by Tom Lloyd
The angel had fought for days amid mud and gore, had split the sky with spears of light and ridden stormclouds to face fell beings so numerous they darkened the sky. It knew the song of violence echoing deep in its bones, but had never experienced true mortal fear. Now, in this place, it was not afraid – was not threatened even – but it tasted mortality as the God’s touch lessened from its shoulder and it glimpsed the world through the eyes of its companions.
‘What about that one?’ Shell demanded, pointing past the angel at the lanterns of a tavern off to the left.
It looked and saw a cold emptiness there, a symptom of this borderland place. Some part of the angel urged it to draw its sword, to burn that empty shell of a building and scour it clean, but it had accepted the lead of Moss and he just snorted as he carried on walking.
‘Not for the likes of us, that place.’
‘Why not?’ Shell demanded, fatigue making her impatient. ‘It’s quiet, that’s got to be a good start.’
‘Sometimes mebbe, but not in this case.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘It is a place of the lost,’ the angel said. ‘He is right, we have no place there.’
‘The lost?’
Moss cackled and stopped. ‘Aye – we’re on a borderland; you see such things from time to time. That tavern ain’t really there. Look again.’
Shell did so, for a moment squinting at the tavern in incomprehension before she suddenly jerked back and her mouth fell open. ‘Shitting gods of the dark! They’re dead!’
‘Hah, aye. The dead tend to be quieter’n most, but that don’t mean you want to stay in such a place. The chill will take you.’
The angel watched grey figures walking in and out of the tavern. It could see the guttered building underneath the illusion, but the ghosts of those who’d died here demanded its attention and the illusion continued to impose itself. A cloud of sorrow filled the air around the spectral tavern, so palpable the angel could have reached out to such sadness, drawn its sword and parted the mist of misery should it have wished. But like mist, it could only be burned away. To cut it would do nothing. The God’s fire was what it needed, but it was not the angel’s mission and it would not act. No doubt one of its lesser brethren would be sent in time, but until then the quiet vigil of silent grey figures would linger there, on the frayed fringe of the God’s power.
‘Come on, this way,’ Moss urged, pointing down the street where the warmth of lamps shone on the streets. Night had fallen swiftly here, the spreading gloom of dusk’s flock only adding to the cold stain in the sky.
They led their horses towards the centre of the town where a handful of sickly trees presided over a square. Taverns spilled out onto the packed dirt, tendrils of ramshackle tables reaching towards a bank of rough brick-sided grills in the centre. The angel saw a brief flurry of flames rise up in the dark as something was draped across the grill and flavours filled the air. Clumps of figures began to drift that way from the stone tables and benches clustered around each tree, drawn by the scents of blackening meat and spices.
Moss reached the edge of the square and looked around, assessing the various taverns before turning left and leading his horse into the alley behind one where a wide yard gate lay open. A huge dog with tufts of grey-black fur lifted its head to sleepily regard him, but made no effort to move even as a smaller pair with bright eyes and pricked-up ears bounced down a set of steps. Each one barked a brief challenge, then just stood watching Moss as the soldier returned the scrutiny a while.
Seemingly giving up on the staring contest, Moss shook his head and continued toward the stable just as the door opened and a tall youth emerged. The dogs watched him go until the stablehand spoke a greeting, then they hopped back up the steps with a self-important waddle and lay down side by side in the doorway, the mass of their grey fur seeming to merge into one amorphous creature in the gloom.
‘Altris?’ Moss called. ‘Venein?’
‘Ah, Venein!’ the youth said, nodding vigorously. ‘I speak little. You want room?’
‘And food.’
‘We have.’ He pointed towards a doorway. ‘Go speak Mistress Galashent. I take horse.’
Moss nodded and pulled his saddlebags from Horse, draping them over one shoulder while the double sheath for his bow and axe went over the other. Shell coaxed her mule over too and removed her pack so the stablehand could take both sets of reins. The youth looked first at the angel then Lichen, pausing only a moment on the strange appearance of each before he shrugged and led the beasts away.
Moss went to the door and put a hand on the latch before pausing and looking back at his comrades. ‘Don’t suppose anyone’s got an “angel walks into a bar” joke?’
Shell only snorted at the man while Lichen, still cradling his arm, looked around as though trying to work out if Moss was talking to him. The angel did nothing.
‘No? Not even you, Ice?’
‘Humour does not feature greatly in the struggle against the God’s enemies,’ the angel said. ‘I know no jokes.’
‘Probably where you’re going wrong then,’ Moss sniffed, and yanked the door open.
‘We are always victorious in the struggle,’ the angel said, puzzled as Moss disappeared through the door. ‘Where do you think I have gone wrong?’
‘He doesn’t,’ Shell sighed. ‘He just couldn’t think of a better reply.’
She followed Moss inside and Lichen shuffled along behind her, leaving the angel staring at the open door by itself. In its mind, the angel relived its last confrontation with the God’s enemies. There had been two of them; one monstrous and huge, the other a pale, darting wisp of smoke and rage. It could find no way it had gone wrong as it struck each down, and eventually it followed Lichen inside to a half-full barroom where Moss was already lounged over the narrow bar, smiling at a woman dressed in green velvet.
‘You can bat yer eyes at me much as you like, it’s still mutton barley soup or nothing,’ the woman said to Moss as the angel entered.
Her eyes widened when she saw it, moving with practiced care through the narrow doorway beside a staircase that wound around and up behind the bar. Mistress Galashent was a striking woman of middle years with tiny crinkled lines around her eyes and seams of grey in her hair.
As she turned her head, the angel saw a red and blistered streak of skin running up the side of her head and its nose filled with the scent of acrid ashes. This was a woman who had been across the great divide and, like Shell, marked by one of the denizens that haunted the dead mountains beyond it. Unlike Shell, Mistress Galashent had been attacked by one or, more likely, been near someone who had. The angel heard the leathery whipcrack of its blow and the woman’s screams of pain, then it blinked and the sounds receded.
‘How about for one o’ the God’s most loyal servants?’ Moss replied, undaunted by her stern tone.
‘You brought a pissing angel into my tavern?’ she breathed.
‘That one? Nah – been travelling with it for a few days and it’s never pissed once in that time, not that I saw anyway.’
The landlady produced a dagger from beneath the bar with such speed that Moss recoiled in surprise, as though she’d conjured the weapon from thin air. ‘Being funny ain’t your strong suit, soldier boy. Next time you try it I’ll pluck your eye out.’
Shell pushed her way forward before Moss could reply, shoving the man back and out of the way. ‘Sorry about him. Is the angel a problem?’
‘For me, no. For those who’d kill their own mothers for an angel feather cloak? Not so much a problem as an opportunity.’
‘Any of them in here?’
‘One or two.’ She nodded over Shell’s right shoulder. ‘The couple over there for starters. They’ve been in their cups a while. Makes ’em horny so they’ve not noticed it yet, but it’s only a matter o’ time.’
Shell nodded and turned the other way, inspecting the tables on the opposite side of the room. The angel looked where Mistress
Galashent had indicated and blinked in surprise at the pair of heavyset, scarred mercenaries in the darkest corner, locked in a passionate embrace. Their hands frantically tugged at each other’s clothing and slipped within folds of cloth. The angel watched, fascinated, until Shell prodded it on the shoulder and pointed towards a table.
‘Now’s not the time to start judging folk for their sins.’
The angel glanced at the empty table she was directing it towards. ‘Their sins are grievous – judgement is the God’s own and I am its vessel.’
‘Leave ’em be. Can’t blame a man for who he loves now,’ Moss joined, resting his chin on Shell’s shoulder until she shrugged him off with an angry hiss.
‘Love is no sin,’ the angel said, puzzled yet again. ‘But why do you defend slavery and murder?’
‘Eh?’
‘Those are chief among their sins - I see it in the taint of their skin.’
Moss hesitated and glanced back at the two men who continued oblivious. ‘Oh.’
‘Mortal life is of the God, both the blessing and the curse. You cannot own another for they are already owned by the God, body and soul, nor can you wilfully steal away that blessed life without judgement falling upon you.’
‘So the whole two cocks thing ain’t a problem?’ Moss asked after a long pause.
‘Why should that offend the God? Their bodies are of the God, the pleasures of the flesh are of the God.’
‘Huh.’ Moss glanced back again. ‘Well that’s an image I never expected to get in my brain. I guess if you say so.’
‘I do.’
‘I’ll go fetch the beers then.’
The angel allowed Shell to guide it to a large square table. Under her urging it sat with its back to the wall, Shell on one side and Lichen the other, while Moss soon filled the chair opposite. He brought three mugs of beer with him and settled into his seat with a satisfied smile. After his first taste the soldier carefully arranged his belongings so the axe with “Wit” inscribed on the blade lay flat on the table.
‘Do you expect trouble?’ the angel asked him.
‘Always best to make it clear you’re ready for it.’
‘But your back is to them.’
He nodded. ‘Reckon one of you’ll give me warning enough,’ Moss said, ‘and I don’t want a table penning me in if it kicks off.’ He gestured towards the angel with his beer. ‘Doubt a table will be so much of a hindrance for you though, eh?’
‘I am not so weakened.’
Moss smiled and took a large swing of beer. ‘Cheers then!’ he added with a belch.
The angel watched Shell grunt and drink herself, while Lichen just stared miserably at the beer. The thin man eventually sipped at the drink and set it back down, returning his attention to the bandage on his arm.
‘Still hurting?’ Shell asked.
‘It – I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know?’
‘Both hurts and doesn’t; feels cold like it’s not there too. Don’t they say that when folk lose a limb they can feel the ghost of it?’ Tentatively, he prodded the pale fingers of his injured arm. The fingers remained still as though they were indeed dead flesh. ‘It’ll be better when we cross the bridge?’
Moss and Shell exchanged a look. Shell coughed, uncomfortable. ‘Some things’ll be better, sure.’
‘My arm?’
‘The mist is in your flesh, stealing the life from it,’ the angel said as Shell nodded. ‘Left untreated, it will steal the life from your body entirely.’
‘But crossing the bridge’ll help?’
‘The mist will lie dormant once you are over the great divide. Your body will have time to recover and drive it out. It will take a half-dozen days by normal reckoning, but it will heal.’
Lichen sagged with relief, the fear and tension draining from his body.
‘That’s not to say it’s a good idea you come,’ Shell continued after a pause. ‘In fact – you shouldn’t. It’d be madness.’ She scowled. ‘It’s bloody madness I’m going, but doesn’t look like I’ve got much choice in the matter. You do.’
‘But I’ll die if I don’t.’
She shook her head. ‘There’s another way, a better way. Ice could cut your arm off, cauterise the wound and we leave you here to recover.’
‘Cut my arm off?’ Lichen gasped. ‘That’s better?’
‘Than risking death out there? Could be, aye.’
‘What’s out there?’
Moss shook his head. ‘Nothing alive, ‘cept a few slavers and the like using the place as a route far from any authority.’
‘But it’s dangerous?’
‘Aye – what’s out there might not be alive in any true sense, but it’s not altogether dead either. I heard tale o’ dead gods in the sky, herds of things more mindless and monstrous than any diaspore—’
He was cut off by Shell slamming her drink down on the table. ‘But you’ve never been out there,’ she said quietly, ‘you’ve just heard tales.’
‘Ain’t that enough?’
She paused. ‘I suppose so, but some of us didn’t get so lucky. You shouldn’t be coming either. No idea how I got out of the place, but I can’t have been far from the bridge by the time the slavers who’d taken me all got killed.’
‘What killed them?’ Lichen asked breathlessly.
‘The Voiceless,’ the angel said. ‘A being that once walked this world. It is what we seek.’
‘A fallen angel?’
‘No. Something else. Once a servant of the God, but neither mortal nor angel.’
‘And when you find it?’
Shell and Moss both sat up at that point, having both asked that question and received no answer.
‘I do not know,’ the angel said eventually. ‘The future is dark to me.’
‘Wait, what? Are you trying to kill it? Give it a message? What? You must know why you’re looking for it!’
‘I do not. I know I must find it, that is all.’
Lichen coughed as the silence that followed got too much for him. ‘And Shell is how you’ll find it?’
‘She is marked by it,’ the angel said, pointing to the blackened hand prints on her wrists. ‘She bears its mark and that will lead us through the dead lands.’
‘Why did it save you from the slavers?’
‘I didn’t stop to ask.’
Before anyone could speak again there came a splutter from across the room. ‘There’s a fucking angel!’ yelled a gravelly voice, followed by the scrape of chairs on the floor.
Moss bared his teeth in a savage grin and stood, lifting his great axe off the table. ‘And it’s got a bloody great sword!’ he roared back. ‘One that’ll leave you a charred lump if you take the time to deal with me. And if you ignore me, your empty skull will feel the full weight o’ my wit here. So sit the fuck back down and get back to jerking each other off, understand?’
He stood for a moment, glaring at the two mercenaries. The angel regarded the room and judged it appropriate to underline Moss’s words. It spread its wings as best it could, the tips of its feathers brushing the walls on either flank. With a thought the sword behind its head began to glow and smoke, though its hands hadn’t yet touched it. The mercenaries sat back down just as the landlady arrived with two more, unasked for, beers and the rest of the evening passed in relative quiet.
BY GRAINY MORNING light they watched the bridge unveil, summoned from the emptiness of the great divide by the dragons of dawn. A great cloud of dust whipped up around them as the distant crack of wings swept across the sky to rend the night sky once more. The thunder of their passing was dulled here on the borderland, a far rumble that shivered through the air and brushed the hairs on Shell’s neck.
The bridge was ancient and pitted, a structure of dust-stained black stone quite unlike the rough, fleeting town that loitered nearby. Directly before them was the pointed corner of a diamond-shaped block where a strange, stone statue glared down at those approaching. Perched like a gargoyle on
a roof made of huge, rough-cut slabs of pale slate, the monster was like nothing Shell had seen or heard of before. Its feathered wings were twice the size of Ice’s, extended crookedly down while one set of clawed legs gripped its ledge and another rose up from its back to slash at the sky. Four great teeth protruded down from a beak-like muzzle, a spray of spines and feathers running from the crest of its head down to the double-blade tip of its tail.
The rest of the bridge bore no decoration, certainly not after millennia of rain and wind. Its walls were so battered there might once have been grand friezes there, or carved poetry or even some indication of the bridge’s maker, Shell realised. But no longer; sheets of stone had slipped and shattered as rain and cold did its work, edges smoothed over by the scoring of wind. Here and there, she fancied she could make out curves and loops that might once have been language, but they were just as likely inscribed by time’s own hand.
Worn, chipped steps led up the nearer of the sides into a space of blank flagstones, the wind raging through great double arches on each flank. The further two faces of the diamond led straight onto a level stone floor that headed out across the great divide. They curved around to meet forty yards beyond the far point and run in parallel for several hundred yards before coming to another block, near-identical to the former. That stood on a column, but what the column itself rested on was hidden from Shell’s view and she found herself not keen to find out once she did get onto the bridge.
‘We going to meet any o’ those?’ Moss asked, pointing up to the stone monster regarding them.
‘They are all dead,’ Ice replied. ‘Dead or gone far from this world.’
‘Killed by?’
Ice turned to give Moss a look Shell couldn’t read. ‘By angels and man. There are adversaries of the God in every age and the angels lead each holy war against them.’
‘Men fought them?’
‘Mortals must fight for the God – what purpose are such struggles if mortal life is sheltered from that which defines it?’
‘Oh, sure. My point exactly,’ Moss muttered and started off towards one set of steps before anyone had the chance to reply.