Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  “Just trying to think what High Commander d’Arrent would do,” Acherre said. “I bloody wish she had her Need bindings back. I could do with a connection right about now.”

  If it was meant as an invocation, nothing came of it—the captain and his soldiers watched them as Acherre spent a moment in thought.

  “Do you think there’s a chance we could find the magi’s leaders in the field?” Sarine asked. “Between Faith, the blue sparks, and Anati, I can break up just about any line of battle unseen, I’m sure of it.”

  “Right,” Acherre said. “That has to be the main thrust of our plan. But we need to know where to look; if we use your magic too openly, we’re going to scatter them and send anyone of any significance on their side into hiding. There’s just too damned much we don’t know about this place, and these people. I can’t plan an attack without information. And it’s a mistake to assume their magi won’t have powers of their own.”

  “So … what’s the plan? You agree with the captain that we should help them withdraw?”

  A moment of tension passed among Captain Hashiro and his soldiers. Frustrating, that she had no means to stop Anati from translating her words into the native tongue of anyone who could hear.

  “Maybe,” Acherre said. “I think a probe first, to show the captain what you can do. We spend the night here, see if Ka’Inari can find another way. If he doesn’t, we get the captain to try an attack across the eastern bridges, small enough that we don’t frighten the enemy, but enough to show Hashiro he doesn’t need to fear them, so long as he has you. Maybe we try to link up with the other company, if we can cut through the center of the enemy’s line. If it works, we decide from there. If not, then we help him withdraw, and save as many of his company as we can.”

  She nodded, wishing Acherre could speak it for herself. At least the mercenaries hadn’t questioned the kaas’s gift with languages. Perhaps it meant the magi here had a similar trick. Either way, Anati had earned her gratitude a hundredfold, and would surely prove herself a hundred times more, before they were done.

  The captain listened as she explained Acherre’s plan, grunting with some deference, though he gave no sign of being willing to abdicate his command. Still, Acherre’s orders came with descriptions of Shelter and Entropy bindings, Anati’s Yellow, and the guidance of Ka’Inari’s visions of where they might find the enemy. Given even a cursory explanation of what the three of them could do, and the assurance that if they were pushed back, an escape up the river was the secondary plan, the captain relented, even joined in with Acherre in structuring the finer details. It took a few more rounds of translation to see the orders polished to Acherre’s liking before Hashiro bowed and pronounced it would be done come morning.

  Acherre vanished toward the temple’s makeshift stable as soon as they were done, having somehow earned her pick of any save the captain’s own mount during their exchange. Sarine found herself suddenly alone after a day spent at the center of a storm. Grief flickered at the edge of her thoughts, touched by steady flares of rage she knew belonged to the Veil. The latter she had learned to dismiss, though the grief was hers in full.

  Ka’Inari had found a place in a corner of the temple’s main chamber, given wide berth by the soldiers of Hashiro’s company. In her uncle’s chapel there would have been pews; here the cold stone floors were empty, save for fires built indoors, vented through places where the temple roof had been shattered and broken by artillery rounds. Ka’Inari had a small fire burning by himself, and she approached without thinking whether she should disturb him until she was already at his side.

  “May I?” she asked belatedly.

  The shaman blinked, looking up from his fire to meet her eyes.

  “Sarine,” he said. “Yes, yes, of course.”

  She sat, too late realizing he must have been consulting with his spirits. It would have been better to follow Acherre, or take a place by herself, but neither choice seemed available when she’d already lowered herself to sit cross-legged beside his fire.

  “What news from their leader?” Ka’Inari asked.

  “An attack, come sunrise,” she said, “though it depends on you. Have you …? That is, are the spirits able to see anything here?”

  “They are,” Ka’Inari said. “Though I suspect the spirits of things-to-come are more awed by this place than even we are. They give me much to consider.”

  “Oh,” she said, now fully aware she’d disrupted him. Better to wish him well and excuse herself. Food would work to explain it; she hadn’t eaten since morning, though she felt no especial hunger in spite of the already darkened skies.

  “You knew him well, didn’t you?” Ka’Inari said. It took a moment to realize he meant Axerian.

  An unexpected rush of grief put tears in her eyes.

  “I didn’t mean for …” she began, and heard her voice break.

  Ka’Inari moved without her noticing, and suddenly he was beside her, offering a shoulder, and a comforting arm.

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know what would happen.”

  Soldiers around them turned to watch as Ka’Inari held her; she felt their eyes, her shame temporarily suspended by the memory of the terrible moment. The surge of lightning from her fingers, the white flash as it lit the courtyard, the smell of sizzling meat and fabric as Axerian crashed to the ground.

  “It was the Goddess, wasn’t it?” Ka’Inari said when they separated.

  She nodded, wiping her eyes. “Yes. The Veil. She’s still inside me. I didn’t know Black would let her loose.”

  “I can’t claim to understand all of what you endure,” Ka’Inari said. “But I know something of unwanted voices pleading for terrible things. For us, for the shamans of my people, it’s a constant struggle. Any moment might carry a dire threat, a terrible image or vision of things-to-come. It is a great burden.”

  She saw softness in him, a look she knew all too well from her uncle, when he’d shouldered his parishioners’ burdens. A strange realization, that Ka’Inari might have played a similar role with his people. He searched through her with his eyes, as her uncle would have done, seeking some place for his words to still her grief, and it was no less welcome for knowing what he was trying to do.

  “Anati has her bound,” she said, though the reassurance sounded hollow even to her. “Yet I feel some measure of what the Veil feels. When I slipped, she seized control, and …” The memories returned, and she winced, lowering her head.

  “Are we in danger, traveling at your side?”

  “I … I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I dragged you here, as good as into another world, and now I can’t even control myself. You’re right not to trust me. I should send you back, and Acherre. I should …”

  Ka’Inari wore an amused smile, and she trailed off, watching him turn it on her.

  “Think about what you’re saying,” he said. “You’re trying to contain a Goddess, one for whom even the spirits themselves have reverence. You do wrong to expect too much of yourself. These are dark times, and there are risks to standing in the path of darkness. I know this, and I am here. Captain Acherre knows it. Axerian knew it, too.”

  “I came here because I’m frightened,” she said. “I don’t know what will happen, at the end of all this. I thought if we could find the other side’s champions, we could cut it short. That I wouldn’t have to use the Veil’s power. But now we’re here, and it isn’t a city, or even a country. It’s a whole bloody world, and I’m still frightened. I don’t know where to go, or what to do.”

  “Tell me of the plans you made with Acherre and the captain,” Ka’Inari said. “Perhaps the spirits can help.”

  She did, grateful for a moment to recover her composure. By now the soldiers around them had returned to whatever they were doing, but it still stung to think she’d wept openly in front of people who were going to need to look to her as a protector come morning. She dried her cheeks on her sleeve as she laid out the situation in t
he city: the two forces in red enveloping the mercenary companies here and on the other side of the river, the score of magi on the enemy’s side and the handful reported to be trapped with the other band of mercenaries in the east.

  Ka’Inari listened as she spoke, nodding along with each point.

  “It is difficult,” he said at last, when she’d finished. “I don’t believe the magi among the enemy’s lines are significant, for all the spirits seem fascinated by what they can do. I see two images that draw my attention. First, a tower overlooking the sea. A great evil dwells there, connected to shadows I see around you, the shadows of the Veil. And now I think I understand the second set. A traveler, come from far away, trapped by yellow spears, with a wolf at his side. These are the magi with the eastern band; our course should lead us there, if I understand the spirits aright.”

  “I’ll tell Acherre, and Captain Hashiro,” she said. Ka’Inari nodded, and reached a hand to bar her before she could rise.

  “Sarine,” he said, his voice taking on a harder edge. “The spirits … they know your strength. You must know it, too. But it will be tested, again and again, before the end.”

  She pulled back, halfway between curiosity and a sudden anxious fear. “You’ve seen more visions about me?” she asked, realizing belatedly the stupidity of the question. Of course he’d seen visions about her, if he was trying to divine the future of their travels together.

  “Yes,” he said. “Enough to know none of this will be easy. But you have my strength, such as it is, and the strength of the spirits whose gifts I carry. You are not alone in your burdens, nor will you ever be, so long as I draw breath.”

  The assertion took her by surprise, and she stammered a belated thanks before he withdrew, returning to focus on his fire.

  48

  TIGAI

  Line of Battle

  Eastern Markets, the City of Kye-Min

  White-armored soldiers braced ahead of him, their spears thrust forward, impaling the red-armored soldiers as they charged.

  Howls and grunts sounded, and Tigai watched, ten paces back, as men rushed to plug the gaps where red spears and poleaxes had cut bodies down trying to break through. Arquebusiers worked in a fury on the sloping hills behind the line, ramming balls down their barrels, pouring powder into their pans, locking burning rope in place to aim and fire.

  Yuli stood beside him, scanning the enemy lines unflinching as they crashed together. Captain Ugirin’s orders had been clear: Stay back, watch for enemy magi, and kill them. The rest, the captain had claimed, would fall to the White Tigers. So far the captain’s bravado had proven itself in full. Daybreak had found the enemy army attacking from six sides at once, though if there was a plan to do more than bleed them for every inch of ground, the captain hadn’t shared it with him.

  “No magi here,” he shouted for Yuli’s benefit. It took saying it twice over the roar of the guns before she nodded. He extended a hand, and Yuli grasped it firmly. A blink revealed the five other anchor points he’d set the night before, and he tethered them to the strands, shifting from the din of heavy fighting to a muted quiet, five hundred paces down the line.

  Here the soldiers were arrayed in the same lines—pikes, spears, maces, swords, pistols, arquebuses—but with no enemy in sight.

  “Lord Tigai!” a heavy voice boomed. “How goes the fighting? Have you any trophies to show me yet?”

  Captain Ugirin could have been Remarin’s twin, from a distance. A hulking man, who eschewed heavy lamellar plate for the boiled leathers of an Ujibari horseman, with a shortbow on his shoulder and quiver on his belt, and never mind that his place was as a general, not a soldier.

  “None yet, Captain,” he said. “If the enemy has magi on the field, they’re waiting to see where you deploy.”

  Ugirin’s manner turned from boisterous to sober in an instant. “Be sure of it,” Ugirin said. “We faced two yesterday. But White Tigers do not die easily.” With that the captain placed a thumb behind his belt, showing off a fresh ear that had been sewn in place alongside a dozen more in varying stages of decay.

  “Your flank, there, is under heavy pressure,” Tigai said, inclining his head back toward where they’d been moments before.

  “A feint, Lord Tigai,” Ugirin said, smiling. “If there are no magi, it is not the main attack.”

  He nodded, extending his hand again for Yuli.

  “Good hunting, magi,” Ugirin said, and Tigai bowed before blinking to find the next anchor point on the line.

  According to the captain the battle had been going for two days already, but for all Ugirin’s bluster, Tigai couldn’t see how it would last to see another sunset. Isaru Mattai had promised them magi, and those magi weren’t coming. He didn’t care at all in the abstract; Isaru had dug the grave for anyone fool enough to support him, so far as he could see. But Master Indra and the magi who had taken him had been Isaru’s enemies, and that meant Remarin, Mei, and Dao were being held by the soldiers in red, or whoever pulled their strings. Finding his family started with taking one of their puppeteers alive, someone who might know where prisoners would be held. A flimsy beginning, but it was all he had.

  This time they shifted into smoke and chaos.

  Powder stung his nose, and a man lunged around him, stumbling sideways as another man grappled the first to the ground.

  Tigai drew a pistol from his belt, and ducked as another pair came crashing past. A quick thumb set the match and he pulled the trigger, belching smoke into the swordsman’s gut and knocking him into another mêlée, five paces down the line. A cloud of fog rolled through the street, obscuring most of the fighting and filling his nose with the tang of powder and ash. Thunder boomed overhead where guns were firing, but he saw no shells exploding here—at least, not yet.

  “We have to get back,” he shouted for Yuli’s benefit. “Back toward the guns.”

  A gamble, since he couldn’t see enough to tell one rank of troops from another. He had to hope those were Ugirin’s guns, situated behind the line of battle, where the White Tigers had fallen back behind his anchor.

  He spun, looking for Yuli to be sure she’d heard, and tried to duck as a spearman came screaming for him, thrusting a metal point into his leg. A ripping pain shot through his body, and he blinked to set himself back to where he’d first appeared, a few paces to the left. The spearman held his weapon steady for a moment, recoiling in a momentary confusion before Yuli sheared the man’s head and shoulder from his spine. Blood sprayed in a wide arc where her claws sent the man and his spear clattering to the street, and she sprang toward where he was standing. A yelp escaped his throat, and he almost tethered himself to a different anchor before it became clear she was bounding for a target behind him. He spun to see three swordsmen cut to ribbons under her claws, slicing through steel, armor, and skin as though they were shields of paper.

  She was at her full height now, as he’d seen her when they’d first arrived in Kye-Min, head and shoulders taller than any soldier in the line. With the smoke clouds spilling over her she appeared as a feral silhouette, her limbs long and thin, her face narrowed almost to a muzzle, with fingers sharpened to claws that raked the soldiers in red in a rain of blood and gore.

  “Yuli!” he shouted, trying again. “Back!”

  This time she snapped around, meeting his eyes for a brief fraction before she turned back the way she’d been headed, bounding in the opposite direction, into the red soldiers’ lines.

  “Oh for the koryu’s sake …” he said, and charged after her.

  This time there was an empty path through the chaos, carved by streaks of blood and mangled limbs lying across the street. He rushed after her, enjoying the momentary panic in the red soldiers’ eyes. The smoke and powder cleared enough to see glimpses of the enemy’s ranks, extending well past the edge of the market, and he chased Yuli, calling after her to turn back, wishing he’d asked after a few more of the details of her Natarii magic. If she had some sort of blood-craze beyond her
morphing into some fucking horror from a children’s tale, he’d as soon have known about it before he chased her into oblivion.

  Yuli stood hunched forward in a clearing when he caught up to her, her claws stained a dark red where she held them out, as though she were brandishing ten knives at once. A hulking figure of polished glass stood facing them. Thick crystal armor encased the enemy magi from head to toe, making for a creature of equal height and a hundred times the girth of Yuli’s long, thin limbs.

  “Wait,” he said. “Fucking wait. I’ve seen this sort before; they can—”

  His words were swallowed in a rush of cracking glass as Yuli charged. The soldiers on both streets backed away in awe, no few chanting and calling for blood, while just as many scrambled away from the spectacle. At the center, Yuli rained her claws on the magi’s armor, shattering fragments of glass into the crowd. The magi shoved off, pivoting to throw her down with a jarring crunch as her body impacted the stone street.

  Tigai had freed his second pistol, taking aim for a quick shot at the magi’s head. The ball struck home, spiderweb breaks appearing in the armor as the magi’s neck snapped to the side. Just as quickly a salvo of glass peppered Tigai’s hand as he raised it to block his face, searing pain shooting up and down the side of his body. He blinked to return to his anchor, shifting his body back to the mouth of the junction. He drew his pistol again and fired, the same ball he’d used before, reset by the anchor. This time he missed, sending a shot into the crowd of soldiers with accompanying howls of pain from whomever he’d hit. He blinked and fired again, this time moving to make new anchors in case the magi pursued toward the first he’d set.

  “Yanjin Tigai,” the glass-magi said, snarling it through the layers of her glass. Still, no mistaking the voice. Lin Qishan. Of all the aryu-twisted coincidences …

  Yuli had rolled back to her feet, though her body showed signs of a limp, and cuts from where salvos of glass must have stricken her when she was down.