by Deck Davis
If Jakub could coax one out at sundown it’d be just that little bit tired, unfocussed, not in full possession of its human senses.
Movement, spikes, night time. If he used all three, and if the gods were still taking pity on him, this could work.
He waited until the sun had set and stars watched from the sky like little eyes eager to see a tired necromancer bait a lusk out of its lair. His walk to the crack in the ground wasn’t a long one but it was tiring due to the canvas bag of rat, fox and rabbit flesh in his right hand, and the sharpened stakes he carried under his left arm. By the time he made it there, he felt like sleeping.
He set the meat bag down and crouched by the split in the ground. It was shaped like a bolt of lightning, widening at one end so that two men could fit side to side. He couldn’t see how far under the ground it went, but he dropped a scattering of stones and it was a while until he heard them land.
His first job was to position the stakes. He wanted to angle them downwards so that when the lusk smelled meat and breached, it would leap straight into the spikes. This was delicate because he didn’t want the lusk to die instantly and then fall back into the depths of the ground before he could reanimate it. He just needed to take a little wind out of it.
After experimenting a little, he decided that they were best positioned a few feet from the widest part of the split. That way, the lusk would leap up from the crack, and the spikes would tear into its lower torso and hindquarters, while still giving it enough room to clear the breach.
Next, he opened the meat bag. The canvas bag filled with flesh, guts, dried blood and stringy intestines and other miscellaneous inner body parts would have made most people’s stomach bubble, but Jakub was attuned to death, and he didn’t try to suppress his academy training this time.
He spread the biggest pieces of flesh on either side of the split and he gathered some of the slop and blood and he spread it on the insides, hoping the smell would drift deep into the gut of the ground and wake a lusk. And then he waited.
And waited.
But soon, Toil delivered another problem to him.
The night-time winds, absent up until now, suddenly picked up, and they seemed to concentrate around Jakub and his trap, and they gathered the aroma of the meat and blood and they carried it far away, far across the desert so that there was none left to tempt the lusks.
Tired, shivering, with shocks of adrenaline working through him, he cursed the wind and waited for it to leave. When that didn’t work he talked softly to it, complementing its coldness and resistance, telling it what a good wind it was and how maybe for tonight, it could blow elsewhere.
When that didn’t work, he began to question his sanity in talking to the wind in the first place, and wondered if even solitary guys like necromancers could get too lonely.
The problem was, he couldn’t wait until the day because if his theory was right, the lusk would be alert when the sun rose. He needed it tired and groggy. Nor could he wait until the next night, because the slavers would get further and further away.
This had to happen tonight.
Desperate, Jakub grabbed a clump of flesh and he lay next on his stomach next to the split in the ground, and he took a deep breath and then he reached down into it until he couldn’t see his arm. He scooted up so he could reach deeper, and then he spread the flesh back and forth against the sides of the split down in the unseen darkness, hoping the deeper he left the meaty scent, the more chance of awakening a lusk.
Something crashed jut left of his hand. The surprise made his stomach tighten, he felt like his heart dislodged from his chest.
He withdrew his arm and rolled away from the split just in time for a giant lusk to breach. The sound was deafening as stone and dirt flew up and then came down like rain, splattering over his face and his hair.
The lusk looked like a shadow set against the black desert. A nightmare of an angry Toil god’s creation, skin glistening with indeterminate fluids, legs long and crooked but with muscle set against bone, perfect for propelling it into the air.
Its eyes were little black pebbles, and you could only tell they were there from the way they were slightly raised like boils on its face. When it opened its slit-shaped jaw its teeth shone pearl-white, like jagged stars but not beautiful; only destructive.
It took a few seconds for his shock to wear off and for him to push his fear to the recesses of his mind before he noticed that the lusk was shaking.
It took a few steps and veered right, and it kept biting at something in its side. Jakub slowly worked his way around, making a half-circle, until he got enough of an angle to see a wedge of spike sticking out from the lusks torso.
It was wounded, and Jakub watched it and he felt like its confusion and fear were palpable energies that drifted off it in waves.
The lusk would have breached the ground hundreds of times in its life, but never would it have found sharpened stick waiting for it, and now it couldn’t understand what had happened to it, and it began making a series of high-pitched sounds, like the chirp of a bird but undercut with terror.
This made the hairs of Jakub’s arms stand. He understood what the sounds were.
A call to its family. This wasn’t a lone lusk.
Nerves and fear and panic gushing through him, Jakub drew his sword and charged at the lusk, knowing he had to end this now. He reached it just as the insect registered his presence, and when he swiped with his sword he met air, the lusk leaping five feet to the right.
That was good, and it was bad. The lusk was still agile and it was dangerous, but it couldn’t leap to the heights it normally would. Up close, Jakub saw a dark fluid spreading over its limbs and skin. Not quite blood, but whatever passed for it in the lusk’s body.
He ducked low and ran right, out of the lusk’s limited vision. It turned to follow him but it was too late, and Jakub slashed at it.
When his sword met one of the crooked smaller limbs on its side, the lusk bleated like a stuck sheep, but the sound was a sharp corkscrew in Jakub’s ears, and he felt it bring on a pounding in his skull. The sound disorientated him, almost like oil sloshing in his brain and slowing his thoughts.
The next thing he felt was a tremendous explosion of pain in his chest, and he felt himself fly through the air and then land on his back in a breath-sapping blow. Pain sprang through him, a bed of it burning through his nerves.
It must have kicked him with one of its larger legs, and the force scared him. He felt like he’d been charged at by a bull. As he gasped for breath he fumbled for his sword, only to see that it was ten feet away now.
And the lusk was leaping toward him five feet at a time. Only a second until it would be on him.
He gasped for air. He summoned every last spark of energy to get to his knees, and he saw that the lusk had kicked him all the way back so he was next to the split in the ground.
As the insect took one last leap, jaws open and teeth shining ghost white, Jakub ripped a spike out from where he’d dug it into the split, and he held it up and braced as a quarter-ton of insect leaped into him, impaling itself and letting out a dagger of a scream.
The sound slashed the insides of his skull as he felt its blood splash into his face, nose, eyes, over his lips.
Jakub fell onto his back once more.
He felt the lusk scrabbling to separate from him. He pushed it away, wrenched another stake from the split, raised it high and then drove it into the insect’s body.
CHAPTER 33
York, the hunter
He couldn’t bear Kolja screaming like that. A horse shouldn’t scream, yet there was something so pain-filled, so human, in his beast’s cries that he couldn’t stand it. Even now two lizards were tearing into his hind legs, while the other pair bit his throat and ripped away skin and flesh and sinew, caring not a bit that Kolja’s blood burst over their scales.
The hunter in him knew that Kolja was already dead. That he should bear his cries until they stopped, and then he cou
ld use his only weapon against the lizards while they were full and slowed from the meat.
The old man in him couldn’t listen to his animal scream anymore. These days, while the old man’s body was weaker, his will was stronger, and York knew what he would do.
He raised the wand to shoulder height, stretched out his arm and squinted. The squinting wasn’t necessary, of course, but the only projectile weapon he was used to was a bow, and old habits rarely left old men.
He willed the wand to fire. Energy trembled through the leather and heat gathered at its tip before exploding like a dying star, spreading a scorching light across the desert.
It ripped into Kolja, blasting a hole in the poor animal’s skull, the fragments coming down as rain along with his blood and brains.
His crying stopped. Now all York heard was claws on dirt. Even so far away he could hear them, those ancient beasts of bone and scale, and their eyes possessing only a predatory intelligence. No mercy, no love. These were creatures as old as Toil itself and just as cruel, knowing only that they survived one sun to the next by killing whatever they had to, whenever they could.
Now they snapped their heads left to right, and though York lay on his belly and felt a stone press into his chest, they saw him.
Their gazes locked on him and they all moved as one, slithering over the ground, tails as sharp as knives swishing left and right, coal-black eyes never wavering from him.
He opened his side-bag and put his hand inside. Bottles tinkled as he rummaged through them. A dozen bottles in total and he knew them all, for he had packed them with Toil in mind and he’d committed the shapes of their lids to memory while the trader had driven him here. A hunter like him knew that sometimes there was no time to look, only to act.
He took one bottle out, unscrewed the lid and he poured an oily liquid onto his palms until his whole skin glistened with it. Then he rubbed this over his face, hair, sleeves, chest, and legs. The smell was like leather dropped in a puddle of putrid water and left to dry, natural and rotten at the same time. He wondered how alchemists could even work with the stuff.
The lizards stopped short. They sniffed the air, nostrils opening and collapsing, heads turning. One stuck out forked tongue and hissed.
And then they carried on running at him.
It was no good. The oil was essence of lusk. York had used animal essences throughout his career, baiting animals into the open using smells they desired or feared. He’d hoped that as one of the larger carnivorous predators in Toil, smelling a lusk would make the lizards flee. He’d obviously been wrong.
Now they charged toward him, claws looking larger every step closer they got, teeth yellow and blunted from years of cracking through bone to get to the meat and marrow.
York had nothing else to use. His weapons were with poor Kolja, his bolt wand useless after discharge. All he could do was crack his knuckles and grimace through his arthritis and force his hands into fists, and hope that in decades to come when archaeologists found his bleached bones they could somehow tell he died fighting.
But wait.
A single tear forced itself from the corner of his eye and down his face. When it reached his cheek, York felt it suddenly move sideways onto his nose.
It was the breeze. He was so shot with adrenaline he’d forgotten the breeze.
With the lizards barely ten feet away, he sprinted diagonally until the wind came from behind him.
Now the lizards stopped dead. All four of them silent and unmoving, the sun shining on their scales and making them look like weathered statues.
They smelled him now. The wind had carried the lusk essence to them, and they were scared. Bison, lion, wyrm, it didn’t matter, York knew what fear looked like in any animal because it was always the same.
The lizards suddenly darted right and broke away, tearing across the desert as fast as they could. York watched until they became scurrying dots and then he breathed out in relief.
Feeling weak, tired, and stinking like a lusk’s arse, York walked back to Kolja. He found the horse in a pathetic heap, pieces of it missing, blood everywhere, eyes wide open and staring at him as if to accuse him. He closed its eyes and he wedged his saddlebag from underneath it and he put the rest of his things in a pile.
By the time he’d cataloged everything, he knew that he was a dead man.
The lizards had split all of his pigskins with their claws. That would have been survivable, had they not bitten his water stone into dust. Now his search for water would be like looking for a Dispolis priest when the brothels open for the day.
So, no water, and no horse. Old bones, tired muscles, a mind almost ready to quit.
Feeling that the end was upon him more than ever, York grabbed his crossbow, his last bolt wand, and his compass. He held the bear claw and the piece of black cloth he’d found.
The claw would lead him to his last, great enemy. But the cloth might lead him to a person. Someone with water and horses. Did he want that? Was living a few more days with it if his purpose was lost?
He held the claw to the compass and he watched the needle spin and then settle. Next, he held the cloth to it, and something curious happened.
Or didn’t happen.
The needle didn’t change. It pointed in the same direction.
With his choice made, York slung his crossbow over his shoulder and he walked at his compass’s command.
CHAPTER 34
Gunar Helketoil
“Most of my ancestors died here,” said Helena. “It took time. Every generation got weaker than the last, diluted like bad wine. People said they were stupid to settle here, and they were right. Lucky that my great-grandpa and grandma saw sense and got out before our line ended. I wonder how much Helketoil blood is in the ground. But you know, for every drop they lost to this place, at least they did it willingly. They chose to come here.”
She rattled the bars around their wagon. The sound woke up a woman and her baby in the far right of the space, and she glared at Helena. It wasn’t just annoyance at waking her baby; it was because Helena had woken her, too, and sleep was the only comfort the caravaners had.
It was their only escape from the cramped wagon where people sat shoulder to shoulder, not even enough room to lie down. It got so hot that their skin stuck together, and when they moved they had to peel away from each other carefully.
Sleep wasn’t just an escape from the present, but the future too. Everyone knew what kind of people their captors were. As much as the lead slaver smiled and made his people give Gunar and the caravaners plenty of water, Gunar looked at him and saw darkness in his eyes.
No, there was no point fooling themselves about what waited when the slaver caravans reached the boundaries of Toil.
The thing that scared him most was Helena, and listening to the way she talked now. Gunar was all bluster and big balls when he was out among the caravan and getting their arses into line, but Helena was the really strong one. Listening to her now, Gunar could hear the defeat that clung to her words like a ghost.
He touched her shoulder and he felt her flinch. She flinched! His wife of twenty years could barely stand him, and he knew why. This was his fault.
“Helena,” he whispered. “I might have a way out of this.”
She looked at him now, and her eyes were sunken like half-buried diamonds, the bones around them sticking out more than they used to.
“They guard us less at night, yes?” Gunar said.
“Go on…”
“And they work in shifts. Four of them each night…except for every fourth night. Every fourth night, only three of them guard us. I think it’s because of the woman who left a while ago; their numbers are short.”
“They still outnumber us, and we’re in a wagon behind bars. We’d have to get free before we could do anything, and we’d make a racket trying it.”
“This is a wooden cage, Helena. It’s not strong enough to hold us, nor is it meant to. The cage is a symbol, more than anything
; they know they outnumber us, and the cage just reinforces the idea that we’re prisoners. It can’t hold us if we choose to break it.”
“You’ve got Toil-stroke. We’re tired and weak and they have daggers, swords, whips. You’ll get us killed.”
“That’s the thing,” said Gunar. “I won’t. They could catch us hacking at the bars and they won’t do a toil-damned thing. Think about it; what do they want to do with us?”
“I’d rather not talk about that.”
“I’d rather not have it happen, but hiding from the truth won’t stop it. They want to sell us, Helena. And if they kill us, there are fewer of us to sell. If they hurt us, we’re worth less. We lose absolutely nothing by trying this, and it could give us everything.”
“Why tell me? You don’t need my permission. You never have. Every time we set foot back in Toil…”
Her words and their implications stung him then because he knew that a truth you already feared was the deadliest venom. He’d dragged her into Toil each time. Shed followed him out of love, but Gunar had always known he’d been leading them into danger.
He just wanted a better life for them. For him, Helena, and Beate. Little Beate who right now was sitting with her knees up against her chest and her head resting on them. Eyes shut, beautiful, a picture of innocence and everything right in the world. Old Shep, the loyal mutt dragged from the grave by the necromancer, was next to her, shuffled up as close as he could get. Gunar suspected the only reason the slavers let the dog live was to keep as much harmony as they could. Placated slaves were easy slaves.
He’d never lead them here again. The gold wasn’t worth it. He’d find something else; he’d work in the Dispolis docks or the city bazaars and he’d labor morning until sunset just to keep them fed, he’d do anything as long as he didn’t subject them to this again.
