Peculiar Soul

Chapter 117: The Sword and the Scalpel

Chapter 117: The Sword and the Scalpel

I received my soul as a young man, barely more than a boy. Only one of the Eight was among our forces at the time - Zahra Alsaif, the Great Sword. She was a formidable woman, and appeared as a force of nature even to my newly-ensouled eyes. When barriers were crumbling around me, she was my constant reminder that I had a long distance yet to walk.

For sixteen years we fought together, shaping the Gharic front. We managed great things together. I learned much of the world and myself under her tutelage, even as Ardalts renewed commitment to the War pressed us.

Her final lesson to me came when she fell in defense of Azim Alsu. It was not her example of a woman walking her path to its fullness, though I have never seen her equal. It was not the inspiration her death lent to her men, that gave them the strength to repel the invaders, though I have never seen its like.

It was the light that came to me in the depths of my despair, when I heard reports of the man who now bore her soul. One of our enemies, a man without redeeming qualities, a butcher and a boor even before the soul found him. The injustice of it wounded me greatly, and the lack of her guidance left me disconsolate.

If not her, to whom could I appeal against an injustice greater than myself? It had not been her practice to coddle me, but she was always there as a comrade and mentor in trying times. No more. I felt a novel and horrible solitude grip me, and it was then that I realized: this had been her life. Alone, at the apex, she stood against the world.

It is a realization that I think every man comes to in one form or another, as he ages, but I flatter myself to think that its form is the most profound for bearers of a great soul. There is no conceit of appealing to higher authority. I am naked beneath the sky, and must contend with the storms as they come.

- Saleh Taskin, On Reclamation, 687

The wind gusted behind Michael as he came up the ridge, blowing chill and damp. It carried with it the sound of feet marching, the Safid making their own advance in his wake. They did not draw too near, though, either wary or respectful of Michaels space; the only men to walk closely to him were Lars and Zabala, with Stenger, Leo, Richter and Brant on their heels.

The tension of the battle bled from them into Michaels mind, their fear and resolve a sharp note against the cacophony of Safid voices around them. These were brave men, for following him here, but that did nothing to stem their fear. It resonated in every footfall, in each rasping breath.

He crested the ridge and looked at the Ardans arrayed before him. None attacked at the sight of him, but he was still far enough away that rifle fire was an uncertain prospect; at this range souls were even less likely to be a threat. The artillery remained silent as well. Michael had a strong suspicion that Sofia had fallen back once their vanguard drew close. The man standing in front of the Ardan lines, though, his mind seething with blood and ecstasy - he could probably attack from where he stood.

But Friedrich would wait until Michael drew closer.

The Safid stayed abreast of him as they moved down the slope, drawing within the range of Ardan rifles, then closer still. A ragged volley rang out against them. No men fell. Their ranks were thick with fortimentes, as many as could be spared from the defensive line, and far to their rear Sobriquet was clouding the Ardans sight.

They advanced. Michaels sight could begin to pick out faces among the defenders, their clenched jaws and wide, frightened eyes - then those faces were lost behind blinding light as lucigentes attacked from the Safid line, crisping the grass around them with frost in their opening salvo. Flame burst from scorched flesh amid the Ardans, and an answering volley of ethereal blades flashed out from the black-clad Swordsmen in their midst. Men began to die around him.

Michael saw all this peripherally, in flashes of sight that came and went with every pounding footfall, for at the first burst of light from the Safid he had pushed forward with all of his strength. His feet strained against the ground, gouging the frozen soil with great divots as he sprinted towards the one man among the enemy who was not attacking.

Friedrich watched him approach with a delighted, mad grin, his eyes widening and his head tilting back. The air shivered as it was torn asunder; Michael twisted to keep himself clear of Friedrichs first attacks. He spun sideways on the balls of his feet, crouched low, and sprang away into every direction at once. Stanza gilded the world as Friedrich lashed out with destructive power. Rocks crumbled to sand around him, then dust; bushes and shrubs vanished. The steep face of a boulder slouched downward into fine, flowing grit as Michael held himself away from the ferocity of Friedrichs strikes.

Michael began to retaliate, immersing his opponent in darkness and drawing further heat from the rocks of the mountain. Friedrich cut away the flows of heat before they could reach him, though, and the men around him turned their eyes to the dome of inky black that had sprouted in their midst. Swordsmen pressed eagerly inward - and toppled with neat, bloody marks in their heads. Lars swept in with Zabala behind him, driving the Swordsmen back on one flank; a contingent of Safid potentes barreled through the other as if the dying men were mere gossamer.

Distractions fell away around him and Michael redoubled his attacks. He stepped into the space close by Friedrich, murmuring with Sparks voice, but the other man barely reacted; Michael expected that he had not bothered to have his self-inflicted deafness healed after the last battle. They clashed again with liquid steel snaking out in the dark, and once more with a burst of cold that froze the new-made sand in place.

Around them, a long melee had sprung up against the Ardan line. Men strove forward with the strength of their fortimentes; there were fewer on the Ardan side, and the remnants of the obruor-led squads crumbled against the assault. There were few obruors at all left in their ranks, anymore, the rest dead or withdrawn; some part of Michaels mind noted their absence as he danced and spun between curtains of death thrown forward from the laughing man at the center of the fray. The battle pinwheeled out from the pair of them. Soldiers raged and surged with one eye always fixed on where Michael and Friedrich fought, the tenuous pressure of their mind on the linchpins of their respective formations.

Michael felt it, but never more keenly than when the warm glow of low souls found him. His horror at having missed so many arriving in the last battle had distilled itself into a watchful paranoia, and he nearly jolted himself out of Stanzas protection when the first light bloomed within him. It clung tightly to his heart as he righted himself and pressed towards Sever, trying to focus solely on the other mans attacks.

They were increasingly wide and fierce as Michael kept clear of them. Friedrichs smile had become a snarl, his teeth bared in pure concentration. For all the violent emotion written on his face, Michael felt nothing from the man. The din of the battle seemed to lessen in his presence. It quieted to a hollow, empty resonance that spoke only of power.

Friedrich sensed his disquiet and regained his smile, wolfish and bloody. His attacks focused, concentrated, snapping through the air just behind Michaels ceaseless motion. One swept wide to cut down half the potentes that had come to Michaels defense. He watched the attack scythe through them with mute horror, the blood of men under his command painting the soil.

The subsequent spike of pain behind his ribs jolted him free from his fluid evasions; one of the dead men came to Michael, a potens soul hanging bright in his mind like the suns afterglow. It burned and writhed in his chest, and for a moment Michael feared that he might fall senseless in the churning sand underfoot - but the burning subsided as he fought past his anger and denial. His inattention cost him a slice through the outside of his thigh. It was shallow, and quickly sealed, but it pained him with each step as the fight spiraled on.

Friedrichs eyes had gone narrow, cold; he struck outward again far to the right. Another formation of Michaels troops perished; three low souls fled to Michael. He coughed, his hand coming up reflexively to his sternum. The burning there was white-hot, searing his mind. He could not help but focus on it, for those men had died following his orders, in his name. It was impossible to look away.

The smile was back on his opponents face, red and cold. Friedrichs attacks began to land indiscriminately among the Safid, and even among the Ardans; amid the sudden burst of agony and the rush of warm souls seeking refuge, Michael saw the reason for that smile. Friedrich had scented weakness, and he drove at it mercilessly.

Death, Baumgart? he cried, sweeping a blade out across a row of Safid regulars; some escaped with light wounds due to a particularly strong fortimens in their squad, but the rest fell in pieces to the ground. Michaels step faltered. It was becoming hard to breathe.

Friedrich stepped in front of him, laughing. You cant bear it, he cackled. Is that it? You loathe it, you fear it. You cringe away from theirs and yours like a mewling child. Death! He obliterated the sandy pit where Michael crouched, fountaining dust into the air; Michael felt a flash of pain as the attack caught the outside of one foot, provoking his enemys laughter. I see it now. I see! You couldnt even face mine. Death, death! I walk closer to it than you dare, and you cannot approach - come to me, coward!

Michael could barely keep ahead of Friedrichs attacks. He suffered another slice on the shoulder when his dodge was too slow, then a graze on the hip that left him bleeding freely into the dust. But that blood was nothing compared to the seas spilled around him, as Ardans and Safid died in their hundreds. He was drowning in it, seized by the suffocating pressure of souls crowding around, filling his vision with black sand and stopping the blood-tainted air from his throat.

Death flew from Friedrich and caught Stenger, in Zabalas squad. The taciturn durens fell. Michael held the other mans pain as his own, feeling the soul like a lance through his heart. A man he had never bothered to talk to much past occasional niceties, but who had pressed his life against Michaels with reckless abandon. Until the end. Flashes of that life melded with countless others, swirling in a torrent of bloody recall around Michaels dimming eyes. At the center of those visions was one man.

Michael couldnt recognize him. He was different to each pair of eyes, bright and terrifying in his pull. Behind that radiant figure he saw Zabala cry out and clutch at his thigh, saw Leo fall to a bad blow from a Swordsman. Lars stepped over his body, his lip curling. Men died clockwork deaths where his wrath fell, tiny marks robbing them of blood and breath.

WEAK! Friedrich bellowed, sweeping his arm out. Safid and Swordsmen alike perished. The unbearable clarity of Michaels sight seemed a curse, now. Stanza watched their paths cut away; Spark heard their voices fall silent. And Michael - Michael sank beneath the tempest of death. Each soul that came to him deepened the wound.

It was not an accident of affinity that drew the souls to him, after all. He had cultivated these men, drawn their attention and directed them to their demise. The excuse of his many warnings seemed flimsy now that it was soiled with so much of their blood; surely he could have done more than meekly accept their presence here.

Yet he had not, and the bodies piled higher. He fell to his knees. Friedrichs exultant face loomed in his vision, drawing closer with measured steps; he was still laughing gleefully between attacks, harvesting his fill from the crowd around them.

I was a fool not to see it, Friedrich said, slowly forming an edge in the air between them. It had a weighty finality in Michaels mind; he knew what it had been made to do. You never had potential. You never had will. Only stolen power, and with that alone you are nothing. He held his hand out. So return to the nothing that you fear.

Michaels mind blurred, his heart hammering in his chest. He could not move, nor speak; the flames within him hung heavy on his being. All he could see was Friedrichs form blurring into inchoate monstrosity behind that single bright edge. There was only one reflex left, a small childs frantic defense against incontestable might: he raised his arms, showing Friedrich his fathers collection of scars, and waited for the blow to fall.

When a blade struck, though, it was upon Friedrichs arm. Through half-conscious murk Michael watched Lars sprint forward with death dancing from his fingertips. Surprised, Friedrich let his focus slide away from Michael, slicing away the worst of the attacks before they could fall - but they were numerous, invisibly tiny. Blood sprouted from wounds on his arms and torso.

Lars redoubled his charge, teeth bared. For the dead youd never remember! he shouted, opening a fresh gash through the meat of Friedrichs thigh, his shoulder, taking fingers from one hand. It was all the other man could do to turn away the ones meant for his head and neck, and even some of those landed; he was missing an ear, and spat cleanly-shaven fragments of tooth into the dirt where one blade had carved into his cheek.

Then he raised his hand, and Lars disappeared in a cloud of red. Michaels heart fractured, his eyes still clinging to the last glimpse of the affable captains face contorted in anger. That image faded against the bright glow of a bladed soul, small but potent against the dark. He felt it sear into his eyes, too bright to look at; Michael winced through a blur of tears.

He could not accept it. Curses sprang to mind, half-formed rants against Lars for his reckless charge. It had been a pointless, wasteful death. Friedrich had been wounded, yes, but nothing that an anatomens could not heal in time. Michael was worse off than before. And Lars was dead. He wanted to grab the lambent soul before him, shake it and demand answers, but he could feel the blackness around him pressing inward.

He half-expected Jeorgs wizened face to emerge from the dark, but there was nothing. Michael was alone in the void once more, placed there by a cruel blade. Again there was a single mediocre soul before him, asking to be taken. Last time he had rejected the soul, and been pressed with something far greater in its stead. Every fiber of him yearned to reject this one too. He did not want to have a scalptor soul within him, nor could he tolerate the notion of Lars burning bright next to his heart. That soul writhed with a scorching vision.

But not all of them.

Michael stepped back into solidity as Friedrich sank to his knees. Blood dripped down to the sand. The scalptor looked at it, uncomprehending, his eyes glassy and wide.

One man can only be so strong, Michael rasped. I couldnt stand against them either. They etched their truth upon me. His hand came up, and the familiar ache began to pull at his ribs. So here is that one last truth, before your weakness kills you: they have named me their captain, and that bond is not ours to end.

A small, precise edge flew out to strike Friedrich in the forehead.

The world turned to white; a storm pressed inward with lacerating fury. Michael grit his teeth and forged through it, seeking the mote of rage at its center. It denied him, what he was, what he had said. There was no strength but strength. There was no power but power.

But behind Michael there was a great light that shone into the void, transfixing the insubordinate remnants of Friedrich with unbending will. A wind blew that was not wind, shining, scouring, breaking-

Ending. Michaels whispered voice blasted away the tumult until all that remained was a bright orb of radiant destruction. He walked to it slowly, holding his hand near the surface. It was absolute, primal. Michael could feel the promise of everything Friedrich had claimed to be, everything his father aspired to. A sword to end all swords.

But there was more than violence humming against his skin. Friedrich had named his soul Discontinuity, and in that soul lay the destruction of growth, the uncertain chaos of creation. It was vast - too vast for him to appreciate in this half-real moment, but he felt a profound relief as he looked into the soul and found nobody staring back. Not Friedrich, and not Karl Baumgart.

Those men had made what they wanted of their soul, nothing more; Michael did the same.

After a while, he opened his eyes. He stood in a vast hollow of sandy dirt that had been blasted outward in every direction. Nothing remained of Friedrich, nor Lars, nor any of the men that had fallen near them. They were dust, now, and memory.

Michael held up his hand and drew a single, bright blade from one finger. It was deep and clear, keening against the air - but still small, and quiet. An unassuming blade, meant to cut only what he willed. He smiled and let it fade away, turning over his hand.

On his wrist he saw the same tracery of scars that had always been there. They had not truly burned away; there was no reason they should have. The scars remained. They likely always would. But they were only a mark on his flesh, and he had seen how small that was against the far horizons of his self.

He looked up to see Zabala limping down the slope of the crater he had made, Sobriquet hovering at a cautious remove from the epicenter. The battle wasnt quite over yet, as forces from both sides clashed up and down the line, but the heart had gone from it.

Michael began to walk towards the others, somewhat surprised to find his legs obey him without complaint; it seemed bizarre that he should feel so damnably normal after the experience he had just endured. Yes, his wounds ached. His clothing was torn and bloody, the sleeve of one arm annihilated from a thousand near-misses.

But underneath it all was that steady light, greater by far than it had been before the battle. He didnt know how many low souls had come to him, but it had easily been hundreds.

That light no longer burned, nor threatened to burst forth from him. Instead it was quiet and hard, as if his bones had shifted to radiant diamond shining within. His grasp on his souls was clearer, faster, effortless - and tinged with what he had taken and remade today. Something still and precise, humble for all that it was effective. The destruction of the plow and the scalpel, of roots rending stone, of wind and rain and rivers. The decay of old trees making way for the new, of obstacles falling to dust.

Michael clenched his fist and walked the rest of the way to the craters rim. Zabala, Richter and Brant were there, looking thoroughly weary; Zabala bore a wicked gash on his leg, while half of Richters face was a mask of blood. Michael bent down to seal Zabalas wound, looking up at where Sobriquets apparition hung in the air.

How are we doing? he asked.

She cocked her head. Were doing better than I would have hoped. How are you doing? she countered. Im surprised youre still upright.

You and me both. Michael gave Zabalas shoulder a quick squeeze, then straightened up. Im fine. I had to - make some decisions.

The apparition had no face, but Michael knew Sobriquet; he felt her skepticism, her narrowed eyes. He turned to walk out of the depression he had made, towards where the Safid officers had set up their forward command. Sobriquet moved to float along with him.

Ominous, she said. Anything you want to share?

Michaels breath held, then came out in a rush as he shook his head slowly. Its nothing profound, he said. Something that had to be real, and something that couldnt live beside it. Nothing more than - waking up. Recognizing who I am and what I can do. What I have to do.

He pressed his lips together. There isnt any safety in isolation, he said. Retreating into peace only works if someone forges that peace first, and there isnt - isnt anyone else.

Sobriquet moved to block his path. Michael, she said flatly. You cant say youre fine and then spout off some fatalistic bullshit like that. Lars is dead. Stenger and Leo are dead. Sever is yours, and I saw what happened before that - the Safid, they came to you too. She floated closer. Its not wrong to be affected. I dont see how you could be anything else.

A smile bent his lips. Neither do I, he murmured. He raised his eyes to Sobriquet, then resumed his walk towards the command post. We have to deal with what comes next.

And whats that? she asked, still sounding nettled.

Michael shrugged. Not sure yet. Whatever presents itself. He ducked his head to walk under the hastily-erected canopy, nodding to the Safid officers that had clustered there. Their gazes came up to rest on him, then slid away, uncertain; a few of the men gave a sharp, compulsive genuflection.

The Sword is dead, Michael reported.

One of the officers raised his head to look at him. We saw, he rasped. My soul to the One.

Michael felt the weight of it, the pressure of edges coming together. He met the mans eyes and nodded, once, not letting himself look aside from what had been said. Then he grinned, and gestured towards a map on the table.

Not today, I hope, he said. How are things progressing elsewhere?

The officer gave a quick, relieved smile in return and bent to answer Michaels question, pointing to crude stone tokens scattered across a map. The bulk of the Ardan forces are in retreat; those that arent are on the brink of a rout. They began their withdrawal almost as soon as we engaged, here. He tapped on a collection of tokens that was already halfway to Gharon. The Seer, and most of their corps of petty Speakers.

The obruors. Michael looked at the map, feeling his heart quicken with realization. Shit. We need to dispatch the remaining Ardans and prepare for a march. Were going after them.

Holy one? the officer asked, looking confused. The bulk of their force has been defeated, and the Sword destroyed. If we fortify the pass-

Michael shook his head, looking up at Sobriquet; she seemed to have come to the same realization. Michaels right, she said. That lunatic isnt retreating, shes recruiting. The Gharics used their city as a defense against the Mendiko, but theres no hiding from Sibyl. Shell find them all, bring them in front of her obruors - and lead them back here. She turned to Michael. You saw how many of them there are.

Everyone has been pouring into the city for days, for the celebration of an independent Ghar. Michael tapped the city on the map. Shell have access to tens of thousands of men. More. Fewer weapons, but thats never stopped them before.

The officer paled, then nodded. Then we should prepare to march, he said, sharing a look with his colleagues. How long do we have before her army is ready?

I cant imagine Marcus will take this lying down, but at best hell be able to delay; shes the only person that knows his city better than he does. Michael turned to look south, across the diminishing melee to the mountain pass. We shouldnt waste any time. Rout the Ardans, reform our column - and then south, to Gharon.