The Last Dark (86 page)

Handir and his warriors formed a shield around Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah. The
Haruchai
countered a barrage of throws. Handir caught one spear, blocked another. A third pierced his chest, cast him silent as a stone into the chasm.

Snagging shafts from the air, Canrik and the other Masters advanced as though their leader’s death changed nothing. When one of Vortin’s comrades mistimed a catch and was gutted, none of the warriors flinched.

Covenant felt the shock as Rime Coldspray crashed against the torrent of Cavewights. She should have fallen: the impact would have split a slab of marble. Yet she stood. At her back, Grueburn braced her with one hand—and Canrik, Dast, and Samil attacked as if they were born to the use of weapons—

—and the enfilade of spears stopped. The creatures thronging along both walls could not throw now without hitting their own kind.

Cavewights plunged like detritus from the bridge as Coldspray and Grueburn powered ahead.

Out of the heights, a boulder struck the span where the sailors and the Cords raced upward. Bouncing away, the stone took two Masters with it.

After that, Covenant lost sight of Stoutgirth and the others. He hardly knew where he was. His boots skidded in blood: he could not imagine how Branl and Linden kept him on his feet. His mind was whirling madness. He seemed to rise borne on a gyre of carnage.

Then he was gasping on the flat shelf of the third level, and Linden was shouting his name, urgent as fever, and the bridge back across the gulf to the fifth level was only a dozen paces away. Cavewights came from both directions, but he had no time for them. He caught his balance on the sight of the span he had just crossed. Up the curve slick with slaughter, more Cavewights rose like executioners; like deserved death. They poured from the passage where the company had entered this habitation, gushed upward in a flood released by the dying of Masters.

They were too many. That was all: they were just too many. The Swordmainnir and the
Haruchai
were already fighting desperately, drenched in blood. Trusting Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah to Stave, Branl sprinted to support his kinsmen. Jeremiah trembled on the verge of panic, ready to hurl black devastation in all directions. Linden stood with him, but she looked lost, unable to help him: appalled or paralyzed. A deranged part of Covenant wanted to demolish the whole place, children and families and everything living. He and his companions could not survive
more
Cavewights.

Suddenly calm, almost at peace with his dizziness, he went to face the creatures rising in rage up the bridge. Once again, he shaped wild magic along the blade of the
krill
, formed a longsword of fierce argent. With it, he began hacking great hunks of granite out of the span.

When the Cavewights there saw what he was doing, they froze.

Three blows cut halfway through the indurated substance of the bridge. The fourth sent shivers down its length. The stone screamed at its own weight.

Shrieking, the creatures turned to flee. Most of them reached the lower ledge before the bridge fell in thunder. The rest plummeted.

Still swinging, Covenant nearly followed the wreckage into the depths. Stave dragged him back.

Covenant did not pause. Every thought was gone from his head: every notion or awareness except a compulsory desire to get his people out of here. He would never rid himself of the taste of blood. Brandishing slaughter, he ran to help his companions reach the next bridge.

e and those with him were only able to gain the fifth level because new groups of Masters entering the habitation converged where they were needed. Fresh and unbloodied, they threw their lives into the mass of Cavewights. They were
Haruchai
. In a distant region of the Land, two hundred of them rode to oppose the Worm of the World’s End with their bare hands. Fighting and dying like men who had never known fear and did not count the cost, they helped Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn clear the top of the span.

Of the Masters ascending with the Swordmainnir, only Canrik and Samil remained. Branl alone guarded the rear, contesting every step with Longwrath’s flamberge. Somehow Stave kept spears away from Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah.

Fortunately the tunnel toward Kiril Threndor was near. And the Cavewights blocking the way had been scattered by unexpected Masters. From the opposite wall, more creatures came, loud as thunder, vehement as lightning; but most of them were not close enough to strike.

Still they were too many, as they had been from the first. They would follow the company into the passage ahead. Eventually they would kill everyone.

At Canrik’s urging, Coldspray and Grueburn led their companions into the blind dark of the tunnel. He and Samil joined Branl and Stave guarding the rear. The surviving Masters arrayed themselves at the opening, braced to die so that the Cavewights could not pursue.

“No,” Covenant panted at them. “Come with us.”

He had seen too many
Haruchai
killed.

Branl silenced him. “Will you seal the passage, ur-Lord?”

Covenant struggled to breathe. “Yes.”

He could not have done so in the earlier tunnels. The company might have needed to retreat. Now he had gained a path to the Despiser. There was no going back.

“Then,” said Branl flatly, “these Masters will aid the other Giants and the Cords.”

Covenant tried to move; tried to lift the
krill
. Are you serious? You want me to leave them out there? His arms refused to obey him until the warriors outside the tunnel met his frantic gaze and nodded their approval.

Even here, they made their own choices. He could not gainsay them.

Groaning curses, he forged fire along the blade of Loric’s dagger for the last time. Unsteady as a man who had forgotten the use of his limbs, he slashed silver at the walls and then the ceiling. With wild magic, he cut down great chunks of stone until the passage was sealed.

After that, he collapsed inwardly. He could still walk, still go where he was guided; but he could not think or speak. Images of slaughter filled his head. Wounds gaped at him like the grins of ghouls. The tumult of falling stone volleyed against the boundaries of his mind. So much killing. So many dead. And he had lost the sailors. He had lost everyone with them.

He had brought carnage into the dwelling-place of the Cavewights: just one more item on the long list of his crimes.

What was it all for? Covenant knew his own reasons, but Lord Foul’s daunted him. The Worm could not be stopped. At last, the Despiser could be sure of his long-sought freedom. Then why had he been so profligate with the lives of his servants? Did he simply
enjoy
sacrificing them? Or did he secretly fear that Covenant might yet find a way to thwart him?

No. The Despiser knew Covenant too well.

But Lord Foul did not know Linden and Jeremiah: not with the same intimacy. The fane which had preserved the
Elohim
and delayed the Worm demonstrated that he had underestimated Covenant’s wife and her adopted son. Without their efforts, their opposition, he might already have escaped the Arch of Time.

Maybe that explained the brutality of his defenses.

The tunnel rose. Dragging the weight of his sins behind him, Covenant trudged upward.

At his side, Linden stared ahead, wide-eyed as a woman who saw a holocaust waiting for her. Jeremiah wrung the Staff as though he wanted to twist it apart. His every step was a flinch. Leading their few companions, Coldspray and Grueburn slumped like derelicts. Only Stave and Branl, Canrik and Samil paced the ascent like men who could not be appalled by any sacrifice.

A rift cut across the tunnel. It split the floor as though it had been made by an axe sharp enough to wound mountains. It yawned at Covenant, too black to be relieved by the
krill
’s shining. But it was thin: a fracture no wider than his thigh. Pretending to ignore it, he stepped across.

More fissures appeared. They were little more than cracks, yet they served to remind him of the times when violence had torn through Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder.

He was getting close—

When the Giants halted, he nearly walked into them. Blinking and stupefied, he looked around.

They had entered a chamber like an exaggerated vesicle, a natural formation left behind by some accident of volcanism. The passage continued, but Coldspray and Grueburn stood wavering as if they had come to the end of themselves: they looked like they wanted to lie down. The cavity was more than large enough to accommodate them prone. It could have held a dozen sleeping Giants.

To one side rested a pair of large boulders. They seemed strangely out of place. Covenant could not imagine how they had come to be here. But plenty of room remained, and the floor was approximately level. When he found himself swaying on his feet, he realized that he was tired enough to stretch out and rest in spite of the Earth’s peril.

And yet his weariness was a drop in the ocean of Coldspray’s and Grueburn’s exhaustion. Even the
Haruchai
were probably worn down, although they concealed it.

Grueburn’s longsword dangled from her fingers. “Is it conceivable,” she asked, plaintive as the cry of a distant tern, “that we are done with combat? I cannot raise my arms.”

“‘The mightiest of the Swordmainnir,’” muttered Coldspray dully. “So I have vaunted myself, and so I am. Behold.” She lifted her glaive. “My hand is firm.” It shook like a dying leaf. “My eye is keen.” Fatigue glazed her gaze. “Beyond question, I am—” Abruptly she dropped her sword. Her shoulders slumped. “Stone and Sea! I am undone by woe and killing. I cannot spit out the taste of blood. It will fill my mouth to the end of my days.”

Sighing, Covenant roused himself enough to respond, “Join the club.”

Jeremiah said nothing. He appeared to have lost interest in everything except his ambiguous struggle with the Staff of Law. Folding his legs, he settled himself against one wall, sat cross-legged with the black wood resting across his thighs. His head he kept bowed as if he did not want anyone to see the darkness deepening in his eyes.

Linden studied him for a moment, then turned away. She had spent too long clenched inside herself; too long crowded with needs and fears which she had not allowed herself to express. She was a rightful white gold wielder: for hours now, she could have struck her own blows. Yet she had contained herself, passive as dust amid the winds of battle. Somehow she had withheld—

But I’m done fighting.

In spite of endless provocations, she had kept faith with her decision. The cost of so much restraint must have been severe. Now she seemed ready to explode.

Nevertheless her voice stayed clenched as she asked the Ironhand, “What about the others? We left them to die.”

Her bitterness resembled the edges of Longwrath’s sword.

Coldspray shook her head. “They will not perish while they are able to fight and flee.” She spoke as if she sought to reassure herself. “Having lost us, they will retreat for their lives. My commands were plain. And Halewhole Bluntfist and Onyx Stonemage are Swordmainnir. They comprehend that they must not sacrifice the Anchormaster’s crew and the Masters of the Land—and assuredly not the Ramen Cords—to no purpose. Rather they will seek an egress from the habitation.”

Then her tone frayed. It seemed to tear. “Now we have played our part. Ask no more of us. We can go no farther.”

Once before, Covenant had seen despair in the eyes of a Giant, when Saltheart Foamfollower had tasted the ecstasy of killing Cavewights—and had found that he wanted to kill more. That despair had kept Foamfollower alive when all of his people were murdered. Coldspray’s surrender, and Grueburn’s, made Covenant want to weep.

He drew a shuddering breath. Well, then, he told himself. This is as good a place as any.

Hell and blood.

To the Ironhand, he said, “Don’t worry about it. You’ve brought us far enough. Nobody could have done more.”

Then, wincing inwardly, he told Linden, “If you’re going to do it, now’s the time. You won’t get another chance.”

On the walls, silver made dark streaks like the ichor of mountains.