The eaters of time, p.57
The Eaters of Time, page 57
She had to believe that Eobum was right. That Kastan was different.
“She’s proof, Lashjuk,” he’d said.
“Of?”
“The idea that gold doesn’t always drown goodness.”
Folk would listen to a noblewoman… she hoped. I just need to get her to listen to me.
It galled her to have to find someone socially acceptable to speak on her behalf, but there was nothing for it. If she and the boys joined up with Kastan, there was at least some hope the lot of them could make a plan to—
“Wait!” she hissed. She grabbed the lip of Andrej’s quiver, holding him back. She’d heard something up ahead.
Laughter? Yes, a man’s mad laughter, and a strange, whirring roar. This latter sounded as if it were winding down. As if it were growing tired.
She turned to Vlk and Maksu. Laying a hand on her son’s shoulder, she addressed herself to the human boy. “Vlk? You were willing to defend Maksu once before without anyone asking you to.”
He nodded, blushing through a lopsided grin.
“Now I ask you to. There’s trouble ahead, and I’ll have an easier time contending with it if I know you’re standing beside my boy. Will you?”
Vlk put an arm around Maksu’s shoulders, offering a solemn nod. “Ve’ll protect each other.”
Maksu beamed up at the older boy, then turned back to his mother, nodding. “I’ve gotten strong, Og. I don’t know how to fight like Vlk and Andrej, but I’m strong now.”
Lashjuk offered an approving smile to the pair of them. “Aye,” said she and fought the urge to wince. Eobum’s word again… Time for that later.
“Can you use a bow?” Vlk shook his head. “Alright. Here.” She pulled one of her azhkasts and handed it to him.
The boy looked at the weapon with a delighted grin on his face. “A spear? I can use a spear. No fear.” He was too focused on the weapon to notice his rhyme, but Maksu wasn’t. He giggled, but had the sense to stifle the sound before it got out of hand.
Lashjuk turned to Andrej. What she saw brought a grim smile to her lips. He was on one knee with his lantern beside him. He’d nocked an arrow, and his bow was already stretched.
“We go,” said she.
Soon after they’d begun to move, Štít began a low growl in the back of her red throat. She kept pace, but also kept looking around, as if trying to find the source of whatever she was smelling, to no avail.
Finally, they came to a large burial chamber lit by a single lantern. As their feet crossed the threshold from catacomb to crypt, the hound began to rend the air with great, snarling sounds that were almost speech. Once their new surroundings came into focus, Lashjuk began to growl as well. What she saw made her heart race with a potent mix of fear and confusion.
Kastan lay on the cold ground. She looked unharmed, but it was difficult to be sure. Another woman lay several feet away, whose state was in far less doubt.
“…Olga,” Andrej whispered. Then he swallowed several times.
Her throat had been opened as if by some rabid animal. Despite that, her face lay in perfect repose, as if her savaging had come after her death. She looked as if she’d died wearing a soft smile. The juxtaposition of peace and misery were hard to look at. It was something of a blessing, therefore, that the chamber’s other occupants made for such a jarring distraction.
Stood over Kastan was a man in a deep red kontusz—one she knew all too well. He was helmeted and wielded a spear not much longer than her azhkast in one hand and a spinning, roaring thing in the other.
This latter was aimed so that the circle it created faced the room’s only other figure. A man in scholar’s robes, with a face that was at once blue and swirling black. The fellow had a mouth full of jagged, dark fangs, and eyes that swam with an unearthly, indistinct glow. A rippling red cord descended from his right fist, seeming to move and shudder of its own accord.
“Once-man…” Vlk’s voice shook. He hissed for Maksu to get behind him, exhaling through his nose in short, sharp bursts.
Huntress’s heart be damned. How in hells do I protect us from… Wait.
She kept her voice low as she spoke to Andrej. “You know her. Do you know him? Either of them?”
For a moment, it didn’t seem as if the boy could answer. Finally, he managed a jouncy nod. “R… Radek. The count’s scholar, and Olga’s hus… husband.” His throat made an audible click as he choked down his quite visceral reaction.
She nodded, raising her voice just enough so that all three boys could hear. “Stay here. Nevermind hiding. Just stay together and come when I call.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. The man in red had dropped his spear, now trying to keep the… whatever it was… spinning in both hands and failing by degrees.
Lashjuk made her face flat and placid. She squared her shoulders, drew a breath, and walked from the light of Andrej’s lantern toward the chamber’s center.
“Radek? Master Radek? Why are you wasting time here?” Her voice was cold and full of an implacable certainty she didn’t begin to feel.
The devil-thing turned a surprised and ruined face her way. Surprise on something so fearsome and unnatural was somehow almost comedic. At first, she resisted the urge to react to that fact, but only for a beat.
Better I look amused than afraid. Always negotiate from a place of superiority, whether you have one or not.
She snorted, allowing her face to relax into a bemused sneer. “Why do you wear that look, scholar? Did you think you could hide from your duties down here indefinitely?”
The creature stepped back, re-centering his aspect, so it focused on her. He looked indignant, which looked almost as absurd as his earlier expression. “What do you mean, woman? Who are you to speak to me of my—”
She made her interjecting sigh loud enough to override him. “Now you seek to waste yet more time? The King returns, and there is work to be done. Why do you linger here?”
His indignance had redoubled, adding obvious suspicion to the haze of his eyes. “And yet you would deliver such news in—”
Again, she overrode him with a sigh of supreme exasperation. As it neared its end, she rolled her eyes, placed her empty hands on her hips as if scolding her children, and hoped that she recalled what she’d heard correctly.
“Rez miss da rill, Radek… The Lord Sau walks, and is here. Lord Ebistian’s coach is above, and the Keening is near enough that we do not have time for this nonsense. Now, why are you idling down here when there is work to be done?”
She forced her face to grow darker and more frustrated as she spoke, willing him to yield the conversational field. I’m dead if he doesn’t. I’ve no idea how to kill someone who’s already… What? Fire? What use is that? I have no…
Her not-quite-one-sided conversation with the serpent-thing that had brought her here was cut off midstream.
“The Shepherd is above? And the Sharpened Shadow? What of the Storm Queen? Is she…”
“She watched her army ride past in the Grey. She watches all of this, and you are still wasting time! The culling has begun already.” Lashjuk groped for the woman’s name, but couldn’t lay mental hands on it. “Join … her while there’s time.”
“Her? Her whom?”
But the woman was stirring—the dead woman. Radek turned toward her, his face splitting into a grotesque yet somehow endearing smile.
“Olllga!” He sounded as if a long-lost friend had surprised him with a visit.
“Eliška, scholar.” Lashjuk’s voice was sharp, trying to draw his attention back to her. “T’lendak.”
Olga sat up, absently taking Radek’s hand as she adjusted to the world of wakefulness. As she did, Lashjuk stepped over and reached down to pick up the lantern. This took her past the man in red. With a start, she realized she knew him. His face showed a man who sleepwalks, but his haunted eyes followed her every move.
“I welcome you to your second life, my heart’s root,” Radek said. “In a moment, you will feel the change—cold, needling, then numbness as if you’ve grown used to the day’s chill.”
Lashjuk steeled herself, then stepped back toward Radek. “She waits, scholar. Well, no. She works without you. A fact she won’t thank you for.”
“I shall be a-long woman. My lady-wife must finish her rebirth, then we shall deal with the traitor, and then we shall join the rest of the King’s faithful for the Keening. Have no fear. Now… run along…”
He turned, raising his dim hand to make a dismissive gesture. As he did, she brought the lantern up, slamming it into his monstrous face. The glass shattered, and he became a shrieking pyre.
Kastan leapt to her feet, lifting her sword and taking Radek—the screaming candle—somewhere near his neck. She stepped back to stand at Lashjuk’s side, turning to face Olga.
Azhferd’s armsman got to his feet behind them, then shouted an inarticulate warning. A monstrous hart of fire and red lightning burst into being. Its arrival came with a wave of licking red light that slammed into all three warriors, knocking them asprawl.
Olga still stood, looking like the Queen of Red Places, tall and stoic beside the beast. As it reared and plunged, sending sparks in every direction, the woman lifted her hand as if to touch the hellish thing. Then she drew it back as if hauling on a snarling hound’s leash. A tether of sickly violet light materialized in her hand. Its end lashed around the hart’s fiery neck like a lead rope, but the creature began to rear again. For a beat, the struggle seemed to bathe Olga’s face in rippling light. An instant later, the truth became clear—the light was moving of its own accord.
Štít snarled her way into the chamber, leaping for the flame creature. The two began fighting with the ferocious abandon that is the sole purview of wild things. The boys were next, racing over to Lashjuk and Kastan, trying to place themselves between them and the feral combat.
Lashjuk was the first to her feet. She moved to help the red guardsman to his feet. One look at his face and she knew he would be little to no help. He was out on his feet, though it was clear he was struggling to fight on.
“Protect the boys!” Her words were sharp, causing his dazed eyes to grow a touch more focused.
He nodded, picking up his spear.
“I’ll…” But he could say no more. He settled for another nod. As he moved into position, it was obvious he was in a great deal of pain.
As she turned back to the fight, she sensed her unseen ally again. She saw a flashback to the moment they’d first met—the moment they’d first truly met.
Another can enter your body, with permission…
She knew she wasn’t hearing the serpent creature directly, but rather hearing the memory of its voice. Then the image of Olga’s violet tether replayed itself before her mind’s eye. She looked around, saw another wave of red fire beginning to build beneath the hart’s hooves, and nodded.
You can counter Olga’s works, and there’s no time to teach me how to do it. Take my body long enough to save my son… to save his friends… to save us all!
-V-
County Thorion
Wick
“Jast?”
He was all but knocked asprawl as an armored figure embraced him. “Jast—Jast—Jast!” Now he was being shaken by the shoulders. “What in hells are you doing here?”
“Rae? Raegus?” Jastar returned the embrace, delighted at the unexpected reunion. “Might ask you the same question. Who sent you? Barnic? Marcza?”
“Sir Jastar?” Apiné’s voice was tight, managing to convey several things at once.
“Come, Sir Raegus. Tell me your drift as we work. We need to shift the rest of the bodies away from the gate. And these poor folk aren’t going to get up of their own accord and kindly step aside.”
Rae stiffened, then nodded. “Aye… Westsong notwithstanding.” He turned to bark at the Wickish folk who’d followed him as he’d squeezed through the gap. “Help us move them or get ‘ee gone west. I’ll be along swift as summer storms, but make for Rockvale. And watch for goblin archers looking for an easy mark!”
They nodded—some of them, anyway—and bolted westward. Apiné had set up shields two to a side, held with their points extended. The canted angle would make it harder for arrows to get past. True, the shieldman’s lower legs were vulnerable, but that didn’t much matter… at least not yet. The defensive posture was necessary, but boring by design. It offered some protection for the unshielded folk as they escaped. It also meant that Jastar, Ibhroth, and now Raegus were left with the grizzlier task.
Methias had been right thus far. The goblins had stacked those they’d killed athwart the gate’s mouth. There must have been more than a score of them. He and Ibhroth had thus far found sacks of grain, wool, carrots, and coin amidst the corpses. He supposed the strange mix amounted to whatever the fleeing folk were able to grab on their way out of doors.
Aye, he was right enough. For all that, I’d love to know what in hells he’s doing over there.
Jastar glanced to the southwest, where their so-called distraction stood. The two men of the Hammers were standing with their shields locked, weapons at the ready. The horses were a shadow behind them. Tharus’s hound was there, which was odd. Jastar couldn’t remember having seen the beast on their run to Wick. As for the Lord Methias? His noble self was stood there looking around, as if unsure what he was supposed to be doing.
The dancing point. Aye and fine. Let the lord look after himself. Leastways ’til I’ve seen to my part here. Once that’s done, then I can worry about someone else’s.
Rae helped Jastar lift a heavyset fellow out of the way. “Barnic sent us—Gordan and I. He, Kaith and I have been through it. I tell you, Jast I’ve about had my fill of Zarec’s Charity.”
“That bad?” This was the Bear, who sounded amused rather than afraid.
Jastar saw Ibhroth’s look of confusion as he moved a pair of large sacks off the pile. “Ever fought a battle you were certain you’d lose?”
The man shook his head, reaching down for a woman’s body. He had to jump aside to dodge a pair of tall children bolting out of the widening gap.
Morric spoke up. “We have, most of us. Why?”
“Zarec’s Charity is to put you in what looks like an impossible situation. It teaches you humility, and to push your own endurance past its limits—mind and body,” said Jastar. “It was one of the few things our knight embraced from the Traeadish faith.”
Xaithrin the Bear laughed. “Pretty. It also means a thing is too damned hard. Enough is e-damned-nough!”
They all laughed at that. All save Raegus. When the laughter had died away and they’d gotten the large fellow shifted, he met Jastar’s eyes. “Gordan’s off to see Valad. Kaith too, I expect.”
Jastar froze. For a moment, that was all he could do. Men died. Of course they did. And in a battle like this? It made sense, but it didn’t feel right. Not after having survived Westsong.
“C’mon Sir Jastar,” Ibhroth called. “Not but a few more to clear. Then we can be about our real work.”
Jastar nodded, pushing the woe aside for now. He needed a strong stomach, a stiff spine, and a hard heart if he were to see this so-called rescue through.
I can mourn them later… will mourn them later. For now…
But there was no more time. They’d cleared enough that the dam had burst, so to speak. The world was full of screams, sobs, and—beneath it all—the arrhythmic sounds of weapons striking heavy shields.
-VI-
Olshnak leapt forward. He’d meant to bash Aleks Silverson with his shield in hopes of knocking him away from Kaith. He never had the chance. Ricgerd and several of the nearest shieldmen engaged the cozening bastard—a decision that turned their defensive wall into a snarling mass of limbs. Their left flank was curling in on itself. And the goblins were only too happy to roll it up like a piece of parchment.
He was just thinking, we need to get them back in good order somehow, when his gaze fell on Vilmocz. The armsman was just pushing through the rear of the fleeing folk. Kaith’s man would’ve been free to act were it not for a tall goblin readying its attack.
The monster made an odd sort of javelin appear as if by some sorcerer’s trick. The weapon looked long and thin, but its head appeared barbed. It brought the weapon up over its shoulder, aiming at Vilmocz’s unsuspecting and un-helmeted head.
Olshnak growled his frustration. We need every skilled shield we have if we’ve a hope in hells of surviving. So while he may not miss his head, I need him to keep it a while longer.
“Vil-mocz!” He raced forward and shouldered the man down in time, but felt the spear drive his borrowed chain shirt into his back. It and the padded gambeson beneath managed to turn the blow, but oh, did it sting!
Vilmocz staggered, looked as if he might come up swinging, then wore an expression of wonder. It didn’t stay on his face for long, but his utter shock at having been saved by someone he’d tried to have killed not long up the hourglass was hard to miss.
“We have to get that wall in order, or we’re done! Kaith’s been betrayed by that silver-braided bastard, but the goblins are—”
Vilmocz shoved past him, nodding. “Get the sandblood, tusk! Him and Terrek!”
Olshnak ignored the slurs. This wasn’t the time. Vilmocz seemed too taciturn to teach, anyway. Shaking his head, he reached down and scooped up the short spear, adding it to his borrowed arsenal.
“Huron!” He backed up the nearby stairs, not wanting to turn away from the goblins. “Huron! To me!” He moved with as much speed as he dared. But Huron wasn’t answering, which didn’t seem much like him.
