Chapter 7: Auric – Supposed to Hate

He found Beecham crawling on his back, another one of the creatures looming over the lad. Its facial limbs stretched out, jointed in three different places, like a mantis, ready to stab into his gut. They moved slowly, precisely, didn't seem to fear anything. Auric supposed they were used to being invisible, relied on it too much. He stepped up to the thing, sliced off one of its claws, then the other. It screamed, just like the first one had killed. Then, it reared up, green blood spurting from the severed ends of its arms. Auric brought the blade across its abdomen, sliced out its guts. Blood splashed onto Beecham's cheeks. He screamed. Auric looked down. The boy's skin melted off his face, steaming as it lifted from the skin underneath, bubbled like a pot of milk on a stove.

'It burns. Get it off. Get it off.' He tried to wipe the blood from his face with his hands, only succeeded in spreading it round. Then he was staring at his hands as the skin on his palms sizzled too.

'Wipe it on the ground, man,' Auric said. 'Don't get on your skin.'

The boy rolled over in the dirt, pressed his face into it, moved his hands about, grabbing big fistfuls of dirt and stones, moaning like a dying animal.

Auric looked at the blade in his hand with a frown. Green blood dripped from the tip, but the metal was unblemished. He tore a piece of cloth from his shirt, and wiped the blade down, careful not to let any of the stuff touch his skin. Same as the steel, the cloth didn't melt away.

Auric stepped over to the boy, leaned down with the cloth in hand. The boy still thrashed about in the dirt. 'Hold still.' The boy didn't listen. 'Hold bloody still, so I can get it off.'

Beecham rolled onto his back. His teeth ground together in pain. Auric wiped the blood from Beecham's face and hands best he could, taking the time to scrape the green stuff onto the ground.

'It still burns,' Beecham said, his face screwed up in pain. The boy's skin had swollen to a lumpy, pink-and-red mass, streaked with blood and yellow pus. His bloodshot eyes sank into a mound of puffy flesh.

'Aye, that it will.' Auric reached for Beecham's canteen, popped the top and tipped water over the boy's blistered skin. 'This'll help ease the pain.'

The boy winced as Auric poured the water over his wounds. Beecham sputtered, then hyperventilated. Slowly, his breathing eased as the burning blood washed away, as the water cooled his skin. He sat up, pressed his back against the wall of the ravine, quivered and winced as he worked through the pain.

Auric knelt down in front of him, took a brief look about for more of the monsters. The unnatural darkness still hung over the ravine, but there was no movement around them. 'You shouldn't have run off like that,' Auric said.

'I know that now.' The boy spluttered. Water dribbled from his mouth. Thin blood dripped from his skin. 'Didn't think you'd be able to fight them, did I? How was I supposed to know?'

Auric shrugged. 'You weren't. I didn't know myself. Still would have been safer as a group.'

'I'll keep that in mind for the next time a shadow slices my commanding officer in half.'

'Can you walk? We have to move before another of those things comes down on top of us.'

'I think so.'

'Then to your feet soldier.' Auric reached out, took Beecham by the arms.

He dragged Beecham to his feet, and they shuffled back to the end of the ravine, one of Beecham's arms lifted over Auric's shoulder. Auric had no scabbard, so he walked with the sword drawn, held out to his side, eyes searching above. Suited him fine. He might have need for it again before the day was out.

They came to the end of the ravine. The captain's body lay on the slope. His head had rolled to the bottom, eye's mercifully downward. Where his torso lay, blood had soaked the dirt, turning it to stinking, dark red mud.

'We should bury him,' Beecham said, as they shuffled past.

'No time.'

'We can't just leave him there.'

'No choice.'

'Wouldn't you want to be buried, if it were you?'

Auric stopped, looked Beecham in the eye. 'Leave him. Those things are going to come back. If it were me, I'd be dead, and I wouldn't care.'

Beecham looked down, winced again. 'You're right.'

They climbed the slope, and back onto the road to Whitehall. They made slow time, following the path over gentle, green hills, and eventually, into a small wood. The strange darkness lifted, revealing a blazing orange sunset, dotted with the evening's first stars.

They stopped to catch their breath. Auric set Beecham down at the base of a gnarled tree, and shivered as a blast of autumn air cut through the woods. He set down the captain's sword, and rubbed at his wrists. It had only been a couple days in the shackles, but it didn't take long for them to chafe. Felt good to be able to itch the skin again.

'I should thank you, I suppose,' Beecham said. The fading light hid most of the damage to his face, but Auric could tell his jaw was clenched. He sounded like how someone spoke when they had a tooth needed coming out. 'You didn't have to come back for me.'

'No, I didn't.'

'Why did you, then? You were out of your chains. Could've just run off. I wouldn't've thought that you liked me all that much.'

'Can't say that I do, lad. But then again, I don't know you very well. You're young, and I ain't really got anywhere to run off to.'

'Is that it, then? You saved me 'cause I'm young?'

'The young deserve the chance to make their mistakes, to learn from them. Perhaps if you do, you can make a better go of it than I did, can help us climb our way out of this God's-forsaken shit fest, where all we care about is fighting and killing one another.'

'I got more that I care about 'n just that. In fact, can't say I care all that much for fighting, for hurting people.'

'Then why are you a soldier?'

Beecham shrugged. 'I got no other skills. Nobody ever taught me nothing. And Vallendred pays a fair wage. Didn't see many other choices, did it? Besides, I got people, people I care about, who are depending on me to bring 'em home a wage.'

Auric sat down in the grass across from Beecham, shrugged his collar up around his neck. He could see the lad liked to talk, and it was taking his mind off the pain.

'Back home, you mean?'

'That's right.' A touch of pride entered Beecham's voice. 'Got me a wife and daughter back home. Might even get to see them again, thanks to you.'

Indeed, it was a surprise. It was hard to see the young man, who had been an accomplice in McJames' torment of Stroud, as a family man. But then, it wouldn't be the first time he had seen good men do cruel things, either at the encouragement of others or simply in the face of the horrors of war. Sometimes, men just went a bit funny when you strapped a sword to their hip. He knew from experience.

'Seem a bit young to be a father, to me.'

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'Oh, I ain't arguing that. But like I said, nobody ever taught me nothin'. Hard to believe, maybe, but that includes what happens when you put your thing in a woman's thing. Don't regret it, though. My daughter's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Don't like to think about what I'd do to someone who hurt her.'

'What's her name?'

'Ezer. Named her after my grandmother. She had more of a hand in raising me than my parents ever did.'

'That's a nice name. I hope you get to see your family again.'

'They're what I'm doin' it for, why I'm all the way up here in Nothstrum.' Beecham's eyes went up. He sniffed. Auric suspected it wasn't simply from the cold. 'Why I took the captain up on his bloody offer in the first place. It was supposed to be an easy delivery, and a hefty bonus. Escort a wanted man, a woman, a girl, and a priest. Now that I say it like that, I should have known it was gonna be trouble. We'll be lucky if we even make it to Whitehall now.'

Auric didn't have much to say to that, didn't feel much like lying either. So, he simply left the awful truth unsaid.

'They call you the Blackhand, don't they?' Beecham said.

Auric sighed. It was always only a matter of time before someone asked. 'They do.'

'Captain said you were a war criminal, said Vallendred would pay for your head.'

When Beecham didn't continue, Auric said, 'You got a question in there?'

'I suppose I just wonder what it all means. Must take quite a lot for Vallendred to know who you are. And you don't look like a criminal to me.'

Auric plucked at the grass, threw a handful of it away. 'War makes criminals of us all, boy. Makes us lawless savages.'

'Is that what you are, a savage?'

'I've done savage things. Burned a whole city of innocent people. Thought I was doing the right thing at the time. Didn't want to do it. But they were my orders.' Auric looked down at his hands, was surprised to see them still, realised he hadn't thought about the drink in a few days. 'Made myself watch as the people burned alive, as their skin turned to ash. Their deaths, their pain, that's on my hands, along with a lot else.'

'Black hands,' Beecham said, after a pause.

'Black hands,' Auric agreed.

Around them, the sounds of the night came alive. Bugs chirped, birds screeched and the black winds howled. Above, the stars twinkled through moonlit leaves. Wisps of grey cloud spattered the darkened sky. Despite the night's beauty, it was starting to get cold, and there was little shelter to be had. The sooner they found the others, the better.

'I think there's more to it, if I can be honest with ya.'

Auric hadn't really been listening. He turned his attention back to Beecham. 'More to what?'

'To what you said about coming back for me. I don't think you'd do that for the sake of it alone. Not after the way the captain and us treated you.'

Auric ripped up some more grass, threw it into the darkness. 'Take no offence when I say I don't care what you think.'

Beecham let out an ironic chuckle, a strange sight given the state of him. 'Do ya? You don't care what anyone thinks, that I don't doubt. Maybe you did come back for me, and of course I'm glad you did, but I think, maybe, you also came back cause you knew there'd be more of those things. Maybe you came back more for them than you did for me.'

Auric didn't like the taste of that. Had too much of the bitter truth to it. God's knew it had been reckless, going back into that ravine, knew he'd been reckless. It had been a long time since he'd looked after himself properly, had been a long time since he had felt he deserved it. Was it true? Had he wanted the violence, or worse, the danger?

'I know who I am, son. If you want to thank me for saving you back there, spare me the analysis.'

'Fair enough. Can you do me one more thing, though, a simple thing?'

Auric sighed. 'Sure.'

'Can you tell me how bad it is? Honestly?' Beecham held up his burnt hands, waved them at his face. It looked like he was wearing thick gloves now.

Auric cocked his head, frowned. The boy's face would never be the same. Probably he'd have a hideous lump of weeping scars where his cheeks used to be. 'It's pretty bad.'

'Oh.'

They rested in silence for a while. The night settled into a gentleness, unbroken but for the sighing of the trees, and the occasional hooting of an owl. Auric turned his ear to a different sort of sound, one he knew wasn't really a sound at all. Somewhere, Liandra was calling out to him, with that mysterious power of hers. He felt foolish, despite all the madness he had seen in the last few days, like a farmer bowing to the moon in the hopes of a bountiful crop. But something was there in his mind, more a feeling than anything else, a beckoning. Something pulling him to the northwest, like an iron bar drawn to a lodestone. He didn't quite understand it, but he knew it was Liandra's doing.

'We should keep moving. I know where the others are.'

Beecham gave him a puzzled look. 'The girl?'

Auric nodded. 'The girl.'

Auric helped Beecham back to his feet, lifted the lad's arm back over his shoulder. 'How's the pain?'

'Better. It's better.'

They shuffled off towards the pulling feeling, picking their way through the trees, the deadfall, the autumn leaves rotting on the ground. It was a peaceful night, clear and beautiful. It was a night for more deserving men.

'There really is something about her, isn't there?' Beecham said as they walked. 'I always knew she was odd. But the way she gets in people's minds, that's proper scary stuff, proper magic, that is.'

'Maybe. Can't say as I ever believed in magic, don't understand it. Yet I don't have to understand a thing to know its effects, know it has a use in the world. She saved my dog, brought him back from the brink of oblivion, when she could have done nothing, probably should have done nothing. That's worth something, even if it did land me in this God's-awful mess.'

'You know, I'm supposed to hate you people. You're the enemy, the ones who fought against my people for years. But she doesn't, and I don't think I do either? I think we might just be from different places.'

'My advice, try not to think about it too much.'

Beecham scoffed. 'I suppose that won't be too hard. No one's accused me of thinking too much before.'

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