Smoke in the Glass

by Chris Humphreys

  This present revolt, though, had the more common origin, starting in some isolated village of Iztec province – among fishermen this time, his spies had told him – where they had killed the Fire God’s tax collector, marched to the next villages, killed whoever opposed them in those, added to their forces then marched on the province’s main town, killing the governor and sacking it before settling down to drink it dry. That these had moved further south in search of more destruction, more plunder, showed that they were bolder – or drunker – than many. Most rebels, after their initial successes, scurried back to their homes and hoped that retribution would not follow – though Intitepe always made sure that it did.

  Will I fight today? he wondered as he yawned again. He’d put on his full armour – interlocking links of supple hardwood from chest to thigh, lined in iron, arm and leg guards of pink clam shell, his helmet hewn and crafted from blackheart tree. He had his stone-tipped war club, Skull-crusher, and his obsidian long dagger, Slake-thirst. He supposed he could do with the exercise. He often accompanied his relay runners for the first stage of their journey but hadn’t lately. A vague unease had kept him in his palace for some weeks now. Truly, though, how much exercise was there in slaughtering drunk peasants? How much of a thrill in a fight when the worst that could happen to him was a wound that would swiftly heal, or a fortunately flung stone that would knock him out for a few minutes? When had he last felt that thrill in combat which once he’d craved?

  Over four hundred years before was the answer. On that early winter’s day when he’d led his men, his elite, into the heart of that much larger army. In the midst of whom he’d felled the priest-king in personal combat.

  ‘Saroc.’ He said the name aloud, liking the sound of it. It was the sound of final conquest. Saroc, his last immortal rival. Who he’d then given to Toluc, the Fire Mountain, dissolving his enemy’s flesh. The priest-king’s eyes had gleamed to the end as he sank into the lava, fixed on Intitepe. Conveying the strength of his final prophecy: ‘As you slew your father, so a son of yours shall slay you.’

  Noise below him took away the image – his men were settling into their final positions. He turned again to stare at the sleeping camp he would soon destroy. Stared past it into the north, towards the distant mountain that he could only see in memory, where he’d laid Saroc low. Yes, he thought, I will fight today. Men who dare oppose me will feel my anger. Some I’ll slay here, some I’ll have carried back to Toluc, to offer to the volcano. It has been hungry too long. His people needed to be reminded that sacrifice was required for the happiness in their lives. Sacrifice …

  He swivelled, looked south. He’d dispatched Tolucca to fetch that … thing. The child that Atisha – curse her name! – had made. He’d save the prisoners he’d take today for a big ceremony. A dozen of them, men and women, the leaders of this rabble from the coast. They would swim the lava first. Finally it would be hurled into the flames. He would hurl it himself, something he’d never done before. This he vowed.

  ‘Father?’

  He looked down. Amerist was there, one of his three immortal daughters. The middle one. Tolucca, the slayer-priestess, was the eldest, near three hundred years old. Sayana, the youngest at a mere seventy, was a simple girl, delighting only in weaving and songs. Amerist, one hundred and fifty at her last birthing day, was most like him – a warrior from the moment she threw the poppet from her crib and tried to pull his sword from his belt. She was tall, lean, her body strong and supple – and revealed, because she delighted in wearing no armour, and barely clothes, exposing herself to enemy blades with an immortal’s certainty. She held a bow, on her back was a quiver with a dozen arrows, at her loin cloth, a scabbard with her short stabbing sword. Her small, hard breasts were, as always, bare.

  He’d once considered taking her into his marana as one of his twelve. Sayana, the youngest, would happily have come to his bed if he’d asked but he had no interest in her softness. Amerist had firmly declined when he’d hinted at it. ‘What if we made a son?’ she’d said. ‘I’d have to kill you before you killed him.’ Besides, her desires ran elsewhere, to women. She led a dozen of them, her personal guard, dressed and armed like her, in the forces below.

  ‘Daughter?’

  ‘All is ready. How do you wish to proceed?’

  He looked into the defile, at his hundred armed and armoured men. They were joking in whispers with each other. They always enjoyed these slaughters, for the killing and especially for what would follow, because he let them do whatever they wanted to the surviving rebel women – or the men, according to their tastes. Behind these, squatting silently on the ground, were Amerist’s female band.

  Although he knew this was going to be little more than a massacre, the memory of Saroc and some vague sense of real warfare stirred in him now. ‘The men to go in first on my signal. The women are the reserve. They follow a hundred paces behind and await my further command.’

  Amerist’s hazel eyes narrowed. She liked to be in the first ranks. But she never disobeyed her father-god. ‘Do you fight?’ she asked, her anger showing in the curtness of the question.

  ‘I will go in with the men. Maybe I will fight.’ He rose from his crouch, stepped to her, put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, daughter. Watch for my signal. I will call you forward before the slaughter is over.’

  ‘Good.’

  She preceded him to the defile floor. His men fell silent, ceasing their jokes and boasts as he moved among them. When he came to the front his grey-haired, much-scarred commander, One-Eared Salpe, grinned and said, ‘Orders, lord?’

  Intitepe felt again that slightest stirring of excitement. He’d lived for this, once. ‘Spread out on the plain. Two ranks, two apart, two deep. Silent charge. Kill at will.’

  ‘Lord.’ Salpe turned and hissed the command back. It would have come as no surprise.

  Intitepe felt the settling behind him. The hefting of spears in their left hands, the drawing of swords with their right. Why not? he thought. Maybe a little blood will wash away this unease. He looked up, and watched Tulami, the morning star, wink and dissolve into the pinkening sky. He drew his sword. ‘Forward,’ he called softly.

  They went at a run, leaving the defile, spreading fast to left and right into two ranks of fifty men, running on, the only noise the drumming of their feet on the parched valley floor. It wasn’t much noise, and the enemy were in a drunken sleep, but someone must have heard or seen, because before they were halfway to the rebel camp, still a hundred paces away, someone screamed, ‘Attack! Attack!’

  It was like an anthill, when boiling water is suddenly poured on. Figures shot up everywhere, a hundred or more, kicking aside blankets, untangling limbs. Yet none of them reached for weapons. All just turned and ran for a second defile – this one behind them, that led into the next valley.

  ‘Faster!’ shouted Intitepe, the need for silence gone. It was annoying, he’d have preferred to kill or take them all here on the plain. Still, no stooped peasant or bow-legged fisherman could outrun him or his guards for long. And the next valley would be as fit a slaughter ground as this one, no doubt.

  The slowest rebels died first, a few of his men heaving spears into their fleeing backs. More were struck with swords as they bunched in the next defile, even narrower than the one he’d led his forces from. But terror and razor-sharp obsidian goaded them on, the rebels bunching before exploding like a cork from a bottle of over-fermented beer. ‘On,’ yelled Intitepe, pausing to let some of his men run by him, running again with the second wave. He was caught up in it now. This was more like the hunts he loved, with the traitors ahead the deer.

  This second defile was short, the next valley they ran into not large, no more than a hundred paces across, with shallow hills rising at the back of it. A stream ahead bisected the plain, a thin line of green water he glimpsed over the dip of its bank. It didn’t look very wide … so he was surprised when th
e rebels halted at it, didn’t fling themselves into the water and risk possible drowning rather than certain stabbing. He was delighted they didn’t, though. He hadn’t thought he’d fight. But now his blood was hot, and it could only be cooled in the blood of others.

  He was still fifty paces away, readying spear and sword, when the sight before him changed. Figures that had been hidden by the lip of the bank rose suddenly from their bellies to their feet. One rank, two, more. Where there had been one hundred fleeing rebels now stood five hundred. Men and women.

  Armed men and women.

  Intitepe caught up with the first runners when they skidded to a halt, many of those coming behind crashing into the back of those ahead. His ranks dissolved, as men jerked to a stop, cursing, muttering. ‘Quiet,’ he shouted – but for the first time in hundreds of years, he was not instantly obeyed. Salpe, other officers, shouted too. The mutters diminished, until at last the Fire King’s forces were as silent as those who faced them.

  The silence lasted five heartbeats – till it was broken by a single voice, on a single word.

  ‘Forward,’ a man called.

  As one the rebels screamed and charged forward.

  As one, the royal forces turned – and fled.

  This is impossible, Intitepe thought, running faster to overtake his men. Peasants thinking, not just being killed, but killing. Impossible!

  He knew what he must do. He had not survived the wars against his seven sons, and against Saroc, without learning things. He would rally his trained men in the narrow defile ahead. They would form a smaller front, with Amerist’s archers holding the steep hills on either side. Peasants, however bold, would bunch and die on spear, arrow and sword.

  Yet as he followed the last of the faster men between the sloping stone walls, he saw his new plan was dust – for the hills were already held. Men were up there with bows of their own, with rocks, with logs, and they swiftly killed the first of his guard that tried to run through the defile. Leaping their falling, thrashing bodies, he ran on, as arrows whipped past his face. A flung stone hit his shoulder, knocking him forward. He stumbled, felt a sting in his back. Now someone was at his side, a hand to his elbow, lifting him. He glanced – Salpe was there, looking grim. ‘Lord,’ the old veteran cried, ‘we must—’

  It was all he spoke, before an arrow took him in the eye. He fell, screaming, grabbing at Intitepe’s cloak. The Fire God shrugged out of it, ran on. There could be no stopping for anyone, and his men were pledged to die for him.

  He staggered from the defile. In the hills beyond it, the path he and his forces had marched down that morning ran south through the trees. He took a step towards it.

  ‘Father! Father!’

  Amerist ran up, and he stumbled into her arms. ‘Daughter! They—’

  ‘I know.’ She dragged him into a semicircle of women, facing the way he had come, bows drawn. He saw there were fewer of them now. ‘Father!’ she gasped, looking behind him. So he did too – and saw the feathers of an arrow shaft protruding between slats in his armour.

  She reached for it, and he hissed, swung away. ‘Leave it,’ he commanded, and looked beyond the women to the defile. It seethed – with his men, some fallen and crushed, some swaying and desperately fighting the shrieking rebels who leapt among them with sickles, daggers, axes. For the moment the narrow gap was so choked with bodies that no one was coming through, while Amerist’s remaining archers were now making the hilltop too dangerous a place to stand.

  Intitepe grabbed his daughter’s arm, pulling her close. ‘Hold them here. Hold them for as long as you can. I must go.’

  ‘Go?’ Amerist echoed him, incredulous. ‘Father, we must rally the men, fight—’

  ‘This fight is lost. We must prepare for the next one. The only thing that matters now is us, you and me.’

  The shrieking rose to an even higher pitch. He looked, saw more rebels leaping, striking, more of his men falling. He stepped away. ‘Cover me for as long as you are able. But not too long, daughter. Forget everyone else, even your women. Save yourself. Return to Toluc.’

  ‘You’ll be there?’

  ‘I …’ It came to him on the instant. This defeat? The sense of dread he’d had for a while now? It was all connected to Saroc’s prophecy – and so to Atisha’s child. Four hundred years of instinct told him that. ‘No! That thing, born to Atisha—’

  ‘What?’ Stones flew above them and they ducked. She took his arm. ‘Father, listen, he does not matter now. Only the fight—’

  ‘He … it does matter! It is everything!’ He flung her arm off. ‘Obey me. Cover me. Then … run!’

  He didn’t hear her reply, amidst bow-thrum and death cries. He ran, more certain with every stride. He would go to the City of Women. End the threat against him in person. He would dissolve Atisha’s child in flame – there; he wouldn’t even take the abomination back to Toluc. Then he would return north with an army to slaughter every peasant rebel, all their families, and salt their earth. No one would ever dare defy him again.

  After another hundred paces he dropped into the stride that the relay runners used, an easy fast lope. Soon he was in the trees, their trunks diminishing the shrieks behind him first to distant wails and then to nothing. The hill was harder to run on than the flat, though, harder still because with every pace he became more aware of the arrow in his back.

  It couldn’t have gone that deep or he’d be dead. Dead to be born again. He thought of stopping to pull it out, which would probably kill him. The last time he’d died and been reborn had been two hundred years before. Gored by a stag he’d cornered. He still remembered the pain of rebirth, didn’t want to face it now. Besides, instinct told him he was not yet safe.

  It was his hearing that told him why. A strange sound, close – too close! – an animal cry that came from no animal he’d ever heard in his realm. Slowing down to hear more clearly he felt, through the soles of his feet, a drumming on the earth.

  Immediately he cut sideways off the path, into thick brush that tore at his legs, arms, face. Came to a tree and, with what suddenly felt like the last of his strength, scrambled up to a low branch on the side of the tree away from the path. Lay there, trying not to pant, peering around the trunk back to the path he’d left …

  … just in time.

  Something was coming. He heard it in a snort, then in another high-pitched cry. But none of that strangeness prepared him for what came.

  It was a beast. He’d never seen the like. A man’s body fused into a creature’s that had a separate, long neck like a llama’s but was twice the llama’s height and length. Man and beast seemed one – until the whole halted, close to the spot where he must have forsaken the path for the trees. Then Intitepe saw that the man was … apart from the beast, that they were two, that the man had been … riding the animal, like children would ride a llama for a few paces before they were bucked off, though adults never did. And once he’d realised that it was just a man, he studied him more closely – and again saw strangeness like he never could have imagined.

  The man was a giant, head and shoulders taller than Intitepe, who was tall for his people. Long black hair fell from a single topknot on his crown to just above his waist. His clothes were black too, glimmering faintly – tanned animal skin from his boots to the band across his forehead. He had a face as pale as llama milk, in vivid contrast to the black beard that grew thick and swept up almost to the eyes … eyes that now turned towards him. In the moment he had before he swung his face back behind the trunk, he noted those eyes were pale as ice.

  He held his breath. For a moment he clearly felt both the man’s and the beast’s attention directed towards him. But then another sound came, distant, clear – a trumpet blown three times. Grunts came from the man; short, explosive. Perhaps they were words. Other sounds followed – that same drumming that had approached, now fading into the distance. Only
when he was certain he was alone, when birds began to call again, did Intitepe finally peer again around the trunk.

  Man and beast were gone.

  He lowered himself to the ground, groaned. The pain in his back had doubled. But he returned to the path, and began again to run, grinding his teeth against the agony. He knew he would have to stop soon, pull the arrow out, die if necessary, be reborn. It would take only a few hours but he could not spare them. Not yet. He would not rest again until he’d put some more distance between him and those … things that had followed him.

  Truly, he would not rest until he’d gone to the City of Women and killed Atisha’s child.

  In the city’s deepest dungeon, in the darkest hour of the night, Atisha woke from a dream of fire. It was the only warmth she had in her cell, and her only comfort too. For in her dream she had wrested a burning brand from the hands of Intitepe, one he was about to plunge into a pyre atop which, tied naked to a stake, stood the child they had made. Not a baby now – their offspring was fully grown. Yet between the child’s legs lay nothing of man or woman. A flower was there, of a type unknown to her, blooming even as Atisha looked. And when she’d seized the brand, when Intitepe fell to the ground and wept, Poum had laughed.

  It was the laugh that woke her. Poum was still asleep though her mother was sure it wouldn’t be for long. Atisha knew that babies changed as they grew, that the early days of ease and gentle slumber would pass. But she also knew it wasn’t mere growing that now kept her babe crying and squirming through most of the day and long into every night. From the moment of her birth, each had reflected the other; ate when both were hungry, slept when both were tired, laughed when each took joy. But there was no laughter in a dungeon and Poum knew, because her mother did, that they might never know its comfort again. For Tolucca – immortal, immortal’s daughter, priestess-slayer – was coming in her raven mask to claim them both. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. They’d been in the cell for two weeks since the runner arrived. And though it had taken just over three for Atisha to reach the city, she knew that Tolucca would travel faster than a new mother and her babe.