Chapter One #2
I unsheathed my weapon and hefted it in my hand.
The handle was wood, thick enough that I could not quite circle it with my entire hand.
The shaft was made of peneldium, one of our strongest metals.
The shaft’s tip spread into two sides. One side was blunt, perfect for a hard blow.
The other side had been forged in heat to a wicked point, which would penetrate flesh and bone.
I called my weapon a skullcrusher. Most male warriors preferred a sword as those didn’t require coming into as close contact with a Hollow, but I found swords unwieldy and cumbersome.
The younger warriors and many women used a version of a weapon like my skullcrusher.
Finnrey had one like mine but with sharpened points on both ends of the peneldium head.
If she’d had a sword, it would have been no use to her in the contained space of the safe room.
I stared down into the darkness, willing my eyes to see through the gloom so I could make out what was happening. I caught a flash of movement, another crash, and then silence. I held my breath and then couldn’t resist. “Finnrey?”
“I’m coming up,” she said. Her face, a pale beige now, came into view as she climbed the ladder. I held out my hand and pulled her up the last couple of rungs. Her hand in mine shook as though she were freezing.
“Mara. Am I bitten?” She scrambled away, turning to try and examine her own back, pulling her clothing away from her body and inspecting it intently.
Panic sliced through my chest, making me lose my breath. I grabbed her shoulders. I was taller than she and looked down into her dark eyes. They were wide with fear, but there was no trace of pink in her eyes. “Where did it attack you?”
“My shoulder.” She indicated her right shoulder.
“Turn around.”
No, no, no, no. Not Finnrey. Anyone but Finnrey.
She turned, and I ran my hands over her thick black tunic. It was intact. She was fin—my gloved finger slid through a tear. I must have inhaled sharply because her trembling body tensed.
“What is it?”
As much as I might want to lie to her, I wouldn’t. I would want her to tell me the truth if our positions were reversed. “The fabric is torn.”
“What about the undergarment?
The undergarment. Yes. We all wore multiple layers for added warmth but also for additional protection.
I ripped off my glove and clamped it under my arm.
Then I slid my bare hand along her shoulder, opening the tear and feeling inside.
I felt no skin. I moved aside so the light from the open doorway might penetrate the shadowy house, might fall on exposed or torn skin.
But all I saw was black. I touched the undergarment, seeking wetness, and felt only dry fabric.
Withdrawing my hand, I examined my skin. No blood.
“You’re not bitten.”
Finnrey slumped and let out a shuddering cry of relief.
“What happened? What’s down there?” I asked. Whatever it was, I could hear it moving. It made sounds, some like a human and others...not so human. Finnrey, still crouched on the floor, looked up at me. Her wide eyes filled with tears. That was so unlike her. We were warriors. We didn’t cry.
“There’s a child down there,” she said, her gaze flicking to the still-open door in the floor. “And he’s turning.”
I stiffened and jerked toward the trap door. Hollows weren’t known to be particularly athletic, but if one was motivated enough, it might climb a ladder.
Finnrey grasped my wrist. “I toppled a shelf over on it—him. He’s trapped.”
“For how long? It knows we’re up here. If it’s hungry, it might be strong enough to—” I began.
“I know. We must kill it. We can’t leave one.
If it were to get out...” She didn’t finish.
She didn’t need to. We all knew what could happen if even one Hollow was free in Earsleh.
One Hollow would kill some people, but other people might only be wounded.
The wounded were inevitably infected with red vein virus.
There was no cure for it. Anyone infected always turned.
We couldn’t risk an outbreak in the outerlands.
“But it’s a child, Mara,” Finnrey said, and the note in her voice drew my attention back to her. I’d never heard her sound like this. Was her tone of sorrow? Regret?
“You’re sure it’s...infected? Mayhap he was scared.”
She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks now. I don’t know what alarmed me more—Finnrey’s uncharacteristic tears or my proximity to a Hollow. Both were terrifying in their own way.
She choked back a sob. “I started down the ladder, and about halfway, I heard the weeping. I could tell it was coming from a child. I started talking to him. Telling him I wouldn’t hurt him.
I was here to help. Not to be afraid. I hadn’t even stepped off the ladder before he came for me.
I should have had my weapon in my hand. Instead, I had to push him back, and I saw—in the light from above—I saw the veins in his face.
They were bright red, standing out.” She shook her head. “So ugly in his little face.”
She covered her own face, and I wondered if I should try and comfort her. How did one do that? A hand on the shoulder? I patted her shoulder awkwardly.
“I kind of froze.” Her voice was muffled from her hands in front of her mouth.
“He came at me again and rammed into me. I doubled over, and that’s when he tried to take a bite.
I kicked him back and grabbed the first thing I saw.
They had a shelf with foodstuffs on it. I suppose it was in case they were trapped there for a few days. He’s under it now.”
I looked down into the darkness of the safe room. All was quiet, but I didn’t think the boy was dead. Sometimes the red vein virus made a person weak before it finished with them. He might be resting before the final phase.
“I’ll go down and kill it,” I said, gripping my skullcrusher tighter.
“No.” She immediately stood. “I outrank you. I should do it.”
I gave her a look, taking in the red-rimmed eyes, the wet cheeks, and the way she still shook. “Don’t be a dusthead. Anyone could see killing a child is upsetting to you.” I’d rather do just about anything than see Finnrey upset like this.
“Killing at all is upsetting, but it has to be done,” she said.
I grasped her arm and held her in place before she could move toward the trap door again. “I’m better for this task, and you know it. Everyone says I have no feelings, no heart.” I said it in a light tone, though repeating the words I’d heard said about me so often ripped at something inside me.
“They don’t know you like I do,” Finnrey argued. “I know that’s not true.”
“We can argue about my paltry emotions later. I’m going.
” I held up a hand. “Don’t argue. It’s just wasting time, and Gaz will be furious at how late we are as it is.
” I lowered a booted foot into the safe room, feeling for the ladder.
Once I had both feet on it, I climbed down, keeping my gaze on the darkness, not wanting to see Finnrey’s tear-stained cheeks.
I didn’t particularly want to see what lay below either, but I resisted squeezing my eyes shut.
Still, my traitorous body began to quiver as soon as my head dipped below the level of the floor.
I’d rather have my tongue pulled out than admit I was scared.
Not just scared of being in spitting distance of a Hollow, although that was terrifying.
I was quaking at the thought of killing one in cold blood.
I’d killed my share, but it had always been in the heat of a fight with other warriors fighting alongside me.
Even then, I wasn’t one of the warriors who celebrated a kill.
I was always happier when I did a tour of duty where I didn’t see or kill any Hollows.
Mayhap that made me weak—the guards at the Barrier would have said so. Or mayhap that meant I had more feelings than I’d admit or allow to show. Right now, I wished my nerves were as hard as I pretended because my heart was pounding so loudly I could barely hear my own thoughts.
And then, just as I reached the last rung of the ladder, I heard it—I heard him, the boy. It hissed at me, and the sound was inhumane enough to make my entire body shudder. I drew in a quick breath and jumped to the floor, swinging around to face it with my skullcrusher raised.
It took ten or so beats of my heart—rapid staccato beats—for my eyes to adjust to the gloom in the safe room.
I took short, quick breaths, legs apart and braced for an attack that didn’t come.
The scent of death and rot wasn’t as bad down here.
There weren’t any dead bodies—yet—and the loamy smell of earth masked the scent from above.
But there was the aroma of blood and sickness and the faintest whiff of Hollow.
The scent of a Hollow is a smell unlike any other, and one that no one who experienced it ever forgot. It was chilling, akin to the scent of putrefying flesh mixed with that of the sickly sweetness of a rotting garbage pile on the edge of the village.
The sound of a Hollow was almost as bad.
We usually heard them long before we smelled them.
From a distance, their noises sounded almost human.
But this close, the grunts seemed otherworldly, almost eerily resonant.
Even the hisses did not remind me of those of the occasional snake we encountered.
Theirs were wet, gurgling hisses that made me want to vomit.
The moans and hisses down here grew louder and more desperate as the moments ticked on and as I stared blindly at a spot just a few feet away.
Gradually the shadows morphed into discernable shapes, and I realized what I was looking at.
The shelf had toppled over, like Finnrey said. I could make out the frame of the structure and see some of the items that had fallen free when it tumbled. Potatoes and sacks of grain littered the floor between the shelf and me.