you feel now?
”

She shrugged, rubbing her hands together before the fire. “
I feel well enough to take a watch.
”

And then she began to remember what had happened, as she blinked away the mists of sleep.

She retched, suddenly, but produced nothing. Her stomach knotted again two or three times, and she had to brace herself with her hands upon the ground to keep from diving into the fire. Preinon was beside her, then, holding her by the shoulders.

“
Where is the child?
” she asked as she regained her composure a little.

“She is fine,” Preinon consoled her quickly, in Aeman. “She sleeps as you did, as one welcoming a small death for awhile.”

Adria sorted the images of the night before, trying to put the whole story together. She whispered, “I don’t really understand what happened.”

Preinon nodded, speaking slowly and carefully, and watching her for her reactions. “We were too late. The camp was taken by the Knights. It could not have been helped.”

“Were there no other survivors?” Adria asked weakly.

After a moment, Preinon shook his head. “This was meant to be a total slaughter. You found the only survivor.”

Wait for the call…
she remembered.

“
I disobeyed,
Watelomoksho,” she said, hesitating, pleading. “
It seemed too long to wait. I knew, somehow, that I could do what I had to do. Or maybe I didn’t care. Almost like it…
had already happened.
”

She had to switch to Aeman to finish her thought.

After a moment, he nodded. “We were only just in place when you called, Púksha. It was Ektito who told the story. He saw everything.”

Adria swallowed. “What is… what is
everything?
”

“Do you not remember?”

Adria blinked a few times. The pain in her head, she knew, still waited at the corners of her vision. Storm clouds and lightning. Circling crows.

“
How many did I kill?”

Preinon poked at the fire a moment, exhaled heavily. “What did you feel as you fought? What did you think? What did you see?”

“As I fought...” Somehow, it seemed a bizarre question, and she knew she couldn’t really answer it entirely, in retrospect, though she felt certain she could have described herself perfectly at the time. “I... felt like it didn’t matter if I died.”

She paused, fought off the crows with a long steady breath. “And then I realized, somehow, that I would not. I saw the way to kill them, and knew they could not react swiftly enough to defend themselves.”

She was shaking her head, and she realized the words did not make complete sense, but Preinon only nodded, frowning, and asked, “You moved more quickly than you have before?”

She shrugged. “It... did not seem that way to me. It... feels like being underwater, seems like… everything else slows.”

“You said ‘seems.’ This has happened before?”

She nodded. “Yes, when I... fought the Knights in the clearing. And also when I fought Tabashi during the attack on the camp. It... seemed like... tainábe, as Shísha teaches.”

He nodded again thoughtfully, but said nothing more, and Adria was left to consider in silence.

Preinon sighed again after a time. “Adria…”

“
Are they buried?
” She interrupted him, afraid what he might say next.

She meant the tribe, and she meant the Knights. She turned her head, and he nodded once.

She nodded as well, turning back to the fire, trembling, and whispered, “
How many?
”

He shook his head again. “Adria…”

“No.”
Her voice found its strength.
“How many of the People? How many Others? I am not counting beads, Uncle. But I will say a prayer for each and every soul who died last night, and by any god, the crows will taken them all.
”

As they returned to the Shema Ihaloa Táya, they were obliged to rest more frequently. Though just old enough to walk, the child seemed to have lost the will to do so, and refused to be carried by anyone but Adria. Unaccustomed to the burden of carrying a child, Adria’s arms and back ached, though Mateko and others carried her pack in turn.

Still, they found no sign of Méneshno as they journeyed.

“
He likely mourns at the camp’s ruins,”
Preinon suggested.
“And if he is wise, he packs up what we did not, and will join us, or else find another camp to join, and live his life in peace.”

“
It would be good for him to know he was not the only one who survived,”
Adria whispered, the child asleep within her arms beside the fire.

Preinon nodded sadly, leaning to stroke the child’s straight dark hair gently.

Adria spoke with her at intervals as they walked, or sang to her some of the Aesidhe songs she would likely have heard, but the girl did not speak. Her eyes seemed intelligent enough, and even the slowest Aesidhe children were likely to communicate some with their hands even if they were reluctant to learn speech.

Her spirit is wounded
, Adria decided, 
The horror of the attack has made it withdraw.

Still, she clung to Adria with affection, and found some comfort in her arms, and after that first night slept curled up against her, turning incessantly in her dreams.

“Hush
, náme,” Adria would say, when the girl awakened in the night, or when she dozed in her arms as they walked. Soon, the other Runners even called her this, instead of the more typical Méli, “girl,” for one whose name was not known. By the time they arrived at the Shema Ihaloa Táya camp, it was how she was known.

N
á
me
, Adria smiled, when she first realized it had stuck.
Quiet One.
 It was not until Shísha pointed it out that Adria realized that to an Aeman, the girl’s name would look like the word “name,” despite its pronunciation —
Nah
-may.

Though she still favored Adria from then on, other women of the tribe were soon able to soothe Náme similarly, especially Imani, who reasoned to Adria, “
She knows that we are sisters.
”

Shísha, with the help of Imani and Adria, among other women of the tribe, performed a healing ceremonial for the child, and Adria watched as the spirit of the child separated from her parents and bound itself to the spirit of the tribe.

Adria remembered the dead father, and the mother who died moments later, the blood on the floor of the tent, the furs wherein the child had hidden. She closed her eyes upon the memory, and only the spirits of the mother and father remained, and Adria knew that they had found peace.

Náme also seemed more at peace afterward, and began to use her hands to speak, but still did not make any words.

“When she needs her voice, then she will find it,” Shísha said, and otherwise seemed unconcerned.

Other tribes had abandoned their camps that season, and Náme was not the only one making a new place for herself among strangers. Still, as the tribes settled together, and the Runners were able to begin their more relaxed winter routine, it was obvious that the Shema Ihaloa Táya were now too large to sustain themselves easily through the coming season by hunting alone.