The Darkslayer: The Battle for Bone (Book 10 of 10) (Bish and Bone)

by Craig Halloran

  Little Erin hugged his neck, patting his broad back. “Bye-bye, Daddy.”

  ***

  Kam didn’t fight the tears. She waved the fingers from the only hand she had left. She cradled Erin to her body with the other arm. Her heart sank as she watched them go. She caught the gaze of Brak. For some reason she mouthed the words, “Take care of him.”

  Brak silently replied, “I will.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The dwarves and soldiers stood behind blockade after blockade of stone piled up across the Royal Roadway. A score of them were behind every blockage, spaced out with ten yards between them in a staggered pattern. The only way through was to step over the men behind the blockades or come right through.

  The orcs, burly brutes with coarse black hair, beat their wooden shields with axes and swords. Howling at the top of their lungs, hundreds of them rushed headlong into the dwarven army.

  “It begins!” Mood bellowed. He waved his huge hand axes high. “The only good orc is a dead orc!” He rushed headlong into the tide of hairy men. Two orcs bore down on the dwarf with flails with spiked balls of steel on the end. Mood’s axe flashed. The first orc’s yellow eyes widened as his weapon hand detached at the wrist. Before the second orc could swing, Mood split his face open like a ripening melon. He put his axes to work.

  Chuk! Chuk! Chuk!

  The dwarves poked holes through the first striving rank of the orcs. The human soldiers’ spears poked the piggish men in the back and belly. The clamor of battle was a glorious death call of steel and metal, slicing and cracking bones. The orcs cried out with hatred for the short, stalwart men who were centuries old. One orc, with a layer of metal armor the others didn’t have and a face painted in dark blue, cracked a dwarf’s skull with a two-handed hammer blow. The dwarf’s broken teeth fell out on the street. He died on the spot.

  “Hardon!” Mood cried out the name of the dwarf. His axes chopped through the battling throng where the orc killer fought like three in one. His coat of mail glistened in an enchanted way. His hammer sang through the air when he swung. The orc’s thunderous blows knocked men and dwarves clear off their feet. Mood collided with the orc at the outermost blockage. Their weapons banged together.

  In a husky voice, the orc, a full foot taller than Mood, said, “Ah, a blood ranger. I’ve always dreamed of killing one. You’ll be the first to fall.”

  With the battle raging from all directions, Mood and the orc went at it. He parried a blow from the orc’s hammer. The jarring blow woke him up a little. In a counter, he slashed his hand axe across the orc’s belly. The sharp dwarven steel didn’t penetrate the coat of mail.

  The orc, with a mouth of teeth that seemed as wide as his head, gloated. “You can’t kill what you can’t cut!” Lifting his hammer over his head, the orc thrust down with power and speed.

  Mood parried by crossing his axes. The fierce blow drove him to a knee. The hammer’s momentum made it pop into the top of his head. Painful spots exploded in his eyes. A knot throbbed on Mood’s dwarven skull. Through clenched teeth, he said, “I felt that! Now you’re going to feel me!” He swung like a farmer slicing down wheat with a sickle.

  Whack! Whack! Whack!

  Mood pounded the orc’s ribs with all the strength he had. His blows came strong and fast. The orc backpedaled, sucking for breath. He couldn’t lift his hammer to swing. Instead, he used the hammer’s handle and his arms to block the blows that were busting his rib bones. Mood flipped his axes in his wrist. He used the flat backsides like a hammer. “You don’t know how to fight with a hammer, piglet! I know how to fight with a hammer.”

  The confident sneer on the orc’s face went flat with fear. Hefting his hammer in front of his chest, he launched one last swing. The momentum sent him tumbling forward.

  Mood swatted the clumsy effort aside with one axe. With his other axe, he busted the orc square on the back of the head. The orc flattened out on the ground, dead. “Huzzah! Who’s next?”

  Three ogres standing eight feet tall waded into the ranks. They each carried a halberd like a man carries a spear. The humongous brutes locked their wicked eyes on Mood. They had stringy hair, big hard bellies, no armor, and arms and meaty hands that could throw anvils like a skipping stone. The one in the middle held a dwarven man’s head. He tossed it over his shoulder and said to Mood, “You are next, red beard.”

  ***

  Jarla led the attack formation of royal knights and riders weaving through the blockades into the surging orcen troops. One with her horse Nightmare, she wielded two long swords with devastating accuracy. Orcs cut into the path of the stampeding beasts. Nightmare trampled their thick bones into the cobblestone road. The sound of hooves crushing bodies delighted her spirit. The raven-headed warrior let out a shrill cry. Nightmare reared. The hooves came down, crushing another orc beneath her bulk.

  Just beyond the first wave of orcs were ogres. They hurled rocks the size of a man’s head at the riders. One rock whizzed at Jarla. She ducked. The ball of stone smote a knight’s faceless helmet. The knight toppled from the saddle. He fought his way to his feet just in time to be gored by orcen men with spears.

  “Yah!” Using her thighs and feet, Jarla turned Nightmare halfway around. Using the horse’s momentum, she unleashed a lethal cut.

  Slice!

  She cut deep in the side on an orc’s face, right between the ear.

  Stab!

  She buried the tip of her steel through another orc’s mail-covered chest. Something hard poked her in the back of her ribs. The ghost armor stopped a spear tip from goring through her ribs to her lungs. She slashed backward, chopping the spear tip clean off. She kicked the orc in the face, crushing his nose with the heel of her boot. The orc staggered backward. His hairy hand fell to his sword. Before he’d drawn the weapon halfway from his scabbard, Nightmare ran over top of him.

  Over a dozen ogres twenty yards down the road hurled the huge rocks with devastating impact. More stalwart knights were knocked from their saddle and into the bloody fracas of fighting on the streets. A boulder smote Nightmare in the hindquarters, sending the big mare into a half spin.

  Jarla’s blue eyes blazed like a demon released from the bowels of the netherworld. “Captain!” she called out to a royal knight that rode tall in the saddle. His plate armor was stained with orcen blood. Gore coated his wrists. “Get those lances up here now and follow me!”

  The royal captain’s voice carried over the clash of weapons as he called out to his men. From the dwarven ranks behind the blockade, the lances were passed from rider to rider while the foot soldiers vigorously kept the orcs at bay.

  The captain passed the lance to Jarla. She sheathed one blade. He gave her a nod as he grabbed a lance for himself. “Lead the way, Jarla!” He lowered his visor. “Let’s take those fat bellies down!”

  The touch of a lance sent a fire through her. She was a royal soldier, once. She was one of the finest ever. She handled a horse and weapons as well as any man. Now, strangely aligned with a royal enemy she’d hated for years, she led the charge for their freedom. Jarla wheeled her horse into the path of rock-throwing ogres. She took aim at the towering brute in the middle. The ogre’s arms were so long his scarred knuckles almost hit the ground. The ogres threw large rocks that whistled toward the target. One stone just missed Jarla’s head. She dug her heels into Nightmare. The horse lurched forward.

  Hooves pounding the stone sounded like the cracking of thunder. The orcs scrambled out of the way of the fearsome riders as they bore down like a crashing wave of piercing steel. Orcs were gored and trampled. Nightmare covered the distance between Jarla and the ogre in less than two seconds. The ogre cocked its arm back for one last deadly throw.

  “Yaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Jarla screamed. The lance blasted into the ogre’s chest and poked out the other side. Flailing its arms, the bestial humanoid groaned. Jarla spurred Nightmare onward. The lance went deeper into the ogre’s body. The ogre thrashed. The lance ripped out of Jarla’s hand. The en
raged beast snapped the lance like a toothpick and swung. The blow connected with Jarla’s head, knocking her out of the saddle. “Ugh!”

  Jarla hit the ground and rolled. She fought her way up to her feet with one sword still in her hand. She charged the brutish seven-footer. With part of a lance stuck in its chest, the enraged ogre charged right at her, arms outstretched and clutching to break her neck in its powerful hands. It lunged. Jarla dropped to her knees. Swinging her sword upward in a two-handed thrust, she split the ogre in the groin.

  Glitch!

  Eight hundred pounds of ogre muscle and bone jumped up and down, wailing like a baby. Holding his bleeding nether region with both hands, the ogre danced on his feet. His lips quivered. The ogre’s eyes watered.

  Jarla pointed her sword at the ogre and laughed.

  The brute’s eye narrowed. Letting out an awful wail, the ogre rushed forward two more steps, fell face-first, and died. Jarla stuck her sword in its head just to be sure. “So that’s how you make an ogre cry.”

  CHAPTER 21

  An underling soldier popped his head over the building’s parapet. Venir ran its eyeball through with the tip of Brool’s spike.

  Glitch!

  For over an hour, Venir and Brak fought the underlings who surged onto the rooftops. The fiends climbed up using their hands, or they rode on the backs of spiders. Death shined in their gemstone eyes. Venir ran from one spot to the other. Brool’s hard chops whistled through the air, bringing black blood and devastation.

  Chop!

  Venir found a little freedom in the way he battled. He wasn’t wearing the helmet. He only wielded the axe. Without the helmet, he fought with a different kind of clarity. It was only him fighting, the man, with no help from the special helmet that became one with him. He was in control this time. His body wasn’t fed by the hungry waves of Helm’s strange power that sent the underlings charging at him like a beacon.

  From the opposite side of the building, Chongo let out a loud bark. The two-headed beast’s lion-like paws were on the rooftop parapet. He barked at a spider the size of an elephant coming their way. Six underlings rode on the giant arachnid’s back, hurling javelins.

  “Brak!” Venir called out. “Watch out for the webbing!”

  Brak finished a swing into the backside of a sand spider that had scurried up on a dwarf. The dog-sized creature, venom dripping from its teeth, latched on to the dwarf’s neck. The blow from the white cudgel knocked the spider across the rooftop. It rolled up in a ball. The dwarf’s neck sizzled and bubbled. His legs twitched. Brak reached down to help the hard-fighting dwarf with the oozing hole in his neck to his feet. The spider’s legs popped out. It spun and shot webbing from its spinnerets, tangling around Brak’s feet. He pulled against the tacky goo. It held and kept his feet fastened to the floor. “Did you say something about webbing?” he yelled back to Venir.

  The sand spider darted toward him. Its fangs dripped venom. Poison shot from its mouth, landing on Brak’s forearm. The venom dripped down the chainmail that covered his arms. Droplets seared the skin on his hands. “Argh! That stings!”

  The spider scurried onto Brak’s legs. Its eight glaring eyes, red marbles of evil, looked up at him as it spit. The venom sizzled on his armor. The spider sunk into the links and chewed on the metal.

  “Get off me!” Brak waved his arms, fighting for balance. Using an awkward swing, he struck the spider in the back again and again. The hulk didn’t move. In a fit of anger, Brak dropped the cudgel. “I’ve had enough of this!” He reached down, grabbed the spider’s legs, and ripped them off one at a time. He slung the legs away. The spider’s teeth held fast. He punched the monster in the face with his massive fist. “Get off me!”

  Venir appeared. He poked the spider in the back of its head with Brool’s tip. Its jaws unlocked. Venir flicked the dead spider aside. Using the edge of Brool’s blade, he cut the sticky webbing away from Brak’s feet. The webbing dissipated with the lightest touch from the foreign metal. “Again, watch out for the webbing.”

  “Thanks.” Brak picked up his cudgel.

  Accompanied by dwarven soldiers, they beat back the underlings and spiders that climbed the walls. The same was happening on rooftops everywhere. Dwarves and men fought with their very lives. The underlings came with gleaming eyes, darkly clad, moving forward like a cloak of death.

  Side by side, Venir and Brak slew a few more. Venir snatched an underling javelin from the air that came within inches of Brak’s face. He flung it back at the underlings riding the spiders. “Come, fiends! What are you waiting for?”

  As if on cue, a giant spider scaled the wall of the building where they stood. It spewed a blanket of webbing.

  “Slat, not again!” Brak said.

  As the webbing floated down over top of them, Venir swung his axe in a high arc, cutting into it. The webbing gave way to the metal. It dissolved. The underlings’ chitters turned into angry cries of terror. Some of them hurled their bodies from the back of the spider at the human enemy below.

  Venir caught a diving underling on Brool’s spike. Brak batted a jumping underling’s skull like a ball. Both fiends died on impact. Venir tossed his underling over his shoulder like a shovelful of dirt. “Chop down those legs!”

  Chongo latched his jaws on the legs of the giant spider, which covered half of the rooftop. Venir cut through one of the stiff legs at the joint. Brak busted through another. The spider wobbled for a long moment before landing on its side. Underlings scrambled out of the basket that was attached to the spider’s back. The first underling who set its ruby-red eyes on Brak got its face backed in by the cudgel. Its sharp teeth cracked off a split second before its corpse hit the ground.

  Venir went to work, chopping the belly out of the spider. Its innards spilled out in a tide of sticky ooze. The huge thing’s body and legs twitched a few more times before its hairy husk went still. Covering his nose with the back of his mouth, Venir said, “I’ll never get used to that stink.”

  Brak clobbered an underling with overhanded blows that shook the roof of the building.

  “That’s enough, Brak, get over here!” Venir said.

  Wiping the red-black gore from his eyes, Brak walked over. “Yes?”

  Venir stuck his hand into the spider’s split-open body. He pulled out a sack of glistening white goo, and stretched the dripping glob toward Brak.

  “Father, what are you doing?”

  “Unless you want that venom to eat your hand off, you’d better apply it.”

  Covering his nose, Brak said, “It’s smells awful.” Wincing, he put his hands in the goo. The hairs on his brows lifted. He let out a sigh. “How can something so bad feel so good?”

  “Only Bish knows.” Venir retrieved Brool. “It’s time to get back at it.”

  Brak showed a broad grin. “Aye!”

  The intense fighting went on for hours.

  CHAPTER 22

  Nikkel ran a wooden slot handle down the groove in the track of his heavy crossbow. It pushed the crossbow string back and locked it into place. In half a second he loaded a bolt, took aim, and fired.

  Clatch-zip!

  The missile sailed true, traveling from one building top to another before burying itself inside an underling’s belly. The fiend doubled over, clutching its bleeding belly before falling behind the building’s parapet.

  Beside him, along with a host of other dwarves on the roof, Billip fired arrow after arrow as fast as he could shoot them. In a moment between notching an arrow on the string, he said, “Where did you get that thing?” He fired.

  “What thing?” Nikkel reloaded and shot again. The next bolt rocketed over two buildings before dotting the eye of an underling. “Hah! Let’s see you top that mark. Not even your bowstring has that much power.” He held up the little block of wood with a groove and a handle on it. “As for this little device, I like to call it my speed loader. I invented it on my own. It’s much faster than using my foot, or turning that clumsy crank. You just ha
ve to be strong enough. I don’t think you’re strong enough.”

  “I don’t need to be.” Billip fired two more arrows, hitting underlings who battled on the adjacent rooftops. Each arrow landed dead in an underling’s head. “I’m hitting twice the marks, twice as fast,” the archer said.

  “Hah. I should show you how to drop them fast.” Nikkel closed an eye and aimed. He spied a pair of underlings fighting side by side, but one slid behind the other. He pulled the trigger. The bolt zipped across the street below and ripped out the necks of two underlings. As the fiends swayed, the dwarves they fought hacked them down with hammering chops. “Top that one!”

  “You really don’t need to challenge me.” Billip notched two arrows on the same string. Nikkel rolled his eyes. Billip turned the bow on its side and aimed at underlings rushing the wall from the streets. Nikkel leaned over the roof. Billip fired. His arrows busted one underling in the clavicle. The second underling had an arrow sticking out the top of its head. It waved its arms and ran in a tight circle. Loading more arrows, Billip laughed. “Now that’s a first.”

  Nikkel laughed so hard he fumbled to reload Bolt Thrower. “Now that was funny!” He took aim at an underling who climbed the window ledges on the outer wall. While the orcs and ogres battled in the streets, the smaller, quicker underlings had taken another battle to the rooftops. Their numbers were hard to count. Nikkel lined up his sight on an underling with dark-blue eyes, who glared at him. “Stop looking at me!”

  The underlings chittered.

  Nikkel fired. The bolt went down the underling’s throat, vanishing fully in its mouth. It fell from the ledge, landing face-first with the tip of the bolt sticking out of its backside like a tail. “Top that!”

  “No more games,” Billip said in a serious tone. His eyes were cast beyond Nikkel’s shoulder. Sweat glistened on his face. “I’ve got a feeling we might not have enough arrows.”