Dark Vengeance (20 page)

Whatever it was in the water slowed when it got to where Orivon had crossed, and then sank down, leaving only ripples behind.

Which was when the foremost Nifl who'd been chasing Orivon reached the spot where he'd turned off the cavern road, and came rushing up through the rocks, and over the ridge, down to where the stream was.

No, don't try to hide behind the rock. They need to see you.

They already had. Warblades plunged into the water, snarling, “Get the Hairy One!” and similar sentiments, and—vanished.

The water boiled briefly, Nifl swords and heads abruptly sank from view, and a few bubbles arose.

Orivon and the Nifl still on the stony bank watched those bubbles pop, and the warblades fell silent, standing wavering on the bank.

The other Ouvahlan band arrived at the bank of the stream farther down, having seen none of this. They plunged into the dark waters without pause, to wade in great numbers along the dark flow toward Orivon.

The black waters promptly roiled, and warblades started to vanish again.

This time, some reappeared, drifting lifelessly to the surface, blades fallen from hands.

One rolled over as it came up, and Orivon saw that its throat had been bitten away. The water-monster, it seemed, had eaten all it could for the moment, and was now slaying for later dining.

Shouting in alarm, the Ouvahlans still in the water turned and
tried to clamber out, falling and splashing in their haste. More than one shrieked as he was taken from behind and dragged under, but the water was soon empty of the living.

Silence fell again, as everyone stared at the drifting bodies and the waters started to calm. No one had yet really seen the slayer in the water—and no one, it seemed, really wanted to.

Orivon heard what was being shouted, and his stomach lurched. They had no spellrobe, and were led by a priestess no one wanted to disturb for anything—he smiled mirthlessly at that—but their highest-ranking officers, the commanders, had found slaying magics in Glowstone. One was being sent for.

Thorar, be with me.

He ducked down below the rock, where the Nifl couldn't see him, and muttered, “Now what? How do I fight magic?”

By doing as you're told. For now, stand up again. When this “commander” arrives, point at him with the arm you're wearing me on
—
point your sword
—
and leave the rest to me. If someone looks like they're about to send an arrow this way, first, point at them, too.

Orivon stood up. Nifl warblades stared at him. He smiled back at them and stood leaning on his swords, watching the bodies drift slowly downstream. The water looked placid again.

The bodies were all gone, and the stream was flowing mirror-smooth again, by the time the commander shouldered through the Nifl along the bank, some sort of slender metal baton in his hand. It looked something like a Talonar slave-goad scepter, and the Nifl holding it looked calm and capable and ready to use it. The war-blades around him pointed at Orivon and then at the water, saying many swift things in voices too low for the man across the stream to hear.

Then the commander gave an order that sent Nifl to searching along the banks for loose stones, and hurling them into the stream. Orivon shrank down, hoping no one would decide to just bury the human in hurled rocks and be done with all of this, but the stones went on plunging into the water and sending it up in little plumes and geysers as it gulped them.

Suddenly the water bulged again—and something black and glistening and serpentine burst into view. It reared up with frightening speed, powerful coils that split into a forest of writhing snake-bodies, each ending in a snapping-fanged head. Those heads lunged for the Nifl-crowded bank, reaching angrily—

For oblivion, as the Nifl commander struck a pose, aimed the scepter in his hand, and fed the beast snarling spheres of roiling lightning.

The water-monster shuddered as those spheres burst in its jaws and along its dripping coils, unleashing snarling, clawing arcs of lightning that split and sizzled, racing and coiling in an eyesight-searing instant that left glowing steam rising from sagging, falling coils.

Point at the commander. Point at the Olone-blasted commander NOW
.

Orivon pointed. The bracer on his arm quivered once, and then erupted in a racing red bolt of flame, a line of fire that spat across the water and through the sinking monster-heads, to melt through Nifl chests beyond.

Aim true, human! Strike that scepter, before he drops it into the water!

Orivon moved his arm, snarling in concentration, and aimed true.

Abruptly the little knot of stricken, staggering-back Niflghar on the bank vanished in a blinding ball of white fire that smote the ears like a forgehammer and sent shards of stone clacking and spinning past Orivon and everywhere else in the cavern.

The stones underfoot shook, the dying monster and much of the water in the stream were hurled up into the air, and dark elves in that more distant band were flung in all directions, limp and broken.

The Nifl on the bank right across from Orivon shouted in fear and turned to frantically flee, Orivon winced as his shoulders were slammed into the cavern wall behind him hard enough to drive all the breath out of him, and . . . silence fell again, the silence of temporary deafness.

Groaning on the ground, fighting for breath, the forgefist could hear nothing but the deep vibrations of his own groaning and the
much fainter quiverings of shock waves dying away through the rock beneath him. He felt rather than heard the water crashing back down into the stream, and the limp carcass of the water-monster slapping down into it.

MUCH better
, Yathla of Evendoom purred in his mind.

Orivon heard that well enough, and felt her satisfaction, too, but of the Dark around him—nothing.

Then, slowly, as he lay gasping, air slamming back into him and then failing again, slamming back and failing, sounds started to come back to Orivon. His own labored breathing, louder than all else.

He struggled to roll over and rise, managing to get as far as up on one elbow, to where he could see the cavern again.

There was a great scorched, blasted place on the bank of the stream where the Nifl with the scepter had been, and for quite a distance beyond, to a ring of lifeless, heaped Nifl that defined that deadly ground.

Groaning, wounded Nifl were limping, crawling, and staggering around behind that ring, and beyond them, their unharmed fellows were hastening away, fleeing down the cavern into the distance.

The dark elves who'd pursued Orivon here, however, had drawn back only as far as the road down the center of the cavern, where veteran Niflghar—more commanders, by the looks of them—had arrived and were rallying them, with much stern shouting and wavings of swords. Glowing swords.

Orivon's spirits sank again. Magic swords weren't something he could fight against, if—

Oh, stop GLOOMING, human. You're as bad as a close-cloistered Consecrated, worrying over which finger to raise in prayer-gestures! Besides, things are about to get worse. Save your despair for when it's truly appropriate.

“I . . . I'll try to remember that,” Orivon muttered sarcastically. He glanced down the cavern again, and added a curse.

The distant group of Nifl had stopped fleeing. It seemed superiors had arrived there, too.

More than that, they were coming back. Slowly and warily,
with swords held ready and gazes darting everywhere, the Ouvahlan warblades were coming back.

To meet with their fellow Nifl in the cavern road, and stand talking . . . before turning in slow unison to face the lone human across the stream, and striding forward.

“Oh,
dung,
” Orivon said feelingly. “This is not how I wanted to—what's
that?
Thorar shield us, Lady of Evendoom, what's that?”

Something was moving, far down the cavern. Something high up in the darkness, flapping and undulating—no, several somethings, curling and banking and gliding . . .

“Raudren,” he breathed, suddenly recognizing what he was seeing. Dozens of them, dark and sinister, swooping suddenly to skim along amid the Nifl.

“The Hunt!” a Nifl shouted, mistaking the raudren for darkwings. “The Hunt of Talonnorn!”

A bright beam lanced out from one of those glowing swords, to stab up at one of the raudren.

See that one, who did that? Keep your eyes on him,
the voice in Orivon's head snapped, sounding very much like Taerune giving him cold, insistent orders in his years of working beside the Rift.

Raudren banked and swooped wildly as those brief-lived beams spat at them. They were the deadliest flying hunters of the Dark, not mere cruel and stupid steeds like the darkwings. Their entire bodies were one great, leathery wing, its edges lined with a razor-tail and even sharper jaws and claws.

One dived down behind a rock pinnacle, then swooped out its far side to plunge down among the nearer group of Ouvahlans. The commander with the sword spat another beam at it, enshrouding it in flames that flared purple, and trailed sparks.

The raudren shrieked, convulsed in the air, and suddenly shot away, climbing swiftly, and another beam raced after it.

Now,
Yathla said firmly.
Aim me at that Nifl with the sword NOW
.

Orivon obeyed, the bracer quivered again, and red fire howled out across the cavern, to drench and immolate the Niflghar commander, very much as he was burning the raudren.

Warblades fell or scrambled away from around him as that Nifl convulsed, staggered—and was dashed to a bloody smear and tumbling severed limbs as the flaming raudren crashed into him, biting in furious agony, and slid him along the cavern floor to a shattering collision with a rock spur of the wall.

As that raudren sagged and others started to swoop down, all over the cavern, Yathla of Evendoom spoke again.

Time to get yourself across the stream and out of this cavern. Head back toward Glowstone; there are far fewer Ouvahlans in that direction. Stop and point at my command
—
otherwise, use your swords and do as you were doing before: keep moving, tarrying to end no fights.

“Yes,” Orivon agreed gratefully, and plunged into the water. “As you command.”

A bit less sarcasm, Hairy One, if you DON'T mind
.

The voice in his head sounded as if it was trying not to chuckle.

 

Lying flat on the high ledge as raudren swooped and soared below them, Nurnra laughed aloud.

“Enjoying the carnage, Softfingers?” Oronkh growled, chin down on the cold stone beside her. The half-gorkul was busy lying very still, unsuccessfully trying to make his huge bulk look like a lump of rock.

“That's
Lady
Softfingers to you, Manyfangs,” came the tart reply. “And yes, I am.” She sighed happily, like a glutton anticipating a glorious feast. “So much blood . . .”

Chin down on the rock just as her longtime shady business partner was, she lifted a slender hand to point. “There goes the Hairy One; getting away clean, by the looks of it. Not too lax in butchering foes who stand in his way, is he? Wonder where he came from? He certainly wasn't in Glowstone before the Ouvahlans pounced; I'd done several survey-the-meals strolls.”

The half-gorkul shrugged his massive shoulders, reaching out his long tongue to lick one of his tusks clean. “Aye. I mean ‘no.' That is, I saw him not, too. A slave escaped from somewhere else, then.”

He grinned, large yellow teeth gleaming as another bright bolt of magic flashed, in the battle below. “Whoever he is, he got them all gathered together nicely for us to butcher.”

Nurnra gave him a sidelong look. “ ‘Us'? Since when are we raudren?”

“Well, 'twas
my
magic as called them, Softfingers.”

Though she hadn't seemed to move at all, the sharren was suddenly pressed against Oronkh, soft and sleek, her sweet breath warm on his tusks.

“And can you call them whenever we need them?” she breathed, excitement in her eyes. “Or when
I
want them?”

“No,” Oronkh replied a little sadly, not wanting to banish that ardent eagerness in her face, but knowing he dared not deal in falsehoods when doing so could soon snatch away their lives. “That was it.”

The knife-seller shifted on the ledge, to bring his far hand around to where she could see it. “I could summon them but the once. Spellrobes craft gewgaws that win but one battle.”

He opened his hand, to display the formerly magical gem in his palm. Dull, now, it had cracked and was crumbling into dust.

“Thank the Ever-Ice, Olone, and whatever other gods there be for
that,
” Nurnra replied crisply, seeking to salvage something from her own disappointment. “Or the damned spellrobes would be ruling us all.”

“Instead of corrupt noble lords and malicious priestesses,” Oronkh said sarcastically. “Oh, yes, that'd be
much
worse.”

 

The gathering-place was too small and too new to have a name yet. It had no handy water or sheltering side caves, which meant no traveler in the Dark would ever have bothered to tarry there at all if Glowstone hadn't become so dangerous, recently.

Yet Glowstone had, and there were more than a dozen dirty and weary traders and outlaws warily sitting there now, backs to the rock walls and keeping watchful eyes on each other.

They all looked up as someone new shuffled into view in the distance, approaching along the smaller, lesser-used of the two tunnels that met at the nameless moot. More than one of the Watchers peered idly, only to shift in obvious interest, and half rise to stare the better.

It was someone they knew, someone thought to be dead—or so the word had recently spread, through the Wild Dark. Word had been wrong before, but then, undeath had dragged the dead unpleasantly to lurching “life” again before, too. More than a few undead walked like the lone wayfarer, too. Hands felt for ready weapons out of long habit.