The Vastness

by Hausladen, Blake;

  A hand of darkness slammed down, and the Savdi-Nuar seemed not to resist. A perfect darkness, thick and full of love spilled out of the nothingness.

  The Shadow’s love.

  ‘You must die,’ the spirit said, and I felt his claws rising up around me.

  “Never,” I said, and flung it all up and away. The claws withered and the light of the fire danced against the opened the terraces.

  A crossbowman somewhere far forward let fly. The shaft swirled the fog and struck Geart’s thigh.

  He fell to one knee and his icy touch abated. I wondered at his frailty. He’d made countless Hessier. What toll had that taken? I’d made over two-thousand Hessier in my fourteen centuries, and I’d felt my blood weaken with each making.

  “Hit him again,” I shouted down, and regretted at once revealing that my gag had been torn free.

  Neither Maison nor Mika responded. Geart had hold of them all. The Savdi-Nuar

  Flames shrouded Geart’s body and I exalted to see it. The silver in his body burned free and he withdrew into the fog as more bolts were fired.

  A low rumble began to grow, and a savage stampede came into view. It spilled up out of the mists and the caribou came up the valley like the wash of a flood.

  Bolts began to stab at them.

  “Hold fire,” came the call and the Savdi-Nuar settled back, watching.

  The terraces had been built to defend against a much different foe, but ended up being perfect for the one they faced. The Hessier caribou jammed themselves against the first high wall of earth and trampled their forward edge, climbing over each other. Some bashed at the gates before being jammed against it by the press. The first false gate gave way and caribou poured into the pit behind it until they jammed it with their carcasses. The true gate gave way next, but it almost did not matter as the tide of frenzied beasts crested the terrace. They trampled across the wide field and pitched headlong into the first terrace.

  “Burn,” the Savdi-Nuar upon the wall above called down, and the ghosts that filled it blazed red and mean. Their shrieks rose above the rumble and baying of the dead beast. Flames leapt high above the trench and it seemed Geart’s beasts would get no farther until the spill of them began to extinguish the bright flame and bury the ghosts. One after another, was extinguished and the Caribou began to crash against the embankment and gates of the second terrace.

  Great cats and wolves began to appear in the mix, and they leapt above the caribou and over the trenches. Bolts stabbed at them, and each hit slowed them until a careful shot struck them through the skull.

  On it went, the second and third terraces being overwhelmed, their trenches of angry ghosts extinguished.

  The order was given and flight after flight of bolts reached down the slope to decimate the heard coming up. Their numbers thinned, and the ghosts in the fourth trench burned hot. Beast after beast went in and its mass was flung up in a wash of smoke and ash.

  A crackling caught my ear, and a flash of light far down the slope cut through the gloom. It sped across the carpet of death, a kin to the magic I’d aimed at Mika.

  All the flesh of the many dead beasts erupted in flame and the blast of heat sent a tidal wave of burning meat rushing up the valley and across terraces. It slammed each, all the way up to where I was tied and slapped me with flaming bits of pelts.

  The blast spent itself and everything below became still. Choking smoke blanketed the valley. A few Savdi-Nuar stumbled behind their walls, but not many.

  And then below, a fresh rumbling began. Hooves and growls of things big and angry.

  He could not have much more.

  “Fight them,” I called down. “Defend the last trench!”

  The blue of healing magic glowed through the smoke and voices began to move upon the terraces.

  Mika appeared on my left with a loaded crossbow and took aim at my head for a long moment, but turned instead and shot it deep into the shoulder of a moose that had raced ahead of the rest. The bone shattered and it toppled across the torn carpeting of meat and plunged into the next trench.

  Behind it, the mass moving up the at us trembled the flames, and the cold breeze pushed away the smoke to reveal a ramps of meat that extended all the way up to the fifth terrace.

  “Loose the ghosts,” Mika called, and the Savdi-Nuar urged them on. Flaming swirls of ash rose from the trench before the sixth terrace and hurdled down at the advancing beasts. They wraiths tore at them and new carcasses began to litter the torn fields by the score. Bolts stabbed down into the mix and the herd began to thin.

  Lynx, foxes, and klipspringer began to race up through the chaos. The rush took the Savdi-Nuar by surprise and they began to fall.

  “Use the touch,” Mika called, and the bit of Soma’s magic began to snap at my soul and sever the Shadow’s magic from the beasts upon them.

  More came. Healing magic began to fade and their savage touch weakened. The clank of crossbow winches slowed.

  “Let me loose. This is folly. I can defeat him.”

  “Where is that damned gag,” Mika shouted, came up to find it, and belted it back in place.

  They faded away to might right and left them, and I saw how they meant to use me. I thrashed and screamed against the gag.

  The last trench filled and the last of the ghosts was overcome. Careful shots knocked back those that made it over the last wall.

  A second crackling tingle began below.

  “Withdraw,” Mika called, too calm for the moment. I was hauled up and back toward the palace as the roar of flame blasted up the valley. The palaces thick columns shuddered as the wave struck and I fell hard as the men lost their grip on my bag.

  More voices and hands. Back through the halls we moved and upon a long stairway the struggled repeated itself. Dead beasts packed the hall and stairs and a fresh blast tore through the palace.

  Back they fled into the cavern beneath the palaces and the places of their most secret work.

  In ones and twos, the beasts came down until there was no more.

  In that long pause, I was taken deeper while others went up—more snipers with bolts made to kill Geart.

  A roar and a quaking of the earth signaled he’d been struck, but the report came down that he was still up.

  Geart pressed the Shadow down at us after that and the Savdi-Nuar struggled to keep it away.

  A small vial of mercury was brought up and they fed it to me one drop at a time. I almost let Geart take them, but as his touch pressed down upon me I knocked it away as I had the biting worms. On this went, longer than I could keep track.

  A heat began to rise somewhere from the back of the cavern, and a growing with a mechanical sound that accompanied it. A second silver-lined bag was brought and laid out next to mine.

  They had a molten forge or something similar waiting for both of us. They meant to exhaust Geart and bind him as they had done to me. We would both be fed into it forge.

  Snakes and rats came next, in a gray spill. Several of the Savdi-Nuar drank vials of the mercury and their songs tore up the caves leaving nothing but bits of scales and rat hair.

  Another roar and quake inspired chuckles from some.

  One of the crossbow men descended, telling a tale of a lurching form upon the terraces they were using for target practice.

  “Let’s put Sikhek in now,” Mika said. “We don’t need him anymore.”

  They agreed and carried me toward the forge. I tried to bite through the silver bar jammed into my mouth and kicked against the lashes around my legs. I called on the Shadow and tried to sing them all to sleep. They knocked my magic away and started me up toward the wide mouth of the cauldron. The air was impossibly hot. I lost my breath and my eyes burned.

  They laughed at me and banged my head upon the iron bars of the rising stairway.

  I looked up at the ceiling of rock and wished it away. I wished for the strength to call the ceiling down upon us. I flung the noun up at it in desperation.

  basa
lt

  Mika laughed at me. “Gifting us a noun will not earn you any more time. Get him up here.”

  They might throw me in, but someone else could still kill them all.

  BASALT

  I sent the word out with all there was left of me, and the sound of it must have carried all the way down the valley.

  “You wretched fool,” Mika shouted. “Hurry! Lose the mercury.”

  The men with the satchels tossed them up and into the molten cauldron. The chamber began to fill with the terrible gas of the burning mercury.

  The first tumble of rock was distant. The second was closer, followed a rumbling as the rocks Geart tore away fell somewhere distant.

  The ceiling fell in with a blast of dust and debris. I was crushed between Mika and the stairway until the broken rock was flung up and away.

  My limbs and jaw were smashed, and perhaps the back of my skull. Deaf and blind for the moment I struggled to understand what happened next. The pressure changed. A song broke over me and the world came slowly back into focus.

  Geart had dropped me upon a blasted shelf of rock where the palace had stood.

  “You need someone to talk to?”

  He was sipping a small handful of mercury, extracted perhaps from the molten lead it had been pour into.

  “You’ll not get much more than that. They worked hard to destroy the last of it.”

  He stood and sang a wild song of words I did not know. Noun after noun as beautiful as any very I’d ever heard or dreamt of.

  When he was done he knelt down, drew a heavy knife, and cut off my hand.

  “My bones will be of no use to you. Nor my blood. Your purification song saw to that.”

  A small bird landed on his shoulder. Then another. Time rolled on, while he removed the bones from my severed hand and rolled them between his hands as if hoping for a different end to our story. I laughed at him.

  “The world does not like us, Geart. We are doomed to fail.”

  He said nothing and waited. More birds and a gray fox arrived. Then a young deer. An albatross was next followed by animals of all kinds.

  Back down the ramp of meat and stone, a shuffling inspired me to turn my head.

  People approached, half naked and starved. Forced to walk from Yud or Dahar or whatever place they had been taken from.

  Geart rolled my bones around again and again, and began to sing a new song. A light mist drifted up from the handful of bones.

  He was pulling the touch of the Vastness free. It would take time, but Geart had found a way. He had everything he needed.

  “Give me your words,” he said to me, and I told them all to him, one after another.

  69

  General Leger Mertone

  The Battle of Alsonvale

  “Have the Chaukai been able to understand the songs being sung inside the city?” I asked Barok as we looked down upon Alsonvale. The spot was one I had camped at the previous year. It overlooked the thick walls and the buildings of its renowned garrison. We’d seen no sign of the 2nd division yet. The men upon the walls were something else, and not one bluecoat scout had studied us as we approached.

  “No. Too many verses banging around. Evela moved the druids further back to keep the verbs out of their ears.”

  The city had had seven days to prepare for us while we recovered after the Mother Earth’s furious upheaval. The gates were closed tight and either arrows or magic was shot at those we sent forward. The broken ground that had been the flat roads north of the Kaaryon prevented any fresh word arriving from Rahan or Evand. Neither of us could abide being blind to what happened on our flanks. Yarik or worse could be only days away for all we knew. I had scouts out as far as I could get them with relay fires ready. The Hemari 2nd was out there somewhere.

  I would not have advanced us so rapid otherwise. The enemy in front of us needed to be dealt with swiftly before we fell into some well-laid trap.

  The Chaukai and soul-irons signaled that they were ready. Barok was pale. I did not comment on his condition, and instead thanked him and gestured to the heavy iron bladder he’d filled during our approach.

  “Make this quick,” he said as he helped me sling it over my shoulder upon a thick chain. “We need to make the turn to Bessradi.”

  I nodded and started down. The city was doomed. Gern believed they would surrender to me and save themselves. Lady Jayme called him a fool. What mattered for their survival was how they responded in the gathering moments. There was only one answer that would suffice.

  The iron bladder began to glow red as I withdrew from Barok and approached the gates. Arrows struck the breast of my armor and caught fire. A green liquid splashed me and a mist filled the air. The men above the gates cheered until I stepped through the cloud.

  “Alsonvale,” I said up, “It is Leger Mertone, General of Edonia and loyal ally of your lord Rahan Yentif. Open your gates to us now and place yourselves under our command. Do so now or you will be destroyed.”

  A red hat yelled down, “Bayen keeps us, demon. Go back to the pit the whores of Enhedu spawned you from.”

  Arrows pelted me, and my armor glowed purple and yellow.

  “Throw that priest over the wall,” I said. “The red hats are finished in Zoviya.”

  “The prophets decry you,” he screamed and continued screaming. I began to chuckle at the poor man and the many reasons he thought me damned. A healthy piece of his litany was straight from the writings of Khrim Zovi. As he screamed I began to hear the hollowness behind his voice.

  He was a thrall.

  The thought was my last before the moist earth beneath me crumbled to ash. I fell into the burning froth and almost slid beneath the surface. I got hold of the edge of the pit and heaved myself up back onto solid ground.

  My patience expired. I trotted forward and began to strike the gates with my fists. They began to burn hot and mean while the songs of priests cut the air around me. The flaming gate bucked when I kicked it and I moved up into the gatehouse, accompanied by flames and ash.

  Men charged me as I pushed through. They died badly as my flames and sword moved up onto the wall. The priests gathered there were shrouded in darkness, and their magic crashed around me as I charged across. I was struck again and again by bits of this and that and did not like the heavy glow of the bladder as their magic tore at me.

  I was the wrong tool. These were men long taken by the Shadow. Soma had not touched this place, and one snap of her fingers could have ended the battle. The thralls sent their magic at me, and then their bodies.

  A blow cleaved my helmet and tore it away. Their songs flared as they imagined triumph. They came at me from all directions, and the tortured smears of their colorful magic flashed and boiled. My sword was a mercy compared to the end the Shadow had in store for them. The crackle of their burning bodies was the only sound until I got back down and heard the approach of our horses. Barok had no patience. The Chaukai and soul-irons had been unleashed and he was moving closer.

  I found Gern in the mix of them charging through the gates. He rode Clever, who was not pleased by his rider. He twisted around as Gern brought him to a halt and snapped at his leg. The bit of iron there looked well chewed.

  “Clever is as impatient as Barok,” I said to him. “He should withdraw.”

  “You are in danger and we are attacked on our flank,” Gern said and pointed toward the heart of the city. “Something like Hessier, they move on us now. There.”

  A form, metallic and monstrous, flashed in and out of view as it raced through the streets.

  “Rally,” I called, and the tumble of my flame-shrouded brethren came quick. “Gern, horses to the left. No room for them here. And will someone please knock Barok out the saddle and keep him clear of this!”

  Gern detached his ghosts, and our flaming eyes searched the many roads that emptied onto the fields between the city’s streets and the burning wall. The city looked oddly deserted, and the empty buildings began to tremble. Windows
shattered and loose tiles started to cascade from roofs. The air began to brighten as though the sun had emerged from behind the heavy bank of clouds above the city, but the cloud layer had not moved.

  Far to my right, the sky was slashed with yellow smoke by a flight of flaming arrows. They carried over the wall toward the living Chaukai and whatever foe had struck their flank. I growled and focused on the strange foe before me.

  The house opposite us exploded out then and silver shapes roared as they charged through. The tumble of debris pelted the field like grains of sand.

  They were three great bulls, their bodies made of ivory and silver.

  Disbelief held us still a moment longer than it should have as the last of the broken bricks and timbers clattered down.

  Silver was a device of the Spirit.

  The thought was my last clear one before the silver beasts charged us.

  “At them,” I called and our blazing red wall collapsed on the silver beasts. Iron and silver collided. My sword lanced deep into the flank of one before I was struck and tumbled back in a confused pile. I rolled and righted myself. The glow of the iron bladder was gone.

  Back in the mix, the beast raged and bucked. Bits of armor tumbled free as ghosts were torn apart by the blows. Deep wounds marked their heads and flanks, and one wore a long spear straight through its skull—all to no effect.

  “Gern, knock them over. Go for their legs. Hack them away.”

  Clever shrieked as Gern brought his soul-irons in. The great horse reared and screamed, danced in amongst the bulls and spun free on the far side, gnashing and shrieking. The bulls turned to follow and the rest of Gern’s ghosts smashed against their flanks. Two toppled over and were swarmed as their legs were hacked away. I looked up to see Clever and his reluctant rider face the last bull alone.

  Its silver horns carried forward in a dash, searching for Clever’s side. The stallion spun out of the way and his iron hooves shot out of the tumbling black ash to strike the thing’s head. A man-sized hunk of silver tore free and the mass and ghastly animal fell.