Fierce Gods

by Col Buchanan

  Coya frowned, chewing his lower lip without realizing it.

  Clearly it was becoming the standard operating method of the Empire, this manipulation of the masses through spectacular acts of violence unleashed amongst them. Helped along by the parroting of the capital’s press, who always ensured that the lies became solidified as official truth.

  In reality, the result from these attacks was that the citizenry of Q’os were in an even fiercer fervour to see the Free Ports defeated in the war. With such personal affronts they could cloak themselves not as aggressors, not as ruthless conquerors, but as distraught and angry victims of foreign barbarity.

  War bonds would go through the roof.

  ‘You look piqued,’ said Lynx. ‘Anything of interest?’

  For a reply Coya rustled the loose papers of the news-sheet noisily, then turned his back on her.

  If only the people of Q’os really knew, he reflected. If only they were aware of the measures their rulers were willing to take in order to manipulate their collective opinions, to control every aspect of their thoughts.

  In the heartland of the Empire, everything that people knew about the contemporary world came from the news-sheets, which were owned and run by wealthy figures within the ruling priesthood of Mann. And for some reason that was forever beyond him, most people naively believed whatever they read on these tissue-thin pieces of paper.

  They truly believed that even now they lived in some form of real democracy, something like the League of the Democras itself. Because they were told they did, because it was self-evident, because they took part in elections in which they were allowed to select between the two primary colours of the Mannian order: between the white purity of the truly devout candidates and the blood-red of the all-out fanatics.

  For a creed which outwardly prided itself on the notions of individuality – at least the individuality to exploit and rule whomever they could – in reality the herd instinct reigned absolute within the lands of Mann, the people corralled within bounds they did not even see. The populations of the heartland lived under a kind of mass delusion in which everything they believed about themselves and the wider world was largely an inverse of the truth, shaped as much by the omission of things as by what was intentionally stated.

  They had been taught that black was white and up was down. That they were the good guys and everyone else was the bad, the envious, the downright crazy.

  It was the work of Nihilis himself, or at least his lasting influence upon the empire he had founded as the First Holy Patriarch of Mann. Nihilis had been a man able to manipulate reality itself by the clever hijacking of language. He had sponsored the first official dictionary of Trade, the common tongue of the Midèrēs, so that he could subtly change the meanings of the words themselves – the conceptual framework of thought itself. Even his chosen name of Nihilis was an intentional inversion of what he truly represented – a belief in nothing, from a man who ended up founding his own faith.

  Coya had read the First Patriarch’s little Book of Truth, and his even more revealing Book of Lies.

  Lies were the very foundation of the Mannians’ world.

  ‘Those explosions are getting closer,’ Lynx remarked, gazing up at the rattling ceiling.

  He ignored her, but her voice piped up once more in his ear. She really did seem to have trouble staying quiet. ‘Who are we waiting for anyway?’

  With pursed lips Coya set the paper down and glared at his new bodyguard, but she only blinked back at him with an innocent frown.

  ‘What?’

  *

  Down on the floor, an uproar rose from the crowd as yet another naked enemy prisoner was led towards the pit in chains.

  People called out in shock at the great size of the man, for he was truly a giant, nine or more feet tall and towering over the armed toughs who escorted him; one of those northern tribesmen used as shock troops by the Empire. He was wearing nothing but a loin cloth, and tattoos covered much of his muscled body. A stained bandage was wrapped over the long and matted hair of his head.

  Passon had said these prisoners had been captured while assaulting the wall. It was hard to imagine anyone bringing this particular one down.

  ‘Impressive fellow,’ noted Lynx, and Coya saw that her mouth was partly hanging open as she marvelled at the hulking form of the man.

  The giant remained composed as they escorted him through the gamblers and drunks, thieves and street girls in heavy chains, with the tips of spears prodding at his back. As they led him to his fate he did not struggle or resist, but rather stepped to the rim with his head held high. While they freed him from his chains, the giant took in the circle of gaping faces around the rim with a slow and steady scrutiny, rubbing at his chafed wrists. Someone handed him a studded gauntlet, and he tugged it on.

  The man was breathing fast, his chest rising and falling. He looked down into the pit at the slin quivering in anticipation.

  With a snarl he raised both arms then leapt down upon the beast.

  ‘Crazy bastard too,’ breathed Lynx heavily.

  Screaming, the crowd pressed in around the rim for a better look. Even Coya leaned forwards over the pages of his news-sheet.

  Through the haze of hazii smoke he could see the two figures locked in struggle, the smaller slin easily holding back the arms of the giant. Most of the crowd seemed to be waving the enemy northerner on, though it was the slin that Coya found himself rooting for. As monstrous in appearance as it might be, this creature had been captured in its far homeland and brought all the way here against its will, only to be thrust into the calloused midst of a war in which it had no part.

  Give it a swift death or give it freedom, Coya thought. But not this.

  A figure climbing the crowded tiers below caught his eye, and Coya sat back, folding the news-sheets closed on his lap.

  ‘Easy,’ he said to his bodyguard, who was rising at the sight of Vay Javalli stepping up through the spectators towards him, as people hurriedly cleared out of the way.

  ‘Lynx,’ he said to his bodyguard. ‘Give us some space here.’

  For a moment he watched the bodyguard’s lithe form stepping away in her skintight suit, graceful as a cat, and then with a huff Vay Javalli sat her own lean body next to his, clad in a quilted Tuchoni longcoat buttoned to her throat.

  ‘So what are they up to in Q’os these days?’ asked the swarthy Tuchoni woman, taking a glance at the paper in his hand.

  ‘Only the usual smoke and mirrors,’ grumbled Coya, slapping the pages down beside him to give her his full attention.

  Coya met the brilliant shock of Vay Javalli’s black eyes, overshadowed by the vertical crest of hair on an otherwise shaven head. A wise and knowing humour pinched her middle-aged features, which were leathery and wind-kissed from exposure to the elements. Her ears were pierced through with many silver hoops.

  ‘You don’t look yourself at all, my dear Coya,’ said the leader of the Javalli criminal clan, for she knew him well enough from their years of acquaintance. ‘Where’s Marsh then?’ she asked with a glance to his bodyguard sitting beyond earshot, who was gazing back intently.

  Coya could only shake his head and purse his lips until the realization came to her.

  ‘No! I thought Marsh would outrun us all.’

  Down on the floor the crowds yelled their encouragement. The northern tribesman had the slin up against the wall of the pit now, and was pounding away at the creature with a studded fist, yelling out with every strike.

  ‘And your wife,’ enquired Vay in an effort to change the subject. ‘I hope she’s well?’

  But his infirm wife was the very last thing he wished to be talking about just then either.

  Coya inhaled and made a grimace of a smile. He reached out a hand to settle it on her trousered knee, and gave her a delicate pat; like he did sometimes with his mother.

  ‘Good to see you in good health, Vay. But it’s late, and I’m tired. You wanted to speak with me. So let’s be he
aring it.’

  ‘Very well. This might be something you’re already expecting, or it might not be. Either way, I thought it prudent you should know, soon as possible.’

  ‘Know what, Vay?’

  ‘That we have a Visitor in the city right now.’

  He swayed back, checking to see if anyone was listening.

  ‘A Visitor?’ he echoed in a hush. ‘Here, in Bar-Khos?’

  ‘Just arrived by boat, she claims. She came to the Broken Wheel herself to speak with me. Told me she’d been asking around, and had heard what line of business I’m in. Seemed to believe I would have the connections she needed.’

  ‘Connections?’

  ‘She wants to sell seven lirs of pure moondust at the going rate.’

  Coya blinked in surprise. ‘That sounds like rather a lot.’

  ‘It is. Enough to make a person wealthy as any king. Moondust is rarer than Royal Milk. That pet Dreamer of yours will tell you as much. Seems this Fallen One intends to use it as her stake here, just like the ones before her.’

  This was news of the most surprising kind.

  He knew the secret of moondust. It was a secret known to members of the Few, along with a smattering of others around the Midèrēs – that the name of the substance was more than mere whimsy, it really did come from one of the moons. A moon that was populated just like Erēs. Those who brought it here were known as Visitors, or Fallen Ones – that untold number of people who had tumbled from the sky over the centuries, mostly hermit monks seeking isolation, and explorers, and the downright crazy, having travelled from the moon of Sholos on a one-way trip.

  The Visitors usually hid their true identities, but not always. Some had made themselves known to the Few over the years, though without explaining how they knew of the Few’s existence, or so much else about their world. It was even claimed that his own distant ancestor, Zeziké, was a Visitor himself. Which, if true, meant that Coya’s blood was partly from another world.

  ‘Why here?’ said Coya. ‘Why come to Bar-Khos in the middle of a siege?’

  ‘She did seem somewhat harried. As though she was asking herself the very same question.’

  ‘Describe her to me.’

  ‘Tall. Black-skinned like a farlander. Called herself Ocean. My people thought of jacking her for the moondust but I stopped them, for their own sake. She looked like she could handle them with a snap of her finger.’

  Vay Javalli tilted her head as though dislodging one last titbit of information. ‘Altogether, she had a very strange manner about her.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Like this was truly the first time she had ever seen anything. That was how I realized she was for real.’

  Coya ruminated over the grip of his cane, not liking what he heard.

  ‘We must bring this woman into the fold,’ he decided. ‘You have a means of contacting this person?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve agreed to act as her middleman for the moondust, so she intends to return here to discuss our business tomorrow. Perhaps you could be there too, say noon?’

  Coya chewed it over.

  ‘It’s almost dawn now,’ he said. ‘I should head back and get some sleep first. You sure she will turn up?’

  ‘If she wants to leave this city she will. I’m arranging passage for her on a fast skud. One of our regular smugglers.’

  ‘Where does she wish to go?’

  ‘Anywhere in the Free Ports but here.’

  Lanterns shook over their heads from explosions growing more distant now. Vay Javalli stood and flexed her back with a rustle of beads. Down below, a chorus of jeers drew their attention back to the fight, and Coya saw that the slin had somehow knocked the massive tribesman off his feet, so that he lay sprawled across half the earthen floor shaking the daze from his head. A sheen of blood was visible on his pained white features, and then the slin was upon him, tearing away with a frenzy.

  ‘Vay, how in Erēs did you get your hands on a living slin?’

  In reply she gave her tight-lipped smile. A Tuchoni with a bad habit for sugar, she did not like to display her rotten teeth to anyone.

  ‘When you’re the number-one supplier of dross in the city, you gain contacts in the most surprising places.’

  Coya never liked to be reminded of the main business she was in, the smuggling of dross to the southern lands of the Empire. Dross could be a particularly addictive substance. Though he could hardly complain about it either. In reality, given that much of the known world’s supplies of dross and other narcotics were secretly controlled by the Empire’s intelligence agency, the Elash, her work was as much about covert intelligence gathering as anything else.

  They clasped hands firmly – scarred palm against scarred palm – and as always in such instances, in a flash of vision, Coya was reminded of his initiation into the Few. How he had stood cold and naked in a total black nothingness with the Truth Stone heavy in his hand, while a voice asked him question after question about his deepest self; how every truthful answer had caused the Stone to grow ever hotter in his clenched fist, only lies seeming to cool it down. Until Coya had cried out from the pain of it, like holding a red hot coal in his grasp, burning so fiercely from the shaking truth of his words that it would leave an indelible scar upon his palm, an impression of a coiling spiral: the divine geometry of the Golden Spiral. A reminder that the truth was always more painful to bear than deceit; that truth required courage and faith.

  ‘To the spirit of the thing,’ she told him sincerely.

  ‘To the spirit,’ he intoned, and both scars on their hands flared like flames caught in their grasp, confirming their continuing fidelity to the cause.

  Vay turned to go, then turned back at the last moment with a finger outstretched in query.

  ‘One other thing,’ she remembered, just as the crowd’s passionate yells rose around her.

  The tribesman held the slin aloft above his head, moving fast for all the great size of him. Blood sheeted from his head and body. With a mighty heave he launched the creature head first into the wall, where it tumbled to the ground visibly broken.

  In victory the tribesman threw his bloody arms aloft, inciting a jubilant roar from the onlookers that nearly lifted the beams from the ceiling in their momentary celebration of the enemy.

  Vay shook her head in amazement.

  ‘Those prisoners we’ve been tossing into the pit have been saying some strange things,’ she shouted over the din, leaning closer. ‘They say their people are getting ready for something big out there on the plain. Lots of explosives being brought into the heart of their encampment for no good reason. Mines being laid all over the place. Something about getting ready for a Khosian attack. What’s wrong, you look pale? Have you heard of an attack being planned?’

  Coya nodded stiffly. ‘The Lord Protector just tried a little sortie against the enemy encampment. Now he fancies trying for an even bigger one. I don’t think his people can talk him out of it.’

  ‘What can it mean?’

  ‘Only one thing,’ Coya realized aloud, snatching up his cane as he rose to his feet. So much for getting back to his bed. At the very least he had to warn him, had to tell Creed what he suspected.

  ‘They know the general is planning another attack. And they’re setting a trap for him.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Nico

  ‘Now I recall why it’s called the Bitter River,’ came a woman’s voice through the darkness. ‘The water tastes awful.’

  ‘Like rusty iron,’ agreed another.

  ‘Like blood!’

  It was certainly an apt name for the river, Nico reflected. He too had forgotten how bitter its waters were to the tongue, though that didn’t stop him from swallowing down a mouthful every now and then to quench his thirst. He knew from his time living in the city – which the river eventually passed through on its way to the sea – that it was harmless enough to drink, even good for certain ailments.

  ‘Never mind the taste,�
� said Kes. ‘It’s freezing! I don’t think I can survive another hour in this water.’

  The sound of her voice in the gloom caused Nico’s throat to grow tighter. He was finding it hard to think of anything but their recent love-making in the tree, reliving the sensations of his body against her own. But Kes was right. Unlike the mighty Chilos not far to the east of here, warmed all year round by the steamy, bubbling lake that was its source, the Bitter River ran off the snowy watershed of the Breaks instead. Its temperature was cold enough to put off anyone from putting more than a toe into it, for fear of dying from exposure.

  Yet here they were in the freezing winter’s night, the whole group submerged in the river while they clung grimly to the boughs of a floating fir tree, their teeth chattering and bodies shaking hard, trying not to curse out from the pain of their ordeal.

  Just to step into these waters fully had been a collective trial of shock and willpower. It was so cold that the breath was instantly robbed from the body along with its heat, a kind of all-embracing suffocation that made it hard not to whoosh noisily for every inhalation of air, and harder still to stop hyperventilating once you got properly started.

  To survive, or at least to increase their slim chances of survival, the group had smeared themselves with layers of animal fat beneath their clothing, which they’d gained from the blubbery remains of a slain river marmuk, helpfully left by the Contrarè next to the river bank. But it hardly seemed enough now – hardly seemed like anything at all, truth be told – against the penetrating bite of the water.

  It would be a miracle if they didn’t all freeze to death tonight.

  The damned rain was hardly helping either. For all that it provided cover it was also making them wetter and colder than they needed to be, big fat drops crashing from the clouds onto their bare heads and across the thrashing surface of the river, splashing water into their faces and eyes. At least the noise of the rain seemed to have lulled the child to sleep at last. The infant lay in his swaddling, perched clear of the water across a few branches of the tree, and sheltered beneath a few more, whimpering occasionally in his sleep. In the darkness, Chira was still clucking her tongue softly by his side, comforting herself as much as the sleeping child.