The Skybound Sea (51 page)

So much red. So many unmoving bodies.

It was a vast field. It had taken him a long time to cross it. There must have been a lot of them. They must have lain screaming, cursing, howling to mothers and reaching out to brothers lying beside them and fathers bleeding out and refusing to die.

He could see that.

But he could smell nothing.

Ktamgi had reeked of memory. Teji stank of regret. And Jaga smelled like nothing. No death. No laments. Not even a faded aroma of a long-ago tear, shed into the earth and waiting for him to find it.

There was no smell of memory here.

There were no ghosts here.

There were no
Rhega
here.

Except for him. And the ones in the stories the Shen uttered.

And could he trust them? Could he bring himself to believe them? To see the
Rhega
walking here, living here, fighting alongside the Shen, alongside humans, as countless as the stars?

He looked to the night sky for reference and snorted. The analogy might have been easier to grasp had he stars to which he could actually compare. There were lights up there, to be certain: purple ones, yellow ones, even the occasional pale blue glow that
might
have been mistaken for a star.

But then they shifted. The fish carrying the lights in their bellies and brows twisted and swam from one another, countless and impossible to keep track of.

“We have no stars here.”

To see Shalake standing nearby was no particular surprise. The lizardman had been by Gariath’s side since he had arrived, always the one to tell the stories, always the one to utter. He now stood by Gariath’s side again and stared up into the sky.

“The sky and sea are one here. There’s no room for anything else.” He traced a slow-moving, blue-glowing fish with his claw as it swam across the sky. “And these fish only emerge in the shadow of the mountain.”

Their gazes shifted to the vast stone monument standing stolidly at the other end of the ring. Haloed by storm clouds, the blue rivers veining it bright and glistening against the many firelights below, it stood with an earthen weariness. It had seen much in its time: many deaths, many bodies.

The blood spilled before its stone eyes tomorrow would be nothing particularly worth noting.

“It’s a mistake,” Shalake grunted. “We shouldn’t be fighting here. The Shen way is to strike quickly from the sea and from the shadows. We should be back there.”

He gestured behind them. The kelp forest rose in great masses of twisting, writhing stalks, cleaved neatly down the middle by the stone road leading into the ring.

“Our best chance of success comes from fighting in the forest.”

“Scared?” Gariath asked, unsmiling.

“Intelligent,” Shalake answered him. “There’s no way for the longfaces to move a force as big as the humans claim they have, but for the road. We fight them there at dawn, we paint the sun red with their blood and ours. Their dead are fed to the sharks, ours are sent back to the sea.”

Gariath stared at the kelp forest and wondered if it was that simple. Had he ever spoken so casually of throwing himself to his death? Did he ever have the same sliver of an excited whine that crept into Shalake’s voice when he said the word “blood”?

Perhaps he wondered too loudly. When he looked back, Shalake had an intent gaze fixed upon him.

“Do you agree?” Shalake asked.

“The humans … think a lot,” Gariath said. “Especially the little one. They spend a lot of time in their heads talking to themselves and wondering how they can stay alive. If they think it’s better to fight here …”

“You trust them?”

The dragonman hesitated before speaking. “The longfaces are strong. I’ve fought them. I’ve killed them.”

“Then they can die.”

“They have no concept of ‘death.’ They look at blood spilling out of their bodies and don’t blink. They see their others lying cold on the ground and walk on top of their bodies. They die only when you convince them that they can die.”

The smile that creased Shalake’s face was morbid enough without the amorous gleam in his eye.

“And there will be many,” he whispered in a shuddering voice.

Gariath furrowed his eyeridges at the lizardman. “Yeah. A lot.”

“The fight will be a story unto itself.”

“It might not come to that. As strong as they are, it’s the males that are the real danger. The little ones control the others and tell them what to do. If one of them dies, this whole thing becomes simpler.”

“The pointy-eared thing’s plan.” The wistful joy in Shalake’s voice dropped back into a growl. “I don’t trust it, her or the ones that think it’s a good idea.”

“Mahalar did.”

“Mahalar is our elder. Even if we must respect his decisions, I am the warwatcher.
I
say there should be more warriors in the forest. We can’t entrust it to a stupid, pink-skinned thing like her.”

“Some of her plans are stupid,” Gariath said, nodding.

“The last one almost got you eaten by an Akaneed, you said.”

“Almost,” Gariath replied. “And it brought me to where the
Rhega
lived.”

“And died,” Shalake was quick to respond. He swept his hands out across the ring. “Atop the demons, atop the humans, atop the steel and the blood and even the Shen. They fought and they died and they bled until the dead were as countless as the stars.”

Gariath looked out over the ring and repeated to himself.

“As countless as the stars.”

He tried to imagine it.

He found he couldn’t.

“And we may join them.” Shalake’s voice grew excited. “In a way that only we know how, in a glory that only
we
know. The humans, they will scream and weep and beg. But we will know what it is that meets us on the other side.”

“I already know what it is,” Gariath muttered. He had talked to enough ghosts to know.

“Because you are
Rhega
,” Shalake said. “And we are Shen. We are the same, you and I. To the humans, it will always be a mystery, something to be feared. As will you. Have they never looked at you as we have? Have they never stood here with you and spoke to you like a true creature?”

Gariath tried to remember the last time they had spoken like that, without fear or terror in their voices.

“No,” Shalake said. “They are weak things,
Rhega
. You are amongst the Shen now. All we have is each other. And our glorious death.”

While not quite certain how lizardman anatomy worked, Gariath dreaded to think what was going on beneath Shalake’s loincloth, given the excited quaver in his voice.

The lizardman positively beamed from beneath his scales. His eyes were alight with glorious stories. His heart thundered with memory. His smile glistened with bloodlust reflected in every tooth.

And none of it was his.

That story was someone’s else. That memory died on the battlefield. That bloodlust belonged somewhere far away and long ago.

That face Shalake wore,
his
face, belonged to someone who had earned it, not someone who had dug it out of an earth glutted on stories and blood.

It belonged to a
Rhega
.

“I’m leaving,” he grunted.

“Rest well. Eat well,” Shalake said. “Tomorrow, we die well and see our ancestors.”

“Yeah.”

Gariath trudged across the sands, head bowed, feet heavy.

He didn’t bother to count the steps.

Dreadaeleon chewed absently on the blackened fish, not sure whether his mouth was open or not. He downed a swig of water from a skin, heedless of the belch that followed. He wasn’t even aware that he seemed to have stopped blinking. The entirety of his attention was focused on his dinner companions.

And the Shen shared his sentiment. Seven yellow eyes, bright against the fire between them, stared back at him. Two of them, the ones whose lids drooped just slightly and were angled down at the boy, belonged to the towering Shen called Jenaji. Four more belonged to the two Shen flanking him, each of them bearing more black stripes than red as warpaint—something Dreadaeleon began to suspect indicated a role of leadership, based on the way they sat apart from the rest.

The seventh belonged to the lanky thing called Yaike, a Shen who never seemed to leave his bow behind and never seemed to stop glaring. Admittedly, it was difficult to glare with only one eye, but damn if Yaike wasn’t trying his hardest to.

Slowly, as though unaware that they were staring back, Dreadaeleon leaned over to the woman beside him and, in what he thought was a whisper, asked.

“Is this as incredibly weird as it feels, or is it just me?”

Asper made a pointed note of keeping her attentions focused only on the fish skewer in her hands. Dreadaeleon acted like he didn’t notice her discomfort.

“I mean, waiting to die, sitting next to a bunch of lizards that were ready to help us along with that up until a gang of netherlings decided to come and now they’re sitting here with us,
also
waiting to die and—”

“We speak your language, you know,” Jenaji suddenly interjected.

“Oh,” Dreadaeleon said, blinking. “Well, you hadn’t said anything all night, so I assumed only a few—”

“All warwatchers learn your tongue. It is part of our duty.” Jenaji leaned back. “I was using the silence to think.”

“About what?”

“The battle.”

“What about it?”

“Does that really need to be answered?”

Dreadaeleon took another bite of fish and nodded.

“About all my brothers, all my sisters, all the Shen I’ve lived with,” Jenaji replied with a sigh, “all for this battle. It takes silence to try and think why we do what we do in the name of duty.”

“What about the others?”

Jenaji glanced at the Shen seated around him and shrugged. “Maybe they just don’t like you.”

“Shiat-ay
,” Yaike grunted.

“Sorry. Yaike wants it to be known that he
definitely
doesn’t like you.”

“Why didn’t he tell me himself? Can’t he speak the tongue?”

“He can. He just doesn’t like to.”

“Na-ah
,”
Yaike suddenly interjected
.
“Atta-wah, siat-nai, no-wah-ah tanna Shen.”

“What was that?” Asper asked, finally curious enough to look up.

“He said it’s a Shen’s duty to speak the Shen’s language,” Jenaji replied, plucking another fish skewer from the fire and taking a bite of it. “That’s not what we were told, but Yaike is the kind of Shen who likes to do a lot of things that aren’t necessary.”

“Well, he’s got a point, doesn’t he?” Asper suggested. “You … warwatchers, is it? You’re the leaders of your …” She frowned, searching for the words. “Tribes? Clan?”

“Shen.”

“Leaders of the Shen, right,” she said. “Shouldn’t it fall to you to protect your people’s heritage? Your culture? I mean, you speak for your people, don’t you?”

“The Shen have not spoken in some time,” Jenaji replied. “We have only a few words to say a few things. We use your tongue only to ask questions of you before we kill you. A warwatcher does not lead through words or through life.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Jenaji reached up and patted the bow on his back.

“My heritage.”

He traced the warpaint on his body, a line for each life he had taken.

“My culture.”

He stomped a foot on the earth, old and dead.

“My people.”

“So, everything about you revolves around death,” Asper said, voice souring.

“All the important things.”

“No medicine? No arts? No traditions?”

“We have those. To fight longer, to celebrate the kill, to remember the dead.”

“How can a society live on those?”

“When the mortal armies freed us from Ulbecetonth, we took our oaths. The lives of our fathers, our brothers, our sons; all were offered up to guard Ulbecetonth. We do not live. We serve the oaths.”

“But what about your children? What about your trade? What about villages, religion, stories?”

“Our children are born dead. Our trade is death. Our villages are graveyards, we worship there and we pluck our stories from the cold, dead earth.”

“So … what? You just sit here, killing people until you die yourself?”

The Shen, save for Jenaji, nodded firmly in response.

“Huh,” Dreadaeleon chimed in. “That’s stupid.”

Only Jenaji nodded.

Asper elbowed Dread firmly, adding a scolding glare to accompany it. Dreadaeleon shot her one back, save with a little more confusion, as he rubbed his side.

“Well, it is,” he protested.

Yaike leaned forward, muttered something to the Shen in their own tongue, and they rose in reply.

“Shalake calls,” Jenaji said curtly. “We go.”

“Is there a plan, then?” Asper called after him as he and the other Shen stalked away. “Do we know what we’re going to do?”

“We know what
we’re
going to do,” Jenaji said. “Do what humans do and try to survive.”

“But why?” she demanded, rising to her feet. “We can do more together than we can apart, surely.” The Shen said nothing as they turned and stalked away. She looked around for support. “Right?”

Dreadaeleon shrugged, took another bite of fish. Asper watched Jenaji as he disappeared into the crowd of Shen.

In silence.

There was something to it, though. It was not a serene silence of meditation, nor a tense, fearful silence. It was a heavy, weary silence, like there were words to say, words that had been rehearsed and repeated so many times no one saw much of a point in reiterating them.

She wasn’t sure what they were. They probably didn’t involve the words “goodbye,” “love,” or “forever.” “Kill,” “die,” and “through the rectum,” maybe.

She surveyed the assembled Shen and frowned.

“How many could there possibly be?”

“A hundred,” Dreadaeleon replied. “Probably about a hundred and a half by now.”

“A third of the longfaces’ numbers.” Asper’s frown deepened with every word muttered. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Have you honestly not been paying attention?” she asked, frustrated. “To how they’re all walking around, acting like it’s their last day alive?”