Black Halo

Nine

Five hundred and forty-nine patches of disease crawling on two legs, he thought as he stared down at the tiny port city beneath the setting sun.

Two hundred and sixty able to hold a weapon, with five hundred and twenty eyes that spoke of their inability to know how.

One hundred and three of them carrying fishing rods and nets instead, taking their aggressions out against an ocean that was far too kind to them.

Ninety and six of them infirm, indisposed or suffering from the delusion that their lack of external genitalia was an excuse to let others do the fighting.

Ninety remained, evenly split between visitors in short boats who believed that the glittering chunks of metal they traded for their fish and grain was what made their civilisation worthy of crushing other peoples beneath its boot, and the children …

The children …

Naxiaw scratched his chin, acknowledging the coarse scrawl of tattoos etched from beneath his lip to up over his skull.

Forty and five little, toddling future lamentations. Forty and five impending regrets on skinny, hairless legs. His eyes narrowed, teeth clenched behind thin lips. Forty and five future murderers, butchers, burners and desecrators.

He had counted.

Diseases all.

Naxiaw took note of them: where they stood, what weapons they carried and which ones would cower in pools of their own urine when he led the rest of them down into their streets. With a finger smeared with black dye, on a piece of tanned leather, he scrawled the city as he saw it from high on the cliff. His six-toed feet dangled over the ledge, kicking with carefree casualness as he plotted a death with each dab of dye.

Port Yonder, as the humans called it, was a city built on contempt.

It was a demonstration of stone walls and hewn wood that the kou’ru bred with more rapidity than could be contained. It was proof that there would never be enough flesh and fish to satisfy their voracity. It was their assertion of contempt for the land, that they would desecrate and destroy in the name of building walls to cower behind, to raise filthy little children behind.

Children, he knew, that will grow up to consume more land, to spread the same disease.

It was a city that proved beyond a doubt the threat of humanity.

He reached behind him, ran his long fingers down the long black braid that descended from his otherwise hairless head. He brushed the four black feathers laced into its tuft. He had earned them the day he proved that threats, no matter how unstoppable they might seem, could be killed.

The time for vengeance would be later; for the moment, he returned their contempt.

He sat brazenly out in the open, long having deemed subterfuge and camouflage unnecessary. The humans hadn’t spotted him in the week he’d been there, and wouldn’t. To do that, they would have to look up.

All it would take for him to be spotted would be for one of them to look up, to see his pale green skin, to squint until they saw the long, pointed ears with six notches carved into each length, to let eyes go wide and scream ‘Shict!’ They would all be upon him, then; they would kill him, find his map, realise there were more of him coming, assemble their forces, pass the word to their many outliers and empires.

And then, Intsh Kir Maa, Many Red Harvests, and all the long and deliberate years that had gone into its planning would be foiled. The greatest collaboration amongst the twelve tribes would be ruined.

And the human disease, in all its writhing, gluttonous, greedy glory, would fester.

But for that to happen, they would have to look up.

Naxiaw couldn’t help but feel slightly insulted at the ease with which the plan was developing. He had dared to venture down towards the city on more than one occasion, to slip a bit of venom into a drink or subtly jab someone from afar with a hair-thin dart. For his efforts, he had counted ten diseases cured. The venom acted quickly — a brief sickness, a swift death. That wasn’t the problem.

What angered him was that the humans never seemed to care.

No alarms were raised, no weapons drawn, no oaths sworn as their companions coughed, cried and fell dead. They simply dumped the slain into the ocean and went on without sorrow, without hatred, without asking why.

He had hoped to share that with them: the anger, the fury, the pain. He hoped to return these gifts of anguish, the ones he had taken when the round-eared menace had come to his lands. But the humans would not accept it. They refused sorrow. They refused pain. They refused him.

Many Red Harvests would be a lesson as much as revenge. It would be the wailing of two people, linked forever in death.

But that would take time. That would take patience. For now, he simply sat on a cliff and continued to plot the end of a race as serenely as he might paint the sunset.

The s’na shict s’ha had time. The s’na shict s’ha had patience.

The s’na shict s’ha knew how to paint a scene of vengeance.

His ears suddenly pricked up of their own volition, sensing the danger long before he did. Footsteps, the details becoming clearer with each hairsbreadth by which his ears rose. Four flat, heavy feet clad in metal, heavy weapons and skins of iron making their approach loud and unwieldy.

Humans. Careless foragers or vigilant searchers for a threat. It did not matter.

His eyes drifted to the thick Spokesman Stick resting at his side; he ran his stare along the twisting, macabre design burned into its polished and solid wood.

Two more go missing, he told himself. No one cares. Then there are only five hundred and forty-seven strains of disease to cure. Still … He folded up the tanned hide into a thin, solid square. With a yawn, he tossed it into his mouth and swallowed. No sense in being careless.

The footsteps stopped; he narrowed his eyes. They had found his camp.

‘Someone else has come here,’ someone grunted.

He raised a hairless brow at the voice. It was thick, sharp, grating with an indeterminate accent, like two pieces of rusted metal hissing off one another. He was not so concerned with their unfamiliarity; the disease came in all shapes, sizes and voices. What gave him pause was the distinct, if harsh, femininity to their voices.

Their females fight now? He had thought that to be a strictly shictish practice. They are evolving …

‘Saharkk Sheraptus sent others ahead of us?’ the other one asked, grumbling. ‘He might have said something and spared us the-’

There was the sharp crack of metal on flesh, a growl instead of a shriek.

‘His motives are not for you to question,’ the first one snarled. ‘And he’s called Master now.’ The footsteps began again. ‘And we’ll find out who wants to stomp here uninvited.’

Yes, Naxiaw thought as he rose, the stick heavy and hungry in his hand, we shall.

He didn’t have to wait long before the footsteps and voices were both thunder in his ears. They were behind him now; he could hear them breathing.

‘Ha!’ The first one, he recognised, her voice being a bit sharper than the other’s. ‘Look at that. They come in green.’

‘A green pinky,’ the other one grunted. ‘I don’t remember them having long ears, neither.’

His back was still turned and they hadn’t attacked him yet. They were either supremely overconfident or desired a solution that ended without someone’s entrails stuffed up their own nose. Either way, he thought as he turned about, they would be surprised.

Of all the things he had expected to meet his narrowed eyes, however, he did not expect to stare at these … things.

They looked human, at least superficially, but were far too tall, their musculature obscene and exposed by the iron half-skins they wore. Their faces, lean and long as spears under hacked crowns of black hair, scowled at him with eyes of pure white, bereft of any colour or pupil.

The fact that they were purple was less of a concern than the swords at their waists. ‘And it has a stick,’ the one closest to him said. ‘A stick. What would even be the point of killing it?’

‘Fun?’ the other one asked.

‘Ah, yes.’

‘Sh’shaqk ne’warr, kou’ru,’ Naxiaw hissed between clenched teeth.

Even if they weren’t human, they were close enough for the insult to fit. And even if he refused to speak their language, he made sure his tone carried as much threatening edge as his raised stick.

At both, the two merely smiled broad white slashes filled with jagged teeth.

‘Look at that,’ one said, as she shook a round iron shield loose on her gauntleted wrist. ‘It wants to fight.’

‘We have duties to attend to,’ the other one muttered, sliding a short spike of dark iron from her belt. ‘Make it quick.’

‘Sh’shaqk ne’warr,’ he repeated, hefting his Spokesman. You don’t belong here.

If they didn’t understand his words, they understood his intonation as they slid easily into rehearsed defensive stances. Their muscles trembled with constrained fury as they edged close to him, careful and cautious, every movement planned and poised, every inch of their lean bodies speaking of an iron discipline.

That lasted for all of three breaths.

‘AKH! ZEKH! LAKH!’ Her shriek was accompanied by the metal roar of her spike clanging against her shield as she charged him. ‘EVISCERATE! DECAPITATE! EXTERMINATE!’

The other one was close behind her, cursing her companion’s recklessness and her own slowness. Naxiaw watched them come, watched the hate pour from their eyes over their shields, their spikes thirsty in their hands. He licked his lips, the stick resting comfortably and silently in his long fingers.

Then, he met their charge.

Tall as they were, they were compact creatures born of rocks, he recognised: too slow, too hard. He was s’na shict s’ha, and he was long. As they rushed, he leapt, his long legs carrying him from the envious earth as their shields went up with their alarmed cries. His long toes curled over the rim of the leading one’s shield, his long fingers caught her by what hair she had, his long arms pulled him up and over her head as her sword whined in a vicious chop that caught only the stench of his feet.

He smiled at the rearmost one’s baffled expression. They always wore it when he did that.

As broad as his smile was, his stick’s was broader, crueller. As he descended to the earth, the stick yearned to show its wooden teeth to her, to offer a brown-and-black kiss.

Naxiaw obliged it.

His stick struck her jaw with a loud crack, sent her staggering backward. He spared enough time to drive the stick’s head into her exposed belly, throwing her farther back. He could hear the other one turning around, hear her spike whining for his blood.

When that whine became a roar, he fell to the ground, heard the spike shriek iron frustrations over his head. He pressed his hands flat against the sand, hurled himself from the earth as his feet curled into fists and legs lashed out like coiled vipers.

He felt skin, then muscle, a shocking amount of muscle. More importantly, he heard her stagger backward, counted off her steps. One, two, three …

Then came the scream, fading as she took one step too many over the cliff face. One moment for a self-satisfied smile, then he was back on his feet, his Spokesman in hand, ready to make a final argument.

The other longface was up, far sooner than he expected, and her weapon was ready. He glowered; she was strong, resilient, but still a kou’ru. All that separated this monkey from the ones below was that she was too stupid to run.

Instead she settled back, waited for him to come to her. He obliged, darting past her thrust, ducking her shield and coming up inside her guard. Half a moment to savour her snarl, another to make sure she could see his large canines.

Then he struck.

The Spokesman had few words for her. It was not a weapon made for long, savoury stabs or vicious, sloppy chops. It spoke in short bursts, rapping against her jaw, then her clavicle, then her arm. Its arguments were sound, though, and reverberated inside her bones, each vibration compounded by the one that soon followed.

Naxiaw had learned well the ways of the Spokesman, heard its arguments voiced to over four hundred kou’ru, watched them all yield to its unwavering wooden logic. This one, he realised, was deaf. She recoiled from each blow, staggered backward, but her muscles did not fail beneath its logic, bones did not shake painfully against her blood. Each sound was solid, firm, where they should be hollow, reverberating.

Like hitting a rock, he thought.

He swung harder, sending her reeling back two steps, then retreated. Now she falls, he told himself. The shock was keeping her upright. Now, she will die. Now, she will fall.

She did neither.

Instead, the longface rolled her neck, letting the vertebrae crack within. She flashed him a smile, her jagged teeth stained with only the most meagre trace of red. All her crimson was in the malice of her narrowed eyes.

‘Well,’ she hissed, ‘aren’t you just adorable.’

She charged. He sprang. This time her hand was in the air, her metal fingers wrapped about his ankle. He had never truly felt the earth until she gave a sharp tug and slammed him down upon it in a spray of sand.

Strong, he thought. His eyes snapped open, body rolled as her spike came down to impale the earth beside him. Too strong. He swung the Spokesman up, and shock rolled down his arm as it kissed her shield. Far too strong. She swung her spike down and his wrist groaned under the strain as he narrowly caught it.

Another quick jerk and he was back on his feet, her turn to savour his baffled expression, his turn to see her jagged teeth. In a snap of her neck, his entire world became her teeth as she drove her head against his face. He felt bones snap under the thin flesh of his nose, blood spurt out in a great slobbery kiss.

‘Ha!’ she cackled. ‘CRUNCH.’

Even as he reeled back, his own crimson trickling down upon the earth, he could not help but smile. Her own smile was undiminished, even as his blood painted her face in a spattering red mask.

They always looked that way, right before it started to burn.

Her grin turned to angry befuddlement, then to anger proper, and then back to shock as her smile grew wider, skin stretching tight about her face. He savoured each twitch, each expression, each moment before it invariably ended the same way it always did …

‘It burns,’ she grunted. ‘It … it burns!’

His venom-laced blood went to work with hungry zeal. Her grunt twisted to a shriek as she dropped her sword and began to claw at her face. The skin was drawn tight now, growing redder as the blood sizzled beneath the purple flesh. Her metal fingers raked wildly, drawing out great gouts as she sought to rip the poison out from under her flesh.

The long-faced creature collapsed to her knees and he saw his opportunity.

His knee led his leap, driving her gauntlet deeper into her face and knocking her to the ground. Her neck was a twisting snake, writhing as she ignored the blow and continued to shriek into her hand.

The s’na shict s’ha knew how to kill snakes.

His foot was up and curled into a fist in one breath, then down again in one crunching, choked gurgle. The longface ceased to writhe, ceased to shriek, but her hand did not leave her face. Just as well, Naxiaw thought; he had seen the seething red mass beneath those digits before. It had lost its appeal after he had earned his first feather

There was little time for it, anyway. His ears pricked up again, sensing the sound of metal scraping up sand, cursing from behind.

Oh, right …

‘Clever, clever …’ He turned and saw that the longface’s voice matched the anger painted on her face. ‘But cleverness doesn’t spill blood.’

He had barely noticed her hand without the large iron spike or heavy metal gauntlet that had been lost in her near-fall. He continued to ignore it right up until it slid behind her back and came out in a flash of jagged metal, the weapon flying from her hand and chased by her shriek.

‘THIS DOES!’

The strike was too fast to dodge; he could only angle his shoulder. Even that wasn’t enough to stop the pain. The blade carved through with a beaming iron smile, ripping through green flesh and drawing great gouts of red. He shrieked, staggered backward, clutching his shoulder as the Spokesman collapsed to the earth, at a loss for words.

He could barely muster the consciousness through the pain to see her hand, which had plucked up her companion’s weapon. The blow came swiftly and fiercely, and he narrowly managed to seize her by the wrist to stop it, biting back the pain lancing through his arm.

And still, the spike drew ever closer. She was spiteful in her attack, but aware enough of his condition to smile. She need only press until the pain became too much to bear. He, too, was aware of her advantage, but more aware of the vein that throbbed under her purple wrist. It pulsed, pumping all the blood she had into her hand, with an inviting wriggle.

Naxiaw was not one to disoblige.

Lips parted, head jerked, canines gnashed and the longface screamed. Her life came spurting out in short, sporadic bursts as the sword fell to the earth. Her other hand came up to strike his head with its heavy gauntlet, but he narrowly caught it before it could crack his skull open.

He had only given her frenzy a desperation that drove her to even more vicious strength. She continued to press her attack, her life leaking out with every twitch of her muscles, intent on driving him into the earth itself. She would succeed, he knew, unless he ended it quickly.

He eyed the spike on the ground.

Legs began to buckle under him, but he pushed up with them, springing off the ground and curling six long toes around her belt buckle. His other leg craned down, toes twitching eagerly, violently. The longface spared enough hatred to glance at them, her eyes going wide as she saw his foot grasp the spike by its hilt and, on a quivering green leg, bring it back up.

‘No!’ she screamed. Her voice grew louder as her arms pressed harder as the spike drew closer. ‘No, no, no, NO! That’s not fair!’

‘Shict n’dinne uah crah,’ he replied. Shicts do not fight fair.

His leg twisted; he ignored the cracking sound as he brought the spike up between them. He sucked in his belly to allow his foot to pass up, past his chest, the spike angling upward sharply and aiming for a writhing, shrieking part of her.

‘CHEAT!’ she roared. ‘I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL RIP OFF YOUR-’

His leg twitched. She stopped moving. He felt blood trickle down from below her jaw and smear his foot.

His leap from her falling body was less nimble than he had hoped; his shoulder stung and his legs buckled as he hit the ground. The fight had gone on too long, his body had taken too much of a toll. If they had been humans, he would have walked away whistling a tune. But they were … These things were …

He ran a hand over his bald scalp. He did not know. But he must tell the others.

He plucked up his stick from the earth. His canoe lay hidden in the reeds nearby. All he need do was reach it, row out until he could concentrate enough to reach the other s’na shict s’ha through the Howling. From there, they could make it to friendly territory, the forests of the sixth tribe, maybe. They could deliver their report; Many Red Harvests would gain a new, purple crop to reap.

Yes, he told himself as the blood seeped out of his shoulder and sizzled on the ground, this will work. Everything will-

‘Interesting …’

No … no, no, no!

As fervently as he tried to deny them, as much as he tried to shut them from his sight, from his mind, every time he blinked and opened his eyes, they were still there.

A dozen long, purple faces, staring back at him.

‘A rather unique approach to combat, I must say,’ the one in the lead said.

If he didn’t know what the other ones were, Naxiaw might have thought it to be a female surrounded by burly, hulking males. The scrawny effeminate creature swathed in violet robes looked tiny against the sea of iron skins behind him. Only his goatee gave him away, the colour of bone instead of night like the hair of the females behind him, as he stroked it contemplatively.

‘It looks surprised,’ the female beside him snickered.

This one stood taller and more muscular than any of the ones present, carrying a massive wedge of steel hacked and hammered into a single, haggard edge. The smile she levelled at Naxiaw’s very visible shock was no less crude or cruel.

‘Oh, come on,’ she said, her laughter deep and grating. ‘You thought we only sent two up here? Who would do that?’

‘I am not sure it understands you,’ the goateed male said, leaning forward slightly. ‘I do not think it is even human.’ His face twisted up, puzzled. ‘What is it, anyway?’

‘No idea,’ the large female said, hefting her giant blade over her shoulder. ‘Better kill it.’

‘I suppose.’

Naxiaw did not wait for the war cry, not the tensing of muscle or the groan of iron skin. He exploded first, charging, his stick held high, his plan a dizzy, swirling collection of images inside a head that swam from blood loss.

The male leads, he told himself. Kill the male. He looks weak. One blow. That’s all it will take. Kill him, break through, run to the water, drown. The others will find you, they’ll pull the map out of your stomach. Don’t watch the female. Watch him.

The male did not move at this sudden charge, instead raising a single white eyebrow. Had Naxiaw glanced to the side, shifted his eye half a hair’s breadth, he would have seen the females backing away. The fear that should have been on their faces was replaced with morbid bemusement, as though they expected something bloody and glorious to happen.

But Naxiaw did not see that.

Watch him. Kill him. Kill the male.

The male’s lips started to move, just barely, beginning as only a few twitches. His eyes shut, not with the tightness of panic, but with a gentleness that suggested some kind of boredom. His breath leaked from his mouth in faintly visible lines of mist.

Kill him.

The male’s eyes opened, milky whites gone and replaced with a burning crimson energy that poured out of his gaze. Naxiaw’s stick was up, feet off the ground. It was too late to worry about the crimson, too late to do anything about the inflation of the male’s chest as he inhaled deeply, too late to do anything but strike.

One blow.

But that would come far too late.

The male’s face split in half with the opening of his mouth; the mist poured from his throat on echoing words that bore no meaning to Naxiaw. The chill that enveloped his body, the frost that formed on his skin — those had meaning.

His feet struck the earth, far, far heavier than when they had left it. The blood crystallised in blackish smears, the healthy green of his skin turned quickly to a light blue. The Spokesman felt light in a hand gone numb. His muscles creaked, cracked under his skin. His jaw opened in a cry, of war or of fear he knew not, and he found he could not close it again.

Then he could not move at all.

When the mist cleared, he saw the male, eyes a disinterested white again. The longface glanced to the side, noting the Spokesman, a finger’s length from his head, and clenched in a frozen blue grip. Paying little attention to that, he reached out and plucked something from beneath Naxiaw’s broken nose.

‘Interesting,’ he muttered, regarding the tiny little crimson icicle. Separated from the shict’s body, it quickly became liquid, sizzling between the longface’s fingers. He hissed and shook his hand. ‘Envenomed blood … curious.’ He leaned forward and studied Naxiaw intently. ‘That may explain why this one is still alive, despite being frozen.’ He rapped a knuckle against Naxiaw’s forehead, smiling at the tinkling sound. ‘It is not a pink. They could not survive such nethra.’

‘Well, I could have told you that. I mean, it’s green.’ The large female chuckled. ‘No wonder you’re in charge, Yldus.’

‘Hush, Qaine,’ the male called Yldus muttered, his voice lacking her snarling ferocity. ‘Whatever it is, Sheraptus will want to look at it closer.’ He glanced over his shoulder to a pair of nearby females. ‘You and you, take it carefully back to the ship. And do be careful not to let any extremities break off.’

‘The rest of you,’ the female called Qaine growled, sweeping her white-eyed glower over the remaining females, ‘retrieve ink and parchment. Remain here and take note of the city’s defences: numbers, weapons, positions, everything. Master Sheraptus demands thoroughness.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘And while I remain appreciative of a female’s need to spill blood, I remind you that your duty is reconno … reconna …’

‘Reconnaissance,’ Yldus sighed.

‘Whatever,’ she snarled. ‘You are not to be seen. Whoever objects answers to me. Whoever violates this order … answers to Sheraptus.’ Her grin broadened at the stiffness that surged through them. ‘Get to work, low-fingers. We return in days.’

‘With an army behind us,’ Yldus added, his face a long, grim frown.

There were grunts of salute, the shuffling of metal as the females reorganised themselves. Naxiaw could not turn his neck, could not even think to turn his neck. He could barely muster the worry for such a thing, either. His mind felt distant, as though whatever rime covered his body also seeped into his skull, past the bone and into his brain.

The sensation of movement was lost to him. He could not recognise the sky as two females gripped him by his arms and legs and tilted him onto his back. They proceeded to carry him down the hill, behind Yldus and Qaine, as though he were little more than a fleshy blue piece of furniture.

‘Days, she says,’ one of them muttered, her voice muted to his ears. ‘How does anyone expect us to wait that long?’

‘The Master demands patience,’ the other replied.

‘The Master demands a lot,’ the first one growled. ‘He never asks the females to hold their iron.’ She glowered. ‘Rarely does he ask netherling females to do anything for him, so absorbed with the pinks …’

‘No one questions the Master,’ the other one snarled. ‘Leave complaining to low-fingers.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the remaining females. ‘Weaklings.’ She glanced at Naxiaw, stared into his wide, rime-coated eyes. ‘This thing is hardly heavier than a piece of metal. How did it kill the other two?’

‘As you said, they were low-fingers pretending to be real warriors. They should have stuck with their weakling bows instead of thinking they knew how to use swords.’ She snorted, spat. ‘They die first when we attack.’

‘They can’t even speak right. What was it she said before she died?’

‘“Eviscerate, decapitate, exterminate.”’

‘That can’t be right. It’s “eviscerate, decapitate, annihilate,” isn’t it?’

‘Right. Exterminate means to crush something under your heel and leave its corpse twitching in a pile of its own innards. It is what humans do to insects.’

‘What does “annihilate” mean?’

‘To leave nothing behind. Low-fingers can’t even remember the stupid chant.’ The other one hoisted Naxiaw higher as a sleek, black vessel drifted into view on the beach below. ‘That’s why they’re dead.’