Swarm and Steel, page 25
“The guards don’t give a shite,” she heard someone in the crowd answer Jateko’s question.
A huge man with wide shoulders blocked her approach, and she struggled to shove her way past. Her sun-dried body must weigh even less than she realized as he barely noticed her efforts. She felt like a desiccated corn stalk, papery and brittle, baked clean of colour and life.
Lie down, corpse. Let them bury you.
People edged forward for a better look and Zerfall lost sight of Jateko in the press.
“What are you going to kill me with?” Grausamer asked Jateko. “That rusty little knife?”
Had Jateko drawn a weapon? The Swordsman would gut him in seconds.
A scarred woman clad in sand-caked leathers scowled at Zerfall’s attempt to hobble past and then blanched when she got a peak inside her makeshift cowl.
If Jateko replied, the growing hubbub of the crowd drown it out. She knew that sound; they scented blood and violence.
“I’m a Swordsman,” said Grausamer, his voice projecting. “I kill Swordsmen. Not stinking desert rats. You don’t even have a sw—”
And then someone screamed, a long wailing screech choking off in a wet gut-shredding vomit of retching and sobbing.
Jateko!
Without thought Zerfall reached for knives, drew one, and felt the stump of her left arm bump into the pommel of another.
Stepping forward, she drove her knife into the kidney of the man in front of her. He folded, his knees giving way, and fell backward with a moan which sounded like it was half question. She spun away, drawing the knife free with a practised flick. Her right leg, knee lashed to those god-damned tent poles, skidded out from under her. On her way down she managed to drag the blade through someone’s guts and blood spattered the cobbled street. She landed blind, the cowl falling across her face.
The sound of the crowd changed and she knew this sound too. Terror. There were foxes among the chickens and those foxes had discovered a lion hidden among them. Those scarred murderers, moments ago hungry for the vicarious thrill of blood-letting, crashed into each other in their attempts to flee. Booted feet trampled Zerfall and she felt ribs crack and break. Air hissed from a torn lung in a rush of rot. Someone stomped on her right ankle—whether on purpose, or in a hurry to escape, she had no idea—and the bone snapped like a dry twig. Rolling onto her belly in an attempt to protect her ribs, she lashed out with the knife, slashing tendons and hurting anything within reach.
By the time she wrestled the cowl away and could once again see, the street was empty except for a half dozen bodies, some wounded and moaning, others unconscious or dead. Jateko stood, unharmed and untouched, blinking in confusion. Grausamer lay sprawled at the lad’s feet, guts open wide and red.
“Zerfall?” Jateko asked, when he spotted her. “What happened?”
She tried to roll over and the stump of her left wrist slipped on blood-soaked stone. Cursing, she sheathed her knife and used her functional right arm to push herself over.
“Are you hurt?” Jateko asked, picking his way toward her, stepping over fallen bodies.
She glanced at her right ankle, examined the shattered ruin with detachment. At least it was the same leg. “No.”
Jateko reached her side, gaze darting about as if struggling to understand what had happened. A numb quiet blanketed the street, but there’d be noise enough soon. The guards might not care if Swordsmen cut each other down, but they’d come to investigate this.
“He said it was okay to kill him,” said Jateko.
“In a duel,” said Zerfall.
“What’s the difference? Someone ends up dead either way. Why would they care how it happens?” He gestured helplessly.
She wanted to ask him what the hell he was thinking, but realized she didn’t want to know.
She couldn’t even be angry with Jateko. He was just a boy, stolen from his own world and dropped into hers. It was her fault he was here.
He’ll die here.
“No,” she said, wheezing. Jateko was alive. She’d get him out and send him home.
She remembered him asking—begging—not more than a few minutes ago, to go home. She’d snapped at him, denying him his desire, ignoring his fear. Why had she done that? She took him for granted. Of course he follow her. The boy was—
The boy is in love with me. She saw it in his eyes, in the way he watched while she splinted her shattered knee and the way he looked away, embarrassed, when she noticed his attention. But was it love, or something darker? Worship, perhaps? He hadn’t argued when she said they’d continue forward. Was it because he couldn’t? Did her Gefahrgeist power coerce him even though that hadn’t been her intent?
Am I still a Gefahrgeist? She wasn’t sure. She felt different, thought different, but how much had she really changed?
I am not the woman I was. She could decide who she would be in the future. She was her choices, nothing else. She could be a person who gave up. She could lie here until whatever passed for the law came to collect her remains and disposed of them. Or she could be the kind of person who didn’t abandon her only friend; there was no denying that’s what the boy was.
Are you trying to convince yourself that he needs you, that you are only doing what is best for him?
Jateko crouched at her side, and for a moment she thought he was offering her a hand up. “We might not have much time,” he said. “Which should I eat first?”
Zerfall stared at him, uncomprehending, until he gestured toward Grausamer’s corpse. She drew breath and spoke fast, air hissing from her torn lung. “Liver. Kidney. Brain too difficult.” How much would a Swordsman’s brain be worth anyway?
Jateko nodded and scampered back to Grausamer. He made bloody work of hacking the corpse open, cutting free the kidneys, and stuffing them into his mouth. He chewed as he worked, face set in a comedic expression of deep concentration.
She’d been a fool, planning for the future. The dead had no future. She’d get Jateko home. It would be the last thing she did. To hell with the Täuschung, and Hölle, and Aas. The thought she could bring down the religion and kill the god she created was too much madness.
Zerfall spotted Tod, standing where she left him. The horse continued to stare glumly at the cobbled stones between his front hooves.
“Tod,” she called as loud as her torn lung allowed. “Here.”
The horse wandered over without lifting his head to watch where he was going. When he reached her, she stared up at him, seeing into the maggot swarming canopy of his opened guts. Reaching up she gripped the tent fabric blanketing him and dragged it off, letting it fall to the blood-soaked ground. Then she pulled off the strip of cloth covering her empty sockets. Who was she fooling anyway?
She watched as Jateko thrust his face into the torso of the ravaged corpse and tore chunks of liver free with his teeth. “No time!” she said. “We go now!”
Jateko stood, turning to face her, but stopped, face scrunched as if trying to remember something. Then he flashed her a huge, bloody grin and she found herself staring at what little remained of that gap between his front teeth. Gore dripped from a chin stronger than she recalled.
“Swords,” he said.
Bending, Jateko drew Grausamer’s two swords and turned to face her before once again pausing to think.
“Hurry!” she shouted.
“Brain,” he called back, and then used Grausamer’s sword to hack at the Swordsman. Stooping, he collected the severed head by the hair and rushed to Zerfall’s side. “I’ll eat it later,” he explained.
“Get up there,” Zerfall commanded from the ground, pointing at Tod’s sway spine. Air leaked from her torn lungs almost as fast as she could fill them. “Have to get out. Before they close city gate.”
“Right,” he said, stopping to pick her up.
She shook her head. “Just you. Go back to the desert. I’ll slow them down, give you a chance to escape.”
He stared at her, blinking in confusion. “Without you? No.” Ignoring her wheezed arguments, he collected her, lifting her damaged body into his arms. “We can fix the ankle.” He grinned his not-so-gap-toothed grin. “We’re going to need more karpan poles.”
Jateko hoisted her onto Tod’s back and offered her one of the swords. She showed him her stump. She wanted that sword, god how she wanted to hold a sword again. If she had a proper sword, Abiega never would have— “Need hand to ride,” she said, air rushing from the wound in her chest.
With a shrug Jateko leapt up to sit behind her, one arm slipping around her waist, the other awkwardly clutching Grausamer’s head and two swords. She almost suggested he should ride in front, but the Basamortuan had no idea how to ride a horse, and maybe she kind of liked what little she felt of his arms. There was a new strength there.
“Go,” she told Tod, and the horse sauntered forward, his rear hip grinding and clicking. “Faster.”
Tod ignored her.
JATEKO GRINNED HAPPILY OVER Zerfall’s shoulder as Tod clomped down the street. He’d done it. He’d killed the Greatest Swordsman in all Geld and eaten of his flesh. He felt stronger already, faster, more balanced. It took a day or more before he heard Gogoko’s voice in his head and felt the difference in his body. With Abiega the change took place in less than a day. Did the changes happen faster the more he devoured? He couldn’t decide if that was terrifying or exciting. What skills, what secrets will I find in the man’s brain?
What kind of person was Grausamer? Gogoko asked. Who else will join us in here?
He’d find out soon enough. He wished he had more time. He hadn’t even got to taste the heart. What he gobbled down barely took the edge off his bottomless hunger.
You can’t be hungry already, said Gogoko. Something is wrong. This isn’t right.
A tremor of fear, a gnawing doubt, turned his hunger sour. He remembered Jakintua’s stories, how the tribesmen would band together to hunt and kill the evil creatures who ate men.
That’s not me.
We need to leave, Gogoko and Abiega said together.
The streets were empty. No one came out to challenge them. Maybe it really was okay to kill people in the city-states. Zerfall seemed to think he’d done something wrong—he saw it in her expression.
Maybe we should go back so I can finish—
Are you insane? Never mind, stupid question. Abiega sounded different, scared.
What has you so freaked out? Jateko asked.
For a hundred generations the sorgin of the Etsaiaren tribe have commanded us warriors to gather the undying in Santu Itsasoa, the Sea of Souls. That’s why we brought Zerfall there. And then you—Abiega stopped.
I what?
You came looking for her.
So?
Pay attention, said Abiega. Here come the warriors.
Jateko wanted to ask what caused this fearless man to shiver in terror. He wanted to mock Abiega, but the Etsaiaren warrior was right: Ahead, dozens of hiria ero, men and women armed and armoured in more steel than a thousand Basamortuan would see in a thousand lifetimes, stood waiting.
“We charge,” hissed Zerfall over her shoulder. “Break through.”
“No,” said Jateko, placing a hand on her shoulder as if to hold her back. “They haven’t drawn weapons.”
“Good.”
“No. Wait.”
Tod slowed his already sedate pace and stopped a dozen strides from the gathered warriors. Zerfall cursed and dug a knee into his side. He ignored her.
Jateko slid from Tod’s back and stood, still clutching two swords and a severed head, waiting.
Really? muttered Abiega. You’re going to fight while carrying all that?
Dropping one of the swords, he transferred Grausamer’s head to his free hand. “Is that better?”
Abiega ignored the question.
The city-states warriors retreated a step, hands twitching toward weapons but stopping short, and for a brief instant Jateko imagined what they saw. Zerfall was dead and had clearly been dead for a long time. Jateko, splashed in blood from his eyebrows to his knees, stood comfortably, a head dangled in one fist while a sword hung loose in the other. Even Tod, gutted and empty, tattered flesh hanging in ropey threads, regarded the gathering with baleful intent.
What a sight we must make, eh, Abiega?
Abiega didn’t answer and Jateko shrugged, annoyed.
One of the hiria ero warriors stepped forward, a woman built like the garrison wall and sheathed in more armour than Jateko thought he could carry. “Wendigast,” she said, “return to the desert.”
Wendigast? Jateko felt Abiega’s confused shrug. He thought about asking, but instead said, “Okay.”
The woman blinked, glancing around, and gnawed on her lower lip like maybe she thought to devour herself before he got the chance. “We have dozens of archers on the rooftops,” she said. “We will bring you down.” Her voice quivered, betraying fear.
“Okay,” said Jateko, looking around and seeing no archers. “We’ll leave.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Never to return?” she asked, as if unbelieving.
“We’re never coming back here,” he said with feeling. “I promise.”
Jateko heard Zerfall’s wheezing intake of breath. “Wendigast sated,” she said. “Let us leave. Before hunger. Returns.”
He was still damned hungry but decided not to correct her.
The woman nodded and both groups stood motionless, watching and waiting.
“You’re going to have to move,” Jateko said to the crowd. “You’re blocking the street.”
THEY RODE, GRIND, CLICK, grind, click, Tod moving ever slower, never once lifting his head to take in his surroundings. Even the long grasses, greener than anything Jateko had ever seen in his life, couldn’t catch the horse’s attention.
Why would they? asked Abiega. He’s dead.
So you’re talking to me again?
Abiega didn’t answer.
“Do you understand why they let us go?” Jateko asked Zerfall.
“Thought you were Wendigast.” She glanced over her shoulder, seeing his look of confusion. She took quick sips of breath between words. Sitting this close he heard the air escaping her torn lungs. “Crazy people. Delusional. Become monsters.”
“What kind of monsters?”
“Dire situations. Starvation. People driven to cannibalism. Sometimes sanity torn by. Horrendous things they’ve done. Wendigast is result.”
Am I a monster? Jateko was all too aware of Abiega’s meaningful silence. “Am I a Wendigast?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “Supposed to appear. Like huge demons. Made of human flesh. And bone. Supposed to stink. Like death.” She shrugged. “I can’t smell anything. You look human enough.”
Jateko thought about the pleasure and strength he felt rushing through his flesh when he buried his face in Grausamer’s sundered guts. How could such pure joy be evil? He remembered the taste of hot blood and his mouth watered. He wanted to crack the Swordsman’s skull, still hanging from its hair in Jateko’s fist, and drink up all he was. “Am I a monster?”
“If you are. I am too,” she said. “I helped you.”
Zerfall, evil? He couldn’t believe that. She saved my life when Gogoko and Dedikatu were going to kill me.
You murdered my little brother, said Gogoko, voice tight with rage.
But why? asked Abiega, ignoring Gogoko. Why did she save your life?
Jateko turned to look back at the setting sun. He frowned in confusion and looked left to see the distant peaks of the Kälte Mountains, faded and purple with mist. “Did we get turned around?”
“Taking you home.”
“Home? Stop.”
Tod ignored Jateko.
“This was mistake,” wheezed Zerfall. “Selfish. Sorry. Deserve better.”
“Deserve better?” Does she mean me?
You know what you deserve, said Gogoko.
Jateko dropped the swords and Grausamer’s head to the ground and slid off the horse to stand waiting, arms crossed. When Zerfall touched the beast’s shoulder he stopped instantly.
“You asked me to take you home,” she said, rushing the words. “I said no.” Once again she paused to sip air between each sentence, her leaking lung a continual whisper under her words. “That was selfish. Wrong. You should go home. Don’t belong in the city-states. I’m sorry.”
Empty sockets stared at Jateko, waiting. Go back to the desert? No. She still needs me.
“I killed Gogoko,” he said. “I ate him. My tribe would kill me.”
“No one knows,” said Zerfall, pleading.
“I know. And I can’t go back.”
“Why not?”
Should he tell her the truth? Should he tell this corpse he loved her and she needed him and as long as she needed him he’d never leave her? Should he tell her he was going to find some way to bring her back to life? It sounded like the wishful thinking of a juvenile moron. Even if it was true. “I’ve changed,” he said instead.
“That’s not all bad.”
“And it’s not all good.” Jateko shrugged, helplessly. “I can’t stop.”
“Stop what?” Zerfall asked, eyebrows crinkling over gaping pits.
“Eating.” Now he said it aloud, he realized it was as a much a reason for her not to bring him along. Zerfall was a smart woman, far smarter than he. She had to understand the danger he presented.
Zerfall nodded her understanding, gnawed on her lower lip, and then spat out a sliver of rotten skin with a silent snarl. A shred of dark flesh hung from the lip, exposing her stained lower teeth and blackened gums. Her flesh, dry and gaunt when they first met, now hung slack and frayed, peeling. It was only a matter of time before it sloughed away to show the gristle and bone beneath. She was, Jateko finally realized, hideously ugly. She’s been dead a long time. Her time in the desert mummified her, preserving her somewhat from the ravages of rot. But now, here in the rolling greenery of the city-states, the damp air would have its way with her dead flesh.
I don’t care.
You’re a fool, said Abiega. You’ll never bring her back to life. She’ll never be a beautiful woman you can hold and love.
