God's Last Breath

by Sam Sykes

  Still so gods-damned perfect.

  She loosed. It flew, lodging itself just above the hand that held Lenk to the earth. The head burst out the other side, bloodless. Mortal violence could not harm Aeon or demon, Lenk knew. Only memory could. And while he wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, he had a few theories and no other choices.

  He reached up. He grabbed the arrow. He pulled it violently out the other way. It came with a spatter of blood. And that long, loud scream that wasn’t a scream.

  The Aeon’s grip loosened, just enough for Lenk to pry himself free. He scrambled away, searched for his sword. He had barely brushed fingers against the hilt when a foot caught him in the side. The kick carried him up off his feet and sailed him breathlessly through the air. He landed hard on the earth, knocking the last breath from him. He rolled limply on the sand, down the dune, before coming to a stop.

  Breath gone. Sword gone. A fierce pain in his side. No blood for his legs to stand with. No air in his head to think with.

  He had a scar somewhere that would tell him what to do here, he knew. Somewhere on his body, one of the old pains would know how to get out of this. But he couldn’t feel it on his body. Not in time, anyway.

  Oerboros came crashing down, his one wing carrying him only a few feet before he landed. He advanced upon Lenk, his sword dragging behind him. His bronze face betrayed no pain as he came; his hollow eyes betrayed no pity. He showed nothing.

  Not even when she appeared over Lenk, bow drawn, ears aloft, arrow aimed right at Oerboros’s throat.

  She couldn’t hurt him. She had to know that. No arrow she fired would ever harm him. But there she stood, her back to Lenk, her muscles tense, not fleeing, not moving.

  She didn’t even look back at him.

  “I am unconcerned with you,” Oerboros said. “I swore no harm would come to you if you did not intervene. And despite that, you still cannot hinder me. Leave now. I will grant him the mercy of sparing you.”

  “No.”

  Kataria fired an arrow. It lodged itself in Oerboros’s throat. He did not so much as flinch.

  “I do not understand,” the Aeon said. “He is weak-minded. He is murderous. He has betrayed many to get here, yourself included. Why? Why would you die for him?”

  Lenk couldn’t see her face. He didn’t need to. He could feel her snarl, the sharpness of her canines, the fury in her eyes, just from her voice.

  “Because,” she said, voice drawn like a blade from flesh, “he’s mine.”

  She fired. Once. Twice. Three times. One in the chest. Another in the leg. One more in the eye.

  Oerboros didn’t care. He didn’t stop. He didn’t so much as hesitate when he lashed out with a hand, striking her across the face and sending her sprawling.

  “Kataria!”

  Lenk found his voice. He found his breath. And while he could find no scar to tell him what to do, he did it, anyway.

  He scrambled across the sand and threw himself over her protectively. She was still, but she was warm, her blood burning inside her. Her breath was hot and ragged as she groaned. And, so close to her, her pain so sharp in his ears, he knew what to do.

  He found her knife.

  “I am sorry,” Oerboros said. He raised his massive sword high. “I cannot remember if you go to the same place. But you will go together, at the very—”

  Lenk whirled around. He lunged. Kataria’s knife plunged into Oerboros’s withered belly. He snarled, giving it a sharp twist. Red came out in a great wash, pouring over Lenk’s hands and staining the earth black.

  No sound this time. Oerboros didn’t have a noise for this. Oerboros didn’t know what this was, what was happening to him. The earth shook as his blade fell from his hands. Sand squished as he slumped to his knees. He looked down at the gaping wound in his abdomen as Lenk tore the knife free.

  “Ah.” His voice, still so empty, still so calm. “I understand this, at least.” He looked up at Lenk. His eyes, still so hollow. “There was no other way to be free of him, was there?”

  No answer but the knife. Punching up through Oerboros’s jaw, under his chin. Twisting in his flesh, tearing out the last part of him. It held lodged there, a macabre piece of jewelry on the magnificent ruin of his body as he slumped over.

  The last Aeon collapsed onto the sullied earth and moved no more.

  Another time, that might have weighed more heavily on him. But Oerboros’s body was not his concern.

  “Kat!” He rushed back to her as she staggered to her hands and knees, coughing. “Easy! Easy.” He took her gently by the arm, slowly helping her to her feet. “Slowly. He hit you pretty hard.”

  In three breaths, she found her legs. In one more, she found her fist. And then, she found his face.

  She struck him across the jaw, a wild blow that found him out of luck. He recoiled from the strike, holding his face as he looked at her with a shocked stare.

  “What was that for?”

  Her only answer was a snarl as she lunged forward, swinging for him again. She missed as he pushed back, but she shoved him harshly, toppling him off his feet and onto the ground. She leapt upon him, throwing wild blows at his face as she snarled through gritted teeth.

  “For fuck’s sake, calm down!” he roared to be heard, trying to block her punches.

  “What did I say?” she shrieked. “What the fuck did I say?” A fist caught him in the cheek. “No more people saving me. No more people getting hurt for me.” A blow caught his ribs. “And what the fuck do you do? You send me off and go rushing off to get killed and leave me fucking alone?”

  “I was trying to protect you!”

  “How many times have I saved your scrawny ass?” she growled. “Including this time? How many?” She seized him by the collar, slammed his head against the ground. “You don’t get to say this was for me. Not any-fucking-more!”

  She struck him several times, but he felt no pain. It wasn’t force driving those blows, but fear. And the more she screamed at him, the more he realized that wasn’t anger in her voice.

  But it wasn’t until she held still for a moment and took a wet, ragged breath that he was able to look up at her.

  And see that she was looking at him.

  Her eyes wide and wild and staring through him, drinking him in, seeing more to him than he knew he had. And though her eyes were glistening with wetness now, tears tugging at the corners, he remembered a time when she had looked at him like this. He remembered their first meeting, her eyes so big, so hard to look at, so deep.

  But fuck me, he thought, were they always that green?

  Without realizing it, he reached up. She flinched at his touch for a moment as his hands brushed her cheek, pushed a strand of dirty golden hair from her face. But as his hand took her gently, she leaned into it. He felt her shuddering breath. He felt her tears on his fingertips. He felt her. And she was so warm.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He swallowed something hard. “I’m sorry, Kataria.”

  She cringed, canines bared, looking as though she was about to cry or kill him. She did neither, instead collapsing on top of him, wrapping her arms around him, pulling him close to her. He felt her breath against his neck, her body soften as he touched her, strands of her hair catch in her mouth.

  Under the sun falling from its apex, he held her as she held him. He felt the scars on his body fall silent. He closed his eyes.

  And remembered the first time she had touched him like this.

  THIRTY-TWO

  FALLING STARS

  The day had died in the dust. But the night was alive with fire.

  Pyres littered the tulwar encampment, lighting up the darkness of the valley like earthbound stars. They blotted out the true night sky as they sent the dead traveling skyward on ash-choked columns of smoke. By their lights, tulwar dragging more corpses for more fires could be seen—teams of ten using ropes to haul the great vulgore carcasses to the flames.

  Smaller campfires dotted the valley, well a
way. These were used only to cook whatever food the warriors had brought with them. There was not enough for a prolonged assault.

  And farther away from them, almost too far to be seen, was the torchlight of the boats. The barges, laden with green roofs and bow-wielding warriors, plied their way up the Lyre, the light of their torches reflected on the water. They made their way slowly, in full view, intent on drawing attention.

  Gariath wondered if they would get it. There was so much fire in the valley, he thought, would the humans even notice just a few more rolling up the river?

  “Lucky they held their flying beasts in reserve for as long as they did.” Mototaru didn’t look up from the map he was drawing in the sand by the light of a torch thrust into the earth. “Just the one might have ruined our gaambols for the rest of the fight.”

  “The Yengu Thuun haven’t found a new chieftain?” Gariath asked.

  “Gaambols choose their chieftain. Like everything else, the Yengu Thuun are just along for the ride.” Mototaru glanced up at the river. “If they had more of those birds at their disposal, they would have sent them all. Our boats will keep them busy for tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  The word was almost too big to contemplate after what had happened that morning.

  Somewhere along the march, after Gariath had left Lenk behind, he had convinced himself that this was too big to stop. So many tulwar bent on fury, on vengeance; how could anyone have stopped them, let alone someone as weak and stupid as Lenk?

  But that was before this morning.

  Before the humans and their thick shield walls. Before their many arrows. Before their flying beasts and giant stone golem and the road they had paved by grinding the tulwar—his tulwar—into the earth beneath their boots.

  They hadn’t been able to collect those bodies.

  “Tell me again,” Gariath said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mototaru said. “It won’t help anything.”

  “Tell me.”

  Mototaru sighed and took a deep puff on his pipe. “Four hundred. Roughly.” He exhaled a gray cloud into the night. “Most died in the initial charge, pushing the humans back. Only a few more died from the crossbows. But then they brought that … that …” He gestured out to the desert, where the golem lay in rubble. “That thing out and we lost track. There might be even more than we knew dead, including the two vulgore.”

  Gariath stared down at the valley. Kudj was an immense, unmoving shape in the darkness, sitting and staring with empty eyes and open mouth at the gigantic pyre on which the smoldering remains of his cousins took a very long time to burn away.

  “Kudj won’t fight again,” Gariath said.

  “He will if you tell him. He’s in shock, but he came through for us. If you just—”

  “I said he won’t.” Gariath snarled. “He’s done enough.” He looked down at the pyres, too many to count. “Do tulwar burn their dead?”

  “Some clans do. Some clans bury. In the north, I hear, they leave them out to be feasted on by scavengers to appease the mountain.” Mototaru shook his head. “No one here will care enough. The Tul will take them back; the Tul will spit them out again as new lives. What we do here is make sure they have lives to come back to.”

  “Four hundred,” Gariath muttered. “That’s too many for one day.”

  “It is,” Mototaru said. “But you wanted to attack today. There is nothing that could have been done.”

  “There was.” Gariath looked away—far away from the main encampment, to a dark corner of the valley. “And for some reason, we aren’t doing it.”

  There, in the shadow of a great dune without a single fire burning, the Mak Lak Kai clan milled. Their gaambols gnawed at bones and raw meat. The only light was the sparks of warriors sharpening their blades. Their black skin melded with the night, making them invisible but for the bright grins of their teeth and the white paint covering their faces. Every now and then, a coarse laugh would rise from Chakaa, so loud as to reach Gariath on his summit.

  And his skin would crawl.

  “No,” Mototaru said. “Not yet.”

  “And why not? The Mak Lak Kai could have broken them in a heartbeat.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe they would have simply been hacked to pieces. Even a malaa cannot do anything when he is dismembered. And even if you had, the rest of your army would not follow in their wake.”

  “They’ll have to get over that,” Gariath snarled. “Everyone who wants to fight gets to fight.”

  “But in our ways, not everyone fights together.”

  Gariath stared long to the mountain pass, where the humans still stood. There was no smoke to mask his sight there. The bones and blood of the fallen tulwar pounded into the earth glistened beneath the moonlight. He narrowed his eyes, snorted.

  “Bone and blood, win or die,” he muttered, “these are my ways.”

  “Did you know him well?” Dachon asked.

  Pathon looked down at the dead man at his feet and frowned. He did not know Apala well. He was one of the newer recruits to the legion, arriving in Cier’Djaal shortly before war with the Sainites had broken out. The liberation of Cier’Djaal was to be his first campaign. He was raw, but disciplined and sturdy, so he had served in the front of the phalanx.

  That much, Pathon knew.

  Whether he had a family back in the Empire, though? Who would receive the deathscroll, telling of his demise? Whether it would be children or elders or a single woman who wept hot, angry tears at his death? Pathon did not know.

  Nor did Pathon know exactly how Apala had died. The Karnerian lay in what remained of his armor on a linen tarp. His cuirass was perforated by spear blows. A deep gash in his side nearly bisected him. One arm was missing, likely wrenched off by those monsters the tulwar rode. It was hard to say which one had killed him.

  Pathon hoped the deathscroll wouldn’t speculate.

  He hoped the deathscroll would instead tell of what Apala had died for. That it would speak of the great sacrifice he had made, not merely for Karneria, nor merely for humanity, but for heaven. He hoped whoever received it would read that, take solace in it, and know that he had served his duty for something greater than even the Empire.

  “Heaven is watching,” Pathon whispered.

  “Heaven watched him get torn apart.” Dachon cringed. “Does this not faze you, brother? There was no glory in this death, to be ripped to shreds by animals. One of those beasts might be gnawing on his arm even now. One of their riders might, even. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “I have not.” Pathon gestured with his chin to the other end of the tarp. He leaned down and took the tarp by Apala’s head; Dachon took the feet. “I have fought many foes but none that have been as savage as this.”

  “Where is your fear, brother? Daeon says that fearlessness breeds recklessness, that wariness is paramount to the complete conquest.”

  “I have plenty of fear,” Pathon said. “More than you could know.”

  That was plenty true. Only thirteen men had died that day—most killed when the gaambols had attacked—but when their numbers were already so few, that was a whole line in the phalanx. The tulwar would be able to tear through their ranks that much easier.

  And yet his hands weren’t shaking as they went about their work. He and Dachon quietly wrapped up Apala’s corpse in the tarp, folding it precisely as they had been taught without hesitation, and securing it with twine. It would be sent to the priests of Gevrauch for preservation, then sent back to the Empire for burial. Many more would be going with him.

  Assuming they weren’t all slaughtered tomorrow.

  But this, too, didn’t bother Pathon.

  “Then share whatever the hell is making you so bold,” Dachon said as he tied the twine around the tarp. “I could use some right now.”

  Pathon blinked. “I’m not sure. I suppose I’m not … really worried about death.” He looked up at Dachon. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”

  “The sp
eaker tells us not to fear.”

  “Yes, and we all listen, but we’re trained to listen, trained to believe. For the first time in a long time … I feel like I’d believe even if he wasn’t yelling at me. I guess it feels like that, even if I die, it’s for something.”

  “The speaker tells us that, too. Many have died for the Empire.”

  “But that’s conquest. That’s to push the borders, to rearrange lines on a map, to secure more gold for the Imperial vaults. This is for …”

  He looked out to the mountain pass. The phalanx there was a fraction of what had been there today, a crew to keep watching for if the tulwar returned while their brothers took their rest. They stood, sleepless and rigid, waiting for the day when they would die tomorrow.

  “Everyone else.” He looked to Dachon again. “We win here, do you know what that means?” His eyes widened. “It means she was right.”

  “Who?”

  “The Prophet. It means that this fight really is the will of heaven. Not just Daeon, but every god. And not just for the Empire, but for every man, woman, and child. It’s not just lines on a map this time. It’s lives. It’s families. It’s … different.”

  Dachon shook his head. He plucked up Apala’s bound feet. “You put a lot of trust in the word of a northerner, Pathon.”

  “I trust not in her words, but in her miracles.” Pathon took Apala’s head. They carried him over to a waiting wagon laden with three other tarp-covered corpses. “She united us with the hated foes, after all.”

  “Some are not pleased by that.”

  “Perhaps. But does it not feel good to have one less enemy in the world?”

  Dachon managed a weak smile. “I suppose a little.”

  “I suppose a lot.” Pathon looked upward, to the watchtower looming over them all, the faint light of candles burning within. “And if she can lead us to victory, who knows where else she can take us?”

  “So,” Asper asked as she stared through the spyglass, “on a scale of one to ten, how fucked are we?”

  Haethen took the spyglass. She glanced through it and let out a deep hum.