‘A break,’ muttered Keshik. ‘We are hunting down the most dangerous army in the history of the world and they want to have a rest.’ He shook his head in disbelief.
‘It is a good idea,’ Maida repeated. ‘We can catch them again easily.’
Keshik closed his eyes and lowered his head. This was why he liked the wilderness, liked being alone with Maida. There, his decisions affected just the two of them, and if — when — he made mistakes, his swords could rescue them, could make things right. He needed the Ogedei to give him orders. Even Slave could help. He understood military tactics better than anyone else in this army of his. And wasn’t he supposed to be the Beq anyway?
‘Call the arbans back,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a rest.’
Slave almost spat with anger. He crouched low behind a bush, watching the conversation. At his feet, the rodent that was also Tatya chittered. Slave rested his hand gently on her back, stilling her. If the Revenant’s army got too far ahead, these Tulugma might not be able to catch it. Myrrhini gripped his shoulder tightly and leaned in to whisper in his ear. He raised his hand to prevent her speaking. They were too close, she might be heard.
When Keshik, Maida and Hayde had pulled their horses away, heading back to the rest of the Tulugma, Slave rose to his full height. Tatya shimmered into her spurre form and Alyosha rumbled his disapproval. Myrrhini released her grip on Slave’s shoulder.
‘The Revenant mustn’t reach the Kuriltai,’ Myrrhini said.
‘I know, I Saw it too,’ Slave said irritably. He discovered he was already holding his Claw. ‘We need to go,’ he said.
Myrrhini pulled her own dagger out and gave a short nod. Slave moved into a jog, heading down the hill in pursuit of the Revenant’s army that still numbered over ten thousand. Tatya loped ahead, her rumbling snarl clearly audible. She would have to change into human form before they reached the army. As unaware as they were, even this army would notice a huge black spurre in their midst. Alyosha had already shifted, running easily alongside Slave. Behind them came Myrrhini. Pausing at dead bodies as they encountered them, they found clothes and weapons for the two shapeshifters.
They ran until they joined the ragged end of the army, slowing to match its relentless march. Immediately they merged into the mass, the noises and the stench assailed them. All around, the mindless people hummed, babbled or simply held their mouths open to allow sounds out. It seemed that none was ever silent. So many people making sounds resulted in a ferocious cacophony that made any form of spoken communication all but impossible. And the smell! So many thousands of people, unwashed, uncaring of personal hygiene, never hesitating to relieve themselves as they walked made for a stench that left one gagging and nauseated within moments.
Slave’s eyes watered with the assault. Beside him, Myrrhini had already vomited onto the filthy ground. She looked up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, and gave him a wan smile. He moved closer, to try to make himself heard.
‘You should have let more of it land on your clothes,’ he shouted into her ear. ‘Look more like you belong.’
She punched him on the shoulder, but her smile was short-lived as she took in his serious expression, realising he meant it.
Slave forced his mind to focus on his surroundings, putting aside the superficial irritations of smell and the choking dust. He tried to discern any pattern, any hint of organisation, that might be hidden beneath this apparent chaos. If this army was what it seemed — a simple collection of bodies to be flung with careless abandon at the walls of the Kuriltai — it could be stopped. If not, if there was a structure beneath it all, his task would be vastly more complicated.
He could not see how there could be a structure, but the Revenant was powerful and ancient, its capabilities unknown or lost somewhere in the books of the Readers. Once again, he silently cursed the rage that had made him lose the books he carried away from Leserlang.
At least concentrating in the face of all the horror around him kept his mind away from the twin threats of the vast open sky above and the madness that lurked deep within his own soul. Even the thought of that blackness was enough to move his hand unconsciously to grip the Warrior’s Claw hidden under his jerkin. His fingers tightened around the wyvern grip, savouring the smooth chill of the metal, the exquisite detail in the carving, the subliminal power lurking, awaiting its chance to awaken, to unleash its fury. Images of chaos, of violent death and bloodshed surged up in his mind, threatening to overwhelm him. With an effort of will, he released his grip on the Claw and the need for chaos faded. The world around him shifted back into focus.
Or at least mostly into focus.
It was as if everything had subtly shifted somehow. Some things — no, some people — had drifted, lessened in some way, while others seemed to stand out in stark relief, brighter, sharper, keener. He was intensely aware of the presence of some of the shambling mass, while others seemed to merge into the general morass of stinking humanity.
Was this the structure he had been seeking?
Slave watched the closest person. He was dressed exactly like everyone else, shambled like everyone else and bore the scars like everyone else, but he was not like everyone else. As if at a signal, the man raised his head to look around, more like a sentry than a shuffling animal. For an instant, his eyes met Slave’s. A flash of mutual recognition thrilled through them. Hue? What was the Kuvnos man doing here?
Hue opened his mouth, as if preparing to raise an alarm that would bring inevitable death to them. Slave reacted, spinning his Claw across the space between them, striking the Mertian dead. Hue dropped, those behind stepped over, on or around him, apparently unaware, unconcerned, no longer truly human.
Slave shambled to where Hue lay and knelt beside the dead man. Looking at his scarred face, seeing the ravages that his long march had wrought, he remembered Kirri. Flashes of memory illuminated the darkness of his thoughts. He saw again her odd lock of fair hair, the intricate patterns painted on her teeth, the steel in her gaze. He could close his eyes and feel her body close to his, warm and willing in their tiny tent as they huddled together against the savage northern winds.
He recalled the hideous vision of his dream where the Revenant itself erupted out of her body, tearing it apart from the inside.
He recalled why he was here and what he had to do.
Slave wrenched his Claw back out of Hue and rose to his feet, his eyes already seeking the next person who seemed too sharp, too alive in this mob. Somehow, they were important. The fact that Hue was Mertian was not lost on Slave. The Revenant was hunting the Mertians to extinction. To use them, to keep them partially awake and aware of what was happening in the time before it destroyed them was just the kind of pain the Revenant would savour. Holding the Claw again, Slave could see three such sharper people. He was about to move towards the first when he felt a hand on his elbow.
Myrrhini fell back with a scream as Slave whirled around, slicing at her face with the gleaming blade of the Claw. In the instant before he landed the blow, he held back. The blade came to rest a hair’s breadth from her cheek. She stared, motionless and wide-eyed at the death that lay on her skin.
‘Ice and wind,’ Slave said. ‘Don’t do that.’
In the unceasing noise of the Revenant’s army, his words were lost, but Myrrhini clearly guessed at his meaning. She slowly stepped back, her gaze shifting to the dead man at Slave’s feet. A shrug was her only acknowledgement of yet another senseless death by his hand. Slave refused to look down, casting his gaze instead in the direction of the next alert, scarred member of this heinous abomination.
Even as he went to move through the shambling crowd, Myrrhini grabbed his arm again.
‘What?’ he shouted at her.
Rather than speak, she jerked her thumb back over her shoulder, indicating the rear edge of the army. It was there that they had planned to kill. To kill as many as they could.
To cut this army until it bled enough to stop and look back.
<
br /> To slow it down.
To keep it from the Kuriltai.
Slave hefted his Claw again, shifting it in his hand to a killing grip as he sought his next victim.
17
Night descended slowly. The sky drifted almost reluctantly, it appeared, from washed-out blue through indigo to black. With the dark came the winds. Slave hunkered down with Myrrhini at his side, awaiting the arrival of the next wave of attacks. They were moving ever-closer to the Kuriltai and the Revenant’s army was in tatters. Slave and Myrrhini, together with the shapeshifters, had wrought terrible carnage, leaving hundreds dead in their wake, while Keshik’s arbans had, when they had finally caught up, scythed horrible damage of their own. Of the more than ten thousand who had first started with the Revenant along the Great River of Kings, barely a thousand remained.
A thousand, the Revenant itself at its head, might still be enough, however. Slave shivered as he recalled the terrible vision he and Myrrhini had Seen deep under the plundered village. Could that destruction, that chaos be prevented? He wrapped his arm around Myrrhini’s thin frame and drew her close, feeling her relax into his embrace. It was going to be another painful night of icy winds and aching cold, but they could not afford to rest.
With the death of the last aware members of the Revenant’s army, any semblance of order had vanished. No longer could the Revenant simply march ahead unconcerned, its filthy flock following blindly. Without its ears and eyes, it had to regularly patrol in order to maintain the singularity of purpose, the mindless advance towards one of the two outposts of Mertian thought left in the world. Every day, Slave had to hide from the Great Revenant as it pounded through the tattered remains of its army, flooding the members with its madness.
The distant rumble of hooves announced the imminent approach of the arbans. Slave tightened his grip on Myrrhini.
‘Here they come,’ he whispered.
‘You can hear them already?’
‘Can’t you?’
Myrrhini sighed and stopped talking.
Tatya made a low growling deep in her throat that Slave had come to recognise as a precursor to her shifting into spurre form. With a brief flicker, the woman vanished, to be replaced by the sleek black feline shape. She shook her mane and bounded off to kill again. Alyosha had already shifted, but his keenness for the kill was less than that of the younger shapeshifter.
Slave waited until the arbans were almost upon them before moving. He withdrew his arm from Myrrhini and rose to his feet. Myrrhini stood beside him. Slave was about to reveal his Claw when the rumble of hooves was supplanted by a deeper, more powerful pounding. Screams rose above the noise as the Revenant surged out of its complacency to face the threat. Its massive feet crushed any not quick enough as it ran through the army. The arbans hesitated in their charge, seeing the huge black form bearing down on them. High above them all red glowing eyes burned with ancient malice. Slave heard the beast’s voice again, as he had so long ago beneath the now burned city of Vogel. It bellowed in rage, crying out in a language that few understood.
Slave crouched again, hiding his Claw deeper in his clothes, and grabbed Myrrhini. Forcefully, he drove her away from the beast’s path. She resisted for a moment before giving way to his urging and together they scuttled away from the Revenant’s fury. Unknowing, the beast thundered past his Beq and his ancient enemy to strike down the arbans who had for so long harassed his army. Even as he ran for his life, Slave could not believe the arrogance, or perhaps the simple stupidity, of the thing. How could it allow its enemy to ravage its army for so long? Did it not know what was happening? Could it not recognise attritional warfare?
Slave realised that it might not. Most of, if not all, modern warfare was based on Tulugma’s warrior poetry, written at about the time of the great purges that rid the world of the Scarens who had summoned this beast into the world. It might not know these tactics, or it might simply be ignoring them. Either way, the fate of the world, assuming Myrrhini’s view into Eztli-Ichtaca was true, could hang on the next phase of this battle.
The Revenant continued to bellow its battle challenge as it pounded past its army towards the arbans. Slave waited as long as he felt he could before whipping his Warrior’s Claw out to hold it aloft. Its blades seemed to catch whatever fading light was around and burst into an unholy radiance. The light flooded over the foetid, mindless army, shocking them into sudden wakefulness. As one they turned to face their Beq.
Slave felt the hated black rage start to bubble upward from his gut, filling his heart, threatening his mind. Words burst from his mouth, words he did not understand, words that tore and wrenched at his throat. The army of the Revenant roared in response, their voices mingling into one vast sound of savagery. Slave regained control of his voice with a massive effort of will.
‘I am your Beq,’ Slave screamed. With the words, the rage within him stilled for a moment. ‘I am your Beq,’ he repeated. ‘I command you.’ He gave a single slashing movement with his arm, hurling the Claw as far as he could into the night, away from the arbans. The silver light from its passage lit the night, drawing a line across Grada as she journeyed through the sky.
Breaking into a shambling run, the entire army turned to follow the Claw. In instants, the ground shook from a thousand pairs of feet moving in perfect time. They ran around Slave and Myrrhini, parting like a river, leaving them untouched. It seemed like barely heartbeats, and they were alone on the plain, beneath the cold face of Grada.
‘How far will they run?’ Myrrhini asked.
‘Until someone tells them to stop,’ Slave answered.
‘There’s a big river somewhere over there,’ Tatya said. She shimmered out of her spurre form to stand beside Slave.
‘And if the Revenant does not get to them in time, it will lose its army in it,’ Alyosha added.
Slave nodded. The surging power of the black rage had faded the moment the Claw left his hand, but he knew it would be back. It had to be.
‘We had better go and make sure it does not get to them in time,’ Slave said.
‘The arbans …’ Myrrhini started.
‘Will all be slaughtered,’ Tatya finished. ‘You told us that yourself.’
‘And we need them to die well,’ Alyosha added. He shimmered into the old barin and rose up onto his hind legs, towering over them and roaring his defiance before dropping down onto all four paws. Without a backward look, he loped towards where the arbans were being torn apart. Slave followed with Tatya at his side, shifting into spurre form again. Myrrhini stood still, allowing her sight into Eztli-Ichtaca to illuminate the scene that lay before her.
Through her flame-filled eyes, she Saw Slave, somehow clutching his Claw once more, running, surrounded by a glowing hemisphere of silver peace. Ahead, the monstrous, towering Revenant raged and tore at the doomed arbans that, to her eyes, were already dead, rotting where they stood. And yet, standing before it were two figures who glowed, shone, radiated with power — Keshik and Maida. She had never Seen them thus before and she could not move for a moment as she tried to make sense of their new destiny.
A particularly loud scream of agony shocked her into motion. No matter they were fulfilling their destiny to die here on this wilderness plain so close to their home, the Tulugma warriors’ deaths would be hard.
Slave ran, flanked by the two shapeshifters, towards the Revenant. He raised his Claw and gave a disconcerting ululating cry that Myrrhini had never heard him make before. The Revenant paused in its destruction of the arbans to look around. When it saw Slave, it ceased eating whatever it was eating and rose to its full height.
‘My Beq,’ it roared, ‘you have come to me.’
Slave brandished his Claw and repeated the ululating sound, but this time Tatya joined it, adding her deep counterpoint. Alyosha blended his own rumbling tone to fill out the sound into a harmony that teased at Myrrhini’s mind. It was unlike anything she had heard, yet it hovered at the edge of familiarity.
The R
evenant, however, clearly recognised it, lifting its hands to the sky and howling the same rhythm. The sound rose to a shattering crescendo, sweeping across the wilderness as if to reach the ends of the world and shake its foundations. Myrrhini clamped her hands to her ears, trying vainly to keep out the sound. In heartbeats, it had driven her to her knees in pain. A scream was rent from her as the sound beat at her mind, battering at her sanity, ripping away her reason, leaving her with nothing but the primitive, the instinctive, the animal need to destroy. Rage built, seething up from deep within, filling her like water, roiling black water from the depths of her ancient past, calling to the Eye of Varuun.
As she surged back to her feet, her awakened memories brought back knowledge of that cry — it was the hunting cry of the Scaren tribes. Her people had been awakened to that sound for generations beyond count. It had ushered in torment, rape and brutal death. The Eye that had looked upon Kielevinenrohkimainen, that had stared into Varuun’s black heart, erupted into its own power, sending flames searing across the bare ground towards the Revenant.
‘No!’ screamed the scrap of humanity that was called Myrrhini. Her voice was loud, powerful beyond what a human could offer; it smashed through the ululating cry of the Scaren, sending the arbans, the vlekkenvorm and the humans crashing to the ground, tossed aside as leaves before the bitter winds of the Sixth Waste. The only ones left standing were the Revenant and its Scaren Beq. Power laid waste to everything between the two ancient foes. Nothing survived that moment: men caught in the blast, horses, insects, plants; nothing lived. The ground shuddered, stones were reduced to dust, boulders shattered.
It ended. Myrrhini fell to her knees, drained. Beneath her fingers, the dust was finer than powder, dead, white and cold. What had she done? What was that power?
Varuun. The name came unbidden to her mind. She had been its Eye all her life, but what did that mean? What had she Seen? Dread gripped her as she lifted her face to regard the monster that stood before her. It towered, even taller than it had been moments earlier. Wings now sprouted from its back, spreading to cover a span of more than a hundred paces. Its face, gnarled, brutal and black, stared down at her, puny human, defeated Mertian.
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