Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  What’s wrong with the air? Kholster asked.

  Relayed through Bloodmane, Scout’s reply sounded distant and faded. We think the odd shimmering is a side effect of Wylant’s destruction of the Life Forge, First One. The warning signs, Scout focused its vision, and one of the distant signs grew large in magnification until the words on it could be clearly read: Twist Warning: All Elemental Magic Prohibited By Order of King Grivek. Other signs read: Elemental Magic Unstable in this Area and Using Elemental Arts in this Area May Cause Dimensional Breach and Death.

  Do you feel any adverse effects? Kholster thought back to Scout through his link with Bloodmane.

  No, First One.

  Can you get me a better look at one of the guardians?

  Of course, First One.

  His viewpoint shifted again, this time coming to rest on an insectoid construction of clear crystal. Six wings like panes of wavy glass held it aloft as it flew a circuit around the thirty-foot seamless wall (made of the same transparent substance) it had been tasked to guard. As Kholster watched, one of its wings stopped functioning and it was forced to land atop the wall, perching with its spider-like legs clutching the narrow blade-like apex of the wall.

  Turning its head 180 degrees so it could get a better view of the malfunctioning wings, the construct reached back with the uppermost of its four sets of arms, the ones with prehensile digits as opposed to the heavy clawed graspers that punctuated the thicker lower arms, and began to manually force the wing to move, first up and down, then side to side. After several repetitions, the wing resumed normal function, and the construct continued its patrol flight, scanning the wall with multifaceted eyes flaring occasionally with brightly reflected sunlight.

  How many of the things are there? Kholster asked.

  We’re still checking, Scout replied, but so far it looks like half a dozen fully functional models. Twice that number appear forced to strictly ground patrol duties due to malfunctioning wings, and perhaps one dozen units appear to be completely nonfunctional.

  Any Eldrennai at all?

  None that we detect, First One.

  Kholster sensed a hesitation in the warsuit, as if it were holding something back.

  What is it, Scout?

  My maker says it looks like the Eldrennai have stopped maintaining the work here. He wants me to go ahead and try breaching the wall.

  Not just yet. Tell Okkust I want to wait until Eye Spike, Wind Song, and Hunter have their teams in position. Full line of sight. Until then keep a watchful eye out, yes?

  Of course, First One. I believe my maker was merely anxious because of the bones.

  Bones?

  The bones of dead makers-to-be, Scout’s echoing voice said, his volume dropping low. They are just visible through the breach.

  Show me, had just left Kholster’s mind, when Vander’s thoughts intruded: I think he’s about to get to us, Kholster.

  Thank you, Scout. Please show Bloodmane the breach you mentioned so he can relay it to me later. And . . . thank you. Well done.

  First One, Scout acknowledged, and Kholster opened his eyes to view the audience chamber once more.

  He just asked if he was boring you, Vander prompted. You’ll want to review the little farmer fighting his gigantic neighbor. Shidarva’s magic was jerking his sword to and fro. I can show you later.

  Fine. Kholster narrowed his eyes at the fat magistrate, his ears filled with remembered cries of a million dead Aern as their souls left their bodies and their spirits fed back into their brother and sister Aern, the five thousand Armored. In his mind’s eye, he saw a sky filled with Aeromancers raining lightning down on Fort Sunder, Geomancers using the rocks to smash his soldiers and break his home. Echoes of past anger quickened in his chest, and he met the magistrate’s impatience with bared fangs and a growl. At the sound of his growl, the pale blue eyes of the goddess, inked below Breemson’s own, lit from within.

  “I have been patient.” Kholster took a step forward. “I have come to your city to make peace with your people and you have made me wait, putting me to heel like a dog!”

  “Here we go,” Vander muttered under his breath, elbowing Okkust. In the rear of his mind, Kholster sensed his fellow Aern ready to tear the city apart and eat their fill of its people, ready to turn his anger into action and . . . He took a deep breath, found his center, and reminded himself that the humans were not his enemies. Not all of them. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

  “And I suppose that comes from unfamiliarity,” Kholster said more warmly, trying to tamp down the anger, stifle the rage. The humans weren’t Eldrennai. They were Oathbreakers, perhaps, but it was difficult putting beings who’d never enslaved him or his people in the same category with those who had done so. “You don’t know me, Magistrate. The last time I was here, you can’t have been more than a child. We Aern trade items of the forge for meat from your farms. On rare occasion, when we decide to sell our bones, we offer you the right of first refusal.”

  “Sell your bones?” Magistrate Breemson scoffed. “You sell us bone-steel.”

  Kholster grimaced and Vander’s thoughts found him: I can start reinforcements on their way here from South Number Nine and they’d be here in three days even if the goblins wake.

  They’d be here in two days; there are no such things as goblins, Kholster thought back.

  An expression, Vander thought at him.

  Ah, no reinforcements yet.

  “Would you like to correct your speaker, Shidarva, or should I?” Murmurs went up from the crowd on that one. Addressing the goddess directly was simply not done. It had been so long since Kholster had felt bound to observe that particular nicety, he kept forgetting it existed. He waited, giving her a chance to respond, and when her eyes only narrowed, he proceeded. “Fine.”

  Kholster held out a hand and Okkust stood up, holding a plain metal bucket for Kholster to take. The Aern wondered if the humans realized the bucket was made of unpolished bone metal. Probably not. He took the bucket, careful not to slosh its contents too much.

  “I need you to understand two things. The first is this: We are different from you. The second thing is everything about us that you think to be just a myth or kitchen talk is true or has its root in truth.” He held the bucket out to Breemson, noting the way Japesh and Conwrath, standing at the back of the room, both slid their hands to their weapons. Whether to defend the magistrate if need be or for some other purpose, Kholster could not say.

  *

  If that jumped-up cousin-in-law of mine goes to knock that bucket out of the Grudger’s hand, thought Conwrath, I’ll kill the fool before Kholster has the chance.

  The tension made his shoulders ache, but worse than that was the touch of long sight twitching in his brain. He couldn’t exactly hear Breemson’s thoughts; God Speakers were awfully hard to read, but he got the gist of them, and he didn’t like the direction they were going.

  “This is a birthing bucket,” Kholster said loudly, not just for the magistrate, but for the audience around them in the chamber. Murmurs of interest and surprise seemed to rule the crowd, their inquisitiveness pressing down on Conwrath like a heavy blanket on a summer day, making him sweat. “None of you have ever seen one.” He held the bucket out and walked around the edge of the chamber. “You may notice it is filled with blood.”

  “Theatrics, surely,” the magistrate muttered.

  “My people were not made by the gods. Jun did not forge us. Gromma did not plant us, nor did Queelay cough us onto some sandy beach in the long ago.”

  “Thought it was one of them things,” Conwrath heard Japesh whisper to himself. “Always wanted to see a baby Grudger.”

  “Theatrics,” Breemson said more loudly. “You are surely wasting our . . .”

  Conwrath flinched as Kholster’s pupils grew large for a moment, the amber pupils stretched, the jade irises strained, the black diminished. Conwrath never wanted to face another Aern with the black gone from its eyes . . . replaced by that glow of jad
e-rimmed amber.

  “Eyes of black, talk them back/Amber and jade be dismayed,” Japesh recited a snippet of warning rhyme.

  “Do not interrupt him again,” said a female voice. It was strong and hard and carried with it a weight Marcus Conwrath found heavy to bear. He knew he should not be able to see the tattoo of the goddess, covered as it was by layers of fabric, but it was as if Breemson had grown transparent to reveal, hidden within himself, a living image of the goddess Shidarva, clad in robes of blue, a quill clenched in one hand, a sword the other.

  “He is your elder by millennia. He was not made by the hands of gods, yet we recognize him. He is a creature of disrespect, of bloodshed and tears, but he does not lie knowingly except perhaps by omission. His kind remain outside my judgment. You may deal with his people or not, but do not test them or taunt them. It would be . . . unwise. I have spoken.”

  Kholster took two steps forward and spat. “I neither request nor require any god or goddess to speak on my behalf or the behalf of my people!”

  “Masterwork of Uled,” Shidarva began, “surely your rage is misplaced. This one’s mind was alive with cry for my intervention.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Watch your mouth and guard your tones,” Japesh was repeating somewhere behind Conwrath, “lest the Grudgers clean your bones.” Conwrath couldn’t look away. Was Kholster’s anger, his rage, directed at the goddess? Conwrath didn’t think it was. It felt deeper.

  “I am Uled’s creation no more!” Kholster reached into the bucket of blood and drew forth a small lump of metal, like two fist-sized stones crushed together. “He forged me. He wrought my very soul, but what I am now was not by his design, but mine and that of my people. He is at best an inspirator, a mad contributor to my initial concept! I reject him!” He held the lump, cradled it. “This is how he envisioned us: Lumps of metal he could mold. Playthings to serve his purpose.”

  Abruptly, Kholster looked back over his shoulder. “Okkust, do I have your permission to wake this son of yours?”

  A thick-eyebrowed Aern, slightly broader than the others, stood and took one step forward. “Yes.”

  “Who is born this day?”

  “Droggust, by Okkust, out of Marridai.”

  Reaching over his shoulder, Kholster found the pointed poll of his warpick and sliced his palm, drawing back the injured hand and smearing his pale almost-orange blood over the still-iron lump. He plunged it back into the bucket and passed the bucket back to Okkust, who grinned broadly and drew out a blinking bronze-skinned infant.

  “Hello, Droggust,” the warrior cooed. “I’m your dad.”

  “Da!” the infant squealed, the word verging on comprehensible with its (his, Conwrath corrected himself) first attempt.

  The new father, in a motion identical to the one made by Kholster, gashed his palm on his own warpick and rubbed his blood on the child’s head. As he did so, a scar pattern rose up on the child’s back.

  “Da da scahs,” little Droggust burbled as if he knew exactly what was happening.

  “Yes,” Okkust beamed. “Your Da Da’s scars.”

  The babe blinked and twisted his head about until he found Kholster. “Ah-no,” he cheered delightedly.

  When Conwrath looked back at Kholster, the black was back in his eyes, the jade a healthy circle around his amber pupils. “Very well,” Kholster said, his voice warm and proud, his amber pupils lit from within. “All know . . . that on this day, Droggust, by Okkust out of Marridai, has joined our ranks and bears his father’s scars. May he never be Foresworn.”

  “Ah know!” the baby chirped.

  Kholster’s smile deepened as Okkust opened his belt pouch and withdrew a clean cotton garment for the babe.

  “Won’t he need a crap catcher?” Japesh murmured.

  “We neither defecate nor urinate,” Kholster said. “What we do not digest, we regurgitate in small pellets.”

  “Like owls?” a young girl in the stands asked.

  “Similar to owls, but not as often or as messy.”

  “Then it’s yarping, says my Auntie.”

  “I am not opposed to the word,” Kholster said levelly, seeking the child out with his eyes.

  “Theatrics,” the magistrate repeated. “Surely . . .”

  “I think that girl oughtta be the magistrate,” Japesh muttered.

  *

  Conwrath was in motion before the words “I agree,” left Kholster’s lips. The Aern, leaving his warpick slung on his back just as he had promised, went low, left hand curling into a fist as he spun on the magistrate to deliver a hammer-like blow clearly intended to crush the unsuspecting God Speaker’s skull. Conwrath rolled forward, scooping up one of the ceremonial blades of judgment and, in a rolling summersault (with consequences to his left knee he hoped he’d live to worry about later), caught the blow with the flat of the judgment blade. The redirected force set his shoulder alight with pain which faded along with the discomfort in his knees as the blue runes, traces of shidarvite worked into the blade, began to glow.

  “He is the magistrate, Kholster,” Conwrath grunted.

  “A poor one.”

  “When it comes to dealing with you Grudgers, that may be true, but he’s still chosen by Shidarva.”

  “Which reflects poorly upon her as well.” Kholster straightened, hand slipping back toward his warpick. Then with a subtle shake of his head, he drew his hand away and spread his arms wide in a combat stance.

  “Still,” Conwrath continued, “it’s her choice to make.” Power, either from the blade or the goddess herself flowed up Conwrath’s arms like youth itself had been injected into his limbs.

  It has been many years since I had a Justicar, the goddess’s voice rang in his mind. The conditions required by the Divine Accords are so stringent. Defeat the Aern and you will be my chosen. I will add unto you a hundred years of vigor, the strength of five . . .

  Marcus Conwrath blocked out the goddess’s words, needing every scrap of concentration for combat with the Grudger. How do I force a draw? The magistrate’s guards made as if to intercede, then stopped themselves, eyes riveted to the glowing blade of judgment. The Grudgers, Conwrath noted, made no moves at all. Sitting. Waiting.

  “Defeat my champion,” Shidarva spoke from somewhere back and to the right, “and you have my leave to kill the magistrate. I will select the girl as the new one.”

  Kholster snorted. “A stopgap at best. I will still find myself back here in a handful of years having to explain to a new magistrate and make new arrangements. I think I liked it better when Kilke was ruler of the gods. He at least had no illusions about the relationship between gods and mortals. He treated them as playthings and knew it.” Shidarva had risen to power after cutting off one of Kilke’s three heads.

  Conwrath lost control of his arm and was jerked into a forward slash. Kholster’s anemic orange blood welled up as he took the blow on his forearm with the sound of metal on metal as sword edge struck metallic bone.

  “And I treat them as playthings and don’t?”

  “Did you just attack me? I don’t think it was the good captain.” Kholster smiled. “I noticed the captain prefers to thrust like mad in an honest fight . . . he’s rarely one to chop.”

  Two more blows came, swift as lightning. Kholster slapped one away with bare hands and took the other across his mail. Conwrath felt himself pulled forward by the sword. He hoped Lyla’s cousin was worth this. Gritting his teeth, he fought for control as Shidarva sent him into a further flurry of attacks. Shidarva’s anger flowed through Conwrath’s mind with a single word: Blasphemy.

  She was a brilliant swordswoman after her own fashion, and a human opponent would have been dead already three times over, but she wasn’t fighting the Aern properly. As he’d told his own trainees, one should never chop at an Aern like a tree, one should fill them full of holes and bleed them. Give them wounds meant to slow them down and tire them out so you can kill them with one blow. Only the killing blow matters
with the Grudgers, he’d told his men. Everything else is a delaying tactic to get that opening.

  Let me fight him, Conwrath howled inside his own head. I know him.

  “Are you offering Captain Conwrath here the status of Justicar yet?” Kholster asked, baring his doubled upper and lower canines like fangs. “I will kill him rather than see him live through the destruction you would make of all he is, Queen of Leeches.”

  More blows. More blood, but no telling shots. Already the wound on Kholster’s forearm was closing. Between the bones. Between the bones, Conwrath cursed. If you must chop at the Grudger, cut muscle and tendon. It takes longer to heal.

  “Answer me if you can, Captain,” Kholster called.

  “You dare call me leech?” was what poured out of Conwrath’s lips in a voice that was definitely not his own.

  “You live on the belief of mortals,” Kholster sneered. “What else should I call you?”

  “I am Shidarva!” the voice came from two throats. “I am Justice! I am Retribution! And you will respect me!”

  Unable to follow the exchange of blows any longer, Conwrath felt pushed back into the recesses of his own body, his own mind. Rills of blood crossed Kholster’s arms, but Conwrath remained uninjured. Had he even been attacked yet? With a sound not unlike a pealing bell, the blade of judgment cracked down on Kholster’s skull, only to be locked between the Aern’s crossed arms and shattered.

  “Are you back, Captain Conwrath?”

  Conwrath’s body leapt for the other blade of judgment, only to be jerked short when Kholster seized him from behind.

  “I’m sorry you got caught up in this, my worthy old foe,” Kholster whispered in his ear. “But I would cast you into the hands of the one god I trust rather than see you enslaved by this one.”

  A crack and a pop and it was done. Dimly, Conwrath thought he heard the sounds of Breemson screaming and another body hitting the floor, but he felt himself wrapped comfortingly in the strong arms of a god.

  CHAPTER 10

  HARVESTER