The Soft Fall

Table of Contents

Dedication

PROLOGUE

PART I: THE DEMON

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

PART II: THE HUNT

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

PART III: THE WOODS

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

PART IV: THE FALL

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

PART V: THE EMPIRE

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

EPILOGUE

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also from Ellysian Press

About Ellysian Press

THE SOFT FALL

Lunar Siege, Book 1

Marissa Byfield

THE SOFT FALL

Marissa Byfield

www.ellysianpress.com

THE SOFT FALL

© Copyright Marissa Byfield 2019. All rights reserved.

Print ISBN: 978-1-941637-66-1

First Edition, 2019

Editor: Maer Wilson, S. A. Maethyn

Cover Art: M Joseph Murphy

Ebooks/Books are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away, as this is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Dedication

For my love, Patrick,

and for wild women everywhere

PROLOGUE

Ram

Mighty men fall when they dare to rise above the heights of gods.

This is what my father told me, not long before his voice failed him in sickness. I’m not sure I believed him then. Though he sought great heights, and his reign was mighty indeed, it was the sickness that proved to be his downfall.

But my father’s throne remains empty. It is not my place anymore.

I am elsewhere, cloaked in a power that I do not control. I watch my people from afar, but they do not see me. I watch and wait for a lurking shadow to reveal itself so that I may finally meet it.

I watch my empire under the siege of my enemy, but I cannot save it.

Mighty men fall when they dare to rise above the heights of gods, but also when they descend below the depths of the damned – I believe this now.

I am Prince Ramus Baines, and this is the story of how I Fell.

PART I: THE DEMON

Woman to man is either a God or a wolf.

– English proverb

Chapter 1

Red moon, new

Four years after siege

There was no god but Mactus.

Since she’d been small enough to sit on her mother’s knee, Dianna knew this truth. Every summer, from the farmstead overlooking the field, she had watched her father tying sheaves of golden wheat.

He’s cutting the hair of the goddess, her mother would say, but Dianna never quite understood what she’d meant, and the chance to ask was gone.

The pestilence came with the first cold snap. Underneath the snow, it seeped into the soil, sapped roots dry, choked the life from every green thing in the village. The fallow earth bared itself in the thaw.

That summer, in a lingering patch of yellow sweetgrass, Dianna harvested the last crops her family’s farm would ever yield. She dropped the shriveled radishes, ugly and scabbed as diseased hearts, into a wicker basket. She dared not turn from her work.

Ravens hovered over the scaly, sunbaked land, scouting for vermin, prattling in throaty, elegiac couplets. The High Elder had warned that looking a raven in the eye ensured terrible suffering, that the birds were harbingers of demons. Since scores of them cloaked the village in black, their gazes seemed inescapable.

Just beyond Awl-Feth, a craggy mountain range cut the horizon, and Silbarran edged it like a lush green scar. There in the wooded depths, among the pines and sawtooth oaks and creeping scrub, life moved. Dianna heard it in the distant song of migrating finches, smelled it in the rich wet earth every spring.

But nameless and unseen to her, death moved faster yet.

Liam knew its name – perhaps he’d even seen it, once. Her elder brother knew just about everything and had meticulously composed theories for all the rest.

So, she had asked him with her fingers mashed into fists, her throat burning with anguish, and her face too hardened for a child of fourteen: What took her, Liam? What took our mother?

You cannot know, he had said, his voice iron.

Their father forbade her to leave the farm without Liam at her side, mistakenly believing vigilance would put an end to her longing to know. Instead the ache of not knowing swathed her heart like thorned vines, growing sharper by the day.

Since Liam wouldn’t ease her grief with an answer, he placated it with poetry. Dianna recited a particular verse every morning when she stoked the hearth fire and every night when she lay awake with gnawing thoughts. As she turned the sun-warmed earth in her fingers she murmured, the breeze snatching at her words.

And I shall not fear the solitary fate of death,

For as surely as we are born,

the weight of death grows inside us all.

But while there grows one true death—

A flicker of black caught her eye, and her heartbeat vaulted. A raven skimmed low on the wind, descending like a shadow opposite her.

Dianna’s breath quickened. She focused on her blackened fingers, working the delicate roots out of the dirt. The raven rummaged and prodded the earth for insects, its body gleaming in the sun, sleek as obsidian.

But while there grows one true death,

lives upon lives are collapsed within us,

sleeping, folded as wings .

At last, she glanced at the raven. It stared at her, its head turning in curiosity, and gave a guttural rasp.

Dianna leapt backward, overturning her basket. The radishes spilled and spun away like red-painted tops.

Fly away, she murmured, squeezing her eyes shut. Fly away.

The bird’s claws scrabbled faintly in the earth. She could still sense its beady gaze upon her.

I’m not afraid of you, she said, louder now, but her voice trembled.

The world around her faded to the drone of cicadas, punctuated by the steady drum of Liam’s forging hammer from the barn. Taking a breath, Dianna tasted ash on the air. Sweat rolled from her hairline into her eyes as she blinked, scanning the crest of the hill.

At the heart of the village, the stone spires of the cathedral pierced the skyline like fanged jaws. Awl-Feth had been a thriving locality of the empire many years ago, its people prospering with the ebb and flow of goods along interwoven trade routes – but those times had long since passed. The opulent cathedral remained as though a memorial, a last bastion, a sanctuary. There, under its magnificent vaulted ceilings, Awl-Fethans believed their livelihood could truly be saved.

There, a black tongue of smoke had begun to rise.

Liam, Dianna said aside, almost a question. Her eyes did not break from the distant haze, dark fear twisting uneasily within her. There’s a fire, Liam.

The breeze stirred again. A radish toppled down the hillside and vanished among the rocks.

Liam! Dianna cried out again, but the sound of her brother’s hammer smothered his name.

Below the hillside, she picked out the shapes of villagers weaving among the thatched roofs of mud huts, urging one another on, fervor in their shouts. A bewildering exchange:

Is it the Caenani?

No – he’s burning them!

Crumbling the earth from her hands, Dianna stole a glance at the barn. Its weather-beaten walls reverberated with the force of the hammer’s strike.

The decision gripped her as she turned to face the hill’s bare slope, rocked forward on her feet, and began to run.

The lone raven took flight in a billow of black as Dianna descended, deerskin boots beating clouds of dust in her wake. Her hair came unloosed from its coil and flagged bright in the sun, long and wild.

Awl-Feth reeled by in a smudge of dry sagebrush, brown moorgrass, gnarled trees. As the ground leveled, she slowed to catch her breath. Already her nerves were simmering beneath her skin.

She turned to face the hill, hair whipping in her eyes, half-expecting to see Liam racing down after her. But his hammer struck on with the same harsh cadence. As a flurry of villagers hastened toward the cathedral, panicked voices mingling, Dianna followed close as a shadow.

Smoke curled over the windows of the cathedral facades. Inlaid with mottled stained glass, they glittered like jewels in the sun. A throng of villagers one hundredfold had gathered at the foot of the steps like bees to the honeycomb. A tall, thin man in deep scarlet robes stood before them.

The High Elder’s features – coal-dark eyes and a strong aquiline nose – commanded respect. He was reading a passage aloud and, though middle-aged and gray-bearded, he dictated with a force befitting a man in his prime.

Though I have tested ye with dearth, with pestilence, with fiendish beasts unto thy land, he cried out, ye who have not forsaken me shall rise up from the clay as the budding flower, to replenish thy losses, spread thy seeds, and thrive in the light of glory. For only when thy land has been razed and thy faithless have perished can ye begin again in the eternal life.’ Scripture Twelve, Verse 118. This is the will of Mactus—

Dianna had reached the edges of the crowd, feeling small amid the shuffling feet and scattered, low conversations. One man had begun speaking in strange, wild tongues.

Excuse me, she murmured, pushing through the gaps between bodies, avoiding elbows, eliciting grunts of irritation. Excuse me—

The High Elder’s dark eyes swept over the faces of the villagers. Unsmiling, he raised his palms in front of him, arms draped in scarlet sleeves as though dripping with blood.

My flock, he bellowed out over the mass. Today we cast out a great wickedness from our village. Silbarran has corrupted their souls and blackened their hearts. They shall walk among us no more.

An eruption of voices – prayers for justice, mutterings of shock and dismay – welled forth. Many made the blessing of Mactus, kissing the backs of their fists, then opening their palms to the ground below them.

Excuse me— Dianna gasped, straining to glimpse the front, her skinny limbs twisting clumsily through the pressing heat of the crowd.

And then she saw them.

Beneath the cloth that bound their mouths, the women shared similar features, as if they could be sisters. They were tied to twin stakes close together, and their fingers were tightly entwined. Their feet were bare upon a ground piled with dry wood. A row of men in buckskin hunting clothes stood before them, carrying smoldering torches.

Dianna’s heart clenched like a fist. Her stomach lurched.

He’s burning them.

No, she said, but her own voice was feeble in the turmoil, a pebble in a rushing river.

Her gaze wheeled over the faces of the crowd, clapping upon a small knot of young men Liam’s age. Their black-banded sleeves designated them as scouts training for the hunt. She watched their arms swing back and forth as they pitched stones.

The women bound to the stakes recoiled with each strike. Dianna flinched with them.

Let this not be a cause for alarm, the High Elder cut across the clamor, raising his hands high as if in praise. A respectful silence fell, hard as an axe to timber. Let this be a call to action.

The row of hunters began to approach the women, torches raised above their heads.

Honor His will, and He shall spare you, the High Elder called out, even as his gaunt features spared no empathy. Women and children must not set foot in Silbarran. Men must ready their weapons and defend our village to the last breath. Let us pray.

Dianna turned to the adult nearest her, a grim-faced man who she reasoned must have a family of his own.

Do something, she pleaded.

The man looked at her, but not with pity or distress. He looked at her as if she knew nothing.

Dianna watched helplessly as the hunters lowered their torches. The fire crackled as it crept over the woodpile.

Most holy Mactus, may your will bless and keep the people of Awl-Feth. Keep our families fed as you feed our souls, the High Elder began.

Struggling against her bonds, one of the women began to scream.

Most holy Mactus, may the poisonous blight borne of the Baines dynasty be severed from the vine, the High Elder continued.

The smoke swelled monstrously as the flames rose. The screams of the women pitched higher, grew wilder, sharp as animal teeth. Dianna felt their bite sinking to the bone, numbing as death itself. The bitter stench of burning hair and flesh mingled with wood smoke.

Her eyes swept over the crowd, the rows of heads bent in prayer. Mothers cradled swathed babies to their breasts, hushing their cries. One man recited the orison with purpose in each word, his upturned palms flat and balanced, as though holding an invisible weight in each.

She recognized his daughter, Cathrin, frozen in horror beside him. Behind a cascade of dark curls, the girl cupped her hands over her mouth, stifling her sobs.

Most holy Mactus, may you purge this evil from our village. The High Elder spoke louder, as the growing flames spit bursting embers and thrashed in the summer wind. May we remain servants and foot-soldiers of your holy order. May it carry us into the dawning of a new empire. Praise be.

Praise be, the susurrus of a hundred voices echoed all around Dianna, making the small hairs prickle on her skin.

A wall of fire veiled its victims entirely. The intense blaze shimmered in the thick air, and Dianna thought she could still see faint movement within it: a twitch of a limb, or a jerk of the head. But it was only the relentless, consuming flames that moved over the women’s still bodies, and only the memory of their screams stung her ears.

They had struggled so little in the grip of their doom.

After a few moments, the crowd began to disperse. Dianna willed her feet to bear her away from the sweltering place, but the ground seemed to hold her there. Her eyes followed the tumble of ashes in the air, falling and catching, sticking to her sweat-laced skin.

From the edge of the crowd, a young man’s piercing gaze found her. It was as if Dianna could sense her tormenter watching before she saw him too.

You’re a lucky rabbit, aren’t you? he said. His voice was cool and smooth as the draw of a hunting blade.

Dianna ignored him, staring ahead at the columns of smoke.

Your mother, he continued. The shepherdess. She should have known better than to venture into Silbarran alone.

Dianna kept her voice low and even. Leave me be, Actaen.

Actaen instead crept close enough to touch her. He moved with a lazy, liquid arrogance, looming at least a head taller.

But you should feel lucky that they never found her. That she didn’t come back, he said, gesturing at the burning pillars, keeping his eyes on her. This is what happens to women who abandon the village. Never seen a Judgment before, have you? The Lead Hunter wouldn’t want his innocent daughter bearing witness to such unsavory spectacles, would he?

I said leave me be.

Actaen smiled wolfishly. Curled a hand around the nape of her neck, as if she were ripe fruit to pluck from a tree. His calloused fingers slid, then settled in the grooves of her spine, making her shiver with revulsion.

Innocent Dianna. Her name dragged slow and soft on his tongue as he savored its sound. I can’t leave you any more than you can leave me.

Dianna wasn’t sure what compelled her to say anything in defense. It would have been easier to remain stone-faced. If she could be cold, refuse to deign to his goading, he might give up at last.

But his taunt about her mother cut deep as steel to flesh, and she wanted to hurt him the same way. To scare him.

From the corner of her eye, she glared at him.

I’ll bite you, she said.

Actaen’s eyes widened. The smirk at his lips broke into riotous laughter, tapering only when Dianna began pulling away.

Snaring her by the arm, he leaned in close and breathed in her scent. His own was rotten leather, the sharp tang of salt and rust.

Not if I bite you first, little rabbit, he murmured, his words lingering hot on her neck. You look good enough to eat, and I’ve half a mind to trap you someday.

Dianna wrenched herself away from him, even as another hand caught fast to her wrist, turning her on the spot. Her brother’s flushed face appeared haloed in sun, behind spectacles glinting rose-gold.

You shouldn’t have come here, Dianna, he said through gritted teeth.

Actaen studied Liam, sizing him up.

Made your first kill yet, Aergyris? he asked, catching the glances of a few fellow scouts.

Liam pulled Dianna to his side. I’ve more important duties than hunting.

The black sheep thinks he’s smarter than us, Actaen said, his voice rising. The other scouts turned to listen in, their interest in the execution waning. With his shiny scholar-eyes.

One sidled up to Actaen, ribbing him. You haven’t heard, then? Lead Hunter’s son ain’t ever fired a crossbow!

The man’s got virgin hands, added another.

A howling torrent of laughter broke among them. Fury welled in Dianna’s throat.

He makes your crossbows, you dim— she began, but Liam’s hand tightened upon her wrist as he looked down at her, his green eyes steady and apollonian.

Don’t, he said.

But her insolence had already provoked a clamor of indignation amongst them. Actaen only stared at a tendril of Dianna’s hair flashing white-gold across her cheek. He licked his lips.

Teach your little sister to hold her treacherous tongue, he warned Liam. The demons will come running for her yet.

Liam turned away at once, taking Dianna’s arm, the scouts’ insults at his back. Dianna clung to him as they jostled through the crowd. He wouldn’t tell their father about this, she knew. He wouldn’t dare, because she’d been under his watch.

But he hadn’t reprimanded her, either.

Dianna squinted at his profile in the sunlight. His back was ramrod straight, and a muscle quivered in his jaw.

What did they mean by ‘demons,’ Liam? she pressed.

Liam pretended not to hear her among the chatter and mumbled prayers, wagging his head. His grip was rough and protective.

What did they mean? she repeated, desperate.

It’s all crock and horseshit, Liam muttered.

What demons?

Forget it.

The two broke free from the raucous mass, and Dianna sucked in a heavy breath of fresh air. But she still tasted an echo of flesh and smoke in her mouth. The smell of death always lingered, just like the bones of the last goats sacrificed for Mactus, fertility god, cultivator of land and people. The barren, yawning village meant they had died for nothing.

A truth, hard and weighty, settled in her stomach, and she trembled. Liam’s hand fell away.

Dianna, he began, faltering. His stare was filled with knowing.

There is no Mactus, Liam, she said under her breath, hot tears pricking her eyes, and the words released her, as though her body was lifting and spiraling away into the ether with the smoke. There is no Mactus.

Chapter 2

Cold moon, waning

Two weeks after siege

Against a desolate, white winter, a ravening mouth of jagged teeth had opened.

The leafless trees had been cut down, then staked into the earth by the sweat and struggle of human labor, forming a barricade. Palisades, the commander had called them. Their gnarled, naked trunks stood apart from the living: the lush forest looming just beyond the sloping grade and snow-filled ditches of the encampment.

Within the palisades, rows of crude leather tents shuddered and flapped in a stiff breeze. Thirty had been pitched in total, aside from the larger commander’s tent, the lictors’ quarters, and a partitioned row of wooden barracks called the reformatory.

A group of boys had filed neatly alongside it, still and silent. Snowflakes settled in their hair and eyelashes. The commander paced opposite them, stopping beside a great, craggy stone half as tall as he. He brushed snow from it with a gloved hand.

This is the killing stone, he said darkly, watching the boys as if daring them to break formation. Read it.

Obediently, each of the children recited the engraving upon the stone. All but one – a waifish boy, dressed in a tunic made out of a tattered grain sack, his pale limbs gangling against its shapeless form.

All night, in the cold void of the encampment, the boy had listened to the quiet scraping of steel blade against stone and the labored breathing of the Valtan man who had toiled at his futile composition. The bleak light of dawn cast the bloodstained letters in sharp relief:

If a man shields his bloodkind from wickedness in the name of Mactus,

he shall be marked bloodkind of Mactus.

The boy’s luminous blue eyes stared from beneath a thatch of mussed, jet black hair, but the words meant nothing to him.

Pausing mid-stride, the commander slowly doubled back. The boy looked downward as the others’ recitation faded to silence.

Read it, the commander repeated.

I can’t, the boy said.

The commander’s brow knit. He stooped, bringing his face level to the one who dared to disobey his order. His voice came hot and spitting.

Read. It.

The boy’s murmur was hollow, as if the breath had been kicked from his lungs.

I can’t read.

The commander seized him by the hair.

Think yourself above my orders, little bastard? he demanded, jerking a finger in the direction of the killing stone. Think this amusing, this blasphemy?

No, sir, the boy gasped. No, I—

The commander’s rough-hewn gloves rasped at his nape, shaking him.

You Valtans think yourselves equal to Mactus? To the god himself?

A voice carried across the encampment, low and strong: Commander Havril.

The commander gave a start, and his grip fell away. Slowly, he turned around.

The speaker approached with an arresting grace, smooth and powerful as a sidewinder, flanked by lictors outfitted with halberds. He wore a heavy fox-fur cloak and lavish silks in the bronze and oxblood colors of Caenan, a striking figure in the dingy encampment.

The commander swept into a firm salute.

Legate Tryntus, he returned, as the Legate of Caenan’s piercing gaze regarded him.

Something in the slant of the legate’s brow and the set of his mouth terrified the commander. Not because of what was there, but precisely what wasn’t: his face could have sooner been carved from stone than shaped from living flesh, betraying no emotion.

Were you inducting my apprentices, Commander? the legate asked. You know that is my responsibility.

Yes, sir. Teaching a lesson. It will not happen again.

At ease, the legate ordered him, turning askance to survey his legion’s handiwork: the palisades driven deep into Valtan soil, the killing stone that had tasted Valtan blood. He appeared satisfied enough. Clearly you aren’t aware of what occurred here in the dawning hour.

No, sir, the commander confirmed. I was on watch with the fifth sentry.

Perhaps the boys should care to explain to you. The legate’s stare swept over the procession and settled on one of the older adolescents. You, boy. What is your surname?

The boy tensed, doffing his cap and dipping his head.

Skintson, sir, he said, breath frosting the air.

And the Valtan man brought here last night, bound to that post over there. What was his surname?

De . . . Demetriou.

The legate nodded. Demetriou had something with him, didn’t he? Something he shouldn’t have had.

A knife, sir. He smuggled it.

Demetriou had a knife, repeated the legate, taking a step forth to examine the killing stone, stroking its coarse surface. Which he used to carve his own epitaph here, in the dark of the night. And what did he proceed to do with the knife? He looked at another boy pointedly. Your surname?

Bracken, sir. He . . . the boy began, but trailed off, as though forcing himself to remember the nightmarish scene. He tried to kill himself, sir.

How?

With . . . with the knife, sir.

The legate’s monochrome gaze glittered as he turned to the smallest boy, who was pale as a silkworm, shock of hair gummed to his brow with sweat.

Your surname.

The boy gaped, terror-stricken, at the legate’s tall, draped figure. An older boy nudged him.

Itsip, the smaller boy whispered.

Itsip, why don’t you tell me how Demetriou tried to kill himself.

He . . . he cut . . .

But the boy couldn’t finish, and instead held his palms out, tears prickling his eyes.

And did Demetriou die quickly?

Trembling, the boy shook his head, blotchy face streaming.

He bled to death, didn’t he?

That was the phrase he used, but they had all seen it happen, had been awakened by the screams, had heard the Caenani soldiers come running. The soldiers stood mocking Demetriou as he begged for the mercy of Mactus in his final breaths. They called him a worthless Valtan. They beat him against the killing stone and dragged his body to the pyre.

His bones lay cold in the snow-choked coals, but his ashes still lingered on the air.

The legate straightened, addressing the boys collectively as Itsip mopped his nose on his ragged shirtsleeve.

‘If a man shields his bloodkind from wickedness,’ read the legate. Demetriou wrote this particular scripture because he had a family, you see, and there are no other Demetrious in this encampment. He smuggled them out of Valta like he smuggled in his knife. That is why he was being reformed. He thought himself a hero, a martyr. He thought himself clever. He paused, and his voice tempered until it was as soft as wings on air. But do you know what I think? I think, in your deepest nature, you are all animals. You are meant to function beneath a master. And you will learn, very quickly, that there is nothing heroic or clever about a dead Valtan.

A delicate snowfall laced the space between white sky and white earth, clean as untouched canvas but for the open jaws of palisades striping the horizon.

I see Caenani features in some of you, said the legate. "Tainted with the blood of Valtans. Wasted. But we can make you serve a purpose, more than you ever had in this empire.

You have been here, how long? A day? He paused. We have positioned fourteen Caenani encampments across Valta in only a fortnight. Each of them filled with your kind, working themselves to the bone. Hard, character-building work. I hand-select my workers for their skills. What is your skill, Skintson?

The boy swallowed. I suppose I’m strong, sir.

You shall move stones. A brush of wind caught the legate’s cloak in a billowing crimson flare. His hawkish eyes tightened, ensnaring his next quarry. And you, Bracken?

Bracken squared his shoulders and declared, I’m strong too, sir. I can lift my own weight.

You shall dig trenches.

Murmurings among the boys bubbled forth, each growing more determined to prove himself.

I can cut wood— one cried out in a reedy voice.

I can catch rabbits, one insisted with an agitated glance all around him. I can make traps—

Some of the younger boys looked uneasily aside, knowing that they could offer little.

The legate paced opposite the row of boys, stopping to face the skinny, black-haired boy in the peculiar, grain sack tunic.

You.

The boy shrank in cold shock at the sudden acknowledgment.

Tell me, said the legate. What is your surname?

Beneath a snarl of black hair, the boy’s intense blue eyes met the legate’s