Something like an insect whistled past her and one of Grass Shadow’s people was abruptly dead, dropping to tangle the paws of the dog behind him. The Fear reached out like a living thing to touch them, making their souls recoil. For a moment, Maniye felt the whole grand assault tremble at it, as though they were running from the warm air of the Plains into some other medium fatal to everything they were.
Then a keening rang out across the sky – horizon to horizon, it almost seemed. A great vane-winged monster swooped across the roofs of the huts, making a sound heard only partly with the ears, more with the whole body. The sound was a stab of pain for Maniye and the others, but it seemed to turn their own fear back on the Plague People. Even as the swiftest of the Boar and the Horse were reaching them, Maniye saw the enemy’s nerve suddenly break and they were fleeing.
Some were running, others took off into the sky, veering madly to avoid the battering wings of the great bat. The air about their shoulders shimmered with the ghostly flicker of their wings. Arrows were beginning to fall about them – warriors of the Horse taking human shape for a breath to release the string, then Stepping back to thunder forwards and trample whatever they could.
Maniye found a new lease of speed within her, rushing ahead. They flee! And they were taking their Fear with them. She saw one of the Plague People tumble from the sky, two arrows in him. Ahead, those trying to escape on foot were discovering the Lions.
She kept running, seeing that the enemy above could not just hold to the air like birds. Their flying was more like great arcing leaps, as though the metal of their armour weighed them down. They dropped behind the Lions and then ran with all the teeth of the Plains snapping at their heels.
Yet they were fast, still. She was close to the front of the charge now, the Horse a little ahead to her left, the Dogs and the Boar the same distance behind on her right. Every time she thought that a final burst of speed would catch the enemy, they would throw themselves madly into the sky again, soaring across the clear blue and then coming down far out of reach, forcing her to make up the distance all over again. She saw one of them veer above her, abruptly off-course, and then the huge-winged shadow of the Bat emissary swept the flailing man-like figure from the air, clawed feet and fanged jaws shelling it of its armour.
Ahead she could see a village that must be that of the Tooth Markers. Her heart stuttered when she saw the Plague People had taken the Boar’s low huts and strung a white wall between most of them, leaving only one gap she could see. The surviving Plague People were rushing madly for it – but then the back half-dozen turned and levelled their rods again. She steeled herself, knowing nothing would save her if they chose for her to die. Instead, one of her warband was struck down from beside her, a young Wolf named Kolomiti who had never earned a hunter’s name. She saw a Horse go down in a flurry of breaking limbs as well, and then the Plague People were making a final leap, their wings taking them well over their own walls.
Maniye started slowing, because she could see plenty of movement within those walls – far more than the scouting party they had set out to deal with. She had no way of turning aside the assault, though, and she was as much a part of it as anyone. Courage was what they needed, and if she fled where would that courage be?
Feeds wheeled past wildly, a feathered black blur in her sight before he was behind her. She had a moment to wonder if he was trying to tell her something. Then the killing started.
There were Plague People up on the hut roofs, or on platforms they had built against their white walls, and they were pointing their rods and striking down the warriors who came against them. Maniye saw their movements, calm and practised, as though that hollowness inside them had eaten up all the places where passion lived. She felt the great Fear hanging in the air, waiting to swoop on the attackers like a hawk the moment they faltered. And yet they did not falter. Those who fell were left in the dirt and the rest rushed on, hooves and claws digging up the earth, and their banner the great dust cloud their progress had kicked up. They had run a long way but Maniye thought they had not even slowed. They were fine warriors the Plains bred, all of them!
But the sleeting invisible death zipped and danced all around them like bees, and then the Horse – still the fastest – suddenly began falling and stumbling. Several who had been galloping at top speed crashed down into the grass and others began to slow. Some Stepped to their human shapes, bows in hand, and Maniye heard the cry go up that there were snares about the walls. She did not slow, but then she saw the pale lines the ground ahead of them was strewn with – more spider-leavings and silkworm trails from the Plague People’s crawling beasts. The advance began to slow, the Horses falling away to her left, and still the killing rain scattered across them – picking away at them one by one.
Then Grass Shadow went bounding past her with his people flooding behind him like a tawny tide, and there were Lions and Boar mixed up amongst them. Maniye found that burst of speed she had been husbanding and caught him up, with the iron grey of her own warband shouldering for room. The Plague People kept killing them, but suddenly their attacks seemed like spitting into the storm instead of the storm itself. She saw movement within the white walls and it was quick and panicked. There are not so many of them after all . . . Feeds on Dreams whirled past her as though a plaything of the wind, his wings battering briefly at her face, but she shrugged him off.
There were Plague People clogging the gap that led to the Tooth Marker village. They pointed their rods together and a whole dozen Black Eyes just died, struck down together without warning. Maniye felt the Fear reach for the hearts of the attackers and she Stepped, from wolf to the great Champion, bellowing at the enemy, looking down on them. The Fear broke, unable to touch her Champion soul, and the sight of her gave the rest heart. A heartbeat later the two Lion Champions were either side of her, smaller than she but bigger than any normal lion. One was dead seconds after, the little metal deaths the Plague rods sent tearing up his flank and opening him up. But then they were all at the gateway.
It seemed to her, as she reached that line of Plague Men, that she was under a shadow, that the sun shone only dimly on her. It was the way of things, to call the dominion of a people or a chief its ‘shadow’, and now she thought, Is it real, for the Plague People? Are we in their shadow now?
Then she glanced up and saw what was crowding the sky above her.
She had seen it before at Where the Fords Meet, a great boat like a moon in daylight, striped with the Plague People’s warning colours. Now it hung low above the Tooth Marker village, coasting forwards so that its shadow stained all the attackers below.
Then she was almost on the spears and swords of the Plague People and she had to give them her full attention. A line of them was trying to hold the gap and she slammed into them, feeling their blades bite at her and grate, iron on iron. Roaring, she swept a handful of them aside, their bodies tumbling over each other, light as though they really were hollow inside. One tried to challenge her, striking at her face with a flare of fire from its hand, but she just shook her massive head and snapped down on him, blood filling her mouth, her fangs ripping into unnatural flesh.
Grass Shadow Stepped beside her, his spear skittering from the Plague warriors’ mail. On the other side, Spear Catcher struck down one of the enemy with his hatchet, splitting the creature’s bare head.
The Plague People tried to hold, but the attackers had too much sheer momentum and Maniye was within their walls with the warriors of the Plains at her back.
Then there was thunder and the ground shook, enough of a shock that everyone stopped fighting for a moment. She had no idea what had happened but the air was full of burning and she heard cries and screams from behind her.
She slapped down the closest Plague Man warrior, trying to understand what had changed. There were still warriors fighting all around her, but the great surging charge she had expected was absent. Where were the rest? She looked round . . .
A great colu
mn of smoke was rising from out beyond the walls. There were bodies strewn all around the base of it, where the earth had been torn up. She did not understand what she was looking at until the thunder spoke again from the flying ship. She saw a flash of light and motion from it, and the ground erupted in the thick of the attacking warriors, tearing them apart, throwing mangled animal and human bodies up into the air. Her heart seemed to stop for a moment. She could not believe what she was seeing. She forgot to fight.
That was when the Fear came back.
That was all it took. The terror rolled out from the white walls like a tide, surging either side of Maniye to crash into the Plains warriors as they tried to get through the gates. She fell back, feeling its pincers pluck even at the edge of her soul. Wheeling about, swatting a couple of the Plague Men out of her way, she saw the entire attack disintegrating. Not the thunder of the flying ship, but the Fear itself was tearing the assault apart. She saw the warriors about to funnel through the gate: Boar, Wild Dog, Horse, Lion. She saw their eyes roll, foam at their muzzles, and the great iron purpose of their attack rusted away in an instant so that they were fleeing in all directions. Fleeing on four feet, because Maniye knew what that Fear fed on. Even as they turned away they were boars, dogs, horses, lions. The human part of them had been locked away, unable to face the Fear. And still the Plague warriors killed them with their rods, striking them down and not caring if what they killed was a beast or a man in a beast’s skin.
Her own warband were still close about her, as were Grass Shadow and a handful of his people, but they had no force to back them up, and the Plague People were all around. She Stepped for a moment, bracing against that storm of Fear, just long enough to cry for them to go, to get clear of this terrible place and these terrible people.
They fell back for the gates, and then past the gates, and still they were her people, Stepping to two feet and four as the need dictated. Some were killed by the swift death the Plague rods brought, but they held their minds because they held to her. Her Champion soul cast a broad shadow.
Still, they ran and there was no shame in it, but now the Plague People were coming after them, not content to let their enemy vanish away. It was a trap, she thought. They baited us in and then they closed their jaws on us. But another part of her was thinking that they had done nothing of the sort. They had been oblivious to their enemies, and this appalling counterattack was little more than a reflex.
There were Plague Men in the air above her, lancing down their lethal bolts, and more landing ahead, weapons raised. She saw something appear from the grass and launch itself at them – a swift spotted cat that bore one of them down and spoiled the aim of the rest. It was Tensho – but it was not Tensho, for when the bloodied muzzle lifted to yowl and snarl at the Plague Men there was no human thought behind it, just a maddened beast that they struck down. Then the warband was upon them.
More Plague Men were dropping down, but before they could strike they were sent reeling by the piercing shriek of the Bat emissary as it swooped low. Maniye put on an extra burst of speed, crashing into one of the Plague warriors and smashing his brittle bones beneath her feet. The air was raked by a swift scatter of death from their weapons. She saw the Bat falter in the air, one wing beating wildly, and then the creature wheeled from the sky to crash, broken and diminished, off into the grass.
A spear of pain ripped across Maniye’s side and she fell.
The warband faltered, and she knew the great rolling tide of the Fear was heartbeats away from claiming them. She Stepped, although pain tore through her to do it, screaming at them to run. Grass Shadow and Spear Catcher were coming back for her, but the Wild Dog warrior was struck down even as he did so, and she yelled her orders again, desperate not to see more of her people die. Spear Catcher was human for a second, scarred face agonized, and then he was a wolf and running, just as they were all running, and Maniye forced herself around, reaching for her knife, as the Plague People came to earth all about her like a poison rain.
And off on a hill overlooking the carnage, Shyri tried to break away from the knot of Hyena warriors to go to her, for all she was too far off, for all she was too late, but the hand of Effey was on her shoulder, clenched painfully tight to remind her who and what she was. Shyri saw the Plague People take up Maniye – the sole living human figure there save for themselves – and haul her back towards their white walls, and tears ran down her face, but she could do nothing. She hated herself for it, and she hated Hyena and all the Laughing Men for it, even though she could have done nothing but share her friend’s fate.
7
It took Hesprec some skulking in the shadows – serpent and girl-shape both – before she could find Galethea. In that time she saw something of how the compound worked – that the Pale Shadow had a complex hierarchy, the great and the lowly. Where did Galethea fit in all this?
Somewhere in the middle was her best guess. Important enough to send as an emissary, expendable enough to send where her predecessors had not returned. The woman was weaving silk in an overgrown garden, when Hesprec’s sinuous form finally caught her scent amongst all the strange and exotic odours.
Did she collect it direct from the myriad spiders themselves, Hesprec wondered, or did she go about the palace unpicking cobwebs? She Stepped, standing on human feet at the threshold, waiting to be invited in. Galethea’s eyes flicked up as her nimble fingers worked. Again Hesprec was struck by how pale she was. Amongst the Serpent, only the very old were such a pallid shade, those ready to split their dry old skins and move on.
‘You would talk with me, Messenger?’ the Pale Shadow woman asked, borrowing the River term of reverence.
‘It’s time for that.’ Taking the words as an invitation, Hesprec walked in and sat cross-legged in front of her. ‘Because there are terrible things happening, and the lands north of here will know my tread sooner rather than later.’
Galethea’s fingers tangled the strands and stopped moving, though her face retained a detached expression. ‘When we met last, you told me your people took host and guest seriously. It is too soon for you to leave.’
Hesprec raised her eyebrows. ‘How long then, for politeness? A month? A year? Ten years, or a hundred, before someone finds a way to tell me what you brought me here to learn?’
The Pale Shadow woman settled her hands in her lap and said nothing.
‘You said, when we met in the Estuary, that you wanted what we had,’ Hesprec recalled. ‘You asked us to teach you. The teacher must know what lesson is required. Your queen will not speak of it.’
‘Can the wise Messenger not guess?’ Galethea asked bitterly.
‘The wise Messenger wants to hear you say it.’
Those pale hands clenched into fists for a moment; in the next they had relaxed, letting the tension fall away like the tangled silk. ‘You know we want souls.’
‘That can be taught, can it?’ Hesprec prodded.
‘Can it not?’ Galethea hissed, locking eyes with her at last. ‘Do they not say the Serpent went to the River and taught the men there how to farm and heal, write and rule? Do you not bring the secrets of learning wherever you go?’
‘The River men already had souls. They were born to the jaws of Old Crocodile long before we came to trouble them,’ Hesprec pointed out.
‘Stop,’ Galethea said abruptly, cutting off whatever might have come next. ‘Do not name it as impossible. We can learn. We will learn. We must.’
‘You did not need souls to take our kingdom from us, so long ago,’ Hesprec pointed out mildly. And she was teaching, in a way. Her favourite means of encouraging students was to set up arguments they could attack. ‘So why must you? Do you envy the Jaguar who clean your fine robes and polish your jewels?’
‘Yes!’ Galethea snapped, surprising her. ‘We envy them. Because they will live and we are dying. They are not the ones the world’s dream is killing.’
Hesprec went very still, feeling herself on the edge of something. Yes, she h
ad known they wanted souls – she had come here on that assumption, believing it some fashion or superstition amongst them. But some malaise was eating at the Pale Shadow, that much was true. ‘So tell me,’ she invited.
Galethea stared at her for a long time. ‘You don’t know,’ she said at last.
Hesprec shrugged. ‘There are many things I don’t know. That is what questions are for. Tell me of this dream.’
The Pale Shadow woman took a deep breath. ‘The land we came from, the people are different.’
‘The Plague People made it different. They devoured everything that was not of them.’
Galethea shrugged. ‘Or you were hollow, before you came here. That is how we tell it.’ That is how we need it to be, was what Hesprec heard behind those words. ‘Who knows if your ancestors could change their skins, before they came here? But the dream of this land is a changing dream, so you are changing people. The dream of the land we left behind is not the same. But that is our dream, still. We breathe this changing air, but we cannot change with it.’
‘It has taken a long time to poison you, this air,’ Hesprec remarked.
‘We thought we would change. We were strong with our own dream when we came, but we lost it generation after generation. We came to love this land and its people – yes, we did!’ She must have seen the doubt in Hesprec’s eyes. ‘We were proud when we came, and we fought your people, suborned them and drove them out – I know it. There are ways we tell that story, which excuse all we did and paint it in better colours, but I admit it to you. We wronged you. We abused your trust and we took from you all you had. We thought we could become you. Once you were gone, we became many and we became strong, but we never became you. We feuded against each other, we wove our intrigues and our dramas, but we were dying and we did not know it. We have never become people fit for this place. We never grew souls.’
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 7