Thunder sighed. It was not the worst outcome; it was even perversely attractive, in a way. He could see the logic. But Kailovela would not like it. It would be breaking faith with her. ‘No.’
‘Give us the hollow monster. Let us put the taste of its blood in the mouths of the gods. Why is this even a question that needs asking twice?’
Thunder almost said that the Tiger would have to look elsewhere for a sacrifice, but that would be inviting all the trouble in the world to his fire when some young Wolf went missing. Instead he just shrugged off the Tiger’s demands and stomped off.
Icefoot came next. He was a Wolf priest from the Moon Eaters and had proven himself amongst the wisest of the wise. Loud Thunder’s heart sank to see him.
‘My warriors live further north than the rest of the Wolf,’ Icefoot remarked. ‘It’s a long way you’ve brought them.’
‘I know what you would say,’ Thunder told him bluntly.
‘Saves me asking.’ Icefoot shrugged. ‘I know the Tiger woman has been at you already.’
‘And I thought if she said push, you’d pull,’ Thunder pointed out. He felt genuinely aggrieved. The enmity between Tiger and Wolf was something he should have been able to count on.
‘Not in this.’ Another shrug. ‘You’ll do what you’ll do. I know the Bear. But you can drag bodies where you want; minds are different. If you want to bring them too, you’ll need something.’
But at least he ambled off of his own accord without any threats.
Towards evening Thunder sent the Boar scouting for somewhere to camp. Even he was beginning to feel it now: the south-ness of things. The air smelled wrong. The sky was too clear. He was too warm. The ground was hard in the wrong ways.
Then something stirred in the branches nearby, and he looked up to see a great white-winged owl Step to become Seven Mending the priestess, with her blind-looking gaze.
‘You too, is it?’ he muttered.
She cocked her head, obviously reconstructing everything the others had said to him. ‘You took the creature from our hands, when you took Kailovela from Yellow Claw,’ she pointed out. ‘It was ours to keep, ours to kill.’
‘Freed,’ Loud Thunder stated. At her blank look, he expanded. ‘When I freed her. The priestesses of the Owl live different lives to the women of the Hawk.’
She stared past him for a long time, pinning him with her attention even though her eyes never quite fixed on him. ‘She won’t be yours,’ she said at last. ‘Not without a leash about her neck. You’re not the first man who’s thought she would roost at his hearth of her own will. But until you cage her, she’s no more yours than the sky is.’
Thunder felt the words strike home, but he bore the hurt without showing it. A moment later she was an Owl again, and flying away into the gathering gloom.
All the next day a new pair of wings was in the sky, far greater than Seven Mending could have spread. Thunder kept expecting Yellow Claw to stoop down and gloat, but the Champion of the Eyrie kept his distance, making sure Thunder knew he was there, his shadow criss-crossing the vanguard’s path. Small wonder whose idea this sacrifice had been. You can take her from me, that shadow said, but I can make you hurt her.
* * *
Tecuman had no idea how to fight the thing. None of them did. The wise had no advice, nor even the Serpent, who knew all the secrets under the earth. The floating ship of the Plague People was the antithesis of such lore, a great bloated thing like a false moon that hung in the sky against all nature. The old stories said nothing of it.
And so the warriors of the Estuary stood ready, watching it course leisurely towards Tsokawan, passing Chumatla, where the Plague Men had been routed. Those few survivors of that battle, who had skipped off into the air and evaded the spears and the poisoned darts, they had gone to this thing. They had told their fellows what had befallen them.
Let it put fear in their hearts, Asman thought, but if it had put fear in their hearts then why were they here? How large is it, truly? How many can it hold? For unless it was far further up than Asman could imagine, surely the vessel could not carry enough warriors to break the will of the Estuary people and let the Terror in.
There was no clue to the Plague People’s intent in that steady approach. The more the warriors on the ground had to wait, with their enemy in full sight like that, the more their nerve started to go. Asman felt it himself. More sinister than fires on the horizon, more sinister than a marching warband was the slow nearing of that floating ship.
Tecuman had sent some of the Heron to fly close, but the Plague People killed some, and the Terror took others, leaving only two to report that they suffered no other thing to share the air with them. Even those whom the Terror had turned had been struck from the sky by the Plague warriors’ weapons.
Would they stop beyond the great camp around Tsokawan so they could marshal their forces on the ground? They would not. The floating ship showed no signs of slowing until it was virtually above the spires of the fortress, turning slowly like a fish in deep water. Asman stood next to Tecuman on one of the balconies, staring up at its swollen silhouette against the bright sky. Either side, a score of soldiers waited with spears in case enemy soldiers began dropping on them.
‘Could we take it from them, do you think?’ the prince asked, his voice shaking slightly. ‘If they brought it low enough, perhaps we could leap from the spires to board it. Then it would be ours, and follow our commands, like something from the stories. We could travel all the world as easily as going up and down the Tsotec.’
‘It would carry you to places you’d not want to go,’ Asman decided. A handful of Milk Tear had entered the chamber at their back, some delegation of their wise women. ‘It is a creature of theirs, nothing of ours,’ he cast over his shoulder as he went inside to meet them. ‘The Salt Eaters say they have a metal-skinned beast of the sea too, that brought more of them to the coast to strike at Where the Fords Meet.’
‘A beast, or a made thing?’ Tecuman speculated, squinting up. ‘It seems made, to me . . .’ His voice trailed off.
‘Teca?’ Asman turned to see him staring upwards.
‘Seeds,’ the prince said distinctly, and then the world beyond the balcony erupted as though Tsokawan had been built on a volcano.
Fire came in through every window, a glare that blotted out the sun, and Asman was plucked at by a score of stone blades as the elaborate carvings of the doorway and balcony railings were blasted apart. He heard the screams of the soldiers, some cut short, some drawn out in horrible agony, and above it all one voice he knew.
Tecuman crouched on the slanting, cracked floor of the balcony, one half of him blistered red by fire, his robes blazing. Asman let out a roar of grief and rage and Stepped, the Champion’s leap carrying him to the doorway, then his human hand reaching for his friend, trying to close about the scorched ruin that Tecuman held out to him. Even as he did so, the stone of the balcony gave, slumping and peeling away from the shattered wall. Asman lunged forwards, but his prince was already sliding away, one good eye finding his gaze as he fell. Asman could hear himself screaming, bellowing over the cries of the soldiers as they toppled away too, or clutched at the floor of the room, seared by the heat and carved by the stone.
And over it all, another thunderous retort, so that the whole of Tsokawan shook. Seeds, Tecuman had said. They fell from the ship above and grew death wherever they landed, cracking stone or belching fire. He could hear the assembled Estuary forces in their panic. If the Plague warriors were to come down now, then the Terror would tear through the whole army, hundreds lost in an eyeblink. Asman ran from the room, heading down, feeling the stones shift and shudder with each new blow, ordering everyone he saw to get out under the sky, for the stone would be no shelter.
He found Matsur and some of the other Serpent, and then some officers and courtiers, and then some of the Estuary chiefs found him, and everyone wanted to be told what to do. Asman’s heart screamed Tecuman would know, but there was n
o Tecuman, and he could not even mourn his friend because he was needed. The Champion was a staff within him that kept him standing when he wanted to fall to the ground and howl his grief to the sky.
The seeds were still falling on Tsokawan, and as he watched a whole spire tore away, fire trailing from its windows like flags, collapsing down and then sloughing from the rest of the fortress, exposing the honeycomb of smashed floor and walls within. Some seeds had already fallen wide of the mark, beginning a blazing harvest of the close-packed Estuary forces, who were already fleeing into the trees.
So Asman cut out his own heart, or tried to. He gave clear, curt orders to any who would hear him. He had the chiefs scatter their people through the trees, to hide beneath the branches and make no grand targets for the death magic of the Plague People. He told them they must take their people up the river, by boat or on foot or Stepped. Tecumet was gathering the strength of Atahlan and the Tsotec’s back. She would need them all, and perhaps she would have a plan that could survive the fire and the broken stone.
And tell her that her brother is dead, but he could not say it. That task was for him alone.
They begged him to come, each one of them wanting a Champion at their side, but he told them he would be the last; he would stay until all ears had heard him. It sounded very brave but he just did not want to leave Tecuman behind.
17
The Boar were fleeing now. Their shadows slid sidelong, human and pig-shaped holes cut in moonlight, but as Shyri caught up, she saw them breed other shadows, thrown by another pale radiance. The Boar tried to break away from it, but always a set of cackling jaws lunged out of the dark at them, forcing them back on the path to oblivion. The mother had the worst of it, always slowest, always with the pack chewing at her heels, tearing at her robe.
Then the old man stopped running. He couldn’t have been far from passing out of his human skin altogether, leaving age and infirmity behind to run with his mute brothers and forget he’d ever stood on two legs. He had been trying to keep pace with the woman, and his bristling hide bore a dozen nicks and grazes where the pack’s teeth had chivvied him along. The woman stumbled and fell, then staggered back to her feet. One of the Hyena ran in front of her, trying to trip her again, and she wailed in rage and frustration. It brought the old man round, and though he had been a bag of bones as a man, he was burly and savage as a boar.
His tusks tore into the Hyena, ripping into her ribs until white bone showed through the red. The warrior Stepped briefly, screaming in pain and driving a bronze blade into his snout. Then she was hyena once more but with him rooting in her stomach, ripping free with her innards strung between the curved ivory blades of his tusks.
Effey was on him, Stepping to drive her spear into him and then vaulting over his shoulders, gashing his flank with her knife as he landed. He rounded on her, but she was already gone, and another of the pack lunged in to tear a strip off him, ripping through the tendons of his hindleg and crippling him.
Shyri watched and knew that none of the pack was watching her. They had someone even less fortunate to focus on. It was a good time to be the runt. She should be jostling for a place at the table, trying to get her teeth red to win Effey’s approval.
No more. The thought of it bucked in her. Each time she bowed to Effey, she gave up more of the Hyena into the woman’s keeping; each time her god became more Effey’s god, defined however she wished.
And there was Effey, leisurely waiting to leap on the old Boar once he had been softened enough. More of the pack were driving the mother and the youth on towards the white walls, but Effey wanted her mouthful of flesh before returning to the chase.
She bunched to spring, eyes on the Boar as he faltered and sank to his knees, the trampled grass around him running with blood. Shyri left her treachery until the last possible moment, leaping out of the dark on hyena feet to Step just as Effey sprang, driving her blade into the woman, aiming to ram it up into her groin.
But Effey was quick – Shyri hadn’t thought anything in her life right then would be that easy. The Hyena Malikah saw the movement and twitched aside, taking only a long shallow cut across her haunch. She was human when she landed, and for a moment she did not know what to make of Shyri, whether to kill her or applaud her for her boldness.
Then the cold part of her won out and she was crying out to her pack, calling them to heel because new game had presented itself. Her grin to Shyri was one of pure murder, but it sparked a jolt of connection too. The Hyena was suddenly in both of them, and that was one too many right then. Before the night was out one of them would die.
Shyri matched her, grin for grin, and then turned tail and ran faster than she ever had before.
What happened to the rest of the Boar she never knew, nor did she care. Saving them was no part of her intent. Probably half the pack kept running them down, and for that service she was grateful for them. The other half were right on her heels, and none closer than Effey, whose breath she felt against her hide.
She dodged right, claws tearing at the dirt as she tried to gain distance. One of the pack was already there, trying to pen her in, but Shyri would not be penned. She threw herself right into the path of the flanking Hyena, Stepping for just as long as it took to put the bronze of her knife past the animal’s eyes. The shock of it had the woman falling back from her on human feet, trying to defend herself from an attack that had never happened, while Shyri ran on.
She had that pale light at the edge of her eye, cutting a course across it but veering closer with each pounding pace. It is like fire. She was playing with something far too dangerous, which could reach out and consume her the moment she had its attention. What watch did the Plague set? Would the first she knew be a killing dart striking her down, or would it be the Terror . . .
But Effey was nipping at her again, heckling with glee whenever her teeth snapped on a tuft of Shyri’s pelt. She had no fear in her, only the fierce spirit of the Hyena. Perhaps the Terror could not even touch her.
And now Shyri was leading her past the very footings of the white walls themselves. She saw, scuttling in the corner of her vision, spiders like the one they had slain, busy at their work. Yet there were no warriors, none of the Plague People themselves. The one time that anybody in the world might want to see one, they were all fast asleep in their beds. The cackling of hyenas beyond their walls meant nothing to them.
Then Effey’s teeth closed on her, gashing at her haunches and failing to take hold by only a hair’s breadth. Shyri yelped and tried for more speed, but the rest of the pack was outstripping her, closing off her path until it was them and the white wall and nowhere left save that narrowing path before her. She was running out of freedom, and when Effey caught her it would be no more runt, no more kicks and curses and menial duties. Nobody challenged the Malikah and lived to brag of it.
Her plan wasn’t working. She could hear alien voices raised from within the compound, but none who had any time for her. She should have known that the Plague People were good for nobody, not even as executioners. She tried to break away, leaping for a gap and finding only bared teeth there that herded her back towards the walls. Effey was laughing as only a hyena can laugh.
I have made a bad job of this. But perhaps this was better. Let the Hyena see she was no whipped cur to be beaten and driven. I fought the Hawk in the north; I fought Old Crocodile in the south. I will fight my sisters now.
She made them think she had tripped and gone down, when she was just digging into the dirt to get purchase and turn about. Half the pack over-ran, speeding past and then kicking up dust as they tried to match her. She was already right under Effey’s nose, though, the Malikah stumbling over Shyri as she tried to slow herself.
Shyri stepped and stabbed, in and out, not a mortal stroke but bloodying Effey’s coat was reward enough. She tried to bolt, a hyena once more, but Effey snarled out her name and got an arm about her neck, ripping her back to her human form. They wrestled fiercely, and probably
Effey could have cut her throat or carved out her kidneys, but she was determined to force Shyri’s face into the dirt, to pin her to the ground and take out a proper revenge on her. Shyri was not cooperating, writhing and twisting in the other woman’s grip. While she held her knife she tried to turn it about and get more of Effey’s blood on it. After Effey slammed her hand into the ground to make her drop it, Shyri snapped at her with human teeth, utterly unrepentant, utterly unwilling to give up. When at last Effey forced the side of her head to the earth, pinning Shyri’s legs down with her own, she made do with curses. Every ill fate the Hyena ever visited on anyone was called down on Effey then, until the Malikah screamed at her and used both hands to grip her head and grind her face into the earth.
That left an arm suddenly unattended and Shyri found her knife somehow and tried to bury it in Effey’s thigh.
Abruptly this was no longer a game that the Malikah enjoyed. With a sudden jerk she flipped Shyri onto her back, driving a knee into her victim’s stomach to still the fight in her, if only for a breath.
She had her own knife out. The long death she wanted to inflict had been worn down into a quick one because Shyri would not be her prey and her patience had snapped at last.
Shyri stared past her, no eyes for the woman, none for the knife.
The Plague People did not care what two hyenas did, but human voices had brought them out. Shyri found herself repenting of her plan. A man hung in the air past Effey’s shoulder, his shoulders glimmering in the darkness as his half-seen wings carried him over the walls.
Shyri was aware that the rest of the pack was fleeing. The Terror chased at their heels and must have caught the slowest of them. It washed past Effey and Shyri in an invisible tide, but for a moment the fire of the fight kept it off them, victor and victim both. Their eyes met.
The Hyena moved in them both, then, each to her own nature. Effey turned and leapt up at the newcomer. Shyri just stood and waited, feeling the Terror pile high over her like a mountain about to bury her.
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 18