She places her hand on his cheek and says, “No. No, don’t talk. Don’t. You don’t need to. It’ll make it worse.”
His eyes are red and watery. He stares at her, afraid, his handsome, boyish face marred by the spray of blood from his mouth. She smooths down his hair and whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. We owed you so much more than you were given. I’m so sorry.”
He seems to lie back a little, to stop struggling to force his lungs clear. He steels himself and shuts his eyes as if preparing for some horrible blow. But then he relaxes, his brow growing smooth, his eyes calm, and Sergeant Major Pandey slowly gains the look of someone who’s just fallen into slightly uncomfortable sleep.
The cannons rage behind her. Just ahead, the ships threaten to land. She can see their decks brimming with Voortyashtani sentinels, ancient warriors eager to leap into the fray.
But she has no attention for any of it. She feels the scream begin to build in her.
Again, a child of her nation she was responsible for. Again, someone who once trusted her with all of their heart. Again, blood on her blade and a body cooling underneath foreign skies.
Again, again, again.
The world is afire. The night is filled with the screams of soldiers and civilians, scrambling and scrabbling in the face of incomprehensible war.
She can see Sigrud watching her, bent double, uncertain what to do.
She wishes to scream to him. Perhaps not just to him, but to the fortress, to the ships, to the terrified people at the base of these cliffs, to the night skies and the pale face of the moon turned a muddy brown behind a veil of smoke.
But then there’s a voice—a voice in her head that is not her own.
The voice whispers to her, very definitely asking her a question, soft and quiet yet filling the whole of her mind:
Are you a part of me? Am I a part of you?
Something nuzzles at her thoughts, something curious and yet welcoming. It is perhaps the strangest sensation she’s ever felt, but she can tell there is some mind or entity reaching out to her—and she has the unshakable feeling that this entity is speaking from her right pocket.
She reaches in and pulls out the sword of Voortya.
***
The atmosphere in the westernmost watchtower grows grim and desperate as the technicians rattle off positions and coordinates to the coastal cannons, though the ships are now so close and so thick that it would be difficult to miss them. Captain Sakthi watches, gripping his spyglass so hard he’s vaguely concerned it may shatter, as the bay of Voortyashtan lights up again and again as shells strike their targets. The bay now appears to be littered with giant prayer lanterns, the seas dotted with flaming, burning wrecks. Ordinarily this would be enough to stave off any coastal attack, but the other Voortyashtani ships simply shove them aside as they plow toward the coast, limitless and indomitable.
The city of Voortyashtan itself is in a complete uproar as citizens stampede up the cliff roads, led by SDC workers. Major Hukkeri’s battered, exhausted battalion is taking up positions on the southern cliffs, desperately trying to prepare for the impending invasion, but the flood of citizens out of the city has turned her work into utter chaos.
In his head, Sakthi rifles through all the scenarios that were taught to him during training, all the strategies and cunning feints and clever tactics he might employ in the battlefield to turn situations to his favor.
He considers his options, and realizes with a sinking heart that he has none.
Then one of the technicians says, “Who the hells is that on the western cliffs?”
Captain Sakthi wheels around, frowning. He glasses the cliffs and sees two figures just to the northwest of them, on the very point of the rock. It’s hard to make anything out, but one of them has a hand that shines very curiously, as if made of metal.
His mouth opens, surprised. “General Mulaghesh?”
***
Mulaghesh listens to the sword.
It begins to show her things: sensations, concepts, avenues of reality and emotion that were never accessible to her before, aspects of existence hidden to the mortal mind.
The world flickers around her: for one instant she is back in the City of Blades; in another she is on the cold, damp mountains along the Solda; and in yet another she stands at the bottom of a mass grave, watching as a never-ending cascade of bones pours over the lip, indescribable casualties from an endless war.
Not one war, she realizes—every war, all wars ever fought by humanity. Never one side prevailing over the other, never separate and disparate groups, but a blazing, monstrous act of self-mutilation, as if humanity itself was cutting open its own belly to send its intestines spilling into its lap.
The sword speaks to her: Are you these things? Is this you?
It shows her an image then: a solitary silhouette of a person standing on a hilltop, looking out upon a burning countryside.
She knows, in some wordless, instantaneous fashion, that this figure has not struck every blow in the war it watches, yet it is still responsible for all of them: this person, this entity, has created every battle of this war, caused every scream and every drop of blood. And in its hand the figure holds…
A sword. Not a sword, the sword: bound up in that blade is the soul of every sword and every weapon that has ever been, every bullet and every bolt and every arrow and every knife. When the first human raised a stone and used it to strike down its kin this sword was there, waiting to be born: not a weapon, but the spirit of all weaponry, harm and cruelty both endless and everlasting.
Do I, the sword asks her, belong to you?
The cannons flare around her. Pandey is now pale and cold, just like Signe Harkvaldsson, and long before them Sankhar and Bansa.
Woresk, Moatar, Utusk, Tambovohar, Sarashtov, Shoveyn, Dzermir, and Kauzir.
Weeping, she bends her mind to the sword, and says:
Yes. Yes, you do.
The blade of the sword flickers to life, greedily accepting her, embracing her. And the world begins to change.
***
Sigrud frowns as Mulaghesh stares down at the black handle of the sword, seemingly in a trance. He begins to say, “What are you doing?” when suddenly something is…different.
Is he going mad, or does the hilt now have a blade? Faint and luminescent, like the flame of a candle just where it touches the wick?
Then there is a blast as if a shell has struck the coast. Sigrud is thrown back, his broken arm howling in pain. A wave of cold air rushes over him. Once it passes he sits up, blinking, and looks to find Mulaghesh, assuming that she is dead.
But she is not dead. He watches as she tears off her false hand and walks to the very edge of the cliff, stalking forward with a curious, menacing swagger, the movements of someone who intends to do violence and do it soon. The strange blade flickers in her hand, its muddy yellow light spilling over the stones.
Yet as she moves he sees something…behind her. Or perhaps over her, as if she is a drawing in a book and someone has laid down a piece of wax paper with something sketched on it, so both images are separate yet visible at the same time….
A figure, huge and tall, arrayed in darkly glittering plate mail.
Mulaghesh stops at the cliffs just over the thousands upon thousands of ships, looks out upon the fleet, raises the sword, and begins to speak to them.
***
She can feel them now, all of them: her children, her followers, those whom she wrought and yet wrought her in turn. She can feel them on the countless ships: bright, hard diamonds of battle. They are not as they were once, she can tell: they are shadows of themselves, the barest shade of souls. They lost themselves just as the city fell apart in the great cataclysm that brought this nation to its knees. But they are still hers. They are doing what she promised them they would do. And even now they seek her.
She calls to them: “Children of warfare!”
The cannons roar and rage. The ships burn and the people scream. They
do not hear her over these joyous sounds.
Again: “Children of warfare!”
The slap of the oars. The howl of the wind. The shriek of the shells. Still they do not hear her.
She takes in a huge breath, the cold, smoky air reaching every inch of her lungs, and howls to them, “Children of warfare! Children of Voortya!”
The call echoes out, out, out, over the seas, through the flames, through the smoke, over the dark waves, until it finally, finally reaches the warriors aboard one single ship.
They stop rowing. They turn to look at the cliffs.
A single thought goes trickling through the vast army below her:
Mother?
They turn their thoughts to her, inspecting her, seeking her out. They parse through her mind, her soul, and slowly, slowly, slowly believe her to be who they wish her to be. And as more and more of them believe, she begins to grow.
The ground falls away below her. She feels the plate mail on her shoulders, the metal boots upon her feet. She feels her neck creak with the weight of the helm upon her brow, and she peers at the world from behind a cold, steel face.
Her face.
***
SDC Security Chief Lem watches, haggard and pale, as the endless line of citizens and SDC workers toil up the mountain paths. The bay beyond is already bright with the queer, spectral light of the warships, and he knows they’ll be here soon. Though could there even be a safe place now, with so many ships filled with those monsters?
Then someone screams: “Look! Look!”
They look westward, just west of Fort Thinadeshi, and stare as a huge, dark figure swells up against the night sky. The figure is lit from below by the lights of the ships and the flaming wrecks on the waters, but even with these wavering lights one can still see that blank, metal face, dark-eyed and pitiless, and the enormous, terrifying sword in its hand—its one and only hand.
“No,” whispers Lem. “No, it can’t be. It simply can’t be! She’s dead! Everyone knows she’s dead!”
There is a new sound beyond the cannons and the flames and the screaming civilians: a chanting from the bay as the countless warriors aboard the ships sing one word over and over again, or rather one name: a primitive, syncopated chant like the beat of a war drum:
“Voortya! Voortya! Voortya! Voortya!”
***
The soldiers in the westernmost watchtower stare in horror as the giant figure swells until it almost completely blocks out their view of the western seas. It seems to have come from nowhere, sprouting out of the rock itself. Its back is covered in broad plate mail, each segment carved with horrific illustrations of violence and depravity. The burning bay beyond makes the sight even more hellish, a Saypuri nightmare come to life.
The goddess of war, the Divinity of death, reborn upon these savage cliffs in Saypur’s darkest hour.
“By the seas,” whispers Sakthi. “By the seas…It simply can’t be!”
One of the technicians turns to Captain Sakthi. “Should we…ah, fire, sir?”
“We can’t fire on her!” says another. “She’s much too close! We don’t have the right angle!”
They all turn to look at Sakthi.
He sighs. “Oh, dear.”
***
Mulaghesh faces the fleet of warships and the warriors chanting her name—or what the sword says is her name. It’s hard to tell….The sword says many things to her, whispering to her, urging her to be glad, to be filled with bright, hot, happy fury at this moment, for she is reunited with her army, with those who built her empire.
Yet all Mulaghesh can think of is the body at her feet, and all those she has left in her trail.
She takes a breath and howls out to the sea, “Children of war! Children of Voortya!”
The warriors scream and howl in celebration.
She screams, “Look at me! Look at me and know me!”
The bay falls silent as the warriors await her words.
She cries out, “I am the Empress of Graves! I am the one-handed Maiden of Steel! I am the Queen of Grief, I am She Who Clove the Earth in Twain!”
The world keeps distorting itself around her. She feels huge, gigantic, a titan standing underneath the sky—yet she knows she feels tears on her cheeks, hot and wet and real.
“I am war!” she screams to them. “I am plague and I am pestilence! In my wake is an ocean of blood! I am death, I am death! Listen to me, look at me and know me, for I am death, I am naught but death!”
***
The Voortyashtani citizens watch in horror as the booming words echo across the waters to them. The figure on the clifftops extends its arms to the sky, as if begging lightning to strike it.
The voice cries: “I have killed countless soldiers! I have left them rotting in the fields, and their mothers never learned where they came to lie! I struck them down even as they begged me to stay my hand! I have broken open the gates of great cities and listened to the citizens weep! I have done these atrocities. I have! Do you hear me?”
The crowd of Voortyashtanis is silent, and yet for some reason they begin to weep as they listen to the figure scream to the seas and the skies. Lem himself finds it strange—these words do not have the ring of a declaration of war, but rather they sound like a confession, full of agony and sorrow.
The voice howls, “I have killed women! I have killed children! Do you hear me? Do you hear me? I have done these things! I have burned down their homes, I have killed them in their beds! I have walked away as they screamed for their loved ones! I have abandoned children to freeze in the dark winter nights! I have done these horrors and countless others!”
The figure holds its sword high in the air and screams, “I am warfare and I am death! I am sorrow never-ending! Look upon me! Look upon me, I beg of you, look upon me!”
***
Mulaghesh raises the sword. She feels as if it is pulling her, like she is merely its vessel, its instrument. She knows it wants her to turn and bring its edge down upon the fortress, to strike it so hard the very cliffs are sundered beneath it, and then once this is done she shall lead these warriors forward, through Voortyashtan, down the Solda, across the face of the Continent, and from there across the world.
Just as she said she would. Just as she promised them. Just as she swore, just as they are owed.
Yet some part of her resists, thinking only, I am so very tired of this.
And as this thought goes skittering through her mind she suddenly understands that she does not hold the sword: rather, it holds her, imprisoning her like it is a massive, dark cavern, and she is just a tiny creature lost in its darkness, trapped inside of it.
She feels the destruction gathering in the sword.
No, she says to it.
It wants to fall. It wants to cleave flesh from bone. It wants to split the earth in two.
No, she says to it.
She feels all the thoughts and desires of all of her warriors pulling at it, wishing it into movement, forcing her to be the force they expect her to be.
Her arm trembles as she resists. No! No, I won’t let you!
Their thoughts rise up to her in a muttering wave: You must! You must, you must! We did as you asked. We became the warriors you wished us to be! Now give us what we are owed! Give us what you promised!
Her elbow strains against the sword. It’s so heavy it’s as if she holds the moon itself in her hand, her will against the will of the countless dead.
Then she thinks, The warriors I wished them to be…
She remembers Villaicha Thinadeshi in the City of Blades, telling her: … you of all people should know that war is an art requiring decorum and formality. It feverishly adheres to rules and traditions—and that can be used against it.
Yes, she thinks.
She twists her wrist, points the sword down, and diverts all its power, driving it into the cliff at her feet. The stone parts as if it were made of cotton.
The ground trembles underneath her, threatening to collapse. Yet
it holds.
The warriors aboard the ships stare at her, confused. Why does she not do as she promised? Why does she not permit them to wage the last war?
Mulaghesh looks out at the bay, sets her jaw, and rips the sword out of the cliff.
Somehow the sword understands what she wishes to do, and cries to her, No, no! You cannot, you must not!
She forces her will upon it, using every measure of her conviction to change it, to unwrap and unfold and redefine and rewrite it and all it stands for—an invisible, agonizing battle that exhausts her, nearly kills her.
The sword cries out: I was meant for death! I was meant for battle! I was meant for war!
Mulaghesh’s answer has the ring of cold iron: Times have changed.
She finishes her work. Then she turns to the warriors below.
She begins to speak, her voice quaking with fury: “Listen to me, my children! Listen to me! You have slain many and taken many lands! You have won countless battles and waged countless wars!” Her voice rises until it echoes like thunder. “Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?”
The bay is silent save for the flicker of flames and the slap of the waters. The sentinels stand upon their ships, staring at her in confusion.
Then one sentinel calls to her, “Mother, Mother! What is this you speak of? What is this you describe? That is not what a soldier is! A soldier does not give, they take! A soldier does not serve, but forces others to serve! A soldier does not cede power, but wields it, wrests it from the hands of any who dares lay claim to it! A soldier never gives, a soldier never serves! A soldier fights only to kill, to claim, to take, to conquer! That is what we are!”
The dead murmur their agreement, their low mutterings floating over the waters.
Mulaghesh bows her head. Her disgust and outrage and contempt burn bright within her, and the sword reacts, flaring brighter than the midday sun, a white eruption of purest light, as if she holds in her hand the morning star.
City of Blades Page 49
