Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern

Chapter 4: Holding Grimshore: Larc

 Larc rode in the back of a cart, bouncing against the hard leather seat as it creaked its way up Iskalon’s steep hills toward the triage camps in Market Avenue. Eleven Warriors rode with her, stacked nearly on top of each other in the tiny cart, unconscious. The one she had her hands on now was barely breathing. She was trying to heal him, but the jolts of the cart kept wrenching her hands from his chest and breaking her concentration.

 They rode from Grimshore, where the fighting had just broken through. All the other beaches had been overrun, and Casser—General Casser, now, she thought dully; the news of Zental’s death had disheartened everyone—held Grimshore firmly. Only those who couldn’t stand were being sent up to triage, and someone, perhaps one of the princesses, had espoused the idea that an Icer should go down on the carts and meet the wounded, to start healing them on the way up. It hadn’t been said, but Larc understood the unspoken implication: the faster they were healed, the faster they could be turned around and sent back to the front. If she could get the Warrior she was trying to heal moving again, he would hop off the cart and go back, perhaps to his death. The whole thing seemed futile, and Larc would have resented the rapid disappearance of her vaerce if the situation hadn’t been so dire. Or if she hadn’t already seen the dead piled high on carts. What was a week, a month, a year of life compared to fifty years or more for each one of these Warriors?

 “Stop the cart,” she yelled to the driver, loud enough to be heard over the distant explosions, the yells of commands and not-so-distant clash of weapons.

 “My orders, Lady—”

 “I don’t give a pile of fungal fodder for your orders! You will stop this cart until he is breathing normally.”

 The driver muttered to himself, but he pulled on the reigns, and the two molebear came to a plodding halt, stamping their feet and swinging their shaggy heads side to side. “I trust you’ll hurry, Lady. This area could come under attack. I’ve reports they’ve breached the shores in several places.”

 Larc did not answer, but she did hurry. She grasped the dying Warrior and pulled as much T'Jas as she could hold from her ice-armor. When he opened his eyes and took in a shuddering breath, she remembered to breathe as well.

 “Go ahead,” she called to the driver.

 The driver yelled and cracked his whip, and the molebear started again. They seemed to be going faster than before, and hitting all the bumps deliberately. Larc continued trying to heal the Warriors, but it was impossible to focus with the jolting. She would have to wait until they reached Market and the triage tents there.

 The air around Larc became oppressively hot in a matter of seconds. She turned and saw an army of Flames advancing up the street. They wore fire on their bodies like clothing, and carried long, burning whips. Larc trembled with fear. The cart was moving fast, but the Flames were faster. She watched them gain ground, and it was as if time had slowed down but she had frozen stiff. They were three houses back, then two, then one, then they had passed the edge of the nearest lawn, a river of fire pouring up the street, lapping at the cart. She yelled to the driver to hurry, but there was no response.

 The air around her burst into flame. The cart jolted to a halt and she fell to the bottom. The Warrior she had just stabilized fell on top of her. She did not move, but huddled underneath him, his body a slim protection as fire enveloped the cart. She squeezed her eyes shut, blinded by the fires, and listened intently, trying to deduce what was happening by sound alone.

 After a time, all she could hear were distant sounds of battle. The voices and the roar of flames surrounding the cart seemed to have died away. Everything was hot, but her ice armor still held. It was sodden, but cold.

 She gently lifted the Warrior off her chest. The others lay still in the bottom of the cart. Terrified, Larc poked her head over the edge of the cart and looked into the street.

 It was empty. The Flames had moved on, leaving the wounded to die. All around, houses and buildings were burning. Someone’s garden lay in ashes just beyond the rim of the cart.

 “Let’s go,” Larc said. “They’re gone.”

 The driver did not answer. Larc peered forward—and leaned over the side and retched a stream of slimy bile. The driver was a pile of charred bones on the cart seat. The molebear were no more than heaps of cinders, though the harnesses, made of metal, still protruded from the cart.

 Larc tried to spit the bitterness out of her mouth and slumped back to the bottom of the cart. She was numb and tired. She should be healing the wounded. That was what she was doing, healing the wounded as they came back from the battlefield. Healing them so they could go back and die. I’m in shock, Larc thought to herself. I need to heal myself, first. But she could not seem to move. Her limbs didn’t want to work. You’re just tired, she told herself. Move. She drew T'Jas and tried to heal her own shock away. But T'Jas was as stubborn and immovable as her limbs.

 Stasia . . .

 Why did I think of Stasia? Larc wondered. She is safe in the Palace.

 “Stasia!”

 It wasn’t a thought, it was a real voice, calling to Stasia. Glace’s voice. He was running past the cart. His blonde hair was dark with soot. His armor was cut in places, and dark circles hung around his eyes. Why was his face covered with blood? “Stasia!”

 “Glace!” The familiar face intruded into Larc’s shock and she stood shakily in the cart. “Glace! It’s Larc!”

 He stopped at the edge of the cart and turned, looking up in surprise. “Larc! Come with me! You have to help me find Stasia. We have to reach the lake.”

 “Stasia is in the Palace,” Larc said. Her brain was sluggish. “Why aren’t you there, guarding her?”

 Glace looked at her strangely, and he said, “Larc, you must come with me. I don’t have time to explain. I will get you to the lake, too.”

 “I have to stay and heal these people,” Larc said. “That is what I’m doing, healing Warriors so they can go die.”

 Glace looked over the sides of the cart and cursed. “They are dead. Can’t you see that?”

 “Dead? No, they are only wounded, Glace. They can’t be dead. I have to—”

 Suddenly he was at the edge of the cart, reaching for her. She felt her body lifted into the air and flung over his shoulder. “Glace! What, by the Ancestors—”

 “No time for this,” Glace gasped. “Taking you to the lake. You’re in shock.”

 “I know that!” Larc kicked and tried again to draw T'Jas from her armor. It slipped away like water between her fingers. Glace began to run, and her cheek bounced against his broad back. She pounded him with her fists, but he did not pause. She was more and more ill as the ground, littered with corpses, sped by beneath her eyes.