Art of War

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Art of War Page 42

by Triantafyllou, Petros


  ‘Hm.’

  Even from such a curt response, I knew I had failed once more.

  ‘Again. Show her valiance!’ His bellow was many-voiced, echoing about the hall. I stared up at him as the drudgelings came from their hatches to drag away the cot and its burned bones. He turned away from me, disappearing from view. I did not like to linger on the great paintings beyond his perch. Even then, as I scanned their multitude, hauntingly illuminated by their own candles, I saw them moving. I tore my gaze away and turned back to the contraption.

  In place of the bones, the hunched old goblins wheeled in a body bleached grey by death. Rot had already claimed him. His stench mixed with the reek of the paints, and I gagged while they prepared the wires and leathery veins. Behind the grille in the wall, the cogs began to spin. I felt the sweat gather on my palms as I heard their teeth crunching.

  Again.

  The drudgelings shepherded me towards the table. Shrugging off their filthy, withered hands, I took the position on the table, face thrust through the hole at its head. I arched my shoulders, breath short and sharp, and listened to the insidious dripping of the bottles.

  When the cogs came to a clanging stop, feet gathered around my head once more. The straps were tighter this time, and when they showed me the silver bowl with its dark, viscous liquid, I betrayed myself with a convulsion.

  I knew it was pointless to hold my breath, but I did it anyway.

  Darkness, broken only by shafts of dusty sunlight, betrayed gaps in a gate. They lit slices of my crowded surroundings: a spiked helmet decorated with cat skulls; lips shivering with nervous prayers; armour plates like palm fronds.

  The stench of sweat stung my nose. I felt an oppressive lump in my throat as I took breath. A cough took me, and I was cursed in hushed voices. I reached to thumb sweat from my eye and felt the bush of a beard in my hands. A spear was firmly gripped in the other.

  Past the huddled figures before me, I saw shapes scattering in the slits of daylight. Shrieks filled the air. There arose a boom from below, and my new world shook violently.

  Sunlight blinded me. Were it not for the savage shoving from behind, I would have shrunk into a ball, all my training forgotten. I blamed the exhaustion.

  I found stone beneath my boots and screams of war pushed me on down a thin causeway. I glimpsed a battle raging far below. Ranks sprawled across a scrub plain dotted with the graves of waterways.

  ‘Death!’ came the chant, rising from the soldiers around me. I looked for an enemy but saw only flashes of coloured silk and heard high-pitched screams. I watched a man wade past me, his scimitar raised high. It flashed in the hot sun as he swung it. A splash of blood followed its arc.

  A woman burst from the crowd and flew at me, sharp nails spread like claws. She ripped a chunk from my cheek before my reflexes threw her aside. Before I could pin her, an axe found her spine, and she tottered over the side of the causeway with a thin shriek.

  ‘Death!’ roared the soldier before storming on. I followed dumbly in his wake.

  A pair of doors had already been smashed through, and I marched over their remains into a room choked with silk curtains and polished furniture. A score of women were pressed against the walls, fending soldiers away with fire-pokers. A handful of guards toiled alongside them. The soldiers sought them with spears, impaling them against the marble.

  Despite my revulsion, I fought with them, finding a convenient excuse in the futility of fighting the meld and the possibility a lesson. I lashed about half-heartedly with my spear, knocking a guard off his feet before turning to run an escaping woman through. I had thought her another guard. She took my spear from my slack grip, painting a bloody streak across the rug before dying.

  An explosion ripped a nearby door in two, and I saw silver-armoured soldiers flooding into the room. The tide turned immediately and violently, sweeping us onto the causeway. My body proved itself a coward, ducking lances and pounding the stone to stay ahead of the flood. I wondered if all of us were, when death is close and the odds are stacked high. If valiance can’t save a man, maybe cowardice could.

  A trip slew me. A silk-draped corpse, a spear through her belly, avenged her death by sending me spinning over the edge of the causeway. I saw the desert plains yawn before me and felt my heart attempt to flee from my mouth.

  The ground was a hungry beast, rising to me with relish. It took an age to fall, and while I roared with useless rage, I caught the sight of others falling around me. We met the ground with great clouds of dust. Merciful deaths, far too merciful for killers such as us. For we were no soldiers.

  Again, I crawled from my table, bile-splattered and reaching for the brushes. I tottered to the canvas, decorating it in vomit before any paint found my brush.

  I sprawled across my art, showing it no mercy, drawing fierce grins and pale faces with crimson makeup. I painted silks stretched over the sharp, purposeful lines of spears. I let blues bleed into the yellow of the sandstone. I let the scarlets spread. Hate was a colour I used often. Splendour was used sparingly, saved only for the shining suits of armour at my canvas’ core.

  I do not know how long I spent on those gleaming characters, but I know I bent the whole scene around them. Every other figure in my painting fled from them, including a marauder with a dark bush of a beard. They had no faces in their helmets, unlike the gawping, grinning villains at their feet, cowards scrambling to be free. The borders of mist from my last attempt still clung on in that sandstone room, as if I had no stomach to paint the rest of the contemptuous scene.

  The tuton barely had the patience for another failure. His eyes had begun to glow.

  ‘Again!’

  ‘Let me finish!’

  The drudgelings came forth to bind me with tough leather and cold buckles. I batted away their scaly hands. ‘I can finish!’

  ‘Sometimes it takes fire to paint a masterpiece, novitiate. Again, I say!’

  Another body came, small as I in stature and covered in cloth.

  Tuton’s voice bounced from the walls, condemnation coming in waves. ’You would waste a decade of training? The sourest insolence!’

  The wood was slimy from days of sweat.

  ‘No! Let me paint more!’

  ‘You would fall at the final test?’

  ‘No, tuton. Don’t put me in—’ The clang of cogs drowned me.

  ‘It was but a simple request! Paint the art of war!’

  My eyes bulged as they pressed me to the hole. ‘And I was trying!’

  ‘Failing!’

  ‘I don’t know what you want from me!’

  ‘All we have ever wanted, novitiate. Success.’

  I roared all the way into the bowl of grey slop.

  Insects droned above. A shameless wind whined across the grasses. Somewhere overhead, I heard the clack of leafless branches duelling. Now and again, a distant groan, or choke, and then silence again.

  My eyes were caked in muck. I prised my eyelids open and lifted a head that throbbed once more, though this time with pain, not life.

  I watched the bloody water rise around the weight of my palm, then around the other. The very mud itself bled a reddish-brown; part earth, part army. When I pushed with my elbows, pain scorched my side. I realised I was contributing to the boot-churned mire.

  The wind blew again, eager to chill me. I felt its northern heritage against my shaved scalp, no different from my own hair outside the meld. I wondered which I felt more: my exhaustion or this body’s.

  I shivered now, half-bloodless and pressed against the squelch of mud. I pushed again and felt the weight of something against my legs.

  Turning my head, I met the skewed stare of a dead man missing his lower jaw. The other way lay an unknown, face so deep in the mud I thought them decapitated at first. Fidgeting my feet told me more bodies lay behind me. Soft skin clinging to hard bone. It was unmistakable.

  I crawled. That was all I had to offer life: two elbows and some strength left to use them. I gave than
ks for my cold-bitten nose, and how it fended off the stink of those around me. Small mercies count for a lot, when mercy is all you depend on.

  I cursed the tuton with each effort, foreign tongue spitting ill-formed words. My profanity startled a seagull, come to pick at the bodies. It backpedaled, cawing harshly.

  The next time I planted my elbow, the ground moaned. A strong grip—the strength only a dying man has—encircled my wrist. I stayed still, watching a patch of mud crack into the white of an eye, a bloody smear of a mouth, the pink of a throat.

  ’S-save me.’

  I felt the need to save myself overpower me, and I freed myself with a kick to his man’s shin. He gasped, falling limp, and I felt a shame envelop me. Though he still blinked at me, I kept crawling, shuddering from more than just scold and blood loss.

  A scorched crater beckoned me inwards, and I curled into a ball in its cradle. The black earth smelled acetic, rotten. At its centre, a burnt skeleton was frozen in some worship of the sky.

  ‘Another!’

  Rough hands grabbed the nape of my clothes and hauled me back to the mud. The pain in my side brought fireworks to my eyes.

  ‘Fucken’ ‘shield-brat!’

  The cold steel found my throat before I could bleat a word. I felt no pain, just the warmth escaping me. I refused to breathe, to drown in my own blood. I clawed for eyes, kicked like a mule, and yet it changed nothing.

  ‘Die, heretic.’

  Before the darkness claimed me, I felt their rough hands begin to search and paw at my body.

  The leather was loosed from around my wrist. I felt my limbs tumble to the floor, painless in the absence of sensation. I blinked, seeing the huge canvas tipped on its edge. The paint had ignored gravity, falling sideways as if blown by a gale.

  I felt the cold of stone against my temples and put the world back upright. I stayed there, my knees, shivering while I stared under hooded brows at the hateful creature the painting had become. It was like no enemy I had ever fought. The more I swiped my brush, the more skin it wore, the more armour I pasted onto it. I wondered how much I’d have to chip away to find out why I had started fighting it in the first place. A decade of training…

  He must have felt me sway. He spoke to remind me he was there.

  ‘Show me. A final chance.’

  I raised a knee. My hand found a scattered brush, and I swiped it from the stone.

  One step. I took a moment to gather some saliva.

  Two steps, and I was angling the brush at the canvas like a lance.

  Three steps. My knees found the stone again, scraping the skin away. I was still too numb from exhaustion to notice.

  I raised the brush to paint the air, and while it danced, I reached up and snapped its neck. Green paint smudged my palm. I smeared it across my face.

  The pause was so pregnant I expected a roar of indignation to break it.

  ‘You wish not to paint?’ came the question.

  I felt like laughing. All I did was choke and spat something red to the stone.

  ‘There is no point, tuton.’

  ‘Because you cannot do it?’

  I found my humour, letting loose a cackle as sharp as napped flint. ‘No. Not because I cannot.’

  Finding my strength next, I stumbled over to my canvas and lay my hands on the darkest paints I could find. With great windmill swings of my arms, I drowned my painting. When the containers were empty, I took my hands to it, smearing it across every part I could reach.

  When I was done, and panting like a hound, my backside found the floor again. I didn’t want to look at him. His hidden face wouldn’t have shown me the displeasure I wanted to see. I had failed, and that I wanted to burn out, not wither away. And besides, I might as well have danced on my way down to meet death. It was the last chance to do so.

  ‘Explain yourself, novitiate.'

  ‘Because, tuton, it can’t be done,’ I gasped, laughing some more. ‘Because there is no art to war.’

  For an age, he left me there on the cold floor, staring at paintings that held nothing but shaking heads and disappointed shrugs. If I’d had the saliva, I would have spat at them.

  The tuton’s answer, when it came, was a slow clap. I heard the shuffling of drudgelings and felt myself being dragged across the floor.

  ‘Well done, novitiate. Well done.’

  Flesh and Coin

  Anna Stephens

  They called her Stoneheart. And they didn’t smile when they said it. Didn’t mean it as a joke or a mock. They Named her in the old way and there was nothing she could do about it. Can’t argue getting a Name, but of all the Names she’d hoped for herself as she made her way into the ranks of mercenaries, as she climbed those ranks like ladders, Stoneheart wasn’t one of them. Quickstrike, Spearfast, Steelwill, those were Names she could be proud of, Names she could wear like a badge, carry like a banner. Not Stoneheart. Not cold and hard and without mercy or regret.

  Stoneheart. But what could she do other than smile, big and bold and mocking, chin up and a challenge in a cocked eyebrow. Stoneheart, aye? Sure you want to find out just how stony?

  But right now, Syl Stoneheart had more pressing concerns. She crouched with her company on the western slope of the ravine, scrunched in among the boulders and scree, two dozen women and men in scuffed leather and ragged shirts, chainmail muffled under jerkins, spears and bucklers plain and functional. Nothing fancy. Nothing shiny or noisy. Just quiet, grim-faced folk in a quiet, grim ravine on the road to Talannest.

  Syl hated ambushes more than she hated stupid fucking Names. Too many things to go wrong. Too many unknowns. And worse, too much time sitting, waiting, thinking about all the things to go wrong. The boulder was cold beneath her cheek as she rolled her head up to peer around it. She could see a quarter-mile before the twisting road vanished around an outcrop. Every stride of that quarter-mile was empty. Empty as her purse until after this job was done.

  A guarded wagon will traverse the ravine an hour before noon. Bring me its contents and I’ll give you a bag of gold.

  Tinker’s words echoed in her head. She’d asked him what size bag of gold. On reflection, she should’ve asked what size guard. Still, she’d the numbers to see this through and another tale to add to the Stoneheart’s glory.

  The company opposite was silent and invisible. Or gone, she supposed, quelling the urge to spit. Wouldn’t surprise her if Garn Spineless had lived up to his Name and fled with his fighters. She’d have to be the Stoneheart if he had. Have to be ruthless if she was to get this done with only half an ambush team.

  And done it had to be. Her belly was emptier than her purse, and her company, while not yet muttering, had taken to exchanging meaningful looks when they thought she wasn’t looking. A crew that did that was a crew only days away from meaningful words with their commander, and after that, there was nothing for it but meaningful fists and terminal knives. The Iron Blades were a good company. She’d no desire to be gutted by them. Or forced to do the gutting herself.

  There was a clatter of stone behind her, a muffled curse, and Syl reached back an open palm in question. Renn slid to her side, well down on his belly where he was hidden. ‘Rock scorpion,’ he said. ‘Dealt with.’

  Syl stuck up a thumb, eyes fixed on the path. Still empty. She let out a soft breath and sat back, checking her crew for the twentieth time. Rock scorpions. Just what they bloody needed. Syl had seen men die from rock scorpion stings, black and screaming as their skin split from the swelling. Like watching someone get turned inside out.

  Spineless cawed like a dying rook, and Syl’s fists clenched as she looked to the road. There. She reached back again and found a part of Renn, shoulder or knee, squeezed twice, paused, then once more. He shifted from beneath her hand, back to the others to pass warning.

  Long minutes crawled by, slower than a long death, before the clop of hooves and creak of harness echoed up the ravine. They were cautious now, alive to danger, archers on the flanks, the wagon in thei
r midst. Syl cursed silently when she identified the guards—the Bleeding Eyes, led by none other than Etta Scarlet herself. Just what I fucking need. Still, had to happen sometime, I suppose. Old scores and all that.

  Whatever was in those barrels stacked so ostentatiously on top of the wagon, Syl knew it wasn’t what they’d been hired to steal. They were close now, and Syl could see the unease in the guards, the distinctive red makeup across their eyelids and noses highlighting the flickering of their eyes as they scanned the high scree and rock walls hemming them in. Etta didn’t hire fools, and if she did, word had it she killed them herself. They all knew this was ambush territory. Syl could see it in every taut line, every horse’s snort, every jerky twist of the head. It was also the only decent road to Talannest.

  Garn’s dying rook called again, and straight away the Eyes reacted, half closing in around the wagon, the rest in squads of three, bows drawn and aiming for the rocks on both sides.

  Come on, Spineless. Now would be good. Garn had the better eyeline, so it was his decision when to trigger the ambush. Soften them up with volleys, then pelt down the slope and take it hand to hand with the survivors. Chances were, the Eyes would press forward rather than try and manoeuvre the wagon around to flee back the way they’d come. Soon as they started running down the ravine, they’d run slap into the third company Syl insisted on recruiting, never mind that it would reduce their cut of the takings.

  All rested on Spineless moving his fucking arse, though, and so far, Spineless didn’t seem inclined to do so. Syl didn’t want to have to take on the Eyes alone, but the Stoneheart had a Name and a reputation to uphold, coin to earn to fill an empty purse. The Stoneheart would give the order even if Syl wouldn’t. That’s how it worked with Names.

 

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