by Tom Lloyd
‘You-? Well, then, as you wish, Captain.’ The commissar shook his head in puzzlement, but he was not going to countermand Doranei’s statement. ‘Wait for me at the camp — but first send your fastest rider on ahead to Ghale Outpost and inform the ranking commissar there that the first sign has been revealed. He will know what to do and make arrangements for our guests.’
He bowed low to Isak’s party as the sound of men retreating came from the trees. ‘My name is Commissar Yokar,’ he said, peering at Doranei and then Zhia, before scrutinising Isak as the largest among them and Vesna as the most regal. His knowledge of their prophecies would be limited by his rank, but he clearly expected one of them to stand out and show him what the mysteries expected.
‘I am at your disposal. Might I — might I ask who is the leader of your group?’
There was a pause before Isak nudged his horse forward. ‘I am.’
‘I am honoured to be in your presence. Might I ask my Lord’s name?’
‘Sebe,’ he replied as he slid the shawl from his head and saw Yokar visibly flinch when he saw Isak’s battered face, but he managed to keep silent. ‘My name is Sebe.’
The commissar was too overawed to notice Doranei’s reaction to the name, but it took only the smallest movement from Zhia to keep the King’s Man quiet. They all knew the king and Isak had agreed he should not use his own name, to avoid provoking months of religious debate. Isak had said that if their mission was to become famous, it deserved to be in the name of a man whose renown had been missed by the Land at large.
‘My Lord Sebe,’ the commissar said awkwardly, unsure how to address the white-eye, ‘I cannot offer you an escort according to the lore, but should you need supplies or horses, you have only to command me.’
‘That will not be necessary.’ Isak replaced the shawl to keep Alterr’s light off his face. ‘We have a long way to travel before dawn, so you may return to your work.’
Seeing the exchange was at an end, Doranei and Zhia started off again across the moonlit grass. The tattooed soldiers leaped back onto their horses and fell in behind their lord, and they all moved off quickly. The commissar was left alone and staring after them. He jumped as Isak turned in his saddle and clicked his tongue, then stumbled backwards when a grey shape broke from the trees opposite.
Hulf trotted out into the open and regarded Yokar. Man and dog watched each other suspiciously for a few moments before Hulf gave an unexpected sneeze and turned after Isak, dismissing the commissar with a swish of his tail. When thick cloud crossed both moons Hulf seemed to disappear entirely and that was enough for Yokar. The commissar fled back into the trees.
An hour before dawn the party reached what appeared to be an abandoned farmstead and Isak called a halt. While the soldiers of the group went on to investigate, Isak eased himself off his charger and watched Legana do the same. Vesna had offered the Mortal-Aspect a hand, knowing her balance was permanently affected by the loss of her Goddess, but she had ignored him. Even when she stumbled and had to grab the saddle to steady herself, she shrugged off any attempts to help.
Isak watched Vesna frown at the display of independence, but he said nothing, just stayed as her side until she had recovered herself and glared at him. Dismissed, Karkarn’s Iron General trudged back to his horse and led it to the dilapidated corral where Ebarn and Tiniq were starting to rub down the horses.
Isak followed. He nudged his friend as his horse was taken off him. ‘You’ve been quiet.’
Vesna’s frown deepened. ‘Not much to say.’ He headed around the back of the corral, away from their companions to a break in the trees behind, through which he could see the western sky where the sun would soon rise. The colours of night were already bleeding from the sky, but Isak knew Vesna saw none of it. The neat patter of paws behind them told him Hulf had joined them and on instinct Isak knelt down and drew the dog close.
All of a sudden Vesna’s head sagged and his legs wavered. Gods-granted strength or not, the famous warrior would have fallen to his hands and knees had Isak not jumped up and reached out to steady the man. He guided Vesna to a wide tree-stump a few yards away, sat him down and sat on the ground himself, while Hulf inveigled his way under Vesna’s thigh until he was sitting between the man’s legs and looking up, begging for attention.
Vesna gave a bitter, pained laugh and began to scratch the dog behind one ear with his un-armoured hand. Hulf arched appreciatively and tilted his head until he was pressing against the Mortal-Aspect’s leg.
‘He’ll never get too much of that,’ Isak commented.
‘Mihn said Ehla gave him to you?’
‘So he tells me. I don’t really remember.’ He winced and pressed his fingers to his temple. One fingernail had refused to grow back after his time in Ghenna and the rest were marked strangely, symbols or some strange script cut into the skin beneath. ‘The time after my escape… I see the cottage by the lake, and figures around me, but they’re like ghosts in the mist.’
‘We all are now,’ Vesna commented sadly, peering down at Hulf’s bright eyes. ‘I feel like we’ve slipped out of life, as if we’re just shadows hunting for the bodies we once possessed.’
‘Some of us are,’ Isak replied with a slight smile. He put a hand on Vesna’s shoulder. ‘But not you — you, my friend, have greatness ahead of you.’
‘Greatness? All I feel is emptiness like ice.’
‘That’s because you mourn, right down to the bone. Tila’s death hurt us all, but your loss was greatest and there’s nothing can ease your pain. I’m sorry. But she saw the greatness in you; the strength not only to survive but overcome.’
‘You speak to me of strength?’ Vesna asked, astonished, ‘when it chills me to even imagine what you endured?’
‘We white-eyes, we’re born to survive, to wade through rivers of blood until we’ve reached our goal.’ Isak tried to smile but the effort defeated him. ‘We’re tools to be used; I see that now. Whatever purpose the Gods or Aryn Bwr sought to use me for, I’ve found my own path — but the white-eyes are the bloody hand of history. We’re not equipped for what happens after victory; we must leave that to greater men.’
Vesna glanced back at the house behind, where a light now shone through the shutters. It was too bright for a lamp; it had to have been cast by one of the mages. ‘You’re not alone there. Perhaps it would be best for some of us if we did not survive this war.’
‘Enough of us’ll die already; there’s no need to seek it out. His hand will reach for us all in due time.’
‘So we just have to wait our turn?’
Isak shrugged and rose, offering a hand to Vesna. The Mortal-Aspect took it, but he did not rise immediately, instead taking a moment to stare at the strange contrast between the two. Each man had used his left hand: Isak’s scarred and white, Vesna’s a black metal gauntlet. They interlocked like some esoteric symbol, a curious symmetry that seemed to hearten Vesna.
‘Let’s hope history doesn’t think me a fool, then, wallowing in my personal misery when the fates of every man, woman and child hang in the balance.’
‘You are far from a fool, my friend,’ Isak said. He hauled Vesna up and pushed him towards the house. ‘Only a monster wouldn’t feel the pain.’
The pair slowly made their way back to the front of the house. It was a large building, considering the remote location, and looked as if it had been abandoned for several seasons. Rampant creeper swarmed over the nearside walls, so thick that when someone inside tried to opened the shutter, the mass hanging off the roof obscured their face entirely. Isak watched as the person hacked away at the worst of it while Hulf stalked the twitching trails at the base of the wall with geat delight.
On the other side of the building was a half-collapsed barn and animal pens, none of which looked safe to enter. Daken was standing beside the barn, surveying it, then he gave the whole thing an almighty kick and hastened its downfall. The groan and snap of timbers seemed to satisfy the destructive little child in him an
d he turned away with a wide grin.
‘Ain’t running out o’ firewood today,’ he commented brightly, accompanying them inside. ‘Piss and daemons; this the best we could do?’
Isak inspected the interior over Vesna’s shoulder. It was not so very different from the cottage by the lake where he’d lived so recently. The smell was more the musty scent of slowly rotting wood, but there was no stink of bodies, human or animal, nor mould. There was little furniture beyond a broken table and two benches, but it was an improvement on spending the day out in the open. He knew Zhia at least would agree with him. ‘It’ll do for the day,’ he said out loud, prompting nods from several others.
Veil had already collected a great armful of kindling which he was unloading into a brick-walled firepit at the back of the room. A rough clay chimney had been incorporated into the wall behind. Isak took the largest pieces of kindling and lit them, holding them just below the chimney; when the smoke rose up freely and he was sure it was clear he dropped the sticks into the pit, let Veil put the rest of the kindling down, then watched as Doranei deposited two logs on top. He lit the lot and watched the flames start to hungrily consume the wood, for a while losing himself in the dancing orange flames.
‘I don’t understand,’ Fei Ebarn said as she came in ahead of Tiniq. ‘This house looks sound enough — so why was it abandoned?’
‘Most likely the owner got marched off for some transgression or other,’ Shinir said darkly as she rooted through her pack, ‘and out here, there’s no one to take the place once it’s empty.’
‘Marched off where?’
‘Slave camps, though they’re not called that, o’ course. No one’s allowed to own another human in Vanach, but they say everyone belongs to Alterr, so some — lots — get taken off to serve their Goddess in whichever ways the Commissar Brigade chooses. They don’t want anyone but the Carastars within a couple days’ ride of the border; makes it simple to work out if you’re fleeing the benevolent fellowship.’
‘So this land’s used for nothing?’
Shinir nodded. ‘You’ll see: two days of riding and we’ll reach the first town. From there on, nothing’s allowed more than one day away from any local administration. You grow crops past that, you’re trying to evade the moral guidance of the commissars — and by extension, the priesthood and the Gods themselves-’
‘-which means you’re a heretic,’ Vesna finished, ‘and we’ve seen enough of that talk in Tirah to guess how they treat heretics here.’
‘This farm must have been used by a commissar in recent years,’ Shinir said. ‘The edict for the protection of souls was issued ten years back, well before this place was abandoned.’
Isak crouched down in front of the fire as the flames continued to rise. ‘“The protection of souls?” Vorizh really is mad.’
‘If it was he who issued it,’ Zhia said quietly from behind Isak, ‘then he has much to answer for here.’
Isak turned and saw the dark, angry gleam in her eyes. ‘You don’t think he did?’
‘My brother might be mad, but capable of self-delusion? I’m not so sure. We were all cursed to feel the suffering of others, and even now I feel a sickness in my stomach for what we might find around this first town. If he is the one issuing orders from the heart of Vanach, he will be constantly pained by the suffering he is causing.’
‘I can tell you what we’ll find,’ Shinir growled, unafraid of the expression on Zhia’s face, ‘guarded farms, where slaves must pray all night and work all day, where it must be their fault if the crops fail — it can’t be the soil suffering without crop rotation because Alterr’s light nourishes all. The women get raped as often as the guards want, and strangled if they become pregnant, because a baby’s a divine blessing which no heretic would get. It can’t be the rape that gets her that way, so she must have been consorting with daemons instead, and so she’ll be carrying a daemon-child.’
‘Do not think to lecture me, girl,’ Zhia said, taking a step forward, ‘and do not think my rage is any less than yours, when the Gods have cursed me with always knowing the pain of others. My point is solely that mortals need no vampire ruler to inflict such horrors on each other. You are all quite capable of it without anyone’s help.’
Vesna stepped forward and placed himself between them. ‘Enough, both of you. Let’s get some food and sleep; it’s been a long-enough day without picking fights amongst ourselves.’
‘Oh let ’em fight,’ Daken grinned, ‘I like that idea.’
‘Fuck yourself, you white-eye shit,’ Shinir snapped, drawing her khopesh and pointing the sickle-like weapon at him.
‘I said enough, all of you!’ Vesna demanded, his voice suddenly full of the War God’s divine authority. It was enough to make anyone who’d fought in battle stop dead, even a blood-mad white-eye like Daken, who inclined his head and turned away with a small smile on his face.
Vesna realised belatedly that Daken had spoken up to keep Shinir from getting herself killed — she was a vicious woman who didn’t know when to back down from anyone, even when she was out of her depth. Luckily, someone so quick to anger was also easily deflected.
‘Sleep,’ Isak echoed as he headed for the corner where Mihn had deposited his baggage. ‘Save your fights for the morning — I’m sure I heard that once.’
‘Not from someone who’s travelled all night,’ Zhia pointed out before she headed into the back room, where the shutters were still closed and the dawn light would not disturb her. ‘Someone wake me when there’s food.’
Both Veil and Daken opened their mouths as Doranei moved to follow her, but Vesna raised an admonishing finger before either of them could speak. ‘I said enough. Your jokes can also wait.’
Their first day in Vanach was uneventful. Word of their arrival travelled slowly in the empty borderlands of the Carastars, so they all managed to sleep before dusk came and they set out again. That night they encountered a second band of patrolling mercenaries camped across the road: two low-ranking commissars accompanying nearly fifty men. They had met Commissar Yokar’s rider and come to investigate for themselves.
They were probably a raiding party, Vesna thought, armed for war. Doranei and Veil had to work hard to control themselves, having seen the results of such raids, but Isak was more interested in the less-deferential attitude of the two commissars leading them. As soon as they had passed on by, the white-eye spurred his horse forward to join Zhia at the front of their column.
‘Tell me again about your brother’s journal,’ he asked the vampire.
She gave him a level look. ‘The answer you’re after is no.’
‘You didn’t hear the question yet.’
The moon was again bright overhead; Alterr’s eye was a day away from waxing full and shone all too clearly on Zhia’s exposed teeth as she smiled humourlessly. ‘I heard it easily enough; one learns to read people after the first few lifetimes.’
‘And your answer’s no?’
She turned away. ‘No, yes and no. No: there was nothing contained in the journal that specified divisions or branches within the Commissar Brigade; yes, I saw the bone clasp on the scarf was a different colour; no, I do not know the significance.’
‘But,’ Doranei supplied from Isak’s other side, ‘considering they claimed the same rank as Commissar Yokar, it’s still significant, even if it only tells us they’re marked according to what job they’re doing. The ones in charge of raids ain’t the same as those supervising patrols, and most likely there’ll be more differences.’
‘And yes, it means some commissars don’t care so much for the mysteries, so they’re probably in this for more simple reasons,’ Isak finished.
‘Good news at last,’ Zhia concluded with a smile. ‘If someone tries to kill us before we reach the ziggurat, I might not have to eat the girl before we get there.’
On the fourth day they were forced to camp under a canopy of tall pines. Zhia retreated into a double-layered tent to hide from the sun while the othe
rs cooked or lay out in the tree-filtered light. Isak and Fei Ebarn managed between them to coax a deer close enough for Leshi to shoot, whereupon half the party set about butchering it and cutting half of the meat into thin strips to dry above the fire while the rest roasted below.
After an hour of activity, they were finished and sat down to eat, tearing apart blackened hunks of venison with their teeth to expose the more succulent meat below. The humour of the group was markedly improved now they had settled into a routine to match the strange nocturnal life Vorizh Vukotic had forced upon them.
After he’d finished eating, Veil lay back against his pack with a satisfied sigh and loosened the adapted vambrace that had been made for him, with its twin prongs extending past his wrist. ‘So what happens to the people of Vanach once we’re done here?’ the King’s Man asked. ‘If this place is built around a lie, does the lie collapse?’
‘Not if Isak plays it right,’ Zhia said through the open entrance to her tent, which had been angled away from the sun to keep her from being burned. She watched her lover pull a cigar from inside his brigandine and blew a kiss towards him; a wisp of smoke drifted through the air and settled on the cigar’s tip to light it for him. ‘Only the commissars know what to expect at all, and all they know is what Vorizh has left for them on the inner walls of the ziggurat.’
‘So we sell them another lie?’
Zhia raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless you have a spare army hidden about your person? We give them hope, something these people have lacked in a long time. The commissars can hardly argue with their mysteries being fulfilled and their saviour leaving to pursue the work of the Gods — certainly not if it leaves them in charge with an even greater mandate than before.’
‘How long does hope last?’
‘Ten thousand days,’ Isak mumbled, lost in the lazy glow of the fire’s embers, ‘longer than good intentions.’
Mihn reached out and put up a hand on his friend’s arm, but only succeeded in startling the white-eye; his flinch prompted Hulf to wake and wriggle up closer, thumping his tail against the ground until Isak reached out to him.
