by Anthony Ryan
It appears the stories were true, Morradin observed dryly. He is a Blood-blessed after all.
Sirus could feel the other Spoiled dying around him as the Shaman King’s invisible hand crushed them one by one. Their last agonies were a curious sensation, absent of fear but full of pain and confusion. He was also surprised to discover a small kernel of fear rising in his own breast, finding a perverse delight in the knowledge that at least he would die with some vestige of humanity remaining.
Oh no, boy. Morradin’s implacable command brought him to his feet. We have orders, don’t forget.
Sirus brought the rifle to his shoulder, aiming at the dim shape of the rock where the Shaman King sat, and fired. The maelstrom died immediately, the raised water transformed into a brief but heavy deluge, the weight of water enough to force Sirus to his knees. He shook the moisture from his face and looked up, finding the Shaman King on his feet now, staring at Sirus with a strangely sympathetic smile on his lips. Blood leaked from a bloody hole in his shoulder, though he gave no sign of pain.
Sirus worked the bolt on his rifle then reached into his ammunition pouch for another round. The rifle flew from his grip with a hard jerk then spun around, the butt striking Sirus on the side of the head. He fell, stunned and blinded by pain, scrabbling on the ground until his vision returned, and when it did it was to regard the sight of a large boulder lifting from the pool. Water trailed from its sides as it drifted closer, coming to a halt directly above where Sirus lay. The wonderful fear lurched anew, growing with every second he stared up at the hovering stone. He decided later that it was the fear that saved him, overcoming his pain and confusion to birth a final instinctive lurch to the side as the boulder fell.
He rolled upright as the rock slammed into the earth, whirling to see the Shaman King regarding him with what could only be described as amused respect. The small man sighed and crouched to retrieve a drinking-horn from the surface of the rock, pausing to utter something in his own language before drinking deep. He staggered as he finished, letting the horn fall from his grip, then straightened, his former humour vanished as he fixed Sirus with a dark, purposeful glare and the air around him began to shimmer with heat.
Red, Sirus realised, casting around for another weapon, hoping one of his unfortunate comrades had dropped a rifle near by, but there was nothing. His reborn fear compelled him to flee into the trees but he knew he would be burned to cinders before he made it. So he stood, watching the Shaman King summon the heat that would kill him, gratitude warring with fear in his heart.
A piercing cry sounded from above and a crimson streak descended onto the Shaman King in a blur of folding wings and flashing talons. The small man had no time to redirect his fire, barely managing to glance up before Katarias bore him down, claws pinning him to the rock. The huge Red gave a brief, triumphal screech and lowered its head to feed.
Sirus, finding he had no desire to witness this, turned away and walked off into the trees. The fear still thrummed in his chest, though it was lessened now. He clung to it, nurtured it with visions of recent horrors, for it was a precious thing he might have need of later.
CHAPTER 24
Clay
Clay screamed again as the dwarf Green worried at his leg, feeling teeth grind on his shin-bone. His finger closed convulsively on his revolver’s trigger, blasting a hole in the earth a foot wide of the attacking drake. He tried to draw back the hammer for another shot, then spasmed as the Green clamped its jaws tighter still and a wave of the purest agony ripped through him from head to toe.
Sigoral’s carbine gave a loud crack and blood exploded from a large hole in the Green’s back. It jerked in response, tail thrashing and thick blood spurting from its wound, but still its jaws held tight.
“The head!” Loriabeth yelled, her words part drowned by a sudden cacophony of Greens crying out in challenge as they rushed from the surrounding trees. Clay heard her revolvers blast out a rapid salvo followed by a chorus of screams.
Sigoral crouched and jammed the muzzle of his carbine barrel into the corner of the drake’s mouth, drawing another scream from Clay as the metal slid over his raw flesh. The carbine gave a muffled crack and the back of the Green’s head dissolved in a blossom of gore and shattered bone. Clay gaped at the red ruin of his leg, fascinated by the sight of his exposed bone and the blood leaking in rivulets from severed veins.
Loriabeth’s guns fell silent and Sigoral whirled away from him, bringing the carbine to his shoulder to loose off a rapid volley. Clay’s gaze swung towards the Corvantine, blinking away a flood of sweat to watch him blast a Green’s head apart in mid air as it leapt towards him. The sound of the shot was oddly dull, like a distant echo, and Clay’s vision suddenly seemed to be bleached of colour, as if he were watching a moving photostat.
His head lolled as a great weariness descended, the world dimming further into a vague mélange of shifting grey. He would have passed out if a fresh flare of agony hadn’t exploded in his leg, returning him to consciousness in time to catch sight of another dwarf Green clambering nimbly through the branches directly above. His reaction was purely instinctive and he later doubted he could have made the shot if he had tried. His gun hand came up in a smooth unhurried arc as his finger closed on the trigger, sending the bullet clean through the drake’s head as it crouched to launch itself down at Loriabeth.
“Up . . .” he croaked, head swivelling towards his companions, who were now preoccupied with feverishly reloading their guns. “Look up!” Clay shouted, loosing another shot into the forest canopy.
Loriabeth was the first to react, her wide-eyed gaze turning to murderous fury as she raised it to take in the sight of a dozen or more Greens swarming through the branches overhead. She started firing as another wave of exhaustion swept through Clay, this time too overwhelming for any amount of pain to resist. His last glimpse before his vision slipped into utter blackness was of Loriabeth and Sigoral standing above him, guns blazing as they fired into the trees and Green after Green fell around them like over-ripe fruit.
• • •
A deep, persistent throb dragged him from the void, leaving him floating close to the surface of consciousness. He drifted in a fog of pain and confusion, wincing at the sound of distant thunder that he slowly realised were voices.
“Aren’t we supposed to dilute it first?”
“He once drank the raw blood of a White and lived. I think he can handle this.”
A burn on his lips, then his tongue, the taste familiar but also far more intense and acrid than he was used to. It invaded his mouth then burned its way down his throat as he gave a reflexive gulp. The pain lessened immediately, the throb subsiding into a slow, muted pulse that felt rather like being punched through a thick blanket.
“Cuz?” a faint voice asked from the far end of a long tunnel. “You hear me?”
Clay tried to open his eyes but still full awareness escaped him. He groaned instead.
“Gonna have to do something about your leg,” Loriabeth’s voice echoed to him and he could hear the note of grim determination it held. “Got no other option, Clay.” A pause. “Soak it good. Alright, give it here. You’d best hold him down, he’s apt to kick something awful.”
Clay had begun to voice a query, which emerged as just another groan, when the void turned into a blinding white sky as a thousand hornets stung his leg as one. The pain was far worse than the Green’s bite. A shimmering blade of fire sliced from his leg to his brain, birthing enough agony to wrench him back to consciousness.
He came to screaming obscenities into Sigoral’s face, the Corvantine averting his gaze as spittle showered him. Clay tried to clamp his hands on the marine’s neck, fully intending to choke him to death, but found they were confined, strapped to his sides by a thick leather belt. He thrashed instead, the foulest insults streaming from his gaping mouth as a shudder arched his back.
“It’s alright
, cuz!” Loriabeth’s face swam into view. “It’s us! Gotta do this to save your leg!”
“Fu-fuck you . . . !” Clay choked and screamed again. “Vicious . . . little bitch!”
“I’m sorry . . .”
He thrashed for a full minute, Sigoral’s hands like vises on his shoulders, keeping him pinned until exhaustion finally claimed him once more. He drifted away to the sight of Loriabeth staring down at him, tears streaming from her eyes as she whispered pleas for forgiveness.
• • •
“You’ve looked better.” She stood a few feet away, speaking aloud as she had in their only shared trance. She clasped the shaft of her spear with both hands, resting her weight upon it as she regarded him, the tattoos on her forehead bunching in amused appraisal.
“You’re dead,” Clay mumbled, then winced as a burning throb shuddered through his leg. “Go away.”
Silverpin gave a pout of mock annoyance. “Of course I’m dead. You shot me, remember?”
“It was an accident,” he muttered, casting his gaze around and finding himself in familiar surroundings. The cave in the Badlands where they found the infant White’s nest. Also, the first time they made love. Clay decided he really didn’t want to be here and made a determined effort to wake up. Nothing happened.
“This isn’t a dream, Clay,” Silverpin said.
Clay realised he was standing upright, his injured leg as straight and whole as before, though the pain it held was everything he expected. He turned around, taking in the surrounding environment, seeing none of the subtle or bizarre alterations a sleeping mind might make to a place plucked at random from the recesses of his brain.
“You shared the image with Miss Lethridge,” Silverpin said. “So it remains fixed. Just like me.”
“A talking memory?” Clay asked. “That’s what you are?”
“We shared a very special form of trance, a deeper and more powerful connection than has been established between two Blood-blessed for centuries. There were bound to be consequences. What are people, anyway, if not just a collection of memories? I suppose you could say you made me.” Her decorated brows bunched again in consternation. “Which kind’ve makes you my . . . father. Not sure I like that analogy.”
Clay stared at her for a long moment, finding no flaw in her bearing or expression. She was as he remembered her, too real and vital to be just a collage of images moulded by his slumbering mind. “So,” he said, “you’re a ghost.”
Her face grew sombre and she shrugged. “A murdered soul with unfinished business. A reasonable description, I suppose.”
“How come I haven’t seen you before?”
“It could be this portion of your mind was closed before now. Trauma can have a transformative effect on the brain. Or perhaps because you just didn’t want to.”
“Trust me”—he met her gaze, speaking in slow, unwavering tones—“I did not want to see you again.”
Her blue eyes twinkled a little as she smiled. “There’s no point lying in here. Can’t lie to yourself after all.” She glanced around at the gloomy interior, frowning. “This is boring. Let’s go somewhere else.”
There was no swirl of images like in his trances with Lizanne, just an abrupt shift from one location to another. This time they stood on the fore-deck of the Firejack, steaming sedately down a stretch of the Bluechurn he recognised as lying south of Stockade. The hard report of a gun-shot drew Clay’s gaze to the starboard rail where a red-haired woman was educating a young man in the finer points of marksmanship. “Damn, kiddo. Woulda thought a Blinds boy would know how to shoot . . .”
Clay turned away, fixing his gaze on the river ahead. “I miss her too, on occasion,” Silverpin said. “In fact, I miss all of them. However, thanks to you I at least get to see how they’re doing. You do know your little quest is going to get them all killed, I assume?”
“No,” he replied. “And neither do you.”
“Remember what I said about lying?”
“We had no choice. If you’ve seen what I have, then you know that. That thing you woke intends to eat the whole world.”
“No, only a large proportion of the people. And there truly is nothing you can do to stop it.”
He gripped the rail at the prow of the boat, knuckles paling with the force of it. “We’ll see. There had to be a reason for the vision.”
“Did there? What makes you think that? You caught a fractional glimpse of the future and immediately concluded it amounted to a providential message. From whom, might I enquire? A Corvantine god perhaps?”
He shook his head, refusing to look at her. “It has to mean something.”
“Everything means something. Water falling from the sky means it’s raining, and that’s all it means, whether you see it in the past or the future.” She moved closer and rested her head on his shoulder before pressing a kiss to his neck. “Face it, Clay, you led a lot of people into certain death for no good reason. Though it wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d had a choice.”
He turned to find her offering him a sympathetic grimace. “Meaning what?” he demanded, then shuddered as the pain in his leg lurched once more into full agony. The surrounding mindscape took on an immediate misty appearance, water and jungle shimmering into a formless fog. Silverpin, however, remained complete and all too real.
“Clay,” she said, shaking her head as the background faded into blackness. “Didn’t you ever wonder why they were so willing to follow you on such an insane course . . . ?”
• • •
He came awake with a shout, or would have if Sigoral’s hand hadn’t been clamped so tightly over his mouth. “Quiet!” the Corvantine hissed into his ear.
Clay relaxed, as much as he could with the pain still raging in his leg. Sigoral removed his hand before turning away, the butt of his carbine tight against his shoulder and barrel raised high to point at a much-denuded forest canopy. The three suns were visible through the sparse branches, the heat they cast down more intense than before, drawing fresh beads of sweat from his already moist brow.
“Greens?” he asked in a murmur.
“No.” He looked down to see Loriabeth crouched at his leg, gently pulling aside a heavily stained bandage to inspect the wound. She had positioned herself so as to block his view, but from the way she stiffened he concluded the news wasn’t good.
“Festered, huh?” he asked.
She shook her head and turned, forcing a smile. “No, the Green we soaked it in seems to have warded off any infecting humours. You’ll be up and walking in no time.”
“Then let me see.”
“You need to rest some more . . .”
“Let me see, cuz!”
She lowered her gaze and shifted out of his eye-line, affording him a clear view of the wound and why she hadn’t wanted him to see it. A sizable chunk of the muscle on his lower right leg was gone or denuded, leaving bone and sinew exposed. It was the kind of injury he would have expected to see only on a corpse. His gaze shifted to his bare foot and he tried to wiggle his toes, an effort that provoked another upsurge of pain but left his toes unmoved. He stared at the wound for as long as he could, forcing himself to accept the reality of it, before a rising nausea compelled him to avert his gaze.
“Might’ve been best to just take it off,” he said as Loriabeth knelt to replace the bandage with one from her pack. He tried for a jovial tone but it came out as a strained, tremulous gasp.
“I ain’t no surgeon,” she replied. “’Sides, I seen folk come back from worse. Remember that tail-strike laid me low at Stockade? And I’m still spry as ever.”
She secured the bandage in place, Clay gritting his teeth against the pain and turning to Sigoral for a distraction. “If it ain’t Greens,” he said. “What’re you on guard against there, Lieutenant?”
“Look at the lights,” Sigoral said, maintaining his
vigil.
Clay raised a hand to shield his eyes and squinted at the trio of crystal suns. At first he saw nothing then noticed the one in the centre dim a little as something passed in front of it, something with wings and long tail. “I’m guessing that ain’t a bird,” he said.
“Reds,” Loriabeth said. “They’re small, like those Greens, but they’re Reds alright. And there’s at least a dozen circling above. Ain’t seen fit to come for us as yet.”
“I think they’re waiting for us to venture out there,” Sigoral said, jerking his head to the left.
Clay turned, finding that the forest was mostly gone now, leaving a short stretch of widely spaced trees before giving way to the broad plain he had glimpsed from atop the overgrown structure. It was flat and mostly barren save for a few bushes. “How long you been carrying me?” he asked Loriabeth.
“Dragging more like,” she said. “Three or four miles from where those Greens came for us. Night came and went. The lieutenant did some counting and reckons this place gets about ten hours of light and the same of darkness a day, if you can really call it a day.”
“Why so short?” Clay wondered aloud, then grunted as Loriabeth tied off the bandage.
“Here,” she said, reaching for two branches lying near by. “We cut crutches in case you woke up. No offence, cuz, but I ain’t got the strength to drag you one more mile.”
She made him eat before they set off. It transpired they had adopted his suggestion whilst he slept, catching several birds for roasting. They made for tasty fare, reminding him of the pigeons he had resorted to trapping during his early days in the Blinds.