The Godgame (The Godgame, Book 1) (19 page)

ASH

He blinked awake and lifted himself. His limbs were heavy, smeared in something sticky and warm. He’d fallen into a bog, stumbled into another swampy section of forest. He was sitting in a pool of decaying, festering plant matter.

The Talosians!

His heart jolted, like the chain had been pulled on an old buggy engine, grumbling to life. Was he in danger? He whipped his head about, scanning the trees. He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t hear anything. Had he lost them?

He pulled himself to his feet.

The trees rustled with the wind. Somewhere, a bird chirped.

He was alone.

Slowly, he climbed from the bog pit, his feet making disgusting sucking sounds as he pulled them free. He checked his rifle. It was dirty, but mostly dry; it was still loaded. He tried to get his bearings, to remember in which direction he’d come from and in which direction he should go. He was lost.

Ahead of him there was a break in the trees, an animal path perhaps. He decided to follow it. Until he found his friends, he’d have to make all of the decisions.

Before he set out, he bent down and scooped black mud from the bog. He smeared it over his cheeks and forehead, applied it thick beneath his eyes.

Now I’ll be harder to see
, he thought to himself.

He felt strangely calm.

He walked.

~

The path winding through the trees slowly became a more trodden footpath, clearly used by humans before. He followed it, hoping it would lead him somewhere safe, where he might find some kind people with a warm house and something for him to eat.

He kept his rifle ready and tried to stay alert. He scanned the trees and kept his ears open.

After a while, the path began to descend a slope. The trees struggled for purchase against the side of the mountain. The path became a switchback, going right and then turning sharply left, back and forth, slowly going down.

It was tiring and he was sore and soon he was panting and out of breath.

At one point, he stopped, sitting on a rock, drinking from his canteen, and he heard a gentle rustling in the trees behind him. He turned quickly, aiming his rifle, but it was only a kylix, tufts of fur blending in with the rocks, its spiked tail disappearing into the foliage as it noticed him watching, and darted away.

He trudged on, finally reaching the bottom.

Before long, the path opened up and he could see a small village.

He began to laugh, desperate and crazy.

~

A motor rumbled to his left, a buggy came blundering down the road, going fast, jostling its passengers, their heads bobbing like dolls. Ash froze, watching it approach. On the front of the buggy, skewered through the abdomen and hanging from its ribcage by various spears and spikes, hung the body of a man, its legs long since ground away beneath the tires, glistening tubes of viscera slumping and coming loose a little more with each dip in the road. As the buggy drew closer, Ash could see a sign had been hung from the dead man’s neck.
NOVACITE = PARASITE
, it read, smeared and runny.

The buggy honked its horn and Ash jumped out of the way.

The buggy careened down the road. Lifting his head, Ash saw the people in the buggy looking after him. But the buggy kept going and he watched it pass through the village, around the corner, and into the forest beyond.

Ash picked himself up and entered the village.

~

Eyes watched him from windows. The street was deserted.

As he walked, all too aware of the sounds of his own breathing and the crunching of his feet in the gravel, he tried to remember his geography lessons. Which village was this? Could it be Kelm? Or maybe Stone Town? He remembered that one because its name was so different from the others. It couldn’t be Fell Tree; he couldn’t have travelled that far. It was probably one of the many nameless villages peppered throughout Nova, too small to be recorded on any map.

He realized he had his rifle raised and he lowered it. He realized he was covered in mud, dark and stinking.

A door to his right opened and a woman stepped forward.

Ash watched her.

“Please, sir,” the woman said, coming forward cautiously. Several faces watched him from the open doorway of the house, including a couple of children.

Ash glanced around, expecting there to be someone standing behind him, but the woman was addressing him, he realized.

He took a step toward the house and one of the small children cried out. They were scared of him.

“Of me?” Ash asked. “Don’t be scared of me.”

The woman, holding her hands out as if to insure a certain distance was kept between her and him, said, “Yes.”

“I’m just a boy,” Ash said. “See,” he began to rub the mud from his face, only smearing it further. He grinned at the family in the doorway and they cringed.

“I just need a place to stay. I’m still just a boy.”

The woman continued to hold her hands out; they were shaking.

Ash dropped to his knees, tears welled in his eyes, slipping free—the world blurring out of focus—drew pales lines through the dirt on his cheeks. Something broke loose inside him. He cried.

The woman came forward, and held him.

~

Ash was sitting, looking out the window, letting one of the little girls play and tug at his hair, when the rumbling began. It started low, hardly perceptible, and then he could see it in the glass of water sitting before him, slight ripples, spiraling back and forth. The little girl stopped, and dropped her hands; he could feel her tense.

All talk in the room stopped.

And then they could hear the buggies, motors burning, tires grinding, men whooping and hollering.

Ash jumped to his feet. He snatched his rifle from where it sat leaning against the wall. He pushed his way to the door, despite the protests of the family, who tried to hold him back. He opened the door and peered outside.

He stood in the doorway and watched.

A roaring blur of dust and shouting was coming down the road, a corrosive cloud of slurry exhaust and filth.

“What will they do?” Ash asked no one in particular.

“Get back inside, boy,” the father of the family said behind him.

“Close the door,” someone else said.

The cloud drew closer, the rumbling increased in intensity.

“Please,” a little voice said, and tiny hands pulled pleadingly at Ash’s stained and crusty uniform jacket.

Buggies emerged from the fog of crimson-tinted grit, ugly motors vibrating like cantankerous growths on rickety frames, drivers with Talosian crested helmets pushing levers and turning wheels, festooned with hanging chains and mismatched poles of metal and wood sharpened to points and chipped and bent at all angles, and fleshy indefinite limbs draped in various stages of decay, some recognizable: feet and hands and unraveled intestines gone gray and limp in the fetid air. And the passengers, faces grinning wild and insane, frothing with anticipation of violence, teeth bared yellow and screaming, celebrating. And giant leering skulls from various beasts, with mouths large enough to swallow children whole—gaping, moldering teeth and polished yellow bone foreheads so that the cometlight reflected from them, blinding their prey—attached to small motorized mounts, their scaly hides worn by their riders, crowns of bone fashioned from their antlers and horns. And everywhere pennants and strips of ragged cloth bearing the simplistic symbol of Talos: an uninterrupted field of crimson. And the legions came through the smoke.

They carried Talosian fluted rifles sharpened to wicked points, and glimmering blades of various shapes and sizes shot through with veins of phosphorescent color, and some had spears with nozzles that belched flame, tanks of slurry strapped to their backs. They hollered and laughed and whistled and cracked whips. Discordant music played from their vehicles and a recorded voice said, “All roads lead to Talos or death!” over and over again on a loop. They brought dogs with them that ran barking through the streets. Already, a couple of the Talosians had leapt from their vehicles and stopped to fight each other in the dirt. They poured forth, what little was left of their uniforms torn and hanging about them, filled in with scraps of mismatched clothing like lowly theater costumes: coats and scarves stained with the blood of their prior owners; stolen headdresses from obscure religious ceremonies; hats of all sorts; human fingers and toes sewn about like medals of honor; sections of skin stretched taut and cured; strands of Novan lace from the traditional dress of the virgin; and one with his eyes painted to look like explosions; and one hurling vegetables from a basket to splat against the walls of the houses; and one beating his bare stomach like a drum; and one with a bloody screaming mouth where he’d bitten his own tongue; and many with stark pictures of the Archon’s face, painted in all colors, a grotesque joke, laughing at them all.

“Awa save us,” said the father over Ash’s shoulder.

Shrieks of rifle fire entered the air. Talosians leapt from their buggies and bikes. They began to smash windows. Somewhere, a baby cried out. Ghastly faces came through the smoke with blades cold and dark.

Two men, smiling wickedly, approached Ash and the house. One of them had an eye patch painted to look like the moon. The other, a pike weapon with three forked blades fused at its end, glimmering green in the cometlight. The people inside the house pulled Ash back inside and slammed the door closed. A moment later, there was a polite knock. Then, the window on the other side of the room shattered. Several of the children shrieked. The man with the eye patch reached inside and took up a cup of tea sitting on the nearby table. He sipped it, smacked his lips agreeably. The family began to back away from the window and door. The man with the eye patch grabbed a biscuit from the table and began to eat. He looked around casually.

The door burst open with a crash.

The father stepped forward, putting himself between the Talosian and his family. The man with the tri-pointed pike thrust it forward, impaling him through the middle of his abdomen, snapping his spine. The father, with nothing but a lightly expelled breath, slumped forward, folding loosely, as the Talosian ripped the pike free and grinned up at them all.

Ash dropped to his hands and knees and crawled. The house filled with screams. He hurried beneath a table and across to the back of the house. Without looking behind him, he groped up the wall until he found a window. Closing his eyes, ducking his head, he threw himself, shoulders first, through the window.

Glass shattered; he thumped to the ground outside. The screaming continued behind him as he picked himself up and glanced around. The village was filled with Talosians, surrounding it, everywhere. A couple of dogs fought over something, ripping and growling. A Novan woman ran from a gibbering Talosian. Papers tumbled through the streets like leaves. Bikes zipped back and forth, leaving trails of foul-smelling smog that hung in the air. A Talosian ran continuously in circles. Several men hacked at bushels of dried grain with their spears and blades. One Talosian was bending over, firing his weapon so that he appeared to be farting flames from his rear, his nearby friend cackling uncontrollably. An escaped oxhoag squealed and floundered awkwardly through the chaos, grafted flaps of flesh that would cook up as delicious guinea steaks wobbling on its bulk, the legs of several other animals swinging limply and uselessly beneath it, tripping it continuously, the animal’s eyes rolling and rolling with blind terror.

Ash was caught in a crowd of villagers, Talosians all around, their faces like demonic masks, red and bloated. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t breathe. He was pushed, herded. There were several barking dogs ahead, baring their teeth, held back on chains by grinning Talosians, the crowd of villagers surging to avoid their frothing mouths.

Shadows closed over them. Ash looked up and realized they were inside a large barn, arching wooden beams above. He was pushed, further and further, people surging all about, closing in the gaps, until the entire structure was filled with people, each struggling uselessly with his or her neighbor, their screams blending into a single ineffectual roar of torment and fear.

“Hello!” a Talosian said from the loft overhead. He waved a flaming torch above his head. “Welcome to your last city council meeting!” He flung the torch spinning over the crowd.

Villagers screamed, trying to get away, but they were stuffed too tight.

A shot rang out and the Talosian tumbled from the loft, landing with a thump into the moaning crowd not far from where Ash struggled, pushed on from all angles, his hands up, reaching, desperate.

Smoke began to drift over their heads; the smell of burning wood filled the air. Ash could see a boy about his age climbing over the people toward an open window, but his body suddenly jerked, and he fell limply back into the crowd. From within the forest of sweaty arms, a face he recognized swirled into view—the little girl who had been playing with his hair only minutes ago—then she was gone.