He landed with a thud too faint for human ears and too unremarkable for elves’. With strong fingers and well-placed footing, he sidled up the side and slipped over the railing.
“By Galway’s arse, whattin I wouldn’t sell to have a night with one o’ ’em fine whores,” a voice grumbled below the crow’s nest, his lean shape swinging idly around the pole. The disgruntled sailor received a round of nods from four weathered companions, each man unaware of the shadow that had crept into position directly across from the mast.
The figure flicked a black oiled cloth from his belt loop and pressed it to his nose and mouth where it clung as tight as his own flesh. When the mask was secure, he withdrew a crystal vial, popped the cork, and let it roll across the weather-beaten planks. A single thunk signified that it had skidded down the upper level of the stern to nestle upon the main deck. The fog seemed to thicken, and then…
Bang!
A cloud of midnight blue gas erupted from the vial and the watchmen of The Black Queen dropped like stones to the floor, splayed and still as death.
Sellemar vaulted over the side of the ship, landing upon the deck just as the thick clouds lifted, a ray of intrusive light illuminating his face and dispelling him from the dark. ‘Too late for that, Noctem,’ he thought with a smirk as he surveyed the unconscious figures.
And then he was gone, clearing the deck in moments to arrive at a heavy trapdoor, its old handles beckoning Sellemar to venture inside. A swift tug, a muted creak, and he descended into the belly of the rocking, amber vessel.
As he reached the base of the cargo hold, a series of growls and hisses heralded his arrival. There was a tremor of feet and a pounding of fists against iron bars.
Sellemar’s eyes adjusted rapidly. The light emanated from a single lamp atop a decrepit wooden table. Its glow was hardly superior to the sliver of fogged moonlight from the world above, but it was consistent.
And it was enough to see that he had found his quarry.
The second bottle of Loedrin’s Breath was at Sellemar’s fingers in seconds, uncorked and sailing slowly through the air.
It bounced once. There was a furious growl. A soft hiss issued forth from an eruption of gas. And then the cargo hold from the Phantom Isles fell silent.
Sellemar felt his adrenaline level out as his prey became immobilized, and he strode forward as though the ship were his own.
And it was. With a lefry mask protecting him from the gas and a blade for defense in hand, he was the king of this shoddy vessel, unchallenged by the unconscious occupants sprawled out in their iron cells. Nonetheless, he maintained the same level of cautious preparation that had kept him alive for so many years—those creatures were only deceitfully peaceful now that the drug had rid their bodies of malice.
He contemplated the scene with impassive calculation. Rows of crates created small mountains before him, each marked with “Xs” of varying colors—whites, greens, reds, and blues. Their contents were a mystery, but given their origin, they were undoubtedly sinister in nature.
More important was the cargo of the iron cages—those beasts he had sent into a slumber. These were his prey. Bound in rusted chains, locked safely within their enclosures, were the demon spawn of Sheolra. They were brutal, soulless beasts, lacking sense of self and purpose. Violence. Bloodshed. Lust. It was all their kind knew, and all their kind could comprehend.
If the stories of Saebellus’ Beast were true, then perhaps it too was one of them.
These particular beasts had been wrenched from their abode in the abyss to the mortal realm, then ferried across the sea to fill the gaps of losses in Saebellus’ ranks. Already, Saebellus’ personal Beast lurked somewhere within the capital. And to think—the warlord was about to acquire more.
Sellemar’s lip twisted. It was a dangerous and sick desperation to use such animals of bloodlust.
He approached the bars of the first cage, drawing his sword and slicing in quickly and wholly painlessly. The beast was dead in seconds. He offered no prayer to ferry it onward as the demon possessed no soul for the gods to take.
On he progressed, dispatching the occupants of one cell after another with crisp efficiency. Soon the demons’ blackened blood oozed with an overwhelming stench not unlike rust, leaking with flickers of essence as the corpses returned to the ether. The scent was nearly strong enough to send a conscious male’s head spinning, but it was the sleeping that were stirred by the tangible call.
There was a sudden cry, a piercing howl that speared Sellemar’s core and rattled his mind. He recoiled from the bars in a surge of fear, even as the creatures before him remained eerily still in the sudden explosion of noise. He whirled around, eyes wildly searching for the beast that had risen above the powerful drug.
The scent of blood must have aroused its hunger—its lust so intense that it had shattered the bonds of Loedrin’s Breath with a crazed need.
There. From amidst the long shadows against the wall, one of the demons rose to its feet, its great mass trembling with fury. Its pale red eyes flicked and twitched, jerking about its enclosure in a frantic hope of finding a means to satiate its hunger.
It found Sellemar. Glee filled the demon’s eyes, its face contorting into a mockery of elven emotions. Cracked skin peeled upward in a fanged snarl. Then the beast wrenched its body toward Sellemar, its bulk contained only by the thick chains and bars that separated them.
At that moment, it felt unsettlingly insufficient.
‘By all the gods,’ Sellemar breathed in sudden realization as the shadows beside the demons shifted.
Three demons beside it were stirring as well. Bloodlust and a cry that split Emal’drathar… They would not be the only ones to awaken!
Sellemar sheathed his blade and hefted his spear, the familiar weight reassuring as he strode forward to the awakened cage. He had to slay them before their howls captured the attention of the Night’s Watch. “Damn Saebellus,” he muttered. ‘How determined must he be to ferry creatures from the demon realms?! Determined… and daft.’
Acting concurrently with his thoughts, he saw one of the demons wrenching at his bonds and roaring to Ramul, his chest bulging as his shoulders popped and grated, as though sensing Sellemar’s intent—and his confidence.
Then with one fierce yank, the chains at the demon’s wrists snapped away like the rusted bits of metal they were.
Sellemar froze, confidence waning.
The three demons that had awoken beside the first grabbed the bars and howled, latching onto his hesitation with mad delight. A ripple coursed through the four—a tremor of rare racial solidarity in which the obstacle, source of food, and enemy were the same.
The first demon snapped the chains from the three awakened beasts behind him, building his force against their prey. Their snarls intensified as they watched Sellemar’s swagger ebb away like the draining blood from his face. When the last demon in that particular cell did not stir, the largest of the four crushed its skull mercilessly beneath its heel. Essence and brain juice sprayed against the wall like the contents of a vomiting gut.
For the last time, its eyes met Sellemar’s. And it sneered.
‘Sel’ari guard me.’
With that, the iron bars separating him from the demons crumpled away like aged parchment and the demons tore into the amber glow of the rocking hold.
Sellemar leapt to the side, throwing his body behind a stack of crates to spin around into the shadowed alley behind him. He dashed into the darkness, his mind racing to calculate the differences in scent and vision, of his abilities versus theirs.
The cargo hold was vast, the many crates like a maze, and Sellemar darted and wove between them, low and out of sight. Before he had travelled even halfway down the expanse, one of the smaller demons found him. With a lurch and a cackle of triumph, its talons swept for the deep tissue of his breast.
Sellemar’s spear lunged with greater speed. He thrust it clear through the demon’s throat and in an unbroken motion, wrested
the weapon free to leave the demon’s essence dissolving on the beaten ground.
There was a sudden tap on the floor before him and a flash of shadow smeared the wall. A lean figure flitted just out of sight. The other demon was on the prowl.
‘Damn it!’ Sellemar hissed internally even as his breath remained calm. Only the tightening of his hand upon his weapon betrayed his fear.
The floor behind him gave the faintest creak and Sellemar whirled, leaping away on instinct, twisting his spear around to shield his narrow frame. The taloned hand shot from the darkness like a viper and raked down the shaft with a blow that knocked Sellemar clear off his feet.
But he was the hunter. Sellemar kicked the butt of his spear up even as he careened away, sending a wave of shock through the demon’s body with a solid blow beneath the chin. The head snapped up to the cobwebbed rafters.
It was the last thing the beast saw before Sellemar regained his footing and shoved his spear through the creature’s silver throat. It flailed once, its talons raking furiously for the nearby crates, and reared free in a final moment of crazed bloodlust. Sellemar immediately drove a second blow into the beast’s naked breast and threw it to the floor. The thud boomed like thunder through the cargo hold, but the taloned hand could do no more damage.
Sellemar straightened, swallowing audibly as his eyes shifted across the cargo. There were two more demons loose, but the wooden crates were just as sinister. He reached out a hand, wiping it gently across the white “X” beside him. To Ramul if he knew what was in this one, but he had seen enough of the storage hold already to warn him that the contents were malevolent. ‘More smuggled goods from the Phantom Isles. And nothing pleasurable to be sure.’ The Phantom Isles only betokened death and destruction, and the crates upon crates from the cursed lands were stacked nearly to the rafters. What was one demon to the mountain of these?!
And he had seen a drugged drake—large enough to rip a fully grown man to pieces in seconds—sprawled unconscious on the western side of the room. Gods forbid that wake as well!
The netted barrels of alchemic explosives around it brought him no further ease.
His breath returning, Sellemar crept past the body of the slain demon as though it might still lash out in death. His body tucked into the shadows as he moved, the shaft of his spear the only comfort in the darkness—his sword and shield against these bloodthirsty beasts.
The ship let out a heavy groan and Sellemar almost missed the soft creak of wood from somewhere nearby. He dropped like a stone into the shadows, hunkering beside a crate with breath held. He was fortunate enough to be able to driftwalk, but his body still carried a scent—noble though it was. Demonic olfactory perception was great enough to rival a dragon’s, even in a weakened state. He could only hope that the lingering odor of Loedrin’s Breath disrupted the demons’ senses enough that they could not locate him.
At least, not at the same time.
That was hardly too much to pray for.
He jerked his head slightly as he once more stood, annoyed by the grease of the lefry skin pressed against his face.
‘Damn it, Sellemar, you are playing too dangerous a game to lose your concentration now!’ He stepped over the body of a sleeping human, the only watchman to be seen below deck. The rest of the six members of the night crew would continue to sleep like babes up above him. But even with that danger averted, the cries of the damn demons would surely bring the Night’s Watch to arms in their stead—if they were not alerted already.
‘Perhaps the greater olfactible sensitivity is causing the demons to be further affected.’ And then a little jolt of pessimism to keep himself alert: ‘Do not count on that.’
And then he found himself tearing to the side, his body reacting on instinct before his mind had even absorbed the dark mass hurtling toward him. ‘Damn it!!’ There was an audible rush of wind, a horrible crack. The crate with the white “X” was hurled with such force that it burst open against the wall behind him, sending a spray of white worms into the air. They narrowly missed Sellemar as he scrambled to his feet, but the others oozed free of the broken planks to wriggle with alacrity toward the unconscious body of the human. Sellemar leapt off the ground instantly, placing his feet against the side of the hull while he rested the bulk of his weight against the spear that held him up. He watched in horror as the worms swarmed past. Then he kicked off the wall, flipping clear of the scene below and landing neatly on a nearby barrel.
The worms swarmed into the body of the sleeping human and in seconds, the man’s flesh withered and caved.
Maravian worms. He felt a convulsive shiver as he realized how close he had been to sharing the human’s fate.
His balance had hardly settled on the barrel when his eyes snapped away from the repulsive sight. ‘Sel’ari!’ The crate had not flown by itself!
But his distraction had cost him the ground. The two demons had emerged from the darkness, their bulging masses rushing across the crates behind him. The nearer one had vaulted from the floor before Sellemar could raise his spear. Wind whistled as the fist flew, smashing into the arm he had hurriedly raised before his face.
He tumbled from the barrel and slammed into the hull, the armor of the gauntlet saving him from an otherwise shattered forearm. His head struck the dense wood and left him dazed. ‘Defend!’ was all the sense his mind could scream, and he spat the blood from his lip as he swept his spear out blindly.
He heard a yelp as the demon skirted the tip. A shape landed beside it, snarling and posturing its blurry form to terrifying height, threatening the lesser beast from poaching its prey.
The fog in his vision cleared and Sellemar lunged, driving his spear into the belly of the smaller demon. It wailed and bayed, flinging itself away into the nearby barrel. It toppled over the side to sprawl, momentarily stunned, across the floor.
Sellemar pulled himself up rapidly, ignoring the jolt through his spine. It was only the subtleness of the pin prick that abruptly sharpened his self-awareness, and he realized in horror that he had fallen by the edge of the mass of writhing worms. He scrambled back, drawing the blade from his hip as he did so and slicing unhesitatingly at the sting emanating from his shin. The maravian worm sloughed out in two as the wound burst open, and Sellemar cried out in pain and terror.
‘Are their more? More?!’ his mind frantically cried, searching the length of his body for the feeling of pins and needles, hardly perceptible above the dance of his spasming muscles. He ducked low, narrowly missing the fist of the last standing demon. ‘No! No more! Focus!’ he commanded himself, even as his mind was racked with doubt. If the maravian worms did not kill him, this beast certainly would!
Its eyes were wild and bloodshot, its mouth gaping wide in a shrill scream of fury and delight. Blood. Blood! Sellemar’s blood was flowing in a steady stream down his leg now, pooling into his boot and squishing as he shifted his weight. He lurched away from the multitude of worms. Around him, a barrage of yowls was joining in the frenzy, the fresh scent rousing the demons to consciousness. And all their bestial minds could comprehend in their unfamiliar surroundings was blood.
Sellemar’s blood.
He could hear the beasts rattling against the bars of their iron cages, screaming and raging, yanking hysterically against their chains.
Sellemar scurried across the span of clear ground, spinning around the corner and dropping low. As the demon pitched around the side, Sellemar thrust his spear forward and through the creature’s skull.
Its legs buckled and it slumped in a twitching heap.
‘Damn it… I have to get out of here now…! I cannot finish…!’ his thoughts were broken as a crate above him boomed and cracked—something had smashed against it from the other side. Something big. He leapt clear from showered debris as a slow trickle of worms began to crawl around the corner, seeking out his trail of blood.
Sellemar sprinted for the stairs to the upper deck, but was forced to reel back as another crate flew past and smash
ed into the planks at his feet. Sellemar’s head whipped wildly to the side and he spotted the demon from before. The small beast heaved as its stomach pumped blood from its essence like a torrent of black ink. ‘A resilient type… damn it!’ he deduced as the beast hounded him with growing speed, its wound merely driving its strength.
Sellemar leapt over the crate of green ooze, stifling a wretch as an overwhelming stench arose from within. A second and third crate followed in quick pursuit, splintered across the floor in a sea of obsidian shards and jellied tentacles—the latter of which flopped and twitched as though still connected to the body of the beast that had borne them.
And then came the barrel of alchemic explosives.
Sellemar saw the net sliced wide and the demon ripped a barrel from the stash, unaware of the deadly contents nestled within the ash buffer. Every ounce of Sellemar’s muscles pulled now. He ran, lurching wildly past the wall lined with bellowing demons, and rushed single-mindedly for the stairs.
Then the barrel smashed into the iron cage behind him.
A thunderclap like the belly of a storm tore into the night sky. Sellemar was blasted off his feet and flung against the stairs in what he was sure was a dozen pieces. Darkness swallowed him and for an instant, his vision was lost. The roars of the creatures had ceased—only a keening ring wailed in his ears, and he felt even his faculty of touch failing him.
Then his chest sputtered and he coughed out a ball of ash. Blurred shapes twisted in the dim light. A faint trickle sounded from somewhere nearby. Muffled voices…
And then his senses smashed into him with the same force with which they had departed. He gasped and cried out, a wave of agony and sensation overwhelming him. The demons were yowling once more. The cage where the alchemic Hadavrae had exploded was a heap of broken iron and singed bodies. Several demons that had managed to survive the blast were clambering free… of the water rushing into the punctured hull.
Heroes or Thieves (Steps of Power 2) Page 11
