The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  Through the gaps between the wooden spires, Gariath could see them: more scraws descending upon the city from all angles. These seemed overburdened, brimming with some cargo Gariath couldn’t see clearly from here. What were they carrying?

  Another wailing bugle sounding a charge answered that.

  In a flash of blue and silver, Sainites burst from a nearby alleyway not fifty paces ahead. Their lips split with war cries and their swords flashing, cutting down all those who tried to flee past or to protect themselves.

  Gariath did not slow down. He felt only the blood pumping in his veins and his legs pumping beneath him as he picked up speed, met their war cries with a howl that drowned their feeble voices, and crashed into them like a ram of flesh and bone.

  Sainite blades cut at him wildly. He wasn’t sure whom his fists caught as he lashed out: A jaw crunched, an arm snapped, a trio of ribs crumpled. When they finally took stock of their situation enough to back away from him, two of them lay dead at his feet and four more surrounded him.

  They didn’t flee. They were not afraid. One of them rushed toward him, the Sainite’s war cry proud and fearless.

  Right up until the arrow took him in the throat.

  The rage ebbed from the Sainites’ eyes as they saw the hail of arrows falling from above. As they fell, impaled, Gariath looked up and saw lean tulwar in green chotas. Their bows were raised in victory, their howls wild across the sky.

  “Chee Chree!” they cried. “Chee Chree!”

  The roar carried, on the flight of every arrow as the Chee Chree clansmen and -women drew arrows and fired at the scraws overhead and the Sainites beginning to flood the city below.

  The scraws’ cargo. They were flying troops into Shaab Sahaar.

  This was what he wanted. This was what he had done.

  This was he, bleeding from their blades. This was Daaru, at his side once more. This was they, running through the fires falling from heaven and the arrows rising up to meet them as they rushed toward the city center. More joined them, their screams ringing in his ear as they fled with him through the avenues wreathed in flame.

  Three dark shapes tore overhead with a screech. The scraws flew over him, to the end of the road, wheeled around. In tight formation they swooped low, sharp lances extended as they flew down the road toward Gariath and the fleeing tulwar.

  Gariath skidded to a halt, holding the crowd behind him back as the scraws came shrieking toward them. There was no time to disperse the crowd, and to meet the beasts would be certain death.

  Perhaps that was what he deserved.

  “YENGU THUUN!”

  Another war cry came from the roofs overhead, followed shortly by a plummeting form of shrieking fur and muscle.

  The gaambols leapt off the roofs, falling like an avalanche upon the scraws. Their muzzles were gaping in simian shrieks, their powerful hands snapping wings, tearing riders from saddles, curling into fists to smash avian skulls. There was no elegance to their attack, no formation or command. The beasts indulged in a brief orgy of violence and meat, heedless of whose it was that they shoveled into their mouths.

  Their tulwar riders didn’t seem in a hurry to stop them.

  “Daaru!” One of them wheeled her gaambol toward them. The one from the streets, days ago. Ululang. “What’s happening? We saw these… these things flying on Shaab Sahaar. Why are they attacking?”

  “Because they are humans, Ululang!” Daaru roared back. “The city center, does it hold?”

  “Tho Thu Bhu clan holds it, along with the Humn, but there are soldiers pouring in and these bird-things… Chee Chree arrows can’t find them and my gaambols can barely catch them if they fly low enough.”

  “And Rua Tong?” Daaru asked.

  “They are mustering. Most of them were in their homes on the outskirts when the attack happened.”

  “I must get to them, lead them back to fight.” Daaru looked to Gariath. “You must protect the Humn. They are our entire people. If you need me to beg, make it quick.”

  Gariath nodded. “Save your groveling for when I save your monkey ass.”

  Daaru grinned. “Un kamaa, dragonman.” He looked to Ululang. “Get him to the city center.”

  No more than a few brief words were traded before Gariath hauled himself up into the saddle behind her. Daaru took off running down a nearby alley, the crowd he had been leading already scattered. Ululang turned to her clansmen and -women and their feasting mounts and barked an order.

  Even with his added weight, the gaambol easily leapt to the roofs of the buildings and took off running, the others close behind. They loped across rooftops, leaping over alleys and swinging from eaves as if they were vines. And from so high up, he could see what he had wrought.

  Fire was everywhere. In iron formation the scraws swept over the buildings, dropping more fireflasks, flying in more troops, before taking off again to go pick up fresh squadrons. Chee Chree archers took down a few, but the scraws’ vengeance was swift as they swooped down, plucking them off the rooftops and disemboweling them in the air. The gaambols were slightly more effective, leaping from the roofs to tackle the avian creatures out of midair, but just as many were skewered on lances or shot dead by crossbow strafing.

  It was war. A real war. This was how war smelled.

  All the smoke, all the blood, all the flame and screaming and fear. He thought he might choke on it.

  But before he could, he felt his stomach rise into his throat and suddenly drop, hammering itself back into place as his mount leapt from the roofs and onto the street.

  He looked up and surveyed their surroundings. The city center sprawled out around them in all its vastness. It looked nothing like the place where he had attended the Humn Tul Naa what seemed like so long ago.

  Instead of gathering together in orderly clusters, the clans here milled and wallowed in one massive herd, their chotas stained black with blood and soot. They moaned and wept, cowering beneath whatever cover they could find. No warriors here; they were children, elders, fathers, and mothers who stayed behind while their spouses fought.

  What fighters remained here were Tho Thu Bhu warriors, who huddled at every alley mouth and roadway, huddling behind stout shields to ward off Sainite charges and crossbow bolts. Chee Chree archers lingered on the rooftops, watching the skies.

  “Back to the fight for me,” Ululang said. “If you’re Daaru’s guest, I trust you as he does.” She leaned back and shoved Gariath off her beast’s back. “Don’t make me regret that, lizard.”

  By the time he landed in the dirt, the gaambols were already leaping to the roofs and returning to the fray. Gariath staggered to his feet, suddenly feeling quite sore as all his new wounds and old scars protested at once.

  He looked around at the cowering tulwar: their fearful eyes, their lips quivering in nondescript whimpers. Children wailed, parents tried to quiet them, elders simply stared, expressionless, at a sky on fire.

  He forced himself to look away. He had made his choices.

  This was what he wanted.

  Towering over the tulwar as he did, it wasn’t hard for him to locate the Humn. They squatted near the center of the center, as though they had not moved from that spot since the Humn Tul Naa. Their heads were bowed in deliberation, though any of the calm that had been in their voices that night was dead and buried.

  “We can negotiate,” Gowaa of the Tho Thu Bhu said, breathless. “Offer them trade.”

  “They came to kill, not trade, you fat idiot!” Sagar of the Yengu Thuun snarled at him. “We should be out there fighting. Dekuu is leading the Chee Chree. We cannot let them be slaughtered!”

  “We can’t, no,” Dugu of the Rua Tong growled. “But how? These birds. Arrows do not stop them. There are not enough gaambols. We are helpless.”

  “You are only helpless if you are weak.”

  They all looked up to Gariath with varying degrees of scorn. He ignored this, as well as the few tulwar who tried to block his way as he waded toward t
hem.

  “You sit and talk while your people die,” he snarled. “Your warriors are scattered and being slaughtered. Your city is burning. The time has come to strike back. Strike hard.”

  “And what do you think we are doing, reptile?” Dugu growled in response. “Sipping tea? We are not served by sending our warriors out to be killed blindly.”

  “And yet,” Sagar muttered, “they are killed all the same.”

  “All your clans are here,” Gariath roared to be heard above the desperate noise of the center. “All the might of the tulwar is here. Rua Tong, Chee Chree, Yengu Thuun, Tho Thu Bhu: Between all of you, you cannot fight back?”

  “DO NOT SPEAK TO US OF THIS,” Dugu roared back, leaping to unsteady feet. Despite his age and size, he bristled with a fury that had not diminished with the ages. “Were it decided by fury and spit alone, the humans would be dead already. As it is, we have no weapons that can kill beasts of that size!”

  A moment of silence, choking on smoke, hung in the air between them. When it broke, it was the soft, almost meek voice of Gowaa that did it.

  “We have the fishing spears,” he offered, sheepish.

  “Spears?” Sagar blinked, stunned. “You old fool, we are not fishing.”

  “Our clan expeditions upriver to hunt sometimes,” Gowaa said. “We have spears. Spears heavy and big enough to fight off river bulls.”

  “River bulls,” Dugu repeated.

  “But they’re too heavy to throw that far,” Gowaa said. “You’d never get close to those… those…” He waved his hand to the sky overhead. “Whatevers.”

  “Are they heavier than me?” Gariath asked.

  “The birds? Probably.”

  “The spears, moron.”

  “Oh,” Gowaa hummed. “Of course not.”

  “Then they can be carried by the gaambols,” Gariath said. “One of them just brought me here.” He pointed to the wooden buildings, those still standing. “The scraws fly low to drop their flasks. If you can get warriors up there to throw them, you can use your spears.”

  The Humn exchanged glances, considering. Gowaa looked befuddled at the idea. Sagar shrugged, unable to offer a better idea. Dugu looked up to the dragonman with a scowl.

  “But the humans on the ground—”

  “Will be met by the Rua Tong,” Gariath said. “Before long the scraws will burn everything left. You either do this now or die.”

  “It will take time to get the spears from our houses,” Gowaa muttered.

  “Then I will send riders,” Sagar said.

  They turned away from Gariath as they called warriors over. That was fine, Gariath was content to ignore them, as well. In another moment a small party had departed to go gather the weapons. The plan was set into motion, the defense of Shaab Sahaar assembled.

  They would emerge victorious. They would see the humans would attack them, kill them for no reason. They would see he had been right, all along, about everything. And they would march to Cier’Djaal and cleanse that city of filth.

  It had worked. They would see.

  They would all see.

  He looked up to the sky, breathed deep of the plumes of smoke coiling over the eaves of the buildings. The sounds of screams and sobbing had grown more distant, drowned out by scraw shrieks and gaambol screeches as the battle raged over the rooftops.

  A flight of scraws swooped overhead and the crowd of tulwar screamed, waiting for fireflasks that never fell.

  They aren’t attacking, Gariath noted. They haven’t attacked yet. An undefended part of the city, choked with targets, and they haven’t so much as dropped a flask here. He glanced around the square’s defenders: sizable, but they wouldn’t withstand any direct assault. What are they waiting for?

  A wordless scream of panic came from the western edge of the city center.

  Probably that.

  He had scarcely laid eyes on the thicket of tulwar shield bearers at the southern end of the city center before they suddenly went flying. Bodies went tumbling through the air to break upon ground and stone. The assembled crowds went running, screaming. An avian screech tore through the air like a scythe.

  What emerged into the city center could scarcely be called a beast, was perhaps too big even to be called a monster. It was a scraw, but only barely: It stood twice as tall, twice as long, twice as broad as any of the slender creatures sailing overhead. Its hooves were flat and made for stomping, its talons the color of iron, its black fur and feathers painted in blood. Its head was broader and flatter than the others’, its beak thicker and sharper, its eyes red and alive with fire beneath a pair of ram’s horns sweeping back from its skull.

  No rider adorned its back. This beast carried itself too proudly for that. It spread its wings, massive feathered crescents, and reared back. Its shriek shook the roofs and sent the tulwar quaking.

  The call was answered in a flood of Sainites, the humans coming in behind the beast with crossbows and blades naked in their hands. The tulwar parted like a tide, struggling to get away even as warriors fought to get to the city center to combat the incursion.

  Too much panic in the crowd, too much hesitation in the warriors. Not a chance between them. All would be slaughtered unless—

  “RUA TONG!”

  Something like that happened.

  Gariath looked behind him. From the eastern edge of the center they came: their faces awash with color and their long, curved, killing blades high in their hands. They charged through the center like a tide, pushing the noncombatants behind them as they rushed to meet the Sainites, heedless of the crossbow bolts flying and the blades swinging and the—

  Another trembling screech ripped through the air.

  The giant scraw strode forward to meet the Rua Tong clan, began swatting them aside with its wings, crushing them in its talons, plucking them up like worms in its beak and bisecting them in one bite. They did not run. They died fearlessly.

  And worthlessly.

  Bold, he thought. And so stupid.

  Human, shict, tulwar; it did not matter. Eventually everyone needed him to fix everything.

  He gave no roar as he took off at a charge; no one would have heard it through the carnage. But the cacophony of battle melded in his ear-frills, became so muddled and indistinct as to become a sort of silence unto itself.

  The sounds of those dying—the Rua Tong bitten in half, the elders trampled underfoot—were silent. He was deaf to the sounds of steel clashing and bolts entering flesh. Even the splatter of blood as the great scraw dashed a limp tulwar body against a wall went unheard. He could hear only himself, only his ragged breaths, only his heart pumping, only his feet on the sandy floor.

  And as he drew in a breath of cinders, he heard a single note of silence as he took one great leap.

  His body collided with the scraw’s face, the blood of its recent kills spattering his skin as it let out a shriek of alarm. It shook its head in an attempt to dislodge him. He gripped it by its horns, swung around to its back, and straddled its neck. The creature’s shrieks grew louder, its thrashing more fierce. Gariath held on, tightened his grip, pulled its head back.

  Gariath’s muscles seared as the creature shook its head wildly. The scraw was strong, no doubt.

  But he was strong, too. He was Rhega. And he had fought much bigger than this.

  He snarled, jerked hard on the horns to pull the beast’s head back. He risked letting go of one horn as he leaned forward and brought his claws about in a wicked hook, seeking the beast’s face. Something soft exploded beneath his fingers, bathed his hand in warm liquid. The scraw wailed. Gariath grinned.

  His time among the humans had not been without merit. They had not been strong, but they knew a few tricks: Never give up too early, never think too hard about a plan.

  And always, always go for the eyes.

  The scraw’s anger was fierce, its pain was monstrous. It reared back with such swiftness and force as to cause him to lose his grip, sending him tumbling down its back. He
only barely managed to catch hold of its haunches, sinking his claws into its thick flesh.

  Its shrieking panic sent it tearing across the city center, galloping haphazardly about the place as it sought escape. Gariath could feel each jolt as it trampled tulwar warrior and Sainite alike, bodies crushed under its hooves and rent beneath its talons. Its wings shook free, spread wide. It leapt.

  And Gariath felt the world disappear beneath him.

  The scraw carried him high among the columns of smoke twisting into the sky. From here he could hear only the screeches of other scraws as they passed by. Even the sound of his own breath was lost as the beast tore wild spirals through the air.

  He snarled. Hand over hand, arms burning as he fought the wind in his face, he slowly made his way up. The thing’s hide was thick, it scarcely even bled as he clawed up its back.

  He had to get to the head, find a weak spot, bring the beast down. This was the biggest weapon the Sainites had. If it fell, the rest would follow.

  If he fell with it…

  Well, he supposed he deserved that.

  Crossbow bolts whizzed over his head. Sainite riders flew past him, attempting to shoot him off. The wind was too fierce, the great scraw’s movement too haphazard.

  He had no sooner reached the middle of its back than it dived suddenly, sending him plummeting down its spine. He caromed off its horns, felt the nothingness of empty air beneath it before something sharp pierced his flesh. He felt the scraw’s talons sink into his sides, felt its claws tighten around his body, felt the heat of its breath as he looked up into its single red eye and gaping beak, open in a shriek.

  He lashed out instinctively, catching the beak with one hand to keep its razor tip away from him. The other shot out in a fist, hammering blow after blow upon the creature’s face as it pulled up and shot through the air. But his arm tired swiftly, his hand bled in the thing’s beak. The scraw didn’t seem to be so much as slowing down from his attacks, and its beak drew ever closer to his head.

  Maybe he was getting old.

  Or maybe he deserved this, too.