The Hammer and the Blade (32 page)

  Egil shook his head. Nix sighed.

  "Jyme, robbing tombs, as you so genteelly put it, involves avoiding traps, crawling through dirt, picking locks, and sometimes,
sometimes
, killing guardians. As a rule, poetry readings are not required. I can read enough, but not this. It's an older dialect, I think."

  "I… I only meant…"

  "Just shut up, Jyme," Egil said.

  Rakon and Baras crested the rise, leaving the horses behind them. Rakon stood his ground atop it. Baras continued toward them.

  "Do you have it?" Rakon called. He shifted from foot to foot. "The horn? Do you have it?"

  "We have it, you bunghole," Nix muttered.

  Jyme chuckled.

  "My men?" Baras asked, looking up and down the beach.

  Egil shook his head. "They didn't come out."

  "Sorry, Baras," Nix said.

  "Shite," Baras said.

  "Do they have it, Baras?" Rakon called again, his voice tense.

  Baras's face flashed irritation, but only for a moment. His eyes fell on the horn Nix held. Over his shoulder, he called, "They have it, my lord."

  "Well done! Bring it to me, Baras."

  Nix handed the instrument to Baras.

  "It damned well better work after all this," Baras said softly, eyeing the horn. "Good men died for it."

  "Uh, take anything else out of there?" Jyme asked. "Anything valuable?"

  "Our lives," Nix said irritably. "But maybe you meant something else?"

  "No offense meant," Jyme said. "Just asking, is all."

  "It's forgotten," Nix said with a sigh. "I'm irritable, is all."

  "Hurry, Baras," Rakon said, his voice greedy with anticipation. The sorcerer looked to the sky, the setting sun turning it red. "Hurry!"

  Baras jogged the horn over to Rakon. Egil, Nix, and Jyme started for the rise. The moment Baras handed the horn to Rakon, Nix felt a sharp pain in his abdomen, as if he'd been stabbed. He doubled over, groaning. Egil did the same.

  "What is it?" Jyme asked. "What's wrong?"

  Nix tried to speak, but the squirming in his guts allowed him to do nothing but heave. He put his hands on his knees and puked bile, then a long, thick stream of sputum that seemed to go on forever. Beside him, Egil did the same.

  "There's something wrong with them," Jyme called to Rakon.

  "There's nothing wrong," Rakon said. "They completed their charge and now they're free of the spellworm."

  The heaves went on for some time, Egil and Nix purging themselves of Rakon's compulsion. When they were done, twin snakes of greenish-black phlegm lay glistening in the sand.

  "That's unpleasant," Egil said, wiping his mouth, kicking sand over the mucus.

  "Seconded," Nix said.

  "You all right?" Jyme asked. He'd lingered while they'd puked.

  "As well as can be," Nix said. "Come on. Time to take our leave, I think."

  By the time they reached the camp, Rakon and the eunuch had already laid his sisters on the ground. The horn hung from Rakon's neck and his satchel of needful things from his shoulder. Baras stood at a distance from Rakon, watching with a curious look on his face.

  "What is he doing?" Jyme said.

  Nix shrugged. "Breaking the curse, maybe? That's what this was all about."

  "Was it?" Egil said.

  "You have a thought?" Nix asked him.

  "Suspicions," the priest answered. "Let's hold here."

  "I want to get supplies and get clear," Nix said. "We're done. I'm done."

  "Just hold," Egil said.

  Baras walked toward Rakon and the eunuch. "My lord, your sisters need to be strapped to the horses for the return journey to Dur Follin. Unless you intend to lift the curse here?"

  Rakon did not turn. "We won't be taking the horses, Baras. I cannot spare the time to return on foot. The Thin Veil is near."

  "The Thin Veil, my lord? I don't understand."

  "Of course you don't," Rakon said. He nodded at the eunuch and the huge man took Baras by the arms and steered him away from Rakon and his sisters. Meanwhile, Rakon rummaged through the pack on the ground until he found what he sought: a wristthick candle. He stood it in the sand, uttered the words to a cantrip, and a flame sprung from his finger. He touched it to the candle and thick black smoke rose into the twilight air.

  "You've done me a service," Rakon said over his shoulder to Egil and Nix. "I won't soon forget it. Nor will I forget that all of this was necessary to begin with only due to your interference in matters beyond your ken. Tomb robbers and thieves almost brought down the house of my forefathers."

  "You blather, man," Nix said. "We had nothing to do with any of this. At least I don't think we did. Did we, Egil?"

  Egil didn't answer. He had his eyes on the sorcerer, his hand on a hammer. Jyme stood with them, lingered at a distance.

  "And now those same imbeciles have saved it," Rakon said.

  "Imbeciles!" Nix said.

  "What's he doing?" Jyme asked in a hiss.

  Nix shrugged.

  Jyme said, "I thought you learned magic before dropping out of the Conclave?"

  "He was expelled," Egil said absently.

  Nix pointed an appreciative finger at his friend.

  Smoke spiraled from the candle in a thick black line. The smoke smelled of burning flesh, pungent and foul. Rakon looked up to the darkening sky, held his hands aloft, and began to incant.

  To Nix, the words Rakon used sounded much like the Language of Creation, but the inflection was off, the pronunciation harsher. Nix knew none of the words, but he didn't have to. He could see the result.

  The wind picked up, swirled in tiny vortices around Rakon, sent sand churning into the air, a fog of grit.

  "Maybe we should, uh, leave?" Jyme said.

  Nix was thinking the same thing, but just as he was about to suggest as much, Rakon's incantation intensified, the candle wick flared, and the candle burned half its length in a flash, sending a column of foul black smoke into the whipping air. Rather than dissipate, the smoke lingered in the swirls, outlining a nebulous, shifting shape. Nix heard a voice in the wind, the words too soft to make out, a high-pitched, otherworldly titter similar to the one he'd heard back in the Wastes when he'd awakened from a dream.

  "A sylph," Nix said. "I should've guessed before."

  Rakon pointed at the air, where the smoke gathered and hinted at a huge, winged form. "Carry my sisters and me back to the prison, spirit."

  The wind whispered in answer, the words audible only to Rakon.

  Gusts formed a wall of whirling sand around Rakon, the desert orbiting him and his sisters. Baras pulled his cloak over his face and turned away. Egil, Nix, and Jyme shielded their faces. Only the eunuch, standing just outside the wall of sand, seemed unbothered. Rakon and his sisters sat in the center of the winds, untouched by the swirling sands.

  "My lord!" Baras called over the swirl. "What is this? What about the horn, your sisters?"

  "The horn will do its work and so will my sisters," Rakon answered. "Goodbye, Baras."

  "Are you… leaving us?" Baras asked. "My lord, we'll die out here."

  "Then die, Baras. You've done your work, too."

  "My lord! I–"

  "Enough, Baras!"

  The wind picked up and the sylph, invisible now except when grains of sand momentarily defined its form, lifted Rakon and his sisters from the sand. Rakon glared at them as he rose higher into the air.

  "Eater!" Rakon called down, and it took a moment for Nix to understand that he was addressing the eunuch. "When Egil and Nix are dead, you're free, the binding undone."

  The eunuch grunted, turned, and fixed his vacant eyes on Egil and Nix.

  "Really, that seems uncharitable," Nix muttered. "And a eunuch, no less? Not even a creditable assassin. I'm insulted. You hear me, Norristru? I'm insulted!"

  Egil made an obscene gesture at Rakon as the sylph bore him and his sisters higher into the air on a blanket of air.

  "All that shite I said about not killing him… forget I said any of that. Next time we see him, we kill him."

  "Agreed," Nix said, drawing his falchion and hand axe. He considered taking a shot with his sling at Rakon, but the sylph's winds would make it fruitless, like trying to shoot gulls at the Heap.

  "He was a bunghole right from the beginning," Jyme said.

  "Truth," Egil agreed.

  "Did he say you two caused all this?" Jyme asked. "The curse and such?"

  "I think he did," Egil said.

  "Makes no sense," Nix said. "And anyone who thinks it does, so indicate."

  Nothing.

  "Are his sisters even cursed?" Jyme asked.

  Egil pulled his hammers. "They're witches and he's a sorcerer and the deeds of witches and sorcerers seldom make sense. But we're clear of them now. We kill this eunuch and go home."

  The eunuch strode purposefully toward Egil and Nix, his heavy tread leaving depressions in the sand behind him.

  "Things always seem to end in blood," Nix said.

  "I blame you," Egil added.

  "You would."

  While they readied themselves, Baras stalked up to the eunuch and grabbed him by the shoulder.

  "Stop," the guardsman said. "You're not killing anyone. Jyme! Help me restrain him."

  "Why restrain him?" Jyme called. "Just kill him."

  The eunuch stopped, but did not turn his head to look at Baras.

  "Jyme!" Baras called, still struggling with the eunuch.

  Cursing, Jyme hurried down the rise.

  "Enjoy," Nix said.

  Jyme and Baras tried to take the eunuch by the arms, but the hulking man would have none of it. His eyes still on Egil and Nix, the eunuch started walking, dragging the two guardsmen along with him.

  Baras dug in his heels, reached for his blade. "I said stop."

  Without breaking stride, the huge man broke an arm free of Baras's grip and loosed a backhand that caught the guardsman flush on the side of the head. Baras went spinning into the sand and lay still.

  Jyme loosed his hold and backed off, tried to pull his blade, but it stuck in the scabbard.

  "Egil!" Jyme called. "Nix!"

  The eunuch lurched toward him and punched him in the face. The ham fist shattered Jyme's nose and drove him to the sand.

  "Strong whoreson, isn't he?" Nix said.

  "We'll see," answered Egil, his hands opening and closing on the hilts of his hammers.

  The priest closed his eyes in prayer, a momentary imprecation for the Momentary God, then charged. Nix hurried after as fast as his wounded leg allowed. The eunuch, seeing them coming, drew his knife.

  Egil closed the distance in ten strides, sidestepped the eunuch's clumsy knife stab, and slammed a hammer into the eunuch's side. Bone crunched but the eunuch did not buckle, did not so much as groan. A punch to the side of the head from the eunuch's off hand staggered Egil.

  The priest wobbled, eyes rolling, waved a hammer clumsily, and fell. The eunuch lurched forward and stomped on his head, driving his face into the sand. He straddled the priest, knife held high, and turned toward Nix.

  Nix shouted and hurled his hand axe at the eunuch. It hit the huge man in the chest, sank half the depth of its head into his sternum, but the eunuch made no sign he even felt the wound. The hulking man looked down, regarded the axe protruding from his sternum, and pulled it out as if it were a splinter in his thumb. Blood seeped from the hole in his chest.

  Nix bounded into blade range, sidestepped a slash from the eunuch's knife, ducked a crosscut from his own axe, now wielded by the eunuch in his other hand, and drove his falchion half its length into the eunuch's gut. Stinking gore spilled into the sand but still the man did not fall.

  He dropped Nix's axe, seized Nix by the throat, and lifted him into the air. Nix cursed as he lost his grip on his falchion, leaving it sticking out of the eunuch's guts like a bloody pennon.

  "What… are… you?" Nix said, barely able to breathe.

  Still wearing the dumb smile and eyeing Nix through vacant eyes, the eunuch stabbed Nix in the gut with his knife.

  Nix's leather jack turned the blade enough that it cut only skin, not organs, but it wouldn't turn another. Nix heaved his legs up and kicked the eunuch in the face, once, twice. The man's nose shattered, spraying blood and teeth, but he did not release his grip.

  Smiling stupidly, the eunuch reached back for another stab, but before he could drive the blade between Nix's ribs, a roar from the side turned his head – Baras.

  Having recovered from the punch, the guardsman bulled headlong into the eunuch, hitting with enough force to push the eunuch sideways a step, causing him to drop Nix to the sand.

  The mountainous man, his face ruined, intestines leaking from his stomach, turned to face Baras. But Baras was too fast, too enraged to be stopped, and he drove his sword into the eunuch's chest and out his back. Blood showered the sand, sprayed Nix.

  The eunuch's eyes should have widened with pain; he should have fallen to his knees, but he did neither. Never losing his vacant smile and empty gaze, he snatched Baras's wrist with his free hand, pulled him close, and drove his knife into the underside of Baras's jaw, up through his mouth, and into his brain. Wideeyed, Baras's jaw moved up and down, as if masticating the steel. Blood poured from his mouth.

  The eunuch pulled the knife free and Baras crumpled to the sand, dead flesh in a bag of chainmail, leaking crimson from the hole in his jaw. The eunuch dropped the knife, pulled Baras's blade from his own body, and turned to Nix, still smiling.

  "Shite," Nix said, climbing to his feet. The blood rushed from his head when he stood and a bout of dizziness caused him to wobble. Adrenaline kept him upright. He pulled the dagger he kept in his boot, another he wore on his belt. He wanted to back away, put some space between himself and the eunuch, but he didn't trust himself to move across the sand and stay upright.