6

The Coalition

Constant and Zed had divided before the last corpse of the Great Death began to rot. Ever since, while Constants tried to preserve the Long Dead’s ways and values, Zeds did their best to wipe them out. They didn’t know the meaning of mercy. Constants did, but couldn’t imagine straining its qualities as far as a Zed. Not surprisingly, all relations between the two were bloody.

All relations? Not quite. The seductive power of the Soterion had changed everything. It had spawned a new and surprising partnership – if that is the right word – between the Constant Sakamir and the Zed Xsani. To grasp the vault’s secrets for herself, Sakamir had become the arch traitor and accepted the tattoo of a Zed. To Constants, this was the worst crime imaginable. Xsani’s fervent thirst for power had persuaded her to accept an alliance with an Alban turncoat – behaviour that went clean against everything she had ever been told. Both women knew their union was based purely on convenience. Mistrust between them crackled like kindling.

Xsani had never seen a book. She knew about writing and words – she had gazed on faded remnants of Long Dead language – but she had no idea how to decipher them. Sakamir guessed this and relished the power it gave her. Her first plan was to explain the alphabet incorrectly so her rival would be unable to read if she ever got her hands on a book. But thinking this through, she realised that to keep up the pretence she’d have to invent a whole language. In the end, she opted to teach Xsani what she had learned from Cyrus. After all, she told herself, the lisping vixen would be dead before she had an opportunity to use any new skills she acquired.

The lessons, conducted each morning in a corner of the piazza, were not a success. Xsani was impatient and Sakamir, with only a few days’ reading experience, was unsure of her subject. Matters came to a head on the fifth day when Xsani brought out four words copied from the wall inside her headquarters and asked Sakamir to read them.

“You mistrust me?” retorted Sakamir.

“Of courthe not. I am jutht interethted, thath all. Pleath tell me what it thayth.”

“Right. As I have told you, that shape is an H and this one is an E and this one an R followed by another E. Together they make a word.”

“What word?”

“It’s pronounced ‘hairy’, I think.”

“And the next word?”

“Well, it begins with an L, followed by I, E and S. That’s pronounced ‘liaise’.

“Go on. Pleathe.”

By the time Sakamir had interpreted ‘Here lies Mary Clough’ as ‘Hairy liaise marry clog’, the Malika had had enough. No more reading lessons, she announced. She would wait until they were in possession of the Soterion. Then she would force that literate Constant – what was his name? Ah yes, Cyrus – she would force Cyrus or one of his pupils to teach her. In fact, she mused to Jinsha later that evening, she was looking forward to meeting this Cyrus. From what Sakamir said, he sounded quite interesting for a dumbman. The Kogon must ensure he was not killed when they took over Alba.

Giv’s education, in contrast to the Malika’s, went exceptionally well. His teacher was a Constant woman of sixteen winters whom the Kogon had captured while raiding for breeding slaves. Finding the prisoner could count, reason and speak fluently, Xsani had agreed to spare her life if she bred and, while feeding her baby, passed on her skills to the Zektivs. Presented with little alternative, the woman agreed.

As with all captured Constants, the woman was given no name. She was referred to simply as ‘Teach’. To begin with, she was terrified of Giv. In her mind, a man with a Z tattoo meant only one thing. Rape. Although she never completely overcame her fear, she soon saw that Giv was fairly harmless. In fact, he was almost as frightened as she was. Before his lessons began, he was given a close inspection of the Malika’s bodyguard and told that if he laid a finger on Teach or any of the Kogon, he would suffer the same fate as the guards and then die. Slowly.

Timur had taught Giv to count to five, the number of his fingers on one hand. Guided by a less brutal instructor, he mastered the rest of his numbers in a few days. He picked up the skill of speaking in sentences and new vocabulary soaked into his brain like rain into desert sand. Gazing at him with sad, red-rimmed eyes, Teach wondered what this young man would have been like had he not been born a Zed.

One afternoon, after he had been at his lessons for barely half a moon, Giv sensed someone standing behind him as he worked out how to add seven to five.

“Giv – er, I – know the answer,” he said, eager to show off his new speech to the unseen spectator. “Seven and five is – wait – yes, twelve!”

“Exthelent, Giv!”

His heart leaped. She was here, his Malika, the one he adored as much as the great Timur! He turned to look up at her, grinning madly.

“You – think I – am – making – progrush, my Mighty Malika?” he spluttered.

“Progreth, yeth. You will thoon be ready to go to work.”

“Anything you say is the joy of Giv,” he responded inanely.

Xsani raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Really? We thall thpeak again in five dayth’ time.”

Giv’s task was straightforward – though hardly simple. Sakamir insisted that the capture of the Soterion, which she called ‘Operation Alba’, needed more warriors. Xsani was not so sure, but in the end she accepted her ally’s advice and gave Giv the task of winning over at least one other tribe of Zeds. He had little experience of leadership and none of negotiation. What he did have was a quick mind and a passionate devotion to both the Malika of the Kogon and the head of Timur, his dead Malik.

To inspire him further, Xsani actually touched him as he was leaving. Briefly taking his hand in hers, she told him he was her favourite dumbman. Since she hated the whole species, this was hardly a compliment. But Giv was not to know this and in his memory the moment lay like an eternal jewel, more precious than life itself. Later that day, to Sakamir’s astonishment, she actually caught him skipping rather than walking when he thought no one was looking.

The key to Giv’s mission was Timur’s head. Were he to approach a Zed tribe without it, he would be slaughtered before he opened his mouth. Xsani and Sakamir knew his, but their frail coalition was strained almost to breaking point when they discussed how the precious totem might be used. Sakamir wanted to accompany Giv herself and act as guardian of the head. Xsani would have none of it. Eventually, they agreed on a party of twelve. Giv, the official head-bearer, would travel with five Grozny, handpicked for their relative competence. To balance them, Jinsha and Yalisha would lead a party of six Kogon.

For some time, Xsani’s scouts had been scouring the region in search of a suitable Zed tribe with whom to ally. The first group they came across, the Flid, were so low on numbers that they faced extinction within a year or so. An alliance with them would be pointless. The second tribe, the four-hundred-strong Dangalon, were the complete opposite. Their Malik, the famously unreliable Sintz, would turn on his allies whenever it suited him. No, Sakamir and Xsani agreed, they wouldn’t risk approaching the Dangalon.

The Gurkov, on the other hand, were an altogether different prospect. They were a reasonably large group – about the same size as the Grozny – and like them they had a reputation for discipline and tough fighting. These qualities owed much to the leadership of their commander, Malik Ogg. From a distance Ogg’s short trunk, from which thick, hairy arms and legs sprouted like branches, gave the impression of a walking tree. His mind was similarly wooden in a no-nonsense way. In his yes–no world, there were only ever two alternatives: good–bad; Zed–Constant; male–female – he couldn’t conceive of anything in between.

Xsani’s scouts found one aspect of Ogg’s character intensely distasteful – his addiction to breeding. Every day, they reported, he tried at least once to increase the size of his tribe. Xsani and Sakamir were not impressed. Nevertheless, in their eyes the lustful Malik had one overwhelming point in his favour. He had heard of the Grozny and regarded Malik Timur as the ultimate Zed leader. Moreover, he did not appear to have heard that his hero was dead.

On the evening before their departure, Giv’s Kogon and Grozny escorts were brought together for the first time. Although they had been prepared for this, both groups were clearly uneasy, shuffling their feet and glancing warily at each other. Xsani and Sakamir, hoping the power of the head would prove greater than traditional hatred, had arranged a small ceremony of unity before the dark totem.

Speaking through Xsani, Timur reminded the mission of their loyalty to him and his cause. He was planning to return to Alba in triumph as commander of a great army of Zeds. Their task was to assemble that army. Nothing – particularly inter-Zed rivalry – must get in their way. The ceremony concluded with the rousing slogan: “Under mighty Over-Malik, all Zeds are one!”

“Under mighty Over-Malik, all Zeds are one!” chorused the chosen twelve until Xsani signalled them to stop. Even while chanting of unity, she noticed, the Grozny and Kogon had tried to out-do each other. Mixing Zed men and women would always be dangerous, but there was no other way of assembling a force powerful enough to seize Alba and its precious Soterion. For a prize of such magnitude, any risk was worth taking.

Soon after sunrise, Timur’s head was wrapped in dried grass and placed in a wooden box strapped to Giv’s back. Xsani and Sakamir bade the embassy farewell and watched in silence as it set out for the region where the Gurkov had last been spotted.

While the Grozny and Kogon were within the forest, all went according to plan. The trouble began when they left the trees and entered a broad and scrubby plain. The wider horizons seemed to free the Zeds’ minds of the limitations imposed upon them and they quickly reverted to type. Giv had done his best to prevent this happening. After the Timur ceremony the previous evening, he had reinforced its message by speaking severely to his men. Jinsha, Yalisha and the other Kogon were not like other flabtoads, he explained. They were not playmates. Had the Grozny forgotten what was done to Gawlip when he tried to amuse himself with a milking flabtoad? Grand Malik Jamshid had ordered him to be whipped and a flaming brand applied to his left hand. The flesh had burned away so completely that he was now known as Bonefingers. That would be the punishment, Giv decreed, if any of them so much as touched a Kogon.

But strong words were not enough.

Under Timur’s harsh tuition, Giv had the makings of an effective Zed commander. But his infatuation with Xsani and his lessons with Teach had softened him. He was confused by the change. He still used the merciless language of a Grozny, but he found it increasingly incomplete and strangely unsatisfying. Like an explorer stumbling across a land of unexpected loveliness, he had discovered a part of his mind he had not previously been aware of, a region where colours were subtler, vistas broader, sounds more harmonious. Words like ‘beauty’, which had previously been meaningless or even offensive, were beginning to make sense.

The Grozny sensed the change in their Captain, though they could not put it into words. They respected him as the man who had brought back Malik Timur, but they were not afraid of him. And a Grozny leader who could not terrify was always going to struggle.

Jinsha noticed the problem first. She was walking beside Giv at the rear of the column. Yalisha was out in front, flanked by two Kogon. The five Grozny warriors followed a short distance behind her while the two remaining Kogon spread out on either side to prevent ambush.

“Those dumbmans are trouble,” said Jinsha, pointing at the Grozny ambling along in front of them.

Giv looked up to see one of his men making obscene gestures behind Yalisha’s back. His colleagues roared with laughter and repeated the gestures with gusto.

“Volebrains, do you want to be bonefingers?” shouted Giv. The Grozny nudged each other and stopped their horseplay for a while. When it restarted, shortly before midday, it took an altogether uglier form. The Zed on the right of the column, unable to control himself any longer, made a sudden lunge at the Kogon ahead of him, pulled her to the ground and began clawing at her leather clothing.

Yalisha, hearing the woman’s shouts of protest, spun round and thrust her lance into the man’s neck, killing him instantly. The column swiftly disintegrated into a vicious melee of stabbing and hacking. A blow from a heavy iron club smashed open the head of the first woman to be attacked, and the stomach of another on Yalisha’s left was torn by a swinging gut-ripper. Moments later, three Grozny were bleeding heavily from deep wounds inflicted by Kogon spears.

To the astonishment of everyone, not least himself, Giv’s prompt action saved the embassy from annihilation. He fell into a sort of trance immediately the fight broke out. He undid the rope that held the wooden box on his back, lowered it to the ground, lifted out the blackened totem and raised it above his head. When he spoke – he had no idea how – it was not with his own voice but with Timur’s. The effect was mesmerising.

“Ratpizzles!” he screamed in the high-pitched tones familiar to every Grozny. “What is this dunghead behaviour? Throw down your weapons, weasel-scum, before I peel off your skin for shoes!”

The fight stopped at once. The astonished combatants lowered their weapons to the sandy ground and looked sheepishly around at the damage they had caused. Two of the Kogon warriors were already dead and a third was dying of her wounds. As only one Grozny had been killed outright, it looked as if the men had come off better. But three of them were losing so much blood they couldn’t continue. Jinsha ordered them to leave at once. Giv gave his consent and the men limped off unsteadily towards the forest. All three died before they reached the shelter of the trees.

The embassy had shrunk to five: three Kogon and two Grozny. Nonetheless, what it had lost in size, it had gained in unity. Even Jinsha and Yalisha respected Giv: walking in their midst was a dumbman so clever he could assume the form of one who had died. He was not just guardian of the head – he was guardian of its spirit, too. Inside Captain Giv, Timur the Terrible lived on.

Back in Alba, Sammy’s suggestion that Cyrus could cure Jalus had tested his friend’s patience to the limit. “What on earth did you say that for?” he fumed when they were alone in the empty Ghasar. “Your big mouth has wrecked the whole mission!” His face contorted with waves of anger and frustration.

Sammy was genuinely taken aback. “What you talking about, Cyrus?” he protested, forgetting the correct grammar he had learned recently. “Course you can cure him! You cured me, easy as shooting rabbits – and I had a great hole in my leg. All that’s wrong with Jalus is a bit of the shivers.”

“Bit of the shivers?” cried Cyrus. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“Course I do! If I hadn’t come up with my plan, Bahm would’ve put a stop to everything. Then where’d we be?”

“Same as we are now.”

“Come on, Cyrus! Don’t be so hard on me. You’ve got a chance to put a stop to Bahm’s nonsense once and for all.”

“It’s Yash, too. And you’ve given them an even better chance of ending our mission, Sammy.”

“So it’s up to you to make sure you win out.” Sammy’s face softened. “I meaned it, Cyrus, I really did. I’ve seen everything you’ve done – well, almost all of it – and I reckon there’s nothing you can’t do if you sets your mind to it. Nothing.”

Cyrus rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t have much choice, do I? Cure Jalus or say goodbye to the Soterion.” Sammy nodded. “Right, I’d better go and see if there’s something I can do to help the lad. I doubt it, though.”

“You might doubt it,” Sammy grinned, “but I don’t!”

“Fool!” muttered Cyrus, giving the young man a friendly slap on the shoulder. “Come on! Let’s go and find Jalus.”

Even before he entered the room in which Jalus lay, Cyrus knew from the smell what was wrong with the boy. Diarrhoea. The vile, dehydrating illness was the scourge of both Constant and Zed alike. It swept through settlements and tribes, disabling adults and killing scores of children. Because it was known to be highly infectious, Alban victims of more than two winters were immediately isolated in the Alone, a small wooden hut high among the terraces above the Soterion Gate. Sufferers were left with drinking water, a foul-smelling toilet bucket and hay with which to clean themselves. Twice a day, an archer carried the bucket away to be emptied and replenished the water. The chances of recovery were slight.

Telling Sammy and Corby to remain outside, Cyrus took a deep breath and opened the door of the Alone. A glance around the room told him all he needed. His heart sank. Jalus, naked and covered in sweat, lay on a low bed with a curtain of long black hair plastered across his yellow brow and cheek. His eyelids barely flicked when Cyrus gently stroked his head and whispered his name. One day at the most, Cyrus thought. Glancing at the toilet bucket on the way out, he noticed flecks of blood floating on the surface. He groaned inwardly. No, not even a day. The boy was doomed.

“Well?” asked Sammy as Cyrus emerged into the fresh air. “How can we make him better?”

“We can’t. He’ll probably be dead by nightfall.”

Sammy shook his head. “Without us even trying? He wouldn’t die if the Long Dead was here to look after him. Come on! You can find out what they’d do, can’t you? It’ll be in that Aid book.”

Where does this fellow’s optimism come from? Cyrus wondered. Looking into Sammy’s open face, he knew he couldn’t let him down. However grim the chances, he had to try.

As quickly and carefully as possible, he explained to Sammy what he had learned of contamination and the importance of cleanliness. He instructed him to carry Jalus out of the stinking hut, lie him in the shade, wash him thoroughly all over and persuade him to drink as much as possible. It might be a good idea to keep Corby away from him, too. Meanwhile, he would run back to the Soterion and see if there was anything in First Aid and Basic Medicine that might help.

To his surprise, on the way down the terraces, Cyrus met Miouda coming in the opposite direction. She knew how desperate the situation was and wondered if she could help.

“Thanks, Miouda. Thanks so much!” Cyrus panted. “Just go up there and boil water! Anyhow, anywhere – and as much as you can get hold of.” Miouda nodded and turned to continue up the slope.

“No, wait! Throw away what’s left in the water jug. It’s filthy! Then get Jalus to drink as much of the water you’ve boiled as you can. Wash him in it, too.”

“Right. But where’re you off to, Cyrus? Aren’t you needed up there?” She pointed to the hut.

“It’ll be alright now you’re here. I need to get down to the Ghasar and see what that first aid book says about Jalus’ illness.”

With an affectionate squeeze of his friend’s hand, Cyrus was off down the slope again, calling over his shoulder, “And while you’re about it, wash Sammy as well! He’s bound to have got muck all over him!”

The terraces were deep in shadow by the time he had finished searching out references to diarrhoea in his first aid book. Struggling with the technical vocabulary and cursing when most of the treatments suggested medicines he couldn’t possibly get hold of, he finally worked out a strategy. Hurrying out of the Ghasar, he grabbed an armful of fruits from the nearest storeroom and set out for the Alone.

He was astonished at the transformation his friends had brought about. Jalus lay on a bed of fresh straw beside the hut. His physical appearance had changed little, though he was cleaner and the hair had been combed off his forehead. Miouda knelt at his side, alternately wiping his brow with a damp cloth and trying to get him to take sips of water from the cup she held to his lips. Bowls of boiled water were arranged on a low terrace wall nearby. A little further off, Sammy and other members of Cyrus’ Soterion class were tending a blazing fire over which water bubbled in an iron pot. Corby, upright and alert, sat on the terrace above and surveyed the whole scene like a sentry.

Miouda looked up as Cyrus approached. No change, she mouthed. He turned to give instructions to the small group of helpers. Jalus was dying of dehydration. Somehow they had to get liquid, clean liquid, inside him. Fruit juice was best, together with water. Leaving Sammy and his helpers to squeeze juice into bowls washed with boiled water, he began scouring the terraces. When he had found a suitable hollow reed, he gave Sammy his instructions, rinsed his hands in boiled water and knelt beside Jalus on the opposite side to Miouda.

The sick boy’s tongue was black and swollen, making it impossible for him to swallow. After Miouda had raised his head so he wouldn’t choke, Cyrus carefully pushed the boy’s tongue to one side and inserted the reed into his mouth. He made a funnel with his hands and held it over the top of the reed. When all was ready, Sammy poured a mixture of juice and water into Cyrus’ cupped hands.

At first nothing happened. Then, very slowly, the mixture drained down the straw. Jalus coughed and Miouda adjusted the reed so the liquid went down his throat and not into his windpipe.

The treatment continued throughout the night. Although Jalus had to be carried over to the bucket twice more before dawn, his fever subsided and by first light he was sleeping soundly. Shortly afterwards, having heard what was going on, Yash and Bahm climbed up to the Alone and stood watching in silence.

By nightfall on the second day, Jalus was out of danger. He slept most of the time. When he awoke, he was able to speak and drink unassisted. The treatment of the Long Dead had worked.

As the patient was finally being carried back to the settlement, Cyrus walked wearily over to Sammy and Miouda. “We did it!” he gasped, throwing his arms round them and holding them close. With tears in his eyes, he thanked them with all his heart.

“We’ve saved the Soterion!” grinned Miouda, holding on to Cyrus as tightly as he held her.

“Not just us,” said Sammy. “The Long Dead. We couldn’t have done it without them, could we?”

Cyrus laughed. “Of course not. And they’ve proved to us, to everyone, why we must go on and on until we have made a brave new world out of the ruins of the old one.” Letting go of his companions, he turned to the fire. “And as a sign, watch!”

He strode over to the fire, pulled out a blazing branch and held it to the wall of the Alone. Soon the filthy wooden hut was burning fiercely.

“There!” he cried as he watched the flames rise into the night sky. “An end to dirt and ignorance!”

Malik Ogg opened one eye and grunted. Something was not right. The sky was clear, the stars were bright, around him the Gurkov lay sleeping… But all was not well. There was an unusual noise. He propped himself up on one elbow and listened. From his left came the whimpering of a breeding slave. He couldn’t have been woken by such routine snivelling, he told himself. Must be something else. Ah! What was that? There was another sound, a new and different one. It wasn’t the wind and it wasn’t an animal…

Ogg rose, grasped his sword firmly in his right hand, and sniffed. There was no unusual scent to give him a clue. Still the noise went on. A sort of moaning whisper, it came from the trees directly in front of him. Cautiously, he moved closer and stood listening to the beckoning tones floating out of the darkness. “Maliko!” they seemed to say. “Maliko.”

As he peered into the gloom, a flickering light appeared. He gripped his sword tighter and advanced a couple of steps. All of a sudden, he realised what the sound was. Someone was calling his name. “Malik Ogg,” it chanted in a strange, high-pitched voice. “Malik Ogg.”

“Yes?” he answered, keeping his voice low so as not to wake any of his tribesmen. Whatever was going on, it was for him alone and he didn’t want any stone-headed Gurkov blundering in on it.

“Advance and look on me!”

Ogg did as he was told. He was a straightforward, blunt man without a smidgeon of imagination in all his Z-stamped body. Nevertheless, he was intrigued. The light, a crude candle that Jinsha had brought with her, was something he had never seen before. Of much greater interest was what hung above it: a blackened head suspended by its hair from an overhanging branch. In the flickering darkness, it looked as if the head itself was speaking.

“Listen carefully, Malik Ogg,” the voice continued. “I am Over-Malik Timur the Terrible. I bring you great news. The time of the Zeds has come. We are gathering together to make a great army. We will crush the Constants and all their riches and knowledge will be ours. Soon Zeds will rule the world.”

Ogg scratched his head. He was no fool, but all this ruling the world business stretched his understanding to its limits – and beyond. “And Ogg,” he muttered, “what does Ogg do?”

“Join our army, great Ogg. Three in one: I will bring together the Zeds of Grozny, Gurkov and Kogon.”

Ogg stared suspiciously at the shimmering head. He’d never heard of the Kogon – who were they? “Maybe,” he responded. “And if I don’t?”

“If you do not join, Ogg, the fury of Timur will fall upon you. His revenge will be terrible.”

Ogg gave an uncertain snort.

“But if you join with me,” the head continued in more flattering tones, “I will reward you. Ogg will have his desire.”

“Desire?” echoed the Malik as he struggled to come to terms with the head’s sudden shift of mood.

“Timur knows your wishes, Ogg. The Over-Malik understands your deep desires. This is what you want, isn’t it?” As the voice was speaking, two female forms slipped seductively into the candlelight, one on either side of the head. Both were naked.

Ogg gasped and took a step forward.

“Wait!” commanded the voice. “Feast your eyes! If you follow me, these slaves are yours – they and as many others as there are trees in the forest. All as soft as doe skin and as smooth as milk! Look on them, Ogg! Dream on them! Tomorrow my man Giv will come to you and explain all. These slaves will then be for you, just you. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …”

As the voice faded, the candle blew out and the bewildered Malik heard a rustling in the dark ahead of him. When he went to investigate, the totem had gone.

But the images in his head burned on. Timur, the mightiest Zed of all, had spoken to him. What an honour to fight with him! Together the Grozny and the Gurkov would be unstoppable!

Ogg stumbled back to his sleeping place, lay down and closed his eyes. Timur and succulent slave bodies – it was almost more than he could manage. “Oh come, tomorrow!” he panted. “Come! Come! Come!”