The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  He remembered seeing an arc of his blood painted on the night sky as he fell. He remembered an explosion of light as he hit the ground. He remembered slipping into darkness.

  Everything else, all the voices that followed, he knew only as dreams.

  “—sent an assassin! Their words are empty as their faith! Exterminate them. All of them! DEATH TO PAGAN—”

  “—planned this all along! Fuckin’ Karnies! Draw steel, boys and girls! Make me proud! Kill every last fuckin’ scalp you—”

  “—get up. Lenk! LENK!”

  Another explosion. Pain shot through him, wakening deadened senses and wrenching a scream from his throat. He saw the bolt first, clenched in a woman’s hand. He saw Asper shortly after, concern drowning under fury in her stare.

  “What were you doing? What the hell were you doing?”

  “Miron,” he gasped. “Miron, he’s here. He’s somewhere. He’s someone. He can…” He tried to stagger to his feet, found his legs swaying under him. “I need to find him. I need to stop him.”

  He steadied himself against a wall. A shadow danced at the corner of his eye, drawing closer. He saw the steel of a spearhead, the crest of a black helmet. The Karnerian came charging across the Meat Market, spear at the ready, shield upraised.

  “Stop!” Asper threw herself between Lenk and the Karnerian, holding her hands up. “There’s been a mistake! STOP!”

  His shield lashed out, caught her across the jaw, and sent her sprawling to the ground. He stepped past her and thrust the spear. It bit the stone as Lenk narrowly rolled out of the way. The Karnerian slammed his shield against him, crushing him against the wall.

  His wound seared, weeping blood. His head swam and grew dim.

  Sword, he barely had breath to think. Sword. Where’s the damn sword?

  Metal hissed. A body shuddered. He found it—the blade of it, anyway—jutting through the Karnerian’s armor.

  The Karnerian looked down at the finger of steel jutting from his belly, as though he could scarcely believe it himself. He fell to the ground in a clatter of metal, leaving only a woman with wide eyes and bloodied hands behind where he had just stood.

  Asper’s hands trembled as she turned horrified eyes to Lenk and all but whispered.

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  “You said you were here to help.”

  “I am.”

  “You said you wouldn’t kill.”

  “I didn’t.”

  She took a step back, shaking her head, looking at her hands, looking over her shoulder as though she were just now realizing what was happening.

  Even then, maybe not.

  In flashes of black and blue, they clashed amidst the crowd. Karnerian spears thrust, spattering Sainite blood. Sainite bolts flew, piercing Karnerian helms. Such merciful deaths were not for the civilians. Merchants were trampled beneath sandal and boot. Servants were thrown out as shields and obstacles between soldiers and fleeing fashas. The Ancaaran envoy’s life wept out on the table as he lay facedown, a hand clutched weakly around the bolt in his throat.

  “There he is! Kill the assassin!”

  And yet there was ample bloodlust for a quartet of Sainites to break free of the melee and rush with swords drawn toward Lenk and Asper. He could see the broad grins painting their faces, the wildness in their eyes. He half-thought they might thank him, so eager were they to be back in a real, proper war.

  Something tremendous and black swept out of the crowd and leapt. It landed upon the lead Sainite with four limbs, smashing him into the stones. It rose up on his back, seized the Sainite by the legs, and drew a broken, bloodied body from the ground.

  Red arms flashed from beneath his cloak as Gariath swung the Sainite corpse into his compatriots. They fell, toy soldiers scattered to the ground and buried beneath their own dead.

  More emerged from the brawl, Karnerian and Sainite alike eager to prove their worth by slaying the assassin and his shadowy new companion.

  But courage was a flower, something that blossomed and wilted swiftly. And Gariath was a cold snap in winter.

  He shredded his cloak beneath his claws, unfurling his wings and voice as one, his roar tearing through the crowd cleaner than any sword. The soldiers fell back, bravery faltering and hiding behind blade and shield.

  Gariath wanted to pursue them; Lenk could see by the twitch of his claws and muscle. And whatever it was that kept him from doing that, he was thankful for. The dragonman turned and stalked toward the two humans, tossing Lenk his sword.

  “What happened?” he growled.

  “Do you care?” Lenk asked, slinging his sword over his shoulder.

  “No,” Gariath said, “but I thought you might like the opportunity to reflect on how useless you are without me.”

  “Later,” Lenk said. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

  “No.” Asper’s words were as hard as her stare. “We have to find Aturach and the other Talanites. We came here to help.”

  “Look around you,” Lenk said. “What can we do to help this?”

  “I don’t know, moron,” she snarled. “The opposite of whatever you did to start it?”

  “I was set up. Miron was there, and a Jackal and—”

  “I already said I don’t care,” Gariath snarled. “Now which is it? Are we leaving or fighting?”

  Of course, had he the presence of mind to think of it, Lenk would have known that such decisions were rarely left to him.

  Of this fact, he was reminded as Speaker Careus stood atop the mediation table, sword held aloft and voice booming as crossbow bolts fell like rain.

  “Wash clean this city of the unworthy! Let the unbeliever gaze upon His works and tremble!” He pointed to a distant building. “Brothers, speak His name and He shall be with us! Summon the Faithbreaker!”

  They had been sitting stock-still this whole time, enough to escape the notice of everyone. But at that moment, Lenk saw the white robes of the Machine Cult flutter as one of them stood up on the roof a far building. The Karnerian numeral for “one” scrawled into his scalp, he stepped to the edge of the building and held his hands out wide.

  “I AM CHOSEN!” he shrieked, hurling himself off the edge and disappearing behind a low-slung wall.

  The earth quaked. Stone, far older than that of the Meat Market’s, groaned to waking life. The body of the Machine Cultist rose up over the wall, twitching and impaled upon a horn of carved marble.

  All screams and sounds of battle fell silent before the explosion of rock as the nearby wall crumbled. From the rising cloud of dust stepped something tall, powerful, eyes alight with bloodred fire and earth shuddering beneath its feet.

  Daeon, Lenk recognized.

  He knew the face: hard and angular and curled up into a cruel frown and crowned by a pair of curling horns. He knew the body: thick with muscle, carved from stone to naked, godlike perfection. He knew this statue: he had seen it in every shrine, temple, and church dedicated to the Conqueror.

  But those statues didn’t move.

  Blood from the impaled Cultist wept into the Faithbreaker golem’s eyes as it craned its head about, surveying the battle through a red haze. From a stone throat, from an unmoving mouth, it spoke with the voice of a God.

  “Death to pagans.”

  Commands rose from the Sainites; crossbow bolts followed, raining upon the golem from on high and below. And like raindrops, they did not so much as slow it down, clattering harmlessly from its stone flesh. It reached into the rubble of the wall and produced a heavy chunk of stone. It turned its baleful gaze skyward toward the Sainites on a nearby roof and hurled the boulder.

  And so, too, did bodies fall like rain.

  “Cleanse this city of the filth, brother!” Speaker Careus scowled at Lenk down the length of his blade. “Begin with their vile assassin!”

  Lenk had seen many of these moments before. And he did have scars to prove it.

  But as a set of red eyes settle
d upon him, he realized there was a moment when the sheer amount of shit a man could get himself in could be so great as to break the feeble mind that tried to comprehend it.

  “Death to pagans.”

  That moment was now.

  The crowd became a shrieking tide, desperately trying to part before the golem as it strode forward, heedless of the unfortunate crushed beneath it. It cared not for them. Nor did Lenk. He turned to run, trying to ignore the wound in his side, trying to ignore the earth shaking beneath him, trying to ignore the noise and the pain and the shadow falling over him.

  Growing darker.

  He threw himself to the side. When he struck the ground, he felt it shudder beneath him. He rolled onto his back in time to see the golem step through stone like a curtain. The wall of the building crumpled before its stride. Men strained to be heard above the groan of stone as the wall collapsed, chunks of rock falling like angels struck from heaven.

  Lenk could do nothing but crawl and keep his head down and pray for it to be over.

  And when it was, when he rose to his feet, he was not certain whether he was alive or dead.

  He still drew breath and blood still wept blood from his wound. But what faced him was the nightmare he always saw when he closed his eyes.

  Dust hung in the air in a great shroud, deafening the pitch of battle and blinding his eyes. But even through this, he could see the faces. Some stared up in blank, unblinking horror, wearing their last moments in their glazed eyes. Others lay half-pulped by boots and stone feet, only fragments of noses, teeth, and jaws remaining to prove they had ever been human. Fewer still moved, lips fluttering in numb prayers too soft for any God to hear.

  So many of them. Every time the dust closed over one, it parted to reveal another. He could not turn away, could not shut his eyes to them or the stinging dust. He was meant to see this.

  He was meant to look upon the dead and know that he had caused this.

  Somehow.

  The stone groaned behind him. He looked over his shoulder, up to the sky. Red eyes stared down at him, a shadow black against the cloud of dust, a voice echoing in the void.

  “Death to pagans.”

  He was running, or doing something very like running. He clutched the wound at his side. He tried to breathe and coughed against the dust filling his nose and mouth. And he tried to ignore the golem’s thunderous footsteps drawing ever closer behind him.

  He saw a shadow stir at the edge of his vision, and rush toward him. Someone seized him and draped his arm around a firm shoulder, easing his weight. Asper’s face was locked dead ahead as she hurried him through the cloud, looking anywhere but at him.

  He wondered whom she had left behind to come for him.

  An avian shriek cut through the dust, drew his eyes to the sky. Painted black against the night sky, he could see dark shapes, feathered wings, heavy armor.

  “Scraws inbound, Sergeant!” someone shouted out.

  “Fuckin’ FINALLY!” He knew that voice. “The area is now hot! Clear out, boys! The Karnies are about to drown in fire!” Blacksbarrow’s laughter and the scraws overhead shrieked as one. “TASTE MY TAINT, YOU SONS OF BITCHES!”

  Fire glimmered bright red upon the evening, falling like bleeding stars cut from heaven. From the wings of the scraws, fireflasks whistled as they fell, shattered against the stone, and erupted into patches of flaming oil.

  More screams cut through the square: Djaalics, Karnerians, the few Sainites who hadn’t been swift enough. The shadows that had been painted black against the curtains of dust burst into bright orange pyres, flailing wildly in vain attempts to scrape the oil from their flesh. The golem strode on, unimpeded by the flames rising up around it.

  “Keep moving,” Asper snarled, tightening her arm around Lenk’s waist, forcing him to march faster. “Don’t stop. Don’t look behind.”

  That was probably meant to be reassuring.

  That would have been more reassuring if he hadn’t felt the earth shaking.

  His wound bled. His legs ached. His lungs burned. His eyes stung from the dust, but he dared not close them. All he had left was the sight of a distant gate, the way out, growing painstakingly larger with each agonized step.

  He tripped over something: a fallen helmet, maybe with a head still in it. Asper struggled to haul him up and called him a foul name he couldn’t hear above the sound of stones breaking behind them.

  He looked over his shoulder. Before he saw anything else, through flame and dust, he saw the great stone hand reaching down for him, fingers outstretched and trembling.

  Slowing.

  Stopping.

  It hung over him, a foot away from crushing him like an insect, frozen. He looked past the tremendous hand to red eyes that had gone dark. Atop its great horn, the impaled cultist, blackened by flame, sloughed off. The blood he had wept upon the golem’s stone flesh flaked off and disappeared in the dust.

  And Lenk understood the difference between a golem and a statue.

  “He returns to slumber!” Another cultist, scalp marked with the second numeral, came running naked toward the golem. “I must wake him. I was chosen! He must live again!”

  A red arm lashed out of the dust to snatch him by the throat and haul him from his feet. The cultist’s eyes were still upon the golem, his hand still reaching out for the stone flesh, when Gariath’s arm tensed with a snapping sound. A limp body struck the stone.

  “Those bird things are coming back to drop more fire,” Gariath grunted as he emerged, cuts mapping his skin. “We should go now.”

  “How many are dead?” Asper asked.

  “Who cares?”

  “Did you see any Talanites? People in blue robes like mine?”

  “I see one now,” he replied. “If she would like to come back later, there will be plenty of bodies to sift through.”

  Asper turned a look of hard appraisal upon Lenk, as if measuring him against all the bodies in that square. And whether she found him worth it, he did not want to know.

  “Come on,” she muttered, readjusting his weight across her shoulders and hurrying him toward the gate.

  They rushed across the cobblestones, heading for the gate leading out, stepping over the bodies. Lenk counted them as they went. One eye, staring up glassily as dust settled upon it. One arm still twitching, reaching out from beneath a stone. A mass of blackened skin and tar that had once been a man, trying to pull itself across the stones. One after the other after another.

  Until he finally closed his eyes.

  FORTY-ONE

  SHICT

  There were no fires that night in Shicttown.

  One would know it was a village only if one had been there to see it before. No shict walked its sands. No yijis bayed at the moon. No fires were burning, no songs being sung. Many tents had been rolled up and carted away. Only a few remained, standing silent and dark in the night.

  Kataria walked between the tents that still remained, the crunching of her boots upon the sand the only sound in the night. No one had come to greet her when she arrived. No one had come to speak to her since. Occasionally, she thought she caught a glimpse of shadows moving at the edges of her vision. Frequently, she felt eyes settle upon her and follow her between the tents.

  She didn’t call out. A shict wouldn’t call out.

  She closed her eyes. Her ears went spear-straight. Concentrating, she reached inside her and touched the Howling, held her breath, and waited for a reply.

  In the long dark of the Howling, she could hear sounds: growling, mutters, whispers. But these were not words. And they were not for her to hear. No voice reached out to acknowledge her.

  But there were people here. There were shicts here. She knew that now, even if they didn’t know her.

  Eyes shut, ears twitching, she followed the susurrus through the Howling. It guided her around tents, over extinguished firepits, across the sand until she heard the sound of scratching.

  She opened her eyes. A yiji, two heads tall
er than the three shicts gathered around it, buried its canine snout into the sand. Its paws worked dutifully, excavating a small hole. One of the shicts beside it muttered a command and stroked the beast’s mane. It giggled excitedly, stepping away from the hole and settling down upon its haunches.

  Through the moonlight, Kataria recognized two of the shicts closest to the hole as the two that had accompanied Kwar to Ghoukha’s house. They proceeded to toss bulging sacks into the hole, coins jingling beneath the burlap. One of them spoke a command to the yiji, who eagerly leapt up and began kicking its back legs, burying the bags beneath the sand.

  “What’s going on?” Kataria asked. “Where is everyone?”

  The khoshicts acknowledged her with nothing more than a glance. They looked far more interested in the yiji as it filled the rest of the hole, sniffed briefly, raised its leg, and urinated over it. The two shicts began to stamp down the sodden earth, packing it tightly over the bags.

  The third shict, also familiar, however, kept a cool gaze firmly on her.

  “East,” Thua answered.

  She cocked a brow. “What for?”

  “Those who cannot hold a bow have gone with the yijis and however many hunters needed to protect them.” He looked long over the distant walls to the rising moon. “They will meet the Seventh Tribe in the desert and stay there.”

  “For how long?”

  “Riffid knows. I do not.” Thua said softly. “I do not know what humans will do when they are panicked. The last time, they burned our homes to the ground, they stole everything we owned that glittered, and they took my…”

  He held his voice within a stilled breath. He closed his eyes.

  “They are like any other animal. We tread lightly when they have the scent of blood.” He gestured to the camp. “If they come to burn, they will find our fires cold. He gestured to the hole. “If they come to rob, they will find nothing. And if they try to kill us, anyway…”

  Thua’s ears flickered in time with hers. They heard the same thing through the Howling—a warning growl, the baring of teeth. Their eyes were drawn up to the black windows of the long-vacant buildings surrounding Shicttown. Arrowheads glinted silver in the moonlight; wooden masks peered out as pale, empty faces staring down.