The Broken God Machine

by Christopher Buecheler

  “I will not let anything happen to you, or to Jace, or to anyone else if I can prevent it.”

  “I know,” Nani said, and took his hands in hers. “Oh, Pehr, we are so lucky to have you. Jace and me. He loves you, you know.”

  Pehr did not know how to respond to this, and so he said nothing. Nani studied him for a moment, and when she spoke again, it was in a voice that was something less even than a whisper. “Pehr, if it truly ends for us tonight, I want … you should know …”

  Pehr felt adrenaline surge through him. The tone of her voice just now – somehow soft and scared at the same time – conveyed to him what Nani was struggling to say. He had never expected to hear these words pass her lips, yet now here they were, on the very edge.

  “Yes,” he said, encouraging her to go on.

  Nani’s eyes filled suddenly with tears, and she cried, “It’s not right!”

  She must have seen the disappointment that he was trying so hard to hide, because she took his hands again. “Pehr, I can’t. I mustn’t! I’m so sorry. Even if I hadn’t taken his necklace, even if I hadn’t … oh … may every last God burn in Hell for making me who I am.”

  Pehr gave her a sad smile. “I know you can’t. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

  She pressed his hands up against her lips and then let them go. She leaned forward and touched her lips gently to his cheek. It was the briefest of contact, barely there, and yet it seemed to Pehr that his entire body leapt aflame. He was trembling now, too, with desire and rage in equal parts. His cousin? It had to be his cousin, of all people?

  Nani was looking him in the eyes again now, brow furrowed, tears still coursing down her cheeks. She breathed deeply and said, “I shouldn’t have done this. It cannot be taken back, and now … Pehr, you must promise me … if we still live tomorrow, it must be only as cousins and as friends. It must be.”

  Pehr clenched his jaw, clenched his fists, and stared up at the sky, breathing hard and deep. Nani let him get control of himself.

  “Please don’t hate me,” she said at last in a tiny, broken voice.

  Pehr shook his head, looked back at her, ran a hand through his tousled hair. He had stopped trembling but now felt weak and grey. Husked out.

  “I don’t hate you,” he said.

  “Then will you say it with me? Say that we are cousins, and we are friends, and that is all that we are or can ever be?”

  “Nani, please don’t make me do this …”

  “I will beg it of you, if I must,” she said, and before he could stop her, she had taken to her knees there in the dirt, her hands on her thighs, her head bowed. “Please, Pehr. Please be my cousin, and my friend, and nothing more.”

  He couldn’t bear it, seeing this girl he knew and loved kneeling humble before him, in penitence for the simple sin not even of loving him, but merely for having betrayed the secret of that love to him.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Please get up. Nani, I … all right! Yes, your cousin, and your friend, and nothing more. For the Gods’ sake, get up!”

  Nani did as he asked, and she favored him with a sad and wistful look of desire that he thought he would likely take with him to the grave, even if he lived another hundred years. It was all the worse because he understood that this look was the last of its type that he would ever see. This thing that had just passed between them was done, and Nani herself had seen to that. She had trapped him, bribed him with a kiss and trapped him with his love, and Pehr let himself be angry at her for that. It would make it easier to be only her cousin and her friend, and never anything more, for the rest of their lives. For a brief and aching moment, the possibility of being cut down by hordes of Lagos warriors in only a few short hours seemed mercifully appealing.

  “You’re a good man, Khada’Pehr,” Nani told him in a voice that was soft, and sad, and toned with the understanding of things that they both wished could be, that could not.

  “I'm not a man,” Pehr said, but Nani had turned and moved away, into the house, and he spoke these words too low for her to hear. “I'm only a cousin, and a friend, and nothing more.”

  He went to feed the kampri.

  Chapter 5

  Jace looked better by dusk, as if the coming darkness brought him strength instead of weakness, courage rather than fear. Only his eyes betrayed him, still distant and dark, as if looking into some endless black chasm.

  Like Pehr and Nani, many of the villagers had returned to their homes to go about their routines as best they could. Others sat still in the circle, like Jace, too filled with fear to function. The drums pounded on and on, a maddening distraction about which nothing could be done, and so the villagers had done their best to ignore them. As the sun began to fade, many had gathered again in the village center, near the shrine and the fire pit, to hold a communal dinner and band together against the coming darkness.

  “Will you eat, Jace?” Nani asked her brother, holding forth a plate heaped with bread, corn, and salted fish. Jace shook his head.

  “Not hungry,” he said.

  “You must keep up your strength!”

  “I will be fine. Give it to Pehr … he’ll eat it.”

  Eventually Nani relented and brought the food to Pehr, who was just finishing his own share. He tore into Jace’s, thanking Nani between bites, and had just finished when the drums abruptly stopped. The resulting silence seemed to pound in Pehr’s ears, broken only by the shrill cries of a single baby from somewhere closer to the fire.

  “Oh, what is it?” Nani whispered, and as if in response the black night sky lit orange with what seemed a thousand glowing embers.

  “They have come,” said Jace in his haunted voice, and then he leapt to his feet, crying, “cover!”

  The embers in the sky were arrows, covered in pitch and set ablaze. There were not a thousand of them, as it had first seemed, but there were plenty enough to set the village alight. They plunged downward, landing among and around the central dwellings. Pehr watched in dismay, pressed up against the boulder upon which Jace still stood, seemingly oblivious to the danger, as flaming arrows fell all around them.

  Huts leapt ablaze, and the night was rapidly bathed in a shifting glow of red and orange. Pehr could hear people screaming, and he saw a girl who he had known all her life run howling by them, an arrow embedded in her shoulder, the right half of her face splattered with sticky, flaming ichor. It looked as if her skin was melting, and he turned away in horror as the scent of her burning hair reached him.

  “Prepare!” Jace was screaming – to whom, Pehr was not sure. “Prepare!”

  The falling arrows thinned, stopped, and again came the drums, closer now than ever before. They drowned out the screams and the sound of the flames, but were soon overtaken by something far worse, something that Pehr understood signified the coming of a truly great evil. From the very edge of darkness at the outskirts of their small village came a terrible roar, the mixed wailing of an unknown number of inhuman creatures. This sound was not a thing that men could make even in their largest numbers; deep and guttural, it reminded Pehr of the noises he sometimes heard come from the jungle, when some great beast was on the prowl. This was like that, yes, only multiplied by the throats of hundreds.

  “To arms!” Jace cried, and in one swift motion he pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and drew back the bowstring, holding it there and waiting only for a target.

  A single, inhuman form came loping into view from beyond the edge of their vision, and without hesitation Jace let fly his arrow. It made its shrieking way through the night air and caught the creature between the eyes, burying itself deep in the skull. Without so much as a sound of pain, the Lagos warrior fell face-first to the ground and skidded to a halt. For a moment there was silence, and it seemed the entire village held its collective breath. Then, like specters, there materialized a great host of the beasts, advancing upon the burning town.

  Pehr took his club in hand and, with Jace still crying to all who would listen that
they must join in battle, must fight or die, he went to face his enemy.

  * * *

  When stories of the Lagos were told, Jace had hung on every word, and there was little doubt that he could have described the creatures quite well without ever having seen one, but it was Pehr who got the first good look at one of their warriors. That first, horrifying sight would never leave him, and he understood in an instant that Jace was right: they must fight to the very last of their strength, every man, woman and child, or they would all surely die.

  The village was in chaos. Pehr could hear the thunder of stampeding kampri, somewhere off to his left, and he saw one terrified animal go running by in front of him, bellowing, its swinging horns tearing chunks from the surrounding buildings and a flaming arrow embedded in its haunch.

  The hunters were few and stretched far between, stationed on the outskirts and unable to meet the entirety of the Lagos advance. Stationed as they were at the edge of the village, they had largely gone unscathed during the initial volley of arrows, but so too had they been the first to meet the advancing Lagos warriors. Some had already fallen to their enemy’s superior strength, speed, and sheer numbers.

  It would have pained Pehr to know it, and so it was best that he never found out, but the first to fall was Truff himself, who had insisted on a spot at the furthest reaches despite his crippled leg and inability to flee should the need arise. The Lagos had crashed into him like a towering ocean wave. He had gotten in one mighty swing with his heavy, double-bladed axe, and it was a testament to his strength that that the blow had killed not one but two of the creatures. Then they had simply swarmed over him, tearing him asunder and leaving little but chunks of dripping meat behind.

  Moving now to engage with the Lagos, Pehr was unsure where to go. He hadn’t run directly at the incoming horde, knowing that Jace and other archers would be launching arrow after arrow into the mass and couldn’t possibly separate friend from foe. Instead he’d taken an arcing path, emerging from the shadow of several intact huts and into the sooty orange glow of a dwelling that had already burned almost to the ground. Before him was a sight so awful that for a moment it stopped him dead in his tracks.

  Its back was to Pehr, and this was a good thing, for it gave the boy time to recover from his initial shock. The creature – and there could be no better word for it than that – was coated in blood, but Pehr was still able to take in its features. It was thin, but its muscles bunched thick and ropy beneath its fur-covered skin. The fur itself was short and bristly, brownish-grey, marbled with some darker color. The thing was built essentially like a man, though with exaggerated limbs that ended in hideous talons at both the hands and feet.

  The Lagos was mostly naked, wearing only a dirty scrap of fabric as a loincloth, and was holding its victim to the ground with one hand. Pehr knew the girl somewhat. She was Nani’s age, a year older than Jace, but not yet betrothed. She was making choked cawing noises that might have been screams if not for the talons wrapped around her throat, and Pehr could see blood streaming from several wounds on her face and neck. Her back was arched high, heels dug into the ground, arms scrabbling in the dirt at her sides. The monster crooned at her – a hateful, mocking noise – and then brought the claws of its free hand back to her face and began to dig again at her flesh.

  Snarling in disgust and fury, Pehr leapt forward with his club raised. Hearing this, the creature whipped around with unanticipated animal quickness, raking out with the claws of its free left hand. They whickered through the air only inches from Pehr’s stomach; if he had been but a step ahead, he would have been disemboweled. As it was, he managed to skirt sideways, acting on instinct and reflex, flipping the club from right hand to left and bringing it down backhand. It caught the Lagos in the jaw and the creature shrieked in agony as the lower half of its face was obliterated. Pehr could hear a dozen or more of its teeth clatter against a nearby wall and fall to the ground.

  The thing was rising to its feet, still howling, and Pehr got his first good look at its features. Its face was neither lupine nor feline, but bestial nonetheless. Pehr was reminded in some strange way of the rabbits whose holes dotted the fields to the east, though the Lagos’s ears were not so long, nor did the rabbits possess a gaping maw full of wicked-looking fangs.

  Or half full, anyway, Pehr thought with some satisfaction; The Lagos’s lower jaw was set at a deranged angle. A long, pink tongue was dangling from between its lips, dripping with thick strands of drool and blood. Pehr didn’t spend time considering his approach, he simply acted – as a hunter should, as he had been trained to act nearly since birth. He switched the club again to his right hand, his better hand, and advanced on the Lagos, leaning low to the ground in anticipation of being charged. The creature didn’t disappoint him, rushing forward in a blind rage, and Pehr reacted with an agility that escaped him in casual affairs but came to him as naturally as breathing when a club was in his hand.

  He sidestepped, drawing up on one leg as gracefully as any dancer, and brought his club crashing down upon the creature’s head. Bone and blood and brain sprayed like foam from waves crashing against the rocks of Nethalanhal, and in some detached part of his mind he heard the girl shriek in revulsion at the sight. For his own part, he felt only satisfaction at a kill well-made. The creature slumped to the ground, dead, and Pehr stared for a moment more at its lifeless corpse before turning to the girl.

  She’d pulled herself into a sitting position and was hunched over double, hands hovering over her face. Gasping and coughing, sobbing, shaking, she was not yet capable of standing up, much less any sort of flight from this place. Pehr knelt down next to her, getting a good look at her face and wincing at the sight; it was a mask of blood.

  “Did he hurt your eyes?” he asked, and the girl continued sobbing for a moment before giving a long, slow shake of her head. No, the creature hadn't taken that from her. With any luck, she would come through with nothing more than a few scars from the attack.

  “Let me help,” Pehr said, and he took her hand. With his aid, she was able to stand, and he helped her to the nearest safe hut. He stopped at the door and pointed inside.

  “Go and find clothing. Rest for a moment if you must, but then make your way as fast as you can toward the village center.”

  “But this isn’t my home!” the girl wailed, as if that could possibly have mattered.

  “I can’t stay here,” he told her. “If you want to live, you must do as I say.”

  Pehr turned to go, but she cried, “Wait!” and reached a hand out to him from the doorway. He took it in his own, and she brought his hand to her lips, and kissed it, and squeezed with all of her strength, her eyes locked on his. She said nothing, but Pehr understood. He nodded, smiled, glanced again at the prone figure of the Lagos.

  “He will never trouble you, or anyone else, again,” he said, and then he let go of her hand, and turned, and moved toward the sounds of battle.

  Chapter 6

  The front lines had broken, and all that was left were individual pockets of flickering light in which men and Lagos fought each other. Screams of pain and rage and raw aggression echoed out all around him, and Pehr felt his body trying to seize up as it attempted to process the sheer amount of information being thrown at it. He knew it was impossible – there was simply too much happening all at once – and that stopping was most probably deadly, so he willed himself to move on. Nearest to him was a group of one hunter, two farmers, and a merchant, all fighting bravely against three Lagos warriors.

  The creatures worked not only with their deadly claws and teeth, but as well with a kind of weapon that Pehr had never seen before: a sturdy wooden handle roughly the length of a man’s forearm that swelled at the head, where a long, sharp, curved blade of metal had been slotted into it. Pehr’s people knew of metal but lacked a steady supply of it, and had thus never developed the skills to work it into such weapons.

  The hunter was fighting with a club, dodging away from the creatures’
attacks and moving in to swing with his weapon with impressive skill. A few times he connected, delivering glancing blows that did not kill or maim but must nonetheless have been tremendously painful. The Lagos warriors didn’t scream in pain, but merely grunted or howled in rage before pressing forward again.

  The merchant and the two farmers were standing in a rough circle, backs together, and Pehr felt a swell of deep admiration for them. These men were not fighters, and yet by instinct they fought as such. The merchant was wielding a stone-tipped spear, jabbing it forward whenever one of the Lagos warriors tried to close the distance. The farmers had the small, sturdy axes that they used in their daily work. They were vulnerable to the Lagos’s longer blades and had suffered some minor wounds, but neither was yet grievously injured.

  Pehr took no further time to observe. He swept wide once again, staying in the shadows at the very edge of sight, until he was behind one of the Lagos warriors. Having learned his lesson, Pehr made no noise this time as he closed the distance, and the full weight of his club connected solidly with the back of the creature’s head, making a sound that reminded Pehr of cracking a coconut’s tough inner shell. The blow would most certainly have killed a man, but the Lagos survived it, falling to one knee and giving a startled grunt.

  The merchant, seeing his chance, stabbed forward with his spear, driving the top of it into the soft flesh between the beast’s neck and shoulder. The Lagos, still groggy from the club hit, made a howling noise of pain and rage that Pehr cut short with a second blow. This hit, coming from above and colliding with the creature’s skull with tremendous force, finished the job that the first had started. The Lagos’s skull caved in with a sickening crunch, and the creature fell. The merchant stared wide-eyed, whooped once in triumph, and then turned to vomit on the ground. Pehr found himself laughing, even as he advanced to help his fellow hunter, and wondered if he hadn't gone mad.