The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  She would be scared later, in the safety of a temple where no one could see her but her god and no one would care if she fell down and started weeping. These fears were for her alone.

  Right now everyone else needed her to survive.

  She clambered to her feet once she was free of the carnage. The scraws’ charge had slowed and the creatures waded amid the melee, clawing and snapping at Karnerians struggling to drop spears and pull out swords. One of the beasts went down beneath a throng of black-clad soldiers, even as one more creature pulled something red and glistening out from the melee and tossed its head back, swallowing it whole.

  For a moment Asper could not help but marvel at it, even as Dransun rushed out of the alley mouth to drag her into the shadows. She had seen violence before, she had fought monsters and demons, she had faced horrors from beyond any world or god she had ever known.

  Somehow, none of it seemed to compare to the crimson splendor of mankind.

  “I’m just saying that, in the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t the worst way this could have come out.”

  “I’m sure that’ll be a comfort to the widows and orphans I have to tell that to tonight. ‘Sorry, darling, but the grand scheme ordered your husband to be trampled to death in a melee between foreigners.’”

  The men were fighting again.

  “You don’t have to tell them that.”

  “You’re right. You do. This is your temple, holy man. You’re in charge. You should be the one to tell them why we aren’t out there doing more.”

  As they always were, lately.

  “The Jhouche were disbanded, Captain. Don’t presume to command me and don’t presume that filling these people’s heads with hopelessness will amount to anything. The only way we succeed is if they help and the only way they help is if we convince them it’s worth hanging on.”

  Aturach would always speak in such a way: lots of hollow promises, lots of bids for optimism, lots of nothing getting done.

  “I could do more with a pack of harsh truths and six men with swords than your entire volunteer service, holy man. If you want to convince these people that it’s worth hanging on, you need to show them we aren’t going to be pushed around by foreigner scum.”

  And Dransun would always respond just like that: calls to action, brave speeches, a lot of colorful words to justify getting a lot of people killed.

  This would go on for a little while longer, at least. Soon enough their arguments would become less coherent, more heated. Rationality would be exchanged for insults, insults for posturing, and posturing for sulking. Meanwhile, on the floor below them in the temple proper, more people would be dying. And in the streets outside, where the war raged, more people would be dying. And no matter how few hours in the day, there seemed always to be time enough for men to sit around making asses of themselves.

  She took a sip of her coffee.

  Not that anyone asked my opinion.

  The steaming hot liquid bit her with a force that tea had failed to match after the third day of… this, whatever it was she was doing.

  Coffee made more sense, in any event. It was easier to brew, kept her more alert. There were downsides: It was harder to ignore the squabbling when she was sharp. But coffee had one trait that made it absolutely necessary.

  When she looked down into the black liquid, she couldn’t see anyone staring back at her.

  “It’s not like I don’t admire the hell out of what you’re doing here,” Dransun said with a sigh. “It’s just…”

  And this was it, the moment when the match was decided. When Dransun fell back into his chair to sit beside her, when the strong soldier disappeared and all the gray hairs, old scars, and armor settled down on the slouching softness of a weary man. This was when Dransun relented.

  One more aged, creaking relic to add to the pile, Asper thought, casting a glance around the area that had become their farce of a war room. This seems to be the place for it.

  The attic of the Temple of Talanas seemed more a graveyard than a place venerating the Healer ought to tolerate. Here ancient medical supplies rusted on shelves and wooden idols of the winged God of Healing gathered dust in corners. When Dransun finally cracked, they’d leave him up here, she thought. She would follow. Aturach probably wouldn’t last long enough to crack.

  “When I first joined up with you, this was a mission of maintaining,” the guardsman continued. “Try to minimize the damage the shkainai could do, save who we could. And when we thought this was going to be a brief thing that would see one side dead within a few weeks, that was going to work.”

  The implication, the hanging dread in Dransun’s voice, finally caused Asper to look up. Beneath the weariness on his face, fear was beginning to show through. And it was reflected on the thin, boyish features of Aturach as Dransun removed a pair of parchments and set them down upon the table.

  Aturach merely stared at them, as though Dransun had just put a human head on his table. After a moment Asper shot him a glare as she reached out and took them. She unfurled them, gave them a quick glance over.

  “These are letters,” she said.

  “From one of my old subordinates in the Jhouche,” Dransun said. “He fled to one of the outskirt towns outside the Green Belt on horseback, sent word to me as soon as he heard.” The guardsman leaned forward, settling his elbows upon the table. “The situation has changed.”

  “What?” Aturach looked to Asper with alarm. “What do they say?”

  Aturach had a soft face, too soft to keep the panic off his high cheeks and thin eyebrows. He wasn’t ready for this news. Not that Asper could blame him; the rest of his fellow priests had been killed and he, at the ripe age of twenty-four, had found himself in the position of Cier’Djaal’s high priest of Talanas. She almost didn’t want to tell him.

  But there was precious little use for a soft man these days.

  “The Sainites and Karnerians both have supply convoys coming through the desert,” Asper sighed.

  She threw the papers onto the table. Aturach moved to snatch them up and pore over them in the desperate hope that she had misread. She leaned back in her chair and draped an arm over her face. Not that she thought she would scream, but if she did, better she smother the sound.

  “This says they’re a month out from the city,” Aturach muttered.

  “I got those letters yesterday,” Dransun replied. “My contact is close to the border. The convoys will be here in two weeks.” He leaned forward, forced Aturach to meet the severity of his stare. “That means more troops and more food and weapons to supply them. This city won’t even be standing after they’re done with it.”

  “So… so what do we do?” Aturach’s gaze swiveled to Asper. “What should we do?”

  “What we should have been doing in the first place,” Dransun snarled. “We stand up to those dogs. We fight. We outnumber them twenty to one!”

  “A regular army we’ve got here.” Aturach gestured to the attic’s door. “You figure I should go down there and start rallying the forces? Have the widows and cripples make up the vanguard? Orphans on the right flank, beggars on the left?”

  “You’ve fed them, sheltered them, tended their wounds.” Dransun stomped the floor. “Below us they’re all crowded together like puppies mating. You’ve given them everything. They owe you.”

  “The gods of the Karnerians and Sainites make demands,” Aturach hissed. “The Healer gives. If we start telling them that mercy has a price, they’ll stop helping us altogether.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s bad enough that the Temple of Ancaa is taking in refugees on the promise of conversion only.”

  “If the Ancaarans are willing to get things done,” Dransun growled, “then maybe conversion isn’t too much to ask.”

  “You understand nothing of—”

  “Don’t presume to lecture me, you—”

  “This is about faith! This is about—”

  “Survival trumps faith. No one will pray if no one—”
r />   And on, and on, and on.

  Asper’s eyes drifted to one of the idols in the corner. It seemed not so long ago that she and Aturach had prayed before it together in the temple’s main hall. Once the refugees started coming, of course, they had moved it up here to make room for another cot for another body from another fight.

  She had thought, at the time, the Healer would approve.

  Perhaps you’ve been going about this the wrong way, Asper thought to herself. Maybe the Temple of Ancaa has it right. Take in the refugees who swear to serve Ancaa. Ancaa smiles on that. Ancaa protects them. Maybe gods don’t give a shit what you do so long as you say their name with a smile on your face.

  A fleeting thought. One of many.

  Yet it was this one that caused that dark, quiet corner of her mind to stir, as a voice hissed in agreement.

  They should bow to you, not a god.

  She shook her head, as if she could force it out through her ears. Just a thought, she told herself. Just a fleeting thought. One of many.

  When she looked back to the table, she saw that the argument had stopped. Both men were staring expectantly at her, and for a moment her blood froze. They hadn’t heard that, had they? They didn’t know. They couldn’t know.

  Right?

  “Well?” Dransun asked.

  “Well what?” she replied.

  “What do you think we should do?” Aturach asked.

  “Why do I have to decide?”

  “Because this simpering pup will do whatever you tell him,” Dransun growled.

  “And this old goat only ever seems to move when you push him.” Aturach shot a glare to the guardsman before his expression softened. “More than that, though, it’s you the people respect. You’re the one out on the streets, bringing them back here.”

  “You’re the one stitching their wounds,” Dransun agreed, nodding. “Northern or not, they’ll listen to you and abide by what you have to say.”

  “So should we,” Aturach said.

  Asper took in their expectant stares for a moment.

  “I’m flattered,” she said. “Speechless, even.” She eased back in her chair, took a very long sip of her coffee. She smacked her lips, calmly regarded the two men, and spoke softly. “Now kindly get the fuck out.”

  Dransun merely looked annoyed. Aturach, though, looked as though she had just slapped him with a dead puppy.

  “That’s no way to talk to people who are—”

  “People who are many things,” Asper interrupted. “Fearless, compassionate, and incredibly annoying. None of those are useful for this decision.” She rose from her chair, knuckled the small of her back, and found that woefully inadequate for easing the ache from her bones. “If you’re handing me this decision, then it’ll be made when I say it is.”

  She walked to the attic door, opened it, and made an inviting gesture. “Until then, gentlemen, it’s not like we don’t have enough to do.”

  They grumbled their assent, exchanging curt glances with each other and her as they slowly shuffled out of the room. Aturach turned, an apology playing on his lips before she held up a hand to silence him, shutting the door shortly after.

  She half-regretted that. Not out of any concern for Aturach’s feelings, but because, in the silence that ensued, there was nothing to deafen her to the symphony of little pains that followed.

  She could almost plan her day around them by now. Her back was stiff from sunup to sundown. Her feet ached from running from soldiers and her fingers hurt from either tending to wounds or keeping would-be thieves from the temple.

  But it wasn’t until she was alone, when all was silent and even the distant sounds of carnage were muted, that she felt the worst pain. There, beneath the skin of her left arm, she could feel it. Something writhing. Something gnawing. Something watching as she pressed a hand to it.

  And felt that dark corner of her mind stir in anticipation.

  It will not end happily, you know.

  She shook her head to silence it, made a move to turn back to the letters. If it would not be still in idleness, then that was a good enough reason to start getting something done. Perhaps there was something else that Dransun’s source had mentioned regarding—

  She froze.

  There, upon the floor, a shadow stood dark enough to drown the scant light afforded by the tiny attic window. She followed its sprawl for what seemed an impossibly long time to a pair of dark feet.

  And there, at the center of the room, back turned to her, he stood. As though he had been standing there all this time.

  He had been standing there all this time, for he had intended to be seen there at precisely this moment. She knew this because he was not a man of possibilities. He was a man of certainties.

  And she knew this because she knew him. This man. This darkness of a man.

  “Do you suspect them of lying to you?”

  His voice was as deep and vast as his shadow. And yet she could sense no malice in either. His was not a predatory darkness, something that sought to snuff light. His was an ancient darkness, something so deep and impenetrable as to be beyond such concepts.

  “They say the people trust you, that they look up to you,” the man of certainties continued. “You, pale and northern. Far from your home, farther from theirs. Does it not seem odd that they should look to you for solace?”

  “They don’t see me.” Her voice crept timidly from her throat. “Not as a person. They see me in the middle of the war, they see me carrying bodies or barking orders. I’m an action, not a person.”

  He did not face her as he spoke. “Can an action die?”

  At this her left arm twitched. “What are you doing here?”

  And finally did he turn to face her with eyes that looked as though they had simply forgotten how to blink. Dark circles rimmed a darker stare, and the face and scalp were shorn clean of hair. His body was thin, sinew wrapped in dark flesh wrapped in a threadbare robe. Not sickly, but far from well, he looked like a man whose concerns no longer included things like sleep or food.

  “Hearing the other side of the debate,” he replied.

  No cryptic allusion in his voice. No riddle in his words. He was a man of certainties. And what he was certain of, she was certain she did not want to know.

  “More soldiers are coming?” he asked.

  “In two weeks,” she replied.

  “Two weeks.” The man looked to the window. “I wonder if there will be anything left to fight for.”

  “There will be.” The answer sprang to her lips. “We’re going to do something.”

  He looked back at her, away from her gaze and to her left arm. She knew he was not looking at mere flesh. His eyes slid past that, past sinew and blood, past bone and marrow. He knew what lurked beneath her skin.

  “Amoch-Tethr.”

  He knew its name. The name of the curse in her flesh, the thing that spoke to her in darkness and ate her fears.

  “Soldiers, weapons, humans…,” he whispered. “You need none of them. Everything that you could ever need for change lies within you.”

  She could feel it: him, her, whatever horror it was. Amoch-Tethr, the thing inside her left arm, squirmed and writhed in joy at being recognized. Inside her head its voice was a noise of excitement, a wet purring that raked across Asper’s skull. She drew the sleeve of her robe over her arm, clutched it protectively.

  And inside her, Amoch-Tethr snarled.

  “No,” she said, to both the man and the thing.

  “Why?”

  “Because I know what this thing does to people.”

  “And you know what people do to people.”

  “No.”

  What was that reflected in his face, she wondered? Acceptance of her choice? Contempt at her outburst? His eyes, for the moment, chose not to speak.

  And so she felt compelled to ask. “What have you come to tell me?”

  At this the faintest smile crept across his features. “That more eyes than you know are
watching you.” He glanced to her arm. “Both of you.” He turned, walked to the window. “And I wonder if they will like what they see.”

  She resisted the urge to ask for names, numbers, intentions. He had said precisely as much as he meant to and not a word more. She knew him only from meetings like this, in brief moments and shadows. But in those moments, she had known everything about him, through his eyes, through his shadow, through his certainty.

  Such was the man called Mundas.

  He came to a stop before the tiny attic window. His eyes drifted to a wooden idol of Talanas.

  “A thought,” he said. “Have you tried asking the gods?”

  She said nothing. He didn’t need to hear anything. The smile returned, a ghost on his lips.

  “Before it all comes to an end,” he said, “promise me you will try.” He looked to the window. “I want to know how long it takes them to answer.”

  She couldn’t say when he had left. How he had left. He was simply gone, as though he had never been there.

  THREE

  A VEIL SO THICK

  He did not dream often.

  But when he did, he dreamed of her.

  The stages were always different. Sometimes they were the grand halls of a palace, statues marching the length of a golden hall to hail him, the returning emperor. Occasionally they were musty theaters that smelled of old wood and cracked paint, motes of dust dancing in shafts of light that opened upon him and presented him to a hundred empty seats.

  But she was always the same.

  She would appear in the distance, and always in golden light—walking down a shimmering path through the pillars, emerging from a halo from the back of the theater. At first he would see her only in the curves of her hips, the easy stride of her long legs. Then in finer details: the flutter of dark hair, the tilt of a proud chin, the dark eyes beneath heavy lids.

  And it always ended the same way. She would come to him, kneel beside him, trace delicate fingers down his cheek, and whisper in his ear.

  “Dreadaeleon.”

  It came from far away, to brush his ear so tenderly close that everything else seemed so very cold in the silence that followed. And so he reached for her, to hold on to her and keep himself warm.