The Lair of Bones (57 page)

Iome raced down the hill, straight toward the light. Several young guards lunged toward her. As she neared them, she leapt toward one's face. It lurched backward, and Iome dove under its legs, then sprang up behind it.

She saw a reaver lying there, with dozens of pale blue runes along its shoulders and head. She plunged her dart into the vector's sweet triangle. Blood and brains gushed from the wound.

Two hundred yards away, the One True Master hissed in anger.

A stone plummeted to thefloornearby, shattering and sending its shards into the reavers all around. Several of them hissed in pain.

Iome peered about, seeking another victim.

In the city of Carris, Borenson raced to meet a reaver, heart pounding in terror.

“For Heredon!” Captain Tempest cried, rushing forward at Borenson's side. The reaver whirled to meet them, rising up in a defensive posture. It's huge blade arced overhead, and came swinging.

Borenson rolled to the side as Tempest lunged with a reaver dart, striking the beast in the thorax. The reaver lurched backward ripping the dart from Tempest's hands, and began to roll about, kicking.

Another reaver came leaping over the castle walls and landed nearly atop it. It was one of the juveniles that Gaborn had seen from a distance, riding the back of a matron. The monster was small for a reaver, just smaller than an elephant, but it seemed to be all legs, and it moved swifter than any adult. The thing raced a few paces, grabbed some fleeing warrior from behind and bit him in half.

An arrow from the tower behind Borenson whizzed into its sweet triangle. The monster curled in on itself, like a wasp, and vainly began trying to pull out the arrow.

Vaguely, Borenson realized that great shadows were leaping over the castle wall—other juveniles—a hail of the swift creatures.

Borenson could see no sign of the heroes assigned to guard the gate. They were still inside the courtyard.

Flames roared to the south of Borenson. The oil and the wood on the burning ramparts sent a wall of flame searing forty feet high. The heat was so intense that Borenson didn't dare try to run beneath the sally port. He was cut off from the others.

Borenson glanced up at the castle walls. The sound of artillery had all but gone silent. Reavers, both adult and juvenile, had already taken the top of the north tower, and a dozen monsters had scaled the castle wall above. Some men were rushing to face them, but the reavers would soon be swarming over the walls.

“Gasht!”
came the sound of a spell. Borenson ducked by instinct.

He dodged toward the north tower, shouting “Myrrima, get out!”

A reaver raced along the wall-walk, and having seen the damage that its weight alone could cause, it bounded atop the tower. Rocks and debris rained down. The first three stories crumbled.

Borenson leapt to avoid a hail of falling stones. One burst near his foot, sending shards everywhere, and he heard Captain Tempest cry out in pain.

He glanced back. The warrior of Heredon was staring down in shock. A shard of stone, as sharp as a dagger, had lodged in his shin.

“Get to the healers!” Borenson shouted, even as the reaver above surged through the tower wall and leapt into the street.

To the north, at the far end of the island, various trumpeters began blowing distress calls and retreat, as if hoping that Queen Lowicker would send her troops into battle.

Borenson charged the reaver, a huge mage. He bounded a dozen feet in the air and brought his warhammer down with all his might, piercing the monster's sweet triangle.

The long spikes on the head of the hammer hit with a
chunk
sound and bit through the mage's flesh. But the sorceress was so large, he couldn't penetrate deep into her brain.

The reaver shook her head, and her bony cape slammed into Borenson, hurled him thirty feet, where he crashed into the wall of a merchant's shop. His mail and padding absorbed the impact against the mud-andwattle facade, but the blow drove the breath from his lungs.

Borenson hit the ground and lay gasping for half a minute. The reaver
mage whirled and peered at him, fanning the bony plates of its head wide, all of its philia waving wildly in alarm.

He could see dark blood pouring down its face. He had sorely wounded the creature. It must have decided that he was dead, for it whirled and was about to lope down the street, giving chase to commoners and lesser men who had begun fleeing in a crowd.

It's leaving, Borenson thought. I should let it go.

But he couldn't.

He scrambled to his feet and raced down the street a hundred yards, chasing the wounded reaver. It pounced on some retreating guardsman and halted a second as it made sure of the man.

Borenson sprang at the reaver from behind and swung his hammer, striking deep into its haunch.

The reaver hissed, and a stench exploded from its hind end. Too late, Borenson realized that it was a spell.

“Be as dry as dust, thou child of man.”

Immediately sweat gushed from Borenson's every pore, and came streaming down his face. His bladder contracted, and warm urine rolled down his leg.

The mage whirled to face him, its jaws opening just the slightest.

“Damn you!” Borenson screamed as he dove into its mouth. The monster's serrated teeth scraped his forehead, and he landed on a tongue as rough as stone.

The reaver snapped its mouth closed, but too late. Borenson was inside. He lunged to his feet, reversed his warhammer, and stabbed upward with the handle, trying to drive it through the beast's soft palate. But in an instant Borenson was thrown off-balance and his weapon struck only bone.

He went flying sideways as the reaver shook its head, trying to dislodge him. He crashed against its sharp teeth, and grabbed onto one.

For only an instant the reaver shook, then stopped to feel if there was still movement. In that instant, Borenson lunged with his warhammer, and hit the creature in the soft palate again. Hot blood washed down on him in a gratifying burst.

The reaver stumbled forward, and then it dropped. Borenson was thrown from his feet, and scraped his face on the monster's gravelly tongue.

He lay for a moment in pain, bleeding from a dozen small wounds,
struggling to catch his breath. Sweat poured from him, and his own tongue began to swell from thirst.

He crawled to his knees. Reaver blood pumped hot from the gaping hole above, gushing out in a steaming shower.

Borenson laughed and crawled forward. The reaver's mouth was closed. He couldn't even see beyond its lips. A large reaver can top twelve tons, and much of that massive weight is in the bony plates of its head. Even a Runelord with all of his endowments of brawn can rarely lift more than a few hundred pounds.

Borenson set his feet in the reaver's gums and leaned his back against its upper palate. He lifted with all of his might, but could not get the head to budge.

Outside, he could hear warhorns blaring, calling a retreat from the front gate. Folk were screaming in terror. By now dozens of reavers had breached the walls.

What do I do? he wondered.

He rolled onto his back, tried pushing up with his legs. But it was no use.

The reaver's jaws were locked.

He pondered his predicament.

After the battle at Carris, he'd seen the reavers in the fields, jaws gaping wide as their muscles tightened. Before rigor mortis began to set in, the beast's mouth would open of itself—in a few hours.

The safest thing would be to stay here until the battle was over. But he couldn't just sit while others fought and died. Besides, Myrrima was in the north tower, where the battle raged hottest. If she was still alive, the reavers would soon block her escape.

“I've got to get out!” Borenson muttered.

He could think of only one thing to do: cut his way out. The only place he might do it was in the monster's throat, just below the neck. He grabbed his warhammer in his right hand, drew his dagger in the left, and raced to the reaver's throat. He was trying to wiggle his way down when the dead reaver suddenly seemed to gag. Its mouth choked open, while bile rose from its stomach.

A flood of bile sent Borenson washing into the street.

He got to his knees, and peered about, to make sure he was safe. As he did, he sheathed his dagger and then wiped bile and blood from the handle
of his warhammer. Reavers were stampeding over the walls, unimpeded. The north tower had completely collapsed. Only the bottom floor seemed to be standing, and there was no movement in its darkened doorway.

He looked about frantically. “Myrrima?” he shouted, but his heart went out of him.

If Myrrima was still in the tower, she'd be crushed under the rubble.

A few arrows still rose from the roofs of markets across the street from the castle wall, and a guardsman was crawling along the street toward him. Borenson saw no other sign of people, though all through Carris he could hear their cries.

A reaver pitched from the wall and crushed a shop that had served as a station for archers. Borenson whirled and looked up the street to the north, to see if Myrrima might be fleeing.

Dozens of reavers rushed ahead of him, already racing toward the marina, clearing the streets.

He was behind enemy lines!

He heard a hiss nearby and whirled. A reaver charged him.

Borenson held still, as if too frightened to move, until the reaver was upon him. Then he sprang a dozen feet in the air and struck with his warhammer, biting deep into the monster's brain.

The reaver went down, skidding beneath him, and Borenson landed on its back.

He had been told to guard the street, to hold back the reavers as best he could while the commoners tried to reach the marina.

But he feared that Myrrima was still in the north tower, and he imagined her crushed and bleeding beneath the rubble.

He could not leave her.

He raced south, toward the tower. A reaver vaulted from the castle wall, seeking to crush him. Borenson rolled away from the attack, then jumped up and slew the reaver. A mage on the castle wall cast a horrific spell, and Borenson waded through a red cloud, holding his breath while his eyes burned so badly he thought they would boil from their sockets.

Two more young reavers dropped from the castle wall, while a third climbed over the rampart, ignoring the flames.

There is a difference between bravery and foolishness, Borenson knew. He was cut off from Myrrima. He dove through the window of the nearest
merchant's shop and raced through a back room while a reaver gave chase. The reaver bulled into the shop's wall, and the building collapsed as Borenson exited out back, into a narrow alley called Bleak Street.

The street was too narrow for an adult reaver to negotiate easily, but a juvenile came rushing toward him.

He ran to the nearest door, found it bolted. Borenson lowered his shoulder and hit the door. It shattered, and he tumbled in.

He stood for an instant, wondering what to do. The reavers would come after him any second. He bounded across the room, heading for a back door.

He felt a wrenching in his gut, as if something vital had torn away, and realized that one of his Dedicates had died.

It could mean only one thing: Reavers hunted uphill where his Dedicates hid in the tombs beneath Paldane's Palace.

Deep in the Underworld, Iome stabbed with her javelin, and another reaver died, her fifth kill.

Across the black chamber, Gaborn yelped.

She looked up.

“Gasht!”
A curse boiled from the One True Master's staff. Gaborn flung himself away, a shadow in the darkness, moving so fast that for a moment he seemed to vanish.

The One True Master became mindful of her. The reaver lord lurched back from Gaborn and scrambled to cut off Iome's advance. Tendrils of darkness, like a wispy fog, flowed out from the monster's feet, surging toward Iome.

Gaborn howled like an animal, leaping to attack. He raced to the One True Master, moving so fast that Iome could not track him as he stabbed her in the thorax.

The creature whirled to face him, cracking her whip. For a moment she blurred, and the surging fog halted in its progress.

Iome kept racing toward a knot of reavers, where a strong light burned, bounding over Dedicates both living and dead.

“Gasht!”
a spell hurtled from the monster's staff, a dark cloud of destruction.

“Jump!” Gaborn shouted.

Iome sprang thirty feet in the air, somersaulting as she did. A funnel of destruction, glittering like ash, touched the ground where she had stood, blasting several reavers to oblivion, smiting the floor so that flakes of stone and dust flew up beneath her.

The wind was a tumult as she fell.

Iome came down into the mess. Her left ankle twisted violently, and she cried out in pain. She crawled to her knees and used her reaver dart as a staff to hobble into the midst of the reavers. One struck out at her, and she dodged its blow.

Their bodies formed an almost solid wall. They moved so slowly that they almost seemed to be monoliths. Iome passed beneath their shadows as if into a dark wooded dell. For a moment she was reminded of the glade amidst the Seven Standing Stones of Heredon, where Binnesman had raised his wylde.

But amid these monoliths, there was no vast reservoir of Earth Power, nothing so grand and glorious.

Sir Borenson gripped his warhammer in bloody hands and stood panting in some poor merchant's hovel. Outside, reavers raged through Carris, knocking down buildings, digging through rubble. The death screams rose, a continuous wail of fear and pain all across the island.

Smoke filled the air as the whole district went up in flames.

And he could do nothing to stop it. In the past few moments, his Dedicates had all been slain, stripped from him.

Without his endowments of brawn, his armor weighed like an anvil about his shoulders, and his long-handled hammer proved so unwieldy that he could hardly swing it.

Without stamina, he felt sick near to death. The exertions of the past few days had taken their toll—his ride to Inkarra and back, the torture he had endured at the hand of King Criomethes. His legs felt so worn that they threatened to collapse beneath him.