The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

  Xessa rested the spear against her chest and extended her empty hand. The Drowned copied her, its own hand turning palm up as hers did. She stopped breathing. She blinked the sweat from her eyes. She watched death watching her. And she snapped her fingers.

  Ossa erupted into motion, streaking towards the Drowned, and it reacted, spinning on those long, muscular legs to face the dog. Her dog. Her Ossa, who obeyed his training even though she was sending him to die. But she needed to draw its attention away.

  Xessa flung the net underhand, the cord wrapped around her wrist. It unfurled in the air, the tiny pebbles tied to its edges spinning it wide and bringing it down over the Drowned’s head and shoulders. The eja raced after it, spear reversed in her left hand. She whistle-clicked to put Ossa into stalk, not attack, but it mustn’t have come out right because he kept running for the thrashing Drowned.

  She clicked once, hard and desperate, to make him stay, and then sprinted towards the monster herself, screeching to hold its attention. The spear was reversed in her hand and she smacked it around the Drowned’s head, splitting skin and releasing green, stinking blood. It was tearing at the net, already ripping holes in the tough fibres, but the blow staggered it and it went to one knee, claws of one hand tangled. Xessa let go of the long cord and brought the spear down again with all the strength of her shoulders, back and thighs. Like splitting wood.

  The haft snapped in half, the splintered, obsidian-tipped end spinning away into the water. The Drowned hit the mud, its tangled hand unable to break its fall and she hit it again, across the back of its neck this time, while Ossa danced in and out of reach. It lay still except for the fluttering of its gills and then the lift and fall of its ribs. The dog, stiff-legged and hackles up, stalked in front of it, throat rippling as he barked his challenge.

  She picked up the club and circled around to come at it from behind – closer to the water, Ossa on guard. Gaze flickering between river, dog, and Drowned, Xessa crept in, stepping carefully over its splayed legs. Then, before she could change her mind, she smashed the club into its knee.

  The Drowned spasmed, rolling over and over towards her, pushing her back to the edge of the bank. Ossa leapt in, burying his teeth in its shoulder and Xessa used the opening to leap over the monster’s struggling, netted body, away from the water just before it boiled apart and another Drowned swiped for her.

  The eja scooped up the trailing cord attached to the net and jerked, arresting the creature’s desperate wriggling towards safety, but the other one hopped over it and came for her and she only had a club.

  A low, dark shape passed between her and the advancing Drowned and an instant later there was green blood and white teeth before it darted back out again. The Drowned – this one a lesser – chased it, but someone leapt in after their dog and raked it across the face with a spear. Toxte, of course, with Ekka. The Drowned fell into the river and didn’t come back up.

  But the day was getting late and the spirit-magic would be leaving him and this was exactly why Xessa hadn’t wanted him here. If he died because of her, if one more eja or Toko or anyone – even a fucking Xenti – died because of a Drowned, then Xessa knew she would die too.

  I won’t fail this time. I will not.

  Toxte’s net settled over her Drowned, wrapping it more securely, and he began to haul it away from the riverbank. She stepped closer to it, and when he paused between pulls, she crushed its other knee with the club. It curled in on itself like a spider, mouth wide. Hurt. Trapped.

  A weary, bone-deep satisfaction began to spread through her, a righteous, hard-edged, foul sort of vengeance, which lasted right up until the magic failed and Toxte tried to give himself to the Drowned.

  It was only a few seconds before the dogs were driving him backwards and Xessa clubbed it in the head to silence it, but those seconds were an eternity that scrubbed her raw and salted her with fear. Because she hadn’t thought this far ahead, had she? So consumed with grief, and the coward part of her hoping she’d die too, just to stop it hurting, she hadn’t thought of the ejab who’d need to help her with this next part.

  Xessa made the dogs guard Toxte, because now he’d found her – now he’d been so stupid as to approach the river at the end of the magic’s effectiveness – he wouldn’t leave her alone. When he was a hundred strides away, she grabbed the two nets and rolled the Drowned more securely in them, then hauled it into the cage. The rope to tie the lid shut fed through a clever combination of hollow sections of bamboo so the Drowned couldn’t reach it with its fingers or claws and unpick it.

  And then it was done. Captured. And they had until the sun had moved a finger’s width closer to the horizon to get it somewhere with a water source, or it would die and everything – all of it – would be for naught.

  LILLA

  Pyramid clearing, southern Yalotlan

  180th day of the Great Star at morning

  He’d worried that things would be awkward with Dakto after the kiss, but the Xenti had accepted his rejection with only minimal hurt. If he volunteered for most of the advance scouting missions, or made himself scarce when Lilla stripped off to scrub sweat and dirt from his skin in the evening, then the Fang didn’t stop him. If anything, his absences were a relief and in the last days, as they moved deeper into Yalotlan, things were easy between them again.

  Their three hundred warriors in ten Paws had so far evaded two patrols, been forced to annihilate a third, and destroyed one partially built pyramid. The force of slave and dog warriors they’d encountered had been almost fanatical in their commitment to the Empire of Songs, and Kux and Lilla had had to give the kill order, leaving none alive.

  It had been different at the pyramid. They’d faced a hundred warriors – what he’d learnt over the past year was called a pod – and three times as many slaves who slept tied in lines of twenty and staked to the ground. They at least hadn’t been a problem. Still, it hadn’t been a sudden skirmish they’d found themselves in this time; in order to destroy the pyramid, they’d had to kill the warriors guarding the slaves and the stone. They’d had to creep in and slaughter as many as they could before the alarm was raised, and then fight the rest. Stabbing people while they slept didn’t sit well with Lilla. Nor with most of them. But as Kux said, it was better than waking them up and asking for a fair fight.

  The slaves were a mix of Quitob and Xentib, and the difference between the two was more extensive than their hair and tattoos. The Quitob had been under the song for nearly two Star cycles; the Xentib for half of one. When offered freedom, the latter had leapt for it and Lilla had given them directions to the Sky City, elated and yet concerned. They could be trained in defence, yes, but they were more mouths to feed and water. But what else could they do?

  Dakto’s reaction had worried him, though. Seeing his kin enslaved was more traumatising than any of them had expected and he’d taken himself away from the pyramid clearing, unable to bear the brands in their flesh and the thinness of their cheeks. Even the renewed vigour in their eyes as the thick leather collars were sawn from their necks hadn’t soothed him and it had been some hours before he’d returned, quiet but composed.

  But the Quitob, oh, the Quitob were different. Slaves, yes, none could doubt that, and out from under the song for the first time in sun-years, but its absence had done little to break their fervour. To Lilla, they’d seemed almost as zealous as the warriors who guarded them and at least forty had died when they’d thrown themselves between his war party and the enemy, even tied to ropes as they were.

  The debate had raged for most of the day as they’d escorted the Quitob away from the pyramid clearing and left a Paw behind armed with chisels and hammers to smash the stone blocks. Escorted? Guarded, more like, and just the memory turned Lilla’s stomach.

  ‘We can’t send them to the Sky City alone, and we can’t be sure what they’ll do when they reach it. We can’t take them with us and I won’t have us roping them and staking them out at night to sleep like animals,�
� Lilla had said. ‘We’re not Pechaqueh. We have to let them go.’

  ‘You let them go and they’ll bring the enemy down on us,’ Dakto had said flatly, arms crossed over his chest. ‘Keep them captive or kill them: those are the only choices we have. We’re in a war, Lilla, and sentiment has no place in war.’

  Kux opened her mouth and Lilla knew instinctively she would make a scathing remark about Dakto’s own response when confronted with his enslaved tribe: he glared her into silence.

  ‘It’s not sentiment; it’s who I am. Who we all are. I won’t become a slave-owner and I won’t kill innocents. We let them go,’ Lilla insisted. They all agreed, all but Dakto.

  ‘I’ve seen what happens next,’ was all he would say, but Tokob were not Pechaqueh, and neither were Yaloh. The Quitob were people, and if all the tribes had stood together back when Chitenec was first invaded in their grandparents’ time, none of this would have happened. If freeing them now was all they could do to even begin to redress that balance, then they would.

  But not blindly. Kux had sent a Paw to follow the retreating slaves and nominated a meeting point, where they’d rested until the trackers got back. They’d been disappointed but not surprised to learn that the slaves had indeed fled to another pod that was standing guard over construction of another pyramid. And from what they could tell in the dark, this one seemed almost finished, looming taller than the tree canopy – a brooding, malevolent presence that promised violence and poison and the end of all things.

  They stared at it now. Lilla told himself it was just wood and stone, but although he could barely make out the painted carvings that had been fixed to the outside, the shiver up his neck half convinced him they were watching him. Monsters. Conjurations of the Underworld. Drowned.

  Dakto’s lips were a thin line of tension, as if he was chewing over words best left unsaid as they crouched a dozen strides into the treeline. It was the still, cool hour before dawn. Birds were not quite stirring and fruit bats were still leaving scratches of black against the surface of the night. Insects droned and night flowers bloomed, sickly and cloying. There was a sudden rustle and a thump above them and Lilla held his breath, staring up into the blackness, but whatever was in the tree was staying clear of the multitude of humans below and he could see nothing.

  Lutek was on Lilla’s left, Tiamoko to his right, and the rest of the Paw stretched out to either side. Kux’s Paw was to their left, and the others had stealthily, slowly fanned out on three sides of the clearing. The fire and the torches around the pyramid had burnt low, barely casting enough light to show the long lines of sleeping slaves, huddled on beds of palm leaves, and the warriors in hammocks strung in the edges of the treeline.

  Lutek shifted, just a fraction, and her fingers tightened on Lilla’s arm. She tapped it, a slow countdown from ten, and fear surged in his gut. He swallowed three times, his mouth dry, and when they reached zero the two of them rose a heartbeat ahead of the rest. They crept through the jungle, slow and sure.

  Kill the warriors. Free the slaves. Smash the stone.

  And the slaves who don’t want freedom? The slaves who now outnumber us two to one? Who will have told the story of our destruction of their pyramid and that the Xentib have run for the Sky City with our blessing? What of them?

  The enemy camp was quiet but for a dozen warriors on guard, making slow rounds of the clearing, stepping between the rows of sleeping slaves with as little care as if they walked past rolls of woven cloth. They had no fear the slaves might rise up and attack them; Lilla marvelled at their arrogance.

  Kux’s Paw shot first, arrows and poisoned darts thumping into the figures in the hammocks and then the moving guards. The other Paws shot and alarm calls went up through the jungle as screams tore the last of the night into rags. One volley from three sides of the clearing and the war party charged into the burgeoning chaos, their cries ringing from beneath the trees like vengeful spirits.

  A man reared up out of the gloom, a wicked hatchet in his hand and already swinging for Lilla’s chest. Lilla pivoted away from the weapon, smashing his spear down onto his attacker’s wrist, and then stabbed him in the gut, out and into the thigh. The hatchet came in again, a strike that would open him up, armour or not, but Lilla spun the spear and cracked the butt into the side of the man’s jaw. He fell, limp, and Lilla stabbed him in the throat and leapt past him.

  He’d been close, right there as soon as Lilla entered the clearing. Where had he come from? He hadn’t been one of the patrolling guards. Tokob and Yaloh were screaming and slaughtering people in or near the hammocks and the perimeter, people who put up little resistance, while flights of arrows and darts rained down from the pyramid itself and the shadowy figures perched there. Not carvings after all. And they had been watching him. They’d watched them all and allowed themselves to be surrounded.

  Fuck.

  ‘Trap!’ he bellowed. ‘Look to the pyramid!’ As he spoke the enemy warriors, concealed on and around the structure – Shit, so those in the hammocks are slaves, we’re killing slaves – began shooting darts and arrows and throwing javelins of their own. The slick, co-ordinated attack by the Paws faltered and then a woman slammed into Lilla and they went down in a tangle of limbs and weapons, Lilla’s spear trapped between them and her knife arcing for his face. He seized her wrist in his left hand, but she had weight and momentum and the blade edged closer to his eye.

  Lilla snarled, thrashing his legs and trying to throw her off, straining to get his other hand onto her wrist. She smacked it away and landed a clumsy punch into his throat that stole a little of his breath. He grabbed the back of her neck in his right hand to pull her sideways, but his grip slipped and the knife lurched closer. Lilla bellowed and slammed his hand into her face, pushing her head sideways and up until she couldn’t see him and her balance shifted. He bucked his hips and threw her off, rolled with her and tried to prise the knife from her grip, but she lunged up off the dirt and her teeth closed on his ear.

  Lilla screamed and punched her, trying to keep the knife out of his ribs and her teeth out of his flesh. He worked his hand around her face, nearly losing his thumb to her teeth this time and then jamming it into her eye. She shrieked, twisting her head away as his thumbnail popped through the yolk of her eyeball, and he pulled the knife from her hand and stabbed it into the side of her neck two, three, four times until her hands fell and she shuddered beneath him.

  Lilla spat out her blood and slid off her, then retrieved his spear and used it to regain his feet. He kept the knife and spun in a circle, looking for the next attack, the next enemy, the next kill. In the confusion and beneath the constant rain of arrows and darts, the fight had become a slaughter on both sides, slaves falling alongside warriors in an orgy of bloodletting.

  ‘Stop!’ Lilla shouted. ‘Stop. Spare the slaves!’

  The warriors closest heard him, but many were too heavily engaged and fought on, heedless, and it wasn’t easy to identify slaves from warriors in the flickering torchlight anyway. Lilla saw an Empire warrior stab three slaves rather than allowing them to be freed; he was cut down from behind by Lutek, but by then it was too late. Lilla ducked as an arrow whickered overhead and another clattered through the leaves behind him, but those on the pyramid had little protection and the war party, too, had bows and blowpipes. And ample cover.

  There was just enough daylight for Lilla to pass the orders in sign to the Tokob nearest, and the Yaloh saw his plan soon enough. Those who could disengage concentrated their arrows and darts on the pyramid, and when the enemy couldn’t stand the withering rain any more, they leapt to the ground and charged those shooting from cover.

  Lilla deflected a spear with his own, slapping it out of the air, but then a dart took him in the thigh. He ripped out the palm-long missile with a roar and held onto it, as weapon and to identify the poison if there was any, and if he lived long enough to take any of the antidotes in the pack he’d left back in the trees.

  Someone screamed his na
me and his skin flushed with cold when he saw Tiamoko surrounded by three enemies. Lilla snatched up a fallen blowpipe, slapped in the dart, and shot. It lost much of its power on the too-long flight between them but grazed one warrior’s arm, just enough to distract her so she didn’t block Tiamoko’s punch to her jaw. She went down hard and the young warrior stamped on her throat and left her to suffocate, ducking the axe of the second and spinning him into the path of the third to spoil his blow.

  Lilla threw his spear, catching one in the back of the thigh, and chased after it, but Kux and a handful of Yaloh got there first, hacking into the enemy while Tiamoko backed away, his eyes wide and wild. Lilla kept going anyway, more slowly. He knew the look of panic on Tiamoko’s face and how quickly it could become unmanageable fear.

  The shouts, grunts, and screams, the thuds of falling bodies and the meaty smacks of flint and obsidian cleaving flesh, of clubs smashing bone, began to fade, though the sun had risen by the time it was done. The clearing fell still and silent but for the groans of the wounded and the sobbing of some of the slaves. Of some of the warriors. The enemy fighters, dog warriors and Coyote commanders only – not a Pecha among them – were herded to the pyramid and executed. Swift deaths. Clean if they could manage it.

  Too many of the slaves had died this time, killed by Empire weapons, killed by the Paws, but still most of the Quitob survivors refused the offer of freedom.

  Lilla wanted to shake sense into them; his fists itched to hurt them, but he didn’t. They were still bound in their hearts, holding firm to the habits of invisibility and obedience that had seen them survive this long. He had no idea whether their stated love for Empire, Singer, and song was a survival mechanism or the truth; all he did know was that he was faced with the same dilemma as before, only with almost double the number of slaves. People, not slaves, he reminded himself. It’s not their fault.

  Yet when Lilla tried to put himself in their position, he couldn’t. He’d fight until he died. He wouldn’t surrender and end up like this – broken and meek, stinking of fear-sweat, expression glazed with hopelessness. The slaves made him profoundly uncomfortable and he began to understand a little better why Dakto wouldn’t go near the Xentib. What would he do if he saw a Toko wearing a collar and a brand, after all? He shivered, head to toe, at the idea.