The day passed uneventfully, but Shivani wasn’t surprised by that. It was dusk she was waiting for, and dusk she feared. More demons would come, and she was afraid she might make another mistake. There would be no more chances. The yagna had to be completed this time.
As the darkness approached, she told everyone who couldn’t fight to gather in the temple. The demons couldn’t step onto consecrated land, even though they could burn it or throw weapons inside. But people could not live there permanently without defiling the temple with their bodily functions, and so it became a temporary refuge.
Shivani was relieved to see Nalini in the temple, amongst a handful of women and children, the village’s old men, and Prakash, who had refused to fight.
The rest of the villagers remained near the priests. They would protect the yagna at all costs. The greater good took precedence over individual safety.
As the sky darkened, Shivani stood ready with her bow.
The sentries cried out.
The demons were coming once more.
A tense silence filled the courtyard, broken only by the priests’ rhythmic chanting. The horde flew in from the west. These demons weren’t gleeful. They saw the piles of ashes, the discarded bone necklaces. They smelled the blood of their brothers, and they screamed for revenge.
A gravelly voice came out of the shadows, “We’ll burn this town to the ground.” This demon stood taller than the rest. His teeth, sharp as an animal’s, were bared in a feral smile.
Shivani didn’t waste time on warning shots. Her first arrow penetrated the leader’s heart. But he didn’t die. He pulled the arrow from his body as if it was a twig, and snapped it between his fingers.
Shivani’s grip tightened on her bow. Her strength alone wasn’t enough. She needed Kali. Her hand reached for the pendant, but there was nothing to hold onto. She’d sold her only tangible connection to the goddess. She tried to focus, tried to find Kali.
Please, Kali Ma. Don’t abandon me now.
Nothing.
The demons circled the priests as their chants wavered. Some threw pieces of bones and birds they’d plucked from air and killed, to defile the holy fire.
Shivani fired, fervently calling to the goddess.
She screamed Kali’s name.
The speed and power of her arrows caught all the vile objects before they could touch the yagna flames. Her arrows shot out, piercing demon after demon, made unstoppable by Kali’s power.
The army of demons was reduced by half, and those that survived snarled in anger and frustration. They attacked the people, who fought back with scrounged swords and clubs and sticks. The villagers were a pathetic band – merchants mostly, and some Brahmin. Not one was trained in combat, but they fought for their lives, with everything they had. Shivani saw an old Brahman, trying to stab a demon with a kitchen knife.
She knew what she had to do. Kill the leader, and the rest of the band would fall apart. But the leader wasn’t interested in the havoc his underlings were causing. He was headed for the priests.
Shivani intercepted him.
“Oi, you!” she shouted with as much insolence as she could muster. “Are you just here to fight unarmed priests, or can you beat a warrior of Kali?”
The leader of the demons stopped in his tracks, and turned. His scrutiny told Shivani he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t disregard her just because she was a lone woman. He realised that she was responsible for the deaths of many of his followers.
“You first then.” The demon started towards her, teeth bared.
Shivani notched an arrow, aiming to bring him down before he could reach her, but he was faster than she’d expected. With one massive leap, he was on her. He snarled, backhanded her with his massive hand, and sent her flying to crumple against a low wall. Her bones cracked at the impact.
Shivani struggled to her feet.
Part of her felt the pain, but another part of her, fuelled by the goddess’ magic, didn’t break focus. She used it to channel her anger. She ran headlong towards the demon, pulling out her sword. And she swung.
He spun away, unhurt.
She went at him again. In another hand, she held a knife. They danced back and forth, in a graceless battle.
Her eyes were focused on him. He had to die.
Inside her, the goddess approved of this determination.
She swung and nicked his shoulder. Enraged, he plucked a curved blade from one of the dead demons, and blocked her next blow.
His blade scraped her torso. She reached out, kicked him in the knee, and charged again.
Shivani was drawing more and more magic. It was no longer her in control. Kali directed her body, so that she was faster, stronger and more tireless than humanly possible. But she was also helpless, carried along with the fight.
She almost had him, when a voice screeched, “You killed my father! You bitch, I will kill you!” Prakash ran out of the temple, Nalini at his heels, pleading for him to stop. Prakash was aiming straight for Shivani, heedless of everything around him. A demon intercepted him, grabbed him by the neck, dangling him as if he weighed no more than a child.
Nalini collapsed on her knees, holding her belly. “Shivani!” she wailed.
The leader of the demons regained his ground, pressing in on Shivani once more.
Another crossroads.
A thought emerged in her mind, but she pushed it down, fighting for control. Her body did not delay. Her blade swung, her aim was true, and it separated the demon leader’s head from his body.
Blood splattered her face.
Shivani wiped her eyes, and snatched up her bow. She ran towards towards Nalini, who was cradling her husband’s body. The twisted position of his head confirmed that his neck was broken.
As the demons saw their leader die, they fled shrieking into the sky. But Shivani’s arrows spared none. There was no mercy.
In the background, the priests still chanted. Their voices swelled and fell back in a cadence, calling out to Kali.
The townspeople started to gather. The women and children who had been hiding emerged from the houses, looking at the destruction around them with numb expressions. People sought for their loved ones amongst the injured and the dead. The cries of children mingled with the wailing of adults. There were some reunions, but mostly all Shivani saw around her was pain and death. Eventually, the townspeople gathered themselves enough to begin to clear the corpses. Once again, they lit two pyres to burn the dead.
Nalini protested as she saw her husband’s body dragged along with others, to be burned with them. “He should have a proper funeral,” she insisted. “He is my husband.”
“So should everyone else,” Devika snapped, and turned away, leaving Nalini alone with Shivani.
Shivani knelt at her side, and put an arm on Nalini’s shoulder.
Nalini’s tear-filled gaze reproached her. “You should have saved him.”
“I had to save the yagna. There would have been no more chances. The survival of the whole town depended on it.”
“You should have saved my husband. He died because of you. He died because you murdered his father.”
“Nalini – “ Shivani felt her slipping away all over again.
“You let him die on purpose. You were jealous that I made this life. That I chose to marry him, instead of running away with you.”
Shivani flinched. “Nalini, please . . .”
She broke off, unsure what to say. She understood grief and anger, and she wanted to believe it was just that. The shock of Prakash’s death, the shock of her situation, was making Nalini say these words. But as Shivani looked into the eyes of the woman she loved, the only one she’d ever loved, she only saw rage.
Shivani rose, and with one last long look at Nalini, she walked away. She returned to the priests, and in the holy fire of the yagna, she added a contribution of her own. Her past, and the remnants of her feelings. Memories she would carry forever.
There would be a price, the goddess had said. Kali always kep
t her promises.
Fire and Ash
Gaie Sebold
Ten.”
It was too much of the money she had left. Riven knew that. But it was that, or another night without sleep. She put the coins on the counter and picked up the jug.
Movement in the corner of her eye. Her elbow shot out, and something flew backwards, a stool tumbled, skidded away and lay, legs up, like a dead beetle. Next to it a young man sat on the floor, rubbing his chest, gasping with shock.
Riven’s heart pounded, sending white shivers around the edges of her vision. Stop. Stop it. Calm down. Stop it.
“What do you think you’re doing? Crazy bitch!” the young man said.
“Sorry.” What am I doing? I don’t know.
“You’ve got your beer. Get out,” the alewife said. More customers were standing in the doorway, gaping and muttering. Riven felt their eyes like crawling things on her skin as she pushed past them.
Now she would have to find another place to buy her beer. That might be a good thing. This one was too close to the apothecary. She’d passed the place often enough, in the last months, walking the streets in a dazed fog hoping to tire herself enough to sleep through the night. Until now, she’d not gone in.
“Hey! Hey!”
She’d barely noticed the gaggle of youngsters, eyeing her from the other side of the street. Now one broke off, a boy, maybe seven. Gap-grinned, eager, hair a red flurry.
“You’re a soldier, right?”
She’d kept wearing her armour and carrying her sword. The places she’d been staying it wasn’t safe to leave anything behind, not if you wanted to find it when you came back. And she felt better, safer, with it on. “I was.”
“You were in the war, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was in the war.” She picked up speed, but the boy, limber with youth and full of energy, kept pace easily. “Did you kill lots of people? Have you got lots of scars?”
“Move yer arse, kid.”
“Were you at Crishnak? When the gods won the war for us?”
The name flicked her on the raw, it always did, no matter how many times she heard it. “Fuck off.”
“But were you?”
“Nishi, Nishiii, come on . . .”
“Your friends are calling you.”
“But . . .”
“Go. The fuck. Away.” Riven was sweating, her heartbeat a cold drum.
She wanted the beer in the jug, badly, now. But it was still light, would be for another four hours. She tried not to drink while it was still light. Come winter she’d be in a stupor before most people had taken supper.
No. Come winter, she’d be under the care of the clericals, or dead.
“Get away from me, boy. I’m warning you.” Her hands tightened into fists without her will. She felt her arm-muscles jump. Don’t hit the boy. Don’t hit the boy. He was nothing but an underfed street-brat, if she punched too hard she’d break him.
The boy heaved a sigh. “Bet you weren’t even there.” He stuck his tongue out and ran off.
Riven just about made it to her crappy little hired room before the shakes hit. The hell with sunset. She drank the jug and stared at the walls. It got dark. She didn’t light the lantern – she hadn’t used it since she got here. She listened to people come in and slam doors and argue and fuck, and all of them were so many miles away beyond the thin, badly-painted walls. She wasn’t drunk enough. She wished she had some more beer, all the beer, enough to drown in.
*
Two nights later she was at the River Run, one of the town’s cheapest inns, nursing a pint, trying to make it last, trying to summon up the energy to ask the landlord if she could sleep in the stables tonight, or at least lie down in them. She’d been thrown out of her room that morning, because even in those lodgings, a naked screaming woman running down the corridor with a sword in her hand and hell in her eyes three times a night was more than the other customers could stand.
It was worse, now, and it was all that fucking kid’s fault.
She’d been at Crishnak all right. The rest of her company, the Dancers, had been wiped out.
And every night she was back there.
Back against the cliffs, a bad situation, yes, already, some idiot’s fucking stupid idea to pull them into this valley with stone behind them and steep slopes to either side, the Kashtin troops piling in after them, their young commander at their head, yelling them on, and a half-grown boy straight off the farm, swinging at her, no technique, then, the roar, the sound like a million swarms of bees, a blur of darkness rising, the boy distracted, she’d killed him, but the roar, so loud, and the valley suddenly all one dreadful rage of fire. Soldiers, horses, shrieking and rearing and flailing and burning. Flags, threshing insanely in the hot wind like dying birds.
The farmboy, shocked wide-eyed by death, sprawled at her feet, his shirt and hair smoking, then flaring.
To her left – Kathje, her comrade-in-arms, all those fights survived, no-nonsense Kathje with her loud laugh, screaming, burning, crumbling away. To her right – Ordel with the sweet mouth and musician’s hands, howling, turning to her as his eyes melted, one hand reaching, the flesh blistering, peeling from the blackening fingerbones, tumbling. And all the others. There were hundreds of them trapped in the valley, but the ones she heard, and saw, and smelled the awful choking stench of their death, they were her company. Kathje, Ordel, Lod, Marthe, Brack, Tunning, Big Jashy, Dark Jashy, and young Tenshin. Their voices, their names, burning. The flame, the wall of flame, closer and closer, Riven standing with her sword in front of her as though it would help, her back to the cliff, watching her swordpoint begin to glow, feeling the heat start to poison her armour, too late to take it off, nowhere to go.
In her dreams, the flame didn’t wink out, leaving her sweating and alive, in a smoking ash-heap, powdered with the remains of every friend she had.
In her dreams, the cliff opened behind her and she ran, ran over the blackened crying remnants of friends and enemies, only to find the flame in front of her at every turn.
In her dreams she burned in the gods’ fires.
She counted her coins again. Enough for another drink and a night in the stables, if the landlord was feeling generous.
But that wouldn’t leave enough for the apothecary. He’d sell her what she wanted, and tell her to use it wisely, and not to take too much, and she’d find somewhere and take it all and sleep without dreams.
There was no-one to miss her. The Dancers had been her family, and they were gone. She’d sent messages to Kathje’s people, a couple of others that she had names for. There were no loose ends.
Kathje, Ordel, Lod, Marthe, Brack, Tunning, Big Jashy, Dark Jashy, Young Tenshin. The only loose end was Riven.
Why was she even thinking about finding somewhere to lie another night? She’d spend it in hell. What was the point?
She went to the apothecary.
He emerged from the cluttered, reeking rear of the shop as she came in, muttered the usual warnings, counted the coins with stained hands, and disappeared again.
Well, she thought, that was easy.
Are you really going to do this, Riven? After all you’ve survived?
Why not?
She’d had a place picked out for some days. She didn’t want some do-gooding clerical on their rounds finding her, and having her dragged to the nearest sanctuary before the thing was done. She didn’t see why some poor bastard should find her in their stables. With practicality that might, once, have been tainted with a kind of mordant humour, she’d chosen the graveyard. She didn’t leave things unfinished. That had never been her way.
As she walked she was suddenly aware of guilt. She should have kept back a couple of coins, as payment for whoever found her. There’s still your sword, Riven. And your armour.
Oh, yes, she still had those. But still – her hands dug in her pockets, rummaging. This would be almost their last task, she thought. Maybe they just wanted to keep themselves occupied.
There was a hole in the left pocket, and something caught below the gaping seam. Her fingers went on feeling at it even as she looked for somewhere secluded to lie down.
It wasn’t a coin. Coins didn’t catch on thread. She tugged, not sure why she even cared, and the thing came out of her pocket. She stared at it.
It was a ring. A heavy, red-gold piece with a black stone carved with some design she couldn’t make out. It had belonged to Tenshin, the new boy. He’d joined them less than a month ago, taking the place of old Garl who’d caught it in the last fight with the Kashtin.
Tenshin was young, sparking, full of angry energy. Clear blue eyes and sleek blonde head, all of nineteen if he was a day. They’d been suspicious, they always were at first.
“So why the Dancers?” Kathje asked him. Take him to a tavern and sound him out, it was what they did with the new ones.
“You know why,” he said.
They did, too. They had a reputation. Good but clean, the Dancers. No looting, no rape – Kathje and Riven would have castrated any man caught at that, and they weren’t the only ones.
The Dancers were good. Maybe the best. Tight and fast and lethal. They got the hard duty, because they could do it, but they cut clean.
The boy wasn’t the first who’d pushed for a posting with them. The Dancers checked them over, and then they watched how they were in the line. Liabilities didn’t last. An unfortunate training accident – not lethal, just enough to invalid them out – a transfer, and they were someone else’s problem.
Sometimes, of course, they just got themselves killed. That was the way of it. The Dancers watched each other’s backs, but you didn’t earn that until you’d proved your mettle.
“Where’d you get your training?” Kathje said.
“Trewater.”
“Trewater!” The rest rolled their eyes at each other. Ordel laughed aloud. “Officer school, eh?” He looked languid and bardic, did Ordel, and he played the fiddle like a demon in heat. That and his sweet dark eyes kept his bed full – men, women, he liked them both. On the field he was cold, slick, efficient.
“Could be worse,” Riven said. “Not much, but it could be worse.” Officer school it might be, but Trewater didn’t turn out complete idiots.
Fight Like A Girl Page 24