No one felt like standing on the edge of the causeway for any length of time anyway.
The lack of food and water was no hardship to Azkun, but marching on foot was weary. It was the next day that they met their second disaster.
Menish had relied heavily on Grath’s woodcraft. It was he who had known which snakes were poisonous and which were harmless, and it was he who had kept a constant watch for other dangers. None of them noticed anything strange about a tangle of branches above the causeway as they passed under it.
Azkun let out a scream, clawing something off his face. An instant later Althak cried out. Only Menish had the presence of mind to throw himself to one side as a dark, wriggling thing with many legs dropped down towards him.
“Look out, there are more of them,” he shouted as others dropped. Azkun was still clawing his face and Althak swatted at his arm as he lurched forward.
A few yards on they turned and looked back at the grotesque pile of wriggling bodies and legs that covered the causeway where they had stood. They were long things, like bits of rope, with stubby legs and they writhed over each other like snakes. Centipedes. Menish had seen such things in his own land, but never as large as these.
“Did they bite? Did either of you feel a bite?”
Both Azkun and Althak nodded grimly. Althak had been bitten on the wrist and two tiny puncture wounds welled blood. Azkun’s wounds were on his cheek.
Menish did not pause. He ripped the sleeve of his tunic and bound it around Althak’s wrist, placing the knot so that it pressed against the artery. For Azkun he could do nothing.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I can't bind it off from your face.” Then he added bitterly when he remembered Hrangil, “Perhaps now you'll call on your dragons.”
Azkun said nothing, but he felt his cheek where the bite had begun to sting.
That afternoon they met their first Gashan.
It was late in the day, the sun was blocked by the trees which cast gloomy shadows across their path. Soon it would be unwise to continue, for they would not be able to watch for more centipede nests.
Menish was about to suggest they stop for the night when Althak saw something ahead on the road. Azkun was filled with a sudden disquiet, like nausea, as they made their way forward to the odd huddle of shadows.
The gloom was such that only when they reached it did they see what it was. A tall stake had been driven into the causeway, its wood blackened and grimed with age. Tied to it by one wrist was a Gashan, the other wrist dripped darkly in the shadows. He was naked. At his feet lay a trampled mess of old bones, waiting for his own to join them.
Azkun felt death here. The Gashan was only just alive. He hung from his tied wrist limply. Azkun felt his own wrist pricking with empathy, his own blood flowed thinly in his veins and he felt the weak pain of the dying man.
The Gashan stirred as they approached. His eyes opened, half focused and listless as he moved his head to survey them. Azkun’s eyes met his and he drew back in horror.
“No!” he cried and his cry degenerated into an animal scream. The Gashan’s mind, though dying, was filled with black malice. Azkun saw it all in an instant. Every fibre of the Gashan, from his bound wrist to the blood pooled at his feet, was writhing with hatred. If they released him he would spend his last strength trying to kill them. Even bound his malice stung Azkun like acid. He tried to shut out the mind of the man, surely he was just a man, a dying man. He looked a little like Menish, though younger and he wore no ponytail. But he could not shut it out. The Gashan seemed to know what he was doing to Azkun, a weak grin tugged at the corners of his mouth and more malice flooded into Azkun. It felt like fire in his veins and, even worse, it ate at his own mind. The Gashan’s thoughts of murder and death became his own. The smell of blood and slaughter became sweet to him. The darkness entered his soul. A tiny corner of his mind that still shouted ‘no’ realised that this was what the Gashan wanted. His hands clutched inexpertly at the dagger at his side, the dagger Omoth had given him when he had told Omoth not to kill, and he threw himself at the Gashan’s throat.
When Menish and Althak finally pulled him away from the body of the Gashan he had opened the man’s throat and covered them both in blood. The Gashan hung lifelessly on the stake. Azkun had killed him.
He had tasted blood and death at his own hand, or the hand of the man he had killed, and the evil lurked on in his mind. He abhorred his deed, he who had refused to eat flesh and had despised those who did. But a part of him, a dark, evil corner of his mind, gibbered gleefully and still it lusted for more. Azkun saw the evil in himself and recognised it. He had seen it so many times in others, and now it lurked in his own mind like a tiny piece of the Gashan he had killed. And he could not drive it out.
In the awful moments after Althak and Menish had dragged him away from the corpse he wanted to run from himself. He struggled, trying to tear himself free. He wanted to throw himself to the creature in the marsh to destroy the evil he was. In the struggle Althak gripped his wrist like a vice and the knife clattered to the stone at his feet. He was grateful afterwards, he would have used the knife on his friends or himself if he had been able.
Althak held him still and Menish slapped his face, avoiding the centipede bite, until the madness left his eyes. When he was calm they led him away from the grisly scene and prepared their comfortless camp. No one spoke. Azkun could feel their questions, and their hesitancy to ask him. He could not bring himself to tell them how evil he was.
Menish checked their bites. Althak’s was dark and swelling with poison. It was giving him pain. Azkun’s was swelling only mildly. He saw Menish chew his lip worriedly as he examined it.
“The wound hasn't swelled, that's because the poison is spreading with nothing to stop it. Does it hurt?”
“No. It stings a little, that is all.”
“That's some comfort. I fear the worst. Such things are written of in the Gash-Tal. They're to be feared.”
“It does not matter.” He glanced over his shoulder. The stake was just visible in the shadows. “It is no more than I deserve.”
“Of course it matters!” Althak gripped him by his tunic under his throat. “Don't say that!”
“Why not? All I have seen and despised in you I find in myself.”
“By Kopth! We're talking about your death!” He glanced down at his wrist. “And possibly my own. How can you say it doesn't matter?”
“Do you think I do not know what death is?” Azkun shouted back into his face. “You have only seen men die. I have died with them. I know what I am saying. Did you not see what I just did back there? There is death inside me, an evil that the Gashan brought to life. I am no better than you are!”
“It's always dangerous to despise others,” said Menish. There was a firmness in his voice, as if he were trying to be sympathetic and yet trying to make Azkun see truth. “You killed a Gashan. I've killed them myself. They're evil. That one appeared near death anyway, but he had enough strength left to look at me with murder in his eyes. Perhaps you despise me, but I say you did no wrong.” He hesitated, about to ask a question but not knowing how.
“Why did I do it?” Azkun sighed. “You know I can see things that you cannot. I saw the Gashan. You only saw his eyes. I saw him. I became him. I had to stop him. Even if it meant,” he glanced over his shoulder. “Even if it meant that.”
Menish and Althak made a frugal meal of some of the dried meat and fruit from Althak’s pack, their first in two days. As usual Azkun did not eat, but he could no longer bring himself to condemn them for their need of food.
He too was a victim of corruption, and he was dying.
Chapter 25: The Eye of Duzral
The next day they moved even more apprehensively along the causeway. The dead Gashan might have been some kind of warning, he certainly indicated that they were approaching a place where the Gashan folk lived, possibly even the city written of in the Gash-Tal.
