Sword & Mythos

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “What would You have of me?”

  Wind whipped across the frozen peat bog, carrying the scream with it. I needed no more answer, even if it meant abandoning the fire. Even as I ran toward King Charles, instinct bade me to check my belt, my sword. Both were secure and King Charles dipped his head, allowing me to lodge a foot in the crotch of his curled, yellowed tusks.

  I would never have called him tame — his first inclinations were largely for himself and for that I would never fault him. It was the way of survival in a strange place, but we had made an accord in my early days here. It could only be the work of angels. Why else would such a beast stay with me? It was true I could lead him to fresh water as I found it for myself, but he had no need of meat. Grass was not plentiful in this place, but we had found enough of it to keep him living yet. The grace of angels, even if they did not speak outright to me.

  “Allons!”

  It was a practiced dance, this. I held to his tusks as he lifted me skyward. This motion allowed me to run up his tusk and leap into the dip between head and shoulder. I had not broken him the way I might a horse, for he seemed acquainted with the guidance of thighs while riding. Whose mount I had questioned in the early days, but no longer, for the answer seemed only to be “my mount,” so readily did he respond. He came around now, thundering toward that awful scream all on his own. Often such a sound meant meat for me.

  I fisted my hands into the coarse hair which covered him as we fled toward the conflict. Across the frozen peat, I could see dark figures, two human and three not. They could be anything, though it seemed the more I saw of this world, the more pieces of my own had been carried and dropped here. I had seen horses once and birds wheeling in familiar patterns against the odd sky. I could not say what creatures these were, though one seemed catlike, sleek and stalking close to the ground, its golden hide splotched with black. The other two were small, stout, and sported singular horns atop their scruffy heads. Like King Charles, they were covered in hair, this gray and black in patches.

  The humans were an odd pair, an older man and a younger girl, and I might have presumed them father and daughter but for the differences in skin color. They shared only a common look of terror as the horned beasts charged. The squat creatures slashed with their horns as they advanced, forcing man and girl toward the broken edge of the peat bog. There, the black ground fell in a ragged cliff edge, into the frozen sludge of another stagnant river. The cat creature seemed content to stalk a serpentine path that prevented any escape other than that which led toward the sludge.

  The young girl screamed anew at the sight King Charles charging. I could not blame her — what a terrible creature this mammoth was, with his yellowed tusks and furious bulk. She turned her back on us and fled toward the broken edge of ground. She would not know which was worse, the mammoth or the cliff, would want only to get away, and I could not say she was wrong. It placed her outside the reach of the horned creatures at least. I screamed for her to stay clear as the horned animals skewered the man through and wrestled him to the ground.

  The scent of blood came to me, sharp in the cold air. It called to mind countless battlefields. In my mind’s eye, I saw horses and pennants sweeping as we surged on an enemy army. This was rage igniting open fields, hard breath taken only to be expunged. I heard horns and angels crying. Whether truth or fancy, I did not care. Both filled me with exaltation. This was what I knew, the battle and the blood. King Charles lifted his head, allowing me the tusk once more. I held to him as he lowered his head and leapt off once near the ground, my sword in hand. I had taken this sword from a body half buried in frozen sludge and it had served me well ever since. The blade was Catherine and Michael and Mary by turns.

  In this moment, the blade was Michael, furious and filled with the Lord’s fire. It seemed I could feel it burn in my hands — so well-acquainted with fire was I — and surely it did light a deadly path through the night’s gloom. It was the cat that saw me first. With the man down and the girl fled, it advanced on me. Its sabered claws churned up gouts of black peat as it charged, no matter the mammoth at my back.

  Before finding myself in this foreign land, I had never killed a creature other than man, for hunting was left to men even in the armies. But was this God’s will I survive this trial, I had now killed such and would again. There was a basal satisfaction in halting the cat’s progress toward me with the sharp thrust of my sure blade into its belly. The cat’s blood was a hot flood over my numb hands, a relief as I plunged the sword deeper. I pulled downward, using the cat’s upward motion against it. Viscera and splintered rib spilled to the frozen peat in a steaming pile.

  King Charles bellowed behind me and charged the horned beasts. He thrust his tusks into the animal that did not heed the warning, tossing it over his shoulders. The beast squealed a protest, but did not move once it hit the ground. Silent and broken it splayed there, as King Charles and I turned upon the last creature. Blood dripped down its horn and tattered flesh hung from its maw. I did not think it had eaten of the man, had only rooted around in that body and thrown pieces where it would. This world was often wasteful, awful, contrary — ever like my own. The animal took a step backward from us, its beaded eyes moving from King Charles, to me, and back again.

  It was the little girl that drew my own attention; she was running toward us now, screaming. Her small face was a portrait of agony, her arms flailing in the air.

  “You cannot! You cannot!”

  Still, we could. As the beast turned toward the girl’s renewed shriek, King Charles thrust his tusks toward it. The beast lunged away to avoid the tusks as I came up on its other side. I skewered its heaving side with my blade, slashing down this time. Blood rained everywhere, steam spiraling upward from the body as the creature screamed in chorus with the girl. This song was not of the angels and though I waited, it did not come.

  But for my own breath I heard nothing for the longest time. I sank to my knees beside the fallen beast and reveled in the warmth of the blood that soaked into me. This was not fire. This was a safe heat and I did not care of the mess it made of me. All battles were thus; if one emerged clean, one had not been entirely victorious.

  I waited. I waited for the voices to come as they had come the first time, on a summer’s day in my father’s garden. I waited for the voice and the light, and I was wholly saddened, for all was quiet and dark. Then the child’s voice.

  “You cannot.”

  The young girl had crawled her way to me and crouched on the other side of the beast, which lay dead between us. Its hide would make a warm drape and with some difficulty, I hauled my sword free. I exchanged it for the dagger at my waist and began to make careful cuts in the hide. There could be two more hides, I thought as I worked, for these bodies lay scattered about the bog. Hide and meat and both meant a longer survival. A longer trial.

  “You cannot.”

  Did this girl possess any other words, for these two were all she spoke. I knew it to be English, understood through the silent grace of the angels, though they still held their silence. The girl was small, older than I had expected. Hunger had worn its way into her dusky cheeks, had chewed her nails ragged and left her clothing hanging from her body. Her black coils of hair were held back from her face with ribbon-like bands and the fur that edged her coat was the color of faded roses.

  “What manner of beasts possesses such fur?” I kept to my native French, for I could not speak English, and she understood me, angels be blessed. I reached a bloody hand for the coat, but the girl shied out of my range. I had seen no such creatures here and wondered if she also had a homeland that was not this place. Had she come here as I had? Had she been brought to trial?

  “Nothing here is pink,” she snarled as though she were part-beast. “I was … supposed to kill them, me, and now you have, and I … I won’t ...” The girl choked on her tears and sat hard on the ground, sobbing into the fur. “Stop cutting them!”

  I couldn’t stop, intent on getting
the hide off before my hands chilled, before some other manner of creature came upon this bloodshed and decided to make a meal of us. “It is not a magical process,” I said. “It involves some butchery.”

  The girl exhaled a shuddering breath. She seemed small crouched in the blood — a tiny, furious angel fallen into this place. When she crept toward the man’s still body, she seemed even smaller. She tried not to step in blood, but this was impossible, so sodden was the ground. By the time she reached her target, her already-wet shoes were burnished in fresh crimson. The girl only stared at him.

  I paused in my work, the blood already beginning to cool on my hands. “Shall we pray for him?”

  “I didn’t know him. I was supposed to — “ The girl burst into tears again.

  I waited and waited for the angels to come, that I would know what to do with this girl. I was but a girl myself, no matter all I had done. I closed my eyes and prayed for the voice, for the light, for the comforting heat of my king’s hands enclosing my own. These things did not come. I could not will them into existence and my breath was but a ragged sigh.

  I spoke the words of prayer, the words I clung yet to even in this place, and still there was no holy light. There was only the bleak sky above us and the child’s anguished sobs. King Charles paced toward the beast he had thrown and gave it a firm nudge, as if to ensure its passage from this realm.

  “They would have killed you,” I said as I resumed my cutting.

  “I was supposed to kill them to get out of here.” The girl kneeled now and began a hasty search through what remained of the man’s pockets. His coat was also like none I had seen, sewn leather, but I left it for the girl should she wish to claim it. She did, pulling it on even though it hung to her knees.

  It was the girl’s words I wanted more of. To hear her voice after hearing none but my own for so long, yes, but also to understand what she meant. “A passage out of here?” Could it be?

  The girl did not answer me. I worked in silence, freeing the hide and setting to work on the meat. My arms screamed exhaustion, but I was not finished, so did not stop. My body knew no rest would come until I was done. If I could only butcher one of the bodies, so be it. I could carry the meager meat in my pack once cooked.

  Alas, once cooked, the meat tasted terrible. It was tough no matter how long or short it cooked, but made for easy packing once I sliced it off the bones. I turned the legs over and over within the stack of burning tentacles, flinching as a curl of flame emerged from one burst sucker. I remembered yet the lick of fire.

  The girl ate as though she had not eaten in years, or had only eaten with censure. Her brown eyes stayed on me as if her food were under constant threat. I minded the meat that had yet to cook, keeping watch for King Charles. We had all bathed in the river sludge, but the mammoth had not returned. Full night claimed this place and I could not discern his hulking form against the horizon. Not even the mountains made themselves known, though the storm in the heavens raged silently on, curling between those suspended spheres.

  I cannot say when sleep claimed me, only that it did. It was the post-battle exhaustion that came over me, pulling me hard into dark and dreamless places that smelled yet of blood. When I woke, King Charles had returned and the girl was gone. Despair was sharp on my tongue; I had not thought she would leave, not when I had food and water, but I saw that she had taken equal portions of both with her.

  Beyond the ring of impressions King Charles had left in the peat, there was a bloody shoe print. I packed the camp, rolling what remained of the meat into my pack before I smothered the tentacles. If the girl knew a way out of this place, it was my trial to discover it. Too long had I been apart from my own world, from the sweet hush of angels.

  King Charles grunted as I hefted my pack and set out to follow the bloodied prints upon the ground. They headed away from the peat bog and toward the mountains. The mammoth followed me, even if he doubted my wisdom in this. At some point, my steps began to stray from the path of prints, so tired was I still, and King Charles nudged me back. I could not remember a full night’s sleep in this place, no matter how much exhaustion I brought to my bed. This, too, was a trial, a thing to be endured until complete.

  I stopped walking only when a rough stone wall rose in the distance. Behind it, the mountains loomed. There was no sense in hiding — King Charles was not a thing to be hidden — and if this wall marked the boundary of a settlement, surely we had been spotted. We walked the length of the wall until we found a place where the stones had crumbled, where countless feet had left their impressions upon the dusty ground. And there, one set that was bloodied, still leaking blood from the day’s battle. Nothing came easily clean in this place.

  This path gave way to a small encampment of tents, with the remains of fires and cooking pots scattered about. But I saw no people, and King Charles and I passed through. The camp led us toward another wall, this of sharpened tentacles lashed together. They stood in the place of wood, ringing a deep, well-trodden ground upon which people battled.

  They were human and not, most caged, chained, pinned to posts of wood or metal. Captors strode among them with long lashes that should have been leather, but seemed more alive, wriggling of their own accord to strike the ill-behaved. There were creatures here I did not understand, even if they walked upright on legs as we did. Their skins were colored like a church’s stained glass, so many colors did I see. Others were more bestial, squat and lumbering, with countless eyes and tongues. Among these creatures, I saw the girl with her rose fur coat, bound now in metal, crouched in the cold mud.

  The creature in the center field was scaled and squat, backed by boundless green-black wings and dripping as though it had emerged from dank water. Its mouth was a mass of writhing flesh, tentacles that slithered down its own arms and torso, hands and feet both clawed in ways that made weaponry needless. I felt sickened as I looked upon it, so terrible a thing was it.

  A human male faced it, small but fleet and able to elude most of the grasping tentacles. His skin bore the marks from other strikes, but the human was victorious, his blade striking a devastating blow to the creature’s ballooned head. Head met sword and deflated with the sound of bat wings in flight. The writhing body hit the ground and a breath later, the human man vanished. The humans in the crowd cheered; those inhuman did not. And then eyes befell me and King Charles.

  I had been looked upon, for as long as I could remember, by eyes curious and condemning. This was no different but for the one man who broke from the crowd. The man who cried my name: Jeanne, Jeanne, by the angels, the Maid. And he fell to the ground, this man I did not know, and gripped my bloody hose and sobbed.

  He knew me by my pennant and my mount, by the angels’ light that clung in the corners of me, he said later in his tent. I looked at the ragged drape that cloaked me and pondered on King Charles. I did not refuse the warm, fragrant drink this man pressed into my hands. He stroked a hand down my cheek then studied his palm as if it were strewn with starlight. Perhaps it was; he closed it into a fist.

  “You have come to deliver us,” he said.

  I said I had not and he laughed. There could be no other reason that I should be here, he said, and I thought on this as I drank cup after cup of liquid warmth. When he left to bring another to see me, I waited. I waited and still there was no angel to tell me of this path. In the distance, I could hear the slither of drenched flesh over dry ground and I shuddered. This place was not mine and I longed to leave it.

  The man who entered the tent was not the man who had left — not a human man at all, though yellow silk draped him as if to fashion a robe. He had no eye that I might meet, for he possessed no face, but I felt certain he saw me all the same. His look was not curious or condemning, but somehow amused, for his black flesh seemed to writhe with laughter and darker sounds. He moved the way an ocean does, not on legs, but rolling end over end, and his breath was the undertow to drag a person down. When he settled into the chair near mine, I felt t
he warm stream of tea down my leg as my hands went slack, but could not look away from him so that I might right my cup.

  This man was not a messenger. This man, this creature, controlled this place, its people, its heart. I had known men like him, kings and those who presumed to be such. This creature beheld me the way I did him: equals? I remembered the old man, the tremor in his voice as he saw me.

  “Galilei says you have come to deliver these people.”

  The voice startled me, so akin to the angels was it. Or was it only that I had been so long bereft of the angels that I heard them even in this monstrous form? I heard myself make a choked sob — the sound of that little girl, bent to the bloody ground. The sound I had made in a tower far from this place as questions from the Cardinal befell me. I spoke words half-familiar.

  “If I have not, may God put me there; if I have, may God so guide me.”

  His laughter was the parting of flesh, the spill of blood onto dry ground. The cup dropped from my fingers, lodged in the muddy ground beneath me, but I could not move. That black body slithered closer — there was nowhere he did not move, so like the heavens above and those strange spheres, pinned yet moving. I felt the chair come out from under me, but he held me so I did not fall, did not kneel.

  “If you save these people, you condemn yourself.”

  Had that not always been the way? As winter was cold and bleak, one gave themselves so that others might survive. I knew none of these people he spoke of, though felt each as though I did; there were children and surely mothers, fathers, people who, like me, did not belong in this strange dreamland, but called other countries home.

  “Nothing will remain of you. None will remember.”