The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  The Arachne started pouring through the smoke.

  The sentiment turned to salt in her throat.

  The Arachne came in vast, writhing swarms—a spider-slide of legs and mandibles surrounded by a storm of silk and hair. The humanoid beasts broke through the vermillion roots on the western bank; by the thousands, they went willingly onto the Divide and the burning web. Meter by meter, second after second, the hissing battalions drew closer and closer, creating webs where there were none, or skirting across the water altogether. So dense were the arachnid packs that R’lyeh couldn’t tell where most creatures began or ended; they were death and all its textures; a swathe cut from the great killer Itself laid out along the land, to remind those who might’ve forgotten the only afterlife that mattered.

  R’lyeh was somewhere in the tunnels of Geharra when she turned on her heels and fled for Penance’s encampment. She felt Miranda and Elizabeth behind her. That was good enough for now. Eyes watering, throat tightening, R’lyeh couldn’t feel much but everything all at once. I’m going to die, she told herself, tearing towards the worm-ridden camp of her enemy. I’m going to die. This is how I die. She laughed, thought of when the soldiers had drugged her village, and laughed some more. She was seeking salvation from her slaughterers. Even at thirteen, the irony was not lost on her.

  Every step she took brought her closer to the encampment and the heavily manned towers that surrounded it. All it would take was one order or one shaky hand to let loose a wave of arrows to pin her and her friends to the ground. Common sense should’ve told her to veer away, back to the dunes where she could’ve disappeared and waited this out. But she ate poison for fun, ran with murderers for friends; home was a lake of blood, and her boss was a Skeleton who sent her on suicide missions. The only common sense she had nowadays was the common sense that told her she needed more of it.

  R’lyeh gulped as worm spirals swept back and forth through the encampment. It was so hazy inside that she really couldn’t see the soldiers anymore, but that wasn’t a problem; her imagination was more than happy to fill in the scene. Geharra was the weed that infested every piece of her and her world. If she dug long enough, she would always find it, destroying everything from the inside, turning everything into something it was never meant to be.

  Anxiety coursed through her body, leaving itching rashes where it went. R’lyeh, running as hard as she could, reached into her pockets for poisons, but there were none there. She couldn’t break down, not again, not like she had in Rime. If she stopped, she’d be stopped for good. She was a Deadly Beauty, and Deadly Beauties weren’t weak; they weren’t soft. Elizabeth never crumbled, and neither did Miranda, even though she kept falling apart. She was one of them now, not a Night Terror. So, taking a deep breath, she slowed down and, for the first time since Alluvia, let herself look back.

  The Arachne had not only crossed the burning Divide, but overrun the eastern bank. The trebuchets and the soldiers who manned them had been swallowed by the spider swell. The ground was gone, replaced by the skittering carpet that choked it. The horizon had been transformed into dark, jagged mounds that moved with horrifying synchronicity. And the mounds weren’t stopping. The great, clicking, spitting brood were headed straight for the encampment, and she, R’lyeh, the dumbass who had decided to stop, to look back, to face her fears for once, was right in the middle of the two.

  Elizabeth, towing Miranda, grabbed R’lyeh by the front of her armor and screamed in her face, “Get out of the way!”

  She snapped out of it. “Get out? What the hell—”

  R’lyeh went sideways as a soldier slammed into her from behind. Elizabeth balanced her. As she pulled herself together, she saw more soldiers running past them, breaking around them like waves around rocks. It was Penance’s army, all of them. They were tearing out of the encampment with wild abandon, their spears held high, their tongues wagging psychotically in their mouths. Gaseous, worm-shaped columns whipped across the frontline, giving those they passed through an angelic glow.

  “Don’t let go of me,” R’lyeh cried.

  Elizabeth shook her head. She wheeled Miranda in front of her and took R’lyeh’s hand. Groups of soldiers marched past in an endless parade and parody of religious zealotry. The ground thrummed with movement. In the thick of the attack, this side of the Divide had grown hotter; all the hateful, faithful mouth-breathers having increased the temperature substantially.

  Running through the army was like running through quicksand: despite how much they moved, it never seemed like they could get anywhere. An arm or a shoulder or an unbreaking wall of heavy, sweaty men kept throwing them off course. The worm-like dust devils weren’t any help, either. They spun sporadically through the ranks by the tens and twenties, infecting everything they touched with their rabid blessings.

  R’lyeh squeezed Elizabeth’s hand hard enough to break it, and then squeezed harder. It’s almost over, it’s almost over, she told herself. But, Holy Child, was it? The encampment was drawing nearer, but the flood of soldiers wouldn’t relent. She knew what thousands of people looked like—she’d seen it before, in Geharra—but this was somehow different. These people weren’t being controlled. They knew exactly what they were doing.

  “Almost there!” Elizabeth yelled back.

  Miranda jerked away from Elizabeth, but she quickly caught her. “I have to fight,” Miranda said, beating her nub for a hand against Elizabeth’s side. “It’s all I can do.”

  Behind R’lyeh, there was a massive crash of wood and steel that sounded like a building collapsing. Penance’s soldiers had already been screaming, but now they were screaming in pain and unbelievable agony. She told herself not to look back, but being a girl of little self-restraint, she did it anyway.

  The frontline and the Arachne had met a thousand yards back, and there everything was now red. The Arachne were crushing themselves to get to the soldiers. Severed arms and legs and crushed heads were being hurled at the living, to blind them with the blood of the dead. When the humanoid horrors weren’t eviscerating the soldiers with their teeth and claws, they were pulling them into eight-legged embraces, where they would either break the soldiers’ backs, or spit webs into their eyes, until the strands melted their faces into pink, bubbling cavities.

  But for all their savage strength, the Arachne couldn’t match the soldiers’ sheer will. Dismembered or damn near dead, the men and women of Penance broke themselves by the tens and twenties on the Arachne menace. They hacked the spiders to bits, and gored them straight through. And those that glowed with the Worm’s blessing were absolutely brutal in their assault. They tore through the Arachne with adrenaline-soaked strength. Spiders were cleaved in two, others stabbed into sputtering hunks of hairy, wheezing mush.

  More soldiers surged past R’lyeh, while more Arachne swarmed in from the Divide. Every clash between the two came with a clap of blood that drenched the armies in every direction. She didn’t need to be a military strategist to know which side would win; they matched each other in almost every way. By the end of this, there would be nothing left—just blood and guts and Nature doing its best to make the most out of all that fresh compost.

  R’lyeh, Elizabeth, and Miranda found a breach in the warring bodies and slipped through it. They wound through the thinning ranks, until they were right outside the encampment. Overhead, flaming arrows ripped through the air from the sentry towers, but still no one noticed these three out of place women.

  Breathing fire out of her burning lungs, R’lyeh dropped Elizabeth’s hand and hurried past the wall and into the encampment. The ground was a muddy ruin from all the marching feet trampling it. She found the nearest tent, ripped off her octopus mask, and fell against the fabric. She wheezed; every breath she took was a fight, for the air, still hazy and thick here, seemed reluctant to give itself to her.

  “Just… across from here,” Elizabeth said, sweat pouring off her face. “The horses.”

  Miranda kept trying to wiggle out of Elizabeth’
s hold. Crying out to the soldiers, she said, “Please, sir. Take me with you. She won’t let me fight!”

  For the first time since all this started, one of the soldiers stopped and paid them some attention. He raised his spear, chewed on his lip.

  “Fighting for god is the greatest thing a woman can do in this world!” the soldier said, pressing forward, the tip of his spear trained on Elizabeth. “If you feel heaven in your heart, sister, you must share it!”

  Miranda nodded, said, “Yes, yes, yes!” and started pounding her heart with her amputated wrist.

  “Should I kill these heretics?” the soldier asked.

  “Yes,” Miranda said, while at the same time shaking her head. “Yes.”

  Elizabeth drew her sword and thrust the soldier’s spear away. “Don’t.”

  R’lyeh felt a change in the wind. Looking into the thick of the encampment, she saw several worm-like dust devils whirling through the remaining soldiers, jumping between them like bolts of lightning. But that wasn’t it. There was something else.

  At first, she saw them as shadows on the ground, moving across the encampment like clouds across the sun. They reminded her of the shadow Audra had conjured, the one she and Deimos rode out of Rime on. As Elizabeth cussed at Miranda and hacked at the soldier, R’lyeh went to one knee and touched the ground where the shadows moved.

  Just shadows, she thought, realizing how stupid she was being. She struggled to her feet—that small moment of rest a near-death sentence—and then looked up to the sky. Oh, crap.

  In the gray, cancerous murk above Penance’s encampment, hundreds of large carrion birds wheeled; oily, black feathers falling from their gore-caked wings. Out of their torsos, long, intestine-like appendages whipped back and forth, showering from their mouths those below in gory regurgitations.

  “What the hell are those?” R’lyeh shouted.

  Elizabeth batted the soldier’s spear again once more and pressed her advantage. She put him in a headlock and ran her sword through his stomach, back and forth, back and forth, until his godly fuel gave out and he died in her arms.

  Letting the soldier fall to the ground, Elizabeth said, “They’re from the Nameless Forest. Edgar’s aerial force.” She stared at the beasts a little while longer, memories clearly overtaking her, and grabbed Miranda again. “We have to hurry.”

  R’lyeh nodded and followed after Elizabeth and Miranda. As they worked their way through the camp towards the stables, the carrion birds drilled downwards through the air. One by one, they slammed into the soldiers around the encampment, tearing out their throats, or goring their chests. Bodies fell around them from those soldiers who had been taken off the ground and dropped to their deaths.

  R’lyeh threw her mask back on, took out the Cruel Mother’s talons, and readied herself for a fight she was certain would come. It had been too long since she had killed something. If not now, then never, and never didn’t sit right with her, no matter what Elizabeth and Miranda thought.

  Nearly at the stables, R’lyeh dug her heels into the ground and threw herself behind a tent. Elizabeth, dragging Miranda down with her, did the same. Between here and the horses were a bunch of weird looking statues. Twenty or more. They had cloaks on and star-shaped heads and—what the hell?—they were moving.

  “He’s here,” Miranda said, giddily.

  Elizabeth punched Miranda in the chest. “Shut up, goddamn it. I know it’s not you, yeah? But shut up.”

  Miranda snarled. “I heard his voice. I hear him now.”

  “You hear a Worm. You hear only what you want to—”

  Miranda shrieked and kicked Elizabeth’s side. She hurried to her feet, kicked away Elizabeth’s outstretched hand, and ran past R’lyeh.

  “Miranda, stop, you idiot!” R’lyeh cried, catching the back of Miranda’s shirt, but losing her hold on it. “Stop!”

  Dead arm swinging limply at her side, Miranda approached the statues. “Your Holiness, I can hear you inside there. I’m sorry I didn’t fight. I’m sorry I never fought.”

  The statues stopped their procession and turned to face Miranda. Cringing, R’lyeh lifted her head from the ground and saw that she was right. There was someone behind the statues, hidden there, protected there by this reanimated guard.

  Miranda dropped to her knees, crying. “I turned away for so long. Let me see you, so that I know god isn’t upset with me.”

  Someone murmured inside the statues.

  R’lyeh crawled forward. Through the gaps between the stone creatures, she could see the outline of someone small. And beside it, something large, except it couldn’t stop moving. Is that the Holy Child? She risked getting closer. Flashes of tentacles moved around the smaller person inside the guard, like a shield. Is that the Mother Abbess?

  “Please,” Miranda begged. She lifted her left arm like a sacrificial offering. “I’ve lost so much. I keep losing so much. Won’t god make me whole?”

  “Move aside,” a boy, the Holy Child, said from within the statues.

  “Your Holiness, you must not,” a woman said inside the guard.

  “I must. Let me do this one kind thing here.”

  The statues began to move away from another; inch by inch, they gave R’lyeh a precious glimpse into the heart of the guard. Through a sliver, she saw the Holy Child standing there, in dirty robes, his right arm, Corrupted like everyone else’s, on full display.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you,” Miranda said. She started to come to her feet.

  And then the statues stepped even farther apart and R’lyeh began to see a portion of the woman standing beside the Holy Child. First her foot, then her leg, and then a maelstrom of tentacles, like a ball of snakes, and—

  A carrion bird screeched through the air, sank its enormous talons into Miranda’s shoulders, and tore her off the ground.

  R’lyeh shoved her forearm into her mouth, to stop her from screaming and giving herself away.

  Elizabeth didn’t care, however. She vaulted over R’lyeh. The statues surrounding the Holy Child and the Mother Abbess closed their ranks and quickly shuffled them away, deeper into the encampment.

  “No, no!” Elizabeth swung her sword at the carrion bird, but it was too high to reach. “R’lyeh,” she cried. “Please, oh god, please help me!”

  R’lyeh jumped to her feet. Daggers out, she quickly scanned the area for something to stand on, or something to fucking throw. Anything to—

  The carrion bird lifted Miranda higher. Screaming out buckets of blood, she bucked in the beast’s grasp, but it would not break. Intestinal appendages began to uncurl out of the bird’s torso. At the end of the appendage, a tooth-lined mouth opened, yawned, and—

  “Miranda!” Elizabeth shouted.

  —it bore down on Miranda’s head, covering it completely. The torso mouth forced itself down to her throat, and started chewing and sucking on her flesh and bones. While it did this, the carrion bird ripped its talons out of her shoulders. It clamped one claw into her breast and another into her thigh.

  “Stop!” R’lyeh could hardly make out what was going on, she was crying so hard. “Stop!” She took both the Cruel Mother’s talons and hurled them at the carrion bird. It was one of the last thing she had of Vrana’s, but if it helped… if it helped…

  It didn’t. The Cruel Mother’s talons sailed right past the carrion bird and disappeared somewhere among the tents beyond. The giant bird cackled, as if amused, and tore Miranda apart, ripping her sloppily from her hip to her armpit. A hot, steaming deluge of blood and organs slipped out of Miranda’s two halves and splatted against the ground. The carrion bird twisted off her head, sucked it down with the torso mouth, and dropped the rest of Miranda in front of Elizabeth and R’lyeh.

  The carrion bird, fat on the flesh and blood of their friend, stretched its wings and took off toward the battlefield.

  “Elizabeth,” R’lyeh said, completely numb inside. “Elizabeth.” She started towards the last, true Deadly Beauty. “Eliza—”


  “Get the horses.” Elizabeth shoved R’lyeh away and pointed to the stables and horses sixty feet away.

  “Eliza—”

  Elizabeth dropped her sword as more carrion birds passed by overhead. She found Miranda’s still-sputtering bottom half and grabbed it by the ankles. “Get the horses,” she said, rolling up Miranda’s pant legs. “Get them.”

  R’lyeh nodded and took off towards the stables. There were three horses left there, and she took all three of them with her, just so one wouldn’t have to be alone. It was easier to do than to think, so she led the three back to Elizabeth and thought nothing of how much of a target she must look to the carrion birds above. Maybe it was the numbness talking, but at this moment, with Miranda’s blood in her hair, she didn’t really care what happened next.

  “Elizabeth,” she said again, the spooked horses trailing behind her. Any other horse, any other time, would’ve run. But they wanted to be out of here just as badly as they did. “Elizabeth, I got them.”

  Elizabeth nodded. She was kneeling down beside Miranda’s bottom half, her hand around the ankle. In her other hand, Elizabeth was holding an ankle bracelet made out of seashells. She closed her eyes, whispered something under her breath, and stood.

  “Three horses,” R’lyeh said. “Miranda can ride back with us.”

  Eyes still shut, tears seeping out from underneath them, Elizabeth smiled and said, “She can’t.”

  “She will, I’m sure.” R’lyeh bit her lip. “Was that bracelet hers?”

  “We all had one.” Elizabeth opened her eyes, sniffled her nose. “Now, I have them all.”

  R’lyeh and Elizabeth mounted the horses and kicked them until the beasts wouldn’t go any faster. They tore through the encampment. In the sky, more carrion birds had arrived to assault Penance’s army. As they reached the southern end of the encampment, the small bands of Arachne clambered in through the northern side.