Blood of the Steppe
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Chapter IX: Blood of the Steppe

 

The gunfire was further off than we thought it was, and after the first few minutes of running, we both slowed down to a quick walk. We were both armed, me with my saber and Ironseed with a small pistol of a unique design, but if there was something serious going on, I could see it in her eyes that she was about as confident as I was in our ability to do something. 

The first round that we heard wasn’t the last of the gunfire, though it became much more sporadic after that. The occasional snap of a gunshot going off was more than enough to keep the two of us pointed in the right direction. Though the terrain was flat compared to Bluerose, it wasn’t completely flat, with enough rolling hills to break up the grain fields and our lines of sight. After a few hurried whispers, we kept to the low areas; better to risk being seen by someone cresting the nearest hill than to make ourselves visible for miles. 

The sounds of shooting became louder and more infrequent, driving us to speed up a little, to a jog from a quick walk. Ironseed looked tired already, which probably said more about her health than mine, considering I could keep going at that pace all day. Fear of what was coming, of blood and death and chaos, dragged me down more than any amount of exhaustion could have, and I found myself purposefully trailing behind Ironseed a few times. Each time I noticed it, I broke into a sprint for just long enough to end up in front again. Just to be safe.

We arrived at the scene of carnage without warning. The two of us circled around the hill at about the same time, the hillside pulling back like a curtain on a horrible tableau. 

The first thing that hit me was the blood. The whole valley smelled like blood; there was blood on the ground, blood soaked into the foliage, pools and droplets and stains of blood. It could have been Regan Leyrender’s blood, for all I knew. Bodies, too, and those were even worse if such a thing is possible, scattered in a rough circle, pale and hairless corpses with huge chunks torn out of them, limbs sliced off, chests opened and quarried out. Ghouls, I realized, almost all of them, though there were a few larger, hairier bodies mixed in. 

The battle was over, and the winning side was rather clear. There were about twenty Durkahns around, all clad in the flamboyant outfits of soldiers. Some of them were injured, but no more than a handful, the rest either settling down to rest, or else… dismembering the remains. One or two quick cuts to sever the neck, a kick to make sure it stayed apart, and on to the next corpse. 

Dr. Ironseed looked faintly perturbed, going a little pale and pressing her lips together in a grim mask. Nausea ran over me in a wave, cold and hot at the same time, memories of all too similar scenes flashing behind my eyes. Green ring on a pale hand, smell of antiseptic. Lady Halflance executed that poor Mechanodrone girl a hundred times right in front of me. 

I fell onto my hands and knees, desperately trying to vomit the hot acid in my chest out onto the ground, but managing only a few pathetic retches. Shivers ran up and down my spine, my arms quivering, my head feeling like it was going to split open. It was a battle, people die in battles, both sides were prepared warriors. That justification rang hollow in front of the overwhelming smell of blood. 

Ironseed was down next to me, though I wasn’t sure how or when. “What’s going on?”

I took a few moments to stop hyperventilating. “Blood. Don’t do well with blood.”

“Neither do I, though it’s never been quite as bad as this,” she said with a nod. 

One of the Durkahni soldiers approached the two of us, wrapping a bandage around her arm. “What are you two doing here?”

I drew myself up onto my knees, trying to look past the dead and see the living. 

“We heard the gunshots,” said Dr. Ironseed, “and wanted to help. But I guess you took care of matters.”

“Meredith Ironseed! Have not seen much of you around, have I?” The very boisterous Dinara Murahnok shoved her way past the other soldiers and stuck out her hand at Dr. Ironseed. The mug she had been carrying in her other hand had been replaced by a sword. Standing right by her side was Sarnai, the soldier I’d met on the day of the opening ceremonies.

Dr. Ironseed smirked, Dinara taking her hand as she stood up. She quickly came to regret that choice, wincing visibly when subjected to Dinara’s tight grip. “Sorry, I’ve been focusing on other things. Studying the environment, devising low-impact survey methods, becoming acquainted with the cook staff, things like that.”

“A fan of the culinary arts?” said Dinara, still shaking Dr. Ironseed’s hand. “You know, I could show you quite a bit at my personal quarters. I kept all the best cooks for myself, hah!”

“I… might take you up on that. I’ve always said that —”

“Is now really the time?” I hissed, slowly remembering how to stand. “You can brownnose when we aren’t knee deep in the dead.”

Ironseed’s expression fell, while Dinara looked vaguely confused. “It’s just pest control, isn’t it?” asked the powerful leader of the Durkahn.  

“Not everyone has gotten as used to the unfortunate fact of violence as we have,” Ironseed said, finally extracting her hand from Dinara’s. 

“So what the hell happened here?” I asked.

Sarnai gave me a pointed glance, then gave the same to Dinara, who gave her a curt nod. “The chanter was hunting wild goat,” said Sarnai. “The accursed attacked from ambush, a powerful war band outnumbering us four to one. Even with our guns, we were in serious trouble.”

“I didn’t realize that there were ghouls up here,” I said.

“Ghouls?” said Sarnai.

“Ghouls?” said Dr. Ironseed. “I’ve never heard anyone call stonewose “ghouls” before.”

I squeezed my eyes shut out of annoyance. “Stonewose, accursed, ghouls, whatever. Is it a problem that eighty of them just showed up and tried to kill you all in the middle of important treaty negotiations? That sounds like it could lead to very bad things.”

Sarnai folded her arms, looking down at the bloody ground. “The accursed have become increasingly organized recently. Larger groups, more coordinated attacks, more captives as well. The record is that this happens every few decades, and it’s nothing that we can’t face.”

“Accursed and organized are not words that should be in the same sentence,” said Dinara, laughing uproariously. “She’s trying to turn this into one of her southern battles, where everyone forms up into neat lines on a map. Don’t listen to her.”

“I’m sorry, why should we not listen to her?” asked Ironseed.

Dinara closed with Ironseed, lowering her voice to what was meant to be a conspiratorial whisper, but was clearly loud enough to be heard by everyone. “She’s a mercenary, the daughter of mercenaries. More like your people than like ours, really. A lot of them are; good fighters but don’t understand a damn thing about how it works around here.”

Dr. Ironseed put on a blank mask, with only a hint of confusion showing through in her eyes. “I… see.”

“Just don’t mention it to her face or she’ll get set off like a gunpowder trail. Not pleasant to watch,” said Dinara. She gave Dr. Ironseed’s shoulder a heavy slap and went back to managing the wounded. 

Sarnai looked about as calm as I would have if I were in her situation. Her eyes were narrow, her arms clenched, and she was trying desperately to just shut up and move on with her life. The rest of the guards were roughly divided in half between those who were resignedly cleaning their rifles and dismembering ghouls, and those who were barely avoiding laughing along with Dinara.

“Chanter Murahnok?” Sarnai spoke slowly, loudly, and with force like she was trying to crush a rock between her jaws with each syllable.

Dinara turned around casually, as if she hadn’t just finished badmouthing Sarnai in front of everyone. “Yes, Sarnai?”

“If you’re not going to believe my assessment, as is your right, could I at least scout out the area to be certain that there are no others around? Organized or not, foreknowledge will be useful for your protection.”

“I don’t see why not,” Dinara said with a shrug. “Maybe you can find where the accursed have built their new steam-powered castle that makes dragons and machine muskets.”

A curt chuckle passed through Dinara’s section of the group, while the chanter pulled a clay bottle from her belt and drank deeply from it. Sarnai didn’t pay them any mind, and without hesitation started gathering whatever supplies she could find, looting them off of the dead guards or borrowing them off the living ones. 

I felt a little sorry for her, for obvious reasons. On top of that, I was not looking forward to having to finish repairing the navigator on the scout airship. “Can I go with you?” I said.

All eyes went to me in an instant, and I realized about a second too late how completely stupid I probably sounded. Sarnai was the only one who said anything. “Could you say that again?”

“I want to go with you,” I repeated. “I can fight fairly well, and unless the journey getting here was a complete fluke, I can tough it out in the wilderness as well. If there really are accursed out there, I don’t want you to be alone to get kidnapped and eaten.”

Sarnai shrugged. “Alright. We’re probably going to be out for all the rest of today, and maybe all of tomorrow as well, so you had best gather supplies for a hike.”

“Yeah, okay. Who wants to volunteer?”

As it turned out, several people. Apparently Dinara Murahnok’s goat hunts frequently lasted overnight, so most of the guards were already prepped for an overnight camping trip. Ironseed loaned me some of her food, one of the guards got me a bedroll, one of the others loaned me a clay water bottle, another her backpack, another her scarf for the cold, and so on and so forth over the next fifteen minutes or so. Ironseed also promised that she would finish repairing the navigator, and if asked, explain to Lady Halflance that I had gone off to do extremely important business for the Durkahns. 

Sarnai and I set off, alone, with her in the lead and me watching her back, in search of a band of flesh-eating raiders. We didn’t find anything on the first day, which made sense considering we only had a couple of hours of light left. I didn’t have any real experience with choosing the location of a campsite, and so let Sarnai choose. We ended up making camp on top of a hill, overlooking most of the Zrimash valley from the town itself and sleepy outlying farms in the west, to the ominous, rocky hills in the east.

I rolled out the two sleeping bags, both Durkahn-sized and stuffed with warm wool, while Sarnai sat in the middle and deconstructed a dead bush into a pile of sticks and twigs. There wasn’t much else for me to do but sit and wait for her to finish, so I decided to start up a conversation. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t do anything earlier, when Dinara and the others were —”

“It’s fine,” Sarnai snapped. “They’re being bastards, but it isn’t malicious. It’s just… the way things are.”

“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “It isn’t like there’s much you can do about that. But that doesn’t mean that you have to pretend it isn’t real.”

“You have experience on the topic?” Sarnai said, looking up from her woodcutting. 

“Not really,” I said. “I’m white and straight and cis, and my parents are both middle class people who lived in Chicago their whole lives. People made fun of me a little for being “spacey” and not being interested in girls, but that was just because I’m a weird person.” Even after getting thrown headlong into a new world, I had a lot left to learn back then.

“You have said a lot of things,” said Sarnai. “None of them make any sense to me.”

I shrugged. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t really have any experience with your exact issue, but I know what it’s like to be surrounded by people who love to make fun of you for whatever reason they have. I know how much that can hurt.”

“How did you solve the problem?”

“Uh. I uh, I guess I didn’t. I sort of retreated from people, especially after my sister… It doesn’t matter.” I stopped, covering my face with my hands. “Can you tell I’m not good at this?”

Sarnai made another chop with her small hand-axe, a second, a third, then tossed the last branch into the pile. She stood up, depositing what was left of that bush on the far side of the hilltop. When she returned, she started arranging the sticks into a proper fire. “I am starting to get an idea of your skill with words, yes.”

“I guess I’m just checking in,” I said “I don’t want you to have to go through all the same bullshit that I did. That I am, if I’m being honest. But I’m pretty sure you’re twice as old as me, so you probably don’t need to hear this.”

“How old are you?” Sarnai asked.

“Twenty-four.”

“Thirty.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It is okay,” said Sarnai. “I thought you were about fifteen, with how short you are, even for a human.”

“Hey! I’m not that short!” I said, folding my arms and accidentally pitching my voice up. 

“Of course,” she said. Sarnai pulled a small wooden splinter out of her pocket and placed it among the tinder. Then, a small stone. With the chipped edge of her axe, she made a spark, flint-and-steel style. My previous camping experience, both on Selene and on Earth, told me to expect a long wait; instead, the moment the spark touched that first splinter, it almost exploded into pale green flame, setting the entire campfire alight in a moment. 

We warmed up a couple of small meat pies over the fire, ate them in peace, and settled down for the night. I didn’t sleep too well, tossing and turning and thinking about my sister, my past, my parents, my first couple of days on Selene. Sleep came to me slowly, in fits and starts, gradually smothering my thoughts until I finally forgot how to think.

We awoke early the next morning to a foggy day and bitter cold in the air. Sarnai didn’t tolerate much in the way of slowness, but I was able to keep up, and not long after dawn, we were out. 

Now that we had more time, Sarnai started scouting for accursed in earnest. She had experience scouting for enemies, and the two of us adopted what she considered to be a standard zigzagging pattern. Our eyes were constantly on a swivel, scanning the most distant hilltops for any sign of movement. A couple of times we did see something, and for a while went silent and moved quickly, until we came close enough to realize it was just a small group of Durkahni farmers, or the like. 

That pattern of near-total monotony continued for better than half of the day, until a little after noon. That was when Sarnai noticed the plumes of black smoke. They couldn’t just be from fires or ovens; burning wood doesn’t produce that shade of oily, awful coal-black. We set off at a jogging pace, any quicker and we’d have collapsed before we reached the smoke, moving in a straight line through the narrow valleys that would impede our travel as little as possible.

We made it about a mile before Sarnai suddenly slowed down. 

“Why are we slowing down?” I asked.

“Two reasons. First, we don’t want anyone ahead to hear us coming. Much easier if we’re moving quickly.” She pointed up and in front of us. The black smoke had almost completely dissipated, leaving only a few wisps visible against the perfectly blue sky. “Second reason is that whatever danger is going on has almost certainly passed by now.”

“Do you think it’s the accursed?” I whispered, despite there being little reason to do so.

“Yes. I’ve heard stories of them using toxic smoke to stun their targets. That is likely what we saw.”

I don’t think Sarnai noticed, but there was a slight stutter in my step. A slight bit of fear as the memory of the ghoul attack on the train car shot back into me. Toxic smoke, surrounding and choking me, was an idea out of my worst nightmares, and it was about to become real. I rested my hand on the hilt of my saber, and rushed to catch up with Sarnai. 

The site of the carnage was a small outpost, not really large enough to qualify as a village, a cluster of buildings built around a well and used by wandering merchants and herders to stop and refresh themselves. At least, it had been. 

We slipped through a stand of thin-bladed prairie grass and crouched behind a worn-down stable. For a moment we waited, listening out for any survivors on either side. Total and utter silence. For nearly a minute we waited, ears straining for any sign of movement or life. When we were still left disappointed, I decided to throw caution to the wind and walk out into the middle of the outpost. 

You could almost be convinced that the inhabitants of the outpost had simply decided to stand up from what they were doing and walk off into the grasslands. The buildings were ramshackle and dirty, but from age and use rather than deliberate damage. There were no bullet holes in any of them, nor had anything been set on fire. The only evidence of anything bad happening at all were the bodies. 

There were eight of them. Maybe nine. Didn’t feel like getting a consistent count. All Durkahns. They had died of violence; broken skulls and crushed ribcages and snapped necks. Very little blood; after all, ghouls weren’t big fans of overly-lethal weapons. They’d been able to fight back, most of them at least. A few had knives out, a few more swords, one had a broken piece of wood to use as a club, and so on. 

The nausea hit like a wave, the flashbacks I’d had a thousand times before but were becoming far too common of late. I weathered it, wishing that I was able to remember half of the things my therapist had said about dealing with them. But I didn’t fall to the ground, I didn’t throw up, I didn’t even really cry. I just stood there, feeling sick to my stomach.

Sarnai moved slowly, as if I wouldn’t notice her coming up behind me to rest her hand on my shoulder and offer platitudes. “It gets easier,” she said, resting her hand on my shoulder. 

“Is this everyone? Are they all dead?” I couldn’t summon the energy to raise my voice above a hoarse whisper. 

“No. I’ve been here before. There are usually at least twice this number around, often more.”

I looked up at her, the world suddenly turning very misty. “So the rest have been… taken?”

“Most likely,” she said, her eyes scanning the outpost.

“Fuck. Fuck. What do we do, then? Are we going to go after them?” I clenched my hand on the hilt of my saber, supporting my weight on the idea of the blade. 

“Just the two of us?” said Sarnai. “That would be suicide. Besides, given how you’re reacting to this… I doubt a serious attack would be good for your psyche.”

I grinned mirthlessly. “Thanks for letting me down easy.”

“We still need to search the area for any clues about where they might have come from, or where they might have gone.” Sarnai paused. “Assuming you’re up to the task.”

“I think I am,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut to banish the images floating in front of them. 

There wasn’t much territory to search, less than half the area of a soccer field, and most of it was empty. I was never very good at searching anyway, which is why when I stumbled across a pile of bones in a small grassy clearing, I was caught completely by surprise. 

They were Durkahni bones, judging by the horns, and still mostly arranged in the shape they would have been in life. A couple of them had been misplaced, and both of the thigh-bones (or whatever they’re called) had been split open. The bones had been cleanly stripped of flesh, leaving only a few short scraps behind, and it hadn’t been done by animals. 

There were things marked in the ground around the bones, concentric circles scratched into hard earth, with a blade of some kind, and marked with perpendicular scratch marks in an odd and uneven pattern. Right by the head of the skeleton, laid precisely enough on the scratch in the dirt that it could have only ended up there on purpose, was a single rounded stone, dark blue lapis lazuli or something similar. 

I circled this odd little scene, trying to pick up on any non-obvious details. Bones didn’t make me sick in the same way that bodies did, even with the little red bits still stuck to them. Looks more like a dead thing than a formerly living one, though dead things are still a little unnerving. The unnerving sensation, the subtle tension in my spine and jaw, wasn’t helped by the fact that someone had decided to mark this one, with carved marks and a single blue stone. 

Finally, I remembered that a world existed outside of me and this body. “Sarnai! Come take a look at this, would you?”

Sarnai hurried over to my side, wincing when she saw the contents of the little clearing in the bushes. “Are you going to be alright?” was the first thing she said. 

“I’m fine,” I said, still looking at the skeleton. “What exactly happened here?”

“Field-stripping,” she said. She sounded more disappointed than angry. “The accursed can only eat fresh meat, so all those killed here are useless to the tribe. But the hunters still need meat for themselves.”

“And the markings?”

Sarnai shrugged. “No idea. Reminds me of the end of Dinara’s goat hunts. Offer up part of the kill to the gods, and so on.”

I sighed, trying to tear my eyes away from it. I couldn’t. “Did you find anything?”

“I did,” said Sarnai. “We have enough of an idea of what the accursed have been up to. Just the fact that they’ve decided to raze this outpost is enough information; that they’re raiding outposts at all, that they selected this one over all the others, and so on. We can go back to the treaty grounds now.”

I didn’t waste any time leaving, picking a direction that felt like it would lead me back to the treaty grounds and walking off that way. I was about done with death, and exploring, and anything exciting at all, and just wanted to be back at the little cabin with Anna and Unity, maybe repairing some minor mechanical device. Sarnai gave me a minute on my own before catching up to inform me that I was walking directly away from the treaty grounds. 

We hadn’t gone that far from the treaty grounds, as it turned out, and the trip was much quicker moving in a straight line than it had been zigzagging across the hills. Sarnai and I talked very little over the trip, and when we did talk it was about anything but that ruined outpost. She asked me a little bit about what was going on in Bluerose, I asked her if she had any hobbies besides doing what Dinara told her to do (the answer was flute playing), she told a story about how Dinara nearly caused a diplomatic incident due to a drunken bet, and so on and so forth. 

Neither of us realized something was off until we reached the edge of the treaty grounds and saw everyone, or nearly everyone, waiting in a huge crowd at the edge of the grounds. Before I could ask anyone what was going on, someone broke from the crowd and sprinted out to meet Sarnai and me. 

Anna threw her arms open and pulled me into a surprisingly powerful hug. I returned it, with irritation. “Anna? What’s going on?”

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Anna said, relinquishing her viselike hold. “We might need you to pull off another one of your ball escapades.”

“Wait, what? What ball? You need me to accuse someone of a crime?”

Anna looked directly into my eyes. “There’s something in the treaty grounds. A beast of some kind, from what I’ve heard. It’s been attacking anyone it can see.”

I looked over Anna’s shoulder into the treaty grounds. Nothing looked amiss, but it suddenly felt very wrong for that. “You mean a wild animal?”

“I don’t know,” Anna said, her voice going shrill with panic. “I didn’t see it. But… Halflance isn’t here. Lady Halflance is still in there with it, and I’m starting to think she might be in danger.”

I took a step back, quickly scanning the crowd. Sir Margaret was there, apparently trying to organize the Bluerose guards, as was Burnardor and all three of the Durkahni chanters. Halflance was not. 

There was still a revolver at my side, loaded, and a saber on my belt, sharpened. I gave Anna a curt nod, and without any further ado, dashed off into the treaty grounds.

Sorry for the chapter delay! I'll try not to forget to upload a chapter like this again. Anyway, thank you all so much for reading the chapter, and I hope you all enjoyed it! Remember to favorite, leave comments, leave a rating or a review if you haven’t already, because those are the things that motivate me to keep writing more and keep writing well! If you want to support the author, read several chapters ahead in all of my stories, as well as gain access to a discord community where you can speak to me personally and read several exclusive short stories, subscribe to my Patreon at patreon.com/saffrondragon

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