by Jack Conner
“I’ll have a horse brought for you.”
“While I’m away, see to my men. Captain Hanen and a hundred soldiers wait in the secret ways under the castle.”
“I’ll see to them gladly.”
With his heart beating with ever-increasing fervor, he mounted the horse Fria’s retainers brought for him and galloped through the streets, hell-bent for the temple. He passed through the Inner Wall and into the outer city, where he saw throngs of refugees packing the streets and choking the allies. Some were so thin he could see their bones. This war must end soon, or many would die of simple starvation.
Reaching the temple, he flung open the heavy doors. All was empty. Still.
He wasted no time but found the stairwell leading up the Inner Sanctum. He mounted it with ragged breath, sweat streaming down his face, all the while imagining Niara in his arms. He had loved her for years, and for the last few months he had thought it unlikely he would ever see her again. Yet he could speak of his fears to no one, not even his closest confidants, not even Hanen, his most trusted lieutenant—not even to an equal like the Baron of Hielsly. It was a truth that he could share only with the one the truth regarded, and so it was a bittersweet pang in his heart, but the bitterness only made the sweetness all the sweeter.
At last he reached the highest landing and threw open the doors to the Inner Sanctum. There, lying naked on the floor, wrapped in the arms of the demon himself, was Niara, covered in sweat, cheeks flushed with ardor, stinking of sex, with the demon’s juices still leaking out of her.
For a moment, everything turned still. Time stopped. Giorn’s gaze went from Niara’s, to Raugst’s, back to Niara’s. The world tilted, and for a moment he thought he might collapse.
Time clicked back on. Rage overcame him. With a roar, he drew his sword and leapt on them. He wasn’t sure if he meant to slay one, or the other, or both. His sword flashed, struck the marble floor where the lovers had lain, but at his leap they scattered, Niara rolling one way and Raugst the other.
Howling like a wounded animal, Giorn pursued Raugst, slashing at the naked man. Raugst, though looking dazed, neatly grabbed his own sword from his pile of clothing and blocked Giorn’s blade. The peel of clanging metal rang in Giorn’s ear and set his teeth on edge. The impact coursed up his arm.
Raugst had become his world, the sole focus of his vision. “Die!” Giorn said. It was the only sensible word he could find to utter.
He slashed at Raugst’s bull neck. Raugst blocked him, shoved him back. The demon rose, not seeming conscious of his nudity, not seeming to care. Indeed, he used his clothes as a weapon, scooping them up with a toe and flinging them into Giorn’s eyes.
Giorn danced back, felt the air part before his neck, heard the whistle of steel.
He tore the clothes away—just in time to avoid Raugst’s next blow.
Giorn thrust, and Raugst parried. Raugst came on with brute strength, dark eyes furious at being interrupted and attacked when vulnerable. Giorn wasted no words but strove for his adversary’s vitals. Their swords rang and flashed, sparks dancing from the metal. The echoes of their battle reverberated from the white marble walls.
Raugst’s energies were spent from his warring and lovemaking, and he still wore that expression of dazedness. So it was that Giorn, consumed with rage and betrayal, dashed the sword from the demon’s fingers, then backhanded Raugst across the jaw and sprawled him on to the floor.
Victorious, Giorn pressed his blade to the demon’s throat. “Burn well,” he said, and prepared to shove the blade home.
Niara pulled Giorn back. Her strength surprised him.
“What ... ?”
“Hear me,” she said. She didn’t blink, just stared into his eyes. “Raugst is goodly now.”
“That’s—”
“Hear me.”
He tried to step around her, but she had put herself in his path, and meanwhile he could hear Raugst getting up on the other side of her. For a moment he was very tempted to shove her aside.
“Are you listening?” she asked. “He’s goodly now. I poured my Light into him.”
“You laid a spell on him?”
“No. I removed the spell on him. Don’t you see? I gave him my Light, Giorn—all of it. I drove the darkness from him.”
“You did what?” said Raugst, sounding stricken. Giorn looked to see him standing, staring at Niara. She turned to face him. His face had gone very still, but his eyes burned.
She maintained admirable poise. “I cleansed you. You’re ... free. Free of Oslog.”
“You’re mad,” Giorn said, inwardly repeating All of it. What could that mean? Surely ... “Nothing can remove the taint of Gilgaroth,” he said. “He’s beyond help, Niara. He’s Forsaken.”
She hardly seemed to be listening. She stared at Raugst, looking worried. Giorn turned to see the demon’s face slowly contorting in rage. His lips twisted in a horrible leer.
“You bitch!” Raugst said. “You cunt! What have you done to me?”
He sprang forward. His hand flew at Niara’s face, Giorn heard a smack, and she flew backward. She struck the floor with her hip and slid hard against a wall.
Giorn stabbed at Raugst’s neck. Raugst dodged, batting the sword away with his bare hand. It raked his knuckles, and blood wept out. The action bought him just enough time to retrieve his own sword. Giorn saw the hate in his eyes and knew Niara’s attempt had been a failure. There was no rehabilitating this thing, no purifying it. It was a thing of darkness and such it would always be.
“Bastard,” Giorn snarled, aiming a strike at Raugst’s abdomen. “How could you hit a woman?”
“You nearly killed her.” Raugst deflected the blow. “Beside, I’ve done a lot worse.”
He came at Giorn, teeth set, eyes afire, almost seeming to growl, his sudden ferocity catching Giorn by surprise. The demon slashed Giorn’s right palm, sliced his side, swung at his feet. Pain flared up from Giorn’s ankle. Finally Raugst struck the sword from his hand, and Giorn’s fingers tingled with the blow.
Weaponless, Giorn fell back before the onslaught. Raugst sliced and thrust, cutting candles in twain so that flaming pieces flew about the room, getting underfoot.
Reeling, Giorn stumbled on a candle and fell backwards. Now it was Raugst who loomed over him. Raugst, breathing hard, naked, hairy chest rising and falling, stared down at him.
“Die, Wesrain,” he said, shoving his blade down to hover over Giorn’s throat.
So this is how it will be, Giorn thought. The demon will slay my father and brothers, steal my sister, steal my beloved, my barony, and now he’ll end me, as well.
No. I will not let it happen! Giorn kicked out, sweeping Raugst’s feet out from under him. Giorn rolled away, clutched up his sword and climbed to his feet.
He spun to see the demon rising, and now the two circled each other, both bloody and tired and wary. Off in the corner, Niara watched them and wept. “No,” she said, though Giorn was hardly listening. “Don’t do this. This is madness. You are both good men, don’t you see?”
Giorn scoffed. “He is neither good nor a man. NOW DIE!”
He sprang at Raugst, who just barely parried in time. Giorn drew back, raised his sword high and chopped down at Raugst’s face with all his might. Raugst blocked him, the demon’s arms buckling, mouth locked in a grimace. Sweat ran down the side of his face, tangling in his beard.
Something was wrong. The cut Raugst had given Giorn on his palm pained him, made his swings awkward. As well, the slice to his ankle had been deep, and he was unsteady and wobbly on his feet. Now, as Raugst shoved Giorn back and drove at him, blade harrying him relentlessly, Giorn stumbled back, blood trickling down him. He limped, wobbled, and tripped on the fallen candlesticks. He couldn’t move properly. What had the demon done to him? Every time he moved his right leg it wouldn’t cooperate. Pain coursed up him. He tried to ignore it, focusing only on Raugst, but the pain was too great, and his body would not respond as it should.
/> Raugst slashed at his middle. Giorn parried, swayed. He hacked at Raugst’s neck. Raugst knocked the blow aside. The defense nearly tore the weapon from Giorn’s hand. He gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the stab of pain from his palm, but the slice there was deep. Perhaps some tendon had been cut ...
Raugst forced him back, at last driving Giorn out onto the terrace. Moonlight washed the marble, and the hot breeze ruffled Giorn’s hair.
Raugst’s sword flashed at his head. Giorn ducked. Raugst’s sword drove at his chest. Giorn barely knocked the blow aside. Sweat flew from his hair.
Off to the side and up he was vaguely aware that a tide of glarumri was sweeping down over the city, shooting flaming arrows into buildings. Human archers were firing back from high towers. A Borchstog screamed and a glarum fell from the skies, then another ...
Raugst’s eyes shone with furor.
Back he drove Giorn. Swords clashed and rang, Giorn’s arm going numb. His hand and ankle throbbed. Don’t give in, he told himself.
Niara screamed in the background. “No, Raugst! You don’t have to do this!” Giorn thought he saw her try to rise, but the pain in her hip was too great.
Raugst hounded Giorn to the very lip of the terrace. Giorn reeled there, flailing for balance. At his back stretched a drop of hundreds of feet. He glanced back, just briefly, and felt the blood drain from his face, then turned back to Raugst, staring at him intently. There was no mockery or humor in the demon’s face, no hint of gloating, only hot rage—and a sense of finality. This was the end.
Raugst wasted no effort on words. He raised his sword in both hands and, using all his strength, brought it down toward Giorn’s head.
Giorn raised his own blade, knocked the down-sweeping sword aside, but the impact nearly drove him to his knees. As it was, it enflamed his wounded right hand. Raugst had cut it deeply, and now, at this worst possible moment, it seized up.
No.
Raugst raised his blade again, rage in his eyes, his face locked in a snarl, teeth gleaming. He seemed to sense victory on the wind.
Giorn, breathless, arm cramping, tried to raise his blade again to block Raugst’s next blow, but his hand and arm were not cooperating. Even as he watched on in horror, Raugst’s sword came down. Moonlight glimmered off the cold steel.
From somewhere, Niara screamed.
Raugst chopped down. His blade clove through the fingers of Giorn’s right hand. His sword hand. Giorn cried out as pain flared up past his elbow, as though his arm were made of fire. Blood spurted from the stumps that were his fingers. The stag-hilt sword, bloody, clattered to the terrace, then bounced over the edge and sailed down and away, spinning into the night. His fingers followed.
Giorn clamped his left hand over his bleeding stumps and sank to his knees before the blood-drenched monster that was Raugst. Niara, how could you? Meril had been right.
Raugst loomed there, a black mountain against the white pearl of a moon. Hair fluttering in the wind, he glared down at Giorn, his sword bright and covered in Giorn’s blood.
“Everything that was mine is yours now,” Giorn said. “You’ve taken it all, you bastard.”
Raugst inclined his head, just slightly, accepting the truth of this and showing a hint of respect to the man whose life he had destroyed.
“I will use it well.”
He drew back his sword for the blow that would separate Giorn’s head from his shoulders.
Just then Niara screamed, even louder than before. She had managed to drag herself out onto the terrace, and now, throwing aside all dignity, she flung her arms about Raugst’s ankles.
“No, Raugst! Don’t do this! This is madness! After all that I’ve just given you, you would slay Giorn? No! No ...”
Raugst hesitated.
Giorn glanced desperately about. On a lower terrace, there was movement. Something large and dark, with a long sharp beak, was eating something ...
A glarum! With a flash of insight, he saw what must have happened. One of the glarums, its rider shot by an archer so that the Borchstog had listed over in his saddle, making the great bird off-balance; thus it had spiraled down, alighting on the terrace, and now it was eating the rider that it had borne.
Providence.
The only problem was that the terrace where the glarum stood was too far away, too low. Giorn could just make it, maybe, but he could not survive the fall, at least not whole.
It was his only chance.
Raugst was distracted, his legs encumbered by Niara. Giorn rolled out from under the blade, to the side edge of the terrace, and bolted to his feet. He coiled himself, gauging the distance, the wind, waiting for the updraft to die down lest it knock him backwards ...
“NO!” Niara screamed.
“You’re a fool,” Raugst called at his back, and Giorn could hear him approach, dragging Niara with him; he could hear the rasp her slim body made along the cold marble. “You’ll never make it.”
“Then I’ll pave the way to hell for you,” Giorn said over his shoulder.
Without another word, he bunched his legs and ... leapt.
The wind shrieked all around him. Somewhere Niara’s screamed. He flew. Weightless, a feather on the wind ...
The terrace shot up at him. Fast. He shoved out his leg to take the fall.
He struck. His leg shattered.
The world turned to red. It spun and wheeled, and he was dimly aware that he was screaming and gnashing his teeth, and the great black bird was cawing in fear and snapping at him.
With great effort, he pried himself loose of the pain, dragged himself to the dead Borchstog, untied the straps that bound it to the glarum, and hauled himself into the saddle. The glarum cawed and snapped, but he jerked at its reins, whipped it about the head, and it subsided. Pain suffused him, and he heard screaming and thought it might be himself.
“Ra!” he said, spurring the bird with his one good leg. “Away!”
He twitched the reins. The glarum soared off into the night, and the white tower receded behind. Giorn turned his head to see Raugst, standing tall and naked, staring after him, and Niara sobbing at his feet. Giorn swore and turned away.
Chapter 14
With Niara weeping at his feet, Raugst seethed.
He strained his eyes, watching Giorn on his stolen glarum.
“Damn him, he’s going toward the castle!”
He broke free of Niara and strode indoors, where the candle-flames danced erratically, and threw on his clothes.
Dizziness overcame him suddenly, and he swayed. He mashed his eyes shut, shaking the weakness away. What had the woman done to him? He did not seem ... himself. Something was missing, like a hole in his being.
Niara dragged herself inside, still crying. Would she never run out of tears? He studied her. She was still beautiful, still lovely, but somehow he perceived that she was ... lesser ... now. She’d been an angel before, a goddess. She had seemed to glow with the light of the moon, but now the light was gone out of her. She looked frail and small. Mortal.
He shuddered. Finished dressing.
Her wide blue eyes filled with more tears. “What do you mean to do?”
“He’s going to the castle,” he said impatiently. “He means to make a stand there. He’s baron, after all, or thinks he is.”
“If he can get Fria on his side ...”
“Bah. He doesn’t realize how much control I’ve taken.” He grinned, but somehow his cheer was forced. He felt a rage in him, a burning, devouring rage, and he directed it at Giorn in his mind. “I will beat him yet.”
He moved to the doorway, but a quick feminine sob made him turn. Niara looked pitiful. Strangely, as though moving in a dream, not completely understanding what he did, he crossed to her and helped her to her feet. She seemed surprised, then smiled, but she was smiling through her pain.
“Are you ... all right?” he asked her, marveling at the words. He must hurry! Giorn would beat him to the castle!
Nevertheless, he made himse
lf look her in the eyes, to give her that attention, if only for a moment.
“Y-yes,” she said, but she bit her lip to stifle the discomfort. “I’ll be fine. Just ... a bruise tomorrow. And I’m not ... not what I was.” She hung her head.
He lifted her chin. “Niara, what did you do to me? I feel ...”
“Yes?” Hope lit in her eyes. “How do you feel?”
“Like ...” He shook his head. “There’s no time for this!”
“Don’t go. It doesn’t have to be this way. You and Giorn don’t have to be enemies.”
He looked at her as though she were mad. “I must get to the castle before he’s able to rouse enough support to be a threat to me. He’s wounded. Badly. That will help.” He grinned, and when he did he felt a swell of that old wolvish pride. “Yes, I got him. He may have escaped, but he will not win. I am the hunter, and he is the prey.”
Laughing, he left her and descended from the Inner Sanctum. Shortly he swung astride the horse he’d ridden to the temple stables after seeing the lights in the tower and rode for the castle. He was a wolf on the hunt, and he could smell the trail of blood before him.
By the time he’d finished with Giorn, his men would have taken their places by the South Gates. When he gave the order, they would be opened, and Vrulug would be free to sack the city.
Sadly, Niara watched him go. She limped out onto the terrace, feeling the warm wind in her hair, and gazed into the distance, where Raugst on his black charger raced toward the castle.
“What have I done?”
He was still Raugst, still an animal, trained against the light and everything touched by it. Niara had driven away his darkness, had removed his leash and collar, but Giorn had interrupted her before she could teach him the other way, the way of the white. Thus Raugst was still a beast, a wolf, and he was still full of rage and wildness.
He was his own master now, though. He could direct his energies how he would.
Only he didn’t realize it, yet.
She must reach him, must teach him, before it was too late.
