Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  He hardly glimpsed the others, Fazdshan wielding his lance like a quarterstaff against three enemy spears, driving under their shafts to stab, swinging down the loaded butt to dash out brains. Asquan, sliding lithe as a dancer through a tangle of blades, his broadsword sliding swiftly here and there, one instant stabbing and biting with the delicacy of a striking snake, the next hewing and slashing with a strength that looked too brutal for such lean limbs, and vanishing behind another wall of assault. Rysha, apparently at bay as two warriors rushed down upon her. Then a ripple, as in summer air, and something stood in her place. To Alya it was unformed, shapeless, and she was clearly visible; but the warriors screamed and threw up their hands. The first warrior clutched at his throat, choked and doubled up. Alya had not seen her move; nor did the man behind, till he stared down at the falchion hilt-deep in his belly. He staggered; and with a deliberate twist she yanked it back, and he fell. The mêlée closed around them again.

  Heads turned, eyes widened; more shouting. Alya barely stopped himself striking at the new figures on the slope. One more glimpse of Rysha, plunging her blade with both hands into another man’s back, straddling him as he fell kicking, stabbing down and screeching with laughter. Then the mêlée broke, revealing Asquan, leaping after fleeing men, striking from side to side. They fell, and over the last, flung writhing on the grass by a great cut over the spine, he stood with blade poised. The man twisted and convulsed, unable to rise; but Asquan did not strike.

  ‘He’s waiting!’ said Rysha, coming up beside Alya; and it was only then he realised the shouting had stopped, that the hero’s sword he held was a foul steaming mass, that the fight was over. Everything was silent, save for the wind and the crackling of the fires.

  ‘He’s waiting?’ began Alya, minded to tell Asquan to kill the dying brute cleanly, to do it himself, even. But then, in his agony the raider rolled over, staring straight up at Asquan with terror-filled eyes. Asquan smiled down at him, put his swordpoint to the man’s hardened leather breastplate, and slowly, very slowly, leaned upon it. The sword bent slightly; the scream was tearing. Alya, angered and sickened, looked away.

  ‘Very neat!’ said Asquan’s dry voice. ‘Twenty-one, I think? And none of ours? Very neat!’

  ‘Kalkan!’ wheezed Alya, desperate for some distraction. ‘Vansha! Well done – but did you delay?’

  Vansha laughed. ‘Delay? We were right on your heels, the moment they spotted you. A few heartbeats! We were hoping you’d leave us some!’

  ‘Heartbeats? It seemed so long …’ Alya struggled to clear his head. ‘Look, you and Kalkan – you’d better take two men, make sure none of them are still lurking. And look for prisoners!’

  ‘I’ll take Nightingale!’ said Vansha. ‘Seems the little stinker can see in the dark, trust him! We’ll get their horses, too.’

  ‘Well thought of!’ said Asquan approvingly. He sounded quite at his ease; but he was wiping his sword on the kilt of the man who still twitched at his feet. ‘Do I make that six? Oh, and of course, our over-observant friend back there. He may have had a touch of the Seer’s discerning talent in his head, but not enough to keep it on his shoulders. Seven, then; but I must bow before your distinguished tally.’

  ‘Mine?’ Alya blinked around, astonished. His gorge rose. Behind him, like a trail trampled through cornstalks, lay a swathe of figures sprawled and still – how many, he could hardly count, but more than six. Here and there a black-and-white breastplate gaped wide with great slashing wounds, a lopped hand or head; one figure, almost at his feet, was cut quite in two. Darkness welled around his boots, and he stepped away hastily. He felt he wanted to vomit, and then realised he was not going to. There was nothing in him, nothing save the ebbing fire, its prickle cold and satisfied. He could hardly loathe Asquan as he had begun to, not when he himself was capable of this. He stabbed the sword down into the clean grass and earth, once, again, scraping the clotted mass from it, and from his hands, stabbing, scraping, wiping, furious and intent.

  ‘This one’s alive!’ called Tseshya. He turned over one of the outflung bodies by its shoulder. The raider moaned, writhed a little. His face in the firelight was heavy, flat, impassive; but the eyelids flickered, the mouth twitched in agony. Alya stooped over him, but looked up as Vansha reappeared with a train of horses in tow, shaggy sturdy creatures like their own captured mounts. In the yellow glow the young man’s face looked waxen and cold.

  ‘Lucky you weren’t there. No prisoners; but there were … joints roasting. Young men, boys even. We tipped what was left into the fires, piled on more wood! Why?’ The word became a thin-lipped noise of contempt. Vansha booted the half-conscious raider savagely in the side, making him convulse and groan. ‘Why do they do it? Why? Plenty of ordinary meat in their packs – smoked fish, fowl, meal, clean provender we can surely use. Why?’

  ‘To drive home their victory!’ suggested Kalkan. ‘To humble those they’ve overcome still further.’

  Asquan’s eyes were hooded. ‘More! To savour the pain they inflict, the cruelty even after death. It nurtures their manhood, in the very awfulness of the act. The taste of the flesh, even …’

  Tseshya grinned nastily. ‘Sounds like you understand them pretty well, my lord!’

  Asquan sniffed. ‘They are a crude people, but an interesting study. Their outlook is original, there are insights to be gained. Pain, understood properly, is a defence, a weapon, a servant and a friend. A close friend. Have your researches never shown you that?’

  Tseshya shifted uncomfortably. ‘Maybe mine were a bit less arcane, my lord. I do remember one chronicler, a man they held as thrall awhile, who managed to escape. He said the sacrifice and the eating, the darkness of the deed, bind them into a brotherhood, not ruled by the restraints of ordinary men. And that makes the deed ultimately an offering to their living gods, the Powers of the Ice.’

  Asquan smiled coolly. ‘Indeed, but there is more to it than that. They believe, it seems, that their lives are only at the gift of the Powers. By destroying other lives they earn their own place in the world, and their right to have children; and they believe their own lives are worth many others. If ever a man dies in the service of the Ice, whatever the cause, they believe it’s because he hasn’t cleared away enough other lives to make room. A dozen children sacrificed to earn a year’s life, maybe; a hundred, to get a wife and brat of one’s own. That is how they see it. Or rather, how they are shown it. The Ice has many ways of clouding the minds of men.’

  ‘Very clever,’ breathed Vansha.

  ‘Very evil!’ said Alya sharply, and the others echoed him. ‘Can we waken this one? I want a word with him.’

  ‘There’s a stream down there,’ said Kalkan. ‘Hoi, Chiansha! Bring a couple of good helmfuls! Bastard’s cut up more than somewhat, but it’s worth a try. You’re a mighty fighter, my lord!’

  Alya said nothing. He would have to be many things he was not, no doubt. Including another, maybe, any moment. Would the inner fires carry him through this?

  Water slapped the twitching face, spilled between the thin lips, over the jagged teeth. The face twisted away, choking, and the stricken raider half raised himself, but sank back with only a grunt.

  ‘You!’ said Alya. ‘D’you understand me?’

  The raider sneered, closed his eyes again. But they had looked more alert than Alya expected. Tseshya tried a harsher dialect Alya could barely understand. ‘Answer the lord!’ He prodded the man with his swordtip. ‘You’re cold mutton in our hands! But we might just let you slither away free, if you answer us fairly. Look at me! He jabbed the sword in, harder. The man glared at him and twisted away.

  ‘He understands, all right!’ said Vansha contemptuously, and planted his foot hard on the man’s injured side. ‘Listen, you – aie!’

  The raider had sunk his teeth in Vansha’s leg, above his boot. The young man lashed out with his sword, but Asquan parried the blow.

  ‘No! That’s what he wants, just to spite us!’

&nbs
p; ‘He’s going the right way to get it!’

  ‘There’s another way.’ Asquan looked at Alya. ‘I somehow don’t think you’d like it, mind you …’

  What Alya really did not like was Asquan’s little lopsided smile. ‘Is that necessary?’

  ‘Nothing less will make them speak, except sheer defiance; sometimes not even that.’ Asquan smirked. ‘Believe me, I have plenty of experience.’

  Vansha looked around at the others. ‘I would not stand in your way.’

  The man understood, no doubt of that. ‘Do your worst, old louse!’ he croaked.

  Defiance, thought Alya. ‘Why? You don’t even know what we want to ask!’

  ‘You want. Is enough! My folk do worse to you, soon. Don’t waste time talking. You dead, now.’

  ‘Are we?’ demanded Alya quietly. ‘Maybe not. Maybe your masters aren’t as all-powerful as you think. Look at me. For years I lay a helpless cripple. Then the Powers healed me in a moment, and poured into me the hero’s strength I longed for. The strength you felt! What have your cold lords ever given you, save fear and hatred?’

  The raider laughed. ‘Powers? Young little Powers, maybe. Rebels, latecomers, scabby tramps! Old Powers we serve, they freeze them in walls of Ice!’ He hawked and spat blood on Alya’s boot. ‘Fault is ours. We hungered for life-meat. We left great band, we leave Their shadow, under the Choosers’ wing. Else you never take us! Choosers of Slain, in their shadow, never. Never! Soon they find you, the Choosers. Then no Powers save you. Can’t trust Powers!’ He lay back, wincing, and laughed again. ‘I know! Bred to serve them – I know! Never for man. For Selves only. Never give. Take only. Your strength, digs your own grave deeper. Better like me.’

  Alya looked down at the man. ‘Very soon you may not think so. Some of your breed murdered my family – you, perhaps. The Powers know how many more!’ The fires leaped in him, feeding the embers of his hatred, spilling over in a way he knew was wholly unlike him, yet no more possible to resist. ‘What you know could save lives. More delay could cost them. You leave me no choice, but to let the Lord Asquan do with you as he likes.’ He looked at Asquan. ‘Call me when—’

  Asquan picked up a fallen spear and stood the blade in the nearby campfire. ‘You will hear.’

  Alya turned away. From what he was ready to allow, he told himself, his stomach cold and lead-heavy. The little ripples of fire along every limb seemed to be mocking him. Coward! Your foe, your vengeance – your decision! Why should you not enjoy it?

  Then he jumped, violently; for he found himself facing the Nightingale, and that long animalistic countenance was no good thing to come upon so suddenly, in a fireshot dusk.

  The creature hopped and giggled, like Alya’s voices given flesh. ‘Nervous, aren’t you? A great big manslayer like you! That was fun, that; like being back home. What now? Oh.’ His tongue lapped delicately at his lips. ‘I see. Just for fun, or is there something you wish of him?’

  Alya shivered. ‘We need to know almost anything he can tell us. The women – did they see them? Where might they be taken? Where the way leads, through what lands, to what end? Anything could help.’

  Nightingale twittered, and his big black eyes gleamed. ‘Silly, silly, silly! Never truly listen to me, do you? I told you, and you never listen! Give him to me! Whatever he knows, I will know, I will tease out for you, I will tell you! Give his life to me! Quick now, before that nasty old man lets him go to waste!’

  Without waiting for a word the Nightingale spun around and let out a fearsome, penetrating whistle. A gust of wind whipped and whirled around the clearing; the leaves billowed from the bending birches, the campfires blazed up, streamed out sparks and tongues of roaring flame. It was a hungry, horrible sound. Asquan, advancing on the fallen raider, hurled down the blade and clapped his hands over his ears, and all the others fell back. The Nightingale pushed and slithered between them like an insistent child, scuttled up, pushed Asquan aside and hopped upon the wounded man. He seized the raider’s head in those long skinny fingers, almost tenderly, gazing deep into the narrow eyes as if to suck out a soul through them.

  Till then the raider had made no more sound, even at the sight of the spear. But now he screamed aloud and struggled; but he could not overturn the creature, and his head shifted not the breadth of a hair in that pale spidery clasp.

  Then Nightingale opened his mouth.

  That long jaw gaped wider than any human mouth, like a biting snake’s. The bloodless lips slipped back over great stubby ape’s fangs, with the thin tongue lolling across them, dripping. The raider yelled in mindless terror, but Nightingale’s head darted forward. The jaws closed.

  The watchers all sprang back with cries of revulsion. Vansha stood like stone. Rysha sank to her knees in fascinated horror, her hard mouth twitching. Kalkan and the soldiers, hard men all, seemed completely helpless, and Asquan stared in appalled fascination. Not one tried to stop the creature; not the bravest would have touched him, not then. Alya shut his eyes, but that only made the noise worse, the popping, crushing sound and the awful liquid noises, lapping, sucking.

  ‘Stop it!’ Somehow Alya managed to choke out the command. Then he wished he had not; for Nightingale looked up from his feeding, and smiled, and that was a sight not to be easily borne.

  ‘Why, lord? I’m not yet finished. When I have, you may ask me anything you will. Ahh, I have hungered, hungered. And this is a tasty, tasty life!’ He bent to his meal again.

  Vansha spun on his heel in disgust. ‘Is this a fit thing for a man to allow, brother? I thought he meant some kind of, I don’t know, reading another’s soul! All those broken skulls at the foot of his tree, remember? Ach! I wouldn’t have spared that little monster for a moment, if I’d known. Lords they call us! Should lords allow this?’

  Alya drew breath. His sickness was all in the mind, his body whole and fell. Even as he had feared, there was a part of him could almost relish this, with bitter-cold enjoyment. ‘Lords have done worse, brother. You were ready enough to watch one, just now. Consider this the more merciful way!’

  ‘Merciful!’

  ‘Compared to Asquan’s way? Yes! And if that little ghoul serves our need, I may well unleash him again. Have to! The power in me tells me I must! Think, man – this is for Savi! This may be what’ll bring us to her!’

  ‘The fires tell you that?’

  ‘As surely as they make me walk. As strongly as the force they lend my arm!’

  Vansha whistled softly. ‘They’ve changed you, brother. Maybe more than you know.’

  ‘Many things have changed me. But yes, the fires among them. Not least by depriving me of Sight, of the Trail, of the Wall – of my father’s legacy.’

  ‘Are you so sure? Could you not at least try once again, rather than – that?’

  ‘Has he finished?’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  ‘My lord! My lord! I am done, done, done!’ Nightingale was crouched over the prostrate body, leaping up and down on all four sticklike limbs at once, gibbering with delight. ‘Ask me, ask me anything! This man has lived!’

  ‘You learn everything about him by eating …’

  ‘No! No! Not learn – live! All he has done, seen … As it lived in his memory, in his soul … I have both! I have everything, to keep, to chew over, to live again. Till I forget it all, bit by bit. And find more.’

  Alya tried to turn from the creature’s breath, and not to look at what lay beyond. ‘Well! Say, then! Look back, how long … Ah. A week or so since.’

  Powers, no longer than that?

  ‘A village set in a deep vale. A raid. Many women taken.’

  ‘Hmm …’ Nightingale looped a long arm over his head to scratch his other ear. ‘No, not there, are we? We hear, though. When Wasp clan meets us with the rest, at stone bridge. Wagonload of villager bitches. A couple worth the eye. Chieftains mark them all off, worse luck. For themselves, as usual. Or for the Great Ones!’ Something had changed in the cretinous piping voice, as if a
darker colour stained it.

  ‘For the Great Ones?’ demanded Alya, forgetting his revulsion, feeling as if he stood on the brink of some vast understanding.

  ‘Surely. As ever. Word down from the top – They, Themselves. Glad it’s not my detail! Women; gather women. Stuff booty, forget weapons – just women. Young women, any kind, many as you can. Bring back safe and whole. A choice!’

  Alya seized the narrow shoulder. ‘But what for?’

  And who,’ put in Asquan, sounding distinctly shaken, ‘are They?’

  ‘They? What for?’ Nightingale laughed, an unpleasantly familiar bark. ‘For life-meat, altar-food, surely! Or something special. Straight to the Taounehtar her sweet self, maybe. So not a finger laid on them, not even when the skinny one skewers that simpleton Wasp! We laugh: serve the bastard right, all balls, no order. Stands to reason. What the Ice takes for its own, only a moron touches. Only a moron!’ He chuckled, quietly, a sound wholly unlike his normal laughter. ‘Fiery little bitch, though. Skinny, but sharp. The Taounehtar’s in for some fun, maybe. Set her sizzling, for a change! No wonder idiot Wasps lose so many, down there!’

  ‘Down there?’ demanded Alya, breathless.

  ‘That dungpit valley. Chieftain’s daughter, she said. Might look in that way myself one day, see if she has little sisters!’

  Alya clenched his fist, shaking with relief and excitement. ‘Thank you, Nightingale! That’s she whom we seek!’ Savi would show them, right enough; leaving him a trail even in the minds of their foes. ‘But where they’ve taken her – does he … do you know?’