The tracker held an arrow up. “The Student was right. This is my last hematite arrow, but they work.”
Karro ran into the courtyard and met the lead beastman. The leather-clad creature tried to dodge around him but tripped over one of the corpses littering the ground. Karro drove his sword into the feline beast’s side. It lunged at him, sliding itself up his blade, and slashed at his face.
He ducked the blow and twisted his sword. The tawny beast screamed in agony and pushed itself, herself, away from him. He left her and turned to parry a blow from the giant Hykori in ancient armor. Red eyes glowed inside the bat-winged helmet of Balanar’s killer.
The Hykori’s heavy sword pushed Karro’s own blade down.
Karro slid his sword from under the Hykori’s weapon and punched his hilt into the man’s full helmet. The Hykori staggered back, swinging his sword wildly to keep Karro at bay.
Karro glanced back at the inn. No one manned the door or the window. Screams and crashing came from inside. Talodan leaped through the window and ran for the stables. Sickened that Talodan’s nerve broke at this critical time, Karro turned back and launched himself at the Hykori giant. The man had tremendous vitality. A normal man would be gasping for breath after three swings of his massive sword.
Karro dodged under one of the Hykori’s two-handed sweeps and grabbed the raw spot where the man had torn off his bracer. Karro wrenched the serum-slicked flesh.
Hissing with pain, the Hykori dropped his sword. The giant’s violent spasm hurled Karro across the yard.
Entrails slipped under Karro’s boots and he fell over a body. When he regained his feet, Balanar’s killer was running for the gate. A trio of living warriors formed up in front of the man. One readied a sling.
More shouts and screams came from the inn. Kestran! Karro ran to the door. Inside, bodies lay scattered on and under the tables. Kestran stood at the upper hallway railing. Blocking the stairway, Zamkrik, her lastman, grappled desperately with a black, wolfen beastman. Three undead crowded behind the beast, the lowest standing on the body of the innkeeper’s son.
A spray of sparks flashed from the upper hallway. Kestran’s wheellock fired and an undead fell back, the top of its head painting the wall.
Karro shouted a challenge and the other undead turned to face him. He saw movement to his left. Talodan climbed through the wrecked window and threw open one of the banners that Ervistellan had given them.
Staring at the banner, the undead leaned against each other. Karro cut them down with four blows.
The black beastman tossed Zamkrik through the stairway railing. The beast looked at Karro and then leaped from the stairway into the common room. The innkeeper backed away, holding a cleaver and pushing one of the maids behind him.
Talodan held the banner up before the beast. It stopped briefly, then it slashed the tracker’s throat open.
Open-mouthed, Talodan blinked twice and then grappled the beast. It tossed Talodan aside, his fingers sliding from its slick fur.
Talodan too? Is there any future for the faithful?
Karro charged the snarling beast. It hopped through the window. Karro ran into the courtyard, swinging blindly. His blow connected, nearly severing the black beast’s left arm.
The beastman clutched the wounded limb, its mouth agape as Talodan’s had been only heartbeats earlier. Faint blue fire danced across the wound. Before the beast regained its wits, Karro struck again. Two more blows silenced the creature.
At the gateway, a few warriors, injured beastmen and a new man clustered around the giant Hykori necromancer. Karro couldn’t mistake the silver-mailed newcomer.
“Voskov!” Karro shouted. “Face me and we’ll end this now.”
The Shushkachevan reached into a pouch at his waist and drew out something too small for Karro to see. The sorcerer motioned his men aside and gripped the item in both hands.
A spray of sparks erupted beside Karro. He blinked rapidly but saw only spots. A handgun boomed at his side. Kestran’s wheellock spat fire. Karro’s vision cleared enough to see Voskov falling back. The warriors at the gate closed around the sorcerer and picked him up.
One ragged warrior stepped out from the Hykori mob and whirled a strap over his head. With a sharp flick, he cast a stone from his sling.
Karro leaped in front of Kestran, his heart racing with the fear that he might be too slow. The stone smashed into his chest, at the height of Kestran’s head. Despite his mail and padding, a rib cracked. He staggered back into the lady, nearly knocking her down.
Karro gritted his teeth and turned to face the Hykori. They were gone.
Lady Kestran’s hand slid up Karro’s arm and gripped his shoulder. “A nightmare. Those guards, the nobles, so many people killed by things that shouldn’t exist.” She shivered.
Putting his good arm around her shoulders, Karro said, “Balanar ends three hundred years of service in this squalid place. Auros sent me back to bring another Knight into his service and now Talodan is dead. Perhaps I’ll outlive Voskov and find another Knight candidate. I’m just not sure I have the strength.”
~~~~~
Kestran and Zamkrik managed to push the inn’s gates back into place. Only one valve was off its hinges and the fallen one fit closely enough to hold against the sharp wind. She felt exhausted beyond endurance, but she endured.
The faint light spilling from the inn softened the scars on Zamkrik’s neck and the burns marring his cheeks. Whether from his training as a warrior or his fierce grip on what remained of his pride, but her lastman had stood his ground before the beastman in the inn. Kestran respected him was too much to mention the deed, although if Karro hadn’t come back to the common room, Zamkrik would certainly have died. Remarking on her lastman’s courage would imply he might have done otherwise. He was no Macmar to live for praise. Tuskaran ways only allowed for doing one’s duty or failing.
“This gate won’t keep those things out,” Zamkrik rasped, “but if they come back through it, we’ll hear.” He shook his head at the bodies scattered in the courtyard. Tilting his chin toward the gate, he said, “Those Hykori won’t be back, my lady. I’ve been in enough fights to see when one side knows they’ve been beaten, even if they’re still the stronger. These things must’ve had too many easy kills and haven’t the stomach to risk their last drop of blood to win.”
Zamkrik spat through a gap in the gate toward the escaping raiders.
Kestran sighed. Our people are too willing to risk that last drop. It’s our curse and why there are so few of us left.
While she and Zamkrik had pushed the gate into place, Karro took the nauseating task of clearing away the bodies of the undead and other unnatural attackers. The Macmar, true to their nature, cried aloud over fallen comrades rather than seeing to the defense or helping Karro. The servants bound wounds and listened to the mercenaries boast of their prowess.
With the bodies of the enemies cleared away, Karro laid out the warriors and fallen servants in a file. The surviving Macmar warriors helped by arranging their fallen in the posture of heroes. Tending Balanar was Karro’s honor.
Kestran went to Tana as the maid wiped the face of Kestran’s horse groom. Karro could to ease the groom’s agony. As the gutted boy tried not to scream from the pain of dying, he bit blood from his lip. Two Knights of Auros were here and I let this boy die! Kestran stroked Tana’s hair but scourged herself for taking the boy into danger.
“We have seen the face of Darkness,” Karro said, standing over Balanar’s body, “and that face turned in fear from the True God.”
The blood on Kestran’s hands seemed to fade and her grief subsided.
He continued. “Those still alive owe their lives to the protection of the True God and those fallen are in his care.”
Her amorphous guilt loosened a bit―a slight bit.
Before she had fallen asleep during the Manifestation play, Kestran’s next line as speaker for Carranos became a whisper in the fog. Now it roared through her. “To
know the Darkness and to face it is to defeat it.” Tana looked at her with shock. Then the girl’s face hardened and she nodded agreement.
Karro’s voice dropped into the cadence of ceremony. “The True God offers no guarantee of happiness or victory in this life.” He had skipped to the end of the play, delivering the word of the True God―Balanar’s role. “Know only that to follow the True God is to follow the way he has mapped for all of mankind. My name may change and the demands I make will change with time, but you will know in your heart the way is right.”
Karro paused. The night chill crept through Kestran’s cloak.
“There is no time to prepare the fallen for the whole Rites of Passing. That sorcerer may have other tricks and I will not have any of our friends become his tools.” Karro pointed at several warriors. “Get straw and broken wood from the stable and inn. Build a pyre.”
When Karro turned to the innkeeper, the man bowed and said, “I will gather our belongings. Any supplies we can’t take with us will go onto the pyre.” He looked at the inn. In a softer voice he said, “I’ll not be back here, except in my nightmares.”
Karro laid Talodan’s bow on the dead man’s chest and wrapped stiff fingers around the riser. The Knight folded the bloody banner the tracker had carried, thinking to lay it on the body too. Shaking his head, Karro rolled it tightly and bound it with a cord.
Turning to call for Zamkrik, Kestran saw her lastman stumble while crossing the courtyard from the gate. Torchlight reflected off a wet patch along the man’s leg.
She waved him to the bench by the inn’s door and tended to the wound. How had she missed this earlier? He was fool enough to bleed out before asking for help—damn his suicidal pride. Though shallow, the gash in Zamkrik’s leg ran the length of his left thigh. He wouldn’t sit a horse for weeks.
The survivors worked in silence. Tana leaned forward, shoulders shaking as she stroked the horse groom’s. The boy lay still.
Resolve built in Kestran. A swamp witch destroyed her life in the Delta. When she had buried the witch’s flayed and scorched remains, she thought the ordeal over, but it wasn’t. Even as she tried to return to her birthplace, Dark things hurt those around her. No more running. I have nothing more to lose and a great debt to pay.
Karro walked past, carrying a bronze tankard to Balanar’s body. He poured glistening oil over the corpse from the tankard then laid the empty vessel on Balanar’s wrecked torso.
Karro moved to Talodan’s body and spoke too softly for Kestran to hear. As he rose from his crouch, the Knight’s features were tight. Despite her own pain, Kestran wanted to hold him and comfort him, share and decrease their pain.
As Karro lumbered back toward the inn, Kestran stepped into his path. “I am going after those creatures with you.”
Karro blinked. His eyebrows raised and then knotted as though she spoke an unfamiliar language.
“I’m going to the town of Raven’s Crag to gather information and warriors for the hunt. This journey holds only death. Stay with your people.” Karro stepped aside to pass her, but Kestran grabbed his arm.
“I will go with you. I’m better with an arquebus and can reload a weapon faster than any man I’ve met. I will be no burden.”
He shook his head. “I’ve killed enough companions and won’t add another. Stay with your people.”
Nothing made Kestran more stubborn than a flat refusal. “I will go after those things. If you say it is better to go to Raven’s Crag first, I believe you. I will have a better chance with you than on my own, but this is not your decision.” She had turned both her father and her husband’s will this way.
“I’ll not have your death on my hands, my lady.” His eyes bore into hers. “It could be your death or worse for you at my side.”
Kestran gripped the Honor Dagger at her belt. “I’ll do my share along the way and I am ready to end my own life if there is no choice.”
Karro scoffed. “Do you think that blade will take you from Voskov’s grip?”
Kestran fought a shudder but held to her resolve. “I’ll trust in the mercy of the True God and the protection of Auros, just as you do.” She had grown up on stories filled with Tuskaran ladies facing danger with the courage of their men. Ladies defending their lords’ homes until no hope remained then taking their own lives rather than submitting. She would not let this go.
“Your lastman is injured. Take his horse. He can ride back to the lowlands in a cart with the innkeeper and your maid.”
Karro stepped past her. The argument was done and Kestran had won. Another chill swept over her as she considered what she had just won. Yet the risk to her meant nothing. Auros grant I don’t fail Karro.
Chapter Ten
Voskov ground his teeth against the burning in his chest. “Put me down,” he hissed at Bone and Ice. “You’re pulling at the wound.” They set him down. He gripped Ice’s shoulder for balance.
Crying out in pain, Redbeard threw Chenna to the ground. He held out his arm to Voskov. “Master, the bitch bit me again.”
As the injured shapeshifter lashed out again, the ex-serf had to dodge. Chenna jerked her arm back with a hiss that dropped into a moan.
A cold wind and chirps from birds huddling in the bare, wet trees accompanied sunrise. The party struggled along the dirt path to the tree where Voskov had left his horse. A young Hykori warrior in bronze armor waited by the horse. Rough bandages covered his left arm and leg. At his feet sat a miserable-looking pair of unarmed Hykori.
Voskov squeezed Ice’s shoulder. “Stop here. We have enough light to work on my wound.”
From some hidden location, Ice produced a dagger with a narrow blade. Without a word, the weird-eyed man probed at the wound near the center of Voskov’s chest. Voskov watched the man’s movements closely. Suspicion was as natural as breathing.
With deft flicks, Ice removed broken rings of mail. The bullet hadn’t penetrated Voskov’s armor but drove several rings into his skin and gave him a painful bruise.
Ice’s fast, accurate work impressed Voskov.
“Enough there. Now attend to me, Voskov,” Morishtevar raised a tattered silk sleeve, exposing a deep cut. The wound barely oozed black blood. Faint blue flashes played along the edges of the injury. Each blue flaring prompted a twitch or hiss from the souldrinker.
His own wound forgotten, Voskov examined Morishtevar’s injury. He touched the areas of blue but felt nothing. He had never been so close to a souldrinker before. Cold and a faintly pleasant smell rolled off the creature. Chilled fruit
Impatiently, Morishtevar poked Voskov’s arm. “This is no experiment. Do something about the pain. Now!”
“You took this from one of the Paladins,” Voskov said. “Chenna has a worse version. Their blades must carry a spell against unnatural creatures. Bad luck for you.”
The ancient Hykori grabbed Voskov’s mail collar. “Bad luck for you, sorcerer, if you don’t stop this pain quickly.”
Ignoring the threat, Voskov told Ice to observe the injury. While his newly-minted apprentice probed around the cut, Voskov shook out his trinket bag. He chose an ivory fishhook and returned the rest to the bag.
Speaking to Ice, he held up the hook and said, “One way to cancel a contamination spell is through direct contact with a spell of a different kind. The contamination is from Auros’s curse on the weapon that cut the souldrinker. It eats at the flesh in contact with the cut. This hook is charged by a drowned man’s spirit, a different spell source entirely.” He touched the hook’s curve to Morishtevar’s wound and the traces of blue disappeared. The Demon Lord’s stance relaxed.
Voskov held the hook up for a close look. He squeezed it in his hand. It’s dead. Amazing. He tossed the useless item aside and looked to Morishtevar’s other wounds. Only the badly burned ring around the Demon Lord’s arm was serious. Flecks of copper were lodged in the flesh where the retrieving bracer melted when its binding spell was broken.
“I have nothing to help here. This injury h
as no lasting magical component.” The look that Morishtevar gave him was chilling, but the Demon Lord said nothing. Morishtevar stalked over to the Hykori waiting by Voskov’s horse.
Voskov felt uneasy. He must blame me for that burn. Morishtevar saying nothing meant that the Demon Lord would save his complaints for Mallaloriva.
Moaning and writhing in agony, Chenna lay on the dew-wet grass. The sword thrust in her side should have killed her outright. More blue flames danced around her wound, clear even in the morning light. Not touching the injury, she held her side near the wound and cried out. Light fur covered her face and exposed flesh as she shifted between human and beast form.
Voskov knelt beside her and she stroked his thigh. “It hurts. Please help me.” She shifted back to nearly human form, looking no more than a girl of twenty. Pain made her blue eyes glitter.
Ice crouched by Voskov. Chenna shifted to completely feline form and lunged at the intruder. Ice fell backward, cursing and brushing at the shallow claw marks along his shin.
With Ice gone, she shifted back and grabbed Voskov’s hand. As another spasm of pain took her, her grip became crushing.
She made no move while Voskov cut away the leather jerkin and shreds of cloth covering her side. The wound festered like a wound untended for two days.
He groped in his trinket bag and withdrew a passion amulet. He needed a craft piece more powerful than the one he used on Morishtevar and this was his strongest single-use piece. He held the intricately detailed metal frame to the blue flickers on Chenna’s side and a spark leaped between the two. The flickering diminished but remained active. He looked at the dead amulet in dismay.
He sat back on his heels. He had only three permanent pieces: Madman, the Fever and the Clouded Eye. Voskov had used the Fever to ward his back-trail when the scout reported Karro still followed. He could not use it again for a month. The Eye had saved him countless times, creating illusions to obscure his trail. It was too useful, even if the Paladin had somehow learned to pierce the illusion. But Voskov feared Madman and the will it showed even when sheathed.
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