The Swords of Night and Day (35 page)

“I was a killer before I carried them,” said Decado, sadly. “I cannot blame the swords for what I became.” He looked up at Skilgannon. “Jianna told me you killed the last man to carry these. She talked of you often. I found myself growing jealous of a man long dead. I used to hope that someone would bring you back—just so that I could kill you, and show the world you were not as great as they believed.”

“And now?”

“Pretty much the same,” said Decado with a smile.

A
skari felt a tingling sensation in her fingers. Then feeling returned. Slowly she opened her right hand, pressing the tip of her index finger against the thumb. The tingling swept up along her right forearm. She lay quietly, her head throbbingas slowly her body came once more under her control. With a groan she sat up. Skilgannon moved to her side. “Welcome back,” he said.

“What were they?”

“Decado called them Shadows. A different form of Jiamad.”

“I have never seen anything move so fast. One moment it was yards away, the next—” She glanced down at her green shirt. There was a small hole in the shoulder, drying blood upon it. “—it bit me. As I fell I saw it spin and fly at Harad. Is he all right?”

“He killed it, but it stunned him also. He is still sleeping.”

“Oh, it is not sleep,” she said, with a sudden shiver. “I heard everything. Your conversation with Decado, the crackling of wood upon the fire. I just could not move.” By the fire Decado stirred. Rolling smoothly to his feet, he swung his black scabbard over his shoulders and moved alongside Skilgannon and Askari. She found the intensity of his gaze disturbing. “Stop staring at me,” she said.

Decado laughed. “Hard not to. The resemblance is . . . uncanny.”

“And that is all it is,” she snapped. “I am not like her.”

On the far side of the fire Harad sat up. Then he pushed himself to his feet, staggered, and walked out into the open. Skilgannon rose and followed him. Askari remained with Decado. “Now it is you staring at me,” he said.

“I have heard tales of you. None of them good. You must be a very sad and bitter man.”

“Nonsense. I am as happy as anyone else.”

“I cannot believe that.”

“It is true. My childhood was a time of great joy and laughter. I was the most popular child in my village. And now I am known for my wit and my charm. You have any food here?”

“No.”

“Ah well, no matter.”

“How did those creatures move so fast?” she asked him.

“It is mostly beyond my understanding. They are fashioned, I understand, from creatures with hollow bones, very light. Bats, birds, something like that. Terrifying, aren’t they?”

“No,” she said. “They do what they are bred to do. They are merely dangerous.
You
are terrifying.” She struggled to stand. Instantly Decado reached out a hand to support her. She brushed it away angrily. “Do not touch me!”

“Are you afraid you might be more like her than you think?”

“Meaning?”

“She enjoyed my touch.”

“Perhaps that is because you are so alike,” said Askari. “You are both monsters.”

“There is that,” he agreed amiably.

“And, if she enjoyed your touch so greatly why does she now want you dead?”

“A lovers’ spat,” he said. “You know how it is. Boy meets girl, girl wants boy dead. An everyday story, really.”

Despite the lightness of tone she saw the pain in his eyes. For a moment only she felt sympathy. The feeling was replaced by a burst of anger. “Well, for once I hope she gets what she wants. You are evil, and the world would be better off without you in it.”

“True enough,” he answered.

Walking away from her, he went to his horse and stepped into the saddle. Askari followed him out. Skilgannon and Harad were standing close by.

“I expect we shall meet again,” said Decado.

“As enemies or friends?” Skilgannon asked him.

“Who knows? If you are heading north, be aware that a large company of soldiers and Jems is ahead of you. Advance column for the main army. The last battle against Agrias is close now. Jianna wants to end the war this side of the ocean.”

With that he turned his mount and rode off.

“I don’t like him,” said Harad.

“He doesn’t like himself,” Askari told him. “Which shows he is capable of good judgment.”

Skilgannon smiled. “Even so I am glad he was here when the Shadows attacked. What did you talk about?”

“Jianna. I told him I was not like her.” She looked into his sapphire eyes. “I am not, am I?”

“I cannot give you the answer you want to hear,” he said. “When I first knew her she was just like you. Brave—indeed fearless—and loyal and beautiful. She was her own woman, with a strong, independent mind. We used to talk about how we would change the world. When she became queen of Naashan she would make the land like a garden, and every citizen would live in peace and prosperity. These were her dreams.”

“So why did she change?”

“She became queen of Naashan,” he said, simply.

“I don’t understand.”

“It took me a while,” he told her. “Mostly people obey the laws of their respective lands for one simple reason. If they break them they will suffer for it. The thought of suffering deters them from wrongdoing. It is an age-old principle. Kill someone, and you yourself will be killed. Rob someone and you will be punished. You might lose a hand, or be branded upon the brow, or indeed hanged. The question is, what happens when
you
are the law, when
your
actions are unchallenged,
your
decisions final and beyond appeal? When you are surrounded by people who agree with your every word and every deed? You become like a god, Askari. It is but a small step from that to tyranny.”

“I would not be like that. I know the difference between right and wrong.”

“I believe you. I also believe that if Jianna had been born in the high mountains and grown to womanhood here, she would have said the same. That is beside the point, though. You are not Jianna. You were not raised in a duplicitous court. You did not see your parents murdered by traitors. You did not have to fight huge battles in order to win back a kingdom. I do not defend what she became. I will not simplify it, either, by holding to the view that she was merely a devil in human flesh, or a monster.”

“That is because you love her!” she said, anger flaring again.

“Perhaps so. But I will do all in my power to end her reign, even if by doing so I condemn her to death. I can do no more than that.”

“No,” she said, her voice softening. “No one could ask more than that.”

S
tavut sat alone, the horror of the day clinging to him like the blood-drenched shirt he wore. He had wandered away from the pack, needing to be alone. The sun was setting in a bloodred sky, and Stavut thought how apt it was that such a day should end with a crimson sky. The color of rage.

Tears formed, flowing down his bearded cheek. He brushed them away, and his hand came away stained red.

For however long he lived this would be the Day of the Beast in his memory. He would never forget it, not one dreadful part of it.

The pack had run for hours, eating up the miles in a steady fast lope. Then they had come to a line of wooded hills, and Shakul had paused. “What is it?” asked Stavut.

“Fight finished,” said Shakul. Stavut glanced at the other beasts. They all had their heads high, sniffing the air. “Much blood,” added Shakul.

“Show me,” Stavut ordered him.

Shakul ran on, up the slope and through the trees, the pack following. They came to a stretch of open ground. Bodies were everywhere. Stavut stepped down from Shakul’s back and walked among the corpses. He saw Kinyon first, his head crushed. Arin, the logger from Harad’s settlement, was pinned against a tree, a broken lance impaling him to the trunk. His wife, Kerena, was close by. Her throat had been cut, but not before she had been brutally raped by the soldiers. She was lying on her back, her skirt over her breasts, her legs splayed. Other women had been equally abused before being slain. There was no point checking for survivors. All of the men had been hacked to death, save Arin.

Shakul loomed alongside him. “Four Jems,” he said. “Stood by trees.”

“What?”

“We go now?”

“Go? Yes, we go. We find the soldiers responsible for this.” A cold anger began in the pit of Stavut’s belly, a rage unlike anything he had ever experienced. “We find them. We kill them. Every one.”

“As Bloodshirt says,” muttered Shakul.

“How far away are they?”

“Not far. Catch soon.”

“Then let’s be going.” Stavut reached up and took hold of the baldric. Shakul crouched down, allowing Stavut to place his foot in the loop. Then the great beast reared up, Stavut on his back, and let out a howl. He began to run. As he did so his right arm swept out, and he called an order. Some fifteen of the pack veered off to the right. Shakul barked out a second order, and another group headed toward the left. The pack ran on silently.

Stavut ducked down as Shakul plowed through thick undergrowth and low-hanging branches. Then he slowed and pointed ahead. A column of men were marching over the brow of a hill, some quarter of a mile ahead. “How many?” asked Stavut.

Shakul lifted up his huge, taloned hands, opening and closing them three times. “Few more, few less,” he said.

Then they ran again, pounding up the hillside. As they crested the hill they saw the troop still marching ahead of them, oblivious to the danger. Then one of the soldiers swung around and shouted a warning. The troop drew their weapons and tried to form a defensive wall. There was no time. The Jiamads tore into them. Stavut was thrown clear of Shakul. He hit the ground hard and rolled. A swordsman loomed over him. Shakul’s talons tore the man’s face away. Blood bubbled from his ruined throat, and he fell. Stavut grabbed the man’s sword and ran into the fray, hacking and stabbing. An officer on a tall horse was leading the men. When he saw the carnage he tried to flee. Grava hurtled across the grass and leapt at the man’s mount, ripping its neck open. The horse reared, hurling the rider to the earth. Stavut ran across the killing ground, slashing his sword into the bodies of men trying to flee. Not one escaped. Their skulls were crushed or bitten through, or their backbones shattered by iron-shod clubs. Stavut paused and looked around. A few men were still moving, trying to crawl. The beasts leapt upon them, long fangs slicing into thin necks.

Then Stavut saw the officer, lying very still. Grava was close by, his long, curved fangs tearing chunks of flesh from the body of the dead horse. Stavut walked to the officer, a young man, slim and handsome, his chin beard carefully shaped and trimmed. “I have information,” said the man. “Agrias will find it very useful, if you take me to him.”

“I don’t serve Agrias,” said Stavut.

“I . . . don’t understand. Who do you serve?”

“A man named Kinyon, and a young girl called Kerena. And others whose names I don’t recall now. I don’t suppose you asked their names before you killed them and raped their women.” Stavut raised the bloody sword.

“No wait!” shrieked the officer, lifting his arm high. Stavut’s blade slashed down, smashing the man’s forearm and cutting deeply through muscle and sinew. The officer screamed. “Mercy! I beg you!”

“Mercy? You’ll get what you gave, you whoreson!” The sword slashed down again, clanging against the man’s breastplate, then ricocheting down to slice into his thigh. He began to scramble backward. Stavut followed him, the sword hammering again and again, sometimes striking the metal armor, but more often cutting into flesh and bone. A massive blow caught the young officer on the side of the face, shattering several teeth and opening up a long cut down to the chin. The man rolled to his side, curling his legs up in a fetal position, and began to sob and cry. Stavut hacked at him. Then Shakul grabbed his arm, pulling him back and pushing him to the ground. The huge beast crouched over the mewing man and slashed his throat swiftly. The officer sank to the ground. Then Shakul moved away. Stavut sat very still, suddenly weary.

He had avenged the villagers. Only it didn’t help. They were still dead, their dreams soaking into the earth with their blood. Kinyon, a big man who only wanted to cook for others, to have them visit his little kitchen and tell him his pies were delicious. Kerena, who wanted five children and a little house on the high hills overlooking Petar. Their deaths had been cruel and meaningless. Stavut sighed. As had the deaths of these soldiers.

Pushing himself to his feet, he saw Shakul standing with the four Jiamads that had marched with the troop. “Why are they still alive?” he asked, moving alongside Shakul.

“You want dead? I kill.”

“Why did you not kill them already?”

“Bigger pack, better hunt.”

“They killed my people.”

“No, Bloodshirt. Stood by trees.” Stavut recalled the scene of the horror, and realized there were no fang or talon marks on the dead. “I kill now?” asked Shakul. The four Jiamads backed away, raising their clubs.

“No,” said Stavut, wearily. Then he sighed. “Why do they want to join us?”

“Be free,” said Shakul. “Run. Hunt. Feast. Sleep. No Skins.”

“I am a Skin.”

Shakul gave a low, rumbling, broken series of grunts that Stavut had discovered was a version of laughter. “You Bloodshirt.”

Stavut realized it was a compliment. He was about to reply when he saw blood on Shakul’s side. “You are wounded,” he said.

“Not wound,” said Shakul. “Boot.” He pointed to Stavut’s feet. The fur had been ripped away by Stavut’s boot during the long run. Yet the beast had said nothing.

“I am sorry, my friend,” he said. Then he took a deep breath and walked to stand before the towering enemy Jiamads. “You wish to run with Bloodshirt’s pack? To be free in the mountains?”

They stared at him with cold, golden eyes. “Run free,” said one. “Yes.”

“Then join us. There will be no killing of Skins . . . unless I order it. There will be no fighting among us. You understand. We are all brothers. Family,” he said. He recognized the look of noncomprehension on their faces. “You will not stand alone. Your enemies are my enemies. They are Shakul’s enemies and Grava’s enemies. We are friends. We are . . .” He swung to Shakul. “How can I make this clear to them?”