Inch by Inch
By: Amber Michelle
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The wind was cold outside of Bulgar's walls, cutting through the wool cloak Sue pulled on but neglected to fasten before she nudged Yu out of the stable to search the field. It blew open, flapped on the currents, her hair pulled from her back with it to drift and snap, and she missed the jingle of her necklace with it-- an heirloom, her prayer. Gray skies stretched to the mountains down south, a flat slate, unbroken by the shadows that would mean rain, accompanied only by the smell of mud and metal, broken grass, the stink of corpses. Always fight away from the encampment, her mother told her; the human body dissolved into poison when it died, blood, disease, worse-- choosing a proper field of battle was a matter of honor, respect for the living, for the women and children. Only bandits killed indiscriminately.
Twice now, invading armies made of Bulgar a city of corpses. The earth could not swallow so much, the sky could not contain their ash. Shapes far to the east of the city gate, mere shadows against the gray and green beyond the wind of the river, stacked sheaves of grass and wood, what they could find. Detachments were sent south earlier to the foothills, where rocks were more plentiful. Roy promised the land would not be poisoned by the remains of this war, but it was too late. The earth was marked in grooves, the dirt darkened and hardened by blood, which did not nourish. There wasn't enough fuel on the plains to burn a thousand bodies.
Sue went outside to search for her bit of silver - a gift from her father to her mother, who then gave it to her when she came of age and returned from her first battle, sword unused but her quiver empty. A silver feather. A brass chain. The battlefield glittered with dull metal along her meandering path between lines of fallen, pricked as a night sky with stars by the glint of arrowheads, blades, spears, buckles. Pieces of armor - a finger from a gauntlet here, a helmet guard there, red for Bern and the purple enamel of Etruria. For Sacae there was blood and dim, muddied shapes, wandering horses; she found one caught by the reins, its rider's grip tight even in death, and she freed it with a swipe of her sword.
Sue looked among the Saceans first - the Djute corpses, the remnants of other clans called upon to fight the invasion and betray the spirit of the ancient pact. Their colors were sparse. She knew them by the trim of their coats and the embroidery of their fur-lined caps.
If there were a little more gold in the designs, a stronger red, it could be the Kutolah she gazed upon, broken upon the ground with arms and legs at odd angles, bent under, or backward, fingers clenched in the dirt, grass ripped up and trampled, the roots white and sick in the daylight. She remembered it well: the tangled hair, the soil muddied under a clear blue sky. Women pinned by spears, curled over their children. She remembered charging to meet the Bern contingent chasing them, an arrow for every wyvern and every Bernese throat, only to return, half of her arrows gone, and find she had chased the wrong predator.
The Kutolah had hunting knives. Bern had silver and steel. And the Djute--
Sue leaned sideways, spat on the remains of an outstretched hand, and nudged her horse into a trot. Lawbreakers.
She'd fought farther west, on the way to the break in the city walls. She would have lost the necklace there, and if her mother and father were gone, and if her clan slept beneath the grasses, cradled in the earth's embrace, she would not lose this scrap of her past. It was like a shard of her mother's mirror, a sliver of silver that would show her the faces of those most precious if she tilted it at the right angle when the sun was out.
Frigid water sprayed when she reached the river shore, and Sue dismounted to search the ground inch by inch. Her fingers froze in the water. Her boots soaked through at the seams, and goosebumps pricked the skin beneath her leggings, over her knees, up, up, the color bleeding to dark brown with moisture. She overturned rocks, spread the grass with her foot, with the tip of her sheathed sword, looking for the pure, moonlight gleam of a silver trinket. In it were her mother, her father, the children she watched over when she was too young to ride out with the adults, the boys she hunted with when she came of age and earned her place among the warriors. It was Kutolah in every silver barb and brass link.
Shin had asked to hold it before they crossed the border and rode into their homeland; she remembered the sound of his whisper when he held it in his palm, his hands moving with the rhythm of his horse's gait, knew he asked the spirits for guidance, for strength. Sue did the same.
She couldn't lose it.
The sky was darkening in the east when she found it, trampled, the chain curling out of the impression of a hoof print. She closed her hand around the feather, felt it bite into her palm. It was cold like the soil, like the wind and water. Her horse bent his head, nuzzled her hair, and his snort of breath was a blast of warmth on her ear, almost as hot as a fire. Once-- not long ago, he was all Sue had left; her horse, the necklace, her bow and sword and knife, wrapped with leather and embroidery by her mother's hand. She remembered riding west and south, stopping to sleep only when it was clear her companion could go no further, and listening to the empty whine of the wind cutting past her ears.
It was only six months, her mother told her once. I was an old woman when I finally broke my solitude. Only her horse was there to listen, keep her from shattering-- and there was the wind, like a long sigh between the pickets, against the walls of her tent, saying nothing. She paused at that part of the story, stroking Sue's hair, gathering it in her hands, and then said would have died come winter, and wondered if some part of her had wanted to lie down and break into earth like the rest of the Lorca.
Sue wanted to ask her mother how she rose above the silence, but she was gone with the rest of the Kutolah, and praying, hoping her mother's spirit would hear her and give its blessing, would not bid the winds to speak again or the tide of the earth recede, so it wouldn't look so sweet, so dark, so restful.
She stroked Yu's nose above the harness, behind his ears, and stood up. There were no metalworkers willing to waste time on a trinket like hers, but it would be safer sewn into her coat behind the lining. Sue didn't care for jewels or precious metal; she wanted was her mother, close to her heart. She wanted to hear her grandmother mutter about not having anyone to teach how to cure cheese properly, or her father directing her mother's use of the bow. She wanted Shin, pushing past the tent flap, telling her she was late, that everyone was waiting for her so they could ride and chase hares, so their bowstrings would sing.
That, she could have. Shin had not left her side once they met on the Western Isles. He would never leave her. Her grandfather was with him, still breathing, still fighting.
Sue pulled herself onto Yu's back and headed back to the city, the silver feather pressed into her palm. She couldn't keep them waiting.