The Broken God Machine (5 page)

“What is
wrong
with him!?” she cried, turning her head and glaring
back at the boy still sitting on the rock, staring out toward the jungle. “It’s
as if he’s become some other person. I don’t know this Jace, I don’t like him,
and I want my brother back!”

“He believes we are all about to die,” Pehr said. “I have heard Truff and
the other hunters talk about this. Some men lose their emotions before the
hunt. Have you not seen this same behavior in some of the others around the
village? Those who believe in the Lagos are terrified, and some of them are
wrestling with it like Jace.”

“He doesn’t seem afraid! How can he talk so plainly about … about
dying?”

“Of course he’s afraid, but he’s locked that away. It’ll help him with it,
Nani.”

“Help with what?”

“The fighting. The killing and the dying. You know his mind; he sees things
in a way the rest of us don’t. If he thinks too much about what he might lose,
it’ll overwhelm him. How can he draw his bow and hope to shoot true if his
hands are shaking with fear?”

Nani chewed on her lower lip, looking less than convinced by this
explanation. Finally she said, “If that’s what he needs to do, then so be it,
but it doesn’t explain why he looks like one already dead.”

“You don’t understand. The fear is still in him. He hasn’t disposed of it …
he’s merely locked it away, and it eats at him from within.” Pehr shrugged. He
thought Jace was on the very edge of something approaching raw, incoherent
terror, the sort of fear that they were supposed to put behind them as they
left their childhood. It seemed better that he be like this, and remain able to
fight, than that he break down entirely.

“He’s just a boy,” Nani said.

“He’s being a man. Would you rather he wept? Begged your father to save him
and make the bad drums go away? Wasn’t that what Josep’s brother was doing only
last night?”

“Alain has only seen four years …” Nani’s tone was truculent, and she
wouldn’t meet Pehr’s eyes.

“Yes. He’s a boy being a boy. Is that what you want of Jace?”

Jaw clenching, Nani struggled but at last admitted it: “No.”

Pehr held his hands out in front of him, palms up, a gesture of
futility.

“I hate it,” Nani said. “I hate seeing him grow so old, so quickly.”

Pehr smiled a little. “Everything here grows old quickly.”

“And I
hate
it!”

“It’s our world.”

Nani had no answer to that, and so they walked again for a time in silence.
They were moving casually, not in any rush. Both understood that this walk was
more about the conversation than the tasks that awaited them.

“I dreamt of a girl,” Pehr said at last.

Nani gave him a quick, smirking glance. “Sili? I’m not surprised. She’s been
on your mind a lot, of late.”

“How would you know that?” Pehr asked her, and almost immediately wished
that he hadn’t.

“Our walls are thin,” Nani said, and she laughed as his cheeks reddened.
“Don’t feel bad, Pehr. Sili’s offerings are …
very
ample.”

“It wasn’t her,” Pehr muttered, trying to ignore his embarrassment. In
truth, he hadn't so much as thought about the girl since Jace had interrupted
him the day before. She was ample, Nani was right about that, and she had let
him see all of her that time when they had gotten drunk together, but it wasn’t
Sili who he felt the burning need to protect from danger.

“Not her?! She’d be disappointed to hear you’re having such dreams about
other girls!” Nani teased.

“It wasn’t that type of dream. It was …” Pehr paused a moment, trying to put
it into words, but he could only remember the calls. He couldn’t remember what
the girl looked like, only that she was not Sili, not Nani, not any girl that
he had ever known. In his mind’s eyes, Pehr couldn't see her face.

“It was what?” Nani prompted.

“Nothing,” Pehr said. “I don’t remember.”

“Oh, Pehr, don’t be like that. I’m sorry I teased you!”

“It’s not that, I just … I can’t see her anymore. Not what she looks like.
There was a girl in the dark, and she was calling. I went to her, but … I can’t
… these damned drums!”

Nani nodded in sympathy. “They make it impossible to think.”

“I’m no great thinker anyway,” Pehr grumbled.

“Don’t say that.”

Pehr shrugged and continued walking. They went the rest of the way without
speaking, until they were standing in front of their mud-brick and
thatched-branch home. Nani seemed reluctant to go inside, and so Pehr stood for
a moment, waiting. He glanced up, noting that the house fire must be very low
indeed; there was only the faintest wisp of smoke curling up from the hut’s
central hole.

“You’ll need to rekindle that fire,” he said. “It’s almost—”

Nani interrupted him. “Are we going to die?”

“Of course not,” he said, and realized only after he said it that the lack
of a pause, of any sort of contemplation, betrayed the emptiness of his words.
Nani understood this immediately.

“Pehr … please.”

Pehr put the heel of his hand against his brow, head lowered and eyes
closed. He was tired and achy from a night sleeping on the ground and
ill-prepared to spout bravado.

“Nani, I don’t know.”

When he looked up, she was trembling, and there were tears on her cheeks.
“Something terrible is about to happen. Jace is right. Something … even if some
of us survive, there’s going to be death. So much death. Do you not feel
it?”

Pehr did. He had stopped trying to fool himself on this account at some
point in the middle of the night, when he had realized that he was sharpening
each of his arrows for the tenth time not out of boredom or even fear, but
simply out of the growing knowledge that there would be fighting. The drums
that hammered still in the distance might be anything, might be marauding
creatures of the Gods or merely other men, but there was little doubt left that
they heralded some great evil. They were the drums of war, and to deny this
fact seemed mad.

“I will not let anything happen to you, or to Jace, or to anyone else if I
can prevent it.”

“I know,” Nani said, and took his hands in hers. “Oh, Pehr, we are so lucky
to have you. Jace and me. He loves you, you know.”

Pehr did not know how to respond to this, and so he said nothing. Nani
studied him for a moment, and when she spoke again, it was in a voice that was
something less even than a whisper. “Pehr, if it truly ends for us tonight, I
want … you should know …”

Pehr felt adrenaline surge through him. The tone of her voice just now –
somehow soft and scared at the same time – conveyed to him what Nani was
struggling to say. He had never expected to hear these words pass her lips, yet
now here they were, on the very edge.

“Yes,” he said, encouraging her to go on.

Nani’s eyes filled suddenly with tears, and she cried, “It’s not right!”

She must have seen the disappointment that he was trying so hard to hide,
because she took his hands again. “Pehr, I can’t. I mustn’t! I’m so sorry. Even
if I hadn’t taken his necklace, even if I hadn’t … oh … may every last God burn
in Hell for making me who I am.”

Pehr gave her a sad smile. “I know you can’t. I just wanted to hear you say
it.”

She pressed his hands up against her lips and then let them go. She leaned
forward and touched her lips gently to his cheek. It was the briefest of
contact, barely there, and yet it seemed to Pehr that his entire body leapt
aflame. He was trembling now, too, with desire and rage in equal parts. His
cousin? It had to be his
cousin
, of all people?

Nani was looking him in the eyes again now, brow furrowed, tears still
coursing down her cheeks. She breathed deeply and said, “I shouldn’t have done
this. It cannot be taken back, and now … Pehr, you must promise me … if we
still live tomorrow, it must be only as cousins and as friends. It
must
be.”

Pehr clenched his jaw, clenched his fists, and stared up at the sky,
breathing hard and deep. Nani let him get control of himself.

“Please don’t hate me,” she said at last in a tiny, broken voice.

Pehr shook his head, looked back at her, ran a hand through his tousled
hair. He had stopped trembling but now felt weak and grey. Husked out.

“I don’t hate you,” he said.

“Then will you say it with me? Say that we are cousins, and we are friends,
and that is all that we are or can ever be?”

“Nani, please don’t make me do this …”

“I will beg it of you, if I must,” she said, and before he could stop her,
she had taken to her knees there in the dirt, her hands on her thighs, her head
bowed. “Please, Pehr. Please be my cousin, and my friend, and nothing
more.”

He couldn’t bear it, seeing this girl he knew and loved kneeling humble
before him, in penitence for the simple sin not even of loving him, but merely
for having betrayed the secret of that love to him.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please get up. Nani, I … all right! Yes, your cousin, and
your friend, and nothing more. For the Gods’ sake, get up!”

Nani did as he asked, and she favored him with a sad and wistful look of
desire that he thought he would likely take with him to the grave, even if he
lived another hundred years. It was all the worse because he understood that
this look was the last of its type that he would ever see. This thing that had
just passed between them was done, and Nani herself had seen to that. She had
trapped him, bribed him with a kiss and trapped him with his love, and Pehr let
himself be angry at her for that. It would make it easier to be only her cousin
and her friend, and never anything more, for the rest of their lives. For a
brief and aching moment, the possibility of being cut down by hordes of Lagos
warriors in only a few short hours seemed mercifully appealing.

“You’re a good man, Khada’Pehr,” Nani told him in a voice that was soft, and
sad, and toned with the understanding of things that they both wished could be,
that could not.

“I'm not a man,” Pehr said, but Nani had turned and moved away, into the
house, and he spoke these words too low for her to hear. “I'm only a cousin,
and a friend, and nothing more.”

He went to feed the kampri.

Jace looked better by dusk, as if the coming darkness brought him strength
instead of weakness, courage rather than fear. Only his eyes betrayed him,
still distant and dark, as if looking into some endless black chasm.

Like Pehr and Nani, many of the villagers had returned to their homes to go
about their routines as best they could. Others sat still in the circle, like
Jace, too filled with fear to function. The drums pounded on and on, a
maddening distraction about which nothing could be done, and so the villagers
had done their best to ignore them. As the sun began to fade, many had gathered
again in the village center, near the shrine and the fire pit, to hold a
communal dinner and band together against the coming darkness.

“Will you eat, Jace?” Nani asked her brother, holding forth a plate heaped
with bread, corn, and salted fish. Jace shook his head.

“Not hungry,” he said.

“You must keep up your strength!”

“I will be fine. Give it to Pehr … he’ll eat it.”

Eventually Nani relented and brought the food to Pehr, who was just
finishing his own share. He tore into Jace’s, thanking Nani between bites, and
had just finished when the drums abruptly stopped. The resulting silence seemed
to pound in Pehr’s ears, broken only by the shrill cries of a single baby from
somewhere closer to the fire.

“Oh, what is it?” Nani whispered, and as if in response the black night sky
lit orange with what seemed a thousand glowing embers.

“They have come,” said Jace in his haunted voice, and then he leapt to his
feet, crying, “cover!”

The embers in the sky were arrows, covered in pitch and set ablaze. There
were not a thousand of them, as it had first seemed, but there were plenty
enough to set the village alight. They plunged downward, landing among and
around the central dwellings. Pehr watched in dismay, pressed up against the
boulder upon which Jace still stood, seemingly oblivious to the danger, as
flaming arrows fell all around them.

Huts leapt ablaze, and the night was rapidly bathed in a shifting glow of
red and orange. Pehr could hear people screaming, and he saw a girl who he had
known all her life run howling by them, an arrow embedded in her shoulder, the
right half of her face splattered with sticky, flaming ichor. It looked as if
her skin was melting, and he turned away in horror as the scent of her burning
hair reached him.

“Prepare!” Jace was screaming – to whom, Pehr was not sure. “Prepare!”

The falling arrows thinned, stopped, and again came the drums, closer now
than ever before. They drowned out the screams and the sound of the flames, but
were soon overtaken by something far worse, something that Pehr understood
signified the coming of a truly great evil. From the very edge of darkness at
the outskirts of their small village came a terrible roar, the mixed wailing of
an unknown number of inhuman creatures. This sound was not a thing that men
could make even in their largest numbers; deep and guttural, it reminded Pehr
of the noises he sometimes heard come from the jungle, when some great beast was
on the prowl. This was like that, yes, only multiplied by the throats of
hundreds.

“To arms!” Jace cried, and in one swift motion he pulled an arrow from his
quiver, nocked it, and drew back the bowstring, holding it there and waiting
only for a target.

A single, inhuman form came loping into view from beyond the edge of their
vision, and without hesitation Jace let fly his arrow. It made its shrieking
way through the night air and caught the creature between the eyes, burying
itself deep in the skull. Without so much as a sound of pain, the Lagos warrior
fell face-first to the ground and skidded to a halt. For a moment there was
silence, and it seemed the entire village held its collective breath. Then,
like specters, there materialized a great host of the beasts, advancing upon
the burning town.

Pehr took his club in hand and, with Jace still crying to all who would
listen that they must join in battle, must fight or die, he went to face his
enemy.

* * *

When stories of the Lagos were told, Jace had hung on every word, and there
was little doubt that he could have described the creatures quite well without
ever having seen one, but it was Pehr who got the first good look at one of
their warriors. That first, horrifying sight would never leave him, and he
understood in an instant that Jace was right: they must fight to the very last
of their strength, every man, woman and child, or they would all surely die.

The village was in chaos. Pehr could hear the thunder of stampeding kampri,
somewhere off to his left, and he saw one terrified animal go running by in
front of him, bellowing, its swinging horns tearing chunks from the surrounding
buildings and a flaming arrow embedded in its haunch.

The hunters were few and stretched far between, stationed on the outskirts
and unable to meet the entirety of the Lagos advance. Stationed as they were at
the edge of the village, they had largely gone unscathed during the initial
volley of arrows, but so too had they been the first to meet the advancing
Lagos warriors. Some had already fallen to their enemy’s superior strength,
speed, and sheer numbers.

It would have pained Pehr to know it, and so it was best that he never found
out, but the first to fall was Truff himself, who had insisted on a spot at the
furthest reaches despite his crippled leg and inability to flee should the need
arise. The Lagos had crashed into him like a towering ocean wave. He had gotten
in one mighty swing with his heavy, double-bladed axe, and it was a testament
to his strength that that the blow had killed not one but two of the creatures.
Then they had simply swarmed over him, tearing him asunder and leaving little
but chunks of dripping meat behind.

Moving now to engage with the Lagos, Pehr was unsure where to go. He hadn’t
run directly at the incoming horde, knowing that Jace and other archers would
be launching arrow after arrow into the mass and couldn’t possibly separate
friend from foe. Instead he’d taken an arcing path, emerging from the shadow of
several intact huts and into the sooty orange glow of a dwelling that had
already burned almost to the ground. Before him was a sight so awful that for a
moment it stopped him dead in his tracks.

Its back was to Pehr, and this was a good thing, for it gave the boy time to
recover from his initial shock. The creature – and there could be no better
word for it than that – was coated in blood, but Pehr was still able to take in
its features. It was thin, but its muscles bunched thick and ropy beneath its
fur-covered skin. The fur itself was short and bristly, brownish-grey, marbled
with some darker color. The thing was built essentially like a man, though with
exaggerated limbs that ended in hideous talons at both the hands and feet.

The Lagos was mostly naked, wearing only a dirty scrap of fabric as a
loincloth, and was holding its victim to the ground with one hand. Pehr knew
the girl somewhat. She was Nani’s age, a year older than Jace, but not yet
betrothed. She was making choked cawing noises that might have been screams if
not for the talons wrapped around her throat, and Pehr could see blood
streaming from several wounds on her face and neck. Her back was arched high,
heels dug into the ground, arms scrabbling in the dirt at her sides. The
monster crooned at her – a hateful, mocking noise – and then brought the claws
of its free hand back to her face and began to dig again at her flesh.

Snarling in disgust and fury, Pehr leapt forward with his club raised.
Hearing this, the creature whipped around with unanticipated animal quickness,
raking out with the claws of its free left hand. They whickered through the air
only inches from Pehr’s stomach; if he had been but a step ahead, he would have
been disemboweled. As it was, he managed to skirt sideways, acting on instinct
and reflex, flipping the club from right hand to left and bringing it down
backhand. It caught the Lagos in the jaw and the creature shrieked in agony as
the lower half of its face was obliterated. Pehr could hear a dozen or more of
its teeth clatter against a nearby wall and fall to the ground.

The thing was rising to its feet, still howling, and Pehr got his first good
look at its features. Its face was neither lupine nor feline, but bestial
nonetheless. Pehr was reminded in some strange way of the rabbits whose holes
dotted the fields to the east, though the Lagos’s ears were not so long, nor
did the rabbits possess a gaping maw full of wicked-looking fangs.

Or half full, anyway
, Pehr thought with some satisfaction;
The Lagos’s lower jaw was set at a deranged angle. A long, pink tongue was
dangling from between its lips, dripping with thick strands of drool and blood.
Pehr didn’t spend time considering his approach, he simply acted – as a hunter
should, as he had been trained to act nearly since birth. He switched the club
again to his right hand, his better hand, and advanced on the Lagos, leaning
low to the ground in anticipation of being charged. The creature didn’t
disappoint him, rushing forward in a blind rage, and Pehr reacted with an
agility that escaped him in casual affairs but came to him as naturally as
breathing when a club was in his hand.

He sidestepped, drawing up on one leg as gracefully as any dancer, and
brought his club crashing down upon the creature’s head. Bone and blood and
brain sprayed like foam from waves crashing against the rocks of Nethalanhal,
and in some detached part of his mind he heard the girl shriek in revulsion at
the sight. For his own part, he felt only satisfaction at a kill well-made. The
creature slumped to the ground, dead, and Pehr stared for a moment more at its
lifeless corpse before turning to the girl.

She’d pulled herself into a sitting position and was hunched over double,
hands hovering over her face. Gasping and coughing, sobbing, shaking, she was
not yet capable of standing up, much less any sort of flight from this place.
Pehr knelt down next to her, getting a good look at her face and wincing at the
sight; it was a mask of blood.

“Did he hurt your eyes?” he asked, and the girl continued sobbing for a
moment before giving a long, slow shake of her head. No, the creature hadn't
taken that from her. With any luck, she would come through with nothing more
than a few scars from the attack.

“Let me help,” Pehr said, and he took her hand. With his aid, she was able
to stand, and he helped her to the nearest safe hut. He stopped at the door and
pointed inside.

“Go and find clothing. Rest for a moment if you must, but then make your way
as fast as you can toward the village center.”

“But this isn’t my home!” the girl wailed, as if that could possibly have
mattered.

“I can’t stay here,” he told her. “If you want to live, you must do as I
say.”

Pehr turned to go, but she cried, “Wait!” and reached a hand out to him from
the doorway. He took it in his own, and she brought his hand to her lips, and
kissed it, and squeezed with all of her strength, her eyes locked on his. She
said nothing, but Pehr understood. He nodded, smiled, glanced again at the
prone figure of the Lagos.

“He will never trouble you, or anyone else, again,” he said, and then he let
go of her hand, and turned, and moved toward the sounds of battle.