by Sam Sykes
“COWARD!” she roared.
Gariath stopped.
“You’re nothing but a coward!”
Gariath turned to face her.
“You hide behind your walls and your monkeys and your big, insane speeches because you know the reason you want to destroy Cier’Djaal is that you’re afraid.” She spit on the ground. “Afraid that we won’t need you anymore.”
And Gariath roared.
A deep, bellowing sound that carried across the desert and sent the tulwar cringing behind the battlements and the refugees recoiling in horror. Asper winced at the sound, felt it echo in her entire being, save for one spot.
Dear me, Amoch-Tethr giggled. He is mad, isn’t he?
“Dransun,” she said, turning to the captain. “Give me your sword. Shield, too.”
“Uh… yeah.” The impact of what was happening suddenly struck Dransun like a weight. He quickly doffed his sword and the buckler he wore on his back. “Give me a moment, I’ll give you my armor, too.”
“No,” Asper said. “I’ve seen him rip plate off one man and force-feed it to another man. It’d only slow me down. I need to be light and fast.”
“And you want to fight something that can do that?” Aturach looked nervously over his shoulder. “Asper, what are you even going to do?”
“I’m going to beat him,” she said. “I’m going to make the tulwar lose faith in him. If we can do that, maybe we can force them out.”
“With refugees? No. We don’t have any fighters in—”
“Aturach.” She drew Dransun’s shield over her forearm, cast an iron look over its rim at him. “I can’t run. Not one more time.”
And he returned a cotton look: weak, helpless, soft. “Asper, you’ve got us this far. You’re holding us all together. If you lose this…”
He let that possibility hang. And she looked to her left arm and felt the heat rising beneath the flesh.
“I won’t lose,” she said.
She could tell by the look on his face that he had more to say, more reasons for her not to go through with this. And if she had given him half a moment, the vast majority of those reasons would probably have sounded pretty sensible.
But she couldn’t afford even half a moment of doubt. She was on her feet, shield in one hand and sword in the other, off at a trot toward Gariath, who stalked forward to meet her.
Right now this was all she had to fight with: a chunk of wood, a chunk of metal, and a vain hope that they might work. And they might. Killing Gariath might send the tulwar running. Or at least make them reconsider holding out on her. But then, it might just make them angry.
A lot of things might happen. But as she closed the distance with Gariath, she realized that there was one lesson he had taught her.
Sometimes one just had to start killing shit and hope for the best.
She was tense as she drew toward him, a tight coil that sprang with each step. But as he stalked toward her, his stride was easy, slow, as though he had already won this fight. It was not arrogance on his part, merely a statement of fact.
One he intended to prove as he drew back his arm and swung.
His outstretched claws sailed over her head, rending the air as she ducked low. She drew back her blade, ready to thrust out and catch him in the torso. But instead she was forced to raise her shield as his foot shot out in a vicious kick.
His leather sole struck it, sent a shock that rattled through her arm and into her ribs. She had to clamp her teeth shut just to stop them from shaking. She had been hit by Gariath before, but never like this. Before it had always been a chastising cuff or a teasing flick. Nothing like that blow.
He meant to kill her this time.
She lashed out of her defensive crouch with a snarl, swinging her sword out as she lowered her shield. He took a long step back, darting out of the way, sparing a contemptuous snort before swinging another arm out at her. She slipped back, brought her shield up, felt his knuckles graze the wood.
Easy, she thought through the shock. Deep breaths. Concentrate. She pulled the shield closer. You’ve seen him bleed. He’s not invincible. He’s like every other monster you’ve faced. Take him down, body part by body part. She tightened her grip on her sword. He’s not a dragonman, he’s a—
Anything she might have told herself after that, she’d never have believed.
Even if she could have heard it over the sound of wood splintering.
Gariath’s fist came smashing through the shield, splinters lodged in his red flesh and spattering his own warm life across her face. She had barely enough time to recognize his hand before he suddenly jerked it back, taking the shield and the woman still attached to it with him.
Asper cried out as she was hauled from her feet and swung in a broad circle. She heard leather straps snap. She felt herself flying. She struck the sand and skidded across it before she slid to a halt. She groaned, trying to clamber to her feet.
Gariath took a glance at the shield hanging off his wrist like some macabre bracelet before he grabbed its rim and jerked it free. He tossed it, punctured and useless, to the side and fixed his sights on her.
“Turn away now,” he growled as he advanced upon her. “Run back to your humans. Lead them somewhere else. I don’t care and I won’t follow.”
“I can’t do that,” she said. Her body protested as she rose to her feet, legs aching and arms sore. “These people are counting on me.”
“To die?”
“To fight.”
She held up the sword in both hands, holding it out before her in a stance she had seen Lenk use before. Her bones felt as if they’d snap, her skin felt as if it’d break, but she forced her stare to be as hard as the steel she looked down.
“And I will.”
She advanced a step.
“For them,” she snarled. “For all of them. I will.”
A step became a charge. A snarl became a roar.
“And I’ll never stop!”
She leapt, swung. The blade came down.
A brush of flesh.
A tiny blossom of blood.
That’s all her sword managed to claim before Gariath caught her by the wrist. She squirmed in his grip, kicked out at him, beat at him with her free hand. But against his scarred flesh, her blows were breezes and her blade was barely more than that.
“Humans,” he growled as he drew her closer with one hand. “You always act so desperate, as though everything in the world rested on your shoulders alone.” His free hand drew back. “But your bodies are too small to take that kind of burden.”
His fist slammed into her belly, knocked the wind from her, sent shock waves coursing through her.
“They will break.”
She never even saw the next blow.
She barely even felt the fist smash against her jaw.
It was a blow that knocked everything out of her: sight, sound, sense. Something inside her came loose.
When she hit the ground, she still didn’t know what had happened.
Vision darkened. Through glimpses she could see blood—hers—pooling on the sand, her teeth lying in it like porcelain fragments of a shattered doll. She could see him looking down at her with pity and with contempt and with hatred and trying to decide which of those to listen to. She could see him turning and walking away.
And slowly she could see the darkness closing in. Her head rang with a distant whining sound. Her blood dribbled down her mouth. But that was fine. She couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t feel anything.
Get up.
Except that.
Get up, my dear.
Burning. Fever. Bright.
Get up and finish your work.
Laughing. Squealing. Starving.
Get up and kill him.
She somehow found her way to her hands and knees. She somehow found the sight to look back. The refugees were there, watching, in horror and in shock and in fear.
And in anger.
Some of them, men and women, you
nger and older, armed with blades and rakes and sticks and whatever they had, were stepping up. They were pushing their way to the front. In their hands were weapons. In their voices were anger. And in their eyes.
Iron.
“Hey!”
She cried out before she knew she had. She stood without remembering getting to her feet. She held her sword despite not remembering finding it.
And when Gariath turned, he beheld a red, broken smile aimed at him down the length of a blade.
“That all you got, you scaly shit?”
It wasn’t anger that was on his face. Not even fury. Rather it was an absence that cast his face into a hard, dark scowl. A void where the last vestiges of mercy fled him as he lowered his head.
And charged.
Steady.
Amoch-Tethr purred inside her head.
Gariath’s feet thundered across the sands.
Let him come to you.
Amoch-Tethr giggled excitedly.
Gariath’s teeth parted, soundlessly.
Together, my dear. Together.
The skin of her arm burned. A bright-red light blossomed beneath. Bones were painted black by a hellish glow.
Gariath’s claws were out and the sound of his breath was in her ears.
NOW.
She swung her left arm out, reached for his throat. Bright-red flash, sin-black bones, fingers brushed against his flesh and tiny coils of steam whispered.
And did no more.
Her reach halted. She looked to her left, saw Gariath’s claws wrap around her elbow. Her eyes widened, saw Gariath’s claws sink into her flesh. She had a single moment for a single thought.
No.
And then he twisted.
A loud snap.
A louder scream. From her. From Amoch-Tethr. Their agonies tore through her skull, through her body, out her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes. Her left arm flopped uselessly to her side.
Maddened by pain, she swung her sword out, shrieking. She drove him back a step, another and another.
“You monster,” she roared. “You fucking monster.”
“I gave you a chance,” he snarled back.
“You coward!” She swung her blade again. “You turned! You left us! You left everything behind!”
Her blade struck flesh. Blood wept down its fuller. She saw his hand tightened around the blade. She saw him tear it out of her grip and throw it aside.
“Leave you? Leave you? To what?”
His bloodied hand reached out, seized her by the throat, and tore her off the ground.
“To the city you wanted? To the city you turned your back on? To Lenk and the other humans you abandon now that you’ve got new ones?”
He seized her by the ankle, raised her high over his head.
“After all the bones I broke for you, after all the enemies I killed, I never left you.” A roar tore from his throat. “YOU LEFT ME.”
She was hurled to the ground, bounced off it, rolled across the earth to lie limp in the sands. No breath. No pain. No sense left for anything like that. Barely enough vision to look up, to see him looming over her, to see him raise his foot and position it over her head.
It felt as if it took an eternity to come down.
There was a soft sound, the smack of flesh.
And when an eternity passed and it still hadn’t, she looked at his eyes. They bulged from their sockets. His entire body was trembling, but unmoving, paralyzed. Her head lolled to the side, looked behind him.
There, insignificant against his bulk, stood the tulwar. The old one. The fat one. His pipe was in his mouth. His feet were firm on the ground. And his fist was firmly planted between Gariath’s shoulder blades.
And Gariath did not move. Gariath barely breathed.
A flurry of movement. The old tulwar’s fists flew, striking several more points upon Gariath’s body. The dragonman’s foot lowered, limp. The rest of him followed, collapsing to the earth beside her.
Not dead. Still breathing. Just barely. She could see that. The old tulwar had paralyzed him somehow, struck him in such a way as to render him like her.
Fallen. Useless. Numb.
Things grew dark. She could barely see the other tulwar rush out to help the old one grab Gariath and drag him away. She could barely feel the hands of Aturach and Dransun seize her and spirit her back to the refugees. She could barely hear the cries of concern as others rushed to her aid, brought blankets and water.
Darkness reached out for her, as before.
And when she listened for a voice inside her, all she heard was Amoch-Tethr.
Screaming.
“Why?”
Feeling had returned to Gariath’s limbs just a few moments after he had been dragged back into the gates of Jalaang. And while he stood under his own power again, he felt it wise to make certain that feeling had returned completely to him.
“Why?”
And he did so by smashing his fist against the old tulwar’s jaw.
“WHY?”
The old tulwar sprawled out on the floor of the house, staggering to a sitting position. Under different circumstances Gariath might have been impressed that one so old had taken such a beating from him and remained conscious. But as it was, the fact that the old tulwar looked up at him and sneered through a bloodied mouth was merely aggravating.
“You know,” he said, “a more worldly person might be more interested in the how. The Way of the Wooden Fist is not a maneuver seen by many, let alone felt.”
“Answer me,” Gariath growled.
“The Muusa Gon were keepers of ways like this,” the old tulwar replied as he unsteadily rose to his feet. “Healers, originally, they learned the functions of the body, the weak spots on a creature that can make his muscles seize and nerves go cold.”
“You’re insulting me.”
“I’m telling you about our people,” the old tulwar said. He wiped blood from his lips and smiled. “Do you not find it interesting?”
Gariath swept across the floor, seized the old tulwar by his robe, and pulled him off his feet. His teeth were a hairbreadth from the tulwar’s face, his nostrils drank in the perpetual stink of pipe smoke. Even here, even this close, the tulwar’s scent betrayed nothing.
“You ended it,” Gariath snarled. “I would have killed her, if not for you. I would have won.”
“I did,” the old tulwar replied simply. “And you would.” He stared flatly into Gariath’s black eyes. “Because you didn’t know whom you were killing.”
“A human. My enemy.”
“I saw more than that.” The old tulwar’s voice grew harder, older, all the years inside him rising into his throat. “I saw a human, yes. I saw an enemy, yes. But I saw a girl, weak and no match for you. I saw a wounded woman, barely able to stand and challenge you. I saw you turn to attack a foe you had bested, because she called you some names.” He sneered. “At that point I could watch no longer.”
“So you betrayed me?” Gariath demanded, shaking him.
“No,” he replied calmly. “I stopped you from betraying us.”
“What?”
The old tulwar’s hand rose. Two fingers extended, found Gariath’s wrist and pinched lightly. A sudden surge of pain shot through his arm, bade him drop the tulwar. He landed lightly upon his feet, turned, and calmly walked to collect his pipe from the floor.
“You never saw, daanaja, because you never looked,” he said. “If you had, you would have seen them, the humans in that rabble behind her.”
“Weaklings,” Gariath snarled, rubbing at his wrist. “Farmers, wailing pups, and bent old men.”
“Humans,” the old tulwar snapped back. “Humans who looked to her as our warriors looked to you when we seized this city. Had you killed her, they would have rushed forward with their frail weapons and attacked to defend her.”
“And we would have killed them. Every last human, we would have—”
“NO.”
The old tulwar’s roar was impressive.
But it wasn’t his voice that rendered Gariath speechless.
Anger. It burst from the old tulwar like a wound whose stitches had just been torn free. It peeled off him in an overwhelming reek, a sudden burst of emotion that had been growing ever since he had decided to bury it so many years ago. An anger so raw, so old, so deep that it flooded Gariath’s senses: sound, scent, and sight alike.
“They would have killed them, yes,” the old tulwar bellowed, rushing toward Gariath. “They would have killed them, those soldiers, those farmers, those mothers and daughters and old men and children and every last human until their swords stuck to their hands with blood.
“I will not let you do that, daanaja,” he said, color rising into his face as he bared yellow teeth. “Killing those humans would have made them monsters, made them everything the humans say we are. We are not monsters.” He slammed a fist against his chest. “We are tulwar. We are warriors. We are hunters. We protect our families and we do what we must and we try to survive. We are not monsters.”
He shook his head.
“And we are not your weapons, either.”
Gariath’s eyes widened. The old tulwar fixed him with a penetrating stare and, for all the effort with which Gariath had tried to sense the elder’s emotions, he wondered what the old tulwar had been seeing in him this entire time.
“Shaab Sahaar would have broken eventually,” the old tulwar said. “Clans would have fought, ties would have dissolved. The wounds of the Uprising were too deep to heal there. We needed to finish what we started. And so, when you led them to Jalaang, I said nothing. I knew you could take us there.
“But I will not let you use them. I will not let you view them as weaklings, like you view the humans. I will not let you watch them die for whatever petty grudge you hold against the humans.
“Daaru, Chakaa, the other young tulwar… they look up to you. They see someone strong, someone mighty. They don’t know what I do.” He sighed deeply, all the anger seeming to seep from him in one great breath. “If you would lead them, lead them. Know them. Protect them. But if you would use them…” He fixed Gariath with a glare. “Then one of us had better kill the other, because I have no intention of watching that happen.”
The dragonman said nothing for a long time. The old tulwar’s anger slowly ebbed away, the scent of his fury dissipating. But what was left behind was no mere reek, but embers of a flame that had not died, merely quieted, and that waited to be stoked once more.