The door to the main building burst open, and more than twenty monks streamed out, bearing swords. These were no men of peace, or at least they were not always so, he realized, and was glad for it.
“The heads!” shouted Akiri. “Take their heads! It’s the only way to stop them.”
He saw Brother Mallorie standing like a stone monolith in the middle of the courtyard, no sword, and more tellingly no hint of fear about him as he yelled, “The boy! They’re here for the boy.”
His brothers ran toward the building where Seyla was sleeping and formed a defensive line. Their blades were clean, oiled and sharp; cared for as by a soldier. Akiri glanced to the wall, weighing the extent of the mess they were in. Kyra was in the center of the yard, shredding more corpses with her claws. Unlike other battles they’d fought together, she spared the enemy her teeth, loathe to put such foulness in her mouth. He couldn’t blame her.
The shuffling corpses formed a line of their own, five dead men for every living one, and clashed with the monks in furious melee. There was nothing even about the fight, and the sheer weight of numbers overwhelmed the monks. It didn’t matter how many times their steel found its mark, the dead kept coming. And coming. Blades took them in the gut, the throat, opened their bellies, stuck in their arms and thighs. Steel clashed against rust-pitted steel. Akiri charged up from behind, picking off a corpse that was already on its knees. His sword bit into the corpse’s neck. It took three swings to cleave the bone before the head hit the floor. The dead man stayed on his knees, but stopped swinging.
In front of him, a bald-headed monk fell to enemy steel. Three of the dead fell on him, sinking their teeth into his flesh. They fed ravenously, tearing the meat from the monk’s bones. His brothers didn’t give ground despite the horror of what failure would obviously bring. They hacked wildly at undead flesh. They cut and thrust, hitting meat and more meat, but without the discipline of true warriors. Every wild swing took more from them, robbing their strength second by second. Eventually they would be overwhelmed. There could be no other ending to this. The dead thrust themselves upon the monks’ weapons, impaling their flesh so that the living could no longer defend themselves, allowing more of their cursed kind to swarm over them, clawing at their faces and throats.
A fresh chorus of voices rose behind him, and several older monks emerged from the monastery, rushing toward the fight.
Rather than throwing themselves into the melee, the old men began pulling back the wounded and their slain brothers.
Kyra released a mighty roar. Akiri turned to see two more of the dead drop from the heights of the wall. One landed on her back, sinking its steel between her scales, as the second sliced blindly at her haunches with a long dagger.
Her second scream was agonizing. He felt her pain tear through his soul. He had never felt anything like the fear and panic that struck him in that moment. He sank to his knees, hammered into submission by the tidal wave of pain that crashed over him, losing all sense of who he was.
His head dropped as his spirit fell into despair.
And then, in a rush, rage replaced the pain. His head came up, the sword in his hand. Kyra’s rage filled him and fired his blood.
Akiri charged to her side, ducking under a pitiful slash of a dagger, and rammed his sword into the spine of one of the two foes. Kyra lashed her tail around, sending the dead man sprawling and wrenching Akiri’s blade out of his hand in the process.
The fiend on her back clung to its weapon, kept off balance by her writhing.
Akiri threw himself across the dirt in a tight roll, came up holding the sword he’d snatched back out of the hand of the corpse, and dislodged the dead shell of a human that clung to Kyra’s back. He followed up hard, wrapping his arms around its torso and hauling the thing down from Kyra’s back. The corpse lost its grip and fell, taking him down with it.
Akiri fell hard on his damaged shoulder.
But now was not the time for pain.
The creature lurched back to its feet, sword raised for a killing blow. Akiri threw himself forward and rolled into its legs, his momentum toppling it. Kyra tore the other foe apart.
He took its head before it could rise yet again.
Behind him, the monks were being forced back. They had dropped half a dozen corpses, whose heads lay on the ground staring sightlessly at the dawn sky. But the relentless march would not be halted. Kyra had her eye on three more circling around off to their left. She let out a serpentine hiss, and this time she took to the air. The wound on her back was minor, just enough to swell her fury to bursting. Luckily, her hide was as tough as it was beautiful.
Akiri felt her relief to be free, to be skyborn, and it was joy in his heart, every bit as potent as the panic that mortal dread had inspired. He was not comfortable with either of these emotions. They weren’t natural for a Dul’Buhar. He had seen comrades die; watched them cut down by pitiless foes. He had seen the death stare take over the bodies of men he had known most of his life. He had seen them broken, tortured. But none of those feelings came close to what it had been like to share Kyra’s fear and pain in those seconds. It was not a sensation he cared to feel again.
He turned his back on Kyra, confident that she could fend for herself now.
He took two steps toward the monks and then stopped short. From the corner of his eye he saw a lone figure standing in the shadow of the wall. It wore a hooded cape and carried a long thin blade. Unlike the others, there was intelligence there. The figure stared at Akiri from beneath his hood with the full knowledge and intent of the living. More, his broad stance was firm and well-balanced, denoting an element of skill and strength. Here, finally, was a proper foe.
Akiri felt the call of violence thrill through his veins – though in that moment he was unsure if it belonged to him or to Kyra. He didn’t care. This was living as a warrior should.
The monks had made some small headway against the undead, taking another four heads. It wasn’t enough, though, even against such a disorganized assault.
But that was their fight. His lay across the courtyard, hooded, watching.
Akiri re-evaluated his enemy, the stench of death surrounding him in a thick cloying miasma. The hooded man met his challenge with a shadowy stare. He did not run. He walked slowly, sword held easily at his side, with the arrogance of a seasoned warrior. He knew his own power. The hooded man raised his blade up before the black emptiness of his hood, holding it there as though kissing the steel. His weapon was beautifully maintained, its edge finely honed. Akiri saw a single fat black fly emerge from within the hood to crawl along the length of the blade; then a second and a third and a fourth; then more and more, their buzzing incessant as they all slowly settled on the blade. Hundreds of them. Thousands. All of them from under the hood.
As he made his first strike, moving with startling speed, the flies fell away from the blade, like sickly flames. Akiri had seen nothing like it. Corruption came off the cadaverous figure in waves. He blocked the first blow that aimed to split him from collar to hip. The two blades slid along their lengths to lock at the hilt.
The force of the blow sent a shiver of pain the length of Akiri’s arm that found its mark deep in his wounded shoulder.
He took the full impact of the blow, and countered. The flies gathered around his blade as it struck steel. They swarmed up, going for his face. His eyes. His mouth. This thing was unlike the others. Stronger, for one. Much stronger. And there was thought behind its moves, not just the sheer monotony of suicidal attack. Akiri was forced to fend off a series of masterful strikes, all the while flies plaguing his eyes. The things crawled into his nostrils and wormed their way into his mouth as he tried to breathe. That would have been the end of most men. The threat went beyond mere strength and skill; Akiri had killed foes more powerful than any mortal man, but this adversary was every bit as unnatural as the rest of the dead.
His wounded shoulder didn’t help matters, making every movement labored, torturing him with subtl
e jabs and not-so-subtle lances of pain right through his core each time he met a blow to defend himself. The pain reduced the power behind his counters, too.
The hooded man was a match for this weakened Akiri with a blade. More than a match. He would have been a challenge for the Dul’Buhar, even without his ruined shoulder. He was good. And being dead, he was tireless.
The flies swarmed around them. Their incessant buzz was maddening. It wormed its way inside his brain, driving him toward fatal distraction. But he couldn’t allow the tactic to work. He concentrated on the sword before him, shutting out all else.
There was something vaguely familiar about the way his enemy fought.
As if he needed proof that this one was aware and able to think, unlike the others, it quickly became obvious that it was cognizant of his damaged shoulder and was concentrating its strikes to press this simple physical disadvantage. It was exactly what he would have done in the hooded man’s place.
Akiri was weakening, slowing. Against a normal foe, that weakening would have been mutual, but this one showed no sign of fatigue creeping in, despite the fact they’d been joined in constant battle, countering, blocking, striking, lunging, falling back and snaking out again and again for what seemed like an age. The longer they were joined, the more obvious it was there could only be one winner here, and the less likely it was to be Akiri, unless he found a way to turn the tide of their combat. But that meant risking everything on a single move. And the hooded man must surely have begun to sense his mounting desperation.
He had no choice.
But desperation was dangerous in more ways than one; cornered, it was a case of fight or die, and this wasn’t going to be the end of his road. He had unfinished business. As Akiri lunged, aiming to unbalance him, the hooded man twisted right and planted the pommel of his sword directly into the center of his wounded shoulder.
Akiri staggered back, blinded by the black agony that flowed through his body. Up above he heard Kyra’s own shriek of pain and knew their bond had forced her to suffer the same blinding torment that almost overwhelmed him. He barely avoided a savage blow to the meat of his right thigh. Biting back the pain, Akiri blocked three blistering strikes, each one harder and faster than the one before. Blood was soaking his sleeve and stained his entire chest. His shoulder had opened again, and he felt the strength draining from his legs.
The hooded man crouched low and brought his blade upward, aiming to impale Akiri with cruel steel, and with a savage twist of the wrist, disembowel him. The sword came too close for comfort, Akiri barely avoiding the opening strike. He expected the hooded man to break and deliver another savage blow, but he didn’t. Instead he released his grip on his sword, his hand snaking out to close around Akiri’s wrist. His grip was merciless. Akiri couldn’t break his hold. With his other hand, the hooded man reached up, digging his fingers deep into the flesh of the wound until they touched the bare bone beneath.
The world exploded in a fire of pain.
Unbalanced, Akiri staggered back until he felt himself pressing against stone. The statue. Pain ripped through his entire body as the hooded man sank dead flesh deeper inside his ragged wound. There was no release. No respite.
Akiri had no choice but to drop his weapon as he struggled to wrench his arm free.
The hooded man’s grip was steel. He wrapped his free arm around Akiri’s neck and pulled him close. Close enough to taste the sweet sickness of dead flesh behind the hood. Close enough for the flies to gather, crawling all over his face.
Akiri drove his head forward, bone hitting meat, and pounded at his throat and belly in a rage of screaming fury. He would not be undone by this fell fiend. It would not draw the last life out of him. But the blood was flowing in earnest. He was weaker now than he had been a moment before, and would only become weaker still. The flies crawled across his open eyes. Ignoring them as best he could, Akiri reached for his dagger. He barely managed to drag it down the middle of the hooded man’s cloak before those cadaverous fingers closed around his wrist again, and the dead warrior used all his weight to press it up against the stone thigh of the statue behind him.
Then, with a violent jerk, his attacker was thrown several yards back, sprawling across the snowy courtyard.
Kyra.
She had ended the unnatural lives of the dead that challenged her and had come to his aid. He didn’t waste time thinking thoughts of gratitude. Already the hooded man was rising. He would not stop. He could not stop. A relentless enemy driven by darkness.
Akiri snatched up his weapon and rammed the blade through the shadow where the hooded man’s throat should be. He was about to withdraw the blade and take the man’s head when the hood fell back. It was a face he knew better than his own. Savagely scarred, blistered and covered with suppurating sores that served as a nest for the endless flies, there was no mistaking his sword brother’s haunted eyes.
“Cammaric.” Akiri’s voice was barely a whisper, filled with desperate denial.
The gem set into the pommel of Akiri’s Dul’Buhar blade emitted a faint glow. The dead eyes of his friend cleared in that moment, the two of them locked in a lethal embrace, as recognition crept across the disfigured face.
“Kill me,” he somehow found the words. “Please.”
“Who did this to you?”
“Seyla,” he said, his voice becoming weaker.
“He is safe. I swear to you. But I need to know what happened if I am to protect him.”
Cammaric’s burned lips struggled to shape around another word. “Yarrow.”
Akiri had no idea what it meant. “Yarrow? Is that a name? What does it mean?”
Cammaric opened his mouth, but choked on a sound that refused to reshape itself as a word. The light in his eyes faded fast, as did the iridescent glow of the gem in the pommel of Akiri’s sword. Akiri looked into his friend and sword brother’s lifeless eyes. “You did not deserve this end. And you shall be avenged.”
In a single fluid motion, he jerked free his sword and spun around, arm extended.
The blade passed effortlessly through his flesh, and his friend’s head fell at his feet.
Akiri stared down at the body for a long moment, the rage in his heart threatening to rob him of reason. Now was not the time. But soon. He bowed his head in farewell, and then looked to Kyra. “Take his head and drop it out of sight. The boy should not see this.”
She let out a growling hiss. Gripping Cammaric’s skull with her front foot, Kyra took to the sky.
Akiri stepped over his friend’s body and turned to the monk’s ongoing fight.
Blood was dripping down his fingers, and his shirtsleeve was stained red. He felt light headed, the horizon threatening to slip away, but he would not allow the monks to perish while there was a breath in his body.
They had slain all but a handful of the vile creatures, though they had endured heavy losses.
Attacking from behind, Akiri made short work of the remaining dead, claiming their heads to add to the growing pile on the blood-stained snow.
As the last enemy was defeated, an eerie silence fell over the parade ground, only broken by the moans of the wounded and the labored breathing of the exhausted monks. They had won. Though victory did not bring celebration.
“Burn the bodies,” ordered Akiri, looking for Mallorie among the living. “Even those of your fallen.”
“We will not burn our brothers,” one monk protested.
“Would you have them rise again as one of these cursed beasts? Is that the fate you would wish upon them? Until we know what has caused this, you must take precautions. Now, do as I say.” There was no question, no doubt, and the horror of having to kill some corrupted version of their own friends was enough to get them to comply.
He left them to it. The survivors gathered firewood to build a huge pyre in the center of the courtyard. The wounded were being taken inside.
He saw Brother Mallorie finally, among the more seriously injured. Akiri examined him bri
efly. The wounds were severe; he would not likely recover. Julla waited at the door, sorting the monks according to their injuries as they were brought in.
He waited until the courtyard was empty of the wounded before joining her.
“Seyla saw what you did,” she said before he reached her. It wasn’t an accusation; she understood that he’d had no choice in the matter.
“Are you sure?”
“I was beside him at the window. He recognized his father as his hood fell away.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Akiri rasped, gripping the door frame. His head was swimming. “I should speak with him.” To see his father dead once had been traumatic enough. To see him die again, and in that foul state – such a thing could break even a grown man’s mind. What must it have done to Seyla? Akiri felt himself falling, but Julla wrapped her arm around his waist just in time. She was surprisingly strong to hold up his considerable weight. He resigned himself to the fact that he could not go on and allowed her to help him inside.
“Where is he?”
“Don’t worry about Seyla,” she answered. “I’ll see to him. Right now we need to tend to you before you bleed to death.”
Akiri was in no condition to argue. The power in his merkesh gave him strength and would help accelerate the healing process, but even the greatest warriors had their limits. And his had been tested.
By the time they reached a bed, he was barely able to stand, even with her help.
Julla carefully removed his shirt and peeled away the bloody dressings. “Sweet Mishna.”
Akiri wanted to ask what was wrong, but could no longer speak. His tongue had lost its words. His shoulder felt as though hot lead were being poured into the wound to seal it. Perhaps Cammaric won the fight after all, he thought, as darkness began to pull him into its deathly hold. His last conscious thought before his senses were completely gone was a memory, a sound, the dying cry of his sword brother.
No.
He would live.
He had sworn an oath of vengeance.
Akiri: Dragonbane Page 9
