Page 7 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Because he killed a sabber,” Jons croaked from behind her. “One on one. Men don’t do that. It’s like a dog taking down a lion.”

Livira tried to picture it. Malar against a sabber. Something fierce burned inside her. Anger felt better than sorrow, and visualizing revenge better still. “I’m glad you killed one.”

“I got lucky,” Malar snarled.

“Luckiest soldier I know,” Jons replied. “Sabbers are faster, bigger, stronger. But Malar here’s been ‘lucky’ with a blade as long as I’ve known him.”

“Shut it, Jons.”

“If he was rich or good-looking or had an ounce of leadership in him, he’d be famous,” Jons’s dry monotone carried on. “Not that they’d ever make one of us an officer whatever we were. Need the right family for that. But Malar though... born killer. Twenty years back, on the Kerlo border, he cut down—”

“Stop!” Livira shouted. “Malar! Stop!”

The soldier paused, something angry on his lips, “Yo—”

But the dust-bear stole his words, erupting from the ground directly in front of him in a hail of grit, dust, and thrashing tentacles. To his credit Malar threw himself backwards without delay and it saved him from the rope-like coils that scythed through the space he’d occupied. He wasn’t fast enough to stop the dust-bear snaring both ankles though, and it used his weight as an anchor to haul its quivering body from the pit it occupied.

The children screamed and ran. Henton’s horse bolted; Jons cried out, struggling to control his own steed. The horror that was the dust-bear snaked out more tendrils, reaching for Malar. It dragged him feet-first towards the great dry, tooth-filled slit of its mouth that ran the whole length of its shapeless body. Somehow Malar had his sword in hand but with tendrils already snaring his arm the best he could do was drive the blade into the ground to keep from being drawn further in.

Livira should have run. Her nightmares had been filled with dust-bears for years, though she’d never seen one and had had to build her own in the pits of her imagination. The shock paralysed her in the moment. Before it was tugged free, Malar’s sword bought the delay she needed to recover herself. She was terrified but suddenly her anger outweighed her fear. It was as if the dust-bear had declared itself responsible for everything that had happened to her. And more than that—it stood between her and the city—the only good thing that could possibly come out of all this disaster.

She’d watched the soldier for hours as he walked ahead of her. She knew where he kept everything. Most of all, she knew where he kept his water. But she’d also located his weapons long ago and mused on the possibility of snatching one. Now, as Malar roared, trying much too late to cut himself free, Livira threw herself to her knees beside him and pulled the larger of his two daggers from its sheath. His feet were inches from the first row of teeth, a hundred sharp yellow triangles.

Every settler knew how to deal with dust-bears. None of them in living memory had put the theory to the test. When a dust-bear attacks, you try to escape. When you can’t escape, you thrash at it and it eats you, feet-first, its gelatinous flesh immune to spear thrusts owing to the stony hide that covers it. The way to deal with dust-bears is from the inside, and by the time the useful parts of Malar got inside he’d be very dead.

Livira dived in headfirst. The teeth, all inward pointing to prevent escape, offered no resistance. She got about rib deep before she could get no further, and in the damp, stinking, darkness she started slashing. She found a direction her arms could move in and hauled the dagger downwards in a long slicing motion, sawing at the obdurate flesh.

Dust-bears, it turned out, had mastered the art of projectile vomiting just for such occasions. Livira found herself back in the brightness of the day, with a brief sensation of flight. The dust-bear folded in on its injury, withdrawing all its tentacles in one swift motion, and scooping dust back over its pebbled hide.

Livira landed with a thud and rolled in the dirt, losing all the air in her lungs. She was still gasping for breath when Malar set her back on her feet.

“That was stupid.” The anger in his voice didn’t surprise her. She often heard the same tone when she solved a problem that was vexing the men at the settlement. Perhaps once they’d invested so much time hunting an answer they were aggrieved not to be the one to find it.

The soldier stared at the dust cloud around the pit as the ’bear reburied itself. He looked very much as if he’d like to take his sword and go back to finish it off. “Come on. Let’s go.” Swearing was, it seemed, saved for pleasantries.

Jons rounded up Henton’s horse, and the motionless Henton, and the trek resumed. Half an hour later Malar shared out the last of the water, most of it with the horses. They climbed one ridge, then another higher one, then a third. In the distance a black fist showed itself, taking a first bite out of the reddening sun.

“The city’s at the foot of the mountain,” Malar said to nobody in particular. “The crowning jewel of the Amthane Empire, may it last ten thousand years.” This last bit lacked sincerity.

On her expedition years earlier Livira hadn’t seen any mountain. She realised with a shock that she must have seen just another ridge and let her childish imagination paint it as city walls. There was a lesson in there somewhere, but she was too tired and sore for lessons. All of her ached and her skin was burned everywhere the dust-bear’s inner juices had touched her. She guessed her layers of dirt and immediate dust bath had saved her from further harm.

—

The mountain devoured the sun and they walked on in growing darkness. The ground here was stony, studded with the occasional succulent, low to the ground and bristling with spines. The danger of ambush from below had passed.

The city first showed itself as a single light twinkling in the dusk, warmer than the starlight, as if being lower down it was more approachable. Within moments there was another. The children gasped in wonder as more lit up. In the settlement when the sun went down it was dark until dawn. They kept no light in the huts. What little they had to burn made too much smoke to use indoors.

The lights spread, picking out lines, some straight, some curved, the patterns making no sense to Livira. There was a beauty and a strangeness to it, enough to make her forget her aches and pains, even her thirst for a moment. Her other worries she had packaged away for later. She knew that, like many of the others who had cried for their parents until they were too dry for tears, she should be weeping over the loss of her aunt, and all the other adults who had been kind to her. Livira could feel that loss like a pit in her chest, but she had put it in a box of her own making. She planned to open it when she could do something about it.

“They’re so yellow.” The lights highest up the slopes didn’t look like flames.

“Wisp-glows,” Malar said. “A modern marvel.” He sounded as if he preferred firelight himself.

Although they seemed close, the lights stubbornly refused to get closer as the children walked. They found themselves stumbling over rough ground and getting tangled in low shrubs with vicious thorns.

“Hold up, you little shits. We’ll make camp here.” Malar’s weary voice reached them through the darkness.

Making camp consisted of lying on the ground and trying to sleep. Malar and Jons didn’t untie Henton from his horse, so Livira decided that he was dead.

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