The Book of Silence

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Nalba nodded silently, then crept cautiously past his commander and down the length of the room, unslinging the heavy mace as he went, so that it was ready in his hand when he reached the arch.

  He peered through, and saw the lamp flickering on the floor. He glimpsed the tapering column and thought for an instant that it was the overman, crouched to spring. He swung back out of the way; then, when no attack came, he inched forward again.

  This time he made out the column’s nature more clearly and determined that it was not an immediate threat. He advanced, slowly and carefully, into the room.

  Behind the door, Garth watched and waited.

  Nalba paused a few paces in, just short of the trough encircling the central pediment, and peered around into the darkness. He saw nothing—no overman and no way out of the room.

  A chill ran through him, despite the chamber’s muggy warmth, as the notion arose that the overman they pursued had vanished by means of sorcery.

  His first thought was to run back and tell the marshal that the overman had disappeared into thin air. He stopped himself, however, and tried to think it through.

  It was undeniable that, as far as he could tell, the room was empty of everything but dust, shadows, and the abandoned lamp; but he could not see all of the room. Sedrik would be disappointed in him if he were to turn and leave now, and if it were later discovered that the overman was hiding behind some secret panel lost in the gloom.

  Besides, he saw no actual danger.

  Mace held out before him, Nalba began to make his way around the room, poking his weapon at the wall every so often and peering into the shadows. He came at last to the deep darkness behind the broad door and paused; any concealed opening there would just lead back out into the long chamber, but he knew he should check it for the sake of completeness. Something about it made him nervous; he thought he saw something glinting, or heard something breathing, or perhaps both. He could not be sure of his sight in the unsteady light and clinging darkness, or of his hearing while the dull throbbing pounded on his ears, or of his thoughts in the foul, moist air of the chamber.

  If the overman were hiding there behind the door, Nalba told himself, he would have jumped out and cut my throat long ago. The soldier prodded with his mace.

  Steel flashed, and the tip of a sword slipped between his chin and the throatpiece of his helmet.

  “One word, human, and I sever your head,” Garth warned.

  Nalba froze, fighting a sudden urge to swallow, his teeth clenched to hold in a scream.

  “Put the mace down, slowly and quietly,” the overman said.

  Nalba tried to obey; he lowered the head, but was unable to handle the weight of the weapon. The metal ball struck the stone paving with an audible thud, and the terrified soldier discovered that he could not reach down any farther to place the handle on the floor. If he dropped it, it would rattle; if he bent down, the sword would be forced into his gullet.

  Garth grasped the situation and said, “Drop it.” He did not see how it could matter; anything listening would have heard the sound of the mace’s head falling.

  Relieved, Nalba dropped the mace; the handle rolled down and clicked against the stone.

  That done, the two stared at each other, Garth seeing a shadowy backlit figure wearing the green uniform and bronze helmet of Ur-Dormulk’s soldiery, while Nalba could see nothing but a great black shape holding a sword at his throat. A few inches of the blade caught a stray glimmer from the fallen lamp, and the soldier thought he could make out something shiny and red where his captor’s eyes should have been.

  At the head of the stair, Sedrik had been watching Nalba’s actions as best he could. He had seen the soldier begin his circuit of the chamber, vanishing to one side, returning to visibility for a brief moment as he crossed back into Sedrik’s line of sight to the rear wall, and then disappearing again along the other side.

  Nalba seemed to be taking plenty of time to search the second side, Sedrik thought; then he heard the thud, just barely audible over the steady beating sound, of the mace hitting the floor.

  Something was wrong, Sedrik was sure. He did not know what, but one possibility was obvious: the overman had been hiding there and had caught Nalba by surprise and cut his throat so quickly that he had no time to cry out. The monster had not managed to catch the mace before it fell, though, and that might prove his undoing.

  Sedrik knew there were other explanations available, but he was certain that this was what had happened. He ordered his men, “Weapons at ready!”

  Swords slid from scabbards, shields were raised, the thongs of maces were looped around wrists, crossbows were cocked and loaded, all as silently as the dozen men could contrive. Sedrik unslung his war axe, hefted it with his left hand, and drew his sword with his right. The deep throbbing covered much of the noise they made.

  Still, Garth heard something other than the beating. He had intended a leisurely questioning of his captive, using long pauses to increase the man’s nervousness, but he suddenly realized he might not have time for that.

  “Are you alone?” he asked.

  Nalba stared, petrified, unable to nod, not wanting to shake his head in a truthful answer, lest it enrage the monster that held the sword.

  In the long hall, Sedrik whispered, “Something’s gotten Nalba; it must have surprised him somehow. I don’t know if it’s the overman or not, but it probably is. I don’t want him to surprise us. If we charge in there at full speed, we may startle him out of attacking; then we’ll be able to see where he is and fight him fairly. Understood?”

  Most of the men nodded; he ignored those who did not. They would follow along and do well enough, he was sure.

  “We want to catch him off guard, so no yelling until we’re through the door; then you can bellow your lungs out if you want. We’re going to run in there and kill him before he knows what’s happening. Right?”

  This time almost all of his men nodded.

  “Good. On the count of three, then. One...”

  Garth pressed the point of his sword forward slightly, forcing Nalba’s head back. “You’re not alone, then. How many of you are there?”

  Nalba moved back a step, but the gleaming blade followed, keeping the pressure on his throat. His head was tilted so far back that the base of his helmet was digging into his neck.

  “How many?” Garth insisted. “Five? Ten?”

  Nalba managed to shake his head.

  Sedrik advanced a step, allowing the rest of his men to come up off the stair and into the room. He half-turned toward the door beyond and raised his sword. “Two,” he said.

  “Twenty?” Garth demanded, his voice slipping into a growl.

  “Three!” Sedrik breathed. He charged toward the open door.

  Nalba was trying to take another step back, his head forced up by the sword so that he could no longer see the floor, when one of the slow beats ended, allowing both Nalba and Garth to hear the clinking of metal and the pounding of booted feet running toward them. Hoping that the overman—if it was indeed an overman that held the blade to his neck—would be distracted, Nalba groped for the hilt of his sword and tried to twist aside.

  Garth was not sufficiently distracted to forget his prisoner; he saw the hand reaching for the belt, though he could not clearly see what weapon hung there. He knew that the man might be of value as a hostage, but he might also be dangerous, since Garth had no time to bind him. The overman could not afford to divide his attention. Unhappily, he rammed his sword forward, through the human’s throat; it scraped past the spine and thunked against the back of the bronze helmet.

  The soldier died without a sound; Garth pulled the sword out and sank back into his shadowy corner, letting the corpse fall to the floor with a sodden thump. The helmet bounced off and rolled noisily to one side.

  An instant later a stream of men burst into the
chamber, steel blades flashing in every direction; the first stumbled over the lamp and sent it spinning away toward the far wall.

  Startled by the number of foes, despite what Nalba had indicated, Garth did not wait for them all to arrive and surround him; he braced his back against the wall behind him and kicked out with all his strength at the carved door.

  It squealed in protest, but slammed with satisfying force into two of the humans; one went sprawling off to the side, within the circular chamber, and the other was knocked back against his advancing companions, gashing himself on an upraised sword.

  A second kick closed the door, and Garth braced himself against it, knowing as he did so that a solid blow of an axe from the other side might injure or even kill him.

  Not counting the bleeding corpse on the floor, six or perhaps seven men were in the room with him; the shadows made an exact count very difficult. One held a smoldering torch. All carried weapons. One was down for the moment, bowled over by the door; he had dropped a crossbow, but still gripped a sword.

  Three held swords and shields, one had a mace and a sword, another bore a mace and the torch while a sword hung on his belt, and the last—there were seven, Garth realized—was coming at the overman with a raised axe.

  Garth had no time for finesse; he raised his sword and lunged forward, meeting the axe-wielder’s attack with his own. The blade slid between the man’s ribs and stood out from his back, gleaming wetly red in the flaring torchlight.

  Sedrik had underestimated the overman’s reach, and had not been aware of his superhuman speed at all until it was too late. He felt the sword go into him above the belly, and knew he had misjudged. His mouth gaped open, blood from a pierced lung gurgling in his throat, and he made a desperate try with his axe, swinging wildly. His right arm fell aside and went limp; his sword clattered to the floor.

  The arc of the axe brought it down across Garth’s sword arm, grazing it, but doing little real damage; then Sedrik sagged and fell.

  Garth pulled his blade free in time to face the charge of a mace-wielding soldier on his right and a shielded swordsman on his left. He ducked back and to the left, letting the mace slam into the wooden door, hoping the spikes would become caught; splinters flew, but the mace scraped onward.

  The swordsman was being cautious, his shield limiting his movement, and missed an opportunity to strike at the overman as Garth slid back off the door and around to the soldier’s right. Startled by the overman’s speed and fooled by the common human idea that large size meant slow reactions, the swordsman was still turning to face his opponent when Garth gripped the axe in his left hand and brought it around.

  The soldier flinched back and the axe missed his right arm, but his sword was knocked from his grasp. The axe continued on and bit into the side of the shield with a loud thunk.

  Seizing the opportunity, Garth used the axe to force the shield down and ran his sword into the man’s face.

  The mace was coming down for another blow as Garth yanked his sword from the shield-bearer’s eye; the overman met the descending weapon with his blade.

  The parry was successful, but Garth could see that the sword was badly notched—Galt’s sword, he remembered, not his own—and he could feel the metal straining as he forced the mace back. He pulled at his axe, using his left knee to knock the shield away. The other two shieldmen were advancing on his left, he saw; he turned, and a crossbow quarrel whirred past his face, then went spinning from the wall beyond. The fallen bowman had recovered his weapon.

  Garth did not worry about that; the man would have to reload before he could fire again, and reloading a crossbow was slow work, particularly when lying on the floor. The weapon was designed to be held between the knees and braced against the ground, with the feet holding down the crosspiece.

  Someone was banging and calling on the other side of the door; Garth ignored that as well. Three men were down, dead or nearly so, but five were still trying to kill him.

  A small part of his mind, unconcerned with the battle, wondered who these men were and why they had come after him and tried to kill him. All wore the uniform of the city guard; that worried him. Temple guards or warrior priests he might have expected, but this party looked official. He hoped that the overlord had not sent them. He had no desire to antagonize Ur-Dormulk’s ruler. Perhaps, he thought, it was all a misunderstanding.

  The two surviving shieldmen were advancing, confident of their safety behind their heavy protection, and Garth decided that they needed a demonstration of his strength, something that would damage their confidence and thereby diminish the threat they presented. He moved left, away from the mace and its wielder. The shieldmen turned and kept their swords weaving, looking for an opening; the man with the mace stumbled when a swing met no resistance and stepped back to recollect himself.

  With him out of the way for a few seconds, Garth held one shieldman back with his sword and brought his axe down on the other in a long overhand smash, like the swing of a sledgehammer, with as much of his strength behind it as he could muster. He had to angle the blow to avoid hitting the low ceiling.

  The axe split the man’s sword in two, the tip spinning away to the side, the hilt dropping from impact-numbed fingers, and drove on downward, hacking into the riveted steel shield as if it were rotten wood. Had the soldier not had it securely strapped to his arm, he would have dropped that, as well.

  Disarmed and terrified, the man fell back, wrenching his shield off the axe and saving Garth the trouble of having to free his embedded weapon. That left the other shieldman’s right flank unguarded. Garth sent the axe chopping sideways, behind the shield. It scraped across mail, but did not cut.

  Still, the shieldman was disconcerted now. He turned his arm to fend off the axe, and Garth’s sword slid into his left armpit, making good use of the overman’s superior reach and speed.

  Behind Garth, the door started to open again, and he slammed it shut with his foot, throwing himself off balance for a moment, unable to pursue the momentary advantage he had gained. The mace-wielder came at him again; Garth turned, parried the mace with his axe, met sword with sword, and drove both back by sheer strength. When he had forced the soldier’s arms up so that the man had to retreat or fall backward, Garth pulled the axe down the shaft of the mace and twisted, yanking the mace from the human’s weakened grip.

  While he did this, however, his left side presented an open invitation to the two shieldmen; the one who still held his sword gathered enough courage to accept and lunged forward.

  Garth dodged, so that the blade scraped across his back, gouging him slightly but not penetrating deeply. He brought his left arm swinging back and caught his attacker on the right shoulder. The man withdrew, wary of losing sword, sword arm, or both.

  That permitted the overman to force his way past the guard of his now-maceless opponent and drive his sword into the man’s shoulder. The soldier gasped as Garth’s blade withdrew and blood spurted; he fell back, dropping his own remaining weapon.

  Garth was working himself up into a state of unreasoning fury; in consequence, when he saw the unarmed maceman fall back, he gave no thought to subtlety, but swung around to face the shieldmen—and the other mace-wielder, now advancing to join the’attack-head on. “Fools!” he shouted, breaking his silence.

  “Inhuman monster!” someone replied.

  The crossbowman was still on the floor, apparently just watching; the injured maceman was upright but unarmed and also seemed content to play spectator. The axeman, the first shield-carrier, and the original advance scout were all down for good. That left Garth facing three opponents, one of them twice wounded, with no reinforcements ready to jump to their aid.

  That meant he no longer needed to be cautious; no one was going to sneak up on him unexpectedly. He roared wordlessly and brought his axe arcing overhead, barely missing the low ceiling, to smash through a human skull. The man tried t
o parry the blow with the sundered shield he bore, and his arm met Garth’s in mid-air. The soldier’s forearm broke under the impact; Garth received a bruise, but the axe continued on and splattered blood and brains across the next man over.

  The shieldman dropped, and Garth faced two terrified opponents. The fight had gone out of them; they were retreating, staying out of his reach. To one side, the unarmed soldier was struggling to open the door and escape. The crossbowman had finally gotten to his feet, but showed no interest in anything but flight.

  Garth took a step forward, pursuing the enemy. They stepped back; one stumbled over the trough around the central column and dropped the torch. The flame flickered and went out as the burning tip landed, hissing, in the dark fluid. The only remaining light was the faint glow of the oil lamp, still burning where it lay against the far wall.

  Garth tried to lift his foot to take another step forward, but something prevented him; something was gripping his ankle. He looked down.

  Sedrik was not dead; he supported himself on one elbow, his axe clutched in that hand, while his other clutched at Garth’s leg. Blood was seeping from his closed mouth. He was trying to lift himself up and raise the axe to strike, his movements uncoordinated and feeble.

  Garth stared at him in surprise for a second, then decided that, mortally wounded as he was, the man was of no consequence. He thrust his foot forward despite the encumbrance upon it.

  Sedrik’s grip did not loosen; instead he was dragged forward, and Garth turned again to look at him.

  The maceman who had dropped the torch saw his opportunity; he danced in and made a desperate, wild, sideways swing. The heavy spiked ball caught Garth’s sword where it had been notched, snapping the blade off.

  Garth whirled back and roared in anger. That was not his sword! Galt would be annoyed, he knew. He swung his axe and saw it bite deep into the soldier’s chest, grating against bone.