by J. S. Bangs
“Really?” Kirshta chuckled. “Well, at least Praudhu got what he deserved.”
“I don’t feel bad for Praudhu,” Apurta said bitterly. “But Sadja—”
His statement was cut short by the blast of a ram’s horn. In a heartbeat Apurta had drawn his sword and moved in front of Kirshta, while the villagers bowed their heads and scattered amongst the palms. Vapathi dropped into a crouch beside the palanquin.
A second trumpet blast sounded. Apurta relaxed a little. The blast sounded from below them, at the bottom of the hill.
“We’ve been spotted,” Apurta said. “I told you we should have had spies. They must have been watching us since we got here.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen,” Kirshta said.
“They’re coming, now.”
Kirshta clenched his jaw and put a hand on Apurta’s forearm. “If they attack, I will deal with them myself.”
Vapathi took her place next to Apurta. “I hope that isn’t necessary. Let me stay here. We have no other guards. Who would attack a woman, a sick man, and a single man with a sword?”
“Well, that depends on how smart Sadja-daridarya is,” Kirshta said. “In any case, I won’t die, but you…”
“I’ll be fine.”
She saw them now: a man in a scarlet kurta marching beneath a banner with the spear and rice stalk, with three Red Men on each side of him bearing swords. They marched up the hill toward Kirshta, hands on the hilts of their swords. One of the Red Men blew a third blast on the trumpet.
Kirshta raised his voice. “Do you need to announce yourself three times, fearful man? I’m not a crow to be frightened away by the noise.”
No response from the approaching party. When they reached the top of the hill the six guards spread out into two wings half-enclosing Kirshta and the others. The villagers had disappeared, dispersing into the scrub. Cowards, but they weren’t Devoured yet. Kirshta would eat their fear soon.
The man in the scarlet kurta stepped forward. “Are you the one who calls himself the Mouth of the Devourer?”
“I am,” Kirshta said calmly.
“Then you will give yourself up to the rightful Emperor of all Amur and end your pitiful revolt.”
“This is not a revolt.”
“Do you not have an army of peasants and slaves? Have you not been chasing off the khadir and dhorsha and desecrating their temples? That is what we call a revolt.”
“This is a liberation,” Kirshta repeated. “I am not an escaped slave trying to redress some petty grievance. I am here to unburden the peasants and free the slaves. I am the Mouth of the Devourer, the speaker for the Power which slept in the mountains. Fear me or be devoured.”
“A revolt,” the messenger said firmly. “Now I see that, like a fool, you came here without a guard. Perhaps I should seize you now and bring you before the Emperor.”
A smile spread across Kirshta’s face. “Bring me to the Emperor? I would be delighted. And here I thought we would have to fight to get to him.”
A cloud of doubt passed over the man’s face. “The Emperor is protected by Lord Am. You will not touch him.”
“Perhaps you should take me to him and find out what I do.”
A thrum of nervousness passed through Vapathi’s veins. If they took Kirshta alone to the Emperor, he would probably emerge victorious… but she wasn’t certain.
The man scoffed. “As we speak, the dhorsha of the Majavaru Lurchatiya are preparing the rite to bring Lord Am to the battlefield and imbue the Emperor and the Red Men with the power of the Right-Handed. Is your Power greater than Lord Am?”
“Yes,” Kirshta said.
“The Emperor thought you might say that. So Sadja-daridarya, whose name we say with fear and trembling, instructed me to tell you that he also bears the power of Kushma, his patron, and that whatever Power you awoke in the ice of the mountains will fall before Kushma, as it has fallen before.”
Kirshta stepped back as if struck, and his weak legs nearly buckled underneath him.
Vapathi caught him. “Get back in the palanquin,” she said quietly. “You don’t need to stand here.”
“I see,” the man said with a contemptuous glare. “At the name of Kushma the patron of our Emperor, you fall to your knees.”
Kirshta shook his head and straightened to his feet. His knees wobbled, and he gripped Vapathi’s arm tightly.
“Your Emperor does not have the power of Kushma,” he whispered. “If he did, we would not be having this conversation.”
“We’ll see when the battle comes which Power our Emperor has,” the man said. He stepped forward until his shadow fell across Kirshta. He was a head taller than Kirshta and Vapathi, and he looked down at them with contempt. “I was instructed by the Emperor not to attempt to kill you, lest you kill me and my men for no benefit. If I hadn’t received that order, I promise you that you would be dead now.”
“I promise you,” Kirshta said, “that you and your men would be devoured entirely before the first blow struck my sister.”
“I am authorized to make you an offer,” the man said. “Your surrender in exchange for the lives of your sister and your friend. You won’t, of course, see the Emperor, but you might be allowed to die painlessly.”
“No,” Kirshta said. “I’m done here.”
He shook free of Vapathi’s grasp and hobbled back to the palanquin. With ginger, pain-weakened steps he lowered himself onto the seat.
“Lovely,” the man said. He gave Apurta and Vapathi a glance of contempt, then turned and marched down the hill.
Apurta let out a long, slow breath. “Wonderful,” he said. “Now the Red Men will attack us.”
Kirshta lay his head on the back of the divan chair within the palanquin and his eyes closed. “We may have a few days,” he said quietly.
Apurta walked a few paces away, staring off into the brush. “Now where are those cowards who brought us here?”
“Never mind them. I need your help, Apurta.”
“I can’t carry the palanquin back by myself.”
Kirshta shook his head. “I need you to sneak into the camp of the Red Men.”
Vapathi’s hair stood on end. “Kirshta! You can’t—”
Kirshta kicked and snarled. He lunged forward out of the palanquin and seized Vapathi by the neck. They tumbled together to the ground, and he rolled on top of her, his hands closing over her throat.
“I told you never to use that name,” he hissed.
She couldn’t breathe. Her vision began to swim. “Mouth of the Devourer,” she croaked with the last of the air in her throat.
He let go and collapsed into the dry grass beside her. For a moment there was silence. A quiet sob sounded from him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Forgive me, my sister.”
Vapathi rubbed her throat. She sat up. Kirshta lay beside her, face-down in the crackling grass, his shoulders shaking with weeping. She rubbed her throat.
“I’m sorry,” Kirshta repeated. “The name… it’s like a limb which is cut off. When you say it, it’s like you press a salted knife into the open wound. You understand? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I knew—”
He pulled himself up to his knees and wrapped Vapathi in an embrace. He kissed her forehead and touched the place where he had crushed her neck. “I do not want to hurt you,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s very hard. So very hard. I’m sorry.”
“I understand.” She clasped her hands over his.
“No, you don’t. You really don’t. But I’m sorry. I will control myself.”
He crawled across the grass to the edge of the palanquin and dragged himself back onto the chair. With a sigh he closed his eyes again and gestured for Apurta. “I was saying, Apurta, that I need your help.”
Apurta stood at the edge of the path on the far side of palanquin. The villagers had emerged from their hiding and stood watching Kirshta and Vapathi with fear on their faces. At Kirshta’s ge
sture Apurta said, “You want me to go into the Red Men’s camp.”
“You were one of the Red Men,” Kirshta said. “You still have friends in the Dhigvaditya.”
“Some,” Apurta said. “I would have to find them in the camp.”
“Can you find them before you’re captured?”
“I can try.”
“Try,” Kirshta said. “Tell them… I will make them the offer we made to Dumaya’s men when Praudhu came to the Dhigvaditya. Anyone that defects from the Emperor and joins me may live. No promises for anyone else.”
Apurta looked at Kirshta. Conflicting emotions played across his face: fear, pride, and determination. “What promise can I give them?”
“They’ve heard the rumors,” Kirshta said. “Tell them we have the Devoured, who cannot die. Tell them they have the same choice the villagers have, to become Devoured or join us as mortals. Unless they fight against me, in which case they have no choice at all.”
Apurta ran his hands through his hair. “It’s possible,” he said. “I can try.” But there was fear all over his face.
“I trust you,” Kirshta said. His eyes were closed. Better that he didn’t see the doubt on Apurta’s face, Vapathi thought. Otherwise he might change his mind, and the plan, alas, was a good one.
“Now pick up this palanquin. The rest of the village is waiting for us.”
They descended the path down the scrub of the hill. Vapathi slowed her pace a little and fell in behind the palanquin. She motioned silently for Apurta to join her.
Apurta fell back. She put her hand on his shoulder.
“I’m worried for you,” she said.
He laughed without humor. “I’m worried for myself.”
She stopped, put her hands on his cheeks, and pulled his face toward hers. Her lips found his and she gave him a long, firm kiss. His arm slipped around her back and pulled her into his chest.
“Come to me tonight,” she whispered. “Before you go to the Red Men.”
“Of course,” he said. He kissed the top of her head and buried his hands in her heavy curls.
* * *
Vapathi stood next to Kirshta in the center of their battle line and watched the Red Men form into neat and orderly lines across the field from them. Behind Vapathi and the Devoured rose a forested hill, and before them an abandoned field of rice, now little more than a pad of dried mud. The sun glowered over the scene.
Their own rank was ragged and disorganized, their weapons mostly wooden threshing poles and copper sickles. The Red Men gleamed with polished bronze spears and brilliant red sashes tied across their breasts. Their own people were dressed in whatever garments the peasants owned, dirty with the dust of the unplanted fields.
Three days had passed. Apurta hadn’t returned.
Kirshta stood next to her, supporting himself with a hand on her shoulder. A cobra lay coiled on the ground beside him. He insisted on going into battle on his own feet, just as Vapathi insisted on accompanying him rather than staying back with the creche. They had argued back and forth about it until they both capitulated.
“Do you suppose he’s there?” Vapathi asked.
Kirshta shifted his weight to his other foot and let out a little grunt of pain. “If I were the Emperor, I would have kept him for questioning. I wouldn’t have killed him.”
Vapathi was quiet. “I hope you’re right.”
Across the field, a ram’s horn blasted twice. Other horns answered from the left and right wings of the battle formation. Shining like a wave of bronze in the sunlight, the Red Men began to march toward them. Kirshta’s grip on Vapathi’s shoulder tightened.
“Perhaps soon…” Vapathi said. “If Apurta has made allies, they might wait until the battle starts to turn.”
“I’ll make a show of power first,” Kirshta said. His voice was hoarse and frail. “Vapathi, I need you with me. This will be difficult.”
“You have devoured many men before.”
“I have devoured the names of those who gave them to me,” Kirshta corrected her, “and a few people I’ve devoured whole. But She Who Devours… this is the first time she will eat many.”
A tremor shook his voice, and his fingers dug into her shoulder. “Vapathi, the hunger is so strong. I constantly restrain it, constantly hold her at bay with my will. Not a moment of rest, not a moment of inattention. I let tiny bits through, enough to take a name or destroy a single man. If I let go of more than that I worry I won’t reclaim control, that She Who Devours will take me entirely and that will be the end of all of us.”
“Mouth of the Devourer,” said Sadma, the captain of the Red Men who had defected to Kirshta. “A few moments and the Emperor’s forces are upon us. What should we do?”
Kirshta straightened himself, and the tremor left his voice. “Tell the people to prepare themselves. But wait for me to act before you charge.”
The Red Men lowered their spears into a defensive crouch, and all down their malformed line the peasants held up their weapons. Vapathi put both her hands on Kirshta’s shoulders. The Emperor’s Red Men approached, more swiftly.
“You are strong, my brother,” she said. “For both of us and for Apurta.”
He nodded. He closed his eyes.
The Emperor’s Red Men were nearly running across the fields, their yells splitting the air. The bronze of their spears seemed to glow in the sunlight—no, they did glow. A brilliant red-tinted light burned on the tips of their spears and shone from their helmets, as if the bronze was freshly plucked from the heart of the forge. A murmur sounded among the soldiers of Kirshta’s line.
“The might of Lord Am,” Sadma whispered, his voice dripping with awe.
“What is this?” Kirshta said, a note of alarm in his voice.
“I have heard of it,” Sadma said, his voice creaking with awe. “There is a rite which the dhorsha of the Majavaru Lurchatiya may perform at the order of the Emperor. The power of Am the Right-Handed descends on the Emperor’s forces. But I have never seen it before….”
Any thought that it was merely the sun on their helmets died. The tips of their spears blazed with a scarlet light, and their armor burned with copper fire. Above them the air shimmered with waves of heat, and strange shapes formed and dissolved in the swirling distortion. Swift glimpses of muscled arms and a fierce face, like shapes remembered from a martial dream. The air seemed to quiver with feelings of valor and power. The shouts of the Red Men drew near, and their voices rumbled with a joyous thunder that was not merely human.
Screams sounded up and down Kirshta’s line. To the left, some of the peasants bolted, dropping their weapons and scrambling away, up the ridge of hills behind Kirshta and the line. Their formation, ragged as it was, started to dissolve.
“Lord Am?” Kirshta said. A heavy, black laugh sounded in his belly. “Let’s see if he can be eaten.” He closed his eyes.
The first of the Emperor’s Red Men clashed with Kirshta’s line. Howls of agony and fear sounded from the peasants. Kirshta’s little guard of Red Men closed around him and Vapathi and raised their shields.
Kirshta’s hand closed over Vapathi’s. He collapsed into her chest and screamed. She wrapped her arms around him to hold him upright, murmuring help into his ear. He shook.
The sound of spears hitting shields ceased, replaced by a strange tearing sound. Oaths and cries of terror sounded from the Red Men—theirs or the Emperor’s, Vapathi couldn’t tell—while Kirshta rocked in her arms, his hands pawing at the fabric of her sari. Her hands closed over Kirshta’s. They were so very cold. She pressed his fingertips between her palms and breathed on them.
“It’s fine,” she said. “You are strong. You have control.”
Finally, she looked up to see the progress of the battle. She cried out in surprise.
The advancing line of the Red Men in front of them was gone, and in its place was a bubbling, steaming pool of black pitch. The ground itself seemed to be dissolving, a pit opening in the earth, giving off a nauseating
vapor of putrescence and rot. The bilious liquid bubbled and hissed.
She looked to the left and right wings of the line. The pool was expanding, and at its edges the Red Men were devoured. Not slowly dissolved, but taken all at once, their bones shattering and their flesh melting, disappearing in an instant into a drip of oily bile into the growing puddle. The peasant army had ceased to retreat, but it did not advance into the bile. They held their weapons and watched the Red Men die.
Sadma grabbed Vapathi’s shoulder. “Look,” he said, pointing to the second line of the Emperor’s forces, on the other side of the black pool.
There was movement among the army. The second line of the Red Men, those who had not been in the initial charge, cast down their banners with the emblems of Am and the Emperor. They turned their backs to Kirshta and his line and began to advance on the rear lines where the Emperor waited.
“Apurta,” Vapathi said. Hope bloomed in her chest. “He did it. He’s there.”
Kirshta gurgled. The black pool expanded toward the Red Men who retreated.
“Stop, Mouth of the Devourer,” Vapathi said. “Stop! We’re victorious.”
A whimper sounded from Kirshta’s throat. He thrashed and fell to his knees. Vapathi struck him gently on the cheek.
“Awake, brother! Apurta gives us the victory. Stop!”
She knelt and grabbed his shoulders. A trickle of black bile dribbled from the corner of his mouth. She shook him. His eyes fluttered. His mouth opened into a groan. The groan turned to a yell, then a scream. He kicked and twisted away from Vapathi, threw himself to the ground, and vomited up a puddle of the black, pestilent liquid. The bile ate away at the soil, sending up billows of rotten steam as the earth dissolved.
He pushed himself away from the pool of vomit and collapsed onto his back. His eyes opened.
“I have her,” he croaked. “It’s over.”
Vapathi knelt next to him. He wiped the black liquid from his mouth with a sleeve. “Bring me some water.”
Vapathi gestured to the Red Men. Someone produced a pouch of water. Kirshta sat up and rinsed out his mouth, spat onto the soil, then drained the rest of the pouch.