Chương 28: Blood and Ash

When the excitement of the bandit attack had fully passed, and the damage and the bodies had been fully cleared away, I was able to turn my attention back to more important matters. The extension on the side of the house was gradually taking shape, growing more defined as we built around the frame. And the more that was added, the more the whole house seemed a strange chimera. I was using the western style for this side, with a flatter roof and a door that opened and shut outward as opposed to sliding.

I wasn't an architect but the practice wasn't alien to me. In my old life I'd been involved in the construction of many barns, coops, and huts. And we did have a bit of help from a local man, Jago, who was well versed as an architect and a shipwright. He'd tried to insist on doing things his way, despaired as he heard the things we did back west, but ultimately he had agreed to follow my designs. A few stacks of gin helped in that regard. Plus the fact that he wouldn't have to live here.

I knelt upon the roof, hammering the roof slates in one by one, until a layer of red scales had taken shape upon it. Haita's two friends worked the other side, at a slower pace, while Haita went back and forth to fetch more slates. He was sweating and redfaced, huffing and puffing a little harder on each return trip, but the good thing about youth was that such things were easy to recover from. When I'd been that age I could have worked dawn to dusk and woken up fine the next morning.

Before my rebirth, even working a few hours took the wind right out of me. Getting old was no fun. Silver lining, I suppose.

"Hey, Aniki," Haita said, the lilt in his voice making it clear he had a question in mind.

"Yes," I absently replied, focused on the rows of tiles before me. I kept checking for gaps, any space a leak could come through. Thus far it seemed we were doing fine.

"Do you... have a wife, or anything? I mean you're old enough for it."

"Haita!" his two friends hissed, glaring daggers at him. Even they knew it was stupid to go poking and prodding at such things. And, indeed, I probably should have told him to mind his own business. Instead, without thinking at all, I said "I used to."

"Oh."

"She... was killed a few years back."

"Oh," Haita repeated, sounding much more pained this time. I should have been mad, but... instead the thought of my wife, all that I once had, sent a strange wistfulness through me. I had tried not to think about my loved ones but the truth was, that was foolishness. Their memories had been the coals that stoked the furnace in my heart, driving me every step of that bloody campaign until the rage sputtered out. But when had I last thought of them in a positive way? As something other than losses to be grieved?

Injustices to be avenged? And was there anyone else left, in all the whole damn world, who knew the names of my wife and daughter? Who could speak their names, or tell of the kinds of people they had been? Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. A small sigh escaped me. They said the Old Stranger was the Great Equalizer of men. That no matter how old or young, rich or poor, good or evil, all had their hand taken in his in the final voyage beyond the Living Realm.

But folks also said that people lingered, in a fashion, even after that. In the memories and stories of others. It was only when those stories faded that the last echoes of a person did too. For great kings and heroes, warriors and monsters (myself included), immortality was guaranteed through songs and folk tales. But who would spare a folk song for the innocent people, trampled and killed by the former?

"A wife, Lydia, and a daughter, Casea. We... had a second child on the way when they died. I was hoping for a boy, but it was too early to know," I said.

"And I loved them all a great deal. The wife was a beautiful and wise woman. The only foolish thing she ever did was marry a louse like me. And the daughter, she was all the good I ever brought into this world."

"Did... a monster kill them?" Haita reluctantly asked.

"Of a kind," I admitted, shrugging lazily. I'm sure he must have thought it was some terribly dangerous monster, something incredibly strong, but the truth was that there had been nothing special about that cavalry. Just a group of fools, driven on by bigger fools, eager to hunt and kill anyone who could have been considered an enemy of Rhonde. There was nothing special about my story, in that regard.

In those early days of the war, when Rhonde had pushed deeper and deeper into Novosian territory, many smaller villages on the fringes had been torn apart.

"I'm... sorry for mentioning it," Haita said, casting his eyes from me.

"It's alright." To my surprise, I genuinely meant it.

"It was... nice, being able to talk about them again." How long had it been? I hadn't exactly been a social animal in Novos' employ. Takeda stared quietly at me, a troubled look on his face.

"Did you... did you get the guys who killed your family?" he eventually asked. My face betrayed nothing.

"I did," I said simply. But that wasn't strictly true. I had tracked a lot of the Gryphon Cavalry, those who hadn't died in other battles, and put them to the sword. But the man who had ordered the charge, led the destruction of my home and my family, destroyed my life and left me trapped in the body of an immortal monstrosity... The roof tile in my grasp shattered apart, the cracking sound like thunder in the otherwise silent afternoon.

Takeda gave a sharp gasp, nearly falling over in surprise, before Yun grabbed him by the shoulders, holding him despite his scrawny build.

"Sorry," I said.

"I think... I think we can leave things for the time being." I lay on my bed that night, shafts of moonlight illuminating me from a crack in the curtains. Ever since the lads had left, I had been entirely lost in my own thoughts. With the memories that constantly bubbled up from my mind. It had been good, being able to talk about my family with other people. Those I had lost. As if mentioning their names and articulating thoughts about them had lifted some great weight off of me.

But that same weight had been like a dam, stopping the memories from overwhelming me. I remembered meeting Lydia for the first time, when the two of us had just been kids. The way the sun had lit up her grinning, gap-toothed smile. Our first kiss at the harvest dance, where we'd both been drunk and sluggish off scrumpy. But I had known, even in that drunken haze, that she'd been who I wanted to spend my life with.

I remembered Casea's birth, the terror and fear that something would go wrong as the midwife and medicine women did their work. And the joy I had felt when her tiny fingers gripped my hand. I remembered her first words, and how they had been the most beautiful sound in the world. So many memories. So many joys. And yet they all ended with the taste of blood and ash. I knew there were those who would scorn me, saying that I had no right to mourn after all the harm I had done.

For all the families I had destroyed, just as mine had been. And, aye, perhaps they were right. But that didn't mean I wasn't going to. I felt a strange pricking at the corner of my eye, and reached up to stroke at it. My fingertips were damp when I pulled them away.

"Huh," I murmured to myself. Smoke leaned into my side, paws gripping me tight.