by Benjamin Sartison
in Issue 148, May 2024
Beneath a canopy of sagging fronds, iridescent and oozing, four grimy figures tramped through green mist. With sucking, squelching steps they laboured through a stinking slurry of mud and grey water, leaving trails in the slime that covered its oily surface. Massive fungal structures quivered and dripped on all sides, and the dense foliage overhead all but shut out the rosy rays of the setting sun. The four figures no longer started at the choked, burbling cries that sounded on all sides. Nor did they flinch when some unseen creature rustled overhead or splashed just out of sight. The wildlife, it seemed, had as little interest in encountering them as they did it, and they’d learned to ignore the chittering chorus that heralded their coming.
Ever since stealing their way into the swamp that morning, following secret paths through the veil of toxic fog that hemmed it in, they’d struggled through mire that sucked at their ruined boots and did its best to root them in place. Their progress was slow and loud, marked by the sloshing of stinking ooze and a steady stream of curses. Without a hope of moving undetected through the morass, they’d given up on stealth by midday. Now, as evening approached, all four had their blades in hand and at the ready, and glowered expectantly about them as they slogged onward.
The place was called Grulgg. It was named, some said, after the retching that inevitably ensued upon arrival at its outskirts. Others said the name belonged to a language long dead, spoken by squat, croaking creatures who inhabited the swamp eons before the first human wrinkled their nose at its noxious fumes. And still others, those who lived nearest its hazy borders, refused to name it at all, or even to acknowledge its existence.
Almost nothing was known about the expanse of mud, though it featured in countless legends. Some held it to be the abode of souls damned for their gluttony, others claimed that it was the footprint of some long-forgotten death deity, and some said that the gods came to Grulgg to relieve themselves. But to the four travellers who struggled along in the shade of its oozing overgrowth, it was merely an obstacle to overcome as quickly as possible. For they were but four among numberless pilgrims, all crowding westward together in pursuit of rumoured wealth. It was said that beyond Grulgg, an army of demigods was on the march, burning their way across the prairies and leaving artifacts of untold power half-buried in their wake.
Most were taking the long way around Grulgg, but these four were among the brazen few who chose instead to go through it. They chose to brave the noxious vapours, the quickmud, and above all the unknown. And now, with the forbidding borders of the great swamp waste well behind them, they made their laboured way through the mire, well past the point of no return.
“Ho up there!” growled a hulking fur-clad man from the rear of the party, “We’ll have no strength in numbers if you all run off ahead!” He huffed and wheezed through his ragged beard as he went, heaving his feet free of the green mud with each stride.
“So keep up, Ratso!” hissed the woman in front of him, without turning around, “It’s no concern of ours if we leave you behind, for we will still be three, and no longer burdened by your bulk. Give up if you wish, only be quiet about it!” The woman, called Tsani, wore the same furs and the same scowl as the big man. She and Ratso were Shielat herders, both come from the same village in the Eastern Mountains, and were making the westward journey together for the glory of their kin. But though the two were alike in their garb and their ill humour, she was half his size, and walked upright without the need to duck under the overgrowth that pressed down on them from above.
“Wasn’t it you who insisted that our sullen friend and I lead the way?” asked the woman marching ahead of Tsani. She spoke with a thick accent that placed her homeland on the far side of the Eastern Mountains, in the foothills where folk churned up the earth in search of precious metals. Wearing just a vest and short trousers, she trod more lightly than the others, and she grinned as she glided along through the sludge. “You herders are welcome to go on ahead, if his pace is too quick for you.”
She gestured in front of her as she spoke, to a silent, slump-shouldered man clad in a tunic so tattered it seemed about to fall apart and slough off. His face was gaunt, and he kept his vacant gaze fixed on the way ahead as he walked, his bloodshot eyes leering from deep sockets. His limbs were lean and his chest sunken, and in the sickly light of the stinking forest he looked as one on the verge of death. But there was strength in the sinew that bulged beneath his thin skin, and a hard set to his features that suggested he might march for another week before stopping to rest.
Ratso spat.
“Shut your insolent mouth, foothill scum. I’ll not be insulted by a soft lowlander.”
“Did you hear that?” the woman said with a gasp, “The fat oaf has forgotten my name! I am called Yesshan, as I’m sure I’ve told you a dozen times already. Not lowlander, not foothill scum, not whelp, and not any of the other titles with which you’ve honoured me. Just Yesshan. And he,” she said, gesturing again to the man at the front of the party, “is called Zygesh. Try not to forget this time. After all, you’ll need something to scream after us when we leave you behind.”
Ratso’s face turned purple, and his eyes disappeared beneath his brow as his scowl deepened. He’d opened his mouth to speak when Tsani whirled on him.
“Enough out of you! And out of you too!” she added, pointing her dagger at a grinning Yesshan, “We have our arrangement. Ratso and I have held up our end. We showed you the way through the veil and into the swamp. And now yours is to take the lead and blunder first into whatever danger may lie ahead.”
“Ah yes,” said Yesshan, turning her attention forward, “and what danger might that be again?”
“We’ve no idea, as you well know. That is why you are going first! Or would you prefer to still be standing on the outskirts, scratching your heads with the rest of those fools?”
“No, no. I’m quite happy to be up to my knees in a midden pool, and in such fine company no less,” grumbled Yesshan, “I just wonder how you were able to learn exactly how to penetrate the veil, without catching a whiff of what might lie beyond it.” She wrinkled her nose at that last remark, waving her hand in front of her face and smacking her lips in disgust.
“It’s easy enough to find someone who’s made it through the mist and turned back when they saw what awaited them on the other side,” answered Tsani, for what might have been the tenth time that day, “Another matter to find anyone who’s been to the heart of Grulgg and come back. We learned what we could with the time we had, but we’ve already been over—”
“Enough!” said Zygesh from the front of the party. His voice was like gravel, and he barked the end of the word as one at his wits end with a pack of children. “I will leave you behind if you don’t leave off. All three of you.”
The three fell silent at once. Not, he was certain, because his words carried any weight, but because it was the first they’d heard him speak since he’d accepted their offer that morning. It had been fair enough, and he’d been quick to agree. But he’d seen no reason to answer them with more a nod. There was much that could be accomplished without tedious chatter—a thing lost on his three companions.
The silence lasted but a moment before Ratso forced out a humourless laugh from his place in the rear.
“The dog speaks! And here I thought it could only bob its head and wag its tail!”
“Shut up, Ratso!” ground Tsani, and a wet slap and indignant yelp told Zygesh that the man had received a handful of mud from his countrywoman. He did not turn around. Did not answer with so much as a huff. He kept his gaze and his pace steady. It was enough work holding his bile back before the stench of the place, and dragging his aching legs through cloying mud. He had no need to wade into the morass of a pointless argument as well.
Yesshan tut tutted behind him.
“You mustn’t let that kind of talk stand, my friend. An oaf like him will only get worse if you let him prattle on.”
“Let him get worse then,” Grumbled Zygesh, “I meant what I said. I can leave you people behind when it suits me.”
“I don’t think you would get far. This is no place to wander alone.”
Yesshan paused as if waiting for him to answer, but when Zygesh stayed silent, she started again in a quiet voice.
“Our mountain friends—Tsani and Ratso—they’ve been travelling together a long time I think, yes?”
“Do all free people talk so much, or only you three?”
“Free people? If we three are free, then what are you, Zygesh?”
“I—” Zygesh shut his mouth as quickly as he opened it.
“You what?” asked Yesshan. He could tell by her voice that she was grinning again. “Is there an empty cage back east where you are meant to be languishing, Zygesh? Are you perhaps a slave, too freshly sprung to think yourself truly free?”
Zygesh whirled and lashed out with his dagger at the place where Yesshan’s neck should have been. It sang silently through empty air, and the wind left his lungs as a crushing blow took him full in the belly. Pain bloomed thick and hot in his trunk, and he fought to breathe even as he hacked up the contents of his stomach. A hand took him roughly by the hair, pulling his head back, and his heart pounded in his ears as cold steel pressed against his neck.
Still bent over, looking wide-eyed into a viscous swirl of upset swamp water, Zygesh heard Ratso and Tsani cry out in anger just a few feet away. But he heard not a word of their outraged oaths, every fibre of him fixed instead on Yesshan’s voice as she whispered into his ear.
“I care not if you come from bondage, Zygesh, nor would I think to send you back. I am no slave taker. You can trust me, but I am not so sure about our herder friends. I think they know this place better than they say. Now carry on, and guard that temper. You have nothing to fear from me.”
The last word came out as a hiss, and with it Yesshan released him and lowered her blade. Zygesh spat out the last of his bile, fighting for air even as his lungs fought to keep out the fetid fumes rising from the swamp. He raised his eyes to where Ratso and Tsani stood side by side, glaring at Yesshan just behind him.
“A disagreement between a dog and a whelp, my friends.” he heard her say, “Nothing more. We have settled our differences.”
Standing up straight and grimacing as he took in a lungful of stinking air, Zygesh was shocked to find himself speaking his agreement with her.
“A misunderstanding.” He muttered, wiping his mouth. More than once, he’d fought his way free of slavecatchers sent by his old masters, and all too often such onslaughts had been preceded by remarks like the one Yesshan had made. Her idle observation had sent him into a panic, and his limbs had lashed out before he fully understood the reason.
The bewildered looks on the herders’ faces didn’t change, but neither did they take another step forward until Zygesh was back walking at the front of the party. Yesshan stepped aside with a smile to let him by, and didn’t seem to mind when he passed within slashing distance. Wordlessly, he resumed his steady pace, grimacing at the pain in his abdomen and the humiliation that hung about him like Grulgg’s noxious fumes. Clinging almost as close was Yesshan, who kept near at his heel as he went.
Ratso continued to growl away behind them, but now grumbled about the two savage lowlanders with which he was saddled, instead of the pace they were setting. Tsani barked at him now and then to leave off with his griping, but Zygesh could tell by the sound of her voice that she was keeping farther back than before.
He paid them little mind. His own thoughts demanded enough of his attention. He was weary of Yesshan’s talk, but there was truth in her whispered words. He could not ignore how little Ratso and Tsani claimed to know of what lay within the borders of Grulgg, in spite of how much they’d known of its outskirts. He was certain that they were keeping something from him and Yesshan, but could not imagine why.
The ways of free people were foreign to him, and he’d struggled just as hard to understand their behaviour as he had to survive among them. He was used to the plain speech of his old masters, to their barked commands and the lash with which they saw them carried out. They had been cruel, and had held him in less esteem than the bloodsoaked sands on which they’d forced him to fight ritual bouts. But at least their aims were clear, and their expectations too.
Ever since killing his way free of them and fleeing across the desert, he’d been contending with people who said one thing and meant another, who smiled and bowed, extending a welcoming hand while the other clutched a dagger behind their back. He’d learned quickly that it was simpler to avoid others, to trust no-one, and to keep moving lest he become too accustomed to any one place and people. But when he’d come to the outskirts of Grulgg, following rumours of wondrous plunder to be had on the other side of the great swamp waste, he’d had no choice but to accept the help of others who knew the world better than he.
Ratso and Tsani had approached him in a transient camp, speaking in terms that seemed plain enough. They’d offered to guide him through the killing mists that ringed the swamp round, if he would agree to go ahead of them through the swamp itself, and be the first to meet whatever danger might await them there. The bargain seemed fair, and Zygesh had thought them trustworthy enough, especially since they made no attempt to conceal his role as a meat shield. There was nothing unseemly about it, as far as he was concerned. He had, after all, been bred to suffer in the stead of others.
But now that they were past the point of no return, Zygesh could not ignore Yesshan’s words, nor the knot in his chest that told him something was amiss. He had taken Ratso and Tsani’s bluntness for honesty, and only now did he consider the possibility that he was not there to guard them against the unknown, but against a danger they expected and feared.
“I think you trust too easily, Zygesh.” said Yesshan behind him, “And not easily enough. You trotted after our two mountain friends like a dog on a lead, and yet you would kill me outright for fear of returning to bondage.”
“If I was a fool to trust them,” said Zygesh, ignoring her second observation, “then why are you here?”
“I never said you were a fool.” answered Yesshan, “Only that you trust too easily. And as for me, I agreed to come along not because I trust them, but because I knew that you would be going ahead of me.”
There was a pause, and when Yesshan spoke again, there was no humour in her voice.
“But now I am not so sure it matters. I think I am in as much danger as you.”
The sounds of Grulgg’s wildlife seemed to grow louder and more urgent then, and the crush of plant life to press even closer, and the fumes rising from the mud to thicken. It was as if Yesshan’s dry wit had kept it all at bay until then, and now that her voice had gone flat, the strangeness of their surroundings intensified.
“There are thousands of us flowing east, following the rumours of rampaging demons and the spoils they leave in their wake. Too many of us to share what we find. We travel together now, but we will be enemies soon enough. I have already killed since setting out from home, and will have to again. The fewer of us who make it to the other side, the better for those who do.”
“And the sky is blue,” muttered Zygesh, “And sand coarse, and water wet.”
“They’re well behind us now,” said Yesshan, ignoring him, “and Ratso has not said a word about us setting too hard a pace. They know more than they let on, Zygesh. There is danger ahead.”
Zygesh stole a backward glance, and saw that there were indeed at least a dozen paces between them and the two Mountain folk. Ratso had fallen silent, and both he and Tsani watched them with wary eyes. Yesshan met Zygesh’s gaze and raised her eyebrows.
“You see?” she said through gritted teeth, “There’s something waiting for us, and they know it. They mean to hang back and watch us die.”
Suddenly, Ratso screeched and his great bulk pitched forward and disappeared into the mud. Just as quickly, he surged up into the open air, coughing and spluttering as green ooze streamed from his mouth and nostrils. Tsani leaped back, away from his grasping hands, and retreated towards Zygesh and Yesshan as Ratso came shakily his feet.
“My leg!” he croaked as his airways cleared, “Bloody tripped me! Bloody tried to grab me! Blast Tsani, it must have been—”
“Must have been nothing!” hissed Tsani, though she had her knife at the ready and peered about them with wide eyes. “Nothing save for a clumsy misstep by a lumbering brute.”
Ratso had his mouth open to retort, but he shut it at a look from Tsani, purple-faced and fuming behind a mask of mud. Muttering to himself, he wiped the ooze from his clothes as best he could with his bare hands and started forward.
“There!” shouted Yesshan, and Ratso nearly toppled over again as he jumped in surprise.
She pointed to his feet with her dagger, and Zygesh traced a line from the weapon’s wicked point to where something slithered along the water’s slimy surface. A smooth, rounded back, and slick skin the same colour as the muck were all he was able to glimpse before it sank out of sight. It was snake-like, but he saw no scales, nor anything to suggest a head or tail. It was gone before he’d begun to puzzle out what it might be, and he stood there as the eddies stilled, wondering if he’d seen anything at all. But of course he had.
“What was it?” Yesshan asked, directing the question at the two herders.
“How should we know?” snapped Tsani, “We know as much about this place as you do!”
“Pah! The fat one was about to spill your secrets before you shut him up! You know more than you admit!”
Yesshan levelled her knifepoint at Tsani, and stepped forward. Tsani and Ratso raised their own blades, and Zygesh watched the three of them in bewilderment as they inched closer to each other, shifting their weapons from one hand to the other and beginning to circle.
Yesshan was right of course—Ratso and Tsani clearly knew more than they claimed. But Zygesh saw no point in demanding answers from them when they’d been lying from the beginning. They could not be relied on, like so many in the free world, and would never serve any aims but their own. Why they persisted in an obvious lie, he could not say, but neither could he fathom why Yesshan was so intent on squeezing a fresh falsehood from them. After months away from the oasis prison of his birth, he had not come any closer to understanding free people’s obsession with deceit, especially when all their intrigues ended in violence more often than not.
And with that he made up his mind. Whatever it was that had slithered across their path, he expected he’d have as good a chance against it alone as he would with his companions arguing behind him. So without wasting another moment, Zygesh turned around and set back out through the overgrowth, leaving behind the other three and their bickering. His aims lay on the other side of Grulgg, and there was a long way yet to travel.
He set out at a lope, splashing through the mire and sending up flecks of slime as he went. Cries of frustration sounded behind him before he’d gone more than a dozen laboured paces, and din of sloshing and squelching told him that the others were hurrying after him. Ratso was the loudest, Tsani a close second with her scolding, and even Yesshan’s voice had an edge to it as she called after him. The disdain between them clearly paled next to their need to involve him their pointless squabbling.
But Zygesh was running now, and their voices melted away as he quickened his pace. He pushed his way through the overgrowth with long strides that sent him slipping through mealy stands of black mushrooms and crashing through curtains of hanging fronds. Fungal stalks broke off against his face and shins, and the sounds of the world around him faded to white noise as he focused on the rhythm of his breathing and his footfalls. He’d made it through countless ritual combats in just the same way during the long decades of his captivity— forgetting the pain of wrenched limbs and smashed bones by focusing on his breath, finding the rhythm in desperate struggles.
By comparison, it was easy to block out the sickening sting of Grulgg’s stench, and to ignore the burning in his battered limbs as he pushed himself harder. The more distance he could put between himself and the others, the better, and the longer he ran, the harder he pushed himself. Damn safety in numbers and damn whatever knowledge they hid. A quick step and a sharp eye would see him through the swamp, and if they did not, then at least he would die in peace, with only the calls of wild animals to assail his ears.
He could not have guessed how long his sprint lasted, but at the very least it was long enough for dusk to become night. As he sloshed and scrabbled along, the soft pink light of the sinking sun faded, and soon he moved by the wan light of the moon—what little of it was able to pierce the overgrowth. Of his surroundings, he could make out little more that shapes and shadows, and more than once he ran headlong into one of those gnarled fungus trees, saved from a smashed face by the softness of their ashen trunks.
When a sudden change came over his surroundings, Zygesh didn’t notice at first. He ran a score of paces before he realized that the overgrowth no longer raked his battered body, and that the light of the moon had grown threefold. The stench of Grulgg still stung his nostrils, the ground beneath him was still a slurry of mud and green water, and the strangled calls of unnamed and unseen slimedwellers still assailed his ears. But above him, where once there had been tangled limbs and sagging fronds, the night sky opened up in all its twinkling vastness, cloudless, and with a full moon casting its pale radiance onto the murky waters. The crushing overgrowth had become a clearing whose nearest edge lay a dozen paces away, and Zygesh came to a stop and stood panting as he wrestled with a sudden sense of smallness.
Ratso’s ragged breath announced the arrival of the other three, and just a heartbeat after Zygesh came to a stop, they sloshed up behind him and stood there, wheezing and with hands on their knees. He tried to put them out of mind, taking a step forward and urging his attention back to his body and the feel of warm mud in his tattered boots. But their breathing alone was enough to jar his focus, and when Ratso regained enough wind to speak, Zygesh gave up his efforts altogether.
“You ass!” roared the hulking herder, “You upstart, whoreson dog! What are you playing at, running off like a scared pup?”
“Not scared!” bellowed Zygesh, whirling to face the other three, “Only bored. Bored by your bickering, and your standing about!”
“Bickering?” Ratso shouted, eyes bugging out in anger, “Your lowland trollop meant to stick me!”
“Not mine!” growled Zygesh, “She is not mine any more than you are mine, or I yours. You free folk imagine allegiance where there is none. You imagine ill intent where there is none. You create conflict where there is none!”
“Free folk, eh?” laughed Ratso, as if it was the only thing Zygesh had said, “So that explains it. You’re a slave who’s slipped his bonds, aren’t you? No wonder you go about in rags. No wonder you’re so bloody dull. No wonder you jump like a frightened rabbit at the first sign of trouble! Pah!”
Zygesh flushed, and a knot of rage wound up in his heaving chest, but this time he was able to keep his twitching arm from lashing out. His mouth moved as if to form words, and yet he could find none worth wasting on Ratso. He was on the cusp of dredging up one of the insults he’d learned since his escape, and of letting Ratso drag him into a useless exchange of profanities, when something at the edge of the clearing caught his attention.
Directly behind Ratso, a serpentine tendril wound its way up one of those corrupted fungus-trees, coiling about the trunk at a slow, searching pace. Forgetting the others altogether, Zygesh leaned around the herder’s huge bulk for a better look, and his throat tightened at what he saw.
It was the creature that had crossed their paths earlier, or at least another like it. It was same colour as the bog water from which it stretched, and it shimmered with the same sickly green sheen. It had almost hidden the gnarled fungus cluster beneath its coils, gliding and looping its way about the growth as it continued to emerge from the water. Zygesh guessed that there must be a hundred paces worth of its wriggling body above the surface now, with more issuing into the air with every passing moment.
But this was not what held him rapt, nor what curdled nauseating dread in his roiling innards. One of them alone, no matter how long or how large, would hardly have mattered to him. But it was not alone, and Zygesh watched wide-eyed as more like it appeared along the edge of the clearing, stirring the fetid waters and writhing upwards in a great, living, dripping palisade.
He took a step back, and saw that Ratso was staring past him, mouth agape behind his ragged beard. He whirled around to follow the herder’s gaze, and saw that countless twisting, boneless limbs were springing up all around the edge of the clearing, penning him and the other three in as the fungus forest vanished behind thick green ropes.
The sounds of wildlife melted away before a din of burbling and splashing. Slime geysered all round them as more and more tentacles sprang out of the mire to weave themselves into an ever-thickening wall. Zygesh leaped as the mud about his legs began first to warm and then grow hot, steaming and bubbling as the ground shook.
Fear and anger wiped away the haughty look on Yesshan’s face.
“Will you tell us now?” she screamed, barely audible over the sickening uproar of sloshing and slapping, “Or will you die to keep your secrets?”
But it was as if she was not there at all, for Ratso and Tsani’s faces had gone blank, gone beyond panic to despair in the space of a heartbeat. Their eyes rolled and they whirled this way and that, brandishing their blades and trying to take in the whole clearing at once. They were searching for something, Zygesh realized—expecting something.
And just as the thought entered his mind, that something appeared.
At first it looked as if a great hill had risen up beneath the waters, with the slime of the swamp running down its quivering sides as its silhouette surged up against the night sky. But a blink and a closer look told him that there was nothing solid behind that great mountain of mire. It was the waters themselves, with all their filth and stink and steam, that had coalesced into the towering thing in the centre of the clearing— a great, jiggling bulk that glared down at the group through two round eyes that burned with emerald fire.
Beneath those green eyes—for what else could they be?—was a maw that blazed with equal ardour, yawning at the base of the midden mountain like the mouth of some infernal cave. The water about it bubbled and burped, and plumes of steam billowed forth from its depths as breath from a rotting corpse.
Zygesh knew he was helpless. He knew that the meagre blade hanging limp in his right hand would do him no good. There was no hope of fighting it, whatever it was, nor of fleeing, with the clearing ringed round as it was by a wall of woven tendrils.
Panic ate away at the edges of his vision, his eyes bulged, and his heart beat against his ribs as if trying to escape his doomed body. For he was doomed, after all. Doom was incarnate before him, green-eyed and heaving. And even as Zygesh prepared himself to meet whatever wretched fate awaited him there beneath the uncaring stars, a voice boomed from that glowing mouth.
“Tribute!” it roared in a voice that sounded of dripping caverns and churned mud, “Foreign feet tread our sacred waters. Outsiders bearing offerings. Long have we hungered. Long have we waited for the apes to return and pay what is due!”
Stinking water, almost unbearably hot, sloshed about Zygesh’s legs as the apparition spoke, driven forth by the force of its words in a wave that reached up to his loins. Just as quickly, as it seemed about to rise past his waist and wash him away, it rushed back into its source, tugging at his legs as if to drag him along with it.
“Flesh and souls! To keep the ground fertile. To feed the roots.” The oozing heap vomited another tide of stagnant water from its green maw as it spoke, and drew it back in again, as breath into diseased lungs.
The whole clearing bubbled like a cauldron filled too close to the brim, and fresh tendrils sprang up all around the party, slithering along the water between their legs and swaying like snakes about to strike. Ratso uttered a mewling cry, far too small for one of his size, and Yesshan whispered something frantic in her foothill tongue. But Zygesh barely noticed any of it, lost in the twinned green fire of the beast’s eyes.
“A toll for passage! Flesh and souls! One must stay, forever to abide. A guest from among our pink-skinned brethren.” The words oozed out by rote, as if the churning mound were but a mindless mouthpiece for something out of sight. Something that could not speak for itself.
Zygesh might have stood there until the end of time, might well have wandered into that gaping green light, if the bulk had but asked. But this time, as it spoke and vomited forth a fresh wave of refuse, a scalding gobbet leaped up from the surge to slap wetly across his face, and all at once his stupor broke.
His body shuddered into motion. Fear and outrage braided together and wrapped tight about his innards as he realized the role he was meant to play. Forgetting the oozing apparition, he whirled on Ratso and Tsani.
“I will not be meat on some god’s table!” he rasped, “Not again!”
Neither one of them answered, staring slack-jawed at the steaming bulk behind him, pressed so close together they seemed about to embrace. A fleeting image of bloodstained sand flashed before his mind’s eye, and of a mangled face turned up towards a scorching sun. For a moment he heard the voices of his old masters, chanting as they exacted from him the suffering demanded by absent gods.
Outrage turned to wrath, and with a snarl Zygesh took a handful of mud from between his feet and hurled it across Ratso and Tsani’s blanched faces.
“Do you hear me?” he screamed as the two started from their stupor, “I will not bleed on the altar so you can go on living! I have given the gods enough, and received nothing in return!”
He leaped forward, driving his knifepoint towards the centre of Ratso’s chest. But even as he did, the man teetered suddenly and fell backwards out of reach, wide-eyed and sputtering. It took Zygesh a moment to realize that Yesshan had grabbed Ratso from behind and had her arms about his neck, squeezing for all she was worth. That moment was all Tsani needed to regain her senses and blink the filth from her eyes, and even as Zygesh charged forward and attacked anew, she swept her blade upwards and stopped his swing in a shower of sparks.
Zygesh turned on Tsani and answered her intervention with a savage flurry of thrusts and swings, forgetting Ratso as Yesshan dragged the herder down into the mud. Red haze veiled his vision, and his thoughts were vague and slow to form. He was all impulse and anger, and drove himself at Tsani with all he had, only half-aware of the gargling cry that oozed from his lips as he attacked. His arm burned with the effort, and he sent her staggering backwards, wide eyed and frantic.
But whatever advantage his outburst afforded him, it was soon lost. Zygesh was an expert fighter with fists and feet, and in ritual combat he had pummelled to bloody pulps more people than he could count. Bladed weapons, however, were new to him—another trapping of freedom and too much wealth— and Tsani avoided his inexpert onslaught with ease. But when she answered his outburst with her own curved dagger, he managed to keep himself just out of reach. His strong legs had spent years wallowing in the bloody sands of the ritual pit, and to move lightly through mud and water came easily to him.
Beneath the gaze of the great god mound, they darted and circled, swinging madly and adding the flash of clashing steel to the green glow. All about them, the forest of twisting limbs swayed and slithered, parting to admit them as they charged back and forth, and reforming behind them as their combat carried them on a crazed path through the clearing. And all the while, the hulking midden creature simply sat and watched with its gaping eyes, frozen in place, lifeless except for the quivering of its bloated body. Through the haze of Zygesh’s fury came the impression that this clearing had been the site of countless such struggles. The great stinking bulk must be well fed to have grown so large, and it seemed content to sit still and await its inevitable tribute.
As Zygesh and Tsani danced back and forth, silent and grim-faced as they tried and failed to kill each other, he noticed that Ratso and Yesshan were still down where they had fallen. He ducked under a swipe at his neck, and leaped away as the backswing sang towards his belly, twisting at the same time to get a better look at the other two combatants.
At first all he saw was Ratso’s back, a mound of mudcaked fur that heaved and quivered. Zygesh wove around a thrust, and Tsani roared with anger as he darted past her. With his second glance, he caught sight of Yesshan—or what little of her remained above the swamp’s surface. Her right arm, clinging white-knuckled to the hilt of her knife, was fully extended, and Ratso held it fast by the wrist. Her left was extended as well, beating weakly against Ratso’s chest as he held her beneath the mire, his arm stretching down to where her neck ought to be.
Most likely he’d crushed her throat already. Most likely her lungs were swollen with bogwater. Most likely she would be dead in another moment. But none of this mattered. Zygesh didn’t care if she lived or died, nor if he himself made it out of Grulgg’s rotten heart. The stinking god would have its tribute, but he would see that it was the herders who paid it.
Zygesh backed towards Ratso, stealing glances over his shoulder as Tsani stumbled after him, kicking away a rope of viscous mud as she did.
“Ratso, you idiot!” she screamed, seeing what Zygesh intended, “Behind you!”
She thrust and swung as she spoke, and Zygesh barely danced out of the way as he turned his back on her and lunged towards Ratso. He might have been clumsy with a blade, but Ratso’s back spread out before him like the broad side of a mountain. The man heard Tsani’s warning, and turned his head just in time to see Zygesh fall upon him. His eyes bulged in surprise and his mouth fell open, but Zygesh was on him before he could make a sound, a hateful grin splitting his scarred face.
The first downward thrust sank into Ratso’s shoulder, and the herder threw his head back and screamed. He lifted his right hand out of the mud and clawed frantically at the wound, but Zygesh had already withdrawn the weapon, slashing Ratso’s neck on the backswing. Blood welled from his shoulder and sprayed from beneath his filthy beard. His scream turned to a gargle, and crimson froth bubbled from between his quivering lips.
He released Yesshan’s arm and brought his hands to his neck, and at once she proved herself to be very much alive. Still crushed beneath the slimy surface of the swamp, she made fine use of her upthrust arm, and plunged her blade over and over again into Ratso’s exposed flank, stabbing and twisting and tearing until his innards began to bulge through the fresh wounds.
He was juddering and heaving all over now, and his face had lost all trace of its ruddy colour. His mouth worked wetly as he pawed at the rush of blood soaking his trunk, and his bowels sagged through the tatters of his coat.
Yesshan thrust her head up from the mud, gagging and spitting as she vomited up a gutful of stinking water. She struggled beneath Ratso’s listing bulk and took hold of his beard, heaving herself clear of the mire as Zygesh planted his foot on the herder’s chest and shoved him backwards.
As he toppled over, Yesshan scrabbled fully free of him, still coughing and croaking, leaving her knife in him as she brought a hand up to massage her neck. The skin there was beginning to show purple beneath caked-on clay, but her gasps told Zygesh she would recover well enough.
As Yesshan struggled to her feet, Tsani screeched and hurled herself over her dying comrade. Ratso’s gutting had lasted just an instant, and she lost only a split second to shock before renewing her attack. The foothill woman was free, but she was no longer armed, and Tsani’s screech turned to a cackle of triumph as she lunged towards her.
But Tsani never made it to Yesshan. With a sloshing, sucking, burbling sound, all the tendrils that swayed in the clearing suddenly rushed together and converged on Ratso’s expiring body. The swamp surged beneath it, bore it up, and swallowed it up to the neck. The upheaval flung the other three aside, and Zygesh tasted Grulgg’s viscous water as he plowed into it face-first. A green haze fell before his eyes, cloying warmth rushed into his ears, and he gagged as his mouth filled with a taste that made him think of beaches heaped with rotting fish. He convulsed, twisted, and struggled to his hands and knees. He wiped the filth from his eyes and blinked as he saw Ratso’s face, still fixed in a silent scream, suffused by bog water that poured from his mouth and burst from his eyes.
Then all at once that face disappeared, wrapped up in the living mud that erupted from its every pore, and the shape of Ratso sank back into the slime until it was little more than a hump. Then that hump began to move, slowly and smoothly, towards the gaping green maw that still shone at the base of the sludge mound, borne along by tendrils that slithered about it like water snakes.
Even covered as he was in the steaming water of Grulgg, Zygesh could not help but shiver as he watched the slime-coated thing that had been Ratso disappear into the green light. The mouth yawned as it always had, but the light within in it seemed to darken, and for an instant Zygesh thought that he saw shapes moving within, stooped figures overtopped by pale green eyes, hunching over to receive their prize.
The vision lasted just an instant, and once it had passed Zygesh could no longer be certain that he hadn’t imagined it. But even so, he could not tear his eyes from that glowing cavern, and even Tsani had forgotten her fury as she gaped at it, watching her companion disappear forever.
Movement in his periphery broke Zygesh’s stupor, and he turned his head to see that Yesshan had retrieved a knife—whether hers or Ratso’s, he could not say—and was creeping up on Tsani, who still stood rapt and terrified. The herder’s eyes were wide and watering, and her mouth hung open, a black hole on her slime-smeared face. She was oblivious as Yesshan stole up behind her, knife upraised, death in her eyes.
But then something else caught Zygesh’s eye, and he set out running the moment he realized what it was. Beyond the living mountain, across the roiling expanse of moonlit filth, the tendrils had parted on the edge of the clearing, revealing a way out.
The world melted away, and he forgot the pain in his limbs, the stink that stung his lungs, and the foul taste in his mouth. There was only that opening, and the pounding of his heart, and the pumping of his legs. He raced across the clearing, past the jellied mound, weaving among writhing tendrils that swayed like plant stalks in the windless night. The toll was paid, flesh and soul, and now the way was open.
The stinking god made good on its word, and laid clear the way even as it feasted on its grizzly tribute. He could hear it speaking behind him, booming and burping, and the ground shook as it did. But whether because of the mud in his ears, or the myopia that dragged him pell-mell towards that oily opening, he understood not a word that it said. Nor could he tell who it was who screamed behind him as he reached the edge of the clearing and plunged in among the fungal stalks and sagging fronds.
If Yesshan wanted to linger beneath the god’s green gaze to take her revenge on Tsani, so be it. Zygesh had done what he could for her, and many leagues lay before him. He hoped that Yesshan’s knife had found a warm home, and that she would be hard on his heels. But he did not look back as he pounded ahead, realizing the farther he went that he could not bear to glimpse that clearing again.
For he’d heard talk of gods all his life—dread beings who waited just out of sight, whispering their whims into the ears of the powerful. He’d heard talk, but had never once seen a jot of proof. Until tonight.
Here in Grulgg, amid the stench and the slime and the killing vapours, at least one god ruled, taking dear tribute from those who stumbled into its domain. Zygesh doubted that the gods of his homeland were real. Most likely they were the inventions of his masters, fabricated in service of aims that he could not begin to fathom. But here in Grulgg he’d found something worse than he could ever have imagined—a living god, real and terrible. And as he scrabbled through the fungal forest, he found himself wishing once again for the familiar cruelty of men, and for a world where tyrants held sway and the gods were absent.
©May 2024, Benjamin Sartison
Benjamin Sartison is a Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy writer who devotes as much time to his craft as his day job and attention span will allow. He enjoys writing stories where hope is scarce, and whose protagonists suffer much while gaining little. This is his second published story, and his first in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.