The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s more weapons and more warriors to wield them. As word spreads, even more will come from the outlying villages. But that is no assurance. This city is defensible, but even with twice our warriors, a decisive attack from Cier’Djaal could dislodge us.”

  Gariath drew in a breath. With every word the stench of pipe smoke grew stronger. He looked up, glared across the room.

  “You’ve got a reason for telling me this,” Gariath growled.

  The small, single-room house he had claimed for his own had little in the way of furniture besides a table, a bucket, and two stools. The occupation of a single tulwar—seated in the corner, his hefty form painted a dull orange by light seeping through shuttered windows—should not have made things seem quite so cramped.

  But then, that hefty form was currently cloaked in a cloud of pipe smoke that grew steadily larger with each breath.

  “I had merely assumed the general would want a report as to the status of his troops,” the old tulwar replied, chuckling.

  “Tell them not to call me that,” Gariath said.

  “They don’t. They call you daanaja.”

  “Whatever. Tell them to stop it. You can tell them I don’t care about numbers or reports or whatever the hell they do, either.”

  “Interesting strategy.” The old tulwar stroked his chin. “Tell me, General, how do you expect that to work out when the army of Cier’Djaal—whichever one it is now—decides to march on our position with more warriors, more weapons, and a strategy that isn’t stupid as shit?”

  “There’s no need,” Gariath growled. “We’ll march on Cier’Djaal, burn it to the ground. The city is weak, gnawing at its own throat. They won’t be able to face us.”

  “Cier’Djaal is always gnawing at its own throat. The fashas are forever strangling one another, yet they still managed to work together long enough to turn back the first Uprising. Them and their dragonmen.”

  Gariath paused, stared down into the bucket of water. His quivering reflection stared back. As distorted as his face was, though, the cuts and bruises upon it were still clear.

  “The prisoners?” Gariath said.

  The old tulwar did not answer for a moment. When he did his voice was tired.

  “They are secure and unharmed,” he said. “No more than they were when the city fell. The third one we could not save.”

  “Right.”

  “The warriors were not happy. Wounds inflicted in the first Uprising still sting. It’s a mark of their respect for you that they agreed not to kill the prisoners.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You need to.”

  Gariath looked up, glowered. The old tulwar’s eyes pierced through the pipe smoke, fixed on Gariath like a blade.

  “Whatever you may think this is, however you see it ending, understand this truth.” His voice grew hard and dark. “This is a war. We may have struck the first blow, but the humans will strike back. We have taken one city from them. They won’t let that stand. There needs to be a plan of defense.”

  “Ask someone else, then. Daaru or the others—”

  “Daaru is a warrior, but also a grieving father. Left to him, we would run into Cier’Djaal and be hacked to pieces. Dekuu is a Humn, good for leading in times of peace, but not war. Ululang cannot conceive of a plan that does not involve her monkeys, and Chakaa is… well, Chakaa. Warriors, yes. Leaders, no. I could make a warrior into a leader, but they do not speak to me.”

  “And why not?” Gariath snarled, rose to his feet. “Or rather, why is that my problem?”

  The old tulwar settled back on his stool, regarded the dragonman coolly, and spoke softly.

  “Because, daanaja, it was you that dragged us into this.”

  Though he spoke calmly, the accusation in his tone was unmistakable. But it went no further than a tone, an implication. His eyes betrayed no fear, no threat. His body remained relaxed and fat. And of his scent, there was nothing but the reek of pipe smoke.

  Even as Gariath stalked forward, loomed over him, bared teeth in a snarl, the old tulwar did not so much as blink.

  “Who are you, elder?” Gariath growled. “What are you?”

  “Someone with secrets, like you,” the old tulwar replied, calmly. “And like you, someone who wishes to see Cier’Djaal burn. And if you would just listen—”

  A knock at the door. It creaked open before anyone had bidden entry. Light flooded the dark confines of the room. And standing there in silhouette, Daaru fixed Gariath with a dire gaze.

  “Gariath,” he said. “Humans. Maybe two thousand of them, marching on our position.”

  The dragonman merely narrowed his eyes. Even before Daaru had finished his sentence, the desperate scent about him told Gariath everything.

  “And,” Daaru whispered, “a northerner is leading them.”

  Almost everything, anyway.

  “What’s that? What are those things on the walls? Those aren’t Djaalics!”

  “Mama? What’s happening? I can’t see. Pick me up!”

  “Tulwar. They’re tulwar! Fucking oids! What are they doing in Jalaang?”

  “Ancaa preserve us, we should have stayed in the city.”

  “The northerner led us here. Why’d we trust that woman? I told you we shouldn’t have!”

  Asper could only barely hear them: the murmurs, the gasps, the occasional cry of fear from the crowd of thousands behind her. She offered them nothing: no assurances, no apologies, not so much as a breath.

  She had no words for what lay before her.

  When she had called for the exodus of refugees from Cier’Djaal, the long, silent march to the city of Jalaang had given her plenty of time for fear.

  She had worried she would arrive, with thousands of refugees—families, elders, widows—and find the gates shut. She had worried she would arrive, with those hungry and wounded, and find no food or shelter to give them. She had worried she would arrive, with a force so big that no god could look down on earth and not see them, and find heaven silent.

  And surely all these fears had come to pass.

  But not in all the nights she’d lain awake or all the days she had marched numbly had she worried she would find this.

  Great plumes of smoke rose from behind the walls, stretching into the sky like black worms. The stiff carcasses of men in battered armor hung from the walls by their necks, or their ankles if they had no heads. And from atop the battlements, several hundred paces away, hundreds of faces awash with colors of red, yellow, and blue snarled at her.

  Tulwar. Hundreds of them. Long limbs clutching long blades. Hairy bodies stained with red wounds. Teeth bared, eyes narrowed, manes wild. Tulwar. Firmly in control of Jalaang.

  She had no words for it.

  What could she possibly say?

  “Well, we’re fucked now, aren’t we?”

  Admittedly, that was both accurate and concise. But Dransun had said it first.

  “How?” Aturach’s words were slightly less concise. “How could this have happened?”

  They stood on either side of her, Dransun to her left and Aturach to her right. At the head of the great column of refugees that sprawled out behind them, the three stared out over Jalaang. Aturach looked on the verge of tears, while Dransun’s weary frown seemed to suggest he’d known something like this was going to happen.

  Asper, at that moment, was still not sure which expression fit her best.

  “They built Jalaang so that this wouldn’t happen,” Aturach said, voice quavering. “After the Uprising, they said… they said…”

  “They lied,” Dransun growled. “The fashas have always been full of shit. Jalaang’s been more trading post than garrison for ages. Every year we saw less and less Jhouche go out there.”

  “And you didn’t say anything earlier?” Aturach demanded. “You couldn’t have fucking mentioned this?”

  “I didn’t know, boy. How could I have? The tulwar have been crawling into Cier’Djaal, look
ing for work, for years now. We thought their backs had been broken.”

  “Well, they fucking weren’t. We led these people out of Cier’Djaal, we told them they’d be safer out here, away from the foreigners. We promised them—”

  “We didn’t promise them shit. They came because they wanted to, not because—”

  “They came because they had no other choice! And now they have no choice at all, save exactly which painful death they want to choose and—”

  “Don’t think I don’t know what they’re going through, you sanctimonious little—”

  “Fucking worthless piece of—”

  So many words.

  So many curses and prayers and cries.

  They rose up from Dransun, from Aturach, from the refugees, and fell upon Asper like rain from an iron-colored cloud. She couldn’t feel them. She couldn’t hear them. They simply swirled about her, passed her by, and drifted off into a sky where no one was waiting to hear them.

  She could muster but one word to add to them. And she did not speak it.

  How?

  How could it have gone so wrong?

  How, after all her plans, all her dealings, had it come to this? After courting Jackals and dealing with wizards, she had still lost Cier’Djaal. After she had beseeched fashas and begged gods, so many people had died. After giving up everything to cross the desert with the weak and wounded, she had found only carcasses and smoke.

  What god would allow this?

  What sin had she committed that her punishment would be so severe? What had she done? What could she have done that she hadn’t? What was she going to do?

  What was she going to tell them? All of them? Any of them?

  Her lips felt numb, unable to form even a single word. Her tongue felt swollen, as if she would choke on it at any moment. She swallowed something hard that settled in her belly like a stone.

  And she knew she had to find the words.

  But the word she found was nothing that they needed to hear. The word she found was harsh and full of black fire.

  And she found it on the battlements, red-skinned, horned, and towering over the tulwar who clustered around him reverently.

  “Gariath.”

  “What?” Aturach asked.

  “Gariath,” she repeated.

  “Who the hell is—” Dransun began.

  “GARIATH!”

  She hurled the word, screamed it over the desert.

  “GARIATH!”

  She spit it, a stain on the sky, as she stormed across the sands and held her fist up at the battlements.

  “GARIATH!” she roared. “GET DOWN HERE AND FACE ME, YOU LIZARD PIECE OF SHIT!”

  This close, only two hundred paces or so away from the gates, she could see him clearly. She could see the disdain on his face, the anger in his eyes, the contempt in his arms folded across his chest. She could also see the dozen or so bows drawn on her from the tulwar above.

  She didn’t see Dransun or Aturach until they were right beside her, grabbing her arms and pulling her back.

  “Asper, are you insane?” Aturach demanded. “Get back to the refugees!”

  “They’re fucking savages, priestess,” Dransun said. “We’ll die if we don’t—”

  “No, we’ll die if I don’t, Dransun.” She pulled herself free from their grips, stalked forward again. “GARIATH! COME DOWN HERE AND ANSWER ME!”

  To their credit, neither Aturach nor Dransun tried to grab her again. Out of their stupidity, neither Aturach nor Dransun tried to run. Through the sole luck she had been afforded, no arrows fell from the battlements to impale her then and there.

  Instead the tulwar archers looked to Gariath. But his eyes were fixed on her for a good long moment. And when it was done, he turned away and disappeared from the battlements.

  Asper drew a breath. And held it until a few moments later, when the gates of Jalaang came creaking open.

  It had been weeks since she had seen Gariath, but he wasn’t the sort of creature a woman forgot easily. She remembered the slow, purposeful stalking of his gait. She remembered the way his hands were always curled into fists. She remembered his ear-frills and his wings and his tail.

  But fuck me, she thought, I don’t remember him being that big.

  He came striding out of the gates, shadowed by the pyres burning behind him so that all she saw was a black shape topped with horns and wings and claws. No longer the companion she had traveled with. Now he was a nightmare walking out of a bad dream.

  Two tulwar walked with him: one a tall young man with a warrior’s poise and a blade to match, the other a shorter, older, and fatter one who puffed a pipe leisurely as they walked forward. As though he were simply out for a stroll and not walking to see whatever was about to happen.

  Asper wished she had some idea herself. And though she didn’t know what was going to occur between her and Gariath, she knew it’d be ugly.

  That much was evident in the glare he cast down at her as he came to a halt, looming over her from five paces away.

  “You’re not dead,” he observed.

  “Surprised?” she asked, not bothering to hide the anger in her voice.

  “No,” he said. “You never could do anything right.” He looked over her head, toward the column of refugees behind her. “But I guess no human can if there are this many of you left.”

  “They’re refugees, Gariath,” Asper said. “People fleeing the city. Many are sick, wounded, young. They need food and water and shelter.”

  Gariath looked down his snout at her. He blinked once.

  “You should go find them some, then.”

  She had, of course, expected him to say something that would make her want to hit him.

  She hadn’t expected him to say something that would make her left arm burn and a little voice in the back of her head hiss.

  Kill him.

  “There aren’t any other settlements,” Asper said. “The villages outside the city couldn’t hold so many people.”

  “And Jalaang can’t hold so many humans and so many tulwar,” Gariath replied. “So look elsewhere.”

  “Jalaang is their city!”

  “Was.”

  The heat in her arm burned brighter. The voice of Amoch-Tethr grew louder, punctuated by a shrill giggle.

  Oh my. I can feel your anger, my dear. We are going to kill him, aren’t we?

  “Gariath, please,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “Listen to me. These people are victims. They’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “They have,” the dragonman replied bluntly. “They fled the city now, when their lives were threatened. But they stayed when the city ate its people like meat. They stayed when their own people died so they could get more coin. They stayed when tulwar were ground under their feet, doing their dirty work so they could pretend they didn’t smell like shit.” His lips peeled back in a snarl. “They stayed for greed. They left for greed. The stink of that city is all over them.”

  “And for that, you’d condemn them to death?” Asper asked.

  Gariath looked at her carefully for a moment, then looked over her head to the refugees, considering an answer to that question.

  “Take them elsewhere,” he said.

  “Where? I can’t take them back to Cier’Djaal.”

  “No,” he said. “You can’t. It won’t be there by this time next month.” He leaned toward her, his breath hot on her face. “Its stink is on you, too. You spent too much time in its walls, ate the same diseased meat as the rest of them. But I’ll fix it. Like I fix every other mistake you’ve made.”

  She narrowed her eyes, refused to turn away. “What do you think you’re going to do?”

  “I will burn it to the ground. I will melt down every coin every hand of every human has ever touched. I will bury your rich men and your guards and your silk-eating swine so deep in the earth that you’ll hear them screaming when you put your ear to the ground. I will save these humans. I will cure them.”

  Asper
stared back at him, eyes wide and mouth open, struck dumb by the sheer hatred dripping off his voice. She had no words to reply.

  “You are out of your fucking mind.”

  Or at least she’d thought she had none.

  “Burn a city? How many people do you think you’d kill for that?” she asked.

  “Many,” he replied.

  “And how many tulwar do you even have?”

  A pause. “Many,” he repeated.

  “And for what? All because we wanted to stay and protect the city? Because we did stay and protect the city while you ran away and hid in the desert?”

  It wasn’t anger that flashed across Gariath’s features. That would have been too tame a word for it. It was fury that painted his face, that coursed down his entire body and sent his fists quaking and poured out of his mouth in hot words.

  “You’re a human,” he said. “I would tell you this isn’t about you, but you’d never believe it.” He turned away from her. “Go back. Find somewhere else to hide. When the city is burned down, you can build in the ashes.”

  His tulwar accompaniment spared a glance for her before turning away themselves. She was left struggling, again, to find the words to hurl at him. Not that she didn’t have ideas. They were forced into her head from the fiery giggles boiling up in her arm.

  Kill him, Amoch-Tethr whispered. Right there. At the base of his skull. Just one touch. Just two breaths. I can end him, eat him, consume him. The others will flee without him. I can feel their fear from here. They need him. They need his strength.

  His strength.

  “Fight me!” she roared.

  At this, the tulwar stopped and looked at her. At this, Dransun’s and Aturach’s eyes nearly popped out of their skulls. At this, Gariath paused and looked halfway over his shoulder.

  “I challenge you,” Asper said. “If you win, we’ll leave, fine. If I win, you give us food.”

  He did not reply for a long moment, then waved a hand, dismissive, and continued stalking back toward Jalaang.

  And she found the words she needed.