Dawnbreaker: Legends of the Duskwalker - Book 3 (14 page)

“What was that thing anyway?” Wren asked.

“A sonic baton,” Haiku answered. Wren had no idea what that was, and Haiku must have noticed his lack of understanding because a moment later, he continued. “It’s a contact weapon that uses sound to do unpleasant things to your insides. Depending on the power, they can be mildly distressing to lethal. That was one of the bad ones.” And then after a moment, he said. “I believe the street term for one is a ‘juicer’, if that tells you anything.”

Wren nodded and tried not to think about what that implied.

“You don’t think we should have kept it?” he asked.

“I don’t typically like to carry weapons,” Haiku said.

“Not even a knife?”

“Well, yes, of course, a knife. Everyone should carry a knife. That’s just good sense.”

“But not other things? A sword or a gun or anything?”

“No.”

“And you travel out in the open a lot?”

“I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘a lot’.”

Wren shrugged. “Everyone I’ve ever traveled with outside has always carried at least one. Usually a lot more. It just seems like the kind of thing you might need, I guess.”

“Well, if I ever really
need
a weapon,” Haiku said smiling down at him, “there’s usually one around.”

After that, they walked on for a time mostly in silence. Haiku didn’t seem to mind the occasional question, but Wren did get the impression he preferred the quiet. After an hour or so of mostly westward travel, they took a short break, each sipping water.

“We’ll turn north now,” Haiku said. “I hope we won’t be more than four days, but we’ll just have to see what comes our way.”

“The man you’re taking me to,” Wren said. “What’s his name?”

Haiku looked at him for a moment and then said, “That, I’m afraid, is not mine to give.”

“What do you think he’ll do?”

Haiku shook his head. “That too is something we’ll just have to see. I have my hopes, but...” He trailed off and looked towards the north. “It is long since he has concerned himself with the troubles of the world. He may very well do nothing.”

Wren hadn’t yet figured out what he’d been expecting from this journey, but those words certainly weren’t anything he’d considered. Was this whole trip going to be wasted? What if Mama came to Greenstone and he wasn’t there, and it was all for nothing? He glanced back the way they’d come, thinking about what lay behind.

“As I said before, Wren, there are no guarantees,” Haiku said. And when Wren looked back, he saw the man was watching him. “But that way,” he nodded towards Greenstone, “lies a life paralyzed by fear, marked by inaction. You rejected it before. Do not allow your heart to bend you back with illusions otherwise.”

Wren dropped his gaze to the ground, partially out of sadness and partially out of shame that Haiku had read him so completely, and had spoken so truly. They rested a few more minutes in silence and then, at Haiku’s signal, they hoisted their packs, turned their faces to the north, and set off together. And though he felt a longing to do so, Wren did not allow himself to look back.

P
ainter had delivered his message
, just as he’d been instructed. And now he wanted nothing more than to turn away. To hide himself, while the Weir did their work. Asher had led him to the top of a tall building outside the town’s wall, commanded him to watch. To bear witness.

The people of this small town had refused his offer. Just as all those other towns before them had done. Just as they always would. Painter knew it was a false choice he presented them, and there was little hope indeed that any would accept his terms. Service to Asher, or annihilation. Who would choose to swear allegiance to a disembodied power?

Briargate, it was called. Named for its single, heavily-fortified main gate, no doubt. It was truly a fearsome thing to behold, covered as it was in sharpened spines as long as a man was tall. They had trusted in their gate, comforted by the knowledge that it had never before been breached. A false hope, the emptiness of which they were only now learning.

There had been a brief battle, as the guards of Briargate had courageously stood their ground against the tide of Asher’s thralls. But they had fallen victim to a simple ruse. While Asher had driven countless of the Weir under his control into the barbs of the Briargate, his select few had scaled the wall on the opposite side of the small enclave. Snow was one of those, her dancer’s grace turned to deadly purpose. It hadn’t taken them long to cut their way to the gate, and to open it from the inside.

The battle was over, but the massacre continued unabated as Asher poured out his wrath and hatred on those who dared oppose him. It wasn’t enough to slay the warriors of the town. The Weir, driven into a frenzy by Asher’s malevolence, were tearing the town apart, rending any and all they found. Painter had seen enough. The carnage was overwhelming, the mindless destruction too shocking to behold any longer.

He turned and started back towards the stairwell that would lead him down, away from the madness.

“No!” Asher’s voice screamed from the center of his mind. “No, Painter! Return to your place! I have not released you from your duty!” There was a raw anger in his words, but something else. A perverse giddiness, as he tested his control over the numbers of Weir and exacted his vengeance on yet another town full of innocents.

Asher couldn’t control him directly, couldn’t force Painter to watch. But he still held power over Snow, and that alone was enough to command Painter’s obedience. Painter returned to his position, but kept his eyes lowered. Asher might be able to pinpoint his location, but he couldn’t see through Painter’s eyes. Not yet, anyway.

“You must watch, Painter,” Asher said. “You must understand, this is
their
choice. This is the harvest they reap when they refuse my generosity. Behold it! Drink it in! And perhaps next time you will plead with more passion, and I will be able to spare the innocent.”

Painter stood on the roof of the building, eyes closed, with the terrible sounds carried on the wind, and Asher lingering in his mind. Asher had said this was their harvest. But Painter could not escape the knowledge that he had planted the seeds.

T
here was
something deceptive about Haiku’s pacing, Wren thought. When they’d started out, he hadn’t struggled to keep up at all. It hadn’t been
easy
exactly, but he’d been surprised that it hadn’t been harder. After Haiku’s comment about needing to make good time, Wren had immediately flashed back to his journey across the Strand, when Three had pushed them as hard and as fast as they could possibly go, and even that hadn’t been enough. In contrast, Haiku seemed to be holding something back. Even after the first few miles, Wren had felt certain that he could have covered more ground in that time. They finished the first day and though Wren was tired, he was pleased with himself and thought that all the travel he’d done lately must have strengthened him more than he’d realized.

It was early in the second day that he started to feel the first pangs of doubt. By noon, he’d lost his confidence, and by midafternoon he was certain he’d never be able to keep going. It wasn’t that Haiku was going too fast. It was that he never slowed. He kept the same, loping gait, hour after hour after hour. And he made no allowance for Wren at all. Breaks were rare, and the few they took were short. Haiku even insisted that they eat on the move. He had some kind of schedule worked out as far as Wren could figure; at times he forced Wren to drink water or to eat, regardless of whether Wren felt hungry or thirsty. Strangely, Haiku’s demeanor hadn’t changed at all; when he spoke to Wren, his voice was still warm and kind. But his treatment was indifferent, also to the point of callousness. At one point Wren got a small rock in his boot, and Haiku refused to stop even long enough for Wren to remove it. Eventually it got so troublesome that Wren stopped anyway. It only took a few moments to take care of it, but Haiku kept right on walking, and Wren was forced into a light jog to catch back up. That change in rhythm threw his body for a loop, and made the rest of the day’s journey even tougher. Within the hour, Wren was already wondering whether or not it would have been better just to keep the rock in his shoe. As they reached into the late afternoon of the second day, he could hardly walk a straight line. His head was light and his legs leaden.

That night they took refuge in a small wayhouse, which offered security but little else; there was no bed, no water filtration system, and only a single, dull light that burned brownish. A concrete cell, eight feet long and six feet wide, with a foul-smelling drain in the center of the room. Wren looked at the floor with its water spots and stains. The thought of having to lie down on that floor made him nauseous, but the idea of trying to stand up the whole night was worse. In the end, he took to sitting in one corner and laying his pack in his lap to prop his head on.

Just before Haiku turned off the light, he came and stood over Wren.

“I know it’s hard, Wren,” Haiku said. “But we must keep our pace.”

“I’m trying, Haiku. I really am. But I just don’t think I can.”

“You can,” Haiku answered. “You may not believe it now, but you will after you’ve done it. And don’t worry. I promise, you won’t die walking.” He laid a hand on the top of Wren’s head. “You’ll pass out before that.” He smiled, but Wren couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

That night was a torturous one, as Wren’s body fought with itself, desperate for sleep, but unable to shut out the pain from the concrete floor. Somehow it was the longest night Wren could remember having, and yet morning still came too soon.

The third day was a blur of grey landscape and pain. Haiku had steered clear of any known settlements, so there was nothing for Wren’s mind to latch onto to separate one mile from the next. For all he knew, Haiku could have been leading him in a circle no more than twenty feet from where they’d started their morning.

Sometime around noon, the hallucinations started. Dreams mixed with reality. More than once, the cityscape became the Strand, Haiku became Three. Wren had been here before. He knew what happened. But where was Mama? Sometimes he would find that he was opening his eyes without any memory of having closed them. How long had they been closed? Had he been sleepwalking? His mind kept returning to the mistake he had made, agreeing to this. Why had he ever thought going with Haiku was what he was supposed to do? He remembered having made the decision, but all the reasons for it had fled. Fragments of thought swept through, flashes of memory, sudden impressions that dissolved before he could capture or recognize them. His mind became a frenzy of disconnected and troubling images like the nightmares brought on by a high fever.

And while Wren was trapped in his own personal hell, Haiku kept walking, and walking, and walking, and somehow Wren’s body kept at it too. Mechanically, as if picking a foot up and putting it down again was all he had ever done and all he would ever do.

That night they found an abandoned high-rise and Haiku had him walk up to the sixth floor. The Weir came out as the sun slipped below the horizon, their lonely and mournful cries echoing through the otherwise empty streets and alleyways. Haiku forced Wren to eat some of his rations and once even had to wake him up to finish chewing the bite in his mouth. After that, Wren curled up in one corner with his pack as a pillow and his coat over his head. He slept deeply and unmoving until Haiku woke him at first light.

When he rose that morning, everything hurt. Feet, knees, hips, shoulders, eyes. Every part of him ached with a dull and hollow pain, and Wren felt like he was coated in a clammy film. It was the same feeling he always got right before he threw up, except it didn’t go away. He had slept, but his body was far from rested.

It was no easy task getting down the six flights of stairs, with each one threatening to buckle Wren’s legs and send him tumbling. He gripped the rusted railing as they descended, knowing full well that if he did fall, he would never be able to stop himself. When they reached the ground floor, his heart dropped to see Haiku resume his long stride again, even, measured, sure-footed, just as if this was the very first day of their journey. Wren hated him then. Not with passion, but with clinical detachment, as if the man was a thing that simply should not be. Always ahead, always threatening to get even farther away.

At some point early on in that fourth day, Wren took to watching the ground just a foot or so in front of him. He’d find a crack or a spot or some swirl in the concrete dust and he’d tell himself to walk that far. And when he reached it, he’d find another. And another. It wasn’t quite a game, because there was never any fun or joy in reaching the goal. But it kept him moving and it gave him something to focus his mind on. Letting his mind wander, that had been his mistake from the day before. Today, he would control his attention, fix it on something, anything, to keep it from running wild.

The change was so gradual that Wren didn’t notice it at first. Not for a long while, in fact. But as he continued his cheerless “game”, it occurred to him that for landmarks he was finding fewer and fewer defects in the pavement, and more and more patterns in the dust. And when his mind awoke to that, he then noticed that his footing was less stable and each step took more effort. Not just from the fatigue.

Wren looked up and found that the landscape had transformed around him. Gone were the recognizable ruins of manmade structures, the ones where most of the original shape and structure could be determined. Here and there were rounded lumps that might once have been buildings. The ground beneath his feet was thick with some combination of concrete dust and ash. Reflexively, Wren stopped and looked around. It was the same in every direction. And it finally struck him, like a surprise punch to the gut.

They’d crossed into the Strand.

And from the looks of it, they’d done so miles ago. A panic surged up in Wren’s chest, the associations from his first encounter with the Strand too strong to ignore. This was the place that had given him his first taste of true, soulbreaking loss. This was where Mama had died.

Haiku had told him they’d be going east. Towards the Strand. He hadn’t said anything about actually going
into
it. Wren turned back to find Haiku, to call out to him, to ask him what was happening and why they were here. But Haiku, of course, hadn’t stopped when Wren had and he’d pulled far enough away that Wren wasn’t sure the man would be able to hear him even if he yelled. And he wasn’t even sure he
could
yell. Wren started moving again, trying to catch up. The loose powder of the Strand shifted like a fine sand beneath each footstep, making travel more difficult even without the previous three days’ worth of exhaustion. It was a mighty struggle, but Wren finally managed to get within what he guessed was earshot.

“Haiku!” he called. The man didn’t slow or turn. “Haiku!” he called again.

Haiku looked back over his shoulder but continued his march.

“What are we doing? Where are you taking me?”

“I can’t hear you, Wren,” Haiku answered. “You’ll have to come closer.”

“Can’t you just wait?” Wren asked, but Haiku had already turned away. Wren pushed on, gaining ground with bitter slowness. He finally drew up behind Haiku. “What are we doing here?”

“Walking,” Haiku said.

“But why? Why the Strand?”

“So we reach our destination.”

Wren had run out of patience long ago. The words came out harsh.

“Tell me where we’re going! I demand it!”

Haiku looked at him sidelong. “Be careful, little one. You were never governor to
me
.”

“Haiku, please,” Wren said, exasperated. “I’m too tired.”

“Then perhaps you should save your energy for something other than questions,” Haiku said, and then he lengthened his stride for a few steps, pulling three feet ahead. Under normal circumstances, that distance would have meant nothing. To Wren, then, at that moment, it was a gulf too wide to cross.

Some time later, Haiku allowed a merciful break. Wren laid down on the concrete silt and fell into a nearly immediate sleep. When Haiku woke him, he was certain that he’d only blinked. But Haiku assured him they had to keep moving. They were in the Strand after all. There would be no wayhouses, no place to hide tonight.

As he’d struggled to his feet and tried to don his pack, Wren lost his balance and went down hard on his hands and knees. For a moment his vision darkened at the edges. It was then he knew his body had reached its absolute physical limit. He’d given all his body had to give, really and truly. Haiku had told him he’d pass out before he died. And here he was, staring over the edge, down into darkness. He’d come as far as his body would allow. Haiku couldn’t ask anything more.

“We must go, Wren,” Haiku said. “Now.”

“I can’t, Haiku,” Wren said. “My legs. I can’t.”

Haiku stood over him for a moment. And then he said, “Then you’ll have to crawl.” He said it without emotion, neither anger nor reproach nor sadness. Simply stated.

And to Wren’s utter disbelief, Haiku turned away and started off again. At that ruthless, relentless pace.

Wren stayed there on his hands and knees watching him go. Surely he’d stop. He’d turn back and see that Wren wasn’t giving up of his own accord. Surely he’d come back. But Haiku kept getting smaller and smaller and showed no sign of slowing. Wren lowered his head then, rested his forehead on the rough ground, felt the grit grind into his skin. He closed his eyes just for a moment.

And Three was there, crouching next to him.

“Hey, kiddo,” Three said.

Wren kept his head on the ground, his eyes squeezed shut. Even in the fog, he knew Three wasn’t really there. But Wren needed him to be there, and as long as he kept his eyes closed, he thought maybe Three wouldn’t slip away. In his mind’s eye, Three was crouched down beside him, sitting back on his heels and resting his forearms on his knees the way he had.

“Bad place for a nap,” said Three.

Wren shook his head.

“I can’t, Three. I can’t keep up.”

Three nodded and looked up after Haiku.

“Well,” he said. “It’ll be a long while yet before he gets out of sight. Don’t worry about keeping up.” He looked back down at Wren. “How about you just get out of the dirt?”

Wren, in his delirium, opened his eyes to look at Three and in that instant the man was gone. Of course he was gone. He had never been there. But even knowing that, his words hung in Wren’s mind. Wren took a deep breath. Just get out of the dirt. Stand up. Even that seemed like too much to ask. But he could at least try. Wren pushed himself back to his knees and then, with all the effort he could muster, he planted one foot and used his hands to lever himself up. It took everything he had. But a few moments later he was standing.

Haiku was by that time a good thirty yards distant. Wren couldn’t keep up. He knew that. But a moment ago, he’d known he couldn’t even get to his feet, and yet here he was, standing. Maybe he could take one step.

And he did. And if he had taken that one, could he take just one more?

Yes.

Those first few steps did everything they could to remind him that he had reached the limits of his physical body; they screamed his limitations, his doubts, his failures. But something kindled in his spirit. Through the pain of his body and the anguish of his mind, Wren found his feet taking one more step, and one more, and then another, and another. And the barrier fell.

The torment didn’t disappear, not by any means. But it became less important somehow; distant, less meaningful. His body was moving, he was making progress. Wren felt as if he’d been lifted up to some higher place, freed from the confines of his physical world. Maybe not removed, exactly. There was probably a word for it, but Wren couldn’t find it at the moment. He was exhausted beyond belief and exhilarated at the same time. He stretched his stride, each step building confidence now instead of robbing it. And to his astonishment, he found himself not just keeping pace with Haiku, but actually gaining ground.

It took him nearly half an hour to catch up. When he did so, Haiku glanced back at him over his shoulder and just smiled. No greeting, no encouragement. But there was something like an I-told-you-so in that look.