They poured into the chamber, a tide of creatures in filthy, threadbare robes that could not hide their inescapable wrongness. Their bodies were twisted and lumpy, with features atrophied or swollen in a wretched caricature of the human form and wrapped in a pallid, suppurating sheathe of grimy skin. They loped and shuffled on bent, mismatched limbs as they swept in, a hooting, shrieking, barking tide of degenerate flesh. Crude, makeshift weapons, some little more than sharpened pieces of stone or wood, were clutched in hands that trembled to bring them to bear.
This will be ugly, Ax-Wed acknowledged as she settled into her fighting stance.
The rush of bodies filled half the chamber in an instant but they slowed before they reached Masheed’s motionless form. Their stink was a putrid amalgam of every filth a mortal creature could excrete. Before the wave of foulness, the young man recoiled and staggered back to his place at Ax-Wed’s side.
She fought the urge to gag as she faced the gazes of her enemy. Behind their black, wet eyes burned a malign hunger and petty rage that promised no mercy and no gentle death to anything that fell into their jagged, crooked fingers.
“Gods have mercy!” the painted woman cried at her side and thrust the torch out before her as though she tried to banish the collection of horrors like some nightmare vestige.
In answer, a fetid figure with its face hidden beneath a deep hood emerged from the seething mass. The frame seemed to be of the same chaotic, malformed mold as the others but there was a dark and terrible presence in the way it stood as straight as it could and looked evenly at them.
“There are no gods here,” declared a voice as deep and terribly beautiful as the ocean. “There is only I and my children.”
Ax-Wed’s stomach clenched and her knees threatened to tremble but she threw her head back and laughed all the harder for the fear.
“They must take after their mother,” she quipped with every semblance of disdain that she did not feel.
The malicious will beneath the hood focused on her and the fear she’d felt before was a mere brushstroke compared to the dark attention paid to her now. It was like a current of despair surged around her, not only from the cowled figure but from the very stones. To her fevered imagination, it was as if the chamber slowly filled with black, icy waters she couldn’t see but that would drown her all the same.
I am he, the waters bubbled from a chorus of drowned throats. Drinker of life, Wallower of souls. I—"
“Atlacothix?”
The name pushed from her mouth and fought through the horror that locked her jaws together and bound her tongue. It was born on a swelling tide of memories, half-remembered stories read from her father’s library. She remembered the smell of musty tomes and the scuffing scratch of parchment pages turning as she beheld blasphemies and wonders graven with ink and quill.
The huge, dark will faltered before the name—or perhaps it was the memories?—and the despairing waters vanished from her mind’s eye. The terrible presence retreated to that single voice within the hood and at that realization, a fell smile turned up the corners of her mouth.
“Take them!” the dark voice commanded and the horde of degenerates was unleashed.
Chapter Thirteen
“What exactly are you asking me, Alborz?”
Guuhal regretted the question as soon as it left his mouth.
When the castellan had requested an audience in his offices the night after the quota had increased, the guard commander had known it was a meeting he would not enjoy. Now, less than a minute into the conversation, he already scrambled to escape.
The Argbed was a good man—a friend even—but he was relentless. He had achieved the coveted position as Castellan of the Gold Quarter and thus the prince’s Citadel by being a man of singular determination and dogged efficiency. If he’d been a little more politically minded and more secret about his religious predilections, he probably would have been next in line for the Hazarbed’s office. While the commander appreciated having such a trustworthy and strong-minded man under his command, by Shizan, the man was not one who could let things go.
“I’ve said it twice now, sir,” Alborz replied, his tone even but uncompromising. “Why are so many individuals—so many criminals—given your permission to pass through the Gold Quarter?”
Guuhal gritted his teeth and tried to force his voice to stay as calm as possible.
“You received another token?” he asked. “Is that what this is about?”
As though waiting for the cue, the Argbed produced a string upon which were hung not one but three tokens of the Hazarbed’s office. The clay disks had the center of the seal awled through to allow them to be strung on the cord and they gave a soft click-clack as they dangled between them.
“Three last night,” the man replied, his voice unchanged in volume or inflection. “It was practically a caravan of wagons that rolled through the quarter last night.”
“Isn’t patrolling the quarter the business of Gondbed Delshad?” he asked, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice as he glared at the tokens.
I told Crim to use them sparingly.
“With respect to the guard captain, we both know that his concerns are elsewhere,” Alborz said and his sanguine mask refused to crack despite the loathing he had for the man. The Argbed was the son of a lesser noble house and had earned his position by skill and dedication. Gondbed Delshad was second cousin to the prince and that was the only reason he held the position he now did.
“So it seems your energies should be spent coordinating with Delshad,” the Hazarbed countered and secretly wished it could be that easy to get rid of the man who challenged him. “Between the two of you, perhaps, you’ll be able to ensure that both the prince’s Citadel and the Gold Quarter are secure, as is your charge.”
The guard commander saw that Alborz felt the warning in his words but predictably, he pushed forward undaunted.
“It will not do either of us any good to coordinate on an investigation where we are not permitted to make arrests, perform confiscations, or detain for questioning. One of the wagon loads was moving across the canal causeway that leads to the granary basins beneath the palace. How can I secure a fortress when vermin like Crim come and go as they please?”
Guuhal stiffened at the mention of the abduction specialist's name.
“Who is this Crim and what does he have to do with this?”
The lowered brow and clenched jaw before the Argbed answered was proof that the man knew the question was a smokescreen. Still, as dutiful as ever, he gave his report.
“Through the weeks, I’ve learned that the man named Crim is the ringleader of these regular visitors to the Gold Quarter. This is based mostly on the fact that he is most often the one bearing your tokens. According to census records and initial investigations, Crimoush bet’Kamboush is the proprietor of a brothel in the Copper Quarter and a generational resident of Jehadim, which affords him full protection under the law, but even my initial inquiries suggested that negotiable affection is hardly the only thing this man is up to.”
An assortment of curses and reproofs ran through the Hazarbed’s mind as he listened to Alborz. Some were for himself but most were for Crim. When the Argbed concluded his explanation, the silence lengthened between the two men while the guard commander bounced between what lie he could possibly offer and what threats he could level.
And I was fool enough to want good men serving under me, he groaned mentally. A wicked man would have been far easier to deal with if this had even come up at all.
His heart began to beat harder and the other man’s gaze dug into him like the awl that had punctured the tokens. Guuhal came to his decision in a rush of pent-up frustration.
“Do you have any evidence, Argbed Alborz— any actual evidence—to support this breach of conduct?” he snapped and looked down his nose at the officer.
For the first time since they’d known each other, he saw the castellan startled.
“Breach of cond
uct?” Alborz repeated and his gray eyebrows bunched in confusion. “Wha—”
“You see fit to question me, your superior, as to how I conduct my duties,” he continued and in a rush of angry inspiration, snatched the tokens from the man’s hand. “These tokens are evidence of my will and permit the bearer and those in his company to pass without being detained, delayed, or questioned. Isn’t that correct, Argbed?”
Alborz nodded and his mouth opened to answer but snapped shut again when the Hazarbed glared at him in warning.
“And knowing this, you understand that it is unacceptable to question me on their use in all but the most dire of circumstances,” the commander declared before he turned to cast the tokens on the floor. “You must therefore have some rather compelling evidence to justify questioning how I am performing my duties.”
The man stood with his jaw set and ground his teeth as he stared at his superior.
“Go ahead, Argbed,” Guuhal pressed. “Tell me the evidence that justifies this insubordination?”
“We have received reports of abduction—”
“Reports are not evidence!” the Hazarded railed and channeled the thrill of fear at the mention of abductions to greater fury. “Try again.”
“We have multiple sightings—”
“Sightings are not evidence!” Guuhal shouted and a sick feeling curled in his stomach as he did so. At least there was some measure of satisfaction at seeing Alborz wince. “Is there anything else, Argbed?”
The castellan’s eyes burned with brutal intensity but he closed them and drew a steadying breath. It made him sick to his stomach again to watch it, but the guard commander knew he’d won, at least for the moment.
“No, Hazarbed,” the man replied and inclined his head stiffly.
“Then see to your duties,” he said and disgust thickened his suddenly weary voice. “And get out of my sight.”
Chapter Fourteen
The first two degenerates to rush directly toward her fell in a spray of blood and their rotted robes and pallid flesh came apart under the caress of her weapon.
Ax-Wed didn’t have time to savor the perfect execution of the stroke as she was forced to use a backswing to drive back another three that sprang to take their places. The stinking press of bodies threatened to overwhelm her as they surged forward with a keening howl. Her ax swept left and right to part flesh and splinter bone with each pass but still, they came.
With a wild cry, the stubbled youth and the painted woman joined the fray with their burning bludgeons and a desperate spark of hope was kindled in the dark chamber.
The Thulian buried her ax in the chest of an onrushing brute and a shrieking creature lunged at her, a jagged spar held out like a spear. Before the thrust could find its mark, the painted woman leapt forward with a wild cry. She swung the torch onto the attacker’s head and the heavy, corroded brass rim buckled bone as sparks showered over the flapping, filthy robes. The degenerate crumpled and its garments kindled, but the woman continued to scream as she swiped the torch to repel another attacker that targeted her flank. Terror and a desperate will to live granted the small figure a tireless strength to swing the heavy torch relentlessly.
The young man bellowed like a young bull and swept his torch before him to scatter the quick and scorch the slow. One of the filthy mob darted forward and wrapped his twisted fingers around the torch haft and snapped scummy, jagged teeth in the youth’s face. He roared his defiance and with a heave disproportionate to his spare frame, threw his enemy down and thrust the torch into it before it could rise. A short, pained wail was followed by silence as the flames engulfed the creature’s face and spread across its greasy frame.
With the respite of not being the only target, Ax-Wed stalked the chamber, grim and terrible, and her ax reaped a dreadful toll.
Her weapon sang repeatedly and with each new blow, one or more of the creatures would crumple, often in pieces. Thulian steel honed beyond the craft of mere mortal smiths parted meat like cloth and shivered bones like reeds. The bodies felled and burned by the torches began to fill the room with smoke and soot and she became like the very specter of death materializing out of the mirk as her ax parted another neck or crushed another chest.
It was not a battle or a contest of skilled warriors, only a matter of slaughter. The defenders would have to shed blood by the bucketful or be overrun. It was simple as that.
And blood seemed to be in no short supply.
A degenerate made a clumsy swing with a hunk of statuary in his sore-riddled fist, but the strike only rebounded off her steel lames with a dull clang. Snarling vengeance, Ax-Wed drove the butt of her weapon into the face of a smoke-blinded wretch and looked around before she delivered a killing thrust with the horn of the ax-blade.
At first, the ferocity of the defenders had bought them precious seconds and the dead, burning or otherwise, had slowed the shuffling onslaught. Now, the pallid mob was uncertain and confused. Some even collided with and attacked each other as they fought to stay clear of the torch and flinched at any glint of her sweeping ax.
Can we truly survive this? she wondered, afraid to let herself think of anything more than the next target for her dripping ax. How much longer before they lose their nerve?
She’d barely finished the thought when a terrified scream tore through the cacophony.
Afraid that one of her allies had fallen, she whipped her head to track the sound but when she squinted into the eye-watering smoke, she saw them. Almost back-to-back now, their torches swept in wide arcs and they created a circle of burning death for any that came close. The scream came again, even higher and more pained, and this time, she could track it to the side of the room where Masheed lay.
It was hard to see amidst the smoke, but a knot of the debased creatures seemed to have set upon her. There were only flashes of the woman beneath the gathered mass but with growing dread, she realized what they were doing. In unwillingly snatched glimpses, she witnessed the howling, drooling creatures tear and rend the stricken woman. Some seemed intent on satisfying their mindless hunger while others sought satiation of darker, viler passions.
The mercenary might have been a monstrous woman but no one deserved to die in such a way. With a snarled oath, Ax-Wed left the defensive triptych.
“Stay together,” she shouted over her shoulder before she drove forward and swept her ax like a scythe felling wheat.
The creatures gave way before her and a few even snapped at and stabbed their comrades in a desperate effort to flee. Those that toppled under her ax but did not expire had their bones and throats crushed beneath her advance. With each step, her fury deepened so her weapon was a blur of gory steel, a sharp, shining comet that trailed particles of bone and strings of viscera.
In moments, she reached those huddled about Masheed and a roar to match that of any lioness erupted from her throat. Even in the midst of their depravity, the degenerates looked at her and found the voice to cry out in fear and despair.
She was a vengeful goddess who moved among them and her every motion and gesture claimed another sacrifice wrought in ruined flesh and fractured bone. With hands smeared and stained with the blood of their victim, they sought to shield themselves and cover their wailing faces but those guilty hands parted before her wrath as easily as the rest of them.
“Grim was the Handmaiden yet sharp was her grin!” Ax-Wed sang in the achingly beautiful and chilling tongue of Thule. “Her song a dirge of hells amidst the battle din!”
The few not felled around Masheed’s stricken body began to flee, but the Thulian bounded after them and snatched a life with every step as she continued to sing.
“Bridal bed never to see yet suitors by score! Ax she has wed, now and forevermore!”
When the last of the mercenary’s tormentors fell, the back of his skull cloven to his neck, a fresh cry issued from behind her. She swung, smiling as she watched the few degenerates around her scatter and race to the doorway, but the smile vanished in an inst
ant.
The whiskery youth swung his torch drunkenly, his whole body thrown into the movement. The only thing that held him upright were two splintered shafts of wood thrust into his belly by festering attackers. Beyond the reach of the sweeping brand, they drove him back until he struck the far wall. The lengths of wood snapped on impact but when the young man pitched forward, the stakes lodged in his body were driven through his flesh and out his back.
One hand still grasped the torch and he scraped it across the floor as he struggled to drag it closer for another swing.
Ax-Wed screamed in red despair but before she could take revenge, her gaze was pulled across the chamber by an agonized shriek.
Surrounded and flagging, the painted woman drove her torch into the face of an attacker before another degenerate lunged at her back with a sharpened stone raised high.
The warrior woman shouted a warning but it was too late.
Chipped rock gouged through the back of her skull and down her neck to open a cruel, flapping gash. The beset woman, shaken and bleeding, tried to turn to face her new attacker and was rewarded by a series of club-like blows across the side of her face. Blood and pieces of teeth spewed from the gaping wounds and her knees buckled.
The pack of degenerates closed their circle, no doubt determined to harvest whatever vile rewards they could from the poor woman’s body.
Ax-Wed fell upon them with a sequence of ax strikes that was almost manic. Relentlessly, the weapon rose and fell until she was spattered from head to foot in blood and her gloves were slick with it.
For a time, there was nothing but deep darkness that rose from within her and all she saw were fleeting wraiths of crimson and vermillion that flitted before her before they vanished into the void.
When the darkness finally subsided and her senses returned, she stood alone in the midst of an abattoir.
The dead degenerates were strewn about the smoky room, their stench somehow even more rancid in death. There was no sign of the young man’s body, nor of Masheed and the cowering man with the hanging jowls.
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