by Sam Sykes
She approached slowly, peering around the building. The sight of something massive and unmoving greeted her.
Another dragonman. Another puddle of red-flecked vomit. Another pair of eyes, bulging out of their sockets, their last moments of panicked agony forever etched on them.
She left it, moving cautiously through the streets, bow in hand. Not that whatever was happening could necessarily be answered by an arrow, but shooting things in the face had solved most of her problems up to this point.
And the farther she went, the more she saw them.
More dead dragonmen. More corpses in puddles of vomit. More visions of terror and agony across their faces. They had died quickly, they had died painfully, and they had died without having any idea what was going on.
Across every avenue, in every square, the sight was the same.
Except for the last one.
There was a dragonman, again. It was dead, draped over a railing to the river apparently in a vain attempt to get water. Its vomit painted the stones, like the rest of them.
But there was someone else here, sitting solemnly on the beast’s massive, breathless shoulders.
Someone she knew.
“Ah.”
He looked up as she approached. Age had creased his face but hadn’t diminished the strength in it. But stress had given him wrinkles he hadn’t had when she saw him last. His hair hadn’t been as disheveled. He hadn’t looked so skinny and weak. He hadn’t worn the eyes of a man ready to die.
“I was wondering what they were chasing,” Sai-Thuwan said. He smiled, weakly. “I am glad they didn’t catch you.”
“Thuwan!” she cried out, rushing toward him. “What are you doing here? I thought your tribe left the city.”
“I remember once, when game was lean. The humans and the tulwar had hunted everything for miles. We were starving. Thua’s mother and I, we left with a hunting party for the plains far to the south. Bemodons roamed there. Great big things, huge tusks they used to rip trees out of the ground and eat them. Their hooves tore up the land.” Sai-Thuwan idly kicked the corpse of the dragonman beneath him. “Bigger, even, than these lizards.”
“Are there other shicts here?” Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. She drew closer. “Have you come alone?”
“Do you know how we killed them?” He shook his head. “We tracked them for days. We ran them down on yijis, firing arrows at them, keeping them running. We hunted like a pack, attacking and resting in turns, forcing them to run. It took a day of running for them to grow exhausted enough that we could finish them. But they made such a feast. There was more meat than we could carry back, even with the yijis we had brought.”
Kataria opened her mouth. The question caught in her throat. She found it hard to ask without wanting to cry. But she had to. She couldn’t not ask.
“Is Kwar here?”
“That was a good kill. It fed our families for months. I never regretted any blood spilled for my family.” He looked over his shoulder, into the dragonman’s last moments of agony bulging from a huge skull. “I thought this …” He gestured to the dragonman, then out over the city. “All of this. I thought it would feel like that kill. That I would feel like I had saved everyone. Someone.”
He stared down at the body. His eyes had emptied themselves of tears long ago. His smile had lost every memory it had once had. His face was the night: as vast, as dark, as empty.
“But I don’t feel. Anything.”
Kataria could not say the same.
At his words, at the realization that followed, something foul and borne on many sharp legs crawled out of the pit of her belly. She tried to speak and, after many choked failures, found a voice for her fear.
“Poison,” Kataria said. “Shekune poisoned them.”
Visions of days past flashed through her head—of a dark night with fading light, of Karnerian humans doubled over in agony as they spilled their innards out through their mouths, of their friends watching, terrified and helpless, before the khoshicts appeared from the darkness.
Back then, Shekune had poisoned their water. But how had she slain the dragonmen? How could she—
“The wine,” Kataria gasped. “She poisoned the wine. How?”
Thuwan stared down at the road, saying nothing. She snarled, reaching out and seizing him by the collar. She shook him until his head flopped in such a way that he was staring at her.
“How?” she demanded.
“Shekune asked me to lead her into the Green Belt,” he muttered, eyes drifting away. “I knew the old hunting trails. I knew the way. I showed her. But she wanted to go into the city, into the fashas’ homes. I did not know. But …”
“Kwar did.” Kataria felt her face tighten with the force of her snarl. Her words were desperate, heated. “Tell me she didn’t, Thuwan. Tell me she didn’t do this.”
He fell silent again. She roared, hurling him to the ground. He struck the stones hard, lay upon the floor.
“FUCKING TELL ME!”
“Do not blame her,” he said, not looking up. “She did it for me. She did it because she thought it would save us all.”
No, Kataria thought. She did it for me.
“The wine’s already been poisoned,” Kataria muttered. “The humans are already drinking it. That was her plan.”
“One of them.”
Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
Thuwan stared vacantly up at the sky. “Kwar and Thua were only three years old when we came back from our hunt. She had been hungry for so long. I remember how her eyes lit up when she ate, and ate.” He smiled. “We thought she would explode, she ate so much. We had to pull her off Thua when she tried to take his food. But her smile … I remember her smile. It was the last time she looked that way and I thought …”
“Thuwan,” Kataria said, “tell me.”
He sighed. “Shekune knew the tulwar were coming. She saw the humans’ defenses and saw a chance to kill them both, slaughter both their armies. It was me who showed her the way up onto the cliffs. It was me who thought that Kwar would see me avenging her mother, at long last. I wanted to …” He shook his head. “I wanted to see her eyes like that again. I wanted to make her happy again.”
“By plunging the shicts into a war we can’t win?” Kataria loomed over him, hands twitching with the urge to strangle him. “By giving her more death? More corpses?”
He rose on his elbows. He stared at her in a way that made her want to turn away.
“My life,” he said softly, “has been nothing but corpses. The truth is, I died with Kwar’s mother. All this time, I have simply been waiting for my body to realize it.” He sighed, closed his eyes. “Maybe Kwar has, too.”
Those words. Of all the things he said, of all the fears and angers he had roused in her, it was those words that made her go cold. Those words that made her hand tighten around her bow and unconsciously reach for an arrow to put in his throat.
“You did die back there,” Kataria said. “You went to the Dark Forest with all the other ghosts. Because Kwar is still here, still alive, but you haven’t noticed for years, have you?”
“Everything I did, I did for—”
“For yourself. You led Shekune here because you thought it would make Kwar love you. You’re going to kill us all for the chance that it might be what she wants.”
“She wants vengeance,” Thuwan growled. He clambered to his feet. “She wants to give her mother peace!”
“She wants her mother back!” Kataria snapped. “But she’s never going to get her back. And the reason she’s so angry, so violent, so willing to kill anyone is that she looked for her father and he wasn’t there!”
He recoiled, as if struck. “That’s not … She hated me …”
“She did,” Kataria said. “Maybe she still does, I don’t know. But it’s killing her. She doesn’t need more ghosts. She doesn’t need people who will kill for her. She needs people who will stay alive for her.” She spit on the ground. “And you fail
ed her.”
Just like I did.
Thuwan’s mouth hung open. His eyes did not blink. His limbs hung heavy at his sides. To look at him, one would have called him a corpse, just like the one next to him.
But Kataria did not. For in his empty eyes, she saw something. A rising wetness at the corners of his stare. He swallowed hard. His words were heavy and choked.
“My daughter …” he whispered. “My son … I’ve lost them both.”
“You did.” Kataria turned and began to stalk away. “Enjoy fucking dealing with that.”
“Wait!” he cried after her. “Where are you going?”
“To clean up your mess,” she snarled. “Or to try, anyway. You’ve already killed us all.”
“I haven’t!” His voice was brimming now. “I mean, not yet! It’s not too late!”
She scowled over her shoulder at him. “Talk.”
“Shekune said she would announce her victory when she killed the tulwar and humans. She hasn’t yet.”
“How do you know?”
Sai-Thuwan’s ears twitched. “We would both hear it.”
Kataria blinked. “She hasn’t launched her attack yet.”
“They can be warned. The humans. You know them, don’t you?”
She did know them. She knew what had to be done.
And part of it involved ignoring Sai-Thuwan as she took off running.
Asper hadn’t listened before, but things were different back then. Now, there was a credible threat, a real ambush. Also, she hadn’t tried violence. If Asper wouldn’t listen, she would just start hitting her until she—
No. Kataria shook her head. She’ll listen. She has to listen. Worry about what you’ll say later. Just get there first. Okay?
She drew in a breath, closed her eyes.
Okay.
She found a carcass of a dragonman up against a building. She leapt atop the massive creature, using its bulk to scale up the wall, hauling herself onto the roof. She scanned the rooftops and streets, searching for the square where she had left Colonel MacSwain. She squinted, growled.
Who the fuck made this stupid place so gods-damned big?
There.
She found the scraw, far away. Much farther than she thought he would be. But if she hurried, she could still make it. She just had to fly him to the battle, hope no one shot her down on the way, hope no one else shot her down when they saw her flying a Sainite mount, hope no one stabbed her when she got off, hope no one—
She thumped her head with the heel of her palm.
What the fuck did I say about worrying? Get there first.
And she was just about to do that when her ears twitched.
Far away, almost too far to be noticed, she heard a scream. And she would have ignored it—would not have even heard it—if she hadn’t recognized the voice that made it.
She rushed to the other edge of the roof. Her ears were aloft, twitching, listening for the sound. A moment passed. She heard nothing.
But she saw …
Well, she wasn’t quite sure what it was.
A mass of tendrils and coils and scales. A horrible, writhing monstrosity that hauled itself over the wall of Silktown and began to slither on a dozen tails down the street. The faintest image of a head—a face that might have been called almost human, were it not for the broad fangs, sinewy neck, and bristling scales across its cheek—leered out from the mass.
This, too, was something she was ready to ignore for now.
And for the rest of her life, if possible.
And she might have done just that, were it not for the fact that she saw something in the thing’s coils.
He was limp, eyes closed, dragged along like a bale of hay. His body was twisted in its scaly clutches, and bruises marred his skin. But even from here, she could see that he drew breath.
Just barely.
And not for long.
“Lenk,” she whispered, and then screamed. “LENK!”
She moved to take off after him and whatever vile horror had him. But the moment she put her foot on the roof’s ledge, she remembered. She looked over her shoulder to the distant square, to the battle she was supposed to stop, to the people she was supposed to save. She looked back, to the man she had sworn not to lose, to the thing that was about to take him from her as it disappeared around a corner.
She stood, paralyzed, cursing her fucking luck, cursing the fucking humans for being so fucking stupid, cursing the fucking shicts for doing this to her, cursing fucking Lenk for not listening to her and always, always getting his stupid fucking self in fucking trouble.
She stood. She gritted her teeth. She clenched her hands. She shut her eyes.
She let out a very long, very angry scream.
And then she took off running.
THIRTY-EIGHT
LET THE TRUMPETS SING HIS RETURN
Before Asper could see it, she knew it.
In the lurch of her gut, the way something deep inside her came unhinged and lodged itself in her throat. In the same way a dog knows its master’s grave and a grandmother knows when to say farewell, she knew.
The battle was lost.
And those who had sworn to follow her.
Those who had trusted her to lead them.
They were dead.
The sandstorm had come out of nowhere, sweeping through the cliffs on a hot wind that buffeted the watchtower and made it shake. Though she had tried to peer through it with the spyglass, she had seen nothing more than phantoms—ghosts whose bodies had yet to realize they were dead.
But now, the sands dissipated. Now, the grit fell away and exposed the battlefield. Now she saw the numerous dead.
And Careus.
“No.”
Haethen shuddered next to her, body trembling with something she fought to contain with the hand pressed against her mouth. Her eyes trembled, wanting to cry, but she had nothing for them. Sorrow visited later, Asper knew, long after horror had its chance to feast.
“Careus …” the Foescribe whispered.
Asper didn’t know who the black tulwar were, with their crude metal and their white-painted flesh. She didn’t know how they were still standing with arrows and spears jutting from them. She didn’t know how it had happened that one of them stood at the center of the melee, holding Careus’s severed head high above and howling with laughter.
Nor did it matter.
Pockets of fighting still raged in the pass. Karnerians and Sainites fought against the black tulwar with spear and blade and shield and crossbow. Despite whatever tenacity they held, a few of the tulwar lay unmoving on the earth. But the watchtower was not so far away that Asper couldn’t see the faces of the human dead. Or how many of them were.
But that didn’t matter, either.
Through the carnage of the battle below, Asper could hear the sound of distant drums. Far away, they pounded out a message, sending out a call to battle.
A call that was answered.
A tide of ash came flowing out of the dunes. A great gray wave, painted with reds and yellows and blues and bright, flashing steel. The drums drove them forward, calling them to battle in one titanic wave. And soon, the thunder of the drums was drowned out by the roar of their rage.
“The tulwar,” Haethen said. “This was their plan … use those … those things …” She made a gesture to the black tulwar below. “Break our lines with them, then pull in all at once. They used the sandstorm to do it, they …” She shook her head. “But how did they know? How did they know it was coming? How come … why didn’t I know? How did I not know they could do that?”
She turned, rustling through the scrolls and parchments on the table, picking them up and hurling them aside, one by one, heedless of where they landed.
“It had to be here! It has to be here! I missed something! I must have! It was my duty to know them, but I couldn’t … I didn’t …”
Her hands shook as she held a scroll, eyes racing frantically across it. Her face twist
ed. She let out a scream, tore the scroll in half, and threw it out over the watchtower. She buried her face in her hands, drawing in a ragged breath.
“My fault …” she whispered. “My fault.”
The sound of her sob could not be heard through the din of battle below and the roar of the approaching army. But the trembling of her body betrayed her. She stood, shaking, for a long moment. When she spoke, she did so struggling to hide the wetness of her voice.
“I’ll sound the retreat,” she said softly. “We’ll fall back to the city. We’ll try to make our stand there.”
When Asper said nothing in reply, she dropped her hands. When she saw Asper buckling her sword belt, she dropped her mouth.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Everything,” Asper replied, cinching the belt up.
“No,” Haethen said. Then again, forcefully. “No. You’re too important to—”
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Asper said.
She hefted her broad, round shield and secured it to her arm. She seized the banner—the banner of the three armies, in all its threadbare glory—and held it aloft, inspecting it as though it were a spear.
“You’re thinking you’re going to go down there and rally them?” Haethen let out a hysterical laugh. “This isn’t a fucking storybook, you moron. Even if we had the men to do that, you’re not going to change anything with a fucking piece of cloth, Prophet or no.”
“I don’t need to be a Prophet right now,” Asper said, hiking it over her shoulder. “I need to be a target.”
“What?”
“We have only one way left.” She pointed out with the banner, far over the cliffs to the distant dunes. “Gariath. Kill him, this army is left without a leader. We can counterattack when he falls.”
“He’s a mile away, at least!”
“He won’t be for long,” Asper said. “Not once he sees me.”
“That’s insane,” Haethen said. “He won’t do it. He can’t possibly be that—”
“He can. He is. He will.” Asper turned and headed for the ramp. “He’ll come. I’ll kill him. We’ll win this. You’ll make sure we do.”