by D. P. Prior
Paxy started to throb and purr, drawing strength from his bloodlust. Together, they fought in sublime ecstasy, a purple patch of killing that he’d not felt since Arx Gravis. Only, this one was cleaner. This one he had no doubts about.
He gored another through the shoulder, back-fisted a snarling maw, cleft a skull with a perfectly timed one-handed strike and… stood dumbfounded. They were dead. Feeders were heaped up all around him like a gory knoll.
“Shog,” Nameless muttered to himself. “Don’t know my own strength.”
But then he saw Jaym standing over a pile of the fallen, broadsword dripping with black blood. Kal was clutching his arm, hand a bloody mess. Old Moary was relatively unscathed, but his hatchet was as black as the false Pax Nanorum. The councilor’s face, though, was ashen, and his breaths came in ragged gasps.
“Duck?” Nameless said.
“Made it back to the tunnel with kids in tow,” Kal said. “Now we need to go.”
“Grok?” Nameless said, looking toward the barricade.
The crossbowmen fired one more volley then jumped down from the carts and sprinted for the tunnel the rest of the dwarves had fled down.
The feeders were upon the carts in a flash, tearing through the tarps and ripping into anything vaguely edible, be it salted meats, herbs, sacks of grain, even kegs of mead.
That shogged Nameless right off. He growled and prepared to charge.
“No,” Jaym said. “Not here. We are still needed.”
The baresark was right. There were just too many of them, and hundreds more continued to pour into the cavern. It was incredible the defenders had held for so long.
Already, the feeders were tiring of the carts and turning their questing mouths toward the Seven, or rather the four standing together.
“Oh my shog,” Nameless said. “Where’s Targ?”
“Trying to get that shogger Cairn to leave,” Kal said. “Grok’s got his back, which is a miracle by itself.”
“We’re not leaving them,” Nameless said, starting toward the carts.
Grok burst out of a canopy and leapt at the nearest feeder, stabbing with the same tireless fury he’d displayed earlier. Targ was out next, clambering down from the cart and running toward the group with a clutch of feeders in tow.
“Run!” Old Moary cried, his voice hoarse and sounding impossibly weary.
“Come on!” Kal yelled.
Grok hamstringed one of the feeders. The other turned on him, but he punched his buckler repeatedly into its head until it dropped to the ground, quivering and twitching.
More of the creatures leapt onto the carts, forming up into a howling, screeching mass with an endless tide behind them. Others ripped into the goats and tore them apart.
“Run!” Targ yelled. “He’s gonna blow it. Shog, he’s gonna blow—”
Time slowed to a crawl. Targ’s words sounded like they came from underwater. The feeders pawed the air, as though it were treacle, their ululating cries eerily distant.
A blinding flash burst from one of the carts, and an ear-splitting boom shook the volcano right down to its roots. Stalactites fell like stony spears, crashing to the ground in showers of dust.
Everyone was running for the tunnel, even as the roof collapsed and the feeders were buried beneath a mountain of rubble.
“Nameless!” someone screamed from back amid the chaos.
Nameless turned as he reached the tunnel entrance. There was dust and smoke everywhere, and the air was thick with sulfurous fumes. The ceiling over one half of the cavern had totally caved in, and the section nearest the tunnel looked set to go any second. A spider web of cracks split the stone like a jigsaw.
“Nameless!” the voice came again.
“Nils? Nils, is that you?”
He caught a glimpse of the boy surrounded by a glimmering silver sphere. The Lich Lord floated down beside him on a disk of pure darkness, and clouted him on the head with the Ebon Staff.
Nameless roared and started to run to his friend’s aid, but Paxy suddenly felt like an anchor, dragging him to the ground. He tried to lift her, but she wouldn’t budge. She was shuddering violently and rattling her way back toward the tunnel.
Blightey began to approach on his shadowy disk. His eyes burned like pools of lava, and he held the staff aloft, wisps of black smoke rolling from its tip, questing, reaching for Paxy.
“Nils!” Nameless cried again, but he was answered by a groaning rumble, a series of cracks and splits, and then the rest of the ceiling came down in an avalanche of rock.
Strong hands grabbed his shoulders and tugged him into the tunnel. Paxy gave no protest, and he dragged her with him, light as a feather.
“I saw Nils,” Nameless told Targ as they leaned against the tunnel wall, panting. “I saw him.”
Shog only knew if the lad could have survived the collapse of the roof. It seemed too much to hope for.
Blightey, however, was bound to emerge unscathed. The skull, at the very least, was as impervious as scarolite. Nameless knew that much from Verusia.
“Yeah,” Targ said, “the lad Cairn found in them woods by the lake. That’s just great. Cairn, on the other hand, is shogged to shite.”
“Poor old Cairn,” Nameless said.
The scout might have hated his guts, but when all was said and done, he’d given his life to save the rest of them.
“Poor Cairn, my buttocks!” Targ grumbled. “Shogger used up the last of our black powder.”
ILESA
Ilesa’s arse was on fire, and not in the sense that shogging dwarf would have meant. The more she walked along the main tunnel into the volcano, the more the skin pulled and split. She knew it was blistered like overcooked bacon. Warm fluid oozed down the back of her legs beneath her frazzled pants.
Another second, and she’d have been toast. Mind you, a second the other way, and she might still be able to sit down. Change! she’d screamed at herself. Shogging change! And she had, right at the moment the heat hit her from behind. The dragon’s maw had all but engulfed her when she zipped between its teeth in the form of a gnat.
She had no idea what made her think of it—perhaps it was all that worrying about Nils, because he was small and irritating—but the choice had been inspired. The dragon’s jaws had crashed together with so much force, she’d spun in a terrifying swirl of released breath. She’d glimpsed the look of bewilderment on the great beast’s face and laughed with elation as its eyes flicked about erratically, trying to locate its prey. But that elation had turned to agony the instant she reached the volcano and changed back. The seat of her pants had been smoldering, one buttock completely exposed and sizzling audibly.
It looked like the tunnel had been bored out with a giant corkscrew. Dark veins, flecked with green, gleamed eerily along the walls.
The way ahead was mostly blocked by a rock fall, but the narrowest of openings had been cleared, a precarious arch that looked set to collapse at the slightest touch.
The ground was stained with black ichor, and here and there were fragments of bone, stripped bare. She was about to step on a rock, when she saw a gaping mouth rimmed with needle-point teeth. She withdrew her foot with a start and almost lost her balance.
It was a head. The severed head of a feeder.
She peered closer and saw that it hadn’t been a clean cut, either. Looked to her like the head had been bitten off, no doubt by the creature’s frenzied companions. Only question was, why hadn’t they consumed it, like they had everything else? Urgent orders? Or perhaps it had just been hidden among the debris.
Her guts seethed like they held a nest of vipers. What was she doing following these things? Even if she caught up with Nils and Blightey, what could she do? She idly fingered the scarolite pen in her pocket as she inched her way toward the opening.
On closer inspection, it looked sturdier than she’d first thought, although she didn’t relish putting it to the test. She strafed between the two sides, careful not to make any contact. The r
ocks were stacked like a poorly constructed drystone wall, and the ceiling of the rough arch was a crushing death just waiting to happen.
The frayed leather of her pants snagged on something, and she had to reach behind to rip it free. She held her breath for a moment, and only released it when the arch didn’t collapse.
Her backside felt ready to burst with hot, bloody pus, it throbbed so much from the effort of moving. Squeezing through the remainder of the gap into the tunnel beyond, she found a low ledge she could sit on and sighed as she took the weight off her feet.
“Shog!” she screamed. “Aaaaarrrrgh! Shog, shog, shogging shit and shog!” The pain was excruciating—a lightning strike through every nerve in her body. Her cries echoed back at her, bouncing around the knobbed and pitted walls and flinging themselves out into the receding daylight.
The only thing for it was to grit her teeth and press on.
Modifying her gait to a foot-scraping limp eased the tension on her glutes but hardly filled her with confidence. She was used to silent movement, keeping to the shadows, sneaking up on her victims with all the advantages that offered. That was ninety-percent of her skill right there, the secret of her success. That, and her ruthlessness when it came to getting the job done. It was a joke, her, Ilesa the pitiless, Ilesa the self-serving coward, lurching through a lava vent to rescue an idiot she could stand about as much as that stunted bastard of a dwarf and his whore. What the shog? Why was she even here? If she’d listened to her gut from the first, she could have been relaxing in a hot bath back in Malfen by now. Except the water would be lukewarm and brackish, and she’d probably have to share the tub with a legion of rats.
Each time she’d tried to leave, she couldn’t quite do it. Oh, she’d got lost, confused by the shifting landscape, but there was more to it than that. Much as it pained her to admit it, she felt empty whenever she set off alone. It was as if Nameless and Nils were abandoning her, rather than the other way round. It didn’t matter how much she told herself she hated the dwarf, that she couldn’t care less if he’d found himself some bearded trollop, she knew she was only kidding herself. She missed his easygoing company. She missed his unconditional acceptance, even when she screwed up. Shog, she even missed the fact that he found her attractive, despite her having to make some distasteful cosmetic alterations to suit his tastes.
And Nils: sulky, whiny, annoying, pillock-faced Nils. It didn’t take a genius to work out why she couldn’t leave him to his fate. Ilesa might have been blessed with many gifts, not least of which was her ability to shape-shift, but she’d also received a geas as good as a death warrant: a conscience that still wouldn’t let her rest for failing her brother.
The corridor widened into a vast cavern, and she was confronted with yet another rock fall. This one was far worse than the first. Whole stalactites had dropped from the ceiling to shatter across the ground. Chunks of rock big enough to crush a house were stacked in mountainous piles, and jutting out from under them were arms and legs, torsos and heads.
And they weren’t all feeders, either. Some of them were dwarves, blood-splattered and squashed flat.
Ilesa stiffened at the sight of a bashed and broken baby, its limbs all askance, and dotted among the debris, the shattered bodies of children intermingled with the gray corpses of feeders.
She surveyed the wreckage with a heavy heart, stifling the tears that were building pressure behind her eyes. She couldn’t give sway to her emotions. Not now, not when things were so desperate. One tear, and a torrent would follow, and then she’d be no good to anyone. She was an assassin. She was strong. No, a much better response than tears was anger. Someone was going to pay for this, and that someone was a creepy bastard with a face like a three-day-old cadaver’s and a twisted black staff. He was the one controlling the feeders, and he was the one who had Nils.
There was no way she was going to be able to climb over so much rubble. Across the center of the cavern, it was piled all the way to the ceiling. Perhaps if she backtracked down the tunnel, she could explore the smaller vents higher up the volcano.
She cast a look over the devastation and caught sight of an iron ladder sticking out above the rocks. It was set into the wall and led all the way up to the ceiling and beyond. Perhaps there was a cave above, a tunnel, even. If she could get up there, maybe she could find another way down, beyond the wreckage, and pick up the trail again. Only trouble was, half the rungs were broken.
Steeling herself with anger, Ilesa clambered over the rubble until she reached the ladder and took hold of both sides. Assuming her upper body strength held out, she’d be able to find footholds on the rough rock wall wherever the rungs were too damaged to be of any use.
Hand over hand she went, wincing at the pain now radiating down her hip. She told herself it would make her stronger, and soon enough she was scaling the ladder with determined fury. Much of it was slick with black blood, which made her grip slip once or twice. She rubbed it off against her bodice and struggled on upward.
The crash of rocks drew her eyes to the far side of the cavern. Debris fell away from a silver sphere of light, and within it she could see Nils, checking himself over for injuries.
Then the Lich Lord reared up beside him, Silas’s long coat smothered with rock dust. One of his legs was bent backward at an impossible angle, and his left shoulder appeared dislocated. He still held the black staff, and directed its tip to his broken leg, which immediately started to straighten. As he touched the staff to his shoulder, Blightey looked in Ilesa’s direction, eyes flaring crimson. He aimed the staff at her, and a bolt of blackness shot forth.
Ilesa twisted aside, and rocks exploded from the wall. She resumed her climb, redoubling her efforts and ignoring the pain. She flicked a look back at Blightey.
This time, he was weaving his hand through the air, and sickly green tendrils fanned out from his fingertips. As he drew back his arm, Ilesa reached the opening in the ceiling and launched herself through it, tumbling onto a rocky floor.
She found herself in a rough oval chamber formed from the same pitted rock as the one below. Twisting tunnels wound away at intervals. The ceiling was so low that she had to stoop, and that did nothing to ease her pain. She made her way into the tunnel that seemed to run above the cavern she’d climbed up from.
She’d gone no further than the first bend, when she pulled up sharp. Up ahead, no more than a dozen yards, she was confronted with the backs of feeders jammed tightly in the passageway. They appeared to be making hard work of it, as none of them would give ground. It seemed they all wanted to be first to the feast.
Now what? she wondered, pressing herself flat against the wall. She could hardly take them all on, even from behind and with the element of surprise. Not that she’d have much of that once she started limping toward them, scraping the ground as she went.
One of the feeders at the rear craned its neck in her direction, its gaping mouth twitching, almost as if it were filtering the air. It gurgled something, and the others began to turn.
“Crap,” Ilesa whispered, looking over her shoulder and estimating her chances if she ran for it. Zero to none, she reckoned, what with the low ceiling forcing her to bend almost double, and the crippling pain in her arse and hip.
Even if she could run, where would she go? She’d seen the feeders in action, knew how quick they were, and how relentless.
She had to find the strength to change again. It was her only hope.
One of the feeders broke away from the pack and loped toward her. Two more followed, and then the tide turned, and those pressed into the tunnel started forcing their way in her direction.
The lead feeder tried to run, claws outstretched, maw gaping, but the ones behind slammed into it in a hurry to reach Ilesa first. They came on more slowly after that, howling their desperate hunger.
As they drew closer, Ilesa racked her brains for the best thing to turn into. Her guts lurched with the effort. The well was dry, so very dry, and yet she had to trans
form, for everyone’s sake, or, failing that, at least her own.
She started into the gnat again—after all, it had saved her from the dragons.
But then she had a better idea.
At least she hoped it was.
The front two feeders lunged for her, screaming their hunger, and Ilesa threw up her arms to protect her face, even as she started to change.
NAMELESS
Just south of the forge, broad steps had been cut into the tunnel floor. On one side, they fell away into a vast abyss, where hundreds of feet below a torpidly flowing lake of lava bubbled and hissed. Scouts reported back that the steps continued deeper into the roots of the volcano for at least half a mile. The gradient was steady, and the steps deep enough for families to set up camps on them.
The survivors of Arx Gravis made for a sorry sight, huddled in tiers down the passage, coughing, weeping, groaning, and complaining. The councilors milled among them offering platitudes, and Old Moary had set up a triage for the injured. Mostly it was the crossbowmen, who’d suffered bites and scratches, but others had picked up minor cuts and bruises along the way. A few of the older dwarves had different problems—swollen joints, shortness of breath, ulcerous wounds. Some were clearly in need of palliative care.
Nameless sat gloomily at the top of the steps, the clamor of the forge ringing in his ears. Further up the tunnel, Jaym and the baresarks maintained a rearguard, in case the feeders broke through. Each time Nameless looked beyond them, back toward the collapsed cavern, he felt a chill invade his bones.
The mere thought of the Lich Lord did that to him, and it didn’t help knowing he had Nils in his clutches. The things Blightey had done in Verusia were too vile to dwell upon. Nameless only hoped the thrill of the chase was keeping him from doing them to Nils. Assuming the cave-in hadn’t killed him, of course. But that was just wishful thinking.