Vengeance ttr-1

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Vengeance ttr-1 Page 19

by Ian Irvine


  Tali lurched through the maze, knowing she couldn’t possibly beat the Cythonians up the shaft while carrying Rannilt. Why had she wasted so much time?

  As she climbed the first step, she realised how weak she was — the strength Mimoy’s earlier spell had given her was gone and she ached from the base of her skull to the soles of her feet. There was no sign of the guards who had been up above, and she dared to hope that they had also been knocked out. If they were waiting outside — no, one thing at a time. Just get to the top.

  Mimoy was halfway up, her cane flashing. Despite her twisted feet and broken ribs she was moving faster than Tali.

  ‘You all right, Rannilt?’ Tali gasped. ‘Can’t carry you much further.’

  The girl jerked. Again the golden light poured from her and she made a rasping noise in her throat. Tali forced against the bone-ache, crunched across a rubble-littered landing and up the next set of steps.

  The pressure in her head was building; once more those coloured patterns whorled and looped their way across her inner eye, confusing her. Her foot missed the next step and she stumbled and nearly dropped the girl. The enemy was close behind. Their lantern beams were shining through the archway and Tali could hear them speaking in low voices.

  Why hadn’t they come through? They must be checking the guards at the loading station, trying to work out what had happened here and wondering how someone could have knocked them all out without leaving a mark, probably fearing it had been done with magery. Their fear was her friend. How could she use it against them? She had to have her gift, and the wilder and more dangerous the better.

  ‘Mimoy?’ Tali called. ‘Wait, I need — ’

  ‘You chose that worthless brat over me,’ Mimoy spat. ‘Beg her for aid.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Please, help me with …’ she was too indoctrinated to say it aloud. The best she could do was whisper, ‘ … my magery.’

  ‘Don’t need you any more.’ Mimoy tossed her head, her white hair floating up like strands of silk, and continued.

  A handful of Cythonians edged through the archway into the shaft and stood there, gaping at the smashed steps, the rubble, the greasy charcoal that had once been a man. Tali had six flights to go and if she had to lug Rannilt all the way she would never make it.

  Then they looked up and saw the golden light dribbling from Rannilt’s dangling hand.

  ‘Aieee!’ a woman cried. It was Orlyk, her face still grey-pink and bloated from the puffball spores. From a belt pouch she withdrew a crimson, chymical death-lash. Yellow bands circled each end. It was a foot long and as thick through as her pudgy thumb. ‘Forbidden magery. The Pale filth spit in Khirrik-ai’s face. Kill them — ’

  A man cut her off, pushed to the front and Tali recognised the compact, muscular figure of Overseer Banj. She was not surprised to see him. It was his responsibility to find any slave from the grottoes who ran.

  At heart he was a kindly man, to those who obeyed the rules, and Tali had always felt that he liked her. But Banj was not a thinker and, as Mia’s death had shown, he was quick to enforce Cython’s rigid rules at need. He could show an escaping slave no mercy. And perhaps he was doing the matriarchs’ work for them. Tali was going to die without ever knowing why she was the one.

  ‘Slave,’ he said to Tali in the voice that every Pale was conditioned to obeying instantly. ‘Come down.’

  CHAPTER 26

  ‘The devil you doin’?’ Tobry slurred. ‘Put me down.’

  ‘You’re not up to it,’ said Rix, heaving him higher on his shoulder. ‘You’ve been out for half an hour.’

  ‘Just restin’.’

  Rix lowered Tobry onto his feet. He fell down.

  ‘Told you so.’

  ‘Noble of you to point it out.’ Tobry lay on his back in the snow and momentarily his pupils widened until his eyes went black. He shivered and looked away. ‘Thanks.’

  Rix’s chill deepened. Whatever the wrythen had done to him, it was Rix’s fault. He had pressured Tobry to come up here, ignored his arguments and overridden his fears. Some friend!

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Getting me out.’

  ‘Any time,’ said Rix absently, keeping watch up the slope.

  It was mid-morning now but the gloom was thickening, the snow falling more heavily than ever, and miserably cold. Now the action was over, the chill was creeping into him. The fresh snow was untracked and there was no way of telling where the horses had gone, which could prove fatal.

  A branch cracked somewhere behind him, then he heard a tearing rustle as though something big was forcing its way through the vine thicket. A jackal yelped, its hoarse call identifying it as a shifter. And jackals never hunted alone.

  Tobry was the most strong-willed man Rix knew, so what was it about shifters that terrified him so? Rix heaved him over his shoulder, then put him down again. It was too late to run.

  ‘That’s twice you’ve saved my life today,’ said Tobry.

  ‘Don’t keep on about things. You’re worse than my mother.’

  ‘How did you get past the caitsthe, anyway?’

  ‘Later!’ Rix snapped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Jackal shifters, coming through the vine thicket.’ Even so, he had to ask the question. ‘What did the wrythen do to you? Your eyes were steaming.’

  Tobry shuddered and one foot kicked involuntarily. ‘Don’t want to think about it. Where are the nags?’

  ‘Ran off,’ said Rix. ‘Can’t think why.’

  ‘Didn’t they come when you called them?’

  ‘Leather doesn’t come when called.’

  Tobry put two fingers into his mouth and let out a whistle that shook snow off the twigs of the blood-barks. There came a frenzy of barking and yelping from upslope.

  Rix helped Tobry to his feet. ‘Your face looks like a warthog’s arse.’

  ‘It never was my fortune.’ Tobry swayed and had to grab Rix’s arm. ‘Skull feels like it’s packed with needlebush.’

  Something crashed through the trees, sending snowballs rolling down the slope towards them, growing as they came. Rix pulled Tobry behind a tree and watched them pass. Then a brindled, scarred cur loped out from the trees to their left. The jackal shifter was no bigger than a dog, though heavier in the shoulders, and its jaws were massive.

  Tobry tried to make a joke, ‘Any last words?’ but choked.

  Rix shoved him back against the trunk, put Tobry’s sword in his hand and drew his own. ‘Stay on your feet.’

  ‘Never would have thought of that.’

  Putting most of his weight on his good ankle, Rix stood in front of Tobry, sweeping the titane blade from side to side. The cur’s eyes did not follow it, which was worrying.

  ‘Whistle the nags again, Tobe.’

  As he did so, three more jackals appeared on the left, then another four to the right. They moved in slowly, black tongues lolling, yellow eyes focused on the same point — the tree trunk. No, on Tobry.

  Rix’s alarm swelled. Their first instinct should be self-preservation, so why weren’t they watching his sword? He could only think of one reason: their instincts had been overridden by the shade that had sent them, and he wanted Tobry dead.

  Rix took a half step backwards, trying to shield him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Tobry. ‘Nearly jammed my blade through your kidneys.’

  ‘We’re in trouble, Tobe.’

  ‘They only want me. Clear out — I’ll be all right.’

  Rix ignored that. The jackals were showing no signs of shifting, which was bad — unlike caitsthes, they were more formidable in the animal form. Cowardly creatures that they were, they only shifted when their victims were helpless.

  The brindled leader darted in, snapped at Rix’s sword and retreated. The others on the left did the same, trying to draw him away from Tobry. He hacked at them but they were too fast; all he managed was a cut to the black nose of the third.

  He saw it from
the corner of an eye — the rest of the pack attacking from the right — and whirled, battle instinct guiding his hand. The blade made a muffled thump as it took the first cur’s head off and cleaved through the snow into hard ground.

  Rix wrenched it out and was going for the second jackal when another, unseen, snapped its jaws around his calf and held him. He froze. It hadn’t broken the skin, but if it did, and shifter saliva got into the wound, it might turn him. Its blood definitely would.

  The other jackals could have leapt on Rix and taken him down, but they were silently watching.

  ‘What the blazes are they up to?’ he said aloud.

  Rix dared not move. He could kill the jackal with a blow, though before he did its jaws would have torn through his calf into the bone and, with such a crippling wound, the pack would soon finish him.

  And where was the brindled leader?

  There was a scuffle behind him and Tobry hit the ground, dropping his sword into the snow. The pack leader had leapt on him from around the trunk, pulling him off his feet and cracking his head against it.

  As Rix swung around, the jaws tightened, the teeth passing through his trews and pricking the skin. Why didn’t the jackal bite? Why was it just holding him?

  ‘Tobe?’ he called, but Tobry was too dazed to answer.

  Only one thing could be preventing them from indulging their natural viciousness. The beasts must be acting on the wrythen’s orders and it wanted them alive. Rix could do nothing to save them. Only Tobry could, but how to get through to him?

  ‘TOBE!’

  Tobry grunted. Two more jackals sank their teeth into his collar and began to drag him up the slope, pulling his weight easily across the snow.

  ‘You’re letting me down, Tobe,’ said Rix. ‘You owe me.’ What a lie that was.

  ‘Ugh?’

  ‘I saved your miserable life. You could at least do the same for me.’

  ‘Can’t,’ Tobry groaned.

  ‘Useless bastard! Use your damned magery.’

  Tobry’s limp fingers stiffened. He raised his head and managed to focus on Rix, then the jackal with its jaws around his calf. Pressing one hand against the elbrot in his pocket, Tobry pointed the other. With a muffled crack, snow blasted out of a trench stretching from his fingers to the jackal and every tooth in its head shattered. Its jaws snapped convulsively on Rix’s calf, which was like being bitten with a mouthful of gravel, then it ran, howling.

  Another jackal came at Rix, and another, but blood-fury was driving him now and he bisected both with the one stroke. He leapt at another, spearing it through the chest. Rix whirled and, refusing to admit any pain from his ankle, took a hopping bound towards Tobry, who was holding his head with both hands. Snatching up Tobry’s fallen sword, Rix hurled it left-handed past his ear and through the skull of the brindled pack leader.

  It fell dead, and immediately the pressure eased. The remaining two jackals retreated several feet, stinking saliva dripping from their black tongues, then ran. A horse whinnied, there was a gruesome thud, then the first jackal came flying through the air, a mangled mess.

  Beetle, Tobry’s black-faced nag, poked its head out from between the trees. Leather was behind it.

  ‘I told you so,’ said Tobry feebly. ‘Put me in the saddle, there’s a good fellow — ’

  Rix heaved Tobry onto his saddle and slapped Beetle on the left flank. ‘Go!’

  Beetle bolted. Rix wrenched Tobry’s sword from the jackal’s skull, dragged himself into Leather’s saddle and followed. A second pack of jackals came loping down, then stopped, their tongues lolling.

  ‘What happened to that liqueur?’ said Tobry later, as they passed the entrance to the Catacombs of the Kings and all the upside-down heads. Rix, who might have died and been reborn in the past hours, no longer thought the insult a good idea.

  He took the flask from the saddlebags and passed it across. Tobry took a deep swig and offered it back.

  Rix shook his head. ‘I’ve never felt less like a drink in my life.’

  ‘I’ve never wanted one more.’ Tobry took another healthy swig. ‘How’s your head?’

  ‘Better. Ankle?’

  ‘No better.’

  After a while, Tobry said, ‘That didn’t go so well.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Well,’ Tobry was trying to sound his normal self and almost pulling it off, ‘we’ve no idea what the wrythen is up to but we know it’s bad, the snow is getting thicker by the second, you’ve got one day less to finish the portrait, Lady Ricinus will be apoplectic by now — ’

  ‘I meant, don’t tell me about it,’ Rix snarled.

  ‘And to cap it off,’ Tobry continued, ‘you came all this way to kill something big, and haven’t.’

  He didn’t know the caitsthe was dead and there wasn’t time to explain. ‘I still might!’ Rix brandished his sword.

  Tobry chuckled and urged Beetle on.

  Rix followed, trying to make sense of all that had happened. Something had changed the moment the wrythen had recognised his sword. Where had it come from? Traitor’s blade. Liar’s blade. Oathbreaker’s blade, he had said, and suddenly the attack had become personal, vengeful. He wanted revenge for an injury done in the past, by some previous owner of this sword.

  And he had committed House Ricinus to memory.

  CHAPTER 27

  Tali was frozen to the step. Though she knew Banj was going to kill her, obedience was so ingrained that it was a struggle to ignore his direct order. But she had to fight it.

  ‘I’m not letting Rannilt be killed by that vicious toad,’ she muttered, avoiding Banj’s stare. No, she had to be stronger. She must openly defy him — for her own sake, nothing less would do. Raising her head, Tali steadied her shaking knees, looked Banj in the eye and said firmly, ‘I refuse. Damn the matriarchs, damn Cython and damn you. I’m the one!’

  Banj’s handsome features registered shock at the defiance, perhaps more so at the secret she should have known nothing about. Purple crept up his cheeks and he glanced over his shoulder. ‘Archers?’

  ‘Not here yet.’ Orlyk waved the crimson and yellow death-lash. ‘But with this I can sever her backbone from twenty feet away.’

  ‘Are you her overseer?’ Banj said stiffly.

  Orlyk bent her head in angry submission.

  Banj drew the Living Blade with which he had beheaded Mia. Red-tinged rainbows wavered around its transparent annulus and it began to keen gently as he lumbered up the steps. Tali retreated, knowing he would catch her before the top. Rannilt convulsed again and light blazed out of her in all directions. Tali could barely hold the jerking girl; it was all she could do to keep climbing.

  ‘Not now, Rannilt, please.’ Tali hugged her tightly, hoping to overcome her inner torment, but Rannilt did not respond.

  Tali looked up desperately. Despite Mimoy’s earlier words, she was waiting at the doors, watching. The pressure in Tali’s head was almost unbearable now, and every flash from Rannilt’s fingers set off such a whirling of the coloured lights in her inner eye that she had to clutch at the rail to hold herself up.

  ‘Stop, slave!’ Banj, only two flights below her now, was taking three steps to her one.

  ‘Mimoy!’ Tali cried. ‘Help me.’

  Mimoy did not reply.

  ‘Please don’t kill Rannilt,’ Tali begged Banj. ‘She didn’t ask for the gift. It just came to her.’

  Banj was inexorable. ‘Magery is forbidden, obscene, and an abomination.’

  ‘But she’s an innocent little girl.’

  ‘Hightspall’s magery was conceived in treachery and birthed in blood. No one bearing its taint is innocent.’

  ‘Kill her and it makes you a child-murderer.’

  Banj’s eyes slid away from hers, but he said, ‘All those bearing the taint must be put down. It’s our law and I swore to uphold it.’

  ‘It proves you’re nothing but savages!’ she shouted. ‘Your ancestors were too gutless to fight Hightspall so
they enslaved its children.’

  Banj’s dark eyes flashed. ‘Oh, we fought,’ he said softly. ‘For two hundred and fifty years our ancestors battled the barbarian invaders. If not for their sly, depraved magery, Cythe would still be ours.’

  He said it with such passion that Tali had no reply. Her knees were shaking; she could carry Rannilt no further. Prising the girl’s arms from around her neck, Tali put her on the steps above the landing. Rannilt whimpered and reached out blindly, the warm yellow light flowing in waves from her fingertips.

  Tali could only see Banj severing the little girl’s head. She shook her. ‘Rannilt, wake up. You’ve got to run, now.’

  She did not wake, and Tali had no choice. She had to fight Banj bare-handed or they would both die. She stumbled to the front of the landing, facing him in the defensive posture Nurse Bet had taught her. Tali had practised the moves ten thousand times but had never fought a real opponent, much less an armed one. She would be lucky to get in one blow before he killed her, yet even one blow was more than her gentle mother had dared. Even one blow would be a blow for justice and an inspiration to all the Pale. The enemies were only human. They could be beaten. Though not here, not by her.

  As she raised her hands, the pressure in her head grew until her skull bones creaked. The colours swirled furiously, she lost vision for a second and when it came back Banj was on the step below the landing, only six feet away, the annular blade pointing at her breast.

  ‘Surrender, Tali,’ he said, using her name for the first time. He inclined his head to her, then reached out as if to take her hand.

  Prickles ran down her front at his mark of respect — Banj was honouring the doomed one. He was no savage. He was a decent man, within his limits. She shook her head. ‘You’ll have to kill me … Banj.’

  No slave dared speak a Cythonian’s name to his face, but Tali wasn’t going to die a slave. She was any man’s equal.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, another first in a day of firsts, and bowed as he had bowed to Mia before he decapitated her.

  Tali had never heard a Cythonian say sorry to a slave before. Banj drew back the Living Blade in the precise, balletic movement prescribed for execution of slaves with the gift. Tali had to get in the first blow, or die. She sprang forwards, swinging at his neck with the rigid edge of her right hand. Such a blow might bring down a frail slave, though she had little hope of hurting Banj through those corded neck muscles.

 

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