The Darkslayer: Chaos at the Castle (Book 6) (5 page)

“Still is a good man, Jans. He’s not dead, you know
.” Slim rose up to his full height and looked down on the weathered soldier. He felt woozy. His blood still felt as thick as mud. Those spiders had taken a toll on him. “You don’t know him like I do. He probably hasn’t made it inside yet.”

Jans stuffed a wad of tobacco into his mouth, sucked on it, then spat.

“Mmmm… now that’s worth dying for right there. I should have sent some with your friend.” He held his tobacco pouch out, shaking it. “Care for some? It’s the best. Dwarven.”

Slim held
up his hand. “No, I don’t think my stomach can handle it. Besides, there are other things I can do to unwind, but now is not the time.”

Jans sucked
and spit. “Well, so long as I have some chaw in my mouth, I think I’ll die a happy man. Of course, I want my horse between my legs and my lance down an underling’s throat, too.” He made eyes up the hill. “Used to be you could see the flags at the top from here. Seems two lifetimes ago.”

Slim nodded.
“I remember. The last five years have been long.”

And they had been, even for Slim
, who had been around longer than most men. Over the decades, he’d seen men, dwarves, orcs and underlings go at it time and time again, but he’d never seen anything like this. It was as if the world was coming to an end. The underlings were creeping up from every corner. In the past, they’d struck terror in the night, keeping the world on edge then moving on. Now, they were getting as thick as a plague of locusts, overtaking and devouring everything in sight.

“Jans, do you think
you can hold off another day? There is nowhere for you to run. Our best chance is to see if Venir comes through.”

“Another day
? Hah! Man, don’t you realize that this might just be our last day? All of us.” He pointed his mailed hand at Slim. “Now you listen to me, Slim. When the scouts come in with the next reports, if it’s not good, we’re leaving. And when I say we’re leaving, I say we aren’t just leaving this spot, but we’re leaving our bones to Bish. And we’re going to take as many of those dark fiends with us as we can.” He patted Slim on the shoulder before he walked off. “I suggest you do the same.”

Slim squatted like a vulture by the campfire and scratched his fingers through his hair.
He fully expected Venir to come through in his mind, but his gut told him something else. Ever since the rangy warrior dashed up into the forest, Slim couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen his friend for the last time. Perhaps, it wasn’t Venir who wouldn’t survive. Maybe it was him. Maybe his time had come to perish battling the underlings.

What was I thinking? I shouldn’
t have let him go alone! I should have died with him!

He nibbled at his fingernails and took another long look up the hill where Outpost Thirty One sat.

“A thousand underlings against one man,” he said. Sadness fell over him. “No one could survive that.”

CHAPTER 7

“Rumph.”

Venir’s eyes fluttered open, but there was nothing to see. The
bag on his head was still in place. His tongue was swollen with thirst, and the stinging sweat that once dripped in his eyes was gone. He groaned.

Every time he dozed off inside the stockade
, a biting pain inside his wrists awoke him. The small bones in both wrists ached in a way that such small things had no business aching. His fingers were black and blue, but he could move them. Several hours had been tolerable, but now he’d lost all track of time. He couldn’t tell which was worse: being in the Mist, or being shackled and wounded in a fort full of underlings.

Must escape.

Venir had been hopeful at first.

Just wait it out until
my enemies reveal themselves.

B
ut the nagging pain in his wrists kept reminding him that he couldn’t do anything. He was crippled. Invalid. Diminished. And the Royal Riders who were waiting on him would be slaughtered. He had failed them. He had failed Slim. He’d failed everyone.

His stomach groaned. His
tongue was as thick as wool in his mouth.

“Waterrr …” he moaned.

Venir had never begged for anything before, not even when he was a starving young boy, but his conditions were beyond miserable. He was shackled inside the darkness. Hungering. Thirsting. No chance for escape. He flexed his limbs and fought against the restraints. They didn’t groan. Days ago, they would have.

Bish.

Hours ago, it had been
Son of a Bish
, but now his deteriorating thoughts couldn’t even muster that. Memories of the Mist sprung forth, worsening his fears. In the Mist, at least he could move; he could walk and talk, and there was water in abundance. In the Mist, there were sounds of life. Here, there was nothing.

Here
, it was black. Painful. Agitating. Eroding and sweltering. The minutes felt like hours. His great strength faded. His will was breaking. This wasn’t like the dungeons in the City of Bone. This was much worse. A hundred times worse, it seemed.

Fool.

Images were coming and going inside his mind. Friends and foes, distinct and drifting. What had he done in life that had led him here? Into the belly of his very enemy? Georgio and Melegal, what had become of them? And the tiny boy, Lefty? He’d forsaken them so he could pursue his enemy. Perhaps Billip and Mikkel were still looking after them. It seemed like decades since he’d seen them.

His k
nees trembled. He sagged to the ground. His feet were numb from countless hours of standing. The middle of his back felt like an anvil was stuck inside it. He wanted to sit, rest, but his pinned and swollen wrists wouldn’t allow it. He hung. Locked in the stockade. His suffering increasing by the minute.

No. Must fight it.
Focus.

It was hard to even think, but the beautiful face of Kam found its way inside his mind. Why would any man leave such a magnificent
woman? Only a bull-headed fool would do that. And he had no lust for her now. Only the desire to see her face and to know that she was alright without him.

M
any other memories came to mind. The Battle in the Pit with Son of Farc. As devastating as that had been, he’d rather risk another beating than die like this. And the blonde-haired half-orc woman, Dolly, with the snaggled teeth. Why did he wonder about her?

Jarla.

Was that when all the madness started? The day of her betrayal? The day he took the armament from the sack and hewed down the gnolls, Throk and Keel? His swollen fingers twitched in the darkness. His life had been nothing but underlings after that. He’d hated them even before. They’d killed his family when he was a boy. They’d buried him alive. Yet he’d survived somehow.

Mood.

Chongo.

They had saved him before.
He lurched inside the stockade. Rocked his bullish shoulders back and forth, on his toes.

“Grrrrr …
umph!
”

Nothing moved but him.

He tried again with the same result.

“B
ish!” His voice was more of a croak than a sound.

He’d failed his friend
s and his dog. He’d failed them all, and they would all die at the hands of the underlings in the end. Now, all he could do was sit in misery and wait for his slow death to come. His thoughts drifted back and forth, between reality and some other world, hour after hour, day after day for all he knew.

His inner fire was dim, but not out. Not as long as the scent o
f underling skin that he knew so well was about. Hatred kept his heart beating when most men’s would fail. Vengeance stoked the coals in his belly. Somehow, if he could get ahold of one more underling, he could die satisfied. If he could even just sink his teeth around one of their throats.

***

Dead silence. His ragged breathing. His only company until the familiar sound of a key being turned in a lock clicked in his ears. It might as well have been a trumpet blast that jostled Venir from his sleepless slumber. Stiff as a board, every joint in his body ached. He tried to move. The gash in his thigh where the underling stabbed him throbbed with its own life.

“Water,” he
said. It wasn’t audible. The deep recesses of his mind blurted out another warning.

Be quiet
, Fool! Shut up! Listen!

A steel door swung open and banged against the wall
. A rush of cool air followed. Chill bumps rose along his arms, igniting each and every hair.

I’m still alive after
all.

Booted feet entered
. Rubbing plates of armor and weapons jangling followed. It was music to Venir’s ears―until someone poked him in the ribs.

He jerked in his shackles and moaned.

Bloody bastards!

“Check the cuffs on those leg iron
s, and unfetter the stockade,” a man said. His voice was familiar.

Venir turned his head
. It was the leader of the Brigands. The ones posing as Royal soldiers he’d encountered in the gorge. Venir tried to recall how many men the leader had said they had. Less than a hundred, was it? His blood thickened in his veins.

“Tuuth,” the leader said, “keep that spear on his back in case he makes any sudden moves.”

The orc snorted.
“He’s not going to move anywhere. He won’t be able to walk. Look.”

Venir could feel the light from a lantern on his face
. The others came closer.

“Gad
! That is disgusting!” the leader said. He covered his mouth. “Give me that torch.”

“No,” the
orc said. “The underlings like this. It’s not ours to mess with.”

Venir felt a lump form in his throat
. What was going on? What was wrong with his legs?

“Give me the torch, Tuuth
,” the leader said. “The Bone with the underlings. This man’s a warrior, and he doesn’t deserve to die with his legs eaten off.”

“It
’ll be your legs sticking out of the ground, not mine, Fraggon,” the orc said. “You humans are so soft. Like buttered bread.”

“And you orcs are rotten like basilisk egg
s. Look at this!” Fraggon held the light closer. “So vile.”

Venir hear
d another man squat down beneath him and gag.

“Blecht!”
Another one spit a mouthful of bile from his mouth. “All these years, and I still can’t stomach it.”

Tuuth shoved one man onto his back and hunched his big frame do
wn in the light. “Bone. That is nasty. Heh. Heh.”

Venir
raised his neck from the stockade and groaned. His head felt like it weighed a ton. He mumbled something incomprehensible. He was trying to say, “What’s wrong with my legs?” He couldn’t even feel them.

“Keep him steady while I burn th
ese things,” said the leader, Flaggon. “Hold him, men.”

Tuuth clamped
his arms around Venir’s chest. Pinning his arms at his sides.

The others grabbed his legs.

“It’s for the better, Stranger. An act of mercy I don’t normally give, but you’ve earned that much respect from me,” Tuuth said into the bag over his head.

“Mercy
?” one brigand soldier started. “He’ll need more than that. These grubs have eaten holes so deep in his flesh I can see the bone.” Venir heard the man swallow. “Ah slat, I’m getting sick again.”

“H
e’s lucky for the leaches; that much is certain,” Fraggon said. “They suck the blood and numb the pain. Gad, you don’t usually see both like this.” He took a dagger out and sliced one off that was bloated with blood and as big as his hand.

“How this man lives, I’ll never know,” the other brigand said
. He spit more bile from his mouth. “He should be dead.”

“Well, the grubs eat the skin, but the
y cauterized the holes somehow. I’ve seen men with tunnels of holes all over them that still live. But you’re right; he should be dead, and I don’t think the underlings want that yet.”

Venir felt heat on his legs
. His heart pounded inside his chest like a war drum. He’d seen grubs and leeches and what they did to the flesh. It horrified him.

What
have they done to me!

Fraggon continued.
“You’ve been blessed and cursed it seems, Stranger. The grubs and leeches are enjoying their meal, and a big beefy man like you can feed them for days. Well, what’s left of you, anyway. But I don’t think the underlings want you dead just yet; else they wouldn’t have sent for you. But, I can’t guarantee you’ll live through this next step either. I mean, you might live, but I don’t see you ever walking again. A shame too. You have him secured, Tuuth? I’d say there be some fight in him.”

“
Should I take the bag off and let him breathe? Let him bite down on something?”

“Are you volunteering your finger, Tuuth
? My, so compassionate you’ve become for the stranger. No, just leave it on. It’ll muffle the screams well enough. Not that the underlings would mind that one bit anyway. Stranger, may Bish be with you.”