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42Godfuckery and a Spark

I feel you wondering why I’d tell you such a bleak tale, and all I can say is that at that moment, I also wondered what the point of it all was. I’d lost the Book of the Full Shadow, which I’d come to study. I’d fled death and found slavery, which may or may not be better than death. I’ll have to die and let you know. Oh right, I don’t get to come back if I do that. So, here I was in a slowly spinning cloud-ship getting pelted with ash and rocks, never knowing when another bang from the Throne of Thumos would sound and send spears of blackglass to rend the gravid balloon holding us up. And all this with a great dead bird and a magnificent dead Spanth for company.

And below and behind me, an entire fucking city I’d murdered and the king I’d killed.

I could almost hear the Spanth saying, And what about the alliance they were making with the goblins? You stopped that, jilnaedu.

She would definitely end it with jilnaedu, so I’d know I was a vicious idiot and not get a big head about things.

“Who knows what might have happened,” I said back to the imagined Galva in my mind. “What did happen looks pretty bad.”

What about the slaves you freed and the slavers you punished?

“Yah?” I said. “And what did I free those kynd and giants and the odd cyclops to do? Sack the city, with all the awful things that go with that? You saw what they did to the queen and how many others? Did they deserve to be freed if that’s how they use their liberty?”

Yes, I think so. If you take a slave and that slave rises up against you, can you cry injustice at whatever treatment they return?

“I don’t know,” I said. “Anyway, shut up. You’re dead now.”

I know. This is just you making words the way you think I would say them.

“Well, that’s worse, isn’t it?”

But I didn’t answer myself this time, and guess what?

It was worse.

Something in me wanted so badly to cry, but it was all too big. I was empty and numb and hoping I’d wake up from this dream, which had been strange, and interesting in places, but had gotten so, so bad. What was I going to do with myself? I was tempted to jump, I’m not afraid to tell you; just steer the great red skyfish over one of those fiery rivers and let it eject one last sad turd before floating off to some, I don’t know, old elvish heaven cradling its knight and its raven in their stately cloud-bier.

As soon as I thought this, it seems, I floated out of the ash-cloud, and sunlight streamed into the ship, illuminating the two of them.

So, if I wasn’t going to jump, maybe I’d just refuse to steer.

That was it, then.

Drop me where you will, gods.

I’m just another one of your playthings, after all, you coldhearted karks.

Time passed, as it will, I don’t know how much. By and by, I thought I might at least look over the edge a bit. It’s quite something to be so high up, to see the world all at once as a hawk sees it. If I must die soon, and that seemed likely, at least I’d do it with a grand view. Beneath me, I saw the twinkle of the northmost aquifer; a silvery line of water stretching off to the snowcapped Thralls, which also lay before me, but close. I was over the foothills already. The mountains went on as far as I could see. Had we really tried to cross those bony, snowy monsters on foot? What a pair of fond eejits we were. Behind me, far away now, the city of Erydon lay under a huge column of smoke and ash like a small, dying donkey hee-hawing before its master as he whipped it without mercy.

“As gods go, you’re really a cunt, Thumos,” I said. “Fothannon Foxfoot might not do much besides laugh at us, and he might not even be real, but better an absent god than one that kills his own people for failing him. Yah, I know I killed most of them, but you finishing them off and, worse, killing their slaves with fire and ash just as they get free is really shyte. You’re a spoilsport is what you are. If you can’t win, you toss the table, right? My god shytes in your smoky old stink-hole. Who’ll worship you now, you tosser?”

As I said this, I felt the cloud-ship rock, as though grabbed by an unseen hand.

I felt my eyes bug and my arsehole clench, but I wasn’t ready to take back anything I said.

“I still mean it, ya fucknose. Do with me as you see fit. This Spanth dead is more fearsome and noble than you on your finest day.”

Now I saw that a sort of stream of ash and smoke was moving over the Thralls; I looked and saw that it went all the way back to the city, that the hammer top of the smoke column reached first east to the foothills and then turned sharp north. It was a current of wind; the strong thermals that kept Erydon warm even in winter, I thought. And now it had hold of the cloud-ship.

“Fine. Fuck it. North it is,” I said.

It was then that I noticed in the clutter of the ship a trio of barrels, each with a bit of twine coming off it.

“Thunderdust,” I said, remembering now the king’s demonstration, and that it was vessels such as these that the half-giants had lit and tossed down to murder camels and kynd with great booms and bangs. “Well, what the kark do I do about this?” I asked nobody.

Take it back to the Crownlands, Galva in my mind said. Give it to my queen, to defend Ispanthia against the Horde.