‘No … no, no. No!’ Lenk swept up to it, cradling it in trembling hands as though it might break at any moment. ‘No … she … she’d never leave this behind. She always wears them.’
‘Wore them.’
‘Shut up! YOU SHUT UP!’ Lenk snarled, bashing his fist against his temple. ‘This can’t be it. She wouldn’t have left this. She … they …’ He swallowed hard, a lump of boiling lead tumbling down his throat. ‘All …’
‘Dead.’
The word was given a sudden, heavy weight. It drove him to his knees, pulled the sword from his hand, crushed the blood from his face like dirty water from a sponge.
‘Dead …’
‘Dead,’ the voice repeated. ‘Another blessing you will come to realise in time.’
‘Please …’ Lenk gasped, his voice wet and heavy in his throat. ‘Please don’t say that.’
‘She would have killed you, you know.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘She said as much.’
The voices flashed through his mind, as hot and tense as his fevered brow. All he had left to remember them by – her by – was the scorn that had dripped from her lips when they last spoke. The memories, the pleasantries, faded into nothingness and left one voice behind.
‘I want to feel like myself.’
‘And you can only do that by ignoring me?’
‘No, I can only do that by killing you!’
It continued to ring, cathedral bells of cracked brass. He clenched his skull, trying to stop it from echoing inside his head. He could not let go of the noise. It was all he had left.
‘Kill you …’ he repeated to himself. ‘Kill you … kill you …’
‘She would have,’ the voice replied. ‘But that’s not important now. Now, we must rise up, we must—’
It faded, drowned in a flood of logic and reason that swept into Lenk’s brain on a hatefully reasonable tone.
Of course she would have, he thought. She’s a shict. You’re a human. They live to kill us. This voice, familiarly cynical and harsh, he realised was Denaos’ own, seeping up from some gash in his mind. What, you thought she’d give up her whole race for you?
Maybe it’s a blessing, a voice like Asper’s said inside him. The one favour the Gods will show you. You don’t have to worry about her anymore, do you? You don’t have to worry about anything …
Well, it’s just logical, isn’t it? Dreadaeleon asked, more decisive and snide than ever. Put two opposing forces in the same atmosphere and one destroys the other. You can’t change that. It’s just how it works.
Your life only became more meaningless when you centred it on her, Gariath growled. You deserve to die.
‘I deserve it …’
‘Self-pity is also a …’ The voice paused suddenly, its tone shifting to cold anger. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I deserve it.’
Lenk reached up and took the feather, the last action he took before he rose without compulsion from his body. He turned to stare out over the sea, clutching the white object close to him. Then, his feet beginning to move with numb mechanic, he walked toward the hungry, frothing sea.
‘What are you doing?’ The voice’s demand didn’t penetrate the numbness in his body. Whatever eyes it had, it must have seen the shore looming up. ‘Stop! This is not our purpose!’
‘You were right,’ Lenk said, a smile creeping across his face. ‘She’s dead. They’re all dead. We’ll be together again, though. Companions forever.’
‘Listen to me. LISTEN. Something is wrong.’
‘It’s over.’ The young man shook his head. ‘I can’t do this anymore. Not without them. Not without her.’
‘Sacrifice isn’t noble if it hinders everything else. We have much to do. What of purpose? What of vengeance?’
No more words. No more arguing with them, any of them. His willpower seeped out of his leg on weeping pus. Hope could no longer carry him. Futility could no longer fuel him. Surrender, the promise of an end to the blood and the pain, drove him forward, inevitably toward the sea.
‘Resist,’ the voice commanded. ‘Fight. We are stronger.’
No more words. The waves rose up to meet him. He would never stop walking until his lungs burst with salt and his flesh was picked clean by hungry fish.
‘You do not get to die here,’ the voice uttered, cold and commanding. ‘That is not your decision.’
No more words.
He felt a sudden, overwhelming cold, his fever coursing out of him on a frost-laden breath. His legs locked up beneath him; ice water coursed through his veins and sent him to the ground.
‘I won’t let you.’
So close to release, Lenk reached out with fingers trembling to grasp the earth and pull him into sweet, blue freedom. Freedom from Miron, from Greenhair, freedom from anyone and everything that had made him think she should have died for leather and paper.
‘Why …?’ He felt his tears as ice on his face as his body trembled and folded over itself. ‘I can’t do this. Just let me die … I want to …’
‘It does not matter what you want,’ the voice replied, unsympathetic. ‘All that matters is what you must do.’
The pounding in his head faded, freeing his ears to the sound of feet scraping against sand, alien voices rising over the sandy ridge. Alien, but familiar.
‘Hake-yo! Man-eh komah owah!’
‘And what you must do … is hide.’
‘But I—’
‘You don’t get to make that decision.’
He could barely feel the sand beneath his feet or his spine bending as he plucked up the sword. He barely noticed; his entire willpower, what didn’t ooze out of him, was concentrated in his fingers as he held desperately onto the feather. He wasn’t even aware of moving behind the sandy dune until he was finally there, his numb body forced to the earth as whatever force moved his legs suddenly gave out.
No sooner had his belly pressed against the dirt than the first green scalp came rising over the opposite ridge. A pair of wide, amber eyes shifted across the wreckage. A satisfied snort emerged from a long, green snout. Two long, clawed feet slid down the sand and into the valley, their tracks concealed by the long tail dragging behind it.
That the creature didn’t notice his presence spoke more of its inattention than his subtlety. Even amidst the beach scrub, a head of silver hair couldn’t have been hard to spot. He lay still; his body bore obedience for only one voice.
The lizardman turned about, cast its glower over the ridge and snarled.
‘Nah-ah. Shii man-eh.’
‘Shaa?’ came an indignant hiss from beyond the dune.
Three additional green bodies came clambering over the ridge. Lenk took greater note of them now, particularly the clubs studded with jagged teeth and savage machetes hanging from their loincloths. A decidedly vicious improvement from the sharpened sticks they had carried last night, but that only brought a grim smile to Lenk’s face.
Their weapons were so sharp, so brutal-looking. They could eviscerate him in the wink of an eye, end the suffering in a horrific chop and smattering of red and fleshy pink chunks on the sand. It would be so quick, so easy.
His felt his leg spasm on the sand.
Despite his mounting excitement, he thought it odd that they hadn’t carried those tools last night. Even more curious was the fact that they seemed taller than before, their lanky musculature packed tightly under taut green flesh. Tattoos as ferocious as their weaponry ran up and down their bodies in alternating hoops, jagged bands and cat-like strips of red and black ink. Still, it wasn’t until Lenk noticed the space under their long snouts that the realisation dawned upon him.
‘Beardless,’ he whispered. ‘These aren’t the same ones.’
‘These are warriors. Look at the way they move.’
Lenk took note immediately. No step was uncalculated, no amber scowl was wasted. They stalked around the wreckage of the Nag with gazes far more predatory than the lizards from the other night.
Killers’ gazes, Lenk thought. They can smell my blood. They hunger for it. They’re violent, bloodthirsty creatures. His grin grew so large that he had to bite his lower lip to stifle it. Gods, but they’re going to kill me so quick.
He felt his hands tighten around the scrub grass in ecstasy. If the voice could feel the plants, too, it made no indication.
‘That one,’ it muttered. ‘The one with the bow. That’s the leader.’
Scarcely a revelation. That one lingered behind the three others with the cool casualness of command against its companions’ predatory vigilance. Its polished black bow hung off its shoulder with the easy relationship of a master and his weapon. Any remaining doubt was quickly dispelled by the fact that its tattoos covered more of its flesh than any other lizard present.
‘Cho-a?’ it called out, apparent disinterest in its voice.
‘Na-ah!’ One of them, the one that had first arrived, looked up with a snarl. ‘Man-eh shii ko ah okah!’
‘Shaa,’ the leader said, waving its scaly hand. It jerked its head back toward the ridge they had come from. ‘Igeh ah Shalake. Na-ah man-eh hakaa.’
The other two lizardmen looked up from their own inquiries into the wreckage with nods. They grunted once, then stalked away from the debris, past the leader and up the ridge, vanishing behind it. The leader sighed and folded its arms over its inked chest as it stared at the obstinate one expectantly.
‘Mad-eh kawa yo!’ it snarled, jerking its head back to the ridge. ‘Kawa!’
‘Sia-ah!’ the other one hissed, scanning the wreckage with desperate intensity. ‘Shii ko a man-eh!’
‘They look agitated,’ Lenk whispered, unconsciously slithering a little closer. He eyed the quiver of brightly coloured arrows hanging off the leader’s back and his voice took on a hysterical edge. ‘Absolutely irate, even. How close do you think we’d have to be?’
‘For what?’
‘For him to put one of those arrows right between my eyes.’
‘It won’t happen. They’re leaving now, look.’
Lenk bit back a despairing shriek, or it was bitten back for him by whatever numbed his throat. He didn’t care about anything save for the fact that the insistent lizard-man’s tattooed body shrank with a sudden sigh. Looking dejected, it turned to go and follow the leader back up the ridge.
Until something on the ground caught its eye.
‘Yes,’ Lenk squealed, ‘yes, yes!’
‘No!’ the voice countered with a chilling anger.
Lenk followed the creature’s yellow gaze past the gutted timbers and scampering crabs, onto the moist sand.
To the perfectly preserved indentation of his footprint.
‘Don’t move,’ the voice warned. ‘They haven’t seen us yet.’
‘Well, we can fix that.’
‘No! DO NOT—’
The voice’s command was lost in his laughter. Its control vanished in a fevered surge as Lenk rose to his feet. He spread his arms wide in a deranged welcome, his sword flashing in the sunlight and catching the attention of the creatures below.
From atop their heads, large crests fanned up. Lenk caught a glimpse of the many colours painting the webs of the green protrusions. Murals of blood and steel and teeth stretched from brow to backbone.
The obstinate one pointed a scaly finger up, opened its jaws in a shriek.
‘MAN-EH!’
‘Yes, yes!’ Lenk cried back. ‘Welcome, gentlemen, to the butchery! If you’ll just hoist those fancy-looking weapons, we can finally get down to the gritty process of spilling my guts onto the dirt!’
‘This isn’t your decision!’
‘You keep saying that, but here I am,’ Lenk replied. His eyes went wide as the leader unslung his bow, nocked and drew back an arrow in short order. ‘If it makes you feel any better, you can say it was your decision.’
‘Down, fool!’
It was not a suggestion. Lenk’s legs gave out the moment the bowstring hummed; he teetered backwards in time to loose a whining curse as the arrow shrieked just over his face. His hand seized up, clenching his sword as he tumbled down the dune and onto the beach.
‘No matter,’ he sputtered through a tangle of sand and steel, ‘no matter, no matter. I can still do this. It’s just going to be a bit messier.’
He felt the vibrations through his feet as he clambered upright, of legs thundering across the sand, long clawed toes kicking up earth as it shot toward him. He smiled, the same sort of grin he might have had for a fond relative, as he looked up at the ridge.
He did not have to wait long.
‘SHENKO-SA!’
The war cry came on the eruption of sand and a shiny emerald flash as the lizardman came leaping over the dune. For an instant, Lenk saw the majesty of his impending demise: the teeth glittering in the creature’s war club, the enraged circle of its stare, the tensing muscles in its body.
‘Oh,’ Lenk gasped, ‘this is going to be good.’
‘No,’ the voice uttered. ‘Fight.’
‘I don’t want to.’ The protest of Lenk’s voice was a sentiment not shared by his body, however, as his sword came up regardless. ‘I want to die.’
‘Fight,’ the voice commanded.
Refusal was mute against the creature, which slid down the dune in a cloud of sand and screams, swinging its club in wide circles over its head. Lenk watched the tattooed flesh, saw the mural painted on its crest foretelling his own bloody demise.
‘FIGHT!’
‘I don’t—’
Lenk did.
His sword jerked up spastically, was seized in hands not his own. The club sputtered a spray of splinters as it bit the blade, steel grinding against teeth. Lenk felt the shock rattle down his arm, shake his heart in his rib cage. Gouts of fire lanced his leg as he felt himself being pushed backwards.
