No, he reminded himself. Not anymore.
They looked through gaps in the wall and saw roaring flames at the heart of the ferocious melee. Kleiderhorn ordered his men to push through, and Dane and Kruje readied their weapons.
“It’s that way.” Kleiderhorn pointed at the doorway, which stood at the end of the great hall. They’d have to go directly through part of the Phage forces to get to it. “The passage on the other side leads to a cave under the docks.” He looked at Dane. “Good luck.”
Dane nodded. He looked to his Voss ally, who regarded him with a stoic expression. “Out,” Dane said.
“Out,” Kruje repeated. There was something like a smile on the giant’s broad face.
It was time to fight their way free.
Sixty-Seven
Kleiderhorn picked up a crossbow. The battle was horrifying. Bordrec had seen people die, had even ordered them killed, but the carnage before him nearly made him sick.
He watched the Dawn Knight and the Voss as they went, the unlikeliest duo he’d ever seen, and found himself impressed by their resolve. They stepped into the great hall and hacked through Phage soldiers with relentless fury.
Bordrec loaded a crossbow and slung a quarrel case over his shoulder. He was no warrior – he barely even knew how to shoot – but it seemed he was going to get some fighting in whether he wanted to or not. His face still stung where Dane had struck him, but he let the pain make him angry. Anger was the only thing keeping his fear in check.
I never should have let it come to this.
Kleiderhorn was glad to have met the knight. It had been surprisingly easy to take him at his word, especially considering how naturally distrusting Bordrec was of most people. He could only imagine the mental torment the Dawn Knights must have gone through after what they’d done. It was ignorant to believe they were all evil, and while many of them had doubtlessly enjoyed the slaughter there had to be some, like Dane, who’d just been following orders.
I hope he can help you more than I could, Ijanna.
She was a good person, just as her father had been. Jonas had seen his fair share of horrors, so many he’d taken his leave from polite society after his experiences in the Heartfang Wastes. His friend since childhood, Jonas had always sided with Bordrec, even when he shouldn’t have. Kleiderhorn had spent many nights wishing the Phage had killed him instead of his only true friend – they’d tried, but Jonas had stepped up to protect him, at the cost of his own life.
Bordrec was shaking. Memory of how Jonas died sent waves of weakness through his body. His nerves were frayed, and he was so frightened he could barely stand. He stood with his back against the wall and watched as his mercenaries and Wolf Brigade soldiers struggled against Harrick’s cold-blooded killers. The sounds of combat hammered in his ears. This was never where he’d wanted to end up, but it was too late now.
“Jonas,” he said quietly, so quiet he couldn’t even hear himself over the roaring flames and the din of battle. “Ijanna. I’m sorry.”
He took a deep breath, readied the crossbow, and fired through a gap in the wall. His heart pounded. An arrow whizzed by. Kleiderhorn saw a pair of trolls attack a great iron sphere with suicidal abandon.
Kleiderhorn steadied himself, reloaded the crossbow, and fired again, then picked a short sword up from the ground and called for whoever was left to follow him into battle.
Sixty-Eight
It was time. Gess was ready, and Slayne had sent Syn off to fetch Aram Keyes and tell him they’d secured the Dream Witch. Shadows dotted the dull light near the cave entrance as men hauled crates filled with Serpentheart canisters down the tunnel.
He watched Vellexa. She’d be the first to die, he decided, after the canisters were deployed. He’d keep his word and take her son to safety, but Slayne had spent so much of his life eliminating Bloodspeakers with single-minded brutality he saw no reason to let this one live. She’d be one less plagued soul polluting the world.
There was a veritable war taking place on the other side of the circular door. From the sound of things Harrick’s Eggs were tearing the place apart. Wolf Brigade and the trolls wouldn’t go down without a fight, not that it mattered. In a few minutes they’d all be dead.
Lose stones fell from the ceiling, and the ground trembled. The onyx portal shook in place, and the Black Eagles drew their weapons and gathered around the door.
Aram Keyes strode down the hall flanked by a pair of grey-skinned Tuscars. Keyes was a hideous creature, wrapped in soiled red cloth which left only the scalded flesh of his bald head and his dead yellow eyes exposed. A dozen men followed him with the crates.
“Where is the Dream Witch?” Keyes growled.
“Safe,” Vellexa said. “They’re bringing her up now.”
It was all the answer Keyes needed. He nodded to his men, and they threw open the crates. Dozens of egg-sized metal spheres were passed forward. Keyes’s diseased and tattered men armed themselves with leather bandoliers stuffed with Serpentheart bombs. Slayne realized they intended to deploy the magical disease personally.
Goddess, you idiots really are insane.
“Open the door,” Keyes commanded.
The onyx slab rolled into the wall with an ear-shattering groan, but it wasn’t any of Slayne’s men who’d moved it. A blast of heat came through the open doorway. Slayne heard the deafening ring of steel and the cries of dying men, but even those were largely drowned out by the thunderous motion of the Iron Eggs.
A massive black-skinned giant with powerful rune-carved muscles and bright white eyes stood on the other side of the door. He yielded a gore-soaked axe the size of a lance. Slayne’s eyes widened. The Voss fearlessly swung its weapon as it barreled into the passage. Tuscars leapt to Keyes’s defense only to be cleaved apart. Keyes’s men scattered, but a few brave Tuscars were smashed underfoot as the giant charged forward.
The Black Eagles fired their arrows, but the missiles stopped short of the Voss, repelled by some invisible force that sent them to the ground with a clatter.
Slayne looked at Gess, questioning. The Veilwarden seemed to have found who’d stopped the arrows, and he stood watching the newcomer with a sinister smile on his face. Slayne followed Gess’s gaze to a figure standing behind the Voss. The man was ragged and blonde-haired, a knight armed with a wicked vra’taar. It was a weapon and a man Marros Slayne hadn’t seen in years, and one he’d never thought to see again.
His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. His blood burned with rage.
“Happy day,” Gess said with a grin. “It’s Azander Dane.”
Sixty-Nine
Harrick thrust the two thar’koon blades together at the hilt, and his mind flew apart. His screams eclipsed the thunderous din of the Iron Eggs.
He was a child again, sucking on his mother’s teat. He was a young boy, running through his dark house in the rain-soaked city of Blackmoon. He was ten years old, looking out at the grey and rocky coast with tears in his eyes. He was thirteen and now without a mother, as she’d been murdered by rival smugglers, and he finally saw the world for what it truly was, a hopeless and bloody place which hated him as much as he hated it.
Men fell onto each other’s swords. Axes came down and split skulls. Torsos flew apart into bloody soup. The Eggs scorched and crushed and melted flesh and bone down to liquid, but Harrick sat unnoticed at the center of it all, laughing even as he wept.
Harrick had turned sixteen the day he murdered his father. He’d finally grown tired of the old man’s lies, and he’d needed to take the anger he felt over his mother’s death out on someone. He saw something of her in every woman he’d ever been with, even the whores, and he’d seen her floating over him in the moonlight when he’d pushed his father off the balcony and onto the rocky shore below. He saw her in Erys, and their resemblance was so uncanny he sometimes wondered if his wife wasn’t his mother reborn.
All of the pain Harrick had ever felt over the course of his whole life crashed though his
consciousness like a tide. It pushed at his skull and tore at his heart, and when at last he was able to stand he’d forgotten all about the thar’koon, all about Bordrec Kleiderhorn and Blackhall and the Dream Witch. He just wanted to go home.
Three fingers from his left hand had been burned away by the Egg’s fiery blast, and two from his right had been severed by the blades. His face was a charred ruin, and his left eye was a bloody mess. Harrick felt skin slide off his face.
There was no pain. He felt nothing but regret.
Harrick struggled out of the bowl, eager to be away from the underground city. He had to get home, had to get to Erys and tell how much he loved her, how sorry he was for all the terrible things he’d done, how he would quit his life with the Phage for her…how he had the strength to do what his father never could and put his wife before his career of crime.
He couldn’t feel his body. His eyes were so welled with tears he didn’t see the swordsman coming at him until Narr cleaved through the man with his axe. Narr caught Harrick as he fell, and some of Harrick’s slimy blood and skin peeled off and clung to the Drage as he set his employer down and fended off an attacking red-skinned beast.
Harrick watched Narr’s brains splatter onto the floor. He chuckled to himself as an Iron Egg rolled over the crimson brute and crushed it to gooey pulp. A hole appeared at the top of the Egg. The pilot popped out and shouted something down at Harrick. An arrow caught the man in the throat and he fell forward, blood running from his mouth.
It was difficult to get to his feet. Harrick wept as he struggled up the slight handholds on the face of the Egg. The metal was scalding hot, and suddenly he felt pain again, and he howled in agony. Blinding hurt flared through his collapsing body as he climbed. Bits of his skin stuck to the metal and pulled from his bones.
A crossbow bolt plunged into his chest, and his breath seized. He fell forward through the open portal on top of the Egg and into the pilot’s seat. The burning in his ears rang like waterfalls. He couldn’t see through the pain.
Harrick had piloted an Egg before. The seat was in a tightly enclosed space surrounded by dozens of levers, pedals and cranks. He reflexively pulled the correct switchs without thinking and sealed the hatch with an audible thud. An image of the area around the Egg was magically projected into his fragmented mind by Vossian neuro-magic, and he saw clearly in spite of his blinding pain. His body seared with hurt at even the slightest motion, but Harrick grit what was left of his teeth and pressed down on the pedals, spinning the vehicle into motion.
He saw but couldn’t hear bodies as he crushed them under the Egg. Harrick pulled a lever and activated the flame jets, setting men on fire as the vehicle barreled into a stone pillar and crushed it to stony debris.
Harrick was going home.
Seventy
Dane leapt forward and killed two Black Eagles with a single swing of his vra’taar. Blood covered his face as he looked at a man he thought was already dead.
“Slayne,” he growled. He threw himself at his former brother-in-arms. Slayne sidestepped the attack and caught Dane with a glancing blow across the shoulder, then reached for a ring’tai. Dane kicked him in the stomach and doubled him over. He slashed at Slayne’s throat, but the older man was faster and dodged the attack.
Kruje smashed two Black Eagles into bloody clay with his axe but took a terrible wound in his leg from a long blade. A pair of arrows landed in the giant’s shoulder.
Dane saw Vellexa back away with the diseased-looking Guild men. He didn’t have time to worry about her.
A Veilwarden with short hair and pallid skin sent a sphere of crackling electricity screaming at Dane’s head. He rolled forward and avoided the magic, which exploded against the wall behind him. Dane ducked beneath a Black Eagle’s sword and took his attacker down with a thrust of his blade in the man’s groin.
Dane rose in time to see the Veilwarden bind Kruje in glowing spiked chains, and he only narrowly dodged a ring’tai as it went flying past his chest. Black Eagles moved in from every direction as the diseased men clustered around the fight, their hands on small metal spheres strapped to their bodies.
Slayne smiled wickedly, but just then something large sprang from the shadows, a furred lupine form with terrifying claws and blood-red eyes, the same beast that had earlier attacked Dane. It jumped on Slayne from behind and tore into his back.
Dane turned and drove his vra’taar into a charging Black Eagle, desperate to fight his way free.
Seventy-One
Slayne was smothered in a mass of claws and teeth. Blood ran from his rent flesh. His face painfully smacked against stone. Something crushed him from behind, and saliva fell onto his neck.
He found a ring’tai on his belt and jabbed back into his attacker, forcing it off of him. Long claws ripped from his shoulders, and Slayne growled in pain as he found his sword and turned around.
A hideous creature stood before him, humanoid but massive, with bristling grey fur and enormous claws and fangs. Its head was that of a wolf, a nightmare beast from a children’s horror story. Slayne dove into the creature and forced it against the wall.
A blade dug into his shoulder from behind, and pain flashed down his body. He twisted around and saw Vellexa, weapon in hand, so he slashed her across the face with his ring’tai. She screamed and fell, and Slayne moved in to finish her off when the wolf ripped into his back and sent him to the ground. Slayne stabbed into its haunch, spraying blood everywhere.
He rose to his feet, his heart pounding furiously. Slayne spat at the wolf, and it came at him once more.
Seventy-Two
Dane wrestled a Black Eagle woman to the ground. His vra’taar locked against her serrated blade as they struggled in a knot of limbs. Blood and sweat ran in his eyes. Dane finally managed to force himself on top of her and plant his knee in her stomach. Her arm fell, and he sliced open her throat with the short end of his blade.
He should have been dead, but the rest of the Jlantrians were suddenly occupied with rescuing Slayne from the lupine assassin. Dane saw Vellexa scurry out of the cave, blood gushing from her face. The diseased Guild men filed through the door into Black Sun…all save one, who stood quietly in the open doorway with his arms folded in triumph.
Kruje struggled to free himself from the chains. Streams of his black blood fell to the floor. The short-haired Veilwarden was locked in concentration, entirely focused on the giant. Dane raced forward, but without even turning the Veilwarden held out a hand and Dane was thrown against the wall like a child’s toy. The impact drove the air from his lungs, and pain lanced down his shoulder.
Something enormous came down the passage beyond the open door. The metallic roar of an Iron Egg enveloped the cave. A Black Eagle backed away from the door and right into Dane, so he skewered the man on his blade and let his body drop to the ground.
The Veilwarden closed his fists and tightened the chains around Kruje, but the thunderous approach of the egg distracted him just long enough for Dane to leap forward and slice his hand off. The man screamed and fell to the ground holding his gushing stump.
The chains vanished. Kruje ran from the approaching Egg and down the corridor with Dane right on his heels. The grind of metal on stone drowned out the screams behind them.
The tunnel shook. Chunks of rock fell in their path, and the ceiling looked ready to collapse at any moment. Dane and Kruje cut their way through wide-eyed Tuscars and moved as fast as their exhausted legs could carry them until they reached the rocky shore, where they dove headlong into the freezing waters.
Seventy-Three
“Ready!” Kleiderhorn shouted. The Iron Egg bore down on them, but he’d finally come up with a way to beat the damned things.
Bodies were everywhere. Kleiderhorn had been on the verge of vomiting the instant he’d stepped into the battle. His heart and his mind raced. Strangely he no longer felt any concern for his own safety. He’d hacked through three men with his short blade, and blood oozed down his side from an
arrow he’d taken in the ribs. He didn’t even feel any pain.
The Egg had Bordrec and two of his men trapped between itself and a damaged pillar. The pair of mercenaries held their crossbows ready. Bordrec wasn’t sure if his plan would work or not, but it was the best idea he’d been able to come up.
The Egg rolled to within a few yards. Kleiderhorn threw a pair of scythespheres at the floor directly in its path. They detonated in twin bursts of silver light and formed a sizable rift in the ground, and the Egg fell into the hole with a deafening boom. It struggled to roll free, grinding rock and sending up sparks, but before it could get clear Bordrec threw a third sphere at the Egg itself and formed an opening over the cockpit. Crossbow bolts slammed into the shocked pilot’s chest, and he slumped over in his seat.
Kleiderhorn laughed and cheered, but not for long. A thick and bloody mist came from out of nowhere and filled the air in the shattered hall. Men from both sides of the battle screamed and ran, and those who stood their ground fell to the ground clawing at their throats.
Bordrec realized too late that the last Egg was screaming towards the pillar next to him. He turned to run, his courage suddenly gone. The mist seemed to chase him. A hundred bodiless screams echoed through the Vossian temple.
The Egg slammed into the pillar. Shards of rock flew from the impact, and a large slab of jagged stone dislodged from the ceiling, fell on Bordrec and pinned him to the floor.
He couldn’t feel a thing, and he couldn’t move. He saw with detached shock that his legs had been crushed.
Red mist swept over him and forced its way into his lungs. He thought of Ijanna, and hoped she was all right. It was the last thought he had before he vomited blood and died.
Seventy-Four
Everything was red. Harrick piloted the Egg down the hall at maximum speed, destroying everything in his path. He heard music in his head, a sweeping crescendo which made him fly. He couldn’t recall the title of the piece, but Erys had always loved it.
Bodies exploded beneath the vehicle. Thick red mist erupted from men who just stood and waited for the Egg to crush them. A solid fog of blood smoke trailed the Egg, and Harrick saw in the vehicle’s mental projection that the iron shell was slick with gore.
City of Scars (The Skullborn Trilogy, Book 1) Page 29