Beneath Ceaseless Skies #223 Read online

I didn’t reply.

  “Do you mind if we...?” He winced, swallowed, then glanced at the horse. “Lot of hungry people, here.”

  I stepped away and he waved a dozen warriors forward. They dragged the beast away, watching me as if I were a coiled snake.

  “Lot of hungry people.” Ardrun massaged the back of his neck with one knobby hand.

  I frowned, not sure what he was getting at.

  He nodded at the sack on my hip. “That the Green Corn Woman’s satchel?”

  “Ah, yes.” Like the horse, I’d simply forgotten. Distance had crept between me and the world, filling the spaces between breaths until reality seemed little more than a smudge on the horizon.

  Chagrined, I loosened the drawstring and upended the bag. From it fell ears of grilled corn, nuts, hard green apples and sour cherries, baked goat, roasted crickets, and more—not a torrent like in the legends, but a steady trickle.

  “It won’t feed everyone.” I glanced around the camp then held the sack out. “Won’t even feed most of them.”

  “Still, we’re grateful.” He took it in both hands, the runes on his yellowed teeth making a story of his smile.

  “I should go.”

  “Stay,” he said. “I may have embellished the meal but rest we have aplenty, at least until the Bronze Faces return. You must be tired. “

  I wasn’t, I would never be again. And yet, the thought of being part of a camp, even for a night, seemed to loosen something in my chest.

  “I need to find Coyote.”

  “Coyote is of the people.” Ardrun bent to pick a chestnut from the growing pile of food. “What better place to look than here?”

  I couldn’t argue with that, or maybe I just didn’t care to try.

  * * *

  “I will howl like the North Wind when I go.” Sweat sheened the young warrior’s face as she strutted around the chanting circle, the low buzz of throat singing lending her words a weighty echo. “Tearing blades from hands and foes from mounts, I will scatter them like autumn leaves when I go.”

  Her proclamation was greeted with the approving slap of hands on thighs, and she hopped from the hot coals, her voice threading the chant.

  Another warrior stepped onto the glowing embers, his arms spread as he thrust his chin at the Bronze Face war camp on the distant hills. “I will glitter like silver when I go, piling masks to the midnight sky; I shall join the stars in heaven when I go.”

  Fire singing was an old game, older than the world, perhaps, played by warriors on the night before a battle to lift spirits and provide distraction. Normally, there would be drinking as well, the boasts becoming even more outrageous as the night wore on. Tonight, they made do with nothing stronger than hot tea but seemed even more determined for the lack of spirits. If the boasters’ voices occasionally cracked or if the chant had an almost manic intensity, no one remarked upon it. All seemed resolved to ignore the swarming firefly glow of Bronze Face campfires to the east and the glitter of whitecaps to the west. We’d been running for weeks, tired and heartsick, the Bronze Faces at our heels—so long that the impassible vastness of the great western sea seemed more a reprieve than a doom.

  “You should join the circle.” Ardrun nudged me. “Show them some real bragging.”

  I worked a toe into the beach, cold seawater shifting the sand underneath my feet. Coyote wasn’t here, had never been here. He was probably curled in a warm burrow on the other side of the plains, laughing at me. I hadn’t meant to stay, to stumble west with the ragged column, but every time I turned away, Fehu’s words came slipping up through the cracks in my thoughts. What if this was my fault?

  Why have you forsaken us?

  Red Claw had blamed me, too, had burned white with the injustice of it. It did not fall to me to judge the gods and I was a traitor for even trying. He’d given me no choice, no time, only came on fast as a wildfire. We had run for a very long time, his breath bellows-hot at my back, the flames of our passing leaping from tree to tree until the whole forest burned bright as day. At last, Red Claw caught me, knocking me to the ground before pinning me with one great steaming paw. Both of us were too breathless to speak. His jaws opened wide, slaver popping like hot oil to spark bright flecks of pain on my face.

  But Red Claw had not devoured me. I felt the heat and pressure recede as he rocked back on his haunches, eyes widening. The great pines were gone, reduced to little more than black-tarred stumps by the flames of our chase. He looked about to speak, then lowered his head.

  I put my question to him then, but he only laid down and closed his eyes. So was war ever ignorant.

  Ignorant, but not blameless.

  “I will soar like a sparrow when I go,” a warrior called. He stepped onto the coals, face tight with concentration. “My enemies but tiny specks, I shall rise until they are nothing when I go.”

  The younger warriors shouted their approval, calling to the veterans who sat back from the fire with eyes slit and canny as they sized up their competition. I scanned the crowd but couldn’t find Fehu among them. She and her followers had been as ghosts during the past few weeks, ranging far ahead or far behind. It was they who’d first brought word of the Bronze Face army. The rest of the camp had been almost pathetic in their gratitude for my food and presence but careful with their words, handling me as if I were knapped flint. They whispered when they thought I couldn’t hear. Several times, I’d caught them burning personal effects to a small, rough-carved effigy of a woman with a bone dagger. I considered stamping out the fires and telling them what fools they were, but in the end I did nothing. Who was I to blame them for trying to make sense of it all?

  “Go on.” Ardrun nudged me again. “Even if you don’t fight tomorrow, it won’t hurt to give them hope.”

  I watched them, recalling the old, fearful joy that dwelt within the chanting circle. The lull in the song seemed to call to me.

  Hope? No, I suppose it couldn’t hurt.

  I swept past a very young man steeling himself for a run across the coals. I felt heat but no pain as I stepped onto the banked embers, and I worked my feet into the ash, standing with my head thrown back and my lips pursed. The chant faltered as the warriors noticed me, startled looks flitting across the fire.

  I drew in a great breath. “I will—”

  “—fall chanting your name when I go.” Fehu stood opposite me. I hadn’t heard her approach. “My body one of many, I will be swept along with you when I go.”

  The raven feathers were gone from Fehu’s hair and her skin was rubbed with white ash. Lines of soot accentuated her cheeks and jawline, giving her face a lean, wolfish look. She was unarmed but for a long dagger of sharpened bone. There were a dozen warriors with her, ranged in a loose semicircle around the coals like pale, wingless ghosts. For a moment, I feared I had never left the Underworld, that Raven had ensnared me as had the Green Corn Woman. I glanced to the Fang, all but humming with the desire to take their lives, and was reassured. It cared nothing for ghosts.

  As one, they knelt upon the coals, knives held out, looking to me for answers.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I ran.

  Ardrun caught my arm. “Please, don’t go. We need—”

  I shrugged from his feeble grip. The warriors parted for me. Silently, they watched me go, faces grim and desperate. I fled the circle, the camp, kicking up sprays of sand, the sea tugging at my ankles.

  I should never have returned. The Green Corn Woman had spoken true in that, at least. “Kinder to lie, to pretend there’s a reason,” she’d whispered. “It’s what they want, anyway.”

  I could’ve stayed in the dream she’d woven for me, drunk sweet berry wine from cups of woven grass and grown old with scarecrows in the dappled light of a thousand, thousand summer afternoons. Finally, I remembered Hashuf’s smile—eyes of polished river rock, his lips drawn back from a double-row of fine white kernels. The Green Corn Woman had fashioned me a husband, children, a life woven of gossamer lies to drape across the hollo
w within me. Why look for answers when there were no questions? It had been all I’d always wanted. Never had I been so tempted to simply drop the Fang and let it worm its way through the rind of the world back to its master. It would’ve been so easy. Denial was but ignorance given breath.

  The Green Corn Woman had died hardest of all, screaming and pleading as I cut away her illusions. She would’ve told me anything and believed it true with all her heart, but belief is not truth. And so I had killed her like the others.

  All but one.

  Pale daylight threaded the horizon, separating sky from sea. I could run forever, faster than the Bronze Faces, faster than my people. I could run until the sky cracked and the earth crumbled, until the Serpent crawled forth to devour the world or slumbered on and left it to rot with the others. The future would hold nothing, simple and empty, when I went.

  Shouts carried along the breeze. In the plain beyond the camp the Bronze Faces rode in wide, lazy loops like hawks drifting on thermals. I could be among them in a frenzy of dust and blood, the crack of bone and wet swish of parting flesh the only sound from men and women lacking time to even scream. Perhaps their great wheel would save them; perhaps there would be too many. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t take enough of them to make a difference when I went.

  I looked back to the camp, which was little more than a bruised shadow on the beach. They would be preparing, making their peace with one another if not their gods. My children. Did they hate me for what I’d done? Had my vengeance given them peace of mind? Had it changed anything?

  A stone skipped through the waves, catching the crest of one and rising up in a spray like broken crystal before disappearing back into the dark sea. I turned to see Ardrun a few paces up the beach. He smiled and threw another stone.

  I watched him for a while, the sea breeze tickling a strand of hair across my forehead. Shapes emerged from the eddies of my memories, shadows in the deeps, still indistinct but solid for the first time. The memories were slippery and sharp like jagged glass—not just what I had done, and why, but who I was. I blinked through stinging tears, throat thick with the heaviness of it all.

  He nodded. “Coyote.”

  I swallowed, knuckled an eye. “How did you find me?”

  “I’ve heard all the stories,” he said. “Wasn’t hard to piece together.”

  “What now?”

  “I suppose that’s up to you.” He glanced to my side.

  The Fang was a cold, dead weight in my hand, whispering of quiet conclusion. It would be slow but painless, grayness bleeding along the edges of my world. I’d done it so many times, a quick slash, barely an afterthought; far easier than going back to camp, than looking my people in the eye and knowing I had failed them.

  I’d always been a coward, but I was so tired of endings.

  I held the Fang out, grip loosening for the first time in decades. It dangled from my fingers, such a small thing. I let it fall to the sand, lips tight as I watched it burrow into the beach. A ragged breath, and it was gone.

  “I knew you wouldn’t forsake us.” Ardrun grinned.

  “I can’t save you.”

  “I know. Just be with us when—” he blew out a long puff of air— “when we go.”

  I took Ardrun’s hand, warm and dry despite the cold spray. He tensed, then relaxed as I squeezed his fingers and smiled. A warm wind plucked at the charms in his beard, but the clatter was lost amidst the hiss of beating wings.

  As we walked back up the beach, I wondered what would happen if I prayed for deliverance.

  I wondered if I deserved it.

  Copyright © 2017 Evan Dicken

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  By day, Evan Dicken studies old Japanese maps and crunches data for all manner of fascinating medical experiments at the Ohio State University. By night, he does neither of these things. His fiction has most recently appeared in Unlikely Story, Starship Sofa, and Flash Fiction Online, and he has stories forthcoming from publishers such as Apex and Daily Science Fiction. Please feel free to visit him at evandicken.com.

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  COVER ART

  “Pillars of the Gods,” by Ward Lindhout

  Ward Lindhout is a concept artist currently living and working in Japan. Having studied game design in his home country of Holland, his love for original videogame design drove him to the land of the rising sun. After having worked on titles like The Evil Within and Metal Gear Rising he is now working at Capcom. He is passionate about designing new worlds and their inhabitants, drawing inspiration from traveling to the many beautiful countries the world has to offer. View more of his work on his website at www.artbyward.com.

  Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  ISSN: 1946-1076

  Published by Firkin Press,

  a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

  Compilation Copyright © 2017 Firkin Press

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