Arrowmask: Godkillers of the Shrouded Vast

by John Ruch

  Telvyr kept an eye on the whore Rinka. Thankfully, she chose to continue playing martyr, struggling to her feet and again drawing the leostrix’s attention. A swat of its paw sent her flying a good twenty feet, and with a pounce, it rejoined to her play with her as food. Gripping her in its massive forelegs, the cat threw itself to the ground and began kicking her with its rear claws. They clattered on her armor like hail breaking windows. Cat versus woman; inexorable nature versus vain human perversity.

  A clamor to his left informed him that his guards were attempting to rush the caravan steps left open by Mieux, and meeting resistance from Arrowmask’s crew. And glancing back to his right, he saw Elsbeth still occupied with murdering Ariotle. Now was the time.

  He crept near the insane behemoth again to retrieve Separatist. Avoiding looking upon Magdeira’s corps, he instead focused on snatching up a conveniently flaming barrel stave. He might have had a chance to run the distracted barbarian through from behind, but the risk was not worth abandoning his plan.

  Undetected, he dashed back to the caravan and crouched beneath its lead wagon, where the barrel of oil-pitch remained concealed. In the light of his makeshift torch, he could see its danger-red color—and the ill-shaven face of Arrowmask. The rogue lay in the dirt, as befit his status and tastes, fiddling with the chain Telvyr’s children had looped through the wheels.

  Before Arrowmask could utter more quips, Telvyr pivoted on his side and planted his boot in the pirate’s face. Arrowmask’s curses were followed by satisfying grunts as he rolled down the roadside embankment.

  Turning to the barrel, Telvyr loosened its bung and set the flaming stave within it. The oil-pitch began hissing and bubbling. In a matter of moments, it would be a bonfire beneath the caravan.

  Metal scraped, wood creaked, chains rattled, and savage pain tore through his left leg. The black air opened above him as the wagon pulled away, its wheel rolling over his ankle in the process. With what senses he had left, Telvyr rolled screaming away from the barrel as it melted into a pool of burning flame in the open space where the wagon once had been. Someone with clever fingers had detached it from the rest of the caravan, and was now wheeling it slowly back around, aiming the testabestia at him. The boy driver’s face was cold as the window glass.

  Fear overrode the pain; not just the fear of personal death, but also the annihilation of his entire family line. Telvyr forced himself to his feet, feeling the raw bones in his ankle scraping as they shifted, and limped toward Butterby’s ruined wagon, where its horses still screamed. He heard the testabestia pull up short behind him, the boy driver unwilling to plow them into the wreckage. But Elsbeth, her dark business with Ariotle done, advanced upon him from a cloud of smoke, her hammer silhouetted against the brushfire.

  And Gratia, that poor child, was in no position to aid him. The equilibrique had picked up the beast-tamers fallen helmet and, with a quick bound, replaced it on Gratia’s head backward. Disoriented, she was easily felled by her foe.

  Telvyr grimaced and began sawing through the horses’ reins with his dagger to free them. One for him, one for Gratia.

  A few paces away, Mieux again seized the leostrix’s tail, flinging it over her shoulder for yanking leverage. Her huge eyes widened larger still and gleamed.

  “It’s a boy cat!” she shouted. She abruptly spun herself and delivered a kick with each foot to the leostrix’s crotch. It leaped sideways a dozen feet, yowling, tail whipping. After licking its battered genitals a moment, it directed its incensed attention to Rinka.

  But this time, Rinka had regained her sword. Lying on her back, she braced its pommel between her arm and side, as if erecting a pike against a cavalry charge. The effect was the same, as the leostrix speared itself on the blade with a howl. Squirming from beneath the beast’s weight, the whore dragged the sword along its side, gutting it. The hideous false head was the last part to die.

  Cold sweat dripping into his eyes, Telvyr threw himself onto one of the horses and croaked Gratia’s name to point her to the other.

  They rode wide around Elsbeth as she swung her hammer. Gratia shot like a dart into the safety of the darkness. Hot on her heels, Telvyr pulled up as they neared the burning wagon. He looked down on Magdeira’s wrecked body and the black crater that had been her face. The fire-stoked breeze stirred her hair as if it somehow retained a scrap of her precious life.

  She was family. And he had a promise to keep. He slid off the horse, screaming at the renewed pain. Hefting her into his arms, carefully cradling that ruined head, he laid her over the horse’s back. He had barely regained the saddle when he heard the heavy foot-stomps arrive, and the hammer slammed into his leg; a fair price to pay.

  Telvyr drew Separatist and warded Elsbeth away with its unsteady point.

  “A bright and shining circle, you animal, and you will forever be outside it!” he shouted as he followed Gratia into the cloak of night. “A bright and shining circle!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Elsbeth tipped the bright and shining circle of the shot glass to her mouth after Alfie poured her one last anaesthetic drink. She banged it back down on the common wagon’s dining table and opened her jaws. Alfie folded her leather belt into layers and slipped it between her teeth.

  “Chomp down, by all means! Just imagine it’s a chunk of Cap’n Trent’s finest jerky,” he suggested cheerily.

  His pep talk done, Alfie reclined in one of the window seats, totally spent from spellcalling. No need to advertise how those couple of tricks had whipped him, nor the risks he took in calling that last spell without any protective warding. Lucky he wasn’t dripping sap from his fanny at this very moment. As it was, his moustaches were seriously drooping.

  But none of this was apropos when Trelleck was about to dig crossbow bolts out of Elsbeth’s limbs with a hunting dagger. Arrowmask stood behind her, his nose bloodied, his street-urchin face grimier and hair wilder than usual. His hands rested lightly on the knotted mounds of her shoulders. Trelleck crouched like an assassin, his grim blades and hooked needles laid out on the table, and a bandage over his own arrow wound. Yet a typical light smile played across his face as if he was waiting for a familiar joke in a classic play. The lot of them smelled of smoke, pitch, sweat, blood and just a pinch of clover and chives—an unexpected seasoning from rolling around fighting in the grass.

  The front-facing door clicked open and Arnbold entered, ducking under the doorframe and standing shyly in the corner, working his long, tapered fingers together nervously. There was something almost pretty about him as he acted like the demure wallflower at a country dance.

  Elsbeth spat out the leather and nodded at him with a crooked smile.

  “You did well,” she rasped in a voice still wrecked by her bloodlust screams.

  “Captain,” Trelleck interjected, “you can chit-chat later, right? For now, we need to force your unwanted visitors to go home.” He waved his blade.

  “No. The metal-venom may poison my blood, sending me into feverish madness until I die and awaken without memory among the black trunks of Vidrfelan,” she said, pausing the slightest moment with, if his ear was not mistaken, an air of longing. She fixed her eyes on Arnbold and declaimed awkwardly about his warrior heart and how the All-Father had blessed him with cleverness that had saved their caravan. The boy’s shy smile vanished when the bit went back between her clenched teeth.

  No one was looking forward to what was coming next, and if the men were honest, they were more than a bit terrified of the possible pain-driven reactions of this woman they had just seen punch someone in the kisser unto death. Enormous convenience, of course, having someone on board who would beat a foe’s face into Nighttide pudding; still didn’t do much for one’s nerves. Trelleck had his combat medicine skills and Arrowmask had his duties of leadership. His cheering presence notwithstanding, Alfie could have been snoozing somewhere far more peaceable and refreshing. Truth of the matter was, he felt a little bit guilty and a little bit old. No one could say he
hadn’t pulled his weight; but he was the only one who had not gone directly into harm’s way, and the only one to come out unbloodied.

  I could be resting somewhere far less restful as well, he pondered ruefully, thinking on that poor girl Anceps, whose hourglass sands were dwindling away in the guard’s wagon.

  So here he sat, reminding himself of what others had sacrificed and offering top-notch snuff and some damn fine lime-blossom honey with remarkable antiseptic properties. He flipped his robe a bit tighter around the curve of his waistline.

  As the screaming began, Alfie kept his chin up and his eyes on Arrowmask. Poor bastard looked dazed by more than just an iron-toed boot in the face. Just as Alfie had in the Jadal, Arrowmask had been through battles like this before and had to know what a damnably close thing it had been. So providential was it to have so few casualties that they should be donating his beloved dice to the nearest Temple of Fortune. What the young rogue did not know, until now, was the weight of command that dragged any sense of luck down to the bottom of a dark abyss.

  Elsbeth bit hard on the leather and stamped hard with her good leg while Trelleck excavated an arrowhead out of the other. She reached her right hand up to clutch Arrowmask’s wrist, her knuckles swollen and her thick forearm raw from where her foe’s shattered skull had gashed it. Arrowmask mouthed silent curses at the strength of her grip and looked fit for a leather bit himself. But he said nothing, instead cradling her massive head with his free arm. She rolled it against his chest as sobs mingled with her screams. Alfie allowed himself a glance at her tortured face, gleaming with tears.

  Arrowmask chewed at the corner of his mouth and suddenly gave Elsbeth’s cheek a couple of sharp little slaps.

  “Fuck pain,” he said. “It’s a useless pale-heart.”

  Alfie swallowed hard and issued a cautionary “ahem.” The barbarian flashed her eyes up at him, then grinned fiendishly, still biting the leather. Her sobs ceased as she banged a fist on the table hard enough to shake the wagon and make Trelleck’s collection of pointy things bounce six inches in the air.

  As the guard neared the end of his stitching, Rinka strolled in and stood beside Arnbold. The boy held a hand over his mouth and studied the floor while Rinka, clad in only the torso of her armor and a pair of blue suede boots, watched the surgery dispassionately. Sweat had washed away most of her makeup. Smudged eye shadow and bleeding mascara reminded Alfie of a skull he’d once seen skewered on a pole in a widuwita ritual.

  Finally, Trelleck stood and wiped his reddened hands on a rag. Elsbeth spat out the belt and wiped drool off her chin with the back of her hand. Arrowmask exhaled slowly and shook his numbed hand. Rinka caught his eye.

  “It’s time,” she said, nodding toward the door and then exiting it.

  Alfie hefted himself from the cushions and poured a fresh round of rums. Elsbeth banged her glass against Arrowmask’s.

  “You slap like a kitten,” she said with a grin, tossing the drink down her throat.

  Arrowmask’s mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t, and they stayed on the open door.

  Alfie poured out another round, and made Arrowmask’s a double.

  Ashton forced himself to look at Littalia. He owed her that much.

  She huddled on the floor of the guards’ wagon, the small of her back braced against a bunk. She sobbed as best she could through her ruined mouth while her fingers explored the damage. Blood and tears patted on the floorboards.

  All the rum in Millennium would never wash this image out of his mind. The kiss of the wheel had ground a gory stripe through her face. Her lips were shredded, exposing toothless gums. Her nose was flattened and her left eye forced out of its socket to gaze blindly sideways. A hank of her scalp hung loose, exposing a fissure that her brain bulged through, trickling a thin fluid.

  She lapsed in and out of consciousness, and of coherent words when she was conscious. She had just enough sense left to know she was dying.

  “I’m ugly now, right? I don’t want to die ugly,” she wailed in sudden awareness, her words slurred as another tooth fell to the floor.

  Trelleck knelt beside her, one hand atop a whisky bottle, the other cupping his chin, two fingers pressed to his mouth. No jokes this time. Ninebarrow sat on the other bunk, face in her hands, muttering a prayer to something or someone called Vitulus. Clyst rooted himself in front of Littalia, his battered fists clenching rhythmically and his jaw muscles working silently. And Ashton stood there stupidly in the doorway, with Rinka leaning against the wall beside him, thumbs in her belt loops and her mouth a tight line.

  In his typical self-conscious selfishness, Ashton and his vast, meticulously catalogued library of guilt instinctively felt that Clyst’s radiating rage was directed at him for fucking Littalia. If it had been possible to squirm away to the Jury Lane as usual, he would have. As it was, he tried joining in the anger instead, which was pretty easy, considering that Telvyr was the sort of ruthless piece of shit who would make anyone swear a vow to eradicate the entire Temple of Family. But really, that just made him feel guilty, too. That rage belonged to Clyst and his crew—theirs to own, not his.

  So Ashton tried doing something totally out of character—his duty. Which consisted of paying Littalia the respect of seeing her sacrifice, remembering her as she was, and being there as she passed.

  Her head rolled and she looked up at them with her working eye.

  “I just want to know what happens in the Vast,” she sputtered. “What’s out there, what rewards we would win. I don’t want to be the one who never knows.”

  Clyst knelt and said something quiet in her ear. She nodded painfully.

  “I can, I can,” she jabbered. “I can follow the little calf…” The word slurred into a grotesque low moan as her eye rolled and her consciousness lapsed again.

  “It’s time,” Clyst said tightly.

  Trelleck nodded and uncorked the whisky bottle. He held it to her mouth, the glass clinking on broken teeth. He rubbed her throat to keep her swallowing. I could use a couple of those myself, Ashton mused with sardonic humor that not only failed to shield his heart, but made him feel stupid the moment he thought it.

  Trelleck set the empty bottle aside. Littalia’s breathing was slow and deep now. Her right was shut, the left still bulging out lidless.

  Clyst gritted his teeth and pinched her nose shut with his left hand while he clamped his right over her mouth.

  I can’t fucking watch this, Ashton thought, half-turning away to look out the door into the incipient night. He heard Littalia’s feet kick against the floor and Ninebarrow choke back a sob. In his peripheral vision, he watched Rinka watch the mercy killing, her face a beautiful mask except for a strained squinting in the corners of her frozen eyes.

  He felt some tension leave the room and knew her life had, too. Trelleck muttered a curse and Ninebarrow cried openly. Ashton turned again to see Clyst standing, scowling, breathing hard through his nose. Littalia’s body remained curled at his feet.

  Clyst glowered at Ashton, then Rinka, then Ashton again. Ashton braced for him to say anything—an accusation, a curse, a thanks. And he thought of a million things to say in return. “She was a good soldier.” “When we catch Telvyr, he’s all yours.” Even, “Maybe that’s what you get for being a psycho thug.”

  Instead, they just looked at each other pointlessly. Maybe just to see if anyone knew a word for the horrible dark bond that just knotted them together. With a last glance at Littalia, Ashton stalked out of the wagon.

  He tramped quickly down the length of the caravan, past Alfie lying in a window seat with fingers folded in disgusting contentment on his belly, past a closed bathroom door behind which Mieux hummed an off-kilter tune to herself. He kicked down the metal stairs at the caravan’s end and trudged into the knee-high grass at the road’s edge, down the embankment to the edge of the lantern-light.

  “Blackberries,” he thought idly, fingering a frond of a clump of plants. Then he bent over and retched into the wee
ds.

  He looked up, through thin icy clouds portending rain, at the dull sheen of Atel’s Trail, the moonlets following each other on their mad trek to nowhere.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and trudged back toward the wagon. As he reached the road, he heard the crunch of chainmail. In the flickering lanterns, he saw a ragtag trio in Thousand Leagues livery stumbling toward the caravan—survivors of some of the wagons they’d destroyed earlier.

  Reckless anger shot through him like lightning. Three-to-one odds again—whatever. Fuck them.

  “Really?” he shouted, stepping forward and drawing his sword.

  At the sight of still more wrecked wagons, and maybe something in Ashton’s half-swagger, they turned tail and bolted. One of them tossed his helmet to the roadside to gain running speed.

  Ashton laughed raggedly and plopped down on the steps. His hand was shaking so badly it took four tries to sheathe the sword.

  After a few minutes, he smelled cheap perfume and battle sweat as Rinka appeared, sauntering onto the balcony and taking up a seat of judgment on the top step. She lit up a cubeb and stretched her legs down the steps, gazing down at him through the smoke.

  He half-turned to acknowledge her, but kept his eyes out on the black ruins in the night.

  “One dead—horrifically—and more injured,” he said. “The caravan beaten to shit. Most of the polarity cannon ammo gone. All before we’ve even crossed the Atelrush. All because of an attack I should’ve seen coming like one of Alfie’s stupid punchlines.”

  “All because I thought it would be fun. An adventure,” he continued. He shook his head and looked up at her sharply. “You should be leading us,” he admitted, his stomach twisting.