The Black Wall

1. The Invasion: Six Months Before the Verdict-3

Vimr coughed and called out into the darkness. “Dakar, is Gre’pa harnessed?”

There was some rustling from somewhere a little way to the north and a slow answer. “Er, not yet, but he can be in twenty minutes. Why? We going somewhere?” Dakar emerged from the darkness just as the tip of the gibbous Eye crested the top of the Black Wall. His grey eyes were on me, not Vimr. “General?”

I said nothing at first, trying to think of a way out. I thought about saying nothing, pretending I could wash my hands of the coming m******e with inaction.

Complacency. The evil of cowards. I could order Dakar to stand down, wait for morning and go around. And then what? If Dakar stayed loyal to me, which was likely, the five karakh would make easy work of the few soldiers and Vimr, but that… I thought of the Salamander and shut my eyes. No, I couldn’t do that. Whatever happened, whomever they took orders from, they would be my soldiers. Until the end. What action was left to me? To take responsibility for the actions of an army that wasn’t mine.

That was the moment I realized that was what my job had always boiled down to. Embarrassing it took so many decades to figure out something so obvious to everyone else.

“As the Cardinal said, Shepherd Dakar.” My voice was quiet, sapped of will. “Harness the karakh. We move when the Eye breaks free of the Wall.”

When we mounted, it was Vimr who took the place behind Dakar. The shepherd shot me a questioning look. I kept my face blank.

The village squatted on a low mesa. It was walled on two sides by fields of the black, thorny brambles, now stripped of their leaves and little white flowers, made harder than steel by the fire. South of the small collection of sunken longhouses, the ground dropped a short way before rising again into the foothills that groped the base of the Wall. To the north of the settlement, between the five remaining karakh and the base of the mesa, a circular lake burbled, edged by reeds. In the Eyelight, the south peaks glowed purple. The wind blew in sharp gusts hard enough that a chorus of cracking branches and swirling ash clogged the air and helped mask the karakh’s approach. The soldiers had tied cloths around their mouths, dampened in the lake, to help filter out the ash and still-hot embers, but the karakh all coughed and sneezed, and the shepherds bore the pain along with them.

I’d harbored faint hope that any survivors would have gone into hiding, if not into their homes, then perhaps into the ash-filled forest. As we edged around the lake, my hope winked out. A line of figures appeared on the ridge above before scattering again.

“They’re up there!” Vimr shouted above the din of branches and gusting wind. “Their last line of defense!”

I said nothing as we charged up the slope into the village.

A coward to the end.

The whole scene became a scatter of broken images: Pregnant women, the elderly, children, who couldn’t have been older than eight or nine, trying to hack with the unwieldy, wooden halberds that the warriors had wielded with such skill. Weeping girls impaled on the tusks of Gre’pa. Old men slashed into bloody strings by a karakh’s claws, faces set with resolve. Dakar looked back at me, his face pale, but I couldn’t meet his gaze.

The ash-laden ground became clotted with thick, bloody mud. I felt sick in every cell of my body, and I hoped I would die before I could see the other side of the Wall and face the black tunnel the rest of my life had become. No words came to my mind, for myself or anyone else.

After sending men from building to building to ensure there were no survivors, Vimr ordered camp set at the base of the mesa along the edge of the lake.

The karakh’s feet and hands were burned, and Dakar and the other shepherds coaxed them down to the shore and the cool mud beneath the reeds to coat their feet and protect them a little against the still-smoldering ground.

I leaned over to retch from where I still sat strapped to Gre’pa’s rear, shaking, when I saw two figures huddled among the reeds. Small, almost child-like, I thought at the time, but clad in the clinging leather the warriors had worn. They crouched just beneath the surface of the water, faces upturned, hued violet but clear in the Eyelight, breathing through reeds.

That, I guess, was the first time you saw me, too.

I spit the last of the vomit from my mouth. The other four karakh had moved further around the lake to a flat clearing a quarter-span away. There was no one else around.

“Two there,” Vimr’s voice. My heart jumped and sank at the same time. “Dakar, kill them, or they may rally survivors.”

“No.” The sound of my own voice surprised me, stronger than it had been since Vimr had taken control of my army.

“General—” Vimr’s tone was condescending, but he got no further.

Without thinking, I pulled the long, wooden dagger from Vimr’s belt. The one the Cardinal had looted from the dead valley native a few days before.

I was old, but I was still fast. Fast enough, or should have been. In one quick motion, I thrust the knife up towards the back of Vimr’s skull.

He twisted out of the way, and in a blur, his soft hand shot up to grab my wrist in a grip of iron.

I was flabbergasted. I did nothing but stare, useless and confused, when from behind the Cardinal, there was another flurry of motion, and Vimr lurched towards me. Dakar, almost as fast as Vimr had been, had twisted to elbow him in the back of his head.

His grip slipped on my sweaty wrist as he spun back to confront Dakar, tangled as he was in his harness, and I tore my hand from his grasping fingers.

I slid the blade into Vimr’s head.

The wood cut through bone like cheese. Vimr stiffened, and he let out a short, strange, high pitched sound. Dakar released Vimr’s harness with a few deft motions and watched as the Cardinal tumbled to the smoking ground.

The corpse smoldered a moment, before it ignited in a sudden flash, burning to ash in a few shocking seconds. Gre’pa jumped and waded a few dozen hands into the lake. Dakar’s brow furrowed at the spot where Vimr’s body had lain, now just a pile of ash a shade lighter than the ash around it, and a few fragments of blackened bone. I stared.

Dakar grunted. “Must have been a hot spot. Coals can be hotter than flame after a fire like this one.” He sounded unconvinced.

I had nothing to add.

I looked toward where the soldiers were setting camp and saw Rohm standing thirty paces away. His face was pale, even in the violet and red light of the Eye, but he only gave me a quick nod and turned back toward the others.

I cleared my throat. “We were ambushed. A lone warrior came out of the reeds and threw his knife. There was no time to react, but Gre’pa finished the bastard off, didn’t he?” I cleared my throat again.

Dakar glanced back, a hint of a smile on his rugged face. “That’s right, General. Not a goddamned thing either of us could have done.”

“Just a minute,” I said. I undid my harness, slid down the back of Gre’pa, and retrieved the black dagger from the pile of ash and bone that had once been Vimr. It was made from something like wood, but undamaged by the fire or the smoking ground which, I couldn’t help but notice, wasn’t as hot as it should have been.

“Let’s go.” I looked for the huddled figures in the lake, but there was no sign of them.