The Skybound Sea

Page 23

He knelt down low upon the dune’s ridge, keeping most of his body hidden behind the sand. For all of ten breaths, anyway. It quickly became insultingly clear that not a single longface was going to bother looking up.

Not that they were particularly renowned for their curiosity, but the frenzy with which they worked, their focus hammered like rivets onto the metals they forged and the slaves they whipped, was unnerving.

Not that they weren’t before.

And yet, it didn’t become completely clear until he noticed them gathering. In knots of purple flesh and polished iron armor, they clustered upon the beach. Thirty-three to a group each time, sharpening thirty-three swords, stringing thirty-three bows, coating thirty-three wedges of steel with thirty-three vials of sickly green poison.

And they continued to gather across the beach, sands stained with blood, blackened by fire.

In thirty-three groups.

“Silf’s Sweet Daughters,” he muttered. “They’re mobilizing.”

“For what?” Dreadaeleon asked, creeping up beside him. “They need that many to go destroy Teji?”

“To destroy Teji, they’d need a strong bowel movement and a stiff breeze. They wouldn’t bring this many.”

“Then . . . what? Are they attacking the mainland?”

Denaos shook his head. “I don’t see any food in whatever they’re loading aboard the ships.”

“Do they . . . need food?”

“Of course they need food.” Denaos paused, furrowing his brow. He looked over his shoulder at the boy. “Right? They have mouths.”

“Those are used for screaming. I’ve never seen them eat.”

“Me neither. Huh.” He looked back over the dune, shrugging. “Okay, if we return to the mainland and it’s been completely decimated, we’ll consider the matter settled. For now, I’d say they’re about to attack a much closer target.”

“Jaga,” Dreadaeleon muttered. “Lenk, Kataria, Gariath . . .”

“Let’s focus on one companion in peril at a time here.”

Denaos swept his gaze over the beachhead, the words slipping out through his frown. He settled on the massive spike-ringed pit in the middle, on the two netherlings hauling a twitching Gonwa to the edge and tossing it in. The spikes shook, the gruesome laughter echoing off the metal as something within stirred.

“If she’s not already—”

“She isn’t.”

The boy’s face was steeled with determination, he knew without even looking. His lips would be turned downward in a perfectly curved frown, his eyes would be acting under the impression that the more squinted they were, the more intense he looked, and he would be trying desperately to convince himself and the world that he had a jaw.

Exactly the sort of look he probably thought he should have had in this kind of situation.

If you were an honest man, Denaos told himself, you’d tell him. You’d tell him you weren’t about to suggest that she was dead. You’d tell him that you know what Sheraptus did to her, what he’s probably doing to her now. You’d tell him he should look far, far worse than whatever it is he thinks he’s supposed to look like.

But Denaos was not an honest man. Not to his companions, not to his gods, and never, ever to himself.

“Yeah,” he said, “you’re probably right.”

Trying to ignore the feeling of self-loathing that came with saying that, he returned to surveying the beachhead. The two males stood out amidst the crowd with the bright crimson glow of the gemstones around their necks as they floated about, dictating to the clusters of females, sending them rushing eagerly toward the black ships moored in the surf, trampling the Gonwa slaves who continued to haul loads.

He wondered if, at some point, she might be among those loads, bound and bundled into the ship to be taken to whatever invasion they were planning. What then? Swoop in, die horribly, be dragged to the pits along with the other Gonwa bodies to be—

Let’s stop that train of thought right there, shall we? If you keep thinking of the pits filled with corpses and how she might be in there and how you’ll probably wind up in there and how whatever’s in there now is laughing and crunching and laughing and laughing and . . .

A cry went up from the crowd. A team of six netherlings came charging forward, a crudely-fastened ramp held between them. Denaos watched, unable to turn away, as they lowered it into the pit.

He dearly wished he could, though, long before the ramp began to tremble with the weight of something heavy climbing up it.

With a sudden howl, the creature tore itself free from the pit, scattering sand and netherlings alike as it tore the land apart to make room for its size. On thick claws, it paced in hurried circles, a great, square head sweeping back and forth across the beachhead. Muscles flexed beneath a pelt of rust-red fur, a bushy tail swishing as it loped around, netherlings scrambling to get out of its way.

It was searching for something, that much was clear to Denaos. Why it was having trouble finding it became clear the moment it turned its head toward his hiding place.

In the place of eyes were two indentations in the skull covered with thick, black fur. It couldn’t have seen him, Denaos told himself over thoughts that largely consisted of “oh gods” over and over. It couldn’t have seen him. It was blind.

That didn’t make it any less unnerving when the thing’s black, rubbery lips peeled back to reveal long, glistening rows of teeth in what was very clearly a smile in a very deliberate attempt to make him take off running, propelled by a jet of his own cowardice.

That option grew increasingly more appealing as six ears, three to each side of its head, split apart in a pair of pointed, wedge-shaped fans. The beast whirled about, canting its head to the side as its ears twitched, trembled, found something.

With a sound that was like a very sick hound laughing at a very sick joke, the thing took off at a gallop. It sent a pair of netherlings leaping out of the way before its tremendous shoulders bunched and uncoiled, sending it leaping through the air to land upon a nearby Gonwa slave that it dragged, screaming, from the line.

The feeding was gruesomely brief: a noisome tumult of flesh ripping, meat slurping, bones cracking between tremendous jaws. All punctuated with peals of gibbering laughter.

Denaos watched the grisly scene for as long as it took him to blink. He then rose up, turned around, walked away from the dune’s ridge, and looked to Dreadaeleon, who raised a brow at him expectantly.

“So,” the rogue said, “how set are you on saving Asper?”

“Why?”

“Hongwe’s just down at the beach with the boat, you know. We could be back at Teji by nightfall and have a few more hours to reflect on how lucky we are not to have our genitals eaten by giant, six-eared, eyeless horrors.”

“What happened?” Dreadaeleon asked. “What’s down there?”

“Well, damn. There are only so many ways I can say it, Dread.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Go take a look for yourself. They’re fairly preoccupied down there.” He cringed as a peal of wailing laughter rose up over the ridge.

“That might prove an opportune moment,” Dreadaeleon said, tapping his chin. “Barring distractions, I could probably do a fair job of scrying out Asper’s location.”

Denaos furrowed his brow, looking a tad offended. “You could do that the entire time? You could have just used some manner of magical weirdness to find her and spared me the sight of whatever it is I just saw?”

“The act of seeing where one is not meant to see is a bit more than magical weirdness,” Dreadaeleon replied sharply. “It requires a clear vantage, a delicate position and—”

“And what? The seed of a blasphemer? Because I’ll get to work on that and be done in six breaths if that’ll make this go any faster.” He whirled about, gesturing wildly over the ridge. “Hell, why are we even here? Why don’t you go down spitting out lightning and flying around like an underweight sparrow made of death like you did on Teji?”

“Because—”

“Even better, why don’t you just drop your trousers right now and work up a good, flaming piss that sets them all ablaze like you did a few days ago? Why are we here, skulking about like rodents?”

“I would have hoped that, in our time together, you’d grasp that magic isn’t so mystical that it can be just summoned up like that. There isn’t an opportune moment to—”

“There is never not an opportune moment to shoot fire out of your prick!” Denaos snapped sharply. “What is it, then? Back on the beach, you were nearly unstoppable. Days ago, you were pissing fire.” He stared intently at the wizard. “What’s going on with you?”

“It’s complicated,” Dreadaeleon sighed, rubbing his eyes. “And I don’t have time to—”

It wasn’t clear what he was trying to say when the boy’s body suddenly jerked, nor when his eyes bulged out, threatening to roll out of their sockets. Nothing was clearer when he snapped at the waist, leaning heavily on his knees as he loosed a torrent of vomit upon the ground to coalesce into a brackish green pool. Things were certainly disgusting, Denaos thought, and disgusting for a solid ten breaths, but whatever was happening to him didn’t become any more obvious.

That didn’t happen until the vomit drew itself together of its own volition, shuddered as if it were taking a deep breath and then, with a slow, leisurely confidence, began to slither off on a carpet of bile.