Leviathan's Blood

by Ben Peek

  ‘And it was there, after I had completed the last of these tasks, that Wehwe informed me that I was his. I had no say in the matter.’

  Samuel Orlan straightened. Slowly, he reached for one of the blades on the sculpture, one held by the melting attackers of the Saan Blade Prince, and with a twist, he snapped off a fist-sized length.

  Bueralan pointed to the cartographer. ‘He said the original Orlan denied his god.’

  ‘It is true, but the same Samuel Orlan could neither deny nor accept the desire of Aeisha.’ The Innocent raised his voice. ‘Am I not right?’

  The old man ignored the shout, sinking instead to the ground, where he pressed the ice up against his neck to soothe the welts caused by the chain.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ Bueralan asked.

  ‘There has not been a god-touched man or woman for over ten thousand years,’ Aela Ren replied. ‘I know where each and every one in this world is, Bueralan Le. Even the sad and pathetic one who lives in swamps and mutters pieces of madness as if it were truth. But now there is you. You, a mercenary, a saboteur, a man but a step from being an assassin, a betrayer of Queen and country. A man who was given no trials by a god, no tasks to complete, and no constraints. A man who was simply given a power that does not describe itself and left to the world as the last act of a dying god. If I were a religious man, I would say that it was ordained.’

  ‘I did not ask for it.’

  ‘None of us does.’ He settled both his hands onto the railing lightly. ‘When I asked if Ger had given you the soul around your neck, I already knew he had not. A different god gave it to you. A new god. Can you imagine what this has meant to me?’

  ‘No.’ The word felt as if it were strangled from his throat.

  ‘Tell me the name of this god, Bueralan.’

  ‘I don’t—’ He hesitated, stopped.

  ‘That,’ Aela Ren said. ‘That is interesting.’

  ‘I do not know it,’ Bueralan insisted. ‘She never told me it.’

  ‘No, she would not have.’

  Then, before the saboteur could react, the small man vaulted over the railing, and dropped lightly to the floor.

  ‘Warriors of the Saan!’ He turned to the men who had been closing in on him, the men who had rushed the railing the moment he leapt. ‘You want to be able to claim that you were responsible for the death of the Innocent! You want fame! You want fortune! I offer you the opportunity. Draw your swords. Come down the stairs. In this room is a man who has been god-touched and who does not know what it means.

  ‘Let us show him.’

  2.

  ‘How long has your name terrorized people, Aela Ren?’ Usa Dvir was the first to speak after the Innocent’s voice fell silent. He stepped from the crowd on the side of the ice sculptures. Beside him the Blade Prince of the Saan wept, but he was otherwise alone. The young prince was nowhere to be seen, and the hand that had pulled the boy to safety now held the hilt of a long straight-bladed sword. ‘I read about you as a child, just as my father had read about you, and his father before him. Your deeds are written on some of the oldest scrolls that we have, scrolls so old that the ink purchased by my father’s fathers is but barely visible.’

  ‘Oh, Usa,’ the First Queen whispered, ‘do not lie to him.’

  ‘Lie?’ the Queen’s Voice asked.

  ‘The men of the Saan cannot read,’ Bueralan answered quietly. Beside him, the Queen leant heavily on his arm as she moved to the edge of the balcony, to gaze down at the Innocent. He was silent in response to Dvir, and Bueralan could feel a tremor in the Queen’s hand, as if that silence was worse than any words he could have said.

  The first of the Saan warriors emerged from the crowd. He was a tall, muscular man, and the thick bands of copper that curled around both his arms and reached up to his chest. He did not pause to wait for others, but instead drew his scimitar and continued towards the Innocent.

  His first slash was fast, the slice not just of a seasoned warrior, but of a skilled one. Yet it met with little more than air. Aela Ren’s left foot took a single movement to pivot him before the blow, while his right continued the circle as the blade came slicing back up, passing through air again. The steel was close, achingly close to the small man, and for a heartbeat the crowd around Bueralan believed Ren had been cut. The saboteur felt the First Queen’s fingers dig into his arm in hope, as if the tremor had been nothing, but it returned when it became clear Ren had not been injured.

  On the floor, the Saan warrior’s scimitar repeatedly slashed through the empty air as Aela Ren stepped around his attacks. It looked very much as if it were a dance that the two had prepared, an entertainment that they had spent years perfecting so that neither was hurt. A slash diagonally across his chest, a thrust that the scimitar was poorly designed for, a hack at the neck: all of it came within a breath of the Innocent as he weaved and twisted out of harm, his hands not yet reaching for the sword and dagger at his side.

  The warriors of the Saan had formed a circle around the two fighters. Bueralan counted twenty, and he could add another two if he included Dvir and the missing prince. But neither of those two was the threat that the warriors were. The thick copper bracelets proclaimed their skill and valour. If that was not enough, the scimitars and long swords that they held, the leather whips and chain maces that they allowed to unravel, were all held with the ease of familiarity.

  Not one of them moved to help the warrior who fought against Aela Ren. Instead, each man watched, their eyes following the darts of their companion’s blade, the weave and shift of the man he attacked, each of them learning from their companion until, with a scream, the warrior drove his scimitar at his opponent’s midsection.

  Aela Ren stepped around the warrior smoothly, grabbed the man’s head in his scarred hands and twisted.

  The scream that came as the warrior slumped to the ground came from somewhere within the crowd. It was followed by another so quickly that Bueralan could not see if it was a man or a woman who had first let out the noise. He felt himself respond to it, as if the scream spoke to a fear that was being activated in him, but he remained silent. The cry, however, repeated itself again and again, as if that terror had been awoken across the crowd, but it was only when all the voices rose in a uniform pitch that the sound finally broke the stillness that had gripped the mansion. Like a ripple on a pond, movement raced through the crowd and soon men and women were running. They ran towards the Innocent, towards the Saan, and they ran away from both. They dashed for doors at the front of the mansion, the doors at the back, and for a moment, the Saan warriors and Aela Ren disappeared beneath the flesh of others seeking escape.

  But only for a moment.

  ‘I trust,’ Aela Ren said to the remaining warriors, once the main floor was empty of guests, ‘that you will do better than your friend.’

  The Saan charged.

  A long whip lashed out first, forcing the Innocent to move to his right. He ducked beneath a scimitar’s slash, only to run into another blade that sped downwards – only to be blocked by Aela Ren’s sword.

  It was an old blade. The steel had long ago lost its shine, stripped away by time and use, but it was simple and elegant in its make and it was partnered by a dagger that appeared in the left hand of the Innocent. The two were complementary, for where the sword’s blade had been made with a single edge that came to a thick point, designed for slashing and thrusting, the dagger was lighter, made with a double edge that came to a wicked point to not just thrust and pierce, but to tear open and spill what was inside another human being.

  ‘Why do we not leave?’ the Queen’s Voice asked in a whisper. ‘It is our chance.’

  ‘We must see this to the end,’ the First Queen replied.

  The plan of the Saan warriors, Bueralan saw, was to keep a tight circle around Ren, to limit his movements and use their sheer number to force him into the blades of their companions. They had witnessed a fearless display against their first comrade and knew that
to permit him space, to allow him but simple room to engage them singly or in pairs would give his sword and dagger the chance to pierce them and begin, one by one, to take away their advantage of numbers. To stop that, they had to starve him of space, to deny him freedom.

  Yet the Innocent denied them.

  As if he were but a flicker of an eye, a trick of shadow at the edges of vision, he blocked and parried, and within moments, began to dictate the movements of the Saan warriors. When Ren moved to the right, the group followed, as if a chain had been wrapped around them. Bueralan felt the weight of it around him. He watched without hope as the blades and maces and whips lashed out around Ren, but each fell in emptiness, passed through air he had just left by turn, twist, or, twice already, a cartwheel flip he made with the strength in his legs. It would be only a matter of time before one of the Saan warriors fell, before a hole was revealed in those around him.

  But when that happened – when a man’s face parted in a straight cut across cheek and nose – the Innocent did not press towards the gap to exploit it.

  Quickly, a length of whip rose high above the Saan, the long black leather end like a snake that prepared to strike . . . which it did through the closing hole, snapping with a loud crack around the Innocent’s sword arm.

  The Saan warrior pulled Ren, hoping to disturb his balance, to pull him from his feet, but the scarred man turned into the length of leather instead. His free dagger sliced up on the turn, cutting through the whip to free his sword, allowing it to catch the blade of a slashing scimitar and spin it out of the wielder’s hand. Yet, the whip had broken the Innocent’s control over the Saan movements and warriors surged forward, sensing weakness – a weakness Aela Ren raised his sword to, before he plunged into their midst.

  ‘I met Usa Dvir, once before.’ Bueralan’s voice sounded distant, as if it belonged to a stranger. ‘It was three years ago. Dark was hired by a town called Oeissi. It’s on the edge of Gogair, near the Saan.’

  ‘I have heard of it,’ the First Queen replied quietly. ‘Oeissi was a day’s ride from the tunnels.’

  ‘The town and the Saan had an agreement.’ On the floor, the Innocent’s charge scattered the warriors, but not before his sword had swept past the defence of one man and tore through his neck. ‘It had been made five centuries before and it ensured that the Saan paid low prices for the food and metals that they bought from the merchants. In return, the Saan would defend the town. When the agreement had been signed, Gogair had been in civil war, and Oeissi had had the better half of the deal; but three years ago, anyone who could remember an attack on the town had long since died and people had begun to speak out against the Saan prices. The new lord, a young man by the name of Buzeur, was sympathetic to that. He had not been born to the old lord, but had been one of his rivals, and had come to power after the older man died rather abruptly – it was never said openly, but Buzeur was known to make jokes about it, to brag as some men do of bettering another.’

  Aela Ren continued to break apart the Saan. His blades thrust forward and, no longer content with a simple defence, he turned each block, each parry, and each sidestep into an attack. The Saan warriors were forced backwards, the weight of their superior numbers lost by the sheer ferocity that was emerging from the small man. One of the largest warriors, bald but for a long braid that ran down his back, thought to challenge Ren, and the heavy end of his chain mace whistled over the Innocent’s head . . . but it failed to return as his fingers lost their grip on the long hilt and Ren’s dagger plunged into his thigh moments before ripping upwards and tearing across the warrior’s genitals.

  ‘When he came into power, Buzeur told the Saan that they would have to pay market prices, as well as compensation to merchants who had lost income during the last lord’s reign.’ Bueralan wanted to close his eyes, to look away from the slaughter that he was witnessing, but instead, he kept talking. ‘According to Lady Farlay, who hired Dark to ensure her power base against the new lord, the Saan were amenable to the idea of paying market prices. She believed that they had already acknowledged among themselves that after the death of the old lord, such a demand was likely. The reasons for the treaty had long passed and Gogair was a united country, now. But the compensation that Buzeur insisted upon was nothing but an insult. More, Dvir had been given the ultimatum in a letter when he went to greet the new lord, but no mention was made of its contents to him at the time. Instead, Buzeur enjoyed the gifts the Saan brought to him and ate at the feast that they prepared in his honour. Buzeur’s insults were many, Lady Farlay told me, but he made them with the clear understanding that, should the Saan march on Oeissi, then the rest of Gogair would respond – she believed he had been ordered by the capital to incite this.’

  On the floor, the Innocent had begun to stalk the Saan. He was silent, swift, his movements nothing short of predatory, but he was not like any animal Bueralan had seen. He did not pause after his kill to savour it, to dig deep into the meat he had carved open, to taste the blood and sinew. For Aela Ren, the remains of a man was nothing but waste, fit for the scavengers that followed him, the birds that would pull the eyes and tongues out, the animals that would rip at the rotted meat. He was primal but he possessed no appetite and the men before him fell beneath his strength and speed, falling into defensive patterns that he broke apart easily. One man’s scimitar clattered to the ground, his hand still on the hilt; his head followed, hitting the ground hard and rolling along the floor, its uneven path leading beneath the table that held the melting sculpture of the Blade Prince and finishing before Samuel Orlan.

  There was no horror in Orlan’s gaze. The head that came to rest at the ends of his boots was met with a tired acceptance, a fatalism born from the inevitability that Bueralan himself felt: that no other outcome could take place, no other grisly reminder of mortality could be presented to him, or to any of the others that remained in the mansion. When the cartographer did, finally, use the toe of his boot to push the head away from him, it was done without revulsion, without a sense of rejection, but rather with a morbid sense that it should roll back into the battle and that it should return to the shouts and screams. It should finish next to another fallen Saan warrior, this man gasping for air from a cut that ran clear through the centre of his throat and up his chin – a cut that threatened to part the skin of his face, as if the blood and bone beneath were a secret that needed to be told.

  ‘Bueralan?’ The First Queen’s voice held the tremor that had been in her hand. ‘Please – please continue your story.’

  ‘Dvir agreed with Lady Farlay, but he would not allow the insult to stand unanswered.’ He spoke quietly, unable to raise his voice. ‘He made that very clear to me when I met him, half a day’s ride into the tunnels. Lady Farlay did not want war, and worried that the Saan would ride out in force, so she sent me to meet with him. Dvir was too smart for the trap that had been laid to draw them into war with Gogair. He is the war scout for the Saan and he understands that war does not begin on the field, but in the quiet halls, in backroom talk. He understood that the talk of war was much like the dark, twisting tunnels where he met me. He knew it was an echo that twisted around you, robbing you of all sense of its origin. He accepted the apologies of Lady Farlay for Buzeur’s insults because he knew that the promise of war came from distant parts of Gogair, but he would not accept her justice. That he wanted for himself, and the Lady agreed, quickly enough. It left Dark with the job of weakening Buzeur’s supporters, to undermining his power while building up Farlay’s, but that is not so important, not now.’

  On the floor five Saan warriors remained, not including the war scout. Usa Dvir had not yet moved from his position beside the weeping sculpture and the sword that he held had come to rest, point-first on the tiles.

  ‘On the night Buzeur was removed from power,’ Bueralan continued, ‘Dark opened the gate for the Saan. We were advised to return to our rooms and to stay there. We did not, obviously. In curiosity, we made our way along the streets a
nd found a perch outside the vast grounds of the estate, where we watched the first fires lit.’

  Aela Ren moved swiftly against the five warriors, but the Saan did not fall from him. The tallest of them met his charge with a wide sweep that was aimed at the Innocent’s midsection. It was a wide but controlled cut that forced Ren to use his sword to block, while a second and third man charged him from the left and right. Yet Ren, with the slightest sway to his body, avoided the second man’s slash, while his dagger plunged into the man’s chest, and the two steps he took to follow the thrust allowed his sword to slip away from the other man’s block and to arc, high over the heads of all the warriors, before it rushed downwards.

  ‘I have seen all kinds of soldiers and all kinds of killing,’ Bueralan said, his stomach heavy. ‘But there are few who enact their justice so exactly and violently as the Saan. No member of the staff who worked for Buzeur escaped. No one who cooked, who made beds, who kept the garden. Not a single one of them left the grounds. They were cut down, slaughtered for the most part, for few were armed. Guards offered a little more resistance, but Dvir’s Saan were not bloodthirsty or wild. They were disciplined. Controlled. Exact. Even when they set out on the long night of torture for Buzeur and his family, they were that.

  ‘Nowhere in Ooila,’ he said, and for the first time, bitterness entered his voice, ‘is there a force like the Saan.’

  On the floor, the final three warriors closed ranks, attempting to pull Aela Ren into a pattern of feints and blocks, the frantic speed of their weapons seeking to seed doubt in their opponent, to mirror the fear that showed itself deep in the lines of the warriors’ faces. Yet Ren, unconcerned with the three, strode forward, beating aside the scimitar of the man on the left, thrusting his elbow into the face of the man on the right, before gliding past the defences of the third warrior, his gory dagger ripping through the man’s leg, before reversing to plunge deep into his thigh. With sheer strength, Ren lifted the warrior from his feet, and as he fell, the straight edge of the Innocent’s sword sheered down much like the blade of an executioner’s axe.