by Jon Hollins
Eight yards.
“Oh, Will.” Barph wiped at his eyes. “I have so missed having someone to talk to.” He nodded. “You’re not quite the sparring partner Cois is, but … Well, zhe’s satisfied with lizard dick, so perhaps I overestimated hir for all those years.” He shook his head. “It’s a terrible thing, Will, to discover your lover has left you for a penis with scales.”
Seven yards. Moving at a crawl. Desperate to do nothing that would give himself away, barely enough concentration to maintain the illusion, the conversation.
“Well,” he managed, “you did kill hir.”
Barph waved a hand. “Details.” He sat down suddenly, folding his legs, leaning forward, looking up at Will’s illusion. “You should have seen hir in hir prime, Will. Zhe was amazing. Zhe would walk into a room and people would collapse on the spot. Zhe was pure chaos. Love, Will. Love. That’s the real madness, isn’t it? And I loved hir. I loved all of them, Will. If anything has driven me mad, and maybe you’re right, maybe it has … but if it has, it was that. I loved them.”
Three yards. Two more paces.
Barph straightened up, stood. Will froze, holding his breath. Barph stretched, looking up at the heavens, rolling his head from side to side. “I really meant to kill you as soon as I came down here,” he said. “But I’m glad we had this chat. It’s been good for me, I think. Perspective and all that.”
Will was almost directly behind Barph now, so he couldn’t see the smug self-satisfied grin on Barph’s face. But he could imagine it.
“Still,” Barph said, “to business.”
Will lunged.
Time seemed to slow. Will was an observer of his own body as it carried out his commands. A yard away now, the knife held low at his waist, the cutting blade facing down, the wicked, curving point held parallel to the floor. His arm jabbing forward, a slight upward movement, the beginning of a curve designed to carry the blade into Barph’s kidneys and up into his lungs.
Barph was bringing back his own fist, preparing some brutal blow aimed at Will’s throat, something to tear the life from him and to scatter his blood around this old, dead place. His head was rearing back.
Will’s illusion was flickering, his concentration fleeing him, everything focused on the power of the blow.
Barph’s head turning, twisting, the movement of his arm hesitating, losing momentum.
Will was gritting his teeth, was starting to scream, to put everything he had into the blade. All the pent-up power of ten thousand believers driving the knife forward. The blade beginning to glow. And this would matter. This would count. This would achieve something.
And then suddenly Barph was flowing like quicksilver through the molasses flow of dilated time. Was twisting impossibly fast, was defying Will’s movement, and Will tried to change the direction of his thrust, but it wasn’t enough. Could never be enough.
The blow caught him like a kick from a dragon. It slammed into his cheek, lifted him off the floor. Will pinwheeled through the air, smashed into a column, shattered stone. He collapsed to the floor, sense and breath knocked from him.
His vision cleared. Barph was in the air, leaping high, fist cocked.
Will rolled. Barph slammed into the ground. Barph’s fist made the earth shake. Flagstones exploded, flew. Shrapnel peppered Will.
Will scrambled to his feet, sent an illusion running left as he went right. And he still had the dagger. He still …
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh fuck.
Barph picked up a broken flagstone, threw it at Will with the force of a cannon. “You think you can trick me?” the god screamed. “You dare?”
The flagstone passed harmlessly through the illusion’s back.
Barph roared. Will struck.
Again that moment of exhilaration, of hope. Again the slippery sideways motion of Barph at the last moment, sliding around the blade, his will enough to bend reality, to negate Will’s own.
A fist like a sledgehammer into the side of Will’s ribs. All the air rushed out of him. He skittered across flagstones, slammed into the wall, collapsed in shadows. His head rang like temple bells.
In shadows. Shadows.
He faded. Disappeared into darkness. Gods, he could barely think. He tried to get to all fours. That was far beyond him.
A chunk of flagstone, hurled like a ballista bolt, struck him in the midriff.
“Just because I can’t see you now,” Barph said, “doesn’t mean I didn’t see where you went.” He paused, then added, “You fucking idiot.”
Will had to move. He had to get away. This was a trap as obvious as Barph had made it appear. And his faithful weren’t far away, but they were far enough. They couldn’t rally behind him. They couldn’t propel him with fresh reserves of belief.
He was alone. And he was fucked.
He rolled. It was all he had. His ribs screamed at each rotation.
A flagstone flew over his head. Barph was advancing. Will lay panting, trying to silence his breath. But Barph was about to trip over him.
He gathered the strength left to him. Sent another illusion skittering away. Just a noise this time. Running feet skittering and stumbling. Barph whirled.
“Idiot,” Barph muttered. He took steps away from Will. A thunderbolt appeared in his hand.
Will made it to his feet as the far end of the temple ruins exploded in a wave of heat and sound that mashed against the back of Will’s skull. He tried to ride the wave, use it for extra propulsion.
His bellow of pain was enough to attract Barph’s attention even through the rumble of collapsing masonry. The god spun around, hurled a curse in Will’s general direction. Will knew in his bones that a thunderbolt was about to follow.
He held on to his invisibility. He sent illusions scattering left and right, weaving in between columns and tangles of leaves. He headed for the open pasture beyond, zigzagging wildly.
Another bellowed curse from Barph. And then a roaring wave of destruction pulsing out, Barph at its epicenter. Fear and disaster chasing Will, nipping at his heels, and for a moment he thought he was finished. And then he was flinging himself into soft grass, and the shock wave was pulsing over him, crushing him against the earth. But he was still whole. His heart still beat within his ribs.
He rolled over, lay on his back.
The ruins were gone. The hilltop was gone. There was just a smoking crater that ended a few scant yards from his aching heels.
Barph was gone.
He lay on his back, stared at the night sky. He held on to his illusion of invisibility like a cloak.
And slowly, slowly he started to chuckle. Because he was alive. Because he knew more now than he had before. Because perhaps he knew a way out of all this.
As powerful as he was, Barph could not penetrate Will’s illusions.
Barph could be tricked.
50
Reptile Dysfunction
“Because,” Balur said with more than a little heat, “it has been becoming nothing more than self-aggrandizing bullshit.”
He did not like arguing with Cois. In fact, he would rank it as one of his least favorite things in life, as long as one discounted all the things that involved his organs being punctured.
Cois laid a patient hand on his arm. “Going to the speeches has nothing to do with Will,” zhe said. “It’s about being with the people. Being part of their cause.” Hir patient tone wasn’t helping as much as zhe thought it was.
They were out of Verra now. One night, Will had woken up, refused to talk about the smoking crater where a ruined temple had been the night before, and started a forced march toward Salera. They were blazing through the craggy landscape of Chatarra now, not stopping, even for recruitment, unless they had to. Winds whipped down the sharp valleys, and herdsmen regarded them from high ledges, eyes peering from the depths of thick-wrapped furs.
There were warriors here, Balur knew. Chatarra was famous for its longships and its berserkers. And Will had been so interested in shock troops when
they had been going to Analesia. He had been so happy to recruit a bunch of savage idiots in the desert. But where was his desire now?
It was bullshit. And the epicenter of all that bullshit was Will Fallows.
“My cause,” Balur said, and he still said the word with distaste, “is being the people who would overthrow Barph. My cause is being their willingness to fight without quarter. To not be giving ground when a god stands against them. That is being a fight I am wishing to be part of. Those are being people I am wishing to die next to. My cause is not being a crowd of sycophants all fawning to tell Will Fallows how mighty and great he is.”
He spat onto the cold Chatarran stone.
“They still fight, love,” Cois said. “Will is just their hope. And their hope is growing. Their taste for the fight is growing.”
Balur ground his teeth.
“Were you not being there?” he asked. “Were you not standing on that stage when he had them laugh at you? When he held you up as a defeated enemy?” And gods, it had taken everything he had at that moment not to get up on the stage and rip out Will Fallows’s throat. Because nothing about that had felt as if it was to do with defeating Barph. It had all felt like Will standing astride the world and shouting that he was god now and touching himself.
“Have you not been being with me,” he went on, “when we walk among these people? Have you not been seeing the looks they are giving you? Have you not been hearing their words?”
Because Will had given them all license to spit on the old gods. And that was fine when it was preening Lawl, or pathetic Toil. But it was not okay when it was Cois. That was asking to see the color of your own liver.
“Our cause is bigger than me.” Cois stepped in closer to Balur now. There was an urgency in hir voice. “These people are more important than I am.”
“No,” Balur said, and his voice was deeper than usual, catching in his throat. “That is not true.”
“Come,” zhe said, pulling at his arm. “Please.”
He would have had more of a chance standing against a horde of Cyclopes.
The crowd was gathered on top of a steppe, the wind whistling among them. In the cold, Balur felt sluggish and irritable. Cois pulled a cloak tight about hirself and pulled him to a stop. Most ignored them. A few threw dark glances, and Balur growled back at them. This had been a place he had come for comfort once. Now he itched to do violence.
Cois had a distinct destination in mind, it seemed. Balur supposed he should have known. The other old gods were all clustered together at one edge of the steppe. They were in an even sorrier state than the one they’d arrived in. They huddled together in rags, no one apparently willing to lend them a blanket or bedroll for warmth.
“No,” he said as they got closer. “This is just making things worse.”
“They’re family.”
They sat, and Lawl offered them a mirthless smile. He was shivering, and snot was matted in his tangled mustaches. Neither Betra, Toil, nor Knole even turned around.
Around them the looks darkened, and so did Balur’s mood as they waited for Will to mount his stage and talk about what a good idea it was to worship the ground he walked upon.
Then a raucous noise, shouting and bluster. A few cries of alarm, a few roars of laughter. The other Analesians had arrived. They were plowing through the crowd as if this were a battleground, storming and stomping through clusters of people, pushing and shouting. A few men and women drifted toward them, as helpless before their obvious displays of power as iron was before a magnet.
Their destination was already obvious to Balur. Toil too, it seemed, as he groaned and sank deeper into himself.
“Traitor!” boomed out one of the lizard men—Kallor, Balur thought. “God lover!” There was laughter around him. It was coarse, rough laughter. It was the sort of laughter Balur loved. Except when it was directed at him.
“Weakling,” Balur snapped back. He was on his feet without truly thinking about it. Cois reached out, placed a hand on his leg. “Don’t,” zhe said. And there was an edge of pleading in hir voice. An edge of weakness. And it was these fuckers who had put it there.
“I am being weak?” Kallor looked around at the small crowd of Analesians and humans that traveled with him. “I am being the one who clings to old beliefs and old ways? I am being the one who is needing a god to feel strong? I am being the one who cannot imagine throwing down a god if I do not have another one at my back? In my bed?”
There was more laughter at this last piece. Balur’s growl deepened.
“You are being weak,” he managed among the flexing of his claws, “because you will be eating the dirt at my feet eight seconds from now.”
“Don’t,” Cois said while Kallor laughed, but there was a sense of resignation.
In Balur’s defense, he didn’t hit Kallor with the blade of the sword. But he did bring the hilt down on Kallor’s snout with enough force to break bone.
There wasn’t much else to be said about Balur’s defense as eight other Analesians knocked him to the dirt and kicked him while Kallor lay mewling on the rock. They finally let him up once at least one of his ribs had been broken in retaliation. He lay there panting. One of the lizards spat on him.
A circle of women and men were watching now. There was an almost eager look on their faces. What else was going to happen here?
“You are worshipping old gods,” said one of the Analesians.
“You are worshipping a man,” Balur spat back.
It was said in haste, and anger. But he lost the crowd with that one.
Someone booed. Then more did.
“Be fucking off.” Balur sat up spitting blood.
Another of the Analesians was looking around, enjoying the reaction he was getting.
“So,” he said, “you are not worshipping Will Fallows? You are rejecting him?”
Balur was wise to answering that question directly now, though. “And you?” he asked. “You are being a proud Analesian and you are licking this man’s boots?”
But the crowd wasn’t having that either. More boos followed. An angry shout was hurled.
“I told you not to.” Cois was staring at the ground. The other gods sat even more huddled now.
“Will Fallows is being a great warrior,” said the thick-skulled Analesian. “He is being the champion of those who stand opposed to Barph. He is being our champion. But is he being yours?”
It was hurled like a challenge. And there was a smart time for knowing when you were outmatched and it was time to go home.
Balur had never been known for making smart decisions in fights.
“I am worshipping no man,” he said. “And I am worshipping no god. I—” He had a lot more to say, but it was drowned out by the shouting.
And gods, he wanted to shout at them now. He wanted to tell them to be better than this, to be who they had promised to be at the beginning of this. But Cois’s hand was on his arm, and zhe was pulling him away, and he could watch his own bones be broken if it was in the name of his honor, but he couldn’t watch hirs.
“Run, traitor!” the Analesian shouted as Balur pushed away into the crowd, using his arms to shield Cois from the hurled hatred. “Run away. We stay here. The true Analesians. The true warriors of Will Fallows.”
And Balur wanted so much to turn and tear the smug smile from the lizard’s face, but Balur fought for a cause now, and in this moment it felt as if that cause was already lost.
51
The Protestant
Days on the road turned into weeks. Chatarra turned into Salera. And if anyone wanted Balur’s opinion, Will did not look well. In fact, Will looked like eight sacks of cow shit shoveled into five sacks of human skin.
No one asked Balur about his opinion.
They finally came to a halt on the hills overlooking the Saleran capital, Essoa. More than a few Salerans had joined them on the last leg of their journey, and Balur suspected that their numbers must exceed ten thousand by now. It was not
a great army, nothing that would define an age, and no more than they had ended up leading through Kondorra when he had first faced off against the dragons. But still, it was not an insignificant number. And they were all worshipping … Well, this thing that looked as Balur imagined the Will of old would look if he’d had a particularly harrowing encounter with a disease-ridden banshee prostitute.
Here, before Essoa, Will had called for a war council of sorts. Balur had resisted coming; his ribs and pride both hurt, and Will’s tendency to talk about what a boon to humankind he was had done nothing but grow. Cois pushed him here, though.
“Who else will beat his swollen head back to size?” zhe had asked, and Balur had no answer.
Now the body of Pettrax—the surviving dragon leader—formed a wall against the rest of the camp. His breath had lit a campfire. Will stood beside it, and the rest of them sat with their backs to Pettrax’s enveloping bulk—Lette, Quirk, and Afrit joining Balur and Cois. The lights of Essoa flickered below.
“You grew up down there, didn’t you?” said Cois, leaning over to Lette.
Lette shrugged. “It feels like that was more years ago than it actually was.”
Above them Pettrax snorted with a sound like thunder. “Are we here to talk of war or not?” he asked.
Will was staring into the flames. He looked up. “Essoa,” he said. “A Barphian stronghold.” He didn’t seem to be looking at any of them directly. There was a strange light in his eyes. It was the wrong color for reflected firelight, Balur was sure. “A source of power for our enemy.” Will chewed his lip.
Balur looked over at Lette. This could not be comfortable for her. The city of her childhood enslaved to a tyrannical god. Her lover raving like an alcoholic.
“People to be liberated.” Cois smiled at Will and then Balur. “Freed from the tyrannical yoke of my former lover by my new one.”
Balur smiled thinly. Zhe was trying to pull him back into this. And had it only been a month ago that he stood in the Analesian Desert shouting that this was his tribe?