Godslayers

The Trade Fleet soldiers surged down the path to the port village. The bulk of the enemy were grimly arrayed at the entrance to the village, with a smaller force occupying a chokepoint halfway down the path to the forest.

The chokepoint in question was one of the goat enclosures where I’d scared the little girl my first time here. The road into the village descended past the lower terrace farms into a sharp turn, where the path opened up horizontally. The clear intent was to defeat us in detail, forcing our guys to charge down four abreast into a defensive line eight across. Two spears to one shield was a math equation that didn’t work out in our favor.

Pellonine saw this too, and immediately directed a group of soldiers to fan out into the woods looking for stones. We might not have had the positional advantage, but in defending this chokepoint they’d ceded the terrace above them.

A third cohort was moving across the highest terrace, arcing along the slopes toward the other side of the village. Erid was leading them; from what I could see, that group was mostly composed of soldiers from the Fool’s Errand, including Enochletes. I’d half expected the admirals to stick him with me and Dal Salim again to keep an eye on us, but apparently Erid didn’t want to deal with my bullshit.

As the troops marched in, so did the storm. I could see the rain frothing the sea a few miles out from here, and it was moving closer. The air felt wet and warm and hateful. I passed through the stone-collecting soldiers, Dal Salim a silent, reassuring shadow at my side.

A nearby tree had given up the fight years ago, tearing its roots out of the mud and flinging itself seaward. Now it lay mossily over the stone of the cliff, its trunk extending beyond the edge into oblivion and ending in a weathered, splintered ruin.

I hopped onto its trunk with a pulse from my augmented legs. Dal Salim scanned the roots for footholds, but ultimately opted not to make the attempt. I strolled a short way toward the edge, stopping only when Dal Salim did. I’d have a good enough view of the battle from here. Enough to see most of the people I got killed. I sat down carefully on the slippery moss.

“Storms belong without,” Dal Salim told me.

“What’s that?” I said, looking away from the troops. They hadn’t made contact yet.

“Storms belong without,” he repeated, gesturing at the sky. Then he met my eyes and tapped his chest. “Not within.”

I snorted wearily, sweeping a hand at the battle as if I could wipe it away. “There you go. There’s my storm.”

Dal Salim hummed. “We have a wager, you and I. I have not forgotten the words you spoke. They were powerful words. ‘I will show you how the wind is tamed.’”

“Giving up already?” I said, resting my chin in my hands.

“I think I know you better now.” Dal Salim watched the armored men streaming down the slope toward their first contact with the enemy. “I think perhaps when all this is done, you will retract the wager yourself.”

“Big talk,” I said, trying to inject some playfulness into my tone. It wasn’t quite there when I reached for it.

“Hm.” Dal Salim seemed to ponder for a moment. “A hungry man steals a loaf of bread and is condemned. He is a thief, yes? But he is hungry because his clanfathers cast him out. Maybe a saint/warrior/ascetic could choose to starve their stomach and not their honor. But most men, no. Not at all. Is the hungry man a thief, or was he made a thief?”

“Does it have to be one or the other?” I asked.

“If you are a judge/quartermaster in Parmad, yes,” said Dal Salim. “When is he cast out, the Golden Law obliges his clanfathers to pay a mercy of a quarter-moon’s wages, or a half-moon’s wages if they are of the Helicati. If the hungry man received no mercy from his clanfathers, the penalty is shared between him and them. Else, the penalty is his alone.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s more enlightened social policy than I was expecting from your civilization.”

Below us, the Trade Fleet soldiers began pelting the enemy with stones from above. They were forced to keep their shields up to defend themselves—which was mostly effective, although I saw one exceptionally large stone break a man’s arm—but the Trade Fleet’s linebreakers were filtering toward the front ranks. They couldn’t hold forever.

“The Law is gold, and should be treasured as gold,” said Dal Salim. “So they say in Parmad.”

“Good for you, I guess.”

Dal Salim smiled, an expression that communicated wistfulness more than regret. “The Parmedi seldom cast out their own. In part, maybe, because a quarter-moon’s wages are dear. When a no-clan receives no mercy, and his cause is right in his own eyes, he may choose to break the Golden Law to bring the Prince’s wrath upon himself and the ones who wronged him.”

“That’s what we call a perverse incentive in my civilization,” I said. “You never want to build your laws to incentivize people to break the law.”

“There are laws of gold, and laws of fire,” said Dal Salim. “Where one meets the other, doesn’t it melt?”

“Under the weird-ass poetic rules of your metaphorical argument, sure,” I said. “What does that actually mean, though?”

Erid’s group was about halfway to the other end of the terrace farms, where another slope would allow them to hit the port from the other side. The group on our side had charged into the beleaguered defenders, using the momentum of the slope and the harassment of the rocks to seize the advantage. The defenders’ line buckled without breaking, but they’d lost the numerical advantage they’d hoped to maintain against the more numerous and better equipped Trade Fleet.

“The fire is in here,” Dal Salim said, tapping his sternum. “Honor tests us. So the hungry man is a thief or was made a thief, but were his clanfathers thiefmakers from selfishness, or guardians of the clan’s honor?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve got laws about that too.”

“If we did, how high can we go?” asked Dal Salim. “How many levels of petty kings, forced to act by the actions of the king above them, every man both prince and satrapy?”

The defenders had broken, running back to the town. The Trade Fleet soldiers pursued down the slopes, but ran into a surprise volley of missile weapons that claimed a handful of dead and forced them to back up and get back in formation.

“You’ve lost me,” I admitted.

Dal Salim pointed at the battle. “You said this is your storm. Did you order Pellonine to call the charge? Is she a general, or did you make her a general?”

I thought about the Luchenko Process.

“You don’t understand why I’m here,” I said. “I can’t exactly explain why, either.”

Dal Salim smiled. “You’re here to tame the wind, yes? The Estheni Calamity has come, their gods are at war, and you plan to tip the scales. So you worked to make this happen.”

“I guess you got me there.”

“Would it have happened without you?”

“Maybe? It’s—really hard to explain, because”—would ‘acausal bullshit’ translate?—“uh, Kives does weird stuff to time. Basically this is only happening because Kives gave the maps to Erid, and she only did that because she wanted to recruit us—well, there’s a bunch of other reasons too, but like if you’re talking about am I specifically, finally responsible for all this, then not exactly, but in terms of me participating in the chain of cause and effect—like, the normal one—”

“I’ve sailed these seas for thirty years,” Dal Salim interrupted me. “We know the Trade Fleet. They’ve wanted this from the beginning, with or without you.”

“Right, yeah. Okay, so back home, there’s this thing called Great Man Theory, okay?” I said. “Like, the stuff that happens in history happens because there were specific people in power and their decisions caused stuff to happen in the particular way it did. Because that’s how all our history books are written, you know? But people are starting to push back on that, and they say that history happens because of broad material forces, and if you didn’t have George Washington to lead the revolution then there would have been someone else leading a similar revolution around the same time. You following?”

Dal Salim nodded. Below, the Trade Fleet had reached the bottom of the path, spreading out into a line of battle. They advanced, shields raised against missile fire that failed to claim more casualties. Erid’s column was finally marching down the hill.

The wind was picking up, and droplets were starting to fall around us. I kicked off the trunk, landing on wet moss that would have sabotaged my footing if I didn’t have military-grade reflex augmentations.

“Forces are, like, momentum,” I said, hunkering down into the shelter of the tree. I mimed punching the tree. “You can measure it. And with the right tools and the right knowledge, you can control it. It’s the same deal with historical forces if you know what you’re doing. You can tame the wind.”

“Maybe here,” said Dal Salim. “But you are here, and not in unbroken Dubol with its fortresses and smithies. Nor are you among the thousand silver towers of Iccalud, where the million scholars of Parmad seek the face of God. Please take this kindly: history does not revolve around one woman.”

“It… kinda does?” I said. “Like, Kives is specifically targeting me. Making history revolve around things is kinda how she works.”

“Is it?” Dal Salim. “Perhaps history revolves around Enochletes and his necklace of memories.”

“Enochletes isn’t important, though,” I said, then stopped when a fat droplet of water splashed on my head.

The rain was starting to come down harder now. The trees were shaking in the wind, and even in the battle below, javelins and arrows were buffeted to the point of uselessness.

“You wanna continue this in the trees?” I asked. “It’ll be drier there.”

“Horcutio’s wrath isn’t staid by trees,” Dal Salim said contentedly. “I will follow where you go.”

“You’re going to wish you didn’t,” I muttered.

My comm fired off a warning: Angelic manifestation, two clicks east, heading this way. I stood abruptly, head snapping in the direction of the warning.

I was staring straight at heart of the storm.

“Shit!” I hissed. “We need to—fuck, I don’t have any of my gear. Hold on, Dal Salim. Ragnar, Face Sponge, did you get that reading?”

“Confirmed,” Aulof replied. “The Horizon is out of effective range. We will not engage.”

“Face Sponge is available to engage if necessary,” said Blackfin in his emotionally muted voice. “Luchenko protocols disindicate intervention at this time. Commander Aulof, is your crypt out of tunneling range? The Face Sponge is equipped with an anthropoform soulbox for emergencies.”

“Oh come on, I’m not going to die,” I complained.

“You may be mistaken,” Dal Salim offered. I wasn’t subvocalizing; it just didn’t seem necessary around him.

“Shut up, it didn’t take,” I said, waving a hand at him.

“We’ll be in crypt range for another half-hour or so,” said Aulof. “Lilith, transfer your tunnel destination in twenty minutes to be safe. We’ll fire a relay satellite to retrieve you in the event.”

In the event, he says. Typical understatement.

“Face Sponge, can you get me a profile on that angel? How much control does it have over that storm?”

“It is the storm,” said Blackfin. “That is its physical manifestation.”

“Fuck,” I said. “That’s fucking huge.”

“Technical officer Bleedgill, your assessment.”

The soul-grating affirmative laughter of a dolphin crackled through my spine.

“My instruments are reading an average output of ninety-four tetrons, with a three point five tetron margin of error,” Bleedgill cackled.

“Disruptors can handle that, can’t they?” I said.

“Ragnar can, splitfin. We’re only equipped with light disruptor turrets. We can’t match that thing ram for ram by ourselves. I recommend avoiding contact.”

“It’s going to fucking annihilate us,” I said, running a hand over my head. The motion dislodged a bunch of water and some of it went down the back of my shirt. “They’re all exposed down there. Can you distract it?”

“Well, ninety tetrons is fairly unsustainable at monophase,” Bleedgill chuckled. “This individual most likely represents most of Horcutio’s power budget for angels.”

“We can destroy the temple,” said Blackfin.

“I think there’s people there,” I said.

“We’ll eliminate any witnesses,” Blackfin assured me. I opened my mouth to argue, then shut it. There wasn’t any time.

“Fuck,” I said. “I need to get down there to warn Erid. Dal Salim, listen closely.”

He tore his eyes away from the storm to give me his attention.

“I need you to run into the forest and find any kind of shelter you can,” I said. “A lot of people are about to die, and not even in the way we needed. Once everything blows over, come and help anyone you can, okay?”

“That’s the North Wind,” Dal Salim said. “He is known to us. So is his passing.”

I blinked, nodded. “Okay, anything I need to know to deal with him?”

Dal Salim smiled sadly. “What is there to say? You can’t tame the wind. Go well, Danou. I will hope to meet you again when the tempest passes.”

He turned to watch the oncoming storm.

I swore. I’d just have to trust he knew his business. Turning, I sprinted down the slope toward the battle, a series of leaping impacts that juddered my bones as I raced down the muddy path. As I ran, I risked a glance at the horizon.

Lightning flashed in the clouds. Below them, great waves gathered.