David Gunn - Death's head

Catching my wince, it grins some more.

“Ugly bastard,” I say.

Claws tighten around my jaw, closing slowly. Too much of that and something will break; in a man less thick-boned it would probably have broken already.

What? it demands.

Lashed to a post, surrounded by bodies, and in the grip of a beast that wants to ask existential questions is not a great place to be. As the claws keep closing, I feel the bones in my jaw stress to cracking point, and think What have I got to lose…?

“I don’t understand your question.” When in doubt, fall back on stupidity, because it works every time.

As its grip loosens and gaze becomes less fierce, the bull turns to another ferox, younger and half its size. I’d think it female but for its skull ridge and a row of tribal markings daubed onto its breastplate.

The two beasts stare at each other.

And then the chieftain steps back, waving one hand as if to say, All yours.

Terrific, I think, slaughtered by the tribal runt.

But the youngster doesn’t strike. Instead it grips my face and twists my head from side to side, and then up and down, as if checking the articulation. Finally, the beast turns my skull beyond what the bones can stand and I wince. At which the beast steps back, obviously puzzled.

“My neck doesn’t bend that far,” I say. “You dumb fuck.”

Grinning, the youngster bares its fangs in obvious amusement.

What? it says.

“Human.”

The amusement vanishes and into my mind comes the picture of a creature bound naked to a post, blood drying like a cloak across his back and buttocks. Splintered bone is already mending, and the gashes on his back have begun to close. He’s shat himself, which I don’t remember, and he looks smaller than I would expect, less than significant among the half a dozen ferox who…

Two thoughts stop me in my tracks.

One, that fewer than a dozen beasts can destroy a whole fort and, two, that for the first time ever, I’m thinking of the beasts as…

“ Who, ” I say.

The youngster looks at me.

Into my mind it replays its picture of the bound soldier.

“Me,” I say, then remember the ferox have no sense of personal identity. Apparently the beasts think of themselves in the third person, as him. Although how any man can claim to have discovered this or had time to write it down before being ripped to bloody shreds, God knows.

“Sven,” I say. “I’m Sven.”

The beast appears to taste the word in its head. After a moment it nods, and the others nod also. As one, they turn and lope away toward a break in the wall I’ve barely noticed before.

“Come back.

“Don’t go…”

When pleading fails I fall back on curses, calling the brutes everything from fuckwits to freaks and gutless cowards. And still they amble away from me and the slaughter they’ve left behind. A silent file of shambling ferox, already beginning to blend perfectly with the sands beyond the breach in the fort wall.

“Kill me,” I shout.

The beast at the back turns and for a second my heart stops, but then my heartbeat kicks in again and the smallest of the beasts turns and hurries after the others.

The FEROX come back before midnight. Well, the smallest one does. He slouches into the fort through that hole in the wall and moves like a shadow across the parade ground, picking his way almost daintily among the piles of dead. Ignoring me, he reaches for the skull on the post above my head and tries to pry it free.

“I can help.”

My words startle the youngster and that tells me ferox can hear, unless he’s simply surprised to find me still alive. Twisting my head to the double moon, he stares deep into my eyes.

After a second he lets his claws drop, obviously disappointed.

A question has been asked and I’ve failed to answer. More worryingly, I’ve failed even to hear his question.

Why? I ask myself. Why could you hear last time?

Because fear provided a key? Possible, but fear is controlled by the limbic system and my body is now too frozen with cold to feel much more than resignation.

Glaring at the ferox, I see he’s gone back to ignoring me. Without the others to be matched against, he looks huge, his teeth recently formed and razor-sharp, his armor shiny with the bloom of youth. And his claws are cruel but clumsy as he struggles with the trophy still nailed to the pole.

He can kill you, I remind myself. Gut you and strew your insides across the sand. But they’re just words, insufficient to create the fear their truth demands.

“Free me,” I say.

Again that flicker of interest. Only this time it vanishes as quickly as it arrives. I need a way to remake the bridge between us.

If not fear…then pain?

As he reaches for the skull, I stretch up with my hands, not to help him but to snag the base of my thumb on his lower claw. Before the beast can react, I drag down my wrist and feel flesh tear and a single word comes into my mind.

Why?

“Must talk,” I tell him. “Only way.”

He looks at me with interest. What? he asks.

I try not to sigh.

“Sven,” I say.

The beast jerks his head at the bodies strewn across the parade ground around us. Ugly in the moonlight, they’re already beginning to freeze as the night strips what little heat they have left. Sven?

I shake my own head, realize how ridiculous that is, and say No, loudly, inside my own skull.

Not Sven?

“No,” I say. “Not Sven.”

He considers this for a moment and says nothing when I reach up again and snag my wrist, harder this time. The thought of words vanishing before this conversation is finished is more than I can bear.

Captive, he says.

Am I? Does that mean he’s taking me prisoner?

Enemies capture Sven. He says this as a statement, one allowing no argument. And as soon as I realize what he means I laugh.

“Yes,” I agree. “Enemy capture Sven.”

And God knows, in the twenty-eight years of my short and so far brutal life few enemies have been worse than Sergeant Fitz, who now lies faceup to the stars with a throwing spear through his heart.

“Let me help,” I suggest.

The youngster’s eyes flick from the trophy to my hands, and he breaks the ropes as simply as a child might snap cotton. With little to lose, I hold out my wrists and wait while he hooks his claws into my metal cuffs and pulls until they split at the hinge.

Help, he insists as I begin to walk away.

“Need something first.”

He follows me all the way to the armory door. It’s as well he does, because the door is made from some aerated ceramic that weighs little more than foam but is far stronger than it looks.

“Can you break this?”

Dark eyes catch mine, amusement replacing anger. Of course I can, says the voice in my head, except it’s not quite a voice, more a wisp of thought that tatters into silence; and the amusement is not really in his eyes, it’s more…

God, I think. I’ve begun to match feelings to the ugly fuck’s smell. The youngster turns at that, looking quizzical, and I decide to watch my thoughts.

“Door,” I suggest.

Putting his hands against the door, he pushes. When nothing happens, he pushes again. Then he draws his lips into a snarl and barges into the door with his shoulder. Something creaks, and I have a nasty feeling it might have been his bones.

In the end he sinks his claws into the door near the hinges, which is a good guess. The lock is flashy and semi-intelligent, certainly too bright to be bluffed by claiming an emergency. The hinges, however, are priced down to a spec just high enough to avoid the contractor getting killed.

It’s harder work than he expects. A good five minutes wasted while I stand shivering and barely conscious and he digs his claws slowly through the shiny surface of the door, chipping his way toward the soft material beneath.