Book II - Exodus (Chapter 9)

When Erich again awoke, he felt much better. Before even opening his eyes he did a mental check of all of his body systems, from his toes on up. He could feel the sun’s rays on his body had slackened, and that meant it must be early evening; he’d slept only three or four hours. He opened his eyes, and looked around for the horsa…no, the horsa was gone. He’d momentarily forgotten where he was and what he was doing here. Ther girl, that was who he was travelling with now. He should be looking around for her. So he did, and when he didn’t see her he stood up, testing his legs. Really, I feel amazing. A complete recharge. He felt stronger now, older, than he’d been just a few short weeks ago. Was that really possible? He shrugged mentally, figuring that questions of possible and impossible had left the stage of reason about the same time he started killing people without touching them. Now where is that girl? Noting that going down the slope meant re-entering the swamp, he started up it, remembering that he’d told her to see if she could find some food.

About two hundred yards further up, he saw her. She was examining a bush, pulling its branches out and shaking them. He saw several little dark things drop, and his stomach groaned in anticipation. It was almost certainly a huskberry plant, of the type he’d seen all the time when he’d travelled to the South with Krutt to perform at Yosgir, a kingdom only fifteen miles North of Agrotia, where the wild men lived. Huskberries were small, that was true, but they were filling – the last time he’d eaten even the smallest handful he’d felt them grow in his stomach, taking his hunger away immediately. Finding a huskberry plant now was miraculous, depending on how many of the berries remained – that is, how many of them had been passed over by the birds.

He walked slowly up the slope, stopping every few moments behind a dark prickly plant that had grown past its normal height. So she didn’t see him when he came up behind her, and when he spoke she jumped, uttering a small cry and throwing her hands up, dropping the huskberries she’d just picked.

“So you’ve found some huskberries.”

After her small fright she turned to him, her face a mixed mask of embarrassment and anger.

“What’s the idea, you sneaking up on me like that? I’ve dropped nearly all the huskberries because of you…how long have you been there, anyway?”

He smiled easily, in direct contrast with the forced one he’d given her just after his horsa had been pulled under the muck.

“I just got here. Woke up and figured you’d gone off up the mountain. So I came to see how you were, and I see you’ve foun some huskberries. That’s very lucky. We won’t be hungry for a while. And what makes you think I was sneaking up on you? Maybe I’m just quiet.”
“How do I know? It’s that grin on your face. It doesn’t help your argument much.” Erich shrugged, finally conceding the point.

“Let me help you get those piced up, then.” Essara uttered a small thanks and the two bent down to the ground, picking huskberries out of the moist growth.

“How are you feeling?” Her voice held just the right amount of interest and concern.

“I feel amazing. Strong, and…healthy. Still, getting some food into my stomach won’t hurt. Are you…I mean, you were hurt pretty bad, maybe I shouldn’t have told you to go looking for food.”

“No, I’m all right. Strange, I felt broken after that knight rode me along the ground like that, but it seems like I’ve just got the usual aches and pains that might come from that sort of thing.”

“But you’re all right.”

“Yes.” She popped a berry into her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. “That is, I mean…I don’t know why I’m here with you, or where we’re going. I suppose you rescued me from those knights, something like that…how did you get away, anyway?”

Erich’s grin faltered, and he looked down.

“I think if I tell you, you won’t believe me. And if you do, you’ll be afraid of me. So maybe that’s a tale for another night. Is that all right?”

She looked into his face, and Erich feared she saw the hidden pain there, writhing beneath his calm expression, before she nodded.

He looked past her and Eastward, toward the Wall. The mountain stood in their way. Is that still where you’re headed, boy? Through the wall, to Mer’ka? Will that help you find the man who’s killing kingdoms? Is it still that you would run from this place, when it is in need and you have the power to do something about it? Maybe not save it, maybe not that, but you’ll go down fighting. He considered for a moment. Did he really want to go down fighting? Sure, Meil was in trouble, perhaps in a little too much trouble. Would he die for a cause that was doomed? But you don’t know that. And even if it is doomed, it’s right. And any right cause is one to die for, if it comes to that. He’d passed the hours in the night dreaming of the wonders that would await him outside the Wall, his people and their advances, their acceptance. Could he give that up so easily? He didn’t know.

Erich caught Essara giving him an odd look, and he averted his eyes, clearing his throat.

“I…I was just thinking about what you said, about where we’re going. And I don’t know anymore. I was on my way out of Meil, to rejoin my people, and be accepted. I don’t know how I’d get through it, there are passages, but I know no one who can tell me the way to them. It was a fool’s bounty, perhaps. Maybe in my heart I never really believed I’d make it, it was just a goal, a fantasy to pass my time. At least, that’s what I need to tell myself. Despite all that, I have a real desire to go there. If it were possible I’d sure try. Now there’s…the thing that happened in Triga, with all the people dead. It seems like I’ve got new priorities. To stop whoever’s doing it.”

Essara looked confused.

“Erich, we’re going to have to work together here, compare stories. There are things I know that you need to hear before you start making assumptions about what happened in Triga…and as to how you’d stop it, I still don’t understand that. Perhaps it has to do with the knights.”

He nodded slowly, but did not speak.

“All right. Well, I think it’s best we sat down and had a talk. I tell you what I know, and you tell me what you know. We may be together now, but you’re not responsible for me. Wherever you choose to go, I will go willingly. This…I’ve never been outside Triga in my life, and lately it’s the one place I haven’t wanted to be. So, now, I have this opportunity. Don’t worry about me, I will be no burden. Just a companion on your voyage, wherever you decide it should lead.”

So the two sat down near the huskberry bush as the light diminished, and talked. Essara went first, and this is what she said:

“You saw no people in Triga, and yet you know they are all dead. I don’t know this, but it is what I have feared. For the past two weeks I had been hiding atop the church, watching the goings on and leaving only to steal food for myself. I dared not leave, as the knights I thought would have seen me and killed me almost immediately, being that toward the end they were on almost constant patrol up and down the main roads, between which the church I took shelter on was placed. It was either I leave my safe spot to risk almost certain detection and death, or stay in the one place they had not bothered to look. As food became scarcer I believe I would have had no choice, but for the time being I stayed on top of the church.

Before I was driven there, and after I took roost, I saw many evil things, things that I dared not believe and yet have come to accept. I cannot honor the memory of my mother and father without believing that they died bravely, fighting a foe that has no right to exist in these lands.

Triga, as you may or may not know, is widely known for its large Dark population. There was a community of us, and most of us knew every other one. Our knowledge base was large, as every piece of information our ancestors had passed down to their children about Mer’ka and the rest of the outside world was also, in time, passed down to us. And we learned well, existing with pride in our heritage and where we’d come from no matter what those in Meil thought of us. We had a school, for those of Dark heritage, where we would learn things the other people rejected, or would not understand. We learned of numbers, and their higher functions. We learned to write, and read, and a very few of the old stories had made it through the Wall with the original Darks in the form of books, which are collections of papers with words written on them. It was not a secret that the others, the fertile, were afraid of us, and wanted us to leave. There were, however, too many of us, and after some time they put aside their energies to control us and began to pretend we didn’t exist. Until about two weeks ago, nothing large had happened, no violence against Darks that we had noticed. Then it happened that we were gathered together and warned against a plot to kill all Darks, a warning we shrugged off. To kill all of us seemed insanely impossible then, but then it started happening. Darks started disappearing, and it was the elders first, those with the most knowledge of the ways of the outside world. We were afraid, and locked ourselves within the homes we’d made over the generations. That’s when the men from the outside appeared.

Yes, from the other side of the Wall. They appeared on the main road with no horsas, and no hint at how’d they’d arrived. They were dressed in strange smooth clothing, clothing that seemed to be all the same, a dark gray glove to fit the body. On their faces they wore black ovals, over their eyes. And they were Darks, Erich. They were from Mer’ka. And they were there to kill us all.

I was on the churchtop, watching in fear. And I won’t forget what I saw. I don’t want to forget. In their hands they carried cubes. Black cubes. For a while they just walked the road, and the people there watched and, after nothing happened, went on about their lives. This didn’t mean the men weren’t watched. They were. They’d just been put aside until the people could figure out what to do with them. And I watched the men; the whole time knowing they weren’t good, weren’t a new breed of emigrating Darks from Mer’ka. No. These men hadn’t snuck through the Wall. I doubt they’d even passed it, because it seemed like the way they appeared that their sort of travel wasn’t anything that could be done on the ground. It was either through the air, or…or something else altogether. And while everyone else had put on an air of temporary acceptance, I pleaded silently with everyone to do something, to run, to hide! But no one did. And then it started happening.

The black boxes in their hands, they began to do something. Brighten, give off light. Then they were white and there was a flash, and I had to sheild my eyes. There were screams of fear and surprise on the street below me, and the smell of burned clothing reached me. Around where the men had been standing, and where people had been milling about, there were no more people. They’d been…vanished. The men walked up the street and those people who hadn’t been caught by the first blast started to act. They shouted, and ran back to their homes, pulling their families from them and leading them out of the city. They never got far, not even those who got on horsas. Because the black boxes could be focused, and shot at distances, and I watched as one of the men held his box up facing the fleeing people. A man and his horsa vanished. As did a group of Darks all holding hands as they ran. There was no sound, no screams. And yet it was as if I could feel them die. I know that’s strange, but at the time I was filled with such sadness and horror, and I knew my family was doomed. As long as the men could see you, you had no chance. It was merely luck that they had not seen me. I should have moved, pulled myself back into the church, but I could not stop watching. It was luck they never looked up to see me. The more the Darks (and even those pale ones from Meil) ran, the more of them disappeared. The panic was absolute amongst those who saw there was no way for them to escape, nowhere for them to hide where the men from beyond the Wall could not get them. And then we began to fight back. Up the road, I saw a blacksmith supplying men with swords, and from windows I saw bows peeking.

Two of the men from beyond the Wall began to pick these men off with their cubes, and those at the blacksmith stand disappeared after a short series of the white flashes. But a few of the men dashed into houses, and even with their speed the two men with cubes could not get all of the bowmen before near on a dozen arrows were shot. Most missed, but I saw four arrows hit men with cubes, and only one of them died. Their clothing acted as mail, and every arrow that hit their body was repelled just as quickly. But one man was shot through the ear, and he fell down, dropping his cube. The other men glanced at him, and went on firing their cubes. No one else was able to hit a man with a cube in the head, and soon all the archers were gone. From then on, the flashes went on steadily, even when I could not see the men with the cubes, and soon the flashes began to slow. My family was gone, I knew that. My mother and father had been flashed by a cube, and in my heart I believe I knew they were dead. But they had gone fighting, I knew that. My father, once he had realized what was going on, had done his best to save all of us. And yet, I knew I’d seen the only dead man from beyond the Wall that I was going to. We never got another one.

You say you want to stop whoever killed all the people in Triga, and yet you do not know how to reach them, or how to fight them. Their power is aweful, and I don’t understand it. How could anyone fight it? They took an hour or two, and destroyed our kingdom without displacing a stone.

The men did not leave after that, no, they walked up the main road to the castle, where I had assumed they would kill the king. I never saw them come back from there, but after two hours I knew they were gone from Meil. Out the same way they’d come in, through the door behind the curtain. Because there is no door behind the curtain. Still, I stayed in my spot, and very luckily, too. Other Darks and non-Darks were trickling out of the side-streets, a very small group of them. That’s when the patrols came. The patrols were the king’s knights, on horsas, and carrying swords. They rode down the Darks, cutting and stabbing them to death. I watched this, as I was unable to look away, but tears dropped down my cheeks far faster and hotter than they had ever done before. To those from Meil, the knights made a short speech, and the pale ones scattered. They had been told that the streets were no longer a place for any man, and that to stay alive one must hide. A warning stood for any pale one who crossed the patrols, and a blade for any Dark. That was when I knew I could not leave unless need forced my hand. And so I have lived, until you rode into town on your horsa, you the only soul I’d seen for more than ten days, and I was going to save your life. It seems you saved mine. And perhaps you’ll tell me how.”