Mortal Consequences

by Clayton Emery

  As Knucklebones dragged him around a corner, the barbarian glimpsed a horde pounding down the ramp in blazing light. City guards in polished lobstertail helmets and yellow tunics emblazoned with I for Ioulaum carried silver-tipped maces and I-shaped shields with gasglobe lanterns bolted to the upper bar. As they surged into the crowd, a mix of workers and young nobles, they methodically clubbed down the working class, breaking collarbones and arms and cracking skulls, while letting the nobles stream past and up the ramp. That rich snots escaped harm while average people suffered lit Sunbright’s temper, but Knucklebones soon towed him into a dark tunnel after other escapees.

  Yet light flared ahead. Someone yelped before being clubbed down. Curses and screams and thuds resounded.

  “They’ve come two ways!” Knucklebones chirped, and immediately tacked against the stalled crowd.

  “Get behind!” Sunbright yelled, hoisted her bodily, and plunked her in back of him. “Which way?”

  In spinning darkness and a milling crowd, the small rogue latched onto his belt, and tugged sharply left. “Go! But for the love of Kismet, don’t kill anyone!”

  Good advice, the barbarian recalled. He’d killed guards in Karsus, and whole teams with sniffing golems had tracked them to Knucklebones’s lair, and wiped out her gang. Pointing his arms as if swimming, Sunbright cleaved into the milling mob, but gently.

  And too late. Lights sparkled before Sunbright’s eyes as three guards in a wedge smashed and trod under a half dozen people. The big barbarian became their target. In the glare of shield lamps, he saw three maces raise as one.

  Tilting back on one leg and mashing Knucklebones against a wall, Sunbright raised a moosehide boot and lashed out, hollering, “Ra-vens!”

  His high kick smashed a lantern atop an I-shaped shield. Glass and a silver-wire cage crunched, and the globe winked out. The mighty blow snagged an inside corner of the shield and wrenched it from the guard’s arm. The man rocked back with a curse, his hand sprained. He fumbled his mace and dropped it.

  The other guards were quick, though. One flailed for Sunbright’s head, missed. The other slammed at Sunbright’s knee. Even though he retracted the leg, searing pain like a bone saw sang up and down his leg.

  But not crippling pain. He stamped the foot flat, missed crunching toes, ducked low then drove high with his shoulder. His broad frame collided with both shields. The owners were shoved up and backward, off-balance. The barbarian roared, and hammered them again. One guard flopped on his bottom. The other, a woman, raised her mace, but found her wrist snagged in a grip like a vise. With a massive twist, Sunbright slammed her hand across the top of her own shield. She cried out as the wrist sprained or snapped. The shank of the club rapped the gasglobe so it winked out. The barbarian was encouraged. To douse the lights would give Knucklebones the advantage, and they could escape.

  But the last guard danced back, leveled his shield, and took aim. From the corner of his eye Sunbright glimpsed a flash of silver. He made to throw up his right hand, but his sleeve fetched on a corner of the shield. Too late he realized the I-shape, with its sharp angles, was also a weapon. He ripped his sleeve loose, but too late to keep the mace from braining him.

  Yet the mace barely flipped over his head, and bounced off his back. A streak of black had flitted by, and Sunbright realized Knucklebones had hurled her elven blade. Hadn’t she ordered not to kill?

  The trio of guards were down, and the flood of people stampeded over them. The guard with the cracked wrist rolled on the slimy floor, whimpering in pain, but someone had already swiped her silver-tipped mace. A child kicked her ribs, sawed through her belt, and jerked away her belt buckle.

  Sunbright felt a dig in his ribs. Knucklebones barked, “Move your bloody big feet! Ha! Drop it!” A woman had stooped for the dark elven blade. Knucklebones stiff-armed the woman on her duff, and snatched up the black hilt wrapped with silver wire.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to kill!” Sunbright recalled.

  “Who killed? I flipped it backward!”

  She waggled the hilt under his nose, showed the diamond-shaped skull-popper. The guard had been beaned on the forehead.

  The mob pilfered the guards bare. Then the last gasglobe was stomped and the catacombs were plunged into blackness. It was stifling hot with so many frantic bodies, and sweat stung Sunbright’s eyes. The tunnels grew more chaotic as folks ran in two directions at once. Evidently there was trouble at both ends.

  True. A roar, a wash of light reflected on steel weapons and stone ceiling, shrills from the common room, and another wedge of brutal guards charged. The thud of ebony wood and silver on skulls and shoulders was sickening.

  “This way!” Having sheathed her blade, Knucklebones planted both hands on Sunbright’s midriff and pushed. Sunbright walked backward, shoving smaller folk aside like a bow wave. Before long, she called, “Duck!”

  He crouched, and backed through a doorway into a small room with only a few people. Knucklebones poked his belly, and slid under his arm.

  Cold glow striped the walls. Sunbright saw long pipes fitted with shelves, jars and crocks atop. A pantry. A handful of thieves and dockworkers screamed at a man by a stout door in the opposite wall. The man was thick through the body, bald, and adorned with enough earrings to make a bracelet. He yanked an iron handle, thumped the door with his shoulder, panted and sweated and thumped again. The door didn’t budge.

  “Open the damned thing, Senon!” someone yelled. The crowd sweated, cursed, glanced for oncoming guards, but Sunbright blocked the doorway.

  “I can’t! It must be glyphed!” The fat man slammed the door with his shoulder, hammered with his fist. “We’re trapped!”

  Chapter 6

  “Hogwash! He’s lying!” The shout came from Knucklebones, to Sunbright’s surprise. She whapped his elbow. “Go! Pound him! Knock him aside!”

  The crowd mashed against pipes and shelves, creating a corridor for the two men. Without a clue why, Sunbright advanced, hands poised to grapple or brawl. Instantly he saw that Senon had been exposed at some trick, for the fat man’s face changed from helpless fright to rage. Whirling from the door, he snatched at a boot top, and yanked up a triangular spike four inches long. Enough steel to pierce a heart through the ribs. Bellowing like a bull, the man charged.

  Sunbright yanked his belt knife, thin and a foot long, and caught it tightly in his right hand. He wished he could unsheathe Harvester, but he had to stop the fat man’s rush.

  Hollering, Senon bunched an arm thick as a hog’s leg to stab straight. His left he put on guard, but he counted on Sunbright quailing and falling back.

  Sunbright didn’t budge. Rather, the tundra-born fighter rotated both hands in circles to distract his foe. And when Senon closed, the barbarian attacked from an unexpected corner.

  As Senon lunged to strike, Sunbright’s left foot snapped up. Senon’s fat knee smacked into Sunbright’s sole, jolting him to a halt, but the fat man stabbed wildly, hoping to land a lucky blow.

  Luck was no part of Sunbright’s fighting. Skill and instinct drummed into him by training saved his life. As the deadly spike slashed by, he snagged the fat wrist in his free hand, locked his wrist, and twisted cruelly. With his arm crooked backward, Senon stumbled helplessly. Sunbright neatly slipped his blade into the pudgy elbow and severed the tendons. Blood erupted to spatter a half dozen folk squashed along the walls, who winced and yelled. Dragging Senon like an ox to slaughter by his trapped wrist, Sunbright inverted his own wrist, and bashed the stag horn pommel on the fat man’s temple. Thin bone popped, Senon’s eyes flew wide, then slammed shut. Sunbright kicked the falling body against the far wall. Senon’s flopping head bashed the door frame. A fountain of blood soaked his clothes.

  Amazed at the cool savagery, the crowd whispered and gasped. Knucklebones squirmed past them all, and rattled the far door’s handle. It opened easily onto a wet cave smell. “Come on!” she called.

  Sunbright sheathed his belt knife, and straighte
ned his shirt. “He’ll bleed to death!”

  “Let him! He’s a ferret!”

  That word again. Rather than shove, Sunbright let thieves rush by. Finally, the impatient Knucklebones grabbed the barbarian’s thick wrist. “Let’s go!” she said.

  They scurried into wet darkness that echoed like wide-open chambers. “What’s a ferret?” Sunbright finally asked.

  “A crawler. A squealer. A spy in the pay of the guards.” Her panting voice led him on. “I saw the door wasn’t locked because he was pulling it shut. You could see the muscles in his arm work, and the handle couldn’t be glyphed, or his fingers would have been singed. He must have thought us stupid gulls!”

  “Quick of you to spot that in a second.” Sunbright’s voice was warm with admiration.

  Her voice floated back, “It’s nothing.” But he imagined she smiled.

  “Where are we bound?” he asked. The dark made Sunbright’s neck ache, for he feared bashing his skull.

  “Wherever this leads. We’ve lost everyone else. They went up at the fork, but I suspect a mousetrap awaits there. South by west will get us out, I hope.”

  Sunbright had known they jogged alone. Now cold light glowed as Knucklebones striped her vest. Underfoot ran dirt and gravel and creases dappled with water that reflected silver. The passage opened overhead, and he heard bats squeak, a comforting sound because it promised an exit. Abruptly the trail slanted, and Sunbright had to hold Knucklebones’s shoulder to keep from overrunning her. She trotted as confidently as a cat until her foot crunched something hollow.

  “Whoa!”

  “What is it?” he said. “That sounded like—” He squinted at more light. Knucklebones stroked a round rock aglow, but it bore eye sockets, an underslung jaw, and yellow fangs. “Skull of an ore,” she said. “Ores,” he corrected. “Look.”

  What looked like yellow sand around them was actually bones. Knucklebones lobbed the luminous skull, and they saw that the boneyard extended farther than the glow could reach. Thousands, perhaps millions of bones littered the cavern.

  “I don’t … understand …” murmured the shaman.

  “Sure you do,” Knucklebones hissed. “Remember? In my time, the cities warred, and prophecies came true? The Rain of Skulls.

  “An explosion hit Ioulaum’s underside, and bones spilled out in the millions. The legends recalled Ioulaum was sheared from one of the Unholy Mounts, Redsnow or Bloody Hill, where an orcish army was wiped out. This is that cavern.”

  “Yes …” Sunbright squinted upward. “I keep forgetting the natural caves lie upside-down so we walk on ancient ceilings. But all this death. There should be—” He swallowed the word “ghosts” before it escaped. No sense in conjuring the spirits of thousands of slain ores.

  “Come. Quickly,” she said. Even steadfast Knucklebones was spooked, and led him by the hand. They couldn’t walk without stepping on bones, so they closed their ears to the crunching and grinding. They made for the far end of the cave.

  A quarter-mile on, dawn light sparkled on cave walls. They reached a grate where the thief pronounced, “Wisht!” to pop the rivets. Rattling it aside, they crawled into a culvert and up to the street. Merchants called to their friends and neighbors, clucked to ponies, and lugged their wares to the marketplace.

  Sunbright was bewildered by the abrupt transition from death to life, but the city-born Knucklebones was already towing him into the crowd, saying, “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “East side. Street of the Faithful Protector. Bly’s. To have her scry what you’ve sought so long.”

  * * * * *

  “It’s no good, Cholena. It’s foolish to fight the yak-men.”

  “Oh, so, Drigor? Ayaz died for nothing? And Ridon and Nodin, their deaths were meaningless? Best their ghosts haunt your nights until all turns black before your rheumy eyes.”

  “Berate if you will, woman. I only speak from three hundred years’ experience. That counts for nothing, I suppose.”

  Deep in the Iron Mountains, Drigor and Cholena, his sometimes wife, worked at a stone bench littered with crude axe heads and blades. The weapons had been puddled in antique molds. By candlelight reflected from copper and brass holders, the dwarven artisans worked with craggy hands to etch the old designs deeper: entwined dragons, bold kings, noble steeds, and fierce sailing vessels. They polished or darkened the swirls and whorls, and brought a glittering luster to all. They argued as they talked, an argument years old.

  “We must defend our homeland,” Cholena chided. “The Sons of Baltar have inhabited these mountains for centuries. It’s—”

  “Aye, centuries,” Drigor interrupted, “but not forever, not since the first dwarf sprang from a glacier by the breath of Igashum. I’ve lived here all my life, three centuries, but my father, Yasur, came from the Rampant Mountains, which tall men call Gods’ Legion. If my father could leave his homeland—”

  A scream cut him off. Not a scream of pain, as someone scalded by molten metal at the forges, but a scream of terror, pure fright. Drigor and Cholena grabbed a mattock and stabbing spear, clumped in tarry boots, and thundered down a wide tunnel toward the foundry.

  Lights sputtered like sparks from a forge. Above the screams of the mortally wounded the dwarves heard a screech like a dragon’s.

  “Where is the bright-haired one? Where is my enemy? I smell his tracks! He must die! You will die for sheltering my foes!”

  Drigor and Cholena burst into a scene from hell. The cavernous foundry, lit by red and yellow fires from iron slotted doors and smoldering heaps of charcoal, was crammed with a writhing mass of black tentacles. A dozen dwarves were snared in hundreds of slimy arms that grew before their bulging eyes. The slither and rustle of these thousand arms was deafening, like the crash of surf in a storm or the roar of an avalanche. Kicking dwarves hung ten, twenty, even thirty feet in the air. Tentacles coiled around them, sliding into their clothing, wrapping arms and legs, circling their necks, as if the plantlike assassin had a mind and a will.

  Centermost in the room, in a hollow the roots avoided, a tall scarecrow of stone shook misshapen fists and screamed. “I’ll destroy you all! Ill rip the flesh from your bones, then crack them and suck the marrow! Ill rend your children before your eyes unless you tell me where lies my enemy!”

  Drigor went for roots, Cholena for the monster.

  A dozen feet high, Cappi and Pullor hung upside down. They kicked and writhed, yanked at the vines around their necks with powerful, work-worn hands, but couldn’t squeeze even a finger under the tendrils. Only the solid muscle of necks and chests kept them from being suffocated, and Drigor saw they couldn’t hold their breath forever. Slinging his keen-edged mattock over his head, he scraped the blade within a hair’s breadth of a stone wall, and sheared through a dozen dark roots. The devilish web sagged, and Cappi’s boot thumped Drigor’s shoulder. Savagely the old dwarf yanked his comrade down, towing a snarl of roots along.

  Deft slashes of a worn knife freed Cappi from the thickest vines. The young dwarf sucked air like a bellows, and retched from a raw throat. Turning to the wall, Drigor leaped, chopped, tore magic vines, and tugged Pullor free. The dwarfs face was white, and Cappi had to bang on his chest to get him breathing. By then Drigor had waded deeper, hacking at the jungle growth toward Oredola trapped farther on. The stink was terrible, for the slimy vines reeked like something dead and rotten raked from a river bottom. Drigor gagged on the stench, spat, but kept cutting.

  By reddish hell-light he saw scuttling movement and cursed freely. The black roots he’d sheared curled in the air. Not alive, but not dead, they clung again to the wall, and spawned new vines from bare rock. Cappi yelled as vines twisted around his boot, and he had to stomp them loose while dragging Pullor clear.

  They’d never defeat this spell, Drigor could see, but he cleaved valiantly, and called, “Hang on, Oredola! I’m coming!”

  All the time, the monster screeched madness. “Where is my enemy? I’ll punish you all!
I want the bright-blond barbarian! These caves will be your boneyard!”

  Cholena didn’t know what this flinty monster was—golem or crypt servant or wight or troll—but few creatures could stand a thrust of dwarven steel. Charging head on, stifling a war cry rather than warn the fiend, Cholena bunched her arms to stab straight and hard. The fiend turned from its ranting too late, and the hand-forged blade jarred its spine just above the cockeyed hips.

  Yet the monster must have been true stone, for the hollow-ground blade only knocked loose a shale chip. Red blood flowed from a jot no bigger than a dwarf’s hand. Cholena was shocked at the toughness of the hide, and how easily the blade had skipped off. Frantic, Cholena stamped to set her feet, slashed upward with her stabbing spear to strike again at the small wound. Only by prying it open could she hope to kill the fiend.

  But the flint monster whirled with clawed hands, fire flickering in its blue, staring eyes. “You dare? You would harm me, who crawled alone from the depths of hell to gain vengeance? You would halt my quest?”

  The last thing Cholena saw was twin tornadoes issue from the unmatched hands of the fiend. Then she was blinded by the hundred-mile-an-hour winds that erupted before her. Blistering, killing winds roared over the dwarf, tearing away her eyes, ripping loose her hair, then the scalp from her skull. Hissing zephyrs like a basket of knives stripped the unfortunate dwarf to shreds in seconds, until hair and flesh and bones and then chips of bone were scoured to splinters and blown in a gory trail across the floor of the foundry. The spear was flung away to clatter in a corner.

  Drigor looked up at the first shrill of wind, and howled like the tornado himself as Cholena died. He’d dragged Oredola free of the death-dealing vines, was cutting his way to the next dwarves, so enwrapped he couldn’t tell their identity. Whirling winds filled the cavern with noise and destruction. Backlash from the tornadoes whipped around the monster so magic vines were wrenched from the walls. The flint creature became a center of snapping, flailing tentacles that spattered into slimy fragments or else wrapped around their creator like seaweed around a shipwreck.