Under the Crimson Sun

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “Fehrd gave me lessons,” Gan said.

  With a sigh, Rol said, “Fehrd gave you one lesson, three months ago.”

  “I’m a quick study.”

  Rol opened his mouth to argue the point—in fact, there were several points worth arguing with Gan about—but he decided not to in favor of finally emptying his bladder. “I’ll be at the slaver carriage if you need me,” Rol said. Even if Tirana—or whatever her name was—wasn’t awake nor to be awakened, he liked the idea of waking up in her carriage.

  Then, recalling something he’d meant to tell Gan, but had forgotten in the mental anguish of not being able to pee, he turned and said, “By the way, I saw some dead aguardi cacti around.”

  “So your comment about anakores turned out not to be a joke?” Gan asked.

  “Maybe not. Keep your eye open.”

  “Will do,” Gan said as Rol walked toward a sand dune. When he got over to the other side of that, he could urinate in private.

  As he adjusted his breeches so he could finally relieve himself, he thought about where in the caravan he might have his liaison with the slaver’s daughter. Privacy was, after all, hard to come by in a group of three dozen travelers (and that wasn’t even counting the slaves in the stone cart).

  The next sound he heard was not one he expected. His urine hitting the sand, the howl of the wind, even the flickering of the nearest of the torches—all of them hovered in the background.

  But suddenly, he found himself compelled.

  In some ways it reminded him of the Way—Rol and the others had done some security work for more than one wizard in their time—but this didn’t quite match how he’d felt when mages worked their mind-craft on him.

  He was overcome with an urge to stop what he was doing and walk toward—something to his left.

  “Do you mind, I’m a little busy here,” he muttered, waving an arm past his ear, as if that would help. “Look, unless you’re a good-looking woman—or, frip, even a bad-looking one—I’m going to be very put out when I beat you into submission for interrupting my—”

  Suddenly, Rol couldn’t move.

  For all his life, Rol had prided himself on being in tune with his body. If you were going to make a living at physical violence, you needed to be in control of your movements and be fully aware of what you were capable of. You had to know your own strength down to the last iota. This was useful not only when he was beating up bandits or killing an anakore, but also in his dealings with women, who appreciated his strength and self-control.

  So to find himself suddenly unable to control his limbs pissed him right off.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t even shout his outrage to the skies—or even to Gan, who wasn’t all that far away—because the control extended to his mouth.

  His legs awkwardly started to amble across the sand to his left, farther from the dune where he’d been relieving himself. More than once he fell forward, only to clamber clumsily to his feet.

  It was magic of some kind, that was painfully obvious. Rol had been on the receiving end of the Way before. But that usually had some impact on the thoughts of the person being affected. More than one mage had subsumed Rol’s will to his own, but on those occasions, Rol only had the vaguest recollection of the time he was controlled.

  This, though, was wholly different. He was fully aware of what was happening. If this was the Way, it was a kind Rol had never encountered before.

  And that, quite frankly, was pretty damned unlikely.

  Whatever controlled him didn’t seem to know how the human body worked. About six years back, Rol had been injured in his left leg so badly that he couldn’t walk for months. Gan and Fehrd had managed to find a healing potion that cured him—a nobleman’s son couldn’t actually pay for services rendered, but he was able to get his hands on the potion—but after being bedridden for so long, he had to virtually relearn the simple act of walking.

  Even then, though, he did better than whatever controlled him was capable of making him do.

  After a few more minutes of ridiculous walking, Rol found himself standing before the corpse of a creature unlike any he’d seen in this or any other part of the desert. It was gray—at least the parts of its skin that were still intact—with four legs in varying degrees of decay and destruction. Bones jutted through cracked, desiccated flesh, rotted organs dotted about.

  Rol barely registered any of that, because his eyes were forced to be focused upon a tiny pool of crimson and silver flecked liquid in the chest cavity. For several seconds, he just stared at it. Rol wondered what it was. It was the wrong consistency to be blood …

  Then it started to roil and bubble, and Rol heard a voice that was at once everywhere and nowhere.

  You will be mine. You are the first. You will not be the last. We will spread throughout this new world and fulfill our master’s purpose. Tharizdun’s will be done.

  Rol had all of about two seconds to wonder who the frip Tharizdun was before the liquid shot upward like a waterspout to his face.

  It covered his visage, blinding him, leaving him unable to breathe.

  Then it began to ooze into every opening: his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears. All at once, his eyes stung, he gagged, he suffocated …

  Hot knives of pain sliced through his mind as he tried desperately to scream, but he couldn’t even breathe, nor even attempt to draw breath.

  He collapsed face first onto the sand, thinking that this was a really stupid way to die …

  Gan was rather surprised when Rol walked right past him without acknowledging his presence.

  He was even more surprised to realize that he hadn’t closed his breeches.

  “Rol, what’re you doing?”

  “Hm?” Rol stopped and stared at Gan as if he’d never seen him before. “What?”

  Gan just pointed at his groin.

  Looking down, Rol said, “Oi! Sorry about that.” Quickly, he adjusted his clothes.

  “After your whole ‘family jewels’ nonsense, I can’t believe you’d just wander around like that.”

  “Sorry,” Rol said, “I was distracted.”

  Gan frowned. “You feeling all right?”

  “Of course. I feel great, why?”

  “Rol, I’ve known you for ten years, and this is the first time you’ve ever apologized for anything.”

  Rol shrugged and again said, “Sorry.”

  That was twice Rol used that word in the last minute and also in Gan’s lifetime. “Rol, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I just had to pee. Gonna go get some sleep.”

  As Rol walked past him, Gan called out, “Aren’t you gonna try to sleep with Tirana?”

  Rol ignored him and kept walking.

  Gan assumed he was just refusing to rise to the bait. He rarely did, truth be told, which was one of Rol’s more annoying qualities. Especially since Gan always allowed himself to be baited by the other two.

  Turning, he continued his walk around the caravan perimeter. He had seen the same dead cacti that Rol mentioned, and that meant that there might be anakores nearby. The nomadic creatures tended to burrow underground and eat roots, leaving the plants above to wither.

  Of course, the creature could have come through days before. Gan certainly hoped so—anakores were pains in the ass.

  Naturally, that meant that one leaped out of the sand right toward him.

  Gan barely had a chance to slash at the creature with his bone knife before it was on top of him. Weighing in at somewhere around three hundred pounds, the creature had Gan pinned to the sandy ground before he consciously knew what was happening, the anakore’s clawed hands holding him down, rendering him unable to take a second swipe with his knife.

  The first swipe, sadly, barely made it through the anakore’s skin, and it wasn’t even bleeding very much.

  In the flickering torchlight, Gan couldn’t really see the creature’s tiny eyes, but its spinal ridge and flat ears stood out in the light.

  Gan coul
dn’t move his arms, but his legs were completely free, so he wrapped his legs around the anakore’s torso and locked his ankles. It didn’t do too much to immobilize the anakore in and of itself, but an anakore’s spinal ridges weren’t just decorative: they had cilia on the ends that enabled the anakore to detect movement against the shifting sands. The ridges were there to protect the ultra-sensitive cilia, but they were still exposed on top, which meant that Gan’s legs clamping down on them caused the anakore distress.

  With a howl, the anakore thrashed between Gan’s knees, and its grip on Gan’s shoulders loosened a bit.

  That was enough for Gan to yank his right arm loose and stab the anakore in the left bicep.

  The creature’s tough skin meant it wasn’t much more than a flesh wound, but it distracted the anakore enough that Gan was able to flip the creature over with his interlocked legs, slamming it into the ground to Gan’s left.

  Such a move would have been more effective on solid ground, but at least it gave Gan the opportunity to get to his feet. He held his bone knife out, taking the anakore’s measure.

  As he studied the creature, he saw that the anakore was a bit on the skinny side. Usually when you found an anakore alone, it had gotten lost from its tribe, and this one had apparently been lost for a while.

  That meant it was desperate and wouldn’t go down easily.

  Anakores also had long arms and claws, so he was better off with a weapon that had a longer reach. He pulled out Fehrd’s father’s staff, hoping that the one lesson he took from Fehrd would take.

  He swung the staff toward the anakore’s head, not actually coming anywhere near it. The anakore snarled and backed off a step, then lunged. Gan swung desperately again, but it went under the anakore’s arm. Gan felt the wind of the anakore’s claws as they just missed raking his face, and it was his turn to back up—and stumble onto his rear end in the sand.

  The anakore leaped onto him once again, slicing at Gan with his claws. Pain ripped through his shoulder as the anakore drew blood.

  Through the haze of agony, Gan registered that the anakore had actually pinned his legs, so he wouldn’t be able to use the same move as before.

  But he had the staff, which he wrapped around the anakore’s back, grabbed it from the other end, and then rubbed it up and down the spinal ridges.

  That did more than discomfit the anakore, and it screamed to the night sky.

  And then it slashed at Gan’s face. Salty blood seeped into his mouth from the fresh cuts in his cheek. Had the anakore struck an inch higher, Gan would have lost his one remaining eye.

  Letting go of the staff with his right hand, he brought it away from the creature’s back and thrust it up into the anakore’s belly. While he did that, he once again grabbed his bone knife with his right hand and tried to make an upward thrust.

  Neither really did much harm to the anakore, but it did once again get the thing off him.

  Trying to recall the grip Fehrd taught him, Gan raised the staff over his head and struck straight downward, at the last second recalling that he should use the palm of his right hand to help drive the staff with more force.

  To his utter shock, the anakore didn’t parry the strike.

  After a second, he realized why, as it hit the creature on its bony head to absolutely no obvious ill effect. The impact of bone striking bone shuddered through Gan’s arms, and almost forced him to drop the staff.

  It was starting to get brighter. That didn’t make sense to Gan, as dawn wouldn’t come for hours.

  “Having a little trouble?”

  Gan whirled around to see Rol holding one of the torches—which explained the brighter light.

  “No, no, doing just fine,” Gan said. “Feel free to lounge about and watch it claw me to pieces.”

  “I would, but I’d honestly prefer to get some sleep.” Rol swung the torch at the anakore. It backed off, whimpering. Anakores’ biggest weakness was bright light.

  Rol swung it a few more times, laughing, then leaped straight at the anakore.

  For a moment, Gan couldn’t believe his eye. It was one thing to get into a grappling match with a human, elf, dwarf, or mul—but an anakore? That was suicide. Gan’s own techniques only worked temporarily because of the sensitivity of the top of the spinal ridges, and all that did was keep him from getting killed in the first two seconds of the fight.

  Rol and the anakore rolled around on the sand for a few turns, taking them farther away from Gan—and from the torch, which Rol had dropped.

  Gan bent down to pick up the torch. As he did so, blood dripped onto the sand and the torch itself from the wounds in his cheek and shoulder. He knew that he’d need to tend to those soon—but his first priority was Rol. The idiot had saved Gan’s hide, and Gan needed to return that favor.

  They were a team, after all. That was what they did.

  Howling loudly enough that Gan was amazed it hadn’t attracted the attention of the entire caravan, the anakore managed to pin Rol the same way it had pinned Gan.

  But unlike before, it had two opponents. Gan shoved the fiery end of the torch into the anakore’s face, causing it to recoil.

  That distracted it long enough for Rol to reach up, grab the anakore’s head at each flat ear, and then twist it far enough that its neck snapped with a crack that echoed into the night.

  Rol then threw the anakore’s corpse off to the side and got to his feet.

  Gan just stared at him.

  “Something wrong? Besides the fact that you’re covered in blood?”

  “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  Pointing at the anakore, Gan said, “That! I’ve seen muls who couldn’t break an anakore’s neck like that.”

  Rol just shrugged. “It was pretty skinny—probably weak. I don’t think it’s been with its tribe for a long time.”

  Gan nodded, having come to a similar conclusion. “Yeah, but still—”

  “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  “Uh, yeah, thanks.” Gan swallowed and tasted more blood. “I need to get these wounds tended to.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Gan turned to see Tirana running up to the pair of them. Several other people from the slaver’s caravan were behind her, approaching more cautiously.

  “It’s all right,” Rol said. “Nothing to be concerned about.”

  One of the slaver’s people asked, “Was that a braxat?”

  “No,” said another, “I think it was a gith.”

  “Don’t be an ass, that was definitely an anakore.”

  “That doesn’t look anything like an anakore.”

  Rol bellowed, “It’s dead, is what it is. That’s all that matters. Look, we took care of it. That’s what we’re here for. All of you, please, go back to sleep.”

  Tirana, though, wasn’t having any of that. The head of the slavers wasn’t either, and the two of them approached Gan and Rol.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Rol gave her that annoying smile of his that he always used whenever he was chatting up a woman. “I’m fine, Tirana, really.”

  “I’m kind of bleeding a little,” Gan said. With the adrenaline from the fight wearing off, his knees were starting to wobble, and he feared he was about to fall over.

  Tirana turned as if noticing Gan for the first time, a look Gan was, frankly, used to from women Rol was flirting with. “Oh, dear, that looks horrible. You need to come back with me, I’ll patch you right up.”

  “My daughter’s right,” the head slaver said.

  Now Gan shot Rol a look. Why did it not surprise him that Tirana was the slaver’s daughter?

  The slaver continued: “That was pretty damned brave, there, what you two did. That was an anakore, yeah?”

  Gan nodded, and instantly regretted it, as the action made his head swim.

  The next thing he knew, the slaver was holding him upright—which was good, as Gan no longer felt at all confident in his legs’ ability to
do so. The man had to be at least in his fifties with bony arms and breath that came straight from the sewers of Under-Tyr, and the fact that Gan needed his help did more to bespeak his weakened condition than the blood that continued to seep from his shoulder and cheek.

  “I’ll stay on patrol,” Rol said. “That anakore looked like he was alone, and there aren’t any other signs of anything, but it’s better to be safe.”

  “That ain’t necessary,” the slaver said. “Whyn’t you come back to our carriage, let us get you a drink for your troubles?”

  “Thanks, but no. Take care of him, though, will you? I still have a few uses for him.”

  Gan couldn’t even work up mock outrage at Rol’s comment. Besides, if Rol was still abusing him, that meant that his wounds weren’t all that serious. Which, of course, they weren’t. This was a normal comedown from a fight, particularly one with a lot of bleeding. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, and Gan was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

  Tirana got on the other side of Gan from her father, and the pair of them each supported Gan under his arms. However, Tirana was calling back to Rol as they guided Gan toward the carriage. “I’ll be back in a little bit with a drink for you, at least. It’s a draft my uncle developed, it’ll keep you awake.”

  “Thank you, Tirana, that’s very kind.” Rol’s voice grew distant as they made their way toward the caravan.

  “Let me guess, you use that draft to pep up the slaves before they go into the arena?” Gan’s own words sounded slurred—he definitely needed to get the bleeding stopped soon.

  “Somethin’ like that, yeah,” the slaver said. “Don’t you worry none, Tirana and me, we’ll fix you right up.”

  Gan did not nod, having learned his lesson from the last time. He did, however, hope that this draft worked. Making Rol take the entire night to guard the caravan was going to take a lot out of him …

  The red sun was just starting to peek over the eastern sand dunes when Yarro awakened. The rest of his family was still asleep—they had been awakened twice in the middle of the night, and so slept past sunup. But Yarro always rose when the sun did. He felt that if he did not start when the day did, then the day was incomplete.