Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  The legates—the legion commanders—had each ridden out in front of their legion. On horseback they presented themselves to their warriors and held their arms high to the air as a pair of legionaries rode up behind them and invested each with a vast rippling cloak of liquid-brown eagle feathers. These were fastened over the shoulders, draping much of the horse as well, and flashed and glimmered as the legate dropped his arms. Clad in this holy raiment, they rode along the front of their advancing legions, holding out before them a branch of holly, an eye woven from the pointed leaves at the top of the branch. The eye looked over the ranks, inspecting their courage for the combat to come and blessing those who were worthy.

  Roper and Kynortas trotted behind the battle line, a clutch of aides following in their wake. Kynortas sent them streaming out in all directions with instructions to hold fast, keep the line together, discharging regards and advice to the legates. He was so calm, the Black Lord. So still. His confidence, his faith in the legions, radiated around him like the ripples his horse made in the flood waters. Roper watched his father, hoping to absorb his presence and character by looking. Even when they had advanced into the shadow of the ridge, when longbow arrows began to spit into the waters around them, bouncing off the armour of two of the aides, the Black Lord appeared unfazed.

  The Sutherners on the ridge above were chanting. Swords thumped on shields, polearms rattled together and the men screamed and jeered. Devils, the Anakim were. Demons. Freaks, monsters, destroyers. They worked themselves into a frenzy of drumming and screaming to drown the awful, gut-wrenching fear they had of the giants they opposed. “Kill!” screamed a lord.

  “Kill, kill, kill!” roared his men.

  “Kill!” the lord insisted.

  “Kill, kill, kill!” bayed his men.

  “Scream at them!” bellowed the lord. “They’re the murderers of the Black Kingdom! Scream at them!” His men screamed. “These are fallen angels, cast down from Heaven! God wants these demons banished from our lands! Do your duty this day by God!” The shields and pikes began to thump in time and the Sutherners stamped their feet. The sound, like a mighty drum being pounded, was enough to create ripples in the flood waters through which the Anakim marched.

  The Anakim had their own drums, but they were not like their enemy’s. Each legion beat its own tattoo on the advance, the drummers standing in the rear ranks and driving their warriors forward. The noise was not feral and savage like the Sutherners’. It was mechanical and crisp; a regular wave of sound.

  Thousands of banners rose forest-like above the Anakim ranks. They had the great squares of embroidered linen that the Sutherners flew, but also long tapestries of woven silk, held aloft by up to six standard-bearers and depicting ancient battles in stark Anakim colours. Next to these stood giant eyes, woven from leafy withies of holly, willow and ash, or perhaps a great stretched bearskin, or a pole suspended with half a dozen tattered wolf pelts that swirled raggedly in the breeze. Where the legates rode, enormous bolts of linen impregnated with eagle feathers were held aloft, rippling and flashing in the wind. All of these banners but the last would be dropped when their bearers joined combat.

  The legionaries themselves did not scream or shout on the advance. They did not clash their weapons, as the Sutherners were doing. They sang. Low, eerie battle hymns spread across the line, clashing and swelling; growing in volume and emotion until the Sutherners were sick with the unfamiliarity of it all. The music reflected the tangled wilderness which surrounded them; the grey agitation of the sky above and forests that rustled and shifted on their flanks. The breeze was intensifying, as though the Sutherners were surrounded by Anakim allies who answered the call of that unearthly singing. This was Anakim land. The Black Kingdom: every inch as barren and unholy as the Sutherners had feared.

  On the Suthern Right, Kynortas could make out the upstart Bellamus riding along the front of the line, roaring at his men. In his wake, men stood straighter and hefted their weapons. Kynortas took note: One day, he thought, I will have to face an army commanded by that man alone.

  No sooner had this occurred to him, than the Suthern Right broke. Perhaps Bellamus had over-excited them to the extent that their officers had lost control. Perhaps, after all, he knew no more about war than his lowly station suggested and he was foolhardy in the face of his steady enemy. Whatever the cause, Sutherners had begun to flood down the ridge, slipping and sliding through the mud in a mad charge against the Blackstone Legion. They broke formation and so lost the only advantage they had held: the ridge. Thousands surged forward, screaming for Anakim blood.

  Kynortas had not expected such an easy opening. Disordered and chaotic, the Sutherners would be shredded in open combat. “Release the Blackstones!” From a trumpet behind him soared three glorious notes, commanding the Blackstones, who needed no second invitation, to attack.

  Once, perhaps a decade ago now, Kynortas had seen a mechanical clock. Envoys from Anakim-held lands to the south had sought an audience, proposing an alliance in which they were to act as anvil to the Black Kingdom hammer. To be wrought: the Sutherners’ central Ereboan territories. Into this alliance they had quietly rooted a trade agreement—favourable, they had said, for both parties. They had presented samples of the goods that the Black Kingdom could expect to flood their markets. A hull load of beautiful, dark timber said to be the best in the Known World for ship craft. Weightless sacks of eider down. Wine-red crystals that are precious to the Black Kingdom for the potent metal that can be extracted from them. And a mechanical clock; the first Kynortas had seen. In the Black Kingdom the length of an hour differed with each day of the year and was judged from the passing of sun and moon. If they needed to measure short periods of time, they would use a water-clock. They had no need of a mechanical timekeeping device and yet Kynortas had been entranced by the inscrutable object.

  It was held together by an exoskeleton that laid bare its inner workings. It was half machine, half organism. Its heart was a little spring; perfectly weighted and animating the busy cogs with which it was enmeshed. There was no flaw in any one of its workings. It ticked and clicked with quiet order and, twelve times a day, a bell would chime out the hour. It was unnecessary, of course. A frivolous waste of good steel, but Kynortas was convinced that he had seen the future. One day, such craftsmanship could build a boat that would man itself, or a harvesting machine that could cut down an entire field if it were just set moving.

  Now, he thought of his legions as clockwork. The epitome of flawless, synchronised cooperation. The Blackstone Legion armed itself as five thousand blades were swept clear of their scabbards. It surged forward in ten waves, five hundred abreast. Kynortas was extending his influence through the flood waters; they were his harvesting machine and he had set them moving. Two lines, one calm and ordered; one frenzied and chaotic, splashed through the flood waters to meet each other. It would be a slaughter.

  The clockwork failed.

  The Blackstones began to stumble and fall into the waters. Legionaries started to drop by the handful, with more and more falling until the front rank in its entirety had dropped below the surface, no longer howling but crying in pain. Those who followed met the same fate, staggering and plunging into the flood waters. Kynortas spurred towards his Left, straining his eyes at the scene. Why were his soldiers falling? Was the footing treacherous? But this was Suthern trickery; the water around the Blackstones was turning red with blood. Beneath the flood waters, a trap had been laid.

  The Blackstone Legion had stopped dead in their tracks. Every man that attempted to advance stumbled and fell. The Sutherners on the ridge jeered and hooted and their charging warriors, who had seemed to be in chaos, stopped seventy yards short of the stricken Blackstones. They were longbowmen; so lightly armed and armoured that they would never have stood a chance against legionaries in open combat. They had charged to bait the Blackstones and now revealed their true strength: their great curved yew bows. These were unslung, arrows nocked to strings and d
eadly shafts poured into the legionaries. Their fletching whistled as they hurtled forward; a noise like a sky-full of whirring starlings. At this close range, some of the steel-tipped arrows were able to penetrate tough Anakim plate armour. The legionaries, unable to move in either direction, dropped into the flooding to try and limit the damage of this swarm of arrows. They cowered in the waters, seemingly completely mired. Kynortas was witnessing the near perfect destruction of one of his legions at the hands of the Suthern upstart, Bellamus. The Anakim Left was ruined and they had yet to kill a single Sutherner.

  “Roper, with me!” bellowed the Black Lord. He spurred towards the Raptors, shouting that the trumpeter should signal the halt. The Anakim line juddered to a standstill, so that they could not outstrip the mired legion and leave their flank exposed. But this left them vulnerable to the longbow shafts that rained down upon the line from the ridge. These arrows were more distant and so had less force, but they still withered the Anakim ranks.

  Roper and Kynortas sped towards the Blackstones, Kynortas looking first for the problem, and then for a solution—any solution. But the Black Lord, so calm, so confident, had strayed. He feared for his legion and could not understand how the battle had escalated beyond his control so quickly. So he rode towards the problem, seeking a solution.

  And a gust of arrows took him and Roper.

  They struck plate armour with a clang like the splitting of a bell, the force enough to knock the Black Lord from his saddle and stagger his heir. Kynortas’s boot became entangled in the stirrup and he was dragged through the water by his bolting stallion, straight towards the Suthern line. His body left a trail of blood through the flood waters.

  Roper, staggering and with an arrow protruding from beneath his collarbone, spurred his horse after his father. Kynortas was not resisting, lying limp as he was pulled through the waters towards his enemies, and Roper spurred hard enough that the horse’s blood and his own mingled and dripped from his stirrups. Arrows spat into the waters around him and more clanged off his armour as his father was dragged further and further from his reach.

  Blood-crazed Sutherners were swarming towards him. Roper drew his sword in anger for the very first time and hacked down. There was a ring of metal on metal and a juddering shockwave ran up Roper’s arm. He struck wildly once, twice, three times; his eyes always on the body of his father which had now been dragged into the heart of the Suthern mass. Men drew wicked knives and converged on the body to claim the rich prize: a fallen king. The Black Lord was dead and his son was dying.

  Roper was spraying vile curses at the men between him and his father, trying to drive his horse onwards. A hand seized his boot and dragged him from the saddle. He crashed into the flood waters and for a moment could neither see nor hear as he was engulfed. There was an awful, puncturing sensation in his thigh and he knew he had been stabbed. Panic lent him strength and he thrashed to the surface, finding his sword still in his hand and sweeping it from the water. He was pinned to the ground by a spear thrust into his leg but he could still swing his sword and aimed it wildly at the Sutherners who surrounded him, blocking attacks as best he could. One lunge made it through and smashed into his head, where it opened a gash to the bone but went no further. Whilst Roper’s head was ringing, his vision a clouded white, another thrust hit his chest, puncturing his plate and through to his bone-armour where, again, it was stopped.

  Roper had no idea of it but he was screaming; a vile shriek of distress and ferocity as his sword flailed through the air, seeking to strike back at someone. He was alone in these waters, which were steadily turning pink with his own blood. He could barely see the sky, the view blocked by lunging Suthern bodies. There was no noise at all; he was enslaved by the overwhelming instinct to keep himself alive for a few seconds more.

  An improbable freedom had descended upon him. His self-doubt was gone, his mind wiped clean for one great, dynamic effort. His vision, which no longer felt like vision in the ordinary sense, had become tunnel-like and responded to motion alone. He could not think, he had no control; Roper was stripped to his core. He was a cornered wildcat. There was nothing in him beyond his hauling lungs and swinging blade. Dark shapes were pressing in on his prone form.

  And then there was a break in the wall of flesh which surrounded him. The light of the grey skies poured down on Roper.

  A dead Sutherner had crashed into the waters at his feet in a spray of blood and there was a shout of alarm. A flash of light carved through another two Sutherners who were hurled backwards and an enormous shadow stepped into the gap they had left. The figure raised its great light blade again and sparks sprang away from it as it swept along a Suthern weapon, taking the top of a man’s skull off as if it were an apple. Like rows of wheat, the Sutherners were falling before this harvester until Roper’s final two attackers fled, splashing away through the waters.

  A hand seized Roper’s collar and dragged him up and out. Roper screamed again as the spear was ripped from his flesh but his rescuer took no notice, hauling him from the scene. The shock almost made Roper drop his sword, but his groping fingers managed to just clutch the pommel as he was hauled away. “My lord father!” he roared as he was dragged back. “The Black Lord! He’s there! Get him!”

  More hands seized Roper and Anakim swarmed around him, flooding between him and the Suthern ranks. “Release me!” he shouted. It was the Sacred Guard. The finest fighting unit in the world had arrived, honour-bound to preserve the blood that surged through Roper.

  if you enjoyed

  BLOOD OF THE GODS

  look out for

  JADE CITY

  The Green Bone Saga

  by

  Fonda Lee

  FAMILY IS DUTY. MAGIC IS POWER. HONOR IS EVERYTHING.

  Jade is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. It has been mined, traded, stolen, and killed for—and for centuries, honorable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it to enhance their magical abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion.

  Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon’s bustling capital city. They care about nothing but protecting their own, cornering the jade market, and defending the districts under their protection. Ancient tradition has little place in this rapidly changing nation.

  When a powerful new drug emerges that lets anyone—even foreigners—wield jade, the simmering tension between the Kauls and the rival Ayt family erupts into open violence. The outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones—from their grandest patriarch to the lowliest motorcycle runner on the streets—and of Kekon itself.

  Chapter 1

  THE TWICE LUCKY

  The two would-be jade thieves sweated in the kitchen of the Twice Lucky restaurant. The windows were open in the dining room, and the onset of evening brought a breeze off the waterfront to cool the diners, but in the kitchen, there were only the two ceiling fans that had been spinning all day to little effect. Summer had barely begun and already the city of Janloon was like a spent lover—sticky and fragrant.

  Bero and Sampa were sixteen years old, and after three weeks of planning, they had decided that tonight would change their lives. Bero wore a waiter’s dark pants and a white shirt that clung uncomfortably to his back. His sallow face and chapped lips were stiff from holding in his thoughts. He carried a tray of dirty drink glasses over to the kitchen sink and set it down, then wiped his hands on a dish towel and leaned toward his coconspirator, who was rinsing dishes with the spray hose before stacking them in the drying racks.

  “He’s alone now.” Bero kept his voice low.

  Sampa glanced up. He was an Abukei teenager—copper-skinned with thick, wiry hair and slightly pudgy cheeks that gave him a faintly cherubic appearance. He blinked rapidly, then turned back to the sink. “I get off my shift in five minutes.”

  “We gotta do it now, keke,” said Bero. “Hand it over.”

  Sampa dried a hand on the front of his shirt and pulled a sm
all paper envelope from his pocket. He slipped it quickly into Bero’s palm. Bero tucked his hand under his apron, picked up his empty tray, and walked out of the kitchen.

  At the bar, he asked the bartender for rum with chili and lime on the rocks—Shon Judonrhu’s preferred drink. Bero carried the drink away, then put down his tray and bent over an empty table by the wall, his back to the dining room floor. As he pretended to wipe down the table with his towel, he emptied the contents of the paper packet into the glass. They fizzed quickly and dissolved in the amber liquid.

  He straightened and made his way over to the bar table in the corner. Shon Ju was still sitting by himself, his bulk squeezed onto a small chair. Earlier in the evening, Maik Kehn had been at the table as well, but to Bero’s great relief, he’d left to rejoin his brother in a booth on the other side of the room. Bero set the glass down in front of Shon. “On the house, Shon-jen.”

  Shon took the drink, nodding sleepily without looking up. He was a regular at the Twice Lucky and drank heavily. The bald spot in the center of his head was pink under the dining room lights. Bero’s eyes were drawn, irresistibly, farther down, to the three green studs in the man’s left ear.

  He walked away before he could be caught staring. It was ridiculous that such a corpulent, aging drunk was a Green Bone. True, Shon had only a little jade on him, but unimpressive as he was, sooner or later someone would take it, along with his life perhaps. And why not me? Bero thought. Why not, indeed. He might only be a dockworker’s bastard who would never have a martial education at Wie Lon Temple School or Kaul Dushuron Academy, but at least he was Kekonese all the way through. He had guts and nerve; he had what it took to be somebody. Jade made you somebody.