The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

  Only I’m not. I’m right here, three steps behind him.

  If she wanted to retake command, she needed to shrug off the pain and start giving the bastard orders. Ilandeh pressed a hand to her ribs and sucked in a deep, deliberate breath, waiting for the scrape or creak that would tell her she’d broken ribs or cracked her sternum. Pain, a lot of pain, but she was intact as far as she could tell. No bubbling, no blood in her throat or mouth. Her armour had held then, just.

  Ilandeh ran heavily after Sarn and the rest of her command, ignoring the urge to sit and rest, to hunch over. She was Flight, and she had a task. A duty to Empire, Singer, Setatmeh and High Feather all.

  The Whispers were shadows in the gloom, flitting like moths across the face of a cloudy moon. Ilandeh moved among them, a little slower, a touch breathier, but with them. Sarn had the arrow’s tip of their formation, while she laboured along out on one of the barbs. She told herself it didn’t matter. She almost believed it.

  And then screams and the faltering of the arrow, a structure that would’ve held strong if she’d been the tip.

  ‘Line out,’ she called ahead into the darkness, no need for stealth now. The Whispers re-formed and ran forward in a loose skirmish line, the better to encircle any enemy, dodging trees and tangles of shrub and vine. Ilandeh saw what Sarn had led them into, what his hubris had done to them in his desire to retake command.

  The force they’d been tracking wasn’t alone. The force they’d encountered had fled – back to its friends. Two, maybe three hundred Tokob and Yaloh warriors spread across a clearing – a full war party – and Sarn had led them straight into it. Fighting broke out immediately and Ilandeh threw herself into it, shouting orders to tighten up again. Where they could, her pod obeyed, falling into close formation to protect each other.

  Ilandeh heard the distinctive sound of a blowpipe and leapt to one side – no idea if she was moving into or out of the dart’s path. Nothing hit her so she kept moving, adrenaline speeding her limbs and smothering her hurts. She slipped beneath the flashing edge of a hatchet and ripped upwards into an armpit with her spear. Her attacker spun with the movement of his weapon and avoided the blow; she flowed into the next attack, letting the spear’s momentum carry it and her forward, the butt rising to catch her opponent in the back as he turned and shoving him off balance. She brought the spear back down again in an overhand blow, the haft slamming into the top of his shoulder.

  The hatchet was too short and he couldn’t get close. She whirled around him and sank the spear tip into his arm, his arse, his thigh, none of them killing strikes as he managed to parry the full force of her blows, the hatchet’s stone head chipping pieces out of her spear haft as they attacked and counter-attacked. An arrow hummed between them and both ducked on instinct, but no more followed it and Ilandeh thrust again. The Yalotl countered, but the crack of wood on wood was high and wrong, and the hatchet’s head flew off the broken handle. He threw it at her and tried to grab for her spear; he got a hand on it, and pushed it wide and then jerked it back, free hand flailing for her. Ilandeh let go. The Yalotl stumbled back, unbalanced, and she kicked him in the thigh, where she’d grazed him with the obsidian.

  He growled and began to swing the spear at her; Ilandeh spun in the same direction, just ahead of its arc, and punched him in the side of the neck; she kept going until she was at his back and snaked her right arm around his throat, grabbing the biceps of her left to complete the lock. She drove her right foot into the back of his knee, wrenching upwards at the same time. There was a grinding crunch and a pop, and his neck came apart in her arms.

  Ilandeh held him up as a shield as she quartered the clearing. Most of her command was down: only fifty or so still fighting hard, and while their formations were holding, they were outnumbered two to one at least. She couldn’t untangle the mess Sarn had dropped them in.

  ‘Scatter,’ Ilandeh screamed. ‘Scatter!’

  Those Whispers who could disengaged instantly, ducking, rolling, and sprinting out of reach of their opponents, weaving through the trees at the edge of the clearing and vanishing into the pre-dawn. Five were too heavily engaged to make it out and Ilandeh retrieved her spear and dashed for the closest, her ribs a forgotten hurt that would haunt her later, and scythed the legs from under the nearest enemy warrior. The Whisper didn’t waste time thanking her – together they helped a third and turned for the dark of the jungle, Sarn vanishing just ahead of them. The final two they left to their fate, and screams rose before they were ten strides into the treeline.

  Fury boiled in Ilandeh’s veins as she ran. The first engagement since Pilos had arrived – one intended to clear the route ahead of them – and fucking Sarn had got half her pod slaughtered. No, she reminded herself, she’d got half her pod slaughtered. She was Flight. The responsibility – and the blame – was hers, no matter what Sarn had done.

  Ilandeh gritted her teeth. Knowing she’d disappointed Pilos hurt more than a club to the chest. She’d forgotten just how much the High Feather’s good opinion of her mattered and how, despite the utter purity of his blood and lineage, his status and reputation, he never once looked at her with anything other than respect. Or he hadn’t, before this.

  They reached the camp. Ilandeh snagged Sarn’s armour and pulled him close. ‘With me, right now,’ she growled, and strode towards the High Feather before she lost her nerve.

  PILOS

  Northwestern Yalotlan

  232nd day of the Great Star at morning

  Pilos walked through the latest ambush site to plague their advance as storm clouds bellied across the sun, their ragged edges turning pink and peach before fading back to grey. He picked his way among the corpses, analysing the arrows, the darts, the direction of flight of both warriors and weapons.

  One man dangled by an ankle from a trip-snare, his head mashed to pulp, body twisting gently around and then back, around and then back, as the wind stirred the branch from which he hung. The clearing was silent but for the call of birds high above and the hum of insects enjoying a brief respite from the rain.

  The High Feather dipped his fingers into the mess of crushed skull, then rubbed them together. The humidity had kept the blood fluid but it was thick, trying to clot. A couple of hours then.

  Six days into Yalotlan, in the Wet, and the enemy was throwing everything at them. The Talons were ambushed every day, sometimes more, from ahead and behind as small war parties crept past them in the thickness of the forest to pick off a dozen or score of their warriors before melting back into the undergrowth. It was a slow, patient attrition that had the Talons on edge, but Pilos wouldn’t let them lose focus.

  Here on this low hill, on the only trail wide enough for his Talons and so of course defended, sprawled forty-six dead warriors with not a Toko or Yalotl among them, from what he could tell. Feather Calan stepped in his footprints behind him, silent as a shadow. Second Flight Sarn came last; it’d been he who brought word. Ahead and behind, four eagles looked beyond the ambush site to the surrounding jungle.

  However much Ilandeh knew about Tokoban, she could provide little intelligence on this land, with its sudden lines of hills that seemed intended to hinder their progress, its unexpected pools and hidden cenotes. He’d lost seven slave warriors the day before when a lip of rock hidden by a tangle of undergrowth had given way and taken them screaming down into a cave. Superstitious dog warriors had whispered of the lords of the Underworld aiding the Yaloh, and Pilos had been forced to punish them publicly for it. And now this.

  Behind them, in the land they’d retaken, slaves and engineers were hurrying the completion of new pyramids with supplies dragged in from Xentiban. They were working through the night, building the pyramids small so they could be completed faster. The song would be weaker, but it would be there. Once Yalotlan was secure, grander structures would be built to properly honour the Singer and the song. Soon it would ring all through this land and all the way to to the edge of Ixachipan, stick after stick of majesty
and hope. The peace of the Empire of Songs brought at last to these uncivilised peoples. Maybe then they’d stop setting fucking ambushes.

  And when we are finally finished here, I will return to the Singing City for a conversation with Great Octave Enet, about so many things. And I will stand before the Singer and break her hold over him. And he will abandon the madness she has brought upon him. There will be peace across Ixachipan and a song of glory. And we will waken the world spirit and life will become music.

  A dream for a different day.

  Pilos pushed at the hanging man, setting his body to swinging again, the rope creaking like the slow laughter of one of the lords of the Underworld. He stared around the clearing some more, squinted up at the canopy. ‘Sarn, you said the trail was clear. Now forty-six dogs and macaws are dead. My macaws. Your Flight’s macaws.’

  The Second Flight limped forward, a stretch of cotton bound around his torn calf. He wouldn’t meet his High Feather’s eyes and shame burnt in his face, hotter than the hidden sun.

  ‘They had archers in the trees, softened us up before we knew they were there, High Feather. Must have taken out at least half of us with one flight of arrows. Then they swung down from the trees and came in to finish us with spears. I fought my way clear, injured two, but I could see they weren’t taking prisoners, so I ran. No one else was getting out; they were mired in too deep. I would’ve given my life gladly if the cause wasn’t already lost.’

  ‘As Second Flight, you should’ve been at the front. You should’ve been the first to die,’ Pilos snarled and spat into the dirt. ‘And yet here you are, the only survivor.’ He poked the man hard in the chest; Sarn flushed anew but didn’t respond. ‘I gave you this task to allow you to prove yourself after you led my scouts into an ambush. And here we are, and you … led my scouts into an ambush. Once can be forgiven, Sarn. But only once. I had thought you a Whisper; I had thought you a leader. Instead you are but a half-blood macaw, and you will march with the rest of your kind and fight with the rest of your kind. Give me your arm.’

  ‘High Feather, please,’ Sarn began.

  ‘Feather Calan,’ Pilos said softly and she caught Sarn in a chokehold and put a sharp sliver of obsidian beneath his eye. The Whisper stilled.

  ‘Your arm,’ he repeated and Sarn extended it. He was wheezing and his face was red, but his eyes pleaded. Pilos ignored them. The tattoo was just above the inside of his elbow – the little chulul. The mark of the Whisper.

  ‘Please,’ Sarn begged again, one last time. Pilos took the obsidian from Calan and slashed it through the tattoo, cutting the cat’s head free, and then its tail. Sarn yelled and writhed, but Calan tightened her grip and choked off his protests. The blood was hot and fresh and pattered into the leaf-litter.

  ‘Do you know where Flight Ilandeh’s chulul is, Sarn?’ Pilos demanded. The man was gasping at the pain, but he managed to shake his head in Calan’s grip.

  ‘The inside of her wrist. She told me when she made Flight the reason – so that if she ever dishonoured herself or displeased her High Feather, the destruction of the tattoo would kill her. That’s how much it means. That’s what a Flight is. Now get that seen to and make your way to the regular macaws. No stitches,’ he warned, for he wouldn’t be the first disgraced Whisper to try and save the tattoo. ‘Cleaned and bound, no more.’

  Calan let Sarn go and shoved him away, back down the trail. She wiped her hands deliberately on her armour before accepting the sliver of glass back.

  Pilos walked through the last of the ambush site, cleared of traps by those who’d died and those who’d secured the perimeter before the High Feather arrived.

  ‘They know we’re here, yet they’re not pushing in. They ambushed us, now they’re allowing us to regroup. Why?’ he asked the trees.

  And that, of course, was when the true attack came.

  Pilos hadn’t anticipated it, as such, but there was less surprise than admiration in him as arrows whined out of the trees to north and west and he threw himself into a stand of young chay, taller than he was and densely packed. A two-pronged attack on his position, and they’d held back long enough to ensure Pilos was barely guarded. They recognised him as High Feather and thought cutting the head from the snake would kill the body.

  They were wrong, and not just because Atu was ripping them apart in the east of Yalotlan. Even if they killed every Feather in the Melody, he would still trust his eagles to bring them under the song.

  Sarn sprinted down the track, calling for aid, his disgrace notwithstanding, while Calan came charging to her High Feather’s defence. Sarn would bring everyone – eagles who wouldn’t be held back from aiding their High Feather – and his elite would crush these bastards. They’d claim another stick of land, that little bit closer to Tokoban and peace.

  Pilos just needed to hold out for a few hundred breaths and the fury of the Melody would fall on the enemy. He huddled in on himself as darts and arrows thudded into the soil and shredded the chay leaves, releasing their familiar scent and milky sap. Pilos wiped it carefully from his eyebrows and mouth. Such a small amount would do little harm unless it got in his eyes, but the situation was risky enough without adding in poison.

  His armour, salt-cotton for the most part, like that of his warriors, was inlaid front and back with strips of painted mahogany in the same style and appearance as the toughened plates gracing the belly and back of the holy Setatmeh. It wouldn’t stop a spear thrown from close range, but for now they weren’t closing, so he had a chance.

  And armour will do fuck all for me if I get a dart in the neck, he thought as one hit and bounced among the woody stems.

  Calan was under a fig to his left, pressed against the trunk and watching him for orders. He could see her debating whether to sprint to his side and make herself into a shield, so he held up a flat palm, ordering her to stay still.

  A scream from nearby, ragged and protracted – a bad wounding, maybe a poisoning. One of his warriors. The arrows and darts flittering across the clearing were coming from three sides now as the attackers kept them pinned down and worked their way around. They all knew it was a race to get to Pilos before reinforcements did. He wondered how many of the enemy had followed Sarn and whether his warning would reach the rest of the Melody at all.

  Another scream as a second eagle found her cover insufficient against the new angle of attack. Pilos would be next, he knew. The chay was dense but the growing stems were slender and green, flexible, not enough to do more than disrupt line of sight and slow the arrows a little. He wormed further into their midst and then watched behind him. It was the only direction left open to them now and he knew all weapons would be trained on him the moment he broke cover.

  A scattering of arrows and javelins whirred through the glade in the macaws stationed between here and the main camp below. The missiles pinning him down faltered, then grew even heavier as they tried to kill him before reinforcements got to him.

  Pounding feet and the Pechaqueh war cry, and then the distinctive crack of wood on wood signalling hand-to-hand fighting. Pilos wiped his palm on his armour and gripped his club again; then he took his chance and joined the fray, leaping from cover and sprinting to the aid of a dog warrior. The head of his club crushed a Tokob warrior’s shoulder and he fell at the feet of the dog; the man finished him, nodded shocked thanks to Pilos and then stepped between him and the flicker of a thrown spear. The weapon tore through the outer layers of his salt-cotton, its force stolen. It staggered him back two steps, into Pilos who caught him, grabbed the spear and wrenched it back out. A spray of blood followed.

  The warrior grunted, then shook his head and pushed away from Pilos, hand pressed to his side. ‘Go, High Feather. We’ll cover you.’

  Three Pechaqueh flowed around him, armed with small shields – eagles. ‘No need, dog,’ Pilos said and grinned as battle-joy surged within him. ‘Kill them all,’ he bellowed and the five of them charged the treeline, where the stutter and flow of movement gave shape
to the enemy. To stay in the open was certain death; better to close with their attackers.

  More eagles joined them, appearing from the trail or the surrounding jungle, and the dog warriors pulled back, let the eagles take their places around Pilos. Macaws ascended into the trees to support with darts and arrows of their own, shot from above.

  Pilos aimed for the thickest knot of Yaloh and Tokob and trusted to the holy Setatmeh and his armour. Screams and shouts erupted, leaves shivered down from the movement of Whispers in the trees, and the High Feather gave himself up to war.

  In the end they’d held and then more than held, pushing their ambushers back through the hours and the rain and wind that whipped the treetops and fluttered the fan of wet feathers in Pilos’s hair.

  The macaws held the canopy and the eagles had the forest floor, dog warriors curving around on the flanks, and the Tokob and Yaloh were driven like deer ahead of a pack of grassland coyotes until they broke and scattered and not even the Whispers could track them through the gloom of storm and dusk. They lost nearly fifty dogs and half as many eagles before it was done, while the enemy dead numbered two-thirds that. They’d chosen the ambush site well, and they’d fallen back rather than fight to the death. It was no shame to admire a talented enemy, and Pilos did so even as he cursed their names and ancestors.

  He walked among the wounded, shamans kneeling over them and bloody to the elbows, until he found the man. He squatted at his side. ‘How do you feel? No, don’t get up, that’s an order.’

  ‘Shaman says I’ll live, High Feather. I’ll be back in the line in a few days, less even,’ the dog tried, panicking. Pilos squeezed his shoulder, hushing him. He looked for the nearest shaman for confirmation.

  ‘A week, but yes, he’ll live,’ she said, wiping her hair out of her eyes and smearing blood across the blue paint zigzagged across her forehead.