The Hammer and the Blade (19 page)

  The hole was circular, about two paces in diameter, and it fell away into the earth at a steep angle. The dying light of the setting sun did not reach down it very far.

  "You called out for this?" Baras said, frowning. "It's just a hole."

  "No it's not. Smell that." Jyme leaned over the hole and sniffed. "It smells like a bunghole down there."

  "Familiar with that smell, are you?" Nix said, eliciting chuckles from two of the other guards.

  Jyme ignored him and pointed. "There are more holes just like this one over there and there. I came over to piss and noticed them. One might be natural, like a cave, right? But lots of them? That ain't natural. Something dug them."

  Baras rubbed the back of his neck, eyeing the hole. Two of the younger guards coughed in the blowing dust. The setting sun stretched their shadows over the ground.

  Egil reached into his beltpouch, removed his dice, and rattled them in his right hand. Nix pulled his cloak over his mouth and nose and walked the area around the first hole, found the others that Jyme had mentioned. He counted five, all of them perfectly circular, all of them descending away into darkness under the Wastes, all of them stinking like a latrine.

  "I count five more," he said, upon returning. "And as much as it irks me, I agree with Jyme. Something dug them somehow. I don't see any tracks so I don't think they've been used in a long while."

  "Used?" Baras asked. "Used by what?"

  Nix shrugged, though his mind turned to the flock of creatures they'd seen earlier.

  The wind gusted and whistled over the holes, which keened eerily. One of the guards looped finger and thumb in the protective gesture of Orella.

  Egil edged closer, crouched at the edge of the hole, and looked down. "It's like a bug hole or a worm's boring. Looks to go deep."

  "No such thing as bugs or worms that big," Baras said.

  "Shouldn't be any such thing as the Demon Wastes, either," Egil said. "Yet here we stand."

  The other guards shifted uncomfortable on their feet, passed worried glances.

  Nix imagined a honeycombed earth under his boots, crawling with horrors. There were many stories about the Wastes.

  "What could be down there?" one of the young guards said.

  "Go see," another of the guards said, and gave him a fake shove, creating a shortlived panic in the first, and laughter or a smile from everyone else except Baras.

  "Bunghole!" the first said. "I piss in your soup for that."

  "Enough," Baras said. "They're just holes in the ground. Dug or natural doesn't matter. There's nothing down there." He looked at the darkening sky, the setting sun. "Lord Norristru wants to press on into the declivity before nightfall. We've got another half-hour or more of light. Let's get into that cut and find a likely spot. Leg it, men."

  Sighs and groans answered Baras's command, but everyone turned to go. As they did, Nix spotted a thin cylindrical stone sticking out of the scree at an odd angle. He stepped over to it, nudged it with his boot to free it, and saw it for what it was: not a stone, but a bone. He glanced around at the ground under his feet and realization dawned.

  "Wait," he said, and the guards and Egil turned back.

  Nix fell to all fours and scraped the soil all around the hole with his punch dagger. His work made the dust worse, and loose dirt, caught by the gusting wind, stung eyes and drew curses.

  "What are you doing, man?" Baras asked, shielding his mouth with his cloak.

  Nix stopped in his work long enough to toss the bone at him. "That's a bone." His digging revealed another, another. As he found them, he tossed them toward Egil and Baras, one after another.

  "It's all bones," Nix said, looked up at them. "This whole hill. Bones and dirt."

  The young guards cursed nervously. They all looked under their feet, wide-eyed, as if fearful the hill of remains would soon vomit up an army of animated dead.

  Egil picked up the bone and examined it. Jyme and Baras looked over his shoulder.

  "Are they… human?" Jyme asked.

  Egil shrugged. "Could be, but I can't say for certain. Any skulls, Nix?"

  "Gods," Baras said. "You talk of this as if they were melons at market."

  Egil shrugged again, handed the bone to Baras. "We're tomb robbers. The dead hold no fear for either of us."

  Nix worried at the heap a bit longer, looking for a skull, darkening the sky with powdered death. He found shards of bone with every dug furrow, but no skulls.

  "Maybe it's a burial mound of some kind," Baras said.

  "Not likely," Egil said to Baras. He took the bone from Baras and pointed at various features. "See that? Cracked open for marrow. And those grooves there, those are from teeth."

  "Gods," one of the guards said.

  All of them made the protective gesture of Orella, even Jyme.

  "Maybe we should just leave them be," said Jyme, his voice quaking. "Show some respect for the dead."

  Nix left off his digging and stood, his clothes and face coated in the dust of the dead. "The dead need respect no more than they need air or food. Didn't have you as the superstitious sort, Jyme."

  "I should be back in Dur Follin in my damned bed," Jyme said.

  "Shouldn't we all," Nix said, and wiped his face with his gloved hand. He glanced around. "Bodies, carcasses, whatever these are, they must have been stacked here waist deep. This was the scene of a slaughter."

  All eyes went to the hole. The wind gusted, whistled over the opening, the sound like a prolonged scream.

  "I ain't camping near this hole," one of the young guards said.

  Nods around.

  "We could still go back to Dur Follin," said another.

  Baras cleared his throat. "No, we can't. And what happened here happened long ago. There's nothing to fear. Let's move, men. Nix, we go. Egil. Now."

  When they returned to the caravan, they found Rakon standing near the carriage, looking up at the sky, muttering as if he could speak to wind. When he saw them approach, he made a sharp, dismissive gesture with one hand and turned to face them, hands on his hips.

  "What was it?" he asked.

  "Holes, my lord," Baras answered.

  "Holes?"

  The guards around Egil and Nix muttered.

  "Unusual holes," Egil said. "Dug by something. With the bones of many old kills near them."

  Rakon stared at them, his thin face unreadable. He checked the sky a final time, looked to the west, at the fading light. "We press on a bit more today. Into the cut so we're out of the wind."

  With that, he vanished into the carriage.

  As the wagon and carriage started to move, Egil sidled up to Nix.

  "I'm disquieted by those bones."

  "First 'dilatory' and now 'disquieted'? My priest has been replaced by a scholar."

  "The bones weren't that old."

  "I know," Nix said.

  "I think if we don't get clear of this soon, we're going to die here. All of us."

  Nix nodded. "We can't go anywhere unless we slip the spellworm. We're in it, Egil. Us and them."

  Egil looked at the darkness creeping into the sky, infecting the air. "No one has ever gotten through the Wastes that I've heard."

  "Fatalism ill suits you. Recall that you and I have done many things most said couldn't be done. We'll add traversing the Wastes to that list."

  "Well enough," Egil finally conceded. "Nix, you see the way Rakon's been watching the sky? He's watching more than the Mages' Moon. There's more afoot here."

  "Agreed," Nix said.

  Before descending into the cut, the guards took a moment to take torches from the supply wagon and fire them. Nix declined to take one. Instead, he rifled through his satchel until he found what he sought: a fist-sized black globe of polished volcanic glass scribed with the symbol of a closed eye.

  "Another gewgaw," Egil said.

  "Indeed." Nix held the globe in his palm, spoke a word in the Language of Creation to awaken the magic, and poked the scribed eye with his forefinger. It opened as if alive, squinted at him in anger.

  "Come on," Nix said, and poked it again, harder. "Come on."

  That did it. The eye closed tightly for a moment, as if charging itself, then opened, emitting a glow as bright as a lantern. The guards looked on with wonder. Baras came over, looked at the globe, looked at Nix, and walked away.

  "We could have used that a number of times previous," Egil said. "Where'd you get it?"

  "Where else?" Nix said, shining the light around at the red, cracked walls. "The Low Bazaar."

  Egil's eyeroll was audible in his tone. "Not a servant of Kerfallen the Grey Mage again?"

  "No," Nix said. "I learned my lesson there. This came from a Narascene fortune teller. A pretty one, too."

  Egil eyed the bauble skeptically. "Well, if it explodes, at least we'll know who to blame."

  "
Whom
," Nix corrected, and couldn't resist a jibe. "Now leave me alone and go be disquieted or dilatory or something."

 

 

 
 

The caravan descended into the cut, leaving even the fading light of sunset behind. The torchlight flickered on the cracked walls of reddish stone that rose to either side and hemmed them in. The meager light provided by the torches and Nix's magic crystal put tall shadows on the wall, but did only a little to dispel the black. The darkness in the cut seemed to have weight, growing heavier as they descended, a blanket of ink that threatened to blot them out.

  "Like walking into Hell," Egil said, his voice bouncing loudly off the walls.

  "At least we're out of the wind," said one of the guards.

  The steep slope carried them down a hundred paces or so to the bottom, where the cut flattened and widened. Boulders and piles of scree flanked the road, but the way ahead looked clear.

  A sliver of sky was visible above, through the gash of cut, and the dying light of the day colored it the purple of an old bruise. Looking up, Nix glimpsed a flock of creatures they'd seen earlier, the roiling, spinning cloud of them black against the purple sky. They looked about as big as ducks and flew with the jerky changes of direction typical of bats.

  "There," he said, pointing, but they were already gone.

  Tense hands went to blade hilts.

  "What?" Baras asked, looking around in alarm. "What?"

  "That flock of creatures," Nix said. "I just saw them above."

  Baras opened his mouth to speak but before he did a high-pitched, uncanny shriek sounded from above. The sound spooked the mounts and those pulling the wagon reared, jolting the cart and spilling two bags of grain. The guards jerked blades from scabbards.

  "Crossbows, you dolts," Baras hissed, unslinging his crossbow and readying a quarrel.

  While the other guards sheathed blades and readied quarrels, Egil filled his fists with the hafts of his hammers. Nix drew his falchion and shined the light from his magic eye up the irregular face of the cliff. Cracks lined it, veins in the earth.

  Another shriek sounded from above, inhuman and savage, but this time from the other side of the cut. The pitch of it put Nix's hairs on end. He thought of the holes they'd found, the heap of bones. He spun around, aiming the crystal eye's beam at the top of the cut. For a moment he thought he caught a flash of movement, but couldn't be sure.

  It occurred to him of a sudden that the crystal would make him an easy target from a foe above, so he covered it with his palm and hid under his cloak. The etching of the scribed eye squirmed irritably against his grip. He poked it in the eye with his thumb.

  "What in the Pits was that?" Jyme said softly. He scanned the top of the cut behind the aim of his crossbow.

  "I thought I saw something move up there," one of the young guards said, pointing up to the right. "Over there."

  "Calm heads, men," Baras said, backing toward Rakon's carriage. "No one saw anything moving. You're imagining things."

  Rakon's head emerged from the carriage window. "Baras?"

  The moment Nix saw Rakon, a sharp pain rooted behind his eye and for a fleeting moment he had an overpowering impulse to charge the carriage, slay the eunuch and the driver, and flee with Rusilla and Merelda. The impulse was so strong that he actually took a step toward the carriage.

  Of course, the thought and the step agitated the spellworm, sent vomit up his throat and caused his chest to ache. He groaned, staggered a step. Egil's hand closed on his bicep, steadied him.

  "You all right?" Egil whispered.

  Nix shook his head. "No. They're trying to do something to me."

  "Who? The sisters?"

  Nix nodded.

  "Rakon," Egil called, apparently intent on confronting the sorcerer about his sister.

  "No!" Nix hissed. "No, leave it. Leave it."

  Rakon looked at Egil, eyebrows raised, but Baras stepped between them.

  "Did you hear that sound just now, my lord?" Baras asked.

  Rakon looked up at the slit of dark sky visible between the cliff walls.

  "The wind, maybe," he said. "Or an animal."

  For a moment, Baras said nothing, then, "Probably we should camp soon, my lord. The light is soon to fail entirely. We should set up before that."

  "Find a spot of your choosing, Baras."

  "Very good, my lord."

  Once more Rakon disappeared into the carriage and they started moving. The caravan traveled only a short distance more, everyone wary and with weapons to hand, before Baras called a halt for the night. The shriek did not recur, though the tension lingered.

  Even with only torchlight by which to see, the guards set up the campsite with impressive efficiency. In under a half-hour, they'd pitched six tents, kindled a fire, distributed dried meat and cheese from the supply wagon, put feedbags on the horses, and started a large pot of water for coffee. Egil and Nix had little to do but watch. Even Jyme was of more use than them.