Chapter Nine #2
He held up a Staunching Lattice, and at the sight of it, the woman and the girl gasped.
That was what convinced them to step away from the bed.
Suddenly, they were looking at Idris with different eyes, with a mix of fear and respect.
He wasn’t just a surgeon, he was someone who wielded sacred bones.
He lay it across Axel’s chest, and the linen remained crisp and clean even as it came into contact with blood. The material simply didn’t absorb it, nor was it stained by it.
He handed a Quetus Net to Seraphina and asked her to find a way to pin it above the bed. Seraphina went for the obvious solution – the curtains.
Idris cut the boy’s shirt, cleaned the wound, and noted that the musket ball was still inside.
He asked for water to wash his hands. While he worked, no one spoke.
It took him thirty minutes to locate and extract the ball, irrigate the wound and inspect it carefully, suture it and wrap a bandage around the shoulder.
Axel didn’t move, his senses dulled by the Quietus Net.
Once done, Idris washed his hands again and proceeded to meticulously clean and disinfect his tools.
“It’s gone silent,” Seraphina said.
They all looked at her, even Axel, who was drowsy.
“It’s over,” the woman said.
Seraphina shook her head and went to one of the windows, pressing her ear to it. There were a few more musket cracks, but that was it, and then she heard someone shouting.
“We won,” the woman said again, her eyes going wide.
Seraphina pursed her lips and looked at Idris, who was packing his satchel in a hurry.
“Stay here,” she said. “We’ll go see what’s going on.”
Could it really be over?
She and Idris stepped outside and quickly closed the door behind them. She didn’t care if they couldn’t go in again; she didn’t want to. They’d done their part here, and all she wanted was to get back to Bramble and put distance between them and the front line.
The air was saturated with black powder smoke, and smelled of sulfur, blood, and scorched flesh. Deeper into the village, Seraphina saw men carrying the wounded and piling the dead. Idris started walking that way, and she caught him by the arm.
“We should go.”
“I can help,” he said.
“We’re not here for that. Let’s just go.”
He turned to her fully and planted his feet, arms crossed over his chest.
“What are we here for?”
Seraphina bit the inside of her cheek. What was she supposed to tell him?
A cry of agony pierced the silence, and Idris whipped his head to the right, looking for the source. He ignored Seraphina as he walked between two houses and found a man lying on the ground, the snow around him turning bright red. Alive, but barely. He wore a dark gray and black uniform.
“No,” Seraphina said when Idris knelt to see where he was bleeding from. “Not him.”
“He’s one of ours,” he said.
“Idris, I lied. I never defected to the High Harvester.”
“You expect me to be surprised?” he murmured under his breath, not looking at her.
“I…” She huffed. “You’re not?”
“You’re a terrible liar, Seraphina. I knew the moment you said it that you were lying. And just to clear the air between us, I always know when you lie. Because I’ve known you since we were fifteen.”
“Then why… Why did you drop everything to come with me? It’s desertion.”
“You’re not paying attention,” he said. “I’ve known you since we were fifteen.”
Seraphina’s chin trembled. This was not the time to cry. She crouched beside him and touched his arm.
“Then you’re on my side?”
He finally looked at her. Nodded. But he knew what she was going to say next, so he cut her off.
“I’m not letting this man die. Idris is on your side; the surgeon is on the side of life.”
She lifted her eyes toward the sky in what she hoped Idris would interpret as exasperation.
It was then that something caught her attention in the distance.
It was plain daylight, and a shadow fell across the side of a house.
Her hackles stood on end, she rose to her feet slowly, hands going to her daggers.
A piercing cry slashed the air, a sound so raw and animalistic that it was hard to believe it came from a human being.
Her stomach dropped. Under her solar plexus, it seemed like a black pit was growing, sucking in all thought, all hope, all worry.
The part of her brain that was more beast than human whispered that nothing mattered anymore.
Her pain, her secrets, the tolls? Her thirst for revenge.
Irrelevant. Because this moment right now… was her last one.
Another scream followed, and another, then every living man, woman, and child in the village was screaming.
Idris shot to his feet. He ran toward the chaos, and Seraphina reached for his hand and tried to stop him, but his instinct was that of a man who saved lives. From behind a broken fence, they saw the horror.
The creature was three times bigger than any man, with broad shoulders, a massive chest, long arms streaked with popping veins, and legs like tree trunks.
He had snow-white hair and golden eyes. He wore no shirt, only black pants and boots, and that was why it was easy to see…
One couldn’t hope to be mistaken. He was sewn together from mismatched parts, his skin marred by crude stitches, the thread black and coarse.
Seraphina’s first thought was, “Is that what Rune looks like?”.
The revenant’s hands and chest were drenched in blood.
It ran down in rivulets, soaking into the fabric of his pants and dripping in the snow.
He swung his arm and slammed a man who’d tried to stab him into a tree, then grabbed him by the throat and squeezed.
The head popped off clean, like a bottle cork, and the body collapsed as it sprayed blood everywhere.
The creature didn’t even blink. He turned on his heel and grabbed his next victim. He tore the man in two.
Muskets fired from windows, hitting him straight in the chest and arms, two in the face.
The revenant didn’t even flinch. The balls lodged into him, but it was as if he didn’t feel them.
Seraphina couldn’t tell if he was bleeding from his wounds because there was too much blood already.
He paid the shooters no mind and tore down a door, entering the house, slaughtering everyone inside in seconds.
Idris turned to Seraphina, and in his eyes, she saw the exact moment when he changed his mind about being on the side of life. He grabbed her by the wrist and started running, but Seraphina only allowed him to drag her a few paces, then she planted her feet firmly and pulled her hand free.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
Seraphina turned back to the massacre. The revenant had just emerged from the house and was walking toward another.
“You,” she shouted.
“Seraphina, what the–” He stopped himself. Idris never swore. “God have mercy.”
He turned back for her and wrapped an arm around her waist. She fought him and easily escaped, took a few more steps toward the chaos.
“You!”
But the revenant didn’t see her. She needed to get closer.
Idris slammed bodily into her from the side, knocking her to the ground and pinning her under his weight.
His action threw her off. She hadn’t expected him to be so determined and strong.
Her first instinct was to reach for her daggers, but she stopped herself.
This was Idris. He wasn’t attacking her, he was protecting her.
In that moment of hesitation, he banded his arms around her torso and started dragging her through the snow like she was a sack of potatoes.
It took her a moment to snap out of her shock.
She kicked her feet, but he ignored her and pushed her against something cold and hard – the door to a root cellar.
He let go of her to try and open it, at which point Seraphina shot up and ran, screaming at the top of her lungs, “You! You!”.
She was too far away, too many people were screaming, muskets cracked all around them.
“Don’t,” Idris said just before he caught her and covered her mouth with his hand. “Shh.”
He dragged her into the root cellar. Once in the dark, with only slivers of light coming in through cracks in the door above, he didn’t let her go.
Seraphina drove her heel back, but not into his shin. She threw an elbow into his ribs but pulled the strike. She thought of snapping her head back into his face and couldn’t do it. All her attempts at escape were half-hearted, because this was Idris, and she couldn’t hurt Idris.
They waited for what seemed like forever.
At some point, she stopped fighting, but he didn’t release her.
She stared at the ceiling, ears trained on every sound coming from outside, Idris’s hand over her mouth almost crushing her jaw, his arm over her middle holding her own trapped.
Her two daggers dug into his stomach, but he didn’t shift.
He let her go only when he was certain that it was over.
Truly over, no one in the village left breathing.
His arms relaxed and fell away from her. He took a few steps back. Seraphina turned to him and shook her head.
“Anytime,” he said.
She huffed and went to push open the trap door.
“You’re welcome,” he shouted after her as she climbed out of the root cellar.
Blood and snow. Torn limbs thrown haphazardly. She saw a leg dangling from a tree branch. Steaming guts strewn in random patterns, strings still attached to gaping torsos. A white canvas painted red, black, and brown. Yellow for piss. Green for vomit.
Seraphina held her breath and started walking. She heard Idris follow. Neither of them spoke. There were no words, and no way they were going to open their mouths and breathe in the foul air to just say nothing.
She found the cottage. The door was in pieces, and inside, the mother, the daughter, and the son had been reduced to a pile of raw meat.
They’d saved them to end like this. Her attention was drawn to the boy, Axel, whose upper half was somewhat intact.
His eyes were open. Wide, glassy, the brightest green Seraphina had ever seen.
They reminded her of rolling hills in spring.
She could smell the fresh grass, damp with morning dew, growing free and wild toward the sun.
“Take his eyes,” Seraphina said.
“What?”
Idris regarded her as if she were insane. He wasn’t far off.
She fixed him with a gaze that left no room for interpretation.
“Remove his eyes, wrap them up, and find a way to keep them from spoiling. Please. Do this for me, and I will tell you everything.”