In Siege of Daylight
Page 74
The Painted Man,
he danced in shadows.
Something, something…
Osrith forgot the rest. Reciting poetry had never been his strong suit.
He surveyed the battlefield, glancing past the flailing guardsmen and the snarling hrumm. The violence seemed out of place in the careful symmetry of the aulden garden. Blossoms fell from the redberry trees, gentle flurries of pink and white fluff curling through the air like snow. Inulf grimaced as he grappled with a hrumm, hand-to-hand. Both tumbled into the stillness of the reflecting pool, splashing in the shallow waters under the serene stares of aulden statuary.
There he is.
Calvraign and Callagh and Foss’ man, Reime, had found the graomwrnokk’s pakh ma, a huge brute with more ink than flesh on his exposed face. The boy was fighting hard, finding a rhythm, using the cover of the trees to his advantage, but he was avoiding Pheydreyr’s embrace by a hair’s breadth, and likely not for much longer. The hrumm fended off Calvraign’s blows on a sturdy kite shield that bristled with three feathered shafts. One arrow hung loosely in the weave of its chain mail. Callagh was poised to loose another, looking for an opening.
Osrith stormed forward at a hard sprint. The pakh ma wielded a bastard sword one-handed, a feat of strength, to be sure, a show of what the hrumm called fhaogk, proof of might. Dominance. But for all its brawn, the balance of the blade was not meant for such a stance, and its speed and leverage suffered. It was a mistake that served to Calvraign’s advantage, and Osrith hoped would serve to keep the boy alive a few moments longer.
“Oz!” Markus called from the steps.
Osrith only spared a glance over his shoulder. The erstwhile cook was cranking his crossbow and blowing a drop of sweat off of his upper lip. He was kneeling on the stairway with Foss and what was left of the crossbowmen.
“They’re knockin’ on the back door!” he shouted.
“Well, hold fast,” Osrith yelled back, irritated. “I can’t fly up there to help.”
Markus muttered something under his breath, but Osrith didn’t waste further thought on Cookie or his unpleasant commentary. He was a few long strides from delivering his own lesson on fhaogk to the hrummish war-chieftan, and he had no time or attention to spare. Reime was down, holding in his guts, and Calvraign’s sword was caught on the pakh ma’s shield. The giant hrumm aimed the deadly length of its blade at the boy’s chest for a killing thrust. Osrith realized, just footsteps away, just an axe-length from saving him, that he would be too late.
Too late.
He should have been too late. But the bastard sword skewed off, parried into thin air, and Calvraign landed a riposte to its abdomen, drawing blood and a disconcerted howl. Osrith blinked. It almost seemed that just as he was turning his attention toward Calvraign and away from Markus, it was almost as if there were two of him fighting the hrumm.
But then Osrith was there in the melee himself, and he worried nothing for shadows or tricks of the light. The hrumm turned, bracing against the charge, but Osrith only feinted a cleaving strike, instead hooking its shield, pulling it out and away. As the hrumm lurched forward, Osrith stabbed it under the chin with the razor tip of his pointed axe haft. An arrow screamed into the pakh ma’s chest, and Calvraign struck twice – impossibly fast, Osrith noted – one thrust to the sword arm and one to the chest.
Markus half-ran, half-fell, down the stairs to the garden, his crossbow tumbling before him. Hrumm had reached and overwhelmed the landing. Foss was trying to hold them, but he was the last man standing, and that was not likely to be for much longer.
A raven squawked, taking wing from the tree at Callagh’s back.
Osrith’s lungs burned, but he heaved his long axe back for one last blow.
Thunder rumbled in the enclosure of the garden. There was no sharp crack of lightning preceding it, only the deep booming peal of the aftershock. Osrith saw the pakh ma’s eyes widen an instant before a gale of blistering air threw them both from their feet. The blast flattened him to the turf and his axe flew from his grip.
Osrith spat out a mouthful of dirt.
That would be the shadowyn, then, he thought. A big one. That’s Kassakan’s cue.
Osrith watched as black flames coalesced into a shape that was vaguely man-like, but writhing with more than its share of appendages. It dominated the steps of the reflecting pool, casting its limbs out, a strange chant on its unseen lips. A body dropped from its slithering arms into the water. Osrith recognized the inert form with a muttered curse.
Hiruld. That means the kin…
“Kassakan!” he screamed, regaining his feet.
The pakh ma also rose, blood streaming from its wounds, staggering but still hefting its sword with menacing purpose. Calvraign was on one knee, shaking his head and trying to stand. Callagh was face-first in the dirt next to Reime, rising slowly. Osrith drew his sword and took position between them and the hrumm. He was reluctant to turn a blind eye to the shadowyn, but the pakh ma was too close to ignore.
Kassakan was supposed to be here if the shadowyn showed up. Her… and help, besides.
But there was no sign of her. Osrith feared for the first time that perhaps she hadn’t succeeded in her mission. The truth of it was, until this moment, he had hoped that she would fail. Now, he was hoping that she came through with the lesser of two evils. Soon.
“Hah! You hungry, huh? Eh?” Inulf’s taunt gave Osrith some consolation that his back wasn’t left completely exposed. “Come take a bite, skarl!”
That’s a few more drips of the water clock, Osrith thought. Where are you, lizard?
Osrith closed the distance with the pakh ma faster than he thought entirely wise, but he needed to create more space for Calvraign and Callagh, or it would be on them first. It fell back, parrying, but Osrith was inside its guard and his sword hilt deep in its chest before it could counter.
It was a mortal blow, but the hrumm appeared in no hurry to accept its fate. It didn’t scream. It didn’t shout out any last heroic battle cry. It seized Osrith by the neck, claws scraping against mail, and threw him to the ground. It landed on top of him, crushing him into the dirt, knocking the breath from him. It smashed his head against a decorative marble tree-nape that lurked in frozen frolic beneath the trees. Osrith twisted, deflecting the blow on the crown of his helm. It lifted him up and pounded his head down again, this time striking the side of his face on the garden ornament.
The crack of Osrith’s cheekbone fracturing echoed between his ears like the splitting of a great belwood. His vision blurred. He lashed out with his leg, kicking the hrumm in the gut. The pakh ma fell back, staggering. Osrith pulled on the blood-wet head of the marble nape, freeing it from the dirt with a lurch. The hrumm pounced again, one claw slicing a gash across Osrith’s temple while the other snagged in the tight links of his kin-made mail, missing his throat by a claw’s breadth. Osrith hit the hrumm across the side of its head with the statue, and then again, and once more. It reeled, eyes losing focus, and Osrith pushed it over. For good measure, he brought the heavy chunk of stone down on the hrumm’s head with all his remaining strength. Then twice more until its skull cracked. With a wet thud its face caved in and its tenuous grip on life was finally severed.
“Kassakan!” Osrith struggled to one knee, wavering, breathing hard. Blood streamed into his left eye, but he could make out Callagh, still on the ground, not far away. Calvraign was on his feet, approaching the shadowyn. Osrith blinked his eye clear. He thought another warrior joined the boy, but in another blink the fleeting image was gone. Osrith’s hand groped in the grass for his axe, and his fingers closed around the haft with a measure of relief.
“Back to the Pits with you!” Inulf’s sword was wedged into the shadowyn’s torso. It wrapped him in a flurry of tentacles. He continued to rip at it with his bare hands, trying to pull apart its shadowy maw. “I’ll drag ye back. Drag ye back to grey.” The appendages constricted, stealing his breath. “Back,” he grunted, lips curling to reveal his stained t
eeth, his muscles like corded steel. “Back to the Pits.”
The shadowyn responded only by continuing its dirge, the alien words and dissonant tone grating on their ears. Its serpentine limbs constricted tighter, tighter. Inulf was silent now, every breath a snarl of defiance, no time for words, struggling against the shadowborn’s embrace, struggling until there was a sickening, hollow snap. Inulf slipped into the pool with a quiet splash.
Osrith stood. The garden spun around him. He stumbled forward, dragging his axe behind. He grit his teeth, trying to bring the world into focus, but two images danced a dizzying dance in his eyes. In one, Calvraign attacked alone. In the other, his shadow joined him, a blur of nothing following his footsteps.
“Kassakan!” Osrith screamed again, his voice cracking and hoarse. He started to run, but his head swam and he stumbled. He fell to one knee.
Calvraign’s sword was a flash against the dark of the shadowyn – his strokes measured but sure. The shadowyn lashed back, striking fast, but its limbs curled away just shy of landing a blow, as if burned by fire.
Not now, you old fool. Get up. Get up or he’s done.
Osrith saw Hestan torn in two all over again. He watched Andrew burn. He could smell it, taste the acrid stench on his tongue. He staggered forward, but despite all the assurance of bards, determination alone could not heal wounds or win battles. He couldn’t make it there. Not in time to help. Gathering his remaining strength, he heaved his axe back over his head in both hands. He took what steps he could, as fast as he could, and brought his arms forward, snapping them as they cleared his head, launching the axe end over end in a throw that would surely have won a ribbon at the Harvest Festival.
The axe hummed through the air and struck the shadowyn in the middle of its incongruous mass. It made a sound that Osrith hoped was a scream. It wavered. Callagh loosed an arrow into it, and it flinched again, to Osrith’s surprise. Usually only kinsteel or bonded weapons could pierce a creature from the other side of the Veil. Such had always been his experience.
Osrith didn’t frown on Oghran’s fortune, however. If a girl wearing a bloodmask could harm the demons, so much the better. Callagh stood back, straddling Reime’s corpse, a bloody arrow nocked at her cheek. Calvraign and his ghostly protector converged, forcing the shadowyn deeper into the pool and away from the motionless prince.
Osrith prepared to yell Kassakan’s name one final time when the courtyard came to life in dancing lights and shimmering rainbow fire. He blinked into the light, searching for his friend. She was there, a silhouette of light dispelling the blackness that engulfed the pool.
And, for better or for worse, she was not alone.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
SUCCESSION
CALLAGH lifted herself up on her elbows and tried to shake the buzzing rising behind her ears. It was not one voice calling to her now, or a dozen, but hundreds of them. She recognized them, somehow. The voices of the dead. The madhwr-rwn. The drone swelled into a crescendo, skittering through her thoughts like the screaming trees of a cicada summer, pushing at her, pulling at her, prying at her will.
Reime lay next to her, lifeless, still clutching the mess of his guts in his pale fingers. Calvraign rose unsteadily to his feet. Osrith yelled for Kassakan and rammed into the hrummish pakh ma in a careless crash of steel and flesh. They tumbled in the dirt. A dozen ravens clutched the tree limbs around her, eyes empty and black, staring. The largest cocked its head at her, waiting… Waiting for her.
To do what? she wondered.
“Ahn cranaoght,” Reime whispered, eyes still blank in death.
“Ach,” Callagh said. “I’ve not time for a pithy li’l talk, now.”
“I’ve time for us both. Just enough.”
“Bollocks.”
“You showed me a kindness once. More than I deserved, and more than I give back, but this is my kindness to you: let her have him. Give the Grey Lady her due. The madhwr-rwn are the strength of those who’ve come before. We are less without him. You are less.”
“Less o’ me’s more than enough,” Callagh growled, scrabbling in the dirt for her bow.
“No, ahn cranaoght,” said Old Bones. “Not for this.”
Osrith had pummeled the life from the pakh ma, and Calvraign was heading for the battle at the reflecting pool. Inulf’s raging had ceased, rather suddenly, and Callagh felt a darkness encroaching that she couldn’t truly see, like the air thickening before a storm. She pulled an arrow from the cracked quiver at her feet. She jabbed it deep into her thigh and yanked it out with a grimace. More than blood spilled from that wound. She let the heat of life leave her, too, a measured bit, giving it over to the barbed steel of the arrow just as she’d surrendered a piece of herself to the amulet.
Not so hard, she thought. She stood, her injured leg bleeding but firm, and drew the bowstring to her cheek.
“Shush, now,” she whispered with a tap of her toe to the corpse’s head, and waited for a clear shot. Calvraign stabbed and sliced at the shadowyn. Ibhraign swatted away its counter-attacks. Osrith staggered forward, still calling for Kassakan, bloodied and dizzy. Callagh waited for her moment. The buzzing in her head screamed bring him home, but her aim on the shadowyn never wavered.
Osrith threw his axe, and it flew into the creature’s mid-section. The shadowyn writhed in response, mouth agape, and Callagh loosed her arrow into the open maw. It screamed again when the shaft struck true, and her heart thrilled. Her elation was momentary, as neither Osrith’s axe nor her well-placed arrow brought it down.
“You would empty yourself to slay this Darkness, and this is not the darkest yet you must face. Not if you wish to save our people.”
Callagh took another arrow, hesitating. As binding as what you give over. If she needed to give herself over, all of her, she’d need more than a pinprick, but something slower than a heart thrust. She’d need time to take aim and loose the arrow, at least.
“All of you to kill this shadowyn and save your boy. Only a bit of you to bring Ibhraign home and save the Cythe,” Old Bones reasoned. “Then, together, you – we – the madhwr-rwn, may fight the coming Dark. But only with the strength of all who’ve come before.”
“I’ll save ‘em both and the bloody world besides.”
“Bold talk. Empty words. To slay the Dark would take what’s left of you, and some of us besides. The price is too dear.”
The dead man’s words scratched at the gilt of her bravado. “I’ll pay any price,” she said, hiding her doubt behind her defiance. What will you give up for him? she asked herself.
“Ahh,” sighed Old Bones. “Doomed by a little girl’s heart where I thought a woman’s will resided. I’m disappointed, ahn cranaoght. I thought better of you. But I am spent. The choices worth making are never easy ones, and I leave you to yours. Be quick, or She will make it for you.”
So make your choice, then, she chastised herself. Calvraign fought without fail before her, sparing not a glance in her direction as he edged closer to the discarded body of the prince. He’s made his. He made it long ago.
A brilliance erupted from the pool, and the Darkness shrank back, leaving her in shadow. The ravens took flight, launching into the air like a cloud of midnight. The droning of voices ebbed to a soft prickling behind her ears until only one remained.
Do what must be done, Callagh Breigh.
A tight ache squeezed her chest, followed by a familiar shortness of breath.
I can’t force you to act, but I can keep you from acting. Do My will, or you’ll do no one’s.
“I’ll not let Cal die,” she hissed. “And I’ll not betray his da’ – not for you or anyone. That’s not my way.” Keep to the old ways, ahn cranaoght. The words repeated in her head as she sought an answer. A bargain. The Old Gods love to make a bargain… a trade. She steeled herself, a plan sputtering from her lips before she’d even thought it through to conclusion. “But… but I can take his place. I’ll be your bloody Hand. Do you hear me? Take me for him.”
“Aye, I will,” Callagh nodded. “And so’ll you. Release your claim on him, and I’ll go willingly.”
Reime’s corpse twitched, jaw working over empty words. The amulet burned in warning. Don’t approve now, do ya? Leave me to it, Old Bones. Leave me to my choice. Callagh grasped the talisman tighter, even as it felt that her hand was consumed by fire.
Life for life. Soul for soul. Duty for duty.
Callagh cut carefully through skin and vein but spared her tendon. She would need the tendon. Hot tears streaked down her blood-daubed cheeks as fresh blood flowed down her arm, warm and wet, but her heart beat cold and empty in her breast. Colder and emptier with every breath.
“Life for life. Soul for soul. Duty for duty.”
Dazed and empty inside, she let the crimson shaft fly.
Two-Moons paused in the rainbow of the Wellspring’s passage.
Never leap into battle, little Ebuouki man, when you may come quietly to victory at a walk. If time moves too fast, then slow it down. Slow…
Two-Moons concentrated on halting his momentum, bringing himself sailing to a gentle stop at the way-gate’s edge while Kassakan came through before him. The hosskan had bound several spells together in Oszmagoth, before they entered the Wellspring, and she unleashed the first of them immediately. Lightning was a nice choice, he thought, as it both illuminated and burned things of the Dark. The shadowyn recoiled. Had the world tides not been turned, perhaps she might even defeat it without assistance.
He allowed T’nkh’t’chk and a dozen of his k’th’t egress from the Way. There were hrumm milling about still, and it would be best to silence any distractions.
A curious assortment of mortals, he thought, though he recognized only the hosskan’s bond-slave from the Sunken City, laying about half-dead.
Two-Moons pulled at the wandering thoughts of his other self. “Osrith,” he said aloud, in a whisper that echoed in the torn fabric of the Veil that surrounded them.