Sam Sykes - Black Halo

‘I don’t blame you,’ he replied.

For the first time, she looked at him. It was a fleeting flash of emerald, nothing more than a breath during which their eyes met. It took less than that for her to frown and look away again.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you do.’

He didn’t protest. Not as she said the words. Not as she walked away.

Awarm droplet of water struck his brow, dripped down a narrow cheekbone and fell to his chin. He caught it on a purple finger before it could fall and be lost on the red and black cobblestones.

The word for it, Yldus recalled, was rain. He knew only a little about it. He knew it fell from the sky; he knew it made things grow. There was meaning behind it, too. It was a symbol of renewal, its washing of taint and sin considered something sacred. This he had been told by those prisoners who had begged for water from the sky, from the earth, from him.

He had given none. He didn’t see the point. Where he came from, things did not grow. The sky never changed. And as he looked up at the sky now, the rain falling in impotent orange dots against the burning roofs of the city’s buildings, he wondered what reverence could possibly be justified for it.

The fires continued, unhindered, belching smoke in defiant rudeness to the meek greyness. There were faint rumbles of what was called thunder, but they did nothing to silence the war cries of the females or the distant cries of the weak and hapless overscum they descended upon.

He picked his way over the bodies, lifting the hem of his robes as he walked through the undistilled red smears upon the cobblestones. He glanced down an alley, frowning at the flashing jaws and errant cackles of the sikkhuns as they feasted upon the dead and the slow with relish. Their female riders, long since bored with the meagre defences that had been offered to them and subsequently shattered, goaded their mounts to gnash and consume with unabated glee.

Wasteful, he thought. Pointless. Disgusting.

Female .

He left them to the dead. His concerns were for the living.

Or the barely living, at least .

The road was slick with blood, clotted with ash, littered with the dead and the broken. Yldus searched the carnage with a careful eye. He had seen much more and much worse, enough to recognise the subtle differences in the splashes of bright red life. He saw where it had been squandered in spatters of cowardice, where it had leaked out on pleas to deaf ears, where it had simply pooled with resignation and despair.

His eyebrows rose appreciatively as he saw one that began a bright crimson and turned to a dark red as it was smeared across the road, leaving a trail thick with desperation.

He followed it carefully, winding past the stacks of shattered crates and sundered barrels, the spilled blood and split spears that had been the last defence the overscum had offered the females. Some had fled. Many had stayed. Only one lived.

And as the road turned to sand beneath Yldus’ feet, he heard that solitary life drawing his last breaths.

The overscum lay upon the sand. Unworthy of note: small, soft, dark-haired, dark-skinned, maybe a little fatter than most. Yldus watched with passive indifference as the human continued to deny the reality of his soft flesh and leaking fluids, pulling himself farther along the sand, ignoring Yldus and the great black shapes that surrounded him.

Yldus glanced up at the warriors of the First: tall, powerful, their black armour obscuring all traces of purple flesh and bristling with polished spikes. The spears and razor-lined shields they clenched were bloodied, but stilled in their hands.

Yldus offered an approving smile; the First, as the sole females proven to be able to overcome their lust for blood enough to follow orders, held a special place in his heart. They could slaughter and skewer with the best of them, but it was their ability to recognise, strategise and, most importantly, obey that made him request their presence in the city.

He was after answers, not corpses. And this was delicate work.

At his approach, they turned, as one, their black-visored gazes towards him: expecting, anticipating. He indulged them with a nod. One of them replied, stepping forward, flipping her spear about in her grip and driving it down into the human’s meaty thigh.

Delicate, as far as the netherling definition of the word went, at least.

He folded his hands behind him, closing his ears to the human’s wailing as he approached, being careful not to tread in the blood-soaked sand. He stood beside the overscum, staring, waiting for the screaming to stop.

It took some time, but Yldus was a patient male.

It never truly stopped, merely subsided to gasping sobs. That would serve, however. Yldus knelt beside the overscum, surveying him carefully, waiting for the inevitable outburst. The human looked back at him through a dark-skinned face drawn tight with pain and anguish.

‘Monsters,’ he spat out in his tongue, ‘demons. Filthy child-killers!’

Defiance , Yldus recognised, saying nothing as the man launched into a litany of curses, only a few of which he recognised.

‘Whatever it is you came here for,’ the human gasped out, the edges of his mouth tinged with blood. ‘Gold, steel, food … we have barely any. Take it and go. Leave the rest of us in peace.’

Rejection . Yldus still said nothing, merely watching as the man continued to leak out onto the earth, merely waiting until he drew in a ragged breath.

‘Spare me,’ he finally gasped.

Bargaining .

‘Spare my life,’ he croaked again, ‘help me and-’

‘No.’

‘What?’ The man appeared shocked that such was even a possible answer.

‘You ask the unnatural,’ Yldus replied. ‘You are here, beneath our feet. We are netherling. Because of this, you are going to die. It will not be swift. It will not be merciful. But it will happen. Ours is the right to take. Yours … the right to die.’

‘Then do it,’ the human spat back.

‘To demand is not your right. We require something in this city. You will offer it to us.’

‘Why should I? Why would I? You’ve killed …’ He paused to gasp, hacking viciously.

‘We have. We do.’ Yldus turned his gaze to the burning skyline. ‘To kill, to bleed, to die. This is simply what it means to be netherling.’ He glanced back at the man. ‘What does it mean to be human, overscum?’

‘It means … it …’

‘Hard to say, I realise. Females may only be concerned with your breed as to how much you glut their sikkhuns, but I have taken great pains to learn about your breed. It’s been difficult, but I have learned something.

‘To be human,’ he said, ‘is to deny. It is to fight, to flee, to beg or to pray, despite that each action leads to only one outcome. Your people can run, but we can run faster. Your people can fight, but we can kill them. Your people can pray …’ He glanced down at the man, taking note of the chain hanging from his neck. ‘Hasn’t worked so well for you, has it?

‘You are faced with inevitabilities: you will die. We will have what we need. Your people will die. How many of them, though, is undetermined. To kill is female. I cannot stop them from doing this. To direct is male. I can point them away from your people, let your people hide, flee, think that their gods are listening to them while we collect what we require and leave.’

He regarded the man evenly.

‘This is the choice you are offered. Deny it if you wish.’

The man’s face was too agonised to allow for any lengthy contemplation. His answer was swift and tinged with red.

‘What do you want?’