by Sam Sykes
“Wait!” Lenk imposed himself between the couthi and her, holding up a hand. “Just wait. We have more important—”
“He anticipated this, as well.”
Man-Khoo Yun’s arm—one of the big ones—lashed out and caught Lenk in the side, batting the young man away as though he were a mere insect. Within the robes, the couthi had looked so rigid that he might break if he bent. Now, as Lenk went crashing to the deck, the four-armed creature brimmed with taut, twitching muscle. And his eyes were alive with fury.
His smaller hands lashed out, steel flashing through the air. He was quick, impossibly quick for such a towering creature. She sprang backward, but the tip of a blade caught her by the narrowest margin, painting a red line across her belly.
The wound was shallow, but the pain spawned panic. The couthi continued advancing even as she darted ever backward, his blades flashing, the scars wrought in his face making his smile something horrifying. There was nowhere to run. There was no escape.
Her ears trembled instinctively, crying out in a language with no words. Her Howling echoed inside her own skull, screaming out to someone, to anyone.
Someone heard. Someone answered.
The wind cried out. As did Man-Khoo Yun, a breath later. An arrow quivered in his foot, pinning him to the deck.
Kataria looked out to the southern cliffs. Among the foliage, among the shadows of her kinsmen, she could see one body standing clear of cover, one face staring out without a mask to cover it. From so far away, a pair of long brown ears trembled and a pair of broad canines flashed in a smile as a single woman raised a hand in greeting.
Kwar.
And Kataria’s heart quickened a beat.
She was halfway tempted to wave back before she saw a black shape descending from the cliffs. Kataria’s ears trembled again, the warning unspoken but not unheard. Kwar looked up, saw the gaambol loping down the cliffs, teeth bared and arms outstretched.
Kataria hoped her Howling had reached Kwar in time. She hoped the khoshict would react in time. She hoped that Lenk hadn’t just seen the smile, anxious and relieved at once, that had flashed across her face.
But hope had little use on a battlefield, especially one as cramped as this.
She heard mandibles clacking in a snarl. Man-Khoo Yun devoted all four of his arms to pulling his leg free, flesh popping as he did. But by the time he looked up, she was already running.
Distance, she told herself through the sound of her feet pounding on the deck. Get some room to shoot. The bow of the deck loomed before her, the green brow of the Old Man bobbing up and down. Remember how tall he is. Turn around, draw, put an arrow between his…
No more words. No more thoughts. No more noise. Nothing but an arrow’s feathers between her fingers and a bowstring creaking. Nothing but instinct, the Howling in her ears and the prey in her eyes.
Man-Khoo Yun’s mandibles spread, teeth bared in a snarl as he leveled his scowl at her. She held her breath, loosed her arrow.
It went sailing through the space the couthi had just occupied. The creature sprang to the side, clung to a support beam. She drew another arrow, fired, only to see it strike the beam as Man-Khoo Yun swung on one long limb up to the canopy’s ceiling. He clung there by his talons, a spider of bone-white skin and seething fury.
Too fast, she thought. How is he so fast?
She forced herself not to think. Not of the rattle of his claws as he skittered, upside-down, toward her. Not of the clattering of his mandibles or the shine of his eyes. There was nothing but the arrow in her fingers, on her bowstring, at her earlobe, flying through the air.
Quivering in the wood of the canopy.
She cursed, looked to her quiver, found an arrow, looked back up. She caught only a glimpse of bone-white palm before it wrapped around her throat and jerked her off her feet. Talons pricked her neck, blood dripped down her body. She thought nothing of that, of anything but the flash of steel.
He clung to the canopy with one arm, his smaller arms free to slash their cruel blades at her. She brought her bow up in a desperate attempt to fend them off. But every chip and splinter the blades took off was by chance; her bow was unwieldy and eventually he’d find an opening to—
A screech.
There was an arc of silver. A spatter of warm life coated her face. She shut her eyes instinctively.
When she opened them, a long thin blade was lodged in the couthi’s arm. Kataria took it in with one swift glance: the blood that ran down the sword to stain a hand as slender as the blade it gripped, the black sleeve that concealed the tremble of muscle, and the thin, angular woman who stood beneath the couthi.
For one breath she met Shuro’s cold blue stare.
And saw nothing in there.
Shuro’s hand twitched. She twisted the sword’s hilt. Another spurt of blood burst from the couthi’s arm and he released his captive. Kataria fell to the deck amid the broken hafts of arrows. The couthi retreated from the blade, leveling black eyes upon the woman.
“This was,” Man-Khoo Yun clacked through his mandibles, “unforeseen.”
“Apologies,” Shuro said, flicking blood from her weapon. “But I have a duty to fulfill.”
“Of course.”
These were the last words the couthi spoke. The next sound out of his mouth was something shrill, clicking, and guttural. He swept across the ceiling, a blur of pale flesh and silver steel, toward Shuro. Even as his larger hands kept him to the canopy, his smaller hands and their wicked blades lashed out. There was a desperate need behind each blow, a spider’s fangs seeking prey.
And yet each slash was met with the thin, delicate-looking blade dancing in the hand of this thin, delicate-looking woman. Shuro parried each slash, turned each blade, ducked low beneath each furious swipe of claw, and met each snarling curse with stony silence.
For one more breath, Shuro met Kataria’s eyes. And in that moment, they spoke a single, silent command.
Kataria took up her bow, nocked an arrow, and loosed. It found its mark this time, sinking into the couthi’s back, just a finger’s length left of his spine. He let out a shrill, screeching wail, falling to the deck in a jumble of spasming limbs. But before either woman could move to finish him, he swept his arms out and sprang to his feet.
He swung his glare from side to side, snarling once before skittering on all sixes to the edge of the railing and disappearing over it. To where, she had no idea. Nor did she have time to wonder, for she instantly felt a cold stare upon her and a cold hand to accompany it.
Shuro’s face was spattered with blood, marred by dirt, graced by a single cut across her cheek. And yet, behind all the grime, she looked unnervingly pristine. Her breathing was calm and even, her brow was bereft of any sweat beneath her hat, and her eyes.
Deep and blue and cold as snow, despite all the carnage around them…
“Who are—” Kataria began to ask.
“No,” Shuro interrupted. “Wrong question.”
The statement, and the chill with which it was delivered, struck her silent. But only for a moment.
“Where’s Lenk?”
“Better.”
Shuro bade her follow and led her in a crawl across the deck. Blood smeared the timbers. Bodies crowded her: the tulwar who had been too reckless to avoid the arrows, the saccarii who had been too slow. Kataria tried not to look, tried to keep her thoughts on finding Lenk, on getting out—
“Please.”
A voice croaked at her. A clammy hand wrapped about her wrist. She looked down and saw one of the saccarii, arrows jutting from his leg and back, eyes wide and weary above his veil.
“Please, you’re a shict,” he rasped. “They’re not shooting at you. Tell them we’re not enemies. Tell them to stop this—”
His words, along with the rest of him, were cut dead by a sudden flash of metal. A great iron mass of metal, hammered to resemble a crude, twisted star, had come whirling through the sky, striking the saccarii with one of its jagged blades and splitting him in
twain. Kataria felt his life spatter against her skin, watched his eyes freeze in uncomprehending fear, saw his grip go limp on her wrist.
She looked up to the northern cliffs, where the blade had come from, and saw another just like it. Atop the shoulders of a gaambol, a tulwar rider pried one of the massive blades from a sheath on his back and tossed it down. The giant simian he rode caught it, took it up in both hands, drew it all the way back over its head and—
“Get down!”
Shuro seized Kataria and dragged her to the deck. With a shriek the gaambol hurled the giant blade. It went sailing overhead, tumbling in a flurry of metal to bite through the railing and continue. Somewhere on the southern cliffs, the sound of metal splitting flesh filled the air, and a shictish death cry rattled through Kataria’s skull.
“Bokka knives,” Shuro said. “Those apes of theirs can throw them as far as any bow can fire.”
They continued crawling across the deck until they reached the bled-out corpse of the gaambol from earlier. The beast had proven remarkable cover, its hide peppered with arrows. They found Lenk there, huddled beneath its bulk. Strange that he should look so weary and harried, Kataria thought; the couthi hadn’t hit him that hard, had he?
He looked up, eyes wild. “Man-Khoo Yun, is he—”
“Fled,” Shuro answered.
“Shuro drove him off,” Kataria added.
“Shuro, you…” Lenk looked at the black-clad woman, to the bloodied sword in her hand, then clutched his head. “No, fuck, how’d this happen?”
“It’s called the Gullet, Lenk,” Kataria muttered. “You didn’t think it was going to be easy, did you?”
“No jokes.” He whirled on her, teeth set and eyes narrowed. “You don’t get to fucking joke right now. The couthi said, he said…”
“The couthi was a traitor. Sheffu didn’t trust us,” Kataria said. “The couthi was lying, Lenk.”
The fear drained from his eyes, and the look he fixed upon her was something cold and hard as rock. “Then why haven’t you shot a single arrow at them?”
Lying had never been her talent. She could stalk prey for miles without being seen, fire a dozen arrows before anyone even thought to look in her direction, but the subterfuge of civilized races was beyond her. She didn’t understand the rules to their games, couldn’t speak the language of their lies.
So when she looked at him, when she saw the set of his mouth and the pain seeping into the corners of his eyes, she knew the truth shone through the blood on her face.
And when his hand shot out and snatched her bow, she shouldn’t have been surprised.
And yet…
“What are you doing?”
“This fucking plant-thing won’t move any faster,” Lenk snarled as he stood up, pulled an arrow out of the gaambol’s corpse. “The only way we make it out is if one of us fights back.”
He swept to the bow of the deck. Arrows whizzed past him. Bokka knives tumbled over the canopy, sometimes under it. He nocked the arrow, took aim at a shict on the southern cliffs.
The Howling filled the air, an unspoken warning buzzing through the ears of every shict within a mile. In a single breath, every shict knew that someone was about to fire back. And in that same breath, every shict knew exactly who he was aiming for.
Kataria could see her unmasked grin and her wild eyes, just as plainly as if she were standing before her. Kataria could feel Kwar’s heart tighten as she saw the arrow leveled at her. Kataria could hear Kwar’s lips part as she spoke a single word meant for just one person.
And Kataria was on her feet.
Lenk was handy with a bow. Not good, not shict good. But good enough that she couldn’t let him.
“No!”
She wasn’t quite sure what was happening until she collided with him, bringing him down to the deck. Only when she knelt over him, stared into his wounded eyes, did she realize what she had done. Only when she felt her chest tighten and tears form in her eyes did she realize whom they were for.
“You…” he whispered, unable to finish it. “You did—”
“Lenk, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, I—”
“Trouble.”
Shuro’s voice was sharp as her blade as she joined them at the bow. She pointed to the southern cliffs. There, perched upon a jutting branch, stood a single shict. His mask was carved with an eerie grin, and he raised his bow and drew back an arrow, its head wrapped in cloth and set ablaze.
“They’re going to torch us,” Shuro said. Even with this grim knowledge, her voice did not hasten. “Someone needs to do something.”
Someone did.
The Howling coursed through her. Kataria could feel feet pounding on stone, wind in hair, cold steel in hand. But it was only in that last moment that she actually saw Kwar, the khoshict leaping out of the underbrush toward the archer with the flaming arrow.
Kwar’s arm snapped forward. A dagger flew from her hand. It tumbled through the air and struck the archer’s arm at the precise moment his fingers loosed the arrow.
The shot went wide, its fire trailing across the sky. It went clear of the deck’s bow, narrowly missing it to sink into the head of the Old Man. It lodged just behind the colossus’s right eye, smoldering there.
And just like that, everything else that had happened didn’t seem so bad by comparison.
The Old Man let out a bellow. Unlike its impassive groans, this noise was shrill and full of fear. The creature began staggering one way and then the other, its tentacles clawing at its face in an effort to dislodge the projectile.
It swung its massive body, smashed against the cliff walls. The agile or lucky shicts and tulwar went screaming, fleeing from its bulk as each impact shook the cliff walls. The clumsy and unfortunate ones went tumbling into the river, the sound of their terror lost in the sound of the Old Man’s wailing pain.
The deck fragmented; support beams split, railings shattered. The Old Man’s trumpeting wails filled the sky and sent the stones themselves shuddering.
The creature reared up on its hind legs, sending the river below teeming with waves. The deck gave out beneath Kataria’s feet. Lenk and Shuro were lost in a moment, scattered along with everything else. She could but clutch her bow in a desperate bid to hold on to at least something as the deck became vertical.
She skidded down it amid a shower of broken arrow shafts, bokka knives, and flaccid, tumbling corpses. Instinct seized her, bit back panic. She had no thought for Kwar, for Lenk, for anything but a drawn breath as she went flying off the Old Man’s back.
And the river rose up to meet her.
First bright light.
And then darkness.
Lenk’s lungs realized what was happening far before his brain caught up. He kicked his legs, flailed his way to the surface of the river, where he burst in a spray of froth and a gasp of air. The water churned around him, waves kicked up by the maddened Old Man as the colossus thrashed about in the river.
Each wave sent bodies roiling, chunks of meat in a great stew. Shicts struggled to get untangled from their quivers. Tulwar fought to get away from their thrashing, panicked gaambols. And everywhere they were disappearing beneath the water.
Lenk never saw the river bulls. Not wholly, anyway. He saw the blurred outlines of their gray bulks beneath the water, eerily elegant for creatures so massive. But wherever he saw their horns, parting the waves like the bows of ships, another body vanished beneath the water with a drowned cry. It didn’t matter who. Dead or alive, tulwar, saccarii, shict, or…
He saw a horn burst out of the water, begin sweeping toward him.
And he was already thrashing for the shore.
His clothes were sodden, weighed him down. The sword on his back caught the waves, held him back. The shore seemed so distant and every time a wave crested before him, it looked farther and farther away. But fear was stronger than despair. He could feel the river bull behind him, the great emptiness beneath him being filled as the beast drew closer.
His feet kicked beneath him, found sand. He slipped, tripped, stumbled his way up the shore and onto a small cove that lay in a gap within the southern cliffs. He took a moment to catch his breath, coughing up water as he did. The sound of carnage behind him was distant, smothered by the crash of waves and the anguish of the Old Man. Yet even that was a distant echo, fading.
In the silence he could afford to hear himself breathe and, shortly thereafter, hear himself think.
Kataria, Shuro, Man-Khoo Yun: Had any of them survived? No way to tell from down here. He glanced up, saw the Gullet’s overgrowth oozing from the cliff face. The cliffs were sheerer here than elsewhere, with precious few handholds in sight. But the vines and branches growing from it looked sturdy enough. A few more moments to breathe and he might have the strength to scale it.
Or maybe he’d just have enough time to shit his pants at the sound of water erupting behind him.
The river bull came bursting out of the waves, its broad maw agape in a bellow, tusks glistening like sabers. On legs that looked almost comically small for its bulk, it rushed toward Lenk.
Lenk’s stomach dropped into his boots, gave his feet new weight as he turned and ran down the cove. The stretch of sand, he saw, ended at a cliff face in another hundred paces, leaving him nowhere to go but back in the water. The river bull, if its snorting anger was any indication, seemed to have no problem with that idea.
Sweat poured down his brow, stung his eyes. When he wiped them clear, he saw a figure, white robes clean and unsullied, standing on the shore sixty paces ahead.
Mocca did nothing more than raise a hand and point a finger at the cliff face. Lenk strained to see—and he would have missed it had he not—but there, little more than a surreptitious crack in the cliff face, was an opening just big enough for a man.
He pushed the last of his strength into one more sprint, twisted and turned into the opening. A meaty thud followed as the river bull tried to wedge its bulbous body in after him and found barely enough room for its massive head. The beast snorted, thrust its horn at Lenk as he stepped away. When it found it could not follow, it pulled back and shot Lenk a look with its beady eyes, as if to accuse him of cheating, before it waddled back into the river to join its brethren before all the good corpses were taken.