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by Therese Arkenberg
Fantasy, 10 pages.
Originally Published in A Fly in Amber, 2009
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It is said that the dead have no touch, no sight, no taste or smell, but only hearing. As a younger man I derided the belief as mere superstition. Now I know the truth of it — the last thing I saw was Aeswyth’s hand rising to close my eyes, and then the pain stopped, and I have had only sound ever since.
Whenever I remember Aeswyth, I regret that the dead cannot speak to one another. I would like to tell him what has happened of late, so he would know he had not fallen defending my keep in vain. But perhaps it does not matter. Aeswyth always cared more for his duty than anything else in the world, even victory.
I had bleed out my life. My gut was split, a lung pierced; for a time I tasted blood bubbling on the back of my tongue. The pain was terrible, but soon it faded, and after Aeswyth closed my eyes I was suddenly consumed by a lack of sensation. Without agony, I felt nothing. I was left in darkness. At first, I could not even hear.
It seemed I should feel fear, or at least some sort of uneasiness, but it was hard to have fear without a heart to pound, or worry without lips to bite, or grief without eyes to weep. My mind slowly strayed to other things — how did the battle go? Were my forces overwhelmed by Kennata’s attack? Or had we sent the whoreson to hell?
At that thought, I felt that I should laugh. What was hell, if this nothingness was what the dead had to face? Or did I live still, only lost in some strange delirium from my wound?
As if in answer to the question, I heard a sound. A thick, high scrape finished by a heavy thud. I could not tell at first where it was, but after some concentration I decided it came from above me.
Skiss-thunk. Skiss-thunk. It sounded somehow familiar. Where had I heard it before?
Skiss-thunk-ha. Skiss-thunk. Ha. That was the sound of a man gasping for breath, panting as he labored at something...digging?
Of course I knew. The knowledge left me with no panic or fear, though for a moment I felt a spike of rage — damn Kennata and his war for leading me here! Damn the man who had killed me! Damn Aeswyth for closing my eyes! But then it was gone, and I was empty again as if it had burned the last feeling out of me, leaving only a cold heavy weight like the earth heaped over me, no better and no worse than the empty nothingness I had felt before.
I listened as they filled the rest of my grave, then heard the cold slide of metal into soil as they planted my sword at my feet, there to wait for the year and a day until my Bequeathment.
* * *
For a long time I listened to the birds. There was nothing else to hear, except the wind through the trees and sometimes the distant tramp of feet. I must be buried near a road, but not one often used. or maybe it was used daily — though I tried to keep track of the morning trills of robins and twilight calls of owls, time has a way of slipping past the dead.
The next human voice I heard was Kennata’s.
“My lord, you have visitors,” he said. His voice was deep and rich with satisfaction.
This was hell. Since I had died, the only emotion I felt between the long intervals of nothing was rage, and when that rage came, I was helpless. I wanted to answer him, but had no mouth to speak. I wanted to rise and strike him, but had no life in my limbs — or anywhere. I could only listen.
“Yes, visitors. Me and one other. Say something, woman.”
She didn’t speak, she cried. Then I realized that rage was not all that was left to me, because my dead heart broke and I found myself near alive again with grief. Strange, to think that she was the one mourning.
“Say something! For one...tell him — have I mistreated you?”
“No.” She spoke the truth, she must be speaking the truth or I couldn’t bear it.
“And your children?”
“The children are well.”
“See?” I heard a shift of weight on the earth above me and imagined the scene: my wife on her knees in tears and shame, Kennata leering over her. I smoldered with helpless anger.
“I have been a worthy guardian of your family, my lord, and a fine steward of your lands.”
“Stop!” my wife cried at something he did. “Let go of it!”
“Why, woman? There’s no law saying I can’t touch the thing, provided I don’t take it out until a year and a day.”
Until the Bequeathment. The bastard’s paws were on my sword! Laying claim to it, he must fancy, anticipating the day he could take it and with it, all that was left of me in the world. House, lands, title, wife—all that he held now would become his under the law. I was a warrior, and whoever took my sword at the Bequeathment a year and a day after my death would become my heir and the champion of my family.
But Kennata was no champion. He was a thief.
My wife cursed, loud enough to reach his ears. -- [End of Preview.]