by John Marco
The big Aramoorian clamored forward, stopping yards away from the wounded greegan. Trosk held up his hands to the animal.
‘Easy, you big idiot. I just want you to move.’
If the creature heard him it did not obey. It merely wailed in pain, pulverizing the dead body of the horse as it thrashed about. Trosk stole a glance toward the sky. Mere moments remained.
‘Move, damn you!’ he shouted, then backed quickly away from the targeted animal. Dinadin arrived next to him just as the shower of flaming arrows came down. The wagon erupted in flame, its huge bellows expanding in an instant. The licking flames caught the rump of the greegan and ignited the oil smeared across its back. The greegan wailed and lunged forward. Trosk yelled and stumbled. Blackness filled his vision as the greegan rumbled forward, then collapsed, its two front legs crumbling beneath its gargantuan weight. Trosk twisted, trying to jump clear of the falling beast. His face and chest hit the ground and he clawed madly at the dirt, cursing. He saw a shadow dropping over him, saw Lotts’ horrified face, then more blackness and a pain so indescribable he thought his lungs would burst.
The greegan had fallen. It lay across his crushed legs, slobbering blood and dragging itself over him, grinding him into the ground and shattering his bones.
‘Lotts!’ he screamed. Blood filled his mouth, gushing up from his insides. ‘Lotts, help me!’
The Aramoorian didn’t move. He merely stood there, his face hidden behind the grotesque demon mask, and watched as Trosk reached out for him. Trosk felt an icy panic seize him. He couldn’t move.
‘Lotts, you idiot, help me! My legs are caught. Help me, goddamn it!’
And still Lotts didn’t stir. Trosk twisted his neck and saw the wagon immersed in smoky fire. The greegan had stopped moving. But now the bellows of the acid launcher were moving, blowing up like an enormous balloon.
‘Lotts, please!’ Trosk cried. Hysterical tears were running down his face. The bellows made a weird, unhealthy screech. ‘Please!’ he screamed again. ‘Lotts, I’ll give you anything! Anything!’
The Aramoorian took a small step forward. Trosk’s heart leapt with hope.
‘Do you remember the girl?’ came the inhuman voice beneath the helmet. ‘There’s only one thing I want, Colonel. And I’m getting it right now.’
Then, without another word, Lotts turned and walked away. Trosk twisted again and saw the groaning bellows through the flames, stretched to an impossible size. A trickle of yellow steam rose from a pinprick in its surface. The hole widened with a shudder, vomiting up a cloud of corrosive vapor.
It was the last thing Trosk saw before his eyeballs burst.
The first thing Lucyler saw when he opened his eyes was the sky. There was an insistent pounding in his temples, and the sky was bright, burning his skin with its heat. His face hurt. His arms hurt, too. Men were calling after him. He heard his name as if from a great distance. And he heard Kronin’s name.
Kronin. Where was he?
Lucyler struggled onto his side. There was a figure in the grass next to him, its limbs unnaturally twisted. Lucyler put his hand to his face, remembering the concussive blast that had knocked him from his horse. His face ached. The sleeve of his blue jacket hung from his left side in tatters, and the white skin beneath had been singed a ruddy red. The pain was unspeakable. Lucyler crawled to where the figure lay, dragging himself with his good arm. He pushed away the tall grass and saw Kronin sprawled facedown in the dirt. The warlord’s hair was almost gone, burned away from his scalp. There was a giant tear along his back, a rent that had ripped through his clothing and devoured his flesh so that the bony facets of his spine protruded. Kronin wasn’t moving, not even to draw the slightest breath.
‘Oh, no, no,’ Lucyler moaned, slumped over the warlord’s corpse. Hakan and another warrior rode up. There was a long, grief-stricken silence before the herald spoke.
‘Kronin is killed!’ he said incredulously. ‘He is killed . . .’
Around them horses thundered past as the men of Tatterak rode toward their enemies, but Lucyler didn’t lift his head. He stayed draped over the dead warlord, feeling the warmness of Kronin’s bloodied back on his chest and letting the steaming fluid drench his clothes. He was sobbing, and he didn’t know why. Was Kronin so great a friend? Barely able to straighten, Lucyler lifted himself off the inert body. Hakan was staring at him sorrowfully.
‘We will avenge him,’ seethed Lucyler. ‘We will fight these men and we will push them into the swamps. And we will drown them there.’
‘Come off me, you little bastard,’ spat Richius as he worked the tip of his dagger under the mouth of the leech. It was the last one, or so he hoped. Somehow he had missed it. The swamps, Voris had neglected to tell him, were full of the slimy parasites, and he had spent the last few hours impatiently working them off his flesh with his blade. Except for this one. This one had eluded him, climbing up his pants leg and onto his back. He hadn’t felt it until a moment ago.
They had crossed the thickest parts of the swamps, waist deep in muck until they each found a perch to support their weight. And when they had climbed up into their hideouts the sickening work of removing the parasites had begun. It was a filthy, exacting surgery, one that Richius hurried through as best he could, and the numerous cuts on his legs betrayed his sloppiness. But he had gotten almost all of them.
He bit his lip as he twisted his body, balancing carefully on the branch with one arm as he put the other behind his back and worked with one hand to dislodge the parasite. He felt the length of its slimy body for its mouth, maneuvered the blade under it, and flicked it, digging out a piece of his own flesh in the process.
‘Son of a . . .’
But the leech was off. He pinched it between his fingers and squeezed until it popped, then dropped it into the water below. Beside him he heard Voris laugh. The warlord, who was roosted in a nearby tree, had been watching his antics with amusement. Richius sheathed his dagger and smiled ruefully at Voris.
‘Thanks for telling me about the leeches,’ he mumbled as he buttoned up his shirt. Jessicane hung from another branch an arm’s length away, dangling safely within reach in its soiled scabbard. It was almost dusk. A weird calm had settled over the moors. Richius could scarcely hear the faint conversations of the Triin hidden in the treetops around him. The heat of the day had broken, but the rotten smell of the swamps was a constant plague. Yellow fumes floated over the waters, croaking up from bubbling pools, and the throaty songs of frogs droned endlessly through the trees. In the distance the distressed cry of a waterbird rang out as something pulled it beneath the waters. The air was thick, rank with humidity, and Richius’ drenched clothing hung from him like rags. His scalp and face itched from a thousand mosquito bites. He wanted to go home.
Wherever that was.
To Dyana. To Shani. Wherever they were, he wanted to be. Anywhere he could be a man again, instead of a tree-climbing predator. He wasn’t a jackal anymore. He had become a jaguar, waiting for its meal to pass beneath him so he could spring and break its neck. Were jaguars man-eaters, he wondered?
A sound echoed through the moors. A warrior splashed toward them. He was shouting, pointing behind him. Richius froze. There was no doubt what the signal meant. He glanced over toward Voris.
‘Are they coming?’
Voris gave a disquieting nod, then drifted backward into the branches and silently disappeared.
Dinadin urged his horse through the muck, forcing the steed deeper into the swamps. His armor had become an oven. Ahead of him, barely visible through a slick of perspiration, Gayle led the procession of horsemen into the darkness. The baron was cursing, screaming at them to hurry. Behind them they could hear Kronin’s warriors closing in. They had battled the raging Triin until they could stand no more. That’s when Gayle had called retreat. But the baron had led them into something far worse.
‘Go on, damn you!’ Dinadin shouted at his horse. The beast snorted and plowed on, already knee deep in gre
en ooze and sinking fast. Black leeches swarmed over its legs and underbelly. Dinadin kicked his heels into the horse’s side. He didn’t want to die here . . .
Behind him he heard branches snapping. The warriors were closer now. They were on foot. It had all been a trap and they had followed Gayle into it. Dinadin cursed himself, cursed Gayle and Trosk, too. He pulled out his sword again and craned his neck to see behind him. The water was moving, the trees starting to waver. They were coming.
‘All right, you gogs,’ Dinadin snarled. ‘No more running!’
He had no sooner drawn his sword than he heard a scream in front of him. He whirled around and saw a giant red creature drop from the trees onto the horseman he’d been following. Soon another fell and then another, toppling the Talistanians off their mounts into the stinking waters. Dinadin panicked. He looked up into the trees just as one of the red-robed men fell on him. There was a blackness and a wind-knocking jolt. Dinadin felt the reins slip from his grip. He tried to shout but something thick and warm ran into his mouth, choking him.
He was under water.
In a raging panic he twisted, knocking the man off him and bursting out from beneath the swamp. His sword was gone. The red man was charging toward him.
‘No!’ he cried, pulling off his helmet and swinging it wildly. The helmet collided with the Drol’s head and sent him careening backward. Dinadin tried to run but was waist deep in viscous filth. It sucked at him, drawing him down even as he fought to move forward. Breath was coming now only in gasps. Panic seized him. Weaponless, he pushed himself through the melee. Drol warriors still dropped from the trees. The horsemen were screaming, swinging blindly at the red phantoms. And there was Gayle, off his horse and on his belly in the water, skulking through the carnage and darkness so that only his silver mask could be seen.
‘Gayle!’ Dinadin cried. ‘I see you, you bastard. I see you!’
He hurried toward the escaping baron, forgetting the Drol falling all around him and the warriors of Tatterak on his heels. He would die here, he was sure of it, but there was one more score to settle before that happened.
‘Coward!’ he shouted. ‘Come back!’
But Gayle had a healthy lead. Dinadin lunged after him, lumbering from side to side, brushing away watery scum with his hands. He could catch him, catch him and kill him . . .
Another red shape fell from the skies, clipping Dinadin’s shoulder. He spun, slipping and dropping to his knees. Foul water flowed into his mouth. He tried to right himself, get back onto his feet, but this Drol was huge. He caught hold of Dinadin’s neck and dragged him backward into the water. Beneath the foam everything was a blurry green. Dinadin twisted his eyes skyward to see the struggling ribbons of sunlight and the bubbles of his own breath breaking the surface.
The fighting lasted barely an hour.
When it was over, Richius collapsed against the trunk of a tree and sank to his knees. Bloodied water ran around his shoulders. He was covered with leeches again. So were the bodies that floated facedown about him. Across the swamp he saw Voris cradling a warrior in his arms, carrying him to a muddy bank. He saw the exhausted men of Tatterak falling into the supporting arms of the Drol. Dusk had fallen, bringing with it a peculiar heat, and the stink of decay and rotting flesh. Next to Richius a water snake was feeding on the open wound of a Talistanian corpse. A giant insect crawled into the frozen mouth of a severed Triin head. Men splashed by, made mute by the carnage and their own unspeakable exhaustion, and the cheerless victors set about the grim task of pulling out their dead.
Richius could hardly move. The acid wounds on his back were screaming. A Talistanian sword had nicked his forehead, and a trickle of blood ran down his face. The insatiable mouths of a hundred leeches sucked greedily at his flesh. He swayed, almost falling face-first into the mire, then righted himself and emptied his stomach into the water next to him. He would have collapsed again if not for the sound of a familiar voice.
‘Richius!’ came the call from across the swamp. Richius managed to raise his head just enough to see Lucyler coming toward him. The Triin’s face was scarred with soot, and his garments hung from him in tatters. A scarlet bloom of broken blood vessels ran the length of his arm and shoulder, and he moved with the uncertainty of a drunkard, panting as he trudged through the ooze.
‘Lucyler,’ Richius gasped, going to meet his comrade. They met on a swale, knee deep in filth, and Richius fell into Lucyler’s arms, all the strength drained away from him.
‘We did it,’ said Lucyler. ‘Richius, we did it! They are beaten.’
‘Beaten,’ echoed Richius. He could hardly speak, but the power of the words bolstered him. ‘God, I can’t believe it.’
‘Believe it, my friend,’ said Lucyler. ‘But you are wounded. We have to get you out of here.’
‘No,’ said Richius, pulling away from his friend’s embrace. ‘I must see Kronin, him and Voris together. Where is he, Lucyler?’
Lucyler’s expression paled. Richius closed his eyes.
‘Oh, no,’ he moaned. ‘Dead?’
‘Back on the plain. Flame cannon.’
Richius reached out for Lucyler’s damaged arm, almost touching the wound but stopping short. ‘Is that what happened to you?’
‘We were both on my horse. I did not see the cannon until too late. I am sorry, Richius. But you should know he did this for you. He told me so.’
‘Voris is the one who should know,’ said Richius. ‘I want him to know Kronin died saving him, too.’
Lucyler smiled grimly. ‘Time enough for that later. Now we have to get you out of this swamp.’
‘I can’t leave yet, Lucyler. I need to find Gayle. Is he dead? Have you seen him?’
Lucyler looked around at the ghastly collection of bodies. ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘I do not remember seeing him at all, not after coming to the moors.’
Richius clenched his fist. ‘Don’t tell me that, Lucyler. He has to be here. He has to . . .’
‘If he is, we will find him,’ Lucyler assured him. ‘He could not have escaped us. But the leeches . . .’
‘Forget the leeches,’ Richius snapped. ‘I want to find Gayle!’
He started off through the maze of bodies, prodding at every Talistanian corpse with the tip of his sword. The bodies rolled over effortlessly, regarding him with their dead eyes. Those that still wore helmets had them unceremoniously removed, as one by one Richius tossed the demon helms angrily over his shoulder.
‘Richius, calm down,’ chided Lucyler. ‘He wore no helmet. Just his mask.’
‘He’s not here, Lucyler,’ Richius growled. ‘Damn it all, he’s not here!’
But there were more cadavers to inspect, scores of them. Richius left Lucyler behind, trudging back out to the deeper water. There was a large body there, large enough to be Gayle, half-hidden under a web of mossy reeds. Richius splashed toward it, ignoring Lucyler. He was consumed with the idea of Gayle’s escape. When he reached the body in the reeds he grabbed hold of its booted ankles and pulled, dragging it toward him.
‘Gayle, you whoreson,’ he roared. ‘Tell me it’s you!’
But it wasn’t Blackwood Gayle. Rather it was a younger man – a boy really – with hair turned brown by the swamp’s filth and skin stippled with insect bites. A great crack had been dealt to the armor around his belly, exposing his swollen innards to the wet poisons of the swamps. The man groaned as Richius yanked at him, opening his eyes to stare at Richius with a delirious gaze. There was only the barest hint of life left in that stare, and a weird, speechless recognition. Richius let go of the ankles.
‘Sweet almighty,’ he whispered. He staggered back, clutching his own belly in sympathy and horror. ‘Lucyler!’ he called. ‘Lucyler, come quick. It’s Dinadin!’
Dinadin blinked, and a peculiar smile appeared on his face.
‘Richius?’
It was nightmarish. Dinadin was barely alive, his skin like ashes, his belly torn open and spilling blood. Richius hurried ov
er to his comrade, dropping Jessicane down next to him. He forced his hand onto the wound, pushing back the distended innards. He put his arm under Dinadin’s head and cradled it, forcing himself to look again into the insane gaze.
‘It’s me, Dinadin,’ Richius stammered. ‘It’s me. I’m here.’ He turned and called again, ‘Lucyler, get the hell over here!’
Lucyler was hurrying toward them. Dinadin’s smiled widened.
‘Lucyler’s here, too?’ he asked weakly. ‘Lucyler’s dead . . .’
‘No, Dinadin. He’s alive. We’re all alive. The three of us together.’
‘Like old times . . .’
‘Hang on, Dinadin. Please. Just hang on. I’m going to get you out of here.’
‘We’re in Dring . . .’
‘Yes,’ said Richius, pushing gently on Dinadin’s stomach. His friend was babbling, talking nonsense, and all he could think to do was agree and try to calm him. Lucyler hurried up to them, panting, and looked at Dinadin, his gray eyes widening in shock.
‘Gods,’ Lucyler gasped. ‘What happened?’
Dinadin flashed his crooked grin. ‘You’re alive,’ he croaked. ‘Lucyler . . .’
‘He’s delirious,’ explained Richius hastily. ‘We have to get him out of here. Fast. Help me with him.’
Lucyler looked at Dinadin’s wound and blanched. ‘Richius,’ he said gently. ‘There is no way –’
‘Help me with him, goddamn it! He’ll die in this hole if we don’t get him out of here.’
‘Richius, he is dead already. Lord, just look at him!’
‘Oh God, Lucyler,’ Richius moaned. ‘Just help me with him. Please.’ He tried to lift up the swaying head but Dinadin hardly budged.
‘I’ll get Voris,’ said Lucyler. ‘He’s strong enough to lift him.’
While Lucyler darted off into the swamps, Richius stayed with Dinadin, cradling his head and trying to keep his insides from gushing out. Dinadin’s expression broke as he glimpsed Lucyler leaving.
‘Where . . .?’ he gasped. ‘Lucyler?’
‘He’s going for a horse to get you out of here,’ said Richius easily. ‘Don’t worry, Dinadin. Just hang on, all right? We’re going to get you someplace safe.’