Black Halo

body. Whatever eyes it had, it must have seen the shore looming up. ‘Stop! This is not our purpose! ’

‘You were right,’ Lenk said, a smile creeping across his face. ‘She’s dead. They’re all dead. We’ll be together again, though. Companions forever.’

‘Listen to me. LISTEN. Something is wrong.’

‘It’s over.’ The young man shook his head. ‘I can’t do this anymore. Not without them. Not without her.’

‘Sacrifice isn’t noble if it hinders everything else. We have much to do. What of purpose? What of vengeance?’

No more words. No more arguing with them, any of them. His willpower seeped out of his leg on weeping pus. Hope could no longer carry him. Futility could no longer fuel him. Surrender, the promise of an end to the blood and the pain, drove him forward, inevitably toward the sea.

‘Resist,’ the voice commanded. ‘Fight. We are stronger.’

No more words. The waves rose up to meet him. He would never stop walking until his lungs burst with salt and his flesh was picked clean by hungry fish.

‘You do not get to die here,’ the voice uttered, cold and commanding. ‘That is not your decision.’

No more words.

He felt a sudden, overwhelming cold, his fever coursing out of him on a frost-laden breath. His legs locked up beneath him; ice water coursed through his veins and sent him to the ground.

‘I won’t let you.’

So close to release, Lenk reached out with fingers trembling to grasp the earth and pull him into sweet, blue freedom. Freedom from Miron, from Greenhair, freedom from anyone and everything that had made him think she should have died for leather and paper.

‘Why …?’ He felt his tears as ice on his face as his body trembled and folded over itself. ‘I can’t do this. Just let me die … I want to …’

‘It does not matter what you want,’ the voice replied, unsympathetic. ‘All that matters is what you must do.’

The pounding in his head faded, freeing his ears to the sound of feet scraping against sand, alien voices rising over the sandy ridge. Alien, but familiar.

‘Hake-yo! Man-eh komah owah!’

‘And what you must do … is hide.’

‘But I-’

‘You don’t get to make that decision.’

He could barely feel the sand beneath his feet or his spine bending as he plucked up the sword. He barely noticed; his entire willpower, what didn’t ooze out of him, was concentrated in his fingers as he held desperately onto the feather. He wasn’t even aware of moving behind the sandy dune until he was finally there, his numb body forced to the earth as whatever force moved his legs suddenly gave out.

No sooner had his belly pressed against the dirt than the first green scalp came rising over the opposite ridge. A pair of wide, amber eyes shifted across the wreckage. A satisfied snort emerged from a long, green snout. Two long, clawed feet slid down the sand and into the valley, their tracks concealed by the long tail dragging behind it.

That the creature didn’t notice his presence spoke more of its inattention than his subtlety. Even amidst the beach scrub, a head of silver hair couldn’t have been hard to spot. He lay still; his body bore obedience for only one voice.

The lizardman turned about, cast its glower over the ridge and snarled.

‘Nah-ah. Shii man-eh.’

‘Shaa?’ came an indignant hiss from beyond the dune.

Three additional green bodies came clambering over the ridge. Lenk took greater note of them now, particularly the clubs studded with jagged teeth and savage machetes hanging from their loincloths. A decidedly vicious improvement from the sharpened sticks they had carried last night, but that only brought a grim smile to Lenk’s face.

Their weapons were so sharp, so brutal-looking. They could eviscerate him in the wink of an eye, end the suffering in a horrific chop and smattering of red and fleshy pink chunks on the sand. It would be so quick, so easy.

His felt his leg spasm on the sand.

Despite his mounting excitement, he thought it odd that they hadn’t carried those tools last night. Even more curious was the fact that they seemed taller than before, their lanky musculature packed tightly under taut green flesh. Tattoos as ferocious as their weaponry ran up and down their bodies in alternating hoops, jagged bands and cat-like strips of red and black ink. Still, it wasn’t until Lenk noticed the space under their long snouts that the realisation dawned upon him.

‘Beardless,’ he whispered. ‘These aren’t the same ones.’

‘These are warriors. Look at the way they move.’

Lenk took note immediately. No step was uncalculated, no amber scowl was wasted. They stalked around the wreckage of the Nag with gazes far more predatory than the lizards from the other night.

Killers’ gazes, Lenk thought. They can smell my blood. They hunger for it. They’re violent, bloodthirsty creatures. His grin grew so large that he had to bite his lower lip to stifle it. Gods, but they’re going to kill me so quick.

He felt his hands tighten around the scrub grass in ecstasy. If the voice could feel the plants, too, it made no indication.

‘That one,’ it muttered. ‘The one with the bow. That’s the leader.’

Scarcely a revelation. That one lingered behind the three others with the cool casualness of command against its companions’ predatory vigilance. Its polished black bow hung off its shoulder with the easy relationship of a master and his weapon. Any remaining doubt was quickly dispelled by the fact that its tattoos covered more of its flesh than any other lizard present.

‘Cho-a?’ it called out, apparent disinterest in its voice.

‘Na-ah!’ One of them, the one that had first arrived, looked up with a snarl. ‘Man-eh shii ko ah okah!’

‘Shaa,’ the leader said, waving its scaly hand. It jerked its head back toward the ridge they had come from. ‘Igeh ah Shalake. Na-ah man-eh hakaa.’

The other two lizardmen looked up from their own inquiries into the wreckage with nods. They grunted once, then stalked away from the debris, past the leader and up the ridge, vanishing behind it. The leader sighed and folded its arms over its inked chest as it stared at the obstinate one expectantly.

‘Mad-eh kawa yo!’ it snarled, jerking its head back to the ridge. ‘Kawa!’

‘Sia-ah!’ the other one hissed, scanning the wreckage with desperate intensity. ‘Shii ko a man-eh!’

‘They look agitated,’ Lenk whispered, unconsciously slithering a little closer. He eyed the quiver of brightly coloured arrows hanging off the leader’s back and his voice took on a hysterical edge. ‘Absolutely irate, even. How close do you think we’d have to be?’

‘For what?’

‘For him to put one of those arrows right between my eyes.’

‘It won’t happen. They’re leaving now, look.’

Lenk bit back a despairing shriek, or it was bitten back for him by whatever numbed his throat. He didn’t care about anything save for the fact that the insistent lizard-man’s tattooed body shrank with a sudden sigh. Looking dejected, it turned to go and follow the leader back up the ridge.

Until something on the ground caught its eye.