Blood Of Gods

CHAPTER 13

Someone was watching. Bardiya could see figures in the distance as he sang; black dots that spread out along the desert’s hazy white horizon behind the procession. He could not tell for sure who they were-if they were human, elf, or animal-but he was convinced it wasn’t his eyes playing tricks. When the convoy shifted directions, so did the pursuers. When the column turned about to march back, they hastily disappeared like soldier ants retreating into a threatened anthill.

Even more interesting was that no one else seemed to notice. Even the elves, with their far superior vision, made no mention of their presence. Perhaps they knew of the pursuers and simply didn’t care. Or perhaps, in their overconfidence, they never entertained the thought that they could be hunted.

His foot caught in a shallow hole in the sand, and he stumbled, the song dying on his lips. The ox harness fastened around his neck caused his back to buckle. All thoughts of Ashhur’s grace or secret scouts left his mind, replaced by pain. He fell to his knees, the rear of the heavy wooden harness smacking the back of his skull. Stars burst in his vision.

“Stand up,” someone commanded, followed by a snap and a pinprick of pain in his shoulder. Then came another crack and another small ache. The soldiers were whipping him again. Bardiya lifted his head, peering at them through squinting eyes, and saw a few of them smiling. He wondered if they would get such joy from torturing him if they knew how little it hurt. Truth be told, the ache in his soul was far worse than anything physical they could do to him.

Calloused hands were on him then, and voices shouted for the whipping to stop. Bardiya turned to see Gordo and Tulani Hempsmen grabbing his shoulders, urging him to stand.

“Please, Bardiya,” Tulani said, fear in her eyes. “You must get up.”

“That’s right,” said her husband. “If you stay down, more of us will be hurt.”

They backed away from him. Bardiya nodded, dug his fingers into the sand and rose on popping knees. Keisha, Gordo and Tulani’s daughter, appeared between her parents. Her rosebud lips were cracked and peeling, as was her brown skin from too long a time spent beneath the brutal desert sun. Little mute Marna came next, followed by Tuan Littlefoot and the brothers Allay and Yorn Loros, followed soon after by old Onna. Voices both human and elven shouted for the column to keep moving, but the people of Ang ignored them. Before long most of the three hundred stood before him, the chains binding their wrists hanging, their eyes solemn, their posture slumped. It was a brutal sight, one no song could hide: Their hope was gone.

“Why are we not moving?” asked that familiar, grating, inhuman voice. A massive charger approached, Clovis Crestwell sitting atop it. As had become the norm, Clovis appeared sickly, his body losing the heft it’d had when the force first rode into Ang. His neck was now slender as a reed, his eyes sunken into his skull, his lips pulled back to reveal chipped teeth and white gums. The man was wasting away before their eyes.

Clovis approached him, having to look up at Bardiya, though he was on horseback.

“Set your people to march, Gorgoros,” he said, his red eyes leaking pink tears. The appalling man peered toward Bardiya’s throng, who were now huddling close together, surrounded by soldiers with pikes. Clovis’s gaze fell on Keisha. “Or would you prefer it if we tortured another of the children? Perhaps that one, the one with the large eyes and sweet voice?”

“No,” Bardiya murmured. He bowed his head. “We will march.”

“Good. Make sure they all keep pace.”

He tried to do just that, but it was difficult to keep three hundred people from stumbling. At one point Onna’s walking stick caught in his chains and snapped, and he collapsed. A group of the olive-skinned elves with clubs beat the man senseless, then beat a young woman named Nina who urged them to stop. Before they started moving again, five people had been sent to Bardiya to mend their broken bones, their bruises, their internal and external bleeding. But no matter how well he healed their bodily wounds, he could do nothing to repair their fractured souls.

Still they were kept walking, made to suffer lashes and still more beatings. By the time the sun began to set, Bardiya was exhausted. The amount of energy it took to heal the injured drained him, making it difficult to lift a foot off the ground. Yet he persisted. Yet he went on. My faith in Ashhur’s teachings will not waver. I will be an example to them all.

That night, as the rest of his people slept beneath the cold desert moon, Bardiya wept.

The next day brought more of the same: lashings and insults, flying fists, rapes, and beaten men, women, and children. Bardiya swallowed it all, unwilling to lift a finger in violence. The song will take me home, he thought as air filled his lungs. But even that seemed not to help. As he took one step after another, closing his eyes to let the song fill his soul, what he saw behind his eyelids was the scene in the mangold grove the day his parents were butchered. He saw himself lunging with a tree limb, swatting aside the Dezren murderers as if they were flies, and pinning their leader, Ethir Ayers, to a tree trunk. For the first time since burying his parents, he dared wonder if it had been wrong to let those murderous elves live.

A shrill cry rang out, and the procession came to a halt. All singing stopped. Elf and soldier alike were thrown into a panic, the soldiers running past the cluster of prisoners, with weapons drawn. Bardiya turned about, for a moment believing their stalkers had made themselves known, but when he looked to the horizon, all he saw was an endless sea of white sand. Perhaps it was all in my head after all.

There was a flurry of activity toward the rear of the procession. Even standing at least three heads taller than the largest wagon, he still could not make out what was going on. Forms struggled, throwing punches, twisting and pulling on armor. Clovis galloped past on his charger, approaching the fray, his strange voice booming as he screamed for the chaos to end.

When the fracas concluded, the soldiers and elves rushed back to their positions in the now-stalled convoy. Clovis wheeled his horse around and trotted toward Bardiya. Behind him walked a young soldier with unkempt auburn hair and a small scar marring his left cheek, carrying another soldier in his arms, struggling with the weight. Behind that soldier were seven more who wore Karak’s sigil and were lugging a thrashing, screaming elf.

The young soldier stopped in front of Bardiya, dropping the limp body on the ground. The young man’s silver breastplate was smeared with crimson. The soldier inclined his head and stepped to the side, allowing Clovis room to approach.

“Heal him,” said the twisted shell of a man, a scowl on his lips.

Bardiya knelt in the sand, trying to keep his balance despite the ox harness. He leaned over the body of the prone soldier, saw this one was just as young as the one who’d carried him. His eyes were bulging and watery, his lips quivered. Hacking breaths left his mouth and his body was thrown into a spasm. Bardiya saw a stream of blood pour out of the gash in his belly, where there was a gap in his armor. He placed a massive hand on the wound, felt the warmth and stickiness.

“Heal him,” Clovis repeated.

“Do not, you craven wretch,” said a strange, accented voice. Bardiya lifted his eyes to see an elf forced to his knees. Bardiya had seen this elf many times over their long march-a captive like his people, chained to a horse and kept separate from the rest. He had long russet hair and copper skin, marking him as Quellan. There were golden bruises covering his face, and his arms were covered with blood to his elbows.

“If you heal that man,” the elf said in the common tongue, “you are a bigger fool than you look to be. Let. . him. . die.”

“I cannot,” Bardiya said softly as he placed his other hand over the soldier’s wound. The young man vomited up a torrent of blood. “I am a sworn protector of life. The blood of my enemy is no different from the blood in my own veins. Ashhur has taught us this, and Ashhur’s teachings are absolute.”

“Then Ashhur is as great a fool as you are.”

Bardiya ignored him, instead closing his eyes and offering words of entreaty to his wayward god. He felt the power surge through him, his core growing hot and expanding outward, through his chest, down his arms, into his hands. His stomach constricted, feeling the depth of the young soldier’s pain. Light shot from his fingertips, entering the soldier’s body. Tissue mended, torn intestines knit themselves back together, and the waste products that had leaked throughout the man’s abdomen dissolved into nothingness. The flesh of the wound itself then shut, creating a thin white scar. The power retreated back into Bardiya as the prone soldier gasped, clutching his stomach tightly, filled with a burst of energy.

Bardiya collapsed onto his rump, the ox harness heavy as a boulder now that his god’s strength was gone. He watched the young soldier sit up, examining the scar across his belly. His eyes were filled with tears as he looked up at Bardiya. There was still fear in his gaze, but gratitude as well. For a moment it looked as if he might lurch forward and wrap his arms around the giant, but he seemed to notice his fellow soldiers standing around him and thought better of it. Instead, he offered Bardiya a nod and stood up.

“Good,” Clovis said from above.

The restrained elf spat in the sand.

“Bloody ignorant savage. You deserve all you receive.”

Other elves then came forward, both Quellan and Dezren, dragging the elf to his feet. The captured elf began shouting in his native tongue, spitting at each of them as they roughly handled him. Clovis watched this all with seemingly detached interest, until one of the Quellan drew his khandar.

“No!” the malformed human shouted. “Beat him if you wish, but Ceredon is to live. That one does not even approach death.”

“Iolas is missing and now this!” one of the elves shouted back. “He must suffer!”

“Suffer he will,” Clovis said gravely, “but he is not to be killed, lest all the reward Karak promised you fall by the wayside.”

The khandar was reluctantly resheathed. Bardiya looked on as the restrained elf smiled. It was a sickening thing to see, frightening even. That smile remained even when the back of a mailed hand connected with the side of Ceredon’s face, even when a whip struck his back, tearing his tattered tunic further.

Such hatred, thought Bardiya. Though he tried to be disgusted by the display, he felt awed by it instead. His guilt grew ever larger.

The twisted man on horseback sounded slightly disappointed when he said, “You are an odd creature, Bardiya Gorgoros.”

“I am the child of my creator.”

Clovis grinned sickeningly. “We will see how true that is soon enough,” he said; then he pulled on the reins, urging his charger to carry him to the front of the procession.

Bardiya’s people looked at him as if he were a ghastly creature they had never seen before. He tried to smile at them, to let them know Ashhur still loved them, but it was for naught. Each of them, even Gordo and his family, looked disappointed. When the order came, they turned away from their spiritual leader and began to march once more. For the rest of the day, none would sing with him, not when he raised his voice as loud as he could, not when he implored them with tales of love, not even when he healed Zulea Doros after she collapsed from sunstroke. They simply marched with their eyes straight ahead, a people defeated.

Heart broken, Bardiya was but a shell of his former self when they crested a final dune to find the Black Spire rising up before them in the valley where the dead of Ker were buried. The obelisk’s shadow seemed to swallow all light, all life, all hope, into its shimmering black maw.