The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  And yet she stood there, uselessly, unable to take the last step.

  I wish Hesprec was here.

  Even as the thought came, a small hand landed on her arm. Not Sathewe’s: Hesprec. Maniye stared at her, not sure whether this was truly her friend or some phantom of the Godsland.

  But then the Serpent girl smiled, that expression that called back to the old, old man Maniye had once known. ‘You’re here then. I knew you’d find the way.’ She waved away Maniye’s protests and glanced at Sathewe, who watched her warily.

  ‘Three seems right,’ she decided. ‘Perhaps we’re the three sisters, to follow after the three brothers.’ She squinted at the sky and grimaced. ‘There they are then.’

  ‘I can’t reach them,’ Maniye told her. She had wanted a weapon, a cutting edge, when all those hungry stars had come to seethe overhead. In her hand was a hatchet of Wolf-iron and she knew it was Broken Axe’s, somehow, an echo of his strength. Broken Axe, who had never given up. And now she was dishonouring his memory because she couldn’t find a way.

  Sathewe howled mournfully at the sky, and Maniye felt the sound through her whole being. The long, lonely call of wolf or dog or coyote that can travel the length and breadth of the Crown of the World. I am here, it said. Even at the end of the world, I am here. Maniye felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

  Hesprec was still staring upwards. ‘The gods of the Plague People,’ she said, ‘sealed in the cold sky for all of history. Surely we knew this, long ago, but we didn’t want to, and so we forgot.’

  ‘They’re about to get their revenge for us sealing them there,’ Maniye said bitterly.

  ‘We didn’t,’ Hesprec said simply.

  Maniye stared at her. ‘But I thought—’

  ‘Forgive an old Serpent. It’s hard not to hold on to one last secret. Or else I’m wrong, and it doesn’t matter.’ Hesprec shrugged. ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘Come on what?’

  Sathewe howled again, long and mournful, but defiant too. I am here. No matter what you have done, I am still here. Maniye felt the sentiment well up in her, the need of the wolf to answer that lonely call. So am I. So am I. With the thought, her soul was at her heels, sniffing the air and then lifting its head to cry out its own existence against the furious sky. Here we are, all of us. So long as our voices sound, you have not destroyed us.

  The tiger was on her other side, ears flat and fangs bared. Maniye let her hand brush the fur of its scalp. At her back she felt the far greater shadow of the Champion.

  ‘Maniye Many Tracks,’ Hesprec said. ‘Maniye Many Souls. Who’d have thought the angry girl I met in the pits of the Winter Runners would save the world? I think I did very well, saving you back then.’

  ‘I remember it was me saving you,’ Maniye told her. An idea was waking in her mind, the sort of thing that only worked in the old tales, but then they were in the Godsland, where things worked more like stories. ‘And the world’s not saved yet.’

  ‘But the stories will say you saved it,’ Hesprec pointed out. ‘Or else there will be no stories, so what does it matter?’

  Maniye nodded briefly, and then retreated a dozen paces back down the mountainside with her souls shadowing her. She looked up at that sky and gripped her hatchet. Then they began to run, all of them, the Champion in the lead.

  * * *

  Asman had done what he could up above, and as soon as the ship began to veer off course he had vaulted the rail and half flown, half dropped back to where the spear-line of the River Lords still held. What had undone the flying vessel he had no clue, but understanding this battle was something he had abandoned long before. He jumped back into the fray just as a wedge of Plague Men tried to push his soldiers aside – heavily armoured creatures that could not fly but still had the killing rods to strike men dead on sight. He gave the Champion its head then, leaping into their midst and trying his strength and claws against their mail, as his soldiers rattled arrows at them and drove at them with spear and sword. The Plague armour was proof against anything they had, but it had gaps. Asman tore at their eyes, their armpits, their groins. He kicked with the Champion’s murderous strength at their knees and elbows, every part of them that could be made to break. Then they were trying to fall back, and the fighting spears of the River still held the strip of ground they had chosen to die on, but the skies overhead were overcast with a mass of the enemy who were not even stopping to kill them.

  Asman broke away from his soldiers, seeing the camp behind him was suddenly alive with Plague warriors, their shadows mottling everything like patches of rot. Mobs of them were descending on anything that caught their eye, and Tecumet’s tent was larger and grander than all the others. Of course it was, for she was the Kasra of the Sun River Nation, but that also made her the greatest target for the Plague.

  The Champion gave him its speed and he leapt and raced between the hearths of the camp, springing over or dodging past the panicking crowds who were fleeing in every direction. Left and right he could see groups of priests and their followers still propitiating their gods, calling on them for aid, but the ritual was being silenced one fire at a time as the Plague attack spread.

  The Kasra’s tent was on fire, he saw. There was a great skirmish about it as the Plague Men attacked, but others just glided over and spat flames from their hands, setting light to the silks and fine cloths. Tecumet would be in there. Asman pictured her in her formal robes and mask, because she would want to meet the end as befitted the ruler of the greatest nation in the world.

  He let out a piercing screech to clear the way and picked up speed, aware that most of his followers were left far behind. A Plague warrior dropped down in his way, rod levelled to kill, and Asman leapt, hooking a sickle-claw in the collar of the creature’s armour and ripping the metal off him, shearing straps and laying open the hollow man’s chest to the ribs. He vaulted the folding body, using it as purchase for a final burst of speed that got him to the tent.

  It was fiercely ablaze, and all around were Tecumet’s servants and guard, trying to save what they could. He got to the flap and stared in, Stepping so that he could shield human eyes against the glare. For a moment all he saw was fire running along every outline of the tent’s interior, but then he caught sight of her: the gold of her mask running bright with the flames, the great heavy robe alight as she stood straight-backed to meet her fate.

  Asman bellowed and launched himself at the opening, but a heavy body crashed into his and slammed him to the floor. He glared up into Venat’s scowl. ‘Get off me!’

  ‘No,’ the old pirate spat.

  Asman bucked under him, then got an elbow into the Dragon’s jaw and writhed out from under him. Venat had his ankle even as he tried to charge for the flames, and furiously Asman Stepped and kicked him off. Even then, the pirate got between him and the fire. Asman screeched at him, threatening with tooth and claw.

  ‘You’re an idiot! You always were!’ Venat shouted at him. ‘Just as well your mate can do the thinking for you!’

  Then the Dragon punched him. A hard fist cracked across the Champion’s snout, more an affront than a serious attack, but it was enough to shock Asman back onto his human feet, and then Venat had hold of him, an arm about his neck to keep him that way, wrestling him away from the fire to where, to where . . .

  To where Tecumet sat, masked by her servants, soot-stained and coughing, but the woman herself, not the Kasra’s mask nor robes of state, but just Tecumet.

  He threw his arms about her the moment Venat let him go, crying out, ‘I thought you’d burned!’

  She stood carefully into his embrace, staring upwards. ‘We all may still,’ she whispered.

  He followed the line of her gaze. The Plague Ship was turning ponderously in the sky, coming around on a course that would bring it over the camp once more. Asman’s mind flashed with images of the fall of Tsokawan, of Tecuman’s fiery death. The Champion screamed within him, but here was another enemy it couldn’t fight.
r />   * * *

  Thunder had gone to fight in the end. When the main force of the enemy were in plain sight of the camp, he could stand the burden of leadership no longer. And besides, the Plague People were making free with the sky. His ability to delay or corral them had been exhausted.

  At the back of his mind was the tally of all those who he had sent to their deaths, that other burden of leadership. Better to lose himself in the fighting than consider it. The guilt would be waiting patiently for him if he lived.

  He gathered up everyone who was close enough to hear his voice and led them out at a swift pace. Many were of his war host, the strength of the Crown of the World, though they had plenty of loose spears from other bands – Plainsfolk and Rivermen and Stone People. A great pack of the Plague warriors was within sight, waiting beyond the camp, and perhaps Thunder and his forces could scatter them or occupy them. Perhaps a little more blood would give Hesprec the chance to act out the Serpent’s plan.

  It was the Serpent he found in his mind, as the greatest of the sons of the Bear charged out. Ever since Hesprec had guested with him over winter, he had been impressed with a god who actually helped people, rather than testing them like the Wolf or ignoring them like his own tribe’s god. If any power will bring us through this, it is the Serpent, he knew, so Serpent be with me now.

  He wanted to ask, Make me your fist, except what use would a snake have for fists? Could he be the god’s fangs, its coils? The theology of it tied him up and made him forget his fear until he and his fellows were almost on the enemy. He had thought that their darts would start carving up his forces long before that, but the Plague People had something else on their mind. Their attention was on the sky, and he risked tilting his head for a glance upwards, seeing the great ship veering away. The expressions on the Plague Men’s faces showed this was not part of their plan.

  And then they realized they were under attack, and some started shooting, striking Thunder’s people dead. A dart clipped his ear and another parted the hairs of his back, but most of the enemy were not standing to fight. They could have withered Thunder’s charge away to nothing had they but tried, but they were taking wing, almost all of them, great handfuls of them just leaping up into the air. For a moment he thought they had broken – that some divine hand had sowed fear into them and the battle was won. Then he understood. With their flying ship foiled, they were going about the killing themselves. Scores of Plague warriors passed overhead, contemptuously dodging aside from the arrows and spears of Thunder’s people. A kernel of them were left over, unable or unwilling to take to the sky, and these Thunder’s force descended on, braving the darts and proof against the Terror for as long as they were winning. The luckless Plague Men were trampled down in short order, but Thunder played no part in it. His eyes followed the great swarm of the enemy as it surged above the camp.

  ‘Back!’ he cried. ‘Back! Protect the priests!’

  He thought he must be too late, that he would get back to only corpses, but the cloud of Plague warriors suddenly lost its menacing spiral and became just a scatter of individuals, crashing into each other or winging off wide beyond the camp’s confines. Thunder didn’t let his surprise slow him – and many of his people were already ahead, on fleeter paws. Had the Serpent reached up from the earth to attack the enemy? No – not the Serpent, but his brother.

  There were few of the Bat Society left by then – many had died in clashes with the Plague before this final fight, and others were still bedevilling the Plague Ship. Some had held back, though, some half-dozen vast-winged shadows that plunged through the seething bustle of Plague Men with their soundless screams. Thunder had never understood their power, but perhaps of all the people, they had been the true killer of Plague Men back in the Land-That-Was. Something within the Plague warriors remembered them and their shrieking.

  But half a dozen Bats against a hundred Plague warriors, how long could that fight sit in the balance? Everywhere the vanes of their wings darkened the sky, the Plague Men fled helplessly, some dropping their weapons, some falling to earth to be killed by the warriors below. And yet when they had passed, the enemy recovered their minds and their discipline, and Thunder knew that the darts would be sleeting like foul weather, wherever the Bats turned. He saw them falter and fall, one by one, each death buying another few heartbeats of life for those below.

  Then they were too few, two left, then one, and Plague warriors were dropping down towards Hesprec’s hearth. Thunder was powering between the tents then, shouldering aside anything that got in his way. He could see warriors there – that was Shyri, surely, and there were Wolves. He saw Aritchaka of the Tiger break from her devotions and hurl a spear into the groin of a Plague warrior, doubling him up over it. Then she was leaping like dark flames, springing higher than a man to get her claws into another and drag him to earth. Beside her, Icefoot of the Moon Eaters died without a sound, a dart lancing the back of his skull.

  Thunder burst out into the open, skidding to a halt before he ended up in a fire, then Stepping, coming to his feet with a stone in each hand. Yaff, his last surviving dog, caught up with him, barking at the sky as though to bring it down with sheer noise.

  Hesprec still sat with Maniye, the motionless centre of the end of the world. The Plague Men seemed to know their true enemy, but a vast shadow stood over them and held them at bay.

  Thunder knew Mother as harsh human words, but as a bear she had just been a great slow weight of ill temper, too sluggish to rouse herself to rage. Now he saw her angry, as he might have seen the Bear angry at the dawn of time, before he settled in to sleep. She seemed even larger than he was, rearing twelve feet and driving the Plague Men back by sheer bellowing fury. Her claws and teeth were bloody, and her pelt was already dotted with blood where their darts had found their mark, but the sight of her held them. She was like a goddess, like a mountain.

  Thunder reached her side just as the next flurry of darts pierced her – her breast, her leg, her shoulder, and one drove a long ugly gouge across the top of her head. He felt the shudder through her, but she did not flinch, just made herself as big as she could and threatened them, all of them, the very notion of them.

  He saw her skin ripple as a dart tore into her throat, another into her open mouth. He was human to touch her side, to let her know he had come to take her place when even her strength had gone. He could not catch her body when she fell. Instead, he Stepped and stood where she had stood, roaring defiance as his war host sent arrow after arrow at the swirling host above.

  Something snagged painfully in the fur of his ankle and he thought they had shot him there, but it was a hand, a small hand, hauling on his pelt as though the owner was trying to haul herself up from out of the earth.

  He risked a glance down.

  Maniye’s eyes were open. They were shining.

  * * *

  The Champion stood tall before her, braced with all four feet on the ground. Maniye leapt on its back, feeling all its solid strength that it lent to her in the physical world: her great soul that had saved her and made her what she was.

  She became a tiger, and the tiger was also her soul, a gift from Joalpey her mother that had come close to getting her killed when she was just a child dwelling amongst the Winter Runners. The tiger planted its feet upon the Champion’s back and readied itself.

  And she became a wolf, which was her third soul, a gift from Kalameshli Takes Iron who had tormented her and whom she had hated and then accepted, but who had never hated her, for all that he had been a cruel man and done evil things. The wolf leapt to the tiger’s back and the striped beast hissed at the indignity, but let it stand there.

  And she became a girl, her first shape, the Maniye before the Many Tracks. She climbed the wolf ’s back and stood there with her hatchet in her hand, and the sky was right above her. The luminous gods of the Plague People were clustered just on the far side, within arm’s reach.

  They’re about to get their revenge for us sealing t
hem there, she had said, and Hesprec had replied, We didn’t. No act of the true people kept these clustering, swarming things at arm’s length, and so perhaps it was not the ruin of the true people that they had drawn close to accomplish.

  Below, far below, Hesprec and Sathewe watched and held their breath.

  She had her axe, and an axe was a weapon if you needed it to be, but only by extension. An axe was a tool for cutting, first and foremost.

  So she drew back her hand, fixing the burning gods with her stare, and cut open the sky.

  35

  Mind still singing with what she’d done, Maniye opened her eyes.

  They were fighting all around her. She saw warriors of twenty tribes with bows and spears, and above them the great swirl of the Plague army, reaching out across the sky to catch them all and crush them into nothing.

  They were praying, too. She was jostled by priests on all sides, Boar, Plains Dog, Turtle, Coyote. They pressed at her because they were surrounded by the warriors trying to keep them safe. And some were dead, anyway, because the Plague darts cared nothing for a flimsy human body standing in the way.

  She wanted to tell them, You can stop now; it’s done, but she couldn’t form the words. What she had seen, what she had done, normal human speech was insufficient to describe it. That was why such deeds became stories: to shrink them to a size that they could fit in the mind.

  Hesprec was beside her, still holding her hand, eyes open as well. Their gazes met, and even though people were dying all around them Maniye saw the triumph there. Then Hesprec’s gaze slid sideways, and Maniye followed it and cried out, lurching away until she reached the end of the tether that was Hesprec’s arm.

  There was a thing nestled beside her, cupped within the ring of priests. It lay on its bristling back, legs curved over in death, yellow fangs half folded. Bulbous eyes stared out at her like stones. It was one of the Plague People’s beasts, surely it was, and yet how had it come . . .