by Martin Ash
But now Leth was aware of other enemies coming from the passages to either side of the large chamber. Vaguely human, featureless things, powerfully muscled, with pewter grey scaly skin, brandishing radiant, beaked axes and combat pincers. They came forward stealthily, weaving between the two remaining cacosas.
Rasgul cried out a warning. 'Goles! Move back!'
One of the goles rushed at Leth, thrusting at his head with the bill-head of its axe with one hand, the other, with the spiked pincers, snapping at his groin. Leth dodged both blows, swung with his scimitar and struck the gole in the shoulder. The blade went deep, but the gole showed no reaction, and as Leth pulled back he saw to his shock that he had left no wound.
'Draw the Orbsword, Swordbearer!' called Rasgul, who was retreating and fending off the blows of another gole. 'It’s your only hope!'
Without hesitation, leaping back to avoid the gole's attack, Leth dropped his scimitar and drew free the Orbsword. It glowed bright, though much of its radiance was lost in the blood-toned air. But there came a gasp from the goles, and even the cacosas seemed hesitant for a moment.
Leth seized the opportunity and lunged at the nearest gole. The Orbsword passed effortlessly through its chest. The gole's mouth sagged open, it issued a long sigh, and fell.
But there were as many as ten goles advancing upon them now, maybe more, as well as the two cacosas. Recovering from the shock of the sight of the Orbsword they pressed forward again relentlessly. Beyond them Leth glimpsed several Acolytes running forward from the tunnel along which he had come, grasping pairs of deadly blazing javelins. With the others of his party he drew back, but the situation was hopeless. There was nowhere to retreat to. His was the only effective weapon, but even with the Orbsword he could not hope to fight off so many assailants.
A cacosa yawned and ejaculated its wet brown mass. Leth glimpsed Harg hurl himself to one side, narrowly avoiding the sticky mass, which glued itself to the edge of the closest column. Rasgul was being hard-pressed by two goles. Leth slid across, lowering his body, and swung the Orbsword into the nearest gole's flank. The creature spun with sudden shock, then fell silently. At that moment Leth saw, beyond the gole, something glittering within one of the column compartments from which the cacosas had emerged. Ducking another mass of flying spittle, Leth lunged for the compartment. On its side wall was a small silver knob. Without time for thought Leth reached in and grasped it, pressed, pulled, twisted . . . Something gave. He heard a low grinding sound behind him. Harg called out.
Leth turned. In the rear wall of the chamber a door had opened. Beyond it nothing could be seen bar a flickering redness, predominantly darker than that which filled he chamber he now occupied. There was no time for consideration. Harg and the remaining Abyss warrior were already fighting their way back towards the new opening.
'Through there!' Leth yelled. Now the others of his party saw the opening. Desperately hacking, they fought their way back. One by one they slipped through. Leth came last, the enemy creatures crowding him, yet holding back slightly, wary now of the glowing sword he wielded. From behind them he saw an Acolyte draw back an arm and hurl a javelin. The thing wuzzed angrily past his ear into the opening behind him. Leth prayed it had struck none of his companions. A gole came at him suddenly, axe swinging, pincers snapping. Leth avoided the blows. Something grasped him from behind and dragged him back. Rasgul stood inside the opening, grasping a metal bar set into the wall. As Leth came inside the Abyss warrior pushed hard on the bar and the door slid shut upon the chamber, leaving the cacosas, goles and Acolytes on the other side.
ii
They were in a spacious area bounded by walls both of hewn stone and natural deep red rock. Numerous tunnel entrances were revealed in the rock faces, leading off in various directions. The acrid smell that Leth had detected earlier was more forceful here. It scoured the back of his nose and was mingled with a faintly sulphurous stench and a moist, sour-sweet odour of decay.
From somewhere unseen, away to their left, issued a blood-curdling sound: a dreadful, dirgeful bellowing. It came semi-rhythmically, finding its way through the tunnels, an inhuman issue that ranged across the scale from a profoundly menacing, enraged basso rumble to a ruthless, tormented lowing which mounted remorselessly, reaching a blood-chilling alto shriek before breaking off, pausing, then resuming again. Leth felt his teeth on edge, his gut knotting, the muscles of his spine involuntarily clenching.
Rasgul bent to pick up the fallen Acolyte javelin, then straightened, glancing grim-visaged towards the direction of the maddening sound.
'She knows,' he said chillingly to Leth. 'The Great Sow has sensed the Orbsword. She knows you are here.'
Count Harg, re-loading his repeating crossbow, wryly observed, 'Ah well, she tells us in which direction she lies, at least. We should not run down too many wrong tunnels.'
'And we should waste no time,' said Rasgul. 'She’ll be more anxious now than ever to release her obnoxious force upon the world.'
They struck out into one of the nearer tunnels, whose black maw promised to take them at least some distance towards the source of the dreadful stridence. They were five in number now: Leth, Rasgul, Harg, Juson and Huuri. A small, tight but motley band made up of murdering thugs and merciless warriors, none of whom knew their own hearts or minds, and led by a desperate young warrior-king who had been summoned as a god to rid a world of a nebulous evil of which he knew nothing.
With Leth and Rasgul leading they crept forward into the obscuring shadows. The area they were leaving seemed deserted, but each of them was aware that anything might lurk there, within the tunnels or anywhere close by, and Huuri took it upon himself to bring up the rear, alert at all times for sudden attack from that direction.
The tunnel, though it twisted like a worm, proved to be no longer than fifty paces, and they emerged from it into a colossal subterranean cavern. The floor was predominantly level and paved with huge slabs of red-black cut stone, but the cavern itself was a natural formation. From its furthest side, beyond fields of stalagmites, tall twisting igneous pinnacles and wildly formed ledges and outthrusts of rock, the chthonic light blazed more intensely than ever before. A raging cascade tumbled down the far wall, its sound muted by the din of the monster somewhere even further below. Spuming jets of spray glinted pinkly, splaying out, foaming and falling, and great clouds of rubescent vapour rose, draping much of the cavern in a fine patina formed of millions of tiny glimmering beads of moisture. Weird capering shadows were thrown across the lofty ceiling, the towering walls and floor. And within those shadows, within that obscuring light, Leth thought he saw movement, as if the rock walls and the cavern floor itself had come alive.
He blinked, peered hard, and realized he had been partly mistaken. The cavern had not come alive, but it was a host, a domain of some kind of life. Creatures were advancing, crawling and slithering down the wet rock walls, coming towards him and his companions, coming in their scores, perhaps their hundreds across the steaming cavern floor. Their approach seemed calculated and deliberate, as if they had no need for haste. And from beyond them, in a yawning gulf unseeable at the back of the cavern, out of which the weird light emanated, Ascaria's dreadful lowing, bellowing, wailing issued without surcease, causing the clamouring air to tremble.
'Prepare yourself, Swordbearer,' cautioned Rasgul, and his voice carried such a strange emotion that Leth turned to look at him.
'What are they?'
'It is not what they are that you must concern yourself with. It is what they are not.'
He knelt, unslinging his bow. The others had done the same, levelling bolts and arrows at the oncoming horde.
'We can’t kill them all!' declared Leth.
Rasgul glanced aside at him. 'No, we can’t.'
Leth craned his neck, straining to make out more clearly the obscure host that moved toward him. The nearest were perhaps forty paces away. And with a horror greater than anything he had experienced so far, Leth gasped, seeing suddenly
what it was that he faced.
'No!'
'They are not what you think, Swordbearer.'
'I cannot!'
'They are transformed. They are lost. They are Ascaria's newest defenders. And they are coming to kill us.'
Leth gaped, twisting his head from side to side, something inside him crying out in mute outrage. For he was looking at children. Some were in rags, some in half armour. All carried hand-weapons of some form or other. They came on at a chill, remorseless pace.
'Do not be deceived. They are children no more, Swordbearer,' said Count Harg, his earlier humour no longer evident.
'I cannot kill them!'
Rasgul yelled at him. 'She lies beyond! She awaits you! We must fight through. It’s the only way.'
'No! There must be another way!'
'There is not!'
Leth turned furiously upon Rasgul. 'How? How can I?'
'They’re not children, Swordbearer! Whatever they once were, they are monsters now!'
Leth looked out again at the oncoming horde. The child-warriors were close enough now for him to make out the glitter of their eyes in the bloodlight. Their ages ranged from perhaps six years up to youths of fourteen or fifteen. Their faces were uniformly ashen, set, cold, expressionless. He looked beyond them in anguish, as if some impossible solace might lie there. But there was nothing, only his own knowledge that whatever they were now, whatever they had become, whatever threat they undoubtedly were to him, he could not bring himself to wade among them, mowing down their small bodies with his lethal blade. He could not. They had been children once. His own children might be among them!
He let out an anguished sob. There has to be another way!
There came the thrumming snap of bowstrings from beside him. Four of the child-warriors fell. Others crowded forward, paying no heed to the fallen bodies. Another flight of arrows and bolts . . . another four dropped. But there were far too many of them to ever be halted by so few bowmen. They were less than twenty paces away now, a swarming determined mass. Leth desperately scanned the walls of the cavern, seeking a way around the encroaching children, another way in.
With horror he realized that Rasgul and the others were laying aside their bows and drawing their blades, preparing to wade into the horde.
'Swordbearer!'
Was it was conceivable that they might fight their way through? Imaginably so, if only just, Leth saw. Despite their numbers the child-warriors were lightly armoured, if at all; they came forward with an almost mindless intent, and he doubted they would be effective fighters. Yet to win through would entail such bloodshed, such carnage. He could not accept it. And in their overwhelming mass the children had the overall advantage, most especially if they could surround the five and strike from all angles.
He scanned the faces of the foremost, his dread ever-growing that in their ranks his gaze might fall upon Galry and Jace.
'Swordbearer!' Rasgul glared back angrily over his shoulder at Leth.
Leth stood unable to move, the Orbsword gripped impotently in his hand. I will not be their murderer! There has to be another way!
He turned and raced back into the tunnel from which they had just emerged, oblivious to Rasgul's furious hailing. Just yards along he knew that he had saved his mens' lives. Three goles were creeping up the tunnel. Within moments they would have launched themselves upon Leth and his companions from behind.
Without slowing, using his speed and momentum, Leth ran at the surprised goles. He lofted the Orbsword and struck as he passed the first gole, taking its head cleanly from its shoulders. His motion took him cannoning into the second. It was sent flying back, hammering against the tunnel wall. Dazed and winded, it tottered and sank to one knee. Leth stepped in and thrust his blade through its chest.
But the third gole was upon him. A heavy axe-blow smashed down hard behind Leth's right shoulder, felling him. As he slammed breathless into the ground his one thought was to keep moving. He rolled instinctively, and heard and half-glimpsed the billed axehead strike again, biting into the rock where his head had been, sending sparks and rock chips flying. With all his strength he swung upwards and heard the gole complain as the Orbsword carved deep into its unnatural flesh.
His head still rang from the gole's first strike. He pushed himself away, came bent-legged to his feet, blinking and shaking his head to clear his vision. The wounded gole was coming at him. Leth parried the first blow, thrust forward. And again! The gole drew back, widened its stance, swung, missed. Leth detected an opening, waited. The gole jabbed with the bill-head. Leth pulled away, then drove in suddenly, neatly flicking aside the arm bearing the combat pincers, and lunged. His blade pierced the gole's throat. The gole opened its mouth as if to speak, and staggered back. Leth struck again, and it fell.
He paused to take stock, breathing hard. The combat had brought him to the mouth of the tunnel. He peered out, scanning the wider area from which the other tunnel entrances ran off. There were no other assailants visible. He gazed down for a second at the last of the fallen goles. Its first blow, which had caught him from behind, had been powerful enough to maim, possibly even kill him. Certainly it should have signalled the beginning of the end of the combat, yet the sapphire armour had deflected or absorbed much of its energy. Leth found himself marvelling. The armour had not split; it had barely even buckled.
He came from the tunnel mouth and ran to the nearest of the other entrances. It appeared to lead towards the same destination as the tunnel he had just left, yet there had been no other entrance in the cavern close to where he and the others had stood. A dead-end, or did it lead elsewhere?
He ran on. In the depths of the next tunnel he spied stone stairs curving upwards. He raced in, desperately hoping. He took the stairs in long bounds. They twined sinuously through the raw, warm mottled red rock, and then suddenly burst out onto a slender ledge.
Leth found himself at the edge, staring down into the great cavern where, some fifty feet below and perhaps fifty paces distant, Rasgul and the other three battled against the milling child-warriors. They had held close to the cavern wall, preventing the child-warriors from getting at their backs. A swelling sea of children crowded them. The ground nearby was littered with young corpses, as many as a score. Leth could see that the men were beginning to tire.
He looked about him, assessing his own situation. The ledge on which he stood, barely inches in width, threaded its way along the bellying, glistening, red-lit cavern wall towards the far gulf from within which hidden Ascaria unceasingly bellowed. Leth could not make out its full extent, and as it wound into various clefts and folds, he could not see whether its width would support him along its entire length. But he knew he could only take it or go back. He would be exposed and vulnerable, forced to inch along the ledge with his back against the rock face, and he could not be certain that it would take him to Ascaria.
He glanced down into the cavern again. So far his presence was undetected. It was go now or not at all.
He sheathed the Orbsword, needing both hands free, and slipped out sidewise onto the ledge. Beneath him the carnage continued, and from time to time, when the Kancanitrix fell momentarily silent to draw breath, the noise of battle reached him: clashing weapons, Rasgul's enraged battle-roars, the yells and grunts of Harg and the others. The children fought relentlessly, in undying silence, like spectres or dead creatures.
And there was another sound between the Kancanitrix's breaths, a strange, wet, rapid slurping, sucking noise that made Leth's stomach turn.
The rock at Leth's back offered few handholds. Its knobs and edges were worn smooth, as if by eons of water passing over its surface. But the rock was relatively dry on this wall of the cavern; the cataract and its clouds and jets of spray being on the other side. A few yards along the ledge the rock began to lean outwards at approximately shoulder height, forcing Leth to incline himself forward from the waist. He hung precariously over the battle below, with only empty space between him and the rock floor
.
A glance ahead showed him that the ledge fell away a little distance on. He was forced to turn, with great difficulty, so that his head and chest were pressed to the rock, his legs uncomfortably bent as he groped for hand and footholds.
He inched his way painfully along, never knowing whether his next step would take him as far as it was possible to go along the cavern wall. Suddenly something smacked off the rock close to his head with a loud report, then clattered to the ground far below. Another object followed, then another. He had been seen! The child-warriors were hurling weapons: hand-axes, knives, rocks . . . Miraculously they appeared to have no proper missile weapons, and their aim was none too certain. Nevertheless the missiles they did possess were a dangerous distraction, and if one struck one of his exposed hands, or his helm or a groping foot, it could spell the end for him.
More and more of the weapons flew at him, beating an irregular tattoo off the wall, and he could do nothing but keep on, hoping, desperately hoping, that he would not find himself stranded.
Something struck him heavily on the thigh. He froze, fearful for a moment that he might be injured. But his armour had protected him again. The sweat streamed down his back; his fingers ached from gripping the harsh rock. A little way ahead he saw that the ledge reappeared. It wound its way a few yards further and disappeared into a large black fissure. Large enough for a man to slip within and shelter, if he could just get there - but did it lead anywhere?
A carbuncle of rock at eye level offered a fingerhold. He leaned and stretched out. His fingers grasped the rock but slipped off and he saved himself from toppling only by pressing himself even harder against the face, adhering, he did not know how, for the vital heartbeats it took him to regain his balance and find a grip. More weapons hammered off the wall all around him. Several struck him, though none powerfully enough to do him serious harm. From behind and below he heard a sudden yell: