by Phil Tucker
“Thousands,” said Kish. “Well, perhaps we can sneak into their camp and free the others?”
“Possible,” said Jarek. “Acharsis and the others will be lightly guarded, and held at the perimeter of their tent city. It’s likely that they’ll be able to escape by themselves, regardless.”
“Perfect,” said Kish. “Then—”
“Think,” said Jarek. “Why do the Athites make it so easy for new slaves to escape?”
Kish hesitated. “I don’t know. Stupidity?”
“It’s the quickest way to break their spirits. They let them escape, let them run for a few days across the steppe, and then snatch them back up. Bring them back to the camp, and put them in the same poorly guarded cells. Whip them. Let them escape again if they want to. Whip them again. Over and over, until their spirits break.”
“Then… then we come up with a place to hide once they’ve escaped. Where we can avoid the Athites until they give up—”
“We’re in the middle of the Golden Steppe,” said Jarek. “The Athites are amongst the world’s best trackers, especially out here. Even if we do get them away, without mounts of our own we’ll be run down in days.”
“So… we steal a dozen - no, two dozen - ponies. We mount up only six of them, and then send the rest running in all directions—”
“No. The Athites can tell from the depth of the tracks which ones are being ridden and which aren’t.”
“So we put weights on the saddles of the others—”
“There are thousands of them, Kish. They could track a hundred ponies without difficulty if they really wanted to.”
Kish subsided, her frustration obvious. “Then we buy them back!”
“With what?”
“We raid Guthos. Steal an entire wagon. Trade it for—”
“They’d take us and the wagons; or, depending how old their deal with Guthos is, return the wagon to him. We’d have no way to make them honor the bargain.”
“Damn it,” said Kish, rising to her feet and pacing off into the darkness. Jarek watched her stride back and forth, a shadow that fairly vibrated with anger. “There has to be something.”
Jarek pressed his thumbs to his eyes. Acharsis was the planner. Acharsis would be in his element here. He’d masquerade as an envoy of Guthos’, perhaps, or fake some religious miracle that would overwhelm the Athites. But he wasn’t Acharsis.
“We can take revenge on Guthos, at least,” said Kish. “Kidnap him, force him to come up with a way to free our friends…?”
“Guthos knows we’re out here,” said Jarek dully. “He’ll be expecting us. We’ll have to fight through the whole camp.”
“Then we fight!” Kish dropped quickly, clamping her hand over her mouth in alarm at her own volume. “Then we fight,” she continued in a whisper. “We kill every one of those traitorous bastards—”
“Even if we could - which we can’t - what will that achieve? It won’t bring back our friends. No.”
“Then you come up with something!”
“I’m trying,” he grated. “We don’t have much to work with.”
“There has to be something. There has to.”
There has to. Jarek closed his eyes again, lowered his chin, pursed his lips. What could he do? His Sky Hammer was just a block of stone without Alok’s blessing. He no longer wielded any divine might. He could defeat perhaps a half-dozen of the nomads before being taken himself. They couldn’t outrun the them. They couldn’t defeat them. They couldn’t reason with them. If they found out who he was, the role he had played in casting them out of the River Cities twenty-odd years ago, they’d torture him to death over the course of a month.
Think. What would Acharsis do?
Imitate someone. Jarek didn’t have the acting skills. Fake a divine miracle. Jarek didn’t know enough about the Athite religion.
A thought occurred to him. “Wait.”
“What?” Kish moved closer. “You have an idea?”
“Not an idea. More like a creative way to commit suicide. But… yes.” He felt his pulse quicken. “A chance. An impossible chance.”
“That’s better than nothing,” said Kish. “What is it?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.” He rose to his feet. “Then you can tell me how crazy I am.”
“I like you crazy.” She rose smoothly to her feet. “You’ll get no objections from me. Let’s go.”
They marched through the night. Purpose fired Jarek’s stride, and Kish had no difficulty keeping up. They forged a path through the high grass, which turned silver under the light of Ninsaba’s crescent moon. Nothing stirred for miles around. The night swallowed the horizon so that it seemed as if they walked in a dream; an endless prelude to a nightmare that was always about to begin.
Slowly, the moon sank down and out of sight, and the horizon to the far east began to lighten. Somber purple gradually became cobalt blue, then ever softer hues, even as the west remained dark. The grass grew damp with dew, and Jarek fought the urge to quench his growing thirst.
He was half asleep when the ground crunched beneath his feet. He staggered to a stop and stared about him. In the pre-dawn light, the swathe of gray grass appeared otherworldly; a corridor cleaved through the endless sea of the steppe, extending as far as the eye could see to the southeast in one direction and curving gently around to the west in the other.
“Praise Scythia,” said Kish, bumping into his side. She took hold of his arm as she gazed at the dead grass. “I was beginning to think we were going to wander out here forever.”
“Not Scythia. Nekuul,” said Jarek. He reached out and took hold of one of the few remaining high stalks. It crumbled to ash in his hand. “Impossible to say how fresh this trail is. But it has to be the same one.”
Kish looked westward. “How far away would it be by now?”
“I don’t know. Only one way to find out. You good to keep walking?”
“You’re the one who pointed out I’m half your age. Keep up, old man.” She strode past him and smiled slyly over her shoulder as she went. Jarek fought the urge to smile back.
They marched throughout the day. Jarek watched their trail, unsure if Guthos would try to track them down, but by the time Qun blazed high overhead he decided they were safe. By tacit agreement they marched alongside the desiccated trail, not on it, though walking on its ruined surface would have been easier. On they strode, ever on, with no sight of their quarry.
They rested at midday beneath the remnants of a wizened tree. Its top had been bitten off, but still it provided enough shade - or the illusion of shade - for them to sit and doze against its hoary trunk. The sound of vultures woke Jarek, and he saw dozens of them eyeing him from the remaining branches, shuffling their cruelly-taloned feet and jostling for space. Dozens more wheeled overhead.
They marched on.
Qun lowered toward the horizon, and still they saw no sign. Dusk fell, and Kish set to talking about her favorite meals: how she liked nothing so much as freshly grilled lamb with mint leaves and honey; figs, freshly plucked, or even a simple grain salad; beer, cold and fresh, or even water. The sound of Jarek’s stomach growling made her stop, hand to her mouth. Then she burst out laughing, and even he had to smile.
Night fell. They slept in a hollow, little more than a rut, and the cold made it practical for them to curl up together, Kish the warm center around which he curved his body. He lay awake after she fell asleep, simply listening to her soft breaths, leaning his face in occasionally to inhale the scent of her hair. Sadness suffused him. He wanted to squeeze her in tight, keep the darkness away from her, and fought to keep his own melancholic thoughts at bay. When she stirred against him he would tense up, only to relax as she did. For a long while, he thought of kissing her neck, waking her, but he held back, and finally exhaustion claimed his thoughts.
They were up again a little after midnight. The moon was high, and they moved with urgency, tracking the dull river of ruined grass. At one point, Kish stumbled, a
nd he caught her by the elbow. It seemed natural to let his hand slide down into hers, and for a while they marched hand in hand, the grass whispering around them, the air bitingly cold, the world endlessly removed so that there only existed a limited bowl of dusky grass and the ceaseless sky above.
Dawn was nearly breaking when Jarek finally saw the dream rhino. It was a darker mass against the night sky, lit from behind by its glowing horn so that its bulk was limned in an impossible, soft-burning purple aura. He squeezed Kish’s hand, and her head came up as if she were waking from a walking dream.
“There,” he said. “There it is.”
They stopped. It was almost half a mile away. Unaware.
“How are you…?”
“I don’t know,” said Jarek. “This is the creative suicide part, remember?”
“But you did touch it,” she said, trying to sound convinced. “You walked away once. It can be done.”
“I’m going to have to do more than touch it,” he said. “And this time, Alok isn’t going to shield me from its aura. I may collapse as soon as I get too close.”
“You won’t,” said Kish. “I know you won’t.”
“One way to find out,” he said. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
His fatigue fell away from him as they walked that last half-mile. Kish took his hand once more, and he held hers tightly, glad she was there with him. If this was to be his last moment, there was nobody else he’d rather have by his side.
When finally they drew close enough, they stopped. Neither spoke. The dream rhino was bewilderingly massive, twenty yards at the shoulder, a miniature ziggurat on the move. The grass crackled as the rhino consumed its life energy, a constant susurrus that was interspersed with the steady crunch of each massive foot being placed on the dirt.
“Wish me luck,” he said. He made to release her hand, but she held him tightly and pulled him around, her other hand slipping behind his head to pull him into a fierce kiss.
Jarek froze, eyes wide, but before he could decide whether to kiss her back, she pulled away. “Luck,” she said.
Jarek nodded woodenly, released her hand, walked backward a few steps and then turned to face the dream rhino. It seemed oblivious to his presence, still walking away from them, each step carrying it a dozen yards. “Luck,” he whispered, then inhaled deeply that familiar scent of dung and fennel.
He squared his shoulders and moved up alongside it, staying just outside the radius of desiccated grass until he was abreast with its front shoulder. He saw its head in profile at last: a great wedge that seemed to thrust directly from its mountainous shoulders, broad where the small ears emerged and tapering down to its small mouth. Liquid black eyes framed by large, delicate lashes, the curvature of each eye reflecting the lurid illumination from the horn that rose from the beak of its front lip to extend almost five yards into the air; a flat blade of bone that bifurcated at the tip, useless as a weapon but glowing with incised lines and what looked like runes in a language nobody had ever been able to decipher. The Nekuulites were said to have derived their secret language from it.
The purple glow pulsed as the dream rhino fed; it cast an otherworldly illumination on the ground before it, bathed the stony ridges of its face, and made the night beyond seem all the more impenetrable.
“Luck,” whispered Jarek to himself again. The last - and only - time he’d attempted this, he’d still been within the farthest limits of Alok’s power; had been able to stagger forward, shielded from the worst of the rhino’s aura, to reach its pebbled flank and brush his fingers across its rough hide. He’d felt the surprising warmth of the beast, like a sun-warmed stone, and then fallen away, assailed by visions he’d forgotten the moment he’d left the aura.
Jarek dry swallowed. The dream rhino took a step, and just like that, it was a dozen yards beyond him. No time to rest. No time to doubt. Aware of Kish watching him, he squared his shoulders and stepped onto the dying grass.
It was like stepping out of shadow into sunlight. Warmth washed over him, his skin prickled, his mouth flooded with saliva and the taste of fennel. His chest tightened. The purple aura from the horn was everywhere, suffusing the night, creating a bubble in whose center walked the dream rhino. The aura played over its skin like light reflecting off water, or summer lightning dancing across the steppe.
Jarek took a deep breath and felt his mouth and throat immediately dry out. Another step, and another. Alok did not rise within him as the time before. The effect did not wash away. Instead, he felt feverish, knees loose, the sensation of the ground beneath his feet growing distant. His very sense of his own body began to warp, so that he felt as if he were floating over the ground even as he struggled with each step.
Gritting his jaw, he pressed closer, trying to hurry. The dream rhino’s form undulated before him as if seen through a heat shimmer, the huge folds of its thick hide seeming to swim. For a moment it seemed smaller than he did, and then it expanded to fill his entire field of vision, becoming a wall that he could never hope to scale.
The ground beneath his feet crunched, and when he looked down he saw bones hidden amongst the gray grass. Ribs and grinning skulls, femurs and random knobs of vertebrae. An old battlefield? He searched the ground and saw that the gray waste extended now beyond the purple aura. The steppe was gone. The dream rhino was moving through a trackless waste of ash, distant hills silhouetted against stormy, impossible skies of shifting crimson and black.
He’d been here before. He knew this place.
Sweat stung his eyes. He blinked, and in a flicker the steppe was back, the dream rhino nearly past him. Kish was calling out, but he couldn’t understand her words. Gripping hold of the Sky Hammer with both hands, he forced himself to jog up beside the dream rhino once more, head lowered as if running into a strong wind. The bones were gone. The purple radiance played across him, causing the hairs along the back of his arms to stand. Tracing his scars.
Thud. The dream rhino’s front left leg impacted with the ground, raising a cloud of ash. Jarek thrust his hammer into his belt, broke into a sprint and leaped just before he reached the leg, clutching at a ridge of hide just behind its knee. He slammed into its calf, and felt its heat radiate into him, banishing the cold. He grabbed on with both hands, suddenly sweating profusely. Cries rose up all around him, a chorus of lamentation, thousands wailing in sorrow and loss, but he ignored the sound and focused on one thing alone: climbing up.
The rough hide swum in and out of focus as he fought his way up. The dream rhino didn’t react to his presence at all. Suddenly, the leg lurched up and swung through space, and when it stepped down again the force was such that he was nearly knocked clear off.
He could feel himself weakening, his grip growing loose. With a cry he pulled himself up, then again. Stuck his toes into a broad seam, then flung himself off the leg and onto its side, grabbing hold of large whorls in its hide. The sky above him was crimson once more, riven by soundless lightning. A dusty wind tugged at him. Up he fought, grabbing at boney protrusions.
One final gasp of effort, and he crawled up over the rhino’s neck. Heaving for breath, he lay across it, trying not to vomit, to not look at the world around him. A ragged gasp, and he turned to climb up between its shoulders. Still it walked on, muscles the size of bridges sliding and bunching beneath the impossibly thick skin. Jarek grasped and pulled, swayed and hauled, dots of white dancing in his vision, till at last he was able to turn around and fall to his knees, right between its shoulders, and gaze out over its head, between the forked tip of its horn and out into the netherworld.
The steppe was truly gone. Everywhere, he saw Nekuul’s dominion. A river of souls was marching by to his right; an endless procession of the dead, some sobbing, some crying for succour, most with their heads bowed in defeat. Hills of bone rose here and there, shrines at their peaks, where shadows whirled and screamed their devotion. Lightning flickered on, and dust was whipped into whirlwinds by the cruel gusts that sought to flay
skin.
Jarek took a deep breath. He could barely keep his head up. He felt impossibly weak. Only the sheer breadth of the rhino’s back kept him from falling off. Inhaling deeply, he looked up into the crimson sky and bellowed with all his strength, “Nekuul! Attend me! It is I, Jarek, son of Alok! I beg you, come to me now!”
The wind howled around him, growing in strength, forming a vortex of ash around him that forced Jarek to raise a hand to shield his eyes. Grimacing, he peered between his outstretched fingers and saw a figure approaching through the storm, hovering in the air as if carried by the very currents that harried him.
Presumption, said the voice, and Jarek felt as if an ice-cold finger had traced his every bone. Arrogance. A pause, then: Ingenuity.
Jarek fought the urge to supplicate. He was Alok’s son, not hers. “My lady, forgive me my sins. Desperation drives me. Your dream rhino afforded me an opportunity to right wrongs. Hear my plea.”
Your wrongs take place outside my realm. What transpires in the world of the living is not my concern. Why should I involve myself in your troubles, son of Alok?
Never had Jarek been so aware of his own vitality. The gaze of the goddess made him conscious of his soul, fluttering within his breast like a caged butterfly. “You know that I have no other recourse. My father lies overthrown in your realm. You must have some sense of balance. For death to exist, there must be life, must there not? And in the world of the living, that balance is gone. Your daughter, Irella, has broken it. I hope that awareness might incline you to listen to my plea with some measure of forbearance.”
The goddess did not respond.
“I don’t ask for much. All I ask is that you allow me to direct this dream rhino for a day, to guide its footsteps as I will. I shall keep it away from your faithful, and do nothing to harm the cities that worship you. You have my word on this.”
You think me unable to calculate the consequences of your request? They might be too subtle for your mortal eye, but I can see the manifold futures that such a request would birth.