My dark thoughts seem to leap across to Sunasuka. Or perhaps it is her melancholy, dimly sensed, that sets me to brooding. The halfling has a gourd of mash—how she saved it for this long I cannot guess—and now swigs deep from it, muttering. “I don’t like this place,” she says.
“Put that down,” Katiiwa hisses.
“I don’t like this mission,” Sunasuka says, a little louder.
We cling to the sides of an ancient wall. Above us jut the remains of broken steps, and atop the wall is a high walkway. As Sunasuka stomps and grumbles, I wrestle with a thought: if the Kembe were giants, who did they have to build giant walls against?
“What are we doing?” the halfling grunts. Without our noticing, she has made herself very drunk. “We aren’t hunting the evil ones. We are the evil ones!” She spins to face us, face red and bleary. “They’re saving the boy. We want to take him to his death.”
Obai holds up placating hands. “You know why we must.”
Sunasuka turns away. “I know why we have to, but none of you can make me like it!” She finishes the rest of her gourd and tosses it aside. It lands on a fallen stone with a resounding crack. “If we’re to be slaughterers of children, let’s at least do it quick and get it over with!” She bounds heedlessly through the choking vegetation and around eroding blocks. Her voice bounces off the walls, collides with itself, growing louder as she forges on.
We have no choice but to chase our drunken druid. We bound after her.
Behind us, in the spot where we had just been standing, lands a vast chunk of stone. Its impact throws up a shower of dirt and pulverized vine leaves. A fine snow of powdered mortar dusts down after it. The stone occupies a wide crater.
“When Tarood dies, not even his wives will mourn.”
Had we not run after our impetuous ally, all of us would have been crushed.
Above us, behind a fresh, yawning hole in the wall defenses, lurks the slaver captain, Tarood.
Verkusht launches himself at the wall. Deftly grabbing at its ragged handholds, he scampers up toward his kinsman. “Snake! Betrayer!” he cries. “Too much the coward to meet us face on?”
The Bekyar captain laughs. “Coward? You’re one to talk, Verkusht! When did you ever kill a man, except when his back was turned?” With slow confidence he draws a bow from his pack.
“Whatever I may or may not have been forced to do, I have done to survive.” Verkusht clambers sideways, zigzagging up the wall with surprising speed. “I’m not the one who extracts a thick, greasy thrill from the infliction of pain.”
Tarood speeds his actions. He fumbles his arrow as he draws it. “I do what I must to enrich our clan,” he snarls.
Verkusht pauses, hanging precariously from one hand, to whoop and chortle. “Is that how you think others see you, Tarood? Everyone knows you’d sooner stick a knife in a man than bed a woman!”
Tarood fires an arrow. Despite the seeming ease of the shot, it flies far wide of the mark. “You dare speak to me thus? I am clan-captain. You stole from your own.”
Verkusht has taken the time to zip several yards higher. “Yes, Tarood, and were I to return, they’d take more than my hand this time.”
Another arrow flies. It hits closer to the mark, but is still a wild, careless miss. “You made yourself doubly a pariah when you had it reattached!”
Verkusht crabs his way closer to his target. “Indeed, and if I did go home, as our kinfolk burned me alive or had me quartered by galloping horses, they’d shed a tear at my demise. Whereas you, for all the gold you bring them, the perfumes you douse them in, all the glory and wealth—no one likes you, Tarood.”
He swings wide to dodge a third arrow. For a moment, he seems suspended in air, then finds his handhold again. The creaking sound of bending cartilage accompanies him as he retains his hold on the wall. “The day you die, all due ceremonies will be held in your honor. You’ll be remembered as a hero and a shrewd man with a coin. But no one will weep for you. Your brothers will vie for your title. Your wives will drink tea and wipe their brows in relief.”
Verkusht has nearly reached the top now. Tarood drops his bow and quiver. He draws his scimitar. It flashes angrily in the sunlight.
“You’ve flung your last insult, clown,” Tarood says, through clenched teeth.
Verkusht reaches the crumbled battlement and struggles to find purchase.
“That’s you, Verkusht. Full of defiance and bravado, until the time comes to win. Then you falter.”
Mortar turns to sand under Verkusht’s clawing fingers. Tarood raises his scimitar, ready to chop at them.
Tarood’s tongue darts snake-like between salivating lips. “Wheedle and beg, Verkusht. Do as you always do. Wheedle and beg.”
Verkusht hugs the battlement, wincing. “Listen, there’s something you need to know about the boy.”
Tarood leans back to enjoy his victory. “Always something to offer at the last moment, eh, Verkusht? Well, this time it will avail you not. Let’s start with that hand which is supposed to be severed.”
He raises his blade.
The blue point of Katiiwa’s jagged harpoon pricks the back of Tarood’s neck. She commands him to drop the scimitar. It rattles to the stone catwalk.
Verkusht stoops to seize it up. He pauses to admire the expensive giltwork on its curved pommel before stashing it in his belt. “That’s the difference between you and me, Tarood,” he says. “I have comrades. They may not respect me, and half the time they don’t trust me at all. But they are friends and I can count on them nonetheless.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Someone must guard the prisoner; Katiiwa claims the right. Verkusht agrees with surprising ease. “Couldn’t trust myself with him,” he mutters.
“I can restore your position in the clan,” Tarood says to him. “Pronounce you redeemed, as is my captain’s right.”
“Who’s the clown now, always with the last humiliating negotiation?” says Verkusht, his tone curiously flat.
“Brachantes has the boy?” I ask him. “Tell us where.”
“What consideration will you grant?” Tarood asks.
“When I was the prisoner and you the captor, I was tortured and threatened with worse,” I observe.
Tarood shrugs. “He is in the place that it would make sense to be.”
“In a building in the middle circle?”
The slaver nods.
“Is there a landmark?”
He looks at Verkusht. “If I were a betrayer who wheedles to survive... but find it yourselves. Then boasts will be tested, and true measures taken.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Tarood says nothing else.
∗ ∗ ∗
We find Brachantes waiting for us, outside one of the few intact Kembe buildings of the middle city. The structure is round and topped with a conical roof, like a curing hut of the Ikihing or Hatangu. Where theirs are made from reeds and planks, this is built from piled and mortared stone. Even the odd sloping shingles on its roof are of solid rock.
Brachantes stands amid a circular patch of browned and flattened vegetation. Acrid steam rises from the freshly cleared earth. He has used the magical liquid Tarood’s slavers used to array the jungle trees against us, or something like it, to clear the ground for battle. Yet he carries no weapon, either in his hand or in his belt. Feet apart, head cocked, he greets us, smiling like a child with a secret.
Mwonduk kneels nearby. A leather collar has been wrapped around his neck. A short length of leash attaches the collar to a wooden stake, which has been driven deep into the ground. The boy could not stand if he wanted to. His arms are tied behind his back. Relief strikes me when I see that he bears no signs of injury. His head is bowed in shame. At the sound of our approach, he looks up. Hope comes suddenly upon him.
Brachantes offers him slavery; we, death. The boy has chosen us.
“You have Tarood?” Brachantes asks.
Having met the northerner before, I am the one who speaks for the group. “Yes. Give us the boy, and we will help you to a place of safety, if you desire it. Or we will leave you supplies to wait for more of Tarood’s men to come and get you. Whichever you prefer.”
“I present a counteroffer. Turn your backs now, admit yourselves outmatched, and I will not harm you.”
“You speak confidently for a weaponless man.”
“My weapons are far away from here, on my island. Yet if you take one further step against me, you will feel their sting all the same.”
“Your threat is unconvincing.”
“Trust me when I say this, jungle man: you do not want to see a demonstration.”
Verkusht reaches for his dagger, Obai for her double-faced holy symbol.
Brachantes addresses the others. “The Zenj is a stubborn man. I sense that he nurses a grudge against me, because he dislikes the company I keep. Fair enough. Also, he lost friends in the so-called plague, and thus lacks perspective. The rest of you, I will assume, are sensible persons and open to a fair offer.”
“Talk as long as you want,” says Obai. She means for him to reveal more of the invisible weapons with which he threatens us. Or so I trust.
“Balance priestess, what is it to you that a few have died from this firefly plague, and that a few more might do so until the boy is well away from here? These jungles are a place of rot and pestilence. In the cosmic scheme of things, what matter is one more plague?”
Obai presents him with both sides of her mouth, the frown and the grin, and remains inscrutable.
“Verkusht, with your cousin a captive, it seems that the position of captain might be made available to a man of ambition.”
The Bekyar snorts. “Maybe he didn’t tell you, but my clan and I are not on friendly terms.”
“Your clan is a family, but also a commercial enterprise. They will present no objections that money can’t fix.”
Verkusht strokes his beard as if contemplating a deal. “Let’s imagine that their vision of profit and loss aligns with yours. You have no similar inducement to offer my friends here.”
“Then step away. Or better yet, fight by my side when they prove intransigent.”
“That would be my last chance with them, I’m afraid.”
“Who counts for more? Your clan, or these mighty ragamuffins?”
Verkusht chucks his head from side to side. Weighing options.
“Halfling. I didn’t know what to dangle before you, until I saw you gaze upon the boy just now. You don’t want him dead. Still you hope for his salvation. Yet he lives only if I am allowed to take him. You’re on my side already, you just haven’t admitted it to yourself. Fight for his life, world-priestess. Follow your heart.”
Sunasuka wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
Brachantes turns to Arok. “Ape-man, of all the so-called Scarred Ones, only you are of genuine interest to me. I offer you what I offer the child—a place in my sanctuary. All the fruit you can eat. Or meat, if that’s what you fancy. A life led in comfort and free from fear.”
Arok charges him.
The outlander braces for the impact as the gorilla barrels his way. Around him, the air pops and shimmers. A crackling hiss rises from Brachantes’ flesh, and the taste of metal hangs in the back of my throat.
Arok swipes at Brachantes. Between the launching of the blow and its landing, Brachantes changes. His skin turns to stone. A terrible crunch resounds as the bones of Arok’s mighty fist break against his granite flesh. Brachantes’ stone fist catches Arok under the chin. The ape staggers back. Brachantes seizes him, hurling the gorilla who outweighs me by double or triple dozens of feet behind us. Arok lands with a thud on the collapsed remains of a Kembe wall.
“What is he?” I ask Obai, as we run toward the outlander.
“I don’t know,” she says, calling the dark touch of divine death-dealing into her hand. Her fingers curl into a claw, wreathed by swirling brimstone.
The ripple of disturbed space again surrounds Brachantes’ body. Stone flesh melts back into skin and bone. Leather wings sprout from his shoulders. Obai swipes at him with her deathly hand, but he rises into the air, leaving her leaping fruitlessly up at him. I poise my spear for throwing.
A tail appears to twist itself around Brachantes’ rising body. From its bulbous end sprout dozens of spikes. The bulb points at us; spikes fly through the air. They hit both Obai and me. We lurch back, pierced in the arms and chest.
Flying daggers volley at Brachantes, slicing the membranes of his freshly grown wings. He judders down. Again comes the rippling air, the crackling hiss, the tang of metal in the back of the throat. New wings replace the old; black reptilian scales rise to blot out mammalian skin. He opens his throat. A belch of acid rains down on us. The stink of vomit coats my burning, bubbling skin. I glance back; Verkusht and Sunasuka have been hit, too.
I look to the boy: Brachantes has aimed his spray to miss him. Mwonduk hides his face in the crook of his arm. He weeps, shaking.
Arok has also been spared, but lies unmoving on his pile of old stones.
Sunasuka, her hide tunic still smoking, steps forward to invoke nature’s power. The flying, reptilian Brachantes shudders in midair. He shrinks, transformed by her magic into a shrew. As a small gray rodent, he drops to the ground.
The halfling surges ahead, ready to stomp the shrew with her pan-like feet. An electric crackle surrounds it as Brachantes shakes off the forced shape-change. He rises as a column of flame and wraps burning limbs around Sunasuka’s throat.
I dash around this new fiery form to plunge a spear into the back of its head. Heat radiates from it. The hairs on my arm withdraw into curls and drop off, singed.
Obai swings at the fiery Brachantes with her iron-shod club. Its head, cast with Nethys’s mocking and mourning faces, swipes deep into the flame-form. It reels, momentarily dissipated. As it comes back together, the crackling aura returns. When Brachantes reforms, it is no longer as a creature of flame, but as himself—except that now patches of his skin are carpeted with a tiger’s striped fur.
A lightning bolt bursts forth from Brachantes’ palm, which is half hand, half paw. It arcs into me, knocking me back, then sizzles into Sunasuka, who has dropped to her knees, and to Verkusht, behind her.
Obai is left as the only combatant standing against him. “I know what you’re doing,” she shouts, as she aims a club blow against the outlander’s head. It bounces off, striking a shimmering helmet of translucent arcane armor.
“Congratulations!” Brachantes roars, baring tiger fangs.
“Your distant menagerie—you’re drawing power from the creatures imprisoned there,” Obai says, as she and her foe circle one another, seeking openings to strike. Claws descend from the outlander’s partly furred fingers. “You have a dragon there, yes? And a stone golem, a fire elemental, a rakshasa...”
Brachantes’ answer is a feline grin. “Wait till you see the next one.”
“This is why you want the boy?”
I stagger forward, chest blackened and blistered.
Obai scoffs at him. “Idiot! What power do you hope to leech from one cursed by a god?”
“You are the fool, priestess.” Brachantes rakes her with his claws. “The boy isn’t accursed. He is god-touched. Through him I can gain the power of a god. Perhaps, in time, become one myself! And none of you pathetic specimens will interfere.”
A square-cut boulder of Kembe stone comes crashing onto the back of his skull. Arok stands behind him, having crept silently up as Obai’s words distracted his target.
Brachantes’ legs buckle. His tiger features blur into something else as he weaves o
ver scorched ground.
Arok raises a paw to smash at him again, but I give the signal and he follows—we are all badly hurt. Only the spirits know what powers the outlander will next summon. We will take the boy and flee, while Brachantes remains addled.
Verkusht slashes Mwonduk’s leash. He dips to lift the boy into his arms, but Mwonduk runs ahead, faster than any of us. I pull Sunasuka to her feet. She blinks, dazed; the lightning strike has left a spreading bruise across her chest.
With an eye cast back to Brachantes and his still-changing form, we cut a maze-like path through the confusing shelter of Kembe’s walls.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Brachantes' arrogance knows no bounds.”
Katiiwa hears us coming. When she tells it later, she will say that she hears Mwonduk’s voice. It tells us that the rest of us have no further need of Tarood, and that she may now do what she has come for.
“Do you know of me?” she asks Tarood.
Her voice startles him. She has stood silent watch over him since we left. “Know of you?”
“Your clan has been searching for Verkusht. Have you learned about those who sometimes travel with him?”
“The so-called Scarred Ones?” he laughs. “You flatter yourself. There are more profitable occupations than seeking gossip on misfit mercenaries.”
“I thought as much.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“If you knew of us, you’d be nervous.”
“Nervous?”
“To be left with me.”
He sweats the same way his cousin does. Beads of it bloom on his forehead, a mass of them all together. “What should I know about you?”
“That I am Katiiwa, of the Azure Harpoon. That the blood of a demon flows in my veins. That it hungers, and that I feed it on the souls of the justly slain. That the world needs executioners, and I am one.”
His fine complexion turns to mottled ash. “The name... is familiar now that you say it.” He turns to face her, begging with wrists bound. “There is no justice in slaying me... a helpless prisoner... in cold blood...”
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