Ricardo Pinto - The Third God

His friend’s face collapsed into an expression of confusion. He watched Carnelian’s hand withdrawing. ‘I’ve no wish to understand what the Standing Dead might mean by “politics”,’ he said, his mouth curling with disgust.

Carnelian marshalled his thoughts. ‘Nevertheless I’m now convinced Hookfork is leaving or has left the Earthsky.’ Though he could not really believe it, he still felt relieved. Something else occurred to him. ‘This could provide us with a way to rid the Earthsky of Morunasa and the Marula.’

Fern looked uncertain, but he was watching Carnelian with hope.

‘If the Plainsmen knew that Hookfork was gone would they continue to listen to the Master?’

Fern shook his head. ‘But why should they believe your conjectures?’

Carnelian saw how impossible it would be to explain his reasoning to the Plainsmen. If Fern was accepting this at all it was from some vestige of faith that he still had in him. Carnelian felt ashamed, humbled that any should still linger in his friend’s heart.

He waited for him to speak. Fern looked up. ‘You hope the Master will take the Marula with him in pursuit of Hookfork?’

Carnelian pondered this. It was a fair question. ‘I believe the faith he and Morunasa have in the Marula god could be enough to make them attempt it.’

Fern stared blindly. ‘Most likely they’d be going to their destruction.’ He regarded Carnelian. ‘And you’ll go with him?’

‘I must.’

‘Then I’ll go with you.’

Carnelian wondered what lay behind this decision. He wanted it to be because Fern still felt something for him. The look in Fern’s face suggested he might have bleaker motivations.

He smiled grimly. ‘And what if you don’t die in battle?’

‘I’m sure I’ll die some other way.’

Their gazes locked; Fern was first to break contact.

‘What about Poppy?’ Carnelian said, as much as anything else to cover up a feeling of embarrassment.

Fern chewed his lip. ‘I believe Krow would want to take care of her… be capable even…’

‘She wouldn’t go willingly,’ Carnelian said.

Fern shook his head. ‘We couldn’t force her.’

Carnelian smiled ruefully. ‘The last time I tried that she triggered a battle.’

Fern nodded. ‘She’s earned the right to choose for herself.’

They found Poppy and Krow together watching the Plainsmen stream down through the mother trees towards their aquar. Carnelian studied the two of them as Fern explained the conclusions they had come to. Krow had eyes only for Poppy’s face as she nodded, listening. When Fern was done she looked up at Carnelian. She indicated the deserting Plainsmen. ‘You’re going to tell me I have to leave with them.’

Carnelian exchanged a glance with Fern, whose look of encouragement prompted a shaking of Carnelian’s head.

Poppy looked from one to the other and frowned. ‘I don’t understand what’s going on here.’

Fern answered: ‘If you choose to go with us it’ll almost certainly be to your death.’

She blushed. ‘The Mother will protect us.’ She looked hard into Carnelian’s eyes. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Then I’m coming too,’ said Krow.

When they all looked at him his face too changed colour.

‘Many tribes would take you in,’ Carnelian said.

Krow glanced at Poppy, slowly shaking his head. ‘I’ll never again be a stranger in a strange tribe.’

Poppy looked at Fern then Carnelian. ‘He’s right. You’re my tribe now.’ She turned to Krow. ‘You too.’

Krow coloured again and Poppy smiled. ‘Well, that’s settled then.’

While Carnelian had been sitting on a rock waiting for Osidian to wake, the grove had emptied of Plainsmen. The sound of them riding away had echoed up through the cedars, then silence had fallen. Brooding mostly over Poppy’s decision, he had watched the sun chase shadows from under the trees.

When the Oracles stirred he leapt up. They yielded to him when he pushed through them. Osidian, blinking, shaded his sunken eyes with an emaciated arm. Morunasa leaned down and began interrogating him in a tense whisper. The Oracles craned forward, struggling to listen. Osidian shook his head, pushed Morunasa away and, with a groan, sat up.

His face lit up as he saw Carnelian. ‘Where…?’

Looking for a moment like the boy in the Yden, though so wasted, he caused Carnelian’s heart to trip. ‘Do you remember the battle?’

Osidian went blind, looking within himself. ‘My Father was there. ..’ He frowned. ‘Everywhere…’

‘The Darkness-under-the-Trees?’ Morunasa asked, his eyes like flames.

Osidian glanced at him, confused.

Carnelian caught Osidian’s gaze with his. ‘The auxiliaries were destroyed, my Lord.’

Osidian frowned. ‘And Aurum?’

Carnelian ignored Morunasa, who was baring his teeth at their Quya. He felt this was an opportunity to make a move in the game. Carefully he began describing their flight north; Aurum’s disappearance; the thunder in the night. He watched with fascination as Osidian’s eyes betrayed his struggle to make sense of it all. He fought to suppress a thrill of excitement as he saw the pattern settle in Osidian’s mind, certain he was drawing the same conclusions as he had himself. Osidian was now alight with confidence, evident in the smile that he turned on the Oracles. ‘Consider the confluence of events. Can you not see the hand of our Lord behind these developments? Is battle…’ – his eyes burned – ‘not one of the clearest instruments of divination?’

As he rose, the Oracles stepped back, awe in their faces. The birthmark on Osidian’s forehead creased as the light dimmed in his eyes. ‘He was with me and in me and about me.’ He looked into the shadow still lingering around the nearest cedar trunk.

‘We must return south before the dragons come,’ Morunasa declared, but the way he searched Osidian’s face belied his tone of confidence.

Osidian seemed not to hear him. He looked at Carnelian. ‘Where are the Plainsmen now?’

Morunasa narrowed his yellow eyes. ‘They’ve deserted you.’

Osidian ignored the Oracle and waited for Carnelian to answer him.

‘They’ve gone to gather their dead from the battlefield,’ Carnelian said. ‘And then, I believe, they’ll go home.’

Osidian frowned. ‘I need them to come with me.’

‘Go where, my Lord?’ Carnelian said, playing the game and then striving to forget that he knew the answer, to keep his face from betraying him.

Osidian looked around him. ‘Where are the aquar?’

Carnelian knew he could say nothing more without revealing himself. He looked to Morunasa, urging him to say what he could not. Almost as if under his control the man obliged. ‘With our Lord behind you what need have we of the Plainsmen? We’re still yours, my Master.’

Osidian would not be deflected. ‘We ride to the battlefield.’

Carnelian nodded and followed him as he strode off to the nearest rootstair. When Fern joined them, Carnelian dared not look him in the eye and clung on to Fern’s belief that the Plainsmen would not be swayed by Osidian’s words.

Carnelian covered his mouth and nose against the fetid air. The ground was foul with corpses. Everywhere ferns were trampled, clotted with dried blood. Dense, swirling mats of flies gave twitching life to the dead. The sky was darkened by wheeling clouds of ravens, by sky-saurians gliding in arcs. The raveners had left, perhaps having eaten their fill. However other, smaller scavengers swarmed the battlefield. Against such numbers the attempts the Plainsmen were making with their whirling bullroarers to drive them from their feast were futile.

As he rode Carnelian’s gaze snagged on a glint here, another there. His eyes found the brass of a service collar bright among the dun and rusty carnage. Its familiar gleam and colour made him turn to see its like around Fern’s throat. He regarded the vastness of the slaughter. He had so easily fallen into thinking of the auxiliaries as merely an extension of Aurum’s malice. Now he was seeing them as men. Each had been recruited from some tribe that was probably not so different from those of the Earthsky. The next Plainsman he passed he stared at. Hunched, the man was picking his way through the mesh of arms and legs, searching. Carnelian scrutinized his face. Its sadness and the misery in the darting eyes was not restricted to his own people. So close, the man could not help seeing that the rage he had sought to turn against the Standing Dead had fallen on men like himself. Carnelian felt the confidence he had drawn from his plotting leak away. This was another massacre: a slaughter of brother by brother. All his defences crumbled. He drank in the horror unmediated by excuses, by judgement, by any consideration of context. A sort of wonder rose in him, a bleak, surprised contemplation of how it was that he and his kind could wreak so much horror, but pass through it unscathed.