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When Kosar saw the horseman, the world
began to end again.
The horse walked toward the village, the rider shifting in fluid
time to his mount's steps. The man's body was wrapped in a deep red
cloak, pulled up so that it formed a hood over his head, shadowing
his face. His hands rested on his thighs. The horse made its own way
along the road. Loose reins hung to either side of its head, its
mane was clotted with dirt, and its unshod hooves clacked and
clicked puffs of dust from the dry trail. Only one man on a horse,
and he did not appear to be armed.
How, then, could Kosar know that death followed him in?
With a grimace he stopped work and squatted. A warm breeze kissed
the raw flesh of his fingertips--the marks of a thief--and took away
the pain for a few precious moments. Blood had dripped and dried
into a dust-caked mess across his hands and between his fingers, and
they crackled when he flexed them. The unhealing wounds were a
permanent reminder of the mistakes of his past.
Kosar decided that the irrigation trenches could wait a few minutes
more. It had taken two years for the village to decide to commission
them; another moment would make no difference to the crops withering
and dying in the fields. Besides, they needed much more than water,
though most would refuse to believe that was so. And now there was
something more interesting to grab his attention, something that
might bring excitement to this measly little collection of huts,
hovels and run-down dwellings that dared call itself a village.
He stared along the road at the figure in the distance. Yes, only
one man, but a threatening pall hung about him, like shadowy echoes
of evil deeds. Kosar looked the other way, past the old stone bridge
and into the village itself. There were children playing by the
stream, diving and resurfacing in triumph if they caught a fish
between their teeth. Elsewhere, drinkers sat silently stoned outside
the tavern, mugs of rotwine festering half-finished in the sun, the
other half coursing through veins and inducing a few cherished hours
of catatonia. It was a false escape that he, Kosar the thief, would
never be permitted again. At least not where any form of law still
applied.
The market was small today, but a few traders plied their wares and
squeezed tellan coins and barter from the village folk. Skinned
furbats hung from hooks along one stall, their livers intact and
ripe with rhellim, the drug of sexual abandonment. He had already
seen three people skulking away, a furbat beneath their shirt and
their eyes downcast. Their children may not eat tonight, but at
least the parents would be assured of a good screw. Another trader
sold charms supposedly from Kang Kang, banking on the fear and awe
in which that place was held to make the buyers see past the
trinkets' obvious falseness. There were food sellers too, offering
fruits from the Cantrass Plains. But the journey from that place was
long, the route difficult and most of the fruits had lost their
lively hue.
Kosar turned once again to the stranger. He was much closer now, and
the sound of his progress had become audible in the heavy air. The
figure raised his head almost imperceptibly. The cloak shifted to
allow a sliver of the falling sun inside, and Kosar squinted as he
tried to make out what it revealed. His eyesight was not as good as
it had once been, scorched by decades in the sun and weakened by
lack of nourishment, but it had never misled him.
The stranger's face was as red as his cloak.
Kosar stood and shielded his eyes. His first impulse was to grab the
pick he'd been using, so he could swing it up in a killing arc if
necessary. His second urge was to turn and run, and this surprised
him. He'd always been a thief but never a coward. It was why he was
still alive now, and it was the reason he could live among people,
even with the terrible unhealing brands on his fingers.
He also listened to his hunches. Instinct was for survival, and
Kosar followed his as much as possible.
But not this time. Instead, he crept back along the trench toward
the bridge. Every step felt heavy, each movement against good sense.
Something inside shouted at him to turn and run, abandon the village
to whatever fate this red man brought with him. The place had never
really done anything for Kosar. Acceptance it had given grudgingly,
but never affection, never any true sense of belonging. They'd put
up with him because he worked for them, nothing more. He'd spent the
last mid-summer festival skulking past the stone bridge while the
town cabal handed out ale and food. The revelry had jibed at him as
he watched the setting sun alone, even though the jibing was mostly
his own.
Turn and run.
But he could not.
Turn and run. Kosar, you bloody fool!
Even though instinct urged him to flee, and good sense told him that
death's shadow was already closing over the village, there were
children here, playing in the stream. There were a few women in the
village that he liked, or would like to like, given the chance. And
more than anything, Kosar was a good man. A thief, a criminal,
branded forever as untrustworthy and devious, but a good man.
The horseman was no more than two minutes away from the village.
Kosar had almost reached the end of the trench where it joined the
stream, the bridge a hundred steps away. The children had finished
their fishing and playing and climbed the bank, and now they sat on
the bridge parapet, swinging their legs over the edge, laughing and
joking and watching the stranger approach. Such trust, in a world
where hunger and fear made trust so precious.
He was about to call out to the children, when the horse broke into
a gallop.
He could have warned them. He should have shouted at them to turn
and run, go to their homes, tell their parents to lock their doors.
Kosar had seen enough trouble in his life to recognize its
flowering, and he had known from the instant he'd laid eyes on the
horseman that he was not here for a drink, a meal, a bed for the
night. He could have warned them, but shouting would have drawn
attention to himself. And in this case, instinct won out.
The man in red dismounted on the bridge and approached the children.
His horse remained where it had stopped, head bowed as if smelling
the water through thick stone. The children stood, jumped around,
giggled. Kosar glanced across into the village and saw several
people looking his way, a couple of them striding quickly toward the
bridge, one woman darting into the brothel where the three village
militia spent most of their time.
For a moment all was still. Kosar paused, unmoving. The breeze died
down as if the land itself was holding its breath. Even the stream
seemed to slow.
The man in red spoke. His voice was water running uphill, birds
falling into the sky, sand eroding into rock. Where is Rafe Baburn?
he asked. The children glanced at one another. One of the girls
offered a nervous smile.
Later, Kosar would swear that the man never even gave them time to
reply.
He grabbed the smiling girl by her long hair, pulled his hand from
within the red robes and sliced her throat. His knife seemed to
lengthen into a sword, as if gorging on the fresh blood smearing its
blade, and he swung it through the air. Three other children
clutched at fatal wounds, shrieking as they disappeared from Kosar's
view below the parapet. The two remaining boys turned to run and the
hooded man caught them, seemingly without moving. He beheaded them
both with a flick of his wrist.
Kosar fell to his knees, the breath sucked from him, and rolled
sideways into the irrigation ditch. He cringed at the splash, but
the hooded man strode across the bridge and into the village without
pause. Kosar peered above the edge of the trench and watched through
brown reeds as the man approached the first building.
The village was in turmoil. A woman screamed when she saw the
devastation on the bridge, and others soon took up her cry. Men
emerged from doorways clutching crossbows and swords. Children ran
along the street, their eyes widening with a terrible curiosity when
they saw their dead friends. Goats and sheebok scampered through the
dust, startled to the ends of their tethers, crying and choking as
leather leads jerked them to a standstill. The man in red walked on,
the robe still tight around his body, hood over his head. From this
angle Kosar could see only his back, and for that he was glad. From
the glimpse he had caught of the red face, he had no desire to see
beneath that hood again.
A woman, mad with grief, tried to run past the man to hug her dead
child. His arm snaked out and buried the sword in her stomach. He
jerked it free without breaking his step, the woman's blood
splashing his robe. Her scream wound down like an echo in a cave.
There was another shout from the village, and the whistle of a
crossbow bolt boring the air.
It struck the man in the shoulder. He paused momentarily--
This is when he goes down, Kosar thought, and then they'll fall on
him and he'll be torn to shreds.
--and then continued on his way. The bolt protruded from his
shoulder, pinning the cloak tighter to his body. The shooter
reprimed his crossbow, loaded another bolt and fired again, his eyes
blinded with grief but his aim still true. This one struck the man
in the face. Again he paused, his head snapping back with the
impact. And again he went on his way once more. His pace increased,
dust kicking up from beneath his red robe, clotted black with his
own spilled blood.
Someone stumbled from the door of the brothel farther along the
street. It was one of the three militia, naked, flushed and erect
from his regular afternoon dose of rhellim, yet still of sound
enough mind to bring his longbow with him. A whore staggered out
after him, frenzied from rhellim overdose, grabbing at the soldier's
crotch even as he strung an arrow and sighted on the red-robed man.
He nudged the whore aside with his knee. She sprawled in the dust
and shouted her rage up at him. The soldier let loose his arrow.
It thudded into the man and burst from his back. He stood for a
moment like a red butterfly pinned to the air. The first man with
the crossbow ran at him, raising his weapon to strike the murderer
around the face, but the aggressor moved so quickly that Kosar
barely saw the sword shimmer through the air. The crossbow spun
across the road and into the stream, closely followed by its owner's
head, mouth still wide in a silent scream.
Another bolt struck home, fired from somewhere beyond Kosar's field
of view. Another, then another. The man barely paused this time, as
if becoming used to the impact of wood and iron, his body adjusting
itself around the alien objects puncturing and shredding it. He
reached the tavern where the regular drinkers were stirring from
thoughtless slumber and slaughtered all six of them. He did so
slowly, seeming to relish every thrust and slice of his sword,
oblivious to the bolts and arrows pounding into his red-robed body.
The other two militia had emerged from the brothel and all three now
stood in the street, ridiculously naked and sweat-soaked and hard on
rhellim. The whores huddled back against the brothel wall and
watched as their men plucked arrows from their quivers, strung,
fired, strung and fired again. Each arrow found its mark, and the
nearer the man in red came to the militia, the more damage they did.
One shaft struck his throat and exited the back of his neck,
carrying a stringy mess of gristle and veins with it. The air was
thick with blood. Kosar could not believe what he was seeing; the
man should be dead. He resembled was a cactus--there were two dozen
arrows and bolts peppering his body, and more hitting home every few
seconds--and yet he walked. He swung his sword, hacked at the
villagers, and their bodies spilled blood into the dust. Kosar
watched aghast as the man in red reached the militia. They stood
their ground as they were trained, wide-eyed and terrified. They
took up their swords, engaged the arrowed-peppered figure together
and died together. One was split from throat to sternum by a twitch
of the blade, another lost his rampant genitals before his guts
followed them to the ground. The third, mad and brainwashed to the
last, ran at the enemy with the intention of wrestling him into the
dust. The robed figure spun at the last instant, and the soldier was
impaled on his own arrows.
With the militia dead, the massacre of the villagers began in
earnest.
The man in red still wore the hood over his face. His hands barely
seemed to move before another body fell to the ground. And arrows
and bolts still thrummed into him.
Time to leave, Kosar knew. He glanced at the bridge, queasy because
he had not gone to help those children. But at least this way he
still had the stomach to feel sick.
He turned and made his way along the trench on his hands and knees.
Each splash in the shallow water was accompanied by a scream from
the village, or a groan, or the thud of another useless arrow
finding its mark. He'd seen some things in his time, some strange,
some unpleasant, some weird and wonderful. But he had never seen a
man fighting with thirty arrows letting his blood and twisting up
his insides.
He started to pant, and realized only then that he was panicking.
The sounds from the village were receding as he lay distance down
behind him. They were worse than before--the screams of children
once more--but they were quieter now. Certainly not easier to hear,
but less of a threat.
Kosar paused for a moment and lifted his hands from the muddy water.
The ground was clay here, hardly ideal for planting crops but
perfect for coating unwary crawlers with a bloodred deposit. He hung
his head until his long hair dipped in as well, perhaps willing
himself to be blooded. He had done nothing. Those children on the
bridge, innocent, ignorant only because their parents were ignorant,
so alive, so trusting . . .
He had done nothing.
"Oh Mage shit," he whispered wretchedly.
The noise from the village stopped. No more screams. No more shouts.
No more crossbows twanging, arrows whistling through the air or
swords met in sparkling fury. Nothing but the slow, methodical
footsteps of one man.
Excerpted from Dusk by Tim
Lebbon Copyright © 2006 by Tim Lebbon . Excerpted by permission of
Spectra, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No
part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without
permission in writing from the publisher.
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