Shadows of Sacrifice

Roderick Foley’s cries wouldn’t stop the soldiers from seizing the life-saving medicine. None of the citizens’ protests would. He could only pray his wife’s medicine would remain. Crate by crate, the apothecaries emptied. It was the fifth one Roderick had seen stripped of its supplies. Chain mailed bodies packed Lochton’s narrow streets. No matter where he looked, they were there. “Back with you, back!” They were the only words the soldiers knew. Anything else, they spoke with their fists.

Roderick clawed at the shuffling shoulders of the citizens, his efforts met with growls and cusses. He needed a glimpse of the confiscated drugs. What if he saw them take Moira’s medicine? The thought tightened his throat. Fingers toyed with the last few coppers in his pocket. He’d pay for what she needed. He always paid. But the chance to do so could be stolen from him. Please don’t take it all.

The faces of the soldiers were as firm as their stance, and too red with frustration for any reasoned words. They had their orders. It was a necessary sacrifice so Lochton could win their war, King Erald Tannenbay had told the people. But the war had no end in sight, and a beginning that no living man could recall.

Roderick followed the line of protests, knowing they’d lead to the king’s castle. He just had to be sure Moira’s medication would still be available. If they took it all… it didn’t bear thinking about. Living in that grotty city without his wife; raising his children without their mother. His eyes already felt heavy. Tears readied, but he fought to keep them away. He couldn’t shake the inevitability of it all.

The rain grew stronger, further darkening the greyness of Lochton. Roderick’s thin cotton shirt and loose trousers were no barrier to the cold wetness. Even more soldiers occupied the next street. More citizens too, their cries tinged with bitterness. “This isn’t our war,” he heard one shout, hurrying Roderick’s heart rate. “He’s hurting us more than them!” yelled another.

Teeth of the Lochtonian soldiers gnashed, and spit sprayed from their mouths. “We’ll make you get back,” said one, prodding his axe handle into the chest of a protester. “I’ll cut you down right here,” said another, twisting Roderick’s gut into a knot. “The war effort demands it!” The rain blackened the navy doublets of the soldiers and gave a menacing sheen to the otherwise rusty blades of their axes. If violence began, the citizens wouldn’t win. Lochton people never did. It would surely be worse outside the castle, but he needed to see – he at least had to do that for Moira. She deserved some strength from him.

Citizens outnumbered soldiers now. The blacks, greys, and browns of their ragged clothes converged upon the mailed men. The human barrier remained, but Roderick knew it wouldn’t hold for long. Tepid sweat met biting rainwater on his brow. Gaps between the soldiers cracked open. He saw the crates, filled to the brim with medicine that would no longer be on sale in the apothecaries. The soldiers would get them now. The protesters noticed the crates too. It may have been their last chance. Whether they lived or died depended on those drugs, and whether they seized the opportunity. It only took one. A middle-aged man lunged headfirst through the metal curtains. Another dived into a different opening, then another. The soldiers flailed. They cracked axe handles onto spines and embedded boots into ribs with meaty thumps. Roderick struggled to swallow when the screams started. Pained cries and furious yells pounded his eardrums. He could hear nothing else. The soldiers’ line was pushed back and staggered, but the crates remained untouched. Between legs, gloved hands of soldiers crushed heads into the wet cobbles. They thrust the arms of those trying to steal behind their own backs and shackled their wrists. Roderick no longer saw rage on their muddied faces, only desperation. His legs quivered at the thought of making a move for the crates. He worked hard as a stone miner for his coppers; he didn’t need to commit a crime. Staying good despite all the bad around him; that was strength, he told himself.

Two soldiers parted to tackle the swarm, revealing a crate between them. Vials peeked over the edge, and Roderick’s heart jolted. He recognised the maroon liquid – Moira’s medicine. Did they have it all? Rainwater spewed from his lips with every sharp breath. The other protesters were yet to see the unguarded crate. The soldiers were yet to turn back to it. Could he snatch the vials? His eyes darted back and forth. It could make Moira better. An overwhelming heat burned through his skin. They were right there, but his legs froze. The soldiers returned and the window closed. His head and shoulders drooped, and his heart plummeted so fast it knocked him sick. He no longer felt strong for remaining good.

A citizen’s face slammed against the apothecary wall, his cheek grating brick and painting it red. As the soldier bound his arms behind his back, Roderick knew that could’ve been him. A cold Lochton cell lay ahead of that man, but for Roderick, the desperate eyes of his dying wife awaited. The defeated look she’d have when he returned with empty hands and pockets – he may have preferred the cell.

Roderick pulled himself away. He continued down the street, still looking at every crate he could. Maybe that wasn’t all of it. The protests became louder. A piercing shriek or a booming threat intermittently disturbed the rising rumble of discontent. The packs grew tighter. They pulsed down every street like arteries, snaking from the heart that would be the castle. Roderick found his steps short and hurried, stumbling over misshapen cobbles as he navigated the streets.

“We’re all sick because of the king!” a woman screamed, not a foot from Roderick’s ear, causing his heart to leap and judder. “He’s sacrificin’ us for his war!”

King Erald was to blame, Roderick reminded himself. The pointless conflict with the North had plunged Lochton into poverty. Yes, Roderick repeated over and over – it was the king’s doing. A man collided with Roderick’s shoulder, rushing the opposite way. He hunched, concealing vials of medicine in his grey cloak. The weight of shame filled Roderick’s insides again. The king may have been hurting them, but it was Roderick’s inaction that was letting Moira die.

He reached the Lochton castle. There were so many people; too many for one city to feed and keep healthy. Everyone was poor. It was a morsel of comfort to see it wasn’t all Roderick’s fault. Ahead of the human mass: a filthy moat and a line of interlocked, axe-wielding soldiers.

“I won’t live through the week!” one woman yelled, pain in her voice.

Roderick’s wide eyes shot to her.

“The king must help us!”

Roderick’s neck snapped the other way.

“You need t’ leave us with somethin’!”

Roderick’s head swivelled this way and that, unsure what to look at, where to stand, and what to do. The crowd stomped. They threw their arms at the dark castle as if launching something. They could hurl only desperate pleas.

“You tell my daughter why her pain won’t go away!” yelled a mother in rags, clutching a crying child.

“Stop hidin’ in there!”

The pack sucked in and edged closer to the moat. The wall of blue soldiers fidgeted, some taking a cautious step backwards. Others planted their feet, leaned forward into the crowd, and yelled for them to hold. The castle behind stayed quiet – King Erald Tannenbay wouldn’t be drawn out.

Roderick tried to shout, but his lips quivered uncontrollably. His eyes felt on the brink of tears, and speaking may have just released them. What could a stone miner from the poor district of Brownmere say, anyway? Stomp. It deafened him to anything else. Stomp. The soldiers at the front tussled with the protesters, both sides becoming dangerously livelier. Roderick looked again at the motionless castle – grey stone walls covered by a sodden blue roof. He picked out a window and imagined King Erald sitting on the other side. He tried to shout again. “My wife…” It was no louder than a whisper, as if using the last of his breath. Moira deserved a husband who’d fight for her. Watching others scream for their families made him feel like less of a man. He’d always said he would kill for his wife and children, but even he couldn’t believe that now.

Stomp. Without realising, Roderick was within the masses. Had more joined, or had he blindly wandered in? He couldn’t even remember; his head was so dizzy, his focus blurred. More soldiers barrelled toward the protests with axes raised, barking like a pack of wild dogs in helms and mail. They fortified the wall of guards, pushing back at the citizens with the handles of their weapons. The protests bubbled like water coming to the boil, and they trapped Roderick, simmering in the middle. He tugged at his bushy brown beard, looking around with wide, urgent eyes. The people on either side were consumed; their desperate needs had erased all rational thought. None of them showed any signs of retreat, and the king wasn’t coming to answer them. An axe handle cracked a citizen’s jaw. The pack swarmed the soldier holding it. Like being caught in a wave, the crowd carried Roderick forward. Stomp. His heart thrashed just as loud. Thud, thud, thud. He had to get out. He turned from the castle and clambered through the people, fighting against the current. Bodies intertwined like a fence. His vision blackened. So much rage surrounded him. Everything closed in, compressing his skull, crushing his legs, collapsing his chest. The more he scrambled, the tighter it became. There were just so many people. He kept his head down and pushed – the pack had to end at some point. Finally, he burst out of the back and gasped for air, then rushed down a nearby alley, his breaths still heavy.

Roderick walked through Brownmere, the cramped alleys of crumbling stone homes resembling many other districts in Lochton. There were no cobbled streets in Brownmere, though – Roderick squelched through sloppy mud and deep puddles instead. He did so with a deliberate slowness, dreading what he’d see when he made it home. The kids would’ve been by Moira’s bedside all day while he mined. They would’ve tried to keep her comfortable. They would’ve told her that Papa was coming, and that he’d have medicine. He wanted to curl up in the mud. The sorrow within was too heavy.

He reached his house. Gaping holes in the stone robbed his family of privacy and warmth. The wooden roof was half black, rotten from years of rainfall.

“Papa,” came the soft voice of little Rylee as the door creaked open. “Did you get some?” Her eyes met his. They were large and watered.

Roderick sighed and placed his hands on the dainty shoulders of his six-year-old daughter. Her scruffy brown hair looked like her pa’s beard. “Not today, Ry. Perhaps tomorrow.” He felt sick just saying it.

“She ain’t good, Papa.” Tears trickled down Rylee’s freckled cheeks.

He squeezed her, his eyes shutting just as tightly as his grip. He closed the door, dulling the rainfall and trapping the musty linger of the decaying roof. At least two or three more pans lay on the floor than when he left that morning, new leaks pattering inside. As he walked across the bare room, a whistling draught pimpled his arms. He stepped across a crimson rug, the only colour in the home, which lay ragged by a fireplace only managing a paltry flicker of orange. He drew back a curtain that led to a smaller room.

Roderick immediately caught the hopeful eyes of his nine-year-old son, Matfrid, perched on a stool holding the frail white hand of his mother. She lay in darkness, wheezing with every breath, covered by only a thin discoloured sheet. Her eyelids laboured to part slightly, and a small smile came across her withered face. “My love,” she said. “I missed you.”

Roderick’s heart sank. He’d never felt more like a failure. He stroked Matfrid’s thick hair, trying to find the strength to look his wife in the eye. When he did, all he could do was shake his head.

“It’s fine.” She closed her eyes once again. “You’ve done all you can.”

Roderick held back tears. He knew that wasn’t true.

“I can become a real letter runner, or even a goods carrier,” Matfrid said. Freckles dotted his cheeks, much like his sister. “They pay good coppers for that.”

“They won’t let you run letters out of the city ’til you’re much older, Mat,” Roderick replied. He also knew that the dangers of delivering letters and packages across the Isle weren’t something Moira would want on her mind.

“Please, Mat,” his ma said, “go take care of your sister.” Matfrid kissed Moira on the forehead and left her bedside, passing through the grubby curtain.

Roderick took his place on the stool and held his wife’s hand. It was icy and fragile. He remembered when her face used to be creased with laughter rather than scarred from boils. Her eyes, now a pale grey, used to be as blue as the sea. She had made that stone shack feel like a palace – a proper home for Rylee and Matfrid to be born into. Now, whatever demon had infected her, it had stripped it all away, leaving just a shell. But her resolve still lived. Most would’ve given up by now, succumbed to the agony and passed to the Kingdom Beyond. Moira fought. She did it for Roderick, and for Rylee and Matfrid. What was he doing in return? Roderick asked himself. He took a gulp and tried to steady his voice. “With the mining, and the kids’ work, I ought t’ be able t’ get you a dose within a fortnight.”

Moira slowly brought her other hand over and placed it on top of Roderick’s, barely enough strength to show she understood. If she made it two weeks, she surely wouldn’t survive another such wait. She pulled her hands away and turned towards the mouldy wall, a pained grimace plaguing her face. She clutched the sheet and held it as tight as she could. Roderick’s head dropped as he looked back towards the curtain. He saw his kids huddled by the fading embers. He closed his eyes, hoping the blackness would stop the hollow sadness within. But instead, his mind pestered him. What more can I do for her? Work longer and harder? There are not enough hours. Ask the kids to work more? They’re already pushed to their limits, and both so young. Steal? I couldn’t do it when the crate lay open in front of me. But I need to do something. Anything.

Moira smiled at him. The cloth on her head was gone, and her long, twinkly brunette hair waved in the breeze. The sun turned her skin a beautiful shade of pink, and she laughed… my, did she laugh. It was child-like, and infectious. Roderick’s entire being felt fuzzy. Their own little pocket of paradise in a world of grey, she called the park. And it really was. The grass tickled Roderick’s bare feet with a warmness. The flowers possessed more colour than all Lochton combined – vibrant blues, purples, yellows, reds, whites. They formed the most majestic mosaic of beauty behind Moira. Her long eyelashes gently came down, she puckered those shiny lips of hers, and she leaned in.

“Papa, wake up! Papa! Papa, please!”

Roderick’s eyes shot open. Rylee shook him vigorously, her freckled face soaked and terrified.

“Papa, help her!”

Moira’s body convulsed. Her eyes were open but had rolled to show only white. Her jaw was clamped, and dark veins shot down her white neck. The bed bounced up and down, the metal legs clanging against the ground over and over. Matfrid clutched her arm, trying to stop the frenzied shudders.

Roderick leapt to the bedside. “Let me in, Mat.” His stomach twisted; he wanted to be sick, but he had to act. He massaged his wife’s shoulders, but her jolts were so violent. Bang, bang, screamed the bed.

“Pa, what’s happenin’?” Matfrid cried.

“Mama,” Rylee sobbed.

“Just… hold on…” Roderick rolled Moira onto her side. His fingers went between her ribs, farther than they ought to go. They felt like frail twigs in a hurricane, moments away from snapping. “The pillow, Ry, please.”

“Is she hurt?”

“Rylee, please, the pillow!” Moira’s spine thudded against Roderick’s palms as the bed banged more.

Rylee rushed to her father with the pillow. “Please don’t go, Mama.”

Roderick lifted Moira’s head, her neck so stiff it would barely move, and slid the pillow underneath. “Come on, Moira,” he mumbled under his breath, feeling his own body tremble.

“Pa?”

Roderick turned to the kids. Their eyes were red from crying. “She’ll get through this.” He stroked his wife as if taming a wild beast within her. “Please, Moira, I need you.” Her arms and legs went limp, only her head and back offering a few final judders. Then they stopped too. The bed no longer clattered the floor. Moira was still.

“Is she…?”

Roderick placed his hand next to his wife’s mouth. He pleaded for it – just a trickle of warm air, please. He watched for a wisp of a cloud. Nothing. He felt for a pulse. Nothing. “Please, Moira. I’ll do anything.”

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