David Gunn - Death's head

“Track him for a day,” he told me. “After that, return.”

We both knew what went unspoken. If a man is not found inside a day, then he is dead anyway, killed by the temperature drop that hits this planet in the hours before dawn…

Out of my sight, the whip master picks up his whip. I know this from the crack it makes as dried blood is flicked from the lash. “And again,” says Sergeant Fitz, and I tense myself against the next fifteen blows.

Sixteen.

Seventeen.

Eighteen.

I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. And then the skull grins. Bone twists like flesh, rotten teeth bare, and the slitted eyes narrow further, in obvious amusement.

I’m going to die…

My thought comes as a shock.

Aren’t I?

The ferox grins some more. Jaws curve upward in a way that defies physics and all logic. Not yet, it says. And not here.

The first I know of a raid is when an explosion shocks the air. Our gate guard goes down with a spear in his throat. A short spear, thrown using a sinew wrapped around its notched shaft. There’s a good chance that sinew came from a human leg; most of them do.

“To arms,” shouts the lieutenant.

Sergeant Fitz is more pragmatic. “Free fire,” he yells, my execution already forgotten.

The skull above me says nothing. It merely grins.

Able to move at speed and deadly with bow, blade, or throwing spears, the ferox fight silently and to a preagreed plan. Speed and silence are a deadly mix in the desert, where sounds can carry for miles and a guard with good hearing is more valuable than one with good eyes.

The ferox pour through our gate in a wave.

And we get slaughtered, that’s the only way to describe it. Most of the legion are new and barely know one end of a pulse rifle from another.

I watch a boy, little older than me when I first joined, drop to his knees and raise his gun to take careful aim. He even takes a breath and lets it out slowly, holding his fire until his heartbeat is steady. His first shot should blow a bull ferox apart and kill the beast behind, but he’s forgotten to flick his precharge lever to load the coil.

The kid pulls his trigger repeatedly, shaking his head. Safety catches were abolished because new recruits kept forgetting to toggle them, but there’s no future for a recruit so raw he forgets to precharge his weapon.

He dies with irritation on his face. Still unsure why his rifle won’t fire. I’d tell him, but the gag in my mouth prevents it.

“Fall back,” cries a voice.

It’s our lieutenant, aged all of seventeen and still so new that few of us have bothered to learn his name. There’s no need now. As a ferox drops from a roof behind him, the boy turns and the ferox flicks out one claw, opening a second mouth in the lieutenant’s throat.

He dies in silence.

“Riddle’s down!” someone screams.

And so I learn the boy’s name after all.

“Fall back, fall back.”

Stand, I want to shout. Hold steady and die well.

The ferox are cruel to soldiers who run, as unforgiving as our own dear leader, and troopers are dying around me in the dozens as they try to fall back toward an inner wall, which simply provides a backdrop for their slaughter. The air is hot with shit and guts, the stink of angry ferox and human blood on boiling sand. Flies settle quickly on the broken bodies.

Eggs will be laid, larvae hatched, and the desert will take back what should never have been here in the first place. The XVth Brigade, Legion Etranger. A ferox goes down, a youngster, half its armor burned away.

The only beast to be wounded so far.

It feels like hours before the last boy dies. In reality it’s probably a handful of minutes and the ferox are kind, in a way rumor says is not in their nature. They kill quickly and cleanly, forcing each cadet to his knees, dragging back his head, and cutting his throat before moving on.

Anyone who says these beasts are mindless knows nothing.

Seven years ago when we first built Fort Libidad the beasts would no more have cut a man’s throat than open his belly; ferox have plating across their throats and over their guts and believed we must have the same.

They’ve obviously discovered this is untrue, because I’m looking at the proof. A hundred dead teenagers with their throats and bellies ripped open.

Their chieftain is huge.

A bull standing nine feet tall, four feet across the shoulders, his mottled armor is chipped and cracked, and age has grayed his fur and dimmed his eyes, but when he moves toward me the others fall back to give him space.

Claws grip my jaw and turn me to face him.

This is it, I think, but his claws never close.

Instead dark eyes glare into mine and my head is twisted farther, to allow him a better view. Releasing my jaw, he taps my metal arm, considering the sound it makes. The prosthetic is crude, all pistons and rewelds and braided steel hoses that are past their safety date, but it looks better than the broken stump beneath.

“You did that,” I mumble.

Dark eyes watch me.

“Well, not you exactly.” I nod to the trophy above me. “Him.”

The ferox follows my glance. Then his other hand moves to the broken flesh of my back as he dips his fingers into my blood and carries it to his mouth.

Seconds later, he spits and keeps spitting.

I could have told him.

Bad blood, my father always said.

As the others watch, the old bull considers his options. I have no doubt my death is at the top of that list. Every other human in Fort Libidad is dead, their blood staining the sand of the parade ground, the stink of their voided bowels so strong it fights with the scent of my executioner.

I wait, keeping my eyes on his.

This is my only vow.

Everyone makes and breaks promises and we all carry our share of those. Vows are different. Well, they are where I come from, which is a backwater so distant our dear leader barely bothers to include it in his list of glorious conquests.

My vow is simple.

However it comes, I will look death in the eyes. I will forgive myself every broken promise and debt still to be repaid, but if I break this vow, God will never forgive me.

So we lock eyes, a tribal chief standing over nine feet tall, and me, an ex-Etranger-sergeant, aged twenty-eight, standing as upright as pain allows.

What? it asks.

I blink, despite myself.

My world suddenly reduced to a pair of dark eyes and a voice in my head. Maybe it’s the pain, I tell myself.

As I said, fifteen lashes can kill.

If not for my unnatural ability to heal, my corpse could have been waiting to greet the ferox when they arrived. The pain is extreme, so extreme I have trouble concentrating on the beast’s question.

What? Its demand is louder this time.

The gag used for a whipping post is crude. It’s the victim’s own belt, fastened tight enough to make speech impossible, but not so tight that groans are stifled, because that defeats the object of the exercise.

Free me, I think.

After a moment’s consideration the beast cuts my gag with a single flick of one claw. It is an object lesson in precision and reinforces why a hundred boys barely old enough to leave home lie dead in the dirt behind me.

“Soldier,” I say, wanting to answer its question while the beast is still interested.

The beast looks blank.

“Human.”

It thinks about this, head turned slightly to one side. When it grins, the beast reminds me of the trophy nailed above me. And once again I see the bull ferox flick its gaze upward. I have no idea how much of my thoughts it can read, but it obviously catches enough.

Not human, it says.

I shrug, which is stupid.