by Michael Meyerhofer
in Issue 157, February 2025
By the time you reach the Arm of Heaven, you wish you’d just kept that burning pig to yourself. You’ve spent most of the war behind a shovel – a consequence of exiting your mother’s womb with one leg a bit shorter than the other – so had you fled the night before the battle, Prince Ichael might have been too busy getting trampled by elephants to mind the desertion of a single crippled sapper. Thanks to you, though, those same elephants wheeled in panic when the fighting started, so desperate to escape that charging knot of billowing flame that they trampled the Unworthy instead.
Now, at last, Prince Ichael stands before the base of the Arm of Heaven, drinking in the ecstatic cheers of his host. When all those knights and footmen and camp-followers finally fall silent, the prince delivers his speech in a proud, booming voice. As he speaks of sacrifices and great battles past – all those young men moldering in graves – he makes no mention of the lowly sapper who approached him weeks earlier, taut with an idea that could only be shared after several cups of wine.
You shift your gaze from the prince’s intricately gilded armor and crown-welded helm to what looms behind him, so bright that it casts the whole western horizon in shadow. You wonder if the stories about the Arm of Heaven are true – that people can be healed by touching it. If so, maybe just standing close to it will be enough to stop the nightmares. One where you hold the torch instead of Prince Ichael, everybody waiting. Another where you become the pig, struggling uselessly, surrounded by laughter as your skin crisps. Even one where you’re an elephant fleeing a tornado made of fire.
Then, a strange murmuring catches your attention, drawing you back to the Arm of Heaven’s base. You look around and realize that from one end of the sprawling host to the other, countless knights, footmen, and camp-followers have all lowered their eyes, joining Prince Ichael in a prayer of gratitude. Even horses lower their heads, if only to tug at the grass with their teeth.
Then you spot her among the camp-followers, still gazing openly: a young woman wearing her hair in so long and thick a braid that it takes you a moment to realize she only has one arm. There’s a faint grayness to her skin, as well – not enough to brand her as an Unworthy, though likely one of her ancestors bedded down with one. Then the woman lowers her gaze from the Arm of Heaven and catches you staring. She blushes. You look down and pretend to pray.
***
You were just a child when the storm came – all that thunder, like a mountain falling – but you still remember how it felt to walk outside and see it for the first time: bone-straight, miles high, rising out of the southern horizon like a titanic glass spear. Far too tall to have been fashioned by any number of mortal workmen, even had it bloomed gradually from those distant plains instead of soaring upward all at once in a single night.
At first, no one can agree what to call it. The Cloud-Tower? The God-Lance? The Great Needle? Eventually, men with crowns and long robes settle on the Arm of Heaven, and the name sticks, though you find it hard to believe that divine beings would have spindles for limbs.
“You can’t even see the top,” swear pilgrims who’ve already braved the week-long journey through lands suddenly roiling with priests and robbers and warlords. Others claim that on cloudless days, you can just barely make out a brilliant pinpoint. “It must be a tower,” men say, speaking in taverns about riches piled high enough to scrape the heavens.
Seemingly wrought of glass or crystal, glinting diamond-bright even on the most overcast of days – yet if it’s really a tower, why doesn’t it have gates or windows? What’s more, they say no hammer or battering ram can crack it open – though that doesn’t stop armies from trying. Meanwhile, limping between turnip rows, pausing to gawk at it whenever the foreman is distracted, you think it looks more like a strand of divine hair, pulled taut between earth and sky.
But now that you’re finally standing in front of it, milling about its base with thousands of exhausted men finally granted permission by their prince to approach it – to touch it – you realize it must be a spear after all. That’s why it doesn’t respond to prayers, why tracing its glassy surface with your fingertips doesn’t lengthen your malformed leg or lessen the nightmares.
Meanwhile, the host argues over what to do next. Some say now that they’ve liberated the Arm of Heaven from the Unworthy, they should simply devote themselves to protecting it – perhaps by founding a new kingdom right at its base. But didn’t the gray-skinned Unworthy start out with the same goal? Other veterans point to the arid soil and parched air, the scarcity of water, homes they’ve left behind. “Wouldn’t it be better,” they say, “to just crack it open and be done with it?”
Prince Ichael surrounds the Arm of Heaven in bright banners rippling with his personal sigil – a kneeling knight grasping a sword, like he’s either praying or plunging it deep into the earth. The prince soon adds a row of sentries to keep the rest of the host at bay, though you can still get close enough to spot distorted reflections in the glass. Day after day, faith gives way to uncertainty. Even Prince Ichael wears a sallow expression as he speaks in a low voice to his generals and fidgets with his crown-helm.
Finally, in a rare moment of silence when the whole host appears to stare at the miraculous structure with the same pair of eyes, someone says, “Why not just dig under it and tip it over?” In the heavy silence that follows, it takes you a moment to realize you’re the one who just spoke. “Wait,” you start to say, but the cheering has already begun.
***
Since Prince Ichael can’t claim credit for the idea – not after so many men heard it come from your lips – he rewards your cleverness by placing you in charge of the assault. Armed with a shovel and pickaxe, slowing your stride to lessen your limp, you start by marking out a preliminary trench around the Arm of Heaven’s entire base. You notice that the base flares just a little from the rest of the shaft – maybe it really is a tower after all – so you instruct the rest of the sappers to start digging a few yards out.
It feels strange to give orders – before this, you mostly just got drunk in rented fields and talked to turnips – but the men seem to respect you. Besides, down here, your limp doesn’t matter. The circular trench deepens, well past corpse-depth by now. You’ve not yet reached the foundation, but if the heavens planted a miles-high tower in the earth, you’d expect it to be planted deep.
Six feet becomes ten, then twelve. You widen the trench to let in more light. On orders of Prince Ichael, camp-followers supply your sappers with cold water and fresh bread dusted with herbs. Among them is the faintly gray-skinned water-wench you saw earlier, who descends the ladder sideways without any trouble.
She approaches you first. You hold out your wooden cup and try to think of something charming to say, but your tongue thickens. As she’s turning to go, you give up on cleverness and decide to simply ask her name. She smiles but shakes her head and walks away.
The other sappers laugh. One explains that she can’t speak. You ask around but no one seems to know who she is, let alone how she managed to lose both her tongue and one arm. She just appeared among the camp-followers after the last battle, and since she can’t write any more than you can read, you decide to start guessing.
“Thank you, Margaret,” you manage the next time she fills your cup. When she frowns, you say, “I don’t suppose that’s your name, is it?” She smiles faintly and shakes her head. “What about Rebecca? Or Gertrude?”
Soon, it becomes a game. The other sappers try to help, offering you the names of their wives and mothers and sisters – Bridgit, Justine, Elwyna. Sometimes, the water-wench laughs, careful not to open her mouth too wide. But always, she shakes her head.
Meanwhile, the trench is so deep by now that aside from torches and lanterns, your only illumination comes from glittering spears of sunlight reflecting in strange arcs off the Arm of Heaven’s surface. Aside from your game with the water-wench, you spend your days in a kind of soiled gloom, surrounded by grunts and curses and the heavy thud of shovels fussing against the earth. The air has a briny musk, like you’re digging through centuries of worms and decay. But she still brings you water even after the rest of the sappers have stopped assisting you in your game. As for the bread that Prince Ichael sends down with his camp-followers, the herbs seem to have been replaced by mold, though it’s hard to tell in the dark.
“Are you Agnes?” you ask. “Bogdanna, maybe – Boggy for short?”
She smiles, shakes her head, and fills your cup. Her braid sways off her maimed shoulder like a dark waterfall. You wait until she walks away – you don’t like to do anything but look at her when she’s nearby – then drink, stretch your aching back, and pick up your shovel again.
One day, a sapper digging just a few feet away from you straightens, makes a pig-like squeal, and swings his shovel at your head. You throw your water in his face to distract him and back away. The man keeps squealing with skull-wide eyes. It takes six sappers to restrain him, then tie him up and drag him out of the trench. By the time they’re done, he’s sobbing. You don’t see what happens to him after that.
Then, at last, it hits you: you didn’t actually need to dig a trench around the entire Arm of Heaven. If the goal is just to weaken its foundation, you could have structured your trench like a crescent moon. Wouldn’t that have been faster? Maybe that way, you’d be done by now. You wonder how long it’ll be before someone else reaches that same conclusion.
The next time the water-wench descends the ladders – it now takes three of them to reach the bottom of the trench – she doesn’t smile but squeezes your shoulder. “I’m fine,” you say. “I don’t think he really wanted to hurt me. He just panicked because he couldn’t remember whether your name was Matilda or Ursula.”
She doesn’t laugh but fills your cup, shaking her head a little.
***
The men start referring to you as the Sapper-General. Because you’re in charge of the diggers – in exchange for a ration of wine and a tiny wool tent that’s too hot in the daytime – Prince Ichael has you deliver regular updates to himself and his generals at their morning council. This quickly evolves from nerve-racking to embarrassing. “Another foot down, My Prince,” you say, “but still no bottom.”
Prince Ichael scowls, reminding you that while diggers yawn over shovels and pickaxes and lazily fill buckets with loose soil, his men are still busy defending the camp against the Unworthy. You resist the impulse to tell him you already know this, since you’re also in charge of digging graves and closing those staring eyes.
The prince also warns that other kingdoms are probably even now massing their own hosts to try and claim the Arm of Heaven for themselves. Any day now, you might also be facing men with braided goatees and painted eyes, men who wear the skin of their foes like armor, men who enjoy seizing followers of other faiths and torturing them with insects.
You recall rumors that other members of the royal family are dissatisfied with Prince Ichael’s progress and have been threatening to seize control of the divine siege themselves. “I understand, Gentle Prince,” you say, calling him that because you’ve heard it might appeal to his softer side – though the resulting scowl and the knights’ smirks suggest you’ve been misled. “I swear to you, we’re digging as fast as we can.”
One morning, limping out of Prince Ichael’s massive war-tent, you find the dark-haired woman waiting for you. This time, she doesn’t have any pitchers or bladders of water with her. When she sees the look on your face, her expression becomes one of concern, but you wave it off. “Good morning, Winifred. I trust you slept well.”
She shakes her head, then she takes your hand in hers and leads you toward the Arm of Heaven. A makeshift wooden bridge spans the ever-widening trench. Halfway across, she pauses and gazes at you questioningly.
“I’m sorry, Amelia,” you say. “I don’t understand.”
She shakes her head, then wiggles two fingers like legs toward the soaring tower before covering her eyes and shaking her head again. You realize what she means. Reclaiming her hand, you nod. The sentries tense at her approach, but when they see the Sapper-General with her, they yawn and wave you by. The woman steps away from you and approaches the Arm of Heaven, parting Prince Ichael’s banners like a red curtain. She reaches back and holds out her hand. Hesitantly, you follow.
While others avoid looking at it too closely – the eyes can only take so much – she faces it fully, tracing its glassy surface with her fingertips. You draw in tight enough to see your reflections. While yours remains warped as ever, hers looks whole. She even appears to have two arms, though you’re sure that’s just a product of the bending light. Sunlight glancing off the surface also causes her faintly gray skin to brighten, like polished crystal. This both dazzles and frightens you, so you decide not to mention it.
“Strange to touch a miracle, isn’t it?” you manage in a low voice. “Seems like being this close should set you on fire or give you some kind of vision, or at least a good drunk feeling. But really, it’s just glass.” You crane your neck, losing the Arm of Heaven in the clouds. “I wonder why it’s here. Don’t you, Godiva?”
The woman turns back to you, smiling slightly as she shakes her long dark braid. Then she squeezes your hand and walks away, her glistening skin dimming back to gray. As you begin your day’s labor, you wonder if you might find someone in the camp who knows hand-signs, like you used to see mutes practice in taverns. You gather that the woman doesn’t know how to make them herself, but maybe with a little effort, both of you could learn together.
***
Sometimes, Prince Ichael and his knights trade their armor for white robes and kneel around the Arm of Heaven. Prayer, you’ve realized, is when men look down and pretend not to be sleeping with their eyes open. Sometimes, you can even hear them chanting while you dig – which makes you dig harder, if only to replace their invocations with the single syllable of metal scraping against earth.
One morning, an abrupt crack of thunder reminds you of the Great Storm, then a downpour starts – rare for these parts. You and the other diggers scramble up the ladders then race to cover the trench with tarps, in the process often colliding with camp-followers ordered to fill every empty jar they can find with rainwater. When you run out of tarps with half the trench still uncovered, the prince orders you to start using tents instead. You know without being told that he wants you to start with your own.
But as quickly as it started, the downpour stops. A lingering haze scatters sunlight off the Arm of Heaven’s surface, bending it in strange arcs throughout the camp. To you, they look like golden moths melting in the rising heat. You spot the woman standing beside a wash-cart, eyes agape at the sight of all those flickering moths. You notice that whenever one passes near her, her gray skin glints back to life. Then you hear Prince Ichael ordering you and the rest of the diggers down in the muddy trench with shovels and buckets.
“The gods have no respect for idle hands,” he says.
***
That night, there’s an attack. While you’re busy dreaming that you’re an elephant on the field being charged by a tiny burning pig that doubles in size with every frantic scamper, a handful of Unworthy dress themselves in the armor of slain knights and penetrate the camp. They make it all the way to the trench, where some of the sappers sleep for wont of room, then they descend the ladders and start killing.
At first, you mistake the sappers’ screams for something from your dreams, but the sound of boots clomping by your tent mingles with the clatter of weapons and you sit up, fumbling for your dagger. You’re no fighter but you rush out of your tent anyway, limping through a disorderly glare of torches and drawn steel. You fear for the water-wench, who sometimes sleeps under a nearby wagon.
By the time you reach the trench, though, the fighting is over. Prince Ichael himself stands there, bare-chested and blood-splattered, holding a sword engraved end-to-end with tiny kneeling monks. His knights surround him, some of them wounded and gasping for breath. Bodies lie in a tangled heap just beyond, though you can’t tell from here whether they’re the sentries guarding the Arm of Heaven or just more Unworthy in disguise.
The prince waves you closer and starts shouting at his half-dressed Sapper-General about all the diggers he’ll have to replace now, not to mention the knights and sentries killed in battle against the Unworthy. Still holding your dagger, you wince in the glare of passing torches and look about, barely listening.
More of Prince Ichael’s men cluster around the edge of the trench, many of them with ropes, hauling up dead bodies. Most of the slain are sappers, dressed in rags, familiar despite the dirt smudging their faces. But some are Unworthy, dressed in the armor of Prince Ichael’s men. Seemingly in an effort to conceal their telltale gray skin, they’ve covered their exposed faces in a thin dusting of white powder, though you can’t imagine how that could have been enough to fool their way into the camp. Then, you see her.
She climbs sideways up the ladder, unaided, gripping a bloody kitchen knife between her teeth. Then her eyes widen and she rushes toward you, spitting out the knife as she approaches. Prince Ichael is still berating you. Nevertheless, you turn – barely remembering to lower your own dagger before she runs into it – and catch her in your arms.
Prince Ichael fixes the two of you in a wolfish scowl. “We wondered if she was with them, thanks to that skin of hers, but they say she killed two Unworthy herself – crept up on them quiet as death.” He sheathes his sword but continues to grip the pommel like the throat of a kitten he means to strangle. “I wonder what she’ll say when I coat you in pig-grease and wash you with a torch.”
The prince stomps away, leaving his knights to fuss over the dead. You avert your gaze from the heap of slain sappers and comb your fingers through the woman’s dark hair, which hangs unbraided across both shoulders. You notice blood on her lips – probably from how she was gripping the knife between her teeth – and wipe it away with your thumb.
“Do you think he means that?”
She nods.
“Then I’m sorry in advance if my death-smell stings your eyes.” You sigh, suddenly unable to keep your eyes open. “I’m glad you’re still alive, Genevieve. I really am.” You don’t see her shake her head but you feel her taking your hand, leading you back to your tent, slowing her stride to match yours.
***
All you want to do is find someone in the camp to teach you hand-signs. Unfortunately, the prince has decided that from now on, you are only permitted to leave the trench long enough to sleep. But the woman works beside you now, scraping at the briny earth with a trowel. Although you hate to see her fingernails bloody, you’re glad to have her there – in no small part because you figure it’s safer in the trench than up there with Prince Ichael and his knights. Each night, you limp back to your tent where she washes the grime from your face. You do the same for her, though by then you’re too tired to invent a hand-language of your own.
Even with the camp-followers helping, there aren’t enough hands to dig. Most of the sappers who weren’t killed in the attack decide to abandon the camp, pointing out that they haven’t been paid in ages anyway. They try to convince their Sapper-General to come with them but you shake your head. After the knights catch the men and drag them back in shackles, Prince Ichael gathers the whole army in the dazzling shadow of the Arm of Heaven and makes them watch. He’s decided to make one of the men an example by doing to him what he threatened to do unto you.
“That’s not even one of mine,” you whisper into the woman’s ear, which reminds you of a seashell. “I think that’s just someone they grabbed from a nearby village.” She gives you an urgent look, like she wants you to say something – to stop this – but by then, the screaming has started and you know smothering the flames would only mean a slower death.
That night, the woman tries to persuade you to flee the camp. You’re glad the sentries posted right outside your tent can’t see the arguments she’s making with her eyes and fingers, inventing a language that’s as clear as it is frantic. “No,” you whisper. “No, Mirabel. If we run, he’ll find us. But if we stay, maybe we really can bring the tower down.” You force a smile. “Or maybe the Unworthy will attack again and settle things for us.”
She sighs, shakes her head, and fills a cup with the last of the wine. She drinks half and hands you the rest. You take a sip and think about the turnips you left moldering in the soil back home. You hear a commotion outside your tent but it’s just drunken soldiers fighting again. That’s happening more and more lately, like men can’t stand being this close to the Arm of Heaven without knowing what they’re supposed to do next.
More diggers are sent down to help you – soldiers forced to trade spears and crossbows for shovels and buckets. The trench sinks deeper and deeper, the air growing more and more stale by the inch. It’s clear by now that you should have started your trench further out. The base of the Arm of Heaven continues to widen the more of it you unearth, forcing you to keep expanding your trench to compensate.
As you continue dismembering the earth with your shovel and filling bucket after bucket with dirt that looks none-the-better for brushing up against a miracle, you wonder if you’ve gone mad – or maybe the world is mad, always was, and you’re finally sane enough to notice. You realize you no longer remember why you’re here, why you’re doing this. That frightens you – maybe the woman will forget why she’s here, too, and disappear. Besides, whatever’s inside the Arm of Heaven, your prince won’t share it.
Maybe it’s only filled with light, you think. Or poison.
The prince doesn’t even threaten you anymore – he just stares, tapping the pommel of his sword with his fingernail. Each night, as you trace the pattern in the woman’s dark braid with your fingertips, you wonder if the next morning will see you staked to the ground at the base of the Arm of Heaven, naked and oil-soaked.
Then one day, you feel the smooth, glassy base of the Arm of Heaven curve beneath your fingertips. You realize you’ve finally reached the bottom. For the first time in ages, a cheer spreads throughout the camp. Even Prince Ichael smiles. But there’s still so much more work to be done.
“Listen to me, Regina,” you say one night, flexing your cramped fingers. “When this is done – when this tower or spear or whatever it is finally tips over – I don’t know what’s going to happen. It might not even break open. And if it does, who’s to say what’ll wriggle out?”
The glint in the woman’s eyes tells you she has an idea, but instead of trying to explain in gestures, she gathers her hair and starts to braid it with one hand, fingers flying, her shadow bending across the crisp fabric of your tent. You watch from the pile of straw you call a bed and feel your insides turn to water.
***
You realize there’s even more work to be done than you imagined. The base of the Arm of Heaven is so huge and heavy that to topple it over, you’ll have to dig a massive series of tunnels underneath its foundation – a vast, treacherous web braced with timbers – then rig it all to collapse and hope like hell you can get out of the way in time.
Desertions have stopped, dissuaded more by progress in the divine siege than the severity of Prince Ichael’s punishments. Meanwhile, the prince’s family answer his promising reports by sending more supplies than the army needs, as though to win his favor: spiced bread, barrels of wine, linen wraps for wounds. They even sent minstrels who sing of the prince’s clever victory over the Unworthy.
As for the Unworthy themselves, some say they’ve finally given up. You remember the screams of the poor man Prince Ichael burned alive, though, and wonder if the Unworthy aren’t waiting for you to destroy yourselves. Or maybe they’re simply giving you time to exhaust yourselves in the stale air, carving out tunnels like the inside of a clenched fist then bracing them with thick wooden beams that fill the hands with slivers. Sometimes, you feel the earth pressing against your skin like a layer of oil about to be set alight, and it’s all you can do to keep from screaming.
But each day sees a few more yards of tunnel painstakingly clawed out of the earth beneath the Arm of Heaven, ant-like columns of men hauling away soil and loose rocks one bucketful at a time. Often, you work well into the night – this deep, it hardly matters – but you send the woman back to your tent. You hope the men will leave her alone. If not, you’ve seen the knife she keeps hidden in her dress.
Finally, after another month of blind tunneling, you breech through to the comparatively fresh air on the other side of the trench. You hear someone cheering then realize it’s you. With unexpected vigor, you lead the diggers out of the tunnels and trench and back up the ladders. You find the woman waiting at the very top, gray skin glistening in the Arm of Heaven’s reflection. If the cheering was loud enough to bring her here, you know Prince Ichael will be joining you before long.
You look down at your filthy arms and wonder if you should wash yourself first, then pull her close. “This is it, Sigrid. One more day. One more day, and this whole damn thing comes crashing down.” She holds you a moment, then gently bites your bottom lip before shaking her head.
***
Prince Ichael removes his banners, lest they be crushed in the collapse. The Arm of Heaven rises through unfettered sunlight, as naked and blinding as the first time you saw it. Most of the army watches from a distance, though some draw in as close to the trench as they can. Since you know the tunnels better than anyone and the next task requires that no flame be present, you finish it alone.
Inch by inch, you crawl through the darkness, dragging along a grimy brush and a foul-smelling barrel the size of a small child. The barrel has wheels fixed to the bottom, but they keep catching on ruts of dirt, slowing you down. Still, each time your fingers touch a wooden beam, you straighten, dip the brush, and slather the beam with oil.
You consider the miracle you’re about to destroy and feel like an insect crawling through the earth’s bloodstream, sewing it with poison. Nevertheless, when the barrel runs dry, you crawl back out to fetch another. Each time, the one-armed woman meets you at the top with cold water and a rag to wipe your face. Knights gather around the trench, row upon anxious row. Prince Ichael paces in his gilded armor, sweating beneath his crown-helm. Finally, when every last wooden beam bleeds oil in the darkness, you crawl back out – exhausted –and give him a nod.
Rather than deliver another rousing speech, especially with so much of the army too far away to hear it, the prince descends the ladders – awkward for a fighting man – and joins you in the trench. One of the knights passes him a torch. A hush falls over the knights and you remember the pig again. You crane your neck and squint up at the Arm of Heaven as it stretches on through unblemished miles of sky.
“I’m sorry,” you hear yourself say.
Prince Ichael turns and glares at you. Then he gestures for you to back up. You realize it’s because of the flammable stuff still smeared all over your limbs and clothes. The woman with the long dark braid takes your hand in hers, regardless of how dirty it is, and pulls you toward the ladders. She forces you to start climbing so that your back is turned when Prince Ichael sets the tunnels alight.
A bone-chilling whoosh accompanies the acrid rush of smoke. Seconds later, you lose sight of the world and grope through the dark, wishing the woman were climbing ahead of you instead. But you reach the next level and side-step to find another ladder, then feel her right next to you. You try to make her climb out first but she answers with a surprisingly strong shove.
Then you hear the prince and the knights behind you, panicking in the smoke, coughing and clashing about the ladders. You imagine Prince Ichael seizing the woman and tossing her out of the way, leaving her to be crushed when the Arm of Heaven collapses. You reach back into the smoke and touch her shoulder – the one with no arm – then take hold of her gown and yank her after you.
A moment later, she screams and falls to one side. You feel something else – a big hand encased in a cold metal gauntlet – then the prince’s voice shouts for you to get out of the way. Instead, you kick and shove until he falls backwards. Then you grope in the dark until your hand touches a long thick braid. You grasp it and pull. Instead of screaming, the woman leaps to her feet and pushes you ahead of her again. This time, you don’t argue.
Halfway up the final ladder, you hear the scrape of metal against leather, imagine the prince swinging his sword at the woman’s legs. You turn back to scream at him but she shoves you onward. Only then do you hear the onlookers’ cries. By the time you reach the top – pulling the woman after you – you can tell those aren’t cries of excitement but screams of panic.
You fear the Arm of Heaven is collapsing more quickly than you expected, but when you blink away the smoke and look up, you find it straight as ever, glassy and unyielding in the afternoon light. Then you realize the truth: the men were only worried about the welfare of their prince, alarmed when he vanished in the billowing smoke. You laugh. Then, you turn to the woman and the look on her face makes your throat tighten.
For the first time, you realize she has her kitchen knife in hand. The edge glistens red. Moments later, the prince emerges from the trench, gasping for air, one hand still clutching his drawn sword. He gives the woman a seething look and wipes a thin trickle of blood from his cheek. Then he starts toward her, ignoring the knights shouting and struggling up the ladder behind him.
As onlookers cheer at the sight of their prince, you reach for your dagger, then remember you left it back in your tent. You pluck the knife from the woman’s hand and stand in front of her, bracing your longer leg behind you. “Enough,” you say, waving the knife in the prince’s direction. “She didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Like hell she didn’t,” the prince snaps. “Look at her! I only let her live as a favor. But now – ”
“I said enough,” you repeat, in a voice you don’t quite recognize. To your surprise, the prince stops. “Consider what’s about to happen. Lots of people watching. What do you want them talking about later – how their prince broke open the Arm of Heaven and claimed its treasure for himself, or how he butchered a one-armed woman because she didn’t get out of his way in time?”
Prince Ichael ponders this a moment, then sheathes his sword with a murderous scowl. His knights finish climbing the final ladder and usher him across the wooden bridge, away from the trench. You start to slide the woman’s knife into your belt but she takes it back, deftly reverses the blade, and tucks it into her sleeve. Then the two of you turn your back on the Arm of Heaven and hurry after the prince.
“You owe me, Sabina,” you say. “Or maybe I owe you. We’ll work it out later.”
Finding their prince unharmed, onlookers scatter. You look up to see the whole army backpedaling farther and farther from the Arm of Heaven, still facing it in case they need to change direction to avoid being crushed. Smoke continues to billow out of the tunnels, staining the air.
Still, you frown. There isn’t as much smoke as there should be. Already, you can see the haze beginning to clear. “The fire didn’t spread far enough,” you mutter. “Not all the tunnels are burning.” Sighing, you trace the woven midnight of her braid with your fingertips. Then you spot Prince Ichael in the distance, glowering at you with his arms crossed. By now, the army’s cheering has faded, replaced with uncertain murmuring and even a smattering of laughter.
“You don’t suppose he’ll give me another chance, do you?”
She doesn’t answer. You consider a terrible idea that you’ve been keeping to yourself – to send another burning pig into the tunnels, trusting its doomed panic to spread the fire further than a man ever could. But you’re not sure you can bear those screams again. Then you turn to find sunlight reflecting off the Arm of Heaven, causing the woman’s gray skin to blaze. You feel the handle of the knife tucked in her sleeve and wonder what Prince Ichael will do to her now. You realize nothing else can save her – or you, for that matter – except another burning pig.
“Wait here,” you say at last. “I’m going to go talk to the prince. I’m going to suggest something that might cool his wrath. Something that might even work.” You feel your throat tightening and touch the knife hidden in her sleeve again. “Keep this handy, in case I’m wrong.”
Before you’ve taken your first step, though, she grabs your arm and yanks you about. Given the urgency in her eyes, you expect to see the whole Arm of Heaven trembling, its glassy surface erupting in quarter-mile cracks. But no, she’s pointing past it, toward the distant hills – and a massive line of horsemen coming over the horizon.
“Unworthy,” you gasp. Among the roiling, gray-skinned legions, you also spot a handful of spiked chariots racing alongside green-cloaked horsemen with frightfully long spears. You stand there gawking until the woman pulls you into a sprint toward the Arm of Heaven’s shadow. You’re sure your limp makes you look ridiculous, but the blare of trumpets tells you the army has more pressing matters to attend to.
Dimly, you hear the prince shouting orders, trying to organize his scattered legions to brace for the Unworthy’s charge. But most – including the diggers – have already begun to flee. Some of the knights dash about with their swords drawn, trying to stop them, while others follow the deserters’ example. And so no one notices the Sapper-General and his one-armed camp-wife following the Arm of Heaven’s shadow into a distant copse of trees.
Behind you, the screams of men and horses mingle with clanging steel and blaring trumpets. You shudder, glad you’re too far away to see what’s happening, then trace the Arm of Heaven like a great silver slash in the sky. It’s maddening – all these unanswered questions – but you feel as though you’re waking from a long dream of dirt and smoke and bleeding knuckles.
“We should keep running,” you say. “I don’t think the prince will come after us – if he survives – but he might.” You cough, suddenly realizing how dry your throat is.
The woman touches your shoulder. When you turn, she hands you a bright fruit you’ve never seen before. You bite in, and a rush of sweetness makes your throat loosen. The two of you turn your backs on the towering spire and the distant battle and start to walk away. You wonder if you should take the woman north with you, back to your turnip fields – if they still exist – but you sense that she’s already decided where the two of you should go next.
You pass the fruit back to her. Looking around, you realize for the first time that these trees are thick with them. You wonder how long they’ve been there, waiting. “I think I’ve finally figured out your name,” you say. She gives you a skeptical look, takes another bite of the fruit and offers you the rest. “Glass,” you say, and shake your head.
© February 2025, Michael Meyerhofer
Michael Meyerhofer is an active member of the SFWA whose work has appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Analog, Dread Machine, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Strange Horizons, and other journals, including previously in Swords & Sorcery Magazine. He is also the author of a fantasy series and several books of poetry. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.
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