Beneath Ceaseless Skies #98

by E. Catherine Tobler

  He thought of rearing up, lunging, ripping Nessus’s throat out with his teeth. How would that curling steel beard taste, the flesh beneath it? He could guess: like human flesh, old and tough, basted in bourbon and smoked. But he couldn’t—the hobbles bound him to the earth.

  “What does it mean that you return now, not to him but to me? Where have you been? All these years we thought you dead, taken by wolves. Was it outlaws instead?”

  Bienor gave a hoarse cough that might have been trying for laughter. “If I’d raised him, he’d be dead. You look surprised—did your visions not predict this?”

  Nessus snorted. “That’s what brought you this far, isn’t it, Bienor? Visions. You always were a sucker for a whiff of the sublime. But I never claimed to know the future. I dare say by now the flower has granted me more visions than it ever showed that human priest—or else he might have seen the bullet coming. But the way of seeing it imparts isn’t sorcery—not in the sense we use the word. I see the past, the present. The flower grants... insight. New perspective.”

  “You told me it had shown you how to kill Eurytus.”

  “And so it did—by showing me how he and the humans were different. Look at them—they’re frightened now, numbed by revelation, but they’ll resurge.” The crowd huddled quiet below, the elder and Thin Crow somewhere among them, as far from the centaurs and the train as they could get. “Centaurs have always considered them weak, but they’re as resilient as we—think what we’ve done to them. They’ve always been more capable of change. This has never occurred to Eurytus. That I, his only rival, might be capable of change has never crossed his mind.”

  Five Legs had learned of the flower from the hunters of the River Crow. They talked like it was human, a member of their tribe. The flower could speak and play jokes, take offense when slighted. At first, he’d thought they must be speaking of the elder. She wouldn’t let him taste it—no more than she would let him see her face. But he’d heard the stories, seen the dance. Alone in the wild, cold and hungry, when a bird on a branch didn’t fly at your approach but sat staring—that was the flower. When you knew you’d pierced a deer’s heart yet it ran on for miles, spilling a river of blood, then disappeared—you hadn’t shot a deer at all. They called it Brother. They called it Death. They said you recovered from its poison, but the flower never truly left you.

  Nessus had eaten of that flower, and it had told him to make of its people an army of slaves.

  “It was humans,” Five Legs blurted, blood flying from his lips like spittle. “Not wolves, not mustangs. For seven years, I’ve lived with humans. I learned their tongue. I ate their food. I loved them. I would have spent my life with them. Then centaurs came and destroyed them.”

  There was a silence, wind hissing indiscriminately over smooth contours shaped by time and jagged edges cut by hands.

  “With... humans,” said Nessus at last. “You ran away from him... to live with savages.” His mouth opened slowly into a grin, cruel teeth blunted by erosion. “Amycus was the last centaur to fall in love with humankind. You knew him, didn’t you, Patroclos? Did you aspire to his fate? From Legate of the West to gelded cowboy in a single stride? There, Bienor, you see? Patroclos can be no spy—he hates his sire too much for that.”

  Amycus, the old soldier at the Labyrinth Ranch. All those years ago, the colt Patroclos had never understood his grief. He understood it now.

  Bienor was looking at him, wrinkles sagging with his jaw. “His... sire? Eurytus.”

  His voice was bitter as wormwood. “Is it so hard to believe? He must have sired a thousand sons. I killed one myself aboard the Echidna—a black who wore the theta.”

  At that Nessus burst into laughter. “I like the centaur you’ve become, Patroclos—whether he or humans made you thus. I find myself further in Bienor’s debt for bringing us together. Which reminds me, there’s the matter of a reward. You’ve given me the makings of my army. For that I owe you both more than I can repay.”

  He waved a hand, warding away imagined objection. “You weren’t in this for gold, I know. None of us are. The death of Eurytus has been our rallying cry. Patroclos—let our common enemy unite us. Join us. Join our revolution. Say the word and I’ll strike off those chains. Bienor—I can’t return Gryneus to you, but I can give you justice. Throw that legendary rifle in with ours, and I’ll give you Eurytus.”

  Bienor’s eyes darted to the bottle in Nessus’s hand, the cliff, then Five Legs. If he was looking for escape, he didn’t find it. Nessus’s assembled captains shifted, hooves pawing at the stone and dust. Five Legs, growing up on the Labyrinth Ranch, then among humans, had never heard of the outlaws Bienor and Gryneus. But Bienor’s presence seemed to mean something to these “revolutionaries”. They wanted him to acknowledge their belief in him—to justify it.

  Nessus, Five Legs realized, needed Bienor’s blessing to cement their support. Or failing that, a passable excuse to kill him.

  Nessus’s nostrils flared with impatience. “I don’t need the flower’s influence to see your hesitation. You know my plans. You can’t deny the justice of our goal. Do you doubt my revolutionaries’ will? Or is it cowardice that stays you?”

  Five Legs decided, when the moment came, he would go for the wrist that held the liquor. The vein.

  “I doubt,” Bienor said at last, “their leader.”

  “Who would you suggest?” returned Nessus, indicating his captains with a sweep of the bottle. “Who knows better than I the mind of Eurytus? The other who might have made that claim is dead. Who else has tasted of the poison flower, learned its secrets? Who has the capacity to rule the New World in his place—you? I warned you of this, my revolutionaries. The outlaws Bienor and Gryneus deserved our respect. They were fearless, endlessly inventive, with a penchant for spectacle in any kidnapping or theft. The tall tales their victims told—the hours of pleasure I enjoyed at Eurytus’s irritation—they inspired all of us who chafed to throw off his yoke. But Gryneus is dead, and the Bienor who ranged with him is gone, replaced by the drunkard and weakling who cowers here before us.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Bienor said quietly, looking at his hands. “It never was. Gryneus—it was always him.”

  “It pains me,” said Nessus sharply, “but you force my hand. If you won’t join us, you’re against us.” He gestured, and the centaurs around him lifted rifles, laying the stocks against their cheeks.

  Bienor swallowed, hard, and nodded at the bottle. “You promised a reward. Give me a drink before I die.”

  Nessus smiled. He raised the bottle, golden liquor flashing. “The last of my stores. After this, I won’t taste it again until we’ve stormed the gates of the Labyrinth Ranch. I hoped we could share it in celebration. Still, despite the recalcitrant mule you’ve become, incapable of vision, you deserve for your past deeds our homage and respect.” He thumbed the stopper free, kicked it down over the cliffs, and drank. Then he offered the bottle to Bienor.

  As Bienor reached to take it, his right hand quaking like a branch in winter wind, his left fell to his side, brushing the pocket of his coat.

  It was clumsy attempt, visible to everyone.

  Nessus twisted away from the blow. The bottle slipped from his hand to strike the stone. It didn’t break but rolled towards the cliff, wobbling, spilling its contents and their overpowering aroma into the cold air. A rifle discharged, the bullet whooshing between them, the report echoing. “Hold your fire,” Nessus snarled. Five Legs flung himself forward, but the guards were on top of him in half a stride.

  Bienor swung again, and Nessus caught the wrist that held the knife. He half-reared but Nessus leaned in, using his huge bulk to force Bienor down.

  When Nessus stepped away, the knife’s handle—elkhorn, scrimshawed in the likeness of a sheaf of rods—protruded from Bienor’s ribs at the top of a crescent-shaped gash long as his forearm.

  Blood seeped from a small cut between Nessus’s fingers; he made a fist to staunch it.

  Bienor fell
headfirst towards the bottle, stopping it an arm’s length from the edge. He lay on his flank at the brink of the cliff and tipped it to his mouth, his larynx contracting as he swallowed. Slick cords of intestine bulged from the wound, mingling ichor with spilled whiskey on the ground. He let out a sigh that, though ragged and gurgling, still sounded to Five Legs like relief.

  “You were wrong about him,” Five Legs said. “The cowardly thing would have been to obey.”

  “Pity,” said Nessus. Stooping, he plucked the knife from Bienor’s chest.

  Bienor grunted; he pressed a palm ineffectually against the gap where the knife had been; bile and blood bubbled up between his fingers. Eyes closed, he kept on drinking, his breaths shallow. The carved stock of the Pyretus rifle rose over his shoulder on its battered sling.

  He could have led us, Five Legs realized. He hadn’t asked for command, never wanted it—but they would have followed him. And Nessus knew it. That’s why he wanted Bienor dead.

  But it wasn’t Nessus who needed convincing.

  “He could have led us,” said Five Legs aloud, his eyes on the captains, former soldiers of Eurytus now so desperate for change. None of these were branded with theta or spiral; they wore their own marks. Could they be swayed?

  “He was old,” Five Legs said. “His hands shook. He’d never eaten of the poison flower. But centaurs would have followed him. And in time, humans might have come to trust him. With Nessus, there is never going to be that chance.” Humans would never follow him in battle. They might die for him, the way they’d died for years—but they would never fight.

  This was where he rose to Bienor’s expectation, and the elder’s. Where he’d earn her forgiveness, if she had any to give.

  “Unchain me,” he said to the centaurs who held him. “Let me test him. If I can stand against Nessus, I’ll have a chance against Eurytus too. And the humans would follow me willingly, not by coercion. They know me. They trust me—some of them.”

  “Raised by humans,” Nessus said, cruel mirth in his tone. “Does their love support you, Patroclos? Does it make you invincible, as your sire’s love would have crushed you?” His hoof struck the bedrock with a clap. When he spoke again, his voice was deafening. “Hear me, human recruits. Here is a centaur, Patroclos, who claims to serve the human cause in challenging my right to lead. Will any of you speak on his behalf?”

  Among the voiceless crowd below, faces made featureless by distance, he recognized the elder’s mask: tilted upward as though seeking the sun, its exaggerated eyes and beak standing out clearly from the rest.

  Nessus laughed. “Listen well, centaur and human. I am your champion, I who have tasted of your poison, seen your visions and your fate. Take a lesson from what follows: though we rebel against Eurytus, dissent among our own ranks will be met with death. Watch his corpse doesn’t crush you as it falls.”

  He turned to Five Legs, the fasces knife balanced on his finger at the hilt, like a scales. “Do you challenge me, Patroclos, in the Old World style, might against might? I’ll allow you that privilege, if you choose it—but be warned. I won’t restrain myself as I did when we play-wrestled on the ranch in simpler times. Remember who you face. I’m not human. My sorcery extends beyond mere inner sight.” By way of demonstration, he traced his symbol on the blade, then held it forth as it began to spark and smolder with his power.

  A wind blew up out of the canyon, raising goose-pimples along Five Legs’s spine. Or was that the poison flower, Death, taking form on the ledge beside him to warm its human toes in a centaur’s blood?

  He had climbed to this knife’s edge of his own volition; now he must dive.

  * * *

  Bienor let the bottle drop from his lips. A few fingers of liquid remained in the depths, but he’d had enough to serve his purpose and to spare. His head buzzed gloriously with alcohol and loss of blood; a warm, tingling precursor to numbness crept up from his extremities; his lips were swollen with the last flavor he ever wanted to grace them. The end was coming. He thought he could see it already in the cloudy haze above the cliffs. It looked like snow.

  Gryneus had never hijacked a train nor dared take a swing at Nessus, but Bienor wasn’t even with him yet. When they met on the far shore at last, he wanted to be able to step high. Besides, he owed a debt here.

  Five Legs tore the loose shackles from the hands of the soldier who had freed him. The fasces knife, red-hot and smoking, seemed to leap between Nessus’s hands of its own volition. The bodyguards leaned in, fingertips tense on their guns, tails twitching. Nobody looked at Bienor. Why should they? He was dead.

  His hands were empty; he must have dropped the bottle already. No matter. He didn’t need it anymore. It made him smile to think how badly he’d wanted it, and for so long, now that it meant so little.

  The Pyretus rifle lay heavy across his shoulder-blades, inert, ignored. He couldn’t reach it without further ripping open his gut, but what did that matter? He raised his hand from the wound, reaching. He drew its smooth stock into his tingling hands, pulled it to him like a lover.

  He’d only have one shot. The guards would be on him by then, even if he could still work his fingers well enough to find a second cartridge.

  He came upright on three hooves, one rear leg dangling out over the cliff. He slid his finger through the trigger-well, pressed the stock to his shoulder, and swiveled at the waist, feeling organs that had once been inside him burst and splatter against his hide.

  But he’d been too slow—far too slow. Now Five Legs and Nessus were grappling, the fasces tangled in the shackles, the chain-links hissing and spitting before the heat of Nessus’s power. He didn’t have a shot.

  A gun went off, then another. Not his own: he could tell by the noise, the high-pitched barks, and by the sudden new pinches in his chest, his flank, the corresponding blackness swarming from the edges of his vision. Time running out. Had to make these last moments count for something. No shakes now, no doubts—he was steady as stone. With this one last bullet, he could shoot out the eye of a needle.

  He swiveled back, hunching, and looked down the barrel’s smooth finger, past the sight pin, past the prone sharpshooters lining the switchbacks and the empty nests of cliff birds abandoned to the cold. There below was the crowd, the burned stumps of slave barracks, the prone body of Deimos, the line of hoplites blocking escape. At the least, he could take out their captain, give the humans a last hope to break through—if they could find the backbone for it.

  The human crowd—something had gotten them riled. They were moving, the crowd’s surface rippling outward from center like intricately-patterned cloth. Unless it was the stars in his vision.

  No. In the center of the crowd, something had taken shape. He knew that nightmare figure. He’d feared it—but it couldn’t scare him anymore. It reared its golden head, parted that razor beak, spread immense scarred wings. It screamed. And in answer, a cry rose from the crowd—high-pitched, ululating and eerie, building in intensity—a war cry.

  It sent a shiver through him. Bienor hadn’t heard that sound since the campaign outside Acoma, when Gryenus still lived, when desertion was only a whisper shared across bedrolls in the dark. Humans had been vicious once. They’d been warriors, killers in the name of a cause; their war cry alone was enough to let Eurytus spin them into a threat centaurs could be proud to fight.

  The humans Bienor had met since that campaign—since deserting, since Gryneus’s death—had been prostitutes, runaways, slaves; the conquered, forced into the habit of submitting, none of them capable of putting up a fight. These humans needed a champion, as Five Legs had said, but they needed more than that. A leader wasn’t worth shit if his people had nothing to believe in. More than a leader, they needed a myth.

  The thunderbird’s pinions beat down, casting up a wind enough to knock the nearest humans to their knees as it took flight. But one of its wings was crippled, bent; black blood matted the feathers where Bienor’s shot had struck; it could barely hold itself a
loft. This time its scream was anguished, piercing and long like a train whistle.

  The train—the Echidna. The boiler, pumped all full of fire and force with no escape. He’d forgotten his ace in the hole. He shook his head, smiling. Liquor—it numbed the pain, killed the jitters, the doubts; it made bad memories warm again and drove the worst away. But it made you slip. It made you clumsy, made you take risks you didn’t need to and say things you shouldn’t. And it made you want to feel that way all the time. What a thing it was, what a joke, dreamed up by centaurs in a world without gods. What a tragedy.

  Bienor took a bead, precise and perfect, unwavering, stone-steady, on a rivet above the iron ridge of the Echidna’s twisted brow, where just a hint of superheated steam displayed itself in winter white. His efforts at recruiting Deimos and Phaeton should have reminded him of the finest thing about drink: it allowed him to believe again. He felt the merciful fingertip of Artemis upon his spine, counterbalancing the pain—his own great myth; no matter that it was a lie, it worked—and what a fine thing for these humans that their own myth could be real. He couldn’t wait to tell Gryneus.

  Under the slightest pressure from his finger, the trigger slid back, smooth as butter, and the Pyretus rifle boomed like a tympanum.

  * * *

  The flat of the fasces knife pressed into Five Legs’s collarbone, searing, twisted up in the chains that had bound him. The scent of sweat and Nessus’s acrid breath, mingled with that of his own flesh burning, sent him back to the Labyrinth Ranch. Patroclos remembered the taste of human flesh, though Five Legs had made himself forget.

  His stomach clenched with shame, his skin crawled with revulsion, tears of rage perilously blurred his vision. The chain was growing hot from contact with the fiery knife; he wouldn’t be able to hold onto it much longer. Nessus was too big, too fast. It took all his concentration to anticipate the next twist or feint; his perception had narrowed to include nothing else but the dark hairs on Nessus’s knuckles, the tense and release of sagging flesh around tendons in his neck and arms, the pale reflections of the desert sky in his pupils.