The Broken God Machine

by Christopher Buecheler

“What hope is that?” Nani asked him, and Pehr smiled at her.

  “Havenmont.”

  * * *

  “What is this … ‘Havenmont’ and you came you to it, Pehr?” Josep asked from his seat at the head of the table. His fellows were gathered with with him in the hunters’ hall, where the warriors of the village – few though they were – gathered to discuss their work.

  “It is a city of man,” Pehr said. “Once, countless numbers dwelled there. Its buildings rise to what seems the very peaks of the mountains that surround it, and creatures of metal patrol the streets at night. It’s the land of our ancestors, and I came to it through fate and fortune, and through my own efforts and those of a very dear friend.”

  “It sounds like something from a child’s tale,” Josep said.

  There was a note of distaste in his voice that made Pehr uneasy, but Josep only leaned forward, resting his chin in the palm of one hand, waiting for Pehr to continue. The older hunter was scarred badly from his encounter with the Lagos. Running across his forehead, an ugly, purple line seemed to give him a permanent scowl, and Pehr could see, at the edges of the man’s shirt, that the damage to his chest and shoulder had been equally disfiguring.

  “I know it’s difficult to believe,” Pehr said. “I hope that your knowledge of me … your trust in me … will help you with that.”

  “What knowledge?” Thomas, the hunter with the crippled arm, asked. “What trust? You’re a stranger to us now, gone more than two years. You left this village when it needed every healthy body. You went to chase after your cousin when all knew he was doomed. Now you have returned, dressed in strange clothes and carrying a strange weapon, to give stories of a miraculous city beyond the jungle. What proof have you to offer?”

  Pehr shrugged. He had collected no objects from Havenmont, and even if he had, there was little chance that they would have meant anything to the hunters sitting at this table. Here even Pehr’s own augmentation proved worthless; he couldn't explain to Josep and the others what calculus was or why it should matter to them. He could tell them why the Everstorm was so important to Uru, but he could not explain to them how it worked in any way they would understand. The only hope lay in bringing them to the city, where they could receive the same gift that Allen had already given Pehr.

  “There is no proof,” he said, and he stopped, looking around at the seven men gathered there. Four of them were younger than Pehr, boys with whom he had grown up who had been lucky enough to escape death at the hands of the Lagos warriors or abduction by their priests. Then there was Clay, and Thomas, and Josep – forced to lead because he was the only one who could.

  “There is no proof,” Pehr said again. “There is only my word … the word of a fellow hunter.”

  The left side of Josep’s upper lip rose momentarily, and in that instant Pehr understood why he had felt such hostility emanating from the group. He didn’t even need the words that followed.

  “You are not a hunter. All the others who sit here have passed the Test and earned the right to call themselves such, but you have not. You are just a boy pretending to be a man.”

  Pehr clenched his teeth against the oaths that rose in his throat and looked up at the ceiling, then returned his glance to Josep.

  “The Test? Josep … the Test means nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  “How dare you speak like this?” Josep snarled. “The Test is our judge of manhood. It’s the only judge that we—”

  “It is a capricious, arbitrary judge that has removed countless thousands from our ranks who might otherwise have benefitted our village, or others,” Pehr said, and he sighed, shaking his head. “I have not passed the hunters’ Test, it is true. I have not gone through the peril of the swinging stones, nor bested the caves of fire. I’ve not faced an angered sow in single combat and come out victorious, and I’ve not swum out past the stones in the bay and braved the currents of the open ocean. These things all of you have done – and lived to tell of it – and thus, by our laws, you are men.”

  He turned to each of them then, meeting their eyes and holding their gaze, not ashamed and not afraid, and then continued. “I have bested tests of my own. I have defeated Lagos warriors and priests in single combat. I have navigated their jungles without aid and have stood before the greatest of their priests without wavering. I have been brought to the very edge of death by thirst, hunted great beasts in herds so large they blackened the horizon, and trained to fight with this blade of steel that I now carry. I have outrun and outwitted an army of demon machines bent on my destruction, and I have stood tall before a thing which unleashes death from its very eyes. I have gone, and done, and endured. I have survived these things that would have killed many men, many hunters, and many of you.

  “I'm not a hunter by your law, Josep, but through my own actions and accomplishments I have become a man. I have survived tests as great as any that our people have ever devised. I will not suffer your doubt, and I will have your respect.”

  “My respect is not simply given to those who ask for it,” Josep said.

  “I am not asking,” Pehr said. He could feel a grim smile on his face, but inside there was little but despair. It hadn't occurred to him that he would be viewed by his own village not as a returning hero or a savior, but rather as nothing more than the boy who had abandoned his family and his duty.

  “Are you commanding me, Pehr?” Josep asked, his voice low. “Consider your answer … boy. Consider it very well.”

  Josep sat at the head of the hunters’ table now, and in this position he was the leader, not only of those gathered in this hall but of the entire village. The politics of Pehr’s society were loose and there was rarely any challenge to the established ways and hierarchy, but neither were such things entirely unknown. To issue a command to the head of hunters was to challenge his authority, and Josep would not take any such challenge lightly. If Pehr chose to go forward with it, there would be battle, and while either fighter would have the opportunity to yield during such a fight, more often than not it ended in the death of one of the two men.

  Pehr did not want to fight Josep. He was not scared of the man, though he couldn't say with certainty who would win such a battle. He was afraid, instead, of failing not just Tasha but all the world. While the idea of coming all this way only to die at the hands of someone who had once been a friend was amusing in some deep, black way, Pehr understood the precarious ground on which the fate of his entire people now rested.

  “What would you have me do, Josep?” he asked the elder hunter, who leaned back in his seat, appraising Pehr, and at last spoke.

  “Take the Test. Pass it and become a man. Live with us and hunt with us. Take a wife. Father children so that the village might grow. I ask that you help us, Pehr. Help us to rebuild, to fix what has happened here, and perhaps in time you will find us more willing to entertain your fantasy tales.”

  Pehr closed his eyes, trying to envision it. All of these things were possible, yes, and some of them were even tempting. He could set down the responsibility of saving them, for now, and focus first on saving this one village. He could reform the bonds of friendship with his fellow men, hunt boar with them, and return home to a wife and family after each hunt. This was all that he had ever wanted, once, and if Nani had been any other than his cousin, she would have refused Josep’s necklace and waited for him instead, and he would never have left this place at all. He would have abandoned Jace to his fate and stayed behind to rebuild and be with her.

  But Nani was his cousin, and so he had gone. He forced himself to picture Tasha lying cold and naked on her funeral pyre, and thought of the promises he had made to her. Would he break those oaths so easily?

  Eyes still closed, Pehr shook his head. “I cannot do these things you ask. I wish that I could, my friend, but I have made promises and I could not live with myself if I did not keep them. If you will not follow me in this voluntarily, then I must lead by force. I must challenge you.”

 
; Josep shook his head, disgusted. “It is a sad choice you have made, Pehr. Death or exile. I will not allow you to remain here if you yield.”

  “I know what I’ve chosen,” Pehr said.

  “So be it, then. Tomorrow at midday we will meet in the village center. Go now and prepare.”

  So it was, Pehr thought. Another test, another challenge, another block in the road toward redemption. Why must it always be so?

  This was Uru; this was their world and these their ways, and for Pehr there was nothing else to do but that which he had been doing since his birth. He would face the challenge head on and seek to overcome it. He would face it and he would triumph, or he would die.

  “Until tomorrow then,” he said, and he stood to take his leave.

  Chapter 28

  Pehr had expected that others might be waiting to see the boy who had returned from the dead, but the group assembled outside of the hunters’ hall was something more like a mob, large and rowdy and restless. It seemed that the entirety of the village had come together to surround the building’s single entrance. As Pehr emerged, the people surged forward, their collective murmuring swelling to a roar.

  “It’s true!” a hoarse voice cawed out from somewhere amidst the crowd of bodies, and Pehr took a step back as several hands reached for him, as if wishing to prove the veracity of his existence by touching him.

  “Leave him alone!” Nani shouted, shoving her way through the crowd and slapping away the hands. “Get back, fools.”

  She stopped, standing beside and slightly ahead of Pehr, staring out at the crowd. There was a moment of silence.

  “Nani … what is this?” Pehr asked, keeping his voice subdued. There was something manic in the eyes of the villagers that startled him. They were staring at him now in silence, as if waiting for some proclamation.

  “It’s my fault,” Nani said. “I told Essa some of where you’ve gone and what you’ve done. She ran off and told half the village that a savior had come back from the land of the Gods to deliver us from the Lagos and raise us up to eternal paradise.”

  Pehr laughed. “She has a vivid imagination.”

  “To go into the very heart of the Lagos’s lands and then return? As far as they’re concerned, you’ve risen from the dead.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think if my brother was still alive, he’d call them all idiots.”

  “He might be right to do so,” Pehr muttered, but then he stepped forward and looked over the crowd.

  “My friends,” he began, and then paused, thinking. “You look to me for salvation as you would look to the Gods, but I'm not one of Them. I’m only a man. I have not met Them, and I know not of Their workings. I know only of the workings of men.”

  “What of the Lagos?” someone else cried.

  “The Gods have seen fit to strike down the Lagos forces,” Pehr said, and he wondered if Tasha would be offended or only amused that he was using his Gods now in such a way, to gain the trust and faith of those around him. He suspected she would find the situation both horrifying and uproariously funny, and had to suppress a grim smile of his own.

  “Are they truly gone?” a young girl asked, and Pehr recognized her as the one he had saved from a beast’s clutches at the beginning of the battle.

  “There may yet be Lagos remaining,” Pehr told her. “If so, they are few and they are scattered. I saw their army destroyed with my own eyes. We must band together, all of the villages from here to the northern desert. We will build an army and sweep through the jungles, hunting down the last of the creatures, so that we may finally claim that which is our birthright.”

  “What is this thing?” someone called.

  “It is Havenmont, the last city of man. It was the place of our ancestors in the years after the Great Destruction, and the men who lived there possessed much knowledge that would have made them seem to us like gods. That knowledge has been denied us by the Lagos for thousands of years, and denied to those who dwell on the eastern plains. We are a split people, no longer whole, and it is only by chance – or good luck, or the favor of the Gods – that I have been able to bridge the gap.”

  Pehr looked out over the crowd. There were faces he recognized, but many were new to him. Merchants and farmers and their families, settlers who had come from other villages to help repopulate the land in the wake of the Lagos’s destruction. These people knew nothing of him, hadn't grown up with him, had no reason to believe him. Surely it would not be so easy as a simple speech to gain their trust.

  As if to confirm these thoughts, another voice spoke. “What of Josep?”

  Pehr grimaced, glancing at Nani and then over his shoulder at the entrance to the hall. If the hunters inside had heard any of this, they had opted not to participate, and Pehr struggled to find the right words to explain the situation. Finally he settled for simplicity and brevity.

  “Josep does not believe my claims, nor will he allow me to bring you to your salvation. He has given me no option but to challenge him, and though I wish for nothing less, we will meet in combat tomorrow at midday.”

  This statement was met with stunned silence. After a moment more Pehr said only, “If you will excuse me, I must prepare,” and with these words, he began to push his way through the crowd.

  * * *

  “This is insane!” Nani cried, for what must have been the thirtieth time.

  “I’ve offered no argument to that statement any of the many times you’ve made it,” Pehr replied. He was sitting at the very same table at which he had eaten for so many years, and to be here now felt strange indeed. Truff should have been to his right, grumbling about something, and Jace to his left, making a light-hearted quip. Instead there was only Nani, and her boy, and Anna in the kitchen. Josep had chosen to spend his night in the hunters’ hall with his fellows, preparing for the coming fight.

  “That’s not the same thing as agreeing with me,” Nani said, and Pehr sighed.

  “Will it help if I tell you that I agree?” he asked. “That I think this entire thing is a foolish, dangerous waste of time? I am bound by laws that I didn’t write and would no longer follow if I had a choice. I would do this thing in peace, but Josep will not allow me to challenge his leadership without a fight. He won’t even accept me as a fellow man.”

  “But why must you challenge him? Why not wait, like he says? In time you might convince him. In time—”

  “Nani, it will never be easier than it is right now. In time the awe will fade, and I will become just another hunter. The Lagos will rebuild and stand again between us and the plainsmen. The Everstorm may even fail, sending waves of radiation over the land that will kill us all unless we’ve reached the safety of Havenmont.”

  Pehr shook his head and continued. “No, I cannot wait. I have made promises to many who I love, many who yet live and one who died in service to this goal. I will not walk away from those promises. I will bring our people to the plains, as many of them as will come with me.”

  “Then why not just take them and go? Why fight Josep?”

  “He will order them to stay, and they will listen because he leads this village. How, then, can I go north and find followers if I can’t even gather them from my own village? I must … Nani, to do this thing, I must create a legend. It must begin here.”

  “Even if it means killing my husband and making bastards of my children,” Nani spat, her voice bitter. Pehr stared up at the ceiling.

  “I will not kill Josep.”

  “He won’t give you a choice! Josep will die before he goes into exile if you beat him, and what if you don’t? What if he wins, Pehr? Which would you choose?”

  He almost told her, then, what it was that he was planning, but at the last moment he thought better of it and shook his head.

  “Death,” he said. “If Josep wins tomorrow, then my mission dies whether I live or not. None of the villagers would follow an exiled hunter, no matter if the Gods themselves came down and declared him a savior.
”

  “Then one of the two of you dies in that ring tomorrow,” Nani said.

  “I understand that you can’t support me in this. If you wish, I’ll leave now and trouble you no further.”

  “Don’t be a damned fool,” Nani growled. “I won’t turn you out into the night. No, you won’t have my support tomorrow, but neither will my pig-headed husband. I refuse to support this horrible tradition that will murder one of the two men that I … that are closest to me.”

  Pehr closed his eyes, reliving the kiss he’d shared with Nani two years ago, in the pouring rain, just before he had left on the heels of the Lagos horde. So much time had passed, and she still loved him … had she not just nearly said it again? He ached to hear the words and knew that he never would. No matter what happened in this upcoming battle, Nani would always be Josep’s woman. God or Gods had saved Pehr’s life more than once … perhaps her love was their toll for that salvation.

  “I can give you no comfort,” he said, not opening his eyes. “My heart aches that it must come to this.”

  He heard Nani stand up and heave a weary, disgusted sigh. “This is insane,” she said again, and Pehr only nodded. There was nothing more to be said, so Nani went to help Anna in the kitchen, bringing her child with her. Pehr sat alone, arms folded on the table, eyes closed, trying to ignore the ache in his heart and prepare for the challenge ahead.

  * * *

  The village center had been prepared for the upcoming battle, and by the time Pehr reached it, most of the crowd had already arrived. They stood in a rough circle around a central combat area lined with thick wooden poles. These had been sharpened at their tips and angled inward, set close enough together that a man couldn't easily squeeze between them. There was only one entrance, at the northern end of the circle, and this, too, would be filled with spikes once the combatants were within.

  Nani had not been in the house when Pehr awoke. Anna told him that her daughter had gone to see Josep, and Pehr suspected that Nani still held hope that she could change one or both of their minds. He spotted her now, standing with her husband near the entrance to the circle. Judging by the miserable and disgusted look on her face, he doubted she had been successful. She was staring only at the ground and standing a full step behind Josep, who watched calmly as Pehr made his way through the crowd. As the two met, Pehr held his hand out and, after a moment, Josep shook it.