The Darkslayer: Book 02 - Blades in the Night

THE DARKSLAYER

VOLUME II

CRAIG HALLORAN

_{TWO-TEN BOOK PRESS}

P.O. Box 4215, Charleston, WV 25364

www.twotenbookpress.com

www.thedarkslayer.com

Illustrations by Ernie Chan

www.erniechan.com

Publishers Note

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to the actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.

Beneath two blazing suns, the restless man known as Venir frowned as he trudged along. His hair was pulled back in a thick braid that ended just below his brawny shoulders. Venir’s bright blue eyes contrasted with his tanned skin. He wore nothing more than a light set of tanned leather armor over outdoor garb, with a white cowl around his neck. A long hunting knife hung from his belt, the sheath’s tip tied down against his lower thigh. His dark leather pack seemed small hanging from his expansive back.

Venir pulled a grimy hand across his forehead to wipe away the sweat. He swore his already reddened skin was cooking. Looking up toward the two fiery orbs in the sky, he longed for the night, but felt compelled to press on. The Outlands could send an unprepared person into a delirium—especially in this kind of heat—but Venir was prepared. He still had his bearings.

Stopping and kneeling, he took off his backpack and extracted two canteens. He chugged a few thick sips from one, then set it down beside the empty one. Venir waited, watching the breeze create tiny whirlwinds over the sun-baked surface. Mirages shimmered in all directions as far as he could see. Greenish brown cacti of all shapes and sizes, some poisonous, stood scattered over the landscape. He knew what he was looking for, and none of these would aid him. He needed to travel farther east for water, but he would not. Venir’s mission was to cut down the underlings, and he knew they were close. He had to find them, and he had to do it on his own.

The underlings were not accustomed to the broad daylight. They would stay just below the surface until the time was right. Venir knew how they used their magic to burrow into the ground, where they would wait, spying, before killing at will. This was one of the reasons they were such formidable enemies.

If he could just find a burrow, Venir would have the jump on them. Just like any other beast, underlings left signs of their movement. Few knew their signs or cared to know: who would want to follow an underling, anyway? But Venir did—he always did. He and a handful of others knew that the underling burrows formed a network throughout the hard surface of Bish. More caves and tunnels went far below the burrows for safety.

The dwarves, too, kept tabs on many of these tunnels. Underlings tended to travel on the surface only at night and in small groups. Their tunnels were small, more like giant snake holes, and on occasion one might find an abandoned one on the surface. Over the past few days, Venir had found several, hoping they were traps he could spring, but there had been no shred of life in any of them.

Wiping the sweat from his brow again, Venir reached into his backpack. He pulled out a large, worn leather sack and dropped it down with a clank. He began to unroll it, then held it in both hands and stared at it. A sour expression crossed his grizzled face.
I don’t need you.

Yes, the contents of the leather sack would give him what he needed to find the underlings. And he knew the contents of the sack would not be in his possession forever. What would he do then? Before he’d gained the items, Venir had survived fine without them while hunting underlings—better than any other man alive. Yet
the sack gave him what he needed to make it much easier and even more … delightful.

He shook his head.
I can do this on my own.
He rolled up the sack and stuffed it back into his pack, along with the canteens, then slung it onto his shoulders once more. Venir walked southeast into the empty landscape. The Red Clay forest wasn’t far away, but he would wait until night to stop and camp there.

Then he felt a tremor beneath his feet, and a large hole opened up before his eyes. He backpedaled, but another hole began to open behind him. As two gigantic sand spiders emerged, his gut told him to run. But four underlings scurried out of the holes and surrounded Venir. The small humanoids wore black leather armor and were armed with short swords and crossbows. Their fingers were clawed, their teeth sharp, and they had coarse black hair and colorful wicked eyes.

“
Bone!” Venir cried, whipping out his hunting knife and charging toward the two closest underlings on his left.

His incredulity at their sudden appearance was only surpassed by his hatred of them—a hatred that he knew had blinded him into waging this fight without his prized items. As Venir bounded forward, his mind wondered: how had he ever imagined that he could take them on alone, without the help of the armaments that remained tucked away in his leather sack?

Pride had overcome instinct. Venir should have known better. But it was too late now.

Caught off guard by the rushing warrior, the two underlings dropped their hand crossbows to draw their short swords. His long knife sliced through the neck of the first like the underling was a chicken in a slaughterhouse, but then the other lunged at Venir’s armored chest. He sidestepped the attack and drove his knife straight through the underling’s heart, pulling it out again and again with a bellow of triumph. Black blood splattered onto him and spilled over the dusty ground.

He whirled toward his other attackers. The remaining two underlings had mounted the pony-sized sand spiders. They attacked. He ran. The sand spiders, Venir knew, were far worse than underling hunters, and it would take more than a hunting knife and courage to handle a single sand spider. The enormous, tarantula-like arachnids bore down on him. He could hear them chittering at his heels. They were fast. He was faster.
Got to make it to the forest.

Pushing himself beyond his known limits, Venir increased the distance between himself and his pursuers.
Pride be damned.
He needed time to get out his mystical armament from the leather sack. Slowing down would be his end, so he sprinted onward.

Venir hear a shrieking sound, and he knew there had to be more underlings in the area. His legs pumped faster and faster, toward the edge of the Red Clay Forest far off in the east. His best chance was to lose them in the forest—if he survived that long. His legs and lungs felt ready to burst.

Then he saw the forest’s edge shimmering in the distance.
Might make it.
But then sand began whipping into a small storm all around him. He ran on, sure at first of his direction, until the wind picked up and confusion beset his course. Then he could not see to move.
Underling magic!
Hot sand tore at his skin. His frustration and frenzy mounted. He couldn’t breathe amidst the swirling thick sand. He pulled his cowl over his face and stumbled on until he could walk no more.

As he crawled forward, Venir saw that four more lightly armored underlings—wielding odd swords and small crossbows—had surrounded him. They chattered back and forth in cruel mockery, knowing that their sandstorm would suffocate him and render him unconscious—if not kill him. They began banging their short swords together in triumph, loud screams erupting from their twisted faces.

Venir heard it all through the whipping wind as he struggled to breathe. His felt his blood coursing through his thick blue veins. They had him; he knew it and so did they. He fought through the storm, the sand and dirt stinging his skin like a thousand bees. He only had one chance. He yanked off his backpack, pulled out then leather sack, and reached deep inside.

It was time to make them pay.

*****

As their sandstorm began to subside, the underlings waited, grins of anticipation on their faces while they continued to bang their swords together. But then they saw something.

In the center of the dying storm, the large silhouette of the rising man began to take shape before their eyes. The swirling ceased and they stopped banging their swords together.

The man stood in place—ominous—like a statue, coated head to toe in the harsh grit of the Outlands and the storm they’d conjured for him. A black helmet now sat strapped onto the man’s head, the helm topped with a single serrated spike that glinted faintly in the blistering sunlight. Dirt and sand encrusted the rectangular eyelets of the helm. Strapped to the man’s left arm was an ornate round shield. In his right hand, he held a massive twin-bladed battle-axe with a smooth spike protruding from the top.

The underlings hovered before the unexpected sight, eyes wide with curiosity—and surprise.

They had the Darkslayer within their grasp.

*****

Venir remained motionless, as if petrified by the storm that was no more. He could not see the enemy through the dirt-sand film that covered him over from helmet to boots … but he could hear them.