Journey into the Void

by Margaret Weis

  Klendist cursed roundly. They’d lost the chance for a sneak attack. Still, he figured, he and his raiding party were mounted, while the taan were on foot. They would be on the taan before they had time to form an organized resistance.

  “Jonson!” he yelled, when all had recovered. “Take half the men, attack that big camp over there. I’ll deal with this one. We’ll meet back here!”

  He galloped forward.

  “The taan will have to honor us now,” Raven said in satisfaction as they dragged their prisoners to Dag-ruk’s camp.

  “Either that or they will kill us,” said Dur-zor. “It will be worth it, though.”

  “They won’t kill you,” said Raven. “They can’t. We bested them in a fair fight. Well, an almost fair fight.”

  “We are slaves, Raven,” Dur-zor reminded him. “And to them we will always be slaves—slaves who dared raise their hands against their masters. For that, we must die.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you,” Raven said, coming to a stop. “Do they all think this? Do all the half-taan believe the taan will kill them for this?”

  “Oh, yes, Raven,” said Dur-zor complacently.

  He looked back at the half-taan, laughing and chattering happily over their victory.

  “And they did this anyway?” he asked.

  “As I said, it will be worth it.”

  “I won’t let them—” Raven began angrily.

  An unearthly sound split the air. The sound came from far away, echoing among the hills—howls rising from many taan throats.

  The half-taan froze, listening. The taan prisoners ceased their cursing and threats. They twisted in their bonds, trying desperately to see what was happening.

  “What is it?” Raven demanded. He’d never heard anything like this terrible sound.

  “An attack!” Dur-zor gasped.

  The ground shook beneath their feet. Raven had been in countless battles against mounted troops, and he recognized the pounding made by horses’ hooves. A force—a large force—of mounted men was riding down on them.

  The taan do not ride horses. Taan have no use for horses. Taan warriors fight best on the ground, even against a mounted foe. The hoofbeats came closer. Shouts and cries carried on the still night air. Raven could hear other shouts, as well, and recognized the voices—humans.

  His heart lurched in his chest. His eyes stung with sudden tears. He could not remember the last time he’d heard a human voice.

  This is salvation, he realized. This is rescue. This is a return to my homeland, my people.

  “They are human, Raven,” she said, her face pale. She knew him so well, knew what he was thinking.

  The half-taan looked to him, wondering what to do. The taan prisoners looked at him, crying for him to set them free.

  “Cut them loose,” Raven ordered, drawing his knife.

  The taan were up and running almost before the half-taan had finished slicing through the tough sinews. As they ran off, the taan stopped, looked back.

  “Bgrt, taan-helarrs,” he said harshly, then he turned and dashed off toward the sound of battle.

  Dur-zor’s eyes glimmered with tears.

  “You will stay, Raven?” she asked.

  “I will stay. You are my people,” said Raven. “What did the taan say?”

  “He said, ‘Join us in glory, warriors,’” said Dur-zor proudly.

  Klendist galloped into the taan camp—Dag-ruk’s camp, though he couldn’t know that. Although he had lived in proximity to the taan, he knew nothing about them. He expected to find in the taan what he would find in humans caught in the same situation—panic, confusion, maybe some resistance, but nothing that he and his men couldn’t handle. They had the advantage. They were mounted, they had superior weapons. They were humans, not beasts.

  Klendist rode his horse over taan tents, smashing them, trampling them. He had hoped to catch taan slumbering in those tents, taan who would be crushed beneath his horse’s hooves. He was disappointed. The tents were empty.

  He cheered up when he saw a taan with a young child in her arms go running out of another tent. Klendist dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and caught up with her in a bound. He sliced off her head and the child’s in a single stroke. He laughed heartily. Waving his bloodied sword, he looked back to see if his men had seen this neat trick.

  They cheered and laughed. Klendist galloped on toward the center of the camp, where the taan warriors would gather to protect their chief.

  One of the men rode up beside him.

  “The boys want to know what we do if we find any human women?” the man shouted.

  “Kill them!” Klendist shouted back. “They’ve got taan seed growing in their bellies. We’ll be doing them a favor.”

  The man nodded and rode back to spread the word.

  The half-moon had set by then, but they had full advantage of the lambent light of the stars. The taan stood together in a single mass. The light gleamed here and there on a weapon. There were children among them.

  Klendist felt the first twinge of unease.

  These taan were not warriors. Warriors would not be saddled with the care of children. Much as Klendist despised the taan, he knew that the warriors would not have run off to leave their children to die. Where, then, were they?

  A shriek was the answer to his question. The warriors were behind him, all around him. They came running through the darkness, running in for the kill. He’d led his men straight into an ambush.

  Taan warriors came out of nowhere, their mouths wide-open in slavering grins, screaming and howling like accursed souls being dragged into the Void.

  Klendist turned his horse’s head, yanking the beast about so fast that it nearly foundered. He turned just in time to see a taan catch one of his men. Reaching up, the taan caught hold of the mounted man from behind, dragged him off his horse. The taan drove his spear through the writhing body, then set off on foot in pursuit of another rider.

  Klendist was not one to fight against overwhelming odds for the sake of honor or heroics. He knew when he was whipped. Wielding his sword with savage efficiency, he fought back the taan who had him surrounded.

  “Retreat!” he shouted, striking savagely to the right and left. “Retreat!”

  He bent over his horse’s neck and dug his heels into the brute’s flanks. The horse, already maddened by the shrieks and the smell of blood, charged into the midst of the taan, bowling them over and trampling them beneath its hooves.

  Klendist’s only thought was to escape the carnage. He was surrounded by tents, surrounded by taan. One of his men cried out to him for orders, but he ignored him. It was every man for himself now.

  A few of his comrades caught up with him, and they banded together, trying to fight their way out of the ring of death, slashing at taan faces that loomed, shrieking, out of the darkness.

  Klendist saw a way out. He headed for it and at last he was free of the camp, out on open ground. He had maybe ten men with him, and most of them were wounded. He alone was unscathed.

  He glanced back toward the taan camp and was relieved to see that the taan were not coming after them. They too busy with their killing. He could hear screams, moans, and the pleas of his men not to be left behind.

  He knew very well what would happen to those who remained in taan hands. He’d seen for himself how the taan treated their prisoners. He’d seen living men disemboweled, seen their arms and legs hacked off.

  Klendist grunted and rode on. He wasn’t about to go back into that fiends’ nest. Not with ten men, some of whom were riding dead men, by the looks of them. He galloped on, heading for the meeting place. Perhaps the other half of his force had experienced better luck. He’d join up with them, regroup, come back, and finish off these slimy gigs.

  “Captain! Look!” one of his men called.

  Klendist turned in the saddle, looked to the north. An orange glow lit the grasslands, coming from the direction of the other taan camp. Klendist smiled grimly and urg
ed his horse toward the fire, hoping to at least arrive in time to slit a few taan bellies before they were all killed. One man, riding beside him, slid off his horse, fell to the ground, too weak to remain in the saddle. Klendist ignored him, rode on.

  He was close enough to see black shapes milling about the dancing flames when a figure loomed at him of the darkness. Klendist raised his sword and bore down on the foe.

  “Captain! Hold! It’s Jonson!”

  Klendist arrested his killing stroke, yanked hard on the horse’s reins to pull it up.

  “Looks like you’ve had some fun!” he shouted. Then he was close enough to see Jonson’s face.

  “Fun, sir!” Jonson echoed in a hollow voice. He was deathly pale, his eyes wide and starting out of their sockets. He was covered in blood, and half the hair had been singed off his head.

  “We rode into a hornets’ nest! Or worse—a nest of Void sorcerers! I’ve never seen the like, Captain, and I hope to the gods I never see anything like it again. Dick Martle was riding next to me and one of those black-robed fiends came out and pointed at him and he…he…”

  The man choked, leaned over his horse to vomit.

  “Well?” said Klendist grimly.

  “He turned into a living corpse. Right there in the saddle. They sucked the life out of him, all the juice, the flesh. I saw his skull grinning at me, and then he was nothing but a pile of ashes…Gods, sir! It was horrible!” Jonson retched again.

  “But who set the fires? Didn’t you?”

  “They set them,” said Jonson with a shudder. “Who would have thought the gigs’d set fire to their own camp? Gives ’em light to kill by, I guess. You hear those screams, sir?”

  Klendist was trying hard not to. “I hear them.”

  “They’re tossing our men into the blaze. Alive. Roasting ’em like pigs.”

  “How many came out with you?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” said Jonson. “I wanted only one thing and that was to get out of that Void pit! I didn’t wait around to see what anyone else was going to do.”

  More of his men were arriving, riding up singly or in groups of twos or threes. Some who’d lost their horses rode double with their comrades. Klendist made a swift count of about thirty. Thirty out of two hundred. He pondered what to do.

  He did not like to be beaten. He was tempted to ride back into the taan camp with his troop and gain his revenge. Some of the men had their blood up, were urging him to do just that. Others sat trembling in the saddle, shaken and stunned, their faces blanched from the horrors they’d witnessed.

  Better to cut my losses, he decided. Shakur will be angry enough at it is. At least, I still have men enough left to deal with the Dominion Lords—

  A horse whinnied, someone shouted, but it was too late. Klendist thought for a wild moment that the night itself had taken on form and shape, for the darkness came alive. Strong hands grabbed hold of him and yanked him from his saddle.

  Klendist landed heavily on his rump. He’d dropped his sword, but he had his fists and his wits. He knew that to lie for long on the ground was to lie forever in his grave, and he scrambled to his feet. He lashed out with his fist at the first face that came near, felt the satisfying crunch of bone.

  Death was all around him. He saw Jonson fall, his skull crushed. Something struck him on the head. The blow dazed him, and he reeled backward, stumbled into strong arms.

  “I can save you,” said a voice in his ear, a human voice, speaking Elderspeak. “But you’ll have to keep your mouth shut and do as I say.”

  Klendist gave a groggy nod.

  An arm strong as a steel band wrapped around his chest. He felt the prick of a knife at his throat and any thought of struggling against his captor vanished.

  “This one is mine!” said the human in harsh tones. “He is my prize.”

  Klendist saw that his attackers were half-taan, the accursed offspring of human and taan. He was surrounded by these monstrosities, with their half-human, half-beast faces and their half-human voices. They regarded him with wide grins of glee. Their hands were dark with blood.

  “I killed one, Raven!” said a half-taan in excitement. She wore hardly any clothes. Her breasts were bare and smeared over with mud. “I killed him as you taught me.”

  “All are dead, Raven,” said another. “As you ordered.”

  “You did well,” said the human, who had hold of Klendist. “Drag their bodies back to our camp. We showed the taan we could outwit them. We will now show the taan we are warriors!”

  The half-taan gave a cheer and shook their weapons in the air.

  “Still, it would have been better if we had taken slaves,” said one of the half-taan. “The taan would have even more respect for us.”

  “No!” said the human sharply, his voice rasping in Klendist’s ear. “There will be no slaves in our camp. Your own mothers were slaves. You were slaves. You were tortured, tormented. Would you do that to another person? If so, you can leave my tribe. Clear out. I don’t want you.”

  The half-taan hung their heads.

  “We are sorry, Raven,” said a female, chastened. “We did not think. Of course, you are right.”

  “We make clean kills,” Raven said sternly. “These men were armed, they came to fight and to die. We came to fight and to die. That is war. Death and glory are the fate of the warrior, not slavery. And it is not a warrior’s fate for his flesh to fill our bellies. Once we have shown the bodies to the taan, I will teach you how to build a burial mound for these men and how to honor the dead.”

  The half-taan were bewildered by this concept. Several scratched their heads, but no one protested.

  “What about the one you have, Raven?” asked the female. “What will you do with him?”

  “He is their leader, their nizam, Dur-zor. I will question him.”

  The half-taan chuckled. They thought they knew what was coming for the human.

  “Could we watch?” asked one eagerly.

  “No. He will talk more freely if it is just the two of us.”

  The half-taan were disappointed, but the human added, by way of distraction, “You can keep the armor and the weapons you captured. Those are the honorable prizes of a warrior. And we will keep the horses. I’ll teach you how to ride. No more walking. Walking,” he added with a grin, “is for taan. Now they will eat our dust!”

  The half-taan cheered again, but the cheering was subdued. They were happy about the armor, but they glanced askance at the horses, clearly not enthusiastic about learning to ride the tall, formidable beasts.

  The human gave Klendist into the keeping of the half-taan he had called Dur-zor, a female. Klendist had the disgusting impression, from the way she looked at him and talked to him that this half-taan was the human’s mate. He wasn’t surprised. This Raven was a Trevinici, humans who were little better than savages themselves.

  The half-taan bound Klendist expertly, hand and foot, then left him lying on his belly on the ground. From that vantage point, Klendist watched the half-taan fling the bodies of his men over the saddles of the horses and lash them securely in place. This done, Raven showed the half-taan how to lead the horses by their reins, showed them how to calm a spooked horse by rubbing its nose and speaking gently to it. The half-taan had a way with horses, seemingly, for the animals responded well to them. The half-taan began to grow more at ease.

  “Will I stay with you, Raven?” Dur-zor asked.

  “No, go back to camp. See that my orders are carried out,” said Raven. “You are nizam in my absence.”

  A shadow of fear fell across her face. She looked from him to Klendist, lying on the ground.

  “Leave me that horse,” said Raven, pointing. “That’s your horse, isn’t it?” he said to Klendist, who gave a nod.

  “Raven…” said Dur-zor uneasily. She touched him gently on the arm. “Raven, will you…” She couldn’t go on. Her courage failed her.

  He put his hand on her ugly face, leaned down, and kissed her on the mou
th. Klendist thought he was going to be sick to his stomach.

  “Go back, Dur-zor,” Raven said. “Watch over our people.”

  “Yes, Raven,” she replied quietly.

  Rounding up the others, she led them away. She looked back once, as she did so. Raven smiled at her, and she smiled tentatively back. Then she faced forward, continued walking. Her people came behind her, leading the horses loaded with their gruesome cargo.

  Raven watched them until they were out of sight, never spared a glance for his prisoner. Klendist had lots of time to think, and he finally had it all figured out.

  “You’re a free man now, Trevinici,” said Klendist. “Cut these ropes, and we’ll get out of here before the gigs ever miss you. My horse can carry us both, at least back to my camp.”

  The sky to the east was gray with the first faint light of the coming dawn. Raven squatted down beside Klendist, looked him in the face.

  “That wasn’t a ruse,” Raven said. “I belong with them. I don’t expect you to understand.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure I understand myself. But that is the way it is.”

  Klendist scowled, struggled in his bonds. “I might have known. You’re a damn savage. No better than these gigs.”

  “And you, by your stink, are a Vinnengaelean mercenary,” said Raven. “Who hired you to come attack us? Who knows we’re here? The Vinnengaelean army? Some local lord? Who?”

  “The gigs are damned Void-spawn!” Klendist growled. “No one paid me to attack them. I had to live among them myself for months. I never turned into one of them, though. I never turned traitor to my race! It’s a human’s duty to rid Loerem of the monsters. It’s the duty of every human.” He glared at Raven.

  “I’d say you failed in your duty,” said Raven, grinning. “So you claim you thought up this raid yourself? You are either a great fool or a cunning liar.” Raven gazed intently at Klendist.

  “I believe you,” Raven said at last. “Which means you are a great fool.”

  “Cut me loose!” Klendist swore. “I’ll fight you with my bare hands.”