Mortal Consequences (27 page)

Grabbing the archwizard’s white hair, Sysquemalyn dragged her to the black cavity left by the departed crysmal. She tipped Polaris and the laraken at the edge. Even in near-mindless fright, Polaris felt a bitter wind blow from the hole. The crysmal had bored back to its own plane. This drop would take her far from anything she’d ever known. Better to die—but would she die?

“This little friend will devour you,” Sysquemalyn cooed, “but you needn’t watch. Lie in darkness, deep in this mountain, never to see light again. And while you lie there, and shrivel, eaten alive, dream of revenge. As I did.”

And the monster tipped parasite and prey over the edge.

Dazed, in shock, Polaris barely felt her head strike stone, her face rasp as they slid down the corkscrew hole. Too, the plump laraken absorbed some blows as they tumbled and rolled. Horror overtook Polaris, and she wished to find death quickly.

Yet part of her native intelligence fought back, calculating, though fear almost drowned out reason. For Sysquemalyn had made a mistake.

By her words, the monster assumed the hole simply dropped into the mountain like a mine shaft. But Polaris had felt the alien breeze, knew it traveled to another plane where she’d never survive. If so, there’d be an instant crossing of border to the next plane. And at the junction, the anti-shifting sphere around the mountaintop would end.

And so, despite grinding, pitching, and rolling, Polaris repeated her shifting spell over and over. Blackness wrapped her, the laraken strangled, rocks bruised, she grew dizzy, would soon black out—

—then the spell took hold.

Sunlight dazzled Lady Polaris. Or twilight, for the sun glared on the western horizon. Feebly she shielded her eyes, and found her hand free.

She was aching, and stiff with blood and slime. Sand clung to her face, clotted in blood at her punctured cheek. Her clothes were shredded, every inch of skin burned or scraped. Thirst throbbed as if she’d swallowed fire. Crawling, rolling over, she fought to locate herself.

Thin yellow grass clumped around, and she parted it to see. Through bloodshot eyes, she recognized a gray lump lit by dusky fire. Widowmaker Mountain belched smoke, spilled yellow-red lava down cracked sides, whirled ash into the air for miles. Sysquemalyn had turned the mountain into a blazing torch to celebrate her victory.

Polaris fell back, sucked dry of magic by battle and the laraken, but her final spell had worked. She’d shifted and left the parasite behind. She was alive, and whole in body.

But her spirit was shattered. The twilit sky seemed too big, the land too wide, the world too large. An overpowering ache possessed her, homesickness, the desire to snuggle in a dark apartment to eat, and drink cool wine, and rest.

Polaris, one of the highest mages the empire boasted, was surprised not to lust for revenge. Sysquemalyn and her hellspawned powers were too great. Let others, a conclave of great wizards, punish the fiend. Lady Polaris only wanted to get home, take a bath, eat, and rest.

Yes, she’d stay home from now on.

“Orcs!”

“Kill ‘em all!”

The canny orcs chose a perfect spot for an ambush. This deep defile, almost a canyon, was the only pass through this stretch of the Barren Mountains. They’d hidden on ledges shrouded by gorse, hurled rocks onto travelers to stun and panic both horses and humans, then rushed from above like falcons. Unfortunately, orcs didn’t plan far enough ahead or post a rear guard, so as the orcs battled the travelers, Sunbright and Knucklebones, and glory-hungry dwarves, tore into the orcs.

Knucklebones ran right while the shaman dashed and cocked Harvester of Blood over his shoulder. A pair of orcs bludgeoned a woman, holding her hair while her children screamed. Everyone shouted in the rock-strewn canyon, but Sunbright hollered “Ra-vens!” loud enough to make the orcs turn from their victim.

The first thug died instantly. Harvester of Blood swung in a whistling arc for the orc’s elbow. As Sunbright expected, the cowardly creature ducked and flinched. The heavy blade clove into the orc’s scrawny forearm, and slammed its slack-jawed head. Lopped off clean, wrist and hand flipped away while Harvester bit deep the orc’s temple and snapped its neck with a heart-stopping crunch. The orc dropped like a log, pulling Harvester down. Sunbright’s blood boiled with a battle-high. Flexing his thick wrists, he ripped the blade free, wary because he was temporarily unarmed.

He needn’t have worried. The second orc had abandoned the attack to run. Sunbright took a long step, flicked the blade, and snagged the orc’s ankle with Harvester’s hook. Blood spurted as razor-sharp steel cut skin and tendons. Crippled, the orc collapsed on its own cleaver. It blubbered and cried for mercy, but the barbarian took another step, planted a heavy boot on the orc’s back, and stabbed straight down as if gigging fish. Harvester’s keen tip cleft the orc’s spine, and the creature stopped wriggling.

The big barbarian whirled to appraise the battle. The travelers were twenty people, two or three families with many horses, more than twenty beasts. Tied head to head on long leads, the horses plunged and kicked and screamed so orcs and fighters ducked flying hooves. Humans grappled with orcs—there were nearly sixty villains—or else crouched behind packs and panniers dumped from the horses. Charging into this milling melee, dwarves with mattocks and warhammers chopped at orcs, hollering the names of their ancient gods and ancestors.

Knucklebones, not much taller than the mountain men, used the dwarves as shields, darting from behind to ply her dark elven blade. Even as Sunbright watched, she hung onto Cappi’s belt to alert him that she was there and a friend. Working as a team with Pullor, the two dwarves carved into orcs that they had backed into a pocket of rock. Sunbright thought that action foolish, since even orcs would fight when cornered. Better to give them room to flee, then kill them from behind, but the dwarves were hot to destroy ancient enemies and win glory. One orc broke from the pack by hurling a spear at Cappi’s face and bolting.

As the dwarf staggered, Knucklebones zipped around him and poised her blade. The orc ran right into it. Black steel sliced its guts just above the naked hipbone, slid out its back, and was ripped out its side by the thief’s deft twist. The orc ran a dozen paces before shock and pain dropped it.

At Sunbright’s feet, two dark-haired children, a girl and boy perhaps eight and six, hunkered behind wicker baskets and howled at their mother, fallen and masked in blood.

Sunbright shifted Harvester and cuffed both across the heads. “Stop that!” the shaman said. “Help, don’t squall! Here!”

He grabbed the boy’s tattered smock and ripped it off his body, and left him standing in a loincloth, so surprised he stopped crying. Stooping, the shaman cradled the woman’s head and wrapped the rag around her head and neck wound. That they still bled showed she was alive. Sunbright snatched the boy’s hand, and pressed it atop the crude bandage. “Hold this and don’t let go or your mother will die,” he said bluntly. “You, little sister, dig in these packs for blankets, wrap her tight, and keep her warm. And feed her water, understand?” The teary-eyed girl nodded and jerked at the ties on a pannier. Sunbright called, “Good work!” and raced off, Harvester winking in the early winter sunlight.

Dashing around a knot of tangled, kicking horses, the shaman ran smack into three orcs, looting. Their hands overflowed with tin canteens, horse bridles, a knitted shawl, and other junk. One had even laid down his war club to dig in a saddlebag.

Sunbright didn’t holler, just sucked wind for a stronger blow. He went for the armed orcs first. A big one, fast on its feet, held a war club of hickory and iron spikes—damned well-armed for orcs, the shaman noted—but few humans could stand up to a Rengarth Barbarian, and Sunbright was fitted with the finest sword his tribe ever knew.

Swung wide, Harvester didn’t break the club’s hickory handle, but snagged and ripped it from the orc’s grasp. The big orc ducked the sweeping steel, but Sunbright stamped for balance, chopped his blade backhanded, and crushed the orc’s collarbone. Yanking the leather-wrapped pommel past its ribs, Sunbright hooked the smashed shoulder into gray meat. Jerked like a pike on a line, the orc toppled at Sunbright’s feet. The warrior-shaman kicked the gray head of lank hair, and stepped to kill the other two. The middle orc froze in fear, and Sunbright pierced its breadbasket, then twisted the hook to carve a hole that spilled guts. Leaving that one to die, the fighter lunged for the third, who ran.

Harvester’s keen tip kissed the orc’s shoulder, slashing muscle to white bone. Grabbing the spurting wound, the orc tripped over its own flying feet and crashed to earth. Sunbright scanned, found the gutted orc falling slowly. He batted it backward, then stabbed the prone orc behind the ear, snuffing the light in its sunken eyes.

Battle-lust sang in his veins as Sunbright Steelshanks whirled to find more enemies, to drown his sorrows in an orgy of blood. It was hard to see now, for the horses had kicked up dust, but the action had died down. Most of the orcs had fled or been killed.

A scratching by his feet caught his attention. The big orc with the crushed shoulder struggled for the hilt of its spiked war club. Sunbright hooked a toe and flipped the orc like a turtle. Despite grinding pain from a bleeding shoulder, the creature still craned for its weapon. Sunbright stamped on its breastbone.

Harvester poised above the orc’s throat, Sunbright growled, “What’s your name, beast?”

The dying orc focussed yellow eyes and sputtered, “To-Toch.”

“Tell your gods you died game.”

And Sunbright plunged the blade into the gray, dirty throat. Blood welled like a red fountain, then trickled away. Sunbright wiped his blade clean on his foe’s tunic: gray wool with a freshly-painted red hand. “Symbol of the One King again …” the shaman mused.

Stooping, he picked up the war club. The long hickory handle gave a good heft, balanced, not nose-heavy, reminding him of Dorlas’s warhammer. Chaffing the handle with dust to swab off blood, he slid it into his belt.

“Was that necessary?” Knucklebones asked. She stood nearby, small chest heaving, and buffed her brass knuckledusters on her lion skin jacket. The mane formed a curious hood. “He was dying anyway.”

“I’ve left too many enemies alive.”

Battle-lust passing, Sunbright was shaky and tired. He wore a brown bearskin vest but no hat, and never seemed cold.

“And I’ve paid for that mistake too many times,” he continued. “It’s a weakness, and I cannot afford to be weak. Besides, you never leave a throat uncut. Are you growing soft?”

The part-elf only polished her shiny knuckles. Raised to be ruthless, she couldn’t argue, but one of Sunbright’s major attractions had been his gentle kindness. Now, cut off from his people forever, he’d turned bitter, and she wondered if he’d ever be kind or gentle again.

Yet he sheathed Harvester to tend the bludgeoned woman, saw to her wounds while crooning to her children. His heart was still true, the thief knew. Only his mind was bitter. But his curt words, or lack of words, were a bugbear to endure.

Four dwarves joked and swapped boasts as they cleaned weapons and touched blades to whetstones. By contrast, the travelers grimly counted their dead, four lost out of twenty. A short, thickset man with massive, hairy arms jogged to Sunbright. Hugging his cowed children, he gasped, “How is she?”

“To tell the truth,” the shaman told him. “I’m not sure.” Sunbright knelt with the woman’s head in his lap. The children had stanched her bleeding with rags and bundled her in blankets. Sunbright plied his belt knife to shave her scalp around a seeping wound. He rolled the woman’s eyelids, examined her pupils, found them the same size. Nor did they bulge, as can happen with a severe head wound. “She may take the day to awaken, or three days. Or not at all.”

The thick man gulped. All the travelers wore the same outfit. Canvas vests, thick knitted sweaters without sleeves, trousers of leather, knee-high boots wrapped with rawhide, leather caps with bills. Most had thick forearms and thighs, Sunbright noted, and wondered why. The man said, “I—we thank you for our rescue. We hoped to escape such troubles by fleeing the empire. But even here you’re overrun.”

Sunbright sliced up a skirt, and wrapped neat bandages around the patient’s skull. “What troubles?” he asked. “We’ve heard naught.”

Thick-fingered hands waggled helplessly as the man told him, “These orcs with the red hand raid everywhere, all around the compass. The emperor’s soldiers wear themselves to a nub fighting, but they’re like grass fires in drought. And they carry disease. Men partake in raids too. Bandits and pirates loot whole cities and torch them. Cities and towns shut the gates and admit no one, not even their own peasants. Markets and fairs languish. We journeyed to Zenith for the Festival of the Harvest Moon and found naught but empty fields. We’ve met no buyers, no one with cash, yet everyone wants our horses. The bandits are bloodthirsty, but imperial troops are just as bad. Twice we met small armies that threatened to take the horses in the empire’s name, and give us nothing but wooden chits …”

Talk of rampant raids and chaos intrigued Sunbright, the dwarves, and Knucklebones. While the horse traders untangled their mounts and picked up and packed, and Sunbright stitched wounds, the dwarves brewed rose hip tea and unwrapped oak cakes. With the hostlers’ permission, they butchered a dead horse and sliced the red meat into long strips. The dwarves cut wood and scraped a fire pit as the short winter day ended and brittle stars winked. Everyone feasted on horse meat and liver and brains that steamed in the frosty air like their breath. The hostlers unfolded curious shaggy ponchos with slits that left their bare arms free.

The hostlers’ news was patchy and shaded by personal escapes, but it was clear the empire was inundated by the One King’s ravagers. Rumor said Lady Polaris had discussed truce with the One King, but they’d warred instead and blown the top off Widowmaker Mountain. No one knew who controlled what territories. Orcish and imperial armies alike splintered into raiding parties. All strangers were foes, and no place was safe. The hostlers, honest traders once welcome throughout the empire, were war refugees, as were many other folk.