“They fought so fiercely for so long that their claw-like feet dug out the rock, wearing a great, flat floor into the middle of the plateau, yet because they never crossed the boundaries set by the lawmen, a wall of stone stood around these plains, closing them off from the rest of the underworld.
“In the end, it was the blades that decided the winner. After countless clashes, the blade of the moon notched the blade of the sun beside the hilt. The warrior holding the blade of moon and spring struck again, cleaving the blade of sun and tree in two, and then, without hesitation, she cut her enemy’s skeleton into pieces and scattered her bones to the west. She threw the broken blade across the Plains, where it struck the wall left behind by the Plateau and left a great hole behind: the Torn Curtain. As for the fallen warrior’s skull, the victrix left it where it lay.
“Standing above it, she raised the blade of moon and spring above her yellowed head, but it was a sunbeam that fell upon her from the heavens. Though she only now remembered it, she was the warrior who hailed from the village of sun and tree. Since each woman had, upon quickening, drawn the blade that killed her out of her own heart, each had fought the battle with her enemy’s weapon, and so it was that the blade of the moon cut the moon-woman’s body into pieces.
“The victrix was brought back to life, and more. The sunbeam falling from the land above made her flesh immortal and stronger than that of any living warrior. She rose through the earth to the land of the living, where she led her people in the war that had erupted during her long absence. And when she had conquered her enemy’s people, she found another war to fight, for though she lived again, she had lost the taste for food, drink, love, and song, caring only for that art that she’d spent a dozen lifetimes perfecting: slaughter.
“As for the warrior who remained below, she could no longer move, let alone fight, and was obliged to remain in the Plains. When the next warriors were driven there by their own violations of Tut’s law, she told them her story, and so it has come down through the years.
“Thus, the Plainsmen believe that the next time a warrior stands over the Plains in victory, she’ll be granted eternal life and return to the Lands Above in immortal glory.”
“Then it’s melee,” said Jacob. “Every warrior for himself.”
“Melee on the grandest of scales.”
“What happened to the loser?” said Remington.
“They put her head in a niche high in the rocky Rim that surrounds the Plains. She was the first of many honored spectators.”
“And the book you mentioned,” said Jacob, “where you found this tale—”
“Is lost,” said Etienne. “Look ahead: the Rim is on the horizon.”
Only scrutiny revealed the shape of the Rim, for the air was thick with motes of dust. Through their lazy currents, at the top of the long incline, the Rim rose like the stump of a mammoth tree, thick-walled and hollow. Its walls thinned as they rose, then terminated suddenly half a mile from the ground. They were the color of ancient vellum, smooth but for a single, jagged rift wide enough to admit a platoon of corpses—the Torn Curtain.
“Well,” said Jacob, “there’s the door. I suppose there’s nothing left to do but walk inside.”
“Has it occurred to you that we’re unarmed?” said Leopold. “The thuggees lying in wait on the other side will churn us into pâté!”
“Etienne, are you certain we’ll be safe?”
“Safe?” said Etienne. “Of course not. The entire population of the Plains wants to do you bodily harm on principle. Was anyone listening to my story?
“But if it’s weapons you want, there’s a market within that sells nothing else. They’ll take city-goods if you have them to trade.”
“A market, eh?” Leopold brightened instantly. “Splendid! Then we’ll arm ourselves forthwith.”
“Right,” said Remington. “And we shouldn’t have any problems staying out of trouble. I mean, if Etienne got through when he was soft and squishy, what do we have to be afraid of?”
“The living move faster than any lurching corpse remembers,” warned Etienne, but Remington and Leopold had already moved on, and Jacob, despite his trepidation, trudged on behind them.
The company’s bravery was quickly extinguished. Visibility worsened as they neared the Rim, the thickening air giving the company the impression that they were walking into a mist. Since even Remington was hesitant to enter a realm he could not see, the little group was slowly coaxed inside by Etienne, who convinced them that a raging battle would make some kind of noise, while this dust-cloud was chillingly silent.
“Plainsmen are anything but stealthy,” he said. “If you don’t hear them, they aren’t there.”
Against their better judgment, they passed through the Torn Curtain, beneath the Rim’s tall ramparts, past the sheer drop of its cliffs, and onto the unreadable floor of the Plains. Jacob led them toward the first shadow they saw, a boulder in the midst of smaller stones.
Pressed against its backside, they strained to parse the noises that reached them: a shuffling, as of heavy fabric being dragged across a dirty warehouse floor; a squeaking and rattling, as of ancient, lightweight chain mail; and a steady, muted thumping that brought to mind a monstrous, beating heart.
“I might find this comical,” whispered Leopold, “if I were on the right side of a rapier.”
“Stay still for now,” hissed Jacob, “and quiet! The dust will settle soon.”
It did, slowly enough that their tension grew into violent anxiety by the time Etienne remarked that the stone closest to them was not, after all, a stone, but a pile of severed limbs whose occasional shifting explained the shuffling they heard. By then they could see well enough to note that the ground all around them was strewn with grasping hands, twitching calves, dissociated joints, and butchered torsos, as if a thresher had recently plowed through a field of men. An arm severed at the shoulder dragged itself by the fingers toward the nearest cairn of human parts, nestling itself with agonizing leisure at the base of the pile. Nearby lay a pair of severed legs still joined by a pubic bone, one of which was pinning a disembodied chest to the ground while the other kicked it, endeavoring to cave in its yawning rib cage.
As the company stared at this grisly tableau, a booming voice startled them into perfect stillness.
“Otho!” said the voice, its gurgling depth only matched by its volume. “Otho, canst thou hear me?”
“If he can’t,” replied a shrill voice from farther off, “half the blooming Horde can! Let it alone, Oxnard. His Crushingness is gone.”
From Oxnard’s direction came the squeaking of tiny wheels and the rattling of thin metal. “Curse thy mealy-wormy mouth, Elspeth!” bellowed Oxnard. “Here’s the grand man’s thigh-bone now, still festooned with his helmet-hard flesh!”
“Still yourself, you great dead puppy!” said Elspeth, drawing close. “By the time you’ve put together half his puzzle, all the other Plains-pickers will have picked the Plains clean and driven the Armory’s prices sky-high to boot. Leave Otho to the fate his judgment earned, and let us trade this bounty for some proper crashers and smashers!”
In a temper, Oxnard shoved his vehicle toward Elspeth and into Leopold’s line of sight: it was a dented shopping cart from a long-extinct chain of grocery stores, its bottom piled with the brick-red flesh of the once-mighty Otho.
Elspeth, a slight, purple woman with a leather jerkin and an imploded face, caught the cart in her claws, dropping the handle of her own conveyance, a child’s wagon, all but denuded of paint and piled high with weaponry.
Oxnard stumbled into view to reclaim his cart, prompting the company to hasten their creep toward the hidden side of the boulder, away from his massive expanse of skinless flesh, which was crowded with spears, arrows, and broken blades, none of which seemed to bother him in the slightest.
“Otho raised thee from a pup, ungrateful bobbin!” he cried to Elspeth, lifting the cart and shaking the bits of Otho about in dismay. “Thou wert
squatting in the Parleyfields, squeening down at that bumble-blighted city, when unchoppable Otho rescued thee from future indebtitude!”
“Unchoppable,” said Elspeth, “is a poor phrase.”
“He it was that plucked us up and armed us with fearsome hacker-uppers bought dear at the mouth of the Bypass, and led us frightened as sheep-shorn lambs through that darklish path, and made us mashers of men! Hast thou forgotten, ungratitudinous Elspeth, whom it was that taught thee the stroke that severed the bean of Beano McGee?”
“’Twas Otho,” said Elspeth grudgingly.
“’Twas our dear dismankled Otho-man,” said Oxnard, and folded himself over to moan into his knees.
She stopped for a long moment, poised like a dog that’s noticed its quarry. Jacob, noting her sudden attention, left off his creeping, but the rest of the company kept scraping around the edge of the boulder.
Elspeth turned. “Ox,” she said, “make me an oath.”
“What oath wouldst thou have?”
“If I reunite you with the missing head of our Otho,” said Elspeth, “you’ll call me sir from that moment on.”
“But find him, and I’ll call thee goddess!”
“Sir will do.”
“Then I oath it, but find him quickly, dear Elspeth!”
“And Ox,” she said, “another oath: if I find folk who swear to bring Otho’s bits to the stitchery, you’ll leave off yowling and follow where I lead.”
“But Elspeth, there’s nobody here but thee and me and Otho-bits.”
“Then you lose nothing by the promise, do you?”
“Truish!” said Oxnard. “I oath it.”
“But hark!” cried Elspeth. “Is that the mewling of Otho I hear? It is!”
“It is!” cried Oxnard, spotting the dusty head past her outstretched finger, as silent as the rock it resembled.
“But soft!” said Elspeth, restraining Oxnard’s bulk with one withered arm. “Who’s that, behind the boulder? Why, a band of fearful recruits, eager to do our bidding or be minced!”
Staggering around the boulder, Elspeth and Oxnard confronted Jacob’s little band, holding their weapons at head-level.
While Remington and the headless threw their hands to the sky, Leopold and Jacob exchanged a curious glance, for the sword-shaped implements wielded by their assailants were cut from aluminum siding, their hilts wrapped in electrical tape.
“You overheard our negotiations,” said Elspeth.
“We did,” said Jacob.
“Then you agree to carry Otho to the stitchery?”
“In exchange for armaments from your wagon,” said Leopold, “and the cart to carry them in.”
“In exchange for your unsevered spines!” said Elspeth. “Resist, and Oxnard will mash you to Plains-paste.”
“Leopold,” said Jacob slowly, “don’t you wonder what would happen if, on the way to the stitchery, we were attacked by a second band as fearsome as this one?”
“Dear me!” cried Leopold. “Then Otho would be scattered to the winds for sport!”
“And we could hardly defend him with our arms full of his constituent parts.”
“I dare say we might lose a chunk or two.”
“Poor Otho,” said Remington, his hands still in the air.
“O, do as they demark, Elspeth, sir!” said Oxnard. “O, thou must give them mashers and the wheely-gig, for to protect our dear Otho-man!”
“Very well,” said Elspeth, irritated at this unexpected deviation. “Leave Otho in the cart, and bring them three bashing-sticks from the chariot, Oxnard.”
“But there are five of us,” said Remington, at which Elspeth laughed uproariously.
“Oxnard, hark!” she cried, pointing at the headless. “These feeble-minded recruits would have us arm their meat-shields!”
“Oh, ho!” said Oxnard, bringing a pool cue, a ski pole, and a slat from a picket fence, all worse for the wear, and tossing them at Leopold’s feet.
“A free lesson in tactics before we depart,” said Elspeth, picking up the severed head of Otho and heaving it into the shopping cart. “This is the bit that does the seeing on a corpse. Lose yours, and you’ll have a hard time swinging those bashers!”
As Oxnard rolled the cart before them, Elspeth drew up to her full height and shook her imitation sword at Jacob. “Swear on your posts in the Ultimate Army that you will bring Otho safely to the stitchery three miles hence, along the curve of the Rim.”
“I swear it,” said Jacob.
“So be it. Oxnard, hie! We make for the Armory before the choicest blades are sold!”
“Fare thee well, brave Otho-bits!” said Oxnard. “Mayst thou tower and glower again, and be the last to fall beneath my vorpal blade!” He lumbered off behind his new general, pulling their little wagon behind him.
“If this is the caliber of corpse we have to contend with,” said Leopold, “we’ll do more than arrive safely at the other end of the Plains: we’ll be its conquerors.”
“The individual warriors aren’t the problem,” said Etienne, “it’s their numbers. You can outwit a warrior, even a platoon, but what the Plainsmen call the scrimmage defies strategy.”
“There’s hope, in any case,” said Jacob. “Now let’s honor our agreement. I confess, I’m curious to inspect this stitchery.”
Though Elspeth had claimed the establishment was three miles away, the company trudged ahead with no idea how much ground they’d covered. If distance had lost much of its meaning, the passage of time was so effaced that Jacob found himself missing Dead City’s bells. Time and space seemed to be slipping away from him, and he found himself wondering, childishly, if they’d ever arrive.
Despite the gusts of dusty wind that overtook the Rim from time to time, the air slowly cleared, and in time a ragged construction appeared in the distance. Two long, flexible poles had been bent over each other and buried in the ground, forming a large tent enclosed by an unraveling tarpaulin, its sides marked by fat-limbed crosses daubed in flaking mud. A ring of crates surrounded the tent, stuffed with wire and scrap metal, encircled by a defensive perimeter of sharpened poles and barbed wire fencing that was currently being deconstructed by two spectacularly damaged corpses. The pair turned toward the rattle of Otho’s cart, a length of barbed wire suspended between them as they considered the newcomers.
He was a lean, naked man with a striking, two-toned corpse. His back, sides, and limbs were a rich mahogany color that indicated a natural Plains preservation, while the entire core of his body was a bombed-out black, as if he’d died by throwing himself onto a live grenade. The destruction stretched from his empty pelvis, through his charred ribs, and into the upper reaches of his face, where his jaws, teeth, and nose had been blown clean off, leaving two piercing brown eyes and a pair of bushy brows below a curly head of hair.
His eyes, once they’d determined the newcomers to be customers, returned to his gloved hands, which swiftly drew a loop of barbed wire from the long line his assistant was feeding him from beneath.
The woman, who stood a full three feet shorter, never took her eyes off the company and could be heard muttering her appraisal of their worth in an unfamiliar dialect, slapping the ground with one of her sturdy work gloves for emphasis. She was so low to the ground that this gesture required no amendment to her posture, for she had been chopped in two just below her breast and rested now on the stump of her torso, leaving her hands free to work.
Once she’d fed the last loop of barbed wire to her employer, she rose onto her palms and padded to the front of the encampment on her hands. Behind her, the two-toned man stowed the wire in an open barrel and withdrew into the tent. As the company approached, the half-woman barked out greetings in a number of languages until she found one that stuck.
“All right, fellas,” she said as they drew closer, inspecting them through a ferrety face that was, like the rest of her, riddled with evidence of post-mortem battles. “I’m the RN, and that there’s the Medic. Alls we need to kno
w is if you got trade.” Her dusty hair was close-cropped to deny grasping hands any purchase, and her flesh clung tightly to what remained of her skeleton. “If you got trade, we can talk about your buddy in the bucket seat. No trade, you got to turn it around. No offense, but we’re running a business here.”
She plopped herself onto her stump before the shopping cart and stopped it with her hands, climbing onto its wire basket and peering down at unlucky Otho. “Your buddy’s a real jigsaw job, too, and I can tell you right off that he’s got pieces missing, which costs extra, on account of the replacements.”
“You use parts from other corpses?” said Remington.
The RN squinted at him. “How would that work? No offense, kid. But how’s somebody else’s leg going to know which way you’re walking? We use prostheses: metal, wood, plastic, rubber. So, you got trade, right?”
“To be perfectly honest,” said Jacob, “we don’t even know this man.”
“Huh. So what did you bring him in for?”
“We traded the favor for these weapons, such as they are.”
The RN slapped the side of the shopping cart. “Okay, so whose is the shopping cart, yours or the jigsaw’s?”
“They were a package deal.”
“Good enough. You give us the bucket, the doc fixes up your buddy, everybody wins.” She loped on her palms toward the front of the tent. “Roll him in!”
While the Medic’s tent, on the face of it, had nothing in common with Jacob’s flat, its layout, arranged around the professional necessities of the Medic’s trade, felt instantly familiar to him. The tools, laid out on barrels and rough wooden shelves, illustrated the ingenious solutions that the Medic had found to those problems of reconstruction particular to the Plains of War, necessitating an approach to preservation unknown in Dead City. As a fellow tradesman, Jacob felt such excitement that he could hardly keep still.
In the midst of the cramped tent was an improvised table made of a barn door and two sawhorses, beside which stood the Medic. His hands, now gloveless, were so perfectly skeletal that it was clear their bones had been intentionally excavated by the Medic himself. With these brilliant appendages, he motioned for the shopping cart to be drawn up beside the table, then withdrew its contents one segment at a time.
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