The Death of a
Soldier
A Snow Like
Ashes Story
Present
Day
Rania
Plains
Thwack.
Twenty-eight.
They’ve
been gone for two weeks.
Thwack.
Twenty-nine.
Two
weeks. It’s only a few days’ travel from here to Spring. They should’ve been
back by now.
Thwack.
Thirty.
But
they went on a scouting mission. And those can take time—finding a hidden yet
easily accessible campsite, sneaking into nearby cities, searching for
information about our conduit. They’ll be back soon.
Thwack.
Thirty-two?
Three? Snow above.
I tap the flat of my chakram’s blade
against my forehead and groan into my wrist. It doesn’t really matter how many
times I hit the target I set in the grassy field—Sir would say that the true
test of aim is to hit the same spot over and over. And the dozens of splintered
slices in the wooden pole are clustered together, yes, but they aren’t exactly
perfect.
“Repetition,
persistence, and accuracy—a soldier’s best weapons.”
Sir’s voice rings in my head. He is
the most persistent soldier I know—he’ll be fine. He’ll make sure the mission
is a success, they’ll all come back alive, and everything will be fine.
But my skin still crawls with
unease, the same way it does when anyone from our camp is gone on a mission—the
unavoidable itch that something’s wrong, they’re in danger right now, and if I don’t help them, my chest will burst.
That’s something I should keep track
of. Not how many times I can get my chakram to hit a wooden pole—how many times
I’ve felt helpless.
I remember the first time as
thoroughly as I know the wear on my chakram’s handle. The memory fits me the
same way too—a deadly thing, which is, even so, a part of me.
Kingdom
of Autumn
Six
Years Ago
I don’t want her to leave.
Walking with Crystalla usually makes
me happy—the freedom from camp and all of those disapproving glares from Sir.
The forest is quiet and cool today, everything holding still, as if the entire
kingdom doesn’t dare interrupt our conversation.
But there hasn’t been any conversation.
Our walk has been nothing but tense and silent since we left camp. As I trudge
alongside Crystalla through the crunchy undergrowth of Autumn’s woods, all I
can think is something I should never utter aloud, not if I want to be a
soldier too.
I
don’t want her to leave.
Crystalla keeps her eyes ahead, her
lips parted like she’s trying to piece together what she wants to say. This
time is different from all the others—before regular missions, everyone jokes
and laughs and brushes off worry as if it’s nothing more than a stray snowflake
on their sleeve.
But today.
Today I want so badly for her to
smile or tug on my hair and tease me about the rip in my dress from climbing
trees that morning. Normal things.
Because her mission tonight is
anything but normal.
I hurry ahead, channeling my worry
into running, darting over the fallen orange and gold leaves that litter the
ground. Autumn is my favorite place we’ve stayed. The entire kingdom is a
forest of sleepy, half-alive trees, oaks and maples and rustling aspens.
“Meira, look at these!” Crystalla
says suddenly, and the happy distraction in her voice makes me stop. That’s the
happiness I wanted. The tightness in my chest loosens as she smiles up at me
from her crouch on the ground.
She doesn’t smile like that very
often.
I jog back to where she bends over a
pile of aspen leaves. When I squat next to her, she picks up a ruby leaf as big
as my palm, hooks a strand of hair behind my ear, and slides the leaf in with
it, pursing her mouth in mock seriousness as she surveys her work.
Her lips break into another smile
and she cups my chin. “Like an Autumnian princess.”
I giggle, touching the leaf.
“No—like an Autumnian soldier!”
Crystalla’s smile falters. “Have you
been asking William to train you?”
At her mention of Sir I frown and
drop my eyes to the leaves beneath us. Dozens of them, each more vibrant than
the last. I scoop up a handful and count them into my palm, my words muffled as
I press my chin into my knees.
“He says he doesn’t need me to
fight,” I mumble. Three, four, five. “He
says I have other duties.” Eight, nine,
ten.
Ten leaves. One for each person in
our refugee camp. I let the largest one, a brown leaf puckered at the edges,
flutter out of my hands—Sir. Our leader. A narrow maroon one follows his to the
ground—Alysson, his wife. A small copper leaf next—Mather, our future king. The
rest cascade from my fingers, dripping one by one back to the forest floor,
until finally, only three remain in my palm. Two identical circles of pale
yellow—Crystalla and her husband, Gregg. And the last, orange and freshly
fallen, still wet with life—me.
I finger the orange leaf and stack
it under the two pale yellow circles.
I could help them on this mission—I
could help them get our magic back from Spring. They need help, especially for missions like this, where they have to go
so close to the man who overtook our kingdom and stole our conduit. King Angra
won’t give our kingdom and people back without a fight, and he won’t give our
magic back either. There are only ten of us he hasn’t captured or killed yet,
and as I stare at the leaves
I
dropped on the forest floor, the pile looks small and brittle. I could help everyone—if not for Sir. If not for the
way he pushes me aside like I’m just one of these leaves, fragile, disposable,
and unneeded.
“We
have soldiers,” he
says. “You’re not needed to fight this
war.”
I glare at the brown leaf on the
ground. But I feel Crystalla watching me, and when I flick my attention up, her
blue eyes flash in the afternoon sunlight.
“And what do I keep saying?” she
presses.
My fingers close over the three
remaining leaves and I clear my throat. “No matter what Sir says, keep trying.
He needs me.”
“No matter what Sir says,” Crystalla
echoes.
I pull the leaf out of my hair and add
it to my stack. It’s larger than the other three, swallowing them up with its
veins of dark red on scarlet skin. The longer I stare at the leaves, the more
the colors blur.
Crystalla puts her hand over mine,
covering the leaves. “I’ll come back. I always do.”
I sniff. “All right. I believe you,”
I say, even though I don’t.
I
want to help you. I know I can help you.
A gust of wind blows Crystalla’s
white hair into a frenzy, whipping up the leaves around us. She laughs and
grabs a handful of leaves and tosses them at me, and I toss some back at her,
and we’re lost in a storm of colors.
The storm passes, along with that
day, and soon it’s been one month since she and Gregg left. I stand, hands on
hips, staring at the weapon on the floor of the old barn. When I woke before
everyone else, I meant to grab a sword or a dagger from the weapons tent,
something I could practice thrusting on my own. But then I saw this. Sir said
it’s an Autumnian weapon called a chakram, a circular blade as big as my head with
a wooden handle through the middle. It’s thrown like a disc, whirling through
the air as it slices anything in its path. I shift from foot to foot, tingles
of nervousness making my whole body hum.
I’m going to throw it. I’m going to
fight.
I sigh. I should wait for Crystalla
to get back and have her convince Sir to let me help—but it’s been a whole
month with no word from her or Gregg.
Leaves crunch on the wooden barn
floor, disintegrating under my boots, and each crunch makes my frown tighten. I
have to do something.
Two fingers press against the bare
skin of my neck. “You’re dead.”
I bite back a scream and grab the
chakram off the floor. My heartbeat flies against my ribs when I whirl to the
attacker, but it’s just Mather, smiling at me.
His smile makes my heart leap even
faster, his blue eyes level with mine, and I scowl so he can’t see how startled
I am.
“I only let you sneak up on me
because you’re our future king,” I declare.
“Uh-huh.” He drops his eyes to the
chakram, and his brows shoot up. “What are you doing?”
I square my shoulders, keeping my
chin high. “I’m going to teach myself how to fight.”
Mather’s eyebrows stay raised.
“William won’t be happy.”
I clench my jaw. The heaviness of
the weapon and the way my fingers hurt around the handle reminds me of how
right Mather is. I’m ten years old. I shouldn’t be fighting. But that’s what
Sir would say, even though he lets Mather fight and he’s ten.
“I’m tired of waiting for Sir to
give me permission,” I say. “I’m tired of listening to stories about King Angra
and how he imprisoned our people, and I’m tired of moving all the time so he
doesn’t find and enslave us, too. I’m tired,
Mather, and I’m going to help so none of us are tired anymore.”
I pant, the words spilling out of me
in a rush of need, and I pause when I see the look Mather gives me. Calm and
thoughtful, he bobs his head in agreement.
He bites his lip and draws a short
dagger out of the holster on his belt. “William said chakrams can be used close
range too. Fight me. I’ll teach you.”
I inhale, sharp and excited. “Now?”
“Now.”
Beyond the barn’s dilapidated walls,
I hear the sounds of the camp waking up, of a fire crackling to life and voices
buzzing. Sir will be looking for Mather soon to begin his morning training.
He’ll check the barn.
I spread my legs in a close-range
stance. Weapon up, one hand out for balance, body cocked so it’s not an easy
target—the lessons Sir taught Mather fly through my mind. I only caught bits of
their training, but I know enough to start.
Mather readies himself, his face
severe. I blink and he moves, throwing his body toward me in a single swoop. I
gasp, swinging the chakram blindly, the circular blade ringing when Mather
smacks it with his dagger. His laughter echoes as I fumble around the barn, his
white hair and glinting blue eyes flashing before he dives again, parrying and
thrusting and cutting around me. Every few seconds I feel his dagger strike
lightly against my body.
“Mather!” I spin. “Stop! Wait—I
can’t—”
“You said you could do this,” he
taunts.
“I can do this!”
“Just because—oh, look!” Mather
drops to his knees and digs at something between the floorboards. His pause
gives me time to orient myself, and I pivot back into the starting position,
panting, gripping the chakram’s handle in both my fists. But Mather seems to
have forgotten our fight—he stands back up, clutching a small blue stone
covered in bits of mud. It’s pure blue beyond the dirt, the same intense color
as his eyes.
“What is it?” I snap. “We’re
fighting, remember? It can’t—”
He ignores me. “Remember what
William said about conduits?”
I keep my grip tight on the chakram
in case it’s a trick. “Of course,” I say. I remember everything Sir says.
Mather rolls the stone around his
palm, brushing the dirt off it. “He said that everyone used to have objects
that they put magic in, before the rulers took them away and made the Royal
Conduits. What if they missed some? What if this stone has magic?”
I snort at him. “If they had missed
any small conduits, wouldn’t people have found them already? Besides, only the
eight Royal Conduits exist now.”
Mather’s shoulders tense and I bite
back my moan. There aren’t eight Royal Conduits anymore—there are only seven
that still work. Because King Angra of Spring broke Winter’s.
“If everyone had magic, we wouldn’t
have to fight,” Mather mutters to the stone. “We wouldn’t need to get the two
halves of our conduit back from Spring. We wouldn’t have to worry about our
magic returning to it, because we’d all just have magic, and we’d be strong.”
I exhale. “I think we are strong.
Even without magic.”
Mather looks up at me, his frown
slack. “What?”
Something about the way he stares at
me, like he’s desperate to hear my answer, makes me toe the floorboards. “I
don’t think we need magic to be strong. We’ve lived for ten years without
magic. I mean, we’ve suffered a lot, but we’re still alive.” I pause, heart
clenching. “Some of us, at least.”
“But . . .” Mather’s voice dips,
like he’s suddenly not as certain as he wants to be. “We need magic. All the
kingdoms in the world have it. We won’t free our people unless we get our
conduit halves from Angra and we are right
again.” He stops, and I risk a glance at him to see him glaring at the blue
stone.
“But . . . ,” he repeats. “It would
be nice. Not to need magic.”
It would be nice not to worry every
day about Angra finding us, about how many of our people are still alive in his
work camps. It would be nice if Sir would let me help with this war, because I know we can be strong without magic, but
. . .
I know we need it too. We won’t stop
Angra without it.
I raise the chakram and let loose a
battle cry to end all battle cries. Mather jerks his head up, his face falling
into an emotionless mask as he looks at the barn door behind me. But I’m
running toward him, too focused, I’ve got him now, I’ve got him—
The chakram is gone.
My fingers grope the empty air above
my head.
“Meira!”
I freeze. My chest leaps with half a
breath of excitement—Sir saw me fight!—until
I register the bite in his voice.
Mather slips the stone into his
pocket and offers a shrug of encouragement as I turn to the looming man holding
my stolen chakram in one giant fist. The morning sun shoots through the door,
creating shadows against Sir’s body. Every time I see him, it’s like the first
time I saw the Klaryn Mountains—vast and deadly, towering over me no matter
where I stood. A powerful, angry reminder that I am small, and weak, and alone.
The muscles in Sir’s jaw flex
beneath his short stubble of white beard. “Mather—to the sword ring,” he snaps
without looking away from me.
“Yes, Sir,” Mather says, and creeps
out around us. When he’s almost behind Sir, he mimes kicking him in the legs. I
smile as Mather winks and jogs off.
Sir and I are alone. My hands shake
in the silence, but I level my shoulders and stare up at him. I’m a soldier,
and soldiers don’t back down.
Unfortunately, Sir is a soldier too.
“Do you have any idea what you could have done?”
His question rises to a yell that practically shakes the barn. “You ran at our
future king with a chakram. I know you think it’s fun to play with weapons, but
this is real. This isn’t for children.”
I growl, hands balling into fists.
“Mather’s a child! And you teach us both the history of our kingdom and the
war—why can’t you teach me to fight too? I can help!”
Sir inhales, calming himself, and
pushes his next words through a clenched jaw. “Mather is the heir of Winter. I
teach you both our history because we all need to remember our kingdom—but you,
Meira, are not needed to fight.”
Tears press against my eyes, but I
will not cry in front of Sir. I am needed.
This is my war too. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never been to Winter; it
doesn’t matter that everyone else in camp belongs here far more than me—I’m
just the baby Sir rescued in the chaos of escaping Angra’s takeover. I don’t
belong to anyone, but I have to
belong to Winter. It’s my home and I have to help get our conduit back.
Sir’s face falls and I think maybe
he feels bad for yelling at me. Maybe he sees how sad I am, how much I want to
help, and will relent a little.
“Stay out of the weapons tent,” he
says, and turns toward the door.
“I don’t have to listen to you!” I
scream before I can think not to. “You aren’t my father!”
Sir stops, looking back at me
through columns of dusty light, and I pause too. I’ve yelled at him before,
many times, but I haven’t said that word since . . .
I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to
say the word father, and now that I
have, my throat pinches. I sprint down the length of the barn and shove past
him, stomping on the dry yellow grass as I burst outside and veer left, weaving
through the array of tents we bought in Autumn’s capital, Oktuber. They’re made
of brightly colored wool, heavy things that look like they might collapse at
any moment. Midnight-blue and sunshine- orange structures that sag and lean but
are beautiful anyway, even with imperfections.
I am useful. I am needed. No matter what Sir says.
Just inside the edge of the forest
that encircles the camp, sits a pile of leaves. I collapse into it, reveling in
the burst of fresh earth that envelops me. But the ruby leaves make me think of
Crystalla, of the leaf she stuck in my hair, and I suck in a breath, pushing
down the surge of worry that pricks at my chest. She and Gregg will be back
soon, and we’ll all be together again. Missions can last for months, but when
she returns I’ll tell her Sir still isn’t letting me—
A branch snaps. I jerk my head up,
fingers digging into my knees. Not more than five paces ahead of me, a man stumbles
into an aspen tree, gripping the trunk like it alone will keep him from
collapsing. I jump to my feet. A Spring spy? One of Angra’s men?
The man falls forward again, grimy
clumps of white hair swaying around his face. He pushes up, face contorted in a
soundless scream, limping and hobbling and grabbing at branches as he drags
himself through the undergrowth of the forest.
I tear toward him. “Gregg!”
He whips his head up and his face
unravels at the sight of me. He jerks back, stumbles, falls to the ground,
unable to pull himself up. His shirt is nothing but a few tattered strands of
once-ivory cotton, blood caked in dried brown clumps over long, jagged cuts
through his chest. He writhes on the ground, a groan finally escaping his mouth
as he curls onto his side, showing me his back. What used to be his back. It’s
so torn open, so mutilated, I can see one, two, three of his ribs, hard white
bones coated in blood and dirt and a few of Autumn’s leaves.
I drop to my knees and scream.
Gregg stays curled away from me, his
body convulsing on the forest floor. Crystalla. She should be with him. She
should be here too—
I scramble toward him, half aware of
footsteps running toward us from camp. But I get to him before anyone reaches
us and pull him over, his head lolling to face the specks of blue sky through
the forest canopy.
“Gregg,” I moan, my fingers slick
with blood where I grip his arm. “Gregg, where is—”
Hands jerk me back into a tight hug.
Alysson holds me in one arm, Mather in her other, her face blank and pale and
as she stares at Gregg. Everyone stands around him now, eyes vacant and faces
gaunt and—where is Crystalla?
She’s
not here.
Sir kneels and whips to the men
nearest him. “Help me move him.”
“He killed her,” Gregg says. Those
three words shake everyone into stillness as Gregg stares up at the sky like
he’s not really seeing it. “Herod. He killed her, William. I watched him. Three
days, he had her in that cage, and he’d take her out and . . . he chained me up
while he beat her, while he—” Gregg chokes. “I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t
stop any of it. . . .”
Herod, Angra’s second in command.
The name sends shivers up my body, shivers of memories, of blood and pain and
people dying.
Sir nods and Gregg is blocked from
view as the other men help Sir lift him into the air. I’m frozen in Alysson’s
grip, unable to look away, unable to hear anything beyond the wind rustling the
leaves together and the whine that escapes Gregg. One of his arms slips free,
dangling limp toward the ground as they pass us. Around his wrist hangs a
scarlet ribbon interspersed with streaks of black and purple, almost like—
No. Not a ribbon. Blood and bruises
and dried gore, skin torn open.
He
chained me up. . . . He killed her, William. . . .
“NO!” I scramble to get out of
Alysson’s arms.
Everyone dies. I’ve seen them die,
and I’ve cried for them, but this time . . .
Crystalla wasn’t supposed to die.
There used to be twenty-five of us, then there were ten, now there are nine. My
parents died in the final battle when Winter collapsed under Spring. Mather’s
parents died when Angra killed them that same night. Everyone dies. But Crystalla was supposed to live because I need
her to live, I need proof that we can live. . . .
I scream again and Sir looks back,
his eyes locking onto me as I push at Alysson and scream again. Someone slips
in to take Sir’s place holding Gregg up, and Sir hurries back the few paces to
us. He’s stronger than his wife, so much stronger, and lifts me as I thrash
against him.
Over his shoulder, I watch Alysson
trail behind us with her arms around Mather, his face expressionless as he
stares unblinking at the leaves beneath his feet. He’s holding something in his
fist that he spins around and around. The stone he found.
He looks up at me, his eyes wet with
tears.
My screams turn into sobs and I
collapse against Sir’s neck, unable to breathe.
That night they lay Gregg by the
campfire under the clear Autumn sky. I drag my bedroll to the edge of my tent
and lie there with the blanket pulled over my head, my knees tucked to my chin,
and my arms wrapped around my legs so I’m as small as I can make myself.
“They caught us in less than a
week,” Gregg says. Everyone crowds around him—except Mather and me, children
who should be asleep. But I can tell by the way Mather shifts in his blankets
next to me that he’s awake too.
“It was too risky,” Sir mutters.
Something rips—bandages being torn. “I never should have sent you to Abril.
We’ll find the other half of the conduit before going near Spring again.”
Gregg makes a muffled grunt. “Stop,”
he snaps. “We both know I won’t—”
His voice fades. Sir stays quiet
too, and I want to ask Gregg what they both know. What won’t he do?
The truth flashes through me: he won’t
last the night.
Gregg snorts, but it’s hollow,
empty. “Angra put us in a work camp.” He wheezes and a shudder runs through me.
“At first . . . we thought we could free them. Stage an uprising. But—” He
pauses, moans, and when he starts again his voice is pinched. “Ten years. Ten
years, our people have been Spring’s slaves. He treats them like cattle. Keeps
them in cages—” A sob flies out of him, making Gregg sound like a child. “Like
animals, and they die like animals.”
Someone shifts and stands, starts
pacing around the campfire. Probably Sir.
Silence prevails for one heartbeat,
two, and Gregg cries out, half a strangled howl and half a pained groan. “I saw
everything Herod did to her. Every time he smirked at me. Every time she
screamed. That’s why Angra released me. I’m a warning that when he catches us—”
Gregg stops, panting. “I tried to stagger my path back here, so no one could
follow me, but I don’t—I couldn’t—when they find us, Herod will do the same to
all of you. Angra will make Herod kill each of you, so slowly . . .”
Gregg breaks into sobs. Coils of
pain rise through me as I listen to one of the strongest, bravest men I know
weep.
Mather shifts beside me and his hand
cups my shoulder. I can’t move beneath the blanket and Gregg’s words, beneath
the knowledge that I know more people dead than alive.
A pause, then Mather nudges my
blanket away and presses his face to my ear, his breath steady on my neck.
“I’ll never let that happen to you,” he whispers.
Everything in my body cools, a
frigid gust from Mather’s words. His hand tightens on my shoulder and he stays
next to me, his body pressed against my back. Gregg’s weeping turns to groans
of pain and Mather’s breathing warms my neck and all I can think is:
I
don’t want Mather to have to protect me.
I don’t want to sit back as everyone
else helps free Winter, everyone else belongs
to Winter, while I just watch people die in the attempt. I belong to our
kingdom too, to the conduit and Crystalla and snow and every bit of Winter. And
if being a soldier means my fate will be the same as Gregg’s, or Crystalla’s,
or any of the countless others who have died . . .
I have to do this. I have to be a
soldier.
For myself, for Crystalla, for
Winter.
Present
Day
Rania
Plains
There were only eight of us after
that night, after Gregg succumbed to his injuries under the clear Autumn sky.
And Sir had no choice—he needed me. There were so few Winterians left, our
entire kingdom either dead or enslaved. The eight of us were the only hope our
people had.
Are
the
only hope our people have. Because Sir will return from this mission like all
his other missions. He’ll go back to analyzing me while I throw my chakram,
silent until I shout at him for being so maddeningly quiet. Then he’ll say I
have no patience and I’ll growl that maybe I’d control my patience better if he
would let me use my fighting skills to help get our conduit back instead of
just to get supplies, and he’ll leave without giving in to the argument.
I laugh at myself. I’ve spent way
too long at camp if I know exactly how my next conversation with Sir will go.
Two fingers touch my neck. “Dead.”
I whirl around, my chakram at the
attacker’s throat a beat before I realize he’s not actually an attacker. Mather
puts his hands up in surrender, his lips cocking into a slow smile, the one I’m
pretty sure he knows is dangerous, because he only uses it when he wants to
fluster someone. Usually me.
I pull the chakram away from the
pulsing vein in his neck. “One of these days, that’s going to get you killed.”
“Not if you keep holding your
chakram like that.”
“Did you just insult my chakram
abilities? And here I thought you wanted to survive to become king.”
His grin widens, but on the last
word, king, he flinches, the
slightest twinge that shakes some seriousness across his joviality. “Anyway,
aren’t you supposed to be practicing your close-range technique?”
I holster my chakram. “I seem to
remember it was you that Sir gave the
order to. ‘Get her to win at least one
sword fight—’”
I groan. Because by the glint in
Mather’s eye, he’s already decided we’re going to spar, which in my case means
spending way too much time lying on the ground while Mather notes how sweeping
a foot under someone’s legs is an effective fighting maneuver.
I shrug out of my chakram’s holster
and hand it all to him as he jogs toward camp to trade my weapon for a pair of
practice blades. When he returns, he tosses one to me, and I snatch it out of
the air.
Mather drops into a combat stance.
“Ready?”
My knuckles whiten as my hand
encircles the hilt. Ranged fighting, I can do. Melee fighting, not so much.
But if I win just one fight against
Mather, just one sparring match, maybe then Sir will let me help our kingdom.
Maybe then I can help stop people
from dying like Crystalla.
I curve my body around the sword.
“Ready.”
