The Wound of the World

by Edward W. Robertson

  "We will attack the perimeter from the south. This should draw down most of the Odo Sein, as well as the bulk of their soldiers. This will render it exceedingly easy for you to slip past the pickets, locate Gladdic, and assassinate him."

  "What about the Drakebane? Isn't killing him the entire reason your troops came all this way?"

  "Your elimination of the sorcerer and his demons will make it much easier for us to reach the Drakebane. Additionally, he might confront us with the Odo Sein, expecting for Gladdic to reinforce him soon after—only for no such reinforcements to arrive."

  Blays rubbed his knuckles into his forehead. "You're sure you can put up a fight against the Odo Sein? I've seen swords of every size and shape you can imagine, and theirs are the second-most I'd hate to be stabbed by."

  "We have developed weapons to use against them." Riza glanced past Blays. "This reminds me. If Volo and your captain wish to accompany you, we can provide them with a small number of flaming stars."

  "Flaming stars? It sounds like I want one."

  "The bursting arrows. You may have seen them in use against the boko mai. They are also quite useful against the armor of the Odo Sein."

  "I will take them," Naran said. "Better to fight beside my friends than to sit in safety while they risk their lives for my honor."

  Volo tilted back her head. "Wouldn't it be even better to renounce your honor, paddle away, and go live a peaceful life as a farmer?"

  "That might be the logical path. If so, then count being illogical as one of my many flaws."

  "Me too, I guess, because I don't want to stay with the boat either."

  Riza snapped his fingers at one of his servants, who delivered them each two arrows. The heads were plum-sized black bags packed tight with something that smelled smoky and metallic.

  "Handle with care," Riza advised. "They explode on impact. 'Impact,' in this case, could include falling on them."

  "Fair warning," Dante said. "Gladdic is an extremely skilled sorcerer. Fighting him will probably exhaust me. I doubt I'll be much use after that."

  "You've made it very clear your only interest is in your foe. We have formulated our plans to account for this."

  Blays loosened his sword in its scabbard. "Ready when you are. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can drink ourselves into forgetting we're wandering around in a place that would make Arawn himself wet his divine pants."

  After a few more instructions, Riza left, saluting with his forearm lifted high, his fingers held together and pointed skyward like the head of a spear. One of the scout canoes joined them. It led them away from the main force and across a route that would approach the Wound from the west. The trees grew taller, spreading pale leaves that looked like the flensed skin of Gaskans.

  Within a mile, a white hill loomed ahead. It didn't look much more than a hundred feet high, but after so long in such a flat and watery land, it loomed like the peaks of the Woduns. The trees closed in again, blocking it from sight.

  The next time it emerged, Dante's breath caught in his throat. It was indeed a hill, or at least something like one, but the sides of it were largely open to the air. Long strands of rock or bone stretched between the floor and ceiling, looking like disheveled harp strings or the fibrous mouths of great whales. The floor of the cavern was elevated above the red water. It looked phantasmagoric, the dream of a sleeping god who, lost in his slumber, had accidentally made his nightmares real.

  In the canoe beside them, the scout motioned to a shelf of dry land running along the base of the white hill. Dante nodded to the scout, tapped Volo's shoulder, and pointed to the shelf. She brought the canoe up to it and got out. There was nothing to tie up to, but the boat had a thin rope tied through a hole carved into a flat stone. In the slack water, it would be a fine anchor.

  Dante got out, the boat swaying beneath him. Once the others were on the ledge, he moved forward to where the wall opened into the vast cavern beyond. Light filtered in from all sides, illuminating a yawning chamber dotted with reddish puddles. The pulse of Gladdic's presence was distractingly strong. The priest was to the east. And he was very close.

  Riza had told them to wait on the outskirts of the Wound until they heard the cries of battle, so they stopped a short ways into the cavern, hunkering down behind a boulder the shape and color of a molar. The surface felt almost like sandstone, but Dante couldn't shake the impression of boneness. Water dripped from the high ceiling. The room smelled like rust and wet rock.

  Voices rose somewhere to the southeast. As soon as Dante heard the first scream, he rose from behind the boulder, jogging across the cavernous space. As he weaved through the sheets and pillars of rock, he got out his antler-handled knife, opening a short cut on the back of his left arm. He reached for the shadows. They answered.

  Near the far end of the cavern, the walls narrowed. A pool of red water filled the way forward. Eighty feet ahead, the rock climbed back out of the water and opened toward the right, where the spike in Dante's skull insisted Gladdic awaited.

  Dante glanced at Volo and gestured at the water. She shrugged. He dipped a toe in, discovering it was only a few inches deep. As he advanced, the water rose to his shins, then his knees. The others were strung along beside him. He and Blays kept their nethereal blades sheathed, not wanting to drain themselves, but Naran and Volo carried bows with nocked arrows.

  Dante was two-thirds of the way across the pool when its surface rippled on all sides. At first he thought it must be rain blowing in from the cave's edge, but no water was hitting him.

  Around him, scores of stark white faces arose from the water, eyes burning with malice.

  26

  A hundred Tanarians surrounded them in the water. The men and women looked as though they'd been drowned, but there was still some form of life in their eyes. Some were dressed in rags while others were completely nude, red water sliding down their concave stomachs. Black hair hung over their faces in clumps. Most carried jagged shards of bone.

  Blays whipped his Odo Sein blade from its sheath, purple and black crackling down its length. "Now listen here—"

  Without so much as a word, the mob surged forward. Dante drew his sword in his right hand and the nether in his left. Naran and Volo let loose their arrows and two of the people dropped, trampled by those behind them. Dante slung a hailstorm of black bolts into the front ranks, felling half a dozen in one swoop.

  As he reached for another handful of shadows, the nether froze in place. "Odo Sein!"

  Blays darted forward, slashing his sword at the closest figure. He struck the man at a downward angle, cleaving through the enemy's collarbone and into his upper chest. Blays pulled the blade free without a hitch, striking at the next man. While the weapon encountered some resistance as it churned through flesh and bone, with deft tweaks of his wrist, Blays was able to keep it moving with little loss of momentum, allowing him to swing his blade about himself like a bolo. As the bodies fell away from him, the wounds seemed slow to bleed. Threads of nether streamed from the navels of the dead and into Blays' weapon.

  "Tighten up!" Blays called. "Back to back! Push toward the water's edge!"

  Dante shuffled closer to him. A woman stabbed at him with a length of bone. He cut through its shaft, then through her arm. She dropped back two steps, then leaned forward and charged him with both arms extended for his face, one no more than a bleeding stump. He cut her down.

  Behind him, Naran and Volo had had no choice but to toss their bows over their left shoulders and draw their weapons. Naran had his saber back—after the Righteous Monsoon had taken the Bastion, they'd found it in the palace's collection of artifacts taken from foreign intruders and criminals—and Volo bore a stout, curved blade with a heavy guard over the knuckles and a metal spike sticking from the pommel. It looked like, and was, a cruel, close-quarters weapon.

  Which was very good news, because the enemy was throwing themselves at the four of them with inhuman recklessness. Within moments, the only
thing keeping them from being completely overwhelmed was the corpses floating in the water and impeding the advance of those still living. As Dante chopped down a one-eyed man, a woman stabbed past his guard with a bone spear, goring him in the ribs.

  Dante stumbled into Blays' back. As the woman moved to finish the job, Naran thrust forward, his saber spearing through her throat. Dante reached for the nether, meaning to heal himself, but it remained as locked up as the realm's crown jewels.

  Next to him, Volo stabbed a sunken-eyed man through the chest. He took the blade willingly, sliding closer to her and stabbing down at her neck with a broken thigh bone. She turned her head, grunting as the weapon scraped down her collarbone and shoulder. Dante leaned in and cut off the man's sword arm at the elbow. Volo withdrew her weapon and bashed the man in the ear in with the heavy guard of her weapon.

  Blays was the only one of them holding his own against the crush of bodies. For all of the ones they'd already killed, even more pressed in on them.

  "No good," Dante said.

  "No good about to die," Blays agreed, shearing through a woman's jaw. He gestured his mundane sword behind him toward the eastern face of the canyon-like space. "Cut a lane toward the wall! Volo, behind us with a flaming star!"

  Dante and Naran cleaved their way eastward while Blays held off a throng of attackers at the point of their retreat. Volo paired with Naran, whose saber couldn't quite keep up with the frenzied men and women coming at them. Dante's side felt hot, the wound tearing at him with every thrust and hack. As they cut down the last of the enemy between them and the wall, Volo sheathed her blade with a clack, unshouldered her bow, and nocked one of the bag-tipped arrows.

  "Ready!" A note of shrillness pierced her voice.

  "Chevron," Blays said. He held the middle, Dante and Naran at his flanks. "Push!"

  Dante surged forward, swinging his nethereal blade like a machete through the jungles of the Plagued Islands. Blays bellowed in echoing defiance, cleaving a grisly path forward. To that point, their foe had fought with a feral madness, all but oblivious to the wounds they suffered for it, but for the first time, they hesitated. Some even dropped back a step.

  "Fall back!" Blays disengaged, splashing across the space they'd opened between themselves and Volo. The girl sighted down the shaft of her arrow, arm quivering. Blays flung himself forward. "Loose!"

  Volo released her hold. Dante jumped headfirst toward the wall. As he splashed down, reddish light speared through the blood-colored water. A great fist slammed upon him, the impact judding up his spine. The thunder of the explosion followed an instant later. Half dazed, he found his feet, reeling to the side.

  Limbs and torsos rocked on the unsettled surface. Pink foam sizzled and popped. Most of the enemy that hadn't been destroyed in the blast had been knocked from their feet. Blays was already wading into them, severing anything he could reach. Dante followed suit.

  A man stood from the water, half his face hanging in shreds, teeth and jaw and throat exposed. Unarmed, he threw himself at Dante. Dante flicked out his sword and cut him down the middle. The man didn't stop reaching for Dante's face until his entire body went slack.

  Dante threw the corpse aside, chest heaving. They'd nearly cleared out the right flank of the opposition, but the people to their left were regrouping, gathering to mount another attack.

  "Get down!" Naran's clear voice carried over the thresh of legs through water. He had his bow out, body tensed to the draw of the string.

  Dante dropped back into the water. An arm bobbed against his head, fingers brushing his cheek. He closed his eyes, but he could still see the flash of light through his eyelids, feel the bang of sound in his chest.

  He stood. The pool was slopping around like a storm-tossed sea. The air stank of sulfur and an acrid, insidious tang that made him want to turn away. Or maybe his nausea was the product of the slew of scorched torsos, floating limbs, and exposed organs. A handful of survivors were regaining their feet and moving together. They still didn't look scared. Just hateful and pained.

  Blays moved across from them, angling both swords down from his sides. "Now would be a good time to surrender."

  The people arrayed themselves in a line. There were only nine left, and of those who were still on their feet, most were bleeding, burned, or both. Despite this, they lurched forward. Blays' face tightened and twitched at the eyes and mouth. It was a fleeting expression, and so subtle that only Dante and possibly Minn would have caught the anguish in it.

  He lifted his swords and cut down two men with three swings. Dante ran to join him, but by the time he got there, only a single man was still on his feet. With mild disgust, he put the man to rest.

  Their breathing echoed through the cavern. Water dripped from the ceiling. Other than the ripples of the bobbing bodies, the pool was still.

  Blays turned, teeth parted. "Is everyone all right?"

  "Stabbed." Dante hovered his hand over his ribs. "I've had worse."

  Volo was bleeding down her collar, but it didn't look serious. Naran had deep fingernail gouges across his forearm and a gash to the thigh. Painful, but not crippling.

  "What were those things?" Volo's voice sounded half an octave higher. "They looked like people, but they didn't act like people. So were they people?"

  "I've fought a lot of people," Blays said. "And I've never seen them come at you to the last man. They should have been shitting their rags after the first flaming star."

  Naran nodded. "There is also the matter that they were lurking beneath the water. Not breathing is not a very peoplish thing to do."

  "Either that, or you need to hire some of them as sailors."

  "Watch the water," Dante said. "And everything else, too. We have to get moving. If the Monsoon breaks through the Drakebane's lines, Gladdic might decide to run away."

  "He tends to do that, doesn't he?" Blays slogged along beside him. "Ought to write his superiors a letter of condemnation. We can send it inside the box we deliver his head in."

  The stone sloped up beneath Dante's feet. He left the pool, dripping red everywhere. With a start, he realized he still had his sword out, but he didn't feel enervated in the slightest. If anything, he felt energized, and so did the sword: the nether flowing along its blade was rushing like floodwaters. Yet the nether around him was still frozen in place.

  The shelf of rock bent to the right. Ahead, thin white lengths of matter rose in a blade-like forest, obscuring the view of what lay ahead. The roar and batter of combat sounded to the south. The pressure in Dante's head had grown so strong it felt like a spike was ready to press through the middle of his brow.

  "We're close." He glanced at Naran and Volo. "If you have a shot at Gladdic, take it."

  They made noises of agreement. Naran's gaze was distant but steady, as if his time in captivity had taught him that slaughtering a hundred hostile insane people was just one of those things you did in life. Volo's face looked haunted. On the brink of a breakdown. A stark contrast to the aftermath of the massacre they'd seen on their way to Dara Bode, when her response had been red-hot anger. Then again, that time, she hadn't had to kill anyone herself.

  They entered the forest of pale blades. These were smooth, with the occasional knob or curve. It made the formations look organic, like trunks or bones.

  Blays let his fingers trail along a flat, rib-like projection. "Know what this reminds me of?"

  Dante nodded. "Barden."

  "Is that because it is like Barden?"

  "It has to be. This place is wronger than Lyle's prophecies." A sharp tingle poked into Dante's palm. He jerked back his hand, nearly dropping his sword. Blays twitched, too. Dante looked up. "You felt that?"

  "You mean the invisible bees attempting to make a home in the center of my hand?"

  "Any idea what it was?"

  "Let me ask." He held the hilt up to his ear, glancing up and to the right. "Hello, sword? My friend thinks I am a soothsayer. Any suggestions as to how I should best insult h
is intelligence?"

  Dante turned the sword in his hand, eyeing the handle. There were no obvious signs of trouble, but it was still emitting a tingle that verged on unpleasant.

  Something drove into his side. The thing was Blays, tackling him to the hard ground. As the air left Dante's lungs in a rude whoosh, he heard the twang of bows. Arrows swept overhead and rapped into the white trunks behind them. Chunks of chalky matter spat down on their heads.

  "Archers," Blays said.

  "You don't say?!" Dante wheezed, catching his breath. "Were they the kind with bows and arrows?"

  Beside him, Volo leaned around a bony trunk and let loose an arrow. She swung back behind cover. "I count about eight."

  "Then I hope the last battle gave you double vision." Dante reached for the nether, but it was still trapped fast, as if caught beneath a rock. "Drakebane's men?"

  "Either that or the Odo Sein they're with enslaved them from somewhere."

  "Odo Sein?"

  He peeked his head up from cover. The trunks of matter were rarely taller than a man's gut, and while they sometimes grew in small clusters, there was usually several feet of space between them. This meant both cover and visibility were decent. The archers were hunkered down in a line about eighty feet away. One snapped off a shot at him; he ducked, then reappeared on the other side of the trunk he was using for cover. A pair of Odo Sein advanced from hiding, ducking to the next row of bone-trees. As soon as they were in place, a second pair got up to follow them onward.

  Two incoming arrows forced Dante back into place. "Four knights." With no nether to draw on, his options felt comically limited. "Advancing in pairs. Naran and Volo, time their advance, then see if you can shoot them down. If you can take them out, that might free me up to use the nether against the archers."

  Volo and Naran nocked arrows, sticking an eye from behind cover. The Odo Sein were moving fast, already within sixty feet. When the next pair moved, Volo and Naran both fired at the lead knight. The first arrow struck it square in the helmet, glancing off the tough scales of the swamp dragon's hide. The knight jerked up his shield and caught the second arrow squarely.