—
A few people still dug forefingers in their ears. The drums were louder. From the eastern fields another light struck. Something—a long line of somethings—was moving toward the common. The sweeping beams threw shadows over the beets, the grain, the kale, all bending in the night wind.
Children and mothers and uncles and cousins looked at one another.
“Why do they come across the field? They’ll damage the harvest.”
“There are so many of them that they couldn’t fit on the road.”
“Such late visitors, and so many. Will we have food for them all? They walk so strangely…”
Grain stalks snapped under the boots in time to the drums. As searchlights swung away, in the inadequate light from the nail paring of a moon, straining to see among the armored figures, Rahm thought to look for his friend from the morning—and thought he saw him there: only a moment later, he saw another tall, cloaked figure. Then another. Among the armed men advancing, a number wore the uniform Kire had worn. Some rode nervous horses; others came on foot. Their capes, despite the wind, hung straight behind them, heavy as night. Above them all, on rolling towers, the searchlights moved forward.
With the others, Rahm waited in the square.
Soon, with their mobile light towers, the soldiers had marched to the common’s near edge. The ground was fully lit. Villagers squinted. On a horse stepping about before the visitors, a bearded man in brown leather, wearing a single glove, barked at the short silver rod in his bare hand:
HALT!
Everyone looked up, because the word echoed and reechoed from the black horns high on the moving light towers. The soldiers stopped marching. The drums stilled.
The man with the silver rod rode forward. The villagers fell back. The man spoke again. Again his voice was doubled, like thunder, from the horns:
SURRENDER TO THE FORCES OF MYETRA!
Around Rahm, people looked at one another, puzzled.
Then Kern, the quarryman, who was not really shy—only very quiet—stepped forward.
“Welcome to you,” he said uncertainly. Then, which was almost twice as much as Kern ever said, he added: “Welcome, visitors in the night.”
“Are you the leader here?” the mounted man demanded.
Kern didn’t answer—because, as Rahm knew, Kern wasn’t anyone’s leader. (He was not even an elder—none of whom, Rahm noticed, seemed to have arrived yet.) Kern frowned back at the villagers behind him.
Someone called out: “No—he’s not!”
Which made a dozen people—including Rahm—laugh. Rahm whispered to Mantice, who was standing beside him, “That’s Tenuk,” though stocky Mantice knew it was plowman Tenuk being funny as much as Rahm did. They both grinned.
“You speak for the people here,” the mounted man said, which was funny in itself because Kern probably wouldn’t say anything more now. But the man spoke as though he’d heard neither Tenuk’s No nor the laughter. “You are the leader!” While his horse stepped about, he pushed the silver rod into his shirt, reached down, unfastened his sling, and lifted out his powergun—for a moment it seemed he was going to hand it to Kern as a gift.
Rahm had seen a powergun that morning, but not—really—what it could do.
Flame shot out and smacked Kern just below his shoulder. Kern slammed backward four feet—without either stepping or falling: upright, his feet just slid back across the grass—the left one was even slightly off the ground. Blood fountained a dozen feet forward. The horse’s flank was splattered and the animal reared twice, then a third time. Rahm was close enough to hear the meat on Kern’s chest bubble and hiss as he fell, twisting to the side. One of Kern’s arms was gone.
When it hit the ground, Kern’s remaining hand moved in the grass. Kern’s heavy fingers opened, then closed, with not even grass blades in them. Kern’s face was gone too—and half Kern’s head.
The bearded man lowered the powergun from where the retort had jerked the barrel into the air. “Your leader has been killed. So will you all be killed—unless you announce your surrender!”
Rahm felt a vast and puzzling absence inside him. Nothing in it seemed like any sort of sense he could hold to. Then something began to grow in that senseless absence. It grew slowly. But he felt it growing. At the same time, something—a strange understanding—began to grow in the face of the bearded man on his horse, who raised his gun overhead.
Suddenly the man turned sharply in his saddle and barked back at the troops:
“They refuse to surrender! Attack!”
—
Though he had learned far back to fight well, like many big men, Uk did not like fighting. Uncountable campaigns ago, he’d also learned that little Mrowky actually gloried in the insult, the attack, the pummeling given and received, the recovery, the reattack. Mrowky could make as much conversational jollity at losing in a melee as he could at winning.
Since men—and sometimes women—so often feel obliged to start fights with big men, Uk had grown grateful for Mrowky’s willingness, even eagerness, to jump in when others, to prove themselves, picked quarrels with him in strange towns and taverns. Since people tended not to start fights with runty men like Mrowky (who enjoyed the fight so much), hanging out with broad-shouldered, beer-bellied Uk was a way to guarantee a certain frequency of entertainment—possibly it was the core of their friendship. For both were different enough from each other to preclude close feelings in any situation other than war.
Uk had an expansive, gentle humor he used largely to mask from his fellows a real range of information and some thoughtful speculation, while Mrowky was simply a loud, stupid little man, who’d been called and cursed by just those words enough times by enough people so that, if he did not actually believe they were true, he knew there was something to them. Thus the friendship of the big soldier, who was also smart, flattered Mrowky. Both could complain about each other in fiery terms, starred with scatology and muddied with proto-religious blasphemies.
But they were devoted.
Perhaps some of that devotion came from the knowledge both shared, that their time in the Myetran army had taught them: life in the midst of battle was on another plane entirely from that in which relationships could be parsed (a concept Uk would understand) or parceled out (an idea Mrowky might follow), analyzed, or made rational.
With ten other soldiers, Mrowky and Uk had been stationed just along the turnoff at the common’s south corner. (Other units of a dozen each had been deployed at seven more points around the green.) When the first villagers hurried by, still unsteady from the grating whine of the high speakers and more or less oblivious to the soldiers (basically because they were just not used to seeing soldiers standing quietly in the shadow), light from an opened door spilled over the flags.
A young redheaded woman passed through it as a young redheaded man—clearly a brother or a cousin—came up beside her. They disappeared, displaced by others rushing to join the villagers gathering on the grass. But Mrowky had given Uk an elbow in the forearm; and in the darkness, his breathing had increased to a tempo Uk knew meant the little man now had the grin that said, “I like that girl—she’s hot!”
When the lights had rolled onto the common, Uk and Mrowky had moved up to the edge of the illuminated space, per orders. As, with his microphone, Nactor had ridden out to address the villagers, Uk wondered, as he did so often, just out of sight, whether the populace ever really saw them or not. Just how aware were the stunned and disoriented peasants of the soldiers in their armor, waiting for the word?
In two years, Mrowky and Uk had been through this maneuver seventeen times in seventeen villages. It had taken the first half dozen for Uk to realize that it did not matter whether the villagers surrendered or not; the attack came in either case. Over those half-dozen times, Uk had listened to Nactor’s amplified address, watched the elimination of the spokesman (that’s how it was referred to: though in half a dozen villages now, the spokesman had been a woman), and awaited t
he final order with a growing distaste—till, by the seventh time, he’d begun to block out the whole thing.
Over the first ten times (which is how many times it had taken Mrowky to learn what Uk had learned in six), Mrowky had watched the process with hypnotic fascination, awed at its duplicity, its daring, its efficacy. But his attention span would have been strained by any more; so now he too gave no more mind to the details than did the other soldiers.
When the attack sounded, you pulled out your sword, moved forward, and began to swing. You tried not to remember who or what you hit. A lot of blood spurted on your armor and got in the cracks, so that you got sticky at knees and elbows and shoulders; otherwise it was pretty easy. The villagers were naked—most of them—and scared and not expecting it.
Among his first encounters, Uk, out of what he’d thought was humanitarianism, had—with some forethought—not always swung and cut to kill. It seemed fitting to give the pathetic creatures at least a chance to live. Three days later, though, he’d seen what happened to the ones who were just badly wounded: the long loud deaths, the maggoty gashes, the bone-breaking fevers, the cracked lips of the dying. After that, from the same humanitarianism, he’d used his skills to become as deadly as he could with each blade swing at the screaming, clamoring folk—who simply had to be decimated.
That was orders.
Indeed, there was some skill to it—like avoiding the flesh-burning power beams lancing through the mayhem from the mounted officers. Best thing to do (Uk had explained to Mrowky a long time back, when the little guy’d gotten a burn on his right hip) was to glance up from the carnage now and then and keep Kire’s horse a little before you, not drifting too far to the left or the right of it—since the mounted lieutenants had the sense (most of them) to avoid powergunning down each other.
You fought.
And you tried not to remember individual slashes and cuts you dealt out to bare shoulders and ribs and necks. (After the diseases and lingering deaths among the wounded in that first campaign, Uk tried for lots of necks.) Sometimes, though, an incident would tear itself free in the web of perception and refuse to sink back into the reds and blacks and chaotic grays and screams and crashes and howls that were the night.
—
When what happened next stopped happening—
But it was too violent and too painful for Rahm to recall with clarity.
He remembered walking backward, shouting, then—when Tenuk fell against him, like a bubbling roast left too long on the spit and so hot he burned Rahm’s arms—screaming. He remembered his feet’s uneasy purchase on the flags because of the blood that sluiced them. He remembered a dark-glazed crock smashing under a horse hoof. (With the soldiers, horror spread the village.) He remembered running to the town’s edge, to find the gravefield shack aflame.
Ienbar had called, then shouted, then shrieked, trying to get past the fire from the mounted soldiers’ muzzles; then Rahm hadn’t been able to see Ienbar at all for the glowing smoke, and there’d been the smell of all sorts of things burning: dried thatch, wood, bedding, charred meat. Rahm had run forward toward the fire till the heat, which had already blinded him, made him—the way someone with a whip might make you—back away, turn away, run away, through the town that, as his sight came back under his singed brows, with the chaos and the screams around him, was an infernal parody of his village.
—
Uk pulled his sword free to turn in the light from one of the towers, parked by an uncharacteristically solid building with a stone foundation. Something was wrong with Uk’s knee; it had been throbbing on and off all last week; for three days now it had felt better, but then, only minutes ago, some soldier and some peasant, brawling on the ground in the dark, had rolled into him. Uk had cried out: it was paining him again. Turning to go toward the lit building, he’d raised his sword arm to wipe the sweat from under his helmet rim with his wrist—and smeared blood across his face, sticking his lashes together. But that had happened before. Grimacing at his own stupidity, he’d tried to blink the stuff away.
While he blinked, Uk recognized, between the struts of the light tower, from the diminutive armor and a motion of his shoulder, Mrowky—who was holding somebody. Three steps farther, knee still throbbing, Uk stopped and grinned. The little guy had actually got the redheaded girl—probably snagged her as she’d fled the common’s carnage.
You’re a lucky lady, Uk thought. Because Mrowky would do his thing with her, maybe punch her up a little afterwards, just to make her scared, then run her off. That was Mrowky’s style—even though, when a whole village had nearly gone into a second revolt over the petitions, laments, and finally rebellious preachings of a woman raped by a soldier, Nactor himself had harangued the troops a dozen campaigns back: “I don’t care what it is—boy, woman, or goat! You put a cock in it, you put your sword through it when you finish with it! That’s an order—I don’t need to deal with things like this!” But Mrowky wasn’t comfortable—nor was Uk—killing someone just because you’d fucked her. And rarely did a woman carry on afterwards like the one who’d raised Nactor to his wrath, especially if you scared her a little. Though others among the soldiers, Uk knew, honestly didn’t care.
Really, though, Uk thought, if Mrowky was going to do her now, he’d best take her out from under the light—behind the building; not for propriety, but just because Nactor or one of the officers might ride by. (No, Uk reflected, Mrowky wasn’t too swift.) Favoring his right leg, Uk started forward to tell his friend to take it around the corner.
The redhead, Uk saw, over Mrowky’s shoulder, had the stunned look of all the villagers. She was almost three inches taller than the little guy. Mrowky had one hand wrapped in her hair so that her mouth was open. As his other hand passed over it, the redhead’s arm gave a kind of twitch.
Which is when Uk heard the howl.
From the darkness, black hair whipping back and a body under it like an upright bull’s, the big man rushed, naked and screaming. Rush and scream were so wild that, for a moment, Uk thought they had nothing to do with Mrowky and the girl; they would simply take this crazed creature through the light and into the dark again. Then Uk glimpsed the wild eyes, which, as the light lashed across them, seemed explosions in the man’s head. The teeth were bared—the image, Uk thought later, of absolute, enraged, and blood-stopping evil. Under his armor, chills reticulated down Uk’s shoulders, danced in the small of Uk’s back.
The wild peasant was heading right toward Mrowky and the girl.
All Uk had a chance to do was bark Mrowky’s name (tasting blood in his mouth as he did so); the careening man collided with them; for a moment he covered—seemed even to absorb—them both. Then he whirled. With a great sweep of one arm, he tore Mrowky’s helmet from his head—which meant the leather strap must have cut violently into Mrowky’s neck before it broke, if it didn’t just tear over his chin and break Mrowky’s nose. The big peasant whirled back; and Uk saw that he had Mrowky by the neck, in both of his hands—the guy’s hands were huge too! And Mrowky was such a little guy—
With sword up and aching knee, Uk lunged.
The big man bent back (a little taller than Uk, thicker in the chest, in the arms, in the thighs), drew up one bare foot and kicked straight out. The kick caught Uk in the belly. Though he didn’t drop it, Uk’s sword went flailing. He reeled away, tripped on something, and went down. Blinking and losing it all because of the blood in his eyes, Uk pushed himself up again; but the redhead was gone (doubtless into the dark he’d been about to urge Mrowky into) and the peasant, still howling, was flinging—yeah, flinging!—Mrowky from one side to the other, backing away. Mrowky’s head—well, a head doesn’t hang off anyone’s neck that way! And the peasant was backing into the dark—was gone into it, dragging Mrowky with him!
Uk got out a curse, got to his feet, got started forward—and tripped on another villager who was actually moving. Wildly, he chopped his blade down to still her. (Yeah, in the neck!) Then he started off in the dir
ection they’d gone, but not fast enough, he knew—damn the knee!
—
On the roof of Hara’s hut, Qualt crouched, watching Rimgia, watching Rahm, watching Uk. (But he tried not to watch what Rahm was doing to the little soldier whose helmet Rahm had torn free.) Qualt turned away. Behind him something huge and dark and shadowy spread out from him on both sides, moving slightly in the breeze, like breathing—watching too. When he looked back, Qualt saw Rimgia stagger into the shadows around the council-house corner—and in the shadows, saw Abrid run up to her, seize her by the shoulder, demand if she were all right, and somehow, over the length of his own question, realize that she was not; and slip his other arm around her. Looking right and left, and totally unaware of what had gone on just around the corner (Rimgia’s eyes were fixed and wide, as if she were seeing it all again), Abrid helped his sister off along the council-building wall.
Qualt had gripped the edging of twigs and thatch so tightly that even on his hard and calloused palms it left stinging indentations. His hands loosened now, and he moved forward, as if to vault down and pursue them. But the thing behind him—did it reach for his shoulder? No, for it had not quite the hands we do. But a dark wing swept around before him, like a shadow come to life to restrain whoever would bolt loose.
And turning, Qualt whispered, words lurching between heartbeats that still near deafened, halting as the trip from one roof—over the violence—to another: “This is—what thou seest if…thou flyest at Çiron!”
—
Something had happened to Rahm—not to the part of him staggering through the chaos of villagers and soldiers. Rather, it happened to the part growing inside, the thing that had begun forming when the bearded rider had shot Kern. It had needed a long time to grow: minute after minute after minute of mayhem. But the growing thing finally got large enough to fill up and join with something in Rahm’s hands, in Rahm’s thighs, in Rahm’s gut. It filled him or became him or displaced him—however he might have said it, they all referred to the same. And when from the darkness Rahm had seen Rimgia and the little soldier leaning against the council building, saw him touch her that way in the overhead light, the thing inside, jerking and bloating to its full size, had taken him over, muscle and mouth, foot and finger.
A, B, C: Three Short Novels Page 32
