Etherwalker (35 page)

Enoch whirled, but too late. Something heavy and sharp drove into his shoulder and sent him tumbling across the floor.

“I was bred to kill your kind. I have slain your kin to extinction—we thought them all dead after the Baroness fell.”

Enoch pulled himself up on his elbows, despairing. The coldman was moving slowly, deliberately. Noiselessly. It could see in the dark. It knew his moves before he made them. He was dead.

Try and sense it another way.

“I don’t know anything about this hunt. Or this woman.”

Enoch laid his face against the cold plastic floor. Maybe he would be able to feel the heavy footsteps. Blood ran down his shoulder, his arm, pooled on the floor around his elbows.

“I was raised on a farm. I’m not what you think I am.”

The kick whistled through the air, again too fast to avoid and from an unexpected angle. It thudded into his ribs with an audible crack, and Enoch rolled across the cold floor. He was gasping.

“I know where you were raised. I know of the blademaster who raised you. I dug his body from the ground and tasted your hands in the soil of his grave.”

Enoch had kept his swords in hand. Somehow. But he was dead. He could not see his enemy. He could not hear his enemy. He could not even feel his enemy’s footsteps rippling in his own blood. A last act of numb defiance, Enoch refused to let this killer enjoy this torture. Refused to put up a fight. He lay back in the pooling blood and waited for the final blow.

The Hiveking did not laugh. But there was something like dark humor in its voice.

“Why else would I confront a jier’anden here, of all places? Only if I knew of the cripplingly primitive way he was blooded. Your blademaster hid you by severing your power, young one. In keeping you safe amongst shepherds, he hobbled you like one of your lambs. No amount of swordplay can replace what he took from you.”

It was standing over him now. The dry voice drew terrifyingly close to his face. Enoch held his breath. He
paused.

How do you defend against what you cannot see?

“How fitting that the last Pensanden should die in the home of his first primitive foes.”

You turn on the lights.

And suddenly the chamber was bathed with light. It coursed from the massive panels overhead as power roared through circuits long dead. Enoch pulled it from the generators that still held life, from the forgotten corners of this complex that still held charge. The light bore down from the ceiling high above, and it struck the coldman’s lidless eyes without mercy.

He staggered back, hissing. “But you cannot know how to—”

His words were cut short as Enoch’s
derech
drove into his right eye. The Hiveking hissed and struck out, knocking Enoch back to the ground. Enoch, bleeding and broken, groaned as he crawled to his feet.

The Hiveking hissed again and turned to regard Enoch with his one eye. The other was shattered and dripping pale ichor that glistened in the bright light. In the full illumination, Enoch could see that this Hiveking was as different from a man in armor as he was from the smaller coldmen Enoch had witnessed on that fateful night.

The Hiveking did not bear a sword. He wore no armor. His weapons and defense came from the bladed shell carapace that covered his body. His shoulders and forearms bore curving spikes, like ebony spurs. His thick fingers ended in claws, and as Enoch watched, the Hiveking reached down to pull the plates over his ribcage apart . . . only it wasn’t a ribcage. It was another pair of arms, folded tight under its thoracic shell. The arms were thinner and did not end in clawed fingers—each arm tapered to a curving, scythe appendage that resembled the talons of a mantis. One of them snapped forward, faster than Enoch could blink.             

No human reflex is that fast. This is how he kills the Nahuati.

The Hiveking hissed again, spreading his arms out to a lethal range. His mouthparts separated, opening toothy segments as the hiss became a roar that sprayed ichor in a wet arc.

Losing an eye only made him angry.

Enoch crawled to his feet, swords drawn, and backed away. The Hiveking let loose with another roar, and one of the light fixtures overhead exploded in a shower of sparks. The roar was a challenge, and Mosk pointed at Enoch’s wrist.

“You found the Eurym! But it cannot help you here, larva. She cannot hear you this deep!”

What? Who is She? He’s gone mad . . . The light is all I can control here. I have to take him deeper.

Enoch turned and ran. Not out the way he came, but past the Hiveking and towards a series of four doors which were in a line along the wall several dozen meters to his back. There were bright lines there. There was motion. Things that Enoch could use.

The footsteps hammering behind him attested to the fact that his pursuer was no longer attempting to be quiet. The Hiveking was in a rage, a passion that had slept for a decade. The hunter had stepped outside of his training, outside of his patterns—and that had saved Enoch’s life. Enoch wasn’t sure why the creature had chosen to go against the behavior that had worked to such deadly effect for so long, why he had chosen to be melancholy and reflective and
human
at such a critical point, but Enoch had used the flaw to his advantage.

He wouldn’t be able to surprise the Hiveking like that again.

Faster.

Enoch’s side raged with pain, each footstep sending an agonizing blast of fire. But the footsteps were getting closer. He had to go faster.

There was a whistle, and a sharp line of pain laced across his back. Enoch saw the door ahead, triggered the mechanism that opened it. The Hiveking drew even closer, saw that Enoch was hoping to reach the opening and close it behind him.

At the last second, Enoch leapt—but not at the open door. He dove through the door
next to it
, a door that he had also unlocked but left closed until the last second. The Hiveking had too much mass to change course now, and he slid through the other door entirely with a roar. Enoch
pushed
as he came to his feet, slamming both doors shut and sealing the locks.

He knew that he didn’t have a lot of time. Already, the Hiveking was pounding on the door beside him. Powerful blows that shook the air. Enoch turned and ran, his mind reaching out to the architecture around him.

This room was cold, and there was a distinctive sound of dripping coming from above. But no machinery. Nothing that he could use.

Enoch found a gantry connected to a staircase that ran along some massive pipes. He began climbing the staircase, which circled around a tall shaft lifting up into the darkness above. And suddenly Enoch realized where he was.

If I can climb high enough . . . I might have a chance.

The lights in here flickered, were not as robust as those from the wide chamber he had just left. But at least he could see here. At least he could fight. He remembered that the
derech
and
iskeyar
were meant to kill coldmen. That the shifting patterns of straight and curved blades were too complex for their minds.

But he also remembered that even his Master had been overpowered. And this was the Hiveking, who had already bloodied him and broken his rib.

I just need to hold him off and stay alive long enough to get higher.

With a roar, the Hiveking smashed through the door below and charged into the pool of flickering light at the base of the stairs. He cast around for a second, raging at the limited sight his one eye offered, but spied Enoch already on the third level above. The Hiveking hissed and turned to face the boy, crouching.             

He cannot possibly think to—

In one tremendous leap, the coldman bounded from the ground up to the second floor just under Enoch’s feet. He grabbed onto the railing with his scythe claws and pulled himself onto the slatted floor below. Enoch could see him from between the slats under his own feet. He had less time than he thought. The Hiveking spun and leapt onto the railing next to Enoch.              

I’ve made him angry and careless. The Hiveking has been out of practice, and I can use that against him.

Enoch chopped down with his
iskeyar
, lopping off the tip of one scythe claw that held the monster to the railing. The Hiveking roared again and lashed out with another scythe, a flash of movement that tore across the boy’s chest. Enoch stumbled back, even now horrified at the thing’s inhuman speed. Hissing, the Hiveking scrambled over the railing and faced Enoch, who continued moving up the staircase with sidesteps, his swords aimed at his assailant. He began chanting the
litania eteria.
Everything came into focus.

The one scythe is neutralized. I need to be wary of the other. I have to be moving before he strikes. I have to read his movements, the step he takes before—

              In a blur of movement, the Hiveking lunged at Enoch. And Enoch was already moving, dodged out of the way just in time. His clawed hand carved lines into the railing as Enoch dodged to the other side.

The other hands are just as deadly. But I can see them coming.

It lunged again, and again Enoch barely dodged the blow.

And another, but this time Enoch followed the swipe with a jab from his
derech.
It wedged into the creature’s rib shell, piercing it a good two inches. The Hiveking returned the attack with a flurry of blows from his remaining scythe arm, and Enoch answered them with a blur of metal. Still, he was driven back up the next staircase.

Higher. There’s nothing I can
use
down here.

The Hiveking’s next attack was met with a lightning-quick series of parries and ripostes—Enoch’s reflexes had returned and he was seeing the patterns of the creature’s attacks. The tells he gave before a lunge, the way he leaned into a parry.

He tilts his head into a lunge—

And suddenly the patterns changed. A tell wasn’t a tell, but a fake that fooled Enoch into committing himself too deeply into his lunge. The scythe lashed out across Enoch’s right hand and severed his two end fingers. The
derech
spun away and clattered on the floor far below. Enoch stifled his cry, and a hoarse groan escaped his lips.

Now the Hiveking came at him hard and fast. Enoch was pushed back up the stairs again and again, his
iskeyar
flashing right and left in a desperate attempt to keep the assassin’s claws from his vital organs. His movements were purely defensive now—the aggressive maneuver had cost him too much. It dawned on Enoch that this creature had been
designed
to kill him. Had killed his people for years before he had been born. Enoch’s time was running out, and another of the Hiveking’s attacks got through his defense.

Blood spattered the stairs, and they had reached the highest platform. Enoch stumbled back against one of the enormous pipes that bent down from high above. Above them, darkness and the dripping of water.

The Hiveking loomed over Enoch, red blood dripping from each of his claws in syncopation with the water. Enoch pulled back against the pipe, trying to tuck himself under its bulk in a primitive, animal instinct to
get away from that predator.
He was bleeding from dozens of cuts and lacerations, and his remaining blade slipped from his wet fingers. It clattered down the wet stairs and was lost in the darkness far below.

Enoch wrapped his arms around the pipe and shut his eyes, whispering the
litania eteria.

*  *  *  *

Mosk d’Abaddon, once Hiveking and Swarmlord, Him without Brother, and Master of the Hunt, had the last Pensanden trapped and defenseless at his feet. There was nowhere to run.

How fitting that I finally end his line here, underneath the lifeless wasteland that his own forefathers blasted into existence.

Mosk stepped forward, shaking drops of water from his armored skin.

And how fitting that the last etherwalker die cowering in the shadows, wretched and wet.

Far above, distant hinges creaked and hidden machinery shifted. The dripping above suddenly became a stream, a torrent. Became an avalanche. A roar of water and sunlight as the floor of the lake above split apart along seams that had been bound for centuries, then tilted and emptied itself. The deluge drove down and bent the steel gantry, ripped the stairs from their moorings, and dragged the Hiveking into the darkness below. The water was a howling storm of torn metal and electricity, sizzling as broken wires fed lethal power into the flood. Mosk was torn to pieces in the darkness.

*  *  *  *

The storm ended as quickly as it began. Warm light now filled the open space, gilded the last rivulets of water as they thinned in streams through the routed tunnel. Enoch crawled out from under the lee of the pipe he had taken refuge in, coughing. He held his hand pressed tightly against his chest, the slow stream of blood lost among a dozen others that coursed down his body.

Enoch tried to crawl out onto the remaining edges of the gantry, his arms trembling. He was so tired. His lips still whispered the mantra, voiceless, repeating; even though the machinery overhead had now spent itself and gone still, the servos of the reservoir had obeyed his command and could do no more.