Wrath of Lions

by David Dalglish

  “Wait,” Laurel said. Mite and Giant squirmed uneasily beside her, as if their wrappings had suddenly tightened uncomfortably. Perhaps they’d heard the noise as well. “Where is Guster?” she asked. “Guster is supposed to be here.”

  “He’s inside, with the rest,” said Lenroy as he fiddled with his long white hair. “Waiting for us.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Well, yes,” insisted Marius.

  “Please, Laurel, don’t be difficult,” pleaded Walter. His jowls waggled when he spoke.

  “Yes,” added Zebediah. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

  “Wait…what’s going on here?” she asked. This time she did back away, only to be stopped by a monster of a Sister who made Giant look small by comparison. The enormous woman grabbed Laurel’s arms so tightly she thought her bones might snap. Walter pulled a dagger from beneath his shawl, handling it nervously. Laurel’s head spun as she frantically sought out her two protectors, but her girls had disappeared. Her heart thumped out of control.

  The Sister began to shove her toward the steps leading to the throne room. Fat Walter paced alongside, the dagger still in hand, though she could tell by the anxious look in his eye that he did not want to use it. Marius turned and faced the doors again, his palms pressed flat against the solid wood.

  “I have done nothing wrong!” Laurel screamed as she was forced up the steps. Her foot caught on the hem of her dress, tearing it down the side with an audible rip.

  “Unfortunately, that is not for us to judge, Laurel,” said Lenroy.

  “But I am the king’s trusted servant!”

  Marius shook his head.

  “The king is no more,” he said gravely. “This city serves new masters now.”

  With those words, Marius pulled hard on the doors. They swung outward, creaking, and the buzz Laurel had believed to exist only in her head exploded into a din so loud the air itself vibrated. She was pushed up the last two steps, then flung headlong into the throne room. She hit the ground hard, and the buzzing grew even louder in her ears. The doors slammed shut behind her.

  Laurel raised her head and almost instantly vomited. The buzzing came from the millions of flies that filled the chamber, forming living black clouds around the corpses that covered the floor. The bodies were naked yet sexless, ripped apart, parts of them black with rot, their spilled insides writhing with maggots. The stench was horrendous, all encompassing. Her head warbled, her vision wavered, and she vomited again. Suddenly, hands were lifting her up, smacking her awake. She stared into Marius’s eyes, which were filled with a haunting emptiness.

  “Keep yourself together,” he whispered. “Face the end with pride.”

  He released her, letting her fall into the puddle of her own vomit. Laurel froze in place, trying to be brave in the face of such atrocities. Marius’s heels clicked as he walked away from her. She took that opportunity to tear a strip from the top of her dress, pressing the cloth over her nose and mouth. That done, she looked around once more.

  The throne room did not remotely resemble the place of dignity she remembered. The banners had been ripped from the walls, and in their place human remains clung to the stone. Everything was dark, and even the flickering torches offered only sparse light. She glanced at the throne, which had been ripped asunder. The grayhorn tusks that had once rimmed it were strewn around the shadowy dais. That was where Marius stood, just to the side of the steps, his head bowed and hands clasped before him as if in reverence.

  A moan sounded to her left, and Laurel turned. A man was slouched on the ground only a few feet away from her, his back resting against the gore-splattered wall. He too was covered with blood, glistening in the torchlight, and when he coughed a red mist issued from his lips. She inched toward him, recognizing his slightly crooked nose, his wattled neck.

  “Guster?” she asked softly.

  The old man’s eyes cataract-filled eyes opened, seeming to brighten as they gazed on her. He reached out with his right hand. It looked as if he wanted to say something, but he coughed once more and grasped his chest.

  Laurel scurried toward him on all fours. At first she meant to throw her arms around him, but she recoiled in horror when she saw his injuries. Long slashes covered his chest, yawning wide whenever he breathed. His left arm was gone, in its place a stump that was blackened on the end as if it had been seared.

  “Oh…” Laurel said numbly. Her mind went blank.

  Guster feebly lifted his one remaining hand, beckoning her to come closer. Laurel could hear the rattle of his lungs through his chest whenever he took a rasping breath. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she shuffled closer to the mutilated, dying man. She tried to swat the flies away, but they were too many and too persistent.

  He grasped at the front of her dress, pulled her toward him. “They…learned,” he croaked. “They…know…”

  His mouth kept moving after each word he spoke, as if there were other things he was intent on saying but could not verbalize. Laurel’s tears fell all the harder. She was about to ask him who learned, who knew, but the answer was plainly obvious from the carnage that surrounded her.

  Guster’s eyes began to roll into the back of his head, and a long, phlegm-filled gargle bubbled in his throat. Laurel pulled him upright, her fingers slipping on the slick gore that coated his flesh. “Stay with me, please, stay with me,” she pleaded. “Guster, where is the king? Where is Eldrich?”

  On speaking the king’s name, Laurel saw a hint of a smile appear on Guster’s blood-streaked face. “The king…is safe,” he said. “The guards…they gathered him up…brought him away…when they first rose up…when they first spoke…”

  His voice trailed off, and another croaking moan left his lips. After that his hand loosened, falling limply to the floor. Laurel continued to shake him, repeating his name over and over. Guster’s head flopped forward and back.

  “He is gone, dear,” a voice said.

  Laurel released Guster’s body, letting him drop to the floor, and spun about on her knees. She watched as a man dressed in a flowing red robe emerged from the shadows behind the throne. His hands were held together, an entreaty to the gods, and his beady eyes peered out between wisps of his thinning gray hair. Marius bowed to him as he backed away from the throne, edging toward the doors.

  “He was judged a sinner,” the cleric Joben Tustlewhite said, “and he was punished as such.”

  He spoke more confidently than Laurel had ever known him to. Joben was the mumbling priest no longer, it seemed.

  “He was no sinner,” she said, her voice sounding small and feeble to her own ears.

  “The masters of Veldaren decided it was so,” the cleric replied. “They are the vessels of Karak’s law.”

  They are here, she thought, her body going numb. I will be shredded like the rest.

  The man stepped aside, and sure enough, in the darkness behind the throne two sets of sparkling yellow eyes stared out at her. The two lions emerged side by side from the shadows, skulking slowly toward her. They had appeared large from the top of the roof the night Quester, Mite, and Giant had saved her, but now she understood just how huge they really were. Even on all fours they were nearly as tall as Marius, who was slinking in the corner.

  The male lion opened his maw wide, running his tongue over his incisors, while the female simply lowered her head, considering Laurel with eyes that radiated intelligence. The two swung their heads toward each other, exchanged a glance, and then turned back to her ever so slowly. A deep rumble sounded in the male’s throat, growing louder as he took another step toward her, then another. The female swiped at the buzzing flies with her tail, matching her mate’s strides. They were testing her, she knew, mocking her with the certainty of what would happen next. Laurel drew her knees to her chest, closed her eyes, and prayed.

  She refused to open her eyes, even when she felt their hot, stinking breath moisten her flesh. A wet nose, easily the size of her fist, nudged her should
er, yet still she refused to look. She kept repeating her prayers over and over again, her voice growing louder in defiance.

  “Karak has not abandoned me, Karak has not abandoned me, he is the light in the darkness, the champion of order, I love you my Lord.”

  “Unsure.”

  The word was spoken clearly, though in a voice that was not human. The sound of it broke her from her prayers, and her eyes finally snapped open. The Judges were standing above her, so close that their whiskers tickled her flesh. Laurel didn’t dare move. She simply looked on as the female glanced at the male and opened her mouth.

  “Sinner?” Lilah asked.

  Kayne didn’t reply. Instead he gazed down at Laurel, and then his mouth opened wide, and he roared. Massive incisors the size of an infant’s arm dripped with pink saliva. Wind scented with rotting meat buffeted Laurel in the face, and she finally screamed, planting her fists onto the bloody floor and scooting backward, only stopping when she collided with Guster’s slippery corpse.

  “Sinner,” the male lion said. It sounded like he was laughing.

  Both lions lowered onto their haunches, looking like they were preparing to leap at her, but they straightened suddenly, their giant heads turning toward the throne room doors, their ears twitching. Laurel followed their gaze, trying to listen through her fear, but she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of buzzing flies and the thrumming of her heart. Then the doors flew open and Lenroy Mott stumbled in, accompanied by three Sisters. Walter waddled in right behind them. The lions stayed frozen in place, staring at the newcomers with their mouths agape, saliva clinging to their jowls

  “Masters, they are here!” Lenroy exclaimed. “The Watch have stormed the front gate!”

  At once, both lions leapt into action, bolting across the gore-splattered floor and out the door. A moment later, Laurel could hear the clang of metal and men screaming. Her jaw trembled. She wanted to get up, to sneak into the chamber behind the throne and scurry up to King Eldrich’s private quarters, but she was frozen in place.

  Marius, who had been cowering in the corner throughout Laurel’s ordeal, stepped out into the open. He was shaking, though he tried to hide it. When he went to exit, Joben stepped in front of him.

  “You, take care of her,” the former mumbling priest said as he shoved Marius back into the room. “Bring her to the dungeons, and then take out that useless sword of yours and join the fight.”

  “Do you think that wise? Should we not be hiding? I feel the Sisters—”

  Joben lifted the front of his cloak, revealing flesh scarred in an interlacing pattern by the lions’ claws.

  “You will not question my words, Councilman. I have been marked by the Judges. I serve them, and by serving them, I serve Karak. You…are nothing. My acolytes are mere boys, and they are better than you. Should you find fault in my commands, you can face judgment as well.”

  Marius closed his mouth and vehemently shook his head.

  “Good. Now go.”

  Joben left the throne room, and moments later Marius marched across the floor, grabbing Laurel by the arm. Her mind was reeling. None of what was happening made any sense in the slightest.

  Her fellow Council member yanked her out of the horrific throne room and into the hallway beyond. Instead of heading toward the front entrance, where a battle raged, he hauled her down a side passage. Laurel had never been in this part of the tower before, and when Marius threw a door open, she understood why. A set of stairs led into total darkness. Her captor hauled her down them, into a torch-lit burrow whose ceiling was so low they had to squat, and then up an opposite stairwell. At the top was another door, and when Marius shoved it open, a double row of iron-barred gray cells was revealed.

  The gates to the cages were open, and Marius threw her into one of them. She landed hard on the hay-covered ground, cracking her chin and biting her tongue in the process. Blood pooled in her mouth. She rolled over, saw that there was a corpse in there with her, and hastily crawled away from it. She kicked over the piss pot in her desperation, which spilled its contents, making the stink of the place all the more unbearable. As the gate to her cell swung shut, she drew her knees to her chin and rocked in place, her mind a whirl of terror and disbelief.

  Marius lingered at the bars for a moment, staring at her, his plain features turned malevolent in the torchlight.

  “I do pray the end for you is quick, Laurel,” he said softly. “But perhaps I will ask Joben if I can spend some time with you first. You have always been nice to look at.” Yet there was no power behind his words. When he left, he snuffed out the only torch brightening that level of the dungeon, leaving Laurel in complete blackness, and when her mind broke and she began to scream, she was very much conscious of how strange it was that such a primal sound could come from her little mouth.

  CHAPTER

  32

  Rain fell in sheets, creating streams that flowed through gaps in the rocks where the group of humans and Wardens were hiding. Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the camp in front of them in a brief moment of clarity. Hundreds of tents were perched on the harsh, dead earth. There were horses too, more than one could count, along with carelessly built wagons and one durable wooden structure. Soaked banners bearing the mark of Karak hung limp from their poles. It was a huge settlement, and those gathered were arguing quietly among themselves as to how many might be sleeping in the tents below. Ephraim Wendover suggested five hundred. Judah countered with ten thousand.

  “Enough. They will hear us if you keep arguing.”

  Ahaesarus sighed and looked at the camp through the curtain of his sodden hair. He didn’t care how many men were gathered in the valley. All that mattered was that they had found it, and quickly.

  There were eight of them in the group: Ahaesarus led the Wardens Judah, Grendel, and Ludwig, while Ephraim had been placed in charge of three young men, Craxton, Enoch, and Uulon, Turock and Abigail’s son-in-law. Each carried a sword that had been recently hammered out at Turock’s secret new smithy. They had departed via raft from Blood Tower just as sunset stretched its crimson fingers across the sky, and after making landfall on the other side of the raging Gihon, they had proceeded to follow their enemies’ embedded footprints deep into the lifeless hills and valleys of the Tinderlands.

  The cold rains had started to fall after only an hour, the downpour washing away many of the tracks. When the footing turned treacherous, Ahaesarus started to think they should turn back. But luck seemed to be with them, for only a few moments later they stumbled on an overturned carriage whose wheel had become stuck in one of the many gaping cracks in the earth, snapping its axel. From there they climbed the uneven rise where they now stood, and found the sleeping encampment spread out beneath them.

  Ephraim turned to him, squeezed water from his thick beard, and scrambled to get a better position on the perch. “I assume we’re done here?” he whispered. “Turock wished to know what we were facing, and now we do.”

  “No,” Ahaesarus said, shaking his head. “We already knew Karak’s men were here. What we need to know is their true numbers and whether this is their only camp. The attacks have been spread out for miles. It’s possible this is but a portion of their total force.”

  Enoch crept closer. Water dripped from the tip of the young man’s large nose, drawing attention to the way one side of his mouth was twisted higher than the other in a frustrated grimace.

  “We’re only eight; what else could we possibly do?”

  Ahaesarus closed his eyes, listening to the camp through the constant patter of the rain.

  “They are overconfident,” he said, a plan forming in his mind. Opening his eyes, he scurried along the edge of the gradient, trying to find a better vantage point.

  “So?” asked Craxton. “How does that matter?”

  “It means there are no guards,” Judah replied, and Ahaesarus silently thanked him. The Warden’s hair, black as night, appeared almost blue in the rain. Judah had been by his side
when Ashhur and Celestia arrived in Algrahar. If any knew what he was thinking, it was he.

  “Which tells us much about their camp and their defenses,” he said. “They don’t view this as a true war. It has never crossed their minds that the people of Drake might attack them or deploy scouts.” He pointed toward the camp, and seven sets of eyes followed his finger. “There should be soldiers marching the perimeter, keeping an eye on the surrounding hills. Yet I hear nothing but snores and the occasional whimper of one who fell too far into his cups and regrets it.”

  “All I hear is rain,” said Enoch.

  “A Warden’s ears are better,” Ahaesarus said, though not unkindly.

  Ephraim shrugged. “That is all well and good, Warden, but again, what are we to do?”

  “We will take from them the information we seek,” Ahaesarus said, as if it were obvious.

  “How?”

  He grabbed Ephraim by the front of his drenched leather surcoat and pulled him toward the edge of the gradient. “Do you see that tent down there?” he asked.

  “Which one? Point all you want; there’s dozens of tents down there.”

  “The largest, standing twice as high as the rest. The one with a banner on each corner post.”

  Ephraim squinted. “Yeah, I see it. What of it?”

  “Whoever leads this army will have the most luxurious accommodations, a way of reaffirming his position and power to the others. Their leader sleeps in that tent…a tent guarded by nothing but sleeping men.”

  “You’re insane,” Ephraim said. “But by Ashhur, I think I like the craziness you’re suggesting. Let’s go grab the information we need!”

  Not five minutes later, seven furtive intruders scampered down the other side of the rocky hill. Craxton stayed behind so he could flee back to Drake should they be captured. The pounding rain helped erase any noise they made, which was not inconsiderable. The hill was covered with water, and there were a slew of loose stones underfoot. Many members of the party bounced down the hill with each blind step, but no one in the sleeping camp was the wiser.