Yawning, her head pressed against Guo’s sweaty breast, Ogma nuzzled her face into Guo’s armpit. Her voice came muffled, “You smell like a mountain.”

  “Ye taste like rivers of my childhood. It has been too long since I have known human love.”

  Ogma laughed, “Fucking isn’t loving.”

  Guo smiled, openmouthed. Her sharp teeth gently biting Ogma’s shoulder, leaving lines of white dots in her dark skin. “The words here are strange in these young tongues. To fuck and to love mean different emotions but are the same also.”

  “Where I’m from we have a hundred words for fucking.” Ogma rolled onto her back and counted on her fingers, “There’s fucking between friends, between lovers, between mentor and apprentice, between slave and owner, between couples, between groups of varying sizes, between one member of a couple and her lover, between enemies, between strangers, and on and on.”

  Guo frowned, “Do ye hear that?”

  Ogma sat up, the redsun peering over the horizon. “Hear what?”

  “Someone is dying.” She stood and dressed. The morning hot and humid, full of birds and insects.

  “How do you know?”

  “I hear them singing.”

  Ogma jumped to her feet, “Walkers?” Her voice urgent and eyes scanning the camp, “Where?” She grabbed Guo and turned to her. “We must find it before Luna does.” Naked, covered in dirt and grass and Guo’s come, she pulled Guo into the camp, seeking the Deathwalker.

  In the distance, a shadow loomed over a woman sleeping peacefully. Guo pointed, “There.”

  Ogma grabbed Guo’s only hand and pulled her forward, moving quietly through the sleeping bodies gathered.

  There was no crowd gathered. No one watching the woman’s final living moments. No one to remember or record or mourn for her passing. Only the Deathwalker, a shadow blacker than the blackest night casting its deep shadow over the woman, calling her to the Ocean. Calling her to the Child Goddess.

  Ogma and Guo crept close. Guo watched the Deathwalker, its black arms reaching out from its black robe. Ogma stared off in the direction of Reuban’s, scanning the camp. The song drifted to them, so close to Death. The melody without words. The melody of the Child Goddess at the shore of the endless Ocean, Her black hair and purple eyes.

  Ogma sucked in a breath and gripped Guo’s hand. Guo turned from the Deathwalker and the dying woman to where Ogma stared. A figure came running, crashing through the camp.

  “Too late,” Ogma said. She let go of Guo and took a step back. Guo’s eyebrows came low and she opened her mouth to speak, but the figure running towards them stopped, pulled out a bow and knocked an arrow, then let it loose.

  Guo gasped as the arrow ripped through the robe of the Deathwalker. A wheeze escaped from it and it fell forward, onto the dying woman. It raised a hand full of blood to its hooded head and a voice like rust groaned.

  The voice of the Deathwalker grated on Guo’s spine and she stepped away, her skin roiling. Itching. Bile in her mouth. She turned to Ogma whose face had become steel. Then Luna was a few paces out, still running and breathing heavy. She pulled out her handaxe and began an arcing swing.

  Guo reached her handless arm forward, “Ye cannot!”

  Luna’s face was a mask of rage and the axe was already hacking through the Deathwalkers body, which seemed to give no resistance to Luna’s attack. The axe plunged into the Deathwalker’s neck. Luna ripped it out and swung again, the blood spraying. She shouted and swung a third time.

  The Deathwalker’s head tore away from its body, rolled into the dying woman, coating her, Luna, and Guo with blood.

  Guo wretched and fell away from the Deathwalker, now dead. Her teeth chattered and her skin crawled. Shaking, she pushed away from Luna.

  Luna casually lifted the Deathwalker’s head, stared into its face, and said, “We will not go!”

  Guo wretched again. Dizzy and sweating.

  Luna dropped the head and stripped the robes from the Deathwalker. By then there was a crowd of bleary eyed and still drunk or hungover refugees. Their expressions ranged from horror to revulsion.

  Luna’s voice carried through the thick morning air, “There will be no gods here. No hands of the gods and no Walkers. No Angels or Arcanes. No priests or goddesses. We are free! Free from the dominion of the careless gods.” The last sentence spat out.

  A faint cheer followed her words, but most were sweating, tired, afraid.

  Luna dragged the naked headless body of the Deathwalker through the camp, kicking its head before her. It rolled awkwardly with each kick. Its mouth filling with grass and dirt, its eyes and nose smashed by Luna’s kicks.

  Ogma helped Guo to her feet and carried her through the camp. Luna led them back to her yurt. Guo’s eyes were full of tears, staring at the clearing now formed where the Deathwalker fell. She stared at the empty robes and the woman found dead but untaken by the Deathwalker, by the Goddess.

  Ogma carried Guo into the yurt and set her down, brushed her hair from her face. “Just rest now.” Then she exited the yurt. Inside the heat was thick and the sleeping mat stank of wine and sweat and old sex. Ogma stood naked in the doorway watching Luna. Guo could not see but she heard the stake pounding into the ground. The axe cutting through meat. The dogs fighting over the remains.

  Dizzy, the world sloshing around her, she closed her crying eyes.

  When she woke Luna sat on the ground facing away from her, drinking wine. Guo sat up and Luna looked back over her shoulder, “I don’t feel like talking today. I’ll give more of my story tomorrow.” She turned back to the entrance and the refugees beyond it.

  Guo’s throat was dry and her voice scratched out, “Ye killed it.”

  Luna took a pull from the wine bottle, “The dead can’t die.”

  “How could—”

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  “I said no talking today. Go out there,” she motioned to the entrance. “Go to them and hear the new songs they’ve made about me.” Luna smiled, then took another drink.

  Guo swallowed and wiped her sweaty face on her sleeve. She stood and stared down at Luna. She seemed smaller at that moment. Alone and drunk and sweating in the dark while the suns raged beyond. She reached a hand towards Luna but walked past her instead. At the entrance, she turned back. Luna’s eyes were closed, her mouth full of wine.

  Outside, the suns were high and hot and heavy. She turned to her left and was confronted by the Deathwalker’s staked head. Its eyes gone but the eyesockets were stuffed with its hands. No tongue or teeth visible through the heart shoved in its mouth. Like a fist wrapped in blackblood. Guo wretched but had nothing to spill, so she heaved dryly before the Deathwalker’s head.

  She stumbled away in a daze, hungry and head swimming with visions of the sky opening and blackness spilling out. Shadows so thick that light became a whispered memory.

  Songs battled the heat. The smell of food and fire and shit and sweat. And blood. The blood of the Deathwalker now crusted on her clothes, on her skin. She stopped and sat at the edge of a fire and was given food that she ate but did not taste. They talked of Luna’s life. Her childhood. Then guessed at the missing pieces that brought her from there to here.

  “Her blood beats with the blood of a dragon.”

  “The gods took her mother so now she takes the gods.”

  “She killed a fecking Walker! Fed it to the dogs and now we’re all marked for the dirt, never to be returned to the Mother.”

  The words slid off Guo. Her skin clammy and itching. Her heart moaned. Her stomach yawned, though she filled it with newly made bread.

  She mumbled a thanks to the people at that fire, but they never heard or responded to it or her leaving.

  She found herself at the river and washed herself in the cool waters.

  “Feeling better?”

  Guo turned to Ogma, her bonelute strung over her back while she held her halberd. She was dressed again.

  Guo shook her head.

  Ogma nodded, “She hates the gods. All of them.”

  “I never—has she done this before?”

  Ogma snorted, “I’ve never watched a body given back to dust in her presence. I’ve seen her kill dozens of Walkers and rage at every one that escaped her. She can smell them.”

  Guo looked away. Her eyes unfocused. “I did not even know—I thought,” She shook her head and wiped her face. She looked up at Ogma on the riverbank, “The dead cannot die.”

  “I thought that too, till I didn’t. Till she skinned one alive.”

  Guo shuddered.

  “Know what it told her?”

  Guo raised her hand, “Please. Not yet. I cannot.”

  Ogma chewed on her cheek, “It told her everything. That the Deathwalkers are just humans. Mortals. Taken as children to some great temple where they’re castrated and forced to never speak again. Forced to usher the dead. Given some kind of magic by some girl who shines bright as a white sun. Luna wanted to know how but the Walker just kept saying it was the Mother’s eyes and hands. I don’t think it even knows the magic it wields.”

  Guo’s posture slumped. “I have never felt so old.”

  Ogma was at her side then, pulling her out of the water. Carrying her clothes and leading her through the camp to where they had spent the previous night. She started a fire to dry Guo’s clothes. Guo held her wooden crate in her lap. The bottles of glass tinkled whenever she shifted her weight. She drummed it with her thumb and pinky.

  As the suns tumbled from the sky, Guo said, “She kills Arcanes.”

  Ogma tossed twigs onto the fire. It was still hot. They cooked nothing, but Ogma kept the fire going. They stared at it. The flames snapping and dancing. Ogma said, “Any gods or those affiliated with any gods. Luna’s fighting a war. You may not know that. She’s waging a war on the gods.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought that’s why you came.”

  “Ye do not know?”

  Ogma exhaled through her nose, “The bones of the world don’t speak to me like they speak to you. The wind doesn’t whisper to me either. Before last night, I knew very little of Luna though I’ve been with her for seven Twilights. We’ve fought together.”

  “Why?”

  Ogma turned to Guo but Guo stared at the fire. Ogma returned her gaze to the flames, “Maybe I feel the same thing you do.”

  “Ye love her.”

  “Aye, there’s that.”

  “She loves ye too.”

  Ogma smiled and glanced at Guo who stared at her missing hand that she held between her and the fire. “Do you miss it?”

  Guo’s voice came quick and hard, “No.”

  “The bonelute is old. Impossibly old. No one, not even my master’s master, knew where it came from or which god the bones belonged to. But there have been Ogmas for a thousand Twilights. Maybe more. Maybe less. Even the songs we sing about ourselves are confused there. The first who played this bonelute and wielded this whispering blade was cursed by the gods to walk forever, losing parts of himself till nothing but dust remained of him and his name.

  “But the blade, this same halberd I now possess, whispers on. It holds thousands of lifetimes inside, yet it tells me nothing of them. I believe it’s been driven insane by violence and Death. The bonelute still plays true though. We’re adventurers. We fight and we fuck and we sing. We do it all for greatness, and greatness finds us. I think that’s why I’m here. That’s how I found Luna. But you’re right. It’s love that binds me to her.”

  “The blade whispers?”

  Ogma’s smile died when her gaze met Guo’s blackhole eyes that swallowed the remaining light from the day. Pulled the flames in her direction, as if a new wind blew. Yawned before Ogma, calling her as if she were swimming from a sinking ship too great to avoid the wreckage. “Have you heard of such a thing?”

  Guo turned back to the fire.

  Night fell and wind picked up. The sky clouded, shrouding the stars and moon in a blanket of grey.

  “Will she not miss ye?”

  Ogma coughed, “She knows where I am.”

  “Does it not bother ye?”

  “The dead Walker or her isolation?”

  “Both?”

  Ogma raised her eyes to the curtain of clouds, “It’ll rain tomorrow.”

  Guo blew a melody on her boneflute. Ogma pulled out her bonelute and began playing with her. First she followed Guo’s melody. A naturalistic one, mimicking the pattern and rhythm of the river and wind, the pattering of rain. But then Ogma created tension. Playing in opposition to the natural rhythms. Strumming hard when Guo created placid lakes. Plucking gently when Guo brought crashing rain.

  Some came to their fire to play with them. A boy with one eye played a drum with both hands while an old woman hummed along. Then a man’s voice picked up the melody and brought it into a wordless singing. The old woman followed the melody and sang brokenly the story of Vilka’s battle with the dragon. As Guo spun the melody in new directions and Ogma crashed through it, twisting Guo’s melodies constantly away from where Guo intended, the woman started singing of Vilka’s life as a mercenary with the caravans. Liquor and food were passed around the fire as the singing and playing continued into the night.

  When Guo tucked her boneflute into her cloak, the night ended. Those who had gathered around their fire traipsed back to their own to sing other songs or hammer out new melodies for the song they had heard newly invented.

  Ogma set her bonelute down. “All great warriors are cursed. I’ve heard it said many times. They are all doomed to die.”

  “All must die.”

  Ogma nodded, “But first we’ll live.” She tossed grass into the dying fire. “It’s different for warriors. To live a violent life is to curse your life. To curse those around you. To be a great warrior is a curse by itself. We are doomed to live short, violent lives. Doomed to watch as all we love and care about burns or fades away. Most Ogmas die very young. My master had seen only seventeen Twilights when she gave the halberd and bonelute to me.”

  “How did she die?”

  “We live violently. It falls back upon us. There was a queen who called herself a god in a land across the seas. She sent an army after us. I lived because my master chose to die.”

  “I have heard it said that all who meet the gods are cursed.”

  “Me too.”

  “I have also heard it said that all humans are cursed.”

  “Aye.”

  “That we are fallen, broken gods.”

  “That’s why the gods are so lonely. They long to be us, or whatever we used to be.”

  Guo laughed, “I have met few who have heard these old stories.”

  Ogma smirked and lay down. “I carry the lives of all who have held this whispering blade.”

  “Does it sing?”

  Ogma startled and frowned. She turned to Guo who already watched her. Her voice quivered, “Is there nothing you’ve never heard of?”

  “How often?”

  Ogma lifted the bonelute and set it on her lap, but her gaze trailed to the halberd standing high, its butt jammed deep into the ground. “Only once. To me.”

  “What did it sing?”

  Ogma shuddered, “It’s too hot for this.” She plucked at the bonelute. A faltering asymmetrical melody. “It wasn’t a song. Not really. More akin to the melody the Goddess sings through the Walkers.”

  Guo sighed, “I wish I had a smoke. It is good to smoke during a talking like this.”

  Ogma laughed.

  In the morning, Ogma was gone.