Bloodrush (Scarlet Star Trilogy #1)

Chapter 26 - The Dead and the Almost

'I saw a shape in the pines today. I couldn't be sure, but I would swear blind it was Fae. The way it rippled, it wasn't just a shadow. I told Merion. I want him to stay out of the woods until I know I was wrong.'

5th June, 1867

It's strange how alive a barren desert can become when there is something dead to nibble on. Rhin swatted at yet another pesky fly. To a faerie, flies are huge: melon-sized, with red and bulbous compound eyes; wings the length of your forearm; and dangling clawed feet; not to mention their slavering, sucking jaws. Rhin punched another square in its grotesque face and watched it fall into a buzzing heap in the dirt. He wiped its rank spittle from his gauntlet.

Rhin heard a sharp shout on the breeze. He looked up and sniffed the rancid, rotten air, instantly wishing he hadn't. The dead turn bad very quickly in the Wyoming sun. Rhin had learnt that shortly after dawn, somewhere near the work-camp. The fallen had been piled into heaps in the night: one for men; one for Shohari. Rhin had watched the men kneeling in the dust, some scratching their heads, others weeping quietly. They might have won the battle, but they had lost hundreds. When the hot morning sun reached them, it did not take long for the bloody mess to start festering. The warm westerly breeze made sure the stench was pushed all the way into town.

Rhin ducked his head so he could measure the progress of the unlucky souls charged with clearing the streets of bodies. It was now some time past nine, and already the sweat poured from them. Every now and again he could hear somebody retching, or crying, but the latter was rarer.

The men and women stalked to and fro, already thoroughly browbeaten by their labour. With one hand they clamped dirty rags to their mouths, and with the other they hauled the broken corpses across the dust and into their allotted piles. The Shohari pile was considerably larger than the other. Perhaps that was what drove the workers on through the raw heat, the stench and the gore, with their rags and their bloody hands. Even though what drove them was how high they could pile their dead enemies, Rhin had to admire their tenacity. We won. They didn't. That was enough.

Rhin crept on, keen to be rid of the flies. He shimmered into nothing as he approached the edge of the house, pausing just the same in the brink of its shadow, looking left and right and left again before hopping across the alley, into the shadow of the next house.

It was wonderful how these Americans built their houses, almost as if they were too precious to touch the earth. Either that, or they were afraid their houses might be roasted alive by the hot sand. It was cool enough in the gaps beneath them. Even in full armour.

A corpse was lying half under this house, face-down in the dirt with its arms spread out, almost as if surrendering to the dust. There was a rather large chunk of its skull missing, just behind its right ear. Rhin wrinkled his lip.

As Rhin looked out into the street once more, he heard a whistle, though not that of any man. Human lips can't whistle like Fae lips can, never just a single note. Rhin felt his heart sinking.

'What brings you out here, Rehn'ar? Picking the corpses of their loot? I had expected a bigger Hoard than that,' The Wit called out. He and three of his Fingers stepped out from behind the corpse, arms crossed and looking cheery. 'I think you've got a lot of balls wasting our time like this.'

If they were in the mood to play games, Rhin could be too. 'I don't like the idea of you thinking about my balls. Rather forward of you, Finrig,' Rhin sneered. It was a cheap joke, but it found its mark.

The Wit sneered right back. 'You'll be the unnatural one, when I set to yours with my dagger, Rhin,' Finrig offered. 'Maybe I'll keep 'em as a trophy. I'll get a little glass case, all velvet inside, and show them around at parties when she makes me a lord.'