The Broken God Machine

by Christopher Buecheler

  The hunter went to his knees, and Pehr lunged forward to intercept the Lagos, but thick, powerful arms wrapped themselves around him and hurled him to the ground. He landed on his side, the wind knocked out of him, and for a moment he could only lie there, staring out at the scene. A taloned hand grabbed his club and knife from him and tossed them away.

  Josep had pitched forward and was lying on the ground, face down, and Pehr knew that the hunter was in dire peril. The blood loss alone would kill him if his wounds were not soon dressed. Nani and Anna had knelt, one on either side of Josep, and Pehr saw Nani take Josep’s knife from the strap on his leg and hold it out in defiance. A third Lagos warrior had grabbed Jace and stripped the boy of his weapons, its massive claw wrapped around his neck.

  All this, Pehr thought, and we’ve done it for nothing.

  The first Lagos warrior was advancing on Josep’s prone form, holding a knife of its own and staring at Nani’s face. Pehr shoved up with his hands, trying to gain his footing, only to feel something heavy and sharply tipped slam into his back and drive him back to the ground; one of the creatures had stomped its heavy foot down on top of him.

  Before the advancing Lagos could reach Josep or Nani, there came from the darkness to Pehr’s left a snarling word that Pehr did not understand. The Lagos warrior glanced back over its shoulder and then, with a nod, turned and ambled away from Josep’s body. He went to the edge of sight and conferred there in low tones with whoever had spoken. The two warriors that were holding Pehr and Jace down also moved away, and both boys moved immediately to join the others. After a moment, the Lagos warrior involved in the discussion shrugged, and the one that had given the command came forth.

  It was like the other Lagos warriors, only not so large or strong, and was dressed in many bird feathers and monkey skins. Around its large, yellow-green eyes were painted great white circles, and its teeth had all been dyed red. It seemed to be grinning at them, but it neither advanced nor made any threatening gestures.

  The creature growled some words at them – to Pehr they were nothing but gibberish – followed by some clucking noises and a hand gesture. Pehr and his family waited in silence, unsure how to respond. The decorated Lagos sneered at them and slowly stretched out its hand. It pointed in sequence to Nani, Josep, Anna, and Pehr. After this, it made a dismissive flinging gesture with its hand, snarling again and looking disinterested. The message was clear: it had no use for them.

  The priest – surely, that must be what this creature was – then leveled its finger at Jace, grinned, and nodded.

  “You cannot have him!” Nani screamed at the thing, and Pehr opened his mouth to agree with her, but Jace only sighed, making a gesture with his hand to quiet them.

  “Of course he can have me,” Jace said. “Wasn’t that the bargain all along? My life, and Pehr’s, and Josep’s, in exchange for yours and Mother’s.”

  “Jace, no!” Pehr shouted, grabbing his cousin by the wrist. Jace shook him off.

  “Would you not do the same, if they wanted you?” he asked.

  “But they don’t want Pehr,” Nani said. “They don’t want Josep, or Mother, or me. Why you?”

  “Does it matter, Nani? If I go now, I can save more lives.”

  The Lagos priest snarled at them again and spoke more of its strange language, its tone making the intention of its words obvious: stop wasting time.

  “It must be a trick!” Nani cried. “Jace, don’t leave us. Don’t let them take you away.”

  “They cannot be trusted” Pehr said. “Jace, don’t do this.”

  Jace knelt down next to them and gestured to Josep’s prone form. The wounded hunter was still breathing, but those breaths were ragged and shallow. Anna was hurriedly binding his wounds with wet strips of cloth that she had torn from her own garments.

  “Do you want him to live?” he asked his sister.

  Nani might have been weeping now – it was hard to tell, with the rain. She looked back and forth between Jace and her husband-to-be. “Don’t make me choose!”

  “It’s not a choice. They will take me either way, Nani, but if they had taken me by force they would’ve had to hurt me. They want me unspoiled. I don’t know why, but I won’t question it. This is a gift from the Gods, and we’re going to take it.”

  Nani had no more words for this, and so she only covered her face. Jace stood, turned, and looked at Pehr.

  “Will you see her to safety, cousin?” he asked.

  Pehr clenched his teeth, forced back the rage and hatred that threatened to overwhelm him, and nodded. “I told you I would.”

  “Forget the cave. Find the closest building that still stands. The killing is done.”

  One of the Lagos warriors had collected Pehr’s weapons from the ground and was now holding them. Jace pointed at it, and then at Pehr. The priest shook its head and Jace lunged forward, stabbing his finger out again and shouting, “Give him his weapons or kill me here!”

  The priest stared at him for a moment, surprised, then grunted out a wheezing laugh. It growled something in his beast-language to the warrior, which also laughed, but then threw Pehr’s club in the general direction of the group. When Pehr bent to pick it up, the Lagos flicked Pehr’s knife expertly down into the ground, just in front of Pehr’s hand. Still laughing, the warrior turned and wandered off.

  “Good,” Jace said.

  Lightning flashed and thunder roared. The priest seemed unmoved by this display of nature. It jerked its head toward the jungle, and Jace nodded.

  “I’m going,” he said, and when his voice broke on the second word, Pehr was reminded that this was no hunter. This was a fourteen-year-old boy, someone not yet a man, no matter how well he sometimes impersonated one. Jace was facing his very nightmares, and had just now agreed to go with them quietly, willingly, to some unknown end.

  Pehr said his cousin’s name, and the boy turned to look at him, managing a half smile. He took a deep breath, then turned back and walked toward the priest. The creature nodded, pointing out into the darkness, and Jace began to trudge in that direction. Nani wailed his name, and Pehr saw the sound of her cry hit the boy almost as a physical weight, making his shoulders drop, but he did not turn around, merely continued to walk. His words came back to them.

  “I love you, Sister. I’m glad you are safe.”

  “Oh, Jace,” Nani wept, her voice broken and defeated. “Oh, Jace, it’s not fair.”

  It wasn’t, but there was nothing else they could do, and so they watched as he walked away, the Lagos priest not far behind him, until at last the rain and the dark swallowed both of them up.

  * * *

  On the outskirts of the village they found a home that had only been half-burnt before the rains had come and extinguished the fire, leaving much of its roof intact, and it was there that they took shelter.

  Josep was awake, but confused and near incoherent. Twice he tried to insist to Pehr that they should make for the ocean, that he could still swim and show Nani the way to the cave. Pehr tried to explain to him that it was over, that the fighting was done, but Josep seemed unable to understand. Eventually he fell into a deep sleep. Pehr was skeptical that the hunter would ever wake, but when Nani asked him if he thought Josep would live, he told her he was sure of it.

  Four hours passed. They had tended to Josep’s wounds as best they could, searching the hut for dry clothing and tearing it into strips to make better bandages. They fashioned a fire from a small supply of wood, augmenting it by shattering the doors and tearing down part of the roof. It seemed that Josep slept peacefully, but still Pehr sat with him for some time, thinking.

  Pehr had survived this night, survived the worst that the Gods could throw at him. Was there any question now that he would pass the Test? Was there any doubt he would be made a man? Why, then, did the prospect feel so empty? Why did he keep returning to Nani’s words? Will you promise to help him? Will you promise to always be there for him?

  At last he left the sleeping hun
ter and came into the main room of the dwelling. Anna was in the other room, sitting on the dirt floor, her back against the wall and her head buried in her arms. Nani was standing at the front door, staring out into the rain toward the jungle. Pehr came up beside her and touched her shoulder.

  “Josep’s bandages will need to be changed often,” he said, and Nani nodded.

  “As soon as dawn comes, I will make for the village,” she said. “I will get supplies. Bandages and salves, broth, tea, and … and, oh … oh!”

  She turned and threw her arms around him, burying her face against his neck and weeping. Pehr put his own arms around her and held her, waiting for her sobbing to lessen. At last he took her at arm’s length, and after several moments more, she looked up at him.

  “Come outside with me,” he said, and Nani glanced out through the door, confused.

  “Out into the rain?”

  “Just for a moment.”

  “But I … oh, very well.”

  When they were outdoors and around the side of the hut, away from where Anna or Josep might hear them, Pehr stopped and turned to face her again. Nani looked back, confused and miserable.

  “I’m going,” Pehr told her, and Nani’s eyes widened in fear.

  “Where? Pehr, why are you leaving us?!”

  “I must go after Jace.”

  Nani shook her head. “Oh, Pehr, no … please, no. They’ll kill you! They’ll kill the both of you and I … if Josep … I’ll have no one!”

  “Nani, I have to do this.”

  “Why?”

  Pehr smiled at her. “Because you made me swear to keep him safe.”

  “But you’ll never come back!” Nani wailed, lunging forward as if to hit him. Pehr waited for the blow to come, but she seemed to think better of it and instead wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight.

  “Damn you,” she was muttering. “Damn you, damn you.”

  “I promised you, Nani. You asked this of me.”

  She had trapped him with his love, and she couldn't ask him to go back on the oath she had made him swear to her. Any hunter worthy of the title would choose death over the breaking of a sworn oath, especially to one he loved.

  “I will come back,” he said, and she laughed, a sound that was bitter and without humor.

  “No doubt. You will come riding in upon the edge of a rainbow, with Jace and my father at your heels,” she said, and then she let him go, stepping back toward the door.

  “It’s too late for me to do anything for Uncle Truff,” Pehr told her. “It is not yet too late for Jace. I will bring him back if I can.”

  She nodded, resigned, saying nothing. After a moment more, Pehr turned and began to jog toward the jungle, focusing on nothing more than preventing himself from looking back. He was almost at the edge of sight when she called his name and came running after him. He considered for a moment simply outrunning her but couldn’t make himself do it, and came instead to a stop, turning to meet her.

  Nani came into his arms at a run, nearly bowling him over. Twisting her fingers into his hair, she pressed her lips to his, pressed her tongue to his, kissed him long and deep with a ferocity that bordered on painful. Overwhelmed, Pehr put his hands in her hair and kissed back. They stood like that for some short, too short, impossibly short time – a period that could never have been long enough for Pehr even had it lasted until the very breaking of the world – and then she pulled away from him.

  “I will never see you again,” she told him. “I will never, ever see you again, and I will not let you leave me without the truth. May the Gods damn you, and me, and the Lagos, and everything else in this miserable place. I love you. I love you, though I cannot have you, and it’s tearing my soul apart to watch you leave.”

  Pehr allowed himself just the smallest moment to savor these words, which he had thought he’d never hear. Then he kissed her once more and stepped away from her. Nani was looking into his eyes, and when Pehr realized what he was about to do, it seemed he could feel his heart splitting in two. Still, he forced himself to say the words that had come unbidden to his head, because he knew that they must be said.

  “Make certain that he lives,” he told this girl that he loved. “I want you to do everything in your power to bring Josep back to health, and then I want you to marry him as soon as he is able to stand at the shrine. Give him lots of sons, strong like their father, and lots of daughters, strong like you.”

  Nani’s face crumbled and she covered it with her hands, beginning to sob. Pehr fought down the urge to go to her and said instead, “Goodbye, my cousin.”

  Then he acted as a hunter should, and as he knew he must. He turned his back to her, and he ran for the jungle, and he didn’t look back.

  Chapter 9

  Dawn was breaking as Pehr came to the great jungle that spanned the entire eastern border of the land upon which his people had settled. It was here that he would have hunted wild boar with his fellow men had the Lagos not chosen his village as their target. The rain had stopped for the moment, and steam drifted in tendrils off the tops of the wide, tall trees that dominated the jungle canopy. The underbrush was not so foreboding this close to its edge, but he knew it would soon grow dark and dense. He could hear the calls of monkeys and birds in the treetops.

  He’d expected at first to find a great many trails blazed by the departing Lagos, but all seemed to converge on a single entrance into the thick greenery. Pehr was not, and would never be, a master tracker, but a blind man could have followed the trail of destruction the Lagos left behind them. Not content simply with burning and pillaging, it seemed that the creatures went out of their way to damage their surroundings even when there was no gain to be had in it. All around him, Pehr saw broken branches and trampled greenery. Even the earth itself had been gouged and torn by the passing of their clawed feet. There was no question of which direction to head.

  Pehr knew that this undertaking was foolish, bordering on insane, but he couldn't bring himself to abandon Jace. He knew that his village needed him, but still he raged against the idea of breaking his oath and leaving the boy to his fate. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to do it, and resolved to press on.

  There was no chance for victory in a frontal assault. His goal was to catch up with the Lagos, not to overtake them. Then, maybe, he could locate Jace and begin to formulate a plan for escape. The Lagos, for all their ferocity and strength, would have to rest at some point. Unless they truly were magic creations of the Gods, they would stop to sleep, and though Pehr had no doubt that there would be guards, there might also be some window of opportunity for him there.

  Two years earlier, Pehr and Jace had gone on an expedition with Truff to the jungle’s edge. They had spent three days exploring the boundary and the immediate depths, as Truff provided valuable education and insight into the flora and fauna they would find there. The wild boars that the hunters so prized, Truff had told them, were most likely to be found living in groups around a central water source. The monkeys in the trees were no danger during the day, but during the night they loved to raid campsites. The jungle was also home to a wide variety of poisons; there were scorpions and spiders, snakes, stinging insects, and even a kind of lizard whose mouth was so filled with vile substances that anything it bit would become infected and begin to rot within days.

  Pehr did not fear these creatures, exactly; he knew how to deal with the boars and monkeys, and even the rare jungle cats that existed as much in rumor as memory. If he was bitten by a snake, spider, or lizard, then that was fate. He hadn’t seen much in recent days that made him believe he could control the whims of the Gods.

  Pehr was exhausted, but he knew that the Lagos would not camp so close to the jungle’s edge. They would be moving all day, and they would gain much distance on him if he stopped to sleep. He knew he must press on even though he hadn't slept since the night before the attack, when he’d had that bizarre dream. What had it meant? Who had the girl been, and why had she been searchin
g for him? Why could he not now remember her face though he had stared directly into her eyes?

  Pehr’s typical nocturnal imagery consisted of things related to life in his village, his training for the hunt, and more increasingly of the various girls that had caught his eye. This new girl, though … she was unlike any he'd ever known, tall and thin, lithe and graceful, and by her silhouette he'd seen that she kept her hair cropped short, something he had never seen before.

  Pehr managed to piece all of this together as he made his way through the jungle, returning to the images again and again in his mind, but when he tried to go any deeper, or get any closer, the dream faded and blurred, becoming inscrutable. This grew ever more frustrating as the day went on, and eventually Pehr gave up, angry that he could not coax the girl’s face from his reticent brain.

  He was tired, hot and sweaty, and ravenously hungry. There had been no time to search for food, and he had stopped only once to fill his water skin, which was now nearly empty again. Pehr looked up at the sky through a rare break in the canopy and saw that it was now a few hours past noon. His body couldn't go much further.

  He slowed his pace and began to pay more attention to his surroundings. The jungle here was riddled with fast-moving streams and his land rarely experienced drought – often the time between rains was measured in hours, not days. Pehr was not afraid of running out of water, but food was something more of a concern. Lush though the jungle was, most of its plants were inedible, and Pehr did not have the necessary time to forage for the few green things that his stomach might tolerate. He had his knife and club, but had left his bow behind, having no arrows with which to use it. It was possible that he might catch something, but Pehr thought it likely that he would have to call on his training and his strength to live without much food for a time.