Blood Of Gods

CHAPTER 21

Hope and faith were two things Bardiya Gorgoros had always possessed in abundance, but even those were beginning to fade. He was exhausted, disenchanted, and in a state of constant, spine-rending pain, a creature made to stoop day and night while chained to three wagons, alone though surrounded by people, the shadow of the Black Spire falling over him as the sun crawled across the late afternoon sky.

They are toying with you, nothing more, he thought, yet he found it difficult to believe that was true. And songs of joy no longer sprung from his lips. He couldn’t save his people, no matter what he sang to them. I have failed.

His brothers and sisters in faith milled about in front of him, serving watered-down wine and salt pork to soldier and elf alike. He looked on as Tulani Hempsman and a large group of Kerrian women, their gazes empty, slaved away over large steel pots, stirring and shifting a horsemeat stew. Behind them, just in front of the Black Spire, the men of his group worked under the watchful eyes of the elves, constructing a dais from disassembled wagons. Tonight there will be a feast, Clovis Crestwell had told him. The largest feast Dezrel has seen in a thousand years.

Of all his emotions, and there were many, confusion reigned supreme. They had camped in front of the Spire for nine long days, and each morning his people suffered a different form of torture. Some days it was constant insults and beatings, whereas on others the captured were wined and dined and treated as equals, even respected. One afternoon twenty married women were gathered up and taken by soldiers in the sand while their husbands, bound and gagged, were forced to watch. The very next day those same twenty fraught women were given fine elven silks to wear while they and their husbands were waited on hand and foot by the same soldiers who had abused them the previous day. After the sun set, none knew what would happen when it climbed the opposite horizon come morning. Some begged for death; other begged to be made servants, if only to know what would come from day to day.

And for all this, it seemed Bardiya was the catalyst. On the bad days Clovis would stand before him in the morning, proclaiming him evil, disparaging Ashhur’s teachings, telling the people that what was about to befall him was his fault. On the good days he was proclaimed a king among kings, men placing a crown of woven wicker about his head. He became an object, a giant human tool and nothing more, useful only when needed. When the soldiers were kind, he was ignored; when they were not, his people lined up before him to receive his healing touch. . a touch that seemed to be failing. With every man, woman, and child he mended, he found himself growing weaker, so much so that just yesterday he had failed to restore Jacco Bendoros’s broken leg. He now watched Jacco limp across the assembly, his leg in a splint. A soldier, the one with the small scar on his cheek, helped him along.

“Do you not see what this is?” shouted a voice, and Bardiya turned, the harness around his neck creaking. The voice belonged to the elven prisoner they called Ceredon, a hundred feet away, strapped to a plank above one of the supply carts, with his arms splayed wide. The elf had been kept up there day and night, yet unlike Bardiya, it seemed nothing his captors did could stifle his rebellious spirit. He continuously railed against everyone, screaming accusations and insults until his throat ran dry and he could scream no more. But then the meals would come, another elf climbing atop the cart to feed him hard biscuits and water, and he would be right back at it again. Strangely, he was ignored.

“You are all cravens!” Ceredon proclaimed, and then he laughed aloud. “Can you not see? This is your last meal! The beast will devour you, and then the scavengers on the dunes will pick through your remains!”

Bardiya turned even further at those words, gazing toward the near rise where once he had saved Kindren Thyne, the Dezren prince, from certain death. He could see nothing but shifting white sand along the ridge, though he swore that every so often he could see a glimpse of something moving up there. He thought of the distant pursuers he had noticed on the horizon as they marched, and then of Patrick DuTaureau, the longtime friend he had turned away when he’d come to plead with Bardiya for help. At night, when Bardiya lay awake, he swore he could hear the jangling of metal and shifting sand in the distance, drawing ever closer, and though he passed it off as a trick of the frigid desert winds, a part of him still hoped it was Patrick, come to help, come to save him from himself.

No! There is no one man who can save me. There is Ashhur and there is love, or there is nothing.

If only he could truly believe that. His back began to ache once more.

“Open your eyes!” the bound elf screamed to deaf ears. “The goddess will judge you, and she will judge harshly!”

“Do not listen to him,” said a gravelly, inhuman voice. Bardiya swiveled his head slowly, every muscle screaming in agony, until he saw a hooded Clovis Crestwell squatting beside him. The first child of Karak was wearing a white shawl instead of his armor. The loose fabric hung off him, and Bardiya could see just how sickly he truly was. More skeleton than man, Clovis’s every bone was noticeable beneath his parchment-thin flesh. When he moved, his joints seemed to creak, like a wet twig being twisted. His eyes were sunken deep, and his lips had retracted, exposing his blackened gums and oversized teeth. He was death incarnate.

Bardiya turned away and closed his eyes.

“Come now, giant,” said the horrific man. “Look at me. Look at how weak I am.”

“No.”

Bony fingers dug into his cheeks, forcing his head to turn. Bardiya was too exhausted to offer any resistance.

“You will,” Clovis said. “You will look, and you will see.”

“I see nothing,” he said, his anger welling inside him. “I see a godless thing that will soon die, only to suffer for eternity in its own special pit in the darkness.”

Clovis offered him a horrendous grin. “I thought you preached love and forgiveness? What happened to that? What happened to the singing? And giant, if I am to die, how will it happen? Will you destroy me?”

Bardiya almost lunged at him, but instead let out a deep sigh. “Your depravity will destroy you. The gods will not allow it. Why else would you be fading away before my eyes?”

“You assume much, giant. I am not the only one fading away.” There was a bag at the man’s feet, and Clovis reached inside it, removing a flattened piece of reflective glass. He then held the glass in front of Bardiya, chuckling. The red glow of his eyes intensified.

The face in the mirror was indeed that of Bardiya Gorgoros, but it was sunken now, the skin stretched, much like Clovis’s. Numerous deep crevasses sprouted from the corners of his eyes. His cheeks drooped, forming jowls, and atop his head was a thick thatch of white curls.

Bardiya sat back, aghast at his own reflection. He was so in shock he knew not what to say; though he had never stopped growing, by appearance he had remained unchanged for more than seventy years. He slumped down, letting the harness carry him to his side. Realization came over him: The pains now running through his body were not his constant growing pains, but the ache of time, of life, of age.

Clovis laughed at him as he stuffed the mirror back into his bag. “Your god has abandoned you, giant, but I have not.” The man leaned in close, and Bardiya could smell decay on his breath. “I once promised that you would bring true beauty back to this world. It is time you fulfilled your duties. The feast begins now.”

With that, the man stood. His emaciated form hobbled away, heading for the now-finished dais in front of the Black Spire.

“Do not listen to him!” shouted Ceredon. “The beast lies!”

Bardiya was too busy wallowing in his despair to listen. Ashhur, why have you discarded me? Have I not lived as you desired?

A horn blew, echoing across the desert and drawing the attention of all to the dais. The people of Ang were herded to the front of the assembly while soldiers approached Bardiya and forced him with prods and whips to stand. He leaned against the roof of the wagon to his left, heavy chains clinking about his wrists and feet.

Clovis climbed the dais and stood in the center. The Black Spire loomed behind him like a portal to the underworld. All in attendance, prisoner, soldier, and elf alike, began muttering among one another. Clovis rubbed his hands together, and his eyes burned a deeper red than ever before, eliciting shocked gasps from his audience.

“This is a glorious day!” Clovis declared, his lips peeling back further. His voice was harsh, as if flames were ejecting from his gullet along with his words. He looked down at the three hundred people of Ang who huddled before him. “Tonight, we celebrate the end of our time together. Tonight, all sins are forgotten with a purging feast. When that feast is done, you will be freed.” The soldiers grumbled; the elves, both Quellan and Dezren, passed suspicious glances back and forth.

“It’s a trick!” Bardiya heard one of his people shout.

“No, no trick,” Clovis said, his grin growing ever wider. “I am a. . man of my word. When the feast is over, consider yourselves free souls in Karak’s eyes.” He folded one arm over his withered chest and propped the other atop it, fingering his chin as he scanned the crowd. “In fact, I feel a demonstration of trust is necessary. Your singing has brightened many of my evenings since we have been together, and it has saddened me that all but the giant has stopped. I wish to hear a song once more.”

More grumbling followed, but no one stepped forward.

“Come now, can we not have some beauty during these dark times? I wish to hear a song, an innocent song, a pure song, the one about mothers and lions and mountains. You know the one.”

A woman suddenly began singing, only to be hushed by a wave of Clovis’s hand.

“No,” he said. “I wish for innocent voices. Are there any children among you who will sing for me? Will you come join me, allow your voices to fill me with warmth? Should you do so, you will be freed. . ”

The man gestured to a group of soldiers off to the right, and three of them shuffled through the sand in front of the prisoners, looking each child up and down. Finally one child stepped forward, then two, then more, until there were seven. The soldiers climbed the dais steps, urging the young ones to follow them. Bardiya noticed one of the soldiers was the one he had healed. Clovis knelt down, kissing each of the children’s hands before directing them to form a line on the front of the platform.

Bardiya’s heart was overwhelmed as he stared at those seven angelic faces. He knew them all, of course: Keisha, Sasha, Minora, Robbet, Yassar, Boren, and Stev. They were all eight years old or younger, and their eyes were filled with worry as they gazed down at the audience of nearly one thousand. Keisha Hempsman raised her head, her eyes finding Bardiya, and she nodded to him. This is for you, her look seemed to say.

“Now sing,” Clovis demanded.

Keisha and Sasha were the first to open their mouths, but soon the other five followed. The sound of their seven voices melded into sweetness and honey.

Bardiya closed his eyes, allowed the singing to wash over him. His energy seemed to return, the pain in his body subsiding. He even began to sway, humming along with their song.

He remembered the first time his mother had sung this song to him, when he was still a very young child suffering night terrors beneath the blankets in their hut. He thought of his father, the mighty Bessus, and how he had chastised his wife for filling young Bardiya’s head with foolishness. His heart ached, especially when the next verse began. His father had been right all along. It was beyond foolishness; it was a complete lie.

“Enough,” Clovis said, his voice loud and shrill. Bardiya opened his eyes and saw the man standing behind the row of smiling children, his eyes bulging with excitement to the point of popping from his skull. Clovis whispered something to the soldier beside him, whose face paled, whose hands shook.

“No,” Bardiya said, dread overcoming him.

Clovis shoved the soldier and grabbed the sword hanging from his belt with quickness that someone in his state should not have possessed. He ripped the blade free with a glare, and the two other soldiers, including the one Bardiya had healed, needed no more invitation. They too drew their blades and approached the children from behind. The crowd in front of the dais pitched forward in a frenzy, and those standing guard struggled against their mass.

“NO!” Bardiya cried.

Clovis lifted his eyes, and it was like they were on fire, they glowed so brightly. He stared right at Bardiya.

“I will set their souls free,” he said. “Now let us bring some beauty to the world! The feast begins!”

The man reared back and brought the longsword across in a wide arc. Bardiya surged ahead, pulling against his chains, the ox harness, the wagons themselves. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he watched the blades, Clovis’s and the soldiers’, find purchase in innocent flesh. Keisha was the first to die, her head sheared clean from her neck. In a matter of seconds, there were seven corpses atop the dais.

Women shrieked, and the anger and dread of Bardiya’s people spread like a disease. Gordo shoved past a soldier and climbed onto the dais. Bardiya saw the parents of the other slain children emerge from the sea of humanity, and his massive heart thrummed so hard that it might have shaken the earth itself. He thrust his arms with such force that the four-inch-thick iron chains binding them shattered. His mind went blank, and he threw his head forward, splintering the ox harness about his neck. His vision went red as he watched Gordo cradle his daughter’s headless body, and when a pair of elves rushed Bardiya, he lashed out without thinking. He grabbed them each by the top of the head, even after one slashed at his wrist with his khandar, and slammed their heads together. Their skulls exploded into a bloody pulp that coated his hands even after he tossed their corpses aside.

“NO!” he screamed, shaking his bloody fists before him. It seemed the very heavens echoed his call.

More soldiers charged, but Bardiya focused on Clovis. The skeletal man was hopping up and down in what appeared to be excitement, his gaze aimed somewhere to the side. Bardiya looked that way, his blood racing, and saw men sprinting down the tall dune. They were dark skinned and brandished weapons of steel, and they bellowed their battle cry as they ran. He recognized every one of them.

Bardiya only looked away when a soldier stabbed him in the side. He reached down, grabbed the soldier by the leg, and then threw him as hard as he could against one of the wagons. The soldier’s body crumpled like a dried leaf, his head spinning around on his torso until it hung there by a single, gummy thread. Bardiya yanked the sword out of his side, such a tiny thing in his massive fingers, and flicked it away. Four more soldiers and two elves came at him next from all directions. He swung his arm, and the thick iron chains still locked around his wrists pulverized two men’s skulls. The rest he smashed with his fists until they were formless piles of flesh, bone, blood, and steel.

All around him was chaos now, his people fighting with their captors while the elves met the stampeding newcomers. Steel met steel with a clang, and the sounds of screams and the smell of blood filled the air. Bardiya jerked his foot, snapping the last chain binding him to the wagon, and hurled his body headlong into the fray.

In his rage his mind was on fire, his body young. There were none that could touch him, and though he was struck and prodded and stabbed from all sides, nothing could hurt him. Each time he saw one of his people put to the sword, his fury burst anew. He snatched up a Quellan, ripped his body in two, and used those two halves to beat the elf’s brethren to death before continuing toward his destination: the dais, and the emaciated man who still jumped and laughed atop it.

Blood was in his eyes, the salt making his vision blurry. He elbowed his way through the bedlam, tossing bodies into the air, stomping them underfoot. When he finally reached the dais, he stepped onto it as easily as one would walk up a stair. He towered over the deplorable, twisted human, who rubbed his hands together as he cackled.

“This feast has begun!” Clovis cried.

Bardiya said nothing. Instead, he reared back and brought his fist down on the man. Clovis never tried to defend himself, never even attempted to dodge. Instead, he took the brunt of the blow, the side of his head caving in, his teeth shattering. His body crumpled like a pile of dry bones, the red glow from his one remaining eye slowly going out.

In a fit of rage, Bardiya kicked the mangled, shrunken body off the rear edge of the dais. He threw his head back and roared, then turned about. The battle still waged below him, and as he looked over the combatants, he saw a cluster toward the center of the countless struggling forms gradually moving his way. The faces in the cluster were those from his past, faces he had not seen in months. There was Loom Umbridge swinging a two-handed sword; Gale Lumber coming down on an elf with a maul; Antar Fidoros using a large ax to lop the scalp off a helm-less soldier, and countless others wielding weapons of their own. . including Ki-Nan Renald. Bardiya narrowed his eyes, watching his old friend fend off attackers with a long, curved blade.

They had returned to him, all of them, at the time when he needed them most.

Bardiya got down on one knee, staring at the seven mutilated children on either side of him while swatting aside elf and soldier alike with his bare hands. He could feel Ceredon’s eyes on him, gaping at the carnage from his plank above the wagon. Men and elves died all around. Ki-Nan and his pack emerged from the swarm, panting and bleeding. The others formed a protective wall, allowing Ki-Nan and two others to approach the raised platform unharmed, holding above their heads a long crate. If not for the current of hatred flowing in Bardiya’s veins, he might have cried.

When they reached the dais, two of Ki-Nan’s men hefted the long wooden box they were carrying, sliding it onto the platform right in front of Bardiya. Ki-Nan leaned forward, his dark hand touching the giant’s massive foot. Behind him, the battle continued to rage. Ki-Nan said not a word. He didn’t need to. The determined look in his old friend’s eyes told Bardiya all he needed to know.

Slowly the giant reached down and unlatched the long, heavy box. He lifted the lid, and within he saw the gleaming steel of a seven-foot-long sword. It was the same blade that Aullienna Meln and the rest of the Stonewood Dezren had shown to him that day on the stony beachhead.

Ki-Nan stepped back. Bardiya grasped the sword’s handle and lifted the heavy blade from the box. The steel felt cold to the touch, but there was an underlying burn that seemed to leach into his skin and set his nerves afire. It was the first time he had so much as touched a weapon of this sort, and somewhere beneath his anger he was both amazed and saddened by how natural it felt in his grip. He took a swipe with it while still on his knees, getting a feel for it.

“No time, Bardiya!” shouted Ki-Nan, pulling him from his private trance. “We are breaking!”

The giant’s head shot up. To his right he saw small bands of his people scurrying away from the fighting, huddled together like a flock of kobo fleeing a diseased land. Wounded human soldiers were fleeing right behind them, casting aside their weapons as they ran. Bardiya watched as, to the left, the protective barrier formed by Ki-Nan’s men slowly crumbled beneath the attack of the combined elven forces. Men screamed and blood misted in the air.

Bardiya gritted his teeth and launched himself off the dais. He soared, sword held out to the side, and landed with a thud in the midst of the carnage. The elves and the few soldiers who remained in the fight turned his way, and in that brief opening, those left of his people made a dash for safety. The Dezren and humans looked fearful, ready to take flight as the Quellan sounded their battle cry. Bardiya let loose a cry of his own, one that sounded like the universe collapsing in on itself.

He swung his new sword with a single hand, as if it were the scythe he had used to cut wheat in the days when he was much younger and much smaller. The strength he possessed was enormous, and he hacked through five bodies at once before looping the blade up and over, ready to attack again. His second swipe killed eight more, his third another five. The bodies mounted around him, their blood pouring from severed arms, necks, and torsos, soaking into the sand.

All the while the Black Spire loomed above them like the God of Death himself.

Those who remained of Ki-Nan’s original large force followed behind Bardiya, picking off any who escaped the giant’s devastating slashes. At one point the soldier whose life Bardiya had saved, the one who, along with Clovis, had then butchered the children on the dais, crossed his path. The young soldier threw down his arms, pleading. Bardiya sliced him in half from head to groin, thinking nothing of it. His mind was focused on a single objective: Kill, kill, kill.

It was visceral. It was liberating. It was pure.

As the sun began to sink below the horizon, the battle ended. In the aftermath Bardiya hovered over the heaped remains of his enemies. He shuddered and dropped his sword, marveling at the destruction. There had to be five hundred corpses strewn about the camp, and another two hundred injured, pulling themselves through the sand as they whimpered and gasped their dying breaths. The vast majority of the dead were elves, their perfect flesh hacked and shredded. Bardiya looked down at one of them, a Quellan who was still writhing, and stomped on his head, crushing it.

Dear Ashhur, has this always been my purpose? Is this what you made me for?

He flexed his hand, his elbow, his knee. Despite the sting of the many stab wounds and slashes that pierced his skin, he felt better than he had in ages. It made no sense, not when he had lived his life in constant agony from his forever growing body. Instead of making him feel vital, it only caused his newfound anger to rise.

“Bardiya,” said a tired voice. “Brother, I am sorry.”

The giant slowly turned, and there was Ki-Nan, kneeling with those who had arrived with him. Tuan was kneeling as well, and Yorn, and so many of the others who had remained in Ang. Bardiya looked down at his old friend, breathing heavily.

“Brother, we had to wait,” Ki-Nan said. “We have been wai-”

“It does. . not. . matter,” Bardiya growled.

He glanced up at the remains of the camp, at Ceredon, who still remained, motionless, atop his wagon, at men and women dressing the wounds of the injured, at fathers and mothers crying; tears of agony for their slain children, tears of joy for those who survived. There was sound all around him, but it was wailing and moans and the final breaths of the dying that he heard. There was no singing. Somewhere inside him, he knew the songs of joy and love and life had died, possibly forever.

“If I am but your tool, your Grace, I do not belong here,” he whispered.

“What was that?” asked Ki-Nan.

“Gather up all who can still fight,” Bardiya said. There was ice in his veins. “Scan the dying for Karak’s soldiers, find out what they know about the whereabouts of the eastern army.”

“I will, but why?”

Bardiya cast his eyes to the north.

“Because I’m going to kill a god.”