by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 2
A noise broke the still, hot air of the forest. Siniq-elb tightened his grip on the longsword, sweat trickling between his hands, and waited. It came again. Footsteps. No animal had such an even, heavy trod. He glanced to his left. Natam, barely visible through the thick grasses that grew even here, flashed a white-toothed smile and nodded. He had heard it too. A flash of silver as Natam shifted and the thick chain he had taken to wearing peeked out from under his leather armor. Siniq-elb frowned; Natam had come into money lately, and he had wasted no time in displaying it. Siniq-elb would have to speak to the man. Vanity could get the squad killed.
Siniq-elb motioned. With a second nod that sent his blond braids bobbing, Natam moved left, disappearing into a wall of wildflowers. Siniq-elb’s second would find the next man in the squad, to pass along the message: they had found one of the rebel scouts. Siniq-elb’s men, well trained, would close their net quickly.
Pressing his nails into the leather grip of the hilt, Siniq-elb waited until his heart had measured out a hundred beats. He slipped through the grass, each movement designed to keep from sending the tall vegetation rippling and betraying his presence. When he could, Siniq-elb crept between the roots of trees, where the undergrowth was thinner. Sweat ran down from under his short-cropped red hair, slicking his thick leather armor. In other lands, Siniq-elb had heard, the grass withered and died under the trees, and the wildflowers grew only in scattered patches. Here, within the Thirteen Paths, everything flourished. At times like this, though the abundance of vegetation could be a hindrance.
Five paces. Then ten. Siniq-elb’s arms began to ache from holding the sword at ready. Nothing.
He paused, waiting for a sound—any sound. The forest was still. No birds sang, even the buzz of insects had faded to silence. Siniq-elb grimaced. Something was wrong. Someone should have found the scout by now. Tair bless him, Siniq-elb should have reached the scout by now.
Could it have been a deksu? The stone-skinned birds, twice as tall as a man, were rare, but they walked on two legs. He could have mistaken its tread for a man. Siniq-elb repressed a shiver. If he met a deksu, even with his squad, it would be the last thing he ever did.
The silence pressed down on him, heavier than the humid summer air. After a hundred deep breaths, Siniq-elb turned, orienting himself toward his men, and started forward. Even more careful now, his heart pounding, sweat rolling down bare arms. He drew quiet breaths, but each one threatened to break the stillness and betray him.
Heavy steps. To the right. Siniq-elb turned and froze. The sound was different. A footstep, but with the sound of a slap. For a heartbeat, nothing. Then a scream.
Siniq-elb recognized the voice. Azel. One of the men in his squad.
He tore forward, ripping through the waving stands of grass, the world a blur of anger and fear. Something had gone wrong.
In a matter of heartbeats he burst free from the grass into a clearing, perhaps a hundred paces wide. The ground ran down to a small pond under a pair of willows, but Siniq-elb had only moments to take in the land and orient himself. Azel lay on the ground, face slack and pale, eyes unseeing as he stared at Siniq-elb. Kneeling over him was a man, skin brown with mud and filth. A tearing noise echoed through the clearing, and the man shifted position, giving Siniq-elb a view of his face. Blood surrounded the mud-covered man’s mouth. Siniq-elb clenched his teeth against the sudden wash of bile as the man bent over Azel’s corpse, mouth opening wide. He was eating Azel.
“Get away from him,” Natam shouted. The blond man stood further along the edge of the clearing, closer to Azel. Il and Aba stood near Natam, longswords raised. No sign of Yre. Perhaps dead already. Siniq-elb had no time to worry about him.
The mud-covered man did not shift, and the awful tearing sound continued. Natam growled; he stood almost a head taller than Siniq-elb and was built like a horse. His braids streamed back as he ran forward, longsword flashing down toward the strange man.
So quickly that Siniq-elb could barely track him, the mud-covered man glanced up, face still expressionless. The longsword swept down toward the mud-covered man, and he sprang into a wide stance, hands moving so quickly they were a blur. There was the screech of metal on metal and a flash of sparks, and Natam threw himself sideways, hitting the ground hard and rolling toward the center of the clearing.
Siniq-elb rushed forward, sword raised, and Il and Aba darted in as well. The muddy man stood still, gaze swinging back and forth between the three. Siniq-elb took in the sight as he ran, forcing himself to think, not to let the anger and fear overwhelm him. The man stood stiffly, almost unnaturally, and his arms hung straight down at his sides. Where those arms ended—Siniq-elb felt a chill run down him—metal claws, each blade a foot long, took the place of hands.
A seir. One of the tair-cursed abominations that mothers frightened children with. A creature of nightmare.
Il must have noticed, for he stumbled to a stop, battle cry cutting off with a squeak. A dark patch marked Il’s trousers and spread down toward his boots, and the stench of urine filled the air. Siniq-elb let loose a cry of his own, praying to the gods-made-flesh that he wouldn’t piss himself as well, and grateful that his momentum, as much as his will, carried him forward.
Aba, flushed and grinning, reached the seir still whooping a war cry. His blade shone in the air, catching the rays of the ever-summer sun. At the last moment, as though roused from sleep, the seir twisted, and Aba’s blade flashed past the creature and struck the ground. In almost the same motion, one set of the seir’s long claws darted forward and found Aba’s throat. For a heartbeat the seir lifted Aba upward, blood fountaining onto the low-growing grass, the toes of Aba’s boots scraping furrows in the ground. With one quick jerk, the seir drew back its claws, and Aba collapsed to the ground like an empty sack.
The seir turned its wrinkled, expressionless face to Il. Il face whitened, but he did not move. The seir crossed the space between them in a blur of speed, but Siniq-elb was almost there. With a howl, Siniq-elb threw himself forward, longsword blurring before it struck the seir’s forearm, just above the glistening blades. Siniq-elb’s longsword rippled as though he had hurled it against solid stone, sticking for a moment in too-thick flesh, and then it was free. Siniq-elb staggered forward, arms throbbing from the recoil of his blow.
Mouth agape, a silent scream, the seir turned. It seemed oblivious to its fallen claw; the remaining blades stretched out toward Siniq-elb as though thirsting for his blood. Siniq-elb set himself, waiting for the creature’s attack.
Faster than should have been possible, the creature darted forward, its remaining claws scraping the air. Siniq-elb parried and side-stepped, turning aside the blades, but in an instant they were back, searching for face or throat or belly. He parried and dodged, but his arms burned with fatigue, and each swipe of the seir’s claws came closer to incapacitating. Fiery lines along his forearms, and one along his jaw, told him that his time was running short.
And then Yre was there, flying through the air to drive his shoulder into the creature’s side. The crack of bone and a muffled grunt from Yre were the only noise as the pair spun away from Siniq-elb, across the low-growing grass.
“Get clear,” Siniq-elb shouted, staggering toward Yre and the seir. His arms were lead weights, his breath ragged as a beggar’s shirt, but Siniq-elb forced himself into a trot, bringing the sword up for another attack. He had wounded it, taken one of its claws. That meant that he could do it again. But how did one kill a creature of nightmare?
Yre and the seir came to a stop near the center of the clearing, not far from where Natam knelt, trying to regain his feet. In the span of a heartbeat, the seir straddled Yre, and the claws came raking down. Siniq-elb vomited as the claws ripped away Yre’s face, exposing a mass of gore and teeth and bone, but even as the vomit ran down his front, he ran. A howl burst from his lips as another of his men—his closest friends—was butchered like a hog.
Siniq-elb’s blade took th
e seir in the shoulder, where the neck met the body, and sank into the thick flesh. It was like chopping packed soil; the blade stuck fast. One of the seir’s arms—the one missing the claw—went limp, but that did not slow the creature as it spun, yanking the hilt from Siniq-elb’s stinging hands.
The seir stared at Siniq-elb with eyes the color of mud. The remaining claw clipped the short grass as the seir regained its footing, the longsword still jutting out from its back.
Siniq-elb crouched and began to move backward. He had trained to fight unarmed, although never against anything as fast and deadly as the seir. Those blades would find his flesh now, one way or another, but perhaps he could hold it long enough for Natam to make an escape. Someone needed to make it back to Khi’ilan, to alert the eses and the su-eses that a seir had been seen. If the warrior-priests of the god-made-flesh could not handle it, nothing could.
Blood and severed bowels flooded the air with their stench, and Siniq-elb bit back the bile in his throat. Father take him, he was not going to die pissing himself, or choking on his own vomit. The waiting, though, watching the seir’s blank face as it watched him—that was worse than anything else.
As though answering his thoughts, the seir jerked forward, covering two steps toward Siniq-elb before it suddenly came to a halt. Its feet slid out from under it, and the seir clawed at the ground with its blades, pounded the earth with its oozing stump. Behind it, Natam stood, flashing that bright, if tremulous, smile, and holding the hilt of Siniq-elb’s sword.
Siniq-elb could only stare. Natam had grabbed the creature by the hilt of the sword! The big man was just foolish enough to do such a thing. The seir twisted, moving so fast that it ripped the hilt from Natam’s hands, and the blond man darted back.
Not fast enough, for he let out a shout as the seir’s claws slashed open his calf, laying bare the white bone. With his leg injured, Natam stumbled and slipped on the bloodied grass, the silver necklace sliding out to shine like white fire in the sunlight.
Whether the sight distracted the seir, or whether its wounds had caught up with it, Siniq-elb did not know, but the creature hesitated for a moment. A moment, but it was long enough. Siniq-elb sprang forward, planting a foot on the creature’s backside as he ripped the blade free. He felt something tear in his arm at the effort, a pain that almost blinded him, but Siniq-elb pressed it down, letting rage and grief storm through him.
The seir stumbled, slipping in almost the same patch of grass that had undone Natam, and Siniq-elb struck. Injured arm aflame, he brought up the sword and, with all his strength, brought it down across the wrinkled folds of the seir’s neck.
The force of the blow tore through the sword. The leather grip burned Siniq-elb’s palms, but the blade slid through flesh and bone. With a wet thud, the seir’s head hit the ground.
Siniq-elb let the sword drop. His palms were bloody, the skin torn off from the blow he had struck. One arm burned hotter than the sun—injured permanently, perhaps, but he could not tell. With a sound half-grunt, half-whimper, he fell to his knees. In his pain, he no longer cared that he knelt in the blood of men who had been brothers to him.
Slowly, as his heart slowed and the too-bright, glazed clearing returned to focus, Siniq-elb came back to himself. Keeping his gaze from the seir, Siniq-elb made his way to each of the fallen men, praying to the tair that one of them, at least, had survived. Azel, his back torn open, chunks of flesh ripped from his side. Aba, throat a mess of pink, shredded flesh. Siniq-elb could not bring himself to check Yre; the mangled strands of flesh and bone that had once been his face was indication enough, and Siniq-elb did not know if he could stand being any closer. No sign of Il. The coward had run. Siniq-elb knew that he would feel anger later. Now, though, there was only relief. Someone had survived.
Siniq-elb dropped to the ground next to Natam. The blond man clutched his leg with both hands, knuckles white under the blood. He flashed his familiar smile, though, and through gritted teeth said, “Tair around us, those rebel scouts have gotten better training.”
“How bad is it?” Siniq-elb asked.
“Knocked me something fierce, but the world’s not moving anymore. The leg’s the only thing serious.”
At Siniq-elb’s urging, Natam loosed his grip. Anger and fear were settling into the dull gray of fatigue. Siniq-elb examined the wound, but he found it hard to focus, and so, eventually, he settled for bandages retrieved from Azel’s pack. Red stains showed through the cloth almost immediately. Then a tourniquet.
“I can’t do much else,” Siniq-elb said. “My hands are shaking worse than a week-dry drunk’s.”
“Time we got back to camp, then,” Natam said. “Can’t stay here.”
Siniq-elb resisted the urge to glance around the clearing. His men were dead. If not for Natam’s quick-thinking with the sword, he would have died himself. He had failed his men, failed himself.
Eyes on the ground, Siniq-elb grabbed Azel’s pack, emptied it of everything but the half-empty waterskin and the remaining bandages, and—gritting his teeth—placed the seir’s severed claw into the bag. He tied the bag, cleaned his sword, and gave Natam a look. The blond man answered with a tight nod. Time to go.
Natam did not even make it to the edge of the clearing on his own. Siniq-elb found a fallen branch, trimmed the twigs as best he could, his raw palms smarting with every move, and gave Natam the improvised walking stick. With Natam leaning on Siniq-elb’s uninjured shoulder, they started back into the forest as the sun sank below the sea of trees.
The walk back to camp was the hardest thing of Siniq-elb’s life. The cuts on his arms and jaw burned, his shoulder ached so that he could barely move his arm, and Natam’s weight pressed down on his other side. The fog of fatigue and failure pressed down on Siniq-elb, rendering the forest around them a blur of dips and hills, stumbles and near-falls, until his legs ached almost as badly as his shoulder. Natam was worse, if anything. The blond man’s face was pale, his lips pressed tightly together. The limp grew worse with every step, and the bandages were soaked with blood before they had made it half a mile.
When the camp came into sight, Siniq-elb could only stare, a mixture of relief and wonder deadened by exhaustion. Torches lit up the darkness; dusk had fallen, plunging the forest into webs of shadow. There were men at the camp. Lots of men. Had the seiri attacked en masse? Had Il gone for help?
When Siniq-elb reached the cluster of tents that he had shared with his men, he stared at the men waiting for them. They were not soldiers—far from it, in fact. Each and every one wore the green robe and chain mail of the eses, the priest-warriors of the tair. Half city guard, half thugs, the eses brought an acrid taste to Siniq-elb’s mouth. Sword-bearer Qilic would be furious when he found out the eses were this far outside the city; if the rebels caught hold of the eses, they would not be gentle in extracting information, and the army of Khi’ilan needed all the advantages it could get over the god-killers.
Most of the eses sat in small groups, chatting, and scattered remnants of food and clothing, along with emptied packs, told Siniq-elb that the eses had occupied themselves by thieving from Siniq-elb and his men. An esis with dark, foreign hair stood up and retrieved a massive sword, almost twice the size of a normal blade, from the ground. One sleeve of his robe and chainmail was missing, revealing an arm with an ivory-colored band around it. A su-esis, the elite guard of the gods-made-flesh. Men imbued with the divine. He walked toward them, face set.
“Squad leader Siniq-elb?” he said.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Siniq-elb said. “Get a healer, man—can’t you see we’re hurt?”
The dark-haired su-esis snapped his fingers, and a rail-thin man with hair the same coppery-red as Siniq-elb’s approached. “Be prepared to tend to them,” the su-esis said.
“Tair bless us,” Natam said, “is this what the eses have taken to doing with their spare time? Picnics from the city to rob honest soldiers? What, were the women and the orphans of Old Truth making too much
trouble?”
The dark-haired su-esis’s mouth twisted, but when he spoke, the words were even. “I am Su-esis Dakel. You are Siniq-elb Ayaou?”
Siniq-elb nodded. Fear pushed back the cloud of fatigue and pain. Something was wrong.
In a heartbeat, the eses were leaping to their feet, swords clearing scabbards with a series of ringing sweeps. Dakel did not draw his sword; if he truly were su-esis, he would not need it. The su-esis were gifted by the tair with incredible speed and strength, beyond anything a normal man might possess. If he were not su-esis—well, the other esis had enough swords as it was.
Behind him, Siniq-elb heard Natam draw his sword. Shaking his head, Siniq-elb motioned for Natam to stay still.
“What do you want?” Siniq-elb said.
“You are hereby summoned to attend the God-made-flesh in the Garden,” Dakel said.
Siniq-elb’s heart almost stopped. The Garden—a place where the unfaithful were taken and corrected. Imprisoned. Tortured.
“This is a mistake,” Siniq-elb said, the words too fast. “I serve the tair; my family serves the tair.”
“You were to have delivered him this afternoon,” Dakel said. “The cost of this expedition will be deducted from your pay.”
“We had a change of plans,” Natam said.
Natam. The silver chain. All the money. The eses had bribed him? It seemed impossible; Siniq-elb had done nothing wrong, and Natam was loyal. Natam had saved his life just hours before.
But why? Because they were friends, comrades? Or because Siniq-elb was worth more to him alive than dead?
The pain of the thought was almost too much to bear. Siniq-elb turned. He needed to see the truth of it in Natam’s face.
For a moment, he glimpsed the blond braids, the firm, unsmiling line of Natam’s mouth. And then the hilt of Natam’s sword caught Siniq-elb on the back of his head. An explosion of blue-white pain, and Siniq-elb fell into darkness.