Doranei cried out in alarm as an enormous lioness flashed past him, only realising when it tore a great chunk of flesh from the creature that it was Haipar, rather than some new enemy. As the shapeshifter darted back out of range, Doranei slashed at the creature again, then flung himself to one side as a trident nearly impaled him. Sebe hacked at the shaft to try to break it, but was rewarded only with clang of metal as a feathered wing swept him off his feet.
Doranei jumped forward to defend his friend, fighting with reckless desperation, hitting out at the only part of the creature that was in reach. He was rewarded with a screech of pain, but the wound didn’t slow it a fraction; he turned in time to catch a taloned limb just before it eviscerated him, turned again and hacked wildly up behind him to save Sebe from the stabbing trident.
The impact knocked the sword from Doranei’s hand, but the moment of distraction proved enough. Through the flurry of feathered limbs, Doranei saw Mikiss attacking the creature from the other side, just before Legana jumped smoothly into the arena, throwing one of her swords straight at the body of the creature. As it struck home, the beast reared back, and Legana pressed forward fearlessly, slashing with all her strength into the creature’s body. Mikiss joined her and Haipar buried her huge canines into one reaching arm, using her weight to pin the limb down and create an opening for the vampire. Doranei felt the splatter of gore on his face.
At last they stopped, each one of them gasping for breath and the massive lioness shaking ichor from her muzzle. In the next moment the raging streams of magic swirling and dancing all around them winked out of existence. They blinked at each other, half-blind in the sudden darkness. Doranei began to cough, but felt down for Sebe’s arm to help him up. They stood for a moment, supporting themselves on each other as the glare slowly faded from their eyes.
‘Congratulations, children,’ came Zhia’s voice from the darkness. ‘You’ve killed your first God.’
They looked up blearily, searching in vain for the vampire until she used her Skull to cast a pale light. Doranei looked at his fellow victors. Legana looked unruffled, almost pristine, barely breathing hard, while Mikiss beamed with pleasure at the corpse at his feet. In the blink of an eye Haipar appeared as her more usual self, fully dressed, with a blade on her hip. She glared at Doranei when she saw him staring and he quickly turned away.
‘God?’ gasped Sebe, ‘that was a
God
?’
Even dead and motionless at last, the creature was so unnatural, so bizarre, that it took him a while to identify the beak and face within the mess of feathers and angular limbs. It looked like nothing he’d ever seen, not even on a temple wall. In the weak light what he could make out of the mess looked daemonic more than divine.
‘Erwillen the High Hunter. His Aspect-Guide,’ Legana answered. ‘The novice, what was his name? Mayel, yes, he told us about that. I should have realised it would have incarnated, given so great a source of magic.’
‘We’ve just killed a God?’ Sebe moaned as Doranei retrieved his sword, trying not to look at the sticky mess coating the blade.
‘An insane one, if that makes it any better,’ Zhia said soothingly, looking around for any further dangers. Her strange sword was dripping blood onto the remains of the minor God: rich, red blood that certainly was not ichor. ‘The High Hunter was as crazed as the abbot.’ She gave him a wolfish grin. ‘Don’t worry; the first one is always the hardest.’
Doranei ignored that last statement. ‘You killed the abbot.’ It wasn’t a question; the evidence was dripping onto her toes.
‘Oh yes, I know a few little tricks, and once he realised I had a Skull too he simply raised his shields against me.’ She shook as much of the blood off her sword as possible. ‘He forgot that shields to stop magic cannot stop steel, and his reactions were as slow as one might expect of an elderly monk.’
‘It was really that easy?’ Doranei asked in disbelief.
‘Not entirely,’ Zhia admitted, ‘but it was always going to be very quick, or slow and completely awful for everyone within half a mile.’ She gave a cold laugh. ‘And, of course, he wasn’t my first.’
The conversation ended as they saw one of the acolytes still on the ground, a huge gash pouring blood just below his ribs. Mikiss stood a yard away from the injured man, his attention alternating between a bloodied tear in his sleeve and the widening pool on the ground, as though he couldn’t decide which fascinated him the most. Another acolyte, almost identical in both dress and build, was kneeling at the injured man’s side. He had drawn a long dagger and for a moment Doranei wasn’t sure if it was to threaten Mikiss.
Then the kneeling man put the dagger at his friend’s throat, wrapped his hands around his friend’s and drove forwards. He watched as the legs spasmed once, then went still, waited a moment longer, then let go of the dagger, still buried in his friend’s neck, and slid the mask up over the pale cropped stubble of his head, revealing a young face, still with puppy-fat cheeks, and a flattened nose that looked like it had been more than just badly broken. The tribesmen from the Waste didn’t resemble any of the original seven tribes; the dead acolyte’s skin was grey, as though dusted with ash. Doranei thought this no tribal custom, but a sign of how the Waste changed its inhabitants. They had been luckier than many; Doranei had spent a little time in the Waste, long enough to know that humans didn’t survive there unchanged. It was for good reason that there were no cities on those verdant plains where once the ancient Elves had built their civilisation.
‘Zhia,’ he said suddenly, dragging his eyes away from the dead. The vampire was crouched down in front of the dead Aspect of Vellern; she turned her head and gave him a quizzical look. ‘Can you sense the minstrel? He must be here somewhere. ’
‘Why are you so certain?’ She finished cleaning her sword on what looked like a wing and sheathed it, then stood up.
‘Because he will not—’ Doranei stopped dead. ‘Where’s the Skull?’
She nodded towards what was left of a cellar entrance. ‘Down there, with the abbot.’
‘You didn’t bring it with you?’
Zhia scowled. ‘I told you, I do not care for it, and frankly, I’m disappointed in your king for wanting it so badly. Aryn Bwr gave it to his son because he knew Velere lacked the strength and majesty to rule after the war. It is a gift for the weak.’
‘And what if it falls into the hands of the powerful?’ Doranei asked angrily. The kneeling acolyte jerked his head at his tone, but Doranei ignored him.
‘I hadn’t thought you such a fool,’ Zhia snapped in return. ‘Your friend Rojak has orchestrated all this destruction, and still you don’t see?’ She swept her arm out wide to take in the ruins of the city in the distance.
‘You think he’s lured us here?’ Doranei almost shouted his reply as he felt the smoulder of frustration and anger inside him suddenly ignite. ‘Do you honestly think he would sacrifice the Skull of Ruling and hand it to his greatest enemy before an ambush?’
‘I think we have all been blundering in the dark,’ Zhia spat, shooting a warning look at Mikiss, who’d begun to edge towards Doranei. ‘I think Rojak has been ten steps ahead for months, perhaps years, and underestimating him will get you killed. And yes, I think you have walked into an ambush.’
‘Then what in the name of Ghenna’s deepest pit are you doing here?’ Doranei yelled, his temper boiling over.
Zhia’s face softened and, quite unexpectedly, she smiled at him. ‘Your simple-mindedness is rather endearing,’ she said. ‘I’m here because I knew you’ll follow your king wherever he goes, and he will not be dissuaded in his pursuit.’ She reached out and tenderly ran a gloved finger over the exposed skin of his cheek. ‘And because I seem not to have learned from past mistakes I find myself trailing along after you.’ Zhia paused and gave a sad smile. ‘Still, I doubt there’s much left for me in the way of punishment this time round.’
She stepped away and pointed out over the wreckage to the south. Doranei followed her finger and looked through the waning flames to see a group of figures advancing on them. ‘Here come your Brothers,’ she said breezily, drawing her sword once more. ‘I presume Rojak will consider that his cue.’
Doranei’s anger had been supplanted by dread as the truth of her words sank in. Rojak had been the architect of this horror, and who could say how far his plans had run?
He staggered back, his ankle catching a splintered beam with enough force to drive a long splinter through the leather before breaking off. Doranei stared down at it as though he’d never seen such a thing before, his mind momentarily fogged. Inside his boot he could feel the sharp scratch of wood against his skin. The splinter - as long as his little finger and almost as thick - hadn’t pushed into his flesh, but he could distinctly feel it scrape over his unbroken skin.
He broke out in a manic grin as he bent down to tug the piece of wood from his boot. He inspected the hole it had made. ‘And I bleed so easily,’ he muttered to himself, ‘far too easily, in most cases.’ Holding the splinter up to his face, Doranei examined it. ‘But you, my friend, somehow you couldn’t manage that,’ he said, flicking the piece away into the crackling pyre.
He watched the curling flames dance as it was consumed, the heat making the air above waver indistinctly and stinging his eyes. He blinked furiously as he tried to clear his sight. He’d seen something beyond the flames, but what? A random shadow the heat had shaped into something more? Or—
‘Oh Gods,’ he breathed as his eyes focused again. Through the flames, staring back at him, was a massive eye. Gleaming gold in the firelight, the eye bobbed and wove through the darkness as it watched him.
Oh vengeful Death,
Doranei thought, hypnotised by the movement,
that’s a long way to move a head. That’s a long bloody neck.
Haipar saw it too and immediately leaped forward over the flames, her body morphing into her animal self, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. Without warning the eye snapped sideways and lunged forwards, the shine of another appearing as the creature turned to face Doranei. His hand tightened around his weapons as the head came close enough to the fire to be visible. A tapering muzzle opened to reveal long dagger-like fangs and rows of smaller teeth. Its head was crowned by fat, stubby horns.
Oh piss and daemons.
Doranei scrambled backwards, almost falling over the fallen acolyte behind him. ‘Wyvern!’ he yelled, finding his voice at last.
The moment balanced on a knife-edge, the air charged with expectation as Doranei readied himself for the creature to leap through the flames. Distantly he heard Zhia spit harsh syllables he couldn’t understand and the air shuddered with the impact of the spell. The fires ahead of him suddenly surged up bright and fierce into the night air, the heat striking him like a mailed fist. He raised an arm to protect his face as a reptilian shriek rang out.
‘Haipar’s out there,’ Doranei yelled, but the only response was laughter from behind him -Mikiss -and he turned to see the vampire raise his axes expectantly. He gave the King’s Man a comradely nod, his canines now elongated and gleaming in his smile. Doranei felt a small shiver; Mikiss had looked about to turn on him as he argued with Zhia, but now they were friends again? A soldier who couldn’t depend on those beside him never lasted long.
‘I can’t help Haipar if she wants to fight on her own,’ Zhia said calmly, her hands tracing shapes in the air as she continued to weave her magic. ‘A wyvern means Mistress is working for Rojak now; I wonder how many of the Raylin I employed are now against us.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose that will make much difference, even if they were all here.’
‘Zhia!’ Doranei had to shout to get her attention. ‘However many are out there, so is King Emin and my Brothers. We have to help them.’
‘And so we shall,’ she replied almost dismissively, ‘but I don’t want to act prematurely.’
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked, but his voice was drowned out by an ear-splitting crack echoing around the street. Doranei turned back, unable to see anything through the flames but certain he recognised the sound of one of Cetarn’s favourite spells. ‘Do you hear?’ he cried in dismay. ‘They’re being attacked. Zhia, please!’
A greenish glow pulsing with energy surrounded Zhia as she put her hand to the Skull she carried. ‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ she said softly, before raising her voice to a shout that made Doranei’s bones tremble. ‘Koezh!’
The wall of fire winked out in an instant. Doranei blinked at the darkness, blind and afraid as he sensed movement all around him. Another whip-crack sound rang out from somewhere to his right and as he took an involuntary step forward, something flashed towards him. Without thought he stepped aside and lashed out with his sword, which caught something, though his night-blindness obscured all detail. An inhuman snarl came from behind him -one of the vampires he guessed, but the sound was so savagely animal he could not tell whether it was Mikiss or Zhia - and a figure darted forwards, striking out at whatever he’d found.
Doranei didn’t hesitate to follow; he’d done his share of sewer-fighting, combat in the dark where blows were guided by sound, following shadows moving in darkness. Something scraped down his chest and Doranei wheeled and struck again. He was rewarded with the splash of blood, or something like, on his face. He hacked upwards with his axe to catch any downward blow, and felt the blade bite. It was the opening he needed; stepping forward he thrust the point of his sword forward at chest height. Wherever on the enemy it had struck, it went in deep and was wrenched out of his grip.
Doranei let it go and sank silently to a crouch, chopping down at some movement at his feet in case it wasn’t just the kick of a dying man’s leg, but the edge only clattered against stone and made him gasp at the impact running through his hands. Nearby he heard a short laugh, someone who was enjoying this as much as Doranei wasn’t.