The Harvest.

Like all of them, he rides the wind, unleashing vivid death. Fast, a short storm of such darkness that if you survive you will never fear the plain kind again. What you forget is that it’s just as fast for the man on the horse. Slice down, trample, drag the fire, repeat.

Imagine a horde of them, far worse than any wind or storm could ever be, riding toward a village with long held intent. Imagine you are one of them. Which one are you? Riding and causing chaos and lighting fires? Or off your horse and into huts looking for ripe fruit and infants to spear. Are you finding other warriors and fighting out your manhood one on one, or is that you in the forest, just out of sight, waiting for orders to move on? If this is you, then you are Khünbish, covered in blood, wiping your horse down and watching with the sharpest of eyes. This is what will happen next.

He will clean his sword before he puts it back, hang his empty quiver on his back and mount up. When the others have done enough of what they came to do, they will leave men to deal with the slaves and collect booty. They will take new arrows, mount, and ride hard for the next village, repeat until they are given leave to rest. This is a night of drunken, drugged debauchery and cruelty that sings like a festival but is covered in blood. Toasts are rung over dead bodies, loot is traded, used, abused, everything that survives is considered booty, handed out the traditional way. The highborn take their due and the rest is divided among the men who rode and fought. Much worth fighting for.

Much not. He wants none of it. Only to be left in peace in his tent. Arm over his eyes trying to unsee what can never be unseen. Each vision carved into his mind forever, leaving scars and beginning to warp his thinking. Born to be a killer, he is not. So simple, so devastating. All kinds of consequences, none of them good. He isn’t a fool.

He lies in the darkness, shadows and lights playing unseen on the walls of his tent. His wound screaming at him, his soul cringing in a corner. Words, long missing, flood him, naming every slight sting, every lash, the stains that can’t be cleaned, the faces he took. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he does. How can he not? They surround him now. Touching his warm skin with cold claws, their feet awash in blood, so many of them crawling, heads, so many heads.

His breath coming in gasps, eyes closed now and hands covering ears. Leave me alone please. I know, I know all that you tell me. I knew it before I made it. Tendons straining, muscles locked, lungs fighting, heart running away. A touch on his foot, one of many, why does this one stand out? Ah- a warm touch, something alive in here with him and his ghosts. What could it be but the devil? Is the devil warm? He must be since he lives in fire, is it the devil? Why would he be here? Of all places Satan could be, at this moment in time, what would draw him here? His work is well taken care of by everyone in this camp, from chief to slave.

 Khünbish remembers how much he drank and smoked; how little he ate. The wound on his side wrapped and clean, he opens his eyes to see if they work, prepared to see the mangled dead ringing him in. Prepared for the darkness. But not prepared.

A woman, in a forbidden red tunic, with her hair loose and her legs bare. She is beside him looking down on him, her eyes still and black in her white face. He stands up as fast as he can, hand on dagger, ghosts trodden underfoot.

“Who are you, are you a slave?”

“No.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I am here for you.”

“What do you mean? Who are you?”

“I think you know that, Khünbish.”

She steps back slightly, torches spring to life, a seat blooms out of the darkness, she sits, and its arms twine themselves around her like snakes. She smiles with lush red lips, golden light on her pearly skin, her eyes have only grown darker. Her skirt drapes itself down her leg in perfect folds, a glass in her hand, catching the flames and filled with emeralds. She holds it out to him. He looks at her for a long time, nothing is revealed, time waits for him to take the glass. It is so heavy.

Outside women shriek and children cry, dogs bark madly, men roar like beasts. Smoke hangs and fires blaze, horses shuffle anxiously, drunken warriors fall and lay still, slaves pick at unguarded food. The chief’s tents are lit with life, lusts, and lanterns. The world as he knows it. As it has always been. A world that has never, to his knowledge, seen such a thing as what is before him in his tent right now.

He looks down at the glass in his hands, what is it? Shards of colour shoot through its twining snakes, its green liquid is almost gold. His hard-carved warrior’s hand looks strange around it, he raises his eyes to her. She sips from her goblet, eyes closed, the glass seems to float in her long white fingers. “Yes,” she says softly. “Look and wonder, find words for it, give them to me.”

He hugs his stomach with one hand, there is something suddenly alive in it. In his head bells begin to peal, he isn’t ready for this. Her eyes fly open, black and sharp, he looks for something in them, anything, there is nothing. Nothing. He drains his glass.

“How is it that you spent your young life learning to shoot arrows backwards as you ride. How could you bring yourself to waste those hours? Swordwork, pillaging, endless riding, words are useless on horseback. They serve no one in battle, stop no killing blade, mercy is never swayed by them.”

“What use are they, then? Why do we waste them now? Tell me your name and what you want from me, tell me why you think you have rights in me. You know there are others far more worthy of just about anything right outside this tent.”

She laughs, low in her throat. She puts her glass down on something else that shouldn’t be here, then she leans forward and her red tunic, soft and sleek, slips down her shoulders. Pale curves, impossible hollows, a line that leads the eye. Rounded fullness, gone too soon, the sharp curve in, melting hips, a shadow he will never know. How not to be mesmerized? Skin so white, surely it must be cold.

“You know my name, make one up if you like, I have never cared what mortals call me.”

Her teeth are perfect, she is perfect, with falling coils of black hair, lips that take more than their share of attention. He stares at them, losing the rest of her face, in his head a song he doesn’t know. Powerful, savage, and strong, the need to touch her, seizing him with relentless obsession. Her smile grows as he reaches out to her.

She keeps his eyes captive, he feels her hand, icy now, pull away, run away. He reads other things in her eyes. Desire stirs in him, making him restless, this isn’t what he wants from her. What do you want from her? How can he think such a thought? Behind him a bench appears, he sits, letting go of her. Not letting go.

“You are alone Khünbish, often alone, and having to fight for it. Where is your family, and the love of your life? Without them you are easy prey, for worse than things than me. How will you carry your words when there are too many?”

His head swims and swarms, she fills his glass to make it worse. He tries to focus on her words, his own take wing, a severed head, a song, a sea of blood, a soft white breast, a beating heart but no life, his own hands, leaving his will. Kneeling, his face buried in her chaotic hair, begging to be choked. What she is naked and beneath him, what rips his heart out, what he is willing to give. For this.

He lies trembling after, still smouldering and missing something. She strokes his face.

“Let me just say that this wasn’t what I came for, but was delightful, thank you. You’ve pleased me, and that’s something, I assure you.”

Khünbish closes his eyes, alive to her cold fingers and listening to music in his head. “It was my pleasure, my lady.” The notes echo out into silent darkness, words he can’t understand but still he is racked, an unexpected torture, ah- who could see it coming? He brings her hand to his lips and tries to kiss warmth into her fingers. He whispers, “whatever it is, I will give it to you.”

His soul cries out, beating its wings against the darkness. She laughs, “I didn’t come for your soul, though you’re ready to give it to me, I’m flattered, but not surprised.” She’s smiling with a hint of sincerity; he has no idea what to do with it. She pulls her hand free and rises gracefully to her feet, back in her throne, no trace of him on her white skin. He leans his back on his bench, knees up and hands on knees, head tilted up at her. She rises like a goddess above him, wreathed in smoke and secrets.

“What have you been missing, lately? What are you missing now?”

A voice, descending from the night sky, finding and filling him, worlds of music, an engulfing, enslaving being with its own life force. It pulls him apart; he is easy prey. When he looks to defend himself, he can’t, when he tries to run away it calls him back. All this he feels, but he has no words for it. They’re gone, like the ground and the roof and tent and his world, there is only music and sight and smoke filling his lungs and a great void.

She leans down to him, holding his eyes, gently this time, and he understands somehow that she has them, his words. A wind, slight, in his mind, pulls him, he follows. Her voice a seductive lover.

“You have wasted your words, I’ve been taking them and making songs with them that sing of your true nature. I have long been in love with your mind, I’m taking you now, whether you will it or no.”

These sentences wing their way into his mind, he doesn’t hear them, he holds them in his hands and begs for more. She laughs and gives him just enough to understand her.

“Come with me willingly and I’ll give them all back to you. Give yourself to me and you will never have to wear armour again, draw a bow, kill like an animal, live in your ugly world, die an ugly death. I can take your words, but I can’t create more of them, or string them like jewels, only you can do that. Only you can sing the senses of your kind. I need to know them, feel them, suffer under their lash.”

“Come with me and I will free you from blood.”

What does that mean? He fumbles, thinking of it, some of his words are back but not quite as he left them. They’re different now, clear and bright, well weighted, with their own purpose and meaning. Something to chase, capture and keep, arranged in their own garden, blooming madly. New ones… Unthinkable, but not.

He is already running ahead of her, straight out of the tent and into the blackness beyond the camp. Running at full force, silently, out into the desert, under blinding stars, rocks, cactus, shrub, stumble, run on until you’re far enough, then call for her, call for your words with your words. She is there, sudden dust storm, black fire, wild whirling, words without end.

The steppes wake, the warriors stir, knives are sharpened, the devil smiles.