Dead of Knight (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 4) (2 page)

Again it was the silence that warned me. Fade appeared in the grass to my left, his head turned toward the dark curve of the hills around us. The crickets and buzzerwings ceased their night songs. My green cat-slit eyes, as sharp at night as Fade’s, picked up movement in the long grass. Something big and quiet slunk toward us.

The wind shifted and the night scents changed from soot and churned earth to the thick smell of old rot and decay, dry yet biting, like a tomb freshly open to the air. The shushing sound of the large body sliding across the ground was soon replaced by a rattle and hiss as the grey shape appeared, winding its way down the nearest hillside.

It was a snake, eight or nine horse lengths in size, with scales like pocked stone and eyes that glinted white-hot like fallen stars. Teeth dripping sharp-smelling ichor caught the starlight as it reared a wide, flat nose, and seemed to scent the air with its flicking forked tongue.

Moving more quietly than I ever had in my life, I slipped off the stone wall and drew an arrow, walking carefully backward toward the barn. The giant snake swung its head in my direction and I drew my bow, planting my feet and taking aim at one of its burning eyes.

Fade sprang as I loosed my shot. The snake flipped its head around toward the leaping mist-lynx, foiling my shot on the bony, or perhaps stony, hide. My arrow would have done more damage if I had turned and shot the sod and stone barn. Fade tried to latch onto one of the coils with his claws and teeth, but had no more luck than my arrow. The snake’s body curled, seeking to trap and crush the big cat between its coils. I tried to cry out as Fade yelped in pain, not quite leaping free of the body before it closed around him.

My curse prevented even a tiny squeak from escaping me and nausea staggered me. I spat bile and nocked another arrow. If this thing had killed my friend, I would tear it scale from disgusting scale and burn whatever was left until it was erased from this world.

Mist rose in a shimmering cloud from between the stone snake’s coils and relief lent strength to my arms as I realized that Fade had managed to vaporize before he was crushed to death. My second arrow fared no better than the first, however, clacking and spinning off into the dark as it was deflected by the bony ridges around the snake’s eyes.

Behind me, I heard movement as my companions, warned by Fade’s yelp of pain, armed up and emerged.

“Stormlord’s eight balls,” Makha shouted. “The hells is that?”

“Deathwyrm,” Azyrin told her as the creature swung its head toward the new sounds.

My worst fears confirmed, I resumed backing up. Deathwyrms were one of the most awful among the undead, pulling souls from bodies with their venom and trapping them within their dark hearts forever. They were very rare, taking the most powerful of necromancy to construct. They didn’t just happen. This thing was created by something far more powerful than it.

Not good news for us. The best way to deal with a deathwyrm was to run from it and hope whoever had built it tired of feeding it power before it killed you.

A high wail rose from the barn as two small human faces poked out and I remembered the six grief-shocked children.

“We have to get them out of here,” Rahiel said as she leapt onto Bill’s back. “I will distract it. We need to get to the town.” The mini-unicorn took to the air, starlight glinting on his golden horn and hooves, his light pink coat almost silvery in the darkness.

The sorceress and the unicorn flew high into the sky, bolts of blue fire springing from the pixie-goblins hands and sizzling into the fetid scales of the deathwyrm. Her bolts had no more effect than my arrows, from what I could see, but the magic did distract and annoy the snake and it turned from us. The deathwyrm coiled high into the air and snapped at Rahiel, but she and Bill were too quick, sliding sideways in the air away from its huge jaws.

“I’ve got Perl,” Drake said, emerging with Alew and the other children. The little girl clung to his arms, her eyes open and a tiny repeated whimper coming from her mouth.

“Cher, take Neth. Iera, Enil, you will follow and take turns carrying Neth.” The shock was gone from Alew’s face, replaced with stubborn determination. His calmness impressed me.

“Rahiel won’t distract it forever,” Drake said. “Go.”

I brought up the rear as we took off away from the barn and burned out farmhouse, keeping an eye on the snake as it danced with Rahiel. The pixie-goblin and mini-unicorn were a darting glint that occasionally burst into bright magics, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden behind the impervious coils of the deathwyrm.

“Killer,” Azyrin fell back and jogged beside me, glancing over his shoulder to take in the fight behind us as well. “Hand me your arrows.”

Not questioning him, not that I could anyway, I unbuckled my quiver from my hip as I ran, passing it to the shaman.

He began to chant in Orcish and golden light spilled from his mouth in a swirly spiral and sank into my arrows, giving the dull metal tips a faint glow as the spell faded. A warning scream from Rahiel turned us both as he passed the quiver of bespelled arrows back to me.

Again the cold rush of decay washed over my sense as the deathwyrm, tired of playing with the too-quick sorceress and her companion, turned back toward us and hissed its fury at our growing distance from it. The coils ate up the ground, no longer silent or stealthy, churning over the grassy hill and diving with sickening speed toward us.

“You have to shoot it in mouth,” Azyrin said to me, golden light weaving out from his upraised hands. “I will try to hold it.”

A web of magic twisted out from his fingers, growing in size and brightness until I had to squint to see the oncoming snake. I strafed to my right, dropping my quiver as there was no time to buckle it back on. I snatched an arrow from it as it fell and nocked it.

The web caught the sliding front coil of the deathwyrm and it reared back, a stinking scream of pain washing over us like ill summer winds. The golden light of Azyrin’s magic hurt it, charring lines on the stony scales. Burning deathwyrm? Not actually an improvement in smell over regular.

The deathwyrm coiled around and around, rising to three times my height and then it hissed and struck at Azyrin, its venomous maw gaping, teeth curving and wet with worse than death.

I loosed my arrow, willing it to sink inside that horrible mouth, desperately wishing I had my voice, my power, and could bind death itself on that horrible creature. If I missed, Azyrin’s soul could be trapped forever. Mine would likely be next.

I did not miss.

My golden arrow bit into the deathwyrm’s forked tongue, sinking deep behind the curving fangs. The snake seemed to turn to stone before our eyes, freezing in midstrike. Azyrin leapt out from underneath it as it hovered there for a moment and then crashed to the earth, the ground shaking like a phantom of the giant quake that had come before. The cold white light rose from its eyes and burst into a thousand tiny fragments of starlight which flew like sparks from a bonfire up into the dark and were lost among the real stars.

Keeping an eye on the now inanimate deathwyrm, I bent and caught up my quiver. Rahiel flew over us with a tired cheer, and we all turned to catch up with the group. They greeted us with cautious joy and many questions as all their fear and nervous energy spilled over.

“Should we go back to the barn?” Makha asked.

“Is it dead?” Drake asked.

“What about Da’s body?” Enil asked.

Rahiel broke in and her words stilled us all.

“I saw more movement further out. Couldn’t tell what it was, but the air is full of death and Bill detects evil like a closing noose all around us.” She stopped her rush of dire words to catch her breath.

I touched my quiver of magicked arrows and wondered how many things like the deathwyrm were out there. As if summoned, Fade materialized at my side, causing the children to shriek and gasp.

“He’s on our side,” Drake said.

“We cannot risk staying here.” Rahiel’s wings flicked in nervous jerks and she smoothed her palms over the skirt of her gown.

“There is a temple in Fallbarrow,” Alew said softly. His calm tone surprised me and I peered at him in the starlight. His jaw was tight but his gaze as it met mine was steady. “Thunla and the Summer Lady are worshipped there. We have good priests. Could they help if there are more of… that?”

“Aye,” Makha said, looking at Azyrin as he nodded confirmation. “But it is hours of travel yet, especially with the little ones.”

“We’ll make it,” Alew said grimly.

“What about Da?” Enil’s wheedling, fearful voice cut in.

“He’s dead,” Alew said. “We have to get to Aunt Emili and the priests. Then we’ll be safe.” He added the last with a softer tone, as though apologizing for snapping at his little brother.

“We will stay aloft,” Rahiel said. “Scout for danger.”

The plan more or less settled, we set off again, angling back toward the packed dirt track that led to Fallbarrow and, hopefully, help. I kept one of the gold-veined arrows nocked and ready as I ranged ahead in my usual position, Fade nervously sticking close to my side. His growl was a constant low vibration in my ears and I knew that whatever danger this night held, it was not yet defeated. With my own ears twitching at every sound and my eyes searching the shadowed curves of grass and hummock, I led the way, dreading what we might find.

* * *

Nothing else attacked us as we moved through the dark hills, but the sense of menace rose and closed in around me, strong enough that I could almost take a bite out of the air and swallow it. Rahiel’s movements in the air far above us mirrored my own unhappy and fearful thoughts as her spirals grew tighter and tighter.

False dawn lent a corpse-grey pallor to the sky and muted the starlight as the tall fans of a windmill resolved itself from the further-off shadows in the sky. Many paces behind me, I heard Alew say something in a relieved and quiet tone to my companions. His aunt was the miller’s wife. Fallbarrow lay just ahead.

Peatsmoke and the burble of a fresh stream were welcome to my senses, helping to purge the cloying stench of the deathwyrm’s presence from my memory. For a moment, it seemed as though the quiet village had not been touched. We descended the last hill and made our way toward the big shape of the mill. From what I could tell in the dark, the windmill lay on the very edge of the town. Little cottages and a few larger buildings, all built in the same rectangular style as the farmhouse we’d abandoned, hugged a flatter space of land beyond, huddling in the dark like funeral mounds.

Shoving away my morbid thoughts, I slowed to let my companions catch up. With my curse, my total inability to communicate even the most basic things, I was not exactly the best person to have in the lead when it came to introducing oneself in the dark on a night like this one had been. On a good day in these parts, a silent elf woman was a curiosity, on a bad day, well, I didn’t fancy getting skewered by wayward pitchforks.

Rahiel’s warning cry caused me to turn in time to see a slinking shadow break away from the regular shadows in the summer grasses and streak toward our party. I sent an arrow into the black mass as my eyes tried to make sense of the swirling shapes. Golden light flared as the arrow found its mark, and the shadows fell away, revealing a skeletal hound with glowing red eyes.
Hellhounds
.
Great
. My second arrow tore into the skull of the injured beast and it collapsed, the red draining from its eyes as it died.

As though a spell of silence had blanketed the village and was now lifted by Rahiel’s warning cry, screams shattered the illusion of peace. Fade sprang away from me, leaping onto an oncoming hound and rending it with his thick claws. Above us, Rahiel resumed throwing bolts of blue fire into the moving shadows as sulfur stung my eyes and choked my nose.

I turned, sprinting back to my companions. Makha and Azyrin were trying to keep the children between them, while Drake had handed off Perl to one of her siblings. He moved around to shield what he could, drawing the rapier Reason from its invisible sheath.

Hellhounds closed in around us, blocking our path to the besieged village. I bared my teeth at them, unable to yell curses like Makha was doing, or to weave spells like Azyrin and Rahiel.

My enchanted arrows flew true, taking one beast through the eye as it grew brave and charged. Another hulking beast met its death as Makha’s shield smashed down, crushing in its bony head. Flesh hung off the undead creatures, sulfurous gas leaking yellow with every hair-raising cry as they backed off and circled us, forcing us to close into an even tighter group around the unarmed children.

Azyrin threw his arms up, twisting golden light coating his leather-clad body as his white hair stood on end, his braids flying up as though lifted by a hidden storm.

“Storm to fire, fire to bone, bone to ash,” he screamed in Orcish. “Ash to hell from whence you came!”

Lightning smashed down, hot and blinding, crackling in a huge arc through the circling hell hounds. Burning flesh and hideous screams made me want to curl into a ball, closing my nose and ears to the carnage. I blinked away acrid tears and forced myself to stay alert for stragglers that Azyrin’s spell might have missed.

“Go, now,” Azyrin yelled. He drooped and would have crumpled to his knees had not his wife caught him.

We ran, even the children, Makha half-carrying Azyrin as we charged almost blindly toward the windmill.

The tall stone tower was besieged by skeletal soldiers whose pewter-colored armor and tattered vestments gave life to my deepest fear. These were not just any undead, disturbed from sleep by some power or some accident.

These were the Saliidruin dead. Fell armies that had lain as bones beneath these hills until all memory of their dread empire and dark powers left the minds of mortal men. Some artifacts remained, of course, like the dark blue mail which Makha wore. I had hoped that all these dead would have long crumbled into dust. The Saliidruin empire had killed off the last of my people, the Elemental Elves, the Worldsingers, from the mortal lands after the bulk of us had fled to our ancestral home in the Between.