The first realization something was wrong did not wake Anrik from sleep. He tossed, covering his face with the bare, hardly worth the name, pillow each worker was granted. His dreams had been horrid. Creatures had come out caves, their cave-dark white eyes full of hate and anger at things which lived in the light of the Sun. Anrik’s hearing was no longer as adept as it had been before he join the powder workers at Mordin, usually it took a rough shaking from one of the others to wake him in the mornings.

The second realization something was wrong was one of those very workers crashing into Anrik’s bunk, nearly knocking Anrik to the floor. Anrik came to his feet with a squawk to see the cabin was half-torn apart, and only he and two others remained. Those two were frantically packing things into knapsacks, their faces alight with fear.

Alight with fear.

Outside it was still deep dark. It took Anrik a long moment to recognize that this was compatible with the amount of light streaming in from the cheap glass windows.

The camp is on FIRE!

Those words struck a gong note of utmost fear into Anrik. Before he could really process that fear the two remaining workers, whom he could see were Tobrin and Schnar, had fled the cabin, running into the orange-coated night outside. A concussive boom shattered the air and the cabin shook. Anrik struggled to get his clothes on, only to find his clothes were gone. He managed to find a tunic half a size too small and slip into it, though he could not find a matching pair of sandals, instead discovering only a broken one made for a foot much bigger than his, and another much smaller, though not broken.

Struggling, Anrik put the sandals on as best he could and grabbed a ripped sack someone had abandoned. He was stuffing bedding into it, as there were no clothes remaining to be had, when the sounds of booted feet reached his dulled, blasted ears.

A harshly accented voice, speaking really tortured Westrin barked orders at Anrik, who heard only the sounds, not the words. Hands shoved at his shoulders, pressing him to the ground while other hands clasped his arms behind his back. Something hard smashed into the side of his head and face and he reeled, all thoughts of fight or flight stilled. When the voice spoke next, it was close enough to his ear and loud enough that Anrik could make out, sort of, what it said.

“Resist... die... Stand man!” the voice had said as rough, strong hands pulled Anrik to his feet. He was hustled out of the cabin to find Tobrin equally bound, sniveling quietly, head bowed into his tunic. Schnar’s twitching body was only a few feet away, streams of congealing blood running slowly away from it, looking like dark brown mud in the firelight. Tobrin glanced at Anrik, the man’s brown eyes wet with tears he could not wipe away, as his hands were bound behind his back with rope. Anrik felt a moment’s pride that he was not crying. The feeling faded quickly as he saw many of the rest of the camp’s occupants being herded into the central square. Around him the orange-red glow of fire lit up the night as buildings were set to the torch.

They’ll kill us all if they light all the storehouses up!

An orderly rush of soldiers stomped past, running lightly on booted feet towards the western end of the camp. Hands pushed Anrik. He turned to see a nightmare of a man’s face glaring at him from the fiery night. “Move!” the man shouted in poor Westrin.

They ran away from the camp, huddled together in a seething mass of frightened men and women, too focused on keeping their feet under them while their arms were bound behind their backs to talk. Anrik did manage to get something of a look about him, and a vague count of how many of his fellows were running alongside him.

Less than thirty of us. Are the rest all dead?

To his shock he saw a flash of silver reflecting orange as he looked around. The Mother Silva was there, her arms bound behind her, struggling to keep her feet under her. No one was making any effort to help the woman. Her hair was long enough to trip her and fell unbound around legs while she fought to keep pace. Soldiers flanked the entire party, keeping them moving forward. Occasionally, another soldier would run past at a dead sprint giving the group no notice. Anrik fought to increase his steps until he was at pace with the Mother Silva. He gently pushed himself against her, helping her to support her weight as they ran. She glanced, from under her hair at him, with a face that was so sharp and hard it could have cut diamond. But she did not refuse the help.

They ran for at least an hour, so far that the orange light of the camp on fire no longer showed through the trees, before the soldiers around them called a halt. Anrik had managed to study them a great deal during that hour.

They are human. Ish. But something is different about them, their skin is darker, their lips redder. Almost scarlet. Most of the soldiers had piercings in their faces, bars of shiny, silvery metal with little balls at each end slashing in short little lines down their cheeks. Some had the same piercings across the bridge or base of their nose, or at the edge of their eyes. They were all men.

“Halt!” a voice called in hard, poor Westrin.

The throng of soldiers around Anrik and the others came to an immediate halt. They moved away, leaving the small crowd of people from the powder camp huddled together, panting for breath after the hard run. Anrik saw the Mother Silva collapse in a haze of hair and sooty, silvery fabric. He moved towards her and stepped wrong, tripped over a tree root, fell forwards to the ground. Without his arms to brace his fall, the crash stole the wind from his chest, leaving him inhaling dirt and wet leaves between attempt to swallow down gulps of breath.

Leaves rustled as someone knelt next to him. Anrik looked up to see a woman, her head shaved bald and her face covered in the bar piercings of the other soldiers. She was terrifying in the strength of her black eyes and the sharp angles of her cheekbones. Muscles bulged in her neck, as though she were straining, though she was motionless in a squat, considering Anrik.

“Is she yours?” the woman said in perfect, if strangely accented Westrin. Her head jerked slightly toward the Mother Silva.

Anrik could not reply, still could not breathe fully. He gasped raspy, sucking breaths and as suddenly as his breath had been slammed out of him it returned. He exhaled, with perhaps the most joyful breath of his entire life. The woman’s hand grabbed his chin and robbed every bit of joy from the moment. She pulled, firmly and with unerring force, on his chin, lifting it towards her face. Her black eyes had just the slightest bit of burning fire in them, as though somehow, they were reflecting the conflagration. Anrik did not want to meet those burning black eyes, but he could not turn away from her iron-handed grip. She squeezed her fingers until the fingernails cut into his skin, just on the edge of drawing blood.

“Answer me, boy.” she said.

Anrik tried to answer, and instead coughed up dirt, leaves, and bits of bloody phlegm. Some of the particulate hit the woman, but she neither flinched nor removed her hand. Instead her grip tightened. A small trickle of blood ran down Anrik’s chin, over her hand and dripped on the loamy ground.

“No!” Anrik shrieked, though it came out more like a grunt. “She is not mine. I just wanted to help her!”

“Why?”

The question was honest. Her expression made it clear she did not understand why Anrik would try and help the Mother.

“Because she is holy!” Anrik said, struggling to find a reason why he had felt the need to aid the Mother. Lessons from childhood, endless droning, or at least endless seeming to young Anrik, about the inviolate and holy nature of the Mothers of the Church came back to him. He had hated those lessons, could not really ever actually believing the women were some other flesh, yet never quite ridding himself of the awe of their existence. A Mother was just a woman, however powerful, at her core, yet she had become something more in the process. This is how Anrik had come to see them: as self-created women of power, who took on a new aspect as part of their power.

Rumors that the Mothers had powers of the Mind and Heart had always been just that. Anrik had never seen any of them. But his eyes had read every book he could find which told stories of adventures, of myths and strange creatures. More than one of those works had centered around Mothers who had powers. It was this conditioning which had always made Anrik receptive to belief in magic. Every trick used by the Fathers of the Church were obvious to the son of a Engineer. It was mechanical, alchemical, or natural – nothing those men did was magic. But those men did not possess the secrets of the Mothers. Anrik had always wanted to believe the Mothers had powers the Fathers either knew not or could not know.

Why did I say that? She isn’t holy. There’s no such thing.

“This woman is one of your witches?” the pierced woman said. She jerked her head to some of soldiers, then back at the near motionless Mother. Three gruff soldiers broke from the pack and bodily lifted the Mother to her feet. Her hair fell about her head and shoulders blocking most of her face and chest from view, yet Anrik saw her face caked in dirt, the ethereal, otherness of her tarnished by the image. Another nod from the pierced woman and one of the soldiers drew a shining blade of some faceted black rock and stabbed the Mother in the shoulder. The soldier took the tip of the blade and tasted it.

“Blarga.” he said to the pierced woman, with a distinct nod even Anrik could understand the meaning of: blood.

“She bleeds.” the pierced woman said, cocking her head to the side, again considering Anrik, a question on her face. “Witches do not bleed blood, but bile. This is known.”

Anrik did not have a response to this. He had no idea what he could or should say, instead he exhaled sharply again and drew as deep a breath as his lungs and the woman’s grip on his face would allow. She could kill him and he wanted to taste air once before she did it.

“Perhaps in your land it is the men who are the witches? I have heard of such a thing among the orrics. You can never be sure with those beasts which is a witch until you have plucked out the eyes and burned them. They will bleed in the fire if it is a witch.”

The pierced woman detailed this horrid, cruel thing as though it were nothing, as though she were relaying the manner in which a person could taste water to determine if it were salty or not. Her soldiers, and Anrik was now certain they were under her command, nodded in agreement with her words.

“So. Boy. Is she a witch or not? Can your people tell them apart in some other way than the blood or eyes? Is this why you would save her? Because you think her spells will secure your release?” Some of the soldiers pealed off rough, coarse laughs. One of them must have done something to the Mother because she cried out in mild pain. Anrik resisted the urge to lurch towards her.

I owe her nothing. I will not die for her.

I will not...

His thoughts were interrupted by the hammering footfalls of booted feet. The pierced woman released him and he fell to the ground from the lack of balance. Thankfully he did not lose his breath this time and managed to fall in a way that allowed him to rise to his knees and look around. A huge number of soldiers, men and women, had come upon the group. They were physically similar to those who had initially run Anrik and the others so hard, but they did not have the piercings on their faces. Near the edge of his vision he saw Tobrin struggling to get off his knees, his shoulders taut with tension as he attempted to pull apart the ropes binding his hands. Stop Tobrin. They’ll kill you.

Anrik had no idea if that was the case or not, but he got the distinct impression somehow that this band of soldiers was not going to let any of the people from his camp go, at least not alive. The pierced woman spoke, in some vulgar, harsh sounding language to one the newcomers. Though the newcomers showed little visible sign of deference, Anrik detected it. The pierced woman is some kind of general, maybe.

At her words the newcomers began to separate the campers according to some determination only they knew. Tobrin, who had gotten his hands free, was jerked upright and a long-handled dirk was shoved into his head from just under the chin. The man’s body was allowed fall where it would, no further care given to the now obviously dead man. None of his fellows had the energy left to shout in dismay as Tobrin toppled to the ground with a soft thud.

The only member of the captured camp who was not led off was the Mother Silva. She was on her knees, head bowed as if in prayer. None of the newcomers paid her any mind, however, the pierced woman had not moved on. With a deft hand she grabbed at the Mother Silva’s hair, jerked the woman’s head back. Anrik saw the Mother Silva’s hand rise, but he had not expected she actually intended to attack the pierce woman.

But that is exactly what the kneeling woman did. She raised her right hand, something silvery shining on one of her fingers and held it like a weapon towards the pierced woman. The brightness of the object was clearly too much for the night-sighted pierced woman. She shied away, both arms raised to cover her face. Yet Anrik saw this was not done in a defensive manner, it was not as if the pierced woman were actually afraid of being hurt by the light, only momentarily stunned by it, perhaps. When the pierced woman’s arms lowered her face, broad and dark, was split in a snarl of barely contained rage. Her arm flew backwards, fist balled as though she would strike the Mother Silva. The Mother cowered, but did not lower her upraised arm and the shining object on her hand.

The pierced woman laughed. Anrik was pulled away but rough hands. He tried to through them off, tossing each shoulder and attempting to twist away. But the hands were too strong, he was pulled away. However, he managed to keep his eyes on the pierced woman and the Mother Silva as he was carried off. Some power surged in the Mother Silva and the light grew, but so did the pierced woman’s laughter. Eyesight dulled by increasingly bright light, Anrik blinked. During that moment he missed the release of the pierced woman’s held blow.

When it struck the Mother Silva she fell, unmoving and the light instantly winked out, leaving only the ghostly afterimage of twinkling dots of light.

Anrik could not contain his scream of rage and despair when he saw the Mother Silva prone on the peaty ground, curled into a semi-fetal position, her hair splayed all around her like some perverse live action art. Anrik tried to reach out toward her, his mind short circuited from the question of why by the sight of her still body in the dirt, no longer shining.

That light! It was so… amazing!

The pierced woman leaned down and pulled something from the Mother Silva’s hand, tucked it away in one of her many pouches. Anrik went slack against the hands pulling him, got his feet back under his body and turned away. He did not see the Mother Silva, left for dead, twitch just so.

“Move!” one of the soldiers shouted, pushing Anrik forward.

The pierced woman jogged past, leapt upon a stubby horse only slightly larger than a pony, her feet clearly well adjusted to the stirrups. She turned and barked an order in the harsh tongue of her people. And then her eyes returned to Anrik. She barked another order. Hands grasped him yet again and pulled him towards her horse, shoved him to his knees before the animal, which smelled like shit and sweat. And blood. And fire.

“Well, boy. Your witch was not so mighty, was she?” the pierced woman said. “Now you will find a new one to worship, eh?”

The word worship struck a bell in Anrik. How does she know of worship? His head, which had been lowered, refusing to look up at the pierced woman, rose and met her crystalline black eyes. There was still a question in them. Perhaps there always was. Perhaps there always would be.

“No, lady. I will not.” Anrik said, finding some courage within him, as though the right combination of powders had been struck deep inside him, had lit a fire which could explode at any moment. The pierced woman met his gaze, did not flinch but laughed. A roguish, gruff laugh, the kind of laugh a man might have after smelting iron in the black pits for a decade or so. Her eyes held their question with the gaze.

“What then will you do, boy? When you meet the nightmares which come to haunt your days?” the pierced woman asked.

Anrik blinked at her, confused. Nightmares?

“Do not believe that prayers would service, for we tried them.” she said, still stern and questioning. “Once, long ago, it was believed that the power to defeat them lay in the West. So our witches told. But they were burned. Perhaps it is the nature of witches, to burn.” She seemed to have reached some endpoint, some conclusion. Another barked order and Anrik was being dragged away by the shoulders again. He kept his eyes on the pierced woman until she was obscured by the trees, and he saw that her hand stayed resting over the pouch where she had placed whatever she had stolen from the Mother Silva.

Next Chapter: Chapter 18 - Masaan