The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  Almost immediately rope ladders descended from the platform atop its back. People began to disembark, crates and sacks were lowered from great ropes. And the crowd below swarmed up to meet those coming down—hawking wares, asking for news from downriver—until the arrivals and merchants became a continuous swarm off the back of the thing, which seemed quite unperturbed by the commotion.

  Of all of its qualities—Lenk called it an it, for he knew not what else to call it—that was what unnerved him: the utter indifference to everything smaller than itself. Did it even notice them, he wondered? It must, to have halted as it had.

  “This, for the record, is why it’s an event.” He suddenly became aware of Shuro at his side, who looked up with a grin. “Even if he didn’t bring goods and news, the arrival of the Old Man would be enough to wake the town.”

  “The Old Man?” He turned to her, agog. “It has a name?”

  “Well, it seems something that big ought to, right? But this is just one of a few. The river gets a bit too choppy east of Jalaang to accommodate boats, so the Old Men are around to help.”

  “Where did they come from?” Lenk asked, staring up and forever up.

  “No one’s quite sure,” Shuro said, hopping off the crates. “The Old Man certainly won’t tell you, so we all assume it’s best to just not ask.” She gestured for him to follow as she turned to leave. “They’ll want us to load soon.”

  She had already disappeared into the crowd by the time Lenk made it down. But before he could do the same, he felt a voice brush past his ear.

  “Curious, isn’t she?”

  Mocca’s voice slipped past as easy as a breeze. And without thinking, he replied.

  “She’s pleasant,” Lenk said. “And not a hallucination. That’s more than I can say for my company of late.”

  “People come either pleasant or honest. Never both.”

  “She only just met me. What could she possibly have to lie to me about?”

  “You only just met her. How many lies have you told her, Farlan?”

  The breeze died along with Mocca’s voice. The humid reek of the river seeped into Lenk’s clothes, made him roll his shoulder. The sword rolled once and settled back.

  Heavy as ever.

  FIVE

  TIMING

  When the seventh day finally came and its pale-blue dawn had turned to a remorseless golden afternoon, Gariath decided that this would be the day that he died.

  Not that any god had decreed it; gods were for humans and thus useless. Nor did any fate demand it; fate was how idiots explained their idiocy. Gariath did not believe in gods or fate. He believed in things he could touch.

  Such as the empty waterskin he dropped from his hand, watching the very last drop of liquid fall from its lip to be swallowed by hungry sand.

  Thirst was a long and painful way to die. Fortunately he had quicker options.

  He looked long to the horizon, over the cresting dunes to the sandy ridge. There they stood painted as shadows upon the morning. A little closer today, as they had been creeping closer each day since he had spotted them.

  Timid guests. Too shy to come share his company.

  He could not see them from so far away. And whenever he came closer to them, they scurried away and hid. But they never bothered to hide their scent. And now, as the breeze changed, he could smell their caution turn to certainty, as if they agreed that this was a good day to kill him.

  He turned and stalked back down the dune, to the shallow valley that had served as his camp the night before. No fire had burned; there wasn’t enough scrub in the desert for that. No food remained; they had eaten it all two days ago. And now there was no more water.

  He could tell it was his campsite only by his companion slumbering upon the ground. And even he was difficult to differentiate from a giant rock.

  In fairness, Gariath admitted, it was hard to tell the difference between a boulder and a vulgore even when the latter was alert and ambulatory. Two tons and ten feet of red flesh and bone that resembled nothing so much as the fruit of a night of tender and terrifying lovemaking between a gorilla and a rhinoceros, few people would dare rouse a giant such as this from his slumber.

  Few humans, anyway.

  Gariath, though, was Rhega. Dragonman. Gariath was out of both water and patience, thanks to this creature. And thus it came all too easily that he should raise his broad foot and kick his companion squarely in the back of his head.

  “Uh?” Kudj rumbled from his slumber, turning to regard Gariath through squinty eyes. His brow hung heavy, weighed down by the thick horn jutting from his forehead, making it hard to tell if his eyes were open. “Kudj uncertain if squib know this, but society consider it rude to roust by kicking.”

  “We’re out of water,” Gariath replied.

  Kudj sighed, a great heaving noise, as he clambered to his feet, looming over Gariath and leaning forward to rest tremendous arms on tremendous knuckles. It was little surprise that they should be out by now, Gariath thought. He was far from small himself, and between their combined seventeen feet of girth, they had consumed what little they had brought fairly handily.

  “Our guests?” Kudj asked.

  “Close today,” Gariath said. “Closer than before.”

  Kudj nodded as though this, too, were inevitable. “Squib see them?”

  “Smelled them. They’ll attack today.”

  “Naw.” Kudj waved a massive paw of a hand. “Shicts not prefer straightforward confrontations.”

  “They fear us,” Gariath muttered.

  Kudj’s laughter was decidedly bleak for how loud it was. “Shicts not scared, just efficient. Don’t fight unless they have no chance of losing. If squib see them, it because they let squib see them.” He looked up at the sweltering sun, squinting. “Maybe wait another day before attacking. But…”

  Six days of travel together had been enough to teach Gariath when the vulgore was about to say something stupid. And he knew Kudj was about to say something stupid when he looked over his shoulder, back in the direction they had been walking from all this time.

  Back toward Cier’Djaal.

  “Oasis town not far from here,” Kudj grunted. “Two days. We move fast, make it in one. Shicts not come too close to human towns. We leave now, we maybe even make it by…”

  Kudj’s voice withered as he turned and met the scowl scarred across his companion’s face.

  It took quite a bit to make something as big as a vulgore sigh with the kind of defeat that made Kudj’s gigantic shoulders slump. But Gariath was nothing if not dedicated.

  Four days ago Kudj had proposed turning back. Three days ago Kudj had argued about turning back. Two days ago Kudj had made several bodily threats about what would happen if they didn’t turn back. Today Kudj didn’t even bother asking.

  Just as well; Gariath never felt like explaining.

  To him it was simple. Cier’Djaal was a wicked place. Its people consumed each other for gold, stepped over corpses in the street on their way to jobs that made them labor for coppers, ate rotten meat and moldy bread and congratulated themselves on how much better they were for it.

  Cier’Djaal was not a city. Cier’Djaal was a disease, an infected wound upon the land whence the human infection spread.

  And they—all of them, Lenk and the others—had chosen it over him.

  He would not go back. He would not even look in the direction for fear that the scent of cowardice and greed would overwhelm him. He never bothered to explain this, either.

  How it wasn’t obvious to everyone was beyond him.

  So he turned away from Kudj and he walked away from him and he did not look back.

  “Kudj initially drawn to squib’s fearless willingness to leave all comfort behind,” the vulgore rumbled. “But Kudj ponders what point is made by wandering out to die in desert.”

  Gariath’s sole reply was a glare cast over his shoulder. Kudj knew the answer, as did anyone with passing knowledge of humans. Though the Karn
erians and Sainites might fight each other in Cier’Djaal, it was no place for nonhumans. Kudj sighed, holding up a hand in acknowledgment.

  “Kudj flee because Kudj afraid,” he said. “Squib not afraid. Why squib go?” He looked out over Gariath’s head to the dunes beyond. “Nothing out there. What squib want to find?”

  And Gariath stopped. In six days Kudj had never asked that. In six days Gariath had never thought to come up with an answer.

  His concerns had always been for what had been behind him: the city and its stench, the humans and their weakness, his companions…

  Former companions, he corrected himself, as weak, as cowardly, as stupid as any other humans.

  He wasn’t sure what he had hoped to find out here in the desert. Not gods. Not fate. Nothing but sand stretched before him, rising in great dunes. And somewhere beyond them, someone waited to kill him. Death was all he would find out here.

  And behind him there was life. There was water. There was food. There were things to touch, there were people he had once called by name. They all waited back there, in that city.

  That city they had chosen over him.

  And with that, Gariath knew he could only go forward.

  “Squib?” Kudj called after him as he trudged forward. “Squib! What Kudj supposed to do now?”

  And Gariath had no answer.

  Everyone had to choose their own way to die.

  After it had taken everything else from him, the sun finally took time.

  How long, he wondered, had he been trekking through the desert? How long had it been since he left Kudj staring absently at him? An hour? Maybe even another day? Had night passed without his noticing?

  Under his own sun, the one in the north that bashfully peeked out from behind storm clouds on occasion, he would have called that impossible. But here, in the desert, the sun was a different creature.

  The heat cooked his skull, sent his vision swimming and darkening at the edges. His limbs creaked beneath him as he trudged over dunes and into valleys, muscles burning without water to soothe them. His tongue lolled from his jaws, head swaying precariously on his neck.

  The sun here was something constant and avaricious, reaching down to pluck the water from his mouth, the strength from his limbs, leaving him barely enough strength to go on. Yet he did go on, and as if in punishment, the sun left him enough thought to realize that he was alone.

  Again.

  He had abandoned Kudj.

  No. He had enough sense left to deny, at least. No, Kudj is weak. He would go crawling back to the humans and beg for their scraps.

  The humans.

  The anger that suddenly boiled through him made the sun feel chilly in comparison.

  He could still see them now, their faces etched in his mind as clearly as they had been when they had rejected him. Their mouths had been flapping, as usual, as the city burned down around their ears. They spoke of retreat, of skulking and hiding and waiting until the war between the humans had passed and they could come out and collect the remains.

  He could remember them clearly: the tall one with his scheming eyes, the other tall one with her useless worry, the pointy-eared one with her feckless stupidity, and Lenk…

  Lenk, who had met him so long ago, coaxed him away from the graves of his sons to go out and try his hand at living again.

  Lenk, who had been the only human to stand against him and had thus earned the right to be called by a name.

  Lenk, who had spoken of trying to find a home in that city, that city full of strife and greed where he was not Gariath, not Rhega, not even a dragonman. In that city he was an “oid,” just one of thousands to have been branded that for the crime of not being human.

  And Lenk had chosen that city over him. They all had. They had chosen sickness over strength, cowardice over courage, they had chosen to stay in a world where he had no name. Just a slur.

  They had rejected him.

  No, no, NO. He roared inside his skull. They didn’t reject you. You rejected them. They were weak, cowards. They would eat the broken meat of that city and drown you in their vomit. They’re useless. They always were.

  Better, then, to die out here, under merciless sun, where his bones would be bleached and his skin would melt away to nothing. His death would be clean. Theirs would be rotten and vile.

  They will die without you, he told himself.

  He told himself this many times as he trekked over the dunes. He told himself this as the sun cooked his thoughts inside his skull. He told himself this as his legs slowly gave out, as the air burned in his lungs, as he swallowed a breath and tasted only sand.

  When he finally collapsed to his knees, he could think of nothing else. And so he rode that thought, facedown into the sand and into darkness.

  His ear-frill twitched. Someone was speaking.

  He knew this and only this. Not what time of day it was, not how long his eyes had been shut, not even if he was still alive.

  Someone was speaking. Someone was close. Someone was drawing closer.

  Theirs were voices he didn’t recognize, full of words that were full of hard edges. But he understood the language, even if he didn’t understand the words. He had spilled too much blood not to know the language of killing.

  His nostrils quivered. He could smell them: the threat on their breath, the excitement in their sweat, the malice in their steel as knives were drawn. The shadow that fell over him was cold, cold enough to let him know what was going to happen.

  He would die here, bleed out on the sand and watch the sun take everything that was left.

  That’s fine.

  He had no delusions about what would have happened out here, no great dreams of finding meaning in the sands. He’d had no intention of doing anything but walking out somewhere quiet and dying alone, even if he hadn’t known that when he set out.

  He heard a knife being drawn from a sheath, smelled the oil of the leather.

  This is where you end.

  He felt a hand reach down and take his horns, raising his head to expose his throat.

  It was always better this way. They were always cowards. They never deserved you.

  He felt his last hot breath leave his mouth as his jaw gaped open. He felt steel brush against the red flesh of his throat.

  And they will never know how you died.

  And then he felt flesh in his hands.

  His claws wrapped around a thin neck before he was even aware of the blood thundering in his veins. A roar tore from his throat before he even knew he had one left. His eyes snapped open before he even remembered he was supposed to be dead.

  It appeared, then, that there was something the heat could not take.

  It took him only a moment to recognize the creature squirming in his grasp as a shict. Or what he thought was a shict, anyway; this one was dark of skin and hair, unlike the pink one he had left behind. Though this one was growing pinker with each moment Gariath’s claw tightened around his throat, it was the shict’s bulging eyes that drew his attention.

  For in them he saw his onyx scowl, his reptilian snarl, his many, many teeth. He saw himself.

  Still alive.

  He snarled, hoisting the writhing shict into the air as he clambered to his feet. The effort was monumental, his body begging him to lie down and see if he couldn’t convince the shict to have another go at it. But he found it, somewhere within the burning muscle, the will to smash his captive back to the ground, half burying him into the earth with an eruption of sand.

  His foot came up and then down like a headsman’s ax, finding the shict’s spine and near folding him in half with the force. His foe’s head jerked sharply upward, eyes still wide, as though he was wondering just how the hell this had happened.

  Gariath admitted to some curiosity himself. But no answer was forthcoming from within. His body slumped, muscles failing him, and every breath was agony, but he was still standing, still breathing.

  He was alive. Somehow.

 
And perhaps not for much longer. His ear-frills twitched at the sound of bowstrings creaking. His nostrils flared at the scent of fear and anger. He looked up and beheld shadows painted across the sand.

  Shicts. Desert shicts. Ten? Twenty? It was hard to tell their number; his eyes felt as though they were melting out of their sockets. Yet even through darkening vision he could see their eyes, wide and terrified at what he had just done to their companion. And even through swimming head he could hear the sound of their bowstrings being drawn.

  An arrow shrieked, bit into his shoulder. He fell to the ground as two more screamed over his head. He found the shict’s broken corpse through blurred vision, hauled it out of the sand, and held it up before him. It shook with the impact of two more arrows. Though shicts were meager and he was large: another arrow found his side, another his knee.

  Pain racked him anew. A body that had been fitfully slumbering now screamed at being awoken so harshly. He felt each blow shake him, his body begging him to drop the corpse and let the rest of the arrows come.

  Not now. His head, baked and broiled as it was, would not listen to his body. Not this way. He gritted his teeth, striving to bite back the pain, failing. I’m not ready. Another arrow shrieked past, grazed his neck. His blood cooked on his flesh as he screamed out in pain.

  “Please!”

  Gariath did not believe in gods; none would answer him. Gariath did not believe in fate; whether he lived or died was in no one else’s hands. Gariath believed in simple things, things he could touch.

  “RUA TONG!”

  Though sometimes things he could hear would do just as well.

  They came flooding over the dune in a wave, war cries tearing from their lips even as long, killing blades flashed in their hands. Their garb was scant: half robes of orange and red that left the gray muscled flesh and fur bare. Their bodies were lean and fierce. Their faces, simian and wild, were flooded with yellows, reds, and blues bright as any war paint.