Would he stop them?
He had not yet decided. Nothing raged inside him. Nothing smouldered an instant’s breath from bursting into flame. Even the effort of thinking exhausted him.
‘Blood runs down.’ An ancient saying among the Barghast. When a ruler is murdered, a thousand blades are drawn, and the weak become savage. We are in our night of madness. An enemy marches to find us, and we are locked in a frenzy of senseless slaughter, killing our own. He could hear faint screams cutting through the howling wind.
The image of his wife’s face, so ugly in its wants, rose before him.
No, I will not let it be. He rose, cast about until he found his coin-scaled hauberk. If he was too late to save the woman, he would kill both his wife and her lover. An act, he decided, devoid of madness.
‘Find him!’ exhorted Sekara. ‘His brothers are out—killing our allies! Maral Eb is alone—’
‘He is not,’ said Stolmen. ‘On this night, that would be insane.’
She glared at him. Huge in his armour, a heavy hook-knife in one gauntleted hand, a miserable look on his stolid face. ‘Tell him you would discuss the alliance of the Gadra Clan—just find a reason. Once you cut his throat—’
‘His brothers will hunt me down and kill me. Listen, woman, you told me you wanted Maral Eb to command the warriors—’
‘I did not expect him to move on us this very night! Hega is dead! Jayviss is nowhere to be found. Nor is Balamit. Don’t you understand what’s happening?’
‘It seems you don’t. If they’re all dead, then we are next.’
‘He’ll not dare touch us! I have a hundred slayers—I have spies in every clan! No, he still needs us—’
‘He won’t think that way when I try and kill him.’
‘Don’t just try, husband. Do it and be sure of it. Leave his fool brothers to me.’
The rain was hammering down on the thick hides humped over the sapling frame of the yurt’s ceiling. Someone shrieked nearby. Stolmen’s face was ashen.
Spirits below, he doesn’t even need the paint tonight. ‘Must I do this, too? Are you worth anything to me?’
‘Sekara, I stand here ready to give up my life—to protect you. Once this night is done, the madness will end. We need only survive—’
‘I’m not interested in just surviving!’
He stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Something in that look, so strange on his face, sent a tendril of disquiet through Sekara. She stepped closer, set a hand on his scaled chest. ‘I understand, husband. Know that I value what you are doing. I just don’t think it’s necessary, that’s all. Please, do this for me. Find Maral Eb—and if you see that he is surrounded by bodyguards, then return here. We will know that he fears for his life—we will have struck our first blow against him without even raising a hand.’
He sighed, turned to the entrance.
The wind gusted round him when he pushed aside the flap and stepped outside.
Sekara backed away from the chill.
A moment later she heard a heavy thump, and then something rolled into the tent wall before sliding to the ground.
Heart in her throat, hands to her mouth, Sekara froze.
Sagal was the first to enter the yurt. His brother Kashat came in behind him, a tulwar in one hand, the blade slick with watery blood.
‘Sekara the Vile,’ said Sagal, smiling. ‘’Tis a cruel night.’
‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ she replied, nodding to the dripping blade. ‘Useless. A burden upon my every ambition.’
‘Ambitions, yes,’ muttered Kashat, looking round. ‘You’ve done yourself well, I see.’
‘I have many, many friends.’
‘We know,’ said Sagal. ‘We’ve met with some of them this night.’
‘Maral Eb needs me—he needs what I know. My spies, my assassins. As a widow, I am no threat to you, any of you. Your brother shall be Warleader, and I will make certain he is unassailed.’
Sagal shrugged. ‘We’ll think on it.’
Licking her lips, she nodded. ‘Tell Maral Eb, I will come to him tomorrow. We have much to discuss. There will be rivals—what of Bakal? Have you thought of him? I can lead you straight to his yurt, let me get my cloak—’
‘No need for that,’ Sagal said. ‘Bakal is no longer a threat. A shame, the slayer of Onos Toolan dying so suddenly.’ He glanced across at Kashat. ‘Choked on something, wasn’t it?’
‘Something,’ Kashat replied.
Sekara said, ‘There will be others—ones that I know about that you don’t. Among the Senan and even my own people.’
‘Yes yes, you’ll sell them all, woman.’
‘I serve the Warleader.’
‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ At that Sagal swung round, left the yurt. Kashat paused to clean her husband’s blood from his tulwar, using a priceless banner hanging from the ridge-pole. He paused at the entrance, grinned at her, and then followed his brother.
Sekara staggered back a step, sank down on to a travel chest. Shivering gripped her, shook her, rattled her very bones. She struggled to swallow, but her mouth and throat were too dry. She laced together her hands on her lap, but they slipped free of each other—she could not take hold . . . of anything.
The wind buffeted the hide walls, cold air lancing in from the entrance flap, which had not settled properly back into place. She should get up, fix that. Instead, she sat, shaking, fighting her slippery hands. ‘Stolmen,’ she whispered. ‘Husband. You left me. Abandoned me. I almost’—she gasped—‘I almost died!’
She looked to where he had been standing, so big, so solid, and her eyes strayed to the banner and its horrid, wet stain. ‘Ruined it,’ she said in a mutter. ‘Ruined it.’ She used to run it through her hands. That silk. Through and through, like a stream of wealth that never wetted her palms. But no more. She would feel the crust of his blood, the dust speckling her hands.
‘He should have seen it coming. He should have.’
______
Bakal had just cinched on his weapon belt while sitting down, struggling one-handed with the clasp, when the two Barahn warriors rushed in. He surged upright. The hookblade hissed free of its scabbard and he caught the heavy slash of a descending tulwar. His lighter weapon’s blade snapped clean just above the hilt.
He leapt close and drove the jagged stub into the warrior’s throat. Blood poured on to his hand.
The other was coming round the brazier.
Bakal back-stepped from the warrior drowning in his own blood. He had nothing with which to defend himself.
Wife, it seems you win—
A shape loomed behind the Barahn who was readying his tulwar for a decapitating cut. Hookblades licked both sides of his throat. The brazier hissed and crackled as spatters struck it. Reeling, the Barahn stumbled to one side, fell over the armour chest, leaving one twitching foot visible from where stood Bakal.
Gasping, his arm in agony, he swung his gaze to the newcomer.
‘Cafal.’
‘I dreamed it,’ the priest said, face twisting. ‘Your hand, your knife—into his heart—’
‘Did you dream as well, Cafal, who delivered that blow?’
The burly warrior sagged, stepped clumsily away from the entrance, his eyes dropping to the weapons in his hands. ‘I’ve come for her.’
‘Not tonight.’
The hookblades snapped back into fighting position and Cafal made to advance on him, but Bakal raised his hand.
‘I will help you, but not tonight—she fell unconscious—two dozen men, maybe more, had used her. Any more and she would die and they won’t let that happen. The women have her, Cafal. They will tend to her, cackling like starlings—you know of what I speak. Until her flesh is healed—you cannot get into that hut. Those women will tear you to pieces. My—my wife went there first, before her other . . . tasks. To see, to join in—she, she laughed at me. At my horror. Cafal, she laughed.’
The priest’s visage was furrowed in cuts—he had been cla
wing at his own face, Bakal realized. ‘Your dreams,’ he whispered, eyes widening. ‘You saw.’
‘I saw.’
‘Cafal . . .’
‘But it’s not over. They don’t know that—none of them know that. Our gods are howling. In terror.’ He fixed wild eyes on Bakal. ‘Did they think they could get away with that? Did they forget what he was? Where he came from? He will take them into his hands and he will crush them!’ He bared his teeth. ‘And I will stand back—do you hear me? I will stand back, Bakal, and do nothing.’
‘Your sister—’
He started, as if Bakal had slapped him. ‘Yes. I will wait—’
‘You can’t hide here, Cafal. More of Maral Eb’s assassins will come for me—’
‘This night is almost spent,’ the priest said. ‘The madness is already blowing itself out. Find your allies, Bakal, gather them close.’
‘Come back in three days,’ Bakal said. ‘I will help you. We’ll get her out—away. But . . . Cafal, you must know—’
The man flinched. ‘It will be too late,’ he said in a wretched tone. ‘Yes, I know. I know.’
‘Go with the last of the night,’ Bakal said. He went to find one of his older weapons, and then paused, stared down at the two corpses crumpled on the floor. ‘I must do something now. One last thing.’ He lifted bleak eyes to the priest. ‘It seems the madness is not quite blown out.’
The rider emerged from the night with a child before him on the saddle. Two young girls flanked the horse, staggering with exhaustion.
As the storm’s ragged tail scudded south, taking the rain with it, Setoc watched the strangers approach. The man, she knew, was a revenant, an undead soldier of the Reaper. But, seated as she was in the centre of this ring of stones, she knew she had nothing to fear. This ancient power defied the hunger for blood—it was, she knew now, made for that very purpose. Against Elder Gods and their ceaseless thirst, it was a sanctuary, and was and would ever remain so.
He drew rein just outside the ring, as she knew he must.
Setoc rose to her feet, eyeing the girls. Dressed as Barghast, but neither was purely of that blood. Twins. Eyes dull with fading shock, and a kind of fearless calm rising in its place. The small boy, she saw, was smiling at her.
The revenant lifted the child with one hand, to which the boy clung like a Bolkando ape, and carefully set him down on the ground.
‘Take them,’ the revenant said to Setoc, and the undead eyes he fixed upon her blazed—one human and wrinkled in death, the other bright and amber—the eye of a wolf.
Setoc gasped. ‘You are not the Reaper’s servant!’
‘It’s my flaw,’ he replied.
‘What is?’
‘Cursed by . . . indecision. Take them, camp within the circle. Wait.’
‘For what?’
The rider collected the reins and drew the beast round. ‘For his war to end, Destriant.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘We leave when I return.’
She watched him ride away, westward, as if fleeing the rising sun. The two girls closed on the boy and each took one of his hands. They edged warily closer.
Setoc sighed. ‘You are Hetan’s get?’
Nods.
‘I am a friend of your uncle. Cafal. No,’ she added wearily, ‘I do not know where he has gone. Perhaps,’ she added, thinking of the revenant’s last words, ‘he will return. For now, come closer, I will make a fire. You can eat, and then rest.’
Once inside the circle, the boy pulled loose from his sisters’ hands and walked to the southwestern edge of the ring, where he stared at seemingly nothing on the dark horizon, and then he began a strange, rhythmic babbling. Almost a song.
At the sound, Setoc shivered. When she turned to the twins, she saw that they had found her bedroll and were now wrapped together in its folds. Fast asleep.
Must have been a long walk.
The carrion eaters had picked away the last strip of meat. Jackals had chewed on the bones but found even their powerful jaws could not crush them sufficiently to swallow the splinters down, nor could they grind the ends as was their habit. In the end, they left the fragments scattered in the trampled grasses. Besides, there was more to be found, not only in this place, but in numerous others across the plain. It was proving a season for fly-swarmed muzzles and full bellies.
After a few days all the scavengers had left, abandoning the scene to the sun, wind and stars. The blades of grasses prickled free of dried-up blood, the roots thickened on enriched soil, and insects crawled like the teeth of the earth, devouring all they could.
On a night with a storm raging to the east and south, a night when foreign gods howled and ghost wolves raced like a tidal flood across an unseen landscape, when the campfires of armies whipped and stuttered, and the jackals ran first one way and then another, as the stench of spilled blood brushed them on all sides, the buried valley with its sprawl of boulders and bones and its ash heap of burnt remains began to move, here and there. Fragments drawing together. Forming into ribs, phalanges, leg bones, vertebrae—as if imbued with iron seeking a lodestone, they slid and rolled in fits and starts.
The wind that had begun in the southeast now rushed over the land, a gale like a hundred thousand voices rising, ever rising. Grasses whipped into frenzied motion. Dust swirled up and round and spun, filling the air with grit.
In the still cloudless sky overhead, the Slashes seemed to pulse and waver, as if seen through waves of heat.
Bones clattered together. From beneath the mass of boulders and crumpled armour in the valley, pieces of rotting flesh pulled free, tendons writhing like serpents, ligaments wriggling like worms, climbing free and crawling closer to the heap of bones—which were edging into a pattern, re-forming a recognizable shape—a skeleton, loosely assembled, but the bones were neither Akrynnai nor Barghast. These were thicker, with high ridges where heavy muscles once gripped tight. The skull that had been crushed was now complete once more, battered and scorched. It sat motionless, upper teeth on the ground, until the mandible clicked up against it, and then pushed beneath it, tilting the skull back, until the jaw’s hinges slipped into their joints.
Flesh and desiccated skin, random clumps of filthy hair. Ligaments gripped long bones, ends fusing to join them into limbs. Twisted coils of muscle found tendons and were pulled flat as the tendons grew taut. An arm was knitted together, scores of finger bones clumping at the end of the wrist.
Rotting meat bound the vertebrae into a serpentine curl. Ribs sank into indentations on the sides of the sternum and lifted it clear of the ground.
When the Slashes were gouging the horizon to the southeast, and the wind was dying in fitful gusts, a body lay on the grasses. Fragments of skin joined to enclose it, each seam knitting like a scar. Strands of hair found root on the pate of the skull.
As the wind fell away, there was the distant sound of singing. An old woman’s rough, enfeebled voice, and in the music of that song there were fists closed into tight knots, there was muscle building to terrible violence, and faces immune to the sun’s heat and life’s pity. The voice ensorcelled, drawing power from the land’s deepest memories.
Dawn crept to the horizon, bled colour into the sky.
And a T’lan Imass rose from the ground. Walked, with slow, unsteady strides, to the fire-annealed flint sword left lying close to the Barghast pyre. A withered but oversized hand reached down and closed about the grip, lifting the weapon clear.
Onos T’oolan faced southeast. And then set out.
He had a people to kill.
Chapter Sixteen
Sower of words out from the hungry shade
The seeds in your wake drink the sun
And the roots burst from their shells—
This is a wilderness of your own making,
Green chaos too real to countenance
Your words unravel the paths and blind the trail
With crowding boles and the future is lost
To the world of possibilities you
so nurtured
In that hungry shade—sower of words
Heed the truth they will make, for all they
Need is a rain of tears and the light of day
THE EASE OF SHADOWS (SIMPLE WORDS)
BEVELA DELIK
D
esecration’s gift was silence. the once-blessed boulder, massive as a wagon, was shattered. Nearby was a sinkhole at the base of which a spring struggled to feed a small pool of black water. The bones of gazelle and rodents studded the grasses and the stones of the old stream bed that stretched down from the sinkhole’s edge, testament to the water’s poison.
This silence was crowded with truths, most of them so horrid in nature as to leave Sechul Lath trembling. Shoulders hunched, arms wrapped about his torso, he stared at the rising sun. Kilmandaros was picking through the broken rock, as if pleased to examine her own handiwork of millennia past. Errastas had collected a handful of pebbles and was tossing them into the pool one by one—each stone vanished without a sound, leaving no ripples. These details seemed to amuse the Errant, if the half-smile on his face was any indication.
Sechul Lath knew enough to not trust appearances when it came to an Elder God infamous for misdirection. He might be contemplating his satisfaction at the undeniable imperative of his summons, or he might be anticipating crushing the throat of an upstart god. Or someone less deserving. He was the Errant, after all. His temple was betrayal, his altar mocking mischance, and in that temple and upon that altar he sacrificed mortal souls, motivated solely by whim. And, perhaps, boredom. It was the luxury of his power that he so cherished, that he so wanted back.
But it’s done. Can’t you see that? Our time is over with. We cannot play that game again. The children have inherited this world, and all the others we once terrorized. We squandered all we had—we believed in our own omnipotence. This world—Errastas, you cannot get back what no longer exists.
‘I will have my throne,’ you said. And the thousand faces laying claim to it, each one momentarily bright and then fading, they all just blur together. Entire lives lost in an instant’s blink. If you win, you will have your throne, Errastas, and you will stand behind it, as you once did, and your presence will give the lie to mortal ambitions and dreams, to every aspiration of just rule, of equity. Of peace and prosperity.
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