Baraat had felt no pain when the cave-thing took his fingers. There was only a clicking sound, distant and snapping and an infinitesimal tug, as the needle-like, sharp teeth bit through his flesh, past the bone before its tongue (that long, prehensile thing like a bloated worm) dragged them down its throat.

Baraat had coped, when Steel-face had turned pale and the half-dozen men with them had stood paralyzed with fear, because he simply denied that this had truly happened to him. All of this, Baraat told himself, was a nightmare. It was something he would wake up from, somewhere warm and safe.

I’ll be sleeping in the passenger seat of Chuluun’s mount, he reassured himself. I’ll be smoking knockoff Marlboros and I’ll be sore all over and then the T-34 will brow my brain into pink mist, instead of his. Then I’ll never be a zuun-lord.

But it was the sensation of his missing fingers, Baraat’s realization of their absence as he felt the rock wall against the palm of his hand and he knew, he knew, that his digits couldn’t feel the rock, that it was his blood running down the stumps, pumped out by his hearts in long, slow spurts that brought him back to reality. That turned the foot soldier Baraat Buriyat, designated driver to Chuluun Ursut, into a broken, battered zuun-lord of a boy that was making his way through the bowels of a mountain, trying his best to convince himself he had not been any further broken.

Baraat’s meager lunch rose from his stomach and splattered itself all over the floor the next second. His men waited as he coughed and hacked, catching his breath. Baraat reached his hand up, to wipe at the spittle that had hung onto his face and pulled it back, as he felt the ghost of his fingers brushing against his skin. He proceeded to pat himself down, looking for his cigarettes. Finding the packet, he grasped it with his maimed hand and watched it as its contents tumbled down on the rock floor, in the filt and the dust. Flailing his other hand, he caught a few in mid-air, crushing all but one. He had been crippled, he knew this much. He would have to teach himself how to fight with his other hand, or he would be useless.

Shivering, Baraat placed his cigarette between his lips and struggled with his lighter, his thumb slipping, watching as it spat ineffective sparks. It was Steel-face who came to the rescue, holding the flame up to the tip, lighting it without a word. Baraat took a long drag and held it, as he moved on. There was something in the air here, a scent that filled his mouth with the taste of pennies, that made his skin crawl with a multitude of tiny, pattering bugs. Even the echo in this place was strange, distorted. Through his boots, Baraat could feel the rock slowly receding, overwhelmed by a thin layer of something soft and yielding. Something was changing in the mountain, that seemed to move and writhe, oh-so-slightly. He checked up on his men and could see they felt it too, but their growing fear was a gnawing feeling at the back of their minds, when for Baraat, it was a certainty.

The darkness seemed to be moving in, lapping at the light from their flashlights, the air seemed to grow thicker around them, more humid. Baraat couldn’t quite put it, but it felt comforting, familiar, almost like coming home. Here he was, in the bowels of a mountain, beset by something from a nightmare and still, he felt like he could sleep, like he could rest and cease this madness, this endless journeying across the world. Here, Baraat knew, he could lay down his weapons and finally rest. He saw that his men felt the same way too: their fear shedding away in layers, as they were overcome by this feeling.

They stopped, one by one, in the darkness, as the glare of their flashlights was gradually reduced to facsimiles of distant stars, tiny and glittering, descending in the un-day. There was a clatter, as each sat and laid on the ground. Baraat did the same. There was silence here and there was warmth and kindness, the kind only a mother can give to the unborn. There was stillness and comfort. There was…

…something slithering up his wounded stumps, lapping at the blood. Something wrapping itself around his ankles.

“It’s a trap! Get up you bastards! Fight!” Baraat said, as he grabbed his cigarette and ground it against the intruding appendage against his skin. Something sizzled and writhed, letting out tiny screams. The illusion of comfort broke for only an instant, but that was enough. The Mongols were on their feet, except for two men, their light extinguished with sudden pops.

Steel-face roared, then lobbed something that whizzed a centimeter over Baraat’s head. There was a clatter, a hiss and then a loud, terrible glare. The bowels of the mountain screeched in an inhuman tone and Baraat saw (in the instants before the flash took his eyesight):

A thick layer of rust-red, outlined with veins.

Long branches of flesh and bone, grasping at the ceiling. 

A pair of eyes, coming closer, framed by a face that was little more than a great maw.

Baraat had his gun out, shooting blindly at its direction. His men followed suit. The thunder of Ak-47s discharging, their bullets ricocheting on the exposed stone, embedding themselves on the flesh-layers of the cave, the familiar sound of blood spurting from wounds increased to such volume it was almost deafening, The howling of the nightmare-thing bounding at them.

Baraat pulled the trigger of his handgun until a strong, steady hand pushed him away, against the wall. Inconsistent, blubbery shapes writhed in his field of vision, the temporary night festooned with the ghosts of the Mongol’s guns discharges. There was screaming and roaring and hissing, as he grasped for his saber, held on to it with both hands (trying not to think how he could not feel his missing fingers) and charged at the largest of the shapes, roaraing in victory as the blade sank into flesh all the way to the hilt.

“Yavyaaa!” he roared, twisting the blade and then dragging it across the open wound, the spurting blood showering him. He screamed as he felt it but held on to the saber, even as the stuck thing thrashed and fought against him, before finally pushing him away. Baraat’s head cracked against stone, but he still struggled to remain conscious against the pain, charging the thing once again. It reached out a limb that seemed to Baraat like a half-formed flagella and struck his face, taking something with it. His saber still struck through, once again, somewhere beneath the limb. Once again, he twisted the blade and this time, there was little bleeding. There was only a weight that fell on it and then engulfed him, trapping him.

Baraat screamed, as he felt the long teeth tearing at his flak-jacket, ripping at the fabric and the thick mesh underneath. Struggling beneath it, the mass of muscle and rubbery skin pinned him down. The familiar, horrible click-click-clicking came once again, a hair’s breadth away from his ear. Grasping madly for the hilt of his sword, finally finding it, Baraat tugged upward, hard, the sound of tearing flesh and muscle as it was released the assurance of victory.

His eyesight returned, as the nightmare finally choked on its own blood and died. Steel-face loomed above him, a benevolent god in war-paint. Grabbing Baraat by his armpits, he dragged him from beneath the creature and set him on the ground.

“It’s over. It’s over, it’s alright” he whispered to Baraat, reassuring him. The zuun-lord looked around him at the mess of gore, squinting against the cordite-cloud that hung over everything like thick mist. Three men standing, three laying on the ground. A choked, spurting Hell all around them, a fallen monstrosity between them, horror to bind them.

We should run, Baraat thought. We should turn tail and go back, to the light, to clean air, to Gansukh Kiryat, to the open road. We should live our lives and get drunk and die on the road, perhaps starved and frozen by winter. If there’s any shred of sanity left, we will not go down this road into Hell.

“Check your magazines, get what you can from the others.” Baraat said, despite himself, amazed at the steel in his voice. “We will bury them after we’ve burned this shit-stain of a town to the ground.”

And he went on, screaming to himself in the confines of his head all the while.

***

The Mongols were scampering, scattering blindly, tearing up their encampment, their mounts kicking dust, their banners bobbing and weaving blindly as they made ready for their retreat. But it wasn’t the side of the myangan retreating, the sight of his hopes being dashed away, that made Nergui feel so uneasy, so close to being crushed.

It was the look the Arystani shared, their own gazes averted from the great look-out. It was in the posture of Nurzan and Kirill, who stared at each other, expressionless, their eyes wide, their lips babbling silently, perhaps conferring in the confines of their heads. It was the horrified expression on Miras’ face, who was looking at each man in turn, his own lower lip trembling, himself terrified at the sight.

It was Temir’s shaking, the angle his head lowered in, one that wasn’t of complete and utter desperation, but an unnatural one, as if he had been twisted and lowered by some great invisible butcher’s hand, about to bring the cleaver down on his neck. The little gods stared and whispered from the shadows around the men, as if they were afraid to come close, to even risk partaking to an inkling of their conference.

There was something there, Nergui knew. Something shared between those men and the teeth-cartridge. Something that moved beneath their feet according to their whim. Even Miras, clueless, terrified Miras, was part of this strange conference. Perhaps the innocent, a sacrificial victim, the virgin in mind, if not in body, to be sacrificed. Nurzan was the King of Hell and Kirill was his prophet, so what was Temir’s purpose? Perhaps a conduit, a middle-man, a battery to power the bone-cannon? Something chattered inside his flak jacket and Nergui knew that this chatter spread throught Saryozek, as well. Something was coming up, pushing against the dirt and the rocky ground, something was sprouting tendrils that spiraled upward through the gravel and the dust, fed on blood.

He thought of the Bone Orchard in his dreams and saw that the little gods shivered and scattered away. Something rumbled, almost beyond the edge of hearing and Nergui picked it up. It was rising from below, like primordial, atavistic terror, blind and directionless, all-consuming. He looked at the scattering Myangan once again and he knew: the Mongols weren’t to leave this place alive. Nurzan wanted more than to simply break them apart. He wanted them destroyed. The chattering of the cartridge increased in intensity and he heard it echo across the floors of the fortress as well, knew it fanned out across the city. Behind him and below him, from the mountain, something churned and turned. Something came loose.

Something began to dig in a great, furious speed  through the ground, rocking Saryozek, making the buildings quake, good men and women howl in horror. Something made the ground bulge obscenely as it moved forward and finally peeked a great white, pockmarked head from beneath the waters of the mote.

The thing that was in Saryozek, that the Arystani had found, that provided them their daily hold on it people, was rising from the mud, shedding silt and raining gravel as it left its resting place to feed on the Mongols. It moved at a deceivingly slow pace, its every motion slow, hypnotic. It opened it mouth and let out a scream like a thousand children set on fire. 

***

Baraat barely had time to turn the corner, when the red-white hell came rushing up to him, to greet him, pushing against the rocks, bulging and tearing up the mountain. He was thrown back, along with Steel-face, only for his fall to be cushioned by a wall of muscle, each as large as a man.

The mountain heaved and then collapsed on itself, like a punctured lung, sending them flying downward, into its depths. Baraat heard something above him cracking, something snapping. He saw the faintest glimmer of teeth, as they slammed together.

He fell down, rows of bone-white trees with canine-like branches stretching out around him, framing his falling body. Reaching out, he grasped at them and watched them as they tore up, crak-crack-crack, not breaking his fall for even an instant. He feel still, until his fall was finally cushioned by something viscous and warm, that made his skin crawl at the touch. His mind raced back to the winter of his fifth year, when his grandfather split open a lamb, letting the fat shed from between skin and muscle onto the ground. Steel-face and his men splashed around him and screamed in terror.

Around and above them, something beat once, a deafening sound, but a familiar one. Baraat knew it as the sound fear made, when it pushed to get to the surface of his brain.

It was the sound of a beating heart.

***

Kushi Ursut was well and drunk and mad. His mount gargled and coughed, but it braved the slope upward. Relesing the gas, he let it roll down the hill, gathering speed, spitting dust. The remote on his lap felt good, felt right. It called for him, teased him the way his wife never knew how.

“Gonna brun, gonna plant me a little seed of Hell…” Kushi said, as the mount reached the final end of the slope and he sped on past the mounts with the wide-eyed idiots inside, staring at the traitor with the battered mount returning to his appointed place of punishment.

The gages shot up once on Kushi’s dashboard, then dropped again. His mount lurched and he knew the radiator had just given way. “Usuless bloody thing, you ain’t got much longer anyway…” Kushi said, as he stepped on the gas, pitch-black smoke spewing from the exhaust pipe. Gansukh Kiryat’s RV came into view, as Kushi tore through the disintegrating encampment and he swerved to the side to clip it, roaring as his headlight cracked against the myangan-lord’s own.

“You stinking fucking cowards! You worthless sons of syphilitic mares! Kushi is coming to wipe your asses!” he  Spat, baning his head on the hood of his car, screaming: “Yavyaaa!” as he reached the final stretch of the road…

…just as the ground bulged and cracked and the great white-red monstrocity with the mouth like a bottomless well ringed with teeth came up from the ground and howled with the voice of a million dying women.

“Now there’s a thing worth killing” Kushi said, stopping himself from pounding on the break at the very last instant, as his engine’s overheating light blinked on and the mount began baying in terror.

***

Nergui set down the wheelchair’s breaks, pinning it on the spot and kneeled. He had little time, so he took a deep breath as he reached into his flak-jacket and produced the teeth-cartridge. The canines laid out across it would make for poor cutting weapons, but they could be an excellent makeshift lever. Wedging it between his wrist and Temir’s wheelchair, Nergui bit his lip as he felt them (now alive and warm) rub across his skin, as he felt them move and caress his pumping vein.

Gritting his teeth, Nergui pushed against the wheelchair, against the strip of plastic holding him there. With enough force, he believed, he would make it break or he could loosen up the aluminum base. He could still get away, before the thing beneath Saryozek was done with the Mongols and he was next. There were a thousand of them, but Nergui knew in his gut that they weren’t going to last long.

The plastic bit viciously into his hand, as he pushed against it, breaking the skin effortlessly. His hand was slicked with blood. Perhaps somehow realizing this, the teeth slipped (seemingly at random and raked themselves across his vein. Nergui watched in terros as the cartridge folded in on itself and bit into his skin, as he felt the bone that surrounded the overly long canines clench around his wound. He fought against it, but he daren’t scream.

***

The blind, pale thing with eyes like bamboo stalks jumped up from the lake of fat and pulled one of the men down in a single motion. Baraat saw it from the corner of his eye, as he looked for the source of the sound from the pounding heart.

Steel-face shot a burst of fire from his rifle, striking absolutely nothing. A bit of jaw and a half-dozen fingers rained down on them as the bamboo-stalk thing rose up once again, from the waters. Baraat gritted his teeth, took a deep breath and then dived down, into the lake of fat (ingoring the burning on the side of his face), to press his ear down against the rubbery layer underneath. The lake lurched, Steel-face and his men screamed but Baraat knew, above the din: there was the source of the sound.

“Steel-face! I need…” Baraat began, as he was violently shoved away, an instant before the bamboo-stalk thing was upon him. There was a ripping sound that Baraat had come to know all too well, but he did not feel a thing. Turning, he watched in horror as Steel-Face’s heedless body stumbled once (blood shooting from the top of his neck), fell to its knees and then finally fell. The lake of fat lurched once again. Baraat knew that he had only moments before Steel-face’s death was in vain.

Ripping at his jacket, tossing aside his tobacco stash, his rifle cartridges, his GPS and rations, Baraat struggled with the bandolier of grenades strapped across his chest and slashed at it. Somehwere behind him, an AK-47 kept firing, even as it fell into the lake of fat, still grasped in the clutches of a dead man. Baraat looked at the grenades of different shapes and sizes, gritted his teeth and then began to pull pin after pin out with his maimed hand.

He was halfway through releasing two pinapple-shaped ones, when the bamboo-stalk thing came for him again. Baraat whipped at it with the bandolier, let it go as it felt it find its mark and then jumped, praying this would work.

***

Kushi shrugged and tossed his cigarette out the window.

“Much better way to die” he said, as his fist smashed the dashboard, silencing the engine’s din forever, as he charged the great white god of Saryozek.

***

Nergui howled, as the cartridge folded in itself and bit into his skin. Tearing it in one motion, he shot up on his feet and threw it, almost blindly, at Miras. The Arystani didn’t notice it, until it was too late. The teeth-cartridge embedded itself in his face, deep inside his skull. The giant of a man screamed, as it began to wriggle and chew into his flesh, momentarily breaking Kirill and Nurzan’s secret conference.

But it was enough, Nergui knew. It was more than enough.

***

The bamboo-stalk thing could have thrown away the bandolier with ease, Baraat realized in the long seconds before the grenades went off together, in a release of light and fire. Baraat dove into the lake of fat, as blood and bits of flesh rained down on him, shielding his eyes, as the pooled, congealed liquid began to rush down the hole the explosives had bored through into the bowels of whatever it was they were in.

Impaling his saber on the fleshy layer beneath, Baraat held on against the torrent of liquid, His hand grappling with Steel-face’s body. The bamboo-stalk thing was swallowed up in the churning depths without a fight. Baraat knew, somehow, that this was his one and only chance.

Tearing the rifle from it strap on Steel-Face’s body, Baraat Buriyat pointed down the hole and released half a magazine’s worth of hot lead into the great, beating heart beneath.

***

The white god of Saryozek stopped mid-roar, shot up and then crashed back into the ground, smashing the rock and the husks of burnt mounts as it fell, kicking up a cloud of dust that swept across Kushi and slipped through his shattered driver’s side window. He was caked in dust, mixed with what he knew was not a man’s blood. It was cold and viscous and it smelled like sulphur.

Kushi felt his mount’s engine give and saw the noxious vapors snaking out of the hood. But it still lurched forward with a final burst of speed, as he muttered:

“If there are gods, they will make this worth it. If there is any justice, I will get out of this alive.” he managed through gritted teeth and barked a laughter, as the dead god’s giant hand finally went limp in that perfect angle, its knuckles raised just so to allow Kushi’s mount to climb up its talons, its fingers, the back of its hand. Riding the thin trails between the veins of a bicep, Kushi watched the speedometer cap out then suddenly decelerate, just as hi mount’s hood spat fire. He tried his driver’s seat door, but it had been jammed. He smashed at it with his shoulders, but it did not give.

As the mount reached the dead god’s shoulders and was launched into the air, Saryozek’s walls coming up to greet him, Kushi grabbed the controller and knew he was about to die. Four decades of toil, of little love, of terror and blood and steel and uncertainty. All for this, instead of a nice, cozy bed or death by frostbite or a bullet in the head.

“My way, motherfucker.” Kushi said to the gods and the gods bowed their head in reverence, as he pressed the button at the moment of impact.

***

Nergui watched as the god of Saryozek lurched once and then died, seconds before a chunk of wall burst inward, destroyed by a gust of flame, bits of burning scrap metal and chunks of the bone-cannon raining down.

“Nooooo!” Nurzan screamed, as Kirill let out a wholly different sound. Miras howled in pain and disbelief, as he clawed at the monstrous growth that had clamped itself on his skin, now dead and shriveling. Temir raised his head and hissed. 

“You!” Nurzan roared. “You worthless Chinese rat! I’m going to kill you!” he spat as he lunged at Nergui, who kicked at Temir’s brakes and spun the wheelchair around, keeping the deformed lord of Saryozek at a distance. Nurzan reached for his desk, to grasp at the wicked-looking knife, but he stopped, moments before attacking, his eyes locked on Temir’s.

Nergui rammed Nurzan with the wheelchair thing just then, smashing him through the glass wantage point, The knife clattering on the floor beside him. Temir and Nurzan went through the glass and fell, taking Nergui with them. Howling in pain and terror, Nergui grasped at the window frame, the shattered glass biting into is flesh, the plastic strap binding him to the wheelchair ripping his skin.

“I am the King Of Hell! And you, you will be my personal fucktoy!” Nurzan howled, holding himself from Temir’s wheelchair, the aluminum frame screeching as it went, dragged on by his struggling. Nergui wept, as his wrist gave way and pulled himself an inch, gritting his teeth, kicking Nurzan’s knife toward him. He was tugged back, just as he let go of the frame, nearly falling off the edge. Below him, Nurzan was climbing upward.

“There will be red and white and there will be pink! There will be bone orchards, far as they eye can see, for you! I will bleed you, Mongol! I will bleed you for centuries!” Nurzan howled, as Nergui found purchase with his heels against the window-frame and pulled upward, the pain on his dislocated wrist almost blinding, his fingers reaching out to grab the hilt of Nurzan’s knife, even as the lord of Saryozek climbed ever upward, inexorably, with the wheelchair’s frame cracking and bending beneath him.

“I will make a coat out of your skin and dangle your eyes over your open chest, to look at your own pumping heart! There is no hell like my hell, Mongol! No hell like…”

And then the wheelchair’s frame lurched and gave way, the seating (threadbare and unkempt for nearly a decade) tore and Temir fell along with Nurzan, crashing in the rocks below without a sound. Nergui pulled himself up and cut the plastic handcuff straps on his wrist, writhing on the ground in pain, not daring to check the gaping, bleeding wound.

Beside him., Miras wept like a child, picking at the black and dead thing embedded in his face. On the floor, Kirill lay motionless and expressionless, dead in every way that mattered.

***

The evacuation ceased as soon as the wall of Saryozek went up in smoke and the flaming fragments of Kushi Ursut’s mount rained down on the encampment. Gansukh Kiryat braked hard, ceasing his retreat, as the chorus to War Pigs was broadcast in the car radios, even thought he had not ordered his men to charge.

Around him, the myangan heaved, spinned, howled and turned back to the field of battle, the men’s pounding at the hoods of their mounts the roar of a great chrome beast. The Mongols moved as one, but their commanding officer had been cut from the herd. Gansukh knew this much, even now.

“What is going on? What was that explosion?” Heng shouted from the back of the RV, as Ganuskh turned back and headed for the burning, ruined walls, toward the husk of the dead god.

There was a scream, the Ganuskh Kiryat had come to know all too well, as the came close. There was a familiar figure, covered in gore and larger than life, flailing a saber at the mounts that humped across the dead god and into Saryozek, the echoed above the bark and thunder of the rifles, over the din of clashing metal.

“Yavyaaa!” Baraat Buriyat screamed.

“Baraat Buriyat! Baraat Buriyat! Baraat Buriyat! Baraat Buriyat!” the sound came from the mounts, from the speakers, from the HAM radios, from Saryozek itself, as it burned and bled and was sacked by the myangan. Those that died that day, died screaming his name. Those who lived to tell the tale, had already crowned him worthier than the lord of a mere zuun.

Ganuskh Kiryat entered the city last, through the torn-down drawdridge. All there was left to greet him were weeping old men and gaunt women and starved children. The only thing that seemed to welcome him, even remotely, was the crackling of the fires that he had been too late to set.

And all around, the sound of the boy’s name:

“Baraat Buriyat! Baraat Buriyat! Baraat Buriyat! Baraat Buriyat!”