The guard fell back soundlessly, bleeding from the great gash Andover’s hammer had opened across his nose and his mouth alike. Whatever the veil had hidden was ruined beyond his ability to identify any features. Teeth and blood alike slopped over his hand.
He was horrified by his actions, but that little voice that was so pleased to be in a fight was crowing with joy now.
No time for that.
The first guard came at him again, and this time he was better prepared. The axe blade skidded down the length of Andover’s hammer and then took a slice out of his outer thigh, just above his knee.
The pain was impossible to ignore, but, despite that fact, Andover had no choice. If he took the time to think about the pain he would be a dead man. The same rules applied as had before: the man was larger and had a better reach. Up close and personal was the only chance he had of surviving this.
The hammer was tight in his hand and he stepped in closely and used the blade of his weapon, ramming the wetted edge into his enemy’s armored stomach with all the force he could muster. It was a small wound , but it was a starting point, and as the man grunted and tried to get away, Andover bent his knees and dropped a bit lower, then lifted with both legs, forcing the hammer’s head into the wound with all of his body’s weight.
The axe caught in the heavy hide of the Pra-Moresh and was lifted and brought down one time, twice and a third time, each blow smashing into Andover’s bound ribs with crushing force.
Andover used his free hand and sought to catch his enemy’s wrist, but failed. His close-quarters tactic was working, but not completely. The axe wasn't getting through his thick cloak but each impact was agony. He either finished this quickly or he was going to die.
The hammer’s blade was still pushed into the man’s torso and warmth slicked his fingers. He pulled the hammer free and let it drop down. He felt the heavy weight sink into his enemy’s thigh, the blade cutting through muscle and sinew and catching on bone.
The guard only grunted and stepped back, pulling his axe free from the hide that had impeded it. The obsidian blade whipped back and the guard went with it, dropping into a defensive posture.
Andover stepped back and felt a grin pull at his lips. “You’ve lost. Yield.” The wound in the man’s stomach was moderately worrisome. He would heal from it in time, barring infection. But the hammer had cut deep into his leg and a heavy flow of blood poured down his trembling, weakened calf. He would bleed out very soon.
The man shook his head and spat.
Andover could not believe that any sane person would continue to fight until the words Delil and Drask had both used a hundred times rang in his mind: Durhallem does not believe in mercy and neither do those who follow him. The guard brought his axe around and let loose a bellow that shook the walls of the pass. Despite his readiness, Andover flinched and then did his best to block the blow.
The axe’s blade screeched along the iron rings wrapped around the hammer’s haft and carved into the wood of the handle. It stopped against his iron fingers and caused a bark of pain. Andover let the hammer drop and rammed the palm of his hand into the guard’s face, felt bones crack and bleed under the veil and watched the man’s head snap back at the impact.
The other hand he used to block the axe again. And then he stepped back as the guard tried to come for him and fell to one knee, his leg giving out. Andover did not let himself think. His foot caught the handle of the hammer and he hooked it upward, catching with his right hand.
Then he brought the hammer up over his head and brought it down with all of his might. His enemy looked on, trying to bring his weapon up to defend himself, but failing as the axe fell from blood-starved fingers.
The helmet on the guard’s head let out one loud clang as the hammer crushed it into a new shape and the man fell forward, dead.
Andover looked over the dead men and reached for his hammer. Two more. Two more and he might have a chance of surviving the fight long enough to meet up with Tusk.
King Tuskandru. The man whose guards he had just killed. No. Only one. The second guard’s face was a bloody pulp, but he was still alive. He still breathed.
Andover looked at Drask and saw the two other guards behind him. They had arrows aimed at him. He was not foolish enough to think that he would survive if they fired the arrows. He was also not foolish enough to think they would accept his surrender. There was a compromise, he knew that, but he could not wrap his mind around what it might be.
And then the words came to him again: Durhallem does not believe in mercy and neither do those who follow him.
He took three steps toward the fallen guard and brought his hammer down upon that ruined head. The man died a moment later, his body shuddering.
Drask Silver Hand looked at him for a moment and then nodded. He did not speak. He did not have to. Since they had left Fellein, Drask and his associates had spent their time schooling Andover on the ways of the Sa’ba Taalor. This test, at least, he had passed.
Both of the remaining guards kept their eyes on him and one of them spoke in harsh tones. “You will wait here. You will not move. King Tuskandru will be here soon.”
Andover nodded his head and rested his weight on the handle of his hammer. The other guard blew several harsh notes into a horn, the sound echoing madly down the length of the pass.
Drask walked closer to him and pointed at the bodies. “Whatever of theirs you like you may take if you wish.”
“What?” The idea of taking from the dead did not sit well with him.
“They are your kills. According to Durhallem if you wish to take what they have, you have earned it. That is not the way with all of the gods, but Durhallem accepts it.”
Andover looked at the two corpses for a long moment and then reached down and took the obsidian axe. The blade was impressive. If nothing else, he intended to study it.
Delil walked closer to him. She looked at the blade and shook her head.
“What?” He couldn’t keep the defensive edge out of his voice.
“You should worry less about trophies and more about the fact that you are bleeding badly.” Her eyes looked pointedly at his leg and he followed to where she was looking, surprised to see a thick runner of blood streaming down to the ground. The cut he’d taken was far worse than he’d guessed originally.
Until that moment he’d been only vaguely aware of his wound, but upon looking at the damage he felt the pain he’d made himself ignore before. The axe fell from his hands and he let out a groan.
Drask looked at the wound from where he stood and sighed.
Bromt dug into his various bags, not speaking at all, but searching. “I’ve not got any.”
Delil spoke, “Of course you don’t. You never have any. You just hope to scab up and survive.”
“Am I alive today?” Bromt’s voice was low and filled with irritation.
“That is up for debate.” Delil’s voice, in contrast, was amused. She pulled a satchel from her back and dropped it before her, pouring the contents out on the ground. Half a dozen different objects fell out and she sorted through them with care, as most had sharp edges. He had never seen that large a collection of knives and arrowheads left in a pile on the ground before. What she reached for was a stick made of silver, which she then tossed toward Drask without looking up.
Drask caught it effortlessly and looked from the four-inch long rod to her, and then to Andover’s leg.
“How do you have this?” There was no accusation in Drask’s voice. He was merely curious.
“You gave it to me.”
His brow knitted with concentration. “When?”
“A long time ago. Before my first Great Scar.”
“You have a better memory than me.” Drask shrugged and walked over to Andover. “You are bleeding. I can stop the bleeding, but it will hurt.”
Andover looked up at the man and gritted his teeth. The last time Drask Silver Hand had told him something would hurt he’d had the new hands bon
ded to his flesh in a moment of the greatest agony of his life. The pain had been so overwhelming that he’d been buried alive by it and had woken several hours later.
On the other side of that coin, Tuskandru was the king here and he’d just killed two of the man’s guards. There was a very real chance that the man would want to rip him in half with his bare hands and if he wanted to defend himself from that particular pain, he’d need to be as intact as he could be.
“Do what you have to.”
Drask nodded his head and pulled at the gaping wound in his pant leg. The larger man yanked at the cloth until it tore, allowing him better access to the torn flesh beneath. Then he held out the silver. “This will touch your wound. If Ydramil decides you are worthy, he will mend you. If not, nothing will happen.”
Andover shook his head. “How can he decide if I’m worthy? We have never met.”
Drask stared at him for a long second, shaking his head slowly side to side. “Ydramil is a god. He knows what he wants to know.” He slid the metal between his metallic fingers. “Besides, I’ll be asking on your behalf.”
“Oh.” It was all he got out before Drask’s thick fingers were pinching the wounded edges of his flesh together roughly. A yelp slipped out before he could stop it and Drask shoved the silver rod against his skin and spoke softly in words that made no sense to Andover.
And then the world went momentarily too bright for him to see as the silver between Drask’s miraculous fingers melted and poured directly into the wound on Andover’s leg.
“If you move, I will stop and you will bleed.” Drask’s words were loud enough to get past the pain. “Do not move.”
The hands on his hammer’s haft gripped harder and he winced, but made himself stand still. The pain was great, but he had endured greater in the past.
A moment later the pain was gone and Drask was leaning away, looking at the wound and the long line of reddish metal that was rapidly cooling. His skin should have blistered and blackened from the heat. Andover knew that for a fact. He had burned himself more than once as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Still, the pain was fading and his flesh was undamaged. In fact, the line of metal was cooling quickly and as it dropped in temperature the pain vanished.
A thick line of silver was clear across the sealed cut, a metallic scar on pink flesh. But the pain was gone.
He had just enough time to marvel at that thought before the riders came, the great beasts of the Sa’ba Taalor and the riders who commanded them. They seemed larger than he remembered. That was always the case with the mounts and their riders alike, as if his mind refused to accept the fact of their scale.
They came at a leisurely pace, Tuskandru at the head of the column. It was impossible to forget the helmet of the man and he couldn’t imagine anyone else in similar garb.
The group came forward at slow pace, not hurried and not concerned about the people they were facing. When Tuskandru dropped from his mount, his hand rested on the hilt of a weapon. Andover could see nothing but the hilt and the sheath and that was enough to leave him worried.
Drask Silver Hand lowered his head and held his hands away from his weapons. When Andover saw both Delil and Bromt doing the same, he mimicked the gesture. Tusk looked at the bodies of his guards and then looked at each member of their party, waiting until the last to look at Andover.
“Who killed my people?” Tusk’s voice was lower and deeper than Andover remembered, but that could have just been the terror that was eating at him. He had held his own against the Pra-Moresh and successfully survived not one but two separate battles against multiple opponents, and not a one of those situations worried him as deeply as the King of Durhallem’s Forge.
“I did.” He could barely believe it when his mouth opened and started making noises.
Tusk looked at him for a moment and then looked at Drask. “And did he have help?”
Drask stood up and shook his head. “He had training, that is all the help he needed.”
“They were good guards.” Tusk looked at the bodies again.
Delil shook her head. “Not that good. They underestimated him.”
“He’s tiny.” Tusk gestured toward Andover with one hand. “He is smaller than you, and you are a runt.”
Drask laughed. Bromt laughed. The Sa’ba Taalor with King Tuskandru laughed. Delil made what Andover assumed was a rude gesture.
Andover did not laugh.
He looked at the bodies and reached down, once again taking the axe he had chosen as his prize.
Tuskandru watched him as he lifted the weapon. It was a very heavy blade and lifting it was not as easy as he might have hoped.
The King walked up to him and held out a hand, gesturing for the axe. “May I?” Andover was surprised to hear the man ask.
Just the same, he handed the weapon over.
Tusk looked at it for several moments, moving the blade so that he could look at it better in the red light of the great tunnel. And then he handed it back.
“That is a fine piece of obsidian. When you use it, you should place it within a weapon that you make yourself. Do you understand?”
Andover licked his lips and nodded. When they had met before Tuskandru had not spoken directly to him. And now the King had addressed him.
“I will, your Majesty.”
Tuskandru looked to Drask and spoke several words that meant nothing, followed by the phrase “Majesty”. Whatever he said, Andover suspected it was a question.
Drask made a few gestures and spoke a few words of gibberish back. When he was finished Tusk nodded his head and looked to Andover again. “I am King Tuskandru. When you speak to me as a leader that is what you call me. When you address me as a person you may call me Tusk. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“I am not ‘Majesty’. I am Tusk.” There was no room for discussion on the matter. “Now, come. You are welcome in Durhallem and you need to clean yourself and make yourself presentable.”
“I do?”
“You are going to meet a god. It is best to be prepared for that.”
“A god?” he shook his head. “I’m going to meet a god?”
Drask spoke softly, “Durhallem wishes to meet you. You will meet a god.”
Andover nodded. He could think of no words to say to that.
“What did you call this? An ‘adventure’?” Nolan’s voice was a harsh crack as he looked to his left at Darus. His friend was crouching lower over his horse and holding the reins for dear life. The horse below him slid and stumbled on the icy, rough ground, but managed to keep running. He did his part by not falling from the saddle. His hood was up around his face and his eyes were squinted half shut. Beneath him the horse was squinting, too. That was almost inevitable. The winds of the Blasted Lands were utterly miserable to contend with and the cold had long since numbed Nolan’s exposed skin.
Darus waved one arm to the blackness coming their way from behind. “That will undoubtedly be an adventure.”
Vonders Orly was riding up on Darus’sother side and he bellowed to be heard. “We’re making camp!” Nolan started to say something but Vonders shook his head. “No choice! These are cutting winds! We stop now, or we will likely die out here!”
Vonders was from the Wellish Steppes and, if he was to be believed, he and his family had made several raids into the Blasted Lands in the past. They’d gone looking for anything they could sell and they’d found things on a few occasions. He wore a ring made from a very odd piece of metal: misshapen and hammered by wind and worse, the circle around his middle finger was heavy and the myriad fragments of what looked like melted gems that ran around the edges and fused together into a multicolored lump at the center were unusual enough that Nolan did not doubt the origin.
There were two ways to get that sort of piece: be very rich or go find it yourself. Vonders came from a family that had gotten wealthy selling the pieces they found.
“How long?” Nolan’s voice sounded like a distant mumble to his
own ears.
Vonders pointed back the way they’d come and Nolan saw that the wall of blackness coming toward them was eating the distances at a terrifying pace.
Seen from the top of the Temmis Pass the Blasted Lands had looked almost calm. There were whorls of mist and cloud, but they were hardly violent in appearance. The pass went far deeper than most people realized, several hundred feet down into the lower levels that held the raging storms of the Blasted Lands at bay. From the inside, the clouds of mist revealed themselves for the tips of the endless winds and the nightmarish dust and frigid air. Nolan preferred the view from above, really.
The four men rode only a hundred feet further before they scrambled to pull blankets for themselves and their animals. While Nolan and Vonders drove spikes into the merciless ground to anchor their tent, Darus and Tolpen quickly set about sliding the heavy cloth of the blankets around the horses and securing the straps that would keep them from blowing away.
Calling their shelter a tent was a bold exaggeration. It was shelter, yes, but hardly as noble a structure as a tent. The horses gathered together at one of the three posts that held the structure up. The supplies stayed at the second post and the men gathered at the third. Darus had pissed and moaned about hauling the posts along for the ride. Each horse had trailed one of the heavy beams, and Vonders’s horse had hauled the heavy leather sheets on a small wagon. As the beast had been bred for hard work, it also carried several heavy stones that they were using to anchor the sides of the shelter, now that it was built.
Darus looked to Vonders and shook his head. “I was wrong.”
Vonders did not gloat. Instead he merely nodded. “Brace yourselves. It’s coming.”
A few seconds, later the harsh hiss of wind and grit and small stones slapping the leather and canvas sides of the structure drowned out nearly all other sounds.
Nolan shook his head, shocked by the violence being unleashed against their protection. The walls seethed and buckled and whipped in a frenzy as the winds tried to tear them down, but Vonders’s instructions had been very detailed and Nolan had listened. He was almost certain the tent would hold.
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