The Iron Dirge

by Sam Sykes

  But spring, like that spring, were for the up-and-comers, the newly formed straggling clans wandering out into the Scar to see if they could survive the law and the beasts long enough to make a name for themselves, like The Bloody Six (executed), Dark Intentions (killed by a bigger clan that wanted the name) or…

  “The Children of the Dead,” I muttered, more spiteful than they deserved. “I hear they’ve been hitting other villages the same way they’re hitting Paarl’s Hollow: giving people a chance to flee and then taking their money. Is that true?”

  “Er, yes, it is,” Irvic said, adjusting his glasses around the bruise my fist had given him. “Dread Niri doesn’t want to kill them, if she can help it. She just wants… everything else. Money. Treasure. Food. Whatever can’t be left behind for the Beast to crush.”

  I frowned, but not for the reasons you’re thinking. If I was going to start criticizing every bandit who took advantage of a Compass Beast’s rampage to loot, I’d be there all day.

  “Why Paarl’s Hollow, though?” I glanced down the road, far away to where the town’s high walls loomed over the forest. “It’s too much trouble for bandits to take and they spend all their money on their peacekeepers.”

  “Niri knew that,” Irvic said. “That’s why she’s had us luring peacekeepers out and ambushing them.”

  “But why not just wait for the Beast to destroy it and sift through what’s left?”

  “Because she doesn’t want there to be anything left. Whatever isn’t crushed goes on the pyre.”

  I screwed up my face. “What, everything? The money, too?”

  “Especially the money.” Irvic shook his head. “Don’t ask me, madam. I just joined for protection.”

  “From her, I bet.”

  Irvic fell quiet. “From… everything.” He turned his bleary eyes toward the distant walls of Paarl’s Hollow. “It doesn’t matter, though. The Beast is moving faster than it should. It’s called to the town. It knows. It knows.”

  His eyes drifted upward toward the tree line. Mine followed. Neither of us had to look hard.

  A gigantic dark shape that crested, a mountain peak of flesh and scale, over the treetops. The entire world shook as a colossal foot took a gigantic, shuddering step. A cloud of birds of various breeds burst out of the trees, prey and predators alike united in their desire to get the fuck out of the way. And, after a great inhale, it roared.

  I had to clamp my hands over my ears—a strange thing to see a woman with a gun that shoots walls of solid sound doing—to block the sound out. I’d endured the sounds of beasts who wanted to devour me with more grace than this, but a Compass Beast’s voice was… something else. No malice nor ferality in its bellow, just a simple announcement of its presence, a sound like a headsman’s axe poised over a neck.

  As if to say: “Oh yeah, asshole, the situation really is that bad.”

  “Fuck,” I sighed, glancing back to the road leading to Paarl’s Hollow.

  Despite what you might think, it wasn’t the Beast I was worried about.

  I mean, yes, I was very worried about a thing that big in theory, but Compass Beasts are just a fact of life in the Scar. Every now and again, some hulking monstrosity bigger than a monster will start moving in a direction and destroy everything in its path with no allegiance or motivation to drive it, no different than bad weather or a failed harvest.

  … well, maybe a little different.

  But I couldn’t do fuck all against any of those, so I tried to put it out of my mind. My concerns were for something else.

  Or someone else.

  Several dozen someones else, actually.

  From Irvic’s post, I could just barely make them out as they filtered out of the forest and onto the road leading to town.

  Most of them were young, wearing that hungry, dark-eyed look that young men and women do when they’re forced to pick up swords too early. A few were older, veteran outlaws who knew a winning team when they saw one. They came lurching out of the forest, carrying what weapons they’d scavenged—no order, no discipline, everything you’d expect from an outlaw war band.

  To look at them, you wouldn’t think they could have put three towns to the torch before this one, would you?

  Hell, I barely believed it myself.

  But then I’d seen the weapons.

  It was new steel they were carrying: fresh swords and spears, helmets and breastplates they’d looted, crossbows made for more than looking tough. Peacekeeper gear; Irvic wasn’t lying, whoever the town had sent out to stop these bandits was now being worn by them.

  I squinted, searched the crowd of painted outlaws filtering out of the forests, looking for the big one, or the one with the biggest sword, or the one with the biggest hat—usually, it’s not too hard to identify which bandit is in charge. But all I saw in that crowd were lean, angry faces rendered indistinct by grime and war paint.

  “Where the fuck is Niri?” I muttered.

  “If she’s wise, she’ll have heard the message and—”

  “There are a dozen ways you can end that sentence, Irvic, and only one of them ends with you keeping both your eyes. Think carefully.”

  I could sense the raving boiling on his lips, but as with so many things in life, a little violence saved a lot of time. “She’s where she always is,” he muttered. “Leading from the front.”

  I searched the front of the army. I was barely able to tell them apart through the paint covering their faces, though. Each of them wore black and white grease, painted in dramatic, stark portrayals of skulls, of ghosts, of pale dead things with veiny mouths. But aside from some truly spectacular makeup work, I couldn’t see anyone who looked like a leader.

  Was Niri the tall one with the long braids? She looked vaguely leaderly… leaderesque? Was she that one with the big sword? Bandits love big swords. The spiky-haired one? No, too short. The one with the scars? No, too lowbrow. The one with the—no, wait, that was a man.

  I muttered a curse under my breath. This was a problem I didn’t need. Keeping the bandits from getting to Paarl’s Hollow, I could handle. Finding their leader, I could handle. Doing all that with the impending beast the size of a mountain bearing down, though?

  “FUCK.”

  I turned my back on Irvic, started off back down the hill, found Congeniality waiting at the bottom. She looked up and regarded me through indifferent eyes, the loose skin of her flabby neck jiggling as she looked down her nose at me with an expression I’m sure was annoyance. Only fair, since I had just interrupted her feasting on the maggoty, hairy carcass she’d discovered.

  She was a giant bird, by the way.

  Sorry, probably should have mentioned that right off.

  But, like I said, I was in a hurry.

  Whenever a Compass Beast showed up, most of humanity forgot all about the petty concerns of their lives and joined every other bird, beast, and bug in a desperate bid to get the fuck out of its way.

  Most of them.

  Only two kinds of people voluntarily get into the path of a Compass Beast: those hoping to profit off its terror or big, dumb assholes with magic weapons and pretty faces.

  Maybe you’ve heard the stories about Sal the Cacophony. Maybe you’ve heard she’s a Vagrant who incinerates towns in her wake. Maybe you’ve heard she doesn’t harm people who don’t take up arms against her. Maybe you’ve heard she’s kind, terrible, generous, ferocious, forgiving, remorseless.

  All of those have been true, from time to time.

  Today, though? Today my concerns for Paarl’s Hollow were slightly less humanitarian. Today I was about to spill a lot of blood, fulfill a lot of promises, and break a lot of shit. Today I was going to get my revenge.

  If some people happened to be spared a grisly death because of it?

  Hey. Bonus.

  I brushed aside Congeniality’s massive beak as she snapped at me in irritation, a stray maggot flying out of her mouth. She didn’t protest as I swung into the saddle and sheathed the Cacophony at
my hip. I glanced down at him, his black hilt jutting out from the leather.

  Even sheathed, I could feel his giddy joy at the carnage to come.

  “WAIT!”

  Irvic came staggering down the hill after me. The hysteria in his eyes had ebbed out slightly, replaced by the much more acceptable hysteria expected of anyone living in the Scar. He stood, breathless.

  “You’re not going to fight her, are you?”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “Depends on how reasonable or shoot-in-the-face-able we’re all willing to be.” I took up Congeniality’s reins. “What do you say you make my day a little brighter and fuck off? You aren’t going to want to be around for what I do to your boss.”

  “No, I…” He shook his head. “Take me with you.”

  “Hah. No. You get to walk away, Irvic. Take the gift.”

  “Please, Niri will know I spoke to you and without the Children…” He hesitated. “I have nothing.”

  That was more poignant a grimace than a bandit ought to be able to have. And that was way more affection than the name of a bandit clan deserved. What the fuck, I spared a thought to wonder, kind of a person was Dread Niri that her boys would do this for her?

  A problem I’d solve later. Along with the rest.

  “Then run,” I said. “Lots of warlords in the Scar need another pair of lips to kiss their ass. Just remember not to do anything with feet or you’ll never do anything else.”

  “No, it’s not… I mean, I…” The fear, the poignancy, everything else was melted off his face, replaced by something deeper, hungrier. “I need to see it again.”

  “See what? The gun?” I grinned, patted the Cacophony’s hilt. “Well, I can’t say I blame you. What was it that caught your attention? The dragon bit on the end? It’s always the dragon.”

  “Not the gun. The Beast. The Compass Beast.” He let out a shuddering, entirely inappropriate breath. “I… looked into its eye. I saw something. I know I did. I just need to… wait, where are you going?”

  I didn’t bother answering as I turned Congeniality away and started off toward the road. Hopefully, he’d take the hint.

  “Please! I’ll do anything!”

  But if you live in the Scar, you know how little hope actually does.

  “I don’t need anything,” I replied. “Not from a lunatic.”

  “I’m not a lunatic! I just… I saw…” He called after me. “Please! I can help you against Niri! I can… I can… I don’t know what I can do.”

  I was content to leave it at that. Content to leave him rambling in the dust to die by Niri, the Beast, or by a bad rash. I didn’t care. I didn’t need someone like this getting in the way when I was about to face off against a bandit in the best of times, let alone one with weirdly affectionate henchmen like—

  And that’s when it hit me. And I pulled Congeniality to a stop. And I looked at Irvic with a long, slow grin that, if he hadn’t been half mad, he probably could have recognized as bad.

  “I know what you can do,” I said softly.

  Okay, so I didn’t feel good about this, either. But try to see things from my perspective.

  Dread Niri, whatever kind of warlord she was, was still a warlord. There’s no chance she wasn’t the biggest, tallest, fastest, and carrying the biggest weapons of anyone in her crew. And her crew, I’m sure I’ve mentioned, is also a lot of people carrying swords.

  I could handle either of those on their own. Hell, the Cacophony and I together could probably handle them both. But that was a lot of mess, a lot of time, and a lot of problems I didn’t fucking need.

  I was, after all, here to kill someone.

  An open confrontation was not a great solution—too much left to chance. An ambush was time I couldn’t afford. I needed something quick, clean, and—

  “TURN BACK, COMRADES! OUR QUEST IS FOLLY!”

  I know I didn’t say “really fucking annoying,” but Irvic was, all the same.

  It’d taken a bit of scrambling—finding a tree in the middle of the road yet far enough away from town, locating enough rope, resisting the urge to just blast his skull and leave his carcass as a warning—but I’d done it. Irvic on his own was rather annoying. But tied to a tree, screaming and shrieking?

  He’d make a good enough distraction. Or, at the very least, a decent barricade.

  I stood beside the tree I’d tied him to, hand on my gun’s hilt, ready to use him for either. In my experience, camaraderie among bandits lasted only as long as it took for someone to want something shinier.

  And yet, as the Children of the Dead approached, they slowed. And halted. And I wish I could tell you it had been because they saw what I’d done to their companion and were already dreaming of what I’d do to them. But there was no fear on their faces beneath their war paint. Only… concern. Worry.

  For themselves? Or for… him?

  “By the look of your paint, I’d say you’re either an impressive-looking orgy or an unimpressive-looking bandit clan,” I shouted out to the gang of stalled bandits. “And by the looks of your weapons, I’d say it’s the latter. I presume, then, I’m speaking to the Children of the Dead?”

  No response, steel, verbal or otherwise. The bandits held their position. That was unusual. Usually a little tough talk convinces one of them to step up and get enough of an ass-kicking that the rest scatter.

  No worries, though. These weren’t even the fanciest-dressed bandits I’d ever met.

  But who could really compare to Stray Dog Swagger, anyway?

  “Then I assume one of you goes by the name of Dread Niri.” I scanned the crowd for an obvious candidate to step forth, my eyes eventually settling on a particularly tense-looking big woman with an even bigger sword. “Should I also assume you’re all willing to die for her?”

  “The Children don’t die! They just come back!” someone found their nerve and shouted from the crowd.

  A chorus of approval came from the crowd, spontaneous chants and cheers emerging in response. I sighed, more from boredom than anything else—not that this was good, exactly, but every fucker with a sword thinks it won’t end the same way it ends for every fucker with a sword.

  My eyes drifted from the distant shape of the Beast, then up to the sun rapidly sliding across the sky. And in my chest, the coldest part of me whispered from inside the darkest part of me.

  He’s going to get away. He’s going to get away and you’ll never cross his name off.

  I clenched my jaw at the sound of their crowing. This preening was taking time I didn’t have.

  “What the fuck do you mean you just come back?” I shouted back at them, quieting their roar. “Do you regenerate? Is it magic or something? Show me.” I held up a hand. “Actually, that would take too much time.”

  I pulled my scarf aside, let the light catch the tattoos adorning my arms.

  “Just everyone who feels like fighting a Vagrant, step forward and we’ll get to the killing.”

  Silence.

  The cheers and chants died. And every painted eye in that crowd of thugs was locked directly on that big brass grin staring them down. The bravest remained quiet. The most timid spoke up, exchanging hurried and harried whispers between themselves until someone said a single word loud enough for me to overhear.

  “Vagrant.”

  I pulled my scarf up just enough to hide my smile. I’d seen this part too many times, but it was still flattering. First came the stares as they tried to process what kind of woman they were staring down. Second came the feet shuffling and the grips on weapons weakening as the limbs realized before the brain did what kind of shit they were in. And then finally… the stories.

  “—a fucking mage? A mage? What’s one of them doing—”

  “—brother’s township, reduced to cinders, like it was nothing—”

  “—fuck, Niri said this was just peacekeepers. I didn’t sign up to fight a fucking Vagrant—”

  Names go only as far as people’s memories. And atrocities are more common tha
n dirt out in the Scar. But stories? Stories are what reputations are made of. Stories eat. Stories grow. And they move. They flutter on fearful words between fearful lips. They cling to people’s backs and whisper in their ears. They ooze, up the body and into the heart, until they’re as much a part of you as your own blood.

  It was stories crawling through that crowd. It was stories that made them lower their weapons and take nervous steps backward. It was stories that made them whisper among each other, in increasing frenzy from mouth to ear and person to person until their line shuddered enough to open a gap. The tall woman from before, the one with the big sword, stood there.

  And stepped aside.

  And there she was.

  Not a warlord. Not a killer. Not even very tall. She was a short, skinny wisp of a woman, dressed in shabby clothes and carrying a thick stick instead of a weapon. Her face was a mess of harsh angles and weary wrinkles, so deep that even the painting of a sullen skull on her face couldn’t hide.

  A girl. Just some tired-looking girl with a big stick.

  “Not who you were expecting?”

  I hid my surprise, but apparently not well enough. Niri’s gait was timid as she approached, her voice clear and shrill. And the closer she drew, the less impressive she looked. At least from a distance, she had an air of mystery.

  Up close, she went from a skinny girl with tired eyes to a really skinny girl with just one eye. The other one shut tight, she turned a dark brown glare up to Irvic bound to the tree nearby.

  “I see you met Irvic. You…” A pause. A visible shudder. “You didn’t hurt him, I hope.”

  “Punched him, tied him to a tree, that sort of thing,” I replied, rolling my shoulder. “But he’s fine.”

  “TURN BACK! YOU CANNOT STAND IN THE WAY OF THE BEAST’S PURPOSE!”

  “Sort of.” I sniffed. “And he and everyone else here will stay sort of fine, depending on how reasonable everyone’s willing to be.”