‘One hundred and twenty …’ Reichis went back to dozing before he could finish.
‘You know, kid,’ Ferius said, pulling on the reins to halt her horse, ‘for someone who gets all fired up about knowing the truth, you sure do seem to want people to lie to you all the time.’
I stopped my own horse. We were about a day’s ride from the Berabesq border. You could tell we were getting closer from the way the sand was changing colour from dull brown to a more golden hue. Soon we’d be entering more populated areas, and that’s when our real troubles would begin. ‘I just meant—’
‘I’m dying, kid. You know it, I know it. So quit askin’ about it.’ She coughed. Blood stained the back of her hand when she wiped her mouth. ‘Damned thing’s moved again. Now it wants my lungs.’
Where the oleus regia can’t help, I thought.
Healing the hole the arrow had left in her chest had also, it turned out, cured the pain in her leg. The malediction was shifting its unpredictable attacks on an almost daily basis. Ferius was the strongest, most resilient, orneriest person I’d ever met, but even she was coming apart piece by piece as this damned curse played with her like a cat with a wounded bird, letting it flutter its wings only to catch it again before it could fly away.
Ever since we’d left the Jan’Tep territories, I’d spent every waking hour trying to understand the malediction and its workings. A typical disease attacks either a part of the body, like the liver, or some continuous system like the blood. But the malediction was different. It could go after the victim in a hundred different ways – as often as not appearing as dumb bad luck. A strange rash might appear over Ferius’s body one day, then the next by sheer accident she’d slip and fall, spraining an ankle that wouldn’t seem to heal or getting a cut that almost instantly became infected. However we tried to compensate for one problem – taking more care whenever she moved, for example – some new problem always came along.
Each day I watched her, trying to make sense of this curse by turning over its properties in my mind. By this point there were only two possible explanations I could come up with: either the malediction was some kind of spirit or supernatural force that haunted her, or it was a disease that affected both body and mind, causing her to produce her own injuries whenever she tried to mitigate against other ones.
Either way, though, how was I supposed to put a stop to it?
If it was some kind of spirit, it had eluded my pathetic whisper magic skills thus far. I’d only ever been able to communicate with one particular wind spirit called a sasutzei who’d once taken up residence in my right eye, but Suzy, as I liked to call her, had left me long ago.
And if the malediction was a mystical disease of the mind, causing its victim to create their own symptoms? Ferius had the most indomitable will I’d ever known, and she couldn’t fight it.
Which left only one solution.
‘You just have to hold on,’ I said to her. ‘Once we reach the Berabesq capital, we’ll find a way to reverse it.’
‘Once we reach the capital,’ she said, nudging her horse back into a walk, ‘we’ll be figuring out how to stop a war, not worryin’ about a little cough.’
She’d dismissed the conversation this way every other time too. She’d remind me that the world had bigger problems to worry about than the life of one itinerant gambler, and that the Way of the Argosi was about preventing the big, unsolvable calamities by dealing with the little, fixable ones that led to them, not letting the world go to hells for the sake of one person.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said as we rode side by side.
‘It’s all right, kid. I know you mean well.’
‘No, I mean I’m sorry because I know, despite all the crap you talk about walking the Path of the Wild Daisy and making light of things that happen to you, that what you’re really looking for is a noble death.’
‘Since when is—’
I cut her off. ‘That’s not going to happen, Ferius. I won’t let it happen.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘And just who are you supposed to be now, Kellen of the House of Ke?’
She always called me that when I was starting to sound pompous.
‘Nobody,’ I replied. ‘Not a proper mage, not a proper Argosi, not a proper anything. It’s like you always say: I’m a kid.’ I spurred my horse on to a trot. ‘I’m the kid who’s going to figure out how to sneak into a foreign country, find their god and stop him from starting the war to end all wars. And while I’m doing that, I’m also going to be beating the hells out of said god until he cures you of the malediction. That’s who I am.’
From his perch atop our horse’s neck, eyes still closed as he snoozed on his back, Reichis said, ‘Damned straight.’
32
The Border
‘We’re all gonna die,’ Reichis chittered.
The three of us were crouched low on a ridge overlooking a wide flood-plain. I always think of Berabesq as a desert nation, but that’s not entirely true. Two massive rivers pass through their territory, one of which lay about an eighth of a mile to the right of us, its currents enriching the soil so that crops of wheat and barley could grow in abundance, and with them, the Berabesq people themselves.
‘There’s so many of them,’ the squirrel cat added.
I’d never heard him sound quite so uncomfortable before. Then again, this was the first time we’d actually found ourselves facing an entire army. Column after column of soldiers in glittering golden breastplates, their curved swords and javelins carefully laid at their sides, knelt upon the plain. Thick leather bands covered their forearms, providing protection from cuts while still allowing them the freedom to move with fluidity and grace. They weaved their hands in the air in perfect unison, almost as if they were casting a spell, all the while intoning soft, almost musical chants.
‘What are they doing?’ I asked.
‘Praying,’ Ferius replied.
I’d been to Berabesq before – twice, in fact. I’d seen them pray, and I didn’t recall it looking anything like this. When I pointed that out to Ferius, she said, ‘You ever notice how the Berabesq refer to their deity just as “God”, but everyone outside the country calls him “the six-faced god”?’
‘I guess.’ In fact I’d never actually paid attention to that distinction. Until recently I’d just assumed all gods were superstitious nonsense.
‘The Berabesq are monotheistic. They believe there can be only one true god. Problem is, they have six different holy books.’ She lowered the brim of her hat to counter the glare from the rising sun. ‘Depending on which one you read, “God” is either a ruthless warrior, a meticulous gardener, a silent hermit, a tender healer, an obsessed clockmaker, or a penitent prisoner who forever holds the world close to the sun so that his people don’t die of cold.’
‘How did they end up with six holy books?’
‘No one knows for sure. They started out with one.’ The corner of Ferius’s mouth rose in the hint of a smirk. ‘Then a couple of hundred years ago, five more codices were … discovered.’
That look on her face got me thinking. ‘Ferius, is it at all possible that the Argosi just happened to come up with altered versions of the original Berabesq codex – ones different enough to split them into six, disunited religious sects?’
‘More likely them other stories already existed and some concerned citizens just made sure they didn’t disappear on account of never being written down.’ She winked at me. ‘Now a wise teysan might wonder why the Argosi would go to all that trouble.’
‘Because it would allow the Berabesq to live in peace, but stop them from launching a massive holy crusade against the rest of the continent. Anytime one sect tried to start something, one of the others would get into a theological dispute with them and that would be that.’
‘Well now, all that just from a few old books? Sure does make the Argosi sound clever, don’t it? Right admirable, I’d say.’
Admirable wasn’t necessarily the first word tha
t came to mind. ‘Ferius …’ I wasn’t even sure how to broach the topic. ‘How often have the Argosi interfered with the development of nations?’
‘Just often enough to keep ’em from killing each other,’ she replied. She dug her hand into the soil and lifted it up, letting the grains of dirt fall between her fingers. ‘This place, it’s nobody’s home, kid. Folks came here from the old continents, searching for new lands, for magic, for power of all kinds. Didn’t have millennia to learn how to get along. Just started conquering whatever they could.’
‘So the Argosi …’
‘We try to keep the peace, when such a thing is possible.’
‘And when it’s not? When, say, one country thinks their god has arrived on earth and is going to use that as an excuse to start a continental war?’
She ignored my question entirely. Instead she pointed to the thousands of armoured men and women praying below us. ‘We’re gonna need to find a way past all those folks.’
‘Just sneak around ’em,’ Reichis advised.
I translated for Ferius. She shook her head. ‘Army this big – and by the way, this ain’t a tenth of what a united Berabesq army will look like – they’ll have scouts for miles around, not to mention a few holy men and women with their own kind of magic looking for spies.’
‘So what do we do?’ I asked, my eyes constantly drawn back to the fluid movements and melodic chants of their prayers. ‘Which face of their god do they pray to?’
‘The penitent prisoner.’
‘Is that good for us?’
Ferius rubbed at her jaw. ‘Could be. Could be. His followers ain’t the worst anyway.’
‘Who are the worst? The ones who worship the brutal warrior face of their god?’
‘Nope. The healer.’
‘The healer? Why? I would’ve thought—’
‘You remember them Faithful we came across a couple of years ago?’
I did. They were some of the deadliest fighters I’d ever encountered. Crusaders determined to drown the desert sand in the blood of blasphemers. ‘I’m guessing the one being “healed” in this case isn’t the patient?’
She nodded. ‘Them as follows the healer believe it’s their job to rid the world of the disease of blasphemy.’
‘You two gonna jaw all morning?’ Reichis asked nervously.
‘What’s gotten into you?’ I asked him.
‘Don’t like armies. Don’t like religious nuts. Don’t like armies of religious nuts.’
I couldn’t fault his logic.
Ferius made a choking sound. She was having another coughing fit, trying in vain to stifle it. I handed her a handkerchief. Usually she refused it, but this time she accepted. It came away smeared with even more blood and bile than usual.
‘We’ve got to get past this army and find an apothecary who can concoct something to hold off the symptoms,’ I said.
She wiped at her lips with the kerchief again. ‘Ain’t no apothecary gonna fix this, kid. Might as well ask the six-faced …’
‘Ferius?’
Despite the ashen pallor, the trickster’s grin that came to her face made Ferius look like her old self again. ‘Reckon I got a plan to get us through the army.’
Something about the way she looked at me got me worrying. ‘How exactly?’
She clapped me on the shoulder and rose to her feet, exposing us to the army below. ‘When’s the last time you got beat up good and proper, kid?’
33
The Penitents
Nothing good has ever come of the question ‘When’s the last time you got beat up good and proper?’ In this particular case, Ferius insisted it was a necessary lesson in arta siva.
The Argosi talent for persuasion was one I’d always been keen to learn. Who wouldn’t want to master the art of being charming? However, the Argosi have some peculiar notions about what types of things people actually find endearing, and one of them turns out to be the unique charm of watching someone get beaten up.
‘Back on your feet, kid,’ Ferius said. ‘Can’t dodge when yo—’
‘“Can’t dodge when you’re flat on your back”,’ I finished for her. ‘I know. You taught me that two years ago, when I was getting my arse handed to me by that kid in the Seven Sands.’
A punch to the nose brought me back to the fight. Well, the beating, anyway.
‘Seems you ain’t learned the lesson yet,’ Ferius observed.
Allow me to set the scene properly: three Berabesq cavalry troopers were taking turns punching, kicking and occasionally kneeing me in various tender spots on my body. Interspersed with this was a good deal of insults, ranging from questioning my manhood to … questioning my manhood in other ways. This was made only slightly more embarrassing by the fact that all three soldiers happened to be women. In between the violence and verbal chicanery, they amused themselves by spitting on me. I was squirming on the ground when one of the soldiers decided on a truly ambitious way to wrap up our little exchange: she began to hike down her trousers in preparation for urinating on me.
‘You just gonna lie there and take it?’ Reichis asked in disgust. Here’s something interesting about squirrel cats: they consider urinating on an opponent to be the ultimate dismissal of said opponent as unworthy of being killed, because even a squirrel cat won’t bite something that’s covered in piss.
Am I going to lie here and take it? I asked myself.
Ferius’s theory was that our best bet for getting safe passage past the encampment was for us to act as penitents – our story was that she was travelling in search of God’s blessing to cure her disease and that I was offering myself to be his sword, smiting his enemies and generally bringing glory to his name. If that sounds arrogant beyond belief, well, that was the point.
‘You pathetic little mouse!’ the soldier pulling down her trousers spat. ‘You think God wants you for a sword?’
One of the others chuckled as she egged on her comrade. ‘More likely God wants him for a piss bucket.’
The plan – if you can use that term for something this ill-conceived – was that my earnest commitment and willingness to get beaten senseless by anyone who doubted ‘the devotion of a foreigner inspired by God’s sovereign will’ would cause the soldiers’ commanders to find me first amusing and then – and this is Ferius’s term for it – adorable. The problem, of course, is you can only be so pathetic before people stop finding it entertaining. Also, while instinct and necessity have led me to allow myself to suffer more indignities than most, even I have to draw the line on humiliation somewhere.
That line was being pissed on by a smug Berabesq half-wit soldier.
Just as she tilted her hips in preparation for urinating on top of me, I rolled onto my left side, getting in closer to her and swinging my right foot over her hip. I hooked my leg behind hers and pulled hard. This had the effect of changing the angle of her – quite impressive – stream of urine, such that instead of hitting me, she hit her comrade.
‘Stupid cow!’ the other woman growled. I think it was cow anyway. I always confuse the Berabesq words for ‘cow’ and ‘camel’.
The woman’s soaking prompted laughter in their third comrade, who slapped her on the shoulder. ‘Now who’s God’s piss bucket?’
The second swore and grabbed the rather confused first soldier by the shoulders, pushing her towards me, but by now I’d rolled myself over my back, coming up on the balls of my feet. Still crouching low, I ran around them in a tight circle, which prompted the first soldier to spin like a top in search of me, resulting in her falling onto her comrades and peeing on them more as they shouted obscenities at both of us.
‘Enough!’ roared a new voice.
Two of the three soldiers instantly stood rigidly at attention. The third, thankfully, hiked her trousers back up.
Me? I took a long, slow breath to ready myself for what came next.
‘You want me to handle this, kid?’ Ferius asked quietly.
‘I got it.’
; A commander – I’ve never figured out Berabesq military ranks, which make no sense to me – strode towards us, the crowd of onlooking soldiers parting for him to pass. He had a thick barrel chest covered in an ornate bronze breastplate. Berabesq soldiers have a tradition of spending their off-hours decorating their breastplates using a slow and painstaking art form called hamitshani, in which small, precise hammers and special awls are used to engrave designs into the metal. The designs tend to be religious scenes from one of the Berabesq codices that are of particular inspiration or significance to the soldier in question.
In this particular case, the commander’s breastplate depicted a sinner, his arms bound and stretched to breaking point, having his entrails lifted out by an angelic being who was holding them up to the ray of sun shining down from above.
‘What heresy is this?’ he demanded of his trio of soldiers.
‘Spies, quadan,’ one of them assayed.
Quadan meant ‘guiding hand’ – a high-ranking division commander, if I recalled correctly.
The commander cast a dubious expression at her, but stepped forward to tower over me, idly fingering the coiled barbed whip at his side. ‘To whom belong your eyes?’
It took me a second to translate the odd phrase. He’s asking who I spy for.
I pointed a finger to the sky.
The implication that I was spying for God drew a chuckle from some of the onlookers, but not the commander. He uncoiled his whip. ‘With this I can strip the skin off a man within a single minute.’ He let me see the barbs. ‘It takes even less time when I dislike the man, and I dislike spies very much.’
‘I am no spy,’ I said. I gestured to Ferius. ‘My aunt and I are penitents, come to serve the living god.’
‘He is not your god,’ the woman who’d tried to piss on me said in a rage.
I gave her a belligerent snort. ‘Does not Vizier Ossodif write, “A god is god of all, or god of none”?’
The commander eyed me warily. ‘I have not read this Ossodif.’
Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker Page 19
