The Settled Dust, Part 24

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

Dusk had nearly surrendered to night, the passing merchants and masterless warriors only blots of ink upon the dimness. The town was quiet now, those who could consolidate power having done so, those whose best chance lay down a dusty track already absent.

A woman and a boy stood beside their camels as the light failed, stuffing the last of their provisions into their saddle bags. The woman reached with her unbandaged hand, touching the boy's cheek, bringing his face against her side for a moment. Just as quickly, this small gesture was broken, this token of affection passed into the stream of moments.

"We should ride straight through until the dawn," the woman said. "Our tasks are done here."

"Where will we go?" Haike watched her, standing in the way he had, that unaccountable stillness.

She gave a slight smile. "There is a place. I know it well, and I am its mistress, now that my own master has gone away. We could go there, if you wish. It is near the mountains. There is snow in the winter, and summer days are fresh and pleasant."

"Does it lie where the road ends, where the wilderness begins?"

She nodded. "It does. Does that suit you?"

"We will go there. For a time. There is another place I must visit again. You know where."

"That road is one you must walk alone, Haike. No one could follow you there, into the lair of the Dolgurs. I'm not ready to be without you yet."

"Don't fear, Mistress. I won't leave you alone until we're both ready. There is yet healing and learning to do."

"The wisdom to know yourself unready means that...I will not have as much to teach as my own master did."

"I've had rare opportunities, that is all."

"No. You are the rare thing. The opportunities were forced to manifest by your very nature. If you believe anything I say, believe that."

Haike turned his eyes away, looking back at Mima, who watched from the periphery, tears standing in her eyes. "I believe everything you tell me, Mistress. As much as I'm capable of such things, anyway." He turned toward her again. "We'll take Mima with us when we go."

The woman furrowed her brow. "Will we?"

"She was our only friend in a bad situation. We shouldn't leave that debt unpaid. In any case, she knows more than she should, and I don't have the stomach to kill her."

"You wish to go with us, Mima? The road will not be easy, and we are not kindly folk," the woman asked. Though bruised, scarred, and battered, her beauty was undiminished, the command of her dark eyes as solid as stone.

"I've never belonged anywhere, Sorcereress. With you, I feel as if for once I've done something important. Please, allow me to come with you. I'm not fragile. I don't need pampering. If not...if you must slay me for the secrets I've learned, at least I will die avenged."

The woman sighed. "We won't kill you, Mima. For our people, there have always been two, a master and an apprentice. These are unusual circumstances. We will try three." She handed a bag of coins to Haike. "Go buy another camel."

*****

In the dark, the road was a bright ribbon through nothingness. The quiet step of three camels was but a whisper, the dust of the day settled. Unheralded they went, and the night swallowed them up, the whisper of their fell deeds already dying upon the wind.

Through fire we came
the pain we carried equal
to that we dispensed

All that came before
ends tonight, without glory
the deed itself stands

Now rises the road
empty before us, trackless
whispering of hope

The End

The Settled Dust, Part Twenty-Three

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

No wheel may hold true when its hub is blasted away. The shattered ends of spokes grind together like white and visible shin bones, sundered parts where a whole thing once existed. The hub, unsupported, sags and wanders a moment before succumbing to the pull of the dust.

In this way, the fortress failed. Panic turned to anger, anger to distrust. Petty disputes and unspoken ambitions kindled aflame without the benefit of leadership. Soon, the shouting from the compound grew into a roaring, and what blood had been spared the previous night was spilled in the haze of afternoon. In the muddy aftermath of the deluge, the streets were scattered with dead warriors, badly planted crops doomed to never grow.

Haike peered down from the peak of the fortress roof as all hands turned against all others. Only now did he understand how deep their cut went, how utter their destruction of the warlord's realm had been. He would not forget this wisdom. In true works of carnage, the bloodletting did not cease with the initial act, but persisted, every wound festered, everyone nearby consumed in the agony of the deed.

He lay back, the uneven tiles below him, the cold dampness of his clothes hanging against his tortured skin, a pit of hunger and thirst blooming like wild roses at his midsection. One after another, he flexed his muscles, moved his joints, tested his energy. Weak, still in great discomfort, he was not dead, not doomed. He had allowed himself to be swept away on the currents of despair before. That would stop. Though he was bereft now, he would live somehow. Perhaps Mima, the scullery woman, was still within his reach. If not, he would go on alone.

On one rough, ill-layed course of stonework, Haike placed his hopes. His body had only just the reserves of energy to try such a decent, his fingers and feet still torn. As he climbed down the low corner of the fortress, blood seeped from beneath his blackened fingernails, and he could feel the last of the skin peel away from the inside of his feet. His jaw clenched so hard that his face peeled in a rictus of pain. The climb seemed to take an eternity, a whole lifetime of difficulty.

The foot that finally touched the ground was like an old man's foot, the slow trudge Haike was capable of, an old man's step. In a city with its heart cut away, no one cared to notice one dishevelled and bruised boy. They didn't look into the uncanny iron of his eyes, didn't examine the slow drip of blood from his tortured fingers.

All the solid things had become permeable, all surety turned to doubt. Perhaps some other group of thugs and warriors would take over where the warlord's men had been. Perhaps the place would be lawless and wild, falling prey to bandits and other hazards. Without the brutal core of hatred and steel, the city could simply fade, becoming a ruin.

Haike, barely able to supress a groan with each footfall, knew that he would not be here to witness what came next. None would know his hand in things. He stopped, holding himself up only by leaning a shoulder against a rough wall. An ox cart came by, splashing mud on him. He was all but invisible, and that...was good. Knowing his own story was enough.

Perhaps he had once hoped for wide-flung glory, but that was before wisdom had arrived. Glory is an obstacle, a difficulty to be avoided. Only the quick and unknown hand can write such terrible verses in the book of years. The full weight of what it meant to be of the Ghost Society now came to rest upon him, a dark bird with a great beak and silent wings.

"Close now. Not far," he told himself. A hurried merchant bumped into him and nearly knocked him down. Haike didn't feel confident that he could have pried himself from the earth. He walked on, ignoring the merchant's fevered spate of insults and rude gestures. He was frightened, and frightened dogs bark. Even out of the corner of his eye, Haike knew he wouldn't act.

Close now.

A whole town may die
curled around deepened wounds
all backbones broken

The awful courage
of the living, this burden
this road of cinders

I renounce glory
given instead the power
of silent doom
*****

Haike stood before the door, just breathing, trying not to think of anything. Had the crushing fatigue not hung on his neck like a ship's anchor, the worry would likely have been a greater, stronger thing. As it was, he sighed, pushing in.

Mima. She sat on the low sleeping mat, her head cradled on her chest. She blinked at him, shaking herself.

"You...you're..." She leapt to him, gathering him in her arms, lifting his feet clear of the floor. "You lived. You lived." She said this many times, as if she couldn't believe it.

Mima sat him down in the single chair, kneeling at his side. She took stock of his condition, cataloging all his hurts and gently squeezing his limbs to search for those she couldn't see. For a moment, this brought a pang of rembrance for his own mother, long since slain and gone to the Coriyat.

"Do I dare ask you what you did up there, how you contrived to escape, what horrors you've seen?"

He shook his head. Her dark eyes couldn't hold his gaze. "If only my mistress could have lived," he mused.

"Oh, but...she did!"

"She..." Haike tried to rise, but once seated, his legs wouldn't hold him. He nearly toppled to the uneven floor.

Mima caught him, helping him back down. "She's resting in the next room, hurt but alive. She found me, and I brought her here."

"I have to go to her." Haike's small chin grew obdurate, his pale eyes flashing out of his exhausted, filthy brow.

"You have to get out of these muddy clothes, get a hot bath and a meal in your stomach. There are hurts that need binding. Let me help you, Haike. Your mistress is resting. If the sun falls a bit further toward the horizon, it will make no difference."

A knot within his chest that he hadn't been aware of suddenly loosened, the last strength of his limbs ebbing away. The room pinwheeled around him, and Haike could only sit very still, holding tight to the chair. For a time, he was only dimly aware of his surroundings, only half alive.

From within a world of shadows, he could hardly feel his body move. Mima coaxed his ruined clothes from him, scrubbed the worst of the soot from his body, helped him eat a small dish of cold gruel.

"I...want to be with...my mistress," he whispered.

Witness my return
delivered out of Hades
torn but unbroken

Debts I paid in blood
hopes once renounced now kindle
a light in the dim
*****

Valila floated in the deep, cold water, and there was no direction upward, no surface to swim toward. Something held her, something made of many slim arms, some great, warm mouth against her back, and she felt herself go limp, pulled ever further from the light. She let her air go, and drowning was a comfort. In death, the mouth of the leviathan felt like a warm body, embracing her gently. Its breath touched her neck, and the unanswerable questions were revealed to her. Through the darkness, the cargo of her soul rode into the Coriyat in the teeth of the great dragon.

She didn't know what to make of this knowledge. It changed nothing. Perhaps there were no answers that would act as panacea to the woe of the living world, only going into the tornado of souls and becoming nothing. In the end, realizing that there was no great wisdom to be learned--that lesson was all she had really taken away from her life.

But why did she feel warm? Why did relief come like a clean wind from off a mountain lake, seeping into her as if she were a wide leaf with raindrops still lingering from the morning rain? Why, alone with the leviathan and hurtling across the unknown void between flesh and spirit, did she feel as if he was with her again?

Her eyes opened, and she returned from the deeps, from death, from the in-between numbness of dreams. A real hand against her hip, a real body against her back, a real face tucked against her neck and breathing steadily in slumber.

He lived. She lived. They were together after all, and against all reason. Those tears she had long scorned returned again, this time in joy.

In the dragon's teeth
I go to become nothing
having never learned

I am born once more
the daylight world returning
at his small hand's touch

The Settled Dust, Part Twenty-Two

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

Valila's breath came rough and desperate. She put out her hand, steadying herself against the door frame. She'd just killed three more warriors, but she was cut and bleeding freely from her shoulder, her ribs, her thigh. The light lulled and guttered in her vision. So tired, so hopeless. She had lost him. Only her own life remained, and that prize had never seemed so cheap as now.

A shout, the rush of some missile turning in the air. Sudden pain. She looked to her off hand, now pinned to the wooden door frame by a slim dagger that pierced through the center of her palm.

Running footfalls, coming ever closer. She gripped the knife's handle, wrenching it from the wood. Blinding agony, then the turn, pressing her back to the wall. Valila ducked, and the stone wall scored with the impact of the heavy mace where her head had been.

A sudden surge as her attacker suffered the mindless overswing of his heavy weapon. His eyes, suddenly wide as the blade tore through his skin, his liver, his lung.

The strength withered within his eyes. He asked a question in blood, and the language of his own decent to the floor answered. Valila, cupping her pierced hand close against her chest, faded away and down into the dimness of the cellars.

Winter of failed dreams
icy winds blow across me
in wordless lament

In blood I escape
turning from the reeling fight
a backward dawning
*****

Valila staggered, the effort to lift her feet and take another step all she could manage. Down in the cellars, the servants cut her a wide berth, in no mood to tempt a bleeding warrior who yet carried a crimson blade. Never mind that she was lost now, without the strength to do them any harm.

She came to the doorway of the storage room. A woman's strong hands grabbed her. Valila gazed at the woman's face, ruined by beatings on the one side, her beauty robbed by hardened knuckles of mean men. She felt that she should remember this woman, but couldn't.

"Where is he? Where is the boy assassin?" the woman asked.

Valila's head hung on her neck, she felt the darkness rise from the floor like clawed shadows, pulling at her, stealing the last pale vestiges of her strength. She no longer cared enough to stop her tears. "He's gone. He came to save me, damn him, and he's gone," she whispered.

"Then we'll have to go without him, sorceress, and we'll hope that he died in a way he thought worthy. Though he was but a boy, he was mightier than anyone I've ever met, perhaps too much for this faded world."

Valila could only sag against the wall, losing blood and tears, broken.

The woman hoisted up the weapons and got her shoulder under Valila's arm. She leaned on her, and no one they passed dared to look long upon their faces. Through the kitchen, and out into the dusty allyway behind the fortress they went. A cook was slaughtering chickens and did not look up from the chopping block as they went by.

Valila could no longer isolate the movement of her leaden body, picking out her own footfalls. The woman held her up, keeping her going. Finally, she was dimly aware of being dragged, heels scuffing in the dirt and over rough stones.

When she dreamed, she pictured Haike, pierced with arrows, hacked apart, his small body destroyed by the implements of war. Even so, his eyes, those pale orbs that held such quiet strength, continued to regard her. There was no damnation, no blame, only the stolid regard that even after death would not be broken. At last, he opened his mouth, but his voice spoke only the grumpy complaint of a footsore camel. Utter dark took her, and she lingered in oblivion.

Wither goest thou?
these empty, wounded questions
this aching regret

She who has been least
gives her shoulder unto death
and becomes mighty

As leaves, he's fallen
speaking in a beast's language
consumed by the fray
*****

Heat and smoke burned his lungs. His eyes stung, nearly swollen shut against the assault of the wet wood fire. Haike's hands, arms, knees, and lower legs were abraded to the flesh, and every upward inch cost him wicked torment. The ascent had long since lost its grander meaning. This was no longer a chimney, but a wicked tunnel into some unimaginably horrid afterworld.

Blind, choking, diminished by agony, he kept on. When his hands closed over the lip of the chimney, he scarcely understood that the trial was at last at an end. He swung a leg over, finally collapsing on the tiled roof of the fortress.

Each time he coughed, the contraction of his body sent a shiver of dull fire through his bone and muscle. Blood filled his mouth, his windpipe tortured and torn, his lungs ablaze. Haike tried to rise, but his body wouldn't respond. It had given all it could. No discipline of the mind could make it rise and go further.

Out of his one eye that had not swollen utterly shut, he watched the dim lamp of the sun behind iron clouds. His whole body was blackened with the sharp pitch of creosote, and every place it coated a scrape or wound, the pain radiated outward like poison in his flesh. He wondered if the escape had only been an empty gesture, if he would sicken and die up here, unknown to anyone. Had he forgone the sudden and irrevocable death of battle for a slow and fevered passing, his flesh torn away by the carrion birds, his bones adorning a roof where no man would walk?

He lay there, the pain too great to simply fade into sleep. Sometimes shouts drifted to him from the residents of the fortress, but they were weak, distant, and meant nothing now. The darkness of the clouds grew ever deeper, and a chill rain drizzled down on him.

Shivering, Haike held close to the slight warmth of the chimney. The rain fell freely now, huge drops pelting him, small rivulets running beneath him on the roof. He let rain fall into his mouth, but the pain of swallowing was so sharp that he could bear to do it only a few times.

After the first eternity of smoke and fire, this second of chill water and swirling wind threatened every fiber of Haike's being. Echoing vaults of madness opened within him. For a time, his fondest hope was gaining enough strength to crawl to the edge and throw himself from the roof. The pavement below, he knew, could save him from the trial. It was the only thing capable of such a feat. The strength was gone, though. There was nothing.

Haike, still clinging to the chimney, fell into himself, into a deep black cauldron of hopeless pain.

Upward into hell
this agonized ascension
this road of the torn
*****

She swam upward from the depths of a maddening well. Opening her eyes in the shadowed confines of the caravansarie room ranked among her most difficult trials. The spirit within Valila was dead. Only the dumb urge for continuance made her heart beat, her chest rise, her fingers twitch.

Her limbs were all attached. Dull pain coursed through her from all quarters, but her body had been adaquately bandaged. She sensed that she would be hungry and thirsty at some later time, though her body had yet to admit that it might recover from its punishment.

The other woman, whom she now recognized from earlier, stood over her, wet cloth in hand. "You're awake."

Valila moved her head in the smallest of all gestures of acknowledgement. Her voice was still locked tight, and would not make a sound.

"I am Mima, in case you wished to know. Though you sent me away, I came to help the boy in your absence." She reached down, gently wiping the cool cloth across Valila's face and neck. Mima smiled vaguely. "You see...he enacted a vengeance I could never hope for. The pale eyed boy killer--a savior to me, laying low all those who had tormented me and ruined my dreams. And though I felt that kindness was not natural to him, he hoped, perhaps, to save me in the end. He...loved you. It is not a bad reason to lay down one's life."

The tears returned to Valila's eyes. The roaring emptiness within her brought pain she had never imagined. Mima gave her small sips of water until the grating croaks of her dessicated voice began to resemble the sobs of a normal woman.

"He was my one hope...for real purpose in this world," Valila whispered. "I spent him on a fool's errand, and now I'm forever cursed."

Wordlessly, Mima stroked her hair and cooled her brow. Her sturdy, prosaic hands brought the twilight of unconsciousness again, and a respite from the pain.

The dead leaves gather
all bright colors departed
'neath uncaring skies

We cannot know love
till it is sundered and torn
born through agony

The Settled Dust, Part Twenty-One

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

"Dawn is coming," Mima said. "Were this a normal night, I would be getting ready to awaken the morning workers for the kitchen."

"How long?" Haike asked.

"Long enough to sweep and mop this room, were it empty of barrels."

Haike ducked his head out of the room, listening. It was dead quiet yet. The high, small windows were still dark as obsidian. "If you don't wake them, will they rouse on their own?"

Mima shrugged. "A few might. Others would remain in their cots for a while longer. My absence won't hold back the day, though. As soon as full dawn comes, the fortress will become active again. This place is a huge and terrible stomach, and letting it go hungry is no good for any of the common people. If you hope to make an escape, it will have to be soon."

"Yes. Soon. If we're to survive, we will have to be gone by daylight. What I need from you now is a quick sketch of the main floor of the fortress." Haike fished out a lump of hard charcoal from his pocket. "Draw it out with this."

Mima frowned, marking rooms and hallways on the floor. "I'm bad at drawing. I can't see how this will help you."

"I'll need to know where I'm going when I get up there," Haike told her. He studied the sketch on the floor carefully, ignoring Mima's shocked expression. He asked her a few pointed questions. How many paces from one place to another? How many guards would be here? Would the fire be burning high at this time of the morning?

Mima frowned, but answered to the best of her ability. "But why would you go up there...when freedom is so near?"

Haike smiled, touching her face with the palm of his hand. "Do you know what a Dolgur is, Mima?"

She blinked, not understanding the question. "A mythic beast of some sort. Huge and terrible, one of the Dragonkind. They say that they have long since gone from the world, if they ever existed."

"They existed, Mima. They yet survive, mighty as an army and perfect as clear water. I have seen them, smelled their scent, touched them, just as I touch you now. I have looked into the eye of death and returned unharmed.

"When you asked me before if there was ever anything I couldn't stand to kill--I couldn't bear to kill a Dolgur. There has to be something greater than we are, has to remain some wonderful force that can cast our works asunder and doom us. There has to be that pinnacle, that natural element that can effortlessly be what we can only dream of."

"I still don't know what that has to do with going up there."

"Perhaps nothing. Probably everything. I'll return in shortly, or not at all. Should I not, I would advise escaping. There is enough coin in this satchel to give you a start." Haike gestured to the weapons satchel, where a small cache of money lay. "There are a pair of camels stabled at the drinking house called the Ebbing Moon. You could leave this town, find a place for yourself."

"I would rather that we both come away from this place, that we both have a chance," Mima whispered.

"That was never the likely outcome. Nothing's impossible, but don't hold out a foolish hope, lest you be marked a fool."

"What will you do...up there?"

Haike shrugged. "Nothing nice."

The world continues
no force can hold back the dawn
or the morning's work

We cannot know peace
after what we've seen and done
blessed, dragon touched

If given the choice
I choose to meet the dawn's light
with weapons in hand
*****

Valila was some distance from the stairway yet, and the sleeping fortress came alive with alarm bells. A bleary-eyed man appeared at the door to his chamber, bare to the waist. Valila punched him in the throat with all her strength, dropping him to the stones. She grasped the door, battering it against his skull until it made a wet sound.

A fully armed soldier came around the corner. She pulled free a dagger and threw it, piercing him in the meat of the thigh. Grunting with pain, he tried to rush her, but his wounded leg wouldn't hold him. He went to a knee, and she caught him across the face with a snap kick, breaking his nose and teeth with her hardened shin. Blood splashed up the wall as his head flung backward.

Valila leaped over his insensate form, running for a short burst and then ducking into a dim alcove to see how the soldiers would respond to the alarm. A few booted feet clattered on the stone, but the time of the morning--at the dead end of a long, seemingly pointless night shift--made the response listless at best. At least one voice from the front of the castle shouted, as if in awful pain. Valila's brows knitted. What could be...

A half-dressed warrior squatted on his haunches, trying to lace up his boots at the entrance to the alcove where Valila waited. She put a jambiya to his throat and pulled him into the dimmer recesses of the hall. One of his boots slid free, standing on its own in the hallway. Sloppy work. She chided herself. None of this had gone as it should. Had she been smarter, less motivated by a foolish sense of the theatrical, she and Haike would have been long gone from here.

"What raises the alarm?" she asked into his ear, her voice an icy whisper. "What have they discovered?"

The warrior grasped her wrist, trying to escape her grasp. Valila used her off hand to slam a thumb into the nerves in the man's underarm, simultaneously kneeing him in the groin. His weight sagged against her, his gorge rising and spilling across the back of her hand.

"Some...some madmen attack us. They are at the great doors, shooting men down with bows."

Valila's air departed. Haike. She had been too slow, and now he had thrown his life away. Her first thought was to do the same, to have her blood feed the same stones as his own, to make an ending of it and call all debts forfeit. She wanted to with all her being. Without her special gift, what was life?

Distractedly, she punched the warrior in the kidneys, then smashed his forehead into the wall. He toppled, but she registered none of that. She stepped out of her alcove, tears standing in her eyes. All roads led to twilight, all to the moaning, formless Coriyat. That had never seemed sad to her until now.

I have wasted time
on elaborate revenge
and now I am damned

The one precious thing
this life has ever given
slips from me in blood
*****

Liquid agony. That was the name of the poison. Mistress Namira had told him that. "Valila," he allowed himself to whisper. Her true and secret name, the name she should have only told to him after long and stringent training. She had honored him, despite his failings. He had never, in fact, been any good at following orders. If he met his death tonight, his mistress would at least be spared the ordeal of forgiveness.

A pair of warriors charged into the room. He had six arrows, and he gave them three. One missed, smashing against the wall. The other two found their mark, one high in the chest of the lead man, the second driving straight through the knee joint of his comrade.

Both warriors dropped, screaming out in abject pain. They writhed on the floor, shivering with the poison, begging their comrades to pull them back. Haike, hidden behind an overturned table, waited. As the first had been, they'd be incapacitated with the pain. Unlike last time, he wouldn't allow their friends to safely pull them back. This time, he'd let the arrows fly, and shoot to kill.

Behind the table, he wiped his sweaty hands against his pants and waited. He squatted on a wooden box that gave him the semblance of a tall man's height when he stood to fire. They had no reason to suspect he was just a boy, as he didn't give them long enough to get a good look at him.

The screaming continued. The poisoned men rolled about on the floor, foam starting at the corners of their mouths. Liquid Agony wouldn't kill them right away, perhaps sparing them altogether. That reprieve would only come after a long ordeal of indescribable pain, followed by a deep swoon and high fever. The fight, for them, was over.

A man ran into the room, still wearing only smallclothes and hair standing out in all directions. He held a clumsy bronze blade in his hand, his flabby belly heaving from his sudden run. Haike shot him low in the gut and he dropped between the two men he'd hoped to pull to safety. Three more men burst into the room, these fully dressed and grim of face. Haike launched his last two arrows. One caught a man through the left buttocks, the other skittered harmlessly across the floor.

One man hunched, grabbing wounded men and pulling them across the floor to safety. The other reared back and threw a javelin. The edge of the overturned table blew inward with the heavy impact, splinters showering all around Haike's feet. The man drew forth a heavy axe and ran forward, whooping a war cry.

Haike reached into the belt pouch he carried. He gripped his final trick, his one last gamble.

He hurled the bulbous ceramic flask at the feet of the charging warrior. There was a cavernous boom and a flash of fire, then the whole room filled with cloying, acrid smoke. In the chaos of alarm bells, screams of the wounded, and pounding boots, no one heard the light pad of a boy's fleeing footfalls.

Perhaps she is dead
and I save no one this morn
with my fool's hope

The bold always dare
holding nothing in reserve
deadly to the last

The Settled Dust, Part Twenty

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

Blood erupted from the wound. She was blind in one eye, her hair suddenly sticky. She could feel the blade scrape against the bone of her scalp. Khalid's weight pressed her to the floor, his eyes flashing with hatred and the ecstasy of battle. The pain bloomed, bright and sharp. Her pulse raced, quickening the flow against her face. Valila could wait no longer. She drove her fist into Khalid the Younger's side, targeting his liver.

The air blew out of him, the strength of his limbs suddenly stolen. They rolled once, twice, a third time. The blade dropped from his fist, his hands clamped against the side of his neck, trying to keep the fruit of his veins from spraying against the rug. He was not successful.

Valila rose, stepping over him as he died, the sucking noises of his slashed windpipe subsiding after a few moments. She pulled the sheet from the bed and balled it in her hands, holding it against the steady flow from her own torn flesh. It was done now. Only the matter of escape remained, and that had always relied more on faith than planning.

Of desperate strength
these final throes of madness
in the lion's den

The killing complete
bloodied, we hope to escape
snares we long taunted

*****

The woman, Mima, returned from hiding bodies. Her face hung slack, the shock of seeing death up close surrounding her as a funeral shroud would. Haike understood that he had asked her to do a difficult thing, and that he could be cruel to others without being aware of it. As he had been cruel to this woman. The deed had needed doing, however, and the fatigue clung in his muscles, reaching so deep that he wondered if he would ever be rid of it. Regardless of anything, he had needed the help. He would remember Mima's frailties, however. It wouldn't be fitting to be unnecessarily mean to her. She had suffered enough of that.

"Will the bodies be found?" he asked.

She shook her head, sliding down the wall to sit next to him. She stared at the wall across from them for several minutes. Haike waited. He thought that she would have questions. He had questions of his own, though they were only asked within his own mind. He wondered if he would need to kill her at the end of this. She had asked to be part of this, and the knowledge she'd gained was of a dangerous sort, perhaps deadly.

He hoped he wouldn't have to end her, though that would solve the awful knot of pain he could see in her eyes. If it came to it, he wouldn't tell her. It would be quick. She would be within the Coriyat's grasp before she knew what had happened.

"How is it that you can..." she began to speak, but her mouth wouldn't frame the question. She rested her chin on her chest, not looking at him.

"Kill grown men as I do?"

Mima nodded. "You showed no more emotion than if you'd cut a limb from a tree."

Haike blew air out his nose. "I was born...strange. I do not experience the world as you do."

"Have you never met something that you couldn't stand to kill?"

Haike nodded. "I value things, cherish people. I experience love and sadness, worry and hope. I have no more fear or guilt than an eagle, however. Those are emotions I don't suffer."

"Never?"

Haike shook his head. "Not in the way that normal people do. There are parts of me missing, Mima. I sense that there is a richness, a whole fabric of meaning that I cannot know in this life. For what I lack, I am given this--if it's within my physical capability, I can do it. There are but few deeds from which my mind would recoil."

"So you could, say, slit a woman's throat as she slept?" Her eyes were suddenly full of fire, finally meeting his gaze.

"If it were important that I did so, yes. I know myself to be capable of it. I would, of course, prefer not to."

"Did you kill...everyone in the barracks?"

"To a man."

Mima covered her face, hiding it from Haike's eyes. He could hear her breathing roughen. She wept. From the angle he watched her, the broken bones of her face were hidden, and she was comely. "You didn't cherish any of those louts, did you?"

Her body shook, and her hands clenched against her cheeks. "I hated them all," she whispered. "They..."

Haike understood. It didn't matter, but he understood. He didn't need a salve, didn't require another reasoning behind what he had done. Good men or cruel, they had been in his mistress's way, and their lives had been forfiet. The pain in Mima would not go away because the authors therewith had been sent into the Coriyat. He expected no thanks.

He didn't recoil, however, when she took him in her arms, squeezing him tight. "I hope they died in agony."

Knowledge of myself
this crippled, granitine soul
this chill observer

She, the consequence
the benefit and danger
of our reckoning

*****

Valila grasped the back rails of the chair and tried to keep from screaming. The pain of the styptic powder blasted across her nerves, blood and tears mixing into a pink flow against her cheek. No sound arose from her. The powerful salts slowed the flow of blood from her torn scalp, finally stopping it altogether. It was an effective coagulant, though the pain of it far exceeded that of the original injury. It was of no consequence.

She rose, using a wet cloth to get the worst of gore off of her face. Her legs felt weak underneath her, and the pain of coupling with Khalid thudded steadily at the crux of her legs. Roaring hollowness spun within her spirit. Whispered on this internal wind, the idea that nothing anyone did mattered, that all the pain she had borne and caused was to no great purpose. The tears stood in her eyes once more, but she pushed those poison thoughts away. Those were the voices of exhaustion speaking. She had heard them before.

After several minutes, her hands were steady enough to hold the needle and thread. She stood before the silver mirror and mended the long cut on her head. It started an inch above her left eye and went well into the hairline. It would scar, but it was a straight cut. It would leave a pale line pointing into her dark hair. One among many, but the first to her face. She smiled at her image in the mirror.

"You're eroded away like a sandy hill in the constant wind, aren't you? Best to leave the vanity of your beauty behind, for this life will make a hag of you, if you live it long enough. You'll cease to mean anything, only the whispering remnants of your deeds echoing through the empty rooms of a castle you can no longer inhabit." Now the last, exhausted remnants of her energy spoke their discouraged words with her own lips. She met her own eyes in the mirror and forced all superfluous thought to a halt.

When the stitching was over, she cleaned herself of blood, only to take the clinging mud from the warlord's boots in her fingers and apply an artful amount of filth to her skin. She slipped into the shabbiest of Khalid's clothes, a rough pair of trousers and a stained tunic. The clothes hung on her, hiding her shape. She secreted all the weapons she could lay hands to on her person.

She went to the high, thin window, looking out at the gloom of city as it crouched against the ground like a giant, dead insect. It would be dawn soon, and with dawn, Haike would slip away. The one marvelous thing she'd ever had would dissappear, and she would be captured, tortured, killed. A vast ocean of regret flowed between her ribs, filling her body cavity with its chill and turgid waters.

But that would be the better of two choices, that he go. He would make it on his own. Such was the strength in him that he would find a way. What she truly feared was that he would come for her, his sense of duty trumping what she'd instructed him to do. Even as a boy, he was his own. He followed her way, but only up to the point that it conflicted with his own steel-solid will.

Valila stepped back from the window, looking at the corpse of young Khalid at her feet. This whole dangerous adventure seemed a foolish and unnecessary risk now. She couldn't...couldn't leave it undone, but she hated that part within herself that had been unable to bend, unable to keep her special gift safe.

Her special gift. Haike. The one person who could look into her eyes, encompassing all that she'd done, all she'd seen, and never blink. She had to live, had to find some way to get him away, whole and unmarked.

Within agony
life's sense is lost; purpose fades
faith insubstantial

Chasms of despair
exhaustion digs them below
success tastes like dust

If only for him
I must press ever onward
beyond the nothing

The Settled Dust, Part Nineteen

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

Twenty-seven. Those were the warriors, mostly reclining and sleepy around low tables at the periphery of the big room. Valila scanned across them as she danced to the dull rhythms of the drummers. Some hoisted cups until the sour-smelling wine dripped from the corners of their mouths, others attacked the goat meat and flat bread with all their brutish gusto.

As a dancer or serving wench would near their table, some of the warriors would pull her aside, putting their greasy hands and mouths against whatever exposed flesh they could reach. Some pulled away, and some were allowed to do so. Valila danced well, for it was not so different than the deadly movements she'd locked within her muscles in her training. Deftly, she kept a perfect distance from every table, every grasping hand. She was neither seen to shrink away nor to be close enough to grab.

The feasting hall grew smokey and rank with sweat and passion as the party wore on. By now, many of the men were drunk on wine. They plied their rough and inexpert love play to the serving girls and dancers, sometimes in shaded alcoves made by rough curtains, just as often at the side of their tables, amongst the discarded remnants of their dinner. Only a few warriors, older and more temperate than the others, sipped at their wine and watched the remaining dancers.

Valila saw that the finer dancers were yet present in the center space, canny enough to avoid molestation by the lesser warriors. Though some of them were good to look upon, they were soft, and the dancing had spent out most of their vigor by now. She chose this time to put her full effort into the enterprise, moving in all the most provocative angles, sweat gleaming on her skin, her raven hair flowing all around her.

The warlord's son gazed at her, his eyes alight with a malignant sort of lust. He lacked the great physical presence that his father had wielded as a younger man, but his face had a cruel beauty about it, and he had the air of both quick reflex and wickedness about him. He sat forward on his throne-like chair, stroking his chin beard. He waved away a servant who offered him wine, only looking, looking. When one of his remaining men would move as if to snare one of the girls for their pleasure, he would glare a line of liquid fire at them, forcing them back to their seats without a word.

The other dancers, avid to be chosen by the warlord's son, danced with abandon, their breath coming in hoarse gasps as they tried to keep up with Valila. They were too soft, too coddled to put forth such an effort. One by one, they dropped to the floor, gasping, until only Valila remained, spinning and leaping, bending like the blade of a thin sword.

The young warlord, masterful, rose from his throne, gesturing the drummers to stop their music. The hall fell quiet, only the snoring of the sodden and the sighs of those yet coupling audible over the heavy panting of the dancers.

"You," the young warlord said, pointing at Valila where she stood, her breath slowing, the sweat cooling on her skin. "The harem master said there would be one woman among these cows that had some fight left in her. I offer you this bargain: should you leave me spent this night, I'll take you to wife. I warn you, though, I am as mighty a bull as walks this world, and no single woman has ever satiated my desire."

"When I'm finished with you, you will want for nothing," Valila called out, a hint of challenge in her voice.

The young warlord grinned. "We shall see." He motioned, and Valila followed him out the back of the feasting hall, into a dark, silent hallway draped with expensive tapestries from the west. He put his palm against her lower back, steering her as if she couldn't manage in the dimness. By his touch, she knew him to be well schooled in the sport of the bedroom.

"Your strength will give out, and you'll beg me to finish with you before the end. In that, you will be the same as all the others. That spirit? I'll deprive you of it long before the night is done."

Valila merely smiled, allowing him to push her into his bed chamber, where no man would come to his aid.

Inexpert drummers
love-sport and smoke covers death
that lingering smell

Who but the weasel
dances with such wicked glee
every eye gone blank

I am gone within
the false lamb with fangs so red
you the choice morsel
*****

Khalid the younger collapsed next to her, shivering with the weakness of pleasure. Valila lay still, saying nothing, studying the dark smudges where the smoke from his lanterns rose to the ceiling. Her breathing gradually returned to normal. The pain decreased, but would not subside any time soon. Any hints of noise from the feast were gone now. The hour grew late. Both warriors and slaves had taken to their sleeping mats.

"I will...stand by my words in front of the men," Khalid whispered when his breath had returned. "You...would bring forth sons fit to conquer all the known lands."

"You would wed me, young warlord? A woman who you saw dancing, about which you know nothing?"

He rubbed his rail-hard belly, grinning up at the dingy ceiling. "Yes. What do I care what you've been up to before now? Clear enough--you've lain with a man or three before this night. All the better, for I can abide only so much soft crying and protestations about the pain of coupling. No, I have found you, and I plan to keep you. I need a strong woman, a woman with too much pride to ever weep."

"Hmm. To many, that would be a tempting proposal. You're in the fullness of your powers, and there would be no sense in denying your...gifts, but I didn't come here to find a mate."

Khalid rolled to his side, looking at her with some interest. "You would deny me, going back to the harem master rather than bonding with me?"

"It wouldn't do to marry a dead man, regardless of the comely angles of the corpse's face."

Khalid blinked. "A dead man?" He recoiled from her.

"Your family owes a debt payable only in blood. Had you been a base braggart who spoke loudly of his prowess to cover a shortcoming, I would have freed your blood in the moment of your apex and watched you die of your own pleasure. Because there is something of regal wickedness in you, and because you can sometimes produce an honest response, you deserve better than that."

"You...you're that Ghost Society witch!" Khalid moved to leap upon her, but he was accustomed to fighting in armor, trusting to cuirass to cover his vitals.

Valila lashed out, kicking him low in the belly and sending him sprawling into the corner of the bed chamber. She sprang up, catching the weapon belt from the young warlord's trousers. There were two fine daggers hung there. She took one, throwing the other so that it would stick into wall next to him. "There. You are dead now, but you may yet come back. If you can fight past me and reach the door, your life waits for you there."

The young warlord pulled free the blade and stood, now uncomfortable with his naked state. "Why? Why come back here? Alone, you cannot imagine that you might escape. And...this madness, laying with me as a whore?"

Valila flexed her legs, feeling the carpet beneath her toes, preparing. "Insults to my folk are always repaid, Khalid. We are not immune to death. We aren't superbeings of the Coriyat. We choose to always pass from this world with our principles intact, however. As for our tryst, does it not deepen the impact upon your spirit? That I've come to you unmarked, knowing you in the absolute way of the flesh? And what shame is there in a whore? We are all paid to do something. What I do this night is done for free."

Khalid shook his head, his black hair falling over his shoulders. "You've shamed me, witch, but I will live. When the door behind you opens, I will be the one to exit this room, and I'll nail shut the door behind me."

"Perhaps. But there will be no keeping the secret of what I've done here."

Khalid leaped forward, faster than Valila had guessed. The whistling of blades parting the air was the only noise. The carpet rolled beneath her feet, and suddenly she thudded to the floor, the young warlord above her. She grasped his knife hand, but he was stronger. The point came nearer, nearer to her face, hovering just a hand's width from her eye.

The known and unknown
we, close with sweat, blood, and seed
yet still mean strangers

Bodies acquainted
striving now for death's purpose
wed by the dagger
*****

Haike heard the noise and swung out into the hallway, hugging the wall. He drew the short bow back, holding three fingers an inch from his ear and aiming the arrow. He had expected them from the other way, but it didn't matter.

The woman he'd seen before, the kitchen worker. She stood there, face pallid with fear, but standing resolute. Haike did not ease off the bow.

"Is it true?" she asked. "What the sorceress said about you?"

Haike felt the strain on his arms as he held the bowstring taut. "True enough."

"Your touch will kill me outright?" She walked closer. "I'll just fall to ash, and be gone?"

Haike allowed the bow to unbend, tucking the arrow back into its quiver. "No. There'd be blood and pain, just as with any violent death."

"If it were like that...painless..." she turned her face to the ceiling. "I'd ask you for that boon. I'm sick with the cruelty of this world."

He put his hand against the handle of his machete. "If you held still, the blade could make short work of it."

The kitchen worker moved near to him, her eyes shining with tears. "You could simply kill me, without a moment's hesitation?"

The boy nodded. "If you wished me to, I would. That isn't why I'm here, however."

"You're..." The kitchen worker reached out, touching his face gently, smoothing his hair.

"Only a boy? Some have said as much."

She shook her head. "Different. Different from everyone."

"Yes."

"I want to help you."

Haike focused his chilly eyes upon her. Without any comment, he touched her wrist, her upper arm, her waist, her calf muscle. "Mima, is it?"

"That is my name."

"You seem sturdy enough. Perhaps you could aid me."

At that moment, the noise of two warriors coming down the stairs floated across the dim underhalls. Haike pushed Mima back into the storage room and nocked an arrow. The men, both sodden with drink, staggered closer, laughing at some jest or prior adventure. "You need at least two wenches for a proper..." one continued, leaning on his comrade.

The thrumming of a bow string sounded twice in the dank air. Arrows appeared in the drunkards' bellies, stealing the strength from their legs and toppling them to the ground. Twice more the bow muttered, sending arrows into their flesh once again. Haike shot across the floor, his machete flashing, the warrior's blood spraying across the stone as they died. He bent, skimming the gore from his blade.

"Now, if you wish to help, haul these two away and hide the bodies. I'll wash down the worst of the gore."

Mima grabbed the first warrior by his feet and strained to pull him away. His cape soaked up much of the blood, but there would yet be a blood trail. Prepared for this instance, Haike put aside his bow and carried out a pail of water, a coarse brush, and a large towel. The fatigue of the day began to creep through his muscles, and only iron willpower allowed him to continue unabated. Where was his mistress? The hour grew late, and he dreaded the thought that, at the coming dawn, he would be forced to slip away alone.

Insects to the torch
we slouch forward into doom
crying for release

Ever and oft used
the timid one now bloodied
with oppressor's gore

Let dawn's light tarry
let not the sun orphan me
in this savage land

The Settled Dust Part Eighteen

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

The stink of slow death hung in the warlord's room like smoke from a wet wood fire. He lay there, breath labored, eyes wide and staring as he struggled to go on another turn of the glass.

Valila stood over him. Finally here, this felt strange. She had never been one to argue inwardly about the symbolisms of death. She trusted in it, was a believer in turning the soil of the world and releasing souls back into the Coriyat. She had no qualms, no fear that she wouldn't be able to finish this part, but...it felt different from anything else she'd ever done.

"You...Namira, of the Ghost Society," Kahlid whispered. His face was slick with sweat, his body a flabby, shapeless remnant of his former power.

"Yes, it is I, though Namira is not my name."

"What do I care what your real name is? You, whose business is poisoned daggers in the dark--I wish I had never seen your face."

"You called for one of my kind, Kahlid. You dispatched me to do your dirty business, though you always planned to use me badly in the end. You betrayed me, warlord. You sent your soldiers to slay me in the wilderness. Of all your misdeeds, that is the one I cannot excuse. My own outrage is unimportant, but you've disrespected the Ghost Society, and that cannot stand."

"You needn't excuse me of anything, bitch. I lay here, free from guilt in this and all things. I did what I had to, what I wished to do. In all my years, I ever had my knee upon the neck of this worldly life. Did I make mistakes? Of course. I should have sent more soldiers, so I would have been spared another glance into your soulless eyes."

Valila shrugged. "Perhaps, though I am worth any number of your brutish soldiers, and would simply have slipped away from a larger force. You should have trusted to my discretion. I never planned to share the details of our arrangement. Killing me bought you nothing."

"Peace of mind, assassin. The most expensive treasure of all. I didn't want you coming back and giving my son any difficulty after I went into the Great Nothing."

She smiled vaguely. "It would never have occurred to me, had you stayed true."

Kahlid coughed. Something dark stained his lips. "Stayed true...did you do as much? I wonder if you really did kill a Dolgur at all. Perhaps you led my men into its lair and doomed them."

Valila's heart clenched, but she allowed nothing to show on her face. "You will have nothing more to fear from that Dolgur."

"I'll have nothing more to fear from anyone, since you plan to snuff out my life this night. Go ahead, assassin. Dampening your blade in my flesh will save me a span of discomfort."

Valila put aside her dagger, straddling the warlord's chest in the noisome dimness.

"You would lay with a man half dead, whore? Sorry to disappoint, but I'm too ill for such sport."

Valila put her full weight down on the warlord's ribcage. "You misunderstand, Kahlid. I intend to smother you like a babe, like a rat caught in a snake's squeezing coils. You don't deserve the honor of a blade."

The warlord fought weakly, struggling to hang onto his breath, but it whistled out from his parched lips at last. His sick body shook, bucking a few times as the nerves fired throughout his wasted system. It took some minutes for him to succumb, his eyes losing that last feverish light, his lips going blue.

Valila swung her leg off of him, feeling the tinge of illness upon her bare thighs. She would have to wash. She gripped the hilt of her dagger, driving it down, smashing through the dead man's breast bone. She left the weapon protruding from Kahlid's body, but the blood oozed listlessly from his corpse, barely staining the sheets.

"One more to slay before the night is over," she told the darkness.

This human Autumn
the killer suffers strange thoughts
the kill tastes bitter

All great creatures die
slow and by aching degrees
their passing ugly
*****

The young guard idled in the hall, whistling a tuneless snippet over and over. Not thinking anyone looked on, he dug a vigorous finger into his nose, examined what he'd exhumed within, and flicked the finger at the wall. Valila waited for him to hold still in a suitable position, then leaped in to attack, silent as a sleeping breath. The weighted pommel of the Jambiya thudded against the back of his head, dropping him to the floor with only a strangled gasp.

She gritted her teeth, pulling him into the dead consort's room. Leaving him bound to a chair and gagged, she studied her appearance in the long mirror. The clothes she'd found were tighter than she would have preferred, but that very quality made them seem more appropriate for a dancing girl. She spared a moment to cover the newest of her bruises. It would have to be good enough. The idea that she'd been beaten by the harem master was not completely implausible, after all.

There was only one problem. There were no killing daggers of appropriate size to secret in her outfit nearby. She would have to traverse the castle, would have to count upon Haike having managed to complete his part of the task. She sighed. He had assured her that he could do it, but...

Valila didn't allow herself the luxury of terrible fancies. She flicked a shawl over her shoulders and skimmed through the castle, purposeful as as a circling hawk in the sky.

I cover the wounds
ever onward into night
death's freight to carry
*****

"What butchery! Whoever was here, they killed Muklo and this boy. By the Dark Hereafter, but look at the blood! The whole place is filthy with it, and the tables look like a whirlwind has come through here." Two cooks stood at the entrance to the lower barracks, squinting at the remnants of the battle.

"Do you think we should tell someone?" the woman asked. "Fell deeds have been done down here before, but this feels strange. I've never known this room to approach quiet, with all the mean cackling of the men as they drink and boast."

The young man, stunted and lumpish after some childhood ailment, shrugged his round shoulders. "None of our business, so far as I can see. How often have these bastards bedeviled us? I've been beaten a dozen times, just because they were bored. You..."

"I'd have liked to geld them all, but this boy...this is below even their standards, Bamek. Anyway, it could be a danger to the fortress, someone coming in to attack us in secret." Her face, pretty from the right profile, was ruined with a badly-set cheek bone on the left, a remnant of a beating that Muklo himself had given her. The number of times she'd been raped far exceeded her ability to count.

"Who would have the wherewithal to do such a thing, Mima? How would they enter the fortress?"

"I don't know. Still..."

"Still," Bamek put his hand against her arm, "let's make it none of our business. Let the warriors see to their own fate, is what I say. If the night sees them face great peril and torment, it is no more than they deserve."

"Perhaps..." Mima's statement was lost in a shriek as the dead boy struggled to his feet, all the blood in his thin body spilled all around him. Only his pale eyes, clear and merciless as a wolf's, were unstained by the gore. He raised a machete before him.

The two cooks stood, rooted to the spot, the weight of the silence squelching Mima's scream, turning it inward where it died away like an unfulfilled dream.

"It saddens me that I must slay you, for you are not warriors, but simple worker folk." The boy stepped forward, jaw set. Though he was smaller even than little Mima, the cooks turned from him, frightened as those who had confronted the spirits of the dead.

We, the unknown ones
who have known hate and cruelty
shattered, we yet live

Arisen spirit!
some ghoulish remainder stirs
a thing dead yet speaks
*****

Valila caught both the cooks by the neck and held them still, their eyes wide and glassy with terror. "You'll say nothing of this. Go on about your business. The boy has become as death itself, and his mere touch would cause you to fall apart in smoke and ashes. Do you understand?" These words were given in a rasping whisper, seemingly louder than a shout in the gloomy underhalls of the fortress.

"Nnnggg..." the stunted man whined.

"Don't let him kill us!" the woman begged.

"Will you do what I say?" Valila asked, her eyes boring into them.

Both cooks nodded, tears springing from the woman's eyes. "We'll do as you say, sorceress, I swear."

Valila smiled slightly. Of all the many names she had been given, sorceress was new. One never knew what advantage there would be in a creative lie. "Good. Go now, and forget all you've seen, if you know what's healthy."

The sound of their feet slapping the hard stone floor disappeared in a moment, and she turned back to Haike. "Honestly, boy, there's no need to be so gruesome. We don't take strange pleasure with the kill. In the end, the death is not about us. It doesn't prove our valor or change our fate. It's the churning of the earth's farm field, and we the harvesters that assure that the seasons of the Coriyat move apace."

He nodded, but didn't appear abashed. Valila imagined that he didn't even have that expression in his lexicon. A strange child, both beautiful and terrifying in his way. Everything that stood in the way of the kill in a normal person, all those weaknesses that most imagined to be the composition of the human soul--all of those impediments where missing from Haike. The frozen river within him contained deep, wide channels, but they were unplumbed depths, and Valila could only guess what they might contain. She forced herself to leave those thoughts aside. The chances of them both surviving the night were none too good. In an hour, none of her postulations would be of any greater use than the twittering of the sparrows in the morning trees.

"Is the way clear?" she asked.

"Yes, mistress Namira. All who would stand against us in the lower barracks died this night."

"The poison worked well, then?"

"Except on that one. He came later." Haike pointed to the burly soldier, dead of slices to foot, gut, and neck. "I was knocked cold in the fight, and just recently awoke. I'll wash up."

"First, show me where the weapons are cached."

Heedless of the itch that drying gore would surely cause, Haike took her to a room filled with barrels and retrieved the weapons. She selected a thin knife no longer than her index finger. It would only do the job if jabbed into the neck veins, or perhaps the big ones on the inside of the thigh, but it was easy to secret inside her brief dancer's outfit.

"You know how to string the short bow and fire it?" she asked.

"You need only show me a thing once, Mistress."

"Good. Clean yourself up and put the barracks to whatever rights you can manage, then drop back to here. Watch for soldiers coming this way," she pointed toward the stairway up to the ground level of the fortress. "I will make the sound of an owl before I arrive. Anyone else's life is forfeit. Understand?"

Haike nodded. "I am yours. Ask it, and it will be done."

The way the boy looked at her made Valila tingle all over. She touched the back of his shoulder, one place that wasn't encrusted with blood. "Perhaps we will survive this night, young Haike."

He smiled. "We have lived free and done as we wished. If we fall, I will have but few regrets."

"And those..."

"Let them be. They would not help you this night."

"I will see you soon, perhaps in the Coriyat," she whispered in his ear. "If someone comes asking for your life, be sure you sell it at great cost."

Queen by my own lies
my sorcery-woven words
whisper infinity

We, soon to depart
share one last, tender moment
before tempting doom

The Settled Dust, Part Seventeen

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

The warlord's soldier pulled free his blade and stepped into the barracks. "What goes on here, boy? Where are the men? At this hour, the barracks should be crowded with the ill-tempered lot of them, yet here is quiet, and a strange boy eating at our table."

"A strange event, I'll give you that," the boy said. His smile was cheerful, if tinged with a hint of chilly fatalism.

"So, explain yourself. I call you to account, rascal!" the thick-set soldier boomed. His dark, wide face formed a scowl, his forehead knotting around a deep, whitened scar.

"The men of the barracks stood to cause me difficulty later, so I killed them. It was not personal, and I take no glory in the deed. Such are the bloody ways of men, eh? I'm sad to see your face, my friend. Had you remained absent, you may have lived through the night yourself. Now I must kill you, as well." Haike slid out of his chair and grasped his machete, careful to keep the table between he and the soldier, who was a big man with rippling arm muscles.

The soldier blinked several times, the strangeness of the scene too gigantic for him to grasp. "You..."

"Yes. Just as if the very hand of death swept across their eyes," Haike agreed.

The big man shook his head, his laugh ringing forced and false against the quiet. "A strippling lad? Killed these evil louts and brigands? A likely story! Did they leave you here to play me for the fool?" The soldier moved quick, trying to come around the table and close with Haike. The boy slipped away, keeping his distance.

"I play no jokes today, but remain here to speak for the departed," Haike said, overturning a chair to slow the soldier down as the man lunged for him.

"Quick little bastard, you are, but I'll have you, and I'll use you like a woman for this foolishness." The soldier's face grew dark with wrath, and he abandoned trying to snare Haike with his off hand, instead swinging his short, broad blade through the air. He connected only with the corner of the table, shearing off a chip of the grease stained wood. Haike led him on a frantic chase back and forth across the barracks. Ragged breath, heavy footfalls, and the screeching of chairs against the hard floor drifted up into the vaulted reaches of the basement room. Wild brawls and grim oaths were not uncommon noises in the dim recesses of the fortress. No one appeared to ask about the current troubles.

"You can't seem to catch me, you lumbering oaf. I can't see how you'd pin me down long enough to rape. The way you're panting, I doubt you'd be able to produce the requisite timber to get the job done, anyway," Haike taunted as he leaped over a chair, skittered across a table, and kicked a plate of cold, greasy porridge at his assailant.

"I'll cut your hands off and geld you when I catch you, you wicked little creature!"

Haike grasped a bronze flagon and threw it at the soldier, hitting him on the knee. He turned and dashed away again, and the soldier slewed into a table, crashing to the ground. He scrabbled up, covered with the remnants of a dead man's dinner, swearing so vigorously that Haike stopped for a moment to look back.

"Well, if you're that upset, I suppose it would be cruel of me to keep goading you." The boy flourished the machete. He'd been traveling with Namira for many weeks, and he had learned much about handling a blade.

Wiping oily gravy away from his face, the soldier shook himself. His whole frame vibrated with anger. He gave an inchoate roar and launched himself toward Haike, sword arm cocked high and fists clenched to paleness. Haike stood his ground, his foot hooked on the leg of a chair. At the last moment, he kicked the chair across the floor and into the soldier's legs.

The big soldier almost managed to vault the chair, but one foot caught on the obstacle, and he fell, tumbling and sprawling past Haike. The boy slashed at the back of his leg as he slid by, giving him a nasty, bleeding wound. Not enough to cripple the leg, though. Shrieking in almost inhuman wrath, the soldier surged up again, now bloody about the mouth and wet to his boot with his own red life. He hoisted a chair and threw it at Haike.

Haike flinched away, but part of the chair caught him on the off shoulder, knocking him back and over one of the tables. He let the momentum carry him, rolling beneath a second table and out of sight. The soldier came nearer, cursing wildly and kicking chairs and tables out of his way. His left foot came down no more than a hand's breadth from Haike as he raged and bellowed through the barracks.

Haike slashed across the top part of the man's foot with all his strength, cutting through boot leather and down to the ankle joint. A scream of pain shot through the barracks, loud enough to hurt his ears. The table above Haike disappeared, and the man's face, now purple with madness, leered down at him. With both hands, the soldier reared back to swing a cleaving strike to the boy's head. The soldier's gulped breath came free at the same moment that the rope of his guts felt the outside air. Haike surged up, having sliced him low on the belly, and jammed the razor-honed blade into the man's neck.

Slaughterhouse gore sprayed across him, blinding his eyes, flooding into his mouth and nose. Something hard and unyielding smashed against Haike's forehead. Filled with peals of crimson thunder, his head reeled. He wasn't aware of taking blind, halting steps away from the dying man, or collapsing to his knees, or slapping against the filthy floor of the barracks.

Amidst the squalor
we two toil unto death
falling blind, nerveless

*****

The fine-boned woman's wavy hair showed the first frosty signs of age, but her figure had not deserted her. She held a wide, curved jambiya in her left hand, cradled close against her belly. "I know all the servants. You are no chambermaid."

Valila nodded, releasing the last of her facade. She stood straight, letting the clothes and bed sheets fall at her side, leaving only the dagger. "Few are so perceptive."

"I haven't lived this long in the jackal's den by luck alone. I suppose you're here to kill him, then?"

Valila gave a faint smile.

"You've nearly left it too long, assassin. He has journeyed down death's road apace already. Slaying him now would probably be more mercy than vengeance."

"I dispense neither. He made a mistake. I need to show him the gravity of that error."

"So you have been used badly in his service, is that it?"

The savage sparkle in the woman's eyes told Valila that she'd ingested some powerful drug. Red spice, she imagined. "How I am treated, in itself, is unimportant. How this reflects upon the Ghost Society, however..."

The warlord's mistress gave back a step. "He never told me that he would have dealings with ones such as you." Her eyes searched the floor at her feet. "Then again, Kahlid always thought he could control everything."

"This does not have to mean your death," Valila told her. "If you were to leave now and never look back, I would turn my hand aside from you."

"The father--him you cannot deprive me of. He is all but dead. My son, though, must live. It is only for my son that I must strive. If you could..."

Valila shook her head. "From the root to the branch, the tree must fall."

"Then I can't stand aside. I couldn't stand to walk the dust of this earth while my son is sent into the Dark Hereafter."

Valila gave a slight bow, dropping into her practiced fighting stance. The warlord's mistress did the same. They circled, tested, and finally leaped together, barely a whisper rising from their movement. Valila caught the jambiya before it fell from her adversary's nerveless hand. She cradled the woman's head as she whispered her last few words in blood. "My son..."

"Will soon join you in the Coriyat." Valila pulled the mistress back into her bedroom before too much blood pooled in the hallway. She hoisted her up onto the thick feather bed, pulling the sheet up to her chin.

"Such a woman as you was wasted upon Kahlid." Valila eased the door closed continued down the hallway. She stopped before the final door, a thick portal with a crude image of a bear carved into its surface. Kahlid's personal chambers. She exhaled and pushed the door inward.

Before the darkened
portal, we strive for one half
rotten from within

All these blood-made works
the lies and damage rendered
let it fall this night

Will we never wake
the fevered madness fading
with the coming dawn

The Settled Dust, Part Sixteen

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

The presence of sickness is shunned. Valila had long known this. The old warlord lay in his bed now, noisome as the deep illness gnawed through his guts. Seeing the man of such cruelty and proportion reduced to the indignity of a slow death was an unwanted vision. It reminded them, from greatest to least, that they would all walk the same route. No earthly strength of arm or richness of coffers would stay the hand of death. The whole quadrant of the castle hung silent, muted with the nearness and reality of death. She walked boldly, allowing her feet to slap against the stone floor. Valila had shed her scanty dancer's garb for servant's dress. No one questioned her, not even when she stopped at the harem master's apartments. Snapping his neck was a mistake, but an enjoyable one. She would just have to work faster.

She rounded a dim corner, her arms loaded with random laundry she had grabbed to complete her disguise. A soldier paced listlessly there below a burning torch, spinning his mace by his side. Little more than a boy, this dull and seemingly pointless duty fell to him. She approached with the uncertain steps of a chambermaid in the midst of warriors. He spun on his heel as Valila made a small sound in her throat. This way? Would this way be the easiest? Complex plans were not her way. She took opportunities as they arose.

"It is late for laundry, maiden," the boy soldier said, a grin creeping onto his face.

"It's late for maidens, but laundry knows no time."

The soldier's face hung slack for a moment, then sparked with understanding. "A saucy one, then. Come here and let me disport myself if you're no maiden."

Valila bent, setting the laundry on the stoop where the soldier could rest his feet. "You're a handsome young brute, but I must serve at the feast later, and I can't be sweaty and covered with a man's musk. I'll please you, but we must be quick about it."

"I'll have no difficulty with that, wench." The soldier came closer, pawing at her, grasping at her dress and pulling it roughly upward.

Valila caught his wrist. "My way."

"Any way I choose," he responded, continuing to pull at her clothes.

She grasped his manhood, already awake with the prospect of action. "Hush now. You're young, and there are things I might teach you, if you're wise."

"Very well. Should I dislike your way, it will be mine. Mark me, wench, I'm young, but I am no boy to be led."

Valila knelt before him. He gasped, reaching out to hold the wall for balance. He would be led, and easily.

By muscle and hate
guile and pleasure given
dark victory nears

*****

Haike found it easy to slip away from the busy kitchen staff. They didn't know his face, and he scrubbed clean of the dirt that had veiled him at the start. A pilfered cap drew close over his ears and partially hid his face. A paltry disguise, but it would serve. He carried the bag full of weapons to a storage room crowded with barrels, hiding the package in a nook where it wouldn't be seen. He withdrew only an earthenware jug filled with fine peppered brandy, worth the price of a boy slave, as he'd once been. The boy he'd beaten earlier had told him about the lower barracks, and it took him only a few minutes to find it.

An old man with only one ear met him at the door, grimacing. "What's this? I don't know you, boy." His voice grated like a knife on a whetstone.

"I brought this." Haike hoisted the jug, which held close to a half gallon.

"What is it?" The old man squinted at Haike's pale skin.

Haike shrugged, not meeting the warrior's eyes. The old man wrenched the jug away with a curse. He removed the cork and sniffed the aromatic liquor.

"Very well, then. Be off with you. Thank whoever sent this. Perhaps we won't be there for the feast, but we'll have some merriment tonight." The old man kicked out at Haike, but he dodged the blow and skittered away.

"Look here, boys!" the soldier's voice echoed. "We'll drink like kings and conquerors tonight!" The rumour of shifting chairs and the clinking of cups followed.

"It's the good stuff!" someone bellowed. "Damn me to rot if it isn't the warlord's own! Perhaps the Kahlid the Younger will be more generous than his sire." The sound of men gulping down the fine draught and slapping backs and shoulders echoed through the deep parts of the castle.

Haike turned from them, satisfied that they would drink deep and, indeed, be damned. Back at the room with the barrels, he crawled into the same void where the killing tools waited. The poisoned brandy would take some time to weaken them and still their tongues. He closed his eyes and allowed his body to relax. If they were successful here, he could close the book of the past. No one who had wronged him would draw breath. Haike wondered what he would feel like afterward. It didn't matter. He and Namira...or Valila, her true and secret name...would go away together. He would learn her ways and always be near to her. It would be good. If they failed, it was only death. To die like an eagle--with talons sunk deep into your quarry's flesh--was nothing to fear.

When all of the soldiers had been given a chance to partake of their doom, Haike came back, looking in on them. A few of them struggled to rise, while others were already insensate. Haike hoisted a flanged mace from the table and stepped into the room, weighing it in his palm. Cleaner than his machete, if somewhat less efficient. The smoky air swirled as he swung a sharp downward stroke. The old soldier, poison sick, put up a weak hand in defense. One of his fingers snapped backward a moment before the mace fell upon his skull. With hardly a grunt, he fell to the floor. Haike hit him a second time, feeling his temple crush inward. All further movement on the soldier's part was only the clattering of the death-coach's wheels along the road to oblivion.

Putting an end to the warlord's soldiers was no more difficult than the slaughter of hens. Dragging the bodies back to their bunk room and hiding them beneath their beds wasn't so easy. Sweat coated his brow and crawled down the center of his back by the time the men were hidden and the worst of the blood sopped up from the untidy floor.

The mace was an imperfect hammer, but he managed to nail the armory door shut at four places along the casement. The enemy's flank was open, his gate unhinged. His mistress and he would have a way clear once their task here was completed.

Now, he'd just have to wait for any stragglers. He unsheathed his machete and set it beside him at a table near the door. Any he faced now would possess their full strength and wit. The slaughter, for him, had ended. The fight would now begin. Haike picked up a roasted hog leg and ripped off a mouthful. Its previous owner would have no need of it.

In sickness they fall
poison drunk and doomed to rot
within their sanctum

*****

The old concubines were already sleeping, but for one. Valila peered in at them. Chalking the door shut would have been sufficient, had they all slept. She didn't relish the thought of killing all the old hens here--they were not targets, and their deaths would merely mark the venture as sloppy. The wakeful concubine's eyes snapped to the intruder. The chambermaid's clothes did nothing to fool her, and she drew out a slim dagger, her teeth in a rictus of fear and determination.

Valila stepped all the way in, closed the door, and dropped the pile of linens against the threshold to muffle the noise. The concubine rushed her, dagger held high. "Intruder! Murderer!" she shrieked. The warning cry echoed about the room. Valila hoped the thickness of the walls would consume the noise.

The concubine had once been a beautiful woman, but her looks were beginning to crack like old pottery. She swung a clumsy stroke at Valila's neck. The assassin twitched to the side and caught her wrist, forcing the momentum into a deadly arc that ended within the old woman's heart muscle. Valila pushed her down, the light already fading from her eyes.

The other concubines surged out of bed all around her, five of them. They tried to grasp at her, to drag her to earth. They were strong in their panic, fierce. Valila felt one of them bite down hard against her wrist. They mauled her, and the strength in her legs nearly faded as one of them punched her repeatedly in the small of her back. The rough sound of labored breathing thundered in the quiet room. One of the concubines smashed something hard against Valila's head, and the dimness shook with vibrant colors.

The knife clattered to the ground beneath them. One of the concubines squeaked in pain as her bare arch caught upon the blade. She recoiled, and Valila regained the control of one of her hands. She punched a tall, fleshy woman in the throat, forcing her to relinquish her grasp. Valila bit down hard on the collarbone of another woman, this one so close she couldn't see anything more than a blur. One of them went for the door, but fell hard on the pile of linens, the breath coughing out of her as her body slapped against the floor.

Valila shrugged off the woman who'd been punching her, spinning an elbow back against her jaw. She lashed out at the hobbled woman, knocking her senseless with a fist to the temple. The big concubine hoisted a stool and swung it with grunting effort, but Valila ducked and the woman behind her fell to earth in a hail of splintered wood.

Several sweaty moments later, Valila surveyed the room, now a chaos of unmade beds, overturned furnishings, and senseless women. The dead concubine's blood pool was small. She'd expired in only a moment, the heart's action brief and weak. Valila hoisted her onto one of the beds and threw a sheepskin rug over the blood pool.

She used the dagger to rip free segments of cloth, binding the concubine's bleeding foot then tying the women together, back to back. She gagged them last, and none too soon, as they were beginning to stir. She found a mirror, examining herself for obvious injuries. None of the bruises were visible. She could cover the ones that her maid's clothing hid if she had to. She washed away the sprinkles of blood on her face and hands. She could do nothing about the torn seams on her shoulders or the dark stains of fight sweat across her torso.

"The darkness will have to aid me, for the killing's far from done," she told her reflection.

Valila knelt beside one of the concubines, whose eyes were wide and rolling beneath her dark brow. "You did yourself an honor, defending your master so well. I applaud your loyalty, though he doesn't deserve such consideration."

The killer reached out, smoothing the older woman's hair. The concubine screamed into her gag, trying to recoil from her touch.

"I'm not here for you. You'll be injured no further. Tomorrow, though, will dawn strange for you...for this place and for miles around."

The concubine's eyes clouded with tears, her chin sagging to her chest.

Sometimes they know, Valila thought. Sometimes they can tell when things are beyond saving, when no one can stop the bloodletting.

Loyalty too great
makes the tender hand grow fierce
in the damned's defense

The fist unlooked-for
an old man's tired harem
clings to hopes forlorn

Bound--hope scatters like leaves
in the Autumn of her eyes
only tears remain

By the felling of
one great and sickened timber
the forest must change

The Settled Dust, Part Fifteen

A Continuing Cycle of Haibun Poetry

The four camels slipped into the city, drawing no notice. A woman, a boy, and two pack animals were of no consequence. The guards allowed them by with only a cursory examination, enough to see obvious weapons or contraband. They didn't take time to dig through the grain and dried meat, however, nor did they check the saddlebags for concealed items. This was a trade road, after all, and the two riders were less than threatening.

Thus, two members of the Ghost Society entered warlord Khalid's walls, two that had suffered betrayal and lived to tell.

"Sloppy work," Haike whispered, his lithe camel matching pace with Namira's larger war steed. "Any fool could have found our weapons, had he taken the time."

"We appear harmless, do we not? Simple travelers, merchants?"

Haike nodded.

"Men will believe what they wish to be true. It's only necessary to create a facade that allows them to come to the assumptions you require."

"We are without a full grown man. They could have taken it in their hearts to rob us, or to rape you. What of that?"

"There are men who would rape a boy, Haike. Don't forget that. I took the chance because Khalid wouldn't put such a man on the gates. Merchants could swing wide of this town. If they were ill-used long enough, they'd do so, and Khalid's men would go without rations and goods. That's no good. You see my point. In any case, we have no full-grown men at our disposal, and bringing another into our fold would be far more dangerous than the small risk of trouble at the gates."

They rode further along, Haike dropping back behind her and keeping an eye on the pack animals. It wouldn't do to have beggars and cutpurses steal their bags. The trade goods were unimportant, only a disguise, but the weapons beneath would be vital to their cause.

Like needles through cloth
we defeat the mud-brick walls
about your sanctum

*****

"You're not like the other wenches," the old harem-master said. "You got good, smooth flanks, and it looks like you could run apace."

Valila nodded, saying nothing. Her voice, if nothing else, would give her away. She had used all her arts with body makeup to hid the scars of her profession, and she knew that her form presented nothing untoward. Men would salivate over her. It had ever been so, and would continue until time or injury stole her beauty. Like her Ka'Javiila or her killing daggers, it was a tool. Any impulse to vanity had long since subsided. True beauty was in the action, in the effortless perfection of a moment's violent and final motion. The preoccupation on form alone was the province of the weak-minded.

"You don't say much, girl. Are you mute?"

"No, I can speak," she whispered, knowing that her one failing was that of her surety, her stern disposition. Her master had often remarked that, had she been capable of the easy submission, the coy allure of a dancer, she would have been his finest student. She had tried, but that way of speaking, that way of holding her body--they had not come naturally to her. She had learned to be satisfied with being the Master's most deadly student, if not his most artful.

"Huh," he grunted. "Not much of a singing voice, then?"

"None at all, Master."

"But you can dance, eh? And you possess knowledge of pillow play?"

She nodded.

He put his pudgy hands on her, feeling the sternness of her muscle, the firmness of her flesh. He touched her in a way that, had it been in the least personal, would have caused Valila's anger to explode to hatred. With the old harem master, however, it was naught but business. He had done this work so often that he was inured to the arousal it would cause in a normal man.

"You've done some heavy work in your time, girl. I would venture that no single man could exhaust you in bedroom play."

"None have ever shown me stamina so great."

The harem master laughed. "Khalid's son may well yet. Not the fighter his father was, but he has the attributes of a buffalo. In him, I think you'll see your match and more."

Valila nodded, knowing that things would never progress that far. They had invited death into their ill-built palace, and many eyes would stare, dark and glassy in the moonlight, before long.

"I'll need to search you further, girl. One can't be too careful. I'll have to check that you haven't secreted any weapons in...within yourself, if you understand my meaning."

A cold tendril shot through Valila's belly. She had hoped they wouldn't be so thorough, but had acknowledged that they might.

She pulled her thin skirt upward to her waist and stood wide-legged. The old harem master looked into her eyes as he searched. It took only a moment, but that moment was as difficult a trial as she had faced in some time. This, she would never tell to Haike. This weight she would carry alone.

On the long backtrail
all the innocence I lost
blades for all my scars

Intangible things
lost parts of what we once were
debts carried alone

*****

Haike sat upon the other boy's chest and pummeled him until his face splashed blood and his struggling became vague twitches in response to the painful barrage. In the alleyway behind the palace, no one paid them any heed. It was simply another mute struggle in the dust, unmarked as tryst or assault.

He tied the boy, bigger and older than himself, with a short length of cord from his pocket. He pulled the boy into a darkened doorway by the armpits and sat him up against the corner of a dusty room, stacked with sacks of grain and the like. It would be no good to have him choke on his own blood. Haike squatted down and waited for the boy to recover his wits. The grain stacks were high enough that no casual observer would see them.

Waiting, Haike scooped up a handful of the dry dust from which the floor was composed. He rubbed it on his knuckles, removing the worst of the blood. He rubbed some of the dirt in his hair and across his bare arms. Finally, he obscured the paleness of his face with a light rub of the same dirt. He could do nothing about his eyes. He knew they would mark him, if he got too close to anyone, but a dirty lad helping to hoist and carry at the palace's kitchen entrance would arouse little suspicion.

The boy came around, starting to cry for help. Haike hit him hard in the gut. Still, the boy tried to utter a muffled shout. Haike gritted his teeth and drove a punch into the boy's groin. He folded in half, tears falling from his terrified eyes. Haike produced a small knife from beneath his trouser cuff. "Make no more noise, or I'll start cutting you in ways which won't heal."

The boy, pitiful, blood-spattered, with a broken nose and eyes swelling shut, nodded. "What do you want?" His voice sounded odd from the smashed nose.

"Tell me of the operations here behind the palace. Tell me of your tasks, the kitchen workers, and ways into the palace. Withhold nothing. Tell me only the truth. In this way, you could, perhaps, survive this incident."

The boy nodded. "I'll tell. Everything."

"Good. Do it quickly."

The boy's eyes had no fire as he told a fragmentary and elliptical tale of how the work entrance of the palace ran. In some dim part of his mind, he had already given himself up for dead. Haike saw this, and was momentarily tempted to smother him. It would not have been difficult, and he could have stacked grain atop the body, hiding it for more than long enough for what Namira had planned. Still, she had said that there was no honor in killing needlessly, and the boy was nothing to him, merely a point of leverage to take advantage of.

Haike punched the boy on the temple without preamble, knocking him senseless. With the time he had available, he tied him hand and foot. He used the corner of an empty grain bag to create a gag to keep him from crying out. Hoisting him was no easy task, but the dusk all around helped Haike stack the boy amongst the refuse on the wagon heading out. Rotten vegetables and other detritus heaped above the unconscious boy, but nothing heavy enough to harm. By the time he awoke, he would be trundling far away.

Haike continued to work the back entrance, fetching and carrying with the rest of the low help. One of the kitchen staff squinted at him. "I don't recognize you, boy."

"I'm the new boy. Bucho's replacement."

"Where goes Bucho, then?"

"To the Great Nothing, I guess. Or to the Coriyat, if that is what you believe. He fell before an ox cart and was crushed, just this last morning." Haike found it easy to make up such stories, and had no guilt for telling them. What matter, the words of a ghost, anyway?

"What do you call yourself, scrawny pup?"

Haike's pride moved within, asking him to stare the kitchen functionary down, but he knew that he couldn't. This wasn't open war, but secret and decisive slaying in the night. His own preferences would have to be put aside. He forced himself to be pliant. "I care not. Scrawny Pup is as good a name as any other."

The man sniffed. "Scrawny Pup, it is. Since you're the newest, it falls to you to scrape the tallow from the frying vats. Do you think yourself capable of that."

Haike nodded. For a short time, he imagined that he was capable of putting up with any appalling condition. He set to work scraping the noisome sludge from the cooking vats. The smell and feeling of the old, congealed tallow was alarming, but he consoled himself with thoughts of dead men, their flesh gone cold and rigid beneath the waning marches of the night. The thought of having no man who'd wronged him striding the surface of all the earth assuaged any disgust, any obstacle along the winding road.

Rough, merciless touch
the language of the balled fist
quick-spoken and clear

The trial is naught
pain and toil but shadows
across glory's road