Shadow’s Lure (42 page)

She thrust her pointing finger down toward the outpost. “Every man is down below doing what you taught him, while we’re left to sit up here like a flock of hens!”

“Keep your voice down.” He chewed on his tongue. Below, the sounds of combat continued. “Don’t be in such a hurry.”

“We trained to fight, Caim. But you’re trying to keep us out of the way.”

“I trained you to survive!”

He winced as his voice echoed down the ridge. Liana had a way of getting under his skin.
Like a rash, and no matter how hard I scratch she just keeps coming back
.

“You aren’t holding Keegan back.”

“You and the other women have only been training for a few days. You’re not ready yet.”

“We
want
to fight.”

Snarling in the darkness, he gave in. “All right. Move your squad down to set up a screen along the north road.”

“Really?” she asked, excitement peaking in her voice. “Don’t worry. We know what to do.”

“Don’t get too close to the walls. And keep your eyes open.”

She turned away. “Don’t worry! North road. Got it.”

“Don’t engage unless you have to,” he called after her. “And don’t be afraid to withdraw if …”

Caim let the words fall away as Liana ran up the slope. A waste of breath. She was too damned eager to jump into the fray. The others in her unit were no better. Pale moonlight reflected on their spear points as they marched past. Two dozen women, ranging from girlhood to wedded matrons, in homemade armor. He’d given them what training he could in the short time allotted to him, utilizing the first drills Kas had ever taught him: how to make a strong stance, to hold a spear against a charge, to attack and move safely. Was it enough to keep them alive?

The sounds of fighting were dying down, but fires had sprung up inside the compound. Small ones, but he’d told the men not to burn anything until they were ready to pull out. Someone was getting out of hand. As a nightfisher cried out, Caim made his way down the ridge.

The gate was open by the time he arrived. Actually, it was half torn off its posts. Aemon and Dray, their faces bound up in gray scarves, stood sentry. They saluted as he approached; Aemon in earnest, Dray less so. It was something the men had started doing the past couple of days. Caim didn’t like it much, but he wasn’t sure if he should discourage it, either. At least they weren’t calling him “sir.” Yet.

He found his lieutenants, Keegan and Vaner, in the main yard beside a group of bound soldiers. Caim had wanted Killian with them, but the veteran chose to remain at the castle. Perhaps it was because of his age. Or maybe he could see what was coming. Caim couldn’t blame him. Keegan’s face was pale in the torchlight. Blood dribbled from a shallow cut across the bridge of his nose.

“Report.”

Keegan started. “The outpost is secure.”

“Injuries?”

“Only one is serious,” Vaner said. “Feoras took a spear through the leg, but it’s a clean wound. Should heal up fine.”

Caim eyed the soldiers on the ground. “What about their side?”

“Ah,” Keegan paused. “Two dead, and another might die before morning. I know you said to avoid that if we could, but—”

“Some things are unavoidable. Go on.”

“Okay. There are a few soldiers holed up in a shack in the southeast corner. We couldn’t get inside.”

“So you started fires to smoke them out,” Caim said.

Vaner glanced at Keegan. “Someone said they saw a man inside wearing Eviskine colors. A couple of the boys went against orders.”

“Have you found their commander?”

Keegan shook his head. “Only a sergeant so far. He’s the one in bad shape. He wouldn’t surrender.”

Vaner started to add something, but Caim missed it as a stabbing pain sliced through the center of his chest. For a moment, he thought he had been shot by a crossbow again. His vision dimmed. Keegan and Vaner looked at each other. Caim didn’t have the breath to speak. As the agony receded, a harsh tingle ran down the back of his neck. Something bad was coming. Caim glanced northward toward the direction of the disturbance. The sky rumbled overhead, but there was no smell of moisture in the air.

“Are you—?” Vaner started to ask.

Caim bit back against the pain. “Get everyone back up the ridge now.”

“What about the prisoners?” Keegan asked.

“Leave them!”

Caim pushed past them and staggered toward the north side of the outpost as fast as he could manage. The walking got easier, but it wasn’t until he was halfway across the compound that he remembered Liana and her women were stationed on the north road. Right in the path of the disturbance. He broke into a run.

He passed Oak heading back toward the courtyard with a long crate under each arm.

“Caim! I found a whole house full of—”

“Find Keegan and get out of here!” he shouted over his shoulder.

When Caim reached the wall, he leapt without slowing. The palisade was built of sharpened, eight-foot-tall stakes. As his hands closed around the tops of two logs, Caim heaved himself up. What he saw on the other side drove an icy spike into his guts.

The night had come alive. It lapped at the wooden barrier and flowed around it like an amorphous beast seeking entrance. Glints of metal gleamed in the blackness—warriors with swords and spears racing to surround the walls. Caim drew his knives as he dropped down on the hard ground. The darkness swirled with shadows. They approached him like a pack of tame pets, rubbing against him, whispering songs of death and ruin in his ears. He fought the violent urges rising inside him as he moved out into the gloom.

Sounds came at him from every direction. Caim was torn between caution and the need to find his troops before it was too late. He almost tripped over the body of a grizzled soldier, his leather breastplate dotted with a dozen deep punctures. Spear wounds. As Caim moved on, a fierce shout was his only warning as a swordsman leapt out of the dark at him. Caim leaned out of the longsword’s path and stabbed the soldier in his side. He twisted his blades free as the soldier slid to the ground and kept moving. Another soldier appeared. Caim glided past a falling battleaxe and smashed the man in the temple with a knife butt. As the soldier shook his head, Caim saw the pale flesh of his enemy’s neck exposed above the breastplate. The longing to attack, to kill, sizzled in his brain. He hamstrung the soldier with two vicious slashes and kicked him to the ground. His pulse thrummed in his ears as he stood over the man, who groaned and clutched his ruined legs.
Kill him. They deserve no better
.

A choking grunt turned Caim around. He lifted his knives as a tall, long-limbed man staggered toward him out of the murk. Caim crouched to leap, but checked his attack when he recognized the face. Oak’s hands were folded around the spear point protruding from his stomach. Rage, red-hot and steaming, bubbled up inside Caim. He reached out to help until a soldier in an iron cap came up behind Oak and slid the blade of a dirk under his russet beard.

Caim yelled as he knocked the knife from the soldier’s hand and slashed him across the face. The man held his face and screamed. Unmoved, Caim punched both knives through the soldier’s boiled leather shirt and spilled his steaming bowels onto the snowy ground. The killer collapsed beside Oak’s body, both of them curled up like sleeping children. Growling—at the soldier, at himself, at the gods perhaps—Caim turned away.

He found the road and hurried down its hard-packed snow-and-gravel surface. Cries rose to meet him. There was a sinister whoosh, followed by the wet crackle of shattering bones. He sprinted at full speed through the gloom, straight into the path of a galloping brown blur. Caim threw himself to the side and was spun partway around as the warhorse’s broad chest barreled into his legs. Something bright and lethal whistled past his head. As Caim regained his footing, the horseman wheeled his steed around and came back for another pass, a long cavalry sword held over his head. Caim leapt before the horseman could close, darting in low on the soldier’s left side. His
suete
cut deep into the meat of the soldier’s thigh. Intending to swing around to the other side, Caim ran around behind the animal.

Then he was airborne.

The breath rushed out of his lungs as he landed in a shallow ditch beside the road. Pain rippled across his left shoulder and down his ribs from the impact of the warhorse’s hooves. The horseman had turned and was closing again. Caim tried to lift himself up, but there was no time. His arm was stiff; his legs felt like boards of lumber. The soldier leaned over in the saddle, his sword raised to kill. Caim hissed between his teeth.

The shadows came from every direction, blocking out the horse and rider with their numbers. A high-pitched whinny sliced through the night air amid a thunder of stamping hooves and human screams.

Caim’s breath returned in shallow gasps as he climbed to his feet. A quick examination of his arm and torso revealed that nothing was broken, but he would sport some nasty bruises. He looked to his fallen enemy. The horse lay on its side. Tiny black holes riddled its sweat-flecked coat. The rider had thrown himself clear, but the shadows found him nonetheless. His armor—a shirt of mail—hung in tatters, riddled with similar holes. His empty eye sockets, leaking white fluid, stared up at nothing.

While Caim looked over the scene, cool touches enveloped his shoulder and side. He started to brush the flitting shadows away, but let them be as the pain leached away. Sensation returned to his hand. More shadows crawled on the ground, nipping at his feet, eager for blood. This preternatural darkness was unnerving, even for him, but he plowed ahead. Sounds of fighting echoed deeper in the gloom, and then—

Nothing. The breeze picked up, making eddies in the mist.

He came across the first body lying against the trunk of an ebonwood tree. Bile rose in the back of his throat as he recognized one of Liana’s women, but he couldn’t put a name to her face. She had died cradling a broken arm. Both her legs were broken, too. He found the second and third bodies facedown in the snow farther up the road. The fourth lay over a rock; blood drenched her chestnut hair from a massive head wound that had caved in half her skull. Caim marched past, fearing what he would find next. His stomach was clenched into a knot of aches.
This is my fault. I shouldn’t have let them
—

Lightning flashed behind him, and the darkness lifted a trifle, enough to reveal a line of bodies arrayed across the road. Caim stopped as the thunder crashed in his ears. The women had stood firm, shoulder to shoulder, presenting a strong front to their enemy. Just like he had taught them.

A solitary figure stood on the road beyond them, tides of darkness swirling around his thick, armored frame.

The Beast.

The throbbing in Caim’s chest pounded against his breastbone as the armored giant looked up. A woman slumped at his feet. In one hand the Beast held up her head by a fistful of long blonde hair; in the other, a massive spiked ball hung on the end of a black link chain. Caim’s arms trembled as he looked into Liana’s glassy eyes. He was too late.

The Beast let go of her hair. Caim was running before Liana’s face landed in the bloody mire. He charged past the women, their features streaked with blood. A rattle of metal links preceded the approach of whirling death. Caim’s spine quivered as he dived under the ball-and-chain’s long arc. He got in close and attacked with all the savagery and loathing he held inside. The Beast was even more formidable up close, an eidolon of metal and darkness. Caim lunged, and both knives struck the ridged midsection of the black breastplate. Jarring tremors ran through the hilts as their points rebounded without penetrating, numbing his hands. Caim caught a glimpse of a black steel-clad fist rising toward him a fraction of a heartbeat before it crashed against his temple. Lights burst in front of his eyes as he staggered back. The chain nicked the top of his head as it passed and knocked him off balance. He put out a hand to catch his fall.
Move! The next pass won’t miss
.

Caim heaved himself sideways and scrambled to his feet. The whirl of the spiked ball hissed behind him. He spun around and hurled his right-hand knife. The charred blade turned end over end and shattered against the Beast’s breastplate in a hail of shrapnel. Caim reached up, and the black sword leapt into his hand. In that moment everything came into perfect clarity, the darkness transformed into a palette of vibrant shades. Pulsating sigils were etched into the Beast’s armor, including a battlemented tower in the center of the breastplate. Tendrils of shadow curled from his helmet’s visor.

Caim followed the sword’s lead and felt the point bite into the joint between the Beast’s hip faulds and the cuisse protecting the thigh. Dark blood trickled from the gap as he twisted the blade, but his foe paid it no mind, bringing his weapon around in an overhand swing. Caim dropped to one knee. The impact of the spiked ball shook the ground behind him. Pulled by the sword, he lunged, but the Beast turned faster than Caim anticipated and smacked him in the chest with the back of an armored fist. Caim rolled with the punch and managed to keep his feet under him. He braced himself for another attack, but the Beast stepped back with a flock of shadows flitting around him. With another step, he was gone.

Caim squinted as he rubbed his chest. A hole had opened in the darkness. It collapsed as soon as the Beast passed through, but Caim could see streamers of shadow left behind. He looked back. Liana lay a couple yards from his feet. Beyond her limp body, the compound was engulfed in an inferno. A file of men ran out of the gate, heading for the ridge, while some waited on the road. Caim made up his mind.