‘It’s still here?’ he demanded.
‘Where else would she go, after you drove her people away?’ Kailovela asked him.
Standing in the cave mouth was a figure whose head was at a level with Kailovela’s navel – meaning below Thunder’s waist. Its shape was that of a woman, but pale and strangely featured. Her hair was hacked short like Kailovela’s and she wore clothing of fleece and hide, just like a person. She was hollow as a pot where it mattered, though; not the physical flesh of her, but her soul. The lack of it shone out from within her, turned her pleasant features into a void, her body into a scar on the world. The little monster, as Kailovela thought of her. She had fallen from the sky one day, long before her kin came to slaughter the Seal tribes and take their children. The Eyriemen had bound her, and she had come into Kailovela’s hands because all living things loved Kailovela, even the empty horrors that were the Plague People. Only she could live with it and be its handler. And when Thunder had freed her, he had freed her fellow prisoner as well to go take word to its people. Yet the little monster had not left her.
There was a bronze knife in the creature’s hand, that looked about the size of one of Thunder’s thumb-nails. The creature was ready to defend the only human she knew.
‘She helps me,’ Kailovela said. ‘She finds food. She flies, and leads me to where I need to go. I would have died without her.’ Her words felt flimsy before Thunder’s wrath, but that last admission softened his look somewhat.
‘It will serve,’ Empty Skin said. Again, Kailovela looked for the vengeful anger that must be there and could not find it, as though the girl’s emotions had gone to find her soul.
‘What will you do, when you reach the Plague People?’ she asked.
The Seal girl’s hard, dark eyes flicked to her. ‘I will try to talk, as you will. When there is a moment for such talk. I will try to find the human in them. You speak to this one. I was their prisoner for many days and heard the sounds they made. And they cannot take from me what I have already lost.’ Her delivery was flat and dull, abrasive on the ear.
‘And you want me to come too?’
‘Yes,’ Thunder told her. ‘I want every voice we have that the Plague People might hear. We will fight them, because we will have to fight them. But I want there to come a time when even the Plague People send an emissary begging peace, and I want there to be you and the Girl,’ he would not call her Empty Skin, ‘so we can try and speak. But this one . . . will this one come too? Will it serve you?’
‘I can only ask,’ Kailovela said, thinking, I can hardly even ask. How little the monster and I can talk, even now. But that little was more than any other true human in the world. Perhaps that little might be the difference between survival and extinction. Because she did not share Thunder’s assessment. If one side was brought to bay and forced to beg for peace, she did not think it would be the Plague People.
9
At Tsokawan, the Kasra’s brother Tecuman received them with all ceremony. Asman and Venat stood before the throne, before the gaze of the serious young man in elaborate robes, as a priest spoke for him. Last time, Tecuman had been in the mask of a Kasra, and still in open conflict with his sister. Asman had half feared that he might come to find those ambitions rekindled – a new civil war just when the Nation needed unity the most. Whatever peace the priest Hesprec had kindled between the siblings, though, it held.
Matsur, the priest who was speaking for him, droned on with a long roll of announcements: how Tecuman welcomed Asman, both as his friend, as the Kasrani and as an emissary of the Kasra herself; how Tecuman had received the Kasra’s word regarding the mustering of the Estuary; how he extended wishes for the health and reign of his sister, on and on. Asman shuffled, and he could see Tecuman fidgeting as well. This wealth of formality had its purpose, but he wanted to speak to his friend now. He was in Tecuman’s court, though. He could hardly start giving orders.
And then the enthroned youth rapped his rod on the arm of his seat, and Matsur drew back to listen. The priest was obviously attempting to demur, but Tecuman was insistent. Even as the priest was stepping aside, the Lord of Tsokawan stood, drawing his robes about him. ‘Matsur was about to say that there will of course be a feast in your honour,’ he said, his own voice almost lost compared to the priest’s grand declarations. ‘But let them be long preparing it. You have words for my ears alone, I think?’
News of what had happened in the Plains would come to everyone’s ears soon enough, but rumours of bloodshed north of the river were common. Heard from travellers on the road, they might find little purchase amongst the people of the Tsotec. Heard from the Kasrani, they would light fires of panic halfway back to Atahlan. Gratefully, Asman retired with Tecuman, Venat trailing mulishly after.
They found the youth shrugging out of his heavy robes, leaving them in the care of a half-dozen servants. He rolled his slender shoulders – his war with his sister had not made a great warrior of him; he was still the boy Asman remembered under all the finery.
They embraced fiercely. ‘You’re visiting sooner than I’d thought,’ Tecuman told him. ‘Surely my sister hasn’t sent you to check up on me?’
‘I’d rather bear her suspicions than the news I have,’ Asman stated. ‘Sit yourself. You’ll need it.’
Tecuman did so, and had the servants bring grapes, mangoes and beer, and then leave the room to the three of them. ‘Well then, you’d better tell me.’
And so Asman did, all of it: that the Plainsfolk had already fought a great battle against the Plague People, and had lost as decisively as they could. ‘And don’t just tell the old tales about the Plainsmen being all mouth and no stomach, when it comes to war,’ Asman added. ‘We know it’s a River lie. They fought, with as much strength as they could muster in the time. I heard tale of the Bat Society there, and . . . Maniye’s warband was in the teeth of it.’
Tecuman drew a deep breath. ‘We’ve had Horse refugees trickling in since before Tecumet’s message arrived. We knew this was no small fish, even then.’ He tried a weak smile. ‘It’s them, Asa. They scared us with stories of the Plague People to keep us in line as children. Of course they’re strong. Of course they’re terrifying. But we have to fight them. Even if I hadn’t heard what you said, even if I didn’t know what they do, I’d know that. Everything you’ve said just makes me more determined.’
‘How goes the muster?’ Asman pressed him.
‘Ah, well, the Estuary folk are slow to take up arms when you want them to, though swift enough all other times,’ Tecuman said, with a rueful expression. ‘We have had some come in, and the rest will follow. They’re remembering where they put their spears and their courage, but they’ll find both.’
It struck Asman how much Tecuman was talking like a man, not the youth he was. Not the rebellion against his sister but the mending of it had taught him how to grow up. Asman found himself grinning.
‘You sent a man to the islands?’ Venat broke in.
Tecuman eyed him warily. ‘For the form of it. Unless I take a force over there to remind your people of their duties, I don’t see the Dragon rushing to aid us. Or am I mistaken?’
Venat shrugged. ‘Probably not. I’ll go.’ Seeing the expression on the youth’s face, he grinned. ‘You think I’ll raise a thousand raiders to come pillage the River while you’re all off fighting.’
‘And would I be mad to have such a thought?’
‘Teca—’ started Asman, but Venat spoke over him.
‘No. Can’t say it won’t happen, with or without me. You know how we are.’ The Dragon smiled broadly the way they did: just a threat of teeth. ‘But I’ll go anyway. The chief of the Black Teeth, Gupmet, he knows me. I know him. If anyone can get Dragon knives into Plague bellies it’s him. I’m not saying we’ll do it for you, but we tell the stories too. And it’ll eat everyone up over there, to hear there’s a bigger bastard than us in the world. We’ll have to do something about that.’
Asman couldn’t tell
if he was serious. Venat would do as he willed, and laugh when people complained.
But it wasn’t his decision anyway, and Tecuman just stared into the man’s hard grey eyes and then nodded. ‘You’ll have what you need. My writ, gold, greenstone even.’ For the Dragon loved the hard-to-work stuff: almost as stubborn as they were, but it made blades that would break bronze.
‘And you, Asa? I’ll find you a fast boat to Atahlan if you need it?’ Tecuman suggested bravely.
‘My brother,’ and it was strange, that his brother-in-spirit was his brother-by-marriage now, ‘I will have a message for my wife the Kasra, to go with all haste, but I will stay and watch the Estuary muster, and I will march out with you.’
Tecuman’s smile filled out into something genuinely warm. ‘Terrible things, Teca.’ The old childhood warcry the two of them shared with Tecumet.
‘The most terrible,’ Asman agreed.
‘Someone mentioned a feast,’ Venat grunted.
‘You won’t like it,’ Asman told him. ‘There’ll be a dozen Estuary headmen as guests and they’ll all hate you.’
‘Sounds like my favourite kind of feast,’ the Dragon told him.
Asman felt the mood in the room lift; surely there was no threat to the world that the Sun River Nation could not defeat, now it was unified and whole. His mind kept slipping to think of Maniye, though. She had not just been a fellow Champion; she had been one of the strongest and most resourceful people he had ever met, and now the world was without her just when her strength was needed most.
He trailed after the other two, trying to keep a confident smile on his face but feeling hollow inside.
* * *
Maniye woke. Every part of her hurt, but most of all her side, where the pain had driven deep, the flesh there hot and pulsing. The slight movement of waking had set it all on fire and she clenched her teeth against it, but long-learned instincts meant she made no sound, nor motion. She did not know where she was.
So she listened, and heard movement and voices nearby. Voices, but no speech, only sounds, harsh and broken, rising and falling in rhythms that sounded almost meaningful, and yet conveyed nothing. Beyond that, she could hear footsteps, the clink and scrape of metal, and there were other noises she had no name for. Something kept up a grumbling roar that never varied. Other things crackled, hissed and hummed, sounds that were not made by humans or animals or the weather, or any other source she could think of. At the same time, she was assailed by a battery of peculiar smells – sharp and offensive, like nothing alive or dead, save for a faint tinge of rot.
And while her ears and nose informed her of all this, some other sense was marking the pressure in the world around her. It was not a physical sensation, though it was so strong in her mind that she could almost fool herself into thinking it. Her surroundings did not consent to her being there. She could feel them prising away at her very being, rattling at the gates of her soul with claws and pincers. The Champion stood over her inside, warding her all the time she had lain here.
She remembered the battle and how it had ended, and knew they had taken her. The understanding came with a flurry of panic but she fought it down without moving a muscle. Whatever they had done with her, she was alive, and she guessed she had been away from the world for some time. She had few enough weapons but surprise was surely one of them.
She risked opening an eye. She saw white. Just a glare at first, but then it resolved itself into one of the Plague People’s walls, two feet in front of her face. She followed it as far as she could without moving her head: there was a corner there, where the material was pulled out into shape. She guessed she was in a prison of some sort.
There was light beyond the wall, that eerie, steady light the Plague People used, which owed nothing to flames. The wall itself blurred her vision like mist, but she could see shapes past it. There were platforms there at waist height, each with a burden. Beyond them she saw more walls, cluttered and hung with things that might have been food and herbs stored out of the reach of rats.
There was movement. She had to fight all her instincts in order to remain quite still. One of the Plague People was within the larger tent with her. It – he? – stood at one of the platforms, its back to her. She heard metal clatter, and then a high whining sound that sent a buzz of pain through her teeth just to hear it.
Her eyes were becoming more used to the haze of the enclosing walls. She could see a little of what was up on the platforms now, and wished that she couldn’t. The Eyriemen and some of the Plainsfolk practised sky burials, so she’d heard. They pinned out corpses for the elements and the scavengers, especially for those who had died as humans and needed their soul freed from its prison. What the Plague People were about here looked like that, save that they were indoors. There were bodies on the tables, and some were whole and others were separated into parts. A lion skull stared bleakly at her from the nearest table. Beyond that was the part-flayed body of a wild dog. She caught her breath when she saw, spread out across one part of the outer wall, the huge wing of the Bat Society emissary, unfolded to its full tattered extent.
The Plague Man stopped what it was doing briefly, and she held very still. Some movement, some too-loud breath had alerted him, but then he continued his work, and she knew what that work must be. She did not want to see what cadaver he was desecrating.
She did not want to be in the place of death and perversity any longer, either. She risked shifting her head, keeping one eye on her busy jailer. The walls enclosed her entirely: no door, no window, no hatch or hole. She could be almost glad of that. Beyond those shrouds she saw only the carnage of the failed attack, Grass Shadow and the others being cut down, the terrible hammer of fear that had shattered them. That Terror was still all around her, tainting the air, weighing on her back, squeezing at her heart. Within her mind the Champion stood between her and dissolution, but she felt it constantly, a dread that would not let up or let her forget about it.
She was not bound.
Keeping so still, she had not even thought about it, but there was no halter about her neck, nothing to stop her Stepping. All these walls, and the enemy had missed a trick that any young hunter would have known.
She felt the hurt within her and wondered how much harm she might do to herself. Was that the chain they sought to bind her with? The wound was still fresh and deep, seeming deeper now than when it was dealt, lancing at the heart of her. She felt feverish with it, and who knew what toxins would follow from a Plague warrior weapon? Will I heal with this in me, or just sicken? And the leaden thought followed after: or will I die?
The Plague Man set down some tool. The metal-on-metal sound sent chills through her. And were they dead before this creature separated out their pieces? Or would I have heard the screaming had I woken a little earlier? And no need to ask what they’re keeping me here for.
It turned around, staring her right in the open eyes, and she could not keep still, but fled across the meagre confines of the gauze-walled cell, pressing away from him. The whole structure swayed with her motion, and she realized her prison was suspended within the greater tent, and that the Plague Man could get to her through any of the walls.
He approached, winding between the platforms with their grisly burdens. Something metal glinted in his hand. He was one of the south-dark Plague People, short and stocky, and wearing an apron smeared with ochres and yellows.
He was still looking straight into her eyes, and she felt the Terror prying there, trying to get into her skull and change her, diminish her into a mere wolf or tiger. The Champion gave her strength, though. And anger. She had forgotten how invigorating anger was until it coursed without warning through her body.
Let us die, then. She Stepped. In an eyeblink the cell was filled with the great furred shape of the Champion.
There was a second when the walls were taut around her, but holding, and she thought she would be trapped despite all her strength. Then she got her claws dug into the cell and unseamed
it, just tore it to shreds around her and stumbled gracelessly onto the ground.
The Plague Man had fallen onto his back like a beetle, eyes so wide she could see the white all round them, mouth open and yelling. She smelled fear, yes, but it was subordinate to the sheer disbelief she could read in that face.
She lumbered forwards, snarling, shouldering platforms aside and spilling bones and tools and half-opened corpses. Her enemy scrabbled backwards on his elbows, shouting himself hoarse as she got closer and closer. And yet incredulity at what he was seeing shackled him. He did not just get up and run. He stared at her as if, any moment, she would simply not be there.
The wound stabbed at her, even as she stood over him. She felt it buried in her, that long line of hurt the Plague weapon had driven through her flesh. She stumbled, and what was meant for a disembowelling slash just cuffed the Plague Man, spinning him across the floor. She roared in her frustration, and then there were more of them spilling in from outside. She had a brief, tantalizing glimpse of the sun.
There were many of them, some with the killing rods and some just with swords or empty hands. Those empty hands spat flame, though – they seared across her, burning her hide and filling the tent with the reek of singed hair. She roared at them, driving them back with the sheer force of her rage. She was desperate to reach the outside. She wanted to die in the open air.
So she charged. It was a weak, staggering thing, but she was many times greater than any of them. She scattered them, bullied them out of the way. A sword drove into her shoulder and another gashed her about her jaw. More fire lit across her skin and she got her teeth into one of them and flung him away with a savage jerk of her neck.
Then she was out, and the sun glared in her eyes, and she let loose a cry, the voice of the Champion in despair, a sound the world had not heard since the dawn of time.
The Plague People were everywhere. Some ran from her, some brandished weapons. The little camp she had seen was now twice, three times the size. Everywhere they had raised their web-walled tents and their scuttling beasts were still building, ceaselessly building. Everywhere their dread soaked into the soil until it must be poisoned for a hundred generations. They were making the world their own place with every foot they laid upon the earth.
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 10