CHAPTER 21 - SO WE CAN FIGHT 'EM!

  The group of seven or eight villagers, most of them young, most of them pale and nervous, shifting their weight and wearing swords on their hips at awkward angles, was the sign Levan had come to the right place.

  “Right,” a man said came out of a small building built into the wall, flexing his fingers into a leather glove as he climbed briskly down the steps, looking up at the sky. He wore a dark tunic of forest green and beige trousers beneath a cuirass of leather and chain mail. He had the shoulders of a boat held sideways, and a physique of ancient strength. Not the kind found on magazines, or even on Greek statues—the kind finger-painted on cave walls.

  “Lads,” he said in a clear and present voice, nodding to the mix of boys and girls, who fell silently and mostly in two rows at the man’s approach.

  Levan…sort of…moved.

  He more so leaned forward noncommittally, hoping that would be enough.

  Apparently, it was.

  Burton caught his eyes, gave him a curt nod, and gestured with a meaty forearm like some kind of gym-bro fisherman mentor reeling him in.

  Levan tried not to seem sullen, anxious, weak, or uncomfortable.

  He tried to seem like he wasn’t a lot of things.

  “This,” he began, taking Levan and dragging him next to him, “is…“

  Is what?

  Is the last night of our lives? Is this his big speech? Does he do a big speech?

  Levan waited, looking around, smiling nervously.

  He glanced back to Burton, who was looking at him with mostly concern.

  “H-hello,” he said eventually.

  “Hello,” Burton said with a smile. “Your name, lad?”

  “Oh,” Levan said, feeling his cheeks go red. Hopefully in the light of the lamps it was hard to tell.

  “Levan,” he said.

  “Levan,” Burton repeated. “Like Leavened bread?”

  “Yeah, or like unleavened bread, or like…yeah,” he said.

  “Unleavened bread?” one of the lads said. He looked like one of the little kids from earlier. Ringo, maybe, or John.

  “You’re named after bread?” Another one of the Lads said, this one a girl about his own age.

  “No,” he assured.

  “Then why specify,” another one of the Lads asked.

  “I just—”

  “Yeah, why unleavened bread?”

  “Well,” Levan said, shifting. “Theoretically, if you don’t have enough time to leaven it.”

  “Don’t have time?” the first one asked. “Why’d you make bread if ye don’t have time to leaven it?”

  “Maybe you’ve gotta leave in a hurry,” Levan offered.

  “Maybe,” another one of the lads said, and this time he recognized McCartny’s older brother when he saw it.

  “Bet ye da left in a hurry,” he said.

  “Yah,” Lennon’s older brother offered. “Or maybe ya mum didn’t have time to leaven you correctly in the cookah,” he said, slapping his stomach.

  “Lads,” Burton said, and when he quirked his head out of the wall, the color drained from the faces of the jeering lads. “Levan here already has the world’s worst timin’. Arrived just a few minutes ago. Didn’t know what he was in for.”

  “No shot,” one of the Lads said.

  “And,” Burton continued. “He wants to help.”

  Reactions were mixed.

  “You good with a sword, Bread?” the girl from earlier asked.

  “No,” he answered.

  “Least he’s honest,” Burton grumbled. “You ever fight?”

  “No,” Levan said, but then he blinked and frowned, thinking of his alleyway fight with the soldier. “A bit,” he added.

  “Oh,” Burton said, his demeanor changing. The pinching on Levan’s shoulder went from a shock-thrust of bravado and enthusiasm to one of sympathy, before switching back again. He used it to throw Levan into the Lads.

  “Bread is dangerous,” Burton said to the Lads. He pointed to his own eyes with his fingers, then to them. “I seen it in his eyes, not lying,” he said. “Keep an eye out, point him at the enemy, eh?”

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  Keep an eye out?

  Point him at the enemy?

  He thinks I’m a murderer, Levan realized.

  Is that all the training I’m going to get.

  “Um, Mr. Burton, Sir,” Levan said.

  “Aye,” Burton said, turning.

  Levan was almost surprised when people didn’t laugh at the awkward formality. Maybe too busy thinking about what was awaiting them.

  “What is it, exactly, that attacks the village every First Sliver Moon? Rose didn’t tell me.”

  A few chuckles from the Lads.

  But now, properly prepped to receive Levan, properly informed of his bad luck and potential murderer status, there was mostly just pity and nerves that he’d be guarding their sides tonight.

  “He ain’t coming with me,” one of the Lads said. Lennon or McCartney’s older brother, he couldn’t tell with.

  A few of the other Lads with him nodded approvingly.

  “Nope, he’ll be with me, then,” Burton said, patting Levan hard on the back, and giving him a reassuring smile. “Lad,” he said addressing Levan.

  “Monsters.”

  “What kind of monsters?”

  “Take your pick,” Burton muttered. “With me, let’s go.”

  ***

  The forest was pitch black.

  The faint outlines of the many palisade spikes stuck like the fingers of giants clawing their way out of the grave.

  All was quiet, save a few specific voices, such as Rose’s, which Levan could hear despite being several hundred yards away.

  For the most part, though, all was quiet.

  Burton had taken him up on the wall, taken them all up on the wall.

  “Primarily,” Burton said, “The Lost Ones.”

  “I saw a Lost One…hunter, I believe?”

  “The little ones? He asked, making a flat gesture with his palm.

  “About knee high flat, on two legs up to my ribs,” Levan said.

  “The little ones,” Burton confirmed grimly. “This is their home I think, to sides of things. They’re from…next door,” the large man said. “One of our neighbors.”

  “Oh,” Levan said.

  “Lad, if you don’t understand something, you’ll have to say,” Burton said, as the night air began to grow cold. “Could be life or death.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You have problems, maybe? With your head? I don’t mean nothing by it, know plenty with—”

  “No,” Levan said, “Well—yes…my..memory, is not so good. Pretend I…pretend I just woke up, speaking the language but not knowing any history or…or anything like that.”

  “As in, this is a wall, this is a sword, that’s a tree?”

  “No,” Levan said, “as in, what do you mean by Neighbors? What are the Lost Ones, the history of the area, those things.”

  Burton nodded.

  “They’re from the neighboring plane. One of them.”

  Levan frowned.

  “You know what a wall is, what a sword is, you seem like a smart lad, I’ve met stupid ones. You don’t know what a plane is?”

  “Like plane of existence?” Levan asked. “Like the…” he took a guess. “Like the Emberlaines?”

  Burton froze.

  “Like the…what?” he asked.

  “Never mind,” Levan said quickly. “A neighboring plane of existence, you mean?”

  Burton nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “Some to the sides, to our ‘left and right’, as it were. But also above and below us. But thankfully not that. Just to the side. The Lost Ones had an empire, here I think. I think then they lost it, hence the name.”

  Burton sniffed, and knocked his heel against the wood of the wall.

  Some soil fell from his boot.

  “I think this was their capital city,” he said. “My theory, at least. I think, if were to go over there, we wouldn’t see our modest little hill. I think we’d see great monuments of stone, pyramids with great steps, altars to dragons and the like.”

  A faraway look took over Burton’s expression.

  “I’d love to explore it,” he said.

  Then he looked back to the tree line.

  “But not here,” he said. “Not on our plane.”

  He pointed a finger into the forest, and voices around the defensive stations around the village all started giving orders at the same time.

  Levan squinted into the trees, but he could see only darkness.

  Then, a trick of light caught something as it ran down the hill.

  Not a monster, not a creature, not a lizard like from earlier.

  A rivulet of water, running to the base of the hill.

  It stopped, and pooled for a moment until the trickle ended.

  “It’s the Lost Ones, tonight,” Burton said quietly.

  Small shadowy forms began to descend the hill, moving in a skittering, loping motion, with details Levan couldn’t yet make out.

  “Some instinct calls them here,” Burton continued. “Mindlessly. I don’t know if there are any Lost Ones with intelligence left. If there were, they stay behind in the forest and go back or run away when they can. It’s their warriors that come through. Crafty. Slightly smaller than us, expect five feet or so tall at their highest. But we’ll be outnumbered.”

  The number of the forms flowing down the hill increased.

  An arrow, lit with flame and burning bright beyond natural ascended into the sky, bathing the ring around the hill in light.

  They resembled the Lost One’s Levan had fought in some ways—the wet and smooth skin of grays, blues, and browns. The way it pulled taut across their bodies. The way their arms and legs were squarely placed out from under them, almost like their torso was a separate object the arms and legs were in charge of carrying rather than one single being.

  They had the same shovel-heads, too, with the same shovel-mouths, and the same black and green gums, holding the same chipped and sharpened teeth.

  But these ran on two legs, leaning slightly forward and with dangling arms that grazed the grass with wet knuckles. Their eyes were wide black orbs, rimmed with red blood vessels and crazed.

  “Monsters,” Burton said.

  Levan didn’t want to judge too quickly on principle, but it was hard to disagree.

  “I know them, Lad,” he said. “I see the kindness in you. Do not force them to prove you wrong.”

  “Sure,” Levan said, but Burton shook his head.

  “Two things,” the big man said, not looking at Levan, just gazing down at the creatures.

  “It’s mostly underwater there,” Burton said. “They’ve never seen the rings.”

  He shook his head at the sky, where the planetary rings caught the moonlight like a chandelier.

  “And they don’t even stop to look at them.”

  “Still—“

  “And second,” Burton said, “They only want to kill.”

  Levan opened his mouth.

  “I cannot guarantee your survival under any circumstance,” Burton said. “But you’ve got to learn that not everyone sees the world the way you do. You wouldn’t kill, maybe. If you were them. But you’re not. They’re them. I can’t guarantee your survival, but you wait around to learn whether or not they want to kill you first, and I can all but guarantee it’ll be the last thing you learn.”

  Levan wasn’t sure what to say, so he decided on just nodding.

  “And it may not be you,” Burton said, clapping Levan on the shoulder and bringing him back down from the walls. “And I won’t have you learning the lesson through one of the Lads.”

  They climbed down the short steps that lead up from the main village and rejoined the rest of the group.

  “Bread understands what we’re dealing with, now,” Burton said to the other Lads. “Don’t you, Bread?”

  Levan nodded.

  “Right,” Burton said. “Let’s get out there.”

  Levan balked. “Get out there?” he asked, bewildered. “Leave the village walls?”

  “Oh, Aye,” Burton said with a laugh. Some of the villagers laughed, too.

  “Why in the world would we do that?” Levan asked, panic rising.

  “So we can fight ‘em, of course!” Burton said loudly, and a few of the Lads hooted.

  “I said—So we can fight ‘em!” Burton demanded louder, and the Lads repeated it back, louder.

  “Lads—there is one of your number that I cannot quite hear,” Burton said, cupping his ear and angling it at them, as he led them up the steps of the wall.

  “Why, tell me, in the world, in all the plane, would we voluntarily leave the warm, generous safety of the village walls?!”

  The Lads took in a deep breath, one of them tugging Levan by the sleeve over to them to make sure he said it with them.

  “So we can fight ‘em!” Levan yelled through the bile.