Heretic of Set

by J. Steven York

  Their chief rejoined the line of horses, but they did not charge.

  Teferi scowled. “What are they waiting for?”

  “For our fear to grow,” said Havilah grimly.

  “These are men used to being feared,” said Anok. “I know their kind well.”

  “We will teach them fear,” said Fallon, drawing her long sword.

  Havilah chuckled. “I like your spirit, barbarian. You could have been one of my people.”

  “I hear you keep your women hobbled in tents. I will keep my tribe, desert man. Watch me, and know what your women could do, given half a chance!”

  Havilah grunted skeptically, then flashed her a smile.

  The horsemen began to ride.

  “Here they come,” said Havilah. “Make ready! Fight hard! Die well if you must!” He waved his scimitar in salute to his offspring. “You will live always in my hearts, my sons, as may I in yours!”

  The raised their blades in answer, and rode into the charge. The others came after, Anok and Teferi struggling to stay on their rushing camels. Fallon stood in a half crouch on the platform of her white-furred beast, hanging on to the corner poles for support, sword in hand.

  The horsemen charged on, and Anok’s party looked straight down the muzzles of those lean, dark, horses. Then, suddenly, the charging horses veered off sharply to the left.

  Havilah pulled the camels up short, and their party struggled to regroup. “We have been tricked!”

  “Those devils,” shouted Teferi, “they seek defenseless prey! After them!” Suddenly it was he leading the charge, urging his camel on ever faster.

  Havilah rallied the rest after him. Anok following close behind the nomads, and Fallon and her white camel, the great creature not trained or saddled for speed, brought up the rear.

  They watched in horror as the horsemen came to the edge of the dry pond and split into two groups, a smaller party leaping over the circled camels, while the rest circled, shooting arrows into the fray.

  To their credit, the two servants were waiting, with swords drawn, standing between the two camel boys and danger. They engaged the horsemen with courage, if not much skill.

  The merchants had blades, too, but they held them up weakly, cowered behind the camels, and waited to die.

  Before the sons of Havilah could reach them, one of the servants had fallen, an arrow through his heart. One of the boys climbed up from behind him and picked up his bloodied sword.

  Then the battle began, as Havilah’s brood charged into the outer group, swords flashing in the sun.

  Anok mustered his courage, not against their attackers, but against his mount. Now he had to trust the strange beast and what he had learned in less than two days.

  He tightened his knee around the horn, made sure his foot was firmly locked under the other leg, then dropped the reins and drew both swords.

  The Kush horses were skittish and easily spooked, but Anok’s mount was well trained, and seemingly fearless. She roared as they rode in among the bandits. As he passed through the line, each bandit managed to deflect his blows, with swords or shields, but he broke their line and put them on the defensive.

  He saw Fallon ride past, her camel practically stepping over the others. From the corner of his eye, he saw a Kushite horse rearing, rider preparing to stab with his lance, below him a boy holding the fallen servant’s sword.

  Fallon let go the corner posts and took up her long sword with two hands. She swung, hard, as she rode past.

  For a moment, the white camel’s body blocked his view, and when it passed, Anok saw the bandits severed head spinning through the air, the horse charging away as its headless rider slowly slumped from the saddle.

  Anok heard rapid hoofbeats behind him and turned, barely deflecting the point of a lance past his head with his sword.

  He answered with his other sword, catching the rider as he passed, opening a wide, red gash between the bandit’s ribs.

  Anok did not follow as his attacker rode away, but turned and headed back into the center of the fight.

  The white camel was back in the middle of things, becoming a nearly stationary tower from which Fallon could fight. The bandits seemed not to want to harm the camel, probably because of its special value.

  As he watched, Fallon reached down and grabbed the other camel boy by the wrist, tossing him onto the platform behind her. He crouched there, trying to stay away from her sword and the flying arrows.

  He spotted Teferi nearby, kneeling behind his fallen camel, pulling off one arrow after another, keeping the horsemen on the defense. As long as they had their shields up, it was difficult for them to attack with their lances, costing them at least one advantage.

  Anok slipped past one rider’s lance and got close enough to sink his left blade into the bandit’s heart. A spray of blood cascaded over Anok’s arm, and he hissed with pain. It burned like fire where blood touched the Mark of Set.

  “Blood is the food of dark sorcery,” Ramsa Aál had once told him, “and blood of the living heart is sweetest of all.” He felt the Mark of Set call to him, but still he resisted. He remembered what had happened when he and Teferi had gone against the White Scorpions. He feared that the corruption of magic would betray him and have him slay his friends as well as his enemies.

  Anok rode on, trying to hold the blade in his left hand and ignore the trembling that was working its way up to his elbow.

  He turned and went at another horseman, but he was forced to pass on the right, and his left arm would not serve him. The blade thudded ineffectively against the bandit’s wooden shield and fell from his hand. He cursed.

  Another rider slipped up on him. He managed to fend off the point of his lance, but the horse bumped his camel and the rider’s shield slammed into him, throwing him to the ground.

  Anok scrambled to his feet, finding some cover behind a dead camel. There lay one of the merchants, dead across the fallen animal, an arrow protruding from his back.

  A few paces beyond, he saw the other merchant, lying in a pool of blood from his own severed throat.

  A few paces beyond that, he could see Moahavilah also to ground, an arrow through the flesh of his upper left arm. The young nomad reached down and with a roar broke the shaft off a finger’s length from his bloodied robes, then kept on fighting.

  Only Fallon still seemed to be on her camel now, and the horsemen took turns running circles around her, keeping just out of sword’s reach.

  We’re losing! Anok realized that it was only a matter of time now. They were pinned down, outnumbered, and Teferi was down to using arrows pulled from the dead camels. They could never prevail by force alone.

  He saw the lead bandit riding at him and started to raise his remaining sword in desperate defense. Then he thought better of it.

  Anok stood, open and vulnerable, and planted his sword point first into the sand in front of him. He spread his arms wide, made eye contact with the bandit leader, and shouted, “truce!”

  Among the defenders, all eyes turned to him.

  But on the bandit captain rode, his lance pointed at Anok’s heart.

  His wrist burned and tingled, his fingers twitched uncontrollably, but Anok stood his ground. He waited for the point to pierce his chest.

  The horse charged up, and just as it would have struck, the lance was lifted, the horse sliding to a stop just in front of him, swallowing them all in a cloud of dust.

  When the dust settled, Anok was still standing, and the leader grinned down at him. He shouted a command in Kushite, and the riders fell back, circling at a safe distance from the defenders.

  He looked down at Anok. “You wish to surrender, Stygian?”

  “I wish to challenge. You and I, man-to-man. Our sides have both taken losses. Let it end here. If I fall, all I ask is that you give the others water and a head start. If you fall, your men will withdraw and trouble us no more.”

  The bandit chief stared at him for a minute, wide-eyed, then threw back his head a
nd roared with laughter. He dug his heels into the horse, and it started to turn away. “Let us finish this!”

  “Coward!” It was an act of desperation, but it seemed to work.

  The leader hesitated, turned back.

  “You heard me, coward! Let your men see that you are afraid to face one, lone, Stygian city man! You are old, and weak, and one day soon a true man of Kush will slit your throat as you sleep and rightfully take your place!”

  His horse danced restlessly. The leader looked at him and sneered. Then he said, “I will fight you, but when you die, I will kill all, save the camels and the woman that I keep for myself.”

  “Good luck with the woman,” muttered Anok, under his breath.

  The bandit raised his eyebrows. “What did you say?”

  “I said I will still fight you,” he shouted back, retrieving his sword.

  “Do not do this,” shouted Havilah. “If you lose, you die for nothing, and if you win, they will never keep their word.”

  Anok spat on the ground and trudged forward. “But he will still be dead!”

  The bandit leader trotted his horse fifty feet or so away then turned. Anok hoped that honor would force him to dismount, but he did not. Instead he raised his lance and heel-kicked his horse into a charge.

  Anok stood his ground, feet apart, knees bent, ready to move in any direction. He faked to the right, and the lance point followed.

  Then he dived left at the last minute, using the numbness in his left arm to his advantage as he rolled on it, unable to feel the pain, and landed on his feet as the horse thundered past.

  The bandit immediately wheeled his horse around and charged again.

  Anok feigned movement to the left, but the bandit captain was having none of it. Anok moved right, and the lance anticipated it. He ducked, but the point of it slashed across his arm, cutting a deep gash in his flesh and nearly knocking him off his feet.

  He staggered, trying to fend off the pain. I’m better than this! Better yes, on a good day, with both swords and a left arm that obeyed his commands.

  Again the charge. Anok tried to duck inside the lance and was successful, but the shaft knocked his sword back before it could find its target, and the horse’s shoulder struck him, spinning him around so that his sword flew away, and he landed chest down in the dirt.

  He tasted his own blood, felt ribs grating in his chest as he struggled to breathe.

  He heard the bandit leader laughing as he circled back. “Pray to your god of snakes, Stygian! He will not help you now!”

  Anok lay there, feeling the burning running up his left arm, like blood poisoning reaching for his heart, ancient voices whispering to him out of unseen mist.

  The chief rode up, and his horse whinnied and reared.

  He means to trample me to death!

  For weeks on end, Anok Wati had struggled against the Mark of Set. Now he set it free.

  Magic washed over him like a warm wave at the beach. Pain faded, as did the taunting cries of the bandits, the sound of their horses replaced by the rhythmic pounding of his own blood in his ears. His heart slowed, and he was gripped by a calm resolve, as hard and cold as iron.

  Anok rolled over and held up his left hand, fingers cupped.

  The horse towered over him, front legs pawing the air, sharp hooves ready to slam down on him.

  “Away!”

  The horse’s eyes widened, the pawing of the legs now somehow desperate, and it staggered backward, then toppled, falling over.

  With the skill of a master horseman, the bandit chief leapt from his saddle and dived to one side, barely avoiding being crushed by his own mount.

  He came up quickly, his long, curved, knife in his hand, easily the equal of Anok’s fallen sword. He smiled, and those sharpened bestial teeth glinted in the sun.

  The bandit charged with a roar, great knife held high.

  Anok saw his fallen blade in the sand a short distance behind his left foot. He held out his left hand at it. “Sword!”

  As though pulled by invisible strings, the sword jumped from the sand and flew through the air toward Anok. But it did not come to his hand. It spun through the air, and he guided it with his gestures, sweeping it past him, so that it flashed past over the chieftain’s head.

  The bandit ran two more steps before he saw his hand, still holding his knife, fall in front of him.

  The bandit stopped, screaming, and clutched at his spurting wrist with his remaining hand. He looked to Anok, eyes wide, searching for some sign of mercy.

  The sword spun past the chief again, making him flinch. But it merely returned to Anok’s hand, and he replaced it in its sheath on his back.

  A look of relief crossed the bandit chief’s agonized features.

  Then Anok extended his hand toward him. “Die!”

  The bandit’s eyes went wide with agony, his mouth open in a gurgling scream, arms extended wide, his severed hand now of little consequence.

  There was a wet crack, a liquid ripping sound like a small tree being uprooted in a swamp, and the chieftain’s chest burst open, his still-beating heart flying to land with a plop in Anok’s hand, where he crushed the life out of it before the bandit’s dying eyes.

  Then he threw the heart on the ground, stomped it beneath his sandal, and stood over the fallen body of the chief. He looked around at the horsemen, his bloodied hand extended, and roared, “Who will be next!”

  The horsemen stopped; their horses bucking and rearing, they looked at each other, then turned and ran at full gallop.

  “Run!” Anok screamed after them. “Run, dogs, or I will rip your heads off and feed them to your necks!”

  And run they did, until nothing could be seen of them but fading clouds of dust.

  Anok watched them go.

  Then his legs began to tremble. He glanced down at the Mark of Set. There was more power there, much, but he had no strength left to wield it.

  He staggered and fell to his knees.

  “Anok!” He heard Teferi’s deep voice, but he could not see from where. He could see the others though, Havilah, his sons, the camel boys, even Fallon, looking at him with shock—and fear.

  “Anok!”

  It is better this way. They will be spared—

  His eyes grew dark, and he felt himself falling. He did not feel himself land.

  10

  ANOK WOKE TO see the sun, low and red in the sky. He was disoriented. It took him a while to realize that the sun was in the east and that he was looking at morning, not dusk, through the open flap of a tent.

  Then he heard several unusual sounds. One, was a slow, irregular, clanking of stone against stone. The other was the sound of singing. He did not recognize the language, but it sounded as though a man was singing a prayer.

  He pushed aside the blanket—already it was too hot for it—and found clean clothing in his bags. To his surprise, he moved easily and without pain. He took a moment to inspect his side, and his shoulder where he had been wounded, but they were already nearly healed. How long have I slept?

  His dirty and torn clothing from the battle were there, too. He inspected them and found some of the blood not completely dry.

  He inspected the mark on his wrist. There was no redness, no irritation, the skin around the mark of the serpent pink and healthy. Moreover, the mark itself seemed to have changed. It was still outlined in black, but the fine pattern of scales seemed filled with an iridescence that shimmered as it moved in the sunlight. It was a small difference, but he noticed.

  Anok finished dressing, realizing as he did that he was parched and hungry. He stepped out of the tent and saw that they had moved from the site of the battle, though the surrounding hills and terrain seemed similar. Then a movement to the west caught his eye, and he saw many vultures circling near the horizon.

  The surviving camels, including the white one, were tied up nearby. The rest of the tents were already taken down, assuming they had ever been set up. He followed the sound of the sing
ing around the back of the tent and up a low rise, where he saw Havilah, Moahavilah, Teferi, and Fallon standing around a mound of stones that could only be a grave. Moahavilah was the one singing.

  Three other mounds of stones were nearby, the last of which was still being added to by Havilah’s two unwounded sons, the clanking of stones he had heard from the tent.

  Anok started walking up to join them, but before he had gone far, Teferi spotted him and hurried down to meet him.

  He took Anok by the arm, and steered him back toward the tent. “You should not be out, brother. You are injured and ill.”

  He shook off Teferi’s hands. “I’m fine!” He pulled back his robe to show him the nearly healed shoulder.

  Instead of being pleased, Teferi scowled. “Magic, I suppose.”

  Anok nodded. “The same thing happened when I brought down the White Scorpions, though you were in no shape afterward to notice. Unleashing the power of the mark seems to heal my wounds almost instantly.”

  “This will not sit well with the others. We pulled a piece of arrow from Moahavilah’s shoulder as long as my hand, and he will be long in healing.”

  “What do you mean by that? Sit well with the others?”

  Teferi leaned closer. “They fear you, Anok, now that they have seen with their own eyes what you can do. Even I fear you. I fear for you.” He looked away at the vultures and shook his head sadly. “I have seen now, too, what I had only heard before as tales, my kinsmen corrupted by evil magic. There was no mercy in them, no honor; only cruelty and malice.”

  “They were men, Teferi. It takes no magic for men of any land or bloodline to be evil and cruel. It is only a wonder when they aren’t.”

  “Before the Sikugiza, the dark time, our people lived in peace, with themselves and with their land. This is what has become of them, those who did not flee their land forever as my forefathers did.” He looked at Anok. “Sorcery did this to them, brother. Now what is it doing to you?”

  Anok found himself annoyed. “Nothing. Nothing is what it is doing. I’m learning to control it. I saved us all, yesterday, if you didn’t notice.” He nodded up the hill. “If I had only failed to hesitate, if I had acted sooner, I might have saved their lives.”