The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  “W—witchcraft!” The man hardly got the word out before a four-legged rotborn tackled him to the ground and opened his throat with a broken shard of bone at the end of what appeared to be a boggard’s prehensile tail.

  Zerill hastily stepped back from the feasting creature and glanced over her shoulder at Verik. His hands were braced on his knees, and he was panting for breath. Using the deepcraft without physical contact was never easy for him, but breaking that sword had saved her life. There was no time for thanks; they shared a brief look, and then she started toward Azlin again, moving quick and silent over the ruined ground.

  The beetleback was facing away from her, and it gave no sign that it noticed her approach. Its smooth black shell gleamed in the guttering light of a highlander lantern, half-sunk in the mud nearby. As Zerill drew near, Castar came into view on the other side of the monster, pulling Prince Josen to his feet. The prince’s eyes met hers for just a moment, and widened in surprise. Zerill still couldn’t see Azlin, but it was not hard to guess where she was—the Deepling’s eyeless head was focused on something at its feet. It raised blade-tipped arms to strike.

  Zerill leapt.

  She landed on the beetleback’s shell. Azlin lay in the creature’s shadow, struggling to one knee as it raised its arm-blades to strike. Zerill stole its attention the quickest way she could think: she grabbed its head with one hand and yanked back, hard. Its chitin felt awful against her palm, smooth and slick and wrong—and worst of all, somehow enticing. Deep down, in a place she had trained all her life to ignore, a small voice urged her to hold tighter, press closer, to cut her flesh and let the blood run over the Deepling’s black shell. Bleed for me and I will spare her, it said. Bleed for me, and I will give you the power to save your people.

  She ignored it. That voice was everywhere in the Swamp, and the Abandoned knew better than to heed its lies. Pressing her spear against the thing’s neck, Zerill felt for a joint in the black armor where her blade could slip in.

  She didn’t find it in time.

  The beetleback lashed a razor-sharp blade over its shoulder, and Zerill dodged back, releasing her grip on its head. Her feet slipped against its shell; she couldn’t find purchase before the creature reared back on spindly insect legs. She felt a moment of weightlessness as she was thrown into the air. Everything seemed to slow down; she had time to watch Azlin surge to her feet, snatch up her spear, and charge at Prince Josen. The prince raised his sword, and Duke Castar stepped forward to intercept.

  “No!” Zerill shouted, unsure of who she meant it for. And then time sped up again, and she slammed against an old dead boggrove, broken off halfway up toward the mist.

  Pain ripped along her left side as she struck the ground. Her hands were empty, and her vision shifted like a reflection on water as she looked for her spear. It lay a few yards from where she had fallen. She tried to drag herself toward it, heard something scuttling through the mud, and turned her head.

  The beetleback was coming at her fast, six skittering beetle-legs barely stirring the muck beneath them. Its arms spread wide, as though seeking an embrace; the mandibles on either side of its blank face snapped wildly. She wouldn’t reach her spear in time, and even if she did, only highlander steel could stand against a beetleback’s blades, and even then not for long. Maker-forged wood and stone couldn’t protect her.

  It was nearly upon her. She raised her arms instinctively, though she knew they were only so much meat before those blades.

  Verik stepped in front of her, his hand outstretched toward the Deepling.

  No. Don’t make me watch you die. But there was nothing she could do. A beetleback’s blades could cut stone and steel; they would cleave through Verik just as easily.

  But they didn’t.

  The beetleback halted just in front of him, and its bladed arms paused mid-sweep. It senses his curse. It wouldn’t hesitate long—Deeplings didn’t like to kill those already tainted by their blood, but it wouldn’t let Verik stand between it and its prey.

  She didn’t waste the chance. Ignoring the pain in her side, she lunged for her spear. Her hand closed around the haft. She rose to one knee, half-turned, and stabbed backward, hoping desperately that she had judged the angle correctly.

  The tip of her spear plunged into the joint beneath the Deepling’s outstretched right arm just as it started to move again. The creature reared back, and Zerill reversed her grip and shoved hard, sinking the blade deeper. Black blood welled out around the spearhead, seeping down the creature’s torso. The blades that would have killed Verik jerked upward and passed just over his lowered head, tearing almost effortlessly through the rotted trunk of the dead boggrove behind him.

  The broken tree leaned forward, creaking and splintering as its trunk gave way. Zerill yanked her spear free and dove beneath sweeping arm-blades, tackling Verik out of the way. She landed on top of him, sheltering his body with hers. A crunching impact sounded behind her as the trunk landed; not the muffled crash and muddy spray it would have made against the earth, but something else.

  Ancestors, let that be what I think it was. I can’t fight this thing alone. Zerill rolled off Verik, struggled to her feet, and turned to see.

  The beetleback was pinned beneath the boggrove, its shelled lower body impaled by a shaft of splintered wood as thick as Zerill’s leg. Its carapace cratered inward under the weight of the tree, seeping black blood. The monster fought to stay upright, and for a terrifying moment, she almost believed it would; its narrow insect legs somehow held, bending but not breaking. It twisted at the waist and slashed spasmodically at the trunk with black razor arms, slicing away chunks of wood like it was carving meat.

  But the frenzied slashing slowed, weakened; the beetleback’s arms fell still. Its humanoid torso slumped forward. One segmented front leg buckled, and then the rest couldn’t support the weight anymore—they collapsed all at once. The massive beetle shell crashed to the ground, throwing up clumps of mud. Zerill raised an arm to shield her face.

  She lowered it again just in time to watch Azlin fall.

  Fifteen yards away, her sister dropped to her knees in front of Prince Josen. Her spear fell from limp fingers and sank into the muck at her side. Azlin touched her stomach in disbelief, and her hand came back red. The same red that dripped down the length of Josen’s saber.

  But Josen wasn’t looking at Azlin. He was staring at Zerill, his mouth open, his eyes wide. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to…” Zerill stared back, frozen, unable to believe what she was seeing. He was supposed to help us.

  “We need to go, Prince Josen,” said Castar. When Josen didn’t respond, Castar grabbed his arm and pulled. “Move!” And this time Josen staggered after the duke.

  Castar looked back at Zerill, just once. “Anyone who follows us will die. Be smart—flee while you can.” Then he dragged Josen away, disappearing into the trees.

  Azlin fell forward into the mud, and Zerill finally forced herself into motion. Vaulting over the fallen boggrove, she ran toward her sister, dropped to her knees beside her. Tendrils of crimson colored the mud, seeping out of Azlin’s body. Frantically, Zerill turned her sister onto her back. She was still, too still, and her eyes were closed, but she was alive—her chest rose and fell, just slightly. Zerill clapped her hands over the ugly wound in Azlin’s stomach, trying to stop the blood.

  Azlin’s right hand moved, came to rest on top of Zerill’s. Her eyes opened, and her free hand weakly signed, Too late. Too deep.

  Zerill shook her head. “No. You’re going to live.” Both of her hands were pressed against the wound; she had to use the loudspeech. “Verik can heal you.” It was forbidden for the Makers to mend living flesh—too dangerous, too many bodies twisted and destroyed—but she knew he would do it. He would do it if she asked him to. “Verik!”

  Azlin’s hand fluttered again. He can’t. Should have… listened to you. Her eyes closed once more; her breathing slowed.

  “Azlin!”

  Azlin’
s hand fell still, too weak to move. “You are Grandmother of the Lighteyes now,” she whispered in a voice Zerill hardly recognized, so rarely used outside Kinmeet. “Do better.” Her chest stopped moving.

  Zerill screamed. No words, no signs, just pain turned into noise. It tore at her throat, but that felt right; it felt right to hurt, just then. She knew that she would be heard, that it went against everything she had ever been taught, that she was surrounded in Deeplings and Knights of the Storm who could be drawn by the sound. She knew all of that, and she didn’t care.

  She felt Verik’s hand on her shoulder then, and she looked up at him. Tears blurred her vision, so that his face was little more than a pale spot in the dark. “You could have saved her.” She was still speaking aloud; she didn’t want to move her hands from Azlin’s body. “Why didn’t you come faster?”

  I’m sorry, he signed, dropping his eyes. I’m so sorry, Zerill. But we have to move. The Deeplings will be done with the knights soon, and everything for miles heard you scream. Someone will come after us. We… there’s nothing more we can do for her.

  But there was. There was still one thing. Zerill wiped a hand over her eyes, and looked in the direction Prince Josen had gone—toward the front, where hundreds of knights waited. She tightened her grip on her spear, shrugged Verik’s hand from her shoulder, and climbed to her feet. She knew what she had to do now. She couldn’t save Azlin, but she could still do one last thing for her.

  She could still kill the man who’d taken her away.

  12. Golden Eyes

  Josen

  Josen trudged through the darkness without ever taking his eyes from his saber, trusting Castar to lead him in the right direction. In the green glow of the witchmoss, the blood along the blade looked black as a Deepling’s ichor. But it wasn’t. He’d seen it in the guttering light of broken lanterns, fresh from the woman he’d killed, and it had been red. Red as his own blood.

  How did this happen? He’d never killed anyone before, and now that he had, he couldn’t make sense of it. He remembered the woman coming at him with her spear, the rush of terror; that was clear as sky. But everything after was a cascade of fragmented images that felt like they belonged in someone else’s memory. Castar stepping in front of him, doing… something, some maneuver Josen couldn’t follow. A sword rising that had to be his own—it must have been instinct, because he couldn’t remember deciding to do it. He’d squeezed his eyes closed, then, and only opened them again when he felt the impact.

  And then it was just her face, wide black eyes fastened on the blade in her stomach.

  He knew that Rudol and Castar and even Eian would tell him that he’d done the right thing, that he’d been defending himself. That she was only a swampling. He wanted to believe that, was trying very hard to, but the way she’d looked down at the blade, the way the blood had dripped over her lips…

  And that hadn’t even been the worst thing. The worst had been after she fell, when he’d looked up to see the other woman staring at him. The swampling he’d saved in the Plateaus.

  Her face had been cleaner than the others, the mud wiped away on her cheeks and around a wound on her brow, and suddenly the little differences he’d noticed in his attacker’s features had made sense. He’d confused the two of them—they must have been kin, sisters maybe—but he’d understood the truth the moment he’d seen her. And the look on her face… that was the worst thing. The betrayal in those dark eyes. Because she had known him, somehow, even though he’d been masked when they met. Her eyes told him that.

  Wind of Grace forgive me, I didn’t mean to. His stomach twisted violently, and he bent over, heaving into a waist-high patch of some fragrant fungus.

  Castar cursed and turned back at the sound. “What is it? Deeplings?” He held his saber in one hand, a fistful of witchmoss in the other. The dim green light barely illuminated their path, serving only to turn his face into a ghostly mask.

  “No, I…” Josen didn’t finish. There was a strange feeling in his stomach, something deeper than nausea—a sensation somewhere between sickness and fascination. And there in the back of his head, very faint, was that lovely whisper. The Voice of Corruption, the chastors called it, but there was something beautiful about it, even so. He tried to go through the mental exercises Cer Eldon had taught him at the Stormhall—repeat a memorized passage over and over, count into the hundreds by threes or sixes or nines, anything to occupy the mind—but rhymes and numbers fled his head at once. He wanted very badly to turn around, to go toward the voice, and that terrified him more than anything. “God Above, are they following us?”

  “I expect so. Deeplings don’t let their prey escape easily. We need to keep moving.”

  “Shouldn’t we have found the front by now? Where are they?” Rudol and the others hadn’t been that far ahead, several hundred yards at most—Josen had assumed it would be easy to follow the lanterns. But light was misleading in the Swamp. It always seemed closer than it was, and there were so many rocks and trees and vines to get in the way. The lanterns in the distance moved constantly, fading in and out of view behind some tree or rise, and when their light appeared again it was never where Josen expected it to be.

  “Soon,” said Castar, but for once he sounded uncertain. “Come—we’re wasting time.” He lifted the witchmoss overhead and continued on.

  Josen shivered. It felt colder in the darkness—or perhaps he owed that to the icy mud that covered half his body and squelched inside his boots. Damp vines—he hoped they were vines—brushed against his face, invisible in the dark until the moment they made contact. And with every step, the nauseating pull in his gut grew.

  “Castar…”

  “I know. I feel it too. They’re close now.”

  A rustling from behind. They both turned.

  “Hold this,” said Castar, pressing the witchmoss into Josen’s hands. “And get behind me.”

  Josen had barely stepped behind Castar when the deeprat pounced, soaring out of the darkness with claws outstretched.

  Castar sidestepped and swung his saber two-handed, using the force of the thing’s leap against it. The blade connected with the deeprat’s head, smashing through cartilege. The creature’s momentum carried it by, and Josen couldn’t tell if it was alive or dead until it landed in a heap and didn’t get back up.

  It hadn’t come alone.

  Behind the deeprat, something else lumbered out of the darkness. Its form made no sense to Josen at first—no head, just lanky man-like arms and legs attached to a spine and ribcage that looked feline, maybe a mistcat. Loose flaps of greying flesh clung to the bones, leaving them mostly uncovered. Clumps of dark sludge that looked like congealed fat mixed with fistfuls of dirt were packed along the spine and around the joints, holding everything in place.

  A rotborn. They were the most numerous—and revolting—of the Deeplings, apparently patched together out of whatever random parts could be found decaying under the earth. If Josen hadn’t seen monsters as bad or worse tearing men apart not long before, he might have screamed. But there was only so much horror his mind could fathom, and it had reached that limit. This was just another nightmare added to the heap.

  It approached more carefully than the deeprat, and moved curiously on its hands and feet, putting most of its weight on the exposed bone of its rotting knuckles. Castar held his saber at arm’s length, trying to keep distance between them.

  Then, in one convulsive motion, the rotborn lifted itself on its knuckles and threw itself at Castar feet first.

  The duke’s saber wasn’t enough to arrest the rotborn’s momentum. Soggy muscle peeled away like cheese under the blade, but the thing’s feet took Castar in the stomach, and he fell with a grunt, landing heavily on his back. The rotborn straddled him, battered at his head and shoulders with savage strength. Castar squirmed away from the first blow, deflected another with his saber, but a third knocked the weapon aside.

  Josen lurched a step toward Castar and the rotborn. His bloodi
ed saber was still in his hand, hanging slack at his side, and he raised it over his head slowly, trying not to attract the rotborn’s attention. The creature showed no sign that it had noticed him, just lifted a decaying fist to strike at Castar again. Spirit of All, just do it. It’s going to kill him.

  But he couldn’t.

  There was something else in his head. A voice whispering for him to stay his hand. To drag his blade along his own flesh, to let the blood flow free. Bleed for me, it said, and you will finally be free. Everything they’d told him at the Stormhall deserted him—counting by threes suddenly seemed like a very futile gesture. He felt cold steel against his wrist, and realized he’d put it there, pulled back his own glove and placed his sword against his flesh. Just one quick cut. It would be so easy, and the reward that would come after…

  “Josen!” the duke yelled, before the creature struck him in the chest and the wind burst from his lungs.

  The sound of his name reached Josen through the fog; he started, jerked his saber away from his skin. Lifting his arms again was like swimming against a strong current, but he made them move. Squeezing his eyes shut, he brought his saber down like a club on the rotborn’s back, with all his strength behind it.

  Bone crunched. Josen felt surprisingly little resistance, and opened his eyes to see his blade cleaving through the base of the rotborn’s spine, where only vertebrae and a few scant scraps of flesh held it together. The top half of the creature’s body split away from the bottom. The hips and legs collapsed to one side of Castar; the arms and torso on the other.

  I killed it. I killed it! He wanted to shout or laugh or cheer, but some last prick of common sense pierced the mania of the moment just enough to stop him. “Was that all?” he asked breathlessly. “Are we safe?”