The Legend of El Shashi (10 page)

Their cries were suddenly drowned in a rumbling crash as the entire side of the building housing my chambers slumped to the ground. Into the ground.

People froze in disbelieving tableaux.

The earth might as well have grown the maw of the mythical sea-serpent, and bitten a chunk off the building. There came a prolonged groan of tortured beams as the roof, bereft of its underpinnings, developed a wide crack up to the eaves and sagged down atop the mound of rubble. What had been the wall of my athocarium developed an unseemly outward bulge
before collapsing in a spurt of lime powder and a clatter of bricks. Red roof tiles avalanched briefly into the pit with a tinkling of shattered shards, like notes plinked upon the seven-stringed lummericoot.

Curses and wondering comments assaulted my petrified form. The brave
advanced toward the scene of destruction, stepping gingerly lest the ground show further signs of caving in. Someone shouted for the watch. The clamour was indistinct, an insignificant counterpoint to the impressions cascading through my mind.

What had I seen before I fled? Spines? Scales? An animalistic, heaving bulk half-seen, half-felt down there
… my knuckles burned. I knelt in the road and rubbed my skinned digits aimlessly. I could not rightly remember, and it was important that I did, I knew, because …

The insight I had been seeking crystallised in my mind as a flash of deathly-white terror. My face flushed cold, then hotter and hotter until I thought my veins would surely bur
st from my forehead. My sweat ran in thick, heavy droplets down my neck.

The Wurm!
Oh, what had I done?

How many times had I not pondered those fateful words? How many times had I heard them play through my mind, prey on my dreams, disturb my waking makh? ‘
Mark you how the Wurm rises!’ she had shrieked. Ay, I had the promised power, but not the belief. I had never truly believed, until this wave broke upon me, and broke my existence too.

Mata sustain me!
I regained my feet, wringing my hands.

“You were selfish, Arlak,” I berated myself. “You took his money and summoned the Wurm. You fool! Jyla’s Wurm!”

Curious stares, a turning of hard faces toward me, brought pause to my tirade. I realised I had spoken aloud, much more loudly than I had intended. I had to leave.

I put my feet to the road
, and ran.

I cared not where.

Recounting a tale in which horrors and happiness are juxtaposed.

Herein a youth
is catapulted into his manhood,

R
efined as through the fires of battle.

O
f love we shall speak, and his beloved, and chronicle the tragic consequences of a ruinous rage.

Lymar Battlefield, last Xarday of the Richness, Anna Nox 1361

That day, I truly beheld the Wurm for the first time.

It seemed at its outset a day
identical to many before–as ordinary a day as is served by war, which is itself an extraordinary affair. A brisk breeze had whisked the previous night’s rain clouds yonder to the northern horizon, where they floated in sullen grey puffs, as if contemplating a return after being scolded hence. Sodden turf squelched underfoot. Bald vultures made grim sentinels atop the gaunt loiol trees lining the gully between the opposed encampments. Fifty paces tall, lean and straight, loiols rise to a single, risible tuft of lavender leaves at the very tip–exactly where a vulture might choose his roost. Here, where Ulim stalked the still-living, the bald vultures congregated in their stupendously ugly, scabby-headed thousands to appraise the impending feast. Perhaps they laughed at us men. To them, we represented ready meals on the hoof.

Beneath the loiols, soldiers cursed as soldiers will. They grumbled through a breakfast of roundel sweetbreads and goat-cheese, griped as they strapped on their armour, checked and rechecked their weapons, and swapped boastful stories and rough jests to raise spirits. Men whinged continuously as we drew up in our ranks, and my voice joined the chorus too.

For I was afraid.

Fear was my invisible brother-in-arms. It woke me at dawn, marched with me to the battle-line, and seeped beneath my enveloping cloak during the darkest makh. Did one ever become accustomed?

Becoming a soldier was easy. Too easy. Having turned up with the right equipment–a sword, leather cuirass, and roundshield–the coin of hire was mine for the asking. How I rejoiced that day! I roughed my tongue across cracked, chapped lips. All of my romantic ideals had been dashed in the first makh of battle. Prove my manhood? Mark my name? Naïve, boyish fancies. Pipe-dreams of yesteranna.

I had last seen Torri an anna before.
A part of me longed to return to that simple life; a life without killing.

For
the hundredth time that grim morn, I checked my short-sword. Janos’ training had kept me alive so far. But no amount of groundwork could have prepared me for the sensation of feeling skin and cartilage part wetly as I drove my blade into a living body, followed by the grating of metal upon bone and the struggle to quickly withdraw before another enemy fell upon me; for the sight of gore dripping off the sword, running freely down the grooved channel and up my sword-arm to the elbow; for the stench of excrement as men’s bowels voided themselves in death or mortal terror; for a clamour so deafening that I could not hear myself shout; and for slipping upon coils of intestines spilled and trampled into the bloody carcass of the field.

I felt grateful to Janos. Angry, too
–why had he not warned me? Why had he not beaten the notion out of my dense skull? Stupid, callow youth I had been–Arlak would never have listened. Ay, that were truth indeed.

Now, the battle lines were drawn up once more on opposing hillsides.

To the south stood the Roymerians–a motley assemblage of some two hundred professional cavalry, and foot-militias bought to service with the coin of a dozen local Hassutls numbering some two thousands, who were armed with basic Lykki short swords, roundshields, and jatha-leather armour. My place was amongst the militias. Behind us stood a mass of civilians who hardly knew which end of a blade to grasp and who yesterday had to be brutally whipped before they would advance to the battle-line.

Luckless swine.

To the north the Lymarian horde milled restlessly, like ants stirred from their nest. The reason for their agitation soon became clear.

“Told you,” spat the fellow to my right, Garrak by name. “Reinforcements.”

“There’s already three of them for every one of us!”

Left and right, my comrades spat in unison. “Tell it to the yammariks, pretty boy.”

I felt myself redden. “In Mata’s name …”

“In Mata’s name?” Garrak mocked.
“Learn to curse like a man, to Hajik sink your quoph! What say you, Salk?”

“Truly told,” grunted the other, and cursed at length in Tulkish, his native tongue. I thought him a surly brute, Salk, but a good man in a pinch. Truly told, while they might mock my proper speech, they trusted my blade.
As dear as brothers we were, a brotherhood forged of death’s imminence. Had I not this Joinday past cleaned Salk’s back of a clinging Lymarian who was about to slash his throat with one of their ugly, serrated daggers?

Death. My quoph had become heartsick of it. Men could die suddenly, or suffer for makh, for days
even, in terrible agonies–before at last Mata’s light faded from their eyes, leaving nought but an empty casing to be discarded amongst the many others. All that remained was a dent upon the sward where the body had lain. My own living flesh was the more precious, the more expendable in comparison; my blood to be poured out in contempt of life’s vessel that carried it.

A roar surged from the Lymarian ranks. The drums struck up in furious disharmony for a moment, before merging into a strong rhythm that throbbed through our bodies even across the valley.

“What’s happening?” I muttered.

The soldier to my left gasped. “Sybali!”

Word rippled through our lines like wind setting a forest a-whisper. ‘Sybali! Trance-warriors! Nethespawn!’ The Sybali were a feared warrior elite, a caste of warrior-born who made reverence to Liathe, the Goddess of Sorcery–whose consort is none other than Ulim, God of the underworld and lord of all things wicked and depraved. Liathe’s symbol was the ulikarn, the double-bladed dagger carved of narwhal-horn. The men whispered that the Sybali trade their eternal quoph to the night-eaters, and from those ravening shades draw powers such as immortality in battle, blades that never shatter, and inhuman speed. Disdaining any form of armour, they rely instead on an ulikarn in each hand, and several makh of ritual meditation prior to battle that put them into a special trance.

Worst of all, they
were women.

Many women command armies, but they do not march in the rank and file. That is a man’s duty. Soldiering is a menial task, of little regard in Umarite society. We men are the expendable ones, for we have no womb in which to nurture new life. One hope
d war was a necessary evil when all proper diplomacy had been exhausted–as the Hassutls say, mark my words, dripping platitudes from their mouths onto the blades they are sharpening. Should a woman become a soldier? Unthinkable. Unless one is born Sybali.

For every rule an exception.

These thoughts and many more flitted through my mind as I strained–along with thousands of other pairs of eyes–to mark the white-robed line filing through the Lymarian ranks. Plain to see how men pressed back to give them wide berth. At the front they broke both left and right in seamless order. For a span the drums beat incessantly as the Sybali lined up before the Lymarian horde, a white quim-stroke of death upon the hillside’s dark scrolleaf.

Then the line began to move.

Our own drums spoke, signalling ‘hold’. One of the Hassutls–the one from Freyal in the far north-west of Roymere, he who actually dared to nick his blade in the heat of battle, and thus the only one of the Hassutls who commanded real respect among the militias–rode along the line toward us, shouting something. Encouragement? His lips moved, but I could hear nothing above the barbarous din. I wondered if the civilians would flee.

The Sybali
crossed the valley floor at a steady trot, followed closely by the bulk of the Lymarian army. I could feel the advance through my feet. Eight thousand men on the move makes the whole world tremble. From where I stood in the fourth rank, I gazed over the shoulders of my fellows and watch them pour up the hill towards our position like a great, glinting shadworm, a multi-segmented insect that dwells beneath every boulder or rotting tree-trunk in the Fiefdoms. Their conical, pointed helms and upraised spears bristled toward the heavens, as thorny as stinge bushes with their finger-long white barbs, and each helm sported a gaudy ponytail that presumably indicated their allegiance. The crimson ones fought the best, we Roymerians agreed.

The customs of war are curious withal. Though they could have gained advantage, the Lymarians refused to outflank us with their greater numbers but instead, each day, would match the width of our front man for man. At sundown they broke off battle to allow both sides time to collect their dead before
too many vultures arrived. Our yammariks took the corpses away for embalming, prayers, and burial in the Shrine of Akki-Ayali, which some call the Hall of Victors, while the Lymarians cremated their dead upon great bonfires laced with bitterwort branches and dwarf peppers. Garrak said they believed a holy smoke was pleasing to Mata. The stench drifted across the battlefield as if the miasmic breath of Nethe incarnate rose from Ulim’s hellish halls. Despite the smoke, millions of biting torflies feasted on the battlefield, turning the late afternoon black with their swarms. The grey ash of dead men encrusted our tents and clung to our nostrils.

I tried not to think upon the dead.
Eventide after eventide, the yammariks removed them by the cartload. Worse, the injured. Their cries, muffled by the great cornsilk tents of the athocaries, formed a piteous backcloth to my increasingly fitful sleep.

Waking, I thought upon the dying. Sleeping, I dreamed of stealing into the tents to heal them.

Had I not the power?

Day by day, my reasons for not employing that power grew dimmer. My swordplay became more reckless. I snapped at my comrades, became foul-mouthed and foul-tempered, and hated myself the more. My eyes grew hollow in their dark sockets.

The Wurm stalked my conscience.

*  *  *  *

“Roymere!” howled Freyal.

“ROYMERE!” we howled back. “ROY-ROY-ROYMEEEEEERRE!”

Three thousand swords crashed against roundshields.

Jerked back to reality, I ran after Garrak and Salk. I took my place in the line. The Sybali were closing
in fast. A volley of javelins shafted above my head, finding ready targets amongst the Lymarian horde. I saw a white robe fall.

Then the two forces slammed together. Shield locked against shield. Blade shattered blade. We may have been shouting, I know not. The roar
of battle was all-consuming.

Somehow the Sybali had already danced through into the second and third ranks, striking
with the speed of vipers. They were astonishing, at once beautiful and deadly. How they moved! Our soldiers blundered about; jatha in harness by compare. Time after time, our blows met only thin air. Theirs found throats, eyes, joints, and fingers. Our units collapsed inward in a dozen places. Wedges of Lymarian foot soldiers rushed forward, breaking us apart and grinding us up as a stone-mill grinds hewehat kernels for flour.

Abruptly, Garrak and I came face-to-face with a white robe. Her face was a mask of white paint, her hair drawn back in a clasp was white too, and her robe was spotless. The only splash colour was the red of her hands
–one clasping a ulikarn drenched in blood, and the other, I realised in shock, was a stump yet spurting blood.

She lunged at me. With a grunt, I made to parry, but hit nothing. While I
stared stupidly at the space she had briefly occupied, Garrak folded over as if he were a cloth folded in twain, gutted by a blow I had not even seen. He took the Sybali’s ulikarn with him. He must have, for she came up empty-handed. I almost smiled as I swung at her head.

A kick numbed my knee. A second dropped me
on my back. And even as I fell, I felt a blow upon my wrist and suddenly, the Sybali loomed over me with my own sword clutched in her good hand. Salk’s javelin sprouted out of the Sybali’s thigh. No mind. She vaulted over me, rolled in a tight ball beneath his upraised shield, and stabbed upward with the full strength her arm.

Salk’s armour saved his life.
The metal-reinforced leather edging turned the blow, causing it to slice narrowly across his upper thigh rather than deeply into the groin as intended. He lunged down with his shield, intent on crushing her, but the woman was quicker than quicksilver running down a windowpane. Her body jack-knifed. Slithered between his legs. The Sybali rose wraithlike behind him and then slipped past my soldier friend to rush at me. It was only as Salk tried to pounce upon her, and his calves separated uselessly from his ankles, that he realised something was wrong.

She had hamstrung him.

The sword whistled down. I rolled desperately. The blade snicked my arm as I fetched up against a corpse. The Sybali tripped over my rotating torso, but then performed an impossible pivot upon that maimed stump, as if she were a slender trout which, having ventured into the shallows, has to flee the flashing strike of a heron’s beak. She raised my sword for the fatal blow.

The contact between us was enough to channel the power.

Dark and ugly was the power I unchained that day, and diabolical in conception.

Her heart ruptured.

I thrust the Sybali’s dead weight off my chest, wanting nothing more than to rid myself of the body and its accusing expression. I scrabbled for my sword. I put my roundshield up; took a look around. Garrak stared open-eyed at the sky. Someone had opened his throat, saving him an agonising death. I averted my eyes from the mess of his stomach. Salk, a hard-bitten soldier of over thirty anna’s service, sat gripping his ruined ankles and rocking slowly back and forth. Tears tracked down his grimy cheeks. He would never walk again.