56. Monsters, Men, and Broken Things
19 th Day of the Blood Moon
Northeast of Berona – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
With Trusil’s hooves squelching in the mud, Rist leaned back, closed his eyes, and let the cool rain splatter against his face, his hands resting on the soaked hair of the horse’s neck.
The First and Fourth armies had left Berona four days ago, marching hard from sunrise to sunset, and in that time the rain had been unrelenting. And still, Taya Tambrel had forced a pace of almost twenty-five miles each day. Even mounted, Rist was exhausted, his muscles aching and his thighs chafing from the rain and constant friction. He didn’t dare try to imagine the state the infantry were in.
After the attack on Berona and the High Tower, both armies had been replenished to their full complements of five thousand four hundred – along with Taya Tambrel’s Blackwatch. The armies were also bolstered by some ten thousand auxiliaries – volunteers drawn from those within the city and the refugees who had flooded into Berona and the burgeoning town that had formed outside Berona’s walls. Many had lost friends or family in the attack, and a marching army also meant food. When the call for volunteers had gone out, the response had been overwhelming. The people wanted vengeance; they wanted blood. The limit had not been the number of souls willing to join and fight, but the capacity to feed and armour them. And now, together, they marched for the rebel stronghold in the Firnin Mountains. From what Magnus had said, the Seventh and Eighteenth armies were marching from Elkenrim, along with ten thousand more from Merchant’s Reach. Over forty thousand souls.
According to Garramon, the empire had known of the stronghold for quite some time but had held off on launching a strike due to the emergence of the Uraks and the elves from Lynalion. They were an irritation that could be ignored.
The attack had changed that.
Rist opened his eyes to the strange hue of pink from the light sparkling in the heavy rain, falling diamonds forged from blood.
Looking up at the crimson moon dragged his thoughts to the gemstone around his neck and the Essence that filled it. The Essence collected from a man Rist had killed with his bare hands. The Essence that called to him even at that very moment.
He barely remembered doing it. Just anger, rage, and then snap . It had almost seemed as though he were floating above himself, watching his body break the man’s neck. But he did remember the whispers in the back of his mind, his own voice, his own thoughts, urging him to take the man’s life. To break his neck for even daring to harm Neera. And he had done just that. He had let his rage control him.
“Your arse sore?”
Rist lurched forwards as Magnus clapped him across the back, almost falling from his own saddle in the process.
The big man rode on a beautiful buckskin gelding that rivalled the Varsundi Blackthorns for size – and almost looked like one with the amount of mud darkening its coat. “Whoa now, ya big bastard. Steady as she goes. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me. We have an understanding. But if you throw me off, you better believe it’s horse for supper.”
The horse snorted and shook its head but carried on walking.
Magnus held up the stump of his left arm, gripping the reins once more with his right, the rain splattering against his cloak. “Still forget it’s gone. Anyway, how’s your arse?”
Rist raised his eyebrows, glancing at Garramon and Neera, who rode to his right.
“Your arse, lad. It’s on the other side of your prick.”
“Magnus,” Garramon called. “May I suggest you elaborate?”
“Ah, you filthy dogs. I meant from the saddle. Mine’s raw as a slab of beef. Fucking hate riding horses.”
“Then why are you riding one?” Neera asked.
“Because I’m lazy,” he said in a way that implied the question need not have been asked, almost sending himself from the saddle a second time as he scratched at his thick black beard. “And I don’t fancy trudging through this shit heap like those poor bastards.”
Magnus gestured to the ranks of the soldiers who marched around them. The Exarch had ensured there were enough mounts for all the mages. Taya Tambrel, her Blackwatch, and the light cavalry were also mounted, but the some twenty thousand infantry and auxiliaries trekked on foot through the unceasing downpour, hauling stuck wagons free of the mud, sliding and slopping, never finding a minute’s respite.
As Rist looked out over the marching infantry though, his gaze moved to something entirely different.
The emperor did not accompany them for the assault on the stronghold, which surprised Rist, though he didn’t presume to understand the mind of a man like Fane Mortem. According to Garramon, the emperor had remained in Berona in case of attack by the elves or Uraks. Although the emperor was not there himself, he had sent ten of the Chosen in his place, along with Primarch Andelar Touran and his own personal retinue of Exarch Battlemages.
The Primarch rode at the head of the army in a sheltered wagon, while the Chosen were scattered amongst the army, each marching in isolation, never seeming to say a word or show a shred of interest in anything at all. Though, since the first day the army had set off, there seemed to be one of the Chosen within Rist’s eyeline at all times.
At that moment, one marched not ten feet to his left. It stood a measure in height with Rist, with short brown hair and the face of a man who had seen perhaps five or six more summers than he. It wore nothing but black trousers, thick leather boots, and a light crimson tunic so saturated it clung to the skin, revealing the rune markings carved into its flesh. It didn’t even carry a sword.
The men and women who walked at its side gave it a wide berth, but not from fear or uncertainty, as Rist would have expected, but from reverence and awe, as though Efialtír himself walked among them. Several priests of Efialtír had marched with the army simply to stay close to the Chosen – a hundred in total, ten for each.
At that moment, ten priests, garbed in crimson robes with white circles marked on each breast, moved in a wide circle around the Chosen. Each of them held a golden thurible on the end of a chain wrought from gold links, and incense wafted into the air in thick plumes. It seemed a strange thing to Rist, to dedicate your entire life to a thing you’ve never seen and to creatures of which you knew nothing more than stories you were fed by those who knew as much as you did. It was a cyclical thing, myth and legend becoming fact over time through the perpetuation of stories told across millennia. Yes, Rist had seen enough evidence to believe that the gods truly did exist, but he had yet to see anything tangible that spoke to the intentions of any one of them.
Rist had seen the Chosen throughout Berona and within the High Tower, but he’d never had a chance to look at them up close. And as he examined this one, he found himself wondering if the correct term was ‘it’ or ‘he’. Was the man that walked before him more human or spirit? More flesh and bone or servant of a god?
The question joined a hundred thousand others in the cavern that was Rist’s mind. And like all others, Rist was determined to have it answered.
His breath caught in his chest as the thing turned its head and its dark black eyes stared into his. The Chosen continued to walk forwards, stride unbroken as it held Rist’s gaze. Something about it was mesmerising, as though the creature was staring into the very core of his soul.
Heavy hoofbeats drummed in the back of Rist’s mind, faint and foggy. And it was only when a bay horse, travelling from the front of the column, stopped before Garramon and Magnus that Rist forced himself to look away from the Chosen and the priests.
The young scout exchanged words with the two Exarchs, then galloped back towards the front, hooves tearing up chunks of sodden earth.
“What is it?” Rist asked, pulling Trusil up beside Garramon.
“The path ahead is…” Garramon hesitated a moment. “The path ahead is covered in corpses. Looks like a caravan of refugees fleeing from the villages around Greenhills, soldiers with them. Uraks tore them apart… There were a lot of children. The scouts say it’s not pretty. Taya is ordering us to take the longer route around, but we will have to up the pace to make sure we don’t lose time.”
“That doesn’t seem practical,” Rist said without a second thought. And it wasn’t practical. The army had already been marching double, slogging through mud and rain and cold and wind. And when they did finally arrive at the Firnin Mountains, they would have to have to face a force of rebels of which they had no known number. Not to mention the obvious risk of Urak attack. Marching further and harder, and adding to the exhaustion that already plagued the army, was not only impractical, it was careless. But he settled for the word ‘practical’. He was learning, and he didn’t think the word ‘careless’ would be taken too well.
“You’ve not seen many dead children, have you, lad?” Magnus asked.
Rist didn’t quite understand the relevance of the question. “No, I don’t suppose I have, but I have seen many dead bodies. And I’m sure I will see many more. These are no different. I wish they were alive, but walking around them won’t change that. The exhaustion of marching harder in this weather, however, might add us to their number when we finally reach the Firnin Mountains.”
“You would have us march this army through a field of dismembered corpses?” A Healer who rode nearby, silver-trimmed white robes draped over his shoulders, pulled his horse closer. Rist knew his face: High Ardent Solman Tuk. He had joined the army at Berona, and Garramon’s mood had soured immediately. The man stared at him with that same strange look Rist had seen many times across the years.
“I would have us take the shortest and safest route from here to the mountains. That is all.”
Solman shook his head in disgust. “Is there a sliver of humanity in those cold eyes, Brother Havel? Do you see death as such a worthless thing that the mutilated bodies of your people mean nothing to you? It seems you truly did find the correct affinity. Did you feel the same way about your friend Tommin? He was a member of my affinity. Apprenticed to Sister Danwar. Would you march over his bloated corpse as well? Would that not bother you?”
Rist stared back at the man, unable to find words that could adequately convey the sorrow in his heart at the thought of Tommin. Beside him, Neera grew stiff, her fingers pale as she clutched the reins. Rist looked to her, but she didn’t meet his gaze.
“Hold your tongue, Brother Tuk. Or I will cut it from your mouth.” The Spark pulsed from Garramon as he rounded on the High Ardent. “Your grievances with our affinity are your own.”
“With a Sponsor like you, Arbiter Kalinim, I’m not surprised this one is the way he is. You Battlemages care little for the devastation you leave in your wake. Monsters the lot of you.” He looked from Rist to Garramon. “You have a knack for mentoring the young. Do you think this one will fare any better?”
“Speak one more word, and then never again. I promise you, that is not a threat, it is a certainty.”
The two men glared at each other for a long moment until Brother Tuk snapped at his reins and drove his horse forwards, the other Healers moving with him.
Horse hooves squelched and rain drummed, but otherwise silence held sway as the army marched on. Garramon didn’t turn to Rist or speak another word. He seemed to vanish into his own thoughts.
Magnus pulled his horse alongside Rist’s. “Solman and Garramon have history, lad – a bitter one. And the Healers tend to look at us as monsters anyway. I get it. They pledge their existence to saving lives, and we pledge ours to ending them. Don’t take it personally. He’s a bitter twat with a small prick, trying to use you to get to Garramon. He knows the places to prod.”
“He’s not wrong though, is he? How could he be when I still don’t understand. We’re at war. I saw more corpses at the Three Sisters than I’ve known people in my life. Hundreds died in the attack on Berona. And when we reach the Firnin Mountains, what do we plan to do other than create more corpses? Why then do we march around instead of through? It’s nothing we haven’t seen and won’t see again. I don’t want to kill the rebels, but I understand the necessity of it. I saw what they did in Berona.”
Magnus gave Rist a soft smile. One similar to those his mother would give him when he didn’t understand what was apparently obvious to everyone else – which happened often. “If we all thought like you, Rist, the world would be a much simpler place. But we don’t. And when it comes to leading an army, you aren’t just managing their bodies, and their armour, and their training. You’re managing their fear, their desire, their fervour – you’re managing their hearts and minds. Logic is all well and good, but it evaporates when it comes into contact with the human heart.” Magnus tapped his stump against his chest. “The men and women in this army have seen endless death this past year. They’ve lost loved ones, brothers and sisters. Some have lost their homes. And I can tell you one thing with a certainty born from centuries of fighting wars. If we march an exhausted army through a waterlogged field full of bloated corpses, we will have deserters by sunrise. And when we finally reach the Firnin Mountains, we will have an army ready to break and route. Steel cuts and kills, but when a battle teeters on the edge of the precipice, when two armies are tooth and nail, it is fear and desire that decide the day – morale. It is a fickle thing and must be tended with care.” Magnus angled his head down to catch Rist’s eye. “You’re a little strange, Rist, but I’m batshit crazy too. There’s not a person here who isn’t.”
Some hours later, Rist stood by the front of the command tent, staring up at the Blood Moon, the rain tapping against his skin, cold and rhythmic. He’d been there for a while, the others keeping dry inside. Something about the drumming of the rain calmed him, allowed his mind to wander. It rained a lot in The Glade.
“Rist?” Neera stepped from the tent and out into the rain, wrapping her arms around him from behind. She rested her hooded head against his back. “You’ll catch your death. Get back inside.”
“It’s only rain.” He placed his hands on top of hers, his fingers slipping into the gaps. “I like rain.”
“Do you not have the Drowned Fever in the South?” She hugged him tighter, pressing her face into his saturated cloak.
“We do. Mara Styr’s first daughter died of it when she was barely old enough to walk.”
“Well then come inside and change out of these clothes and stop being an idiot. I’ll not sit by your bedside, tending you like your mother.”
“I miss my mother…” Rist glanced over his shoulder. “Neera?”
“What? And don’t ask me something that’ll make me think. I just want to sleep.”
“Am I a monster?”
Neera loosened her grip a little and shifted so she could see into Rist’s eyes. She shook her head, smiling softly. “What about ‘don’t ask something that’ll make me think’ do you not understand, Rist Havel?”
“Probably everything, if I’m being honest. What’s the point of questions that don’t make you think?”
She laughed at that. “You’re not a monster, Rist. It’s that High Ardent who’s got you thinking like this, isn’t it? Don’t let him into your head. You are a Battlemage. You vowed to fight for our people, to protect them. And these rebels,” she scoffed, pure hatred tinging her voice, “they violated that. They burned their own people alive. The Healers never understand who we are because they live safe behind walls that we protect. That Solman Tuk is nothing but a?—”
“I didn’t mean it literally,” Rist said, cutting Neera short.
Neera pulled her head back and narrowed her gaze. “You always mean everything literally. Always.”
Rist looked away, back up at the star-dusted sky.
“Rist, what’s wrong?” Neera grasped his elbows, moving around him and trying to meet his gaze, but he refused to look down. “Talk to me.”
“I’m not like everyone else,” he said, his heart skipping every second beat, then quickening. “I know that. I’ve never been like everyone else, no matter how hard I’ve tried. Never been like Calen or Dann, never knew what to say, always had trouble seeing things they thought were obvious. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said something wrong or done something wrong and everyone’s looked at me like I was… Everyone but Calen and Dann, and you, and Garramon and Magnus… and Anila. I don’t… With the bodies earlier, I… Is Brother Tuk right?”
Neera lifted a hand and pressed it against Rist’s cheek, forcing him to look at her. To look at the rain dripping from the hood of her cloak, rolling over her soft skin, strands of hair saturated. Her eyes stared into his with a gaze that refused to let him look away. “Rist, you don’t see things the same way, and I’d never want you to. You are kind, and thoughtful, and selfless, and brave, and strong… You spend hours – or even days – thinking on things that others forget in an instant. You put so much thought and care into everything you do. You are entirely yourself and nothing else, and I love that about you.”
“But I just…” He didn’t know how to take the words in his mind and place them onto his lips. His tongue kept tying itself in knots even trying to do so.
“Look at me.” She placed her other hand on his opposite cheek, pulling him a little closer. “Do you understand why we walked around the corpses?”
He nodded. “Not at first, but I do now. It took a lot of thinking. The rain helped. Rain always helps me to think. I’m still not sure I agree, but I understand.”
“So you didn’t know, but you learned and now you do?”
“Yes.”
“Would you chastise me for not knowing something that was plain as day to you? Think of me as less?”
“Well—”
“You wouldn’t,” she said, cutting him off. “I know you wouldn’t because you never have. So why do you do it to yourself? Should you be held to a higher standard than I am? Am I not capable?”
“No, that’s not it at all.”
Neera wiped the rain from her eyes with her shoulder. “Rist, Brother Tuk is a self-righteous prick who thinks he is anointed by The Saviour himself. You are a better man than him by a distance that cannot be measured. You understand that there are things you do not know, and you are always willing to learn. I love you, both because of who you are and who you are not. I love how you lose yourself in the tiniest of details and how you seem to develop a new obsession every other day, or every other hour – like that goat in Al’Nasla.”
“I actually discovered the answer to that not long after Ilnaen,” Rist said with a touch of pride.
“The answer to what?”
“How the goat had gotten to the top of the crates in Al’Nasla. Did you know that goats are incredible climbers? In Maru Katir’s book, Wardens of the Mountain, there are drawings of whole herds of goats pressed to the sides of sheer cliffs, seemingly standing on thin air. It was truly fascinating. I actually asked Marien, the librarian, to keep the book safe for me so I could show you when we’re back. She’s not as thorough as Gault but... Wait, did you say you love me?”
Neera pressed her forehead against Rist’s sodden shirt and moved her hands down to grasp his cloak.
What had he said wrong?
After a moment, she laughed. “Only you, Rist Havel.”
“Only me what?”
“Only you would have an entire monologue on the climbing ability of goats before realising what I said.” She pulled her forehead from his chest and looked up. “Yes, I do love you.” Her expression grew stern. “But if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”
Rist smiled, brushing his hand against her cheek.
“No, seriously. If you tell anyone, I’ll push you off a cliff.”
A brief moment passed where Rist couldn’t quite tell if she was serious or not. Neera had never been one to openly display affection – unlike Rist’s mam, who was the exact opposite – but Rist quite liked that. He was much the same as Neera. At night, her comfort warmed his heart, but in general, just her presence was enough for him. Just knowing that she cared for him and that he cared for her.
“I’m joking, Rist. Kind of.”
“I think I love you too.”
As often happened, Rist realised he’d chosen the wrong words just after they’d left his mouth. Though he wasn’t quite sure why those were the wrong words, he could just tell by the opened-mouthed and narrow-eyed expression on Neera’s face. “You think ?”
“Well, I?—”
“You better have a damn good explanation for this one.”
Rist searched his head for the right words, trying to run through the scenarios in his mind as to how many different ways he could say the same thing wrong. “I don’t know how it feels to love someone. I do know that my dad is a man of few words, not quite as few as me, but still few. He could go through the day without speaking barely more than three sentences, just keeping the bees, checking the mead, baking bread. I always found him harder to read than most, and I never found anyone easy. He doesn’t smile a lot, doesn’t frown a lot either, so that didn’t help. Smiles and frowns are the easiest. Smile, happy. Frown, sad – or angry. Sighs are really difficult. There are so many reasons to sigh.”
“Rist, this better have a point.”
“It does, sorry. No matter how long the day was or how quiet he’d been, my dad would always smile when he saw my mam. She’s everything he isn’t. Excitable – almost too excitable – bubbly, enthusiastic even in the mornings, and she never stops talking. But when he sees her, it’s like everything melts away and all the words he hadn’t said throughout the day come pouring from his mouth. He laughs and smiles and becomes almost a different person. It’s like he only becomes himself around her. And I think that’s love, because if that’s not love, I’m really not sure what is. And that’s what you do to me. So I think I love you, but that’s all dependent on the definition of the word. So if my dad loves my mam, then I love you.”
Neera stared back up at Rist, her eyes glistening, lips pressed softly together. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her silent for so long.