Fierce Gods

by Col Buchanan

  Enough!

  In the flickering light of the hall Coya rapped the steel tip of his cane hard against the stone flagging, stunning the entire assembly into silence.

  ‘My dear Pericules,’ Coya said as smoothly as he was able. ‘You are hardly alone here. The rest of the Free Ports support you wholeheartedly in the defence of your island. Or have you forgotten the thousands of Volunteers now shoring up your city’s defences? Or the squadrons of skyships patrolling your skies? And all of those medicos and their supplies? And the League navy even now engaged with imperial forces off your shores, trying to keep your shipping lanes open? Need I go on?’

  ‘Yet still the enemy shells rain down on our northern districts,’ retorted Pericules, supposed Minister of Defence. ‘Still our defences could be overrun at any moment. What good will your words be to us then, Coya Zeziké? Can we even take the chance of annihilation if another option is available?’

  He sounded desperate, almost babbling. General Creed was glaring at the man with a mixture of disgust and suspicion. He tore his gaze away to look around him, meeting Coya’s eyes at last across the width of the pool. Something of meaning passed between them.

  They’ve bought him off somehow. The Empire has bought the new Minister of Defence to their side!

  In his bearskin coat the Lord Protector took a step closer to Pericules. His voice was dangerously quiet for all that his eyes flashed with fury.

  ‘You really think it worth discussing, our surrender to the enemy?’

  Pericules licked his lips while he glanced to his fellow Michinè.

  ‘I would hardly have expected such talk from our notable Minister of Defence, of all people.’

  It was as though in that moment the whole gathering grew suspicious too. Coya felt the change in mood. Chonas and the other Michinè exchanged subtle glances of query, confusion, muted alarm. The people of the Associations muttered amongst themselves around the walls.

  ‘Bahn,’ announced the Lord Protector’s voice. ‘Open a window there, if you please.’

  The chamber was deathly silent as a Red Guard lieutenant stepped out from the general’s entourage. The officer crossed the room to the nearest high window on the southern side, where he paused and looked about him a little uncertainly, then fetched a chair and brought it back to stand upon. He strained to tug open the window’s latch.

  A stiff gust blew in against all their faces, bearing with it a few shots of hail that scattered across the floor like chipped diamonds.

  It was a coincidence perhaps, or merely the fact they all held their breaths in the same instant of silence, that they heard just then the crash of a wave from far below the building, perched as it was on the heights of the city right on the edge of a sea cliff.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ erupted Pericules as the general came for him across the floor. The Minister backed away, horrified, and when he ran out of floor he splashed into the knee-deep pool, falling in his robes before struggling to his feet again.

  ‘Help me!’ yelled the man as Creed jumped down into the pool and waded after him. But no one moved, only watched on in grim uncertainty.

  ‘Wait, no – gghrrrrk!’

  Creed had seized him by the throat. Grimacing and bloodstained, he dragged the fellow from the water and marched him across the room straight for the open window. No one tried to stop him. Instead they looked on like a jury of the damned as the general roughly grabbed the smaller man, and with a great heave lifted him up over his head, defying his fifty-odd years.

  ‘No!’ screeched Pericules.

  In a handful of steps, Creed ran at the open window and launched the Minister of Defence clear through it.

  ‘You have our answer, priest,’ he told the Mannian envoy, even as the screams fell away behind him.

  For his own part the bald-headed envoy drew himself up to his full, considerable height, and stepped towards them. He was sweating profusely now, alarmingly so, like a waterbag stuck with holes. From the side, Coya noticed how unusually plump the fellow’s belly was beneath his white robe, as though he carried a cannonball inside him, or was rapidly filling up with gas. How had he not noticed that detail before?

  The priest’s face seemed to have become a struggle for composure.

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ sounded his strained voice as he came nearer, and the man started scratching at the inner wrist of his left arm as though bitten by a flea.

  Even as Coya watched on, Marsh stepped close to his side, alert and sensing trouble. The priest was scratching so hard now that bloody welts were forming on his skin.

  What’s he doing there? Is he mad?

  Marsh uttered a low growl, hand reaching for one of the pistols beneath his longcoat.

  ‘Look after that wife of yours,’ he remarked as he brushed past Coya in a hurry.

  ‘What’s that?’ uttered Coya like a fool, even as his bodyguard and lifelong companion charged for the envoy in quick animal bounds across the flagging.

  Marsh took a desperate running leap, firing the pistol in his hand at the same time. The priest screamed, tilting his head backwards to release a blast of blue flame from his open throat, another erupting from his belly.

  Together he and Marsh tumbled into the pool with flames engulfing them, a roaring fireball spilling across the water even as the priest violently exploded, showering everyone in roiling fire.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Nico

  ‘Is it them?’

  ‘Hard to say from here.’

  ‘It has to be. You said we’d catch up with them today.’

  Nico’s father pulled a face within his hood. Cole was crouched down on the side of the road next to him, peering through the freezing blizzard at the wagons circled up ahead, his scarred features whitened with patches of ice.

  ‘I doubt they’re the only slavers on the road today,’ said his father in misty tatters of breath.

  ‘But it has to be them!’

  ‘You’re the one with the miracle vision. You tell me what you see.’

  But even Nico’s superior eyes were having trouble making much out through the storm. Up ahead the wagons had been circled not far from the ruts of the road, and they were obscured by snowy gusts that ripped at the canvas awnings strung out between them, tearing away the white billows of smoke rising from a fire of wet logs. He glimpsed a figure moving within the circle, too indistinct to make out.

  Another gust howled against them, so sharp it cut into Nico’s cheekbones. The storm had raged all night and through the better part of the day, until now twilight was falling again and still there was no sign of respite. They had coped as long as they kept on running in the weak sun. But now, hunkered down in stillness, their extremities were starting to grow numb.

  ‘We’ll be good for nothing if we stay out in this much longer. We have to do something!’

  ‘Easy,’ said his father. ‘We can’t rush this.’

  But that was exactly what they needed to do. Time was most definitely not on their side here.

  ‘We need to get closer,’ Nico decided, and he rose to his feet with the pack on his back.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Cole, but Nico ignored him as he bounded off into the woods

  ‘Nico!’ hissed his father after him.

  *

  The moons were rising up there above the storm. Nico couldn’t see them, only the glow of their light in thinner breaks of the clouds. It struck him that by the Mercian lunar calendar it was nearly the turning of the old year into the new. Right now he should be snuggled up at home before a roaring fire, anticipating the feast to come with friends and family. Not out here in the raw elements trying to save the life of his mother.

  We’re coming! he called out in his mind as though she might hear him.

  Beneath Nico’s hood the curls of his hair swept wildly like the limbs of the trees. He had rounded the slaver camp so he could approach from behind, hopping so fast over the fresh surface of snow that even his father’s long-legged strid
e had only barely kept with him. Now, approaching a low rise to the rear of their camp, he felt his father’s sudden grip on his arm yanking him around.

  ‘Hold up, I said!’ Cole panted hotly into his face. ‘We’re not going another step until I know your head’s on straight.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If we get up there, and we spot your mother amongst the group – I need to know you’re not going to do something stupid.’

  ‘What am I, a child?’

  ‘I mean it, Nico,’ his father rasped, squeezing his arm hard. ‘We have to wait for the right moment, you understand me? No matter what is happening down there, no matter what they might be doing to her, we have to be smart about this if we want to save her, you hear me, boy?’

  ‘Yes, I hear you!’

  ‘Then follow me and do what I do, nothing more.’

  Into the worst of the gale Nico tramped behind his father up the slope of snow, his pulse throbbing in his veins. He could see snow lice leaping up wherever Cole’s boots broke the surface, dancing with the snowflakes as they tumbled away together in mating pairs. When he glanced down he saw them jumping up from his footfalls too, little white bugs like seeds of rice.

  A dream came to mind. An image from the night before provoked by the crisp whiteness of the surface. Nico had stood upon a snowy plain covered in the bodies of slaughtered lambs, thousands of bloody lambs lying dead and torn open, white and red, white and red, as far as he could see.

  We’re coming! he called out again to his mother as they surged up the hill.

  *

  They had dogs down there, whoever they were, for a few barks sounded from the circled wagons.

  ‘Damn,’ said his father with a scowl, his narrowed eyes snaring flakes of snow.

  They lay on the crest of a hill with the storm raging over them like a rushing flood, looking down on the road and the camp and the many shapes huddled around its smoky fire waiting out the blizzard. Someone was playing a reed pipe against the roars of the wind.

  ‘Can you see her?’ asked his father, swiping a wayward snow lice from his cheek.

  ‘It’s still hard to make anyone out. They have captives, though. They’re chained to the wheels facing the fire. Eighteen, nineteen of them.’

  ‘How many guards do you count?’

  ‘About a dozen.’

  Cole rubbed the stubble of his chin. ‘That’s more than I was hoping for.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Wait until they’re all asleep. See how their sentries are deployed. Make our move then.’

  ‘Wait around in this weather? Can’t we take them by surprise?’

  ‘Against a dozen men – have you any idea how long we’d last?’

  Laughter rang up from the camp just then. The pipe player struck up another tune, something faster this time. There was movement down there beneath the awnings, a few figures staggering about drunkenly. It looked as though they were dancing.

  Nico’s voice cut through the turbulent air like a knife: ‘I think I see her.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The woman they’re dancing with. She has red hair.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  He was squinting hard to make out the figures nearest the fire, staggering together to the rough music of the pipe. Even through the storm he could see the flash of the woman’s crimson hair, pressed between two jeering men.

  ‘Bastards are playing with her,’ Nico growled.

  ‘Easy,’ said his father.

  They were handling her roughly, squeezing and slapping her.

  ‘We need to do something. We can’t just lie here and watch.’

  ‘What did I just say?’

  ‘I know, but—’

  The woman shrieked and tried to get clear of the men. They were both shoving her back and forth between them and grabbing at her hair, but a third man was rising now with a coiled whip in his hand, hollering to take their hands off her, that she was no good to them broken.

  ‘Trust your mother to cause a damned argument.’

  ‘You’re all right with this?’ Nico spat. ‘Looking on and doing nothing?’

  ‘No. That’s why we’re going back down into the trees and waiting for nightfall.’

  ‘You don’t give a damn what happens to her, do you? You never did.’

  The sudden pain in his arm was so fierce it took him a moment to realize it was his father’s fingers gripping it like a vice.

  ‘You’re talking about the mother of my son,’ Cole said with his voice shaking, and it was like the night in which he had deserted them all over again, the rage in his eyes, the unexpected violence.

  ‘Let go of my arm.’

  ‘Are you going to do as I tell you?’

  ‘Let go of my arm!’

  Down below, one of the men knocked his mother to the ground with a savage slap of his hand. A whip cracked out like a gunshot.

  Nico broke his father’s grip. For an instant they both glared at each other, locked in conflict, and then Nico was surging up and over the crest of the hill before Cole could gain another hold on him.

  ‘Hello, the camp!’ Nico shouted down at them, and the men stopped what they were doing to look up at his staggering approach through the drifts of snow. Other guards rose into view. Dogs darted out from between the wheels to growl at him in warning.

  Sweat was beading Nico’s forehead by the time he approached the circle of wagons. He was on the verge of trembling. Still his anger spurred him onwards.

  ‘I’m lost in this storm,’ he declared, trying his best imitation of a Q’osian accent. ‘Have you shelter and some food?’

  Cloaked and armoured men stood in his way, cautiously watching his approach and the hill behind him. Nico hoped they could not see his fear through the flurries of snow.

  ‘Let him through, let him through,’ came a voice from within, and the men pulled back the barking dogs by their collars and opened a path for him.

  He fought against an urge to look back up the slope. Stepped between two wagons into the sheltered circle within, finding his fears replaced by something else instead: a roaring sense of his own audacity.

  Under the flapping awnings more guards stood around the fire, coolly watching him. They all bore the pale skin of northerners, save for a darker fellow in a fur coat, plump and bearded, coiling a whip in his hands while he appraised Nico with poorly concealed mirth.

  Nico looked towards his mother, lying sprawled on the ground now, holding her bruised and tear-streaked face.

  Yet it wasn’t her.

  The woman was a stranger to him. Her hair wasn’t even red, more a light bronze that was simply catching the reflections of the firelight.

  With his heart sinking he glanced around at the rest of the captives tied to the wheels, not seeing his mother amongst them.

  ‘Listen,’ he said to the men, holding up his palms. ‘If it’s a bother, I’ll be on my way again. I didn’t mean to trouble you.’

  ‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ cooed the swarthy fellow, hooking the coiled whip to his belt as he pranced towards him. ‘Shelter and food you shall have, my lad.’ He moved with surprising lightness for his size, a large man busily working with small feet. He stopped to throw back Nico’s hood for a better look at him, and gasped with delight at what he saw, pursing his hands together against the thatch of his beard.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he sighed, and gave the merest of nods.

  Nico was turning when something cracked him smartly on the head. He went down hard, rolling onto his side, feeling the awful cold reality of it all suddenly rushing through him like nausea as his bravery fled him.

  He blinked up at the fat bearded face leering down with wicked eyes and gold-capped teeth. Turned his head to see the captive women staring across at him through the legs of the dogs, while darkness tried to take away the remaining light.

  ‘You’ll make a fine addition to our collection, my boy,’ crooned a voice just above his head, and for a horrible ins
tant Nico couldn’t tell if it was one of the camp dogs slobbering over his bleeding scalp, or the fat slaver instead. ‘A fine addition indeed!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Coya

  ‘Try the garlic sashwoon if you haven’t yet,’ suggested General Creed, Lord Protector of Khos. ‘Melts in the mouth like butter.’

  ‘Sashwoon, General, in the midst of a siege?’ replied the Dreamer Shard in surprise. ‘I’d almost forgotten how much you Khosians love having meat with every meal. Even if it is more likely to be rat.’

  ‘Please,’ said Creed. ‘Call me Marsalas. And maybe we should keep a lid on the rat talk, at least while people are trying to eat?’

  ‘Why? I bet every plate of meat around us is rat.’

  ‘Because Shawnee here isn’t just a fine waitress but the daughter of the proprietor, Olaf. And Olaf’s a mean old bastard when it comes to his cooking.’

  ‘Well I see she hasn’t denied it yet.’

  Shawnee stood there waiting to take their orders on the flat rooftop of the restaurant. ‘We have some dog on the menu too, if rat isn’t to your liking.’

  The Dreamer Shard sighed. ‘I’ll have some spiced root stew, thank you.’

  ‘Coya?’

  From across a gulf of space a heavy voice reached out to him, drawing him from his thoughts. Coya pinched his lips together, turning away from the view of the harbour to face his dinner companions for this evening.

  ‘Yes?’ croaked his voice.

  ‘What will you have, man?’

  General Creed was staring at him across the linen dining cloth, which flapped at the corners in the breeze like everything else on this windy rooftop. Coya blinked, taking a moment to figure out what he was being asked here, and why they all seemed to be staring at him, and then he saw the wooden menu being displayed in Shawnee’s hands, where tonight’s meagre specials were chalked on a square of slate.

  ‘Oh, the usual, Shawnee,’ Coya said with a flicker of a glance towards the waitress, his appetite still gone. ‘Peling soup, but no rice balls this time.’