by Sam Sykes
“So you think they’re going to get married or what?” Kataria asked through a full mouth, spitting as she did.
“Kataria!”
Asper cried her name and rushed forward. The shict rose up to meet her, grinning, and Asper felt her own face nearly split apart with the force of her own smile at the sight of her.
She was leaner than before. The muscle of her body was more apparent now. And her skin was tinged red. And there was much more dirt and grime on her than Asper remembered.
But her ears were still long and pointed. She still wore feathers in her hair. Her canines were unnervingly big. And, as Asper rushed forward and embraced her, she still smelled comfortingly terrible.
It was Kataria.
One of the few friends who didn’t want to kill her.
Presumably.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered. “I thought you were lost, I thought …” She pulled back and looked at the shict, amazed. “How’d you get in here? The entire road is being watched.”
“Being watched by humans.” Kataria half grinned, half sneered. “Which is a little like asking a … stupid thing to … not do something well.”
Asper quirked a brow. “Uh …”
“Shut up. I’ve been riding all day and I’m tired.” Kataria glared over the haunch of meat as she took another bite. “I’ll say something wittier once I’ve finished this.”
“Clearly.” Asper cringed, as lovingly as one could, at the meat. “Where’d you get that, anyway?”
Kataria looked down at the haunch, shrugged, and took another bite.
“You took a long time to get here. I got hungry.”
“A long time to …” Asper laughed, breathless. “You didn’t have to sneak in. If you had just let me know you were coming, I would have had you welcomed in.”
“Yeah, you’ve got an army now, don’t you? What do they call you? The Pratfall?”
“The Prophet.” Asper drew herself up, unconsciously. “I speak for heaven and—”
“Right, yes, nice.” Kataria spit out some gristle before taking another bite. “Anyway, as cuddly as your army of angry humans carrying spears and crossbows looked, I thought it’d be better if I sneaked in. Something tells me they wouldn’t like seeing these.”
Her ears twitched, folded against her head. Asper winced in response.
“Listen, it’s not like that. Tensions are running high, I’ll admit, but you’ve missed a lot since you’ve been gone. There’s an army—”
“Of tulwar,” Kataria finished. “I passed them on my way here. They were far behind me when I arrived, but they were moving quick. I think they’ll be here—”
“By dawn.” Asper’s face hardened, the smile fading. “You know, then. Do you also know who leads them?”
Kataria chewed a bit, then swallowed. She tossed the haunch of meat aside and wiped her greasy fingers on her breeches.
“I guess I have missed a lot, haven’t I?” She sighed. “Gariath used to threaten to kill us so often, I never thought he’d do it.” She paused. “I mean, I never thought he’d get an army to do it.”
“He did,” Asper replied, her voice a stone in her throat, cold and hard. “He killed hundreds at Jalaang. And he’s coming with the intent of killing thousands. Every last human in Cier’Djaal, if he can.” She shook her head. “He’s not what he used to be, Kataria. I don’t know what he is anymore.”
The weight of her frown pulled Asper’s gaze to the earth at her feet.
She had sometimes thought about a moment like this; ever since Gariath had so savagely beaten her, she had wondered what her other friends would have done. She wondered what Lenk would tell her to do, what joke Denaos would make to cheer her up.
And, more than once, she had wondered what Kataria would say. Fierce, relentless, the shict never doubted or compromised; Asper had found herself craving Kataria’s voice, urging her to keep fighting, to never give up. Even now, she found herself waiting for those words of encouragement.
What she got, however, was a thick, phlegmy snort as Kataria spit something foul on the sand.
“Well,” the shict grunted, “good for him for being ambitious, I guess. But it doesn’t matter now. Listen, I’m here to tell you—”
“Doesn’t matter?”
Asper all but roared as she looked up. And though Kataria tensed up, keenly aware of how loud that was, Asper didn’t care.
“They were people!” the priestess snapped. “Hundreds of them. And he just killed them! He hung their corpses on the walls!”
“That’s not the worst thing he’s done with a corpse,” Kataria replied, shrugging. “And that’s not as many people who are going to die if you don’t—”
“Gods damn it, how the fuck can this still be happening?” Asper clutched her hair, gritted her teeth. “How the fuck did I think you’d be any different from him? Than the rest of them? How the fuck is it that, after all of this, I’m still the only one who gives a shit about saving lives? How? HOW?”
Kataria lunged forward, seizing Asper with one hand, clapping the other over her mouth. She hissed through bared canines, green eyes glowing in the dark as she narrowed them.
“You keep screaming and that’s one more life lost,” the shict growled, voice low. “Mine. And if you’d shut the fuck up for a moment and listen to me, I could tell you that I’m trying to help you save lives.” She looked intently at Asper. “I’m going to take my hand off now. You scream, it goes on your throat next time. Okay?”
Asper scowled at her but nodded, grudgingly. Kataria let out a breath and removed her hand.
“Listen,” Kataria said, her voice growing more urgent, “whatever I’ve missed, that’s not important. It’s what you’ve missed that you need to hear. Something happened in the Forbidden East with Lenk. Something came out of there that shouldn’t come out. A demon.”
Asper stared at her flatly. “A demon.”
“Don’t look at me like that, you’ve seen weirder shit.”
“I have,” Asper said. “What’s this one?”
“I don’t … I don’t know. I haven’t seen it. I just go by what Lenk told me. He’s alive, by the way. He says ‘hey.’”
Asper’s lips pursed. Her eyes narrowed.
“But listen, it’s big. It’s deadly. It’s huge. And it’s not the only thing that’s coming. There are shicts, too.”
“Shicts,” Asper said. “How many?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know. They scatter around, but—”
“How are they going to attack?”
“I don’t fucking know, okay? They’re shicts. You’re not supposed to how many of us there are, where we are, or how we’re going to attack until you’ve been dead for an hour. That’s how we fight. That’s how we … how they will fight when they attack.”
Asper stepped back and folded her arms over her chest. Her expression was neither impressed, nor sympathetic, nor exactly believing. But she did not stop Kataria from continuing. And so, the shict sighed deeply.
“Listen,” she said, “Lenk is off telling Gariath to stop his attack. I need you to do the same. What’s coming next, we’re going to need everyone alive and ready to fight. Because what’s coming next will make this war you’ve got brewing with Gariath look like a picnic in comparison. You want to save lives, you start right now by getting ready for something much worse than tulwar.”
Kataria met her gaze. She stiffened up, her muscles tensing visibly beneath her skin.
“Asper,” she said, “you need to make peace with Gariath.”
It sounded crazy, of course. But Kataria was right; Asper had seen, and heard, for that matter, weirder than this. Together, they had fought demons, they had fought monsters, they had fought abominations. They had explored the wilds and abandoned civilization together. They had shared bad food, picked parasites off each other, gotten so ill they shat buckets in buckets.
Together.
Her, Kataria, Lenk, Dreadaeleon, Denaos, and Gariath.
Once.
And once, she had felt a softness creep into her face, like she did at that moment. Looking at Kataria, her friend, so desperate as to sneak into a camp full of humans to tell her this, she felt something. Something warm, something tender, something she hadn’t felt since that day they had all separated.
And when she reached down inside her, took that feeling in her hands, and strangled it until it was dead, it hurt her.
“No,” she said.
Kataria’s face all but exploded with the shock that painted it. “What?”
“No,” Asper said. “I won’t. I will never make peace with him.”
“Did you not hear me?” Kataria’s ears pointed straight up. “Did I not just fucking say—”
“I heard you. I’ve heard those words a lot,” Asper said. “Every fucking time there’s a fight that needs to be won, someone comes along and says that the next fight will be bigger, worse, bloodier. Maybe that’s true. But it doesn’t make the one I have to fight any smaller, any better, any less bloody.”
“You need to listen to me.”
“I don’t care, Kataria,” she said. “You can’t tell me what demon is coming. You can’t tell me what the shicts are doing. You don’t know these things and neither do I. But I do know that Gariath is coming, with an army of tulwar, and he’s going to murder everyone. Every man, every woman, every elder, and every child he can get his hands on.
“What am I to tell them? That I can’t protect them because something bigger might be coming? They’ll end up dead, either way, unless I stand up for them.” She shook her head. “I’m tired of death, Kataria. But I’m more tired of watching it happen. I’m more tired of failing people. Thousands are depending on me. I can’t fail any of them. Not one.”
“But Lenk is talking to Gariath right now! He’s going to—”
“Kataria …” Her voice softened. “If you can look me in the eye right now, knowing Gariath as well as I do, and tell me that you truly believe anything would make him stop … I’ll do what you ask.”
Kataria opened her mouth. Kataria looked Asper in the eye. Kataria held her gaze for a long, silent moment that stretched into eternity.
And she could not say a single word.
Asper inclined her head. “Thank you for coming this far to talk to me, Kat. Thank you for telling me Lenk is alive. Thank you for living.” She reached down and took the shict’s hand in hers. “Go back to him. Go somewhere far away from here. Stay alive.”
Kataria stared at her, eyes wide in helpless silence. She smiled, squeezed the shict’s hand gently, then let it drop and turned away into a cold and quiet night bereft of fire or song.
“Because tomorrow, I don’t think I’ll know many people who still are.”
THIRTY
HEAVEN IS WATCHING
Shortly before dawn, Marcher Pathon rose.
It was not his choice anymore; he had never slept past this time since he was very young and first entered the legions. And by the time he had been granted the rank of Marcher, his every morning became the same thing, a function so effortless and instinctive he felt more like a machine now.
Not that he minded. Not anymore.
In the first breath, he got out of his bedroll. He ignored the chill breeze blowing across the desert, as he had ignored the weather of every battlefield before.
Five breaths to roll his bedroll up, bind it tightly around the pillow, make certain every sheet was tucked away neatly, as he had been trained.
The next thirty breaths were the most leisurely. He knelt on his bedroll, his head bowed toward the sun that had yet to rise. He closed his eyes. And he recited the same prayer he had recited every morning since he had first joined.
“I am a son of the Empire. I am a disciple of the Conqueror. I am a weapon of my nation and a shield of my people,” he spoke to the breeze. “I make no claim, beg no favor, beseech no aid. I go to battle, for I am made for battle. I conquer in your name, for I am made to conquer. Daeon, O Daeon, gaze upon me.”
Effortless, like the words barely had any meaning anymore. In truth, he had no real need for the meaning. Just the very practice of saying them every morning was enough to remind him he was what he needed to be. What his empire needed him to be.
Two breaths to stand up. Two more to bow deeply. The next fifty-eight were spent with the armor meticulously stacked beside his bedroll. He had this, too, down to a mechanical process.
Three breaths to pull the long tunic over him. Ten to affix the metal and leather cuirass over his torso. Seven to secure the heavy belt that draped a thick skirt down to his knees. Twenty to tie tightly the metal plates of his shoulder armor. Three to attach his sword. Seven to don his helmet. The last eight spent pulling the heavy-soled boots over his feet and lacing them up.
He stood up.
Two breaths to spare. He was getting better at this.
The rest of his phalanx was still busy drawing up their armor; they had not much time left before the speaker arrived. Whosoever was not in uniform by the time he made his rounds would go without breakfast. This was usually enough to motivate them to be quick about it.
“I am … I am a son of the Emperor. No, I mean … I am a son of the Empire …”
Usually.
He turned to his left and saw another soldier—Dachon, he thought the man’s name was—kneeling upon a bedroll not yet rolled up, next to armor that had been placed haphazardly beside him, head bowed and trembling.
“I am a … a disciple. A disciple of the Conqueror. I am a … a …” Dachon shut his eyes tight and let out a fevered whisper. “Fuck.”
“A weapon of my nation,” Pathon finished for him. “And a shield of my people.” He frowned at his fellow soldier. “Those are the most important parts, brother. Daeon does not listen to he who falters.”
“Forgive me, brother,” Dachon said, averting his gaze. “I’ll … I’ll finish the prayers later. I should get suited up before the speaker arrives.”
“No. Finish the prayers.”
“But I won’t get breakfast.”
“Fast if you must to clear your mind. It is not food, not plunder, not battle that motivates us. It is him. The Conqueror who sends us forward to bring order to this land. Only through him do we win.”
“Of course, brother …” Dachon looked up, finally. There was fear in his eyes. “But against tulwar?”
“You’ve been in Cier’Djaal, brother. You’ve seen plenty of battle.”
“Against Sainites, yes. I can fight Sainites. They’re humans. They’re not monsters.”
“Monsters do not exist outside of fairy tales. What you face are simply flesh and bone, like any other foe.”
Dachon nodded, then drew in a breath. “Thank you, brother. I shall pray for Daeon to grant me your confidence.”
“Daeon does not grant what a man cannot take on his own.” Pathon nodded back. “Finish your prayers. Heaven is watching.”
He walked away, leaving his fellow soldier to his routine. In truth, he hadn’t intended to sound confident—he had never fought a tulwar, either. Confidence, after all, was simply a mask to hide cowardice. Pathon was a soldier of Karneria. The legion hadn’t taught him to be confident. It had taught him to be certain of things.
Things like what to do in the morning. Things like what Daeon expected of him. And, most recently, things like the Prophet’s wisdom.
That was why he felt no fear as he walked toward the table where the quartermaster dispensed that morning’s rations—unlike some of his brothers who dragged their feet or shook as they walked. Fear was something he was not certain of, so he did not think of it.
The Prophet, he was certain of. Her miracles, he was certain of. How she had emerged before him, healed of all wounds, he was certain could only be proof of what she said.
Heaven had chosen her to lead him. Just as heaven had chosen him to fight for her.
He got in line behind the other soldiers. They moved quickly, each one receiving his rations and hurrying off, rather than loitering around as they ate. He was only confused until he got to the front and the quartermaster thrust a wedge of hard cheese, a heel of bread, and some hot cooked ox meat into his hands.
“Eat quickly,” the quartermaster said. “The speaker calls.”
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to. Pathon was already off, eating as he ran in the same direction of his brothers. The speaker rarely called for the legion before they could eat, but not so rarely that Pathon didn’t know what to do. He ate not so quickly that he would get sick, but quick enough that he was finished by the time he arrived. He fell into ranks with his legion as they gathered.
The speaker loomed over them all, his black armor drinking what little light had begun creeping over the horizon. His sword, long and heavy in his hand, was not half so sharp as the scrutinizing scowl he swept over the assembled soldiers. Even after so many years under his command, the speaker never failed to cut an imposing figure.
Until that day, anyway.
Pathon found his eyes drawn to the woman beside him. She was clad simply—no longer in her frayed priestess robes, but now in chain mail and leather. It was clearly not new, not resplendent, not some golden armor fit for the great kings from the old legends. But Pathon hadn’t expected that.
The Prophet did not need things like that to command attention.
Her brown hair was roughly kempt in a thick braid. She hadn’t been able to wash all the grime from her face. The sword she wore hung heavy at her hip, and the shield on her back was round, metal, and simple.
And yet … she glowed. She stood taller than she was. Her eyes were not hard like the speaker’s, but they were clear, seeing something far beyond what he could.
He was certain of that.
“Soldiers of Karneria,” the speaker said suddenly. “You have been called. The pagan horde has been sighted closing in on us. The time for reflection, for prayer, is over. The time for battle is now.”
He nodded to the Prophet, stepping behind her. The Prophet, in turn, looked to the Foescribe beside her. The Foescribe glanced up from the scroll she was writing in to incline her head.
