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  THREE TREES TO MIDNIGHT

  PATRICK WEEKES

  Myrion of Ventus didn’t know much about Qunari. Until last week, they had been an annoyance, something young soldiers went off to fight while everyone else grumbled about the taxes they paid to defend the Imperium from the savage ox-men. That ignorance had ended in a blast of cannon fire, and in less than a day, Ventus, jewel of the Tevinter Imperium, had fallen.

  The Qunari had cut down anyone wearing armor. Those who were unarmed, they had herded into different groups. The women, children, and elderly had quickly returned to their homes. The mages had screamed horribly as alchemical concoctions killed their minds and left them as empty husks who stumbled along, sweeping dirt from the streets with awful vacant stares, their beautiful gold-trimmed robes dragging in the dirt behind them.

  The men, however, had been put into work camps.

  The afternoon sun was blinding after days down in the hold of the Qunari ship. Myrion squinted, his chained legs rattling as he shuffled along in the line of prisoners. The sandy beach gave way to grass, and shortly thereafter to forest, where a dense cloud of black foliage hunkered over twisted green tree trunks as though preparing to lash out at the weeds below.

  “Vishante kaffas,” Myrion muttered. The Qunari bastards had taken them to the outskirts of Arlathan Forest.

  The last of the prisoners were off the ship now, and shirtless Qunari roared at them to line up, waving swords that looked like they could chop through a horse with no appreciable difficulty. Finally, a Qunari even larger than the others stepped forward. His face was twisted into a scowl, his gray skin painted gold with red slashes, and his armor was a mass of knotted rope twisting around jutting spikes. His horns were jagged and swept forward to either side of his face like a low helmet. One horn had been chopped off, probably in battle, and replaced with steel.

  “Bas!” he called, his deep voice sending a shudder through Myrion’s gut. “That is what you are. Bas. Things. You do not know what is and is not. You need the guidance of the Qun to learn.”

  “How generous of you,” muttered the prisoner who had been in front of Myrion, a tall man whose accent placed him as from the south. Myrion kept his head down. If the Qunari were going to single out someone for back talk, it wouldn’t be him.

  “I am Bas-taar, keeper of bas,” the Qunari leader went on. “You belong to me now. Work, and you live. Resist, and you die. Run”—a slow smile twisted across his face—“and you belong to the Huntmaster.” He gestured at another Qunari warrior, this one dressed in lighter armor, strips of leather and drakescale bound by crisp red ropes. His face was painted with stripes of black and white. His cold stare swept down the line of prisoners as Bas-taar went on. “Run, and he will track you down, and you will suffer, as the mages of Ventus suffered.”

  Myrion felt the panic rising up in him and fought it down with a conscious effort, clearing his mind and keeping his body still. When he was certain he could look up without giving himself away, Bas-taar had moved on.

  “You will take axes. You will cut the trees. Prove you are useful and obedient, and you will one day earn a place in the Qun.” Bas-taar looked across the line of prisoners, then let out a snort. “Come.”

  Myrion glanced nervously at the Huntmaster, but the Qunari tracker had walked back to the ship. Qunari guards came forward, carrying massive chests between them, and dropped them to the sand. As Myrion drew closer, he saw that the chests were filled with wood axes—heavy and clumsy, sharp enough to fell a tree but too clumsy to be much use in a fight. Each prisoner got one, and as he did, he was released from the long prisoners’ chain.

  The prisoners weren’t released fully, though. Before they were freed from the prisoners’ chain, they were shackled into pairs, each pair connected at the ankle by a length of chain no longer than Myrion’s forearm. Only a pair of circus performers could run while tied together like that.

  Before Myrion knew it, he and the prisoner in front of him were at the front of the line. The other prisoner stepped forward, back straight and shoulders square under his brown laborer’s tunic. His hair was silver, Myrion noted, and revised the other prisoner’s age up a few decades.

  “Right,” said the prisoner, holding out a callused hand to the guard standing over the chest of axes. “Off to work, then.”

  And as he turned, Myrion saw the points of the man’s ears.

  An elf. That explained everything. Myrion’s mouth twisted into a sneer as the Qunari handed the elf the ax. Any elf in Ventus would have been a slave, so of course he’d have no loyalty to the Imperium, no understanding of what Tevinter had protected him from all these years. He’d probably laughed as the soldiers had been cut down, the mages poisoned, happy to trade one master for another.

  “Filthy knife-ear,” Myrion muttered, glaring at the elf, unaware that the words had worked themselves free from his mouth until the elf and the Qunari guard stared at him.

  The elf was the first to recover. “Lazy shem isn’t used to working,” he said with an easy smile, “not with those soft hands of his. Chain me to another elf, so I don’t embarrass the poor man.”

  “You’d embarrass me with your knife-eared stupidity,” Myrion snapped, “and then stab me as soon as my back was turned.”

  “Quiet,” the guard roared. “There will be no disruptions.” He spoke slowly. Most of the Qunari didn’t speak Trade well, Myrion remembered.

  “Then chain me to a man, not this knife-ear,” Myrion said, glaring at the silver-haired elf.

  “Probably faster for everyone if you do it,” the elf added. “The humans of Ventus are an ugly lot, and they only care for their own.”

  The guard hesitated for a moment, but then a booming voice startled them all.

  “No.” They all turned to see Bas-taar stomping over from another line of new prisoners—there were prison-ships landing all along the beach. He glared at the guard, who shrank back, and then smiled at Myrion and the elf. “The bas must learn. There are no more elves, no more humans. There are only bas, who must work to prove themselves worthy of serving the Qun.” He turned to the guard. “Chain them together. Let them learn to work as one.”

  “As you say, Bas-taar,” the guard murmured, and brought out a chain. He clapped one cuff around the elf’s ankle, snapping it shut, and then turned to Myrion. Helpless, Myrion stepped forward. The cuff was cold on his right leg, pinching his tender skin as it snapped shut.

  “As you say, Bas-taard,” the elf said with an obedient smile, and the big Qunari looked at him, then nodded and strode off, ready to give orders to another line.

  Myrion let out a shaky breath as the guard undid the prisoners’ chain and slapped a woodcutting ax into his hand. He glared at th
e elf. “You could have gotten us killed.”

  “What’s that, shem?” the elf asked, his face a mask of innocence. “These old knife-ears aren’t as sharp as they used to be, and sometimes I hear things wrong.”

  “Go now and cut the trees,” the guard said, pointing to the forest. Myrion saw that other paired prisoners were already at the edge of the wall of green, hacking away. “Work well, and you will eat well.”

  The elf started off, and Myrion stumbled as the chain jerked against his ankle. The elf looked back. “Come on, shem,” he said with a little grin. “Try to keep up.”

  Myrion and the elf found an awkward rhythm after a few strides, keeping pace so that the two legs chained together moved as one. Myrion’s legs were longer than the elf’s, and he had to shorten his steps.

  “You keep running your mouth like that, you’ll get killed,” Myrion said as they made their way across the grass, the chain hissing between them. “You’re still a slave, idiot, only now you’re a slave to beasts that will kill you as soon as look at you.”

  “What would you know about it?” the elf asked. His voice wasn’t friendly anymore, and when Myrion looked over, he saw that the elf was looking ahead at the forest. “You’re no laborer, whatever tunic you wear.”

  Myrion’s breath hitched, and his grip tightened around the ax he carried. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, elf.”

  “Strife,” the elf said.

  “What?”

  “There’s more than one elf around here. Call me Strife. And I know what I’m talking about better than you, I’d wager.” Strife, if that was what he wished to call himself, still wasn’t looking at Myrion, squinting instead into the trees ahead of them. “The loose tunic hides your belly, but those nice rounded forearms say that you haven’t missed many meals, and you keep your head down out of fear, not habit.”

  Myrion jerked his hands back up into his sleeves. “At least I keep my head down at all.” They came to a stop as the grass thickened into waist-high weeds. On either side of them, other pairs of prisoners had already started chopping at the trees, the dull thumps of their clumsy blows echoing through the air. “What kind of stupid knife-ear calls the head guard a bastard?”

  “One who wants to know how much Trade the head guard speaks.” Strife smiled. “Now we know. Enough to talk to us, not enough to get nuance.”

  “What kind of slave talks about nuance?” Myrion snapped.

  Strife stepped to the tree closest to them, a blunt ugly thing whose trunk was so thick that Myrion couldn’t have reached his arms around it. “Guards are watching, shem. Probably want to start chopping.” He stepped to the tree and swung his ax with casual strength, his blade biting into the bark.

  “Myrion, elf. There’s more than one shem around here.” He stepped up, looked at the tree a bit uncertainly, hefted his ax, and swung.

  The blade hit at an angle with a jolt that sent pins and needles up Myrion’s arm, and he winced, dropping his ax. As it thudded into the soft turf, Strife burst out laughing.

  “Now, there’s a man who’s never done a day’s hard work in his life! What were you, Myrion, before you put on those laborer’s clothes to hide from the Qunari? A merchant? A petty noble? A ma—”

  Myrion was moving before he realized, and his fist smacked Strife in the face. The elf stumbled back, his smile gone and his face going red with anger. “Shut your mouth, you damned knife-ear!”

  The smile was back a moment later, though, and the elf sank his ax into the soft turf and clenched his fists. “Why don’t you make me, shem?”

  Myrion came in with another swing, but this time the elf stepped into the blow and caught it on his tucked-up arms. It was like punching a thick rope, and Myrion’s knuckles stung as he tried to step back, then stumbled as the chain reached its limit and nearly tripped him.

  A sudden flash blossomed into pain, and Myrion staggered from a blow he hadn’t even seen coming until it cracked across his face. In the distance, he heard yells and shouts, but then Strife punched him in the gut, and Myrion sank to his knees as the air whooshed out of him.

  “Isn’t that just like Tevinter?” Strife asked, standing over him. From the corner of his eye, Myrion saw that the Qunari guard was approaching, with Bas-taar himself alongside him. “Starting fights you can’t finish. Take away your mages and your slaves and your blood magic, and you’re all soft.”

  The guard put a hand to his blade, but Bas-taar grabbed his hand. He looked at Myrion and smiled, then shook his head.

  “Now, get up and work,” Strife muttered, leaning in.

  Myrion lunged to his feet, ramming his head up and catching the surprised elf in the gut. As Strife staggered back, Myrion punched him again and again. “No slave would talk like that,” he said, breath hitching from effort, as he brought his fists together to smash down on Strife’s head. “Whoever you are, you’re a fraud. And as soon as I tell the guards—”

  Strife’s forearm, lean with long ropy muscle, slapped Myrion’s fists aside, and his other fist hammered Myrion’s chest just below the breastbone, stealing his breath. As he stumbled, Strife caught him by the shoulder and leaned in.

  “And people say I talk too much,” he said, and then his other hand came in with a blow Myrion saw coming but couldn’t do anything about, and the world exploded into light and then darkness.

  As the world slid away, he heard the Qunari laugh.

  * * *

  The Qunari guards had beaten Strife afterward, of course, but it had been a perfunctory beating, to make sure he knew that there’d be more of the same if he talked back or caused more trouble. Later, the guards dragged him and the unconscious Myrion, still chained to him at the ankle, to a makeshift shelter where the prisoners were secured for the night.

  The guards came around with bowls filled with some sort of savory porridge, and Strife shoveled it into his mouth. Beside him, Myrion, finally awake, sniffed at it and grimaced.

  “Not up to your fancy tastes?” Strife asked, shaking his head.

  “Shut up.” Myrion glared at him and then took a bite, chewing more than he needed to with a sour look on his face.

  “That’s the spirit. Eat hearty. You’ve got a full day’s work ahead of you.”

  The shelter was open on one side to let what passed for a breeze flow through and cool down the prisoners. Strife had a good view of the forest in the distance, the greens of the mossy trunks and heavy leaves darkened to black in the dim gray starlight.

  As he ate, a pale white form separated itself from the forest. It was a halla, antlers curling out like Tevinter sabers. It scented the air, one foreleg raised. When it saw Strife looking at it, the halla tapped the ground slowly and deliberately three times.

  Strife shook his head and tapped his leg twice.

  The halla ducked its head down. Then it turned back into the forest, gone as quickly as it had arrived.

  “What was that?”

  Strife looked over at Myrion, whose eyes were narrowed in thought. “What was what?”

  “That deer. It was like you talked to it.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Strife said, smiling and cracking his knuckles. “It was a deer. I shooed it off, so it wouldn’t end up in the porridge.”

  “No, those white ones are…” Myrion thought. “Halla. That’s what the Dalish elves use to pull their wagons.”

  “Is it?” Strife downed another spoonful of the porridge. It wasn’t bad, once you started thinking of it as lukewarm stew after your brothers had already gotten the good parts.

  “You know that’s what it was.” Myrion glared. “Is that what you are? One of those Dalish bandits?”

  “Seems to me,” Strife murmured, putting his bowl down, “if I were chained to one of those Dalish elves, the ones willing to kill any shem who looks at them wrong, I’d watch my mouth, because that Dalish elf might be here secretly, and he’d have to kill anyone who gave him away.”

  Myrion opened his mouth, and then looked up guiltily as t
he guard stopped in front of them.

  “Bowl,” said the guard, a thick Qunari warrior who seemed to be made of scar tissue and knee-skin. “Now.”

  Myrion looked at Strife. Strife raised an eyebrow, curling one hand into a fist where Myrion couldn’t see.

  Myrion passed the bowl to the guard. “Thank you for supper.”

  Strife did the same, head down to hide his grin.

  When the guard had moved to the next chained pair, he looked at Myrion. “‘Thank you for supper’? That how the slaves talked in your manor?”

  “I didn’t—” Myrion caught himself, then glowered. “Threaten me again, and you’ll find my tone quite different.”

  “Don’t worry.” Strife lay back on his pallet, using his arm as a makeshift pillow. “Tomorrow, I’ll be away from here, and you’ll be chained to someone new.”

  “Is that so?” Myrion asked. Strife wasn’t sure whether the man sounded angry or curious. Maybe both.

  “You’ll see.”

  He shut his eyes and went to sleep with the ease of long practice sleeping in uncomfortable places.

  The Qunari came early in the morning to wake them all, and Strife pulled himself up, as did Myrion, who was groaning and whining exactly like a good slave wouldn’t. Whatever he’d been before the Qunari conquered Ventus, it hadn’t involved getting up early.

  “I must speak to Bas-taar,” Strife said when the guard started to unchain them from the main chain-line. “There is other work I should be doing.”

  The guard, a burly Qunari whose face looked like something a Tevinter noble saved for his dogs at the end of the day, stared down at Strife. “You cut the trees.” His hand moved slowly to the cudgel at his waist.

  Strife nodded. “Yes, but Bas-taar will want me to do something else when I speak with him.”

  Myrion was shifting nervously beside him. The little man would already be trotting off with an ax he didn’t know how to use, ready to make some new blisters.

  So would Strife, if he’d been thirty years younger, looking up at a human guard. Hurry along so the guards didn’t notice you, and maybe you’d get through the day without trouble.