by Sam Sykes
Kwar spurred it forward, made it bite and gnash at its sister until Kataria’s mount finally turned and took off running.
Directly toward Cier’Djaal.
Clever, Kataria was forced to admit.
She might even be forced to admit it to Kwar, if she didn’t break her neck. The yiji’s frantic lope beneath her left her clinging to its mane to avoid being flung from its back.
The beasts tore off, baying and loping through the fertile fields of Cier’Djaal’s farmlands. Shepherds guiding their flocks in from the day’s grazing went screaming in one direction, their goats in another. Small yokes of oxen huddled together, lowing as the yijis went rushing past. The beasts themselves ignored these easy meals, driven as they were.
The city walls loomed larger with every stride the yijis took until they towered over Kataria.
Good, she managed to think through her iron grip on the beast’s mane. We’ll be there in no time. And once we are, we can make our way into Shicttown, find Sai-Thuwan, and—
That last thought went flying as her beast skidded to a sudden halt.
She was tossed unkindly from its back, sent shrieking over its head to tumble across the sand. The few abrasions she earned were not enough to deter her from scrambling to her feet even as a curse scrambled to her lips.
“Hairy, lazy, disobedient, four-legged, motherfucking piece of—”
Whatever the end of that curse might have been—and Kataria was certain it would have been among her best—she never got to speak it. As soon as she found her feet, she found Kwar hurtling toward her. They collided with a shriek, falling to the earth.
The shicts fervently untangled themselves in time to see their yijis turning and bolting away from the city walls and fleeing into the hills.
“Ha!” Kataria whirled on Kwar, triumphant. “I told you it wasn’t me!”
“Sh’ne! Sh’ne kaia!” Kwar chased the beasts a few steps, shouting commands in shictish after them, before giving up with a snarl. “Fucking weird,” she muttered, brushing sand from her skin and clothes as she walked back. “They’ve never done that before. Something scared them.”
Kataria was tempted to ask—after all, it was just good business knowing what sort of thing could frighten a beast that looked like the misbegotten offspring of a drunk hyena and a sober camel—but she resisted. The walls of Cier’Djaal rose up behind her, swallowing the dying light of the day. No time to worry about the sensitivities of beasts.
Kwar apparently had the same idea. She soundlessly followed as Kataria took off, walking south along the wall.
Heading through Cier’Djaal’s main gates would be madness. Even if they hadn’t been guarded, even if the streets hadn’t been a battleground for the Karnerian and Sainite armies, they were still a winding, twisting labyrinth of houses and storefronts that would take hours to navigate.
However brief her time in Shicttown had been, though, Kataria had learned the khoshicts had a few ways of getting in and out of the city without going through the main thoroughfares.
And as they stalked south, they found that the walls of the city grew lower and more dilapidated. Eventually the towering, well-wrought walls of Cier’Djaal proper gave way to the splintering palisades of the outer city: an old, decaying memory of what Cier’Djaal had been in its infancy, back when this had been an actual city and not just a ghetto in which to cast the shicts.
Columns of smoke rose over the walls; the fires were likely burning for the evening’s cooking. Though the noises from inside were somewhat quieter than Kataria would have expected for this time of day.
“Should be around here somewhere,” Kwar muttered as she pushed ahead of Kataria. She walked the palisade, running fingers along the timbers until she found it. Tucked between two of them, she pulled out a hidden rope tied to the top. “Here.” She glanced at Kataria, snorted. “You should probably go first. Wouldn’t want you having to touch something I already did.”
The venom in her voice went without response. Kataria cast a glare at her as she seized the rope. One moment to tug on it, one more to make sure her bow and quiver were secure, and she was climbing.
“Wouldn’t want you having to touch something I already did,” Kataria thought back to herself in what sounded like a very good mimicry of Kwar in her head. Like it’s my fault. She winced as she hauled herself up the wall. Suck it up. Make it quick. Talk to Sai-Thuwan, tell him about Shekune, then you never have to see her again. Then you can go.
The thought that followed struck her like a fist.
But… go where?
Back to Lenk? Even if he wasn’t dead, even if she could find him, what could she say to him?
But she couldn’t stay with the khoshicts, could she? Even if they didn’t cut her down for speaking out against Shekune, what hope could she have of finding a place with them after killing their greatest chance to strike back at the humans?
She couldn’t be with them. She couldn’t be with Lenk. Where could she go?
It felt as if she used to know.
But, she thought, perhaps she could figure that out later. She reached the top of the wall, swung a leg over. Whatever happened later, that was later. Whatever happened now, that was everything.
She took a breath and dropped down.
She landed beside a figure. She looked up and saw a dark-skinned face and wide, startled eyes. She had expected that.
What she hadn’t expected was for them to belong to a human.
From beneath his helmet’s visor, the Karnerian soldier’s face was agog at the sight of a shict fallen from the sky. However slow his eyes might have been to understand, though, his hands were faster. Certainly faster than Kataria.
By the time she had her bow up, the soldier’s sword was already in his hand. By the time she remembered she had spent all her arrows, the soldier’s feet had left the earth as he leapt at her.
There was a scream.
There was steel.
None of it was hers. Or his.
Kwar fell from the sky, landed hard on the Karnerian’s back, and bore him to the ground. She didn’t appear to hear the snap that followed when his belly struck the earth—or perhaps she simply wasn’t satisfied by it. Her dagger was in her hand, her teeth were bared, her ears were erect.
And she was stabbing.
Once, twice, six times. Messy business, in the neck and the cheek and any bare flesh that she could find. When it was done, the Karnerian lay oozing onto the sand. The woman who rose up wore eyes that burned bright through the spattered mask of gore across her face. And Kataria found herself tense, unable to look away.
Here. This creature. This was Kwar.
“No.”
That voice, that soft whimper of fear that escaped her lips, that was Kwar, too.
And as Kataria looked up, it was she, as well. For as her eyes went wide, they were stung with smoke. And as she opened her mouth to scream, someone else did for her.
Shicttown once had been a ghetto.
Shicttown once had been a village.
Shicttown now was a funeral pyre.
Its tents were ablaze, erupting as Karnerians ringed them and tossed torches into them. Its yijis were butchered meat, dead on the ground as pups whimpered and nudged the carcasses. And its people…
Its people were everywhere.
Some fled, screams cut short as Karnerian spears pierced their backs. Some fought, swinging hatchets and blades before being brought down by Karnerian swords. Some begged, finding no mercy beneath the black visors of the helmets that scowled down on them one last time before their blades came down.
Everywhere they lay bleeding. Everywhere they lay burning. Everywhere they lay still.
“Father.”
A voice.
“Father!”
Kwar’s.
“Kwar!”
Kataria cried out, reached out, but neither availed her. Kwar was off, running, ears aloft and full of the Howling. Kataria tried to follow that sound. But she heard nothin
g but a twisting, shrieking cacophony; hundreds of voices screaming out for each other.
She shut her ears. She pressed them against the sides of her head and gritted her teeth as she took off after Kwar.
Over corpses, behind burning tents, around soldier formations. The Karnerians didn’t look like people, didn’t even look like humans. They were shadows at the edges of her vision, faceless suits of black armor that stalked among the fires, cutting down anything not wearing their colors. No rapine howls of pleasure, no savage looting, no barbarity.
Simple killing. Crude slaughter. Just another day for them, like all the others they had trained for.
Kataria did not look at them. She did not stop. She kept her eyes on Kwar, just as Kwar kept her eyes ahead, chasing an unspoken sound with no heed for the slaughter surrounding her. Luck had kept the soldiers from noticing her. But it would not last.
So Kataria ran faster.
Just as Kwar turned into the gap between two tents, Kataria leapt and tackled her to the ground. She was met with snarls and beating fists as Kwar attempted to writhe out of her grip.
“Let me go!” she growled. “Let me go, my father needs me!”
“They’ll see you and kill you, too!” Kataria replied, tightening her grip. “We need to think this out. We need to—”
“STOP!”
The voice was one Kataria knew. The plaintive cry of a voice used to speaking with authority suddenly realizing its own impotence.
Sai-Thuwan.
Beyond the two tents, out in a large sandy space littered with bodies, the elder of the Eighth Tribe stood. His hands were extended in pleading, his eyes were wide with horror, his lips were struggling to find words with enough power to make the slaughter end.
“Please!” he cried out. “You must stop this!”
But the ears that his voice reached did not seem moved.
Karnerian soldiers surrounded him in a ring, spears drawn on him and shields raised. They held themselves, though, at the raised gauntlet of a towering Karnerian, every hairbreadth of him wrapped in armor but his shaven head. A severe face scowled down the length of a sword at Sai-Thuwan, and Kataria remembered it.
Speaker Careus. Leader of the Karnerians.
“You had the power to stop this,” Careus said. “Had your people not attacked our convoy, had you been content to sit in your deserts and gnaw bones, we would not be here, savage.”
“There’s been a mistake!” Sai-Thuwan said, voice strained with desperation. “We did nothing, human, I swear to you! We’re the Eighth Tribe. It’s the Seventh that lives in the deserts. They likely—”
“Likely what, oid?” Careus spit the word. “Likely attacked because of a mistake? Likely slaughtered my men by accident? Those few that returned to us spoke of abominations: poisons that tore them apart from the inside, survivors flayed and hung from trees, cowardly ambushes in the dark.”
“I… I don’t know!” Sai-Thuwan said. “Maybe they… they felt threatened, I don’t know! But we didn’t—”
“Threatened? Threatened?” Careus’s iron visage began to crack. “Is that what I should tell their families? Shall I tell their widows that they threatened a bunch of oids? Shall I tell their children that they’d still have fathers if only they hadn’t threatened?”
“We can work this out.” It wasn’t clear whether Sai-Thuwan was trying to reassure Careus or himself. “We can work this out! We can make payments. We have hides, sosha. We can—”
“No, savage. The life of a Karnerian is not bought. It is forged in Daeon’s arsenal, sent to earth to be shattered in his name. We are the Sons of the Conqueror, destined to bring order to this world.”
Careus’s hand went to his sword. The hiss of its steel as it left its sheath spoke louder than even the screams surrounding them.
“And we do not treat with animals.”
“FATHER!”
Two voices rose. One was Kwar’s, the other was not.
Thua, large and brawny, erupted from a nearby spot. His hatchet was in his hand, swinging a broad arc that took a Karnerian in the neck from behind. He tore it free in a gout of blood, swung into the next one before he could react, splitting his helmet and sending him to the ground.
“Father, run!” he screamed. He turned eyes, wide and wild as Kwar’s, to Sai-Thuwan and gestured. “RUN!”
Sai-Thuwan screamed an unheard reply. Kwar shrieked unheard curses as she tried to free herself from Kataria. Karnerians breathed unheard prayers.
Thua’s Howling screamed louder than the dying and the living.
His hatchet whirled, swinging wide and splitting spears and shattering shields. Gutting necks and cleaving into chests and splitting arms down to the bone.
The Karnerians thrust, scored glancing nicks and cuts here and there. And each one was met with an edge whetted with red as Thua howled, hacking limbs and splitting collarbones.
“Let me go! LET ME GO!” Kwar was screaming, writhing, shrieking, pounding, hitting, clawing. “I have to help my brother! I have to help Thua!”
Kataria snarled, clung, bled. And she did not let go. She accepted her bruises and her cuts and all the pain. She knew she could not let Kwar in there.
Because she knew how this would end.
With a roar of challenge, Careus swept forward, bringing his sword down in a savage hack. Thua whirled, brought his hatchet up to block it. The blow brought Thua to his knees. Careus’s boot lashed out, caught him in the chest, and knocked him back.
He staggered, rushed to his feet, hurled himself at the Karnerian. He swung his hatchet in savage arcs, painting the sky with the gore that dripped from its edge. But where savagery had brought the other Karnerians low, it could not catch Careus. He moved, parried, saw each wild strike before Thua had even made it. His furious roars seemed impotent, his wild thrashing seemed pointless.
And yet he did not stop. He continued pressing forward, screaming, howling, slicing.
Until he swung too wide.
Too much energy spent. Slow on the backswing. His blow went wide. He brought up his arm to protect his chest.
And Careus’s sword sheared right through it. It passed through his forearm, sank into his chest. Thua jerked on his blade, as though he had just been slapped instead of impaled. His eyes were full of disbelief, even as his life leaked out from between his lips.
“THUA!”
Kwar reached out for him, screamed for him, struck at Kataria’s face to be released. Kataria accepted this. She accepted the pain.
Realization set into Thua’s face as he slumped to his knees. As he looked, slowly, for a father who had disappeared, something dawned inside his eyes. A sort of peace, a wisdom that looked odd on a man so young.
In those last moments, before his head left his shoulders, Thua looked very much like his father.
Careus’s sword hung steady in the air. As the headless body fell to the ground beside him, he did not even deign to look at it. He merely flicked gore from his blade and began ordering his troops to collect their dead.
And Kwar said nothing.
She did not scream. She did not speak. She did not move.
The khoshict went limp in Kataria’s grasp, as though it were she who had just been killed instead of her brother. She stared forward, eyes wide and unable to comprehend what they had just seen.
But she did. Kataria knew this because, no matter how tightly she pressed her ears shut, she could not block out the sound of Kwar’s Howling.
Long. Loud. Louder than the dying, Kwar’s voice reached inside Kataria’s head, into her skin, into her heart. It sat there and let out a long, sobbing scream.
It hurt to Kataria to move. Every time she did, Kwar’s Howling plunged deeper.
But she did move. She rose to her feet. She hauled the khoshict to hers. She aimed herself toward the wall of Shicttown and started for the last exit she could remember.
She drew Kwar close. She held her tight.
And she did not let go.
F
ORTY-ONE
THE HAND THAT HOLDS THE KNIFE
He could still feel them.
Isn’t that funny?
Days later, after the gutter-priests had done what they could, after the wounds had been cleaned and cauterized and bandaged and treated, he could still feel his fingers as if they were there.
Where do you suppose they are, anyway? Denaos asked himself. Still down there in that dark hole, maybe. Do you suppose that woman cast them into some ritual fire for sacrifice? Or maybe just a regular fire to get rid of them. Oh, say, what if a rat got them? Yeah, you could turn the corner right now and see a big fat rat with your pinky in its mouth and chase it all over town trying to get it back. Wouldn’t that be funny?
He stared at his maimed hand.
Laugh. It’s funny.
His mouth hung open, but no sound came out. Breath came instead, sickly and sour-tasting. It didn’t taste like his breath. Not the way he remembered. He wondered then, if he were to close his mouth and will himself to simply stop breathing, would he die? Or would he just pass out and get the only sleep he’d had since they had pulled him out of that hole? Either one seemed as if it would be rather nice.
Easy there, fellow. This is all becoming a tad morbid.
And these didn’t sound like his thoughts. These sounded like the thoughts of someone else. Or someone he once was or might have been.
Shit, what happened down there?
That thought, admittedly, could have been his.
Because, as much as he tried to think on it, he still wasn’t quite sure. Whenever he closed his eyes—and he did that very briefly lately—he saw only flashes: scales coiling, ochre eyes flashing, the silver flicker of steel, and then pain.
Pain he recalled clearly. The blade chopping through one digit, sawing through the next. The feeling of cold wind on hot blood. The shrill screams that had torn themselves from his mouth and how they just did nothing. No matter how hard he screamed, there was no end to the pain.