Chapters The War and What Came After
Four fours of herdsfolk lay around a fire, built small but hot in the People’s way. The fire’s light shone from their eyes, green and gold and red, and touched gleaming highlights from their tawny coats and their proud, sharp antlers. As one, they watched the shaman in the center of their circle.
The old shaman looked as dry and brittle as a bundle of winter sticks, so old and weathered he might have been one of the trees of the forest around him, but he moved with a vital energy a young buck would have envied. He darted in close to the fire so the red and ocher storytelling runes painted on his face and neck caught the light, looking like dried blood and fresh blood. The herdsfolk lying around the fire were warriors, all—young and strong and determined to fight to defend the People, but many of them shuddered when the shaman wasn’t looking. They’d seen that sort of energy before, now and again in their own herds—the shaman was god-touched.
The vines strung between the shaman’s antlers rustled as he thrust his head back. “The People were not always as they are now,” he intoned, and weaving around and through his voice was a sound like wind coursing through dead leaves. More shudders rippled through the gathered warriors. “In the days of my great-grandsire’s great-grandsire, the People were rich beyond dreaming. The People strode across the fields and the rivers, and everything they looked upon was theirs, from horizon to horizon.”
The shaman was a skilled storyteller, and despite their awe of him, some of the assembled breathed longing sighs, dreaming of the old days.
“The People lived in great villages, as big as a hundred villages today. The gods gave them tools, and their fields overflowed with food. The gods gave them weapons, and their villages were safe from harm.” The shaman drew himself up, stared around into the fire-glowing eyes. “And the gods themselves walked among the People.”
The herdsfolk murmured in awe.
The shaman closed his eyes and some of the booming energy seemed to drain out of him. He sagged, his head drooping down. “But no more. In the days of our ancestors, the Others came, fleeing a great disaster they had brought down upon their own heads.” He did not profane the story by naming the Others in their own language. “They were small, and weak, and unaccustomed to the People’s earth. The People were kind, and took pity upon them.”
Murmurs rose again, but harsh, angry. The warriors knew this part of the story as well as they knew the reach of their own antlers.
The shaman raised his head to meet the murmurs. His eyes were fire and his voice was ice. “Soon, more of the Others followed their kin to the People’s earth. The gods warned the People of their danger, but the People were prideful in their power and riches, and their hearts overflowed with kindness, and they did not heed the gods’ words. The People were generous to the Others, giving them portions of the earth on the wide plains between the forest and mountains and teaching them how to live on the earth, how to eat, how to shelter and warm themselves. But the Others kept coming, more and more and more. They were a river that seemed endless, and they demanded pieces of the earth from the People for themselves, more and more and more. At last, the People decided to fight, to take the earth back from the Others.”
The shaman’s vines whispered against each other as he shook his head sadly. “And that is when the People discovered that the gods had abandoned them, to punish them for their hubris. The People were slaughtered, their great villages consumed by fire like a field of weeds. The Others were too powerful to defeat without the help of the gods. The People fled across the plains, across the rivers. Into the hills, into the forest, where the Others had not come. There, they hid, shivering like fawns.
“And it was there, shivering in the dark, that the People discovered that not all the gods had decided to punish them.” The shaman’s wrinkled, white-furred lips parted in a predatory grin, revealing that his front teeth had been filed to points. The warriors flinched away, ancient instincts coming to the fore in their moment of shock. “Noa, goddess of the forest, spoke to them then, as she still speaks to the People now.” The shaman’s antlers glowed green, bright and springlike, and the color flowed into the vines strung between them. The vines burst into flower in a riot of color, eliciting gasps from the group. “Noa is the forest, and the forest is life—she feeds us, she shelters us.”
The shaman’s eyes went distant in concentration and the glow of his antlers darkened to the green of the deep forest. The flowers dried and fell away in seconds, then a damp tearing sound could be heard as the vine’s tiny thorns grew to the size of antlerpoints in the blink of an eye, sharp and glistening with poison. This time, the group’s gasps had the flavor of keen interest. “Noa is the forest, and the forest is death—she guides the predator’s fang and the poison’s sting.”
The shaman stalked around the fire, planting each hoof firmly, as though he were stabbing the ground. He met each warrior’s gaze directly and unflinchingly. “Ano, god of fire, spoke to them then, as he still speaks to the People now.” The shaman’s antlers glowed cherry-red, and the vines between them burst into ravenous fire and were consumed in a breath, though they had been green and filled with moisture. “Ano is the fire. He is destruction. He is the cleansing flame.”
He stopped suddenly and nodded a signal over the heads of the supine warriors. Another warrior, older and bearing a long scar from an Other’s knife, came into the fire’s light carrying a spear in her teeth. No—not a spear, but a pole with a split end which held a smooth, oblong stone. The warrior waited for no signal, but thrust the split end of the pole into the heart of the fire and held it there. The shaman’s antlers glowed red, and he bent toward the fire, which leapt up beyond the confines of its tidy arrangement of fuel, as though the neat pile were a window onto a towering bonfire. The light from his antlers grew suddenly in intensity. There was a sharp crack which resounded from the trees around the clearing. The flames withered down to their original size as the shaman’s antlers lost their glow and became simple bone once again.
The warrior drew the pole out of the fire, tilting her head to hold the split end aloft for all to see. The young warriors gasped in surprise. The smooth stone had fractured and split, becoming a gleaming razor-edged spear head. The thin split ends of the pole which held it had not been burnt or even singed by immersion in the fire. The shaman continued speaking as though there had been no pause. “Ano is the fire. He is creation. He is the flame which shapes, the flame which molds.”
Silence fell around the fire for a dozen heartbeats, partly fearful and partly thoughtful, the only sound the whisper of the night breeze through the forest around them.
The warrior dipped her antlers in salute to the shaman, and left the circle without a word. The shaman watched her go before speaking. “Four fours of warriors of the People,” he said, sweeping his gaze around the circle, “a holy number, for the gods numbered four fours before the People drove them away. The elders of your villages saw potential in you, and they sent you to us, deep into the forest, to be taught to hear the gods. And to speak to them.”
The shaman’s voice was eerie in the stillness. “In the seasons since the gods punished the People, we have remained hidden in the forests and the hills, reaching out to prey upon the Others with the gods’ blessing and the gods’ gifts. Though the Others encroach upon the hills, Noa’s favor is upon us in the forest. The People are powerful here, and the Others do not survive long when they enter. This forest shall ever remain free while the People live. We follow the gods’ ways. We remain true. We guard the earth. One day, all the gods will forgive the People, and on that day, we will rise up and drive the Others from the earth!”
A doe rose to her hooves before a cheer could rise up to follow the shaman’s words, the whisper of her movement as loud as a shout in the tension which surrounded the campfire. All eyes went to her proudly erect form—all eyes but the shaman’s.
The shaman gazed into the fire, though his words were for the doe. “Why do you stand?”
The doe did not flinch. The sharp points of her antlers gleamed like teeth in the firelight. “Teach me to use the gods’ power to kill Others.”
The shaman looked directly at her now, appraising, weighing. “Why?”
“Snowfall was the village of my herd.”
Her tone was flat, giving the words no more weight than a simple statement of fact. But all around the fire, the other deer gasped and whispered. Snowfall, they told each other, eyes wide and frightened. She survived the burning of Snowfall.
The shaman tossed his head and the whispers died. “How came you to survive that day? You could not have been more than a fawn.”
“I was a fawn. The first I knew of our fall was the flames and the stink of the Others’ magic. I was not yet a warrior, so like a fawn, I ran, I hid. By skill or luck, I remained unseen. I made it to the palisade, still unseen, and leapt through a burning gap where part of the wall had fallen. I fled into the night, hearing the screams of my family fade behind me, the fire leaping from the bones of my home casting a long shadow before me as I ran.
“I could scarcely see through my tears, and in the tall grass beyond the palisade, I met a female of the Others, one of those who was tasked with slaying the People who fled. I surprised her, I think. Or she was slow to act because I was young. I know not why she hesitated, but hesitate she did. And though the velvet had not been shed from my first antlers, I did not make the same mistake. I struck, and opened her skull with a single blow. They bleed just as we do, and her blood was bright and heavy in the firelit darkness as it dampened the earth beneath her head. I ran from my dying village into the safety of the night.
“I ran west for a day and a night, through valley and over ridge. I fell down nearly dead before the scouts of Clearbrook, and that herd took me in. While I recovered, I did not weep. I have not wept since that awful night when the Others came upon my herd, because that night, I learned that the Others are weak, that they are fragile. With that knowledge, I found purpose. As a fawn, I killed my first pony .” The doe’s lips twisted as she named the Others in their own language. She paused to spit, to clear her mouth of the taste of the word.
“I have become a warrior. I have mastered the People’s tools of death. I have learned to lead warriors against the Others. I have hunted many, killed many, since that first terrified kill in the fire-bright snow. But my own strength and cunning is not enough. I cannot kill them all. I came here to earn the gods’ power, so that I can.”
The shaman began to speak, but stopped without uttering a sound, looking around at the forest as the night breeze died. A stillness fell over the clearing, deep and dark. In the silence, there was a sound like the snap of the smallest twig, and a flame-red leaf drifted down through the still air from the green canopy overhead to land softly between the doe’s antlers.
The shaman lowered himself to his knees in a deep bow. “Our gods see you, doe of Snowfall. You are welcome.” He met her steely gaze. “How are you known?”
The doe bowed, not to the shaman but to the forest, without disturbing the leaf perched on her forehead. “The name my herd gave me is ashes mingled among the greater ashes of my village. In its place, I took for my name what the Others whisper fearfully about me when they find their warriors dead, their merchants dead: I am Ghost.”
The War and What Came After
The chosen ones trained under the elders of the great free forest, learning to use the arts of forest and flame to mend or destroy, to grow or kill. After an early lesson on using Ano’s power to start a campfire, Ghost looked up from the tiny blaze she had created and frowned at the elder who was the disciples’ teacher that day.
The elder smiled, for even after such a short time, all the elders recognized that frown as the precursor to a question from the young doe. Ghost’s frown deepened as the thought came to a head, and she said, “Why do we not use Ano’s touch to burn the Others in their beds?”
The elder shook her head, setting the twigs depending from the points of her antlers to rattling gently. “Would that we could, child. The gods are powerful, but that power has limits.” The twigs rattled again. “Harsh limits. The gods may only touch the world directly through those of us who have learned to hear them. And—”
Ghost tossed her head impatiently. “So we march on the Others to bring Ano close enough to burn them!”
“And,” the elder continued, ignoring the interruption, “the gods can only affect that which is theirs. The People are theirs. The forest is theirs. The hills are theirs.” She fixed Ghost with a stare. “The Others are not theirs. Anything the Others have made is not theirs. The earth the Others have taken is not theirs.” Her stare sharpened, becoming as potent as any warrior’s. “That is why we use the gods’ power to defend the forest and the hills, and to shape weapons to carry out of the People’s earth and into the Other’s. A spear hardened by Ano kills just as well on the plains as it does in the forest.”
Ghost’s face fell for a moment, but her chin came up and she nodded firmly to the elder. “Then continue the lesson, for I must learn. I will need to make many spears before my work is done.”
Ghost was eager to learn the ways of war, and attended closely upon the lessons as the weeks became months, but had little regard for studying the arts of life, saying that they held no purpose for her. She learned quickly. Too quickly, some whispered, and others answered that she was not truly being trained by the elders, but by Ano himself.
Both elder and disciple came to hold themselves apart from Ghost, fearing her single-mindedness and her ravenous skill with the touch of the god of flame. But one doe in the camp was different. Her name was Ember, and she was another of the elders’ disciples, fine to look at, tall and muscular with a red cast to her tawny coat. Directly after meeting Ghost on that first night of their training, she had stayed close by her side, much to Ghost’s displeasure.
But no matter how Ghost had scowled and threatened, Ember would not be dissuaded. She was Ghost’s opposite in nearly every way—gentle and peaceful, she was hungry to learn the healing arts, the growing and cultivating arts.
In the second month, after days of struggling to coax a sapling to grow under the watchful eye of an elder beloved by Noa, while walking back to the secret village through the last shy rays of sun, Ghost had let her frustration run out onto Ember. She had spun to face her, hot with anger, yelling insults about the uselessness of the growing arts and mocking Ember for her skill—Ember’s sapling had grown to the height of three tent poles in the first day—and stalked a circle around Ember, berating her for being unable to help drive out the Others.
Ember stood before this cascade, unbowed and unmoving. When Ghost’s tirade slowed, Ember’s voice sliced out like a blade, stunning Ghost into silence with a single sentence: “You will kill them, and I will heal the earth after their passing.”
Ghost drew herself up in her shock, then set her jaw, and in the shadows of the forest an observer could have been forgiven for mistaking the one doe for the other, so alike were they in height and form and determined posture. Only their eyes told them apart, Ember’s calm against Ghost’s anger.
Slowly, the anger leached out of those eyes, and at last, Ghost nodded. “I had never before given thought to after ,” she said, in a tone of distant revelation. “It is good that you are here to do so.”
She turned for the village without another word, and just as wordlessly, Ember followed.
After that day, they walked side by side rather than ahead and behind. They talked as friends and argued as rivals—more often the latter than the former. And they were inseparable.
Time passed, their training continued, and the eighteenth new moon of their time in the camp of the gods was nearly upon them when Ghost made the twin discoveries which would change everything.
* * *
During the months of training, their mastery had grown rapidly—Ghost was clearly a chosen of Ano, and Ember of Noa. But despite strain, and sweat, and struggle, neither of them could truly grasp the powers of the other god’s domain, despite the elders’ most patient efforts to teach. At first, neither had minded this failing, because they only saw a need for their own god’s side of the stream. But as the months passed, Ghost and Ember wondered at, and dismayed at, the number among their fellow disciples who showed great and growing skill in both gods’ realms.
Their long discussions and heated arguments on the matter brought Ghost and Ember to understand, at last, an essential truth which all the elders’ efforts had failed to impress upon them: one cannot pick and choose among the gods’ teachings. If one does not understand how to destroy, or how to make life, then one cannot reach the fullest potential of the opposite, for life and death, and creation and destruction, are inextricably linked. They were each set on true mastery of their favored god’s powers, so that thought was intolerable to them.
So it was that they had come away from the village on a day of rest, seeking to overcome their limitations. It was barely summer, and yet the air was sticky and close around them, even under the cooling shade of the forest canopy. Sweat darkened their coats but went ignored, so focused were they on the lessons. It was Ghost’s turn at teaching, and she paced tight circuits around the hollow stump at the center of the little clearing and Ember, who scowled at the stump as though she could set the tinder inside alight with the force of her stare.
Ember’s antlers feebly flickered red as she muttered ritual phrases half under her breath. A wisp of smoke struggled up through the scalding air, causing Ghost to stop her pacing and look on with the first twitch of a smile. But no lick of flame followed the smoke, and after a moment the smoke itself stopped. Ember’s breath whooshed out of her in a blast of frustration.
“I can’t do it, Ghost. Your advice always makes sense, but when I put it into practice, Ano turns away from me, his power slips through my grasp, no matter how tightly I hold to it.” She cocked her head at Ghost. “What is it?”
Ghost stood straight and predator-alert, with her teeth tugging at her lip and her brow creased in a frown, in the way she had when a thought teased at her mind. Her distant gaze shifted to focus on Ember. “Grasp? Hold?”
Ember blinked back at her, confusion loud on her face. “I— I say the words, I feel Ano’s presence, I reach for his power, take control of it, and push it where I want it. I feel the flame begin, but—”
Ghost’s brow had wrinkled as Ember spoke. She cut her off, her voice harsh. “I am a fool. I did not see it until now. Ano’s power flowed through me so easily that I let the elders’ talk of technique pass over me without truly listening to it. So I failed to understand that the elders were setting us on the wrong course.”
Ember sat as still as a statue. Her surprised blink was her only motion. “Wrong how?”
Ghost resumed pacing around the clearing, her hooves uncharacteristically loud, her movements quick and agitated, speaking to herself. “Why? How could that be? Do they not truly understand Ano’s power? How is that possible?” She stopped and her gaze flicked to Ember. “Ano needs no coercion, no grasping, no holding. The flame waits inside everything, and it is always eager to burn. I need only to show Ano which flames to stoke, and it is done.”
“I— can it truly be so simple?” Ember closed her slack jaw with a snap and stared anew at the stump. Her antlers flickered red, like coals breathed to life. Ember visibly struggled, her lips curling and teeth set. After a long moment of that, her eyes flicked to Ghost. She unset her jaw and her breath joined the hot summer air as she sighed. She relaxed.
Light flared from her antlers, bright enough to cast shadows.
A column of white fire leapt from the stump with a detonation that caused birds all around to take panicked flight. The knot shot out from a knothole low on the trunk, faster than a bullet from a sling, so fast that the air hummed around it as it passed between Ghost and Ember and flew off into the dense forest behind them.
The white flame bloomed up and mushroomed out, flower-like, around the level of the forest canopy. So hot was it that leaves and branches touched by it seemed to wink out of existence, burned instantly to ash. At the edges of the white fire, ordinary red flames ignited amidst the trees.
Ghost stared at the spectacle, satisfaction and horror warring in her breast. Ember sat rigid, her antlers red, her eyes wide, her coat shimmering white in the glow of the fire roaring from the stump. Above, fire crawled through the branches of the canopy, leaping with increasing speed from tree to neighboring tree. Ghost frowned, thinking fast. Just as she decided she would need to intercede between Ember and Ano, though she was not sure how one would accomplish such a thing, Ember’s antlers ceased glowing, becoming ordinary bone once again. The white fire vanished as well, and Ember collapsed onto her side.
Ghost worried for Ember’s health, but the growing forest fire was a more pressing concern. She centered herself, and Ano was with her, his power crackling at the points of her antlers. Casting her mind out, playing her attentions over the outer ring of the spreading fire, she quenched the burning branches and leaves, feeling Ano draw their flames back into the secret space at their hearts. She let go the god, ignoring the feeble fires which were feeding on already-burnt branches, knowing they would die out soon enough, and rushed to Ember’s side.
She threw herself down by Ember, only to find that her friend was already struggling to rise. A relieved gasp choked out of her throat as she bent to help Ember to her hooves. “Are you in pain?”
Ember’s head wobbled in an impatient but exhausted negation. “It was incredible,” she panted as she heaved herself upright, leaning heavily on Ghost’s neck. “Ano was so close I felt I could touch him! He felt like an elder standing at my back guiding my aim. It was different than it’s ever been. The fire was right there when I asked!” She fixed Ghost with an eye burning with excitement. “Is that how it always is for you?”
“That sounds familiar, yes.” A sudden thought struck Ghost. “You . . . with Noa. Is that how it is?”
“Not . . . exactly.” She sobered, leaning hard on Ghost as she struggled for words, lips working soundlessly before giving voice to her thoughts. “Noa is . . . immense. Powerful. Ano is a yearling compared to her. She must respect your strength and control. If you cannot seize her and bend her to your will, she will not obey. But when she obeys, it is strangely similar to Ano, all light and power.” A small, secret smile touched her lips.
Ghost nodded, her gaze distant. “That is much to think on.” Her eyes sharpened, and she nudged Ember, nearly bowling her over in her enthusiasm. “But that is for later. Did you witness the knot’s flight?”
At Ember’s puzzled look, Ghost described what had happened. She concluded with, “It gave me an idea. I wish to try some things. Will you help me?”
Ember regarded Ghost levelly for a moment. She straightened with a grunt to stand upright on her own and nodded. “Always.”
Ghost returned her nod with a grateful smile, and led her out of the clearing.
An hour later, the two does were even sweatier than before, despite frequent gulps from their waterbags. But the work was done–piles of forest debris lay in a neat line to one side of the charred clearing: moss and lichen, shaved bark, small twigs, thicker branches, and stones of various sizes.
Despite her panting, Ghost looked at the piles with pleasure. The dead, hollow stump in the center of the clearing still stood, apparently intact, even after Ember’s white fire, and Ghost inspected it closely. The wood was thick and strong, and proved to be whole and unbroken, the knothole the only gap in the wood aside from the gaping mouth of the stump. Ghost was satisfied at this, and beckoned to Ember. The other doe lurched to her hooves and came.
With a gesture at the knothole, Ghost asked, “Can you close this?”
Ember considered it doubtfully. “The wood is long dead. I will try.” She stood erect, exhaled. Her eyes sharpened, brows drawing down. Her antlers burst into green life.
Ghost had never before noticed how alike Ember’s Noa-calling expression and dueling expression were. Much to think on, indeed.
The knothole glowed green, but faintly. The edges of it quivered and shrank, but slowly, not with the usual sudden speed Ember could coax from Noa. Ghost’s mouth twisted and she began making plans to search the most likely places to find a suitable hollow log and drag it back to the clearing. But even as the thought began, it was shocked from her mind. Ember’s face showed immense strain, then relaxed into placidity. Ghost’s eyes widened as Ember’s antlers glowed both green and red, the colors rippling and mingling like the smoke of two different fires flowing to her points. A crack sounded from the stump, drawing Ghost’s attention. The rim of the knothole came to healthy life, the wood browning and softening. It began tightening in fits and starts, leaving old dead wood behind as it closed. In seconds, the knothole sealed tight and the last spot of living wood faded to deadness.
Ember exhaled. Her antlers winked out as she let go the gods. She weaved, barely staying upright.
Ghost rushed to shore her up as she sagged, but stayed standing. “Incredible, Ember! Both gods at once? Even the elders cannot match that feat!”
Ember shook her head minutely, eyes closed. “Or perhaps they can, but they are wise enough not to. Balancing the gods’ needs— I am drained by it.”
“It worked, at least.”
Ember’s eyes squinted open to see the absence of a knothole, then fell closed again. “That is good. Ano was able to kindle the flame at the heart of the wood, gently and carefully, enough to restore a semblance of life to it. Noa completed the process, turning the semblance of life into true life, and then she was able to shape the living wood. The false life that Ano coaxed out lasted but an instant, so I could not call one god, then the other. I should have worked with you, but I was seized by the idea, and in my hubris . . .” She trailed off with a weak shrug.
Ghost grinned and tapped her antlers to Ember’s in affectionate salute. “Hubris is sometimes rewarded, my friend. I think you have become a master this day.” Her grin widened to show more teeth. “Now I must hurry to catch you.”
Ember’s eyes remained shut as she grinned. “Oh yes? And is this mysterious test part of that?”
“It is. You are not the only one who has been seized with an idea this day.”
“Then you’d best get on with it, hm?”
“I bow to the master’s wisdom.” Ghost considered the piles of kindling, then left Ember’s side to cross the clearing and scoop up a mat of moss with her antlers. She carefully tipped the moss into the mouth of the stump and made sure it covered the bottom. She went back several more times, carrying small loads of tinder, twigs, and full-sized branches, arranging them in a neat cone inside the stump. Finally, she lipped up a small stone and dropped it into the stump to rest atop the unlit campfire. With a satisfied nod, she stepped well back and invited Ano to release the flame hidden in the materials.
A flash of white fire leapt skyward from the stump, accompanied by a thump that shook Ghost’s bones. The stone was a dark flicker among the blaze, there and gone in a blink. Ghost craned her neck, trying to see it through the blackened and denuded branches above. There–a fast-moving fleck against the bright summer sky, impossible to judge the distance. It disappeared, hidden behind the screen of branches, and was gone. Ghost’s grin was equal parts dangerous and pleased.
Ember’s legs were braced wide, holding her upright and steady. She eyed Ghost, and asked, “Well?”
Ghost continued to stare up through the black and naked branches. “Well. The principle seems sound. It wants refinement, however.”
“How, refinement?”
“It lacks accuracy, I think. We need hollow logs of various sizes.”
Ember raised a questioning eyebrow. “Accuracy? What are you creating, O budding master?”
Ghost looked straight across at her. “A way to kill all the Others. ” Her grin was back, wide and hungry and gleaming bright as Ano’s unleashed fire.
Ember swallowed against a throat gone suddenly dry. “Oh.”
The War and What Came After
A week later, Ember and Ghost stood before the gathered elders and the head scout of the training camp’s small corps of warriors. It had been a week of trial and error, waking early and retiring late to test and refine the weapons. The initial test had proved to be enormously wasteful—only a nibble of moss was necessary to propel objects from their rapidly-improving tubes with killing force. At first, the projectiles had been stones, but they had soon learned that the shape of the stone had even more effect upon the accuracy of this weapon than it did upon a sling throw. While they were fretting over the difficulty of finding enough round stones to make the weapon useful, Ember had hit upon the idea of using Noa’s power to shape and shrink bits of wood into dense, hard, smooth little cones that would fly true and be easy to create in great quantities. Finally, they had been ready to come before the elders and the grizzled old warrior to demonstrate the fruits of their labor.
The elders waited patiently, having long recognized the burgeoning power in the two determined young does, but the scout shifted and fidgeted. Ember ignored his impatience as she used a long straight pole held in her teeth to tamp down a wad of moss and a cone-shaped plug of wood into the bottom of the wooden tube hanging at Ghost’s side. Finished, she slid her pole into the spear harness she wore and stepped back.
Ghost faced the elders with a courteous bow. “I thank you for your consideration, elders. I bring before the People a new weapon. A weapon created by divine inspiration and blessed by the gods. A weapon which the Others will be unable to stand against.”
The elders murmured and leaned forward. The scout snorted. Ghost ignored it. He would be convinced soon enough. She turned to face a sling target made in the approximate shape of one of the Others, which had been moved to the edge of the camp for the demonstration. “Attend the target, there,” she told her audience. Once their attention had shifted, she opened herself to Ano and bade him release the fire in the moss wadded in the tube.
A tongue of pure white flame licked from the open end of the tube with a thump that Ghost’s audience felt in their hooves, but the noise was swallowed in the same instant by a much louder detonation as the target burst apart into straw and flinders.
The elders flinched away with little cries, but the scout’s widened eyes narrowed again. “A trick, not a demonstration. A spear is the weapon of a warrior, not an . . . exploding target.”
Ghost’s eyes flicked to him. “Long Eye, let us test your spear against the gods. Cast at a tree, if that is foe enough for a warrior.” Her voice was mild, but the scout’s back stiffened at the challenge in her words.
The People’s spears were carried point-first in their harnesses, and Long Eye was an expert, drawing and casting away from the exploded target with a single fluid whip of his neck. The spear arced away, humming as it split the air. But as fast as it was, Ghost was faster. She wore a spear harness of her own, its loops adjusted to hold one of the tubes securely on each side. She had fired the left tube at the sling target, and now she spun and bent her knees to bring the right tube in line with the spear’s path; her antlers glowed a brilliant red and there was a dual detonation as the tube belched flame and the spear’s haft burst midair into a cloud of shattered wood.
All present were silent as the echo faded swiftly into the distance.
One of the elders cleared his throat with a nervous exhalation. At the sound, Ghost turned to face her audience, looking from face to face, noting their surprise and the hints of fear which showed around the edges of their expressions. She was careful not to smile as she bowed.
The same elder cleared his throat again. “Ghost, the power of your . . . device is obvious. For what reason do you bring it to us?” The other elders murmured agreement, seeming to hope that Ghost had not meant her earlier words.
Ghost stood erect, unbowed, as though she was one of Noa’s trees herself. “You know my story. You know I am sworn to see the Others swept from the People’s land. The gods have granted me inspiration, understanding, and knowledge, and from those, power flows. I will share this power with all of the People, and then, I will see the Others destroyed.”
The elders hesitated, but Long Eye had been sucking on his lip thoughtfully after the initial shock had worn off, and now he spoke with a firm voice. “Elders, I believe Ghost offers us an opportunity we cannot waste. We hold the Others back from the forest, but we lose ground in the hills.” He nodded at Ghost as he said it, not needing to name Snowfall for its loss to be on the minds of all assembled. “And it has been lifetimes since the People last recovered any such losses. With this weapon, I believe we could do what Ghost says, if we are brave enough to seize the advantage.”
Taking her cue, Ghost stepped forward determinedly, gaze fixed on the eldest of the elders, the god-touched elder who had begun her training. “We have fought since the days of our great-grandsires’ great-grandsires to cleanse the People’s land of the Others’ taint.” Her eyes grew flinty as she quoted his words back at him. Some among the elders looked away from her uncomfortably. “Now, in this moment, we have the chance to finish that fight.”
The elders exchanged searching glances with one another, and finally, the god-touched elder nodded to her. “We must eat what the gods have grown for us.” His voice was firm enough that the defeated slump to his shoulders was almost unnoticeable.
* * *
The next week was a flurry of activity for Ghost and Ember. Trainees who were strong with Noa were given to Ember, to be taught the technique of opening a thin, straight branch into the wide hollow tube which was the weapon. It was simple enough to describe, but required a firm control of the god; a matter of moving all the wood in the branch outward, forming a strong, smooth-sided tube, and once taught, most of the trainees could make it happen. In comparison, shaping chunks of wood into the dense little cone-shaped projectiles was a trivial exercise.
Meanwhile, Ghost was given the Ano-oriented trainees. First, she taught her way of inviting the god to her aid, which proved so successful that a shaman was made to sit near the training to extinguish any sudden wildfires. On a whim, Ghost pulled aside one of the camp’s defenders, a doe who had never demonstrated any affinity for the gods, and had her antlers glowing red in scarcely an hour of quiet instruction. The elders exchanged weighted glances over that success, but let her add all the camp’s defenders to her rolls. Ghost moved on to the rigorous training at loading and firing, and of hitting what one fired at, the latter of which occupied most of the week’s days from sunup to sundown.
At the end of the week, the warriors under Ghost’s tutelage were hitting more than missing, and Ember’s warriors had a stockpile of tubes, harnesses, and straight rods to load the tubes, and a plentiful supply of the dense wooden cones.
Ghost’s smile reflected her deep satisfaction as she looked around at the waiting ranks of warriors, then at the elders. The elders had grown less apprehensive about the prospect of using the weapons in battle as they began to see the results of the training, but worry still showed on many of their faces. Ghost ignored it, as usual, and bowed her head to them. “Elders, we are prepared. It is time for the test we agreed upon.”
They bowed to her in a slow rustle of graying coats and wrinkled flesh. The eldest spoke. “It is time. I think ill of this new future, but the gods have laid these gifts before us, so we must take them up.” He raised his voice to carry throughout the small camp. “Ghost, warrior of the People. You will lead these warriors in an ambush, to test the effectiveness of the new weapons in combat.”
Ghost dipped her antlers in formal salute, and turned to her forty warriors. An auspicious number . Her voice rolled over them, carrying effortlessly. “We travel north, to the edge of the forest. The Others patrol between their armed camps, and we will fall upon a patrol when it is too far away from either of the nearest camps to receive help.” The assembled deer shifted and murmured in a swift current of worry. Ghost’s ears went up, swiveling attentively as she gauged their fear, but she smiled confidently. “You fear the past, my warriors. It is true that the Others’ patrols were mighty, once. You have heard the tales of their strength in the days when the People and the Others met as equals in battle.” Her smile widened to bare her teeth. “But that was long ago. We were driven into the forest, and in the centuries of our exile, the Others have grown soft and weak. Now the gods have given us great power, and their softness will fall before us!”
The murmurs had ebbed to silence as she spoke and the edge of fear had gone with them, and now the assembled warriors burst out in cheers and war cries grown brittle for lack of use. They will not be so for much longer, thought Ghost.
The forest’s edge was two days north of the gods’ camp, even at the great speed the People could manage along their hidden trails through the dense undergrowth. They moved quietly and with growing anticipation as they neared their destination. The forest’s edge was separated from the first rising of the northern hills by a strip of rough grassland less than a mile wide. The Others patrolled to reassure themselves that the People could not surge north out of the forest and attack their villages in the hills. The warriors moved east along the forest’s edge, toward the towering crag that marked the center of the earth, until they found a place where the patrols’ road—really a dusty path where the grass had been tramped down—snaked between the forest and a steep-sided hillock. The patrols covered the forest’s edge several times a day, so the warriors knew they had not long to wait. They loaded their weapons with moss and tamped down a conical plug snug against the moss, then dispersed to conceal themselves amidst the trees and bushes of the forest, still and patient, eyes scanning the patrol road.
The sun had crept only a short distance across the sky when the patrol came into view. The still, silent warriors stilled further, becoming indistinguishable from the woods around them. Ghost counted the approaching Others. Two fours, standard for a daylight patrol such as this. Two horned ones, two with wings, and a full four of the weak but disturbingly deerlike earth ponies , clanking under the weight of their metal armor. Her warriors understood that the horned ones were the most dangerous, with their magic —Ghost liked thinking in the Others’ ugly language even less than speaking it—that had nothing to do with the gods. The winged ones were only slightly less fearsome, as they could attack from any angle. The walking ones could safely be left for last.
The Others were talking amongst themselves in their guttural tongue, talk of flowers and crops and petty gossip from their villages, making Ghost’s lip curl at their confidence and their lack of attention. They believed they were safe while the sun was shining. We will teach them otherwise. The patrol approached the ambush spot the warriors had arranged, where the road squeezed around the hillock and drew closest to the forest, and Ghost tensed. The weight of the loaded tubes in her harness excited her.
Ghost was screened from the Others’ sight by layers of light foliage, which the wooden plug would travel straight through, so she had no need to step out of concealment to fire. She bent her knees, bringing her tubes to bear on the horned one at the end of the patrol’s line. She held her breath. The patrol reached the spot.
Her antlers flared red—
The tube jerked back in her harness—
A wash of heat struck the side of her face—
The Other’s headless body collapsed. Blood gushed, staining the dirt of the road.
The rest of the patrol stopped and turned, some to look toward the noise from the forest, others to see what the sodden thump from behind had been. Fools. In the moment they stopped, a dozen pairs of hidden antlers flared red, and a dozen tubes spat fire. Three plugs struck the second horned one, throwing him to slam against the hillock with a wet sound, already dead. One of the flying ones and three of the walkers also died in the initial volley.
The second flyer was fast and lucky, and launched herself straight up as plugs hummed past her, avoiding everything but a glancing blow which shattered one of her rear hooves. She flew like a mad thing, climbing fast in an erratic weave as warriors fired up at her. She avoided every shot, and when the shooting had stopped, she swiftly doubled back, looking down on the forest. From directly above, the warriors’ concealment was useless, and her eyes lit with a bloodthirsty gleam as she drew her long knives.
Ghost had seen the flying Others in action before, watched them slay great warriors with their speed and agility, slashing them to ribbons as they flew past. But the forest was her place, not theirs. Ghost stood and yelled in the Others’ tongue, hoping her voice would carry to her foe’s ears and goad her into stupidity. “Face me, pony! Let us discover whether your ‘Fire of Friendship’ is more powerful than my antlers!”
The pegasus bared her teeth at Ghost and dove, her knives glittering in the sun. She stooped, diving faster and faster, blurring toward Ghost. Ghost readied her antlers to stab, knowing she must provide a convincing performance. She waited one heartbeat and a second as the flying one grew larger. She heard Ember hold her breath, and at that moment, Ghost threw herself flat, pressing her nose into the forest’s moist loam. Her coat rippled in the blast of air from the Other’s passage, and Ghost turned her head, listening to the guttural jeering at Ghost’s cowardice and watching the flying one pull up to break through the canopy back into clear air. But Ghost had other plans for her. Her antlers flared red as she called Ano to her, showing him the branches and leaves around the fast-moving enemy.
White fire blossomed in the canopy, and high, thin screams filled the space between the trees for a terrible moment before cutting off abruptly. Ghost’s antlers continued glowing red, and the fire sucked itself out of the air, absorbed into the green summer leaves without a trace. The People’s earth was the People’s no longer, but the forest was still rich with power. The dead pony had forgotten that truth, and had paid the price so many Others had paid before her.
The walking one who was the last member of the patrol had turned and fled while Ghost was luring the flying one. He had scrabbled up the hillock in panic, wanting only to get as far from the forest’s edge as possible. It did not save him. Two blasts rang out, fired by two of Ghost’s most promising sharpshooters, and the Other’s body rolled and slid down the steep side of the hillock to add its blood to the thirsty red dirt of the road.
With the patrol dead, the warriors came out of hiding, murmuring to each other in stunned tones. Ember stood near Ghost and whispered, “And now, what?”
Ghost answered at full volume, speaking to all the warriors. “The gods’ gift is true. The People have been granted the power to reclaim our earth. The proof lies dead in the road, but they are only the first! All of the People’s warriors will carry the gods’ weapons to slay the Others and drive them before us out of the earth, and the earth shall be the People’s once more. We will regain our glory, our dignity, and our rightful place as the chosen of the gods!”
As the warriors’ cheers washed over her, Ghost smiled at Ember and saw that the other doe’s eyes showed as much excitement as she felt.
* * *
The triumphant warriors returned to the gods’ camp and told their tale to the elders by firelight, over a feast, as was appropriate for tales of victory and tales of the gods—and this was both. The elders exchanged weighted glances and nodded to one another as though dark suspicions had been confirmed.
When the tales and feasting ended and the People of the camp started for their tents, Ghost and Ember fell in together, for their tents were close to one another. “Well done,” Ember said.
Ghost glanced at her and then away, finding the darkened trees around them of sudden and intense interest. “I know.”
Ember grinned at her friend’s reticence. “I should not have waited to compliment you. If I had not, perhaps you would not be so stuffed with the compliments of others that you cannot accept mine.”
Ghost’s wayward gaze snapped back to Ember’s face, eyes wide with something resembling panic. “No! I— that is—” Ghost scowled at herself and forced her mouth under control. “Thank you. I had felt the lack, because your compliment is the only one which matters, coming as it does from a place of knowledge.”
Ember giggled. “You are a warrior of action, not words, my friend. But from time to time, you make a good attack.”
Before Ghost could gather her thoughts to reply to that, the eldest elder intercepted the two does, stepping from between two tents into their path. Ghost and Ember bowed respectfully, but the elder tossed his head impatiently, waving away the courtesies. “Ghost of the People. The elders of the gods’ camp have conferred, and we have decided. The weapons you offer the People are truly of the gods. Therefore, the gods have chosen you to act through. For what purpose…” He trailed off, his eyes going distant for a moment. Then he shook himself and continued in a firm voice. “For what purpose, we do not know. But the People obey the gods’ wills. Therefore, we will use our authority as elders of the gods’ camp to call every available warrior of the People to this place—” He swallowed. “—that you may lead them to war against the Others.”
The War and What Came After
The rest of summer passed slowly, at first. The elders dispatched runners to all the villages in the forest and the hills to the north, save Clearbrook in the western hills, which was closest to the Others and so could spare no warriors. The days crawled by as Ghost waited for the warriors’ arrival, and when they began streaming in at last, in groups large and small, the days began passing in a blur of activity as they were brought into the training regimen.
Summer’s heat was waning toward the cool of autumn by the time the training was complete. The god’s camp had swelled to hold ten thousand warriors from all over the People’s earth. Every doe and buck in the camp had been trained in loading and firing the gods’ weapons, and many had also been trained to make the weapons and had spent much of their time for a month or more spinning sticks into hollow tubes and chunks of wood into the cone-shaped plugs and the cotton-like tinder that was packed in behind the plug—moss had finally proved unworkable as demand increased with thousands and thousands of warriors needing supply. The weapons and ammunition had been produced in ever-greater quantities as the summer steamed on, until at last every warrior had their harness and paired tubes and bags of plugs and tinder.
In the long tent shared by the Firsts of each village and the highest-ranking elders, Ghost and Ember surveyed a map drawn from the recollections of daring scouts who had ventured into the Other’s earth to spy on their villages throughout the hills and plains. The Others had not advanced their western border past Ghost’s fawnhood village of Snowfall. Clearbrook, the nearest village to the Other’s lines, had not fallen in the years since Snowfall, though it was unclear whether that was because the Others did not know of Clearbrook’s existence or whether Clearbrook had succumbed to cowardice and ceased pressing the Others. Ghost tapped a hoof near Clearbrook on the map and swept it over the Other’s settlement in the place where Snowfall was. “We will travel west in the forest, then north to the hills to rally at Clearbrook, then move east through the hills to retake Snowfall. It is a fitting first strike.”
The Firsts nodded and rumbled thoughtfully. Customarily, the First of a village was a respected and accomplished warrior who had demonstrated skill in the arts of leadership. Becoming First meant one was trusted by their village to arbitrate disagreements, coordinate defenses, and speak for the village in the rare councils of the People. Ghost respected their combined knowledge and judgement, and made a point of publicly including them in her planning.
Ghost had originally planned to bypass the hills, taking her army far to the east while still in the forest’s cover, to strike north into the plains around the east side of the craggy mountain at the center of the earth. East of that mountain was a steep and inhospitable mountain range which neither the People nor the Others could inhabit. But Ember had had the wise idea to begin the attack in the hills, where the Others were closer and the terrain less favorable for them. Though the hill villages were not well-garrisoned and so could not easily strike at the army’s back, Ghost understood the wisdom in not leaving any enemy at one’s back, no matter how weak. Ember’s strategy also gave the People the chance to take the hills back in a series of lightning-quick strikes before the fullness of winter bore down on the land, whereupon the heavy snowfall would cut the villages off from the lowlands and prevent the Others from reversing those advances. The People would be fighting on the plains in winter, where the snow would only serve to hide their advance on the well-defended large villages—cities, Ghost’s memory supplied the ugly, alien word. The Firsts’ thoughtful noises faded, and one by one, they stamped a hoof against the packed earth of the tent floor, ritually signaling their approval of the battle plan. Ghost caught Ember’s pleased smile from the corner of her eye.
The rest of the day was taken up by discussion of details—supply lines, signals, and debate over which village’s warriors should have the honor of being the vanguard in the attack on Snowfall. Finally, all was settled, and Ghost and Ember were free to leave the long tent into the long rays of sunset. They circled the camp, which had grown huge and sprawling with the addition of thousands of warriors, taking a last look at the preparations.
Ember said, “Do you believe we will succeed?”
Ghost stared at her for a moment before speaking, eyebrow raised in surprise. “Of course! The gods themselves assist us, and their weapons give us unstoppable power. The Others will be unable to withstand us. By this time next year, the earth will be the People’s again.” She hesitated and glanced aside at Ember. “Do you not?”
Ember shook her head, her fine large antlers gleaming in the light of the People’s celebratory bonfires. “I do. I wanted to hear you say it. I worry, Ghost. About after.”
“Ah. After.”
“Ghost,” Ember said quietly, “have you given any further thought to after?”
Ghost blew out a breath through her nostrils. “I have not. After is a lovely dream, but one I cannot afford to have just yet. Wetting the earth with the Others’ blood is where my concern ends. Once the earth has dried, well, that is for you and others of the People to concern yourselves with.”
Ember looked away, into the darkness of the forest around the camp. They completed their circuit of the camp in silence, and retired to their tents.
* * *
The wind swept through the narrow, dead-end valley, building speed as the valley’s rocky walls closed in. It passed through the village the Others had built over the bones of Snowfall, ruffling manes and tugging at the brightly colored bits of cloth hanging decoratively on the low stone houses as though in imitation of the brightly colored Others scurrying through the streets. The Others were builders, not warriors, and the dozens of dozens of stone buildings they had built in place of the tiny village of Snowfall showed that. Ghost snorted. They might as well be beavers. At the back of the village, opposite the high stone wall which spanned the valley to keep the village secure, the wind whistled over the granary—a long building with thick walls built snug against the valley’s steep rear face—and howled as it climbed out of the valley, forcing Ghost to squint against the steady blast in her face as she looked down on the village. In the hills, autumn was already well-established, and the fast, cold wind cut through her tawny coat like a knife. She ignored it, standing firm as she conferred with the Firsts and their head warriors to plan the attack.
Minutes later, Ghost crept through the scraggly brush of one of the valley’s side walls. Ember was at her side, and a thousand other warriors lay all around the lip of the valley, surrounding the village below. From her vantage, Ghost could see the five hundred warriors of the vanguard, creeping toward the village’s heavy gate. There were thousands more warriors standing idle, just out of sight of the village, and there they would remain. Ghost and her advisors had decided to use only a fraction of her forces in this narrow valley, lest they clog it and do more harm than good.
The vanguard was a long sling throw from the gate when a sharp-eyed sentry finally saw them and shouted an alarm. The Others who were working the fields beyond the gate dropped their tools and galloped for safety even as the gate began to close, pulled by blunt-featured, heavy-shouldered walking ones—earth ponies , Ghost thought, letting her distaste for the Others’ ugly tongue increase her pleasure at their impending death. The front rank of the vanguard rose from their stealthy crawl and the command to fire drifted faintly to Ghost’s ears.
Light sparkled from the standing warriors as they fired at the gate’s hinges, then fired again. The heavy wood cracked, then shattered under the impacts, but the hinges were not destroyed and the gate still stood, albeit crookedly. The walking ones were nothing if not physically strong, and they continued to drag it closed despite the damage, digging a great furrow in the soil.
The front rank threw themselves flat and twisted their necks back to draw their loading rods with their teeth, beginning the swift and practiced motions of reloading. The second rank of the vanguard leapt up and fired upon the gate’s hinges. That second volley was enough to destroy the hinges and separate the gate from the wall, and the gate fell slowly inward to land with a mighty crash and a great cloud of dust, leaving the way open. The second rank threw themselves flat and began reloading, and the rest of the vanguard charged past the supine warriors with a roar, rushing to run over the fallen gate to take advantage of the confusion before a proper defense could be mounted.
The Others’ warriors—if they could be called such—were flooding from their homes into the streets in response to the sentry’s alarm, some still adjusting their grip on their weapons or awkwardly running on three legs while securing their helmets. Ghost smiled, seeing them. “Now it is our turn,” she said conversationally.
She surged upright from her supine position, and the warriors lining the valley on either side of her followed her lead. She bent her front knees, lowering the mouths of her tubes to face the running and flying Others. It was a long shot through windy air, but not longer than they had practiced. Her antlers glowed red as she opened herself to Ano, but he felt weirdly remote, as though she were shouting across a distance. This is not the gods’ land anymore. Who would have thought the change could be so swift? But when she asked Ano to bring out the fire hiding in the tinder, he reached across the distance and it roared forth as hot and bright as ever, and one of the flying Others fell broken in the street. The products of the forest still belong to the gods. Intellectually, she had known the weapons would work, but feeling her tube fire was comforting nonetheless.
The Others had no chance. The warriors on the rim of the valley barraged the village like rain, ensuring that no defenders could move through the streets to take up favorable positions in the guard towers or in the air, which forced the defenders either toward the vanguard’s tubes or into the biggest buildings. The vanguard’s battle cries crossed the distance to Ghost’s ears, thinned to a musical quality. The vanguard stood just past the fallen gate in a leaf-shaped formation, the long straight sides of the leading edge giving the formation a wide sweep of control. The defenders were in disarray, charging the van in small groups, spears or knives shaking only a little. But no matter where they attacked the formation, a dozen warriors or more saw them coming. The scared, foolish Others were always reduced to a bloody heap in moments. Once a warrior fired, they would step back and the warrior behind them, who waited in the second rank with loaded weapons, would step forward to take their place. The formation was three warriors deep, and thus able to fire continuously in any direction.
In scarcely half an hour, the village fell silent. Defenders had stopped attacking the van, and there was no sign of motion in the heavy, squat buildings facing the open square behind the gate. The warriors of the van raised up, all together, to their rear legs, then slammed their forehooves down on the packed dirt of the square. It was the signal for the warriors on the valley rim to stop firing so that the vanguard could move from building to building without being struck down by a blind shot from above. Ghost stood, grateful for the relief in her aching knees, and all around her warriors stood and boasted to their neighbors about the Others they were sure they had killed.
The van’s leaf-shaped formation dissolved, reforming into a hundred fours of warriors and a much-reduced leaf formation to guard the gate. The fours fanned out quickly but cautiously, some combing the streets and alleys and others bursting into buildings to slay any cowardly Others hiding inside.
Occasional thumps and booms carried up to Ghost and Ember as the fours found enemies, and a few screams wended their way through the wind. Ember shivered at one drawn-out scream, and Ghost touched her shoulder to Ember’s, saying quietly, “It must be. This earth is the People’s.”
Ember nodded, gulped a breath of the cold wind to steady herself. Ghost barely caught her whispered words. “Is it, still?”
Once the all-clear had been signaled, Ghost and Ember filed down to the village to meet the Firsts and head warriors. They gathered in the square, and the First of Longbough cleared her throat. She had led the vanguard, and her voice was scratchy from the smoke and her war cries. “All told, we lost three warriors. A fine trade for a village of hundreds of Others.”
The group of leaders made pleased noises, nodding and congratulating each other and Ghost. Ghost sucked at her lip for a moment, and when she spoke, the leaders sobered at her tone. “The Others outnumber us a thousand to one, or more. Trading one warrior for a hundred Others will doom us. We have a two-day march east to the village of Wind. We will spend that time discussing what went wrong and how better to kill.” The leaders bowed to her.
Ember looked around at the corpses in the square and lying twisted where they had fallen in doorways, and raised her voice to carry. “This village will be the People’s when the snow melts. Let us not leave our sisters and brothers the task of cleansing it of dead Others. Gather the bodies beyond the wall and we will burn them. And have the doors of the granary reinforced to prevent hungry animals from entering in the People’s absence. We will need that grain to survive until the first harvest.”
The Firsts and head warriors stiffened to attention at the firmness in her voice, but they looked askance at Ghost. Ghost gave no sign that she noticed their questioning glances, but only bowed to Ember. It is a thought both kind and wise, and she thinks of after, as always . The leaders hastened to bow in turn before striding away snapping orders.
With the muscle of thousands of warriors, It took less than an hour to gather the corpses in a series of great piles beyond the fallen gate. On Ember’s advice, bits of weapon-tinder had been laid in the piles as they were being built. Ghost stepped forward from the ring of warriors standing well back from the piles, and reached for Ano. He came to her as across a great distance, as before. Out of curiosity, she asked him to release the fire in the body of one of the Others, but even she could feel that there was no fire there to be released—or that Ano could not touch what was there. She was unsure which thought was more disturbing. They do not belong to the gods, just as the elder said. Then, thinking of Ember’s earlier words, What have they done to the earth in their time here? Ghost frowned, and resolutely turned her mind to her task. She showed Ano the bits of tinder amidst the doubly-dead piles, and he reached across the distance to touch them all in an instant. White flame roared toward the sky, marred by a pall of greasy smoke. The warriors cheered, seeing only their enemies’ ultimate defeat.
With the feeling of Ano’s distance still fresh in her, Ghost could not see what they saw. What will it take to bring the gods back to this land? She had the sinking realization that simply killing the Others would not be enough. She turned away, suddenly tired all the way to her bones and wanting nothing more than to sleep. On her way to the tents, Ember fell in silently beside her and pressed her shoulder to Ghost’s. She didn’t speak, but Ghost was soothed by her presence. We have only begun, and already I long for the work to be complete. Then the responsibility will be yours, and I can rest.
The War and What Came After
The People continued their campaign for the hills, moving rapidly east along the line of the hills and retaking Wind, High Meadow, Big Rock, Weeping Valley, Smalltree, and a dozen others, many of which had not belonged to the People for several lifetimes, before winter bore down on them at last.
After that first victory, at Snowfall, Ghost and her commanders had devised better tactics, and had improved them battle by battle. With each village, the Others’ defenses had grown stronger, for the People were advancing toward the heart of the Others’ earth and the villages were older and older yet. The Others were builders, not warriors: given enough time, the Others would make even a single tent into a fortress.
When the Other’s villages were only a lifetime old, the People had still been able to assault the gate and engage the Others up close. As they had marched on to older villages, the villages grew a second wall enclosing the fields. The People would have been slaughtered in the space between the walls if they had assaulted the gates, and so all the thousands of warriors had stood idle for a day and a night as Ghost conferred with Ember and the commanders. They were fortunate, and the Others trusted their walls, so none of the flying Others had passed over the sprawling camp in the next valley.
As the sun had set on the restless camp, a decision had still not been reached in the commanders’ tent. Discouraged, they prepared to adjourn and hope that luck would favor them through another day of deliberation, when suddenly Ghost remembered burning the bodies in Snowfall. Since then, the Others’ pyres had been lit by flint and steel, on the pretense that the Others did not deserve Ano’s touch. In truth, it was because Ghost would be the one to call Ano to light the pyres, and she feared to be reminded of Ano’s powerlessness here in the Other’s earth. But the memory had come to the forefront of her mind, sparkling with insight, and she had understood intuitively how the attack could be carried out, as though Ano himself had planted the knowledge in her.
Her lips had compressed into a thin line. She had not enjoyed the implications of the plan, but she spoke the idea. The commanders were excited by the possibilities. Only Ember looked as reluctant as Ghost felt, regarding Ghost from under her lashes as though her friend might disappear simply by giving voice to it.
The next morning, the army had approached the village of Seahill, so named because of the broad, gently rolling hilltop it was founded on. The soil was fertile, but the location left the village without any natural defenses, so the Others had surrounded it with walls. The People had marched toward the part of the outer wall furthest from the main gate, hearing the alarms rise up inside the walls—the hilltop offered them no cover, so they advanced in the open. Flying Others rose from the village, to scout or harry, but the warriors with the keenest eyes shot them down as they closed on the army. When the People came within range of the wall, the order to fire rang out and a volley was fired by a hundred warriors. The dense wooden plugs bounced and splintered and fell from the thick stone wall, leaving it unharmed, and Ghost imagined she could feel the relief from the puzzled defenders. It will not last. She shouted a signal, and reached for Ano along with a group of warriors chosen for their sensitivity to the god. They invited Ano to release all of the fire in the plugs, all at once. It was difficult to touch the plugs at that range, like seeing through murky water, though in the forest it would have been as simple as breathing. Still, they each accomplished it, and the detonation flattened the dying autumn grass outside the wall and threw great chunks of stone and masonry inward to batter down parts of the interior wall and crush some nearby buildings. An order rang out, and the army advanced toward the inner wall to repeat the performance. Panicked shouts floated to their ears as the defenders realized that they had underestimated the People’s weapons.
With that new tactic in the army’s teeth, allowing the Others’ stone walls to assist with their own breach and to reduce many of the buildings near the breach which would have sheltered defenders, the double-walled villages had been trivial to reduce and retake, and the army had continued marching. Ano had grown more distant at each new village as the earth became more firmly of the Others, but though it became harder to lead him to the plugs, Ghost and most of the sensitives were able to do it, village after village. Ghost had taken to resting after the initial breach, letting her commanders oversee the details of the assault as she recovered from the spiritual fatigue of feeling Ano so dimly. Accustomed as she had become to the god’s nearness and willingness, that feeling of distance was, to her, like losing a close friend, and it pained her each time.
As the defenses of the Others’ villages had grown more elaborate, the army had begun taking losses. Deaths were fortunately few, but the healers’ area of the army’s camp grew as wounded were moved there after each battle. Each evening, after camp was made, Ember brought Ghost with her as she walked among the wounded, holding Noa to her so that her antlers glowed a brilliant green. She did not act to heal any warriors, because the army’s healers were the best the People had to offer, and most could coax Noa to knit flesh better than even Ember could. Ember’s goal on these nightly excursions was the wounds of the spirit, not the body. She and Ghost would stop for a moment with each new casualty to exchange a few quiet words of reassurance. It was not the words that were important as much as the fact that the commander of the army and her most trusted friend, both of whom were the People’s chosen of the gods, had come to say them personally. As the green light from Ember’s antlers played over their faces and the commander of the army paid respect to their bravery, one could almost see their urgency to return to health. On subsequent visits, Ember or Ghost had merely to nod familiarly to each warrior, and that urgency rose back into their faces.
In the last month of autumn, with the winds of winter already breathing down their necks, the People had finally encountered the oldest villages in the hills, which had been taken in the Others’ first push to seize the earth. The Others had rebuilt the villages as fortresses, for the People had been powerful then, and furious, and the Others had had lifetimes upon lifetimes to reinforce and improve the defenses since. The People’s army had moved quickly, but word of their advance had reached the Others at last, and the high walls were crowded with armored forms standing ready. The army made camp in sight of the city so that the commanders could decide upon a strategy.
The commanders had chosen to attack just before dawn the next morning and to approach from the east, so that the sun’s glare would give the flying Others no advantage. The defenders had scattered from the walls the People approached, but not fast enough, and bodies and blood flew with the stone and masonry to crash into the interior wall. This deep into the Other’s earth, Ano’s presence was as dim as a candle on the horizon, and only a bare few warriors could bring him strongly enough to detonate the plugs at the walls. Thankfully, Ano’s growing distance had never interfered with firing the weapons, as near and rich with the touch of the gods as they were. The army spent some time reducing the first wall, demolishing hundreds of yards so that the Others would not be able to stand on what remained and kill warriors with magic or sling. After the first wall, Ghost was fatigued, but her work was far from over. She advanced in the van to within range of the inner wall, shots ringing out around her as her warriors returned fire at the slits in the inner wall’s towers. Horned Others lurked beyond the slits, and a few were powerful enough to send killing light past the ruined outer wall to scorch and slay in the moments before the vanguard reached their weapons’ range. The inner walls were lower but thicker than the outer, and Ghost steeled herself and reached for Ano again, knowing that a volley would be required for each of the towers and that a single volley would not break through the stout wall.
As the dust of the shattered inner wall had cleared at last, many hundreds of defenders could be seen, heavy-shouldered walking ones on the ground, armored and with bared steel clenched in their teeth, the dangerous horned ones in the upper windows of big stone buildings and in hastily-built wooden towers, giving them the height to look down on the whole army to fling deadly light, and a cloud of flying ones lifting into the air roaring a battle cry, many carrying heavy stones and slings to kill from above where the People could not fight back. Ghost took a deep breath, her head swimming with fatigue so that she felt as though she were drifting above her body.
The commander of the vanguard, the First of Swampreed, threw his head back and shouted the order to fire just as the rising sun crested the hill behind the army. The warriors knew their business, and Ghost’s innards were jostled painfully by the near-simultaneous blast from a thousand tubes aimed high. Ghost reached for Ano with a sensation unpleasantly like stretching her soul, and time seemed to slow down for her. She had an endless moment to admire the plugs, moving at a walking pace, as they pushed their way through flesh with a delicate puff of blood. The sun’s rays struck red-tinted rainbows from those clouds of fatal mist, and Ghost was lost in the beauty of the sight for a moment as the dead and dying Others hung like statues in the air. She blinked. Oh, yes. My duty. Straining herself almost to the breaking point, she led Ano to touch her portion of the thousand wooden plugs. The tail of her eye caught the red-glowing antlers of the three other sensitives engaged in the same task just before time resumed its normal pace. The vanguard was outside the ruined gap in the outer wall, but the heat of the thousand midair explosions singed Ghost’s eyes before she could blink them closed, and hot air buffeted her roughly, almost knocking her to the ground. The wind passed, the heat ended, and she opened her eyes on a scene of devastation.
The wooden towers that had bristled with horned Others were smashed into splinters. The towers beyond the range of the initial blast had become great torches, and horned ones flung themselves away from the flames to fall and land with a wet crunch far below. The thick stone walls of the buildings did not burn, but the thatch roofs and the furnishings inside lit like kindling in the wash of irresistible heat, sending horned ones with red eyes and charred coats spilling from the upper windows to roll in agony on the ground. The mass of winged ones had been erased by the blast, the few which remained lying broken and burnt where they had been thrown against stone walls or groups of Others. The heavy muscles of the earth ponies had been nothing against the force unleashed by Ano, and the whole group of them had become not much more than a charred smear.
Screams came faintly to Ghost’s ears, attenuated by her distance from her body. The effort of bridging the gap between Ano and the plugs had left her empty of will. It was all she could do to stand, and she hoped that one of the warriors near her would push her into motion when the vanguard moved.
A flutter of wings could be heard, like a flock of crows startled into flight, and the Others’ second wave hove into view, a solid wall of defenders filling the streets and the sky, hurrying from the other side of the fortress-village toward the invaders. Ghost’s heart sank and her legs threatened to give out, but with some untapped reserve of strength she had not known she possessed, she stayed upright and reached across the miles for Ano even as the First of Swampreed shouted the order to fire once again.
* * *
Night had fallen when Ghost awoke in her own tent with Ember and one of the army’s healers sitting beside her bedroll. Ember smiled and leaned forward to touch her antlers to Ghost’s. Ghost was vaguely embarrassed by the worry in Ember’s eyes. “You awaken sooner than Greenbriar expected,” Ember said, with a nod to the healer. “I am glad. How do you feel? Are you well?”
Ghost took inventory of her body, staring unfocused at the peak of the tent above her. “I feel well, but weak,” she admitted at last. She hesitated. “There is a hollowness in me somehow.”
Ember and Greenbriar exchanged a worried glance, but Ember put a smile in place before looking back down at Ghost. Her lips parted to say something reassuring, but she was interrupted by a deep, liquid growl which filled the tent. Ember went taut, head swiveling to find the source of the noise, but relaxed when she saw Greenbriar’s smirk.
“The fearsome Ghost seems to be hungry,” the healer said, amusement in her eyes. Ember’s eyes held only relief.
With the words said, Ghost realized it was true—she was hungrier than she could ever recall being, hungrier even than her time of starvation during her panicked flight from the destruction of her village so long ago. “Yes,” was all she said.
Greenbriar nodded. “Wait here,” she said. As though I could walk away even if I chose to. Greenbriar left to retrieve food, leaving Ember and Ghost alone.
Ember smoothed a wrinkle in the blanket she lay on. “Ano?”
Ghost nodded. Ember had felt the god’s distance too. She was one of the most recent to leave the line of sensitives in the vanguard. “He is . . . It is like trying to throw a spear across the forest, and the forest gets wider with each passing day. We are so very far from where the gods have power.”
“Can we continue?” She did not say is this the end, and Ghost was grateful for that.
“We are nearly at the end of the hills. There are but two more captured villages, and then the entirety of the hills belong once more to the People. Then we travel north to reach our first target on the plains. Surely the gods will be able to reclaim the hills before long. That will make it easier.”
Ember nodded, and smiled in relief. Neither of them mentioned the profound unholiness of the earth the Others had held, nor their doubts whether the gods would ever be able to reclaim it.
Two dead fortress-villages and two weeks of hard marching later, the army came down out of the hills just ahead of the heavy snow, and there was a great celebration there on the plains between the hills and the crag at the center of the earth, for they had swept the hills clean of the Others, a feat none of the People would have considered possible before the gods’ weapons. Ember and Ghost missed most of the festivities, cloistered as they were in Ghost’s tent as the weakened and feverish doe nibbled hard cakes soaked in broth between bouts of sleeping as though dead.
The army camped there, amid the dead grass of the plains, for five precious days—days which had grown more precious now that the Others had learned of the People’s assault—letting the supply train reach them from the forest and letting the wounded heal. Ghost insisted she was well enough to travel, but her fever remained, and Ember and the healers pressed her back down into her bedroll, eyeing her protruding ribs and feeling her weak resistance.
The healers plied their art on Ghost. They grew more dour with each failed attempt to make Noa touch Ghost’s feverish body. Some—not all—could reach her, but the god’s distance and the difficulty of the task caused each healer to give up in the end. Finally, they informed Ember, who had waited anxiously by Ghost’s bedroll during each of the dozens of attempts, that Ghost would simply have to be allowed to heal naturally. Ember’s brows lowered at that, but she said nothing.
Ember waited. With each sunset, her expression grew darker, and during her brief walks outside Ghost's tent, she stalked around the camp like a thunderstorm. On the third day, Ghost at last slept normally, without the tossing and moaning that had marked her unconsciousness until then. Seeing that the worst had passed, Ember bared her teeth in a snarl and her antlers filled the tent with green light as she seized Noa and forced the god to the task of repairing Ghost’s body.
Greenbriar, who was in attendance again that day, put a hoof up to her that was not quite a command to stop. “Our finest healers could not enlist Noa’s help in this place. What can you do, young warrior?”
Ember cut a look at the healer. “None of you were angry enough.” Her antlers flared brilliantly green, making Greenbriar wince away.
In an hour, Ghost’s nose and eyes had lost any signs of fever, and her muscles had begun to press against her skin with their accustomed youthful hardness. Ember released the god when Ghost woke and complained of being too hungry to bear, and nearly collapsed across Ghost’s body as soon as the god had left her. She murmured, for Ghost’s ears alone, “It seems I too can throw a spear across the forest, when there is need enough.”
Greenbriar put her head through the tent flap to send another healer to bring double helpings of food for both of them, and bent to poke and prod at the two does until she was satisfied that neither of them had been harmed by the process. They ate, and slept, and the following day Ghost was able to leave her bedroll and walk carefully about the camp, which lifted the army’s morale scarcely less than it lifted hers.
There was another celebration that night in honor of the return of the army’s god-warrior, a name which amused and horrified Ghost in approximately equal measure. She leaned close to Ember’s ear and whispered, “Later, you must tell me the tales that spawned that name.” Ember’s reply was an impish smile and a wink, leading Ghost to decide that at least some of the tales had been her doing. Ghost and Ember ate to repletion, then rested as warriors competed in contests of skill and tale-telling. On the fifth day, Ghost awoke feeling fully recovered, and after the healers had poked and prodded and satisfied themselves that she was correct in that, she ordered that the camp be struck immediately and that the army begin the march north toward the first of the mighty cities of the Others, constructions so alien that the People had no word to name them.
The War and What Came After
Winter caught up to the army as they marched day after day toward the nameless city —it had not been built over the ruins of a village of the People, so it had no identity to them. It guarded the way deeper into the plains, where the corpses of once-great villages had been defiled by the Others. It was not of the People, so it would be razed to the ground rather than taken.
The warriors of the People slogged through the rising snow, exhaling frozen clouds but warm in their tightly-woven cloaks. Many of them looked around now and again with an expression like awe, seeming amazed to be walking on earth that no one of the People had trod for centuries, for even the most daring scouts never penetrated this far north into the plains. The army’s knowledge of their target came from sharp eyes squinting from the lowest cliffs on the mountain at the center of the earth. Ghost herself felt invigorated by the bright cold sunlight, laughing and smiling with Ember as they marched. The difficulty and strain of the battles which had come before seemed a distant shadow that did not reach far enough to darken this moment.
The army swung east and camped several hours from the city , and resumed the march an hour before dawn, approaching from the east so that the Others would have to fight staring into the early morning glare. They traveled in silence broken only by the crunch of slender hooves into fresh snow and occasional low conversations between friends.
The stronghold of the Others was visible a long way off, its walls and towers rising high above the smooth white plain, the crowning work of a race who had chosen to be beavers rather than warriors. As they drew closer to the imposing pile, the army settled out into a wide line formation, four ranks deep. The warriors fairly crackled with energy, eager for victory, ready to burst the walls of this new kind of village as they had burst so many before. Only Ghost and the other sensitives were dour, worrying privately about the toll this battle would take.
The base of the walls came into view at last. What is that? Ghost squinted, trying to make out the odd darkness before the wall. When their march brought her close enough to see, her mouth dropped open in surprise. Others—no, unicorns , a thousand or more, were gathered all together in a series of concentric circles: the outermost circle would have been difficult for an expert to sling a stone across, and the innermost was small enough that a single warrior could not have stood in the center. No matter where in the circles they were, the Others all faced the oncoming army. They presented a motley appearance; their coats had a hundred different shades, so unlike the pleasing subtlety of the People’s coloration. Many were clothed, wearing anything from scarves and boots as protection for their softness against the cold, to colorful blouses and ornamentation, to hooded robes which hid their entire body from view. But on every face there was an identical look of concentration and grim determination.
A note of uncertainty tinged Ember’s low voice. “What are they about?”
Ghost shook her head, unable to adequately voice her sudden worry. “I don’t know.”
Ember shot her a look, hearing her worry anyway. Ghost saw it, swallowed, and gritted her teeth around her orders to the commanders flanking her. The orders rippled out through the army, shout to shout. Stagger formation, advance, stand firm, take aim.
Fire all .
The horned ones were dangerous, and this many of them gathered together could not be anything but more dangerous. The army fired upon them all together, each warrior igniting both tubes so that twenty thousand weapons spat flame and swift death at the Others.
The instant before the command to fire had gone out, the horned ones had bent their necks in unison, and in unison, a brilliant gleam shone from each of their foreheads. The colors were almost as varied as their clothes and their coats, but the faint shimmer which appeared in the air between the army and the grouped Others was all of a piece. Ghost’s back prickled at the sight, unable to guess what it was, but knowing it was not good.
Twenty thousand projectiles arced toward the soft bodies of the Others. Not a single one struck home. They reached the shimmer and changed course, deflecting midair as though they had ricocheted off a rock. The plugs fairly leapt up to plink and poke ineffectively against the massive stones of the stronghold’s wall, falling pitifully down to land amidst the circled Others.
Ghost saw their chance, and screamed the order to detonate the plugs, reaching across the distance for Ano as she did so, finding the god only as distant as he had been in the middle of the hill campaign. The gods do reclaim the earth. Perhaps there will be an after worth having, in the end. Hundreds of sensitives were able to reach Ano, and hundreds of pairs of antlers glowed in the ranks of the army, here and there between warriors busily reloading.
The horned ones stepped forward with their left hoof, exactly together, setting them down with a thump that echoed in Ghost’s teeth.
Ano touched the plugs.
There was no fire.
The horned ones stepped forward with their right hoof. Thump. The plugs, all twenty thousand of them, lifted silently into the air and flung themselves into the ranks of the People. One glanced off of Ghost’s shoulder, no harder than if it had been thrown by a playful fawn. She was puzzled for the barest instant, and that was almost too long.
The horned ones lifted their left hooves. Ghost’s mind shocked with realization. She begged Ano to withdraw the flames. She showed him one plug, two, twenty, fifty, two hundred—
Thump .
The horned ones released their hold on the plugs, that unimaginable grip that had locked Ano’s fire in the plugs’ hearts, and the fire sprang forth.
Ghost was knocked to the ground by a blast close behind her. She huddled low as a hot rain spattered her coat and hissed in the snow around her face. I need to see. She forced herself to rise on unsteady legs and turned in place, dazed, looking upon a scene of devastation. The army of the People was ten thousand warriors and more. Was. Now it was a vast field of flame and blood, charred bodies and staring eyes. A bare few pockets of warriors still stood, each such pocket centered on a sensitive who had been quicker of thought or surer of intuition than the rest. Scarcely more than a thousand warriors could remain.
When she had been barely more than a yearling, but already set on her life’s path, Ghost had remained hidden while the pair of fat merchants she was hunting sat on thick cushions close by their fire and babbled in their grotesque language. She listened, hoping to learn of more merchants traveling the roads through the hills. Instead, the merchants spoke of politics, discussing concepts for which Ghost had no referents, and thus no patience. She readied herself to strike while the merchants’ guards’ backs were turned, but hesitated as one merchant casually mentioned a unicorn council which raised and set the sun each day. Ghost assumed it was metaphor or tale, for the sun belonged to the old gods. It was impossible to imagine a group of mortals—a group of fat, soft Others!—powerful enough to wrest control from a god. Her lip had curled in disdain as she stepped from hiding and threw her spear.
Now, confronted with the evidence of the power the Others could muster, Ghost remembered that moment, and something occurred to her which her younger self had not recalled: the old gods had turned away from the People.
Thump . Ghost’s head snapped around. Streaks of killing light, in every shade of the rainbow and some others besides, darted from the horned ones’ foreheads toward the remnants of the army. Warriors on both sides of Ghost were struck and fell with cries of agony and neat, sizzling holes punched straight through them. Ghost threw herself flat and somehow was not hit. We have to retreat, have to get back to the forest. To stay means only annihilation.
She inhaled to order the retreat, but her breath clung in her throat. She had been too dazed to notice Ember’s body on the ground next to her. Ghost lunged forward, heedless of the lights overhead and the stink of Others’ magic, and pressed an ear to Ember’s ribs. Her heart still beat, but faintly. Ghost tore her harness from her back and threw it down on the crushed snow. She had never tried to put into practice Ember’s words of advice from months and a lifetime ago, but she could wait no longer. She reached for Noa—not welcoming, not as a friend beckons a friend, as she would with Ano, but as a warrior reaches for her opponent. She gripped the god and threw her down onto the tubes, still in their harness, forcing enough respect from Noa to make her perform the feat Ghost needed.
The green light from her antlers washed over the snow as the tubes lengthened and the woven fibers of the harness stretched here and split there and merged there. In seconds, it was done: the tubes had become long slender poles and part of the harness had reformed into a web of fibers strung between them. She pushed Ember, hard, rolling her onto the travois with a moan, and shrugged into the leads.
The drunkenly swirling colors reflected on the snow died as the hellishly silent attack ended, and Ghost shouted the order to retreat. She leapt up with the surviving warriors—so few, so very few —and ran, bounding across the loose snow as fast as she could manage. The poles thumped against her flanks and scraped against rocks and bumps hidden beneath the snow, but Ember did not roll off and her agonized groans told Ghost that she still lived. No more streaks of light came after them to cut them down, which meant at least that the massed unicorns were not without limits.
They ran until they found a slight rise in the plain and threw themselves down behind it to regroup out of the sight of the city . Ghost bent and slipped out of the leads, gently laying the travois down on the snow. Ember groaned and panted as she was moved, her eyes unfocused with pain. The only surviving healer came at Ghost’s call, to examine Ember’s wound. It proved not to be one of the horrifying holes made by the killing light, but it was scarcely better news—a ragged-edged gash high on the side of her belly, which bubbled as she breathed, likely caused by a fragment of plug which had shattered instead of burning cleanly in its explosion.
The healer reached into his bags and expertly mashed together a poultice and bound it to Ember’s side. “That will ward off the killing fever, and it will keep her breath in. She may yet survive.”
He doled out a portion of cold healing tea for Ghost to serve to Ember. Ghost nodded and the healer moved to the next wounded warrior. Ghost positioned the bowl on the snow close to Ember’s head, and helped her hold her head up to lap at the bitter tea.
When the bowl was empty, Ghost tenderly laid Ember’s head down on Ghost’s folded cloak. Ember relaxed and appeared to fall asleep, but the ironic twist of her lip showed she still held on to consciousness. “One would think that that horrid stuff would taste better the more you need it. I can tell you, that is not so.”
A noise halfway between a laugh and a sob choked its way out of Ghost’s throat, and she bent to tenderly touch her antlers to Ember’s. “I am happy that you live.”
Ember’s eye cracked open, and some of its old light had returned. “I pray you may remain happy for some time, then.”
Ghost grinned and shook the tears from her eyes. “We must move again. We are the last of the People’s warriors, and we must reach the forest to survive.”
When Ghost said move , Ember winced at anticipated pain. Ghost’s heart hurt to see it, but Ember said, “It must be. I will live.” Her gaze grew distant and her voice fell to a whisper as quiet as fog creeping through the trees. “What does after look like now, I wonder?”
Ghost had no answer to that.
The War and What Came After
They were six days from the edge of the forest at a pace slowed by the wounded, and Ghost had little hope of reaching it alive—at this moment, a group of flying ones could defeat them by spitting on them. Ghost worked the few surviving scouts mercilessly, but there was no sign of pursuit, which only increased her itching sense of not knowing when the spear would strike. The scouts were able to guide the army’s remnant around several small armed camps and patrols, justifying Ghost’s urgent use of them.
Some of the wounded fell and did not rise again, or stopped breathing in the night. They were loaded onto travois which the warriors most attuned to Noa were able to create from the fallen warriors’ tubes and harnesses. The dead would be burnt in the forest so that their spirits would rise to the gods. Ember’s pain did not ebb. She grew sick, and then sicker, despite the teas and poultices. The healer was skilled with plants and herbs, but was weak with Noa. His supplies ran low, and then ran out, and he was unable to reach out to Noa outside of the forest itself. Ghost set her teeth and continued pulling her travois, hoping that Ember’s fever would not prove lethal before they reached the forest.
On the morning of the day they would enter the forest, Ember began raving, speaking to visions only she could see. It was a very bad sign, and Ghost ignored her exhaustion and pulled harder. They crossed the threshold of the forest, and Ghost led the remnant a little further on, until they would be hidden from eyes outside the forest. She let down the travois on a small flat rock and turned to find the healer already kneeling by Ember, his antlers glowing green.
The healer frowned, bent his head, then strained visibly for a long while, eyes screwed shut and breath coming in pants. At last, with a sigh, he let go the god and his antlers lost their light. He would not meet Ghost’s eyes directly. “Noa will not obey. It is as though the god refuses to heal her.”
Ghost scowled at him, her anger rising, but blew a breath out through her nose and forced herself to relent. He is weak, but it is not his fault. “Gather your herbs, healer. Ember is in need of a fresh poultice.” The healer bowed and scurried away, calling a few warriors to him to help his search.
Ghost bent to touch her antlers to Ember’s with tears hot in her eyes. “You must live, Ember. This is not the after we sought, but it is an after, and so it is your time, not mine.” She fell silent for a moment, then a sob escaped her. “Oh, Ember. What do I do now?”
Ghost sank down to lay listless next to her friend, listening to her rough breathing and occasional snatches of argument or conversation with entities only she could see. The healer returned with a poultice ready, and when he stripped the old, dried poultice from Ember’s side, Ghost saw that the wound had torn further open and its edges were an angry red laced with the white of pus. The healer clucked at it before applying the new poultice, but did not state the obvious to Ghost. She is dying.
Ghost forced tears back and stood. She raised her voice to carry to all the pitifully small group of warriors. “We will camp here. I need runners to travel to all the villages of the forest and those villages of the hills which are not blocked by snow, to inform them of our defeat. All of the People must know that we are weaker and more at risk than ever before, and so every village must be on guard. The warriors gathered here are all that remains of the People’s spear, so we must remain at the edge of the forest to battle the Others if they strike.” She bowed to her few scouts, lying exhausted on the cold ground. “My scouts, I must ask yet more of you. You will keep watch for the Others, for an attack must be in the making. The Others are soft, but they are not stupid, and they will understand that they have dealt us a staggering blow.”
The scouts dipped their antlers in salute, heaved themselves up, and left the forest on stealthy hooves. Warriors, young and lean, the haunted look in their eyes their only battle scars, came forth and were dispatched to all the People’s villages. The rest of the warriors began making camp amidst the trees of home, moving slowly with fatigue. Ghost turned away and knelt next to Ember, waiting and hoping.
A day passed, and Ember grew worse. It was after full dark that one of the scouts came to Ghost where she lay unmoving by her friend’s side. The scout bowed low, touching her antlers to the earth in a blessing for Ember. When she spoke, her voice was urgent, and fear danced in her eyes. “Campfires on the horizon, Ghost. Enough for five times our number—” Her eyes flicked down. “Our original number. The Others will be here by sundown tomorrow.”
Ghost sucked at her lip. “They will not camp near the forest. Even weakened as we are, they will still fear what we can do in the darkness. They will attack the next day.” Realizing that the scout was still waiting, she went on, “You have done well. Eat and rest a little, then continue to watch them.” Dismissed, the scout bowed her way out of the tent.
None of the Firsts or their head warriors had survived the slaughter, and Ghost felt keenly out of her depth, longing for the missing voice of experience. What do I do? What can I do? The ravages of wounds and time had left her with fewer than a thousand warriors, of which nearly a hundred were wounded in some way and unable to fight. She chewed on her lip, deep in thought. They would have to let the Others enter the forest, though Ghost’s spirit rebelled at the thought of allowing even one of those broad, graceless hooves to profane this last bastion of the People’s earth. Once inside, the Others would be at their weakest, while the People would be at their most powerful. The People knew the forest intimately; perhaps they could employ stealth and subterfuge to trick the Others into thinking that more warriors had joined the People’s forces.
The next day dawned clear and bright. Conversation in the remnant’s camp was tight and low-voiced, and tension was in the movement of every one of the People. Scouts came and left from dawn to dusk, reporting on the Others’ movements to Ghost. The enormous army was marching straight toward them. They saw where we entered the forest. One of the flying ones must have been watching from high up. Damned winged beavers. After the first reports, Ghost had ordered her healthy warriors to dig pits and bury sharpened sticks across a broad swath of the forest’s edge centered on their camp, so she was ironically grateful that the Others were confident enough in the People’s weakness to come straight in.
When not attending to the necessities of command, Ghost stayed by Ember’s side, gently offering her bites of nourishing travel cakes soaked in broth. She tried not to think of when Ember had done the same for her, and she tried, and failed, not to wish that their places were reversed now. She pleaded with Ember to eat, to heal, to speak to her, but all her pleas went unanswered. At midday, the wounded who were unable to fight were to strike out for the nearest village and then for their homes. They would spread the tale, so that the remnant’s inevitable defeat would not be forgotten. Ghost heard the bustle of the wounded breaking camp, and it struck her powerfully that this was the last time she would ever see Ember. She grew frantic, begging Ember to come back to her so that they could say goodbye properly.
As Ghost watched, her vision swimming with tears, Ember blinked slowly and her eyes focused, then turned to Ghost. “Ember?” Ghost croaked.
Ember smiled, the barest twitch of her weakened lips. “I have only a moment.”
“What—”
“They’ve explained it all to me. This is how it must be. It is for the best.” She raised her head on a weak and wobbly neck, and Ghost bent to touch antlers. “I love you, my friend. I will see you again.”
Ghost choked back a sob and her questions. “I love you as well, my friend.”
Ember let her head fall. Her smile drooped and faded, and her eyes left Ghost to focus on something Ghost could not see. “Oh,” she said, in a small voice, “I’m ready.” The light left her eyes as the breath left her body.
Ghost bowed to touch her antlers to the earth, and stayed bent, tears coming unbidden. Silent tears became weeping became great heaving sobs, giving voice to her anguish at losing her closest friend, her equal, the doe who had taught her to think of after . But after was meaningless without Ember to show her how to live. She sobbed for all that she had lost, and then, as her grief expanded, at leading her people into slaughter for no purpose, no gain, no reward. She had doomed the People, she herself, Ghost the Kinslayer, Ghost the Traitorous, Ghost the Doom of the People.
She found suddenly that her teeth were set, and her grief became anger. She alone had not doomed the People. The gods had taught her of the weapon. They had set her on this course, knowing where it must end. Knowing that it would cost their People everything. Knowing that it would cost her Ember.
That thought fanned her anger into rage. You have betrayed us all, but I will not allow you to take Ember as part of your spoils. You will not have everything. Not everything. Her antlers glowed as bright as the summer sun as she reached to seize Noa’s throat with her spirit-teeth. Ghost gripped, and held, and threw the god down with an impact that shook her soul. Heal, you traitorous god! Noa writhed in her grip and Ghost knew that what she demanded was beyond possibility. Ghost shook the god by the throat to still her. Her mind raced. Ember herself had taught Ghost that anything was possible. Ghost compartmented herself, pushing her rage to one side, keeping Noa pinned with its white heat. In her other part, she let herself feel her duty and her love for Ember, and beckoned to Ano. He came willingly, and more fully than she had ever felt, as though his power was hers to wield directly. Red and green chased each other over the walls of her tent before merging into a brilliant yellow. She reached out to touch Ember’s body with Ano’s power and found she could feel what was inside Ember. She released a tiny fraction of the fire in the little pieces that Ember’s heart was built of, and then pressed Noa into the freshly-warmed heart. The god’s fear was salty in Ghost’s spirit-mouth, but Noa did what she was bid, infiltrating the heart and filling it with her essence. The dead heart flickered greenly to life, giving a desperate clench before settling into a frantic rhythm.
Ghost smiled grimly and continued her work. The edges of Ember’s terrible wound grew pink and healthy, then knitted back together, closing without even a scar. Her eyes shone again, her chest rose and fell, her muscles thrummed with vital energy. But no matter how Ghost touched the gods to Ember’s corpse, they could not put Ember back into it. Ghost ignored the tears rolling down her muzzle for a long while, trying one thing and another, as though she hoped to trick the gods into returning Ember to her.
Finally, with a broken sob, she released the gods, the yellow glow from her antlers winking out to darkness. But the gods did not go. She felt them rush into the waiting, empty shell that was Ember’s body. Ghost recoiled in horror, fetching up against the wall of her tent to stare at the alive corpse. What have I done?
Ember’s chest rose sharply as Ember’s mouth sucked in a desperate breath. Ember’s eyes blinked, and when they opened they were no longer her brown eyes, but holes filled with a white glow. Ember’s head raised, absent the frail weakness it had so recently shown in life, and swiveled to point those glowing portals at Ghost. “Ghost of the People,” Ember’s mouth said, and her voice was gone, replaced with a voice that was both masculine and feminine, both life and death, both creation and destruction. “We grieve for your loss.”
Ghost did not know whether the gods meant Ember, or the war, or both. Or neither. “What do you want?”
The gods made Ember’s body stand, and Ghost’s heart pained to see it. “We want what we have always wanted: the survival of the People.”
Ghost's fear evaporated as her rage rekindled. She snarled and tossed her head, stabbing the air with her antlers. “Survival! You have destroyed us!”
The gods bowed their head, looking incongruously contrite. “It must be. The Others grow more powerful by the year, while the People grow weaker. In time, the Others would have penetrated the forest and slain the People, regardless of our best efforts.” They hesitated, then plunged on. “And we have reason to believe that it will be sooner, not later.” Those featureless white pools turned aside to glance at the sun-dapples on the tent wall, but they did not elaborate.
“You brought us to destruction on the field! You gave us hope of the People’s earth being the People’s once again, and you snatched it away! You have set into motion forces which will push the People out of the earth entirely. Were you so very eager to have us join you?”
The gods sighed. “You are a proud people. Too proud to retreat when there is any chance to fight. If your warriors remained, you would not heed the truth in our words. The People have faded, and we are not powerful enough to give you victory. Instead, we chose to give you defeat, so that the People would survive in the end.”
Thoughts clicked together in Ghost’s mind. Her voice stabbed out. Bitter. Accusing. “And there is Ember.”
The gods nodded. “Without the defeat, we would not have had a vessel.”
How long have they been manipulating events to this end? “Why do you need a—” She swallowed. “A vessel?”
“We can only touch the earth through the People, and then only when you call for us. What is to be done requires… more control. So. A vessel was required to work through.”
“What more do you plan to inflict on us?”
The gods smiled sadly. “We will save you, if you will let us.”
Ghost’s shoulders sagged. They offer the People an after, though they have stolen mine from me. My anger is an indulgence when my duty is so clear. Her face was rigidly controlled when she looked at them again. “What is to be done?”
“We will show you.” Their antlers glowed, one red, one green. A sudden wind blew, whistling through the evergreen leaves and bare branches of the forest. The whistling modulated, shifted, and formed into words with the same dual quality as the gods’ voice. “People of the forest. People of the hills. Ano and Noa speak to you in your own words. Heed us. The Others come now to destroy you, your villages, and the very forest and hills themselves. You must flee south, deep into the forest. Take what you can carry, and no more, for the way is long and hard. But safety lies at the end of it, a place free from the Others for all time. We ensure it.”
The wind gusted, plucking Ghost’s tent from around her and the gods as lightly as a fawn lipping grass. The gods stood tall, looking around at the warriors kneeling respectfully in ranks around the tent. Ghost turned her head and found the healer lying outside her tent flap—or rather, where the flap had been until a moment ago. “What is this?” Ghost asked him, gesturing to the prostrate warriors.
The healer tore his gaze away from the gods and swallowed hard before answering. “We— we heard your grief, and we saw the yellow light. We knew something mighty was happening, though not what. Not this. ” His eyes went inexorably back to the gods, his mouth hanging open.
Ghost stood, meeting the gods eye-to-eye. “What of the Others? They are mere hours away from this spot, in their thousands upon thousands.”
The gods’ smile was achingly like Ember’s. “We will ensure your safety.”
“Will you?”
Their smile did not falter. “You have earned the right to mistrust us, Ghost of the People, and you have earned the right to bear witness to see that we are worthy of trust in this. Order the camp struck and your warriors returned to their homes to accompany the migration, and then the three of us shall go together.”
Ghost issued the orders, and the camp became a bustle of activity. The gods watched it with a bemused smile. Ghost glanced aside at them with suspicion. “What do you see when you look at us?”
“You are marvelous creatures. We exist apart, and cannot touch the world without one of you to act through. It is delightful to see how easily you do it.”
Ghost shook her head at that. “Shall we go, then?”
They nodded. “Walk with us.” They turned away and set off deeper into the forest at a sedate pace.
Ghost fell in alongside them, refusing to be reminded of the last time she and Ember had had the chance to simply walk and talk. “Where are we bound?”
“The heart of the forest.”
Ghost balked. “That is weeks distant! The Others will be here in hours! Did you not hear me?”
“We heard. We will reach it quickly enough.”
Frustrated, Ghost looked back to make sure the camp would at least be safely gone by the time the Others arrived, and felt a thrill of surprise when the camp was nowhere to be seen. She realized then that she was in a totally different part of the forest. If she paid close enough attention, she could see that the trees were blurring past in the tail of her eye, faster than the fastest run. She turned raised eyebrows on the gods, and they returned a modest little shrug.
In considerably less than an hour, the gods halted. “We are here.”
Indeed, Ghost felt a curious pulse of energy in the air, similar to the closeness of the gods in the gods’ camp she had been trained in, but vastly more vital. “What is our purpose here?”
“We are of the forest. It is the center of our power, and the locus which sustains us.”
“If the Others succeed in razing the forest…”
The gods nodded. “Exactly so. We wish to save the People, and also to save ourselves. In this place we are at the peak of our power. Through a vessel, our touch can encompass the whole forest. We will remain here, in this vessel, forevermore, always protecting the forest and the People within. Follow.” They led Ghost down a narrow path between tangled oaks. The path turned sharply and ended. Ghost gasped.
She found herself in a broad circular clearing filled from side to side with tall green grass and blooming heather with a fine disregard for the winter mere steps away. In the center of the clearing was a circular pond brimming with water so clear one might think the pond was dry, but for the flashing scales of the fish swimming in it. In the center of the pond was a tiny island with an enormous standing stone planted upright in its soil.
The gods walked through the grass and heather down to the edge of the pond. They regarded Ghost with their glowing eyes. “Your journey is complete. You can come no further.” They bowed to her, respectfully, as an equal to an equal. She returned the bow, flattered despite all they had done. The gods stepped into the pond—no, onto the pond, for the water did not wet their hooves as they crossed to the island. They folded their legs, laying down by the standing stone, and became as still as the stone itself.
Ghost waited a considerate amount of time, then cocked an eyebrow at the stationary gods. Mindful of the approaching army, her voice grated out between gritted teeth. “Well? This is no time to sleep! What did you bring me here to witness?”
The gods remained motionless, but a sudden breeze blew, fragrant with heather, and formed into a chuckle and a breath in her ear. “Our apologies, Ghost of the People. We were preparing. Look into the pond, and you will see our work.”
Ghost leaned forward, staring down through the crystal-clear water to the silty bottom. Her eyebrow went up again, and just as she was about to protest, the surface of the water abruptly went opaque, showing scenes that were no reflection. In each village of the People, signs appeared showing the villagers where their destination lay: a red rabbit sprang from under a rock, waiting patiently at the edge of the village for the People to follow it; a tree fell in a village center, all of its branches but two shivering off and rolling away when it struck the ground, forming a great arrow pointing deeper into the forest; a fawn spoke with the gods’ mingled voices, dictating instructions to the village elder. All over the forest, the People began to move, preparing for a long journey.
At the edge of the forest, the trees twisted and darkened, grew or shrank. Branches formed into evil-looking talons and bark into terrifying faces. The changes rippled in from the edges nearly to the heart of the forest, leaving the north of the forest a dark and foreboding place, far removed from the bright and cool greenness Ghost had come to love. Shaded forest pools fed by sweet-tasting streams filled with murk and overflowed their banks, becoming sprawling swamps. New plants sprang from the ground, with dangerous, poisonous colors, wicked thorns, or grasping tendrils, choking fields and filling the ways between the warped trees.
The creatures of the forest changed, adapting in minutes to their menacing new home, becoming bigger and more vicious, or lithe and cunning, growing fangs and claws, oozing venom, or a petrifying gaze. Deadfall throughout the forest cracked and split, shivering apart into piles which stood up in the shape of great wolves, howling at the sky through the crabbed branches above. From the newborn swamps, enormous multi-headed creatures rose roaring out of the muck, and Ghost shuddered at glimpses of dark shapes with too many eyes swimming through the opaque water.
Above the forest, the air thickened and whirled, forming new weather patterns which had no part of the outside world’s weather in them. Birds grew larger, tougher, more agile, able to fly and navigate through the most chaotic weather, and many of them grew fangs. Ghost knew somehow that they also grew a taste for meat, especially the stringy meat of the flying Others.
The pond became clear again, allowing Ghost to catch her breath. After a moment, she stepped back, eyeing the gods with a newfound respect. “I believe you will ensure our safety.”
Their body remained perfectly still, and Ghost saw that it had become overgrown with moss, so that it was hard to tell where the gods’ body ended and the earth began. The breeze spoke in her ear. “Thank you for your trust, Ghost of the People. We will honor your friend’s sacrifice by keeping this forest ever free. None of this would be possible without the vessel.”
Ghost nodded, surprised to find that she felt more pride than sadness at the mention of Ember, and surprised again at the truth in the words which spilled from her. “She would be proud to ensure that the People have a future.”
With a last look at what had been her friend, Ghost turned to leave the clearing, trusting the gods to deliver her to her people. The path between the trees turned sharply, and she stepped from spring warmth to winter chill, finding herself on the edge of a village in the forest. It was the bright and welcoming forest she was used to—it seemed the gods would not subject their People to the new form of the forest as they passed through it on their way to their destiny. An older doe gaped at her. “Where did you come from, stranger?”
Ghost’s lips twitched in a smile, knowing how the truth would sound. “The heart of the forest. How can I help the migration?”
The doe looked at her as though debating whether Ghost was mad, then shrugged. “There’s plenty to do, just look around and find something.” Then, speaking to herself, “I hope that fawn of mine shows up. I fear for her.”
Ghost had caught a red tint to the doe’s coat when she shrugged, and now she understood why the gods had set her down in this place. “Is your fawn known as Ember?”
The doe’s head snapped back to Ghost. Her eyes were worried. “Yes. I am Autumn, Ember’s mother. Do you know her? Is she here?” Autumn glanced around hopefully.
Ghost lowered her head in a ritual gesture of respect for the dead, and heard Autumn’s sharp intake of breath. “I am sorry, Autumn. Ember is… gone. I am Ghost, Ember’s friend.”
Autumn’s shoulders slumped, but she nodded. “I had a feeling. How did she— how did she die? Was it the Others?”
“Yes… and no. Ember died to save the People. It is a tale you will be proud to hear.” A cold gust blew over Ghost, ruffling her coat. She looked up, half-expecting the wind to talk to her, then smiled regretfully. The after I wanted is gone. But there is another here to be lived. It would be a hard tale to tell, but it would grow easier with repetition. All the People deserved to know the story of Ember, the doe who had paid the price for their after.
Author's Note
This story was written as an entry for the World-Building Alliance's May contest. The prompt was:
Now, recall the tale of Hearths Warming Eve, if you will. Each of the pony races was brought to an all-time low by the seemingly endless onslaught of blizzards. The Windigoes forced the pony ancestors to flee their homelands for greener pastures, eventually settling in Equestria.
Now, pick a race. This race has, at some point, suffered a similar disaster. They, too, were pushed to the brink. They, too, were faced with the end of their kind. Tell us this tale.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
