The Sword of the South - eARC (63 page)

They should have arrived by now, especially by either of the shorter ways, and she was sorely tempted to recall her northern and southern guards. But it would be just like Wencit to give her time for second thoughts, time to redeploy her forces, so he could stroll in through the gate she’d left unguarded.

* * *

“Careful, lad!”

The flat of Bahzell’s blade pressed Kenhodan’s chest and the faint blue nimbus about the hradani flickered brighter.

“What?” Kenhodan’s answering question was equally soft.

“There’s something foul ahead through yonder arch, but it’s damned I am if I’m after knowing what.”

“I don’t see anything,” Kenhodan said after a careful scrutiny.

“And no more do I, but I’ve a hradani’s nose, and it’s more than enough times I’ve smelled the stink of death.”

“That’s what you’re smelling now?”

“Aye, and something worse. Something I’ve not smelled before, but it’s after having the touch of Krahana about it somehow.”

“You think Wulfra’s been able to summon some of
Krahana’s
servants?” Kenhodan didn’t like that thought at all, and it showed, but Bahzell shook his head.

“No, lad. If she’d anything of that sort, himself would have been after telling me plain that she did. There’s none of the Dark Gods as have taken a direct hand in this. But that’s not to be saying such as Wulfra would be having any scruples about necromancy, now is it?”

Kenhodan pondered. If Wencit was right, that arch ought to lead into the wider space immediately before their destination, so there probably
was
an ambush on the other side of it. And if
Bahzell
was right, the ambush in question was likely to be even more deadly than he’d feared.

“Any idea how we might creep up on whatever it is?”

“No,” Bahzell’s voice was almost appallingly calm.

“None at all?” Kenhodan asked wistfully.

“Not on how to creep up on ’em, no. But it’s an idea or two I have as to what we ought to do.”

Large teeth showed in a tight smile, and Kenhodan shook his head in resignation. Then he unsheathed Gwynna’s dagger and nodded to Bahzell.

“
Tomanāk!
”

The hradani’s bellow hurled them around the bend like javelins, and Kenhodan’s bare feet slapped stone while spell-sharpened eyes probed the dark for foes.

He found them.

Human-shaped but not human, their enemies towered over them. Grossly obese, they stood over a foot taller than Bahzell and spiked maces hung from hands like shovels. Their eyes were empty, untouched by hate or pity, and their stench wafted from them—reeking of death and filth compounded in some queasy corner of hell. Two of them held shuttered lanterns, covers ready to be snatched aside to blind to their prey when they surprised.

But the prey had surprised
them
. Bahzell’s war cry echoed with all the fury of his lungs and the blue nimbus of Tomanāk flared suddenly brilliant against the darkness, and if the golems weren’t surprised, Wulfra was. To control them, she must occupy their minds, see through their eyes, hear through their ears. The shout blasted through her from twenty pairs of ears, that terrifying blue glare struck her through twenty sets of eyes, and Bahzell and Kenhodan were upon her before she could recover.

The grotesque front rank hefted their clubs and crouched forward to strike, but they were fatally slow. Twin thunderbolts of steel slashed the blackness, biting deep, and two heads thudded to the stony floor.

“
Shekarū, Herrik
!”

Kenhodan screamed the half-familiar war cry as he and Bahzell spun into their foes like the arms of a single warrior, but the golems were silent—silent as they struck, and silent as they died. They dwarfed Kenhodan, but his speed and skill surpassed them. He slid among them like a shadow, entangling them in their fellows as he killed them.

Bahzell was too large to follow into the golem’s midst. Instead, he planted his boots in the blood of his first victim and his eyes glittered with the same blue light that wrapped itself about his limbs. His teeth were bared in a wide, savage grin, for this wider stretch gave him fighting room at last and Tomanāk had sent him foes that needed killing. His left hand moved improbably, flipping the hook knife back into its sheath to free both hands for his sword as Wulfra fed her golems into the screaming circle of his steel. Blood flew in salty spray as he took the head from one and twisted his wrists, slashing back in a figure eight to take an arm from another, like a child plucking thistles.

Kenhodan dodged a mace and darted inside it to open the attacker’s throat before the golem could straighten. Blood pulsed, but the golem ignored it and reached for him with its free hand. Steel severed its wrist and a bare foot slammed its belly, staggering it back into the hulking shape behind it. Both crashed to the floor, and Kenhodan drove his blade through the unwounded one’s throat, severing windpipe and spinal column in the same thrust.

Wulfra fought to control the battle, but her efforts were in vain. She needed light, but while she ordered one golem to smash a lantern into a blazing pool of oil, she couldn’t direct others in combat. Even when she turned her full attention to the battle, it was impossible to manage enough awkward sets of limbs. One, possibly even two, she could manipulate as easily as her own body, but twenty were too many. Her enemies moved through them like wraiths of steel and shadow, reaping a red harvest while she flailed at them.

Steam hung in a tunnel floored in blood, and Kenhodan skidded as he engaged another mace. He drove the bludgeon wide, daggered his attacker’s heart, and hooked his foot behind its leg, toppling the mortally wounded monster. Air hissed, and he ducked under another fiercely driven mace and slammed steel through its wielder’s belly. It folded over the wound, and he recovered, then hacked the following creature’s neck dispassionately as a gamekeeper. He and Bahzell moved deeper into the press—dodging, striking, shielding one another. Their salvation was trained speed and motion, and their foes fell away in blood.

Wulfra couldn’t credit the carnage. She’d known them for warriors without peer, but she’d never guessed how far they outstripped her golems. The creatures were strong and quick, but they were handicapped by divided control and her own lack of weapon skill. Her fear grew, hampering her further as it manifested in jerkier motion and wilder blows. Her mind began to retreat, but discipline forced her back, and her lips thinned. If she couldn’t direct her full numbers, she’d direct one or two of them fully.

Kenhodan sensed a change without identifying it. His mind was focused on survival, not analysis, yet the change was fundamental, forcing itself upon him. The golems were no longer attacking. They stood immobile, ignoring him as he struck. His killing was delayed only by the need to let each body fall, and for a moment he thought it was victory. But then the truth dawned: the mind animating
his
foes had withdrawn to concentrate on Bahzell.

The change surprised the hradani, as well. The golem before him went abruptly inert, but the one to his left took on a sudden cunning and speed none of the others had shown. A mace scythed too savagely to avoid, peeling away his helmet and grazing his skull, and lights flashed before his eyes. Reflex evaded the backswing as he thrust through the golem, but the creature only grunted, ignoring the yard of steel in its belly to slam its mace into his right thigh. Bone snapped, the sound ugly as Bahzell was hurled aside by the blow. His sword flew from his grip, and he bounced twice, skittering across the floor on his back as a third golem raised its mace to crush his skull.

Kenhodan saw it even as he cut down yet another of Wuldra’s creatures, but the falling monster blocked him away from his friend as the mace began its downstroke.

Agony pounded Bahzell, but he was a champion of Tomanāk, and he drew his experience about him like armor. He ignored the grating anguish in his thigh and his left hand slapped the hilt of his hook knife. He drew and threw in a single motion, and the knife flashed past the falling mace to drive through the bridge of the golem’s nose and into its brain, severing Wulfra’s link to it. The whistling bludgeon continued its plunge, but it was an inert mass, without guidance or control.

It nearly sufficed anyway.

Bahzell hurled himself aside, rolling away from the blow while his broken thigh screamed agony. Spikes shattered stone beside him, and one crashed into his shoulder blade, crushing bone through mail and throwing him aside once more. He slammed the wall with a grunt and lay limp as yet another golem loomed above him.

But Wulfra was just too late. Kenhodan vaulted a fallen body and his sword smashed the attacker’s spine. He straddled Bahzell, levering the monster aside, and spun to face the rest of the pack as it fell mutely into death.

Stone guarded his back, and Wulfra could come at him only from the front. She could no longer confuse him by shifting from mind to mind, and no single golem could withstand the red lightning of his borrowed blade. Oxygen burned his lungs and his muscles ached, but Wulfra wasn’t wise enough to wear him down. She strove to crush him, instead, and after only brief moments of singing steel and spattering blood, it was over.

Kenhodan dashed pink sweat from his face, watching the tumbled bodies lest one might be only feigning death. But they were all truly dead, and he dropped to his knee beside his friend.

“Bahzell!”

“Calmly, lad!” Bahzell gasped. “I’ve taken hurt before. I’ll live.”

“I know,” Kenhodan lied, “but how long are you going to lie idle?”

“A spell, I’m thinking,” Bahzell said, his dark face tight with pain, and his ears wiggled feebly. “That as doesn’t kill off hradani outright’s unlikely to be after killing him at all, and we heal fast, but not that fast.”

He tried to sit up and gasped as broken bone ends ground together, and Kenhodan lifted him gently.

“If you’d be so very kind as to be straightening my leg?” Bahzell asked in a pain-tightened voice.

Kenhodan did, his hands gentle as a lover’s. Fresh sweat coated Bahzell’s jerking face anyway, but he made no sound.

“Better. Much better!” He smiled more naturally once the leg had been straightened and raised his sound arm. “My thanks for my life, Sword Brother.”

“I have to bring you home in one piece or Leeana will never forgive me,” Kenhodan said, clasping his arm firmly.

“Ah, now, she’d not hold it against you if it was after being my time. But it wasn’t, thanks to Tomanāk and you.”

“Shut up,” Kenhodan told him. “I think they must’ve hit your head. Something certainly rattled that pea-sized brain of yours.”

Bahzell turned his head as Wencit suddenly appeared.

“Will you be listening at him abuse me, Wencit?! Here and I was so careful to be leaving Brandark behind, but not a bit of good did it to me in the end at all, at all! It’s a hard life a champion of Tomanāk’s after living!”

“Especially for champions with heads made out of solid bone,” Wencit said tartly. He knelt and whistled with dismay. “I warned you you might not enjoy this trip.”

“Aye, and I’ve never understood it, such a pleasant time as we’ve had and all. You’re after getting old, Wencit! It’s a fine rough and tumble it was.”

“Perhaps, but you’ve been tumbled out of it. We can’t move you quickly, and quickness is what we need now.”

“Leave me my sword,” Bahzell said calmly.

“We can do better than that.” Wencit smiled. “The Border Warden will stay with you while Kenhodan and I finish what we came to do.”

“Just a minute, Wizard!” Chernion broke in. “I’ve come this far, and I want to see the end of it!”

“You may want what you wish to…Elrytha.” Wencit’s gleaming eyes pinned her. “But whatever you want, you wouldn’t survive it.”

“But—”

“We haven’t got time for buts!” Wencit said sharply. “Someone has to care for Bahzell, and you’re in no shape for a fight. That doesn’t mean one won’t find you anyway if we delay, though. You
must
stay here while Kenhodan and I finish this. We’ll return as quickly as we can.”

Chernion eyed him rebelliously for a long moment, then bent her head in acceptance. It galled her to realize he not only suspected her but had also guessed enough of her inner thoughts to know she wouldn’t finish the hradani while he was helpless. Yet he was right. She
wasn’t
in any shape to fight, and they
did
need to finish this quickly. She glared at him a breath or two longer, then drew several shafts from Kenhodan’s quiver and knelt painfully to splint the broken thigh.

“Here, Elrytha.” Kenhodan laid her sword beside her. “It served me well. Thank you.”

“It served you because of your skill,” she said stiffly, confused by the sense of gratification she felt at his thanks. “But you’ll still need it.…”

“No,” Wencit said quietly. “We’ll need no swords from here.”

“Ahhh!” she growled in disgust. “Gods rid me of wizardry!”

Wencit made no response. He only touched Kenhodan’s shoulder and gestured down the tunnel, and Kenhodan rose and followed him.

* * *

Wulfra sat quietly by her blank crystal. She’d guessed wrong after all, and it was time to pay for all misjudgments. She made no attempt to recall her other creatures; they were too distant and Wencit was too near. Besides, there was a certain foreordained quality to this moment.

She straightened her gown calmly as she stepped into the rust-red pentagram, and her lips curved ironically. She stood on stone sealed with the blood of her house, and more blood from the same fount might soon anoint it.

Ah, Wilfrida! If only you could see me now,
she thought.
Brought to bay by a dotard wizard and a man who wears mystery like a shroud! How you’d laugh—with the last laugh, and the best
.

She bent to touch one powdery line with a gentle finger. She’d never really hated her sister. Strange that she hadn’t remembered that in so many years. Wilfrida had simply stood in the way of power and offered an avenue to more, yet it was the quest for that power which had brought Wulfra here, to this moment.

She straightened and tucked her hair under her headdress. She was of the House of Torfo. However she’d acquired her power, whoever had died to secure it, not even Wencit could take her lineage from her.