Hall of Smoke

by H. M. Long

  I looked from them to the cavalry on the other side of the valley. Distantly, I wondered if Nisien, even Estavius, would have the same dull, charcoal-eyed gaze tomorrow.

  And the Algatt who roared for vengeance and hammered their shields, would their corpses swing, eyeless, from the trees?

  Another bout of Algatt horns split the air.

  I replied this time, blinding myself to everything save my own people and my own goals. I loosed an Eangi howl to the dawn, my lone notes rising up the valley on the shafts of fragile, golden light. In my memory, hundreds of Eangi and Eangen warriors joined me, adding their own tones to the twisting, melodic scream.

  As if that were their signal, the battle began.

  FORTY-TWO

  Lines met with a thunder of shields and Algatt cries. Swords and spears thrust. Axes hooked over Arpa shields and one section of the line faltered, only to snap closed an instant later.

  Legs braced and, overhead, arrows began to fly. Arpa archers dropped and loosed, sending a volley over the Algatt front at the same time as the second and third rows of Arpa locked their shields into a roof. An answering rain of Algatt arrows clattered and cracked down onto the barrier, only a handful punching through to do any real damage.

  I’d seen this tactic before; it was distraction, not damage, that the Algatt archers aimed for.

  As the last Algatt arrow fell, the Miri called Gadr launched himself over the shield wall. He crashed into the Empire’s lines, buckling the roof of shields and vanishing beneath them in a glistening ripple of rectangular scales.

  I caught my breath, thinking for an instant that he’d been swallowed.

  The god of the Algatt reappeared in a circle of scattering, scrambling Arpa. He hacked vengeance for his murdered people in a bloody, glistening arc of axe and muscle, turning and slashing with indomitable strength. He roared and his people roared back, pressing in as their god vanished once more into a forest of spears and shields. Soon, the ripple of chaos his axe left was all I could see of him.

  Throughout it all, the Arpa did not speak, not even to shout orders. Even with Gadr in their midst they moved like a flock of ravenous birds, pushing and receding, thrusting and blocking, until the Algatt line began to snake.

  My eyes flickered over the battle and shoreline, trying to glimpse Gadr and watching for Omaskat.

  The Arpa lines cracked. Gadr unfurled in a scar of butchered Arpa, heaving chest drenched with blood, as his people rushed around him. Their howls reached a fevered pitch and the Arpa began to retreat, leaving dead and dying legionaries in their wake.

  But the Arpa retreated too far and too fast, falling into expert formations: shields on all sides, shields overhead. Horns began to blast in warning and Gadr bellowed, but the Algatt force was already too divided.

  Polinus and his riders thundered across the empty ground, flowing around the foot soldiers’ formations like water around stones.

  Omaskat strode into the lake from the east.

  I leapt from my boulder and took off at a sprint, sending up a spray of white water as I tore through the shallows toward the Watchman.

  An Algatt stumbled in my path and slit the throat of a legionary. As she looked up, her face streaked with blood and her red hair full of the dawn, she paused. She knew me. She was the woman I had freed, who’d threatened Sixnit.

  Her eyes rounded, but I had no chance to choose my response. An arrow of white bone slammed into her cheek. She toppled backwards into the water as the Archeress, Goddess of the Old World, fell into step beside me.

  “Go, Eangi!” the goddess – the Miri – hissed.

  There was no time for shock or qualms – no time for the thought that the Archeress had killed my Eangi brethren in this same way, with these same arrows. Five more Algatt charged into our path.

  The attackers faltered as they realized who I was. Eangi instinct still told me to throw myself at them, and I saw the same wild impulse in their eyes. Gadr’s alliance with Omaskat could not obliterate centuries of bloodshed.

  The Archeress, again, did not wait for me to act. Three bone arrows thudded into the Algatt chests and were buried up to their pale fletching. One collapsed, one stared uncomprehendingly down at the fletching between her breasts, and the last began to keen in a drowning, blood-bubbling shriek.

  The remaining two Algatt bolted and my muscles unclenched. Before the Archeress could put arrows into their backs, I pulled Eang’s Fire into a scream. It chased them across the surface of the White Lake and they stumbled, crashing down into the water with shrieks of pain.

  I sprinted off towards Omaskat, leading the Archeress away before she could see the Algatt get back up.

  She followed, her lithe strides easily overtaking me. A hundred paces ahead, Omaskat was knee-deep in the water, a naked Vistic held in his large hands. His eyes bored into the water, lips moving in an inaudible prayer.

  “Go!” I yelled to the Archeress. “He’s mine!”

  She waved an arrow at me in mock salute and turned, facing the shore and settling another fan of arrows between her deft fingers.

  “Omaskat!” I yelled, hoping that it sounded more like a threat than a warning. My mind scrambled. What could I do now? I was so close. Styga, the Archeress – they would all expect me to strike him down within moments.

  Omaskat, unsurprised by my approach, kept walking. “It will be done soon!”

  As he spoke the dawn light faltered; or rather, it narrowed. Over the great peak to the north, thick black clouds loomed. They reached over the shoulders of the mountain in snaking tendrils and began to seep down towards the lake. As they smothered the dawn light, they glowed a distant, eerie red.

  The sky was bleeding into the mountain.

  I heard a shrill, victorious wail and spun. Quentis stood in the water with his robe floating about his hips, throwing a worshipful face towards the new clouds. He grinned madly and threw out his hands – one clasping a knife, the other his bowl.

  “Oh, my lord! Come!” Quentis sang in his deep, crackling voice. “Revel in the death of your enemies!”

  Lathian was coming. Blood hammered in my ears and my breath hitched with every inhalation. Focus. Quentis didn’t matter. Omaskat was almost finished, his god would rise, and Lathian would be destroyed before he reached the lake. I just had to buy him a few more moments.

  Then I heard Telios laugh and the crash of someone falling from a horse.

  A dozen paces away, Nisien came up out of the lake gasping, Telios’s hand dug into his short hair. The older man kept him on his knees, forcing his head back, forcing earthen brown eyes to meet tainted grey.

  The horseman stared back. In that horrible moment he was stripped of himself, no longer a man, no longer a soldier; he was a boy on his knees. A boy at the mercy of a man.

  Then Nisien bellowed. He jerked at the hand buried in his hair and managed to come to his feet.

  Telios’s sword flashed toward his legs.

  Eang’s Fire exploded from me, searing across the surface of the lake towards Telios. It struck him just as his sword thrust. Lathian’s zealot staggered and Nisien pried himself free, struck him in the face and seized him by the throat, following his former commander down into the water with a second, hate-filled shout.

  For an instant, I thought that my intervention had gone unnoticed. Then I saw Quentis’s expression. He glared at me, accusatory and grave, and his eyes had already lost some of their color.

  In the north, Lathian stepped down onto the surface of the lake. He was beautiful and devastating, draped in Arpa garb and surrounded by tendrils of midnight fog. He did not look at me. Instead, his gaze fell on Omaskat, still murmuring, still praying, and the wailing form of Vistic, now lifted above his head.

  Nearby legionaries began to turn. The Archeress lowered her bow and I felt a hundred, a thousand eyes settle upon me.

  It was time. I approached Omaskat slowly, sword and shield in hand. I’d long forgotten to breathe, long lost linear thought. But Vistic’s wail
s cut me to the bone, and I knew what I had to do.

  A handful of paces from Omaskat I turned my back to him, raised my shield, and dropped into a defensive crouch.

  With that action, my façade shattered. I heard Styga roar from the shoreline and Rioux laugh in hysterical vindication as the Archeress raised her bow.

  An arrow of bone leveled at me. “Finish it, Eangi!”

  An owl hooted.

  Eang came. She rushed into me as she had in Souldern, but this was far more painful. I spasmed and screamed, railing as Eang blazed through my blood, snapped out into my fingers, and obliterated my mind.

  She began to drive me towards Omaskat, though each step was labored, every movement pained. He did not look our way, eyes clenched shut, Vistic wailing, but there was something about him which resisted her, as it had Styga. It was agony, utter agony to the Goddess of War.

  And it was not alone in its resistance. Even as my consciousness retreated, I railed against her, battering and clawing. The Fire was hers and that amber sweetness, the honeyed magic that had become my own – it was no match for this, not bound as it was.

  Still I felt Eang’s horror, her rage and indignation. She knew my mind. She found my stolen power, my traitorous heart, and her hand came down harder than ever. My self, all that was me, sputtered and buckled.

  My memory of the next few seconds set in jarring, jagged chunks. My human thoughts – rage against Eang, terror for Vistic and Omaskat and Nisien and dread of Lathian – disintegrated. Water buffeted my chest as my speed increased. My feet found a boulder beneath the surface, I leapt up, and Eang launched me at Omaskat like a stone from a sling.

  Omaskat froze, his lips still parted.

  Just before impact, the goddess fled in a flurry of vengeful, soul-stripping rage. I was left with a single moment of clarity before my sword came down and the flesh of Omaskat’s throat and chest opened like butter. Vistic fell. We collided. The White Lake engulfed us.

  By the time I found my footing in the chest-deep water and raked air into my lungs, Omaskat floated on his back. He stared upwards, hands slipping away from the bloody division in his neck. Red turned to brown where it met his tunic and spread out into the water in pinkish tendrils.

  “Hessa,” Omaskat croaked. “The wind—”

  His voice faded. In its place, other voices cried out in chorus: Styga, the Archeress, Rioux, even the distant, unseen strains of Ashaklon. They stabbed me like knives, exultant and victorious as my mind clattered between Omaskat’s body, Eang’s rage, Lathian and Vistic. Where had Eang gone? Had Omaskat completed the ritual?

  No. He was dead. Dead by my hands, as Fate had decreed.

  Vistic. Where was he? I focused on this closest, simplest fear. I spun, clutching my chest as if that could somehow keep my ravaged body from falling apart. I searched the surface of the lake for any sign, any bubble or flicker or cry. But there was nothing.

  Panic overtook me. I dove back beneath the surface and threw my eyes wide, but the water was too foggy. I could see nothing except the broadening stain of Omaskat’s blood.

  I jerked upright again and saw Lathian looming over the north shore, Quentis wading out on the south. Telios was in the midst of dragging Nisien onto the rocks not far off and, between the lake and the trees, the Arpa had surrounded the remaining Algatt.

  By the time I looked back to Omaskat, he was perfectly still.

  “No! How?! How could you let this happen?” The words tore out of my throat, meant far more for myself than for him. Desperate, I grabbed at the dead man’s tunic and heaved him upright, trying to shake him back to life, but his sodden weight was too much.

  I let Omaskat go, unable to bear the sight of him and my failure, and staggered back to my feet. My bleary eyes found Lathian, under gathering clouds. Styga was with him, and Rioux and the Archeress. The sight of them was like the smell of decay; it struck me, winded me, and made me gag.

  Omaskat was dead. Vistic – I couldn’t even think of him. Nisien captured. And me? My betrayal was known to the creature I called my goddess, the goddess of vengeance who, despite my will, still owned me.

  And furthermore, my betrayal did not even matter. I’d chosen to break my faith, and Omaskat had still died by my own hand. Fate’s word had held true, to the detriment of all.

  Eang’s recompense would not be long in coming. Perhaps it would not be immediate death, not while I remained her Vestige, but I’d no doubt Eang could devise something equally as dreadful.

  A desperate urge to pray came over me, to beg for forgiveness and take back my betrayal now, when it ceased to matter. I closed my throat, physically rebelling against the instinct, but her name still escaped my lips – half belligerent plea, half hateful growl.

  “Eang.”

  “Oh, she’s finished with you now, you delightful little traitor.” Ogam strode towards me, the lake freezing beneath his feet. “Aren’t you, Mother?”

  Eang appeared. There was no flash of light, no gathering of smoke. One moment the space between Ogam and me was empty, and the next she was there.

  I had never seen Eang outside of a vision or a veil of snow. She was everything I’d been told she was: glorious, staggering, frightful, wrathful. And she was beautiful, captivating in a way that matched even Lathian.

  But at the sight of her I felt only dread, and her Fire in my chest seared with true, violent pain. I staggered to the boulder I’d leapt off moments ago, clutching at my ribs and trying vainly to access the sleeping, golden well of power beneath the flame.

  Eang’s twin axes absently divided the surface of the water as she considered her son, the muscles of her shoulders and biceps standing out and her forearms wrapped in bronze-plated bracers. She was certainly aware of the Old Gods, gathering power on the other side of the lake – her head cocked slightly towards them, and several of her owls circled overhead. I thought that she even glanced at me, at the Eangi collar resting against my throat, and that I saw my death in her dark eyes. But her focus was on the Son of Winter.

  “Ogam. My spawn. Explain yourself.”

  Ogam’s grin was wild and wicked. “Look at your Vestige, Mother. Even she saw through you, even she betrayed you. See how piteous she is. See!”

  Eang did not turn as I battled to find some scrap of dignity here, at the end of all things.

  Ogam spat in disgust. “Perhaps you’ll care if I show you this.” With that, he held up Svala’s severed head.

  I vomited into the lake.

  “Hessa.” Though Eang spoke to me, she did not tear her eyes from Ogam. “Keep back.”

  “See?” Ogam crowed. “Now you matter, Hessa. Now you’re her only anchor, traitorous as you are.”

  Eang glared at me, her expression written with disdain and crippling fury. But I had seen enough of her mind by this point to recognize the fear, too – hidden in the creases around her eyes and the flutter of her throat.

  My eyes dragged to Svala’s head, dangling from Ogam’s hand, and I swayed.

  Eang spun back on her son. “Ogam. If I die, if the binding on Lathian fails – that is no world to live in. I bore you. I nursed you. I—”

  “You despised me.” Ogam issued the words in a deadly, even tone. As he spoke, he threw aside Svala’s head and a spear of ice appeared in his hands. “You loved yourself in me, nothing more. Come now, Mother. It’s well time we rid ourselves of one another.”

  “No.” Eang’s response took me by surprise. “Ogam—”

  “Do it!” Ogam screamed in a winter’s gale. “By your own hand! Kill me! Drown me!”

  “No!” Eang had raised her weapons, but I heard the pain in her voice. “Stop this!”

  Ogam threw himself upon Eang with millennia of hatred in his roar. She retreated under his blows – once, twice – then the anguish in her face locked. The mother faded. The Goddess remained.

  The Goddess of War and the Son of Winter hacked at one another with strength and skill that belonged to legend and myth. I stumbled backwards as they
burst past me, Ogam chasing his mother a dozen paces up the lake. Eang plowed through the water but Ogam thundered across a sheaf of ice, his steps sure and more water freezing in his path. He slashed with his spear and Eang leapt aside, the distance between them and me widening with every step.

  Svala’s severed head drifted by my knees, eyes half-open and jaw cracked wide. My world tapered into a stifling, soundless tunnel.

  I fled, stumbling into the shallows and toppling onto my hands and knees. Rocks jarred into my shins, knees and palms, but the pain was little more than a flicker on the edge of my mind.

  Someone crouched before me. I raised my head and found Quentis’s grey-tinted, bloodshot eyes mere inches from mine.

  I toppled back, splashing and clattering on the rocks, but he didn’t move after me. Instead, he sunk back into a kneel and raised his eyes to the lake, his grey robe darkened and clinging with lake water.

  “Look, Eangi,” he whispered, voice barely penetrating the silent storm in my skull. “Watch the gods battle. This is our privilege, you and I; priest and priestess.”

  I didn’t want to watch, but my eyes dragged out across the water all the same. Ogam and Eang clashed, broke apart and harried one another. Meanwhile the Gods of the Old World converged on the far side of the water, gathering around the feet of Lathian to watch the conflict unfold.

  Quentis followed my gaze. “Lathian gathers,” the priest explained, “drawing his strength. Omaskat is dead, and the binding weakens. He will come to us soon. Perhaps by morning?”

  Eang’s scream tore through the air. Her cry was the pattern of an Eangi’s, the original which we echoed on the battlefield. But now it wavered, turning from rage to sorrow and terrible pain.

  My eyes snapped back to Eang just as Ogam drove his spear deeper into her chest. She staggered. Ogam jerked the spear free and prepared for another thrust, but Eang did not give him the chance. She screamed again, a cry of vengeance and pain, and vanished into thin air.