Pyrebound - 16.2

Chapter 16.2 – Pyrebound
The first load of tribute went up the Teshalun in the tetrad after Ram’s rooftop conference. It was timber, naturally—a fine load of mature hardwoods that had been piling up by the riverside for want of a market. Atellu and the three pyres to its north were cut off to trade, along with the ordinary routes to Jatu, and nobody had much of a taste for luxury goods. Ram couldn’t imagine what Mannagiri would do with all those logs when he got them, but it was pleasant to imagine him struggling to get the wretched things up the cliff without all the help he’d scared away.

It bought them peace—of a sort. Mannagiri sent no more handmaidens to Dul Karagi. The very next white day, however, a swarm of shabti overran Dumenshina Beacon, staging area for every campaign; a barque flew in that afternoon with a report of the fields themselves uprooted by crawling black shadows, fertile earth scattered to the winds.

Per Imbri, this might mean that the bazuu had abruptly cut off negotiations with Mannagiri, that he was covertly breaking his new treaty, or that the bazuu had simply gotten irritated with the delay in their perennial ritual and decided to poke the humans to remind them of their line. It was hard to say which explanation was most likely.

“It’s not like the war really matters to them,” she explained to Ram over a game of tsympir that evening. He was learning the rules—or, at least, she was trying to teach him. Given the circumstances, he wasn’t enthusiastic about playing, but Imbri was often frustrated by inaction and games seemed to help her focus. “It’s more like, oh, I don’t know. Isn’t there a custom here where the less important sort of rich man makes a public donation to something everybody approves of, just so people will take him seriously?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it a custom,” Ram said, half-listening. He couldn’t quite remember the legal moves for the piece she’d just threatened, but he was damned if he was going to admit it.

“But it happens, right? The war’s like that, for the bazuu. They’re here to punish the Dominion, officially, and it’s really important to them, officially, but after hundreds of kindlings you’re still around and they’ve lost the taste for it. The wars used to be ferocious enough that many actual bazuu got hurt in them, and they can’t stand that. So they scaled back, and so did the Dominion. They don’t feel comfortable just giving it up, but it gets foisted off on the lower-ranking abizuu who have something to prove.”

“Not very flattering, from our perspective,” he said, and moved the piece at random. With luck, she’d be too distracted to notice. Bal, sitting across the room, raised an eyebrow before going back to his whittling project. His humanity seemed to be slowly emerging once again.

Etana and Piridur were far less sanguine; they had only three days until the shabti were likely to strike again, and Dul Atellu had been one of their three allies in the wars. Worse yet, they had no militia. For a quarter of an hour the next morning, Ram stood by the door of their council chamber listening to Etana’s lieutenants propose scheme after addle-brained scheme for making battle work without crowhammers. It seemed the flamekeepers were reluctant to do the job themselves.

By and by, he strolled out into the plaza and called for volunteers for a new militia, pledging something equivalent to two months of his old pay per battle. He had no idea how much money Etana had to spare, but that wasn’t Ram’s problem, and he wasn’t about to let civilians or handmaidens get slaughtered just because the Lugal was feeling cheap.

He made his offer, repeatedly and at great volume, in the style of an auctioneer, hoping for just such a young man as he had been himself, after that fatal white day in Urapu hearth. Who, who was ready to stand by their pyre in its hour of desperate need? When all the men who gathered to listen still seemed hesitant, he offered to lead them in battle in person, and hinted that he might use his power to help. That tipped the balance.

A few of the volunteers seemed familiar to Ram, but he did not trouble to take a second look, and declined to take notice if any of them winked. If anyone asked later, he could truthfully say that the men he remembered from his militia days had looked different (in that they had been much better fed and dressed). He certainly didn’t ask names himself, instead assigning registration of the new recruits to the first acolyte he saw—a junior clerk fresh out of school, who was carrying a message towards the Temple in a dilatory way. Ram ripped the seal off, verified that it was nothing critical, and told the boy to write down as many names as he could fit on the back.

It was remarkable how much you could accomplish with freshly laundered priestly robes and an air of total confidence. Within ten minutes he had impressed four more passing acolytes, started his troops jogging around the plaza, sent Bal with his lockpicks to open up the old militia barracks, and commandeered a laundry-woman’s cart to fetch as many of the pyre’s crowhammers as it could bear out of storage. By the time Etana finally poked his nose out his front door, Ram had thirty men lined up in rows, swinging, thrusting, turning and bracing for impact while bystanders clapped and cheered.

Ram motioned for his men to continue the current maneuvers—which they were executing remarkably well, for men who had never held the weapons before—while he sauntered over to confer with his chief flamekeeper. “Lord Piridur said I should have more freedom to act in the event of emergencies,” he began, before the Lugal cut him off.

“Do you seriously think you can reconstitute, equip, and train the entire militia in the space of three days?” he demanded.

“The entire militia? No. They’re going to have some trust issues.” Ram glanced toward the Temple, and added, “I think we can make up the difference, though.”

Etana shook his head, and shut the door without further comment. One of the recruits, seeing his retreat, struck up the ballad of Ektush im-Garza, but was quickly silenced with a hand over his mouth.

As predicted, they didn’t get the entire militia. The final tally, at the close of peak day, amounted to somewhere just over two hundred men, who essentially served on their word; if any of them decided they would rather take their single silver tanbir up front and vanish before battle, nobody had any means of stopping them. Ram was counting on a combination of greed, bravado, and sheer curiosity to keep up their morale.

Those were the men for the battle. The battleground was another question. With Dumenshina destroyed, the ritual dance of countless centuries was halted; there would be no assault on the rookery this bloom, and the bazuu, it was presumed, would ravage wherever they pleased in a broad arc up and down the Teshalun. Every skybarque available from Karagi, Natati or Shasipir was kept in the air, sweeping back and forth across the desert.

When waning day arrived, Ram retreated to his bedroom in the Palace, shifting his perspective relentlessly between two dozen flying craft. It was tedious work, but it was all he could do, and around noon his patience was rewarded with a smudge of black against the eastern horizon a short distance up the river. After a hasty consult with his map and the crew of the barque, he ran to find Etana and alert him that Barenmul Hearth was the most likely target.

“That’s surprisingly close,” Etana said. “Are you sure?”

“It’s one of the largest,” Ram said. “I assume they wanted a major target, and the big ones are closer to the pyre.” He didn’t believe it was a coincidence that it was one of his hearths, either, when Natati and Shasipir were options. Or was that just his spirit’s vanity and paranoia talking?

“Even so, it’s damned short notice. I don’t know how many men we can move by nightfall.”

“I’ll call back most of the barques,” Ram offered. “They can help with transport.”

“No. Leave them in place. There’s nothing to prevent the bazuu from striking multiple targets.”

Etana bit his lip. “Fine. But they could still change targets to surprise us. Leave five up on an expanded course, plus a designated spotter near Barenmul. The rest can be diverted to troop transport.”

Ram saluted, then went back to work. It was nearly twenty minutes before he was finished with all of it, by which point Etana had once again submerged in his council chamber, discussing the logistics. Ram waited for some time outside the door, but when he was not called in to consult he wandered off to find Imbri instead. She was on her bed, twirling one of her bazu devices listlessly between her fingers.

He peered at it closely. “Are you doing something magic with that?”

She stopped twirling. “No. Just bored. Please don’t ask me anything about the shabti. I’ve been answering the same daft questions for two days, every time somebody got the brilliant idea to ask me. Somehow, none of them think to tell the others what they learned.”

“What kind of questions?”

“I told you: the daft kind.” She set down the trinket so she could tick them off on her fingers: “No, I can’t hijack the shabti. They’re controlled directly by their masters. No, I can’t track them. They’re a totally different kind of thing from the gates and rookeries my inductors aim for. No, I don’t know any way to communicate with them, or disable them, or anything else actually useful.”

“I think I get the picture. Nothing I personally need to know about them?”

“There’s not much to know. A shab’s locus is effectively a bazu soul with a loosely associated mass of subservient human spirits it can use as a shield against pyrelight. The locus can force the bonded matter to reconfigure as it pleases, and because it isn’t strictly assigned to any one of them they can redistribute it between them as needed. The human portion degrades rapidly in the absence of a locus.”

“That … actually sounds pretty complicated.”

“Eh. It’s nothing you can use to hurt them, I don’t think. Smash the locus or burn it, same as ever.”

Outside, the first ship was landing back on the roof of the acolytes’ school. Ram could trace a swarm of haranuu hustling across the plaza to board it. “I know you have no military experience, but based on what you know of bazuu, would you expect them to attack one target, or spread them out?”

She sighed. “It’s not a military question for them. If you had a bunch of buildings that kept getting infested with rats, would you split up your dogs to hit them all at once?”

Many of Ram’s new militia were already stationed at or en route to the larger hearths, to provide a thin illusion of security (and make it harder for his volunteers to desert or make trouble). For them, it was a simple matter to redirect the sunbarques. Where the flamekeepers and handmaidens were concerned, it was a mad rush to get as many to the hearth as could be managed before dark. Ram left in the late afternoon, aboard a barque stuffed with frightened women. Balnibduka hopped aboard at the last minute before takeoff, seemingly on a whim; Imbri refused to come at all.

Barenmul was Dul Karagi’s second hearth to the north, on the eastern bank of the river. Population at last census, at the turn of the kindling, had been a bit short of three thousand. From the air, it looked distinctly cluttered compared to stamp-cut hearths like Urapu or Rumshiza, its buildings stuffed between, around, and atop five hills of varying sizes.

An unusually tall and ornate tower rose from the highest hill, farthest back from the Teshalun, so that most of the hearth would have a line of sight to its fire. The other hilltops were given over to other prestigious facilities: a dormitory to sleep its twenty handmaidens, a school staffed by seven acolytes, and the local shrine to Tegnem, casting a benevolent eye over the little crafthalls huddled around the flanks of its hillock. The smallest hill, off to one side, was crowned by a modest grove of Karagi’s famous trees—too modest to exploit sustainably. Ram assumed they were there for show.

Everything else found space in the lowlands, primarily the smallish pocket between the hills and the water. The center of the hearth boasted a common hall two stories high, with a narrow courtyard down the middle, which looked like ready to seat a thousand or more at a time. It dominated one side of the hearth’s main street, the other being dedicated to various shops with brightly colored signs. They’d had no signs at Urapu; everyone had known where all the craftsmen lived.

Their barque landed atop the roof of a short, broad tower attached to the common hall, where the hearth council met. The handmaidens were promptly hustled away by flamekeepers who’d just arrived themselves; presumably Etana had a headquarters of some sort, and was trying to put his best face on fighting off an entire shab army with less than a quarter of the usual forces, with civilians at his back. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to welcome Ram or Bal—but then, he’d only been here one time before, with Shimrun, and all they’d done was give a speech and loot their offering jar. And nobody ever welcomed Bal.

The riverside was alive with traffic, sunbarques and galleys disgorging Ram’s new militia, then taking on as many of Barenmul’s citizens as they could accommodate without sinking before they turned about for the pyre, three hours’ hard rowing away with the current to help. Those who left now would arrive after dark, and it was doubtful whether any craft that took them would be brave enough to turn back for another load. Even with opportunistic tinap transports on hand, and the hearth’s own craft, there was no hope of moving the great and frightened flock on the shore.

Ram made for those docks, to welcome his militiamen before they could change their minds and force their way back onto the boats. He found them already hard at work alongside what remained of the hearth’s watch, struggling with the increasingly frantic crowd. He could only hope that they never had to actually use their crowhammers to keep order. A score of flamekeepers had been delegated as well, but they were content to stand back so long as no actual brawls broke out.

Of course, there was little else to do there; none of them had any right to say which of these strangers should be prioritized. Women and children ought to go first, Ram supposed, and if they’d had more time they might have arranged things better, but all this had happened on a few hours’ notice. As it was, the entire free population of the hearth looked to be jammed together on the waterfront, and there was no hope of sorting out women or anyone else. The first on hand when a boat pulled up would be taken, and the rest would take their chances. Ram wasn’t even sure what would happen to the refugees at the other end.

He was just turning back to begin his halfhearted search for Etana when he abruptly realized Bal hadn’t followed him to the docks. He was so used to the big mute stalking behind him like a second shadow that it hadn’t occurred to him to check. Ram briefly considered leaving the matter alone; Bal hadn’t attacked anyone since Dul Misishi that he knew of, and was acting more or less human these days. But Ram couldn’t be sure, and while he didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to pick a fight, Barenmul was on edge, and Bal was his companion.

It was a hell of a place to lose a man in; everything in the hearth, aside from major facilities, seemed to be stuffed in wherever it could be made to fit. Streets zigged and zagged around the hills in a bewildering way, in several places dead-ending at the remains of the hearth’s old outer wall, which was slowly being cannibalized for new projects. The current barrier was some ways outside the hills, built with room to spare for further growth. There were a number of lovely houses out there, with carefully tended gardens. Home, no doubt, to men like Mother’s father.

Ram got to see the lot, as he spent two increasingly frustrated hours in an involuntary tour of Barenmul, jogging back and forth through the largely empty streets of a substantial hearth in search of a single (admittedly conspicuous) man. At last there was only one place to look: the miserable assembly of shacks behind the tower hill where the hearth kept its bonded.

There, at last, he found properly busy streets. Waning day was fading fast, and there was a small crowd of women around the local well, waiting to haul up pails of water so they wouldn’t have to leave the house during white day. All of them were quietly singing, the same plaintive hymns he had heard in the plaza a few days back. A hundred feet away at the crossroads, another, much larger crowd had gathered, mostly men, though children of both sexes dashed in and out unnoticed. The adults were hard at work on something, and did not sing. Ram drew closer to see what they were doing, and his heart died inside him.

Bricks. A little pile of bricks, many of them cracked, sat in a bare dirt patch in the road. Many of the smaller children, he now saw, were bent over, using their fingers to pry more bricks loose from the walkway, but they were making poor progress. The men had more luck, tearing at the walls of the nearest house with hammers, chisels, or whatever durable tool they could find. One whole wall had been dismembered already; to judge by what remained, they’d picked the house in poorest repair.

As Ram watched, and tried to understand, a scruffy girl of twelve or so scurried past him to load up the lap of her tunic with bricks from the pile. She paid just enough attention to Ram to not bump into him, since he was a stranger with a sword. Ram watched her waddle awkwardly over to a spot some distance away and dump her load in another pile. They had several such piles in place, evenly spaced along the path.

Of course, it would make sense to them. There would be no space on any boat for these people, and the new wall, fine as it was, had only a couple of unarmed men atop it to watch. There was a skybarque circling overhead as well, ready to give warning to inner Barenmul, where flamekeepers and handmaidens were gathered together in a sensible, defensible perimeter.

The bonded of Barenmul had no faith in defensible perimeters. They didn’t believe anyone would fight to protect them, or that it would matter if they did. And nobody had seen fit to tell them otherwise. Whether this was callousness or honest oversight hardly mattered at this point. When the shabti came (a thing none of them had ever seen, or even heard clear report of), they would throw their bricks, and perhaps make an annoying clattering noise against the smooth black armor before they, and their homes, were ground into a grisly pulp of blood and dust. Then the fire would fall, as the handmaidens took advantage of the lull in the charge, and it would be some days before anyone could be bothered to order more workers for the fields.

Ram could call his new militia—but they wouldn’t come, and they wouldn’t come close to tipping the balance. If the enemy held off till morning, he might pester Etana to … split his forces to guard some hovels? No, that wouldn’t do either. The bonded would have to retreat, and rebuild their homes. Assuming he could convince them.

Who, if anyone, was in charge here? Ram looked around, but saw nobody giving orders. That might make it easier, if he could simply pose as a flamekeeper and command them to leave. But what was that one man doing, over in the alley? He was kneeling, and bowed over, like he was about to vomit. Only he hadn’t moved from that spot in some time. Ram trudged over to investigate, and belatedly saw the blades at his hips.

“Bal? What the hell are you doing here? I’ve been looking for you for ages, man.” Bal didn’t look up, or even react. He was frozen in place, digging his fingers deep into the dirt of the alley. No, not frozen: his shoulders were shaking slightly. “Bal?” Ram put a hand on one quivering shoulder, only to have its arm shoot up and shove him into the wall of the nearest house. “Ow! What’s your problem?”

Bal only bent a little lower, making a noise between a grunt and a whine. Great. “We don’t have time for this, Bal. The sun’s almost set. Move your ass.”

The giant pushed himself back up slightly, so he could give Ram a contemptuous look, and wave one hand at the scurrying bondservants, then at the useless wall. “Yeah, I know. Trouble’s coming. You going to fight shabti with knives? The sooner you move, the sooner we can convince the rest of this gang to get back somewhere safe.”

Bal shook his head, and bowed back down into the dirt. Were his cheeks wet? To hell with it. Ram marched back to the well, clearing his throat as he went. “Ladies! Gentlemen!” That at least got everyone’s attention; nobody had ever called them such things before. Who was he talking to? “We don’t have much time, but if we hurry, we can get all of you to relative safety. There will be space in the inner hearth for tonight. Don’t take anything with—“

Back in the alley, Bal rose to his knees and roared, a long, agonized bellow like a wounded beast caught out on a cold desert night. Then he stood, drawing his two longest swords. Before Ram could think what to do in response—whether to chide him, wrestle him down, or simply try to talk around his freakish behavior—there was an answering shout from outside the wall, distant but clear, the sound of many voices, none human.

It was a sound he’d heard once before, though not by so many. With it came an odor, whether faintly smelt or urgently remembered Ram could not say. A stink like filth, and disease, and death.