Servant of a Dark God

by John Brown

  A guard yelled back at the tower door, a mastiff snarled and was cut off. There were grunts, the sound of something metal clanging violently into the wall.

  Argoth turned and looked at the gate, but the shadows obscured everything.

  Something dark flashed in the corner of his vision and dropped from the sky. It thudded to the ground not two paces from where Argoth stood. At first Argoth thought it was a pile of rags, and then he realized it was one of the mastiffs that had been guarding the tower door.

  It lay in a broken heap.

  16

  BREACH

  A thundering crack sounded from the base of the tower. A dim light briefly shone where the door should be. Argoth thought he heard Droz’s roar, but almost as soon as it started, all fell silent again and the light vanished.

  There was no moaning that would suggest someone had been injured. No movement. Nothing but moon shadows and the monstrous dog at his feet.

  Argoth drew his sword and began to increase the flow of his Fire.

  Hogan walked over to the dog and pushed at it with one toe. “She said she wasn’t part of a dark grove.”

  “That is what she said.”

  Purity had a past with the lore before she came to the Order, just as Argoth did. He had broken all ties with his former masters. Was it possible she had not? “Be ready for anything,” Argoth said.

  A guard called down from the battlements. “Ho? What’s about?”

  They ignored the guard.

  Hogan took off his mantle and laid it over his saddle. Then he removed the Hog from its bindings. The blade of the weapon shone with a dull gleam in the moonlight.

  They moved forward, but could take more than a few steps before Argoth stumbled across three bodies, all of them broken and lying in a heap like the dog. He found a dead guard a few paces farther, and another. When he reached the small wall, he saw the tower door hung ajar.

  Someone or some thing with immense power had come through here. Oh, Purity, he thought. Secrets within secrets.

  “A breach!” Argoth yelled up. “Breach!”

  The guard on the battlements took up the alarm.

  Hogan pushed the door open with the business end of his Hog.

  Inside two lamps had fallen and spilled their oil onto the floor. Two pools burned. The dim light revealed guards lying in broken heaps. Droz was among them. There was no blood, but the gruesome angle at which he lay told them all they needed to know.

  Shouts rose in the courtyard. But Argoth couldn’t wait for those men. Besides, they would probably meet the same fate as their comrades. A dreadman of a high level might have been able to cause such carnage. But how fast must the man have been moving to dispatch all these men with hardly a sound?

  “Let’s try to take this one alive,” said Hogan. He picked up a lamp. “I’ll go first.”

  They approached the pitch-black chamber that led to the stair. Nothing.

  Something crashed below, then silence.

  “Hurry,” said Hogan and began his descent, Argoth close on his heels. They could not move as fast as he’d like because the movement would extinguish the lamps.

  They took the second set of steps three and four at a time, their flames guttering with the movement. Hogan’s lamp blew out. Argoth didn’t expect that to be a problem because whoever had forced his way in would have a light. But he was mistaken. They soon found themselves facing the open doorway to the cleansing room, and all inside was as dark as ink.

  They heard Purity’s frightened voice from inside. “What do you want?” she said in terror.

  It wasn’t her words that stopped him. It was the fact that the intruder hadn’t brought a light. Who would have come down without a lamp?

  Hogan turned and relit his lamp with Argoth’s flame, then stepped through the doorway. Argoth followed.

  Hogan held his lamp aloft. There on the floor lay the door to Purity’s cell. It had been wrenched completely out of its fittings. Argoth looked at the cell itself and saw someone large hunkered over her. Purity struggled in his grasp.

  The man seemed not to have heard Argoth and Hogan approach. Hogan changed his grip on the Hog. But it was too dark to see clearly. They needed light. Argoth spotted a small pile of straw used for the cells lying in a heap to one side. He kicked a portion of it away then lit it with his lamp. When it ignited, he threw his lamp down into the middle of it, cracking the lamp and spilling the oil about.

  The fire flared, illuminating the room and the back of the rough figure.

  By this time, Hogan had approached the cell. He stood, lamp in one hand, axe held high with the other. “Put her down,” he commanded.

  The man supported Purity with one arm and with the other fingered the king’s collar around her neck. Her blanket had fallen to the floor to expose her injured and bandaged body. Purity struck at the man, but she was so weak her blows had no power.

  The huge man wore an odd cloak of grass. But then he turned, and Argoth saw it was not a man. It was nothing like anything Argoth had ever seen. The grass he’d thought was a cloak was part of the creature, some patches whole, some burned. Then it opened its too-wide mouth and took in a ragged breath.

  “Purity,” demanded Hogan. “You said there was no dark grove.”

  A terrible fear lit her eyes. “Run,” she said. “It’s full of souls.”

  Hunger had tried to devour Purity like he had all the others, but the thing at her neck fought him. It stunk of the men’s magic. As he tried to feel along its weave to untangle it, the word for what it was came to him; it surfaced from the murky waters of his mind like a giant fish. It was a king’s collar, something forged in the secret fires of the Kains that could prevent even a Divine from using magic. He marveled for a moment-how could Barg, a common butcher, know such things? He couldn’t, shouldn’t know such things. Unless Barg wasn’t the only man he’d eaten.

  He looked more closely at the collar. If such a thing could harness a Divine, it might be able to harness a Mother.

  That thought made him hold very still. The Mother had been sleeping and shut him out. She could not know about this. He could not wake her. Hunger kept his thoughts quiet.

  The Mother was going to eat his family. He knew that. No matter what he did, she would eat them. Perhaps in the end, she would eat him as well. But this collar, this might bind her up tight. After all, humans had beaten the Mothers before. She said so herself.

  Humans with magic.

  Hunger looked at the Sleth woman. He’d need to plan very carefully. The Mother was strong. But perhaps this time the prey, with this slip of magic, might turn the tables and catch the predator.

  Someone called out from behind him. He turned and saw two men-a Mokaddian with a sword and a Koramite with an axe. Stink rolled off both of them in waves. There was the Mother’s magic, but hers was always fresh and clean. This, this was something else.

  Hunger recognized the Mokaddian but couldn’t put a name to him.

  Then the Koramite struck him with his axe.

  The force of that blow knocked Hunger back a step. Such power surprised him. But it didn’t matter. Hunger was a man of dirt, and he caught the Koramite by the throat and held him up. He could snap him like he had the other men above.

  But there would be secrets in these two men. Plenty of secrets. Some of which might show him how to defeat the Mother. He should eat them. They weren’t human. They were Sleth. In fact, by all laws he should kill them. Eating them would not make him any more abominable than he already was. And it just might prevent the Mother from working her evil further.

  Hunger tried to shuck the man, but he could not find a crack. It was like trying to use a spoon to peel the bark from a maple: all he could do was chip off small chunks.

  He searched over the man’s body and snagged on the tiniest of gaps. He could feel the man’s fear. He could taste him.

  Something flashed and Hunger lost his grip. The Koramite fell to the floor.

  Hunger turned. The Mokad
dian had joined the fray. The flash had been his blade, cutting clean through the wrist of the arm Hunger had been holding the Koramite with. The Mokaddian swung his blade again at Hunger’s neck, but the Mother had built him solidly there, and the blade simply lodged in the rock she’d used for his bones.

  Hunger drew back the stump of his arm and swatted the Mokaddian to the other side of the room. He looked down at his hand on the floor and then at his stump. The dirt in his forearm had already begun to shift and form itself into a new ragged thing that looked not so much like a hand as it did the wild growth from a coppiced tree.

  These two knew how to resist him. This meant he was going to have to kill them before he unraveled them. That was trickier than just taking them live. Trickier, but he could do it.

  The Koramite backed up by the burning pile of straw. He held his useless axe ready. The Mokaddian knelt at the far wall, looking as if he were trying to regain his senses.

  Hunger would take the Koramite first.

  Then he felt the Mother stirring and all his attention turned to the collar. He had to hide it, had to busy himself with some other task. Otherwise, she would know.

  She would know, she would know. She would command him to bring these men to her, and he would have to obey. Eventually, he would have to obey. But if she didn’t know, she couldn’t command.

  Hunger turned and rushed back to Purity. He threw her over his shoulder like a sack of grain, then ran for the exit. The Koramite tried to stop him, but Hunger flung the man aside. Then it was up the stairs and into the dark, back the way he’d come. He’d get out, then he’d remove the collar before the Mother fully wakened. He’d cover it and all thought of the men. And when she fell asleep again, he’d come back for them all.

  Argoth saw Hogan bury the Hog deep in the creature’s leg, but it had no visible effect. The creature knocked Hogan aside as it had done to him, tossed him like he was so much straw. Then the creature rushed out of the cleansing room with Purity clutched to its chest and the Hog still buried in its leg.

  Hogan struggled to his knees. He grimaced and held his arm close as if it were broken. He winced. “That just might have cracked my collarbone.”

  “I’ve never-” said Argoth in amazement. The power of that creature. What was it?

  “I felt someone there,” said Hogan. “Inside the beast.”

  “Who?”

  Hogan shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Men yelled above. There was a crash, something heavy tumbling down the upper stairway.

  “They’re not going to be able stop it,” said Argoth.

  Hogan’s face twisted in surprise. “Lumen,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Lumen’s soul.”

  Lumen, the Divine who had overseen the Nine Clans. The Divine who had gone missing last year. Is this how he had disappeared, in some experiment gone awry? Or had the Bone Faces taken him and put him into this rough creature?

  Another crash sounded from above.

  Argoth raced out of the room to the stairs. He saw the Hog lying on the steps where it must have fallen from the creature’s leg and called back to Hogan to pick it up. Smoke from the straw fire below rolled up along the ceiling. It choked him, so he kept his head low and ran up into the darkness. He burst into the first cellar and heard the clamor of many men above.

  On his way up the next flight of stairs he jumped over two guards. One was dead, splayed out in a horrible pose. The other lay on his back, moaning.

  Argoth reached the main level and saw that the battle had moved outside. Men with torches and pikes stood outside the door and shouted. They surged to one side as if hit by a large wave.

  He’d been able to hack off the thing’s hand. Of course, it had done as much good as chopping a worm in two. But he’d much rather face that thing in pieces. And if all they could do was dismember it, then that’s what they must do.

  He charged outside. A number of the men shouted and pointed at something on the wall.

  Argoth turned. The thing climbed the wall like a dark, three-legged spider, shielding Purity against its chest like a mother might her newborn babe.

  Men threw spears. The half-moon made silhouettes of a number of guards on the wall who were in the process of stringing their bows or taking aim.

  Those would do nothing to the creature, but they could kill Purity. And if this was her monster, that might dissolve its bindings.

  “The ballista!” he shouted. “Turn the ballista!” At various points upon the wall stood seven ballistae. Argoth shouted up the orders a third time, and the guards manning the one closest to the creature began to turn it.

  Hogan appeared at Argoth’s side. “How can this be?” The Hog was in his hands.

  “I don’t know,” answered Argoth.

  “It’s hers, isn’t it?”

  “We’ll soon find out,” said Argoth.

  The creature moved with such speed he knew the ballista men were only going to get one shot.

  “Take it when it crests the top!” Argoth shouted.

  More archers arrived and the thrumming of their bows made a chorus. He could hear the ballista men on the wall cranking their engine back. One five-foot, iron-headed dart from these machines could transfix several armored men. The only weapon more powerful would be one of the warwolves, casting a massive stone. But those would be ineffective against such a small, mobile target.

  The creature neared the top.

  “Lead it!” a man shouted.

  The moon suddenly shone through a gap in the ragged clouds and lit up the wall. It was hideous how the thing moved, like an insect. Then it reached the top and raised itself up, its back bristling with arrows.

  Now, they should fire now! Argoth heard the loud thwonk of the ballista. The creature took one massive step upon the wall, a dark, hulking figure, Purity’s naked form like a small, pale flower held at its chest, then, in the next moment, both were swept away.

  “Lords,” said Hogan.

  “Quickly,” Argoth shouted, “to the bailey!”

  By now most of the fortress guard had awakened and had come to the call to arms. Torches were lit. A quarter of a cohort, almost a hundred and fifty men, rushed to the gate of the inner wall, Argoth and Hogan following behind. When they reached the bailey between the two fortress walls, they rushed to the spot where the creature should have fallen.

  Argoth expected at any moment to hear the men in front call out that they’d found the creature. But no such shout arose. Then one soldier lifted the massive ballista dart into the air.

  “Scan the walls!” someone shouted. Men stood back to examine the moonlit walls. A group of soldiers charged forward, beyond the location where the ballista dart was found.

  Argoth grabbed a torch from a soldier and stepped up to examine the tip of the dart. It was clean. Not a drop of blood. Not a speck of dirt.

  He looked at the ground where the dart had fallen. Nothing heavy had landed here. He looked up at the wall. He knew the soldiers searching the rest of the bailey would not find the creature. It was gone, vanished into the night just as it had come.

  “Purity,” he said. “What have you wrought?”

  17

  SOUL MEAT

  The dart from the ballista might have passed through Hunger like stick through a pile of sand, but the Mother had created him with more than dirt. He had a skeleton of wood and stone. Of course, it was not just wood. Not simple stone. Whatever power the Mother controlled had bound him. He wasn’t just a piece of carpentry, for then the ballista dart would have shattered his chest. But it didn’t. The dart stuck in his ribs and the force of the impact threw him backward.

  But it did not throw him directly away from the wall and into the bailey. Instead, it cast him off the rampart and into the bottom wall of the hoardings used to sweep attackers off the slopes and cliffs on the back side of the fortress. And that saved the Sleth woman, for Hunger was able to grasp one of the hoarding timbers and swing up underneath.

>   Hundreds of feet below him the sea sparkled in the moonlight. The waves surged and crashed upon the rocks, spraying forth great gouts of pale foam. Hunger would have survived the long drop to the sea, but the Sleth woman would have broken on impact.

  He heard the men yelling, and he felt… pain? It was not sharp, but there was an echo of hurt. And then he realized it was not him, but the Sleth woman. He could feel the emotions roiling inside her body, feel them like one might feel a puppy thrashing in a sack. He realized he’d always been able to feel the souls of his victims. He wanted to devour her, but he ignored his appetite.

  He didn’t have much time, and he didn’t dare climb down the cliff, for the men would see him, and then she would die. So Hunger skittered like a spider along the belly of the hoardings until he was on the other side of the fortress, far away from the shouting.

  He lay the Sleth woman onto the rock and sparse grass that grew here. He had probed the collar down in the cellar of the tower, but could not find its clasp. It was said only a Divine could remove a king’s collar, only they knew the lore of unbinding. But did he not have magic also? He examined the collar again. There was no break, the collar seemed to have been woven around the woman’s neck. But nothing was that perfect. He could find the part if he searched slowly.

  It seemed he had only just begun when the Mother stirred again. Hunger bent his concentration, moving faster and faster along the loops and whirls. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  She was coming, he could feel it. Feel her fingers reaching out to his mind.

  Panic rose in him. She couldn’t have it. She mustn’t have it. Then he found a spot that seemed different from the rest, but he couldn’t tell for sure if it was the spot of joining. It wasn’t a break; it was just a spot.

  Hunger?

  He tried to unravel the collar at that point, but he could not. It resisted him. Then he mustered all his strength, he pulled, and, when he thought he’d failed, the collar snapped.