A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  The last thing she felt was Boris’s sweaty fingers crushing her hand as she pulled him along, dragging innocents down with her to the very last.

  The last thing she heard was Hoartrap shouting her name, telling her to wait.

  And the last thing she thought of was Leib, holding her in the darkness of their bed as they listened to the summer rain.

  Then the Gate enveloped her, and all the tragedies and triumphs and loves and losses of the world of mortals became as remote as the farthest star.

  CHAPTER

  21

  Sullen had known at a glance that the swamp was trouble, that they should have turned back and seen if the tamarind post could find them another path instead of fording the flooded trail, but had they listened? No, they had not. Now Diggelby had stirred up a nest of somebody else’s vengeful dead, all scrabbling claws and snapping teeth, with piles of wooden debris armoring their backs as they swam or scrambled forward on their bellies, and it was too late for I-told-you-sos. Hells, there was barely time to shoulder the whole damn post himself as Keun-ju went to help the others, and Sullen awkwardly transferred the heavy pylon to the pony’s back, hoping it stayed wedged against the packs—he figured he’d be needing his hands free pretty soon. Reluctant as Sullen was to strike the remains of anyone’s ancestor, these things had not responded to his soothing words of peace, pressing their attack. Purna shooting one with her deafening hand cannon probably hadn’t helped, and didn’t seem to do much but surround them in a peppery plume of smoke that hovered over the sunset swamp.

  The pony was surprisingly placid as a line of three aquatic ancients approached down the narrow path ahead of them, another four coming up it from the rear. Keun-ju looked ready for action, but the other two Craven hunters were acting the fool, as usual, shouting and splashing and looking at Sullen as though he could magically undo the mess they had dragged him into. Purna was down on her knees in the marsh, rooting in the muddy waters, and Diggelby was hopping on his left foot as though reluctant to put his bare stockinged right one back into the water. In addition to the things quickly dragging themselves along the submerged trail, the one who had snatched Diggelby’s boot still bobbed in a pool of deeper water just off to the side of the shallow path, while yet more could be seen approaching from deeper in the swamp.

  Sullen hated this kind of shit. It wasn’t these foreign ancestors’ fault that a band of interlopers had despoiled their burial ground, thought Sullen, finally remembering where he had seen similar heaps of wooden poles rising from a watery scene. The Walrus Folk buried their dead in a similar fashion, submerging their bodies in tidal estuaries and then planting a cage of wooden poles around them in the riverbed so that they wouldn’t float out to sea, but would instead be kept in place to feed the fish and crabs that would in turn feed the tribe. That this was an ancient gravebog didn’t explain why the restless dead still wore so much soft grey flesh on their bones, or why those bones should rise to attack any trespassers, but then in the songs Sullen’s ancestors were always running afoul of such revenants, no explanation needed. And that old man back in the town of Black Moth had warned them not to wander through a graveyard, hadn’t he? Sullen’s ma had always told him that those who ignore the warnings of the wise get what they deserve.

  His sword drawn and held in a funny posture, Keun-ju glanced back at Sullen, his eyes wide and scared though the rest of him was steady as a picture stone. Sullen wished there was time to reiterate how much he had liked the poems Keun-ju had shyly recited over the past few days when they walked off ahead of the two on post duty, the words so richly seasoned Sullen could actually feel the salt-kissed breezes of Isles he had never visited, taste steaming dishes he had never eaten, smell the scents of unknown flowers, hear the cries of exotic birds… and, with the last verse Keun-ju had shared despite the tint it brought to his cheeks, revisit the woman they both clearly loved. There was no time to tell him all of that, though, so Sullen just held Keun-ju’s eyes and nodded, like warriors were supposed to do before epic battles, as though they were passing secret messages, sharing a deeper understanding.

  And perhaps Sullen had been premature dismissing those old songs entirely, for as the fear left Keun-ju’s eyes and his veiled chin returned the nod, Sullen thought maybe they had communicated something in that silent exchange, just as the heroes of old supposedly did. It was a simple thing, really, and putting it into words, not such a great revelation… but Sullen’s heart began to pound even faster than it had when he’d first glimpsed the wood-shelled dead, and he tightened his grip on his spear, leaving his last remaining sun-knife in its bandolier lest he lose it in the swamp. What they had agreed without a word was that they would not fail Ji-hyeon, that they would return to the Cobalt Company with the other or not at all, and in that moment Sullen felt almost like he had when Grandfather was still alive—like he had someone he needed to protect, even more than himself, and commitment to this task overpowered his earlier dejection at their situation. While Keun-ju moved back around him to guard their pony from the monsters at their rear, Purna clambered back to her feet and Sullen stepped up beside her, the first of the risen corpses sliding easily toward them.

  “Fuck Maroto!” cried the soggy girl, whipping her dripping hair around her face as she brandished a long, inwardly curving blade.

  “Fuck Maroto,” said Sullen, smiling to consider how little he’d thought of his feckless kin over the past few days; to be forgotten even by those who hunted him was exactly the fate the ruffian deserved.

  “Fuck Maroto!” shouted Diggelby and Keun-ju, and then the underbrush-coated corpses attacked, the boot-nabbing monster in the pool swimming back in and making another grab for Diggelby as the creature before them on the narrow trail darted forward.

  The risen corpse pushed itself ahead through the shallows, the hump of debris on its back half as tall as Purna. Its belly slid across the mud of the sunken path, its mutely snarling face and grasping claws cutting through the filmy water. Sullen stepped forward and jabbed his spear through the corpse’s water-softened skull, nailing it to the marshy trail. It hardly seemed to notice, pushing forward against the shaft of the spear until Purna stepped around it and whipped her long, curved knife into the back of its neck. The blow severed its pinned head and, as Sullen flicked his spear around to send the skull flying off into the swamp, he saw the strangest sight yet.

  Its gaping neck-hole writhed with movement, pale grey knots coiling over one another. But fast as he’d glimpsed the activity the thing retreated deeper into its human nest, and Sullen understood what was happening here. Certain ancient devils were known to hide in rocks or trees or other lifeless things, causing minor mischief, and a pack of such fiends must have slipped into the corpses of this graveyard, employing the wood-interred remains to engender fresh suffering. That seemed most likely, anyway, because whatever was moving around inside the corpse’s throat was the same distinct shade of grey as the devils he used to glimpse dancing around his bed as a child, the ones nobody else could see because they weren’t born with the same eyes as Sullen.

  Sullen was about to warn Purna that if there was still a devil in the decapitated corpse it might not be done fighting, but before he could their opponent proved that point for him. The headless horror lunged forward, and while Purna was slightly off to the side Sullen was directly in its path. Before he could spear it again, one of its hands closed round his right ankle, talons digging painfully into his flesh.

  Sullen panicked, spearing its debris-armored back over and over and trying to kick it off him with his left leg… but agile though he usually was, the slick mud slid out from underneath his heels, and the spear slipped from his sweaty fingers as he fell.

  He landed flat on his back, splashing into the shallow mire, and worst of all, the headless thing still gripped his ankle. It was quick, too, and before Sullen could reach the spear that lay beside him it had pinned his writhing legs beneath its soft, slippery belly, and slid its way up his body. Its claws
scratched at his arms, the particular stench of drowned mammals rising from the stump of its neck and making Sullen gag as it tried to crawl completely on top of him. Sullen screamed, then, not a noble howl or a defiant battle cry, but a noise more appropriate for the occasion as the devil-ridden corpse mounted him…

  And with strength he did not know he possessed, Sullen rolled the whole stinking bulk of it off of him, onto its woody back. Which would have been perfect, except it held fast to his shoulders and carried him along for the ride; being held atop the slimy-bellied monster was better than being stuck beneath it, but he was still trapped. Its ribs bent like a rubber tree’s boughs as he struggled to get free, the bundle of branches moored to its back groaning beneath their combined weight. Purna reappeared, shouting things he didn’t understand, swinging her flashing blade perilously close to Sullen’s extremities as she tried to hack him free of its talons. Then he heard the snapping of overtaxed wood and half of the creature’s shell-like backing of soggy limbs gave way, and they pitched to one side… away from the shallow waters covering the path, and into one of the deep sinkholes that bordered it.

  It was colder here, and hard to see. Sullen grappled his opponent in the center of a maelstrom of mud and dead leaves as they sank into the pool, screaming a cloud of bubbles as its fingernails burrowed into his biceps. The darkness deepened, as did the chill in the water, but then Sullen glimpsed something through the haze, a twisting rope of shining silver. It was the devil that lurked inside the corpse’s nearly translucent skin, wriggling in the dead man’s chest; this was one of those rare occasions when Sullen was glad he had been born with the eyes of a snow lion instead of those of a man… and glad that it had grabbed his shoulders instead of his wrists, since he could still move his arms through the pain. Bracing one elbow against the corpse’s cheese-soft breastbone, he used his other hand to find the hilt of the sun-knife on his bandolier.

  The devil inside the headless corpse must have sensed the cold metal, for its spear-like fingers slid out of Sullen’s upper arms and swam to his wrists… but not fast enough. Though the darkening water made Sullen slow, the multiple edges of the flanged sun-knife tore through the corpse’s shriveled chest as though it were wet silk. Before the silver devil could flee deeper into its hiding place the tip of the main blade brushed its coils, and its faint glow went out as though Sullen had snuffed a candle. The hands that had reached for his went limp, but the legs, which had become tangled in his own, grew stiff, and as he continued to sink into the cold, lightless pit he was obliged to break the corpse’s femurs between hand and knife before he could slip away from its heavy bulk.

  His chest tight, Sullen kicked his boots, thanking Grandfather for making him learn to swim in the snowmelt pond that formed when the Frozen Savannahs thawed each summer. The old man insisted Sullen be prepared for the inevitable day when the Horned Wolves returned to the sea, a day that had never come. Before he could get too relieved, though, Sullen’s face smushed into cold muck; half-blind from the stinging silt in his eyes, he’d swum into the floor or side of the sinkhole. He’d never drowned before, obviously, but Sullen reckoned this was how it felt, fire instead of air smoldering in his chest as the dark water claimed him…

  He tried again, awkwardly twisting in the blind well, bumping off the floating corpse, and again brushed a rough, muddy surface. And again he kicked off, shoving the sun-knife back into the bandolier so he could snatch the water with both hands… again, and again, and again, and—

  Sullen exploded up into the fading light, unable to do anything but flounder as he gasped in the foul pool. In the moment or two it took him to regain his senses, another of the possessed corpses swam up almost on top of him. Nothing moved behind its dripping hump of branches and leaves, the open swamp flat and empty—Keun-ju and the others must have already been pulled beneath the surface, too. Sullen’s feet kicked for purchase but there was none, the wall of the sinkhole crumbling away beneath his boots, and as he groped at his bandolier for his sun-knife the shriveled face of a long-dead woman lunged for his throat, her carapace of sticks and filth filling his world—

  And then exploding as a brown blur landed atop her, sending broken twigs and plumes of water high into the air, an enormous animal crashing into the sinkhole beside Sullen. He was washed clear out of the pool by the ensuing wave, and found himself back in the muddy shallows that bridged the deeper waters. Familiar bodies coalesced around him as he dizzily rocked back and forth. Purna was pulling him up before his vision had settled, and he saw Diggelby was almost to the far shore already. The girl pulled him forward, the submerged trail becoming hard to make out as the setting sun stained the water copper.

  The disappearing path was bad—they had to get across the swamp fast, or it would become impossible to see where they could step without plunging into another pool. He turned to impress the urgency of their need to Keun-ju, but the Immaculate wasn’t where he was supposed to be, wading through the shallows behind them. He was just gone. Then Sullen’s mud-stopped ears popped as the water and muck drained back to their source, and he heard the screaming.

  Before that day Sullen had heard Princess whinny and nicker, but that was about it. Now the poor beast sounded almost like a shrieking babe as she floundered through the deep mire behind them, circled by the wood-backed horrors, and atop the wallowing pony was Keun-ju. He had ridden the animal straight onto Sullen’s assailant, and in trying to swim back out of the sinkhole Princess had gotten herself stuck in the deep mud on the far side of the pool. The full host of hungry corpses converged around the trapped pony, and its trapped rider. Sullen snatched himself away from Purna, even though he could see how hopeless it was, even though he could only get himself dead by trying to rescue his doomed friend. Keun-ju managed to raise his legs out of the water, knocking the magic post into the pool and crouching with his feet precariously balanced on the pack animal’s back, but any moment he would slip into the ravenous swarm.

  And then it happened: Princess’s scream cut off as one of the things caught her bridle and jerked her long pinto face down into the boiling water, her shoulder and haunches sinking quickly after. Keun-ju now appeared to be balancing on an enormous, undulating raft of driftwood, the corpses’ funerary burdens becoming entangled as they fought to get at the easy prey. Hands were rising from the water on either side of him, clawing the air, and before Sullen could throw his sun-knife into one of the monsters the brave young Immaculate flung himself high into the air. He hadn’t jumped toward Sullen and Purna, but away from them into the swamp, toward what might be open water or might just be more mud, and while the frenzying corpses weren’t as tightly clustered on that side, he still failed to clear their perimeter. The Immaculate punched a ragged hole into the rippling waves of wooden debris, which immediately closed on top of him as the corpses banged their baggage together, desperate for a fresh taste now that the pony was coming apart in grisly pieces.

  And just like that Keun-ju was gone, slipping out of the song so easily you never would have known he was in it if you hadn’t been listening from the beginning.

  Sullen must’ve been shouting, screaming, even, but couldn’t hear anything over the splashing, thrashing ruckus the corpses made as they butchered Princess. He was on the verge of wading out after his friend, when he realized Purna was clinging tenaciously to his waving right arm. He finally pried the girl off, as deaf to her pleas as he was to his own cries, and focused on the first corpse he was going to stick his sun-knife through.

  Worse ways for a song to end. Better than a fucking weakbow to the gob, anyway… but before he could lunge into the haunted bayou, a dark shape surfaced far out in what looked like deeper water, gulped the air, and went back under. Sullen blinked. He couldn’t believe it, but he thought he had seen the last ray of the winter sun catch on the edge of a lace veil. It must have been a trick of the light, a large fish snatching a bug… but it was enough distraction from his fury that he finally let Purna drag him back along the trail. Whe
ther or not there was any actual hope that Keun-ju had slipped past the monsters, wasting his own life wouldn’t help the situation.

  “Come on,” commanded Purna, hauling him by the elbow. The path was nearly invisible now that the light was almost gone, and they slipped and fell several times in their escape. When they finally reached the high bank on the far side they were too exhausted to climb the steep, slippery shore, and lay panting against the moldy-smelling mud bank, trying not to throw up.

  Purna couldn’t possibly take another step. Let the horrible fuckers eat her like they’d eaten Keun-ju and poor Princess, so long as they let her lie on her back while they did it. She’d done all she could, and Maroto himself wouldn’t have asked more of his star pupil.

  Then she heard the dripping, softly splashing approach of another monster. Sullen must’ve heard it, too, and lurched back to his feet beside the miniature cliff that cut them off from the presumed safety of the forest. Purna might not be able to scale the yielding, slick shore, but Sullen’s tall, toned form provided better traction, and she scampered up the barbarian as if he were a sapling, planting a foot on his butt and hopping from there to his shoulder and then leaping for the top of the steep bank. She almost made it, knocking the air out of herself as she dug her hands into the soft earth, her legs dangling down where anything might grab them… and then she hauled herself up over the edge, rolling onto her back with a gasp.

  The moon wasn’t high enough to cast much light yet, and she could barely make out the dim trail through the tangled magnolia bushes. She was about to call out for Sullen, to see if he needed her to find a vine to lower down or something, when Digs appeared out of the dark underbrush, his face so pale she wondered if he’d applied more foundation after gaining the high ground.

  “Purna!” It was a stage whisper, like Maroto had taught them, but still sounded bloody loud out here in the Haunted Forest, which was actually a pretty good name for the dump after all. “Where’s the others?”