by Shannah Jay
Men sidled past them, eager to see what was so precious, but returned disappointed.
'Whips,' Jozlin said to his tengroup when he returned. 'That's all there was. Just whips. Great piles of
'em.'
Men looked at one another.
'Like in the shrines?' one ventured.
'Yes. Exactly like those in the shrines. The ones with the metal tips.'
'I don't like the sound of that.'
'Shut up, you fool! Do you want to get yourself in trouble?'
They all looked over their shoulders hastily. Their ten-leader was a strict man, devoted to the Serpent.
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'Nothing we can do, anyway,' said Darreth, one of the older men. 'So just shut up while I'm around.
I don't want one of those Initiates finding fault with me. I do my duty to the Serpent, and that's that, as far as I'm concerned.'
It was the safest way.
That night, no food was prepared and all hundredmen were summoned to a meeting, which was to be addressed by Sen-Sether himself. They in turn passed on their new instruction to the tenmen.
The common soldiers sat around glumly in their tengroups waiting for their leaders to return.
Stomachs were rumbling, hearts heavy. Something was brewing this night, something that sent shivers down your spine. They were sure of only one thing - it would not be something to look forward to.
They’d all seen examples of Sen-Sether's viciousness.
First great candles of the new incense were lit everywhere and the smoke seemed heavier than usual, settling on the ground, so that men's legs disappeared into it. Caches of the incense had been built up all along the route they were following, and there was never any shortage of it. The men shifted from one invisible foot to the other, feeling strangely reluctant to sit down in this mist-like smoke.
Then each tenman gathered his group together and repeated the instructions from Sen-Sether.
'All men to offer pain and blood to our Dread Lord this night,' reported Rommith, Jozlin's tenman, when he got back. 'We serve the Serpent and our Dread Lord needs our pain if he is to defeat those hags.'
Jozlin gasped aloud. But his gasp was lost in the surprised sounds around him, so he wasn’t punished for this lapse. Whether you offered your back for whipping or not was usually a free choice, even in the city shrines. And Jozlin's choice had never been to let someone flay his tender flesh. In fact, he was rather proud of the tanned unblemished skin there and knew he drew admiring glances from the girls when he went swimming back in his home village in the forests of Tenebron.
Rommith was looking directly at him. 'No exceptions,' he ordered. 'Anyone objecting is to be killed in the main shrine-tent tonight.'
More gasps, then all mouths shut firmly.
Jozlin sat there trembling. He wasn’t brave when it came to personal pain, he knew that. He caught the eye of his tenman and realised that Rommith knew exactly what he was thinking. He gulped audibly and tried to quell the trembling in his belly.
'You first, Jozlin,' Rommith said, shaking out the thongs of the whip. 'Form a ring, the rest of you.'
Jozlin could not, he just could not, force his legs to move. Nor could he think straight. He could only sit there, feeling muzzy-headed, as the incense floated upwards, making his eyes water.
When Rommith nodded to the two nearest men and they hauled Jozlin to the middle of the circle, he stood there quivering like a sapling in a breeze, but he didn’t protest when they pulled off his tunic and then held his arms out.
As the whip bit into his flesh for the first time, he screamed loudly and pissed himself. He hadn’t thought anything could hurt so much. He realised dimly through the pain that Rommith was laying on the whip as hard as he could. But the hands that held him were strong and merciless, and the pain of that first blow was still howling through his body as the whip bit in for the second time.
'Five strokes each,' Rommith announced grimly, hefting the whip.
How would he endure three more strokes, Jozlin wondered as he hung between the two men holding him, moaning at the waves of pain that had followed the strokes.
Rommith clouted him about the ears. 'Stay on your feet, you coward, or I'll send you to the shrine.
Now, hold him tight - in the name of the Serpent.' He continued to wield the whip hard, ignoring Jozlin's screams, for screams were now rising from the circles of men all around them.
When the five strokes had been administered, the men let go of Jozlin and he dropped to the ground to lie there huddled, writhing, moaning, as they kicked him away. But somehow the mist of incense seemed to help him, somehow there seemed to be comfort in the shuddering of the ground beneath him. He heard the whip fall again and another man started screaming. And all the time, as the screams rose, the groaning shuddering sound beneath them grew louder, throbbing in the pit of your belly, till you were lost in pain and vibrations.
After an interminable period of agony, Jozlin recovered enough to raise his head and watch numbly from what seemed like a great distance, as the sixth man was whipped. All the men had screamed, without exception, for the metal tips added instant agony to the usual pain. It was unheard of for such whips to be used on ordinary folk who were doing their duty.
In his village shrine, Jozlin had only ever been beaten lightly with a switch before. Men dropped beside him to add their moans to his. When all ten men had been whipped, Rommith stoically removed his own tunic. 'Six strokes,' he said, nudging one of the men to his feet. 'I offer an extra stroke to our Dread Lord of my own free will. Lay it on hard.' He didn’t ask to be held.
When he’d been whipped, he, too, sank to the ground, groaning, trying to overcome the pain that seemed so much stronger than usual. 'Lie down,' he ordered, as the incense filled his nostrils. 'Lie right down, pressed to the ground, and let the Serpent call to you.'
For what seemed like an aching eternity of pain the men lay there and the ground rumbled beneath them. And not until dawnlight outlined the clouds above did the earth stop shaking, or the bone-shuddering fear of what might happen next leave the men.
In the main shrine tent, Sen-Sether was jubilant. He had felt it, felt the extra power accruing to his master. As he’d offered up his own pain, he’d felt that fathomless darkness gather around him, filling him with the black delight that only the Serpent could now give him. The whole camp had been filled with the Serpent's call. And would be filled again before they reached the High Alder. Those hags would be astonished at how strong the Serpent had grown by the time the army arrived, very surprised indeed.
The next day the men ate camp rations and marched on in silence, wriggling their shoulders under the pain of the lacerations. No one swapped jokes or reminisced. No one did anything but obey orders and march. And if some of the backs were less deeply lacerated, if some of the tengroups had made an unspoken agreement with one another not to lay on the whip hard, no one, not even the most devout officer, could check on every single group.
***
In the north of Garshlian the land grew hilly, the ground folding gently into small valleys and softly rounded peaks. On the lower slopes, vines grew, with wine-berries forming on them already, for summer was drawing to a close.
Except when he made sacrifice, Sen-Sether was in a sour mood. The only thing he hadn’t been able to control had been the speed of march. An army that size moved only slowly, even with fear nipping at their heels.
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When they reached the hills, they could see that near some villages the fields were untended, the vines growing in a riot of haphazard shoots. Those villages had which hadn’t acknowledged their Serpent god had been long deserted, though the canny hill folk had left the houses intact. Not so Sen-Sether. He ordered the villages put to the torch, the houses knocked down.
No people were found to sacrifice along with the houses, but even so, the Serpent called from beneath the earth as the flames licked up the walls, cracking th
e stones.
'He is stronger now, our Dread Lord,' Sen-Sether told the Initiate riding beside him with deep satisfaction.
'And will grow stronger yet,' said the gaunt-faced man with vicious eyes whom everyone feared nearly as much as his master.
As the army passed, flowing across the low land like a filthy great tide, Jozlin looked down upon them from a distant peak. Desperation had lent speed to his feet during a scouting trip and sent him running away till his breath sobbed in his throat, running from the pain in his back and the dull feel of a head clouded by the new incense candles, which all were required to lean over and breathe in deeply each morning.
When he saw the tail end of the army pass by, leaving behind it the blackened ruins of houses and vines torn from their frames, he let himself slide to the ground, nearly weeping with relief.
A little later a man with grizzled hair and a bitterly unhappy face stepped out from behind him and held a knife to the fugitive's throat. 'Don't move, you.'
Jozlin froze like a greybird in a net.
Other men slipped out of the undergrowth and stood staring down at him.
'What are you doing here?' one of them growled. 'Why didn't you stay with the rest of those murdering devils?'
'I ran away,' Jozlin said. 'I ran away of my own accord. I can't - ' he gulped. What if this was a trick to trap him? But whether it was or not, he could pretend no longer. 'I can't make sacrifice,' he said in a voice that quavered. 'I can't pretend to serve the Serpent any more. And I'd rather die than live under the whip.' He shuddered at the memory of that first night, and the second whipping that had followed a few days later when the scars were barely healed.
'What do you man, live under the whip?' the leader questioned.
Jozlin explained.
'They're far beyond reason now,' a woman whispered in horror
'Not all of them,' Jozlin ventured, since no one seemed about to kill him. 'Some of them are like me
- only came along to avoid being killed - only stayed because we might be recaptured and killed in the shrine,' he shuddered.
'Tell us. Tell us exactly what they're doing,' Fethlin demanded.
So Jozlin, voice faltering, shudders not feigned, explained what was now happening. 'And the Serpent growls more loudly each time the whips fall,' he finished. 'You can feel it in your belly, see the ground shaking, and you can't move, only lie there and let him fill you, whether you want him to or not.'
When he’d finished, there was dead silence for a few moments, then the woman made a sound of disgust deep in her throat. 'Brother, look down upon us all,' she murmured.
'We'll need to send word of this to the Lady Herra,' Fethlin said. He stared down at Jozlin. 'And I think we'll have to send this cowardly worm, too, so she can question him herself. I don't like the sound of this. We'll have to take him with us, Roalla.'
So Jozlin found himself tramping along secret mountain pathways in company with half a dozen grim men and women. They seemed to find him despicable, but they fed him well and they didn’t ill-treat him. Gradually his body began to feel better and the last of the fumes left his clouded brain.
One morning, Roalla looked at him and called for Fethlin. 'He's out of it now, I think.'
Everyone stared at Jozlin, who wriggled uncomfortably.
'How do you feel today, lad?' Fethlin asked.
'Better. I've felt better each day.'
'And your head.'
Jozlin nodded. He knew what they were asking. It was only now that he realised how the incense had affected him. 'Clear. Really clear.'
'What do you feel about the Serpent now?'
Jozlin felt anger rise unexpectedly within him, anger at those who had dragged him into their loathsome rituals and anger at himself for not resisting. 'I'm ashamed.' The words seemed to burst out of him. 'Ashamed. My mother would disown me if she knew I joined them. Well, she would if she were alive. And she still would be alive if there’d been Healers still.' He found tears rolling down his cheeks and could do nothing to stem them. 'Why did I do it? Why did we all do it?'
'The incense, lad,' Fethlin said, in a more kindly voice. 'It's drugged.'
Roalla came and laid her hands on Jozlin's shoulder. 'Look into my eyes, boy,' she commanded.
He suddenly realised that she was a Sister, a Healer. At her touch, warmth flooded through him, and love, and joy. The air seemed to flicker with light and for a moment he couldn’t move, then she embraced him.
'Another one saved,' she said. 'Our Brother be praised.'
'How can you bear even to speak to me?' Jozlin sobbed.
'How can we bear to leave you in trouble and alone?' she countered. 'We have to wait for the effects of the incense to fade - and with some they don't - then we can heal the inner wounds and welcome you back to humankind. Will you fight with us against the Serpent, Jozlin?'
He nodded. 'Yes.' Then a fear shook him. 'But if I smell that incense again - '
She smiled. 'Once you recover fully, you're more resistant than those who’ve never inhaled the poison. So - will you join us?'
'What if I say no?'
'Then we'll show you a track which leads north to some new settlements and we'll give you provisions for the journey.'
Great joy welled up in Jozlin. 'Then I can choose freely to join you.' He found himself being hugged in turn by each member of the group, and then he was weeping again, weeping for sheer joy.
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***
Ten days later Jozlin and the others arrived in the High Alder by a secret track, guarded at its narrow apex by more of the grim-faced people.
'This is Northwoods,' Roalla said as they walked down the last stretch on the other side of the range of hills. 'Come and meet Herra. She'll want to hear your tale.'
'Herra of Tenebrak?' Jozlin knew whom he was to meet, of course he did, but it still seemed impossible that the Lady Herra would deign to speak to a despicable creature like him.
When he was brought to her, the Lady Herra was dancing with the younger children, and laughing with them, too. They were all singing a new song, one Jozlin had never heard before. It was a happy tune, and after a moment, he found himself humming it under his breath.
'You can sing it aloud,' said Roalla, grinning. 'We often do.'
'What is it? I've never heard it before.'
'It's called Herra's Joy. Katia's son Alaran wrote it for her specially. It's one of our weapons against the Serpent.'
He could only goggle at that.
'I mean it. Remember the Great Prophecy.'
He nodded. Forbidden as it was, they’d all heard it.
'And Sunrise shall awake with joy,' she quoted. 'When you sing it, you feel happy. We'll be singing it when we go into battle. Who would not be happy to fight against the Serpent, even if it means giving our lives?'
Understanding dawned on his face. 'They'll hate it. Oh, how they'll hate it. Rommith had even scolded Jozlin for smiling up at a blue sky or avoiding stepping on an untrampled flower.' He turned round to find Herra by his side, and was amazed at how small she was. But her smile was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his whole life. 'Oh, lady,' he said, as more tears fell from his eyes, 'I will do my best to serve you. I will fight and die if necessary, and with great joy. I will make up for the crimes I've committed.'
'Serve our Brother, lad,' she retorted, giving him a hug, ‘but first come and tell me your tale. It must be important for Roalla to bring you through the mountains to me.'
What he told her took the smile from her face.
CHAPTER 25 BATTLE PLANS
'Right,' said Quedras to his informal War Council, 'we need to work out some proper battle plans.'
He raised one eyebrow enquiringly at the man who sat beside him.
Benjan nodded, content to leave the direction of any campaigns to this clever and inventive man.
Being a bodyguard in the Hashite Guild didn’t teach you strategies for mass attack, rather individual fighting
techniques, strategies of defence for yourself and your client of the moment.
He and Quedras had become firm friends in the past month or two, and he knew their Brother had sent Quedras to them. It was doubtful if the two of them would ever meet again after the war, though, because Quedras was longing to return to the Sandrims and Benjan's duty lay in Tenebrak, where he intended to re-establish the Hashite Guild headquarters.
The phrase 'after the war' had crept into everyone's mouth lately, voicing hope of a future free of the Serpent, a future where people would be able to live at peace with one another and worship or not worship as they pleased.
Some of those who had assembled in Northwoods didn’t feel any strong belief in a Brother-God, only a deep reluctance to follow the ways of the Serpent. And unlike the Serpent followers, the Kindred didn’t feel a need to push everyone into their own ways.
'How can we work out battle plans when we don't know where or when they'll attack?' someone asked.
Quedras gave a scornful sniff. 'You don't want to wait for those rrascals to attack us, surely? If we do that, they will choose the time and place, and that'll give them the advantage. That would be crrazy.'
Katia sighed, upset at the thought of violence as usual, but determined to play her part in the battle to come. You could abhor violence, but that shouldn't make you give in weakly to someone else's attacks. Then a thought drifted into her mind and she stiffened. 'Therak Bowl!'
Davred looked at her. 'What?'
'Therak Bowl!' she said more loudly, standing up and banging the table for attention. 'That's where the battle will take place.'
Quedras opened his mouth to ask her how she could possibly know that, then something about the glow in her eyes, the flickering of light around her head, stopped him.
'Our Brother is whispering in my ear.' Her voice continued to echo slightly. 'The battle will take place at Therak Bowl, but we must make our first stand on the Hapslith Terraces nearby.'
There was a buzz of comments.
'Hey, it's useful to know that,' Quinna announced cheerfully. She had no hesitation about accepting anything one of her Kindred said in that tone of voice.
