Dark Vengeance

by Ed Greenwood

To meet with their fellow Nifl in the cavern road, and stand talking . . . before turning in slow unison to face the lone human across the stream, and striding forward.

  “Oh, dung,” Orivon said feelingly. “This is not how I wanted to—what’s that? Thorar shield us, Lady of Evendoom, what’s that?”

  Something was moving, far down the cavern. Something high up in the darkness, flapping and undulating—no, several somethings, curling and banking and gliding . . .

  “Raudren,” he breathed, suddenly recognizing what he was seeing. Dozens of them, dark and sinister, swooping suddenly to skim along amid the Nifl.

  “The Hunt!” a Nifl shouted, mistaking the raudren for darkwings. “The Hunt of Talonnorn!”

  A bright beam lanced out from one of those glowing swords, to stab up at one of the raudren.

  See that one, who did that? Keep your eyes on him, the voice in Orivon’s head snapped, sounding very much like Taerune giving him cold, insistent orders in his years of working beside the Rift.

  Raudren banked and swooped wildly as those brief-lived beams spat at them. They were the deadliest flying hunters of the Dark, not mere cruel and stupid steeds like the darkwings. Their entire bodies were one great, leathery wing, its edges lined with a razor-tail and even sharper jaws and claws.

  One dived down behind a rock pinnacle, then swooped out its far side to plunge down among the nearer group of Ouvahlans. The commander with the sword spat another beam at it, enshrouding it in flames that flared purple, and trailed sparks.

  The raudren shrieked, convulsed in the air, and suddenly shot away, climbing swiftly, and another beam raced after it.

  Now, Yathla said firmly. Aim me at that Nifl with the sword NOW.

  Orivon obeyed, the bracer quivered again, and red fire howled out across the cavern, to drench and immolate the Niflghar commander, very much as he was burning the raudren.

  Warblades fell or scrambled away from around him as that Nifl convulsed, staggered—and was dashed to a bloody smear and tumbling severed limbs as the flaming raudren crashed into him, biting in furious agony, and slid him along the cavern floor to a shattering collision with a rock spur of the wall.

  As that raudren sagged and others started to swoop down, all over the cavern, Yathla of Evendoom spoke again.

  Time to get yourself across the stream and out of this cavern. Head back toward Glowstone; there are far fewer Ouvahlans in that direction. Stop and point at my command—otherwise, use your swords and do as you were doing before: keep moving, tarrying to end no fights.

  “Yes,” Orivon agreed gratefully, and plunged into the water. “As you command.”

  A bit less sarcasm, Hairy One, if you DON’T mind.

  The voice in his head sounded as if it was trying not to chuckle.

  Lying flat on the high ledge as raudren swooped and soared below them, Nurnra laughed aloud.

  “Enjoying the carnage, Softfingers?” Oronkh growled, chin down on the cold stone beside her. The half-gorkul was busy lying very still, unsuccessfully trying to make his huge bulk look like a lump of rock.

  “That’s Lady Softfingers to you, Manyfangs,” came the tart reply. “And yes, I am.” She sighed happily, like a glutton anticipating a glorious feast. “So much blood . . .”

  Chin down on the rock just as her longtime shady business partner was, she lifted a slender hand to point. “There goes the Hairy One; getting away clean, by the looks of it. Not too lax in butchering foes who stand in his way, is he? Wonder where he came from? He certainly wasn’t in Glowstone before the Ouvahlans pounced; I’d done several survey-the-meals strolls.”

  The half-gorkul shrugged his massive shoulders, reaching out his long tongue to lick one of his tusks clean. “Aye. I mean ‘no.’ That is, I saw him not, too. A slave escaped from somewhere else, then.”

  He grinned, large yellow teeth gleaming as another bright bolt of magic flashed, in the battle below. “Whoever he is, he got them all gathered together nicely for us to butcher.”

  Nurnra gave him a sidelong look. “ ‘Us’? Since when are we raudren?”

  “Well, ’twas my magic as called them, Softfingers.”

  Though she hadn’t seemed to move at all, the sharren was suddenly pressed against Oronkh, soft and sleek, her sweet breath warm on his tusks.

  “And can you call them whenever we need them?” she breathed, excitement in her eyes. “Or when I want them?”

  “No,” Oronkh replied a little sadly, not wanting to banish that ardent eagerness in her face, but knowing he dared not deal in falsehoods when doing so could soon snatch away their lives. “That was it.”

  The knife-seller shifted on the ledge, to bring his far hand around to where she could see it. “I could summon them but the once. Spellrobes craft gewgaws that win but one battle.”

  He opened his hand, to display the formerly magical gem in his palm. Dull, now, it had cracked and was crumbling into dust.

  “Thank the Ever-Ice, Olone, and whatever other gods there be for that,” Nurnra replied crisply, seeking to salvage something from her own disappointment. “Or the damned spellrobes would be ruling us all.”

  “Instead of corrupt noble lords and malicious priestesses,” Oronkh said sarcastically. “Oh, yes, that’d be much worse.”

  The gathering-place was too small and too new to have a name yet. It had no handy water or sheltering side caves, which meant no traveler in the Dark would ever have bothered to tarry there at all if Glowstone hadn’t become so dangerous, recently.

  Yet Glowstone had, and there were more than a dozen dirty and weary traders and outlaws warily sitting there now, backs to the rock walls and keeping watchful eyes on each other.

  They all looked up as someone new shuffled into view in the distance, approaching along the smaller, lesser-used of the two tunnels that met at the nameless moot. More than one of the Watchers peered idly, only to shift in obvious interest, and half rise to stare the better.

  It was someone they knew, someone thought to be dead—or so the word had recently spread, through the Wild Dark. Word had been wrong before, but then, undeath had dragged the dead unpleasantly to lurching “life” again before, too. More than a few undead walked like the lone wayfarer, too. Hands felt for ready weapons out of long habit.

  The newcomer saw the handful of gathered travelers, halted for a moment as if trying to decide whether or not to turn and flee, and then came on again, trudging slowly on through the Dark. Alone.

  No one traveled the Wild Dark alone.

  This “no one” was a Nifl rampant, and he was the perfect picture of what most Haraedra, the city-dwelling “Towered Ones” among Nifl, thought all Ravagers looked like. He wore tangled scraps of weathered, salvaged armor, and struck even a less than fastidious Nifl eye as “dirty.” He looked every bit as battered as his armor; scarred, with a torn ear, and sporting an eye patch. Gaudy battle-trophies hung about his neck, and a profusion of rusty, well-used weapons hung off his body everywhere else. He bore a worn knife in his hand too broad-bladed to have begun its existence as anything less than a full-sized sword, and his face was grim and unwelcoming.

  “Daruse,” someone said his name as he came up to the moot. He replied with a hard stare, and kept right on walking, past them all and on down the tunnel, on toward Manyworms Cavern.

  No one called his name again.

  12

  Why Knives and Throats Meet

  Always we are ready here

  A stranger fair to greet

  Yet watching them for the times when

  A knife and throat must meet

  For forest dark and valley fair

  Many a beast do hold

  And smiling strangers sometimes are

  A-seeking everyone’s gold.

  —Orlkettle firesong

  “We must hurry,” Andralus Dounlar snapped at his kin urgently, striding through the busy throng of House warblades crowding the great hall at the heart of House Dounlar. He hoped they could hear him through the din all of
these sword-louts were making.

  The warblades were gathered in the vast and lofty chamber because they were loyal to the younger generation of the Blood of Dounlar. They were used to all of the family they served arrogantly, thrusting their ways through anything that was happening, so they paid Andralus little heed. They were all too busy readying carry-sacks of food for the long and perilous journey through the Wild Dark; moreover, it wasn’t any of them that Andralus was addressing.

  “We are well aware of the need for haste, Littlest,” his eldest brother said dismissively, using the childhood name that always made Andralus pale with anger. “The High Lord won’t be pleased if his intended slaves—Olone pardon, his subjects—start departing the city in droves; we expect him to do something to try to stop us. Yet neither are we eager to find ourselves out in the Dark without a morsel or drop to eat or dr—”

  “Barrandar,” Andralus burst out, “will you stop sneering at me and listen? There’s an army out there trying to break down our gates, right now—and none of them are Evendoom warblades!”

  That got their attention, all of them: Barrandar, Garlane, and even their three lofty sisters. Alohphea even looked alarmed, mouth falling open above her glossy, magnificent fall of hair. They stopped their arguing to stare at him.

  “Well?” Barrandar snapped. “Whose army?”

  “I—I know not. They’re wearing all manner of weapons and armor; they look like all the malcontents of the Araed: the wildblades who go out seeking bounties!”

  Garlane frowned. “Someone has hired them,” he said grimly. “It could well be Jalandral, not wanting to be seen to openly storm and loot a House of the city. Andralus, back to the gates with me, and beckon the best of our blades as we go. We’d best—”

  Shouts and screams deafened him. Everyone turned to face the front of the hall in time to see the reason: a spell had melted away the great front doors in a sighing instant, and the wildblades of the Araed were streaming in, hacking at every scurrying Dounlar servant and shouting House warblade they saw.

  The three brothers all drew their swords and bellowed at their sisters to do various things; it was Barrandar’s voice that rose like a deep war-horn over them all, snarling: “Alohphea! Raelimel! Lorneera! Get you to Father, or to the House Spellrobe Hlammaras! Let nothing prevent you, or House Dounlar is lost!”

  The three sisters needed no urging to flee, racing through the rushing House folk as swiftly as their skirts would let them. Wincing at the shrieks of Niflghar dying behind them, they spared not a moment to look back, but departed the great hall like frightened, flitting birds, darting around and between everyone in their way.

  Their brothers were already crossing swords with various of the murderous intruders, and were devoting all their attention to slaying, and all their breath to cursing.

  Rorlann had been a blade-for-hire for a long time, and had a reputation for being lucky. It had been his good fortune, for example, not to have been anywhere near the infamous Bloodblade when a certain maimed lady noble of Talonnorn, in the company of a fearsome Hairy One, had encountered the Ravager leader, and brought down on Bloodblade’s band the attention and long reach of Talonar nobles—and their dooms.

  Wherefore Rorlann was a Ravager, yet still alive.

  Alone, mostly, but alive nonetheless.

  And both astonished and pleased to see someone he knew, walking up to where he’d camped in a little hollow of rocks, in the string of caves that led like a long and untidy staircase down into Manyworms Cavern.

  “Daruse!” Rorlann said delightedly, setting down the hurlbow he’d raised at first sight of a visitor, right beside the drawn sword laid across his knees. “ ’Tis me, Rorlann! I heard you were killed!”

  “You heard correctly,” Daruse told him sweetly, sitting down beside Rorlann with a weary thump and smiling like a wolf—as the old knife in his hand swept up through Rorlann’s throat. “How long it will be before word spreads that you were killed? I wonder.”

  Rorlann gurgled helplessly as he stared at his slayer, his chin held up on that oh-so-cold blade as his eyes slowly lost their focus and the light behind them faded.

  Slowly his body slumped over.

  Daruse let the dead Nifl slide wetly down the bloodied steel, then wiped it on his supple-worn leathers and turned away.

  As there was no one to see what crossed that eye patch–adorned face, the Nifl-she whose strongest spells had gone into shifting herself to exactly match Daruse the Ravager’s body, so she could wear his gear and filthy garments—Olone spit, but they still made her itch like fire-fury, a dozen vermin-banishments later!—curled her lip in contemptuous disgust.

  What they said back in Talonnorn was true; all Ravagers were unwashed, stone-headed cave-rats. Cunning, yes, or none of them would ever last long enough to get dirty, but . . .

  She shrugged. Not that she’d had much of a choice. Between the hungry jaws of beasts large and small, and swift-gnawing molds and fungi, uneaten bodies out in the Wild Dark were rare indeed.

  This Daruse, whoever he was, had literally fallen into a spell as he died. He’d toppled into where a magic worked for other reasons entirely, in whatever battle had claimed his life, had been raging. Forgotten yet still flickeringly powerful, it had kept predators of the Dark at bay, and greatly slowed the corpse’s decay.

  Which had made the dead Ravager just what she was looking for. She very much needed to be someone other than who she was, for a time, and a Ravager was ideal.

  She needed to find others, though—and better ones than idiots like the one she’d just slain.

  This Rorlann had a poor knife, a poorer sword, and a slim purse; nothing she wanted. She was after someone who hadn’t known Daruse by sight, who could tell her where the Ravager known as Bloodblade could be found—or someone who could confirm his death.

  Either would do.

  House Spellrobe Hlammaras was striding scowlingly toward the terrific din arising from the great hall at the front of House Dounlar, wondering what dark idiocy the rebellious younglings of the Blood Dounlar had unleashed this time.

  Pranks and rebellious misbehavior had marked their lives as long as he could remember, but since the Ouvahlan attack they’d spewed oriad schemes and fancies so wild and fast that—

  Hlammaras came out onto his favorite high balcony, overlooking the great hall, and stopped thinking.

  He just stared, as horror rose to take him by the throat, as he beheld in disbelief the tumult of wild battle now filling the vast chamber. Nifl were dying bloodily everywhere, and strangers—wildblades!—beyond counting were streaming into the hall, through the great arched hole where the front doors should have been.

  Hlammaras stood quivering—and then blinked, and at the last instant ducked aside from a pair of hurled daggers that came whirling up out of the fray below to seek his life.

  Whirling around, the spellrobe left the balcony, darted back out into the dark upper passage he’d just come storming along, and ran faster along it than he’d ever run in his life before.

  He needed a door that locked, and for privacy, a deserted chamber behind it.

  He found both in an undermaid’s room, after he’d snatched her shrieking and half-dressed out of it and hurled her bodily out into the passage. Pausing only as long as it took him to properly draw breath before working a certain spell, House Spellrobe Hlammaras began its casting, altering the incantation carefully as he went, to boost it into the strongest magic he knew how to craft.

  All over House Dounlar, as the altered incantation took effect, every last apprentice spellrobe of the House collapsed to the floor, dark-eyed and empty, their lives snatched out of them.

  With all of that bewildered life-energy raging and crackling through his arms, and nigh-choking him, House Spellrobe Hlammaras unleashed his spell.

  A breath later, the great hall fell suddenly silent. Everything in it—living or dead—had been sucked out of it to somewhere far away across the Wild Dark.

  Hlam
maras knew not where. He stood panting in the sudden stillness, all the energy gone from him, barely able to keep his feet.

  Outside House Dounlar, he knew, the last roiling remnants of his spell would claim any Araed wildblades—or anyone else—who dared to step through the empty doorway of the great hall.

  They would vanish, without any fuss at all, and their next steps would be somewhere out in the Wild Dark.

  Where they would have to fend for themselves; he had no time to spare for any worrying about them. He had his own skin to see to, and the heads of the rest of House Dounlar.

  High Lord Jalandral would very soon be far less than pleased with any of the Blood Dounlar, or their household. With not enough spellrobes left in all the city to restore them, the greatest spell ever worked by House Spellrobe Hlammaras had just shattered the wards of Talonnorn.

  Leaving it defenseless against the Dark.

  “Belorgh, quiet!”

  Grunt Tusks lashed out hard with his heavy length of chain to take the ever-talkative Belorgh right across the tusks, and added in a roar, “Silence, all of you!”

  All of his battle-band blinked at him in astonishment. He saw them shift their feet uneasily at the sight of Belorgh’s blood on the chain, and Belorgh down on the ground clutching his face and rocking back and forth in silent agony.

  Grunt Tusks gave them all a baleful look, and turned back to trying to hear the distant sound.

  Remarkably, it was still continuing. A dying, mournful chiming, the tinklings of a thousand tiny bells that were sliding downward in pitch even as they rang.

  Grunt Tusks had heard that sound only six times in his life before, and knew very well what it meant. When he turned back to his brutish band of gorkul outcasts and escaped former Nifl slaves, his savage smile was fearsome.

  “The wards of Talonnorn are no more!”

  His band all stared at him blankly, incomprehension as plain on their faces as if he was looking at so many slabs of stone.

  Rage flared in Grunt Tusks—and just as swiftly faded. How could they know what the collapse of a Nifl city’s wards meant?