The Wyrmling Horde (5 page)

“Society has the right, and the duty, to protect itself from the individual.”

Normally, at this time, Cullossax would afflict the subject. Sometimes the very threat of torment would strike enough fear into the heart of the reprobate that she would do anything to prove her obedience. But Cullossax had discovered over the past two days that these children were not likely to submit at all.

“What shall I do with you?” Cullossax asked.

The girl was shaking still, speechless with terror.

“Who is society?” she asked suddenly, as if she had come upon a plan to win some leniency.

“Society consists of all of the individuals that make up the whole,” Cullossax said, quoting from the catechisms that the child was to be studying.

“But which one of the people makes up the rules?” she asked. “Which one of them says that I must die if I do not follow the rules?”

“All of them,” Cullossax answered reasonably. But he knew that that was not true.

The girl caught him in his lie. “The catechisms say that ‘Right acts follow from right thinking.' ‘But youth and stupidity are barriers to right thinking. Thus, we must submit to those who are wiser than we.' ‘Ultimately the emperor, by virtue of the great immortal wyrm that lives within him, is wisest of all.' ”

Wyrmling education consisted of rote memorization of the catechisms, not upon learning the skills of reading and writing. The wyrmlings had found that forcing children to memorize the words verbatim trained their minds well, and in time led to an almost infallible memory. This girl had strung together some catechisms in order to form the core of
an argument. Now she asked her question: “So if the emperor is wisest, does not the emperor make the rules, rather than the collective group?”

“Some might say so,” Cullossax admitted.

“The catechisms say, ‘Men exist to serve the empire,' ” the girl said. “But it seems to me that the emperor's teachings lead us to serve only him.”

Cullossax knew blasphemy when he heard it. He answered in catechisms: “ ‘Each serves society to the best of his ability, the emperor as well as the least serf,' ” Cullossax reasoned. “ ‘By serving the emperor, we serve the great wyrm that resides within him,' and if we are worthy, we shall be rewarded. ‘Live worthily, and a wyrm may someday enter you, granting you a portion of its immortality.' ”

The child seemed to think for a long time.

Cullossax could not bother with her any longer. This was a busy time. There had been a great battle to the south, and the troops would begin to arrive any day. Once all of the reports had been made, Cullossax would be assigned to deal with those who had not distinguished themselves in battle. He would need to sharpen many of his skinning knives, so that he could remove portions of flesh from those who were not valiant. With the flesh, he would braid whips, and then lash the backs of those that he had skinned.

And then there were people like this girl—people who had somehow gained memories of another life, and who now sought to escape the horde. The tormentors had to make examples of them.

Cullossax reached under his collar, pulled out a talisman that showed his badge of office: a bloody red fist. The law required him to display it before administering torture.

“What do you think your torment should be?” Cullossax asked.

Trembling almost beyond control, the girl turned her head slowly, peered up at Cullossax. “Doesn't a person have the right to protect himself from society?”

It was a question that Cullossax had never considered. It
was a childish question, undeserving of consideration. “No,” he answered.

Cullossax would normally have administered a beating then, perhaps broken a few bones. But he suspected that it would do no good. “If I hurt you enough, will you listen to your dogmatist? Will you internalize his teachings?”

The girl looked down, the wyrmling gesture for
no.

“Then you leave me no choice,” the tormentor said.

He should have strangled the child then. He should have done it in front of the others, so that they could see firsthand the penalty for disobedience.

But somehow he wanted to spare the girl that indignity. “Come with me,” he said. “Your flesh will become food for your fellows.”

Cullossax reached down, unlocked the manacle at the girl's foot, and pulled her free from the iron rung in the floor.

The girl did not fight. She did not pull away or strike back. She did not try to run. Instead, she gathered up her courage and followed, as Cullossax held firmly to her wrist.

I would rather die than live here, her actions seemed to say.

Cullossax was willing to oblige.

He escorted the girl from the room. Her fellows jeered as she left, heaping abuse upon her, as was proper.

And once the two were free of the classroom, the girl walked with a lighter step, as if glad that she would meet her demise.

“Where are we going?” the child asked.

Cullossax did not know the girl's name, did not want to know her name.

“To the harvesters.” In wyrmling society, the weak, the sickly, and the mentally deficient were often put to use this way. Certain glands would be harvested—the adrenals, the pineal, and others—to make extracts that were used in battle. Then the bodies were harvested for meat, bone, skin, and hair. Nothing went to waste. True, Rugassa's hunters
roved far and wide to supply the horde with food, but their efforts were never enough.

“Will it hurt?”

“I think,” Cullossax said honestly, “that death is never kind. Still, I will show you what leniency I can.”

It was not easy to make such promises. As a tormentor, Cullossax was required to dole out the punishments required by law without regard to compassion or compromise.

That seemed to answer all of her questions, and Cullossax led the girl now effortlessly down the winding corridors, through labyrinthine passages lit only by glow worms. Few of the passages were marked, but Cullossax had memorized the twists and turns long ago. Along the way, they passed through crowded corridors in the merchant district where vendors hawked trinkets carved from bones and vestments sewn from wyrmling leather. And near the arena, which was empty at the moment, they passed through lonely tunnels where the only sound was their footsteps echoing from the stone walls. Fire crickets leapt up near their feet, emitting red flashes of light, like living sparks. Once, he spotted a young boy with a bag of pale glow worms, affixing one to each wall, to keep the labyrinth lighted.

Cullossax wondered at his own reasons for wanting to show her compassion. It was high summer, and in a few weeks he would go into musth. Already he felt the edginess, the arousal, and the beginnings of the mad rage that assailed him at this time of year. The girl was desirable enough, though she was too young to go into heat.

The girl's face was blank as she walked toward her execution. Cullossax had seen that look so often before.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, knowing that it was easier if he kept them talking.

“There are so many worlds,” she said, her voice filled with wonder. “Two worlds have combined, and when they did, two of my shadow selves became one. It's like having lived two lifetimes.” She fell silent for a second, then asked, “Have you ever seen the stars?” Most wyrmlings in the labyrinth would never have been topside.

“Yes,” he answered, “once.”

“My grandmother was the village wise woman at my home in Inkarra,” the girl said. “She told me that every star is but a shadow of the One True Star, and each of them has a shadow world that spins around it, and that there are a million million shadow worlds.”

“Hah,” Cullossax said, intrigued. He had never heard of such a thing. The very strangeness of such a cosmology drew his interest.

“So think,” the girl said. “Two worlds combined, and when they did, it is like two pieces of me came together, making a larger whole. I feel stronger than ever before, more alive and complete. Here in the wyrmling horde, I was driven and cunning. But on the other world, I was learning to be wise, to take joy in life.” She gave him a moment to think, then asked, “What if there are other pieces of me out there? What if I have a million million shadow selves, and all of them combined into one person in a single breath? What would I be like? What things would I know? It would be like having lived a billion lifetimes all at once. Perhaps on a few thousand worlds, I might have learned perfect self-discipline, and on others I might have spent lifetimes studying how to make peace among warring nations. And if I were combined into one, imagine how
whole
all of those shadow selves would become.”

The thought was staggering. Cullossax could not imagine such a thing. “They say a wizard combined the worlds,” Cullossax said. “They say he is in the dungeon now.”

And I wish that I had the honor of being his tormentor, Cullossax thought.

“Perhaps we should be helping him,” the girl suggested. “He has the power to bind all of the worlds into one.”

What good would that do me? Cullossax wondered. Perhaps I have no other selves on other worlds.

He was lost in thought when she struck. It happened so fast, she almost killed him. One instant she was walking blithely along, and the next moment she pulled a dagger from her sleeve and lunged—aiming for his eye.

But his great height worked against her. Cullossax dodged backward, and the dagger nicked him below the eye. Blood sprang from the wound, as if he cried tears of blood.

Fast as a mantis taking a cave cricket, she struck again, this time aiming for his throat. He raised an arm to block her swing. She twisted to the side and brought the dagger up to his kidney. It was a maneuver he'd learned as a youth, and he was ready for her. He reached down and caught her arm, then slammed her into a wall.

The vicious creature screamed and leapt at him, her thumbs aimed at his eyes. He brought up a knee that caught her in the rib cage, knocking the air out of her.

Even injured she growled and tried to fight. But now he had her by the scruff of the neck. He pinned her to the wall and strangled her into submission.

It was a good fight from such a small girl—well timed and ruthless. She was not just a victim waiting to go to her death. She'd planned this all along!

She'd lured him into the corridor, waited until they were in a lonely stretch of the warrens, and then done her best to leave him lying in a pool of blood.

Doubtless, she had some plan for escape.

Cullossax laughed. He admired her feistiness. When she was barely conscious, he reached into her tunic and felt for more weapons. All he felt was her soft flesh, but a thorough search turned up a second dagger in her boot.

He threw them down the corridor, and as the girl began to come to, he put her in a painful wristlock and walked her to her death, whimpering and pleading.

“I hate you,” she cried, weeping bitter tears. “I hate the world you've created. I'm going to destroy it, and build a better one in its place.”

It was such a grandiose notion—one little wyrmling girl planning to change the world—that he had to laugh. “It is not I who made this world.”

“You support it,” she accused. “You're as guilty as the rest!”

It happened that way sometimes. Those who were about
to die would search for someone to accuse, rather than take responsibility for their own stupidity or weakness.

But it was not Cullossax who had created her world. It was the Great Wyrm, whom some said had finally taken a new form, and now walked the halls of Rugassa.

As they descended some stairs, a fellow tormentor who was climbing up from below called Cullossax to a halt. “Have you heard the news?”

“What news?” Cullossax asked. He did not know the man well, but tormentors all belonged to a Shadow Order, a secret fraternity, and had sworn bloody oaths to protect one another and uphold one another and to promote one another's interests, even in murder. Thus, as a tormentor, this man was a brother to him.

“Despair has taken a new body, and now walks the labyrinth, displaying miraculous powers. As one of his first acts, he has devised a new form of torture, surpassing our finest arts. You should see!”

Cullossax stood for a moment, overwhelmed. The Great Wyrm walked among them. He still could not believe his luck. Obviously, with the binding of the worlds, Despair felt the need to confirm his supremacy.

The very thought filled Cullossax with awe. This was a great time to be alive.

“So,” Cullossax teased, “Despair wants our jobs?”

The tormentor laughed at the jest, then seemed to get an idea. “You are taking the girl to be slaughtered?”

“Yes,” Cullossax said.

“Take her to the dungeons instead, to the Black Cell. There you will find Vulgnash, the Knight Eternal. He has had a long flight and needs to feed. The girl's life should be sweet to him.”

The girl suddenly tried to rip free, for being consumed by a Knight Eternal was a fate worse than death.

Cullossax grabbed the girl's wrist, holding her tight. She bit him and clawed at him, but he paid her no mind.

Cullossax hesitated. A Knight Eternal had no life of his own. Monsters like him did not need to breathe or eat or
drink. Vulgnash could not gain nourishment by digesting flesh. Instead, he drew life from others, consuming their spiritual essence—their hopes and longings.

Cullossax had provided the Knight Eternal with children before. Watching the monster feed was like watching an adder consume a rat.

In his mind's eye, Cullossax remembered a feeding from five years ago. Then Vulgnash, draped in his crimson robes, had taken a young boy.

Like this girl, the boy had screamed in terror and struggled with renewed fury as they neared Vulgnash's lair.

“Ah,” Vulgnash had whispered, his wings quivering slightly in anticipation, “just in time.”