The Broken God Machine

by Christopher Buecheler

  After a few more minutes of walking, he came to the edge of a small, rushing stream. Its pools were deep enough to harbor fish, small freshwater lobsters, and snails. Perhaps a meal could be had here after all, and in any case he now had his opportunity to rest and collect water. There would be no more traveling this day, even if it meant losing ground to the Lagos.

  Pulling his knife from his belt, Pehr set about making for himself a simple shelter.

  * * *

  The Lagos were driving forward through the jungle at a relentless pace, and it took Pehr four days of near-constant travel to finally catch up with them. After the first night he slept only in brief stints, climbing into the low-lying branches of the jungle trees and fashioning a type of nest from their fronds. He encountered no snakes or scorpions and only a few spiders, but the sounds of the jungle made his nights hell, and by the end of that fourth day he could think of little more than how much he missed his bed. He was concentrating so hard on this thought, in fact, that he nearly stumbled into an outlying Lagos campsite before realizing it was there.

  It was half-dark and the jungle had grown fuzzy and indistinct. At the last moment he became aware of the glowing fire only yards away, and he came to a dead stop, feeling suddenly open and exposed, standing as he was in the very middle of the Lagos’s trail of destruction. He dropped quickly to his belly, scanning warily for enemies. When he saw none in the immediate area, he pulled himself as quietly as he could into the dense underbrush that surrounded him.

  His first goal was to determine the size of the group by scouting its entire perimeter. If he was lucky, he might locate Jace during this process. Pehr assumed that all of the prisoners were being kept together, and he wondered for a moment if it would be possible to free more than one. If not, how could he explain to them that he was there to save his cousin but leave them to their fate?

  What was their fate? He didn’t know any better than they did, and part of him was tremendously curious about what the Lagos might have in store for the children whom they had stolen away. Pehr could barely remember the stories from his youth, but he thought that the Lagos had no use for the very young – those who had seen fewer than four years – or for any child who had passed much further than their fourteenth year. Had Jace been even a few months older, Pehr thought it was likely that his whole family would be lying dead at the edge of Nethalanhal.

  The going was slow, but not difficult; it took Pehr two hours to circle the camp, staying at the edges of the rough circle formed by the individual fires and trying his best to remain absolutely silent. He had at first attempted to stay downwind of the Lagos as well, but had failed in this endeavor multiple times. It seemed that the Lagos, beast-like though they were, did not have a highly developed sense of smell. They hadn't even so much as scented Pehr’s presence, let alone his exact location.

  He estimated the group at around four hundred Lagos, of which the vast majority was made up of warriors. There seemed to be about one female for every three males. There was only one encampment of priests, and it took only a few minutes of observation to obtain an exact count of their numbers: fifteen creatures dressed in feathers and beads led this group. All of them were male and uniformly smaller than their warrior counterparts.

  He saw no sign of Jace or any of the other prisoners, and he guessed that they were being held nearer to the center of the circle. Periodically, during his observation of the priests, one or two of them had moved in that direction, only to come back a few moments later. It seemed likely that they were checking on something, and Pehr could only assume it was the collection of human children that they had amassed.

  At last Pehr made his way out from the encampment and climbed a tall, rocky hill, upon which stood a massive tree, its huge green leaves seeming to stretch so high above him that they must surely touch the stars. Pehr climbed into a low-lying branch and sat with his back against the trunk. From here he could see several of the campfires, now tiny, dotting the landscape below him. He could smell the roasting meat, hear the occasional burst of laughter or fighting, and sometimes see forms moving around the fire.

  The tree gave access to a gentle breeze that was a true mercy after the heat and wet of the jungle below. It minimized the number of insects, too; for this, perhaps more than anything else, Pehr was thankful. He watched the valley below, illuminated by the full and bloated moon rising over the mountains in the far distance, tracking the progress of the occasional bat as it swooped through the clouds of insects gathered in the valley below.

  His plan was simple but dangerous; he would wait for a few more hours, dozing if the need took him, until the fires of the Lagos had burned low and most of them were asleep. Then he would return to the valley and make his way slowly and quietly into the interior. He did not expect to free Jace tonight, but he hoped to locate the boy and begin devising a plan for their escape.

  He had every reason to believe that the Lagos would catch him and his quest would end here in the jungle, his blood spilled by an enemy blade. Yet Pehr could neither think of a better plan nor bring himself to abandon the idea of rescuing Jace. The Lagos were disorganized and did not expect any sort of infiltration. The plan would work, it had to work, and he endeavored to put any thoughts of its failure out of his mind.

  Pehr leaned back against the tree trunk, put his hands behind him, and tried to relax, staring up at the stars that dotted the heavens above him.

  * * *

  The blonde-haired boy was lying on his side in the dirt, breathing easily in sleep. He was disheveled and filthy, but Pehr recognized him from thirty paces nonetheless. His cousin was lying there with at least three dozen other children of varying ages, all of whom slept, though many shifted, whimpering, as if their dreams were dark.

  There was a collar of metal around Jace’s neck, and a chain of the same material that led to a nearby tree, around which it had been fastened with a sort of device that Pehr had never seen before. The same was true of every child; each had been tethered to a tree by thick loops of linked metal that no human could hope to break. Pehr wondered how he might free Jace from the chain and decided that the answer must lie in the device at its end. Break that and the links would slide easily through the collar, and the boy would be free.

  Pehr had seen only four Lagos awake in his dangerous journey into their ranks. Two warriors were aimlessly wandering from campsite to campsite, clearly on watch but not very involved in their duties. He'd come upon the other two, a male and a female, noisily rutting in the underbrush not far from a guttering campfire and easily avoided. The interior seemed completely unguarded, and Pehr made his way slowly inward until he'd come upon the prisoners. Now he was on his belly, crawling slowly toward Jace. He came to a stop no more than ten feet from his cousin.

  “Jace!” he hissed, but the boy only muttered and rolled over in his sleep. Pehr grimaced in frustration and searched for a rock that would be large enough to wake the boy without braining him in the process. Finally he found one and, taking careful aim, threw it at the boy’s prone form.

  His aim was true, and the stone bounced off the boy’s arm, leaving a painful-looking red mark in its passing. Jace gasped, sitting bolt upright and swiveling his head back and forth, trying to determine where this unexpected attack had come from.

  Pehr half-whispered the boy’s name and, when Jace still couldn't locate him, said, “To your left, wet-head.”

  Jace glanced over at the underbrush and seemed to discern his cousin’s presence, his eyes widening. “Gods … is that you, Pehr?”

  “Keep your voice down! Work your way over here and then lie down as if you’re asleep.”

  Jace did as he was told, moving slowly along the ground until he was lying only a foot or two from Pehr’s prone form. The chain at his neck was stretched to its furthest extent.

  “You’re insane,” Jace hissed, his eyelids slit, trying his best to give the illusion that he was still asleep.

  “Probably,” Pehr said, and shrugged. “Bu
t I’m here.”

  “For what purpose, Pehr?”

  “To rescue you.”

  “Oh? Fantastic, cousin. And have you some way of cutting this chain at my neck?”

  “No,” Pehr said. “Perhaps I could break the … the thing which keeps you attached to the tree.”

  “I tried that the first night. It’s metal, too … it houses a sort of bolt, I think. The Lagos have a bent metal stick that they put inside, and when they turn it, the device opens.”

  “Could I steal the stick?”

  “I think that would be suicidal. Pehr … you shouldn’t have come!”

  “Why not?”

  “What of Nani and my mother?”

  “Our family is safe, Jace. Nani and your mother will survive, and maybe even Josep. They’re not in danger. You are.”

  “So are you, now that you’ve followed me.”

  “I’m a hunter,” Pehr said, and he shrugged again.

  “You are not. You’ve not passed your Test. Pehr … you could’ve still, if you’d stayed. You could’ve passed and joined the hunt, helped rebuild the village, given Sili your necklace. There was a life for you there.”

  “There still is. Jace, stop fighting. I'm here, and I won’t leave you to these creatures. You can either lie there moaning about it, or you can help me. Where’s the metal stick kept?”

  Jace looked disgusted, but after a moment he spoke. “A priest – I think he’s the one in charge of this entire hunt – keeps it with him on a leather cord around his neck. Pehr, there is no chance of grabbing it without waking him. It’s not possible.”

  “Then we must find another way to free you.”

  “I don’t—quiet! Something comes!”

  Jace was right; Pehr could hear footfalls nearing them. He froze, praying to the Gods that he was as well-hidden as he thought. Jace closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe deeply, pretending to be asleep. A priest – Pehr thought it was the same one that had taken Jace away initially – came wandering up to check on the prisoners. Seeing Jace stretched out to the end of his chain, his eyes formed suspicious slits, and he took a few steps forward for a better look. After a moment, seemingly convinced that Jace was indeed asleep, he turned and headed back for his own camp. Jace waited until the priest was well away before he spoke.

  “Gods, Pehr, get out of here before they catch you.”

  “If I go, it will only be until tomorrow night. You should use that time to think of a way to escape.”

  “There is no way.”

  “Kampri shit. You’ve a mind for plans, Jace. Make one.”

  “Damn your stupid, stubborn head,” Jace growled, but Pehr knew that the boy’s sharp mind had already set to work. He waited in silence.

  “What about the others?” Jace asked him finally. “There are thirty-eight of us, in total. Two of Josep’s brothers are here. Sili’s sister is here. Stefan’s two brothers and one of his sisters …”

  “I cannot save them all,” Pehr said.

  “How could I live with myself if I fled with you and left them here?”

  It was a good question. “If I can get that metal stick, I could free you all.”

  “To what end? I’m older by two years than the next … most of them are barely more than babies. Thirty-seven of them and two of us? Even if we got away, the Lagos would track us down in hours.”

  “Perhaps. How many would they send after us, do you think? Could we fight them?”

  “There might be two or three others who have ever so much as held a weapon, and none of us but you are armed. If I’m being optimistic, we might be able to kill two Lagos. They will send more than that, cousin.”

  Pehr found himself filled with rage at the situation and at Jace’s unflinching assessment of it. “I will leave the rest here if I must. I would save them all if I could, but I cannot, and will not leave here without you!”

  Jace opened his mouth to speak, and then he glanced up and over Pehr’s shoulder. His face drained of color.

  “No,” he said, and his voice had regained that dry and dead quality of acceptance that it had held after the drums began. “No, you won’t leave here without me.”

  Pehr twisted, looking behind him. The Lagos priest that had come earlier to check on the prisoners was standing there, smiling down at Pehr, with two warriors flanking him. They held their weapons easily in their hands, ready for action should Pehr make any sort of aggressive movement.

  “Damn it, Pehr,” Jace said.

  Yes, Pehr thought. That seemed about all there was to say.

  He rolled onto his back and held his hands out to show that he held no weapon. One of the warriors bent down and took his knife from its sheath. He tossed it into the jungle, and Pehr knew that they would soon strip him of the club strapped to his back as well.

  He was trapped. His quest to save Jace had failed.

  Chapter 10

  They marched for six days. During that time, Pehr and Jace rarely had the opportunity to speak; any attempts during the day were met with aggression, and at night the two were chained far away from each other. Pehr wondered why they did not simply kill him, but it seemed that the Lagos had other plans.

  They had been ascending for at least two days, and the jungle was beginning to give way to less tropical flora. Here and there Pehr caught sight of large, conical trees that bristled with green needles. The screaming of monkeys and buzzing of insects had disappeared. Whatever creatures lived here, they did not produce the cacophony of the lands below. The journey would almost have been peaceful were it not for the heavy metal collar bolted around his neck.

  The Lagos gave them little time to rest, and the going was difficult for some of the younger children; at times, Lagos warriors would grudgingly and with much snarling pick them up and carry them, hauling them along for hours at a time until they were fit to walk again. Still, Pehr understood now why they didn’t take any of the youngest; it would have meant carrying them the entire way, a task toward which the Lagos were clearly ill disposed. The creatures had been surprisingly liberal with both food and water, however, as if they had a vested interest in keeping their prisoners healthy. The journey was not the death march he had expected.

  Near dusk on what would prove to be the final day, the company came to a halt and Pehr sensed that they had arrived at their destination, whatever it was. There was no village here, no group of Lagos awaiting their arrival. In fact, he could see nothing save more forest and the mountains, which had been far in the distance before but now loomed over them, blotting out the sun hours before real dark fell.

  Here at last came a chance for Pehr and Jace to speak. The Lagos left all of their captives tethered within a tight group, attached to the trunk of a gigantic tree. The entire pack went off ahead, leaving only two behind, standing at some distance and paying little attention to the prisoners. Jace sidled up to next to Pehr and murmured to the older boy without looking at him.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  “Wherever ‘here’ is, anyway,” Pehr agreed, staring ahead so as not to seem like he was speaking to his cousin.

  “There’s something up ahead, and they all went to see it. Could you sense it during the day? They’re excited, but I think they’re also afraid.”

  Pehr nodded. He’d felt the tension mounting during the hike and thought it simply excitement about nearing the Lagos’s home, but now he realized that Jace was right: the tension had been tinged not with relief or happiness, but with awe and something that resembled fear.

  “What do you suppose it is?” he asked, and the younger boy laughed.

  “If I had the slightest idea, I would say, but I can’t even manage a guess. You might as well ask me to explain the Everstorm. We have come far beyond anywhere that our people have ever been.”

  “If only we could take these stories back to the village,” Pehr said, and he felt a sudden, deep sadness rush through him, a longing for the place he’d grown up. How he would love to see the ocean again, and to
walk in the fields with Nani, and to train for his Test with Truff and Jace.

  “Perhaps in the next life,” Jace said. “I don’t think we’ll see home again in this one.”

  “I’ve failed you.”

  The boy shook his head. “No. Nani is safe.”

  “Then I’ve failed her.”

  “Nani would never have asked you to come this far. She didn’t even want you to try, did she?”

  Pehr admitted that she hadn't, and Jace smiled a little.

  “You haven’t failed anything but your own expectations.”

  Pehr considered this. If it was true, it didn’t make him feel any better about what was happening.

  “Do they mean to kill us?” he asked after a time.

  “I can’t imagine anything else,” Jace replied.

  “I’ll go out fighting if they’ll let me.”

  “And I … Pehr, we can only wait and see. I have no doubt that we’ll see.”

  As if on cue, one of the priests returned and spoke in his guttural, growling language to the two warriors, pointing at the group of human prisoners. The warriors came and took six of them, Pehr and Jace included. They were led to the priest, who looked at them with disdain for a moment before making a series of complex hand gestures before them. He chanted in his guttural language and shook a stick with many feathers tied to its head in their direction.

  “He’s blessing us,” Jace said, and one of the warriors roared at them. Pehr didn’t understand the words, but the message was clear: they were expected to be silent.

  Deliberately, looking at the warrior that had shouted, Pehr said, “I will not die under the blessing of their gods.”

  The guard snarled and moved closer. Jaw set, Pehr moved up to face the creature, looking it in the eye, and then threw his hands forth and shoved the creature backwards.

  “Command me again, beast!” he shouted. “Command me again and see if this time I obey. I’ll die beneath your blade if I must, but I’ll do so under the eyes of my Gods. I will not stand here in silence like a coward while your heathen priest waves his sticks at me.”