Ruva made a whiplike gesture with her arm, and the black thunderhead overhead swirled into an ominous storm. Nicci retaliated with a curtain of air that slammed the woman into her sister. The general fought to keep his stallion under control as it reared.
Facing the reckless charge of the Hidden People, the ancient soldiers broke ranks and fought in individual battles. Many wheeled their mounts and used the sharp hooves to strike down their pale attackers, while others hacked down with their swords.
The surging Hidden People stabbed the warhorses, chopped at the soldiers’ legs, and pulled them from their saddles. The air rang with screams and the clang of weapons.
Amid the clamor, Nicci heard a primal snarl, and Mrra leaped into the fray. The big panther pounced on the ancient soldiers and tore out throats and ripped open chests.
Pushing forward, Nicci swept her hands apart and sent waves of wind that buffeted the mounted soldiers as if they were game pieces on a har’kur board. The Hidden People darted into the disarray with their sharp blades, while Mrra lunged in with fangs and claws.
Utros kicked his horse into a gallop as he charged to the other side of the plaza. The twin sorceresses each sent searing lightning at Nicci, which she deflected. The ricocheting bolts shattered the flagstones. With her eyes on her real enemy, she focused on Utros.
Carefully manipulating her gift, Nicci found the stone resonance in a granite monolith that loomed thirty feet high above the general. The segmented column shuddered and wobbled as she moved the foundation stones. When she weakened the underpinnings of the column’s base, cracks raced up through the bottom block and crumbled it into powder. The great pillar began to topple toward Utros.
He leaped off his horse and scrambled out of the way while the terrified stallion galloped off. With a tremendous crash, the monolith smashed into dozens of fragments, spraying rock splinters in all directions.
“You are mine, Utros,” Nicci said, stalking after him. “Why bother to run?”
The general turned his golden half mask toward her and drew the long sword at his side. “Run? I will squash you.”
As she focused on him, Nicci was caught unawares from behind when Ava and Ruva threw a combined blow of magic. The fabric of her black dress smoldered and burned her skin, but she extinguished it with a thought. Even though her legs shook with the exertion, she pressed forward. The air burned in her throat and nostrils.
As the increasing battle swirled across the central complex of Orogang, Nicci mentally sneered at the fallen statue of Emperor Kurgan, his arms and head broken off, the features scoured away by time. Not far away, the mysterious sliph well sat empty and silent among the other monuments, and she thought it might be fitting to throw General Utros down the bottomless pit.
Unified against her counterattack, the twins hurled more lightning at Nicci, but she strengthened her shields and turned to face them. Utros was just a man, no matter how powerful or legendary he might be. The two sorceresses, however, were genuine distractions.
Ava sprang onto the body of the Kurgan statue and called another flash of light that dazzled Nicci. Below her, Ruva stomped hard, pounding her heel to send a shock wave through the flagstones, which rippled across the plaza.
At just the right moment, Nicci leaped into the air and landed on the unstable flagstones after the wave had passed. She retaliated with a bolt of lightning, pure energy called from the sky. The twin sorceresses cast desperate shields that crackled and sparked against the barrage.
“I am stronger than you,” Nicci said.
The twins retreated into the next plaza, and Nicci followed, vowing to eradicate them. Without his horse now, the general charged toward them, his sword drawn and ready to fight alongside his sorceresses. They gathered beneath the titanic Utros statue that loomed over the high square.
Ava and Ruva faced her, building their magic to defend their commander. Nicci concentrated the air into a single force, forged an invisible knife, and slashed sideways with a razor of air. Ruva thrust up her shield and blocked the brunt of the attack, though Nicci’s unseen blade sliced a long furrow down her right arm. Ruva cried out in pain, and her sister responded by hurling a shock wave woven with a wall of fire.
Nicci dodged, and the magical hammer blow swept past her and smashed the base of the Utros statue, cracking its pillar legs.
Ruva wailed to see fractures spread through the muscular stone legs. Both women screamed as the enormous statue toppled toward them. Utros and Ruva scrambled away from the impact area, but Ava darted in the other direction. She staggered two steps away as the stone figure thundered to the ground. Waves of dust and rock chips flew in all directions.
Ava stared, horrified, her mouth agape. “Utros!”
Nicci used that moment of vulnerability to call down another bolt of lightning, braided and twisted with both the Additive and Subtractive sides of magic. The fierce energy slammed into Ava like a bright and dark spear, piercing her chest, shattering her spine, and blowing out her back.
Ruva screamed. The agony and dismay in her voice nearly tore her throat open.
Nicci could barely hold herself up after expending so much energy. Her knees buckled.
Ruva bounded over the broken statue and grabbed her fallen sister. Wailing, she dropped to her knees and clutched Ava’s body, holding her sister against her chest.
Next to the sorceresses, Utros raised his long sword, ready to kill Nicci.
In her last moment of life, Ava clasped her sister weakly with one hand, but her chest was burned open, and she sagged into death.
Nicci climbed back to her feet and summoned her gift again, created a ball of wizard’s fire in each hand, and prepared to throw the pair of boiling suns at Utros.
Ruva was absolutely destroyed, emotionally wrecked. “No! You can’t have him!” Wrapping her arm around her dead sister, she grasped Utros and squeezed her eyes shut, invoking some spell that Nicci didn’t recognize.
With her last effort, Nicci hurled both spheres of wizard’s fire, an insatiable blaze that could burn through any substance. Ruva and Utros didn’t have a chance.
But before the fires struck, Ruva, Ava, and General Utros simply vanished, as if they had winked out of existence. The fireballs smashed into the broken plaza, but they burned only emptiness.
CHAPTER 34
As the three serpent ships prepared to drop anchor for the night, Bannon continued scrubbing the boards with a stiff-bristled brush, though he had long since removed any visible remnants of catfish blood and slime. With his ankle shackled to a pin in the deck, he had been on his knees for hours, and his hands were raw and bleeding. Several other slaves, including morose Erik, were tied on deck nearby, forced to watch him.
Bannon knew that if he could get free for only a moment, he would fling himself over the side of the ship. He could stroke across the river and hide in the thickets—if he made it to the bank. The Norukai were skilled with their bone-tipped spears, and one of the jagged weapons might skewer him before he made it halfway to the shore.
Then he wouldn’t be able to help Erik and the other captives either. He had to find a better way.
In the thickening dusk, he saw a bright bonfire ahead. He heard a pounding drumbeat and loud voice as someone stood out on a spit of land, challenging the serpent ships. A lone woman stood silhouetted by the flames, lean and clad in black leather wraps. A morazeth!
At first he thought, he hoped, it was Lila, but he recognized the voice of Adessa, the cruel morazeth leader from the combat pits of Ildakar. Adessa had taken his best friend Ian as her lover and then killed him in front of Bannon. He would never forgive her for that.
But here she was, calling out a challenge to King Grieve. He hated Adessa, but she was certainly no worse than the Norukai.
Her challenge amused the scarred raiders, but Bannon knew they were fools to underestimate her. When the two raiders rowed a landing boat out to fetch her from the shore, others checked the bindings of the slaves on deck. Shipwright G
ara grabbed Bannon by the hair and dragged him to the side rail. “Enough scrubbing for now. You can spend tomorrow scouring the deck. Again.” Gara lashed Bannon’s wrists together and checked the chain around his ankle, but she kept looking toward the serpent ship’s bow, where King Grieve waited for his morazeth challenger to climb aboard.
Chalk pranced back down the deck, squatting next to Bannon. “She challenges King Grieve! She will grieve.” He whispered close to Bannon’s ear, “Blood on the deck, scrub, scrub! You’ll see.” Then he scuttled back to the bow, where Adessa faced the Norukai king.
She revealed the rotting head and set the hideous trophy on a barrel. Although decay had distorted the features, Bannon recognized Wizard Commander Maxim. “Sweet Sea Mother.”
Ugly raiders crowded at the rails to watch the duel as Adessa and Grieve faced off in the flickering lamplight. The king let out an explosive laugh and lifted his heavy war axe while Adessa drew her short sword.
With their backs to him, the crowded raiders blocked Bannon’s view, so he could see only glimpses of the combat. All the Norukai were focused on the unexpected amusement of the battle. Meanwhile, the slaves remained silent, huddled and trying to stay unnoticed at the stern.
Against the jeering, laughter, and catcalls from the rowdy Norukai, Bannon heard a stirring from the river, a furtive splash along the hull. He heard a soft thump, and realized that someone was climbing up onto the ship!
He turned away to see a lithe figure clamber over the rail and quietly roll onto the deck—another morazeth, her skin covered with branded runes, her short brown hair plastered to her head. Lila! A surge of hope set his pulse racing. He nearly leaped to his feet, despite the chain, but her gaze swung over him like the lash of a whip. She held up a hand to silence him.
At the front of the ship, the Norukai let out a loud cheer, and the clash of blades rang out.
“What are you doing here?” Bannon whispered. Optimism flared inside him.
“Don’t be a fool, boy. I’m here to save you.”
* * *
Adessa confronted the Norukai king, who looked even uglier than many of the combat beasts she had fought in the Ildakar arena. Maybe Grieve thought his slashed cheeks and implanted bone spurs made him more fearsome. Adessa just found them all the more reason to kill him, which was what she had promised to do. It would give Lila a diversion to free the young swordsman, and Adessa enjoyed the task. Throwing herself upon the Norukai king, she swung her sword, letting out an explosive breath with the effort.
King Grieve was an ox of a man with a broad chest, swollen muscles, and a sharkskin vest. He had the strength to wield his heavy war axe as if it were no more than a dagger. Despite his size, he showed surprising agility as he arched himself backward to avoid the point of Adessa’s sword. The Norukai spectators whooped at the near miss.
Adessa put so much effort into her swing that she overbalanced herself when the weapon struck only air. As she caught her balance, the king smashed the side of her head with his iron-augmented fist. Her skull rang, but she managed to dance out of the way while he swung his axe at her.
Judging by their howls and laughter, the Norukai were convinced she would lose.
On top of the barrel, Maxim regarded her with jellied eyes. She could hear his malicious taunting in her mind, but the rotting head did not speak aloud so that others could hear. He was too devious for that, but she heard him laughing inside her head, louder than the rowdy Norukai. She shook her head fiercely, as if to drive away annoying gnats.
She blocked Grieve’s axe with her sword, and even though her blade was much smaller, the blow deflected the king’s weapon. After his big axe swept past, Adessa lunged with her right foot and kicked him in the abdomen hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
Enraged, Grieve swung his axe like a bludgeon, without finesse, but with enough strength that she barely avoided it.
Hooting and whistling, the Norukai taunted her by throwing slimy objects that splattered her skin. Fish guts. It was a common trick from desperate fighters in the combat arena, and she refused to let herself be distracted. She had faced altered bears, spiny wolves, and sand panthers without flinching, and Grieve was a monster just like the others.
She and the king smashed together again, attacking, neither managing to land a mortal wound.
The albino shaman darted in among the spectators, then flitted out of view again. The simpering man made her skin crawl, but she concentrated on Grieve while keeping her peripheral vision alert for treachery. She did not trust the Norukai to fight by honorable rules.
The king grunted again, straining with the weight of his heavy axe. His studded boot stepped on a pile of slippery fish guts, and he stumbled. The disorientation lasted no more than a heartbeat, but Adessa seized her chance. She raised the sword in her right hand, forcing him to defend himself, and with her left hand she snatched the small engraved wooden handle from her hip. The agile knife—the specific morazeth weapon used to cause intense pain in their victims.
Grieve regained his balance as she plunged in. He twisted his axe to block her short sword, exactly as Adessa had expected him to do. He wasn’t watching the insignificant object she held in her other hand.
Adessa struck with the agile knife like a stinging bee and pierced him. The tiny blade was needle-thin, no longer than a knucklebone, but that was not where its power lay. She doubted he even felt the puncture through his sharkskin vest. Until she slid her thumb over the rune and activated the magic.
An overwhelming thunderclap of pain rocked through the Norukai king. Grieve snapped back, all of his muscles contracting with seemingly enough force to crack his spine. His scarred jaw dropped open in a yawning scream that was horrifying enough to shock the Norukai observers. They gasped in disbelief.
Adessa twisted the agile knife and continued to release the litany of pain. With this tiny weapon, she had made her bravest, strongest warrior trainees fall to their knees and sob for release. She pressed harder.
Then Maxim’s head began to laugh. With the soft neck stump squished on the barrelhead, the hideous jaws stretched and the hollow, mocking voice slithered out. “You won’t beat him. Come, join me in death, dear Adessa! That is where you belong!”
The voice was shocking, jarring. The Norukai were shouting, howling, demanding blood. Their king writhed under the pulse of the agile knife, and Adessa drove it in harder.
“You are weak, Adessa!” Maxim taunted. “You know it!”
She flinched, flung a poisonous glare at him. “Be quiet!”
In the instant she was distracted, somehow, even with the needle of the agile knife still inside him, Grieve grabbed her left hand. He squeezed her wrist with unbelievable strength, a vise enhanced by the desperation of pain, and crushed the bones, turning Adessa’s hand and forearm to pulp.
A black thunder of unbelievable pain swirled behind her vision.
Somewhere in the background clamor, Maxim was laughing again.
Grieve grabbed her broken hand, snatched the agile knife from her mangled wrist, and shoved her backward.
Adessa tried to lift her short sword, but the big man knocked her flat to the deck. Her head struck the wooden boards, and more pain rang through her skull. She raised her knee to push him away, but Grieve had the agile knife now. He could not unleash the pain spell, and as a weapon it was no more than a cobbler’s awl, but he stabbed her throat, then stabbed again, puncturing her jugular. He viciously dragged the small blade across her neck.
Adessa felt warm blood splashing out. In a distant part of her mind, she realized that her struggles were growing weaker.
He hammered the tiny blade down, pounding and pounding like a butcher tenderizing meat. With a constant wordless roar, Grieve stabbed her countless times in a fury. Hundreds of puncture wounds mangled her face, throat, and chest into a horror of ripped flesh. He kept stabbing long after she was dead.
The Norukai howled with victory.
* * *
As soon
as Lila dropped onto the deck, Bannon realized that he had always expected her to come. Optimism hadn’t failed him. While Adessa and Grieve fought at the front of the ship, Lila darted over to him. Then Bannon saw that she had a familiar sword strapped to her back—Sturdy! For the first time in many days, genuine joy filled him.
Lila used her knife to slash the rope around his wrists. He twisted until the cord snapped, and she set to work on the manacle around his ankle. Bannon whispered to her, “You have to free the others too. They are my friends.”
The slaves groaned. Some were panicked, others distraught. Erik pulled against his chains.
Lila turned her hard gaze up to Bannon. Sweat ran down the side of her face, mixed with the drying river water. “I don’t have time, boy. I did not swear to protect these others. I came to rescue you.”
Inspecting the cuff around his ankle, Lila followed the chain to the pin screwed into the deck boards. With Sturdy still strapped to her back, she dug into the wood with the point of her dagger, trying to uproot the pin.
At the bow, the Norukai roared louder than before, and Bannon saw Adessa fall. King Grieve was upon her, stabbing and stabbing. Blood flew everywhere, spraying high.
Bannon groaned. “Sweet Sea Mother, he just killed her!”
A flicker of shock and disbelief crossed Lila’s expression. She hesitated only a moment, then she worked harder at the chain. “I thought I would have more time.” She did not look up as Grieve continued mutilating the fallen morazeth. She was breathing harder.
Bannon reached out. “Give me Sturdy! Please, I can help.”
The raucous Norukai were still celebrating Grieve’s victory, but a pale figure scampered down the deck toward them. Bannon looked up as Chalk saw him, then spotted Lila as well. The shaman suddenly jumped up and waved his arms, shouting, “Another fish! We caught another fish.”
Heart of Black Ice Page 20
