Fierce Gods

by Col Buchanan

  His gun hung heavy in his hand as he stepped closer. Seeing it, a bodyguard stepped into his path with a scowl, but the motion drew Creed’s attention his way, and the general’s eyes flared open in surprise.

  ‘Bahn!’ the general roared over their heads at him. ‘You bloody bastard, is that really you?’

  The bodyguard let him through only when Bahn put the pistol away. With a clash of breastplates the Lord Protector embraced him, while faces turned to observe the scene. Bahn stiffened, surprised by Creed’s sudden show of affection. Though he was surprised even more by the words that Creed cast to the others, explaining how his favourite field aide had returned unannounced from the dead, today of all days. How it was a good sign.

  Inwardly Bahn recoiled, like a sea creature flinching from salt.

  ‘I prayed to the Way that you had made it,’ Creed puffed as he held him out at arm’s length for a full inspection, a towering silhouette blocking the sun with the Khosian guns blasting away behind him. ‘For once the damned cosmos must have been listening!’

  The Lord Protector had stopped dyeing his black hair, Bahn could see, so that it hung to his shoulders bearing streaks of white like the feathers of a pica bird. His voice too seemed different, somehow rougher than before. ‘I held out hope, when I heard that other prisoners had escaped after Chey-Wes. Where have you been all this time?’

  It felt like days since Bahn had last opened his mouth in speech. He coughed, clearing his throat of emotions.

  ‘Juno’s Ferry, General,’ he said as normally as he could manage, while his voice sounded like a brittle stranger’s in his ears. ‘Laid up on my back. Took a while to find my way home.’

  ‘Well you look terrible, Calvone, but you’re still a sight for sore eyes.’

  A heavy clap on his shoulder, just like old times. Creed’s eyes wrinkled, sparkling, as though Bahn’s unexpected reappearance was indeed a good omen of some kind, a sign of hope for them all.

  Beneath his cloak, Bahn could feel the weight of the double-barrelled pistol hanging in its holster, and the leather tube of charts pressing against his side.

  ‘Your family, they are safe?’ asked the general, looking back towards the smoking city district where Bahn had just come from, remembering where he lived.

  Bahn looked back too, and saw his family huddled under the kitchen table as the shells came down around them. He blinked quickly, wondering why he had walked out on them like that, barely saying a word.

  ‘General!’

  A shout drew Creed back to the forward crenellations, where officers conferred with him under the thunder of the artillery. Bahn approached the group of men, recognizing faces amongst them. A few nodded in welcome.

  He stared out upon the Mannian forces once again, still spreading like a flood across the muddy plain before the city. The first contingents of the Imperial Expeditionary Force had arrived the previous day from the nearby Chilos. Now the main force was here, filling the air with a low and menacing murmur as they occupied the plain. Yet the Mannians were wasting no time in beginning their attack on the city. Already their heavy guns were dug into fortified positions, close enough to lob shells over the wall, and as they fired at Bar-Khos the city’s own cannon were trying to dig them out again with spurts of earth and debris, trying to push them back beyond range.

  He was looking at a classic artillery duel, like many Bahn had witnessed on the southern Shield. Firing from the wall, the Khosian guns had the advantage of height, but the Mannian artillery had a longer range to compensate. Just as well the whole northern face of the wall was fronted with a slope of earth, and the gates protected by a curling shield of freshly erected earthen berms.

  ‘Is that the Little Eagle, do you wonder?’

  The soldier beside Creed was peering through a spyglass just as the general was now doing. Bahn saw that it was Halahan, the old Nathalese commander of the foreign brigade of fighters known as the Greyjackets. It was good to see him still alive and well.

  ‘Aye, it’s his standard all right,’ answered the Lord Protector. ‘And that’s Romano over there to the right. Joint command of the army, our agents are telling us.’

  ‘I hear he’s an impetuous little bastard, full of his own arrogance.’

  ‘He’ll balance out the Little Eagle’s usual caution. They’re both opposites. If they work together effectively, it might be difficult to predict their moves.’

  ‘You notice how their heavy guns still aren’t targeting the wall, just the city itself?’

  ‘Spreading fear,’ drawled Creed. ‘That will be the Little Eagle’s decision. He likes to soften things up before he attacks.’

  ‘He’s the Archgeneral of an empire for a reason,’ grumbled Halahan around the smoking pipe in his mouth. ‘You can be sure he’s brought along some tricks with him.’

  ‘Mind games, I’ll guess. He’ll mess with our heads, try to break our spirit. What’s he doing down there anyway?’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Near their forward mortars now. They’re loading them with something.’

  ‘Looks like he’s waving at us.’

  ‘Sure he is.’

  ‘Well he’s holding up his hand this way.’

  ‘No, he’s giving the order to fire.’

  Sure enough, a ripple of smoke erupted along the line of enemy mortar positions.

  Bahn squinted, watching the projectiles arching up into the air towards them, oblong shapes that looked white and shiny in appearance, moving slowly enough to track their flights.

  ‘He is, the bastard’s waving at us,’ said Halahan, watching the distant enemy Archgeneral through the glass.

  ‘Incoming!’ someone roared from nearby, for it was clear by now that the projectiles were all aimed at the gates themselves, containing Bahn and Creed and the rest of his field staff. The enemy had sighted the Lord Protector’s position.

  Bahn crouched with a hand on his head, wishing he’d had the good sense to bring his helm with him to the battlefront. He saw Creed’s bodyguards raising their shields to protect the general just as the projectiles started crashing down before the wall, landing wildly this way and that. Some of them skipped against the berms of earth protecting the gates. Others bounced off the slopes that fronted the wall on either side, before falling backwards to finally crack open upon the ground.

  They looked like pupae the size of barrels, giant cocoons that were breaking open before the eyes of the defenders even as pale forms rose into the weak daylight, shaking as they unfurled what seemed to be cloaks.

  The creatures sniffed the air and looked about them as though in shock at where they were. White heads turned slowly towards the crowds of defenders gaping down at them. More shells fell amongst their numbers, black projectiles this time, which released a white gas upon breaking open, quickly obscuring the creatures with mist.

  A blood-curdling scream of pain sounded out. One by one the pale forms leaped away from the smoke and surged up the slope of earth, screeching like madmen. Others started clawing up the very gates below Bahn and Creed’s position. Up the slope they were vaulting a dozen feet with every bound, using not cloaks but leathery wings stretched between arms and feet to sail through the air, moving so fast they were hard to follow. Rifles erupted in earnest anyway; shouts of panicked alarm. Above the gates they were scrambling up the stones of the wall now. Before anyone could stop it, one of the creatures leapt over the crenellations and onto the parapet amongst them, scattering men from the slash of its claws.

  Bahn kicked himself away from the thing as the creature unfurled itself amongst the scattered bodyguards, dripping wet and shivering in the daylight like some newborn calf, frightened out of his wits by the alien face that flapped open with a scream of blasting air. Its head was a featureless, deflating sack of skin that flopped about like a rag doll, and it tottered on hairy legs hinged in the way of a goat, on claws that clacked and scratched against the stone of the parapet. When it dropped down on all-fours the head inflated aga
in and a mouth lunged out from it, clamping onto the neck of a fallen man to suck feverishly at his blood. Behind it another creature was leaping onto the parapet, and another.

  ‘Slin!’ someone was yelling. ‘They’re firing slin!’

  Above Bahn, a Red Guard still on his feet swung at the creature with his sword, catching it across a shoulder and causing it to recoil in pain. Claws lashed out and clove the man’s face into strips, sending him sprawling even as Bahn regained his feet and drew his own blade with a desperate tug.

  Before Bahn’s eyes the creature bounded onto the wounded soldier, uttering strange and creaking clicks from the back of its throat while the bloody protrusion of its mouth latched onto the poor fellow’s neck.

  Bahn froze, horrified by the sight of the semi-inflated head beginning to enlarge with blood.

  He had heard of slin before, in the exotic Tales of the Fish performed on the street corners of the city, stories of fierce parasite-carnivores from the far-off wastelands of the Skif. They were meant to be hard to kill. He braced himself then lunged with his sword, but the creature was faster than he ever would be and swept the blade aside, then leapt at him with its kicking legs, bowling him to the ground in a bundle of panic as his sword went flying from his grasp. The creature planted a heavy hoof on his chest, blood dripping from its maw.

  Bahn gagged on the musky scent, gagged even more at the bizarre sight of the animal craning over him, gills flaring as it stared at him with a trio of black eyes that held a deep and vengeful intelligence.

  The gun, you fool! The bloody gun!

  Even as he tugged the pistol free a boot flashed past his eyes, deftly kicking the creature from his frame of vision. It was Creed, hacking with a hatchet, and beside him Halahan swinging with the butt of his rifle, followed by a wedge of bodyguards. Bahn staggered to his feet. Another creature was nearby. People reeled back from a sudden purple mist rising up around it, the slin flapping its winged arms to release its dark spores into the air.

  Hooks suddenly caught in his throat. Bahn’s eyes stung so that he had to rub them clear to see. Men were yelling all around him, stumbling sightlessly or launching themselves at the creatures in desperate recklessness.

  The pistol came up in his shaking hands and he tried to get an aim on the monster. Blood sheeted from a toppling man as the slin bounded onto another soldier too fast for Bahn to track, so that suddenly he found the gun pointed right at General Creed’s head instead.

  Bahn paused for an instant, looking down the double barrel at the general’s profile. His finger trembled on the trigger.

  Not yet, you fool! Remember the plan!

  But this was the only choice left to him. The only way to betray himself, and perhaps the other traitors in the city, before it was too late for them all.

  For a moment Bahn heard and saw nothing around him. Instead he thought of that morning in the house, of how he had stared at his son without hearing what he said, or even feeling anything. Bahn knew that he was lost.

  He squeezed the trigger and the gun went off with a bark of fire and smoke. For a long moment Bahn stood there with his eyes shut, knowing his life was over, wondering why Creed’s bodyguards were not rushing him. When he peered out again, a strange hush had settled over the scene.

  ‘Easy, lads,’ Creed told them all, and the general was staring back into the city like the rest of the defenders. Bahn’s shot had gone wild and unnoticed. Meanwhile the remaining slin were gone, vaulting across to the rooftops nearest the wall while riflemen fired after them and horns sounded out a general alarm.

  ‘Easy,’ General Creed said again. ‘The Little Eagle’s only playing with us. Only giving us his regards.’

  Bahn lowered the pistol with a strange feeling creeping through him. A feeling of fear at his own self.

  ‘General, a rider approaches!’

  Again the defenders crowded forwards to the crenellations. From where he stood Bahn could see a Mannian rider galloping towards the city gate with a white flag in his hand.

  The Empire was sending Bar-Khos an envoy.

  ‘Now what can they possibly have to talk about,’ muttered an old veteran by his side, loud enough to catch the general’s ear. But the Lord Protector looked on in silence, suspicion pinching his features, and simmering anger.

  Even as the Mannian envoy approached the gates, a collective howl rose up from the slin on the city rooftops behind them, a cry of fear, perhaps, as much as rage, though no less terrifying if it was.

  Bahn turned to look back, thinking of his family again, of all that was to be taken from him if he failed in his mission of betrayal, and his gaze followed the shapes of the slin bounding south over the flat garden rooftops, seeking escape or easier prey, no one could yet know.

  ‘What do you want?’ Creed hollered down to the Mannian envoy, sitting on a zel just beyond the berms protecting the gates. The distant figure wore the white robe of a Mannian priest, and his zel was entirely white too.

  ‘To speak some sense into you all,’ rose the man’s voice in reply.

  ‘Should we let him in, Lord Protector?’

  Creed was pursing his lips in contemplation, not liking this at all.

  ‘Mind games,’ Bahn heard the general remark to Halahan of the Greyjackets. ‘What did I tell you? Now it begins.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Coya

  ‘What in Creation is that thing?’ gasped Coya Zeziké, famed Delegate for the League of Free Ports, from the saddle of his startled zel.

  Right over their heads a pale long-limbed figure was leaping between the rooftops, partially gliding on what seemed to be leathery wings. Coya craned his head to follow it, but lost sight of the creature as it thrashed through the greens of a rooftop garden.

  Dark spores drifted down in its wake. Coya rubbed at eyes that were suddenly stinging with fire, and felt a cough tickle the back of his throat. Other people in the street were doing the same and shouting in alarm, their shouts joining others all the way to the northern wall that rose above the district behind them, where the heavy guns were momentarily silent.

  ‘Slin,’ declared his bodyguard ahead, calm as always. Riding in front, Marsh’s steady stare was reflected in the rear lenses of his wraparound goggles, which allowed him to see behind; two magnified eyes gazing from the back of his head.

  ‘You’re joking,’ Coya replied with a cough from behind his handkerchief. ‘Slin?’

  ‘You saw it yourself.’

  ‘I can’t say what I saw for certain.’

  His bodyguard inclined his head by way of a shrug.

  They cantered onwards, heading south along the city’s main thoroughfare, the Avenue of Lies. Over the heads of the panicked crowds Coya could see the procession of cavalry and rickshaws they were trying to catch up with not far ahead, the riders armed and alert to the screams on either side of the street.

  It felt like he and Marsh were riding in circles this morning. At the onset of the enemy shelling they had both set off for the northern wall, racing along side streets that were less thronged than the Avenue of Lies. But at the wall they found the shelling had suddenly stopped. Some kind of ceasefire was in effect while a Mannian envoy was allowed inside the city, an envoy who was being escorted south for a meeting in the Council Hall, even as fiercesome creatures vaulted the rooftops overhead, slaughtering Bar-Khosians indiscriminately.

  They were slin all right, Coya saw now. Through a plaza full of scattering people another creature was bounding wildly, and Coya saw it clearly, its goat legs and winged arms, its rag-doll head flapping as though empty, its limbs of pink-white skin longer and thinner than any human’s.

  Slin, loose in Bar-Khos!

  ‘What did I tell you,’ said Marsh, and the bodyguard drew one of his pistols and cocked the hammer.

  Coya had heard of them, as most people had. Creatures made famous by the Sans Elios Expedition into the far wastelands of the Skif, a merchant venture that had gone horribly wrong. The few survivors had recounted t
ales of the man-sized cocoons they had discovered and brought back with them in the hold of their skyship – creatures called slin by the natives. They told how the slin had awakened one night to gorge upon everyone they could reach, hiding in a veil of blindness cast about themselves while they preyed most of all on those who were sleeping – drawn, according to the natives, to the vibrations of their dreams.

  Though these slin were hardly waiting for nightfall, Coya saw now, nor were they chasing after anyone’s dreams.

  In full daylight the creature in the plaza bounded onto a stone well and then onto the back of a fleeing man. Its wings swept forward to envelop his head and shoulders and then it began feeding on him, its mouth locked on the top of his skull, its own partly inflated head rippling like a blouse filling with wind even as the man kept on running.

  Within seconds the slin leapt off him onto another poor soul, and its previous victim fell limp to the ground with the top of his skull missing, what remained of his grey matter running out of it like broth.

  ‘Sweet Mercy,’ hissed Coya, seeing the man’s eviscerated features fixed into a twisted scream, like one of those famous paintings by Juminji.

  He jerked at a sudden bang next to him. It was Marsh, taking a shot with his pistol, startling both their mounts. Marsh never missed with a pistol, and the creature screeched and hopped off into an alley so they lost sight of it.

  ‘Good shot.’

  Here in the northern limits of the city smoke was rising from buildings hit in the recent barrage. It was another cold day in Bar-Khos, not long past midwinter. At least it had stopped raining. Coya wore layers of wool and hemp, including a brightly dyed hat with long tassels covering his ears, a traditional Minosian garb and a present from his wife. That morning, Marsh had only rolled his eyes at the sight of it on his head, as though Coya intentionally donned the most conspicuous of clothing just to make his job more difficult. But Coya’s real reason had been to cover up the bandages wrapped around his skull. Even now he still carried a portion of a crossbow bolt buried in the back of his brain, a recent wound gained during their mission into the Windrush forest. One that should have killed him outright.