The Sin Eaters

by Aaron Summers

  He liked the plan, or so he thought. It had its weaknesses. They could reject the terms and choose to fight. Many of his tribe might die. A Dara might escape into the night, prolonging their violation of the pact with the Dragons. Camdzic might chase the runner and then… and then… there were too many possibilities to consider. Lundoo called them realities. They were not real to Fen. Only what happened was real, or so he thought. It was hard to know now.

  Omduro disliked his plan. Fen stared at the round, boyish face in the night and wondered if he should hit him. Omduro’s thoughts hadn’t flowed like they should in a long time, maybe even since before the messengers attacked. The boy was always touched in the head. Fen still remembered his grinning face at the hunt when the tribes decided that the loss of Omduro’s fingers, and not the slain hyena who ate them, had earned the boy his manhood.

  His body showed no signs of illness, no hints of mutation, but his thoughts ran crooked. Some days he wanted to charge into battle, whooping whatever cry occurred to him in the moment. Other days, he cowered from the world. Was he losing his mind? Insanity could touch anyone. So could the cancer, at any age, at any time. Fen set his jaw. The cancer could always return. Omduro would survive or he would not. Fen hoped his young friend would be stronger for it.

  A fist to the odd boy’s face might rattle the chaos loose. Then he could think clearly. They could not leave. This must be settled tonight before citadel scouts spied both tribes and inflicted their monolithic punishment. That was certain. The agreement was clear.

  Fen’s fingers tingled. War. It was not the first time he considered fighting the greedy Dragons who claimed whole expanses of the free world as their own. They did not even use the land they claimed. Scouts from all tribes reported nothing. They found no farms, no constructions, no trails left by human feet. South of the gobi was empty of humanity. Why did the Dragons threaten the annihilation of entire tribes over an empty place? Such was the way of Hollow Folk.

  Camdzic shook her head. Fen was glad the oppressive dark obscured her features. She healed well enough by the dedicated efforts of Lundoo but her face still bore the marks of the explosion. The African’s body had been a menace even after losing its head. The corpse had exploded, nearly destroying Camdzic’s left eye, ruining her scalp above the eye, and destroying the hearing in that ear. She eventually regained most of her sight and hearing but half of her peculiar clattering hair would never return. A smooth, darkened scar much like Fen’s own covered a quarter of her head. She considered the savage scar a mark of honor. Her reputation preceded her before that day. Now, she carried the mark that proved she could slay a Dragon.

  Each glance at her reminded him of his mistake. He had to watch for the true dangers, always. There were so many to track. He could not know if he was tracking the right ones. There were so many choices. How had he never seen all these threats before?

  “Mine is the only plan,” she said. “You want to abandon the field. Let the Dragons chew up the Dara! Idiot boy whose brain does not work. What if the Dragons decide the Dara are scouts and that we plan to attack? Do you offer the Leyevi as tribute?”

  Her hard hands flew upward in a gesture meant to include them all as she continued.

  “There will be no terms. These wildlings broke the borders. They chose to camp in plain sight of the watchers. They plan to steal and kill. They did not even come to the Duma.”

  She spat, paused, and spat again.

  “We must kill them and leave their bodies for the vultures. This is simple.”

  Fen’s absentminded hand found the leathered flesh that was his right flank. It no longer itched. He developed the habit in the long seasons since true healing began. Now he could not stop himself. Nor could he shake his hesitation. Never before that day, more than a year ago, had he hesitated. But uncertainty had become the rich soil in which every thought grew.

  He spent more time among the Running Folk, or with Lundoo, or learning memory tricks from the crippled Armasar called Hoda as she taught them to children, or talking to anyone whose voice sounded remotely unfamiliar to his own, than with Camdzic. These people spoke. He listened and learned. She only ever wanted to act, now.

  “Camdzic… Camdzic speaks wise words,” Fen said. “The straight path is to walk into the valley and kill them. Some of us will die. All of them will die. The Dragons will know we were not them. They must see this.”

  A cold breeze carried smoke through the crouching trio. Omduro wrapped his arms around his body. Camdzic’s teeth chattered. She was not silent for anyone else, ever, except her chieftain. He thought he understood. Who else could live through a wound such as his? He was, in many ways, mightier than before that day. He did not feel mightier as a new poison crept from the grievous wound into his blood. They were bonded before by choice and now, by survival. He could never reveal the fear inside his thoughts. It was another danger to watch. It was another kind of cancer.

  “But we are not them. They make poor choices that hurt many. They take away life. We will give them a chance,” Fen said.

  He forced himself to face Camdzic. She was more companion than consort now because of his negligence. The woman needed more than he could provide. She had carried him to Lundoo while her own tattered face bled. She fed their dying tribe while he died on his furs. She protected Lundoo from the plains wolves, the raiders, and again from Sadanandan. She never left his side. Maybe she should lead the Leyevi. He knew she would refuse. She was here for him alone.

  “One chance,” Fen said. “I would not surprise them with death.”

  “They are not sacred! They broke our pact!”

  Camdzic spat again at the mention of what she considered a curse between free peoples and Hollow Folk.

  “Nothing is sacred. We must be what we will the world to be. You know this is true.”

  Her scowling face shifted, thin lips baring and then hiding her wicked teeth in subconscious reflex. Then she nodded.

  “I will offer them terms. Camdzic will surround the valley.” He held up his palm and closed the other hand into a fist inside the open palm. “If they do not take the terms then they will not leave the valley. Omduro will made ready three runners with messages to the first Dragons they find.”

  “What is the… what is the… what is the…” Omduro slapped his head with the butt of his hand, winced, and laughed. “What is the message?”

  “We offered terms. The Dara broke the agreement. The Leyevi stood against them.”

  Omduro left and the trio became a pair.

  “It is a good plan,” Camdzic allowed. “What if they take the terms but break them at first light? All people are not you or I, Fen Enkidu.”

  Fen scratched the bony growths around his wrists. The bitter night air should sooth them. It did not. They were growing again.

  “We will kill them.”

  She grinned. He wondered if she would join him in the furs when they returned home. It had been too long. She had lain with others. He did not care. She would be violent, selfish, feral, or so he hoped. She stalked off to prepare the warriors. He mounted the ridge and descended into the valley.

  The dozen or so sleeping Dara did not startle as he materialized from the night. They would not expect anyone here in the forbidden space between spaces. The fire’s warmth crackled on his bare skin. He waved his hand closer until its pleasant heat grew into outright pain. His outstretched fingers bent back on themselves. The fire burned his taut palm. A shudder rippled up his spine.

  He was back there, trapped inside his useless body, rolled on one side like a butchered hog while Lundoo forced fresh garlic paste into his sticky wounds. All he could remember was the man’s words from that day, from those years ago, from whenever it was, of Darumbull Jonah’s countless feverish nights spent beneath the healer’s hands so that he could train Fen come morning.

  Endorphins surged. The fire became pleasure. He felt new life stir in his chest and then his loins. This peculiar thing was new since the attack. Lundoo ca
lled it an evolyutsiya. Fen called it life. His body learned to love the unending pain that meant existence. His hand would shed the burned skin and in time, grow tougher stuff. He hoped the more deeply ruined flesh of his ribs would one day do the same.

  The dozing invaders brought themselves to consciousness at the sight of the intruder ruining his hand in the fire. A single man, no matter how quiet, sharp-edged, or crazy, did not scare the remnant Dara who twice defied the Dragons.

  “Who are you?”

  The voice belonged to a robust man holding a spear tip against Fen’s back. Fen had not heard him rouse. He leaned back into the blade. It skipped from a bony spur. He felt a line of blood run down his bare back. The thin flesh would heal soon.

  “I am Leyevi Fen Enkidu. You should not be here.”

  “Leyevi Fen Enkidu died north of the gobi when the Dragons brought their message. Here we are. Are you lost, crazy man?”

  More spears and their wielders rose in the tense breaths between spoken words. The blades soon formed a ring. Six or seven more - Fen tried to count their feet but the fire interfered with his nighttime vision - surveyed the valley walls. A slender woman waiting high above the camp silhouetted against the night sky. One by one, more warriors appeared at the ridge. Camdzic understood the theater of predation.

  Fen nodded at the distant figures.

  “You should not be here. Do you know Camdzic of the Steppe? She is here tonight. She wants to kill you all and leave your bodies for the vultures. I told her we must offer terms so that you may have life.”

  “Camdzic of the Steppe is a hundred days from here with her Berian cousins. Sadanandan gathers his brethren,” the voice behind him said.

  “You are certain of yourself. I speak truth. Do you want to meet her?”

  “I… we do not.”

  Fen raised his burning hand from the fire as he turned. It glowed with captured heat. White smoke curled into the night.

  “I offer life. This,” he swept the scorched hand at the camp, “breaks the agreement.”

  The captain stepped forward. Fen could see him now despite the flickering flames. He certainly looked like a Dara, with a thickset lower jaw studded by coarse curly hair, bushy dark eyebrows, and a broad nose. Lundoo would know more about what this man’s home was before the lightning came. He would remember to ask.

  “We have no agreement! No one spoke for us at the Duma!”

  “The Dara chose to not attend.”

  He examined his smoking hand. It already hurt less. Even fire’s unique pain did not linger. The only pain he could remember was the devastation of his flank. But he would continue to heal.

  “The Dara could not attend. It was too far. We face dangers in our home that your grass rats cannot imagine. This is our tribe. All that remains.”

  The captain flung a hand out to his lingering companions. Their spear tips had fallen, still ready for conflict but slack in their wielders’ hands. They doubted the man as Fen did.

  “You angered a citadel. This is what remains.”

  It was not a question. The man nodded as his grim face softened to mockery.

  “You cower from them, boy. You carry their water. You milk their sows. You safeguard their empty homes. Right now, you would kill your own cousin to protect some barren grasslands. How much has changed among the Endless Tribes that we kneel to these stone gnawers?”

  Fen chose to ignore the insult. He was close. The man would understand, soon.

  “Come to the Duma this summer at Baikal. The Dara can speak. We might make a new agreement.”

  The leader snarled in response. The ridgelines were empty of their silhouetted sentries. Camdzic would not wait until dawn. This was his final chance to choose a reality before she chose it for him.

  “I come to this camp without weapons. No one is hurt. You are offered life. Do not choose death.” Fen said.

  He raised his arm to show the scarred webbing that was his new flesh. The tissue reached from his elbow to his armpit, around his chest to the nipple and down his waist into his hip. It groaned as he forced it to stretch. The cold night did him no favors. Dim orange light flickered in its smooth channels. It looked more like well-worn leather than human skin. But then, little of him must look human to these travelers. The Dara lived far south of the Uralskiye.

  “I have died. It is nothing. We are nothing. What we know in our blood is true. Do not destroy this time to be alive.”

  The leader raised his spear, lowered it, and then locked his stance towards Fen.

  “The Dara make a new home. Maybe you are Leyevi Fen Enkidu. You did not die or you would not be here. That makes you a liar. We have no home remaining.”

  “You may have my home. I will make another. We have land and more for all our cousins. We are all Suzerain Beneath the Sky.”

  The captain lowered his spear. He almost let it drop, catching it with his fingertips and rolling it back into his grip as he thrust it at Fen’s gut. A gruesome peak rose in the center of the captain’s chest as a spear pierced. His own spear tip scratched Fen’s stomach.

  The captain gurgled, muttering some unfinished threat at the placid man in front of him. The spear sucked free of the fatal wound. He fell sideways into the fire. It began to consume his robes.

  Camdzic held her glistening spear held high for all to see their leader’s blood as she stepped over the new corpse.

  “This idiot led you to death.” She pointed the dripping spear at Fen. “This idiot offers life.”

  Fen shook his head but said nothing. She was not so wrong. He was a kind of idiot now, a tottering fool who considered every way of thinking about something while life sped past him. It did not matter tonight.

  “Camdzic of the Steppe speaks the truth. We offer each of you the choice. Join us.”

  “Who?” The watcher who had spied the Leyevi spoke.

  Fen touched his hard abdomen where the leader meant his spear to penetrate.

  “The Leyevi.” He nodded to his companion. “The folk of the Steppe. The Oshegar. The Mothers Jodenna. The Novgorodi. The Troka. Hannelius and her children. The hundred hundred tribes who live north of here beneath the stars. The Endless Tribes. The Suzerain Beneath the Sky.”

  “We were Dara,” the watcher said.

  “You are still Dara because you choose to live.”

  He stepped around the fire to embrace the shaking guard. It was a girl, maybe, and hardly old enough for it to matter. He lifted her off her feet in a crushing hug.

  “You are with us.”

  ◆◆◆

  The travelers broke camp at first light. They marched north until noon with all the pace they could manage. They had to escape the Forbidden Plains before dusk. A gap in the mountain wall signaled their escape. No one spoke until all passed through the Gates of Kitay. They rested just north of the natural mountain barrier at this small pass where the gobi hardly separated their world from the Dragons.

  The various chieftains of the party gathered away from their peoples. Mannu, the girl who spoke the night before, was now chieftain of the Dara. Her people decided this in the sleepless twilight hours as they packed for their journey to a new home. Fen wondered if he should ask for the dead captain’s name or let it rot with his abandoned corpse in the Forbidden Plains.

  “Where do we go now?” the new chieftain asked.

  “Where we take you. To our tribes.” Camdzic’s teeth ground behind her thin lips.

  “We go where we wish out here in the homelands,” Fen said.

  “Yes, Fen Enkidu is right. We must honor your freedom even though you risked ours.”

  “They chose life.” Fen rested his hand on Camdzic’s high shoulder. “We must celebrate.”

  “No, we must reach the tribes before the Dara can join them. They moved west with the gentle rains when we left.”

  “Not farther than a seven-day run,” Fen said.

  “Do you think these children can run with us?” Omduro giggled.

  Fen thought to hit
the man again. Instead, he turned to Mannu. She chewed her lip but nodded. Quiet tears streamed down her unwashed face, cutting tracks through ash, dirt, and blood. It would be a long journey.

  “We must,” she said.

  The chieftains turned back to their small band and found them standing at the imagined line of the Gates, as though the hidden demons might surge up to eat them if they stumbled back over the boundary already crossed once that day.

  Unmoving people stood against the southern horizon. More figures appeared. It was a familiar tactic. Each filled a miniscule expanse of blue sky with their dark shapes. Ten Dragons stared back at the tribes from across the expanse.

  “They know we are here,” Omduro said.

  “Yes,” Mannu said, “and they know whose fault it is. That is why we left Utenya to rot.”

  Camdzic turned on the girl, hesitated, and nodded.

  “Smart girl.”

  She whistled a low whooping noise. The party fell into a line for the slow run home. The Dara soon followed. Fen lingered. He waited for his skin to bristle at the watchers as it did when he felt he was being watched or when storm clouds came. It did not. These people only watched. They understood the Dara’s message. He had not known what a gate was before these people came. He looked up and realized he stood alone in the Gates, looking out on the forbidden world ahead of him, wondering what lay in and beneath it.

  No one knew. The Dragons claimed the whole world south of the gobi but what had they built? Nothing, that the Suzerain could tell. Suzerain. A name for the people Fen once thought made up the entire world. It was good to name a thing. This name felt right. Each person was chieftain of their own life. All kneeled only to the paramount king that was the sky. So much was different now.

  His hand found his scar. It did not hurt, not precisely, but neither did it feel the wind that blew through his unkempt hair. It did not writhe beneath Camdzic’s touch. It did nothing. The emptiness he once felt in his legs as a child had made a new home in his body. The scar would never fade. He had failed to protect his tribe and would carry this emptiness forever as a reminder of his failure.