KREEEECH?
It had heard that. The vulture talons reached down—
PPPFT!
An Amakri spear pierced the side of the blood eater, and it turned into a black, blurred, shrieking frenzy. Pythius’s horn blasted the night, and the Amakri sprang up, hurling spears and throwing nets upon the shadows hovering around the encampment. Moreth and Talwyn heeded the call and opened fire upon the thrashing shape above them, riddling it with a volley of blue fire. The blood eaters’ cries of gluttonous ecstasy became shrieks that tore into the ears of the defenders. The blood eater above them dropped with a squealing thud, and Moreth and Talwyn—still holding onto Mouse—ran to the downed beast to finish it. Speared and broken, it continued to drag itself like a dog with two broken legs, leaving a bloody trail through the snow. Its wings flickered like burning paper and added gobs to the ebony drool left by its wounds. As they caught up to the monster, it turned its head toward its attackers and gave infuriated screeches. Then it made a disturbing mewl as its black pearl stare fell upon Mouse. There were slits in its eyes, and they expanded, lovingly.
“In the head,” said Moreth. “Shoot it in the head.”
The men peppered the creature’s skull with bullets, and it slumped and curled up into a smoldering coil. The corpse hissed with foul vapors and within instants had dissolved into a slop of quivering black goo. The three had watched the dissolution with a macabre fascination, but they quickly pulled their eyes away from the spectacle. However, the Amakri had already seen to the security of their people. Warriors could be spotted stomping and spearing entangled blood eaters, or dancing back from the running decay of the monsters’ bodies. The three sighed in relief, but soon realized their victory had been a hollow one, for they heard sobbing and moans as the Amakri mourned their dead.
“It was all so fast…” whispered Mouse.
“They may come again,” said Moreth. “Usually, the first wave is sent only to test the strength of a herd of prey. More of them will have been held in reserve—one hundred times the number we’ve seen. A hive of the things.”
“How do you know so much about these horrors?” she asked.
As they’d come so far together, and now trusted each other with the most dangerous of secrets, Moreth shared one of his. “I married one.”
Before anyone could think of a reply, Pythius arrived. Fast as changelings, he and a band of warriors had sped through the encampment to reach them. The half-naked shaman looked wild-eyed. In one hand, he held his horn and in the other, a weapon that seemed birthed of a cleaver and a sword—possessing the blade of the former and the handle of the latter. The shaman’s weapon dripped blackness, and he and his warriors were spattered with the death of the blood eaters.
“Dýsi Touílio! Skáfos Feyhazir! (West Sun! Vessel of Feyhazir!)” he called.
Reaching them, Pythius tucked his horn into his waist, threw his weapon straight into the frozen ground—where it hummed and did not move—and then examined Talwyn and Mouse. Pythius made no concessions to modesty, feeling the two from cranny to crevice for injury. Secretly, Talwyn enjoyed the attention, particularly as Pythius had examined him first, before turning to the sacred vessel. One had to relish the finer moments in life, because the rest of it seemed to be monster-hunting and doom. Once they had passed his rough physical examination, he addressed the scholar: “Isoun apospástike íe danchotheí?” (Were you clawed or bitten?)
“Ochi.” (No.)
“Kalóc. Afís tous eínaa dilitírio.” (Good. Their touch is poison.)
As the shaman turned to Moreth, Talwyn confirmed that he, too, was uninjured, figuring he would be a less cooperative patient.
“Prostimo, Sou écho empistosýni (Fine, I trust you),” said Pythius, and strode past the three to the pool of ichor behind them. “Thae to ékan aftó?” (You did this?)
“Emes.” (We.) Talwyn pointed to Moreth and then tapped the pistol that he held, which continued to flicker with sapphire flames until he clicked the hammer off. Pythius watched the flame go out and gasped.
“Mágos (Sorcerer),” said the shaman. “Ákousa tis dýnamís sas símera to proí, kai den pistévoun. Eínae énas mágos, pára polý?” (I heard of your power this morning, and did not believe. Is he a sorcerer, too?) Pythius nodded to Moreth.
“Den eínai arketá.” (Not quite.)
“Deíxe mou, enóéchoume tin tási na to travmatíes.” (Show me, while we tend to the wounded.)
Talwyn turned to his companions, who had been unable to follow this exchange. “I have been asked to help, though I think the invitation extends to all of us.”
They would help, and then they would talk: of blood eaters and of the man who had married a monster. As they were leaving, Moreth glanced back at the liquid corpse and spat upon it.
VI
Moreth’s story would have to wait until the encampment had once again been made secure, however. That eve, a host of scowling, spear-gripping Amakri camped outside and watched the skies. The warriors made silent prayers for the wounded whose cries pained their ears. It was in the dark incense-clouded tents that the three strangers from Central Geadhain were most needed, and they spent their evening tending to the gasping, thrashing souls who had been clawed and bitten by the blood eaters.
Mouse and Moreth weren’t unaccustomed to grisly battlefield wounds, and they soon learned that Talwyn had spent six months or thereabouts as a surgeon. He had still been deciding on his vocation, he said, though his listeners wondered whether any one cerebral pursuit in all of Geadhain could actually satisfy a man of his intellect. He was a genius, Mouse realized, a miracle worker when it came to medicine. Like many such folk, though, he wanted none of the prestige and attention that came with his gift.
At ease in a crisis, the scholar made tourniquets to stop the spread of blood-eaters’ venom. With herbs taken from Pythius’s collection, he boiled remedies to sedate his patients, attempting to recreate treatments he’d known in the West. Doctor Talwyn and his Western assistants did the impossible: they saved a handful of Amakri from the screaming death of blood-eater fever. However, survival often came at a cost: even those who’d been lightly grazed could be saved only through the excising of large hunks of tissue from in and around affected areas.
In some cases, a patient could be saved only if one or more of his limbs were amputated. This might affect the tribesperson’s pride and harm his standing with his people, but Talwyn didn’t care, and he didn’t ask. Grim Pythius, who assisted with the bloody surgeries, offered no information on the topic. Once the dissolving, rotten flesh—that resembled the blood puddings Talwyn had once enjoyed but never would again—had been removed, Amakri disposed of the putrid matter by burning it in the fires. Thick smoke and the smell of seared compost soon filled the encampment, but in time the screaming subsided. Those who could not be saved, who far outnumbered those who could, were given a terminal dose of Talwyn’s other medicine.
This drink was boiled in the largest lidded cauldrons available. It smelled of ether and pine. Inhaling its fumes from a rag would cure all aches; drinking a thimbleful of the liquid was enough to stop one’s heart. Within instants of coughing the liquid down, men, women, and children would close their eyes and sink into unconsciousness as their gelatinous bodies were brought toward the great pyre now burning in the center of the camp. Into that belching inferno the dead were cast. Those Amakri not busy caring for the ill or watching the sky sang beautiful, hard-throated songs and made music with rattles and hide drums. Once or twice, when the shaman wasn’t around, the companions thought they heard Pythius’s horn sounding notes that evoked the long, sad cry of a deep-sea king. They weren’t always certain where the shaman was—where anyone was—as a sweaty haze obscured their surroundings.
As the sun rose, as red and angry as the souls of those who wouldn’t rest, the great labor at last came to an end. Talwyn, Moreth, and Mouse became aware of their surroundings again, and stood outside of the tents. They’d been watching the whorls in
the twisting pyre as if counting the wailing spirits within; they couldn’t say for how long they’d stood there. Their sleeves were rolled up, and they were covered in blood and oils. Although they were without their cloaks, they were warmed by the pyre’s rage.
“Fáoch ka freskada.” (Food and freshness.)
Temupka had approached them soundlessly and now stood beside them with two peace offerings: in one hand, she held a handled pot of stew with three ladles sticking out, and in the other, a bowl of rags, melted snow, and rock salt for washing themselves. Talwyn and the others accepted the items, and he gave Temupka a nod, which she returned. Their feud now apparently over, the pregnant woman wandered back to the pyre, took up a drum, and shuffled her feet to the music. The companions, tired as they were, still weren’t ready to move; their minds were still processing all they’d seen. Moreth stood soberly, while Mouse leaned on Talwyn—each of them watched the dancing, and the whirling twists of ash and smoke that rose to the skies.
“I am sorry for what I said, Talwyn—all of it,” apologized Mouse, gripping the pot tightly, gazing at her bloodless knuckles. “You’re quite possibly one of the most useful people I’ve ever known.”
“Exactly how smart are you?” Moreth asked, flatly; the question felt overdue.
“I don’t know quite how to answer that,” replied Talwyn, blushing. “I’m sensitive to too many things in life. I see too much. I hear too much. I imagine if I had Caenith’s senses, I would’ve killed myself long ago; what I know is already a burden. I wish I could turn it off, the machine in my head, but I can’t; I simply cannot stop absorbing information, no matter how I try.
“I also am incapable of ceasing to analyze, to parse, to understand completely. Everything I see, I can’t help seeing in terms of probabilities, expressions of physical laws, arrangements of atoms—and the intersections of all these and every other force working in or on people and things. Perhaps that’s why my personal relationships have mostly been in the dumps; at least, they were until I began traveling with persons equally, if differently, as strange as I am. For one cannot view a comrade, a friend, as an object and hope to develop healthy attachments. Both of you are unique enough to stand out from others of your species—which has made it easier for me to react to you as though you’re more than your parts and processes.” Talwyn frowned. “Which, of course, you are. That sounds horrible and cold, sorry.”
It sounds extraordinary, thought Moreth. “What do you see right now? Tell me.”
And so summoned, the machine in Talwyn’s mind and soul took the reins. Gazing at Moreth, he saw an unshaven man, clinging to refinement, and, past that, a spiderweb of pink veins around the master’s eyes that to some would indicate fatigue, but to Talwyn spoke of fleshcrafting abuse. Quite often, the facial musculature was replaced as men aged and the resuturing to the skin occurred at set points that caused specific vascular patterns—usually around the eyes and the interior of the mouth. While Talwyn hadn’t seen many examples of fleshcrafting in the living, he’d seen such irregularities once while autopsying the corpse of a Menosian diplomat. It’d been poison that killed the diplomat, and such murder had been brought about by one of his Ironguards. In time, Talwyn had identified the cause of death—bloodlily powder—as well as the culprit. For the poisoner, even if wearing gloves and a mask both during and in preparation for the act, would’ve still suffered from mild exposure to the poison, which was so fine a dust that it spread even when conscientiously handled. Further, bloodlily of any dosage left a telltale darkness around the eyes, as well as made the gums bleed, slightly—a cough, too, would wrack anyone that came in contact with this poison. Talwyn had read the symptoms in a book once, and that fact had embedded itself into his brain—along with every other fact he’d ever learned. During the autopsy, the guilty soldier had been gloomily staring at Talwyn with his charcoal-sunken eyes and repeatedly stifling a cough. In a bit of black Menosian humor, Talwyn had told the young man, “Smile, it’s not your autopsy,” which had made the soldier nervously grin. Right after noticing the soldier’s raw, red gums, he’d asked the young man, politely, “Why did you murder him?” Trapped and stunned, the soldier had confessed in that very room and turned himself over to the Iron marshal in attendance.
“Hold on a speck. What were you doing in the Eastern Front in the company of a Menosian diplomat and an Iron marshal—while working as a field surgeon?” interrupted Mouse.
“A story for another day, my dear.”
Part of his curse, Talwyn continued, was that he only needed to see, smell, read, touch, experience something once to remember it. Therefore, he knew that Mouse had stubbed her left largest toe three days, sixteen hourglasses, and eight sands past, even though she’d completely forgotten both the pain and the incident.
Likewise, he could use his incredible cognition and ever-growing store of information to accurately deduce historical facts out of present circumstances. For example, as he stared out into the winter waste beyond the Doomchaser camp, from the data and geological patterns he’d observed, he overlaid this time and place with a mesh-framework of warmer seasons: of forests, of grand rocks that had since tumbled into tiny piles, and of great animals striding terrain—creatures reconstructed like wire-form figures in his mind from the bones and beasts he’d known. Talwyn explained all this to his awestruck companions much more slowly than it arose in his mind; to speak as fast as he thought would’ve made for an unintelligible screech.
“Good Kings!” Mouse gasped.
“Eidetic and a savant of all sciences. Astonishing,” exclaimed Moreth. Talwyn blushed from head to toe, and began to wilt in response to their awe at his abilities. “You have my admiration and respect, which are not easily given. I can see you’re not one for flattery or vanity, however, so I shall leave the matter be.”
“Thank you,” said Talwyn, and began to walk. Quietly, he added: “I am glad to have met others for whom my curiousness doesn’t offend. I do not think myself above man. Indeed, until all of this extraordinary madness began, I was very lonely.”
“Well, you’re not now,” said Mouse, patting him on the back. “You’re the kind of friend I’ve always wanted. One day, good friend, we need to hit up a betting house and use those skills of yours to rob everyone down to their knickers. Our stew will be quite cold by now. We should head inside.”
The company somberly greeted the weary Doomchasers they passed. Travelers and Doomchasers now looked on each other with both understanding and admiration. The strangers had been through battle with the tribe, had lent their knowledge and skills to the community; they were now fellow warriors, bound together with blood. The three walked past Pythius, who was sitting on a stone and explaining to a group of young Amakri where the spirits of their parents had gone. Talwyn and the shaman exchanged glances, a substitute for the conversation that would come when the mourning had ended.
Once back in the soothing darkness of their tent, the men turned their backs to Mouse, undressed, and washed the sour death off their bodies. Temupka, or some other thoughtful Amakri, must have been by, for on the floor lay three bedrolls, upon each of which had been placed a stitched white garment. The three changed into the highlander-styled shifts, which were something like a shirt and a skirt in one and were tied with corded belts. Now dressed, warm, and feeling the pull of exhaustion, the companions rested their heads on their bedrolls and closed their eyes. Sleep wouldn’t come to any of them, but they were happy to snatch a moment’s peace. After a time, the waft of the stew they’d brought woke their aching bodies, and they sat up and had a cold meal.
“Quite a night,” said Moreth, throwing his ladle into the empty pot.
Talwyn sent his utensil clattering into the pot, too. “Although it’s been an exhausting day, I think it’s time we heard about your wife, and about your travels in Pandemonia.”
“Mine is not a love story,” warned Moreth. “It is a tale of blood, lust, and hunger.”
“I like it already,” said Mouse, t
ossing in her ladle. “Go on, regale us. Leave nothing out. We’ll decide what’s important and what isn’t.”
Regale you, thought Moreth. Tales of his time in Pandemonia—of almost any point in his life, for that matter—would disgust any reasonable audience. Mouse and Talwyn, however, had just carved jellied rot off screaming invalids and administered elixirs of death with steady hands. They could handle the truth of his past. “As you know, Mouse, I was a malcontent as a young man. I was a master with too much wealth and ambition, and nothing in the Iron City could sate my desires. Elsa, my mother, ended her life with narcotics. I don’t know if she did so intentionally, and I can’t blame her if that was the case. Father had finally passed, and the reins of the estate had suddenly been handed to me…I had the world at my fingertips…”
The parties had been exhausting, but nothing like his father’s soirees of blood and debauchery. Civilized affairs of string music, dancers, and artists had allowed Moreth to celebrate the death of the foul tyrant who’d spawned him. Father had never allowed proper art—works that were not cast-iron statues of slaves or portraits of himself—in the house, and so Moreth had filled the estate with such creations once he was free of his father’s vicious influence. After a time, however, his parties had begun to disappoint the Menosian aristocrats, who were bored by the lack of sex torture and death. Fewer and fewer of them attended his events; his false friends vanished. However, he often saw their slavering faces below the city at the Blood Pits, which he now owned. In his new position of power, Moreth presided over these contests; after a time, he realized the sounds of gristle tearing, men choking, and men screaming had become as pleasing to his ear as the strains of violin music that accompanied his lonely dinners. Brutality could be viewed as an art, if one could achieve the necessary perspective.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 53