Hell or High Water Read online

  “It could only mean that the spirits had removed their protections from him. They could not, after all, favor such a hideous alliance. Some good came from the catastrophe, then, for while a few of my people still argue, even to this day, to join the Terwa, most are wise enough to heed the spirits’ signs.”

  Seyusth lapsed into a fit of coughing, which in turn tugged at the spikes and set his wounds bleeding anew. Several of the men up front glanced their way, attracted by the sudden spasm. A few laughed; one flicked his tongue in and out, like a reptile.

  “How does that make what happened to Issisk your fault?” she insisted. Keep talking. Stay awake…

  “I… After becoming shaman to Haa-Ok, I spoke long about the evils of the Terwa Lords and those who follow them. And many of our youth took those lessons deeply to heart. We sent hunting bands far from our territories, in part, to patrol against Terwa incursion from the Sodden Lands. And Issisk’s band… I found them well beyond their accustomed terrain. I fear they went looking for the enemy, and it was this that brought them to the White Leech.”

  “And we’re so delighted it did!”

  The voice was soft—not with kindness, but like a smothering pillow—and high as a young girl’s. Ameyanda looked up at the obese bulk that now kept much of the rain from her skin; she could not even imagine how a body that fleshy could approach so quietly. Or without rocking the entire skiff.

  He squatted so that the jiggling of his thighs threatened to slap against their feet. Ameyanda could smell not merely sweat, but mildew and the seepage of open sores.

  She could see, too, the cause of his misshapen jaw. His teeth had been removed and replaced, via foreign magics or surgeries, with twin ridges of serrated bone.

  As much to keep from gagging as anything else, Ameyanda spoke. “‘Delighted’? Why?”

  Galgur ignored the question. “Did we hear,” he asked Seyusth, “that you dislike the Terwa lizards? Oh, that’s really too bad, since we’ll be trading you to them. Not for a while, though. We’ve a friend who would dearly love to speak with you first!”

  The shaman hissed, deep in his throat.

  “And you two…” He turned to Ameyanda and the other captive. “We’ll put you in the swamp for a time. You’ll be so much more succulent after you’ve softened and ripened!”

  It wasn’t the laughter and cheers of the White Leech that sent a shiver through Ameyanda’s spine, but the string of anticipatory drool that dangled from Galgur the Gullet’s maw.

  ∗∗∗

  The village had been built in part on a gentle hillside. It had probably been beautiful, pastoral gardens and fields of crops. But that was before the coming of the eternal storm.

  Now most of it was permanently submerged, the wooden buildings rotted to skeletons of what they’d been. A few, however, stood tall enough, and high enough on the hill, that a story or two protruded from the swamp. These, too, harbored the restless stench of decay and rough smears of various molds. Still, with the use of uncountable patches and slapdash repairs, they remained good enough for some.

  Galgur’s faction of the White Leech called them home.

  They’d approached the hillside through a veritable thicket of peculiar reeds. Protruding stiffly, reaching almost a man’s height above the waters, they didn’t appear remotely natural to their surroundings.

  And now Ameyanda knew why.

  “We’ll put you in the swamp for a time. You’ll be so much more succulent after you’ve softened and ripened!”

  Despite her best efforts, or the shame it brought, she’d finally panicked. First the bag, yanked over her head and sealed around the neck with some viscous sludge. It smelled of light tanning and animal fat, and it had one of those long reeds—long, hollow reeds—protruding from one side.

  And then she’d felt herself manhandled, strapped by leather cords to a heavy log, and tossed in to lie amidst the others.

  They didn’t even mean to kill her first. Let her lie, submerged in the marsh, half-buried in muck, until her waterlogged skin came loose on her flesh. Only then, she knew, would they haul her up—a primitive rope-and-pulley system dangled from an overhanging cypress branch—to feast.

  So yes, as the world went away save for the sound of the torpid waters beyond the bag and the patter of rain on the surface, gradually slowing as the squall finally passed, she’d thrashed, bucked, screamed in panic.

  But only for a moment.

  No large animals, was her first rational thought. Galgur and his men wouldn’t want anything to rob them of a meal, so they must have some means of keeping the bigger predators away from their “crop.” Nets in the water, perhaps. It meant there was nothing—well, nothing large enough to kill her outright—to be attracted by the blood.

  And there would be a lot of blood.

  Ameyanda pulled her left wrist toward her shoulder, as far as the straps would allow—and then kept pulling. For minutes beyond count, she pressed the ball of her hand against the leather, against the soft wood of the log. The pain was enough to draw another scream. So be it; let them think she howled in terror, if they could hear at all through the breathing reed.

  She pushed; she twisted. And slowly, agonizingly, the jagged crocodile tooth—one she’d knocked from the unliving creature’s mouth, the thing she’d deliberately fallen upon and concealed within her own meat—slid from her skin.

  She’d expected that she might need to free herself of bonds; she’d never begun to imagine the circumstances in which that need would arise.

  Her fingers seized up, twitching, and she almost dropped it. The breath caught in her throat as she bobbled at it, and she almost cried in relief when she once more held it firm. The hand was weak, limp with pain and a growing infection she could already feel.

  But it would do. It had to do.

  In tiny twitches, Ameyanda began to run the edge of the tooth over the leather, again and again.

  ∗∗∗

  “I know what you did.”

  It was hearing his own language, more than the words themselves, that yanked Seyusth awake through the fog of pain. The room smelled of rotten wood, and as he pried his eyes open, he could see huge blotches of mold and water damage on the walls.

  The room was also at a slight angle—no, he was at a slight angle. They hadn’t even bothered to stand the stake to which he was crucified straight up; just leaned it in the corner.

  And then full awareness finally flooded through him, and he lowered his gaze to the one who’d addressed him.

  “Issisk! Leaves and scales, you live!”

  The younger lizardfolk stood in the chamber’s open doorway, perhaps a bit scrawnier than Seyusth recalled, but healthy enough. He nodded once, but otherwise offered no response.

  “They allow you to move freely?” Seyusth asked.

  “Largely. They keep eyes on me, to ensure I do not attempt to leave, but otherwise I do as I will.”

  “A strange sort of imprisonment.”

  “And what makes you believe I am a prisoner, Seyusth?”

  It was, somehow, shocking to the core of his soul and the precise answer he’d anticipated, both at once. “I don’t understand. Issisk, why—?”

  “They needed another of our people,” Issisk said, his voice oddly flat, even for a reptile. “They grew accustomed to having one of us work alongside them, to serve as spy in Terwa territory, or negotiator with their patrols, or scout who could swim farther than any human.”

  “Accustomed to…” Seyusth was feeling dizzy, and not only from his wounds or the precarious angle.

  “The one who had been with them was dying. They were hunting our kind when they came across my patrol. I was the fortunate survivor, and I chose cooperation over consumption. And I had some time to converse with my tribesmate before he died of his illness.”

  “Who… Who was…?”

  “I thought you would never ask.”

  Issisk stepped aside, and a second lizardman strode—no, shambled—through the door. The
dull scales and gaping holes were sufficient to tell Seyusth that this was the undead who had attacked him in the swamp.

  But this near, he could also see details he’d missed at the time—including a face that, though partially worn away, he recognized.

  “Oh, spirits. Hasseth…”

  “As I said, murderer,” the younger one hissed, “I know what you did.”

  Chapter Four: In the Lair of the White Leech

  “Which one’s the Gullet want?”

  “Don’t think he cares, long as it ain’t one of the new ones. Someone been in there at least a few days.”

  The two warriors—muscle-bound, covered in scars of both battle and pestilence—waded into the waters, making for the stump from which the pulley could be operated.

  “What about that gussied-up Shackles pirate we took? He oughta be about ripe by now, yeah?”

  “Yeah, what is he? Two down, four over?” The White Leech reached for the mildewed rope, tugged—and nothing happened. A puzzled glance upward, and he could just barely make out an amorphous shape in the darkness, perched on the block-and-tackle.

  “Hey, what—!”

  The blood-smeared tooth wasn’t much of a weapon, and her left hand was all but useless. But when Ameyanda dropped upon the first of her captors, a feral snarl erupting through bared teeth, it made no difference.

  ∗∗∗

  “Issisk…” Somehow, though the iron stakes allowed little range of movement, Seyusth seemed to slump. “You must understand—”

  “Understand? Understand that you murdered your own cohort on your journey to the Terwa? That you snuck back to Haa-Ok and killed Errash, your own mentor, before skulking home with your tales of ambush? You never knew Hasseth survived, did you?”

  “I—”

  “He ran, Seyusth. The greatest warrior of Haa-ok, and he fled. He thought that, because it was you who tried to kill him, it must have been the will of the shaman. It was not until I spoke to him, in his dying days, and told him that Errash had also been murdered, and the lies you spun of what had occurred, that he knew it was you alone who had betrayed him. Betrayed us!”

  “Issisk, listen! Errash wanted the alliance for his own gain, not because the spirits told him so. The others, you… None of you understand what the Terwa Lords are! What we would become, were we to ally with them… The horrors we would have to accept, to inflict… I died with every Haa-Ok life I took, but I could not allow the delegation to deliver us into a devil’s bargain for the soul of our people!”

  “I do not know the Terwa Lords,” Issisk said stiffly. “I know only what you told me of them. How can I know, now, what of that is true?”

  “All of it. Issisk, I swear—”

  “What I know is that the blood of several Haa-Ok is on your talons. And that this was not your decision to make.

  “Some day, Seyusth, the eyes of the White Leech will grow careless, and I will escape. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps a year from now. But I will make my way home, and I will tell all Haa-Ok what you did. That it was not the wrath of the spirits that allowed an assassin to reach our shaman, but a traitor who knew his magics. And they will make their own choice, as they should have long ago.”

  “Issisk, please!” It was not a word that came easily to the lizardfolk, above all a practical and pragmatic people. “Please, if your anger is with me, take it out on me. But you will be doing Haa-Ok only harm if you—”

  “You have no more words I wish to hear, traitor.”

  Seyusth was still pleading as his cousin disappeared through the open doorway, followed by the shambling Hasseth. If his people were capable of it, he would have wept.

  It was the commotion from outside—running, howling, the thump of fists on armor as wild men worked themselves into a frenzy—that snapped him out of it a few moments later. From here, he could see absolutely nothing of what was happening. All he could tell was that it wasn’t a fire.

  Which, given the rather damp state of affairs, he’d have known anyway.

  The sounds faded into the distance, the night now filled with nothing but the hum of insects and the hoot of a hunting bird. And then…

  “Hsst! Seyusth!”

  “Issisk knows things he shouldn’t.”

  Ameyanda slipped in through the doorway, carrying one of the White Leech blades. The human looked awful—her eyes were slightly wild, she winced with every step—but it seemed that most of the blood splattered across her armor and skin was not hers.

  “We don’t have long,” she told him, limping across the open chamber. “I left a trail down to the water’s edge, and pushed one of the small rafts into the current. Not one with the dead who, uh, row,” she clarified. “But we have only minutes before they catch up and realize I’m not aboard.”

  “Then we had better act, and discuss the details of your miraculous escape another day.”

  She nodded and halted before him, examining the rough wooden cross.

  “Seyusth,” she said softly, “there’s no way to do this gently, not in the time we have.”

  “I understand.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Do it.”

  Even in the blackness, the room spun as she pulled the cross from the corner, twisted it clumsily, and laid it flat. He felt her fingers squeeze between his scales and the curved iron pinning his right arm; saw her flinch from the touch of the necromantic runes; heard the scrape as she braced her feet on the wood.

  Wood splintered. Iron screeched. And despite his most adamant efforts, Seyusth screamed.

  ∗∗∗

  When it was done, they lay sprawled on the floor, chests heaving, growing sticky with the lizardman’s blood. Ameyanda tried not to stare at the raw meat and exposed tendon visible through the rents in her companion’s flesh.

  Especially when they began to twitch.

  “They still work well enough…” he muttered. His arm shaking, he reached a hand out to the huntress’s shoulder.

  “Seyusth…”

  But he was already speaking in his own reptilian tongue.

  Ameyanda gasped as an icy shock ran down her arm, as though someone had replaced her blood with mountain runoff. It faded swiftly, however, and so too did much of the agony in her hand.

  Not all—and it still burned with a sickly heat—but any relief was welcome.

  “Tomorrow,” the shaman said softly, “I can cure the infection. I fear you will have to bear it until then.”

  “Thank you. I—”

  Again he spoke in his own language, and the worst of his wounds began to close over. Much like her own, it was far from a complete cure, but impressive for all that.

  “What of Issisk?” she asked, staggering roughly to her feet.

  Seyusth’s face went tight, as though he’d only just remembered why they’d come.

  “He is here. He… ran into the swamp when the commotion began. I must find him before they do.”

  “Wait just a—”

  The shaman staggered through the door, shifting into some sort of ibis, and took to the night skies.

  “Grandfather Gozreh damn that lizard! I should—”

  The thump-squelch of ponderous footsteps in the mud, and a high-pitched wheezing of animal fury, announced that her time had run out.

  They announced, too, who approached.

  The room was empty, save for the broken cross. Nowhere to hide. And even after Seyusth’s curative magics, Ameyanda didn’t think she had it in her to face the Gullet directly.

  Her frantic gaze alighted upon the shaman’s blood, only just beginning to seep into the saturated wooden floor. With no other choice, she dropped to her knees and began to arrange things just so…

  A grunt as he came through the door, a faint creak of wood beneath his feet. She knew what the walking avalanche of flesh must see: Her body, lying crumpled in the midst of a sizable blood pool, her stolen weapon lying beside her. Using techniques she’d learned long ago to avoid the sensitive ears of prey and predator both, she breathed lightly, softly. In the
feeble lighting, it should appear she didn’t breathe at all.

  She hoped.

  “Well, haven’t you been trouble?” the high, breathy voice asked from behind. “Not as ripe as I’d like, but you’ll still taste fine. And more of you to go around, with fewer mouths to feed.”

  She felt flabby fingers close around an ankle, lift in preparation to drag her from the room…

  Ameyanda rolled upright, stomach muscles screaming, and struck. The iron spike that had nailed Seyusth’s feet to the cross now plunged through Galgur’s own. The lumbering giant shrieked, a sound almost too high to hear, and crumpled, grasping reflexively at the sudden agony.

  The huntress’s other hand, clutching one of the sharpened brackets that had held the shaman’s arms, punched between those toothy ridges and down that screaming gullet. She felt things tear around her makeshift weapon, the skin of his throat quivering obscenely at the touch of the thing’s vile magics.

  “How does that taste, you motherless hyena?”

  Galgur managed a single, wet choke. Blood bubbled up around Ameyanda’s hand, and she yanked it back, leaving the cursed bracket behind.

  The room shook as the Gullet’s body rolled to the floor. Ameyanda decided to believe that her brief gasp was a result of that shuddering, and not a near-sob of relief at the creature’s death.

  All right, now what?

  She had no idea of how quickly the others would return, and she’d never find her way out of here wounded, in the dark, without Seyusth. So what could she possibly…

  Ameyanda studied the massive corpse, then the blade on the floor beside the puddle of blood, and heaved a thick sigh. In a day of sickening tasks, what’s one more?

  At least now she had somewhere to hide…

  ∗∗∗

  “I knew you would run.”

  Seyusth dropped through the branches, shifting out of bird-form as he landed with a muddy thump. “After what you told me, I knew you would see the sudden commotion as your opportunity. Perhaps even a gift from the spirits.”