Dark Vengeance

by Ed Greenwood

  Orivon started to run, not worrying about silence. He needed that other sword, and a few of the smaller pieces of armor—and he needed to get them before the sleeth got him.

  It was charging again, rushing forward with surprising speed. Both pincers were held aloft and back, ready to slam down on him, and it was snarling now, a wet, burbling snarl of bloody spittle and pain-driven, burning rage. Orivon reached the first piece of fallen armor, plucked it up without slowing, and heaved it to one side. He didn’t want the beast to blunder into the heap of armor and realize his tricks.

  It clanged, bounced, and then clattered to a halt—and the sleeth slowed, suspiciously.

  Damn!

  Curses of Olone!

  It heard Orivon, as he skidded to a hasty stop and caught up some armor plates from the little heap, and came after him.

  He swore aloud, and snarled to Thorar, “Must I be my own foe-distraction, too?”

  The sleeth answered him with a roar, and launched itself forward. As it came, it brought its pincers crashing down on the rocks, let them rebound, and slammed them down again.

  And again.

  Amid their deafening crashings, Orivon snatched up all the armor he needed, retrieved the second sword, and scrambled up the rocks to his chosen spot.

  Still furiously smiting bare rock, the cave-sleeth charged up the rocky slope. When it was past him, Orivon launched his own charge, running and then leaping high.

  He came down jarringly on that last neck, got an arm around the head—and then had to fight to turn the sword and drive it through the forest of clashing fangs. The moment it was in, he kicked and twisted, keeping hold of the neck but hurling himself around and down.

  One of the pincers slammed into him anyway, numbing his hip and tumbling him helplessly away through the air, sword torn from his grasp. The other pincer crashed down on the rocks, hammering them repeatedly in agony as the sleeth thrashed about, shuddering and shrieking.

  He’d wounded it sorely, but was it dying?

  The forgefist watched the pain-wracked beast writhe and hit out blindly.

  It seemed to be growing more feeble, but that could just be weariness, not death coming on.

  Orivon glanced quickly around to make sure no other beasts of the Wild Dark had heard all this and come running, but saw nothing but rocks and heaped bones and treasure. Plus plates of his own discarded armor.

  He hefted one of those plates and threw it at the sleeth’s snarling, gore-drooling mouth—the hilt of his blade was still protruding from it—but the plate struck some of the fangs and glanced off; the creature didn’t seem to even notice it.

  It was growing weaker, though.

  The pincers were coming to rest on the cavern floor, the spiderlike legs rising and falling more slowly as it turned in one direction, and then, almost aimlessly, turned back.

  Orivon drew his favorite sword and took a few steps closer to the monster. He should just walk away and go on, while he still had only bruises and a few cuts and broken ribs, but he’d heard tales of beasts that could heal as they slept, and then go forth as good as new to hunt their foes—and not just the folk of Ashenuld and Orlkettle had told such stories; Ravagers who knew the Dark well had told a few.

  He had to—

  The sleeth reared up, shuddering all over, gave a great roaring bellow that echoed around the cavern walls, and then sank into a long, raw groan. A groan that ended when the monster slumped down, its spider-legs tilting at odd angles, to sprawl belly-down on the cavern floor.

  Cautiously Orivon stepped nearer, sword held ready.

  Was this a ruse?

  Another piece of armor, bounced off that last head, elicited a brief muttering growl and a great shudder, but no rise off the stones. Orivon took a deep breath, stepped in between the pincers, and jumped onto the central neck with both boots, coming down hard.

  The beast pitched under him, giving forth a wet, bubbling roar, and one pincer lifted a little—before it slumped down into silence again.

  Orivon put the point of his sword in under the lowest of the sleeth’s overlapping bony neck-plates, and then leaned on it.

  The warsteel sank in, the beast quivered—and then the head vomited out a huge rush of gore and sank down into it.

  Orivon hastily scrambled back along the neck to keep from falling, and then sighed, turned, and started carving.

  He wanted his second sword back.

  One of the eldest warblades of Ouvahlor came back to her, bowed low, and made the gesture of Reverence to the Ice. “The battle-din has ceased.”

  “I am not,” Exalted Daughter of the Ice Semmeira replied icily, “quite deaf yet. Have you anything useful to report?”

  The veteran—one of only four, among all the untried younglings she’d been given—went a little pale around his mouth, but otherwise showed no sign of anger. “We have found warning sigils—heralding the lair of a strong dangerous beast—by the entrance to the cavern where the fighting was befalling.”

  “So we go around that cavern, without delay,” the priestess told him airily, “and on to Glowstone. Our fighting and slaying shall be done there.”

  The warblade bowed again, turned, and hastened away to give the orders.

  Semmeira watched him go, idly lashing the palm of her hand with the whip she’d brought along to use.

  At last.

  She let the smile she felt inside slowly show on her face.

  Ah, but she enjoyed command. Doing things in the name of the Ever-Ice, reaching out with power to take ever more power. This was what she was made for.

  And should have been doing long ago.

  Kryree’s hands trembled as she fitted the last of the interlocking plates into place, rose from her knees, and held out the spherical map to Erlingar Evendoom.

  “Thank you, lesheel,” the Lord of Evendoom told her gently, to calm her; her large and dark eyes were full of fear, and her face pale for the same reason. Kryree and Varaeme had been his pleasure-shes for a very long time, and were not unfamiliar with either his moods or Evendoom matters—but they were not used to wearing armor and walking the Wild Dark.

  He touched the intricate spherical map with both fingers, and murmured the word that would make it float and glow. It was one of the oldest Evendoom family treasures. Rare and irreplaceable, of course, but then so were loyal living Niflghar, it now seemed . . .

  “We should be close to Glowstone’s nearest watchpost by now,” Faunhorn murmured, coming up to stand at his shoulder and point. “We must be here, yes?”

  “Yes,” Erlingar agreed. “Pity the thing doesn’t show the way to Nrauluskh, to let us go around Glowstone and on, seeking no one.”

  “Pity it doesn’t show the way to a huge store of weapons, loyal-to-Evendoom Niflghar to wield them, and endless food and shes, too,” Faunhorn said dryly. “If only we had one of the more expensive maps.”

  Those words didn’t strike Lord Evendoom as all that amusing, but then Faunhorn never made jests, and so couldn’t be expected to proffer good ones.

  Not that he had need to.

  Lord Evendoom was under no illusions as to why such a large handful of Evendoom warblades had accompanied them out into the Wild Dark. Perhaps a dozen admired Erlingar, and were loyal to him because of that or because he was the reigning Lord of House Evendoom.

  All the rest were here because of the one Evendoom even rival nobles admired: Faunhorn. Principled, merciful, dignified, and somehow stylish in everything he did, or had ever done.

  If Faunhorn stood shoulder to shoulder with Erlingar Evendoom, then so did they; if Faunhorn turned on Erlingar, so would they, without an instant’s hesitation.

  Right now—armed with the old family map that showed the caverns of the Dark in a sphere immediately around Talonnorn—they were all out in the Wild Dark rather grimly heading for Glowstone.

  Where Erlingar hoped to find and hire the Ravager leader Bloodblade, to keep them all alive as he guided them somewhere well away from Talonnor
n. To distant Olone-worshipping Nrauluskh, or perhaps even more distant Olone-venerating Oundrel; cities where nobles were many and weak, and merchants almost as numerous and as strong. Yet cities that had no love at all for murderers who hunted victims inside their gates.

  With Bloodblade as their guide, Erlingar’s handful just might manage to reach the relative safety of one of those cities before Jalandral’s forces—or his private flying Hunt, or spellrobes working for Jalandral—found them.

  Jalandral’s agents were out there hunting for them right now.

  “Make for that cavern, to stand guard and rest?” Faunhorn asked, pointing. Erlingar nodded, and reached out to take the sphere and quell its magic.

  Kryree and Varaeme were on either side of him in an instant, murmuring wordless comfort and reaching to take and disassemble the map-sphere.

  “You are so troubled, Lord,” Kryree whispered, her eyes now more full of concern for him than fear.

  Lord Evendoom managed a crooked smile. “My son wants us all dead,” he murmured, shaking his head in disgust. “The last of my children . . .”

  He spun around to look at Faunhorn, and asked, “Were we ever this inexplicable to our elders? I can’t bring myself to believe so, no matter how I try.”

  “Our elders never knew Talonnorn invaded, or its temple torn asunder by Consecrated fighting Consecrated,” Faunhorn said gently. “What they thought of us privately, I cannot say. Other than to observe that some of the elder crones of our House thought of us not at all.”

  “If scant comfort can warm me, I bask in your words,” Erlingar said wryly, and held out his arms.

  His brother gave him a wry smile to match his own, and they embraced. Faunhorn had always been true, the Evendoom everyone could trust.

  Just as Jalandral had always mocked and given insolence.

  It was out of respect for Faunhorn, who had suggested that Kryree and Varaeme remain untouched, that none of the warblades had done so much as kiss either pleasure-she, after they had tremblingly offered themselves to all the rampants.

  Everyone knew that they were not along to bed with Erlingar at every rest, but because Lord Evendoom knew no other way to safeguard their lives. Six of their fellow pleasure-shes lay sprawled in their blood back in Talonnorn, casualties of one of Jalandral’s latest attempts to have his father slain.

  Latest, but not last. They had fled Talonnorn with Jalandral’s hunters closing in. At their first stop to rest, out in the Dark, Faunhorn had told the warblades that he had not come along merely to save his own skin, but because it was imperative they all survive for a time to come, when Talonnorn would need them. Probably to refound it, for the Talonnorn they all knew was lost; Jalandral was dragging it down into bloody doom, and House Evendoom with it.

  Now, with Kryree and Varaeme on their knees disassembling the map-sphere into its separate metal plates, the two Evendoom brothers walked slowly across the cavern, into the heart of their silent, listening warblades.

  “I do not know my son any longer,” Erlingar told Faunhorn grimly. “I thought his purring indolence, his love of shes and pranks and posing, all leaned for support on Talonnorn unchanged around him; a Talonnorn strong and proud and prosperous. And now Jalandral seems hungry to twist, remake, or hurl down all; he’s become the sort of Nifl who would awaken That Which Sleeps Below just to work change.”

  Faunhorn nodded gravely, but said nothing at all.

  “I thought Klarandarr of Ouvahlor was Talonnorn’s worst foe,” Erlingar told his brother, “but I was wrong. Jalandral of Evendoom is the one who will destroy us all.”

  9

  To Glowstone

  If you must to Glowstone away

  Guard well behind you

  As sleepless you stay

  For Glowstone blades keen

  And Glowstone blades fast

  Spill blood in rivers

  that run but don’t last

  For Glowstone throats await

  Thirsty but not few

  —Ravager saying

  The dead sleeth stank—and glowed.

  As Orivon stared at it, the monster’s cooling flesh kindled into an eerie, sickly yellow radiance.

  Silently it pulsed once or twice, light bubbling up from it, and then started to fade. The forgefist backed away warily.

  Nothing happened.

  Eventually, Orivon shrugged and strode to the carcass again, to cut free his second sword.

  It was easily—if messily—done, and nothing odd happened.

  The beast was dead.

  Orivon turned his back on it and started exploring the cavern.

  In his frantic scramblings during the fray, he’d seen—or thought he’d seen—many dark cave mouths in the far walls of the cavern. He knew he’d seen, rushed past, or stumbled through bones and the tattered remnants of Nifl clothing and weapons. The lowest parts of its rugged floor were choked with bones and leavings. Which just might hide real treasure.

  Orivon bent, raked heaped bones aside with his sword, and peered.

  Then he did it again.

  And again.

  And, with a sigh, once more.

  Bones and leavings, indeed. Either the Wild Dark was full of large bands of blindly marching oriad-heads using maps that led them straight to this cavern, or the sleeth had hunted down prey, pounced, and dragged its victims back here to devour. In their thousands. Mostly Niflghar, judging by the skulls, though perhaps the smaller ones had just fallen down among the bones to crack unnoticed under his boots along with everything else. There were skulls of sorts Orivon had never seen before, some of them jutting with bony spurs, or long and thin like the heads of gigantic needle-billed birds. More than one skull looked frightening even in its broken, empty state.

  Wading in crumbling, cracking bones, most of them green with cave mold, Orivon sought to pluck useful things from in and under their disintegrating tangles.

  There were belts and straps of rotting hide, and pouches and scabbards wrought of the linked scales of various snakes and lizards of the Dark . . . and a few of these still held contents of interest.

  He found many daggers, and gathered the better ones into a heap; something to trade with, in Glowstone. Coins were harder to spot amid the crevices and bone-dust, but were plentiful, most of them stamped olden-day ovals of the cities that venerated Olone; these, too, the forgefist gathered. Eventually he found a battered metal carry-box that had been bolted onto the shoulder-plates of armor too small for him . . . but if he broke those plates, thus, and bent the result, he had a shoulder-pack that he could swing free and drop in an instant, to free both of his arms for swinging swords. It would do to carry the coins and most of the daggers in.

  More coins, and weariness, as his bruises started to ache and stiffen.

  Not to mention the insistent aches of his broken innards.

  He felt hunger, too, and thirst . . .

  But not strongly enough to stay awake.

  And what safer place was there in the Dark for a lone Hairy One to sleep than in a sleeth’s lair?

  Orivon recalled a smooth, tilted shoulder of stone in one of the higher, more rugged corners of the cavern. He went and laid himself down on it, sword in one hand—and fell asleep in a seeming instant, plunging down into endless darkness.

  As he fell into oblivion, he only just had time to wonder:

  What did raw sleeth taste like?

  “Most holy Exalted Daughter?”

  The deferential murmur was very close to her ear; it was only by some miracle of the Ever-Ice that Semmeira managed not to flinch.

  Arothral, the eldest warblade of the raiding band she’d been given, was at her side again, sword in hand. He’d approached in utter silence.

  “Glowstone’s first watchpost is just ahead of us,” he added, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Shall we attack?”

  Semmeira gave the veteran warrior the coldest incredulous look she could manage. “And have them warned and ready to meet us?”

 
“Ah, no, Most Holy One. I have slain the two Nifl who were on watch here, and sent two of my fellow battle-tested warblades to the other two watchposts, to serve them the same way. Helbram has just now returned; I expect Lorrel in the next breath or so.”

  “And you saw fit to neglect to consult with me on this beforehand why, exactly?”

  “Revered Mother Lolonmae swore by the Everlasting Ice that we could trust your judgment,” Arothral replied solemnly, “so I knew you’d approve of this unquestioningly, being as it is the only prudent tactic.”

  The bastard! The stone-faced, grinning-within, right rich-in-tongue-dung bastard!

  Knowing her eyes were blazing with fury, Semmeira let her grudging, twisted grin of admiration rise to her lips so he could see it, and replied, “You pass a test, loyal warblade Arothral. And thereby win my trust of your judgment. Order and launch our assault on Glowstone just as you see fit.”

  The veteran warblade nodded, face carefully expressionless, and then bowed, backed away, and was gone, as silently as he had come.

  The screams had begun, somewhere in the caverns well ahead of her, before Semmeira realized why Arothral had carried a sword ready in his hand.

  And that as he’d vanished into the dark distance on her left, the slightest of metallic sounds to her right probably hadn’t been an Ouvahlan warblade drawing steel and hurrying forward to slaughter unsuspecting Nifl in Glowstone. It was far more likely that she’d heard Lorrel, whom she hadn’t even realized was there, sheathing his ready sword and turning away.

  The same Lorrel who was now standing, arms folded across his chest, a careful distance behind her right shoulder, regarding her with the faintest of smiles on his face as he murmured a steady stream of orders to young warblades who hurried up to receive them, and then hastened on toward Glowstone.

  Ouvahlor, it seemed, spawned no shortage of deadly bastards.

  “Seek healing stones.”

  That whisper was fluid and lilting Niflghar, and female . . .