Revenge of the Zeds

by Stewart Ross

“Alright, if you think he’ll manage, I agree,” he said. His tone sounded relieved. “It wasn’t really my decision anyway… So please pass on the good news to him. He’s a good lad – a man now, really. That one eye of his is probably sharper than most people’s two! I’ll apologise to him myself about that ‘squinty’ business. It was only a joke, Cyrus.”

  Cyrus thanked him and went to find Sammy. He was relieved to find he’d been wrong about Yash. The Emir was still the same good-hearted friend he had been all along. Pity his copemate was so prickly, though. Thinking over what Yash had said, he was sure it was she who had refused Sammy’s wish. He must watch her. Experience had taught him that prickliness could develop into something more than unpleasant.

  Late that afternoon, after an armed patrol had carried Timur’s corpse outside the walls of Alba and cast it into a ravine some thousand paces distant, Cyrus and Sammy joined the crowd gathered to watch the bodyburn. The near-naked bodies of Navid, Taja, Roxanne and Padmar were carried to the huge fire stone near the Patrol Gate, the lower of the two entrances into Alba. A tall pyre of brushwood and logs had already been erected on top of the flat-topped rock on which corpses were incinerated.

  Two ladders ran up the side of the pyre. A couple of strong archers, one at the head, the other at the feet, lifted the bodies and laid them next to each other on the top of the pyramid. When everything was ready, Yash took a flaming brand and lifted it above his head.

  “Alba, courage, duty!” he yelled.

  With one voice, the crowded responded. “Alba, courage, duty!”

  As the sound echoed away, the Emir lowered his brand to the tinder and the summit of the rock was soon blazing like a volcano. The crowd drifted away until just two figures stood arm in arm, gazing into the flames.

  “Bit special, wasn’t she, Mister Cyrus?” said the younger of the two, his eyes fixed on the fire.

  Cyrus let go of Sammy and folded his arms across his chest. During his seventeen winters of life he had witnessed hundreds of fireburns. Most were just routine disposals. He had vague memories of standing sorrowfully beside the pyre on which his parents’ bodies had lain; later, he had difficulty holding back tears at the fireburn of Pari, his young wedun who had bled to death shortly after the delivery of their stillborn child.

  This one was different, more troubling. Not because it marked the end of wretched Padmar, nor because it reminded him of the deaths of Navid and Taja, painful though they were, but because it brought to mind once again the awesome responsibility he bore. Roxanne’s passing had deprived him of that most rare and precious of all gifts – a fellow human being with whom he had merged in both heart and mind. Like two streams meeting, each had flowed into the other. As he watched the thick grey smoke drift up from the fire stone into the darkening sky, he heard again her dying exhortation: “For all our sakes, Cyrus, you must go on. You must go on.”

  Sammy, having received no answer, said nothing for while. Then, with wisdom remarkable for a young man, he said carefully, “I’m still ‘ere, Mister Cyrus. You ain’t all alone, you know. There’s two of us what’s going to carry on the mission.”

  Cyrus looked at him and smiled. “Thanks, Sammy. Yes, two of us. I almost forgot. It’ll be much easier with two.”

  Four thousand paces away, on the other side of the valley that ran along the sunrise boundary of Alban territory, two Zed minds were also contemplating the future with uncertainty.

  “Malik not come back,” grunted Jamshid, scratching angrily at his lice-infested groin.

  Giv, the younger and brighter of the two Zeds, shook his head. “Timur come back. He tell Giv wait.”

  His weasel-faced partner snorted and picked at a rabbit bone, all that remained of the day’s kill. He cracked it open with his teeth and sucked at the bloody marrow. They had no means to light a fire, and had subsisted on wild fruits and raw meat ever since Timur’s departure. A full lunar cycle having elapsed since he had left them on his foray into Alba, they were hungry and bored.

  When he had extracted the last of the marrow and wiped the blood dribbling down his stubbled chin, Captain Jamshid stood up. “Jamshid going back to Grozny,” he announced.

  A look of horror passed across Giv’s face. “No, Jamshid, no!” he shouted, leaping to his feet. “Malik come back and …” He left the sentence unfinished, unable to imagine what terrible things Timur would do if he found they had abandoned him.

  Giv’s terror reminded his colleague of their leader’s unquenchable thirst for inflicting pain. Jamshid had seen and heard its victims too often not to catch the younger man’s fear. He scratched himself again, more thoughtfully this time.

  “Stay here, soon Constants find us and we die,” he mused. “Go back and Malik come, we also die. Worse. Big screaming.” He sat down again.

  Giv resumed his seat and the two men sat without uttering a word until the shadows lengthened into twilight and the first stars shimmered through the canopy of trees overhead.

  “What they?” asked Giv, lying back and pointing up at the pinpoints of light dotting the night sky.

  Jamshid looked blank. “What what?”

  “Little suns,” explained Giv.

  “Malik call, er, slars,” Jumshid replied, unsure whether he had remembered the word correctly.

  “Slars, slars, slars,” repeated Giv.

  After he had said the word perhaps fifty times, he suddenly stopped. “Slars’ light,” he muttered slowly. “Giv see in night.”

  Jamshid looked at him and frowned. “Malik say you ratbrain.”

  “No, not ratbrain!” Giv got to his feet. “No Constants in night. Giv see in night with slars’ light.”

  “You still ratbrain.”

  Giv ignored him. “Jamshid stay. Giv go find Malik Timur in night.”

  Without another word, the young man bounded off into the darkness, leaving Jamshid staring after him in disbelief. “Ratbrain,” he muttered as the sound of his partner’s footsteps died away. Shortly afterwards he fell asleep and dreamed of Giv with two gleaming slars where his eyes should have been.

  Jamshid had the instincts of a wild animal. No matter how tired he was, he woke at the slightest noise. The first light of dawn was breaking through the trees when a rustling in the bushes to his left had him sitting bolt upright and reaching for his rusty gut-ripper. He relaxed and lowered the weapon as the grey shape of Giv emerged out of the thicket.

  “Giv back,” the young man announced in a hushed, almost wondrous voice.

  Jamshid snorted. “Giv back but no Malik. Where is Malik?”

  “Malik here,” said Giv in the same reverential tones.

  The Captain grabbed his gut-ripper and leaped to his feet. “Jamshid still here, Malik,” he cried, looking wildly around him. “Jamshid wait for…”

  His voice trailed off into a horrified silence. In his left hand Giv was holding something strange. Swinging gently from side to side, it looked like a massive white club. But it wasn’t a club, it was –

  “Malik!” howled Jamshid, raising his gut-ripper and charging at Giv. “Giv kill Malik!”

  Had the vicious weapon struck home, the blow would have slain Giv in an instant. But the younger man was too agile. Seeing the blow coming, he skipped to one side and swung the object he was carrying hard at his assailant’s head. Skull met skull with a loud crack and Jamshid staggered back.

  “Listen!” screamed Giv, jumping up and down before his dazed companion. “Giv find Malik body. Constants think they kill Malik. Giv say no.”

  Jamshid stared in disbelief. “You loony man,” he said quietly. “Tell Jamshid – or he kill you.”

  Slowly, in broken sentences and simple words, Giv told his story. He had followed Timur’s path towards Alba and, after walking for a short while, he noticed what appeared to be a fire in the distance. He advanced cautiously towards it until he found himself gazing up at the walls of Alba standing tall and pale in the moonlight. The fire was blazing on the other side and although he couldn’t see what
was happening, the smell told him immediately what was being burned. All Grozny Zeds recognised the aroma of charred flesh, but for different reasons from Constants.

  Giv had blundered around in the dark for a bit, trying to find a way to enter the citadel. He finally gave up and headed back roughly in the direction he had come. Finding a steep-sided ravine in his path, he chose to cross it rather than find a way round. He had scrambled noisily down the steep side and was making his way across the rocky floor when he tripped over something soft and fleshy.

  The bottom of the ravine was in shadow and at first Giv couldn’t believe his eyes. Undeterred by the stench of putrefaction, he knelt and examined the corpse more closely. The same pearly skin scarred with a Z tattoo on the forehead, the same long white hair… He gingerly pushed open a slimy eyelid. Yes, despite the work of an early maggot, the same red eyes. It was his Malik.

  Giv sat back on his heels in disbelief. No, he said to himself. Not happen. What Giv do? What Grozny do? Malik not die, Malik not die, Malik not… The young man’s shock and fear were interrupted by a flash of instinctive inspiration. He, the humble Giv, would bring Timur the Terrible back to his people. Not all of him – the corpse was too heavy to carry or drag on his own – just the important bit. Kneeling again, he took out his knife and began the grizzly business of decapitating his master.

  When Giv had finished his story, Jamshid sat quietly for a while before saying, “You right, Giv. Timur not dead – Jamshid and Giv have Malik head. Timur Malik live in his head.”

  Giv considered this for a moment. “Head not speak,” he frowned.

  “Jamshid will speak Timur words,” grinned the Captain.

  Giv did not like the implications of this. “No, Giv speak Timur words.”

  Jamshid reached for his weapon and growled, “Jamshid has gut-ripper.”

  Giv cradled the stinking trophy to his chest. “Giv have Malik head,” he retorted.

  There was another long silence. In the end, they agreed both would act as Timur’s voice when the head was safely back with the tribe. The plan was ridiculously optimistic and would certainly have led to bitter squabbles between the two men, and probably to the death of one. Its effectiveness was never put to the test. Long before they reached the Grozny, both Jamshid and Giv and their rotting symbol of authority were taken prisoner. Their captor, had the two ever met, would have been more than a match even for the mighty Timur.

  The blow fell early one drizzly evening as they were passing through a patch of scrubby woodland. The path was narrow. Jamshid went first, his gut-ripper hanging idly at his side. Giv, holding Timur’s head by its long white hair, followed three paces behind.

  Giv, blessed with sharper hearing than the older man, heard it first. To begin with, he thought the noise must be a snake and he checked to see where he was putting his bare feet. There was nothing. The sinister hissing grew louder. Jamshid had now stopped and was peering into the trees. The sound seemed to be coming from every side.

  All of a sudden, it ceased. Two dozen figures slipped silently into view and spread out around the startled Grozny. Each gripped a long, metal-tipped spear and was pointing it directly at them.

  Giv stared around in open-mouthed amazement. The tattooed warriors surrounding them were clearly Zeds – the same bare feet, scarred, half-naked bodies, unkempt hair and cruel, stupid faces as the men he had been brought up with. But there was one crucial, astounding difference: among their captors there was not a man to be seen.

  2

  The Soterion

  The morning after the fireburn, Cyrus awoke to the sound of rain. For a few moments he lay thinking about what the change in the weather brought. It meant water for the terraces that rose in measured steps above the settlement; it meant replenishment for the great well in the centre of Lion Square; for him personally it meant much more.

  The rainy season heralded the onset of his seventeenth winter and his entry into what might well be the last twelve moons of his life. He rubbed his eyes. Twelve moons? He really must start using the language of the Long Dead that Roxanne had taught him. A complete cycle of seasons was a year. He had a little over a year to live – at most.

  And there was so much to do! A current of urgent energy surged through him. He rose quickly from his straw mattress, pulled on the leather cape Yash had given him and picked his way between the sleeping Konnels to the door. Before stepping outside, he checked the pouch at his belt. Yes, it was still there. The key to the Soterion, to hope and to the future.

  Leaving the dormitory, he turned right for the lower Patrol Gate and the site of the fireburn. He needed to say one final farewell. The flames had died down before the rain began and the sodden ashes – Roxanne’s ashes – were being carried off the rock in little grey-black streams. He watched as they hurried down to the waterlogged ground where they gathered in muddy pools before flooding under the gate and out into the woods and wastelands beyond. By the end of the day, all would be washed away. The stone altar, clean and bright, would await its next occupant. As it was with the ashes, he determined, so it must be with the events of the past half-year. However painful, from now on he had to look forward. His past was a mountain from whose summit he could see the future, not a block in the road ahead. He was sure that’s how Roxanne would have seen it.

  He stood gazing at the scene, then turned and walked rapidly along the course of the wall towards what was already being called the Soterion Gate. The guards recognised him straight away and let him through. Would he need an escort? There might be Zeds…

  Cyrus shook his head. “Thanks for the offer, but no need. There’s less chance of Zeds being out early on a morning like this than there is of them flying over the walls. I reckon I can take care of myself. Anyway, Asal and Shyad and the other lads are still on guard there, aren’t they? I’ll yell if I get into trouble, ok?”

  The guards waved him through and he set off along the slippery path that wound down the mountainside to the vault. He met no one on the way and was soon turning the key in the lock of the stainless steel door. As it swung open, he was greeted once again by the wondrous smell of leather and paper and ink and glue. All was as it had been two days earlier when he had lifted the dead body of Roxanne in his arms and carried her out into the sunlight. He swallowed, trying hard to put the memory aside.

  “It’s over,” he muttered to himself, striking sparks to light the torch Yash had tied to an iron ring by the door. “It’s over.”

  Orange-yellow light filled the chamber and, for the first time, he made a careful inspection of its contents. The three sets of shelves, one on each of the walls away from the door, contained perhaps as many as six hundred books. They were divided into sections with labels such as Science, History, Literature, Mathematics, Theology … the words meant little to him.

  He moved to the section where he had found Peter Pan, one of the three books by which Roxanne had learned to read. He singled out another volume, took it closer to the light and tried to read. Tell me, Muse, the story of that resourceful man who was driven to wander far and wide…

  He stopped reading. Though he wasn’t sure what ‘resourceful’ meant, the story could be his. He too had been driven – more or less – to wander far and wide. How weird! He wondered who or what a ‘Muse’ was. Man or woman? He glanced at the title for a clue. The Odyssey. That didn’t help. Returning to the story, he found himself tripping over further vocabulary. What was a ‘holy citadel’? Roxanne had once tried to explain ‘holy’ but he still wasn’t sure.

  Having struggled to the foot of the page, he put the book down on the desk in the centre of the vault. This was no good – at this rate, it’d take him the rest of his life to read just one story. He must leave The Odyssey for the time being and find a book that explained words. Surely there was such a thing? The Long Dead must have known not everyone would be able to read fluently, not at first anyway? A word-meaning book would also allow him to understand properly the letter he had come across after Roxanne
’s death. He was keen to see what it said about the Salvation Project.

  He found what he needed quicker than he expected. It was in a section called ‘Reference’, between ‘Encyclopaedia’ and ‘Thesaurus’. It had Dictionary in gold letters on the blue spine. Once he had opened its covers, he was enthralled.

  It was like entering a magic cave in a dream, a Soterion within a Soterion. Old familiar friends were there, lying side by side with strangers. It didn’t take him long to get the hang of it. When he had done so, he turned to ‘holy’ and read, ‘perfect in a moral sense’. He understood that, just about – but there was more. ‘Pure in heart’ – easy enough to grasp. But Ozlam, the High Father of the Children of Gova, had called himself holy – and he certainly hadn’t been pure in heart.

  Cyrus read on, eagerly eating the delicious words. ‘Associated with God or gods…’ Still more meanings to look up. And so it went on, word after word, line after line, each leading to another in a wondrous trail of discovery. With every step, he felt as if a door into the world of the Long Dead was being opened just a fraction wider. It was thrilling, mesmerising.

  He was so engrossed that he didn’t notice he had visitors.

  “Hello Cyrus!”

  It was Yash, with Sakamir standing just behind him. The flickering torchlight threw uncanny shadows over their faces. “Guards said you were down here. What’re you doing?”

  Cyrus did his best to explain. He showed them the shelves of books before turning to the table and picking up the letter he had found on first entering the vault. He’d been so lost in the dictionary, he’d forgotten about it.

  “Remember me mentioning this?” he asked, carefully picking up the dry, crackling paper and motioning to his friends to sit on the couch. “It helps us understand a lot, though there are bits I don’t get. I’ll read it out loud once, then go over it again. We can look up the words we don’t know in this book.” He held out the volume he had been reading when they came in. “It’s called a ‘dictionary’ and it gives the meaning of every word, like –”