The Crippled God

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    T’lan Imass, carrying a makeshift stretcher on which lay a swaddled body. Beside this, a marine with blood covering his hands and forearms.
    Blistig squinted as they drew closer.
    The T’lan Imass walked past him and the Fist looked down at the pale face of the man on the stretcher. He grunted.
    The marine halted before him, saluted. ‘Fist,’ he said.
    ‘Pores ain’t dead yet? What was the point of that, healer?’
    Blistig’s answer was a fist smashing into his face, hard enough to crush his nose, send him reeling back. Stumbling, falling to the ground. Blood gushing down, he lay stunned.
    The healer moved to stand over him. ‘Thing is, Fist,’ he said, massaging his hand, ‘what with all the shit Pores has gone through because of you, we decided to make him an honorary marine. Now, you go sticking a knife in a fellow marine and, well, we’re out for you now. Understand me, sir? The marines are out for you.’
    Blistig listened to the man walk off in the wake of the T’lan Imass.He made it on to his side to spit out slime and blood, and then grunted a laugh. Aye, and a man is measured by his enemies .
    Do your worst, marines. So long as I get to her first .
    It was some time before he managed to regain his feet, but when he set off after the column, his strides were stiff, jerking, filled with a strength past anything he had known before. In his head three words made a mantra. To see her. To see her. To see her .
    The Khundryl camp was being packed up, but the people doing the task moved with aching slowness. The claws upon their skin seemed to be dragging them down, and Badalle watched in the midst of twenty or so of Rutt’s children, as everything that was coming along for this final night was put in its proper place – everything but for the mother’s tent, and she was yet to emerge.
    The midwives and other women had come out earlier, expressions guarded, and, though she could not be certain, in Badalle’s mind she saw but three figures remaining inside. The father, the mother, and the baby. Would this be their final home, then?
    A Khundryl child came up to Saddic, pressing into his hands yet another toy – a bone top or whistle, she couldn’t quite see it before Saddic slipped it into his sack and smiled his thanks. A new sack, too big to carry now. The Khundryl children had been bringing him toys all day.
    The times she’d watched that procession, she’d wanted to cry. She’d wanted Saddic to cry. But she didn’t understand why she wanted that – they were being kind, after all. And she didn’t know why she saw those Khundryl children as if they were but servants to something greater, something almost too big for words. Not at the instigation of adults, not even mothers and fathers. Not at the behest of pity, either. Didn’t they want their toys? She had seen such precious things settle into Saddic’s hand, had seen bright shining eyes lift shyly to Saddic in the moment of giving, and then fall away again – children running off, too light-footed, flinging themselves into their friends’ arms, and this went on and on and Badalle didn’t understand, but how her heart ached. How she wanted Saddic to weep, how she wanted to feel her own tears.
    She spoke a poem under her breath.
‘Snakes do not know how to cry.
They know too much
and yearn for darkness.
They know too much
and fear the light.
No one gives gifts to snakes,
and no one makes of them a gift.
They are neither given
nor received.
Yet in all the world,
snakes do not know how to cry.’
     
    Saddic studied her and she knew that he had heard. Of course it was for him, this poem, though she suspected that he did not know that. But the man who will find him will. Maybe he’ll cry, when we cannot. Maybe he will tell this tale in such a way as to make his listeners cry, because we cannot .
    A Khundryl elder came up then and helped Saddic load his bag of toys on to a wagon. When the boy glanced over at Badalle, she nodded. He climbed up to settle himself beside his treasure. And there, he believed, he would die.
    But it is not to be. How will he survive? I wish I knew the answer to that, because a secret hides inside it .
    The birth-tent’s flap was swept aside then, and the father emerged. His eyes were raw with weeping, yet there was a fire in them. He is proud. He is defiant in his pride, and would challenge us all. I like this look. It is how a father should look . Then behind him, out she came, unsteady on her feet,