Into The Dark Flame (Book 4) (28 page)

   'Do not be deceived. They are children no more, Swordbearer,' said Count Harg, his earlier humour no longer evident.

   'I cannot kill them!'

   Rasgul yelled at him. 'She lies beyond! She awaits you! We must fight through. It’s the only way.'

   'No! There must be another way!'

   'There is not!'

   Leth turned furiously upon Rasgul. 'How? How can I?'

   'They’re not children, Swordbearer! Whatever they once were, they are monsters now!'

   Leth looked out again at the oncoming horde. The child-warriors were close enough now for him to make out the glitter of their eyes in the bloodlight. Their ages ranged from perhaps six years up to youths of fourteen or fifteen. Their faces were uniformly ashen, set, cold, expressionless. He looked beyond them in anguish, as if some impossible solace might lie there. But there was nothing, only his own knowledge that whatever they were now, whatever they had become, whatever threat they undoubtedly were to him, he could not bring himself to wade among them, mowing down their small bodies with his lethal blade. He could not. They had been children once.
His own children might be among them!

   He let out an anguished sob.
There has to be another way!

   There came the thrumming snap of bowstrings from beside him. Four of the child-warriors fell. Others crowded forward, paying no heed to the fallen bodies. Another flight of arrows and bolts . . . another four dropped.
But there were far too many of them to ever be halted by so few bowmen. They were less than twenty paces away now, a swarming determined mass. Leth desperately scanned the walls of the cavern, seeking a way around the encroaching children, another way in.

   With horror he realized that Rasgul and the others were laying aside their bows and drawing their blades, preparing to wade into the horde.

   'Swordbearer!'

   Was it was conceivable that they might fight their way through?
Imaginably so, if only just, Leth saw. Despite their numbers the child-warriors were lightly armoured, if at all; they came forward with an almost mindless intent, and he doubted they would be effective fighters. Yet to win through would entail such bloodshed, such carnage. He could not accept it. And in their overwhelming mass the children had the overall advantage, most especially if they could surround the five and strike from all angles.

   He scanned the faces of the foremost, his dread ever-growing that in their ranks his gaze might fall upon Galry and Jace.

   'Swordbearer!' Rasgul glared back angrily over his shoulder at Leth.

   Leth stood unable to move, the Orbsword gripped impotently in his hand.
I will not be their murderer! There has to be another way!

   He turned and raced back into the tunnel from which they had just emerged, oblivious to Rasgul's furious hailing. Just yards along he knew that he had saved his mens' lives. Three goles were creeping up the tunnel. Within moments they would have launched themselves upon Leth and his companions from behind.

   Without slowing, using his speed and momentum, Leth ran at the surprised goles. He lofted the Orbsword and struck as he passed the first gole, taking its head cleanly from its shoulders. His motion took him cannoning into the second. It was sent flying back, hammering against the tunnel wall. Dazed and winded, it tottered and sank to one knee. Leth stepped in and thrust his blade through its chest.

   But the third gole was upon him. A heavy axe-blow smashed down hard behind Leth's right shoulder, felling him. As he slammed breathless into the ground his one thought was to keep moving. He rolled instinctively, and heard and half-glimpsed the billed axehead strike again, biting into the rock where his head had been, sending sparks and rock chips flying.
With all his strength he swung upwards and heard the gole complain as the Orbsword carved deep into its unnatural flesh.

   His head still rang from the gole's first strike. He pushed himself away, came bent-legged to his feet, blinking and shaking his head to clear his vision. The wounded gole was coming at him. Leth parried the first blow, thrust forward. And again! The gole drew back, widened its stance, swung,
missed. Leth detected an opening, waited. The gole jabbed with the bill-head. Leth pulled away, then drove in suddenly, neatly flicking aside the arm bearing the combat pincers, and lunged. His blade pierced the gole's throat. The gole opened its mouth as if to speak, and staggered back. Leth struck again, and it fell.

   He paused to take stock, breathing hard. The combat had brought him to the mouth of the tunnel. He peered out, scanning the wider area from which the other tunnel entrances ran off. There were no other assailants visible. He gazed down for a second at the last of the fallen goles. Its first blow, which had caught him from behind, had been powerful enough to maim, possibly even kill him. Certainly it should have signalled the beginning of the end of the combat, yet the sapphire armour had deflected or absorbed much of its energy. Leth found himself marvelling. The armour had not split; it had barely even buckled.

   He came from the tunnel mouth and ran to the nearest of the other entrances. It appeared to lead towards the same destination as the tunnel he had just left, yet there had been no other entrance in the cavern close to where he and the others had stood. A dead-end, or did it lead elsewhere?

   He ran on. In the depths of the next tunnel he spied stone stairs curving upwards. He raced in, desperately hoping. He took the stairs in long bounds. They twined sinuously through the raw, warm mottled red rock, and then suddenly burst out onto a slender ledge.

   Leth found himself at the edge, staring down into the great cavern where, some fifty feet below and perhaps fifty paces distant, Rasgul and the other three battled against the milling child-warriors. They had held close to the cavern wall, preventing the child-warriors from getting at their backs. A swelling sea of children crowded them. The ground nearby was littered with young corpses, as many as a score. Leth could see that the men were beginning to tire.

   He looked about him, assessing his own situation. The
ledge on which he stood, barely inches in width, threaded its way along the bellying, glistening, red-lit cavern wall towards the far gulf from within which hidden Ascaria unceasingly bellowed. Leth could not make out its full extent, and as it wound into various clefts and folds, he could not see whether its width would support him along its entire length. But he knew he could only take it or go back. He would be exposed and vulnerable, forced to inch along the ledge with his back against the rock face, and he could not be certain that it would take him to Ascaria.

   He glanced down into the cavern again. So far his presence was undetected. It was go now or not at all.

   He sheathed the Orbsword, needing both hands free, and slipped out sidewise onto the ledge. Beneath him the carnage continued, and from time to time, when the Kancanitrix fell momentarily silent to draw breath, the noise of battle reached him: clashing weapons, Rasgul's enraged battle-roars, the yells and grunts of Harg and the others. The children fought relentlessly, in undying  silence, like spectres or dead creatures.

   And there was another sound between the Kancanitrix's breaths, a strange, wet, rapid slurping,
sucking noise that made Leth's stomach turn.

   The rock at Leth's back offered few handholds. Its knobs and edges were worn smooth, as if by eons of water passing over its surface. But the rock was relatively dry on this wall of the cavern; the cataract and its clouds and jets of spray being on the other side. A few yards along the ledge the rock began to lean outwards at approximately shoulder height, forcing Leth to incline himself forward from the waist. He hung precariously over the battle below, with only empty space between him and the rock floor.

   A glance ahead showed him that the ledge fell away a little distance on. He was forced to turn, with great difficulty, so that his head and chest were pressed to the rock, his legs uncomfortably bent as he groped for hand and footholds.

   He inched his way painfully along, never knowing whether his next step would take him as far as it was possible to go along the cavern wall. Suddenly something smacked off the rock close to his head with a loud report, then clattered to the ground far below. Another object followed, then another. He had been seen! The child-warriors were hurling weapons: hand-axes, knives, rocks . . . Miraculously they appeared to have no proper missile weapons, and their aim was none too certain. Nevertheless the missiles they did possess were a dangerous distraction,
and if one struck one of his exposed hands, or his helm or a groping foot, it could spell the end for him.

   More and more of the weapons flew at him, beating an irregular tattoo off the wall, and he could do nothing but keep on, hoping, desperately hoping, that he would not find himself stranded.

   Something struck him heavily on the thigh. He froze, fearful for a moment that he might be injured. But his armour had protected him again. The sweat streamed down his back; his fingers ached from gripping the harsh rock. A little way ahead he saw that the ledge reappeared. It wound its way a few yards further and disappeared into a large black fissure. Large enough for a man to slip within and shelter, if he could just get there - but did it lead anywhere?

   A carbuncle of rock at eye level offered a fingerhold. He leaned and stretched out. His fingers grasped the rock but slipped off and he saved himself from toppling only by pressing himself even harder against the face, adhering, he did not know how, for the vital heartbeats it took him to regain his balance and find a grip. More weapons hammered off the wall all around him. Several struck him, though none powerfully enough to do him serious harm. From behind and below he heard a sudden yell:

   'Swordbearer! We see you! We are with you! Swordbearer, hang on! Hang on!'

   With difficulty Leth inched his head around. Below him he saw Rasgul running, leaping from rock to rock, striking down children with his scimitar. Blood poured from wounds on his thigh and cheek, but he scrambled to a platform closer to Leth's position, and from there was able to draw the attention of the children who pounded Leth. Many now abandoned their attempts to dislodge Leth and turned to deal with the former Abyss warrior.

  Count Harg, also blooded, now broke free from the main battle and followed Rasgul's example. He clambered to another vantage and similarly drew the child-warriors to him. Huuri and Juson fought on at the tunnel entrance.

   Leth forced his way onward. The ledge was almost within reach now. He could not tell exactly what was supporting his weight, but knew that a single tiny miscalculation would bring him plunging down. The floor immediately below was a mass of boulders and stalagmites; if he fell he would almost certainly break limbs if not actually kill himself. He cursed
the helm and sapphire armour. Though they protected him from the missiles that still struck him, no matter the armour's suppleness, it made traversing this face immensely difficult.

   At last his fingers gripped a narrow crevice above the ledge. He brought his rear leg up, skidding and fumbling until it found a toe-hold. Now he could bring his other leg up and rest the foot upon the ledge itself. He pushed with his other hand, managed somehow to get his weight onto the forward leg, hauled himself across and was at last balanced precariously on the ledge.

   He risked a look down. Rasgul was whirling his scimitar, striking down the children who clambered towards him. Bloody bodies and limbs were piling up on the cavern floor, and between Ascaria's bellows the cavern was filled with the cries of the dying. The sight was too horrible to bear, and Leth forced down his fear, not daring to let rise into consciousness the knowledge that it could be his children who were being slain down there.

   He turned back, made himself concentrate upon his task. The fissure gaped just ahead of him, the ledge widening a little as it entered the dark. He hauled himself forward and at last collapsed exhausted upon his knees in the blackness between the folds of protecting rock.

   He could afford no time to rest. Hardly regaining his breath he scrambled up and began to feel his way gingerly forward. At first he was in total darkness. He gripped the rock on each side of him, tested each step with one foot on the uneven ground. A little way ahead of him a bleak jag of rosy light glimmered, showing a ragged outline of rock. He pushed on towards it.

   The crevice narrowed. Leth was forced to his knees, squeezing between what had become hardly more than a crack in the warm rock wall. He removed the sapphire helm to ease his passage, and became more aware than ever of the heat of the air against his face. It seemed that the helm even offered some protection against that. Once through the crack he replaced the helm, feeling vulnerable without it.

   He eased forward into the weak glow of light, and found himself at the lip of a chasm. He was at the far end of the great cavern, and beneath him was the gulf out of which the flickering dark bloodlight issued, more intense now than ever.  Far off to the other side the great red cataract tumbled, its spumes and vapours rising high. He could no longer see the child-warriors, nor his companions: the main body of the cavern was obscured by a dark shoulder of rock humping out near to where he stood. Ascaria's baleful roars split his ears, louder, much closer. They seemed to fragment the very air about him.