Shawna drew her horse into a halt a small distance from the fight and dismounted in a quick motion, drawing her second sword from the sheath at her belt, and ran to D’Jenn’s aid. She entered the battle as she always did, whirling in a deceptive dance that left men slashed, stabbed, and disabled in her wake. As Dormael watched, she ducked under the slash of a broadsword that had been aimed at her neck, and calmly sliced the tendons at the back of the wielder’s knee while simultaneously ramming her second sword up into the surprised man’s gut and into his vitals, twisting it as she pulled it free. Blood poured from the wound as the broadsword dropped from suddenly limp fingers and clanged away on the ground, the man falling away uttering a gurgling cry of pain.
She slashed at the back of a man’s neck that was turned to engage D’Jenn, and blood flew from the clean slice as the man went suddenly limp in mid-swing of a flail, his knees turning to jelly as the cut cleanly severed the spinal cord. He fell in a heap and was trampled by Mist as D’Jenn turned the horse aside to swing a heavy blow at another bandit on his side.
Dormael pulled a roaring ball of power together from his Kai and unleashed it on two men who were running from the shadows beside the road to join the fight, and the twilight brightened into sudden light as a new ball of bright yellow flame rushed with blinding speed toward the men. Shadows moved in circular patterns away from the road as the fireball closed the distance in the time it took to suck in a surprised breath. The men never saw the magical attack coming, and didn’t even scream as it exploded between them; covering both in blinding, liquid fire. Their bodies’ momentum carried them a few more feet as they fell limply to the ground, their remains burning bright and angry.
Allen crashed back into the fight, Old Girl forcing a path into the press of men and Allen’s huge sword slashing rents in chests and taking the heads from two men who weren’t fast enough to dive away from it. His brother’s eyes were alight with fury and excitement, and Dormael could swear that he heard mad laughter issuing forth from his brother’s contorted mouth. Blood spattered freely on Allen’s chest, neck, and face, but he paid it no mind as he continued his grisly work.
More men seemed to pour out from the shadows of the fast-darkening night, and Dormael began to lay about him with power. He sent waves of raw force lashing into men and taking them from their feet. He pulled the heat from one bandit and froze him completely, his body breaking apart in wet cracks as it fell to the earth. The bodies began to pile up around the companions’ feet; there must have been ten or fifteen men down in the space of a minute, but they kept coming. Dormael began to grow tired and sweat beaded underneath his clothing with the effort of casting so much magic about.
He watched as Shawna was surrounded and though she danced in a circle whirling death from her spinning blades, the bandits began to work together and she was overcome. One of the men slipped a catchpole over her shoulders, and a rope tightened around the small woman, pinning her elbows to her side. Dormael was forced aside by a man trying to pull him from the saddle, and he had to kick at him before he could throw another magical attack at him, forcing him into the air and away from him and Bethany. When he turned back, he saw one of the bandits ball up his fist and punch Shawna heavily in the face. Her body slumped to the ground, and they began to drag her away. Bethany screamed in panic.
“We’ve got her! We’ve got the girl!” one of the bandits screamed.
“Shawna!” Dormael roared, kicking Horse into motion toward the subdued noblewoman and the men dragging her into the shadows. Bethany screamed again and he felt her tiny hands grasping into the fabric of his mesavai. Suddenly he felt a jarring pain and the world turned over in his eyes. Stars swam in his vision, and it took him a second to realize that he tasted dirt in his mouth. He mumbled something and reached for Horse’s reins, but his hand passed before his face and all he grasped was the dust of the road. Bethany let out another howl of fear, and her voice freed him of his stupor.
He was lying on the road. Someone had unhorsed him, and his head hurt with a dull, numbing pain. He rose as quickly as he could, but his arms felt like jelly and he could hardly draw a breath. Something hot and wet dribbled down his face and into one of his eyes, and a moment later he tasted coppery blood in his mouth. He reached for the magic, but as he did a sharp pain lanced through all of his senses, and for a moment he was blind and deaf and fell back to the earth, trying once again to breathe.
Bethany screamed again.
Dormael turned over and saw through blurry eyes two men hauling the tiny girl from the ground. One of them had her around the waist and had tugged her hard from the earth. Her tiny legs kicked at the air, but try as she might she couldn’t hurt the much larger man who held her. Another man faced her, one hand on a dagger and the other reaching over to tangle in the little girl’s hair and tug her head back, baring her throat.
“No,” Dormael uttered with rage and fear and blinding apprehension tearing a cold path from his belly and into his throat. He reached again for his magic, and again the pain rushed into his head and blurred his eyes. The knife reached out for Bethany.
Suddenly the girl screamed again, and Dormael felt a rushing torrent of power from somewhere. For the space of a breath he thought it was coming from him, but it wasn’t. It was coming from Bethany.
A rush of orange-yellow light burst forth from the little girl, and for a second Dormael could see the two men outlined by the burst of light, as if they were staring down at a blinding campfire, then everything seemed to happen at once. The man holding Bethany screamed, releasing her tiny form and stumbling back from her. His arms swelled and distended, his face scrunched into a grimace as if he was trying to hold in some vast internal pressure as his entire body rippled and waved like some great snake crawled around under his skin. Then he exploded in a cloud of flying blood, bone, and meaty gore. The smell was revolting.
As Bethany’s feet touched the ground and she fell on her knees, she looked up at the second man who held the knife while he stared at his comrade in horror. Her eyes were full of fear and panic, and she screamed again, closing her eyes and putting her hands over them to hide him from her sight and cowered onto the ground.
As her voice lashed out, the man gave a surprise grunt of pain and he flew back from the girl like some giant invisible hand had swatted him away. The impact of the force Bethany had unleashed threw dust into the air in a circle around her and made the noise of the battle around Dormael thin down to an inaudible roar for a second. Then he felt the pressure give way, and Bethany collapsed onto the road, crying and whimpering in a fetal ball.
He felt a strong grip clamp down on his shoulder and haul him to his feet, and looked up to see Allen’s blood-spattered face staring down at his.
“Grab the girl, man! Protect her!” Allen shouted at him through the din. Dormael nodded back dumbly then clamped his own hand on his brother’s arm as Allen turned to join the battle again.
“They took Shawna. We have to get her back,” Dormael said, squinting his eyes and trying to will the pain and dizziness away. Allen’s mouth drew into a thin and determined line and he nodded once at Dormael before turning back towards the battle raging around D’Jenn. Dormael reached Bethany and pulled her up into a rough embrace, hugging her tight to his chest and taking a deep breath to try and still his head and keep his wits. Bethany cried quietly into his shoulder, clutching hard at him in fear. He murmured soft words into her ear and stroked her hair as he forced the pain away and grasped his Kai once again.
****
Maarkov squinted into the night at the dim outline of land in the distance, wiping a hand across his brow to wipe the cold rain from his eyes for the one hundredth time in the past few minutes. The King’s Blessing bucked in the violent waves of the Stormy Sea, and Maarkov shifted his weight calmly against the storm that tried its best to toss him overboard into the cold, dark water. Men rushed to and fro around him, shouting orders and responses and tying lines down in a vicious struggle against the s
quall that battered the galleon through the waves like a piece of bark in a violent river. Maarkov paid it no more mind than he ever did.
They had made good time across the angry ocean, pulled by the dark spirits or whatever it was that his damned brother had called up from the abyss to hurry them along. The rotting remains of the former captain had been replaced with fresh meat, whether to slake the bloody thirst of the spirits or that of his brother, Maarkov had no idea. He imagined that it was debatable, and he also imagined that it mattered not. Dead was dead, no matter how it was sliced.
The ship rocked forward and aft in the churning, foamy water. It issued great, protesting groans of wooden protest as it was tossed about in the sea, bringing Maarkov the sight of the land in one second, and a wall of dark waves the next. The men around him were frightened, that much he could tell. Maarkov was no sailor. He’d been around long enough to acquire many skills, for certain, but seafaring had never been an area that he’d been particularly interested in. He knew trepidation when he saw it, though, and these men had the wide-eyed harried stares of people who were fighting their last stand. Maarkov had seen that look in men’s eyes too many times to count in his disgustingly long life.
Turning, he edged his way along the railing hand-over-hand to the door that led to the captain’s quarters where his brother would be holed up like a bat in a cave. He grasped the handle and barely made it into the dark room beyond, pushing the door shut behind him and falling against it as the ship rocked once more on a violent axis.
Maaz rushed about the room, securing his things into chests and stuffing clothing into open sacks as water ran freely from the ceiling of the little room, dribbling back and forth along maps and other papers that slid from corner to corner on the large wooden desk that dominated the space. Unseen objects clattered about the floor as the ship was tossed around, and more than a few bottles fell from a cabinet and smashed open, spilling dark wine across the deck of the pitching room.
“What are you staring at?” Maaz spat, spittle bubbling on his pallid lips, “Get your things together and stop standing there looking at me. It’s maddening, brother mine.”
“Already abandoning ship, Maaz? And here I thought the captain went down with the vessel,” Maarkov drawled, a smile playing across his face for the first time since they’d set out.
“That would please you to no end, wouldn’t it? To see me brought low by the very forces I called forth. I hate to disappoint you, brother, but these forces are nothing more than midwinter storms in this Gods-forsaken sea. This is nothing of my doing. Now get your things. I can get us out of this, but only if you hurry.” Maaz turned away again, grabbing his belongings and stuffing them away. He resembled nothing less than a dead corpse dressed in a black funeral cloth, suddenly animated and dancing about to the whim of some mad puppeteer. Maarkov smiled at the thought. The night was looking up, after all – that was two smiles in the bare space of a few seconds.
“You know, I think it may take me some time to get my belongings together, brother. I seem to have misplaced a whetstone that is very dear to me. I think it will take quite a while to locate it.”
Maaz paused in his mad activity and shot his brother a murderous glare from under his deep cowl.
“A…whetstone, brother?”
“Yes.”
Maaz’s scowl turned black by slow degrees. “And what, pray tell, is so important about this implement?”
“As I said, it is dear to me. It keeps my blade sharp, brother. Wouldn’t you just hate it if you ordered me to murder someone, and I was without a sharp blade? Why, I’d have to resort to bludgeoning someone to death, and that would spatter blood everywhere. Whatever would you drink if all the blood were spattered and spilled upon the ground, eh? I know how you get all sullen if you’re not able to drink blood and rape corpses whenever you get the chance,” Maarkov said, his smile deepening.
Maaz’s eyes grew hooded and Maarkov thought for a splint second that his brother almost smiled back at him. He was wrong, of course. Maaz was only baring his teeth.
“Do not test me, brother mine. Not now. Find your things and get ready to –
Suddenly there was a great cracking noise and the deck beneath their feet bucked and jumped violently, throwing both brothers to the ground in unceremonious heaps. Maarkov banged his chin on the hard wooden planks and grunted in surprise as he was tumbled toward the aft of the cabin. He barely caught sight of his brother’s corpse-skinny arms grasping for a hand hold as he was tossed about as well. Maarkov heard a roaring noise and the sound of breaking glass, and the next thing he knew biting-cold water rushed into him, stealing the breath from his lungs.
Maarkov tasted salty water as the dark took him down into nothing.
****
Dormael extended his arm and pointed at a bandit who was running headlong at his brother, unleashing a violent whip of bright white lightning that crashed into the man’s back and hurled him head over heels, spinning and burning in midair to contact a large rock by the side of the road with a sickening wet smack. The smell of ozone and burnt meat and hair hung in his wake in a miasma of black smoke that curled sinuously into the twilight before it dispensed. The magic was taking a serious toll on Dormael, who could still taste dirt and blood in his mouth, and had to wipe a grimy sleeve across his eyes from time to time so that the blood running from his head wouldn’t blind him. His head cried out in pain at every ball of fire, every bolt of lightning, and every man thrown or frozen or simply hit by a barrage of flying stones. Still, Bethany clung to his shoulder tightly, her face buried in the side of his neck. He had to protect her.
Allen had jumped immediately back into the fray like a man gone insane. He screamed and roared at the ill-organized bandits, causing them to falter and hesitate. It was all the time that Allen needed.
Dormael saw his brother chop into the body of a man with his great, curving sword, abandoning it when it caught in the bones of the dying man’s torso. He kicked the body of the man aside, catching a spray of arterial blood across his chest as he did, and with the practiced ease of a professional fighter he drew the handaxe in his right hand, and a long, thick bladed dagger in the other, reversing the grip. He waded toward two other men who faced him, and crouched slightly in the knees, bringing his center of gravity lower to the ground. The two men stepped carefully toward him, their confidence ebbed by the sight of the mutilated corpses Allen had already left behind him.
The nearest man stepped toward him, slicing a longsword at his neck, but Allen was ready for it. He moved like a predator, no effort wasted, and he ducked just low enough to avoid the blow as he rushed inside the man’s sword range. Dormael could see the surprised look on the man’s face as Allen dropped under his guard and rose behind his swing, punching brutally into the man’s throat with the dagger. He fell, gurgling blood.
The last bandit rushed Dormael’s brother, swinging a shortsword in quick, vicious arcs. Allen danced backwards, slipping outside of each blow as the man pursued him, screaming in rage and adrenaline-spiked fear with every attack. Suddenly, Allen reversed his momentum and stepped forward at the man, swinging his axe and meeting the bandit’s attack mid-swing. He wasn’t aiming for the bandit’s weapon, however, looking to parry the attack.
Allen’s axe took the man’s hand off at the wrist.
The bandit continued his swing, if a little off balance from the sudden loss of weight at the end of his arm, and stumbled past Allen when he ducked under the bloody stump as it went by. The hand, still holding the sword, tumbled off into the distance and clanged against a rock at the side of the road. It was only when the man’s feet betrayed him and he went to the ground that he realized that Allen had relieved him of his hand. He screamed, squeezing the wrist that spurted red gouts of blood into the dirt. His screams cut off abruptly as a hoof slammed down onto the man’s head, crushing it like a hard-shelled melon with a wet crunch.
D’Jenn had turned his horse to get a swing to his right side, and althoug
h Mist was no trained battle mount, he still had the instincts of fear and self-preservation of all his kind. His descending hoof had been a reflexive strike, blind and aimed simply at the noise and sense of the man behind him. Dormael looked up in time to see D’Jenn rain a heavy blow down on a man’s shield, and as the morningstar contacted the shield, bolts of electricity crawled across the surface of it like a spider web spreading impossibly fast, and the bandit didn’t so much scream as grunt loudly in surprise, as a man who had the wind knocked from his chest. He froze, his body going rigid for a crucial second that allowed D’Jenn’s second blow to batter the shield aside, and his third to crash into the man’s helm, sending one of those vicious spikes into his brain.
Dormael realized that the narrow pass had gone quiet, and for a second the only sounds were his heartbeat, rebounding inside his ears like some morbid drum being accompanied by the sounds of his labored breathing. Allen’s wide, bloodshot eyes stared around the narrow pass, searching out new enemies in the shadows. D’Jenn raised his morningstar high in his right hand and clutched his still injured left arm to his chest and turned Mist in quick circles, shooting glances off to both sides of the road and to the ridges above. The wind moaned lowly through the pass, throwing up a small plume of dust as it whistled by.
“It’s over,” Dormael heard himself say, and as one Allen and D’Jenn slowly lowered their weapons. Bethany sobbed wet tears onto his shoulder.
“They took the girl,” Allen said, turning to head off into the shadows to search out the bandits’ hidden path to safety.
“Wait,” D’Jenn said between gasping breaths, “They’re sure to have their retreat guarded, and I’d like to learn a little more as to how they knew we were coming, and how to recognize us in the first place. This is going to take a little guile.”
The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs) Page 52