Around him, he sensed the chimeras equally engaged in their bloody work. Busy, too, were the Historian, Arune and Aoife. Even the Fool was fighting. Some of the sailors had joined the fray, a few had already fallen, and a few had fled. Vykers was dimly aware that the Frog ought to be somewhere in all of this, but he hadn’t the time to worry about the boy. The surprise attack had just about overwhelmed the landing party; the present and foreseeable future offered nothing but more of this desperate battle for survival. They could take stock when and if they repelled their assailants. Vykers took a nasty slash across his upper left arm, an event almost unprecedented in his life, but it only served to inflame his already raging anger. On a backswing, he smashed the pommel of his sword against the faceplate of one attacker; on the fore swing, he drove the point above a second man’s gorget and just under his visor, almost decapitating him. A red mist filled the air, so furious was the bloodshed. Hysterical, frightened laughter added an eerie element to the goings-on and found its echo over and over again throughout the melee, a sure sign that Hoosh was having his way with the attackers. The night stank of sweat, urine and bile.
“Spare the damned horses!” Vykers yelled again, though he doubted anyone cared at this point.
Fire and lightening rampaged through the enemy’s force, taking men from their saddles faster than they could be counted. Yet, more continued to pour from an unseen rent in the darkness. Vykers had never experienced the like, but found it exhilarating even so. Bodies began to pile up around him, making it look as though he stood in a pit, reminiscent of his battle against the grebbers. Eventually, he had to climb up the dead just to reach his next target. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the remaining knights galloped off at speed.
As his battle-induced adrenalin subsided, Vykers lost his strength and dropped backwards onto a pile of the slain. In short order, the pain of his wound became too great and he lost consciousness.
When he recovered, he felt ashamed, unmanned by his weakness. Tarmun Vykers never failed. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and saw Aoife standing a few feet away, watching him.
“Are you injured?” she asked.
“No more ‘n usual.” Vykers got to his feet with difficulty, gritting his teeth at the pain in his side. “Everybody make it through alright?” Aoife didn’t answer quickly enough, and Vykers knew there was a problem. “Who’s done, then? Not the boy…” he said.
The A’Shea shook her head.
The Reaper was in no mood to play twenty questions. He waded through the corpses, searching left and right, until he came to the body of Number Three, whose head was nowhere to be seen. Vykers fell to his knees and closed his eyes. It couldn’t be so. Three had been his most staunch companion, a force of nature, a true warrior. It hadn’t occurred to Vykers that Three could be killed…except by his own hand. And Three had never given him reason. It was easy to blame the Queen: if she hadn’t been abducted, they’d have never gone on this Mahnus-cursed journey.
But the truth was, it was Vykers’ fault. He’d been courting an attack and had proven woefully unprepared when it came. Three was dead because of the Reaper’s hubris. Well, the chimera wasn’t alone in that regard. Long indeed was the list of friends who’d gone to it because of Tarmun Vykers’ arrogance. This loss was especially painful though; this one hurt as badly as the wound in his side. Without opening his eyes, he asked, “There any horses hereabouts?”
Aoife was confused. “Horses? Yes, there seem to be several in the area. I guess their owners are dead.”
Arune wanted to weigh in, as well, but deemed it a bad time to criticize her host. Let him sort this out, let him heal a bit. She needed to understand his thinking.
“We lose anybody else of note?” Vykers wanted to know.
“Most of the sailors. Nobody else.”
“What about that other chimera?”
“He’s still alive, licking his wounds at the moment.”
“Too bad,” Vykers muttered. Then, “Where is he?”
“Over by the fire. You’re not planning to hurt him, are you?”
And what if he was? Vykers wondered. What fuckin’ business had the A’Shea to question him or intervene? He stood, stared at the pile of dead knights. How’d they get the jump on us? He asked Arune.
They blinked in as a group. I’ve never seen that before with this many men.
You’ve never tried it?
Not with this many, no. And I didn’t notice a Shaper in their number.
Guess I’ll have to ask the Historian.
With the toe of his boot, Vykers flipped one of the knights onto his back. Knights in full armor. Some local king’s gonna sleep a lot less comfortably tonight, I’ll wager.
Arune couldn’t help herself. So, the bonfire was about getting horses? But she knew he wouldn’t respond, and he didn’t.
Instead, he strode over to the remaining chimera and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, in the same way a lioness might carry her cubs. The creature did little to resist. Wordlessly, Vykers dragged the chimera to the body of his fallen brother.
“You know what to do,” Vykers rumbled.
The chimera did nothing, clearly confused.
The Reaper cuffed him on the back of the head. “Go on. Do what needs doing. Three would’ve expected it.”
“I do not understand,” the chimera confessed.
Vykers was flat out of patience with the new chimera. He extended his claws and ripped into Three’s corpse, removing, after some effort, what looked to be a kidney. “Whenever one of the Five fell, the survivors ate him. In that way, they kept him alive, forever a part of their number. You gotta do the same.”
When the new chimera remained inert, Vykers struck him across the face. The Reaper would’ve been gratified to see the creature react in anger; it did not. “You a coward, then? That why my friend died?” The chimera’s eyes wandered to the folks sitting by the fire. It seemed he needed privacy to carry out the ritual.
“Fine,” Vykers growled. He stooped, grabbed a hold of Three’s leg, and dragged the dead chimera off into the saw grass, a good hundred yards or more from the fire. “Eat,” he commanded. Yet again, the chimera resisted. Vykers pondered the kidney for a minute or two, considering the possible consequences, and then bit into it. When he’d eaten the liver of an earlier chimera, he’d had no relationship, no history with the beast. Eating a piece of Three, however, was a great deal more difficult. He forced down a mouthful or two and then turned to the surviving chimera. “See? Do it.” He slapped what was left of the kidney into the creature’s paw and stalked off towards the fire, hoping the beast could do in solitude what it could not accomplish with witnesses.
“Anybody round up the horses?” Vykers barked, back at the fire.
“They are secure,” the Historian answered with equal surliness.
Arune and Aoife each knew better than to ask questions; it was clear what had happened: Vykers had been careless. No one and nothing would be harder on him than the man himself.
“And the ship’s crew?”
“Those who survived have gone back to the boat.”
“And the Frog?”
“He’s alive,” Aoife was happy to say. “He’s around here, somewhere.” Then, she realized “somewhere” was not good enough. Not for her, anyway. She started looking for him.
The Reaper threw himself down in the sand near the flames, though not even their heat and light could penetrate the cold, blackness of his thoughts.
“Perhaps we should move our camp away from these…bodies,” Hoosh ventured.
Vykers was unreachable.
With a heavy sigh of resignation, the Fool began dragging bodies away.
A while later, the surviving chimera returned to camp. The Reaper was alert enough to note a complete absence of blood on its face or body. He stood up and walked off to the place he’d left Three’s body, only to find a large mound of sand. Certain of what he’d find, he asked Arune, anyway.
There a
full body under there?
It wasn’t the kind of thing that required a conversation. Yes, Arune replied.
Vykers was inclined to kill the chimera and be done with it. But he’d made a mistake, a grievous mistake, in being so cavalier about the bonfire, and his friend Three had paid dearly for it. Well, the Reaper could kill the other chimera in the morning if it still needed doing. He wasn’t going to rush this decision.
On his way back to the fire, Vykers passed a growing mound of bodies that the Fool had been building. It seemed the loony fucker was good for something after all. Again, Vykers lay down in the sand. Eventually, the exertion of battle took its toll and he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
~SEVEN~
He felt a cool hand on his shoulder, knew it to be Aoife’s.
“I can’t find the Frog,” she whispered urgently.
“Prob’ly just gone off to take a piss,” Vykers replied without opening his eyes.
“He’s been gone for hours.”
Vykers lurched into a sitting position. Agony. “What do you mean, ‘hours?”
Aoife looked exhausted. “The last time I recall seeing him was just after you came back to the fire.”
Vykers took in his surroundings, noted the sun’s position in the sky. “Shit,” he said. The boy had been missing for as many as ten hours. The Reaper extended an arm and the A’Shea helped pull him to his feet. His wound was giving him extra grief this morning. The new chimera still around? He inquired of Arune.
Aye, said she. He’s fishing in the surf.
Sure enough, the crazy beast was up to his shoulders in the water. Like that’s gonna help him or us. “Have you questioned the Historian or that idiot jester?”
Aoife nodded.
What about you? Vykers asked Arune. Tell me the lad’s still alive.
Oh, he’s alive.
Then where the fuck is he?
You’d best go check on Three’s body for the answer to that.
Another one of Arune’s games. Vykers made a beeline for Three’s remains and found the sand completely scraped away and the body half-eaten. For a long time, he just stood and stared. Then, Why would he go and do a damn fool thing like that? What in all hells was he thinkin’?
Trying to please you, maybe?
How the fuck’s that s’posed to please me? Vykers demanded, before looking down and seeing his own hands, with claws fully extended. Aoife’s gonna shit.
I expect so.
The big man turned and walked to the water’s edge, where he stopped and whistled at the last chimera. It heard him immediately and waded sheepishly to his side, carrying a couple of good-sized fish in his left hand.
“Yes?”
“I know you didn’t eat Number Three, like I told you to.”
The creature bowed his head, shrunk into himself almost imperceptibly. “I did not.”
“I need a reason not to kill you.”
The chimera, having no doubt of the warrior’s abilities, answered, “What must I do?”
“You can still hunt, no?”
“I can hunt,” said the creature.
“The boy’s gone missing. Find him and bring him back. Alive and unhurt.”
The expression of relief on the chimera’s face was almost comical. “I can do that!” he proclaimed.
“Then get about it. I ain’t askin’ twice.”
The chimera ran off like death was chasing him.
*****
Oh, she was angry, all right. Vykers had never seen her so angry. “I wanted to take him back to Lunessfor, but you knew better!” Aoife thundered at him. “I said travelling with you was too dangerous for him, but did you listen? Have you ever considered anyone’s counsel but your own? You are not a god, Tarmun Vykers, however much you may think so.”
No, he wasn’t a god. Neither was he used to being yelled at. By anyone. And for Aoife to go after him like this in front of the Fool and the Historian was more than he could stomach. “You’ve said your piece. Have done, now.”
But the A’Shea was not so easily controlled or appeased. “Have done? You may’ve killed the boy! You certainly got your friend Three killed!” She felt justified in thinking such thoughts, but as they spilled off her tongue, she could see she’d gone too far. The look Vykers shot back at her was so full of menace, she felt sure her death was but seconds away. A trickle of sweat ran down the center of her back.
The Reaper looked out to sea, where a longboat had been dispatched from the ship. Without acknowledging Aoife in the slightest, Vykers retrieved his pack from the fire circle, fished something out of its depths, and stalked down the beach to meet the incoming sailors.
All this, Aoife watched with the dread certainty that Vykers was not finished with her.
As for Vykers, the longboat’s approach was evidence the shit storm in the aftermath of the previous night’s battle continued. He knew exactly how this would go: the captain would argue that he and his crew had been contracted for transport, not battle, and thus threaten to leave.
There was only one answer for that, and the Reaper was more than ready.
As the captain drew near, Vykers could see the man was working hard to maintain a take-no-prisoners demeanor. But he was still just a man, with the unenviable job of telling the Reaper how things were going to be.
“Save your breath, Captain,” Vykers called and held out a handful of the largest gold nuggets the sailor had ever seen.
“D’you think to buy me, Reaper?” the man asked, his boots crunching in the sand as he climbed from the longboat. “I’ve lost a good part o’ my crew. We’ll be hard-pressed to make it home safely, which I mean to attempt this very day.”
“You were hired to bring us here and wait ‘til we were ready to leave again.”
The captain eyed the gold, still sparkling in Vykers’ outstretched hand. “No one said nothing about dying ashore,” he said half-heartedly. “Still, that gold would go some ways to compensatin’ my crew for damages…”
“And this ain’t the half of it!” Vykers laughed. “But I’m willin’ to give you this-here, now, and the rest when I come back. And, o’ course, you’ll get your share of whatever treasures we find inland…”
That was more than good enough for the captain. Gold in hand and the promise of plenty more to come? He couldn’t agree fast enough.
“There’s just one other thing,” Vykers said…
*****
She wanted to rage; she wanted to continue raging, but she feared she’d pushed the big man to the very edge last time. One more slight, she suspected, and he’d snap her neck. “You’re leaving me behind?” was all she could get out.
“That’s right,” he said scornfully. “’S too dangerous, travelling with me, anyway. Ain’t that so?”
“But you need…”
“I need nothing, A’Shea. I got by for decades before we met; I figure I’ll do the same once you’re gone.”
What could she say? He was right, after all.
“The boy shows up, the Historian knows how to bring ‘im here. I’m sure you two’ll be be right comfortable aboard the ship ‘til I get back.”
A lesser man might have added, “If I get back.” But Vykers had no need for such games. He was confident to his marrow that he would succeed in his quest and equally confident that he would return. As furious as she was at him, Aoife couldn’t help admiring these qualities.
Arune, on the other hand, was disgusted. Vykers’ stunt with the bonfire had resulted in absolute catastrophe, and the Reaper’s decision to banish Aoife from the party was far and away the most frustrating experience the Shaper had ever shared with her host. But, with the mood he was in, there was just no way to broach the subject of Aoife’s importance to the mission without drawing Vykers’ ire. For all her power, Arune felt every bit as trapped as the A’Shea. Even the Fool, Hoosh, enjoyed more freedom than either woman, though Vykers had vowed to kill the man some day. A great sadness came over the Shaper as she observed Aoife bein
g trundled into the longboat, as if she were part of the captain’s newly acquired treasure. Oh, Arune had no doubt the woman could take care of herself in Vykers’ absence. What was less clear to the Shaper was how she would cope with the A’Shea’s absence.
And now Vykers was talking to the Historian, like he did any other morning.
“Where’d all the bodies go?”
“I buried them.”
As Flies to Wanton Boys (Immortal Treachery Book 2) Page 24
