Thren sat up, looking the tube over before holding it before him.
“What’s the plan?” Haern asked him before he could start.
“We give everyone a few minutes to see and react,” Thren said as the rain momentarily died down. “Then we go barging in and slaughter all who are foolish enough to remain loyal to the Sun. Down there is one of Muzien’s few remaining strongholds, and from what I’ve learned, it’s where those who came with him from Mordan most frequent. If the elf’s not in there, I’m sure we can find someone who knows where he’s at. Are you ready?”
Haern clenched his hands into fists to prevent them from fidgeting against his saber hilts.
“I am,” he said.
Thren drew a dagger, jammed the tip into the center of the clay seal, and then held the cylinder above his head. Haern watched, curious as to what the signal might be. For a moment nothing, and then a great red flash burst from the end of the tube with such force Thren had to brace himself with his free hand. Into the darkened sky streaked an enormous glowing ball, sparks trailing along its path as if it were a comet. Higher and higher it soared, and then it exploded in a great red plume that rolled in all directions, filling the sky with red smoke, the backdrop of clouds taking on the hue of dried blood. Four yellow sparks zipped through the air before burning out, leaving behind the painfully familiar symbol of Muzien’s guild, that of the four-pointed star. It shimmered there, the golden color startling against the red … and then it began to change.
Each of the four points faded away, as did the lines connecting them. Replacing them was an illusion carefully created by Tarlak, that of a spider slowly uncurling its legs. Its body was made of smoke, its legs shadow, its entire form outlined in the still brightly burning red smoke. The symbolism was clear, and with the display seemingly as big as the city itself in the sky, impossible to miss. Despite the rain returning with fresh strength, the hovering spider remained, lording over the city, declaring it his.
“Your wizard did a fine job,” Thren said, discarding the tube and returning to his stomach so he might peer over the building’s edge to watch the tavern. Haern watched as well, curious if Thren’s plan would succeed. To have so many rise up simultaneously, having not given Muzien any warning to counter, seemed almost ridiculous. But then again, no matter how many tiles he scattered throughout the city with his symbol, Muzien would always be a foreigner. Given how the majority of the underworld were motivated by fear and greed, their turning both against Muzien seemed entirely plausible.
The drunk guard outside was still sober enough to see the display in the sky, and he rushed inside. Haern tensed, straining his ears to hear. People within shouted, and two men rushed outside to look. One said something to the other, and at the second’s response, the first drew his dagger and stabbed his companion in the throat. It should have been shocking behavior, but it made Haern’s blood run cool, while Thren beamed.
“It starts,” his father whispered.
The man outside tossed aside his coat, then raced down the street, away from the tavern. Rain beat down on upon the corpse, mixing with its blood into a growing puddle before the tavern door. More shouts came from inside, the sounds of wood breaking, glass shattering. Thren rose to his feet, and the man looked so eager, so alive.
“Come,” he said. “Let us crush them all.”
Haern wished he didn’t feel the same excitement. Grabbing the side of the rooftop, they both swung down, landed lightly on their feet, and drew their blades. In perfect tandem they ran, gaining as much speed as they could in the short distance. Like monsters of the night they blasted into the tavern, Haern slamming open the door with his shoulder while his father smashed through one of the windows, a shower of glass heralding his arrival. Haern surveyed the entire tavern in a heartbeat, welcoming the feeling of time slowing down while the pounding of his heart surged. Over a third of those there had tossed aside their long coats, with several even fighting bare-chested due to the Sun Guild’s symbol having been sewn onto their shirts. All eyes turned their way, and Haern allowed a grin to spread across his face at the fear he saw in them.
Thren landed before a group of three, and he tore into them with ruthless efficiency. The nearest died before turning at the sound of the breaking glass, the other two barely getting their weapons up in time to temporarily avoid death. Haern ignored the fight, instead focusing on a tall man lifting a crossbow from the other side of the bar. Leaping feetfirst, he dropped beneath the bolt, which whizzed past his head, and then crushed the man’s windpipe with his heels upon impact. Haern landed atop the bar, a hard jolt to his chest that would certainly leave a bruise, but he had no doubt he’d recover far faster than the man he’d kicked.
His instincts flared a warning, and he rolled aside as a short sword thunked into the wood of the bar. Haern slashed wildly, cutting its wielder across the face, and then pushed off the bar and onto his feet. Two others joined the first, the three all holding short swords and bearing the four-pointed star on their coats.
“Are you mad?” Haern asked them, ignoring the ache in his side. “Have you forgotten who I am?”
“Muzien’ll kill us if we flee,” said the center of the three, his speech whistling from several missing teeth.
“I’ll kill you if you stay,” Haern shot back.
They seemed not to care, and they simultaneously lunged, trying to spear him from all directions. Haern spun, deflecting all three with both his weapons. The motion sent his cloak billowing upward, and he used it to hide how low he dropped to the ground. Before they could react he sprang into them, sabers crossed in an X as he crashed into the man on the left. Legs pumping, he bowled him over, cutting across his stomach as the man hit the ground. Intestines burst out like coiled springs. Dying screams in his ears, Haern spun, each sword blocking an attack. Sidestepping left, he brought both weapons to bear on one man, the expert precision of his strokes easily knocking his foe’s short sword out of position. The man tried to retreat backward, as if sensing his own vulnerability, but Haern lunged into him with a ferocity that would have made his father proud, burying his left saber up to the hilt in the man’s chest.
Haern released it as the last of the three tried to stab him in the back. His saber curled down and about as he turned, lifting the thrust so that it passed harmlessly above his shoulder, and then Haern struck the man hard in the throat with his free hand. The windpipe crunched inward against his fist. His foe doubled over hacking as Haern yanked out the second saber. The sounds his foe made were awful, ragged gasps as he sucked in air followed by whistling hisses as he released what thin breaths he could manage through his missing teeth.
“Consider this a mercy,” Haern said as he plunged a saber into the man’s heart.
Kicking the body to the ground, Haern looked to the corner to see his father finishing off his own group. One last member of the Sun remained, and Thren beat aside his flailing defenses and then slashed his short swords across the man’s abdomen, splashing the floor with gore as his stomach opened and his innards plopped free. Thren wiped at his face with his shoulder in a vain attempt to clean his eyes, then nodded at Haern.
“Downstairs,” he said, as if oblivious to the horrible display at his feet.
Those not dead or dying had fled, and Haern strode through the now-empty tavern to the door behind the bar and yanked it open, revealing six rickety stairs leading to the basement.
“How many down there, you think?” Haern asked as Thren joined his side.
“Does it matter?”
Haern shrugged.
“How about this one, then: that door down there, does it open inward or outward?”
Thren grinned, all the long years and lines seeming to fade from his face.
“Inward,” he said. “The honor’s all yours. I’ll be your shadow.”
The stairway was too narrow for them to run side by side, so taking the lead, Haern raced down the steps, gaining speed, and at the bottom he flung himself shoulder-first
into the door. The wood snapped, the hinges groaned, and whatever lock was on the other side could not hold against the force of his impact. As the door flung open, Haern dropped to a roll, and his prescience was rewarded by four crossbow bolts soaring above him. Coming up from the roll, sabers ready, he found five men standing together in what appeared to be little more than a well-stocked cellar, the members of the Sun all armed with daggers and swords.
Haern’s hesitation lasted for a single heartbeat, and then after him came Thren, bursting into the cellar with the energy and devastation of a tornado. Side by side they assaulted the five, cutting, thrusting, overwhelming them so they could only retreat. Haern saw the stunned horror in their eyes as he parried a frantic counter, their realization at how terribly outclassed they were when it came to the art of killing, and he knew the battle would not take long. Their confidence, their spirit, was already broken. Taking down the flesh was merely perfunctory after that.
Haern pushed two of his foes back farther, frightening them with blurs of steel that were merely feints. As they retreated, he turned to the middle of the five, catching him trying to sneak a thrust into Thren’s side. Out went his saber, and it came back bloodied. Seeing the space the other two left him, Haern risked turning his back to them for the briefest moment. Sensing the coming aid, Thren lunged to one side, turning the attention of his foes even farther away, and Haern came crashing in unopposed. He cut the throat of one, and the other managed to duck just in time so that instead of taking out her throat he merely slashed across her cheek.
Leaving her to his father, he brought his attention back to the other two, and was mildly disappointed to see them attempting to flee. Haern was faster, and his sabers found their backs before they reached the stairs. Yanking them free, he looked to the final member of the Sun, who was cornered by his father.
“I surrender!” the woman said, hurling aside her dagger. “I’ll join, I swear, I swear I’ll…”
Thren cut out her throat anyway, and as the body fell, he kicked her once in the chest in contempt.
“The writing’s in the damn sky,” Thren told the dying woman. “What worth are you if you can’t understand until it’s too late?”
Haern watched the life leave her eyes, and he echoed Tarlak’s words in his mind again and again to harden his heart against the cruel image.
Do what must be done, you understand me? You do what must be done …
“Not even guilt,” Haern whispered, and he cleaned the blood off his sabers using a dead man’s shirt.
“What’s that?” Thren asked, cleaning his own blades.
“Nothing,” Haern said. “Where to next?”
Thren sheathed his short swords, frowned at a cut on his arm, and then gestured up the stairs.
“To the streets,” he said. “Let’s see if we can witness the fruit of our labors.”
They climbed the stairs into the empty tavern, and Haern stepped out first, followed by Thren. In the soft rain, they could still hear the occasional scream, and the darkness made the various fires easy to spot. Looking to the rooftops, Haern saw a man running, the dark green cloak of the Serpent Guild flapping from his back. To his left Haern spotted another trio, two men and a woman, and all of them bore the color of the Spider Guild. Thren’s smile blossomed, and when the three rushed to Thren and bowed low, his satisfaction was almost sickening.
“Muzien likes to say the sun always rises,” the woman said. “But it also sets. Night has fallen upon Veldaren, Master Felhorn. Give us our orders.”
The title gave Haern chills that even the gray cloaks of the Spider could not.
“Hunt down all who remain loyal,” Thren told them. “From the highest of nobles to the lowest of the low, I want those with the Sun on their bodies executed.”
“What about you?” asked one of the men.
“He’s with me,” Haern said. “And we have the highest of the highest to find.”
Thren cast a look over his shoulder, and he seemed terribly amused.
“Indeed,” he said, returning his attention to the first of many to rejoin his guild. “I’ll be fine, now go. Shed blood in my name.”
They did as they were told. Instead of watching them go, Haern ran back across the street and climbed to the rooftop they’d first lurked upon prior to the assault. Feeling the rain beating down on him, he held a hand up over his eyes and peered across the city. He saw shapes everywhere, though how many were real and how many were imaginary distortions of the rain, he couldn’t guess.
“You left none to tell us where Muzien is,” Haern said as Thren joined him on the rooftop.
“He’ll show himself,” Thren said.
“What makes you so confident he will?”
Before he could answer, the ground shook from an explosion not far to the south. Purple fire roared into the air, accompanied by black smoke and a tremendous blast of sound. Eyes twinkling, Thren pointed toward the distant fire and grinned.
“I think we found our invitation,” he said, and before Haern could call it insane to run into a certain ambush, Thren dashed across the rooftops, aiming to do just that.
More dying screams reached his ears through the rainfall. Not just thieves. Bakers. Smiths. Clerks. Stablemen. Prostitutes. Any who bore the four-pointed star upon their breast, or painted it above their doorways, all died as the resurging tide of the old guilds burst open doors and climbed through windows, cloaks that had been hidden or tossed now hung proudly from their shoulders. It felt like the Abyss had risen up to swallow Veldaren, and Haern clenched a fist tight as he did everything to convince himself it was justified.
“What must be done,” he whispered.
Legs pumping, cloak billowing, Haern followed his father into the storm.
CHAPTER
26
No enemy was yet in sight when Antonil ordered Veldaren’s city guard and stationed soldiers to arm themselves for battle. Their foes would arrive that night; he was certain of it. And as the clouds deepened, bringing rain in from the north, he could not shake the feeling they were borne on an unnatural wind. Come nightfall he stood above the western gate, eyes to the distant King’s Forest, as the few hundred men under his command joined him on the wall.
“What happens if this army doesn’t show?” Sergan asked beside him as the soft rain fell.
“Then I’ll claim it was an exercise,” Antonil said. “Gods know we could use the practice.”
When the symbol of the Sun erupted above the city, only to be consumed by the Spider, murmurs spread all across the wall. Antonil watched, a foul feeling deep in the pit of his stomach.
“What does it mean?” Sergan asked him as they both peered up at the sky.
“It means exactly what it looks like it means,” Antonil said. “The Spider Guild’s rising up against the Sun Guild. Of course they’d pick tonight to do it, while not a single city guard will be out there to stop them. Tonight’s going to be ugly, Sergan. While we fight our battle at the walls, there will be another raging inside them.”
“Try not to think on it,” Sergan said, pointing north, and he was hardly the only one to notice. “The scum of the city can butcher each other to their heart’s content; we have our own enemy to worry about.”
From the forest the army emerged. At first they were distant dots of gray, blobs of a different color from the rest of the night. As the army continued to march, coming closer, those on the wall better saw their armor, their drawn weapons. They carried no torches, for they had no need of them, given their racial ability to see in darkness as well as daylight. Antonil envied the ability as his own men struggled to keep their torches lit against the rain. Even from such a great distance, they could easily hear the thrumming of drums and a chorus of war chants sung by deep voices.
“No wagons or catapults,” Sergan said, squinting in an attempt to see them better. “But if they’re coming out of a forest, they’ll have had plenty of choices for a solid battering ram. Unless they built a cover for it, though, ou
r archers will tear whoever’s carrying it to pieces.”
Antonil nodded, keeping unspoken Dieredon’s fears about what the necromancer could do. Up and down the wall he heard his men calling out, and he was proud of how much was in mockery of the approaching army. The fear was there, hidden but controlled. So long as it stayed that way, Veldaren had a chance.
“What the…?” Sergan asked, voice trailing off as he pointed dumbly.
From deep within the forest sailed thin dots of deep-purple fire, bursting from the trees in a direct flight toward Veldaren’s skies. The men around him braced their shields or lowered themselves to take cover, for it seemed as if they were projectiles … but then they arced, and shifted, continuing to fly without dropping. Antonil stared along with all the others, baffled as to what approached.
“Sir?” Sergan asked, but Antonil didn’t know what to say. The shapes were growing closer, and lit so brightly by the purple fire, he swore he could almost make out …
And then the screams hit. A thousand of them, horrific wails, as if the tortured souls of the very Abyss were given a chance to let loose all their torment and agony. The blistering cacophony descended upon them from above. Antonil felt his heart skip in his chest, felt terror clawing at his throat. There was no reason for it, no rationale; he simply felt terror, helpless, crippling terror, and he knew he was not the only one. All around him, his soldiers cowered along the wall, holding their ears or covering their eyes.
“Fight it,” Antonil screamed, trying to muster strength against this supernatural horror. “Fight it, fight it!”
Slowly he felt the fear ebbing, and he looked up to see the orbs flying directly above them. They were skulls, he realized, those of the dead the army had butchered on its march toward the capital. Their flesh was peeled away but for the tiniest of bits that still clung to the bone, flapping in the ethereal fire that burned and burned. The skulls took circular flight over the gate, some dipping down low to soar mere feet above his soldiers as if to toy with them and their fear. Others looped into the city, sending their horrific screeches piercing through Veldaren’s streets.
A Dance of Chaos: Book 6 of Shadowdance Page 27