They were netherlings. They would have more.
Because he would give it to them.
She stared out into the crowd, so far and still so vast. The tangles of purple flesh and black iron were so dense, yet she searched and she stared and she feared the moment her eyes would catch him and—
“Stop it.”
Kataria’s growl was low, threatening. Her glower was sharp and cast over her shoulder like a spear as she thrust it at Asper.
“Stop what?”
“Looking for him. You know he’s down there.”
Kataria held her gaze for a long, painful moment. And the moment stretched, long enough for her to realize the pain was not from Kataria’s eyes, but from the quake of her jaw as she fought to keep it fused shut.
“You were supposed to kill him,” she whispered through her teeth. “You said you would.”
“I didn’t.”
“You were supposed to—”
“I didn’t.” Kataria snarled. “And I can’t right now. I don’t know if I can ever.” She gestured to the blade tucked into the priestess’s sash. “And that’s not going to be as useful as you think it is.”
“I’m not going to use it on him,” Asper said.
“I know what you think you’re going to use it for.” The shict’s ears folded against her head. “Whatever it is that kills him or you . . . it’s not going to be me or that blade.”
“Then what?”
Kataria took another long swig of water. She looked at Asper and offered no words. She looked out over the field and said nothing. No poignancy in the silence, no meaning. No answer.
Asper’s fingers scraped an empty bowl. The last of the charbalm lay glistening upon Kataria’s pinkened skin. She set it back inside her satchel, hiked it up over her shoulder.
“I should go down to the barricade,” she said. “There might be wounded down there.”
The priestess left without another word exchanged between them.
Kataria had no objections leaving it at that. She could have easily pointed out that there were never any “wounded” amongst the Shen, merely the dead and the envious living. She could have stayed and talked her through whatever she felt after Sheraptus’s return, told her that he was whole and whatever the priestess had done to him wasn’t enough. She might have even felt better about her own failure to kill him.
But her ears were upright and rigid with the sound of dust settling upon stone. Her burned skin tingled with the sensation of being watched. And her teeth ground behind her lips as she rose and turned upon the withered, decaying creature standing a few steps above her.
“You are alive,” Mahalar observed. Not with any great relief.
“Yaike isn’t,” she replied. Not with any great sympathy.
“Their loss weighs on me heavily.”
“Then why did you send them out there to die?” At his raised eyeridge, she chuckled, an edge of hysteria to it. “You told Shalake to let me go attack Sheraptus alone. Shalake agreed to it. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He wouldn’t send them out against your wishes.” She pointed a finger at him. “So you changed your wishes.”
“It was no wish. I asked Yaike if he would save us all. He took his warriors to do just that.”
“By what? Ruining an ambush? Ruining all our chances for survival? I had him in my sights. I would have killed Sheraptus and we’d be facing a rabble of disorganized, leaderless animals instead of . . .” She swept a hand out over the battlefield. “That.”
“Whatever is ruined is made so by you.” There was no anger to his voice. He spoke in a cool, dusty observation. “You weren’t supposed to survive.”
“There’s a reason killing your own isn’t really a viable military strategy, you know. Mostly because it’s completely stupid and makes your own come back to beat the stuffing out of you.”
Mahalar did not so much ignore her as make her transparent. His dull, amber eyes stared through her. He shambled down the steps and walked through her, in front of her in one moment, behind her in the next. When she turned, his back was brazenly turned to her, his eyes down upon the barricades.
Lenk sat there, a silver pimple on a green backside, amidst the Shen that pointedly did not look at him. His sword lay in his lap, blood stained his hands, his eyes were somewhere far away.
“Did you hear it?” Mahalar asked.
“Hear what?”
“Him.”
“I saw him.”
“Then you saw what we all saw. You saw him cleave them apart, stain the sands with them, rip them open. You saw him bring down that monster, nearly kill the male. All on his own.”
“I saw what happened to him. I saw the way people looked at him when he came back.”
“But you didn’t hear him.” The wistfulness in his voice bordered on the obscene. “No one did, of course. If they had, they would try to kill him, as they killed the girl in the chasm, the rest of them. The voice has that effect on people who do not understand it.
“I do, though. I heard it. I heard it screaming in his head, clawing against his skull. It begged for more, cried out with joy, wept and wailed as he ripped them apart. It was just like I heard it the last time, when they all spoke out in unison, when their voices were as one and their swords slew demons.”
He exuded the kind of morbidly nostalgic sigh the rest of his scaly brethren did. It trailed from his lips on a cloud of dust.
“I didn’t understand what they were, anymore than you understand what he is. But I watched him since he came to Jaga. I knew that your death would enable him to kill. Kill the netherlings, kill Ulbecetonth, kill everything if we merely stepped out of his way.”
He shook his head. “I don’t blame you for surviving, no more than I blame myself for placing our survival above yours. But in doing so, you’ve ruined us, shict.” He twisted his gaze out to sea, to the dark storm clouds gathering over the waves. “But I suppose you can’t hear that, either.”
“I hear everything, lizard.” Her ears folded flat against her head. “And all I hear out of you are a bunch of reasons that fail to convince me that I shouldn’t kill you.”
“And yet . . .”
“And yet, I’m still aware of where we are: wedged up the collective rectums of a hundred reptiles who would be left leaderless against a horde of longfaces and who would probably eat me alive if I laid a hand on you.”
“Wisdom.”
“Patience,” Kataria corrected. “I can wait, until we’re all alive or you and I are almost dead. And then, despite the fact that I have no idea what it is that’s been leaking out of you all this time or if it’s edible, I’m going to pummel it out of you and eat it.”
Mahalar blinked. She cleared her throat.
“In front of you.”
The elder Shen frowned.
“While you’re still—”
“I understand,” Mahalar interrupted. “You are as obsessed with death as any of my people. If we come out of this, if my death will still soothe you, it is yours. But hold your . . .”
His voice trailed off into nothingness, as did his stare. Just as well, Kataria wasn’t listening anymore. Her eyes were drawn to the battlefield below. The horde of netherlings had begun to stir. Shouts of command, audible even from so far away, went up in a raucuous cacophony.
They were preparing for something.
She took off, shoving past the elder Shen and hurrying down the stairs to rejoin the barricade.
He stumbled, fell to his knees, didn’t bother to get up. He didn’t feel her shoulder bumping into him, couldn’t feel the stone beneath him. But he felt the island, he felt Jaga, the land he was forever bound to. He felt the breath of thousands of living things upon it go still. He felt the forests shuddering in a wind that wasn’t there. He felt the land itself tense, as though readying itself to be struck.
And at that moment, in a fleeting instance, he felt feet upon Jaga. Two. Then ten. Then hundreds. It was the pain of an old scar, the awareness of the space left by a lost limb, the feel of blood drying on his skin.
He knew this pain.
He knew these feet.
And in the sweep of his amber gaze to the sea, in the storm that had come from the sea to the shore, in the dusty and breathless gaze that emerged from his lips, he knew what was happening.
“He comes.”
“Is this really wise?” Yldus shouted to be heard over the rattle of metal and the roar of females. “Our last charge lost Vashnear. While I lament the loss of a male, I can’t help but feel . . .”
Undoubtedly, he had taken the hint that Sheraptus’s distant glare and hundreds of roaring females had strived so hard to convey. The male’s gaze was locked hard upon the warriors knotted around him as they howled with ecstasy for the impending command. The order had been given moments ago, its mere mention like the scent of blood to them, inspiring a frenzy they had no choice but to unleash.
His eyes found Xhai’s sikkhun as it panted heavily, its grin as broad and toothsome as the warriors surrounding it. The Carnassial herself glanced to him, an eyebrow cocked.
“This is what you command?” she grunted, the iron grate of her voice more than adequate to carry over the excited din.
A fever burned behind his eyes as he spurred his beast around and swept his gaze to the distant shore. A great mass of gray clouds came roiling over the horizon like a living thing, slithering across the sky to chase away wind and smoke alike. In the distance, a roll of thunder could be heard.
And in it, a voice.
His palm itched, burned where he had clenched the stone that had restored him. He could feel it as keenly as he heard the voice in the clouds, the scream on the wind.
Unbeckoned, the Gray One That Grins’s words returned to him.
“We are out of time,” Sheraptus muttered. “He comes.”
“Who?” Yldus asked.
“The weapon.” Sheraptus asked, turning a glower to Xhai. “You have it?”
She patted her back. An obsidian spearhead loomed over her shoulder, stark and black against the gray of the sky. Sheraptus nodded grimly, forced a hiss between his teeth.
“End this.”
Xhai offered a stiff nod before turning and sending a roar down the line.
“BRING UP THE FIRST!”
Her howl was echoed amongst the warriors, rattling through the crowd, twisting amongst the iron voices until it was without word or language, a mindless, bloodthirsty howl of anticipation. For the First was brought up for one reason and one reason only.
A reason that became clear, Sheraptus noted, in the sound that followed. Boots, thirty-three of them, marching with such rigid unison as to grind the howls and the bloodlust beneath their heels, heralded the arrival of the pride of Arkklan Kaharn.
They came with armor, thick black plates bound so tightly that the purple of their flesh was obscured completely. They came with helmets, crested and barbed and polished like the carapace of beetles. They came with spears and shields, jagged heads held high, crescents of metal clenched tightly against their bodies.
They came, as one. The only netherlings capable of following orders more complex than “stab this.”
The crowd of warriors parted like a tide to let them through. Even Xhai reined her beast aside to make way. They came to a sudden and disciplined halt, long enough to turn their visored gazes to Sheraptus in compulsory acknowledgment, before turning back to the field.
“QAI QA LOTH,” one of them at the head barked the order. She lowered her spear, thrust it out to the distant barricade. “KEQH QAI YUSH!”
And with the thunder of their boots, they marched out, spreading into a long line of black plate and speartips. Sheraptus had no smiles of pride for the sight that had won him many battles back in the Nether. He had no time.
A mutter of thunder caught his attention. Overhead, the storm clouds swept in, darker than even the halo of gray that encircled the mountain. The voice in the thunder was audible. The anger in its odor stung his nostrils.
The crown of storms had come. And its bearer came with them.
“We move,” Sheraptus snarled to Yldus and Xhai. “Be ready.”
“This isn’t fair, you know,” Denaos muttered as he peered over the barricade. “They’ve got giant, no-eyed beasts, ballistas that shoot metal stars, hundreds of crazy ladies that feel no pain and now they’ve got big, black bipedal bugs.”
He whirled around and glared at the assembled Shen.
“We’re supposed to have the unholy amalgamations between men and animals. They’re cheating.”
“They’re doing something,” Asper said from beside him, a hint of panic creeping into her voice. “They’re coming closer. Marching. They’re not charging. They charge, don’t they?”
“Sheraptus is moving with them,” Dreadaeleon whispered. “The other male, too. I can’t see them, but I can sense them.”
“So they’re making a push,” Lenk said as he pushed his way through the Shen to rejoin his companions, Kataria close behind. “Couldn’t expect them to be content with sending out warriors to get shot one by one forever.”
“That system was working perfectly fine,” Denaos griped.
“What do we do now, then?” Asper asked. “They’re coming closer. He’s going . . . they’re going to be on top of us in a moment. What’s the plan?”
“Plan?”
Shalake’s voice boomed with contempt as he strode to the front. His smile was so broad as to be visible even from beneath his skull headdress. He held his club up, flicking free a few lingering chunks of viscera that had been wedged between its teeth.
“Kill them all, of course.”
“Look, it’s not that I object to the conclusion,” Lenk said, rubbing his eyes, “just the logic behind it.”
“And the crazy, murderous lizardman that tried to kill us posing it,” Kataria added.
“Right, and the crazy, murderous lizardman that tried to kill us.”
“Death needs no logic. Death needs nothing but us,” Shalake replied coolly.
Lenk blinked. He turned to the Shen surrounding their leader. “So, do you guys just never tell him what he sounds like or . . .”
“Enough of plans and cowering behind coral like fish,” Shalake spat. He held his club high above his head, the stray chunks of meat and bone spattering down upon his headdress. “We will charge. We will meet them upon the field. We will make them bleed and we will show our ancestors that we are worthy of the sacrifices they made!”
The cheer that went up at his words was enthusiastic, if muted. Sensing this, Shalake turned to seek Gariath out in the crowd. One could rarely accuse the dragon man of trying to avoid detection, and one rarely did without detecting the dragonman’s fist in their face a moment later. But Gariath looked as though he attempted to shrink into the crowd, which would be impossible even if he weren’t tremendous and the color of blood. Shalake gestured to him with his club.
“And with the Rhega leading us,” he crowed, “the first to spill blood, the last to die, we will honor all the dead! Attala Jaga! Attala Rhega! Shenko-sa!”
“SHENKO-SA!” the Shen howled, vigorous and full of life they were desperate to spill.
Gariath was silent.
While it was difficult to read the face of a man who happened to have a snout instead of a nose and largely didn’t bother to convey emotions beyond rage, Lenk had known Gariath for some time. Lenk could see the shine in his eyes grow dull, the frown tug at the corners of his mouth, the tightness with which his earfrills were held.
“Gariath,” Lenk said hesitantly, “do you . . . want that?”
He looked at the young man, straight into his eyes. Possibly for the first time, Lenk thought. Because for the first time, in his brutish companion’s eyes, he could see the same doubt he had seen in Kataria’s eyes, the same doubt he felt in his own, the doubt he had thought Gariath simply didn’t feel.
“I am . . .” Gariath began to speak.
“Dead.”
Not that it was entirely unwarranted, but everyone turned up to see Mahalar, hunched and stooped and breathing heavily amidst the lizardmen. There was a direness to his stare that burned straight through his cowl.
“We are all dead.”
“Well, not yet,” Lenk said, glancing over his shoulder. “They’re moving kind of slow and—”
“And you have killed us.” He leveled a finger, half-sheathed in flesh, at Lenk. “You could have ended this. You could have saved us. You could have done something if only you had listened to me.”
“I don’t—”
“You didn’t,” Mahalar spat. “You didn’t and now it’s too late.” He pointed the finger at his temple. “Have you not heard it? Have you not felt it? She’s been calling to them this entire time.” The finger shifted overhead. “And now, he has come to answer.”
They looked, as one, to the darkness broiling overhead. No longer stormclouds, they were ink stains oozing out upon a pure gray sky. Thunder groaned overhead. The clouds split open. A single drop fell from above.
It plummeted to earth and splattered across Lenk’s face. Warm. Sticky. Red.
“Blood?” he whispered.
“Daga-Mer,” Mahalar said. “The consort comes to free his queen.”
The world was a riot of sound and color. The dawn had fled at the first sign of trouble and taken its gray draining with it. Now remained the broken purple and green flesh, the bloodstained coral, the howls from the netherlings and the roars sent up to meet them.
And through that, all the cacophonies and all the dizzying miasma, they could hear it in the echo of Mahalar’s words.
Somewhere, not far away enough: a single heartbeat. Slow. Steady. Inevitable.
“We must go,” Mahalar muttered, turning around to shuffle back up the stairs, “take the tome and—”
They didn’t even hear the arrow flying before it caught Mahalar in the shoulder. The elder collapsed to his knees with a hiss as a trail of earthen substance began to leak from the wound.
They turned and saw the line of netherlings bold and black and drawing closer. The crescents of their shields locked together defensively, the jagged heads of their spears pointed out like the legs of a great, shiny beetle.
“TOH! TOH! TOH!” they chanted with every careful step, not a crack in their great, black carapace showing.
Without breaking their march, two shields would occasionally pull apart. An archer would appear in the gap, fire off an arrow that flew noiselessly to send another Shen to the stones. The gap would slam shut as Shen arrows flew in retaliation.
