S. A. Grove

Rafael and his sons sparred. Armonde leaned against one of the thin columns that formed the outer edge of the cloister, and Jaxon came at him with a wooden training sword. The blade tacked against Rafael’s own as Jaxon worked through a routine Rafael had taught him, after which they switched and Rafael took the offense, and so it went in rhythm until Jaxon’s movements began to wane, and Rafael took the advantage.

Jaxon collapsed against the dying oak that sprouted in the midst of the courtyard. “Always look to your own defense first,” he preempted Rafael’s usual lecture. “And once you’ve seen to yourself…”

“Defend those around you,” Lily picked up where her brother left off. The girl was perched up in the branches of the oak, laying with her limbs dangling and her face turned toward the coast. Dunegrass rippled in the evening breeze out there, beyond the walls of the old abbey in which they’d taken refuge.

Armonde finished: “Only then should you go on the offensive.” They had heard it often enough, Rafael knew, but a little repetition never hurt. What happened when the plagues that ripped across the North reached their little corner of the Strand? They would need to remember then, and the repetition would have been worth it.

As a fisherman, the lighthouse at the far end of the Strand had saved Rafael’s life countless times–or at least saved his boat. In the heavy mists of fall mornings and the sudden storms of summer, the lighthouse had always been a kind of sanctuary for him. So it was that when plagues spread across the North, Rafael took his sons and his daughter and hid away in the old abbey with a lighthouse for its crown. The keeper had been alive then, but when Rafael appeared at the gate, he’d handed over keys and gone in search of his own kith and kin. For a while after that, Rafael kept the great brazier at the height of the round tower burning. As time wore on and the plague settled in, though, blazes dwindled to flames, flames faded to embers, and embers cooled into ash.

“Rafa,” Armonde called from the gatehouse once. “Do you think it’s worth going out there?” the boy asked when his father came close.

“What for?”

“People,” Armonde replied. “We’ve got more than enough beds, and there might be someone out there that needs one.”

Rafael thought for a moment, chewing on the thought, but shook his head. “Always look to your own defense first,” he echoed his own father’s old wisdom. “We aren’t safe just yet. Your grandpa used to say that.”

“The one I’m named after?”

Rafael nodded. “Back when we lived in Acalane, he’d tell me all the time. It was that readiness that kept us alive back then–the same readiness will keep us safe now.”

He had that conversation often enough in the intervening months that his sons stopped asking. Lily still would, from time to time, though it was more of a look and less of a conversation. She would perch up in that tree and wait and watch. At the close of the day, she would look down at her father with a certain sorrow in her eyes.

So it was that when a knock came on the great wooden door of the abbey, Rafael’s children looked to him in silence. Waves crashed against the rock all around them, but cutting through the unending cascade came the sharp sound of a mailed fist beating against an iron-braced door.

Armonde swallowed a bit of saltfish and spoke up. “We cannot pretend we are not here.”

Rafael had twisted away from his scant meal and toward the door. From where he sat in the base of the tower, the gate was the farthest point from him, and yet he felt smothered, like there was not room enough, like the mailed fist beat upon the tower door, not the far gate. “We don’t know who they are,” Rafael said. “For all we know, they are plagued and violent.”

“For all we know, he is one man with his children,” Lily said.

Rafael studied his daughter, then set his fish on the cold plate in the middle of them all. “I will go and speak with–whoever this is. Stay here; stay quiet.”

He pushed open the tower door and strode across the dark main hall, its columns looming about him. The far doors opened to the cloister with its old oak like a wooden kraken spreading across the sky. Beyond the bare tentacles of the tree, the gatehouse loomed, its treasure thumping away under the mailed fist of some plague-ridden intruder.

Rafael strayed up atop the gatehouse and looked down. A cluster of people made camp across his bridge, just beyond the reach of the tide. The thumping man had given up, and now strolled back across Rafael’s bridge to join his camp.

“Oi!” Rafael called. If they thought the place empty, they’d break down his gates. He couldn’t have that. “You there–were you the one knocking?”

The man turned. He wore chain-and-plate, like a proper knight of old, but the device on the shield that hung across his back had been scoured. He was a scavenger–they were all scavengers these days. “I was just going to fetch a hammer,” the faux-knight confirmed Rafael’s fears. “I’d thought the abbey abandoned.”

“I and mine live here,” Rafael called back. “If you return in the morning, we can discuss whatever you’ve come for.”

“Only shelter,” the vulture-knight replied, “but I would prefer not to expose my family to another night, if possible. There are creatures out here, I’m sure you know. Blight-things of the plague upon Maura.”

“I’m afraid it’s not possible,” Rafael stood firm.

“How many are you?”

“It makes no matter,” Rafael replied. “We do not have room.”

The scavenger-knight was silent for a moment. He scratched at the back of his neck and surveyed the walls of the abbey. “We have children,” he said. “Perhaps you could at least give them refuge until something can be sorted out.”

“We have plenty of room, Rafa,” Armonde said quietly. “There is space enough and food enough.”

“We do not know these people,” Rafael muttered back. “Their children might be diseased same as they might be.”

“It doesn’t matter if they are,” Jaxon said. “We have to let them in.”

Lily crouched atop one of the oaken tentacles stretching out from the cloister. She said nothing.

“I will not bring the plague into my house,” Rafael said. “This is my decision.”

A fire bloomed amidst the tents on the beach. “Return in the morning,” Rafael called down to the vulture. “It is late.”

The faux-knight regarded Rafael silently for a moment. “I pray it will not be too late.”

“Monster,” Jaxon sneered and ran away.

“Jax!” Rafael’s voice boomed after him.

Armonde reached out a hand to say his father. “I’ll talk to him,” he said before jogging off to find Jaxon.

Rafael glanced up to Lily, but she just watched the shoreline. Her eyes flicked down at him as he moved to walk away. She was silent–as ever–and that might have been worse.

#

Rafael awoke to noise in his sanctuary.

He settled from his dreams, twisted to sit on his bed and wiped away the sweat beading on his skin. The sound came again and he filtered out the noises: the wind, the waves, the–slight sound of naked feet on stone. He pulled on his tunic and barefoot made his way down the stone steps of the tower. Somewhere above his children would be sound asleep, but someone had crept inside his sanctuary. At the base of the tower he carefully lifted his sword from its place and pushed the wooden door open. The darkness of the abbey hall stood broken by moonlight peering in from high, arched windows. Shadows danced behind the columns–but that was paranoia, not the intruder he sought.

A thump sounded beyond the gatehouse, and Rafael ran after it. He slid between the barely-open doors of the main hall just in time to see a small form drop from one of the long oak branches. Lily! Rafael thought. A thousand father’s fears rushed at him then, and he found himself fumbling with the keys and peeling open the heavy gate door. He plucked his longsword from its place and darted through the gap, hoping to catch his beloved daughter before the plague did.

Jaxon hit the sand as his father reached the midpoint of the bridge. His middle son deposited a sack in the dim ring of light that lingered from the fire. A watchman snapped around and toward him, sword raised and ready. But the blade sank to the vulture-knight’s side.

“What is your name, child?”

“Jaxon,” the boy answered. “My father refused you, but I thought you might be hungry.”

“That is kind.”

Rafael slowed his run. His footfalls had been covered by the surging sea, and now the watcher would reach his boy long before he could, should it come to that.

“My father says you might be dangerous,” Jaxon said. “He says he doesn’t want to bring the plague into his house.”

The vulture nodded. “Tell your father we are healthy.” His eyes flicked up to Rafael on the bridge. “Tell your father we will not harm him, nor you.”

Jaxon saw the man’s gaze and twisted ‘round to see. Fear crossed his face when he laid eyes on his father.

#

They breakfasted in silence. Lily and Armonde stole glances at sullen Jaxon, and Rafael saw that they did not wonder. “You knew,” he realized. “Both of you.”

“We cannot sit here on cellars full of food when there are people starving on the beach,” Armonde’s challenge was calm and firm. His grandfather had been that way, Armonde of Acalane had always been like a stone in the midst of a river–firm and unmovable.

“There are other girls,” Lily commented. “I saw them playing last night–making towers and castles in the sand.” She swallowed her bite and set the rest on the plate in the midst of them. “They looked hungry.”

“He said they were healthy,” Jaxon added. “He said they would not hurt us.”

“They said,” Rafael echoed. “They may say whatever they will. That does not make it truth.”

Armonde shook his head. He hadn’t eaten anything, Rafael realized. Armonde hesitated, as if to speak, but instead bent and plucked his bit of bread from the plate.

“You two finish eating,” Rafael said. “He is old enough to make his own choices, but you two need to stay healthy.” He took his last bite, but the buttered bread tasted like ash.

Rafael found his eldest son standing on the gatehouse with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes watching the camp over the merlons. “It does not matter what they bring,” he said. “Even if we are all dead within a week, it will all have meant nothing if we do not help.”

“If we are dead within a week, it will have meant nothing no matter what choice we make,” Rafael countered. “I aim to make the choice that will allow us to live.”

“What is that worth if we are monsters?”

“We are not monsters for protecting ourselves,” Rafael rebuked.

Armonde turned toward his father. “We are monsters for doing nothing. If the plague comes upon them now, every one of them will succumb to it. Every one of them will die and we will live with their ghosts! We will live knowing that we could have stopped it!

“Can you not see?” his boy went on. “This place is not a sanctuary! It is just another corner of the world where people go to die! What is this place worth if its gates are sealed?”

Rafael felt his face flush red, and his son walked away before he could answer.

#

That night Rafael dreamed, and the screams of the dying ripped the air. In his dream, he started from his bed, barely catching himself before he hit the cold stone floor of his tower cell. Above, the lighthouse-basin lay cold and empty, but from behind the merlons of his tower, he could see the encampment across the bridge roiling. Fires had spread over the canvas tents.

The plague at last had come upon their sanctuary.

In a panic, Rafael ran down the curling stairs of his lighthouse. The screams from beyond the old abbey swelled like nearing thunder, and Rafael’s panic drove deeper. He burst across the floor of the main hall, throwing open the door to the outer courtyard. The dying oak stood bathed in damning orange light, but Rafael pushed the accusation aside and slowed only has he hit the heavy wooden gates. His biceps tightened against the weight, and after an endless moment of straining against the door, it began to budge. The screams settled into moans, and he planted one foot against the other door, pulling with all his strength.

When at last the gate peeled open, silence greeted him from the night beyond. Firelight flickered against his face, against the empty bridge, and against the gate itself. Shock gripped his mind as he began to understand what gleamed on the wood. The bloodied bridge stretched away to the fire-ravaged banks. They had died–every last one of them. They’d come to him for help and been butchered upon these very gates. Rafael stumbled back inside, let the heavy door close behind him, and slumped against it. “What is this place worth if its gates are sealed?” he asked the blood-stained door. His body rippled with sobs, and he slammed his fist against the gate, screaming his rebuke again.

Rafael awoke. His stomach felt hollow and his throat opened and tightened with anxiety. He pulled on his tunic and spilled up the steps to the height of the tower. There before the final stair, he gathered a bundle of wood and lifted a dusty oil lantern from its place on the wall. The lighthouse blazed before Armonde called up the steps. “Rafa? Dad?”

Rafael tossed the key ring down to his son. “Open the gates.”