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Vigil
by Mary Soon Lee
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Copyright (c)1999 Mary Soon Lee
First published in Talebones Magazine #5, May 1999

Fictionwise Contemporary
Dark Fantasy


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       EACH DAY the war drew closer.  Branwen refused to let the worsening tidings disrupt her duties.  When Old Connell died in his sleep, she supervised his burial, then waited by the grave for his spirit to settle.  As usual, she sent her apprentice down to her sister's for the night.  At nine years old, Evan was too young to stay on a dark hilltop with an unquiet spirit.
       Branwen sat on her reed mat, a woolen cloak pulled tight around her.  Spring nights were still cold up in the highlands.  Wind whispered through the row of pines behind the graves, carrying the smell of resin.  In the moonlight, Connell's ghost paced the border of his grave.
       "My fault," said the ghost, borrowing the wind to shape the sound of the words.  "I should have stayed, should have stayed."
       "It's all right," said Branwen gently.  Her fingers worked the spell to bind spirit to bone.  "It's the way of things that we make mistakes, and then regret them when they're past mending.  But you were a good man, Connell."
       "Not then," sighed the wind.  Connell's outstretched hand passed through her face, colder than the night air.  In the wind she heard Connell tell of a girl he had lain with before his first wife, a bastard son he'd never met.  Loneliness shivered through every word he spoke.
       Branwen murmured what comfort she could, while she reworked the binding spell.  Slowly the ghost drew back into the mounded earth, its form fading.  Branwen saw the stars shine through the outline of Connell's head.  Only minutes later, the ghost was gone.
       For a while longer Branwen sat alone on the reed mat, fingering the charm bracelet on her left wrist, the last gift from her mother.  Her eyes stung, and she rubbed at them impatiently.  Her mother had died years ago, yet keeping a graveside vigil always brought Branwen back to the same well-worn grief.
       She picked up the mat, her legs stiff, and walked to her cottage, just outside the burial ground.  She tucked herself under the quilt, and bade herself sleep.  Instead she lay awake for an hour, thinking about the war, about her mother, about Connell.
       Her thoughts shifted to her apprentice, how fiercely proud Evan had been when he arrived last summer, the only child in his family's history who'd ever had such a gift: he could speak to ghosts!  Soon after his arrival, Evan had begged Branwen to let him keep vigil with her.  But long before the shadows lengthened that first afternoon, Evan's enthusiasm had evaporated, a grimness settling into his face.  So Branwen had sent him to her sister's; the boy deserved his childhood.  Branwen would make sure that Evan accompanied her sister when the army evacuated the village.  On that thought Branwen finally fell asleep.
         * * * *
By the time Branwen woke it was late morning.  She found Evan sitting on the drystone wall that bordered the burial ground, his knees grubby, his hair tousled.  He drummed the wall with his legs, in time with a song he was humming.
       "Evan, if you're so keen to wear away at that wall, maybe it's time you learned how to repair it."
       Evan stopped drumming abruptly.  He stared at his feet as though disowning them.  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that."
       "No harm done, but we may as well have the lesson anyhow.  Did you ever help your father build a wall?"
       Evan shook his head, and jumped down to stand beside Branwen.
       "This is a drystone wall."  Branwen laid her hand on it.  "It's a special type of wall made just out of stones, with no mortar to hold them together.  All the walls in the burial ground are like this."
       "Why?  Is it a kind of magic?"
       "No," said Branwen, trying not to smile.  The boy was always hoping to learn more magic.  No doubt his daydreams were full of dragons and heroes and tousle-haired boys with mysterious powers.
       "Then why isn't it made like an ordinary wall?"
       "Well," said Branwen, "There's an ancient legend of a sorcerer who mixed blood into the mortar of the walls of a great tomb where eight warriors lay, side by side."
       "And then?" demanded Evan, his eyes round.
       "And then the sorcerer cast a great spell and the warriors rose out of the tomb, and though the warriors' bodies were still wraiths, no more substantial than mist, each warrior held a broadsword in his hands.  And the swords were solid as this wall." Branwen thumped the wall.  "And the eight warriors chopped the sorcerer up into tiny pieces, and terrorized the surrounding countryside for years to come."
       "Why?"
       "Perhaps because the sorcerer kept asking questions when he should have been doing something more useful," said Branwen dryly.  She bent down beside Evan, and showed him how the stones fit together, their shapes chosen to make the structure stable.
       When she got up again, she paused to savor the clear spring day.  The hillside was touched with green, the grass shooting up.  Down below she could just pick out the red roofs of Darseton by the bend in the river Pleth.  Further away a wisp of grey painted the horizon, more like smoke than a rain cloud.  Branwen reached for Evan automatically, her hand fastening on his shoulder.  She had heard the army was burning the fields behind them as they retreated, leaving nothing but scarred ground for the enemy.
       With an effort, Branwen made herself release the boy's shoulder.  "Evan, get ready to go to the village."
       "Again?"
       "Again.  I'm coming with you this time."  Something in her voice must have silenced Evan, because he dropped his usual flood of questions.  He sprinted ahead of Branwen to her cottage.  By the time she got there, Evan had packed two lunches and a change of clothing into his knapsack.
       "Thank you, Evan."  Branwen unlocked the top drawer of the kitchen chest, where she kept the few valuables she owned.  She took out her drawstring purse, closed the drawer, stopped, opened the drawer again, lifted out a thin gold chain.  Unclasping the charm bracelet around her left wrist, she removed a tiny silver rabbit from the bracelet.  She threaded the rabbit onto the gold chain and handed it to Evan.
       "Mistress Branwen?"  Evan stared from her to the chain.  He touched the silver rabbit carefully, as if afraid it might break.
       "My mother gave me the bracelet when I was about your age; the rabbit is meant to bring luck.  I want you to keep it."
       Evan put the chain and the rabbit down.  "I don't want it.  You're only giving it to me because you want to get rid of me."
       "No, Evan."  Branwen squeezed Evan's shoulder.  "I don't want to get rid of you -- "
       "Then why are we going to the village?"  Evan twisted free of her grip.  He scowled up at her, but she saw his chin tremble.  "I heard your sister say you'd send me away."
       Branwen's throat suddenly ached.  "Evan, I don't want to send you away.  I won't ever want to send you away.  But the war is coming, and it won't be safe for you to stay."
       "Are you staying?"
       "Yes -- "
       "I want to stay too."
       Branwen took a deep breath, searching for an explanation that might satisfy Evan.  "I have to stay, to keep vigil for the people who will die in the coming battle.  You have to go, so that you can keep vigil for the battle's survivors in the years to come.  We share the same duty, you and I, but yours lies in the future."
       She picked up the gold chain, and threaded it round Evan's neck.  "All right?"
       "All right," said Evan in a very small voice.
       "Then let's go."  Branwen took Evan's hand in hers.  Together they walked out of the cottage and down to Darseton.
         * * * *
The next day the first of the casualties arrived.  The battleground had shifted so that the Darseton burial site was now the closest.
       Branwen watched the draft horses pull the wagonload of corpses up the path, led by six soldiers.  Each corpse lay wrapped in the deep blue cloth of the Salian flag, but the bodies had been heaped on top of each other to fit them in.  Other soldiers must have risked their own lives to recover the corpses, so that they might be safely laid to rest.
       As the wagon rounded the last corner, Branwen took a clove of garlic from her pocket, whispered a charm over it to disable her sense of smell, and swallowed it whole.  Better that she reek of garlic than that she gag while handling the corpses.
       She met the wagon at the entrance to the burial ground, nodded to the young soldier in charge.  "Corporal."
       "Mistress Branwen, my men and I are here to assist you."  He glanced back at the wagon nervously.  He didn't look more than twenty years old, a lean, angular man, all bone and muscle.  "Is there -- can you see their spirits?"
       Branwen followed his gaze, looked carefully at the bodies, but as she'd expected no ghosts were visible.  "Not yet, Corporal.  Most spirits don't know how to follow their body when it's moved.  The first rite I'll perform at the burial will summon the spirits."
       "Ah," said the corporal, a shade paler than he had been just a minute before.  That was the way of it; most men were more scared of ghosts than of thunderbolts and battle.
       Branwen told the other soldiers where to park the wagon, giving the young corporal a chance to recover himself.
       The corporal cleared his throat, some of the color back in his lean face.  "What, what do you need us to do?"
       "Can you tell me how many casualties we're likely to receive in the next few days?"
       "Three hundred, maybe more.  The fighting goes badly."
       So many.  Branwen braced herself against the wall, trying not to think about the magnitude of the ordeal ahead of her.  "I'll need you and your soldiers to dig burial pits.  We'll bury the soldiers in groups of a dozen.  If there's time later on, we can disinter the bodies and bury them separately."
       Branwen doubted they'd get that chance.  More likely the enemy would kill Branwen and the corporal and his men, and then desecrate the burial ground.  But she saw no point in voicing her concerns.  The work they did here would last, even if they themselves did not.  Once a spirit was bound to its bones, it would remain at peace, no matter if those bones were later disturbed.  The binding turned the spirit's essence inward, beginning its slow but inexorable return to the earth.
       "Burial pits," said the corporal.  "That I can do."
       "Wait," Branwen said as the man turned to leave.  "Did you stop at Darseton?  Are the army evacuating it?"
       "Yes."  The corporal's voice gentled.  "All the children will be out by evening, and the rest of the civilians by noon tomorrow."
       "Thank you."  Branwen fingered the bracelet on her wrist, the gap where the rabbit used to be.  Let Evan be safe, let her sister be safe.
         * * * *
That night seemed unending.  Dead men's ghosts ringed the burial pits.  Some of the spirits had forgotten the war, regressing to a happier time, plaintively asking for their wives or lovers.  Other spirits remembered the battle all too clearly.  Those wraiths screamed for vengeance, pale grey blood dripping from dismembered limbs and gaping wounds.
       Branwen knew the grey blood had no substance, fading as soon as it touched anything solid; she'd seen such ghost wounds before.  But somewhere between sunset and moonrise, she lost track of that certainty.  Each time a wraith approached her, Branwen shrank back, her fingers faltering midway through a spell.
       Her head pounded; her skin flushed hot then chill.  Too slow, this was all too slow.  The enemy would reach them before she settled any of the ghosts.  She could not think straight.
       A figure loomed out of the night, grabbed her.
       "Mistress Branwen?"
       She blinked up at the corporal's face.  "Y-yes."
       "Can we help you with this?  Can I help you?"
       "No," she said.  But he'd already helped, the sound of his voice an anchor against the chorus of ghosts, restoring her balance.  "Thank you for coming to ask, but I'll be fine."
       "It's hard to fight any kind of battle alone," the corporal said gruffly.  "I can sit nearby if you want, if that would help."
       Branwen nodded.  "It would, thank you."
       She moved over on the reed mat, making room for the man to sit down.  He hesitated, then took his place beside her, his back ramrod-straight.
       "It's all right, Corporal.  The spirits have no power to hurt you."  As she said it, the words sank into her, and she relaxed.  She worked the spell again, concentrating on the movement of her hands, the command to bring spirit and body back into a whole.  Before her a wraith wavered, its form thinning to mist as it sank into the earth.
       Over and over she worked the binding spell, until her fingers cramped.  As the last ghost faded to nothingness, she saw a faint light glimmer through it.  She looked around; the dawn sun stood out against the sky.  The corporal's head lolled to one side; sometime in the night the man had fallen asleep, too tired to be afraid any longer.  Branwen draped her cloak over him, and left for a more comfortable bed.
         * * * *
Five wagonloads of corpses arrived over the next two days.  Branwen had never been so exhausted in her life.  She had no time to rest, pausing only for hasty meals.  The ground seemed unsteady under her feet whenever she moved from one burial pit to another.
       On the third morning, she had a few minutes alone.  She walked to the drystone wall that rimmed the burial ground.  Down by Darseton the forest was burning, hundred-year-old trees disappearing in a haze of smoke and flame.  Branwen smelled the smoke in the wind, relief from the stench of putrefying corpses -- she had no energy left over for minor spells to spare her nose.
       The corporal strode over to join her.  "The enemy forded the Pleth a few hours ago, and now they have troops to the east, south, and west of us.  If you ride north, you might still escape them.  I could give you a horse."
       He made the offer straightforwardly, no hint of rebuke in his tone.  Branwen hesitated.  "I take it you still expect more bodies to arrive."
       He nodded.
       "Then I'll stay."  She twisted the bracelet round her wrist.  "How long before they reach here?"
       The corporal shrugged.  "Maybe by evening.  Get some rest.  I'll wake you as soon as you're needed."
         * * * *
There was something warm beside Branwen in the bed.  She curled around it, dopey with sleep, imagining she was back in the house she grew up in, sharing the mattress with a brace of marmalade cats.
       The warmness hugged her in return.  "I missed you," said a small voice.
       Branwen sat bolt upright.  On the bed beside her Evan blinked at her.  "Evan!"
       For a second, Branwen was too appalled to act.  Then she hoisted Evan in her arms, ran to the cottage door.  "Corporal!" She sprinted over to the soldiers' tents, barely slowed by the squirming boy in her arms.  "Corporal?"
       The corporal scrambled out of his tent, his shirt half unbuttoned.
       "Corporal, please, you have to take Evan away -- "
       "I'm sorry.  I can't."
       "You must -- "
       "It's too late.  The hill's surrounded."  The corporal freed Evan from Branwen's grasp, and set the boy down.  "I'm sorry.  Is this your son?"
       "I'm Mistress Branwen's apprentice," Evan said proudly.
       Branwen couldn't speak.  She walked to the edge of the burial ground, stared down the hill at the approaching enemy troops.  Their shields glinted in the last of the day's light.  On the path below, a last wagonload of corpses neared the burial ground.  The smoke hurt her eyes.  She blinked back tears.
       Years before, Branwen had given her solemn vow to help the dead, and never to abuse the trust placed in her.  She watched the wagon approach, and steeled herself to break that vow.  The men in the wagon had been soldiers; Evan was just a child.  She could not, would not, let him die.
         * * * *
Twelve wraiths faced Branwen across the burial pit, barely visible in the gloom of dusk.  At the east side of the burial ground, the corporal and his men waited by the stone wall, ready to make their last stand.  The corporal had promised to guard Evan as best he could.
       Only the ghosts watched Branwen as she took a kitchen knife from her pocket.  She drew the knife across the palm of her left hand.  A curious sensation; to the hand wielding the knife, indistinguishable from slicing meat for dinner; to the hand being sliced, a razor edge of pain.
       Branwen stared at the blood welling from her skin.  She did not know exactly what would happen to these ghosts if she continued.  But the old legends all spoke of a ravening hunger that stripped away a wraith's memories.  For a few hours, perhaps a day, a wraith might hold onto memory and purpose, before its mind emptied.  After that the wraith posed little threat, too undisciplined to menace anyone, and yet it might wander for years, searching for it knew not what.
       She could still stop.  She could lay these soldiers to rest as she had vowed, as these men deserved.  Blood ran down her wrist, over her bracelet, filling the gap where the silver rabbit had hung.
       Branwen looked up and met the wraiths' waiting gaze.  "With my blood I call you to the memory of your deaths, slain by the enemy on the battlefield to lie in cold earth.  Now I offer you vengeance."
       She walked onto the soft earth filling the pit, and outstretched her left palm.  "One thing I ask in payment, that you save the life of the boy who waits by the east wall.  In return for his life, I give you a chance for vengeance.  The enemy approaches.  Will you do battle once more?"
       A pale grey wraith, its body rent almost in two by some vast blow, surged forward, surrounding her hand.  Blood leapt from her palm, mingling with the wraith.  Where she touched it, a dark grey stain spread through the wraith like ink on blotting paper.
       Another wraith grabbed for her hand; the wind funneled its words into a battle-cry.  Another and another ghost drank from her palm, siphoning blood.  Six, eight, a dozen spirits reached through her to vengeance.
       Branwen swayed, light-headed.  As if in a dream, she crossed to the soldiers' tents.  She lifted the tent flap.  No one inside, but a pile of weapons lay heaped on the ground.  The wraiths surged past her, hefting swords and shields in their grey hands.
       Branwen followed them to the drystone wall.  She paid no attention to the corporal as he shouted at her.  She paid no attention to the enemy soldiers marching up the hill.
       Only Evan, that was all she looked for.  The boy ringed by twelve grey figures in the moonlight.  Safe.

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