The Sword of the South - eARC (9 page)

* * *

Wencit’s eyes narrowed as his ball of witchlight blazed purple-red. He lifted his sword in a sparse, economic motion, and the blade whined softly, as though possessed of a life of its own in his sinewy hand. Blue light shimmered briefly down its edge, like a reflection of his fiery eyes, as he paused to throw a warning to the bedroom beneath the eaves before he turned to the taproom.

Leeana looked up at the touch of his magic, her green eyes calm. She stood, and his mind saw her garbed for war. Steel-fanged throwing stars glittered at her belt, and Wencit nodded approval as she loosened the restraining thongs on her sword hilts. Then he opened the taproom door.

Kenhodan rose on catlike feet as the wizard entered. The borrowed sword balanced expertly in his hand, ready to strike, and Wencit stood motionless until the red-haired man relaxed in recognition. Then he glanced across at Bahzell.

The big hradani cocked his head, mobile ears half-flattened, and took his pipe from his mouth.

“I’m thinking you’ve the look of a man as has a mission,” he rumbled calmly.

“I always knew you were smarter than you looked,” Wencit replied with an edged smile.

“It’s here they are, then?” Bahzell laid the pipe on a table at his elbow and rose, stretching his arms in a mighty yawn while his ears shifted back and forth, alert for any sound through the pound of rain.

“Outside.” Wencit jerked his head at the windows. “Something’s out there, anyway. Part of it’s easy enough to recognize, but there’s something strange, too. Difficult to place.” He sounded almost meditative.

“What kind of attack do you expect?” Kenhodan asked tautly.

“Shadowmen, I think—and whatever else it is I sense.”

“Ahhhh!” Bahzell let out his breath in a sigh that mingled understanding with something very like anticipation. “At least your wizard friends’ve been good enough to send me something as I can get steel into.”

“So they have,” Wencit said grimly, “and one of them’s come himself—Alwith, I think. But remember: if you can get steel into them, they can do the same for you. And they’ll attack without fear, as well, so they’ve a good chance of doing it.”

“It’s been done,” Bahzell said simply, “but never twice by the same person.”

“Gods send me strength!” Wencit snapped in exasperation. “Tomanāk knows you’re almost as good as you think you are, but try to remember these aren’t mortal enemies!”

“But if I can be killing them, they aren’t after being
im
mortal, either, are they now? And I’m thinking whatever it may be you’ve sensed out yonder in the rain, it’s not so very likely to be a demon or a devil. Not unless Wulfra’s run clean mad and decided as how she
wants
to see an Axeman army burning its way across Angthyr to take her head, any road.” He wiggled his ears and reached for the helmet lying on the table beside his pipe. “Taking the rough with the smooth, that’s not so very bad an outcome, Wencit!”

Wencit eyed him sourly and turned to Kenhodan.

“They’ll concentrate on you and me,” he warned.

“It’ll be a relief to have a problem I can deal with.” Kenhodan grinned, meeting Bahzell’s eyes in the dimness, and Wencit snorted.

“Solid bone between the ears, the pair of you! It’s to be hoped it at least makes your heads harder to split!” His voice was tart, but his hand squeezed Kenhodan’s forearm in approval.

“Leeana?” Bahzell had his helmet on and his enormous sword’s edges glittered in the fitful firelight. Now he moved to Kenhodan’s left, facing the windows while Wencit turned to the kitchen door and Kenhodan confronted the front door. They formed a hollow triangle of ready steel.

“She’s awake and ready,” Wencit murmured, “and Blanchrach’s in the hall. But I doubt she’ll see much of them compared to us.”

“Aye.” Bahzell shifted the great sword to his right hand and drew the hook knife with his left. “Well, as to that, they’ve business with us, tonight. And since they do, I’m thinking it’s only courteous to be giving them a belly full of commerce.” His smile was unpleasant.

“I approve,” Wencit said briefly. Kenhodan only grunted, his eyes sweeping the front of the tavern, swinging from the barred door to the corner of the windows. A flicker of light caught at the corner of his eye, and he glanced over to see red and gold runes dance quickly down Wencit’s sword, confusing the gaze that tried to follow them.

“
Ready!
” the wizard hissed.

* * *

Shadows conferred silently outside the tavern. Lightning whipped the clouds, shattering blue-white above their silent forms, and the spalling electricity etched two shapes which stood apart from the others. The human’s sodden cape lashed from his shoulders in the gusting wind, and the lightning leapt back from the ebon staff he bore. The other was a shadow, taller and somehow more solid than the others. A rod of polished steel or dull silver winked at the lightning from its left hand, its metallic glitter broken by patterns of jagged, deeply-carved runes from no alphabet ever used on Orfressa.

The human’s staff pointed at the tavern, his lips moving in unheard words, and the shadow’s black head bent. Its rod touched the staff, and a speck of eye-searing blackness leapt from the staff to the metal and vanished. Then the shadow turned and gestured to its fellows.

Lesser shadows moved to obey silent commands. Some flitted to the shutters and doors. Some lifted gently into the rainy night, borne by the wind to chimney openings and upper windows. Lightning cracked again, its jagged light vanishing into the shadow forms, and the taller shadow waited another moment, then stretched an arm to point at the tavern and its finger glowed dully.

* * *

Everything happened at once.

Kenhodan’s brain seized a brief image of the door as it flew inward in an explosion of splinters and broken bolts. An iron shard gashed his cheek, hissing past to bury its length in the wall. Windows and shutters cascaded inward in the same moment, showering the sawdust with diamond-bright glass. Broken bits of pane winked in the fire like rubies, ringing as they bounced over tabletops and benches. A shadow filled the doorway, and cold rolled from it like acid. A flash of brilliance washed his shoulder as Wencit muttered a semi-audible incantation and his blade pulsed with savage light in time with the words. The chill withdrew slightly, and Bahzell’s breath snorted, pluming like frost, as his huge sword swung up in a silvery arc, as if saluting his foes.

Then the shadows were upon them.

Despite his scars, this was in a very real sense Kenhodan’s first combat, yet there was time for him to realize that he felt no fear. Time for him to wonder what that said about the man he’d forgotten. And then a strange, consuming rage roused within him. It filled him with a fury which demanded blood, and it had an endless depth that staggered the mind. He had no idea where it had come from, and if there’d been time to think about it, its fiery strength would have terrified him. But now, at this moment, he was conscious only of his own burning hunger, and his lips drew back in a feral snarl as the shadows attacked.

“
Tomanāk!
” Bahzell’s bull-throated bellow roared through the taproom, and a shadow loomed close, a scimitar of blackness reaching for Kenhodan like an extrusion of its own substance. Instinct prompted and reaction obeyed. His own blade darted to engage the scimitar, driving it wide, then recovered in a straight backhand that raked the shadow from crotch to throat. He felt a fleeting resistance, and the shadow fell back with a thin, ear-hurting wail. It dissolved in streamers of noisome fog before it hit the floor.

Another eluded the sweep of Bahzell’s knife and charged Kenhodan from the left while the hradani’s sword engaged two more. Kenhodan’s blade flashed across his own vision as if he were a spectator. Black scimitar crashed on razor-blue steel. Wrist and arm throbbed, and his booted heel slammed into the shadow’s midsection as he heaved the scimitar away from his flesh. Acid cold stabbed as high as his thigh and burned in his hip with a pain that wrung an anguished gasp from him, but his sword whistled back against the shadowy neck. A half-seen head flew, and another high death wail pierced his ears.

Sorcerous they undoubtedly were, he thought grimly, but they were as killable as he was.

“Tomanāk!
Tomanāk!
”

Bahzell’s thunderous war cry rose over the clash of blades. Kenhodan leaned away from a slash and caught a glimpse of the hradani in the full, murderous action of a champion of the war god. His greatsword avalanched down in an overhand blow, propelled by the muscles of an arm as thick as Kenhodan’s thigh. It smashed clean through a scimitar to cleave a shadow in two, then whistled up in a perfect backhand, preposterously swift for a blade of its dimensions, that split another shadowy head. The hook knife darted, gutting a third while the first two fell away. Every move, every shift of weight, was perfect, like some choreographed exercise, with a deadly efficiency which had to be seen to be believed, and a bright yet half-imagined blue glitter wrapped itself around the towering hradani.

Kenhodan spared a thought for the old wizard, but the ring of blades and the odd wails of dying shadows came from his rear as well. It was reassuring evidence of Wencit’s condition, yet the moment of inattention was almost his own undoing. The brief break in the flow of his rage snapped his automatic reactions. His waking mind intruded on his trained body, and cold fire burned his shoulder, tracing a line of hot blood edged with ice. He staggered, momentarily convulsed by the awful cold pulsing through his body. But he dragged himself back on balance and his elbow smashed the attacking shadow. Another burst of cold slashed through him, but this time he was prepared. He shook it off and shattered his foe’s head, recovered, and slid two feet of steel through another’s chest. That shadow, too, fell away, winning him the tiny moment he needed to beat the last cold shudders from his muscles. A shadow sprawled to his right rear, and Wencit’s blade burned with dangerous fire, consuming his foe as it struck.

There seemed no end to that first rush. Kenhodan lost track of the number he struck down in a wild flurry of blows, counter blows, and hairbreadth escapes. Yet there was a break in the attack wave at last. He smashed the guard of the final shadow and lunged through its throat, then stood back, panting, as the remaining shadows fell away.

They stood just beyond reach, like a circle of icebergs, their silence taunting him, and that fierce rage roared up within him. It gripped like bands of hot iron, and he leapt to the attack. But Bahzell dropped his knife. His hand darted out to fasten on his shoulder like a steel vise, and Kenhodan’s eyes flared at the immense strength which stopped his lunge as if he were a child.

“No, lad!” The hradani rasped, holding him effortlessly in the defensive triangle. “This one’s Wencit’s!”

Kenhodan froze, then nodded tightly, panting for breath as a single shadow glided over the sawdust. A metal rod glimmered sullenly in one hand, and a black scimitar burned in the other. A dim flow of light from half-guessed eyes mocked the wildfire of Wencit’s gaze, and Kenhodan shuddered to see it.

The defenders pivoted slowly, Kenhodan compelled by the hradani’s grasp, until Wencit faced the new threat. Bahzell paused just long enough to recover his hook knife, then faced the shattered door, content to leave the main fight in Wencit’s hands. Kenhodan knew he should echo the hradani’s detachment, but he found his attention split between the kitchen arch and the arcane confrontation of wizard and shadow.

“You’ve been lied to,” Wencit said levelly, the words drifting in puffs of vapor in the icy chill radiating from the shadows. “Your power here is less than you think. You’re overmatched. Be gone or die!”

The shadow continued its silent advance. The metal rod traced an intricate pattern, its tip glowing like a dull ember that left a brief, sullen line of flame in its wake. Wencit’s glowing blade moaned a sub-audible shriek that grated in the bones of Kenhodan’s skull like the howl of a hunting animal, but the wizard made no move.

Ruby light spat suddenly from the tip of the rod in a quasi-solid pencil that lashed at the wizard with the speed of thought, but Wencit’s sword flashed up. It parried the light with a sweeping gesture and red sparks flew, burning through Kenhodan’s jerkin. Wencit’s blade wailed hungrily, and the wizard twisted his wrist, wrapping the light about his weapon like a cord. He jerked, and the rod snapped from the shadow’s grasp. It bounced into the sawdust with an unnatural ringing sound, as if it had struck stone.

The shadow leapt forward as its rod flew free. Its scimitar scythed at Wencit’s torso, but the wizard spun on his toes in a graceful dance that carried him out of the blade’s path and behind its wielder. The shadow lurched silently forward, committed to its attack. Its free arm flailed as if for balance, and the shadow head snapped silently towards Wencit.

The wizard continued his swirling motion. He grasped his hilt two-handed, lowering the blade to waist level, and completed his circle. Eldritch steel smashed squarely through the shadow, cleaving it into unequal halves that tumbled grotesquely to the floor. This death wail was louder and more vicious, and the bits of shadow didn’t dissipate. Instead, white fire blazed through them, tearing at their darkness, flaring bright and hot. It seemed to last for minutes, but it couldn’t have been more than a handful of seconds before those flame dwindled once more, taking the shadow’s broken pieces with them in a stink of burning sawdust and something worse.

The remaining shadows snarled as the stench of burning rose, and scimitars lifted in the firelight. Kenhodan gripped the wizard frantically, dragging him back into formation. There was something ominous in that snarl from their hitherto silent enemies, and dread burned through his rage as he fought to reposition Wencit. But the wizard was badly out of position, and he’d barely begun to move before the charge began.

Only Bahzell seemed unconcerned as the shadows gave tongue. He simply leaned sideways, peering intently into the rain beyond the shattered door. And then, as the shadows surged forward, his left hand snapped like the idle flick of a whip. The hook knife hissed from his fingers into the outer darkness, a short, bubbling scream erupted, and the shadows halted, frozen in mid stride. As Kenhodan watched in amazement, they faded slowly and the flames of their fallen chieftain sank back into smoldering sawdust.