The drums are still going, pounding faster and faster, and it’s working the crowd into a frenzy.
Something bad is about to happen.
I gaze up at War, and he looks so remote. The horseman gives me a disparaging look, and I feel like I’m just another woman who’s satisfied him for a time. But now I’m a toy that’s more work than it’s worth.
All at once the drums cut out, and the crowd goes quiet. A breeze blows, stirring my hair in the silence.
“Devedene ugire denga hamdi mosego meve,” War begins.
You have discovered my one weakness before I have.
Around me, the crowd listens raptly, as though they understand even an iota of what he’s saying.
I stare unflinchingly back at him.
“Denmoguno varenge odi.” His voice is loud as thunder.
I cannot punish you.
Judging by my situation, I’m sure War’s figured out something.
Beneath my feet, the earth begins to quake.
My heart skips a beat. I know this sensation.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
Around us, people glance about, unsure what’s going on. Some look more frightened than others; I’m sure those spooked individuals are familiar with this sensation as well.
Besides War, the only ones who don’t look bothered are the phobos riders.
War stares at me, his gaze deep and dark.
“Denmoguno varenge odi,” he repeats.
I cannot punish you. There’s an emphasis on that final word.
“Eso ono monugune varenge vemdi nivame vimhusve msinya.”
But I can punish others for your trespasses.
The first skeletal hand breaks out from the ground.
Oh God.
The earth is full of so many bones, he said last night. I hadn’t understood his words then, but now, as I watch the dead claw their way out of their graves, I understand. Anywhere War goes, he has a ready-made army.
Someone gives a surprised scream. Then there’s another several screams. I turn around just as a ripple goes through the crowd.
The dead rise, some no more than bones, others desiccated husks, and others still who look freshly dead. It’s not just human carcasses that are dragged from the ground, either. Animals, too, are pulled from the earth, their bones clattering and grinding together as they move.
People don’t know what to make of it. Not even as those bones begin to approach them.
The horseman has never done this before, never wholly turned on his own army.
I glance back at War. His eyes are stormy, his expression resolute. He’s made peace with my punishment.
My punishment.
“Stop.”
“Mevekange vago odi anume vago veki. Odi wevesvooge oyu mossoun yevu.”
I thought you’d want them dead. You’ve made it your mission.
He’s right; I had made it my mission to pick off his army. But now that he’s turning on them just like he has every other city … I’m reminded of our shared humanity.
“Stop. Please.”
But he doesn’t.
I don’t see the first bit of blood spilled, but I hear the scream. Now a true, blood-curdling cry goes up. It’s not fear I hear, but pain.
Another scream accompanies it, then another.
Most of these undead creatures are nothing more than brittle bone and a bit of dried sinew. It should be effortless to pulverize them into dust. And I’m sure some people do just that, but there are so many dead, and they care nothing about self-preservation, only carnage.
A skeleton bites a man in the throat so hard blood spurts. Another twists a woman’s neck. All around me people fall to the ground dead.
All the while, War watches the massacre impassively.
He’s an evil motherfucker.
I don’t bother begging again. I tried that tactic before, when War wasn’t trying to punish me. I begged right up until the very end.
I won’t give him the pleasure of my anguish. Not again.
This is what heartbreak looks like on a horseman, and it is terrifying.
Now people are scattering, and the dead are giving chase. Some run towards me.
My guards, who haven’t joined the fray, unsheathe their weapons. The moment someone comes too close, they attack.
Another wave of screams come from the tents that ring the clearing.
Zara. Mamoon.
I feel the blood drain from my face.
“War—” I was wrong, I’m willing to beg. “War, please, stop this.”
He ignores me, his eyes focused on the fight.
I stride towards him, my hands beginning to shake. My friend, her nephew; I couldn’t live with their deaths on my conscience.
“War!”
My guards block my way. I try to shove past them, and they grab me, holding me back.
“Damnit, War, look at me.”
“No,” the horseman says, not bothering to speak in tongues; the screams drown out most of his words. “Now is when you look, wife. They fall because you dared to try to kill me.”
I jerk against the zombies’ hold, but they don’t release me. They turn me around and hold me in place as War’s horde is slaughtered.
I’m forced to watch the entire thing, and this time, it takes much longer for the living to die than in Mansoura. They lay in bloody piles on the ground, and I guess it’s a small blessing that the dead stay dead.
I thought I had lived and seen it all—the loss of my family, the loss of my home, the loss of so many people. I thought that the pain was some sort of armor; if the worst happens to you, eventually, there will be nothing left to hurt you.
Maybe that’s true. But this hollowness has its own frightening ache.
Eventually, the screams die off and the chaos gives way to stillness. Eventually, my guards release my arms, and I take a staggering step forward.
The zombies fall to the ground in the next instant. Their task completed, they can rest once more.
My eyes sweep over the clearing, with its piles of bloody, broken bodies. In one sick wave, the entire settlement is gone.
That hollow ache is still there. It throbs along my skin and sits like a lump in my stomach.
It’s quiet. So, unnaturally quiet. The canvas tents flap in the breeze, but there are no sounds of life.
Zara. Mamoon.
I take a sharp breath, and their deaths hit me like a physical blow. My entire body trembles from adrenaline and terror and guilt.
I put a hand to my mouth. I won’t cry. Not in front of this beast.
I can sense War behind me, his vengeance settling around us like ash drifting to ground. How I hate him. How I’ve never hated anything so deeply in my entire life.
My heart squeezes.
I’ve never cared for anything so deeply either. If he intended to break my heart as I have his, then between Mansoura’s destruction and this, he’s succeeded.
Under my feet, the earth begins to shake once more.
I cast War a wild-eyed gaze. Is it my turn to die now?
One by one the dead around me rise, animated once more. But whatever brought that spark of life to their eyes, it’s now absent. That woman will never smoke another cigarette and that man will never play cards with his buddies. The people who drank and danced in this very clearing only last night are well and truly gone—either to heaven or hell or someplace else altogether.
“I’m never going to stop,” War says.
My gaze moves to him. I’m so remote I feel as if I’m made of stone. “Neither am I.”