Page 18 of Red Demon
The ritual of packing up and moving on wasn’t as comforting as it used to be, when I’d planned to travel no farther than the North Barrack. Even though it was less than a day’s travel, there was no point now. I’d run into those soldiers in Nunbiren. Why lay out my entire story to them, if they are just going to lie to me about what’s really going on? Yet hopping on a ship to another island felt like running away, when now more than ever I wanted a path that would lead me to putting a sword through the Red Demon’s heart.
East would do, to Noé’s capital in Uyr Elderven. I knew there were other Chaeten settlements on the east side of Noé on my map, and it seems there’d been no attacks in that direction. Hoisting my bag, I slipped into the pre-dawn gloom, the forest whispering amid the pale green of early spring.
I stalked like a shadow, a refined habit by now, my path taking me closer to the clearing where I’d seen Asher and Galen train yesterday. Dawn still hadn’t broken the horizon before I sketched together a plan. Well, maybe not a plan: a stupid last-resort for someone with nothing else to lose.
The frosted ground packed firm under my boots, and I was grateful I didn’t have to worry much about tracks. I got my knife and rope out of my bag before hiding it behind a log, layering on the usual brush and dried leaves. Then I found my tree: an ancient oak with thick branches overhanging the training area. Using my rope and knife, I shimmied up high above the clearing and waited. I shifted close to the trunk, hiding as much of my body as I could.
My skin warmed to the glow of the rising sun before I heard them. There was a chance I could prove myself, but this was the riskiest part of the plan. When they were on the far side of the clearing coming my way, they’d be most likely to spot me, not when I was right above. Iden was the brother who’d taught me to ambush, teaching me that people—namely, our siblings—don’t look straight up in a forest as often as you’d think.
No one called out a warning as the militia entered the clearing. I heard a thud as the bag of weapons dropped under me, a five meter drop to the ground, maybe six. I waited until their chattering voices were all assembled beneath me; then I shifted my weight to look.
Asher laughed at a girl next to him, dark-skinned with fitted blue armor and auburn braids wound tight to her head. She gave him a wry smile, turning back to the broad-chested boy behind them with long brown hair: their camaraderie feeling so familiar and foreign all at once.
Dawn stained the mist-shrouded clearing with a pale gold as Galen called the militia to order. They spread out with an arrangement of weapons as he walked to the center of the clearing, every exhale seeming to carry the heat of his forge and the weight of command.
“Meragc,” Galen boomed, then nodded up at a tall muscular Asri man, sporting short dark hair and pale skin. “Remind us why we are here.”
A low murmur rippled through the group.
“Weapon testing is important for your forge’s quality control, na?” Meragc said in sarcastic Chaeten. I recognized his dark hair as the man I saw sparring with Asher before, and I could now make out his bright blue and yellow-ringed eyes.
Galen snorted, a sound like molten metal hissing against water. “I didn’t say the Z’har were asking. You’re saying you want a pep talk, Meragc?”
A few cheers, including Asher. The girl in the blue armor huffed beside him. A woman clapped, one with long dusky blond braids tied behind her head.
Galen gestured for silence. “What language does the Goddess speak? And her Z’har? Not Chaeten. Not Asri.”
“Power!” Meragc and the others called back the word in unison. With that, Galen unsheathed his sword and practiced a series of quick thrusts and turns, clean and powerful. I drank in every move. The man knew what he was doing.
“We can speak that language too, but it is not enough. We live by the code of our ancestors. We live by Niire Mai. There can be no clean justice from an explosion from the void, not a—”
Between my vocabulary limitations and a gust of wind, I couldn’t catch the rest, but the small crowd groaned in disgust, then cheered.
“We believe what, Ruan?” Galen said.
Ruan, the dark-skinned girl beside Asher, stepped forward. She looked about my age, even if that blue armor was the suit of a mature warrior. “If the demon must die, look them in the eye!”
Galen worked the crowd, his dark eyes sparkling. “Let’s repeat that together.”
“If the demon must die, look them in the eye!” They chanted it a couple more times, louder each time.
I knew what demon sprang to mind for me, but I also knew that a century ago, the Attiq-ka went to war over their belief that no Chaeten was human. To those Asri that fought with them, all it took to label me a demon was the rabbit I had for dinner last night. Asher couldn’t possibly believe that, so I focused on the demon I knew. I wanted to look the Red Demon in the eye like Galen said. I wanted her helpless at my feet, repentant. I needed her to feel every bit of pain she ever inflicted before I finished her, and I wanted both the strength and the patience to deliver it. If the intensity of that desire made me a demon, a sa, by Asri standards: fine. She deserved that.
“Atalia, show us the fourth form, the best you remember,” Galen said, his booming voice echoing between the trees.
Atalia, the woman with the dusky gold braids, appeared ten or fifteen years my senior, pale-skinned with dark, Asri-ringed eyes. She spun her sword before she began, letting it glint in her hands. She repeated the form’s movements, halting near the end and following it up with a grunt. Galen repeated the form with a smooth combination of sweeps and upper body attacks added to the end. Atalia mirrored, picking up the remaining movements on the second try.
“Good. Pair off with Ruan and show her. Meragc, work with Plato and I’ll show Ash and Tamon. After you have it down, work out the best attack to meet that, the mirror to the form. Last, we’ll finish with an open-form spar.”
Ruan’s gaze scanned up to my perch as she walked across the field with Atalia. I held my breath, knowing better than to move, to make myself easier to see.
She looked away.
The clearing erupted in a whirlwind of movement as each pair practiced the form together. As I lay on my branch to watch, a mix of emotions churned within me. Admiration for their skill, envy for their friendships, a twinge of fear for the real possibility that I was about to get my dumb ass killed. They clearly had—in each other—a reason to live. I didn’t have many reasons left.
My fingers tightened around the rough bark of the oak. I’d gotten the measure of them, so it was time to get this over with. But I couldn’t help from doing Galen’s assignment in my head, the part where I decided how best to parry and challenge the sequence of moves he demonstrated. I stalled a few minutes more as dawn continued its climb.
I couldn’t delay any longer. Galen moved into position, sword in hand, below the place where I perched like a spider. I took a deep breath, then launched.
