Bone Magic

by Brent Nichols

  The creature was in the center of the room, head swinging from side to side as it searched, and it let out a bellow as it spotted her. Its arms came up, and she fired at the center of its chest. The arrow flew true, burying itself deep in the creature's fur several inches below the shining band of metal on its throat.

  A scream split the air, making Tira's bones vibrate, and it came at her. She had to stand frozen, waiting for it to come close before she could dart around the column. The thing was learning, though, and it switched direction even as she started to move. She nearly ran into its waiting claws, and a slash knocked the bow from her hands and tore her sleeve from shoulder to wrist.

  She darted back around the pillar. This time the creature had its back to her as she raced past. The doorway was on her left, but the next pillar was closer, so she ran for the pillar. Her left arm stung from shoulder to elbow, the skin wet with blood. From elbow to fingertips the arm was completely numb. She ignored the pain, drew her sword with her right hand, and peeked around the pillar.

  The creature dragged a paw across its eyes, peered around, then spotted her and let out a roar. It coughed, then roared again. Tira was instinctively slouching, keeping her head below the worst of the smoke, but the beast was taller and getting the worst of it.

  It came at her now, and she stepped behind the pillar, listening for its footsteps, waiting for it to commit itself. For a moment the two of them danced back and forth. Then the creature came around from the right. Tira darted left and fled to the next pillar.

  In a moment it was there on the other side of the pillar. She crouched, leaned to the right, and saw a vast foot at the pillar's far corner. With a quick step and a lunge she drove the point of her sword into the side of the big, hairy foot.

  The beast bellowed, and she took advantage of the distraction to run to the next pillar. She dropped into a squat, scanning the floor, searching frantically for her bow. It was at the next pillar over, hopelessly out of reach, and she felt the thump of the floor beneath her as the creature ran toward her.

  Constant surprise seemed like the best strategy, so she sprang out from behind the pillar and ran to meet it. It pivoted to meet her charge, and she saw with a sick certainty that she had made a fatal miscalculation. The thing, despite its bulk, was fast. It stepped toward her, one terrible paw slashing through the air – and it stepped down on its injured foot. It stumbled, and the paw that had been scything toward her head instead swatted the sword from her grasp. Steel rattled on cobblestones, and she lunged forward, scooping up the sword as she went past the creature at a dead run.

  A moment later she was back behind the pillar closest to the fire, the pillar farthest from her bow. The flames were nearly out. The layer of smoke near the ceiling would take time to disperse, but when it did, she would lose her only advantage.

  There was nothing to be done about it. The creature was coming toward her, and she stepped out to meet it as every nerve in her body screamed at her to retreat. Her sword came up to strike, and she felt the shock of impact as the blade hit the timbers of the ceiling. The beast brought an arm up, and as it began to swing, she halted her charge and twisted back. The paw sliced through the air, missing her by scant inches, and she darted forward, jabbing it just behind the elbow.

  A backhand blow slammed into her shoulder, knocking her back half stunned. Her shoulders collided with the pillar behind her, and she rotated her shoulder, trying to shake off the pain. She kept underestimating the creature's speed!

  It peered at the wound she'd put in its elbow, then snarled and charged her. She twisted aside, darting around the pillar, then changed directions and darted back. She made a lucky guess and came up behind the beast. It turned as she lunged, and the blow she aimed for the middle of its spine hit ribs instead. A moment later the big arm knocked her blade back and she retreated, barely keeping her grip on the hilt.

  For ten or fifteen nightmare seconds she hopped back and forth, barely keeping the pillar between her and the creature. She didn't try any more counter-attacks. Survival for another moment required all of her attention.

  Then the creature over-committed, charging around the pillar, and she broke and ran. She was running full-tilt when she reached the next pillar, and she stretched her left hand out, catching the corner of the pillar to stop her momentum. She had forgotten the scratches down her arm, and pain exploded from her neck to her fingers. She told herself that agony had to be a better sign than the earlier numbness and darted around the pillar.

  Instead of snarls or footfalls, she heard coughing. A quick peek around the pillar showed the beast in the middle of the room, doubled over, shaking with the force of one cough after another. Tira briefly thought of charging it with her sword, and ran for her bow instead.

  Wrapping her left hand around the bow was painful. Lifting the bow brought tears spilling down her cheek. She jammed her sword into her sheath and took her last arrow from the quiver on her back.

  The creature fastened its eyes on her. It was no longer coughing, but it was bent over, keeping its head out of the smoke. Blood made a dark triangle in the fur beneath the feathers of her arrow. The other cuts she'd made had bled as well, but the scarlet hand wrapped around the bow told her she was losing the war of blood loss.

  There was blood on the creature's muzzle and chin, which gave her hope. Maybe her arrow had punctured a lung, and the smoke wasn't the only thing making it cough. It wasn't indestructible, after all.

  Not quite.

  It took a step toward her, and she drew the bowstring tight. Another step, and she stood paralyzed, unable to choose a target. A chest shot might kill it, but the last one hadn't done much. A leg shot might slow it down. She could run, and leave it here to bleed to death. A head shot was too much risk. She would most likely bounce the arrow off of its thick skull.

  The creature took another step, and another, and it threw its mouth open and roared. Tira let fly, hitting the creature in the chest, then threw her bow aside and drew her sword.

  A bellow of agony blasted her eardrums, and she cringed involuntarily. The beast brought its front paws up to its head and bellowed again, thrashing its head back and forth. Her arrow was lodged in the roof of its mouth, not the fatal blow she'd hoped for, but enough of a distraction to give her a chance.

  She ran straight at the creature. It felt like suicide, but the agonized beast didn't even see her coming. She put both hands on the hilt of the sword and rammed the blade forward at the height of her stomach for no other reason than because it was where she could strike the hardest. The blade slammed into the creature's thigh, going deep, and she stepped to the side, ducked a blind swipe from one paw, and pulled sideways on the hilt. Flesh cut and tore as the blade pulled free, and she circled wide, staying out of reach of those paws.

  Blood poured from the thigh wound. The beast tried to turn and face her as she circled, but it couldn't lift the wounded leg. Each clumsy step brought a fresh gush of blood, and she kept circling, forcing it to keep moving. Finally it stopped, and she circled behind it, then darted in and stabbed for the spine.

  The creature twisted as she hit, and her blow slid sideways, cutting a gash in the broad, furry back. The beast turned, moaning as it moved the wounded leg, and gave a weak swing with one paw. Tira dodged easily and circled until she was behind it again.

  It made one last attempt to circle and face her. Then, before she could even strike, the creature sagged forward onto its knees. She could hear the ragged rasp of its breath. It coughed once, then again. The sound of breathing stopped a moment before it toppled forward onto its face.

  Tira very nearly collapsed as well. She wobbled on her feet, then straightened and made herself walk over to the nearest barrel of cursed bolts. She put her sword away, then tipped the barrel over and rolled it to the glowing remains of the fire. A bit of coaxing got the new bolts burning as well. She rolled the remaining buckets over one at a time and dumped the bolts on the flames, then sank to her knees and watched until
she was sure every cursed bolt was on fire.

  When she tried to stand up, she found she couldn't do it. She decided she'd crawl to the stairs instead, but putting her hands on the floor sent agony through her left arm and her right shoulder. Finally she shuffled on her knees until she reached the nearest pillar, and clung to it as she worked her way to her feet. She might have stayed there, leaning against the pillar, but the smoke was too bad, and coughing hurt her arm. So she stumbled toward the door, following the trail of the necromancer's blood up the stairs and into the kitchen.

  She stopped in the kitchen, using a pump to fill a basin, then discarded her cloak and used her dagger to cut away what remained of her left sleeve. Her left arm was a mess, still bleeding, the flesh torn quite badly from shoulder to elbow along the back of her arm. There were shallow cuts below her elbow, but they were much less serious.

  She made a half-hearted attempt to wash the wounds, then rummaged through cupboards until she found a pile of cloth napkins. She bandaged herself awkwardly, using her right hand and her teeth to pull the knots tight.

  When she tried to draw her sword she found that her bruised right shoulder had stiffened until she could barely lift her arm. She spent a couple of minutes working her shoulder, her teeth gritted against the pain. Then she pulled the sword from the sheath and turned her attention to the necromancer's blood trail on the floor.

  The other woman had lost at least as much blood as Tira. The trail was easy to follow, fat red drops in a steady line from the staircase, through the kitchen, across the entry hall, and to the front steps of the keep.

  Then, the blood trail disappeared. One of Tira's arrows lay on the steps, neatly broken in two. The other arrow, the woman, and the blood trail were all gone.

  "Well, crap." She wanted to sit and rest, but the sky was lightening outside. Soon the streets would fill with goblins, and she would be trapped. She took a deep breath of the morning air and considered her options.

  The keep stood on a low hill, the highest point in the city, and from the top of the steps she could see across a sea of rooftops, over the top of the town wall, and across the plains beyond. She was facing north, and she could see a yellow point of light moving on the horizon.

  Tira blinked. It looked like several points of light, now. She kept watching, and the lights multiplied until there were more than she could count. She kept her hand against the side of her face, blocking out the glow of impending sunrise to the east. There seemed to be a river of tiny lights flowing toward her.

  It had to be the king's army, riding to retake the city. She smiled, feeling some of her weariness fall away. Her ordeal might be nearly over.

  A horn pealed somewhere above her, a lookout high in the keep giving the alarm. She heard a goblin shout from a window somewhere high above, and footsteps clattered on the cobbles to her left. She stepped back into the keep, peering past the door frame.

  Three goblins came into view. They had a small cart, one goblin holding the shafts and pulling, the other two pushing from behind. The cart was piled with crossbow bolts, the red glow of magic shining above them.

  Tira cursed under her breath, thinking furiously as she waited for the cart to roll out of sight. Her bow, useless now that her arrows were gone, was down in the dungeon with the remains of the creature. Otherwise, she would have tried shooting all three of them and setting fire to the cart. Injured and with only her sword, she didn't have a chance.

  The edge of the rising sun appeared over the horizon, and a rooster crowed in excitement. That made Tira think of animals. Surely the keep had stables. With a horse, she might be able to fight her way out of the city and warn the approaching army about what they faced.

  She headed down the steps and walked around the bailey, peering through the gloom, trying to spot a building big enough to contain horses. She actually passed the stables without seeing them, but the unmistakable smell of horse manure stopped her. She turned, looking in every direction, and finally headed for the bailey wall. The stables were built from the same gray stone as the wall, invisible in the half-light until she was almost upon them.

  Sheathing her sword sent twinges of pain through her shoulder. Heaving a saddle onto the back of a horse nearly killed her. In the darkness of the stable, the animals were anonymous black shapes. She might have been saddling a cow for all she knew. Only when she led the horse out into the bailey did she see that she had chosen a handsome brown mare with a proud arch to her neck.

  There was a mounting block in front of the stable, and Tira led the mare over, glad there was no one to see her. The horse stood placidly while Tira climbed on the block and got a leg across the saddle, feeling the scabs on her thigh tear open. Blood trickled down her leg as she worked her feet into the stirrups.

  As she rode out the gate of the bailey and into the street, she had to pull up as a squad of goblins hurried past, heading for the wall. A couple of them gaped at her, and she stared back with all the arrogance she could muster. Somehow it worked. The goblins kept marching, and she fell in behind them.

  The goblins turned left at a cross street. It looked like they were heading for the main gate, so Tira turned the other way. She needed to find a smaller gate, something with only a token guard.

  Near the east wall of the city, Tira found herself riding down a narrow street with shabby, older rowhouses looming on either side. The wall was to her left, just on the other side of the houses. She heard an occasional shout from goblins on the wall, but she was hidden from their sight.

  She reined in the horse when an opening appeared between a candle shop and a bakery. It was an arched walkway at ground level. Above the arch, the second floor of the building continued uninterrupted. The arch formed a dark tunnel leading toward the city wall.

  Tira climbed down from the saddle and drew her sword. She led the horse into the dark tunnel, the horse ducking its head to follow. There was no way to move quietly, not with the horse's hooves clopping on cobblestones and splashing through puddles behind her.

  A gap of only a few feet separated the back of the row house from the city wall. There was a small gate set in the wall just past the end of the tunnel. A solitary goblin was there, seated on the cobbles with his back against the gate, sound asleep. Tira slid the point of her sword into his neck just below his chin, and the snores went silent.

  For a long moment she just stared down at the corpse, feeling tired. With his head curled forward, hiding his face, the goblin looked childlike and pathetic, and she felt an unexpected remorse. If she never saw death again it would suit her just fine.

  The gate was solidly made, banded with iron so thoroughly that the wood barely showed. No fewer than five thick bolts held it shut, and Tira slid them back, one at a time. Her shin was pressed against the goblin's side, and she could feel the warmth of his body through her trousers. She did her best to ignore it, reaching down and pushing the goblin over so she could reach the last bolt.

  Beyond the door she found a short tunnel, five feet or so long, leading under the wall. There was another door at the far end, bolted as thoroughly as the inner door. She opened the bolts, eased the door open, and peeked out across the grass.

  Nothing moved that she could see. She returned to the horse and led the reluctant animal through the narrow gap between the row house and the wall. It took some urging to get the mare to step over the corpse, but at last she led the horse through the stone tunnel and onto the plain beyond.

  She darted back through, straightening the corpse, making it look as if he still slept, and closed the inner door. She pulled the outer door shut and climbed into the saddle.

  The wall loomed above her. She tensed when a goblin shouted above her, but no green faces peered down. She was on the south wall, and everyone's attention was fixed on the east.

  Tira rode along the base of the wall, so close her knee brushed the stone, and waited for the alarm to sound. Surely someone had to spot her soon! But the seconds crawled past and she remained undiscover
ed. The southeast corner of the city was before her, the bulk of a tower jutting out, and she caught occasional flashes of movement from goblins atop the tower. None of them were looking her way, however.

  At last she reached the base of the tower and circled around it. The sun was mostly up, the bottom edge just touching the horizon, and she lifted a hand, shading her eyes as she looked at the approaching army. There were hundreds of cavalry rolling across the grass toward her, still distant but closing rapidly.

  Tira took a deep breath, trying not to think about the number of goblins lining the walls above her. Just one crossbow bolt would be enough to snuff out her life and change her to an animated corpse, a meat puppet for the necromancer.

  Well, the odds aren't getting any better as I sit here. They've got the sun in their eyes right now. It's time to go. She dug her heels into the mare's sides, leaned forward, and went charging across the plain.

  The horse made a dozen galloping strides before the first shout went up behind her. The horse made another dozen strides before the first bolt went flying past. A cold fist clenched in Tira's stomach. There was nothing she could do, though, except lean in close over the mare's neck and whisper encouragement as they thundered forward.

  The goblins, she found, were quite bad archers. A dozen bolts flew past her, none of them coming closer than six or seven feet. The rising sun was blinding for Tira, and it had to be much worse for the nocturnal goblins. Shooting at a downward angle was tricky, she knew, and crossbows were not a weapon goblins traditionally used. In well under a minute the archers gave up, and Tira slowed the horse to a trot.

  A squad of cavalry came out to meet her ahead of the main force. The officer in charge reminded her of Carmody, a precise and upright young man who looked her up and down as she reined in before him. "You need to get out of the way," he said. "We're retaking the city."

  "There's a necromancer," she said. The words poured out of her in a rush. "They've got crossbows, the bolts are cursed. If they kill you with one of their bolts, you turn. You'll be fighting your own men as soon as you reach the walls. I've seen it before, it'll be carnage. You need to be careful."