The Deathless

by Peter Newman

  If he pushed on, it was not that far to Sorn. Perhaps he could outrun it. Given the choice, he’d much rather fight in a cleared space than in the tangle of the trees.

  He had to twist to keep clear of the branches as he came down, their tips shrieking against the inside of his left wing. Also to his left was his pursuer, coming down to land a beat after like a bulky shadow.

  When he leapt, it leapt too. Not as high as him but covering similar ground.

  From the little he had seen of it he could tell it was large, of at least equivalent size to him in his armour. It was also fast, confident, forcing him forward.

  It’s acting like a hunter.

  Suddenly certain that he was being manoeuvred, Vasin changed tactic. This time, when his Sky-legs touched the ground, he turned towards his pursuer, kicking off at an angle so that their next leaps would intersect.

  Mid-air, Lord Rochant dangling from one arm, it was difficult to aim his spear. The creature was already aware of his approach but was unable to do much about it, having already committed itself.

  The soft blue glow extended in front of him, giving shape to a dark carapace and horns curving out from the eyesockets of a massive humanoid skull. He saw five limbs. Two legs that bent back at the knee, shiny, black, powerful, and three arms where there should be four, their shape well known, and in that moment he realized his mistake.

  The Scuttling Corpseman! screamed his brain. I’m fighting the Scuttling Corpseman.

  He thrust the spear for its head but it was faster, grabbing the shaft in one hand while grabbing Vasin with the other two. Locked together now, they landed, the Corpseman rising up on its rear legs.

  Vasin found his feet no longer touched the ground. As they struggled, the point of his spear wavered but moved no closer to its target.

  He’d experienced the disorienting closeness of a thing of the Wild before but never on this scale. The Corpseman smelt of ash and sweet decay, and the sight of it filled Vasin’s vision, leaving little room for thought.

  But he was Deathless, and some part of him was not cowed. Adjusting the grip on the shaft, Vasin pulled the trigger, and the crystal tip of the spear shot forward on a thin cable, cracking the black shell of the Corpseman’s shoulder and burying itself in the meat within.

  The monster gave a reflexive lurch and the next thing Vasin knew he was flying backwards, the spear ripped from his grasp. He struck ground a second later, his back first, then his skull.

  Before he could get up, before sense could fully return, it was after him, scuttling forward with terrifying speed, his spear still dangling from one shoulder. Ten feet from him, it jumped, arms drawn back to strike.

  With nothing else to hand, Vasin raised Lord Rochant like a shield, putting the bound man between his face and the Corpseman’s attack.

  He felt the impact of the Corpseman’s feet planting either side of him and braced for what was coming.

  The moment drew out. Time and again, his heart pounded in his chest, but no attack came. Was it playing with him? Very slowly, he lowered Rochant a fraction, ready to raise him again if need be.

  Nothing lurked in the darkness. Even the sense that radiated from the Corpseman was gone. He was alone, save for his prisoner and the whispering trees. As he slowly picked himself up off the ground, it became clear that the Scuttling Corpseman had spared them both, and for the life of him, Vasin could not understand why. Gone, and my spear with it. Damn. I’ll neve see that again.

  It was still dark when Vasin reached the edge of Sorn. He’d approached from the trees, keeping plenty of cover between him and the Godroad, but all seemed quiet. Were it not for the lack of lanterns, it would be possible to imagine the village was merely resting.

  For the first time he wondered what had happened to its people. He’d heard many had fled to their neighbour, Sagan, and others had gone to Lord Rochant’s castle to beg sanctuary, but he suspected that a large number remained unaccounted for.

  Like most of the Sapphire settlements, Sorn hugged both sides of the Godroad, with the most desirable houses nearest, the less desirable ones in the second row, and the farming land spreading out beyond, high-fenced.

  There was little left of that perimeter now, great chunks of barrier torn down or smashed, leaving several of the posts standing alone, exclamation marks without a point. The soil of the field was gouged with deep lines, as if heavy weights had been taken from the village, dragged to the forest’s edge and beyond.

  He came to a stop in the central street that divided this section of houses and called out: ‘Mother?’

  There was probably a better way to do this, but he couldn’t think of it. An ache ran from shoulder blades to tailbone, and his head still felt fuzzy. He needed to stop and rest.

  ‘Mother?’ he called again.

  A light appeared in one of the houses, the yellow of a torch. Without hesitation, he went to meet it. His mother was waiting in the doorway, and he dropped Rochant in the dirt to scoop her off her feet.

  ‘Sweet one,’ she said, ‘I did not expect you.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘Nothing is as I expect any more, Mother.’

  She tapped on his visor and pointed towards the floor. After he had put her down, she gave Rochant’s body a nudge with her foot. ‘Is this …?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The look she gave Vasin was chilling. ‘Why is he still alive?’

  ‘I can explain—’ he began but she cut him off.

  ‘Not here. Come inside, we’ll find a place for this scum,’ her foot made a second, more forceful contact with Rochant’s body, ‘and then you can tell me everything.’

  He had to duck and move carefully to manoeuvre his wings through the doorway. There was no door to shut behind him, only a few splinters, but his mother stretched a piece of hide across the opening.

  A small fire crackled, barely strong enough to heat the room, a bed of furs laid out next to it. They stashed Rochant next door, his mother tying him to the wall and then attaching a bell to the end of the rope.

  Vasin didn’t feel the cold in his armour but was sure his mother would. ‘Have you lived here, like this, for over a year?’

  She came back into the room and sat by the fire, cupping her hands around its meagre flame. ‘What else did you expect? A palace hidden in the Wild? Servants?’

  He hadn’t really thought about it. He’d assumed she was dead. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re sorry. I don’t have time for sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t have time any more. Do you understand, my sweet one? I don’t have time.’

  Her body was around half a century. Not old but not young either. The golden tattoos that once marked it had been burned off, leaving puffy white scars, the edge of one just visible through a hole in her trouser leg.

  Vasin crouched down so that he could lay a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s not too late.’

  ‘Tell me of your progress.’

  ‘One of Lord Rochant’s descendants eluded your people, a baby. If we can find it, we can end his line.’ How easily I say these things now, and how easily she hears them. Was Mother always this ruthless or has the Wild changed her?

  She clapped her hands together before rubbing them vigorously over the fire. ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘What didn’t? Nothing worked out as you planned. There was interference on the night of the attack. Another Deathless. I’m told it was Lady Pari of House Tanzanite. She killed some of Yi’s team. And then Dil … He’s not the man you thought he was. When things started to unravel he panicked. With a descendant still alive, he didn’t dare kill Rochant, in case he was reborn and could take revenge, so he brought him to my castle.

  ‘The High Lord arrived shortly after. I don’t know how the news reached him so fast. It’s been all I can do to hide Rochant.’

  ‘Lady Pari, you say? That’s a long way for her to go.’ Vasin heard her sigh. ‘He always was able to win people’s hearts.’

  ‘You sound as if you a
dmire him.’

  She turned from the fire, her face a set of pale lines. ‘I do. I knew him before he was Deathless, before he became my brother’s pet. He was a fine man once. Brilliant, in his own way. So yes, I admire him, almost as much as I hate him.’

  ‘I tried to question him, Mother, to find out where the baby is … I couldn’t do it. I thought that maybe you …’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He eased himself down next to her and pulled off his helmet. They both stared at the circular cracks winding out from the back of it.

  I must have hit the ground harder than I realized.

  ‘What happened?’

  He lowered his voice. ‘The Corpseman. We fought on the outskirts. I wasn’t strong enough to take it alone. It had me, Mother, at its mercy, but it didn’t kill me. Why?’ She didn’t answer, and as the fire crackled quietly between them, a nasty thought entered his mind. ‘How did you take its arm, Mother? You had no hunters, no wings, no armour. I don’t understand how you fought it off, let alone maimed it.’

  ‘Do you doubt my integrity? Do you imagine that I traded a piece of my soul for the Corpseman’s arm? Do you think, if I truly was an ally of the Wild, that I would be hiding in this graveyard?’

  He held up his hands. ‘No, please, I just need you to explain it to me.’

  Her eyes went back to the fire. ‘It’s true I didn’t have my armour and I was alone here. Can you imagine what that’s like, to be abandoned by your own family?’ She saw the way he flinched and her tone softened. ‘I wasn’t completely forgotten though. Yi managed to smuggle me a weapon before they cast me out. Though Yadavendra had made a show of breaking my spear, he hadn’t attended to what happened to the remains. When the spectacle was over, she managed to sneak in and steal the head, fashioning the broken end into a crude handle.’

  She produced what looked like a cross between a dagger and a saw. Two feet of sharp crystal, with teeth running down one edge. It looked too big for its hilt, Vasin’s mind expecting it to be mounted on a much grander shaft. Diminished, he thought sadly.

  ‘There wasn’t much of a fight. It was nearly on me by the time I saw it and I knew I couldn’t win, so I ran. I wish I could tell you that I had a clever reason,’ she waved a hand, ‘something about it being territorial and me trying to cross beyond its boundaries, or about moving to fight on better terrain. But the truth is I saw how big it was and I was scared.’

  Vasin hadn’t even considered that she could be scared. The mother of his memories was always in control, a sharp contrast to the hunched figure of the present.

  ‘I didn’t run far,’ she continued. ‘It came down on me with the speed and precision of our greatest hunters. At the last second, I turned to attack. I knew I’d only have one chance and that I had to make it count. I managed to get my blade into one of its armpits, where the shell is thin and flexible. The Corpseman’s own momentum drove it home until I could feel its shell against my knuckles.

  ‘Then it had me by the head with that same arm. I tried to work the knife but most of my vision was covered by its palm and I was in such pain …’

  It seemed to Vasin that her hands rose unconsciously, to press against her temples.

  ‘But that wasn’t the worst of it. You’ve seen its arm. Do you remember the antennae on its knuckles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They were moving, probing between its fingers to run over my scalp. I could feel them … on my skin … and inside … I could feel the Corpseman inside my skull. I … Oh, my sweet one, I don’t have the words. In a way, I’m glad. Perhaps it’s better you not truly know.

  ‘I don’t recall how long we stood there, but at some point I became aware that the pain had stopped. Its presence was still so strong as to be overwhelming but some part of me was able to think again. I couldn’t get its hand from off my head and I was sure that at any moment it would finish me off. Then I realized that my knife was still embedded, my hand pressed against its shell. I began to saw. Carefully at first, and then when it didn’t react, desperately.

  ‘It began to make this high-pitched sound and I knew it was in pain. That spurred me on. It was hard work. I was half-blind and so afraid, but I knew this was my only chance.’ She began making a slight back and forth motion with her hand, as if her body were reliving the moment. ‘When it came free, there was no blood, just liquid that bubbled thickly in the wound. I still remember the way it steamed in the air. Throughout, it was just standing there, making this terrible noise.’ Her shoulders gave a weak shrug. ‘When I realized it wasn’t going to attack, I picked up its arm and ran.’

  Vasin felt his eyes well up with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, before wincing.

  She straightened, whatever expression her face was wearing fading to something stronger, a secret kept by the fire. ‘But no more of that. We have other things to discuss, like what your uncles have been up to, and how your search for allies progresses.’

  ‘House Ruby is preparing to move against Yadavendra, they say that others stand with them. They’ll back me, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Good. What about within House Sapphire?’

  ‘I’ve not had much luck there. I think Yadva could be won over. I can’t speak for Umed.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘My coward of a sibling? He’ll go whichever way seems easiest. Yadavendra scares him, so if you want his support, you’ll have to scare him more.’ She took his arm. ‘Win Yadva over. If you have her and Gada, and outside support, Umed will come over to you.’

  ‘Mother, I don’t know how to say this but I’m not sure about Gada.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s set on winning Yadavendra’s favour. He thinks you’re dead.’

  ‘My Gada has always been cautious, but have faith, sweet one. When you are in position, tell him the truth and he will stand with you.’

  Vasin nodded. It was what he wanted to hear, and yet, for the first time, he found himself questioning his mother’s judgement.

  ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Rest. You need your strength and you need to steel yourself. We are going to face Lord Rochant. It will not be easy.’

  He found himself unable to meet her eye. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Get the answers we seek. One way or another.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Within the tree, they all had places now, little slices of space where they slept and kept their things. ‘Fiya, I’ve been thinking,’ said Chandni from her spot, ‘what you said, that your family were once part of House Sapphire. At first I assumed they were connected to Nidra, but they can’t be, her banishment was only two years ago. You’ve lived here your whole life.’

  The old woman blinked at her. ‘You asking me a question?’

  ‘No. Well, yes. My question is, if you don’t mind me asking, which Deathless did your family serve?’

  ‘The Sapphire High Lord, Samarku.’

  ‘Yadavendra’s predecessor.’ The one who betrayed us to the Wild.

  Fiya’s face soured. ‘Don’t say that name here.’

  ‘My apologies.’ It felt wrong invading Fiya’s privacy, but if they were going to stay, Chandni had to know more. ‘Could you tell me about Samarku?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Sensing the change in atmosphere, Glider lifted her head to see what was wrong. Chandni reached out and stroked her until she settled again.

  Fiya tutted loudly. ‘The faces on you! You’d sour milk. There’s others keep the past better than me. You can talk to them if you want.’

  ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

  ‘Well then, you’d better get your things. We’ve got a long day’s walking ahead of us.’

  Chandni and Varg exchanged another look.

  ‘I told you,’ said Fiya, with the implication that they were either stupid or very, very forgetful, ‘we live separate but we meet up from time to time. Next meet is tomorrow. I don’t normally go but seeing that you’re here I can make an exception.’

&n
bsp; ‘Tomorrow?’ asked Varg.

  ‘Yes. I didn’t say anything because I wanted time to make my mind up about you first.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be telling you if I hadn’t.’ Fiya got up and started to put some of the filthy jars in her bag. ‘Enough talking. You’re worse than Devdan.’ She glared at Chandni as she opened her mouth to ask who Devdan was. ‘Ask him. When we get there, you can ask him all of your questions. He’ll tell you anything you want to know, so long as you don’t mind long answers.’ As the old woman packed her bag, she continued to mutter to herself. ‘Why do people want to talk so much all the time? Tires me out just listening to them.’

  Fiya opened up a jar, scooped some muddy paste from it with her fingers, and started smearing it on her face. She bid Chandni do the same.

  She and Varg had tried using dirt to cover their scent before, but when she brought the jar to her nose, she could tell this was something else. Mixed scents of crushed leaves, a fiery spice and what she hoped was just very pungent dirt. ‘You want me to put this on my face?’

  ‘Your face, hands, neck, and your baby.’

  ‘What about Glider?’

  Glider barked derisively and pressed herself against the trunk.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Fiya snapped.

  Satyendra allowed himself to be coated without complaint. He even shared a few smiles with her when Varg started moaning. ‘I know it smells bad,’ she whispered, dabbing a little on Satyendra’s chin. ‘But if it keeps us safe, I don’t care.’

  Glider seemed to care, however, keeping as much distance between them as the hollow trunk allowed.

  They packed some of the dried fruit and nuts they had left and slipped out of the tree. For someone who didn’t like talking, Fiya talked often, stopping to point out particular flowers or to lecture them on the way they walked. ‘It’s not about being quick,’ she said. ‘It’s about not needing to be. With the right preparations, and a bit of luck, you can move through the trees like a ghost.’