by David Hair
He scurried to catch up and grabbed her shoulder. ‘Where are we going? Did you have a vision?’
‘No, I cast a Divination and it told me to find a certain place.’ She took his hand impatiently and pulled him after her.
He stopped dead, asking, ‘What place? Severine, where are we going?’
She put a finger to her lips, hushing him, and murmured, ‘Just follow, Ramon – I’m going to show you.’
They had to use the gnosis to aid their vision as she led him through the darkness into the maze of city alleyways, slipping cautiously past the houses of the Keshi. The city was supposed to be under curfew, but the further into the narrow, twisting lanes they went, the less this was enforced. They had to evade prowling gangs of youths, angry little mobs of Keshi armed with knives and home-made clubs. Once they came upon a murdered legionary, lying face-down in the dust. He had a slit throat and no purse, but Severine didn’t spare him more than a glance.
Finally they came to a tall building near what sounded like a livestock market. Severine looked about and once she was sure they had not been seen, pointed to the crumbling stone stairway built onto the back of the house and leading to a shadowed doorway.
They climbed the steps into the deserted building and Severine led them to the front windows as confidently as if it were her own home. When Ramon tried to question her she turned and fiercely hushed him, until he threw up his hands and nodded his acquiescence, and proceeded to follow her without further comment.
The windows opened out over a square. Severine pulled up her hood and made sure her hair was tucked out of sight before creeping forward, beckoning Ramon after her.
They pressed against each other in the cramped space and peered down onto the dimly lit plaza, where a horse was lying on its side, squealing. It took a moment for them to realise it was in the throes of giving birth. Then something glinted on its head, and Ramon realised that it wasn’t a horse birthing; it was a khurne.
Interesting.
Then he looked at the men standing around the thrashing creature and felt his heart leap into his throat.
The animal was surrounded by the members of Siburnius’ Fist. Delta, the bald branded mage, was standing there too, just a little outside the circle, and he was watching the khurne’s labour with fierce concentration, his eyes gleaming, even in the darkness. The Inquisitors were also watching intently. No one was paying any attention to the shadows – after all, who would dare attack Inquisitors?
It took a while, more than half an hour, before the new foal emerged. Though it was hornless, it was somehow not quite a horse but something other, something alien. It thrashed about, shrieking in fear at the men who surrounded it, terrified by this new world, by the lights and the movement. Its mother watched it, prostrate with exhaustion, unable to do anything as the creature tried to stand on wobbly legs and fell, wrenching its head about.
The bald mage came forward, intoning something in a low voice, speaking too quietly for Ramon and Severine to work out what he was saying. The newborn khurne watched him coming closer and began to panic, but then calmed and lay there transfixed.
Animagery, Ramon guessed. Severine, pressed close up against him, was trembling too, he realised. He linked fingers with her and squeezed.
The man reached out, holding something in his right hand. It was pulsing green and purple, glowing through the flesh, revealing his skeletal digits.
Delta bent down and touched the khurne colt between the eyes with the gem, and all at once it flared, a dazzlingly bright flash that illuminated the square like a great bolt of lightning, bathing all those watching in its putrid colours.
The colt’s head fell onto its chest and it started shaking.
What in Hel’s name—?
Severine squeezed Ramon’s fingers so tightly he began to lose feeling in them, but he didn’t pull away; he needed the comfort of another’s touch as much as she did. They stared as the little construct – is it still a construct if it is actually the born offspring of a construct? – thrashed about weakly, its limbs still shaking as it tried to toss its head. It was still caught in the gnostic glow.
Delta spoke – in fluent Keshi, to Ramon’s great surprise. The mage’s melodious voice carried easily in the otherwise silent night.
Ramon turned to Severine and pulled her head close. As quietly as he could – if they could hear Delta that easily, surely he could hear them? – he whispered, ‘He said “Get up”.’
First the colt twitched at the branded mage’s words, then on awkward limbs, it rose to its feet and stood obediently.
More Keshi spilled from Delta’s lips.
‘“Walk”,’ Ramon translated, grateful for his easy facility with foreign languages; his paterfamilias had always encouraged language lessons, both at Turm Zauberin and since.
The little khurne staggered forward, its legs akimbo.
‘“Walk in a circle, then stamp three times”.’
As they watched breathlessly, the colt did exactly what the mage ordered.
The implications hit them both at once, and Severine closed her eyes and pressed her face into Ramon’s shoulder, stifling a sob – so she didn’t see what happened next: the man standing beside Siburnius turned to the Fist Commandant and shook his hand. As he stepped into the light, Ramon saw a face he knew, though he’d only ever seen it at a distance, on the parade grounds or at the head of the army, leading the march.
Duke Echor Borodium of Argundy.
They crept out, barely daring to breathe, and made their way back through the empty house and into the alley. They’d got barely a block away before Severine began to babble, ‘Tell me I saw wrongly! Tell me they didn’t do that! Tell me it’s not true!’
Ramon shook her gently, trying to quell her growing hysteria. ‘Hush,’ he whispered, stroking her arm, desperate to stop her from falling apart. ‘Listen, Severine, I know, okay? – but we’re not safe here, do you understand? We’ve got to get well away from here.’
Severine shook him off, straightened her back and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m all right,’ she whispered hoarsely, though she sounded anything but all right. ‘Just get me out of here.’
She looked around, trying to orient herself, but clearly her brain couldn’t cope with such detail. He took her hand and led the way back through the city streets to the army camp.
They found a broken-down, deserted stable on the edge of the camp. It had obviously been some kids’ hideout before the army had arrived – the mudbrick walls were covered in obscene Keshi graffiti and date stones littered the ground around the poor excuse for a fire-pit dug into the middle of the floor. They’d become almost inured to the stench of human excrement in camp and barely noticed the piss-soaked walls. The wooden roof beams were long gone, and shattered tiles covered the floor, but they kicked them into a pile to create a clear space on the floor and sank to their haunches facing each other.
‘They’re killing refugees and using their souls to inhabit the khurnes!’ Severine burst out in a frantic whisper, barely able to keep the volume down. She reached for Ramon’s hand. ‘And probably the hulkas too! Ramon, we have to tell the Duke – Seth has to tell the Duke! He can—’
‘Shush.’ He put a hand over her mouth. ‘Listen, Severine, Echor already knows – he was there.’
She froze, and he told her what he’d seen.
She listened, not interrupting, stunned, until he’d finished, shaking her head in utter disbelief. Finally, she stuttered, ‘Then … every khurne … every hulka … they all … every one of these … these creatures … they all contain a human soul …’
‘And the war hounds – the ones Seth described in his father’s legion too, no dou
bt,’ Ramon added. ‘They’re all possessed by the souls of people.’ He swallowed. ‘They must have begun it during the Second Crusade.’ He looked down at their linked fingers. ‘Severine, I may be only a Silacian familioso mage – but I know evil when I see it.’
‘Who can we go to?’ she whispered.
‘When the man at the top is involved? I don’t know. I can’t begin to imagine.’
‘We have to do something.’ Severine’s voice was steeped in fear and doubt.
‘Not here, and not now,’ Ramon started. ‘Maybe when we’re back in Yuros – although if the Inquisition are involved, I cannot think of anyone who’ll want to touch something like this with the end of a lance-pole …’
Severine’s eyes welled up with tears. She lurched over to him, shaking, and clutched him blindly, wrapping herself in his arms as she had in the deserted house. All he could do was try to stifle the sounds of her despair as he held her close to his chest. As she cried out her pain and terror in huge, body-racking shudders, her whole body quivering, he held her, patting her back, feeling completely ineffectual, but trying to give her some kind of comfort.
When at last she stopped crying, she whispered in his ear, ‘I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.’ Then she pulled his head to hers and kissed him desperately.
Something inside him went still in surprise. She was most of the things he despised: a rich Rondian princess who thought she was the centre of the universe; a self-important, condescending snob – or at least, she had been. The trauma of her visions had been stripping that away, layer by layer, revealing the raw, almost skinless soul beneath, with no filters to block out what she was daily confronting. He pitied her that, and he found himself grudgingly admiring the self-belief that made her pugnacious and principled enough to want to resist this evil. She was growing up in front of him.
And she was more than comely, even right now, when she was little more than great bruised eyes and skin and bone held together by sheer desperation …
And taking advantage of that desperation would be the act of a churl.
He pulled away and said quietly, ‘Severine, you don’t want me—’
‘Don’t you tell me what I don’t want,’ she replied, reaching for him again. She started to pull his clothing apart, then gave up on that and lifted her own robes to her waist, spreading her legs and revealing herself to him, even as he surrendered to the inevitable. Despite his concerns about taking advantage of her, his member had gone rigid at the first touch of her silken flesh.
She pushed him flat on the ground, then lowered herself onto him, groaning hungrily in his ear as her warm, damp tightness enclosed him. She rolled him over until she was underneath him and lifted her hips upwards to meet him even as he pulled away, then pushed back inside her. She gasped with pleasure and rose to him again, and he sealed her mouth with his, trying to concentrate on anything but the feel of her, running through the table of affinities in his head and trying to hold off, even for just a few moments more, but then she wrapped her legs around his hips and moaned into his mouth and he came, emptying himself into her in great convulsive gouts while she grunted in unison.
They went still and lay locked around each other, panting softly, for long moments, until she opened her eyes and blinked as if to say, ‘Oh, it’s you.’
They stayed like that, exploring each other’s face in the dim light of the rising moon. Outside, the noises of the camp went on, the singing and drumming, the whickering of the horses and the lowing of the cattle of the wagon-train.
‘Get off, you fool,’ she whispered finally.
He slid out of her, his semen-slick member shrinking. He shifted his weight and put an arm across her chest, pinning her down. ‘Wait,’ he whispered. ‘The night isn’t over yet.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Rukk off. I’ve had what I want.’
He shook his head. ‘But I haven’t – nor have you, not really.’ He put his hand on her mound, and then slid a finger into her, and she quivered, sucking in her breath. So he did it again, and again, until her desire to leave melted away. She moaned softly, a sound like pleased surprise, and started gently rocking her hips to his rhythm, and as she writhed under his ministrations he studied her face, enjoying her agonised, ecstatic expression as she came for him.
Afterwards, she lay looking up at him, her face filled with radiance as if she were made of moonlight. Slowly she propped herself up on one elbow and kissed him, slowly and deeply.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘No one’s ever done that for me before.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he said, rolling onto her and slowly pushing himself into her again as she gazed up at him with a look of exultant surprise.
This time they took it slowly, and made their pleasure last.
*
Pallacios XIII was still the last in the column as they set out for Shaliyah. The narrow desert road forced the legions into single file until the army was strung out over several miles. Mages and legionaries alike wrapped themselves in headscarves and covered every inch of bare skin as they clanked through the desert under the rising heat. The sand reflected and radiated the sun’s fire, sending it throbbing through the poor soldiers who were boiling in their heavy armour.
Each day was identical to the last, a trial and a purging, as if they were being hammered on Kore’s anvil. Peroz vanished behind them as if it had never been, and the desert swallowed them up.
Echor left two of his twenty-one legions behind to garrison Peroz, and sent a further three south to invest a fortress near Vida. Duprey begged to be part of the desert crossing, much to Ramon’s disgust. Storn’s wagons now carried as much opium and coin as they did food and water, and he lived in perpetual fear of exposure.
The windships sent to reconnoître their destination reported that Shaliyah was fortified and garrisoned, and there was no sign that Salim was about to retreat. It looked like someone was at last prepared to stand and fight, and that thought alone lifted the morale of the whole army. After so long on the march, the prospect of taking out their fury on an actual enemy was intoxicating.
Despite this, Ramon was convinced the march was showing every signs of disaster. Two days into the march half the beasts of burden came down with some sickness that rendered them incapable of moving. Investigation revealed poison in the feed, but by then it was too late; that was the price of complacency. When they found the first three watering holes on the route were entirely dry, with nothing left but hard, cracked beds of silt, the men began to talk of curses.
There was one blessing: after Peroz the visions that had been plaguing Severine ceased and she began to sleep through the night – something Ramon knew at first hand as he slept wrapped around her on her narrow cot. She made no attempt to hide their relationship: he was sharing her tent and that was that. It earned her sneering contempt from Renn Bondeau and lewd snickering among the rankers, but she didn’t care – if anything, Ramon was more bothered by their social inequality than she was. He thought perhaps that she simply hated being alone at night – or maybe her overwhelming craving for a child, which was a sure way out of this nightmare, was overpowering all other motivations … but the sleep and lovemaking had restored her colour and removed the dark circles under her eyes, and a restored appetite for food had also started to restore her natural curves.
‘So, you are in love, yar?’ Kip commented one morning as they prepared to march. The sun was barely up, but already the heat lay over the camp like a blanket. Severine was long gone to her post at Duprey’s side, relaying his messages to the other farseers.
Ramon wasn’t really sure how he felt about her. He had come to like her, to enjoy her company, now she wasn’t being so haughty all the time – but they could still end up squabbling over nothing. Was that love? He had no idea. He ignored the question and jabbed a finger towards the southern horizon, where a distant figure mounted on a tall beast – a camel, probably – was watching the camp. ‘Keshi.’
Kip peered ble
arily; he was a little short-sighted. ‘How many?’
‘Just one, amici, but that’s the third morning in a row.’
Seth Korion and Tyron Frand walked past them to the edge of the camp, peering at the lone rider. They had become close, the pair of them. Now they were loudly arguing about the merits of some poet or other – rukking poetry was all they ever seemed to talk about.
Ramon and Kip turned to watch as a troop of Estella cavalry rode out towards the Keshi scout. He waited until they were halfway to him before lazily turning and trotting slowly away, leaving the Estella to return empty-handed, but deeply relieved that they hadn’t been forced to gallop in this heat. The Rondian rankers jeered them, until a tribune stepped in to shut them up.
‘Is Sevvie pregnant yet?’ Kip asked, returning to his original line of questioning. ‘Or should I take a turn?’
Ramon chuckled and said, ‘No. And no! She bled last week – she’s not fertile till the full moon, so all our efforts since that first night have basically been for fun. Getting a bit of practice in, you know?’
‘How is it that the only pretty girl in this whole wertlos camp is with a runt like you?’ Kip teased. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
Ramon tossed the content of his empty cup at him. ‘She’s crazy,’ he said with a laugh. ‘So obviously we’re well matched.’
‘Yar, you said it.’ Kip leant closer. ‘Is she still having her bad dreams?’
‘No, not since Peroz.’
‘Then the Kirkegarde aren’t following us any more. Or they’ve run out of victims.’ He turned away and spat. ‘How many of those poor verdamnt refugees Echor marched back will end up like those we saw? Or inside something?’ He looked about him furtively, then dropped his voice, even though no one was paying them the least bit of attention. ‘I am glad you told me, but I can’t even look at the hulkas now without thinking of how they’re made.’
‘It makes me want to steal Seth Korion’s khurne and set it free,’ Ramon admitted. ‘I’ve never known a worse thing – Pallas have really outdone themselves with this. It’s the evilest thing I’ve ever heard of.’