It ran a finger down where the Severance marked my face. Red, like the carving Erma’s Ma had used to call them; like the painting on many of the brackers I could see. I don’t know what it meant to them, but it was something.
Then there was a commotion from somewhere off in the trees, deeper into the bracker village or perhaps the other side of it. Abruptly the entire mass of them was in motion, ramming into each other, climbing over each other, some heading towards the noise, others away from it. For a brief moment we were an island in that grinding flow, constantly in danger of being crushed on all sides.
Then Melory just dropped, the ghostlight flashing bright as day from the pits of her face. I propped her up. Her one eye was wide, and her lips writhed.
“I hear ghosts!” she got out, clutching at me. “From far away. Ghosts. Ancestors!”
There was a shrill whining sound that bit into my head—I thought it was the wasps, but then one of the bigger brackers had shouldered into us, knocking Kalloi down. The thin sound issued from the vast bulk of its body.
“They hear,” Melory got out, before the creature seized her, rearing up so its middle legs could tear her from my grip and bundle her up. A moment later and it was loping off, out of the frenzied mass, out into the clear trees, Melory clutched to its underside.
VI
I HAD THOUGHT THEY’D be slow, looking at them. The bracker that had Melory was swift as a running man the moment it was out of the press of its fellows. Those huge forelegs pounded down and it swung its body between them, the short hindlimbs nothing but an anchor so it could swing the front pair forwards again. When I tried to pursue, another bracker was in my way, beating at the ground with its clubs and yet not quite wanting to touch me. I shouted at it furiously, waving my metal staff, even striking it across the nearest limb.
“Priest!” Kalloi yelled. I turned to see him trying to haul the hairless outcast with him. The dwarfish creature’s flesh deformed under his hands as though it were soft sand, blackening and splitting into runnels of blood. I went back automatically, but a fresh bracker rammed Kalloi aside before recoiling from him. It paused a moment over the hairless man, stamping like a child having a tantrum. I had the sense of conflicting desires within it, driving it into a frenzy.
One bludgeoning fist came down and smashed the hairless man’s body to pulp. I felt as though it could have been Kalloi as easily. The bracker was retreating, jostled by its fellows, shuddering as though the touch of the man’s flesh had been toxic. I grabbed Kalloi and hauled him upright. He was white with shock, bloody where the bracker’s serrated side had shunted him.
“They’re fighting each other!” Amorket shouted over the thunder and scrape. “Fighting, over there.” A finger pointed vaguely into the unseen spaces past the trees.
“No!” Erma insisted. “They don’t!”
“I don’t care,” I bellowed at both of them. “Let them slaughter each other. Where’s Melory?” I put my face, the Eyes of the Ancestors, right up in Erma’s. “Track them, hunter. They broke out of this mess. Follow them!”
But it was easier said than done because there were plenty of shoving, trampling brackers all around us and we couldn’t just push our way out. These were the larger ones that had remained behind, and many carrying their unformed young.
Right then I would have butchered the lot of them if I could, but while my nature seemed to be keeping us from being crushed, it wasn’t cutting a path through them.
Amorket did that. I will give her that much credit.
Without warning—and she was at my very elbow—she exploded with wasps. Her Furies swarmed us. I felt a searing fire in my arm where one just drove its sting straight into me. Kalloi cried out, too, wrapping himself in his cape to ward them off. I don’t think Amorket had any control over them; they just responded to how she felt, and right then she wanted to get out as much as any of us.
The wasps attacked the brackers around us. They dived about the creatures’ heads and bounced off their backs like stinging rain. More, they attacked the soft bundles of life the brackers were carrying, stinging the helpless little monsters wherever they could. The seething mass of beasts all around us was suddenly an expanding circle as the creatures tried to escape and protect their larvae.
Amorket moved, and the wasps moved with her, driving fiercely in whatever direction she faced. In such a way we got clear of the brackers; though, by the time we had, the wasps seemed as much of a threat as the animals. I retreated with my people and waited until the Furies had calmed and returned to their homes within the knots of her armour.
By then, Erma had a trail, and I could only hope it was the right bracker we were tracking and not some random beast that had lumbered off into the forest. With no other choice, we were after it, making the best time we could.
* * *
The bracker had taken Melory downhill, away from Tsuno. I asked Erma what was this way, but all she could say was that it was where the brackers lived, where their villages were, before they came here.
We stopped first when we came to a ploughed-up piece of forest. Trees had been torn up, and those that hadn’t bore scars and weeping wounds where something had carved into them on its way through. I reckoned they were all shuffling aside, in their slow way, as the memory of whatever had happened rippled through the forest.
“Portruno,” Kalloi said, and the rest of us nodded. Just like the way the earth had been churned up there, just like the path that had led between the wrecked village and the forest.
This doesn’t go to where the brackers are, though, I thought, but it didn’t mean anything. There were many bracker villages, Erma had said. Possibly they were expanding in all directions, great herds of them driving their paths between the trees. Except even when they had all been panicking and charging around, they hadn’t been causing that kind of devastation.
“Erma,” I said, after we’d set off again. “Those tracks . . . ?”
“Can’t say.” Her face was closed up, unreadable. “Too much gone past, can’t see any prints at all.”
“Are we gaining on Melory?”
“Can’t say.”
And then we ran out of forest.
We’d come to a dip in the ground, a fold between hills, and here we rejoined that devastation, except it was still being enacted. Even as we arrived there was the splintering snap of a tree being pushed over, and the whole dell had been ground clear, broken trunks and branches, spiralling sprays of leaves, all piled up on either side.
Things moved across the barren ground, grinding through the mud. They looked like rocks, save they were all roughly the same shape, like a great stone hood curving back on itself at the rear. They ploughed across the earth, raising a wake of mud and ravaged roots. Where they met resistance, they just braced themselves and shoved, and eventually the stone or tree just gave, undermined and turned aside.
Melory’s voice, high and clear over the grind and crack of the stone-things, was like a knife jammed in me. She was calling my name.
We found her in the middle of the scar of ravaged land. The bracker had dragged her there and was still holding on to her arm with one of its stubby hands. She kicked at it and wrenched, but the creature’s grip was strong enough to leave great round bruises on her arm.
I was running before I knew it, leaping over the torn earth brandishing my staff. The bracker reared back, yanking Melory half off her feet, slamming its clubs down to turn me aside. Erma was shouting but right then I had no time for her or her mystery.
The head of my staff danced before its eyes, and then I had Kalloi on my left and Illon on my right, shouting and waving their arms, throwing stones. The bracker twittered at us and reared again, shoving towards me with one arm without actually striking me. All around us the stone-things went about their destructive business. We shouted and Erma blew her pipe and it bracked. And now I wonder if it was demanding answers or trying to provide them.
What I did see was that the bracker had let Melory go
.
It backed off from us, head low, side-eyes weaving about. It made a noise I hadn’t heard from them before, a kind of liquid gurgling. Erma stopped still, face set.
I was in the middle of asking what that meant when it went for one of the stone-things, just bounded off sideways and slammed into the thing’s shell with both clubbed fists. I saw a crack flower from the impact and suddenly understood what the brackers had been showing me before: the piece of ridgy stone had been a shard of shell.
Then the stone thing fought back.
What had seemed no more than a boulder grubbing its way through the dirt lifted up into angry motion on long, pinkish legs, doubling its height. It was fast, too, dancing back on four limbs and striking out with the front two, so that the pair of monsters threatened and beat at each other with blows that would have crushed any of us. I rushed to Melory, who was on the ground. I thought the bracker had hurt her, but she was clutching at her head and the ghostlight pulsed there in odd rhythms.
“Voices,” she got out. “There are ghosts here!”
I was still trying to get her to her feet, but the others drew back from her. Even Severed from the villages, there’s something about ghosts that commands reverence. Even having been to the House of our—
“Ancestors,” as though Melory was reading my mind.
“Attack!” Amorket’s high shriek, and I thought for a moment it was just her being her, like facing off against the bracker. Then I had a moment to look around and saw things had all gone horribly wrong.
All the stone-things were in furious motion. And they weren’t stone-things, not when those long legs came out and they were flurrying over the turned earth towards the bracker. They were coming to the aid of their kin, fast as running men. One of them almost trampled Erma, who was trying to get the bracker’s attention. It was Kalloi who dragged her clear.
The bracker whirled, lashing out at them, shrilling, making that gargling sound again. The strike of its clubs against their shells was like the retorts of thunder. For a moment the shell-creatures were hesitating, kept back by its sheer fury. Then they began baiting it, each one attacking the bracker’s back when it was turned to them, backing off when it spun to face them.
By then we were trying to get away, me hauling Melory and Kalloi dragging Erma. Except the stone-things were between us and the trees, and they were noticing us, now. They high-stepped close, tilted and peered. I saw nests of eyes protruding and retracting at the lip of their shells. Under the arching limbs, a hideous mouth sucked and slapped.
Melory jerked in my hands, and I saw one of them was pawing at her foot. I hit it with my staff, and it recoiled, from me rather than the force of the blow, because the contact was almost nothing. They were trying to get to Erma, too, and Amorket, but we of the Order were . . .
I was thinking that we were abhorrent, as we were to any animal, but it wasn’t like that. They didn’t shy away from us as the brackers had. They pushed past us, tried to shove us out of the way to get to their prey, but . . . politely, almost. Insistently, but they could have trampled us flat and they didn’t.
And yet they were monstrously strong, and we couldn’t stop them, could only dance around Melory and Erma for so long. Then one of them got at Amorket and knocked her down—nobody had really cared to be her guard, in all honesty. I thought that was it for her, and perhaps we could get out while she had their attention. I reckoned without the gifts Jalaino had given her, though.
Her Furies boiled out of her armour, mad as their namesake, just as they had amongst the brackers. They attacked whatever was closest, and that meant the stone-thing that had floored her. I saw them dart and lance into its pinkish-grey flesh, and the creature recoiled, that hideous mouth gaping to show a host of writhing limbs and teeth within it. It made a sound, a sickening sound. I felt ill just hearing it, though I couldn’t understand why right then.
The expanding ring of wasps washed over us, and all the shelled beasts were rocking and lurching away, or hunkering down so that the rims of their shells were flush with the earth.
I had Melory moving immediately. Her ghostlight was so bright I could have read by it, and she seemed completely lost to the world. The others were right on my heels.
When we got to the trees, I heard another sound, so shrill it felt like someone boring a hole in my skull. I looked back and saw the bracker torn bodily apart, each limb hauled in a different direction by one of the stone-things. Erma’s cry of shock came right after.
* * *
After we had caught our breath, we found a vantage that gave us a better view, the knocking and groaning of the stone-things echoing hollowly to us. Below us, where once was unbroken canopy, a scar curved out through the forest. Stone-things were moving there, a dozen of them, some far larger than we’d seen before. They ground forwards at their inexorable pace, ploughing earth already thoroughly churned up by the passage of their fellows. Some curved off to the edge of the scar to widen it, pushing over trees and turfing up great stones. Their strength seemed limitless. Nothing could stand against them, and their concerted effort seemed to have a dreadful purpose to it. Not the grazing of beasts, but creatures acting in concert to widen their road, just as the villagers at Orovo had made paths around their village. The scar went as far as the eye could see, off until the trees consumed it, until the heavy, greenish air obscured it.
“Brackers live over that way.” Erma’s shaking hand could have meant anywhere, but we understood. Brackers didn’t live there anymore, I guessed. These stone-things had carved a path through their villages, broken their houses as they’d destroyed Portruno. Driven the brackers before them until the creatures had ended up squatting on the doorstep of their human neighbours.
We spent a night under the trees on our way back to Tsuno. Kalloi was already pale from more than just shock, by then, shivering by our fire as Melory tried to help him. She was still trying to work out what she had experienced. Some ghosts, she said. Or perhaps something like ghosts, as the ancestors were like ghosts. Something that could talk to the ghost part of her.
For me, I didn’t sleep much. That sound the stone-thing made still haunted me, its cry when the wasps stung it. I had heard the ancestors speak in their own way, those words that are like and unlike the ones we use. The sounds the stone-thing made had struck my ear like their words. As though human words had come from that ghastly gaping mouth. “No, no,” my ears had heard, and, “Mother!”
Interlude
The Sister Colony: Part Two
“WE CAUGHT ONE,” Lena Dal said. “Right up against the perimeter.”
Bain stared dully at her. “Perimeter,” he echoed. Because there wasn’t a perimeter. They were up on a scarp slope, the sea still a grey-brown line on the horizon. A half-dozen emergency quarantine domes linked together, like a child’s imitation of the research base they’d abandoned. All they had left.
“Are you listening to me?” Lena demanded. “We caught one. A snail. It was right there.”
“Tell everyone we . . .” The thought was so morbidly depressing Bain couldn’t quite enunciate it. I’m the director, he told himself, though director of what was a fair question. “We have to move again.” Farther inland, towards the line of those scale-trunked, twisted trees; towards the distant landing site they hadn’t been able to contact, the main expedition that hadn’t even come looking for them.
There had been a flier, just the once. It had passed over the beach and doubtless seen the wreckage. They had waited for it to swing back and make a determined search for survivors, but it had never returned. And yes, there had been harsh words when Bain’s team had schismed from the main expedition, rejecting their plans for the future of the colony. He wouldn’t believe that was the reason, though. They were just desperate. He knew how that felt. This world was death, and doubtless one look had been enough to assure them that the sister expedition was gone. It was a mindset this planet cultivated. Nothing would ever turn out well. It was cursed.
&nb
sp; And now they were going to have to move again.
“Are you even listening to me, Bain?” Lena was shaking, ever so slightly.
“Perimeter. Snail. Have to move,” he mumbled.
“Bain, we’re a kilometre from the littoral zone here. There are no snails. It’s not their habitat. But this one was amongst the tents. It had taken the water purifier apart, just laid the pieces out, eaten some of them. That could have been one of us, Bain.”
And it could. Because they’d sent a drone back to the lab complex to look for other survivors. Bain had seen the recording where two snails had been organising the various pieces of Orindo Snapper, technician. They’d eaten parts of him, though some of the biotechs were saying it wasn’t actually eating. Other parts had been placed in a circular pattern, organised. Filed.
“So we . . . move. What do you want me to say?”
“They have come after us,” Lena spelled out for him. “They have come way outside their normal range, for us.”
He tried a level stare, the sort of expression a serious director would have. “Are you saying the snails want revenge?”
“Revenge?” Lena snapped. “I want revenge, Bain. I want to murder every last one of the bastards. I’m saying that there’s some damn thing we have they want. We have their attention, Bain.”
Something terrible was building up inside him. “You’re saying we’re going to be . . . hunted to the end of the Earth . . . by snails?” And it was a laugh, and he couldn’t stop it. Even to his ears it sounded grotesque, the braying of a dying animal.
“Bain!” She looked like she wanted to slap him. He wouldn’t have blamed her. “Shay thinks the . . . the big one’s on the move.”
That killed the laugh. They hadn’t seen the hill-sized snail since they abandoned the base. They didn’t even have enough drones to go look for it, because the trundling remotes just kept not coming back. The image of the colossal thing wrenching itself from the earth recurred to him. And can it move as fast as the others? In his imagination, of course it could. It could coast over the landscape, light and vast as a zeppelin, its mass returning to it only in the moment it put its feet down to obliterate them.
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