The Hammer and the Blade (24 page)

  The carriage wasn't going fast enough. The driver beat at the horses mercilessly and the beasts picked up speed.

  "Crossbows!" Baras shouted. "Clear the road!"

  "Do not stop for anything!" Rakon ordered the driver.

  Baras took aim and fired. His quarrel slammed into the chest of a Vwynn ahead and to the right, sent the creature tumbling head over heels to the earth. The Vwynn's fellows ran over and past him without slowing.

  The horses picked up more speed, but not enough. Guards cursed as they tried to load, the bumpy ride making it difficult to lay quarrels into cocked crossbows. Nix held his falchion in one hand and held onto a rail on the top of the carriage with the other. Beside him, Egil held a hammer in one hand and held on with the other. His dice had vanished back into his pocket.

  The guards got their ammunition set and crossbows sang, the bolts sizzling into the moonlit darkness before the wagon. Two Vwynn fell, a third, all of them screaming as they tumbled into the rockscape. The rest closed from all sides, fangs bared, claws flexed, their muscular bodies lurid against the stone.

  The road behind them closed like a drawn curtain as the Vwynn coming from either side met up in a churning mass and ran frenziedly after the carriage, which was now careening wildly over the road.

  "Don't overturn us!" Nix shouted at the driver, and the older man nodded.

  "Don't let them get the horses!" Baras shouted over his shoulder. "Crossbows! Crossbows!"

  Jyme, loading his weapon, lost his balance and would have fallen if Nix hadn't grabbed him by the collar and steadied him. He didn't bother with thanks, just loaded his crossbow as fast as the situation allowed.

  Vwynn poured forth from the sides, before them, a mob of claws, teeth, and violence. One of them leaped onto the driver's bench, its claws scrabbling on the wood. Baras stabbed it through the midsection with his blade.

  "Keep driving!" he shouted to the driver. "Keep driving!"

  Blood spurted from the Vwynn's gut and it screamed. Baras kicked it off the carriage, wary of its slashing claws and snapping teeth. Another Vwynn leaped onto the bench from the other side, wrapped arms and legs around the old driver. The guards on the side near the driver cursed, swung their blades at the Vwynn, but it did little good. Baras spun on his seat, reached for the driver, but too late.

  A chaotic swirl of limbs, claws, screams, shrieks, and blood ended with the Vwynn toppling over the side and into the road with the driver still in hand. The wagon continued on, the horses whinnying in terror. Baras grabbed the reins and whipped the creatures onward.

  Behind them, half a dozen Vwynn fell upon the writhing, screaming driver, devouring him in the road.

  Meanwhile another Vwynn closed from the side and leaped at Jyme, Egil, and Nix. Nix impaled it through the chest on his blade and a backhand from Egil's hammer crushed its skull and sprayed gore.

  "Shite!" Baras cursed, and Nix saw why.

  Perhaps a dozen Vwynn had reached the road ahead of them and now charged directly toward the wagons.

 

Emotions churned around her, a lightning storm of fear, anger, and dread. Rusilla perceived them only thickly, the drugs her brother had given her attenuating her perception. She fought through the fog, swam up through the roiling emotional ocean, seeking acuity.

  She could not focus.

  She could discern nothing but the inchoate mass of feeling, a mash of indistinct emotions. No individuation. Her mind drifted and she sank, falling back into somnolent quiescence.

  A voice sounded in her mind, roused her from lassitude. Merelda's voice.

  
Rose!

  Mere's mental call was unfocused, a blind flailing in the midst of the emotional churn. Rusilla felt the terror in it.

  Mere's fear, the desperate hopelessness of it, brought Rusilla renewed focus. She waded through feelings, seeking the thread of her sister's thoughts, but could not pinpoint them. Instead, she projected soothing thoughts with as much power as she could muster.

  In truth Rusilla had no idea if all was well, if her plan was working. She was blind, trapped by her brother's drugs in the cage of her own mind. The world outside her mental space was blurry, sensed as if through thick glass.

  Her frustration spiked and she felt her body, felt a moment's control over her flesh, just a flash of feeling. She might have clenched her fist, or perhaps just lifted a finger.

  She was bouncing, moving fast. There were sounds all around her, shouts, the rattle of carriage wheels.

  Feeling her body allowed her renewed mental focus. She snatched at the emotions around her, taking the measure of each until she perceived a familiar thread, an emotional resonance she'd felt before her brother had increased her dosage and drowned her in drugs – Nix Fall.

  She held on to Nix's emotional thread, climbed up it and settled into his consciousness.

 

"Run them down!" Rakon shouted, leaning out the window to see ahead. He sat back and Nix peeked into the carriage through the window.

  Rakon had his thin blade drawn, fingers white around the hilt, his expression tense and nervous. The implacable eunuch sat beside him, knife in hand, an empty smile on his slack face. Across from them sat the sisters, their bodies bouncing here and there from the rough ride of the carriage.

  Nix glanced ahead. The carriage was bearing down on the Vwynn before them. Nix looked back into the carriage. Rusilla's head was tilted to the side, her body bouncing, but her eyes were fixed on him. A shooting pain rooted in his skull, behind his eye. He winced, looked away, but too late. He tasted pepper, and Rusilla's mental voice penetrated his head, displaced his thoughts with two words uttered with such rage and hate that they nearly caused him to lose his grip on the wagon.

  
Kill Rakon!
she said.

  The words bounced around in his brain, drowned out the sound of everything else around him. His hand tightened on the grip of his falchion. He brought it up toward the window. He could jam it through, stab Rakon in the chest.

  The violent thoughts against Rakon triggered the spellworm. Nix's stomach cramped. His muscles seized and he held on to the bouncing carriage only because his spasming hand closed over the rail he was holding on to.

  
Kill him!

  A sharp pain started in Nix's chest and radiated toward his left arm. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't hold on.

  It was no good. He felt as if he'd been stabbed in the chest. His legs went weak under him and still his hand slowly, incrementally raised his falchion for a killing strike that would surely result in his death. He forced his teeth apart and shouted, spitting as he spoke.

  "Stop it! You're killing me!"

  Rakon looked at him sharply, at Rusilla. He cursed and fumbled for his bag. He withdrew a metal vial and popped the wax seal with his thumb.

  Rakon leaned across the carriage's interior, roughly took his sister's face in his hand, and dumped the contents of the vial into her mouth, spilling some in the process.

  Almost immediately the drumbeat of violence in Nix's head ceased.

  Rakon shoved his sister back into her place, glared at Nix, and slid the wood window panel back into place. Nix could hardly breathe.

  "You all right?" Egil asked him.

  "All right," Nix said.

  "Good. Because here we go."

  Ahead, a dozen Vwynn loped down the road toward the wagon.

  "Hold on!" Baras said, and whipped the reins with one hand while holding his blade in the other. Nix put the episode with Rusilla from his mind and gripped his sword.

  The wagon closed on the Vwynn. Ten strides. Five.

  Baras pulled the reins slightly to steer the terrified horses into the Vwynn as the groups met. The huge draft animals trampled two of the creatures, who died in a spray of blood and screams. Another leaped high, over the horses, and landed on the roof of the carriage, claws scrabbling for purchase. Egil's hammer and the swords of two other guards bloodied it and sent it careening off the back. The other Vwynn parted around the carriage and leaped at the passengers from the side as they passed.

  A Vwynn bounded at Nix, claws outstretched. Nix slashed wildly and his blade opened the creature's shoulder in a spray of blood. It snarled, clawed at him as it fell away to the road. Egil's hammer caught another Vwynn in mid-leap, slammed into its head, and sent it spinning away with a shriek of pain.

  The guards on the other side of the wagon chopped and slashed and screamed. A Vwynn tore one of them off the rail and onto the road. He was swarmed, screaming with pain and fear as claws and teeth ripped flesh.

  The guard beside Egil, Derg, lashed out with his blade at a Vwynn that loped beside the wagon, an awkward swing made still more awkward by the fact that his foot slipped as he swung. He lost his balance and the Vwynn coiled and pounced on him. One of the creature's claws sank into the wood of the carriage's top, with which it pulled itself up onto the rail, and the other tore bloody furrows in the man's face. Before Derg could ply his blade, the creature sank its teeth into his shoulder and tried to use its weight to pull him off the carriage.

  Egil snatched at Derg's shirt, held him precariously on the hurtling wagon. The Vwynn clambered over Derg and clawed Egil's arm, tried to bite it. The priest endured the attack and held on to Derg, whose one leg was dangling free, hanging in space.

  "Nix!"

  Nix stabbed at the face of the creature, once, twice, and it lurched back, lost its balance, swayed. Derg shoved at it, but almost dislodged himself in the process. A blow from Egil's hammer to its face finally ended it, sending bits of fangs flying and knocking the creature back onto the road.

  "We're clear in front!" Baras said.

  Behind them, Vwynn thronged the road. Egil assisted Derg back onto his perch.

  "My thanks," Derg said to the priest.

  Egil thumped him on the shoulder, eliciting a wince of pain from Derg.

  "Two wounded on this side," Nix said.

  "We're all right over here," the guard called from the other side.

  "My lord?" Baras called over his shoulder into the carriage.

  "We're all fine, Baras. Don't stop until we reach the ruins."

  "Yes, my lord."

  Nix sagged against the carriage, blew out a sigh. "You all right?" he asked Egil.

  Egil winced with pain but nodded. "I'm all right."

  Derg, however, was not. He did the best he could to stanch the blood flowing from the bite in his shoulder, but he was already pale. Yet the carriage could not risk a stop for fear of another Vwynn attack.

  In time they could no longer see the mass of Vwynn behind them. Minnear rose as they rode onward, casting the landscape in sickly, pale green. The ruins thickened, towering, monumental blocks looming out of the darkness, the stone ghosts of a lost world.

  It looked as though an entire city had been torn from the ground, jumbled in the air, and cast back to earth in a heap. Tumbles of stone suggested pillars, statuary, monolithic building blocks that dwarfed everything in Dur Follin save the Archbridge and Ool's clock.

  "They say Ool had the building secrets of the ancients," Nix said, as they rolled past a bygone age.

  "Seeing this," Egil said, grimacing at the pain of one wound or other, "I believe it. What do you say, Derg?"

  Derg glanced at him, glassy-eyed, pale, and started to fall back. Jyme and Egil grabbed him simultaneously. Derg's eyes rolled. His head flopped back.

  "Stop the carriage, Baras," Nix called. "Now."

  "Don't stop," Rakon said.

  "Derg needs attention. Stop the damned carriage!"

  Baras looked over his shoulder, saw Derg, and pulled the reins. The horses pulled up, sweating, steaming. Egil and Jyme quickly lowered Derg to the road. Baras hopped off the driver's bench and came to his man's side.

  "Derg!" Baras said. Everyone gathered around as Baras rolled him over. Rakon looked on from the carriage.

  "What is it, man?" Baras asked, tapping Derg's cheeks. "Derg? Derg?"

  Derg's eyes rolled and his mouth fell open, moved, but no sound emerged. Flecks of foam rimed his mouth. Nix kneeled beside him, touched Derg's face.

  "Is it blood loss?" Baras asked.

  "No," Nix said. "He's burning up."

  "We cannot stay here," Rakon said from the carriage. "The Vwynn will be coming."

  All eyes looked back down the moonlit road. Nix saw no Vwynn.

  "Watch the ruins and the road," Baras said to his men. "Stay sharp."

  "Check his wounds," Egil said, nodding at Derg. "The bite especial."

  Baras hurriedly cut off Derg's tunic and pulled the man's makeshift bandage away from his shoulder wound. Gasps sounded from the men. The ragged, bloody oval of the deep bite wound was surrounded by skin that looked purple and gangrenous.

  "The bite's poisoned," Baras said. "Shite! What do we do?"

  "Get his mouth open," Nix said, and started rifling through his satchel. He soon found what he sought, a smooth, crimson-colored pebble of enspelled jasper, etched with a rune puissant against poison.

  "I said we cannot remain here," Rakon repeated.

  "We heard you the first time," Egil snapped.

  Nix held the jasper pebble between forefinger and thumb. He'd been given it by a priestess of Orella after he'd performed a service for her church.