Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 (18 page)

“It’s a trap!” Talen shouted. “A trap!” His shout echoed among the dead trees.

“It is too late, Holy One,” said Harnock. “Too late for both of us.”

No! It couldn’t be.

Talen searched Harnock for a weave, for a collar, a thrall. But he had none. How was he linked?

He thought furiously. There had to be a way. Thralls, like any weave, were alive. They grew into you, Harnock had said.

Talen’s mind fixated on that that—thralls grew
into
the victim.

Yes! Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? The thrall grew into the person. That meant the weave was
in
the flesh. The weave was right there on Harnock’s arms! Harnock himself had said that the tattoos were the points of access.

A thrall in a metal collar or a thrall living in the flesh, shouldn’t it be the same? If he could ravel the one, surely he could ravel the other.

Talen brought his roamlings to Harnock’s wrists, to the patterns there. He could feel the weave of Harnock’s flesh, but there was another pattern that ran through the flesh—a separate living thing.

Talen examined the pattern. Tendrils and roots grew from the weave into Harnock. They sank deep into the flesh, but Talen knew they went deeper: they went into his bone, into his very soul. As he examined the pattern, he saw it was different, but not so very different from the thralls on the bats. Not so very different from the thralls Argoth had shown them at Rogum’s Defense. In a moment, he found the way in, but he paused. He’d probably only have one chance to attack, for Harnock knew how to mount a defense and close his doors.

Talen brought all four roamlings to bear, mustered his courage and struck, pushing his way into Harnock’s flesh, ripping at the thing growing there.

Harnock gasped, took another stride, and stumbled. “Filth!” he said and flung Talen from him.

Talen slammed into the ground, the impact knocking the breath out if him, but he continued to follow the thralls, and even though they were intertwined with the flesh, he found the line of the weave he was looking for, bit, and raveled.

Harnock roared, charged over to Talen, and grabbed him by the throat.

Talen ripped farther. His roamlings were in a frenzy, biting, raveling, and, Creator’s help him, eating Fire. He felt a presence, went after it, but it retreated deep into the flesh, and Talen could not follow. So he turned back to the bits that remained.

Harnock’s hold slackened, and Talen twisted out of his grip.

Then Harnock fell to all fours in pain. “Hogan’s son,” he growled.

Talen bit, tore, raveled, until he found himself surrounded by nothing but tatters of the thrall. There was more—he could feel it—but he couldn’t reach it. It had grown too deeply, and he could not distinguish it from Harnock’s own self.

“Hogan’s son,” Harnock growled again.

“Are you free?” Talen asked.

“Get your filthy self out of me!” Harnock roared. “Get out!” And he shoved Talen’s roamlings back, expelled them from his body and soul, and slammed his doors shut. Murder burned in Harnock’s eyes.

Talen backed away.

Harnock rose to his feet, his face full of fury.

Talen looked about for his knife. The quickest way to kill himself would be to reach across his neck and slash deeply into the artery there. There would be no stopping that bleeding.

Harnock was breathing hard. “The master,” he said. The fury in his eyes lessened and was replaced by a mad joy. “Hogan’s son, you yeasty boil. You stinking glorious runt!”

Talen remembered his knife was back by the fallen tree trunk. He spotted a sharp, half-burned stick. It would have to do.

“That whoreson is gone. Gone!”

“Harnock?” Talen asked.

Harnock brought his arms up and looked at his wrists. “We are free!”

Shouts rose from the trees. Harnock turned. Nashrud and the dreadmen were fleeing, running full out.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Harnock said. “Not today. Today is the day Regret finds you.” And then he sprang forth in a flash and growl and raced through the burned trees to cut off Nashrud’s retreat. Harnock was pure power—the sinews and speed of a lion, the wits of a man, and all of it multiplied beyond reason.

Talen ran back to the trunk to get his weapons, then turned to follow, but Harnock was the wind itself.

Nashrud mounted Scruff and put his heels into him. Scruff surged forward, but Harnock had the angle on him. He flew through the blasted trees and sprang at him from the side, carrying him off the saddle.

The two men crashed to the ground and rolled in a cloud of dust. Scruff neighed and trotted a number of steps away.

A knife flashed in Nashrud’s hand. Then he lunged and plunged the blade into Harnock’s lower back.

Harnock bellowed, snatched Nashrud by the head, and with a mighty yank, lifted him off his feet. He whipped him up and over his head in an arc, and slammed him down violently on the ground. Then he twisted Nashrud’s head with a sharp jerk into an impossible position, and the Divine’s body went limp.

Harnock roared, and took Nashrud to the ground. The branches of a fallen tree obscured what Harnock did, but a moment later, when Harnock hurled the Divine’s severed head to the side, it was clear what had happened. Then Harnock rose, bloody knife in hand, to face the remaining dreadmen.

The severed head was gruesome, but it was said that decapitation was the only way to ensure some Divines stayed dead. Talen realized he’d stopped running to watch the spectacle. He began to run again, knowing that despite Harnock’s power, he’d been stabbed, and he’d need help.

With his roamlings, Talen looked for the orange skir. Half a dozen flew above the tanglewood clearing. Below them, the soul of Nashrud rose, bright and shining, from his body. He looked up, saw the skir, and fled into the trees.

One-by-one the orange skir dived into the gray woods after him. A high-pitched buzzing rose from where they’d entered the burnt forest, followed by the horrible clacking.

Two of the remaining four dreadmen spun around and turned their bows on Harnock. But Harnock didn’t slow or change course. There was no way Harnock could avoid those arrows at such a close range.

Suddenly a swarm of wasps shot in among the dreadmen, attacking their faces. One dreadman released his arrow, then flinched, slapping his cheek. The arrow went wide. The other dreadman swatted his neck, then arm.

That brief moment was all Harnock needed. He rushed in, knives in both hands. He stabbed one slayer, turned and slashed the throat of another.

A tall dreadman charged Harnock with an axe. But Chot bowled into him, knocking him to the side. Then the rest of the woodikin poured in. They bore the remaining dreadman down to the ground and finished him. The battle ended before Talen could run the last fifty yards.

Talen arrived to find the woodikin preparing to cut open the dreadmen’s bodies and remove their hearts. Talen turned away. He did not want to watch.

A wasp darted past Talen’s face. The bodies of a few others littered the ground, but most were flying back to the wasp lord’s basket.

Harnock pressed his hand to the wound in his back. When he saw Talen, his face lit up. “Ah, there he is!”

“Are you okay?” Talen asked.

“Am I okay?” Harnock’s face crinkled with delight, and he laughed.

“I can’t believe we just beat a Divine and a fist of dreadmen,” Talen said

“We?” Harnock asked. “You!” He shook his head in wonder. “Maybe they didn’t scrape you off the bottom of the barrel after all.”

River joined them, blood splattering her face. “You’re free?” she asked Harnock.

Harnock held up his wrists. The tattoos there had changed. “Your eel of a brother chewed the thrall to pieces.”

Her eyes widened in surprise.

Talen walked over to where Nashrud lay. He picked up the man’s bloody knife and examined it. “Let’s hope this blade wasn’t poisoned,” he said.

“We will know soon enough,” Harnock said.

A few of the woodikin sucked on their wounds. Talen hoped there wasn’t poison there as well.

One of Chot’s warriors barked. The others turned. A moment later, the trees on the other side of the clearing boiled with Orange Slayers. The warriors split, left and right, and began to circle around the clearing.

“Up!” Chot shouted.

Talen estimated there were fifty, and then revised it to seventy-five, then a hundred. Their numbers kept growing. When the last had come through, he was sure there were close to two hundred woodikin formed up in a wide arc. Then three wasp lords walked up through the middle.

“Oh, Lords,” River said.

Chot held a piece of liver in his hand. Its red juices stained the fur around his mouth. He cast the liver to the dirt. “Now we die,” he said. “It is good to die by the hands of woodikin instead of filthy skinmen.”

With his roamlings Talen looked about for the orange skir, but the ones that had chased after Nashrud were still down in the trees.

“We are not going to die,” Talen said. “Not here. Not in this place.”

He had to be able to do something. The wasp lords would send in their minions to distract. Then the woodikin warriors would charge. How many wasps were in each nest—a hundred, two? The baskets of the Orange Slayer wasp lords were much bigger than the one of the wasp lord in Chot’s troop. There were probably more than a thousand—far too many wasps for Talen to kill with his roamlings.

A woodikin wearing a mantle of bright blue feathers shouted at them. Chot responded.

“What did he say?” asked River.

“He said he wants the skinmen. He said he will pay well.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him his mother spawned him from a lizard.”

Talen nodded. “I’m sure that came as a heavy blow.”

Chot grinned. “Fight well, skinman.”

There was no escape. They couldn’t outrun so many enemy troops. Furthermore, the woodikin weren’t dependent on weaves for strength. So he couldn’t ravel their strength. He couldn’t kill all their wasps.

He’d broken a link between Harnock and the master of that thrall. But how would one master control so many? The image of a wagon master holding the reins to a dozen horses came to his mind. He’d assumed that the weave in Harnock created the link. But what if the link was like the reins held by a man on a wagon being pulled by a team of ten or twenty horses? There was the harness for each horse, but they all connected so the driver held just two lines. You could try to cut each horse free, but it would be quicker to sever the reins being held by the driver. One cut, and the driver loses his connection to all the horses.

Talen sent his roamlings speeding across the clearing. He picked the wasp lord in the middle, the one wearing the most feathers and opening the largest wasp basket.

He carefully examined the wasp lord’s body, the beautiful weave of woodikin flesh. He found the tattoos on the woodikin’s palms. They were so much more than decorations. So much more than tribal identifications.

The wasp lords began to murmur to their minions. A few huge orange wasps began to emerge and take flight, zigzagging about as if getting their bearings. With one roamling, Talen rushed to the open mouth of the basket and examined a wasp closely. Upon its thorax grew a tiny weave.

Talen turned back to the wasp lord and searched the rest of his body. He didn’t want to strike until he knew he was attacking the right place. But there were only two weaves: one on each palm. Just as with Harnock, tendrils and roots grew into the flesh.

The wasp lord rose and lifted his arms to the sky. The other two did the same. Their wasps began to crowd the mouths of the baskets and take flight, moving in a wide circle overhead.

The wasps were huge, and Talen didn’t think anyone could sustain more than a few stings; such large creatures must inject an enormous amount of venom strengthened by whatever the Orange Slayer wasp lords fed them.

He had to act now. Talen attacked the palm of the main wasp lord. Every time raveling became easier; this time he was in and biting almost immediately.

The wasp lord cried out and grabbed his hand. He tried to close his doors, but Talen was ready and attacked the presence, the delicious soul. It fled before him. He let it run so he could focus on the weaves.

And he realized he could feel the echo of the wasps through the weave. They were agitated, angry. One broke free and sped down to land on an Orange Face warrior and sting him. Another broke free of its bonds. Talen bit and tore. Fire rolled up out of the mouths of the weaves like smoke. The whine of the wasp wings rose, and then the whole swarm heaved in chaos and dove at the Orange Face warriors.

Talen moved to the next wasp lord.

“What’s happening?” River asked.

“I’m freeing the wasps,” Talen said. “It appears they dislike being enthralled as much as Harnock did.”

Chot hooted in shock. “You?” he asked. “You do this?”

“He does this,” Harnock said.

“You lied to the queen,” Chot said to Harnock. “The skinmen didn’t want you. They wanted him!”

Chot turned to the other woodikin and spoke with great animation. They all looked over at Talen. The wasp lord regarded Talen and said, “Shallog.”

Harnock laughed.

Talen bit into the second wasp lord’s weaves, tore, drank up the Fire and lusted after the soul that cowered from him, but he pulled himself away from the soul, and focused on the weaves.

“Shallog,” the woodikin repeated.

“What are they saying?” Talen asked.

“The shallog is the woodikin nightmare,” Harnock said. “I’ve never seen one, although I have seen sign. The woodikin have all sorts of stories. It comes in at night, slaughters a family in their sleep. Maybe carries off a child to devour later in its lair. The wasp lord thinks you’re one of them.”

The wasps from the second basket began to break free from their master and attack the warriors on the slope.

“I’m no shallog,” said Talen.

“You are shallog,” said Chot. “That is all the Orange Slayers need to know.” Then he turned to the Orange Slayers and began to shout. Talen didn’t know what he said, but he clearly heard the word “shallog” repeated a number of times.