Thieves' War

by Clayton Snyder

  Too soon, she thought. Age and hunting had taught her patience in most things, but never in her need to be near family. Her mind drifted a little - it did that more these days, time unmooring and sending her down faded paths.

  Blue-Eye had appeared in the spring grain, full of chest and tall, his withers wide and his teeth sharp. She had set her paws in the mud, green shoots tickling the pads, and lowered her head, her mouth set, her legs wide. She let a low rumble escape her chest, the sound like rocks tumbling in a stream. He paused and turned his head, one blue eye shining over his thick muzzle, the other a circle of fur bounded by a thick seam of scar. He turned his head and opened his mouth, tongue lolling out, as though he thought her challenge amusing.

  Grey bounded forward, intending to teach him that she had little to do with joking, and more to do with keeping intruders from her pack. She leapt, and he stepped out of the way, banging his head into her ribs, and bringing his paws onto her side. She coughed out a surprised bark as she landed on her back in the mud, and he nipped her throat - not enough to draw blood, but a message, nonetheless. She lay still, waiting, and he licked her face once, then tore off through the tall grass. A fierce sort of something rose in her, and she found her feet and gave chase, wheat whipping by to either side, his musk in her nose, his hard breath ahead of her.

  And then - and then there he was, waiting, and she rolled him this time, catching his throat in her jaws, a playful growl escaping her. After a moment, she let up, and he bounced to his feet. They stared at one another, that striking blue eye honest, and came together.

  The memory faded, and Grey looked to the sky. Stars, unseen before, peeked through cracks in the clouds. There was a story her people told themselves sometimes, after a hunt, when the elders would lie in warm circles, and the pups wrestled among the pines. It was the story of Amarok. They said when the world was all forest, before the tall hunters, it was full of prey. Others abided there, the bear and the hawk, and darker - the wendigo and the alakwis. They said that when Amarok was just a pup, the wendigo took his father and gave him a hunger that he could only sate with his people's flesh. Wild and alone, Amarok's father - Rust - fled to the wood, fearful that he should swallow his family and devour his pups.

  In time, he was all but forgotten as the pack moved on, though it was said they could hear him moving behind them always, his paws scrabbling on the rough bark shed by ancient trees, claws clicking on stony hillsides. They whispered they could hear his rough growl behind the gorse and heather, and glimpse his shadow, hunched by hunger behind the thick maples. So, they moved, always moving, not letting He Who Lurks catch their throats.

  Then, they began to fall. First, the old and infirm. Packmates rendered slow by the river of time, hobbled by nature, or sick with any number of things that could creep up and take the honorable in a dishonorable way. No one said more than was necessary. No one slowed their pace. It was the Way. The Way said you moved on. And on. And those who fell were left behind. Not forgotten, not discarded. Their time had come, and it was up to the Mother to reclaim them. There was no dishonor in death, for it came for all.

  But Amarok knew better. He saw better. He saw how when the weak fell, a shadow fell over them. He saw jaws, dark and red, reach from the dark places between boles and snatch a leg, tear a tendon. And still he ran with the pack.

  It was a clear night when his father came among them, sleeping in their groups. He stalked among the kits and whelplings, and his head would dip, coming back up with jaws working. He had grown lean in the intervening years. His ribs stood out in stark relief, his spine bristling. Rust's eyes held a yellowish sheen, his teeth stained brown, and his saliva ran in rivulets from half-open jaws. Madness had settled in him like a thorn in flesh, and as his head swiveled side to side, he saw only prey - an entire world for the eating.

  Amarok stood, and approached, head down, teeth bared. His father, if he recognized his son, slavered and snapped, and opened his jaws wide, a maw that reeked of black death and rot. Seeing his chance, Amarok dove in, for his father was huge - the largest wolf that had lived until that point - and Amarok fit between his teeth easily. He traveled down his father's slick throat, into the furnace of his stomach. Once there, he ripped and tore, he rent and bled his father among the corpses of his littermates, and with a final howl, tore free of the beast's stomach, rebirthed in savagery.

  When the other wolves saw what he had done, they voiced their joy to the moon, the Mother, and she took notice. For each thing that Rust had devoured, she placed their souls in the sky and set them to burn so that all would know the good Amarok had done.

  "Amarok. It is a good story."

  The wolf that stood apart from her was black, his eyes the green of the forest in summer. He settled to his haunches in the shadow between two great oaks. Grey watched him warily. She was not startled, though she hadn't heard him approach, and was not surprised, though he seemed to know her thoughts. Grey had lived long enough to know that things worked that way in the world. There were certainly more things beneath the stars and between the shadows of the trees than could be accounted for, even in her long life.

  "I am waiting for my friend," she replied, as if that explained everything.

  The black wolf looked out toward the rolling hills in the distance, trees clinging to them like bristling hairs. Snow had begun to drift down again in lazy see-saws.

  "It may be a while."

  Grey sniffed the air again and smelled only ice on the wind and the hours-old passage of prey. "My pack..." she began.

  "Will be fine without you for a while." It was the black wolf's turn to raise his head and sniff slightly at the air.

  "Tell me, Old Mother, aren't you tired?"

  The question rankled her. It was not their way to complain. Of the heat, or of the snow. Of the scarcity of the hunt, or the ache from old wounds. It was not their way to give voice to doubt or pain, or to whisper even to the wind of the way their joints ached with age, the way their paws no longer gripped tight to rocky land, or the way their vision sometimes blurred when something moved too fast before them. Despite that, all those things were true, and she kept her silence.

  Instead, she turned her thoughts to Blue-Eye. She thought of his humor and his strength, his ferocity. She thought of the time they cornered a bear who had been harassing the fringes of the pack, snapping and snarling, pushing it back despite its size. And Blue-Eye, stupid, brave, funny Blue-Eye, had grown bold. He moved too close, lunging at the beast's midsection, and it swatted him. It hammered him back like a tail would swat a fly, and red fell, carmine and bloody in its fierceness. When they found her, she was bleeding, her ribs ached, and her leg would not support her weight. And beside her, the bear, its throat a ruin. Despite the pain, she stood over Blue-Eye, stood until she could no more, and when darkness fell, laid her head on the still-soft mat of his fur, resting until his soul burned among the stars.

  Her thoughts turned to her cubs, loyal to pack and family, strong and good. They led packs of their own now - Sharp-Tooth and Little Bear and Red Sister. She thought of the days they frolicked in the long grass, and through crisp castoff leaves in autumn. She thought of the times she had brought down countless deer and rabbit, moving aside to share the kill, of the times she could only find squirrel or vole, and went hungry herself that they might be full and warm a night.

  "Your love, your children. Where would they be without you?" He stood and paced a slow circle around her, passing into light and shadow, light and shadow. "Would things have gone differently? Have you only spared them what fate might have allowed given time?"

  She growled then and bared her fangs. They were still sharp, despite age, her jaws still strong.

  "Rest, Old Mother, rest and let time do its work. You need not worry. Time and age and the wind bring change to all things. Surely, you are tired?"

  Even as he spoke, she felt the ache of years in her hips, the weight of a paunch gained from children, the soreness of teats that had never he
aled all the way after whelping. She felt them, and ignored them, and pushed herself to her feet, bracing against the shooting pain from the scars above her ribs.

  "Yet you stand." The sound that followed was a sigh. "Come then, Old Mother. Come and test your teeth against my throat."

  She moved, fast, but he was faster, and her jaws only scraped him while he snapped in and opened a wound in her leg. Crimson spattered white snow, steaming slightly in the chill night. She limped to the side and let him come at her, his head low, wide like a viper's. She let him bull in, teeth opening a new wound on her scars, and she twisted, lowering her jaws, closing them tight around his throat. He yelped, and tried to pull away, but she held on tight despite his claws raking at her, front and back, making a red ruin of her fur. Grey shook her head, a mixture of snarl and whimper escaping her lips. Still, the black wolf fought her, opening wound upon wound as he struggled from her jaws.

  For his part, it was useless. These were jaws that had felled countless prey, that had torn the throat from the beast who took her lover. They were jaws that had protected and killed for her cubs. She shook her head one last time, the action sending a ripple of pain up her spine, and with a final crack, the other wolf went limp. He ceased to struggle, and she dropped the limp bundle of fur.

  Grey paced a few steps, and sagged to the snow, not caring that beneath her it grew warm and sticky, thick with her blood. She looked up, to the stars, and one among them winked blue. She chuffed out a soft greeting. Somewhere distant, drawing closer, like a chinook through the trees, came the sound of wings. After a moment, Ebon landed near.

  "My pack?"

  He cocked his head, taking in the scene. He processed it, then took it in stride. "Further, just beyond the hills."

  "Thank you." She pushed herself to her feet, her body aching. She thought of the pack, alone in the night, and walked, the raven close behind.

  Cord’s voice trailed off. He heaved a breath, sighed, and left the room. I felt death creep in, but I had nothing left to give. I’d felt my time slip even as Cord spoke, and now could only close my eyes.

  A Deal With Death

  “I told you you’d be back.”

  Fela’s voice held a hint of mockery, a trace of amusement. I cursed under my breath. I was well and truly dead, then.

  She appeared behind me, as before. Breath in my ear.

  “Not yet, daughter. Not yet. A thin strand. The barest hint of a gossamer thread connects this life to that one. So once again, I come to you with a bargain.”

  The scenes of my life played out in a blur, though I understood and remembered each. And near the end, the lessons Cord had drilled into me, the family I had made. Anger, bright and hot, slipped into my spirit, and I snapped my head back. I felt my skull connect with Fela’s, and registered distant surprise that the stuff of spirit was solid as flesh and bone.

  She staggered back, and I spun, leaping atop her, bearing her to the ground. She squealed as my fingers sought her face, fending me off with forearms. I brought my knees up to batter her ribs, elbows striking downward.

  We struggled, briefly, and then, as if a child who tired of playing with a favored toy, she pushed me off and stood, smoothing her clothing.

  “Enough,” she said.

  The command was simple, spoken in a level voice. And yet I found myself unable to move. It was her turn to straddle me, and she did so, lowering her face—bone and flesh, bone and flesh—until it hovered over mine. The literal specter of death.

  “I tire of your childishness, daughter. I have done everything for you. I move the stars for no one, and yet, here, I have shifted worlds. Now accept my offer, or rot in the frozen hells.”

  I glared at her. The defiant part of me wanted to spite her, to let her send me to the Ghen, to decay in cold eternity. And yet. My family. Oros. The end of all things. I wasn’t delusional enough to believe myself a chosen one, or even one whose small firefly of a life mattered in the long night of existence. But I did believe in family. I’d just found my father, my best friend, and my lover. Each were more than I’d ever expected or asked out of life, and I’d be damned if I’d give that up so easily.

  “Name your price,” I said.

  “Something escaped me some time ago. Something dear to me. I would prefer it not float about in the worlds.”

  “And my part?”

  “Bring it back, and I will gift you life. I will gift you strength. Perhaps, I will even gift you an arm. Providing you don’t lose yourself.”

  I didn’t know what the last part meant, but I was beyond caring. “Done,” I spat.

  She leaned in, her breath in my face. Cold, smelling of juniper and wet earth. She kissed me, soft on the lips. The world faded out.

  I had come here for something. Hadn't I? A more pressing question weighed on me, though. Who am I? I looked down at my clothing. Rough leather, comfortable, not too loose. Sharp blades. A bag containing - I glanced inside - tools, of some sort. So, some sort of workman - a guard, a tradesman? But why the blades? This was a dangerous place. Maybe that was why I was in this cave -- clearing it out? Were there beasts in here? Something left from before? Before what? Worse, something waiting? I pulled the blade free, suddenly anxious. It fit my hand well, the balance good. It looked worn, like it had seen plenty of use. So, maybe I was a warrior. I took a step forward, and something moved in the darkness. I wished for a light, and the ceiling above took on a slight glow.

  I was in a deep room, the walls distant and dark. Movement came again from somewhere in the black. I shouldered the pack to free up my movement. What could be out there? What sort of things did warriors fight? My mind conjured up rats and bears and wolves, but those things were rare in places this deep, and seemed more prey for hunters than warriors. The thing moved again, a slithering sound. I stepped back, the light following me. Why was I here?

  What slithered into the light was grotesque, a long coil of tail pushing its massive bulk along. Four arms hung from a bloated torso. Its chins dripped saliva, its eyes were the square gold of a goat’s. Coins glittered on its skin, embedded deep into the folds, and more gold clanked in chains from its neck. Jeweled rings encircled each finger, and claws the black of obsidian sprouted from its fingertips. It moved forward unhurriedly, beady eyes above plump jowls questing in the dark. They fell on me, and I cringed back, blade shaking slightly.

  "Put your blade away." Its voice held a sibilant quality.

  "Why would I do that?"

  "Because I mean you no harm."

  "You'll forgive me if I don't believe you."

  The demon spread its hands to either show they were empty, or to concede the point. It stopped a few feet from me, coiling its tail into a cushion and settling its torso on it. I eyed the claws on the beast's hands. Its massive arms looked solid despite the weight of fat on them. I tightened my grip on the knife, despite the sweat that slicked it.

  "What do you want?" I asked.

  "You're a woman who knows the value of coin, yes?" The 's' was drawn out, echoing in the deep room.

  "I don't know what I am."

  "Then take my word for it. You are a bargainer. A survivor. An appreciator of true value in all things."

  "Fine. What's that got to do with us?"

  The demon spread its hands again. "You have made a bargain."

  Something in the hazy recesses of my mind shone back at those words, a glint of light on glass, or steel. The words rang true. I let the tip of the knife drop.

  "Are you here to collect then? Because I don’t know what I owe."

  The demon shook its head. "I am here to extend your deal."

  "How? Why?"

  "You stand in the demesne of the first gate of death, that which is called Nepenthe. It means 'forgetting'. You have two choices. Move forward, accept the deal. Or, refuse, and die.” It paused.

  "Not much of a choice is it?"

  The demon shrugged and sucked air between its teeth. I saw they were fashioned from gold, and studded with small
diamonds. "That is...rather complicated."

  "How complicated can it be? You want my soul, right?"

  "Nothing so petty."

  "Then what? Speak clearly--this shit's wearing on me."

  "She wants your faith. You take her mark, and in return she will grant you all you need. In return, if you survive, sometime in the future, you honor her."

  “Her?”

  “The Bitch Queen. Lady of Sorrow. The Cold Hand. She has many names.”

  “And which one should I use?”

  “Mother, perhaps.”

  I made a face on instinct. “Any other? Or is that all you got?”

  "It is one that will serve. Now you stall. What is your answer?"

  I thought only a moment. I had obviously come here for something. The conversation also told me I owed someone else something. My gut told him that reneging on the deal might get my skin separated from my body like a boiled tuber. I nodded, and sheathed the blade. The demon uncurled, slithering close. When it was near enough to touch, it reached out a claw, the talon hovering over my missing arm. I steeled myself.

  "I won't lie. This will hurt," the demon said, and plunged the claw into my stump.

  I screamed, and cursed Fela for sending me into this gods-forsaken shithole. I reached for my blade, intending to amputate the demon's hand, but the beast had vanished, the room suddenly light. My shirt had been sliced neatly open, and under it, the skin of my shoulder marked with a scar shaped like a coin. I breathed a sigh of relief at the demon's departure, despite the cold feeling in my gut that came with being forced into a corner and headed for the door in the far wall. This one made of obsidian, the stone glossy in the low light. I pushed, it opened easily, and I stepped through.