They Fly at Ciron Read online

Uk had an expansive, gentle humor he used largely to mask from his fellows a real range of information and some thoughtful speculation—while Mrowky was, in simple words, a loud, little, stupid man, who’d been called and cursed by just those words enough times by enough people so that, if he did not actually believe they were true, he knew there was something to them. Thus the friendship of the big soldier, who was also smart, flattered Mrowky. Both could complain about one another in fiery terms, starred with scatology and muddied with proto-religious blasphemies.

  But they were devoted.

  Perhaps a little of that devotion came from the knowledge both shared, that their time in the Myetran army had taught them: life in the midst of battle was on another plane entirely from that in which relationships could be parsed (a concept Uk would understand) or parceled out (an idea Mrowky might follow), analyzed, or made rational.

  With ten other soldiers, Mrowky and Uk had been stationed just along the turn-off at the common’s south corner. (Other units of a dozen each had been deployed at seven more points around the green.) When the first villagers hurried by, still unsteady from the grating whine of the high speakers and more or less oblivious to the soldiers (basically because they were just not used to seeing soldiers standing quietly in the shadow), light from an opened door spilled over the flags.

  A young redheaded woman passed through it, as a young redheaded man—clearly a brother or a cousin—came up beside her. They disappeared, displaced by others rushing to join the villagers gathering on the grass. But Mrowky had given Uk an elbow in the forearm; and, in the darkness, his breathing had increased to a tempo Uk knew meant the little man now had the grin which said, “I like that girl—she’s hot!”

  When the lights had rolled onto the common, Uk and Mrowky had moved up to the edge of the illuminated space, per orders. As, with his microphone, Nactor had ridden out to address the villagers, Uk wondered, as he did so often, just out of sight, whether the populace ever really saw them—or not. Just how aware were the stunned and disoriented peasants of the soldiers in their armor, waiting for the word?

  In two years, Mrowky and Uk had been through this maneuver seventeen times in seventeen villages. It had taken the first half dozen for Uk to realize that it did not matter whether the villagers surrendered or not; the attack came in either case. Over those half dozen times, Uk had listened to Nactor’s amplified address, watched the elimination of the spokesman (that’s how it was referred to: though in a half a dozen villages now, the spokesman had been a woman), and awaited the final order with a growing distaste—till, by the seventh time, he’d begun to block out the whole thing.

  Over the first ten times (which is how many times it had taken Mrowky to learn what Uk had learned in six), Mrowky had watched the process with hypnotic fascination, awed at its duplicity, its daring, its distractionary efficacy. But his attention span would have been strained by any more; so now he too gave no more mind to the details than did the other soldiers.

  When the attack sounded you pulled out your sword, moved forward, and began to swing. You tried not to remember who or what you hit. A lot of blood spurted on your armor, and got in the cracks, so that you got sticky at knees and elbows and shoulders; otherwise it was pretty easy. The villagers were naked—most of them—and scared and not expecting it.

  Among his first encounters, Uk, out of what he’d thought was humanitarianism, had—with some forethought—not always swung and cut to kill. It seemed fitting to give the pathetic creatures at least a chance to live. Three days later, though, he’d seen what happened to the ones who were just badly wounded: the long loud deaths, the maggoty gashes, the bone-breaking fevers, the cracked lips of the dying…After that, from the same humanitarianism, he’d used his skills to become as deadly as he could with each blade swing at the screaming, clamoring folk—who simply had to be decimated.

  That was orders.

  Indeed, there was some skill to it—like avoiding the flesh-burning power beams lancing through the mayhem from the mounted officers. Best thing to do (Uk had explained to Mrowky a long time back, when the little guy’d gotten a burn on his right hip), was to glance up from the carnage now and then and keep Kire’s horse a little before you, not drifting too far to the left or the right of it—since the mounted lieutenants had the sense (most of them) to avoid powergunning down each other.

  You fought.

  And you tried not to remember individual slashes and cuts you dealt out to bare shoulders and ribs and necks. (After the diseases and lingering deaths among the wounded in that first campaign, Uk tried for lots of necks.) Sometimes, though, an incident would tear itself free in the web of perception and refuse to sink back into the reds and blacks and chaotic grays and screams and crashes and howls that were the night.

  When what happened next stopped happening—

  But it was too violent and too painful for Rahm to recall with clarity.

  He remembered walking backward, shouting, then—when Tenuk fell against him, like a bubbling roast left too long on the spit and so hot he burned Rahm’s arms—screaming. He remembered his feet’s uneasy purchase on the flags because of the blood that sluiced them. He remembered a dark-glazed crock smashing under a horse hoof. (With the soldiers, horror. spread the village.) He remembered running to the town’s edge, to find the gravefield shack aflame.

  Ienbar had called, then shouted, then shrieked, trying to get past the fire from the mounted soldiers’ muzzles; then Rahm hadn’t been able to see Ienbar at all for the glowing smoke, and there’d been the smell of all sorts of things burning: dried thatch, wood, bedding, charred meat. Rahm had run forward, toward the fire, till the heat, which had already blinded him, made him—the way someone with a whip might make you—back away, turn away, run away, through the town, that, as his sight came back under his singed brows, with the chaos and the screams around him, was an infernal parody of his village.

  *

  Uk pulled his sword free to turn in the light from one of the towers, parked by an uncharacteristically solid building with a stone foundation. Something was wrong with Uk’s knee; it had been throbbing on and off all last week; for three days now it had felt better, but then, only minutes ago, some soldier and some peasant, brawling on the ground in the dark, had rolled into him—Uk had cried out: it was paining him again. Turning to go toward the lit building, he’d raised his sword arm to wipe the sweat from under his helmet rim with his wrist—and smeared blood across his face, sticking his lashes together. But that had happened before. Grimacing at his own stupidity, he’d tried to blink the stuff away.

  While he blinked, Uk recognized, between the struts of the light-tower, from the diminutive armor and a motion of his shoulder, Mrowky—who was holding somebody. Three steps further, knee still throbbing, Uk stopped and grinned. The little guy had actually got the redheaded girl—probably snagged her as she’d fled the common’s carnage.

  You’re a lucky lady, Uk thought. Because Mrowky would do his thing with her, maybe punch her up a little, afterward, just to make her scared, then run her off. That was Mrowky’s style—even though, when a whole village had nearly gone into a second revolt over the petitions, laments, and finally rebellious preachings of a woman raped by a soldier, Nactor himself had harangued the troops a dozen campaigns back: “I don’t care what it is—boy, woman, or goat! You put a cock in it, you put your sword through it when you finish with it! That’s an order—I don’t need to deal with things like this!” But Mrowky wasn’t comfortable—nor was Uk—killing someone just because you’d fucked her. And rarely did a woman carry on afterward like the one who’d raised Nactor to his wrath, especially if you scared her a little. Though others among the soldiers, Uk knew, honestly didn’t care.

  Really though, Uk thought, if Mrowky was going to do her now, he’d best take her out from under the light—behind the building; not for propriety, but just because Nactor or one of the officers might ride by. (No, Uk reflected, Mrowky wasn’t too swift.) Favoring his right leg, Uk
started forward to tell his friend to take it around the corner.

  The redhead, Uk saw, over Mrowky’s shoulder, had the stunned look of all the villagers. She was almost three inches taller than the little guy. Mrowky had one hand wrapped in her hair, so that her mouth was open. As his other hand passed over it, the redhead’s arm gave a kind of twitch.

  Which is when Uk heard the howl.

  From the darkness, black hair whipping back and a body under it like an upright bull’s, the big man rushed, naked and screaming. Rush and scream were so wild that, for a moment, .Uk thought they had nothing to do with Mrowky and the girl; they would simply take this crazed creature through the light and into the dark again. Then Uk glimpsed the wild eyes, that, as the light lashed across them, seemed explosions in the man’s head. The teeth were bared—the image, Uk thought later, of absolute, enraged, and blood-stopping evil. Under his armor, chills reticulated down Uk’s shoulders, danced in the small of Uk’s back.

  The wild peasant was heading right toward Mrowky and the girl.

  All Uk had a chance to do was bark Mrowky’s name (tasting blood in his mouth as he did so); the careening man collided with them; for a moment he covered—seemed even to absorb—them both. Then he whirled. With a great sweep of one arm, he tore Mrowky’s helmet from his head—which meant the leather strap must have cut violently into Mrowky’s neck before it broke—if it didn’t just tear over his chin and break Mrowky’s nose. The big peasant whirled back; and Uk saw that he had Mrowky by the neck, in both of his hands—the guy’s hands were huge, too! And Mrowky was such a little guy—

  With sword up and aching knee, Uk lunged.

  The big man bent back (a little taller than Uk, thicker in the chest, in the arms, in the thighs), drew up one bare foot and kicked straight out. The kick caught Uk in the belly. Though he didn’t drop it, Uk’s sword went flailing. He reeled away, tripped on something, and went down. Blinking and losing it all because of the blood in his eyes, Uk pushed himself up again; but the redhead was gone (doubtless into the dark he’d been about to urge Mrowky into) and the peasant, still howling, was flinging—yeah, flinging!—Mrowky from one side to the other, backing away. Mrowky’s head—well, a head doesn’t hang off anyone’s neck that way! And the peasant was backing into the dark—was gone into it, dragging Mrowky with him!

  Uk got out a curse, got to his feet, got started forward—and tripped on another villager who was actually moving. Wildly, he chopped his blade down to still her. (Yeah, in the neck!) Then he started off in the direction they’d gone, but not fast enough, he knew—damn the knee!

  *

  On the roof of Hara’s hut, Qualt crouched, watching Rimgia, watching Rahm, watching Uk. (But he tried not to watch what Rahm was doing to the little soldier whose helmet Rahm had torn free.) Qualt turned away. Behind him something huge and dark and shadowy spread out from him on both sides, moving slightly in the breeze, like breathing—watching too. When he looked back, Qualt saw Rimgia stagger into the shadows around the council-house corner—and, in the shadows, saw Abrid run up to her, seize her by the shoulder, demand if she were all right, and, somehow, over the length of his own request, realize that she was not; and slip his other arm around her. Looking right and left, and totally unaware of what had gone on just around the corner (Rimgia’s eyes were fixed and wide, as if she were seeing it all again), Abrid helped his sister off along the council-building wall.

  Qualt had gripped the edging of twigs and thatch so tightly that even on his hard and callused palms it left stinging indentations. His hands loosened now, and he moved forward, as if to vault down and pursue them. But the thing behind him—did it reach for his shoulder? No, for it had not quite the hands we do. But a dark wing swept around before him, like a shadow come to life to restrain whoever would bolt loose.

  And turning, Qualt whispered, words lurching between heart beats that still near deafened, halting as the trip from one roof—over the violence—to another: “… this is—what thou seest if …thou flyest at Çiron!

  Something had happened to Rahm—not to the part of him staggering through the chaos of villagers and soldiers. Rather, it happened to the part growing inside—the thing that had begun forming when the bearded rider had shot Kern. It had needed a long time to grow: minute after minute after minute of mayhem. But the growing thing finally got large enough to fill up and join with something in Rahm’s hands, in Rahm’s thighs, in Rahm’s gut. It filled him, or became him, or displaced him—however he might have said it, they all referred to the same. And when, from the darkness, Rahm had seen Rimgia and the little soldier leaning against the council building, saw him touch her that way in the overhead light, the thing inside, jerking and bloating to its full size, had taken him over, muscle and mouth, foot and finger.

  When what happened next finished happening, Rahm had dragged the soldier halfway through the town—till he no longer pulled at Rahm’s wrists, till he no longer flailed, struggled, gurgled, till he was limp and still and hung from Rahm’s grip, as Rahm stood in darkness—choking out one and another rib-wrenching sob.

  Horses’ hooves struck around him. Rahm heard a shout beside him. A blade—Rahm saw firelight run up sharpened metal—cut at his shoulder; and a sound that was not a sob but a roar tore up out of him. He’d hurled the little soldier’s corpse away (the flung body struck the sword from the soldier’s hand, knocked the soldier free of his horse) and fled—till much later Rahm hurled his own body, nearly a corpse, down among the foothills.

  He lay in the woods at the mountains’ base, his cheek on his wrist; tears ran across the bridge of his nose, slippery over the back of his hand. Breath jerked into his lungs every half minute.

  He lay in the leaves, gasping. His eyes boiled in their bone cauldrons. His teeth clenched so tightly, it was surprising the enamel of one or another molar did not crack. His body shook now and again, as if someone struck him hugely, on the head, on the foot. What kept going through his mind was, mostly, names. Names. In the dark woods, he tried to remember all the names he had spoken that day, from the time he’d first reached the field to the time he’d stood in the common. He would start to go through them, get lost—then try doggedly to start again, to remember them all this time. (What were they, again? What were they…?) Because, he knew, a third of those names—children’s, mothers’, fathers’, friends’—were no longer names of live people. And they mustn’t be forgotten. But his body, finally, shook a little less. They must not… Without his mind ever really stilling—

  —dawn struck Rahm awake with gold.

  He rolled and stood in a motion, blinking to erase unbearable dreams. He stood a long time. Once he turned, looked down the wooded slope, then off into the trees either side. He began to shake. Then, possibly to stop the shaking, he started to walk—lurching, rather, for the first few minutes—upward. Possibly he walked because walking was most of what he’d been doing for the past week. And the relief from walking, the feeling of a wander at its end, the astonishing feeling of coming home—something terrible had happened to that feeling.

  Rahm walked—

  Once in a while, he would halt and shake his head, very fast—a kind of shudder. Then he walked again.

  The trees thinned. As Rahm stumbled over the higher stones, bare rock lifted free of vegetation, to jut in crags around him—or to crumble under uncertain handholds. Soon he was climbing more than walking. After an hour—or was it two?—he came round a ledge, to find himself at a crevice. Fifteen feet high, a cave mouth opened narrowly before him.

  CHAPTER IV

  FROM inside, a flapping sounded—as of a single wing. Rahm eased along the ledge. Still numb, he had no sense of danger. His motivation was a less than passive curiosity—more the habitual actions of someone often curious in the past.

  A fallen branch, split along its length, lay on the rock. Morning light reflected on the clean, inner wood, still damp from the breaking. Like metal. Like a polished sword gleaming in firelight—

  Ra
hm grabbed up the stick, as if seizing the reality would halt the memory. He shook it—as if to shake free the image from it. Then, a moment on, the shaking turned to a hefting. One hand against the stone wall, the other holding the stick, Rahm stepped within the cave mouth, narrowing his eyes. A slant beam from a hole toward the roof lit something gray—something alive, something shifting, something near the rocky roof. That something moved, moved again, shook itself, and settled back.

  Rahm stepped further inside. Looking up, frowning now, he called out—without a word.

  A mew returned.

  Rahm took another step. The gray thing made the flapping sound again.

  As his eyes adjusted to the shadow, Rahm could make out its kite shape. It hung in a mass of filaments—one wing dangling. A tangle of webbing filled most of the cavity. Ducking under strands, Rahm took another step. Leaves ceased to crumble under his heel. Within, the softer soil was silent. He glanced when his foot struck something: a bone chuckled over rock. Rahm looked up again, raised his branch, brought its end near the trapped creature.

  He didn’t touch it. Between the branch’s end and the leathery wing were at least six inches. But suddenly the mewing rose in pitch, turning into a screech.

  Rahm whirled—because something had flung a shadow before him, passing through the light behind:

  Suspended nearly four feet from the ground, a bulbous… thing swayed within the cave entrance, dropped another few inches—much too slowly to be falling—then settled to the ground. It scuttled across the rock, paused, made a scritting noise, then danced about on many too many thin legs. Rahm jabbed his stick toward it.

  Mandibles clicked and missed.

  It ran up the wall, then leapt forward. Rahm struck at it and felt the stick make contact. The thing landed, spitting, and hopped away, one leg injured and only just brushing the earth. Behind it trailed a gray cord—the thickness, Rahm found himself thinking, of the yarn Hara might use on her loom.