The Broken God Machine (27 page)

The younger woman was tending to her little boy, who had at that moment
decided that eating a handful of sand and pebbles would be a most excellent
idea, and so she did not at first see the figure cresting the hill. She heard
the older woman sitting behind her make a quiet murmur of surprise and say,
“Who is that?”

The younger woman glanced up, ceasing her tsking noises, eyes slit to try to
make out the features of the still-distant form. In one hand she still clutched
the stones that her boy had been trying to eat. The other hand rested on her
slightly swollen belly, inside of which her second child was half grown. She
tossed the pebbles away and brought a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun,
pushing away her hair. After a moment she said, “I can’t see.”

“Merchant?” the older woman asked.

“No … I don’t think so.”

“Not a farmer?”

“Coming from the east? It has to be a hunter.”

There were so few of those now, even two years after the coming of the
Lagos. Only three had survived the battle: Josep, Thomas with his crippled left
arm, and the youngest, Clay, who had been knocked senseless in the fighting and
mistaken for dead. Since then only four boys had passed the Test. Most
others who might have done so had been taken by the Lagos priests.

“It’s not your man, nor Sili’s, nor mine,” the older woman, Thomas’s wife,
said, and she leaned forward a bit, shielding her eyes as well.

“I don’t think it’s any of ours. I don’t think he’s from this village at
all,” the younger woman said, but there was something in her voice like doubt.
The silhouette was familiar and foreign at the same time, like someone who has
come from a dream to stand in the waking world.

The man came to a stop at the crest of the hill, looking over his
surroundings and grinning broadly. With the sun lighting his face, the two
women could better make out his features, and after a moment more the younger
one made a sudden, harsh gasping noise, like a woman nearly drowned who has
just broken the surface. She began to babble half-words and fragments, and she
leapt to her feet.

“Nani, what is it?” the older woman asked.

She only cried, “Watch the baby!” before taking off toward the stranger at a
dead run, seemingly unburdened by the child growing inside of her.

* * *

Pehr heard her call his name. He heard the call become a long and breaking
cry of joy, and he turned to see his cousin barreling down upon him. He opened
his arms and caught her, laughing, and the two very nearly toppled over into
the sandy grass. Nani pressed her face against his chest, fingers wrapping the
leather of his shirt into knots, and sobbed. Pehr held her, put his face in her
hair, inhaled.

“How I have missed you,” he said.

“You’re dead!” Nani wept, still clutching him with all of her strength, and
Pehr gave a soft laugh.

“No.”

“You must be!”

Pehr nodded. “I must be, yes. But I’m not.”

“ You and Jace … Josep said it was impossible.”

“I couldn’t save Jace. Nani, I am so sorry.”

His cousin’s sobs redoubled, and for a time they stood there like that, Nani
weeping in some terrible combination of joy and grief and Pehr doing his best
to comfort her. At last she gained some control and pulled away from him,
looking up into his eyes.

“Tell me what happened.”

Pehr took her hand and began to walk back toward the dwellings. Nani allowed
herself to be guided in that direction.

“Do you remember that I told you I dreamed of a girl, just before the Lagos
attacked?” he asked as they walked, and Nani nodded. Pehr sighed. “She was
there. No, I understand that it seems insane, but you must trust me. I fell,
dying of thirst, at the feet of this strange girl with her purple eyes, and her
family took me in. Nani, there is so much to tell, but I’ve returned at last
and I bring salvation with me. The girl, Tasha, and I … we found something that
will save us all.”

“From the Lagos?”

Pehr ran a hand through his hair and looked out toward the horizon, where
the Everstorm continued to churn and shift as it had for as long as his people
could remember. Finally he spoke.

“No. The thing we call the Everstorm keeps a great evil at bay, something
far worse even than the Lagos. It is … a demon, almost, called Radiation, and
the Everstorm was built to keep its touch from these lands, but the Everstorm
is failing. With each passing year the demon creeps closer. Eventually all who
live in this place will die. There is only one hope for Uru.”

“What hope is that?” Nani asked him, and Pehr smiled at her.

“Havenmont.”

* * *

“What is this … ‘Havenmont’ and you came you to it, Pehr?” Josep asked from
his seat at the head of the table. His fellows were gathered with with him in
the hunters’ hall, where the warriors of the village – few though they were –
gathered to discuss their work.

“It is a city of man,” Pehr said. “Once, countless numbers dwelled there.
Its buildings rise to what seems the very peaks of the mountains that surround
it, and creatures of metal patrol the streets at night. It’s the land of our
ancestors, and I came to it through fate and fortune, and through my own
efforts and those of a very dear friend.”

“It sounds like something from a child’s tale,” Josep said.

There was a note of distaste in his voice that made Pehr uneasy, but Josep
only leaned forward, resting his chin in the palm of one hand, waiting for Pehr
to continue. The older hunter was scarred badly from his encounter with the
Lagos. Running across his forehead, an ugly, purple line seemed to give him a
permanent scowl, and Pehr could see, at the edges of the man’s shirt, that the
damage to his chest and shoulder had been equally disfiguring.

“I know it’s difficult to believe,” Pehr said. “I hope that your knowledge
of me … your trust in me … will help you with that.”

“What knowledge?” Thomas, the hunter with the crippled arm, asked. “What
trust? You’re a stranger to us now, gone more than two years. You left this
village when it needed every healthy body. You went to chase after your cousin
when all knew he was doomed. Now you have returned, dressed in strange clothes
and carrying a strange weapon, to give stories of a miraculous city beyond the
jungle. What proof have you to offer?”

Pehr shrugged. He had collected no objects from Havenmont, and even if he
had, there was little chance that they would have meant anything to the hunters
sitting at this table. Here even Pehr’s own augmentation proved worthless; he
couldn't explain to Josep and the others what calculus was or why it should
matter to them. He could tell them why the Everstorm was so important to Uru,
but he could not explain to them how it worked in any way they would
understand. The only hope lay in bringing them to the city, where they could
receive the same gift that Allen had already given Pehr.

“There is no proof,” he said, and he stopped, looking around at the seven
men gathered there. Four of them were younger than Pehr, boys with whom he had
grown up who had been lucky enough to escape death at the hands of the Lagos
warriors or abduction by their priests. Then there was Clay, and Thomas, and
Josep – forced to lead because he was the only one who could.

“There is no proof,” Pehr said again. “There is only my word … the word of a
fellow hunter.”

The left side of Josep’s upper lip rose momentarily, and in that instant
Pehr understood why he had felt such hostility emanating from the group. He
didn’t even need the words that followed.

“You are not a hunter. All the others who sit here have passed the Test and
earned the right to call themselves such, but you have not. You are just a boy
pretending to be a man.”

Pehr clenched his teeth against the oaths that rose in his throat and looked
up at the ceiling, then returned his glance to Josep.

“The Test? Josep … the Test means nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“How dare you speak like this?” Josep snarled. “The Test is our judge of
manhood. It’s the only judge that we—”

“It is a capricious, arbitrary judge that has removed countless thousands
from our ranks who might otherwise have benefitted our village, or others,”
Pehr said, and he sighed, shaking his head. “I have not passed the
hunters’ Test, it is true. I have not gone through the peril of the swinging
stones, nor bested the caves of fire. I’ve not faced an angered sow in single
combat and come out victorious, and I’ve not swum out past the stones in the
bay and braved the currents of the open ocean. These things all of you have
done – and lived to tell of it – and thus, by our laws, you are men.”

He turned to each of them then, meeting their eyes and holding their gaze,
not ashamed and not afraid, and then continued. “I have bested tests of my own.
I have defeated Lagos warriors and priests in single combat. I have navigated
their jungles without aid and have stood before the greatest of their priests
without wavering. I have been brought to the very edge of death by thirst,
hunted great beasts in herds so large they blackened the horizon, and trained
to fight with this blade of steel that I now carry. I have outrun and outwitted
an army of demon machines bent on my destruction, and I have stood tall before
a thing which unleashes death from its very eyes. I have gone, and done, and
endured. I have survived these things that would have killed many men, many
hunters, and many of
you
.

“I'm not a hunter by your law, Josep, but through my own actions and
accomplishments I have become a man. I have survived tests as great as any that
our people have ever devised. I will not suffer your doubt, and I will have
your respect.”

“My respect is not simply given to those who ask for it,” Josep said.

“I am not asking,” Pehr said. He could feel a grim smile on his face, but
inside there was little but despair. It hadn't occurred to him that he would be
viewed by his own village not as a returning hero or a savior, but rather as
nothing more than the boy who had abandoned his family and his duty.

“Are you commanding me, Pehr?” Josep asked, his voice low. “Consider your
answer … boy. Consider it very well.”

Josep sat at the head of the hunters’ table now, and in this position he was
the leader, not only of those gathered in this hall but of the entire village.
The politics of Pehr’s society were loose and there was rarely any challenge to
the established ways and hierarchy, but neither were such things entirely
unknown. To issue a command to the head of hunters was to challenge his
authority, and Josep would not take any such challenge lightly. If Pehr chose
to go forward with it, there would be battle, and while either fighter would
have the opportunity to yield during such a fight, more often than not it ended
in the death of one of the two men.

Pehr did not want to fight Josep. He was not scared of the man, though he
couldn't say with certainty who would win such a battle. He was afraid,
instead, of failing not just Tasha but all the world. While the idea of coming
all this way only to die at the hands of someone who had once been a friend was
amusing in some deep, black way, Pehr understood the precarious ground on which
the fate of his entire people now rested.

“What would you have me do, Josep?” he asked the elder hunter, who leaned
back in his seat, appraising Pehr, and at last spoke.

“Take the Test. Pass it and become a man. Live with us and hunt with us.
Take a wife. Father children so that the village might grow. I ask that you
help
us, Pehr. Help us to rebuild, to fix what has happened here, and
perhaps in time you will find us more willing to entertain your fantasy
tales.”

Pehr closed his eyes, trying to envision it. All of these things were
possible, yes, and some of them were even tempting. He could set down the
responsibility of saving them, for now, and focus first on saving this one
village. He could reform the bonds of friendship with his fellow men, hunt boar
with them, and return home to a wife and family after each hunt. This was all
that he had ever wanted, once, and if Nani had been any other than his cousin,
she would have refused Josep’s necklace and waited for him instead, and he
would never have left this place at all. He would have abandoned Jace to his
fate and stayed behind to rebuild and be with her.

But Nani
was
his cousin, and so he had gone. He forced himself to
picture Tasha lying cold and naked on her funeral pyre, and thought of the
promises he had made to her. Would he break those oaths so easily?

Eyes still closed, Pehr shook his head. “I cannot do these things you ask. I
wish that I could, my friend, but I have made promises and I could not live
with myself if I did not keep them. If you will not follow me in this
voluntarily, then I must lead by force. I must challenge you.”

Josep shook his head, disgusted. “It is a sad choice you have made, Pehr.
Death or exile. I will not allow you to remain here if you yield.”

“I know what I’ve chosen,” Pehr said.

“So be it, then. Tomorrow at midday we will meet in the village center. Go
now and prepare.”

So it was, Pehr thought. Another test, another challenge, another block in
the road toward redemption. Why must it always be so?

This was Uru; this was their world and these their ways, and for Pehr there
was nothing else to do but that which he had been doing since his birth. He
would face the challenge head on and seek to overcome it. He would face it and
he would triumph, or he would die.

“Until tomorrow then,” he said, and he stood to take his leave.

Pehr had expected that others might be waiting to see the boy who had
returned from the dead, but the group assembled outside of the hunters’ hall
was something more like a mob, large and rowdy and restless. It seemed that the
entirety of the village had come together to surround the building’s single
entrance. As Pehr emerged, the people surged forward, their collective
murmuring swelling to a roar.

“It’s true!” a hoarse voice cawed out from somewhere amidst the crowd of
bodies, and Pehr took a step back as several hands reached for him, as if
wishing to prove the veracity of his existence by touching him.

“Leave him alone!” Nani shouted, shoving her way through the crowd and
slapping away the hands. “Get back, fools.”

She stopped, standing beside and slightly ahead of Pehr, staring out at the
crowd. There was a moment of silence.

“Nani … what is this?” Pehr asked, keeping his voice subdued. There was
something manic in the eyes of the villagers that startled him. They were
staring at him now in silence, as if waiting for some proclamation.

“It’s my fault,” Nani said. “I told Essa some of where you’ve gone and what
you’ve done. She ran off and told half the village that a savior had come back
from the land of the Gods to deliver us from the Lagos and raise us up to
eternal paradise.”

Pehr laughed. “She has a vivid imagination.”

“To go into the very heart of the Lagos’s lands and then return? As far as
they’re concerned, you’ve risen from the dead.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think if my brother was still alive, he’d call them all idiots.”

“He might be right to do so,” Pehr muttered, but then he stepped forward and
looked over the crowd.

“My friends,” he began, and then paused, thinking. “You look to me for
salvation as you would look to the Gods, but I'm not one of Them. I’m only a
man. I have not met Them, and I know not of Their workings. I know only of the
workings of men.”

“What of the Lagos?” someone else cried.

“The Gods have seen fit to strike down the Lagos forces,” Pehr said, and he
wondered if Tasha would be offended or only amused that he was using his Gods
now in such a way, to gain the trust and faith of those around him. He
suspected she would find the situation both horrifying and uproariously funny,
and had to suppress a grim smile of his own.

“Are they truly gone?” a young girl asked, and Pehr recognized her as the
one he had saved from a beast’s clutches at the beginning of the battle.

“There may yet be Lagos remaining,” Pehr told her. “If so, they are few and
they are scattered. I saw their army destroyed with my own eyes. We must band
together, all of the villages from here to the northern desert. We will build
an army and sweep through the jungles, hunting down the last of the creatures,
so that we may finally claim that which is our birthright.”

“What is this thing?” someone called.

“It is Havenmont, the last city of man. It was the place of our ancestors in
the years after the Great Destruction, and the men who lived there possessed
much knowledge that would have made them seem to us like gods. That knowledge
has been denied us by the Lagos for thousands of years, and denied to those who
dwell on the eastern plains. We are a split people, no longer whole, and it is
only by chance – or good luck, or the favor of the Gods – that I have been able
to bridge the gap.”

Pehr looked out over the crowd. There were faces he recognized, but many
were new to him. Merchants and farmers and their families, settlers who had
come from other villages to help repopulate the land in the wake of the Lagos’s
destruction. These people knew nothing of him, hadn't grown up with him, had no
reason to believe him. Surely it would not be so easy as a simple speech to
gain their trust.

As if to confirm these thoughts, another voice spoke. “What of Josep?”

Pehr grimaced, glancing at Nani and then over his shoulder at the entrance
to the hall. If the hunters inside had heard any of this, they had opted not to
participate, and Pehr struggled to find the right words to explain the
situation. Finally he settled for simplicity and brevity.

“Josep does not believe my claims, nor will he allow me to bring you to your
salvation. He has given me no option but to challenge him, and though I wish
for nothing less, we will meet in combat tomorrow at midday.”

This statement was met with stunned silence. After a moment more Pehr said
only, “If you will excuse me, I must prepare,” and with these words, he began
to push his way through the crowd.

* * *

“This is insane!” Nani cried, for what must have been the thirtieth
time.

“I’ve offered no argument to that statement any of the many times you’ve
made it,” Pehr replied. He was sitting at the very same table at which he had
eaten for so many years, and to be here now felt strange indeed. Truff should
have been to his right, grumbling about something, and Jace to his left, making
a light-hearted quip. Instead there was only Nani, and her boy, and Anna in the
kitchen. Josep had chosen to spend his night in the hunters’ hall with his
fellows, preparing for the coming fight.

“That’s not the same thing as agreeing with me,” Nani said, and Pehr
sighed.

“Will it help if I tell you that I agree?” he asked. “That I think this
entire thing is a foolish, dangerous waste of time? I am bound by laws that I
didn’t write and would no longer follow if I had a choice. I would do this
thing in peace, but Josep will not allow me to challenge his leadership without
a fight. He won’t even accept me as a fellow man.”

“But why must you challenge him? Why not wait, like he says? In time you
might convince him. In time—”

“Nani, it will never be easier than it is right now. In time the awe will
fade, and I will become just another hunter. The Lagos will rebuild and stand
again between us and the plainsmen. The Everstorm may even fail, sending waves
of radiation over the land that will kill us all unless we’ve reached the
safety of Havenmont.”

Pehr shook his head and continued. “No, I cannot wait. I have made promises
to many who I love, many who yet live and one who died in service to this goal.
I will not walk away from those promises. I will bring our people to the
plains, as many of them as will come with me.”

“Then why not just take them and go? Why fight Josep?”

“He will order them to stay, and they will listen because he leads this
village. How, then, can I go north and find followers if I can’t even gather
them from my own village? I must … Nani, to do this thing, I must create a
legend. It must begin here.”

“Even if it means killing my husband and making bastards of my children,”
Nani spat, her voice bitter. Pehr stared up at the ceiling.

“I will not kill Josep.”

“He won’t give you a choice! Josep will die before he goes into exile if you
beat him, and what if you don’t? What if he wins, Pehr? Which would you
choose?”

He almost told her, then, what it was that he was planning, but at the last
moment he thought better of it and shook his head.

“Death,” he said. “If Josep wins tomorrow, then my mission dies whether I
live or not. None of the villagers would follow an exiled hunter, no matter if
the Gods themselves came down and declared him a savior.”

“Then one of the two of you dies in that ring tomorrow,” Nani said.

“I understand that you can’t support me in this. If you wish, I’ll leave now
and trouble you no further.”

“Don’t be a damned fool,” Nani growled. “I won’t turn you out into the
night. No, you won’t have my support tomorrow, but neither will my pig-headed
husband. I refuse to support this horrible tradition that will murder one of
the two men that I … that are closest to me.”

Pehr closed his eyes, reliving the kiss he’d shared with Nani two years ago,
in the pouring rain, just before he had left on the heels of the Lagos horde.
So much time had passed, and she still loved him … had she not just nearly said
it again? He ached to hear the words and knew that he never would. No matter
what happened in this upcoming battle, Nani would always be Josep’s woman. God
or Gods had saved Pehr’s life more than once … perhaps her love was their toll
for that salvation.

“I can give you no comfort,” he said, not opening his eyes. “My heart aches
that it must come to this.”

He heard Nani stand up and heave a weary, disgusted sigh. “This is insane,”
she said again, and Pehr only nodded. There was nothing more to be said, so
Nani went to help Anna in the kitchen, bringing her child with her. Pehr sat
alone, arms folded on the table, eyes closed, trying to ignore the ache in his
heart and prepare for the challenge ahead.

* * *

The village center had been prepared for the upcoming battle, and by the
time Pehr reached it, most of the crowd had already arrived. They stood in a
rough circle around a central combat area lined with thick wooden poles. These
had been sharpened at their tips and angled inward, set close enough together
that a man couldn't easily squeeze between them. There was only one entrance,
at the northern end of the circle, and this, too, would be filled with spikes
once the combatants were within.

Nani had not been in the house when Pehr awoke. Anna told him that her
daughter had gone to see Josep, and Pehr suspected that Nani still held hope
that she could change one or both of their minds. He spotted her now, standing
with her husband near the entrance to the circle. Judging by the miserable and
disgusted look on her face, he doubted she had been successful. She was staring
only at the ground and standing a full step behind Josep, who watched calmly as
Pehr made his way through the crowd. As the two met, Pehr held his hand out
and, after a moment, Josep shook it.

“Well met,” he grunted, and Pehr nodded.

“Josep, please …” Nani began behind him, and the hunter held up his hand to
stop her, not turning around.

“I will hear no more,” he said.

Nani’s lips were pressed together in a thin, white line, and there was
clearly much more she wanted to say, but she held her tongue. Pehr tried not to
look at her. Instead he returned his attention to Josep, matching the hunter’s
gaze. He wondered if he had judged the man correctly.

“There is nothing more that I could say either, is there?” Pehr asked Josep,
and the hunter raised an eyebrow.

“This is your challenge, not mine,” Josep said. “Turn around, walk away, and
take up your duties as one of our people. Do that and I will embrace you as a
brother.”

“I cannot,” Pehr said.

“Then there is nothing more to say.”

Josep stepped past him and into the ring. A loud murmur went through the
crowd, a noise of anticipation. There was always the possibility that one of
the two might back down, but once both contestants had entered the ring, they
could not leave until one yielded or died at the other’s hands.

“I await your challenge,” Josep told him from the center of the ring. The
crowd had gone completely silent, and Pehr saw that Nani was covering her face
with her hands. He forced himself to look away from her, and instead stepped
into the circle. This action was greeted with a roar of approval, and Pehr
heard two of the other hunters slotting the last spikes into place. He was now
committed to this course.

The two fighters stood facing each other at the center of the circle, each
taking the measure of the other. Josep was carrying a club of stone and had
strapped to his back the large axe that had once belonged to Truff. There was a
small bone knife strapped to his right boot by leather bands. Neither man held
a shield or wore much in the way of armor, though Josep had strapped extra
bands of leather around his upper arms and waist. Pehr was wearing the same
clothes in which he had left the plains: breeches and a shirt of soft tral
skin, and hard leather boots. He was carrying a bone club in his hand, and
strapped to his back was the blade Samhad had given to him.

Josep turned to the crowd and said, “Let it be known that a challenge has
been made to the head of hunters. This dispute shall be resolved here, in this
circle. Let no man, woman, or child enter the circle lest their lives – and the
life of him they seek to aid – be forfeit. Whoever wins this battle will leave
from the north, to take his seat at the head of the table of hunters. The
loser, if he lives, faces exile. So it is, and so it has always been.”

Not always
, Pehr thought, but he said nothing. Josep surprised him
by turning and making the hunter’s salute. Pehr mirrored the gesture, and Josep
nodded. He shifted his club from left hand to right and assumed a ready
stance.

It is time
, Pehr thought, and with his eyes never leaving Josep, he
knelt slowly down and set his club aside. Standing up, he reached with his
right hand over his shoulder, pulling the blade from its sheath. The crowd went
silent again, and even Josep seemed slightly unnerved, the smile slipping away
from his face.

“Yet more disrespect for our traditions,” the hunter commented. “You throw
away your people’s weapon in favor of this strange blade from the plains.”

“The plainsmen are us, and we are them,” Pehr said, pitching his voice loud
enough that all could hear. “We both came from Havenmont.”

“You should have stayed with them, then,” Josep snarled. He tossed his own
club aside and unhooked the gigantic, double-bladed axe from his back. Like
Pehr’s sword, this was a weapon meant for killing. Anything but the slightest
blow would prove catastrophic. Pehr had once seen his uncle use the axe to lop
the head from a wild dog in a single swipe as the dog ran by him. Its body had
kept on running for nearly ten yards before finally collapsing.

Pehr held the blade out before him, tip pointed to the ground in a defensive
stance, waiting for Josep to make the first move. There would be only one
chance, and if Pehr had misjudged this man who had once been his friend, if
Josep proved any less honorable than Pehr believed he was, then their world
would end here.