Caine Black Knife

God War. When gods go to war, it’s an ugly thing-that whole Armageddon Rag, Ragnarok’n’Roll shit. It’s never really over till everybody’s dead. That’s what got Jantho Ironhand’s brother Jereth up in arms; he decided to make the God War as ugly for the gods as it was for the poor bastards who worshipped them, which brought the Deomachy to a relatively swift and bloody end. Bloody on all sides. Though Jereth didn’t survive the war, he is reputed, before his death, to have kicked substantial deific butt.

His epithet is “the Godslaughterer.”

The Deomachy is why Our Founder, Jantho Ironhand, was of the considered opinion that the greatest threat to humanity’s survival on Home was our unfortunate tendency to murder people for bowing down to the wrong gods, and the gods’ unfortunate tendency to take advantage of our unfortunate tendencies, to play power games just because they can.

The whole murdering-people-because-we-like-their-land-and murdering them as an oh-well-what-the-hell side effect of making money and murdering them because, y’know, it’s the kind of fun you just can’t get anywhere else-those were all side issues for ol’ Jantho, so the Monasteries didn’t start worrying about any of that shit till later on. Of course, most religions get into those businesses eventually, too.

So a lot of what the Monasteries do is keep an eye on the gods, and on their worshippers; a lot of what we in the Esoteric Service do is get ourselves bloody when some of these religions look to start running a little wild.

So we have to know the gods. All of them. And their religions-which, of course, often don’t have a whole lot to do with their particular gods, but let that go. We’re encouraged to be consecrated to some god’s worship and rise in their service, even their priesthood. So Monastics know a lot of, well, esoteric shit, if you’ll pardon the expression, about every major religion. Including some of the splinter sects that follow Dal’kannith Wargod.

This is why I’m sounding kind of fucking cheerful right now.

When I said I knew what Pretornio was up to, yeah, I was lying. . but, y’know, funny fucking thing. I was also telling the truth. Just took me a while to remember.

Probably that dying-on-a-cross thing screwing with my concentration a little.

And maybe it was because I was still thinking she was praying to Dal’Kannith. .

They were supposed to have died out or been suppressed-I can’t remember-something like two hundred years ago. That might be another reason. The trehv’Dhalleig Jzranapal, if my memory can be trusted, something like that anyway-the Silent Pure, more or less. Reluctant hostage-sacrifices from Chi’iannon to her son/husband/master Dal’Kannith, so the story runs-but really they were more like Home-grown Joans of Arc, strapping down their tits and stuffing fake codpieces and becoming, before the world, full Kannithan battle-priests. Often the most powerful Kannithan priests, in fact, so long as their secret was never exposed. And so long as they stayed virgins.

Surrendering virginity surrendered power. But surrendering virginity’s one thing. Rape is something else.

The Great Mother of the Lipkan pantheon rules the dead as well as the unborn-because, y’know, they’re the same, right? — and there is one tale in the Monastic Record, one fucking scary one, of an incident in Paquli’s Western Marches some three hundred and change years ago, in the Vale of the Dead, when one of the Silent Pure called upon Chi’iannon, instead of Dal’Kannith, while being murdered by sexual mutilation. Want to know why it’s called Vale of the Dead?

Wait-

Hear that?

Those low swirling storm wind moans from the west? I know you can hear them. You’re using my ears. Hear them ramping up toward the howls of a full gale? The question is, how long before those storm winds catch the attention of Crowmane and her bitches?

How long will it take them to notice that the wind they can feel is only a medium breeze? And it’s coming from the east. And then, sooner or later, eventually, maybe, one of them’s gonna remember that all there is west of the camp. .

Is the funerary platforms.

Those winds you’re hearing with my ears-I bet you guessed it already. That’s not wind. It’s howls of mindless insatiate hunger.

The voices of the dead.

There’s a storm coming out of the west all right, but it ain’t fuckin’ weather.

››scanning fwd››

“-your ass till it comes out your ears. Had your chance.” I’d need the voice of a civil defense siren to be heard over the screams and howling from the horror show in the camp, but I’m pretty sure Crowmane catches my meaning anyway.

I laugh down into her smoking yellow stare. “I’m comfortable right here.” My instructor in Applied Legendry at Garthan Hold-Brother Clement, his name was-I remember him bloviating about the Vale of the Dead story: How minor incidents become exaggerated to preposterous degrees over only a few years. . Clearly impossible for a single individual, no matter how complete her attunement, to channel power sufficient for yammana yammana yammana bullshit. Pompous old fuck.

Wish he could be down in that camp right now.

The rest of the top bitches have joined the final defense perimeter, a thick wall of wide-eyed, flared-nostril, clenched-jaw fight-to-the-death determination between the howling chaos of the camp and the corral area where they’ve got all their cubs and juvies. Their last line of defense, with all the power they’ve got left. Dunno how much it is. Down in the camp, Black Knife bucks have given up on arrows and spears to use whatever heavy cleaving shit they can lay hands on to hack desperately at the arms and legs of writhing howling shadows that are all teeth and claws and hunger.

I think the bucks might be winning, might have a pretty good chance of containing the corpses and chopping them down. It’s hard to tell.

Goddamn shame so many of ’em we killed went down sliced in half by my bladewand, or with spines or legs crushed by Marade’s morningstar or arms severed or legs hamstrung by Pretornio’s porters. If we’d left their dead in better shape, this would have been a shitload more entertaining. But, y’know. .

It’s still not bad.

From the foot of my cross, Crowmane shows me her age-greyed tusks and sends a wave of dream-Real threat up to close over my head.

You think it can’t be worse for you. I tell you it can.

I show her my own teeth. Probably pretty fucking grey by this time, too. “Now you’re just flirting.”

She snarls up at me and squeezes her ball of Reality-

— and my days of death on the scaffold rewind within my head in a harlequin whirl of white-noon blaze and black-ice midnight until the dead cold carved-oak tree limbs that are nailed to the arms of the cross and connected still somehow to my shoulders and hips spasm and jerk-

Hang on to your balls, kids. My arms and legs. .

She’s bringing them back.

Ligaments twist barbwire through acid-etched joints. Muscle fibers ripped in handfuls like hair from my head, steelclamped around the spikes-

I can feel the spikes again. .

Iron on naked bone scraping blossoms of screaming midnight off my arms-ankles-

Gahh.

Gahhhh.

Fucking pain center. . got that going again too. . betcha . . noticed, huh. .?

huhh-

the spasms and the twisting and the spurt of tears into the blood that trails from my lips-

tellya. . secret. .

secret to-

— gahhhhh-

The secret to great Acting.

Huh.

Huh fuck huh.