The Dark Glory War (14 page)

And on they yet came.

I tasted sour, salty blood on my lips and could smell it on my face. My stomach roiled, half from the scent and half from hurt. Gibberkin howls pounded me while anguished screams drilled into my soul. What had been a noble expedition and a chance to explore the world had deteriorated into a slaughter that dappled my moonmask with blood. Part of me was certain my own blood would soon be in the mix, and that part of me wanted to panic.

The tingle of returning sensation in my left hand gave me hope—not of survival, but hope that I’d take more of the gibberers with me. If Cooper’s count had been right, we were outnumbered ten to one, and I’d not killed nearly my share yet. I was determined to do that and set my teeth in a fierce grimace as the gibberkin came for me.

My only hope was to play for time. I retreated along the priest’s-walk, letting the gibberers string themselves out, so I could engage them one on one. A quick slash here opened one’s belly, leaving him on his knees, madly stuffing ropy white entrails back into his open gut. His companions surged around him, undaunted.

I turned and ran the dozen yards to the end of the priest’s-walk, then pivoted and cut to the left to continue my flight up the long side of the temple. I stopped quickly and lunged forward as a gibberkin rounded the corner. I’d have skewered him, but he allowed himself to careen into the wall. He held his left arm wide, letting my blade pass between it and his rib cage.

He flashed fangs in a lupine grin of victory.

I slashed my blade up into his armpit. A wash of hot blood poured down the sword as I severed his brachial artery. My blade splashed his blood against the wall as I began to run again. He kept with me, his teeth snapping as if he wanted to bite me, then he faltered and slumped against the wall. His heart continued to pump the life out of him, gushing it into a lake that caused one of his followers to slip and crash into the wall. The other two leaped over it and came running.

I cut through a doorway into what had once been some priest’s private chambers. Despite a little moonlight streaming in through open windows, the darkness lay thick enough on the room that I could discern all but nothing in the way of details. Almost immediately something caught me across the shins. My greaves absorbed the damage, but I spilled forward, head over heels. My sword went flying off into the darkness, clattering to rest somewhere. I picked myself up as I looked for it, but all I saw were the silhouettes of the gibberkin. I turned and leaped through one of the windows, praying the fall to the ground would not injure me.

My prayer was answered.

The window had pot looked out on the street, but onto a courtyard garden built as an extension of the temple’s second floor. I landed on a slick surface of melted and recongealed gravel, which sent me sliding along into the stony bulk of what had once been a wooden planter filled with rose bushes.

The pair of gibberkin that had chased me climbed through the window, and two more emerged after them. They spread out as they came for me, slowly, cautiously. Their shortswords dwarfed the dagger I brandished, drawing derisive hoots.

I moved around so the planter served as a breestwork. Straightening up, I waved them forward. “Which will it be?” I forced my voice to be firm and pitched it low. “The first of you to reach me will die. Which one of you wants that honor?”

That was the wrong question to ask. The four of them exchanged snaps and snarls. Then, apparently unwilling to let any one of them claim the honor, they came at me together.

fP heir united front died seconds before they did. The two on I my left pulled up short as if they’d hit an invisible wall. 1 Silver moonlight flashed from circular shapes that whizzed through the air andchunked solidly into them, chest and throat respectively. Without more than a harsh cough from the one, the two of them collapsed into petrified rose bushes, crackling and popping them on the way down.

The third gibberer dove at me over the rose barricade, intent on stabbing me with his longknife. I twisted, letting his blade slide past harmlessly, then brought my dagger up. My thrust stabbed deep into his chest. A warm gush of blood covered my right hand as the blade’s tip emerged from his back.

His dive continued, with his left shoulder catching me in the chest. It knocked me back on my heels and we went down together. We bounced once, hard, then I heaved, flinging his body off. He flew away and took my dagger with him. I heard his head smack wetly against an unseen planter, finishing what my knife had started.

I turned back to my left to face the last gibberkin. I saw it loom above me, then its upper bodv ierked forward TtcU^A hit its knees, then rebounded as the beast fell forward. It landed hard, muzzle-first on the ground. It stayed there for a second, balanced on knees and nose, then toppled to the side, its guts flooding out with a sigh.

Beyond where the gibberer had stood, I caught the first glimpse of my savior. Blood streamed from his sword’s blade. Moonlight drained all the native color from his flesh, but painted the various tattoos on his bare arms in clear relief. He had sharpened ears, which were quite easy to see because his pale hair had been shaved away from the sides of his head and remained only in a narrow strip down the center. I thought from his profile and the shape of his ear that he must be an elf, but they were all supposed to be tall and slender. He was not. Tall, yes, very tall, but thickly muscled. He was easily larger than Nay.

As he knelt on one knee beside me, I gave him a grateful smile. “I’d like to th—”

He clapped a blood-slicked hand over my mouth and pressed me back down on the roof. “Silence!” His voice came in a harsh whisper colder than the north wind in winter.

I wiped blood from my mouth with the back of my left hand as he moved to the gibberer bodies. He bypassed the one he’d nearly cut in half with his sword and squatted beside the one I’d killed. He pulled down its lower lip, then snarled and moved on. He pulled the things that had killed the other two from their bodies, then checked their lower lips. Something about the second one, the one he’d hit in the chest with his missile, elicited a low chuckle.

The moonlight made it difficult to see what he did, but as nearly as I could make out, he jammed the tips of his thumbs into the creature’s muzzle and pressed his fingers against its open eyes. He mumbled something with a sing-song melody and the shadows around his hands seemed to intensify. More sinisterly, a tattoo on his left forearm began to glow a deep dark blue. It reminded me of Fesyin sign, for it had the shape of the broken twig, yet had been embellished with sharply hooked thorns.

The gibberer’s body shook. The elf pulled his hands free and the gibberkin lurched to its feet. Its lips curled back in a feral snarl. The elf aped the grimace, then barked out an order in a guttural tongue the very sound of which made my flesh crawl. The gibberer turned, its arms hanging rather loosely, and trotted back into the temple.

The elf turned back to me and the moon’s light blazed from his silver eyes. “Unhurt?”

I nodded.

“How many?”

“Gibberers? Two hundred.”

“Vylaens? Temeryces?”

“Some, yes.”

“Good.” He waved me forward. “Come.”

I rolled to my feet and bent to pull my dagger from the gibberer, but a snapped command stayed my hand.

“Leave it.” The elf extended to me the hilt of one of the gibberer’s longknives. “Better for killing, this.”

I took it, then padded alongside him back to the window I’d come through. “How did you … ?”

Again he covered my mouth with a hand. “Silence. Live and I might explain.”

He went through the window first, then snapped his fingers and I followed. I heard the scrape of metal on stone, then felt the pommel of my sword poke me in the ribs. I took it and nodded thanks. His crouched silhouette moved to the doorway, then into the hall, and I came hard at his heels.

The temple’s nave was filled with bodies. Heslin’s mage-light still held, letting me see where my people had fallen back to the entrance of a side room around which were arranged overturned tables and other furniture to form a semicircle. The breastwork limited the number of Aurolani forces who could get at Lord Norrington and the others. The room allowed men to retire and rest as others stepped up to fight.

Lord Norrington and Nay stood behind the breastwork dealing death and doing damage with an ease that belied the sheer fatigue they had to be feeling. Norrington’s silver blade flashed, slicing paws from arms; gashing red, wet furrows in flesh and cleaving skulls open. Nay’s maul struck with viperish speed. He shattered muzzles, scattering teeth; drove his spike through chests, crushing ribs and piercing organs. The dead and dying hung on the breastwork or were drawn back through the horde to be dumped on the stairs and slid down to where our horses shied from them.

The gibberer that the elf had magicked ran ahead of us on the priest’s-walk, then hurled itself into the roiling mass of its fellows. It carried a half dozen of them to the ground, then heaved itself up and snapped its muzzle shut on the throat of a vylaen. The smaller Aurolani clawed at the gibberer. The gibberer whipped its head back and forth, cracking the vylaen’s neck with the ease of a dog killing a rat.

As other gibberers hacked the assassin to pieces, the elf opened his arms and stalked across the priest’s-walk. He barked in a loud voice and that quelled the gibberers chorus from below. Cruel hard words exploded from his mouth in a short, sharp cadence. I could not understand what he said, but he was nothing shy of magnificent. Standing there, wearing only a sleeveless leather jerkin, leather breeches, and tall boots fitted with greaves, he howled at the Aurolani forces.

A vylaen snarled orders at gibberers, and I noticed a bunch of them peel off from the rear of the pack to head toward both stairwells leading up to the priest’s-walk.

The elf pointed at the opening I’d defended before. “None get past.”

“Over my dead body.”

My joke narrowed the elf’s eyes, then he snorted and turned toward the doorway he would defend.

I darted through the opening and slashed at the first gibberer coming up the stairs. The stairs themselves helped me because the tight spiral meant the central spine was always on the right of anyone ascending. A right-handed swordsman couldn’t bring his blade into play very easily, whereas I had plenty of room to make nice right to left slashes.

My first blow caught the gibberer on its raised forearm. I pulled my blade back, then raised my right hand to stab down over his forearm. My blade pierced him between neck and shoulder, going in a good handspan or so, then came out with a meaty, wet sucking sound. I used the gibberer knife in my left hand to parry his weak lunge at me, then I kicked out with my right foot, caught him in the muzzle, and sent him back into those bunched behind him.

As they peeled him off to the outside and continued up, I realized I’d made a mistake earlier by not defending the stairwell itself. The doorway was a great fallback position, but here I had them at a severe disadvantage. My strokes would fall on heads and shoulders, while they could only stab at my armored legs. My only vulnerability lay at my back, but I didn’t think my savior was going to let anyone get past him.

On the gibberers came, heedless of how hopeless their situation was. A quick feint would bring an arm up in defense, then I would twist around to lunge past it and catch a throat. A low parry with the longknife would let me riposte to the chest or face. One gibberer did his best to swallow my sword, then he snorted blood and collapsed. A blow that went awry might only sever an ear or shatter an arm, but a second or third attack was usually enough to finish the gibberer and feed another into my killing range.

Finally the last gibberer flopped down, his neck open and gushing blood in rapidly decreasing spurts. He slid back, bumping limply over blood-drenched steps and other corpses, disappearing around the corner. Weak groans and pain-filled sighs greeted his passage downward.

I recoiled from the gory hole and looked back out into the temple itself. I could still hear the sounds of fighting, which made it tough for me to understand why no more gibberers had come for me. Across the way I saw the elf emerging from his stairwell, and below saw my comrades still at their defense.

Toward the rear of the temple I saw something new. It came from the direction of the initial temeryx wave. At first all I saw was a golden glow that I didn’t think was that intense, yet it painted the shadows of the gibberers running toward it on the wall with sharp contrast. It continued forward. Gibbers reeled away from it and collapsed on the ground bleeding from hideous wounds.

Suddenly Leigh came into view wielding a golden sword. He lit into the gibberers with a cold ferocity I’d never seen in him before. The blade came up and around, decapitating one gibberer, then swept down to parry another. A quick, double-handed slash opened that one from hip to hip, then Leigh danced to the left and sliced open two gibberers that had moved to flank him.

I could recognize Leigh’s style of fighting in each cut. He did nothing we had not been trained to do, yet now managed it with more speed and skill than he had ever exhibited before. Low sweeps sliced up into thighs and groins, opening arteries, careful parries directed blades past him by just enough, then the ripostes would pierce a heart, perforate a bowel, or cut a throat with the ease of slicing fruit.

A vylaen moved out and around with magickal energy gathering in its hands. The elf’s left hand flashed forward. The vylaen’s head snapped to the left, a silver star buried in its skull. It dropped to the ground, the spell it had failed to cast at Leigh igniting its paws.

The elf howled and crouched on the priest’s-walk like a gargoyle. His inhuman scream and Leigh’s golden harvest seemed to unnerve the gibberers. In retrospect I came to realize that the death of the vylaens had really broken the horde. Without their leadership exerting magickal influence over them, the gibberers’ native cowardice flourished. The force pressed around the survivors’ breastwork eroded and fled. I turned to the windows through which I’d originally shot at their horde and watched the gibberkin fade into Atval’s shadows.