One of the freketes on a roof leaped into the air and, holding its wings angled up vertically, slammed down on the structure. The houses, Rialus knew, were built around a framework of pinewood and whalebone, layered with a latticework of beams and skins and covered with turf. The house being attacked was solid enough that the frekete needed to leap several times before it punched through. It half disappeared inside. Only its wings protruded as the rest of its body twisted and slashed around inside.
The others went wild. One shattered another roof. Another punched in a door and shoved an arm in. The first to break through climbed out of the wreckage, a flailing body clenched in its jaws. When its upper body was clear of the rooftop, it grabbed the person in one hand and hurled him out toward the onrushing Auldek. The man screamed as he tumbled through the air and crashed down. Howlk slammed his spear into the man’s abdomen, pinning him to the ground for the moment it took before he strode over him, yanking the weapon out as he did so.
The Auldek reached the village as the inhabitants began to emerge. A man burst through a door and ran roaring into the open. He carried an ax in one hand, raised above his head not so much in an attack as in a gesture of warning. Rialus could tell it was not a war ax. It was one for chipping away ice. Devoth, who was standing directly in the man’s path, spun to one side. As the man passed him, he swung his sword around, angled it up, and severed the man’s arm at the elbow. It and the ax looped away. The man ran forward a few strides, waving his stump as if it still held the ax. Devoth let him turn, spraying blood in a circle around him. He let him understand a portion of what was happening, then he sliced his legs out from under him.
Other men followed, to variations of the same fate. Women and children died the same way. The villagers fought as best they could, or they begged for mercy. The Auldek were like cats playing with baby mice. When the villagers stood still, the Auldek smiled and laughed and said incomprehensible things to them. When they dropped to their knees or ran or lashed out, the Auldek slashed them to pieces. Sabeer was just as gleeful as Devoth or Howlk. Menteus Nemre worked his own bloody havoc. He dove into houses and chased out the inhabitants. He shoved them savagely toward waiting Auldek, slicing to pieces any who ran in a whirling dance of butchery, his face expressionless, his white locks wild and living as he moved, whipping about like snakes searching for victims to bite.
It did not last long. Yet it went on forever. All in the settlement-men and women, old and young, even a few children-were hunted out and slaughtered. All of them. This could happen to Gurta, he thought. This could be what happens to my-He did not let himself finish the thought. It lingered, incomplete, within him.
The last few died within a howling circle of monsters dancing around them, gleefully cutting them down one after another. Until they were all gone. All dead. The Auldek held to that circle, drawing in closer over the bodies, their weapons finally lowered. The freketes already looked bored. They rummaged through the debris of the houses. One began stoking a fire that had spread from a chimney. The others took up the task, caving in whole walls to watch them ignite.
Rialus hovered at the margin of the carnage. It was like he was standing too close to the fires. The blaze of shame scorched his face even as the raging winter froze his back. The people of Tavirith were not warriors. They had been whalers, hunters, traders, women and children, as poor and simple as any in the Known World. Why kill them? For what purpose? What sense did it make? Didn’t they see what they had done? He wanted to find Devoth and ask him, show him how vile this all was. The work of cowards. An act to be ashamed of for the rest of his eternal life.
That was why he stepped forward across the blood-splattered stones. That was why he approached the circle of Auldek backs. That was why he moved around them, searching for Devoth. That was why he was right in among them when he understood what they were doing. In a crack between the huddled bodies, Devoth worked over a slain villager. The furs and clothing had been cut from his body. Devoth slid the point of his short dagger up along the man’s thigh, slicing away a strip of flesh that he then held dangling from his fingers. He stared at it, the other Auldek silent around him. Their blood joy was gone. This was something else.
“Do it,” Calrach urged. “Believe me, and do it. This is not as in Ushen Brae. This is a new world for us. I tell you, do this thing. Your soul will rejoice.”
Devoth’s eyes moved from face to face. He had never looked so circumspect, so unsure of himself. But when he acted he did so decisively. He held up the strip of bloody flesh and bit it. He had to rip off a morsel gripped in his teeth, with a slice of the knife and a sideways jerk of his head. Immediately, he thrust the rest of the flesh up for someone else to take. Howlk was first. The others followed.
For a few minutes there was no sound but their chewing. That and the crackling of the fires and the screech of gulls that had suddenly materialized; the crash of the waves over the stones and the wind buffeting about Rialus’s head; and the strange calls the freketes exchanged, like some language of cackling grunts. And the roar of something that was not quite sound but that felt like a storm building inside his skull. Somehow, a sort of silence contained all these things, broken only when Devoth began to laugh.
“Yes,” the Auldek said. “I think this is yes. Something is here.”
Howlk cupped his groin. “I can feel it here. I can feeeellllll it!” He stretched the word out and lifted it into a shout. The other Auldek responded in kind. One after another confirming that they felt it, too, whatever it was.
Calrach danced from one blood-splattered diner to another, clapping and patting them on the back. “I told you so! I know what you’re feeling now. I felt it, too. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t believe it. I thought, ‘What’s this I’m feeling? What’s come to life down there?’ But I learned. I learned and I brought you here to give you life back. Tell me you feel it!”
They did.
Rialus turned and ran. He got only a few steps before he lurched over and vomited. As he crouched there on all fours, his insides escaping him, he was more miserable than ever he had been in a life filled with misery. He would not have thought it before, but oh how he loved the people of the Known World. They were his people. His! Even these villagers were his people. He wanted to rise and run from body to body, kissing their faces and pouring his grief over them. But he couldn’t. He had failed them. It was his fault. These monsters were eating human flesh! They were vile, vile, vile. He was vile for even the brief moments he had taken pleasure in their company. Sabeer. She was eating this flesh, too. He had not seen her, but he knew she would. She would eat him if the desire took her.
And what now? After watching this slaughter was he to climb back on that winged beast, with Devoth again pressed against his back? Was he to sit with them as they told the tale to the others, stirred their blood, promised them more was coming for them all? Would he be beside them still when the bulk of the invasion arrived to destroy everything about the world that he had ever known?
No. Better to die. Right now. Here. All he had to do was attack them. He never had! In all his days with them he had never fought! The truth of it stunned and sickened him. All he had to do was grab one of their daggers and stab. They would kill him, but maybe he would even take one of them with him. Or just take one more life out of them. That would be something.