An Affinity for Steel, page 170
“Wisdom.”
“Patience,” Kataria corrected. “I can wait, until we’re all alive or you and I are almost dead. And then, despite the fact that I have no idea what it is that’s been leaking out of you all this time or if it’s edible, I’m going to pummel it out of you and eat it.”
Mahalar blinked. She cleared her throat.
“In front of you.”
The elder Shen frowned.
“While you’re still—”
“I understand,” Mahalar interrupted. “You are as obsessed with death as any of my people. If we come out of this, if my death will still soothe you, it is yours. But hold your . . .”
His voice trailed off into nothingness, as did his stare. Just as well, Kataria wasn’t listening anymore. Her eyes were drawn to the battlefield below. The horde of netherlings had begun to stir. Shouts of command, audible even from so far away, went up in a raucuous cacophony.
They were preparing for something.
She took off, shoving past the elder Shen and hurrying down the stairs to rejoin the barricade.
He stumbled, fell to his knees, didn’t bother to get up. He didn’t feel her shoulder bumping into him, couldn’t feel the stone beneath him. But he felt the island, he felt Jaga, the land he was forever bound to. He felt the breath of thousands of living things upon it go still. He felt the forests shuddering in a wind that wasn’t there. He felt the land itself tense, as though readying itself to be struck.
And at that moment, in a fleeting instance, he felt feet upon Jaga. Two. Then ten. Then hundreds. It was the pain of an old scar, the awareness of the space left by a lost limb, the feel of blood drying on his skin.
He knew this pain.
He knew these feet.
And in the sweep of his amber gaze to the sea, in the storm that had come from the sea to the shore, in the dusty and breathless gaze that emerged from his lips, he knew what was happening.
“He comes.”
“Is this really wise?” Yldus shouted to be heard over the rattle of metal and the roar of females. “Our last charge lost Vashnear. While I lament the loss of a male, I can’t help but feel . . .”
Undoubtedly, he had taken the hint that Sheraptus’s distant glare and hundreds of roaring females had strived so hard to convey. The male’s gaze was locked hard upon the warriors knotted around him as they howled with ecstasy for the impending command. The order had been given moments ago, its mere mention like the scent of blood to them, inspiring a frenzy they had no choice but to unleash.
His eyes found Xhai’s sikkhun as it panted heavily, its grin as broad and toothsome as the warriors surrounding it. The Carnassial herself glanced to him, an eyebrow cocked.
“This is what you command?” she grunted, the iron grate of her voice more than adequate to carry over the excited din.
A fever burned behind his eyes as he spurred his beast around and swept his gaze to the distant shore. A great mass of gray clouds came roiling over the horizon like a living thing, slithering across the sky to chase away wind and smoke alike. In the distance, a roll of thunder could be heard.
And in it, a voice.
His palm itched, burned where he had clenched the stone that had restored him. He could feel it as keenly as he heard the voice in the clouds, the scream on the wind.
Unbeckoned, the Gray One That Grins’s words returned to him.
“We are out of time,” Sheraptus muttered. “He comes.”
“Who?” Yldus asked.
“The weapon.” Sheraptus asked, turning a glower to Xhai. “You have it?”
She patted her back. An obsidian spearhead loomed over her shoulder, stark and black against the gray of the sky. Sheraptus nodded grimly, forced a hiss between his teeth.
“End this.”
Xhai offered a stiff nod before turning and sending a roar down the line.
“BRING UP THE FIRST!”
Her howl was echoed amongst the warriors, rattling through the crowd, twisting amongst the iron voices until it was without word or language, a mindless, bloodthirsty howl of anticipation. For the First was brought up for one reason and one reason only.
A reason that became clear, Sheraptus noted, in the sound that followed. Boots, thirty-three of them, marching with such rigid unison as to grind the howls and the bloodlust beneath their heels, heralded the arrival of the pride of Arkklan Kaharn.
They came with armor, thick black plates bound so tightly that the purple of their flesh was obscured completely. They came with helmets, crested and barbed and polished like the carapace of beetles. They came with spears and shields, jagged heads held high, crescents of metal clenched tightly against their bodies.
They came, as one. The only netherlings capable of following orders more complex than “stab this.”
The crowd of warriors parted like a tide to let them through. Even Xhai reined her beast aside to make way. They came to a sudden and disciplined halt, long enough to turn their visored gazes to Sheraptus in compulsory acknowledgment, before turning back to the field.
“QAI QA LOTH,” one of them at the head barked the order. She lowered her spear, thrust it out to the distant barricade. “KEQH QAI YUSH!”
And with the thunder of their boots, they marched out, spreading into a long line of black plate and speartips. Sheraptus had no smiles of pride for the sight that had won him many battles back in the Nether. He had no time.
A mutter of thunder caught his attention. Overhead, the storm clouds swept in, darker than even the halo of gray that encircled the mountain. The voice in the thunder was audible. The anger in its odor stung his nostrils.
The crown of storms had come. And its bearer came with them.
“We move,” Sheraptus snarled to Yldus and Xhai. “Be ready.”
“This isn’t fair, you know,” Denaos muttered as he peered over the barricade. “They’ve got giant, no-eyed beasts, ballistas that shoot metal stars, hundreds of crazy ladies that feel no pain and now they’ve got big, black bipedal bugs.”
He whirled around and glared at the assembled Shen.
“We’re supposed to have the unholy amalgamations between men and animals. They’re cheating.”
“They’re doing something,” Asper said from beside him, a hint of panic creeping into her voice. “They’re coming closer. Marching. They’re not charging. They charge, don’t they?”
“Sheraptus is moving with them,” Dreadaeleon whispered. “The other male, too. I can’t see them, but I can sense them.”
“So they’re making a push,” Lenk said as he pushed his way through the Shen to rejoin his companions, Kataria close behind. “Couldn’t expect them to be content with sending out warriors to get shot one by one forever.”
“That system was working perfectly fine,” Denaos griped.
“What do we do now, then?” Asper asked. “They’re coming closer. He’s going . . . they’re going to be on top of us in a moment. What’s the plan?”
“Plan?”
Shalake’s voice boomed with contempt as he strode to the front. His smile was so broad as to be visible even from beneath his skull headdress. He held his club up, flicking free a few lingering chunks of viscera that had been wedged between its teeth.
“Kill them all, of course.”
“Look, it’s not that I object to the conclusion,” Lenk said, rubbing his eyes, “just the logic behind it.”
“And the crazy, murderous lizardman that tried to kill us posing it,” Kataria added.
“Right, and the crazy, murderous lizardman that tried to kill us.”
“Death needs no logic. Death needs nothing but us,” Shalake replied coolly.
Lenk blinked. He turned to the Shen surrounding their leader. “So, do you guys just never tell him what he sounds like or . . .”
“Enough of plans and cowering behind coral like fish,” Shalake spat. He held his club high above his head, the stray chunks of meat and bone spattering down upon his headdress. “We will charge. We will meet them upon the field. We will make them bleed and we will show our ancestors that we are worthy of the sacrifices they made!”
The cheer that went up at his words was enthusiastic, if muted. Sensing this, Shalake turned to seek Gariath out in the crowd. One could rarely accuse the dragonman of trying to avoid detection, and one rarely did without detecting the dragonman’s fist in their face a moment later. But Gariath looked as though he attempted to shrink into the crowd, which would be impossible even if he weren’t tremendous and the color of blood. Shalake gestured to him with his club.
“And with the Rhega leading us,” he crowed, “the first to spill blood, the last to die, we will honor all the dead! Attala Jaga! Attala Rhega! Shenko-sa!”
“SHENKO-SA!” the Shen howled, vigorous and full of life they were desperate to spill.
Gariath was silent.
While it was difficult to read the face of a man who happened to have a snout instead of a nose and largely didn’t bother to convey emotions beyond rage, Lenk had known Gariath for some time. Lenk could see the shine in his eyes grow dull, the frown tug at the corners of his mouth, the tightness with which his earfrills were held.
“Gariath,” Lenk said hesitantly, “do you . . . want that?”
He looked at the young man, straight into his eyes. Possibly for the first time, Lenk thought. Because for the first time, in his brutish companion’s eyes, he could see the same doubt he had seen in Kataria’s eyes, the same doubt he felt in his own, the doubt he had thought Gariath simply didn’t feel.
“I am . . .” Gariath began to speak.
“Dead.”
Not that it was entirely unwarranted, but everyone turned up to see Mahalar, hunched and stooped and breathing heavily amidst the lizardmen. There was a direness to his stare that burned straight through his cowl.
“We are all dead.”
“Well, not yet,” Lenk said, glancing over his shoulder. “They’re moving kind of slow and—”
“And you have killed us.” He leveled a finger, half-sheathed in flesh, at Lenk. “You could have ended this. You could have saved us. You could have done something if only you had listened to me.”
“I don’t—”
“You didn’t,” Mahalar spat. “You didn’t and now it’s too late.” He pointed the finger at his temple. “Have you not heard it? Have you not felt it? She’s been calling to them this entire time.” The finger shifted overhead. “And now, he has come to answer.”
They looked, as one, to the darkness broiling overhead. No longer stormclouds, they were ink stains oozing out upon a pure gray sky. Thunder groaned overhead. The clouds split open. A single drop fell from above.
It plummeted to earth and splattered across Lenk’s face. Warm. Sticky. Red.
“Blood?” he whispered.
“Daga-Mer,” Mahalar said. “The consort comes to free his queen.”
The world was a riot of sound and color. The dawn had fled at the first sign of trouble and taken its gray draining with it. Now remained the broken purple and green flesh, the bloodstained coral, the howls from the netherlings and the roars sent up to meet them.
And through that, all the cacophonies and all the dizzying miasma, they could hear it in the echo of Mahalar’s words.
Somewhere, not far away enough: a single heartbeat. Slow. Steady. Inevitable.
“We must go,” Mahalar muttered, turning around to shuffle back up the stairs, “take the tome and—”
They didn’t even hear the arrow flying before it caught Mahalar in the shoulder. The elder collapsed to his knees with a hiss as a trail of earthen substance began to leak from the wound.
They turned and saw the line of netherlings bold and black and drawing closer. The crescents of their shields locked together defensively, the jagged heads of their spears pointed out like the legs of a great, shiny beetle.
“TOH! TOH! TOH!” they chanted with every careful step, not a crack in their great, black carapace showing.
Without breaking their march, two shields would occasionally pull apart. An archer would appear in the gap, fire off an arrow that flew noiselessly to send another Shen to the stones. The gap would slam shut as Shen arrows flew in retaliation.
Shen archers assembled as warriors with shields fell back to protect them. Lenk ducked one such missile, hearing it curse his name as it sped past his ear.
“Gods damn it, whose job was it to watch those things?”
“Nevermind that,” Mahalar snarled, swatting away the aid of a nearby Shen as he staggered to his feet. “They are coming.”
“They are here, you moron,” Kataria snarled, stringing an arrow.
“Not them, not them,” Mahalar gasped, shambling up the stairs. “They are coming. He is coming.” He made a fervent gesture. “Quickly. We must take the tome away. You must protect it. Follow me.”
“Follow you?” Lenk asked. “Up the mountain to the dead end? We stand a better chance here.”
“Even if we did trust you,” Kataria added.
“There’s more room to escape here,” Denaos said, nodding. “It doesn’t make sense to—”
“Doesn’t make sense?” Mahalar whirled on them, his eyes bright with anger. “Doesn’t make sense? The sky is raining blood! There is a heartbeat in the storm! Are you so stupid as to think that the person with the least idea of what’s going on is the lizardman that bleeds earth?”
The companions fell silent, exchanged brief, nervous looks.
“I mean,” Lenk said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I think that’s a good point?”
Another arrow hummed past, narrowly clipping Denaos’s shoulder. The rogue shrieked, clutched the grazing blow. “I’m for it.”
“They’re here!” Asper cried out. “Go. Go!”
They stole glimpses over their shoulders as they hurried up the stairs, the Shen closing in defensively behind them as Mahalar barked commands in their language. They could see the netherling line grinding to a halt. They could see one of the males suddenly break off and rush to the edge of the ring. It was the flash of red flesh that caught their eyes collectively, though.
“Gariath!” Lenk cried. “Come on!”
The dragonman looked up over his shoulder. A forlorn gleam flashed in his eyes before it died, replaced by a dull, black acceptance.
“His place is with us,” Shalake called back. “He dies with us as we died with him!”
“Oh dear,” Denaos said, rolling his eyes. “The Shen are insane and Gariath’s decided to stay behind and be insane with them in an attempt to kill himself. This is so unexpected. Oh dear, oh no, oh Gods, oh well.”
He took another ten steps before he was aware that his footsteps were the only ones he heard. He flashed an incredulous grimace at the companions standing stock-still upon the steps.
“Oh, for the love of . . .” He sighed, seized Dreadaeleon by the shoulder and shoved him down the steps. “Go get him.”
After the boy had staggered several steps, paused to cough violently, he glowered up at Denaos. “Why me?”
“You’re the one that has the connection with him.”
“Since when?”
“Look, now’s not the time to argue. Just go get him.”
Resentfully, Dreadaeleon wormed his way between the Shen down to Gariath at the barricade. A glance over green shoulders and he could see the netherling line halted. Their shields held fast, barely quivering under the hail of arrows sent from the Shen.
Sheraptus was still there, somewhere behind the wall of shields. He could feel it in the burning of his brow, the chill in his veins, the great pressure bearing down on him. The mere hint of the longfaced male’s presence was enough to make him feel ill, enough to send the power in him spiking in response, a moth twitching around a burning flame.
He tried to swallow the vomit roiling in his throat. He tried to ignore the fever burning behind his eyes. Wouldn’t do to break down now, start pissing fire and vomiting acid in front of the Shen and lose all this hard-earned respect he didn’t have.
“Look, Gariath—”
That was as far as he got, a meek whimper lost amidst the shriek of arrows and guttural howls. Gariath said something in response, something about this being the only way, about having nothing left. Dreadaeleon didn’t hear. His brow suddenly began to burn, the vomit clawed its way to his throat and he got the very distinct feeling that things were about to go very, very wrong.
“NAK-AH! SHIE-EH-AH!”
He couldn’t understand the Shen’s warning. He didn’t have to. He knew what was happening even before the magic started.
At the far end of the ring, the other male spoke a word. Lightning flew from his hands, leaping out to gnaw angrily at the stone ankles of one of Ulbecetonth’s towering statues. It increased with each breath, its electric teeth pulverizing the granite and sending out clouds of powder. Stone snapped. The Kraken Queen let out a moan as she toppled forward.
Another word, the air rippled, the statue was suspended above the male, smaller, less grand than Sheraptus. He visibly tensed, grunted as the invisible force from his hands kept it aloft. Dreadaeleon could sense the strain, the weight. But only for a moment. After that, another surge of power from somewhere distant coursed through him, sent bile spilling out his mouth and onto the stone.
“Sheraptus,” he choked through vomit.
This lesser male grunted, threw his hands and the statue. It flew through the air, was caught, hovered there. A great monolith the size of a spire hovering over the netherlings like a crown.
It didn’t take an incredible amount of intelligence to know what was happening.
“Shoot,” Dreadaeleon gasped. He pointed a trembling finger. “Shoot! He’s there! In there! SHOOT HIM!
“Shoot!” Gariath roared to Shalake. “SHOOT HIM!”
“KENKI-SHA! KENKI-SHA!”
The command was carried on the scream of arrows, flying one after the other until there was not a space of bare air in the sky. Desperation in every shot, the arrows flew, shattering against the statue, shattering against the shields. The rare netherling went down, the others shuffled to fill in the bare space. In those moments, Dreadaeleon could see the white robes, the broad smile, the eyes burning bright and red.
