Myrana slipped her dagger from its sheath. Sellis had his swords in hand, and Koyt had another arrow nocked.
They were as ready as they could be.
Koyt fired. This arrow hit the giant mid-belly. He simply swept his clawed hand, snapping it off and leaving the head buried, then took flight again, hurtling right for them. His wings were sheer, almost transparent, like an insect’s.
He hadn’t bothered throwing rocks, which was how most giants preferred to fight—knowing if they could crush an enemy’s skull from a distance, the battle was over before it began. But this one seemed determined to deliver his violence close up, by hand.
Koyt got one more arrow into him, which the giant tore out and tossed aside, before he came down in their midst. The earth shook at his landing. Myrana’s feet almost went out from under her, but she caught herself on the fingers of her left hand, dropping her staff but hanging onto the dagger.
The giant’s stink assaulted her first, ripe and foul. He swiped his tree trunk-sized arm toward them. Myrana dodged it, as did Sellis, but although Koyt tried to duck under it, the giant’s elbow slammed into his skull. He dropped to the ground.
Sellis attacked, swinging his right-handed sword in an arc toward the giant’s outstretched arm and thrusting the left-handed one into the giant’s upper thigh at the same moment. The giant screamed so that Myrana thought her ears would surely burst. He then stamped down had enough to quake the ground under her once again, and hurled himself upon Sellis.
The impact sent up blinding clouds of sand. Myrana moved in as close as she dared to the giant’s flailing limbs and stabbed him with her dagger, over and over, until his blood coating her hand and arm made the weapon almost too slick to grip.
She heard Sellis’s groans and the heaving of his breath, but she couldn’t see him. Koyt, dazed, shook his head and regained his feet, still unsteady. “He’s got Sellis under him!” Myrana cried. “He’s crushing him!”
Koyt got an arrow nocked. He drew back the string, almost fell down, righted himself and tried again. But the giant saw him, swatted like an annoying bug. That huge clawed hand hit Koyt across the chest. The arrow skidded harmlessly into the sand and Koyt reeled back, a deep cut gushing blood where he’d been hit.
Myrana looked for a critical spot that she could reach. If she jumped on the giant’s back, maybe she could hit the base of his skull, or the side of his neck. She was about to try when one of Sellis’s swords jutted up through the giant’s back, just beneath an unnatural translucent wing. The giant roared again and pounded his fist into the sand, as if he could shift the pain there.
Sellis squeezed out from underneath the cursed creature. He was disheveled, bruised and bloody. The giant grabbed at him, but Sellis’s blades flashed and two clawed fingers flicked into the air, blood spraying from their nubs. The giant screamed, drew his injured hand to his chest, and rose up on his knees.
Koyt still sat on the ground, one hand over his chest trying to staunch the bleeding. He discarded his bow and drew his short sword. “You’ve cut me, you big bastard,” he said. “Now you pay.” His voice was weak, and there was so much blood, Myrana didn’t know how he would manage to gain his feet.
She darted in behind the giant, reached up, and drove her dagger into the base of his back, just above his knotted loincloth. The giant lurched to his feet and she hung on, lifted into the air, but with her dagger tearing down through flesh and muscle the whole time. He reached around for her, and Koyt made his move.
2
Koyt stepped forward, clutching the sword’s grip in two hands, and swung with every ounce of strength he could muster. His blade arced left to right, at the same time the giant reached toward Myrana, his hand moving right to left. Koyt felt the combined force of both motions in his shoulders, almost knocking him off his feet. He hoped that meant he had struck bone, for the blade was buried deep in the giant’s forearm, the blood flowing as freely as an undammed stream.
The giant howled and kicked out with his right foot. Koyt released the sword and dodged, but the side of that foot caught him and sent him tumbling. He drew his head up in time to see Myrana finally drop away from the giant’s back and run a few paces away. The giant made to go after her but Sellis, who still had both his swords, charged him as soon as he turned toward Myrana. Sellis chopped and sliced. He was covered with the giant’s blood already, and no doubt some of his own. But he was the bravest man Koyt had ever known, and even when the giant spun back toward him, Sellis kept up his barrage.
Koyt tried to get to his feet, wincing at the stabbing pain in his side. Some ribs broken, he was sure. Blood coated his face and his abdomen, from the claw slice across his chest and cuts to his head suffered when he fell. His sword was trapped in the giant’s arm, probably wedged in bone, but the arm swung too fast for him to risk reaching for it.
The bow, then. It was his best weapon, anyway, the one he was most comfortable with by far. He had to move fast, before the giant overwhelmed Sellis. Biting back pain, he crawled on hands and knees to where he had abandoned it. He scooped it up, its familiar heft in his hand bringing him comfort, and reached for an arrow.
The quiver was empty.
One of the times he had fallen, the arrows must have spilled out.
He didn’t have time to look. Sellis backed away, keeping his swords in motion. Blood flew through the air with every swipe. The giant reached for him, though, and if he got a hand on Sellis again, they were done. Myrana was as brave as anyone, but she was on the small side, and crippled besides. And Koyt was too badly injured to battle the giant on his own.
He had to do something, now, before the giant caught Sellis.
He slid a bone knife from a sheath on his belt. The giant’s attention was fixed on Sellis, as if those flashing swords had hypnotized him. Koyt rushed up behind the giant, jammed the knife into the back of its ankle, and sliced across the tendon there.
The giant loosed another howl as that leg buckled. He drove his fist back, barely missing Koyt. Sellis dashed forward, slashing. Myrana had gathered stones and hurled them one by one at the giant’s head, aiming for his eyes. The giant was weakening, his strength flowing from his body along with his blood. We’re going to beat him—this Koyt knew, finally, as he braved another advance, meaning to strike at the leg that still supported their foe. We’re going to win this!
He had almost reached the giant when those weird wings beat against the air, lifting the giant though his damaged leg would not. The giant’s arm darted abruptly toward Koyt, fingers splayed, and another of those long, swordlike claws pierced Koyt’s belly, driving deep. He fell back, dropping his bone knife and clapping his hands across his stomach.
3
Myrana’s eyes froze the tableau before her: the giant, his damaged right leg hovering just above the sand, wings slapping the wind, his hand out toward Koyt, fresh blood dripping from his claw. Sellis, swords moving as if entirely independent of one another, blades completely red with blood, dicing giant flesh into the sand. And Koyt, struggling to hold his guts inside his body even as they slipped and slid around his fingers.
The moment seemed to last for a long time. She took in odd details, like the hairs on the giant’s arms, each nearly as long as one of her own hairs, but thicker—quills, almost. The color of Koyt’s guts, pink and gray, threads of crimson on them as they passed through the bloody gash. The look in Sellis’s eyes, lost and haunted, desperation driving him on even though hope had faded.
Then it passed and things were once again a frantic whirlwind of motion and sound. She had a moment’s chance and she jabbed her dagger into the giant’s left leg several times, then darted away before he could reach her. His wings stopped flapping and he crashed to the ground, losing his balance and toppling forward. One arm swung toward Sellis but missed. Sellis took advantage of the moment, apparently casting aside all fear and diving at the giant’s head. One sword drove into the giant’s eye, the other slashing at his neck. Myrana moved in again, stabb
ing his broad, muscular back. She, like everyone else, was wet with the giant’s hot, thick blood, its copper tang filling every sense.
She was still stabbing him when Sellis put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s done,” Sellis said. “You can stop now, Myrana.”
She shook her head, wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. Sellis was right. The giant was still, his back an uneven landscape of gashes and cuts. She had even shredded his wings; they lay broken and twisted on his back like paper wadded up and sliced.
Then she realized who she didn’t see. “Koyt?”
Sellis shook his head. Tears sprang into Myrana’s eyes, tracked down her cheeks. She looked around and found him lying on his back, eyes wide open, jaw slack, arms out to his sides. Blood was everywhere. “No!” she cried. “Koyt!”
Sellis held her, letting her weep against his strong, bloody chest. “He saved us,” Sellis said. “Without him, we’d have all died.”
“But … but … How do we go on without Koyt?”
“I don’t know,” Sellis replied. He held her closer, moving his hand on her back. “We just do. We just go on. Koyt did what he had to. Now it’s our turn.”
Myrana swallowed, gathering herself. Life on Athas was hard, death a constant companion. You had to move past it. Sellis was right. “Now it’s our turn,” she repeated. “We just go on.”
XI
THE CALL OF STEEL
1
The streets of Akrankhot had not, Aric was certain, seen this much activity in a thousand years. Members of the expedition fanned out in small groups of anywhere from four to ten, searching street to street, building to building, for the metal believed to be hidden in the city. They shouted to one another constantly, people of each group checking in with the ones on the roads parallel to theirs. No one knew what terrors the city might hold, and if one group encountered something dangerous, the others wanted to be able to respond quickly.
Not every street was as prosperous as that first grand avenue they had seen, but overall, the city still seemed to have been a place of considerable wealth. Buildings had been tall, most constructed with a seeming simplicity that actually required a great deal of skill. And there were ornate touches, moldings and carved capitals atop fluted columns, friezes and murals, that gave the appearance of a population with an interest in artistic expression, and time to practice it.
It had only been a matter of weeks or months since the dunes burying the city had moved off it, but in that time, a wide variety of insect and reptilian life had moved in. Aric, Ruhm, Amoni and Damaric encountered an array of beetles, flies, ants, caterpillars, lizards and other small creatures as they explored the ruins. They also saw the beginnings of plant life, green shoots that had erupted from the earth as if welcoming the sun after such a long burial. These sights added to the impression of a city only recently deserted, rather than one left vacant even before the birth of the Shadow King, back in the mists of a forgotten age.
They covered three blocks of a narrow street, with buildings crowded so close together the sky seemed only a dull green ribbon overhead. Some doorways were open, other times they had to break through doors sealed shut by time and desert sands. Many of the homes looked as if people had walked out in the middle of their daily activities. They checked upstairs and down, to the extent allowed by the condition of the buildings, and outside one of them, Amoni made an observation. “We’ve seen that a lot of the staircases have fallen down,” she said.
“Right,” Damaric said. They were back in the middle of the street, and she pointed to the higher levels of a few of the buildings around them.
“And look at this. The windows on many of these upper floors have been sealed off with stone and mortar. Some of the doors, too. In many cases the towers, spires or what have you have been knocked down.”
“You don’t think that was from the pressure of the sands that buried the city for so long?” Aric asked.
“It’s hard to tell,” she admitted. Sand was everywhere. Farther in, the city was still buried, but even where the dunes had shifted off the city as a whole, it had left plenty behind. “But look here.” She led them to where a turret had crashed down from a three-story building, and squatted down beside a few good-sized pieces. She lifted one, pushed it away. Sand slid off when she hoisted the chunk, but beneath it, the ground was relatively clear. “If the sand’s weight had knocked this down, wouldn’t it have landed on a thick layer of sand? I think these—at least some of them—were brought down before the dunes buried the city.”
“Perhaps true,” Ruhm said. “But what of it?”
“I don’t know, Ruhm, I’m just speculating. It just seems odd to me—as if they had given up on the upstairs long before the city was abandoned. Even in the buildings we’ve been in, the staircases going up are inaccessible more often that those leading down. And sometimes the walls are still solid, so what would have brought the stairs down?”
“What do you think happened?” Aric asked.
“I haven’t any idea.”
“Perhaps,” Damaric said, “the city’s residents became afraid of something out there. Something that could climb, or fly, a dragon or some other beast from the sky. Perhaps they decided that going down was safer than going up. So they built down, collapsed any spires that might have attracted attention, blocked off their upper windows, knocked down their staircases so anything entering on those upper levels couldn’t easily come down.”
“And perhaps it got them anyway,” Aric said. “Or drove them from their homes. There must be some reason a city so grand would have been abandoned.”
“No water,” Ruhm pointed out.
“That’s true, if there were springs or a lake or anything in the area, it’s long since dried up,” Aric agreed.
“I’m not saying it’s important now,” Amoni said. “Whatever they feared is likely long gone as well. I just thought it was curious.”
It was, and now that Amoni had pointed it out, Aric saw more and more evidence supporting her theory. Like her, he didn’t know what it signified. But it did seem to point to a citizenry fearful of some threat, and that realization made him look at the ruins with a different eye.
After the fifth block, by prearrangement, everyone was to meet back at the main avenue running through the center of the city to report to Kadya what they had found. These reports were likely to be brief, unless some group had had more success than theirs.
They were two streets over from the avenue, within view of most of their comrades, when they heard the shrieks.
2
Dune reapers were possessed of a terrible patience that allowed them to wait in a single spot for days, or longer, secure in the knowledge that prey would sooner or later come into range. They would eat anything, including sand or stones, if need be, but they had a strong preference for freshly killed prey. They lived in subterranean colonies, where the dune reaper matron grew to enormous size while female warriors and male drones went out in search of sustenance. Sometimes dune reaper colonies moved, leaving behind their carefully crafted nests, for reasons little understood, although it may have had to do with changes in the availability of water or food.
These things Aric knew.
He had never before heard their haunting cries echo through the vast stone silences of an ancient city, or the skittering of their feet, the horrific clacking of their mandibles and the scythelike blades on their front limbs, or the weird chortles and chuffs they made when communicating with each other.
When he heard them now, Aric clutched at Ruhm’s arm.
“Dune reapers,” Damaric said. “A lot of them, it sounds like. Hurry!”
They broke into an anxious sprint, hoping to join their fellows before the reapers attacked. There were probably thirty soldiers around Kadya, and as many slaves, but other groups were also still on their way to the meeting point. One of these, seven in number, was on the last remaining street between Aric’s party and the grand avenue.
That was where the
reapers struck first.
A slave running full-tilt for the protection of the larger group risked a backward glance and stumbled over a piece of debris in the road. Before she could get to her knees, a reaper warrior was on her. It shoved one of those long, slender blades between her shoulder blades, thrusting so deep that it emerged from her breast, red with blood. She gave a gasping cry and slumped forward, sagging on the blade. The reaper shook her free, and then two of its drones descended upon the slave, grasping her corpse with claws and dragging her away.
Ruhm held out a big arm, and the other three stopped where they were, hoping the reapers had not noticed them. More warriors and drones came into view, chasing the Nibenese. Two of the soldiers turned to fight. The reapers cut them down easily while drones sped past and felled the others.
“We’re cut off,” Damaric whispered.
As if it had heard him, one of the warriors slowly turned its head in their direction. The warriors’ builds were vaguely humanoid, in that they walked on two legs, and their heads sat atop their torsos and necks. But those torsos were lean and stringy, with ridges down their backs, short stumps of tails, and their heads long and bony, all snout and huge, toothy mouth and glowing red eyes. And the front limbs of the warriors ended in those blades, as if human beings had lashed longswords to their wrists in place of hands.
“Back away,” Amoni said.
Drones hauled away the bodies of the just-killed soldiers and slaves. Others advanced, with somewhat more care, on the larger group of Nibenese. Aric had no doubt they were using the Way to communicate as still others turned their awful heads toward him and his friends. Mandibles quivered, drool glistened where it fringed mighty jaws and gnashing teeth.
Two warriors, and their handful of drones, started toward them.
City Under the Sand: A Dark Sun Novel (Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun) Page 18
