Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) (69 page)

K
REECH
! K
REECH
! K
REECH
!

What discordant music the monsters made: singing with the wind, calling to each other. The companions sensed the grating hunger in their pitch, the need to feed. Pythius’s magik horn would not deter these beasts, Moreth knew. Their hunger would stop only when they had gorged themselves on fresh red meat.

“I believe it’s time for me to borrow one of your pistols,” whispered Talwyn.

In a flash, the pistol was in the scholar’s hand, cocked and loaded. Moreth gritted his teeth and also readied a pistol. Mouse felt less confident than her fellows. She possessed only a shiny new dagger taken from the
Skylark
’s armory, and it already felt slick in her hand. Although she had the power of a Dreamer within her, he hadn’t been much use so far. Nonetheless, she doubted that Feyhazir would let her die. While Amakri scattered for their weapons, the three moved in a tight circle, eyes and weapons aimed toward the twisting sky that echoed with cries. The storm chose this moment to roar, and a white whirlwind descended from above. Within the pale nimbus flickered shadows, darting glints of black that moved as erratically and quickly as schools of ebon minnows.
Those can’t possibly be creatures
, thought Mouse. But she was wrong. Moreth immediately fired a couple of shots into the storm; he may even have hit a monster or two, as the sky fell silent. They waited. Nearby, the Amakri, no longer panicking, crouched low upon the ground in the white coats that made them indistinguishable from the snow.

K
REECH
! K
REECH
! K
REECH
!

An inky streak shot from the heavens, touched down for an instant, and then took off again in a puff of snow and black smoke. Whatever the creature was, it moved so fast that it left a trail, a dark smear, in the air. Mouse heard a yelp to her left, and noticed that the white-cloaked man many paces beside her had disappeared—snow still whirled up from the ground marking his absence. Then, his screams rang with the thunder in the storm. By the Kings, he’d been snatched up as if tied to the end of a string. Gone. The blood eaters’ cries came again, their throats warbling with gory sustenance. Mouse thought of running for their tent, but she would not leave her companions, Moreth had warned her against
running, and the distance between her and the tiny brown dome now felt unbridgeable.

K
REECH
! K
REECH
! K
REECH
!

The world collapsed into terror. All over the encampment, dark comets streaked to and from the earth, causing explosions and noiseless ruffles of sonic force. One, two, ten…Mouse lost count amid the zigzagging confusion. The snowy eruptions and disorienting screams inspired panic in the usually unshakeable Doomchasers. Men and woman who risked being cast out of the tribe for their cowardice ran for the perceived safety of their tents. With a grim calm, Moreth watched as they were pulled into the sky like naughty marionettes.

“Don’t run,” he whispered with disdain. “Never run. Their thinning of the herd is almost over. Soon they will come for the strong.”

They huddled closer. Either Mouse or Talwyn had grabbed the other’s hand; they didn’t know who had initiated the gesture, though it gave them each strength. The three bated their breath and watched as the storm of black lightning slowed, then stopped. On high, the grisly tearing and screams of the dying ended on a whimpering note. At last from the night came a satisfied cawing and the leathery whoosh and flapping of many great wings. The blood eaters returned for more.

Elegantly, the horrors descended and circled the quiet encampment, where at least a thousand warriors and children stayed motionless as rabbits beneath a great flock of owls. The monsters cawed lazily. Lower and lower they drifted, and the shadows slunk away, revealing forms horrible to behold. Mouse, though, frozen with shock, found herself staring into the face of one that breezed over her: a glowing white countenance with eyes and hair of misty blackness, and the mouth of a lamprey eel. Mouse swore she saw the orifice pucker inward and become an anus ringed with razor teeth.
That’s where the meat goes to get squished and chewed into pâté
, her mind shrieked.

Suddenly, the head snapped toward her, and Mouse’s heart lurched. Mid-flight, the creature paused, effortlessly hovering while flapping its tattered and fuming wings—nightmare appendages that seemed too thin, slow moving, and ethereal to support real flight. The blood eater made a sensual gurgle and uncurled its shrimplike, emaciated body that was
jutting with bones. It clacked its black talons and toenails as if in delight. The creature drifted nearer, spiraling down toward them like a demonic snowflake, spreading its lanky mass and smoking wings as if to embrace her. No.
It cannot see me
, Mouse told herself. It sensed only her heartbeat and fear. Or perhaps it sensed something else…Was that an expression of happiness distorting its hideous, puckered face? Mouse cast off the impression. Indeed, her fancies disintegrated as the acidic wave of the creature’s stench drew nearer: the reek of rot, death, and oniony filth. Mouse noticed the butcher’s apron of blood spattering the creature and began to gag.

K
REEEECH
?

It had heard that. The vulture talons reached down—

P
PPFT
!

An Amakri spear pierced the side of the blood eater, and it turned into a black, blurred, shrieking frenzy. Pythius’s horn blasted the night, and the Amakri sprang up, hurling spears and throwing nets upon the shadows hovering around the encampment. Moreth and Talwyn heeded the call and opened fire upon the thrashing shape above them, riddling it with a volley of blue fire. The blood eaters’ cries of gluttonous ecstasy became shrieks that tore into the ears of the defenders. The blood eater above them dropped with a squealing thud, and Moreth and Talwyn—still holding onto Mouse—ran to the downed beast to finish it. Speared and broken, it continued to drag itself like a dog with two broken legs, leaving a bloody trail through the snow. Its wings flickered like burning paper and added gobs to the ebony drool left by its wounds. As they caught up to the monster, it turned its head toward its attackers and gave infuriated screeches. Then it made a disturbing mewl as its black pearl stare fell upon Mouse. There were slits in its eyes, and they expanded, lovingly.

“In the head,” said Moreth. “Shoot it in the head.”

The men peppered the creature’s skull with bullets, and it slumped and curled up into a smoldering coil. The corpse hissed with foul vapors and within instants had dissolved into a slop of quivering black goo. The three had watched the dissolution with a macabre fascination, but they quickly pulled their eyes away from the spectacle. However, the Amakri had already seen to the security of their people. Warriors could be spotted stomping and spearing entangled blood eaters, or dancing back from the
running decay of the monsters’ bodies. The three sighed in relief, but soon realized their victory had been a hollow one, for they heard sobbing and moans as the Amakri mourned their dead.

“It was all so fast…” whispered Mouse.

“They may come again,” said Moreth. “Usually, the first wave is sent only to test the strength of a herd of prey. More of them will have been held in reserve—one hundred times the number we’ve seen. A hive of the things.”

“How do you know so much about these horrors?” she asked.

As they’d come so far together, and now trusted each other with the most dangerous of secrets, Moreth shared one of his. “I married one.”

Before anyone could think of a reply, Pythius arrived. Fast as changelings, he and a band of warriors had sped through the encampment to reach them. The half-naked shaman looked wild-eyed. In one hand, he held his horn and in the other, a weapon that seemed birthed of a cleaver and a sword—possessing the blade of the former and the handle of the latter. The shaman’s weapon dripped blackness, and he and his warriors were spattered with the death of the blood eaters.

“
Dýs
i
Tou
í
lio! Skáfos Feyhazir
! (West Sun! Vessel of Feyhazir!)” he called.

Reaching them, Pythius tucked his horn into his waist, threw his weapon straight into the frozen ground—where it hummed and did not move—and then examined Talwyn and Mouse. Pythius made no concessions to modesty, feeling the two from cranny to crevice for injury. Secretly, Talwyn enjoyed the attention, particularly as Pythius had examined him first, before turning to the sacred vessel. One had to relish the finer moments in life, because the rest of it seemed to be monster-hunting and doom. Once they had passed his rough physical examination, he addressed the scholar: “
Isoun apospást
i
ke íe danch
o
theí
?” (Were you clawed or bitten?)

“
Ochi
.” (No.)

“
Kalóc. Af
í
s tous eínaa d
i
l
i
t
í
rio
.” (Good. Their touch is poison.)

As the shaman turned to Moreth, Talwyn confirmed that he, too, was uninjured, figuring he would be a less cooperative patient.

“
Prostimo, Sou éch
o
empistosýn
i
(Fine, I trust you),” said Pythius, and strode past the three to the pool of ichor behind them. “
Thae to ékan a
f
tó
?” (You did this?)

“
Emes
.” (We.) Talwyn pointed to Moreth and then tapped the pistol that he held, which continued to flicker with sapphire flames until he clicked the hammer off. Pythius watched the flame go out and gasped.

“
Mágos
(Sorcerer),” said the shaman. “
Ákousa t
i
s dýnam
í
s sas s
í
mera to pr
o
í, kai den pisté
v
oun. Eínae énas mágos, pára polý
?” (I heard of your power this morning, and did not believe. Is he a sorcerer, too?) Pythius nodded to Moreth.

“
Den eínai arketá
.” (Not quite.)

“
Deíxe mou, en
ó
échoume t
i
n tás
i
na to tra
v
matíes
.” (Show me, while we tend to the wounded.)

Talwyn turned to his companions, who had been unable to follow this exchange. “I have been asked to help, though I think the invitation extends to all of us.”

They would help, and then they would talk: of blood eaters and of the man who had married a monster. As they were leaving, Moreth glanced back at the liquid corpse and spat upon it.

VI

Moreth’s story would have to wait until the encampment had once again been made secure, however. That eve, a host of scowling, spear-gripping Amakri camped outside and watched the skies. The warriors made silent prayers for the wounded whose cries pained their ears. It was in the dark incense-clouded tents that the three strangers from Central Geadhain were most needed, and they spent their evening tending to the gasping, thrashing souls who had been clawed and bitten by the blood eaters.

Mouse and Moreth weren’t unaccustomed to grisly battlefield wounds, and they soon learned that Talwyn had spent six months or thereabouts as a surgeon. He had still been deciding on his vocation, he said, though his listeners wondered whether any one cerebral pursuit in all of Geadhain could actually satisfy a man of his intellect. He was a genius, Mouse realized, a miracle worker when it came to medicine. Like many such folk, though, he wanted none of the prestige and attention that came with his gift.

At ease in a crisis, the scholar made tourniquets to stop the spread of blood-eaters’ venom. With herbs taken from Pythius’s collection, he
boiled remedies to sedate his patients, attempting to recreate treatments he’d known in the West. Doctor Talwyn and his Western assistants did the impossible: they saved a handful of Amakri from the screaming death of blood-eater fever. However, survival often came at a cost: even those who’d been lightly grazed could be saved only through the excising of large hunks of tissue from in and around affected areas.

In some cases, a patient could be saved only if one or more of his limbs were amputated. This might affect the tribesperson’s pride and harm his standing with his people, but Talwyn didn’t care, and he didn’t ask. Grim Pythius, who assisted with the bloody surgeries, offered no information on the topic. Once the dissolving, rotten flesh—that resembled the blood puddings Talwyn had once enjoyed but never would again—had been removed, Amakri disposed of the putrid matter by burning it in the fires. Thick smoke and the smell of seared compost soon filled the encampment, but in time the screaming subsided. Those who could not be saved, who far outnumbered those who could, were given a terminal dose of Talwyn’s
other
medicine.

This drink was boiled in the largest lidded cauldrons available. It smelled of ether and pine. Inhaling its fumes from a rag would cure all aches; drinking a thimbleful of the liquid was enough to stop one’s heart. Within instants of coughing the liquid down, men, women, and children would close their eyes and sink into unconsciousness as their gelatinous bodies were brought toward the great pyre now burning in the center of the camp. Into that belching inferno the dead were cast. Those Amakri not busy caring for the ill or watching the sky sang beautiful, hard-throated songs and made music with rattles and hide drums. Once or twice, when the shaman wasn’t around, the companions thought they heard Pythius’s horn sounding notes that evoked the long, sad cry of a deep-sea king. They weren’t always certain where the shaman was—where anyone was—as a sweaty haze obscured their surroundings.

As the sun rose, as red and angry as the souls of those who wouldn’t rest, the great labor at last came to an end. Talwyn, Moreth, and Mouse became aware of their surroundings again, and stood outside of the tents. They’d been watching the whorls in the twisting pyre as if counting the wailing spirits within; they couldn’t say for how long they’d stood there.
Their sleeves were rolled up, and they were covered in blood and oils. Although they were without their cloaks, they were warmed by the pyre’s rage.