The Mermaid's Tale

by D. G. Valdron

He chuckled. “Such a thing, an Arukh shouting murder? It’s like a fish complaining of pissing in the water.”

  “Then we hear about you, going again to the places you’ve already been, but this time asking about Horsemen.”

  I cocked my head to one side.

  “Arrah?” I grunted.

  Behind me, I could hear Vhoroktik hissing. Khanstantin glanced at her and gave a slight shake of his head. The hiss stopped.

  “Honest for an Arukh,” he said, “which means hardly honest at all. We told you to come to us with what you’d found. Instead, you try for the head yourself and then you go to the Selk. You’re a fickle beast, aren’t you?”

  “Kill her,” Vhoroktik snarled. “Kill the Arukh, kill them all, exterminate the brutes. Now!”

  I stood calmly, betraying no emotion. I waited.

  Khanstantin coughed and looked embarrassed.

  “You have to admit,” he told me apologetically, “hers is a most sensible point of view.”

  I grunted.

  “And held by many,” he said.

  “But little acted upon,” I replied.

  He shrugged, half smiling at my apparent confidence.

  “It is the Arukh who rides with them,” Vhoroktik growled. “She let him live.”

  “No,” I said.

  Khanstantin and the others looked interested.

  “It is the Prince,” I said. “The son of the King of Humans. The son of the King of the Horsemen.”

  Khanstantin nodded.

  “Tell us how you know this for certain?” he asked.

  On my own, I returned to the Lodge and waited for the meal drums to pound. The little Arukh had found a shell comb, someplace, and as I sat and thought, I allowed her to groom me.

  The Horse men, so far as I could see, were loyal to the Prince.

  Why?

  Perhaps they didn’t know what he was?

  I didn’t credit that. I’d been able to find him, and I’d made sure other peoples knew of him. I didn’t believe his own people wouldn’t know.

  What then?

  Perhaps it was as simple as the fact that he preyed on other peoples? On Kobolds and Vampires and Mermaids.

  But he’d preyed on humans as well on the street of Joy.

  But not the same humans, I thought suddenly. Not his own people, but different humans.

  The Horsemen stood with him because he didn’t hunt among them.

  That was an interesting thought. I played with it for a while.

  It occurred to me suddenly that the simplest way to kill him, might be to murder a Horseman, or Horsewoman if they had such, in the way that he killed. They would find the body, and find his marks. Surely they couldn’t tolerate the fact that he was hunting among them.

  A thought of the Mermaids flitted through my mind.

  Murder and mutilation, a horrible death of many wounds, gibbering madness and lust atop a mauled corpse. What would it be like to kill like that? To die like that? My stomach twisted.

  And if it didn’t work? What then? A stupid useless death and blood on my hands, and perhaps the Prince with someone or something else to blame his crimes on.

  And if I did this thing, I thought, would I be any better than the Prince? Perhaps within myself, but what did that matter? So far as any might see, I would be no different.

  I would become the Arukh I’d been set to hunt.

  It struck me as monstrously unfair that the Prince would be tolerated for his atrocities.

  The more I thought of it, the more things seemed able to go wrong. The more impractical the scheme became.

  And there would be the unbearable taint. A taint even more unbearable because it was expected of us. Of abominations.

  “What are our lives?” I complained out loud. “But fodder in other peoples’ wars.”

  The young Arukh looked at me, eyes widening as she stared. She paused in her grooming.

  “How are we ever free, when others spend our lives like coins for their own purposes?”

  “They’re no better than we are. It is not right,” I said, “that they should look upon us, and despise us for sins that they commit. Why should they judge us? Why should they not be judged? What makes them see us as less than they? They see little more than tools to use and discard.”

  “How was it decreed,” I asked, “that we could be only what they said we were? And why should we abide this law above others? Who made this law?”

  “Why should we kill for others wishes? Is that a good enough reason to kill? Or is it no reason at all? What are our lives but shadows clutched as if in thieving hands? What are our deaths but the whims of strangers?”

  “Perhaps we should choose our own ways, make our own Kingdom, be something...” I ran out of words, “...something... more.”

  “Orc Nation,” she whispered softly, interrupting my thoughts, her eyes almost shining.

  I looked at her, paying attention to her for the first time. Orc Nation? Where had she come up with that?

  She stared back.

  She was mad, I thought again. I should just kill her.

  The meal drums started.

  “Arrah,” I said finally, and walked away.

  I watched from the sagging roof of an abandoned building partially torn down. The little Arukh and I held the highest point, but there was a crowd of spectators around, none standing too close. Everywhere that was safe, people of all sorts watched the fight. The group near me was a mixture of distaff races, wild Humans and totemless Dwarves, fugitive Kobolds and threadbare Hobgoblins. Some stood together in small groups, others alone.

  Even as I looked, I could see watchers on other higher buildings, Dwarves and Vampires, officers and leaders surveying their work.

  It was another battle. It had been coming for days, the whole city holding its breath as Horsemen and Vampires cantered along different streets, glancing sidelong, waiting for a sign. What sign? Challenge or weakness? I guessed they’d hardly knew themselves.

  Dwarves had marched in phalanxes, blowing their horns, waving their weapons. They pulled whole streets down, evicting waves of refugees as they tried to shape the land itself as a weapon to defeat Vampires.

  The great flat plain of the Downriver seemingly emptied out, as anyone who could, retreated to the centres of their cities. Even the Arukh tended to stay in their lodges.

  The weather had turned wet, rain turning many streets to mud. Some said this gave advantage to the Vampires, where cattle plodded easier than horses. Others said it hindered both.

  It was light morning when the word came, waking us in the Lodge. Dwarves’ choosing then, or perhaps Horsemens’. A bad time for Vampires, who preferred the night.

  Was the Cull out there somewhere? Waiting to choose the dead? I couldn’t see her.

  The Prince hadn’t come out of the Human Kingdom since my attack. He’d stayed well away and sheltered by other Humans. But for Tashifar, no other Arukh was even allowed in the same room.

  I had waited and watched.

  I’d skirted the edges of the Human Kingdom. I’d asked questions. I fantasized about plucking him with an arrow from a distance, but I wasn’t a good enough archer. I conceived fantastic traps to separate him from his allies and deliver him into my hands.

  I waited.

  He was a war leader, I found. Him, with Tashifar at his side, in the thick of every battle.

  The battle from my vantage point looked different from ones I’d been in.

  Always from within it had been a howling desperate mess. Here, free from desperation and fear, I could study it.

  “It makes a pattern,” I said out loud.

  The little Arukh glanced at me nervously, her face colouring, and then turned away to watch the battle. I didn’t think she understood me.

  Was it always like that
? I wondered. I tried to think back to the battles I’d been in, to imagine what they would have looked like from a vantage point like this.

  I felt pieces slide together in my mind, as I put together the patterns that they must have made.

  War was only senseless when you were inside it, I realized suddenly. Step back, look down, and it fell together in recognizable patterns and purposes. Opposing patterns that twined together like serpents rutting. Patterns of intention and contention.

  I’d planned to wait for a battle and join it, to find him in it and kill him. Now that I was actually watching it, and remembering what it was like inside, I felt little incentive to enter it. More likely I’d be killed before I reached the Prince, or killed trying to get out again.

  I watched and waited. Perhaps a moment would come that I might take advantage of.

  It looked like numbers had been equal, but the Vampires were taking the worst of it. The Horsemen had them harried against a long wall that ran the length of the broad boulevard, as they swept back and forth across the field killing everything in their path.

  The Vampires were losing. Hemmed in and harried, the Horsemens’ tactics had them caged. They were unable to move effectively, and were slowly being chopped to pieces. Their skill and bravery availed them nothing.

  I noticed that they were trying to use their Arukh troops for defense, forming them into phalanxes to try to blunt the Horsemen, the way the Dwarves used their own phalanxes to thwart the charges of mounted Vampires.

  It was partially successful. Arukh phalanxes pushed the Horsemen away, but as they met Dwarf phalanxes they tended to disintegrate, fighting in the old style.

  “The Vampires are learning,” I spoke aloud. “They’re learning how to fight against the Horsemen. But not fast enough.”

  “Will they take this defeat as a failure of their new tactics and abandon them?” I wondered. “Or would they keep on trying? You can’t tell with Vampires.”

  “Arrah?” the little Arukh said softly.

  I glanced at her.

  She shrugged.

  A boiling of motion in one section of the field caught my eye. Horsemen swept boldly into something that chewed them up mercilessly.

  I stared, fascinated, trying to resolve that sudden flurry of violence into something like a pattern. The Horsemen floundered and their horses reared as they seemed suddenly to be surrounded by... Hobgoblins?

  The Brave Tohkzahli, Khanstantin and Vhoroktik and their band.

  Had they been there all along? Or had they just joined the battle?

  And how could they stand against Horsemen? I forgot the rest of the battle, and focused exclusively on them as they began to carve their way across the battlefield, keeping together in a tight group.

  Squadrons of Horsemen rode up to them, were abruptly swallowed and pulled down.

  How were they doing that?

  They kept together like a Dwarf Phalanx, a wall of knives and spears. I’d never seen Goblins or Hobgoblins fight that way. I watched as a trio of howling bravos rode against them, pellmell and yelling.

  The Phalanx didn’t hold, it seemed to disintegrate along it’s left side thinning out, the right holding strong. The Horsemen rode down the left, even as they did so, I saw the right side seem to turn about itself, Hobgoblins rushing in at the left, their formation tightening. The charge of the Horsemen slowed and stopped, even as they found themselves in the middle of a circle of spears. They went down.

  The Phalanx moved swiftly across the battlefield, cutting down Horsemen, killing all out of proportion to their numbers. I began to make out individuals among them. Vhoroktik, overthrowing a horse and rider with main strength. Khanstantin, his spear flashing and dancing, barking out orders.

  They were very good. Frighteningly good.

  When I’d met them, I’d had some hidden thought that if it had come down to it, I could beat them and escape. I realized now, that I’d have had no chance.

  Around them, the battle seemed to disintegrate. A phalanx of Dwarves broke off from where they were hemming Vampires in and converged upon the Brave Tohkzahli. There was bloody contact once, twice, three times, and then the phalanxes moved away from each other, the Dwarves bleeding visibly, as the Brave Tohkzahli drove towards the Horsemen.

  Behind them the Vampires threw themselves at the weakened, extended line of Dwarves and broke loose, spilling out and charging freely.

  The broken Dwarf phalanx wavered and then collapsed reforming into heavy circular groups that drifted together, even as the Arukh squadrons rolled over them.

  The patterns I’d seen dissolved before my eyes as the battle disintegrated into a thousand vicious fights.

  The Vampires were trying to gather, to pull themselves into some sort of order to rally and attack. The Horsemen abandoned their tactic of pursuing those running loose, and threw themselves at the developing formations of the Vampires.

  I tried to pull back, to see patterns again. The main body of Horsemen met a force of Vampires. The Vampires moved left, trying to sweep around the Horsemen, even as the Horsemens’ line extended left to catch them. Galloping waves of Horsemen were sweeping right trying to take the Vampires from behind, both groups trampling Dwarves underfoot.

  “I see it, I see it,” the little Arukh said excitedly. “I see the patterns.”

  And then the Hobgoblins hit.

  The heart of the battle seemed to pulse and then explode in chaotic fighting as Horsemen and Vampires and Dwarves slashed and leaped and spun desperately searching for a friend to keep at their back.

  With something approaching awe, I watched as the Hobgoblin phalanx forced it’s way into the melee, changing from a wall to a spear point even as resistance hardened before it. Vhoroktik was well behind now, exhausted in the centre. Khanstantin and others were out in the lead.

  As they drove forward, Khanstantin’s group separated from the Tohkzahli main force and lanced amongst the hunters, even as the Horsemen and Dwarves began to push their fellows back.

  Then I saw what Khanstantin was pushing for. The whole of the battle faded away and I saw only Khanstantin and his band. I felt them as if I could smell their sweat and hear their uttered curses as the rest of the world fell away from my notice. Before them, less than a dozen yards away, fought the Prince and his band, the Horsemen who directed the battle.

  Even as I watched, Khanstantin and his companions fought well, hacking and stabbing at the mounted Vampires and their foot mercenaries with abandon.

  But Khanstantin’s band was dwindling, I could see. There weren’t enough of them there to make their phalanx work.

  The Prince caught sight of them, and with a shout, led a squad of half a dozen riders to bear down on them. He stopped short as his men swept forward and seemed to dissolve under a seething mass of blades.

  He wheeled his horse in retreat, but even as he showed them his flank his horse squealed, a spear sticking from its flank. A lucky cast, for these were not throwing spears.

  The horse staggered, venting it’s high pitched scream. It seemed to sag, going on three legs even as a Hobgoblin rushed forward and stuck another spear in its belly. With a vicious downward stroke the Prince laid his head open as the horse fell.

  The Prince kept his feet about him, staggering free as the body of the Horse hit the ground.

  On unsteady feet, he backpedalled slipping in the mud, his bronze sword dragging in the ground, his eyes darting about wildly as he tried to orient himself. To understand what was happening to him

  I growled in my throat. I could all but smell his death upon him. I could all but feel the sweat running down his back as he tried to understand how he had gone from being a destroying god, raining death, to some naked wanderer in a field of bloody madness.

  My heart raced with anticipation.

  A trio of Horsemen appeared in front of the Prince, thwarting
the Hobgoblins. One took a spear in his belly and fell, his horse running free.

  A Hobgoblin I recognized from before, Hahnuk, swung his axe at a horse and one of its legs vanished below the knee. The horse screamed shrilly, tossing its head as it tottered uncertainly on three legs where four should be. It went over, falling upon Hahnuk as he tried to flee it’s death throes.

  Khanstantin and his followers, but three now, swept around the dying horse, and suddenly, they were face to face with the Prince.

  I saw his eyes go round, his face go white.

  In my mind’s eye, though his back was to me, I could see Khanstantin’s fierce grin. I could almost hear his whispered promise.

  Exquisitely slowly, the Prince dropped his sword and turned about to flee.

  A spear whistled past his ear.

  Khanstantin and the others leaped after him.

  My heart seemed to slow with each footstep they took.

  I saw the Prince taking two steps, and then three.

  I saw Khanstantin climb over the dead mound of the Prince’s horse.

  I saw them coming after him, closing the distance with sharp knives flashing in the light.

  The shadow of a horse fell over Khanstantin. Its bulk loomed large at his back. Khanstantin began to turn, and then he was ridden down.

  Tashifar upon the horse smashed in the head of another Hobgoblin with his club. He left it behind even as the horse galloped three steps further to the Prince.

  Tashifar leaned down to embrace the Prince, sweeping them atop the horse. It paused, seemed to sink down beneath the weight of the two of them, then it galloped off, leaving the remaining Hobgoblins to die beneath the flashing hooves of following horses.

  So close.

  I howled with resentment and frustration, felt the savage cry tear it’s way out of my lungs as if it had been my teeth that had almost been upon the Prince’s neck.

  The little Arukh, terrified, almost fell from her perch as she climbed away from me. The spectators near us went silent, startled and frightened.

  My cry rang across the field, and perhaps it was my imagination, but for a second it seemed like Tashifar and the Prince, as they galloped away on their horse, fleeing the battle...