‘Oh,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘It’s a woman.’ He looked sick.
‘She said she had to kill me,’ Krish told him. ‘You saved me. Thank you, brother.’
Dae Hyo’s face twisted and Krish thought the warrior might deny him, even after that, but he just nodded.
‘I’m sorry,’ Krish said. ‘For making you kill a woman. For … for everything. I’m very sorry.’
Dae Hyo gently closed the dead woman’s eyes, then hung his axe back at his waist. ‘Words don’t mean anything. Actions have a louder voice. What are you doing hiding here?’
‘They’re after me – the carrion riders. They’re hunting all the Ashane men.’
‘I killed, I killed, I killed one myself,’ Dinesh said and laughed. ‘I saved my master.’
‘I’m not your master,’ Krish insisted.
‘But saving you made me happy – it made me feel as good as bliss.’
Krish turned away from his grinning, blood-spattered face, but he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t known that Olufemi’s rune might replace one kind of servitude with another.
‘You’ve done ill,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘Do better.’
The warrior was more stern-faced and serious than Krish had ever seen him. ‘I’ll try,’ he promised.
‘I had to save you. The magic won’t work without you and without magic we’re lost. I’ve seen what men do to those they’ve defeated. The mages are worthless rat-fuckers and the slaves aren’t much better, but they’re all fighting for you. It’s not right for them to die that way.’
‘No.’
‘It’s not right for you to hide in here while they’re fighting your battle. Are you a child or a man?’
‘I’m a man,’ Krish said. ‘I’m a Dae man.’
Dae Hyo sighed. ‘No you’re not.’
‘I want to be. I want to be your brother or – or at least your friend. I’ve never had a friend before. I don’t think I’m very good at it.’
That startled a laugh out of Dae Hyo. ‘Belbog’s balls – you’re fucking terrible at it. But I haven’t been too fine a friend either, if we’re talking honestly. And I’m not so sure we’ll have time to learn to be better. It’s not looking good out there: your father’s forces are nearly at our door. Do you want them to find you here, hiding like a rabbit? Or will you leave this life with your weapon swinging?’
Sang Ki held the burnt woman’s hand as they fled, but he wasn’t sure who was leading whom. The city had confused him even when it wasn’t being attacked by the King’s carrion riders. Now he was utterly lost. The birds seemed to be everywhere, while their missiles had left the wreckage of houses and people flung all over the broken streets. The sun beat down without pity for their plight and he didn’t know if he had the strength to continue.
‘This way!’ the burnt woman said. She at least appeared not to have given up hope. He let himself be led, gasping and drooping behind her.
A carrion rider flew overhead, the shadow of its wings passing over them. Sang Ki flinched, stumbling against the marble wall of a building, and when he righted himself he saw that the burnt woman had stopped.
A man stood in the mouth of the alley, blocking their exit. He was bruised and bloody like so many others they’d passed, but when he saw them, he smiled. It was that smile, crooked beneath a long nose, that sparked a flash of recognition. This was the man who’d tried to bargain for Nethmi’s life in Smiler’s Fair. The man the burnt woman had claimed she didn’t know.
‘Nethmi,’ Marvan said. ‘I’ve found you.’
Her back was to Sang Ki. He couldn’t see her face, but even if he had, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to read it. Nethmi had revealed more than she knew. The burnt woman kept her feelings locked tight. ‘How did you escape?’ she asked.
Marvan shrugged and smiled wider. ‘The pillar fell and funnily enough, no one seemed that bothered about recapturing me. But one advantage of sitting up there for months: I had a wonderful view of Mirror Town and nothing else to look at. I can get you out of here.’
‘And what about him?’ She and Marvan both turned to Sang Ki. The burnt woman was hideous but it was the Ashaneman’s face that frightened him. Marvan might have looked on a rat with more warmth.
‘He’s kept you prisoner all this time, hasn’t he?’ Marvan said.
The burnt woman’s eyes, hooded in the melted folds of her brow, were fixed on Sang Ki. ‘He thought I was Nethmi.’
‘So he’s right about one thing.’
‘But what if I’m not Nethmi?’
Marvan pressed his body against hers, as close as a lover. Sang Ki thought he would kiss her, but instead he grasped her hand, curling his fingers round hers to draw the knife that was sheathed at her belt. Little Blade, the weapon from which she’d once taken her name. Sang Ki had returned that knife to her when she’d risen from her sickbed. He’d meant it as a statement: an insistence that she was the woman she claimed not to be.
‘You’re Nethmi,’ Marvan said. ‘This is the knife your father gave you all those years ago, when he knew you’d need to fight to live. I don’t care what you look like. It was never your face that mattered to me. You are the woman whose knife this is.’
He held the knife between them, the blade pressed flat against their chests, and now he did kiss her. Sang Ki had to look away. His stomach rebelled at the sight, though he wasn’t sure what the nauseous feeling was. It felt like disgust, but he feared it might be jealousy.
‘You think I’m a killer?’ the burnt woman asked when she pulled back.
‘I know you are. We’re the same, you and I. That’s why we found each other. It’s how we’ll always find each other. Come away with me now – a war is a good time for people like us. Who notices a few more corpses?’
She looked back at Sang Ki. He wished her face were unburnt and whole so he could read it. But the unburnt woman had killed his father. ‘I don’t believe that you’re a killer,’ he told her.
The knife’s blade looked dull in the shadows. The moment seemed to stretch or perhaps to be preserved, like an insect in amber. His heart was the only thing in motion, thudding against his chest. Then she opened her fingers and dropped the knife to the ground.
‘You’re mistaken. I don’t want to be like you,’ she told Marvan. ‘You are a mistake – no one should be like you.’
Marvan stared at the knife, dusty on the ground, as she took Sang Ki’s hand and led him away.
43
It didn’t take long to find the battle. Dae Hyo followed the sound of screams until he saw his first Ashane soldier, running towards the low outer buildings of Mirror Town. He opened the man’s chest with one swing of his axe, but there were a lot of his friends behind him, and not much that was going to stop them. The wheat fields lay trampled beneath a thousand boots and the ill-armed slaves were fighting a desperate rearguard action. The men they faced clearly knew their business. Probably only their fear of the mages’ power held them back – but that fear wouldn’t last long. The runic defences had already been passed.
‘It’s not going well,’ Krish said and Dae Hyo laughed.
Krish smiled tremulously in return and Dae Hyo felt something so complicated he couldn’t name it. There was some hate in it and anger, but there was more affection. He supposed it was how most people felt about their brothers. It was how he’d once felt about his own brothers and sisters – the years of drinking had allowed him to forget that. ‘I’ve gambled on better odds,’ he agreed. ‘Think we can turn the tide?’
‘Probably not,’ Krish said.
Dae Hyo pulled out both his axes, testing the weight of them in his hands. ‘I tell you what – I’ll try if you will.’
His brother drew his knife, which really was a pitiful little thing, so Dae Hyo passed him one of his axes. They hefted their weapons and ran towards the fight.
The Seonu seemed to be everywhere, in front of Alfreda as well as behind. The mammoth trampled those in front and outran those behind, but it couldn’t outrun their a
rrows. Some were tangled in its hair and others seemed no more than beestings to it, but there were so many. Arrows struck flesh and joints and the mammoth let out a terrible bellow as one drove into its eye.
It reared, legs lashing out at its tormentors. Alfreda clung to its back, but now the Seonu were all around and not all of them were being trampled. She saw an axe slash at the mammoth’s legs, severing the tendons, and the huge creature fell to its knees.
She had her hammer, the largest of her forge. She lifted it and slid from the saddle, balancing for a moment on the slope of the mammoth’s back and then leaping off and on to two Seonu warriors. They all fell to the ground together in a tangle of limbs and weapons, but she rose first and her hammer mashed their skulls into bone and blood-streaked grey fat.
There were a dozen Seonu around her – two dozen – but she saw them step back in the face of her anger. And then something passed overhead, some vast shadow that blotted out the sun and nearly all the sky. Her enemies looked up at it. Some of them flinched and others shouted with joy. They shouted something else, which must have been an order in their own language, because suddenly they were turning their backs on her and running towards Mirror Town and the battle that raged on its borders.
They’d driven her far to the rear of the fight, where the camp-followers’ wagons sat. But the Seonu had got there before her. As she limped towards the wagons she saw the first corpse, his arms splayed and his throat slit. A horse bent its head towards him, snuffling at his blood-streaked face. Behind were more corpses, overturned wagons – and somewhere among them Jinn. Jinn, who they’d left here to keep safe.
Her ankle was trying to tell her that it was sprained and in pain but she couldn’t hear the voice of her body. She could hear nothing but the pounding of her heart and the terrible fear – the terrible certainty.
She felt the shock of the sight like a wound, a knife plunged into her stomach and twisted. They’d dragged Jinn from his wagon and beaten him before they killed him. There were cuts and red marks on his cheeks that would never blossom into bruises. She could see the deep wound in his palm where he’d raised his hand to try to protect himself and the slash in his throat because he’d failed.
His shirt had been ripped off and there were cuts on his chest too deliberate to be the marks of rage or frenzy. Someone had carved words into him, but they were in the tribe’s language and she couldn’t read them. She thought she knew what they’d say, though: ‘Traitor’.
His corpse when she lifted it in her arms was heavier than she’d expected. He wasn’t truly a boy any longer; he’d gained two inches of gawky height since she’d first met him, his body straining to turn into the man he’d now never be. She rested her forehead against his and breathed, in and out. There were no tears. There was only anger.
One moment Eric had been looking at Mirror Town shimmering on the horizon, the final stop on their very long journey, and the next moment Rii shouted ‘Yron!’ in a voice so loud it vibrated right through him and they were plunging towards the ground.
His son cried out in shock, huddled in blankets against Eric’s chest. ‘What are you doing?’ he yelled over the leathery flap of her massive wings.
‘Our master requires us!’ she said.
The baby wriggled in his arms, screaming as the wind scoured past them. ‘You’re hurting him!’ Eric said, but Rii didn’t reply.
The ground rushed up to meet them. There were thousands of people below and the vicious sounds of battle drifted up, the clash of weapons and shouts of rage and pain. Rii hovered above it all, her wings beating. Some of the fighters looked up and Eric could see the expressions of shock on their faces. A few loosed arrows, but they cluttered uselessly against the armour on Rii’s breast.
‘I do not know which men fight upon our master’s side,’ Rii said desperately.
The battle certainly was a terrible mess, not two armies facing off but just knots and swirls of people all hacking at each other. ‘There – look!’ Eric shouted. ‘Those are Moon Forest folk. My folk serve the Hunter, don’t they? And the Hunter hates the moon.’
Rii hissed and turned her wings, plunging towards the fighters with her claws outstretched.
The slaves seemed to sense Krish’s presence. When he and Dae Hyo came to the field of battle, they turned their heads and ran to rally at his side. They fought without skill but with a dreadful enthusiasm, and Krish saw Ashane soldiers recoil from the joyful sound of their laughter whenever their weapons found flesh.
He raised his axe but found no target. The slaves crowded around him, shielding him with their bodies. The Ashane pressed forward and a boy half Krish’s age darted in, taking a spear that was meant for him. The boy doubled up, gasping, over the mortal wound and smiled with pleasure as the life slipped from him. When he fell, Dinesh moved forward to take his place.
Another charge came against them, mounted men slashing down with sabres, and Krish’s force fell back. He felt the ground give softly beneath his feet and looked down to see that he was treading on the body of the fallen slave. His gorge rose but he swallowed it back.
They were surrounded, the fierce faces of the Ashane soldiers focused on Krish. They must have seen the way the slaves clustered around him. They knew who he was and there’d be no escape for him. He’d fight this battle out to its end and the end seemed near.
But as the time stretched he realised that his own force was swelling. More slaves were flocking to him, and a band of pale-skinned tribesmen who fought the Ashane with savage skill. Though many died as they drove through the surrounding soldiers, some made it through. Gradually the group around Krish transformed from a rabble to the remnants of an army, undisciplined but stubbornly still alive.
There were mages among them too. Krish felt a flare of hope that magic might save him, but the runic defences had long ago been passed. No magic could be used in the chaotic heat of this fight. Unable to reach for that power, an old, dark-skinned man clutched a kitchen knife in his hand and waved it at the Ashane soldier who confronted him. The soldier sneered and gutted him with his sword.
They were more but they were losing – they could only lose. The slaves were fighting with a ferocity their enemy couldn’t match and a lack of skill that would ultimately see them defeated. Their uncanny laughter mingled with their screams and Krish shouted, ‘Retreat! Retreat! Back to Mirror Town!’
Olufemi was lost in the city of her birth. Streets she’d spent decades walking became unfamiliar when battle raged through them and half the houses were shattered by war or magic. The runes had slipped through her grasp entirely. Broken mirrors crunched beneath her feet and shards pierced her. She felt no pain, only the squelch of her blood inside her shoes.
They had lost, although for a short while she’d ceased to believe that they would. She swerved to avoid the corpse of a cousin she’d barely spoken to since her return and choked down her guilt. She wanted to blame Krishanjit, but the blame was really hers. It was she who’d brought death to Mirror Town.
There was nothing left to do but flee. The desert might kill her but it would be a gentler death than the Ashane would grant her. She was nearly at the city’s southern edge, among the low, sprawling houses of those without family. The streets ahead were empty even of corpses. She’d finally outrun the conflict and the way ahead was clear. She pulled in a deep breath and stopped, suddenly unsure. Vordanna. Vordanna was still in Mirror Town.
But why should she care? Her lover had been like a stranger since her return. All her passion had been reserved for Krishanjit. And yet Olufemi found herself turning, running back the way she’d come, towards the library of Turnabout.
When she saw Vordanna, it was already too late. The Ashane soldiers surrounded her, swords drawn and expressions that said they planned to have some fun before they used them. One stepped forward, reaching for Vordanna’s breast – and a red streak shot towards him and latched on to his hand. He screamed and shook his arm. It was Adofo hanging there, teeth plunged into t
he soft flesh of the soldier’s palm. The lizard monkey bit deeper and then let go, scurrying to fling himself into Olufemi’s arms and screech his fury at the Ashane men.
They turned to her, rage replacing lechery in their faces. Olufemi tried desperately to calm her mind, but the desperation itself made the task impossible. She grasped for the runes of fire, of water, of pain, but all she could see was what stood before her: men ready to kill her.
And then there was a noise like a cracked bell ringing. The sound reverberated through her bones as if it meant to shake them apart. It vibrated in her mind too, shaking her thoughts loose. It felt like careless fingers sifting through them: her guilt was picked up and tossed aside, her childhood discarded along with her many years of wandering. And then the force had moved on, through her and out.
She blinked her eyes, stunned, and saw those the force hadn’t released. The Ashane soldiers shook with unnatural speed, a blur of motion accompanied by high, quivering screams. The scream rose higher and higher as the vibration grew faster and faster until all at once it ended as the men simply … fell apart. Scraps of skin and hunks of flesh and shards of bone dropped on to the cobbles below like gory rain. Behind them was a young woman, her arms raised in the attitude of meditation, the pose of a woman who’d summoned the power of the runes.
Olufemi didn’t know her – and then all at once she did. This was her mentor Yemisi in the flower of her youth, with a crown of oily curls and plump, unlined cheeks. Yemisi’s arms fell to her sides and then reached up to her face, feeling its new-old shape. ‘What happened?’ she said. ‘I can’t remember anything. Why can’t I remember?’
The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods Page 47
