Fierce Gods

by Col Buchanan

  Bahn felt the concussions of the battles deep in his bones, though otherwise he was numbed to all that he saw. He gazed down towards the district of All Fools, sprawling between the two harbours across the throat of the Lansway, and then his stare roamed out along the land bridge stretching across the sea to the far southern continent.

  Through the misty air the multiple walls of the Shield were barely visible today, dark forms rising across the waist of the Lansway to stand in the way of the Imperial Fourth Army, or what was left of it now, bogged down in Camp Liberty after their General Mokabi had been slain, his countless mercenaries flown or killed along with him. Beyond the foremost surviving wall, Bahn could just make out the muddy waters where the sea had flooded in around Mokabi’s forces, killing a hundred thousand or more, and holding off any further attacks from the south.

  After ten long years it was a strange sight to see the walls of the Shield standing in silence like that, now that the heavy guns had mostly been moved to the northern wall and the newer threat facing them there instead – the arrival, in the midst of winter, of advance forces from the Imperial Expeditionary Force, who had invaded the island from the sea.

  He thought of his home to the north of the city, and his wife Marlee who had shared it with him for all this time. The mother of his children, a woman he still adored. Marlee would be in the local temple at this time of day, praying for the safety of everyone but most of all for her loved ones – her own side of the family, and those of Bahn’s: Reese and Nico and even that crazy fool of his brother, Cole, still somewhere out there beyond the wall.

  His only surviving brother, returned after all these years of absence. Only to run out again as soon as he’d gotten here.

  What else should he expect from a brother who had never been there for Bahn when he’d needed him the most – those times in which the siege and the war had come close to burying him in their traumas? Cole had run off years ago to escape it all, his own mind near-lost in the tunnels beneath the Shield, fighting in the darkness as a Special.

  Had his brother visited their mother upon his unexpected and brief return to the city? Bahn supposed there hadn’t been time, and that he would have said so if he had. Still, he pictured his mother opening her door to fling her arms around Cole, hailing the hero son now returned to save them all with his charts to the Isles of Sky. So clearly proud of her eldest surviving son, while she barely tolerated Bahn’s visits at all, the son who remained a lingering disappointment for refusing the path she had wanted for him, a path of monkhood.

  It was just as well their father was long gone from this world. He would have beaten seven shades of blue into Cole if he had been alive upon his return, and Bahn would have enjoyed seeing it.

  Except that wasn’t right.

  Their father had never raised a hand to them in his life, remaining a mild-mannered man to his dying day.

  Why was Bahn now thinking otherwise?

  I’ve lost my mind, said a voice in his head as though not his own. I’m starting to believe I’m someone else.

  He had been this way ever since his captivity by the Mannians after the battle of Chey-Wes. Ever since the Mannian priests had drugged and tortured him, whispering thoughts into his breaking mind and planting suggestions he could no longer recall, save for one: report to a particular address in Bar-Khos, once he had escaped.

  And he had escaped, Bahn and several other Khosian officers. Though only now did the truth strike home. The Mannians had allowed them to escape. They had wanted them to return to the city.

  Bahn rocked on the balls of his feet, looking straight ahead again, swaying forwards over feet planted right at the crumbling edge of the cliff.

  Do it!

  He tried to think of his wife again, his daughter, his son, needing to clutch on to them for all that they meant to him, which of course was everything. But they were like drowning figures swept away in the welter of his thoughts, lost beyond his grasping.

  Do it now while you have the strength to!

  Bahn leaned forwards into the wind, blinking fast. A shape was hovering in the air directly before him. Bahn stared at it through his tears. It was a sea piper, its broad golden wings extended to catch the updraught rising from the cliff-face, close enough that he could see its bronze breast feathers ruffling in the breeze.

  The bird was watching him, drawn in some way to his strange manner.

  Swaying forwards Bahn leaned out further towards the animal, lifting his arms from his sides like wings. The sea bird drifted closer, piping out its sweet voice as though to stay him.

  For a moment he was reminded of a different time and place, of bright song birds darting about on the breeze of a summer’s day. A holiday with his family on his aunt’s rice farm in the northern hills. His brother had been there, and Reese and their quick-tongued son Nico, along with Bahn’s own wife and son. Vividly he recalled the burning days when multicoloured fish had flitted between the stalks of rice as though in play; indeed how the fish had toyed with them, darting in and out between their feet while the family ran splashing through the fields in increasing circles, laughing the joy of it into the summer sky.

  It was them that he did this for, Bahn reminded himself now, steeling himself to jump.

  ‘Are you all right, son?’

  The voice behind him sounded old and frightened.

  Bahn leaned back, clearing his throat.

  Next to him an old woman appeared, nearly as close to the edge as he was. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed white hair beneath a tartan shawl. She carried a scrap of bread with her, and he watched her toss a morsel out to the sea piper, who snapped it up in its beak.

  ‘Cold day,’ she remarked, and was kind enough not to look around at his blustered condition.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, suddenly shivering hard.

  ‘I’m sure there are better days for it, son. Days other than this one.’

  ‘Better days?’

  ‘Aye. Better days.’

  She tossed another lump of bread, standing there in the manner of someone not intending to leave any time soon.

  Wiping his face clear, Bahn took a reluctant half-step back from the brink, feeling his strength draining away. He knew he wouldn’t do it now, couldn’t do it now. The moment was gone.

  Instead he turned away with a grimace, heading back to the path he was so desperate to be free of.

  *

  Along the cobbled road Bahn marched onwards through the city heights, set upon this course now, his soldier’s cloak tugging like a billowing side-sail, his boots inordinately heavy. There were few people about in the streets of this wealthy district, though Bahn kept his head down anyway, lost in himself, his thoughts a ragged sea with waves of bleak confusion washing away what was left of him, crashing around the stony hardness of his two eyes.

  Now that he was facing the prospects of life again he had little interest in his surroundings. Yet he would have to, for he could barely recall the address of the villa he had previously visited up here, and so he forced himself to look about at the spectacle of mansions all around him, seeking anything that looked familiar.

  Bahn had been born and raised in the city of Bar-Khos. Yet he had never walked through this district of Cherry Heights before this week. Here above the shanties of the Shoals, on this blustery hill overlooking the city and the sea, the wealthy Michinè patricians had built their mansions after tearing down the Pale Palace of the High King, survivors of a revolution that had swept their fellow aristocracy from the rest of the Mercian Isles.

  Now though, it looked as though half of them were gone anyway, for behind the high walls many of the mansions appeared to be deserted, their windows boarded up and front gates wrapped in chains. Bahn caught sight of a house that he seemed to recognize, taller than all the rest with turrets like decorative watchtowers, and then on the opposite side of the road he spotted a mansion of pink stone.

  This was it.

  Bahn glanced back at last, remembering to
check that he hadn’t been followed, then stepped across the street towards the house. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks.

  A fellow Red Guard was coming out through the iron gates he was approaching. Bahn squinted, seeing that it was the old staff sergeant Chilanos, one of the men he had been imprisoned with after the battle of Chey-Wes. He hadn’t seen the man since their escape to Juno’s Ferry together, where dysentery had claimed Bahn’s body for the better part of a month.

  ‘You made it then,’ declared the old staff sergeant upon sighting him, and although Chilanos’s tone was a pleased one, his eyes were as raw and exhausted as his own.

  Perhaps he was suffering from nightmares too. The man had been tortured by the Mannian priests during their captivity, same as the rest of them. In the freezing cold they had been held in a pit with other survivors of the battle, while the priests had taken them one by one to be broken with pain and mind-altering drugs, feeding them bitter suggestions that even now Bahn could hear whispering through his blood . . .

  ‘The others,’ said Bahn. ‘I hear they all made it back too.’

  ‘Aye. Save for Bull. No one knows what happened to him. Maybe he didn’t make it.’

  Or maybe he deserted, considered Bahn.

  A clatter of wheels sounded behind them and they turned as a rickshaw hurried past, both remaining silent until it was gone.

  ‘It’s good to see you well, Staff Sergeant.’

  ‘And you, Lieutenant.’

  They did not shake hands in farewell. Neither did they ask the other what they were doing there. They didn’t need to. Old Chilanos pulled the cloak tighter about himself and stepped out into the wind. In moments, Bahn was alone once again.

  Before him the gate lay open, leading through a well-kept garden to the house. He approached it slowly, pausing on the threshold of the front door as it opened in front of him into darkness.

  The sky was close and bright over his head, a thing hanging in suspension readying itself to fall.

  Bahn stepped inside.

  *

  ‘Sit down,’ ordered the withered crone over her shoulder, croaking out the words as though she could barely muster the breath for them.

  The room was hot and stuffy from the wood-burning stove squatting in its corner. Shutters sealed the windows from outside so the only light came from a thick candle perched upon the table top. Bahn loosened the scarf about his neck and sat down noisily in his armour. She was the same ancient woman he had spoken with the last time he had been here, drawn by a compulsion of his mind, though he could barely remember it now, just another fragment of waking dream.

  Kira, he thought she was called.

  With skeletal hands she tossed a bundle of sticks into the open stove, as though the room wasn’t yet hot enough. Her bones creaked when she slowly straightened, then creaked some more as she shuffled around to face him in her loose white robe, tilting her shaven head forward, her withered scowl pierced in many places.

  A priest of Mann.

  Near the door a figure sat at another smaller table, his back turned, writing something into a notebook. He did not look their way. In the far corner a second man sat in the shadows, two eyes gleaming, watching on as the old witch Kira blew a fine white dust across Bahn’s startled features.

  Time slowed instantly. The thud of his heart was like a distant, monotonous thump against a door. When Bahn sneezed he lost all sense of himself for a moment, and when he came back his head was reeling, lost and confused. It felt as though his whole body was melting away. From the corner of the room something ticked away loudly, tick tock, tick tock. The sound of it was lulling him into a kind of waking dream.

  ‘You know why you are here again, soldier?’ she suddenly asked him, and she tilted up his chin so he had to look right into her eyes, black and bottomless. ‘Shall I tell you?’

  Bahn swallowed hard.

  ‘It is time to begin the city’s downfall, that is why.’

  ‘But . . . my home. My family.’

  ‘If you succeed, their lives will be spared when Bar-Khos falls. Your family will be free to leave. They may go anywhere they wish. Do you believe me, Bahn Calvone?’

  Her eyes bore into his mind. Tick tock, tick tock.

  ‘I— Yes, I believe you.’

  She studied him long and hard, seeking the truth in him. But Bahn had nothing to hide. To lie was to know the truth in the first place, and he barely knew where his words came from any more, what was real and what was not.

  ‘You are still a field aide to Creed, the Lord Protector?’

  ‘I – think so.’

  ‘Good. Then all you need do is follow your orders at the appointed time, and all shall be well.’

  Tears were gushing from his eyes again. Bahn blinked at the old witch with his mouth falling open, gasping.

  He thought of his brother again. He thought of the charts to the Isles that Cole had given into his care, now sitting at home within a drawer, neglected. Bahn wanted to tell her about them so that their weight could be taken from him, but a small core of self-preservation still remained inside him, just enough to prevail.

  ‘And what – what are my orders?’

  ‘Oh my child, you have the sweetest task of all.’

  The old woman leaned towards him, and Bahn tried not to flinch as her rancid hot breath washed over him. Her screwed-up features hovered ever closer, two hate-filled pits for eyes amongst the wrinkles of her spite. Bahn knew then that the old woman was mad.

  ‘You are the one who gets to be remembered most of all.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Nico

  It was raining hard in the heart of Khos, darkening an already gloomy wintry morning in the city of Tume.

  The rain pounded against tarpaulins stretched as roofing across the steamy yard, loud and close and dramatic. At the edge of the yard Nico Calvone stood where it was least crowded, wrapped in a coat still wet from the night before and the day before that, just like the rest of his clothing.

  Nico couldn’t recall when last he had been so thoroughly soaked for so long. And so cold! Even standing next to a brazier of burning coals did little to thaw him out, for all that steam rose from his clothing to join the swirling miasma hanging above the crowd.

  Midwinter on the island of Khos was no time to be travelling about like this. Nico should be indoors before a roaring fire, yet here he was in occupied Tume, surrounded by the enemy; cold, wet and hungry after their desperate ride here to the high Reach.

  All morning they’d been searching the Mannian slave markets of the city for his mother. He had seen cage after cage of Khosian captives, men and women alike waiting miserably to be sold, but she hadn’t been amongst them.

  Nico ground his teeth together and tried to stay calm, tried not to think the very worst.

  He looked for his father amongst the tight press of bodies, the officers and priests and camp followers of the Imperial Expeditionary Force, reeking of damp clothes and stale sweat, gathered here in the slave yard to buy some fellow humans. But he couldn’t see him anywhere. Unconsciously, Nico rested a hand on the pommel of his sword for reassurance. One wrong word here, one mistaken step, and these people would be on him like wild dogs. At best, he’d be thrown into one of the cages along with the other Khosian civilians unfortunate enough to have been captured.

  He wouldn’t let that happen, he’d already sworn to himself. He would go down fighting first.

  Flames crackled in the brazier. They kept snagging Nico’s gaze, a reminder of his previous captivity in the hands of the Empire and the terrible things they had done to him.

  Easy. Remember why you’re here.

  They were on the outskirts of the island city here. Around them lay the eternally warm waters of Simmer Lake, bubbling with the rotten-egg stench of sulphur. He’d never been to this remarkable Khosian city before. And now it lay half ruined in the hands of the enemy. Overhead, through the scudding rain clouds, Nico glimpsed one of the moons shining pale and blue in the ev
en paler sky. It looked as though it was falling as the clouds raced past on either side.

  The image brought to mind the old farlander, drawn unbidden from memory. Ash’s fascination with the moons and the stars and everything else up there in the sky, a fascination that Nico shared.

  More memories of his previous life, slotting into place at random. Since his resurrection they’d been doing that, Nico’s memories coming back to him, moments scattered by time but returning one after the other, settling into the blank spaces of his mind.

  What do you see? he’d once asked the old farlander around a camp fire during their short time together, seeing Ash studying the night sky.

  Wonder, the drunken farlander had replied. The beauty of all creation.

  Nico remembered how he had scoffed like a careless child from the other side of the hot coals at Ash’s sentimentality, so unexpected from the old assassin, drawing a scornful glance his way.

  Cast a single glance around you, Ash had asserted. Go on. Look from any shore, from any piece of ground you stand upon, and you will strike upon beauty, some wonder of the Great Dreamer. It is always worth remembering how much beauty there is in this world.

  What about the rest of it though? Why is so much of life a nightmare too?

  Why? The old man had blinked as though the answer was obvious. Because all life is free will. So shit happens.

  But still, so much suffering!

  Most of it we make that way.

  But why?

  Why? Because mostly we are insane.

  Hardly. Not all!

  No. But enough of us. Those who live in fear and greed and envy. Those who are not wholly human, but are fractured inside, separated from themselves and everything around them. Who seek power and dominion over others.

  Such people damage the world in their madness. They damage other people. And that damage lives on, creating ever more insanity. Sometimes even creating entire societies in its image.

  Unless, somehow, it is stopped.