The gleaners that follow it, their feet are crimson"
-Euripides, Medea
A spider's web of criss-crossed vanilla streets spread away from under him. They disappeared behind the rooftops of the city, crimson peaks tumbling away under the sky like ripe tomatoes. It was not an old city, as creaking mausoleums like Igros and Lionel were measured - but neither was it a new town, with orderly streets and well-planned aqueducts and the pervasive sense of urban atheism. No, Gariland rested comfortably in the middle. It had a history, but it was calm history of burghers and alchemists and hedge-wizards, and it had a future, but it was a sedentary future of commerce and security.
Delita scratched his nose and then resumed his still position. He had unbuckled his scabbard in order to sit more comfortably; it rested next to him on the roof. Above the white streets and the red roofs, he could see the smudge of green and gold on the horizon of the fields and farms, lying just outside the city.
He was sitting on top of a bakery. At least he was reasonably sure it had been a bakery; it hadn't been a great priority to establish the exact profession of the building. All that was needed was to inform the owner (who had been wearing an apron and covered in flour, so Delita was reasonably sure that he had been a baker) of the current situation, and what allowances the civil code of Magic City Gariland called for in this current situation. The baker (and really, what else could he be?) had been less than happy about the cadets taking up position next to his business. He had been even less thrilled about the occasion that called this pack of callow children to perch upon his front step under the distant autumn sunlight.
His feelings ultimately mattered not a whit, and Delita had interrupted his complaints with the request for a ladder, which his wonderful host had reluctantly granted. He had clambered up the ladder with the baker's youngest children clustered around the base, looking up in curiosity, and then bade them to return the ladder to their father, which they did slowly. Delita idly wondered if they had gone back to baking - the umber scent of bread lingered in the air, but there was no smoke issuing from the chimney.
He turned his attention to the green gold strip on the horizon. It was late autumn, but not too late, and so he supposed that the farmers would be out there still, wading deep within their fields of wheat with swinging silver scythes. It was a casual, random thought, and Delita was surprised by the burst of feelings and images and warm nostalgia the thought brought on - he could remember the harvests from his childhood vividly, as if they were inked in brilliant color right there in front of him.
A low whistle interrupted his thoughts. He pushed himself to the edge of the roof and looked down, to where a lanky cadet stood grinning up at him.
"Found yourself a cozy spot, eh?" Ramza asked merrily.
Delita shrugged. "It'll do."
"Aye, that it will." Ramza happily turned his gaze down the length of the deserted street and pointed to a position three buildings down. "I put young Roland on the little bridge back there, and I've got the others positioned in the alley behind here. When Alexandro's group drives them this way, this will be the place to bottle them up."
"If Alexandro drives them this way," Delita said tonelessly.
Ramza looked up at him and a frown slid over his fair face. "Oh, are you still riding that? I tell you, Delita, they'd have to be pure idiots to go up north of the canal. This is the fastest route out of the city.
"That assumes that they know the layout of Gariland." Delita turned his gaze back to the horizon. He was bored with this argument; Ramza refused to acknowledge that his position had any validity. It was like debating with a brick wall.
From below, Ramza's clear voice floated up, "Gariland's streets are logically organized, so if those knaves have any common sense of which to speak, surely they can find themselves here. And even if they don't, I'm certain that Alexandro will give them the necessary motivation. He knows where we're stationed." He stood there for a few more minutes looking up, but as Delita resolutely ignored him, he sighed and said, "Well, whatever. If you see them, give the signal. And if you hear Roland give the signal, pass it along to us." He silently wandered off, and Delita watched the distant, green horizon.
Strange, really, that he could remember things about the harvests from his childhood. He hadn't thought about his childhood in years, much less the autumn traditions. He had always been too young to actually participate in the harvest before they had sent him to the Academy, so his scanty memories were solely formed as a passive observer, and yet...there they were, imprinted into his mind. Strange.
From this position, Delita could see nearly the whole length the little street, now lonely and deserted. Occasionally a citizen would scurry along its length, but they could sense the eyes trained on them and would hurry to move off it. Delita's bakery was positioned right at the turn in the street, where it abruptly twisted off and joined the main thoroughfare out of the city. Distantly, he supposed that Ramza might have a point: this would be a good place to fight. If they came this way.
He could remember that after the harvest, the villagers would have a great, roaring bonfire. They would serve strange sweet cakes and hot cider and tell wonderfully bloody stories around the heat, surrounded by inky darkness. All the harvesters were there, all their wives and pretty daughters and solemn sons.
The Church frowned on such festivals, considering them to be throwbacks to pagan worships, and officially condemned them. Which is why Zalbag, when he caught two small boys returning to the manor from one of the bonfires, had given them a whipping they would not soon forget. The Church - and the manor, for that matter - usually elected to turn a blind eye as long as the affairs were discreet and held at a decent distance, but when presented with incontrovertible evidence, they were forced to act.
A gust of wind suddenly started moving in a new direction, against Delita's unprotected face. He sealed his eyes, crossed his arms in front of his chest, and gritted his teeth. For a moment, it chilled him, freezing his breath in his lungs. Then, just as suddenly, it was gone. Delita opened his eyes and returned to autumn.
As a boy, Delita hadn't understood the Church's attitude - the festivals were about food and life and happiness. Only when he was older did he comprehend the meaning of the harvest and the onslaught of winter and the old traditions that had degenerated into incomprehensible rituals. Around that fire they celebrated the fruit of the land by killing it at the peak of its ripeness and consecrating it to their old, strange gods. Little of that remained in the contemporary festivals, though - it was just an opportunity to relax and get drunk after the hard work of the harvest.
He was concentrating on the issue so intently that he missed the first call; a second low whistle was required to get his attention. He looked up with a start, and automatically returned the whistle. No one was on the street; they must still be around the bend. Delita grabbed his scabbard. He half-consciously registered a second whistle from his right - Ramza - and swung his feet over the edge of the roof. Delita had learned early the value of not thinking through certain situations, so he choose not to notice the great distance to the ground and instead pushed himself off.
He hung in the air for a stomach-churning instant, and there was an insistent hard note of regret and anguish and fear, and then he landed on the packed earth. Gravity drove him to his knees and he blinked for a second, coming back to himself. He straightened, brushed himself off, and looked ahead.
At the thieves.
They stood about fifty feet from him and had just rounded the bend. They stared back at him, their surprise at a strange boy dropping from the top of a two-story building temporarily rendering them still. Time stopped for a second, with everything frozen in crystalline perfection. Delita saw their ragged clothes, their dirty faces, the blood stains around their wrists and arms. They saw a sturdy young man with dark hair and darker eyes, clutching a long, worn scabbard..
No one was breathing.
And then Ramza was beside him, visibly radiating light and glee, and saying, "Stop right there, knaves! Surrender now or die in obscurity!"
Delita winced (Die in obscurity?) and the thieves stared at him in a mixture of fury and confusion. One of them shouted, "What's this? A bunch of children?" Another one cried, "Just kill them and get it over!" The dusty group began to draw their swords; they suddenly seemed a lot less spell-bound and a lot more lethal. From behind them, Delita saw Roland pop up with a drawn sword, waiting for Ramza's move; now everyone was out and in position.
Delita could feel the others at his back but he suddenly felt less confident about their situation: desperation emanated from the thieves like smoke and he knew that they would give no quarter. "Ramza," he said quietly as the cadets drew their swords, "I wouldn't rush them..."
Ramza misinterpreted his warning as being in line with their earlier argument and irately cried, "Stop patronizing me, Delita. I am a Beoulve, and I know what I'm doing."
The thieves snapped to attention.
"A Beoulve?"
"THE Beoulves?"
"They must be from the Academy."
"Hey, we've got some military brats here."
"It's the snot-nosed little nobles."
"God damn."
Abruptly, as if responding to some hidden signal, they shook themselves from their golden molasses petrifaction and began as one to run towards the knot of cadets standing in the middle of the road.
Ramza screamed, "Move out!" and there was a moment when tension snapped through their group like a bow hitting the violin's string; there was a moment where it felt distant and unreal and dreamlike; there was a moment where Delita's mind went cold and blank because, like his fall, there were some actions that should not be thought through.
For a moment, there flashed through his mind an image of the wheat fields in the morning, like a sea of gold laced with crystal dew.
He drew his sword, and as the first thief in the group made a desperate sideways lunge at him with a knife, Delita sliced open his head. It was a quick uppercut, from below the jawbone to the outside edge of the left eyebrow. The other man stumbled back in a mess of blood and screams. He made another attempt, but Delita parried the blow and than thrust his sword in the thief's belly. The man gurgled a crimson curse, and then went down.
Around them reigned noisy, frenetic chaos as bodies slipped left and right, jumped and then collapsed with a shriek. As Delita yanked his blade free, he saw that the man had been wearing a golden locket that gleamed along with the glossy blood in the wet wreck of his neck.
After that, he stopped noticing details.
Author's Note: Originally written as Chapter Five of my Chorus project; eventually booted so I could write something completely different for that section. I still contend that "Golden Molasses Petrifaction" would be a good title for a rock song, and I have no idea what "pervasive sense of urban atheism" was supposed to mean. (Oh, 17-year-old self, you are inscrutable.)
(11/29/02) - Some very minor editing to change a plot device that always bothered me (instead of just "happening" conveniently across this particular street, the thieves are actively being driven towards it by another team of knights). Hooray! I feel the vague stirrings of interest in this baby, though I'm not certain whether to go with the original conceit (which would mean that the next chapter has original characters - that seems awfully tiresome at this point, however) or forge ahead with Algus. Hmmmm...
(01/12/02) - This went through...several rewrites, and it's still a little patchy in places, but I desperately want to move on, and this chapter's current state is sufficient for my purposes. So now, moving on. Hurrah! Next Time: Send in the Mary Sues!