Hero at the Fall

Sam dropped down behind her easily, leaving Tamid sitting awkwardly astride the huge bird. His bad leg was keeping him where he was, between Izz’s enormous wings.

He looked shaken and angry, staring intently at Izz’s feathered shoulder blades. I offered my hand to help him off, but he refused to meet my gaze as he slung his fake leg over one side and carefully slid down. He landed badly, crumpling to the ground in a heap. I rushed to help him up, but he waved me away. I stood back, watching him pull himself to his feet with agonising difficulty.

He was angry at me about Hala. That he’d lost another person, someone he’d formed an unlikely bond with in all the late nights when she couldn’t sleep for grief and he was pouring over the books she’d brought him, looking for an answer that wasn’t there.

‘Can you walk?’ I asked. Izz had slipped back into his human shape and found some clothes of his own. We were ready to start moving.

‘I can walk,’ he replied bitterly, pushing past me. And we made our way up to the fortress to have some words with Lord Bilal, Emir of Iliaz.

We hadn’t been walking long when we came across the first body.

It was partly covered by dirt, like someone had heaped soil on it. And then someone – or something – else had started trying to dig it out. Whatever had been digging had managed to drag an arm and part of the torso out of the ground. There were teeth marks on the skin, like maybe a ghoul had made a start on its meal before sunrise drove it away.

The arm was wearing a deep green uniform trimmed with gold. Those were Albish colours. And the hair that poked out of the grave was the same bright gold as Sam’s. What was an Albish soldier doing covered in dirt outside Iliaz?

Iliaz was the most significant passage from east to west in Miraji. The bastion against invasion of Izman. The fighting here was frequent, and so the soldiers were the best trained in the country, and the most likely to die, as well. It was where Rahim had been sent as a boy, with the expectation that he wouldn’t last long. An easy way for his father to get rid of him. But he’d thrived instead, becoming the soldiers’ commanding officer, first under Bilal’s father and then under Bilal. Iliaz defended the country against invaders. So how come now there was an invader so close to the fortress, and on the wrong side of the pass, no less?

A little way further on, there was another pile of dirt similarly disturbed. And another one after that. A whole line of them.

‘What is this?’ I asked.

‘They tried to bury them.’ Jin sounded grim. We were close to the fortress now, and the stone walls loomed above us, casting this side of the mountain in shadow as the afternoon moved on.

‘Why would anyone do that?’ We passed another mound of earth, this one undisturbed. It was marked with a stick, standing straight in the ground, snapped off one of the vines that climbed up the mountain.

‘In the north, we don’t burn our dead like you do here.’ Sam spoke up from where he had dropped to the back of the group. He looked uneasy. ‘We bury them. Return them to the earth they came from. In Albis, you’re supposed to put them in soft earth and plant a tree to mark the spot.’

That didn’t make any kind of sense. Bodies had to be burned. Leaving a corpse lying around was like inviting ghouls to come and feast on it.

‘They don’t have the same problems with ghouls in the north as you do here in the desert,’ Jin said absently. ‘There are only five graves. That’s not enough for this to have been a battle.’

Before I could ask what he meant, we rounded a turn in the path leading up to the fortress. Half a dozen Albish soldiers’ heads shot up from where they were gathered around a freshly dug hole. Their uniform jackets were slung over nearby stones, shirts rolled up to their elbows, brows sweating under the Mirajin sun. We’d interrupted them in the middle of burying another body.

My gun was in my hand in a blink – Jin’s, too. But the soldiers were scrambling for their own weapons, diving for discarded gun belts. We were outnumbered if they got there.

We’d have to shoot first.

My finger was on the trigger when the ground moved below my feet. It wasn’t like the mountain itself shifting – more like the skin of it was trying to shake us off, like we were an itchy nuisance. Dirt slid away under our feet, pitching Sam off balance and sending him crashing to the ground. I fought to steady myself, but it was no good. The wind picked up from nowhere, slamming me backwards, sending me sprawling, opening the skin at my elbow and knocking the gun from my hand.

And then, as fast as it had started, everything stopped. The mountain stilled. The wind died.

‘What just happened?’ I asked, cradling my bleeding elbow.

Sam groaned, clutching his side as he rolled over. He’d scratched up his face. That would dent his vanity for sure. ‘The ones in the dark green uniforms,’ he said. ‘They’re like me. Well, I guess more like you,’ he amended quickly, looking sour. I glanced over at the men. Two among them were in different uniforms than the others, the green of the fabric patterned with bright gold leaves, like vines twisting up and around their bodies. And they were unarmed, unlike all the others who were now pointing guns at us. One of the men in the gold vine uniform had the most brilliant pair of unnaturally green eyes I’d ever seen. The other had a faint tint of grey to his pale skin, like it might be made of stone.

Sam might have immortal blood in him from some ancestor or other, but he had two mortal parents. These men were true Demdji. Or whatever it was the Albish called their Demdji. Jin had told me once that their immortal creatures weren’t made of fire and wind and sand but of water and clouds and soft earth. Their gifts were different, but there was no mistaking them. And they weren’t hidden away – they were standing proudly, wearing their country’s symbol emblazoned on their chests, using their powers to fight.