An Ill-Fated Sky

by Darrell Drake

“Rest assured they aren’t chicken,” he added.

  Shkarag didn’t smile. That would have been too much to ask. Tirdad always considered the expectation of a smile nothing short of unreasonable. Sometimes, there is nothing to be but down. She did, however, slip the axe into her weapon belt.

  “Put in a general order when we left for the island,” he explained. “Honestly didn’t expect anything to come of it. Mind letting me know if I’ve been swindled?”

  Shkarag cocked her head and accepted the box. She spent some time contemplating its lid before finally opening it, but once its contents were in full view, her gaze darted to flicker over his shoulder. Meanwhile, she drew an appraising touch over the eggs.

  “Osprey,” she confirmed at length. “I think.”

  “You can tell by feel?”

  She canted, but only just. “Maybe,” she said, unconvincingly. Without taking her eyes off the space just above his shoulder, she crammed both eggs into her mouth. After a protracted round of crunching, she closed her eyes and emitted a hum.

  “Well?” asked Tirdad.

  Shkarag licked a strand of yolk from her lip. “Maybe the bazdari gloves, the falconry leather isn’t so far-fetched after all.”

  “Sure it wasn’t a kestrel egg?”

  “. . .” Deadpan, she held out her hand. “My move.”

  Tirdad gave her the board, pointing at the pieces as he did. “Tried to put them back as we had them.” He looked on as she tinkered with the pieces, picking each up and putting it back down without making a move.

  "Well . . .” He ran his fingers through his hair, and treated himself to another long draw of spirits. “As close as I could manage.”

  Shkarag’s stare flitted from the board to him and back. When she finally got around to throwing the dice, her roll took two of his pieces.

  “Oh, nice move!” he said. “You’re getting the hang of it. And here I was thinking your strategy was an utter mess.”

  She held one such piece between her thumb and forefinger, tapping it on the board and moving her lips as if to some internal dialogue.

  Tirdad had been working toward an apology, but it seemed to him the right moment wasn’t forthcoming. By now, the distallate had relaxed him enough that he didn’t need one. “Listen,” he began, “you’re entitled to your secrets—we’re all burdened with the things we keep to ourselves, even the tiny everyday thoughts. And that’s just as well. Trust can’t be absolute. There will always be something we can’t share, or something better left unsaid.” He reached out and, when she showed no resistance, placed his hand over hers. “For everything else, I’m here.”

  Her reply was bereft of emotion. “An utter mess,” she intoned. “Only moving from one right ascension to another like some, like some star strolling through the šo-merry celestial theatre, and the star’s thinking, it’s rolling over its tongue that allies are like an onager. That bringing the right one to a siege will secure victory. Wrong one will make you look like an ass. And it’s thinking it hopes its alliance was the siege engine. But really it doesn’t know war or allies so maybe there’s no onager at all.”

  She pulled her hand away, and something foreboding leaked into her delivery. “Your game is only strolling to me. No strategy. But chaos . . .” Shkarag made a claw of that same hand by her head. “Can see into it sometimes. Here and there. To and fro. Connections are always there, peeking from behind this onager or that catapult.”

  “So you’re playing without a plan at all then?”

  “Sometimes the plan isn’t yours,” she said. “Can only glimpse it. Make the moves they demand of you. Doesn’t mean you aren’t, aren’t into the game.” Shkarag returned the board, which freed her hands to fish for another flask.

  Tirdad inclined his head. “There’s wisdom to be found in reacting to those whose plans are brazen or foolhardy. Allow them to seal their own fates.”

  He went on to win the game no contest, which left him wondering whether her one good move was a fluke. That curiosity fell by the wayside, soon to be replaced by her explanation. Tirdad found it odd. Strangely, since odd came to her naturally enough to be anything but.

  XVI

  His snow-powdered hillock afforded Tirdad a clear vantage of the ambush. A Turkish invasion force had been corralled into a narrow pass, upon which Chobin’s humble contingent rained arrows and boulders. Muted as they were by the cover of snow, the cries, shouts, and commands still fought against the walls of the ravine as desperately as those unfortunate souls seeking to flee certain death.

  Tirdad’s lips were a thin line. Without intervention, the ambush wouldn’t be enough to stop the nomads from emerging from the pass. From there, they would no doubt pillage the nearby villages.

  He brought his horse about to face those who had joined him on the rise. Over the course of their month-long journey northeast, the Eshm sisters had proven themselves worthy sentinels. Time and again, the trumpeting would return, only to be scared off for a few days thanks to their tireless pursuit. That aside, they kept to themselves. Only Stahm ever addressed him directly, and hers were brief conversations, often meant to impart some anecdote or another when not teasing Shkarag. For her part, Shkarag took it in stride. More relevant to the matter at hand, he trusted she would follow him to the end of the universe. Ultimately, they were all Eshm’s stock, which meant he had his answer; asking was at most a formality.

  He drew his sword, blade alive as ever with iridescence, and looked them each in the eyes. “Shall we give the sky-obsessed fucks something to dash themselves over?”

  Seven grins told him what he’d already anticipated, to be topped off by Shkarag’s saw-on-wood consent. He locked stares with her—as much as one could, prone as she was to flitting—and her otherwise inscrutable slits and blank expression, betrayed by her parted lips and anticipatory breaths, were utterly transparent. Her bloodlust swelled. Her thrill became his. He grinned wide, which she returned in kind, uneven as the shuddered chuckled she let out.

  Tirdad dismounted, and Shkarag followed suit. Their horses would only encumber them in close quarters combat. “Let’s wreak ourselves all kinds of havoc,” he said, feeling bolder by the second, as he started off in a trot toward the mouth of the pass.

  From afar, the ravine had seemed an off-kilter cleft that violated rolling hills otherwise white with virtue, and went on to defile the adjoining ridge. Passing into it imparted a different perspective altogether—one much like returning from the celestial theatre with a lot drawn and ready. Now, the cliffs towered to either side, acting as insurmountable boundaries to pen in livestock on their way to slaughter. Tirdad grinned, full-toothed and drunk on adrenaline. They were the wolves. And they were quickly closing in on horsemen who were panicked and focused on the enemies overhead.

  To his side, Shkarag flung her cloak open to billow behind her with a flourish, axes spinning by her sides, which prompted him to follow her example and unclasp his cloak. Together, at the vanguard of a wedge, they collided with the line.

  It must have been a true spectacle for those looking on from above.

  In the span of seconds, Tirdad severed the front legs of the leading horse, introduced its falling rider to a bite colder than the blizzard, cut another horseman’s arm off at the elbow, gutted his horse, and pressed their wedge deeper into the line.

  Their advance seemed indefatigable. Every step he took was one of gained ground. Every stomp into blood-saturated snow another rider dispatched. Arrows pelted all around, but he paid them no heed. It was as if his well-being came second to glory; there was only the thrill of the moment.

  Shkarag moved in and out of his vision, axes a blur and cleaving with furious abandon, as if the battlefield bowed to her, fashioned itself such that she could vault from foe to foe, winding and unwinding, in a constellation both unerring and panache.

  Meanwhile, her display drew him in sure as a shared orbit. Where she lashed out with her axes in stilted succession to open the chest cavity of one warrior and clea
ve through the skull of another, he was there. Tirdad bobbed and weaved beneath her left arm and between her victims to bat aside an incoming spear that would have run her through. A curt thrust dealt with its bearer. Another found the heart of a nomad whose back was to him. Shkarag’s scales flashed into view, there came the clap of metal, and a downward stroke fell just shy of his forehead. Its owner gurgled.

  Tirdad turned, her cuirass to his back, to face their rear for the first time. There, the Eshm sisters were fighting in his wake. Unlike Shkarag, they moved in well-honed unison. That was the only glimpse he got of them before he had to parry an incoming thrust from a straggler. Tirdad’s rebuttal had him spin, crack the woman’s jaw with a reverse elbow, then uncoil in a swift movement that brought his blade across her throat. Without looking back, he rushed to overtake Shkarag.

  Ahead, several nomads had the wherewithal to form a cursory line. That called for theatrics. He skidded to a kneeling halt, and from immediately behind, reacting as if she knew his aim ahead of time, Shkarag bounded off his upper back. Even as he knelt, Tirdad had been readying his bow, and wasted no time putting it to use once she was airborne. With one smooth movement, his trained fingers found the nock, drew, and loosed a single arrow beneath her flight, effectively plugging the opening she’d left. The warrior directly in her path collapsed, which gave her leave to descend upon the next in line.

  So progressed their tireless advance. Where before Tirdad had merely supported Shkarag in battle, he became a part of her routine, and she his. Where before he kept an eye on her, he felt her presence as keenly as his own. Where before smoke and firelight screened his vision, pomegranate-red swamped it. Tirdad smiled through it all. He didn’t just fight: he belonged.

  The paths they carved through the horde overlapped constantly, coiled like a pair of snakes. Together, they might have made it out the other end.

  If not for the sudden blaring. A herald blew its trumpet, announced the arrival of the latest predator to join the fray. Tirdad had only the chance to glance over his shoulder before it barrelled through him.

  Thrown into a roll, he tried and failed to right himself before the cliff face did it for him. A prolonged groan escaped, and he looked up in time to see the beast skid through swathes of horsemen.

  “Fuck,” he spat when it turned on him. Parted as it was at the jaw, connected by rows of teeth like haphazard potsherds, playing at humanity but coming dreadfully short, that vulgar face was unmistakable. Their trumpeting stalker had come for them at last. A manticore.

  Tirdad fought to plant his feet beneath him, still dizzy from the roll. He couldn’t afford to recover. Deathly unnerving though it was, its face was the least of his worries. The manticore had a body like a lion’s rife with mange, balding mane grimey as seaweed, and larger than several elephants combined. Worst of all was its tail, which oscillated with bristles like pikes.

  Dire. That was the word for it. Not just any manticore—a dire manticore.

  Thankfully, the chill was bracing. He snatched up his sword and raced to join Shkarag.

  “What now?” he breathed. The burning in his ribs changed; it invigorated him. “How in the seven climes do we take that down?”

  The manticore blared its trumpet-damned roar. The Eshm sisters drew up alongside, and Shkarag bared her fangs. Tension hung in the air, taut as hide left out to dry. Then a gale stirred a plume of powdery snow, and with it, everyone into action.

  Bristles, hurled from the manticore’s tail, broke through the snow in whirling pockets, streaming past like a hail of javelins. Tirdad dove beneath the barrage just as a bristle caught the thigh of the Eshm sister to his right, and ripped her leg clean off. He came up from his roll with Shkarag by his side, and together, they rushed the beast.

  “Under!” he yelled, hoping to use the other Eshm sisters as a distraction while he and Shkarag attacked its flank. “And watch for the tail!”

  A paw raked through the plume, claws like shark fins leaving eddies of snowflakes in their wake. The first swipe came up short; the second had him diving once more. Snow bit at his face, and when he recovered, it was to another cloud of it, probably excited by the huge paw.

  Perfect. That meant a moment’s cover. Though it prevented him from seeing Shkarag, it could not obscure their bond. He dashed toward her, only for that terrible maw to lunge into the cloud just in front of him, rows of teeth gnawing and snapping independently of one another to the sound of pots shattering.

  He stumbled out of the way, twisting his ankle and cursing, only for the maw to snap shut around his sword. That was a mistake. The manticore reared, trumpeting in pain and in so doing pulling the unnaturally keen blade through its chin.

  Tirdad seized the opportunity to rush in beneath its ribcage and swerve to his left, sheathing his sword as he did. With both hands free, he about-faced, slipping in a puddle of blood, but catching himself in time to greet Shkarag. Without thinking, he clasped her forearm in both hands as she ran by, and swung her in a rising arc that flung her into the air.

  Half-way up the manticore’s flank, her axes struck home. Briefly, her descent could have been likened to ripping a tapestry on a ride to the bottom. That ceased when she began hacking her way down—glorious and wild. The blood that splattered her reeked of sickness, but it smoldered all the same. Her bloodlust glowed, beautiful and alive; it sloshed out of her with Tirdad there to catch the excess. How he revelled in it.

  “Yeah!” he exclaimed before the manticore’s pounce cut short his triumph. Its back leg caught him mid-bound, and this time, he was knocked flat.

  Unwilling to let it gain the upper hand, he hurried to his feet. Or tried to. Bloodlust drowned out the pain, but that didn’t stop his leg from buckling beneath him. Chest to the snow, Tirdad craned to look ahead in time to see it land by the exit, whipping its tail. The figure between him and the manticore was out of focus—until it jerked all of a sudden.

  Lapis lazuli inlays were the first to come into focus, sharp and damning. A lump rose in his throat as he watched the shards fall to the snow.

  “No . . .” he muttered. “Ohrmazd, no.”

  A bristle had skewered Shkarag just below the cuirass—penetrated her girdle, her phylactery. The bloodlust fled completely. She staggered back a step, her shoulders slumped, and she fell to a knee.

  “Shkarag!” Tirdad screamed at the top of his lungs. “Shkarag!” He pressed himself off the ground, screaming as loudly as he could as if it’d somehow undo her fate.

  “Shkarag!” he bellowed, even as his leg failed him a second time. So he crawled for her. “Don’t you fucking do this to me! Don’t you fucking do it!”

  Shkarag struggled to look over her shoulder, but couldn’t seem to get her upper body to listen. He could feel the dread in her as if it were his own, deep-seated and ancient. A fear that could be neither contained nor overcome. Not a fear of death—she would have embraced death. This was terrifying; this was freedom.

  She spoke to him through their bond then. Though only a series of hurried and convoluted emotions, she got the message across. “Don’t make me do this to you.”

  Tirdad was on the verge of crying out when it hit him. If her phylactery was destroyed, if she embraced death, what could she possibly have to fear?

  Someone grabbed him by the collar, lifting him as if to carry him away, but he shoved off to fall to the ground again.

  “You must leave now,” Stahm hissed from where she loomed over him.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he growled, teeth gritted at the pain that gripped his broken leg.

  Stahm stooped to pick him up, patently impatient. “This is where I failed,” she said. “Believe me when I say we must go.” She threw a nervous glance at Shkarag. “Now.”

  Stahm went to heft him, but drew up short when he reached for his sword. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

  “You’ll die.”

  Tirdad stared her down. Whatever was happening, Shkarag would not face it alone. Not as long as
he breathed. “So be it. I refuse to leave her.”

  The Eshm sister shook her head, backing away. “Have it your way,” she said, then sprinted off in the opposite direction.

  Tirdad sidled against the wall of the pass, thinking he’d find a spear to use as a crutch, when a sudden wave of heat washed over him.

  Shkarag straightened her back.

  She canted such that he could see the glint in her smile.

  She bared fangs dripping acid.

  The stone at her feet cracked.

  Even from afar, she felt heavier to him—massive at that—but not only in weight. She was magnitudes denser, as if too much were being contained inside her.

  “Shkarag,” he called, unsure what, if anything, to do. He reached out, not really knowing why, and feeling stupid for it.

  Her semi-keeled scales flared, and out rushed a billow of steam so caustic the rock to her sides bubbled. Starling-black rivulets, pearly and livid, described the space between scales.

  Shkarag pulled in a breath that filled out what remained of her sizzling caftan. When she exhaled, more steam billowed. Her breathing became more and more frequent; with each, a hiss would feed on those that came before it, to rise in intensity and volume. Until, when it seemed it would come to a head, she screamed. Like cruelty given life, it echoed through the pass. His hair stood on end. He felt at the same time nauseous, euphoric, and scared out of his wits.

  Then the stone buckled beneath her. Corpses were thrown into the air. She took a step, then another, and with each a crater gave credence to the immensity he sensed in her. Shkarag bent at the knees and moved so swiftly the haze of steam didn’t react until a second later.

  The manticore trumpeted its challenge, which took a sharp turn to a high note. Shkarag had appeared directly in front of it, and with a left hook, tore its jaw from its face. Tongue hanging free, it bayed like a trumpet into water. Probably meaning to escape, the manticore leapt, but Shkarag would have none of that. She caught it by the tail mid-leap, and dislodged the bristle from her abdomen with which to stake the tail to the ground.