The Bones of the Old Ones

by Howard Andrew Jones

  I felt a brief moment of satisfaction when Gazi’s eyebrows arched in surprise, but then he was all business, deflecting my onslaught with blocks that came with expressionless ease. Still, he retreated. I felt a rush of air behind me, but no talon pierced my armor. There was, though, a great wolf howl that distracted even Gazi, who winced in pain at the sound. I thrust in, but the Sebitti parried and grinned more broadly.

  “Let me know,” he said smoothly in a deep voice, “when you want me to kill you.”

  Again and again he deflected or sidestepped my blows and I wondered at his aim until Alexis rejoined me. I think Gazi waited until we both were fighting to attack so that he would not be entirely bored by the kill. The moment the Greek was with me Gazi launched into us, wielding that two-handed blade not like a butcher with a cleaver, as you might expect from the size of the thing, but like a dancer with a staff. Within the first few moments of the assault he had smashed twice into my armor with such strength it drove the breath from me. Alexis fared a little worse, for the blade took him in one leg. The Greek grunted and stumbled, but came on, limping and leaking blood down his boot.

  Just as I was wondering how much longer the pair of us could continue amusing the Sebitti, I saw Dabir advancing from behind him. Flames burned along cloth tips that poked from the two jars he carried. He had brought the Greek fire. I shouted a battle cry and intensified my attack to keep attention on me.

  The wolf howled once more. Gazi, meanwhile, laughed and caught my blow on his own sword, spun out, and struck hard. I lifted my shield in time, but the blow numbed my arm from fingers to bicep and split the metal. He pressed me back, and I am embarrassed to say that I lost my footing and spun in the snow. Down I went, landing heavily on my shield. My arm was so numb I felt the impact more surely in my shoulder. Worse, my back was exposed. I scrambled to face what I was sure would be a deathblow.

  Alexis drove aggressively into the madman, buying me time. Say what you will about most Greeks, but I shall never suffer you to slander that fellow.

  As I pushed back up to my knees I saw the bird sweep through again, claws outstretched. Dabir flung one of the pots and the projectile shattered against its immense feathered abdomen. Fire blossomed there and the bird screeched, flapping frantically as it climbed, one claw passing so close to Lydia that its passage cast back her hair and robe as though she walked into a mighty wind. The Greek woman was still stationed at the circle, holding the club and shouting spells. I had only a brief moment to look, but it seemed the wolf had grown even larger, and more substantial.

  I would never admire the doings of such a man as Gazi, but I shall ever respect his ability. Somehow he knew that Dabir lobbed a pot despite the fact he was not looking at him. Gazi stepped to the side, sucking in his chest so that Alexis missed, then swung his sword out behind him and caught the firebomb in midair, shattering it. Little blobs of flaming oil spattered in the snow and a few hit my shield, but most of them caught upon Gazi’s steel. He advanced, laughing with delight, the sword now flaming before him.

  I staggered to my feet and stumbled forward to help the Greek. By the light of Gazi’s blade I saw my sleeve stained with blood, though I could not tell if it was mine, for my shield arm was still mostly numb. I was surely not at my best, but I did not mean to abandon Alexis.

  My ally ducked under that flaming blade. Gazi’s return swing was briefly hampered as an icy ball thrown by Dabir smashed into his right shoulder, and at that precise moment the Greek’s blade jabbed him along the upper thigh. The Sebitti hissed in rage and brought the flaming weapon down against the Greek’s armored shoulder. Alexis sagged, falling with exposed neck, and Gazi’s sword whipped back to strike.

  I did not give him the chance. Any normal man would then have been overwhelmed as I rushed, but Gazi twisted and lashed out at me with his sword, scoring my armored shirt. The flames on his weapon had almost completely failed, although ghostly blue fire still danced along its edge, casting the madman’s face in skeletal relief as he brought it back to guard.

  I could feel that I neared the barrier holding back the wolf; not only did I sense the weird, shifting brightness behind me, the very hairs upon my body stood at attention.

  “Drop back, Asim!”

  This was Dabir’s advice, but there was nowhere to go. I was winded and wounded, and Gazi seemed fresh. His laugh slid into a giggle as he feinted at my neck. I threw my blade up to block, but with a snakelike shift he brought the sword down at my thighs. I sank to one knee, hoping to catch it with both armor and blade. This I did, and I think the sword deflected part of his strength, but the blow still numbed my weapon hand and the strike cut into my armor.

  Dabir shouted once more. “Asim, down!” So, suppressing my instinct to rise, I crouched lower and pivoted to intercept the next anticipated blow.

  But Gazi at last gave Dabir full attention. I saw then that my friend had picked up a bucket from somewhere. The Sebitti paused to gaze quizzically as Dabir slung the thing back, like a boy hurling water from a well. Gazi leapt aside, but his leg injury hindered his spring, and blood arced out from the pail, coating the Sebitti’s side.

  Perhaps Gazi had not quite reasoned what was happening, for I saw a confused expression on his face as I threw myself flat. Behind me, the barrier dropped. The wolf stepped over me and leaned in toward Gazi, who screamed as the wolf’s great jaws snapped down on him.

  “Get out!” Dabir shouted. The cold from the monster stabbed through my fatigue and I scrambled away as the wolf’s belly swayed above me. Gazi writhed in the monster’s teeth, his form shifting to a swarthy thick man, then to a small woman, then to a slim youth, his body only partly visible through the creature’s translucent maw.

  As the muzzle grew more and more substantial Gazi’s screams grew louder and did not leave off, even as the voice that shouted changed. Less and less of the wizard’s body was visible through the beast. I was close enough to see individual hairs of its fur, close enough to see the blood streaming down Gazi’s body, close enough to hear the crunch of his bones when the screaming stopped.

  Tarif was avenged, and so, too, were all those who Gazi had murdered through the eons.

  I joined Dabir, spear clasped in one hand, helping Alexis to safety near a wild-eyed Lydia. For someone who had finally gotten what she wished, she seemed none too pleased.

  The wolf turned from the mangled thing that had been Gazi to slurp one of the blood-filled cauldrons. Everywhere knots of Greeks and Sebitti followers struggled, though far more on both sides now lay dead or wounded than remained standing.

  “Turn the wolf on them,” I said when I reached Lydia.

  “It didn’t work!” she cried.

  “What are you talking about? You sent it against—”

  Dabir explained quickly. “I had her drop the barrier after I drenched Gazi.”

  The shriek of the returning bird rent the night air.

  I am not certain why it came back. I had thought it under Gazi’s magical command, as the wooden men were controlled by Koury. Yet it may be that there was nothing magical about the beast but its size. Whatever the case, the singed roc dropped on the wolf with its claws outstretched. It may not have known that its master no longer cared what it did, or could ever care again; maybe it acted as it had been told, fighting until being signaled away.

  The frost wolf spun to snap at the enormous bird.

  “Move!” Lydia thrust her hand toward my shoulder and I withdrew from her, nimble as a drunkard. Black-shrouded figures flew from the pouch at her waist, ghostly, hooded, their rotting limbs transparent. I gaped in dread, almost too tired to raise my blade. A full half dozen soared out toward a familiar figure by the stables even now readying a silvery hooked line. I had the satisfaction of seeing Anzu’s face go ashen before he dashed for cover behind a shed.

  For only a moment I thought we might yet have a chance, for the surviving Greeks were regrouping. The Sebitti onslaught seemed spent. Then the vaporous snow spirits drifted down fr
om the south wall and the ice barrier crashed in under the onslaught of a gargantuan white bear shaped from mist and vapor. Snow women poured in behind it. With them came a shrilling wind clutching at us with icy fingers.

  Lydia, teeth gnashing, shouted something about the carpet, hoisted up the club and bore it in two arms as she dashed for the nearest tower. I put an arm about the sagging Alexis. Dabir and I ran after, the Greek warrior half supported by me. He was shouting to his men, but those few left alive were dying or fleeing, and I heard the torment in his voice that I knew too well, of a commander seeing his men fall.

  Lydia threw open the door and raced inside. Behind us, so close that my ears rang, came a great roar and a blast of icy wind.

  Dabir whirled and thrust the spear past my chest. I let go of the Greek and turned, raising up my blood-drenched sword.

  The bear had followed, and stood fully a man’s height over Dabir, advancing with a growl. As the wolf had been before it drank blood, it was ghostlike—the battlefield and drifting snow women were visible through its body. Its empty sockets blazed a brilliant blue.

  Dabir drove it back with another jab and shouted for us to run. I pushed Alexis after Lydia, then grabbed Dabir’s arm and pulled him with me through the doorway. The bear hesitated before stomping forward on its hind legs, then I slammed the door. I hoped it could not simply pass through the shelter like the snow women.

  There was no sign of Lydia within the gloom, but there were stairs along the wall, and we heard her footsteps racing upward. Alexis had made it to the stair bottom, but his face was pale even in the feeble red light cast from the dying hearth.

  “Keep moving, soldier!” I told him. I think he understood my tone more than my words, for his back stiffened and he took a step. I tore off my mangled shield and grabbed his elbow as Dabir ran up.

  I was a third of the way up the stairs with the Greek when the cursed bear walked straight through the wooden door in a spray of frost. It let out something midway between roar and wind blast. I think Alexis was protesting, but I got him up to the next floor, and then I had no recourse but to ram home my bloody sword into the sheath uncleaned so I could push him up the rickety ladder.

  We arrived at last at the tower height, where Lydia had laid out the carpet and now sat on it. Dabir stood behind her, frantically waving us forward.

  In the courtyard below, the wolf had finally won. It was fully solid now, though it still seemed less a mortal creature than a being fashioned from snow in its shape. It was bent over the splayed, motionless corpse of the giant bird, greedily devouring it, uncaring that dozens of other spirits crowded around the carcass with him. Others were bent down over the Greek and Sebitti warriors: women, bears, smaller wolves, and stranger things I had no time to observe in detail.

  “What took so long?” Lydia snapped.

  Alexis slumped onto the carpet and I stepped aboard. I’d only managed to sink to one knee near him before she spoke her words and the fabric shot into the air and away from that terrible place. If I’d tumbled backward instead of forward into Alexis I would have fallen to my death.

  Once I righted myself Dabir turned to converse with Lydia in urgent, low tones ahead of me. The fortress was already half a league away, praise God, distant almost as a dream. Or nightmare. From here I could almost pretend it was only a snowcapped ruin, except that I knew what looked like a large mound of snow visible over the wall was really the back of the giant wolf.

  I turned attention to Alexis, feebly cutting away the cloth on his leg so he might see his wound. I told him I would help him with the bandage, but I saw then just how blood-soaked his garment had become. Our eyes met, and I understood that he knew he was but a walking dead man, and that he had suspected for a long while.

  The carpet soared on, high over the landscape below, a pale blue in the moonlight. Above us loomed a wispy sheet of clouds, and I wondered if he might reach heaven faster, for being so close to it. For all that their ways are strange, Christians are people of the book, and the virtuous go to paradise.

  Alexis twisted awkwardly so that he might look over his shoulder. Dabir was leaning forward, still in deep conversation with Lydia.

  The Greek officer weaved a little as he turned back to me. “You must guard her now.”

  “Lydia?” I asked. Though my voice could barely be heard above the chill wind whistling past us, I think my skepticism was easy to read.

  “The lady Doukas,” the dying man corrected. His voice was failing. Slowly he blinked. “You must protect her.”

  I thought of all the reasons I should not—that she had cursed Najya, that she had tried to murder Jaffar, that she consorted with dark powers. I frowned.

  “Swear, Arab,” he said. He lifted up a bloody hand, looked at it as though seeing it for the first time, then made the cross over his heart, as Christians sometimes do. “Swear it.”

  “I will guard her,” I promised, “so long as she is our ally, though her soul is mostly black. But I do it for you, not her, because you were a brave man and noble warrior.”

  He seemed to have trouble focusing, and I thought then that the color was draining even from his eyes, so white had he become. “We made a fine team,” he told me.

  “Aye,” I said. “You were a good man in a fight.”

  “The better man.” His lips shaped what was probably meant as a smile. It looked ghastly. “I’m the one who got through his guard.”

  I knew a brief stab of irritation, but saw that he still smiled, and I chuckled. He managed what might have been a laugh himself, but then he was silent forever after, and I had to lay him beside me, holding on to his shoulder.

  I have never forgotten him. I hope that when I am called to paradise I, too, shall meet it with a jest upon my lips.

  14

  I shall not detail the shouted conversation that immediately followed on that sad flight; I shall merely say that Lydia was distraught to learn her man had died. She did not seem sad so much as angry, and at me, as if I had not taken proper care of a prized possession.

  Once she had calmed down sufficiently, Dabir inquired as to my injuries—none of which seemed life-threatening, although my arm was quite sore. He then told me we were on our way to Mosul.

  This seemed a remarkably bad idea to me. “Won’t that just lead the spirits and the Sebitti to our home?”

  “We won’t stay long,” Dabir said. “But we need rest. And you said the other bone was south.”

  “Do you mean to go after it?”

  He leaned back, opened his mouth as if to explain, and then the wind swept hard from the left and tore his turban away. Dabir grabbed at the fabric, but it unrolled as it spiraled off into the sky like a living thing. He then pressed a hand to the spear lying half pressed under his thigh, to ensure its safety, and I glanced beyond him to where Lydia sat with the club across her lap. Alexis did not shift in the slightest from where I had put him, on his side next to me, his legs curled so that they would not hang over the edge of the carpet.

  “I have an idea,” Dabir said finally. “I’ll need to get some answers from Lydia before I can be sure it works. Do you think you can get the spear working?”

  I had figured out the club; I saw no reason that I could not work out the spear as well. “Yes. What are you planning?”

  He shook his head. “We will talk when we land.”

  We were on that carpet a very long time indeed, for it was a long way to Mosul even when soaring like a bird. Also, it was cold, and after the first hour we were forced to huddle together under Alexis’ outer robe, which we spread like a blanket.

  I was dismayed that we had once again missed our prayers. It always seemed to me that in those times when they might do us the most good we had no opportunity for them. Also, there was the presence of Alexis to darken my mood. It seemed that all our journeys upon the carpet would be in the company of a corpse, surely an ill omen. I bethought then of Jibril’s body, still unburied, and I knew great sorrow, just as I knew that was likel
y nothing to what Dabir must be feeling.

  Below us all was blue-gray where the snow threw back moonlight and black where it did not, outlining trees, rocks, or occasional buildings. One long winding patch of ink was a river and it silvered as we passed. After traveling a long while in silence, we began to drop lower and I could see flickers of light from dwellings glinting off objects outside. The carpet soon carried us a bowshot above Mosul’s walls, close enough for me to see two warriors talking over brazier coals. They did not see us, praise God, for they would surely have raised an alarm. Dabir advised Lydia so that our course changed now and again. We flew low enough over a block of buildings that I might well have stepped safely onto a roof.

  Finally the carpet arrived above the dark rectangle of our courtyard and settled gently into it.

  I realized how tense I’d been only when I began to relax in the familiar surroundings. I climbed slowly to my feet, discovering a few new pains, then helped Dabir bear the body of Alexis into one of our empty rooms. Dabir had promised Lydia he would be buried in the Christian cemetery south of the wall, and I would see that it was done personally. Our tread wakened a visibly startled Buthayna, who volunteered with surprisingly few words to stoke the fire and warm something for us.

  Lydia waited to the side of the oven, eager for the warmth. I couldn’t suppress a grin when a bleary-eyed Rami stumbled into the kitchen to stare at us in shocked wonder. Dabir directed the lad and they both helped me to remove my armor. I was startled to catch Buthayna looking over at me with concern. I recalled then the multitude of red splashes staining my tunic and armor.

  “It is not my blood,” I said.

  A savage laugh then fell from her lips, and she kept on chuckling from time to time over the next quarter hour. Even Lydia traded a curious glance with me at this.

  I was famished, so hungry that I hardly savored the rice and stewed vegetables Buthayna set before me. The Greek woman ate nearby, forced into proximity because we both desired to be near to the oven.