by Joshua Hiles
He tasted blood and thick, black, soil as his face ground into the dirt. He felt the swish of the polearm descending. He scuttled away, spitting red and black, “wonderful land!” The three road agents looked uncertainly at each other. They were dressed in tattered finery, looted from travelers much richer than he, and the rusted armor of Puxico’s militia. The eldest, belly hanging slackly under his breast plate, yanked the butcher-bladed stave out of the ground, and clicked his tongue at a new nick in its tarnished surface.
“Crazy fella, aren’t ya?”
He laughed in response, came to his feet, eyes darting from one to the other. The two younger men spread out to either side. Both carried heavy machetes. “Careful, friends,” his hand dropped to the hawk-billed hatchet at his belt, “the gods watch over the mad.” His eyes narrowed at the complex shudders the deserters gave at the mention of the gods. He sidestepped an overhand swing with the machete and yanked his hatchet from his belt. Strange that. He’d known men who feared the gods; but none who’d been disgusted by them. His right hand pulled a narrow, single-edged knife from it’s sheathe at his back.
“Just give us your jingle, madman,” one of the machete wielders muttered.
“I haven’t any.”
The three exchanged looks again.
“His clothes ain’t worth much.”
“I’ll say what’s worth what,” the poleaxe twirled speculatively in the older man’s hands.
“Names Lazlo. I’m content to walk away and let you gentlemen ply your trade,” he flipped the knife so its point extended downward from his fist. “A stranger should respect the custom of the country.”
“Plenty of meat on his bones,” the rangier of the two machete-men eyed him up and down. “Sell him to the cilanti?”
“Knew there was a reason I asked you to run away with me,” the halberd stopped turning and pointed at Lazlo.
“Ominous,” Lazlo’s comment was ignored. The thoughtful one with the ideas lunged at him, slicing his hand-width blade crosswise at Lazlo’s chest. He deflected the blade up with his knife and chopped down with the handaxe as the man stumbled. The spine crunched as it severed. The man collapsed in a heap.
“Shitting bastard!” Polearm charged him with the other machete a step behind.
The handle of Lazlo’s axe thunked into the wooden haft of the polearm. He stepped to the side slicing at the older man’s hands with the knife. A line of blood spouted across their hairy backs and his grip loosened. Lazlo swung his hatchet over the shoulder of the machete-man who smiled, thinking he’d missed. His mirth turned into a scream when Lazlo hooked the beard around his neck and the sharpened point dug into the side of his throat. Polearm and screamer hit the ground at the same time. Lazlo kicked the old man in his sagging gut and sent him down with a clatter. With a hand clasped to his neck, the machete-man rolled onto his back just in time for Lazlo’s heavy boot to stamp into his throat. He died gurgling.
“Well this was fun,” Lazlo sheathed the knife and poked the axe back into his belt.
The old man was gasping and clawing at his breastplate. Lazlo looked around and hefted the polearm. The man scrabbled in the dirt, trying to back away. Lazlo swung the staff over his head and split his skull in two. A shower of blood-drenched the ground and teeth clattered away. Lazlo breathed deeply and slowly, leaning on the polearm. He tossed it to the ground when blood and brains began to run, viscidly, down the haft. He knelt next to his discarded pack and pulled a swatch of fur from a side pouch. He hummed as he cleaned his fingers and weapons. When he finished he shouldered his pack and continued along the trail.
+++
“Well, at least the map was right.” Lazlo murmured an hour later. He stood atop a small rounded hill. A massive peninsula spread out under him. The sapphire sky was devoid of clouds and the sun, gleaming like a brass coin, floated directly above. His eye ran along the trail until it ended in the sea a hundred miles away. The water was the color of fine wine along the coast, but blurred into orange and brown where dirt and sand from the Polar Desert sluiced into it’s waters. Five cities dotted the trail. The nearest only a mile away, standing bright and clean in the sunlight. White-washed buildings rose multiple stories above the plain. In the center stood a massive hundred-stepped pyramid its stones painted crimson and silver. “The Plain of Ziggurats,” he murmured a smile dancing on his lips.
+++
Down from the ring of hills that lined the landward side of the peninsula he lost sight of the ocean and the other cities. Only Puxico, gleaming in the sun, could be seen. It’s ziggurat towering over him. Canals carried water down from the hills into the finely cultivated fields ringing the city. Men and women, pale from time spent in subterranean barracks, picked at grain stalks. Their eyes were empty and dead. A man on horseback in armor, better maintained but identical, to the dead bandits noticed Lazlo and road toward him.
“Stranger,” he said by way of greeting.
Lazlo smiled and kept walking.
“Where ya goin’?”
“Into town.” Lazlo wiped sweat off the back of his neck.
The man jostled his horse alongside Lazlo, keeping pace. “Where ya comin’ from?”
“Outside of town.”
“Not very talkative are you?”
Lazlo kept walking, the guard shook his head and went back to watching slaves. Closer to the city, red lotus waved in the breeze. Each flower was being gently swabbed by workers. These seemed better fed and housed. They dragged a swatch of cotton through the thick, fleshy petals. The resulting stained fabric was placed gently into a box at their feet and covered with a silk sheet. The guards at the gate glanced at him as he walked in.
“Where ya goin’?” one asked through a mouthful of red petals.
“Cheap street?” He turned his head as he walked past them.
“Straight ahead,” the guard spit a stream of periwinkle, studded with masticated petals, into the street.
His progress toward the ziggurat was checked by a long procession of hooded and robed figures. They moved in perfect unison, hands tucked into thick sleeves. Attached to their backs were long poles with heavy banners hanging from them. Their vestments were the same silver and red as the steps of the pyramid. The banners flapped listlessly in the weak wind. A geometric figure, with eight lines radiating from it, adorned each.
“Stranger?” a voice oiled into his ear.
He turned a bright smile on the small man with the dirty blonde hair and washed-out eyes.
“Yes, just arrived.”
“Got a place to stay?”
“No,” he looked at the man’s simple, but well made, clothing up and down. “I doubt I could afford whatever inn you work at.”
“Oh, I’m not in the trade. Just a helpful citizen.”
“You’re to be commended.”
“The cilanti shelter travelers for free.”
Lazlo raised an eyebrow, “cilanti?”
“The priests,” the blonde man pointed at the tail end of the procession. “Bottom level of the ziggurat.”
“Kind of them.”
“It’s part of the city’s faith.” The man patted Lazlo on the arm. “Food’s simple but plentiful, beds are clean and safe.”
“Then I’ll be taking advantage of their hospitality.”
The man nodded and smiled as he walked away. Lazlo waited til he and the priests were out of sight, then turned off the main road. Every city he’d been in; from Icepinch Pass on the rim of the world, to the ports he’d sailed from to reach the Plain; had a Cheap Street. It wasn’t always called that, once he’d spent a profitable week in a fleabag on Shitside. As he breathed in the odors of cheap food lovingly prepared, home distillation and brewing, and human waste, he reflected that certain things could always be counted on. People bustled along dressed in rags or hand-me-downs. Beggars squatted on blankets telling interminable tales and waiting for the rattle of coins at the cliffhangers. He bought some fried dough from a boiling pot of oil and burned his mouth happily. Sour wine, poured into a cheap parchment cup, cooled the sting and he eyed tavern after tavern. Finally, he reached the small cul-de-sac that ended the street. Drunks lay in pools of piss and vomit and the sign was a wooden board roughly broken in half with no image on it. His smile widened and he walked in.
“Welcome to the Broken Board, sir,” a man as bald as he was ugly squatted on a stool behind a bar made by laying two planks across piles of bricks.
“Lovely place,” Lazlo flipped him a coin.
“Gold!”
“A room, a dinner, breakfast, and a tub of hot water.”
The man’s front teeth, working solo these days, dented the coin, and he slid it into a pouch.
“Diane,” he bellowed and a girl of about five emerged from the curtain hanging behind him.
He dropped some copper coins into her hand and whispered in her ear. She sprang past Lazlo and her bare feet pattered up the street.
“I’m Arvid,” the man ladled beer from a bucket at his feet and pushed a bowl of it toward the front of the bar. “Dinner in a moment, the bath will take a little while.”
“The room?”
“I’d say finest in the house but we both know you’re not here for luxury.”
“What am I here for?” Lazlo lifted the bowl and sipped. The brew was thick, nearly chewy.
“Anonymity, I imagine.”
“That gonna be a problem?” Rich malty flavor exploded on his tongue.
“If that’s why you paid me in gold you wasted money,” Arvid spit, not in the bucket Lazlo noticed. “I wouldn’t talk to the militia if you slit my throat and robbed me.”
Lazlo laughed out loud. “But you’d write it down?”
Arvid snorted. “No one appreciates the classics.”
“I laughed.” Lazlo drained the bowl and shoved it over for a refill.
The girl was at his elbow and laid three leaf-wrapped packets in front of him.
“Didn’t know if you wanted lotus, poppy, what?” She lisped.
“Neither,” he patted her on the head and passed her a gold coin.
Arvid’s eyes popped and Diane ran screeching into the street.
“I’m going to have to hire more help now,” Arvid’s jaw clicked shut when another gold coin appeared on the bar. He stood up and walked behind the curtain.
Lazlo unwrapped the fiber holding the leaves together. Chunks of roasted chicken, stewed in a pepper sauce, filled one. The other was some sort of vegetable paste and the last a pilaf of rice. He dug in.
+++
His hand was snaking quietly under the pillow before he woke completely. His pants with the hatchet still thrust through the belt loop were in easy reach and the knife hilt was sweet in his hand as he slitted his eyes. There was a woman, sitting at the long table that took up one whole wall of the room he’d been shown to.
“Bridal suite,” Arvid had snorted. “Care for some extra pillows?”
A steaming cauldron of mostly clean water was waiting and Arvid had accepted his nod and pulled the door shut. Lazlo bathed, drank some more of the beer, and tumbled into bed. Now this woman. She was doing something fiddly on the tabletop. Lifting small pieces of something into the air to look closely at them in the light of the lantern dangling from the ceiling. His pack was undisturbed under his feet. He slid the blade from under the pillow and reached for his pants. She turned with a smooth sinuous snap he couldn’t have equaled on his best day and he felt something scrape down his forearm. The fingertips, just brushing the hatchet’s handle went numb. Her face was all points and pixie eyes. A lion’s mane of blonde hair framed her pointed chin and broad cheekbones. Wide and blue her eyes regarded him without concern or malice. Her short fingers, nails bitten, held a silver needle with a single drop of his blood perched on the tip.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
The numbness spread, he couldn’t speak, or move.
She looked him up and down, eyes lingering on his scars and the rounded curve of his limbs. She smiled at him.
“You’re not as heavily muscled as I’d prefer. For any purpose.”
She deliberately flicked the drop of blood off the needle and then rinsed it in the bowl of beer he’d left half-full.
“That should make you feel more comfortable.”
He wasn’t sure why and his eyes must have shown it.
“I won’t keep any of your blood.”
He felt his breathing accelerate, his pupils dilated in fear.
“Alchemist,” she said primly, voicing his fears.
Over her shoulder, he saw what she’d been doing. Articulating a skeleton. Bleached and gleaming bones laid out in the rough shape of a man. What she’d been regarding so closely were the tiny bones of the left hand. Everywhere, from brow to pubis the bones were covered in thin, swirling, characters of no language he recognized. She moved to give him a fuller view. Most of the lower body was wired together with bronze as thin as string. The ribs were incomplete as were the arms.
“My old master,” she lay her hand on the skull. “We write our greatest feats on our bones.”
She reached down and detached the right femur. She stood and he realized she was barely over five feet tall. Dressed in billowing skirts of undyed, homespun cloth.
“Here’s the recipe for damascene steel,” she held the bone with its whorls and swirls of unreadable text to his eyes.
He looked closely and she nodded in approval.
“I keep it right here,” she lay a finger on her right shoulder blade. “My handwriting is less fine than his was, I needed more room.”
Her laugh was low and he wanted to shudder but couldn’t.
“I’d like to give you the antidote now,” she gently pried the knife from his numb fingers and daintily picked up his pants. She moved both of them to the table with the bones. “We’ll talk. I’ve a proposition.”
She came back with a small clay dropper in her hand. Two drops into his mouth and she pulled her chair over to sit very close to him. She smelled like dried flowers and something astringent under it.
“Thank you,” his tongue was thick.
“Not at all.”
“How can I help you?”
“That’s an attitude I like,” she clapped her hands together and smiled. “I want you to steal something for me.”
“I’m not a thief.”
She cocked her head at him.
“I’m not a professional thief,” he amended. “Or a very good one.”
“I need the hair of one of the spider priests.”
“You want me to,” he rubbed his face. “Shave a priest.”
“And bring the hair to me,” she looks into his eyes. “Please.”
“Okay, I could theoretically do this,” he sat up. “What do I get?”
“Eating and drinking without fear for the rest of your days?”
He gulped.
“Also this,” she reached into her sleeve and handed him four uncut diamonds.
He rolled them around in his hand, then smiled at her. “What do you want the hair for?”
“Why are you headed poleward?”
They stared at each other. “I’m down from Icepinch Pass, looking for a wife.”
“Oh my,” she batted her eyes at him. “Here I thought you were planning on joining the mercenaries coming ashore at Calixo.”
“I like to keep my options open. Why did you pick me to do this?”
“The Cities of the Plain don’t like each other for…religious reasons. But, if the cilanti knew a mercenary army was invading the peninsula and you were planning on joining them. Or that perhaps you intended to buy your way in with information gleaned from a leisurely stroll down the coast…” she trailed off.
“I’ll do it.”
“Good,” she reached out and took the diamonds.
“Do you have a deadline?” He watched her tuck the diamonds inside his pack.
“Tomorrow will be soon enough,” she stood up and went back to her bones. “You need a good night’s sleep.”
His vision swam as she spoke, “you’ll need to flee right after, your pack will be waiting at the poleward gate. Bring the hair there.”
“Damn it,” he spiraled into darkness.
+++
In the morning she was gone. So was his pack. He ate fried dough with sweet syrup from the stall outside and bid Arvid goodbye.
“Where ya headed?” The innkeep asked.
“Barber.”
“Well, stop by on your way back.”
The street was as crowded and fragrant as yesterday. He left Cheap Street and walked toward the poleward gate. He planned a few routes from the central ziggurat to the gate and then squatted next to a fountain to sharpen his hatchet and knife. He snagged some figs simmered in honey and, munching sticky sweetness, slunk towards the center of the city. The huge steps leered down at him and he walked deeper into the shadow of the ziggurat. Fewer and fewer Puxiconians shared the street with him. He paused at another fountain to wash his face and noticed no beggars. No street people at all. Prosperous looking tradesmen, a few nobles, some militia bravos, but no one lingering, no one lounging. Everyone scuttled quickly, finding their way to streets more distant from the cilanti. He stared down at his reflection.
“Ominous,” he repeated.
He was beginning to suspect this was a terrible idea and if he was at all intending to come back this way he wouldn’t do it. Four glittering gems danced before his eyes. He sighed and admitted to himself that he would absolutely do this no matter what. A flash of silver and red caught his eye. A cilanti stood in a narrow alley, hood pointing at him. A sleeve, hand invisible in its shadows, beckoned him. He smiled and walked forward. His right hand rested comfortably on the broad leather of his belt, a finger from his hatchet.
“Shelter?” The voice from the hood was strange like the cilanti was speaking through a mouthful of orange pulp.
“Yes,” Lazlo kept his smile bright, “please.” This close there was something wrong about how the fabric draped over the figure. The right shoulder noticeably higher and more pointed than the left. The belt seemed to cinch far too deeply into what he could only assume was a waist.
“Follow.”
Lazlo bowed and gestured toward the ziggurat. The figure stumped past him with an awkward, rolling gait. As soon as Lazlo fully had the cilanti’s back his axe whispered out of his belt and arced through the air to bury itself in the spine, just between the shoulder blades. His other hand pulled his knife free. Both these motions were practiced and thoughtless. His conscious mind was already considering how best to conceal the body, and how to change the diamonds to liquid capital. He knew exactly what would happen. The axeblade would bite in with a thunk. The priest’s arms and shoulders would come up and back. He would throw his head up to screech in pain. The knife would slam into the throat from the side, edge out, and rip through arteries and veins sending a spray of blood into the street. A few quick slices would do the rest.
“Easy-peasy,” Lazlo murmured.
The first thing that went wrong was the sound. Instead of the axehead biting into the tough bundle of the spine with a woody thunk, there was a crunch and the feeling of sliding into something squishy and yielding. Things went downhill from there.
“Assassin,” gurgled the cilanti, standing totally upright and with a hatchet buried in its back.
“Double damn,” Lazlo jammed the knife toward the turning head as he yanked the axe free.
The hood fell away as the cilanti whirled revealing features that were a hideous compound of arachnid and human. A band of human eyes, brown, blue, green, hazel studded the thing’s forehead and the thick swollen lump of its skull. Furry pedipalps rubbed against each other on the thing’s lower face. Dripping fangs tipped them. Thick, spiky hairs quivered and clicked against each other on the skull.
“Oh,” Lazlo backed up a step, “shit.”
The robes exploded into tatters as the things flailed all six of its arms. Four on the right side, each ending in misshapen human hands slammed into Lazlo and sent him stumbling back. The left arms were huge spider’s legs. Pulpy organs pulsed and quivered under the partial exoskeleton that covered the torso. Dripping ovipositors studded its misshapen legs. Lazlo turned to run and one of its hands wrapped around his throat with crunchy plates digging into his skin. He felt some of those thick cilia dig into him and screamed, high and hopeless. He looped the hatchet underhanded and up. The blade bit in between the cilanti’s legs with the same crunch and sliding. Clear fluid streaked with yellow and green splattered the ground. The creature spasmed and hurled Lazlo into the dirt. He jammed his knife into its horny spiked foot. The six arms pummeled him and poison burned his skin where it fell from the slavering mouth. He sprang to his feet and punched the head of the hatchet into the thing’s throat. It went onto its back and he leapt over it with both feet pulled up. He stamped down on its chest and sank up to his ankles in foulness. He split the head completely and its chittering finally stopped. He reached down and picked up a fragment of skull, hairs curling in on themselves. Panting he lifted his feet out of the slosh of its chest and stumbled to the fountain. He dunked his upper body into the water, not before carefully placing the hair-studded fragment on the edge, and scrubbed frantically at his skin. He swung his legs into the water and repeated the process. A loud horn sounded from the ziggurat and he looked up to see priests filing out into the streets.
“Nope,” he turned and sprinted poleward, chunk of skull clutched in his hand.
The city streets might as well have been deserted. Everyone who saw him made some complicated gesture with their hands and ran in the other direction. Windows were being shuttered and he saw families piling furniture against their doors. Beggars were pounding on shut doors or forcing their way into inadequately secured homes. The militiamen made no pretense, most dropped their weapons and sprinted for the barracks. Behind him gurgling voices rose in obscene chants and prayers. His lungs burning he saw the gatehouse ahead. She was mounted on a militia horse and another was saddled next to her, his pack strapped to the saddle. He heard screams behind him as the priests caught up to the few people still on the streets. He vaulted into the saddle and she reached out and snatched the piece of skull from him.
“Thanks,” she spurred her horse.
They rode through the gate neck and neck. Past a sign pointing poleward the word “Quilin” and a leopard’s face scrawled on it. Her lighter animal began to pull ahead. He glanced over his shoulder and saw cilanti sealing the gate behind him. Ribbons of smoke poured into the sky from multiple places. Screams wafted into the afternoon air. He turned back to the pole and saw her riding, skirts and hair flying, far ahead.
“What’s your name!” He shouted after her.
“See you in Quilin!” She called out.
“Triple damn!”
©October 2022, Joshua Hiles
Joshua Hiles is a lifelong Midwesterner who learned to read from Giant Sized X-Men #1 and can’t do math. After abandoning a promising career as a wandering Martian swordsman he settled down to his passion, Venusian dinosaur wrangling. When he lost the ranch he became a writer. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.