Sharp Ends

Hell

Dagoska, Spring 576

Temple ran.

It was hardly the first time. He had spent half his life running away from things and most of the rest running back towards them. But he had never run like this. He ran as though hell yawned at his back. It did.

The ground shook again. Light flared in the night, at the corner of Temple’s eye, and he flinched. A moment later came the thunderous boom, so loud it made his ears ring. Fire shot up above the buildings to his left, mad arms of it, reaching out and scattering liquid flame across the Upper City. A piece of stone the size of a man’s head thudded into the road just in front of him, bounced across his path and smashed through a wall in a cloud of dust. Smaller stones rained down, pinging and rattling.

Temple ran on, heedless. If Gurkish fire plunged from the heavens and ripped him to specks that could never be found, there was nothing he could do. Precious few would mourn him. One little drip in an ocean of tragedy. He could only hope God had chosen him for saving, even if he could not think of one good reason why.

There was not much he was certain of, but he knew he did not want to die.

He reeled to a stop against a wall, caught by a sudden coughing fit, his chest raw from breathing smoke. From days of breathing smoke. His eyes ran with tears. From the dust. From the fear. He looked back the way he had come. The walls of the Upper City, broken battlements cut out black against the fire. Men struggled there, tiny figures lit red.

It was hopeless. It had been hopeless for days. But still they fought. Perhaps to protect what was theirs. Their property, their family, their way of life. Perhaps they fought out of love. Perhaps out of hate. Perhaps there was nothing else left.

Temple had no idea what could make a man fight. He had never been much of a fighter.

He scuttled down a rubbish-strewn side street, tripped on a fallen beam and skinned his knees, staggered to the corner, one hand up as a feeble shield against the heat of a burning building, flames crackling, smoke roiling skywards into the night.

Fire, fire everywhere. I have seen hell, Verturio said, and it is a great city under siege. Dagoska had been like hell for weeks. Temple never doubted that he deserved to be there. He just didn’t remember dying.

He saw figures crowding about a door, a man swinging an axe, the sound of wood splintering. Gurkish troops somehow broken through the wall already? Or looters taking their chance to snatch something while there was something still to snatch? Temple supposed he could hardly blame them. He’d snatched plenty in his time. And what did blame mean now, anyway?

When there is no law, there is no crime.

He scurried on, keeping low, torn sleeve across his mouth. You would never have known that his acolyte’s robe had been pure white. It was as frayed and filthy now as the beggar’s rags he had worn before, stained with ash and dirt and blood, his own and that of those he had tried to help. Those he had failed to help.

Temple had lived in Dagoska all his life. Grown up on these streets. Known them like a child knows his mother’s face. But now he hardly recognised them. Houses were blackened shells, bare beams showing like the ribs of desert carcasses, trees scorched stumps, heaps of rubble spilled across the cracked roadways. He kept the rock ahead of him, the lights of the Citadel perched at its top, caught a glimpse of one of the Great Temple’s slender spires above a fallen roof, and hurried on.

Fire raged all across the city, but no more fell from the sky. That only made Temple more fearful. When the fire stopped falling, the soldiers came. Always he was running from soldiers. Before the Gurkish it had been the Union, before the Union it had been the Dagoskans themselves. Give a man a sword and he always acts the same, whatever the colour of his skin.

There had been a market here, where rich folk had bought meat. Only a few blackened arches of it remained. He had begged here, as a boy, hands stretching out. Older, he had stolen from a merchant. Older still, had kissed a girl at night beside a fountain. Now the fountain was cracked, choked with ashes. The girl? Who could say?

It had been a beautiful place. A proud street in a proud city. All gone, and for what?

‘Is this your plan?’ he whispered at the sky.

But God rarely speaks to beggar-boys. Even those educated at the Great Temple.

‘Help me,’ came a hissing voice. ‘Help me.’

A woman lay in the rubble beside him. He had almost stepped on her as he ran past. A fragment from a Gurkish bomb had struck her, or perhaps from a burning building. Her neck was scorched and blistered, some of her hair burned away. Her shoulder was a ruin, arm twisted behind her. He could not tell what was torn cloth and what torn flesh. She smelled like cooking meat. A smell that made Temple’s empty stomach growl and then made him want to be sick a moment later. Her throat clicked with every breath and something bubbled in her chest. Her eyes were wide and dark in her black-spattered face.

‘Oh, God,’ whispered Temple. He did not know where to begin. There was nowhere to begin.

‘Help me,’ she whispered again, clutching at him, her eyes on his.

‘There’s nothing I can do,’ croaked Temple. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, no, please-’

‘I’m sorry.’ He peeled her fingers away, tried not to look into her eyes. ‘God have mercy on you.’ Though it seemed plain that He had none. ‘I’m sorry!’ Temple stood. He turned away. He went on.

As her cries faded behind him, he tried to tell himself that this was not just the easy thing, but the right thing. There was nothing he could have done for her. She would not have lived. The Gurkish were too close. He could not outrun them carrying her. He had to warn the others, it was his duty. He could not save her. He could only save himself. Better one of them die than both, surely? God would understand that, wouldn’t he? God was made of understanding.

Times like these reveal a man for what he truly is. For a while Temple had convinced himself he was a righteous man, but it is easy to be virtuous before your virtue is put to the test. Like a camel turd baked in the sun, beneath the pious crust he was the same stinking, self-serving coward he had always been.

Conscience is that piece of Himself that God puts into everyone, Kahdia would have said. A splinter of the divine. There is always a choice.

He came to an uncertain halt, staring down at the bloody smears her fingers had made on his sleeve. Should he go back? He stood trembling, breathing hard, trapped between right and wrong, between sense and stupidity, between life and death.

Kahdia once told him he thought too much to be a good man.

He looked over his shoulder, back the way he had come. Flames, and buildings lit in the garish colours of flames, and against the flames he saw black shapes moving. The slender shadows of swords and spears, the tall helmets of Gurkish soldiers. And was it a trick of the shimmering haze, or could he see another figure there? A woman’s shape, tall and thin, swaggering forward in white armour, a glimpse of golden hair shining. Fear clutched at Temple’s throat and he fell, scrambled up, ran. The mindless impulse of the child grown up on the streets. Of the rabbit that sees the hawk’s shadow. He hardly knew what there was to live for, but he knew he did not want to die.

Wheezing, coughing, legs burning, he struggled up the cracked steps to the Great Temple. He felt a moment of relief as the familiar façade came into view, even though he knew it would not be long until Gurkish soldiers flooded into this square. Gurkish soldiers … or worse.

He hurried across to the looming gates, ashes whirling past, burning papers fluttering down on the hot wind, thumped at the door until his fist hurt, called out his name until his throat was raw. A small door within the door was pulled suddenly open and he scrambled through, the bar swung down behind him with a reassuring finality.

Safety. Even if only for a few moments. A man in the desert must take such water as he is offered, after all.

The first time Temple entered that glorious space and gazed upon the sparkling mosaics, and the filigree stonework, and the light pouring in through the star-shaped windows and making gleam the gilded letters of scripture written man-high upon the walls, he had felt the hand of God upon his shoulder.

He did not feel the presence of God now. Only a few lamps lit the vastness, the shadows of flames beyond the windows flickering across the ceiling. It stank of fear and death, echoed with the whimpers of the wounded, the endless low murmuring of hopeless prayers. Even the mosaic faces of the prophets which had once seemed moved by heavenly ecstacy seemed fixed in terror now.

The place was crowded with people – men and women, young and old, all filthy and desperate. Temple shouldered his way through the press, trying to swallow his fear, trying to think of nothing but finding Kahdia, finally saw him on the dais where the pulpit had once stood. One sleeve of his white robe he had torn off at the shoulder to make bandages. The other was blood-spotted to the elbow from working on the wounded. His eyes were sunken, cheeks hollow, but the more desperate the situation became, the calmer he appeared to grow.

What mighty strength must it take, Temple wondered, to carry the burden of all these people’s lives?

There were Union soldiers gathered about him and Temple hung back nervously on old instincts. A dozen of them, perhaps, swords sheathed out of respect for the holy ground but hands twitching always towards the hilts. General Vissbruck was among them, a long smear of ash down his sunburned face. He had been a plump man before the siege, but his uniform hung loose from him now. They all were thinner than they had been, in Dagoska.

‘Gurkish soldiers have flooded through the North Gate and into the Upper City.’ He spoke in the Union tongue, of course, but Temple understood it as well as any native of Midderland. ‘It will not be long until the wall is lost. We suspect treachery.’

‘You suspect Nicomo Cosca?’ asked Kahdia.

‘I have suspected him for some time, but – whatever else he is – Cosca is no fool. If he meant to sell the city he would have done it while there was still a good price to be had.’

‘What about his life?’ snapped the soldier with the sling.

Vissbruck snorted. ‘One thing on which he has never placed the slightest value. The man is an entire stranger to fear.’

Gods, what a blessing that must be. Temple’s fears had been his closest companions since before he could remember.

‘It makes no difference now, in any case,’ Vissbruck was saying. ‘Whether Cosca betrayed us or not, whether alive or dead, he is surely in hell now. Just like the rest of us. We are pulling back to the Citadel, Haddish. You should come with us.’

‘And when the Gurkish follow, where will you pull back to?’

Vissbruck swallowed, the sharp knobble bobbing in his throat, and spoke on as if Kahdia had said nothing. Something the people of the Union had proved themselves expert at ever since they came to Dagoska. ‘You have been a courageous leader and a true friend to the Union. You have earned a place in the Citadel.’

Kahdia gave a weary smile. ‘If I have earned any place it is here, in my temple, among my people. I am proud to take it.’

‘I knew you would say so. But I had to ask.’

Kahdia held out his hand. ‘It has been an honour.’

‘The honour is mine.’ The general started forward and embraced the priest. The Union man and the Dagoskan. The white-skinned and the dark. A strange sight. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, eyes shining with tears, ‘that I did not understand you until it was too late.’

‘It is never too late,’ said Kahdia. ‘I believe we may meet in heaven.’

‘Then I hope once again that your beliefs are true, and not mine.’ Vissbruck let Kahdia go, turned on his heel, and stopped. He looked back.

‘Superior Glokta warned me that a man might be better off killing himself than becoming a prisoner of the Gurkish,’ said Vissbruck. Kahdia blinked, and said nothing. ‘Whatever one thinks of our erstwhile leader, when it comes to being a prisoner of the Gurkish he must be considered an unchallengeable expert.’ Again, the Haddish did not speak. ‘Do you have any opinion on that matter?’

‘To kill oneself is reckoned an offence against God.’ Kahdia shrugged. ‘But at times like these, who can say what is right?’

Vissbruck slowly nodded. ‘We are cut loose. From the Union. From our families. From God. We all must find our own way now.’ And he marched swiftly towards the temple’s back entrance, his boot heels clicking against the marble as the press parted to let him and his soldiers through.

Temple started forward, grabbing Kahdia by the arm. ‘Haddish, you must go with them!’

Kahdia gently peeled Temple’s fingers from his wrist. Just as Temple had peeled away the fingers of the dying woman. ‘I am glad you are still alive, Temple. I was worried about you. But you are bleeding-’

‘It’s nothing! You must go to the Citadel.’

‘Must? We always have a choice, Temple.’

‘They are coming. The Gurkish are coming.’ He swallowed. Even now, he could not bring himself to raise his voice when he spoke the words. ‘The Eaters are coming.’

‘I know. That is why I must stay.’

Temple gritted his teeth. The old man’s calm was making him furious, and he knew why. Not for Kahdia’s sake, but for his own. He wanted the priest to run so that he could run with him. Even though there was no place safe from the Eaters. Nowhere in all the world, and certainly not in Dagoska. Even though taking refuge in the Citadel could only buy him days, and probably not that many.

The Haddish smiled. As though he saw it all. Saw it all, and forgave him even so.

‘I must stay,’ he said. ‘But you should go, Temple. If you feel you need my permission, I give it gladly.’

Temple cursed. He had been forgiven too often. He wanted to be raged at, to be blamed, to be beaten. He wanted a reason to take the easy way and run, but Kahdia would not let him take the easy way. It was why Temple had always loved him. There were tears in his eyes. He cursed. But he stayed.

‘What do we do?’ croaked Temple.

‘We care for the wounded. We give comfort to the weak. We bury the dead. We pray.’

He did not say fight, but that was clearly on some minds. Five acolytes had gathered uncertainly beside one wall, shifty as children about some secret game. Temple saw the glint of a blade. An axe hanging in the fold of a robe.

‘Set down those weapons!’ called Kahdia, striding over to them. ‘This is a temple!’

‘Do you think the Gurkish will respect our holy ground?’ one of them screeched, a madness of fear in his eyes. ‘Do you think they’ll put aside their weapons?’

Kahdia was calm as still water. ‘God will judge them for their crimes. He will judge us for ours. Set down your weapons.’

The men glanced at each other, shifted their weight uncertainly, but armed though they were, none of them had the courage to meet Kahdia’s unwavering eye. One by one they set their weapons down.

The Haddish put his hand on the shoulder of the man who had challenged him. ‘You are on the wrong side as soon as you pick one, my son. We must act as we would want to act. We must act as we would want others to act. Now more than ever.’

‘How will that help us?’ Temple found he had muttered.

‘In the end, what else is there?’ And Kahdia looked towards the great doors, and drew himself up, and set his shoulders.

Temple realised that a silence had fallen outside. In the square that had once echoed with the priests’ calls to prayer. Then with the merchants’ calls to buy. Then with the cries of the wounded, and the orphaned, and the helpless. Silence could only mean one thing.

They were here.

‘Do you remember what you were when we first met?’ asked Kahdia.

‘A thief.’ Temple swallowed. ‘A fool. A boy with no code and no purpose.’

‘And see what you have become!’

He hardly felt any different than he had. ‘What will I become now, without you?’

Kahdia smiled and set his hand on Temple’s shoulder. ‘That is in your hands. And in the hands of God.’ He came a little closer, to whisper. ‘Do nothing foolish, do you understand? You must live.’

‘Why?’

‘Like a storm, like a plague, like a swarm of locusts, the Gurkish will pass. When they do, Dagoska will have need of good men.’

Temple was about to point out that he was no better than the next thief when there was a booming blow on the gates. The great doors shook, dust filtering down as the lamps wildly flickered. A gasp went through the people and they shrank back, back into the shadows at the far end of the temple.

Another blow, and the doors, and the crowd, and Temple all shuddered at it.

Then a word was spoken. Spoken in a voice of thunder, impossibly, deafeningly loud, mighty as the tolling of a great bell. Temple did not know the tongue and yet he saw the letters of it burned into the door in blinding light. The heavy gate burst apart in a cloud of splinters, chunks of wood tumbling across the marble floor and scattering wide.

A figure stepped between the twisted hinges. A figure in white armour, marked with letters of gold, a smile upon his face, a face as perfect as if it was cast from dark glass.

‘Greetings from the Prophet Khalul!’ he called out, warm and friendly, and the people whimpered and crowded back further.

The letters of fire were still written across Temple’s swimming sight in the darkness, holy letters, unholy letters, his ears still humming with their echoes. A girl whimpered beside him, hands over her face. And Temple put his on her shoulder, clutched at it, trying to calm her, trying to calm himself. More figures sauntered into the temple. Figures in white armour.

They were only five but the crowd shrank back as though they were sheep and these were wolves, crushing each other in their fear. Close to Temple came a woman, beautiful, awful, tall and thin as a spear, a light to her pale face like the glistening of a pearl, golden hair floating as if she carried her own breeze with her.

‘Hello, my pretties.’ She smiled wide at Temple and ran the tip of a long, pointed tongue down one long, pointed tooth, then shut her mouth with a snap and winked at him. His guts were water.

There was a cry. Someone jumped from the crowd. One of the acolytes. Temple saw a flash of metal in the darkness, was jerked sideways by another sudden ripple of fear through the crowd.

‘No!’ shouted Kahdia.

Too late. One of the Eaters moved. As fast as lightning and just as deadly. She caught the man’s wrist, snatched him from his feet, whirled him around with impossible strength and flung him flailing through the air across the full width of the temple, as a sulking child might fling away a broken doll, his fallen dagger skittering across the tiles.

His scream was cut off as he crunched into the wall perhaps ten strides up, flopped bonelessly to the ground in a shower of blood and cracked marble. His head was flattened, twisted all the way around, his face thankfully turned to the wall.

‘God,’ whispered Temple. ‘Oh, God.’

‘Still, all of you!’ called Kahdia, one arm out.

‘You are their leader?’ asked the foremost of the Eaters, raising one brow. His dark face was young, and smooth, and beautiful, but his eyes were old.

‘I am Kahdia, Haddish of this temple.’

‘A priest, then. A man of the book. Dagoska has been the birthplace of many holy men. Of revered philosophers, admired theologists. Men who heard the voice of God. Are you one such, Haddish Kahdia?’

Temple did not know how, but Kahdia showed no fear. He spoke as he might to one of his congregation. Even this devil born of hell, this eater of the flesh of men, he treated as if he was no lesser or greater than himself. ‘I am but a man. I struggle to be righteous.’

‘Believe it or not, so do we all.’ The Eater frowned down at his hand, and made a fist of it, and let the fingers slowly open again as if allowing sand to drain from his palm. ‘And here is where the road to righteousness has led me. Do you know who I am?’ There was no mocking triumph in his perfect face. Only a sadness.

‘You are Mamun,’ said Haddish Kahdia. ‘The fruit of the desert. Thrice Blessed and Thrice Cursed.’

‘Yes. Though with every year the curses weigh heavier, and the blessings seem more dust.’

‘You have only yourself to blame,’ said Kahdia, calmly. ‘You broke God’s law and ate the flesh of men.’

‘And of women, and of children, and of everything that breathes.’ Mamun frowned over towards the acolyte’s ruined corpse. One of the Eaters had squatted beside the body, and she put one finger in the pooling blood and began to smear it on her blandly smiling face. ‘If only I had known then what I know now things might have been different.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘But it is easy to speak of the past, impossible to go there. I am powerful in ways you can only dream, yet I am still a prisoner of what I have done. I can never escape the cell I have made for myself. Things are what they are.’

‘We always have a choice,’ said Kahdia.

Mamun smiled at him. A strange smile, it was. Almost … hopeful. ‘Do you think so?’

‘God tells us so.’

‘Then I offer you yours. We can take them.’ He glanced towards the crowd, and as his glassy eyes passed over Temple he felt the hairs rise on his neck. ‘We can take all of them, but you will be spared.’

The Eater with the golden hair winked at Temple again, and he felt the girl beside him trembling, and he felt himself trembling, too.

‘Or we can take you,’ said Mamun, ‘and they will be spared.’

‘All of them?’ asked Kahdia.

‘All of them.’

That was the time to step forward, Temple knew. To act as he would want to act. As he would want others to act. That was the moment for courage, for selflessness, for solidarity with the man who had saved his life, who had shown him mercy, who had given him a chance he did not deserve. To step forward, and offer himself in Kahdia’s place. Now was the time.

Temple did not move.

No one did.

The Haddish gave a smile, though. ‘You drive a poor bargain, Eater. I would happily have given my life for any one of them.’

The blonde woman raised her long arms, let her head fall back and began to sing. High and dazzlingly pure, her voice soared in the great spaces above, more beautiful than any music Temple had ever heard.

Mamun fell to his knees before Kahdia and pressed one hand to his heart. ‘All heaven rejoices in the finding of one righteous man. Wash him. Give him food and water. Convey him with honour to the Prophet’s table.’

‘God be with you,’ murmured Kahdia over his shoulder, the smile still on his face. ‘God be with you all.’ And he walked from the temple, an Eater on either side, their heads respectfully bowed as his was held high.

‘Shame,’ said the Eater with the blood-daubed face, her lips pushed out in a pout. She took the acolyte’s corpse by one ankle and dragged it after her, swaggering to the doors and leaving a bloody trail across the floor.

Mamun paused for a moment in the broken doorway. ‘The rest of you are free. Free from us, at least. From yourselves, there is no escape.’

How long did they stand in that sweating press, after the Eaters were gone? How long did they stand silent, staring towards the ruined gate? Frozen with terror. Rooted with guilt. Minutes? Hours? While outside, faintly, they heard the burning, the clash of steel, the screams, the sound of the sack of Dagoska. The sound of the end of the world.

Finally the girl beside Temple leaned close and asked in a broken whisper, ‘What do we do?’

Temple swallowed. ‘We care for the wounded. We give comfort to the weak. We bury the dead. We pray.’

God, it sounded hollow. But what else was there?