He used his sword to finish the job, then had to scramble for his life as the Daikini’s mare reared so high over the brambles she had been tethered to that she lost her balance and crashed full-length onto her side. It was as though a mad painter had gone to work on her coat, she was splashed all over with blood, no color to the image, none to the entire scene, only blotches and smears of glistening indigo under the moon’s unblinking glow. There were two Death Dogs on her, one at the neck, the other scrambling for her belly to disembowel her. She’d made a magnificent effort for her life and it would count for nothing.
Thorn spun himself full circle to build up speed and let fly with his sword. He would have preferred another revolution or two for better effect, but the mare didn’t have the time. The gleaming blade appeared to leave a trail through the air, a silver streak to match the light falling from above, the throw as straight and true as any javelin.
It missed. The Death Dog saw it coming and got out of the way. Then it had to scramble as the mare lashed out with every leg, snap-arching her back like an acrobat to regain her feet. The dog trying for her throat was taken by surprise—like Thorn, it hadn’t thought the mare had such resistance left in her—and found itself pitched into the air.
This time the eagles didn’t pull away from their attack. Bastian struck with the force of a battering ram, full to its spine, raking the Death Dog open to the bone. The creature let loose a horrible shriek as it found itself caught in midair and tossed even higher, spinning a lazy little circle to expose its belly. It knew what was coming, but there was nothing it could do. Nothing below its shoulders worked anymore. Thorn knew from a glance that it was dying; the fiery structures of its life force had been savaged as cruelly as its flesh. The eagles took no chances. The Nelwyn had his perceptions of death, they had theirs, they knew which to trust best. Anele stooped as quickly, as powerfully, as her mate, her own claws savaging the Death Dog from breast to hip, doing to it what had been intended for the mare. She ripped out its heart and cast it on the fire.
It was a magnificent sight; Thorn couldn’t help watching. An almost fatal mistake. The hounds he’d missed came looking for retribution. The Daikini had problems of his own, he’d lost bow and sword and spears, he was fending off a pair of attackers with a battle-ax whose haft had broken. There was no sign of the brownies, but that came as no surprise. With all the bodies charging hither and yon, they’d go to ground until it was safe; the peril of being too small. The eagles weren’t in view, either, probably climbing back to altitude. Which left him alone.
He was close by the fire. He scooped up a brand, using a scrap of concentration to shunt the flames to the end of the wood and fan them to peak intensity. The Death Dog didn’t mind, it actually seemed to appreciate the challenge. He wove the torch back and forth to keep the beast at a distance. It dodged the flames easily, once or twice offering a perfunctory snap of the teeth, but it wasn’t trying to get him. Merely hold his interest.
It was as though Thorn’s realization was a cue. The dogs facing the Daikini made swift, twisting, diving moves, using all their fabled quickness and guile; one went for his throat, the other began racing full tilt for Thorn. The Daikini reacted with equally impressive speed. His foot booted the one trying for him, and with that same movement he threw himself after the other, extending his lanky form full-length, casting the ax in a long, overhand sweep that buried its head deep in the loamy soil. All he’d managed for his effort was to crop the tip of the hound’s tail. By so doing, he’d left himself wholly open to an attack.
Thorn couldn’t worry about that, he had problems enough. He charged a breath with a streamer of Power, huffed it down the length of his torch, and flames exploded outward from the burning tip. This, his Death Dogs hadn’t expected. One of them backpedaled furiously, right into its charging fellow, the collision sending the pair of them into a tumble of legs and fangs. They recovered almost instantly and immediately took up the chase, for Thorn was on the run, as fast as he could manage. Out of the campsite and across the boulder-strewn field. The ground sloped slightly upward and was furrowed in a random, messy pattern. A Daikini—or the Death Dogs—could streak right over the uneven terrain and hardly be slowed; not so, the Nelwyn. His slim lead vanished with every step.
His advantage was that he hadn’t far to go.
At that, it was a near thing.
The mountains sensed his approach. They wanted him still, more than ever. He was counting on that.
He fed more Power to the fire, until his torch blazed so brightly in his grasp he had to narrow his eyes to slits to avoid being blinded. Another portion of Power he used to mask this from the Death Dogs. Only a half-dozen steps to the edge of the crater. He imagined he could feel their breath on his neck and then it wasn’t imagination any longer; they were on him.
He spun in his tracks and pulled the “hood” that hid his torchlight, flashing the solar radiance full in the Death Dogs’ slavering faces. At the same time his next step hit empty air; he’d reached the Scar.
He let himself go and the torch as well, thrusting out his hands to grab for purchase as he crashed down against the crater wall. The Death Dogs couldn’t see and were following so close behind, they were so bound up in the chase, there was no chance to notice how he’d deceived them. Even if they had, there was nothing to be done about it.
They’d been pushing themselves to the limit; their leap took them a fair ways beyond him, which in turn meant a fair fall to the steep slope of the crater. They landed well, and he knew they’d be after him again the moment their feet touched the ground. His hope was that they’d have a hard time finding any sort of purchase on the wall.
He needn’t have worried.
He hadn’t forgotten the other forces at play here; he simply hadn’t been sure they’d take an interest. But witch-lights began flickering beneath the glassy surface even before the Death Dogs landed, different hues, darker textures than the ones he remembered going after him. Those had been desire, these were hate. The mountains recognized a resonance of the Power that had maimed them years before and took the opportunity to strike back with all their might.
The hounds wailed their distress, sensing what approached, and they tried to flee. Their desperate calls sounded like off-key horns; they made Thorn’s nerves jangle, his heart lose rhythm within his chest—pounding too hard one set, not at all the next—and he quickly threw a calming pass over himself for protection. The smartest move would be to turn away, but he had to watch. Partly in fascination, this infuriating, insatiable curiosity that he knew would probably be the death of him; partly to bear witness.
The end was blindingly quick yet every stage found itself printed indelibly on his memory. Between one step and the next the Death Dogs turned from flesh to molten fire, retaining form and animation for a step farther until they cooled and he beheld a pair of monstrously ugly statues. In that same heartbeat their momentum caught up with them, all the impetus of their headlong flight shattering them to bits, as though they’d been struck by a hammer. Not a decent-sized pebble remained; they were reduced instantly to dust, which in turn was swept up and away by the same swirling winds and energies that had earlier entrapped Thorn.
He felt breeze touch his bare face, then the nape of his neck as he deliberately looked away, saw sparkles all across his field of vision as the mountains turned from what they’d destroyed to what they desired. He didn’t have strength to fight them, and knew there’d be no help from the Daikini. Assuming the man was still alive.
He heard a Call and set his face as he breathed a reply.
“I can’t,” he said, though he wanted to. So easy, so tempting, to take himself out of the game, to once more have focus and home, to spend his days at a simple, straightforward task and never a need to worry about the consequences. A life with limits.
“I won’t.” There was real sorrow in his voice, for himself as much as the mountains.
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�I’m pledged already,” he went on. “You’re not alone in this; others have suffered as well, in equal measure.” And all, he thought, cry out with equal force for vengeance. “I offer you what’s rightfully due them, a chance for justice.”
He felt a tingle beneath his toes and a flush of true fear that they weren’t going to take no for their answer. But the pressure of his weight slackened on his fingers as he found himself with a ledge to stand on, and another just above it, making an easy climb up his body length and over the edge of the Scar.
He rolled to his seat, and from there stood wearily erect. Then he took a breath to gather himself and make a proper, formal obeisance. He had been treated at the last with kindness and respect, he would do no less in return.
That gesture just about finished him. He’d heard the stealthy pad of feet approaching from behind but was so exhausted his brain hadn’t processed the information; the sounds had no meaning, until it was nearly too late. He didn’t try anything fancy in response, he simply dropped and rolled, hoping to upend whoever was after him. This attacker walked on two legs, and wasn’t that much bigger than Thorn himself, impressions noted in passing as Thorn thrust out a leg to act as pivot and brace and recovered his feet. He hadn’t emerged unscathed, the other had taken a slash at him as he leaped over Thorn’s tumbling body, leaving a burning trickle of dampness along the length of the Nelwyn’s back where the tip of the blade had cut him.
It was a face Thorn knew, and the recognition of it almost got him killed a second time.
“Faron,” he called, more question than acknowledgment, because he truly didn’t believe his eyes, though InSight as well as Out told him it was so.
Then the knife flashed again, for his heart this time, and there was no more opportunity for conscious thought. His body reacted as it had been trained to. One hand to block the thrusting blade, another to clutch the boy’s tunic, Thorn’s body giving way under the onslaught, feet presenting themselves to Faron’s solar plexus as Thorn’s backside touched the ground. The Nelwyn rolled onto his back, building speed as he went, pulling with his hand, pushing along the whole length of his legs, sending the boy into a flying somersault. Faron tried to land like a Death Dog, on his feet and facing his foe, twisting himself in the air so wildly Thorn was sure he’d break his back, but he didn’t have height or agility enough to succeed. His body hadn’t yet grown sufficiently to fulfill those demands.
Faron struck hard, shoulder first—that impact costing him his hold on the knife, which Thorn immediately kicked over the edge of the Scar—but came up quickly nonetheless, favoring his sore side but determined to continue the fight.
He bared his teeth and it was as though Thorn had been shot through the breast. The boy had long fangs, creating the impression that a Death Dog’s teeth had replaced his own. When Faron flexed his fingers, OutSight caught the gleam of claws where human nails once had been. What had been illusion with Thorn when he took on the aspect of a Death Dog, was reality for the boy.
“Faron,” Thorn pleaded, “no!”
A waste of breath; he knew that when he spoke. The boy sprang, expecting Thorn to try to duck away somehow. Instead, the Nelwyn stood his ground, and caught Faron’s hands in his own. The boy snapped his teeth, trying for Thorn’s throat, but Thorn had a slight advantage in arm length and put it to good use, pushing up and away, stretching Faron’s arms to full extension.
There was blood on the boy’s breath, the stale smell of lives gleefully taken; he was screaming as well, might have been words, or more likely his equivalent of the gabbling noises his hounds made; Thorn was beyond listening.
He knew there was no hope, a foregone conclusion the moment Faron had tasted blood, tasted death, but he turned the full force of his InSight on the boy regardless, praying to find some small remnant of the lad he’d brought into the world a decade ago.
As he did so, his fingers tightened their grip, his hands began to twist, forcing the boy down to his knees where he couldn’t bring his legs around to strike out with them. The boy’s struggles became more frantic as he finally realized his plight, but he’d have better luck trying to break a set of iron manacles than the Nelwyn’s hold. It was a common misconception. To most, especially among the Daikinis, size and strength went together; lack one, you had to lack the other, especially when the odd proportions of Nelwyns were thrown into the mix. In Thorn’s case, folk saw a figure that barely reached a grown man’s hips and accorded a child’s ability to go with its stature. Little notice was taken of the breadth of his chest, and the power of his arms and shoulders was generally mistaken for the bulk of his clothes. In the right circumstances, he was a match and more for those three times his size.
Thorn bent the boy more and more until, at last and with an awful crack, Faron’s back broke.
It was like slicing the strings on a puppet; all the tension fled from the boy’s body and he collapsed to the ground, little more than a collection of sticks. He wasn’t yet dead, his eyes moved, his mouth still worked; he made no sound, though, for his lungs had lost the capacity to draw in air, as had his heart the ability to beat. Thorn dropped beside him, gathering the boy gently into his lap, as though he were handling a piece of the finest porcelain. There was only blind hatred in Faron’s eyes, the lust of a Death Dog eager for its kill, and his teeth made a feeble klak sound as he brought them together as hard as he was able in a vain attempt to draw more of Thorn’s blood. Dying as he was, the boy remained true to the nature that had been grafted onto his soul.
It was more than Thorn could bear, far more than the boy should have to, and so he swept InSight about the pair of them and cast his spirit face-to-face with Faron’s. The boy was broken in his soul as well, a mirror to his corporeal state, the radiance that was his life dimming with every passing moment. Thorn had thought that here, at least, he’d find a last vestige of Faron’s essence, but all that lay before him was the shape of a Death Dog amidst the shattered remnants of its feast. The boy’s human soul, every part of him that was decent, had been utterly consumed.
Such was the way of things with Death Dogs. Stories abounded as to how they were creations of the foulest sorcery. Like all such tales, this one had some truth to it. The hounds themselves were animal, creatures of flesh and blood and bone and sinew, just like those they hunted. The leader of a hunting pack, however, had to be human, and embrace this abominable path as an active choice. Someone willing to cast off all that separated two legs from four, most especially humanity, in return for the power and passion that went with running with the Death Dogs. It wasn’t true shape-shifting—the few Shapers Thorn had met were by and large honorable folk—but a deliberate and malefic twisting of something decent. A corruption of the flesh to complement that of the spirit.
Thorn took the phantom beast by its throat and peeled away the layers of its memory to determine who had brought it into being and to this place. The images came easily, a pathway he was meant to follow, leading to a mazelike catacomb of the soul that was enshrouded by a darkness the like of which he’d never known. There was no true light here; Thorn found his perceptions defined by degrees of Shadow—and his expression tightened at how naturally the ancient word for evil came to mind.
Physically, Faron had been taken by force—Thorn felt resonances of riders as dark and deadly as this vault in the boy’s memory—but he’d accepted the ChangeSpell willingly. Without question, without hesitation. No true sense remained of the sorcerer responsible, both face and spirit were wholly cloaked, only the boy’s reactions to him were there to be read. And they were wholly at odds with what had happened. Faron had been unafraid, certain to his core that this was someone who would never do him harm. It was a deception as absolute as the boy’s faith—he was told that evil was good and so embraced it with all his heart—to his final moment, he never realized how he’d been totally betrayed.
The spirit hound uttered a growl that might have been a laugh of triumph, at the Nelwyn�
��s inability to save yet another that he loved, and Thorn cast the last scraps of radiance from that haunted place and put out its light forever. When he looked again through his own, physical eyes, there was no movement to the boy’s body and his eyes had lost their luster. Thorn closed the lids and gathered the child’s head close to his breast, rocking back and forth in tune to his heartbeat, wishing for tears from eyes that had long ago gone dry, wanting to howl like a man demented, yearning with a passion that frightened him for the power to repay this murder a thousandfold and bring to the creature responsible such pain and more as he felt now.
The walk back to camp was an interminable slog. He didn’t worry about the details, he focused on placing one foot before the other, content that eventually he’d reach a destination.
The carnage should have shocked him. There were bodies everywhere, Death Dogs skewered or decapitated or outright burned. Too many of those for the fire to properly handle; it had been reduced to smoldering coals, the pile on top charred meat. The stench didn’t make him gag. It was as though he’d gone beyond physical sensation, that in slaying the boy he’d cut out some small but crucial piece of himself.
The Daikini lay beneath a hound that was almost as tall as he and more powerfully built. Thorn had no idea if the man was still alive, nor any desire to use InSight to find out.
It took two tries and a major grunt of effort to push the corpse aside. Thorn wrinkled his nose at the sight and smell beneath and started to breathe a prayer for the Daikini, until a closer examination revealed that the mess was mostly of the hound’s making.
It hadn’t been the Daikini who killed it, either. The creature bore the small but lethal mark of brownie blades.
“Lucky for you,” Thorn grumble-muttered, hooking his arms around the beast’s massive shoulders and attempting to move it, offering as foul a set of comments as he could give thought to at the difference between their respective sizes. He could remember easier times clearing rocks from his field, and tree trunks.
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