Some few shadowkin continued to dare Loro and his murderous blade. The bulk of them sought Rathe, seeming to think he would make easier prey.
He caught the greasy hair of one, sawed his sword through the man’s belly, shoved him howling away. Rathe spun, his sword a flash of silver-red death tearing through a face, a neck, bowels. More shadowkin darted close. Rathe stove in the skull of one with the pommel of his sword, then gouged the tip deep through the eye of another. Yet another he spitted to the hilt, crossguard slapping against his squalling foe’s belly.
Powerful hands tugged at Rathe’s legs, cloak, and arms. He fought clear, once and again, face and neck running with the blood of enemies. His boots slid in the accumulating gore underfoot, and he went to one knee. Growling, he lunged up and pierced the skinny, naked cheeks of a bent-backed horror. Rathe saw only a monster that meant to devour him this night.
The dirty creature slashed with its clawed fingers, trying to tug the steel thorn from its flesh. With its arse poked through, its legs buckled at the knees. Rathe brutally levered his sword free, giving the bent-one four cheeks.
A handful of shadowkin landed on him at once, climbing him like blood-hungry squirrels. He slashed wildly with his sword, and lashed out with his fist. He felt mouths on him, then teeth, gnawing through the sleeves of his cloak, more at his belly, gnashing through his leather jerkin. Cloth ripped, skin ripped. Rough fingernails tore at his eyes and hair. More wrenched his sword away.
Rathe rolled to his belly, curled into a ball to protect his neck and face, and reached for his dagger. He bit back a scream when a rude hand clutched greedily at his groin, as if at a handful of sweetmeats. Risking castration, he stabbed his dagger into the hand, and the ripping pressure eased. But only a moment. More hands followed, more claws, all seeking to tear him apart one bloody piece at a time.
Loro roared somewhere beyond the frenzied mass piling on Rathe, and a great weight added to that of the writhing shadowkin, crushing Rathe against the tiles.
Hot breath gusted into his face, a lapping tongue followed, swabbing his chin and lips, leaving a trail of stinking spit. Teeth snapped together where his nose had been an instant before. A hungry babbling voice filled one ear. The other was jammed against the floor, and in it his blood pounded like a kettle drum. More spittle dribbled over his cheek, into one bulging eye.
Loro roared again, and the pile shifted, lessened just enough for Rathe to tuck his chin to his chest. Teeth flashed and nipped, and Rathe rammed his head sideways. The crunch of a breaking nose gave him joy. The ensuing patter of hot blood that washed over his face, into his mouth, and across his tongue stole that pleasure.
Loro cut loose with another bellow, and the weight pressing Rathe down let up a bit more, enough so he could move. By inches, he dragged the dagger closer to his face, meaning to stick it into the next mouth that thought to taste him.
Through the shifting mass of bodies and filthy limbs, he saw a naked foot, the toenails long and yellowed. He stabbed the arch of that foot, digging the blade deep. A ragged scream ripped through the kitchen, and the foot jerked out of sight. Rathe saw a straining tendon above the heel of another foot. He slashed it. Steel cleaved skin and gristle, grated over bone. Blood splashed, and the second foot leaped away.
He continued to stab and slash whatever target presented itself. Fists and kicks rained down, but he absorbed the punishment with a grim smile, for where his enemies bruised him, he crippled them. He kept on striking toes and heels and calves where he could, moment by moment gaining more freedom, moment by moment more convinced that no historian would dare jot down an account of such bloody, brutal fuckery, for fear of tainting the glory of war and victory.
The weight pinning him down suddenly lifted. A flapping shadowkin soared across the kitchen to land headfirst in the huge kettle hung above the hearth. Scalding broth splashed over the coals, steam billowed thick and foul. The scalded shadowkin reared back with a face blistered and red. As the wailing figure thrashed, Loro ended his cries with a ruthless slash to the back of the neck. Head bobbling loosely, the last foe fell.
“Gods damn me!” Loro raged, spinning in search of enemies who no longer stood.
Rathe clambered to his feet, spitting blood. Spread across the kitchen floor, some few shadowkin still clung to life, their cleaved appendages and spilled innards swimming though a spreading scarlet tide. They showed no signs of rejoining the fight, or living into the next minute.
“What do we do with
him
?” Loro asked, pointing his bloody sword at the bound fellow.
“Cut him loose,” Rathe ordered, using his sleeve to scrub his face clean. All he managed was to smear the sticky red mess around. “He might be able to lead us out of here.”
“What if he’s one of them?”
Rathe paused in his search for another way out of the kitchen. The man’s patchwork tunic was at least as tattered as anything worn by the shadowkin, his black hair hung lank and oily around a slender, bladelike face. But his straight limbs set him apart from the shadowkin. That, and being tied up. All he lacked was a pinch of seasoning sprinkled over his sweat-damp skin.
After pointing that out to Loro, Rathe said, “I expect he’s a luckless traveler, much the same as us. Cut him loose.”
Loro grumbled under his breath about the ills sure to befall warriors-turned-nursemaid, but he severed the man’s bindings. “Up with you,” he said, hauling the man to his feet.
“What’s your name, friend?” Rathe asked, trying to put the ratlike fellow at ease with a kind tone.
“H-Horge.” The man’s whiny voice matched his short, spindly stature. “Gods be blessed, thank you! Thank you!”
Before Horge could start blubbering in earnest, Rathe stopped him. “Master Horge, can you lead us out?”
Horge bobbed his head. “Aye, I think so.”
“You can, or you cannot. Which is it?”
“So many turns,” Horge whispered, closing his eyes in concentration, one finger sketching a winding path in the air before his nose. “Aye!” he said, nodding eagerly. “ I know the way.” He took a bundle off a nearby table, shook it out to reveal a cloak of coarse dark hair, and wrapped it around his shoulders. “Follow me.”
“What of this lot?” Loro asked, gesturing to the downed shadowkin. Many of those who had been groaning had gone still, eyes glazed over, waxen skin pale next to the blood pooling around them. Some still writhed and groaned, but not much longer, Rathe guessed.
“Leave them. If our luck holds, Tulfa will find the flesh of his kindred as palatable as ours.”
Loro’s face blanched. “It’s a foul blasphemy, folk eating folk.”
At the moment, Rathe was beyond counting blasphemies. “Lead on,” he instructed Horge.
Face ashen, swallowing compulsively as he scanned the dead, Horge did as bidden.
Chapter 7
Relief flooded Rathe when the river’s mossy scent tickled his nose. It seemed hours had passed since the trio set out from the kitchen. They would have been mounted and gone long before, but the hunters of Deepreach seemed to be everywhere. More, they were driven by Tulfa’s wild cries of, “Meat on the bone!” and “Yes! Yes! Hunt them down, and we shall feast!”
Whenever the trio heard that voice, or the squeals of hungry shadowkin, they quickly lost themselves down unfamiliar passageways. Horge always brought them back to the first corridor, through which Rathe and Loro had traveled to the great hall.
Now Rathe heard the river’s rush, saw a dim rectangle of lesser darkness. The way out. He touched Horge’s shoulder, and the man flinched violently, squeaked in terror. “Better let me lead from here,” Rathe said, wondering if the scrawny fellow had become jumpy after falling into the hands of the shadowkin, or if it was a particular trait. He guessed both.
Loro searched Horge’s face. “Are you without a proper steed, friend?”
“I have a beast of burden. I do hope these monsters did not get Samba, and that he remains where I tied him. I had gone fishing, you see, when Tulfa captured me, and—”
“Which way?” Rathe asked, arresting the man’s explanation.
Horge thought about it, a finger again tracing the air before his face. “That way,” he said, pointing in the direction Rathe and Loro had been going before Tulfa showed himself.
“You can ride with Rathe,” Loro said quickly, patting his round slab of belly. “This much man-flesh does not favor two riders to a saddle.”
“Let’s go,” Rathe said, seeing the way Loro’s nose wrinkled at Horge’s unpleasant scent, and regretting that he had not spoken first.
After gathering their gear and saddles at the entrance, they moved into the mist-shrouded night. Their horses looked up from grazing, ears pricked and alert. It seemed a monstrous blessing that shadowkin had no love for meat that did not cover the bones of men. That aside, Rathe decided to take all blessings that came to him, and gave silent thanks to the Cerrikothian god of war, Ahnok.
While he and Loro saddled their mounts, Horge danced nervously to one side of the entrance, pausing frequently to cock his head and listen.
Rathe was slipping his toe into the stirrup, when the sound of claws scratching stone drew his eye upward. His blood went cold. Scores of shadowkin were climbing over the rails of the walkways above. Where the twisted folk scurried and scuttled on the ground, they moved with eerie grace in scaling surfaces that would hinder spiders.
“Go!” Rathe called, leaping into the saddle.
Loro kicked his horse into a bounding leap down the stairs to the roadway. Rathe reached for Horge, but the scrawny fellow had vanished. “Horge!”
Only the shadowkin answered, mad squeals merging with the river’s throaty rumble.
“He’s gone!” Loro shouted below, his horse dancing a circle.
Rathe gave another second to searching for Horge, but there was no sign of the little man. Shadowkin began leaping down and scampering near. Rathe’s sword slashed, and the nearest foe toppled back, missing a few fingers.
“
Horge!
”
No answer. With a curse, Rathe joined Loro, and they sped away.
“They’re after us,” Loro warned.
Rathe glanced back. The freakish folk streaked like wolves on the hunt, closing the gap. His gray snorted in fear, began fighting the bit. Rathe almost lost his seat, but clutched the pommel and righted himself. He had no sooner settled back, when a pillar supporting one of the city’s many footbridges forced him to saw hard at the reins. Trumpeting, the gray swept by the column, so close Rathe had to tuck his shoulder to avoid collision.
A leering face framed by streaming hair appeared at his stirrup. Rathe hacked his sword downward. The shadowkin fell away with garbled scream. Another took the place of the first. Yellowed claws swiped at the gray’s belly, setting it to bucking wildly. Rathe swung, and the clutching hand became a bloody stump. The second shadowkin stumbled, fell into a bouncing roll, and was gone.
Rathe dug in his heels, and the gray focused on escape. Up ahead, cloak fluttering like the wing of a bat, Loro leaned over his red’s neck, swatting the horse’s rump with the flat of his blade. The big steed surged forward, steel-shod hooves throwing sparks over cobbles. They raced under another footbridge. A moment later, they flashed beneath another.
With the gray now striving to catch the red, Rathe risked another look behind. The shadowkin had fallen back, but showed no indication of tiring. Facing forward, he saw Deepreach stretching into moonlit fog. There was no telling how far they must go before escaping the city.
Rathe’s gray veered to avoid another leaning pillar. Far up ahead, a line of darkness, half the height of a man, blocked the roadway. After a few more strides, the darkness resolved into fallen pillar.
Loro began to pull back on the reins, but Rathe called, “Jump it!”
“Not at this pace!”
“We have no choice!”
The nearer they came, the more daunting the pillar seemed. Rathe kicked the gray to greater speed. The blowing horses leaped together. Soaring through a tattered streamer of mist, the gray’s rear hooves struck the pillar’s curved surface. The big red made the jump clean. They hit the roadway on the far side, hooves clattering loudly. Without breaking stride, the horses galloped on, necks stretching, manes flying.
It was not enough. The relentless shadowkin were gaining. Rathe had to end the chase.
He drew rein. The gray dropped its hindquarters and slid to a halt. While Loro rushed off into the milky gloom, Rathe spun his mount.
Leaping shapes plunged closer. Hungry calls pebbled his flesh, and he almost abandoned his plan. But he had to try, or run until the shadowkin ran them down.
“Come on, boy,” he urged, patting the gray’s neck. The horse tossed his head and whinnied. He was no fierce destrier, such as those Rathe had ridden when he commanded the Ghosts of Ahnok, but he gamely went where Rathe directed him.
Rathe reined in at a pillar rising crookedly to the base of the footbridge overhead. With its neighbor toppled into a heap of rubble, this pillar served as the bridge’s last support on this side of the river.
He forced the gray’s shoulder against the column’s cracked base. The horse shied at a deep grinding noise. “No time to be skittish,” Rathe said gently, guiding the gray back against the pillar. Ahead, Loro’s voice drifted back through the fastness of Deepreach. Behind, the shadowkin closed swiftly.