by Kaleb Schad
A cruel, cutting light filled the tower. Isabell felt something slam into her from behind and pain erupted up her spine. A drawing motion pulled at her and she could feel her very life being slurped from her body, necrotic magic encasing her.
A Wallwraith. His hood had been thrown back and his head was nothing except curling smoke pillowing around in the vague shape of a skull.
Isabell tried to close with the creature, but her legs wouldn’t move. She raised her sword, but couldn’t hold it. A hollow clatter as it crashed to the floor. She tried to call out to Anaz, but her voice was gone. It was all she could do to stay on her feet. And then it wasn’t. She dropped to her knees and watched the coursing magic stream away from her into the wraith’s hands.
“Mine!” her father roared and lunged at the Wallwraith. Seven Claws came down on the wraith’s arm and severed it at the elbow. Isabell gasped as the magic was cut.
The wraith spun on her father, spearing his other clawed hand at him. He parried and stepped back, but he found himself pinned against his own men.
Isabell snatched up her blade and wobbled to her feet. She watched as her father battled the wraith, his arms dragging as if swimming through mud, the cuts along his neck and chest freely flowing with blood. She could leave him. He would die. The Wallwraith would take him, take his soul into a hell he deserved and nobody would ever know she had a chance to save him. Maybe wouldn’t ever care.
She thought of Lelana, the way he threw her to the Wretched. She thought of Anaz, of the missing finger on his hand and of the Fentins, the entire family hung and still rotting at the gallows even tonight. She listened to the wall crashing over her village. This. All of it. His.
The Wallwraith found her father’s face with his claws, dragging three lines across his cheek and nose, the skin peeling back to the bone.
Nobody would ever know.
Nobody except her. And she’d never heard of a cut being healed by another cut.
She sprinted forward, screaming nothing in any language except fury. The Wallwraith turned that fleeting visage on her just as her sword bisected the creature at the waist, splitting him into two equal halves.
Two Fingers recovered his strength and Daveon found himself nearly off the ground as the half-orc bucked his hips against the hearth and shoved. Daveon stumbled backwards, wobbling as he tried to catch his balance.
But balance was the last thing Two Fingers wanted Daveon to catch. Like a nightmare, Two Fingers chased him. He backpedaled, every parry of the half-orc’s sword a blistering zing up his arm.
The piebald shuffled to avoid the melee. Its hooves crunched in the seeds.
Malic hustled around the two warriors. He kicked two stools out from under a table and started dragging the table towards the front door.
“Daveon,” he called out as he grunted against the table’s weight. “I think you should know some things before you die.”
Daveon and Two Fingers broke and watched each other, circling like a wheel, Two Fingers the axel, Daveon a spoke. They tested each other for openings, half-hearted clings of steel.
“Two Fingers’s real name is Kal-Makis,” Malic said. The table gave a great grinding sound against the wooden floor. “We’s part of a crew, back in the day. The Falcon’s Sweep. Probably never heard of ‘em. Merc group. The king liked to send us on raids into the gnome’s lands, go shopping with swords and fire, pick up stuff Humay couldn’t make for itself too easy what with the bone wall on one end and a desert prison on the other.”
Two Fingers lunged and his greatsword went high, which Daveon ducked, but before he could bring his own sword up into the half-orc’s guts, the greatsword was back and going for Daveon’s ankles. He skipped over the blade, then cried out when he landed, the pain from his knee exploding white behind his eyes.
“Well, we were over there in Lalabanadra, fucking up some gnome villages, pardon my language, kids, and we got trapped in one of their mines.”
Daveon circled again. They were on the far side of the hearth, now, and Daveon caught a glimpse of Alysha on the other side of the room, tied to the table. She watched him and he thought her intensity might overwhelm even the hearth’s fire.
Two Fingers roared and charged into Daveon, but before he reached him, he scooped up a stool with his left hand and flung it. In that split second, Daveon knew he had to decide which to eat, the stool or the greatsword. Some choices make themselves. He felt their swords crash into each other just as the stool split his face. A numbing, raging burn erupted across his mouth and nose. The taste of blood.
“Those rugged buggers,” Malic said, “They small, but damn sharp and they’d set to ticking some contraption to blow the whole damn mountain down on us. Well, long story short, I’m damn sharp too. Figured out their little fuse system and got me and this monster kicking your ass right now out alive.”
Elnis started to cry. Daveon listened to his son’s wail. Alysha called to her son, saying it would be okay. She promised. It would be okay.
Daveon let the pain melt away and he went at the half-orc. Go high. Clang against the greatsword. Roll his wrist, bring the blade around and up towards Two Fingers’s throat. Nothing but air, but set the half-orc back on his heels. On it went, Daveon pushing, closing in like a snake coiling around a mouse, constant, merciless pressure. He thought of something Anaz had told him, of how a true warrior will move like water, filling every opening. He made himself like water.
No. Not water.
He made himself like fire.
The half-orc started breathing heavy.
He smiled.
72
There wasn’t a part of Anaz that didn’t hurt, as if his skin were nothing but a vessel to pour pain into. His missing finger sizzled and throbbed. Great lobs of ache pulsed in his side and down his legs with every heartbeat and, for seconds at a time, he found himself having to stand still to rest. Death in a battle.
Yet, as he stood gasping, he saw something he never imagined he’d see. They were winning. The baron’s men, these weren’t the town militia. They were well trained and brutal and by the day they were winning.
Isabell fought near her father. Entire sections of the outer walls had been demolished by the Wallwraiths’ magic, the books and papers and wooden furniture burning, yet large mouths in the ceiling opened into the pouring rain, giving the room an almost beautiful balance of fire and water.
Move. Still is dead. He pushed off the wall and just as he did a Fletcher dropped on him, its razor-edged tail carving along his shoulder blades, opening a long seam along his spine. If he hadn’t moved, the tail would have buried itself in his skull. He swallowed his scream and spun, but the creature raised the steel edge of its tail and caught Anaz’s blade on it.
They separated and looked at each other. Anaz’s shirt dropped away, shredded by the attack.
This one was bigger than the others. Considerably. It rose up on its hind legs and cocked its head as if examining him and it grumbled something he couldn’t understand.
“We cannot speak,” he said. “I don’t believe we are meant to exist together. There can be no understanding.”
It dropped back to all fours and charged.
Anaz reached out with the hsing-li and created a wind whip beneath him. A small tornado of papers and rain spiraled under his feet and launched him into the air. The Fletcher jumped. Blade and claws crashed together and sparks erupted as they slashed and blocked, the two of them supported by Anaz’s wind. Two specters suspended in a throb of violence.
Alysha couldn’t take her eyes off of her husband. She’d never seen anything like this. Sure, she’d watched him practice on those dummies in the barn or on the tree trunks limbed and stood upright in a pasture the height of a man. Wood chips flying. But that had been play. Like dancing. Now, here, she saw what had always been inside of Daveon, something he’d always known had been there, but had never used, had never been able to use. Well, it was out now. He was using it now.
She startled when hands touched her
shoulder, jumping, but catching herself from yelping. Nikolai crouched behind her. He’d sneaked around the horses to her. He sawed the dagger against the ropes binding her hands.
“Oh, my beautiful, brave boy,” she whispered.
“Kal-Makis thought that a fine thing, me saving him and all, and decided to kind of follow me around from then on,” Malic said. He had levered the table onto its side and shoved it against the door and was now back, picking up stools to stack on top of it.
“Thing is, I don’t let just nobody into my crew. Learned that the hard way. You got to show me you mean it. Show me some grit.”
Every breath felt like Daveon was sucking on a campfire, his lungs searing and gasping. A terrible numbness burning in his shoulders. He was slowing. He knew the half-orc sensed it, too.
“So, before we stole out of the Falcon’s Sweep with all that coin, I demanded Kal-Makis give me two of his fingers. He got to pick which two. Know the best part? When I handed him my knife to do it, he wouldn’t take it. Put his hand into his mouth and bit and when he took it out, well, it looked just like it does now, just a bit more bloody. Spit those two grey sausages out into my palm. You reckon that?”
Daveon chased Two Fingers around the near side of the trestle table and their feet made frantic slushy sounds in Elliot’s blood, his gore blending with the sunflower seed husks.
“And since then, he’s been Two Fingers. I don’t know,” Malic said. He’d stopped barricading the door and watched Daveon. “I just thought you should know. It’s not your fault you’re going to lose. Two Fingers, he just made for this kind of work, you know? Made for it the way you ain’t.”
Suddenly, Two Fingers stopped backpedaling just as he exited the slop. He dropped to one knee and kicked at Daveon’s legs. Daveon tried to raise a foot to block it, but he lost his balance and spilled backwards into the puddle. Two Fingers’s sword followed. He heard Alysha scream. He brought his blade around to block, but didn’t have the strength to match the half-orc and the greatsword’s edge pushed through his sword. His blade shattered, metal shrapnel stinging into Daveon’s cheek and neck. The greatsword continued through, slower now, and bit into Daveon’s arm and the floor under him. He cried out.
Two Fingers jerked at his sword, trying to loose it from the floor.
“Daveon,” Alysha cried.
The half-orc couldn’t get his sword free and set to stomping Daveon instead. Massive boots dropped like boulders into Daveon’s stomach, chest, ribs. He felt something crack in his side. Coughed. Something hit his ear and set a ringing sound vibrating through his entire self.
Senseless. Daveon lay there, all the things he knew and was coming apart under the blows, and he saw his wife crying, one hand free, his son Nikolai working at the ropes and he thought that was nice of him to do. He’d always been a good boy. He thought he’d miss that when he died. He’d miss his nice boys. He’d miss his nice wife. He looked at her and he couldn’t hear her, but he thought maybe she was saying that she loved him. He hoped that’s what she was saying. He didn’t deserve it, he knew. He was glad he’d been able to say he was sorry, though. At least he’d been able to say that.
73
The room grew quiet. Isabell pulled her sword from a Fletcher’s carapace face, the wet vacuuming sound of yielding tissue, and let the dead monster clatter to the floor. She sucked in deep breaths and looked around the room and felt a smile stretching across her face. They had done it. Everywhere the battle had ended. Somehow, they had survived.
Seven, maybe eight, of her father’s men remained standing, all of them staring upwards. Sunell stood behind the baron’s desk, black clumps of gore lodged in her hair, also looking at the ceiling. Isabell looked up and saw Anaz hanging midair, an elemental force waging war with the undead.
“Anaz,” she whispered.
The Fletcher moved like a sandfury, a wall of threats that couldn’t be pierced. Everywhere Anaz went, a claw or a bite or a barbed tail waited for him. The calcified shell and amalgam of metal chains and plates sewn into the creature turned his every strike.
The hsing-li raged furious through his blood, burning him from the inside out and he knew he was using too much.
The Fletcher kicked off of his chest. It flipped backwards and swung its tail up from under them. Anaz threw himself sideways, midair, and caught the tail with Nattic’s sword while kicking the creature in the face. The Fletcher caught the kick, wrapped a claw around his ankle, and flung him into the wall. It was the crumbling section still remaining above the door to the bridge and when Anaz hit it, cut-stone blocks the size of a man cracked and broke free, plummeting to the floor with him.
He lost his grip on the hsing-li. The Fletcher dropped to the floor.
Mailed boots splashed in the pooled rainwater as the soldiers ran to help Anaz.
“No!” the baron shouted. “Leave him.”
Anaz and the Fletcher stood at the same time, watching each other. The Fletcher’s eyes darted to Anaz’s sword, then back. Anaz looked down.
Nattic’s sword had broken in the fall, nothing but a finger’s length of blade left above the crossbar.
“That’s ill luck,” he whispered.
Isabell moved to help him, but the baron’s grip shot out and held her arm.
The creature stepped towards him, one foot, then the other, claws clacking down individually into the slushy water. Anaz backed away with each step. It would pounce. He was almost to the wall. That’s when it would pounce. He reached out with the hsing-li and slowly pooled the water together under the creature’s foot.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dead soldier lying under the rubble, his sword only paces away. Another of the baron’s men stood over it.
Just as he knew it would, the moment his heel touched the wall the creature leaped. Anaz softened the mortar under its feet and the stones sagged with the monster’s pressure, swallowing much of its strength. The Fletcher was strong, however, and still reached him with the lunge. It hit Anaz, bowling him backwards into the wall, up and over the debris. He kicked out and used the wall to spin sideways, rolling for the dead soldier’s sword.
He came up onto his hands and knees and scrambled for the sword. The Fletcher clung to him, like a wolf bringing down an elk, draping his weight across Anaz’s back, front claws wedged between his ribs.
He reached for the sword. Nothing but water.
The baron’s man had kicked the blade out of reach.
Anaz bucked his hips to create space between him and the Fletcher, then used the hsing-li to pull a stone from the rubble into the opening between them. The Fletcher released its grip in Anaz’s side and they separated.
He scrambled to his feet, circled the creature and backed out onto the bridge between the two towers. Lightning combed along the horizon, rending white tears in the night’s black.
The Fletcher crawled onto the bridge after him.
The soldiers ran to the door behind it. Watched.
The bridge was long, too long for Anaz to run for the other end and open the door before the Fletcher would have him. He didn’t dare take his eyes from the creature to look for a weapon, though he knew it was hopeless, anyway. There would be no blade out here.
Rain lashed at him.
Rain.
Water.
As a boy, he’d heard tales of an Ascenic tribe high in the mountains above his Varkut clan, high enough to where water flowed for a week in spring before disappearing. They shaped the water into weapons. He thought about the stream behind his cabin, about the jagged edges of ice breaking apart in the spring thaw.
The Fletcher yowled a mournful screech and loped towards Anaz.
He closed his eyes, feeling the rain within the hsing-li. He touched the individual drops, his head wailing against the effort. He shaped them into icy quills. When he opened his eyes again the Fletcher was two paces away. Anaz threw forward his hands and thousands of ice-formed barbs exploded forth. Most shattered against the Fletcher’s skull and armore
d plates, but many found the soft links between, the fleshy gaps and the gut-rope stitching.
The Fletcher screamed.
“What is he?” Isabell’s father hissed.
She looked at him, then to Anaz, then back to her father. He stood stooped, his injuries still bleeding. Seven Claws hung loose in his grip.
“What you should have been,” she said. “Our hope.”
She drove her elbow into her father’s ribs. He grunted and doubled over. Isabell rolled behind him, hooked her father’s sword with her own and flipped the blade out of his grip. She snatched the hilt from midair.
“Anaz,” she shouted.
He looked up as she threw the sword, the blade skating across the stones, through the water, out onto the bridge and between the Fletcher’s legs.
It reached him at the same time the Fletcher did. He brought it up lightning quick, faster than any mortal she’d ever seen move, to catch the Fletcher’s open mouth. The spiked cross-guard snagged on the Fletcher’s teeth, shattering several.
Anaz and the creature moved so fast that she couldn’t see most of their melee, only heard the screech of metal on metal, the burbling hiss of the Fletcher’s breathing and when the lightning fell the violence would burn itself into her eyes, frozen and permanent.
Guards blocked Isabell from reaching the bridge. She couldn’t say how long they struggled like that, this Fletcher, this monster lasting far longer than any of the others, but soon Anaz slowed. He used less of his magic, seemingly unable to concentrate on both his sorcery and the sword work. The Fletcher feinted high like it was going for Anaz’s face, but then made a desperate stab at Anaz’s guts with its tail. Anaz wasn’t ready for it. He braced against the strike, giving himself to the blow, and leveled his sword. They speared each other at the same time.
She watched in horror as they tumbled over the bridge, swallowed by the black void below.
