I took a sporebag and popped it on the end of an arrow. I stood up and sent it at the ground ahead of them.
From my belt I got me some white oak sap which I took for my eyes to see safe in the spore cloud. I put on a mask covered with the same stuff for breathing.
The spores were quick to get in them and they wheezed and clutched their throats as I finished them off.
I was hoping I could have saved my boys but I needed to be in some guts and get the job done with Shale’s crew.
Horns were going up now, so the fighting was on. I saw a few coming at me from the trees ahead. I got behind a trunk but I knew I was spotted. They slowed up and the hemp creaked as they drew for shots. There were four of them, from their breathing, and I could hear their commander whispering for a flanking.
I opened up a satchel of rice paper bags, each with quicklime and oiled feathers. I needed smoke. I doused a few bags with my flask and threw them out.
“Masks!” came the shout. As the paper soaked, the lime caught and the feathers put out a fierce smoke.
My eyes were still smeared good. I took a couple more arrowbags out, but these were agave powders for blistering the eyes and skin.
Two shots to tree trunks spread the powders in the air around their position and I moved out from the tree to them as they screeched and staggered about blind. The Honour give me the senses enough to read where they were without my eyes, better to shut them with smoke and powders in the air, and their brews weren’t the Honour’s equal. They moved like they were running through honey and were easy to pick off.
It was then I took the arrow that’ll do for me. I’d got maybe fifty yards further on when I heard the bow draw, but with the noise ahead I couldn’t place it that fraction quicker to save myself. The arrow went in at my hip, into my guts. Some things give in there, and the poison’s gone right in, black mustard oil for sure from the vapors burning in my nose, probably some of their venom too.
I was on my knees trying to grab the arrow when I saw them approach, two of them. The one who killed me was dropping his bow and they both closed with the hate of their own fightbrew, their eyes crimson, skin an angry red and all the noisies.
They think I’m done. They’re fucking right, to a point. In my belt was the treated guaia bark for the mix they were known to use. No time to rip out the arrow and push the bark in.
They moved in together, one in front, the other flanking. One’s a heavy in his mail coat and broadsword, a boy’s weapon in a forest, too big. Older one had leathers and a long knife. Him first. My sight was going, the world going flat like a drawing, so I had to get rid of the wiser one while I could still see him, while I still had the Honour’s edge.
Knife in hand I lunged sudden, the leap bigger than they reckoned. The older one reacted, a sidestep. The slash I made wasn’t for hitting him, though. It flicked out a spray of paste from the blade and sure enough some bit of it caught him in the face. I spun about, brought my blade up and parried the boy’s desperate swing as he closed behind me, the blow forcing me down again as it hit my knife, sending a smack through my guts as the arrow broke in me. He took sight of his mate holding his smoking face, scratching at his cheeks and bleeding. He glanced at the brown treacle running over my blade and legged it. He had the spunk to know he was beaten. I put the knife in the old man’s throat to quiet my noisies, the blood’s smell as sweet as fresh bread to me.
I picked up my Juletta and moved on. The trees were filling with Blackhands now. I didn’t have the time to be taking off my wamba and sorting myself out a cure for the arrow, much less tugging at it now it was into me. I cussed at myself, for this was likely where I was going to die if I didn’t get something to fix me. I was slowing up. I took a hit of the Honour to keep me fresh. It was going to make a fierce claim on the other side, but I would gladly take that if I could get some treatment.
Finally I reached the caravan: smoke from the blazing wagons and stores filled the trees ahead. The grain carts were burning, so Shale, again, delivered the purse.
Then I come across Dolly, slumped against the roots of a tree. Two arrows were thrusting proud from her belly. She saw me and her eyes widened and she smiled.
“Gant, you’re not done… oh,” she said, seeing the arrow in me. I might have been swaying, she certainly didn’t look right, faded somewhat, like she was becoming a ghost before me.
“Have you a flask, Gant, some more of the Honour?”
Her hands were full of earth, grabbing at it, having their final fling.
“I’m out, Dolly,” I said, “I’m done too. I’m sorry for how it all ended.”
She blinked, grief pinching her up.
“It can’t be over already. I’m twenty summers, Gant. This was goin’ to be the big purse.”
A moment then I couldn’t fill with any words.
“Tell my father, Gant, say…”
I was raising my bow. I did my best to clean an arrow on my leggings. She was watching me as I did it, knowing.
“Tell him I love him, Gant, tell him I got the Honour, and give him my purse and my brother a kiss.”
“I will.”
As I drew it she looked above me, seeing something I knew I wouldn’t see, leagues away, some answers to her questions in her eyes thrilling her. I let fly, fell to my knees and sicked up.
Where was Shale?
My mouth was too dry to speak or shout for him, but I needed him. My eyes, the lids of them, were peeling back so’s they would burn in the sun. I put my hands to my face. It was only visions, but my chest was heavy, like somebody sat on it and others were piling on. Looking through my hands as I held them up, it was like there were just bones there, flesh thin like the fins of a fish. My breathing rattled and I reached to my throat to try to open it up more.
“Gant!”
So much blood on him. He knelt next to me. He’s got gray eyes, no color. Enemy to him is just so much warm meat to be put still. He don’t much smile unless he’s drunk. He mostly never drinks. He sniffed about me and at my wound, to get a reading of what was in it, then forced the arrow out with a knife and filled the hole with guaia bark while kneeling on my shoulder to keep me still. He was barking at some boys as he stuffed some rugara leaves, sap and all, into my mouth, holding my nose shut, drowning me. Fuck! My brains were buzzing sore like a hive was in them. Some frothing liquid filled up my chest and I was bucking about for breath. He poured from a flask over my hip and the skin frosted over with an agony of burning. Then he took out some jumpcrick’s legbones and held them against the hole, snap snap, a flash of blue flame and everything fell away high.
There was a choking, but it didn’t feel like me no longer. It felt like the man I was before I died.
introducing
If you enjoyed
THE SPIDER’S WAR,
look out for
HOPE & RED
The Empire of Storms: Book One
by Jon Skovron
In a fracturing empire spread across savage seas, two young people from different cultures find common purpose.
A nameless girl is the lone survivor when her village is massacred by biomancers, mystical servants of the emperor. Named after her lost village, Bleak Hope is secretly trained by a master Vinchen warrior as an instrument of vengeance.
A boy becomes an orphan on the squalid streets of New Laven and is adopted by one of the most notorious women of the criminal underworld, given the name Red, and trained as a thief and con artist.