The Broken God Machine

by Christopher Buecheler

  “That hurt,” she said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know if I can walk by myself.”

  “I’m sorry. Tasha, I'm so sorry. I should have—”

  “Pehr, stop.”

  Pehr bit his lip, forcing himself to put away the anger and self-loathing that threatened to sweep over him. There would be time for it later, perhaps, but Tasha was right: their present situation was too dire to allow it.

  “Come,” he said. “Lean against me. We will stop in the glade below and I will bathe and dress your wound as best I can.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “Quite a lot, I think,” Pehr said. Tasha made a sobbing noise, but she began to limp along with him back up the path, toward the branch that would take them to the plains. Pehr was proud of her.

  “Am I going to die?” she asked him, and Pehr told her the only thing he could without inspecting the damage in much greater detail.

  “Tasha, I do not know.”

  Chapter 24

  Once he had cleaned the wound and dressed it with strips of soft leather torn from his own shirt, Pehr had a much better idea of what Tasha was facing. He thought it very likely that something vital had been damaged inside of her, and that she would live two or three days at most. Tasha pressed him for his diagnosis, but he brushed her off, saying only that he couldn't tell the extent of her injuries and that they had to keep moving.

  They made their way as best they could across the plains, but it was obvious that Tasha’s strength was rapidly fading. Several times during that day they were forced to stop and rest. Even during the times when she was strong enough to walk, Tasha’s eyes leaked constant tears from the pain that movement brought her.

  “If only we had a car,” she growled at one point, and Pehr rolled his eyes. Less than a day ago, the word would have been meaningless to him. Now he knew what it meant, but little good it did – there were none left in Havenmont capable of bearing the two of them. Though blessed with exteriors crafted from non-metallic polymers that didn’t rust, and in most cases kept inside buildings that had afforded some level of shelter over the millennia, the vehicles had still been dismantled by the ravages of time. Their batteries were all dead, their rubber tires all rotted away.

  “We’ll get there,” Pehr said, but Tasha only looked at him with an expression of disbelief, and he found that he couldn’t meet her eyes for long.

  The sound began behind them sometime after dusk, so low that Pehr mistook it at first for his own imagination, but soon it rose to the point that it could not be denied. It was not the drums of war with which the Lagos had announced their presence two years ago. This noise was lower, rumbling, not nearly so rhythmic. Pehr knew from his dreams that it was the sound of many trampling feet. The Lagos horde had come to the Plains of Tassanna at long last, bent on revenge and destruction.

  “Already?” he murmured to himself, frustrated. He had hoped for another few days at least.

  “They’re coming for us,” Tasha croaked beside him, and Pehr came to a stop.

  “Drink,” he said, when she gave him a questioning look, and held out his half-full skin.

  “I don’t want it,” she said.

  “Tasha, you need water. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “I didn’t say I’ve no need of it,” Tasha said, hissing in pain as she sat down in the grass. Pehr saw that fresh blood was seeping past the leather dressing he had put on the wound.

  “So drink …”

  “I don’t want it,” she replied, and there was something in the tone of her voice that kept him from pressing the issue. It was not anger or sorrow or despair – those things he would have expected, here at what could only be the end of all things. It was, he thought, almost a trancelike tone, as if her mind was someplace far away. She had sounded like this in his dream.

  “You’re not here,” Pehr said to her, and Tasha remained staring out at the plains ahead of them.

  “No.”

  “Tell me where you are.”

  Tasha shook her head. “It’s like the dreams … I know this is real, but that’s what it feels like. I don’t want the water, Pehr. I don’t want anything. Something is coming.”

  “The Lagos are coming,” Pehr said. “All of them, I think. They’ll be atop us by nightfall tomorrow.”

  “Yes. We’ll make our stand then.”

  “Make our stand?” Pehr grinned a hard, bitter grin. “I don’t know, Tasha … I can only handle five, perhaps six thousand of them, and you’re in no condition to fight the other half.”

  Tasha laughed, then grimaced at the pain this caused her. “No, I’m not. Three thousand at most.”

  The rumbling had stopped. Pehr sighed and sat down next to her in the grass. Tasha put her head on his shoulder.

  “They’ve called a halt for the night, so we’ll do the same. We can camp here, but I won’t risk a fire.”

  “It will be cold.”

  “I’ll hold you.”

  “Will you? Even though I’ve nothing to give back? I have no kisses to offer you, Pehr. No soft touches. No warm, wet place between my legs for you to explore. It’s … it’s not what I was built for.”

  “Tasha … none of that matters to me. You know that it doesn’t.”

  “Yes, I do, and I love you for it. I love you very much, Pehr. Not like Nani does, or even like Kissha does, but … but I do. I wanted you to know.”

  She turned her head and kissed him on the cheek, and Pehr smiled at her. “I love you too. I’m sorry it has to end like this.”

  It was only after they had curled up together amid the grass, her back pressed against his chest and his arms around her, that she spoke again. She whispered the words in a voice so soft it might have been nothing more than the wind, or just his imagination, except it wasn’t, and he knew it.

  “This is not the end,” the girl with the purple eyes told him, just before sleep took them both. “This is only the time before the new.”

  * * *

  Their last march lasted fourteen hours, and near its end the sky behind them had gone the dusty red that Pehr knew from his dreams. To the west, at the very edge of their vision, a dark black line had appeared, and Pehr knew that it was the front of the advancing army of Lagos. The thudding of feet had become a dull roar in the distance, and the sound was now and again peppered with cries, yips, snarls and shouts. The Lagos were whipping themselves into a frenzy as they advanced through these new lands, preparing to destroy whatever they encountered.

  “Your people will fall back to the southlands as the monsters advance,” Pehr told Tasha. “They will find themselves pinned between the horde and the mountains.”

  The red-haired girl seemed not to hear him. She was sweaty and feverish, wracked with pain, staring out ahead of him with wide eyes. She had taken neither food nor drink, claiming not to want them, and Pehr hadn’t forced them on her. What was the point? Death’s hands were already upon her.

  As if to confirm these thoughts, Tasha stumbled and went to one knee, crying out at the pain this caused her. Pehr stepped up beside her, put a hand on her shoulder, and found the skin there slicked with sweat. Tasha’s head was lowered, her breathing ragged and tortured.

  “Tasha, no matter how hard you push, we will not reach your family before the Lagos overtake us. Don't cause yourself undue pain.”

  “Not trying to reach them,” she gasped, and after a moment more she forced herself to her feet, making a sound of agonized effort that Pehr found he could barely stand listening to. When at last she was up, he studied her face. Despite the pain, her eyes still seemed distant, as if looking forward not just in space but in time.

  “Where exactly is it that you think we’re going?” he asked her, and Tasha shook her head.

  “I don’t know. I have … your dream, the rising waters …”

  “There is no ocean in the middle of these plains, Tasha.”

  She shook her head, leaning half-bent at the waist with her hands against her thighs, panting. “N
o.”

  Pehr glanced back over his shoulder. The thin line of Lagos had become a large, black wave. The beat of their advance shook the earth, and their sounds had gone from isolated noises to a steady roar. In the east, purple thunderhead clouds were gathering, larger and in greater numbers than he had ever seen before, as if nature was preparing to send him and Tasha off to death with a vast and violent storm. Pehr thought of his dream and a small shiver ran through his body.

  “Let me know when we’ve reached wherever it is we’re going,” he said, and without further discussion he leaned down and – like he had done in the great, white capitol building of Havenmont – swept Tasha off of her feet. She didn’t protest this time, merely wrapped her arms around his neck and put her face against his shoulder.

  Pehr found it grimly amusing that he was able to move faster in this fashion than the two of them had managed with Tasha walking. He knew his reserves of strength would not last very long, not with days of nothing more than salted tral and water in his belly, but for now it seemed all right. Tasha had always been thin to begin with, and the exertions of their journey combined with the fever that was now eating her away seemed to have left her little heavier than the air around them.

  Still, it took only minutes to determine that the Lagos horde was rapidly catching up to them. The creatures were not yet advancing across the plains at a run, but neither were they taking their time. Pehr was sure that they had sighted the two lone humans by now, which would only add to their excitement. They would catch up by dusk at the latest.

  As he walked, Pehr went over the images in his dream again, the last sliver of sun setting in the west, the girl with the purple eyes standing with him at the top of the hill and looking out at the oncoming army. He wondered about the long fade to white at the end, about what it might represent. He was not enthusiastic about the possibilities his brain came up with.

  It will be difficult, saving the world once I’m dead, Pehr thought, and then surprised himself by laughing. Tasha stirred against him, muttered something incoherent, and coughed twice. She felt like a bundle of burning sticks in his arms, and Pehr knew that the end was not far away. He found himself amazed and proud that she had fought for so long.

  With nothing else left to do, Pehr made his way across the Plains of Tassanna, carrying his friend toward the rains, and toward wherever it was that they were meant to die.

  * * *

  “There,” Tasha told him, her voice fuzzy like that of someone who has just woken from a long sleep. “Take me there.”

  Pehr hadn't even realized she was awake until she reached out her arm to point toward a large and steeply sloping hill just ahead of them. He looked up to where she was pointing, and he shrugged. “It seems as good a place as any.”

  Pehr’s arms and back ached from carrying Tasha. Though he thought he could go further, it no longer mattered; the Lagos behind them were now positively roaring in anticipation, and the front ranks had broken into a run. There were perhaps four miles between the advancing army and its intended victims, and Pehr thought that simply getting to the top of Tasha’s hill would be a very near thing.

  He began to run as well, knowing the motion would cause Tasha pain but sure that she would rather deal with that pain and reach the top of the hill than be cut down only halfway up. She didn’t cry out, only tightened her grip on his neck, affirming his choice. Pehr raced forward as quickly as he could, wondering when he would feel an arrow or spear pierce his body and bring him down. The increase in speed and elevation made his calves burn, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now, it seemed, except reaching the top of this hill in time to turn, and face his enemy, and die well.

  By the time he reached the top, the Lagos horde had already begun their own ascent, but Pehr did not set Tasha down and turn to face them as he had expected to do. Instead he found himself unable to move, unable to do anything more than stare at the sight before him, his brain attempting to process what it was that he was seeing.

  It’s the black sea from the dream, he thought. It’s real after all. How is it possible?

  But it wasn’t the sea, and after a moment more he understood what it was that he was looking at. The great, roiling blackness spread out below him was not liquid. Its movement was organic, but this was not water ebbing and flowing before him. It was a herd of tral so large that it covered the entire valley. Pehr had developed some ability to estimate the size of these groups during his time with Samhad, but this herd dwarfed any that he had ever seen before. This was the group Samhad had spoken of: at least ten thousand animals, each weighing more than a ton, spread out below him.

  “Gods, Tasha,” he said, his voice low with something near reverence.

  “There are no gods,” Tasha muttered against his shoulder. “Let me go. Stand me up.”

  Pehr set Tasha down, glancing over his shoulder at the enemy clambering up the hill toward them.

  “We have come as far as we can,” He said. “There is no escape ahead, and no hope of survival behind.”

  The Lagos had closed the distance to only a few hundred yards, and Pehr realized that there would be no spears or arrows for him or Tasha; the creatures would take them up close and rend them limb from limb.

  Tasha had turned away from the tral and was looking out at the horde with the same dreamy, vacant expression that she had held for much of the past day.

  “I am frightened,” she said, and Pehr felt a sudden twisting, doubling sensation within him, so powerful that he nearly dropped to his knees. Here was the sunset and the storm, just as they should be, Tasha looking out on the plains in awe, and if she felt the fear that she claimed, Pehr couldn't hear a trace of it in her voice. He stepped forward, as he was supposed to, and took her hand.

  “I am frightened, too,” he said, and he glanced sidelong at Tasha. The girl with the purple eyes did not look back at him, but a small smile formed on her face.

  “This is what you’ve seen.”

  “Yes.”

  “We have come to the confluence,” she said, and Pehr saw that she was weeping. “All things will end here, and all things will begin anew. Will humankind be there to see the new dawn? Oh, Pehr … I’m glad to know you’ve seen this.”

  “Tasha, what does it mean? What does the seeing mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she said in a voice that was audibly weakening. “Maybe it’s luck or chance. Maybe it’s destiny. Maybe it’s God. I always knew that the plainsmen were wrong about their gods, but we have passed now beyond the edge of my sight. Don’t let go of my hand.”

  “I will be here for you.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s for you.”

  “Are you going to protect me?” Pehr asked, and he gave a grim laugh. “I cannot wait to find out how.”

  Tasha’s eyes were far away, now, and her face was pale. The air seemed charged with electricity, and Pehr understood that the storm was upon them. As if in confirmation, the first, fat raindrops began to patter to the earth around them.

  “Tell Ketrahm that I wished I could have been there to see him grow up,” Tasha said, her voice strained and cracking at the effort of forcing out the words. “Tell Mandia that I will watch out for her from above if I can, and that she must not be afraid. Tell Kissha … tell Kissha that I have bought with my life a beautiful future for her, and that I was happy to do it.”

  Tasha sank to her knees, and Pehr went with her, holding her hand.

  “Tell my parents I’m sorry,” she said. “Tell them … I love them. Tell them all I love them. Pehr, tell them—”

  “I will tell them, Tasha,” Pehr said, though he did not believe that either would survive the night. “Tasha, I will tell them everything there is to tell. You can let go.”

  “Thank you, my friend,” the girl with the purple eyes said, and she smiled, and let herself fall sideways, still staring out at the oncoming horde. Pehr caught her and held her to him, gripping her hand and looking as well out at the Lagos warriors, only a hundr
ed yards away now. He was glad that Tasha was going to pass before they reached her.

  “There is darkness, and then there is light,” Tasha whispered, her voice dry and rattling like the plains grasses in autumn, and with these words went the last of her life. She gave one long, hitching exhalation, and her eyes became distant and glassy. Lying amidst the soft plains grasses that she had known her entire life, Tasha, daughter of Samhad, found peace.

  Moments later, the first bolt of lightning struck, arcing from the earth to the clouds from within the center of the herd of tral, blowing some of the huge beasts into the air with its force. It was followed by another, a third, and then the individual strikes dissolved into an unending succession of blasts. The rain came down in torrents, the lightning lit the earth, and Pehr watched as all around him faded into white.

  The tral, confused and terrified, began to stampede, heading west, up the hill toward Pehr and the Lagos.

  Holding the body of his friend in his arms, head bowed against the force of the rain and the lightning strikes crashing all about him, Pehr found himself at the exact meeting point of two armies, each thousands strong. The first Lagos warriors crested the hill and raised their blades, shrieking in triumph at the sight of the solitary hunter kneeling on the ground. Their shouts were cut short by the sight of the first of the tral, bellowing in terror as they crested the hill and bore down on the Lagos. Even through the noise of the thunder and the great blasts of lightning all around him, Pehr could hear as new screams, these of alarm turning to outright fear, rang out through the night.

  He held on to Tasha. Throughout it all, Pehr never let go of her hand.

  The tral split around the two humans, leaving them untouched, and plowed directly into the Lagos’s front line, tossing the warriors into the air and trampling them underfoot. For all their strength, the Lagos stood no chance against this onslaught, and the unending wave of tral beat them down underfoot. Pehr knew it was only a matter of time before he, too, was crushed underneath those stomping hooves, but he found it impossible to care. All of his attention was focused on the carnage before him.