by Sam Sykes
Then again, she reasoned, perhaps their disappearance upset her for the sole reason that magic and claws would be much better for a potential fight than a hefty stick and harsh language.
Whenever her companions planned on returning, however, they’d have to deal with whatever metal bits would be inevitably jammed into their orifices themselves. She had no intention of moving from her cover in the first place, and the sudden sound that arose from the ship’s deck did nothing to persuade her.
There was a sharp groan, followed by a heavy slamming sound, as though someone thought it a good idea to drag a bag of particularly old door hinges in a particularly thin sack across the deck. With each passing breath, the sound grew to resemble the distinct pound of footsteps. And with each heavy fall of the heel, the realisation grew in Asper’s heart with a chill.
Talanas help me. . they’re coming ashore.
From the rear of the ship rose a great white plume, stalking between oarsmen who, at its presence, lowered their heads. It strode to the prow of the ship and Asper could see it was a stiff topknot stretched tightly above a particularly long face. The man, noticeably taller and more muscular than his dark-haired companions, stood at the vessel’s bow and swept a white-eyed glare across the shore.
Asper had to clap her hand over her mouth at the sound of shattered surf as he placed a gauntleted hand upon the railing and hoisted himself over. Trudging through the waves with a contemptuous stride, he emerged onto the shore, purple flesh and black armour glistening.
Despite his proximity, close enough for her to see the hard sneer etched into his long, hairless face, Asper couldn’t help but lean closer to study the man. There was something off about him, she noted, for as tall and powerful as he was, there were too many decidedly unmasculine qualities to him.
The skirt-like garment that hung from his belt exposed legs that should have been covered in greasy, grimy hair; even Dreadaeleon had that. But his legs were smooth, as was the rest of his purple flesh. His armour, a haphazard collection of blackened chain and plate, was sparse, exposing a muscular abdomen that was also hairless. It was the particular curvature of his breastplate that caught her eye, though: the metal was curved, seemingly needlessly, as though it had been wrought to fit. .
The realisation knocked her to her rear.
‘Sweet suffering Sun God, it’s a woman.’
Why wouldn’t they be? she asked herself. Females more massive than men would certainly fit with the absolute nothingness she knew of these alien things.
The rest of them, she realised, were also female. Their curves became more apparent, though hard and unyielding. Their chins bore a feminine angle, but only vaguely. Their faces resembled first the same hard iron they wore, but secondly women.
Women, she realised, but only barely so; the one standing upon the beach even less.
Taller than a man, lean and hard as a spear, she surveyed the shore through a long, narrow face. Her eyes were hard and white, not the colour of milk but of angry quartzites, sharp enough to draw blood with a mere gaze. Even her hair was menacing, topknot rising like a white spire from the crown of her head, the rest of it pulled tightly against her skull.
For as much ferocity as she oozed, however, it was nothing compared to the weapon clenched in her hand. Resembling nothing so much as a broad, flattened sheet of iron with a hilt jutting from it, the sword looked to be easily the size of a small man, yet this longface, this woman, clenched it with familiar, five-fingered ease.
No, wait, Asper noted, four fingers. The gauntlet covering her hand had only three digits and one thumb, the middle being decidedly larger than the others. She blinked, took a moment to consider.
Four-fingered, purple-skinned, white-haired, longfaced women who carry giant slabs of metal, she paused to swallow, and kill demons.
Quietly, she looked up to the sun, beaming proudly upon this towering woman and asked.
‘Why?’
‘SCREAMER!’
Asper staggered back twice; once for the sudden snarl from the woman’s mouth and twice for the fact that she was apparently speaking the human tongue. She froze, fearing that the sound of her rump scraping across the dirt might have attracted attention. For the strange woman’s part, however, she seemed much more concerned with the state of the beach than anything else.
And the beach seemed to annoy her immensely. With another growl, she hefted her huge weapon and brought it down in an explosion of sand. Sand, Asper noted, that was suddenly green as it landed in sizzling blobs upon the shore.
She squinted and, upon eyeing the sickly emerald shimmer to the weapon’s edge, the reason for the Abysmyth’s death at the longfaces’ hands became apparent.
‘Semnein Xhai!’
Another voice, far less hurried and harsh, lilted from the ship as another figure stepped to the prow.
In shocking contrast to the others, this woman was a head and a half shorter than the rest, clad in silken fineries as opposed to heavy black plate. Her face was more rounded, as though better nourished. The billowing velvet of her black and gold robe could not obscure her figure, either. Where the others were lean and hard, this one was frail and slender, where the others bore the modest swell of breasts. .
‘Oh, you can’t be serious. .’ Asper muttered to no one in particular.
The male looked wildly out of place amongst the metal and muscle. Where the females sat attentively, grips shifting between oars and weapons, he reclined lazily upon the prow, daintily covering a yawn with a slender hand.
He looked almost approachable, Asper thought, at least compared to the others. The images of the frogmen, frozen upon the earth, and the Abysmyth, shrieking out its last breath, were fresh in her mind. That, and the imposing white-haired female between them, kept her still and silent.
For that reason, though, a thought occurred to her. Fierce as they were, these longfaces had slain an Abysmyth, an impossible task done to an impossible foe. Whatever their motives, they had removed one more piece of filth that stood between herself and the tome.
After all, she reasoned, it wasn’t as though she travelled with the most gentle-looking people herself. Perhaps these longfaces could be trusted, perhaps these longfaces could be her key to delivering Lenk and the others from Irontide.
Of course, perhaps they’d simply carve her open and wear her intestines as laurels and call it a day.
At the very least, it would have helped to have known what they were saying.
The male at the prow called to the white-haired warrior with a lazy lilt, the language not quite so foul from his lips. In response, she whirled about, howling what were undoubtedly curses in her twisted tongue. The male repeated himself with a smirk, holding up a single digit, one of five, Asper noted, and wiggled it.
The female bristled, hard body trembling with restrained fury.
Though she looked like she would have, and could have, hurled her giant cleaver at the male, she settled for stalking back to the ship. Her angry snarl commanded the sound of two sets of boots rumbling up the deck and, within moments, two more of the females had disembarked and stood before her with hard-faced attention.
She barked orders, accompanied alternately by wild gestures and ironclad slaps across the chin. Barely fazed, the females grunted in response, smashing gauntleted fists together in a gesture that appeared half-salute, half-challenge and uttering a unified roar in response.
‘QAI ZHOTH!’
The white-haired female gave them a long, hard stare, as though appraising them. Apparently satisfied, she snarled at them and hefted her weapon over her shoulder. Asper noted grimly the ease with which she hoisted both herself and the weight of metal upon her back into the ship. Tense as she was, though, she couldn’t help but spare a relieved breath as the females’ grunting rose with their oars, pushing the ship away from the shoreline.
The longfaces were departing, leaving her with two heavily armed, possibly deranged purple women.
The thought momentarily cros
sed her mind to make her move now: as powerful and fierce-looking as these two were, they still resembled dainty purple milkmaids in the shadow of the white-haired one. Perhaps the opportunity to discover what they were about and whether they might be of use was now.
She quickly retracted that thought as they slid short, stabbing spikes of iron from their belts. Exchanging a momentary scowl with motives unreadable, they turned and began to stalk off towards opposite ends of the beach. Like narrow-faced hounds, they swept the shore with hard stares, searching.
But for what?
Horror’s icy fingers suddenly seized her by the throat, her breath dying with the sudden realisation: it didn’t matter what they were searching for, so much as what they would find. And, if their eyes were for more than just looking menacing, they would undoubtedly find tracks.
Her tracks.
If they didn’t think to search the forest after that, she would have been shocked. However, an old adage involuntarily came to her mind: the Gods frequently offered gifts in threes. Given that she had already been handed giant purple men-women in addition to giant black fish-things, it would seem a shame if they both didn’t try to kill her.
Her options were so slim as to be an emaciated wretch begging for food.
Running was clearly futile; deserted islands tended to leave very little room for evasion. Fighting them was similarly discarded; neither longface’s unyielding muscle seemed to suggest that a staff’s blow would have any greater result than a stern talking-to.
Clearly, then, she reasoned, someone else would have to do the fighting.
She glanced up and down the beach and frowned; each one of the longfaces had departed in the same directions her companions had. If she didn’t find them first, the females undoubtedly would. Then she might never find out if they were friend or foe before the others decided to eviscerate or burn them alive.
That was, of course, if they didn’t simply gut her companions first.
Then again, she thought, rubbing her jaw where Gariath had struck her, maybe that’s not so bad. She growled, giving herself a light thump to the head. No, no, no. Stop thinking like that. Don’t end up like them.
She would stick to the forest, she imagined, skirt the trees to keep out of their sight until she could find Dreadaeleon or Gariath. Even if the longfaces were allies to be won, negotiations would go much easier accompanied by four hundred pounds of red muscle or one hundred pounds of fire and lightning.
The sole question remaining, then, was why there was so much activity atop Irontide’s battlements.
She wouldn’t have noticed it had it not been so prominent. The crown of white was now alive, the Omens writhing and hopping about, emitting all manner of chattering jabber that carried over the waves. The sight of them, their countless bulbous eyes shining like ugly, unpolished jewels, made Asper’s stomach roil; they had been bad enough when they stood still.
And yet, it wasn’t until she noticed a distinct empty space that she truly began to worry as another question crept intrusively into her mind and onto her lips.
‘Where’d the big one go?’
Her question was answered in the chattering of teeth that filled the air behind her, carried on a cloud of acrid fish reek. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, kissed by a wisp of salt-laden, hot breath. The fear came over her in a cold blanket, freezing muscles that begged her to run, paralysing a neck that shrieked at her to turn around.
Heat returned to her as she heard something behind her speak in a guttural mimic of her own voice.
‘Where’d the big one go?’
She whirled, eyes going as wide as the eyes staring into hers. Two bulbous blue orbs stared at her, unblinking, from an old crone’s face. Asper’s lips pursed for a moment, unable to find the words to form a prayer holy enough to ward against what she saw.
The creature’s eyes stared at her from where the chin ought to have been, the hooked nose curving sharply above them like a long, fleshy horn. Breathlessly, the priestess stammered, trying to form a curse, and her words were echoed back to her from a pair of jaws creaking open upon the creature’s forehead.
Trembling hand clenching her pendant, she muttered a word.
‘Run,’ she gasped to herself, ‘run.’
‘Run,’ her own voice replied from the creature’s jaws.
Legs refusing to obey, she all but collapsed backwards out of the foliage and onto the beach, arms swiftly dragging her away from the creature. The Omen was not deterred, and leapt from the underbrush in a great flap of white wings to land before her.
In the daylight, the thing was even more horrific. From its upside-down face ran a long neck, leading to a body that resembled an underfed stork. The creature crawled forwards on bony hands blue with swollen veins that jutted from its wing-joints. Its face was blank and expressionless, teeth chattering as its eyes locked on to Asper, who sat frigid and unable to move before it.
The Omen rose up on webbed, yellow feet and spread its wings, exposing a pair of withered breasts that trembled as the creature drew in a deep breath and dropped its massive, inverted jaws.
Whatever sound it might have made, whether a curse or the shrill mockery of Asper’s own terror, was lost in a whining shriek and a hollow slamming sound. Something silver whirled violently through the air. Asper blinked and, when she opened her eyes, a leather-bound hilt jutted from the creature’s neck. With its face still unchanged, the Omen gurgled slightly, lowered its arms and keeled over.
The Omen lay leaking dark red upon the sand. Asper could not find the breath to scream, nor to do anything but stare open-eyed and open-mouthed at the twitching corpse before turning to gawk at the sound of heavy boots crunching across the sand.
The longface’s stride was casual and unhurried as she stalked towards the Omen, her face appearing more perturbed than anything. Completely heedless of the priestess sitting paralysed beside it, she merely leaned down and pulled the long blade, its edge jagged and thick with life, from the creature, her only expression being the hint of a smile that emerged alongside the choked squawk from the parasite as she ripped the weapon free.
When Asper finally spoke, the words came as a shock to her.
‘Th-thank you,’ she gasped.
The longface turned and lifted a black brow, as though she hadn’t noticed the woman until just now. Despite the not-entirely-friendly expression, Asper shakily rose to her feet and dusted her robe off, offering the woman a weak smile.
‘If you hadn’t come along just now. .’ She cleared her throat. ‘Can you understand me?’
The longface cocked her head at that and Asper sighed. Of course, she muttered in her head, that was much better.
‘All right,’ she said resignedly. ‘You can’t understand me. We’ll work around that. But you did help me and you did kill what I’m supposed to be killing. So, for now,’ she extended a hand and a broad smile to her purple rescuer, ‘we can satisfy ourselves with that, can’t we?’
The longface regarded Asper’s hand with apparent concern, eyeing it for a moment as if unsure what to do with it. For a moment, the priestess felt her heart stop as the longface shoved her bloodied blade back into her belt without cleaning it. While the sensation she felt as the purple female seized her hand in a red, sticky gauntlet was not what she thought she could call ‘good’ in all conscience, it was with no small relief that she saw the longface smile back, exposing rows of jagged teeth.
The feeling was decidedly ruined when the longface pulled her forwards violently and drove a purple knee into her belly.
She staggered backwards, clutching at her stomach. Her left arm throbbed angrily, pulsing with a life all its own, a foreign, fiery blood coursing through it. Swiftly, she seized it with her weak right hand, clutching it as though it were a feral dog.
No, no, no! NO! Not now! She grimaced at her arm, and it seemed to scowl back at her, as if to ask, Then when?
She found no ready answer as the longface stalked forwards, eye
s glimmering cruelly in their sockets. Feebly, the priestess held up her right hand, half in futile warding, half in unpitied plea.
‘No! No!’ she hacked. ‘That’s. . not. . I didn’t want to. .’ She staggered to her feet, knees threatening to give out beneath her as she backpedalled awkwardly. ‘Listen. Listen!’
She stumbled backwards, saved from falling only as the red gauntlet reached out to seize her by her collar. With a harsh jerk, she was brought face to longface, a jagged, white smile added to the ivory stare. And the longface spoke with a voice as harsh and grating as the iron spike sliding from her belt.
‘I heard you, pinky.’
‘You,’ Asper gasped, ‘speak my language?’
‘I do.’ The longface’s smile seemed too wide for her narrow visage as she levelled the spike at Asper’s. ‘That’s what your weak breed calls “irony”, isn’t it?’
‘It’s not irony, it’s coincidence!’
‘Arguing languages while you’re about to be skewered?’ The longface shook her head. ‘Your death will be a boon to your race.’
Before she knew what was happening, Asper’s left arm, burning under her sleeve, snapped up to seize the woman by her throat. The voice shrieking inside her mind, begging for control, fell quiet against a violent crackle inside her. The fire in her veins slid through her fingers, up her shoulder and scorched a bare-toothed snarl upon her face.
‘I’m not going to die, heathen.’
The longface’s smile only grew broader, a predator feeling its prey squirm inside its jaws. Without a thought for the unnatural tension in Asper’s hand, she raised her spike and aimed the point directly at the priestess’s face.
‘VERMIN!’
The bellow degenerated into a wordless howl that rent the air. Eyes, white and pupilled alike, turned upwards to regard the massive wall of crimson muscle standing upon the shore.
