“I already know what it is,” Gariath muttered. He had talked to enough ghosts to know.
“Because you are Rhega,” Shalake said. “And we are Shen. We are the same, you and I. To the humans, it will always be a mystery, something to be feared. As will you. Have they never looked at you as we have? Have they never stood here with you and spoke to you like a true creature?”
Gariath tried to remember the last time they had spoken like that, without fear or terror in their voices.
“No,” Shalake said. “They are weak things, Rhega. You are amongst the Shen now. All we have is each other. And our glorious death.”
While not quite certain how lizardman anatomy worked, Gariath dreaded to think what was going on beneath Shalake’s loincloth, given the excited quaver in his voice.
The lizardman positively beamed from beneath his scales. His eyes were alight with glorious stories. His heart thundered with memory. His smile glistened with bloodlust reflected in every tooth.
And none of it was his.
That story was someone’s else. That memory died on the battlefield. That bloodlust belonged somewhere far away and long ago.
That face Shalake wore, his face, belonged to someone who had earned it, not someone who had dug it out of an earth glutted on stories and blood.
It belonged to a Rhega.
“I’m leaving,” he grunted.
“Rest well. Eat well,” Shalake said. “Tomorrow, we die well and see our ancestors.”
“Yeah.”
Gariath trudged across the sands, head bowed, feet heavy.
He didn’t bother to count the steps.
Dreadaeleon chewed absently on the blackened fish, not sure whether his mouth was open or not. He downed a swig of water from a skin, heedless of the belch that followed. He wasn’t even aware that he seemed to have stopped blinking. The entirety of his attention was focused on his dinner companions.
And the Shen shared his sentiment. Seven yellow eyes, bright against the fire between them, stared back at him. Two of them, the ones whose lids drooped just slightly and were angled down at the boy, belonged to the towering Shen called Jenaji. Four more belonged to the two Shen flanking him, each of them bearing more black stripes than red as warpaint-something Dreadaeleon began to suspect indicated a role of leadership, based on the way they sat apart from the rest.
The seventh belonged to the lanky thing called Yaike, a Shen who never seemed to leave his bow behind and never seemed to stop glaring. Admittedly, it was difficult to glare with only one eye, but damn if Yaike wasn’t trying his hardest to.
Slowly, as though unaware that they were staring back, Dreadaeleon leaned over to the woman beside him and, in what he thought was a whisper, asked.
“Is this as incredibly weird as it feels, or is it just me?”
Asper made a pointed note of keeping her attentions focused only on the fish skewer in her hands. Dreadaeleon acted like he didn’t notice her discomfort.
“I mean, waiting to die, sitting next to a bunch of lizards that were ready to help us along with that up until a gang of netherlings decided to come and now they’re sitting here with us, also waiting to die and-”
“We speak your language, you know,” Jenaji suddenly interjected.
“Oh,” Dreadaeleon said, blinking. “Well, you hadn’t said anything all night, so I assumed only a few-”
“All warwatchers learn your tongue. It is part of our duty.” Jenaji leaned back. “I was using the silence to think.”
“About what?”
“The battle.”
“What about it?”
“Does that really need to be answered?”
Dreadaeleon took another bite of fish and nodded.
“About all my brothers, all my sisters, all the Shen I’ve lived with,” Jenaji replied with a sigh, “all for this battle. It takes silence to try and think why we do what we do in the name of duty.”
“What about the others?”
Jenaji glanced at the Shen seated around him and shrugged. “Maybe they just don’t like you.”
“Shiat-ay,” Yaike grunted.
“Sorry. Yaike wants it to be known that he definitely doesn’t like you.”
“Why didn’t he tell me himself? Can’t he speak the tongue?”
“He can. He just doesn’t like to.”
“Na-ah,” Yaike suddenly interjected. “Atta-wah, siat-nai, no-wah-ah tanna Shen.”
“What was that?” Asper asked, finally curious enough to look up.
“He said it’s a Shen’s duty to speak the Shen’s language,” Jenaji replied, plucking another fish skewer from the fire and taking a bite of it. “That’s not what we were told, but Yaike is the kind of Shen who likes to do a lot of things that aren’t necessary.”
“Well, he’s got a point, doesn’t he?” Asper suggested. “You. . warwatchers, is it? You’re the leaders of your. .” She frowned, searching for the words. “Tribes? Clan?”
“Shen.”
“Leaders of the Shen, right,” she said. “Shouldn’t it fall to you to protect your people’s heritage? Your culture? I mean, you speak for your people, don’t you?”
“The Shen have not spoken in some time,” Jenaji replied. “We have only a few words to say a few things. We use your tongue only to ask questions of you before we kill you. A warwatcher does not lead through words or through life.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
Jenaji reached up and patted the bow on his back.
“My heritage.”
He traced the warpaint on his body, a line for each life he had taken.
“My culture.”
He stomped a foot on the earth, old and dead.
“My people.”
“So, everything about you revolves around death,” Asper said, voice souring.
“All the important things.”
“No medicine? No arts? No traditions?”
“We have those. To fight longer, to celebrate the kill, to remember the dead.”
“How can a society live on those?”
“When the mortal armies freed us from Ulbecetonth, we took our oaths. The lives of our fathers, our brothers, our sons; all were offered up to guard Ulbecetonth. We do not live. We serve the oaths.”
“But what about your children? What about your trade? What about villages, religion, stories?”
“Our children are born dead. Our trade is death. Our villages are graveyards, we worship there and we pluck our stories from the cold, dead earth.”
“So. . what? You just sit here, killing people until you die yourself?”
The Shen, save for Jenaji, nodded firmly in response.
“Huh,” Dreadaeleon chimed in. “That’s stupid.”
Only Jenaji nodded.
Asper elbowed Dread firmly, adding a scolding glare to accompany it. Dreadaeleon shot her one back, save with a little more confusion, as he rubbed his side.
“Well, it is,” he protested.
Yaike leaned forward, muttered something to the Shen in their own tongue, and they rose in reply.
“Shalake calls,” Jenaji said curtly. “We go.”
“Is there a plan, then?” Asper called after him as he and the other Shen stalked away. “Do we know what we’re going to do?”
“We know what we’re going to do,” Jenaji said. “Do what humans do and try to survive.”
“But why?” she demanded, rising to her feet. “We can do more together than we can apart, surely.” The Shen said nothing as they turned and stalked away. She looked around for support. “Right?”
Dreadaeleon shrugged, took another bite of fish. Asper watched Jenaji as he disappeared into the crowd of Shen.
In silence.
There was something to it, though. It was not a serene silence of meditation, nor a tense, fearful silence. It was a heavy, weary silence, like there were words to say, words that had been rehearsed and repeated so many times no one saw much of a point in reiterating them.
She wasn’t sure what they were. They probably didn’t involve the words “goodbye,” “love,” or “forever.” “Kill,” “die,” and “through the rectum,” maybe.