‘Oh my . . .’
A miracle, better than merely recounted second or third hand – witnessed. Witnessed: the four bearers would have carried their charge directly past, but then – see – a gnarled, feeble hand reached out, damp fingertips pressing against Myrla’s forehead.
And the bearers – who were experienced in such random gestures of deliverance – halted.
She stared up into the Prophet’s eyes and saw terrible pain, a misery so profound it purified, and knowledge beyond anything her useless, dross-filled mind could comprehend. ‘My son,’ she gasped. ‘My son . . . my self – oh my heart—’
‘Self, yes,’ he said, fingers pressing against her forehead like four iron nails, pinning her guilt and shame, her weakness, her useless stupidity. ‘I can bless that. So I shall. Do you feel my touch, dear woman?’
And Myrla could not but nod, for she did feel it, oh, yes, she felt it.
From behind her Bedek’s quavering voice drifted past. ‘Glorious One – our son has been taken. Kidnapped. We know not where, and we thought, we thought . . .’
‘Your son is beyond salvation,’ said the Prophet. ‘He has the vileness of knowledge within his soul. I can sense how you two merged in his creation – yes, your blood was his poison of birth. He understands compassion, but he chooses it not. He understands love, but uses it as a weapon. He understands the future, and knows it does not wait for anyone, not even him. He is a living maw, your son, a living maw, which all of the world must feed.’
The hand withdrew, leaving four precise spots of ice on Myrla’s forehead – every nerve dead there, for ever more. ‘Even the Crippled God must reject such a creature. But you, Myrla, and you, Bedek, I bless. I bless you both in your lifelong blindness, your insensitive touch, the fugue of your malnourished minds. I bless you in the crumpling of the two delicate flowers in your hands – your two girls – for you have made of them versions no different from you, no better, perhaps much worse. Myrla. Bedek. I bless you in the name of empty pity. Now go.’
And she staggered back, stumbled into the cart, knocking it and Bedek over. He cried out, falling hard on to the cobbles, and a moment later she landed on top of him. The snap of his left arm was loud in the wake of the now-resumed procession of bearers and Prophet, the swirling press of begging worshippers sweeping in, stepping without care, without regard. A heavy boot stamped down on Myrla’s hip and she shrieked as something broke, lancing agony into her right leg. Another foot collided with her face, toenails slashing one cheek. Heels on hands, fingers, ankles.
Bedek caught a momentary glimpse upward, to see the face of a man desperate to climb over them, for they were in his way and he wanted to reach the Prophet, and the man looked down, his pleading expression transforming into one of black hate. And he drove the point of his boot into Bedek’s throat, crushing the trachea.
Unable to breathe past the devastation that had once been his throat, Bedek stared up with bulging eyes. His face deepened to a shade of blue-grey, and then purple. The awareness in the eyes flattened out, went away, and away.
Still screaming, Myrla dragged herself over her husband – noting his stillness but otherwise uncomprehending – and pulled herself through a forest of hard, shifting legs – shins and knees, jabbing feet, out into a space, suddenly open, clear, the cobbles slick beneath her.
Although she was not yet aware of them, four spots of gangrene were spreading across her forehead – she could smell something foul, horribly foul, as though someone had dropped something in passing, somewhere close; she just couldn’t see it yet. The pain of her broken hip was now a throbbing thing, a deadweight she dragged behind her, growing ever more distant in her mind.
We run from our place of wounding. No different from any other beast, we run from our place of wounding. Run, or crawl, crawl or drag, drag or reach. She realized that even such efforts had failed her. She was broken everywhere. She was dying.
See me? I have been blessed. He has blessed me.
Bless you all.
He could barely stand, and now he must duel. Murillio untied his coin pouch and tossed it towards the foreman who had just returned, gasping and red-faced. The bag landed in a cloud of dust, a heavy thud. ‘I came for the boy,’ Murillio said. ‘That’s more than he’s worth – do you accept the payment, foreman?’
‘He does not,’ said Gorlas. ‘No, I have something special in mind for little Harllo.’
‘He’s not part of any of this—’
‘You just made him so, Murillio. One of your clan, maybe even a whelp of one of your useless friends in the Phoenix Inn – your favoured hangout, yes? Hanut knows everything there is to know about you. No, the boy’s in this, and that’s why you won’t have him. I will, to do with as I please.’
Murillio drew his rapier. ‘What makes people like you, Gorlas?’
‘I could well ask the same of you.’
Well, a lifetime of mistakes. And so we are perhaps more alike than either of us would care to admit. He saw the foreman bend down to collect the purse. The odious man hefted it and grinned. ‘About those interest payments, Councillor . . .’
Gorlas smiled. ‘Why, it seems you can clear your debt after all.’
Murillio assumed his stance, point extended, sword arm bent slightly at the elbow, left shoulder thrown back to reduce the plane of his exposed torso. He settled his weight, gingerly, down through the centre of his hips.
Smiling still, Gorlas Vidikas moved into a matching pose, although he was leaning slightly forward. Not a duellist ready to retreat, then. Murillio recalled that from the fight he’d seen the very end of, the way Gorlas would not step back, unwilling to yield ground, unwilling to accept that sometimes pulling away earned advantages. No, he would push, and push, surrendering nothing.
He rapped Murillio’s blade with his own, a contemptuous batting aside to gauge response.
There was none. Murillio simply resumed his line.
Gorlas probed with the rapier’s point, jabbing here and there round the bell hilt, teasing and gambling with the quillons that could trap his blade, but for Murillio to do so he would have to twist and fold his wrist – not much, but enough for Gorlas to make a darting thrust into the opened guard, and so Murillio let the man play with that. He was in no hurry; footsore and weary as he was, he suspected he would have but one solid chance, sooner or later, to end this. Point to lead kneecap, or down to lead boot, or a flicking slash into wrist tendons, crippling the sword arm – possibly for ever. Or higher, into the shoulder, stop-hitting a lunge.
Gorlas pressed, closing the distance, and Murillio stepped back.
And that hurt.
He could feel wetness in his boots, that wretched clear liquid oozing out from the broken blisters.
‘I think,’ ventured Gorlas, ‘there’s something wrong with your feet, Murillio. You move like a man standing on nails.’
Murillio shrugged. He was past conversation; it was hard enough concentrating through the stabs of pain.
‘Such an old-style stance you have, old man. So . . . upright.’ Gorlas resumed the flitting, wavering motions of his rapier, minute threats here and there. He had begun a rhythmic rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, attempting to lull Murillio into that motion.
When he finally launched into his attack, the move was explosive, lightning fast.
Murillio tracked the feints, caught and parried the lunge, and snapped out a riposte – but he was stepping back as he did so, and his point snipped the cloth of Gorlas’s sleeve. Before he could ready himself, the younger duellist extended his attack with a hard parrying beat and then a second lunge, throwing his upper body far forward – closing enough to make Murillio’s retreat insufficient, as was his parry.
Sizzling fire in his left shoulder. Staggering back, the motion tugging the point free of his flesh, Murillio righted himself and then straightened. ‘Blood drawn,’ he said, voice tightened by pain.
‘Oh, that,’ said Gorlas, resuming his rocking moti
on once more, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
One insult too many. I never learn.
Murillio felt his heart pounding. The scar of his last, near fatal wounding seemed to be throbbing as if eager to reopen. He could feel blood pulsing down from his pierced shoulder muscle, could feel warm trickles running down the length of his upper arm to soak the cloth at his elbow.
‘Blood drawn,’ he repeated. ‘As you guessed, I am in no shape to duel beyond that, Gorlas. We were agreed, before a witness.’
Gorlas glanced over at his foreman. ‘Do you recall, precisely, what you heard?’
The old man shrugged. ‘Thought there was something about wounding . . .’
Gorlas frowned.
The foreman cleared his throat. ‘. . . but that’s all. A discussion, I think. I heard nothing, er, firmed up between you.’
Gorlas nodded. ‘Our witness speaks.’
A few hundred onlookers in the pit below were making restless sounds. Murillio wondered if Harllo was among them.
‘Ready yourself,’ Gorlas said.
So, it was to be this way. A decade past Murillio would have been standing over this man’s corpse, regretful, of course, wishing it all could have been handled peacefully. And that was the luxury of days gone past, that cleaner world, while everything here, now, ever proved so . . . messy.
I didn’t come here to die this day. I’d better do something about that. I need to survive this. For Harllo. He resumed his stance. Well, he was debilitated, enough to pretty much ensure that he would fight defensively, seeking only ripostes and perhaps a counter-attack – taking a wound to deliver a death. All of that would be in Gorlas’s mind, would shape his tactics. Time, then, to surprise the bastard.
His step and lunge was elegant, a fluid forward motion rather quick for a man his age. Gorlas, caught on the forward tilt of his rocking, was forced to jump a half-step back, parrying hard and without precision. His riposte was wild and inaccurate, and Murillio caught it with a high parry of his own, following through with a second attack – the one he had wanted to count from the very first – a fully extended lunge straight for his opponent’s chest – heart or lungs, it didn’t matter which—
But somehow, impossibly, Gorlas had stepped close, inside and to one side of that lunge – his half-step back had not been accompanied by any shift in weight, simply a repositioning of his upper body, and this time his thrust was not at all wild.
Murillio caught a flash along the length of Daru steel, and then he could not breathe. Something was pouring down the front of his chest, and spurting up into his mouth.
He felt part of his throat tearing from the inside out as Gorlas slashed his blade free and stepped to the right.
Murillio twisted round to track him, but the motion lost all control, and he continued on, legs collapsing under him, and now he was lying on the stony ground.
The world darkened.
He heard Gorlas say something, possibly regretful, but probably not.
Oh, Harllo, I am so sorry. So sorry—
And the darkness closed in.
He was rocked momentarily awake by a kick to his face, but that pain quickly flushed away, along with everything else.
Gorlas Vidikas stood over Murillio’s corpse. ‘Get that carter to take the body back,’ he said to the foreman, bending down to clean his blade on the threadbare silk sleeve of his victim’s weapon arm. ‘Have him deliver it to the Phoenix Inn, rapier and all.’
From the pit below, people were cheering and clanging their tools like some ragtag mob of barbarians. Gorlas faced them and raised his weapon in salute. The cheering redoubled. He turned back to the foreman. ‘An extra tankard of ale for the crews tonight.’
‘They will toast your name, Councillor!’
‘Oh, and have someone collect the boy for me.’
‘It’s his shift in the tunnels, I think, but I can send someone to get him.’
‘Good, and they don’t have to be gentle about it, either. But make sure – nothing so bad he won’t recover. If they kill him, I will personally disembowel every one of them – make sure they understand.’
‘I will, Councillor.’ The foreman hesitated. ‘I never seen such skill, I never seen such skill – I thought he had you—’
‘I’m sure he thought so, too. Go find that carter, now.’
‘On my way, Councillor.’
‘Oh, and I’ll take that purse, so we’re clear.’
The foreman rushed over to deliver it. Feeling the bag’s weight for the first time, Gorlas raised his brows – a damned year’s wages for this foreman, right here – probably all Murillio had, cleaned right out. Three times as much as the interest this fool owed him. Then again, if the foreman had stopped to count out the right amount, intending to keep the rest, well, Gorlas would have had two bodies to dispose of rather than just one, so maybe the old man wasn’t so stupid after all.
It had, Gorlas decided, been a good day.
And so the ox began its long journey back into the city, clumping along the cobbled road, and in the cart’s bed lay the body of a man who might have been precipitous, who might indeed have been too old for such deadly ventures, but no one could say that his heart had not been in the right place. Nor could anyone speak of a lack of courage.
Raising a most grave question – if courage and heart are not enough, what is?
The ox could smell blood, and liked it not one bit. It was a smell that came with predators, with hunters, notions stirring the deepest parts of the beast’s brain. It could smell death as well, there in its wake, and no matter how many clumping steps it took, that smell did not diminish, and this it could not understand, but was resigned to none the less.
There was no room in the beast for grieving. The only sorrow it knew was for itself. So unlike its two-legged masters.
Flies swarmed, ever unquestioning, and the day’s light fell away.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He is unseen, one in a crowd whom none call
Do not slip past that forgettable face
Crawl not inside to find the unbidden rill
As it flows in dark horror from place to place
He is a common thing, in no way singular
Who lets no one inside the uneven steps
Down those eyes that drown the solitary star
We boldly share in these human depths
Not your brother, not anyone’s saviour
He will loom only closer to search your clothes
Push aside the feeble hand that seeks to stir
Compassion’s glow (the damp, dying rose)
He has plucked his garden down to bone
And picked every last bit of warm flesh
With fear like claws and nervous teeth when alone
He wanders this wasteland of cinder and ash
I watch in terror as he ascends our blessed throne
To lay down his cloak of shame like a shroud
And beckons us the illusion of a warm home
A sanctuary beneath his notice, one in a crowd
He finds his power in our indifference
Shredding the common to dispense with congress
No conjoined will to set against him in defiance
And one by one by one, he kills us
A King Takes the Throne
(carved on the Poet’s Wall,
Royal Dungeons, Unta)
With a twist and a snarl, Shan turned on Lock. The huge white-coated beast did not flinch or scurry, but simply loped away, tongue lolling as if in laughter. A short distance off, Pallid watched. Fangs still bared, Shan slipped off into the high grasses once more.
Baran, Blind, Rood and Gear had not slowed during this exchange – it had happened many times before, after all – and they continued on, in a vaguely crescent formation, Rood and Gear on the flanks. Antelope observed them from a rise off to the southwest – the barest tilt of a head from any of the Hounds and they would be off, fast as their bounding legs could take them, their hearts a
frenzied drum-roll of bleak terror.
But the Hounds of Shadow were not hunting this day. Not antelope, not bhederin, nor mule deer nor ground sloth. A host of animals that lived either in states of blessed anonymity or states of fear had no need to lurch from the former into the latter – at least not because of the monstrous Hounds. As for the wolves of the plains, the lumbering snub-nosed bears and the tawny cats of the high grasses, there were none within ten leagues – the faintest wisp of scent had sent them fleeing one and all.
Great Ravens sailed high above the Hounds, minute specks in the vaulted blue.
Shan was displeased with the two new companions, these blots of dirty white with the lifeless eyes. Lock in particular irritated her, as it seemed this one wanted to travel as she did, close by her side, sliding unseen, ghostly and silent. Most annoying of all, Lock was Shan’s able match in such skill.
But she had no interest in surrendering her solitude. Ambush and murder were best served alone, as far as she was concerned. Lock complicated things, and Shan despised complications.
Somewhere, far behind them, creatures pursued. In the profoundly long history of the Hounds of Shadow, they had been hunted many times. More often than not, the hunters came to regret the decision, whether a momentary impulse or an instinctive need; whether at the behest of some master or by the hatred in their souls, their desire usually proved fatal.
Occasionally, however, being hunted was such exquisite pleasure that the Hounds never turned the game. Let the chase go on, and on. Dance from the path of that rage, all that blind need.
All things will cast a shadow. If light blazes infernal, a shadow can grow solid, outlines sharp, motion rippling within. Shape is a reflection, but not all reflections are true. Some shadows lie. Deception born of imagination and imagination born of fear, or perhaps it is the other way round and fear ignites imagination – regardless, shadows will thrive.