February 28, 2017

PodCastle 457: Blade and Branch and Stone

* Author : Spencer Ellsworth

* Narrators : Graeme Dunlop, Wilson Fowlie and Kay Steele

* Host : Matt Dovey

Discuss on Forums

First published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly

read by Graeme Dunlop (as Lassan), Wilson Fowlie (as Dhar), Kay Steele (as Kahirun)

Blade and Branch and Stone

by Spencer Ellsworth

Lassan

The trees screamed. Mortars shattered white wood that bled golden sap. The Fei looked down from the ridge with cold blue eyes, raised their muskets and hailed lead onto the human lines. Blood blossomed on white shirts around Lassan, under black-coated Imperial jackets.

“Form a wedge!” Lassan yelled. “Prime and load! One more round before we rush the hill!” Around him men fell to one knee and musket plugs tamped down powder and ball. Lassan looked over his men, memorizing every face. They were good people, settlers and drilled regiment all. They would probably all die today and they would do it under his orders.

Lassan looked back up the ridge against the gust of wind and light rain sprinkling in his eyes. He could see a line of Fei; their immense silhouettes, twice the size of men, their curling tattoos and hard gray skin. Up there was the Fei who killed his son. Lassan might die, but God willing, he’d take Kahirun with him. “Cock your firelock! Present! Fire—”

A musket ball tore through his coat and his arm. Lassan fell to his knees, vision blurring. He clutched his arm. Blood oozed through his fingers, soaking the wool of his coat. Lassan looked up the ridge, through the haze of pain. They could still make it up the hill with bayonets, if they moved fast. “Fix bayonets!”

“Colonel!”

Lassan recognized the voice. One of the couriers. He shouted, “Aster, I’ll have your scalp! They’re on the run—”

“Sir, Kahirun sued for peace,” Aster shouted. “They’ve been flying a white flag at the main line. The other regiments saw it. It’s only us that haven’t.”

Lassan didn’t answer.

“We must stand down, sir,” Aster said. “Sir?”

The Fei’s dead trees stretched in an open grave for a full quarter-mile beyond the camp, vast, milk-pale whitebarks and black sentry pines and gray-gold minaret trees with their leaves rotting to detritus. The sides of the grave sloped down, rich black earth thick with roots and seeded with vines that would eventually cover the dead trees. It was everything a Fei might want for a memory grove’s burial, honoring trees that had supposedly held stories and histories.

It still looked like a pile of firewood.

Lassan stepped to the edge of the grave. It had been two weeks since the day of peace. He looked behind him at his commanding officer, a fat Imperial sorcerer with a dozen talismans pinned to his ground-scraping black coat and his wig tightly curled. High Faustus Bodwin’s face was thick with blackened veins from years of magic, and his eyes were a pale inhuman white. He wore a fixed smile like a jolly old man.

“Colonel,” Bodwin said, “I’m turning to stone here.”

Lassan didn’t answer. They were at peace. The Fei were beaten, suing for survival and trying to save whatever trees they had left.

But to see trees laid in a great grave… all he could think of was his first son Alvin’s body, jammed into a treehollow by the Fei, cracked and broken and crushed to fit, like rotting meat in a locker. Lassan had burned a thousand trees for his son, and done worse. It should have been enough.

...more

View all episodes

By Escape Artists Foundation

4.6

498498 ratings