The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  Lenk’s sword came out as the beast emerged from the shadows in all its horror. From so high above, it certainly looked like a spider: a bulbous body, a small head, eight long legs. But this one was positively gigantic, bigger even than the things in Cier’Djaal. It moved slowly and ponderously as it clambered its way up the web-coated wall.

  This creature lacked the predatory swiftness of its smaller brethren. Really, it seemed in no particular hurry as it came up the wall, looking as though it had been more inconvenienced than anything else. Its eyes—only two, Lenk noted—did not have the soulless gaze of a hungry beast, but rather a sort of ancient weariness that somehow struck him as familiar.

  It wasn’t until the creature came even closer that Lenk realized why that was. The whole thing was coated in a thick, rubbery mass of vines that entwined all over its body. Several dozen fungal caps, bright red, grew from its bulbous posterior. And each leg was tipped not with a spike, as he had thought, but with a root.

  The damn thing was a plant.

  “Like the Old Man,” he whispered.

  But no one noticed. Not as the spider came crawling up the wall, past the bridge, and came to a halt above their heads.

  From its spinnerets dangled a cord of silk thick as a man’s thigh, and it descended to some manner of cradle or gondola wrought of the same metal as the harp-like device. Without even swaying, the cradle came to a halt perfectly level with the bridge.

  Not a bridge, Lenk realized. A dock. A loading dock. It wants us to get on.

  “‘Ascend to heaven,’ eh?” Shuro stared up at the beast suspiciously. “I suppose that’s what they meant.”

  “See?” Chemoi said. “I told ya.”

  “You didn’t tell me there was going to be a fucking spider.”

  “It ain’t a spider, can’t ya see? It’s a—”

  “It wants us to get on,” Lenk said. And as if to prove that, he took a step forward, stopping only when Shuro put a hand on his shoulder.

  “What if it’s a trap?” she asked.

  “It might be,” Lenk said. “It might not be. But this is where the jungle ends. If Rhuul Khaas is anywhere”—he pointed up—“it’s up there.”

  Shuro frowned, looking disappointed less with his answer and more because she couldn’t think of a better one. She sheathed her sword, took the lead, and stepped tentatively onto the cradle.

  Almost immediately it shifted. Sensing weight, the spider began to stir on its perch. Lenk and Chemoi banished any fear they might have had as they rushed forward and leapt onto the cradle just as the beast began to move again, dragging the cradle up and into the mist-shrouded sky.

  Lenk swallowed a sour breath. Though it swayed slightly, the cradle felt firm and its silken support cord looked sturdy. The thought of falling did not worry him quite so much as the thought of ascending higher.

  As they cleared the mist, he could see great carvings in the stone walls. Four massive heads of serpents, the water emptying from their ever-gaping jaws, stared ahead with unblinking eyes.

  He stared up as the bright-blue sky began to seep in through the mist. Looming overhead he could see the shadows of statues rising out of the stone, all depicting the same thing.

  The smiling face of Mocca, arms open in benediction, welcoming him to Rhuul Khaas as though he had been expecting him this whole time.

  THIRTY-TWO

  A BURDEN OF STEEL

  For the Rhega, fighting was nothing special.

  Males and females came together once every few years, exchanged blows and bites and claws before mating—which involved a fair bit of violence itself. Fists were exchanged to see who would raise the resulting children, before the mates parted. Elders schooled their pups by ending each lesson with a headbutt. Young Rhega became fully grown the day they could beat their parents into submission. Old Rhega, sensing their time was near, wandered out to find a fight they couldn’t possibly win.

  For the Rhega, fighting was just something that was done.

  Like eating, like shitting, like any other part of life.

  For tulwar?

  “A fucking mess,” Gariath growled as loud as he possibly could.

  He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if they would hear him on the front line.

  That there was a front line was just one more irritation in a slew of irritations that had cropped up since they had arrived at Jalaang. They had marched all night to reach the city. Their charge had broken with the dawn, faces alive with colorful fury and mouths gaping with war cries.

  It had all seemed so simple.

  Rush the city. Open the gates. Get inside. Kill the humans.

  Easy.

  But as the sound of dying tulwar reached him, he was beginning to have his doubts.

  From high upon the dune, he scowled down at the battlefield. In great hordes the tulwar gathered at the walls of Jalaang.

  Tho Thu Bhu warriors crowded the front, holding the line behind their stout wooden shields. Chee Chree archers hung at the back, sending arrows and war cries alike up at the battlements. Between the two clans, Rua Tong warriors seethed and roiled, waiting for their chance to spill blood.

  All told, there must have been close to a thousand and a half tulwar on the field.

  And they were being held back by…

  Gariath squinted. He couldn’t see how many humans were on the battlements, but it was a much less substantial number.

  Clad in the flimsy armor of the Jhouche guardsmen, the human defenders of Jalaang retaliated with crossbow fire. Those Chee Chree arrows that could fly high enough clattered off the battlements.

  The mounted warriors of the Yengu Thuun clan milled at the rear of the battle, a few gaambols short. The bold beasts that had led the charge now hung impaled on spikes jutting from the battlements.

  “Well, what the fuck do you expect?”

  A voice from behind him: Ululang of the Yengu Thuun. Her growl was met with noises of disapproval, but she bellowed louder.

  “You sent us in without scouting,” she snarled. “Did we not even think to look for spikes?”

  Gariath turned. At the top of the dune, what passed for leadership among the tulwar stood squabbling among themselves. Daaru stood, arms folded, scowling at Ululang as the tulwar woman gesticulated wildly out over the field. Dekuu, the elder the Humn Tul Naa had elected to lead the others into battle, merely rubbed his eyes in weary frustration.

  “We had no choice,” the Chee Chree Humn said. “Jalaang is the only clean water source between here and Cier’Djaal. When we marched during the Uprising, it was just another oasis.”

  “That was years ago. It has become Jalaang.” Ululang pointed out to the city. “A fortress designed specifically to repel an attack from Shaab Sahaar, including gaambols.”

  “We can’t afford a siege,” Daaru said, looking intently to Dekuu. “Cier’Djaal will send reinforcements. If we aren’t entrenched in Jalaang by then…” He let the threat hang, sighing. “Yengu Thuun was our best hope. If they can just get over the walls, they can open the gates for us.”

  “Why not just break it down?” Dekuu suggested. “What the fuck did we bring the vulgore for?”

  “About that…”

  A bellowing roar rose up from the field.

  Kudj’s lumbering shape rose from the crowd of tulwar like a mountain, and his voice drowned out their war cries as thunder drowned the sound of rain. But for all his size and strength, he could do little more.

  And the reason for that became apparent as a chorus of screams pierced Gariath’s ear-frills.

  A mere thirty paces from Jalaang’s gate, a heavy battering ram lay in the dust. The tulwar who had been carrying it lay skewered by two immense spear-long bolts that pinned them to the earth. Atop the gate a small team of humans set about reloading the massive ballistae they had fixed there.

  “The vulgore could shatter the gates quicker than a ram, but those giant bows would kill him even faster.” Daaru growled. “We need a new idea, Dekuu Humn Chee Chree.
”

  “There are two gates to the city,” Dekuu said. “We could go around, try the western—”

  “The humans could get their troops to the other gate in half the time it took us to round it,” Ululang snapped. “And that gate faces Cier’Djaal. Any reinforcements from the city could cut off a retreat.”

  “There can be no retreat.”

  Gariath’s voice cut through the argument like a hatchet as he stalked forward. His eyes were dark in the sunlight, his teeth white as his lip curled back in a growl.

  “If you run now, they’ll come after you,” the dragonman said. “You can run across the desert, they’ll chase you. You can cower behind your city, they’ll burn it down. You can die and hope your Tul brings you back and they’ll kill you again and again and again.”

  He narrowed his eyes, spoke through clenched teeth.

  “You fight here,” he snarled, “you die clean. You run, you die slow.”

  Ululang stared at him as if he were crazy. Dekuu scowled at him as if he dearly wished he had a way to refute that. Daaru nodded at him, as though he had been thinking the same thing.

  As well they should. Gariath had practiced that speech a hundred times before he could say it without hating himself.

  “We get nowhere if we can’t get the gates open,” Dekuu muttered, turning toward Ululang. “Can you get the beasts to charge again?”

  “Eventually,” she replied, shrugging. “The gaambols follow the head of their troop. Ours got spooked by the charge and now the others won’t go until he does.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “We can try to nerve him up a little, but…”

  “How long will it take?”

  “As long as he needs.”

  “What? Can’t you encourage him?”

  “It’s an eight-hundred-pound monkey, you shit. I can’t exactly give him a speech about the magic of believing in himself.”

  “Unbelievable.” Daaru stared out over the field. “So many warriors, each of them worth three humans in a fight, and a big piece of wood keeps them from this city.” He narrowed his eyes, color flooding into his face. “From what they deserve.”

  Gariath breathed in the scent of Daaru’s anger. It hung in a thick, heavy cloak around him, along with the acrid reek of his fear, his pain, his sorrow. He was a creature of stretched seams and loose nails, ready to break apart but for the cords of anger he wrapped around himself.

  Gariath didn’t need to know his scent to know this. He had felt that way before, had felt that way since he held his sons’ still bodies in his arms. Gariath knew this by simply looking at Daaru.

  Just as Gariath knew that these humans of Jalaang were not responsible for his daughter’s death. Just as Gariath knew that Daaru could kill these humans, the Sainites, the Karnerians, every last human in the world, and the pain would never go away.

  Just as Gariath knew he couldn’t tell Daaru that. Not now.

  Now he needed anger. Now he needed fury. Now he needed war.

  He needed all this death to mean something.

  “Well, whatever the hell you’re hoping on giving them, you won’t today,” Ululang grunted. “We’re out of time, out of ideas, and out of options.”

  “Forgive me for ruining the drama of the moment…”

  Their attentions all turned down the dune as a lone figure approached. Gariath’s nostrils were suddenly flooded with the scents of distrust, scorn, hatred. But above even all of those wafted the familiar scent of pipe smoke.

  The old tulwar.

  Leaning heavily on a walking stick, sweat drenching his brow, breathing heavily, he trudged up the dune. He flashed a soft, gentle smile at the assembled tulwar.

  “But you still have one option left.”

  “You…” Dekuu uttered the word as he might utter a particularly blasphemous profanity. His face screwed up in search of an emotion to match the tone of his voice. “How did you come here?”

  “With immense difficulty,” the old tulwar replied. “Your army set an amazing pace, General. I was hard-pressed to keep up.”

  “I am not a general,” Dekuu snarled. “This is not an army. You are not welcome here.”

  “No? You are commanding what appears to be a military siege of a fortified city. If you have different words for that, I am happy to use them.”

  “Heed the last part,” Daaru growled. “You are not welcome here.”

  The scent of tender, old hatred roiled off the others in waves. But the old tulwar betrayed nothing. His smile was serene as he puffed his pipe.

  “I will be gone shortly,” the old tulwar said. “Will you not permit a Humn to lend his expertise?”

  Gariath lofted a scaly brow. It was only a minor surprise to him. After all, as far as he could tell, the qualifying traits of a Humn were, in order: fat, smelly, old, tulwar.

  Like this fat, smelly, old tulwar.

  “Expertise,” Dekuu spit. “As though you—”

  “He’s a Humn,” Ululang interrupted. She looked meaningfully at Dekuu. “Still.”

  Dekuu sneered at this, but did not protest further. He looked to the old tulwar and grunted. This the old tulwar met with a bow.

  “You are, in my humble opinion, failing to live up to the humans’ expectations.” The old tulwar clenched a fist. “When the Uprising came, they shut themselves in their homes for fear of the savages knocking at their doors.”

  “We are not savages,” Daaru growled. “We are not what they think we are.”

  “No. You are fighting a war on their terms. You are agreeing to play by their rules and this is how the humans win the game.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Dekuu asked.

  “He who sets the new rules”—he turned, gestured down to the sandy plain from which he had trudged—“must first break the old ones.”

  All eyes went down to the plain. All eyes fell upon the shapes meandering toward the dune.

  Tulwar. A clan Gariath had not seen. They rode gaambols the color of coal, their own fur likewise stained black and their faces painted with white. Knives made of twisted metal hung from straps upon their saddles. They carried twisted-looking spears, cruelly edged swords, weapons Gariath couldn’t even guess the purpose of, let alone the names.

  Tulwar. Barely numbering seventy. Just tulwar.

  “Oh, fuck me,” Ululang whispered.

  Or perhaps not just tulwar.

  The scent of scorn and resentment hit Gariath’s nostrils once more, but carried with it a reek of fear that bordered on animal in its intensity. The tulwar on the dune tensed collectively as the tulwar leading the troop of riders below spurred a mount on. The gaambol let out a hoot of excitement as it came loping up the dune.

  The woman—or at least Gariath thought it was a woman—riding the beast’s shoulders stared down at the assembled through a broad grin.

  Her teeth were yellowed and her gums were black. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she looked as though she had not slept in days. The sword she carried on her back looked too big for a man twice her size, let alone her. Her chota was tattered, poorly stitched, and cut where massive scars had healed in twisted knots beneath her fur.

  If scents could scream, hers certainly would. And it would rave, rant, and howl to be heard over the reek of gaambol shit.

  Not that she seemed to notice this. Or the resentful scowls cast her way.

  “Kalaa maa, my friends,” she said, her voice raspy and dark. “What fortune that we happened to spy your march. No one seems to have mentioned to us that you were going to a fight.” She wagged a finger at them. “If I were a less trusting woman, I might think you didn’t want us to come.”

  “Chakaa.” There was awe in Dekuu’s voice as he uttered the name. Not the pleasant awe that came from witnessing a miracle, more like the terrified awe that preceded empty trousers’ becoming full. “Chakaa Humn Mak Lak Kai.”

  “Dekuu Humn Chee Chree,” the woman named Chakaa said. She inclined her head in an unreturned bow. “I am surprised to only see you out of Sha
ab Sahaar now. I would have thought you’d be out fighting shicts with us.” She let out an unpleasant, barking laugh. “Considering how many Chee Chree corpses I saw the pointy-eared things using as fertilizer.”

  Gariath would have called that an insult, yet there was no malice in the woman’s voice nor on her stench. By the broadness of her smile, she seemed to genuinely think that was hilarious.

  Which might have explained why the remaining tulwar merely stared at her in stunned silence.

  “Well!” Chakaa chirped, glancing at Gariath. “What is this? You are no clan that I have seen. No tulwar at all.” She leaned over, squinted. “Are you?”

  “No,” Gariath growled.

  “No? Then what are you doing here?” She stared at Gariath, unblinking, before her eyes widened in recognition. “Ah, of course. He is a daanaja. Why else would he be here?” She laughed again. “Well, it is fortunate that we came, no? You would not want anyone else by your side for the glorious slaughter that awaits—”

  “NO!” Dekuu held up a hand, made the sign of the Tul from right to left. “You are not needed here, Chakaa Humn Mak Lak Kai, and neither is your clan. We shall handle this our own way.”

  “If I was not needed here, I would not have been asked to come,” Chakaa replied simply.

  Dekuu glared at the old tulwar. “You.”

  “Do not blame him,” Chakaa said. “Since I am here, I was clearly meant to be here. And as I am meant to be here, I will take care of your battle.” She gestured to the city. “Since I missed the last Uprising, it is the least I can do. Do not worry, Dekuu Humn Chee Chree. Chakaa will take care of you.”

  She spurred her gaambol around, barked an order to her clan. She took off down the dune and the rest followed her toward the front line.

  Whether from relief from her stench or relief from something else, the tulwar all exhaled when she left. Whatever calm blossomed in Chakaa’s wake, though, quickly withered as everyone whirled upon the old tulwar with murder in their eyes.

  “How dare you,” Dekuu snarled, “how dare you bring them here!”

  “I merely traveled with them,” the old tulwar said. “They came all on their own. And now they are here and willing to help. The humans will not expect them. They never fought in the Uprising.”