Call of the Wolf (The Kohrinju Tai Saga)

by Nelson, J P

  How many cogs were injured in that first volley is unimportant, it set us up for our next move. There was no time to watch those Ice Bolts do their work. As I had hoped, upon contact with the hardness of water they immediately began their effect, and apparently each bolt hit a cognobin as well.

  I could feel the energy from below well up, and from the south, the walls of the Pyramid started rolling away, from within shouts were heard as enemy forces were preparing to come out. As we flanked back to meet the second wave of cavalry, something else began to happen. From the four corner towers there was a groaning as something was opening from their tops.

  You would think an army leader might stand back and let the troops do their work. But as I turned my charger to join the second wave, to my right I could see Hoscoe as his soldiers must have seen him in the Jernigan War, at the Battle of Kithnuchai, and the sacking of the great city of Hezk’Lien. He was first to fire his crossbow into the water and the second bolt of his Mark VII hit as most were firing their one.

  He rode a fierce black charger with three white feet, and when we met the second wave he had already reloaded his Mark VII and pulled his sword. As the full cavalry bore down to cross the now frozen mote of ice and to the hill, it was General Tyorrin Hoscoe Val’Ihrus who led the way. It was he who touched ice first, and he who rose up onto the Pyramid’s Holy Dias to fire upon the first of the unprepared enemy. They had not expected our maneuver and were caught completely off-guard.

  We may have ascended the plateau, but we had not yet taken it. Human warriors with an ancient golden armor were taking arms against us, but I could not describe it all in detail, I was fighting. They were dressed in some archaic chain mail, but wore skirts and used a short blade and shield. It seemed they were pouring from within the Pyramid’s walls. Some of the apparent blocks had rolled upward and into the structure.

  What I had to do was get inside that gateway on the south side. Hoscoe’s was now on his feet and I found myself beside him. Together we fought back to back and as deadly as it was, it was exhilarating as well. How he found the breaks, I couldn’t imagine, but we kept pressing through the steady stream of warriors. He fought with intensity beyond imagination and I was pushing myself to keep up. For months I had been training to control my own rages, to conserve my own energy for the useful moments and still had much yet to learn.

  With every strike he was yelling commands to our troops. Yet as we fought, I felt that energy again, and it was stronger. We were now at the top of the Pyramid’s base and I saw the heads of statues slowly rising up. In the statues’ eyes, though, were diamonds … and they were shining. Zaeghun’s Lair! Up on top … the Witch Kin---

  I glanced at a statue with the head of a hyena … and on top of it was Kisparti; He had straddled the snout and locked his legs in while aiming that 400. I saw a spear hit him solid, but he didn’t move and the spear fell away.

  “No-o-o-o!” I yelled. I sprang to aim my crossbow … and took out one enemy aiming at him, but it took too long to reload. There had to be something better and I thought of the re-curve bows used by my ancestors.

  The statue was rising higher and the enemy was focusing on Kisparti. I could hear Hoscoe yelling at me, but I had to save my man. Too far away and too many, I sliced through a torso and parried a weapon to slice another, yet farther away another threw a spear at the man on the statue. I couldn’t help him but I had to try. He was a sitting target, helplessly I watched him take a crossbow bolt under the shoulder blade but he held steady, focused; he was sacrificing his life for the one good shot.

  I was washed through with burning rage, but I couldn’t let myself go berserk; my mental clarity was necessary for the task in front of me and I felt helpless. Five times more Kisparti took bolts but held his aim, and then he let loose his own bolt. I saw Soyvette take the bolt fired from the 400 through the head and topple off backward as the scepter fell from his hand; and as the Witch King fell, so did Kisparti … over two hundred feet to the ground below, before landing on the frozen mote.

  The scepter did not fall down the side of the Pyramid, and I could only imagine it had come to rest on that nearly forty foot square platform. Then Hoscoe was beside me yelling, “Timber Wolf! It is now to you!”

  I looked and saw the gateway opened, I had to do my job. A quick forearm clasp to Hoscoe and I pulled my own horn. My men were in place and we charged in.

  The architecture was astounding and the ceilings high. We had done what no one had done in thousands of years, but we weren’t finished by a long shot. Using staged volleys of crossbows, we made our entrance, and then to swords. I had expected cognobins, but we got big humans. Then we met some elves with swords and magic. Tobin took a spot of light into the chest which blew a hole out his back many times bigger than when it went in.

  Wesney came in with us and almost caught one of those spots of light when Merle shoved him out of the way, narrowly missing it himself. When I first saw Wesney in combat I was astounded, was he not a surgeon? But then, who better to know the right place to put a cut than one who knows the body intimately, and where better to learn a history than right in the middle.

  Wesney had courage, and watching him I saw he had skill. Almost all our boys used broadswords, but Wesney used a more slender blade something called a rapier. It was more of a parrying and thrust weapon, but his was sharpened top and bottom on the front third to a razor sharpness. One might think his blade would not be as effective as these heavier weapons, but he wove that blade with beautiful efficiency. Many ties he deflected an opponent’s weapon and skewered him, or else found a carotid artery with a surgically precise draw cut on the neck. And he did it all with the ultra-calm demeanor of the master physician he was. It was if he was waging war against a human sized disease.

  Yes, he had skill, but he also had something more. Wesney pulled out a stick, the one which had been used to kill Lieutenant Commander Eppard and identified as a wand, and he aimed it at an elf who died instantly.

  I had learned to merge my own energy with my sword, and I *Pressed* causing something like green and blue flames to embrace the blade. Everything I cut sliced like a hot knife through butter. As we fought I could tell these were clansmen dressed in cool armor, nothing more.

  As we pressed inward, from the ceiling came a rain of deadly missiles as giant spiders with human heads and arms took aim with small crossbows. Dudley found a place he could use for cover as two footmen protected him from the front, and began a firefight with the ceiling. One of his footmen went down and another took his place. Others of our troops got the same idea, and I saw Merle swing that 400 on his back and chase a lead on a spider-leg across the walls before shooting the bastard and pinning him onto a statue of a crocodile.

  One of those elves suddenly crossed my path and raised one of those wand things at me, but Izner skewered him with his sword from behind. The wand skittered across the floor and I did a roll to pick it up; eight little dots on the side, interesting. I pointed it at another elf who saw me with it, and then his eyes got big as I pressed a dot. He didn’t think about it long.

  When I pushed the dot, though, I felt strange. Just to see what would happen, I *Pressed* my own energy into it, then aimed at a bunch of bad guys and punched the dot. A backlash knocked me twenty feet back into a wall, and a ball of black and purple light forty feet in diameter hit those guys and burned them to a crisp. Problem was, I dropped the damned stick and couldn’t see it, what from the blur in my eyes.

  Izner was beside me and must have seen what I did, he found my wand and aimed it himself, taking out another one of those elves. Then right out of the serpent-man paintings on the wall, serpent-man creatures started walking out and fighting us.

  Y’nesia abruptly appeared beside me and said, “Here is not your place. Follow me.”

  “Like Hades it isn’t. These are my boys-”

  “There … Is … No … Time.”

  Ander was there, and for the first time he saw her. He instantly knew and u
nderstood and yelled at me, “Wolf! We got it! Throw the ball.” It was the phrase he would use, back when we played pigskin. The team would set me up so I could throw for a score. I now had the ball and it was up to me to throw true to the goal.

  Y’nesia pressed her hand to a gem in the wall and a door opened. She ducked in and I followed quickly. The door closed, but not before Izner, Dudley, Deak, T-bone, Patriohr and Lieutenant L’Nahr made it through with me. Dudley tossed me that wand and said, “Here’s your play-pretty … and don’t get your drawers tangled in your ass. We’re here, now do that Ahnagohr shit and we got your back!”

  I wanted to swear, some really bad swearing, but Y’nesia wasn’t waiting. She waved her hands at us and something went blurry, then she put her finger over her mouth for us to keep quiet. Somehow we knew where each other was, but when I held my hand up in front of my face, it was like all I could see was an outline. We went through a maze of chambers, hallways, staircases going downward, a room which spun for what seemed forever and then stopped in a bunch of mist, and when the mist faded away we were standing in a huge field where the whitest goats the size of deer were grazing.

  She waved her hands again and the air swirled around until all we could see was what seemed to be a mile long tunnel that ended in another room of mist. All the while the vast energy surge below was almost to the point of causing me pain. And then we were in the middle of it. My whole body tingled as we stepped into that second misty room. From time to time Y’nesia kept glancing back to me, she didn’t seem to notice the others.

  In the second misty room she said, “We are here. On other side is Chamber of Utnim-Su-Zai. He that you seek is there. The Gate of Huk-nu’Sis, called by some the Eye of Anu-Rah, is there.” My thoughts went immediately to Hoscoe, ‘It’s what he was looking for,’ as Y’Nesia continued, “Death is there. Many doorways are there.”

  “Doorways,” I asked, “Doorways to where?”

  “Where do you wish to go?”

  That caught me flatfooted. Thinking quickly I asked, “Can you get my friends out?”

  “Hey!” declared Izner, “We go where you go. We came together, we leave together, or we don’t leave.”

  The looks on their faces were resolute. I said, “There’s a huge magic creature that has to be killed, a wizard who has to be killed or stopped, and then we have to fix it so this door thing can’t be used again. It’s probably going to happen all at once.”

  L’Nahr said, “Major, we’re ready.” I saw he had one of those wand things, that made two we had, and I was wishing we had a lot more.

  Dudley remarked, “Are we goin’ to take a dump or go kick some ass?”

  I asked Y’nesia again, very pointedly, “Can you get my friends out?”

  “I can show them the way, but choose their own path they must.”

  I took a deep breath, then said, “Fair enough.”

  Stepping first through the misty veil, I saw a vast chamber with a thirteen feet high ceiling. I figured the place to be one hundred and thirty feet in diameter and a pentagram was etched into the floor. At the center was etched the figure of a large eye, the pupil being thirteen feet in diameter. At each point of the pentagram was a diamond the size of my fist, and they were all glowing. ‘That explains the importance of the diamond mines,’ I thought.

  In the ceiling was a paralleled design, but with the pentagram pointing in the exact opposite direction. Diamonds were in the points above, as well. Around the lower pentagram circle were the same runes from the pits, and in the pupil center was the thirteenth rune. In the walls, evenly spaced, were numerous openings that I guess counted to be thirty-nine all totaled, including the one we were coming out of. Everywhere were scattered lavers, pillars from ceiling to floor and statues against the wall.

  There were also several beings in this room, including one humongous cognobin who wore a gold band around his head, a few humans, three robed elves with outstretched arms evenly spaced around the pentagram, my friend the Warrior-elf, and a human looking person who looked like his skin was missing and was in process of making an incantation. All of this I saw in a scant second. And then the world went sideways.

  Chapter 51

  ________________________

  I DID NOT hear the exact word skinless said in his incantation, but when he said it a rush of unnatural energy tore through my body and I screamed. It wasn’t intentional, mind you, to announce our secret arrival in such a way, but it felt like a thousand lightning bolts coursed through me at once. It was the same instant jagged lines of multi-colored lightning danced from one diamond to the next, forming a kind of electric cage around the pentagrams. A blur began to emit from the eye on the floor and then everyone in the room looked in our direction.

  A robed elf with pale skin and orange hair addressed skinless in a form of Draconic I barely recognized, saying something to the effect of, “Xiahstoi! You fool! You said-”

  “Hnugh, Phostein, Rh’Tosh! Quickly!” Yelled Xiahstoi as he pointed our way.

  ‘Rh’Tosh,’ that name … the Eayahnite priest who came to our quarters when I was little. Did he have something to do with Kalisha’s death, or anything else for that matter? A grizzled old man turned quickly and stepped back in a dramatic pose while throwing his hands up in the air … and my whole team suddenly became weightless. My elvin-warrior buddy, who I finally decided was Phostein, aimed that craiken ring at me again and I just winced. It knocked me back into Dudley, Deak and T-bone, each of who began spinning around in the air without control.

  Izner leaped to evade the collision, and while he succeeded he also flew across one part of the room and collided with the ceiling. L’Nahr managed to latch onto a protrusion on a pillar and aimed his wand at a robed human in process of moving his hands and fired. Charred mess splattered all over, a hand splashed into a laver full of amber liquid, revealing it was only us who were weightless and floating.

  T-bone showed his quick thinking and rebounded off of the wall with a hefty leg press, right into another spell caster and smashed her into the wall. Hnugh was charging and drew his morning star back deep to attack Patriohr, but Patriohr was not to go that easily. He leg-pressed once off of a pillar, off of a wall from a different angle, off of the ceiling, down beside a laver, and leaping up did a back flip allowing him to catch the Cog Chief under the chin with both feet. Shael’s, where did he learn to move like that?

  The pulsing energy was still affecting me and I was raked with pain, with sword in one hand and wand in the other, I saw as I *Channeled* into the sword it glowed brighter and drew some of the pain from me, so I tucked the wand away and *Channeled* harder. I think Phostein wanted his sword back, but even he marveled at the effect I was manifesting with it. The more I channeled the brighter the blade became. He had a new sword, but it wasn’t glowing and I was mad.

  Y’nesia, on the other hand, doffed her cloak and I’ll be jiggered if she didn’t have wings … and some kind of armor. Cherron’s Beard! Apndiul … her ancestors built this place, she was one of those praying mantis people and that wasn’t armor, it was her hide, I mean her skin. She began flying from one of our team to the other, laying a glowing hand on us and speaking Elvish words meaning, wall walk.

  Why Y’nesia didn’t fight with magic, I didn’t know, maybe it was out of her portfolio, but she pulled out a pair of glowing hand sickles and everything she hit cut deep. A wizard hurled a dull silver glow of an effect at her, and she caught it with those sickles and spinning in mid air she hurled it right back. The wizard had a funny expression on his face as he saw that effect come back at him, right before he turned to stone.

  Cogs were coming into the room and over in the center those three elves were still chanting, and something really big was starting to form in that blur. I wanted Rh’Tosh, but I had to put him into the back of my mind.

  Phostein was giving it all he had and he was now covered in that protective glow, and while he might be better than me in many regards, I had him at skill-at-arms, and
I now had the superior weapon. I had to focus. The prize was in that blur … if only to bring the roof in. That was it! Would my sudden idea work, I didn’t know.

  Phostein could do nice flips with his effect enhancement, but I had trained in gymnastics. The weightlessness didn’t bother me, in fact it gave me release. I used my imagination and made him chase me in our combat. With every movement I would aim my glowing sword at a pillar, and when I hit chunks flew. The alarm in my opponent’s eyes told me I had scored the right idea. It didn’t take long to finish cutting through one pillar, and my glowing blade was making it easy.

  Although I was channeling it into my blade, that energy pulsing through my body was getting old. More importantly, these people were succeeding in keeping us away from the pentagram and that thing in the center was starting to solidify, and it had fins. Suddenly Izner hurtled past Phostein’s back and sliced hard. I took the moment and attacked his sword, shattering the blade like glass, and then striking hard at the elbow joint. I just didn’t have time for this.

  As Phostein’s arm flew through the air, I yelled out at the fast chanting person calling himself Xiahstoi, “Hey Aydrian, dog-face!” I actually got his attention and he looked at me in startled amazement as I hammered hard into another pillar. Focusing all the unnatural energy I could into the glowing sword, I cut through the pillar and it immediately began to crumble. The ceiling groaned and he stopped in mid-syllable, horrified. One of the three elves echoed the horror on her face and two of the warrior-elves targeted me.

  The creature was still there, however, and you could tell they, the elf wizards, were also in a race against time. The creature was not yet solid, but was looking pretty mean and you could hear it scream to shake the room. My guys were fighting for all they had, but we still weren’t taking the advantage, we were running even. The enemy was being killed, but something would take the place of the downed, and as one of us tried to attack the three elves, someone would get in the way.