Written in Blood

by Span, Ryan A.

  Ever since the Harari village, part of me had suspected some hint of intelligence in the bronzes, or at least a mindless force of will, like animal desire without reason. Whatever it was, this coin possessed it in spades. It desired. It had more purpose in life than most humans.

  It didn't take a genius to figure out what the Armaments wanted. They were weapons, made to kill, either in protection or in conquest. Maybe even extermination.

  Then I came on one of the dead mountain men, the one who'd melted into the floor, slumped to one side, arms limp and head hanging at an eye-watering angle. I took a long, hard look, then glanced at the coin again. It seemed to glow brighter than ever.

  “I think you wanted me to come down here,” I told it. “These Grenokes died like they were nothing. Not me. I didn't set off a single trap. I was so nervous, but looking back, I bet I was never in any danger. You were protecting me. I bet you and the other Armaments have been helping us all along.”

  Then it struck me what I was doing. Talking to a coin in my hand, second-guessing its intentions. The sheer barking madness of it would've made me laugh, if the coin hadn't answered back.

  You know you don't have a choice, Karl.

  I refused to let myself be unmanned by another blasted vision. Presuming I wasn't simply going mad and having a conversation with myself. I said defiantly, “Don't I?”

  We both know he's not going to let any of them go, least of all you.

  This was self-evidently true, and I couldn't argue against it. So I carried on climbing in sullen silence. Bad enough to be out-reasoned by a living, breathing person. I resented it all the more when it came from inanimate objects.

  Up the next step, I discovered the charred body I'd passed on the way here. The one after that, the spattered circle of blood. I paused there. The exit was only a few dozen yards away, and I still wasn't sure what to do when they let me out. I couldn't run, couldn't fight, couldn't win. All the same, I feared what the coin would do to me if I gave it its wish.

  Thinking about it didn't bring me any closer to a decision. I forged on, and banged on the stone slab blocking the way out, and cursed at both the Grenokes and Penn until they hauled it out of the way.

  The sky was molten gold, shot through with bands of wispy, pink-white cloud. In the distance, darker clouds lined with copper promised rain at some future time. The sun hung low like a ball of liquid iron ready to melt its way through the world. To my left, Penn had Yazizi under the sword again. The woman sat nearby, hands clenched in her lap, and for the first time since I'd met her, she looked truly afraid. She threw me an apprehensive look as I emerged from the bowels of the pyramid. Off to the side, I spotted Lytziri leaning against one of the roof pillars, arms crossed. Her face was a closed book.

  The Grenokes let the stone slab drop and 'escorted' me to my knees in front of Penn.

  “Let's see it,” he said, his voice fluttering, face tight with anticipation. The stump of his arm twitched as if aching to grasp something.

  I opened my hand to show what I'd brought. The coin grew brighter still, shining like a tiny lighthouse beacon. Penn stared, mesmerised, and began to reach out. I snatched it away from him.

  “We had a deal,” I reminded him.

  “You're in no position to bargain, Byren.” He smiled, and madness sparkled in his eyes as he went to the curtain behind him and pulled it open.

  It revealed a naked body standing on a stool, hands tied securely behind its back and a makeshift noose around its neck. Purple cheeks were already puffed and swollen as the man desperately balanced on tiptoes to suck another paltry, inadequate gasp of breath into his open mouth, where his parched and swollen tongue spasmed in reasonless panic. I gasped when I recognised Sir Erroll under the network of cuts and mutilations carved into his face.

  Penn kicked the stool out from under his feet as I watched. Legs kicked at empty air, searching for any kind of purchase and finding none. I tried to lunge forward, but burly arms held me back by the shoulders, too strong for me to fight. A scream of helpless fury tore its way out of my throat. I couldn't do a thing except close my eyes and turn away while Sir Erroll Highhaven ‒ Erick Selcourt, whatever ‒ died like livestock.

  His struggles faded bit by bit, and at last he fell completely still, dangling from the ceiling. I'd failed him. At least his suffering was over now.

  “A fitting end for a traitor, wouldn't you say?” said Penn, as if it were a summer afternoon's entertainment. “Hand over the Armament and I'll consider sparing the rest. Before I have it taken from you.”

  The coin practically giggled. Last chance.

  I went over the arithmetic in my head one more time. Three Grenokes behind me, one in front, as well as Penn. I had no weapons, no armour, and no allies. Another glance at Lytziri's stone expression told me there wouldn't be any help from the Dargha. I couldn't keep denying the hard truth in front of my face. I was all alone.

  “Fuck it.”

  I popped the coin into my mouth and swallowed, struggling to get it down my dry throat. The woman gasped, but Penn seemed unperturbed, treasuring an unhinged little smile. He rose to his feet and, thankfully, forgot all about Yazizi in the heat of the moment.

  “I'm rather glad you did that, Byren,” he sang. “Now I get to cut it out of you.”

  Sudden, sharp pressure like a javelin hitting me in the gut. I doubled over and crumpled to my knees, hugging my stomach. Agony of every kind, piercing, twisting, burning, ripping, all at once, a thousand times worse than any wound I'd ever suffered. My vision went white, and I blew away on the wind.

  6. Into the Bronze

  “A contract binds until completion, death, or betrayal.”

  - Contractor's Sixth Rule

  I experienced only fragments of what came next. Flashes of my body being ripped apart, shredded like offal under a hundred slicing blades, dissolved into its raw components. The pain and horror of it knocked me unconscious again.

  I woke for one brief moment, unable to move, watching. The colourless puddle that was my old self rippled at my feet, then reached upward and weaved itself into an exposed skeleton, with bones of gleaming bronze. Flesh began to wrap itself around the gleaming metal frame. Suddenly I realised there was a mirror in front of me, where my opposite number writhed in the throes of the same harrowing process. Its grinning skull seemed to notice me, and its empty eye sockets met my gaze.

  No, not quite empty. There was something there, like smoke dancing in the dark cavities. Something that wasn't me. It lifted its arms, and the puddle of clear flesh crawled over them, up the collarbones, and engulfed the head. The outer layers resolved into hair, nails, pink skin. Moments later I found myself staring into my own face. I knew each scar and how I got it. The cuts on my cheek and chin from the Battle of Ironstones. The ragged bit which bisected my left eyebrow, torn by a glancing blow from a knight's lance, then roughly sewn back together. The wrinkled burn under my right ear from the time a catapult incendiary landed not twenty feet away, spraying me and a dozen others with burning coal tar. Every little mark the years had left, down to the last detail.

  Only the eyes stayed the way they were. Wisps of dirty yellow smoke curled around in the sockets, and the creature nodded as if conceding some kind of debt.

  There's no need to be afraid, Karl, it said.

  I asked, “What's happening?” It didn't make a sound, I no longer had a voice, but the Other seemed to understand.

  A merging-together. Becoming more than the sum of our parts.

  “And when it's finished?”

  Then we start by saving your friends, as per our deal.

  “How?”

  Don't worry about that. I'll take care of it. Relax, and watch.

  The last skin swirled into place, then mottled and wrinkled with the telltale signs of age. It was me. I was it. I took a step forward, and we met in the middle. The Other fused into me with a sensation like someone walking over my grave.

  Then, light.

  I was on
the pyramid again, on all fours on the floor. I looked around to get my bearings. Only I didn't. Whomever moved my head, it wasn't me, and my body refused to obey my commands. I was a marionette dangling on someone else's strings. I couldn't even scream.

  All the same, I felt solid ground under my feet again as I stood up. The two burly Grenokes grabbed me by the arms once more ‒ I hadn't noticed when they'd let go ‒ but the Other brushed off my captors' hands like an omnipotent puppet-master. One of them met my eyes for a brief moment, and something about me made him jerk back in abject terror. The other man stared at his friend, confused, because he hadn't seen whatever dwelled inside me now.

  “I hope you're not thinking of doing something foolish, Byren,” said Penn, brow furrowed. His voice held a note of uncertainty, and he took a step back, reaching blindly for Yazizi while he kept nervous eyes trained on me. I didn't know how much he'd seen of my transformation, but he was afraid.

  “You're talking to the wrong man,” my mouth declared without my permission. By the sound of my voice, my broken nose had fixed itself. Not a bruise or an ache on me.

  The remaining barbarian tried to grab me again, but couldn't so much as slow me down as I advanced on Penn.

  Penn continued to retreat, tense as a cornered animal. “I'll kill her. You know I'll do it!”

  I smiled. “How, when you haven't got a weapon?”

  My hand made a grasping motion. In an instant, the bronze sword left Penn's hand and appeared in mine without any visible movement. Penn glanced at his suddenly empty hand. Though I was a frightened and helpless prisoner inside my own body, the confusion and the growing terror on his face warmed me to my bones.

  He turned to run, but I intercepted him with a neat slice just below the kneecaps. Penn separated from his shins and landed heavily on his side, then rolled onto his back, screaming, grasping at his stumps.

  “Can't have you leaving so soon,” I said. “You've been quite the thorn in our side, Master Saldette.”

  A Grenoke behind me swung his axe in a clumsy arc, his whole body shaking with fear. I wanted to react, to move, but the disobedient lump that was my body simply stood there and received the blow. I watched the sharp blade bounce off me. I was wearing my breastplate, nestled into place like an old friend, even though it had been on Penn half a moment ago. The Grenoke struggled with his heavy weapon as it pulled him off-balance. I gutted him before he had a chance to fall over.

  The other bronzes came in response to the same unheard call, and materialised one by one. The amulet clinked against my plate. I hefted the shield, and felt the vambrace hug my sword arm with reassuring tightness. Lastly, the helm, which seemed to complete my transformation. Things began to look different somehow, less substantial, as if I ‒ we ‒ were the only entity in the world that was truly real.

  I sought out Lytziri, who stood off to the side with her scimitar half-drawn, rooted to the ground. She flinched when my gaze touched her, shrank from it, and bowed her head in frightened submission even as she drew holy symbols of protection in the air. My voice thundered out like a great bell, “You follow me, now. Order your men to attack.”

  She gave me a strange look, as if she searched for something inside me and was unable to find it. She nodded and fled. Long strings of rough Harari echoed out over the camp, and the Dargha began to respond. They fell on the Ducals and Grenokes with all the enthusiasm in the world.

  A platoon of Ducal troops hit the top of the pyramid, and I dispatched them two by two in great sweeping strokes. There was no Art to those attacks, not a hint of my years spent training and fighting for my life. Nothing but raw power. I moved like a butcher and they fell like meat.

  The woman touched my shoulder as I stood over the twitching body of the last challenger. I turned halfway to study her. Whatever the Armaments might've thought, she certainly surprised me. Not a hint of worry in her. Beaming and triumphant.

  “You did it, Karl,” she murmured in mixed elation and awe. She found my hands and took them both. She was trembling. “We've got them all, at last.”

  I felt my mouth smile and watched myself lift her hands to kiss them. “The waiting is over, Ioanna.”

  Something in me caught her off-guard, something puzzling and new, and she actually blushed when our eyes met. I'd never addressed her with such familiarity before, or so much self-assurance. It seemed to strike a chord in her. If only it were actually me... I ached with my first true pang of regret for the deal I'd struck.

  Down below, I saw the Grenokes turn and run for the jungle, while the Dargha shot them down as they fled. Without the Ducals to keep them in line, they routed from their own lack of discipline. Only a handful made it as far as the treeline.

  Penn had stopped screaming by then, reduced to breathless squeaks through his ruined throat, hovering on the point of bleeding out. Yazizi hadn't moved. She stayed on her knees, still bound wrists and ankles, eyes downcast. Didn't even try to rise. I noticed her mouth move faintly, praying to her absent gods.

  I put my arm around Ioanna's shoulders and watched the spectacle with her. “The start of an army. Beautiful, isn't it?”

  “It's grand! We'll save the Kingdom, together. We'll brush Lauric aside like the pointless obstacle he is. And you, Karl...” She placed a hand on my chest, and somehow I could feel it through the breastplate as intensely as if it were skin. All her sultry power concentrated in her eyes and voice. “I've decided. You can be my Prince-Consort.”

  “Prince-Consort?” I heard myself scoff. “I have something a bit different in mind.” Before she could protest, I had my arms around her waist and pulled her close. “With my power, there is no appropriate place but King. And you, Ioanna, will be mine in whatever capacity I want you.”

  She hesitated, fuelled by the lingering hunger for some power to call her own, the ache to have what Lauric had been born into. The idea of sharing or giving it up didn't sit well. She wanted to argue, even against something as persuasive as all the Armaments together bearing down on her will. The words just wouldn't quite come.

  “I-I understand,” she whispered faintly and dropped her eyes. I would never have believed she had it in her if I hadn't been there and watched it happen.

  I kissed her, a rough, forceful claim on her mouth that brooked no disagreement. She melted like putty in my hands. Savage joy on my face as I pulled back. “Ahhh, it's been so long since I was flesh... How I've longed for the touch of such an exquisite woman. I knew I was right to choose you.”

  She gasped with sudden revelation. “You‒ You sent me the dream.” Then, as if thinking through the fog, “You're not Karl anymore.”

  “Such a powerful will you possess, my dear, to have your wits even now.” I reached out, dragged my fingers down her face, closed her eyes with them. “It's alright. You don't need to think anymore. Just accept.”

  She said nothing after that, but stayed on my arm like a mute puppet. Anger roiled in the pit of my stomach at seeing her like this, her fire dimmed and her spirit wasted. It was a crime!

  Leaving Ioanna in a daze, I strode down the steps of the pyramid. A couple of leftover Ducal troops tried to ambush me from a blind spot. I caught their attacks on sword and shield and sent them tumbling down the pyramid, cracking and snapping along the way.

  I found Faro and Racha in their cage and, with a loud crack of snapping rope and splintering wood, tore the door open as if it were made of paper. “You're free.”

  The squire didn't move. He stared sightlessly at the sky, and you might've mistaken him for dead but for the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. Racha stared at me, clutching the tatters of my shirt around her, and asked, “Where's Nevick?”

  “That is no longer your concern, Racha of the Valley. You have no further need for personal vendettas. I see the guilty secrets you've tried to hide. I see your weakness, and your shame, and I absolve you. Rise, and fight for me.”

  Sudden panic in her eyes as mine bored into her. Literally. I could feel the Other dig into h
er mind, grinding her down with the sole purpose of moulding her to a more pleasing shape...

  ...Racha tried to lose herself in the hustle and bustle of the harvest festival. Everywhere, people were talking, laughing, eating and drinking. With every step she took, someone would recognise the Chieftain's daughter and thrust things at her; little gifts and trinkets, plates full of the choicest morsels, whole mugs of the tribe's best beer.

  She accepted a few things out of politeness. It was good to be seen to participate, her father told her, and it helped to keep the people active. If she wore one of the baubles at the formal dinner tonight, every woman of Brunoke would want one the next day. Rogald had said that in the South, it was called 'fashion.'

  She couldn't quite seem to enjoy herself no matter how hard she tried. The thought of that formal dinner kept intruding on her. She was old enough now, she no longer believed in faery stories. Having the Speaker prattle on about Armaments this and Bronze-Bearers that for two hours did not constitute her idea of a good evening.

  Oh, there'd been a time when she hung on his every word, when she could recite it all from memory. But you could only hear the same story so many times before you started to pick holes in it. She knew the habits of old men, especially old storytellers. They... embellished. Each one along the line tended to add a little something to the tale, because apparently adding their own piss to the pie made it taste twice as nice.

  Sometimes she wondered if her father still believed, truly believed, or if he kept up appearances for the good of the tribe. He'd never admit it. Not even to her.

  She decided she'd beg off the dinner early. Some excuse about not feeling well would do it. Then she might sneak out to Dafrig's house while her father was occupied, and be back before anybody knew she'd gone.

  Rogald of the Valley couldn't know about Dafrig. The idea of his 'virgin' daughter dallying with a common man was anathema to him. True, Dafrig might not be marriage material, but Racha wasn't worried about her wedding day just yet. Twenty-five was still a few years off.