The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  They were howling.

  They were fearless.

  They, Gariath realized, were tulwar.

  The line of shicts whirled about to bring their bows against this newfound foe, launching arrow after arrow into the onslaught. Some fell, arrows taken to the throat or heart. Others merely staggered as broadheads found shoulders or knees. None stopped.

  They crashed into the shicts with blades flashing, hacking through the hafts of bows, cleaving arms from shoulders, cutting gashes in chests. Blood spattered them, adding to the wild colors that painted their faces. The shicts let out cries of alarm, turning to flee even as the tulwar rushed to chase them and cut them down upon the dunes.

  Gariath wanted to laugh. It was all quite funny to him, after all. To have come this far, to have faced the shicts, and still to be alive and alone.

  Sometimes life was simply unfair.

  But he found he had no breath for laughter. He had no breath left to even stand upright anymore. That brief rush of life that had refused to let him die ebbed away, sending him to his knees and crashing face first into the earth.

  He didn’t feel the hands around him, turning him onto his back. Nor did he even feel the arm that wrapped around him, propping him up. All he knew was the sensation of cool water dripping down his throat as a skin was forced between his jaws and emptied.

  He did not open his eyes until there was no more left to drink. And when he did, he beheld a face riotous with color.

  The tulwar’s peculiar coloration was no war paint, he knew. The vivid red, blue, and yellow across their faces was in their blood, lighting up in the thick gray knots of flesh of their faces when their fury was up. And this one that loomed over him was vivid indeed, the colors of his face burning brightly through the blood that washed his muzzle.

  But it wasn’t until he saw the tulwar’s eyes, bright yellow and hard with concern, that he knew the name that came to him.

  “Daaru,” he said.

  “The Rhega lives, then?” The tulwar’s face was split with a broad white smile, fangs glistening. “Good. I would have hated to have wasted an entire skin of water on a corpse.”

  In another moment Gariath became aware of his position: cradled like an infant by the tulwar. A massive red hand shot up, shoved Daaru away.

  “Get off me, you monkey,” he snarled as he tried to rise to his feet.

  “The Rhega lives,” Daaru laughed. He made a move to help the dragonman rise, only to be warned off by a snarl. “If the desert cannot kill you and the shicts cannot kill you, I am starting to wonder what could.”

  Gariath did not answer that. To speak would be to let Daaru hear the weakness in his voice, to let him know just how close both the desert and the shicts had come. More than that, though, Gariath did not trust his own voice.

  Had it really been his that had cried out like a coward’s? Had it really been his that had sounded so weak, so terrified, so frail? Was he so afraid that he had screamed out for help rather than die with dignity?

  He did not know. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Daaru be the judge.

  “You can walk?” Daaru asked. At Gariath’s pointedly firm nod, he grunted. “Our camp is far from here. We had to come a long way to find you.”

  “Find me?” Gariath asked. That would mean they’d known he was out here. And that could only mean…

  “Squib!” Like an overlarge puppy, Kudj came loping over the hill on his knuckles, tumbling down the dune to arrive in a spray of sand before Gariath. His grin was broad and toothy. “Kudj feels vindicated in seeking help of traditionally problematic element to see squib alive.”

  “We came across the vulgore on our way to Shaab Sahaar,” the tulwar said. “He pointed us in the direction you went. I’d like to say that it was fate that led us to you.” Daaru chuckled. “But you don’t really bother covering your tracks.”

  They were laughing. As if this were a happy occasion. As if he hadn’t just disgraced himself by crying out for help.

  “Shengo!” Daaru cried out to a nearby tulwar. “Grab your pack. We have wounded to tend to before we leave. Tell Haangu to bring up the beasts. We have a ways to go before…”

  Daaru’s barked orders, the grunted acknowledgments that followed, Kudj’s various expressions of joy, went unheard by Gariath. His wounds were tended to, the arrows plucked out and the cuts treated. He was given more water, and food, as well.

  And yet he felt no pain, no hunger, no thirst. An uncomfortable numbness had set in, an emptiness that had previously been filled with agony and fear. In its place uncomfortable questions had settled.

  Why? Why had he called out? Why had he been afraid to die?

  He had no answer.

  Soon he was fit enough to walk. Soon they took off toward wherever it was that Daaru wanted them to go. Soon Gariath went with them.

  Shamefully still alive.

  SIX

  RIVERS AND SHADOWS

  Salaried contract compels this one to advise you to engage all aural sensibilities for what this one is about to tell you, shkainai. There is only one way into the Forbidden East and there are many ways to die in getting there.”

  Shortly before midnight the members of Sheffu’s expedition gathered to speak. In hushed whispers at the edge of the deck, far away from the other passengers, they huddled. Most of them, anyway.

  She had not been asked to attend the meeting.

  “The city of Jalaang shall be within proximity within one hour. This one has been contracted to acquire additional supplies. Past the city, the Lyre suffers an infestation of river bulls and sailbacks, necessitating transport unorthodox, such as the one we stand upon.”

  She could hear them, of course. Over the conversations of the other passengers clustered upon the deck, over the murmur of water rippling from a colossal stride. The low rumbling noises of the Old Man beneath her feet couldn’t drown them out. Even with her ears tucked beneath her hat, the couthi’s jarring monotone rang in her ears like a cracked bell.

  And still, his was not the voice that set Kataria’s teeth on edge.

  “Okay,” Lenk said, “that’s two. There are more ways to die, I take it?”

  She had spent all day avoiding him, lingering at the opposite side of the vast platform upon the Old Man’s back. She had tried conversing with other passengers—albeit only a little. She had tried meditation, staring out over the riverbank, even singing at one point.

  Somehow she always heard him as clearly as if he were standing right beside her.

  “The potential for fatality experiences exponential growth as eastward projection grows.” There was the rustle of parchment as Man-Khoo Yun’s fine-boned finger prodded at a map. “Desert becomes forest, in which the desired destination resides, the sole passage to which remains a tiny gap in the surrounding mountains. A sufficient amount have died there to earn it the dubious human honor of affixing a foreboding moniker.”

  “That being?”

  “The Gullet.”

  Lenk sighed. “Of course.”

  Kataria found herself echoing that sigh. Not for the same reason, of course. Inappropriate sarcasm in response to legitimate danger was fairly expected at this point, but there was only so much of it she could take.

  This, she told herself, was why she was avoiding him.

  Yeah, she told herself. That’s it. She closed her eyes. Coward.

  “The mountains are situated to form a border between breeds of less civil natures than your most humble self, shkainai. The deserts to the west are claimed by tulwar clans, while the forests hold qithbands of reprehensible shict tribes. Both claim the Gullet as their own, finding it prosperous hunting ground.”

  “For game?” Lenk asked.

  There was a deliberate pause before Man-Khoo Yun spoke. “Amongst other things.” Paper rustled as he rolled up the map. “Research suggests that the uncivil breeds favor conflict with each other before engaging with foreign interference. It remains doubtful that their base natures will suspend in
order for them to pursue hostilities with us.”

  “If we’re lucky.”

  “Fortune, luck, invocations of faith, and fate are irrelevant, shkainai,” the couthi replied. “Tulwar can be trusted to be hapless and naïve. Shicts can be assured to be vile and perfidious in their pursuit of hostilities.”

  “You have a problem with shicts.”

  A statement, rather than a question. A challenge meant to be answered. She found her ears quivering beneath her hat, attentively listening to what the couthi had to say next.

  “Disclosure of opinions political and economical violate all non-judgment clauses included in standard guide contracts, shkainai. Do not let it trouble you.”

  “Considering the fact that I travel with a shict, it troubles me. Speak plainly.”

  Silence followed. In its wake Kataria heard her teeth grinding.

  “This one was selected to deal with the shicts,” the couthi spoke softly, “because this one gave them everything. Homeland, mate, children, house… everything this one had, they took, and left only ash and blood in their wake. This one was selected for this contract because this one knows the shicts. And you do not know a shict, shkainai, until you have witnessed their cruelty firsthand.”

  A pause. Then the couthi spoke.

  “But you should know that, should you not, shkainai?”

  And she felt him. As clearly as she would if he were right next to her.

  She felt his eyes drift to her, picking her out of the crowd. She heard his lips part to say something, heard his hot wordless breath. She felt him, heard him, could almost smell sweat forming upon his brow.

  Now, she thought. Do it now. Turn around. Face him.

  Her legs didn’t move. Her fingers tightened on the deck’s railing. She closed her eyes, pressed her lips tight, did not look at him.

  Not as she felt his eyes leave her. Not as she heard his mouth shut without a word. Not as he turned and walked away, until she could hear him no longer.

  Not a word.

  Not one word had he spoken in her defense. Not so much as a vulgarity thrown at the couthi. He had left without a word and had left her with a silence so deep and so cruel that she could not escape the thought that came next.

  What did you expect?

  It didn’t come from her head. That thought struck her hard in the chest, knocking the wind from her lungs.

  You haven’t spoken to him since this morning, she told herself. You haven’t seen him in six days. You haven’t told him what you’ve been doing.

  She choked on that last thought.

  You haven’t told him.

  There were a number of reasons why, of course. It would hurt him when he needed her, now wasn’t the right time, they were about to head off into certain danger.

  And so on.

  But these were not thoughts, not words. They were whispers and smoke and lies that left her with every shuddering breath she took. They weren’t solid, like the pain in her chest. They weren’t warm, like the wetness at the corners of her eyes. They weren’t words.

  Like the ones she hadn’t said.

  “Can you hear me, shict?”

  Her ears twitched. An unfamiliar voice; not hers, not his.

  “Did you hear everything?”

  This voice was low, guttural, possessed of a quivering reverberation, each word rattled out of a choked gullet. Each syllable was drawn out, and in the spaces between, there was a dry clicking sound.

  “Of course you did. Your misbegotten breed knows how to listen,” the voice rasped. “You never rise above your base nature. You cannot suppress your savagery.” A black, oily chuckle. “I meant every word.”

  She turned and saw, at the opposite edge of the deck, Man-Khoo Yun. The couthi stood tall and rigid as a tree, his larger set of hands folded behind him, his smaller set folded in front. She could feel his scowl keenly as any blade and knew that, behind the tastefully framed painting of rolling hills and blue skies he wore over his face, he seethed.

  This was his voice. His real voice. Free from its chilling monotone and filled with hate.

  “Whatever you’ve done to fool this human,” he hissed in a low voice meant only for her, “I do not believe it. I do not trust you, I do not trust your breed, and I do not have any intention of allowing you to violate the contract.”

  He made a soft, wet, chittering sound. Her ears folded back on themselves at it.

  “We arrive in Jalaang in less than an hour, shict,” he hissed. “We depart in another eight. Our contract guarantees that I will see this expedition to its destination. I guarantee that if you are there tomorrow, you will regret it.”

  Regret?

  Shicts didn’t have a word for regret. She hadn’t learned it until she met Lenk. Humans had so many nuances to attach to it—when it was necessary, when it was undesirable, which gods approved and which gods didn’t.

  She hadn’t come to understand all the complexities of regret quite yet. But she knew eight hours was a long time to wait for it.

  So, she thought as she strode toward the couthi, reaching for the hilt of the long knife at her belt, she might as well get a head start.

  Maybe the couthi saw it. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he would see it only when it was naked in her hand, cutting through that fucking landscape, his fucking head to follow.

  She didn’t care about humans, couthi, or anything; her sole concern was for the blade in its sheath, soon to be in her hand and soon—very soon—to be in someone’s face.

  Or it would have been her sole concern, if not for the hand that shot out and suddenly clamped upon her wrist.

  “Don’t do it.”

  A woman. One she had seen before: that strange, short, slender little thing wrapped in nice black clothes and with cold blue eyes under a broad-brimmed hat. She had scarcely looked as if she could carry a walking stick back on the docks that morning. Yet the force with which she held Kataria’s wrist suggested she could do much more than just keep the blade in its sheath.

  What had she called herself?

  Shuro.

  “This doesn’t concern you. Yet,” Kataria snarled through bared teeth. “Though if you don’t take your hand off me, I can make time for you.”

  If the threat affected her, it didn’t show in Shuro’s impassive blue stare. All the same, she eased her hand off Kataria’s wrist. But when the shict moved to pass her, she stepped in front of her, eyes still on her knife.

  “You show steel here, you’re going to draw eyes,” Shuro said.

  “No, that won’t happen until I start eating his face after I cut it off,” Kataria growled.

  “And what do you think they’ll see?”

  “I don’t care what—”

  “They’ll see a couthi—weird, unusual, but valuable—being assaulted by a shict—dirty, treacherous, and savage. What do you think they’ll do then?”

  “I’m not dirty!” She winced after saying it, finding her hand drifting to her hat. “You’re not supposed to know I’m a shict. That’s what the disguise is for.”

  “A hat is not a disguise.” Her eyes drifted down to Kataria’s exposed middle. “Particularly when you’re wearing shictish clothing. And particularly when you go showing shictish fangs whenever you get angry.”

  Kataria took a step backward. Her face twitched, canines bare. “You think I didn’t notice? You think I don’t see the way they stare, hear what they say?” She jabbed a thumb to her chest. “I’m not going to change who I am for them. Let them know. Let them see. I don’t care.”

  “You should,” Shuro shot back.

  “Why should I?” She narrowed her eyes upon Shuro. “Why should you?”

  The woman remained silent for the moment, lowering her face and regarding Kataria out of the corners of her eyes. “Would you like me to ask why it matters what they say? Why you’re so eager to spill blood?”

  Kataria did not reply.

  Some part of her very much did want to be asked that. Some part of her very much did
want to say what made it seem as if getting into a fight would be infinitely preferable to spending another moment here. Some part of her…

  But that part wanted to be asked by him. Not this woman.

  Shuro nodded, taking her silence as statement enough. “I respect that. I ask that you respect that I need to get to the same place as you.”

  “You don’t know where I’m going.”

  “I do. And I don’t want anything jeopardizing me getting there.”

  Kataria’s nostrils flared as she let out a breath of hot air. “Or else?”

  At this, Shuro stepped away. The look she spared Kataria was as brief and cold as the breath that blows out the last candle in a dark room.

  “Or else,” she replied curtly.

  Her eyes lingered long enough for Kataria to appreciate the intent behind them before she turned and stepped away, disappearing into the crowd of passengers and leaving Kataria alone on the deck with no sound but that of the river churning beneath her.

  While the passengers hadn’t been forthcoming with information, it didn’t take Kataria long to figure out what the Lyre meant to Cier’Djaal.

  So named for its many tributary “strings” that ran across the desert, the Lyre was used to bring in grain from outlying farmlands and take silks and spices to the borders of northern Muraska and the eastern realms controlled by the Karnerians after successive conquests. While the city’s wealth came from the silk, its life came from the river, and to control it was to control everything.

  Thus the walled fortress of Jalaang.

  It had originally been built to deter tulwar uprisings, she pieced together. But whatever had broken the will of the tulwar so long ago had apparently done so permanently. Now any of those apelike creatures who came to Jalaang did so to trade. And thus the garrison had slowly turned into a trading outpost.

  From the deck of the Old Man, Kataria could see the city’s lights burning brightly as the colossus rolled to a slow halt among the fishing boats and river barges at the docks. Even in the dead of night, it was easy to see where the city had struggled to make good return on the coin pumped into it.

  Buildings that had been erected as armories now stood as warehouses stacked with sacks of rice and crates of grain. Barracks had been emptied and repurposed as bathhouses, the silhouettes of prostitutes visible in their lighted windows. Training fields had been turned into makeshift bazaars rife with stalls, catapults were still and dusty in the streets, the gates at the western and eastern ends of the city stood wide open.