Crowlord

by Michael Wallace

  Should one of the spear points penetrate her flesh, it would slide through, destroying muscle, bone, organs. And the one wielding such a weapon would be quicker, stronger, and more sure in his aim than almost any of the men she’d fought at the farmhouse.

  A familiar figure with a thin face and a commanding voice stood at the head of the spearmen, shouting his men into ranks. It was Captain Pongur of the Transriver Third Spears, the elite force that Balint Stronghand had sent across the Vestanovul to secure the south bank for his invasion. The same man she’d delivered the weapons to in the first place.

  Alone among his men, Pongur did not carry a spear, but instead a shield and a straight, one-handed sword. Also weapons that she’d hand delivered. In fact, she’d made that sword herself. It was no master blade, but it was a damn fine weapon, and more than capable of cutting through a chain hauberk with a single blow. Pongur used the weapon to gesture as he shouted commands. Already, nearly half of his men were on the ground and in position.

  “Hold here,” she told Gyorgy, and tensed her muscles to jump.

  No more than two seconds had passed from the moment she and her student had scaled the tree trunk to the moment when she made the decision to leap into battle. She’d used her sowen to blur the bladedancer auras and buy an additional moment of advantage that mere speed could not provide. Yet as she made her move, someone spotted her and let out a cry.

  Narina’s jump took her halfway to the gathering spearmen. A second leap carried her into their midst. Captain Pongur turned, alarmed, and lifted his bladedancer-forged sword while he tried to pull his shield around and position his body to throw her back.

  But he was slow. Like oozing pine sap. Such was the power of her sowen. His eyes blinked slowly, while his mouth began an exaggerated movement to form a shout. The first stirring of sound moved in his vocal cords.

  Narina brushed aside the sword with her dragon blade, while her demon stabbed over Pongur’s slowly rising shield. She shoved the tip in with a thrust. The point of the demon blade tore through his chain mail like it was made of rotting linen, split through his collarbone, and rammed deep into his chest. His body gave a shuddering jerk as the sword clove his heart in two. The cry died on his lips, and his eyes rolled back. She let him slide to the ground, drew her sword clear, and stood astride his corpse.

  The loss of their captain while half the riders were still trying to dismount and form ranks sent a shock wave of moans and gasps through the Transriver Third Spears. As ranks faltered and spears lowered, she saw an opportunity that had not been present when sketching a battle plan for Gyorgy. A chance to shatter the enemy in a single, brutal attack.

  Two men, more alert and quick to recover than the others, thrust at her from opposite sides. The spears came sliding in, too slow to hit her. She danced backward from one man, hacked at a second, and then gave another skyward leap when he lowered his spear point and tried to hook her leg and throw her from her feet.

  Narina’s jump carried her to the man’s lowered shoulder, which she used to launch herself over the first rank. She came down behind them with a triumphant shout, slashing and whirling. Two men fell with her blades thrust through their backs, then two more who tried to get their unwieldy spears turned about.

  Her attack was indiscriminate: calves, thighs, arms, shoulders, chest, back, neck, head. Anywhere her blades found an opening. Some died instantly, while others fell clutching severed arms or opened bellies. She clove helmets and shattered shields. More men were arriving every moment, but they were slow. They died as they dismounted, died in the saddle, died beneath their dying horses.

  And then a figure appeared behind the ranks of the spearmen. As men and horses moved about her in slow, exaggerated movements, he alone seemed to be striding forward at a normal speed. He wore no shoes, and black streaks of charcoal marked his face. In his hands lay a long, slender, two-handed sword, elegant in its lines from the sword point to the hilt, with black curlicues along its edge. The edge radiated a keen, deadly aura.

  A firewalker sohn.

  The man fixed Narina with a hard look, his mouth a grim line. His sowen was a powerful, radiating force, and it divided the struggling men in front of him, who opened a path for him without seeming to understand what they were doing. Instead, the spearmen kept fighting her, thrusting with spears and trying to dodge the blades that fell upon them like lashes from a deadly whip.

  Narina looked up from her fight to hold the firewalker’s gaze. “Stop this!”

  The firewalker ignored her cry, bobbed slightly to avoid a spearman staggering backward with blood spurting from his throat, and lifted his sword to strike, though he was still a dozen feet away. And then, in an instant, he was on top of her. She hadn’t seen him move.

  She fell into a roll. The man’s sword whistled past her ear. She changed directions in her roll and came up with the intention of skewing him through the groin with a double attack from below. It might have worked if spears hadn’t been poking at her from her right and left. From above and behind.

  Narina had to fend them off, and by the time she got her bearings, the firewalker was coming at her again, this time with massive, sweeping blows. She ducked and weaved and rolled to get beneath his swings, but the spearmen, no longer facing her furious attack, were regaining confidence and discipline. They had her surrounded, and she caught a grazing blow to the shoulder that would have penetrated deeper if her sowen hadn’t instinctively sent her twisting away.

  Just when she thought she’d be overwhelmed by either the firewalker’s assault or the stinging, wasp-like attack of three dozen jabbing spears, men began to drop on her left side. It was Gyorgy, who came with scythe-like blows against Narina’s tormentors. Many of them had not yet realized they were in danger from the rear, even as their companions were already falling.

  Finally, they began to turn to face him, but Narina’s student was a swiftly moving force of death against their unprotected flank, and within moments the threat was gone from her left side. As Gyorgy moved around to his master’s right, his weaker dragon blade became the primary attacking weapon, and this, combined with a recognition by the spearmen of a new enemy in their midst, slowed the boy’s assault.

  But meanwhile, Narina was free to concentrate on her fight with the firewalker. Her enemy was strong and swift, and his sowen was a raging maelstrom clawing at hers, trying to break it apart. If her own sowen collapsed, she’d lose her concentration, stamina, and speed. She beat back the sowen attack even as her blades continued to knock aside blows from his sword.

  Moments later, she felt, rather than saw, a chance for a true counterattack. As his sword fell, slicing harmlessly past her shoulder, she jumped backward over a fallen horse. His blade sliced into the rib cage of the already-dying animal instead of striking her, and before he could pull it free, she leaped back across the downed horse and came in from the side with her swords flashing.

  Her dragon struck first, aimed not at the firewalker, but at his sword. The white blade pinned its blackened edge in place while her demon swept in an arc at his neck. He spotted the blade coming at his throat and twisted away from it, but not in time. It glanced off the back of his neck and bit into his shoulder muscle.

  The firewalker cried out in pain. There was shock on his face, and his sowen faltered. He got his sword free and fell back, even as her blades darted in and out, seeking another opening. Before she could break through, more spear attacks forced her to respond. While her attention was thus diverted, the firewalker gained separation and reached back to the wound at his shoulder. His hand came away drenched in blood. The man grimaced, got control of his sowen, and staunched the bleeding. An opportunity had slipped away from her.

  Narina cut down more spearmen and spared a glance for her student. Gyorgy had his back to the fallen tree, and nearly a dozen men came at him with their spears. From their determined charges and thrusts it was clear they thought they had their tormentor pinned. Time to skewer the boy and return to the fig
ht against the bladedancer sohn.

  Gyorgy, however, had gained confidence, if the strength of his sowen was anything to go by. He was untouched so far, and had left a trail of dead and wounded. If he kept his wits about him, he could get on top of or over the trunk to safety should the fight turn against him.

  Narina returned her gaze to her enemy, even as she danced away from another spear attack. “Who the devil are you, and what do you want?”

  “Sohn Tankred of the Blade Temple of the Elegant Sword. I’m here to cut you down and add your sowen to my own.”

  She scoffed. “You think you can steal my sowen? Or is that a metaphor?” They closed briefly, fought to a stalemate, and withdrew. “Stop this at once. Your men are dying—do you care so little that you’d throw their lives away?”

  “They are insects to us. Only your death or mine matters. Sohn Narina, is it?” he added after another flurry, one that saw her wound a spearman who thought he’d stick her while she was fighting the firewalker. “You’re better than I thought. It was the other two bladedancer sohns who had me worried. You, I thought would be good training before the real fighting began. And yet here you are, still standing.”

  “Seems like you made a mistake.”

  She pressed another attack, but he got away from her. By now, the spearmen were thinning. She and Gyorgy had killed or wounded dozens, but the battlefield still seemed less crowded than she’d expected. She supposed that some of the men had broken ranks and fled in a panic. So much for Captain Pongur’s vaunted Third Transriver Spears.

  “You’ve trained your student well,” Tankred said. “I was counting on those spearmen to wear you down during the fight, but the boy has acquitted himself well. A pity he has to die, like the rest of you.”

  He charged Narina again, and this time he gave a twist to his blade as it darted past her rib cage. It sliced through her tunic and she felt a sharp sting. When she looked down, there was blood. It wasn’t deep, but it was shocking all the same. When flailing spearmen drove the two sides apart again, she glanced up to see Tankred grinning.

  “There, now we’ve both suffered a bloodletting,” he said. “Now we’re the same, you and I.”

  All of this talk was only buying the man time to heal his more serious wounds and regroup behind his sowen. It was clear he wasn’t going to accept a truce, and Narina knew she had to press the attack. Her own sowen was already fraying around the edges, and if she took a serious wound it might not hold up for a longer fight.

  A clump of spearmen—all of them with broken, exhausted auras, and several injured as well—made for a final charge from her left flank. Narina made as if to engage them, but whirled at the last minute to concentrate her entire attack on Tankred. Before the spearmen could press their attack into her unprotected back, she had her true enemy on his heels and was spinning him around.

  “Gyorgy!” she cried.

  He heard her call and fought his way through his remaining spearmen to join her in an attack. Gyorgy’s motions were fluid and swift, but his skills were nothing compared to Tankred’s. If she brought her student into the fight, one good attack from the firewalker sohn would cut him down as surely as the boy was cutting through spearmen.

  But his charge into the battlefield forced Tankred to position his body to respond. As he drew his sword into a neutral position, ready to beat back Gyorgy’s blades, Narina ducked low and drove forward in a thrusting motion with both of her blades. At the last moment, she twisted them under the firewalker’s sword.

  Her demon blade hacked off the firewalker’s left hand at the wrist. He cried out and tried to bring up the weapon with his right hand only. Narina shoved her dragon at his belly, caught him under the rib cage, and lifted him completely off the ground as the blade pierced through his back. She threw him down, blade gliding neatly free.

  Tankred’s head tilted back as he landed, and his mouth opened as his eyes rolled back. Blood streamed out of his mouth, and his sowen dissolved like a clod of dirt thrown into a bucket of water, swirling for a moment before it dissipated. His eyes glazed, and the spark of life seemed to fade as she watched. Narina stared, stunned and unable to move.

  By the time she recovered, she expected to turn and find spearmen surrounding them, and a final struggle before they won the battle. Instead, the handful of survivors were trying to grab for horses that hadn’t either died or fled so they could ride to safety.

  Something twinged in her side. She looked down at where Tankred had cut her, at the long, thin line of blood seeping through. She sheathed her swords and felt at it. Nothing serious; firewalker wound or not, her sowen would close the wound shortly. In fact, it was already working to heal her.

  The battlefield was a mass of dead and dying, but at a glance, it seemed there were twenty or more of Tankred and Pongur’s men unaccounted for, apart from those killed and those who’d escaped.

  “Where are the rest of them?”

  Panting and sweating, Gyorgy pointed a sword across the tree trunk they’d used for defense as he gasped for air. “Other side of the hill. Dead.”

  “You killed them all? I didn’t even see you go back there.”

  “It wasn’t the boy,” came another voice, heavy with age. “I did it.”

  The voice belonged to Kozmer. Somehow she hadn’t seen him standing by himself among the bare branches of the fallen tree. He’d been partially shielded by several of the remaining horses, which now drifted away, confused and nervous.

  The elder limped toward them, staff abandoned, and in his hands were the sword and shield Pongur had been carrying when she cut him down. It was a sword she’d made herself. Other, similarly made weapons lay strewn about the battlefield. Turned out they’d done Lord Balint’s captain no good at all, and found their way back into the hands of the bladedancers.

  A sly smile crinkled Kozmer’s eyes and mouth. “I meant to hide until the battle was won, but matters sounded rather. . .thrilling. I figured I’d lend you a hand so you didn’t give me grief like last time.”

  Narina wiped her blades with a cloth and sheathed them. “You cunning old goat. You were using your sowen to hide.”

  “That and some horses that were otherwise unoccupied. I called them in, and they shielded me until I was armed and ready to fight. I’m not the warrior I was twenty years ago, or hell, ten years ago—deception is all I’ve got left.”

  “You were good enough, old man.”

  “Speaking of old goats,” Kozmer added, “Brutus is trying to get to his feet. Whatever else Andras did, his bitter herbs seem to have brought that beast back to life. Do you suppose we could get off this cursed hillside?”

  Narina wasn’t ready to think about that yet. She clamped a hand on Gyorgy’s shoulder. The boy still held his weapons in hand. “You did well, too. It’s time to train you to the next level.”

  Gyorgy cast his eyes around the battlefield. “Master, I don’t think we’re going to be doing much training anymore. Not until all of this is resolved.”

  At his words, Narina took in the battlefield herself, and couldn’t help but groan to see so many wasted lives. They had no time to deal with the dead, but she’d better figure out a way to haul away the bladedancer weapons. Couldn’t leave all those spearheads abandoned on the hillside, but Narina and her companions no longer had a cart, and there were too many to bundle on the goat’s back.

  They talked about fashioning a sling of sorts, to drag them behind, but in the end decided to wrap the temple-made weapons and the firebrand sword and bury them in the hollow of the fallen tree. There was a chance that someone would come along who could sense their presence, but with the already unsettled auras on the hillside even more chaotic after the slaughter of Tankred and his men, she thought this unlikely.

  Kozmer gathered the weapons and a couple of cloaks of fallen soldiers to wrap them in while Narina and Gyorgy used lowland spears and swords to dig. Narina softened the soil with her sowen, and it came up easily, along with bones and rusting armor from t
he ancient battle. Once they had a small hollow excavated, they filled it in again, tamped down the dirt, and dragged over the body of a horse to lay on top of it so nobody would see the disturbed soil.

  Some twenty minutes had passed since the battle ended, and Brutus bellowed impatiently from the opposite side of the fallen tree trunk where Kozmer had left him.

  “So, off the hillside. Then what?” Narina asked Kozmer.

  He leaned against his staff and lifted a shaggy eyebrow. “You want my advice?”

  “Do I want it? Not really, no.” She sighed. “But you’ve been right so far. I may as well start listening.”

  “I might otherwise have suggested we return to the temple,” Kozmer said. “But you sent people to the firewalker temple. This sohn you killed was one of them. What if the whole temple was waiting to ambush Abelard and Katalinka?”

  It was a chilling thought. Hopefully, they were all right.

  “What do you mean, otherwise?”

  “There’s the small matter of Manet Tuzzia.”

  “What about it?” she asked.

  “I guess you haven’t noticed. Might want to take a glance to the south.”

  Earlier in the day, when Brutus had taken ill, the mountain sitting at the mouth of the canyon leading up to the temple had been sending up a steady plume of smoke. It had seemed to be quieting from its fiery eruption. That would be a relief for the people of Hooffent, who’d faced the risk of fire, and must have grown tired of working with rags tied around their mouths and of sweeping away ash every morning.

  But now the entire southern sky was black, as if the world’s darkest storm had rolled down from the highest peaks. Except it wasn’t clouds blotting the sky, but rather a massive column of ash and soot that rose from the crown of Manet Tuzzia. Whatever had poured out of the volcano on their descent was dwarfed by the scale of the current eruption.