He laughed as he stood upright.
“You melted your own ice, fool,” he taunted, stepping forward more confidently.
But his teeth chattered just a bit when he spoke, she noted. Her bolt had gotten through, at least a bit. Aoleyn understood the wear of magic, and so now believed that Tay Aillig’s use of this strange anti-magic was also tiring him.
She had one trick left to play, and it would end this battle, she believed. She called to her malachite and ran toward Tay Aillig, then veered and leaped, calling down another lightning stroke to occupy his attention. She floated out wide of the spur, turning as she went to face him—and was surprised and hopeful to see that the lightning bolt, though again mostly defeated, had stung him this time. Whatever magic he was using was indeed beginning to fade!
She went to her moonstone with all her strength. Tay Aillig was on a slippery ledge—she meant to blow him off the other side.
A simple gust of wind to end the fight.
But her opponent reached his clenched fist out toward her and struck first, some wave of discordant notes, some unknown anti-magic, washing over Aoleyn, stealing her levitation as she focused on the moonstone.
Down she plummeted.
* * *
Talmadge hopped from foot to foot as Aydrian slowly swiveled his head, peering through the magical lens. The flashes on the mountain had lessened, but there remained one storm cloud—it seemed to be a storm cloud, at least, though it was tiny and roiling and flickering with lightning.
“I do not see the woman,” Aydrian said to Talmadge in the language of Honce, and then, speaking so that all could understand, he added, “Only a man, atop a stony jag.”
“It had to be her,” Talmadge said. “It might be still. Why am I down here?”
“Halfway up the mountain,” Aydrian replied. “A day’s march! What might you have done?”
“I would have tried!”
“Tried to do what? This fight, if it was a fight…” He stopped and jumped back, startled, and lowered the lens.
“Lightning,” Catriona said sharply, clearly annoyed that the two were speaking back and forth in a language only they could understand.
“A powerful bolt, from the cloud and at the man,” Aydrian explained to her, and as he finished, the rumble reached them, the ground trembling under the angry growl.
“Not a day’s march,” said Khotai, rolling up beside Talmadge, then taking his hand. “Not for him,” she added, indicating Aydrian.
“There is nothing we, or he, could’ve done,” Talmadge admitted. “Too far.”
“But you think it was her?” Khotai pressed. “This woman who saved you? Why?”
“I’m not for knowing,” Talmadge admitted. “It’s just a feeling.”
“No matter now,” Catriona said. “We’ve duty here, to our neighbors. The sidhe await us at Carrachan Shoal, and so there we’ll go to send them running.”
Several about, particularly those from Carrachan Shoal, gave a cheer at that.
“Can you see that place, water walker?” she asked of Aydrian, who was once more intently staring up the mountain through the crystal. He didn’t seem to be looking in the same area as the thundercloud, though, and yet seemed even more on edge.
Talmadge translated the question to his friend, but Aydrian nodded that he had understood and still didn’t respond at all. Following Aydrian’s gaze, he, Catriona, and the others peered up the mountainside, shielding their eyes once more. They saw more flashes then, far afield of the first, and far from where that small storm cloud still flickered.
Not lightning, though. These were flickers of light, like a mirror catching the rising sun, and tinged in gold.
All about the highest peaks of Fireach Speuer came those flickers. To the right, the west, and to the east, far to the left, and from that direction where the morning sun shone more directly, there came responding flashes much lower down the mountainside.
Without a word, Aydrian sprinted out from the town, over to the side and the ridge that separated Fasach Crann from Carrachan Shoal. The others followed, but the man, with his magic, went up the side of that ridge in long and sure strides, slowing not at all. At the top, he turned more to the east, and went to the crystal again, his expression obviously grim.
He only remained atop the rocks for a few heartbeats, then lowered the lens and leaped back down, floating the last few feet to land easily among the villagers.
Before he even began to explain, the look on his face, one of sheer, open dread, spoke loudly.
“What is it, my friend?” Talmadge asked as Catriona and the others crowded in.
“We cannot go after the Usgar woman,” Aydrian replied.
“Carrachan Shoal!” the man named Asba insisted, seconded by the young woman named Tamilee.
But Aydrian stared him in the eye and shook his head. “We cannot. We must ready the boats, with all haste.”
“The boats?” Talmadge and Khotai said together in surprise.
“What did you see?” Catriona demanded.
“They are coming.”
“Who?”
“Demons.”
“Demons?” Talmadge asked.
“Usgar?” Catriona pressed.
“No, not men. Demons.”
“How many?”
Aydrian paused and stared. He turned back toward Carrachan Shoal, hidden behind the rocky ridge, then swept his gaze up the mountainside, all the way to the east, and now, all across Fireach Speuer came the flickers of mirrors, golden mirrors, signaling.
“How many?” Talmadge demanded.
“All of them.”
* * *
Panic gripped her, for she was too low to get her malachite or moonstone working in time to break her fall, and too high to accept the fall.
She gripped the pendant on her hip, grabbing for the wedstone, thinking to heal as she landed. But in her desperation, the songs jumbled, and she gathered the power of the orange stone set atop the wedstone instead.
It didn’t matter, she knew.
It didn’t matter in her conscious thoughts that her hand on the pendant was no longer a hand, but was instead, a leopard’s paw.
Aoleyn hardly took any of it in, hardly realized that her panic alone had elicited the power of her tattoo, and more fully than she had ever known. Not just her arms had transformed, but her legs, as well, and on those hind legs, the legs of a cloud leopard, the drop was not so high.
She landed hard, but not too hard, and dismissed her luck from her mind immediately, going with the energy of the gemstone cupped in her feline paw, bringing forth its power fully.
High above her, she saw Tay Aillig hoist a rock over his head and heave it down at her.
“Demon fossa!” he yelled. “What beast are you?”
Aoleyn easily dodged and didn’t allow the attack to distract her as she fell more fully into the orange stone.
She saw Tay Aillig gather up another rock to throw, and she was glad.
He should have been moving from the high outcropping of piled boulders, but then again, from his angle, he couldn’t see the side of the spur glowing an angry red as the orange gemstone’s power ate into them, exciting them, heating them.
Tay Aillig’s next missile barely missed, clipping off the ground near to Aoleyn, and nearly cracking her shins as it rebounded weirdly.
She called another lightning stroke from her conjured storm down upon him, and he jolted and clenched, and seemed to be barely holding his stance.
“I’ll have you, demon,” Tay Aillig promised through chattering teeth.
“No,” Aoleyn whispered, shaking her head, noting her handiwork with the orange stone, eyeing the piled boulders and those areas where the edges of the stones solidified the pile—edges now softening, even dripping in small bits where the stones had become molten.
She looked back at Tay Aillig, who began picking his way down, spear in hand. He had barely gone below the ledge, though, when he stopped and stared, mouth agape, at
the angry orange glow of Aoleyn’s magic.
“What?” he asked, and turned to see Aoleyn below, looking up, her face locked in determination.
She stamped her hind leg and threw a lightning bolt—not at him, no, but at what she believed to be a critical joint in the outcropping pile.
Immediately, the stones shifted.
Immediately, they began to tumble.
Again, luck alone saved Aoleyn, for she had not reverted her limbs to their human form, and the power of her leopard legs alone allowed her to leap away as the entire outcropping tumbled down, boulders bouncing, magma splashing, huge rocks twisting and settling right where Aoleyn had been standing.
Lost in the thunder of the rockslide were the screams of Tay Aillig. Aoleyn heard them, though, in her mind if not in her ears.
She leaped back in after the stones and dust had settled to find the Usgar-triath wedged between two massive slabs of rock, only his upper body visible.
Amazingly, he was still alive, still conscious.
“Demon,” he spat at her approach, blood flying with his spittle.
She stared at him. In her mind, she saw, too, the charred bodies in the cave. Was this to be her fourth kill of the day?
“Save me, witch,” Tay Aillig pleaded then, surprisingly, his entire aspect changing—likely, he had come to understand that he was dying here, and horribly. “The stones … they are crushing … bleeding.”
“Save you?” Aoleyn said, but weakly, for she was certainly not enjoying this horrid moment. “As you would save me? Or spare me? Or spare Bahdlahn?”
“I will,” Tay Aillig promised, his words trailing off into a groan of sheer pain, then followed with a violent cough that spewed blood.
Aoleyn’s hand—and it was a hand once more, as she dismissed the magic of the tattoo—went to her wedstone. She thought of the malachite and whether she’d be able to alleviate the weight enough to slip the broken man out of there.
“Save me, witch,” Tay Aillig repeated, every word forced through teeth gritted by agony. “My wife.”
My wife.
Like Brayth’s wife.
Aoleyn let go of the wedstone, called upon her tattoo, and raised her arm, her leopard arm, her leopard paw, claws protracted.
She showed mercy to this man, her tormentor.
She took out his throat cleanly, one swipe, ending his pain forever.
23
OTONTOTOMI
Aghmor stumbled aimlessly, not knowing where he should turn. From afar, he heard the lightning, then the thunder of an avalanche, though he had moved too far to the west, down along a stone-filled dell, to see the incidents.
He couldn’t go back to the Usgar. He had killed Egard.
He wanted to be with Aoleyn, to beg her forgiveness, but was she even still alive? Again, he wished that he could replay this terrible morning, wished that he had been less impulsive.
Even the image of Bahdlahn beneath Aoleyn couldn’t change his mind now.
He had murdered Egard.
Aoleyn was caught and likely dead.
Bahdlahn was doomed.
The man stumbled and continued along the trail, not even knowing where it might lead.
His surprise was complete when she stepped onto the trail before him. His first thought was that she was an older woman, perhaps Mairen’s age, and that she was beautiful, whoever she was, whatever she was.
For he had never seen such a being.
He thought of Bahdlahn’s story of the fight on th’Way—was this the same creature?
She said something he could not understand and took a step toward him.
Aghmor lifted his spear, noting that she carried a bat-like weapon, a flattened club of some dark green wood, with edges serrated by lines of what appeared to be actual teeth.
She said something again, and motioned to the ground before Aghmor.
She was asking him to kneel, he realized, to surrender.
Aghmor was in no mood for that. He laughed, and leaped at her, stabbing his spear.
How easily she dodged, the slightest of movements, but just enough so that the thrust went wide, and with her bat coming across to ensure that Aghmor couldn’t sweep the weapon back in at her.
The man retracted and leaped back.
His opponent easily rolled her weapon hand to hand, spinning it over and over.
A skilled warrior, Aghmor was not dazzled by the movements, nor even impressed. No, he was instead looking for patterns, waiting for an opening.
He saw it and he struck, a thrust for her gut that could not miss.
But it did miss, and badly, and from the side—how had she moved to the side?—came the bat, swinging across, striking Aghmor’s spear mid-shaft and cleanly breaking it.
Before Aghmor could even react, before he could bring the remaining half of his spear in close to defend, the woman turned a sudden and perfect circuit, and suddenly her bat was up high, slashing down diagonally at the left side of his head.
He fell back desperately, but felt the bite as the bat grazed him. Still, he thought he had avoided any serious injury.
Until his blood began to spray up from the severed artery in his neck.
Aghmor gasped and grabbed at the wound. He turned and started to run, but got whacked across the back of his legs and found himself on the ground.
“No, no, no,” he said, he begged, as he got up on all fours and began to crawl for all his life.
He heard her walking calmly behind him.
“No, no, no.”
He felt a burst of hot pain across his back, and could hardly believe the weight of the blow.
Now his legs wouldn’t answer his call, but he grabbed ahead with his hands, clawing, crawling, begging.
“Egard!” he cried, for he saw the Usgar warrior, hanging limply, but alive, and in the grasp of two more strange-looking humanoids with painted faces.
Aghmor didn’t understand, was beyond comprehension, was too overwhelmed by this morning—Aoleyn making love with a slave, his betrayal, the fireball and lightning bolts, the avalanche he had heard, his murder of Egard, and now this! All of it, all of his life’s choices, seemed to speed past him then in this moment that was simply too terrifying to allow him to make sense of anything. Was this all a dream?
The bat came down hard on Aghmor’s head, a final explosion, an instant of bright white, burning light before eternal darkness.
* * *
They came over the mountain ridges like a plague, a thousand riders, tall and terrible on their lizard mounts, and behind them the dark lines of huddled infantry, more numerous than could be counted. The whole mountain shook, and Loch Beag rippled with the impact of their march.
Over at the boats of Fasach Crann, the villagers and the refugees of Carrachan Shoal looked back in shock, with many, led by Catriona, then reflexively grabbing for their weapons.
“No!” Aydrian shouted as soon as the would-be defenders began to form. “No, run! Sail out!”
But off many ran, calling for a defensive line akin to the one that had earlier defeated the mountain goblins.
Beside Aydrian, Talmadge kissed Khotai, drew his sword, and started off, but before he had gone two strides, Aydrian grabbed him by the shoulder and, with frightening strength, yanked him back, then kept pushing until he had pushed the man over the side and into the boat beside Khotai.
“We can’no leave them!” Talmadge implored, but Aydrian, strength enhanced by the magic of his armor, lifted the prow of that large boat, which was filled with more than a dozen villagers, and began driving his legs, pushing it out onto the lake. Aydrian leaped over that prow as the boat floated free of the sands, hoisting yet another villager, a refugee from the neighboring town, over with him.
“We can’t leave them,” Talmadge protested, moving for the rail.
Again, Aydrian grabbed him.
“They have come to trust me and you,” he said. “If we go back, many others will follow, and will die. For nothing! We cannot win.”
As if in answer to his prediction, both men gasped then, for the approaching lizard riders hoisted spears on strange Y-shaped handles. As one, they threw, snapping their arms forward, launching the missiles from the atlatls with frightening speed and accuracy.
More than half of the two-score villagers rushing back to defend went down under that barrage, many hit by more than one, more than two, long spears, and with such force that they were thrown down hard to the ground.
On came the strange-looking humanoids astride their green, golden-headed lizards, and those villagers who had not been hurt, or not hurt badly, turned back for the beach and ran for all their lives.
“Row, row!” Aydrian implored those in his and nearby boats. “Sails up!”
Sounds echoed across the water west and east, screams of fear and pain, and it quickly became clear that the other villages, too, were under attack.
Aydrian jumped out of the boat, calling upon his amber gem, running across the lake surface back toward shore, toward a boat that Catriona and some others were trying to launch. They got off the shore as another rain of missiles descended upon them, spearing several more.
“A line!” Aydrian yelled to them, and Catriona herself, a spear stabbing through her side, stumbled to the prow and threw a rope out toward the man. It didn’t reach him, falling into the water, but Aydrian was fast to the spot, grabbing it up.
He turned and hunched it over his shoulder, then ran on, towing the craft.
Back at the shore, more villagers died.
On Catriona’s boat, several offered their thanks, relief evident, but looking back, Aydrian’s expression could not return any consolation.
For the front ranks of the invading cavalry hit the beach and hardly slowed, the sleek lizards rushing into the water and gliding out with great speed.
They were doomed, all of them, and Aydrian knew it.
* * *
Cold and wet, Bahdlahn ran out of room. In a small clearing in the copse of pines, he saw the shadow of an Usgar warrior rushing before him, and when he turned, a second man came out from behind a tree, crystal-tipped spear leveled his way.
Reckoning of Fallen Gods Page 37