by Jon Kiln
“Stand up,” the Dal grunted, and, slowly, painfully, Suriyen did so – staggering and waiving as she did so. Her side still hurt from where one of the Menaali’s black arrows had struck her, and she was sure that she could feel its poison spreading through her system.
“You were the Captain on the bridge. You fought to destroy the bridge,” The Dal stated.
Suriyen nodded. “I did.”
“Hm.” The Dal nodded to himself, as if confirming something. His eyes moved casually down her body, drinking in the way that the white and loose linens clung to her athletic form. “Come,” the large man barked, and, thankfully, as far as Suriyen was concerned, he did not turn to the back of the yurt where his chambers were veiled off, but instead turned to the outer door, stalking past Vharn as he did so. Both Vharn and Asai fell into uneasy step behind their warlord, as Suriyen and her mortal enemy emerged from the tent.
To see Fuldoon transformed.
The Menaali horde were still across the river from the great walls of the trading city, but the river was now a choked and blackened ruin of wood and bodies. The walls of the city itself – the walls that Suriyen had sworn to uphold – had vast bites taken out of them by the pounding of the trebuchet and catapults of the Menaali, and the strong gate house itself was little more than a skeleton. Black smoke rose from numerous fires across the city, creating a heavy cloud that obscured even the nearby coast.
“Look at your city.” The warlord shrugged at it. “I took down the Iron Pass. Something they said couldn’t be done. Do you think that I couldn’t take Fuldoon?”
“I was hoping,” Suriyen murmured, not really seeing the point in avoiding the truth.
“Ha.” A chuckle from the warlord at her side, a weary sigh. “You are brave. It is a shame you were not born Menaali.”
Suriyen bit down on her sudden desire to scream and shout at him. She wondered if she was too ill to attack him right now? To seize a knife from his belt?
But the warlord was already talking, gesturing to the river in front of the gates. “Look. It doesn’t take the Horde long to fix a problem when you have ten thousand or so seeking to solve it.”
That’s a lot of faith you have in your slave army… Suriyen thought, but she understood what he had meant. Suriyen had succeeded to burning and destroying their own Fuldoonian bridge – her last act as wall-captain to keep the Menaali away – but all it had done was buy them the few days it had taken for the Menaali to construct a new one. Suriyen saw the carcasses of siege towers, catapults and carts, hastily worked together to form a massive, crude jetty stretching across the gap.
And over it moved a steady stream of Menaali Horde warriors.
Most of them are camping on this side still, Suriyen’s soldiering eyes saw. The resistance must be so great that he can’t allow them to run amok into the city, just yet.
But it seemed that Dal Grehb had intended a vastly different lesson for her. “You think I don’t know your story, girl?” he growled his voice low, just loud enough for her to hear, and Suriyen froze.
“You are too fair skinned, fair haired for these southerners. You are Iron Pass folk, I swear it from the pride in you, and the anger you have every time you look at me.” Suriyen swayed on her feet. Could he tell that she had been a Menaali slave before? What would he do to her now, an escaped slave?
But that was not what the warlord knew. “So you must know that I destroyed your homeland, too. Maybe you were there.” The warlord shrugged as if it was of no importance. “I did what no one thought a steppes barbarian could do. I destroyed the gates to the north, but then, instead of pillaging the kingdom of Thrane, and the city states, and the other soft northern lands, I did what no other king or army has done – I crossed the Burning Sands, and I took the City of the Gods.” Dal Grehb lectured, a hint of pride growing in his voice.
“And now it is just a matter of days before I will have taken Fuldoon – the largest trading city in the world. Tell me, Iron-Pass-girl, do you think that I will stop here? That I can be stopped here?”
Suriyen was startled by the warlord’s question. What was he suggesting? That he would conquer the world? For a moment, the warrior in her forced herself to consider his question as one soldier to another.
“No. A general that successful won’t be stopped here,” Suriyen said.
“No.” Dal Grehb nodded. “And now you see. It will be easier for you now that you concede my victory.”
“But I know how a successful general will be stopped.” Suriyen’s voice was steady as her eyes searched the smokes.
“What?” Dal Grehb was gruff, turning to look at her. Had this slave really just said that?
“All generals that successful are only stopped by one thing, Dal Grehb,” Suriyen muttered in the same, low tone. “No enemy can defeat them. So it has to be one of their own. Mutiny. Civil War. Treason.”
The warlord’s heavy hand cuffed Suriyen across the side of the cheek as she was talking, and it was a lot harder than any normal slap. It threw her to the ground, where she groaned in her feverish headache.
“You are probably right,” the Dal said, no malice at all in his voice, a split second after his judgment. “But not today. And not now. But, because you are so very brave to talk to me like that, Iron-Pass-girl, I will offer you a boon.” The warlord’s voice rose, even as Suriyen turned to look up at him.
He’s mad. He killed one of his trusted chiefs just for speaking out against Asai, but he offers me a boon for speaking of his end? She couldn’t fathom the strange customs and beliefs of this heathen folk.
“You were the Captain defending the bridge,” the Dal reasoned. “So you must know the cities’ defenses.”
“I will never help you,” Suriyen spat, and, as quick as before, the warlord stepped forward, pressing one of his heavy boots into the warrior’s side. He didn’t kick her, just levered some of his impressive weight forward to send pain through her wounded side. Suriyen cried out in agony, earning a small smile from the warlord himself.
“You will help me if it means saving however many tens of thousands of lives still in Fuldoon.” Dal Grehb said.
“What do you mean?” Suriyen gasped.
“You know its defenses, you must know its leaders, or powerful people. Help my Chief Vharn to eliminate them, to cut the head off this resistance, and then you may join the Fuldoonian slaves, if you wish. Or I can send Vharn in with the Horde, and they will fight long and bloody, street by street. Many thousands of your precious traders will die, and I will still win.” The large man eased back from Suriyen, releasing her from under his foot. “Make this city easy for me to move in, and you can save countless lives. Make it difficult, and Fuldoon will just be a smoking memory to the world.”
Suriyen grimaced. How can I agree to that? He wants me to help Chief Vharn find and kill people and seize control over the very city that I was obligated to defend?
But she was also a Guide, one of an ancient cult of people who are meant to protect the everyday citizen, worker, slave, peasant. To keep the nightmares and horrors of the dark away.
Wasn’t the Horde itself a nightmare to the rest of the world? If there was any way that she could lessen its suffering…
“Fine,” Suriyen spat into the floor, and felt tears of shame and frustrated anger run down her cheek.
“Ha!” Dal Grehb bellowed with laughter as he turned and lumbered back to his royal tent. “I’m probably saving your life, Iron-Pass-girl!” he called over his shoulder. “My witch Asai here will find a way to kill you, if you stay here!”
Suriyen punched the ground, a moment before Chief Vharn seized her arms.
“I guess you’re coming with me, pretty,” he snapped at her.
Suriyen struggled, but she knew that there was no real escape. She felt shamed and humiliated. After everything that she had been through. Why was it that she owed her life to the man who had killed her family, again!
6
Vekal gasped, his chest burning as tho
ugh he had swallowed fire.
And in many ways, he had.
‘Wake up, you fool! We’re going to die!’ Ikrit’s voice buzzed and hummed against his mind, causing Vekal to flinch once again. He had forgotten, for a time, what it was like to have the dark creature inside of him. The Sin Eater wondered if this had all been a terrible, terrible mistake.
But the devil was right. There was fire – everywhere.
“What’s happening!?” Vekal turned, and rolled onto his side to see that the small chamber in the Isle of Gaunt was filling with dark and ugly smoke, and that outside the sky was a sullen and malevolent crimson.
“Is it hell? Has hell come to the Garden?” Vekal coughed, staying low.
‘Perhaps.’ Ikrit, inside of him, was also sounding panicked, but also surly. If the devil knew where the fire was coming from, then he did not explain it to his host. ‘We have to leave this accursed place,’ the ancient creature snapped.
Accursed? Vekal thought giddily for a moment. This shrine had been the Lockless Gate, the holiest shrine in the world, and the ‘back door’ to heaven. A part of the priest’s long-ago pride resurfaced, as he rejected the demon’s description.
Not that it mattered. It was clear that if he stayed here in this cave, then he would die of smoke or fire. Had the gods been so angry at the invasion of heaven that they had sought to destroy the Lockless Gate? Or had the devils themselves dragged their hellfire with them in their assault?
Only one way to find out.
Winding his ragged robes around his face (not the luxurious heavenly robes he had worn just a moment ago, the Sin Eater thought direly), he got to his feet, steadied himself, and scrambled out of the cave.
To see a world at war.
***
“What are they?” Vekal managed to shout amidst the smoke as another gigantic shape moved ponderously overhead.
‘Boats, you idiot!’ Ikrit spat back. It seemed that his time in the heavens had done nothing to ease his temper. But the devil was right – kind of.
Above the Isle of Gaunt, Vekal could see that the sky was crowded with large shapes, almost like boats, but not quite. They were flat-bellied, for a start – more like floating platforms than boats. Triremes, a part of his mind reminded him. He had heard of their like described in the ancient scrolls of the City of the Gods… but never flying!
“But whose are they?” The priest hugged the outcrop of dark rocks as he was frozen to his spot, watching the spectacle above him. It was an impossible sight, an overturning of every law of nature that he knew.
‘Says the man who is able to heal others with a prayer, and has just been to heaven?’ Ikrit said, unhelpfully.
The platforms looked like dark wedges that cut across the sky in slow-moving motion. The one nearest the island was just a large expanse of planks and supports of wood, although Vekal was sure that he could hear the distant creak of ropes and the snap of shouts. He looked beyond to the smaller, further-out shapes to see that these ones, also triangles, had terraced levels of wood above them – and, remarkably – balloons above that. The Sin Eater could also see people running back and forth along their galleried ‘decks’.
The Sin Eater jumped as he saw something tumbling, falling from the side of the floating platform above him; a barrel, perhaps; and hit the far side of the atoll to where he stood. The barrel broke apart, and gigantic gouts of flame swept along the rocks and shrubs of the splintered island, and Vekal could smell pitch and burning.
“But… why?” The priest staggered back from the top, stumbling over his own feet as he tried to find the path that led back down to the small cover, where he had arrived with his little boat. If it was still intact, that is.
‘The gods,’ Ikrit snarled. ‘These people – whomever they are – must be in service to the gods, who are trying to close the door to heaven. Look!’ The priest’s body was suddenly wrenched and turned of its own accord (although not of Vekal’s will), for the priest to see that something was happening in the waters around Gaunt.
They were frothing and boiling, as if there was something rising from the depths itself.
Hell on earth. Vekal almost screamed. What have I done?
‘Don’t give yourself too much credit, priest. You were ever only the carrier pigeon. I was the message,’ Ikrit said, and his tone was full of self-contempt as they looked in horror at what the frothing water portended.
There were shapes racing across the bubbling seas in all directions, both from the Shattering Coasts and in from the Inner Sea on the other side. They were not the unnatural creations of the floating platforms, but more regular boats – and there were hundreds of them. Thousands of them.
“Sweet sands…” Vekal swore as he finally understood what was going on. The boats coming towards the islands were made up of every kind of water going vessel imaginable. He could see rowboats and coracles, trading brigantines and even several galleons. And they all had different flags and colors – there were the flags of a Fuldoonian privateer, there was a galleon from the distant kingdom of Thrane, and still many smaller, stranger flags from the many disparate little fiefdoms and villages of the Shattering Coasts.
“Are they…?” Vekal murmured, falling to his knees between two boulders.
‘You can feel it too?’ Ikrit buzzed grimly inside of him. ‘They are possessed. You may think that you are looking at a host of humans, but in fact, you are looking at the hordes of hell.’
The priest swore. So, this was to be the fight, was it? While Heaven was fighting its own spiritual war in the realms of the Undying, their conflict was mirrored here. The gods had called their allies and servants in the mortal realms to destroy the Lockless Gate, and the devils of hell had done everything – everything – to flood into the world unchecked, to seize any unprotected mind that they could, and seek to keep the route open.
As he gritted his teeth and wondered how he was going to get clear of any of this, he saw that the battle between the two sides were joined.
With a roar like the rumble of thunder, the floating platforms released more barrels onto their spiritual enemies, but this time they smashed and broke apart on the sails and decks of the demon-driven ships attempting to reach the Isle of Gaunt. Vekal saw humans shrieking in agony and terror as the flames consumed their vessels, many dark shapes throwing themselves into the sea to escape the inferno.
But the horde of ships below were starting to fight back, and then – if Vekal had any doubt that their pilots and captains were indeed devil-controlled, what he saw now put an end to that.
“They’re firing on their own side!” Vekal saw, although he knew that it probably wasn’t intentional, only uncaring. The larger sea-going vessels, the ones that had cannons and catapults and ballista, were firing up at the attacking platforms with whatever armaments they had – and many of the shots either didn’t reach, or else were wide, smashing back down into the rowboats and longboats of their infernal comrades. Screams and the growl of flames filled the air, and the black smoke was so intense that the Sin Eater couldn’t be sure that what he saw was happening at night or not.
But, with a mighty crack, some of the cannon shot had found their mark on the underside of the largest floating platform. There was no way for these strange vessels to maneuver out of the way, and the largest shook as bits of wood splintered from its underside, falling like deadly spears into the seas and ships below.
The Sin Eater heard a groan like that of an earthquake, and the largest of the floating platforms started to swerve and dip to one side, in incomparable slowness.
Others of the Thranian galleons joined their fellows in firing at it, and suddenly, with a sound that could have been the crackle of lightening, a large section started to swing downwards from the flat belly, tearing wood and railings and spilling human, spinning figures hundreds of feet to their deaths below.
‘She’s going down…’ Ikrit said, and Vekal could sense the fear and excitement in his voice. Just which side was the devil loyal t
o, he thought.
The Sin Eater watched as the platform lowered again in the sky, like a storm cloud of incredible proportions, until it was only a little higher than the highest point of the Isle of Gaunt itself.
‘That’s the thing, see, Priest…’ Ikrit whispered into his ear. ‘That’s what they didn’t tell you upstairs in that celestial paradise of theirs. The Undying lands might be powerful, but there are far more devils in hell than there are hosts in heaven. Far more.’
“What are you saying? That you want to side with hell?” The priest was appalled from where he crouched, watching the destruction raging on all sides of the Isle.
‘I’m saying that we should side with whomever will save our skins!’ the devil hissed. ‘Now up! Move!’
The devil didn’t need to order him twice, as Vekal saw the platform above start to disintegrate, start to spiral slowly, out over the sea, and back over the Isle.
There was a grinding noise of splintering wood as the ragged and frayed edge of the dying platform hit the isle behind and above Vekal, and kept on moving forward, disgorging lengths of timber as it did so.
Vekal was screaming, throwing himself down rocks and over boulders in an attempt to get away, scrambling as the chewed up aerial craft crashed into the island, its body shaking the ground.
The priest ran until there was no more land to escape to. His steps slowed as he saw he was coming to the edge of the narrow Isle of Gaunt itself; a cliff overlooking dark and burning seas.
He had no choice.
He jumped.
7
Meghan’s eyes flared open, certain that something was wrong – although she couldn’t say what. Her thoughts turned immediately to the snoozing child beside her on the bunk, but Kariss was huffing in her asleep, lulled by the constant motion of the pirate ship that they were both aboard.
What the hell am I doing? Meghan sighed to herself in the dark, staring up at the dark woods of the ceiling, even though she had to strain her eyes to do so. Somewhere she could hear the muffled sounds of the crew’s voices as they worked, even through the night.
