Fury of a Demon

by Brian Naslund

  There was a metallic click. Suddenly, Bershad was flying through the air.

  62

  CASTOR

  Above the City of Deepdale

  The ballista bolt took Bershad off the rampart like a spider flicked from a table, but Castor couldn’t see what happened to him after that. Too much smoke and darkness.

  “That must have killed him, right?” Rummy asked.

  Castor didn’t respond. He was focused on Vergun, who was still on the ground, a broken sword jammed very deep into the side of his chest. He was writhing in pain, which meant he was still alive. For now.

  Castor didn’t feel a particularly strong inclination to save the life of a sadistic cannibal. But Vergun had stopped Bershad from killing him back at the castle.

  He had to square things, at least.

  “Just keep the ship steady while I get the commander.”

  * * *

  Castor hauled Vergun back onto the deck a minute later, lifting him over the gunwale real careful so as not to jostle the hilt sticking out of his chest. Castor didn’t know how to fix an injury like that—wasn’t like he was a damn alchemist—but he knew enough to know that he should leave the blade where it was until they could get him to somebody more qualified.

  “Where did he go?” Vergun rasped.

  “Off the wall. Didn’t see where.”

  “Fucking look, then!” he hissed.

  “It’s too dark, and you’re dying.” He paused. “Commander. We have to get you back to Floodhaven.”

  Osyrus Ward was the only one who could fix the damage that the Flawless Bershad had done.

  Vergun didn’t give the order. Just a tiny nod of tacit approval.

  “Raise elevation!” Castor shouted to the crew. “Turn on that dragon beacon, then make a heading north-northeast. We’re getting out of here.”

  63

  NOLA

  City of Deepdale

  “We have to go back and help him!” Grittle screamed as Nola hauled her toward Jakell’s shop.

  As they were leaving the manse, they’d seen Lord Silas get shot by the massive bolt the skyships use to kill dragons. Nola hadn’t seen him land, but she’d heard a terrible noise near the castle wall.

  “No, I have to get you out of Deepdale.”

  “Grittle, thank the gods!” Pern said, coming over to meet them. There were four mud totems on the rim of Jakell’s broken window. Pern gave Grittle a big hug, then looked to Nola.

  “Trot?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Pern. Trotsky … he didn’t … I gave him your shell.”

  Pern nodded. Swallowed. “What happened to Bershad?”

  “He got shot with one of the big arrow things.”

  Pern bowed his head. “Then he’s dead.”

  “No, he isn’t!” Grittle yelled. “He has magic, just like Trotsky said.”

  “I don’t think anyone has magic that’s strong enough to survive a ballista bolt,” said Pern.

  “You’re wrong,” Grittle insisted.

  An hour ago, Nola would have agreed with Pern. But he hadn’t seen Lord Silas’s skull knit itself back together in that kitchen.

  “He might be alive,” said Nola. “I’m not sure.”

  Grittle looked at Nola, pleading with her eyes. “Please, Nola. We can’t leave him. He came back for us, and now he needs our help.”

  Nola hesitated. She wasn’t sure what to do.

  “Hey! Hey, is anyone up there?” someone shouted from farther down the street. It was a man with a Balarian accent.

  “Wormwrot!” Pern hissed, grabbing Grittle and ducking back into Jakell’s shop. Nola followed.

  A few moments later, hurried footsteps crunched up the road. But they belonged to a man who didn’t look like a soldier.

  He was definitely Balarian, judging from his short hair and long nose, but he wasn’t wearing any armor and didn’t have a weapon. He stopped a little bit beyond the shop, panting.

  He muttered something to himself in Balarian that Nola didn’t understand. Then cupped his hands.

  “Silas!” A pause. “Silas, you out here?”

  “I know him,” Grittle whispered in Nola’s ear. “He came into the Cat earlier in the summer and beat everyone at dice. His name’s Falcup, I think. Trotsky said that he cheated.”

  “Silas? Where are you, you reckless bastard.”

  “He’s going to bring whatever Wormwrot are still alive down on our heads if he doesn’t shut up,” Pern whispered.

  “Agreed.”

  “Silas!” Falcup shouted again.

  “Hey, Falcup, stop shouting, you moron!” Nola hissed to him.

  He whirled around, surprised. When he saw Nola he relaxed. “Oh. Hey. My name’s actually Felgor.”

  “Whatever. Just be quiet, okay?”

  “Have you seen Silas Bershad?”

  “He got hurt up by the castle. We didn’t see where he went.” Nola paused. “He might be dead.”

  Felgor swallowed. That news put him on the brink of tears.

  But a moment later, the big gray dragon landed with a loud crash behind him.

  “Smokey!” he yelped, more happy than terrified.

  The dragon cocked its head, studying him. Nola was pretty sure that Felgor was about to get himself eaten.

  “Where is he?” Felgor pressed.

  To Nola’s surprise, instead of devouring Felgor, the dragon pointed back toward the castle with her snout, then flew off in that direction.

  “Right,” said Felgor. “We follow the dragon.”

  “Are you insane?” Pern hissed.

  “I’m just trying to save my friend,” said Felgor, already running toward the castle. “You all can do what you want!”

  Nola gave Pern an uncertain look. Despite what she’d told Grittle, she had no idea whether Lord Silas had seen that shard of plate in her hand. No idea if he’d been willing to let her die to get to Vergun.

  “I’m going to help Lord Silas,” Grittle said with all the confidence that Nola lacked. “He saved us. Now we save him.”

  “Grittle, I’m not risking your life again to—”

  “It’s my soul to risk,” Grittle interrupted. “And I’m going to help Lord Silas.”

  Grittle ran after Felgor.

  “Gods,” Nola muttered.

  If her ten-year-old sister had the courage to run back into that mess, Nola figured that she did, too.

  64

  BERSHAD

  Deepdale Castle, Outer Wall

  Bershad had blacked out when he hit the castle wall. The crash of the Nomad landing on a nearby manse woke him up. She looked at him with curious concern for a moment. Leaned forward and licked Bershad’s bloody foot. Then sniffed the bolt that was jammed through his chest.

  “Yeah. Got a bit of a problem there.”

  Bershad’s vision was all hazy and twisted. It felt like his veins were pumping river sludge instead of blood. How long had he been pinned to this wall? Ten seconds? Ten minutes? Was he dead and just hadn’t realized it? Seemed possible. But his chest hurt an awfully large amount for a dead man. He could feel the moss fighting against the ruination of his body, and he could feel the moss losing.

  The point of the ballista bolt had burrowed into the stone wall behind him. No way to pull it out himself. He turned to the Nomad.

  “Hey, girl. Could use some help here.” He tapped on the shaft of the ballista bolt. The fletching was made from braided metal wire. “Think you can yank this out?”

  The Nomad leaned forward again, sniffing the bolt curiously. She gave the nock an exploratory lick, which shifted the bolt, and Bershad’s lungs. He groaned from the pain and the Nomad backed off.

  “No, no. It’s fine. You just gotta … you just gotta pull it out.”

  The Nomad blinked. Let out a skeptical snort.

  “If you can tear this city apart, you can pull one fucking bolt out of a castle wall!”

  The Nomad spread her wings and leapt into the sky, disappea
ring into the night.

  “Great,” Bershad muttered. “Really great.”

  With the last scrap of strength he had left, Bershad reached for the pouch of Gods Moss on his hip, grunting at the pain it caused in his lungs and chest. He tore it off his belt, pried it open with his teeth, and then dumped the contents into his mouth.

  He knew that was a bad idea, but getting pinned to a wall by a bolt that was made for killing dragons had a way of forcing you to adjust your plans. Bershad swallowed the rest of the moss in three big gulps. Then he sucked the remnants off his teeth and gums to make sure he got everything. He’d need every scrap of strength for what he was about to do.

  “Well. This is gonna be unpleasant.”

  He grabbed the bolt with both hands, wiped away some of his own slippery entrails so he could get a better grip, then hauled himself forward. Screaming the entire way. He felt his lung tear. His heart pumped furiously, trying to produce enough blood to make up for the buckets’ worth he was splashing all over the cobblestones below.

  Bershad hauled himself forward a finger’s length at a time. Grunting and cursing. Howling. Legs twitching from the pain. His body spasmed, and he coughed up a black streak of blood onto the ballista bolt. He stopped pulling. Looked back at his progress.

  “Shit.”

  He’d made it half a stride. Maybe. The bolt was ten strides long.

  This wasn’t going to work. And it was a pretty shitty way to die, pinned to the wall like a rat. But maybe it was better than turning into a tree. He wasn’t sure, and he was in a little too much catastrophic pain to really weigh the two options carefully. Bershad closed his eyes. Wished that he hadn’t eaten so much Gods Moss. It was going to take him a long time to die.

  He drifted off. Wasn’t sure for how long. When he did come out of the fog, it was because of a familiar voice.

  “Silas, you big idiot!” called Felgor. “I told you not to die!”

  65

  NOLA

  City of Deepdale

  “Fuck yourself, Felgor,” Lord Silas groaned.

  Then he vomited more blood and went limp. Nola would have assumed he was dead if she couldn’t see his blue, exposed lung slowly filling with air, then deflating.

  Gods.

  Nola didn’t understand how Lord Silas was still alive. There was so much of his blood dripping down the wall that it was forming an ankle-deep puddle on the street.

  “Okay,” said Felgor. “We need to get him down from there.”

  “That’s pretty obvious, Balarian,” said Pern. “The method we’re gonna use is less clear.”

  Nola looked around. The street was littered with debris and wreckage from the dragon attack. The gray dragon had torn one of the ballista stations off the castle wall and dropped it on the street. There were corpses and twisted metal and gears.

  And rope. A lot of rope.

  “We’ll use this,” Nola said, running over to the closest length, which was clumped and knotted around a man who’d been torn in half by the dragon. “Who knows how to tie a noose?”

  There was a silence.

  “I do,” said Grittle.

  “What? Why?”

  “Trotsky taught me.”

  Nola choked up a little at that for reasons she could barely think about. “Okay, then get to it. We need four good ones.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Grittle had tied the nooses, and they’d managed get two of them around Bershad’s wrists. The ankles were proving to be more difficult.

  “Silas, you gotta lift it up so we have a target!” Felgor called.

  “Trying to,” he mumbled.

  Lord Silas had been moving in and out of consciousness during the rope-throwing process. Nola wanted to get this done before he passed out again.

  “Please, Lord Silas!” Nola called. “Just try one more time. I can get it. I know I can.”

  He gave her a look. Then, with what seemed like a very large amount of effort, he lifted his right leg up as high as he could, which wasn’t much, but it was enough to give her a target.

  She threw it.

  Hooked him. Tugged to tighten.

  “Yes!” Felgor said. “Thank fucking Aeternita.”

  “Keep your time god out of this,” Pern hissed.

  “Well, we can thank your mud gods, too. I wasn’t gonna be exclusive about it.” He squinted up at Lord Silas. “You think three’s enough?”

  “I think that I’m real tired of throwing ropes at him,” said Pern.

  “Agreed. Let’s do this.”

  Felgor, Pern, and Nola all took a rope.

  “Grittle,” said Nola. “I want you to close your eyes and cover your ears.”

  But her sister shook her head. “I was in that kitchen. I’ve seen a lot worse.”

  That hurt Nola’s heart to hear. “Okay. At least step back so you don’t get any blood on you.”

  They pulled Lord Silas to the fletching of the bolt without much trouble aside from his agonized screams. But things became more difficult from there.

  The wire fletching was too thick and long to pull him through. He screamed and howled as they pulled. Eventually, they got him over the first bundle of wire with sheer force, but there were still three more to go and it just didn’t seem possible that Lord Silas would survive that. The fletching behind him was slick with blue lung tissue.

  But that wasn’t what stopped them. It was the fact that while they were trying to get Lord Silas over the next braid, his shoulders started sprouting vines and roots.

  “Oh, shit,” said Felgor, dropping his rope. “Stop! Stop pulling!”

  “What’s the problem?” Pern asked.

  “Hard to explain, but it’s a pretty big one.” Felgor chewed on his bottom lip, suddenly looking very worried. “All of you need to get out of here.”

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  “He’s, uh, gonna turn into a tree type thing. And you all need to be elsewhere when that happens.”

  “Tree? What are you talking about?”

  The gray dragon crashed down onto the rooftop of the manse across from the castle wall, drowning out whatever explanation Felgor was going to give with a deep roar that made Nola’s stomach turn. They all backed off, using the corner of the manse as cover. Nola peeked around it. Whatever was going to happen next, she wanted to see it.

  The dragon nuzzled her snout into the crook of Lord Silas’s arm. She seemed to want to give him comfort, but not help. Lord Silas was dropping in and out of consciousness, but his eyes turned clear for a moment and he patted the side of the dragon’s face.

  “I can’t go yet,” he whispered to the dragon. “Not until it’s finished. Please…”

  The dragon reared up. Studied him with an intelligence that Nola had never seen in a great lizard. Never seen in any kind of animal.

  She leaned down, took the ballista bolt in her mouth, and tore it free from the wall. With the gentleness of a cat moving one of her kittens, she laid Lord Silas down on the street. More roots were pouring from his back. Spreading across the street.

  “Help me!” Felgor shouted, already running to him.

  “There’s a fucking dragon in the road,” Pern hissed.

  “Me and Smokey have a relationship. C’mon!”

  Pern cursed, but he followed. So did Nola and Grittle.

  The dragon watched while they got Bershad off the ballista bolt. The point had broken off in the wall, which made it easier to slide him off the rod. Nola could see directly into his chest, where Lord Silas’s heart and lungs and bones were weaving together in fits and starts, almost like he was choking himself back together in pieces.

  But the roots coming out of his back and shoulders were also spreading along the cobblestones. Digging into the earth between the bricks.

  Felgor pulled the strange bone dagger out of Bershad’s chest, then started rummaging around in his pack. He produced a massive needle that was filled with a black liquid. “Need to wait until he’s healed,” he mu
ttered to himself. “But not much after.”

  Lord Silas was shaking. Covered in sweat. “Don’t mess this up, Felgor,” he hissed.

  “Trust me. I’ve got this.”

  Silas just gave him a little nod. The hole in his chest was almost sealed. The vines coming out of him were starting to sprout yellow flowers.

  “He really does have demon’s blood,” Pern muttered.

  He bent down and starting pinching a mud totem from the wet mixture of rubble and Lord Silas’s blood. Nola wasn’t sure if making a totem with demon blood was a good idea, but she didn’t say anything.

  Felgor raised the needle over his head, poised to jam it into Lord Silas’s chest.

  “Wait,” he gurgled, putting a hand up.

  “Silas, we got a real bad situation brewing all around.”

  “And I still only have half a fucking lung … just … a little … more…”

  The wound in his chest morphed into a dark scab. Lord Silas turned to the dragon, who was watching the entire thing unfold with that same intelligent interest.

  “Sorry about this, girl,” said Lord Silas. “Hope you’ll come back to me down the line.” Then he turned to Felgor. “Do it.”

  Felgor plunged the needle directly into Lord Silas’s heart. As soon as the dark liquid entered his body, the scab on his chest sloughed backward in the healing process, turning runny and red again. But the regression stopped there. All the flowers that had bloomed along the vines shriveled and died within a few heartbeats. The roots turned twisted and brown, as if they’d spent a week under the hot summer sun with no water.

  The dragon let out a wild, pained shriek. Grittle put her hands over her ears and started to cry. Nola felt a click in her left eardrum, then nothing at all from that side. The dragon arched her wings and leapt into the sky—flying south and disappearing over the big hills.

  “Grittle?” Nola asked, shaking her sister. Her voice sounded far away in her own head. “Are you okay?”