Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

Someone in the western flank made a decision. Shouts rang out. The Neherians formed up—and turned on their heels. Began marching back around the lake.

  Leaving Noetos and Anomer in limbo. They could not rush back to aid the refugees—if they left the bridge, the Neherians would surely return and cross it, surrounding them. They had to wait until the army was sufficiently far around the lake that they were committed to their new course.

  Perhaps that was all their commander wanted to do.

  The vanguard of the eastern army was now among the rapidly scattering refugees. ‘Father! We have to go!’ Anomer cried. ‘Now!’

  He was right. Noetos took to his heels.

  The next few minutes were hell.

  A gut-busting sprint back to where the refugees were already being cut down, their desperate pleas ignored. Beaten, stabbed, sliced. Non-combatants. Men, women, children. Screams. Terror—and horror as the full measure of Noetos’s complacency, his misjudgment, was sheeted home.

  He engaged the nearest Neherian and slew him without recourse to Arathé’s magic. Automatic now. Decision: protect his daughter or go forward to drive the Neherians back? Which would save most lives? He went forward, leaving his daughter with Anomer and the southerners, knowing on this day his every decision was likely cursed.

  Just in front of him a woman raised her arm to shield her children. It was taken off above the elbow by an armoured warrior. Her screech ended as the same sword was shoved into her face. As her two boys stared wide-eyed and uncomprehending at their mother’s bloodied, still-twitching corpse, the warrior set to work on them.

  Indiscriminate payback for what Noetos had done to them. Blood for blood, atrocity for atrocity. On this small patch of level ground, the full fruit of his revenge fell from the vine and rotted.

  He threw himself into the battle, uncaring of his own life. Unencumbered by armour, he used his speed advantage to strike at knees, necks, helms, visors. A full step back, then a surge to his right and a downward chop, taking the legs out from the warrior busy withdrawing his blade from a boy’s body. Sword held high, blocking two separate strokes. Half-jab left into a visor, a quick withdraw amidst spurting blood, and two quick raps with the hilt against the helm of another. A blade scraped down his leg, taking off a strip of skin. He saw but did not feel the blow. Anomer beside him, moving incredibly quickly, using his Wordweave to slow his foes. Within moments the field cleared in front of the pair as the Neherians found easier opponents.

  Dozens, no, hundreds of Racemen on the ground, wounded, dead or dying.

  ‘Drive them back, force them into the lake!’ Noetos called.

  There were perhaps twenty defenders in all, most armed with swords, none armoured, trying to hold a line against a hundred or more attackers. More Neherian soldiers were crossing the flooded stream to join the battle. Others moved to outflank Noetos and his pitiful band. It was he who was being forced back. He who would soon be encircled. He who would fall.

  Where is Cohamma?

  The Neherian in front of him dropped to the ground without a hand laid on him. Noetos paused, and looked for the arrow or spear, but saw none. To his right, another. There, a third. And others screaming in their helms or casting them off.

  What madness is this? If it is sorcery, I feel nothing. Yet his heart lifted as the Neherian line wavered.

  Then collapsed.

  ‘The water!’ one soldier called. ‘There is something in the water! Tell them to keep out—’

  Noetos ended the man’s words with a swipe of his sword, then took time in the midst of everything to strip off the man’s segmented leg armour, hacking at the leather straps until the metal came free. The man’s legs were covered in weeping, bloody sores, as though something had corroded his skin.

  Seren. He’d found something up in the hills and added it to the water.

  ‘Forward!’ Noetos roared, and as one the few Racemen charged at the Neherians. Back the attackers were driven, back, back, cowed by the stories about this man, the slaughter of the Summer Palace passed fearfully from company to company; and by the agonising pain seizing them, which naturally they connected to the man’s sorcerous magic. Back until they stumbled down a short slope and into Lake Woe.

  Where the accumulated acids and foul effluvia of decades of ruinous mining awaited them.

  Yet not a victory. Most of the Neherian army remained unfought, and now Noetos had to worry about Cohamma and his hundred troops. When would they come down from the hills to bring death to their fellow citizens?

  No, not a victory. Not with at least a third of the refugees turned from people into bloodied corpses.

  Seren and his men appeared just as the last of the Neherians withdrew beyond the death-filled creek. Few of their adversaries realised it had been the acid-thick water that had done the damage, and so in ignorance had waded the creek in retreat. Howls of pain came from the doubly afflicted, a sound both horrifying and pleasant.

  ‘It worked,’ the miner said, beaming.

  Noetos cuffed him. He could no more have stopped the blow than the words that followed. As Seren got to his feet, stunned and shocked, Noetos said: ‘Go and tell that to those Racemen, fallen because we overestimated our own cleverness.’

  ‘I only see those we saved,’ the miner said stubbornly, not giving an inch.

  ‘And I see the Neherian army preparing a second assault,’ Anomer said. ‘We should give them our attention now, and save recriminations for later. Father, I have a message from Arathé. She wonders if you would lay your stone carving aside for now, as it prevents her strengthening you. You had her worried half to death.’

  ‘She supplied me with nothing?’ Noetos said, incredulous. ‘I felt as energised as I did in the Summer Palace.’

  Nevertheless, he drew out the huanu stone, looked left and right, then walked over to where Duon lay.

  ‘I’ve never been on a battlefield before without the ability to defend myself,’ the southerner said to him. ‘But you showed strong. Your daughter has obviously recovered.’

  ‘I don’t know, friend. This carving prevented her contacting me. I need to place it in the hands of someone trustworthy who is not magically talented.’

  The girl Lenares put out her hand. ‘Give it to me,’ she said peremptorily. ‘I need to study it anyway.’

  Noetos narrowed his eyes, but Duon nodded, so he surrendered the huanu stone into the girl’s fine hands. Trust. It always finds me out.

  The girl’s pretty eyes narrowed and she lifted a hand to her temple. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s coming back.’

  ‘What, Lenares?’ Duon asked.

  ‘The hole. It comes. Swiftly. I have a tie to it. We need to…I don’t know what.’

  Duon lifted his head and stared into the sky. ‘How long?’

  ‘Soon,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  ‘Can you spare your friends?’ Noetos asked Duon, indicating the other two southerners. ‘The Neherians will return, no doubt along the western shore this time. I see no hope of final escape, but we—’

  Beside Captain Duon, one of the southerners—the mercenary, Duon had called him—began to grunt, as though something inside was trying to get out.

  The captain jabbered to the man in his own language, but the man ignored him, intent on his pain.

  ‘Did he touch the water?’ Noetos asked Duon.

  ‘He was here with us the whole time. Said he was protecting me.’

  ‘Then what—’

  Without warning the man stood, put his hands to his head, spat bile on the ground and began running towards the hills behind them at great speed.

  ‘Coward,’ Noetos said.

  ‘No, not him,’ Duon replied. ‘He’s a mercenary, yes, but I’ve never seen him flinch or admit any kind of weakness.’

  ‘Then what’s afflicted the man?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  But whatever it was began to affect others around the lake, Neherian and Racemen alike. Soldiers dropped to their knees, hands over their e
ars or held against their stomachs, some heaving. Refugees whimpered or screamed. Noetos felt it as a low rumble that tore at his stomach and bowels. Earthquake? No, the ground remained steady under his feet. Something was wrong with his eyes, though. Weird colours flickered across his field of vision as though it was raining dye. Others were similarly affected, if their sudden eye-rubbing was evidence. Around them stones started rattling. Earthquake, then. Though why were the rocks and stones flickering, lapped by blue flames as though a new, higher lake was forming? Could rocks burst into flame? Or had some flammable chemical from the gold mines caught fire?

  ‘Get back! Get back from the water!’ The warning came simultaneously from three or four hoarse throats.

  Noetos threw a glance at the lake and saw the water surging around a central vortex, lifting into the misty air, extruded by some invisible hand. The surface of the water had definitely caught fire.

  ‘The hole!’ yelled a woman’s voice. Lenares. ‘The hole in the world!’

  The basin ignited.

  Pale blue flame exploded out from the centre of the lake with a thump, rolling across the water in every direction. Noetos ran along with everyone else, though he knew—they must all know—it was hopeless.

  The flame hit.

  And passed through.

  The fisherman took a series of deep, gasping breaths with lungs he’d expected to be full of fire. Fire that now swept up the slope and winked out. The chain of events had proved too much for many of the refugees, who fell to the ground in fear, clearly wondering why they still lived. A wonder Noetos shared.

  ‘Fisher.’ Bregor, tugging at his arm.

  Not fear. Shock. The lake was empty of water. The mist had dissipated. In its place, fire-dried bare earth—and, incongruously, a boat, half-buried in the earth, with a number of figures clambering out of it. Stumbling on the stone-dry ground, struggling forward.

  No one spoke as the strangely robed figures climbed onto the flat beside where the lake used to be, and approached the first of the refugees.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said one of the figures, an extraordinarily tall man with a rich voice at odds with the dirt clinging to his feet and legs. ‘Can anyone tell me where we are?’

  CHAPTER 11

  INTERSECTIONS

  ARATHÉ HEARD THE ROAR of the flames and waited to die. She wondered what death by fire would be like. Painful would be the least of it, she was sure, worse than the last time she had died. Then she saw the flames roll towards her and relaxed a little. They had the same appearance, the same feel, as those that had covered her after she was stabbed in Fisher House.

  Nevertheless she tensed involuntarily as the blue fire flashed over her, leaving her and the rest of the group untouched. Yet the feeling of dread did not leave her. If anything, it settled more heavily on her as the flames departed.

  Duon had seemingly not even seen the fire. ‘What was that?’ he asked, struggling to lift himself from the sickly yellow grass.

  Anomer turned from facing the hills. ‘Magical fire. I would say it was beyond belief, but it’s merely apace with everything else that has happened since…well, since your people came to Raceme, I suppose.’

  Duon frowned in response, but said nothing.

  Arathé signalled her agreement with her brother. ‘Magical fire and a questing mind, or more than one. Can you feel them?’ she asked Anomer. ‘No, don’t seek them out. And don’t use mind-talk. At least one of them doesn’t like us, remember?’

  Two, maybe three, enormous presences hovered over the basin. Actually, ‘over’ wasn’t the best word for what they were doing. ‘Within’, perhaps, as though they occupied the too-small spaces between her muscles and her veins. Confined and trying to get out. Beside her, the girl Lenares was doubled over, moaning and retching. The curly-haired black southerner leaned over her supportively, muttering in the soft-edged southern language. A few refugees huddled together, obviously suffering the effects of the weight of these manifestations. The vast majority of the crowd, though battered, scared and confused, clearly could sense nothing.

  The hole in the world, Lenares had called it. She really must talk more with the strange southern girl. One hole at least, certainly more than one hole-maker. Hole-makers with a purpose; one that seemed to involve them. A purpose wider than the conflict over the Fisher Coast, as evidenced by the presence of the southerners, pulled from their homeland by some impatient power. Game pieces, just like the Neherians—and the Fossans.

  As if conjured by thoughts of her home town, Bregor, the Fossan Hegeoman, bustled into the centre of their group. ‘What happened to Cohamma?’ he demanded, as though anyone there could tell him. As though it was possible to think while being pressed from all sides by unseen powers. ‘What’s happened to the Neherians? And who are those people?’ This last was accompanied by a gesture towards the lake.

  Or what used to be the lake. Something had happened to it. Despite the pain in her head, Arathé found her eyes drawn to the gaping hole, an empty eye socket with the liquid scooped out. Where had the water gone?

  Bregor went over to where Noetos stood, blood congealing on his Roudhos sword. ‘Fisher,’ he said, directing the gaze of Arathé’s father to the group of tall, bedraggled figures emerging from the lake bed.

  The tallest among them spoke for a few seconds in a language unknown to Arathé.

  After a pause, he spoke again, using the Bhrudwan common tongue. ‘Excuse me, can anyone tell me where we are.’

  Arathé sensed something, a great power, but not the same as the overwhelming presences; this was much sharper, more narrowly focused. Without a word, she pulled Duon to his feet. Anomer guessed her intent and brought the southerner his crutch.

  ‘Lake Woe,’ her father replied guardedly, and the man nodded his head like a wading bird dipping for a fish.

  ‘A day’s hard walking north of Raceme on the Fisher Coast,’ the man said in the voice of an aristocrat, then added, ‘And a month or more south of Malayu. In Bhrudwo, at least.’

  Some of those with him nodded or shook their heads. He repeated his words in another language, eliciting groans from the rest.

  One of their number collapsed suddenly, one moment standing, the next on his face in the dirt, insensate. The tall man kicked him, hard, in the ribs. ‘Witness the architect of our misfortune,’ he said angrily. The man on the ground groaned and stirred.

  One of the figures, a woman, said something to the tall man. It sounded like she was pleading or excusing the collapsed man, but she made no move to assist him.

  Another tall man, the first man’s grandfather perhaps, put a restraining hand on the man’s arm and shook his head as he spoke to him.

  ‘Ah, the legendary Dhaurian energy,’ the first man said, more than a hint of mockery in his voice. ‘Always ready to ignore the obvious and preserve the status quo.’

  ‘Enough,’ Noetos ordered, and the bickering stopped. ‘You emerge in the midst of a battlefield in a burst of unnatural flame, and then spend your time arguing with each other? Declare yourselves!’

  The second tall man muttered in the other language, likely translating for those who did not speak the Bhrudwan common tongue. Which begged the question of why they did not speak it.

  Arathé shuddered. Her father could not know that at least two of these people likely possessed the ability to destroy him where he stood, if she sensed their power correctly. Be easy, she warned him in her mind-speech.

  The result would have been comical had matters not been so tense. Seven heads turned in her direction, three of them from the group newly emerged from Lake Woe. And three—definitely three—hidden presences turned their crushing attention towards her.

  ‘Don’t think your strong thoughts,’ said Lenares into the silence. Though not strong, her voice was audible to everyone gathered there. ‘The holes in the world will hear you, and they will destroy us all.’

  ‘You are right,’ Arathé signalled her. ‘We must talk about this.’

  The gi
rl smiled triumphantly. ‘You need me,’ she said in her improving Bhrudwan. ‘Everyone needs me. Only I can see what is happening.’

  ‘Well, I certainly cannot,’ Noetos growled. ‘Nor can I keep up with this confusion of languages. I want answers in the language of this soil.’

  He turned his attention to the newcomers. ‘No answers for us, friends? Are you Neherians? Neherian magicians, perhaps?’

  A shorter, but still impressive, man—a soldier, surely, by his bearing—took a pace towards Arathé’s father, babbling as he did so.

  ‘Fair point, Robal,’ said the tall man. Then to Noetos: ‘Forgive him; he did not understand your request. He asks what battle you refer to. Has there been fighting?’

  ‘Aye, behind you are those who would slay defenceless women and children,’ Noetos replied.

  The newcomers turned as one. Arathé followed their gaze across the empty basin and beheld the Neherians in disarray. Less than half their army still stood. Bodies had nearly blocked the poisoned stream, and were strewn between there and the southern end of the lake, tracing the line of their retreat. The faint sounds of suffering drifted across the lake bed, mixing eerily with those closer by.

  There was no doubt that further retreat would be called when the Neherians worked out what had happened to them.

  So much agony, so much death, and Arathé had no idea why. Had not been given enough time to think it through. Perhaps there was no answer; perhaps the puzzle was missing too many pieces.

  ‘Neherians,’ the tallest newcomer said. ‘What are they doing so far north?’

  ‘You continue to evade my questions,’ Noetos observed. ‘Do I have to slaughter unarmed men?’

  ‘Yes, and no. Yes, I will continue to evade your questions, and no, you cannot harm us.’ This said with absolute confidence. ‘I can assure you, we are neither Neherians nor your enemies, even while your hand remains wrapped around the hilt of that most notable sword. Indeed, if the Neherians are this far north, they are my enemies also.’

  ‘We have no weapons to lend you should the Neherians press their attack.’