The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

  Xessa went to Tiamoko’s aid again, now being pushed back by three opponents. She ripped her spear down the flank of the nearest, parting his salt-cotton and the flesh beneath and Tiamoko was able to slide out into space. He forced a woman back, bleeding from leg and shoulder, as Xessa batted away at the other, defending desperately. She feinted, slid her spear over a clumsy parry and into the shoulder. Tiamoko took him in the back, his hatchet chopping into the man’s spine. In the seconds of stillness, surrounded by corpses, they looked both ways along the wall and saw it was lost, defenders being overwhelmed and falling like trees succumbing to the sheer weight of strangler vines. Xessa met Tiamoko’s eyes. He pointed down into the city. ‘Run.’

  There were no non-combatants any more. In the intermittent light of torches and cook fires, the sudden blazing of houses burning, Xessa saw greyhairs and youngsters, pregnant women and spirit-haunted ejab take up weapons and fight for their families and themselves. Fight for their city and way of life. Fight and die.

  The Melody was methodical: those who offered battle were engaged and cut down without mercy; those who surrendered were roped, forced onto their knees, and put under guard.

  It was carnage. It was death on a scale Xessa couldn’t comprehend, even seeing only slivers through the flame-flecked night.

  The inside of the Sky City wasn’t built for defence. Hundreds retreated into one of the healing caves, holding the entrance against their enemies, but there was no other way out. Perhaps they simply wished to die a little closer to Malel; perhaps they were praying for rescue. Others climbed the stairs onto the few buildings big enough to have stone roofs and held there, but again, they had nowhere to go.

  The Melody pushed them back from three sides and then somehow, without warning, from below, too. Surrounded. Warriors trying to make a stand got caught up in the crush, and once they were moving, they couldn’t stop. Somehow, Toxte had found her, and with him were a dozen ejab. They were pushed deeper into the avenues and plazas at the centre of the city by wave after wave of Melody warriors: desperate fights in the half-light among houses splashed with blood and screams, where the young and old were dragged from hiding and butchered if they wouldn’t surrender.

  Now dawn was coming, and madness rode its wings.

  Eventually Xessa and Toxte burst from the streets into the grand plaza below the council house where hundreds, thousands, of Tokob and Yaloh had pressed together. Each avenue leading in was cordoned off by a double row of defenders – the ejab slipped in and were directed to the east. Scores of torches burnt all around the plaza, lighting its edges and leaving its centre in pulsing, milling darkness.

  They wriggled through the frantic crowd and stood with thirty warriors, mostly ejab, at the eastern entrance. They were to hold it no matter what. Xessa had her spear and knife but her lungs were tight, her thirst shards of obsidian in her throat with every breath. Toxte was haggard, his mouth a slash more bitter than any wound.

  Her eyes settled on Ossa – his lithe black form as he lay on his side at her feet, his broad head and elegant muzzle, those huge ears that were her ears, his unwagging tail. Exhausted and hurt, only his fierce loyalty had carried him this far. Lilla and Tayan were gone: dead, captive – she didn’t know. Lutek and Tiamoko were on the western side of the plaza, she thought, out of reach, distant as the sun. Otek was missing and her fear for him was a bird trapped high in her chest, wings frantically beating. Here and now, Toxte, Ossa, and Ekka were all she had left in the world: her husband and their dogs, her ancestors and Malel.

  Protect Ossa. Protect Toxte. Protect the city. Eja. Warrior. Life-bringer.

  Life-taker.

  A ripple of movement, of gestures, down the line told her the enemy was coming, and in force. Demons. Monsters that looked human. Denizens of the Underworld. The few warriors mingled among the ejab shouted directions, organising them into a Paw to face the threat.

  A black shape in the corner of her eye and Xessa spun to it, the recall whistle already on her lips, but Ossa was still at her feet. The figure was a little boy, running, mouth wide and square with screams, a long-haired, black-painted warrior wearing a grey-and-white banded eagle feather chasing him down, spearing him in the back and leaving him to fall. Killing him. Killing a child.

  The plaza erupted into motion and then someone wrenched her around to face the eastern road again: the road that was suddenly full of the enemy. Xessa and her makeshift Paw lunged to meet them. Their line shattered under the impact and the first Melody warriors were shoving through, into the plaza, into the mass of civilians, the mass of innocents.

  ‘—stay in formation or we’re—’ Toxte was shouting, trying to pull them back together, to prevent them scattering, but it was too late. Small, fierce battles erupted as the second line of the enemy engaged the broken Paw. They were overwhelmed with the ease of a Drowned cutting through water lilies. Lethal and against the current, killing everything they touched.

  Xessa’s spear shivered as it deflected a club that arced towards her. She stumbled sideways under the impact, and Ossa leapt in and caught the enemy’s free hand in his jaws, tearing, holding on and shaking. The woman’s mouth opened in pain and Xessa got her spear in the way of the club again so she couldn’t smash in Ossa’s head. The dog let go and backed off, flanks heaving, paw curled up. He was nearly done. She had to get him to safety.

  The woman facing her had somehow lost her weapon; she punched Xessa in the side of the head and the eja reeled backwards, stars bursting in her eyes. She hit her again, and again, until Xessa’s head was ringing, vision blurring, her spear flailing blindly. She blocked the next punch with it and punched back, fist crashing into the warrior’s jaw, and in the split second it gave her Ossa leapt in again.

  The dog buried his muzzle in anything soft he could find and tore. Tore through material and tore through flesh, wrenching away great gobbets of meat. Blood sprayed, thick and bright, coating them all, and the woman tried to twist away. Ossa followed her, his muzzle deep in her belly.

  Xessa stabbed her in the chest. Ossa tore at her some more and then leapt away, his black coat ruby red under the first bars of dawn, the stench of blood and shit clinging in Xessa’s nostrils, making her gag. She wiped at her face, realised her hand was red, her face already sticky, blood in her eyelashes, running down her forehead and cheeks, insinuating its way into her mouth. She gagged again, coughed a stream of black bile, and made herself check for danger.

  She wasn’t in the road mouth any more. Somehow she’d been pushed back and now the Melody was flooding in through the entrance she was supposed to have held. Toxte – where was Toxte? She spun in a circle. Fighting everywhere, the Melody in lines and formations, impenetrable groups of warriors for the defenders to splash and break against. Everywhere, Tokob and Yaloh were dying or surrendering. None of them were her husband.

  We’ve lost.

  Xessa began weaving through the battle, looking desperately for Toxte, blackness threatening at the edges of her eyes like a second night falling even though the sun, finally, was rising.

  Two men came for her, hefting clubs. The eja drew her knife and flung it, underhand, the way she cast the net to tangle a Drowned, and it took the man on her right in the belly. He dropped to his knees. Xessa grunted, leapt over a corpse and parried the club of the other. She slammed the butt of her spear into his exposed ribs and forced him back, then pivoted and sliced downwards into the kneeling man’s stomach, opening him up from chest to groin. Xessa spun the spear and punched the butt into his face, sending him back in a spray of blood and teeth.

  The club thudded into the side of Xessa’s left knee with a sickening crunch. Her leg buckled, the sheer size of the hurt stealing her breath and strength. She collapsed. The warrior swung again and Ossa tore into his arm, the dog arriving out of nowhere. In the moment Ossa’s intervention won her, Xessa spun on her knees, pain exploding through the left, and stabbed the man in the chest, the belly, the shoulder, a frenzy of panicked stabbing until
he fell, twitched and died.

  The white-hot fire pulsing through Xessa’s left knee convinced her it was smashed to pulp, but when she made herself stand and test her weight on it, she could move. It felt as if there were shards of broken pottery inside the joint, but if it came to it, she could fight. If it came to it, she could run.

  Within a few dozen steps, she had to do both. These were eagle warriors – free and elite Pechaqueh – the first she’d seen up close. She didn’t have time to study them, instead parrying with a speed born of panic, not practice. The impact shivered through the spear improperly set in her hands and she stumbled back, managed a second wild block, and somehow managed to slice her opponent’s arm.

  The breath of his pain against her face and she whipped the spear in a vertical arc, driving the butt up between his legs. She missed his balls, the shaft slamming into his thigh, but it staggered him, giving her time to pull back and thrust. It went high and the flint tip raked through his cheek, missed his eye and laid open his nose. As he bellowed, she thrust again and speared his throat.

  Something slammed into her shoulder and sent her sprawling. She kept hold of the spear, just, as her hip slammed into the stone and she rolled away from the direction of impact. Footsteps thudded around her – whoever had hit her had kept their footing and run on, heedless. The woman chasing them, however, did not. She had a scarlet feather in her hair, bloody in the orange light like the edge of the glass axe that arced for Xessa’s face.

  Xessa rolled again, twice. Glass chips sprayed her back and the side of her neck as the axe head splintered on the stone. She lashed out with her good foot and caught the side of the warrior’s knee, collapsing it. The woman fell towards Xessa and turned it into another attack. The eja grabbed at her axe hand and missed again, forearm slamming against forearm instead. The woman landed hard on her, crushing her lungs, but Xessa got her other hand up and around her throat and twisted, shoving her away, scrambled to her feet and snatched up her spear and stabbed her, three quick thrusts in and out of the belly. Enough.

  Stepped back into shattered obsidian and yowled, even the toughness of her sole no match for that sharpness. Looked for Toxte or her father. Started moving again, beginning to shake.

  More enemies sprinting across a plaza stained dark with blood in sweeps and swathes, piles of bodies twitching, others still, yet more crawling, dragging, limping. She passed a group of Tokob throwing down weapons and dropping to their knees before the enemy.

  Xessa looked around at the carnage, now lit up by a golden-edged dawn, and sucked in a breath. There’d be no more running today; there was nowhere left to go. Fight, then. Fight or die.

  Probably fight and die. No one was giving orders; no one could tell her what to do. Toxte had vanished, despite his promise before all this madness started: I will never leave you.

  But you did, she thought, adrenaline burning away the tears that filled her eyes. You have. She wondered if it would be better or worse to die next to her husband and knew she’d never find out. She set out again, hobbling, only the mad swirl of battle screening her from the enemy. Ossa, red with gore and slower even than her, limped at her side. She knew he wouldn’t be left behind, no matter how badly hurt he was. They needed each other. No destination in mind, nothing but the imperative to find someone, anyone, that she loved and stand over them, protect them for as long as she could.

  Fight, Xessa. There’s nothing left but the fight. Make your ancestors proud.

  A hand grabbed her shoulder and she spun, spear coming up too slowly, but it was Otek. Her father. The old ejab eyes were wild, but not with spirit-haunting. He was afraid. Ossa was circling them slowly, performing his duty as best he could and if Xessa had had the time or the peace to do it, she would have broken her heart for him.

  Two exits out of the plaza were still being contested, but the defenders were outnumbered and they were being cut to pieces even as she watched. The other two avenues were already in Melody hands. Everyone in the plaza was trapped. Xessa was trapped.

  ‘Run,’ Otek signed. ‘Go, now.’ He shoved at her but then they were under attack again, half a dozen stalking them, Tlaloxqueh and Quitob in their distinctive paint, and there was nowhere to run to anyway.

  ‘Eja,’ she saw one say, perhaps recognising the bamboo snake-scale over her salt-cotton, and something like ugly triumph blossomed in their faces.

  Ossa was bristling and stiff-legged and Otek was wild. Fight or die.

  A Quito danced in, holding his hatchet up high: too high. Ossa responded as he’d been trained – as Xessa had trained him – leaping for the lower belly to tear him open. Xessa began the command to recall him when a second warrior spun, graceful as a shaman in celebration, and brought his club down towards the dog’s back.

  Everything stopped. Xessa’s breath, lips pursed. The blood in her veins, still. The spear in her hand, motionless.

  And then Otek threw himself in the way and the club caved in his skull in a single blow.

  Xessa could move again. She threw her spear, punching the warrior off his feet as Otek landed face down with a thud she felt all the way into her heart. She pulled out her knife and tore at the warriors crowding towards them, Ossa slow but snarling, his jet-black coat stiff with blood.

  Someone shoved her and Xessa fell to her knees, heedless of the pain and the blood and the danger. The knife fell from her hand and she pulled Otek into her arms.

  The impact of falling bodies shivered through the stone and she ignored it. Someone grabbed her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. There were feet and legs in her periphery, encircling her. She ignored them. Otek’s eyes weren’t spirit-haunted. They weren’t empty. They were cenotes of agony. Of love.

  Xessa broke. Broke into pieces so sharp that breathing cut her, that thinking flayed her. She kissed his gaping mouth and Ossa, who had always sat so calmly in her father’s lap, licked his unresponsive cheek.

  And Otek died.

  Someone fell over her. Xessa didn’t care. Something shifted in her heart then, an ember of anger that nothing could quench. They had taken the friend of her heart. They had taken her husband and her father. They had hurt her dog.

  Xessa laid Otek’s body gently on the stone and picked up the knife again. She slashed it through the leg nearest her, and then again up into the groin of another and then hands, filthy fucking slave hands, were on her arms and there were ropes around Ossa’s muzzle and a big fist in the scruff of his neck and more ropes around his paws and she wanted to tell them about his wounded shoulder, but they were hauling her back, away from Otek, away from Ossa, a sticky hand wrapped around her jaw and her head wrenched back and up until she had to stand, arms tight behind her.

  A man faced her, older than her, forties, a little silver in his hair, lots of eagle feathers standing proud at the back of his head. He had a war club and wooden squares sewn onto his salt-cotton that reminded her of a Drowned’s back and belly armour.

  He pointed the club at Otek. ‘Brave,’ he said and then he nodded and the hands let her go. Xessa tightened her fingers on the knife they hadn’t taken from her and saw the warrior’s face become still, ready, the rest of him relaxed. Hate. Feel nothing but hate, eja.

  Nothing but hate.

  Xessa rammed the blade at his throat. The point nicked skin before his empty hand shot out and punched her unconscious.

  PILOS

  Sky City, Malel, Tokoban

  34th day of the grand absence of the Great Star

  He had them. While thousands were no doubt hiding in houses and buildings elsewhere, Pilos had most of the defenders contained in one huge ceremonial plaza.

  Scores began to surrender, those civilians trapped with their offspring among the fighters giving up first. And once it began, it spread faster than fever. Control the children; control the council.

  The warriors began to drop their weapons and plead for clemency and the Melody switched smoothly from fighting to capture, disarming and herding together Tokob and Yaloh,
forcing them to give up their armour and their sandals. A barefoot, unarmoured, frightened captive was less likely to run.

  There was still fierce fighting in the western part of the city, but the dogs had it under control. By dusk tonight – tomorrow night at the latest – the Sky City would be theirs. But what would be the cost to his beloved Melody? The dead were everywhere, and everywhere eagle feathers stirred in hair, twisting on bodies that would never move again.

  This might have felt like the decisive battle, and likely was, but there were thousands of sticks of jungle still to comb. The Melody would be desperately under-strength by the time Tokoban and Yalotlan were fully subdued.

  Under-strength but with no enemies left to fight. The whole of Ixachipan will live beneath the song and all its people will know its glory.

  If it still has any.

  Pilos pushed away the thought and watched the eja. Her hands were tied before her and she sat on the stone with her head bowed. Her dog was trussed by her side and he wriggled occasionally, straining against his ropes, and then the woman put her bound hands on him and he was still. She made no other move, gave no indication she was aware of anyone around her. She was staring at the spot where the old man had died. Pilos had ordered the corpse to be dragged away. Warriors staring at their dead were angry warriors. Better to have them on their knees with nothing to look at but others like them – and the Melody standing tall on guard.

  ‘Feather Calan.’

  The woman was hoarse from shouting orders and rusty with dried blood, her salt-cotton stained. ‘High Feather?’

  ‘Get the prisoners moving. I want them into the jungle before dark. Send them along the most secure trails through Yalotlan – where our pyramid-builders are numerous and well guarded – and get them into Xentiban. They’re to hold at the border with the heartland and wait for us; we should be no more than a few days behind. We’ll enter Pechacan and the Singing City together.’