Leviathan's Blood

by Ben Peek

  Halfway to the stables, he turned to look behind him and came to a halt.

  There, spread out across the front lawns of the mansion, across the long gravel driveway that he, Taela and the First Queen had travelled to the party, was a scene of such slaughter that Bueralan could not move. He heard Orlan call his name, but as the old cartographer turned to follow his gaze and saw the scene behind them, he did not finish the second half of his name.

  The two stared at the scarred land silently. The grass had been torn up and burnt, and it was wreathed in such smoke and fire that, for a moment, he thought a demon from his childhood had been conjured, a creature from a netherworld whose very step left a burnt print in its wake. He imagined it a huge figure, towering over the landscape, a face of unspeakable horror. He could see its hands reaching down to tear at the earth, to leave the huge divots in the land that he could see, as it broke the bodies of men and women and horses.

  But no such horror existed.

  Instead, Bueralan saw a single mount in the centre of the field. It was riderless and covered in dirt and blood and it was so still that it could have been cast from dark, tarnished bronze.

  It was through that one beast that Bueralan envisaged the horror that had befallen the soldiers who rode on Yoala Fe’s mansion. He heard the order that had been given, heard the words that swept through the ranks surrounding the mansion grounds, heard it repeated by the units hidden by the women who sat in circles of blood. He saw the first kick of the horse’s rider, saw the gentle nudge that began the movement of the cavalry, saw the first break from the illusion, a gentle shimmer over the body, a warping of the night sky. The catapults groaned from behind and the slow walk continued as the machines of wood and steel were dragged out. A shout halted the riders. He heard the sound of the siege engines being wound back. He heard a sword being drawn. The horse sidled in anticipation. Spurs tapped its flanks. Finally, it began to move in freedom, to pick up speed. Its rider gave a loud shout. A second shout rang out. A third followed, but it was not until the fifth or sixth that the shouts turned into screams. Not until then that the ground began to break apart before the horse, that the heat was exposed. Then a violent stream of flame burst from the ground to the horse’s left, then the right. It halted. In front of it the ground began to break. The shells of butterflies rose only to burn. Spurs dug into its flanks but the horse refused to go further as all but the ground it stood on began to break apart, as the long-dormant streams of lava began to break their shackles beneath the First Province and spew upwards.

  ‘They’re here,’ Samuel Orlan said softly. ‘Aela Ren’s soldiers are here.’

  The horse began to sink to the ground, its forelegs giving way first.

  ‘Bueralan,’ the cartographer began.

  ‘I heard you.’

  He turned from the sight before him and chased the trail of Zi Taela to the stables.

  He burst through the doors just as the back of the stables were being opened and the sixteen horses that had been within prepared to ride out into the broken skyline. Ce Pueral stood at the gate, one hand pushing it open, while the other held her drawn sword. He could almost not see her for her soldiers, who wore the black and red of the First Queen and held their own weapons in their hands, including heavy crossbows. ‘No!’ he shouted to the latter, raising his hands, for the six soldiers who sat double on the mounts held the loaded weapons and they turned immediately to him, lifting the devastating weapons.

  But none fired.

  Bueralan heard Taela cry out his name from the back of his grey, the surly beast pawing the ground as if it knew with more intimacy than the others what horror awaited it outside. ‘Bueralan,’ she said again, her hand extended. ‘We have to leave! This is our chance.’

  ‘Such words.’ Above her, from the shadows of the first floor, where Bueralan had found the Saan Prince, Aela Ren emerged. In his hands, he held both sword and dagger. ‘They are naught but lies.’

  9.

  The woman turned to the door of the siege tower and shouted – but only a moment before Heast’s sword hacked into her skull.

  He dismounted roughly, afraid that he was too slow, too awkward with the stirrups, but made it through the door before a young man finished scaling the wooden ladder. A quick glance revealed the inside of the tower to have three levels, each reached by a long ladder. Already, the Leeran soldier was pulling himself through the first onto the next level. There, the weak orange light revealed the youth of the man’s face, the dark hair, the stubble and his look of determination. Heast passed a scattering of iron bolts on the floor in his heavy-footed pursuit; if the woman’s crossbow had not fallen hard to the ground when he killed her, he would have turned for the weapon, but since he could not trust it, he hauled himself up the ladder with his sword in one hand.

  A pair of bedrolls lay in the corner of the first floor, a lantern in front of them, but Heast’s gaze only grazed it, focusing instead on the boots of the young man, now disappearing onto the next level.

  He heard a desperate slide and scurrying and, as he was halfway up the ladder, a solid thump. Quickly, he hauled himself up and at the lip, he saw the young man, his foot jammed into the leather stirrup of a crossbow. He had a bolt grasped in his hand and was struggling to attach the bow’s string to his belt to begin pulling it tight. He looked up only moments before Heast crashed into him.

  It was not an elegant charge, but it drove the young man onto his back and gave the Captain of the Ghosts time to spin his blade around and drive it downwards. The man screamed and Heast leant on it more, while his steel foot rose and fell on the soldier’s face until he went still.

  A low breath escaped Heast. ‘If you had not panicked,’ he said to the dead man below him. ‘If you’d had a different crossbow.’

  Releasing his sword, he limped over to the tower’s drawbridge. A long rope held it in place, and Heast sliced through it with his ugly dagger and let it clatter open.

  A cold wind blew into the siege tower. Outside, the ravine lay in darkness, and he could see the torches of the Maosans, riding hard towards them, drawn by the sounds of battle. Heast turned and walked back to the dead Leeran and freed the crossbow’s tangled string before he picked up the heavy weapon. The leather quiver that the soldier had pulled the bolt from lay on the floor and Heast bent down to pick it up as he returned to the end of the drawbridge. There, he clipped the string to his belt, thrust his foot into the strap and loaded it with professional ease. When he had finished, he walked to the edge of the bridge, the crossbow pointed upwards in his right hand, and his left hand touching the fresh wet ring where his flesh and steel met.

  At the edge of the bridge, he saw that the darkness of the ravine had broken beneath a pale white light, a light that came from both Kye Taaira and the large, misshapen form of Nsyan.

  The latter was less human in appearance than his brother, Myone. A mass of muscle had grown across Nsyan’s back, and it wrapped around his torso and neck, leaving it impossible for him to wear armour. It made the twisting, swirling whiteness in his chest easier to see and Heast was left with the impression of a parasite, squirming and turning in anguish. By that light, he saw a small, withered third arm extending from the right side of Nsyan’s chest, beneath the two muscular arms that wielded two giant axes. They whirled and struck at the man before him with a furious speed, and it was from that man that the white light came: the two-handed sword that had appeared so dull and old now glowed with its own light. Yet, there was nothing pure in that light, nothing that suggested a holy or blessed air, and the light cast itself like old bones, like something long buried and best forgotten, and it was beneath that light that the parasite within Nsyan’s chest – Nsyan himself, Heast believed – so rebelled.

  Heast had never seen a Hollow fight before, but he had not expected the savage joy he saw in Kye Taaira’s face, as if a deep, primal part of him had finally found release. Heast had seen both men and women fight with such intensity before – had seen, in truth
, such emotions displayed on numerous occasions – but he had never thought to see it on the face of one born to the Plateau. Nor did he expect to see four bodies of Leeran soldiers through the ravine, each one a violent stone to mark the path the tribesman had taken to Nsyan, ending where Taaira now stood, both hands on the hilt of his sword as he feinted and slashed, blocked and turned, the length of his blade catching the creature’s skin repeatedly, always drawing blood, and always pushing him backwards.

  In the scrub, Heast saw a Leeran soldier move, circling around the pair.

  It was a difficult shot, yet he lifted the crossbow to his shoulder, ready for when he saw the soldier again; but Taaira, who leapt over a low slash from Nsyan, and ducked under an ugly chop that followed, took three steps towards the soldier before his heavy sword lashed out and crashed through the raised defence. As if he were nothing more than a nuisance, Taaira turned quickly and blocked both of Nsyan’s axes.

  Heast’s bolt punched into the ancestor’s side.

  He roared, the sound bursting over the ravine, but in that moment of pain, the ancestor’s axes fell from their defence, and the tribesman drove his sword forward.

  It punched into the creature’s stomach, deep and hard. Leaning on it, Taaira pushed the blade further into his ancestor. In doing so, the tribesman was exposed to Nsyan’s axes, but as they crashed towards him, Taaira released the blade and drove his fist into Nsyan’s right arm. The speed of it broke the momentum of the swing and broke the arm, and he darted away from the other axe by moving to the ancestor’s right. Yet, when he was almost out of reach, almost free, the sickly arm Heast had thought lame snagged his clothes.

  Nsyan roared as he lifted the axe in his left arm up high . . . but that roar turned into a scream and he dropped the axe, grabbing at the sword in his stomach, only for a second roar of pain to burst from him as he released the hilt.

  Heast had expected Taaira to move out of range of his ancestor, but the tribesman surprised him and grabbed the hilt of his sword with both hands. There, he began to lift the blade, drawing it up through the mass of muscle and twisted bone and, in doing so, lifted the larger figure of his ancestor off the ground. In the chest of Nsyan, the highlighted parasite mirrored the agony that his scream announced to all of those in and around the ravine, and for a moment, Heast saw it transformed into the figure of a man, a large, bearded man – and then, as the light and the revealed figure began to fade, it started to disappear. Taaira continued to raise the sword until, a moment before the darkness of the ravine was restored, the body parted as if it were nothing but old, rotted meat.

  10.

  The Eyes of the Queen had seen too much. The assault on Yoala Fe’s mansion had turned into an unmitigated disaster. The sky outside the stables was smothered with smoke, the ground beneath it lit with fire. Earlier, she had stood at the back of the mansion and watched in horror as the illusion that her witches had used to hide the First Queen’s forces had begun to splinter. She felt the gazes of her soldiers turn to her, the question of what to do unspoken and, in response, she had tightened her hand around the Voice’s arm. The young woman had been in the middle of telling Pueral that she could not leave Samuel Orlan or Bueralan Le, that they had to find both men, but her voice – speaking her own desires, not the Queen’s – had fallen silent. She watched the sky begin to break and did not resist Pueral’s heavy lurch into a run.

  A run that began as the assault on the front of the mansion did, as the first catapult was fired, and the horses began to charge.

  With each step she took, Pueral felt her control of the situation stripped away, felt her sphere of influence reduced to the soldiers around her, and to the safety of the Queen’s Voice. By the time she reached the stables, the young woman who had been but a small part of the operation had become the centre of it, a figure whose freedom would, at the very least, be an act of denial against the man who now stepped onto the edge of the first floor of the stables.

  She did not need to give the order to fire.

  Yet, as the crossbows emptied, Aela Ren jumped onto one of the horses and all but one of the bolts missed him.

  The one that hit did so in the lower half of his chest, but the Innocent, his sword held much like an axe, tore into the neck of the man who had shot it. The chain mesh broke apart as if it were naught but paper, and the scarred man flung the body from the horse before his swords snapped out in a series of blocks and parries from where he sat.

  ‘Out!’ Pueral shouted. ‘Get him outside!’

  It was Lanos who reacted to the command first: the old tracker shouted and pulled on the reins of his horse before driving his heels deep into its flanks. As he came in closer, he ducked low and wrapped his old, hard arms around Aela Ren’s waist as his mount ploughed out of the stables.

  The charge did not last much longer and Pueral, standing in the open gate as her soldiers tore out after him, saw Lanos topple to the ground. Yet the tracker had taken Ren far enough that the other soldiers around her had enough time to reach a heavy charging gallop that forced the small, scarred man to twist and turn out of their way.

  Pueral turned to the stables. There, the tall grey stood with the Queen’s Voice in the saddle and Bueralan and Orlan shielded by its body.

  ‘Captain Le,’ she said to the saboteur, the title falling easily from her lips. ‘She is your charge now. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied reluctantly.

  ‘Ride hard, Captain. With any luck, you will find soldiers to stand by you.’

  She left the stables without waiting for an answer. Ahead, her soldiers and Aela Ren fought, and already three had been dismounted, and one horse would never rise again. Still, Pueral had one plan left, and she held to it. After that, she would deal with Aela Ren’s army, later she would take his head to the steel boxes, and parade it before those who had been hidden from her. Lanos lay on his back, his stomach torn open viciously. Next to him knelt Tanith, but when she rose, her face was hard, and in her hand she held her ugly knife and her cracked jar.

  ‘What we do now was once outlawed,’ she had said to Pueral a week earlier. ‘Even here, in the heart of Ooila, few witches will do this, but for Aela Ren, I will. During the Five Kingdoms, the man known as Qian said that the cruellest thing we did to the dead was to use them as if they were but fuel. He said you had to honour them. It is from here that all our practices of rebirth have come. But in this jar is another form of magic, one that goes much more to the heart of Qian’s own home and the horrors that happened there. In this jar are parts of the dead themselves. Parts I have tied to the blood that Aela Ren wrote his letter in, parts that will wish to devour him, and that I can control to do so.’

  The Eyes of the Queen drew her sword, the witch now in step beside her. Ahead, Aela Ren had killed six of her soldiers, and had wounded a seventh.

  ‘Aela Ren!’ she shouted, the words torn from her throat with all the military training she had, all the authority she knew, and all the anger she felt.

  Her soldiers fell back and, in the middle of them, the Innocent turned to face her.

  She raised her heavy sword to him.

  A small smile parted his scarred lips, and she thought, as her pace began to increase, how his disregard for human life was apparent in that one motion, how it revealed just how little he thought of those he had killed, and those who stood before him – and then her sword blocked his thrust, and the armour on her wrist fell like a shield before his dagger. He was quick in his response, though, and his sword cut out in long slashes that she met with shrugged blocks of sword and armour while she angled herself around him, drew him away from where Tanith stood, and gave her the time she needed to cut into her own hands, and give focus to the dead that she held in her grasp.

  The glass jar struck the ground next to him.

  Ren stepped back immediately, as if he felt the power flooding from the broken shards, and Pueral herself, though she had thought to press home her advantage, found herself stepping b
ack from it for that reason.

  The ghosts that poured from it did so in such a flurry that their fury was undeniable. After a moment, Ren frowned and attempted to take another step back, only to find that he could not move. Around his feet, the fragments of men and women that he had killed grasped at him, clawed deep into the boots he wore, and soon a miniature tornado began to spin around him and lift him from the ground. Soon, Pueral could see faint ghostly hands holding his arms and legs, and the vague outline of a figure, neither male nor female, forming. Across the body hundreds of faces began to appear, each snapping and biting, and puncturing the Innocent’s skin. In response, he snarled, and he drove his torn boots into the figure, where he found purchase, enough to break free from its grasp and land on the ground.

  Pueral took a step forward as the creature did, closing in on Ren. Yet, he twisted out of the way of her heavy sword, and moved backwards, keeping out of the cold reach of the creature. You take those steps. Pueral felt a hard joy run through her, and she saw her remaining soldiers edge in closer, preparing to attack the Innocent. She struck again, forcing him to block, and her return swing was quick, a vicious slash he stepped back from, close to a mounted soldier – but in a swiftness she could not follow, he slammed his sword into the front of the horse’s legs, and as it tumbled forward, his dagger jammed into the soldier’s eye. But in the last movement, he did not have enough time to avoid the reach of the creature, and its hands latched around his neck before it began to lift him up again.

  And Tanith slumped to the ground.

  It happened in such a blur that Pueral did not even notice that Ren’s dagger had caught her in the neck, had broken her control of the creature and freed him from its grasp.

  Pueral charged, but Ren’s sword – so fast, so blistering fast – battered aside her thrust with ease. Her armour turned aside two of his return cuts, but she did not relent, she did not fall back. She slammed her sword at him, losing all the finesse that she had once had, hoping to use her size and her armoured weight to overpower him . . . only to feel the hard end of his blade part the steel she wore before it parted her flesh and sank into her stomach. She felt herself torn as the Innocent began to lift his sword, felt herself split, and as the blade ripped through steel and flesh and bone, she gazed at him, at the fury that was deep on his face, and felt a certain satisfaction that he would not forget her, not any time soon.