Darkness Weaves (5 page)

Unceasingly since her return to strength has she intrigued to gather an army about her. She has delved ever deeper into the occult mysteries, seeking to marshal forces of the other planes for her vengeance. The others of her family are powerless or unwilling to halt the destructive designs of her fiendish energy. Her hidden conspiracy against Thovnos and its Monarch progresses daily, and she seeks everywhere for those who will aid her in this. Soon the magnitude of the venture must alert Maril to its existence--assuming he does not already suspect.

In some unknown manner Efrel became aware of your presence here, milord--and she is convinced that your generalship is essential for her victory in the rebellion. Accordingly, she has sent me to you as an emissary to secure your aid.

In conclusion, Efrel offers this proposition: Assume leadership of her naval forces, and when victory is ours, your reward shall be the island kingdom of your choice--saving Thovnos and Pellin.

There was quiet as Imel finished his narrative. Kane sipped his wine and brooded over the tale. The tomb beetle had finally given up its obsession with the lamplight and escaped on some other errand. At length Kane turned to Imel and said, "Well, your story does interest me. I'll have to look over your Queen's set-up before I decide definitely, but what you say sounds attractive. Dramatic, but in content your account is in keeping with various things I've heard from time to time.

"The main problem, though, is how to get out of here. I assume you have made some sort of arrangements?"

Imel felt his insides slowly unknot as the tension left him. The first part of his mission was going to be a success. The rest would be on more familiar ground for him. "Yes. We have a small craft, fast and well-manned, hidden in a cove along the coast maybe thirty miles from here. If we reach it, I think we can run or fight through any blockade the Combine may have sent out--these Lartroxians never were worth much on the seas."

"Our light cavalry is good enough," growled Arbas, feeling something approaching patriotism.

"That's true," conceded Imel. "And herein is our greatest danger. They have mounted patrols covering the roads and passes through the mountains, so we'll have to sneak through them or plan a running fight. Fortunately, the authorities have grown lax in their search for you, Kane, and we won't have as much trouble as we would have had, say, two months ago."

"Yeah. I know about those damned patrols. I was waiting for them to grow laxer still," said Kane. "There are definite advantages to biding your time..."

"Advantages we can't wait for, I'm afraid. We've already pressed our luck by waiting this long. If the ship is discovered, everything is ruined. We don't dare hold off any later than tomorrow night."

"How many men do you have with you?"

"Seven--no, six," Imel corrected.

"Well, that should be enough men to carry us through a running fight, though that many will be ticklish to slip past any large patrols unseen." Kane rubbed his beard in thought. "Coming along, Arbas?"

"No, thanks," the assassin replied. "My trade affords me both wealth and excitement enough for my tastes. Conspiracy on so large a scale is not to my liking."

They passed another hour settling details and swapping anecdotes over a jar of wine, and Imel began to think that Kane could be almost likable if you just avoided his eyes. The man was an enigma: gigantic, of savage strength, a hardened warrior; withal he was no barbarian outlaw, but a man of cold intelligence whose knowledge was extensive in whatever area their conversation touched.

At last when the storm had somewhat abated, Arbas and Imel slipped out and began to pick their course carefully back along the rain-slick ledge. They were almost beyond the tombs when the light of Arbas's lantern caught something white moving toward them.

"Watch it!" hissed Arbas and whipped out his sword. Biting back the taste of fear that the weird apparition had churned in his gut, Imel did likewise--hoping it was only soldiers that they had to deal with.

Arbas threw open the lantern shield. The white object suddenly fell with a slopping thud. Half-seen in the flickering light, emaciated figures with leprous flesh crouched and snarled--then scurried off into the shadows. The shapes disappeared into the night, although an occasional pair of luminous eyes could be glimpsed beyond the lantern light.

Stealthily the two men approached the motionless object, and Imel suddenly felt recognition and with it, sickness. It was the corpse of the unfortunate bodyguard who had followed him and been cut down by Kane. The mystery of his presence here was clear at first glance. His body had been partially eaten, the fleshy parts of his face, arms, and legs gnawed away. Entrails hung across the ledge.

"Ghouls!" cursed Arbas. "Those were ghouls carrying him back to their dens to ripen!" He studied the shadows with grim intensity. "Well, let's just hope those carrion-eaters haven't the courage to attack two armed men with a light!"

"Ghouls!" Imel echoed. "What kind of man would choose as his lair these ghoul-infested tombs?"

The storm began with renewed fury after Arbas had left with Efrel's emissary. Lightning flung forked tongues against the eroded escarpment; thunder blasted the pitted stone, shook the mouldering sleepers in their beds of plundered decay. Within Kane's lair, the reverberating echoes sounded distant and unreal. Flickers of bluish light stole past the curtained doorway in fitful effulgence.

Kane hunched in his chair, drinking cup after cup of wine. Ordinarily he would have drunk no more than constant vigilance permitted. Tonight his mood was blacker than the storm outside, and enemies human or inhuman might steal upon him at their peril. His cruel face was set in dark rage, and the death-fires in his cold blue eyes matched the flickering hell of the storm.

Kane drained his cup with a grunt and reached carefully for the wine jar. It was empty. Kane swore and flung it into a corner of the crypt, already littered with broken glass of earlier jars. The thick glass struck something soft and bounded away without shattering. Kane muttered a curse and went to retrieve it. He intended to smash it properly.

The wine bottle had bounded onto a mound of rotted debris in a disused section of the crypt. It hung in the air a few inches clear of the wreckage. Its thick, black-green glass was smeared with blood and ichor.
Kane took a pull from the new bottle he had broken open as he crossed the chamber. His uncanny eyes focused in the near-darkness.

A cave spider had spun her web across the niches with their mouldering coffins and sardonic skeletons. As large as Kane's hand, the white-furred arachnid had snared a bat. The heavy bottle, flung aimlessly in Kane's blind wrath, had struck weaver and prey together--pulping them against the debris. Clotted with fur and chitin and venom and gore, the chance missile spun slowly in the thick web. It was a thing of beauty, the web, and meticulously woven....

Kane laughed mirthlessly. His blade slashed the web to make a shroud.

The rain had stopped, but the quiet of the night was broken intermittently by rumbles of distant thunder. High among the splintered rocks that guarded the unfrequented roadway leading up to the escarpment, Kane crouched behind a boulder. Beside him lay a small pack of personal belongings along with an assortment of weapons. Crossbow at hand, Kane scanned the darkened roadway for sign of Imel and his men. From the trail below he was impossible to be seen--even by eyes that might search intently. Kane had told Imel to meet him at a point farther along the cliffs--but always wary of treachery, he chose to await the renegade from this point of vantage.

Regretfully he considered the priceless volumes of black knowledge which he had been forced to leave behind. Well, he had committed most of them to memory, and the Black Priest would recover them presently and return the accursed tomes to their niches within his shadowy vaults. There had been a very early transcription of Alorri-Zrokros's monumental Book of the Elders that had particularly captured his admiration. The later transcriptions could be deadly from errors and omissions, Kane well knew. Presumably he might have found room to include just this one bulky volume in his pack, but he knew the crumbling parchment would never survive the frantic dash to escape the Combine's vengeance that lay ahead. Perhaps he would return to Lartroxia when those who now hunted him were dead and their curses forgotten...

His keen ears caught the sound of hooves on stone. Riders were coming up the road--but who were they? Kane cocked his weapon past its safety stop, then searched along the path with eyes that saw more in darkness than man should.
Eight riders and nine horses--presumably an extra mount saddled for him. Their approach was furtive; soldiers would be watchful, but more confident. Kane strained his eyes and recognized Imel on the lead horse. Certain that this was his party, Kane fired the crossbow bolt across their path, drumming it into the trunk of a dead tree. It brought them to an effective, albeit abrupt, halt.

"Don't piss in your pants! It's me!" Kane called to the startled riders. Gathering his kit, he scrambled down over the boulders. Muttered profanity greeted him as he paused to cut the quarrel from the hardened trunk where the iron head was bored with force that would pierce the best mail as if it were silk.

"Have you been followed?" asked Kane, wrenching the bolt free.

"We don't think so--though it's a damn fool who says for sure. Did you have to shake the crap out of us like that? I was damn well sure we'd run into an ambush!"

Kane recognized the angry growl. "Arbas! So you're still with us! Surely sentiment hasn't driven you to see me off."

"Bindoff decided I'd better go along as guide in case we have to start dodging patrols," Arbas explained, watching Kane stow his gear on the horse they provided him. "I told him you could get lost in these hills as well as I could, but he was persuasive."

"An assassin for a guide. I like that," chuckled Kane. He swung his heavy frame into the saddle and made certain his battle-axe was in easy reach. "Let's ride, then."

The nine riders retraced their way up the neglected road. When they finally reached the main roadway, they headed southwest for the coast. One man rode ahead to scout for patrols. It was Imel's plan to force their way to the hidden ship by following as rapid a course as possible--speed rather than stealth, and trust to luck that they might not run into anything a quick fight could not carry them through. Drumming hoofbeats muffled their flight along the sodden road beneath storm-heavy midnight skies.

Twice along the way they had to leave the road to make a wide detour of army outposts that kept a check on all travellers. Then the ride was suddenly halted--as Essen, the scout, rushed back upon them.

Savagely reining- in his plunging horse, he gasped out, "Five of them! They heard me turn bark, and they're hot after me!"

Five. They had blundered upon a small patrol.

"Keep on running, and we'll ambush them," ordered Kane, taking charge without thinking twice. "Quick--the rest of you over here and take cover in the trees. They'll ride past hot on the trail and never look up. You with bows--get ready and we'll cut them down!"

He gave a quick critical glance at the terrain, then snapped, "You there without a bow--down the road and head off anyone who gets past us. Hurry, damn you!"

With a loud thrashing but not undue confusion, Kane's commands were carried out. Imel kept silent as he slid behind cover. He had had no illusions about who was commanding the band, anyway. Barely had they withdrawn into the shadow of the trees and readied their weapons when four Combine cavalrymen tore into view.
Hoping that Imel had carefully selected his party, Kane fired his crossbow and sent the iron quarrel drilling through the eye of the lead rider. A deadly chorus of twangs followed on his shot, and two other riders catapulted from their saddles--each with a pair of shafts quivering in his chest. The fourth rider raced through unscathed--saved not by bad marksmanship, but because there had been no time for the archers to call their targets.

"Stop him, Labe! Damn it man, stop him!" shouted Imel, alerting the survivor to his new danger. He jerked free his sword just in time to meet the attack of the Pellinite who lay waiting for him. Desperately the soldier traded blows with his adversary--knowing the others would be on him in an instant. Then, using a trick that caught the inferior horseman unaware, the cavalryman crashed his mount into the other. Startled, Labe swayed off-balance, and the cavalryman slashed his blade downward through unguarded shoulder and into the other's spine.

Ripping his sword free from the blood-gushing corpse, the soldier bolted across the road for the shelter of the woods. He had just left the roadway when a searing pain pierced his throat and lifted him head over heels from his saddle. He fell in a broken jumble on the forest floor, blood pouring hotly over the quarrel that skewered his neck.

Kane lowered his crossbow, thankful that the brief struggle had given him time to get off a second shot. The crossbow's greater range and power balanced against the additional time it required to load and fire; someday Kane hoped to find a bow with equal power that was practical to use from horseback--not that a crossbow was much fun to manage on a running mount.

Essen rode back warily, having assumed from the disappearance of his pursuers that the skirmish was over. Kane questioned him, "Did I hear you right that there were five horsemen?"

"Yes, Five--I'm certain."

Kane made a remark about cavalrymen's mothers. "It seems then they weren't the eager fools I had hoped. They must have kept a man behind in case they ran into more than they could handle. Lato devour their cautious souls! If only they had been overconfident!"

"Now what?" Imel wanted to know. "How far is it to your cove?"

"From Imel's description I'd guess we're maybe halfway," Arbas answered without enthusiasm. Kane caught the assassin's eye and shrugged. "Well, the dice are cast now. The other soldier will have the whole Combine on the alert by now. It's suicide to bypass the roadway and try to slip through the forest now. Heavy patrols will be combing the' area in an hour--they'll cordon us and close in. Our best chance now is to ride like the Pack of Volutio--and gamble we can beat them to the ship. So let's move out!"