Death Angel's Shadow (22 page)

"Out of the question! Now Kane knows I intend to kill him! He'll hide where no man could find him--use his evil powers to build up defenses I could never hope to overcome! Stand aside, Alidore, and I'll forget your insane insubordination!"
"I'm sorry, milord Gaethaa," he returned slowly. "You'll kill Rehhaile and raze this city by yourself--but first you'll have to kill me!"

Sudden rage claimed Gaethaa. "Betrayal is it--and from you, Alidore! Damn you--if you stand among the forces of evil, stand against the cold light of good, then by the cold light you shall be destroyed! Get out of my way!"

"Don't force me to cross blades with you, milord!" Alidore's plea was a warning as well.

Gaethaa's face broke into a pale mask of vengeful fury. "You're a fool, Alidore!" he screamed. His sword streaked outward, all but tearing Alidore's weapon from his grip.

Alidore jumped back, blade weaving a defensive pattern. His soul was close to shattering with the conflicting emotions that raged through him. His entire universe had suddenly collapsed about him, so that now he found himself locked in deadly combat with the man for whom an hour ago he would have willingly given his life. Suddenly he was pitted against the beliefs and ideals he had sworn allegiance to all his life. Spurred out of his emotional maelstrom only by the instincts of self-preservation, he desperately parried Gaethaa's maddened attack.

It was not the state of mind to offer a chance against an opponent of Gaethaa's prowess. Rapidly, easily the Crusader wore down his guard. A sudden thrust Jay open Alidore's side, and as he recoiled in pain, a glancing stroke tore off his helmet. Alidore was driven to the ground, blackness flashing through his skull, while his eyes were blinded by blood pouring from his gashed brow. A thousand miles away echoed a girl's scream.

Gaethaa surveyed his fallen lieutenant, madness still in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Alidore," he intoned with heavy regret. "You were a brother to me--a friend through many battles. Though I must kill you now to purge this evil spell that has stolen you from me, I'll always remember you as the loyal and courageous lieutenant you once were to me." He raised his sword for the coup de grace. "The tales spoke of the evil curse that follows Kane--evil that destroys those who cross his twisted path. Now I understand the truth behind those legends. Good-by, Alidore--Kane has destroyed you, but die assured that you will be avenged!"

"Hell, kill him if you're going to--but don't give me credit for it. It bothers me to accept favors from a man I'm going to kill in another minute." The mocking voice grated from the street behind Gaethaa. "Or if you're embarrassed to kill a friend, let him lie there and I'll finish him after I've carved out your heart."

Gaethaa whirled to face Kane. His enemy stepped from out of the fog and smoke and casually strode toward him, sword poised. Rough bandages were bound across his ribs; others made crimson bands across his right shoulder. A murderous light shone from his blue eyes, brutal face drawn in a savage snarl.

"So the tiger has come out of hiding!" Gaethaa purred. "I had thought I'd be forced to smoke you from your lair! But now comes the final cast of dice in this game we've played, and it's only fitting that the principal players should meet at last. You've cost me every man in my command, Kane--it's for their lives you now must answer--and for the centuries of crimes that lie behind you like an accusing shadow!"

"You've achieved a fair number of atrocities in your own short career--soon to be lamented!" sneered Kane, raising his sword.

Gaethaa's silent lunge brought them together. Their swords clashed and locked, then Kane hurled the lighter man back. The knife in Gaethaa's other hand sliced empty air. Blow upon blow hammered a vicious cacophony to death. Kane's right arm was all but useless to him, but the dazzling speed of his sword arm made the loss seem minor.

"Call upon the forces of evil to aid you, Kane!" jeered Gaethaa, observing the crimson stigma of fresh blood spread over Kane's bandages. The wounds were opening, and soon his strength would waver. "Or have your dark gods left you in fear, just as evil must always flee before the invincible sword of good!"

"I serve neither gods nor fool's causes!" Kane growled. "And don't delude yourself into terming invincible principles that are meaningless except to the relative viewpoint of the beholder!" His apparent feint twisted into a sudden lunge that sliced across Gaethaa's cheek. "First blood!" he laughed.

The men struggled on in silence then, voiceless save for panting breath and animal grunts. Gaethaa was a deadly opponent--a shrewd and skillful swordsman with wiry strength driving his long frame. In addition he was relatively fresh, while Kane was fatigued and bleeding from wounds suffered in recent combat. Still his endurance did not falter before the Avenger's fanatical attack, nor did the lethal beauty of his swordplay grow strained. Relentlessly the two men slashed and thrust, parried and feinted--each confident that his attack would exhaust the other and soon bring an end to the stalemate.

Again their swords locked hilts. They strained against one another, man to man, blade to blade--a split second would see them thrown apart again! Gaethaa's dagger slipped past Kane's guard and slithered for his side. Heaving against the other blade, Kane threw Gaethaa back a step, dropping his own knife at the same instant. As Gaethaa fell away, Kane seized his left wrist in passing. Forcing the thick muscles of his injured arm to respond, Kane crushed the wrist in his grip and bent it back as his enemy lunged away. Gaethaa's dagger stabbed around to gash his arm. Then with a grating snap, the forearm bones cracked under the twisting pressure.

Gaethaa gasped and swung his sword wildly at Kane's arm, frantic to relieve the crushing agony. Kane released his grip and jerked his arm clear. At the same moment his sword flashed out at Gaethaa's unprotected trunk, before the other could recover his guard. The powerful blow clove down through Gaethaa's right shoulder, all but severing arm from trunk! Kane's reddened blade gleamed and slashed out again, catching his opponent as he spun about and sundering head from body! The head bounced twice with a hollow tolling.

Kane stood before the grotesquely strewn corpse of Gaethaa the Crusader, sucking great gasps of air into his hammering chest. In the crisp dawn chill tiny tendrils of smoke seemed to writhe from the scarlet splashed stones, from his dripping sword, from his torn flesh. It blended with his steaming breath and vanished into the morning mist.

Shaking himself wearily, Kane frowned at Alidore's fallen form, stretched out across the deserted street, his head staining Rehhaile's skirt. Kane strode toward him purposefully.

"Don't, Kane!" Rehhaile pleaded. "Please don't kill this one! Alidore saved my life several times from those killers! Spare him now for me! Please, Kane! Alidore can't harm you now!"

Kane swayed before them, sword raised, murder lust still twisting his face. Alidore stared up at him blankly, face an expressionless mask. No move did he offer in defense or in flight; his eyes met Kane's in uncaring gaze. With a shrug Kane lowered his blade, blood fury slipping from his face--only to remain smoldering in his eyes, where its fires never slaked.

"All right, Rehhaile," he said. "I give him to you. But I doubt that your pity will be of much use to him. It seems that Gaethaa's blow knocked loose his brain inside that thick skull."

"No, Kane! It's his soul that's torn loose within him! I can heal his spirit's torment in time."

"So that's it," Kane laughed mirthlessly. "No point in asking you to come with me then, I see. Just as well. I'm leaving now, Rehhaile. I've had my fill of living among ghosts. I'm sick of morbid brooding--there's still adventure to amuse me in the world outside. Your companionship here has been interesting--soothing. I'm grateful."

"Good-by, Kane," said Rehhaile softly, turning her mind from the winter of his thoughts and spirit.

Kane muttered something she did not quite bear, then turned and stalked away down the empty streets. The ghosts of dead Demornte watched him depart. Go from Demornte, land of the dead, world of shadows, where death has lain and life cannot linger.

Alidore stirred. Sitting up dizzily he reached for his fallen sword. With shaking hands he placed its point against his chest. His universe had toppled, pinning him in the wreckage of his unshakable beliefs, unassailable truths. What use to survive tire death of his gods?

"Alidore! Don't!" screamed Rehhaile, sensing what he was about to do. "For my sake--don't! I want you to live! Together we can leave this land of the dead--we can go out into the world of life!"

"I thought I followed the cold clear light of right, of god," Alidore spoke in agony. "Instead I served the cold light of death!"

The swordpoint wavered against his chest. The soothing oblivion of death? Or try to return to life with Rehhaile? His soul was too wounded to decide.

Death came shimmering through the afternoon heat.

In silence broken only by cursing, the battleworn band of mercenaries had fled along the dusty mountain road. Overhead the sun burned dismally, scornfully; its heat lanced through the ragged forest cover and seared the disheveled fugitives. Stumbling over scorched stones, they had plodded along in the weary desperation of flight, dust choking their panting breath and smothering them in a grimy blanket compounded of sweat and caked blood.

Half a hundred soldiers of a fallen cause. Men who had gambled their lives for the ambitious bastard brother of Chrosanthe's dainty king. But Jasseartion had proven no fool despite his laces and curious affectations; his spies, his personal army had been as meticulously efficient as his subjects foolishly loyal. In the end, his brother Talyvion had hung moaning in a tiny cage suspended from the great beams of the same throne room toward which his ambitions had lured him. Now the scattered remnants of his smashed army fled across the land, pursued by Jasseartion's tireless soldiers and vengeful subjects, a bounty on each man's head.

For Kane the bounty was great. Kane was the last of Talyvion's lieutenants still unaccounted for by Jasseartion's so very efficient servants. And although Kane had only entered into the conspiracy shortly before its downfall, his remarkable talent both for cloaked intrigue and open battle had impressed a particular enmity upon Chrosanthe's ruler, and upon his subjects as well. Even to a rebel would come full pardon and more gold than he might earn in ten years' soldiery, so promised the royal proclamation. True, Jasseartion's word had never been so inviolable as to inspire confidence among the fugitives from his well-famed justice, but it was nonetheless a most tempting proposal.

With this in mind, Kane had wrapped his face in bloody bandages, padded his belly to outsize proportions, and covered his mail with a filthy, voluminous cloak. So disguised, he had mingled with a band of fleeing refugees, hoping that neither Jasseartion's followers nor his own companions would recognize this dirty, obese foot soldier with bandaged face as the aristocratic stranger who had joined with Talyvion not long before the latter's fortunes had changed.

Then the searing summer air was filled with the sharp hiss of glinting arrows. Ambush! A detachment of Jasseartion's army had lain in hiding among the trees and the smoldering rocks that enclosed the dusty mountain trail.

Furious at having been caught in ambush along with the sheep he had hoped to masquerade among, Kane broke for cover, his right hand fumbling in the damp folds of his cloak for his sword. A deep wound from the last battle caused his left arm to be still too weak to use effectively, and although Kane was almost as dexterous with his right arm, he knew he was at a disadvantage in the chaotic fighting that enveloped him.

The king's soldiers rushed upon the stricken mercenaries simultaneously as the last arrows tore into them. Many of their number already writhing upon the burning pathway, the desperate fugitives staggered to make a hopeless stand against their assailants. The first man to reach Kane he hurled back again with a crushing swordblow. Another charged past his comrade's husk and swung an axe in a glittering are that took all of Kane's strength to turn aside. The axeman snapped backward and raised his weapon once more. Kane cursed impotently. The man would be gutted by now had Kane free use of his left arm. As he sought to face the axe, another soldier fell upon him front his left, just as the axe again swung down. Kane leapt back and caught the axe once more with his blade, frantically dodging his other foe. Twisting his blade, he slashed outward through the axeman's wrist, and as the other dropped his weapon in agony, Kane's return thrust caught him in the ribs.

A second to free the sword. Too long. The other soldier's sword was slicing for him. Kane forced his left arm into action, clumsily grappling with the sword arm that thrust for his trunk. A double wave of pain shook him as his wounded arm only partially deflected the swordblow, and the edge gashed through the heavy cloak and padding to smash against the mail beneath. Kane toppled, his powerful grip yet locked on the other's arm, pulling him to the ground along with himself, and impaling the soldier on his sword as they fell. And as he struck ground with the dying assailant atop him, an impossible weight slammed against Kane's skull. In a black wave of agony he lost consciousness, never knowing whether he had been purposefully struck, or simply kicked by some other pair of combatants.

His eyes opened into the cool of night. Groggily he rolled from under the soldier's corpse and sat up. Vision blurred, ground rocked with the roaring pain in his skull. Kane bit his lip and forced himself to his knees. About him lay only the dead.

Gingerly he unwound the heavy bandages that swathed his head and ran fingers over the ache in his skull. It had been a hard blow, but the bandages and his thick red hair had effectively cushioned it. He rose to his feet and disgustedly threw off the enveloping cloak and the slashed padding beneath. His mail had stopped the swordthrust, but the force of the stroke had mashed the links painfully into his side.