Page 18 of Humans Don't Have Horns
“You know, it’s strange,” I say to Siean. This Kozari lasso, it burns badly. But it’s not so bad as the Mongan described it to me. He said that not only is it the worst pain, but it is as if someone has put a blanket of despair on you, and you lose the will to fight or even live.”
Her voice is flat, her face still at the window as she answers, “That’s because they contain Cursed Ones’ horns. It affects them differently.”
My breath is tight all of a sudden. How would one get Mongan horns to begin with? And to chain the Mongans with the remains of their people. Such callousness. Daton’s harsh words come back to me. And why would Siean know this? Is it common knowledge?
“Wait, is this how Tilil brought you back from the dead? Is that why you still look sixteen? Are you using some kind of Renyan healing involving Mongan horns?” I ask her.
She looks at me then. Her eyes simmer with anger. “Don’t you dare judge me.” Her voice is harsh. “I was dead. You have no idea what that’s like. She didn’t ask me if I wanted to come back. It’s not as if anyone has ever given me a choice.”
I frown at her. “So if they bring you back to life, you’re stuck at the age you died?”
“I don’t know. Just shut up,” Siean snaps.
But I won’t drop this. “So you’re still using them? Don’t you—” The carriage stops as I’m mid-sentence.
I can hear the soldiers talking while climbing down from the carriage. But as they get farther away, there is an unnatural silence. Siean opens the door and goes down to see what caused them to stop, leaving the carriage open. But she doesn’t return. I push my way out of the carriage slowly. Every movement burns where the lasso touches my skin.
Farther down the road, Siean and the guards are standing with their backs to me. All five of them are looking at something I can’t see. They are all quiet and stand still as if frozen. I go farther down the road to get a better look, and then I see it. Body parts of Aldonian soldiers are scattered on the ground. It is the most horrific and violent scene I’ve ever witnessed. I can tell the body parts belong to Aldonian soldiers by their blood-drenched uniforms. The men themselves are impossible to identify, since most of them are missing. It’s hard even to estimate how many bodies there are. The dismembered bodies are dispersed in ten-feet radii. I spot an ear close to me, then a finger. A few feet from me lies something like a half-eaten head. Everything is quiet but for the sound of one of the guards vomiting. I can’t hear even a single bird.
Siean clears her throat and says in a determined voice, “Back to the carriage. We can still cross this road.” The guards look at one another as if waiting for one of them to gather his courage to defy her. But they head back to the carriage without a word.
“Have you all lost your minds?” I cry out. “What if what did this is farther down the road?”
“We can’t go back to Renya without completing our mission. And we have our armed guards with us for protection,” Siean answers brusquely.
I stare at her in bewilderment. She looks just as she did before she got sick, yet I don’t know her at all. How can she be so calm about delivering me to my death? She stands tall and looks me straight in the eye, challenging me to defy her. Her royal cape is deep blue withsilver strings reaching the ground. She looks like a proper Renyan princess, one I can never look like. Beyond her lies blood, gore, and death, yet she seems like an island of tranquility. It’s a mask of calmness. She was never calm. She was always so easily frightened, so profoundly loving. More so than all of us.
I wonder again why my aunt has such control over her. While we rode in the carriage, I saw her pain. It was so palpable. The memory of my mother and brother haunts her still. And these body parts are scattered around. It looks as if something preyed on these men. And whatever it was, it wasn’t natural. The guards appear utterly terrified. And yet she is more scared of my aunt.
“At least untie me. I can’t protect myself like this,” I say. I can’t believe I need to press her in this way.
“I can’t see how you can protect yourself from whatever did this untied as well,” she answers wryly and walks past me to the carriage. I reluctantly follow her.
“Now you are taking both of us to our deaths,” I implore. But I get no reaction from her.
At first, the horses are reluctant to ride ahead, but the guards whip them violently until they cooperate and pull the carriage. Even so, our ride stops after just a few minutes. The horses are now bucking in fear, screaming loudly.
“Release me, Siean. I will not run from you. May the Goddess strike me if I lie.” What a strange thing it is to have the Goddess on my tongue again. My mother was very religious, even under the supervising eyes of the King of Aldon, the head of the True Religion. And I remember now how we prayed secretly to the Goddess. She told us, “Sun is our punishment, girls, and we shall endure him and pay for our sins. But our souls are gifts of the Goddess. We are the daughters of the Goddess. Sun is childless.”
I can see Siean’s thoughts battling in her mind. She doesn’t trust me, but something horrible is approaching us, and she can no longer deny it. She unties me quickly and wordlessly. Then she is out of the carriage, calling to the guards.
It is a great relief to be free of the burning sensation. When I look at my wrists, I’m surprised to see no burn marks. No sign whatsoever of the feeling of my skin being scorched – which I endured for hours. I follow Siean outside the carriage against every instinct I have. In front of the carriage, Siean and the guards stand as if paralyzed. And when I see it, my legs are also glued to the ground. Because what we all see is impossible.
It is impossible because the Aldonian army exterminated the demichads in the War of Light. The war that made Aldon the nation that rules all others also made Renya and Kozari submit to the True Religion, disarm, and relinquish all aspirations for independence.
The War of Light was the triumph of Amadans over the darkness, over the man-eating monsters—the demichads. They have been extinct for a hundred years, but not before eating and preying on a third of the population of Amada. Families vanished, and so did whole villages and towns. No one was spared. It didn’t matter how old you were, how wealthy you were, what language you spoke, or what god you worshipped.
Once they got close, you ended up as their meal.
The demichad stands solitary in the middle of the road. It is more horrific than the drawings I’ve seen, and it reeks of death and decay. It has the body of a man. Or at least, the body of a skinless man. Its flesh is raw, and all its muscles are visible. There are hundreds of earthworms traveling on it and inside it, yet it seems unbothered. Long claws extend from its fingers. The head is very inhuman. It has two little eyes that look like black beads, and the rest of its face is a huge mouth full of sharp teeth.
It looks directly at me, only at me. In their despair, the guards draw their swords, a useless thing to do. Running is also useless. That is, if the stories of the demichads are true. They are the strongest and fastest predators in all of Amada. They attack in a great mass, thousands of them at once, and devour complete villages in several minutes. But here stands only one of them. Is it alone? Is it the last one of its kind, saved somehow from the great Aldonian crusade?
The demichad’s tiny eyes are fixed on me still. “Hello,” I say in ashaky voice because I have no better idea. But when I speak, I feel a strange, delicate vibration in my body, like there are dozens of butterflies flying outside me.
“What are you doing?” Siean whisper-shouts at me through ground teeth. “We must run.” But running is pointless. This is what killed the Aldonian soldiers we just saw. It devoured them.
The demichad tilts its head at me curiously. Its mouth is not moving, yet there is a vibration in its body, and I can feel its ripples inside me. “You speak our language. Prey doesn’t speak our language,” it responds, sounding puzzled. I can feel Siean and the guards staring at me in astonishment. I tell myself to keep talking. I don’t know what good it will do. I don’t understand how I can communicate with this ghastly creature. First the direwolves, and now this. Is the Nimatek responsible for this? I don’t have the first clue about this bizarre situation.
