The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall (15 page)

“Yeah,” Danello said, “aim for the eyes.”

A knife whooshed over me and sank into the Undying’s eye. His sword dropped. His body followed. Danello stood at the top of the stairs, his throwing hand still pointing at the Undying.

I scrambled forward and grabbed the younger Undying’s hand, and
pushed.
He yelped, but I doubted my sliced leg hurt him all that much. I slapped both hands flat against his chest plate.

“Put it in your armor,” I said, crawling to my knees. “I dare you.”

“Don’t kill me!”

“You can’t help us if you’re dead.” He’d hurt them. He could heal them, one way or another. I held out one hand to the three men. “If you’re hurt, grab my hand.”

Two men stepped forward. The first slipped a shaking hand into mine. I
drew
, pulling out a deep shoulder wound.
Pushed
, and the Undying yelped louder this time. He merely whimpered as I
pushed
the other man’s injuries into him.

“Anyone else hurt?” I asked.

“On the first floor,” the oldest man said. “Not sure how many.”

“Bring them here.”

Danello stood beside me, his rapier tip hovering over the Undying’s eye.

“Nice throw back there,” I said.

“I was motivated.”

The Undying swallowed, his gaze darting from me to Danello and back. I could see the planning going on behind his blue eyes. Could he get me before I flashed his armor? Could he get Danello before he stabbed him in the eye? Could he survive either if he pushed it into his armor fast enough?

People came up the stairs: two limped, three others were carried. Pale, bleeding, moaning. Random victims of the Undying shaking under my hands. How many more innocents were bleeding and dying in their homes? And for what? Why kill random people? They weren’t soldiers—they weren’t trying to fight—they were trying to hide and stay alive.

“Nya, what are you doing?” Aylin said from behind me.

“Helping people.” I reached out for the injured.

“You can’t, not like this.”

“Sure I can.” I
drew
and the pain swirled through me, sharp and biting. I gathered it in the space between my heart and my guts and
pushed
it into the Undying. He sucked in a breath and whimpered again.

“Let me heal them,” Soek said.

“No. He hurt them so he has to heal them.”

“This is wrong and you know it.” Aylin padded down the stairs and dropped beside me. “You’re torturing him.”

“He did this, he can fix it.” I reached for the next person.

“Nya, stop!” She yanked on my arm.

I shrugged her off. She stared at me, pleading. I stared back, but she wasn’t going to talk me out of it.

“Healers don’t kill. It’s time one of them learned that lesson.” I’d teach the others as soon as I got my hands on them.

“So this is it now? We’re just as bad as they are?”

“For the Undying? Yes.”

Aylin backed away.

I healed the next person in line. And the next, and the next. The Undying sobbed softly, glaring at me through the tears.

“Is that all of them?” I asked the old man.

“Yes. Except for the dead.”

The Undying had killed them for no reason at all. No, worse. He was probably
told
to, and that was worse than having no reason. “Go see who else is hurt out there. Bring them here.”

I unbuckled the Undying’s bracer and pulled it off him. No kragstun lining. So he didn’t even have that as an excuse. Then the other arm. Shoulders. His helmet. He moaned but didn’t fight me. I needed help on the chest piece, but the men he’d planned to kill were delighted to hold him up. I unbuckled the greaves last, pulling them off his legs.

I grabbed his chin and shook it. “Hey.” He grunted and opened his eyes. I put the greave in his hand, pressing his fingers against the pynvium. “Heal yourself.”

He looked surprised but clutched the pynvium. His color returned, his eyes cleared.

I stood. Danello kept the rapier on him. The Undying stayed on the floor, watching me. So did Aylin and Soek. Soek didn’t look upset like Aylin. He seemed fine with what I was doing.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” the Undying asked.

“Because I’m not like you.” I turned to the small crowd now gathered in the hall. “Does anyone have any rope?”

Several folks vanished and returned with various lengths. I tied his hands behind him and his feet to the banister. We’d have to figure out what to do with him later, but for now, this was good enough. I knelt in front of him.

“Why are you running around killing people?”

“Like I’d tell you.”

I shrugged. “Okay. I’ll let these folks have you then.”

His eyes bulged. “Wait!”

I waited. He didn’t continue. “Listen,” I said, “people are going to die when the Duke’s army gets here. Innocent people. You don’t care about that, but
I
do. If you act like a real Healer and help these people now, you’ll get a chance to redeem yourself. Otherwise, I walk away and I don’t care what happens to you.”

He paused, his jaw working slowly side to side. “Fear,” he muttered.

“What do you mean?”

“We were supposed to spread fear. Go building to building, kill people, kill guards, cut through and show everyone that you can’t stop us. Soften you up so you’d be too scared to organize.”

This had to stop. The Duke couldn’t treat us like stock animals. Couldn’t kill us whenever he felt like it. “Do we
seem
soft?”

He glanced away. “You did ’til I found
you
.”

“How many Undying are here?”

“Eight.”

Down to six now. Six Undying could kill a lot of people, especially if they were all spread out in small groups like we’d seen so far. They could kill and kill until their armor filled up. Organized or not, the resistance wouldn’t be able to stop them.

But
I
could.

The door opened below, and folks started up the stairs. Ten, fifteen, twenty—growing harder to count as they filled the hallways.

I picked up the greave again, held it out in front of the Undying. “I can either untie your hands so you can heal them, or I can do it and shift into you. Your call.”

He paled. “I’ll do it.”

Two men had picked up the Undyings’ swords, and a few women had arrived with rapiers. They pointed them all at the Undying.

“I don’t have to warn you about trying to run or trying to hurt these people further, do I?” I said.

“No.”

He healed them one by one. I checked afterward, just to make sure he’d done it right. When he was finished, I tied him back up again.

“Now what?” Danello said.

“Kill him,” cried someone in the crowd. A few more agreed. Even Danello seemed okay with that.

I shook my head. “No. We need Healers and we need information. We’ll keep him here and find out what we can. Maybe heal more injured who haven’t had time to reach us yet.”

“He’s the enemy!”

“We’re not murderers.” I looked at each person in turn. The ones who glared back I stared at until they looked away. “When more soldiers come, and they will, you’ll need him. Would you risk your families to get revenge?”

Shamed faces stared at the floor.

“You heard him. The Duke is trying to soften us up. Break our spirit. There are more of us on this island than them, yet we’re the ones hiding. We’re the ones fighting each other, looting our homes, and kidnapping our friends.”

“How are we supposed to fight
them
?” someone asked. “They don’t die.”

I pointed to the dead Undying on the floor. “He did.”

“You’re the Shifter. It’s different.”

Danello stepped forward. “I killed him, not her. Undying die quick if you hit them in the eyes. They don’t have time to heal themselves.”

Impressed murmurs ran through the crowd.

“A small blade is all you need. Better if you can throw it. We have those in every kitchen and tackle box in the city.”

“Long, thin steel’ll work too,” said a woman, waving her rapier.

Danello smiled. “It will.”

“We can fight back, even against
them
,” I said. “Show them that we aren’t soft, and if they want what’s ours, they’ll have to send more than half-trained soldiers in pretty blue armor to get it. And if they try, it’ll cost them more than they can afford.”

A few folks cheered. The rest nodded, determined gleams in their eyes.

“Gather everyone who can throw a knife well,” Danello said. “Those who are fast and accurate with a rapier. Swords are too big and won’t work, but those who own them can help defend the others. Guard the bridges, and when the Undying try to cross, you stop them.”

“Yeah, put ’em down!”

“Show the Duke what for!”

“No more hiding!”

Those from other buildings left, heads held high, chins set. So different from the scared folks who’d scurried inside not long ago. The rest went back to their apartments, except for the older man I’d saved earlier.

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

“Spread the word,” I said. “The Duke is on his way. We need to fight and we need to protect those who can’t. Get them out of the city or into brick buildings, places that won’t burn.”

He frowned. “The Duke really is coming?”

“He is.”

“Guess we’ll have to be ready for him. You gonna fight him with us?”

“I’ve been fighting him my whole life.”

He nodded and walked away, a smile on his still-bloody face. “Good enough.”

I grabbed the rope and hauled the Undying to his feet. Danello kept the rapier on him. “Soek, Aylin, gather the pynvium armor, please.”

They stripped the other set off the dead Undying and grabbed what I’d already removed.

“We’ll keep him upstairs for now, but he’ll need to be guarded by folks who won’t kill him when our backs are turned. We can hand him over to the resistance once we make contact.”

“Nya, this is crazy,” Aylin said. “What are you doing?”

“Fighting.” Even when we were losing, Mama and Papa fought. Grannyma, too. Now the Duke was threatening us again. He’d broken more than our bodies. He’d broken our spirit, and unless we got that back, we didn’t stand a chance.

“I thought we were leaving?”

I hesitated. I had said that, hadn’t I? “We are, as soon as we meet with Ipstan and find Danello’s da. Oh, and get Lanelle back.”

“Then why say all those things?”

“Because we might as well help while we’re here.”

Aylin and Danello dumped the pynvium armor into a trunk Saama brought out. Heavy stuff, and pretty too, if you didn’t think about what it was used for.

Saama recruited the two husky sons of a fisherman down the hall to help guard the Undying. They tied him to a chair and watched him like cats with mice. Tali watched too, her eyes narrowed. I didn’t like suspicion any more than fear, but at least she was showing
some
kind of emotion.

“Is that really one of the Undying?” Saama asked.

“He is.”

She tsked. “Well Saints and sinners, he’s just a boy.”

“Young minds are good and pliable,” Tali said. The Undying jerked and looked at her. I stepped between them, blocking his view.

“He might be a boy,” I said, “but he’s still a murderer.”

“And now everyone will know how to kill them,” Danello added. “They won’t be able to terrorize us anymore. We’ll be able to make them fear
us
.”

The Undying started laughing. “You really think you have a chance against the Duke?”

“We can fight you now. We can beat your army.”

“Don’t you get it? There won’t
be
an army. The Duke is going to sail up and burn every last building to the ground. These little isles you have? Your little soldiers at the bridges and docks, ‘keeping us at bay’? You’re being herded. He
wants
you there where it’s easier to kill you.”

“That’s a lie.”

He smirked. “Why do you think we were here to scare you, keep you in your homes? You’re a bunch of fishermen, with no armor and no real weapons. We could cut you down without even trying, but why risk good soldiers on trash? While you’re all dying, we’ll be boarding ships at the League and leaving this hunk of rock to burn.”

I
knew there’d been a good chance the Duke planned to burn the city, but hearing it stated so plainly—so coldly—made it all the more real.

“If Geveg dies, you’ll die with us,” I said.

He shrugged. “Not if I get out first.”

He thought he would too. He’d been scared before, but of me, not them. Or maybe this was another way of trying to scare us, part of some plan to help him escape. I’d done similar things before.

But it made too much sense to be a lie. The Duke had the Undying and thousands of soldiers. A city that was split down the middle, with Gevegians struggling on one side and Baseeri on the other, and looters out for themselves in between. Even if we convinced everyone to fight and somehow outnumbered them, what good was an army if there was no one for it to fight?

I turned back to the others. “The city should evacuate, like the farm did.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” the Undying said. “The Duke controls the river and all the roads to Geveg.”

The Duke had to be close to Jeatar’s farm by now. How long would it take him to destroy it and move on? A day? He had brought his army, so he must have planned on using it somewhere, even if it wasn’t on us. Did he plan to take over the river towns? The marsh farms? Or maybe the plan was to crush them and keep on marching. If so, we might have as little as a week before he reached Geveg.

“Put him in Saama’s room, please,” I said. We needed to talk without him hearing and spinning lies just to prey on our fears.

The two husky boys grabbed his chair and dragged him across the floor and into the other room. They shut the door but stayed with him.

“We should meet with Ipstan right now,” I said. “I don’t know what we can do, but they need to know all these attacks are part of a trap.”

Saama nodded and headed for the door. “I’ll fetch those girls of mine. They’ll know someone in the resistance who knows Ipstan.”

“What about Lanelle?” Danello said.

I groaned. “She’ll just have to wait.”