The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  Tor saw the holes in the side of the thing, and even though he hadn’t seen a living Behemoth so close in well over three hundred years, it was obvious that these were broken places, pieces of the creature that had yet to be repaired. He glanced over to Noon, but she was already gone, Vostok a rapidly dwindling shape as the dragon dived down towards their enemy. Instead, Tor leaned low over Kirune’s shoulder and shouted into the great cat’s ear.

  ‘That big hole. Let’s make it bigger.’

  The war-beast growled, a deep rumbling that Tor felt reverberate up through his legs, and then the cat folded his huge leathery wings and they were falling, the Behemoth suddenly looming impossibly large ahead of them. Beyond its bulbous greasy shape Tor could see the bleak little settlement, grim-looking shacks of driftwood and shell now bleeding panicked people. The smell of salt and seaweed was strong in his nose, and for a second he felt a strange welling of euphoria – they would save these people – and then they crashed into the side of the Behemoth, Kirune skidding across its surface before digging his claws into the greenish material.

  ‘We need to work on your landings.’

  ‘Like you would do better,’ growled Kirune. The war-beast folded his wings away awkwardly – they still looked ungainly to Tor’s eye, grey and leathery like a bat’s, with short black horns poking out at the joints – and leapt towards the ragged hole. Up close it was possible to see the oddly fleshy interior of the Behemoth; grey, almost translucent pads, white nodules and clusters of yellowish lights. Kirune immediately began to claw viciously at the edges of the hole, peeling back the greenish moon-metal and exposing more of the pale padding. Tor glanced up to see Vostok passing over, her violet fire filling the overcast day with an eerie glow. Her flames licked over the surface of the Behemoth, and Tor saw things moving there, creatures like huge six-legged spiders with pulsating sacs nestled at their centres. Three or four of them seemed to crumple under the dragon-fire, but after a moment Tor saw that they were not dead, they were merely crouching to protect the delicate egg sacs that birthed the burrowers. Noon added her own dragon-fuelled winnowfire to the blast and finally two of them fell away from the surface of the Behemoth, smoking and blistered, but more were seeping out all around them.

  ‘There are burrowers on the ground!’ The shout came from above. Tor looked up to see Bern on the war-beast Sharrik flying overhead. The big human had a shining axe in either hand, trusting his harness to keep him in place, while the griffin Sharrik, who had grown to be the largest of all the war-beasts, beat his wings with such violence Tor could feel the wind from them pushing his hair back. Looking over his shoulder, Tor could just make out the ground and the people panicking there, but an answering shout came from Vostok.

  ‘No! We must concentrate on wounding the Behemoth! Leave the humans.’

  ‘You make your holes.’ Sharrik’s voice was a rumbling boom. ‘We have lives to save.’

  Immediately Tor felt Kirune’s shoulders bunch, and the great cat lifted his head. Eyes like yellow lamps narrowed at the retreating form of the griffin. He gave one last slash at the hole and he was leaping into the air again, wings unfolding with a crack like the wind filling the sails of a ship, and they were diving again, racing to reach the ground before Sharrik. From behind them Tor heard Vostok’s roar of outrage.

  ‘No! We must work together!’

  Tor leaned forward, gripping the thick fur on the back of Kirune’s neck. His eyes were watering at the speed of their descent. ‘Kirune! When Vostok gives you an order—’

  ‘I will not be told what to do by a snake!’

  Tor hissed between his teeth, but as they neared the settlement it was clear that the situation on the ground was very bad indeed. The packed dirt was seething with a tide of burrowers, and men and women and children were falling as he watched, while others were climbing up onto their roofs to get away. The ‘mothers’, the strange spider-like creatures, stalked among the chaos, white sacs pulsing as they gave birth to more of the scuttling carnivorous beetles.

  Kirune hit the ground hard enough to throw up a cloud of dirt and dust, with Sharrik landing a moment later. The griffin’s wings were blue and black, bright against the teeming chaos. Bern gave him a cheery wave, just before Sharrik’s great blunt head darted out and snapped the legs off a passing mother-spider. Tor sincerely hoped the big man hadn’t heard the growl he had received in response from Kirune.

  ‘Where is Aldasair?’

  Bern pointed to the houses behind Tor with the butt of his axe. Aldasair’s war-beast was a huge black wolf with grey eagle’s wings, her eyes a deep warm amber. She was standing on the roof of a shack, peering down at the chaos below with obvious alarm. Aldasair, Tor’s cousin, was sitting very upright on her back, his face utterly drained of colour.

  ‘We’ll do what we can.’ Tor drew his sword. All around them the people who had initially fallen to the ravenous burrowers were rising again. Their insides consumed and the black sticky residue oozing from their empty eye sockets, they began to converge on the war-beasts with welcoming smiles. ‘Drones. Kill them, and as many of the burrowers as you can manage.’

  Kirune roared, a sound that seemed to roll around the stricken settlement like thunder, and then he was pounding across the teeming space, his huge paws crushing burrowers into paste. Next to them, Sharrik was a massive, bulky shape, ebony beak slashing and tearing like a blade. Drones fell, their hollow bodies exposed to the bleak daylight, and for the first time Tor heard the screaming from all around them; the howls of pain of those being eaten alive, the wailing of those forced to watch. Grimacing, he forced himself to turn away from it. There was no time to focus on the horror of what was happening.

  A spider-mother stalked close by them, and Tor tugged on Kirune’s thick grey fur. ‘Quickly! Kill this thing!’ But Kirune had brought down a pair of drones and his muzzle was buried deeply in their sticky guts, jaws tearing and rending. ‘Kirune! Listen to me!’

  It was too late. The spider-mother closed its long arms around a fleeing woman, pouring its gift of scuttling burrowers directly over her, and then the great black wolf was there. She caught the mother between her jaws and ripped it away from the woman, shaking it back and forth like a dog with a rabbit, before throwing it away in disgust. On her back, Aldasair wore an identical expression of dismay.

  ‘Good work, Jessen.’ He stroked her between the ears soothingly. ‘You are doing very well.’

  Just then the day filled with green and purple light, turning the shadows crisp and black. Tor looked up to see Vostok wreathed in her own flames, a jet of green fire travelling from Noon’s outstretched arms. He followed the direction of her winnowfire and felt his stomach turn over – there was a rupture in the side of the Behemoth, but not one they had made. Part of the creature was opening up, metal skin peeling back as something pale and shining pushed its way through from inside.

  ‘It’s a maggot!’ bellowed Noon. She was waving at them frantically. ‘We have to stop it getting out!’

  Tor curled his hands around the harness, preparing to order Kirune back into the air, when he spotted a group of people by the wall of a house. The mother had already been turned into a drone, her eyes nothing more than gaping black holes, but she had three small children with her. They were clinging to their mother, not understanding what she had become, or why she was holding them down, pressing them to the ground so that the burrowers could do their work. Their pitiful cries, more confused than frightened, squeezed at his heart. Gripping his sword firmly, he unstrapped himself from Kirune, and jumped down.

  ‘Go and help Vostok.’ He pointed at the underbelly of the Behemoth, where already the maggot could be seen more clearly. ‘Stop that thing from getting down here.’

  Kirune turned his baleful yellow gaze on Tor and snarled, before leaping away into a thick crowd of the drones. Tor opened his mouth to protest, but there was no time. Instead he ran to the small house, kicking burrowers out of his way as he went. One of the children was alr
eady lost, kicking and screaming in the dirt as the beetles inside him ate away everything that made him human – Tor stepped over him, ignoring the painful contraction of horror in his chest – and ran the mother through, bringing his sword up to part her chest into two gaping pieces. With so little left inside her, it was horrifyingly easy. Next to her, the two surviving children screamed, scrambling away from him.

  ‘Wait! I’m on your side!’ The door of the hut clattered open and a stout woman grabbed the children by their necks, dragging them over the threshold with impressive strength. The look she turned on Tor was a cold slap; horror, fear and rage twisted into a rigid mask.

  ‘Murderer!’ she screamed, before slamming the door shut again.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘War-beasts! War-beasts, to me!’ It was Vostok again. Her violet fire and Noon’s winnowflames had blistered the maggot, but it was still wriggling its way out of the Behemoth’s port side. Jessen and Aldasair were there, but the wolf was circling with her wings spread, clearly uncertain how to help, while Sharrik was on the far side of the village square, nearly overwhelmed with drones – men and women and children now under the control of the Jure’lia were clinging to his wings and his shaggy hindquarters. One stocky man with a white beard was hanging around the griffin’s thick neck. Bern, on the war-beast’s back, was busily fighting them off, his bright axes – the Bitter Twins, Tor remembered, that was what he called them – streaked with black fluid.

  ‘Kirune?’

  Tor’s war-beast had his head down, nose deep in a pile of dismembered drones. Tor yelled again, with no response from Kirune save for a lazy flick of his black and grey stripped tail, so he ran over, glancing uneasily at the Behemoth above them. Judging from the fat width of its body, the maggot was nearly halfway out.

  ‘Kirune! We have to get back up there. Are you even listening to me?’ Reaching the beast’s side he clapped a hand on his shoulder, and abruptly found himself on his back in the dirt, Kirune’s heavy paw pressing on his chest. The cat’s blocky head hung just above him, enormous yellow fangs bared.

  ‘I am busy!’ There was black ooze smeared across Kirune’s short, thick whiskers. His breath was hot and fetid, stinking powerfully of dead things. ‘Do not order me about!’

  Tor felt his own rage sweep him from head to toe, and with more strength than he thought he possessed, he shoved Kirune’s paw from his chest and scrambled to his feet. Slamming his sword back in its scabbard, he squared up to the cat, who hissed at him.

  ‘Oh, hissing, is it? The great war-beast Kirune, legend of Ebora, hissing at his master because I have demanded he stop playing with his toys!’ Tor kicked at the remains of the drones. ‘Great Kirune, the whining kitten.’

  Kirune growled low in his throat, crouching with his wings folded tight to his body. Tor knew he meant to leap at him, and if he did, that he would likely break every bone in his body, famed Eboran strength or not, but at that moment it was impossible to back down. He was thinking of the scarred portion of his face, and how if the tree-god Ygseril hadn’t chosen to birth these war-beasts, there might have been sap enough to heal him – to heal all the Eborans still clinging to life despite the crimson flux. Kirune’s tail lashed back and forth over the dirt, his eyes wide and dangerous.

  ‘Tor! Blood and fire, look out down there!’

  It was Noon, her voice shrill with horror. Tor looked up in time to see the maggot squirming fully from the side of the Behemoth, and then it was falling, some obscene dropping plummeting towards them even as Vostok blasted it with her flames. Tor threw himself past Kirune just as the maggot landed, crashing in the midst of the square and then rolling over several shacks, shattering them into shards of wood and shell. Up close, the thing was a creamy grey, shining here and there with a sickly pearlescent gleam. The front part, which Tor, for want of any better ideas, decided must be its head, was a darker grey than the rest of it, with a handful of glistening nubs at its top and a dark, pulsating maw beneath that. It rolled once more, and Tor got a brief glimpse of a set of tiny, stubby legs underneath, and then it was busily munching away on the houses it had crushed. Wood, shell, glass, hay and dirt – all was sucked up and consumed, faster than Tor would have thought possible. A few men from the settlement, armed with what looked like steel harpoons and a couple of rusty swords, ran forward and began hacking at its slippery flesh, but a fresh swarm of spider-mothers appeared, overwhelming the men and dragging them, screaming, towards the mouth of the maggot.

  Tor jumped up onto Kirune’s back and for a wonder the great cat turned from the corpses, leaping across the square with teeth bared. They made it in time to knock one spider-mother aside, and Tor reached down and tore the man free with his bare hands, only to see another disappear into the monster’s mouth out of the corner of his eye. Then Bern was next to him. The human’s bare arms and neck were covered in scratches and bites, and with a lurch of guilt Tor remembered that the last time he had seen him the man had been close to being overwhelmed by drones.

  ‘Where is Sharrik?’

  Bern nodded upwards even as he grappled with the next spider mother, his axes flying. Sharrik was above them, his huge shape casting a dark shadow over them all, while Vostok circled overhead.

  ‘Get away!’ Vostok was bellowing. ‘We must burn it as best we can!’

  As if hearing the order itself, the maggot suddenly pulsed, throwing them all back. Its rear end thrashed back and forth, and then with another violent pulse, a thick green liquid began to gush from what, for want of any better ideas, Tor was forced to think of as its arse. The green fluid flowed across the square towards the remains of the small buildings, surging over the rubble and the remaining people, trapping humans and drones alike.

  ‘The varnish.’ Tor squeezed the hilt of the Ninth Rain, at a loss. ‘How can we stop this? How?’

  The maggot pulsed again, and more of the stuff surged from its back end, threatening to flood the square and trap Tor and Bern where they stood.

  ‘Bern! Quickly, to us!’

  Bern didn’t need to be told twice. He climbed onto Kirune behind Tor, and with a cough of protest, the war-beast leapt up into the air, leathery wings beating furiously. It was not easy – as strong as Kirune was, Bern was a heavy man – but they made it out before the varnish reached them, joining Vostok and Sharrik in the air.

  ‘Move, now, out of my way.’ Vostok’s voice was tight with command, her long serpentine neck already stretching out to funnel her flames directly onto the maggot. Noon had both her hands raised, each fist gloved in her emerald witch-fire – the life energy she drew from the dragon to fuel it produced an especially bright flame.

  ‘Wait!’ Tor scanned the ground desperately. How was it possible to miss a giant wolf? ‘Where is Jessen? Where are Jessen and Aldasair?’

  For a few moments no one spoke. Tor had time to wonder what he would do if his cousin had been killed; to lose both his sister Hestillion and Aldasair, so close to each other, would be too much, and then Bern thumped him on the shoulder and pointed. Jessen was on the far side of the square. Aldasair was still on the wolf’s back, and he was pulling children up onto the saddle with him – three or four of them clung to him desperately, while Jessen dangled one small child from her jaws, teeth delicately holding on to the boy’s collar.

  ‘There is no time for that,’ hissed Vostok. ‘Jessen, drop them and clear the area!’

  The wolf looked up at them, and even from that distance it was possible to see the defiance in her amber eyes. Aldasair, now fairly swamped with children, wore an identical expression.

  ‘Foolish cubs! They will soon move when everything is aflame.’ Vostok opened her jaws and Tor could see the violet flames banked there, stirring into life.

  ‘Stop it!’ He caught Noon’s eyes, and was glad to see that Vostok’s rage was not reflected there. ‘Noon, we have to think about this . . .’

  Above them, the Behemoth was still bleeding its spider-mothers down onto the settlement, while below, t
he varnish was spreading its green fingers between each broken house. Tor hoped that some of the humans down there had had time to flee, that perhaps they had given them that much at least, but he could see darker shapes trapped in the varnish, and bodies strewn everywhere.

  ‘We have to move it,’ said Bern in his ear. He turned then in the saddle, and shouted over to Vostok. ‘Pick it up, take it beyond the palisade. Burn it there, on the beach.’

  The dragon hissed between her teeth, obviously outraged that her orders were being ignored again, but then Noon leaned down and spoke into her horned ear.

  ‘Very well. All of us together may be able to shift it. Quickly now.’

  It was not easy. Bern climbed over to Sharrik in a manoeuvre which Tor was half-convinced would see the man plummet to his death, and then together the three war-beasts descended. Vostok and Sharrik went to the maggot’s head, while Kirune grasped at its tail. It was slippery and the big cat struggled to get a purchase on it. Kirune muttered in the back of his throat about how it smelled bad, but eventually sank his long claws into the maggot’s hide, and the whole thing rose uncertainly into the air.

  The reaction from the Behemoth was immediate. More spider-mothers began to fall on them from above, and Tor found himself working hard to keep them away from Kirune, the blade of the Ninth Rain slashing back and forth like a scythe. Despite their best efforts, they could not lift the maggot very far off the ground, and they left a long line of destruction in their wake as they dragged it beyond the confines of the settlement. There was a grim moment as the belly of the creature caught on the wooden palisade, but then with a sickening tearing they came free again and Tor was glad to see a steaming pile of grey innards on the sand behind them. Once they were clear, Vostok gave a cry and they dropped the maggot, Kirune growling with relief.