Aarin’s piscine drays burst from a thicket of the kelp, and into a wide slash cut through the submarine trees. There, he encountered the army of the Drowned King.
Across a broad, sandy road through the forest of kelp, the drowned were marching to war.
The rearguard travelled in tattered, mixed columns, for death makes no distinction between gender, age, race, or degree. Every type of man and woman, and a few luckless children too marched together, undead comrades in arms. Amid this army were many nations, from the Hundred Kingdoms of Ruthnia and beyond. There were tribesmen of the Deep South, clad in thick coats of sea dray feathers and rotting, dogskin parkas. There were dozens of peoples from the diverse empire of Ocerzerkiya, and men in odd costumes whose like Aarin had never seen and could not guess at the origin of.
The drowned wore no uniform, being garbed only in the apparel they had sported in life, whether that remained as a full suit of clothes or was absent depended on the circumstances of their drowning and the length of their submersion. But they were all armed. In fingers bloated by water the drowned carried rusted swords encrusted with barnacles, and spearheads whose worm-devoured shafts were nothing but memories. Boat hooks, tools for carving float stone, sail maker’s knives, and fishermen’s gaffes were mixed in with halberds, cutlasses, daggers and all the other tools intended only to bring about the death of men. Glimmer weaponry they possessed too, though their gunners were in no formal groupings of their own, but scattered among the horde. The earliest examples of ironlock technology were present as corroded lumps fronded with seaweeds, the holes where iron filings should be poured to react with a glimmer charge clogged with half-moon shells. Later guns held more of their form, the very latest were barely rusted, their wooden stocks unmarked but for the odd wormhole.
Aarin’s guards took him down the long column, and it became apparent the massive rearguard was a militia, poorly equipped and ordered, for toward the front greater organisation was in evidence.
Next came the artillery, a mismatched train of guns taken from every kind of ship. The dead had worked to preserve this artillery from decay, encasing the barrels in tight, waterproof skins of leather. By contrast to the care given the guns, the carriages were rickety, being of sun-bleached driftwood and bone lashed together with the sinews of undersea beasts.
Ahead of the guns regiments of dead men marched in drilled squares. The warriors toward the front of the column were the most decayed. Many were entirely fleshless, little more than animate skeletons in whose cavities sea creatures dwelled. These soldiers marched with surer purpose. They wore armour fashioned from panels of shell, and their weapons were of glittering stone, sharp and unmarred by the ocean’s corrosive waters. Officers went ahead of them on composite mounts stitched together from the corpses of many beasts. Shoals of seahorses accompanied some as gaudy pets, while anguillon elvers glided at the sides of others upon leashes fashioned from their parent’s leather. Like all the spectacle of the drowned host, examination of the detail left a poor impression. Their proud officers were unlovely parodies of parade ground heroes. Their helmets were full of holes, their hats rotted. The feathers in their headgear were sprigs of seaweed wafting in the current generated by the passage of the army.
Through billows of sand kicked up by the trudging feet, Aarin was taken toward the very front. The column moved at a snail’s pace, leaning into the water to push its way through, further belying its impressive first appearance. Every curtain of sand pulled back revealed another tawdry glory or bone-chilling horror. Upon the backs of adolescent anguillons rode drowned knights, their lances the spiralled tusks of oceanic monsters, their helms outsize cowries, their shields the nacreous upper shells of giant oysters. These swept back and forth over the marching infantry in impatience at their sluggish speed.
The undersea road wound downwards, and the kelp thinned and gave out. A wide plain of broken rock formed the seabed ahead. Every army requires its staff and its general. Upon the plain at the head of the host they were to be found.
A hundred bearers carried banners. Some were made of scavenged sails and stolen flags, their colours bleached by salt water. The flags were of all nations, many fragmentary, selected seemingly for their colours’ prettiness rather than any meaning they might carry. Only two thirds of the standard bearers bore such devices, the rest made do with tall pennants of kelp, their rubbery stalks stripped, the upper part left with an unruly mop of fronds. Musicians marched before the banner men, carrying beneath rotting arms great conches and other shells, and brass trumpets greened by long exposure to the deep. A bodyguard of huge warriors, mostly again skeletal, marched ahead of them.
In the midst of this fearsome bodyguard was the Drowned King.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN the drowned and their liege was poorly understood by the peoples of the land. The Guiders said the drowned and their king were one and the same, that his soul was composed of the spirits of the world’s drowned and the rest had no will of their own. Other wise men disagreed, maintaining that the king held the drowned in thrall, preventing their escape to the afterlife. There were drowned souls before the coming of the King, their opponents argued. Not so many, said the others. So scholarly debate went back and forth in university cloisters of dry stone, safely away from the terrors of the deep.
For those that witnessed the King—or worse, suffered his wrath—the argument was immaterial. The King was mercurial, dangerous and oftentimes wicked. His subjects were legion. Air-breathing men feared to join them.
On the last occasion Aarin faced the Drowned King, he had been a giant composed of many corpses, a gestalt horror of storm-lost sailors and shattered boats. The day Aarin saw him striding across the rocky plain, the King was still a giant, still made up of a thousand dead men. But his body that second time incorporated trees swallowed by the sea, their roots and branches coiled like sinews in the corpse flesh of his limbs, while his head and chest were made of the coiled cadaver of a giant sea dragon, the rotting face of the beast furnishing the lord of the drowned with a new, bestial visage.
The fish dived lower, swooping over the hooked spears of the army’s foremost regiments, passing through the fluttering array of flags. The drowned released their captive, depositing Aarin ahead of the army.
Aarin stood alone before the horde.
Through the eyeless sockets of the sea dragon carcass the Drowned King looked upon Aarin. He held up an arm made of drowned men, wood, the corpses of giant fish and other things besides, and brought his legions to a halt.
Silence. Sand churned up from the bottom by the army floated away in the watery breeze of the ocean currents.
Guider, spoke the king. No words issued from his mouth. No sound carried through the water, but Aarin heard him nonetheless; a cold, black, boneless presence in his mind, chilled by sunless fathoms, whispering to his soul. Upon your brother’s ship you committed a crime against my people, sending them away from our home beneath the waves, into the uncertain hells of the hereafter. Now you are drowned, and you are mine. The Drowned King beckoned to him. Come forward, let me free you of the memories of your dry life, so you may begin anew in the nation of the water.
I will not, replied Aarin. He was not sure if he could respond, but thought back his words at the vile sensation intruding into his mind. I have an errand to complete that will determine the future of all the dead, and must be resolved.
He was heard. The Drowned King’s stolen head reared high upon its serpentine neck.
You speak! The presence hissed, a maddening sensation worming deep into his spirit. It was all Aarin could do not to hammer at his skull to try and claw it out. How is this so? Ghosts have no voices.
This one does, replied Aarin.
Then you have a powerful soul.
Perhaps, Aarin replied. I am not dead, nor am I alive. I am between the two, under the protection of the Dead God himself.
The water was perturbed by the king’s emotions. Swift currents tugged at Aarin’s clothes. From beh
ind the banner men, a cohort of drowned emerged, weapons levelled at the Guider.
Tell me before I kill you, what business Tallimastus has with the dead of the sea.
Business left unfinished at the time of the driving, said Aarin. When he was captured, and he turned the tables upon the man who imprisoned him. I have come here in search of that man, so that I may release him. I come here in search of Res Iapetus.
At the uttering of the great mage’s name, a ripple of movement passed down the column’s length.
That name means nothing to me, said the Drowned King.
You lie, said Aarin. Look inside yourself. To your heart. You know who you are. Speak with me. Tell me how I may free Tallimastus. He will free you in return, and we may repair the damage to the way of the dead.
You appeal to the wrong monarch. I care nothing for the fate of the dead of the land, and I have no heart! laughed the Drowned King. Why would I wish the dead to depart? You would rob me of my kingdom!
The skeletal warriors advanced, the eyes of fish dwelling in their ribcages gleaming at Aarin.
I will stop you. I will use my gifts.
You cannot. You may guide one or two of my warriors from this world before you are torn apart, that is all. You have no mage to help you this time. Dead God’s boon or no, you will die. After this interruption is concluded, I will march on to my war against the dry folk. You shall be no more.
The dead legionnaires advanced, shields overlapped, long spears pointing at the Guider.
Aarin’s heart sank. Then to all the souls bound into your service, who languish here in the depths when they should fly free across eternal skies, I offer my apologies. But I must do what must be done.
With a thought, Aarin conjured the weapons of Tallimastus into his hands. The shield gleamed brassily in the feeble undersea light. The sword burned with green fire. At their summoning, all weight of the water fell away from him, and he moved unencumbered by the ocean’s press. Raising the god’s weapon, he ran into the warriors surrounding him, and set to work.
The sword boiled the water. Spear heads fell slowly to the sea bed. Shields of shell exploded into fragments. The sword cut through armour and then through bone, biting finally into the atrophied spirits of the drowned. They were dragged from their bodies and torn apart. Freed for a moment from the Drowned King’s bondage, they saw the fate awaiting them, and they screamed as Aarin cut them from the Earth’s tale.
Green flashes lit the kingdom of the drowned as Aarin destroyed the souls of dozens of damned men. Like his brothers, Aarin had been instructed as a youth in swordplay. This combination of shield and sword was unfamiliar to him, an outdated, military form of combat. But he was empowered by the wrath of a god, and he cut through the Drowned King’s soldiers with ease. Not one of them could touch him. They died the final death, the expunging of spirit. Aarin would weep for what he had done, if he were not so driven to solve the problem of the dead. Lives must be sacrificed, souls must be sundered.
He did not know if these thoughts were his, or the sword’s.
Soon enough he had cut through the regiment, leaving them as bone splinters and rags of cloth drifting off into the ocean’s darkness.
You cannot kill them all, said the Drowned King. Thousands of souls are mine to command!
You must speak with me, Res Iapetus! Aarin responded.
I do not know that name.
Bubbling horn cries sounded. The army of the drowned moved forward, the column splitting, regiments arraying themselves for battle. Their sudden advance pushed the water forward as an invisible force. Anguillon knights came shoaling from the murk behind the king, their lances levelled at Aarin. He lopped them off as they charged, cut the giant eels in half, dismembered the corpse-warriors and sent their souls into shrieking oblivion. But there were too many.
A spiral lance slammed into Aarin’s side, breaking off and leaving its point embedded in his ribs. A scream escaped his mouth in a cloud of bubbles. His shield dropped, allowing a second lance to enter his body. The knight released the haft; the weight dragged Aarin to his knees. The Drowned King laughed.
His laughter turned to rage as Aarin forced himself up, slicing the second lance’s shaft away with the Dead God’s sword.
I am under the protection of death. I cannot die, he said, and leapt forward, his sword raised to strike.
Tallimastus’ blade cleaved the snapping dragon’s head from the Dead God’s shoulders, and continued down the chest. Where the blade touched the sodden flesh of drowned men, it shrivelled to black mud, and the feeble candles of dead souls were snuffed out. Aarin cut one of the King’s legs away, the sword of the god shearing through the five men who made up his thigh. The Drowned King tumbled down, his arms flopping uselessly. Aarin cut his other leg away below the knee.
Aarin turned his attention to the torso again, hacking his way through the King’s chest. Wisps of spirit and rotting flesh clouded the water, and the screams of the damned burned his soul. He ignored the blades cutting at his back as the drowned desperately worked to protect their king. Holed, drowned, pierced by blade and lance, he did not die, and his heart still beat.
One final blow brought forth a flood of light that drove back the drowned men attacking him. Aarin fell from the Drowned King’s chest. A second explosion of light blasting back the water, the shockwave knocking flat the troops of the king for half a mile around.
Aarin got to his feet, coughing water from his lungs. His back was a mess of bloodless cuts. Like the one in his arm, they bled but little. He and the Drowned King were in a hemisphere of air upon the seabed. The drowned circled outside, those that had recovered from the blast attempted to get within, but there was some barrier they could not breach, and they clawed helplessly at the edge of the water with their bony fingers and puffed corpse flesh, dead jaws snapping their frustration.
“Guider,” a weak voice said.
The Drowned King had disintegrated into a pile of corpses and marine debris. The stench was overpowering.
“Guider!” The voice came from the centre.
Aarin clambered over slippery corpses. At the very middle, half-buried in reeking dead flesh, was a living man. The family resemblance with Vols Iapetus was unmistakeable, although the man lacked Vols’ less fortunate features, being strongly muscled and handsome, with a full head of hair.
“You are Res Iapetus,” said Aarin.
The man nodded. He was spread-eagled and naked in the filth. Only one of his arms was visible. Around the hand was a silver ball that blended with his skin. Magical lightning sparked around it.
“I am Res Iapetus, the driver of the gods,” he said with self-mocking pomposity. He appeared very tired, like a man recovering from a long sickness. “I only have a minute or so before Tallimastus’ magic overpowers me again. So listen carefully. I understand why you want to free the Dead God. Do not do it, no matter how many people seem to be suffering.”
“They are not suffering,” said Aarin. “They are dying, forever. That is your fault.”
“Maybe,” said Res Iapetus wearily. “Maybe not. There is much at play here. Knowing what you do, you may think me foolish for driving out the gods and precipitating this crisis, but my work was unfinished. I was hoping to save the world from what is coming. Had I completed my task, we would all be safe.”
“What about your wife?”
“There was that too,” admitted the mage. “Her death made me look closely at the gods, and why we are beholden to them. I did not much like what I saw.”
Spirit light shone in the air. Souls coalesced. They sank toward the broken bodies of the drowned, and were absorbed.
“It is beginning,” said Res. “Even Tallimastus’s sword cannot destroy these souls. See, they reform.”
“Impossible!” said Aarin.
“They are here by his enchantment. They are my gaolers. I will become the Drowned King again, Tallimastus’ last gift! Listen, and listen well. Only one of my bloodline can stop what is going t
o happen.”
A corpse twitched near Aarin’s foot. Another rolled over, and embraced the first. A third wriggled into place against them, entwining fingers with a fourth. Others plucked at Aarin’s robes as they crawled together. He tugged them free in disgust.
“My only descendant is Vols Iapetus.”
More corpses wriggled together. The initial knot of them were taking on the semblance of an arm.
“I know him,” said Aarin. “He is with my brother in the south.”
“He was with your brother,” said Res, speaking quickly. “I have watched Vols in my dreams, the only place I am free. He has the potential to be the greatest mage ever to have been, greater even than I. He can finish my work. He can save all humanity, not only the Kingdoms. He can stop them all—the Morfaan, the Draathis, and the Y Dvar.”
“Tell me what he must do!” said Aarin. “I shall get word to him.”
“Ah, I would, but there is a problem,” said Iapetus ruefully. “He is dead.” Iapetus made a pained noise as his legs were pulled taut.
Corpses rolled under Aarin’s feet, binding themselves together by embracing. He stepped back, stumbling over them, until he reached the safety of the sand. The corpses inside the hemisphere ignored him, but around the perimeter of air more and more of the drowned were gathering, thronging the ocean bed, and were staring in at him with murderous eyes.
“Then what can I do?”
“You have power. You are of the Dead God’s quarter. All true Guiders are mageborn, but you are powerful, I can see it. You must go into the Lands of the Dead.”
“Impossible!” said Aarin. “I am no necromancer.”
“A poor word for a powerful man. It is possible. You know it is. Tallimastus has rendered you immune to death. It is probable he foresaw this chain of events.” A dead man rolled onto Res Iapetus’ chest, making him breathe quickly. “Return Vols to this world. He can save it. Only he can save us all.”
The Brass God Page 37