The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  Asper felt her blood freeze as she realized who they were talking about. She had been there to see him, this Sandal person, engulfed in flame.

  “And?” Denaos snorted. “He catches on fire every other day. Or did, anyway. He’ll be fine.”

  “Assuming the Khovura have not found him yet,” Yerk replied. “What they do to Jackal prisoners is neither art nor faith, but crudely human.”

  “Who are they?” Asper asked. “These black-clad… Khovura?”

  Yerk fixed a heavy-lidded, slow stare upon her.

  “They are our enemy,” he said simply. “And we are at war.”

  “Yerk,” Denaos pressed. “There are four others with me.”

  “We saw your run-in with the honorable fasha Ghoukha. Unwise to make that kind of enemy in Cier’Djaal.”

  “Unwisdom has a long been a hobby of ours,” Denaos replied. “I need to find them and I need to get all of us out of here.”

  “You will find the gates barred. The Jhouche guards themselves do not deign to enter a footwar, but their obligations to the fashas command them to keep the battles contained.” A spark of a match and Yerk took a deep puff of his cigarillo. “I can keep you safe, so long as you stay here by my side.”

  “The boys and girls know me, surely,” Denaos said. “They remember what I did for the Jackals.”

  “In war, blood is coin, Ramaniel. You trade the ones you covet the most and get new ones to fill your pouch. You’ve been gone too long. Even the old members we retained remember you as a dark Djaalic”—he gestured to Denaos—“not this pale northerner.

  “Stand beside me and I can help you,” Yerk said through a puff of smoke. “Go out there and you are one more coin slipped through my fingers.”

  Asper glanced at Denaos. Secrets he had aplenty, still. But the years had taught her to read him. In small, fleeting glimpses between the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the slight purse of his lips. But she could see him well enough, then, and see that he was dearly considering taking up Yerk’s offer.

  That, she resolved, was something he would consider alone.

  She moved to go, found his hand on her shoulder. She whirled upon him, ready to brush him off by hand or by foul language. Instead, she found him in step with her, a sigh on his lips.

  “Hang on,” he muttered. “You’ll get yourself killed out there without me.”

  “I haven’t so far,” she replied coarsely.

  “Well, yes, but if I go out there and get killed, I’d like to have someone other than myself to blame.”

  He pulled ahead of her, making a pointed effort of not looking behind him. Yerk’s voice, however, followed them out of the darkness on a slow, lilting tune.

  “Anielle would love to know you’re safe,” he called out. “You left on such sudden terms, Ramaniel, she feared you dead.”

  “Ramaniel is dead,” Denaos said, terse. “I go by another name now.”

  “As you will again when whoever you are now dies,” Yerk said. “Out there, tomorrow; it doesn’t matter. To men like us, lives are no more difficult to part with than suits.”

  Denaos put his head down and kept walking. Asper hurried to catch up.

  “Where were they when you last saw them?” he asked.

  “At the fountain, a little ways west,” she said. “They’ve probably headed for the gates by now, if they’re able to, though.”

  Her stare remained fixed on him. She opened her mouth to speak. He did not look back at her when he cut her off.

  “You don’t want to ask,” he said.

  She looked over to the distant flames, the Jackals silhouetted against the sheets of crimson, firing bolts and falling to blades. She glared at Denaos’s back.

  “Just how many secrets do you want to die with?”

  “I was intending to go with all of them,” Denaos replied with a sideways glance. “Of course, you went and ruined that.”

  She shot him an indignant look. “I saved your life. A few times, in fact.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful,” he said as he ducked between a pair of stalls, heading for the square. “But I should point out that if you had let me die, I wouldn’t be facing this awkward conversation right now. So we’re kind of even.”

  TEN

  RARE MEAT

  Around him, war was raging.

  Crossbow bolts flew through the air as birds to find nests in bone and sinew. Fire rose in sheaves around the bodies that fell beneath them. And everywhere—under his feet, in his nostrils, stained on his hands—was death.

  That did not matter. Today, Gariath had something more precious than all of that.

  Today, Gariath had someone to hate.

  All that mattered was the blood on his teeth; the scent of silk and soft, clean, civilized things burning in his nostrils; and the shudder of earth beneath his feet as a tremendous shadow fell over him.

  Kharga’s ax came crashing down, no war cry to herald it. It struck the earth as Gariath leapt away, no curse to accompany the shattered stone. The massive dragonman turned upon his smaller cousin without a single word.

  There was nothing but the tremendous ax in his hands, fragmented stone sighing from its blade as he pulled it free. Nothing but the gashes from Gariath’s claws painting his armored hide. Nothing but the hatred burning between him and his enemy.

  This was Kharga, Drokha. This was Gariath, Rhega. These were dragonmen.

  Their hatred for each other was something altogether too beautiful to be sullied by words.

  Gariath’s language was in his claws and his teeth and the roar he loosed as he fell to all fours and charged. In a twitch of wings, he leapt. And he scrawled his words across Kharga’s flesh as his claws raked the bigger dragonman’s flesh and drew gouts of blood.

  Scratches. Nothing more than fleeting fragments of pain, half-smudged in red, running ink. Kharga’s hide was too thick for his claws to do any true, lasting damage. To truly maim, to truly damage, Gariath would have to strike tenderly: a claw in the eye, a ripped nostril, a place where the colossus was vulnerable.

  But Gariath did not do this. Not yet.

  Anger was an ugly limerick. Despair was a droning speech. Hatred, however, was an argument. Arguments demanded that someone concede.

  And only when the Drokha did that would Gariath grant him the death his breed so richly deserved.

  Each finger worked its way between scales. Each clawtip drank greedily of the blood that wept. Kharga’s flesh groaned beneath, drawn to a twitching spasm as Gariath ripped and tore.

  Even then, Kharga made no sound. Though his body shuddered and his hand trembled, he reached up and seized Gariath. He tore the red parasite from his face, heedless of the flesh and blood that came away on Gariath’s claws. He accepted Gariath’s bloody argument, its many points and its many persuasions, and offered a single retort with one great swing of his arm.

  And Gariath flew.

  Gariath, who had killed dozens of humans, beasts, and worse, tumbled through the air like a leaf. Gariath, last of the Rhega, was—

  He struck something hard. Thought left him, hammered from his skull.

  Coughing on ash, he pulled himself free from the shattered embers. The remnants of the stall collapsed behind him with a shudder of ruined silks and dying wood.

  Across the square, Kharga stood, unmoving, awaiting a retort.

  Embers stung his nose. Ash smeared his skin. There was a decidedly uncomfortable ache where a shard of blackened wood had decided to lodge itself.

  None of that mattered. Gariath had blood on his claws. Gariath had ashes in his eyes. Gariath had a response.

  “KHOTH-KAPIRA!”

  That wasn’t it.

  That wasn’t his voice, either.

  He turned and saw the human running toward him. A walking sack of meat wrapped in black cloth pretending it had business challenging him. A sword was held high above his head, a shriek was caught in his throat, and something was in his stare that should have been in the ey
es of disease-maddened beasts.

  The human rushed toward Gariath, deftly leaping over the bodies fallen on the cobblestones. He swung his sword wildly. He started to scream.

  “KHOTH-KAPIRA—”

  He never finished.

  A thick red hand wrapped about one’s windpipe would do that.

  “I’m busy,” Gariath snarled.

  A quick jerk, a twitch of claws, something red and glistening came out of the man’s neck and into Gariath’s hand.

  Gariath let the human fall and stepped over his corpse, heedless of a distant cry and the hum of crossbows preceding a shriek of falling bolts. The battle raged around him, blades flashing and crossbow bolts flying as the humans waged whatever pettiness they decided to call a war.

  He broke into a sprint, hoping to pass beneath the bolts as they flew. He caught one in the arm, another in the thigh, but those didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered but Kharga. The Drokha. The hatred.

  The air shimmered before him, almost imperceptibly. Easy to ignore. He crashed against it as though it were a solid wall. Less easy to ignore.

  The crossbow bolts struck the same barrier, ricocheting off empty space with but a ripple in the air and clattering to the ground. Gariath snorted, reached out, and touched the invisible wall before him. It quivered at the touch, and through it, he could see a distorted figure in the distance.

  Kharga.

  Turning and leaving through the Souk gates.

  Only then did Gariath make a sound.

  A long, angry sound born from his chest and torn out of his throat and punctuated with a lot of soundless cracking as he smashed his hands against the barrier, the air rippling with the impact. Perhaps Kharga heard him. Perhaps Kharga had a smile across his gigantic face. Gariath couldn’t see.

  The thought alone was enough to make him roar louder, longer, angrier.

  “Yes, yes. How terrible it is that I saved you from being impaled and crushed beneath a giant reptile’s foot.”

  The human. The skinny one. The only one he knew better by the shrill condescension of voice than the reeking scent of weakness.

  He whirled upon Dreadaeleon. The boy stood a few feet away, hand aloft in some arcane gesture, eyes bright red and leaking with the magic that held the invisible barrier up.

  “Bring it down,” Gariath snarled.

  Dreadaeleon glanced up. He looked thoughtful for about as long as it took another volley of bolts to strike the barrier and bounce off. The boy frowned and shook his head.

  “We could also do something that doesn’t get a foot of iron and wood in our skulls,” Dreadaeleon offered. He glanced over his shoulder; the barrier quivered with a moment’s lapsed concentration. “There’s cover back there. We can regroup, find the others, and then—”

  “He’s getting away!” Gariath snarled, smashing his fist on the air.

  “Who? The big dragonman? What did you call him? Drugga?”

  “Drokha,” Gariath snarled. He thrust an accusatory claw at the boy. “That is our tongue. It doesn’t belong in your mouth.” He pointed that claw across the square, toward the slowly vanishing hulk of Kharga’s shadow. “And he doesn’t belong outside of a funeral pyre.”

  “You’re awfully worked up about this, I can tell. Regardless, there’s still the whole—”

  The barrier rippled. There was a thick sound of flesh striking a wall. A man in a sand-colored hood was pressed against the intangible wall, a knife jammed in his neck and trailing a red smear as he slid down the barrier to the ground.

  “Yeah, that,” Dreadaeleon said. “So. Back to cover?”

  “Bring it down. You seek cover. I’ll handle the killing, as usual.”

  “The incomprehensibility and self-importance of that statement is only vaguely overshadowed by the sheer hilarity of you wanting to walk out into an open war to try to kill someone twice your size. Which, given the fact that you are about twice my size, is just… just…” He shook his head, trembling. “Either way, no. The barrier extends about ten feet around me and it goes where I go.”

  The expressions of dragonmen were often inscrutable; long reptilian snouts and black, dead eyes didn’t leave a lot of room for nuance. Still, there was a crack in the everyday fury that Gariath wore, just enough to let slip a clear, thoughtful look leveled at Dreadaeleon.

  “Around…” he repeated slowly, “you.”

  “Yes. And that means—”

  What he might have said was irrelevant and thus ignored. In any event, Gariath clearly disagreed. What it meant, as far as he was concerned, was that he was perfectly justified in seizing Dreadaeleon by the lapels of his coat, throwing him over his shoulder like a sack of flour, and taking off at a sprint after Kharga.

  As near as Gariath could tell, magic largely revolved around the flailing of limbs and the screaming of a bunch of words incomprehensible even to humans. And while the flailing limbs were certainly present, the words that came vomiting out of the boy’s mouth were all too human.

  And entirely rude.

  Humans were dying around him. Ones with black cloth around their heads fell into pyres, crossbow bolts jutting from their chests, necks, spines. Ones with sand-colored cloth around their heads were dragged from rooftops, cut beneath many hungry razors.

  Thrown knives were flung at the barrier; ash parted against the barrier; ash-kissed corpses were shoved aside before the barrier; an errant bolt came through the barrier, sank deep into his shoulder, and chewed eagerly on the muscle beneath his skin.

  That was annoying.

  “If you’re going to be obstructive, be useful,” he snarled to his human cargo.

  “I am a wizard, you red turd!” Dreadaeleon screamed. “I am the apex of human knowledge! I am the product of years of careful study and raw, natural talent! I am—”

  “And if you’re not going to be useful,” Gariath interrupted, narrowly ducking beneath another bolt that had penetrated the barrier, “be quiet.”

  Through the smoke and the bolts and the wails of panic, Gariath saw Kharga. At the far edge of the Souk wall, he waded among the last trickles of a tide of panicked civilians through a great stone archway. Gariath could see the colossal dragonman’s head tilt up, nostrils quivering at the scent of the approaching Rhega, just as Gariath could smell nothing but Drokha.

  Kharga looked over his shoulder. His smile was infuriating, even more so than before. He offered a wave of a massive hand at a pair of guards wearing Ghoukha’s sigil as he strode past.

  With grunts of acknowledgment and then effort, the two men seized a complicated-looking lever in their hands and pulled down. And with the sound of thunder, an iron portcullis came crashing down behind the Drokha, sealing him away.

  Gariath’s howl was almost everything in him: all his anger, all his rage, all his frustration. But not his hatred. He wouldn’t waste that on a roar thrown at a wall of iron and stone. He saved his hatred for the muscles in his arms, for the claws on his hands, for the boy he took off of his shoulders and aimed upward with intent to throw.

  “Wait! WAIT!” Dreadaeleon screamed, swaying as the dragonman took a few practice swings.

  “If you don’t squirm so much, you’ll clear it fine,” Gariath grunted. “Just open the portcullis on the other side and we’ll—”

  “Damn it, I said…”

  Exactly what the boy said was no language Gariath knew. But the red light leaking out of his eyes, the wave of his hand, the ripple in the air that sent the dragonman flying, slapped away by an invisible wall of force…

  He understood that.

  He leapt back to his feet in time to see Dreadaeleon clambering back up. The boy was breathing hard, as he usually was after hasty expenditures of his power. Buckled at the waist, hands on his knees, the boy looked at Gariath beneath a brow creased with sweat.

  “Look,” he said, breathless, “I’ve known you long enough to not ask what makes you want to kill people. I’ve been around you long enough to know that you’re pretty good at it. But why this
one? There’s dozens of people around to kill. What makes that one so important?”

  “Complicated,” Gariath said.

  Dreadaeleon furrowed his brow.

  “You know, for most people, murder tends to be complicated.” He glanced up at the portcullis. “He’s a dragonman, right? Like you.”

  “Not like me,” Gariath snarled. “Not like us.” His lip curled backward, all teeth bared. “Not like the Rhega.”

  Dreadaeleon fixed him with a curious glance. Gariath said nothing more. For a moment, hate had seeped into his voice. He had nearly wasted it. He needed all of it.

  “There aren’t many of you left,” Dreadaeleon said, “your people. Right?”

  Gariath said nothing.

  “How many are there left of him? The gray dragonmen?”

  “Too many.”

  “Right. So, he goes away to whatever happy, gigantic home he has with his happy, two-ton wife, and you waste your time trying to get over this wall while your friends,” Dreadaeleon tapped his chest, “die in smoke and blood.”

  Gariath snorted. The boy’s tone suggested there was a downside, but he was having a hard time seeing it.

  “By now, everyone who saw you will be talking about red-skinned, horned demons. If you want to kill that dragonman, you’re going to need help.”

  “I have killed bigger than him. With less than you.”

  “Then you’ll do it alone. And when you kill him, when we’re dead, you’ll still be alone.”

  Gariath said nothing.

  Because if he opened his mouth to voice his scorn, to scoff, to tell the boy just what he was about to rip off of him and where he was going to stuff it, something would tumble out on his voice. Something that would prove to Dreadaeleon and to himself that there were, indeed, worse things than not killing a Drokha.

  And so Gariath growled, turned around, and began to stalk back toward the Souk.

  He heard Dreadaeleon stumbling over bodies and ashes as the boy tried to keep up.