The Godspeaker Trilogy (25 page)

Aieee, Et-Raklion! I have failed you, I have failed the god. Will it desert me? Will my godspark go to hell?

Death came towards him, and he was afraid.

Why did you say I was godblessed, Nagarak? Why did you tell me I was safe in the god’s eye? Are you not my high godspeaker, do you not know the god’s true will? You said I would live, how can you be wrong?

Above the faltering sounds of battle, a lilting, laughing, challenging cry.

“ Bajadek warlord! Bajadek warlord !”

Raklion lifted his dizzy pounding head to look where Bajadek looked. He saw puzzled disbelief in his enemy’s face, felt his weary heart leap as he recognized who it was calling Bajadek’s name.

“ Bajadek warlord, it is time for you to die !”

The challenging warrior danced across the charnel plain, danced towards Bajadek, a scarlet snakeblade in her scarlet hand. She was lithe, she was beautiful, bathed in blood like sacrificial milk.

Hekat.

Beneath his blood, Bajadek warlord was an ugly man. Hekat danced towards him, repulsed by his ugliness. He was all brute force, no grace, no lightness. His one good eye was wide and blue like the sky, his crimsoned skin as dark as night. He wore many godbells in his braided hair, but they were clogged with gore and could not sing.

She took this as an omen.

The air she danced through was soaked in death. The ground she danced over was littered with warriors and horses, their emptied bowels and bladders sludging the earth and the soaked, crushed brown grasses. Their eyes were dead, they stared at nothing.

Bajadek warlord’s living eye saw her. He held an axe in one hand and a sword in the other, they were smeared crimson from blade-point to hilt. He was wounded, his own blood mingled with the blood he had spilled from Raklion’s warhost. He stood up straight and laughed to see her.

She challenged him again, dancing like sunlight across the crowded plain. So many warriors she had killed already, she could not count them. He would be one more.

“ Bajadek warlord! You must face me !”

“Face you ? A child ?” jeered Bajadek. He hefted his axe and brandished his sword. He stood there waiting, he was unafraid. An ugly man, and stupid, also.

Hekat smiled and opened herself to the god. The god’s power filled her, it set her on fire, if Bajadek cut her she would bleed out its fury. Every one of his warriors she had danced with was left weeping scarlet tears as they died. A few of them had kissed her, she was cut in this place, bruised in that. Pain was a sacrifice to the god, she gloried in it, how else could she worship but with her blood?

She danced with Bajadek, whose godbells were silenced.

The warlord was a mighty man, and with his sword and axe was mightier still. He swung at her, he slashed at her, he roared his rage and screamed his hate. He could not touch her, she was in the god’s eye, and its grim power was her blood, her heart, it was her solace and her strength.

Where Bajadek reached for her she was gone, twisting sideways or upwards or around him like smoke. Where he was, her snakeblade kissed him, it bled him like a black lamb on the god’s altar. She danced on sand, on a clean-swept street, he stumbled through entrails and staggered over splintered bones. Her hotas flowed like honey, sweet in her fingers, sweet in her toes. She was the sandcat, the lizard, the falcon dancing over the meadow. Her snakeblade was keen as mercy from the god. Inside her was stillness, death whispered in her ear.

Lost in the knife-dance, feeling Raklion’s hot gaze on her, she smote Bajadek for him and for the god, a terrible ecstasy welling inside.

I am Hekat, I know what I am. I am the god’s snakeblade, dancing in its eye.

Bajadek warlord was ugly, and dying. His axe was fallen from his hand and Hekat had severed his wrist’s taut tendons so his fingers could no longer make a fist. His own great sword was shattered, his stolen sword not long enough to reach her. She had cut off his breastplate with two swift knife-strokes and laid him open to the bone. His arms were slashed like lamb for roasting, his legs were shredded scarlet ribbons. His heart’s blood pumped with each shuddering beat, there was more outside him than within. He breathed like a camel at the end of endurance.

She stood before him on the balls of her feet, looking up into his blood-slicked face. “Bajadek warlord, it is over. You displeased the god, the god has punished you.”

Pain and fear dulled his bright blue eye. “Who are you? What are you?”

“She is Hekat,” said Raklion’s pale, satisfied voice. “She is a warrior, godtouched and mine.”

Bajadek’s fading gaze shifted to look past her. His slack face twisted with hate. “Raklion warlord. With seed like water, and a blunted spear.”

Hekat killed him. Drew her snakeblade across his throat and watched without comment as the last of his red blood spurted from the wound. Bajadek stayed standing one moment, two moments. Then his dead knees buckled and he crashed to the ground.

“Hekat,” said Raklion, and put his hand on her shoulder.

She turned to him slowly, emptied of the god, emptied of power. Raklion, standing now, was hurt and bloody, he favored one leg and breathed as though the air was poisoned.

She smiled at him, though she was hurting. “You watched me, warlord. You saw me dance.”

“I watched you, Hekat.” He smiled back at her, a grimacing effort. “I saw you dance. You have slain my enemy. I am pleased with you.”

Her hollowed heart lifted. The warlord of Et-Raklion had seen her, and was pleased. She is Hekat. Godtouched and mine . She was precious to him now, she had slain his enemy, she had saved his life. Her home was the barracks, for ever and ever. “I danced for you, warlord. I danced for the god.”

“I know,” he whispered, and bent to kiss her brow. “The god thanks you, Hekat, and so do I.”

“The battle is over?”

His gaze swept across the almost silent plain. “It is over. We have won.”

“No, warlord,” she told him, even as the sun was blotted from the sky and a dark veil fell before her face. “The god has won. It gives us the victory. Kill a bull-calf and drink in its honor.”

“Hekat!” he shouted.

She barely heard him. The last thing she felt was his strong hand, reaching for her, as she crumpled witless at his feet.

Standing in the midst of carnage Raklion grunted as Wyngra godspeaker healed his sluggishly bleeding wounds. He had resisted godspeaker attentions as long as he could, his hurts were not mortal. Other warriors needed Wyngra’s godstone far more urgently than he.

But he was the warlord and Wyngra had at last insisted, using the might of his office as leverage. He capitulated. To shout at Wyngra was to invite censure from Nagarak, once they were returned to Et-Raklion.

It was two fingers past highsun, and Bajadek’s death. An unsteady hush mantled the bloody Plain of Drokar. The last of the dying had been sent to hell or to the god, a sharp knife in the throat their final gift. Bajadek’s warriors who’d survived their warlord’s folly sat defeated on the reddened ground, watched over by warriors of victorious Et-Raklion. Each warhost’s dead had been separated and laid in rows, awaiting the godspeakers’ attentions. The horses too badly injured to save were killed and skinned, their hides bundled for curing, their harnesses saved for living horses. Crows argued over their naked carcasses even now, quick to feast on such generous bounty. The sky was rotten with black wings, wheeling.

“You are certain Hekat has taken no serious hurt?” he said to Wyngra, clutching at the wheel of an upturned chariot. The godspeaker’s godstone burned against his severed hamstring, his flesh crawled and stretched, healing with enough pain to make him grunt and bite his lip.

“The god protected her,” said Wyngra, unperturbed. He was a godspeaker of many seasons, he knew his business and the god’s. “She was exhausted and wounded a little. Her hurts are healed. She will sleep now until she wakes.”

Raklion nodded with sharp relief. She is Hekat. Godtouched and mine . What a glory was in that child. Death and beauty, gifted to him by the god. She would be his warrior forever, fighting for him and for the god. “Good. Hanochek!”

Six paces distant, Hanochek dismissed the warrior he spoke to in lowered tones, and approached. The god had seen him in its eye, he was whole and unharmed save for a little split skin and some drops of spilled blood, hardly enough to moisten dry bread. He stood beside the chariot wheel and pressed his fist against his unhurt heart.

“Warlord?”

“Tell me again how stands the tally?”

“Of our number, four hundred dead, three hundred sorely wounded,” said Hano patiently. “One thousand hurt but able to ride. Almost a quarter of our horses slaughtered. We’ll make them up from Bajadek’s horses, if there are enough left living.”

Raklion winced. Twice already Hano had given him the tally but his tired mind was reluctant to grasp it. Four hundred dead. Aieee, how his heart wept. “What else, Hano? What bad tidings do you not give me?”

Hano hesitated, then sighed. “Warlord, among the fallen there are Dokoy Spear-leader and Bodrik Chariot-leader.”

“Aieee!” The news was pain greater than any sword-cut or knife-stab. His fingers tightened on the chariot wheel, and splinters bit him. Dokoy and Bodrik, great warriors. He’d chosen them himself to stand as leaders. “They died for the god, Hano. They are not gone to hell.”

Hano wept without shame, tears diluting the blood on his face. He and Bodrik had been particular friends. “I know, warlord.”

Raklion gripped Hano’s arm, lending him a little of his meager strength. He could not weep openly, he was the warlord. “You said nearly two thousand of Bajadek’s warriors are slain?”

“Yes, warlord.”

“No word yet on Bajadek’s second son?”

Hano shook his head. “The godspeakers are searching Et-Bajadek’s death piles. If Banotaj is there with his father and brother, they’ll find him.”

Wyngra straightened and slipped his godstone into its pouch. “Warlord, stand on your leg now. Show me you are whole again.”

Raklion released his grip on Hanochek’s arm. Tentatively at first, then with more confidence, he let his injured thigh take his weight. No pain, a little stiffness. He walked five paces, then nodded and walked back. “That is good, Wyngra. Join your fellow godspeakers in the search for Bajadek’s second son among the slain.”

Wyngra bowed. “Warlord.”

As Wyngra departed, Raklion frowned at Hanochek. They were alone now beside the upturned chariot. For a short time unobserved. He could show his tiredness and grief to Hano, there was no loss of strength in that. He leaned his hip against the chariot’s splintered pole-staff and let it take his burdensome weight. Wyngra had plucked the arrowhead from his thigh, but the wound was still sore.

“Perhaps Banotaj is fled back to his father’s city,” he mused.

“Leaving his father and brother dead on the battlefield?” said Hano, sounding doubtful. “Naked to the crow-filled sky, without the proper rites? Let us hope not, warlord. If he lives he’s the warlord now. Such cowardice does not bode well.”

Raklion agreed. Bajadek warlord had tried to steal another warlord’s godpromised wife. Such godless trickery could be a disease, passed from father to son like plague, with kissing. Cowardice could be its symptom.

“Has our godspeaker returned from Et-Bajadek city?”

“Not yet, warlord.”

“Send him to me the moment he returns, Hano, and also when this Banotaj is found. I will walk among my warriors now. I will shed silent tears for my fallen before they burn on the pyre.”

“Yes, warlord,” said Hano, and bowed his head. Then he looked up. “I will make special sacrifice when we are home again, Raklion. When I saw you bloody I feared the worst.”

Raklion smiled, and held him close. “The god sees me, Hano. It sees me in its eye. It sent me Hekat knife-dancer, a child with the godspeark of a mighty warrior. Aieee, if you had seen her. Bajadek warlord fell like wheat before her scythe. There is no need for Nagarak to test her blood, I have seen what she is. The god has shown me. She is Bajadek’s doom, my gift from the god.”

Hano stepped back. His eyes were wary. “If you say so, warlord.”

“I say so, warleader,” he said, displeased by Hano’s displeasure. “She is the god’s gift, her teeth are made of gold. Now obey my want. There is much to be done before we can ride home in triumph.”

“Warlord,” said Hano, and departed to his duties.

Weary, heavy-hearted for his losses, Raklion thrust aside Hano’s resentment of godgiven Hekat, put on his warlord’s face and went to mourn the fallen with his warriors.

The funeral pyres were lit at lowsun, for the victors and the vanquished. Bajadek’s only living son had been found senseless among the wounded. Revived, he torched his father’s cold remains, and his brother’s. Then he torched the warrior pyres, built from the bodies of his father’s fallen and timber brought by Et-Bajadek’s sullen godspeakers. Soaked in pitch the pyres burned and burned, sparks like godsparks flying into the starlit sky.

Banotaj was a young man, twenty seasons had he seen. Raklion, regarding him, his own pyres already burning, his silent tears shed, his warriors praised and comforted, wondered how he would fare as warlord.

It would be no bad thing if he faltered, I think. A neighboring warlord embroiled in domestic bickering is one kept safely inside his borders.

When the last pyre was set alight and Banotaj had returned to stand with Raklion and the godspeakers from both sides of the conflict, sacrifice was made by Wyngra and one of Bajadek’s godspeakers. The bull-calf blood was caught in two gold cups and presented to the warlords. The warlords unsheathed their knives and slashed their arms, they dripped their blood into their cups, then swapped them, in silence. In silence they drank, in sight of the god and its godspeakers and the gathered warriors, to signify an end to war.

“Banotaj warlord,” said Raklion, as his wounded arm was bound with linen. No godspeaker healing for this hurt, there must be a scar to record the peace. “The days of Et-Bajadek are done with and dead. That name now passes into history. You are Banotaj warlord of Et-Banotaj.”