Blood and Bone

by Ian C. Esslemont

  ‘Greetings!’ boomed a hollow metallic voice.

  Now Mara knew they faced magery as well, for the creature seemed to have spoken in Dal Hon, which she knew was a virtual impossibility. So, not just an automaton wearing a cloak of flayed human skin …

  ‘I sense the one I name Kasminod has sent you. I believe I saw one of his rats!’

  ‘Who are you?’ Skinner called. He still held his blade ready – though Mara wondered what the weapon could possibly do to a creature without flesh.

  Iron and bronze screeched and grated as the thing described a shallow bow. Through gaps in the tattered skin Mara glimpsed within its torso coils of rusted metal tightening then expanding like the workings of a showpiece clock she saw once in Tali. ‘I am Veng. King Veng. Welcome to my kingdom.’

  Skinner made a show of peering about. ‘Your kingdom, Veng, is sinking.’

  More high-pitched scraping of metal as Veng shrugged the rods and wire and bent straps that made up its arms – arms that ended in jagged rusted iron blades. ‘What of it? A mere change in the weather. One must make the best of change.’

  ‘What are you?’ Petal shouted from the rigging, and Mara almost smiled, thinking how the man would let no circumstance interfere with his curiosity.

  ‘Excellent question!’ the thing boomed once more. ‘What am I indeed … I have been hailed as a masterpiece of the venerated Meckros mechanicians. For generations I guarded this floating city – Ambajenad, it was called.’ Veng bowed again, yet jerkily, as if miming a marionette. ‘Ahh … but then the Meckros smiths sought to perfect their creation. Their deep sea nets brought up an item from the ocean’s floor. A unique item of inexhaustible power. This they placed within me and – by the gods! – I lived! No more winding or moments of darkness during which I sensed nothing. I lived … no differently from you creatures of flesh. Yet I will not die. Being of metal I am immortal and am thus far superior to you.’

  Skinner motioned with his blade. ‘Why then the skin and the head?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, since I live among you I thought I ought to look the part. Convincing, yes?’

  ‘Extraordinarily.’ This from Petal.

  Skinner nodded his helmed head as if in understanding and then he shouted, pointing: ‘I order you to stand down! Your job is finished.’

  A spine-grating screech of metal scraping sounded then from the creature and Mara realized this was its laughter. The head rocked obscenely as Veng edged closer. ‘Too late for orders – but a worthy gambit. No. No more orders for Veng now. Veng is king and King Veng gives the orders now. And Veng’s order is …’ it raised its two jagged blades, ‘death.’

  The creature charged. Yet so too did Skinner. They met in a blacksmith’s ring of clashing metal. The automaton’s blades of toothed and notched iron caught and snagged at Skinner’s weapon. The guardian swung with inhuman power, his blows like battering rams that Skinner slipped or barely edged aside. Their commander thrust through the creature’s guard easily. His blade pierced the workings of the torso and Mara heard wires pinging like plucked instruments and metal bands grating. None of these strikes appeared to trouble the automaton.

  One thrust from the monster, as deadly quick as a released crossbow, struck her commander only to rebound from the black scales of the man’s coat. Such a blow would have penetrated any other armour but this unique scale seemed true to its reputation: utterly impenetrable.

  Yet the power of the thrust had been immense – like the release of a siege engine – and Skinner now clutched his side, parrying one-handed. Ribs broken, probably.

  Veng pressed its advantage. Its weirdly articulated limbs spun and lashed with even greater speed. It appeared to Mara that no swordsman could hope to continue to deflect such a storm of blows. No doubt Skinner understood this too as at that instant he closed, dropping his blade, to hug the creature.

  The two slid and scraped together in a grating of iron as the creature’s metalwork scoured Skinner’s coat of scale. Veng’s blades slashed his back in blows like the hammering of mattocks.

  Skinner thrust a gauntleted hand into the innards of Veng’s torso. Wire popped and rang, metal screeched. The creature let out a shriek like iron pushed past its endurance. Skinner twisted bands and wires and cylinders of wound metal strips. What sounded like a panicked shriek of tearing bronze escaped Veng. It lurched as if attempting to escape, dragging Skinner with it. The two fell in a tangle of limbs and rolled to a break in the fractured decking to slip from sight. Mara heard a great splash as they struck the surf below.

  At first she could not believe what she’d just witnessed. Never had Skinner been bested. The surrounding monstrosities, however, did not take heart from what they saw; they squealed and chattered and clicked in what appeared to be a wave of panic. It seemed that Veng – or the thing within it – might have held some sort of compelling control over them. Summoning her Warren, Mara cast a wave of pressure in a swath across the decking, sending them and all the wrack of loose abandoned equipment tumbling backwards. This broke the creatures and they scattered in a lurching rush for the sides. In moments the deck was clear of them. Mara climbed down to cross to the break in the timbers.

  Waves surged below, crashing among the black rocks of the reef. It seemed to her that the force of those breakers might simply dash Skinner to pieces.

  Petal joined her. ‘I do not see him,’ he murmured. ‘What should we do? Lower a rope?’

  She peered around. ‘Where’s the damned priest?’

  ‘Fled. Perhaps eaten.’

  ‘Let’s hope he poisons them.’

  Petal heaved a sigh. ‘So? What now? Shall we search?’

  ‘No. If he’s alive he’ll make for shore. If he’s dead – he’s dead.’

  ‘And the fragment?’

  Rising, she brushed off her robe. ‘I really do not give a damn.’

  Petal released his lower lip. ‘Very good. We return to shore then.’

  They found the raft unmolested where they’d left it. Veng seemed to have been quite certain of itself. Heaving off they made little progress towards shore until Mara tapped her Warren to provide a force that allowed the raft to push through the breakers and advance to the distant line of surf that marked the strand.

  On the beach they found the priest awaiting them, bouncing and twitching, his hair a dripping greasy mass of tangles. ‘Well?’ the man demanded. ‘Do you have it? Give it to me.’

  Mara brushed him aside but he would not be put off. He hopped from foot to foot before her. ‘Ha! You do not fool me. You would keep it. Use it. Fool! Go ahead – it will consume you!’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I will start a fire,’ Petal said.

  ‘And find us something to eat.’

  The big man nodded ponderously. ‘Yes, yes. Always it is me sent to lure in a hare or two. Or …’ he raised a thick sausage-like finger, ‘lobster, perhaps?’

  Mara stared at the man. ‘Enchantress forgive us, Petal. Did you just try a joke?’

  ‘I judged it potentially amusing – given the recent unappetizing display of—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Mara interrupted before he could go on and describe the entire spectacle. She waved him off. ‘And a fire.’

  All this time the priest’s fevered gaze had been flicking between them. Now the bloodshot orbs narrowed and the man pointed. ‘I surmise you do not have it. You have failed! Return and retrieve it!’

  Mara waved him to the wreck. ‘Be our guest.’

  ‘That is not the agreement. You do the retrieving. Otherwise our master will be displeased.’

  Mara had been searching for her robes and she found them now and pulled them on. ‘What of it?’

  The priest jerked as if slapped. ‘What of it? You should ask such a question given what we have just witnessed?’

  Mara sat heavily in the sand. ‘We would not be of much use to your master twisted in such a fashion.’

  ‘That would be your problem,’ the man returned so smugly that Mara
considered killing him on the spot. But, exhausted, she could only be bothered to again wave vaguely to the wreck.

  ‘We shall see.’

  Stymied for the moment, the priest edged from foot to foot, all the while mouthing complaints under his breath. Petal arrived carrying an armload of driftwood, then set to lighting a handful of dry grass with flint and steel. This drove the priest to snipe: ‘Some magi you two are. Can’t you even start a fire?’

  ‘Certainly I can,’ Petal answered, then continued striking, tongue clenched between his lips as he concentrated.

  ‘I favour taking a lit stick from one fire and touching it to another,’ said Mara.

  Petal sat back with a satisfied sigh to fan a thin plume of white smoke. ‘That can be known to work also,’ he allowed, squinting.

  The priest stormed off, hopping and twitching as if the sands were white-hot embers beneath his feet.

  Mara brushed the grit from her hands. ‘Well, at least we’re rid of him. So, what do you think now?’

  Petal tossed twigs on the gathering fire. ‘By morning, I should think.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘And for the meantime,’ he sighed, ‘I should like some privacy to dry my clothes. If you do not mind.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I remain in case a lovesick whale should lunge on to the beach …’

  Pausing at his shirt-ties Petal let his head hang. ‘Again the caustic humour. I have warned you it hurts my feelings.’

  Mara rolled her eyes to the darkening sky. ‘My apologies. I’ll go have a look around.’

  ‘Very good.’

  It was full night when Mara returned to the fire. Petal sat in his undershirt. His wide pantaloons and outer robes hung over sticks next to the fire. The priest had returned as well and now sat glum and quiet, staring out to the glowing surf. ‘Anything?’ she asked.

  Petal shook his head. ‘I’ll take first watch,’ he added.

  Mara grunted her acknowledgement and promptly rolled up in her robes to sleep. This she found difficult as not only was the Banner high as usual, so too was the moon. The light was almost bright enough to read by. She threw a fold of cloth over her head.

  It seemed as if immediately someone tapped her shoulder and she jerked, yanking down the cloth. ‘What?’

  ‘Something,’ Petal said.

  She sat up. The priest was already down amid the surf frantically waving his arms and jumping. Further out, in the lagoon, a dark shape was making its slow laborious way towards them. ‘Go help him,’ she told Petal.

  ‘Only now have I just dried …’

  ‘Go on!’

  The man winced as if hurt. ‘Well … if it so be that I must …’ and he lumbered down to push awkwardly into the surf, leaning forward to advance through the waves out to the figure, which was now plainly Skinner, still in his black armour, but missing his full helm, his blond hair and beard sodden and streaming with water.

  He was dragging what looked like some sort of box or chest but Mara knew it must be the remains of Veng’s body. Just up from the surf he dropped it one-handed to the sands. Petal dragged it the rest of the way while the priest tore at it as if worrying a corpse – just like a dog, she thought.

  She went to Skinner who stood weaving unsteadily, looking far more pale than usual, his helm in his other hand. ‘Sit at the fire,’ she told him. ‘The leg?’

  ‘The ribs,’ he ground out. She helped him to the fire where he slumped like a sack of grain and hissed his pain.

  ‘Your armour …’ She ran a hand down the back, searching for catches or ties. Strangely, the individual scales of the coat seemed to shift beneath her fingers.

  He shrugged her away. ‘No! Just … just get me to Gwynn—Red.’

  Red was their best bonesetter and surgeon now that Gwynn had deserted them to rejoin K’azz. Mara looked to the priest. ‘We have to leave! Now!’

  The man had literally thrust his head into Veng’s torso. He was tearing at the wreck, which, horrifically, still jerked and writhed like the crippled wind-up automaton that it was. The metal bands of its arms still flexed and the remains of its torn legs twitched. The priest flinched away, yelping, ‘Aya!’ He studied a hand that he then thrust into his mouth. He kicked the shuddering beetle-like body and yelped again, hopping on one foot.

  ‘I cannot get it out!’ he wailed. ‘All is lost! I will be refused my lord’s reward!’

  Skinner lifted his chin to the wreck. ‘Mara …’

  She let out a snarled breath. Stupid useless fool … She shoved the priest aside and studied the mangled torso. Something did reside there wrapped in bands of bronze in the middle of the chest. The heart. How … poetic.

  She focused her Warren and envisioned those bands parting. Metal stretched and deformed. The thrashing of the creature became frantic, as if it sensed the end. Reports of metal parting sounded like the popping of small munitions. The torso spasmed the way anyone might, were you in the process of tearing out their heart.

  Bronze parted shrieking and something fell to the sands. The body slumped, suddenly quiescent. The priest dived upon the object, cackling and chuckling, and wrapped it round and round with rags.

  Mara released her Warren, suddenly exhausted. Petal stepped up next to her. Pulling on his lower lip he asked, ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘Just a glimpse. It looked like a black rock.’

  The man grunted thoughtfully, still plucking at his lip.

  Mara blinked, remembering Skinner. ‘We must go now!’

  The priest was hugging his prize to his chest. He seemed to be crooning to it. ‘Yes, yes,’ he answered without even glancing up.

  ‘Return us to the column.’

  ‘Of course! Just four more to go.’

  ‘Four? There’s four pieces left?’

  ‘That we know of!’ the priest snapped, and he slid the object behind his back as if Mara had made a lunge for it.

  She raised a finger to his face. ‘Now.’

  The priest backed away. His bloodshot eyes darted about as if seeking escape. ‘Get your commander then! We must all be together.’

  ‘Fine.’ She marched off. The fine sands squeaked and slid under her boots. Back at the fire Skinner had somehow managed to lever himself to his feet. She saw that his sheath hung empty at his side and she remembered that when he emerged from the waters he carried only the automaton and his helm.

  Skinner, it seemed, had lost his sword.

  * * *

  The sky might be partially overcast, but there was no respite from the heat. Their local guide led them past intermittent jungle now. They climbed a rising slope bringing them to the first of the naked stone cliffs of the Gangrek Mounts, known to some as the Fangs, or the Dragon’s Fangs.

  They had lost a man yesterday. He’d disappeared down a crack hardly large enough for anyone to slip through. Pon-lor sent a fellow after him on a rope. The man reported that no one answered his calls and that the torch he dropped fell a great distance before it dashed itself out on rocks. Pressed for time, Pon-lor was forced to call off the search and they’d continued on.

  That concern for time also forced them to march on into the night. Their captured bandit guide, Jak, led carrying a torch while two of Pon-lor’s soldiers followed. Even the sun sliding down behind the steaming ocean of jungle behind them to the west did little for the heat. Though Pon-lor had grown up knowing such heat it felt different here – perhaps because the air was so humid that streamers of water seemed to hang within it. In the middle of the column he pulled his sweat-soaked shirt from his chest and paused for a moment to catch his breath. His guards halted about him.

  He’d known such claustrophobic heat before, and the memory did not sit well with him – his childhood quarters in the Academy at the capital, Anditi Pura. They were taken as children. They were always taken as children. All would-be Aspirants. He did not know what supposedly guided that choice: some demonstrated predilection or talent? In his case he remembered being taken into a hot overcrowded room and
led to a low cloth-covered table. There lay an assemblage of trinkets, some bright and rich-looking, others plain and worn: rings, cups, necklaces of beads or of gems (fake no doubt), combs, knives, and assorted other mundane possessions. He remembered his confusion, not knowing what was expected of him, facing these gathered fierce-looking old men and women in that hot smelly room. He’d searched their gazes hoping for some sign, some hint, of what he must do. And thankfully he found it. While a number of them kept their eyes on him, a few kept darting their gazes to the table and those glances kept returning to one area in particular among the proffered bits and pieces. Experimentally, he extended his hand in that direction and was rewarded by an almost imperceptible tension gathering within the tiny room. He moved his hand closer, passing over several of the offerings, a silver wristlet among them: one of the most attractive trinkets, gleaming brightly in the lamplight. The breathing of all those gathered slowed in expectation. A few breaths even caught. Emboldened, he edged his hand further across the table towards the edge. The atmosphere subtly changed. It was as if the room had suddenly expanded, the ancients now distant and withdrawn.

  By then he’d identified it. The object, the thing they seemed to want him to pick but wouldn’t, or couldn’t, say. A silly game. All to get him to pick a plain wooden stick – the least interesting item laid out on the table.

  And so he chose it. And they chose him.

  And now, standing in the dark and the rain, the sweet cloying scent that permeated the jungle slipping from his nostrils, Pon-lor wondered, had it been just that all along: a test of awareness, of a kind of native intelligence? Or were those old Thaumaturgs of the testing board blithely unaware of their own subverting of the entire selection process? If so, so much for the organization’s conviction of its privileged superiority – held by virtue of having passed the test!