Ambush

Sayblood's Children: Part Ten

Sayblood’s Children is a folk horror/romance novella, serialized in twelve parts. This is Part Ten.

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Previously, Sayblood’s attempt to run was interrupted, and Othniel pursued her.

In this chapter, the little family returns home, ready to face their fate.

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Photo by Jakub Kriz on Unsplash

The little girl was called Mouse, and the old man’s name was Rooster.

That they had spotted me in the labyrinth of tunnels at all was a miracle, they said. Had they not, I would have disappeared into the darkness, bones lying in the dust, alone and mourned by no one.

Mouse was a young girl of maybe seven or eight, Rooster had a crown of white hair. The two of them had a similar singsong lilt to their voices as Shrike, and I assumed that they were all from the same place, or close to it.

They were suspicious of me, but in hindsight I cannot blame them. It was clear that I was a member of One Prince’s own house, and could too easily spell their doom had I chosen to harm them.

Rooster took my blades and tied my hands and feet, but in all other ways the two of them were merciful, even gentle. Mouse took great care to feed me and give me water, her eyes straying wide to my pregnant belly with a child’s curiosity. It took time for me to regain my strength, and they were patient.

When I was well enough to speak to them, I told them of Shrike’s death. The news was unexpected, and both seemed to grieve in their own way.

“It was Shrike’s plan we were after following,” Rooster said.

It had not occurred to me that these were my guides, the ones who were supposed to lead me out.

“Can you still follow it?” I asked.

Rooster seemed to hesitate, looked at Mouse. “It is a dangerous road,” he said. “And the plan is already broken, with the loss of the poet.”

I had thought in my naivete that the road Above would be a simple stone staircase or even a hill, winding upward. But my new guides told me, no. It was a stone maze with many tunnels, each branching off to their own vast landscapes and unseen subterranean cities, each teeming with dangers and foes. The tunnels would move of their own accord, it was said, and no map was ever accurate for long.

I came to understand that the Underside, my home, the underground city I had thought so expansive and glorious, was merely a tiny speck in an endless void.

“It’s frightful easy to fall in,” Mouse said, so young and yet with a shrewd sharpness to her gaze. “Near impossible to climb out.”

The very idea was dizzying.

Even so, after a time they released me from the ropes. As there seemed to be no other way, they agreed to lead me up and out.

But Rooster kept my blades, just in case.

*******

Three days after the birth of her children, lying on the bed in the shack in the fisherfolk’s settlement, Sayblood had a dream. But it was not of her father, or of his dark library, or of the twin blades in his blood-stained hands.

Instead, in this dream she saw Othniel’s small orchard covered in soft pink blooms and green leaves fresh-born, faces turned toward a high-tilted sun. The air was warm and smelled sweet, an unfamiliar fragrance, breath from pink fluttering petals and the embers of the earth.

It reminded her of the smell of her newborn daughters’ silken hair. And she understood it to be a smell of rebirth.

Spring.

The word was sweeter still, like meeting an old friend much longed-for. Sayblood stood in the orchard surrounded by the songs of birds and the hum of unfamiliar insects, and she could feel the roots of the trees digging down, down, deeper still than most roots dare to go. She could hear the rush of underground water, rivers and oceans below the rock.

As the wind fluttered through the orchard, petals dislodged from the trees and wherever they landed, a new tree grew in its place. Soon the small island was alive with apple trees—young saplings and gnarled crones—and the black evergreens divided like a tide to let them pass and grow and rise and scent the air with their fragrance.

Sayblood saw lithe, darkly-furred, slim-legged creatures darting through the trees, lifting their narrow noses to the breeze, ears twitching. She saw an old bridge made from haunted timbers. She heard singing.

The sun rose gold over all that living green.

In the center of it all, Othniel’s cabin. And more. And the “more” was too beautiful for Sayblood to comprehend.

She woke weeping, and scarcely understood why.

*******

Three days was not enough, but time was not on their side.

Despite the kindness and patience of the fisherfolk, Othniel and Sayblood knew that they could not stay and put these innocent people at risk.

In the end, they had two choices only. It was either to run, step onto The Tern—with Sayblood still recovering and the twins only days old—or it would be to go back to Othniel’s cabin to await whatever fate lay there for them. Neither felt right, both felt like stepping out into mist. They argued each position, debated, quarreled.

But on one point, Othniel was firm and unmoving: he refused to be left behind. Wherever Sayblood would go, he would go with her. No argument.

In the end, both knew that to take The Tern into the unknown while mother and daughters were so fragile and there was no guarantee of safety on the other side would be to flirt with disaster.

And there was something else. An assurance that only Sayblood seemed to have, based on evidence only she could see.

“We need to go back,” she said. “There is no running from my fate, and that island is our home. We cannot forsake it. We need to go back.”

So it was that they packed up what meager belongings they had with them—along with a hearty supply of extra provisions and gifts given to them by the fisherfolk—wrapped Sayblood and her babies warm against the chill, and started to head back to the little island.

As he rowed them across the strait in the rowboat, bleary-eyed and yawning from lack of sleep, Othniel could not help but steal glances at Sayblood. Since the birth, he had watched many complicated thoughts dance past her eyes without reaching her lips. He longed to ask her what she was thinking about, but he thought it best to leave her be. Her body was tired and in no little pain, and the tiny beings she held wrapped to her body demanded much of her.

He detected a private sorrow in the loving way she looked upon her children, and it was familiar: he had often seen it in his own mother’s eyes, too. And a grave fear rose in him that Sayblood would do anything to protect her children, even at the cost of her own life.

He was not sure he could bear that.

The waters of the strait lay obedient to the oars and the rhythm was calming, hypnotic. But as they crossed the halfway point and the little island loomed closer, Othniel found himself arrested by the feeling that there was something wrong. Something strange about the way the island lay hunched like a panicked animal.

He had no real evidence, nothing to alert Sayblood to. But the sense would not leave him.

The rifle lay at his feet on the floor of the rowboat, propped up on a basket of gifted shellfish to keep it up and away from the bilgewater. Othniel’s fingers itched to bring it up to his knees, but he kept calm. No need to spook Sayblood if he didn’t have to.

When the boat landed with a crunching whisper against the shore pebbles, Othniel jumped out to pull it up so that Sayblood wouldn’t have to get her feet wet in the shallows. He helped her step out, and she stood pensive, staring up at the trees, her arms wrapped around the babies strapped to her bosom.

“Something is wrong,” she said. They were the first words she had uttered since they left the fisherfolk’s settlement, and they felt deeply portentous.

Othniel nodded. Where the island’s plants and beasts always had a sort of watchful way of leaning in, now they seemed to lean away, their attention drawn to something else, like an animal might worry at a wound.

Othniel shouldered the rifle and the bags and baskets of supplies and led the way up the beach. Sayblood stayed close to him, carrying her own basket, and they entered the treeline, leaving the little boat behind.

The trees were as hushed as hostages. No wind stirred their branches, no birds fluttered overhead. Despite it being the middle of the day, the low clouds cloaked the sun in shadow and the canopy deadened the light to a strange twilight, casting the path in gloom. Mist hovered between heaven and earth, cloaking the trees, muzzling the sound.

Othniel began to wish for the voice of Shrike to guide him, but the ghost had been silent since the birth of the twins. The silence terrified him more than the phantom’s presence.

When the ambush came, it was Sayblood who sensed it first. She slipped a blade from her belt where it had been kept unseen under the babies’ wrappings, a stout fisherman’s blade sharp enough to cut net and salmon spines, and she froze in place.

“They are here,” she said. “We are found.”

The footsteps behind Othniel were so quiet that he barely had time to react when something red leapt from the shadows to the right and knocked him to the ground. Sayblood hissed in surprise and the woods seemed to erupt, animals and birds escaping from the melee where they had been hiding, terrified. The starveling snapped at Othniel’s face and neck, clinging to him with long fingers and toes, white eyes rolling.

Within moments he felt the creature pulled backward off of him, throat sliced neatly, and Sayblood threw the creature’s body to the forest floor. But there was no time to think; starvelings crawled down from the trees, nimble on their strange limbs like red spiders, tongueless mouths gasping. Eight, nine? Impossible to count with panic coursing through his veins.

Othniel raised the rifle and fired, hitting one square as it reached the ground, and Sayblood threw her knife to hit another. But just as soon as those two fell lifeless, two more leaped down to take their places. Sayblood pulled a second knife from her basket. The babies woke and began to cry, a surprised mewling in tune with the quick thunder of their mother’s heartbeat.

It all happened in a moment. Othniel felt his left calf light up with terrible fire, looked down to see a starveling’s sharp teeth holding fast to his flesh through his trousers, having crept up from behind.

He felt terror and pain mingle, filled his limbs, turned his actions feral and unthinking. He lashed and flailed, using the butt of the rifle to strike at the blood-red, white-eyed thing holding him fast. And when all was done and the starveling lay dead, Othniel’s blood on its teeth, Othniel raised his gaze and realized that Sayblood and her children were gone.

The remaining starvelings, having fulfilled their mission, vanished into the woods.

*******

Sayblood cursed herself, holding tightly to Rose and Wren as the starvelings dragged her through the forest, uncaring of striking her against every root and stone. One of them had struck her in the face and she was dazed, thinking only of keeping her children close. She tried to soothe them but her tongue wouldn’t work properly to form words, only hushing sounds and groaning tones.

There was a time, she thought, when her body would have risen to this occasion and dealt death to every infernal creature in this godforsaken forest. But her whole lower half was still in pain, muscles aching, and the basket with two more hidden knives was back on the path with Othniel.

Othniel.

Her heart fluttered with terror. She listened for the report of the rifle, of his shout, anything to prove he was still alive, but there was nothing. She hoped beyond hope that he had escaped, that he had run.

I want my blades.

It was the first time since arriving Above that she had truly ached for the feel of steel in her hands. But instead those same hands lay on the softness of her babies, wrapped at her chest, and she held them tightly.

The starvelings stopped for a moment, unexpected, and scented the air. There were two of them, strong-limbed and shrewd. One held Sayblood up against a tree by her throat while the other seemed distracted by something, a scent on the air that it couldn’t place. It crawled away, crouched, rose up on its feet to sniff, and turned its head. A thoughtful pause. Then, it seemed to give up on whatever had distracted it.

Just as it turned to come back to Sayblood a figure stepped out of the trees, fast.

It was Bill.

With one swift movement the wild man swung out with a stout piece of driftwood, hardened and cured by time and studded with the sharp skeletons of old barnacles, and struck the starveling square in the back of the head.

The creature spasmed and fell. Bill lifted the driftwood weapon and gave the starveling another final blow, then turned his gaze on the second, eyes savage with blue fire.

At that moment, something happened to the one holding Sayblood by the neck. Something strange. Its grip loosened and it faltered backward.

Its bizarre face, so animal and so horrifying, rippled with a very human emotion: fear, mingled with regret. And Sayblood felt that, perhaps, the madness that led these things to forsake their own safety for the orders of One Prince might fall way like scales. She could not remember this one’s name, but she knew it had one. And she wished she could say it.

Sayblood would wish many things of that moment that could not come to be.

As quickly as it came the fear passed through the white eyes of the starveling, replaced by the crazed blood-lust of a berserker, and the creature leaped at Bill. The wild man struck the starveling with the driftwood and it fell back, hitting its head on the ground with an audible sound, nose bleeding, eyes empty. It was still.

Bill dropped the driftwood and approached Sayblood, holding out his hands as if calming a shy horse. “Bird and blood, and here you are again,” he said. “The island is overrun.”

“How many are there?” Sayblood asked.

“Hard to say. It’s a landing party, if I’ve ever seen one. A sweep. Something worse is coming, you can gamble on it.”

Bill’s attention was suddenly grabbed by the babies in Sayblood’s arms.

“Oh,” he said, a deeply surprised sound. “And look at that. And look at two.”

Sayblood smiled. “All is well. Two girls, Rose and Wren.”

Bill was entranced. He held out one hand as if he was going to touch the top of Rose’s head, but thought better of it and let his fingers hover like a blessing.

“Never seen the like of it,” he said, hushed. “Never before and never again.”

He looked up at Sayblood, then, and as was his way a ghost of lucidity passed over his face. “You can’t imagine what sweet fruit will grow in this place, Dear Lady. You simply cannot imagine it. All gold, all green, and as sweet as—”

The interrupting sound was sickening.

The starveling, only stunned, had jumped up and latched its teeth into the side of Bill’s neck from behind, biting down hard.

Blood spilled. Blue eyes widened. Sayblood gasped and fell back against the tree as Bill was pulled away from her, then raised herself up again with a cry of sheer violence. She took up the driftwood stick and knocked the starveling’s leg out from under it, loosening its grip with surprise, and then swung again. And again.

She could not stop. The babies screamed against her breast. Her hands shook with the effort, every sinew poured into the act.

The starveling lay twitching on the forest floor, skull crushed.

Bill leaned against the tree, gasping, pale as death.

*******

When Othniel finally limped into the clearing, calf in agony, following the sounds of snarling, of screaming, of the babies weeping, it took him a moment to understand what he was seeing.

Bill was lying against a tree, blood soaking all the way down the front of his coat, and Sayblood and her daughters were sitting beside him. There were two dead starvelings lying nearby.

Sayblood had Bill’s pale hand in hers, and she had her head tilted, gaze distant, as if looking at nothing. There was a nasty cut over her eye as if she had been struck a blow, and a rivulet of blood beaded on her cheek like a tear.

When she heard Othniel approach she tensed and looked up, eyes red from weeping, confusion on her face.

“I should have said its name,” she whispered. “I could not remember it.”

Othniel did not understand. He limped over to kneel beside her.

Bill stirred briefly.

“One step closer,” the wild man said. “Lucky day.”

Othniel shook his head. “No need to talk, old fellow. We’ll get you back to the cabin, fix you up. Hold tight, will you? Just a little longer?”

Bill shook his head very slowly. “One step closer, Brack, and that’s all that matters. Closing the gap.”

“Do not go,” Sayblood said, sobs choking her voice to a thin whisper. “Please.”

Bill squeezed Sayblood’s hand, a feeble gesture, and then said, “Where does Bill ever go? It is my call, you know, to come back around.”

Here he looked at Othniel, as if he hoped that Othniel would understand better than anyone else. Then he looked away, out at the trees, seeing something invisible and beautiful, a smile fluttering across his lips.

“It’s all so gold, and so green.”

And that was all.

Bill was gone.

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