Prince of Skulls

Copyright © 2002 by M. A. R. Barker

Here is a sample from "Prince of Skulls"

The statue uttered one soft click, then a second. Among the roots and fungi below, the statue's chalk-white mate emitted a tiny note that a listener would hear as the rasping of a wood-beetle. Nothing moved.

Hársan hiTikéshmu twisted to face the glossy black Pé Chói beside him. He raised an eyebrow.

The latter bent from the thorax, touched the human's cheek with slim fingers, and made a faint rustling noise, like one dry twig rubbing against another. This signalled: "Patience!"

Close by, a human voice grunted a curse, and there came the sound of a slap. "Thrice-damned flies!"

Both Hársan and the Pé Chói turned toward the speaker.

"Sorry...!" The second human sounded more annoyed than contrite.

The black Pé Chói moved, as silent as water trickling across a leaf, to kneel beside the offender. He squatted down, folded his middle pair of limbs across his thorax, and curled his segmented tail underneath himself until he was comfortable. Then he said, "The Red-Hats employ Pé Chói scouts, too. Let them not hear."

A third human glided up beside Hársan. This man did not speak but put out two fingers in the signal that meant "Deploy?"

Hársan extended one hand, palm down, then extended a thumb toward the forest floor. This said: "Yes. But stay concealed."

The newcomer raised his fist and repeated the message for those farther away. The thick green undergrowth waited, breathless and expectant.

A new human voice whispered rapid words in the Mu'ugalavyáni tongue. Another replied with a command, and someone else cleared his throat nervously. The voices were startlingly close, and they were moving closer.

The black Pé Chói touched Hársan's cheek again several times in a complex sequence with one of his upper pair of hands: "A Pé Chói. With them. Not ours."

Hársan raised his right index finger. There was no sound, but he knew that weapons were being drawn. Bodies tensed. Booted feet sought secure footing among the leaves and branches.

The finger slashed down.

The woods exploded. A human voice screamed. Something crashed through the foliage; then the underbrush erupted into crackling, snapping chaos. Black figures swung out of the trees. The human voice kept on shrieking until it was cut off.

The racket ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

"Got the lot of 'em. Ten more of the bastards," someone remarked in the accents of the northern Tsolyáni city of Khirgár. "Another squad of Red-Hats that'll never see Ssa'átis again!"

"Keep quiet! There may be more!" Hársan hissed.

"Not around here." The other hawked and spat. "Not live ones anyhow."

"Casualties?" Hársan arose, almost as lithe as a Pé Chói himself, and returned his Chlén-hide dagger to its bronze belt-clip. He had become accustomed to jungle warfare.

"None of our people hurt," the second man said.

"Where's Trínesh?"

"Here, Sir." Another, younger soldier emerged from the underbrush.

"What of Red-Hat scouts?" Hársan persisted.

"None, Sir. Nkét-Kté stuck his skewer through their one Pé Chói scout. A female."

The tall, black Pé Chói reappeared. "She died bravely." The creature wiped his two delicate upper hands on a handful of leaves. "Loyal to her Black Old One until my dagger took her."

"Fá," remarked Trínesh succinctly. He clambered over a stump and sat down to sponge his brow with his tunic. In this steaming jungle no one wore a helmet or armour. "She was of the Legion of 'The Slayers of Chkét.' One of their better units."

The black Pé Chói displayed a copper amulet on a leather thong. "I took this from her body. After the fighting-if it ever ends-I shall return it to her family. That is 'Noble Action,' is it not?"

Trínesh accepted Hársan's leather wineskin and gulped noisily. "Why bother? An enemy is an enemy, and a dead enemy is the next best thing to a friend. Keep the amulet, if it's of any value."

The chitinous Pé Chói face had no means of expressing emotion. Only Nkét-Kté's stance indicated a mixture of sorrow and reproach.

Trínesh spat. He was well-built and powerful, about thirty years of age, with golden-brown skin and a cap of shoulder-length, black hair that showed only a strand or two of grey. He belonged to the Red Mountain Clan and came from the western city of Tumíssa.

Hársan slid over to join them. His complexion was ruddier, and his hair a shade lighter. In Chákan fashion, he wore a short braid on either side of his face. "Nkét-Kté, you know that 'Noble Action' is harder for humans than any other doctrine we profess." He smiled to forestall tension. Here in the jungle, soldiers tended to be touchy.

The third man emerged from the forest. He was stout, barrel-chested, and somewhat older. He scratched at a thick, muscle-roped neck that was splotched with red weals. "Damned bugs!"

Hársan said, "My wife sent along some ointment to keep off the flies, Náru. Let me get my pack."

The other pulled his sopping tunic up to reveal a torso covered with insect bites. "I hope she gave you a cart-load of the stuff! The little bastards find me all too tasty." He made as though to scratch, then thought better of it. "A few more bites, and I'll throw myself upon the Red-Hats just to feel the slice of an honest blade!"

The black Pé Chói made a clicking sound. "We also have remedies. They may not be efficacious upon human flesh, of course."

"Probably peel my skin off." Náru squatted down next to Hársan. "What do you want to do? March on and bivouac tonight at the Pé Chói village, or make camp out here in this Chlén-pissed wilderness?"

Hársan did not reply but lifted a fist in the signal to march. Ahead, Nkét-Kté's bone-white mate emerged from the trees to point the way. The column rose and shuffled off down the near-invisible path to the village.

Thus far, the mission had not been overly successful. Its objective was to enlist the neutral Pé Chói of the northern forests of Dó Cháka in the war against the Red-Hats of Mu'ugalavyá. The nonhuman creatures were as skittish as a clan-girl on her bridal night. They had steadfastly refused to make a commitment, even when the Mu'ugalavyáni marched through their jungles.

The Palace of Foreign Lands in Avanthár had chosen Hársan hiTikéshmu, scholar priest of the Temple of the God Thúmis, to deal with the matter. As Mission Commander, he was likely to do a better job than anyone else the Imperium could find, even though the post offered no military or priestly rank.

Hársan was the one person who might succeed with the fractious Pé Chói. He was the only human who had ever learned so much as a smattering of the creatures' clicking language. Raised as an orphan by the Pé Chói, he knew the Chákas well. The Chancery had thus provided him with an escort, gifts, and a treaty to use in his negotiations. The troops were too few; the gifts were of no great value; and the treaty consisted of coloured inks, Hruchán-reed paper, and gold-sprinkled sealing wax. A heavy rain would offer more material benefits than this treaty could deliver.

Hársan was well aware of his chances. The old Emperor, Hirkáne Tlakotáni, had died (assassinated, many said), and his youngest son, Prince Dhich'uné, had succeeded to the Petal Throne by a stratagem that most folk considered dubious, if not completely illegal. Civil war ensued. It was Prince Dhich'uné whose plans Hársan had frustrated through no deliberate plotting of his own. The Prince was unforgiving, nevertheless.

By the time the civil war was over, the Empire lay almost in tatters. Casualties were only one of the consequences. Everything suffered: economic life, temple and sectarian relations, clan politics, and diplomatic arrangements between the Five Empires and their client states. The world was off-balance, and it would take time to make it quit wobbling. Now there was war in the west with Mu'ugalavyá, while the east roiled with sporadic fighting along the Salarvyáni border. Yán Kór in the north was relatively quiet, although its unity was largely gone.

Hársan had few powerful friends in Avanthár. The new Emperor, Mirusíya Tlakotáni, had no particular hostility for the Chákan-born foundling, but even at the best of times Avanthár was not a healthy place for young people without clan and temple backing-or funds. Prince Eselné had provided Hársan with a commission to travel to distant Livyánu, where he would be out of reach of his-and the Prince's-foes at home. Upon his return, he found himself still in danger from Prince Dhich'uné's supporters. His second wife, Lady Eyíl hiVriyén, had therefore secured this post in the Chákas for him.

The mission was of no great importance. It was intended to produce negotiations with the Pé Chói, if the creatures would only cooperate. Whether they did or not, the war with the Red-Hats of Mu'ugalavyá would continue. "Small stones build a wall," as the Pé Chói adage said.

Hársan's lack of a military background was one disadvantage. His subordinates were another. Náru hiSsáivra, his second in command, was an old friend who had been with him in Livyánu. Náru was a ranking army officer, a Molkár or field commander of half a legion, now semi-retired. Náru's subordinate military commander, Trínesh hiKétkolel, was a Kási, a Captain, who should have had a full Cohort of four hundred troops under his command. Instead, Trínesh was given two Semétl of twenty men each from the Legion of the Storm of Fire, plus a Semétl of Pé Chói scouts from the Dó Chákan legion of Tík-Nékw-Két.

Trínesh also had few friends in Avanthár.

To complicate matters, Hársan, Náru, and Trínesh belonged to different religious sects. Náru hailed from the northern city of Khirgár and was a sometimes-faithful follower of Karakán, the Lord of Glorious War. Trínesh, on the other hand, came from Tumíssa in the west and was a devotee of Vimúhla, the Master of All-Consuming Flame. In the Tsolyáni pantheon of twenty deities, Hársan's Thúmis and Náru's Karakán were at least deities of Stability and thus relatively close, but Trínesh's Flame Lord belonged to Change at the other end of the spectrum. The only thing that kept the peace between these temples was the Concordat, the ancient treaty that forbade sectarian strife. Fortunately for Hársan's mission, none of the three was interested in religious squabbles.

Aside from its forty human troops and twenty Pé Chói, the expedition also had fifteen servants, bearers, and cooks. These, so far as anyone knew, had offended no one but were just unlucky to be chosen.

The avowed goals of the expedition were optimistic. The Chancery in Avanthár had worries other than the distant Dó Cháka Protectorate, and the bureaucrats had little sense of the neutral-often hostile-attitudes of the Pé Chói. Aside from a sizeable Pé Chói enclave loyal to the Empire, Dó Cháka held some factions who were neutral, and still others, which were actively hostile. Most of this last group favoured complete Pé Chói independence from human affairs, but several were actively loyal to Mu'ugalavyá, the Empire's bitter enemy to the west.

In 2,369 A. S. ("After the Seal Imperium") the Red-Hats of Mu'ugalavyá perceived that the Tsolyáni had grown weak. They thus attacked across the western border into the two Cháka Protectorates. The southernmost, Pán Cháka, fell after a bloody siege, while the northern region, Dó Cháka, remained a harder nut to crack. The war dragged on, and an alliance with the neutral Pé Chói was now a moderately important objective for Tsolyánu. Hence Hársan's mission.

This year of 2,372 A. S. had begun inauspiciously. Now in Didóm, the third month, it was possible that a success-diplomatic, if not military-in northern Dó Cháka could turn the tide and open the way for the reconquest of Pán Cháka..

This the bureaucrats of the Court of Purple Robes in Avanthár hoped Hársan hiTikéshmu could accomplish. As Hársan himself tried to tell them, however, Pé Chói politics were at least as complicated as those in human lands.