The Heretic Land (47 page)

‘You still love me too much to kill me,’ Leki said. She was smiling, one hand splayed in the blood-slushed snow, finger pressed into the muddy ground.

‘You’d dare read me, floater?’ As he spoke the word, a pang of shame made him turn away. There was silence for a precious heartbeat, and then Leki spoke.

‘You’re such a fine soldier,’ she said to his back. The words were so loaded they hurt.

‘I’m a
loyal
soldier!’ Sol snapped. The
distance between them was growing. He wished she had never found them, even if that meant the battle would still be raging.
He held up that thing and the Skythians fell to their knees.
Sol glanced back at Leki and the fist-sized object, pale in the reflected firelight.
I should kick it into the fire
.

His wife was lost to him. He loved her so much, and yet a stranger sat before him now, loaded with lies and corrupted by the land she had come here only to visit, not to be absorbed by. Its false god had made a disease of her mind. She shunned the Fade, and the mere idea of that sent a shiver down his spine – Sol was never an obsessive, but he was a devout Fader because that was how he had been brought up, the life he had lived.

His skin was stiff with dried blood, his hip burned and raged where he had taken an injury, his fingers were open to the bone where a sword had slipped across them. Yet the greatest pain nestled deep within his chest.

‘There are no gods but the Fade,’ Sol said. He drew his pistol and walked past Tamma, kneeling beside the bound man and pressing the barrel against his chest.

‘Sol!’ Leki cried out, and in that one word Sol heard so many admissions that it made the pain in his own chest heavier, and deeper than he thought he could carry.

‘Oh by all the fucking gods of the Fade …’ Tamma said. Her voice dripped awe and terror, and when Sol looked up past the fire he dropped his pistol, fell onto his rump, pushing himself back across the wet, cold ground.

Beyond the fires, where snow still lay relatively untouched outside the battlefield, something emerged from the shadows of the trees. Something huge, and pale, and impossible.

‘There, Sol,’ Leki whispered tenderly. ‘Aeon arrives.’

Aeon gave them a chance
, Venden thought. Before
Aeon lay evidence of humanity’s squandering of that chance – bloodied snow, bodies, flaming pyres, and at the battle’s centre another act of violence about to take place. The message it had sent with his father and the woman had been cast aside.

Now, Aeon was gathering itself, its aura of sadness pushed aside as something began to rise. Venden sensed a shadow deep within the ancient being’s mind, forming inside and ballooning outward, and at its heart was such violence, turmoil and hatred that he had never imagined.

What
is
that?
Venden thought, but Aeon did not respond, and he quickly realised why.
That’s … they’re …
Recoiling in horror, Venden could not turn away.

Soon, they would soon be released.

Sol kicked his pistol aside and drew his bloodied sword, angry at himself for dropping his weapon, shocked, staggered by what he saw, but already he was struggling to gather his senses. Tamma was behind him, standing and shaking. Gallan was to his right, edging sideways closer to his Blader and showing no external signs of his shock. Sol knew that it must all be inside.

He had seen one of his Blade press a knife to
his eye and fall on it. Suicide was a mortal sin amongst Alderians, and even more so for a soldier during the height of battle. Each Spike soldier bore the weight of the brothers and sisters within his or her Blade, and to remove one’s own life – in whatever circumstance – was to put the rest of the Blade in danger. Sol wanted to rush across and stab at the soldier’s corpse, slash and ruin his body as punishment for what he had done. But his soul had already filtered to the Fade, and any punishment was now in the hands of the gods.

‘Sol, what
is
that?’ Gallan said. Tamma answered from behind them.

‘Aeon,’ she said. ‘The Skythian god, Aeon.’

‘It’s what we all came here to kill,’ Sol said. Such a statement seemed so foolish in the presence of this thing.

‘You can never kill it,’ Leki said. She had regained her feet and stood almost within Sol’s reach. Almost. She was not afraid.

As the huge shape drifted closer to them, ambiguous, difficult to discern fully in the shifting shadows and dancing firelight, Sol was overcome with awe at the history it implied. It was a manifestation of the purest blasphemy a devout Fader could imagine – a player at being a god, in denial of the Fade. He could understand why the Skythians believed it a deity, but in the same thought he hated the very idea of such beliefs, and hated Aeon for attracting them.

Around him, captured Skythians had dropped to the ground and lay prone, faces averted.

‘This is why we brought the Engines,’ Gallan said.

‘We can’t run
away,’ Sol said.

Gallan turned to him. ‘I wasn’t suggesting we should.’ His tone betrayed the lie in his statement. Fighting this was the last thing he wished to do, and Sol could not blame him.

But Spike
never
ran. There were countless stories about the Ald’s soldiers holding out against all hope, succeeding against all expectation, triumphing against overriding odds. Stories, too, about heroic defeats.

‘Blade, re-form!’ Sol shouted. Gallan blinked, afraid. But he pressed his lips tight together, and nodded once at Sol.

‘Alderia,’ Gallan said, the fighting call barely a whisper.

‘Sol!’ Leki said. She moved closer, holding his arm as she used to. But her touch had changed. ‘Sol, listen instead of fighting, and perhaps you can learn something.’

‘Don’t condescend to me!’ Sol hissed, shoving her away. She tripped over a discarded spear and fell close to the man Sol should have killed. But there was something larger to kill now. She was welcome to him.

‘Sol … you’re so wrong.’

Traitor
, he thought, but he did not respond. His wife was lost to him, and Sol turned his back on her.

The remaining soldiers had formed into three groups, each placing itself between two of the Skythians’ large fires. Aeon paused at the edge of the battlefield, its pale body reflecting blood-tinged flames in streaks of red and orange.

‘Alderia!’ Sol shouted. Without another glance at Leki he hefted his sword, charged Aeon, and knew with complete faith that the remainder of his Blade followed.

Bon surfaced, blinking away pain, and wondered if he was the only person to notice the sky.

It was smeared with dawn in the east, and the snow had stopped, yet the sky was ominously heavy with something ready to fall. He noticed Leki close by, looking up and frowning.

‘Something
wrong,’ he said.

She turned, surprised at his voice. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Laden with doom.’

Bon sat up and Leki helped him, and her words struck home.
Laden with doom.
His whole time here on Skythe had felt like that, and now it gathered towards a climax. Doom watched him, and he looked around to see what else it saw.

Fires burned, piled bodies cast spiky skeletal shadows, and Aeon was here. They were attacking it, but ineffectually. Spears ricocheted from its body, some snapping in two. Swords wielded by experienced hands seemed not to touch its legs, nor its stomach where it dipped low enough for them to reach. Its huge head turned lazily, knocking two soldiers to the ground almost by accident.
It’s not fighting back
, Bon thought.
It’s almost as if …

‘Waiting for something,’ Leki said.

‘I think so too,’ he said.

‘What about …?’ Leki nodded at the Skythians, scores of them still lying on the ground.

‘Waiting as well.’
Aeon doesn’t need them to protect it
, he thought. A pile of Skythian corpses burned close to the bridge, grotesque shapes of bone and simmering flesh thrown out by the flames, and he felt so sad. Tears blurred his vision.
It sent those as well as us, and …

‘What if we’ve both failed?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look at the sky,’ he said. Dawn was brightening, but the sky was still rank with something terrible.

‘Oh, by all the gods,’ Leki said, and she slumped against him. ‘Bon, I see it now. I
smell
it. I think maybe one of the Engines is working already.’

‘Already?’

‘Magic draws
close,’ Leki breathed.

‘And this is growing warm.’ Bon had pulled the bone-thing Aeon had given them closer with his foot. Wet mud steamed around it, slushy snow melted. He was about to kick it away again when Venden spoke in his mind. The voice was his son’s when he was very young, barely able to talk. But the words carried great weight.

Hold this part of Aeon’s heart
,
and close your eyes again, father. Whatever you hear, whatever you sense … close your eyes.

Sol Merry had fought Outer rebellions, dissenters in western Alderia, a plague of rabid Ban Chock tribesmen in the east, and a rash of rawpanzie attacks on the Chasm Cliffs. But he had never faced an enemy like this. Aeon was beyond imagining, because it was blasphemy to imagine a false god. To even consider them capable of being imagined was heresy, and as he drove a spear towards the monster’s underbelly, and darted between its legs to hack at the heavy swinging parts either side of its head – tentacles, or other appendages – he felt the gods of the Fade moving with him. He was fighting for them and every honest, devout Alderian who paid them the homage they deserved. He was fighting for his dead father’s warrior heritage, his politician mother who strove to better her town’s outlook and future, and his sister and her burgeoning family.

But he was no longer fighting for his wife, and that left a knot of scar tissue at the centre of his soldier’s bloody heart.

Aeon did not seem concerned at the attack. It moved towards the river, kicking apart one of the Skythian’s fires, and the Spike followed. It swung its huge head from left to right, knocking two soldiers aside. But their fall was an accident, not a deliberate attack.

‘We’re not touching it!’ Tamma yelled.

‘The Engines will
touch it,’ Sol said, lunging with his sword, blade skittering from the thing’s hard foot. He felt hollow, bereft. Empty of every good thing. Even the memory of his family seemed to be fading, replaced with an all-consuming understanding that nothing he did, and nothing he had ever done, held any significance.

Who am I what am I why am I?
It should have been a scream, but when he opened his mouth, he only gasped.

His friend was staring at him. Gallan had dropped his sword and mace and stood wide-eyed, as if a profound realisation had struck. His face looked calm and uncreased by the stress of war.
Hollow man
, Sol thought, and as he and Gallan locked eyes, something filled them both.

The world exploded and blew Sol backwards, sprawling in muck and blood, conscious only of the shattering violence erupting around and within him. There was no refuge from its fury, no islands in this convulsive turmoil. Something entered and wrestled with his consciousness, a twisting mad thing, ancient and abhorrent and yet suddenly rejoicing in this strange freedom.

Kolt!
Sol thought as his mind was shattered, shredded, ripped apart by the invader. Sol’s scream of agony was silent, because his body was paralysed by the extent and shock of the pain. Everything he was – every dream and love, habit and history – shrivelled to nothing, and witnessing the loss was awful. Sol’s last full, conscious experience was seeing his whole life and self erased and replaced with something monstrous.

Sol Merry ceased to exist at that moment, leaving a travesty of what he had once been. His new present – his here and now, where existence was as interesting to him as a bug’s existence to the bug – was filled with one impetus.

He picked up his dropped
sword and spear and examined his surroundings. There were more who looked like him, but they were of no interest. There were other shapes prone on the ground, not like him, but these also held no interest. And there were two more shapes huddled together around something that burned and shone like the sun.

Sol flinched from the glow and started running, raging, as an instinct he did not understand took him south.

Bon kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the rage. He could feel Leki pressed against him, the fragment of the heart of Aeon blazing between them, her breath warm against his cheek, her heartbeat welcome against his chest, and he so hoped that she was keeping her eyes closed as well. Whatever was happening, neither of them should see it.

The explosion had been incredibly violent, and all but silent. Bon had felt himself compressed and then pushed across the ground, sliding through mud and blood with Leki clasped against him. They had come to rest against a pile of Skythian bodies.

I smell blood and fear and something unknown
, Bon had thought, and the storm raged. He heard the subtle rustle and clink of other bodies striking the ground, clothing and weapons knocking together. The air seemed to writhe and flex around them, whipping back and forth as if indecisive about which way to blow, scouring his skin.

He kept his eyes closed and felt Leki’s hand squeeze his shoulder, and the pressure remained as she found comfort in the contact.
Was that the end of Aeon?
he thought, and he could almost not bear to look. But the thing between them kept them warm and safe, and Venden’s words rang with him, spoken in the voice of his beautiful young son before he had grown up and away.
Whatever you hear, whatever you sense … close your eyes.

Bon almost opened
his eyes. Leki seemed to sense his inclination, because she pulled him tighter, closer, and pressed her mouth against his ear.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to see as much as you, but no. We do what Aeon told us.’ She kissed him below the ear, a desperate, hard kiss. ‘A few more moments of ignorance might be all we have.’

So they hugged close, and though the object Venden had handed Bon was pressed between their stomachs, it did not come between them. Bon kissed Leki on the side of the face, the eye, and then a full kiss against her lips, sharing passion and need and pleased to feel them both returned.