The overseer slit open the casing so Anand could see the eggs inside. “Look here,” he said. “These are for the feasts of Queen Polexima. She was used to eating her eggs mixed into lovely little biscuits, she was, but now we feed ’em to her just like this. We make her subjects eat ’em, too.”
“Disgusting,” Anand said as the overseer tugged on the ropes so they could be hauled up. “Be prepared to escape,” Anand shouted in Britasyte as he rose on the platform. “I will inform the Hulkrites that they need to make a daily delivery of fresh, green grass and fly larvae over the next moons so you can grow the roaches to their fullest and strongest. Make sure the riders are fitted with reins and steering bates. Pack your supplies.”
The overseer gave Anand a sideways glare.
“What did you say to them?” he asked.
“I warned them. I told them to accept the Termite’s love or submit to death and an eternity of torture.”
“You are a good Hulkrite, Vof Quegdoth.”
“And so are you, brother. I’ll inform the Prophet of what we’ll need here if the roaches are to thrive and give us a good supply of roach eggs. He’ll need to keep these Britasytes alive in the meantime.”
The Hulkrites had already conquered the Silk Moth and Bitter Ant People . . . or so the Hulkrites thought. Pleckoo’s Silk Moth concubine had learned enough Hulkrish to communicate that the colony that had been subdued was not their capital, but an outpost of criminals, debtors, and other undesirables. One morning, Tahn summoned Pleckoo and Anand to his chambers.
“Faithful Hulkrites,” said Tahn, “I received a prophecy this morning. Hulkro has made it our holy duty to return to the Silk Moth lands, which we know are far more rich and populous than first imagined.”
“I pledge my heart and soul to the battle,” said Anand, who stood tall and puffed his chest.
“I pledge my life, if Hulkro demands it, to this cause,” said Pleckoo, not to be outdone.
“Good, Pleckoo. But I have a more demanding task for you. I wish you to stay at Zarren and be the guardian of my followers in our absence. Quegdoth, Hulkro has blessed you with a gift for languages. You will make the Silk Moth concubine your own and learn what you can of her tongue.”
Pleckoo had been pleased with his promotion, but his joy went into sudden reversal. Anand saw the resentment in his unblinking eyes.
“As you command, Prophet,” said Anand. “And I shall return good Pleckoo’s property on my return and desist from intercourse with her.”
“Pleckoo has nine wives and many more concubines,” said Tahn. “Surely he can part with this one.”
“The Silk Moth woman does find favor in my eyes,” said Pleckoo. He was thinking of her beauty, of her thick lips in particular, and her exceptional talents in their use.
“As you wish,” said Tahn.
Anand turned to Pleckoo and nodded towards him in deference. “Good Pleckoo, if I am to indulge in women on the march, my seed will land only in the patches of the war trollops.”
Pleckoo smiled, happy that Quegdoth did not forget the debt he owed him.
Days later on the march to mulberry country, Tahn invited Anand to his mess to check on his progress in learning the Moth People’s tongue.
“Yakku shunjo ulem. It goes well, commander,” said Anand. “This mission seems very important,” he added, modestly probing.
“It is. We have one real mission among the Silk Moth people—to cleanse their souls of idolatry and bring them to the true love and light of Hulkro. In return for the gift of eternal life, they will deliver a steady supply of the shellac we need to strengthen our mounds and conserve them through the centuries as we extend our righteous and eternal empire.”
“Shellac, sir?”
“Yes. The Moth People’s mounds are thousands of years old, preserved by a fine shellac mixed with natron. It’s something they extract from the lac bugs that live on the bark of their mulberry trees.”
“Mounds that are thousands of years old?” said Anand.
“Yes, and watertight and free of dry rot. Some people know this nation as the Mummy People because they do not feed their dead to the ants but cover them in shellac. We are told that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of mummies, are embedded in their walls, forcing their ants to build greater, higher mounds. The tallest of them are ten times the height of Zarren.”
“Why do they preserve their dead?” asked Anand.
“To worship as ancestors, we have heard. We will break them of this ridiculous sacrilege and will convert them to belief in the True God, but they will never have the blessing of ghost ants here.”
“Why not?”
“Our ghosts can only enslave other ants—they attack the silk moths’ caterpillars as well as the lac bugs.”
“Are these Moth people fierce warriors?” Anand asked.
“The Moth men are poor warriors. They are an effeminate tribe and let their bitter ants do most of their fighting for them. Bitters and their eggs are too poisonous to eat but they are effective in battle—each ant possesses an internal potion that makes them explode when they are attacked, destroying themselves as well as their attackers. That’s why we have gathered so many of our own ants in order to subdue this mound of Theb-Thebe.”
At the end of the meal, Anand joined Tahn and his captains in prayers and drinks of kwondle-bark tea to keep them alert for the night. With a stop at the mound of Sterlitz-dozh, the army combined forces and grew to an uncountable number. Surrounding the cavalry was a crawling sea of unmounted ghosts, massing towards the mulberry trees.
The army passed the first Silk Moth mound, the outpost of exiles that had already been subdued. Thus far it had yielded little of the desired shellac, for its people were inept or drunkards. After venturing for two more nights, the Hulkrites reached the vast outskirts of Theb-Thebe, which had been abandoned by its laboring castes who had fled to shelters deep in the sand.
“We are to make an example of this mound,” shouted Tahn to his officers. “Once they have refused the Message of Hulkro, we will attack.” Tahn nodded at Anand as a signal to send the concubine with the Prophet’s message. Anand urged his ant forward to a place the concubine had identified as a bathing station.
“You do know what to say?” he asked her.
“You’ve made me repeat it a hundred times,” she said, climbing down the ant’s legs. As she stepped into a scenting tub, she turned and looked at him with a look both flirtatious and arrogant.
“What’s my name, Hulkrite?”
“Your name? It’s . . .”
“You’ve never asked my name,” she said as she covered herself with the kin-scent of bitter ants. “No one’s ever asked my name. And no, it’s not Moth Whore.”
“I . . . I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” she said, removing herself from the clinging bulge of water in the tub to the excitement of Anand’s ant who suddenly identified her as prey. “And you might have asked me if I care what happens to the hundreds of thousands who live at this mound—and if they might accept or believe the words of a trollop who gave her wet-box to hundreds of Hulkrish savages.”
She turned and ran deep into the darkness as Anand fought to keep control of his ant. He was sure she was not running to the mound and to its leaders, but away from it. Anand rode back to the army with a crushing sorrow, wondering if the Silk Moth people were no less cruel than Hulkrites or Slopeites.
As the Hulkrites awaited a response, Anand looked up at the enormous black mound, which impressed him with its height and mass. It was an almost perfect cone covered in dark shellac. Around its southern outskirts were fields of cages full of silk cocoons, vats and looms for the dyeing and weaving of silk cloth. On its northern outskirts were vast sheds where Anand saw barrels and grindstones for extracting the precious substance from the lac bugs. Theb-Thebe had windows in its dwellings, but the lights shining in them were dimming as the inhabitants waited to be attacked.
Tahn allowed the release of a few ghost ants to climb up the m
ound and initiate the battle. The smell of approaching ghosts forced the first wave of bitter ants and their riders out of the mound. Tahn then employed his usual strategy, which was considered cowardly by his enemies: he parted his living barricade of mounted ants to let thousands of unmounted ants make the first assault.
The bitter ants allowed themselves to be overwhelmed, for when they were pierced, their bodies exploded and tore the heads off of the ghosts. This left a stench that made breathing difficult for humans and soon reached Anand’s nostrils in the distance. Riders of the bitter ants jumped off their mounts to fight on foot before their ants exploded, but the Theb-Thebans were overwhelmed. Waves of ghost ants picked the men up and swallowed them whole.
Streams of bitter ants poured out of the mound and exploded thousands at a time, sending up blue flashes that looked like the ants’ souls rising to the heavens. Thousands of ghost ants died in turn, but they easily replaced their casualties and pressed up the mound. When the moon was at its zenith, nearly all the bitter ants had burst.
The remaining human soldiers fought the ghost ants within a maze of insect corpses, hiding behind them to shoot their arrows. That was when Tahn called for his cavalry to attack. Anand and the other warriors stopped pounding on their ants’ heads to let them race into the fray. The Hulkrites aimed arrows at the scattering enemies whose call to retreat back inside their mound was too late.
Anand dreaded what was coming next: the pillaging and enslavement. Giant bitter ants with enormous heads guarded the mouth of the mound. Unwise Hulkrites smashed their swords into these living gates that exploded with a force that shredded the men and sent their blood flying. Once these guarding ants were destroyed, the Hulkrites poured down like water.
Being part of this attack was a nightmare-come-true for Anand. To squelch his suffering, he entered into a kind of living-sleep, a place of detachment where the atrocities whirled around him like so much vapor. He glanced at Tahn, who regarded the carnage with amusement. Anand’s impulse was to surprise Tahn by shooting an arrow through his forehead. But retainers surrounded him and Anand had no choice but to carry out the commander’s orders.
After grabbing a wall-torch, Anand led a patrol through tunnels connected to the outer shell of dwellings. Each chamber they broke into had endless mummies encrusted in the walls. Behind Anand, young women and children were collected while men and old women were slain.
Anand reached a large, open sanctuary where the nobles of the mound were cowering, praying to the thousands of royal corpses that surrounded them. “You will live,” he said in their language. They were tossed crude brown rags stinking of ghost ants to pull over their silken gowns. Anand gave them Tahn’s demands, which they were to present to the Silk Emperor in the capital mound of Kair-Kairfu. “You will send a delegation tomorrow to receive the terms of your surrender or risk a more devastating attack on all your mounds, including your capital,” Anand shouted. The nobles acknowledged the commands by getting on their knees and bowing to Anand.
As Anand returned to Tahn at the base of the mound, he surveyed an unimaginable carnage of ants. Not a human corpse was in sight as the ghosts were uninterested in eating the exploded bitters. Anand fought his urge to weep. He reminded himself the raid would still have happened even if he had not participated. I swear to my beloved Daveena, to the spirit of my mother, and all my loved ones in the Dranverite nations, I will right these wrongs. When he was sure that no one was looking, he allowed himself a single tear.
Women and children were crying inside the bags as they piled up in the sand-sleds. Anand resumed his persona as he reported to Tahn.
“Commander, they have been informed to send their delegation to our camp tomorrow.”
“Quegdoth, I have to entrust that meeting to you as I must leave now. Tell these silly infidels we will return in fourteen days for the first thousand barrels of their best shellac.”
“Yes, sir. Where do you go now, Prophet?”
“An insurrection at Mukaz-dozh. A former Hulkrite is making his own claims as a prophet of his old god. It will not take us long to slaughter him and the backsliders and restore the Faith. So say I.”
“Then so says Hulkro,” Anand said as Tahn smiled, held his gaze. The Prophet looked pleased with his new favorite. But while Anand was being admired, he was deciding how he would kill Tahn and grind his empire back into dust.
CHAPTER 39
A SPINNING TOP
As Anand and his troops waited for the Silk Emperor’s delegation, he wandered into nearby weeds where he had sighted dried milkweed to saw and stuff into his backsack. In his chambers at night, he had worked in utmost secrecy on the reproduction of a Dranverish blowgun. It had a flexible magazine of tempered roach egg leather that could be loaded with seventy darts into its cartridges and pulled with precision to the blowpipe’s barrel. Now he had the hard, straight twigs he needed to cut into slivers and sharpen with a bit of obsidian. Soon he could coat them in shellac supplied by the newly conquered Theb-Thebans.
Late in the afternoon, an exhausted and fearful Silk Moth delegation arrived. They dismounted from their ants and continued on foot, their heads bowed in submission. They wore deep colors with much lace at their necks and brought a variety of crafts as well as the requested barrels of shellac, all of it lugged in their travoises. The Hulkrites openly laughed and called them “flower girls,” though all of them were men.
Anand laid out the demands of the Hulkrites and the schedule of delivery for the shellac. When they were dismissed, the delegation bowed before scampering off backwards. The Hulkrites were fascinated by the skillful embroideries, bangles, and necklaces. Also left were rare flower seeds that completely mystified the men concerning their value. When the garrison returned to Zarren, Anand had the tribute brought to his chambers until Tahn could examine it.
In privacy over the next few nights, Anand perfected his darts and practiced on targets. One fearful evening he dipped them in the concentrate he had secretly held for so many moons. That same night, Tahn returned from Mukaz-dozh with sled-cages full of the rebellious heretics who had revived their cult of Scorpion the Sun God. Anand had heard the rumor that the Sons of the Great Stinger were communing with their god through injections of His diluted venom, which brought them visions of resurrecting their old nation and casting off the Hulkrites.
The following afternoon Anand was among the masses at a public event in the stadium to watch the backsliders denounce their idol before Tahn. The Prophet looked kindly and forgiving and offered a quick death to those who immediately confessed. Others of the apostates were tortured by slow slicing until they admitted their heresy and earned their execution. Each confession was politely applauded and when all the heretics were dispatched, Tahn looked to the heavens, announced the rebellion was over, and blessed the loving followers who had joined him in the stadium. He ordered the corpses to be covered in shellac and returned to Mukaz-dozh to be hung from poles near the markets. Anand was exiting the stadium, anxious to get away to the privacy of his chambers, when Pleckoo approached him with a chiding smile.
“Quegdoth . . . we’re holding a strategy dinner tomorrow. We’ll need your service.”
“Yes sir.”
“You might have been able to join us in the fun—as a captain yourself—if you had returned my Moth Whore.”
“Again, I apologize, Captain Pleckoo. And I will look for her on my next return to mulberry country. We heard she may hiding in a brothel-nunnery in the mound of Shank-Shankua where . . .”
“Yes, yes, you may find her someday. For tomorrow night, though, you will join the other lieutenants as a sober guard.”
“It is my duty, sir. I look forward to it,” Anand said.
It was the first truthful thing he had said in moons.
Like a good Hulkrish warrior, Anand arrived early at the feasting hall to fulfill his duties at the strategy dinner. Toothless gave him a chaw of kwondle which Anand placed in his mouth, then secretly removed as he feared it woul
d increase his anxiety. He hid the chaw in the right pocket of his backsack which hung on the wall with those of the other guards, its opening cinched extra tight. Anand took some dried, sweetened hover-fly maggots from the left pocket to present to the other guards. “In case you can’t wait for dinner,” he said, taking a large chewy bite of one. The others accepted his offer, then leaned against the wall to eat as the officers rambled in for their paint-removing baths.
The night’s musicians were also dancers of a sort—they wore hard, ball-shaped shoes and hopped on different lengths of wood set across a flat box as a tuneful percussion while others sang and plucked at tall, taut strings for a thumping sound. Anand thought he might like their music under other circumstances, but at the moment it sounded like the rattling of skeletons.
The evening seemed different, off somehow, than the last strategy dinner. As the officers drank from their bowls, Anand sensed a quiet tension between them and their laughter was infrequent. An occasional loud boasting was not followed by a boast in return, but calls to shut up. Commander Tahn was circulating in a way that seemed to chastise the men rather than encourage their revelry. The spirits that were usually drunk so quickly were slower to be consumed. As Anand looked through the darkness of the chambers, he was reconsidering his plans, sure that something was amiss.
Pleckoo was regretting having drunken and eaten so much. He had enjoyed the spicy sun stew of sprouted, speckled bush beans, crimson chile pods, and minced scorpions brought from Mukaz, but it did not agree with the night’s drink which had too much turpentine. “Bring more from a different cask,” he shouted to the servants. “This batch is bad!” He looked around and saw the other officers were pursing their lips, holding their stomachs and experiencing something of the same discomfort.
“Drink has nothing wrong,” said the man next to him, the tawny-skinned, orange-haired Captain Kraznoy formerly of the Seed Eater nation. “Maybe people who come from Slope can’t hold liquor.”
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