The Effects of Arrows

Death In Harmony: Part Nineteen of Twenty-Nine

Death In Harmony is the fifth in the Tales of The Lesser Evil and this is the nineteenth chapter.

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This is a fantasy series—not quite grimdark, but dark nevertheless—with complicated and believable characters doing their best to survive in a world simply indifferent to their existence.

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The Effects of Arrows

The Present: somewhere north of The Pit

‘Are you done?’ The woman asked, and Flin looked up, wondering what she meant, only to see that the other woman had silently returned, now clothed and wearing an added scowl.

‘No.’ She threw down the thick bundles of clothing she carried and began to remove an assortment of pouches, bags, and weapons. ‘One got away. I am not as fast as I was, this,’ she stabbed at her leg with her hand, ‘slows me down. I need to fix that.’

‘Give it time. You are still healing, remember how bad it was? Remember how long healing takes. Now, what happened?’

‘I put an arrow in his leg, but not a killing wound, so I let him run. He is headed to the centre of the city.’ They exchanged a glance and Flin knew something more passed between them.

‘What is at the centre of the city? Why let him run?’ Flin asked, and was met with silence, both women merely glanced at her, then ignored her questions. ‘Look, I want to help.’ She scooped some more mashed food on to the tiny horn spoon and fed it to the baby. As she looked into the small pouch she realised that, at this rate, she would be out of food by the end of the day.

It was strange, how simple practical things, like feeding a baby, never stopped being important, even when there were more pressing matters at hand. They never mentioned these things in the stories.

‘What is at the centre of the city?’ She asked, again.

‘Something unpleasant,’ the woman finished dropping the items she had taken from the other men onto a heap.

They made quite a pile and Flin could not help but look at a stout haversack and think of her own frayed, patched and poorly-mended bag. Similarly with some of the clothes, with these to choose from, she’d be able to be clothed in something other than fraying, threadbare patches. Later, she told herself, there would be time to ask later, she hoped.

‘Maybe we won’t have to do anything about this man. Maybe the city will deal with him for us?’ The woman said.

‘Or maybe he’ll double back and escape? Maybe the man with the dogs at the top of the cliff will go back to the village, return with others? Maybe they will find your treasures and maybe we’ll all die? Maybe.’ Flin thought she did well to speak so calmly, but she was irritated, even though she knew she had no right to be.

‘Maybe,’ both women chorused, looking from each other to Flin and back.

‘What? What is in the centre of the city?’ Flin asked for a third time and, finally, it was the black woman who answered.

‘There is a tower, a tall tower we cannot reach and, around it? Death. Death waits there. Death and madness. It is extremely unpleasant just to get close, it does things to the mind.’ She paused, frowning, ‘You see things. You believe things you do not want to.’ She shook her head. ‘No. I am not going close again. Once was enough. I can deal with the man with the dogs, or wait to see if the man I shot does make it back to the cliffs, but I am not going near the centre, no matter what riches might be hidden there.’

Flin looked to the other woman, who was standing studying the collection of bags, clothes and weapons, slowly nodding to herself in agreement. Eventually, she looked up, frowned, then nodded again.

‘I will go. Maybe you are right, maybe he veered from his path, doubled back. I doubt it, when a man is shot, he usually flees in a straight line as fast as possible, but perhaps he ran another way. You,’ she pointed to Flin, ‘will come with me.’

Flin nodded in reply as the woman picked up a water gourd and attached it to her belt, putting some leaf-wrapped packages in a pouch before taking a bow down from inside one of the lean-to shelters. She pulled out a thin quiver and carefully selected several arrows from a larger collection. Then she spoke again.

‘You come, but you have to leave your baby. You cannot take it there, it is not easy for us to bear, and I do not know what it would do to a child this young.’

Flin stopped nodding and unconsciously placed a protective hand on the infant’s head. She knew this was a test.

‘Very well,’ she said after a moment, ‘I will leave him with you,’ she nodded to the black woman, ‘and we track this man.’

‘He will be safe here. I promise. I had children, once.’ The woman held out her arms but Flin paused, holding the baby tight, so she continued, ‘Look, listen, we do not yet know your story, we do not yet know what we will do with you, but I will say this, and I know my companion well enough to speak for her too—your baby is safe here. We will not, ever, harm him. Ever. You, maybe. Him, no.’

Flin nodded in response, a weight she had not known she was carrying lifting from her shoulders, and she passed the baby over.

‘I am nearly out of food and have only a little moss left,’ Flin said. She did not ask what had happened to the woman’s children. It was a common enough story and one best left to be volunteered, rather than pried loose. Sometimes the pain was too much, the wound still healing.

‘Do not worry, we have plenty of both.’ She stroked the baby’s head, then kissed it, the small, gentle smile on her face at odds with her scars, her weapons, and the fact she had only recently killed several men, stripping them of all they carried.

Flin left her haversack and broken axe beside the statue and did not go to pick up her spear. Her knife would be enough.

‘Then let’s go, get this over with.’

The Past: east of Youlbridge

‘Run, run, run,’ Flin gasped the words almost silently, inhaling and exhaling the words with every shallow breath. She was reduced to concentrating on breathing and placing one foot in front of the other, over and over.

She was also utterly exhausted. If it wasn’t for the tall line of mountains in front of her, the sun would already be visible. The light through the thick brown smoke clouds was odd, giving all a strange hue, eerie and otherworldly.

Once, when Flin had been very young, the forest to the north of Boncliff had burnt. She remembered the initial excitement among the children, which turned to a deeper terror when they understood the worry and fear of the adults. She had not forgotten the constant acrid taste and difficulty breathing but, most of all, she remembered the light. As she ran, her childhood fear resurfaced, triggered by exhaustion, by shock, and by the smoke of the city she had considered a home. She felt that her world was burning once more, a constant cycle of flame and fume and loss.

‘Run, run, run, run.’

The mantra turned into wordless sounds, whimpered through ragged breaths and she knew she had to stop.

‘We have to stop. We have to rest.’ Gasping it aloud made the thought possible and Flin pulled up from her ragged trot, staggering and leaning against a thick trunk, taking a moment to relish the cool sensation of the damp, moss-covered craggy bark. When she could again hear anything beyond the blood pounding in her ears, she strained every sense back the way she had come, hoping she heard nothing.

After she had first heard the voices, she had periodically paused and, each time, had heard the sounds of pursuit: cracking twigs, thudding steps, words shouted between pursuers gaining on her.

It was on the third such pause that she had recognised the voices as those she had fled during the night, just before the iron grille had sealed her within the Maze. Flin had a thing for voices, for sounds: once heard, she simply remembered them, as some people did with faces. She knew it must have been sheer chance that they had regained her trail, there was no way they could have followed her through the tunnels, or perhaps they had credited her with more knowledge than she possessed, guessed at where she would exit the underworld, incorrectly theorising she had known where she was going.

This time, there was nothing, no voices and no sounds of pursuit. Rather than settling her mind, this only heightened Flin’s fear. Kadan slept on, utterly ignorant of her flight, sleep cradling him even as she held him to her breast.

‘I can’t keep running. I have to rest,’ she whispered, ‘I have to.’

Flin carefully placed her bow against the tree, then took off her pack and hid it behind the bole, placing the quiver beside it. Finally, she unstrapped Kadan and removed and bundled her wool coat, now soaked with sweat and the damp of the dawn, laying her baby on the makeshift bed, gently covering him with the wide sleeves to keep the chill away.

‘I have to,’ she repeated, her decision made.

She drew three arrows from the quiver, picked up the bow, retrieved the bowstring from her inside pocket and strung it, testing whether the damp would affect the draw. When she was relatively certain it would not snap in her face, she looked around for where to make her stand.

She dismissed a patch of thick undergrowth as being too close to the sleeping Kadan and moved back the way she had already come. There was no sense in risking a stray arrow, or her pursuers catching a glimpse of the baby.

There was precious little cover beyond sporadic shrubs and boulders, certainly nothing she could safely hide behind with a good view of the trail. Flin stood in the middle of the trail, thinking about her best course of action until, as so often seemed to be the way, the decision was taken out of her hands.

They were running quickly, two men, neither with any obvious weapon in their hands, heads down, moving towards her, unencumbered by packs and constantly checking the ground for prints. One briefly raised his head and immediately saw her. He was a thin man, tall and rangy, with arms and legs which seemed too long for his frame. He reached out an arm to tap his companion, shorter and broader, who glanced at him before he too noticed Flin. Neither slowed down.

She did not pause to aim, just drew and released. The arrow went soaring beyond the pair, who were now trying to keep a distance between themselves on the narrow track, to reduce the target they presented. Both had drawn knives and were pounding ever closer, teeth bared and arms pumping.

Flin released the second arrow and watched as it tore into the throat of the shorter man. She had been aiming for the tall. Both stopped running, the tall man skidding to a halt, holding out an arm to his accomplice, who was sinking to the ground, knives slowly dropping to the earth, eyes widening as he reached for his neck.

At this range, Flin knew she could easily hit the other man and, as she drew, he realised it too.

Screaming, an animal sound of deep rage mixed with fear, he dropped his companion and started sprinting as fast as he could, straight at her.

She fumbled the arrow on the draw and dropped the bow, barely giving herself enough time to pull her knife before he crashed into her and they both tumbled together, steel flashing in the early morning light, arms flailing, hands grasping, blades stabbing and slashing.

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