“What? I’m still—”
“Now.”
The wind shifted, dragging her mane forward and carrying the scents of tree, flower, and anger. The sound of footfalls sped up and stopped. Al kicked, planting her rear hooves into the chest of whoever had leaped at the baron, and pitched them backward. The baron tumbled to the ground as she came about, sword raised.
The figure rose from the low shrubbery and snarled, his face seeming a mix of something feline and something like an elf. His fingers ended in sharp claws, which he seemed ready to use.
Urk dragged the baron behind him as Al edged closer to the attacker.
The creature raced forward, keeping low to the ground, arms wide. Al sprang forward, closing the distance between them in a heartbeat and almost bringing her hooves down on his skull. The elf-cat thing rolled aside and came up before Al could recover from her leap. Pain ran up her flank as the creature’s claws tore through her armor and flesh. She rotated, battering him with her flank and sending him rolling along the ground. He came up, and she put a rear hoof into his jaw, which sent him spiraling to the earth. He pulled back before she could finish him with a swing of her sword.
Al pressed her momentary advantage, swinging rapidly with her sword to keep the creature dancing backward. He hopped back, planting his clawed feet onto a tree, then launched forward. He collided with Al, driving the centaur back several steps, but she’d gotten her shield up in time to absorb the brunt of the blow. A claw sank into her shoulder, and he tried to sink his teeth into her neck, but she lifted the shield just in time. She dropped the sword—it was too long for such close combat—and grabbed his opposite wrist. She pulled, wrenching him free, and slammed him into a tree, snapping branches and bones. Blood erupted from his lips, but he had enough sense to slip aside before her hooves came down.
The creature rose and wiped the blood from his mouth before looking past Al to her husband and the baron. He spat on the earth, then turned and ran.
“Al, get him! He mustn’t reach more pursuers!”
She nodded, kicked her sword back into her hand, and charged through the brush after the attacker.
The creature was running on all fours, racing ahead more like a large cat than an elf, and was quite fast, but she was quickly closing. He must have realized this, because he raced up a tree and into the thick canopy. With the sunset and the sky growing dark, the canopy turned into a blur of grays and greens impossible for her eyes to focus on.
Al stopped and focused on her other senses. Her ears twitched left and right as she listened to the rustling of trees, the scraping of branches, hunting for something out of place, something unnatural. She was certain she could hear his labored breath above and to the right. Even so, getting him down would be difficult. “I can smell your blood—” she turned, looking up at where he probably was “—and hear you breathe.”
There was a sharp intake of air, and Al smiled. She hurled the sword into the branches overhead.
The creature howled as it leaped from the trees. The sword had gone wide, cutting through branch and leaf almost a foot from where the attacker hid.
As she had planned.
Al’rashal lifted her shield with both arms, slamming the heavy steel disk into the descending skull of her attacker. The blood that washed her face and chest told her he was dead even before the corpse hit the ground. She kicked the tree to dislodge her sword and carried it and the corpse back to Urkjorman and the baron.
Al dropped the body before her husband, and he picked over it.
“Anything?” she asked the baron.
The Baron of Wings came forward, somehow looking both weak and magnificent. “No one I know, if that is your asking.”
“No symbols, no tattoos,” said Urk before opening the creature’s mouth. “Looks like a lykin.”
“That explains why he didn’t turn back into an elf after he died,” agreed Al. “I thought he was using magic, not tapping into his werewolf ancestry.”
“Tiger,” corrected the baron. “Or some other massive feline. His teeth would have been larger and his claws smaller were he descended of canine.”
“Water carrier assassins and now lykin hunters,” mused Al’rashal. “How hard is Black-Hand trying to kill you?”
The baron responded with a few motes of laughter, which ended when he allowed himself to cough up a drop of blood. “Apparently, not hard enough. No doubt he has promised great riches for my head. If he takes my throne, he will have my coffers, so he can promise a great deal.”
Urk turned from the body and looked downriver. “How far to those shepherds you mentioned?”
The baron gazed west. “Five or six minutes by flight, so that much in miles.”
“They’ll be on us long before then. Does the river narrow to the east?”
The baron nodded. “Yes, it becomes deep and quite fast but perhaps only one or two hundred feet wide.”
“All right, east then, and ford the river,” decided Urkjorman.
“You sure about that, Urk? I hate deep water.”
“Have faith, Al. We’ll make it.”
“Such confidence, it is positively invigorating,” said the baron with a smile.
“Good,” responded Al. “Because you’re walking. I need to be ready for another attack.”
The baron curtsied. “Of course. What must be, must be.”
Chapter Four
River Crossing
Urkjorman released an aggravated sigh as his eyes tried to adjust to the growing darkness. The sky was a dark slate of thick clouds and tiny stars that bathed everything in shadow and made navigating the slick stones of the river shore treacherous. To their right, the river was a slash of rolling darkness, more heard than seen. Ahead he could just make out what appeared to be a great waterfall.
“You sure we can manage this, in this darkness?” asked Al’rashal.
“I’d hoped the light would hold out longer, but we can make our own.”
“Sorry,” apologized the Baron of Wings. “My hold on the sky slips more with each moment that passes.”
Urk shrugged. “Why still hold on to it at all?”
“You do not know this land. There are things that lurk in the deepest dark. Without my hold, there would not be even stars or moon above, and those things would be loose once more.”
Urk looked up. “With clouds so thick, the stars and moon will do us little good.”
“That I may be able to do something about.” The baron aimed one hand at the sky and drew his fingers closed as though he were grasping something. One by one, light suffused each of his seven wings, and he pulled. Slowly, then with building momentum, the clouds peeled from the sky, dragged to the horizon to wash the land in the cool light of moon and stars.
The baron collapsed into a fit of coughing as the light permeating his wings faded away. Al helped him back to his feet, but even with the coughing over, he looked weaker than before. “Will that suffice?”
The river looked like a frothing band of silver in the moonlight, and the darkness had been banished to only the thickest of places. Urk was about to give his thanks when he saw several figures revealed by the sudden light. “More lykin! Go! To the base of the falls! Go!”
With the element of surprise lost, the lykin rushed forward, most loping on all fours, and a few charging with weapons drawn. Al pulled the baron onto her back and ran ahead. Urk followed, but the first of the lykin were soon about him. One slashed at his thigh, drawing a thin line of blood, and another leaped on him to sink teeth into Urk’s shoulder. The minotaur tore the lykin from his back and cast him into the river before swinging his ax at the second, who nimbly dodged aside. Another ran past him, barely leaping over Urk’s swing to charge his wife. He wanted to race to her side, but he would have to trust her to keep the baron safe as more of the creatures caught up.
Urk drew on the divine radiance gifted to him by his god and poured it into his ax. He swept the weapon about him, leaving a trail of lightning in his w
ake that lashed out at everything and left three of the lykin convulsing in pain. On the return stroke, he decapitated one and kicked another back down the slope toward his fellows. Now Urk had a better idea of how many they would have to fight, almost a dozen more, though it wasn’t the numbers that alarmed him, it was the figure at the rear.
At the rear of the line of attackers was a person wrapped in various beast hides and wearing the skull of some massive predator as a helmet. He carried no weapons save a gnarled wooden staff adorned with teeth and topped by a silvery stone the size of a man’s fist. Even from here Urk felt the figure exude magic and menace. He was probably some kind of shaman, and Urk had no desire to challenge the whole pack and its master together.
Pulling a small measure of radiance into his voice, Urk roared, causing many of the coming lykin to cower in fear. Behind him a body hit the ground as his wife severed an arm, and there was a splash as the baron pitched another into the fast-moving currents. One of the lykin, who was unaffected by Urk’s magic, charged forward, swinging a hammer almost six feet long. Their weapons clashed with a blow so great it staggered Urk and sent him stumbling back. The lykin brought the weapon around again, much faster than such a heavy weapon should have been used, but this time Urk was ready and struck back, causing the lykin to reel back. Urk gave ground, edging back to his wife and the baron before the warrior charged in again. Urk caught the next swing on the haft of his ax and twisted, drawing the warrior off-balance and onto his knee. Air and spit flew from the warrior’s mouth, and Urk followed by punching him with enough force to fell trees. The warrior tumbled to the ground, rolling to rest at the feet of the man adorned with bones. The other lykin pulled back to their apparent leader, and Urk let them.
“What are they doing?” asked Al’rashal as Urk reached her side.
“Wasting time,” he answered as he knelt at the water’s edge. The minotaur raised his arms to the sky and called to his god. Kurgen’Kahl was most known as the god of the seas and the storms, but to Urk’s people, he was also the lord of mountain snows and ice.
“They’re not wasting time,” warned Al as the injuries of the lykin knitted closed under the light of the leader’s staff.
Pulling the essence of winter into his fist, Urkjorman pressed his palm to the surface of the river, and the endless cold washed across it, freezing the surface and even part of the fall, connecting one side of the shore to the other. He felt suffused with the greatest chill and burned by the greatest exhaustion all at once and was barely able to drag himself back to his feet.
A cacophony of howls, snarls, and roars tore through the air as the lykin about the shaman tore out of their clothes and transformed into monstrous versions of wolves, tigers, and bears.
“Go,” ordered Urk.
The baron was the first to start across, with Al staying beside him. Urk came last and had barely made it onto the ice when the first wolf sprang at him. He brought his ax up, burying it in the wolf’s side as it clawed and snapped at him with its jaws. Two other lykin tried to rush past him, and he managed to slam the wolf he was wrestling with into another wolf, but the giant tiger got around him and charged his wife. Urk slammed his fist again and again into the side of the wolf he was struggling with, generating the sound of snapping bones and cries of pain. The other wolf sank its teeth into his calf as a third tried to leap upon them. Urk swung the wolf on his ax up, slamming it into the leaping wolf, knocking it away from the ice bridge and into the river. Then he grasped the wolf on his ax by the throat and slammed his horn through its skull. The wolf savaging his leg pulled back, barely evading a swing of Urk’s ax.
Urk took another step back. He was about halfway across the bridge now, and the rest of the pack seemed poised to attack. At some unspoken signal, four of the creatures charged. Urkjorman lifted his left hoof, filled it with radiance, and drove it down. A thunderous explosion cast three of the creatures back and sent deep fissures running through the ice. Urk turned and ran, trying to outpace the fractures spreading to the opposite shore as he heard another of the creatures tumble into the waters. However, the fissures were spreading too quickly. Soon he was hopping from piece to piece as they started to break away, and finally his hoof pushed into the frigid waters. He flailed, scrambling for purchase, and sank his ax into the chunk of ice before him, but that just caused the ice to split and break. He took a deep breath and prepared to be dragged into watery darkness.
Thin, delicate fingers wrapped around Urk’s wrist in a soothing warmth. The minotaur looked up to see the Baron of Wings hovering, two of his wings beating furiously as the other five held perfectly still, as though they were anchored to the air.
“Do more than admire the view, Urk. Pull,” said the baron.
Urk was able to drag himself back onto the ice and get to shore before the last pieces of the bridge were washed away. Al’rashal hugged him, then hugged the baron, and they all released a sigh of relief before turning their eyes back to the lykin and their master on the far side of the river. The shaman stared at them coldly and turned downriver. Urk put the baron on Al’s back and searched for a path north.
“I thought you had to be a full-blooded lycanthrope to change like that,” said Al.
“Moonstone,” answered the baron weakly. “Had to be moonstone.”
Urk looked up at the moon and its shattered fragments stretched across the sky, then at the shaman’s staff, emitting the same silver light. “It seems you aren’t the only one who has weaponized the sky, my lord.”
Slowly darkness claimed the stars, and clouds drifted in from the horizon. Urkjorman turned to the baron for answers but found him unconscious.
“Do you think he’ll make it?” asked Al’rashal.
“If he doesn’t, none of us will.”
Chapter Five
Nightfall
Something rumbled through the air and drew his attention back to the waking world. Slowly he became aware that he’d been unconscious and then that the low rumble, like distant thunder, had been words. “What?” asked the Baron of Wings.
“I think we’re almost there,” repeated Urkjorman.
One of the minotaur’s massive hands was cradling the baron’s face as his eyes struggled to focus. It was terribly dark. It seemed that even the moon had been smothered, with the only real sources of light coming from the minotaur’s ax and the centaur’s shield, both of which crackled with lightning. The baron looked about, his eyes peeling back the darkness to see the sparse trees and the broad path that led up to the Old Aerie. It remained as he remembered, little more than a series of high walls and pillars. Except for the massive arches that rose above the structure, it had nothing that even resembled a roof. He smiled. He was moments away from restoration and vengeance. “Yes. Soon I will be restored, and all will have what they deserve.”
Al’rashal set him down, and the two moved ahead of him. She and her husband were still cautious of unseen dangers.
His legs were unsteady, his wings heavy, and his body felt like ice wrapped around a ball of fire, but he only needed to make it a little further. However, something was nagging at him. Something that should have been obvious.
Beyond the entrance, the walls cast shadows so thick the baron felt he could grasp them. Within, the only light came from the weapons held by his protectors, and even that seemed to be waning, as though the shadows were slowly devouring it. And still something nagged at him. “Wait.”
The two stopped, weapons readied. “What?” asked the centaur.
“Do you hear anything?”
The two looked to each other, ears twitching back and forth, hunting for anything they might have missed. Urk shook his head.
“There should be music,” realized the baron. Even now, with darkness almost complete, the pixies, sprites, and flying things that roosted here should have been singing. More than that, they should have seen the three arriving, and come to greet them, especially if they had seen him walking and injured. “There should be others here. We
should not be alone.”
“But you’re not alone,” rumbled Black-Hand from the darkness. The first they saw of him was the glint of one sickle the length of his arm. Then he stepped into one of the few shafts of light that reached the floor. He brought a second sickle into view and speared to it was a pixie. True to his species, he pulled the red cap from his head, crushed the last life from the pixie to soak its blood into it, and set it back on his bald head. “We’ve prepared a welcome for you, my lord.”
The redcap was joined by the three remaining water carriers and another dozen or more other members of the Iron Guard, and behind them, what had first appeared to be torches on the wall moved to reveal they were the fiery manes of horses with coal-black skin and gleaming crimson eyes. “No,” said the baron. “Taking my throne is one thing, but you don’t really think you can—”
“Kill them,” ordered Black-Hand.
The baron ducked as two arrows barely as long as his forearm passed over his head. The minotaur charged forward, swinging his ax in a wide arc that sent a few brownies ducking for cover, and the centaur began facing off with the assassins. The baron clung to the nearest wall and hurried through the shadows. The interior of the Old Aerie was a maze of dead ends and half corridors designed to make moving on its heart difficult on foot. Part of him was proud of how well it worked now that he was incapable of flight. If he died here, at least it would be because his own genius had betrayed him. He rounded the nearest corner and pulled his head back in time to prevent an ax from splitting his skull.
“Here!” shouted the brownie, drawing the attention of an elf at the far end of the hall.
The brownie swung again, savage two-handed strokes that created sparks as they impacted the wall. The baron grasped the haft of the ax, ignoring the way the iron made his hands tingle, and twisted it from the brownie’s hand, then buried it in his chest. The elf was on him now, using a long, thin sword to stab at him, which forced the baron to dance backward. “What has Black-Hand offered you?”
Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4) Page 99
