Twixt Heaven And Hell (27 page)

The Gryphons had waited for three days before Darius first awoke. Though he spent less and less time asleep afterward, his full strength was slow in returning. He ordered a small party of soldiers down to Fort Turast to notify Bastion of their location and condition, and he also sent out groups of men to locate any stragglers from the Gryphons. Most of his men had been accounted for, and surprisingly few had been lost to the Demon's assault. It was unlike a Demon to be so... focused.

The memories did not return, though Darius now felt clear-headed. He tried to turn his full attention towards recuperation, but the death of Kray, and moreso Robert, weighed heavily on him All the more because he could not
remember
them. Though he knew it a silly notion, he felt guilty at the lack, as if it were a personal failing.

Though he had hoped their camp was far enough from the fighting to allow an Angel to bring him healing, none came. Perhaps the recent actions of the Demons had made them more wary.

However, the woman, Shara, seemed to have a great deal of experience mending injuries. She went about dosing Darius with herbs and applying poultices daily. The shallow cuts on his arms were nearly invisible now, and no longer troubled him.

Despite her help, Darius’s fever returned – something Shara had seemingly anticipated. She was often beside him at night, making him chew those foul-tasting leaves. One night, when the mountain air had a chill to it that betrayed the approaching winter, Darius lapsed into a bout of violent shivering that wracked his body and set his teeth noisily chattering.

Shara had Darius’s men move him closer to the fire, and cloaks and blankets were piled atop him. Deep in the night as Darius drifted in a feverish half-sleep, a cold, damp wind nearly blew out the flames; but then they rallied and grew, bathing the ailing wizard once again in warmth.

Darius looked in confusion at Shara. It was she who had saved the fire. His muddled mind had barely felt it, but there was no mistaking her now. Shara commanded magic. She was a wizard.

She saw his eyes turn warily to her. Without speaking she re-soaked the cloth upon his head.

“How?” Darius asked.

A shadow of her earlier disdain crossed Shara’s countenance, but she did not answer.

"There are no female wizards," Darius said in confusion, repeating what the wizards had long held to be true, though they had no explanation for it. "There have never been."

Shara shook her head without looking at Darius, but she finally answered: "You have so much arrogance. You think you know so much."

Now she did look Darius in the eye, leaning closer to his face with a challenging stare.

"Where do you get all this learning? From the Angels – but the Angels are not of this world. They do not know this place. My people lived here, in these mountains, before the Angels came – we remember this, though it was long ago. We know more of our home, and ourselves, than they."

Darius gazed at her in fevered confusion. "You don't like them."

It was foreign to him. How could someone not like the Angels? They healed and comforted and protected.

A guarded look filled Shara's eyes, but she did not keep silent.

"The Angels are very beautiful, and wonderful. They still visit my people. They heal sickness and hurt, and comfort the grieving of widows. They sometimes ask us to leave our home and come to your city. But they do this so we can fight the War they brought."

"They did not bring the War!" Darius protested, though his weakness robbed his words of much of their conviction. "They came to defend us."

Shara's gaze remained on him, though she did not respond immediately. Finally, she simply said, "You think you know so much."

She tended him a moment more. Though Darius tried to get her to keep talking, she said nothing. She gave him more leaves to chew – Darius had nearly become used to the taste – and left him.

He brooded over what Shara had said. There were dark ruminations in that conversation, and for some reason Darius could not simply dismiss it as the suspicious rantings of a wild woman. In any case, it was a welcome change to his constant brooding over Robert's death, and Darius chewed over Shara's words even as he chewed the leaves that sent him to sleep. When he awoke, the conversation he had had in his fevered state dissipated like a dream, and Darius would not remember it for a long time after.

Eventually his health returned, and this time Darius felt truly on the road to recovery. The soldiers he had sent out had all returned, and nearly every Gryphon was accounted for.

The battle between the Aeonians had been over for weeks. A massive area of the plateau where so recently the Gryphons had camped was churned ruin, trees smoldering and crushed, grass torn up in long furrowed rents where clawed feet had gouged the ground in their terrible charges at the Angels.

Darius did not know which side had been victorious in the end. He was not sure it mattered. Even if the Angels had driven off their opponents, Kray and Robert were still dead. The Enemy – the human Enemy – had not stood to gain the land which the Angels and Demons had fought over. Even if the Angels were defeated, they would be back in time. Angels and Demons were almost never truly destroyed. They fought until forced to flee or until they were banished from whatever battlefield the War had chosen at that moment. In time they returned to the conflict.

As Darius lay idle on his bed, it struck him just how unjust the War was. Where a person went upon death, none knew – if the Angels did, than they would not tell, remaining silent whenever asked. It seemed certain enough that his fellow soldiers who fell in battle did not simply wait awhile and return. They gave their lives for Bastion, for the cause of Heaven. What did they get in return?

Darius tried to shake off his morbid thoughts. Robert had been a soldier, and unjust War or no, Robert had known death may lie in wait for him. The same was true of Kray, who had at least managed to taste the life of a man of Bastion before he died, much more than could be said for all the poor curs Darius himself fought against.

Still, Darius could not completely shrug off the feelings of outrage – and guilt. Robert had not been just a soldier. He had been a friend. Darius fought as hard as he did, gave what he did, so that his friends would
live.

But he was
also
a soldier,
Darius thought. "Even Robert would say I'm being foolish," he muttered. As was so often true, what his mind knew did no good against what his heart felt. The guilt remained.

Darius carefully attempted to move his injured leg. The pain that shot through him was dire, but less than it had been. It no longer made him want to wretch and retreat into unconsciousness. Soon he would be able to move about with a crutch, and then he would return to Bastion – or at least close enough for an Angel to come to him. He was still puzzled by their absence here, and wondered again if the unexpected attack had unsettled the Choirs. Or perhaps they had lost the battle, and there were none to send for a time.

"How many Angels does Heaven hold?" Darius wondered aloud to himself. He scoffed at his own question. Another futile attempt by a man to understand the Great War. However the powers of Heaven and Hell were reckoned, he was certain numbers had very little to do with it.

Though Darius disliked having to wait – especially for himself – he had seldom had a better place to do it in. This forest amongst the mountains was nothing short of gorgeous, and it was now deep fall and all the trees were afire with vibrant color. It was far more pleasant than spending his convalescence in some army camp, with the dust and smell. His sickbed lie against the bole of a mighty tree, and above him the expansive canopy let in shafts of light here and there to illuminate the forest floor.

The ground here was rockier than by the river, and unlike that forest, here underbrush was rare. Even grass did not grow here – the floor was mostly dead leaves and the loam they left behind. Only the trees grew here, tall and proud, their roots reaching deep into the soil, pushing aside rock and stone in search of water. They were much fewer than by the river and most of them had no branches until many feet above a man's head, so that the forest had an open, airy feel to it. In some places when the trunks of the trees aligned just so, the view to the south was nearly open, allowing sight of the Threeforts Valley.

Had he not suffered so dear a loss, Darius thought he could have truly relaxed here, War or no War. As it was, his mind would not lie still and quiet. Concentrating on the birdsong, he could push aside the voices in his head for a moment – until the chirps and trills
became
the voices, reproaching him and cursing him for his failures.

It was his time with Shara that truly drew Darius's mind off his troubles. His constant attempts to engage her in conversation eventually yielded success, and she answered his questions openly once she realized they stemmed from simple curiosity. Darius had forgotten his feverish revelation about her, and she gave no more displays to remind him.

No doubt there were men in Bastion who knew all about her tribe, but Darius had never been much for reading reports unless they impacted him directly. These mountain people – the
Pa'ra'a
, in the tongue they still used amongst their own – had inhabited the region for many hundreds of years. They were not unlike the river folk who provided Bastion with such excellent scouts to the south. More stubborn, more cautious – the mountains were home to many predators which even a skilled hunter must be wary of.

Though these people had not moved to Bastion, they were allied with the city – there were no bystanders in the War. Instead, they sent men to serve in the army, most of whom did not return – either killed in battle, or choosing to settle in the city after their service. The rest of the people guarded the mountains to the north of Threeforts, ever vigilant against the spies of the Enemy.

Darius was surprised to find that they were quite numerous, with a handful of villages scattered throughout the heights. It was one of the reasons for the Valley's surpassing safety – it was well nigh impossible for the Enemy to surprise Bastion here, with such an able ring of guardians.

"Don't you think you could do more good if you were more active in the War?" Darius asked. Shara looked sharply at him, and Darius silently chastised himself. The question had been innocent, not meant as another suggestion that her people should go to Bastion. She did not answer, and he afterward watched his tongue more carefully. Still, he could not help but wonder what manner of impact they might make. If Shara was to be taken at her word, her people must number in the thousands.

Darius was also impressed by the extent of the history Shara's people had preserved. He could not judge its veracity, but its scope and depth was vast. They had no written script of their own, but their cultural memory reached back to their emigration to the mountains from lands further north. A warlike people then, they had fled a tribe even more aggressive – and who rode great beasts of war, lending them speed Shara's people could not match. When they came to the mountains they adapted to their new home quickly, eventually dominating the area, and displacing other tribes in turn. They had enjoyed many generations of relative peace, for there were none to challenge their supremacy.

Until the Angels came. Under their tutelage, a lowlands tribe united many peoples into a nation, and built the citadel of Bastion. Though their focus was not on Shara's people, there were conflicts between them as Bastion pursued their war against the Demons and their servants. Bastion required many resources, and much land to provide them. The
Pa'ra'a
were forced to give way – though they had been mighty, the men of Bastion had learned much of warfare.

At the time, the Aeonians fought each other often, and Angels and Demons alike were too concerned with each other to lend much aid or counsel to the humans that did their bidding. It was not until many years after the initial Forging that men of Bastion came on missions of friendship to Shara's people.

By then it was too late. That same impressive cultural memory their people preserved also carried with it a lasting grudge against those who threatened their home. The hostility they bore was eventually allayed by the Angels, whom no man or woman could hold in contempt, but the memory – and with it, a permanent rift – remained between the two peoples.

"I'm sorry," Darius said once, when Shara told him of the destruction left by the soldiers of Bastion, as they chased the
Pa'ra'a
away from lands they themselves coveted.

Shara shrugged off his apology. "It was war, wizard. And it was not you who did this."

"They were my people. They were wrong to attack – they should have gathered you in from the start."

Shara smiled with a bit of her old disdain, softened by familiarity. "You see the past with the present's eyes, wizard. We would not have come, even then; we would have fought. We had already been forced to abandon one home, we would not do so again. Your people were just men to us – we knew nothing of the Angels then."

There was a moment of silence then, until Shara asked, "Why do you fight, if you are sorry, wizard?"

With a puzzled look, Darius answered. "I am sorry we fought when we did not need to, Shara. I do not shy from the fight that is necessary."