A Clash of Shadows (22 page)

The scream cut into Katja’s ears but it was a good pain. She grabbed him and threw him to the ground with a move Serdra had used on her time and again. Then she grasped the axe handle and stabbed him in the neck.

Vajan arrived before she could move the weapon into her right hand and struck with a savage scream. Katja had no time for fear. She just tried to dodge the blow and almost managed it.

Her own sword struck her in the side with less force than he had intended, but still enough to drive her up against the wall.

She pushed one foot in the wall to recover her balance, dropped the knife and grasped the axe with both hands. Vajan swung again but she parried with the shaft and retaliated. Vajan retreated and she swung again and the third time. Vajan retreated out of reach and readied the sword. Katja braced and waited for him to make the next attack.

They looked one another in the eyes.

Katja’s veins burned with combat tension but her head was still throbbing with the spell’s after effects. She thought she heard a long silenced din of other conflicts this place had seen. Would someone later feel an echo of all this?

“You are... quite the bother,” Vajan said. He was winded and Katja realized she was even more so. He had to realize that.

“What’s it like to kill an entire village of innocent people?” she asked in a harsh voice she barely recognized.

“Easy.”

She made a strangled sound and attacked. Vajan evaded the blow and aimed a counterattack at her unarmoured legs.

Katja defended with the axe and then pushed the handle at him. She managed to drive him a bit back and then struck at him with the shaft. Then she jabbed with the axe rather than chop and the top of the shaft hit him in the fighting hand.

Vajan screamed and dropped the sword but got a grip on the axe handle with his left. Katja pulled and kicked at him but he wasn’t so easy to unbalance. She went for the knife before remembering that it lay in the grass.

“Remember this one?” Vajan hissed and thrust at her with his own knife. Katja most certainly remembered it and defended with her armoured arm. She managed to stop Vajan’s forearm but he kept pushing. The tip touched her belly and she knew a powerful enough stab would penetrate the armour.

Not this time!

She pulled hard on the axe but Vajan held it. Then she suddenly let go.

Vajan overbalanced a moment. Katja grasped his wrist with both hands and turned the knife towards him.

Vajan dropped the axe and held his right hand up in desperation and the blade slid through the palm. Vajan screamed as it exited the other side and Katja kept pushing towards his torso. Vajan headbutted her between the eyes. She fell backwards and stumbled over something.

She flailed, trying to rise again before her balance or vision recovered, but she heard Vajan take to his feet. She rose up to a knee and saw him run in the direction they had all come from, with his injured hand up against his chest.

She threw herself at the axe and picked it up. She spent a portion of the precious remaining energy she had left to sprint after him with the weapon. Vajan was fast, now that he was the one pushed on by the will to live.

Katja stopped as he was stepping over the fallen log. She double-handed the axe, raised it over her head and threw it.

The axe smacked into the back of Vajan’s head and knocked him over the log.

“It was nice catching up!” Katja growled.

The Brotherhood man didn’t respond.

“I won,” Katja sighed to the world. She let herself fall with her back up against a tree.

Still, she did not feel the satisfaction that came with victory. The evil force she had begun to feel earlier still called her. And it was growing stronger. If this wasn’t directly related to the sarcophagus it meant there were two major problems in this forest.

She allowed herself four breaths. Then she sheathed the sword and knife and picked up the bow. She strode briskly towards the disturbance and passed by the archer she had killed. She snatched the quiver off the corpse and hung it on herself.

She was starting to gain control over her breathing and could go on a light jog she expected to be able to maintain all the way.

What is going on, you monsters? What calamity are you bringing about this time?

After a stretch she picked up a familiar smell of intestines and shit. She followed it and saw in a bush the remains of a man who had been attacked by a demon. She knew of nothing else that left a body in such a state. She was relieved to see it wasn’t Serdra.

How was that fight going, anyway? With nothing trying to kill her at the moment she finally had time to think about that.

If Serdra was still alive she wasn’t close enough to this mysterious sorcery to have ended it. Did that mean the woman was busy somewhere else and that the sarcophagus was nowhere near the village? But if so then what was going on?

Katja shuddered at the thought that she might be the only remaining person in the area who could save the day. But she had become certain that she was heading for the village. And the Night Hand didn’t plan to push the cart through the entire forest, did they?

The disturbance suddenly seemed to intensify, but she then realized that this was something else similar but much closer. One of the demons burst out of the forest.

The monster was hunched with short, stubby legs and long narrow arms. The flesh was creased and sickly looking, as she had come to expect from rushed summonings. One arm was almost severed and dangled by the monster’s side as it ran. It had been fighting.

Katja dropped the bow and readied the sword as it attacked. She drew on the power within her and pushed it out and into the sword. The blade burned with the might of the Sentinel Flame and Katja gave a cry and slashed as the monster came upon her.

The blow missed when the demon sidestepped. It swiped its claws at her and hit her in the shoulder.

Stupid cow!
she scolded herself and evaded the next attack. The Flame in the sword fluttered in tune with her concentration and the blow she landed in the demon’s torso inflicted less damage than it should have. Still, the flesh yielded and burned. The demon staggered back from this weapon which hurt more than anything else in the world of men and Katja steeled herself and breathed fresh life into the Flame.

The demon couldn’t dodge the next blow and Katja burned the sword through its neck. The head bounced off a tree before the torso hit the ground and both parts began to break apart.

Katja had no time to savour this victory either. She briefly examined her shoulder. The claws had torn slightly through the mail but it didn’t seem to be a major issue. She continued jogging.

She was now certain that she was headed towards a spell of some sort. She knew the Night Hand had some sorcerers among their ranks but she could only link this to the Brotherhood.

The disturbance crackled in the air. As Katja approached the village she felt the waves and pulses speed up. It was almost like a shrill howl in her ears, or rather her head. She didn’t know what was happening or how powerful this spell was meant to be, but she still felt it had to be reaching a climax.

The light jog had enabled her to gather some energy and she now used it to speed up.

She greatly feared being exhausted once the next battle began but the spell drew her inexorably. It was either meant for her and Serdra and had to be stopped, or the Night Hand which would mean they were close. Perhaps she could even hide and let them lead her to her other enemies.

She sped through branches she now recognized and finally saw the village. The sight was no prettier than before but now at least she had something else to focus on and was almost grateful for it.

The air remained as still as death and when she dared to stop a moment Katja heard some muttering ahead, roughly in the centre of the village. She jogged on with long steps. She tried to keep them soft and silent but weariness made it difficult.

She saw them as she passed a house where four corpses lay up against the walls. They were in the middle of the area that would have counted as a square in a larger town.

One of them was dark haired, pale and had a small beard. He was barechested, kneeling and clasped a knife in one hand.

The other one was tall, broad shouldered and had ruffled, brown hair and a spear. Katja didn’t examine him more closely before putting an arrow on the string.

The kneeling man spotted her and the one with the spear reacted to the gaze and turned around before a word was spoken. He had time to see the arrow come flying at him.

The missile punctured the centre of the torso and he fell with a cry. Katja readied the next arrow as the kneeling man looked at his comrade in quick shock. It turned into anger as he reached the same conclusion as she did; it was a mortal wound.

The man’s body did not tense up for escape as she would have expected. He just glared at her with anger and outrage in his eyes. She bared her teeth at him. He was surrounded by his own victims. What right did he have to disapprove of killings?

“What is going on here?” she hissed. The man’s shamelessness had that effect on her voice and she hoped that it also covered her breathlessness.

“Further loss,” he said with controlled hatred and looked her straight in the eye rather than at the arrow.

“There has been great loss tonight,” she replied. “A little more makes little difference.”

“These wretches are no loss,” the man said.

The force she had harnessed with the string fought her. The arrow wanted to fly off and Katja wanted to let it. But perhaps she could discover something important. If it took no more than a few moments.

“What have you done?” she reiterated. “What vileness were you attempting just now?”

The man had made a shallow cut across his own chest. Thin streams of blood lay down to the belly. He stroked one index finger through them.

“I am Arvar, descendant of kings,” he said with angry pride. “A family of power, which will rise again. And whether I live or die here tonight this forest will belong to us. Neither you nor the Night Hand will live to report anything that has happened here.”

The arrow shook on the string. Katja darted her eyes about. There was nothing to see but corpses and houses and nothing to hear in this wretched forest but for the buzzing the spell had left behind.

“I merely used what was available,” he then said.

Katja heard pained gasps on the left. She looked there quickly and saw a long-limbed man of about forty years roll about to face her. His neck was covered in black buboes like the other villagers and Katja was at first disturbed that he still lived. But the face contorted into a horrid sneer. The dead eyes locked onto her with fierce hatred and the gasps turned into a shrill, piercing yell. Then he sprang up on his feet.

Katja released the arrow and it smacked into his chest. He made a throaty noise and stumbled two steps backwards, but did not fall. She began to hear similar yells around as dead, ruined lungs suddenly began to breathe anew.

A blond girl of marrying age stood up on Katja’s left. A boy of about ten stood up a bit further away. Katja glanced towards the latest noise and saw an old woman rise from an awkward position on top of a mound. The fifth person rose. And the sixth. And the seventh. And all glared at her with the same hatred.

The sorcerers had let demons into the corpses.

Katja returned her gaze to him and reached for the next arrow, but the demonic corpses charged at her.

“Your timing is excellent, Red,” the man said sternly. “Getting to kill one of you is an excellent gift.”

The long-limbed man with the arrow in him was almost upon her as the bow hit the ground. She dodged the wild attack as she drew the sword and slashed him in the back before he could turn around. She didn’t hit the spine as she had intended, but the cut still sufficed to drop him.

The young girl’s fist impacted Katja’s face with more force than such a thin frame possessed. Katja fell on her back and for a moment didn’t understand which direction she was facing.

She heard footsteps through the buzzing in her ears and knew she would die if they managed to pile on her.

The girl leapt at Katja, who raised the sword up between them. The blade slid through her midsection and out the other side. The girl screamed and bile and vomit splattered at Katja. The stink was awful.

The girl thrashed about on top of her and tried to hold her in place despite being impaled. Katja couldn’t help but shriek with disgust. The terrible noises sounded through the village as more entities from the underworld found damaged anchors in the world of men.

“Kill her!” Arvar shouted.

Katja tried to shake her off and saw the old woman pick up a shovel that had stood by a wall. The boy was almost upon her. She beat the panic down and pushed the Sentinel Flame into the sword.

The demon wearing the girl screamed as the Flame burned and drove it from the wounded body.

Katja threw the body off of her with a yell and tore the sword free. The boy came at her as she was rising and she kicked him in the head and had no time to feel bad about it.

She struck a fighting pose and tried to gather her wits.