The Black Wynch stood and rounded its upper back, gnarled spikes emerging from it and launching in a hail towards Walter. Walter gritted his teeth and dashed into a low roll, spikes slamming into the ground in a line behind him. He came out of the roll whipping horizontally with Stormcaller. The Black Wynch jumped over the attack, countering with a roundhouse kick that threw Walter onto his back. White-hot pain wracked his jaw.
Nyset punched with both hands, and dozens of flaming bolts whizzed through the air. The Black Wynch’s body unnaturally twisted and weaved like an eel, dodging the majority of them. Three did find purchase, tearing clean holes through its thigh, shoulder and abdomen. The creature shrieked, thick black blood oozing from the smoking wounds. It appeared shaken and it surprisingly hesitated, taking a step back.
Walter sprang to his feet and groaned, working his jaw. He attacked in a fury of lash strikes, the Black Wynch weaving and dodging defensively. He caught a glance of Nyset, who was visibly drained from her attack, face pale and posture sagging. The creature tactically weaved its way towards Walter through his last two Crane Catching Fly strikes, pouncing on him and bringing them to the ground. Stormcaller’s lashes dissipated when Walter lost focus.
It raised its arms overhead with ear-splitting screams. Sparks sizzled through the air as its talons tore chunks of plate from Walter’s abdomen. It threw its head back in frustration, gripping his armor and smashing its plated head against Walter’s soft face. Blood washed over Walter’s eyes, nose cracking with the impact.
Time seemed to slow as pain radiated across his face. It’s going to rip me to shreds if I don’t get up. Weakness settled into his body, urging him to surrender, to do anything to stop the pain. Never give up, fight until the end, Noah’s voice said.
Walter blinked stinging blood from his eyes, bucking his hips and throwing a hard knee, tossing the creature over his head. Nyset screamed and brought a flaming spear down from overhead, attempting to finish it off after it fell. The creature squirmed out of the way and slashed her thigh.
The jolt threw her aim off and the spear slid through its clawed foot, pinning it where it lay. Nyset yelled and fell onto her back, scrambling out of the Black Wynch’s range while gripping her bleeding leg. Scintillating talons angrily whipped and slashed at her, catching only air. The Black Wynch hissed and tugged at the spear through its foot, trying to reach her.
Walter clambered to his feet as the beast tore its burning foot free from the spear, leaving most of the foot behind. Walter wiped blood and tears from his face, regaining his balance. The creature limped towards Nyset, forgetting about Walter, trailing blood from its severed foot with a single talon still attached. Walter came from behind and booted its knee, producing a satisfying snap. It fell to its face, turning towards him snarling and muttering nonsense.
You shall not! Slay the whore girl soldier! a dry voice rasped in his head, compelling him to obey. He felt the anger drain from his body, lethargy taking its place, eyes feeling heavy as elixir barrels. I am so tired. He lowered his right leg, which was poised to slam another Cerumal armor-enhanced heel into the Black Wynch. A woman’s voice sounded in the distance, muffled as if from a root cellar. “Walter! What are you doing? Walter!”
“Slay the whore,” Walter said, staring at Nyset.
Slay the whore, the voice in his head resounded. Nyset stared in disbelief, struggling to her feet. Walter strode past the Black Wynch to Nyset, his eyes vacuous. He reached his bleeding hand for her neck. A blast of air knocked him to his back, sending him three paces across the road. He gasped for breath and struggled to an elbow. Where am I? Fighting the Black Wynch. How did I get here? Why is she looking at me like I’m a flesh-eating plant?
Walter rose to his feet and regained his Warrior’s Focus, and the world seemed to slow once again. “Enough!” Walter said through gritted teeth. The Dragon was available within his renewed inner calm. He hurled a fireball that passed through the Black Wynch’s neck and quieted its screams and gnashing teeth. Walter stared, expecting to feel vindicated, but felt overpowering exhaustion. It took minutes for The Black Wynch to stop twitching after the greater portion of its head was displaced from its body. He sat down, head spinning.
He wanted to lie down and sleep and let reality melt away. There are many things in life one wants to do, but cannot. The dead are not able to wake from their slumber, even if they wanted to. It is our duty to allow the living the same pleasure. His head swam with the reality that they’d survived.
“What the Dragon was that?” Nyset asked with damp eyes.
Walter held his palms before his face, inspecting his marbled human and Cerumal ashen-gray skin.
“It… I think it… controlled me.”
Walter looked to Nyset, meeting her eyes. “But I’m me now, OK? It’s just me.”
They smiled at one another. She nodded, dropping to sit on the ground, wiping sweat from her brow. “We did it, we killed that… that thing.”
“A Black Wynch.” Walter pressed his scarf against his nose. “Let’s get you wrapped up, we have to get the Dead Adders to the sick.”
“Death Adders,” she said.
“Yeah, those – close enough,” he said, grinning and helping her to her feet.
Nyset’s eyes bulged as she stared beyond him, behind him. His smile faded into amused curiosity. “What’s wrong?”
“Walter!” she screamed, terror warping her face.
He turned his head over his right shoulder, catching the snaking form a second before pain exploded from his back and through his stomach. Excruciating pain. He felt like he was moving in slow motion, as if trying to move underwater. He looked down to his abdomen, finding to his horror four red talons poking through his flesh where the first Black Wynch had torn plates free.
He was raised from the ground and the talons slid further up his stomach, slicing flesh and only stopping between ribs. Time seemed to have stopped when he was airborne, staring down at the blades poking through his shirt. They slid back and out of him. He fell through the salty breeze towards the ground and watched as the second Black Wynch turned its horrific visage upon Nyset.
Before he struck the graveled road, an orange bird with bizarrely long tail feathers spread its wings before him and then burst alight with white warmth. He smiled, pain transmuting in an unexpected bliss, filling him with light.
He landed on his feet and the light of the Phoenix puffed from his wounds like mist, knitting the flesh together better than any master surgeon. Nyset took a few steps back, bracing her leg with her hands, bright red engulfing it. The Black Wynch turned on him, frozen, staring from where eyes should have been.
Three balls of fire volleyed towards the Black Wynch from the ether behind Walter, while he simultaneously roared and lashed with Stormcaller, flaming death tearing through the air. The Wynch, incredibly, weaved through the flaming spheres, but was incapable of avoiding Stormcaller’s destruction at the same time. It fell as it was hewed into pieces, slabs of smoldering, cauterized flesh hitting the ground.
Walter fell back onto the ground, face emotionless, letting everything he held drain from his body. He gazed at the second twitching Black Wynch, and then at Nyset, who met his eyes. He sat and started laughing. Uncontrollable laughter filled the air as he reveled in their victory. Nyset found his emotion contagious, and joined with her sonorous laughter.
Chapter 17 – Bonesnapper
“Eventually, all will enter my cold embrace.” –from Necromancy and Wolves: The Veiled Darkness
Hassan’s office was a cramped addition connected to the city guard barracks. The fading rays of the sun spilled through two small windows, casting deep hues of purple and pink on Walter, Hassan and Baylan. It was sparsely adorned with a painted map of Breden that hung behind his thick oak desk. The desk held a neat stack of paper on the corner. Three long swords with Breden insignias were mounted on the adjacent wall. An armful of worn books lined a shelf carved from brownstone. Walter glanced at their titles, havin
g a sore spot for books. Officers and Men, Companion of the West, Edges of Strength, Zoria Economics were a few that caught his eye.
“It was a strange thing – shortly after they went through the town square, they left,” Hassan said. “I was afraid they had come for the sport of it, knowing we couldn’t defend ourselves or something.” He stropped his sword with a small stone, working out the gouges in the blade.
“Bastards split like they was searchin’ for somethin’, didna even stay fer a good fight,” an eavesdropping guard said from the main barracks. Hassan set the sword down and pushed the warped door closed, wedging it into its frame. “Damn city craftsman,” he mumbled, eying the door.
“Walter, I want to personally thank you for finding all those children, there are many distraught families that will finally get closure. So, thank you for that – your parents would have been proud.”
Walter nodded. “Just did what anyone would’ve done.”
“How did you know it was him? Did you see him add something to the food?” asked Hassan, folding his arms.
“I didn’t, Noah did, and I’d trust my life with him.”
Hassan bowed his head. “We lost a great man. He always had a strange sixth sense about people’s motives. I’m glad you followed your gut on this one. Gut instincts never lie.” He sighed. “Those kids that you saved, they’re going to have an hard road ahead of them.”
“Yeah,” Walter mused. Baylan scribbled away in his worn notebook, quill scratches sounding louder than they should have in such a small room. Walter realized it was the heavy silence that magnified his writing.
“They most certainly were,” said Baylan, scratching his head. It took Walter a moment to realize that Baylan had been thinking over the barracks guard’s comment on the Cerumal. “It was a classic three-sixty search pattern. The more pressing question is: what were they searching for?” He had a deep slash under his eye that oozed blood. He occasionally dabbed at it with a once-white cloth. Why hasn’t he healed that? Walter drummed his fingers against Hassan’s desk, watching Baylan write.
“The Black Wynch gave something to a Cerumal on horseback near my house, my parent’s house. It was quite strange,” Walter said.
Baylan looked into the remaining ellipse of the red sun, attention seemingly elsewhere. “What did it look like, Walter?”
Hassan stood, went out the door, and stuck a small twig in the hearth in the barracks, using it to light his pipe. He puffed on it, tending to his other men, some wounded physically, others mentally by the second reality-shaking attack.
Walter answered Baylan. “I’m not sure what it was, it had something wrapped in cloth.” He paused, perusing his most recent memories, searching for a clue. The image of his parents’ house before they came upon the Black Wynch kept returning to the forefront of his thoughts. Something isn’t right with this image. Fresh hoof prints before the house. It was there. Yes, that’s what they were.
“It came from my house, the Cerumal came from my house.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Let us go,” Baylan said, closing the notebook.
**
Torches burned and popped around Breden Square as a morose trail of sick townsfolk wound around storefronts, awaiting a dose of Death Adder tea. Beyond the square in the practice field, three large funeral pyres burned brightly, paying homage to the fallen. The moon hid behind dark clouds that threatened to unleash their watery payload upon the land.
Breden folk were a hard people, forged in the rigors of farming and fishing in scorching days and icy nights. They would patiently await their turn, even in the face of impending death. Nyset had at first felt victorious for discovering the antidote and killing the Black Wynch with Walter. There was, however, no celebration among these faces.
She ladled gelatinous yellow liquid into a wooden cup, handing it to a woman who thanked her profusely. “Of course, Lora, rest up now,” Nyset replied.
A man a few paces back stepped out of line and vomited. Others helped him to his feet, each taking an arm and propping him up. Nyset’s mother, Aliza added the last of the Death Adder flowers to an oversized stockpot that had just started boiling. “Let’s hope this is enough for everyone,” she said quietly. She squatted with the grace of a Midgaard dancer and retrieved a few petals that had fallen.
Nyset handed a filled cup to a child who had dried blood on her nostrils. “Mom, I think I’m going to have to leave soon.” Nyset said.
Aliza stopped stirring the stockpot. “What do you mean you’re leaving? I need you, we need you on the farm. You know we have debts to be paid that we can’t manage without you. Have you forgotten about that?”
“No, no, of course not but–”
“Selfish child, you think of no one but yourself,” Aliza snapped, stirring vigorously.
“Mom, please, listen. We’re going to go to a place where–” She handed a cup of tea to an elderly man with shaking hands. “–where my real talents can be practiced.”
“I see. Well, I suppose that’s a good enough reason. If you can get into the Tower, you should be able to pay our debts with the money you would make there, wouldn’t you?” she whispered.
“I don’t know, Mom, but it’s what I have to do, and Walter, he has to go. He’ll need my help. It’s hard to explain, but please trust me.”
Aliza wiped tears from her tanned face. “I know, I need to let you go into the world. We’ll be OK, your father and I. I do trust you, dear.”
“Don’t worry, Mom, you know I can protect myself and–”
“I know, you’ll be just fine, I know.” Aliza wrapped an arm around Nyset, holding her close with one hand and stirring with the other. “You’ve made me proud, Ny. Without you, we would’ve lost so many more people,” she said, looking into her daughter’s eyes. “All the times I yelled at you for wasting time studying your plant books when I thought you should’ve been helping us tend the farm – well, I’m sorry. I see how it can be useful now.”
Nyset produced a half-smile, distraught over not discovering the poison earlier. Aliza grabbed two thick rags from her apron and transported the bubbling stockpot from the stove onto a stone slab set down to protect the wood where Nyset ladled cups. “How many people, how many did we lose from the poison?” Nyset asked.
“From the Pink Caps alone, a terrible count of twenty-seven. Mainly the sick and elderly fell… they burn on the pyres.” Aliza looked to the burning pyres, tiny pinholes of light reflected and danced in her eyes. “Hassan feared it may have been a contagion. It’s not right that they didn’t get a proper burial.”
“He was smart to do that,” Nyset said, remembering the histories of plagues that had decimated entire cities.
**
Walter and Baylan entered the foyer of Walter’s house. The moon emitted a faint yellow glow illuminating their path. Marie slowly pawed at the ground where she was tied at the stairs. She’s probably hungry. Focus. Here again – why am I continually pulled here? How many died that had recently slept here? Mom, Dad, Lillian. Three deaths within three days. This place is cursed.
“Now, think, Walter. Where would your parents hide their most valuable things?” Baylan said, interrupting his thoughts.
Walter stared down the hallway into the kitchen, red swathes of blood catching his eye.
“Their bedroom would be a good start.”
The master bedroom was undisturbed, the antithesis of the rest of the house. A large double bed with white linens lay in the center of the room, adjoined by windows on either side whose thin, white embroidered curtains lolled in the cool breeze. “I don’t think anyone, or anything, was here recently,” Baylan said.
They combed through each room, finding them in relatively the same state they had left them. Walter found charcoal sketches his mother had made, of various flowers in the garden, on the bottom of the trunk in her office. One was of a bunch of roses, one a lone tulip, and another a bed of sunflowers. He inhaled sharply at
the sight of the last sketch in the small pile. It was a stunningly detailed drawing of a dragon, of the Dragon. It almost appeared to wriggle out of the page. It had four arms, each holding a weapon of fire. Its scales almost appeared to be waving flames.
“Find anything of interest?” Baylan shouted from a guest bedroom.
Walter stared at the drawing, bemused he hadn’t caught on to her ability earlier.
“No, nothing really,” he yelled, putting the drawing in his satchel.
They met in the second floor hallway. Walter said, “There is one more place we haven’t searched.” Baylan met his eyes. “The cellar.”
The stone steps leading under the house were worn in the middle from generations of use. Dim moonlight streamed in from small windows lining the walls near the ceiling, throwing a tremulous, uncertain sheen upon the floor. The encompassing silence of the cellar struck Walter, elevating his heart rate. He crossed his arms as he walked.
The air was thick with musty humidity. A glowing blue shield materialized on Baylan’s intact arm, casting the room in a soft light. The cellar was mainly used for storing root vegetables after the harvest season. There was still a good supply of multi-colored potatoes and wine skins neatly organized on rickety-looking shelves along the back wall. In one corner there was a pyramid of elixir bean barrels. In another corner there was a small table with papers strewn about it. A bevy of rusted farm tools rested on a center column.
“What is that? This isn’t looking how it should.” Walter pointed. The cream ceramic-tiled floor between two thick support columns in the middle of the cellar had been broken up and the earth scattered around a hole an arm deep. Something, that Black Wynch, had clearly spent a fair amount of time digging through the tile and stone covering the soft earth below.
Stormcaller (Book 1) Page 13
