Page 5 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Music Hall Entertainers of the Eighteenth Century, by Able Jons

CHAPTER 3

Livira

For a moment after the arrow struck there was only silence. Even from Selly, who stood with the feathered shaft extending from beneath her collarbone. Another arrow hissed through the air, close to Livira, burying itself in the ground behind her. Then the air was full of them, and of shouting, and, inevitably, of dust.

In hindsight, the sabbers had been moving from almost before the first arrow arrived, but they did so without exclamation or alarm, leaving their prisoners in confusion.

For the second time in half a day Livira found herself being dragged this way and that, blind and terrified. It hurt more this time, for the ground beneath her lay thick with stones and ridges of rock slashed up through the hard-packed dust.

Screams rang out, shouts of pain and terror. Twice the guttural roar of a sabber shuddered through the air. In her extremity Livira managed to free both hands, proving Neera right: the rope had been an instruction to remain; the real cage had been the Dust.

An impact threw Livira to the ground and she curled up, shielding her head with both arms, waiting for the chaos to end.

The dust thinned. The screams became fewer and more scattered. And in time a rough hand knotted in the back of Livira’s shift, hauling her to her feet. She blinked and spat, struggling to make sense of the scene before her through hazy air reddened by the remaining corner of the sun.

Children sat here and there, throwing long shadows to the east. Five were still bound to the main rope, Selly among them, face down in the dirt, the crimson arrowhead pointing skyward. Several others huddled close by. Uniformed men stalked here and there, sabres in their hands. The one who had pulled Livira from the ground dusted his hand off against his breastplate and took in the scene. He towered over her, broad-chested, his gleaming brass helm slightly askew and trailing a dusty plume. It was his bristling beard that Livira’s eyes fixed on rather than his armour. The settler men rarely wore beards—dust traps, they called them.

“You’re from the city,” Livira said.

The man ignored her and strode away.

Neera sat two places up from the dead girl, still tied to the rope, coughing. Katrin had freed herself and edged silently towards Livira until the two of them were shoulder to shoulder. The girl might not be clever but she was always kind. Too kind to see what she’d seen today. Livira could feel her trembling.

As the dust cleared completely the soldiers cut the remaining children free. They stepped around Selly as if she weren’t there, refusing to see what they’d done. There were twenty men in all, half a dozen bearing wounds. One had a broken arm, another bore three deep, bloody furrows running from forehead to chin, carved by a sabber’s claws. Beneath the dirt their jackets were a bright red, more vivid than any cloth Livira had ever seen. The colour of fresh blood.

The soldiers lined the children up, ignoring questions or complaints, and marched them off into the dusk. They abandoned Selly still face down where she’d fallen, still tied to the rope.

“We can’t leave her.” Katrin tried to go back. “Her mother—”

Livira caught her friend’s arm. “She’s dead.” She didn’t know if she meant just Selly or her mother too. “Come. On.” She tried to drag Katrin after the soldiers, though it wasn’t until Neera lent her strength to the effort that the girl surrendered and the sobs that she’d been holding in came bursting out: ugly and startlingly loud.

Livira glanced back one more time at Selly, sprawled over the snaking length of rope. Katrin’s grief shamed her. She wanted to feel as broken by the girl’s death, but so much else filled her mind: fear for herself of course, but more than that—questions.

The rope was gone but apart from that Livira wasn’t sure their situation had improved. She wasn’t even entirely sure that the soldiers were less likely to eat them than the sabbers had been.

The bearded man seemed to be in charge. He was the only one with a breastplate and a helmet. He led the way into a gully about a quarter of a mile from the ambush. Here a score of dusty horses stood with their heads down. Livira could make out few details in the gloom but she’d heard enough stories to know a horse when she saw one.

Neera coughed her dry cough then asked in a parched whisper, “Are we going to ride home?”

Livira wasn’t hopeful. She didn’t know where their home was or how to describe the location. The idea that she might one day find herself so far from the settlement as to not know the way back had occurred to her before. The idea that she might be eager to return never had. Among the many ways she had dreamed of leaving her home and escaping into the wideness of the world, none had been as sudden, violent, real, and final as this.

The captain and his men mounted up. Livira found their conversation hard to follow. They employed the same words she used herself, not the sabbers’ wholly new supply, but barked them out with such hard edges and strange emphasis that it stole away the meaning. From what she gathered, the captain was taking his soldiers to hunt down more sabber raiders. He ordered three of his men to stay with the children and take them... somewhere. Wherever the somewhere was it didn’t sound like home. Livira got the impression that she and the others were an unwelcome discovery and that if the initial volley of arrows had killed them all, not just little Selly, then the captain would not have been too displeased.

The men chosen to stay were the two most badly wounded, plus the soldier with the clawed face. The ones mounting to depart gave this last man all manner of nods and cheers as they moved past, several clapping him on the back. Why so much respect should be aimed his way Livira couldn’t tell, but she saw that it ran deeper than simple good will—there was an undercurrent to it, something between admiration and fear. None of those slapping at his shoulder let their hands linger. For his part the man just spat and shook his head.

The captain and his men rode off into the plains and the sun fell behind the hills, sealing the soldiers from sight. Livira would have warned them against riding the Dust at night. It was flat enough that their horses wouldn’t lame themselves, but fear of breaking an ankle wasn’t what kept the settlers in their homes after dark. Perhaps night terrors ran from men and horses and swords and bows. Or perhaps the night would stand its ground and make a fight of it.

“Where are you taking us?” Livira asked the clawed soldier. Of the three men left behind he was the shortest, though of solid build and bristling with a restless energy. His uniform was also the dirtiest and most torn of any of them. “Where are we going?” She spoke slowly and clearly in case her words were as odd to him as his to her.

He looked up from sharpening his sword, one of the thin curving blades that cavalry used, at least in the stories. “One thing I hate more than children...” Even in the dark his wounds looked ugly. They were deep and, Livira imagined, very painful. “...is fucking mouthy children.”

“But wh—”

“Oh fuck my luck. Mouthy and fucking stupid. The city. You’ll be allocated there.”

“We’re thirsty.” Livira had heard swearing before but never quite so much of it in quite such a small space of time. Still, words were just words, and she’d had never been so dry.

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