One side of Malice’s head was flattened, although mostly near the top. Her ear was pushed in, surrounded by torn skin and cracked bones that made a pattern like the petals of a flower around that bloodied ear. The eye on that side stared up at the ceiling, leaking bloody tears. She made a moaning sound as she was lifted from the floor, but the other eye looked directly at Envy.
‘Wait!’ snapped Spite, setting Malice’s foot down and reaching for the oven handle. She cursed as she pulled down the door and Envy smelled scorched flesh. ‘That smarts,’ she said, gasping as she retrieved Malice’s right ankle. ‘Turn her round — head first into the oven.’
Envy could not pull her gaze from Malice’s lone, staring eye. ‘She’ll kick.’
‘So what. We can break the legs if we have to.’
Together, with Malice between them, they forced their sister into the oven, and this effort at last swept from Envy that terrible staring eye. The inside of the oven was lined with clay, and loud sizzling sounds accompanied every touch of skin, blood and hair against the rounded sides. Malice struggled, pulling at her arms, but the effort was weak. They got the upper half of their sister’s body into the oven and began pushing the rest in. The legs did not kick. They were limp and heavy, the toes curling upward.
‘No more bread in this one,’ gasped Spite as she folded the leg she held and pushed it past the edge of the door, the knee leaving a patch of skin on the metal rim.
‘They’ll have to smash it into pieces and build another,’ said Envy. She got the leg in on her side as well.
Spite grasped the door’s handle and slammed it home.
‘Feed more wood,’ said Envy, sitting back. ‘I want her crisp. She stank like the Abyss!’
‘I wonder what we did wrong.’
‘Don’t know, but it tells us one thing.’
‘What?’
‘You and me, Spite. We should never try to kill each other. If one of us did, well, I think it’s dead for keeps.’
Spite studied her for a long moment, and then went off to gather an armload of wood. ‘She won’t come back from this one, will she?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Because,’ continued Spite, ‘if she did, we’d be in real trouble.’
‘Throw some wood into the oven itself, and that kindling there.’
‘No. I don’t want to open that door again, Envy. In case she jumps out.’
‘All right. It’s a good point. Just fill it up underneath, then. Lots and lots.’
‘That’s what I’m doing! Why not help me instead of just sitting there giving orders like some fucking queen!’
Envy giggled at the swear word and could not help but look round guiltily, if only for an instant. Then she set to collecting more wood.
In the oven, Malice burned.
Rint remembered his sister as a child, a scrawny thing with scraped knees and smears of dust on her face. It seemed she was always climbing something: trees, crags and hillsides, and she would perch high above the village, eyes scanning the horizons or looking down to watch passers-by. Her moments of fury came when it was time for Rint to find her and bring her home, for a meal, or a bath. She’d spit, scratch and bite like a wild animal, and then, when at last he had pinned her arms against her sides in a tight hug, and lifted her from the ground to stagger his way back to the house, she would moan as if death had come to take her.
He bore stoically the wounds from her thrashing about, as befitted a brother who, while younger, was still bigger, and he was always mindful of the smiles and jests of others in the village when he passed them with his sister in his arms. They had been amused, he thought, even sympathetic. He had refused to think such reactions belonged to derision, contempt or mockery. But every now and then he had caught an expression and he had wondered. Some people took pleasure in the discomfort of others: it made a balance against their own lives.
There was no reason for thinking these thoughts now, as he looked across to his sister, except for the way she was studying the Houseblades forming up below. From her perch on her horse, atop this hill, she was wearing the same expression he had seen many years past. He thought of the daughter growing inside her, and felt a deep pang in his gut. It was said the soul only came to a child in the moments after birth, when the world opened out to wide, blinking eyes, and the lungs first filled with breath and on that breath rode the soul, rushing in to claim what had been made for it. In the time before all of this, with the vessel still trapped inside the mother’s body, the soul hovered near. He imagined it now: rising high above them to look down, with a girl’s closed expression, a strange steadiness in the eyes, and a wall of mystery behind them.
All at once, his love for his sister almost overwhelmed him, and for an instant he felt tempted to steal her away from what was to come. Perhaps the disembodied soul of the child sensed the risk, the terrible danger awaiting them, and was crying out to him, in a voice faint as the wind that reached through him, slipping past his own hurts, his mass of wounds. Then he looked round to study his companions. Ville, silent and hunched — there had been a young man he had longed to give his heart to, but was too frightened of rejection to make his feelings known. That young man had been a potter, possessing such talent with clay that no one questioned his rejection of fighting ways, and were ever pleased at his work. He was dead now, cut down in the village.
Rint’s eyes travelled past Ville and settled briefly on Galak. In the days before they had left on their mission, Galak had lost the love of yet another young woman in the village, the last in a pattern of failures. Galak had blamed only himself, as he was wont to do, although Rint could see nothing in the man to warrant such self-recrimination. He was kind and often too generous, careless with coins and his time, prone to forgetting meetings he had arranged with his mate, and hopeless at domestic tasks — but in all these things he had displayed a child-like equanimity and innocence, traits which seemed to infuriate women. As they had ridden out for House Dracons to begin their journey west, Galak had sworn off love for all time. Looking upon him now, Rint wondered if his friend regretted that vow.
He saw Traj, with his red face and belligerent expression, both permanent fixtures. Rint could not recall ever seeing the man smile, but his wife had loved him deeply, and together they had made four children. But now Traj was alone in his life, and no love surrounded him to soften his stony presence, and he sat as one exposed, suffering the weathering of a harsh world.
There were others, and each one he looked upon reminded Rint of his stoic marches through the village, with his sister trapped in his arms. The wounds could not be hidden and so must be worn as a child would wear them, struggling not to cry at the pain, or the shame, determined to show everyone else a strength well disguising its own fragility.
The sun stood high above them. Below, on the killing field beyond the plots of farmland, the heavily armoured Houseblades sat motionless on their caparisoned mounts. Some bore lances; others held long-handled axes or strangely curved swords. The round shields slung on their left arms were black and showed no crest. There were, Rint judged, more than five hundred of them.
There are too many. All this time, while we were away, that damned captain was building his forces, preparing for war. We sat and watched them, and pretended to be unimpressed, and not once did we take heed of the portents.
‘Refuse their charge,’ Traj now growled. ‘We part before them. Nothing changes.’
But everything has. We saw these warhorses. We even remarked on their impressive size. But not once did we see them arrayed in full complement. Now, even at this distance, to look upon them is to feel… diminished.
‘We will dance around them,’ Traj continued, as if seeking to convince himself, ‘striking and then withdrawing. Again and again. Those mounts are burdened. They will tire fast, as will their riders. See the grilled visors on their helms? Their vision is restricted. They’ll not hear commands — the battle will roar through their skulls. They’ll flounder in confusion.’ He rose on his stirrups. ‘Skirmishers, stay well guarded behind our advance — close only when and where we lock blades with them! Close in and kill the ones we unseat. Gut or hamstring the horses if you can. Scatter if they seek to charge or surround you.’
An odd way to use the skirmishers, but then I see your point, Traj. They don’t wield pikes, and there’s not enough dismounted besides, not for a square, not even a hollow one. Their only hope is if we can make this messy.
‘It’s time,’ said Traj.
