by Danie Ware
Before he could win smug points, though, a whole new problem bit them in the ass.
One of Mostak’s command tan dropped dead.
What?
Well, okay, not dead exactly – but he keeled over and he looked pretty damn sick. The guy was… Jesus Hairy Christ… in the failing evening light, the guy was green.
Ecko gawked. Even Lugan’d never gone that colour and his hangovers were fucking legend.
You gotta be kiddin’ me…
The warrior was an older man, a proper vet, and he’d come in bearing a message. Now, he looked like he’d swallowed a bottle of Insta-Lawn – despite the cold, he was growing, for chrissakes. He was sprouting random vegetation from ears and eye sockets, more at the neck of his armour. Ecko didn’t scare easy, but grass popping out someone’s eyeball was enough to turn him carnivore for life. And somehow the man was still alive, hands blindly reaching out.
“Help me,” he said. “Help me. Please.”
The words sounded wrong.
Skin crawling, Ecko told himself to get a grip.
Drums sounded orders.
Rhan arrived at a run.
“Seneschal.” The Commander was on his knees in the muck, gripping the fallen man’s hand in both of his own. “This man is my friend.”
“Samiel’s balls.” Expression contorting, Rhan dropped to his knees on his other side. He held the man’s head in one hand, tried to clear the growth with the other.
“Ghar, it’s Rhan.” The words sounded like a knell. “This is getting to be a habit.”
Ghar repeated, like a litany, “Help me.”
Propelled by an obscure impulse, Ecko picked up the soldier’s discarded spear and turned it over – then dropped the thing as if it’d stung him.
It was growing.
Just like the blade from the Amos wharfside, the one that had led them to the House of Sarkhyn – the terhnwood fibres in the resin were struggling for life.
Help me.
What the hell?
Glancing back in the direction of the blighted woodland, the symmetry of the two things was unmistakable – but why the hell would one die while the other tried to grow?
Something about all of this made him shiver, right to the core of his being. Ecko had the oddest fucking feeling…
The oddest feeling of what?
So. Do I get a cookie when I solve the puzzle? Or just a piece of veg grown outta my ass?
Rhan was speaking. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.” He was freaked, Ecko could hear it, freaked right the fuck out of his socks – and hell, he wasn’t the only one. Resignation and horror fell from his words like stones. “Mos, I don’t think I can help him. Maybe Amethea—”
“Rhan…” Mostak’s tone was dangerous.
“I can’t tell what’s the matter – can’t feel it!” It was halfway between anger and plea. “He’s not sick! He’s—!”
“Rhan!” It was a bark, an order. “You—!”
But the moss-grown man had gone into spasm. His eyeless body was jerking, arms and legs and hands and feet hammering against the cold ground. He was still trying to speak, and green froth came from between his lips. Rhan and Mostak were trying to hold him down. The commander’s face was thunderous with accusation. Ecko stared, car-crash fascinated, and saw that the man’s body temperature was all over the shop. He was cold at the core, but the places where he was growing were hot.
Ecko found he was rubbing his hands like Lady Macbeth.
Jesus fucking Harry Christ and little fuckin’ fish…
He managed, “What…?”
“I don’t know,” Rhan said, baffled, furious. “He’s not injured, not infected. It’s not a disease. It’s like – it’s almost like a parasite, but I can’t even see all of it. And the smell. Like Foriath, like the terhnwood. Like Mael saw in the market. I don’t understand.” His appeal was to the commander, but even as he spoke, Ghar arched his back and gagged a mouthful of green. Then he collapsed like a broken thing, still.
Holy shit. Ecko swallowed, shuddered.
Mostak placed two fingers on the fallen man’s lichen-grown neck, then smoothly rose to his feet, his expression set. For a moment, he stared down at the still-kneeling Seneschal.
“Lost enough, have we?” The words were thrown like acid.
Then he turned his back and he walked away.
“I don’t… I don’t understand.” Rhan’s response was a whisper. He stared at the dead man, at his own helpless hands, then up at Ecko, his face full of ghosts. He was grey and his shoulders were shaking.
Across the site, the drums had started to call the muster.
“Why the fuck’re you lookin’ at me?” Ecko picked up the spear again and examined it with his telos flicked in, looking at its odd, struggling growth. He threw it at where Rhan was kneeling. “Get up, for chrissakes. I dunno what that shit was, but we better hope it’s not contagious.” Green froth trailed down the sides of Ghar’s face, oozed into the cold dirt. “Otherwise we’re fucked.”
* * *
They ran.
They ran for real now, ran with the cold night vast over their heads and the winter wind behind them, ran knowing that their enemy was hunting them, right at their heels. Vahl himself was behind them, coming like the end of the world…
Or some such poetic bullshit.
Ecko was tired, more tired than he would’ve believed possible. He kept going on defiance alone: Yeah, beat me, willya? Around him, body heat came off the soldiers in waves, like panic.
He was still thinking about Ghar and the spear, about green froth and growing things, and about the dead woodland. Life and death, sides of a coin, philosophical shit maybe – but he was so gonna work out why.
As the moons set, though, he realised that he could see the pursuit – a red shimmer at the horizon, a distant warmth coming closer. If the curve of the earth – yeah, okay, funny – was anything like normal, then they’d be about twenty klicks away, and hell, they were closing fast.
Faster than expected.
He couldn’t do the math exactly, but he reckoned they might make the morning before the bad guys caught them with their pants round their ankles.
And then they really were fucked.
The drums thundered on, their necessity unrelenting. They sounded like adrenaline. Like demand. Like something that was giving purpose; like not being able to quit.
Groaning, they ran.
They ran through the night.
Behind them, the line of heat closed slowly like the edge of a noose, nearer with every passing hour. After a time, Ecko’s oculars could almost pick out individual figures; see the horses coming for them, the roil of monsters. The wind had faltered, and a cold mist rose from the dead ground. Behind them, the red line on the horizon grew steadily, separating out into a blur of shapes – it seemed the Big Nasty wasn’t one for kipping either. Moonlight slid slowly across dark soil. Breaths came ragged, hurting; warriors stumbled. Biscuits and water were passed from hand to hand, with warnings about rations.
And then, in the weariness and the flowing fog, they began to hear whispers. Whispers like smoke.
Why do you run? Let me help you.
Let me catch you. Why do you run?
Vahl was speaking to them, in his own voice, and in Selana’s.
It was soft, embracing, gentle as a caress. It was rest and sleep. It sounded in Ecko’s ear like Amal’s temptation, the lure that’d nearly made him give it all up. It coaxed and taunted and tempted, reminded him how weary he was. For moment, he paused, wanting nothing more than to sink down into the soil and let his exhausted body stop…
Why do I run?
Let you catch me…
But the drums answered, loud as thunder and jarring in the darkness. And with them, he could hear the Bard, a jagged and dissonant vocal noise that made him suddenly flushed and angry, made him want to jump up and put his hands over his ears and scream at the fucker to shut up, to shut up now…
The
force had come to a ragged and stumbling halt. Their exhaustion was palpable, but somewhere, the Bard was not letting this happen. The drum rolled fury; the noise was huge in the sky, it seemed to pick up the winter wind and throw it at them, filled with grit and the edges of the frost incoming.
Yet the soft voice was not alone. Others wove with it, smoky and faint.
You cannot run any further.
Wait now, the end is nearly upon you.
Give us time, we will be with you.
We will help you.
Time!
In the darkness, the Bard’s roar was as vast as the wind itself: “I will give you nothing!”
Its sheer force seemed to billow the mist, blow the voices back, weeds rolling before the wind. The taunts faded, but in their faintness they were laughing, soft as ash.
Biding their time.
The drum boomed defiance. The freezing fog eddied round them. The force collected itself, and ran on.
And still, the red line grew closer.
* * *
The night seemed endless, stumbling in a half-dream that was full of cold, and numb fingers, and hurting feet, and drum-throb; full of ears chilled and of voices pleading for rest. Hours later as the mist coalesced into a freezing grey dawn, Ecko felt he was wakening from some demented sleep-walk, some endless stagger of exhaustion that’d left him shaking in every muscle, tired enough to fucking cry.
As they paused at last, the pre-dawn chill biting at their faces and ears, some of the soldiers dropped to their knees. The horses stood shaking, their heads hanging low. Steam rose from their shoulders.
The drums rested, as if they too, were exhausted.
And behind them…
As the mist eddied, Ecko found he could see them in glimpses – just like he’d done from the top of that tiny, shell-speckled chapel. He could see the pennons and shields of the city’s cavalry. He could see the spears of the foot-soldiers, and the wagons that may be artillery or supplies. He could see the hiss and seethe of Amal’s creatures. Like the force before them, they’d stopped.
It was all the fuck wrong – how the hell had they been moving foot and cartage that fast?
But the mist played havoc with his telos – he couldn’t see them well enough to even guess.
Then a soldier beside him nudged him with her boot.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We’ve done it.”
To his left, the sun was just rising. Its first light caught the very top of the slope, the tip of the huge, dark ruin that stood atop it. It shone like some castle tower, some end-of-level promise, some mighty city that guarded the final and forgotten treasure.
“That’s it,” she said. “That’s Tusien. We’re here.”
16: LAST RIDE
THE NORTHERN VARCHINDE
Out in the unprotected winter of the open Varchinde, Tan Commander Triqueta was a tiny, bright figure under a glowering sky.
The wind was vast and merciless. It cut at her skin and harried the dirt in waves, but it wasn’t the chill that was making her shudder. Her shiver was one of horror, of absolute disbelief – the cold of confronting something she’d no wish to see…
Something that was making the chapped skin on her hands itch as if she’d already touched it and recoiled.
She’d no words other than, “Dear Gods.”
But the wind snatched them skywards and dismissed them.
Mane and tail billowing, her little palomino tapped a restless forehoof on the frozen ground. Still shivering, Triqueta stroked her neck.
Beside them, the Banned veteran Taure cupped his hands and blew in them.
“You wanted to see it,” he said, with a slightly apologetic half-shrug. “Know what it is? You were the one down there.” He rubbed his palms together briskly, as if to somehow keep the exhaled warmth, but the chill had seeped into his skin. The man’s fingers and lips were tinged with white like manifest fear.
You were the one down there.
Triq shuddered again.
Before her, like an open mouth in the rising ground, there festered a wound.
It was terrifying; it made her throat rise with nausea. It was poisonous, wide and spreading, caked in filth and hungry; it looked like it was somehow sucking the very life from the world. And yet it also looked half healed, as though it were trying to scab over and mend.
It stank.
Triq was compelled by it, unable to look away. Cracks spread through the ground; the whole thing looked like it was spreading, like the mouth would widen and swallow everything, ground and sky and all, down into the hollow below.
Leaving… what?
Nothing.
Triq’d seen her share of nasty injuries – by the rhez, she’d had more than one herself – but this thing, gangrenous and lurking, in the world’s very flesh… Gods, it made her stomach turn over.
She realised she was scratching her hands and stopped herself with an effort. She straightened her shoulders and pushed her straggled yellow hair out of her face.
From the wound, and stretching down the slope sides, there spread open fissures, like veins in the soil. They revealed nothing, no clue or hope – they showed only an empty, darkening grey. She thought about dropping something down one of them – thought better of it. One too many market sagas told the end of that story.
“You know anything?” Taure asked her. “Anything that might help?”
That might help what?
Yes, she’d been down there – once. A season and a lifetime ago – on a summer night, in a blaze of fury and fire. That wound, that fetid and spreading fracture, had once been the Monument, the great Elemental Cathedral – Amethea had called it the heart of the Powerflux. Long forgotten, it had lain dormant for returns, until Maugrim had come to claim it. Something catalytic had happened down there – the waking of the world.
Catalytic – and catastrophic.
Everything that’d happened had started from this place.
The wind whined, cold.
“Triqueta!” Taure waved his waterskin at her to gain her attention. She shook herself, looked away. They’d pulled their mounted force to a ragged halt for a meal break, but they weren’t stopping long. “Triq,” Taure said. “This is some crazed shit. If you know anything…”
Cold rain scattered. She almost expected to see the damn thing hiss as the water struck it.
“No, no… not really.” She was scratching her hands again. “Maugrim woke the site. He summoned his elemental – we fled. And then The Wanderer… Well, you know what happened to that.” She turned to meet his gaze. “Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. Amethea could explain, maybe. Or the Bard.”
The old vet scratched his straggled beard and took another slug out of the waterskin. Triq would’ve laid a decent wager that it didn’t contain water.
“I wish I understood,” he said. “Wish this’d never started. Wish I had a giant scaled lizard to fly me to the distant moons.” He said something else, shook his head and took another slug. When she cupped a chapped hand round a cold ear, he gave a short and humourless snort.
“It’s funny,” he said, then repeated it louder, as the wind threw his words away. “It’s funny! Just – things. If Jade’d ridden out after Maugrim when you asked, maybe we could’ve stopped this. Maybe none of this would’ve happened.”
“Maybe,” Triqueta told him. “And maybe the cold sky’ll fall on our heads and shatter. We’re here now, and this is what we’re doing. Send the messenger back to Syke with the update – and make sure he sets a watch. We’ve got a war to fight.”
She made Taure grin, just for a moment. “Yes, Commander,” he said, sketching her a horseback bow. “Let the arse-kicking commence.”
* * *
By the Gods, Triqueta had missed this!
Wounded soil behind her, war ahead of her, grey sky over her – however harsh the winter, the freedom of the open plain was what she lived for. The wind in her hair, the feeling of running, the warmth of the mare in the vas
t cold – by the rhez, she’d been too long behind city walls, held back by rules and boundaries and etiquette. This was life! Beside her ran Taure, his grin an echo of hers – for just a moment, they were the Banned again, free to run and with all the plains as their home.
Out here, her age was forgotten – the time she’d lost, the time she’d wasted, the things she’d seen and lived through. Out here, this was all she was, and it was everything she’d ever wanted. She needed to howl, and she threw her head back, lifted her voice in the Banned’s ululating cry – for no reason other than she could. The echo from around her made her skin shiver with elation.
But the voices were so few!
Ress’s voice was missing, and Jayr’s. Syke had hung up his tack to stay with the CityWarden. As the Banned’s war cry faded, she realised that the missing voices would never come back, that this life was really over now, that everything was backwards, and the whole damned world was twisted up and dying…
Her mood crumpled, like a rag; she swallowed hard, lifted her face to the wind. The vast chill was suddenly welcome, the cold on her skin.
If Jade had ridden out after Maugrim…
Ecko and his damned patterns!
Now, they were the only ones left, for the Gods’ sakes, the only ones still fighting. Seventy-two horsemen and women from the Banned; the same again from the city’s garrison. And out there somewhere, the other side of the great Scar Lake, Ecko was even now establishing the base at Tusien, holding it until Triqueta could reach him. And then they’d make their final stand for the future of the world…
This was like some damned story.
Well, whatever happens, Triqueta promised herself, we won’t falter. We’ll be heroes, one way or another.
A realisation came out of nowhere, and it felt like hard hope…
This was the Banned’s last ride.
And it was damned well going to matter.
* * *
The ride was a good one.
It stretched fantastically timeless, empty, somehow fallen down the gaps between one place and another. Away from cities and soldiers and politics, it was a freedom from responsibility, a glorious null-time, and by the Gods it was welcome.
