by Tim Akers
“Leave it to the priests,” Martin said. “There’s no reason to risk your neck out there.”
“Listen to you. Just this afternoon you were talking up the advantages of having peasants pound you in the head with hammers, so you could learn a little something about true combat—and now you want to hide behind the church?”
A terrible sound rolled out of the forest. It was a creaking scream, like trees torn asunder. Martin winced at the sound of it.
“I wouldn’t call it hiding,” he said. “Just clever positioning. Find a place of strength, and depend on it.”
“I’ll be my own strength, thank you,” Ian answered. He motioned and a few soldiers from his father’s company followed him, each in various states of preparedness. Their column clanked and clattered as they strapped on armor, and belted scabbards to their waists. Sir Doone was at their head, her face grim in the flickering torchlight.
A crowd was gathered at the perimeter of the camp. Most of the people were just as unprepared as the Blakley party, standing around in piecemeal armor, many of them drunk or half-asleep. A ring of priests stood by the warded fence that surrounded the tourney ground. Ian looked them over. By their dress and nervousness, he pegged them as common frairs, untrained in the mystic powers of the Celestial church.
In the woods beyond the barrier, the light from the perimeter torches faded and the trees dissolved into shadow. Here and there distant spots of light danced between the trunks: scouts, darting along hunting trails, looking for the source of the alarm. The horn on the city wall droned on, the sound echoing through the night. Above, Cinder shone his silver light, crowded on all sides by his host of stars.
Ian forced his way to the fence’s edge and leaned over.
“Did Marchand ride out?” he asked the closest priest. He was an older man, wrapped in the crimson robes of Lady Strife and wearing a costume of cheap brass. He blinked slowly in Ian’s direction before answering.
“On horses, yes,” he said. His voice was slushy. “I tried to stop them.”
“How many vow knights does Halverdt command?”
“The knights of the winter sun are not under the command of any mortal…” the frair began. Ian waved him off and hopped the narrow picket fence that the priests had set up to keep the nervous Suhdrin hearts safe from the frightening woods.
“Never mind,” he said, and he turned. “Sir Doone, you and the rest stay here. I’m sure the vow knights will be with us soon enough.”
“Not bloody likely,” Doone muttered, climbing ponderously over the fence and dropping into the mud. “If your father hears we let you walk the gheist hunt alone, he’ll have our bones for batons before morning. It’s not like we can leave you in the care of Marchand’s clan, can we?” A few more men followed her example.
“All the faithful are to remain behind…” the priest began. Ian ignored him.
“Three good knights have ridden out, and we can’t leave them to gather all the glory on their own. Besides, they’re southern boys. Probably have no idea what to do with a proper gheist.”
“I’d wager it’s a false alarm anyway,” Doone said, though she didn’t sound convinced. “Creepy sounds in the night, and the watchmen have their tits in a twist.”
“Hopefully,” Ian answered. “I don’t like to think what sort of gheist could break into the Allfire.” With a nod to Martin and a condescending glare for the priest, he led his little band into the woods. He was more worried than he let on. The gheists were the gods of the old religion, the spirits of stream and forest that the Tenerrans had worshipped for generations before the crusades. Now deprived of their sacrifices and abandoned to the quiet places of the forest, many of those spirits had gone mad. They manifested in strange and unexpected places, sometimes demanding tribute, other times taking their sacrifice in blood and fire.
One universal truth, though, was that the Celestial church held sway over them. The sanctified godsroads that crossed the forests and connected south to north were almost always free of their profane incursions. The blessed ranks of the vow knights and the priests of the inquisition could break the gheists with their gods-given powers. The divine calendar of the Celestial church could track their manifestations and predict their intrusions into the mundane world.
The Allfire was the height of Strife’s power, as Frostnight was the apex of Cinder’s worldly rule, each set at a solstice. During the equinox, when Cinder and Strife were most briefly in the sky, that was when the gheists were most likely to roam the land.
Ian stood at the forest’s verge and listened to the distant roaring of this forgotten god. It was almost unheard of to see any kind of manifestation this close to the Allfire. Whatever was out there, it was either extremely weak, oppressed by Strife’s abundant power, or it was so powerful that it didn’t fear the bright lady.
Either way, he meant to face it.
A lesser horn sounded in the forest, a hunter’s call. Ian lifted his spear in that direction.
“Marchand and his men,” he said. “They have sighted it. We’ll beat our way in their direction and hope they flush out the beast. How many of you carry bloodwrought weapons?”
“We’re no hunters, my lord, but we carry good steel,” Sir Doone answered.
“If this is a true gheist, good steel won’t be enough,” Ian said. “If this thing is larger than a dog, stay away. Form a funnel and try to beat it toward me, or at least away from the city. If it comes for you, to hells with your honor. Run.”
“Aye, my lord,” a nearby man said, and others mumbled with different degrees of enthusiasm. Sir Doone didn’t answer at all.
The woman would never run.
“Fine,” he said. “Then form on me. Stay tight and fast, and may the gods watch your blood.” With that Ian held the spear aloft and trotted into the forest, Doone close on his heels. His cadre followed in a clanking line. The shadows swallowed them quickly. The forest was loud with vibrant insect life and the eerie creaking of wind-whipped trees. Only the drone of the gheist horn stayed with them.
They tromped through fallen branches, squinting into the darkness, the ghost world of trees and flickering leaves slowly dissolving out of the shadows as their eyes adjusted to the gloom. The gheist horn’s drone warped the air around them, only slightly louder than the chattering bugs, the forest floor alive with scampering creatures that only stayed in sight long enough to startle the increasingly nervous men. Ian was afraid they had lost their way when Marchand’s horn sounded again, very close.
It was followed by the short scream of a horse, a clatter of armor, and then meat and metal tearing. The column stumbled to a halt.
“So,” Sir Doone whispered in Ian’s ear, “bigger than a dog.”
“Aye. Draw the men together and take them back to the camp.”
“Not going to happen.”
“You’re no good out here. None of you are. Spare my father the pain of your burial cost and return to the camp. Halverdt will have summoned the vow knights. You can give them some direction.”
“A very practical suggestion, my lord,” the knight said. She made no move.
“Well, if you’re hells bent on getting killed…” Ian said with a shrug. He looked down the column behind him. All were scared, but none were leaving. “When we see the beast, have the good sense to stay away from the killing bits. Spread out, draw it close, then let me do what needs to be done.”
“Any idea which sweet god we might be facing?”
“This close to Greenhall? The Darkhenge is beyond the horizon, and the river Grehl can only draw its spirit once a season.”
“Vow knights put her down just after the equinox,” Doone said. “Too regular, that one. Could be the hound?”
“It is not the hound,” Ian said with more confidence than he felt. His family’s totem spirit had a history of dangerous predation along the border of Halverdt’s lands. Ian could never bring himself to lift a spear against the great beast, though he had seen its furry back flickering betw
een trees ever since he was a child. “And this close to the Allfire, it’s probably not one of the regular manifestations.”
“Aye,” Doone agreed. She looked up and down the column. “Let’s get about it, my lord, before the men lose their cool.”
Before I lose my cool, you mean, Ian thought, but he gripped his spear tighter and crept forward.
They crouched at the edge of a broad clearing, grass and stone limned in Cinder’s light. At the center of the clearing were the remains of a horse and rider, armor a splintered shell of steel and leather. Of the rest of Marchand’s knights there was no sign. Cinder was in half aspect, his cloak drawn across his face. Yet there was still sufficient light to see. Ian crept to the clearing’s edge.
“Do you see anything?” he whispered.
“Dead knight,” Doone answered.
“Besides that. It’s close, you can taste it in the air.” Ian breathed deeply, and his nose filled with the murky stink of swamp and tombs. Not natural. Not godly. He prayed a quiet prayer to Strife for strength, and Cinder for clarity of mind. Then he stepped into the clearing.
“My lord,” Doone hissed. Ian waved her off.
“Your steel may do some good, but only if you take it by surprise. Wait here. I will draw the beast.”
“That is a terrible plan.”
“You shouldn’t speak to your lord’s son this way, Doone. I will speak to Father of your impertinence.” He gave her a smile that none of them could see, then walked slowly into the clearing.
There was no sound from the trees, of insect or god. Only a handful of breaths brought Ian to the dead knight in the center of the clearing. The man was beyond help. With the butt of his spear, Ian snapped the knight’s visor back and recognized him: Grandieu, a knight from the dusty hills around Heartsbridge. He had ridden with Ian’s father during the Reaver War. The knight had been opened from crotch to heart, his ribs cradling a ruin of pulped organs. A chill went through Ian’s chest, shivering the sweat on his chest. He tapped his spear against the ground and scanned the tree line.
“I think it’s gone,” he called back to Doone and her men. “The other riders must have led it away.” Or been chased to their death, somewhere between these trees, he thought.
The loose line of Blakley soldiers followed the knight into the clearing. The far tree line shattered and shook, and delivered a god into their midst.
It unspooled from the trees like a ribbon of darkness, lightning fast threads of liquid night that slumped out of the forest and pooled on the ground. It was huge, two horses wide and bristling with legs and arms that stuck out of the tangle of its body. The shape of a man fell from its front and crawled forward, his body bound in cords of shadow. The mass of the gheist was dragged along behind, rising and falling on half a dozen other legs, hands, and other unidentifiable body parts.
He saw the bundled form of a woman whose whole body was being used as a leg. The god looked like a tumor of bodies, tied together by satin ribbons, glowing with malevolent, purplish light.
“Much bigger than a dog,” Ian whispered to himself.
The demon slithered toward them, sometimes slow, then as quick as fog in the wind. A single torso sat atop the body of bodies, broad shoulders and thick arms grasping at the air. It strained against the dark cords that held it in place. White, tattered robes stuck out between the shadows, and a pilgrim’s cowl hid the man’s face.
The gheist opened its mouths and howled.
“Fuck this,” Ian said, and ran. He passed Sir Doone and her men, grabbing at them as he went by. They followed, those who had not already taken flight. The ponderous thumping of the gheist’s pursuit disappeared, replaced by slithering wind. Ian dared a glance behind him, just in time to see the beast arc its body like a twilight rainbow, bounding over him to land with a thunderous crash at the forest’s edge.
Ian skittered to a halt, staring at the roiling mass. Doone and the rest clustered around their lord’s son, gripping their weapons in quaking hands. The beast howled again.
“Or we could make our stand here,” Ian said.
The demon fell on them, arms and mouths and grasping ribbons of night.
9
AS THE BROKEN god howled across the field toward them, its myriad of teeth gnashing and shattered arms tearing the ground, Ian knew terror. His limbs froze, his blood stopped, his breath and lungs went solid in his throat. The spear at his hip trailed forgotten through the grass. He watched the gheist come, action forgotten, bravery fled.
He should have died.
The beast crashed forward, and Sir Doone responded. The knight struck with her sword, gripping it in both hands and screaming as she thrashed the blade against the gheist’s coiled limbs. Something cracked, the beast howled, and then slid to the side.
On the ground between them, lying at Ian’s feet, was an arm. It was thin and wasted, the product of a life of deprivation and hard work. The gnarled fist was lined in dried blood. The tattered remnants of a mendicant’s robe wrapped the flesh, the edges charred and grimy.
The gheist circled like a wolf, snapping its jaws, growling in many voices. Ian looked from the arm to the demonic figure, then raised his spear.
“The bodies break!” he shouted. “Destroy them, and only the gheist will remain!”
The soldiers raised their voices and their swords, then broke into a stumbling charge with Ian at the fore. The gheist clenched tighter into itself. Ian felt a thrill at cowing such a large abomination. His men fell on it, hacking and breaking and cleaving it into pieces.
The gheist struck back. It seemed to break apart, bodies flying from the core, the black cords that bound it together straining against skin and bone until the bare flesh of the possessed showed through the binding. They clawed at the Blakley soldiers with fingers broken open, their bones tearing at armor and flesh, shattered wrists punching past chain mail and drawing blood. Ian saw two men go down, then another, overwhelmed by enemies who would not falter when their bones were broken and their flesh cut.
Ian drew close to Sir Doone, weaving the tip of his spear through the air. The gheist avoided the bloodwrought tip of his weapon, slipping away whenever Ian tried to bring it to bear. He used this to clear some space around the knight, who was hard pressed by the gheist’s remaining limbs.
“Grim business,” Doone spat through clenched teeth.
“Aye,” Ian agreed. “We’ll need to break soon.”
“No breaking. There’s nowhere to break to.”
Ian looked around the field of battle. The knight had the truth of it. The gheist’s tendrils were circling their increasingly tight perimeter, diving in and snapping one or two of the Blakley men down before circling again. They were penned like cattle. The massive creature moved fluidly, a handful of possessed bodies pressing Ian’s position while the rest moved past to attack the flank. Ian watched with horror as it coiled around them, tighter and tighter.
“That one remains,” Ian said, pointing at the torso that seemed to stick out of the center of the slithering mass, broad shoulders and a head like a boulder, split by a wide and horrific smile. “The others move around it.”
“Head of the snake?” Doone asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not, but it doesn’t seem to care about the rest of its bits.”
Sir Doone didn’t answer, occupied as she was with hacking apart one of the gheist’s slender forms. It turned out to be a woman. Her head fell from the tendril-laced mass of the god, rolling between Ian’s feet. She wore the silver-and-gold-twined circlet of a celeste. Ian’s mind wrestled with that, wondering at a gheist made up of the bodies of dead priests and penitents.
Doone drove back the demon, aided by Ian’s spear and her own maddened fear. Two of the Blakley men remained, and those bleeding from many wounds. Only Ian was unharmed.
“It’s afraid of the spear,” he said. Then he made a hard decision. “Stay here. Whatever you do, don’t follow me.”
“My lord?”
“The hound! The hallo
w!” Ian yelled, the ancient battle cry of his tribe. Ever since he was a child, he had dreamed of giving voice to those words in some great battle. Half-expecting to die beneath the gheist’s assault, he’d be damned if he would pass up the chance to bellow it now.
He dived forward, straight at the big man at the swirling center of the gheist. His spear cut the air. The gheist fell back and then, when it realized it couldn’t get completely away from this unexpected charge, collapsed into his path to try to stop him. Suddenly Ian was flooded with black-coiled arms and legs, blunt teeth gnawing at the thick leather on his arms and breaking the skin of his chest. Something tore through his face, ragged bones plucking at the soft skin of his cheek and raking his jaw.
Blood poured into Ian’s eyes, and still he fought forward. He vaulted over one body, grimacing as shadowy tendrils wrapped around his ankle and sucked him down, struggling toward his goal in spite of the storm of pagan energy that lashed against him. The gheist tried to fall away, the tendrils of its presence straining as the core rolled and the rest of the bodies threw themselves at their attacker.
He fought through them.
With a final push he jumped clear of the attack and plunged his spear into the heart of the core figure. The bloodwrought blade of the spear sizzled as it cut through the shadow coils, into flesh and grated bone. Ian buried the weapon in the chest of the mad god.
Then there was silence. Everything was still.
The corrupted god gave voice to a dozen mouths. Howling.
Then its presence wilted like a vine in drought, the dark tendrils of power slithering back to the core, lashing limply against the ground as it abandoned the myriad bodies, each falling loose-limbed to the ground as the god left them. The ribbons of the gheist’s true body coiled in a tangle around Ian, battering his skin and burning his spirit, flailing in one final attempt to be free of the spear’s grip. They pulled away from him, wrapping around the wound, and then slumped to the ground, a loose knot of broken power.
