The River War

  The River War

  Part Two of The Vastness

  Blake Hausladen

  Edited by

  Deanna Sjolander

  Published 2018 by Rook Creek Books, an imprint of Rook Creek LLC

  Copyright © 2018 by Blake Hausladen

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  * * *

  Edited by Deanna Sjolander

  Cartography by Author

  Contents

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Map of the Eastern Reaches

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Also by Blake Hausladen

  About the Author

  11

  Emi

  Healers

  Everything changed in a long blur as I left my eyes closed to hide from those who stared at me.

  The plaza vibrated while my thin dress strangled me. A sea of faces waited below my tall riser for me to open my eyes, a milling mass a half million strong. They swayed and whistled for my attention. I kept my eyes shut tight instead and bathed in the twinkling lights and gossamer strands of their souls. The knit between them was a solid thing, a blazing ball of souls compared to a thin soup on Yarik’s side of the river.

  Each day they wanted my voice, my gaze, my magic. I wanted them to be well and for the count of them to stop going down. I did not like their attention. I could not look them in the eye.

  I’d not moved from the plaza since the rebellion began. We slept under Master Pickesh’s wagons waiting for Captain Benjam to return. Each morning the crowds gathered in great numbers to find food and work and to feel the blue glow of healing magic. It was the twelfth morning of our freedom, a number I could not help but hear in the chatter of the crowd.

  “Can’t believe it. I’ve not eaten twelve days in a row my entire life.”

  “You’re the fattest girl Gatehouse Road has ever seen, I wager.”

  “What comes next?” a third voice asked.

  “After twelve? Thirteen, you idiot. Don’t let our goddess hear you fooling with numbers. That’s where her magic comes from.”

  “Ohh, look. She’s wearing linen. Did they find a Yentif to marry her?”

  “Piss on the royalty. She is a god upon this earth, like Bayen before her. The Yentif are beneath her. Besides, she is too young to marry.”

  “No she is not. She’s sixteen.”

  I looked down the long steps of the fresh-built riser toward the wagon where I might hide, only to have the crowd in that direction yell and cheer as if I’d blessed them.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Dame Franni said but I could not. The yellow linen hugged too close, and the morning’s moisture and warmth made it cling. The man who had presented it to me claimed that it was the softest linen in all of Zoviya, but if this was what rich people wore, they could keep it. It rubbed my entire body every time I moved.

  “Big crowd, today,” she said. “I don’t know that the plaza could fit any more. How many are they?”

  She was trying to distract me and it worked. I couldn’t help but close my eyes and count the bright dots of their souls. Thirty-four bluecoat priests from the Warrens and 109 girls from Yellow Row stood with me upon the riser, a tight ring of 3,253 spearmen protected us, and a milling mass of 522,941 freed people packed the plaza.

  “Lots,” I said.

  She said something else, but I did not hear it as I began to study the stories of the crowd. The priests were not as divided from us as they had been the day Rahan conscripted them. One had burst into a cloud of black ash when his greed convinced him to touch my arm, and the rest tried to flee. Rahan’s spears and the promise of power that came with being near me kept them coming back. They’d made a few friends since, judging by the way they connected to individuals in the crowd across the Warrens. The crowd similarly had come to love Master Pickesh and his wagons, while the girls from yellow row were rapidly pairing up with our spear carrying freemen—though I overheard more about that from the whispers around the wagons each night than from any of them.

  I could also tell from the shade of their souls how much they had suffered since Lady Soma had pulled the darkness from us. I hoped she would return to us soon. Every death and misery added back the stain and Bessradi was a master at making us suffer. The threads of the priests and freemen had already gone gray, and there were a few black specks amongst the remaining 1,203,064 souls in the Warrens.

  “My Goddess,” a freeman said, “Every road and way are clear as you asked. Everyone who could make it here has come. We will do better today, I vow it. We have studied the maps, goddess. Tell us where to go.”

  I kept my hands on my eyes, and tried to guess what the rest of the healthy people of the Warrens might be doing. Along the river, a group of freemen were on patrol. Inside the buildings along most rows, dames and girls worked wash tubs and hot kettles. Out by the wharfs, lines of men moved the food that fed so many. And in the neighborhoods inside the west wall, easterners gathered in large numbers to work the white stone everyone was talking about.

  But these healthy people were not the ones I was looking for, and the absence of the crowds in the streets allowed me to see the wounded that could not make it. I searched the dark spaces, found a group whose dim threads joined with nothing, and matched my vision to the map we’d memorized.

  “Along Amber Road, down Tongue Row. Fifth or sixth lodge—around a bend.”

  A dozen freemen sprinted toward them, while I found and called out group after group. A comet darted toward each, until I used up half the freemen and all that was left for me to search was the wide bowels of the Warrens. It was hard to distinguish with so few freemen patrolling the walls, and the greasy hairball of alleys inside were not a place anyone willingly stayed. It was deserted and nothing more than a dark smudge.

  Smudge?

  “Oh, no,” I said and freemen below the riser clamored in response. “All along Black Road. So many. Why are there so many left? Every lodge ... the children ... they were left behind. I can barely see them. Run. Get them. hurry!”

  The freemen roared in response and poured liked flowing water down the twisted ways. The crowd hushed. It would be time soon.

  I began to tremble despite the warmth. Someone wrapped a blanket around my shoulders but it did not help.

  I had missed them. In the glow of so many, I had missed the smudge left by a thousand dying children. How many had died because of my blindness?

  The sun continued to rise and the light disturbed my vision. I covered my eyes with my hand.

  “Here,” a man said. “Hold still.”

  A soft cloth covered my eyes and ears. The man tied it tight and my vision steadied.

  The freemen did not slow and they did not fail me. They searched every lodge along the twisted rows. Each time a child was found the great threads of those men wrapped tight to the dying lights and bore them to me with all speed.

  “Hurry,” I whispered and wet the blindfold with tears while the sun th
reatened to start the day without us. The great crowd needed to be moving. I’d kept them waiting, but never this long. A murmur rose.

  The freemen began to return from Black Road and soft sounds were replaced with gasps and screams. The crowd recoiled away from them and their threads divided against us like spider webs retreating from a wash of bright flame.

  The road widened and they began to enter the circle.

  “How are they still alive?” someone shouted. “What plague is this?”

  The crowd’s cries grew louder, and the circle of freemen began to call out orders and close ranks. Several of the priests swore oaths to Bayen and their threads severed from mine.

  I untied the blindfold and let go of my vision. The smell of the children’s sickness filled my nose before my eyes could focus. It was the stink of old death. I blinked and wished I’d left the cloth in place.

  The bodies laid below the riser were twisted and small, black from scabs and wet from seeping boils. They were missing limbs and hunks of their bodies. I’d watched bailiffs drag away the sick my whole life. The greencoats had purged them from the Warrens, but someone was still delivering the sick to Black Road. The children could not have survived twelve days in their condition.

  My head swam and buzzed.

  I would find those who did it, and they would burn.

  I hurried down to the children and Franni yelled at the priest to follow me.

  “We are close enough,” one of them said. Another made a run for it and was jabbed with a spear. He tumbled down the stairs toward me while the freemen herded the rest within a few paces of my place near the children. Everyone began shouting.

  “Do not make me touch them, goddess,” the wounded priest said. “Please, mercy.”

  “Impress her with your magic then,” Franni said.

  With the urgency of fat pigeons, they sat down around me. The nervous crowd followed them down, and I hurried my blindfold back into place.

  The threads of the priests’ souls began to join with mine once again as they began to sing. The blue light of healing magic reached out across the crowd The priests’ searching threads of magic swelled and multiplied like creeping vines and entwined with every soul they touched. The songs closest to me flared as the searching threads met mine. Wounds by the hundred-thousand closed, and each healed soul brightened.

  In a slow growing circle, their magic healed the crowd.

  But the dying children did not stir. I stripped away my blindfold and stood to get a look at them. Their flesh was healed, but their mutilated bodies remained twisted and folded upon the ground.

  “More,” I shouted.

  One priest stopped singing—the same who had spoken up earlier. His own small wound had been healed and he had the courage to look me in the eyes.

  “Sing,” I said to him. “Heal them.”

  “My Goddess, it is the wrong song. The words we know won’t heal them. We can sing a song that tries to heal a body all at once, but for strength enough to do it we must touch you and burn.”

  “Then sing the right words.”

  “I do not know the words. None of us do. Eyes, bone, teeth, brain, viscera, tongue, genitals. None of us know these words. We each know but three words. Heal, body, man. What you ask is impossible.”

  I reached my hands toward his face. “I don’t care what song you sing. They will be healed today.”

  “Wait, let me try. Let me try,” he wept and rocked forward and back. The rest leaned in, leered and drooled.

  The young priest sopped his eyes and searched my face as if reading a book. His lips began to move and a song of many colors stabbed violently from him. The priest next to him was struck in the face by a yellow light and he collapsed. Those around him reached their hands into his mouth despite his protests. They pulled free a collection of wooden teeth and the bits of metal and string that held them together.

  “Teeth,” one of them shouted. They dropped the man and packed themselves around the young priest.

  His hands and face glowed red and blue and everyone close was shrouded in a violent purple light. The sky darkened. Yellow thorns stabbed us all, and the color of his magic changed again and again with each word of his long verse. I took a step toward him and the rainbow of colors crept farther across the plaza.

  I stepped close and reached my hands as close to his cheeks as I dared. His magic flared across the plaza and then all of the Warrens. The city screamed in fright as the shroud of colors gripped them and they gasped as the magic dug deep. The priests in the circle shouted out and collapsed at odd intervals, perhaps learning a word or two from his song. None joined him.

  I turned toward the children. They were sitting up. They were frail and had a winter’s complexion, but their bodies were whole. The crowd gathered them up into hugs, and loaves of bread and cups of water were hurried across.

  I stepped back from the priest. His magic failed and he collapsed like an untended puppet. The murmur of happy laughter filled the plaza.

  “You’ve made them very late to their work,” a strong voice said—the same who’d supplied the blindfold. I spun with angry words ready.

  It was Captain Benjam, and the teasing smile upon his face overwhelmed my annoyance. He was encased in steel and the thick horsehair crest of his Hemari helmet was the whitest thing I’d seen with my eyes open.

  I clapped once but managed a scowl. I said to him, “Why did it take you so long to come back?”

  “No healing magic like yours on Rahan’s side of the river. Twelve days of bandages and rest is nothing compared to a moment standing next to you,” he said and posed as if for a portrait. “Look, you even fixed my front tooth.”

  “You should have come sooner.”

  “Few outside the Warrens believe the stories of your magic,” he said and took hold of a man through the circle of freemen. It was Master Pickesh and he was as I remembered—equal parts caring craftsman and overdressed snob. He brushed clean the bits of himself that had touched a freeman on the way through, but refrained from using the kerchief in his sleeve to do it.

  The priests, meanwhile, had gathered up their overcome companions and were headed back to the tithe tower. Several cast dark looks at the captain.

  “They hate you,” I said.

  “We did press them into service without pay,” Benjam said. “I’d hate me, too.”

  Master Pickesh frowned at him and found something else to talk about. “What a fantastic dress.”

  Dame Franni was close enough to overhear this, but not close enough for me to swat away her grin. “What brings you here today, Captain?” she asked.

  “Lord Rahan and the Sten have summoned us.”

  “May I accompany you?” I asked. “I would love to meet them.”

  “We are simple men, the captain and I. It is you they want to see. We are but your escorts.”

  Benjam winked at me and offered me his hand. He was wearing a thick glove of leather and mail. “Thick enough for a man without magic like me?”

  I took his hand and the girls of Yellow Row waved goodbye to the cheering crowd while the freemen organized themselves to move.

  I caught a glimpse of the children as we went. Each clutched at the people that held them, and a few of them wept uncontrollably.

  “How happy they are,” Franni said.

  They did not look like tears of joy to me.

  12

  General Evand Yentif

  The 14th of Autumn, 1196

  “Get me off this damned boat,” I said and earned approving grunts from the battered formation of Hemari upon the bloody square between the tall purple and black checkered towers. The boarding party had been thrown off, and the fires they’d set were out. I’d not lost a single man, thanks in part to the high bulwarks that had been installed along the rail, but in greater part to the healer my brother had assigned me. Meanwhile, the river thrashed with the wrath he had promised.

  Alsonvale did not like us.

  No man who’d wor
n the blue would approve of our service aboard ship. Marrow and the rest of our horses were in the hand of strangers, on their way to stables we’d not seen. Their proper care would be the first, second, and third thing on the minds of the men the moment the battle was over—if ever it would be over.

  My focus was drifting and I imagined the glare my wife, Liv, would aim at me for my quarrelsome mind. She had less sympathy for distraction and complaints than a sergeant.

  The deck lurched and several of my men lost their feet. The sudden cheers of the crew did not coincide with our panic. My sergeant vomited on a number of the guardsmen and several streams of profanity were aimed at the wretched river.

  I stepped out of formation and took a look over the high bulwark. We had smashed through another of Alsonvale’s galleys and our four tiers of long oars churned the remains of the ship and its crew. Off to the left, a pair of smaller boats flying Yarik’s blue and yellow pennants were going down, their sides smashed by the heavy bolts our ship could fire five at a time.

  I tried to be consoled, but the feeling sank as fast as the broken ships. In the days since Lord Rahan had taken the throne, our brother Yarik had consolidated the rest of the Kaaryon against us. All its noble families and its three gateway cities were his, Alsonbrey, Alsonelm, and Alsonvale. Our brother Barok and the provinces of the north and east were with us, but it would be spring before they could come to our aid. All we had at hand was a thousand loyal Hemari, a handful of healers, and the capital fleet. Rahan counted the freed slaves of the Warrens on our side as well, but none who wore the blue judged them fit for war or trust.