"The toes, lads! Aim at the fuckers' skanky toes!" Hatch yelled, switching tactics against the giants' kicking feet. Seeing one seaweed-covered foot moving at them like a small boat, Hatch set his body and drove home, followed by all five of his men bunched into a wedge. Grunting, straining, they leaned in with every ounce of brawn they possessed. The cyclopta's rush halted as his foot skidded to a stop. The cyclopta hissed with suppressed fury, then a snort of pain. Hatch skipped forward at the head of the impromptu scrum and jabbed his spear under the exposed big toenail in the soaking wet sandal. The snort became a screech as it snatched the foot back in a grating clatter of stones and shingle.
"Press it!" Van Reiver roared, looking three ways at once. He struggled to see more than helmets, Cephill stood out with his height and his helm lunged towards the opposite leg. Hatch was unseen at the tip of his wedge, his men following the retreating foot. A roar of fury boomed and the cyclopta's right hand smashed down on the man beside Hatch, pulverising the corpse into Hatch. With a bone-jarring crunch, Hatch toppled under a cloak of gore. The cyclopta back-pedalled a pace. This time, Hatch did not clamber back to his feet. Groaning, he tried to push himself up, then flopped back down.
"Keep at it! We can do it! We 'av to fuckin' do it!" Grimm snarled—taking charge, Van Reiver hoped as he rushed in, legs pumping, sparing only the briefest of glances at the downed man beside the mashed sailor. Jenkans led the rest of their reduced formation to heave against Hatch's spear. With a rapid burst of epithets, grunts, and prayers, they rocked back and forth, pinning the foot down. Van Reiver picked up the dead man's spear, exchanged it for the rock in his nearest skirmisher's shaking hand and pushed him towards Cephill.
The small group of men pounded their spears at toes the height of their legs, shredding flesh, tearing thick sandal leather and beating at exposed bone. Their attack succeeded in two ways; it stopped the cyclopta advancing and forced it to turn away from Grimm's men and the cave by facing the treeline. More battered, bloodier, yet the seamen stood resolute. Running was no option. This was personal. Blood flowed, and it would continue to the death of one combatant. It was not enough, never seemed enough. They found themselves being driven back. Faster and faster they slid back the way they had come. Their ranks bending and fragmenting as the leviathan pressed on. Then his men fell.
Van Reiver staggered across his twitching men. Throwing out a hand, he regained his footing and hurdled a sprawled Grimm. Dragging his sword free, he swung a punishing a blow at the cyclopta's injured foot. It was like hewing at a hardwood tree. His blade rebounded and vibrating in his grip almost smashed him in the face. He swapped to a two-handed grip, clenching the hilt tighter in his fingers. He swung again, and again, his elven steel slicing the end from the massive sandal, then removing the tip of a toe the size of Hatch's thigh. A spurt of crimson splashed across his shoulder as the massive humanoid whimpered, then growled its anger and continued its implacable advance.
For an instant, Van Reiver hesitated, hating himself for hounding the creature. But it was the only way the humans would get home and get off the beach. He knew it deserved death for its deeds. He hardened his resolve through the venom of guilt. With a roar, he moved with the male cyclopta and swung again with all his fury. Again. Again. The giant dug its hand into the beach and flung a hellish storm of shingle at them. As if to mock the navigator's guilt, it thrust through them as though they were insects. Trumpeting disdain with a roar, the cyclopta left them behind, lying in dirt and shingle coated with the blood from the toe. The beast limped from the toe he had savaged, but it was no solace. Van Reiver coughed and punched the beach, knowing he had failed. Gritting his teeth, he looked sideways at Hatch. The seaman groaned, eyes tight with pain and exhaustion. Yes, it could be worse.
45
Men and women fell to their knees, tearing their helmets free, grateful to gulp in clean air. Mathyss knew that feeling well: the chest heaving, agonised gasp in and out through seared throat. Even with centuries of life, the air in never seemed enough, and the throat burned as though from guzzling acid. Others moved about, checking the less fortunate. For a moment, it was hard to tell human from elf. The ultimate irony of all ironies with their race's turbulent history. Mathyss felt his knees sag as a dreadful wave of guilt suffused him, swamped him in a roiling tide of agony and anguish. Whatever the creature had done—whatever its sins—this brutal ending desecrated the wheel of life. The beliefs of all elvenkin, if he trusted himself to bare his soul. He felt lessened. Shamed. His guilt dimmed as anger vaporised it. One more monster, and it was over. His inner demon capered, tormenting sanity and nightmare alike. He would avenge his sister, avenge both of them, and end this carnage. One more whatever the cost.
Sensing a shadow, he turned to see Kandra with an inscrutable expression on her face, as though reading his mind. Mathyss returned her bow, waiting for her barbs. For the truth, in the risk-laden shambles, he called an attack as he writhed with guilt and loss and failure.
"You need better tactics. They are too big for this to work again if you want any of us to survive." Kandra seemed troubled, her eyes never staying still as she fingered the bowstring. They scanned the cave and the sea, skittered across the shoreline and the humans, and then towards the second battle. They missed nothing as they hardened. She winced, unable to meet his eyes.
"Better archery, too."
Kandra nodded, jerking her head at the humans as they reformed. "The outlanders fight well, if crude. It looked touch-and-go as I hurried back."
"The outlanders did exceptionally well. Injuring tall creatures is difficult. We need a battle magus, or siege weapons. How has something like this escaped our notice? There's a difference between a score of crabmen, a basilisk burrow, an ogre clan feeling frisky, and a pair of monsters marking territory and feeding grounds from our settlements. This disaster was utter negligence."
"I know. Or arrogance, as the north takes precedence. You know the council's response, eh, my friend?" Kandra made gesturing motions for the exhausted men to reform quicker and replace their helms.
"True. We requested scouting and look what that cost. Cost me on top of your own suffering. This is not over. We must end the male faster."
"It will be livid. We form our own trap, and if we run with this number of injured, it will hunt us to our end. We can raise this when we return. Perhaps now is the time we involve ourselves with the interior?"
"This ends now." Mathyss clapped her shoulder. As rigid as a rock, his attempt to reassure her flat with hollow words. Pointless words of encouragement.
"I will remind the archers to collect up our arrows, we need them" Kandra muttered, rubbing her head, greasy with Carla's salve and thick with sand and shingle. With a flicker of distaste, she wiped her hand on her thigh and stepped around the massive corpse, now turning the inshore waters a dirty brown. A stain to match their wicked deed.
Mathyss sighed and gave Merizus a deep nod of respect. Merizus nodded back, the moment saying something more than words could. Mathyss stabbed his sword at the second creature as the ground trembled as rock fountained by the cave entrance. The boulder toppled, blocking it and cascading into a mound. Merizus groaned.
Mathyss drew in his determination. "We cannot wait. Merizus, Harcux, open the cave and get the sunjammer into the fight. If he argues, drag him. Ephraim, take the injured to the cave and send every man with a weapon to us. Everybody else, follow me!"
.*.*.
Lady Carla of Pallach glanced up from tending the man with a shoulder shattered from the first boulder and knuckled her back at the centre of a venomous stabbing ache. Pumping out a lengthy breath, she leant against the rough interior of the cave for a moment of respite and closed her eyes. Sounds of battle made a mockery of her desires and heightened her fears—too many fears to count. Opening her eyes, she brushed the hair from her eyes with a trembling, gore-smeared hand. Until now, she'd ignored the shouts, roars, curses and screams from the beach, apart from an abbreviated sojourn to atten
d a downed man.
Carla would never repeat to anyone what Ephraim snarled when he hauled her back to the cave sanctuary as he might an unruly child. Unspeaking, he headed back into the maelstrom. Ephraim returned, cursing the cacophony as he dragged one-handed a shrieking seaman clutching a knee. He turned away, leaving the problem to her.
"Oh, no. No," she whispered, walking to the entrance in dreamlike steps and halting in the last of the shadows, her words too soft for their sibilant whisper to reach the bandaged sailor behind her and the writhing man at her feet. Blanketed in darkness, she felt the chill infuse her as the image of men dropping in sprawled heaps augured through her mind. Carla gulped through the embarrassment and shame as her stomach lurched, unable to do anything bar place an impotent hand to her face. Unable to rip her eyes away, she could not tell what wrenched her heart the most. The men who fell like chaff, or the men who staggered upright.
Limping men leaned on weapons or each other like drunken revellers, and on stiff legs returned to hack, to stab and shove at the leviathan trying to stamp them into oblivion. Their thoughts roared inside her head. She could feel their individual terror, their despair and battle rage.
Sucking in a huge breath, she strained and dragged the man inside, while staring at events and Ephraim's stiff back. She felt the surprise and anguish of each man as they fell and died, a vibrant spark snuffed out in an instant and as though a weight added to her soul. "We have to do something, Dagmar! What can we do?"
"Get me to my bloody feet!"
Carla swung at the harsh echo of her mindless rhetorical question. She was even more astonished to see Dagmar shoving his back against the scarred cave wall to struggle up with his staff. Aside from his scrying injuries, part of the first boulder had exploded on the cave ceiling. Tiny shards had gouged his face, and a head-sized block had crushed his already injured foot to a bloody pulp. Dagmar seemed to notice her eyes roving to his foot, encased in its second bloody bandage. Then her eyes raised to meet his own. She started at the depths contained within those narrowed red orbs.
There was no humour in the magus. Just like her. He looked disgusted at the death-strewn beach and the shocking risks their dwindling companions were taking. To survive, or to make futile attacks, seem somehow meaningful, worth the blood and their sacrifice. Their sacrifice, not hers. Not hers. Carla blinked away burning tears and searing thoughts, but couldn't miss the aura surrounding the sunjammer. It was the power the man contained within a cage of guilt that tore her rambling discourse back to reality. She could almost taste, never mind sense his rage.
"I need to get out there. I shou—fuck me!" Dagmar exclaimed, eyes wide as he back peddled, heedless of his wounds, until he slammed into the tunnel wall. Out of options, he yelled the deadly words she had heard him use when fleeing Tryphon. Her vision whited out as a blinding flash in the entrance dazzled her. She staggered, legs boneless as the passageway rang like a bell as roiling head flashed over them.
Carla went to fan the dust-laden air and discovered she was face down on the legs of the injured man. She pushed up and shook her head. Puzzled by not remembering falling, she glanced in the near dark, broken by the flicker of dust motes flickering in the clearing air. Noises returned as pebbles and stunned limpets fell from the ceiling to ping of armour and stone.
"Dagmar?" She called, peering into the gloom wafting air towards where she heard a breath, then a cough. Looking around, she saw a thumb wide beam of light filtering down. In sudden inspiration, she felt around. Carla found her backpack upended, and she snatched the flap covering the elven glowstone. It was tiny, a little bigger than her palm, and raising it up she shook it until it emitted maximum brightness. Part of her wished she hadn't bothered. It illuminated a swirling storm of dust motes and despair. The entrance had been partially obscured by the boulder first hurled by the giant. The second stone sealed them in tighter than a crypt, with the faint glow of residual heat where Dagmar must have thrown his spell.
Carla rose and took up a sword from one of the wounded. Crunching across debris, she poked the stone. It was huge. She could feel the warmth from two paces away, and she couldn't help her shoulders slump. Trapped. They were trapped, and the others were dying outside. The tip of the blade glowed on the boulder and looking closer, she saw the dried blood coating the steel smoke away towards the roof. Carla glanced from the glow after the pale smoke and saw a sliver of light higher up.
Hope surged, she rammed the sword into the gap and heaved. And heaved and pushed against the hilt, then stepped back. The longsword remained trapped and her efforts did little but strain her shoulder.
"Fuck!" She cursed, then held her breath at hearing the far-off crunch of feet.
"Hello, the cave," a familiar voice called from outside and hammered something metallic. Tap, tap tap, tap. "Hello?"
"Ephraim?"
"Aye, you all right, lady?"
"Ecstatic. Can you get us out?"
"Dunno, it's a right fucker of a pebble. Hang on, two big lads are hustlin' up. Let us have a chinwag and we'll try to pry a gap."
"What is happening out there?" Carla felt small, very girl-like at the pitifulness of her question.
"Big Mez and the elf got the first one, but the second kicked the shit out of the other party. Be right back."
"Fuck." Carla repeated, glad she could vent without impropriety, or a smirking audience. She now knew her utter failure as their healer—she should have rammed a potion down Dagmar's throat when sat under the tree and left the splint in her backpack. Why had Mathyss, or an elf, not said something? "Fuck!"
"That is not ladylike, and you should set an example."
Ha, speak of the demon. Carla scuffed her way back to him, dragging her backpack. He slouched against the wall, his robe smoking under a layer of dust, and blood pooling under his foot.
"I think I fucked up," he grinned, "again," and made that familiar grimace as he straightened his foot. Carla snorted and looking through her pack found several of the precious vials smashed among the empty ones used earlier but a sickly green one among two yellow ones, and a brown one in the pouch Kandra had left. She took one of each, checked the man with the shoulder still breathed, then popped the lid and poured the yellow one into his mouth, brown into the man with the shattered knee and finally turned to Dagmar.
He spat blood to the floor and glared his frustration as she straddled him and forced his head back. She poured it in over his objections and pinned him to the wall. Dagmar shook, gagged, then convulsed as though having another fit. His mouth gaped as though breathing and words were beyond him, then he slumped. Carla snorted, and feeling a strong pulse in his neck, rocked back on her heels. She sighed, part in relief at not killing him and part in mockery at the stupidity of the situation. Trapped again. The man with the injured knee snored his exhaustion as he healed. Carla wished she were as oblivious to the situation.
Hearing grunts and curses and the familiar pops and pings of clattering rock, Carla stood and returned to the blocked entrance. If anything, the crack was a fraction wider and longer, and the borrowed sword had slid further.
"Can you move it?" Carla called out?"
"We dunno," Merizus shouted back. "We can rock it a bit, but I think it's wedged on something."
"Can you climb up and try to roll it over it?"
"We were just thinkin' of tryin' that. Ephraim's gone for a stretcher, as it's thicker than our two-handers. Best step back, it may get sweary, an' that sword might drop out."
"God's strength to you, I will wake the magus, he may help."
"Uh huh, warn us before any big booms, right?"
When she returned, dragging a wounded man, her leg muscles pleading for her to stop, she saw Dagmar stirring. Carla grinned with relief at the miraculous survival of herself, the sunjammer and the comatose sailor. Carla dropped the man, wiggled her toes in her boots to ease the cramp, and moved to Dagmar. She shook his shoulder—nothing. She shook it harder and provoked a grunt in response. Her humour fa
ded, and she shook him again and again until his teeth rattled. His head lolled forwards then slowly back. It was hopeless. Clenching her jaw, she swung her hand back and slapped his cheek with enough force that her palm stung, and his head rebounded off the wall, puffing dust into her face. Carla coughed, and when she'd finished hacking into her hand...
She froze, felt her heart skip a beat.
Dagmar's eyes blazed with a roiling fury. This was a new Dagmar. A stranger to her. As though her blow had forced him to claw through his inner barrier and seize an alternative path with both hands. Carla recoiled from that look. As she pulled back, he seized her arm. As though dragging fate to his bidding, she hauled him up as he vented a scream to echo around the cave. Suffering and sacrifice were changing everyone. She had failed as a healer—this on top of the loss of her father would demoralise anyone, and Carla was not just anyone, not with the status of her family in the principality—and this magus to her horror was much more than a sunjammer steering a ship from harbour to harbour.
He was dangerous, grim, and missing his customary barbed humour. He grimaced as he put weight on his foot and would have toppled back to the floor if her hand hadn't instinctively snatched a grip on his robe. Annoyed, his features pinched a passage through wounds, the veins bulging and pulsing in his neck a marker to the willpower needed to vanquish pain. To quench a shame to match her own. She felt the thought in his mind as though he shrieked it into her face. She froze, shocked at the intensity in his expression, and felt for a moment as though she was falling.
"Fuck this for a kurchizzle!" he screamed. The magus's mouth took on a lopsided twist at her frown. Shaking her head clear from the echo, she took his uninjured arm with her own and with tendons and ligaments howling, heaved him towards the entrance and propped him against the wall. Back muscles howling, she almost fell, and Dagmar pushed her towards the opposite wall. He mumbled a phrase and summoned his charred staff to thud into his hand.
THE TRYPHON ODYSSEY (The Voyage Book 1) Page 41