A cavernous chittering laughter erupted inside Fogle’s mind. “Go away, you pitiful fool. You have no power in or outside of my head.”
Fogle sensed another presence. Melegal! The rogue’s cap had a mystic quality that performed much like that of a mage. Link with me! Melegal’s thoughts went from confused to keen understanding. “So be it,” the thief said. Their thoughts intermingled, and together they assaulted Sinway’s mind.
“You dare!” Sinway said. His thoughts became a powerful vortex. “I’ll turn your minds into urchling food!” He latched onto their link.
***
Melegal found himself drowning under a waterfall of black water. Together, he and Fogle swirled in a chilling whirlpool that stretched their minds and the inner fabric of their bodies. He screamed through the swallowing waves, “This was an ignorant idea!” Master Sinway’s mind was filled with deep, dark, terrifying secrets. The underling would kill them a thousand different ways. He swam against the current. Treading the soul-swallowing murk, all he could think was, “Quit! Quit! Quit! Quit, you black-hearted sonuvabish!”
A gleaming fist of emerald light blasted through the darkness. The link between the three broke. Melegal’s eyes popped open. He was bathed in sweat, clutching his chest and gasping for breath. Fogle was flattened out on the floor, coughing. Kam stood in the chancery’s entrance with a staff filled with power in her hand. With the appearance of a goddess, the fiery redhead turned loose a torrent of energy. It blasted out of the staff’s sculpted fist.
Master Sinway hunkered in the corner, taking a pounding.
Kam poured it on. The energy busted into Sinway’s body. “This is the end of the road for you, underling!” She shot a look at Fogle. “Get off your arse! I can’t finish him alone!”
Fogle rolled to his feet, stood alongside Kam, and fired streaking missiles of energy. The razors of light buried themselves in the velvety folds of Sinway’s robes.
“Enough!” Sinway said in a room-shaking voice. With the magic pounding at his back, he came back to his feet. The underling faced them. His eyes were fire. His chest heaved. The searing magic deflected away from him. He brought his hands before him. “Your futile moment of victory is over… Forever!”
The Staff of Manamus ripped out of Kam’s fingers. Sinway caught it and smiled. “Potent. I can use potent!” Violet bands of energy jumped out of the staff, snaring both Fogle and Kam. The bands wound around their bodies like snakes, binding their wrists and ankles. The coils twisted around their necks. Sinway clenched his hands. The skin-searing coils constricted. Kam and Fogle’s eyes bulged in their sockets. They pulled at the bonds and clawed at the air. “Now you will witness the full zenith of my power. I shall strip your flesh from your bones!”
Catching his breath, Melegal drew his sword. He crawled toward the backside of the underling. The underling made his way halfway across the room and stood along the table. He had Kam and Fogle suspended in the air, their feet kicking. Melegal moved slowly, hoping to reach out and grab the underling by the ankle. A charge from the ring of shock might save them. He came within a foot of the hem of the underling’s robes. He coiled his body to spring.
Sinway turned in midair. “Worm, did you really think I didn’t know you were there?” He pushed his hand at Melegal.
Melegal slid across the floor and into the wall. The jarring impact popped his shoulder out of its socket. “Gah!” He forced himself into a sitting position.
“Before you die I am going to put you through ultimate suffering. All of you. I shall pull your bones through your flesh.” With one hand, Sinway wrenched the air.
The knuckles in Melegal’s hands popped. His bones were being pulled out of his fingertips. His mind screamed, Stop! Stop! Stop!
Master Sinway’s wicked hollow laughter filled the room.
Tears streamed down Kam’s face. Fogle turned a pale blue.
“Once I am through with you—and the rest of this city, for that matter—I will finish off the Darkslayer, too,” Sinway said. “All mankind shall die!”
The air crackled. A shimmer of Sinway’s power coursed through the room. Seeing his finger bones pop from his skin, Melegal thought, This is it. He took one last glance down the corridor. There was no Venir to save them this time, and there was nothing they could do to save themselves. All he could do was unleash an uncustomary scream. “Stop!”
Master Sinway held the staff and prepared to deliver the final lethal blow. His face lit up with pain. A dagger with a tip that glowed blue like hot iron burst through the front of his chest. Out of nowhere, Lefty appeared. He stood on the table just behind Sinway’s shoulder. Waving his arm backward, Sinway flung Lefty into the fireplace.
Melegal renewed his concentration the moment Sinway’s guard went down. Stop! Stop! Stop! The coils of energy dissipated from Kam and Fogle’s body. They landed on their feet. Kam screamed, “Die, you fiend!” She and Fogle flung all of the radiant power they had left at the underling.
Sinway’s body locked up. The wave of energy consumed him. His body withered and bowed. His robes caught fire. Shiny bracelets fell from his limbs and rattled on the floor. Sinway was falling to pieces, but his sharp mind pulled his busted body together. An amulet glowed white-hot on his chest.
Melegal summoned all the strength he had left and charged Sinway. Gripping his sword with bleeding fingers, he unleashed a swing just as the last of Kam’s and Fogle’s fires went out. “Yaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The blade sliced through the air. Sinway’s head lifted from his shoulders. The body flopped over. Sinway’s head floated like a living thing. The glimmer in his eyes faded. Voice cracking, Sinway said, “I might have lost this battle, but you are overrun. Bone is lost. Mankind is doomed. You will all perish soon—”
Kam struck the underling’s head with the Staff of Manamus. The skull exploded. “Shut up.”
Melegal helped Lefty out of the fireplace. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been through worse,” the halfling said.
“Good, now give me my ring back?”
“I was only borrowing it. I didn’t know it would make me or you invisible. I thought it was pretty. Ew.” Lefty’s face soured. “What happened to your fingers? And why is your shoulder drooping?”
“The same thing that’s going to happen to yours if you don’t hand the ring over.”
“Fine.” Lefty handed over the ring. Melegal tussled his head.
“What are you doing?” Kam said to Fogle.
The wizard was searching the remains of Sinway. He recovered the bracelets and amulet and a pair of iron eyes. “They are warm. We need to destroy them.”
Kam stepped back. “Definitely.”
“Can somebody help me up?” Ebenezer said. He had a busted leg and arm. “If I’m going to die, I want to die in my castle.”
They headed down the corridor and into the portal, arriving instantly where they left at Castle Kling. Rayal gasped. “Thank Bish you are here!” Terror filled her voice. “The underlings have gone mad! We are overrun!”
They rushed to the end of the terrace. The underlings poured over the castle wall, slaying everything in sight. The streets were filled with them as far as the eye could see. They came like a nest of angry hornets. Bone’s last stand was down to its final moments.
“Slat,” Melegal said, “all of that work and we are still doomed, just like Sinway said.”
CHAPTER 38
By the time Venir made it to the battlements, he knew the helm was gone. Billip and Nikkel stood by his side, searching the underling forces below. The exhausted men’s expressions were blank.
Venir moved to the other side of wall, overlooking the inside of the West Gate. Brak and Chongo were fighting for their lives against a growing force of already-superior numbers. Brak was alive, wild-eyed and berserk. He swept underlings aside in three and fours.
“I’m all out of arrows,” Billip said, drawing his sword. “Shall we join the frenzied fray?”
“Fight or d
ie,” Nikkel said, casting aside his crossbow. He picked up his studded club and slipped on his skullcap. “It’s time to fight or die, Billip. Get your slat ready!”
A shrill cry of chittering went up from the ranks of the underlings. A new surge of anger pushed them to their limits. It came from the back ranks toward the front in a new upheaval. Something was wrong. The well-oiled machine of killers was mad. their mission personal. More and more bodies crashed through the quavering dwarven wall of flame.
“What madness is this?” Billip said. “They attack with wild abandon! Every breath we take, the world gets worse!”
“Let’s make it even worse for the underlings!” With Brool in hand, Venir started for the ladder, determined to fight side by side with his son and Chongo. A shadow crossed over his face. Fully expecting an underling, he looked up. A great white owl with pink feathers dropped an object from its talons. It was Helm. Venir caught it. He smiled. Venir climbed to the topside of the West Gate. For some reason, he stole a glance toward the black columns. A long row of dust was coming their way. “Billip! Get the gate open!”
“What? Why?”
“The Jung and the striders are riding for Bone!”
“That’s no reason to open the gate.”
“Do as I say!” Venir gave them one more final order as he lowered Helm on his head. “Fight or die!” He buckled the chinstrap. His senses caught fire. He felt the hate of every underling within a league. Standing on top of the West Gate, he bellowed out toward the city, “HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Venir’s enhanced voice carried like rolling thunder. Birds scattered from the spires. All of the underlings within earshot froze in their tracks and cast their eyes at Venir. For the longest moment, all the fighting stopped. Even the exhausted dwarves and men stopped. Venir stood, a titan of muscle and metal. He called down, “I’m going to kill all of you filthy underlings.”
Screeches of fury exploded from the underlings’ mouths. From both sides of the wall, they came for Venir like moths to a flame. They trampled men and dwarves in their path. All they wanted was the man in the helmet. The King of the Last Call. The Murdering Enemy. The Scourge of Underling Kind.
As they ran with wild abandon, Brak the Berserker clubbed the frenzied flock. Venir, fighting his own all-consuming urge to attack, did the opposite. He hopped from the top of the West Gate onto the parapet’s walkway. He ran. The underlings followed. Along the parapet, the underlings jumped into his path.
Slice! Slice! Slice!
The ravenous underlings were no match for the blinding speed of his steel. Every life he took fed Helm’s hunger as well as his own. Venir cleared a path all the way to the South Gate, where a host of underling magi waited in the air. Lightning spewed from their fingertips into Venir’s body. The crackling fires engulfed Venir, but did little more than tickle the blood-mad warrior. The shield covering his back and shoulders absorbed it all.
Propelled by the power of the armament, Venir launched himself into an underling mage floating twenty feet away. Its glaring emerald eyes became bigger than saucers when Venir plowed his hulking frame into it. With Venir’s hand locked on its throat, they drifted toward the ground, where a vicious flock of underlings waited.
Venir’s viselike grip crushed the underling mage’s windpipe. He hit the ground swinging. His underling attackers’ limbs went flying. The huge warrior moved faster than the shifty fiends. His strikes were sudden death. Helm throbbed. The armies of the enemy converged on him from the east and the west, numbering in the thousands. Helm wanted to drive Venir into the massive army. For the sake of all of Bish, he fought against it. Not yet! On feet swifter than a deer’s, he ran eastward toward the Mist. Every underling for miles followed.
***
Venir’s flight left Billip and Nikkel gaping. Billip slapped Nikkel on the chest. “You heard him, let’s get the gate open!”
Witnessing the most bizarre event he’d ever seen in his life, Billip climbed down the ladder. The underlings moved in a single-minded mass in the direction of Venir. Among the chaos, he caught sight of Mood, who was cutting down the underlings that ran by. “Mood! Get the gate open. Just let them out!”
Mood made a sharp whistle. Before Billip could say “sonuvabish,” the dwarves had the West Gate rising. A current of underlings flowed, by the hundreds, through the gap. Billip climbed back on the ladder Nikkel was coming down. “Up! Up! Go back up!”
“Do you want me up or down?” Nikkel said.
“Up!”
At the top of the wall, another battle unfolded. The black-bearded Jung nomads, riding like thunder, galloped into the mindless swarm of underlings. The long-limbed, four-armed, fast-running striders descended on the underlings, lancing them with spears. The battle lasted for a few minutes before the Jung and the Striders pulled back. The underlings, one and all, poured out of the city, taking the same eastward path, not giving the Jung or the Striders the slightest glance. Hundreds of the horsemen were left scratching their heads. So were Nikkel and Billip.
“What in Bone just happened?” Nikkel loaded his last crossbow bolt. As he did, a limping underling warrior ran out of the city. He crossed through West Gate and turned along the wall going east. All of the underlings and spiders were gone. Nikkel shot the underling in the back. “They’re all gone.”
Billip surveyed their surroundings. Only a few living men and dwarves were among the battlefield of the dead. Brak and Georgio sat back-to-back. Brak held his hand over his neck. Georgio sat with his severed hands in his lap. Elypsa’s body lay in the street, trampled. Billip climbed back down the ladder and said to Mood, “What just happened?”
Mood swung his bloody and battered body into Chongo’s saddle. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” He rode off.
CHAPTER 39
Resisting the urgings from Helm to turn back and fight, Venir ran on, with supernatural endurance fueled by the armament. He didn’t slow until he neared the wall of Mist, which rose as high as he could see. The last time he went in, he barely made it back out. He turned his back to the Mist that licked at his tail end. The underlings came in a black tide, numbering in the tens of thousands.
The leather on Brool’s handle groaned in his sweaty grip. He stood his ground. The underling army came. At the forefront, a juegen in full-metal armor rode on the back of a spider. Its ruby-red eyes locked on Venir. It shouted in Underling, raised its sword high above its head, and sped forward. The underlings closed within one hundred feet.
Helm tried to send him into the speeding mass of the enemy. Venir growled. His neck veins pulsed. The underlings gnashed at his heels and backside less than twenty feet away. Not yet. Venir went into the Mist.
The underlings didn’t slow. They ran right in.
The landscape changed. The foggy air was all around. The terrain was slippery with hard rock and shifting dirt. Venir lost all sense of direction, but he didn’t lose sense of the underlings. Blind as bats, they wandered through the smoke, searching for his face. Venir led them deeper into the murky soup. His rage began to boil over. Helm fed it. He’d been holding back. Now his time had come to give in. He let his will and helm’s become one.
Now!
Brool sang.
Underling clavicles were chopped through. Legs came off at the knees. Faces and chests were gored. Venir moved like an angry spirit of steel-wielding death. He smote down the underlings from the unseen. They fell, one, two, and three at a time to his fatal strikes and thrusts.
The armament propelled him deeper into the confused fray. He spun through them like a tornado. The fiends thrust back. At close proximity, they saw him; by the dozens they closed in.
Clang! Slice! Chop! Glitch! Jab!
Edged weapons sliced at Venir’s legs and arms. The scale mail held, at first, but the dwarven links were weakening. Venir clobbered down one fiendish knot and hunted down another. The death toll rose into the hundreds. Venir, in a body ravaged by the armament’s desires, pressed on. Venir delivered an o
verhead two-handed chop that split an underling in two.
“Yaaaaaaaargh!”
His guttural outbursts cost him. Through the misty murk, the vengeful underlings closed in with overwhelming numbers. They ripped the armor from his body. Their weapons slid into his body. His blood spilled into the unseen sand. There was burning, hot as fire, as searing slivers thrust into his body. Venir’s heart slowed. Thump… thump-thump… Thump… thump-thump…
Underlings circled him. Though lost, they cavorted around him with foul chittering gestures. Flat on his back with blood pumping out of his body, Helm brought a new light. His skin, strands of muscle, and bone mended. He sat up as if rising from a coffin. He unleashed his rage on the underlings who put him down. Brool broke up the celebration and chopped it into bits.
Slice!
The war in the Mist raged. Back and forth, a lone man fought against the underlings. Unrelenting, he crept into their ranks and killed. Other times, he charged in like a wild berserker. By the hundreds, they fell to his mighty axe day by day, but time was lost in the Mist. And Venir’s death came more than once. Helm sustained him.
***
Boon and thirty dwarves journeyed down the Current into the dead-quiet Underland. Lit up by the underlight, the vast complex of homes and castles rivaled in majesty the very castles of Bone. Walking the evacuated streets, even the dwarves’ jaws hung a little. Huge castle-like homes made from black onyx, marble, metal, and stone stood proud from their ledges.
“Be wary,” Boon said. Life scurried in the shadows. Dark things crept and crawled in the darkness as they moved into the heart of the Underland. They passed through a garden of statues filled with horrific images of people on the surface world being conquered and mutilated. “The evil in the underlings is bone-deep, clear through the marrow.”
The Darkslayer: The Battle for Bone (Book 10 of 10) (Bish and Bone) Page 13