The SteelMaster of Indwallin, Book 2 of The Gods Within

by J. L. Doty

  The coach came into sight as soon as he rounded the bend. He didn’t go deep into the forest, but stayed close to the edge of the road, slipping in and out of the shadows there as he worked his way toward the coach, trying to keep it in sight at all times. AnneRhianne had regained consciousness, and was pulling quite actively at her bonds, shouting angrily at her captors, though with no hint of hysteria in her voice. With the coach turned on its side, the Kulls had tied her to its underbelly, torn her clothing away down to her waist, and two of them were busily groping at her breasts and crotch. A third Kull was on his knees in the middle of the road much closer to Morddon and facing him, busily rifling the body of the coachman; his back to his comrades and the coach. Morddon kept a close eye on that one since he might look up at any moment. Then one of the two groping at AnneRhianne leaned back and slapped her with a blow that resounded loudly through the damp mountain air. “Bitch!” he shouted at her.

  Morddon froze as the Kull in the middle of the road looked up and back toward the coach. “You monsters!” AnneRhianne screamed. One of the Kulls jammed a torn piece of her gown into her mouth to silence her, then the two went back to their groping. Their comrade in the middle of the road laughed and returned to his scavenging.

  They were just within bowshot, but still too far for good accuracy, and he still didn’t know where the other six Kulls where, though he saw their horses tethered on the far side of the coach. As he worked his way closer he caught glimpses of four more behind it, but even after he’d reached a reasonable range he had yet to locate the last two. Tentatively he drew an arrow, knocked it, edged closer a few more steps, still wondering where the last two Kulls might be.

  “Blast you!” one of the two Kulls groping at AnneRhianne screamed. He cuffed her hard with a closed fist, gripped her chin and slammed her head against the coach’s floorboards two or three times. Her eyes fluttered near the edge of consciousness. This time the Kull in the road scavenging the dead coachman did not look up, but the overturned coach rocked and one of the missing Kulls hoisted himself up out of its interior. He climbed up onto the side of the coach and looked down at his two comrades.

  One more left, Morddon thought. Just one more.

  The Kull standing on the coach growled at his comrades, “If you can’t handle that bitch any better than that I’ll take her for myself.”

  The one who’d cuffed AnneRhianne displayed a large, ugly knife and snarled, “If you try you’ll get nothing but steel.”

  Morddon tensed, turned slightly to one side to get a better aim and pull on the bow, stood up straight and flexed it once. He’d rather be closer, and he still wanted to know where that last Kull was.

  The halfman standing above shook his head and turned his back on them, bent to look into the interior of the coach again. AnneRhianne spit the gag from her mouth; her head shot forward, her teeth flashed and she bit into the ear of the halfman holding the knife.

  “You whore,” he screamed. He hit her with the butt of the knife but she refused to let go of his ear. He flailed wildly at her while his comrade cuffed her again and again. But when they finally pulled her away the Kull’s blood dripped freely from her mouth, and with a triumphant gleam in her eyes she spit his ear in his face.

  “Ahhh!” he raged, grabbed a fist full of hair, forced her head back and raised his knife to cut her throat.

  Morddon’s bow rose into firing position almost with a will of its own, and his muscles strained against the pull of it. He sighted down the arrow toward the back of the Kull’s head, a part of him conscious of the shaft’s fletching tickling his cheek. But at the last moment he realized the shaft would pass straight through the Kull’s head and into AnneRhianne without stopping. In the flash of an instant he changed his aim to the outstretched arm holding the knife, corrected upward for distance and slightly to one side, leading the arm already striking inward toward her throat. Then he relaxed the fingers clutching the string.

  ~~~

  AnneRhianne understood instantly she had pushed her tormentor too far, though she experienced a moment of triumph in the realization she would die outright now, rather than being raped first by this monster and his comrades, then killed afterwards. But as the blade rose high above her head and paused against the gray background of the afternoon sky, she thought of WindHollow, and of the likelihood he would not die so cleanly, and in that moment the blade began its descent toward her throat.

  She heard, but took no notice of, the familiar hiss that always reminded her of water on white hot steel. Then a loud thud and a sharp vibration pounded the coach’s floorboards. And the knife, still glinting high above her exposed throat, jerked to a sudden and unexpected stop.

  The monster holding the knife frowned angrily, looked toward his arm to see what had prevented it from delivering the death he so wanted to see in the Benesh’ere woman’s eyes, and both she and he saw it at the same instant: a steel tipped, Benesh’ere war arrow, glistening with the blood of his arm, pinning it to the coach. The monster looked down at her with a face wholly ignorant of pain but stretched into a grimace of hatred. He turned with a growl, moving awkwardly because of the arm still pinned to the coach, tried to look over his shoulder to locate the source of this affront.

  The hiss came again, the second arrow punched into the ear she had bit off, out through the temple on the other side of his head, thudded into the coach’s floorboards, and the monster stood with his head spitted like a gobbet of meat and pinned to the coach beside his arm. He twitched, but could not fall.

  ~~~

  Morddon tried not to hurry as he knocked another arrow, took careful aim, paused for just one instant. The dead Kull’s comrade was busy biting one of AnneRhianne’s breasts, and again any shot now would kill her as well as him. But then the monster looked up, saw the fate of his comrade, turned to look down the road, and Morddon’s third arrow caught him squarely in the center of his chest, thunked into the floorboards of the coach and pinned him upright.

  “You bastards,” AnneRhianne cried. “Stop that! Take your hands off me.”

  Morddon hesitated, then realized she was buying him time, certainly not knowing who he was, but knowing a sudden silence would draw the attention of the other Kulls, all of whom were still ignorant of the fate of their two dead comrades. He knocked another arrow, waited for the Kull standing on top of the coach and bending over the open door to rise to an upright position. Then he fired the arrow cleanly through the back of the halfman’s head, though it didn’t stop there, but arced well out over the forest beyond. The Kull twitched, leaned heavily to one side, then toppled off the coach with a crash.

  Still kneeling in the middle of the road, the Kull scavenging the dead coachman looked up at the sound and turned to look over his shoulder. Morddon knocked another arrow, raised his bow, fired the shaft square into the middle of the halfman’s chest. He toppled backward off his knees and lay face up in the road.

  Morddon drew another arrow, knocked it, jumped out onto the road and started sprinting toward the coach, wishing he’d been able to get closer before firing the first shot. He was still a good distance from the coach when a Kull stepped from behind it into view, and though the halfman was unprepared to see such carnage and his reaction was slow, Morddon was at a full sprint and wasted precious moments coming to a screeching halt before raising his bow. The Kull stepped aside just as Morddon released the arrow; it hissed past his ear, buried itself in one of the Kull horses on the far side of the coach. The animal screamed, toppled over with a crash as the halfman shouted a warning and disappeared behind the coach. Almost instantly another Kull appeared with a crossbow in hand.

  Morddon dove desperately to one side, narrowly escaped the crossbow bolt as it tore a chunk of flesh from his shoulder. He rose quickly to his knees, pulled, knocked, fired an arrow at a flicker of movement near the side of the coach, pulled, knocked and fired two more in rapid succession. A hint of movement; another arrow, then five arrows in rapid succession as the Kulls behind th
e coach tried to get a glimpse at him. A Kull head appeared above the door of the coach, a single halfman still trapped inside. Morddon heard the thunder of Mortiss’ hooves pounding up the road behind him. He put his last arrow into the face above the door of the coach, tossed the bow and quiver aside, drew his sword and jumped into the middle of the road.

  A crossbow bolt cut the air beside him as Mortiss bore down on him at full charge, her nostrils flaring with exertion, her eyes burning with the lust of battle. He broke into a run away from her and toward the coach, trying to match her speed in some slight degree, managed to catch the saddle horn as she tore past him and wrenched him painfully into her saddle.

  He almost toppled off the other side, though a Kull arrow pierced the air where he would have been if he’d mounted cleanly. He got his feet into the stirrups and leaned forward low in the saddle.

  He saw the crossbow bolt quite clearly an instant before it struck: straight ahead, seeming to hover in the air in the middle of the road directly before Mortiss’ heaving breast. Then the moment ended and it hissed toward her, and without a sound she collapsed beneath him like SarahGirl had done beneath Morgin so long ago.

  Morddon had the presence of mind to dive forward out of the stirrups, though he landed hard in the middle of the road and bounced and skidded for a good distance. He came up slowly, dazed and without his sword, just as a Kull saber hissed past his face, and with the road swaying heavily beneath his feet he charged blindly beneath the halfman’s guard. He caught a momentary glimpse of the Kull’s three remaining comrades mounting their horses and escaping up the road, then he gripped the halfman’s throat in one fist, the wrist of his sword arm in the other. His ears filled with a strange metallic voice, speaking as if from a great distance, warning him to beware of the Kull’s free hand and the steel gripped within it.

  AnneRhianne screamed a warning; Morddon’s back lit up with fire, but the blade refused to stab deeply no matter how hard the Kull tried, though it cut into his back painfully. Morddon’s grip tightened about the halfman’s throat with a spasmodic jerk. The Kull’s neck snapped, and he slumped to the ground at Morddon’s feet.

  Morddon staggered, almost tripped over the dead Kull crumpled about his ankles, and turned back down the road thinking only of Mortiss. He found her laying quite still and peaceful in the middle of the road, her neck at an odd angle, her eyes glassed over in death.

  “Unbind me,” AnneRhianne called. “Unbind me now.”

  He turned about to face her. She was a grizzly sight tied to the underbelly of the coach with her two assailants pinned by arrows beside her, stripped to the waist and more, blood from the Kull’s ear covering the lower half of her face, still drizzling down the front of her throat and across her bare breasts.

  He swayed unsteadily, thought for a moment he saw concern in her eyes, then staggered toward her. Half way there he found his sword laying in the road, picked it up, picked up the knife the Kull had used. AnneRhianne shouted something at him, but his head swam and his ears were filled with a rushing sound. He cut the rope tying one of her hands and handed her the knife, then turned away from her to retrieve his bow and quiver and gather his arrows.

  Oddly enough, he found them all, even the shaft that had gone through the back of the Kull’s head and disappeared into the forest beyond. He had the strangest feeling he found it because the steel in the barbed war point called to him, but he scoffed at such a ridiculous notion.

  As he returned to the coach with his quiver full he hallucinated voices, all like that strange metallic voice he had heard when the Kull had tried to stab him, and he had a compulsion to take the sword from the dead Kull’s hand and hold it within his own.

  His legs buckled and he dropped to his knees beside the Kull. He pried open the halfman’s tightly gripped hand and removed the sword. The instant his fingers touched its steel the voices grew stronger, though there were so many of them speaking at once he could understand none of them clearly, only a name: SheelThane.

  “. . . Morddon . . . Morddon . . .”

  A hand shook him gently. He opened his eyes, was still kneeling beside the Kull, though the voices were gone and his head had cleared. AnneRhianne knelt in front of him, looking at him oddly. She had found a ragged wrap of some kind to cover her breasts, and this time he did see concern in her eyes, and too, a frown on her lips. “My nephew?” she asked. “Where is my nephew?”

  Morddon shook his head. “I didn’t know you had a nephew.”

  “But you’ve met him,” she growled at him angrily. “Back at Metadan’s camp, WindHollow.”

  “Ah!” Morddon said. “The boy.”

  “Yes,” she shouted at him. “The boy. Those monsters have carried him away and I’m going after them.”

  She started to rise. Morddon reached out and gripped her shoulder, forced her back to her knees in front of him. “You’re going back to Metadan; I’ll go after the boy.”

  “Then I’m going with you.”

  “No you’re not. You’ll only slow me.”

  “I can ride with the best, and I’m as good with a bow as any man.”

  Morddon shook his head. “You have no bow, no riding clothes, no equipment. And can you track those Kulls through the darkness of the night, then slip into their camp and slit their throats while they sleep?”

  She frowned, started to say something but he cut her off, “Who or what is SheelThane?”

  She hesitated, looked at him oddly and he regretted the question. She asked, “Are you a sorcerer?”

  He ignored her question, demanded, “Answer my question.”

  “A strange question,” she said.

  “Nevertheless, a question that deserves an answer.”

  She flinched at his tone, and he flinched inwardly for he hadn’t meant to speak so sharply. She asked, “And does your question deserve an answer more than mine?”

  If there had been any empathy between them, he had banished it with his bitterness. “Just answer my question, woman. I saved your life, you owe me that.”

  “Very well,” she said angrily. “SheelThane was the last Queen of the House of the Thane. The last griffin Queen. She was imprisoned by Beayaegoath twelve centuries ago, and to this day no one knows her fate, though all of griffindom mourns her. What does she have to do with all of this?”

  “I don’t know,” he snarled.

  She looked at one of the dead Kulls lying in the road. “What kind of demon is this that is a man, but not a man?”

  “You don’t know the truth of your own words,” he told her. “They are called halfmen, or Kulls.” With Morgin’s memories he described the magic that created a Kull from a demon and a man, and as he did so her mouth opened slowly in utter horror.

  “No man would willingly go to such a fate.”

  “For power,” he said, “men have been known to do many things.”

  “You’re speaking of sorcery again. Are you a sorcerer?”

  “I’m speaking of power,” he said as he pulled himself slowly to his feet, looked up the road and was pleased to see two of the riderless Kull horses still milling about. “I need a horse. Hope those Kull mounts are worth the meat they’re made of.”

  “Why not ride your own?”

  He looked at her angrily, was about to growl at her that Mortiss was dead, noticed her looking over his shoulder down the road, turned to look that way himself. In the middle of the road Mortiss, quite unharmed, walked toward them. When she reached them she snorted at Morddon, as if to remind him of what a fool he was. “A horse for you,” he lied. “We need a horse for you.”

  She turned away from him and walked toward the Kull horses, checked the two animals carefully, chose one and walked it back to the coach. She tethered it there, then took the Kull’s knife and split the skirt of her gown up to her waist. While she was at that he dug into his saddlebags and pulled out a leather pouch he kept full of healing unguents and herbs, quickly prepared a poultice and pressed it into his shoulder where the crossbow
bolt had nicked him. He put together another larger poultice and struggled unsuccessfully for some seconds to press it into the stab wounds in his back.

  “Here,” AnneRhianne growled. “Give me that.” She tore the poultice out of his hand, pushed him forward against Mortiss’ side, lifted the back of his tunic. “These are nasty. You’re lucky they aren’t deeper.”

  He closed his eyes as she pressed the poultice into each wound, gritted his teeth and refused to cry out. She tore strips of material from her gown and used it to secure the poultices on his shoulder and back. “You’d better have a healer look at those as soon as possible.”

  When she was done he unstrung his bow, returned it to the canvas case and tied it carefully to Mortiss’ saddle, then started giving AnneRhianne instructions on finding her way back to Metadan. She interrupted him. “I can find my own way, thank you.”

  “Good,” he said, turned abruptly and climbed up into Mortiss’ saddle.

  AnneRhianne took hold of Mortiss’ reins to keep her still, stroked the horse’s long black mane and looked up at Morddon not unkindly. She smiled at him. “A real mercenary would not have risked his life for me the way you did.” She looked so like Rhianne Morgin could not believe his eyes, and on impulse he cast a spell of shadow over her, one that would stay for many hours after they parted, though one she would not herself be aware of. “And a true mercenary would not so risk his life now.”

  Morddon frowned. “You’re talking like a foolish woman.”

  Her smile remained. “Well now, I am always a woman, but only sometimes a fool. Don’t you think we all have the right to be a fool upon occasion?”

  She stepped away from Mortiss. “Ride well, brother,” she said. “And safely.”

  “Watch out for more Kulls,” Morddon growled, then tugged on Mortiss’ reins and started up the road.