Chet tried not to think about where they were headed, these games, but instead of escape. He glanced at the rusting chain again, at the pins holding it to the cart, and felt sure, when the moment was right, he could tear it loose. He just need that moment.
“From where do you hail, Chet?”
“What?”
“Where is it you come from?”
“Alabama, mostly.”
“Alabama? Hmm, is that from the new world? The Americas?”
Chet nodded.
“I come from Africa, the Kingdom of Nri. It is there that I first served the great goddess, Oya. My whole life was dedicated to her. And then, when the angels drove her beneath, I took my own life so that I might follow, that I would have the honor of serving her too, in death.”
Neither Chet nor Ana seemed to know what to say to that.
Ado looked to Ana. “And you, Ana. Are you from the Americas?”
“Yeah, Puerto Rico.”
“It seems many of the souls arriving in Styga come from the Americas. I believe the doors from earth above must be aligned somehow to the cities along the River Styx. But this is just a guess, one of many ponderings on the workings of this realm. My great goddess, Oya, she said I spend too much time contemplating things that do not matter. Trying to find logic in a world with none.” He laughed. “She said chaos is the only truth down here.”
The valley of bones fell behind and the clouds settle in, turning the landscape gray. A light drizzle began to fall.
“Is there no sun, Ado?” Ana asked. “Something besides these damn clouds?”
Ado looked up. “Mother Eye. She and her children are above. When the clouds are thin you will see her watching over all. When she sleeps . . . the world goes dark.”
“An eye, huh? Why not?” Ana shook her head. “And those?” She pointed to what appeared to be a row of jagged mountain peaks, only they jabbed downward from the clouds.
“It is the same above as below. On a clear day one can see the land above us, and even after being here hundreds of years, it is still a fearful sight. Many of the mountain peaks touch, like giant teeth, connecting the realms. I have spoken to those who have climbed up one mountain and then down another.”
“So we’re in a giant mouth full of jagged teeth with an eyeball glaring at us,” Ana said. “That’s just wonderful.”
“Some say that we are in a great cavern beneath the earth above,” Ado continued. “I do not believe that. The earth above could never hold all of the nether realms. They are far too vast. Great Oya, she said that the netherworlds are infinite. I like that. It gives one hope that somewhere out there, perhaps just beyond the next hill, lies a place of peace and tranquility.”
Ado continued talking, seemed to be full of stories about his goddess, about his travels. Chet came to enjoy hearing the man talk, found his deep voice soothing, but as the miles dragged on even Ado ran out of things to say. The rain continued to fall, turning the dirt underfoot to mud, the slippery muck sucking at their feet, making the going difficult. They trudged along to the drum of the golem’s heavy footsteps, punctuated with the occasional blast of steam and ash. Chet found himself fighting to keep his mind off Trish, away from hopelessness and despair. “Ado,” Chet asked, hoping to get the man talking again, “how’d you end up here? I mean as Veles’s slave.”
Ado started to answer, hesitated, struggling to find the right words. “Because I am a thief,” he blurted out. “And not a very good one. I tried to steal from Veles.” He met Chet’s eyes. “And I would do it again. I would do anything for her. For my goddess, Oya.” He was quiet a minute. “My soul belongs to her. She is my moon and stars. But like so many of the ancients, she is fading. A hard truth to face, but I must, as there are jackals everywhere . . . these godless souls, demons, and even other gods . . . watching, waiting their chance to devour her. And that is why I stole from Veles . . . for her . . . to help her.”
“I’m sorry, Ado,” Chet said and sighed, wishing he’d just kept to himself.
“Yes, I am sorry as well. Sorry that I am not a better thief. I can only hope—”
Seet was there again, walking in step with Chet along with two guards. The two guards stared at Chet as though he were a circus freak. “So that’s really him?” one asked.
“Yes,” Seet replied. “The horsekiller.”
“Seems Veles would’ve skinned him alive,” the guard said.
“He is saving him for the games. Him and the girl.”
The guards nodded, giving Chet and Ana a look of deep pity.
Seet held up the lash to Chet. “Agony just wishes to say hello.” The goblin struck again and again. Chet raised an arm, trying to ward off the blows. The lash tore open his sleeve, biting into his flesh.
“Stop it!” Ana cried. “Stop it!”
Seet did stop, his cold eyes fixing on Ana. “Are you his guard dog?”
Ana didn’t answer.
He leaned in close, tapping her forehead with the hilt of the lash. “Agony thinks you are a bad dog.” Seet struck Ana across the face with the bludgeon.
She let out a cry.
Seet snapped the lash across her back, then struck her again, but this time Chet caught a handful of the lash—held it. The goblin man tried to yank it free. “Let go,” he snarled.
Chet didn’t.
“Let go.” Seet’s cold facade cracked and Chet saw the mounting fury. Seet yanked, tugged, and suddenly Chet did let go, sending the creature tumbling back. Seet fell, landing with a wet splat in the thick mud.
The guards laughed.
Seet’s black eyes flared. He started to his feet when a whistle blew ahead. The golem came to a stop and men began shouting.
“What now?” one of the guards said as they rushed away.
Seet snatched his lash out of the mud and scrambled to his feet, glowering at Chet. “That will cost you much flesh,” he said before running off toward the clamor.
Chet grabbed the chain, shoved one of the worn links over the pin, and gave it a twist. It held. He twisted harder.
Ado put a hand on his. “Chet, no. Not here.”
“I’m getting out.”
“There is nowhere to go. It is a maze of caves and cliffs. There are things that will eat you whole out there. You will have no chance unarmed and alone.”
“Not going to be unarmed,” Chet muttered under his breath. “Gonna get my fucking knife back.” He gave the chain another twist, felt it give, and checked for guards—they were all up ahead. He noticed a man, one of the ones shoveling coal, staring intently down at him from the cart. His face was black with soot and partially wrapped in a rag, but Chet thought there was something familiar about his eyes.
Seet was yelling again—heading back.
Chet bore down on the chain link, gritting his teeth as it bit into his fingers—still it held.
Seet led four guards their way. They dashed up to the first row of slaves and began unlocking their pins. Seet unlatched the two rows of slaves in front of them, then, to Chet’s surprise, he unlatched Chet’s row. Chet found himself being led up the line by heavily armed guards. They passed the golem and Chet saw the problem. One of the lone carts had slid into a ditch, one wheel now hanging over the steep ledge, the runoff threatening to drag it away. A length of rope ran from its rear axle, and a handful of guards were struggling to pull it from the muck.
“There!” Seet shouted. “Grab the rope! Pull!”
The slaves fell in, snatching hold.
Chet hesitated, his eyes darting to Seet, the belt, the knife.
“Move it!” a guard yelled, jabbing Chet with his spear. Chet fell in behind Ana and Ado. He grabbed hold of the rope and dug in his heels, pulling along with the rest of the slaves, but his eyes stayed on Seet.
CHAPTER 30
It can’t be, Coach thought as they unlatched the man, sure that this twisted place was playing tricks with his mind again. He watched the guards lead the man away. That gait, that hair, his build. No, that??
?s Chet all right. Coach drove the shovel into the coal, twisting, grinding, clutching the handle so hard his hands hurt. “That’s him,” he hissed, his breath coming faster and faster.
“You okay?” Jorge, the man next to him on the coal cart, asked.
“Never been better,” Coach said coldly, hopping to the ground and heading away.
“Hey,” Jorge called. “Where you going?”
Coach shouldered the shovel, getting a good tight grip on the handle with both hands. “Going to even some shit up.”
CHAPTER 31
Mother Eye began to dim, turning the rocky landscape the color of a bruise. A cloud blossomed along the ridge—riders, trailing a plume of gray dust. Hands dropped to weapons, hard eyes all on the approaching riders. The Colonel halted the procession.
Gavin tugged the reins, pulling the wagon to a stop, and checked the cargo. Lord Horkos’s one bloody eye stared back, and behind him the twelve prisoners—souls unwilling to denounce their god—stumbled to a halt.
Four horses approached bearing seven men wearing green coats, three of them riding double. The Colonel’s forward scout signaled the all clear, but the Colonel waited until he could see their faces before lowering his musket. “It’s them all right,” he said, then yelled to his ragtag troops. “Fall out. Rest your feet while you can.”
The rangers dropped their weapons and gear, and collapsed upon the rocks and boulders, weary from a full day’s march.
The Colonel dismounted, walked up to the cart, and stood next to Gavin.
The lead rider galloped ahead, a man in a long overcoat, his face covered against the dust. Even so, Gavin knew exactly who it was. The Colonel leaned toward Gavin. “Let’s not have any trouble, Gavin. We have to work with them.”
Carlos rode up, his eyes falling on Lord Horkos’s mutilated body. He yanked down his kerchief, revealing a broad smile, the smile of a man whose number had just come up on a roulette wheel. He leapt from the saddle, dashed up to the Colonel, clasping the man on both shoulders. “You’ve done it! A god, Colonel. You’ve taken down a god.” He let the Colonel loose and climbed onto the cart, sneering at the god. “What are you now?” he said. “Nothing!” He jabbed his thumb into the god’s remaining eye, grinding it back and forth. The god’s face distorted with pain, and blood bubbled about the gag. Carlos laughed.
The remaining riders rode up, their mounts looking to have been pushed too hard. Gavin knew the horses to be common soul-shifts, could tell by their eyes—still human, haunted, only too aware of their plight.
The six men dismounted, looking bushed and glad to be out of the saddle, Carlos’s select crew—big, muscular men with faces covered in ritual scars. But their size hadn’t come naturally. You could tell by the clusters of lumps and knots growing on their skin that these men had gorged themselves on ka. Along with swords, three of them carried muskets, one even a revolver.
They called themselves the Defenders, as in the Defenders of Free Souls, but Gavin thought fancy coats and grandiose names did little to hide what they really were—a gang of thugs, much like the crime syndicates he’d run liquor for during Prohibition. The Defenders had started out as common bandits and soul thieves, gaining turf in Styga over the years, taking over ka coin production with their own brand of protection racketeering and extortion. Then they threw in with the Colonel and suddenly they were freedom fighters, using the Colonel’s revolution as justification to try to take over all of Styga.
Defenders, Gavin spat in the dirt and glanced at the Colonel, searching for some trace of disdain, some sign that it pained him to deal with this vileness, but found none. There was a time, old man, not so long ago, when you would’ve shot their sort dead on sight. Gavin’s lips tightened. All’s good in the name of the grand crusade. Right, Colonel?
Carlos hopped down from the wagon and strolled to the Colonel’s horse, where the spear, the one the men were now calling God Slayer, was harnessed to the saddle. He laid a hand on the spear, almost a caress. He looked to the Colonel. “So, how d’you feel about Lord Kashaol now?”
“To be honest, there at the end, when the only thing between me and Horkos was the spear, I felt sure I was gonna die a fool. But, as you can well see, Lord Kashaol did right by us.”
Lord Kashaol, Gavin thought, hardly believing the Colonel had just referred to a demon, a servant of Satan, by its proper title. An act the Colonel himself had warned many a man was akin to allegiance. Can you really be so blind? Or do you choose to be? Gavin, recalling all the demons they’d tracked and killed together, felt sure it was the latter. You’re playing with fire, Colonel.
“Wish you could’ve seen it,” the Colonel went on. “Musket balls and arrows bouncing off his hide, but the God Slayer, it did its work. Sure as hell it did. Like a hot knife through butter. Most of his guard turned and fled after that. Them that stayed, well, they didn’t have much fight left in ’em. It was pretty much a clean rout.”
“Damn sorry to have missed it,” Carlos said. “But there’ll be plenty of glory to share in the days ahead.”
“You sound sure.”
“I should, because there’s much afoot.” He hooked a thumb into his big brass belt buckle and led the Colonel around the wagon, out away from his troops, a swagger, almost a strut in his stride. “Heard back from Lord Kashaol. He’s promised us twenty muskets in exchange for Horkos’s head.”
“Twenty!” the Colonel repeated. “Why . . . do you know what that means?”
Carlos’s cocky smile showed he did.
“And with the God Slayer . . . we’ll have the means to defeat Veles.”
“Yes, sir, we sure will. And Veles is on his way to the Gathering even as we speak. Out in the barrens, easy pickin’s. And there’s more. Lord Kashaol’s emissary gave me some details on the weapon he promised. The one for the Red Lady.”
The Colonel looked at him like a child waiting to open birthday presents.
“It’s some sort of handheld canon, like a blunderbuss perhaps. Designed to deliver a load of shot made from that same god-slaying metal. If we can get close enough it’ll tear her to bits.”
“How soon?”
“Soon. In time to take her before she gets to Lethe.”
The Colonel nodded, a man hearing exactly what he most wants to hear. Gavin was disturbed not only by the Colonel’s trust of Carlos, but of a demon lord. This was the Red Lady, the warrior goddess, whose sworn duty was to protect not only the gods, but the entire realm of the ancients. She’d kept the demons at bay for ages. Gavin had heard she’d once crushed an entire battalion of demons that had dared to enter her territory. And here was the Colonel, willing to go head-to-head with her on the word of Kashaol.
“The other gods will either still be at the Gathering, or on the road,” Carlos said. “By the time they find out, it’ll be too late for her, for all of them.”
“And where’s she now, the Red Lady?” the Colonel asked. “Did you find her?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t hard. She’s a creature of habit. We caught up with her in Styga. When I left, her and her witches were still rounding up children. So it’ll be at least another night or two before she heads out. I got a man on her. He’ll let us know.”
“So you still think we should go after Veles first? Huh?”
“Yes, I do. Once he’s gone, the road to Lethe will be ours. The Red Lady will be alone. That will give us the best chance.”
The Colonel nodded agreeably.
“It’s all lining up,” Carlos said. “Why, if I were a religious man, I’d venture to say God’s on our side.”
The Colonel laughed at that, his eyes distant, a man already envisioning glory. “And nothing’s changed with Kashaol? No new demands? No funny business?”
“Colonel, we’ve been around this. Y’know as well as I do that the One Gods would never let a demon rule over the river realms. That’s why Lord Kashaol came to us. Because he needs a go-between. Someone to gather the damned for him.”
“I understand the s
ituation,” the Colonel spat. “Just seems there’d be some other way.”
“Well, you let me know if you find one,” Carlos said, then let out a long sigh. “Look, Colonel, dark is coming on. We need to be heading out.”
“You mean now?” the Colonel asked. “You don’t want to be riding through the canyons at night.”
“There’s just no time to lose.”
“Something’s got you spooked.”
Carlos tugged at his mustache. “A bit. When we caught up with the Red Lady, a man was there with her.”
The Colonel waited.
“The thing is . . . he’d just come across, his flesh still moist and lily white.”
“You’re suggesting the Red Lady came there to meet him. Someone from the other side?”
“Sure looked that way to me. And there’s more to it. We tracked him to the temples. Caught up with him meeting with Yevabog.”
The Colonel looked unsure.
“Yevabog. She’s an ancient god . . . a real small-time player. But . . . she’s still one of them.”
The Colonel frowned.
“We thought we had him, but things got out of hand. Him and Yevabog, they got the best of us, got away, and you aren’t going to believe where they went.”
Again the Colonel waited.
“Veles.”
“No.”
“Yeah. Veles took them in. The best we could tell they all left for the Gathering together.”
“That’s odd. You think perhaps they’re conspiring?”
“Something’s going on.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Wait, now, another thing. Two things. That man, or kid rather, he was young. And, well, he’s damned. Seen the mark myself and I’d sure like to know how he escaped from topside before the demons caught him.”
The Colonel nodded.
“The other, he had a knife. Dirk said he brought it over with him, and get this . . . it was white gold, just like the God Slayer. Cut stone like butter.”