“I bear a message for certain distinguished members of an alliance—including one Sir Govin Dahna, loyal knight of Saint Cuthbert, and his companions, Shantirel Galanhaevel, Shirral, Ahleage, Draga, and Elmo—from his lordship, marshal of Furyondy, Prince Thrommel. Can anyone direct me to these individuals?”
For a long moment, there was perfect silence. Everyone in the room stared at the liveried courier, unable to speak. At last, Govin recovered his wits and stepped around the table toward the young man.
“I am Sir Govin,” he said with a bow, “and the others you speak of, with the exception of Elmo—may his spirit find peace—dine with me here.” He gestured to his friends. “What is the message?”
The courier handed Govin a scroll case, saluted the knight, turned on his heel, and strolled out the door and into the evening. Staring after the courier for a moment, Govin held the scroll case until Ahleage coughed loudly.
“Uh, knight, you can open it any time you’d like,” Ahleage suggested, tapping his fingers on the table.
Shaking his head, Govin turned his attention back to the others and cracked the seal on the case. Pulling the curled parchment free, he unrolled it and read. When he finished, he let his hands fall to his sides, staring off in wonder.
“Well, what does it say?” Shirral insisted, reaching for the message.
Govin let her take it from him, and Shanhaevel looked over the druid’s shoulder as she read aloud.
“ ‘My good and faithful subjects and friends, I trust this message finds you all in good health and successful in your efforts to dispatch the elemental temple. I have returned home in triumph and have been received gratefully by both my father’s court and my beloved, Jolene, princess of Veluna. Unfortunately, civil war in her nation threatens our impending marriage. Several in her father’s court challenge my claim to her hand and would see our union destroyed.
“ ‘I require your assistance. If this notice has reached you, I must assume that you have achieved victory over our mutual enemies. Come with all due haste to Chendl. I have a special task that requires your unique talents. Further explanations will have to wait until your arrival. Thrommel.’ ”
Shanhaevel looked up and saw everyone around the table staring wide-eyed at Shirral.
“By Cuthbert,” Govin said, that look of amazement still on his face, “what a great honor this is, serving the prince. Tomorrow, it seems, we ride for Chendl.”
Shanhaevel shook his head, realizing he had already made up his mind to go, to ride with his companions, his friends, the Alliance.
“What was it you were saying about unknown paths, Govin?” he asked, a smile appearing on his face.
Master and apprentice lay in the heather, side by side. Recca wore flamboyant armor and a helmet fashioned like a screaming eagle, and his apprentice was in gear rugged, tested, and unadorned. Recca was thin and rakishly handsome with amber eyes and golden hair as soft as silk. His apprentice, almost invisible in the weeds beside him, was a huge human. When they’d first met, Recca had thought the boy too big and too powerful to move in stealth, yet he was always somehow silent as a cat. No, not a cat—a bear, dark, terrifying, and immense.
The war had taught him failure, hate, and emptiness. He had a stark brilliance with the sword, which Recca found annoying. No flamboyance, no style—merely a brutal, unforgiving efficiency. Recca’s reputation had been founded on his brilliance, his merciless speed, and his raffish charisma. But in dark times, men looked to tireless, efficient men for comfort. Men like Recca’s apprentice.
With the turning of the war, decent targets had become fewer and fewer. The only troops of Iuz to be seen were armies in retreat, but here, all of a sudden, a mistake had been made. A demonic general was bringing labor troops to build field fortifications. There would be a general, officers, officials—and they were guarded only by shambling, rotting zombies armed with shovels and stakes. There were no abyssal bats, no demons. A general of Iuz would fall—the greatest coup achieved by any band through the entire war. Recca’s reputation would be immortalized.
The war was ending, and it was time to look to the future. A new generation would be searching for heroes—for kings. As the hero of the resistance war, Recca’s name would ring upon a hundred thousand tongues.…
Recca thought the new attack would be easy, but his apprentice failed to agree. The big human studied the scattered parties of zombies digging ditches and hauling rocks. He looked at the general’s tents and the few guards set on hills and ridgelines, and he drew back into cover.
“Withdraw. It’s a trap.”
His voice was bass—quiet, grim, definite. The elf rolled to look at his apprentice and raised one brow.
“And we know this how?”
“It smells wrong.”
“What? Have you become part man, part hell hound?” Recca slid an amused sidewise glance at his apprentice. “The problem with humans is that they cannot accept being clever! There is a superiority that comes with intelligence and training. I have trained you superbly. Every movement you make is properly honed.” Recca smiled. “Remember—evil may have cunning, but it never has wit or style.”
If the apprentice had been a bear, he would have growled. The big man made to speak, but Recca had already slithered back down from the ridge to give orders to his men.
They collected there under cover—painted men, camouflaged and almost invisible. Eleven of them sat and listened, trusting their leader to give shape to their lives. Recca looked about the empty wilderness and filled his mind with images of his victory—his glory.
“They’re coming! More Iuz vermin to kill! A general, and without an escort in sight!” The elven warlord infected his men with his confidence. “We’ll slaughter a general!”
An Iuz general. The only demonic warlord to be slain in this war, and its head would fall to Recca! Recca parted the weeds and showed his men his plan for victory.
“They’re fortifying this valley. That means their army is coming, so we must work fast.” Recca looked the scene over with all the care of a true artist at work. “They’ll survey this ridge. This is the obvious point to use as the crest of their line. So we hide, and when the general comes, we fight. I want you all to attack the workers in one group. This will draw attention to your position. I will then slay their general. We flee down the gully, here into the trees. So lay traps to kill the pursuit. Usual mix. Rendezvous at broken pine an hour after dusk.” He slapped his men on the shoulders and bade them go. “Good hunting!”
The apprentice did not leave. He hovered, huge and unsmiling beside his teacher. He never smiled, never laughed, and never tired. His sword jutted through his belt, always poised for a lightning-draw.
“I will cover your back, Master Recca.”
“I do not need you.” The elf rested one hand languidly on his sword—the black sword of the swordmaster of the elves. “My sword and I have work to do.”
The apprentice was utterly unmoved. “Then I will make sure you are free to do it.”
He led the way into the best possible cover—not the obvious place to hide, it was a place in which only a ranger could disappear. The apprentice used his sword to slit a thin carpet of the dead, dry grass, and he slid beneath it, disappearing totally from view. Unwilling to follow a mere student’s lead, Recca stood proud and alone on the hilltop until prudence dictated that he hide at last.
Soon, shambling footfalls sounded on the turf. The undead servants came to build their masters’ wall. With them came their overlords—a general, his scribes and advisors—all feeling perfectly safe so far behind their lines. Soon the sounds of the attack came—rangers’ war cries and the sounds of spells. Recca saw his target standing and staring at the commotion. The elf rose in silence, sliding forward to strike from behind—
And then everything went wrong.
Eleven of Recca’s men engaged the undead in battle, and suddenly the air rang to the sound of piercing screams. Shambling, rotting corpses on the hillside split
open as shapes inside the dead flesh exploded into the air. The zombies burst and took shape as filth-spattered, howling monsters with dead grey skins, fangs, and claws. Carnivorous and mad with rage, they flung themselves on the freedom fighters, fighting in a frenzy of speed.
Wights!
Recca cut with his sword, but his target was merely an illusion—a spell sent by an enemy that mocked him and laughed. From within the enemy tents, more shapes exploded into the sky—abyssal bats and huge rotting demons, skull-headed and spewing acid as they flew. A blast of fluid ploughed through Recca’s men, turning three into skeletons and scattering the others in fright.
A laughing toadlike demon lurched up the hillside toward Recca. The huge demon was covered in pustules and bristled with fangs. It struck sparks from the boulders with its claws. Towering over the elf, the demon leaped and capered on the hill, bellowing in lust and glee.
As the monster drew near, three of the wights attacked Recca. He spun past one, cut, spun, cut again. The sole surviving monster threw itself at him. Recca ran and jumped, twirling like an acrobat. He landed behind his prey, lanced backward with his sword and felt it strike home. He jerked his blade free, turned and decapitated his enemy in a single blinding stroke.
Behind him, he heard a blade striking at incredible speed—one, twice, thrice—strokes that struck home with massive force. Recca saw his apprentice standing, smeared with soil and dust. Two wights lay dead at his feet, each one almost sheared in two. Seeing the abyssal bats and wights charging into his men, his apprentice turned and lunged toward the valley with its gully and its traps.
“Retreat!” Recca bellowed. “Now!”
Recca ran. He sped as only a grass elf could—the swiftest runners of the Flanaess. Recca reached safety amongst thick brush and boulders too thick for the titanic bats to penetrate, ducked past traps, and then looked back up the hill.
His apprentice had obeyed him, running with the heavy, lumbering stride of a big man. He reached the boulders, turned, and saw his comrades fighting not far away. There were now only five survivors, but they were making for the gully, and the enemy had left themselves open to attack. The apprentice flicked an eye over the fight, then moved forward.
“Master, I’ll go left. You can hit from behind once they see me charge.”
Recca looked at the fight and sheathed his blade.
“No.”
His apprentice stared, his eyes searching Recca for an answer, unable to comprehend.
“Why?”
Honor! Men like Recca and his marauding rangers could not afford the luxury of honor. Leave that for the foppish knights in their castles. Survival was a practical art, and only survivors returned to fight and kill and win. Recca raked his apprentice with a glance that despaired of the human’s petty intellect.
“You suffer from an overdeveloped sense of justice.”
“We can save them!”
“We can’t save them!” Recca shoved his apprentice onward. “We’ve lost, so we go while we still can, and we live to avenge them!”
The apprentice stared, shocked and lost.
“They did what you asked them to!”
“Because they were sworn to!” Recca’s voice rose in anger at his student looming over him in the gully. “They are soldiers, and soldiers are tools! You leave them when you’re done with them!”
Recca turned to go. His student watched him leave, turned …
Then charged.
He was young, but he had a violence in him that could detonate mountains. The big man burst through the weeds and ploughed his sword through an abyssal bat, cleaving off its wing. The bat screamed and spurted out a column of acid. The apprentice dived and rolled, and the acid missed him, blasting a second bat off its feet. The huge man lifted a hand, and a spell made grass burst into life and grapple a bat to the ground. He stabbed down with his sword in one swift blow—and two bats were dead and down.
The rangers fled, fighting their way back to the gully. Wights sprang like javelins from the grass, but the apprentice cut them down, sheltering injured comrades as they helped each other walk. He fought as he had never fought before—swift, punishing, and precise. He was death—swift, pitiless, and unyielding. Recca watched his student fight, and he simply stared.
His apprentice was holding them back. He was holding them. If survivors returned with tales of Recca fleeing the battle, his ambitions of leadership would be dead. Recca snarled and charged into the fight. He spun in a spectacular acrobatic flip over the enemy, spinning to cut a shapeshifter through the spine.
Far beyond its warriors, the toad demon watched the fight. The beast reared, its great yellow gut swelling as it roared in challenge. It was a demon none would dare to fight except a swordmaster. Recca sped away from the combat and ran at his chosen foe. He gave an ululating scream, feeling the glory of the eagle in his veins. He was Recca, he was a blademaster, and he was invincible!
The demon had a sword of its own, but the monster never bothered to draw. It suddenly blinked out of sight. Recca stopped, looking wildly about, then staggered as something ripped into his back. The demon stood behind him, bawling with joy. Recca spun and cut, but the monster had gone, and again claws ripped him from behind, tearing through his armor and gouging his flesh. Recca lurched, lashed out—then had the sword smashed from his grasp. The demon croaked, its throat pouch puffing. Recca dragged a dagger from his belt and blundered forward, screeching in hatred as the demon laughed.
Smiling, the demon struck, punching through the golden eagle, claws ripping into Recca’s chest. The elf collapsed to his knees and stared in horror. The demon flexed, Recca felt his lungs tearing—and then suddenly the monster fell back with a roar. A sword hacked at the creature. The demon dodged, only to be caught by a kick from a massive boot. The demon staggered, and suddenly Recca’s apprentice was there, huge with rage.
The toad flickered out of sight. The apprentice whirled and swung, but the screaming monster had appeared behind him. It caught the human’s sword and snapped the blade in two. Snarling, the apprentice turned and tore the black blade out of Recca’s dying grasp. He cut, the blow fast and vicious, but the demon disappeared an instant before the blade struck home.
The apprentice reversed and jammed his sword behind him, striking the demon as it reappeared. Black, steaming blood burst from the fat toad’s guts. The monster screamed, wrenched free, then flashed out of sight again. Whirling, the apprentice brought his sword down in a massive blow aimed at empty air behind him.
The demon flickered back into view. The blow smashed the demon in two, plowing through skull and chest. Other monsters backed away as the bisected monster fell aside. The warrior bellowed, and his enemies fled into the gloom.
Somehow, Recca still lived. He lived long enough to see his apprentice win the fight that he had failed.
The Temple of Elemental Evil Page 27
