Black Halo

their faces when we kill one of them. That’s what baffles me.’

‘They mourn.’

‘Why?’

‘To honour their dead.’

‘The dead don’t care.’

‘They do.’

‘You talk to them?’

‘Sometimes,’ he replied.

‘Huh … well, they shouldn’t. What do they got to ask for once they’re dead?’

‘Honour. Respect.’

‘You and I both know that’s … what’s the word? Shnitz?’ She shrugged. ‘If you believed that, you wouldn’t have watched this ugly thing’ — she kicked the eviscerated corpse — ‘do what he did.’

‘He didn’t do anything. You killed him.’

‘Ah, see, this is where the overscum stop learning,’ she said, smirking. ‘You all talk about death like it’s a sole decision. It takes two to die. The person with the sword does the least amount of work.’

He furrowed his eye ridges.

‘See,’ she elaborated, ‘these dumb things are quick. I only caught them because there was no other place to run.’ She gestured to the river rushing beneath the cliff. ‘Now, when I grabbed one, the others could have run away. They all stood and fought, though. They made the decision to die.’

She looked up at him disdainfully. ‘You could run now, too. I’ve killed plenty today. I can kill you later, if you want.’

‘You could run, too,’ he replied.

‘No, I couldn’t. There’s nothing for a female but death. I kill or I die.’ She spat on the ground. ‘You?’

He stared at her, unblinking. He closed his eyes. Darkness. He inhaled sharply. Quiet.

‘Nothing,’ he replied.

‘Didn’t think so,’ she said. She rose from the rock, pulled her blade from the sand and slung it over her shoulder. ‘You ready, then?’

He nodded. She furrowed her brow at him.

‘No weapon?’

‘Unnecessary.’

‘Don’t know what that means.’

‘It means-’

‘Don’t care, either.’

She howled, iron voice grinding against jagged teeth as she rushed him. Her blade came out in an unruly swing, adding its metal groan to her roar as it clove the air, hungry for Gariath’s neck, or torso, or head. A blade that big couldn’t be picky.

He ducked, more from reflex than desire, and dropped to all fours, meeting her rush with horns to her belly. It was impossible not to shudder at the blow, not to marvel at the rock-hard muscle he pressed against as he shoved, driving her back only one minuscule, agonising step.

As he extended his last weary breath, his muscles giving out at the futility and his mind fighting hard to remember a time when this had been easy, it was impossible to think of a reason to keep going … and even more so to keep from listening to her long, loud laugh.

‘Come on,’ she whined. ‘How are you going to kill me this way?’

It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. He remembered shrugging off blows like this before. Yet her first came down upon his neck and sent him buckling to his knees effortlessly. She made a clicking sound of disapproval, which he noticed less than the second strike she delivered. It was an intimate blow, all three metal-bound knuckles of her hand digging into his red flesh, finding a tender, affectionate spot between his shoulder blades.

Not possible. His thoughts ran wild, leaking out of his mouth as he hacked wildly, I don’t have tender spots.

His spine disagreed. His vertebrae rattled against each other, sinew bunched up painfully at the force that ran up his back and into his skull, sending brain slamming against bone and sending body crashing to the earth.

That’s never happened before …

That it had happened should have shocked him. It was difficult to feel shock, fear, pain, anything. Every scrap of consciousness was devoted to keeping his eyes open, to resist the urge to sleep into darkness, though he didn’t know why. At least if he fell now, he wouldn’t have to see the long, purple face leering down at him.

‘You’re doing it wrong.’ Her voice was clear and sharp as a knife.

Funny, but he hadn’t expected there to be a right way to die. The fact that he had been doing it wrong did explain a lot. He might have mentioned this to her, had his throat not been swelling up.

‘It’s fine for us to do this, you know,’ she said. ‘But we’re netherlings. We come from nothing. We return to nothing. We live. We breed. We kill. We die. This is all there is in life.’ She reached down and tapped his red brow. ‘Note that third part, though, about the killing. That’s important.’

Her throat loomed over him. His hand would just about fit around it, he figured, but it trembled, refused to rise.

And why should it? he asked himself. Whatever your body knows, you didn’t. Now you’re both done. There’s nothing left.

‘But overscum are supposed to have bigger things on their minds, yeah? They talk to invisible people, spend their whole lives hoarding bits of metal instead of making them into weapons; they do stupid stuff like plant crops and store food and leave it all to wailing whelps who did nothing to deserve it. Point being … you’ve got reasons to scream, don’t you?’

His breath came in shrill whispers, leaking through a closing throat, just enough to breathe, just enough to think.

Kill her and then what? What’s left? Kill more, kill more, live in death. Die, live in nothingness … but with nothing to think about, to speak about, no one left to disappear.

‘But that’s what’s so fascinating to us. To Carnassials, that is.’ She glanced over the cliff. ‘And some males. We’ve never seen this before, a breed that worries about so many stupid things and lives in complete fear of whatever invisible thing they talk to and is concerned with things other than breeding and killing. It’s like … watching ants. That’s the correct animal, right? Yeah … ants that run around and cling to every little piece of dirt like it’s the greatest piece they’ve ever seen, even as a thousand more lie around. Take that piece away, and what do they do? Some grab new ones, but most sit there … like you.’

And how much dirt have you been clinging to? Grahta, Grandfather, the humans … they’re all gone. How much more can you pick up?

‘You’re not going to get up, are you?’ She rose up, took her sword in both hands.

This won’t be so bad.

‘No more dirt, huh?’

No more hurting; no more being alone.

‘Too bad.’

She raised the weapon, angled the flat edge of it at his throat. It would be messy.

No more rivers; no more rocks.

‘Hey, maybe you’re right about the whole invisible thing, yeah? If so, I’m sure you’ll see your pink friends there with you by tonight.’

No more anything … It’ll be so great …

‘Anyway …’

‘SHENKO-SA!’

He blinked. Those words weren’t said by the longface. That shrill, shrieking sound didn’t emanate from her, either.

The loud, angry roar as she staggered away, clutching at the arrow embedded in her side, however, certainly