Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  Shit. It’s the cavalry.

  Half-armored lancers flood through the gate at a gallop and fan out across the arena floor. Sunlight splinters from their steel-bladed spears, except for one group—five of them riding behind an unarmored man who’s covered with blood, who waves a bastard sword as lightly as a conductor’s baton.

  Our eyes meet across the sand, and Berne shows me his bloody teeth.

  And now fingers of liquid fire spread through the large muscle of my left thigh, and I understand where that mysterious look of satisfaction on Toa-Sytell’s face came from.

  The little cocksucker poisoned me.

  With a dull ripping sound like the tearing of flesh over bone, Ma’elKoth shreds the net and casts it aside. He comes to his feet in a surge like a tidal wave. I leap into the air, chambering my leg for a side kick at the point of his chin, but the purple blood is draining from his face. His magick is back and he’s already too fast for me: his huge hand strikes like a snake and wraps my ankle before I can fire the kick, and he slams me down to the wagon hard enough to splinter its bed.

  Meteors shoot across my vision and I can’t breathe. Ma’elKoth picks me up by the ankle, so that my head dangles near his knees.

  He purrs, “Now, you will learn what it means to trifle with My wrath.”

  This isn’t working out quite as well as I’d hoped.

  But there comes a shout like the end of the world, and the wagon bucks as though it’s alive. Ma’elKoth staggers.

  His hand opens and I fall. For one brief instant the air is filled with metallic snicks and clacks: Ma’elKoth’s belt buckle springs open, and the manacles that hold Lamorak to the cross over my head burst wide and he falls toward me. Throughout the stadium pieces of armor fall as their buckles unclasp; even locked doors slam open and gates bend wide.

  The wagon bucks again, and this time I can see it’s not the wagon that’s moving—it’s the whole fucking stadium. Horses stagger and men fall and screams rend the air—fading behind the grinding roar of the earthquake.

  Pallas floats above us, hanging in the air five feet above the cross on which she’d hung. She is the only motionless thing in the pitching world. She extends her hands, and the linen shift that covered her burns away in a flash of pale fire, a fire that burns ever brighter until I can’t look at her, burns to a pure white streaming light that melts the last remaining shreds of the net that had restrained her power. The grinding roar of the earthquake gets louder, beating against my ears, rhythmic—

  And becomes a Voice, as though the world itself speaks to us.

  “HARM MY HUSBAND, LITTLE MAN, AND I WILL TEACH YOU TRULY WHAT IT IS TO ANGER A GOD.”

  20

  EVERY TECH IN the booth was on his feet, eyes riveted to the POV screen. Arturo Kollberg was right behind them, breathless, trembling.

  “Jesus stinking Christ on a stick! That’s Pallas! The earthquake, the voice . . . My god, if I’d known she’d show this kind of power, I’d never have . . .”

  He felt a presence behind his shoulder. Kollberg bit off the sentence, wincing, suddenly aware of the chill sweat that trickled between his shoulder blades down the curve of his spine.

  A digitized voice said flatly, “You would never have what?”

  He flicked a glance at the soapy’s mirror mask; a fisheye-distorted image of his own black-bagged, red-veined eyes leered back at him. He licked his lips and tasted the salt sweat that had moistened them. The speed muttered in his veins and leaked into his head until he thought his skull might burst like an overblown balloon.

  “I’d, ah, never have let her take on a mission of such, ah, limited audience appeal. I’d have pushed for something, ah, more, you know, bigger, more like, well, more like this. . .”

  Impossible to tell if that satisfied the mirror-masked face or not. This was a nightmare, and he couldn’t wake up. He wiped his sweaty palms on the legs of his jumpsuit and prayed that Carson would come through with her restraining order before something really damaging slipped out.

  Damn that Dole cunt, he prayed to a god in whom he did not believe. And her lawyers, and her damned soapy goons, and Marc Vilo, and damn the frigging Studio too while you’re at it, and yes, most of all: damn Caine.

  Kollberg’s rolling eye fixed upon the emergency recall switch.

  Especially Caine.

  21

  EVERYTHING WAS GOING wrong.

  Majesty had stayed at his vantage in the upper reaches of the grandstand. He’d signaled the attack when Caine threw the net. Loyal old Deofad had gone diving onto the arena floor, his enchanted blade Luthen upraised and shining like a bar of white-hot iron in his fist. He had already cut down one man to spill out his life onto the sand and was fighting another before any of the Subjects following reached the sand behind him. None of them saw Majesty’s frantic wave of negation, nor heard his throat-clawing screams of “No! Come back!” when he saw that Caine’s lunatic plan had failed. Ma’elKoth was really here, and though he was currently occupied with killing Caine, it was all too clear that this was the time for all prudent folk to be finding an exit.

  Then the gates had opened, and the Ankhanan Horse Guards had thundered in. Deofad could still be seen down there, his blade scattering gouts of molten steel that it cut from the lancers’ armor—but the lancers charged, spearing Subjects and mock revelers alike. And the earthquake began, and that awful voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

  He kept his head, Majesty did, in the midst of the screaming, staggering townsfolk around him. He kept his eyes open for a chance to get away, looking away from Pallas Ril, who shone like the sun.

  A shadow fell across him, and the heat of the sun vanished. Curving within this huge shadow that painted the stadium in dark greens were twists of purest gold, like the sun seen on the bottom of a rippling pool of clear water. He couldn’t understand what cloud could cast this sort of shade, and he looked up—

  And saw the river, up over his head.

  22

  THE MOST FRIGHTENING part of this is that Ma’elKoth isn’t afraid.

  He looks up, shading his eyes against the stinging actinic light that streams from Pallas’ nude body, and he grins the grin of a rich kid on Christmas. There is some deep sexual anticipation in his voice.

  “Chambaraya, I take it? I had always thought that you were a myth.”

  The Voice that answers him shapes itself of birdsong, of cracking stone and splashing water, of the very shouts of the fighting itself that storms around us.

  “NO MYTH, LITTLE GODLING. STAND AWAY FROM CAINE, FOR HE IS OURS.”

  Chambaraya? My mouth flops open a little wider. The freaking river god?

  “Stand away? Most assuredly,” Ma’elKoth responds with silken courtesy. He steps back from where I lie helplessly watching, and he dusts his hands like a workman finishing a well-done job.

  “I have been waiting for the Old Gods to come and stand against Me. I had been hoping for someone more . . . impressive. But you will do.”

  Pallas closes her fist, and the flowers that garland this wagon suddenly writhe to life—snaking over and around Ma’elKoth, pinning his arms to his sides, wrapping his neck. Even the wooden platform beneath his feet squirms and shapes itself to manacle his ankles. For a moment he tests his purely physical strength against them, his robes rippling with the play of parahuman muscle. They creak but hold him fast. He looks down at the riot of flowers making a jungle of his massive body, and his grin spreads.

  He shrugs, and thunder rolls.

  He laughs, and the sun goes dim.

  He lifts his head, and lightning spears from the darkening sky, crackling energy that transfixes him; flames explode from his body, igniting the wagon, charring the vines to blackened ash in the blink of an eye.

  The thunderclap that follows blows away my hearing, and Ma’elKoth stands triumphant amidst the flames.

  He raises his fist, in that gesture I remember from the Ritual of Rebirth in the Great Hall. I roll away, shout
ing a wordless warning for Pallas.

  Ma’elKoth’s fist strokes outward. A blast furnace ignites the air with a shattering roar, a shaft of power that strikes my wife full upon the breast—and she opens her arms to receive it as a flower opens its petals to the sun.

  Her laugh is full of alien power. She points north, over the wall of the stadium, angled high into the noonday sky.

  A pulsing crystalline mountain rises there, blocking half the sky, emerald with algae and sparking with the silver-mailed flickers of darting fish. The river itself is spilling upward against all reason—

  It shapes itself higher, and higher yet, a globe the size of a village growing upon its end. Then the globe unfolds, like a flower, like a starfish—

  It’s a hand.

  The Hand of Chambaraya descends upon the stadium. All around us fighting men, seasoned veterans of a hundred battles, cast aside their weapons and throw themselves to the ground, covering their eyes and screaming like children. Civilians clutch each other and wail. And I . . . I can’t look away.

  What has Pallas become, that she can do such things?

  The hand is the size of a battleship, a freaking aircraft carrier, and it closes upon us. The flames of the burning wagon hiss and boil through it, sending a cloud of bubbles skyward. For a long, astonishing instant I am underwater, face-to-face with an equally astonished carp that’s bigger than my head. Then the surface leaves me, lying here upon the smoking dripping reeking ruin of a wagon, wet through, with the poison still spreading through my fiery leg.

  High, already so high above that the sun glares through it, the hand holds Ma’elKoth within its watery grip—it’s a globe of water again a hundred meters through—I can barely see him deep within its center.

  Sudden steam bursts boiling around him as he spreads his arms and begins to burn.

  He hasn’t given up yet, and I’m not all that sure that Pallas—Chambaraya, whatever—I’m not sure they can beat him.

  I’m not sure that anybody can.

  I roll over, coughing out a throatful of thick greenish water, and find myself staring into the ruins of Lamorak’s face. We’ve really done a number on him, over the past few days—broken leg, broken jaw, shattered nose that has his eyes nearly swollen shut. Those swollen eyes meet mine and begin to drift hopelessly closed; if I choose to take his life right now, there’s not a goddamn thing he can do about it, and he knows it. He’s letting go of consciousness because he knows me too well to waste his breath begging.

  “Stay with me, you worthless sack of shit,” I snarl, twisting my fingers into the bandage that ties shut his jaw. The sudden sharp pain of the linen cutting into his swelling brings him back, and his eyes roll like a spooky horse’s.

  “Stay with me. I want you awake for this.”

  “Wha . . . but, but Caine . . .”

  I’d love to lie here for another day or two, but I drag myself to my feet. My poisoned thigh has gone numb around the wound now, and a creeping wave front of fire enters my pelvis.

  I’ve got maybe five minutes to live.

  I stumble over Toa-Sytell’s unconscious body—hope he drowned, the sneaky little shit—and barely make it to the X-shaped framework that Pallas had hung from.

  She’s up there, over my head, shining like the sun.

  She’s the only light left in the stadium. Black clouds have come out of somewhere—huge rolling granite boulders of storm clouds licking the sky with tongues of lightning.

  All I have to do is get to her, get my hands on her, and I can save us both, but she is far out of my reach, floating, borne up by the air itself—

  I shout her name, over and over again, but winds have come, gale winds that rip the sounds from my mouth and cast them carelessly away. She can’t hear me; she’ll never hear me. Maybe, maybe if I climb the rack, I can balance on the top, and jump—

  Both my legs are killing me, my right knee and my burning left thigh. I groan as I pull myself up onto the cross . . . and that’s when I see Berne.

  He’s down on the arena floor, shouting and cursing and kicking the soldiers that cower on the ground around him. I can read his twisted lips, screaming for somebody to just shoot that fucking bitch, but none of the men nearby have bows and none of the bow-armed Cats that still struggle with Subjects here and there in the stands can hear him.

  He lifts his head, and the light from her body blurs his face into featureless white, and he’s calculating something. He reaches a decision, and Kosall comes up like his cock, his legs bend—

  And he leaps.

  So do I.

  He shoots upward like an arrow. I jump up and out to intercept him, with all my failing strength. I’m starting fifteen, twenty feet above him, but it doesn’t matter, it’s not enough, I’m too late, too slow. I stretch forth my hands . . . and my fingers find his boot top as he soars past me, and I hang on.

  The opposing angles of our momentum jerk us into a crazy tumble in the air. I fall down, down, and down, losing my hold on him as we twist apart, and the sand slaps all breath from my lungs.

  I can only lie there, limbs twitching like a dead man’s, while I try to drag air into my chest. Even as it comes in a great whooping gasp, Berne looms over me, backlit by the lightning-shot storm clouds above us.

  “What the fuck,” he says, raising his voice above the wind. “I’m nothing if not flexible. You first, then.”

  He lifts Kosall and regards its shimmering edge. “Y’know, I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

  “Yeah, me too.” I hook his ankle with my instep and stamp the side of his knee, but he’s seen that one and it nearly costs me my leg. He bends the joint to absorb the impact, slicing down toward my thigh with Kosall, and I only barely throw into the back-roll in time. I go over my back to my feet while he’s pulling an arm’s length of Kosall out of the sand.

  I back away from him, glancing at the ground around my feet so that I don’t trip over one of the cowering soldiers. He comes for me, stalking cat-footed, holding the blade loosely canted at a high angle between us. The smile on his face looks like what people must see on mine before I kill them.

  It’s not much fun from this side.

  Thunder cracks over our heads, and the flashing glare of lightning above tells me that the other fight, the important one, is still going on: Pallas and Ma’elKoth, duking it out in front of twenty thousand terrified witnesses.

  Nobody’s watching Berne and me. Nobody cares about this dirty little grudge match.

  No blaze of glory for me.

  He’s vastly stronger than I am, inhumanly fast, his technique and balance are better than mine, and he has a sword that’ll cut through anything. Not to mention that this Buckler thing of his makes him virtually invulnerable.

  I’m gonna kill him anyway.

  I have to. Because Pallas has no attention to spare for him, and there’s nothing but me between them.

  I glance around, and he comes for me in a lightning lunge, covering three meters in less than an eye blink; Kosall’s point sizzles through my tunic, parting the leather without resistance, as I twist aside barely in time. I take his wrist lightly as he passes me, pulling him along to draw his balance, and then clothesline him with a forehand chop at his throat.

  He drops his chin and takes it on the mouth—I don’t even draw blood—but his boots skid on the wet sand and he goes down on his back. No point in trying to take advantage: I can’t hurt him and he can muscle out of any pin. I whirl away and run as fast as my limping legs can carry me.

  “Hey, Caine?” he calls mockingly from behind me. “You used to be able to outrun me!”

  And he’s right on my ass already. I can hear his booted lope, but I’m almost there, almost to the spot I’d found with that risky glance. His Monastic training saves my life—as he swings for the back of my neck, he exhales a sharp chuff, like a ki-ya. I dive into a forward shoulder-roll. Kosall hisses through the space that my neck just vacated, and when I come up, the net is in my hand.

&n
bsp; Berne stops and cocks his head, still smiling. “What do you think you’re going to do with that?”

  “Recognize this, Berne?” I say. “This is the one four of your boys died watching.”

  “So?”

  I draw a long, chisel-bladed fighting knife from its scabbard below my armpit. “So I’ve been saving it to kill you with.”

  He snorts. Lightning flares and thunder crashes.

  “Come on, then.”

  So I do.

  I don’t cast the net over him, as I did to Ma’elKoth. Berne is a born fighter, a natural warrior, and I’d never catch him like that. Instead I use his incredible reflexes against him: I snap the net like a whip at his head.

  He disdainfully blocks it with Kosall, but he hasn’t carried this blade very long, not long enough to retrain himself: he blocks the net with Kosall’s edge. It slices right through, so instead of wrapping around the blade, about half the net splashes across his face. In that half-second reflexive blink, I lunge with the knife.

  He knows how I fight. He knows I favor the heart, and so I stay away from it—that’s where he will have focused that Buckler of his. Instead I lowline him and shove a foot of cold steel through his groin right into his hip joint.

  The hilt vibrates against my palm as the blade grates on bone. Berne gasps and gives a lover’s low moan. I jam the knife in deeper, right into the joint. As his superstrength muscles clamp down around the injury, I wrench the knife downward, leaning on it with all my weight. The hilt snaps off in my hand.

  He looks at me in white-faced astonishment: he can’t believe how badly I’ve hurt him.

  I drop the hilt with its stub of blade. I reach inside my tunic for my other fighting knife and between my shoulder blades for my wedge-pointed thrower.

  And Kosall flashes down toward my head.

  I throw myself to the side out of its path, but I feel an impact on my boot as I dive away: half my boot heel and a thumb-sized chunk of my own heel are sliced away in a fraction of a second. I scramble back, and Berne comes for me, snarling his agony with every step.

  I can’t believe he can even stand, let alone walk, and now, beyond reason, he breaks into a running fleche—!