Trial of the Thaumaturge (Scions of Nexus Book 3)

by Gregory Mattix

  Metal shrieked and clanged as the machine that worked the drain went about its business.

  That doesn’t explain why the entire ocean didn’t flood this chamber, however. Did one of those doors get closed?

  Creel’s shoulder pain made it hard to think. He gingerly climbed down from the platform and went over to the smooth side of the tank that had transformed Ferret. Before he could lose his nerve, he slammed his shoulder into the iron wall. A hot wave of pain flared as the bone reset in its joint, then it was gone. He rotated his arm, pleased that it felt good enough to wield Final Strike again.

  Final Strike. He reached for the hilt, as much an extension of his body as his arm was, but found it gone.

  “Damn it.” His hand ran over the opening of the empty scabbard as he might probe the socket of a lost tooth with his tongue. He looked around but saw no sign of the copper-tinged longsword.

  The machinery in the room was making an awful lot of noise, he realized belatedly—distant clanging followed by the rattling of the catwalks. But then he glimpsed movement through the slatted floor. Ferret must have released her grip on the pole, for she was lying slumped on the walkway, perhaps wounded but alive. She was saying something he couldn’t quite make out.

  When he stepped away from the tank, opening his mouth to call to Ferret, he spotted the black-and-gold-clad men disgorging from a tunnel on the floor level of the laboratory, having been concealed earlier by the bulk of the tank. The reason for the reverberating catwalks, men pounded up stairs and surged across the lower walkways, spreading out to encircle the room. A few had loaded crossbows, and the rest had swords in hand. Several men ran past Ferret before one hard-faced bastard grabbed her by the neck and hauled her to her feet, a knife to her throat.

  Creel reached for Final Strike by reflex again and cursed when his hand came up empty. He did have a dagger, though it wouldn’t be sufficient to take on more than a dozen armed men. But he was determined to try.

  A quartet of Nebarans were climbing up to Creel’s level from the far side. He moved away from them, crossing above the gap in the lower catwalk, then slid under the railing to drop to the next level below, putting himself a few paces from Ferret and her captor.

  The girl’s violet eyes were wide as she regarded him with a silent plea for help.

  “Unhand the lass,” he demanded, eyes not leaving the face of Ferret’s captor. He knew from meeting the Nebaran’s cold reptilian gaze that this was the type of cutthroat who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.

  “Give me the control rod, and I’ll release the girl,” the Nebaran replied in a thick accent.

  “Creel, ye alive in there? Guess what I found?” Kulnor tromped into the laboratory from the entry tunnel and froze when he saw the Nebarans. “Oi! More rats comin’ up from the sewers!” The dwarf held Final Strike in one hand, his hammer in the other.

  But he was separated from Creel by the collapsed twenty-foot section of catwalk and then some. In fact, Creel and Ferret were alone on that particular section, with half a dozen Nebarans around him. More were moving to surround Mira and Taren.

  Creel held up a hand to stall Kulnor. “I don’t have the control rod on me.”

  “You’d best find it quick, or the bitch dies.” The Nebaran jabbed Ferret’s neck with the point of his dagger to reinforce his threat.

  “I have it here.” Taren’s voice was strained, and he looked barely able to stand, but he held the rod aloft, supported by Mira with his arm across her shoulders. “Set her free.”

  The Nebaran leader motioned with his head, and his men moved in on Taren and Mira. “The rod first. Give it to my men.”

  “What’s to stop you from killing her and the rest of us once you have it?” Creel asked.

  The man shrugged. “Guess you’ll have to trust me.” His ugly smile was devoid of any humor. Trustworthiness was among the last qualities Creel would have ascribed to the man, but they didn’t have many options to prevent Ferret’s murder.

  “Creel?” Taren was looking at him to make the call. “I think we’d better hand it over. For now, until Ferret is safe.” The latter was spoken telepathically. Creel wasn’t surprised at this, for Taren had used his psionic talents earlier to access a mental picture of Creel’s. He’d done so in order to open one of his magical gates to the desired location and transport Sianna’s army.

  “Are you in any shape to fight them?” he sent back.

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Do it,” Creel said aloud. He took a step nearer the Nebaran leader, his dagger still in hand, though he kept it lowered. He looked over the men arrayed before him and didn’t like the odds at all. In addition to the leader were three other soldiers and two constructs at the rear.

  Taren gave the control rod to the nearest Nebaran. At the leader’s curt beckoning, the man ran toward them along the catwalk overhead.

  The leader kept the dagger at Ferret’s throat and held out his free hand. “Give it to me.”

  When his man dropped the rod down, the leader caught it with his free hand. He examined it briefly, then his cold eyes flicked from Creel to the others. He slipped the rod into his belt.

  “Now free her!” Creel demanded, taking another step forward.

  A cold, calculating expression passed across the cutthroat’s face. With his free hand, he reached up, jerked Ferret’s head roughly back by the chin, and slashed his blade across her throat. He cast her aside with a casual motion. Ferret fell over the edge of the catwalk and sprawled on the slimy floor four paces below.

  “Kill them all,” the Nebaran leader ordered.

  Creel’s momentary shock gave way to an overwhelming rage. With a wordless roar of fury and horror, he charged forward with only his dagger. A crossbow quarrel slammed into his left shoulder and spun him just enough for a stabbing sword to narrowly miss ramming through his chest. Creel put his dagger through that man’s eye, burying it to the hilt. His opponent spasmed and fell. Creel snatched the broadsword before it could fall from the dead man’s hand. Other swords slashed into him, one cutting across his bicep and another blade turning on his leather cuirass. He hacked wildly with the broadsword and stabbed with his dagger. A man fell with a cleaved neck. But the third swordsman landed a stab through the joint in the side of his cuirass, and his blade sank into Creel’s ribs. The Nebaran looked surprised when he didn’t go down, and he instead split the man’s head open with a heavy overhand chop of the broadsword.

  Creel panted, looking around, free of foes for the moment, though two constructs lurched into motion at the leader’s command. The cutthroat was racing back down the catwalk, taking the steps two at a time as he bolted for the rathole they had scurried out of.

  Elsewhere, Mira was fighting off several Nebarans. One man pitched over the upper catwalk only to land headfirst on the railing below, snapping his neck.

  “Creel!”

  He looked around at the sound of his name. Kulnor lobbed Final Strike into the air, a perfect throw. Creel tossed the broadsword into the face of one of the advancing constructs and flipped his dagger to his off hand just as Final Strike’s hilt slapped into the palm of his hand.

  The first automaton swung its fist at him. Creel ducked, stabbing at the automaton’s midsection, where he hoped to disable its inner mechanisms. The construct seized his sword arm like a vice, pinning him in place, then its right arm coughed out a blade as Ferret had been able to do. The point drove into his chest a handbreadth inside his already skewered left shoulder. The stab of pain stole his breath away for a moment. He wrenched desperately on Final Strike, but it was held fast. The construct’s blade drove deeper, grinding against his collarbone.

  Teeth gritted, he took a step closer, the blade piercing through him and coming out his back. With his dagger in his left hand, he rammed it into the construct’s neck. The blade jammed between metal vertebrae, and he tried to sever the head, but the dagger was pinned in place. The creature’s red eyes faded a moment, and the grip on his arm relaxed. He pulled
his arm free just as the eyes blazed brightly again.

  “Die, you bloody metal bastard!”

  He released Final Strike and seized the automaton by the chin, fingers curling under its faceplate, and wrenched on the thing’s head with all his strength. Metal groaned and shrieked, then the resistance was gone, and his dagger was freed. He hacked at the construct’s neck several times until the head came away with the sound of taut wires snapping. Clanks and whirs sounded from within its carapace, then it ground to a halt.

  Creel shrugged out of its grasp and shoved the automaton away, the bloody blade sliding free of his chest. He retrieved Final Strike just in time for the second one to attack. He dodged its grasping hands and jumped off the catwalk.

  He landed badly, turning an ankle, but he retained his feet on the slimy, muck-covered laboratory floor. Glancing over, he saw the Nebaran cutthroat disappearing into the tunnel with the control rod.

  Gritting his teeth against his injuries and leaking blood all over, Creel increased his limping pace. The mouth of the tunnel loomed ahead. He was nearly there when the iron door slammed shut in his face. He bounced off it, cursing his misfortune. The door had no wheel or handle with which to open it, and a latch slid home on the other side with a muffled clunk.

  He roared a curse and pounded his fist on the iron door, but he knew he wouldn’t be getting through it with brute force.

  Chapter 47

  Ferret felt the cold edge of the knife slide across her throat, then she was hurled off the catwalk, landing facedown on the floor in a muddy puddle of seawater. The fall sent painful jolts through her battered body, but she barely noticed.

  I’m dead, she thought in panic, fingers going to her slashed throat. Gods, after all that, I finally get cured and survive that battle and near drowning, only to have my throat slit!

  Her fingers came away bloody but with only a smudge of blood on the fingertips. Something was wrong—she should’ve been geysering blood, lying in a pool of it, but there wasn’t as much as expected—far less, in fact. After a moment, the fact that she wasn’t dying made it through her panicked whirlwind of thoughts.

  That whoreson cut my throat and tossed me aside. Killers like that know their business and don’t bugger up a simple throat-cutting.

  Yet despite that knowledge, she wasn’t dying. Save for what felt like a shallow cut across her throat and her assorted bumps and bruises, she felt pretty good, all things considered.

  “Where are you, murderous piece of shite?” She climbed slowly to her feet, surveying the chaos of battle around her, a hot flare of anger filling her.

  Bodies of fallen men were strewn across the catwalk overhead, blood dripping steadily through the slats. A headless automaton lay sprawled a short distance away.

  Creel was facing off against three Nebarans near a sealed-off tunnel previously hidden below the seawater. He was wounded, bleeding from a dozen cuts, some more serious than others.

  Above Ferret on the upper catwalks, Mira was a blur of motion, fighting around Taren and holding off a handful of soldiers. She launched one opponent off the catwalk, and he fell two stories with a cry, landing with a broken leg. The next man fell back, clutching his crushed throat, the result of a strike nearly too quick to register.

  Taren’s eyes were curiously dull, and he looked pale and unwell, apparently unable to summon his magic. He leaned heavily on the railing, although he did contribute by throwing Lightslicer, spearing a couple of soldiers in quick succession, the dagger returning neatly to his hand after each throw.

  Kulnor was bellowing oaths and laying about with his warhammer. He crushed a man’s forearm with a blow of his hammer then smashed his jaw in with the next strike.

  Ferret turned her attention back to Creel, who still faced three opponents. He was wounded and bleeding heavily, and an automaton was lumbering down the steps toward the fight. Another trio of Nebarans were converging on him from the opposite side of the laboratory.

  “I’m coming, Dak,” she said quietly.

  Ferret started forward, just in time to see Creel hack off a man’s arm at the elbow. Spurting blood, the severed arm spun overhead, sword still clutched in the fist. One of the Nebarans across the room pulled up and leveled his crossbow at Creel, taking a moment to line up a good shot.

  Rabbit-sticker was in Ferret’s hand in an instant, and she threw it in one fluid motion. The crossbowman’s finger tightened around the trigger and squeezed, but the bolt flew astray as the man lurched sideways, one hand swiping at his ear, which had sprouted the hilt of the small knife.

  He doesn’t know he’s dead yet.

  Rabbit-sticker couldn’t return to her hand like Taren’s fancy dagger, so she was forced to find another weapon. Her short sword had been lost during the flood, but fortunately a severed arm lay nearby, the hand still clutching a short sword nearly identical to her own. She stepped on the wrist, grimacing with distaste, and plucked the sword free of the hand.

  Ferret looked up just in time to see Creel stumble and nearly fall, a sword puncturing his gut. He whipped Final Strike around and sliced the nose from his attacker. The man cried out, reeling backward as blood sprayed from the hole in his face.

  Creel fought ferociously, unheedful of his own well-being, and Ferret feared for him. Despite his regenerative ability, she worried it must have a limit. The thought popped into her head that he was enraged over what he perceived to be her murder. She didn’t try to analyze that disturbing thought, shoving it aside as she ran to help him.

  Creel parried one man’s strike, then managed to dodge aside just as the automaton charged in. He tripped and fell as the automaton barged a Nebaran to the ground. It stopped abruptly and whirled.

  Four Nebarans and one construct surrounded Creel. He picked himself back up with some difficulty, but his movements were clearly slowing, and blood was spattering the ground heavily around him.

  Snorting blood, Noseless circled around to stab Creel in the back when Ferret got there. Without thinking, she reached out and seized Noseless’s raised forearm, poised to drive his sword into Creel’s back. She pulled back, thinking to disrupt his strike, and was surprised when she yanked him clear off his feet. The man slammed down hard on his back. She blinked in surprise, staring at the stunned man, who stared back. She recovered first and stabbed him in the heart. He shuddered and lay still, a shocked look on his face.

  Looking back up, she saw Creel’s sword nick one of his opponents in the inner thigh. Bright blood sprayed from the cleft artery. The man futilely tried to stanch the flow. Creel’s follow-up strike split his head apart to his jaw, gore sluicing out of his skull.

  The construct punched and stabbed at Creel with its arm blade. He backed away, barely deflecting a stab from one of the soldiers. Ferret waited for an opening then lunged, jamming the tip of her sword into the automaton’s exposed hip joint. Metal crunched, and the tip of her sword snapped off. But the construct stiffened, its right leg nearly locked. It was forced to shuffle in a clumsy limp to move.

  One of the two remaining men struck at Ferret. She narrowly avoided his lunge, her own broken blade chopping down reflexively on his wrist. His chain mail parted, as did flesh and bone. The wrist sagged, hanging from a strip of gristle. The Nebaran screamed, dropping his weapon. Creel ran him through without seeming to see Ferret.

  The construct cocked back a fist to pound Creel in the back of his skull when a dangling metal cable slipped around its neck. The automaton was hoisted into the air, Kulnor hauling on the other end of the cable, using the railing as a pulley. Once the construct was several feet off the ground, Kulnor looped the other end around a pole and secured it. The automaton tugged and slashed at the cable but was unable to free itself.

  Creel stumbled, and the final swordsman took advantage, dodging Creel’s clumsy swipe, and ended up right in front of Ferret, poised to run him through. Without thinking, she thrust her broken sword into the Nebaran’s back. To her astonishment, the broken tip pierced mail, flesh, and bo
ne with relative ease, bursting from his sternum.

  Creel stared wide-eyed at the bloody sword sprouting from the Nebaran’s chest, then his eyes followed it back to Ferret, and he seemed to see her for the first time.

  “I reckon that bastard missed,” she said with a shrug, pointing at her neck, although she knew it wasn’t true.

  The Nebaran gurgled and took a step forward. Creel shoved him aside, and he toppled. Ferret left the broken blade in the man’s back.

  Then Creel was gripping her by the shoulders. “By the gods! How…” He peered at her throat.

  “Just a graze,” she said.

  “That was certainly no graze. That whoreson knows his business, that’s for sure.”

  “Hmm… another incongruity?” She thought of how easily the broken blade had penetrated the man’s body and how she had thrown Noseless to the ground with little effort. “I think I might’ve retained a few properties from my metal body. My throat should be carved wide open, and that broken sword shouldn’t have run him through like that.”

  Creel smiled. “Nay, it shouldn’t. Gods, I’m happy you’re alive, lass. We’d best help the others, though.” He took a step forward then lurched to one side, nearly collapsing before she could grab his arm to hold him up.

  Ferret slung his arm across her shoulders. “Brings back memories of Ammon Nor. Just like old times, eh?”

  Creel laughed then winced and clutched his chest. “Ah, that hurts. Don’t make me laugh, all right?”

  Ferret grinned. “Aye, I’ll try not to, Dak.”

  She eased him into a seated position on the steps. A quick look around showed her friends had prevailed. Taren looked the worse for wear, but Kulnor and Mira seemed well enough off.

  “Let’s take… a break for a bit.” Since his adrenaline had evidently worn off, Creel looked half dead. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds, many of them quite severe.