Weapon of Blood (38 page)

Lad lunged for small sphere, the bolt in
his shoulder grating against bone as he flung out his free hand.  He caught it
as he would a falling egg, knowing that death awaited him inside that glass
ball.  He tucked into a protective roll, grimacing as the bolt in his shoulder
snapped off against the ground, and hurled the glass sphere at the assassins
rushing him from behind.  The ball ruptured against the leader’s chest, a cloud
of green vapor exploding forth to envelop several of Lad’s foes.  Flesh melted
from bone in a runny mass of liquefied meat wherever the mist touched them.

Through the screams and hissing rain, Lad
heard a strangled gasp.  He hoped it was Neera choking on her own blood, but a
glance dashed his hopes.  The Master Alchemist was backing away from the
battle, a bottle clutched in her hand.  She looked down at the dark glass
vessel, her ancient features pale with fear as she popped the cork and quaffed
the potion.  Still he heard the sound of choking breaths.  Whipping around, he
spied Mya standing over the corpse of Patrice’s bodyguard, one hand tearing at
a serrated silver chain that constricted around her neck.  Patrice clutched the
other end of the chain, her painted features contorted in a rictus grin of
vengeance.

Mya clawed at the throttling chain,
gasping for breath, and slashing ineffectually at it with Youtrin’s stolen axe,
but she could not break free.  It was killing her.

I’ve got to help her
.  There was no way Lad could fend off all the
attackers alone.  But as he prepared to leap to Mya’s aid, the charging
assassins fell on them both.

Lad parried and slashed, kicked and
punched, struggling to reach Mya.  Though impeded by his arrow wounds, his
strength sapped by pain, no blade touched him.

A glance showed him that Mya fared far worse. 
She had managed to lay Patrice flat on her back, the axe blade embedded between
the Master Inquisitor’s kohled eyes, but still the chain writhed and coiled
around her neck.  Mya fought to breathe, bloody fingers wedged between the
chain’s serrated links and her throat.  She met the onslaught of assassins with
her last dagger, drawn hastily from her boot, and many well-placed kicks, but
she was surrounded, and blades scored her flesh.  She couldn’t take much more
of this before she was too weak to fight.  And once she was down, they could
kill her.

Lad slashed through his ring of
adversaries and leapt to help Mya.

Two of the assassins facing her fell
before they knew he was on them.  As another turned toward him, Mya’s dagger
flicked out too fast for anyone but Lad to see.  The assassin fell twitching to
the ground, his brain disconnected from his spine.  But Mya still couldn’t
breathe.  Her face had darkened, her mouth gaping for air.  Lad slashed the
writhing end of the chain, severing the handle from the rest, but the chain
still constricted her neck, sawing into her flesh like it was striving to cut off
her head.  Her face darkened further, her eyes bulging from their sockets.

“Mya!  Hold still!”

Desperate to draw breath, she complied as
best she could, deflecting two sword strokes with her dagger while she stood
rock steady.  Her eyes bulged even further, however, when Lad slashed at her
neck with the enchanted blade.

The katana severed the chain binding her
throat.  It also cut a half-inch furrow in the muscle of her neck, but that
razor-thin wound sealed in seconds.  The chain fell in pieces at her feet.

“Thanks,” Mya gasped as she flicked a
fallen sword up to her free hand with her toe.  Once again, they stood back to
back.

Lad took a deep, steadying breath—
No
pain
…—and assessed their opponents.  More than a dozen assassins still
stood against them, but twice that number lay dead or maimed.  Not ten feet
away, Neera thrashed on the ground, her yellow fingernails digging deep into
the mud, her back arched, and her face contorted in a grimace.  Lad wondered if
the Master Alchemist had taken Moirin’s way out, poisoning herself to prevent
capture.  He didn’t care; as long as she was dead, his family would be safe. 
He turned back to the surviving assassins.

“Your masters are dead!  Leave us, and
we’ll spare your lives!”

“We will?”  Mya nudged him in the back,
and he could hear her malicious grin.  “Why?”

“Because they can’t beat us, and they
know it.”

The assassins exchanged worried glances,
some looking to the senior journeymen, others to their fallen masters.  They
eased back a step…two steps.  Several at the outskirts of the crowd turned and
bolted, then the rest fled, some quickly, some backing slowly, only breaking
into a run at the last moment.

“You okay?”  Mya dropped the sword and touched
her hand gently to Lad’s shoulder above the splintered arrow.

“No, I really don’t think I—”

A tearing, hacking cough interrupted
him.  Lad and Mya turned to the pile of thrashing robes where Master Alchemist
Neera had lain.  What stood up from the robes wasn’t Neera.  In fact, it wasn’t
even human.

Chapter
XXIV

W
ell,
damn
!” 
Mya stared as the thing heaved up.

It stood half again as tall as Lad, and was
twice as broad, with massively muscled arms and legs.  The silk robes that had
clothed Neera tore as the creature straightened, but it wasn’t just its size
that shredded the cloth.  Its entire body was armored with scales, each bearing
an inch-long barb.  One backhanded swipe would rip the skin right off a human
being.

“What…is it?”

Mya heard more disgust than fear in Lad’s
voice, which helped to boost her own flagging courage.  She felt no pain, but
the fatigue of blood loss lay on her like a wet blanket, pulling her down.

“Neera, I think.”  She swallowed hard as
the creature reached up one clawed hand to rip away the last clinging vestiges
of Neera’s face.  A vaguely reptilian visage glared at them, eyes like yellow
coals burning beneath a jutting brow.  Scaled lips drew back from a broad mouth
that sported far too many teeth.  They both backed away as the monstrosity
stepped forward.  Mya dropped the sword, and jerked Youtrin’s axe from
Patrice’s corpse.  “We could run.”

“We could, but if it
is
Neera…”
Lad paused, “…she has to die.  She knows Wiggen wears the guildmaster’s ring. 
If she tells the Grandmaster, my family will never be safe.”

“I thought you’d say something like
that.”

The creature took another six-foot stride
forward, eying first Lad, then Mya, as if deciding which of them it should eat
first.  They both stepped back again.

“Well, staring at each other won’t solve
anything.”  Mya threw the axe with all her strength, right at its head.

The blade glanced off its armored brow,
whirled in an arc and ricocheted off the scales of its shoulder before returning
to Mya’s grasp.  The creature had made no effort to dodge, but neither impact
had penetrated its armor.

With a hiss like rain on a tile roof, its
mouth gaped, a basketful of daggers.   Beneath the forked tongue, Mya glimpsed
two fleshy pits that swelled and opened.  She shoved Lad away as a spray of
yellow liquid jetted forth.  The reflexive action struck her as ironic; for the
last five years, Lad had been saving
her
from attacks.  But the fact
was, she could heal and Lad couldn’t.  And she stood a much better chance of
surviving this fight if he was alive to fight beside her.  She was thinking
like an assassin.

At least, that was what she told herself
as acid splashed across her legs.

The noisome stench of burning flesh,
her
burning flesh, sent a surge of panic through her.  She backed away from the
creature and glanced down.  The legs of her trousers had melted away in a cloud
of noxious vapor.  Unfortunately, the magical wrappings, her armor of
anonymity, had finally betrayed her.  The acid-soaked cloth burned, knitted
back together, and burned again, each time searing her flesh anew.  In the
brief gaps of the writhing cloth, she saw her blistering skin.  The magic
renewed it, pink and soft, and still etched with runes.  Fear ripped through
her, for she knew that if too many of her runes were destroyed before they
could heal her and reform, the magic would fail.

Mya slashed frantically at the wrappings
with her dagger, peeling them away bit by bit with her fingers before they
could knit back together.  Her hands blistered, healed, and blistered again. 
The dagger smoldered as acid pitted the fine steel, and still she slashed,
ripped and threw away the acid-soaked cloth.  Finally, the saturated wrappings
were gone.  The flesh on her legs healed, and the runes reformed, shimmering in
the streaming rain, their magic intact.  She allowed herself a breath of
relief.

“Mya!”

Lad’s shout brought her eyes up to see a
massive, scaly arm sweeping toward her.

Mya had just enough time to turn and take
the impact on her shoulder and back.  Barbs like a wall of thorns ripped into
her.  The force of the blow snapped her head back, and she felt the muscles of
her neck tear in a painless but nauseating sensation.  Bones cracked, and she
wondered why the scenery tumbled past in a spinning swirl.  A brick wall
flashed across her sight, and Mya’s vision went suddenly dark.

Lad heard Mya hit the wall of the
tenement building with a sickening crunch.  He didn’t dare look to see how she
was, for the Neera-creature had turned its full attention to him.

It lunged, its mouth gaping and clawed
hands grasping.  It was fast for such a large creature, but not fast enough to
seize him.  Lad spun away and slashed at a wrist as thick as his thigh.  The
katana skittered along the armored hide, shearing the spines off a half-dozen
scales, but didn’t penetrate into the flesh beneath.  Ducking under a sweeping
backhand, he leapt to slash at its face.  The creature jerked back, and the
blade scored a line in the fine scales of its cheek.  Blood as black as
midnight flowed from the gash, and the flat, reptilian head snapped around to
glare at him.  Lad landed in a crouch, stumbling at the pain from the crossbow
bolt still protruding from his thigh.

This isn’t working
.

He circled to buy time, favoring his
injured leg, every moment weakening him further with trauma and blood loss.  He
had to end this fight quickly, but how, if he couldn’t hack through the
scales?  He searched his memory for a lesson and came up with nothing.  He’d
been trained to fight people, not a monster like this. 
Got to find a way to
get through its armor.

Armor… 
When fighting an armored
opponent, seek the joints between plates with the point of a weapon or apply
blunt force to vital areas.  Remember!

Lad considered his options.  Blunt force
wouldn’t work; he would only tear himself to pieces if he tried to kick or
punch those thorny plates.  He had Horice’s sword, but the creature didn’t have
any joints in its armor.  If he thrust at the right angle, the blade might slip
between the scales, but it could become jammed between them, and he would lose
the weapon.  He edged to his left, and the creature’s gaze followed him, its
yellow eyes narrowed.

That’s it!
  Lad smiled grimly as he focused on his targets.  The
creature might be armored, but if he blinded it, he might be able to kill it.

He dodged another grasping hand and
slashed at the fingers.  Again the blade chipped off a couple of the spurs from
its knuckles, but did no real damage.  Lad backed away, but his heel found one
of the dead assassins.  He turned his stumble into a short backward flip into
the midst of the corpses and snatched up an abandoned weapon.  Feinting to his
left to draw the creature’s attention, he flipped the heavy, leaf-bladed dagger
in his hand and threw.

One of the yellow eyes went dark.

The beast’s half-hiss, half-scream,
shattered the rain-soaked night as it yanked the dagger out of its ruined eye. 
The toothy maw gaped, spewing acid in a broad arc, but Lad was already tumbling
out of the way.  A cloud of noxious fumes rose behind him as the corpses of the
fallen assassins hissed and smoked.  Lad looked around wildly, searching for
something else to throw, and spied a crossbow bolt.  He had just wrapped his
fingers around the short wooden arrow when a deep rending noise snapped his
attention back to his foe.

The creature had ripped one of the
stunted trees right out of the ground.  Holding the root end, it brandished the
tree like a huge leafy club and advanced.  As it cocked the tree back for a
swing, Lad took aim and hurled the bolt at its remaining eye.  A last-instant
twitch of the creature’s head sent the arrow ricocheting off into the dark. 
Lad prepared to dodge the sweeping blow of the tree, but realized that he had
mistaken its attack.  Instead of using the tree like a club, it flung it
straight at him.

Lad leapt, but the raking limbs caught
him like a huge net.  He hacked a swath through the foliage as he fell, but
landed hard, pinned for a moment beneath the densely packed branches.  He
thrashed to free himself, but the limbs bent rather than breaking.  A huge foot
came down on the trunk of the tree, pressing hard to pin him to the soggy
ground.  Cold mud rose around Lad as he slashed at the encumbering limbs, to no
avail.  Droplets of acid hissed in the rain as the toothy maw snapped forward,
as quick as a striking snake.  Lad plunged the katana toward the soft tissues
at the back of the throat, but the creature twisted its neck, and the blade
punctured its cheek instead of its spine.  Teeth grated on steel as the jaws
closed.

The enchanted blade snapped off near the
guard.

The creature flung its head, spitting
blood and shattered steel as the sword’s hilt writhed in Lad’s hand, morphing
through a hundred different forms as the magic died.  He flung the useless
thing away and struggled to free himself, agony lancing through his leg as the
crossbow bolt in his thigh caught on a limb.  A huge clawed hand reached down
for him.  He couldn’t evade it, couldn’t dodge, and couldn’t break free.  He
grasped the hand by finger and thumb to keep the claws at bay, but the
creature’s strength could not be resisted.  Finger-long claws plucked at his
throat.

A flash of movement caught his eye just
before one of the thick stone benches crashed down on the Neera-creature’s
skull.  Blood and pulped gray matter gushed from its ruined eye socket.

Lad rolled to evade the falling corpse,
pain lancing thorough his leg as the crossbow bolt snapped off.  A stifled cry escaped
his lips as the heavy body crashed down onto the tangle of limbs and foliage.  Pushing
himself up slowly, he eased out of the pressing branches, every wound screaming
for attention.

A slim hand grasped his arm and lifted
him up, steadying him on shaky legs.  Mya looked like a tattered scarecrow, her
shredded wrappings hanging in rags.  The tattoos on her legs, shoulder and one
arm shone dark in the glistening rain, unveiled for the world to see.

“You okay?”

“No.”  He looked around the corpse-strewn
courtyard, his eyes drawn to the narrow tunnel through which his wife and
daughter had fled.  “But I will be.”

He brushed off her helping hand and
stumbled toward the dark passage.  “Wiggen!”