Swarm and Steel, page 33
Pharisäer glanced at the tattooed hand. It remained unchanged, the eye closed. Its opening had probably been some minor hallucination of Hölle’s.
Why isn’t it rotting? The thought left a sour feeling in her gut.
“It’s just me,” she said to the empty room. “Me, Zerfall.”
She frowned, confused.
“I am Zerfall.”
It felt wrong. Empty.
“I am Zerfall Seele,” she tried again. It wasn’t true. “Shite,” she swore. Zerfall was still alive.
Maybe Aas hadn’t found her yet. Yes, she decided, that has to be it. Soon Aas would find and kill Zerfall. She licked her lips, examining the corpse at her feet. Soon.
A dark worm of doubt curled cold in Pharisäer’s heart.
TWENTY
All civilization is built on fear.
—Versklaver Denker, Gefahrgeist Philosopher
EAT MY BRAIN? WHAT a strange threat. It must have cultural connotations of which Aas was unaware. It was difficult to even take seriously.
Aas’ hand ached and throbbed. Twisting had mostly closed the wound, but the sodden bandage still leaked blood.
He examined the young man—Basamortuan, he guessed, judging from the dark mahogany of his skin and the tattered and burnt remnants of what looked like tent fabric. The youth, broad shouldered and slim hipped, was bald except for a hint of dark stubble. He brandished a matched pair of swords, looking all too comfortable with their weight. Did the desert tribals have roaming Swordsmen like the city-states? Aas didn’t think so. It was odd to see one with a proper sword, never mind a matched pair of such quality. Usually they were armed with shoddy and rusting weapons or spears of bone and wood.
“Do I know you?” Aas asked.
The handsome warrior—and he could be nothing else for his balance was perfect, his poise ready to move in any direction—grinned straight white teeth. “No. But I will know you.”
I will know you? What a strange thing to say.
I don’t have time for this. Now he’d finally decided to leave Geld, the urge to spread his wings and fly drove him to distraction. “Begone,” said Aas.
The man might be a warrior, but Aas was a killer, an assassin. He had more tricks—knives and poisons, garrottes and hooks—up his sleeves than this barbaric youth could imagine. The Basamortuan were fierce warriors, but they fought without finesse, relying on brawn and speed rather than skill.
“What happened to your hand?” the young man asked, noticing the blood leaking from Aas’ makeshift bandage.
“I chopped off my finger.”
The Basamortuan accepted this without question, nodding as if this were normal behaviour.
“Don’t do this,” a voice wheezed, and with a start Aas realized another figure stood partially concealed behind the Basamortuan warrior. “We should leave.”
That voice. Weak and thin as it was, Aas recognized it. “Zerfall?” Excitement and fear warred for supremacy. Had she returned to reclaim her religion? Would she kill everyone who wronged her, or would she crush his will with her Gefahrgeist power and once again make him hers?
Aas leaned to look past the Basamortuan. She looked near dead last time he saw her, but she’d progressed far beyond that. She stood lilting to one side, one foot missing, the ankle ending in a ragged stump of splintered bone. The knee of that leg had been shattered and bound to a few sticks to keep it straight. Where her torso showed through the tattered remains of her shirt he saw what looked to have been patches of ratty horse flesh sewn to her. Aas understood immediately: She’d been repaired many times. Calling her a corpse would have been kind.
When she stood staring, dead face unreadable, he knew she was helpless. The old Zerfall would have crushed him already, wouldn’t have given him a moment to think or act. I could keep her. He could study her. Cotardists were supposed to die when the rot reached their heart, weren’t they? That’s what he always heard. Oh, the mysteries to explore! Or she could be a trophy. A defenseless Zerfall; the thought intoxicated.
“We aren’t leaving,” the Basamortuan said over his shoulder, speaking to Zerfall.
Is she not here of her own free will? Had the Basamortuan somehow taken advantage of her in her weakened state? I can save her! Drawing a long black condor-fletched arrow from his quiver, Aas laughed aloud, spinning it in his fingers. He’d escape the Täuschung and their hell and get the woman of his dreams. Once he rescued Zerfall from this savage she’d see his worth. She’ll finally love me. Gods he wanted that more than anything. Looking at her rotting corpse it was like nothing had changed, like she never left. Somehow he’d make her a new body. Could he make a good enough puppet, and if he did could he move her soul? Belief shapes reality. Somehow somewhere it would be possible. She’ll be mine. Forever.
The Basamortuan stood waiting, swords at the ready.
Aas approached.
{That isn’t right. That’s the stance of a city-states Swordsman.}
JATEKO GRINNED AT THE scrawny man. Aas was not at all what he expected; the man looked like a plucked chicken, all puckered skin and hanging wattles.
“That’s right,” he said. “I—you didn’t speak.”
Aas said nothing, sauntering forward, an arrow turning in a languid spin in the fingers of his unhurt hand. He didn’t look at all like a man about to fight for his life.
“Wouldn’t you rather use that sword?” Jateko asked, nodding at the plain blade hanging at the man’s side.
“No thanks,” answered Aas, the arrow continuing its lazy rotation. He made no attempt to retrieve the bow slug over his back.
He doesn’t want to use Blutblüte? Why not?
He’s an assassin, said Grausamer, not a Swordsman.
Oh, said Abiega, decided to be useful, have you?
Some goat-shagger ate my brain, snarled Grausamer. Sorry if I needed some time to get used to the idea.
I heard Aas’ thoughts, said Jateko, but no one else seemed to care.
In a sword fight, said Grausamer, I’d slaughter this man.
“Good,” said Jateko, receiving an odd look from Aas.
{Who is he talking too?}
This is not a sword fight, added Grausamer. That arrow is poisoned.
Jateko glanced at the arrow and, sure enough, the obsidian tip was coated in something dark.
The assassin noticed his attention. “Düster venom. Comes from a—”
“Snake. I’m familiar with them,” said Jateko, circling to keep the assassin at distance. “Taste awful.”
{So he is Basamortuan. That stance …}
Since no one else seemed to think hearing the assassin’s thoughts was odd, Jateko decided to accept it and move on. “I ate a Swordsman,” he said, explaining.
“Oh.” The assassin changed stances, darting forward.
Jateko danced back, staying well clear of the poisoned arrow.
Why are you telling him this? asked Abiega
Maybe I can scare him, answered Jateko. Frightened people make mistakes.
He seems terrified, muttered Gogoko,
“Wendigast?” asked Aas, frowning. “No. You aren’t manifesting as demonic.”
Jateko feinted with one sword to draw out the assassin’s defence and attacked with the second. He made the attack loose and sloppy, at half the speed he was capable of.
The assassin avoided it easily and shot him a look of disgust.
I thought you were trying to scare him, said Gogoko.
And I thought we decided that wouldn’t work, answered Jateko.
“I don’t understand your city-states classifications of Geisteskranken,” Jateko said, again circling. “Aren’t all Geisteskranken really Wahnist? Don’t they all suffer false beliefs? You label things thinking it means you understand them.”
Hey, said Abiega, that’s my line.
The assassin halted. He bit his lip in thought and said, “There are differences. Nuances.”
“I don’t fit the Wendigast classification at all,” pointed out Jateko, changing directions. “So am I Wahnist, or Halluzin? Are the strengths and skills I gain from eating my victims manifest hallucinations?”
The assassin’s attention wandered as he frowned in thought. “Does everyone in your tribe—”
Jateko attacked, stabbing and slashing in a lightning dance of singing steel. Aas retreated, ducking most attacks and batting aside others with the flat of his empty hand. Jateko pressed forward, driving himself faster until his twin swords screamed a clear note of savagery and still Aas avoided his attacks. When he let up, the assassin was breathing heavily and nodding in appreciation.
“Which Swordsman did you eat?” Aas asked.
“Grausamer Schlächter,” said Jateko. “He claims to have been quite good.”
“He was,” agreed Aas between breaths. “The best in Geld. Maybe the Greatest Swordsman in the World.”
See, said Grausamer petulantly, I told you I was great.
Aas examined Jateko through slitted eyes as he once again circled away. “You aren’t breathing hard.”
Jateko shrugged non-committally. “I devour more than their skills.”
{That should do it.} “I think I’ve stalled for long enough.” said Aas, grinning and looking relaxed.
“I—what?” Jateko’s knees wobbled under him.
AAS LIFTED THE ARROW and raised an eyebrow as a thin stream of red blood dripped from the obsidian tip. “I cut you.”
“Really?” The young Basamortuan took a moment to search himself before finding the cut, a deep scratch, along one forearm. “That? It’s nothing.”
{Like all Swordsmen, he’s none too bright.} “Remember the Düster venom?”
Jateko blinked and then laughed. “I was so excited about killing you, I forgot.”
{It should be reaching his organs right about now.}
The desert warrior crumpled to the cobbled road, the beautifully matched swords skittering on stone. “Hardly seems fair,” he growled through clenched teeth.
Aas approached, kicking away the young warrior’s swords. {Muscles should begin seizing.} “Did you really kill and eat Grausamer?”
The Basamortuan’s limbs shivered in tight paroxysms and he curled into a foetal ball, whimpering. “Yes.”
“Good. I lost money when he killed Verlierer last year.”
“He says sorry,” hissed the warrior.
“That’s unlikely. He was a prick.” {He should be paralysed already.}
The young warrior’s body stiffened, and Aas heard the creak of bone and tendon. “That …” The youth managed to gesture by moving his head the barest of a nod. “… Blutblüte?”
Aas nodded. Leaving it sheathed had been a wise choice; he never could have defeated Grausamer in a sword fight. “Yes. It was hers,” he said, glancing at Zerfall. {Once I’ve made you whole again I’ll return it to you.} He loved her so much it hurt. Having her this close clenched his guts like an iron fist. He couldn’t breathe. Everything he always wanted stood but a few strides away. Finally, she needed him! Everything would be different now.
Zerfall watched him with empty sockets, her dead face unreadable.
“I’ll take you away from here,” Aas said. “I can make you whole again,” he promised.
Her failure to react—either with appreciation or scorn, and he was more familiar receiving the latter from Zerfall—distracted him. {I love you. I always have.} It didn’t matter that he’d had no choice. Things were different now, somehow he knew it.
Aas knelt by the Basamortuan’s side, preparing to finish the youth with a thrust of the poisoned arrow. “He’s carrion, he just doesn’t know it yet.” {I know you need me. Need is love, I see that now. Before it was always just me needing you, but now …}
“Aas,” Zerfall croaked.
He looked up, met those dark sockets. “Just one moment—”
JATEKO TORE BLUTBLÜTE FROM its scabbard and rammed the sword up through the assassin’s guts and into his chest, twisting and wrenching the blade to cause maximum damage. Aas gurgled and coughed a great gout of blood over the cobbled street. Jateko shoved him aside and pushed himself into a sitting position with much groaning and grunting.
{Not possible. Düster venom.}
“Mom used to make Düster soup. I had to collect the vicious bastards. I’ve been bitten hundreds of times. I may have developed a slight resistance.”
{Not … possible.} The assassin’s thoughts were fading.
“And I ate over a dozen people,” said Jateko. “It would take twelve times the usual dosage to kill me. I felt pretty bad for a moment, but started healing immediately.”
The assassin’s eyes slid closed. {Wendigast? It can’t … work like that … never heard of …} Even now, as he lay dying, the man struggled to understand.
“I believe it does. I know it does.” Jateko appreciated the assassin’s curiosity. He looked forward to possessing it. “But I don’t think I’m Wendigast.”
{Must get out.}
“I think I was so naïve I was capable of convincing myself of all manner of insanity. That’s why I question your civilized classifications. You assume insanity has to fit nice neat labels, but surely that’s crazy!”
{Get to …}
“Labelling something doesn’t mean you understand it. In fact, I think it stops you from further questioning. Hello?”
The assassin lay motionless. No breath moved his chest, no pulse throbbed through the veins in his neck.
Jateko stood. “It’s a good thing I heard what he was thinking. I wasn’t sure what the symptoms of Düster poisoning were. Couldn’t remember the order. I think if—what the hells?”
Aas’ chest moved like something sought to claw its way free.
AAS LAY ON HIS back, watching the Basamortuan youth through fading eyes. The world grew dark, distant. The pain in his gut, the vicious rape of his internal organs, dragged him down, sank him in darkness. Drowned him in waves of agony. The cocky little bastard had murdered him.
How had he done it? How had the Düster venom not killed him?
The young warrior babbled, perhaps in response to Aas’ own thoughts. He couldn’t be sure. The man was too far away and getting farther with every failing beat of Aas’ dying heart. And they were just words. Words didn’t matter. Not now.
Swarm.
Oh gods no. All hells and shite. He believed in Swarm, absolutely.
If only Hexenwerk was the escape he needed it to be. How had that salbei been able to ignore the pull of his flesh body and move his soul into a lousy puppet? Was it the salbei’s life of abstinence that made it possible, was it living an entire life in abject misery? What if Zerfall and Hölle were right and the key to everything was suffering. He’d laugh, if he could. At best he managed a bubbling cough of blood.
How many times had he been on the other side of this violent equation, standing over his victim, watching the eyes as the spark of spirit went to whatever Afterdeath awaited? How many souls had he sent to Swarm?
He’d know soon enough. They’d be there, waiting.
Aas remembered standing in the Basamortuan desert, watching Zerfall writhe around the poisoned arrow he left in her gut. Gods how he drank in that moment, gloried in her pain.
A wet sob—a bloody whine of fear—escaped his lips. He felt emptied, like a slashed wineskin, its contents splashed about the stones of the Verzweiflung courtyard. He remembered watching his father gut chickens in the cellar, their innards spattering about his feet. Is that what he looked like, a gutted chicken?
No, a condor.
Could he twist? Aas tried, struggled to find that place inside, that black core that hated who and what he was; that part of him wanting nothing more than to shed his humanity like a scorpion shedding its exoskeleton. He should have stayed in that cellar, died there. Eating the rotting corpse of his father, had been wrong. Evil. He deserved this.
That very same part which hated him, that which allowed him to twist, wanted him to die.
Escaping that pain would be a blessing.
Escaping.
Aas struggled to bring his scattered thoughts together, to focus. The salbei of the Ausgebrochene tribe, had he been escaping his body? Is that why he could leave it behind when Aas remained rooted in flesh? Had a lifetime of physical and mental abuse and suffering allowed the salbei to desire escape from his own flesh more than his soul wanted to remain there?
{Must get out.}
Aas reached for the Hexenwerk with his thoughts and found the puppet, an empty shell. His body, a failing meat prison soon to become carrion, did nothing to resist the flight of his soul.
There was no end, just more suffering. The Täuschung got that much right.
{Get to …}
Aas fled his dying body into Hexenwerk. He felt tiny, crushed. The puppet was too small, but it would do. He had to find another vessel. The drunken salbei told him it was possible to possess the body of another, though he refused to go into detail. Aas would have to make his way to the Ausgebrochene tribe in the Gezackt Mountains before Hexenwerk fell apart; a seemingly impossible voyage for a puppet of snot and hair and a single small finger. Somehow he’d force the truth from the salbei.
He struggled, trapped within the inner pocket of his robes. He should have thought this through, made the pocket easier to escape. He should have armed the puppet with a razor blade. Even a tiny weapon was better than none. He felt naked, unarmed and vulnerable.
There, the cobblestone of the road. He dragged himself from the pocket and pushed himself upright to stand on rubbery legs.
{I did it! I’m free! I—}
JATEKO RETREATED A STEP, eyes wide, as a hideous puppet of snot, hair, fingernail clippings, long black feathers, and what looked like a freshly severed finger, crawled from within Aas’ robes. Small, ill-formed wings stretched wide.
{I did it! I’m free! I—}
In a fit of visceral disgust Jateko stomped on the puppet, crushing half of it to the road. It wailed a discord of shattered thought and agony and squirmed, shedding flakes of flesh and what might have been dried nuggets of shite. Jateko brought his foot down on the offending creature over and over until it stopped moving and he no longer heard its screams.
