Chapter XLI: To Serve

The Captain-of-Captains lowered her glaive into a guarded stance, readying the curved blade to intercept any attempt at getting within reach. “It occurs to me,” she said in flawless Blueroser, “that if you have given me the benefit of knowing your name, that I should return the favor.”

I shrugged, not taking my eyes away from her glaive as we slowly stalked toward each other. “Why not?”

“I am Ikamja the Unifier, Prince of Princes, Conqueror of all the Forgotten Ones between here and the southern edge of Urcos,” she said, not taking her eyes off of my weapon either. “I assume Halflance sent you?”

“Nobody sent me here,” I said. “I already told you that I’m here to end this however I can.”

“End what?”

I shrugged. “This battle, this war, whatever you want to call it. This thing where your followers shoot guns at my friends.”

“I see,” Ikamja said with a nod. “And you really think that my death will bring an end to…” 

She didn’t say anything more, interrupting her own speech with a shout of aggression as she leaped forward, holding out the glaive with one hand to bring the tip within range of me. I threw my sword at the approaching blade, knocking it just far enough to the side that it left nothing more than a shallow cut. Then I charged, running past the length of the wooden haft and into cutlass range. Ikamja retracted the glaive, throwing a bruising punch at my head, which I narrowly ducked under at the same time that I threw an upward slashing cut at her stomach. 

She stepped back far enough that only the very tip of my blade bit flesh, leaving a thin red line on Ikamja’s skin. The wound didn’t slow her down. She took the glaive in both hands and swung it around to strike me with the butt, so quickly and powerfully that I was caught both off-balance and off-guard. I stumbled away, out of measure, taking a moment to recenter myself once I was out of range. We circled each other. 

Ikamja was the first to attack once again, two quick steps forward before swinging her glaive in a lethal arc of sharpened steel that felt like it took up the entire world. The two steps gave me time to be ready. I crouched just before the blade hit, then jumped cleanly over it, landing on the upper part of the haft. My weight forced the blade down, but I didn’t stay for long, not the least because I didn’t trust my balance. Instead I sprang off of it, the force knocking Ikamja even further off-balance, and leapt to strike against her head, which would normally be out of reach given her height. She didn’t attempt to dodge my strike. Instead, realizing that her weapon was disabled, she bared her fangs and let out a roar and slammed her head forward as soon as I was close enough. The unexpected movement meant that I was only able to leave a long, deep cut along her cheekbone. Her headbutt, meanwhile, crashed directly into my solar plexus and knocked me back like a rag doll being hit by a golf club. 

I hit the floor, the breath completely knocked out of me. But there was no time to rest, because she had her glaive back under control, and was trying to impale me to the floor. I rolled out of the way, or tried to, as the glaive sank into the carpeted floor and bit into the outside of my shoulder. I kept rolling while she pulled the weapon out of the ground, then clawed my way back to my feet while the wound healed. 

“You know you can’t hurt me,” I said, in between pants of breath.

“Neither can you,” Ikamja said, pressing the limp flap of severed skin against her cheek while the wound knitted shut. “But I can hurt you very, very badly. The steel one said that you seemed to die when your head was cut off; I’ll have to test that theory.”

“Why are you doing this?” I said. “Why are you working with her? Why are you working with the Cassandrans?”

Ikamja’s expression became grim. “Why do you care, Emma Marcus Farrier? What does it matter to an assassin?”

“I’m not an assassin,” I said. “I’m Lady Halflance’s ward. And because I’ve seen how your soldiers feel about all this. They’re just as terrified as any other soldier, and they very clearly hold no loyalty to the Cassandrans. But they all serve you, and if you say to work with the Cassandrans, then that is that. Am I wrong?”

“You are not wrong.” 

Ikamja lunged, and we had an inconclusive exchange of blows. My speed and small size meant that she couldn’t hit me, but the reach advantage meant that even getting close enough to hit her was more than I could manage. After a few seconds of steel clashing against steel, we separated again.

Ikamja lowered the glaive slightly, raising one eyebrow in an expression of curiosity.”You are a strange human. Most of your kind would see us as monsters, as vermin to be eliminated. But you notice our feelings.”

I shook my head. “A bunch of you tried to eat me, like, a week ago. You are monsters. But you’re monsters with feelings, and fears, and inner lives. And this doesn’t quite add up to me, why you would let the Cassandrans use you as muscle.”

“Because my people need to live, Alraune,” she said with a sneer. “And if we are to live, that means the flesh of humans, of Durkahn, of Crocax, whoever else we can hunt. But your people have become ever better at defending their encampments from our raids, until we begin to starve.”

I nodded. “The ones who nearly caught me… I saw some of them lose their minds from it.”

Ikamja returned my nod, ever so slightly. “And it is into that starvation that I have become ascendant. Into that starvation that the steel one comes with a promise. The Cassandrans take a great many prisoners: thieves, rebels, tax evaders, enemy soldiers, heretics.”

My mouth fell open as a shiver of absolute horror ran through my ribs. “They promised you a supply. They promised to—”

“To give us the detritus of their society, that ours might continue. And all they asked in return was our loyalty and our strength of arms.”

“That’s, oh my god, that’s awful. A human slaughterhouse, and the Cassandrans are running it!”

Even Ikamja winced at that. With her head lowered, momentarily unable to look at me, she said, “And it is the only option. For myself, and for every woman under my authority. That or the final penance… suicide, you call it.” She looked up, baring her fangs, eyes burning with unstoppable fury. “And I will not take the final penance without a fight!”

Ikamja moved more quickly than I thought possible, letting out a furious scream so loud that it made the tentpoles quake. She struck again and again and again, too angry to become exhausted or even to give any single blow anything less than the absolute maximum of her effort, blasting through all of my defenses with force approaching the mechanically-augmented limbs of the reikverratr. She pushed me back and back and back, never letting up for a moment, even as her eyes became bloodshot and her every movement cast out a mist of sweat. 

Eventually I ran out of space to back up; I dodged, terrified, and my hip rammed directly into the edge of the queen-sized bed. The shock of pain was enough to stun me, just for a moment, which was all the time that Ikamja needed to sweep my cutlass out of my hand, then attack again with a reverse stroke. I raised my arm in an instinctive, terrified gesture. There was only a quick sting of pain before the profound numbness as my left arm was severed just below the elbow. 

While most ordinary people would take the loss of a limb very poorly, the sudden shock to my system kicked my reflexes into overdrive, slowing time to a crawl as Ikamja went in for a third strike. I ducked under the blow, dodging just out of reach of a rising cut, then made a break for it. By the time the true, nerve-deep agony of having lost a limb truly sank in, I was on the far side of the room, standing atop the long dining table, clutching my stump in my right hand as it was sealed over with skin.

Ikamja, thankfully, had worn herself out in her berserk fury. She was down on one knee, the heel of her glaive planted heavy in the floor, her chest heaving with breath, her eyes locked on mine and her mouth flecked with foam. That I wasn’t dead was very clearly a source of bottomless anger. But this stalemate would only last as long as it took for her to catch her breath, and once she did, being short an arm sure as hell wasn’t going to make me any more capable of beating her than I had been before. I only had one option left, no matter how much it terrified me to have to try it.

“I didn’t think you would be this tough to beat."

“Very few do,” she said, in between gasping breaths. “And those who do surrender.”

I chuckled. “Well, I’m not quite there yet. But I’m going to have to try something I never thought I’d have to. So be warned. I’ve never done this before, and I have no idea how much this might hurt you.”

“I’m a big girl, Emma Farrier. I can take whatever you can do.”

Warning given, I steeled myself for what came next and drew my backup sword. Ikamja looked mildly irritated that I had one, but I was vastly too worried with what I was going to have to do to myself to be concerned with her feelings. I took the cutlass in a reverse grip. If I was going to do this right, it would have to be between the ribs; hitting bone would ruin it. The tip of the sword went on the right side of my sternum, between the fourth and fifth rib. There was a second of suspension, where I allowed myself to wonder what the fuck I was doing. Then I remembered that I was immortal; with one swift movement, I pushed inward, and the blade slipped through my torso with ease.

It hurt more than being shot, and nothing feels quite like the odd tugging sensation of a blade coming out of your back. I seized against the cold metal, coughing up blood. Then, just as swiftly, I yanked the cutlass out, spinning it around into a proper grip and spreading a thin arc of blood all across the floor. Instinctively I reached for the wound, only to realize that I didn’t have a second hand to feel it with. I had to risk looking away from Ikamja for a moment to confirm that the thin slit was healing.

Ikamja, for her part, was about halfway between terrified and impressed. “Is that meant to intimidate me? I will admit that you have a tolerance for pain matched only by your recklessness.”

“I mean, you can be as intimidated as you like,” I said, jumping down from the table. “But I’m not here to scare you. I’m here to win.”

The cutlass was slick with a thick layer of my blood. It was going to be hell to clean off later, but for now, it was going to be my only chance. As I raised it into a gesture of challenge, pointed squarely at Ikamja, I focused myself utterly down that blade, concentrated the whole of my being onto that sword, onto the weight of it, onto the way it would bring carnage onto my enemy. Everything else, my exhaustion, my injuries, it all faded into the background. 

Ikamja wiped her lip with the back of her hand, slowly rising up from her kneeling position, putting her glaive in a guarded stance. She looked exhausted, but that impression was rapidly fading. One burst of exertion wasn’t going to be enough to exhaust her for very long; I, meanwhile, had been fighting for hours at that point.

“You’re really not going to give up,” she said.

I shook my head. “Not a chance. I’m going to end this.”

There wasn’t another moment of wasted time. Ikamja let out a shout, stamping one foot hard on the carpeted floor, then charged, pulling back the glaive for a lethal blow. I conserved my movement, taking only a few long steps to meet her charge head-on. We met in the middle. I dodged past her initial cut, knowing full well that I didn’t stand a chance at parrying with only one arm, then went in with a series of slicing blows.  The next few seconds was a frantic series of blows that taxed my strength, attacks and parries and counterattacks that happened almost too quickly to understand on anything but the most instinctive level. When I felt my strength wavering, I backed off, springing several feet backwards in a single leap. It wasn’t until I had a moment to think that I realized I’d accomplished all I needed to.

Ikamja was ready for more, but she only advanced a single step before she stopped dead in her tracks, eyes wide. The glaive hit the floor with a clatter. There was a long red line down the middle of her chest, starting to the left of her neck and tracing down to just above her right breast, and it was soaking her clothes in a waterfall of thick blood. One hand flew to the wound, grabbing at it in desperate confusion. It should have been healing, like every other wound I’d dealt to her; but I knew that it wasn’t going to, at least not for a few days.

“How…?” she said, falling to her knees. “You knew. You knew this would happen. But how…”

I walked up to her, shoving the glaive aside with one foot. My cutlass was aimed firmly at her throat, and there were all kinds of things I could have done with a minimum of effort to end her life there and then. One slight move and the fight would be over.

I wiped the flat of my blade on her upper arm, smearing most of the blood off of it, then sheathed it. “I hope you know how to sew, because that injury’s probably going to bleed like a motherfucker,” I said, moving right past her. I’d left my arm somewhere at the far end of the room, and I wanted it back.

Ikamja staggered to her feet, one hand pressed firmly to her chest in an attempt to stifle the bleeding. “It’s the blood, isn’t it?” she muttered. “Your blood on the blade makes it leave wounds that don’t heal. That’s the only explanation.”

“You’re a smart one,” I said, looking around for my severed limb. “I don’t fully understand it myself, but I noticed the effect while I was fighting a thunderfang a few days back. Afterwards, I had a nice long talk with someone who understands more of the principles behind it than I do. The basic idea is that my blood contains my élan vital, the electromagnetic force that governs my healing, and yours. And because the thing is electromagnetic, two powerful EV fields can interfere with each other. Coating the blade in blood… it made it almost like a part of my body, extending my EV field to cover it. You following along?”

Ikamja didn’t respond, as she was too busy rummaging through a small chest across the room from me. I assumed that she was following along. “Well, with my élan vital wrapped around the sword, it was able to cut into yours; not just your flesh, but your élan vital itself. Hence preventing it from healing properly.”

“Clever,” she said, producing a small ceramic jar from the chest. She opened it one-handed, grabbed a handful of the jar’s contents, and started smearing it across the wound. I smelled honey, and remembered vague trivia about the antibacterial properties thereof. “But I have to ask: why didn’t you kill me?”

“Because I’m not here to kill you,” I said. My arm, as it turned out, had rolled under Ikamja’s bed. I pulled it out and pressed it up against the stump. At once, the skin that had grown over the stump exploded open, tendrils of flesh plugging into the severed arm and pulling it in. It was several seconds before I started feeling the pins and needles of blood flowing back into it, and several seconds more before I could move it.

“Not here to kill me? But you said you were here to—”

“End the fight, I know. And I also know that just killing you wouldn’t end the fight, because someone else would show up and take your place, or all of your soldiers would try to avenge you, or something else like that. I came here to talk, but I have the feeling that you weren’t going to do that if I didn’t first prove that attacking me would be fruitless.”

By that point, Ikamja had moved on to bandaging her wound. “Alright, fine. What is it you want to talk about?”

“The Cassandrans aren’t going to hold up their end of the bargain. I do hope you realize that.”

Her lips pulled back in a hateful grimace. “And what makes you so certain?”

“Because I’ve read a fucking history book, Ikamja,” I said. “Empires love this kind of shit, they take these little local rivalries and play them against each other, and once they have enough power they turn both sides into their slaves. Besides, you said it yourself: most humans see your kind as monsters, so why would the Cassandrans of all humans need to act any differently?”

She shut her eyes and turned away in a way that made me think that she knew I was right. “We aren’t asking for much. Just their prisoners. And in exchange, a fighting force with no equal in the world.”

“Right, because they’ll totally need you once they’ve moved a hundred thousand rifles into the plateau. And it’s totally in their self-interest to give you their prisoners as food instead of using them as free labor. Face it, you’re getting played.”

Ikamja looked like she was about to start attacking me again, until the pain from her wound dissuaded her from that course of action. She clenched her fists, grunted in anger… and then softened. When she looked up at me, it was with an expression of profound exhaustion. “And you think I don’t know that? Of course they’re going to exploit us. But what other choice do I have?”

“I don’t know,” I said, throwing up my arms. “Eat the Cassandrans? Go somewhere else?”

“There is nowhere else!” Ikamja snapped. “The same guns that have brought us to this desperate state can be found in every corner of Imbrium. Better, then, to be an attack dog, well-heeled yet well-fed, than to be a rat, the hated enemy of the whole world.”

I sat down on the bed, biting my lip as I stared down at my own lap. She had a point. Hell, for all that I’d begun to sympathize, I had to admit that ghouls were still, each and every one of them, remorseless cannibals. “There’s really no other option, is there?”

She shook her head. “It must be the flesh of a thinking, speaking woman, it must have been dead no longer than two hours, and we must eat at least a pound of it a month. Many have tried to find some cure, some substitute, forgotten and human and Durkahn alike. Most have given up once it became clear that the glory of being the one to heal us would not be so easily attained.”

“There has to be another way…” I said to myself.

“Oh, but there is. The entire species could take the final penitence. I’d say that about half of us do, at some point or another. But I would rather damn myself to the life of a warrior than watch my people be destroyed by this ancient curse.”

“You mean that you’d rather see them be destroyed by the Cassandrans,” I said. “Because that’s what’s going to happen if you keep going down this road.”

Ikamja compulsively shook her head, and went to go retrieve her glaive. I moved my hand to the hilt of my cutlass, just in case she decided to pull something, but I didn’t really believe that she would. If she was the type of person to spring a trap, she would have already done it. And indeed, when she reached the place where she’d dropped the weapon, she only made sure to place it in a slot along the wall, where nobody would hurt themselves by stepping on it.

“Suppose I did agree with you, that the alliance with the Cassandrans is a trap. What would you have me do?”

“I told you what I wanted in the very beginning. End the battle, stop fighting the Cassandrans’ battles for them. Get your followers out of Zrimash, and go home. Wherever home is for you.”

“Hmph. There is fighting along two fronts, according to the last report. The women fighting in the town itself are loyal to me, and will follow my commands. Those fighting in the east, though… they do so under the command of the steel one and her human friends. It may prove more difficult to sway them.”

I jumped to my feet. “The reikverratr is fighting directly?”

Ikamja nodded. “She took to the field of battle less than a quarter of an hour ago. You and her have a score to settle, last I heard.”

“You could say that,” I said, rushing toward the exit of the tent. When I passed Ikamja, I stopped. “Trust your instincts, Ikamja,” I said to her. “And, you know, take into consideration the fact that I could have totally killed you just now and deliberately didn’t do that.”

“Of course.” She chuckled softly. “You really are a strange human, Emma Farrier.”

As I left the tent, unsure whether I’d done the right thing or not, I said, “You don’t even know the half of it.”

SaffronDragon

Sorry about the late chapter, everybody! Tomorrow is the finale, as there will be a double upload of first the final chapter, then the epilogue. I'll leave a long author note at the end of the epilogue discussing my plans for the future. Don't forget to check out my Patreon if you haven't already, and I'll see you then.