Martyr (The Martyr Trilogy) (28 page)

I
finally reached the city, and it was a different place than when I had last
seen it.  Had it not been for the obvious signs of decay, I might almost have
been able to believe that the plague had never struck here.  The streets were
teeming with people, and the buzz of a half-dozen conversations could be heard
at any given time.  It was alive.  One could imagine that the city itself was
happy to be occupied once again after such a long period of desolation.  I heard
the clang of metal cookware as I passed one house, the scent of a hearty stew
tempting my nostrils.  Here a man carried water jugs for washing, as his wife
hung brightly-colored clothes to dry on newly-strung cords.  There a child
swept decades-old dust from a granite step before the door.  I even passed a
group of young girls playing a game like hop-scotch, skipping across
chalk-drawn tiles hand in hand.  Even as the remaining traces of the plague
were slowly being erased, these glimpses of joy gave a piece of comfort, a
sense of community. 

I
suppose the streets looked different, too, with so many people on them, for I
soon found myself traveling an unfamiliar lane.  I thought about retracing my
steps, but the masses were thicker in that direction, so I decided to try to
work my way in a more circuitous path in the general direction I thought I
should be heading.  Eventually this tactic succeeded, as I found myself passing
the jailhouse from the direction opposite the way we had approached it
previously.  Noting that the door was slightly ajar, I dismounted, thinking to
check in on Greda (or whoever was currently posted guard), and to hopefully
have better luck drawing Jeyt into conversation.  I wasn’t prepared for what I
found within.

Greda
was dead.  Gutted, her entrails spilling over her lap and onto the floor as she
sat unmoving in her chair.  Blood now pooled at her feet, and had spattered on
the walls and ceiling with the violence of the attack that had taken her life. 
The cell door hung open.  The prisoner, of course, was gone.  Greda’s face was
contorted into a mask of horror, its many creases smoothed out as much as
they’d ever be.  I approached the body and closed her eyelids and mouth,
scanned the area quickly but saw no murder weapon or other indication of what
had transpired.  Suddenly I remembered the lone rider on the ridge.

I
ran to the street, mounted my deer, then raced to the main road, turning toward
the gym where I hoped Maya waited.  Flying past curious onlookers, I drove the
deer hard toward the large crowd assembled in the distance.  As I drew near, an
angel appeared before me in the middle of the road ahead.

This
had to be Maya's new armor.  Its design was similar to mine, with a few
noticeable differences.  It was all a pearlescent white, but when she
moved, or the sun hit it just right, it shimmered with hidden color like an
opal.  The helm was falcon-like, complete with white tufted crests over
both her ears.  Like mine it sported a single wing, but over the right shoulder
rather than the left.  And she appeared to be in battle form, a matching
white crossbow built into the suit's right arm, yet unlike mine the
wing was persistent while armed.  There was an outpouching on the side of
her left thigh that mirrored the one on my leggings.  It was a beautiful
piece of work, and it probably did outshine mine just a bit, if only because of
the luminosity of the materials out of which it was fashioned.  I imagined
it was every bit as strong, and as light, as mine, if not more so.  But I didn't
mind, as it suited her well. 

In
reality, I didn't have that long to appreciate its finer qualities.  As I
approached, she slapped both elbows against her sides simultaneously, and the
armor split along multiple  hidden fissures and folded within itself again and
again, finally all but disappearing into a few discreet pieces attached to the
back of her body, arms, and legs.  In a few places the armor curled
asymmetrically around the front of her limbs and body in a pattern that seemed
more decorative than pragmatic.  It occurred to me that the way these pearly
tendrils fell might have allowed a less modest person to wear the armor sans
underclothing.  Maya wore it over her usual blacks.  The many-pocketed vest was
missing, however.  Perhaps that was the purpose of the receptacle on her
thigh. 

Maya’s
proudly beaming smile quickly dissolved when she saw the look on my face. 
“What happened?” she asked.

“Greda’s
dead.  Jeyt is gone,” I said.  “Tell Reya and then stay with her.  I think I
can bring him back.”

“I’m
coming with you!” she said.

“No! 
Listen to me this time, please!  Stay with Reya, you’ll be safe.  I will return
with or without Jeyt, I promise.”

“I
can’t lose you!” she implored.

“You
won’t,” I said.  “Now go, tell Reya what’s happened.  Tell her to wait here;
I’ll need to know where to find you both when I get back.”

“Justin!”

“There’s
no time,” I said, already turning my deer around.  “If Jeyt gets away…”  Maya
nodded slowly as understanding dawned.  I was off, racing through the streets
of the city, weaving my way toward the outskirts that would lead to the
wilderness.  Larger buildings gave way to smaller ones, eventually tapering off
into residential neighborhoods.  Every time I had a choice between roads, I
took the smaller one, until at last I spotted the tree-line at the end of a
dead-end street.  I prompted my deer to leap the weathered fence that stood
between us and the forest, and we landed in a run on the far side.  Almost
immediately I steered to the north and west, the direction that I knew would
lead to the place below the dam road where I had last seen the rider.  After
about ten minutes of riding I began to worry that I might have miscalculated,
or gotten turned around in the dense wood. 

Then,
finally, the trees began to thin, and when we crossed a clearing I could see
the cliffside rising sharply to my left, could even make out the tiny forms of
tourists along its edge, making their way up and down the curving path between
the dam and the city.  I hurried on, reaching at last the place where I had
seen the person I felt certain must have been Jeyt.  But now what?  I was
racing in the direction I had last seen him moving, but there was no way of
knowing if or when he may have deviated from that course, or how far he could
have gone in the intervening time that it had taken me to work my way all the
way down into the city and out again.  I realized now that my plan hadn’t
actually covered what I would do once I reached this point.  But then it came
to me.

I
spoke to the puurr-deer.  “Show me any other deer that are nearby,” I said. 
Instantly, an image formed before me.  I saw men and women on deer traveling
the dam road.  “Are there any others?” I asked.  The image changed, and then I
saw Knox and Corvus, each mounted, riding into the clearing where the chopper
sat, Doog sitting on the ground below it, enjoying a mid-morning snack.  I
re-framed the question.  “Show me the last deer that passed this way.”  The
image changed again, and now I saw Jeyt, mounted on a deer, riding through a
shady valley.  Good!  But where was that place?  It wasn’t here, so I must have
been seeing where he was now.  I saw Jeyt turn his head to look over his
shoulder toward something above.  “Go back a little,” I said, “and show me the
scene through his eyes.”  Then I was Jeyt, pulling my deer to a halt and
glancing back and up…at the dam road!  He was checking to see if he had been
noticed.  The angle was different, but that enabled me to estimate
approximately where he must be. 

I
hummed my deer into motion, and sped toward that place.  Minutes passed, and
then I saw the familiar valley from the vision rising on either side of us. 
Jeyt had not appeared to be in any particular hurry, an odd choice for one who
had recently committed murder and was almost certainly being hunted.  The
valley curved lazily north, finally opening onto a slate-strewn plain that rose
like a ramp onto a high, broad plateau straight ahead.  As my deer climbed over
the apex of the slope, there stood Jeyt, facing away from us, having recently
dismounted.  His deer trotted past us, snorting a greeting before heading back
the way we had come.  I decided to dismount as well, and approached him on
foot.  As I walked, I performed the necessary actions to arm myself, the sound
of which he must have heard.  Yet he didn’t turn, standing with the same
despondent posture I had observed in the jail.  He didn’t appear to be armed. 
I could see now that he stood at the brink of a sheer drop, the unforgiving
earth several hundred feet below.  He spoke first.

“I
didn’t do it.”

“Didn’t
do what, Jeyt?” I asked.  “Brutally murder a dear friend and ally, or betray
all of your people?”

“Either,”
he said.  “I never betrayed them to Magus.  Yes, I had the device.  And yes,
Magus gave it to me.  I agreed to lead him to the camp.  But I never actually
did it.”

“Why,
Jeyt?  Why would you help that demon?  What did he offer you?”

“I’m
not a brave man,” he said.  “I’m not a hero like you.  I was tired of being
afraid all the time.  Magus told me he’d let me have a little piece of land
where he’d leave me alone.  I have a son, you know.  He stays with his mother,
far away from Magus’ reach.  But I knew one day the war would come there too. 
I thought maybe, if I did this, we could be together again and live in peace. 
This was a way I could save my little boy.”

“Do
you really think that justifies bringing a death sentence down on scores of
others?” I demanded.  “Some of them had families too, living with them in the
camp.  Did you think about them?”

“Of
course I did!” he shouted.  “That’s why I never entered the full code.  I
started to, several times, but that thought always stopped me.  That’s what I
was doing when Euthus jumped me.”

“Oh,
how noble of you,” I said, “to stop just short of calling Magus’ army down on
dozens of innocents.”

“I
told you I’m no hero,” Jeyt said.  “That’s why I’m here.”  He inched closer to
the edge.  I sheathed my weapon, preparing to grab him should he try it.

“Hold
on,” I said.  “What about Greda?  Are you saying you weren’t the one who killed
her?”

“Greda
was like a second mother to me,” he said.  He turned at last to face me, and I
could see that his scraggly beard was wet with the tears that had been
streaming down his sallow cheeks.  He took another step back.  I poised myself
for a lunging grab.  “You should take a careful look at those closest to you.”

That
caught me off guard.  “What do you mean?  Who did it?” I demanded. 

He
stared blankly, seeming not to hear.  “For what it’s worth,” he said in a
rasping voice just above a whisper, “I believe you are Martyr.  Take that demon
out for us.  For my little boy.”  Even as he said the last words, he spun
around and lurched over the edge, his arm twisting just out of my reach as I
lunged, grasping only air.  Jeyt was gone.

I
leaned toward the edge, not out of morbid curiosity but only to visually
confirm what I knew must have happened, and as I did I almost followed him
down, as the silence was abruptly shattered by a series of seismic explosions
from the direction of the city.  We were under attack.

26

The
city was in chaos.  Where previously the smoke of a handful of scattered
campfires had scrolled lazily skyward, the air was now thick with black clouds,
heavy with ash and cinders.  Entire buildings were engulfed in flame.  On the
ground, people were scrambling in every direction, singly and in small groups,
fleeing for their lives or desperately calling out the name of a missing loved
one as they ran.  I pushed forward amidst the anarchy, hoping to catch a
glimpse of Maya’s glistening armor through the searing haze, or to hear Reya
shout a command to her troops.  It was not immediately apparent who the
aggressors were, though it could be safely assumed that Magus was behind the
attack.  The explosive entrance was all-too-reminiscent of the raid at
Milltown.    Corpses littered the street, invisible in the smoke until I was
almost on top of them.  These were not the parched bones or mummified husks of
ancient plague victims, but fresh kills, twisted and torn and bloodied.  My
weapon leaped into my hand, shield at the ready as I continued my advance, more
cautiously now. 

A
hollow roar was heard over the screams and the crackling of burning debris. 
Just then a stray gust of wind cleared the smoke from an area before me just
long enough to display a scene of horrific violence.  A family of pilgrims fled
before one of Magus’ black-clad assassins, mounted on an armor-cat that had
been fitted with biomechanical restraints.  An elderly matriarch failed to match
the pace of the rest of the group, and the cat snatched her up in its massive
jaws.  With an effortless crunch, the beast rendered her fragile body limp,
then tossed it aside and launched itself after the others.  The glow of orange
lights could still be seen for a second after the cat disappeared into the
smoke with its rider.  It roared again, and received distant replies from at
least two more of its kind.

I
decided it was best to stick to the shadows and alleys of the city buildings,
rather than stumbling blindly down the main street, and possibly into the
hungry jaws of one of those beasts.  There were no deer to call – they tended
to avoid the urban sprawl in favor of the wooded glens – and so there was no
chance of repeating my mind trick on these cats.  My strategy was to basically
circle a block, then return to the main throughway long enough to see if I
could spot one of my allies, and to try to assess the scale of the assault.  I
would then circle the next block in similar fashion.  It was slow progress, but
it was effective.  Only once did I encounter an enemy off the main road.  It
was a lone assassin on foot, and upon seeing him I immediately flattened myself
against the building next to me, but he never looked my way, turning instead to
sprint toward an unfortunate couple leading a young child across the street a
couple of blocks down.  Upon seeing this I abandoned caution and shouted,
“Hey!” 

The
soldier skidded to a halt and whipped about to face me.  It took him only a
moment to realize that I was not one of his own men, and he strode confidently
in my direction, dragging the tip of his blade over the cracked asphalt as he
came.  I presumed that the reason he was not concerned about dulling its edge
was because it was enchanted in the same way as his armor.  His manner was
casual, almost playful; as a predator toys with its still-living prey before
snapping its neck.  Clearly he was not accustomed to encountering much
resistance from those he victimized.  He was due for a surprise. 

I
stood my ground until he was almost upon me.  When he finally
attacked I swatted aside his first two half-hearted swings
easily.  Now I had his attention.  He paused, then came at me with a
much more sincere thrust, his body weight now behind it.  I side-stepped
at the last moment, then brought my staff up forcefully into the articulation
between the armor plates of his arm and side, cleaving the limb cleanly at the
joint and relieving him of that much extra weight amidst a shower of
blood.  Clutching the wound in disbelief, he turned to run,
underestimating the reach of my perfectly balanced weapon.  With a broad,
scything slash I invited his head to join his twitching arm in the dust, and
his body flopped to the ground, pouring warm crimson
into the cracks in the pavement.
 
Circling the next block, I returned to the main street once more, and as I did
a stronger breeze momentarily cleared the smoke so that I could see to the end
of the city and the forested hills beyond.  There, in a large clearing at the
base of one of the hills, a massive, dark, ellipsoid form hovered just above
the yellow-grassed slope.  A second shape, identical but smaller, or as I soon
realized, more distant, appeared over the far-off mountain peaks beyond the
foothills.  My own-world cultural memory immediately conjured images of alien
spacecraft, but context steered me toward a more reasonable conclusion:
dirigibles.  From the nearer vessel more dark troopers could be seen dropping
the short distance to the ground, then vanishing into the trees that stood
between the city and the hills.

I
broke into a sprint, less concerned about encountering another mounted assassin
and more about finding Maya and my friends before more of those death-dealers
did.  I hadn’t run more than a couple of blocks when I heard sounds of battle
from a side street off the other side of the main road.  I crossed cautiously
under cover of smoke and headed in that direction.  Just as I reached the far
side of the street, a bus-sized chunk of burning concrete and steel from
somewhere high above crashed into the ground behind me, cracking the earth and
throwing me off my feet.  Heart in my throat, I picked myself up and re-oriented
to the sounds of struggle – the ring of edged weapons clashing, the shouted
commands, the cries of the fallen.  As it turned out, the noises had seemed
deceptively close; in fact, the site of the conflict was well away from the
tall buildings of the old city center.  In this forgotten place before the
river’s edge, deteriorated warehouses languished in the shadows of concrete
colossi: a knot of looping remnants of overpasses and off-ramps that teetered
precariously on crumbling legs.  In a few places the years of erosion and
disrepair had exposed a skeleton of rusted rebar.  Beneath this firmament, a
miniature war was waged.

I
spotted Reya first, as she was never one to let others do her fighting for
her.  As I drew closer, I saw other faces I knew: Knox, back-to-back with Reya;
Kuro and Jager, similarly paired; Kaire, a short distance away.  Each warrior
was facing off against one or more of the dark marauders, and appeared to be
holding their own.  They weren’t the only rebels in the fray; numerous others I
didn’t recognize – most woefully under-equipped – fought the good fight as
well.  I scanned the dust- and smoke-obscured battlefield, and eventually
located Charr, picking off unsuspecting foes with a traditional bow from an
elevated position atop one of the warehouses.  For a second I thought I saw
Maya beside her, but it was Mana, who to my surprise was attempting to snipe
bad guys with one of Charr’s crossbows.  I wondered how she could possibly hope
to land a shot with no training on this kind of weapon, but before I finished
the thought I saw one of her bolts find mooring in the soft spot at the base of
an assassin’s skull.

I
couldn’t reach any of my friends to ask after Maya, so I stalked the edges of
the battlefield, hoping that a better angle might reveal her location.  Here in
the dusk and dark shadows, Maya’s armor would not catch the sun’s rays, and
would offer no help in pointing up her location.  As I traced a wide circle
around the conflict, I was met by several of the dark soldiers who, upon
spotting me, tore themselves free from the melee to oppose me.  As my tutors
had predicted, they presented a hearty challenge, but each time I was
ultimately able to prevail against them and continue on my intended course. 
Finally I saw Maya, on the far side of the battlefield.  But she wasn’t
embroiled in combat.  Instead, she was running away, back in the direction of
the main street via a narrow alleyway.  I shouted to her, but it was impossible
for her to hear me over the clamor.  As I tried to make my way to her last
known position, I was intercepted by another dark soldier. 

This
one wasn’t going down so easily.   In fact, as we got into it, he gave me a few
moments’ uncertainty about the outcome of our fight, matching me blow-for-blow
for the better part of ten minutes.  An imperfectly-aimed attempt to dislodge
his head sent his helmet flying instead, and I was unwillingly reminded that
the enemy wore a human face.  Oddly moved amid clashing blades, I asked him,
“Why do you fight for him?”  

His
face registered not the expected anger, but consternation, bewilderment.  At
first I didn’t think he was going to answer me, but as we continued to exchange
blows he replied matter-of-factly, “He gives us freedom.”

“Said
the slave,” I responded.

“You’re
the slave, fool!” he spat.  “Magus shows us another way!”  Now I was angry.  As
his sword came down, I shoved it aside with a powerful counter, and rammed my
shield into his chest and up under his chin, pushing his entire body back as I
pressed forward like an offensive lineman.  Then I pulled my shield arm away
suddenly, and without hesitation replaced it with the tip of my staff, driving
it between his ribs and pressing it deep.  He dropped his blade and stiffened,
then fell at my feet.  I braced my foot against his chest to withdraw my
weapon, then completed my arc and slipped into the alley where I’d seen Maya
go.  As I did, the sounds of battle at my back muffled by the high walls, I
heard another sound rising over the clash of swords and screams of men: a
terrible chorus of bellowing roars.  The armor-cats had arrived. 

I
didn’t want to leave my friends and allies to fight them, but Maya was alone,
and if she came face-to-face with one of those beasts…I wasn’t sure how well
her armor would hold up against those crushing jaws.  I increased my pace,
dodging and leaping piles of scattered debris and the occasional set of human
bones as I ran.  Around a bend, and I startled a pack of grotesquely oversized
rodents gnawing at the remains of one more recently fallen.  I hurried on,
emerging at last onto a proper street.  I glanced quickly in both directions,
but there was no sign of Maya.  I stood in the middle of the block.  Now I was
unsure how to proceed.  Maya could have disappeared around one of the corners
to my left or right and down a side-street, but which way had she gone?  I
heard a roar behind me – one of the cats had followed me into the alley! 
Spotting another gap between buildings almost directly opposite my position, I
bolted for it.  I heard another roar, louder, but didn’t dare to look back,
hoping to be out of sight in the gap by the time the beast reached the street. 

I
slipped into the alley, heart pounding.  The shadows fell deep, but I wasn’t
sure how well those cats could see – or smell.  The alley turned left, and so
did I, and nearly ran into a huge, vertical slab of concrete that had fallen
across the gap, completely blocking further passage.  I hurried back around the
corner and toward the street, not wanting to give the cat a chance to trap me
in a dead end.  If I was going to go down fighting, I wanted room to swing my
blade.  As I neared the egress, I could see the beast and its rider standing
just before the opening on the opposite side of the street.  The creature was sniffing
the air when I first saw it, but instantly snapped to center on me, lowered its
head, and charged, bellowing as it came.  I was still a short distance from the
street, my senses restricted by the narrow slit of the alley to only that
directly before me, and that – the terrible sight of that monster bearing down
on me, its thunderous roar – was amplified to frightful effect.  And so it was
that I didn’t hear another kind of a roar, rising quickly to swallow up the
sound of the cat, until a great white shape, entering my field of vision from
the right, slammed into the creature’s side, flipping it up and over itself and
launching its rider into the air.  Only after it had passed by my spot and come
to rest, purring, to the left of my view-slice, was I able to identify the
sound.  I ran out into the street.  The cat and its rider lay unmoving where
they had fallen.  I turned my head and saw…Maya…sitting atop a radiant
two-wheeled steed. 

To
call it a motorcycle, a bike, would not do justice to the artistry of this
vehicle.  It was white and shimmering, of the same material as her armor.  It
appeared to have pairs of wings shielding its wheels on either side.  As I
watched, a third pair of wing-like blades that had been extended from the
cycle’s flanks folded themselves back into a more streamlined position along
its sides, helping to protect the rider’s legs.  The rumble of its engine was
music to a bike-lover’s ears.  So this was her big surprise.  “Hurry, get on!”
she shouted, and I complied.  As she accelerated down the street, swerving to
avoid the cat’s body, she said, “I didn’t want to hurt the cat, but time was of
the essence.  As you’ll see,” she said, flipping a switch between the
handlebars, “it’s equipped with the same type of deterrent devices as the dam. 
Under normal circumstances, that would be enough to scare away the cats.”  She
rounded the next corner, steering back toward the river.  As we turned, my
peripheral vision detected a huge shadow passing up the side of the building to
our left, but by the time I looked, whatever had cast it was gone.