The Warrior Who Carried Life (19 page)

“Cara,” said Stefile, fear rising in her voice.

“They’ll slip,” said Cara. “They’ll fall.” Her thoughts were murderous. She wanted to cut them all down. In her mind she glimpsed a Dog, made immortal by the Flower. He grinned at her in vindication.
You won’t get that, my lovely
, she promised him.
Either way, you won’t get that. The Galu will have you
.

She was depending on the Galu. The Galu would not let anything else have the Flower. They would burn their own Dogs to prevent it—at least as far as Cara knew. She heard their horrible music, and wished it closer. There were stars overhead. God had returned, surrounded by death. She, Cara, was yearning for the Galu to kill again. The snow swirled around them, like all the contradictions, and somewhere amid them was God. The Dogs were nearly upon them.

The shield and the spear leapt out at the Dogs ringing against their heads, pushing them back. Asu Kweetar screeched inside their heads, so loudly they dropped to their knees and covered their ears, but the sound didn’t stop. They slipped on the snow, feet flailing. A Man with Wrists of Steel fell backwards on to his comrades, and rolled, with a rumble of clanking metal. A Shadow Man slipped, and grabbed those ahead of him. His doubles grabbed as well, pulling men off their feet. A Man who Cuts Horses drew his sword, and his overarching backstroke slashed those behind him. A rank of Angels, fearsome, impatient, seeing only the Flower so clearly ahead of them, flung themselves forward. Dervishes, they broke through the men ahead of them, and very suddenly spun themselves into pieces, a flurry of blood and flesh, on the drawn swords they did not see.

Cords of braided metal were thrown, arching through the air between the towers of the Spiders. The cords hung low over the top of the temple. The first of the Spiders launched himself into the air, sailing down the length of the cord, with a sizzling sound, on a pulley. Asu Kweetar turned to him. “You serve nothing,” he told the man, and drew his bow, and let loose an arrow. Its tip was white, and it plunged through the head and helmet of the Spider, and ploughed a furrow along his spine.

The most noble of his comrades, Angels and Horses,were just then gaining the top of the ramp. The Spider swept low over it, his hanging legs smashing into the heads of his companions, the scythe that was bound to his hands slamming into the backs of their necks. He somersaulted, a helpless mass across the stone, and up, slightly, across into the opposite tower.

The arrows of the Beast were curved like boomerangs, and returned to him, to be plucked from the air and sent out again. The shield and the spear pushed back the Dogs in advance. Those behind them pushed forward. The line up the ramp swelled in its middle, and suddenly overspilled its edges. The column of flesh, seething, began to slide helplessly, irrevocably backwards, on slush that was hardening into ruby ice. Those who fell dragged down those in front of them and, together, they slid sideways into the legs of those behind them. With a slow sagging of the knees, those behind settled on top of them. The descending weight of even more men above them pushed them to one side. Slowly, helplessly, they seemed to ooze towards the edge of the ramp. In a tangle, like holly, they pulled each other, rolling, over it. Some were able to cling, for a time, to the slope. Others judged the distance to the layer of the temple beneath them, and jumped. The clacking, wailing music of the Galu ground closer.

Cold had made both metal and stone more brittle, and grease was thick. A Spider on his pulley squealed to a halt overhead, halfway down a cord, blocking it. There was a sudden, spreading crackle through the stones of the square. The buttress of a tower sprang free from shattered pavement. With a tortured creaking, the tower leaned towards the ziggurat, held only by the web of cords that linked it to the other towers. The Spiders who clung to its lower sections jumped down from it. There was a crinkling sound of breakage, as the wires of the cords snapped. Then the cords burst apart, lashing through the air. Slowly, as if with great deliberation, the tower fell, trailing men after it who plummeted down, kicking, on to the stone. The tower fell on the ramp, crushing one side of itself, bending from the top. The tower began to slide, wiping everything out of its path, or gliding over it. As it fell, the crumpled top moved farther and farther out from the ramp; the entire, massive edifice began to roll, gathering speed, whipping the metal cords round with it. Like a barrel down stairs, it began to bounce, rising up and dropping down, rising up again, and hammering the limestone beneath it. The Dogs scattered in front of it, hurling themselves off the ramp, kneeling under its shelter, hands over their heads. Some of them on the ramp were miraculously passed over as the tower, hollow and elastic, sprang up into the air, making whiplash, metallic noises all along its length. It reared up one final time before sweeping into the Dogs still at the base of the ramp.

Then silence. The Dogs had been trained not to cry out in pain. They had also been trained to regroup. They stirred, struggling up through the limbs of comrades. A Baked Man pulled a length of metal from out of his leather skin, and walked on, barefoot on frozen blood and water. The Turtles began to creep forward under their shells.

“No!” snarled Asu Kweetar. “You defeat yourselves! Go back!” He launched himself into the air. He flew low over the ramp, gathering up straggling warriors in his front and rear paws, beating others with his giant, soft white wings.

Cara watched, bemused. It was almost funny, this sudden collapse of the Fighting Schools, like watching a clumsy giant fall.

“I’m almost disappointed,” she said. “I have not yet had to strike a single blow.”

A Man who Cuts Horses was suddenly standing in front of her. Cara whinnied at him, mocking. He struck. His sword dipped and swerved around Cara’s, rose up, and was driven down. He severed Cara’s arm clean away. She barked out a nervous laugh. She fell backwards, and sat on the stone.

Stefile called her name and leapt forward. The Man who Cuts Horses wiped aside her blow almost casually. A Man with Wrists of Steel lumbered up behind him, ponderous in his armour, and swung at Stefile. She danced backwards, out of the way of his heavy downward stroke. Then, untrained, she jumped as hard as she could on the blunt back of the sword. There was a grating of metal on metal as the sword slipped out of his grasp. He blinked at Stefile for a moment through the slit of his visor, and then snatched Stefile’s sword from her, grabbing it by the blade with his metal-shod hand.

The Man who Cuts Horses lifted up his sword.
I still haven’t struck a single blow
, thought Cara. Her arm was beside her on the stone, still holding the sword. The Horseman swung down. With a sudden humming sound the arm somersaulted into the air and blocked the blow with Cara’s sword. It rose in the air, flipped over the Horseman’s head and slapped him across the buttocks with the flat of the sword. Outraged by the dire insult, the warrior spun around to find himself facing the sword alone, pink and white-flecked, floating in the air. He swung at it, and ducked out of the way. Then, very carefully, it inserted the Horseman’s blade into its handle, and wrenched it out of his grip. Cara yelped with laughter.

The Steel Wrists swung at Stefile. Suddenly a shield descended from above, and absorbed the blow. It stayed in front of Stefile, blocking her view. She heard the Steel Wrists give a little cry of surprise. This was followed a few moments later by a clattering, spreading crash from below. The shield was raised. The Steel Wrists was simply no longer there. Stefile felt a tap on her shoulder and turned. Cara’s arm presented her with her own white sword, gave a little wave, and then darted off, swimming through the air like an eel.

Cara gave a fresh howl of laughter. “Stef! Stef!” she cried. From out of the stump of her shoulder, baby fingers emerged, wiggling. “The Flower!” Using her left arm as a prop, she jumped to her feet. “The Flower! The Flower! The Flower!” she roared, and hopped up and down with delight. She grabbed hold of the Man who Cuts Horses and, although somewhat asymmetrical, swung him around in a little dance. Aghast, the Horseman pulled himself free, his bearded cheeks puffed out at the impropriety. They were supposed to be fighting! Shrieking with laughter, possessed with it, Cara reached up and wrested a handful of petals from the Tree and crammed them into the Horseman’s mouth. Infuriated, the Horseman spat them out. Then he realised what he’d done. His jaw dropped open. Shaking his head, muttering, he simply turned and walked away, back down the ramp.

Cara felt something in the air all around her that was like the buffering of many small wings. Stefile was beside her. Cara could feel her hand. Cara swung her around too in a kind of stumbling peasant jig. All she could see was the light. It seemed to form highways up through the snow and sky, big and broad enough to walk on. The beams shone through her, tickling, making her want to giggle. The snow all around her was like thousands of bells, rolling.

A Baked Man stomped towards her, stiffly, with wattled knees.
Like a baby
, Cara thought. He jammed a long sliver of metal into her neck. Cara left it there. She had not been made immortal to give blows, but to absorb them. Feeling a thin, wide grin spread across her face, she reached up into the Tree, and peeled away a petal of the Flower. She pressed it into his hands, and held them. His encrusted mouth was a tiny straining circle of surprise. That made Cara laugh out loud. He was at other times a cheerful soul, and without quite knowing why, he laughed too, a brief, hearty chuckle, the light of the Flower illuminating the velvety black of his eyes.

“This’s yours,” said Cara, her words slurred. “Always been. Now go. “’Fore the Galu.”

The Baked Man stared back at her, confused, almost hurt.

The music of the Galu screeched and bashed and rattled overhead.

“Run!” hissed Cara, and gave him a push.

Yes!
she suddenly thought, with a thrill, as the Baked Man skittered down the icy ramp. Something caught up both of them, both Cara and the Baked Man, and suddenly he was lifted up as he ran. He squawked, kicking, and squealed, and he soared up and over the walls, out of the square. There was a roaring in Cara’s ears like a wave, and it seemed to carry her down the ramp. She advanced arms outstretched.

An Angel smashed his fist into her chest. She grabbed his hand without looking, and pulled it out, and held it by the wrist, and pulled the Angel with her. A kind of warrior she didn’t know ran towards her and rammed his spear into her gut. She walked forward on the spear, smiling. She patted his cheek—a child’s trick to distract him—and kicked his feet out from under him. Armoured, he tobogganed down the ramp. The Angel she held began to scream, staring at her arm. The arm had begun to glow, like the Flower. He broke free, and ran.

“Time to go home now!” said Cara, in a high mocking voice that was hardly her own. It filled the square, it shook the stone. “Time to go home now!”

A flight of arrows rose up against her, and she turned to welcome them. They dug into her shoulders and chest and arms.

“Dance,” she whispered.

All the weapons of the Fighting Schools rose up against them. The swords, the shields, the spears all danced in front of her like a curtain, prodding, slapping, poking, herding their masters backwards. The metal duplicates of the Shadow Men wrested control from them, and made them walk backwards. Tossing her head, Cara danced on the ice, arms still held outwards, snapping her fingers, flicking off the blood. She whirled and stumbled down towards the Dogs.

The stones of the pavement began to shake. With a hollow scraping sound, like the shifting of the grate, the first of the great stones began to rise. The men on top of it howled, and dropped to their knees, and clasped its edges as it swept upwards, bearing them away.

“Whee!” Cara cried, feeling everything race past her. She looked up at her arms against the sky. They were as clear as water, and they flowed around bones that were like ice, light bending and rippling through them. Magic swelled, unbearable within her, aching like love, until she thought she would burst. She opened her mouth to howl, and it was like something rupturing; a torrent seemed to pour out of her, with the weight of the universe behind it. She felt it sweep across the square, and break against the old walls, rearing up, and then surging over them. Dimly she saw all the warriors and all their goods rise up too, like a flock of ravens, borne up, lifted over the walls. She saw the giant towers turning in the air, glinting like ships.

She heard the music just over her head, like an empty mechanical contraption. She felt a giant claw grab her, felt its reptilian scales under her hands. “Enough!” commanded a voice inside her head. She felt warm feathers, and a sudden weightiness in her stomach as she was hauled upwards. Her head drooped weakly and she saw the square below, suddenly so small, with its little cake of a temple, with a line of little black insects, so shallow and insubstantial, on the walls all around it. The only real thing there was the Tree.

“That,” said the shadows, the deluded Galu, “is for us!”

There was a sparking of orange light from their fingertips, and fire—solid, livid jets of orange flame—leapt out of them, joined into one, and poured into the square, filling it to the brim. All the bloody snow on the pavement billowed up, hissing, as steam, rising up through the fire, flickering pink and ochre on its roiling underside. The falling snow turned into feathery streaks of vapour as it hit the heat. In the middle of it, the fire and the steam, the Tree stood, untouched and steady with light. No soldiers had been left behind.

“We didn’t kill them,” said Cara.

Asu Kweetar hugged her to his breast. Like a fire her mind seemed to flicker and go dim.

“No, we didn’t, Little One. We didn’t,” said the beast. He was weeping.

Cara awoke, because there was no movement. The beast beneath her was still. Her head was in Stefile’s lap, who was tugging at her hair, untangling it. Cara’s body was caked in black, icy blood, and she felt weak and shivery, feverish. She groaned and sat up.

The light of the Flower filled a chilly mist, all around them, blue-white, in wisps and wafts. All around them, on the roof and down the ramp, knelt the Galu, in serried ranks. Their eyes were wide and unblinking, streaming with tears. Cara stumbled down from the warmth of Asu Kweetar’s neck. Dazed, she moved among the Galu, towards the Tree. Stefile followed anxiously, silently.

“It was all joy,” said Cara in confusion. “Why does it feel like sorrow now?”

“Cara, I thought you’d gone mad,” said Stefile with relief and took her hand.

“I . . .” Cara began and couldn’t finish. It hadn’t been madness, but what had overcome her? She only very dimly remembered the dancing and what had happened to the Loyal Dogs. What she did remember, heart-stricken, was the light, and the snow like bells, and the sound of the magic. Everything seemed very dull now, and ghostly. She felt as if something had been broken inside her. “I was being carried,” she said, and walked on, towards the Tree.

The silver leaves rustled as she approached them. She reached up, almost absent-mindedly, and picked one of the Flowers. Holding it in her puffy, baby arm, she pulled off one of its petals with her older hand, and held it out towards the nearest Galu. She knew his face.

“Hello, Galo,” she said. “You wanted this.” His eyes were upon her as she moved the petal towards his mouth. He opened it.

Then suddenly from out of that face, from all the other faces around them, shuddering out from under the skin of their faces came a single, gigantic voice. It roared, harsh with anger. “All
right
!” it said. “You’ve won!”

The face in front of Cara began to blister and swell, crispening, bubbles of oil seething under the skin. Then very suddenly, it burst, spraying Cara. There was a split down its forehead and nose, black liquor welling out of it. The flesh on the shoulders began to bruise, blacken, and to peel off in strips, falling away from the bone. The bones charred and crumbled. Something was destroying the Galu, in rage.

“Serpent,” said Cara, weakly. She didn’t want to see him again.

The Galu collapsed, their flesh tumbling on to the stone. The flesh flapped, like carpets by a door with a draft blowing under them, belching out dust and ash. Their black blood trickled in streams down the ramp. The streams joined together, winding and sinuous, flowing up and over the uninhabited flesh, slipping over the edge of the ramp, drooping down into the square, gliding across the pavements. The darkness cohered into a dark pool.

The pool heaved in place, and shivered, and with a sudden leap, like pieces falling into place, he rose up, the Serpent, in the Land of the Living, and he tossed his head from side to side.

“No! No! No! No!” the Serpent wailed, thrashing. He looked more human now, his scaly disguise dropped, a skin-coloured column of flesh, on fleshy coils. His blunt, round head had a human face, a white beard and ruby lips. He filled the square.

“You destroyed them, not us,” whispered Cara, fearfully.

“I’m going to have to take it back!” the Serpent cried, and shrugged himself forward. “I’m going to have to take it back!”

“Leave it to us. Leave us Life,” begged Cara, beginning to weep. “Hadam? Father? Don’t hate us. Why do you hate us?”

The Serpent simply howled. He lunged forward, his vast bulk and heavy head shooting up the ramp, knocking Cara and Stefile aside. He was cold, like a block of ice, and his breath was chilly vapour. He opened his human lips, bloated and red, and closed them about the trunk of the Tree of Life.

Asu Kweetar shrieked, and sprang forward. He lanced out the Serpent’s eye with his beak, and there was a bursting outward of clouded jelly. The Serpent hissed, and turned, and Asu Kweetar leapt back, and clambered up on the Serpent’s hide, which was creased in folds. The beast scrambled up the Serpent’s head, and leaned over his face, and snapped his beak shut across the black circle of the Serpent’s other eye, ripping out its clear covering.

The Serpent was blinded. The blue and yellow backs of his eyes were illuminated, in empty sockets. He screeched and tossed his head, and Asu Kweetar was flung. The beast rolled across the stone, and there was a crack. The coils of the Serpent rose up all around the temple, and dropped, lumbering on to the top of it, groping blindly. Asu Kweetar hobbled out of their path as they fell like fleshy trunks of trees. The beast dragged one wing, broken. He stood on his hind legs and charged again, claws outstretched to gouge at the Serpent’s exposed throat. He slashed at it deeply, red blood spurting over white feathers. The Serpent knew then where he was. The coils looped, and arched and gripped.

He lifted Asu Kweetar up, and beat him against the stone, hammering him up and down, the coils crushing and twisting the beast with a sound of snapping wood, but it was the Serpent who was shrieking in pain.

“You won’t have him, God!” the Serpent cried, jerking his head up blindly towards the sky. “You won’t have him anymore.” He stretched the beast out, gripping him by the legs. The Serpent placed his lips, like a kiss, on Asu Kweetar’s belly. The Most Noble Beast squirmed, and turned his head, and snapped on empty air. The Serpent’s teeth, great flat plates as long as Cara’s arm, closed, scooping out all the inner workings of the beast’s stomach. Asu Kweetar squealed like a pig. The Serpent pulled back, hauling out strands with him, tore them free, and then spat. The Serpent shuddered, and threw Asu Kweetar from him.

Then with the speed of a whip, the coils wrapped themselves around the Tree, and as he touched it, the Serpent howled as though burnt. The Serpent clenched, and the Tree buckled, and then broke, like glass, cutting his sides, and light burst forth, crazy light, sweeping through the mingled steam and ash like searchlights. The Serpent heaved himself backwards, and the temple shook as the Tree was uprooted, and the air seemed to open with a gasp so cold, it seemed to slice through Cara’s heart, and stop it for a moment, immortal as it was. Cara saw the Tree and the light retreat, as the Serpent, rigid with pain, threw himself back and forth amid the light. Then the air seemed to fall shut like a curtain, and the Serpent, and the Tree were gone.

Stefile was already beside the Wordy Beast. The animal’s heart and lungs had been left to him, but out of the crater of his belly, fountains of blood gushed out, slapping the pavement with rich red droplets. He lay gasping on his back, his claws still fighting, feebly.

“Oh no,” said Stefile in a tiny, wounded voice. “Oh, Wordy Beast, oh no.”

Asu Kweetar was a beast, long-lived beyond understanding, but they understood then that he could die. He was dying. His silver eyes stared, growing dim and dry, and his beak hung open, sideways. Stefile knelt and moved her hands towards his stomach, as if to close the arteries as thick as her fingers, through which life splattered, wasted. The ruin was too great.

“Pity God, whose work is spoiled,” they heard a dim whisper from his mind. Then, a promise. “When the Dragon wakes.” Then Asu Kweetar tried to stand. He lifted up his head, with its dim eyes, and his claws tried to close, and his one whole wing thumped against the stone. They saw into his mind.

He thought he had stood. They saw how, deluded in his death dream, he thought he had risen, and was flying, free in the air. They felt his heart beating, and the surge of warm air in his lungs, all delusion, and the wind ripple across his wings, white and firm and strong, and he screeched with delight. At last, he was away from the ground! He soared fast, into wafting white cloud, higher, higher, until the water turned into drifting crystals of ice, where the thunder boomed.

They seemed to hear something else through him, something warm and welcoming and infinitely sad, that enfolded him, that was steady and wordless and flowing, like a human voice singing, that was somewhere ahead in the white, white cloud. Then it all faded.

Stefile burrowed her face into the feathers that were still stiff and clean and warm. “Oh Wordy Beast,” she pleaded. “Don’t die. Please don’t die.”

Cara felt something throb, in a tiny hand.

“Stef!” she screeched suddenly, and pulled her out of the way, on to the stone.

In her new, raw, infant arm, still clenched, was the Flower she had plucked from the Tree. “Dear God, if you love anything make me not too late!” she prayed, plunging her good arm down through the open beak, deep into the beast’s gullet, past the stiffening tiny blade of a tongue.

“Cara!” cried Stefile, jumping up, grabbing her. “Cara, Cara, Cara!”

They watched in silence. The beast was still. “Too late,” sobbed Cara, the words rattling with the shudder of her breath. “Too late.”

A strand of flesh, as thin as a thread, leapt across the great wound. Very quickly, as if on a loom, threads of flesh crossed and recrossed each other. The torn edges plumpened and reached out. “Help to close the stomach, eh?” whispered Cara, and they knelt, and tried to ease the wound shut, as a net of white was woven with blinding speed. They had to pull their fingers clear of it. Cara’s severed arm reached across to help. And a third pair of hands joined to help them. The Baked Man knelt with them, and Stefile gave him a silent nod of thanks. Under their hands, they could feel the stomach fill, flooding with the organs of life. Suddenly there was a rasping of breath, and the white chest rose up, heaving. The flesh about the dim eyes strained to blink, and finally did, and the eyes freshly moistened, gleamed. The beast lolled his head, and sighed, and then, limply, rolled on to his side.

Stefile whooped with joy, and jumped up and down, and swung Cara about, and hugged the Baked Man. “
Jarwe! Jarwe, Jarwe, Hallu!”
she cried.

“Oh! I saw!” They felt the beast’s mind brush theirs with wonder. Then, disappointed, “I was flying.”

“Where is some water? Where is some water?” demanded Stefile, weeping.

“Can you hear it? Can you?” asked Asu Kweetar, raising his head and looking all around him.

“No,” whispered Cara, stroking his feathers, making him lie down again. The snow had stopped, and in the East the sky was silver, like his eyes.

They each knew, of course, what Cara had done. If she had kept only one petal of it behind . . . But none of them spoke of it. It was enough. They saw Asu Kweetar fly again. He rose up white as a cloud, and slightly pink with the dawn. He circled over their heads, making high and wild sounds.

“When the Dragon wakes,” he promised them, “we will see him together, each of you, and me.”

It was a long, slow walk out of the City. The Dogs wandered through it, dazed, their faces covered in ash, their minds somehow wounded. “What do we do now?” one of them asked Cara.

Cara was moved to pity. “Go home, back to your villages. Live there. Forget this,” she told them.

Beyond the City was a wide, marshy plain. The bogs were black with ash. They found a charred wooden barge and used that to find the river. The Baked Man went with them, playing jolly marching soldier songs on a small pipe. It was many days before they saw another human face. The face, a young fisherman’s, fell in amazement to see, floating in the air behind them, a human arm.

The Baked Man said goodbye to them at the Lower Falls, to see his people. It was he who sung the songs that told of what had happened. They were largely disbelieved, save for the fact that their singer resolutely refused to die.