“Am I?” He regarded us with calm blue eyes, like chips of ice. "A little bird tells me that neither of you are really a Count or Countess of anything, yet. You were granted a provisional peerage that is solely dependent on your ability to retake and then hold Egbolt Castle. To do that, you must drive the Demon back from here and retake Karhad. Consider this an opportunity to prove yourselves worthy."
"After you just undermined all the work we did to earn the trust of the troops?" I drew up beside Suri. "The questline doesn’t even provide enough Renown to make up for this. How are we supposed to do that?"
"Try taking some responsibility." He smiled mockingly. "I suggest you meet with Bolza's old bannermen before anything else. If the Western Wall falls, the Lords of Racsa will be exterminated, much like the House of the Voivode himself."
"You do remember that Istvan was the one you were arguing with?" Suri slashed a hand in the direction Istvan had left. "Not us?"
"You’ve made it abundantly clear who you side with. Now, pardon me, but I really am very busy. The Fire Scorpions waiting in the workshop won't build themselves. We only have a few days to prepare – you should both get to work." He pushed his visor down and nudged his mount in the ribs, barreling past us.
Suri's expression curdled with rage, and before I could stop her, she pulled a knife from her belt with a roar and threw it with deadly precision at Soma's retreating back. The weapon hit an unseen magical shield that diverted its course, but it clipped his face close enough to draw sparks off the side of his helm and slammed into a wooden beam running across the ceiling. He whirled around in shock, his hookwing screeching in protest.
"Suri! Stop!" I jumped on her as she stalked toward the man like a pissed off tiger.
“You listen here, cunt!" Suri's voice rang off the walls of the gatehouse, guttural with fury. "No one talks to me like that! You can take your Wall and your attitude and your orders and piss on it!"
"How savage," Soma remarked.
The lords who had been approaching us hung back, watching. And judging.
"Get back here and say that to my face!" Suri pulled her sword, and half a dozen blades unsheathed around us. I caught her wrist, and she looked down at me, wild-eyed.
"Cmon, Suri!" I hung on, but it was an effort. “He’s not worth it!”
She snarled and turned away, right into the group of noblemen in their fancy armor. They parted for her as she stormed off across the plaza, knocking people out of her path like a bull. With a furious backward glance at Soma, I turned to chase after her - and ran right into Vash Dorha's outstretched fist.
Chapter 31
The monk had his arm out, resting his ironclad knuckles just beneath my sternum. Vash had shaved – kind of – and was now dressed like a grungy ninja: faded black leathers over a gi jacket that had definitely seen better days, and heavy canvas pants tucked into black leather boots. I hadn’t heard or seen him, and I could almost see behind my own head.
"Büu jeh. Not yet." He dropped his hand, metal rasping against leather, and continued in Tuun. "Despite the fact that I’d rather be elsewhere, we must talk, Oathbreaker."
"Right now? No. We can talk later." I replied in the same language, and angrily brushed past him.
"Let Suri burn off her rage in peace. She is spewing fire at some pain you do not perceive, and she will resent it if you try to help her,” he called back.
I halted, turning back to look at him. “And how would you know?”
Vash regarded me with intense, dark eyes. “Because I don’t spend all my time diddling myself. I pay attention. Not just to her. To you and her Holiness, also.”
Suddenly anxious, I glanced out of the gatehouse toward Karalti. She stood tall and proud in the plaza, surrounded by people eager to receive the blessings of a real live dragon, the avatar of their gods.
"Fine. Let me guess - you're about to tell me you won't work under me as Captain of the Western Wall." I reached up and passed a hand over my hair, squeezing it to try and loosen the tension in my scalp.
"I won't. But that is not why we must talk." Vash jerked his head toward the upper rampart over the gatehouse. "Follow me to the wall. Try to keep up."
I was about to retort when he stepped into the nearest shadow and disappeared. Annoyed, I took my usual shortcut by heading out of the gatehouse, jumping to the rampart, and then heading through the attached bastion to the wall. I spotted Vash in the crowd, winding like smoke through the milieu of soldiers. He didn't dodge or weave; it was the crowd that seemed to flow around him. To keep sight of him, I had to move quickly.
We broke out onto the wall, and there, Vash hopped up onto the parapets and squatted down on the edge like a crow. He waved to the crenellation next to his.
Warily, I joined him. “Okay, so, I don’t have much time-”
"Shh." Vash shook his head, taking out his pipe and a plug of green herb from his pouch.
I rolled my neck and sighed, gazing out over the battlefield. The brief rain had passed, leaving it sodden. The earth was steaming now that the sun was out, releasing the stench of death into the air. There was no sign of movement at the treeline, no zombies shuffling out of the woods. Small dinosaurs and other scavengers - crows, foxes, stingcrabs - were squabbling over the corpses of soldiers and animals churned up from the mud. It was peaceful, but not the good kind of peace. When Vash lit his pipe, the cloud of smoke he exhaled was pleasant, like fresh-cut grass and pine sap. It masked the smell of the dead.
"Now then." He canted his jaw up, eyes hooding thoughtfully. "I approach you on one condition. For a short time, I talk; you listen, unless I ask you a question. Understand?"
"Sure." I shrugged.
"I am a blunt man, Dragozin, so I won’t mince words. You disgust me." Vash nodded slowly to himself, pausing to take another hit. "You are angry, immature and impulsive. You learned to kill before you learned to live. You’re like a seagull shitting on everything it touches. You carry the sacred bone knife, the iron gauntlets and other trappings of my order with no regard for what they mean and what we go through to obtain them. Do you know what goes into the training of a Baru? Do you even know what we are?”
I thought on it. "Not really. I know you serve Matir-"
"Burna," he corrected. "Burna the Fly-Headed God, patron of healing and long journeys, the Many-Winged, the bearer of the sickle and the herb. He is an aspect of Moðr, whose name has been bastardized from the original Solunkraati to 'Matir' in the lands to the West: Ilia and the White Sail nations. And we do not ‘serve’ him. We love the world first, our selves second, our god third. Burna is our teacher, and we relate to him as students seeking instruction to better themselves. If the Black God wanted a pack of fawning dogs, he could have every bitch between the Sea of Swords and the Sommbaar. Pride in the self is a virtue.”
I grimaced, waiting to see if this roasting was going to lead anywhere.
Vash gave a little nod. "Now: to become a Baru, you must be a child under the age of twelve, a child battling a terrible injury or a great disease. You must be close to death, so close that a rangy mutt like myself is summoned by your parents or the village elder. This Black Brother comes into your yurt and must judge whether it is worth attempting to heal you, or whether he should draw his kamanocha and end your pain. He must decide that euthanasia is the correct course.”
After a small pause, he continued speaking. “The child is bathed if possible, given medicines and treatment to make them comfortable, and then the Black Brother commences a vigil, where he reads the Book of the Dead to prepare the child’s mind for death. The soul of the child listens, and somehow, a miracle occurs. The disease is conquered by some strange inner strength. The fever breaks. The infection begins to subside. The wound closes. The coma relents. If this happens, the Baru is duty-bound to nurse the child back to health and take them as their student."
I frowned as I listened.
"Once the child has recovered enough to travel, the first lesson they’re taught is the fut
ility of disgust." Vash gestured out to the battlefield, his iron-clad fingers clicking. "That the sensation of disgust we feel at the sight of the normal, everyday processes of life is the corrupted soul rebelling against the truth of our reality. Blood and bile, sweat and saliva, the corruption of the dead and the stench of the placenta at birth. We ascribe these things to a state of suffering, of ‘filth’, without understanding that they are, in fact, as poignant and beautiful as the loveliest of flowers. So for the first years of your life as a Baru, you live on the charnel ground where the corpses are bought for sky burial. You meditate, exercise and eat among the dead until you feel no disgust – only love and compassion for the natural, normal processes at work all around you. Overcoming disgust and embracing the importance of reality in all of its fucked-up glory: that is the first trial of a Baru. For the rest of your life you are trained to endure and embrace what is real." Without looking at me, he motioned to me with his pipe. "And that has gotten me thinking about you."
I arched an eyebrow.
"I can prattle off a sordid list about my own faults as easily as I can about yours, Dragozin. I myself am a failed brother to two sisters, a coward and a kin-slayer. I am hot-tempered and easily frustrated, short-sighted and crude. I like to smoke and take drugs and fuck around too much. Every human has secrets more or less as terrible as these, and you and I are no better or worse than most men. And so I ask myself: 'Why am I feeling this terrible, profound disgust for you? There is little in the world which induces disgust in a Baru, especially another human being.”
A kin-slayer? Curious, I turned to look at Vash’s hard-cut face in profile. Now that I thought about it, I had seen wounds like the ones that had scarred on his face. They were hatchet wounds, as if someone had hit him in the face with an axe several times. Somehow, he had survived.
“When I say that you disgust me, it is not the earned disgust I have for Soma. That feeling is founded on evidence. You saw him this morning, thinking himself clever and virile and powerful, dividing and conquering his enemies as his father and grandfather did in the courts of the Voivode and the Volod. They were merchants not even three generations ago, and gained peerage because Soma the Elder learned how to suck the right cocks in Taltos.” He grinned wolfishly. “But you? Other than your normal human failings, what have you done to induce that feeling in me?"
"Well, I used to drink sriracha out of the bottle," I said.
He laughed, a short sound like a crow’s caw. “Isn't it strange that you say that, and without ever having experienced sriracha in my life, I know exactly it is? If a bottle was lying in front of me, I could identify it. Yet, if you asked me to describe or create some, I could not. Such are my feelings toward you - based in some sense of reality that is not real. It is like a compulsion that lies beyond me. While oathbreaking is a serious charge, when I dwell on the feeling, I find that it does not live inside me. It comes from some 'other'."
I was paying very close attention now. The conversation with Rin now seemed excruciatingly relevant.
"You fell to your death today," he said. "You landed on Corporal Lazan's pike and died. Ten minutes later, you emerged - alive, naked - and came to get your things. You were confused and stumbling like a drunkard... but you were alive. The rumor of your being Starborn is true. Show me your right hand."
Oh, shit - the Mark. I hadn't covered up the Mark of Matir when I'd gone to do my corpse run. Someone had seen it, but it was too late now. I shrugged, then pulled my glove off.
Vash jammed his pipe in his teeth and took my hand in his. He looked down at the Mark pensively, his twisted mouth sloped to one side. "Fascinating. You, of all people. Tell me - did you survive a disease as a child, like how I described?"
"No." I watched him steadily. The leering, clownish man we'd met in the Broodmother's lair was not here. "I died from one as an adult. Like, really died.”
He rubbed his thumb over the skin. The iron pad of his gauntlet was strangely warm. “Explain.”
“Archemi is my afterlife.” I shrugged uncomfortably. For some reason, I never wanted to try and explain to NPCs that this world was just a virtual reality. After learning about the Frankensteinian shit that went into making them, even less so. “I come from… the world of the Architects.”
"Hrrrm. It is as the stories tell us." He let go of me. "You know what a 'status' is?"
"Yeah."
“You have a 'status'. It hangs over your head like a stigma, and it tells me: 'This man broke the Bukat Kara Talom. Do not work with him, do not agree with him, do not help him’. While you carry this 'status', I am compelled to feel disgust. And yet, you are branded with Burna’s mark. This also comes with a status." He tapped the back of my hand. "That status tells me that not only are you the Black Hand of Burna, but that I should lay down my life for you if need be. The conflict has made me aware of something I had struggled to realize about the world before now - that both these feelings come from outside of me. A person’s Status does not reflect the feelings I have - the Status causes them. Correct?"
"Yeah." I watched him, strangely fascinated. I was literally watching a digital entity gain true self-awareness.
He let go of me and gesticulated with both hands. "My point being... I cannot stop this feeling. But I can rise above it, because Soma dry-fucked the Defense Force today and I am in half a mind to cut the man’s throat in his sleep tonight. It would be a mercy for us all, but instead, I will be counseling Istvan to stop him from gathering his men - the ones Soma assigned you - and riding out to take his chances as a partisan. That is exactly what Soma planned for him to do. He knows Istvan is too proud and brittle to accept a demotion. He will resign and desert with his dead lord's banners."
It dawned on me then. "If Soma predicted Istvan would ride out... then Soma wants to abandon the Wall?"
"Yes. Any fool can see this place cannot be defended against the likes of the Demon." Vash inclined his head. "He also wants you, Suri, Istvan and me declared to be deserters and brigands. He will pin the misfortunes here on our collective shoulders, savaging your claim to Racsa in the process, and retreat the remaining force to Litvy. There, he will conscript the local peasantry and take the fight to his own county."
"Why?" I was stunned. “The Demon will destroy his farmland-”
"And Soma is confident that he can simply ship grain in from the other provinces. The Voivode can command such a thing. Besides that, Litvy is the most technologically advanced city in the East," Vash replied. "It has magic built into the walls, I have heard. Magical shields. Can you already see the flaw in his cunning plan?"
"The Demon fields devices that consume mana." I rubbed my face. "Is Soma really that fucking stupid?"
"In his own field, he is brilliant. Here, he is mediocre. There is nothing more terrifying than a mediocre man who thinks he is brilliant at everything." Vash nodded. "I’ll do everything in my power to stop Istvan from dancing to our Lord's tune, but he has an obnoxious streak of honor that I haven’t been able to rid him of. And you, the Black Hand of Burna… You are a catalyst, a force of change. Like mana, you Strange everything and everyone you touch. For better or for worse, though... that is the question."
Maybe Rin was right after all. I looked down. "I can give you my answer to that question, at least. I want to leave the world a better place than how I found it. I always have.”
"Then I have a proposition for you." Vash stood up, as secure on the small lip of stone as any cat. "Atone the way that heroes of history have always done. Atone by deed. If you are successful, you will wipe this 'status' you carry and bring every man and woman in this garrison to your side. Soma won’t see the foot before it kicks him in the balls."
The phrase 'atone by deed' had a specific word in Tuun - Rigung Gul’ga. 'Crossing Ritual'. "What you're saying is that you want me and Karalti to fly out and kill the Demon in one-on-one combat or something?"
Vash uttered an exasperated sigh. "Did your parents not teach you manners? You wouldn't put a fing
er in someone's mouth. Do not put your words in mine."
My cheeks flushed hot.
"Your task is not as difficult than that," he said, once he was sure I wouldn't interrupt. "You shall go to Krivan Pass and defeat what you find there, then bring back a piece of evidence to prove you have succeeded. And you must do it alone. Without Karalti."
"Without Karalti?" I repeated dumbly.
He gave a curt nod. "Such is Burna’s decree. You can ask him, if you like."
"Ask him?" I rubbed my face. "How? I haven't seen Matir in like... jeez. Weeks. Months. A long-ass time. Last time he paid me a visit was in the swamp back in Ilia."
“You really are dense, aren't you?” Vash put his hands together, palm to palm, and shook them. “He’s a god. Pray to him."
I scowled. "I'm not religious, and I don't pray."
Vash gave me a puzzled look. “You know Burna is real.”
"Yeah. So?"
"So why not pray? He is a real god you have seen with your own eyes. Unless that is also a lie."
"No, it's not. I've met his avatar. Twice."
Vash’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline.
"Look, people - the Architects - they made the gods. All of them. They made everything here, including the Drachan. I didn’t worship anything when I was alive, and I'm not worshipping anything now that I'm dead." I gestured at the sky in frustration. "The Architects are just human, okay? Rin is an Architect, for fuck’s sake."
"Rin is not human." The monk chuckled to himself. "But the fact remains: even if your old world didn't have gods, this world does. It would be strange not to believe in them."
"I believe in him, all right. That fucker is why I'm here in Myszno, instead of sunbathing on a beach somewhere with Karalti." I sighed. "Anyway. You want me to go and do the Supply Train subquest by myself without Karalti, and after that, we're cool?"
"Yes. After that, I should be able to look you in the eye without retching." Vash's expression turned distant. "Let me see... oh, that's new. 'Issue Quest'... then I just... Oh. There it is."
Kingdom Come Page 32