by Неизвестный
Moments later, I stood at the front of the phalanx. I saw the black wave roll toward us, a cloud of dirt and hatred in its wake. My hand felt sure, my arm strong. Their terrible mass filled the battlefield, but we choked the gates.
“Let the dogs come!” brave Demophilus said at my shoulder. He was a true friend and companion to me, and a fearless warrior. “Let us slay them one by one!”
A cheer went up, and we braced ourselves for the swarm. When a strange stench reached us while the Immortals were still at distance, I felt a small amount of wonder. These Persians smelled like death. A cunning tactic, but not one that would trample the bravery of any Greek. I heard no war cry rise up from their lines, but instead a dry rasping, like the last breath of a dying man, multiplied by thousands. I gritted my teeth and ignored the questions in my head. A soldier needs no questions, and a Spartan is greater than most soldiers.
The first line reached us, and I shouted as I drove my spear forward. The stink was unbearable as my weapon pierced black robes and entered my enemy’s chest. His body shuddered, and I ripped the spear free. I expected a fountain of blood from the mortal wound I’d given him. I expected him to fall in a heap, forgotten as I killed the next of Xerxes’ precious Immortals. There was no blood, though. The man who had shuddered as my spear breached his heart did not fall or cry out in any way.
Something was wrong. I heard more of those rasps, now angry, almost hungry. Around me, I heard my fellows scream in surprise and then pain. I stabbed the man again, and this time my spear erupted from his back. He gave no sign that he felt the terrible blow, and still he did not bleed.
I looked into his hateful eyes, and I realized they were entirely white. His nose was missing, rotted away, and his lips were cracked and desiccated things stretched back to reveal a mouth of blackened teeth. My breath caught in my chest as I realized the Immortals were dead men. Somehow, Xerxes had set an army of corpses upon us.
Grabbing my spear with both hands, the rotting man dragged himself toward me. I shoved back at him, but it only brought him closer. Beside me, the phalanx began to break. I saw black-robed corpses climb over the line and drag my fellow Greeks to the ground. They bit faces and throats, and our soldiers bled more than they ever had. Demophilus thrashed beside me, one of the Immortals riding his back like an angry spider. When the dead man breached my friend’s armor and bit into his throat, blood splashed across my cheek.
Dropping my spear, I ripped my sword from its scabbard and swung at the man I should have killed twice over. My blade chopped through his neck, and his body dropped as his head rolled away. At last!
I turned to Demophilus. His attacker had him pinned to the ground, still gnawing on his throat. I grabbed the horrible Immortal by what remained of his hair and jerked back his head. With my sword, I hacked at his neck. Four blows, and his skull separated from his body. I tossed the terrible thing away.
Demophilus was dead. Any fool could see it at a glance. His eyes were closed, his face washed with crimson. A wet and ragged crater replaced his once healthy throat. In the instant I had, I mourned him as best I could.
Turning away, I joined the battle anew. With each swing, I aimed for a throat, meaning to cleave head from neck. I shouted to my remaining fellows, telling them how to drop the Immortals.
A strong and violent hand grabbed my shoulder. I whirled around, ripping free of the menacing grip and cocking back my sword for a death blow. Had they flanked us?
I faced brave Demophilus. He stared at me with white eyes. Held by that cold gaze, I hesitated. My friend. My fellow. A Spartan.
Demophilus shrieked from his ruined throat, and I screamed with him.
The Cost of Moving the Dead
E. L. Kemper
To move your dead you must pay two ban liang. Not a lot.
If you didn’t move them, bring them home, their restless souls roamed the countryside—your ancestor-spirits moaned and wailed for the missing, rustling through the thatch of your roof, all night long they’d call. Nobody wanted this. So the cost of moving the dead was reasonable.
The priests came to town, feet bare, bundled in brown robes, dusted by road. They passed between the mud-brick houses, trailing clouds of spiced smoke that would linger in the village for days.
When they stopped at your door you knew. Your husband, father, brother had gone north to fight the barbarians, to build the wall, and he wasn’t coming home. At least not alive. So you paid. And you waited.
Months pass. One morning you wake, the crow of roosters echoing through the village. You remember you are out of oil when your front door hinge creaks, a soft stutter that makes your hair stand up. And then you forget the oil again.
Your husband, father, brother is home.
He lies across your front yard, bound to a bamboo pole, veiled in linen, small sacks of azuki beans on shoulders, hips and knees hold him down. Now the ancestor-spirits will cease their nightly clamor. Now the children will sleep in peace. You sink to your knees and reach with shaking hands to touch the bare iron nail pierced through his forehead.
He is home.
Bells rang, trickling over the blowing sands. The goats back at camp bleated and muttered, then settled into sleep once more.
Buwei followed the wall, this section as high as his hip, soon to be higher. He stopped, eyes straining in the dark for the glow of lantern and incense burner, ears straining for another clink of bells, for the shuffle-thump.
He must see Yun again. Just one last time.
Foreman Liang’s orders were very clear this night. Do not venture out until sunrise.
Liang had worked the men hard, harder than usual, digging, carrying, filling the forms and tamping the walls. Pounding and hammering until the earth was hard as a rock—until wind, water and weapon couldn’t tear the wall down. Then Liang filled the men full of spiced goat meat and sent them to their tents with wine to warm their bellies. Most of the men stuffed their ears with cloth, shutting out the snores of their fellows, muting the moan of the restless wind as it chased clouds of earth across the barren hillsides. And they slept.
But Buwei had to see Yun again. He had to make sure Yun’s family had paid the price—could afford to. That Yun’s family was bringing him home.
Bells sounded again, bright slivers of sound pricking the dark. A line of lanterns bobbed along, floating towards him. Buwei jumped to the other side of the wall and crouched in the cold, waiting for the priests to bring the jiang shi his way.
A scuffing slump accompanied the ringing of the bells. The tickle of incense came gusting towards Buwei, along with a rotted-meat stench that seeped into his throat until he gagged. Pack-mules followed, snorting ghosts of vapor. One shook its head and sent its bell-decked bridle jingling.
The priests walked barefoot and slow, the words of the I Ching spilled from their tongues. And with the priests came the jiang shi. They were close now, moving with a steady, lurching shuffle. Buwei hunched lower behind the wall, his hands numb, his knees turned to water.
He had to look. He had to know.
So he raised his head again, every nerve in his body protesting, twitching, urging him to run, to scream, to shut this horror away. Jiang shi. The dead. A nightmare told by grandmothers to pale, shivering children.
He must see Yun again.
The priests walked in a circle around the dead, penning them in with their shields of bamboo. Each shield bore the eight symbols of the bagua, the elements in all their forms, and was strung with mirrors swaying on black thread. With these, and the clanking bells they moved the jiang shi, guided them, held them at bay.
The dead were prepared well for their journey.
Buwei searched the horde of corpses, each wearing its funeral robes, hair smoothed and knotted atop its head, lashed to bamboo poles that rose like reeds from a fetid pool. Each with arms extended, fingernails grown long in the grave. A strip of yellow paper was nailed to each forehead, and the papers curled and shuddered in the wind.
The dead
walked with a strange lurching hop, joints stiff and unbending. The dead had skin the color of the moon, coated in pale mold. The priests grew the mold on the corpses for three cycles. After three cycles the dead would rise, ready to go home.
Buwei searched for the familiar jaw, square and proud, the familiar arch of eyebrow, always asking and at the same time knowing, the familiar bearing, wide-shouldered and proud, arms strong and comforting against the chill of the winter nights.
It tortured him to think of Yun’s spirit, tumbling with the north wind, lost and howling its loneliness across these frigid plains. Yun must return home for his body to be placed on the altar with a lantern at its feet. Home, surrounded by family in funeral white, candlelight catching their tears, incense smoke rising with their mourning chant, rising with the shadow of death.
When the buckets fell on Yun, crushing fingers into flat worms, bruising toes, Buwei had wrapped Yun’s hand with a strip of his robe and traded Yun’s straw slippers for his own worn leather boots and bindings. Yun worked for days, hiding his pain and the swelling. He screamed as Foreman Liang cut rotting fingers away, then the whole hand. But too late. A black line shot up Yun’s arm and he slipped away, not feeling Buwei’s grip on his remaining hand, not hearing Buwei’s desperate prayers.
He needed to see Yun.
One priest cried out when he stumbled over a stone. As he fell he dropped his shield, his lantern and his bell. The bell tinkled as it rolled across the pebbled earth, and the priest scrambled on hands and knees after it.
Buwei couldn’t breathe, his fingers dug into the wall, holding himself in place.
Two other priests rushed to assist, but not fast enough. The dead advanced on the doomed priest as he retrieved his bell. Just as his fingers grasped the cool metal, the dead fell on him. The priest’s screams filled the night as the dead began to feed.
The dead were hungry. They hungered for life, for flesh, for blood.
They tore at the priest as his fellows held back the rest of the shuffling mass. With their shields and their bells and their steady recitation, the priests forced the jiang shi between them, leaving the fallen ones to their feast.
Soon the priest’s cries ceased, and the night was filled only with the sound of the hungry dead. Joints, stiff with death, creaked and popped as the dead gnawed at their prize. When the writhing and slurping slowed, two of the priests approached the pile of corpses. Shaking their shields they reached for the bamboo poles that the jiang shi were lashed to and righted their charges, guiding them back to their glass-eyed brothers.
The last of the dead was pulled from the ground, with one claw dripping blood and chunks of flesh as it came, the other an aborted stump. Yun. His jaws snapped open, shut, open with yearning. His lips, now cracked and mottled by decay, smeared with the gore of his final meal—Buwei knew those lips. So often those lips had broken into smile, into laughter. Those lips were warm and soft, their touch gentle, insistent against his. On his feet he still wore the leather boots Buwei had tied with such care, those boots would bear him the countless miles of his return.
Buwei’s heart slowed, each beat an ache that pressed through to his bones.
Yun. Yun was going home.
With prods and chanting and ringing of bells, the priests began to move the dead once more. Scraping along the ground the horde moved away. One priest stayed behind. He wrapped the new carcass in cloth and secured it to a mule, and together mule and priest hurried after the horde, jingling as they went.
Buwei watched until he could see them no more. The dead were going home.
One morning Yun’s wife would wake to the rooster’s crow, open the door to fetch some water to make rice soup for her children. She would stop. A bundle laid carefully across her front yard blocks her way, wrapped in linen, held down by small sacks of azuki beans. She sinks to her knees, tears falling from her eyes in streams. With shaking hands she reaches to touch the iron nail pierced through his forehead.
The night became quiet again and sanded wind stung Buwei’s face.
Yun was going home.
Hauntings and Hungers on the Banks of the Vipasa
Rajan Khanna
The summons came as Adhrit was meditating in the temple, breaking him from contemplation. He hurried to his brother’s side, the raja’s side, pausing only to clothe himself in his white ascetic’s robes, incense still tickling at his nose.
Sankara’s advisors were leaving as Adhrit entered, their faces drawn, serious. The room held the lingering odor of sweat. “What is it?” Adhrit asked when he saw his brother’s pale face. Sankara’s turban was askew, his habit being to rub at his forehead when he was worried.
“Alexander moves toward the Vipasa River,” Sankara said. “He defeated Raja Puru, and you know Puru’s strength.”
Puru was something of a legend, Adhrit knew. He had more troops, more chariots, more elephants than anyone in the region. “There is still the Vipasa,” Adhrit said. The river had long aided them by providing a natural boundary.
Sankara shook his head. “It won’t stop him. Alexander crossed a swollen river to attack Puru. Some say he can’t be defeated.”
“Anyone can be defeated,” Adhrit said, but he wasn’t sure he believed it.
“Ramyasthana is a place of learning, of art and music and for faith. We are not warriors and now we are facing conquest.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” Adhrit asked.
“I need allies who can defend us from the Macedonian.” Sankara looked hard at Adhrit. “You can help me get them.”
Adhrit exhaled and turned away from his brother. “Are you truly asking this?”
“I must.”
Adhrit turned back to his brother, heat rising through him. “You want me to return to that life? You were the one to rescue me from it! You set my feet upon the just path and I was grateful for it!”
“I know,” Sankara said. “But this is to save our home. Our family. All we know.” He moved forward and placed his hands on Adhrit’s shoulders. “I ask. The burden is mine.”
Adhrit met his brother’s gaze. “Tattva tells us life is temporary. We should meet it as we are, travelers on the right path. Like a plague, this Alexander might kill us, but our souls will move on, further on the path to moksa. Why pollute our souls—”
“The teachings say violence is allowed in situations of self-defense,” Sankara said. “That’s what this is—defense of our lives, our homes, our way of life.” He knelt at Adhrit’s feet. “Please, anujah, do this for me.”
Adhrit’s chest tightened. Sankara had dragged him from an evil life. And when their taata had been ready to turn his back on Adhrit, Sankara wouldn’t. Sankara had saved his life, and more so, his soul. “I will do it,” he said.
Yet, as he walked from the tent, that very soul felt heavy. Even sick at the thought of whom he had to return to.
In the dark, a lantern his only illumination, Adhrit wound his way through the jungle. Peacocks howled in the darkness punctuating the insects’ hum. Sankara had once asked him how he found his way so easily through the jungle. “I often need escape,” he’d said. He was amazed that he still knew the way.
His brother had wanted allies. Rough men. Lawbreakers and blackguards that Adhrit had known in his youth. But there was another option, of greater strength but higher price. A few killers would make little difference to an army. But the man he sought now was a different breed. It forced him to live apart.
Ekaaksh had survived the jungle by transforming himself. Just as Adhrit once had.
Their wise taata had welcomed the Jains and the followers of the Buddha into the heart of Ramyasthana and Adhrit had learned from them. It had been difficult, but the teachings gave him something to hold on to, a path to setting himself right. For years since he had prayed at the temple daily, vowing to do no harm, giving up his worldly possessions, wearing only white robes. Yet now he wore a dhoti once more, wrapped his head in a turban, shod feet that had long gone uncovered. Only his lon
g beard marked him as monastic.
Ekaaksh’s cave was filled with what appeared to be a random assortment of objects. Bowls and powders stood on surfaces of differing heights. An altar stood in the middle of the cave, containing another bowl next to a vajra and a bell. Behind it stood simple stone representations of the Vedic gods. Adhrit thought he recognized a crocodile’s skull, lying next to the horns of a goat. The lamplight sent the shadows of all these things dancing on the stone walls.
“Ah.” The voice came from behind him. Adhrit turned to see the familiar face: the teeth were still rotten, the one eye still blind, but Ekaaksh smiled at Adhrit. “I haven’t seen you for some time.”
Adhrit shrugged. “I found better things to do.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Ekaaksh said. “What can I do for you now? A virility charm perhaps? Or some kind of protection?”
Adhrit waved a hand in the air. Living so distant from others gave the hermit the bliss of ignorance about the wars. “I want nothing from you. The raja has need of a tantric sorcerer.” The word conjured memories of other men from the past, other so-called sorcerers. Adhrit remembered one, though not his name, who drank his own urine and ate his own feces. Adhrit had been disgusted even then, but the man had said that in breaking from morality he was able to work great magics. But at what cost?
Ekaaksh stepped closer. His breath reeked. “The raja wishes my help?”
“The Macedonian sends his armies this way. Already he has defeated forces much greater than our own. We need more than men to save Ramyasthana.”
Ekaaksh narrowed his eyes and rubbed his hands together. Adhrit noticed that they were stunted, small as a child’s hands. “You are still shrewd to seek out sorcery.”
“So you know someone who can do this?”
Ekaaksh frowned. “Me, of course. Mundane magics may earn my bread, but I know the old rituals.” Ekaaksh held out a splayed hand studded with long, filthy nails. “It will be no trouble, provided the payment is—”