The Sacred Band a-3

by David Anthony Durham

  Beneath and between the structures figures moved, driving animals, hauling supplies, doing the million things needed to feed and care for an army in constant, rolling motion. Rialus had doubted it would be possible, but the Auldek-or their slaves-were more efficient than he thought. They unpacked food stores in an organized manner that meant they could abandon the vehicles that had carried them. They ate the animals freed up from this, or any that got injured or sick. Rialus even suspected that the slaves themselves became food for the animals or worse. He tried not to think about it.

  A man rode by atop an antok, swaying with the beast’s strides, as at ease as a horseman on a trusted mount. The swine blew plumes of white vapor from beneath the heavy patchwork of throws that covered it. Rialus felt the vapor billow around him, fogging his visor. He smelled the rank scent of the creature’s breath. But that did not make sense. It was not that close. Rialus scrubbed at his visor a moment, smearing the scene before him. He pulled back his hood and yanked the visor from his head.

  The antok had moved away, but still the steaming breath blew past him. A noise at his back turned Rialus around to meet the clear blue eyes of a snow lioness. The cat crouched just a little distance away on a ledge of the station, tensed as if it might pounce. It thrust its chin forward, and then cocked its head, then righted it. Rialus had no idea what that was meant to convey, but the female of the species worried him as much as the massive males. In the wild, he had been told, it was the females that did most of the hunting. The males just used their brawn to fight one another and win wives. Miserable beasts! Rialus thought. He fumbled for the ladder poles, dropped over the edge, and descended.

  Dropping from the ladder onto the frozen earth, Rialus pitched over, as he always did when jumping from the ever-moving structure. He scrambled to his feet, wary of the vehicle’s massive wheels, and had to shuffle run to catch up with Allek. They cut a zigzagging path through the rumbling, roaring, groaning flow of men and machines and furred and horned and tusked beasts, all the while buffeted by the wind.

  They entered the steamstation through a trapdoor that lowered for them to leap up to. A moment later, after climbing a winding staircase, Rialus was shrugging out of his garments, the air warm around him. At least the steamship had that going for it. It was a specially constructed station, one that featured an elaborate heating system fueled by the flammable pitch the Auldek had brought with them in great quantities. A fire burning somewhere inside pumped in enough hot air that the Auldek lounged about half naked, slaves fanning them and serving them chilled drinks and giving them massages. It never failed to remind Rialus of the baths at Cathgergen, a memory which he ran from, remembering just how that had turned out.

  “Ah, Allek, you’ve found my leagueman,” Sabeer said. “You never disappoint.”

  “I try not to, dearest one,” Allek said, bowing his head.

  Dearest one? Rialus sneered inside. As if you have a chance with her.

  “Come, Rialus, sit with us.”

  Sabeer lounged on a low divan, propped up on one elbow, sipping something from a tiny blue glass. She was tall and long limbed, with a tensile muscularity that hummed like a coiled spring, making even languid movements seem somehow dangerous. She wore a thin linen garment, perfectly designed to hug her contours and yet hang loose. Another woman, Jafith, lay in a similar posture. A man named Howlk sat with her feet in his lap, an absurdly submissive posture for a warrior who, Rialus knew, enjoyed wrestling naked in death matches-or as close to such as an immortal could suffer.

  Two humans stood just outside the group, one beating out a rhythm on a waist-high drum while the other smacked a rattle on his palm. If not for the sloshing liquid in the glasses one might have forgotten the entire station was rolling across an icescape.

  Rialus sat on the cushion to which Sabeer directed him. He had been petrified when he learned she was Devoth’s wife, but what that distinction meant Rialus could not figure out. He rarely saw them together, and when he did they treated each other more like siblings than anything else-deeply familiar, enough so that they were also deeply dismissive. They kept separate quarters, and Sabeer spent her time with whomever she chose. For some reason, Rialus was one of those.

  “Howlk was reciting a song to Sumerled,” Sabeer said, squeezing Rialus’s thigh. “Continue, sir. Let Rialus hear the end.”

  The Auldek warrior cleared his throat. He closed his eyes, his fingers kneading the ball of Jafith’s foot and his upper body swaying with the effort, as if he were putting all of himself into the pressure of his fingers. He tilted his stern features up, long hair flowing over his shoulders, and told a tale of epic love and tragedy that would have brought the entire Acacian senate to tears. Two lovers suffered the wrath of the Lvin for some crime Rialus could not quite pinpoint. Rialus had heard poems performed like this before, but Howlk had a particularly good voice for it. Despite himself, he was transfixed.

  Rialus had ceased being surprised by the complex collage that was Auldek culture. At times they seemed as barbaric and prone to violence as the Numrek. But those moments did not define them entirely. Devoth with his dancing hummingbirds. The time Rialus watched them draw garden tapestries with colored pebbles, complex works of art that would blur and disintegrate under the first rain. They achieved a balance in their lives, but it was a balance of extremes. Here was a race who would howl for blood in the morning, and then tend beetle farms on their terraces in the afternoon. Here was a people who would abandon their land to march to war, but then bring with them strange artifacts of gentility.

  He would never forget the makeshift banquet held on a black stone beach, waves crashing in the distance. The Auldek delicately plucked the violet leaves of some flowerlike vegetable. They dunked each leathery leaf in fragrant oils and scraped off the softer tissue with their upper teeth. The thing tasted fine, when you got used to it, but it was the spectacle of such rough creatures all silently attending leaf dipping that ranked as one of the strangest sights he had ever witnessed.

  When Howlk finished his song and had shaken off the praise offered him, Rialus asked, “How old is that tale?”

  “A couple hundred years,” Howlk said. “It’s a newer poem, really.”

  “So as new as that? Then… did you know these ill-fated lovers? Personally, I mean.”

  Howlk looked away without answering, opening an awkward silence.

  Something over Rialus’s shoulder caught Sabeer’s attention. Several Lvin women climbed the circular staircase. Though they were human, Rialus knew them instantly. Their every movement shouted their status, not just with their clan affiliation but as simple sublime motion. Their bodies were lithe and sculpted, honed through torturous training that made them fighters almost on par with the Auldek themselves. They went about wearing only short skirts. They were bare breasted, with chiseled arms and long muscles taut in their legs as they climbed. Like their totem animal, they moved with feline grace, circling and climbing up toward the next level without pausing.

  Behind the women came the white dreadlocks and the pale, leonine visage of Menteus Nemre. Like the women before him, he was nearly naked. The slave’s muscles bulged absurdly on his chest and arms, cut fine divisions on his abdomen, and stood out in thick bands running down his legs. He paused halfway up the stairs, taking in the room. For a moment, he seemed to stare so intently at him that Rialus wanted to squirm. Actually, he did squirm. Nothing about the attention of Menteus’s gaze changed, though.

  As his torso narrowed, the color of his skin changed from powder white to rich, dark brown from his abdomen down-his natural color. A shade of Talay. He paused on the landing and studied the lounging Auldek group.

  Strange to think of this man as a slave, for not an inch of him betrayed the slightest subservience. Rialus had never been this close to him before. He could not think of him without seeing images of the damage he had done during the games back in Avina. The speed of his attack. The way limbs and blood flew from his blade work. The death he infl
icted for no other purpose than to determine the order in which the clans would march away on this campaign.

  Realizing the man was staring at Sabeer, Rialus looked back at her. She smiled and dipped her head in greeting. Her gaze ascended as Menteus Nemre continued his climb. “You shouldn’t ask such things,” Sabeer said, returning to Rialus’s question. She leaned a bit closer. “You embarrass us. You see, we’ve forgotten.”

  “Forgotten?”

  She shrugged, waved him away with her hand, and then pointed at the musicians. “Sing.”

  Howlk asked, “So what do you believe, Rialus? I’ve heard the quota speak of few gods. There is one that gives, yes?”

  “The god of presents,” Allek quipped.

  “Yes, that one. Can you get him to give me something? I want a great many things.”

  They all looked at Rialus with playfully serious faces, expressions that grew more amused as he tried to convey the essential details surrounding the Giver. Before he had gotten far at all, Jafith said, “What nonsense! Did you just make that up, Leagueman?”

  “No, I’ve heard others speak the same many times,” Allek said. “Theirs is a feeble faith. Don’t look offended, Rialus. What sense does it make that one god would create all? Why would he create… rabbits. Soft and cuddly, yes? And then create foxes that hunt them down and tear them to shreds? Why do that? That god is no god to the rabbits. He is a demon that favors their enemies. But nor does that god honor the fox, for he creates other animals bigger than it. Creates wolves. Creates you Acacians. Even you, Rialus, could kill a fox if you were lucky and had the right weapon.”

  “And if the creature was lame or old,” Jafith added.

  “It simply makes no sense. It’s an addled god who creates hunted and hunter both, killer and those to be killed. Health and disease at the same-”

  “No, the Giver did not create disease,” Rialus said. “Elenet did that!”

  “Elenet?” Sabeer asked. “Who is Elenet?”

  “One of the first humans. He followed the Giver and learned his language and tried to use it, but when he did he released disease, illness, death. Things like…”

  Rialus’s voice faded as the triumphant expression on Howlk’s face grew. “Listen to yourself. You’re telling us that a human stole the words of creation from a god? All he had to do was talk like a god and he became a god?”

  “That’s like saying if you stole Devoth’s armor and wore it you would become as he,” Allek said. “Do you think that, Rialus?”

  “No, I-”

  “But that’s what this Elenet did,” Howlk said. Rialus tried to say more, but Howlk talked over him. “Foolishness from start to finish. You know how the world really works? Life is war. It’s the struggle between forces that defines it. Hunger gnaws your belly until it is defeated by consumption. But then just when consumption lies down to sleep, hunger rises and grabs it around the neck and starves it. The night overcomes the day; the day burns away the night. Back and forth. Back and forth. War, Rialus, but not chaos. That’s the difference between us. In conflict you and your people see confusion, see something to be lived through in waiting for peace. We, though, see conflict as what the gods intended.”

  “I think this is good news for us, yes?” Allek asked. The others agreed that it was.

  Sabeer rose to her feet. “Rialus, pay these fools no mind. Come, let’s entertain ourselves privately.”

  “Me?” Rialus said.

  She smiled suggestively. “Yes, you, none of these others interest me tonight.”

  A howling protest answered this, mixed with invitations and suggestive encouragements for Rialus. The humorous remarks followed them to the edge of the chamber, where Sabeer slipped on boots of white fox fur and a coat of some other hide that she wrapped around herself loosely. Rialus, unsure what he was heading to but trying to be relieved to get away from the others, fumbled himself into his outer garments. He dreaded that Sabeer would expect him to perform in intimate ways. Dreaded it, and yet it was not only his stomach that tingled with anticipation.

  A nother drummer played in Sabeer’s chamber. Still other servants hovered near, but Rialus forgot about them as Sabeer lay down with him. She pressed her strong body against his frail one. She spooned around him, breasts pressing against his back, her long legs entwined with his spindly ones.

  So positioned, she stroked her finger up and down his arm. “Do you understand what the two lovers did wrong in Howlk’s song? They were old. You know yourself that none of us Auldek are old in body. We all took our first soul at an age of vanity. You understand? If we were to be immortal, we wanted to be forever strong, young, good for fighting and lovemaking, no sign either of our beginnings or of our ends. That’s why there are none of us in child bodies, no immortal children. That would be very disturbing, I think. That’s why I chose to look forever as I do now. I made a good choice, yes?”

  Rialus blushed. “You are… very well formed.”

  “Such a silver tongue you have.” Sabeer chuckled, and then grew serious. “What those two lovers did wrong was that they disdained immortality. They gave up on it and died back into their true souls. And then those true souls let their bodies age. That itself made them… I don’t know what to call them. Outcasts. Not exactly. A holy couple. Perhaps they would have been. But then, nearing death, they asked for life again. They wanted souls from the soul catcher then. You understand that they could not have this. Can you imagine? Them old forever? In love and old forever. No, we could not allow that. I do wish I remembered them, though. Truly remembered them.”

  “Do you not?”

  Sabeer slid her leg over Rialus. Her skin was soft and hot, and he was glad he faced away from her, curved around the arousal in his groin.

  “No, I haven’t for many years. None of us do. I’m making a confession to you, Rialus. We know what’s written. We know things because we keep the knowledge alive. In records. In songs. We can only hold the memories of eighty years or so. The length of a long normal life. As we grew past that age our childhoods disappeared, and then our youth, and even the day we ate our first soul and gained lasting life. Rialus, I once lived in the interior, in a palace in the Westlands. I loved a man name Merwyn. We lived seventy-five years together but could have no children. The sadness of this became too much for him and he let free his lives and died a final death. At least, that’s what the written histories say of him. Myself, I remember none of it. We claim we abandoned the cities because of ancient wars and slaughter. Perhaps that’s true, but that’s not why we fear to return to them. I think what scares us is not remembering, not knowing our own lives, being strangers to ourselves.”

  “I-I understand,” Rialus said. “That must be like-like when the old in my land lose their minds and memories. Not just like it, of course, because they forget yesterday and remember fifty years ago, but the same sort of thing. Sabeer, you are like us. Your immortality hasn’t made you different at all. You’re just like-”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. She propped herself up on her elbow and pressed her finger to his lips to silence him. “Rialus Silver Tongue. That’s what we should call you. Always trying to save your people.” She smiled and leaned close enough to kiss him. “I like you, Rialus Silver Tongue, but when we reach your lands, I’ll take to the field of battle with my kinsmen just as we’ve planned. You can’t change that.”

  She pulled her finger away, but Rialus felt it still, as if it had left a brand on his lips, an old, bitter wound already scarred over. What was he doing in bed with this creature? Listening to her. Talking to her. Aroused by her and, for a moment, understanding her. Fool, Rialus! He tried to remember Gurta instead. She had wrapped around him like this also, but she had done it with true love for him. She had said so many times. Gurta, I won’t let them have you.

  “You know, Rialus, I can see the beauty in your race. I’ve had quota lovers, you know. There’s no shame in it.” She circled her finger on the soft skin of his inner elbow, smiling at some re
velry this line of conversation brought back to her. “No shame at all. I even like you, Rialus, though that’s strange. You’re not… well, a specimen considered attractive by your race, are you? No one ever called you handsome, did they?”

  She was a vile, barbarian woman. He could have found a hundred ways to insult her. Instead, he heard himself say, “No, no one ever called me handsome.”

  “Rialus,” Sabeer said, “my poor leagueman. I don’t think you’re handsome either, but I like you. You’ll always have a place with me. After all this is over and your world is ours, you should come stay with me in some palace somewhere. You can bring your woman, too. Where do you think I should take a palace?”

  You never will, Rialus thought. You and all your kind will die first. I’ll make sure of it.

  “Tell me about the best of them,” she prompted, nudging him. “Tell me things you’ve not told Devoth.”

  And, despite the thoughts that played inside his mind, he began, “You should see Calfa Ven, in the Senival Mountains. It’s a hunting lodge…”

  “Oh, hunting. That sounds good.”

  If we go there together, I’ll use you for target practice, he swore. Out loud he said, “Or the cliff palaces of Manil…”

  “Palaces on cliffs? Wonderful.”

  I’ll push you from them and watch you fall into the sea.

  Sabeer squirmed against him. “Tell me more.”

  And he did. He could not help himself. “Of course,” he said, “there’s the isle of Acacia itself…”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Aliver Akaran reached out and touched the statue’s chin. He traced the Talayan’s jawline. He brushed his fingertips over the full lips and caressed the clean-shaven crown of its head. All so very lifelike down to the finest details-the texture of the skin and eyelashes, the expression of focused engagement, the collarbones and lean runner’s chest, and the muscled compartments of its legs. It stood frozen in a posture of motion, iron spear high in the fingers of one hand. The other arm was wrapped above the bicep by an arm ring. A tuvey band, Aliver recalled.