The Skybound Sea tag-3

by Sam Sykes

  Who still drew breath and whispered.

  And through the pain and the confusion, Asper smiled as she was hauled into the darkness.

  She was far away when Sheraptus made another noise, far too far to hear him chuckle to himself. Far too far to see him stare up, past the cavern roof, past the sky above, into heaven.

  “Great suffering. . still alive. .” A contented smile came over his face. “You do listen.”

  FOURTEEN

  VIRTUOUS LABOR

  “ QAI ZHOTH!”

  It began with one cry, an iron voice torn from a throat, somewhere amidst the bustle and bloodshed on the beach. And at one cry, one by one, they looked up.

  The shaven-headed metalshapers wiped the sweat from their brows as they looked up from the white-hot iron in their forgepits. The slave drivers held their whips at bay, giving their scaly, reptilian drudges but a moment to lower their loads and bleed quietly as their taskmistresses looked up. The females hauling yet another broken corpse to the sikkhun pits stopped, looked up, smiled broadly.

  And one by one, the cry was taken up.

  “QAI ZHOTH!”

  “AKH ZEKH LAKH!”

  “EVISCERATE! DECAPITATE! ANNIHILATE!”

  They leapt from throat to throat, roaring over one another, accompanied by weapons thrust into the air, purple muscles flexing, howls of bloodlust. Even as the cries died down, the fervor did not. It filled the nostrils of the netherlings, drove their activities to frenzy.

  The call had gone up. Bloodshed was close.

  Hammers rang out nearly continuously as the shapers strained to finish just one more sword that they may start just one more sword. Whips cracked harder, forcing slaves to run instead of trudge as they hauled more and more loads. Bodies not quite dead-the weak, the starving, the ones that took just too long a break-were added to the corpses flung into the sikkhun pits to stoke the appetites of the beasts and drive their hunger-crazed, warbling laughter to ravenous cacophony.

  The netherling war machine was a sight to behold, Yldus thought.

  As it had been the first time he saw it. And the second time. After the forty-fifth, he surprised himself by realizing that one could grow tired of the sight of a bunch of females working themselves into a furious frenzy of snarling, spitting, and headbutting.

  “Funny,” he muttered to himself.

  “Which part?” his companion growled behind him. “The fact that the invasion of Jaga is leaving without me? Or the fact that it’s leaving without me because of you?”

  He felt Qaine’s eyes bore into the back of his skull, neither he nor she quite certain what was keeping her from planting something sharper than a scowl there instead.

  Still, he couldn’t help but smile as he turned to her. There was an honesty to her that he appreciated. Possibly because Qaine’s particular brand of honesty allowed her to speak openly at least twice as long as any other female before resorting to grunts and bodily functions to make her point.

  “Consider it a favor,” Yldus replied. “This invasion is doomed.”

  “All the netherlings we have, being sent to an island populated by more of Those Green Things,” she snorted. “There will be blood. There will be death. And I should be responsible for at least most of it.”

  “You killed plenty just a few days ago.”

  “And?”

  “And we lost no one. Jaga is different. We’ve lost more than fifty warriors trying just to find the damn place.” He cast a glower toward the cavern at the rear of the beach that served as their base. “And Sheraptus wants to send out three hundred, nearly all our sikkhuns, and all three males to try and find it again. I’d be insane to recommend taking one of the few Carnassials we have left when we’re liable to lose at least half of them.”

  “That’s not why you want me to stay.”

  He looked her over. She stood two paces away and a full head taller. Powerful arms were folded across a more powerful chest, a frowned scarred upon her long face, white hair cropped cruelly short refusing to flutter in the wind. He smiled gently at her. She snorted, spat, scowled.

  An adequate summary of their relationship.

  “Xhai is going,” he said. “Xhai is violently unstable.”

  “And I’m not?” she sounded offended.

  “You can grasp the concept of self-control. She can grasp the concept of killing anyone whom Sheraptus so much as looks at. Maybe Those Green Things wouldn’t hurt you, but Xhai would, and she will if you go.”

  Qaine clearly wanted to protest, if the flare of her nostrils and narrow of her eyes were any indication. It was a sign of weakness for a female to admit being incapable of destroying anything short of a mountain, and even then, it would have to be a big one.

  But Semnein Xhai was notably more insane than a mountain and had only been getting worse since she had returned from her brief captivity at the humans’ hands. And neither Yldus nor Qaine thought she would be any more reasonable after whatever ruckus had just happened in the cavern a few moments ago; Sheraptus had forbade anyone from entering to find out.

  “Fine,” she grunted.

  “It’ll be a disaster, regardless,” Yldus replied, staring down at the bustle on the beach and Vashnear standing at the center of it.

  His erstwhile brother stood between the ships bobbing at sea, the red jewel about his neck glowing brighter and bloodier than the crimson robes he wore. His nethra sent him hovering a foot off the ground, only barely meeting the gazes of the females he presumed to command with sweeping gestures as he directed them and the cargo their scaly slaves carried aboard the boats.

  “After all, Vashnear is involved.”

  “Him?” Qaine scoffed. “He trembles at puddles of piss. Will he at least grow a spine for the invasion?”

  Yldus frowned as a slave broke under a particularly fearsome crack of the whip. With a throaty scream, it collapsed, a globule of blood flying from its lacerated back to splatter upon the ground.

  It was bad enough that Vashnear hurled himself a good ten feet away from the bodily excretion, even without the cringing shriek that accompanied it.

  “Unlikely.” Yldus sighed, rubbing his eyes. “A male terrified of contracting a disease from the overscum is just one problem. Consider that our forces are diminished and that Sheraptus refuses to wait for more from the portal, the fact that an unstable lunatic will be leading them and. .”

  “And a male so spineless that he denies the force a much-needed Carnassial just to keep her from getting hurt?”

  “Just so. Anything could be turned against us, especially Sheraptus. It was bad enough when he bedded the overscum females, but now he’s talking to them. . when he isn’t talking to crabs. And he’s supposed to be leading us.”

  “That’s why you’re not staying here,” Qaine replied, as soft as a seven-foot-tall female could. “His is the right to lead. Yours is to plan.”

  “Indeed. My staggering intellect continues to burden as well as amaze.” He sighed. “We have the First, if nothing else. They can carry the rest.”

  “Already, you’re sounding more stupid than weak,” she said, chuckling. “Glad we had this talk.”

  “Keep talking like that and I won’t bring you back anything from Jaga.”

  She grunted, pulling out a small gray fragment of stone attached to a thin black chain from beneath her breastplate.

  “You already gave me this, which you were stupid to do.” She snorted, thrusting it at him. “Everything you could have taken from Port Yonder and you chose a pebble.”

  “And I gave it to you.”

  “Why?”

  He rolled his shoulders. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever owned. Everything else belongs to Sheraptus. It’s mine to give away.”

  “For stupid reasons.”

  “Then give it back.”

  She pulled it away defensively, glowering at him. He half-sneered, half-smiled.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Shut up,” she grunted, stalking
down the dune. “I’ve got to go ready my sikkhun. If I’m going to stay behind with the high-fingered weaklings, I’ll at least ride taller than them.”

  They descended the sandy slope, picking their way through the rocky outcroppings jutting from the dunes. Amidst them all, Yldus paused, drawing Qaine’s attention as he slowly surveyed the pillars.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It just occurred to me,” he said, beginning to walk again, “do you ever feel like it’s a little stupid to talk about our strategies and weaknesses so openly like this?”

  “I think talking is stupid.”

  Denaos peered around the stone outcropping. Risky, he knew; it was hard to hear anything over the sudden ferverous roar that rose up from the beach below, let alone the footsteps of two netherlings. But he caught only a glimpse of their purple backs as they disappeared into the activity below.

  He turned, glanced to his companion expectantly.

  “Did you get any of that?” he asked.

  “No,” Dreadaeleon replied. “How would I? I don’t speak netherling.”

  The rogue took a cautious step out into the open. “It might have been something important.”

  “When have they ever said anything important?” Dreadaeleon asked, taking a less than cautious stumble after him. “I feel I should remind you that we’re not here to pick up the finer points of their conversation, either.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” Denaos muttered, stalking up the dune to a higher vantage point. “In fact, if you wanted to stop talking altogether, I wouldn’t object.”

  “I’m just saying, since it’s your fault and all.”

  “My fault?”

  The boy rolled his shoulders helplessly, unable to deny simple fact. “You took the longface prisoner rather than just killing her, she took Asper prisoner, which brought us here.”

  “I thought she’d have valuable information about the tome.”

  “I refer you to my earlier point about netherlings and the relative value of their conversation. From what I was able to discern, the primary thrust of your interrogation was whether or not she could answer any question with a bodily function.”

  “Yeah? Well, now we know she can.” The rogue snorted. “Regardless of whose fault it is, here we are.”

  He knelt down low upon the dune’s ridge, keeping most of his body hidden behind the sand. For all of ten breaths, anyway. It quickly became insultingly clear that not a single longface was going to bother looking up.

  Not that they were particularly renowned for their curiosity, but the frenzy with which they worked, their focus hammered like rivets onto the metals they forged and the slaves they whipped, was unnerving.

  Not that they weren’t before.

  And yet, it didn’t become completely clear until he noticed them gathering. In knots of purple flesh and polished iron armor, they clustered upon the beach. Thirty-three to a group each time, sharpening thirty-three swords, stringing thirty-three bows, coating thirty-three wedges of steel with thirty-three vials of sickly green poison.

  And they continued to gather across the beach, sands stained with blood, blackened by fire.

  In thirty-three groups.

  “Silf’s Sweet Daughters,” he muttered. “They’re mobilizing.”

  “For what?” Dreadaeleon asked, creeping up beside him. “They need that many to go destroy Teji?”

  “To destroy Teji, they’d need a strong bowel movement and a stiff breeze. They wouldn’t bring this many.”

  “Then. . what? Are they attacking the mainland?”

  Denaos shook his head. “I don’t see any food in whatever they’re loading aboard the ships.”

  “Do they. . need food?”

  “Of course they need food.” Denaos paused, furrowing his brow. He looked over his shoulder at the boy. “Right? They have mouths.”

  “Those are used for screaming. I’ve never seen them eat.”

  “Me neither. Huh.” He looked back over the dune, shrugging. “Okay, if we return to the mainland and it’s been completely decimated, we’ll consider the matter settled. For now, I’d say they’re about to attack a much closer target.”

  “Jaga,” Dreadaeleon muttered. “Lenk, Kataria, Gariath. .”

  “Let’s focus on one companion in peril at a time here.”

  Denaos swept his gaze over the beachhead, the words slipping out through his frown. He settled on the massive spike-ringed pit in the middle, on the two netherlings hauling a twitching Gonwa to the edge and tossing it in. The spikes shook, the gruesome laughter echoing off the metal as something within stirred.

  “If she’s not already-”

  “She isn’t.”

  The boy’s face was steeled with determination, he knew without even looking. His lips would be turned downward in a perfectly curved frown, his eyes would be acting under the impression that the more squinted they were, the more intense he looked, and he would be trying desperately to convince himself and the world that he had a jaw.

  Exactly the sort of look he probably thought he should have had in this kind of situation.

  If you were an honest man, Denaos told himself, you’d tell him. You’d tell him you weren’t about to suggest that she was dead. You’d tell him that you know what Sheraptus did to her, what he’s probably doing to her now. You’d tell him he should look far, far worse than whatever it is he thinks he’s supposed to look like.

  But Denaos was not an honest man. Not to his companions, not to his gods, and never, ever to himself.

  “Yeah,” he said, “you’re probably right.”

  Trying to ignore the feeling of self-loathing that came with saying that, he returned to surveying the beachhead. The two males stood out amidst the crowd with the bright crimson glow of the gemstones around their necks as they floated about, dictating to the clusters of females, sending them rushing eagerly toward the black ships moored in the surf, trampling the Gonwa slaves who continued to haul loads.

  He wondered if, at some point, she might be among those loads, bound and bundled into the ship to be taken to whatever invasion they were planning. What then? Swoop in, die horribly, be dragged to the pits along with the other Gonwa bodies to be-

  Let’s stop that train of thought right there, shall we? If you keep thinking of the pits filled with corpses and how she might be in there and how you’ll probably wind up in there and how whatever’s in there now is laughing and crunching and laughing and laughing and. .

  A cry went up from the crowd. A team of six netherlings came charging forward, a crudely-fastened ramp held between them. Denaos watched, unable to turn away, as they lowered it into the pit.

  He dearly wished he could, though, long before the ramp began to tremble with the weight of something heavy climbing up it.

  With a sudden howl, the creature tore itself free from the pit, scattering sand and netherlings alike as it tore the land apart to make room for its size. On thick claws, it paced in hurried circles, a great, square head sweeping back and forth across the beachhead. Muscles flexed beneath a pelt of rust-red fur, a bushy tail swishing as it loped around, netherlings scrambling to get out of its way.

  It was searching for something, that much was clear to Denaos. Why it was having trouble finding it became clear the moment it turned its head toward his hiding place.

  In the place of eyes were two indentations in the skull covered with thick, black fur. It couldn’t have seen him, Denaos told himself over thoughts that largely consisted of “oh gods” over and over. It couldn’t have seen him. It was blind.

  That didn’t make it any less unnerving when the thing’s black, rubbery lips peeled back to reveal long, glistening rows of teeth in what was very clearly a smile in a very deliberate attempt to make him take off running, propelled by a jet of his own cowardice.

  That option grew increasingly more appealing as six ears, three to each side of its head, split apart in a pair of pointed, wedge-shaped fans. The beast whirled about, canting its head to
the side as its ears twitched, trembled, found something.

  With a sound that was like a very sick hound laughing at a very sick joke, the thing took off at a gallop. It sent a pair of netherlings leaping out of the way before its tremendous shoulders bunched and uncoiled, sending it leaping through the air to land upon a nearby Gonwa slave that it dragged, screaming, from the line.

  The feeding was gruesomely brief: a noisome tumult of flesh ripping, meat slurping, bones cracking between tremendous jaws. All punctuated with peals of gibbering laughter.

  Denaos watched the grisly scene for as long as it took him to blink. He then rose up, turned around, walked away from the dune’s ridge, and looked to Dreadaeleon, who raised a brow at him expectantly.

  “So,” the rogue said, “how set are you on saving Asper?”

  “Why?”

  “Hongwe’s just down at the beach with the boat, you know. We could be back at Teji by nightfall and have a few more hours to reflect on how lucky we are not to have our genitals eaten by giant, six-eared, eyeless horrors.”

  “What happened?” Dreadaeleon asked. “What’s down there?”

  “Well, damn. There are only so many ways I can say it, Dread.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Go take a look for yourself. They’re fairly preoccupied down there.” He cringed as a peal of wailing laughter rose up over the ridge.

  “That might prove an opportune moment,” Dreadaeleon said, tapping his chin. “Barring distractions, I could probably do a fair job of scrying out Asper’s location.”

  Denaos furrowed his brow, looking a tad offended. “You could do that the entire time? You could have just used some manner of magical weirdness to find her and spared me the sight of whatever it is I just saw?”

  “The act of seeing where one is not meant to see is a bit more than magical weirdness,” Dreadaeleon replied sharply. “It requires a clear vantage, a delicate position and-”

  “And what? The seed of a blasphemer? Because I’ll get to work on that and be done in six breaths if that’ll make this go any faster.” He whirled about, gesturing wildly over the ridge. “Hell, why are we even here? Why don’t you go down spitting out lightning and flying around like an underweight sparrow made of death like you did on Teji?”