Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron

by Steven Harper

  “She tried to kill me,” Ranadar said. “She tried to kill Kalessa. That is reason enough.”

  “For once the orc agrees with the elf,” Kalessa spat. “We do not allow enemies to live.”

  “She kidnapped you,” Danr the truth-teller pointed out. “She threatened you. She didn’t actually kill anyone.”

  “She bought and sold thousands of slaves,” Talfi said.

  “So did thousands of elves and orcs.” Still tired, Danr heaved himself to his feet, wincing as more pain flared across his broken arm. With his good arm, his slender human arm, he picked up a strut that had broken away from the tank. “But do what you like. Just leave me out of it.” With that, he trudged away from the tree. Aisa hurried to follow.

  “You must let me see to your arm, my love,” she said.

  Talfi called after them, “So you’re saying after all that, we should just let her go? That she shouldn’t be punished?”

  “I never said that.” The truth popped out, as it had to. That and the pain and the incredulous looks on his friends’ faces made him angry, and rather than respond further, he swung the strut as hard as he could and struck the nearest golem with it. The jolt snapped all the way up Danr’s shoulder and jarred his teeth. Only a small crack marred the golem’s chest. Damn it, this body was so weak! His birth form would have smashed the golem to rubble. Danr smacked the golem again, and this time it cracked more visibly. A third hit put a hole in the golem’s chest, and a fourth finally smashed it in half. Panting, broken arm throbbing, Danr leaned on the strut.

  “How’s that for punishment?” he asked.

  Kalessa and Talfi looked puzzled, but Aisa and Ranadar caught on quickly.

  “The Obsidia have sunk their fortune into these golems,” Aisa said. “A pity if someone destroyed them all. With no slave market to sustain her, and no golems to sell, Sharlee will soon find herself without a single copper finger.”

  “And without her beloved high-status husband,” Kalessa agreed, “it would be almost worse to leave her alive.”

  Sharlee gave a quiet groan on the grass. Kalessa retrieved her magic blade from the ground and flicked it into a heavy two-handed sword.

  “This,” she said, “should be fun.”

  She smashed a golem. It hit the grass in shards after three more hits. Ranadar and Talfi grabbed pieces of their own. With an angry howl that pulled Danr’s hair upright, Ranadar laid about, shattering clay and bringing down golems as fast as he could. Talfi did the same beside him while Kalessa worked on her own.

  “Please let me see to your arm,” she said again. “I cannot bear to see you in pain like this, and anyway, it is foolish of you to go without.”

  He nodded and sat down again, inhaling sharply as the motion brought sharp pain to his arm. The others continued to smash golems. Aisa examined his arm carefully, tenderly. Danr closed his eyes. It was nice to let Aisa take care of him, even for just a few minutes. But the truth-teller in him couldn’t leave a question open.

  “You relive the Battle of the Twist,” he said.

  “This seems to be a clean break. I can set it easily enough, though it will hurt.”

  He wanted to ask the next question, but at the same time, he didn’t want to know the answer. He asked anyway. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I can use some of those pieces from the tank for splints, and shreds of Hector’s clothes will make a fine wrapping,” she replied, then looked at his face and sighed heavily. “I did not wish for you to feel bad or guilty over something that could not be changed.”

  “I wouldn’t—” The words halted in Danr’s throat. He was unable to say he wouldn’t have felt bad. He was unable to lie.

  Aisa noted this and nodded. “You see? But you must listen to me. I do not fully understand these visions. My hatred for the Fae—except for Ranadar—runs deep. Yet watching you destroy them … the sight haunts me like an evil spirit.” She paused. “The visions are not your fault. You did what needed to be done. As I said, I believe it is because I had no strength, no power. Not then and not now.”

  Smash. Thud. Crash. Clay shards continued to fly. Only the golem trudging between the well and the remains of the tank was left. Sharlee stirred on the grass and slowly pushed herself upright.

  “You’re a powerful woman,” Danr said. “You’ve visited Death and the house of Grick. You killed the king of elves. And now you have the power of the shape and the Gardeners want you for one of their own. How much more powerful can you get?”

  She smiled wanly. “So. Now that you have given me a sharp talking-to, I will believe it, and the visions will disappear. Hold still—this will hurt.”

  It did. Danr sucked at his teeth while Aisa swiftly bound the splint around his forearm. When he had been a half troll, his bones weren’t nearly so breakable, and the one time he had broken his arm as a child, the pain wasn’t half what this was.

  “My golems!” Sharlee coughed. “What have you done?”

  The golem with the cup spun just as Ranadar was drawing back the strut. With startling speed, it rushed over to Sharlee and pulled her upright. Ranadar missed.

  “What have you done?” Sharlee screeched again. Tears streamed down her face. “Your blood killed my Hector!”

  “And once the guards arrest you for collaborating in treason with the harbormaster, the prince’s executioner will let you join him,” Aisa said. “Honey.”

  For a moment, Sharlee pulled herself upright into her old haughty self. Then her gaze flicked over the wreckage of the courtyard and her husband’s dreadful corpse. Her face crumpled into itself and she sagged like a dying tree.

  “You won’t know when the knife falls,” she whispered hoarsely. “You’ll only feel the blade.”

  She spat a few words at the golem. It lifted her up and sprinted away faster than any of them could run.

  “You got your wish, my beloved,” Aisa mused to Danr.

  “I did?”

  “We did not have to kill her. We only have to wonder what she might do next.”

  “It won’t be much,” Talfi said. “She has no money now, and Danr’s blood didn’t change her shape. She can live in the gutter for the rest of her days.”

  “Hmm,” said Aisa.

  Danr swung his broken arm and winced at the twinge of pain. “So now what do we—”

  “YOUR … ORDERS … EXCELLENCY?”

  The voice echoed around the city. Danr spun wildly, looking for the source.

  “There!” Ranadar pointed with a pale finger. “Up!”

  Rising above the skyline was the biggest golem any of them had ever seen. It was taller than the tallest giant. Its azure eyes glowed, and the great runes on its head ran with blood.

  “Halza’s tits!” Talfi whispered.

  “It is at the temple of Bosha,” Aisa said. “Or near to.”

  “The harbormaster.” Danr was staring up at the golem, his broken arm forgotten. “We have to stop him.”

  “How do we stop that?” Ranadar asked.

  “We can’t do a thing from here,” Danr said. “Come on!”

  Not even a shape-shifted Aisa could carry them all, but they found horses in the Obsidia stable. While they were dragging them out, the dwarf Hokk met them at the door. He was swathed all in red against even the weak sunlight, and he moved stiffly, as if his back pained him, and he held a cracked golem head in his hands.

  “You destroyed my golems,” Hokk whimpered. “They were perfect. My masterworks! And you destroyed every one of them.”

  “You are free of the Obsidia,” Aisa said. “You can make more, and make them for yourself.”

  Hokk shook his head under the heavy hat and within the thick scarves. “That’s not how it works, not how at all. You can’t make a golem for yourself. You can only make it for someone else. To serve someone else. I need a master.”

  “Not us,” Ranadar said.

  Danr furrowed his forehead. “If you only make golems for someone else, friend, how does the other person c
ontrol them?”

  “It’s a secret,” Hokk said.

  “Not much of one,” Talfi said. “Not if golems were going to come up for sale.”

  “The world is changing,” Hokk said to the golem head. “Dwarfs walk with the humans. Trolls burrow under the cities. Golem secrets are coming out.”

  “The Tree tips,” Aisa said. “And we can’t stop it. We can only try to control it. Tell us how it’s done, Hokk. We need help, and only you can give it.”

  Hokk looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. “The blood. When the golem is done—perfection!—you have the owner, not the maker, smear Stane blood into the runes. To control a golem that big, the harbormaster used a lot of blood. Stane blood.”

  “Stane blood,” Danr repeated. “So if I smear my blood on it—”

  “Stane,” the dwarf said. “Not human. And to control a golem that large, you’d need to do more than slash your palm.”

  “So what?” Kalessa said. “It does not help to know how the harbormaster controlled the golem. We need to know how to destroy it.”

  “Why would you?” Hokk said, genuinely shocked. “It’s beautiful. I only wish I had helped create it. I should have gone with my brother dwarfs to the temple of Bosha.”

  “How can we stop it, Hokk?” Aisa said.

  He shrugged, utterly defeated. “You can’t. My little golems are thin and elegant, but that one is big and heavy. Nothing can bring it down. You’d have to stop the harbormaster himself.”

  “Oh!” Danr said. “Remember what happened when we knocked out Hector and Sharlee?”

  “The golems stopped,” Aisa breathed. “Thank you, Hokk. As a reward, you can have anything you like from the Obsidia house. Hector is dead and Sharlee has fled, so feel free to plunder whatever you like to buy a new forge.”

  Hokk’s eyes lit up. “I didn’t like Hector much.” And he shuffled out the door.

  “You were awfully free with Hector and Sharlee’s possessions,” Ranadar observed.

  “Why should we make all the sacrifices?” Aisa said tartly. “Grab the horses. We have to tell the prince what we know.”

  The golem didn’t go unnoticed. People filled the streets, staring and pointing and speculating. Danr and the others had to shout for people to move aside so the horses could get through. Danr’s splinted arm jolted with pain at every step. From the slave market in the distance, two ravens and an eagle rose and flapped heavily away. Danr felt a small twinge at that, as if a thread or thin web bound him with the people who had changed shape. He had felt it before when he shared blood in the slave market, but everything had happened so quickly he hadn’t thought about it. Grandfather Wyrm had said that those who shared the blood could also take power from the ones they shared with, especially once they changed their shape. Aisa had certainly taken power from him so she could change shape several times in a row, and he had gladly given it to her. But he hadn’t thought about taking power from other people himself. He supposed it didn’t matter—he could only change shape once, and he had done it already.

  The golem, for its part, still hadn’t moved. Its implacable blue eyes and bloodred runes seemed to stare at nothing. The great storm swirled behind it, ready to break over the city. Tiny orange streaks rushed at the golem like darts of sunlight, and Danr realized that someone—a group of someones—was loosing fire arrows at the golem. They bounced off without any visible effect.

  “Is it waiting for something?” Talfi clung to the back of a gray gelding.

  “Probably,” Aisa said. “And we also probably do not want to know what it is waiting for.”

  When they reached the temple, they found a chaos of guards and soldiers ringed by crowds of people. Surprisingly few seemed interested in running away. Great fires burned on the cobblestones, and men cranked catapults down to be loaded. The golem watched from behind the gleaming walls of the temple compound.

  At the border of the civilian and military crowds, perhaps a hundred yards from the temple wall, Danr leaned down from his horse to grab a passing soldier. “Where’s the prince? We have a message for him.”

  The soldier said, “The prince? He’s—”

  The golem moved. Its head came around and its leg came up. As cold raindrops spattered the cobblestones, the golem’s massive foot came down over the temple wall. It smashed a great wagon to flinders. Horses screamed, as did the crowds of onlookers, who tried to stampede away.

  “WE WILL RAZE … BALSIA,” the golem boomed. “WE WILL BUILD … BALSIA ANEW.”

  “Fire!” someone shouted. The catapults shot their boulders, but they bounced off the golem’s baked clay skin like stones from a boy’s sling. Hundreds of arrows darkened the sky in a deadly rain of their own, but they pinged away from the golem and spiraled to the ground while the soldiers below ducked and tried to avoid their own ammunition coming back at them. Danr and the others stared from the backs of their horses. The golem was perhaps a hundred yards away, but a few steps forward and it would be right on top of them. People stampeded past them up the street in a panic now. Some of them stumbled, and the others rushed right over them. Kalessa leaped from her horse and pulled an older woman to safety, and Talfi dove into the crowd after a boy who had tripped.

  Danr slid off his horse, which cantered away the moment he let the reins go. The golem stomped forward again. Its second step destroyed a house, and Danr prayed there was no one inside. Some of the fire arrows that had fallen back to earth landed among buildings and started fires. Danr wondered if the foolish commander who had given the order to use them would be removed from command, and then he wondered if any of them would survive to find out.

  “There!” Aisa had abandoned her own horse near a low wall, and she pointed over Danr’s shoulder. “Do you see?”

  Sitting high on the golem’s shoulder, well out of archery range, was the harbormaster. Danr could just make him out. He leaned into the golem’s ear.

  “BALSIA … WILL RISE AGAIN!” the golem shouted, and it smashed its way through a block of houses. Danr saw rag doll human figures fly through the air. “WE WILL RAZE HER DOWN … AND RAISE HER UP … IN PERFECTION!”

  “He will destroy the entire city,” Aisa said above the noise.

  “I can’t stop that!” Danr asked. “None of us can.”

  Kalessa pushed her way through the panicked crowd. “We need something big,” she said. “My blade can grow to enormous size”—she held it out and once again it leaped into a two-handed sword taller than she was—“but what could grow big enough to fight that?”

  The golem stomped through more and more houses, destroyed shops and other buildings, ignoring the catapults and arrows of the army, while the harbormaster watched from on high. A river of people fled up the street, and the golem turned to look at them.

  “No!” Danr shouted. “Don’t!”

  The golem’s foot came down. Screams of fear and pain mingled with the blood under the golem’s sole. Another step crushed more people. Danr’s stomach twisted and his knees went weak. The horrible sounds echoed through his head, and his vomit spattered the cobbles. The harbormaster laughed like a boy stomping an anthill.

  “WEAK!” the golem boomed. “THOSE WHO CANNOT STOP ME … ARE WEAK!”

  More screams of fear and pain burst up just as the storm broke over the city, pouring water and lightning over it in equal amounts. Thunder smashed Danr’s bones, and chilly water sopped his clothing and dripped down his face. The army rallied and rushed toward the golem, swords and bows aloft, but the soldiers only met the people fleeing in the opposite direction. The harbormaster laughed and made the golem tear an entire house off its foundations. It threw the building straight into the middle of the frightened mob. It wasn’t possible for so much blood to exist.

  “It is the Battle of the Twist all over again.” Aisa’s voice was hoarse.

  “This is what the harbormaster wants,” Kalessa said. “Sacrifice one thing—the city—to gain something else—a new kingdom. Think bigger.”


  “You are full of aphorisms today, sister,” Aisa observed tightly. “What do we do? We cannot fight it like this. We are not strong enough.”

  Danr forced himself to ignore the screams, ignore the carnage, ignore the blood. He looked at Kalessa’s sword, the sword that changed size and shape, and then he looked at Aisa. A cold feeling came over him. There was a possibility, if they were willing to take it. He touched her arm. “Kalessa and I aren’t strong enough. But we know someone who is.”

  “Me?” Aisa stared in disbelief. The rain soaked her hair, plastering it to her neck. “If you are not strong enough, I certainly am not.”

  “But you are, Aisa,” he said. “The harbormaster was right. You have to think big. Really big.” And he pointed at the golem.

  “Think—” It took her a moment to understand. “Oh! Big! But … Hamzu! I cannot reach such heights. I have not the strength.”

  “You aren’t alone, Aisa,” Danr said quietly. “I can help.”

  The golem swept through another neighborhood. It was growing a little smaller in the distance. Houses and shops, halls and warehouses, fell beneath its tireless hands and feet. The army, caught completely off guard, seemed to have no idea what to do.

  “I cannot,” Aisa said. “I am not—”

  “Don’t let Ynara’s sacrifice go in vain,” Danr said.

  Rain poured ceaselessly down over them, and the wind picked up, driving the water harder over the companions huddled in the small shelter of a street wall. Aisa watched the golem go.

  “Kalessa,” she said at last, “may I borrow your sword?”

  • • •

  Aisa stood in the center of the street with Kalessa’s sword in both hands. Wind and rain swirled around her, and lightning crackled over her head, but she barely noticed. The golem’s footsteps shook the earth and made her bones tremble, but she barely noticed. Instead she reached into herself, into the place where she found the power of the shape.