“By the Council of the Treaty for the Safety of the World,” said Hereward. “Not that anyone remembers that name. If we are remembered it is from the stories that tell of . . . god-slayers.”
“I know the stories,” whispered Jessaye. “And not just stories . . . we were taught to beware the god-slayers. But they are always women, barren women, with witch-scars on their faces. Not a man and a puppet. That is why the barrier . . . the barrier stops all but gravid women . . .”
Hereward paused to wipe a froth of blood from his mouth before he could answer.
“Fitz has been my companion since I was three years old. He was called Mistress Fitz then, as my nurse-bodyguard. When I turned ten, I wanted a male companion, and so I began to call him Mister Fitz. But whether called Mistress or Master, I believe Fitz is nurturing an offshoot of his spiritual essence in some form of pouch upon his person. In time he will make a body for it to inhabit. The process takes several hundred years.”
“But you . . .”
Jessaye’s whisper was almost too quiet to hear.
“I am a mistake . . . the witches of Har are not barren, that is just a useful tale. But they do only bear daughters . . . save the once. I am the only son of a witch born these thousand years. My mother is one of the Mysterious Three who rule the witches, last remnant of the Council. Fitz was made by that Council, long ago, as a weapon made to fight malignant gods. The more recent unwanted child became a weapon too, puppet and boy flung out to do our duty in the world. A duty that has carried me here . . . to my great regret.”
No answer came to this bubbling, blood-infused speech. Hereward looked across at Jessaye and saw that her chest no longer rose and fell, and that there was a dark puddle beneath her that was still spreading, a tide of blood advancing toward him.
He touched the hilt of the dagger in his side, and coughed, and the pain of both things was almost too much to bear; but he only screamed a little, and made it worse by standing up and staggering to the wall to place his back against it. There were still two guards somewhere, and Fitz was surprisingly vulnerable if he was surprised. Or he might be wounded too, from the struggle with the god.
Minutes or perhaps a longer time passed, and Hereward’s mind wandered and, in wandering, left his body too long. It slid down the wall to the ground and his blood began to mingle with that of Jessaye, and the others who lay on the floor of a god’s antechamber turned slaughterhouse.
Then there was pain again, and Hereward’s mind jolted back into his body, in time to make his mouth whimper and his eyes blink at a light that was a colour he didn’t know, and there was Mister Fitz leaning over him and the dagger wasn’t in his side anymore and there was no bloody froth upon his lips. There was still pain. Constant, piercing pain, coming in waves and never subsiding. It stayed with him, uppermost in his thoughts, even as he became dimly aware that he was upright and walking, his legs moving under a direction not his own.
Except that very soon he was lying down again, and Fitz was cross.
“You have to get back up, Hereward.”
“I’m tired, Fitzie . . . can’t I rest for a little longer?”
“No. Get up.”
“Are we going home?”
“No, Hereward. You know we can’t go home. We must go onward.”
“Onward? Where?”
“Never mind now. Keep walking. Do you see our mounts?”
“Yes . . . but we will never . . . never make it out the gate . . .”
“We will, Hereward . . . leave it to me. Here, I will help you up. Are you steady enough?”
“I will . . . stay on. Fitz . . .”
“Yes, Hereward.”
“Don’t . . . don’t kill them all.”
If Fitz answered, Hereward didn’t hear, as he faded out of the world for a few seconds. When the world nauseatingly shivered back into sight and hearing, the puppet was nowhere in sight and the two battlemounts were already loping toward the gate, though the leading steed had no rider.
They did not pause at the wall. Though it was past midnight, the gate was open, and the guards who might have barred the way were nowhere to be seen, though there were strange splashes of colour upon the earth where they might have stood. There were no guards beyond the gate, on the earthwork bastion either, the only sign of their prior existence a half-melted belt buckle still red with heat.
To Hereward’s dim eyes, the city’s defences might as well be deserted, and nothing prevented the battlemounts continuing to lope, out into the warm autumn night.
The leading battlemount finally slowed and stopped a mile beyond the town, at the corner of a lemon grove, its hundreds of trees so laden with yellow fruit they scented the air with a sharp, clean tang that helped bring Hereward closer to full consciousness. Even so, he lacked the strength to shorten the chain of his own mount, but it stopped by its companion without urging.
Fitz swung down from the outlying branch of a lemon tree, onto his saddle, without spilling any of the fruit piled high in his upturned hat.
“We will ride on in a moment. But when we can, I shall make a lemon salve and a soothing drink.”
Hereward nodded, finding himself unable to speak. Despite Fitz’s repairing sorceries, the wound in his side was still very painful, and he was weak from loss of blood, but neither thing choked his voice. He was made quiet by a cold melancholy that held him tight, coupled with a feeling of terrible loss, the loss of some future, never-to-be happiness that had gone forever.
“I suppose we must head for Fort Yarz,” mused Fitz. “It is the closest likely place for employment. There is always some trouble there, though I believe the Gebrak tribes have been largely quiet this past year.”
Hereward tried to speak again, and at last found a croak that had some resemblance to a voice.
“No. I am tired of war. Find us somewhere peaceful, where I can rest.”
Fitz hopped across to perch on the neck of Hereward’s mount and faced the knight, his blue eyes brighter than the moonlight.
“I will try, Hereward. But as you ruminated earlier, the world is as it is, and we are what we were made to be. Even should we find somewhere that seems at peace, I suspect it will not stay so, should we remain. Remember Jeminero.”
“Aye.” Hereward sighed. He straightened up just a little and took up the chains, as Fitz jumped to his own saddle. “I remember.”
“Fort Yarz?” asked Fitz.
Hereward nodded, and slapped the chain, urging his battlemount forward. As it stretched into its stride, the lemons began to fall from the trees in the orchard, playing the soft drumbeat of a funerary march, the first sign of the passing from the world of the god of Shûme.
Illustrated by Jessica Douglas