Shoreseeker

by Brandon M. Lindsay

  The first bell to be rung was at the east gate, she was sure, so that was where she was headed now. It was common practice that when one bell was rung, those manning the other bells throughout the city rang their own to ensure that everyone heard the alarm. This had the unfortunate effect of causing panic when there was nothing to worry about. This wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. If that was all it was—and Sherin desperately hoped it was—she would give the prankster an upbraiding he wouldn’t forget.

  But if it was something else …

  Sherin picked up the pace, breaking into a slow jog, which was all her dress would allow. She didn’t know how she knew, but she felt that something really was wrong. Too many strange things had happened recently. But perhaps that was all it was. She was on edge because of Rannald, the Naruvian, and the … the sheggam. No, she couldn’t blame the bell ringer for her being on edge. Just having one of those creatures in the city would have made her ring that bell like a madwoman if it had been her charge.

  A gently arched stone bridge stood over the small river cutting through this part of the city as continued its way west. Sherin continued her quick pace over the bridge but froze just on the other side.

  Up ahead people were running toward her. Screaming.

  Her frown deepened as she glanced over her shoulder at her aides, but they looked just as confused. The people didn’t seem to be running towards anything. Rather, running away.

  A small troop of Garoshmir Guard, armed with long, gleaming halberds, rushed past Sherin in tight formation, headed in the same direction as her. Sherin immediately began to feel that her initial instinct, to investigate the ringing bell, had been foolish. Dangerous, even. With an ever-tightening knot of anxiety forming in her stomach, Sherin turned around to head back towards the Dome and Spire. If this was something that a Councilor of the Wall could fix, she could fix it later.

  The eastern bell went silent. Then the southeastern, only moments behind the first. The screams, now to Sherin’s back, rose in intensity.

  Skin prickling, she broke into a jog.

  A thick crowd of people had formed up ahead, eyeing the commotion behind her with rapt interest. Her rising fear overcame any sense of propriety. She ran straight into the knot of people, shoving them out of her way, shouting, “Move! Get out of here!” She heard her aides behind her doing the same.

  The expression on one of the gawkers on her left, a tall, graying man whose height allowed him to see over the heads of everyone else, suddenly changed to sheer terror. He pointed, screaming, “Run!”

  Chaos erupted. The people, standing calmly just a moment before, transformed into a screaming, running, trampling, elbowing mob.

  Sherin scrambled to get through them, too afraid to look over her shoulder at what had caused the pandemonium. Someone punched her in the shoulder; an elbow clipped her wrist. She didn’t care. Sherin was throwing her own limbs about in her mad dash to escape.

  She heard steel clash behind her, a scream cut short. Something small sailed over her shoulder into the crowd, but her mind couldn’t make sense of it at first. Wouldn’t make sense of it. Had that been … a severed hand?

  Tears filled her eyes, made it hard to see. It was so hard to breathe. Sherin paused only a moment to wipe her eyes—the prospect of getting lost was as terrifying as staying in this place. Someone fell to his face at Sherin’s side, then was yanked out of sight—fast. Whatever had taken him was immensely powerful.

  Sherin didn’t see it. She ran.

  Someone—or something—shouldered into her, throwing her against the wall of a shop. Her head smacked against a window, cracking the glass, but not breaking it. She slid down the wall until she was sitting, finally seeing the horror unfold before her.

  Beasts ran through the crowd, ripping people apart with claws and teeth.

  They were sheggam, she was certain, but different from the one she had seen. That one had seemed more … human.

  These were frenzied animals.

  She had to hide. Ignoring the throbbing in the side of her head, she glanced around for cover.

  A grain cart, parked against a wall up ahead. The bed was low and wide. She could hide there for now.

  She crawled towards it quickly, shoving aside anyone who came too close to trampling her. Panic closed her throat as she heard more people dying all around her; many of the buildings around here had been built snugly, with few alleys. There weren’t many ways to escape. The best she could hope for was to hide and wait for them to pass her by.

  But she knew they wouldn’t. They would find her and they would kill her.

  Just as Sherin reached the back end of the cart, a woman rolled under it and, seeing Sherin, kicked her in the face.

  Blood sprayed from Sherin’s nose. Beyond terror, Sherin grabbed the woman’s foot and began half-pulling herself under the cart, half-pulling the woman out.

  The woman began to thrash. Something reached under the cart—a long, gray arm, fingers tipped in black claws. The claws gripped the woman’s hair, pulling her screaming out from under the cart and yanking her free from Sherin’s grasp.

  Sherin hesitated; she knew that would be her fate soon enough. The cart was no place to hide, but she had no choice. She crawled under it and tucked herself against the wall, pulling her shaking legs up against her chest to create the smallest profile possible.

  She tried not breathing—she didn’t want her breathing to give her away—but it was impossible. Each breath only came faster and faster as bodies dropped all over the street in sprays of blood and gore.

  More people were left injured than dead, she realized. Severed limbs, hair ripped from scalps, broken limbs. The screams were overwhelming her, swallowing her. The world was awash with agony, and Sherin was drowning in it.

  Some of the beasts carried weapons. Some were little more than clubs, others were roughly forged swords, too large for a man. Sherin watched as a man scrambled backward right next to the cart. The blade of one of the swords, as wide as her leg, crashed down. Shards of paving stone shot everywhere. The man’s arm rolled under the cart and came to a rest right next to Sherin.

  The man turned to Sherin and met her eyes. His screams were muffled as sheggam claws slowly reached down to rake across his face, drawing runnels of blood.

  Something landed heavily on the cart, shaking it. The cart lurched as if that something had leapt off. Several more sheggam jumped up and then off the cart, landing in front of it before engaging in more slaughter. Other sheggam took a less-roundabout path, rushing through the crowd directly. When the next sheggam landed on the cart, Sherin heard the axle down past her feet groan.

  Then it snapped.

  The cart collapsed.

  Sherin squeezed her eyes shut, expecting it to crush her, but amazingly, she was still alive. When she opened her eyes, the bottom of the cart was inches closer, now tilted at a wild angle.

  She shifted her feet and noticed they weren’t moving. The broken axle had stabbed into the ground, pinning a loose fold of her dress.

  Her heart raced. She knew she had to stay here for now, but that she had to be able to get away when it was safe. She would have to rip her dress if she wanted to get—

  She looked over.

  Crouched down and staring at her was a sheggam. Snarling, it reached for her.

  Chapter 58: Stronghold

  The sheggam’s claw snagged a hold of Sherin’s sleeve. Sherin jerked her arm away as it tried to pull her out from under the grain cart. Hot breath, reeking of blood, washed over her face as the sheggam’s long muzzle snapped at her.

  Sherin couldn’t hold it in anymore. She screamed. She screamed until her throat was raw.

  Something sharp jabbed into her head. She craned her head up towards the front of the cart only to see another set of claws only an inch from her eyes. Sherin flinched, wriggling towards the back of the cart, where there was no room for them to reach under thanks to the broken axle. She wedged herself there, pulling her kne
es up against her chest to make herself as small as possible. Another sheggam joined the first two, then another. Sherin lost count of the claws reaching for her, scraping the stone near her head and her arms. They were only inches from her. If that axle hadn’t broken and the bottom of the cart dropped a bit, they would’ve gotten to her easily. Now it was too tight.

  But how long could she last like this? How long before they finally got her?

  How long until she threw herself at them just to get it over with? Shores … help me.

  Someone, help me.

  Please.

  Something heavy landed on the top of the cart. Then another. And another.

  The front axle groaned.

  If the sheggam couldn’t reach her, they were going to crush her.

  “No!” Sherin started pounding her fists against the bottom of the cart. “No! Get me out of here! Get me out of here!” Her screams became wordless. Words had no meaning anymore. There was only fear. Pure, animal fear. Everything wanted to kill her—the sheggam, the cart, the world. Everything was a threat.

  More sheggam jumped onto the cart. The front axle splintered but held. Some of the sheggam reaching for her wriggled out from under the cart, not wanting to get crushed. Some were too busy trying to tear her apart to sense the danger.

  Sherin squeezed her eyes shut, shaking all over.

  The jumping had stopped. When, she didn’t know. How long had she been under there? She had no idea. But she looked around her.

  The sheggam were gone, though she could still hear them nearby. There were other strange sounds—a man grunting? Steel?

  Was it a trick? Sherin didn’t care; if it was one, she would just fall into it and that was that. With a frantic urgency, she yanked on her dress, ripping it free, and crawled out from under the cart so fast she split one of her fingernails down the middle. She barely felt it.

  When she was halfway out, she looked up. A man towered over her, armored in steel, cloak flapping. The sword in his hand slashed left and right, sheggam blood in its wake, a constant crimson arc. The sheggam scrambled over each other, jaws snapping frantically, in their haste to kill him. His feet remained planted, unmoving, as he cut them down. He was a stone in the storming ocean; waves and waves of sheggam crashed against him, but could not shake him.

  He was terrible.

  He was magnificent.

  He was, some dim part of her mind realized, her husband.

  The last of the sheggam fell at his feet, cleft from the tip of its snout nearly to its neck. Rannald’s sword had split its head nearly in two, hacking between its eyes through skull and brain alike, its muzzle, top and bottom split in half, looking like the mouth of some grotesque worm in its ruined state. There were dozens of such corpses scattered in an arc around him—lopped off limbs strewn upon pools of reeking innards, clumps of flesh, chunks of armor. A moat of sheggam blood surrounded him as if he were a one-man stronghold.

  He stood there panting. The sword in his hand was so dinged and nicked it was a wonder it hadn’t snapped, not to mention how it cut so cleanly. Pulse pounding in her ears, Sherin followed the edge of that horrible blade with her eyes up to the face of its owner. Rannald turned to her, and when his eyes fell upon hers, tears began to mingle with the blood spattered on his cheeks as he smiled.

  Sherin had never been so happy to see his face.

  Yet the horror of the scene before her, not only the blood and violence but that … thing in her husband’s hand, forced a scream from her throat as her eyes rolled back into her head. She slumped to the ground, unconscious.

  Chapter 59: Encounter

  Excuse me, I’m looking for a little girl. She—”

  Without even glancing at him, the man shrugged free of Tharadis’s gentle grip on his arm, not even giving him the time to ask his question. Everyone Tharadis had asked was like that, most people heading the same direction—west, he thought—while some people milled about in confusion. He thought it had something to do with the bells that had just started ringing. They didn’t sound like the typical bells that marked daylight hours. They rang more frantically, and a few of them had stopped ringing. It didn’t take a Warden to figure out that the bells meant trouble, but no one seemed to know what kind of trouble. Did it have something to do with Shad Belgrith’s soldiers? He couldn’t say exactly why, but he didn’t think that likely, though he didn’t know what else it could be.

  “Uh, Mister Warden.” Chad was tugging on his arm again. Tharadis felt bad that he kept forgetting the boy was following him. He silently reprimanded himself and vowed to keep better track of his charges.

  “What is it, Chad?”

  “I’m pretty good at finding people. I think I should go ahead and look for Nina on my own.”

  Tharadis shook his head firmly. “No, you’re staying with me. I don’t want to have to go looking for you, too.” He crouched down and took the boy by the shoulder. “Chad. I know how much you’ve done for Nina. You’ve been very brave in helping her escape that place. But Nina’s lost now because you two got separated. I’m not blaming you, but I need you to understand that our best chance is to stay together for now.”

  Tharadis tried softening his words, but Chad looked wounded all the same. To his credit, though, he nodded. Tharadis didn’t want to spend so much time telling the boy what they had to do—even a moment not searching for Nina was too much—but neither could he afford the boy getting any heroic ideas.

  Exhaling heavily, Tharadis stood and continued on. But before he took another three steps, he felt a palpable change of tension in the air, rippling through the crowd from some unseen point up ahead. Frowns began to crease foreheads and heads swiveled towards the source of the disturbance.

  Then people scrambled out of the way as a man staggered into view. Tharadis couldn’t see where he’d come from; maybe one of the narrow alleys that crisscrossed Garoshmir. At a glance, it was easy to tell the man was wounded. Blood soaked his untucked shirt. He clutched something to his stomach with one arm, his eyes wild and pained.

  “She … gam …” Fingers clawed, he lunged desperately for support from the nearest onlooker, but she stepped aside in horrified disgust. With nothing to hold onto, the man collapsed, spilling the contents of his arm. His intestines. He went still.

  Everyone gaped at the man in disbelief—not at his death, Tharadis knew, but at his final word. Sheggam.

  Tharadis pulled Shoreseeker free, which seemed to shock people more than the dead man, and turned to tell Chad to stay behind him. But Chad was gone. Where in Farshores had he gone?

  Like a dam breaking, the street erupted in chaos. People ran in every direction, screaming and flailing, tripping and crashing and trampling. Shoreseeker clenched tightly in both hands, Tharadis shoved his way forward like a fish dashing upstream. Around the corner, two hulking figures, flesh gray as rot and dressed in worn leathers and heavy mail, hacked away with massive swords blunted nearly to clubs, crushing as much as cutting. There was nothing human about the creatures’ long muzzles, no recognizable emotion in those crimson eyes.

  Sheggam. He’d never seen a sheggam before—no one alive had—but he knew without a doubt that’s what he was seeing.

  Their eyes met his. He rushed towards them.

  Someone fell, sprawling right in front of Tharadis, tripping him and sending him flying forward. A sword whistled past him, cleaving the air where he’d stood a moment before. His shoulder smashed into a sheggam’s knee. The leg folded under Tharadis with a sickening crunch. Tharadis rolled away from the roaring beast, swinging Shoreseeker where he thought the other one would be. Thick links of mail split under Shoreseeker’s blade, but he couldn’t tell if it struck flesh. He sensed another strike coming and spun to the side at the last moment. The powerful thrust barely missed him, and without Tharadis there to slow its momentum, it punched right into the wounded sheggam’s chest, goring it. Tharadis finished his spin with a flick of his wrist. Shoreseeker clove up through the unwounded sheggam’s jaw, s
plintering jawbone and skull before completely removing its face from its head. It fell dead on its unmoving companion.

  Breath coming in ragged gasps, Tharadis scanned the street as he rose to his feet. He was the only one left standing; everyone living had already fled. Eight dead bodies—not including the two sheggam—lay on the street. That had taken mere moments. Far more would have fallen had Tharadis not been there. His stomach twisted with worry. Worry for everyone in danger, but overwhelmingly worry for Nina.

  “Chad?” he called.

  No answer.

  Tharadis quickly checked the faces of the dead. None were children. But that didn’t mean Chad was safe.

  Sheggam. No one was safe if sheggam were here.

  Tharadis whirled when he heard shuffling behind him. It was Chad. Where had he been hiding? No matter; he gripped the boy’s shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

  Chad was rather pale for a Naruvian, but he was even paler now. His eyes were wide as he stared at the carnage and his whole body trembled. Tharadis wondered if the boy was too shocked to think, but then to Tharadis’s immense relief, he shook his head.

  “Okay. I need you to stay by my side. No more running off.” He gave Chad’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’ve heard you’re good at hiding.” Uncanny at it, if the rumors from back in Naruvieth were to be believed. “If you see any danger, no heroics. Just hide. Okay?”

  Chad finally lifted his eyes to meet Tharadis’s. His jaw tightened. “I’m the best hider there ever was.” Fierce. Despite the tears now running down his cheeks.

  “Good.” Tharadis released his shoulder. “Then let’s go find Nina.”

  Chapter 60: Trappings Discarded

  In dim light of a single tallow candle, Ander’s bearded face stared down at Esta from where he stood at the foot of the bed. His face was still as he unbuckled his axe belt, tossing it across the room next to where his boots lay.