“Say his name!” Bardiya cried. “Say the name of your god!”
“Karak,” hundreds of them whimpered and growled, the word seemingly pulled unwillingly from their throats.
Again he slammed his sword into the broken earth. The ground roiled, and air blasted in all directions with the force of the mightiest storm. The beast-men let out cries of fear and confusion as behind them the people of Ker backed away, the soil firm beneath their feet.
“Say his name!” Bardiya roared, the challenge so loud it hurt his own ears. He could hardly believe himself capable of such volume. “Say the name of he who gives you strength!”
“Karak,” they answered, quieter. Even fewer were willing to meet his gaze, yet none dared turn away. Their attention was his. Simple beings, he knew. They were driven by fear, only fear. Fear of Karak, the god who made them. It filled their hearts and minds. But fear was weak, lacking loyalty or faith. Fear he could conquer. Fear he could break.
“Karak’s strength?” Bardiya asked. “Show it to me, you unclean things. Show me his strength!”
They did not move, only tensed their muscles. Despite the blood dripping from his body, despite the exhaustion he felt tickling in the back of his mind, Bardiya grinned.
“Fine,” he said. “Then let me show you mine.”
He rushed them, sword pulled back to swing. The sword’s light flared brilliantly, and the creatures howled. When Bardiya swung in a wide arc, it was as if there was no end to his weapon’s length. Ten times his height it slashed out, cutting the beasts down, severing their bodies with shining white. Pulling the blade back, this time he flipped it around and drove the blade downward, and as it pierced the rocky ground, a wave of chromatic brightness rolled in all directions. The beasts it touched let out cries as their hair burned away, and their skin turned black and rotten. The sound was deafening, and with it came the stampede. All of them, thousands, from the greatest to the smallest, fled north. Bardiya stood there, watching them, chest heaving as he breathed in and out, the glow on his sword slowly fading away.
When the last of them were gone, Bardiya collapsed to his knees, and he had to clutch the hilt of his sword to remain upright. The steel of the pommel was cold against his warm cheek, and he closed his eyes and held it to him as if it were a long lost friend.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Slowly Bardiya rose to his feet and turned to face his countrymen. Where once there had been four hundred, now there was barely half that number. All of them were bloodied and injured, a few near death themselves. Of those he had known best, only Allay Loros remained standing. They stared at him with wide eyes, a mixture of fear and awe that Bardiya would never forget.
“Ki-Nan?” Bardiya called. He turned and staggered through the corpses until he found his friend. Ki-Nan’s left side was mangled, and a gash in his neck was soaked with blood. His lips moved, but Bardiya couldn’t hear the words. The giant lowered himself to his knees and leaned closer to Ki-Nan’s mouth.
“I knew it,” the dying man said in barely a whisper. “I knew . . . you could.”
Bardiya didn’t hesitate. He placed his hands on Ki-Nan’s chest and allowed the healing energy to flow through him. This time, he felt no pain as Ki-Nan’s wounds mended. When it was finished, the man rolled over and coughed.
“Stand,” he told his old friend. “You have a woman and family to find, remember?”
Bardiya helped Ki-Nan to his feet, and together they made their way to their maimed brethren. The giant flexed his arm as he went. The wracking pain of the injury he’d sustained from the bear-man’s jaws was now a dull throb, but he knew the pain would return in time. Still, there was more he had to do before he looked to himself.
Bardiya turned to his friend as he walked. “What is the name of the woman you love?”
“Catherine,” said Ki-Nan.
“After I heal our brothers, leave this place and do not return. I wish never to see your face unless this Catherine is at your side.”
“But what of Karak?” asked Ki-Nan. “If you think I’m going to abandon you while the rest of our people—”
“Enough,” Bardiya said. “Let me work.”
For the next two hours, as the sun reached its highest point and began to descend, Bardiya spent his energy healing the remaining one hundred and eighty-two of his people. By the time it was over, he was exhausted, and his arm pulsed despite the bandage he’d tied about it. He slumped down on his rump, feeling much smaller than the giant he was, and gazed at the sea of corpses, both beast and man, that surrounded him. He then looked back at those he had just healed, who hovered a few feet away. They were torn, overwhelmed by grief yet given hope by his display of strength. But Bardiya knew their purpose was done. After today, they would follow him to the ends of Dezrel. Yet, after today, he would never ask them to.
“Go home,” he told them.
Once more that day, all eyes turned to him.
“What?” asked Allay Loros, tearing his sorrowful gaze from his brother’s corpse.
“I said go home. There is nothing left for you here but death, and that is never what I wanted for you all.”
“But what of Karak?” asked Midoro, a middle-aged man whose white sideburns nearly glowed against his black flesh.
“Karak is a god,” Bardiya said. “There is nothing you can do to him.”
“But I thought we—”
“It matters not what we thought,” said the giant gravely. “Your lives are all that matter. So take off that borrowed armor, toss it to the ground, and go back to Ang. Be with your wives; play with your children; bring joy and laughter into the world once more. You have witnessed enough ugliness for five lifetimes, never mind one.”
“And what will you do?”
The question came from Ki-Nan, and Bardiya could see the pain in his old friend’s face. Ki-Nan might have betrayed him by desiring to be someplace other than the land where he was raised, but in that single look Bardiya understood just how much Ki-Nan still loved him.
“I will continue on,” he said. “This is my burden. Whatever trust you have, put it in me now. Let me carry it alone.”
Ki-Nan gazed at him solemnly.
“I know I’ll never understand what we just saw,” he said, “but even that will never be enough. You will lose, brother.”
Bardiya nodded, his massive body casting an imposing shadow over his remaining mates.
“I know, my friend,” he told him. “I know.”
CHAPTER
37
Patrick sighed. If it wasn’t one thing sapping Ashhur’s strength, it was another.
The first had been the task of sealing the huge gap in Mordeina’s wall after the collapse of Celestia’s tree. That effort had taken the deity almost six hours to complete and was accomplished only with the help of the nine spellcasters who hadn’t been killed during the raid on the settlement. Next the god raised a temporary passage to replace the Wooden Bridge, which lay in ruin—Karak had apparently splintered the structure after his army crossed. After that came Ashhur’s efforts to quell the fires that raged on either side of the road as they marched. The deity had also taken it upon himself to pass along his healing touch to any who might need it—human, Warden, or even horse—as they proceeded at breakneck pace toward the east.
And now this.
“There’s so many,” Tristan whispered, the young soldier’s eyes wide and disbelieving as he stared at the impossible things surrounding them.
Patrick glanced at the boy. He looked as frightened as Patrick felt. “No shit,” he said, trying to break the tension.
No one laughed.
They had come out of the smoke that billowed from the shattered lands bordering the Gods’ Road—beasts of every species imaginable, wolf and elk and hawk and boar to name a few, standing upright as they broadened around the massive convoy. Luckily Ashhur had sensed the beasts’ presence before they’d appeared. The god stopped the march, ordering his eight thousand brave warr
iors to bunch up while the undead he commanded surrounded their ranks, forming a wall of dead flesh. If he hadn’t, the exhausted new army of Paradise would have run smack into Karak’s new pets.
As it was, while the beast-men snarled and howled and snapped their jaws when they first emerged from the smoke, they hadn’t yet attacked. They simply leapt about, their numbers far too many to count, encircling the undead in the same way as the undead encircled the living, rarely coming within ten feet of Ashhur’s deceased sentinels. Occasionally, one of the more wild-looking beasts would venture close to the walking corpses as if testing its strength, but not once had any truly attempted to cross the barrier.
Those trapped in the middle of the undead were in a state of unease just as great, if not greater, than the pacing beasts. The air was filled with the sickly sweet scent of their fear. Patrick felt it as well, a churning deep in the pit of his stomach that made his throat run dry and his shoulders quake. I have it better than most, he thought, and that was the right of it. At least he knew the gods were capable of such feats of alteration, having watched as Ashhur created fiends like these on two separate occasions. For the others, seeing wild beasts that walked like humans must be like living a nightmare.
“Form up!” came a firm voice from Patrick’s right. There he saw the Master Warden Ahaesarus walking among the men, four other Wardens behind him. His face was stern, and he ambled with ease, hands clasped behind his back. At least someone isn’t frightened. Though, perhaps it was only an act to help calm the nerves of his wards.
If it is, it’s a good one.
“What do you think they’re waiting for?” asked Preston Ender.
Patrick looked up at the old soldier. Preston sat atop his horse, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed, hand cupping his thick gray beard as if deep in thought. He didn’t seem afraid in the slightest. That makes two. Patrick thought.
“I don’t know,” he said aloud.
“How many do you think there are?”
Patrick shrugged. “You tell me. I can’t really see from down here.” He had lent his new stallion to a man named Duncan earlier that day, saying that he wanted to jog for a short while to get his blood pumping. A funny suggestion, considering running was extremely painful for Patrick given his uneven legs. It was something he only did when absolutely necessary. But Duncan was a proud man, and he would have taken offense if he’d known that Patrick had only made the offer because Duncan looked like he was ready to pass out from exhaustion. Stupid fucking git, Patrick chided himself, wishing he had that horse now.
Preston leaned forward in his saddle. “Impossible to tell for certain. They keep moving around. But there are certainly lots.”
“That’s helpful,” Ragnar muttered from beside his father.
Preston cuffed his son on the back of the head, and Ragnar rubbed the spot, looking upset. Little Flick laughed at him, which made his brother, Big, laugh as well. Edward chuckled. Soon, the whole of the Turncloaks were guffawing like a pack of hyenas in the midst of frightened lambs. Patrick smiled truly for the first time in quite a long while, feeling the tension break. The other men in close vicinity seemed put off by the display. Warden Barnabus even shushed them, but the Turncloaks didn’t listen.
“You know,” Patrick said after the laughter died down, “your boy has a point. You don’t even have a guess for us?”
“Fine,” said Preston, shaking his head. “Let us say . . . a hundred thousand.”
“A hundred thousand?” said a panicked voice from among the others.
“Only a guess!” the old soldier shouted, and he glowered at Patrick. “You see? That is why it’s not a good idea to make assumptions, especially out loud.”
“Got it,” Patrick replied.
Preston gestured for Patrick to come hither, so Patrick placed a hand on the man’s horse and got up on his toes.
“Though there do seem to be twice, maybe three times as many beasts as there are undead,” he whispered, serious as a lightning strike.
Patrick rolled back flat on his feet, any joviality he felt fleeing him. Ashhur had more than twenty thousand walking corpses at his disposal. The math was demoralizing.
“Shit.”
He spun around, elbowed a man wearing a comically large helm to get him out of the way, and began walking between two columns of frightened people. “Where are you going?” he heard Preston ask.
“I think a god might have a better grasp on numbers than you,” he shouted over his shoulder.
Ashhur lingered just inside the ring of undead, standing beside one of the wagons holding their paltry food stores and fronted by a company of thirty Wardens. The frightened men and women of the convoy kept edging closer to the deity, seeking out his protection, but the Wardens shielded the god while Ashhur remained inexplicably standoffish. Patrick approached the line of Wardens, preparing a tirade for when they would try to stop him from advancing, but oddly their numbers parted as he clanked toward them, allowing him passage. He cocked his head, uncertain. Warden Judah nodded to him on his way by.
He sidled up to the deity, who was standing mere feet behind the wall of undead, gazing out at the legion of beast-men in the same way Tristan had. His flesh was still chalky; his hair seemed to have lost its golden luster; and his normally pristine silver armor now looked a dull gray, but that somehow only made him seem more statuesque and imposing. Patrick cleared his throat, and Ashhur’s softly glowing eyes lowered to him.
“Patrick,” the god said.
“Your Grace,” Patrick replied.
“I have been waiting for you to come to me.”
“You have?”
Ashhur nodded. “Please, climb atop the wagon.”
“Um, all right.”
Patrick did as he was asked, using his powerful arms to haul his bulky frame onto the wagon’s roof, where his sightline was almost even with Ashhur’s. Boards creaked beneath his feet. For a moment he simply stood there, in awe. The multitude of beast-men had seemed daunting when he’d been down below, but up here, able to fully witness the sea of writhing fur that seemed to stretch out for a mile in every direction, the view was entirely different. It wasn’t a daunting task that faced them, but an impossible one.
“Your brother’s been busy,” he said, trying to keep from careening into despair.
“Indeed he has.”
Patrick thought back to the morning Ashhur created the grayhorn-men, pictured the landscape darkening and turning brittle as the life-giving energy was siphoned out of it. “But your Grace,” he said, “to make so many . . . he must have gutted half of Paradise to pull it off . . . ”
Ashhur frowned. “He did no such thing. These beasts are different. Remember when I formed the wolf-men, so long ago? You asked me why I did not make them more intelligent, and I told you it would greatly weaken me. Karak has taken no such precaution. Just as we did when we created humanity, he gave these creatures a piece of himself, each and every one of them. Though they are still close to the beasts they were, in time their intellect will grow, as will their drive. And they will be loyal, entirely, to Karak.”
Patrick gave the deity a queer look. “That makes no sense, your Grace,” he said. “Why go through the trouble of making these beasts smart, if they’re not smart enough to realize when we’re sitting ducks?”
“If they were mere beasts, they would have already attacked,” said Ashhur. “It is that intelligence at work here. Karak wanted them to surround us. They were created to make me choose.”
“Choose? Choose what?”
“That which is more important to me: my need to pursue my brother or the need to keep my children safe.”
Patrick frowned.
“I don’t get it.”
The deity turned to face him. His expression was exhausted and filled with a mixture of anticipation and doubt. It was not a look befitting a god, and it made Patrick nervous.
“I can scatter them if I wish,” Ashhur said, lowering his booming voice and directing it so on
ly Patrick could hear. “They are still base creatures, and whatever intelligence they have, I can still overwhelm with fear. But these . . . things will move deeper into my lands, and when they do, they will hunt my children, without warning, without mercy. Yet if we fight the beasts, our forces will suffer casualties, and it will give Karak ample time to distance himself from our troops.”
“So what will you do?” Patrick asked. His voice sounded small and insignificant in his ears.
The deity inclined his head. “We stay the course,” he said, “and hope my children are intelligent enough to hide within the walls I’ve raised for them when the beasts arrive.”
“What of those who aren’t in Mordeina? There must be thousands of them.”
“Those, we simply pray for.”
“And who does a god pray to?”
Ashhur sighed once more, his glowing eyes aimed at the gray-blotted sky. “Anyone that will listen.” Patrick didn’t think he’d ever heard anything more depressing in all his life.
Ashhur turned away from him. Patrick was left to stand atop the wagon alone, surrounded by frightened humans and Wardens on one side, and countless undead and beast-men on the other. The beasts’ grunts and growls rose in volume, their eyes following the god as he progressed along the line. Patrick could see hatred in their glares, but awe and dread as well. In that way, the creatures were very much like himself.
The deity strode ahead, the line of undead bulging outward as he neared their numbers. The beast-men outside the protective circle howled and snarled, backing away as the walking corpses pressed closer to them and snapping their jaws at Ashhur. The god held out his hand, and his ethereal sword appeared from the mist, massive and glowing.
The sea of decaying flesh parted, and Ashhur walked past them, each step measured, determined. The beast-men snarled, a guttural chorus that caused the very air to quiver. Patrick looked on uneasily as twenty or more of the braver beasts, former wolves and elk, charged the deity, claws outstretched. Ashhur swung his sword with such speed that the blade became a glowing half-circle as it cut through the attacking beast-men. Bodies were carved in two, the beasts’ blood washing over Ashhur. In a matter of moments, all of those that had attacked were dead.
Blood Of Gods (Book 3) Page 45