In Red Rune Canyon

by Unknown

  Kagur had always imagined the walking dead to be slow and clumsy, but the ghouls were nimble and inhumanly resilient. As she struck repeatedly, whirling and dodging all the while in an effort to keep her foes from surrounding and swarming over her as a group, she came to the uncomfortable realization that they might well overwhelm her.

  Particularly if she had to go on fighting alone. Somehow, despite the incessant pressure exerted by the ghouls and the need to respond to the threat after threat, she managed to cast about and spot Eovath in the darkness.

  His head bowed, the giant was down on one knee. Plainly not dead, thank Gorum! But why wasn’t he fighting? Had the first ghoul wounded him that severely?

  Suddenly, Kagur glimpsed a shadow, a ghoul apparently seeking easier prey than she was proving to be, darting in on the giant’s flank. She couldn’t have reached it in time even if she hadn’t had her own foes blocking the way. She could only gasp in a breath and shout, “Look out!”

  The frost giant lifted his head, cast about, and swatted the ghoul away with the back of his hand. As it fell and rolled back to its feet, he groped to reclaim his axe.

  At the same moment, a charging ghoul forced Kagur to refocus on her own situation. She slashed the clawed white fingers from her assailant’s hand and crippled one leg with a cut to the knee. When it fell headlong, she scrambled right over the top of it and cut at the undead brute behind it. The stroke ripped open the ghoul’s neck, but that only made it bare its fangs and gather itself to spring.

  Eovath fared better. Looming up behind the ghoul, he chopped down at the top of its skull and split the creature all the way down to the breastbone.

  Freeing the battleaxe and dumping the ghoul’s remains to the ground with a flick of his wrists, he panted, “Don’t let them scratch you! It steals your strength!”

  “I wasn’t… planning on it.” Kagur feinted high and cut low, but her target sprang aside from the true attack. “Let’s fight back to back!”

  Once they did, things seemed less frantic. Kagur had instants when she could consider tactics, not simply react, and her sword struck home more often. She had little doubt that behind her, Eovath’s axe was chopping and smashing to similar murderous effect.

  “Blacklion!” she shouted. “Blacklion!” Then her brother took up the battle cry as well, their twin roars reverberating off the canyon walls.

  After several more exchanges, and another ghoul sprawled maimed and motionless in the sand and stones on the canyon floor, it became clear the undead were attacking less relentlessly than before. It seemed likely they would soon retreat, and, grinning, Kagur resolved to give chase when they did. She wanted to slaughter all the filthy things.

  Then, however, two whistled notes, the first short and the second sustained, shrilled down from the sky. Whereupon the ghouls did fall back, but plainly not of their own choosing.

  A signal! Judging that locating the ghouls’ hitherto unsuspected leader was more important than cutting the creatures down from behind, Kagur held her position. Struggling to control her breathing, sweat stinging in her eyes, she peered upward.

  Leathery wings flapped, and a shape swooped down from on high. For a moment, Kagur couldn’t make out anything to distinguish it from a gigantic bat. Once it lit on an outcropping partway up one of the walls, however, it was easier to distinguish other features. Though tufted with bristles, its body was mostly hairless and scaly like a snake’s, and it had arms as well as wings. Its legs were as long as a man’s but bent backward like a goat’s and ended in feet with three splayed toes.

  “Well,” Kagur panted, “you wanted to see a demon.” She had little doubt they were seeing one now. The thing certainly looked demonic.

  “I didn’t ask for a flying one.” Moving slowly, Eovath stooped and picked up a stone. Giants were notorious for their ability to throw rocks, and unless the demon descended to the canyon floor, they would have no other way of striking at it.

  Although maybe they wouldn’t need to, for the fiend appeared to be paying them little heed. Instead, it raked its gaze over its followers, the ones still whole—or mostly so—that had gathered beneath its perch, as well as the crippled ones struggling to crawl in the same direction, and the inert forms Kagur and Eovath had dispatched outright.

  When it had glared its fill, it bared its needle fangs and hissed. “Disobedient!”

  Most of the ghouls cringed, but one glowered back. “Hungry!” it growled. “Starving!”

  The demon sprang from its perch. The defiant ghoul tried to dodge out from underneath, but it was far too slow. The fiend slammed down on top of it, smashed it to the ground, and, stooping, beheaded it with two sweeps of the dagger-long talons on the fingertips of its oversized hands.

  Kagur watched to see if the other ghouls would protest the fate of their fellow. But even if they felt any such impulse, their master had them too thoroughly cowed.

  The fiend then pivoted and glared squarely at Kagur and her foster brother for the first time. Eovath immediately flung the rock. The missile caught the demon just above its batlike snout, but despite the force with which the giant had hurled it, the stone glanced away without doing any apparent harm. Ignoring the attack, the creature locked eyes with Kagur.

  Her vision shifted. Though Kagur could see that the demon was still crouching over the headless ghoul, part of her suddenly had the feeling that it was springing at her. Or perhaps she was plummeting toward it, falling sideways in defiance of nature, into eyes that yawned like pits to swallow her. Cold pain shot through her, and her heart stuttered in her chest.

  Chapter Three: Divide and Conquer

  Kagur’s legs turned soft as dough. She collapsed to her knees, banging one on a stone. Eovath dropped beside her, and the ghouls raised a hissing snarl to see the foes who’d humbled them brought low.

  But by the ever-thirsty blade of the Lord in Iron, Kagur refused to be helpless. With a rasping snarl of her own, she pushed chill and weakness—well, the greater part of them, anyway—out of her body by sheer dint of will.

  Which was good as far as it went, but instinct told her the improvement would be fleeting if she kept looking at the demon’s batlike face. Somehow, it was the fiend’s gaze that had debilitated her, and with that still linking them, she sensed the creature focusing its mind for a second assault.

  With a fierce twist of her neck, she broke eye contact. She scrambled back to her feet even as Eovath did the same. The demon hadn’t succeeded in slaying or crippling him, either. Poised to launch themselves forward, the ghouls balked at their prey’s sudden recovery.

  Kagur laughed. Her brother spat.

  With a scream, the demon clenched its fist with such vehemence that the long claws surely stabbed into its flesh.

  Kagur felt as if the air was thickening and sliding around her. She tried to spring clear of what must be some sort of supernatural attack, but she was too slow. Her limbs froze, locked in place as if her whole body were encased in ice. She couldn’t even make herself bellow in rage as the demon, wings lashing the air, swept down from its perch toward them. Eovath swung his axe, but the demon jinked nimbly out of range, then curved back to sink its filthy talons into the meat of Kagur’s shoulders.

  Again, Kagur tried to shout something—anything—but still her jaws betrayed her, leaving her to silently suffer the pain of the intruding claws as they lifted her off the ground and up into the night sky. Below her, Eovath roared curses, and in her mind Kagur matched them.

  Yet now she had bigger problems. As the ground retreated beneath her, she felt a sudden surge of mingled rage and fear. Once the creature had lifted her high enough, it need only drop her to kill her. And in her current paralyzed condition, she wouldn’t even be able to resist, just fall as placidly as a dropped stone until the impact splattered her across the rocks of the canyon floor.

  Yet as the demon sailed over the ridge of the canyon’s wall and down into a defile on the other side, she felt a brief flare of hope. If it was descending
, then perhaps it meant to set her down safely—no doubt to better enjoy the pleasure of killing her slowly.

  Inwardly, Kagur smiled. All she asked was that the demon’s plans force it to release its spell over her before killing her. Then she’d show it what a warrior of the Blacklions was made of.

  Yet though the demon did deposit her on the ground, in a section of twisting gorge little different than the one from which it had extracted her, it didn’t land as well. Instead, it released her from her magical bonds as soon as her feet touched the soil, then flapped back up out of reach.

  Quick as a hunting cat, Kagur drew her sword and threw, sending it lancing up into the sky after the creature. Yet the fiend only laughed a grating laugh and rose higher, wings snapping, and the sword passed harmlessly beneath its trailing claws. Within moments, the beast had disappeared back over the canyon wall.

  Kagur had no idea why the creature hadn’t killed her, but she assumed it had removed her from the battlefield so Eovath would have to fight alone. She ran, retrieved her sword, and then peered about, seeking an opening that would allow her to pass through the wall at ground level.

  There wasn’t any. There was no way back except to climb.

  So this is the ghouls’ master.

  She did so, without hesitation, finding handholds and ledges to aid her ascent. But despite her resolve, she was no experienced mountaineer, and the darkness further slowed her progress. It immediately became obvious she’d never reach her brother in time to help him.

  Still, panting, fingers aching, denying herself all but the briefest of rests, she struggled upward. Dawn found her atop the wall.

  She peered down the other side and made out a scattering of ghoul bodies. But Eovath was nowhere to be seen—not from the ridge, and not when she completed a laborious descent.

  Her jaw clenched as fury welled up inside her—an admittedly familiar sensation. But it was different, too, because this time she was angry with herself.

  Borog had warned her and Eovath not to enter Red Rune Canyon, but she’d been certain she knew better. And here was the result of that brash overconfidence: her brother was lost. It made her want to scream, or pummel her own body.

  She took a long, deep breath instead. Now was not the time for self-recrimination. She had to rescue Eovath before the demon had a chance to do whatever it intended to do to him.

  She stooped beside the creek, scooped frigid water in her cupped hands, and slurped away the raw, parched feeling in her throat. Then she strode to retrieve her bow and quiver. Her path took her near one of the fallen ghouls, and the emaciated, gray-white thing startled her by hissing.

  She drew her sword to kill it, then reconsidered. Last night, a ghoul had spoken. Maybe she could persuade this one to speak to her now.

  As she approached it, she saw it was the same ghoul whose fingers she’d sliced off and whose leg she’d crippled. Then she caught her breath as she noticed the blue and green beadwork adorning its deerskin tunic and the two copper rings in the lobe of its pointed ear.

  The undead thing was Dron—or what was left of him. Fighting him in the dark, Kagur hadn’t realized, but it was so.

  Which meant there’d never been any hope of saving him. The realization brought another pang of self-disgust.

  Pushing it out of her mind, she pointed her sword at the creature on the ground. “Do you know me?”

  Squinting against the morning light even though little of it had as yet reached the floor of the canyon, Dron bared his fangs.

  “Talk,” Kagur persisted. “I know you can. Or I’ll hurt you.”

  “Know you,” the ghoul rasped. “Cut fingers. Cut knee.”

  “Yes. But do you remember me from before that? From before you… changed?”

  The ghoul hesitated. “Kagur.”

  “That’s right, and you’re Dron. We hunted together. Tell me what happened to you.”

  Dron hesitated. “Can’t. Master not like.”

  The living Dron had been loquacious and clever. Repelled by the undead version’s ugly form and noxious reek, Kagur nonetheless felt a twinge of pity at his broken speech. His transformation had seemingly damaged his mind as well as warping his body.

  But compassion wouldn’t get her what she needed, so she set it aside and jabbed at the raw, spongy stumps of Dron’s severed fingers with the point of her longsword. The ghoul hissed, snatched the maimed hand back, and covered it with his good one.

  “‘Master’ isn’t here,” Kagur said. “The demon abandoned you because you were crippled and of no further use to it. I am here, and I swear by Gorum I’ll keep cutting pieces off you until you answer my questions.”

  Dron hesitated. Then: “Killers come. Demon eyes kill some hunters. Make me… this. Other ghouls kill the rest. For meat.” The undead creature lowered his eyes. “Not want eat. But did.”

  Kagur frowned. “So… every time there’s an attack, the demon turns one victim into a ghoul. That’s why there’s always a body missing. But what’s the point? What does the demon want with ghouls?”

  Dron shook his head, apparently to indicate he didn’t actually know. But he did have an opinion: “Little demon. Wants be big demon.”

  In other words, to be a leader like Kagur’s father, or one of the Mammoth Lords who presided over the followings. To command a following, or even a single tribe, one needed followers.

  East of the tundra was the Worldwound, a land teeming with demons. People said it was the wrongness of that place seeping through the earth that tainted Red Rune Canyon. Maybe “Master” hailed from the Worldwound and meant to return one day at the head of a war band of undead warriors.

  Kagur caught her breath as a ghastly possibility occurred to her. “What about Eovath, then? Is he gone because the demon changed him into a ghoul? You were here watching. Tell me!”

  Dron shook his head. “Giant strong. Not change yet.” He smirked as though enjoying Kagur’s distress. “But Master make him weak. Ghouls drag him off. Master will change him.”

  Him and me, Kagur realized. That was why the demon hadn’t just dropped her from on high. Eovath and she had both impressed it with their prowess, and it meant to add them both to the ranks of its followers to replace the undead they’d destroyed.

  She swallowed. “No. That won’t happen because I won’t let it. Now, you ghouls ambushed Eovath and me without Master’s permission. Why was that?”

  “Told you. Hungry. Too many ghouls, not enough meat.”

  “Hm.” She took stock and decided she was nearly out of questions. “Where is Master holding Eovath prisoner?”

  “Cave. Probably.”

  “You’re going to take me there.” It ought to be quicker and surer than trying to track the other ghouls, especially since, by all accounts, the blighted land called Red Rune Canyon was actually a confusing tangle of several interconnecting gorges.

  Dron flinched. “No! Tell you the way!”

  “And then what could I do about it if it turned out you told me wrong? I need you with me so I can kill you if you try to betray me.”

  “Can’t walk!”

  “I can fix that.”

  Kagur trotted back around the bend, slung her bow and quiver over her shoulders, but left her pack where it sat lest it slow her down. She then planted her foot atop the head of one of Eovath’s javelins and pulled up on the shaft until the steel point snapped away from it.

  When she returned to Dron, she tossed him the length of seasoned ash. “Your crutch,” she said.

  Fangs bared, the ghoul struggled up with the aid of the prop. “Can’t do this!”

  “You can,” Kagur said, “or I’ll finish you off here and now.”

  Hobbling, the ghoul turned and led her toward the deeper recesses of the canyon. Alternately watching him for signs of treachery and scanning her surroundings from other dangers, Kagur unbuckled her belt pouch by touch, fished out the last few half-squashed bearberries, and popped them into her mouth.

  Chapter Four: The Maste
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  As more and more sunlight reached the canyon floor, Dron made a steadily increasing effort to keep to the shade. Sometimes, even though raising his maimed hand made his face twist with pain, he used it to shield his eyes.

  “I take it,” Kagur said, “that ghouls generally hole up during the day.”

  Dron grunted.

  “Does that mean all your fellows will be resting in the same cave where the demon is holding Eovath?”

  The ghoul hesitated, as though pondering whether he dared lie or might gain any benefit from doing so. At length, he said, “No. Slaves not rest where Master rests. Might touch Master’s things. Might eat Master’s prisoner.”

  If that was true—and to Kagur’s ears, it sounded true—it might be a bit of good fortune. Maybe she could at least make her way to Eovath without fighting any more living corpses.

  That was assuming the demon wasn’t leading its minions against her at this very moment, but she doubted such was the case. The fiend had taken Eovath first because it deemed a frost giant the greater prize. At the moment, it probably wanted to concentrate on turning him undead, not hunting down the human who remained at liberty. It would assume tonight was time enough for that.

  Scowling, Kagur vowed to prove that this time, it was the demon that was underestimating its foe.

  As the morning wore on, she and Dron began to encounter the unnatural features that figured in campfire tales of Red Rune Canyon. Patches of the walls had turned the hue of blood or obsidian black. In some places, the discolorations had cracked open, and bubbling crimson sludge oozed forth like pus from infected wounds, stinking of sulfur.

  At another spot, the creek took on a rusty hue, and the vague suggestion of anguished faces formed and dissolved in the flow. Glimpsing them made Kagur’s skin crawl, yet she felt an urge to go on peering, a sense that if she could only make them out clearly, she’d learn something she urgently needed to know.