Fierce Gods

by Col Buchanan

  Horns were calling out when Ché finally awakened. Squinting at a harsh stream of light that poured through the inkworks’ broken windows, the young Diplomat cocked his head to listen more closely, hearing the alarms sounding all across the city, frantic and desperate in their calls.

  Nearby, his guard’s chair was empty and the man nowhere in sight. Voices sounded loud and hot-tempered down in the ground floor below.

  Something was happening, he sensed. Something big.

  Ché tried to rise and felt the discomfort flaring across his neck. He groped at his throat and found bandages there, covering a stitched wound that itched more than it was sore.

  The Dreamer had saved him then, miraculously, on the night he had wakened with his throat cut.

  Should have let me go, thought the young Diplomat, and sank back against the furs with a sigh.

  But then he recalled Fanazda’s cruel face looming over him with the bloody knife, and his helplessness as he lay there bleeding out, and Ché growled and threw the furs aside, and struggled awkwardly to rise against the heavy weight of his shackles and chains.

  An empty wine bottle lay next to the guard’s chair. Ché stooped to grab it up, feeling light-headed as he straightened so that he breathed deeply to steady himself. Gripping the bottle by its neck, Ché shuffled for the stairs with cold murder in his eyes.

  *

  Down on the ground floor of the inkworks, people were hurrying back and forth carrying wounded figures between them, trailing blood all over the place, their raised voices echoing throughout the space as they yelled to clear the way. Ché noticed the Rōshun on the far side, hunkered down in conversation, and elsewhere a smattering of Volunteers, Red Guards and other soldiers, looking ragged and bloody and defeated. Civilians were crowded there too amongst the racks of urns at the back. Every face looked white with shock and disbelief.

  Thunder sounded in the air today, like every other day in this damned city, though the cannons rumbled louder than he had yet heard them. Indeed they sounded close by.

  Coya was shuffling across the room with his head down, his sweaty features burning with emotion. But the cripple didn’t even see Ché standing there, and he hurried on towards the stairs not looking at anyone, shaking and gripping a leather tube in his hand.

  With a start Ché spotted the girl Curl coming in through the front entrance, sagging with exhaustion. Other rangers followed behind her. Yet she was the last thing on Ché’s mind just then – it was Fanazda he was after, and when he spotted the lean Rōshun dunking his head in a barrel of water, Ché headed straight for him, smashing the bottle against a passing table so he was left gripping its jagged neck.

  ‘Easy,’ said a voice as someone grabbed Ché by the arm.

  Wild stepped in front of him, almost close enough for their chests to touch. His big moustaches were twitching in humour, as though he did not entirely disapprove of Ché’s choice of action. Still, Wild’s next words said otherwise. ‘Wait!’ said the Rōshun. ‘This isn’t the time for this.’

  ‘Get out of my way, or I’ll kill you too.’

  ‘Listen to me! The northern wall has fallen. They’ve taken half the city already. People are acting crazy enough as it is.’

  ‘I don’t care if the Seventh Horde is headed our way. He’s getting cut. Right now.’

  It was then that Fanazda spotted him standing there in his chains. The man flinched in surprise before he masked his expression with his usual mocking sneer.

  ‘Fanazda!’ Ché roared across the space of the inkworks, causing every head to turn his way.

  ‘Don’t be a fool!’ rasped Wild. ‘You think you stand a chance in those bloody chains?’

  Ché thrust his arms out with the iron links snapping tight between them. ‘Release me, then.’

  ‘Ché . . .’

  ‘If you have any sense of honour at all, Seratian, you’ll take them off me.’

  ‘I’m being lectured on honour by a deceiving low-life Mannian, am I?’

  ‘I was once a Rōshun too, Wild. Now step aside.’

  ‘Fine, have it your way then,’ snapped the man, and he stepped aside, motioning to one of the guards. He told the man to fetch the keys to Ché’s chains, and while they waited Wild called the Rōshun over, who gathered now in interest.

  There were ten of them in all. Ché studied the familiar faces amongst them, including the many younger Rōshun who had been apprentices at the same time as himself. Aléas was one of them, one of their sharpest blades even as a boy, chewing a match and gazing at Ché with all his usual nonchalance.

  But then Fanazda was fast approaching, and Ché straightened with the broken bottle in his grip.

  The man stopped a dozen feet away, confident and relaxed with a hand resting on the hilt of a sheathed knife, tapping away with a forefinger. He wore a tall imperial sky-officer’s hat slanted haphazardly on his dripping head – salvaged, no doubt, from the wreckage of the crashed Mannian skyship on the other side of the vast room. Ché supposed that Fanazda must be pushing forty by now. Yet he knew too that the man was one of the fastest knife fighters Ché had ever known.

  Wild addressed the semi-circle of his peers. ‘Looks like there’s a score to settle, never mind that the city’s falling round our ears.’

  ‘Have we time for this, Wild?’

  ‘Fellow had his throat cut,’ Wild answered, though he was staring hard at Fanazda. ‘We’ll make the time.’

  The guard returned with the keys and Wild snatched them off him, bending to unlock the leg irons first.

  ‘I don’t care what Coya says. Anyone still has a problem with our Mannian companion here, now is the time to settle it. Here’s your chance to see how well a Diplomat fights for his life.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Indeed, thought Ché. What was he damn well telling them here?

  ‘I’ll give you a count of two hundred to do what you like to him. Knives only!’

  The Rōshun stirred, a few smiling. Wild stood and cast aside the leg irons. His eyes were glittering.

  ‘However, after the count of two hundred, if he still lives, you leave the man alone. Anyone lifts a hand towards him after this – well, he forfeits his life. That includes you, Fanazda. Are we agreed?’

  ‘Aye!’

  Ché was scratching at the stitched wound across his neck as Fanazda drew his knife, and started loosening up for the fight to come. He waited for Wild to remove the manacles, but the man leaned in close instead.

  ‘That’s all I’m taking off,’ Wild told him quietly. ‘Your legs are free so you can make a run for it. My advice to you now is that you do precisely that. Get out of here, while you still can. The snipers are gone from the roof. Get outside and lose yourself in the crowds.’

  Over the man’s shoulder, Ché saw that Curl was looking his way across the room. He had no intention of fleeing from this place, not yet.

  ‘Stay out of my way,’ he growled. And it was only then that Ché realized – like some bizarre dream – that he was naked.

  On the hard stone floor of the half-destroyed inkworks they stood facing each other – Ché against Fanazda and four other Rōshun who had stepped forward with knives in their hands, a few younger ones amongst them.

  ‘You want a piece of him?’ shouted Wild, retreating out of the way. ‘Come and take it.’

  For a moment no one moved save for Fanazda. And then the others started spreading out around him.

  ‘One!’ Wild called, standing in a shaft of daylight. ‘Two!’

  Ché’s heart was pounding in his throat. His muscles were stiff from his long imprisonment, his head light from the simple exertion of moving around. He wasn’t going to last long in manacles against five Rōshun. Mere seconds, he reckoned. He would have to make this fast; single out Fanazda, take him out, then fall back into whatever defensive position he could manage.

  Ché pictured it in his mind, rehearsing what was to come; mentally preparing himself for what he needed to do.

/>   ‘Ten,’ shouted Wild. ‘Eleven!’

  ‘You first, Fanazda,’ Ché declared, pointing the broken bottle towards his opponent. ‘You get the first try.’

  He hardly needed to urge the man on, though. Fanazda hopped in lightly on the balls of his feet, the knife held like a natural extension of his hand, thinking this was going to be easy.

  ‘Fifteen. Sixteen!’

  Suddenly Ché crouched low as Fanazda stepped in within his reach. Fanazda feigned to the left, then his knife snaked at him on a whisper of air so fast Ché could barely see it.

  Ché was faster though, even now in his ragged condition. He grabbed the blade in mid-air like he was snatching a river trout, trapping the steel in the grip of his palm even as it cut through the flesh. Fanazda had time to flare his eyes in surprise, before Ché stuck the broken bottle right into his neck, once, twice, three bloody times.

  He hopped back as the dying man crashed to the floor grasping at his wounds.

  ‘Twenty-two! Twenty-three!’

  Ché kept hopping backwards until he was right next to Wild. It was gallant of the man, he thought, not to resist as Ché got behind him and pushed the jagged glass right up against his neck.

  The remaining four Rōshun froze. They looked to each other uncertainly while Fanazda gasped his life away on the floor. Others were rushing to the fallen man’s aid, including Curl with her medico bag.

  ‘Don’t stop on my account,’ Ché prompted Wild, and he pulled the fellow back until Ché felt the wall pressing behind him.

  ‘Thirty. Thirty-one.’

  Over Wild’s shoulder he watched the Rōshuns’ hesitation.

  ‘I’ll do it!’ he shouted, pushing the broken glass harder against his neck. ‘I’ll kill him if you take a step closer.’

  ‘Not so hard, Diplomat,’ Wild muttered from the corner of his mouth. ‘Thirty-five. Thirty-six!’

  Ché couldn’t help but look towards Curl just then. The young woman was gaping at him in horror, her hands bloody.

  What else could I do? he implored with his eyes. The man tried to kill me in my sleep!

  ‘Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three.’

  It was the longest wait of his life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Dreamer

  ‘You’ve heard the worst then, I take it?’

  It was Coya, stamping into the room all hot and blustery. Shard looked up from the wooden crate she was packing, as did her assistant Blame, busily grabbing things from the table surfaces.

  ‘What, that the city is on the verge of being taken?’ Shard drawled in reply, feigning a bravado she did not feel.

  She didn’t think she’d ever seen her friend so stunned before, or so ragged. Coya resembled a version of himself who had been dragged through a hedge then left in a ditch for a day and a night. His usually immaculate clothing was a mess. His eyes were blasted open; like a man who had stared hard into the abyss only to find it glaring back at him.

  ‘You won’t believe what I have here,’ he rasped in a throaty voice. ‘There might still be time yet.’

  He slapped a leather tube on the table before her, then opened it up and pulled out the sheets within. Coya was trembling as he flattened them out for her to see.

  Shard gazed down at a map of the Great Hush, marked by the route of an expedition.

  ‘That isn’t what I think it is, is it?’

  ‘Yes, Shard, the charts to the Isles!’

  For just an instant, she wondered if they were fakes that Coya had put together in some vain hope of saving the city. But one glance at him told her otherwise.

  The breath caught in her throat.

  ‘How in all Erēs did you—’

  ‘Never mind that. What do we do with them right now is the question? Surely we can force the Caliphate into imposing a ceasefire in the siege.’

  Her mind was already racing with the implications. She looked to Coya. He looked back at her, hopeful, excited. Even Blame came over to study the sheets in stunned amazement. She watched him trace a finger down a pencilled coastline all the way to the Isles of Sky.

  ‘Huh,’ he said in wonder. ‘They’re not even islands.’

  Indeed not. It was clear from the maps that the legendary Isles were actually the peaks of mountains.

  The Alhazii Caliphate would agree to almost anything in return for keeping these charts – and therefore the location of the Isles – a secret. If it meant preserving their monopoly, the source of all their power, they could certainly be pushed into helping the democras in this war.

  Skies above, Coya was right. There might even be time to save Bar-Khos if they acted quickly enough. They could take these charts to the Alhazii embassy down by the harbour and show them what they had, before thrashing out the beginnings of a deal with Zanzahar by farcry. With the Caliphate on their side in this war, the Alhazii could force the Mannians into a ceasefire here, under threat of cutting off their black powder.

  ‘Damn it!’ Shard growled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The city is still under a communications blackout. We have no way of reaching the Caliphate.’

  ‘You can’t break through?’

  Shard raised an eyebrow in annoyance. Coya whooshed the air from his lungs, frowning, looking about him in frustration.

  More explosions boomed to the north like waves crashing against the foot of a cliff. The building rattled.

  ‘We need to leave the city,’ she said. ‘Get out from under this blackout.’

  ‘There’s no time, Shard! Can’t you hear them out there? We’re barely holding them back at the barricades as it is.’

  Coya inhaled deeply, then matched her gaze with the steady clarity of his own. ‘Think, damn you. Put that oversized brain of yours to good use for once.’

  ‘I am thinking!’

  ‘Well think harder!’

  Shard bit her lip in frustration. ‘None of this would be a problem if I still had my strength. I could Dream my way through their blackout easily enough, and reach the Caliphate directly.’

  ‘So what do you need? How do we get your strength back in a hurry?’

  ‘We can’t. I’d be doing it already, if there was a way.’

  ‘Shard. Please. There must be something!’

  ‘A miracle, you mean? Some fellow Dreamer here to flood me with vitality again? Or maybe I should go looking for a jar of Royal Milk in my pockets? Maybe I’ll even find a few shots of moondust to blow the breath of the cosmos through my veins?’

  Coya craned closer over his stick with a sudden wily look in his eye.

  ‘Moondust, did you say?’

  Her forehead furrowed in puzzlement as he tapped the tip of his cane against the floor.

  ‘I think I might know where to find the very thing.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Nico

  So incredibly vivid, the inner world of dreams at times. So real that it was hard to tell you were even dreaming at all.

  Yet what was that? What did it suggest, about the mind, about reality itself, when a dream could be as real as anything ever experienced in the waking world, for all that it was only a construct of your imagination?

  What did it mean, if you could be fooled into believing in existence so easily by your own mental workings?

  Maybe the cloudmen of the Way were right in considering all things to be part of the Great Dream. Maybe there really was a Great Dreamer casting all of this into being from its own cosmic musings.

  In his fevered mind, Nico knew that he was dreaming. He knew that he lay on a hard stone floor with a bandage wrapped around his throbbing head. He could even hear the constant background murmur of people in the large space all around him, and the dull concussions of war in the distance. Yet he did not wake himself, preferring to remain where he was in the stirrings of his dreams – high in the mountains of Cheem on a sunny day, where he had trained briefly as a Rōshun apprentice, brought there by the old farlander Ash.

  For a spell he had been
fishing in one of the cool mountain streams with his friend and fellow apprentice Aléas, within sight of the Rōshun monastery, talking and joking.

  But then Nico found himself scrambling up the boulders of the stream alone and breathless with anticipation. Rounding a bend of grassy banks he came to a large pool and stopped with a gasp, seeing the shocking, thrilling gleam of a young woman’s flanks in the water.

  It was Serèse, daughter of the fearsome Alhazii man Baracha – bathing there by herself and turning slowly his way. Before she could see him, Nico threw himself into the long grasses, trying to stifle the excited rasp of his breathing.

  His eyes were magnets locked to the attraction of her bronzed and naked skin. Serèse stood in the water with her fingers trailing across its surface, a twisted lustre of black hair hanging between her perfectly pouting breasts, her thighs shimmering in the reflected sunlight, taut as paper. From her narrow hips her pelvis curved around the soft bulge of her abdomen, pointing to a dab of dark pubic hair that was drip-dripping into rings of spreading motion between her slightly parted legs.

  A groan rattled from the back of his throat like his final breath of life.

  But then Serèse turned her face fully towards him, and Nico saw how it was a bloody ruin. He looked away in horror.

  Behind him men were shouting now. A bonfire was blazing down there in the lower valley, tall and bright. Nico glimpsed the white cloaks of Acolytes flitting between rocks below, headed his way – hunting him, he realized, so that they could burn him alive on the flames of the fire.

  Again he groaned aloud, though this time in dread.

  ‘Nico?’ Serèse enquired with a start, looking up to his position with the sunlight pooling around her in a million flashes of brilliant white, a vivid contrast to the bloody red remains of her face.

  ‘I think he’s dreaming,’ a distant voice was saying.

  And then Nico remembered once again where he really was, and slowly parted his eyelids to see his mother’s concerned and bruised features hovering over him, framed by the red sheen of her hair.

  Such a relief to see her there alive and well after all his worries. It was possibly the best feeling he’d ever had in his life. Though his mother didn’t notice him looking up at her just then, focused instead on the young medico crouched over him inspecting the lump on his head – a pretty girl with a splendid crest of hair, dressed in dark leathers.