‘Between us, who has heaped damnation higher?’
The speaker stood immediately behind him, he realized, the way priests do during invocation–the way the Gods were rumoured to do.
‘Is it you, the darling of the mob?’ the voice asked, moving through nowhere. ‘Or me...’
His captor at last strode into the circuit of what could be seen, appraising him like a slaver on walkabout.
‘The devil.’
Shinurta. Eryelk’s eyes balked for scrutinizing him, so septic was his Mark. Never had he gazed upon a soul more soiled for the commission of sorcerous blasphemies. The Grandmaster was every bit as tall as rumoured–as tall, if not taller than the Holca freebooter himself. He wore an inexplicable robe, black silk wrapping him in burial swathes, his shoulders so narrow that Eryelk might almost believe that a boy stood perched upon another beneath his clothing. But the man’s great and ghastly head dispelled the illusion. He was a chanv addict, his skin rinsed of his race’s swart pigment, so that the tepid meat of him could be seen through his skin. His irises gleamed crimson. What hair he had left was white and intermittent, here matted into locks, frayed and greasy, there thinning into bare scalp.
‘Do you know why they celebrate you so?’
Shinurta. He seemed an old acquaintance, so often had Eryelk heard his name mentioned. The rabble of the Worm called him the Moth, and he looked as much, his great head perched on a bundled and stoop-shouldered form. The caste-nobility called him the Secharibi, a name derogatory enough to appease the Collegians, but not so contemptuous as to offend the Schoolmen.
Kwi Shinurta, the Grandmaster of the dreaded Scarlet Spires.
‘Why is it, I wonder? Why does the mob prize the rapacious Hand, yet loathe the rapacious Intellect?’
The Holca barbarian glared down at his horrid captor, still swaying for his earlier exertions. He spat the taste of sour garlic from his mouth.
‘The wise trust what they can fathom,’ he grated in reply.
‘Yes!’ the Grandmaster hissed, smiling not so much in surprise as at the recognition of shared insight. ‘What is easily grasped is easily wielded! This is the why the mob loves your kind, Hewer! Why they populate so many fancies with souls such as yours. Even small boys ‘fathom’ you. You are a knife that fits any hand...’
Shinurta chortled for some obscure reason, caught drool on his thumb. ‘They despise my kind because we fit no hand save our own. Treachery is the very essence of Intellect–they know this the way cattle know wolves. The rapacious Intellect is the treacherous Intellect, one that can at most humour the thought of fatter souls...’
‘And what of it?’ the Holca snarled.
An offended peer.
‘But this is why you’re here, is it not?’
Eryelk dragged his bearded chin across his shoulder. ‘What do you mean?’
Shinurta gazed at him with flat constancy, a look fearless in the mild, bottomless way of those astride death.
‘You are here because you could only be a traitor among your people, your race.’
The most violent Son of Wiglic glared at the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires.
Boma-bom.
A compassionate scowl crept into the mien, a clutching of myriad muscles about the eyes and mouth.
‘Such a curse,’ the Grandmaster said, ‘despising what one is. It eats souls... makes lives thin.’
§
Once, in this thirteenth summer, Stitti found him whetting his knife. ‘War, is it?’ he had asked.
‘They called me pick.’
A laughing huff. ‘They call me pick.’
‘You are a pick!’
‘Earth and muck, boy. And you? What are you?’
‘I’m Holca.’
‘And yet you read. You write. You train in chirong. You even play benjuka!’
‘So then I am a pick!’
‘No. You are more. More than a pick. More than a Holca.’
‘More? Why not less?’
‘Indeed. Why not?’
‘Curse your rat riddles!’
‘Then go, slake your fury, avenge your honour, bring down bloodfeuds upon my House, ruin the poor pick who has made you so much more than your kin!’
These words had slapped him as surely as any palm.
‘I must do something!’
‘Aye,’ the canny slaver said, ‘laugh. Move near them, show them the trim and temper of your soul. Look at them and think, do not say, “Poor... rancid... savages...” They will feel it, but since they cannot hear it, they will be confused. Confusion is identical to terror.’
‘You mean do what you do! Play rat-pick word games–play jnan!’
The slaver shrugged. ‘I merely refuse to squander my time on the stupidity of others.’
‘You do more. You try to make that stupidity work for you!’
Cackle. ‘And this is a bad thing? How do you think a man such as me has won so much respect among the Folk?’ He shook his head the horse-like way he always did when confronted with some absurd point of Holca honour. ‘Make a flag of their idiocy, boy! Laugh to show strength, to communicate their woeful insignificance. Move near to make them bristle, to bodily demonstrate their inferiority, to show how quickly their courage strikes bottom. And think contemptuous thoughts to better embody yo–‘
‘Outland madn–!’
‘For them!’ the diminutive man roared with sudden violence. ‘Not for us! Not! For! Us!’
A moment of mutual breathing.
‘Look, boy. I understand how such words cut–even hack at y–‘
‘What one is,’ Eryelk cried, ‘determines what one must do! Ajencis even says as much!’
But the old slaver was already shaking his head. ‘Philosophers,’ he spat. ‘It’s their curse to confuse their skullpan for the sky–bah! Forget Ajencis. When a Man has a heart such as you, he is never such a fool as when he asks what he is...’
‘No...’
‘Yes. Trust me, boy. The self is known only so far as it is mastered.’
‘No!’
‘No? No? Why am I not surprised.’
‘There is blood, Stitti–blood! Blood always has its say.’
§
The most violent Son of Wiglic jerked and wagged for paroxysms of laughter, a sound that boomed through the black, cracked into ambient echoes across unseen walls. He laughed all the harder for the way Shinurta’s obscene face pursed.
Boma-bom...
‘Earth and muck!’ he roared on a carnivorous grin.
The Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires retreated a step, such was the heat of his animal ferocity. For all the convolutions, all the disfigurations, the sorcerer’s soul remained a mannish one, and could not but genuflect in the presence of such a frame and manner. The barbarian chortled.
‘What is it, rat? Numb to demons yet cowed by the likes of me?’
Boma-boma-boma-boma...
A smile hooked the whitish lips.
‘You are not a thing of proportion,’ Shinurta sneered. ‘You disgust.’
A monster-headed sorcerer–a chanv-addict, no less!–complaining of proportion? Thurror Eryelk howled some more. He had seen Shinurta’s ilk before, men who called themselves wise, simply because they could think ways others could not. But thoughts were like rivers: the more they forked, the more they made swamps of what was sensible ground. Wisdom was naught but cunning made grand, a weapon forged to win empty battles.
‘Who?’ he boomed at the Grandmaster. ‘Who was it I killed at the Third Sun?’
Boma-boma-boma-boma...
The red eyes narrowed.
‘So it’s true. You do not recall what you do, when Gilgaöl seizes your soul.’
‘What was his name?’ Eryelk barked.
‘Nagamezer.’
‘And what is the punishment for killing one such as he?’
Boma-boma-boma-boma...
Another sneer, rendered grotesque for the glutinous film that passed for his skin.
‘Nagamezer..
. lingers,’ he replied, smiling as if at the memory.
Boma-boma-boma-boma...
‘So I relieved you of a rival! Excised what you could not!’
Boma-boma-boma-boma...
The Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires grinned as if at some leprous secret.
‘Rival? Nay. Simply a fool... Nagamezer saw you as another errand to discharge. He earned the judgment you delivered.’
Eryelk glared at the hideous figure.
‘But you must destroy me, nonetheless.’
‘Not at all.’
Boma-boma-boma...
‘Surely you aren’t surprised,’ the putrid face said. ‘Carythusal is ship at sea, barbarian. Eternally so. Sometimes it founders for the riot of waters, and sometimes it founders for the riot of Men. Certes, she houses both a King and a Grandmaster, yet it is the Mob that rules her most, the countless souls packed in her obese belly...’
What was happening?
Boma-bom.
‘And as much as it recoils from the likes me,’ Shinurta continued, ‘the Mob adores the likes of you.’
Earth and muck.
Could it be?
‘My brothers say the Pit has not seen your like in generations... that if I kill you, I would be remembered for nothing else...’
A sudden, translucent sneer seized the face. ‘You! A trifle! A mummer! A Norsirai sell-sword!’
Thurror Eryelk broke into a bull laugh, saying, ‘You would much rather be remembered as a rat without skin?’
Boma-boma-boma...
‘You provoke me?’ the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires spat, as wondrous as outraged.
‘Destroy me! Make yourself immortal!’
‘Ware your words, Holca. The Mob casts away their baubles!’
Boma-boma-boma...
‘Kill meeee!’ the barbarian roared. ‘Lest I kill you!’
A stalk of sorcerous words reared into the chamber...
And with that, the floors seemed to plummet, dissolve into a Pit more profound than any he had mastered.
Boma-boma-boma...[GdM]
The Knife of Many Hands concludes in Grimdark Magazine issue #3, on sale 1 April 2015.
R. Scott Bakker is the author of seven critically acclaimed books, including The Prince of Nothing, a trilogy that Publishers Weekly calls “A work of unforgettable power,” as well as the Aspect-Emperor novels and the acclaimed thriller, Neuropath. He lives in London, Ontario, with his wife, Sharron, and his daughter, Ruby.
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ISBN-10: 0994165927
ISBN-13: 978-0-9941659-2-3
Copyright 2015 Grimdark Magazine
Table of Contents
The Line
Grimdark: Onscreen
An Interview With Kameron Hurley
Review: The Heresy Within by Rob J. Hayes
Drone Strikes for Fun and Profit
Review: The Falcon Throne by Karen Miller
An Interview With Richard K. Morgan
Excerpt: The Dark Defiles
The Knife of Many Hands
Grimdark Magazine Issue #2 Page 8