Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

‘Clearly, the Cloaca is not draining properly,’ sang Legions’ homunculus.

‘The corpses of the sartlar we cleared from before the Gate have dammed the flow,’ Carnelian said. Even as his voice was making promises to do something about it he was brooding over how it was that Osrakum was being threatened with a flood by the dead.

Carnelian pulled a fold of his military cloak over the nostrils of his mask, but it was not enough to dull the miasma. To his right rose a bronze grille, acid green mottled with black, streaked with the excrement of the anvil-headed sky-saurians that roosted above it in the shadows. The grille was a defence against any attackers making their way up the Cloaca. Above, a stair scaled the ravine wall, becoming a vague scratch lost in the blackness lurking beneath the bridge that linked the killing field to the outer Canyon. Up there was a door from which a passage joined the supply tunnel that ran from the Blood Gate to the Prow. It was along that route they had come to this stinking sewer.

Barring the opening between the grille and the Cloaca bed was a massive portcullis clogged with filth. In slots cut into the walls on either side, Ichorians were greasing the tracks in which ran the counterweights that controlled the portcullis. Eventually, it would have to be raised. Reluctantly, Carnelian looked upstream to where the Cloaca was choked by the immense corpse dam.

In the Cloaca, his feet squelched deep into a stinking putty. On the opposite wall, superimposed tidelines showed the levels where water had run. Through the portcullis, he could make out the Cloaca curving left, out of sight. He lingered, trying to resolve a feeling that he had seen this place before, then turned to face the dam. He began wading towards it through the filth, the fetor so thick it was almost a physical barrier.

The slope rising before him was like the midden mound beneath Qunoth, though immeasurably vaster. Of corpses, mouldering, mulching down to squeeze out their juices which were licking around his feet. He surveyed that mountain, judging the labour needed to release the waters it was damming. When he had stood upon the Blood Gate tower so far above, gazing down, it had seemed a simple thing to describe the opening they must make, as if with a single sword-cut. Sapients had described how, given a narrow channel through, the pent-up fury of the lake waters would quickly flush the whole mass away. Standing before it, Carnelian found it harder to believe their plan could work.

Around him, Ichorians, chins soiled with vomit, were trying not to see the limbs, the rotting faces in the mound they were going to have to dig through. Carnelian knew his impulse to work alongside them was inappropriate.

Climbing back up to the Blood Gate, he released more Ichorians and sent them down to the Cloaca. Thereafter, each day, standing among the mute heliographs, he watched them labouring far below in those sewers. Sometimes, when the breeze died, the charnel stench reached even his eyrie. Too slow the work, too slow for him so that, in desperation, he denuded the Gate of its garrison. Legions’ Thirds protested that he was compromising their defences, but he held his ground, stating that the Prow could break up any sartlar surge long enough for the Ichorians to return to their posts.

Judging progress still too slow, Carnelian sent a command that work in the northern branch was to be abandoned and all effort concentrated on the southern. The Cloaca haunted his dreams. He longed to see its disgusting blockage flushed away as much as if it were a clot in his own arteries.

Infrequently, messages were heliographed from the Labyrinth. One reported that the God Emperor had slipped into a sleep from which he could not be woken. Knowing Osidian would soon wake, Carnelian wondered how he would react to what had been happening while he slept. In darker moments Carnelian brooded as to who it was who would emerge from such terrible dreams wearing the face of a god. At last, one of the Thirds came to inform him the God Emperor had taken up residence in the Stone Dance of the Chameleon. The Sapient had no answers for Carnelian’s questions. He said only that Osrakum was now hungry. When Carnelian learned that Osidian had been deaf to the appeals of the Wise that the render in the Red Caves should be distributed to the coombs, he authorized it himself. That night, Fern and he stood on the summit of the South Tower in a world made frosty by a full moon. The only warmth came from the patch of gold that flickered in the Cloaca far below where the Ichorians had made their camp. Though both were starving, neither could stomach eating render.

One morning Carnelian woke feeling that a burden had lifted from his heart. He went to stand upon their balcony as had become his habit. Night still filled the Cloaca. He raised his eyes towards the open Canyon. His glance hardened to a stare of scrutiny. He called into the cell for Fern to join him. When he came, tousled, bleary-eyed, Fern confirmed what Carnelian already believed. Their spirits soared. The sartlar were gone.

Carnelian watched Ichorians scurrying along the Cloaca bed to clamber up into the counterweight slots. He could imagine how they were struggling to raise the portcullis. Filthy water was already gushing out of the channel they had delved in the corpse dam. As the stream widened, the edges of the channel crumbled into it like a sandbank into water escaping to the sea. The rush roared as it snagged more and more corpses and swirled them off along the channel. Carnelian felt it all as a physical release.

The sun falling beneath the clouds set them aflame. Light drained from the world, but the fire did not die in the west. Carnelian thought it was just another storm coming. It was Fern who recognized its true nature. ‘Dragonfire.’

Carnelian caught hold of Fern and they grinned at each other like boys. It began to rain and they laughed as it ran down their faces. At last the legions had come to lift the siege.

The next day was dark and brooding. Even atop the Blood Gate, Carnelian felt as if there was no room for movement. Sounds were dulled by the thick air. The black, smothering sky felt close enough to touch. In the west, the cloudbase was reflecting the release of titanic energies. Masters started arriving. More and more came until, by nightfall, the summits of both Blood Gate towers were crowded. All profane eyes had been commanded to remain below, so that the host of the Great could look towards the west unmasked.

By the following morning the conflagration in the west had become a flicker. By late afternoon there was nothing except, now and then, a sudden, wavering discharge. By nightfall, the sky seemed eerily dead. As Carnelian left the roof, he detected the salty tang of render. Elegant voices rose and fell. The Masters, congratulating each other on their victory, talked greedily of the delicacies that would soon be flooding into Osrakum.

Cowled against the midday sun, Carnelian had been able to remove his mask to see better. Legions was beside him with his Seconds. Their homunculi, after having described to their masters what they could see, had fallen silent. The edges of the tower roof, west and south, were crammed with Masters. Every eye was fixed on the outer reach of the Canyon. It was some time since sartlar had appeared from around the corner and the sounds of consternation across the summits had had time to fade. Carnelian’s mind had ceased to devise scenarios to explain them being there when he had been expecting towered dragons, or some aquar-mounted auxiliaries dashing ahead to bring news of her relief to Osrakum. Dread gripped him as he tried to pierce the intervening distance. Among their multitude, pale pyramids like bloodied ravener teeth, but large enough to rise above the dust of their march. Then there were the white grains that floated above the procession. He pulled himself back from the drop as terror possessed him. He could no longer deny what he was seeing.