His scream was cut off as he crunched into the wall perhaps ten strides up, flopped bonelessly to the ground in a shower of blood and cracked marble. His head was flattened, twisted all the way around, his face thankfully turned to the wall.
‘God,’ whispered Temple. ‘Oh, God.’
‘Still, all of you!’ called Kahdia, one arm out.
‘You are their leader?’ asked the foremost of the Eaters, raising one brow. His dark face was young, and smooth, and beautiful, but his eyes were old.
‘I am Kahdia, Haddish of this temple.’
‘A priest, then. A man of the book. Dagoska has been the birthplace of many holy men. Of revered philosophers, admired theologists. Men who heard the voice of God. Are you one such, Haddish Kahdia?’
Temple did not know how, but Kahdia showed no fear. He spoke as he might to one of his congregation. Even this devil born of hell, this eater of the flesh of men, he treated as if he was no lesser or greater than himself. ‘I am but a man. I struggle to be righteous.’
‘Believe it or not, so do we all.’ The Eater frowned down at his hand, and made a fist of it, and let the fingers slowly open again as if allowing sand to drain from his palm. ‘And here is where the road to righteousness has led me. Do you know who I am?’ There was no mocking triumph in his perfect face. Only a sadness.
‘You are Mamun,’ said Haddish Kahdia. ‘The fruit of the desert. Thrice Blessed and Thrice Cursed.’
‘Yes. Though with every year the curses weigh heavier, and the blessings seem more dust.’
‘You have only yourself to blame,’ said Kahdia, calmly. ‘You broke God’s law and ate the flesh of men.’
‘And of women, and of children, and of everything that breathes.’ Mamun frowned over towards the acolyte’s ruined corpse. One of the Eaters had squatted beside the body, and she put one finger in the pooling blood and began to smear it on her blandly smiling face. ‘If only I had known then what I know now things might have been different.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘But it is easy to speak of the past, impossible to go there. I am powerful in ways you can only dream, yet I am still a prisoner of what I have done. I can never escape the cell I have made for myself. Things are what they are.’
‘We always have a choice,’ said Kahdia.
Mamun smiled at him. A strange smile, it was. Almost … hopeful. ‘Do you think so?’
‘God tells us so.’
‘Then I offer you yours. We can take them.’ He glanced towards the crowd, and as his glassy eyes passed over Temple he felt the hairs rise on his neck. ‘We can take all of them, but you will be spared.’
The Eater with the golden hair winked at Temple again, and he felt the girl beside him trembling, and he felt himself trembling, too.
‘Or we can take you,’ said Mamun, ‘and they will be spared.’
‘All of them?’ asked Kahdia.
‘All of them.’
That was the time to step forward, Temple knew. To act as he would want to act. As he would want others to act. That was the moment for courage, for selflessness, for solidarity with the man who had saved his life, who had shown him mercy, who had given him a chance he did not deserve. To step forward, and offer himself in Kahdia’s place. Now was the time.
Temple did not move.
No one did.
The Haddish gave a smile, though. ‘You drive a poor bargain, Eater. I would happily have given my life for any one of them.’
The blonde woman raised her long arms, let her head fall back and began to sing. High and dazzlingly pure, her voice soared in the great spaces above, more beautiful than any music Temple had ever heard.
Mamun fell to his knees before Kahdia and pressed one hand to his heart. ‘All heaven rejoices in the finding of one righteous man. Wash him. Give him food and water. Convey him with honour to the Prophet’s table.’
‘God be with you,’ murmured Kahdia over his shoulder, the smile still on his face. ‘God be with you all.’ And he walked from the temple, an Eater on either side, their heads respectfully bowed as his was held high.
‘Shame,’ said the Eater with the blood-daubed face, her lips pushed out in a pout. She took the acolyte’s corpse by one ankle and dragged it after her, swaggering to the doors and leaving a bloody trail across the floor.
Mamun paused for a moment in the broken doorway. ‘The rest of you are free. Free from us, at least. From yourselves, there is no escape.’
How long did they stand in that sweating press, after the Eaters were gone? How long did they stand silent, staring towards the ruined gate? Frozen with terror. Rooted with guilt. Minutes? Hours? While outside, faintly, they heard the burning, the clash of steel, the screams, the sound of the sack of Dagoska. The sound of the end of the world.
Finally the girl beside Temple leaned close and asked in a broken whisper, ‘What do we do?’
Temple swallowed. ‘We care for the wounded. We give comfort to the weak. We bury the dead. We pray.’
God, it sounded hollow. But what else was there?
Two’s Company
Somewhere in the North,Summer 576
‘This is hell,’ muttered Shev, peering over the brink of the canyon. ‘Hell.’ Rock shiny-dark with wet disappeared into the mist below, water rushing somewhere, a long way down. ‘God, I hate the North.’
‘Somehow,’ answered Javre, pushing back hair turned lank brown by the eternal damp, ‘I do not think God is listening.’
‘Oh, I’m abundantly aware of that. No one’s bloody listening.’
‘I am.’ Javre turned away from the edge and headed on down the rutted goat-track beside it with her usual mighty strides, head back, heedless of the rain, soaked cloak flapping at her muddy calves. ‘And, what is more, I am intensely bored by what I am hearing.’
‘Don’t toy with me, Javre.’ Shev hurried to catch her up, trying to find the least boggy patches to hop between. ‘I’ve had about as much of this as I can take!’
‘So you keep saying. And yet the next day you take some more.’
‘I’m bloody furious!’
‘I believe you.’
‘I mean it!’
‘If you have to tell someone you are furious, and then, furthermore, that you mean it, your fury has failed to achieve its desired effect.’
‘I hate the bloody North!’ Shev stamped at the ground, as though she could hurt anything but herself, succeeding only in showering wet dirt up her leg. Not that she could have made herself much wetter or dirtier. ‘The whole place is made of shit!’
Javre shrugged. ‘Everything is, in the end.’
‘How can anyone stand this cold?’
‘It is bracing. Do not sulk. Would you like to ride on my shoulders?’
Shev would have, in fact, very much, but her bruised pride insisted that she continue to squelch along on foot. ‘What am I, a bloody child?’
Javre raised her red brows. ‘Were you never told only to ask questions you truly want the answer to? Do you want the answer?’
‘Not if you’re going to try to be funny.’
‘Oh, come now, Shevedieh!’ Javre bent down to snake one huge arm about her shoulders and gave her a bone-crushing squeeze. ‘Where is that happy-go-lucky rascal I fell in love with back in Westport, always facing her indignities with a laugh, a caper and a twinkle in her eye?’ And her wriggling fingers crept towards Shev’s stomach.
Shev held up a knife. ‘Tickle me and I will fucking stab you.’
Javre puffed out her cheeks, took her arm away and squelched on down the track. ‘Do not be so overdramatic. It is exhausting. We just need to get you dry and find some pretty little farmgirl for you to curl up with and it will all feel better by morning.’
‘There are no pretty farmgirls out here! There are no girls! There are no farms!’ She held out her arms to the endless murk, mud and blasted rock. ‘There isn’t even any bloody morning!’