The Holding

There weren’t always Dragons in the Valley. Once upon a time, we built our homes with wood.

“Do you understand your charge?”

I stand before a line of students clothed in fresh sewn blues. Uniforms are what the Regent’s call them, dressing their soldiers at a distance from their high steel chairs. I call them burial robes. At least when they don’t burn.

“We understand,” comes the reply, vibrating off the high ceiling.

I watch their faces. “Tell me then.”

“Today we are not men, we are not women,” the students call out, only children, sons and daughters of the farmers and merchants.

“Today we become the Wall,” half the room hums, followed by the other. “And we become the Sky.”

I pace before them. “Why do you become this?”

“To hold.”

What else is there to do when a predator deems you the prey? When your children are hiding behind you? You put weapons in their hands.

I look at the youngest standing in the line before me, a girl no more than twelve, glaring at me as if her eyes could strike the Dragons dead. I want to hold her gaze and tell her about fear, real fear. The kind that comes when liquid fire sears your face and your skin bubbles and your vision blurs and you can’t stop your comrades from burning alive beside you. I want to tell her there’s no glory here despite the Regent’s promise. I want to show her numbers, point to them and say ‘this is the chance you’ll make it to my age’. It’s a single digit, easy to understand, but just now we need soldiers.

“What will you do when they come?” I say, eyes leaving the girl.

A door opens at the end of the hall. A man comes in. “We will hold,” say the children.

“What will you do when they take us?”

“We will hold.”

My eyes watch the man as he runs, robes tangling about his legs. He’s close but Wellen catches him before he reaches me.

“What will you do when your town is burning, your brothers are burning? What will you do when you are burning?”

“We. Will. Hold.”

The children are numbered at 33, a whole new cohort to replace the one we’ve lost. This is our youngest yet. Mothers had asked us not to take their children, fathers had tried to hide them. They ranted about youth, innocence, freedom.

“For how long? How long will you hold?”

“From this day until our end.”

There is only one freedom for the children of the Valley. It waits beyond the wall for them, holes eight feet by three, dug deep into the earth.

“Garth!” The man calls out, trying to drag himself free from Wellen’s arms. “Garth!”

The children turn to him, annoyed than suddenly curious. Most men run to me in fear and horror. Most come to tell of destruction and loss but here this man is grinning. “Garth! Garth, I’ve news!” he calls.

My eyes slide slowly to his face. He’s panting like a dog, mouth open, eyes wide and shining as he says, “We got one. We got one.”

***

She‘s standing to the far right of the road, packed into a line of bodies clutching hold of empty bowls. The crowd stirs.

“Garth!” they call. “Hey, Garth!” She stumbles as someone slams into her shoulder.

Her knees meet the dirt and she curses as the man mutters an apology and barrels past her. His stride is long and fast, carrying him through the pools of fading twilight and falling shadow in the streets. He’s clothed in the standard blue garb of the Shell, flanked by a guard in a twisting black robe.

"Garth! Garth!" The people call after him.

She watches him grow smaller with the distance, her hands curling into fists as he ascends the wide steps of the stone wall. Above her, metal clangs and moans, shadows falling in patches across the roads.

The Shell of the town is beginning to close above her. Night is falling, sunlight fading, and it takes time to seal a town one cranked steel shutter at a time. Her gaze rises to the crisscrossing of welded beams above her. They draw squares in the space between the rooftops and the sky, held up by tall steel pillars that rise between the houses. From the beams, the shutters dangle like drooping leaves, swaying as men and women sprint the lengths of each girder. She watches as they stop to crank the shutters up, pulling ropes and working gears one at a time. Each sealed shutter cuts a shadow in the twilight, darkness closing in one steel board at a time. In the streets below, the citizens light candles on wax pooled barrels.

“Aadya.”

She lifts her head to the whisper of her name and meets eyes with a man dressed in filthy brown slacks. He nods to her before disappearing into the crowd, shuffling among the shifting bodies cramped together on the narrow road. He only looks back once but she still prickles. They're all worried she will break before she's supposed to.

Aadya peers up at the line before her. There’s only 8 people between her and the pots of hot food stacked between baskets of bread. She looks down at her empty hands and curses quietly. Her eyes search. There’s a little girl squatting just in front of her, her bowl sitting in the dirt while she plays with stones. Aadya bends down quietly behind her and snags hold of it. It’s one of the few things people still make out of wood. The line crawls slowly forward.

The mother cusses and pinches the little girl’s arm when she finds the bowl missing. No food for you, the mother says. The daughter wails. One scoop per person, one bread roll per person, the woman serving the food says. There are guards in black cloaks standing at her back to enforce these rules but they're deep in conversation, heads bent together, lips moving fast with falling words.

Aadya clears her throat as she reaches the top of the line but the guards don’t notice. She tries a cough with no results. The woman behind the pots of food curls a lip at her, says her line, scoops a mucky ladle of something stew-like into Aadya's stolen bowl and gestures for her to move on. One bread roll per person. Aadya reaches out, plucks a bread roll and drops it into the stew. Then she grabs another.

“I said one!” The woman snaps. Aadya snags another two rolls, shoving one into her mouth as she looks back at the guards.

Taking more than your share of rations was a great offense. Thieves rotted in cells for much less, and yet, the men in black robes barely glance at her. They’re too busy with the news of what happened beyond the wall. She sees the excitement in their eyes.

“You!” One of them shouts absently, eyeing the bread in her hands. “Move along!”

Aadya is shoved out of the line, swept into the crowd and pushed down stream from the black robed guards. They’ve already fallen back into conversation, uninterested in her transgression.

A hard breath sighs through Aadya’s nose. She drops the food, kicking the bowl to the side as she spits the wad of bread out of her cheek. Her eyes crawl to the burning candles.

She has a thought. Stooping, she snatches up the overturned bowl and strides to one of the wax covered barrels. She holds the bowl above the small flame. It licks the wood, blackening the base.

Aadya hears the boards cranking into place above her. There’s more shadow than twilight now, candle light fighting to fill the gap beneath the closed shutters. Time is running out. With one hand, she rips a strip from the edge of her shirt and dangles it over the candle until it catches fire, then she drops it into the bowl.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

The strip of her shirt is curling, burning a tall flame the height of her skull. The scorched black base of the bowl catches fire on the candle.

“Guards!”

Yes. She hears them now, clattering with the weight of their weaponry as they race to catch her. The fire grows bright, almost two feet tall and luminous. People are shrieking around her. Put it out! Put it out! They fear it might be seen from the sky.

One Guard tackles her, driving a fist into her face while the other throws water on the burning bowl. There's sizzling and smoke, chattered fear rising above it. The people watch in stunned horror as the guards seize hold of Aadya and drag her through the streets.

She watches as their faces tilt up, waiting to see if they'll come.

***

The man is not a man, he’s a boy like the others, the same age as my son at 18. He tells me to call him Benton as he leads me up the wall to the black metal bucket. He seals the waist tall door behind us.

Three men work the crank that lowers the bucket down the exterior wall to the edge of the Valley below. Chains and gears whir their complaints. I look back at the floods of blue skittering across the wall and its steel beams, soldiers preparing for night. The Shell is closing one steel flap at a time, the children we call the Sky, flying across the beams to drag them into place. It takes nearly an hour to seal the town below, closing all the people into a tight, steel box. It was the logical solution. When you fight and lose too many times, one must learn to hide.

“It was a caravan. They built a cookfire outside the woods, said they were headed East.” Benton’s mouth seems permanently curled up at the edges, grinning at me. “I can’t believe I’m the one who gets to tell you.”

I frown. “They should have known not to build a flame in the open.”

“If they hadn’t we wouldn’t have had the shot," Benton shrugs when I glance at him. "It’s been almost three weeks since a Lizzy came so close. Never had the chance to try your weapon until now.”

My palms tingle. “Are you sure they hit it?”

“Are we sure? You should have heard the scream.”

I turn to look upon the Valley and the fading light. The hills roll like a gentle ocean, gaps cupping ponds, trees sprouting up in tight bushels scattered among the rolling earth. “Where?” I ask.

“There.” Benton points to the South-East where trees sprout from the summit of a hill. “It was incredible,” he says. “Like watching a mountain fall.”

The bucket shutters to a halt at the bottom of the wall and we exit into the presence of three tall stallions, one already mounted by a man my age. “Garth,” Elijah says to me. “I owe you great thanks.”

He pulls back the long black robes that fall around him, exposing a long, thin shimmering of cut, polished steel. Steel that I designed.

It’s about three inches wide and a meter long, mounted with strapped leathers down the length of the horse’s right side. Elijah’s leg crosses over top of it, strapped down, helping to hold it firm. He lowers his hand to the long steel and displaces the latch, lifting up the shuttle; a runway of grooved steel for the bolt to fit, with a waxed string to drag it back, springs to drive it forward. His bolt is missing.

Like boys, Elijah and I share a grin. “Did you see it fall?”

“Couldn’t take my eyes off it.”

I swallow the bitter taste of jealousy and smile. That was the thing about weapons design. Regents said thank you, patted your back, shook your hand. Then they put your creation in the hands of better men, and told you to go train the children.

Benton and I mount our steads and follow Elijah out across the Valley until we reach the small collection of trees we’re aiming for. At their edge we find two smashed caravans, clothing and small belongings littered around them. A broken porcelain doll still grinning, bowls spilling bug infested rice, a broken wooden lute, strings frayed and twisted. Beside it lies the black remains of a fire, scorched grass brittle at its edge and just passed it all, the heights of great trees lie fallen.

Rather, they’ve been smashed into the ground.

Shattered stumps gape with jagged white-pulp teeth. Others trees have fallen with their trunks, ripping up the brown earth around their roots. It looks like the moon came crashing down, bursting into the trees, opening a crater that changed the shape of the earth. I glance up to the sliver of the moon rising above, still high and safe in the sky. I grin.

“Where is it?” My eyes crawl to a path of deep trenches leading away from the crater.

“We’re tracking it,” Elijah says, silhouetted by the fading light. “It shouldn’t be long now.”

***

The guard chains Aadya’s wrist to the bars of a cell. Thick rusting shackles, weighing her hands to the floor. She’s squatting in some sort of filth, flaking and discolored, stinking of people in their worst ways. She tries to stand but the chains hold her down as the guard throws the gate closed and locks it with a heavy key. He presses his face against the closed bars.

“Who are you?” he hisses, slapping his palm against the steel. “Where did you come from?”

There’s another guard in the room, sitting with an ink stained feather poised above stiff parchment on a long steel table. His eyes flicker between Aadya and the other guard. “What’s she in for, Ehch?”

“She’s one of them.” Ehch pulls his face from the bars, sneering at Aadya. “Couldn’t stop lighting fires, could you? Not even when the Lizzy came. Not even when we saved you.”

“Another fire?”

Ehch drags his cloak from his shoulders and throws it on the floor. He’s tall, thick in the middle, with rivulets of sweat streaking his forehead. “They’re not who they say they are,” he says, ignoring the question. “They didn’t come for food.”

The other guard is thinner, pale of hair with a youthful shape to his face. He sets down his feather and stands from the table. “They said…”

“What?” Ehch glares at the younger guard. “That they’re from the South or the West? I’ve heard both. That they’re here for supplies, food and steel, or are they selling it? They’re a performing troupe, but I’ve yet to hear them sing. They’re startled that their fire brought the Dragon, two of their wagons are ruined and they all nearly died, and yet there’s no fear in their eyes.”

The younger guard creeps forward quietly, eyes level. “They’re nomads, H. Freeman. They always have tales.”

“This is different, Thoren.”

Aadya turns at the name, pressing her cheek to the bars. Her blood feels cold. “Thoren,” she whispers. There’s a cracking in her heart, small and thin, spider webbing. “They say it was Thoren who learned to kill the Dragons.”

The guards look at her. H glaring, the other searching her face, her eyes, her hands as they lift in a clatter to clutch the bars.

“Shut up,” Ehch hisses.

“Garth Thoren,” the younger guard says. “My father.”

Aadya thinks of the man in blue from the streets. She thinks of what he took from her. “That makes you Ivar,” she says, wiggling her fingers at him. “Ivar the son of the Dragon killer.”

“I said shut up!” Ehch’s hands pound the bars with a closed fist. The whole world seems to rattle.

Aadya listens as Ehch gives Ivar orders, throws open the door and stands there as the younger guard disappears into the twilight.

“We’re rounding up the others,” he says to her. “We’ll find out who you are.”

***

The horse sways back and forth beneath me, striding forward through the trenches. The last strips of light drift lazily through the trees, collecting on the path of destruction we follow. A nervousness spreads through the crowd. Benton’s mouth has finally turned down, frowning deeply, as around us the party of guards we’ve joined whispers.

“Maybe the Lizzy flew away…”

“...we’re still following a path ain’t we?”

“Yes but…”

“... the bolt soaked in hemlock all night. It’s dead.”

“Yes but…”

But why is the path narrowing?

I still my horse and peer back down the flattened path behind us. At first it had been wider, nearly 12 yards across with trees toppling to either side, crushed into splinters and pulp. Now the path was barely three yards wide. The damage to the trees had lessened, some now remaining untouched at the edges of the path, others merely leaning bent as if they were simply pushed.

Maybe it flew away.

I look up. Above the damage is even lesser. There’s no wounds to the bark or branches of the trees closing in around the narrowing path. Their leaves wave down at me, undisturbed and whispering. I imagine they would not be so jovial if a Dragon had just soared through them. Up ahead the path narrows to barely more then a single yard across. I nudge my horse forward.

“It’s getting dark,” I say to Elijah.

He does not look at me. “I shot it down,” he says.

The path abruptly ends a dozen yards ahead. No trees are plowed down, no twigs snapped. The trenches ripped into the forest floor simply disappear as our party comes to an aimless halt in the trees.

I listen to the guards bicker, I hear them question things. One man keeps on repeating that he watched the Dragon fall, that they did not see it rise. I walk into the trees. Twigs shift and snap beneath my boots, leaves brushing gently across my arms and cheeks. It’s grown too dark. Above me the moon is pouring light but sprinting clouds threaten our safe return to the town and its Shell. I look up in search of Elijah.

“Garth.”

I turn, eyes searching through the half-dark of nearly night. A few meters further into the trees I see Bronson’s gold hair shining faintly above his long black cloak.

“Garth!”

I rush forward, arms raking thin branches from my path. Benton's head is tilted down, staring at something laid out in the trees before him.

It’s a man. He’s pale and naked, lying on his back with one arm collapsed on his chest, the other sprawled out beside him. I don’t recognize his narrow face, the wide blue eyes staring up into the trees unblinking. I take a step forward and crouch down beside him. His hand is wrapped around something lodged into his shoulder.

Elijah is behind me now. Other men are gathering, watching as my hand slides over the man’s to peel his clutching fingers back. I see the black veins then, spreading down his chest where his arm was resting. They come from the wound in his shoulder, from the place where Elijah’s iron bolt is protruding from his flesh.

***

Ehch stands in the open doorway whispering with a guard.

Past them Aadya watches the streets succumb to darkness, shadows stealing colors with their depth. She hears Ehch snarl at the man. She tastes his impatience, agitation like cold sweat, as the guard departs hurriedly into the night. The door slams. Candles flicker across the tables, slow wax dripping onto steel.

“They’re not in their wagons,” Ehch snarls. “Where are they?”

Aadya stares at the stone walls casually. Beyond them she can hear the people of the town milling softly through the streets. Gentle steps fall, pebbles scatter through the dirt. Children run and weave. Someone drags a cart, wheels popping and cracking. Guards laden with weapons sprint past them, searching.

Ehch wraps his hands around the bars of her cell, glaring down at her. “Where are they?”

Slowly, she turns to peers up at his chin. She smiles.

The blood drains from his knuckles. His eyes flicker between hers, mouth bending and moving, searching for words as Ivar Thoren bursts into the prison, steel door slamming into brick.

“They’ve been asking about the weapon,” Ivar blurts, heaving breaths. “I spoke to people in the market, in the streets, on the wall. They’ve been talking to everyone who knows about it.”

“That doesn’t tell us where they are,” Ehch growls.

Ivar steps towards Aadya’s cell. “They told her about my dad, Ehch. How he made it, where he worked and who our family is. They told her I was here.”

Ehch blinks. “They’re after the weapon.”

”Is that what you want?” Ivar meets Aadya’s eyes. He’s a short two feet away, close enough she smells his sweat. “The weapon? The design? What is it?”

They’re both watching her, eyes narrowed, nervous, as her mouth cracks open and pours soft laughter on the floor.

“I was a mother once,” she says.

Ehch and Ivar share a glance, hands rising slowly to the hilts of cut steel at their waists. They’re afraid of her, the brute man and the son of Garth Thoren. She lifts her hands to the grip bars again.

“Tell me,” she says quietly. “Do you think Dragons have families?”

Ehch barks with laughter. Ivar stares. Aadya watches as his face pinches together, brows knitting, eyes searching her own. She can almost see the little hairs rising on his neck as her body begins to expand.

***

I wrap my hands around the end of the bolt and pull it free from the man’s body. There’s movement around me, more men creeping in. Gore drips from the bolt’s iron tip as I rise to face Elijah.

He’s standing half a meter behind me. “It was a dragon.” His eyes don’t leave the bolt. “I shot a Dragon.”

I take a step towards him. “Walk me through it.”

Elijah’s eyes glide up to my face. “Blues on the wall saw the flame, sent us out.”

“And then?”

“We could see the caravan and the Dragon circling above them,” Elijah narrows his gaze. “The men fanned out. The first rules to douse the fire but the Dragon was hunting real low so I took aim.”

A man steps up beside Elijah. “All of us saw…”

“Stop.” The faces of the men fall into shadows with the rise of night. I hear my own breaths cross my lips. “Did you say it was circling the caravan?”

Elijah’s eyes narrow. “Yes.”

My breath slides in then out. “When have they ever done that?”

Heads shift around me, nervous glances passing like a whisper as feet move in the dirt. Elijah glances back and forth around them. “Never,” he says.

“How many times did it circle?” I shoulder past him back towards my horse. Elijah puffs behind me, scrambling for his words. “How many?” I shout.

“I don’t know! A lot. The whole time we were riding out it was hunting them.”

“It wasn’t hunting.”

I throw myself up into the saddle, seizing the reins as my eyes fall on Benton, climbing up onto his horse. “Where is the caravan? Where did you take them?”

Benton blinks at me, clutching his reins. “We… we took them inside.”

I drive my heels into my horse, surging forward down the ruined path we followed. Benton is on my heels with Elijah and a dozen other men on horses, the rest lagging behind. I’m thinking of the dead man, the threads of curling poison in his chest.

I break through the trees, to the rolling valley illuminated beneath a strip of white moonlight. My chest seizes. Behind me Benton yelps.

“Smoke!” he shrieks back at the other riders. “Smoke rising from the Shell!”

***

Ivar takes another step towards the bars of Aadya’s cell, brow furrowed.

“Ehch,” he says. He’s staring at the shackles on her wrist, at how her skin is suddenly pushing against the steel like it’s suddenly too tight, flesh rolling up around the edges. “Ehch…”

There’s a soft pop and the shackles on Aadya’s wrist crack. “Hey!” Ehch bellows. “Stop!”

Aadya wiggles her hands free from the steel and meets Ivar's eyes. “Behind you.”

Ivar spins on his heel just as the glass of the far window explodes with liquid fire, blasting the guards off their feet.

Black spots sparkle through Ivar’s vision. He’s on his back, head aching, lips gasping for the dust thick air. Around him small fires are burning hot red and yellow. The books. The bowls. His cloak ablaze. He fights to put it out. The walls are scorched around the window. The desk and chairs are overturned beneath a world that’s ringing. He rolls onto his side, fighting to look back at the cell.

Aadya’s towering above him now, skin rippling. She wants to laugh when she sees his eyes fall upon the scales bursting through her skin but her jaw is dislocating, teeth falling free as the bone cracks and births new daggers. She feels the walls as they crumble against the bones of her back. She feels the ceiling as her shoulders meet them, stone bursting, mortar crumbling as the roof bursts against her rearing head.

She shrieks her son’s name in fire.

Shattered stone and steel rains down into the prison and Ehch disappears beneath the hail as he tries to run. Ivar’s still on his back. He lifts his arms like it will help, but the falling debris drives them down. His nose snaps. He tries to suck in air as blood pours down his throat. Crimson spittle dots his cheeks.

Above, the sky is burning.

He hears the screams of doomed men, the shrieks of mothers and daughters fleeing. He wants to run too, desperately, but he’s struggling to rise when a sudden pain spears through his left shoulder.

***

Benton snatches my arm as the bucket reaches the height of the wall. Horror greets us there. Bodies are scattered across the wall before us, children finally made free.

“This way!” Benton shouts above the rising screams. “Get to the bunker!”

I do not follow him. Instead I sprint the length of the wall to the stone steps. They’re littered with bodies, the living now scrambling over top of the dead. I fight my way down to the streets. Below the world writhes in chaos, buildings crumbling, the few things that could burn now burning.

“Ivar!” I scream. “Ivar!

Shattered stone buildings fall into my path, stalls overturned and ablaze, men and women running between them. I see the beams holding up the Shell swaying back and forth, gaining speed. The ground shakes as the pillars begin to collapse.

I’m close. I can see the guards house ahead as I dodge a falling shutter, throwing myself into the side of a shattered building. Broken bricks skewer my side and I wheeze, rolling myself onto my back. Dragons are flying low above me, breathing fire on the roofs.

Someone drags me up by the collar. “Garth! Get to the bunker!”

I rip at Wellen’s hands, eyes clinging to the guard’s house. “Not without Ivar!”

“He’ll be there!” Wellen grabs at me, dragging me from the wreckage. “He’s a guard. He’ll…”

Behind him the guard’s house erupts. The brick bursts in every direction, glass and steel splinter, spitting shards the length of arrows through Wellen’s back. He falls and I’m not quick enough to escape him. I flail and fight and lose beneath his weight. I scream my son’s name through the falling dust as a Dragon rises from the rubble.

The beast rears its head and shrieks fire into the sky. The world lights up, golden and blood red, embers raining down. I raise my arms over my face, peering through my fingers.

There’s a man clutched in the Dragon’s claws. Pale haired, young, like my son. I open my mouth to scream his name but the Dragon spreads its wings and beats them down in a flood of debris and dust.

I’m gasping, choking, buried beneath my dead brother as the monster flies away.

What will you do when they come?

“We will hold,” I whisper to myself, tasting the layer of dust on my lips.

What will you do when they take us?

I think of my son and weep.

***

Wagon wheels creak and rattle over the earth as pale morning light bleaches the world. Birds chirp. A soft wind whispers. Little white moths flutter softly above the green grass like they’ve never known fear.

Ivar awakes to the world clunking and shaking beneath him as the wagon rolls along. He sees the wooden walls, the blankets around him, the woman sitting in the corner by his feet. He tries to see her face.

“Your father took something from me,” she says.

He knows her voice. She rocks back forth through his vision, blurry and distant, her skin smooth and scale-less once more. “A son for a son,” Aadya says. “That is the cost.”

Ivar wants to weep. His body aches mercilessly, his head throbs, his muscles stretch and burn. “Everything hurts,” he whispers.

“Yes,” she says. “It will take a few days.”

A few days. The tears fall free down Ivar's face. “I feel like I’m dying,” he says.

Her laughter cackles like fire in the wagon. “You won’t,” she whispers back. “But you won’t live either.”