Path of the Crushed Heart: Book Four of the Serpent Catch Series Read online

  “The Rough is not kind to the old or young,” Phylomon answered. “I’d be surprised to find many of either.” Yet clearly his tone showed that he was worried, too.

  “Could they be Blade Kin spies of some sort?” Fava asked. That seemed to be the most reasonable explanation.

  “The Invisible Arm of the Brotherhood?” Phylomon said. “I suspect that you’re right, and I’ve been wondering about it, too. They very well could be spies, but even if they are, what harm can they do? We are closing in on Bashevgo and should reach it within a week, but.…”

  “But?”

  “But normally the guards aren’t so far away from their fortresses. Among the Blade Kin, any guards that have been posted would be within running distance of the city. That way, if they see an enemy coming, they could run to warn their troops.

  “But these six people accomplish nothing by coming with us—unless they hope to sabotage our attack.

  “Yet I don’t think that that is their plan. There aren’t enough of them to stop us. That doesn’t feel right. Still, something about them bothers me.…”

  “What?”

  “The fact that they are human at all,” Phylomon said. “If I were to post guards so far from Bashevgo, I’d post Neanderthals. They have better endurance than humans. They run faster in the snow, and would get a message back more quickly than these six could.”

  “Perhaps the Slave Lords fear that Neanderthals would run away?”

  “No,” Phylomon said. “Two hundred years ago that might have been true. But today most of the Neanderthal Blade Kin are as faithful as any human.…”

  “Do you want me to try to talk to the six?” Fava suggested, “Find out what they are doing?”

  Phylomon stirred the fire so that it kicked up some embers, and Fava pulled her cloak tightly around her.

  “No,” he said at last. “If they are Blade Kin, they would arrange an accident for you. Perhaps it is only chance that has brought them to us.”

  Throughout the day Fava studied the humans from her campsite. The six had congregated in a small group, and sat around a fire talking and laughing among themselves.

  Stavan went and spoke to them, but moments later, when Darrissea tried to join the group, the six suddenly fell quiet.

  Some turned away, others went off to sleep under their furs. Watching them gave Fava a shiver, and she looked over to Phylomon. The blue man sat frowning, squinting as he steadily regarded the strangers. He had noticed their odd behavior, too.

  ***

  Chapter 4: Winners and Losers

  Fourteen days after Mahkawn left South Bay, his great iron ships began plowing through the ice at the Straits of Zerai to reach the docks at Bashevgo.

  For hours they moved at a slow grind, crashing through the ice again and again, the gleaming lights upon the hills of the city beckoning them, until at last he was forced to give up hope of reaching the docks.

  The ship’s captains turned off the engines, settled for the night, and let the ice freeze around the fleet.

  At dawn Mahkawn climbed down from the ship and trudged through a thick fog over the frozen sea for the last two miles until he reached the city of Bashevgo and made his triumphant entrance.

  There was no cheering, no crowds, yet Mahkawn felt his victory keenly. In history books children of future generations would read of the Black Cyclops and his conquest of the Rough.

  From the basalt walls of the city, Mahkawn climbed onto the gleaming golden laser cannon that sat atop the Wall of Five Hundred Cannons, which guarded the straits below, and as the morning sun touched upon him, he gazed down into the white sea of fog and ice and fired laser blasts to cut the ice, freeing the black ships so that they could enter the harbor.

  Afterward, he rode the Death’s Head Train from Bashevgo to Mount Sidon, which hunched above the city.

  From the days of the Starfarers, there were still vast buildings on the mount, constructed from exotic materials, designed with otherworldly domes and spires.

  Beside these were newer buildings.

  Three hundred years after the Starfarers had built here, captive Neanderthals had crafted monolithic buildings in black stone and then decorated them with horrific statues and columns.

  Historians called it the “Decadent” period of architecture. Somehow, the older structures seemed to be the newest, the shiniest, the most radiant.

  Mahkawn’s private train—the Death’s Head Train—was a macabre relic from that Decadent period. It had a giant engine of black iron, and upon its front was a bas relief of a Neanderthal’s skull. The train seemed to radiate evil, and no one could mistake it for anything other than the personal trans-port of the Black Cyclops.

  After the thirty-minute ride, Mahkawn went to meet Lord Tantos in his palace chambers.

  The Lord seemed distracted, yet Tantos spent the day debriefing Mahkawn meticulously, exacting death counts of Blade Kin versus numbers of slaves taken, ammunition spent versus booty captured.

  Mahkawn delivered his records, listing the names, home cities, and description of each captured slave.

  All in all, the mission had been a financial success—fifty thousand slaves taken, versus twenty-seven hundred Blade Kin dead.

  The balance sheets showed that amount Lord Tantos feared he might have “squandered” on weaponry and salaries would be earned back more than triple when booty from the expedition was sold off, along with the excess slaves.

  Then of course, there was the land. When the Mastodon Arm of the Brotherhood crushed the Hukm in the south, there would be hundreds of thousands of square miles of land, much of it already under cultivation.

  All in all, it was a glorious war.

  Yet near the end of the debriefing, Tantos took the log of Smilodon Bay and read over the names. He asked with a tone of concern in his calm voice, “You did not capture the Starfarer?”

  “No,” Mahkawn repeated for the third time during the debriefing.

  “I would be happier,” Tantos urged at last, “if you would lay his dead body before me.”

  The Lord drew back his hood, exposing his own red symbiote. No one knew better than Tantos how hard it was to kill someone protected by such a creature. He peered down at the book, stuck one red finger on a name, read off Tull’s description, height, and weight.

  “And this Tull Genet? Lord Atherkula informs me that this big Tcho-Pwi killed two of his sorcerers, along with one of our Crimson Knights. He suggests that we make an example of him, let him die in the cage of bones. Have you put him to death yet?”

  “No,” Mahkawn said, controlling his anger, wondering how Atherkula had sent word so fast. “The death sentence is perhaps deserved, but the young slave is good, strong fighting stock. I wish him to fight in the arena, to earn the privilege of becoming Blade Kin. He also has training as a Spirit Walker. Rather than waste him, I believe he might come to serve in place of one of the sorcerers he slew.”

  “You think he would serve us, fresh from capture?” Tantos asked. “Dubious. I doubt you could break him. If he fights as well in the arena as he does in the wild, he might well win his life. Yet I suspect that he’ll remain Pwi at heart, and try to escape the first chance he gets.”

  “We have caught him twice. We could catch him again,” Mahkawn said.

  “I think,” Tantos said, “perhaps Atherkula is right. Maybe we should execute him outright.”

  “Humor me,” Mahkawn asked and Tantos looked at him askance. “I want this one, badly.”

  “Very well,” Tantos said, obviously swayed by his good mood. “I will give him to you, but under one condition. At the spring festival you may let him fight in the arena, but on the morning before his first fight, you will take a hammer and break both of his thumbs.”

  Mahkawn frowned. “But he will not be able to hold a weapon! He will lose power to his blows!”

  “Tull is a big man, an accomplished fighter. Anyone who can strike through the armor of a Crimson Knight should not be allowed to fight in the ar
ena without a handicap. Don’t you agree?”

  One could not disagree with Lord Tantos. It was far too dangerous.

  “If you wish, my lord,” Mahkawn said, thinking, Perhaps it would be kinder to execute Tull outright.

  Tantos closed the books. “You did well,” he said, “yet I fear it may all be for nothing.”

  Tantos stood and walked to his window, looking to the north. In his shadowed hall the roaring fire highlighted the red hues of his cheeks. “In the past month we have had numerous reports of white snakes in the ice, attacking our citizens. You yourself were attacked by the Creators. We’ve had to pull our Blade Kin out of the northern reaches of the Rough. In southern Craal, thousands of people are dying by drinking strange parasites carried in the water. We must strike back at the Creators soon.”

  “I would lead such an attack, my lord,” Mahkawn asked, hoping that in this he might be honored a second time.

  Tantos continued staring north. “We cannot attack the Creators until we know where to find them. They’re sending gray birds to watch our city walls, and I have some of my Blade Kin prepared to follow the birds on hover sleds, like bees to their hive, when they return to the Creators. Within a few weeks we hope to know where to hunt. You will be among the ranks of that attacking force, but I myself will take the lead.”

  “As you please, my lord,” Mahkawn answered, dismissed.

  He left the palace while the sun hung low over the snowfields, and as he watched his hot breath steam from him, Mahkawn thought of dinner. The cold was causing the arthritis in his left shoulder to flare up. A sour mood settled on him.

  I’ve been defeated, he thought. He had hoped that this campaign in the Rough, a campaign he had prepared for over fifteen years, would be his last, but now it seemed the Creators conspired to rob him of peace.

  Even Atherkula, with his wagging tongue, had managed to rob Mahkawn by convincing Lord Tantos to take Tull’s life.

  Mahkawn thought briefly of Tull, of his little home in Smilodon Bay, the simple pleasures Tull had taken with his wife and child. The fact that Mahkawn had irretrievably lost that option as a way of life made him feel even more defeated.

  He thought of his own favorite, of Pirazha in her stone house, and the kwea of his time spent with her.

  It had been months since he had spawned with her, and he thought longingly of her golden eyes, of the orange hair going silver, of the sagging breasts with the dark nipples that had suckled his children.

  I’ve been too long at sea, too long without sex, Mahkawn told himself.

  He went to the Death’s Head Train. Right now he needed Pirazha more than food or drink; he needed the sweet perfume of her sweat, the embrace of her arms, the taste of her kisses.

  He convinced himself that he should spawn, but a small voice inside ridiculed him: She breeds, but gives you only Thralls. Why not find a woman more worthy? Besides, is it really spawning anymore, now that she is past the age of childbearing?

  Mahkawn answered himself angrily, almost defensively, No, but I shall spawn with the Thrall anyway. I’ve earned that much.

  Mahkawn made his way to her cottage, a defeated man.

  ***

  Chapter 5: An Attack

  The Hukm climbed down from the coastal mountains, and for several days they made good time over the Mammoth Run Plateau.

  The glistening Dragon Spines rose above the plain, seeming to march nearer with every step. Often during the nights, Darrissea would stop in the moonlight and look behind her. The Hukm’s great mammoth herd stretched behind for miles in the darkness, like black pearls on ivory satin. In the mountains she’d never really seen what a huge company she had joined.

  The white snakes never attacked them. Phylomon surmised that the pounding feet of the mammoth herd kept them at bay. Or perhaps the mammoths and their Hukm masters merely confused the creatures. They had been created to target humans and Pwi, after all.

  So the Meat People stayed hidden deep within the Hukm’s ranks.

  During the nights, sometimes, a thousand Hukm at once would take out their giant wooden flutes and play as they traveled.

  Their melodies seemed to Darrissea to be fluid, quirky—the sounds of windsong and rainsong and women pining for men on a lonely afternoon.

  The Hukm did not play human music—no vibrant dance tunes, nothing one could sing to.

  Darrissea at first imagined that each piece was improvised. Yet as she listened, she found that all the Hukm played together, high reedy flutes harmonizing with deep basses. But in her weeks of travel, she never heard the same song twice.

  Sometimes when she looked at the Hukm in the early morning, she would see them standing or sitting beneath the trees, hairy giants tending their mammoth herds, and she’d hear the music in her head. And for a moment she could almost imagine what it was like to be a Hukm, a creature of the field, living in isolation, the peacefulness of bluebottle flies buzzing around your head and a few green leaves to chew.

  Sometimes they’d come to a frozen river, and the Hukm would break the ice and dive, playing like otters, steam rising from their wide nostrils, and she could hear that in their music, too—joy, celebration.

  But in the evenings she would watch the Hukm women practice with their great war staves, whirling the clubs and smashing one another faster than she’d have believed possible for such large beasts.

  Even in practice they fought like berserkers, often drawing blood and knocking one another into the snow. Yet the Hukm played no war music, nothing with marches or the pounding of blood in it, and Fava sensed that this upcoming battle, these ages spent fighting the Blade Kin, were some alien thing thrust upon the Hukm, something they would never fully comprehend or embrace.

  Darrissea had not learned the Hukm finger language, but she spoke with Fava about it one day, and Fava said, “You are right. Even after all these hundreds of years fighting the Blade Kin, the Hukm still do not have a word for war.”

  Darrissea pondered that, and wished that the need for such a word would be done away.

  During the days, Darrissea and Stavan often talked after sword practice or in the evenings. Though she was drawn to him, she felt guilty for it.

  She’d watch Fava’s back during the night as she rode her mammoth and spoke finger language with the Hukm, and knew that Fava felt bereft. There was no one for her to talk to.

  The Okanjara were marching somewhere south of the camp, so that there were no other Neanderthals among the Hukm.

  Phylomon remained aloof, self-absorbed. The few odd humans in camp were a little tribe to themselves, which left only Darrissea and Stavan for Fava to speak with, and Stavan’s attempts at conversation with Fava were always half-hearted.

  He spoke no Pwi, and Fava’s English was terrible, deeply nasal in accent with greatly shortened vowels.

  After nearly a week, as Darrissea rode next to Fava one night, Fava said simply, “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Darrissea asked.

  “For being my friend. For staying close when I need to talk.”

  Darrissea found that her throat felt tight. “You’re welcome.”

  “I know that you would prefer to spend time with Stavan,” Fava said. “Your eyes shine when you are near him. I think you should spend more time with him.”

  “You wouldn’t feel bad?”

  “If I am feeling bad, I’ll know where to find you.” With those words, Fava gave permission for Darrissea to leave.

  Darrissea immediately slowed her mammoth until it came even with Stavan’s, and she felt as if she had just made a promising change in her life.

  That night, when the Hukm stopped to give the mammoths a brief rest, Stavan invited Darrissea to ride with him for the rest of the night, and he kept his arms around her, warming her back with his body, resting his thinly bearded chin on her shoulder.

  He snuggled, as if they were longtime lovers even though they had spoken little.

  “Tell me more about yourself,” Darrissea asked as they
rode. “I don’t even know your last name.”

  “Toucher, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I … don’t really know. My father had a last name, Toucher. I guess that would be my name.”

  Darrissea turned to the side, gazed into his gray eyes to see if he was telling the truth. He really didn’t know his last name, she decided. “Of course Toucher is your last name,” she said.

  Stavan nodded thoughtfully, as if he had just figured something out.

  Darrissea asked, “Where are you from?”

  “North,” Stavan said. “The mountains.”

  “What? No city?”

  “No. We lived in the mountains. My father is a trapper, and an ivory carver.”

  “And your mother, was she Pwi?” He did not look Pwi, but sometimes he acted it, between his openness and his mannerisms. There was something odd to them.

  “No, she’s—you ask too many questions.”

  His mother could be a dryad, she suddenly thought, a keeper of the trees. That would make sense, why he lived in the mountains, whey he acted so strange. Children born of dryads were often quite handsome, she’d heard. She felt guilty for prying.

  “I’m sorry,” Darrissea said. “I only want to know you. I want to know everything about you.”

  “I’m hungry for you,” he whispered savagely, “that’s all you need to know.”

  Though the night was cold, Darrissea began to perspire. She leaned back, kissed him.

  Stavan’s lips and tongue tasted sweet, sweeter than another man’s, almost as if the faint scent of honey lingered there, and his lips felt faintly warm. Such kisses came from dryads she knew.

  She wondered at that. Was he really part dryad? Before she could consider the problem more, she found her head beginning to spin, as if she’d drunk too much wine.