The Path of Flames (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 1) (9 page)

The gorge was a knife wound between two mountain slopes, the fir trees that grew on either side standing so close that they seemed to form a continuous forest despite the sharp canyon between them. The sun had almost set. Tharok ran in near darkness, moving more by instinct and intuition than sight or smell, avoiding boulders, finding handholds, stepping where the rock and shale was stable. Up he went, and the urge to sing his death song began to grow strong, swelling his chest and seeking to escape and reverberate from the great mountain walls, a dirge to quell the joy that the kragh behind him were taking from the hunt.

He heard a scrape from behind and turned to see a dark-furred shape hurtling across the rocks toward him. Finally. Time for blood. He drew his curved hunting blade and fell into a crouch, shifting his feet for better footing as the hound bounded up the side of the gorge, a lithe bolt of baying brown muscle and fangs. It gained a boulder above him and then leaped to fall upon his upturned face. Tharok reached out and closed his fingers about the hound’s neck as he fell back, driving his knife deep into its gut. The hound’s howl turned guttural and wounded, golden eyes flashing in the gloom as it sought to lock its maw upon him, to sink its fangs deep into his face.

But the hound wasn’t the only one with fangs. With a roar Tharok bit into the hound’s neck even as it whipped its muscular, lithe body from side to side, claws scoring deep tracks in his chest. Tharok bit down, the massive tusks of his lower jaw puncturing hide and muscle to sink deep into the dog’s windpipe and arteries. Hot, fresh blood filled Tharok’s mouth, and the hound let loose a terrible whine. It whiplashed and thrashed in its attempt to get away, but the highland kragh held on. Only death would cause him to open his jaws now. Tharok’s head was wrenched from side to side, but he continued to dig his dagger over and over into the hound’s gut until the dog let loose one final cry and went limp.

Tharok opened his mouth and cast the dog to the ground, turned his head and spat its blood upon the white-covered rocks. Crimson flowers bloomed all about him. Wiping his forearm across his mouth, Tharok turned and stared down the gorge,. Other shapes were racing toward him. If more than two hounds came at him at once, he was finished. Desperate, he turned and ran, cursing the fate that had him fleeing dogs. He stopped cursing when he gained the final cliff face and picked a route up through the boulders and rocks, using fir trunks to haul himself up quicker until he tumbled over the edge and out onto the shallow valley that held the Dragon’s Tear.

The moon was rising. The world was cast in melancholy blues and silver, and the snow gleamed with the unearthly beauty that made the mountains his only possible home. The rock was so dark and black where it emerged through the mantle of the snow that it appeared to be holes into Hell. The Dragon’s Tear dominated the valley floor. Its black waters stood so still that they appeared frozen into the most perfect sheet of ice, yet no reflection of the Five Peaks showed on its surface.

Tharok had been here once before in his brief life. His sister had been brought here to be consecrated as a shaman. Her eyes had been put out after a torturous ceremony, and she’d been left to spend two weeks in vigil by the water’s edge, left to survive two weeks alone amidst the ghosts and spirits that thronged the edges of the Tear. When Tharok and the others had returned two weeks later, there had been no sign of Loruka. She’d been deemed lost, consumed by the night and the ice and the hungry ghosts, and their father had raged for days at the insult to his honor.

Rising now, Tharok gazed once more upon the Dragon’s Tear. It was said to be bottomless, was famous for never freezing. Nothing lived in its icy fastness. The spirits of fallen kragh who could not ascend to the Valley of the Dead were said to dance along its edge for eternity, broken and gibbering and hating the living. This was no place for the living. Nobody ventured here without the shamans to guide them, and even they hesitated before coming to the Tear.

Tharok took a deep breath and strode forward. He was in no mood for piety.

He scrabbled down the great rocks that hemmed in the lake’s broad waters and began to follow its shore, running with fierce determination. The ghosts could go hang. He’d gain the far tapering point before the hounds caught up with him, and there take his stand. He came to the broad fan of rocks upon which the ceremony had been performed, then loped past the great obsidian rock on whose surface his sister had been bound and blinded. Old history of a now-dead tribe. Anger curdled in his gut. He ran on.

A howl split the silence and Tharok glanced over his shoulder to see three hounds come surging over the rocks at the far end of the lake. Their Tragon masters would be hard behind them, close enough that if he stopped to fight the hounds he’d soon find himself fighting all twelve lowland kragh as well. Lowering his head, Tharok summoned his reserves and truly ran. He consigned his fate to Dead Sister Moon and didn’t even look at where his feet were falling amidst the rocks and snow, but simply sprinting, chest heaving for breath, his sight growing blurry as he raced around the curvature of the lake.

The sound of yelps and strangled cries came from behind him. Tharok slowed and looked back. The hounds had stopped their pursuit. They paced back and forth as if behind an invisible wall, midway along the length of the lake, whined and chuffed and came no closer. Then they began to dance back, tails between their legs, as if invisible whips were lashing them. Tharok grinned. Human-raised hounds had no place at the Tear. Let the ghosts scourge the hides from their bodies.

Tharok narrowed his eyes and saw lowland kragh at last. Slender, bald, and as green as untried mountain kragh children, they were coming fast on their bandy legs along the shoreline. Let them figure it out, he thought, and with a deep breath forced himself to begin running once more. His legs were trembling, his strength spent, but he staggered on, the lake growing ever narrower, the cliffs drawing closer, till he finally reached the Tear’s far point. He stopped beside a massive, jagged boulder that had been spat out by the Dragon’s Breath. It was twice his height, but he growled and climbed it through sheer force of will. When he reached the top he inhaled deeply, massive chest expanding as if he’d breathe in the world, then let his breath out in a deep, rumbling groan and turned to face his pursuers.

He unshouldered his grandfather’s horn longbow, dug one end into a cleft in the rock and strung the other end with a massive bunching of the muscles of his arm. He tied it off smoothly, his taloned fingers moving with a calmness that belied the tension that coursed like fire through his veins. The band of hunters was closing around the far sweep of the lake, dark shadows that ran, short swords and bows in hand, coming in to seal his doom.

Rising, he drew a red arrow from the quiver slung over his back, the last of three. Each arrow was three feet long, as thick as his thumb and headed by a bolt of black iron, wickedly sharp and forged in the human lands. He set the arrow to the string, took a deep breath and drew. No other in his tribe could draw this bow, not even his father, and weak as he was, he worried that he too would fail to bend it. The horn groaned, the arrow drew back, he sighted down its length and released.

It was gone, blessed by Dead Sister Moon, not arcing high to fall upon his opponents but shooting straight, a bolt of fury that punched into the lead kragh. It knocked him clean off his feet, arresting his momentum as if he had run into a stone wall. The others split around their fallen comrade, coming still, and Tharok drew his second and last red arrow. Only his death arrow remained.

Tharok took a second, steadying breath. The trembling might of his body was near exhausted. He growled deep in the back of his throat, a coarse rumble of bestial fury, and then he roared and drew and fired the second great bolt in one rapid heave. It whistled out through the moonlight and missed his target. The Tragon were bunched so close, though, that it didn’t matter. The bolt hit the one right behind him, slammed into his gut, passed through him as it spun him around and lodged deep into the thigh of a third.

Tharok grunted his pleasure.

He drew his last arrow. His black-fletched death arrow. He’d carried it with him since he’d learned to draw the bow. It was only to be shot when he knew he was about to die. That time had come. Now, where was the Tragon leader? There, in the middle of the pack. Cunning old wolf. One-eyed, he'd led the hunt for three days with discipline and ferocity that would have done a highland kragh proud. It was time to end his life.

Tharok took a final breath, deep into his cavernous chest, and pulled one more time at his grandfather's bow. The horn creaked, the string quivered, and he felt his hands weaken, his forearms tremble, the muscles in his shoulder and back burn and writhe. It was like trying to heave a boulder right out from the frozen ground. His lips writhed back from his fangs, his snarl turned silent as he saw red, and then he felt his ancestor’s strength course through him. He hauled the arrow back. His final arrow, his death arrow, the last arrow he would ever shoot. He drew the string back farther and farther. Never had he drawn the old bow so far. He pulled it back till the wicked arrowhead was flush with the bow’s curvature, drew back till it felt as if the string was going to slice through his fingers and the bow explode in his hands, and only then released.

His death arrow hit the one-eyed lowland kragh right in the face. It punched through his cheekbone with bone-shattering power and exploded out the back of his skull. Down crashed the old wolf, and Tharok lurched to his feet, a roar of defiance tearing from his throat. He cast his horn bow aside and drew his axe, the great curved blade gleaming like ice hewn from the heart of a glacier. Eight kragh were closing in on him. Their bloodlust was upon them. They cared nothing for their felled comrades. Their numbers were great, they had hunted him for three days without rest or good food, and now was the time to end it.

Tharok wanted to laugh. He wanted there to be more. He wanted an ocean of lowland kragh to dive into, the entire bloody Tragon tribe for him to attack. His own blood fury was rising. Did they think they knew what battle rage felt like? It was time for them to learn.

Tharok lowered himself into a crouch. They were almost upon him. He drew his heavy curved dagger. He felt nothing but rage and scorn. None of them were even half his height. He roared and raced forward, three great strides across the curving top of the boulder, and launched himself into the night air, right arm scything down and throwing the curved dagger so that it whipped forward, tip over pommel, right at the lead kragh. It connected hilt first, but had been thrown so hard that the kragh dropped and tripped the one directly behind him. Tharok fell amongst their charging mass, axe swinging, and all was rage and blood.

Tharok felt the berserker fury descend upon him. It swept the fatigue, the cold, and all thoughts from his mind. Like a crescendo of scouring fire, a storm of crimson, it drowned his mind in rage and he felt as if he could lift mountains, crack open boulders, tear down Dead Sister Moon with his own ragged claws.

His fall dropped three of them, his bulk and weight crushing one directly down into the rocks as the other two were swept off their feet by his outstretched arms. Tharok went down hard, but he tucked his head and left shoulder into a roll and came up running. He swept his axe in a howling arc around and behind him as he broke free of their number, only to wheel and drop into a deep crouch. He’d severed a foot. That kragh was down screaming. Only three were still standing, another three regaining their feet. The moon shone on their bald pates and glinted on the gold earrings in their ears. Their eyes burned red as their own feeble rage fueled them. Tharok opened his great maw and screamed his fury at them, ropes of spittle flying forward. Not waiting for their charge, he attacked, leaping into the madness of their blades.

One went down, a blade bit deep into his side, and he slammed the base of his palm against the face of another. Something ricocheted off his shoulder; he ducked and slammed his shoulder against a gut, staggered back as a blow cracked his temple, shook his head and bellowed once more. Another blade dug into his back, tried to penetrate the thick hide armor, but failed.

Tharok reared back and buried his axe deep in the head of the kragh before him, reached out and wrapped his fingers around the neck of another and brought it in close enough to tear its throat out with his tusks. He threw the suddenly limp body at another, ducked under a swung blade, and roared his joy. He began to roar as the enemy fell and failed to kill him.

A blade sliced deep into his left arm. Pain flared and was ignored as his arm dropped uselessly by his side. He ducked his head and rammed it to the side, wrenching it across and up so that his tusks dug tore open a stomach. Lowland kragh had no tusks. Small-toothed and pathetic, they disdained them. Here and now, Tharok would show them the meaning and power behind them.

He staggered back, turning to find a new foe. One of the lowland kragh was trying to crawl away. The others lay still. Heaving for breath, reeling, he stumbled over to it and smashed his foot down on the nape of its neck. It crunched and the kragh went still.

Silence now but for his heaving breath. He didn't know where his axe was. Blood covered his left arm, was running down his side. The pain had yet to hit him, held back by his berserker rage, but that was sluicing from him now that the battle was over. Weakness began to encroach.

Moving with clumsy haste, he knelt down by one of the corpses and tore free its shirt, then wrapped it around the wound in his left arm and tied it off tight. He bit the cloth and yanked till it bit cruelly into his arm. He took another shirt, balled it up and held it against the wound in his side. Gasping and shivering, he then took two belts, forged one from them both, and cinched it tight over the balled bandage, pulling it in against the wound.