Food for the Garden, Part One
I. The Rumor of Hope
The word of an Exile carried little weight in those days, but even the rumor of hope was enough to send men to their deaths in the terrible desert beyond the shores of paradise.
The Sentinels' River, named as such for the twin stone colossi that guarded the river, was a fertile plain that stretched for miles. Kappa turtles nested in the shade of banana trees, gazelle grazed on the teeming sea of vibrant berry bushes and grasses, and cassowaries in their colorful plumage honked and strutted up and down the cerulean river.
After surviving crucifixion and the haunted dunes of the Broken Highway, the Sentinels' River seemed a perfect sanctuary. Who would want to leave? Game was plentiful and fat, the water was clear, and the days were peaceful. Exiles, dirty and beaten and far from home, were more than happy to band together and build a new life here free from the horrors of the past.
Most of them, anyway.
At the foot of one of the Sentinels, a crop of brick and thatch huts had mushroomed up over time, serving as a way station for Exiles bound for the desert. Everyone who passed through the village had voiced their own reasons for leaving.
Some wanted to reclaim lost glory, others curious of what lie beyond the horizon and the sands. A few of the bold declared themselves kings and set off in search of power. The few Cimmerians that camped in the village were convinced that if they went far enough in one direction, they would find snow and ice and, perhaps, their ancestral home.
"All deserts must end," one particularly bronzed Cimmerian had told Cal. She had playfully laughed at him in the dim candlelight of what passed for a cantina in the village, not sure if he knew he was talking to a Stygian. Of course all deserts end, she had thought. Doesn't mean they won't kill you first.
Cal had spent two weeks in the unnamed village before she finally convinced a mercenary captain to let her join his merry band through the desert on the rumor of hope. Three days into the journey, she was questioning her eagerness to leave paradise.
The cannibals' ragged band had been tracking Cal's group since first light, hoping to roast an easy meal by dusk in their unholy fire pits. She had watched them watch her group from afar for hours. It was an easy thing, to spy back at them. They were not discreet. The black men skittered from jagged rock to jagged rock along the rim of the canyon wall, casting cautious glances down at the mercenaries, who seemed not the least concerned despite Cal's blooming fears.
"They will attack us," she said for the third time that morning to no one in particular. The group was idling under the shade of palm trees and banana fronds, taking a respite from the march, drinking deep from their skins and munching on foraged berries and dried gazelle steaks. The mercenary captain, lounging next to her, cast his grey eyes up to the black faces on the rim of the canyon.
"I have seen their kind before. Cravens." The last word was spat out with bits of gristle. "Man-eaters who would rather club their meal unconscious in the night than make an attack on armed men. I do not fear them."
Seeing the apprehension on Cal's face, he added, "Rest easy, woman. We will be at Maker's Village before nightfall at this pace. The Afghuli chieftain there is no friend of these man-eaters, trust me."
Cal took another look at the black faces watching her band from on high. She shivered from the thought of an old memory and pleaded again with the mercenary captain to leave the canyon floor and make for high ground.
The captain scoffed at her. "High ground? Why? They will not bother us. Let their bellies grumble. I dare them to break their pointed teeth on this," he said, slapping his steel breastplate with a plated gauntlet. Cal looked down at her own garb, a motley collection of riveted leather and thick cotton, and gently touched her exposed abdomen. Not the best protection, she thought. She had a bow, of course, a cheap wooden thing, and her falcata and ponaird, but they were nicked and spotted with rust. She had traded away everything she owned for the weapons, and was regretting the deal.
Looking around at the mercenaries, she felt naked compared to the array of steel pauldrons, targes, and spiked helms before her.
"Besides," the captain added, "unless Mitra himself blocks out the sun, we will roast on higher ground and do all the work for them. Better to stay in the cool walls of the canyon, close to the river."
"And what happens if they attack us?"
"We kill them," he said after an impatient sigh.
He mumbled an unkind comment about women and tore into his dried piece of steak, ending the conversation. Cal made a face and resigned herself to rest, but continued to watch the greedy faces above.
It had been a hastily arranged excursion. A drunken boast by a commanding presence, enough voices foolish enough to answer the call, and a few tugs of fermented kappa juice were all it took to make a gang of strangers march north in search of gaining favor with some tinpot warlord. It was also the only group, until now, that offered steel as protection against the dangers of travel. One group of Exiles had left with little more than stone hatchets and crude spears, seeking treasure and power. Another left with only a single dagger to share among eight hands.
And then there were the Mitra lovers.
Before Cal and the mercenaries, the last group to leave had been some foolhardy pilgrims of Mitra. They marched out proudly enough, armed with cotton and piety, singing songs and laughing at the sun. Their leader had promised that their god would guide and protect their way through the desert to a hallowed sanctuary, a place directly blessed with His favor.
When Cal and her group had passed their mangled corpses outside of a hyena den a day into their own trek, she had laughed along with the mercenaries at the arrogance of their faith. The mercenary captain had put it plain enough that afternoon. "They were never meant to be more than food for the garden."
Food for the garden. The words lingered in Cal's head, and disturbed her sleep that night.
Now as each hour passed under the gaze of the cannibals, she was feeling more and more like the pilgrims must have felt in their final moments. Hunted. Desperate. Scared. If only those feelings would cross the air into the hearts of the mercenaries around her. The tension pulling her heart apart did not seem to arrest the mercenaries in the least. They japed and laughed and punched each other all around her, but Cal had never felt so alone. These were hard men, their hearts turned to stone long before their arrival in this forsaken land. What were a few craven cannibals to these career killers?
Question after question slammed into the front of Cal's skull, aching to escape and spread dissension and doubt among the ranks. Memories of home, of a past she wasn't sure was real, flooded her head and set her on the verge of tears. She forced herself to bite down on her tongue inside her mouth. She let the pain remind her she was still standing, let it take her away from the riverbank, the canyon, the Exiled Lands. Above her the cannibals watched, and followed.
The bright noonlight had just scared away all the shadows of the canyon when a cry came down the line. An Hyrkanian in the middle of the group with a fierce black beard had suddenly grown an arrow from his neck. He gurgled and clutched futilely at his neck as slick red blood spilled onto the sands of the riverbank. A youth, brash and blonde under his blue turban, dove to assist, but it was too late for the Hyrkanian. The youth lifted up red-slicked hands, his eyes wide and uncertain of what to do next. A bronzed Cimmerian with a square mane of raven hair--the same man from the cantina, Cal noticed--strode over to the youth and pulled him off the corpse and threw him back toward the group.
The mercenary captain barked an order, and shields rose to the blue strip of sky high above the walls of the canyon. A second arrow whistled past Cal and splashed into the shallows. A third landed harmlessly with a thunk in the targe of an old Shemite. Then the deluge came--two dozen Darfari cannibals armed, literally, to their filed-down teeth.
The cannibals, black as midnight and dressed in bone ornaments and loincloths, slid down the steep slopes of the canyon in a frenzy, bone cleavers and whips and clubs waving wildly about their heads. The captain barked orders left and right, and the mercenaries obeyed without hesitation. The grizzled fighters locked shields with their backs to the river and began launching missiles at the mob. They were outnumbered two to one, but the mercenaries were disciplined and dangerous in formation.
Two cannibals went down to javelins and arrows as they crossed the fertile stretch of grass and palm between the canyon slope and the riverbank, and then the battle was joined. The cannibals impaled themselves on spear and sword alike, slashing their sharpened cleavers at the mercenaries' helms and necks above the shield wall. The blonde youth did not raise his shield in time to deflect a bone cleaver, and his beautiful locks were split in twain, along with his skull.
Cal was so stunned that her prophecy had come true that she had not joined the others in formation. She stood apart, an easy target, her bow hanging limply in her hands. A cannibal noticed and broke away from the fray to dare feast on her flesh alone, his yellowed cleaver slashing with a madman's fury.
The motion was enough to snap Cal from her trance. She nocked and loosed an arrow in one fluid, trained motion. It crossed the divide and slammed home into the chest of the oncoming cannibal. He barely flinched from the intrusion and continued his charge. "Food!" was the only cry she understood as bloodlust rose to flush her skin.
No, she thought angrily.
Cal swung her bow and tangled it up with the cleaver as it bore down on her slender form. She twisted with her whole body and disarmed the man, but lost her bow in the process, dashed into the shallows of the river. Quickly she skipped sideways and drew her steel falcata and iron poniard from her girdle. The cannibal threw a right cross at Cal's unarmored skull. She sliced off his hand with an upward slash of the falcata, the poniard following through to slam into the man's hip. Cal ripped the poniard out and the cannibal fell to his knees in the sands of the riverbank, screaming. His clenched hand plopped into shallows, darkening the waters.
The violent crack of nearby whip stung Cal's ears, and the dying man was forgotten. A second cannibal had broken from the bloody fray, whip and bone cudgel in hand. Quickly judging her distance from the second cannibal, Cal skipped backward just in time to avoid the whip's second strike.
The cannibal moved to flank, and Cal poked at him with her falcata to keep him back. He smiled a mouth of filed fangs and thrust his cudgel forward. Cal deflected the strike with ease, but the black man sneered as Cal suddenly realized her blades were apart at her sides and again he sent his whip out, looping it around Cal's unguarded neck. When the man's muscled arm snapped back and tightened the cinch, Cal lost vision for half a heartbeat. Something inside her kept her on her feet, but she dropped her falcata on instinct to grasp at the whip.
Panic overtook her bloodlust, and she clawed the whip with her right hand, slashing out the cannibal with her off-handed poniard. Too short to reach him.
He danced around her, pulling her this way and that way among the lush grasses of the riverbank for what seemed like eternity. In the moment, the bloody mess of mercenaries and cannibals seemed far away, something else. Something beyond the horizon.
Cal's world became a tunnel between her and the sneering man-eater. Her neck muscles tightened to cords of wood. She dared not breathe, and continued to stab at the cannibal to little effect. The man-eater was content to suffocate her, dance away, and keep her separated from her confederates. Cal hated the thought of being skewered and roasted. She was Stygian, proud and noble and ancient, not some damned Argossean sailor drunk in an alley somewhere in the Black Kingdoms. She would not go easy. I am not food.
The bloodlust returned at the thought, and it flushed her skin darkly. She feigned a tug, and when the man-eater reflexively pulled back, Cal lurched forward. The man-eater lost his balance and went flat on his ass, losing his whip and cudgel as he tried to catch his unexpected fall. He splashed down in the shallows near his disarmed and now dead crony.
Cal was on hands and knees in the damp silt of the riverbank, but the cinch was loose, she could breathe free again, and the bone cudgel had landed closer than her poniard. Before the man-eater could process the shift in fortune, Cal pounced on the cudgel, sprang upright, and cracked the man across the face with his own weapon. He was out cold before his head splashed into the ankle-deep water.
It was over. Cal sucked greedily at the air in long, heavy draws. She got to her knees and leaned back, embracing the brilliant azure sky above. When her vision ceased to blur, she looked in the direction of the bloody fray. Neither cannibal nor mercenary stirred. They were like the rocks of the river, the water simply breaking around them.
The once spotless emerald bushes and golden palm trunks were dashed with bright red stains. Filth and bile from half a dozen spilled intestines darkened the sands up and down the riverbank. A vulture appeared in the sky, eager and alert to the smell of death.
Cal sat down on the edge of the shallows, and put her fingers to her neck. She flinched from the pain. That'll be a bruise. Just then, a moan rose from the man-eater she had pounded with the cudgel. Alive. Cal's skin was still flush with bloodlust. She got up, grabbed the man-eater's whip, tied it to his foot, and dragged him to the narrow shade of a nearby palm tree.
She would take her time with this one.
The word of an Exile carried little weight in those days, but even the rumor of hope was enough to send men to their deaths in the terrible desert beyond the shores of paradise.
The Sentinels' River, named as such for the twin stone colossi that guarded the river, was a fertile plain that stretched for miles. Kappa turtles nested in the shade of banana trees, gazelle grazed on the teeming sea of vibrant berry bushes and grasses, and cassowaries in their colorful plumage honked and strutted up and down the cerulean river.
After surviving crucifixion and the haunted dunes of the Broken Highway, the Sentinels' River seemed a perfect sanctuary. Who would want to leave? Game was plentiful and fat, the water was clear, and the days were peaceful. Exiles, dirty and beaten and far from home, were more than happy to band together and build a new life here free from the horrors of the past.
Most of them, anyway.
At the foot of one of the Sentinels, a crop of brick and thatch huts had mushroomed up over time, serving as a way station for Exiles bound for the desert. Everyone who passed through the village had voiced their own reasons for leaving.
Some wanted to reclaim lost glory, others curious of what lie beyond the horizon and the sands. A few of the bold declared themselves kings and set off in search of power. The few Cimmerians that camped in the village were convinced that if they went far enough in one direction, they would find snow and ice and, perhaps, their ancestral home.
"All deserts must end," one particularly bronzed Cimmerian had told Cal. She had playfully laughed at him in the dim candlelight of what passed for a cantina in the village, not sure if he knew he was talking to a Stygian. Of course all deserts end, she had thought. Doesn't mean they won't kill you first.
Cal had spent two weeks in the unnamed village before she finally convinced a mercenary captain to let her join his merry band through the desert on the rumor of hope. Three days into the journey, she was questioning her eagerness to leave paradise.
---
The cannibals' ragged band had been tracking Cal's group since first light, hoping to roast an easy meal by dusk in their unholy fire pits. She had watched them watch her group from afar for hours. It was an easy thing, to spy back at them. They were not discreet. The black men skittered from jagged rock to jagged rock along the rim of the canyon wall, casting cautious glances down at the mercenaries, who seemed not the least concerned despite Cal's blooming fears.
"They will attack us," she said for the third time that morning to no one in particular. The group was idling under the shade of palm trees and banana fronds, taking a respite from the march, drinking deep from their skins and munching on foraged berries and dried gazelle steaks. The mercenary captain, lounging next to her, cast his grey eyes up to the black faces on the rim of the canyon.
"I have seen their kind before. Cravens." The last word was spat out with bits of gristle. "Man-eaters who would rather club their meal unconscious in the night than make an attack on armed men. I do not fear them."
Seeing the apprehension on Cal's face, he added, "Rest easy, woman. We will be at Maker's Village before nightfall at this pace. The Afghuli chieftain there is no friend of these man-eaters, trust me."
Cal took another look at the black faces watching her band from on high. She shivered from the thought of an old memory and pleaded again with the mercenary captain to leave the canyon floor and make for high ground.
The captain scoffed at her. "High ground? Why? They will not bother us. Let their bellies grumble. I dare them to break their pointed teeth on this," he said, slapping his steel breastplate with a plated gauntlet. Cal looked down at her own garb, a motley collection of riveted leather and thick cotton, and gently touched her exposed abdomen. Not the best protection, she thought. She had a bow, of course, a cheap wooden thing, and her falcata and ponaird, but they were nicked and spotted with rust. She had traded away everything she owned for the weapons, and was regretting the deal.
Looking around at the mercenaries, she felt naked compared to the array of steel pauldrons, targes, and spiked helms before her.
"Besides," the captain added, "unless Mitra himself blocks out the sun, we will roast on higher ground and do all the work for them. Better to stay in the cool walls of the canyon, close to the river."
"And what happens if they attack us?"
"We kill them," he said after an impatient sigh.
He mumbled an unkind comment about women and tore into his dried piece of steak, ending the conversation. Cal made a face and resigned herself to rest, but continued to watch the greedy faces above.
It had been a hastily arranged excursion. A drunken boast by a commanding presence, enough voices foolish enough to answer the call, and a few tugs of fermented kappa juice were all it took to make a gang of strangers march north in search of gaining favor with some tinpot warlord. It was also the only group, until now, that offered steel as protection against the dangers of travel. One group of Exiles had left with little more than stone hatchets and crude spears, seeking treasure and power. Another left with only a single dagger to share among eight hands.
And then there were the Mitra lovers.
Before Cal and the mercenaries, the last group to leave had been some foolhardy pilgrims of Mitra. They marched out proudly enough, armed with cotton and piety, singing songs and laughing at the sun. Their leader had promised that their god would guide and protect their way through the desert to a hallowed sanctuary, a place directly blessed with His favor.
When Cal and her group had passed their mangled corpses outside of a hyena den a day into their own trek, she had laughed along with the mercenaries at the arrogance of their faith. The mercenary captain had put it plain enough that afternoon. "They were never meant to be more than food for the garden."
Food for the garden. The words lingered in Cal's head, and disturbed her sleep that night.
Now as each hour passed under the gaze of the cannibals, she was feeling more and more like the pilgrims must have felt in their final moments. Hunted. Desperate. Scared. If only those feelings would cross the air into the hearts of the mercenaries around her. The tension pulling her heart apart did not seem to arrest the mercenaries in the least. They japed and laughed and punched each other all around her, but Cal had never felt so alone. These were hard men, their hearts turned to stone long before their arrival in this forsaken land. What were a few craven cannibals to these career killers?
Question after question slammed into the front of Cal's skull, aching to escape and spread dissension and doubt among the ranks. Memories of home, of a past she wasn't sure was real, flooded her head and set her on the verge of tears. She forced herself to bite down on her tongue inside her mouth. She let the pain remind her she was still standing, let it take her away from the riverbank, the canyon, the Exiled Lands. Above her the cannibals watched, and followed.
The bright noonlight had just scared away all the shadows of the canyon when a cry came down the line. An Hyrkanian in the middle of the group with a fierce black beard had suddenly grown an arrow from his neck. He gurgled and clutched futilely at his neck as slick red blood spilled onto the sands of the riverbank. A youth, brash and blonde under his blue turban, dove to assist, but it was too late for the Hyrkanian. The youth lifted up red-slicked hands, his eyes wide and uncertain of what to do next. A bronzed Cimmerian with a square mane of raven hair--the same man from the cantina, Cal noticed--strode over to the youth and pulled him off the corpse and threw him back toward the group.
The mercenary captain barked an order, and shields rose to the blue strip of sky high above the walls of the canyon. A second arrow whistled past Cal and splashed into the shallows. A third landed harmlessly with a thunk in the targe of an old Shemite. Then the deluge came--two dozen Darfari cannibals armed, literally, to their filed-down teeth.
---
The cannibals, black as midnight and dressed in bone ornaments and loincloths, slid down the steep slopes of the canyon in a frenzy, bone cleavers and whips and clubs waving wildly about their heads. The captain barked orders left and right, and the mercenaries obeyed without hesitation. The grizzled fighters locked shields with their backs to the river and began launching missiles at the mob. They were outnumbered two to one, but the mercenaries were disciplined and dangerous in formation.
Two cannibals went down to javelins and arrows as they crossed the fertile stretch of grass and palm between the canyon slope and the riverbank, and then the battle was joined. The cannibals impaled themselves on spear and sword alike, slashing their sharpened cleavers at the mercenaries' helms and necks above the shield wall. The blonde youth did not raise his shield in time to deflect a bone cleaver, and his beautiful locks were split in twain, along with his skull.
Cal was so stunned that her prophecy had come true that she had not joined the others in formation. She stood apart, an easy target, her bow hanging limply in her hands. A cannibal noticed and broke away from the fray to dare feast on her flesh alone, his yellowed cleaver slashing with a madman's fury.
The motion was enough to snap Cal from her trance. She nocked and loosed an arrow in one fluid, trained motion. It crossed the divide and slammed home into the chest of the oncoming cannibal. He barely flinched from the intrusion and continued his charge. "Food!" was the only cry she understood as bloodlust rose to flush her skin.
No, she thought angrily.
Cal swung her bow and tangled it up with the cleaver as it bore down on her slender form. She twisted with her whole body and disarmed the man, but lost her bow in the process, dashed into the shallows of the river. Quickly she skipped sideways and drew her steel falcata and iron poniard from her girdle. The cannibal threw a right cross at Cal's unarmored skull. She sliced off his hand with an upward slash of the falcata, the poniard following through to slam into the man's hip. Cal ripped the poniard out and the cannibal fell to his knees in the sands of the riverbank, screaming. His clenched hand plopped into shallows, darkening the waters.
The violent crack of nearby whip stung Cal's ears, and the dying man was forgotten. A second cannibal had broken from the bloody fray, whip and bone cudgel in hand. Quickly judging her distance from the second cannibal, Cal skipped backward just in time to avoid the whip's second strike.
The cannibal moved to flank, and Cal poked at him with her falcata to keep him back. He smiled a mouth of filed fangs and thrust his cudgel forward. Cal deflected the strike with ease, but the black man sneered as Cal suddenly realized her blades were apart at her sides and again he sent his whip out, looping it around Cal's unguarded neck. When the man's muscled arm snapped back and tightened the cinch, Cal lost vision for half a heartbeat. Something inside her kept her on her feet, but she dropped her falcata on instinct to grasp at the whip.
Panic overtook her bloodlust, and she clawed the whip with her right hand, slashing out the cannibal with her off-handed poniard. Too short to reach him.
He danced around her, pulling her this way and that way among the lush grasses of the riverbank for what seemed like eternity. In the moment, the bloody mess of mercenaries and cannibals seemed far away, something else. Something beyond the horizon.
Cal's world became a tunnel between her and the sneering man-eater. Her neck muscles tightened to cords of wood. She dared not breathe, and continued to stab at the cannibal to little effect. The man-eater was content to suffocate her, dance away, and keep her separated from her confederates. Cal hated the thought of being skewered and roasted. She was Stygian, proud and noble and ancient, not some damned Argossean sailor drunk in an alley somewhere in the Black Kingdoms. She would not go easy. I am not food.
The bloodlust returned at the thought, and it flushed her skin darkly. She feigned a tug, and when the man-eater reflexively pulled back, Cal lurched forward. The man-eater lost his balance and went flat on his ass, losing his whip and cudgel as he tried to catch his unexpected fall. He splashed down in the shallows near his disarmed and now dead crony.
Cal was on hands and knees in the damp silt of the riverbank, but the cinch was loose, she could breathe free again, and the bone cudgel had landed closer than her poniard. Before the man-eater could process the shift in fortune, Cal pounced on the cudgel, sprang upright, and cracked the man across the face with his own weapon. He was out cold before his head splashed into the ankle-deep water.
---
It was over. Cal sucked greedily at the air in long, heavy draws. She got to her knees and leaned back, embracing the brilliant azure sky above. When her vision ceased to blur, she looked in the direction of the bloody fray. Neither cannibal nor mercenary stirred. They were like the rocks of the river, the water simply breaking around them.
The once spotless emerald bushes and golden palm trunks were dashed with bright red stains. Filth and bile from half a dozen spilled intestines darkened the sands up and down the riverbank. A vulture appeared in the sky, eager and alert to the smell of death.
Cal sat down on the edge of the shallows, and put her fingers to her neck. She flinched from the pain. That'll be a bruise. Just then, a moan rose from the man-eater she had pounded with the cudgel. Alive. Cal's skin was still flush with bloodlust. She got up, grabbed the man-eater's whip, tied it to his foot, and dragged him to the narrow shade of a nearby palm tree.
She would take her time with this one.
