by Wayne Hill
Talon fans his finger-blades out, facing Reznor. The Barrenite lets out a war cry and charges in, swinging wildly at Talon, desperately trying to land a blow. Talon laughs and wheels around the wild, cloaked figure, dodging rapid blows with ease.
“Seems to me, Reznor, all this peace has made you forget how to fight,” says Talon, as he shoves Reznor from one side to the another — passing Reznor to himself, then back again. Reznor's rage intensifies but it is an impotent rage, like shouting into a storm.
“Seems like one of those dreams when, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t land a blow,” chuckles Talon, dodging more of Reznor’s roundhouses.
Reznor realises that suddenly he is just swinging wild blows at nothing. Looking around, he sees Talon standing several metres away, near a mound of skulls, spinning skulls on his fingers and smiling his saw-boned smile.
Tommy holds his neck, still struggling for breath, watching the crazy, one-sided fight. At one point he is convinced that Talon turned and winked at him, mid-fight. Talon’s ridicule of Reznor is complete.
Talon thinks that by showing Reznor how outmatched he truly is he can convince the Barrenite to stop fighting and escort him back to the Barrenite leaders so he can personally explain what has happened. Unfortunately, Reznor has other ideas. Being a talker, but not a thinker, he says something stupid. This seals his fate.
“You and your whore’s child are food for the Dehas,” Reznor screams.
Talon’s smile slowly fades under dark lips. His head tilts slightly and he stalks up to where the Barrenite stands panting. Reznor looks deep into the burning eyes of a demon: red eyes with something ancient and unspeakable swirling inside them. For the first time in his long life Reznor is honestly scared by what he sees.
He swings for Talon’s face with a powerful right hook, trying to punch his fear away. Talon lets the creature hit him. Barely rocking Talon’s head back, Reznor’s fist is impaled on Talon’s cheek spikes. Whipping a lethal finger blade up, Talon severs Reznor’s right hand at the wrist. Screaming — his fist still affixed to Talon’s face — the Barrenite backs away, trying to stem the spray of arterial blood which is quickly covering both monsters.
Talon explodes into motion, twisting like a cyclone. His vicious elbow blades blur and — with the swift accuracy of a katana wielded by a samurai sword master — slice the top off Reznor’s skull, like the top of an egg. Another revolution of Talon’s fatal death spin takes Reznor’s eyes and nose. Yet another, removes his insulting mouth and jaw.
Reznor sways, his death arriving too fast for him to register. His hand still clasping the stump of his wrist, the Barrenite stumbles blindly toward the cliff edge. A fountain of blood almost six feet high marks the loss of Reznor’s head. An almost nonchalant spinning back kick from Talon sends Reznor’s decapitated body over the cliff-top edge — to join his former congregation on the rocks below.
Talon still looks fierce, glaring after the Barrenite’s plunging corpse. He stands on the cliff edge, taking deep breaths — a blood-covered devil. He spits off the cliff.
“You will never speak of her again,” Talon says. He walks slowly over to Tommy and lifts him gently from the floor. “I told you to stay a mile from the shore. Your stupidity nearly cost you your life, and the peace between my people and the Barrenites. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry,” says Tommy, still struggling to breathe. “I couldn’t watch them die, Talon. I — I wanted to help them. Look at what they have done!”
Tommy and Talon stare over the field of massacre.
“This happens. We will help them — those we can, anyway. Check them, Astilla,” says Talon. His mind far from here: in another time; another place.
Tommy moves from one body to another with little hope — he knows that he is too late. There is no way of telling how many people have died on this lonely cliffside. The large, moss-covered bone piles around the outside of the clearing are an indication of just how long this evil has been happening.
Tommy collapses to his knees amidst the carnage.
“They’re dead, all of them,” Tommy says. “I thought the Believers were cruel, but — what’s the point in all this?” Tears fill Tommy’s eyes and his shoulder aches. He walks past corpses — trying his best not to stand on, or in, them — and stops next to Talon. Together at the cliff edge they stare out over the white horse waves of the ocean.
“You were following me ...Why?” Tommy asks.
“It’s beautiful here.” Talon takes in deep draughts of sea air and smiles at the waves rising and falling in the sunlight.
Tommy tries to see the same beauty, but all he sees is the sun-drenched waves as sores on a bloated green-blue corpse. Tommy thinks the sea today is torturous — a cold, wet charnel house for the dead: a crypt for the recently deceased.
“You’re part of the northern coastal clan. We are family, me and you. We protect our own,” says Talon.
“You watched them kill the others. You could have stopped this at any time,” says Tommy.
“Don’t. Don’t do that, Astilla! These young cadets were dead as soon as they stepped foot out of the Drumcroon facility. There’s nothing I can do for such numbers. It is your father that damned them to their fate. If they hadn’t died here, it would have been ten miles from here. Or twenty. In any direction. They are not equipped to survive in this place. This place belongs to those who live beneath.”
“It’s not my father’s fault, Talon,” Tommy says. “It’s the Believers that control the courts, and the courts that banish these people.” Tommy feels unexpectedly protective about his father. He is not sure why. Perhaps only family can insult family.
“You’re talking as though he has no choice, as though these Believers control his very mind,” says Talon.
“Well, no, they don’t control him. But they do have a very large say in what he can do. I don’t think this is the fault of just one man. And even if it is, I doubt that man is my father.”
“Tommy, I have seen scores of people running this Drumcroon facility in my life. They dispatch these people out to the Barrens with no real preparation for what’s actually out here. Even for my clans, there are no safe places on this land beyond our boundaries. Boundaries that many hundreds died to establish. I lost many, many friends. We prefer to shelter in the caves than risk being attacked by the Barrenites. What chance do strangers have in this land? They do not know the boundaries. They do not know how to kill. They know nothing.”
“Why is it safer hiding in a cliff?” Tommy asks, trying to examine Talon’s viewpoint. “You could easily get raided by Barrenites in boats. Or they could climb down the cliffs with ropes from the top. This makes no sense to me!”
“You have no idea what has happened here, Tommy. This is a place for sacrificial offerings to the Barrenite’s sea god. Barrenites are terrified by the sea. They visit the shore only in small numbers and only to perform sacrifices. We rarely see them, and so are able to raise our families, and live peacefully. However, if other Barrenites find out about what happened on this clifftop, then this will be considered a contravention of our peace treaty — an act of war — and we may suffer retaliations. I’m only afraid for Daria and my clan, now. It is too much for me to try and alter the ways of the Barrenites. They are lost to ancient beliefs, things that I choose to forget.”
Tommy does not see her move, but he hears a woman’s weak voice. Talon watches him snake through the bodies to the source of the noise.
“This one’s alive!”
Talon comes over to help the young woman. Her face is obscured by her blood-soaked hair. Tommy checks her injuries. She has a very deep cut to the head and many other wounds, just visible through the ravaged cadet uniform.
“We need to stop the bleeding!” Tommy says as he finds the worst injury: a ruined left hand, missing three fingers and part of the palm, which has clearly been bitten away. Tommy points his joining tool higher up the girl's arm, and a golden cable springs out and
wraps around it. The golden tourniquet tightens and detaches from the device.
“Ok, what will it do? What happens now?” says Talon, waiting for the cables to do something interesting.
Tommy brushes the long, blood-drenched hair away from the girl’s face and is taken aback.
I know you, thinks Tommy. He shakes off the thought, there are more pressing concerns.
The girl’s eyes are open, but her stare is vacant. Her pale, bloodied face is frozen with fear — the horrors she recently witnessed locking her in this state. Tommy only glimpsed an image of her companions being killed but this poor soul had experienced the militarised Hell Lights version of events. Tommy feels sick.
“Can you fix her with this?” Talon asks, tapping one of his dark blades on Tommy’s adapted arm.
“I need things. The Barrenites, do they have venom in their bites? She’s dying, and I can’t help her, Talon. I need more equipment. I need to treat her for the venom, but I don’t recognise the symptoms.”
“Some Barrenites, from the line of Funerela, have poison sacs in their mouths, but I couldn’t tell you what it does to men, though,” says Talon.
Tommy’s MechVision is busy analysing the girl’s biometric data as Tommy places the joining tools onto the girl's wounds. The findings suggest an unrecognised poison. No treatment suggestions scroll down, just her prognosis: death. A small hourglass icon appears in Tommy’s MechVision and a countdown starts.
Tommy tells Talon.
“Well, let’s not waste any more time, Astilla!” Talon throws the injured young lady over one shoulder and springs into the high branches of a pine tree twenty feet away.
“Follow the shore to the sea towers,” Talon shouts back. “I will meet you there at sundown. We will be in the middle tower. You should make it in time if you start sailing now, and Slash is as fast as Rhombus keeps saying it is. Remember: keep to the sea, one mile from the coast.”
Tommy waits as Talon vanishes. He strains to follow the sound of his friend’s progress through the trees for a while, still in pain from his many injuries. He keeps focused on his friend disappearing until all he hears is a faint rustle of branches in the wind. He looks over the scene of the slaughter one last time. Tommy makes a promise to the souls that he failed to save this day. The mass grave surrounding him is witness to this promise, and the dead never forget.
“I will do anything in my power to rid this land of this evil.”
Tommy uses his grappling hook to descend the cliff to the beach. The broken bodies of the monsters lie amidst the rocks and the stinking seaweed. Their bulging eyes and gaping mouths are frozen by death, their limbs are arrayed randomly, some in unnatural positions.
He stares and cannot control his disgust for the Barrenites.
The way they are in death, he thinks, is a mirror of what they were in life: twisted, disgusting abominations that poison everything that is natural and pure.
7
Tommy wades through the shallow water and boards his catamaran. Aboard the boat, Tommy sits and tentatively pokes at his broken nose. Using sea water, he tries to clean away the dried blood as best he can. He feels around the bone, it does not seem like a bad break — but then, he is no medic.
Putting his fingers either side of his nose, he thinks Fuck it! and slowly pulls his nasal-cartilage back into alignment. The pain is sharp and fresh blood gushes immediately. He washes the rest of the blood away, and from his flask takes a long drink of water. Sailing away from the horror of the cliff, he studies the coastline, dotted with coves and inlets. The hidden bays sparkle in the sunlight, their picturesque mystique an illusion covering the harsh reality. The lie is not fooling Tommy. Not now. He sails further from the shore, from the temptation of exploration. The slaughter on the cliff haunts him still, poisoning everything he thought would be magical about this adventure. He seems mired by uncertainty, and paranoid questions fill his head. How many of those beaches hide mass graves? How many innocent lives were lost? How much blood spilled? With no answers forthcoming, the questions only multiply. He sails on, imagining alien eyes watching him from the shore. Paranoia keeps you safe, thinks Tommy.
On the calm sea the nautical miles fly by and, as the daylight fades, a small impact on the port side of Slash draws his attention. He scans the water and catches a fleeting glimpse of a shadow, keeping pace with Slash and disappearing under the boat. He thinks it could be a shark or a dolphin, so he rushes to the other side to check. Peering over the edge, he is wetly slapped in his face by something. Face reddening, and not just from the blow, Tommy falls back into the catamaran.
He did not see a tail coming out of the water, nor going back in, but guesses it must have been a shark. He laughs at his fortune — it could have bitten his head off! More cautiously this time, he returns to the side of the boat and peers beneath the racing waves. He sees nothing. Still smiling, he returns to the basics of sailing Slash.
The sky’s subtle tonal changes are more appealing to Tommy as the sun sets in the west. His imagination keeps him company. The patterns in the sky are the slashes of a fire-sword carving through the pink flesh of a heavenly Titan’s throat. The colours originate from an apocalyptic volcanic explosion, magma exposed, leaving fiery trails in the sky. The ever-changing sunset was a theatrical performance, placed there by the gods, to entertain Tommy on his adventure, speaking a thousand tales of ancient and forgotten mysteries.
Soon, just ahead, he could make out the jutting fingers of the towers described by Talon. Black, at first — silhouetted against the blood red sky — they grow, and their details appear rapidly. The most magnificent sunset Tommy has ever seen is about to end as he makes his final approach to the sea towers. The first three towers have light emanating from high up.
As he approaches, a sudden scream rends the dusk air. Intense fear grips him as the scream dies abruptly, halted by something, or someone. Tommy’s mind pulses with frightened, barely logical ideas and scenarios. They must not have made it. The Barrenites must have swarmed Talon, tearing him apart, dying in vast numbers. His stomach churns as he approaches the towers. He ties his boat to the side of an old jetty and stares up a rickety, old rope ladder. At the top of this poor excuse for a ladder was a hole in the tower that flickered with firelight.
8
Tommy clambers up the swaying and creaking rope ladder. Talon greets him with his frightful smile and slaps Tommy’s aching back, knocking the air from his lungs, winding him. He is almost surprised at how relieved he is to see his unusual devil-faced friend alive and well.
“Welcome to Idra’s tower, Astilla. You made decent time.” Talon moves beside the welcoming fireplace and Tommy looks at Idra’s home.
The large cave atop the plateau is a treasure trove of ancient and macabre artefacts.
Furniture is placed around the large, well-lit cavern, made from driftwood and bones — Animal bones, Tommy thinks; although his paranoia instantly wonders if there are not some human remains mixed in. Next, Tommy’s attention is drawn to the ceiling — it is a collage of human skulls. He takes several steps backwards in shock. On the walls, the skeletons of various sea creatures are strung between skulls which are sunk into the rock, pearls blinking reflected fire from darkly shadowed sockets. A knot-work rope motif of purples, greens, and browns spread out, weblike, weaving amongst the furniture and the skeletons. Skull lanterns light the darkest areas furthest from the fire. The dancing shadows cast from these ghoulish lanterns enchants the ceiling with a chiaroscuro movement of its own. A theatrical performance of light and texture, mighty with its majesty: a sparkling, writhing universe of Death.
The focal point of the room is a huge hearth, built using the fossilised ribcage of a huge prehistoric beast, into the centre of the cavern’s back wall. The fire crackles, logs spitting embers from their andiron embrace. In front of the elaborate hearth, on a deeply furred rug, lying completely naked, is the injured cadet. Bent over her pale form is a fur-covered old crone, stooped and withered with time.
Talon sits on an elaborate throne to the right of the fire — in this light, his rune-covered skin looks even more fascinating. The throne is made from the jaws of a huge sea creature somewhat like a great white shark. With the addition of furs, leather and wood, the forbidding jaw-seat seems almost comfortable.
Tommy nervously approaches the trio.
His eyes are slowly drawn to the form of the cadet lying in front of the fire. Her pale white skin contrasts with the bulbous blue leaches which are gorging on the injured woman’s yellowing wounds. He watches, sickened, as their slick, shiny bodies slowly pulsate and swell with purloined blood.
“Are they helping her?” Inquires Tommy, his lip curling back in disgust.
“They’re removing the poison,” creaks the old woman. She looks at Tommy and says,
“They’re also tea.” She un-attaches — with an audible pop — one of the fat, blood-filled leaches and throws it into a pot bubbling on the hearth.
“No! Really?” asks Tommy as he looks towards Talon for reassurance.
Talon merely licks his lips. His tongue — Tommy now notices that it is bifurcated like a snake’s tongue — licking top and bottom lips simultaneously.
“What the hell! ... Your tongue! ...It’s not tea. Not, really? ... Is it?” rants Tommy.
Idra smiles now and laughs, a short, gravelly cough. Perhaps at Tommy’s disgust, perhaps at his naivety. She pulls the remaining blood-filled leeches off the girl and casts them into the pot. She wraps thick furs around the young cadet and sits in a chair facing Talon. The hag gestures Tommy to pull up a seat by the fire. Talon pokes the fire, throws on more wood and the flames start to roar higher in the hearth. Tommy notices a natural-looking vent that takes the fire-smoke far up and out the top of the tower. The cadet stirs in her unconsciousness, wrapped up like a furry chrysalis — oblivious to her strange surroundings.
“Get rid of that for me will you, Secretas,” says Idra, wafting a hand towards the steaming stew pot. Tommy remembers that the Barrenite at the clifftop, Reznor, also used that same name for Talon. Talon catches Tommy’s confused look and just smiles, winking as he taps the side of his nose with a long index finger-blade. Tommy shrugs. He realises that he does not care. Maybe if they all existed in a different time — a time when he was not so tired, irritable, and hungry — maybe then he would question this odd name, Secretas.
