Cautiously he clasped her shoulder. She smacked his arm and recoiled the first time; the second time she punched him in the chest. It hurt, but the third time she reluctantly let him steer her onward, though she turned her face away. They walked for a while like that, with his hand just barely on her shoulder, until she finally shrugged it off and walked on her own.
“’M sorry about your friends,” he said as she pulled ahead again, remembering his callous thoughts in the tavern.
“Don’t talk to me.”
Cob nodded and shut his mouth, and wished he had never come here.
Chapter 9 – Under Underground
Hunter Trevere led the way down, slowly but not slowly enough for Lieutenant Sarovy’s preference. That the Hunter had done this before was obvious in the careful way he inspected the archways and the chamber floors, in the lightness of his footsteps, in the silent hand-signals he gave to the ogrekin mage to direct the bobbing wisps.
Yet Sarovy would rather have torn apart the chambers crate by crate, hauled anything useful back up, and retreated as soon as they spotted any sign of defense. He wanted the rooms flooded with lights, while Trevere ventured forth with only a few wisps hovering over his head, leaving the soldiers anxious and half-lit in the hallways.
They had already been through what would have amounted to a block-long storage complex aboveground. Crates, barrels, boxes stacked high toward the smooth ceilings, positioned in long narrow rows that crimped visibility and brought on the claustrophobic certainty that at any moment the boxes might start falling. Chamber after chamber filled to the brim with them, with sledges in the aisles waiting to be loaded and the occasional ramp or ladder leading up into the street-level buildings, and strange code-like dents at shoulder-level on each archway. No light-sources but for the mages’ wisps. No Shadow Cult presence but for the foreign-looking charcoal marks on all the crates and boxes.
No dust. No noise from ahead. No blood-trails, though Trevere was undoubtedly tracking something.
At the forefront of his soldiers, Lieutenant Sarovy had the best view of the Hunter, though that came with the necessity of standing next to the stinking mage. Now and then, Trevere would pause in his careful creep and sniff the air. At any branch in the long featureless hallways, he would do the same, and select his path with the precision of a hound. It chilled Sarovy’s blood.
This whole place did.
There were the walls: striated stone, dark grey with threads of rust and ochre, unmarred by chisels or seams. Smooth, as if worn by water. They reminded him of the aqueducts outside of Kanrodi—the ones the Kanrodians themselves had destroyed when the Crimson Army advanced upon them, to keep the troops from using their channels to march straight into the city. Those too seemed to have been formed rather than built, though they had been as red as the rocks of Varaku from which they stretched.
Sorcery, he guessed. And where there was sorcery, there would be traps.
His men were not happy to be here, but they did not argue. The city guards had argued until he had threatened them with Voorkei. The ogrekin mage, most obliging, had grinned his horrible tusky grin at them and they had quieted down, though Sarovy still caught their mutters from the back of the ranks.
None of us should be here. This is beyond our power.
Another chamber crossed, another beckon from Trevere on the far side. Reluctantly Lieutenant Sarovy led the way through the mountains of crates, trying to steel himself for ambush. A blizzard of poisoned bolts, perhaps, or…
Nothing. An easy crossing. He joined Trevere in the newest doorway, the lights hanging over their heads, and stared down.
“The scent goes this way,” Trevere said.
It was a staircase descending endlessly into blackness. Just the sight of it made Sarovy's mouth go dry. They had come far already, and to descend into those depths without knowing if they could make it back up…
He did not intend to die in the bowels of the earth.
But Trevere was already heading down, his hand raised to keep the others from following, and one of the mage-wisps spiraled down before him to search out the darkness. Down and down and down to a new chamber far below. A new chamber filled with crates.
“Pike me, it never ends,” muttered one of the soldiers peeking around the archway.
This would be why the city guards prefer the bribes from the cultists over the bounty rewards from the Empire, Sarovy thought. It could take weeks to find them.
Then Trevere beckoned, and Sarovy reluctantly followed.
No threats, no alarms. He could not help the feeling that they were being lured down the gullet of some great trap, but what it might be, he could not fathom. There were no Shadow Cult enclaves in the Imperial Heartlands where he came from--the Silent Circle and the White Flame had long ago scoured them out--and beyond a few thefts and some rabble-rousing, the cult had made no move against the Army here in Illane. The camps were warded against them, and the Army had better things to do than chase around a bunch of thieves. Sarovy had never fought them before.
Know your enemy. That was impossible here, and it distressed him more than the darkness.
The new storage chamber at the bottom was the same as the others. His men filed down behind him, at once bored and uneasy—a bad combination. Trevere slunk ahead again, straight on, and though Sarovy was relieved that they would not have to navigate a new labyrinth of crate-walls, this was getting ridiculous. “Keep sharp,” he told his men and paced after the Hunter, grimacing at the hard sounds his boots made on the strange floor.
“Close now,” Trevere said as Sarovy drew up behind him. “The scent is thick.”
Sarovy sniffed the air but caught nothing but dry wood, distant sewage and faint, unfamiliar spices. He squinted past Trevere into the new corridor. It was short, sloped, and ended at yet another chamber—though from here it seemed markedly smaller than the others and devoid of crates, with a metal wall on the far side.
“Is he there?” Sarovy asked, pitching his voice low. It did not look likely.
“There or beyond the gate. Either way, he’s close.”
Sarovy frowned, but nodded. He set one hand on the hilt of his sword and looked back at the mages, gesturing for them to send in their lights. Two wisps flickered by to bob down the hall, and Trevere followed them immediately, half-crouched and with such a silent, cat-like tread that Sarovy wondered why the Hunter had not simply gone alone.
The answer, of course, was that Trevere’s quarry could smack him across the room with the ease of a man swatting a fly.
He watched as the Hunter reached the end of the corridor and knelt down, then leaned out ever so slightly. A long moment of no movement, then he beckoned.
With the men at his heels, Sarovy approached, eyeing the room warily over Trevere’s head. The closer he drew, the less he liked it. The metal wall was not a wall but a solid, ceiling-mounted gate that bisected what was likely a circular room. In the visible half-circle stood two man-sized figures, one at each edge of the gate: a knight in dull iron plate and a masked gladiator in coppery southern-style splint mail. The knight bore a longsword, its hands overlaid on the pommel; the gladiator held two shorter blades, both copper, crossed down. Neither moved.
“Statues,” Trevere hissed.
Sarovy blinked. Yes, on second glance, he could tell they were not men; the gladiator’s forearms were bare beneath carved bracers and they too were copper. Fantastically detailed copper, the muscles standing out as if alive, but metal nevertheless. Through the eyeholes of the mask and the knight’s helm, he saw no eyes but only more metal.
Still, his heart was racing. He did not trust this.
He jerked back when Trevere rose abruptly, and the Hunter gave a derisive snort before crossing the threshold. Sarovy realized that he had been crouched at the edge of a grooved strip of metal in the floor—one that ran up both sides of the entryway. Looking up, he saw the tines of a withdrawn drop-gate just barely recessed into the ceiling.
“Hunter, t
his is not a good idea,” he said.
But Trevere was already across the room, sniffing at the gate. Sarovy shot a look between the two statues then stepped across the threshold. When nothing happened, he moved in fully.
As he had assumed, the room was a half-circle. In the center of the floor was a grating no bigger than a man’s fist, and in the ceiling directly above it was a larger opening, perhaps a foot in diameter and just out of arm’s reach. No other details marred the chamber.
“Mages. I need this gate opened,” said Trevere as he dug his gloved fingers at the bottom of the metal wall. “It’s inset in the floor.”
“All in,” said Sarovy, and moved out of the way as his soldiers poured in to let the mages through. The wisp-lights bobbed up to the ceiling, shedding their stark radiance over everything, and in that glow he saw the strain on the soldiers’ faces—the grey around their eyes, the clenched jaws, the specks of sweat. The two mages slipped in, followed by the injured men and the rear-guards, who fanned out cautiously along the curved wall. Behind them, still in the corridor, lingered the city guards.
Sarovy eyed them as the mages slipped past him to approach the metal gate. Their commanding officer was not at the front; two younger green-clad guards stood there, pale beneath their deep tans, their hands clasped restlessly on the hilts of their swords. “I said ‘all in’,” Sarovy told them. They avoided his eyes.
“We’ll not go any further, Lieutenant,” came the officer’s gruff voice from somewhere back among the press. “Bad enough we’ve come this far. You’ll not budge any of my boys into that room.”
Sarovy ground his teeth, but had no energy for argument. He looked back to the mages, who were scribing arcane sigils on the metal wall with their chalks. “Voorkei,” he called, “send one of your lights back into the tunnel—“
Then he noticed Trevere, and the rag he was pulling out from behind the base of the knight statue. The bloody rag. The look of horror on Trevere’s face told him all.
Something clicked in the wall above the entry.
“Send the light!” he shouted, and grabbed the two front guards by their tabards. Surprised, they did not resist, and he yanked them into the room just as a solid metal plate dropped like a portcullis from above, slamming into place and blocking off the corridor. The sound of metal on metal reverberated horribly through the room. A moment later, a wisp-light bounced off the plate like a moth from glass.
“I need this door open right now,” Sarovy said as he shoved the guards aside and went down on one knee at the edge. Its bottom was sunk into the floor with no place to grip.
Jegen said, “I’ll just—ah!“
Sarovy looked back to see shards of red light falling from around the young mage—the remains of his physical ward, shattered by a copper sword. Shocked, Jegen stood stock-still as the metallic figure of the gladiator brought its other blade to bear.
Sarovy’s men were in motion but it was already too late. The weapon descended and no other ward sprang to meet it.
Bone crunched sickeningly beneath the strike, and Jegen was driven down, convulsing, one eye rolling madly next to the red concave of his brow. A moment later a soldier hit the copper gladiator shoulder-first--a desperation tackle--but the creature did not budge, only tilted its masked head and turned its swords toward the soldier.
Then the others were upon it, hacking furiously, and Sarovy lurched to his feet and drew his heirloom sword. He glanced from the copper monstrosity to the dying mage, to Voorkei backing up rapidly from the wall and cursing in his guttural tongue, to Trevere on his feet now with his seething red blade drawn and the iron knight come to life as well.
“Pikes,” he whispered, then strode for the gladiator. “Protect Voorkei!”
The soldiers’ swords impacted the copper monster but the dents they made filled in immediately, and as if in response, the metallic creature's own weapons twisted like snakes to jab through the ranks, its armor erupting with spikes. Ours are regulation blades, unenchanted, Sarovy realized; no common soldier owned anything of magic and most would not touch the stuff even if they were offered.
“Down swords, up shields!” he shouted. “Unengaged move toward the entry!”
He pressed forward and the soldiers peeled out of his way automatically, responding to his voice and the helm’s red crest. Trapped in the small room with Dark monsters, they were already halfway to panic, but they were well-trained.
The hilt of the eagle-headed heirloom blade made Sarovy's hand tingle through the gauntlet. It was not Trevere’s terrible weapon nor mage-enchanted, but time and faith had imbued it with the will of fifteen generations of House Sarovy--soldiers, conquerors, even the pagan spiritists. It had served as an anchor to him throughout his exile, and he did not fear to test it against the Dark.
Another step closer and the gladiator turned its masked face toward him, spikes protruding from every inch of it, some bloodied. The blades arched up to greet him.
Then there were men with shields at his side, moving to block for him. Tall cavalry shields; he was glad he had ordered them brought along. The copper monster did not stagger as it was shield-struck, and its material immediately began to flow around the stricture, but it gave him a chance. Sarovy stabbed for the metal in between the shields, and the blade went in.
Not far. Not well. Like striking hardwood. Still he saw the creature flinch and pull back, and another shield-man hit it from the other side. Sarovy struck again toward what seemed to be its neck—not that it mattered. The first gouge stood open, showing him that the creature was solid copper. This time the impact cut a divot from its metallic throat.
A snakelike blade shot toward him from the gap between shields and he leapt back, feet braced like a fencer. This was not the way the heirloom sword was used; slightly curved, it was meant to hack, to behead or dismember, not to pierce. But any form in a crisis. Slicing down with the edge, he managed to cut off a good length of that stabbing appendage, and it hit the ground and started wiggling toward the drain.
Another stab, another minor gouge cut into its mask and the blank face beneath. A soldier cried out as a spike got past his guard. This was not going well.
“Heave!” Sarovy shouted. Another shield-man added his weight to the press, and soldiers without shields rushed in to help. Stepping back into a crouch, Sarovy jabbed at the thing’s legs, gritting his teeth—it would be too easy to stab his own men like this. A thrust, a twist, and a large chunk of copper fell free from one calf.
The thing teetered, one foot coming free from the floor. He hacked a divot from the opposite heel.
Metal tore, then buckled. The thing collapsed. The soldiers went down with it, all their weight on their shields, and beneath the pile a man squalled horribly.
“Get him out!” Sarovy barked. “Keep it down!” The shield-men shifted and it lurched, but Sarovy stabbed between them, drawing a gouge down its center. It seemed to flinch from the blade, giving the men enough time to place themselves: a shield across each arm, across each leg, one balanced precariously on its flattening head. It was changing shape, losing its faux humanity, but slowly; Sarovy saw its limbs separating into thick tendrils but they were still compressed beneath the shields. The shield-men managed to shift the copper mass enough for the fallen soldier to be pulled free—the sergeant, Benson--and Sarovy sliced apart the metal strands that tried to keep him. Benson’s leg looked crushed, with shards of copper sticking from the skin, his face grey as his fellows dragged him away.
Piece by piece, Sarovy hacked at the thing, heedless of the sweat stinging his eyes and deaf to his own curses. After one strike he lifted the heirloom blade enough to see that the tip had blunted, the beveled edges flattened by his blows.
It made him feel something he did not want to acknowledge. He layered anger over it and laid into the monster all the harder.
But soon its change had completed. Like a nest of snakes, the copper creature unraveled beneath them, each separate tendril writhing toward the drain
at the center of the room. The men stomped and struck with swords and shield-edges but it was like hitting metal bars, and as they dispersed Sarovy just stepped back and glanced over the scene.
On the other side of the room, Trevere stood amid the ruins of the iron knight, its sword in pieces, its gauntleted arms the same. Droplets of iron boiled up from the huge gash in the center of its armored chest, defiant of gravity, to bead along and dissolve into the pulsing red blade. The Hunter’s head was bowed, his shoulders heaving; the back of his nondescript tunic was in bloody tatters, and the red-streaked flesh beneath it looked grey and…
…wriggling.
Sarovy looked away before his stomach could revolt. The last of the copper snakes disappeared down the drain and his men gathered around it at a safe distance, poking with their swords and staring, their faces frightened, fascinated.
Three. Two. One.
Their eyes closed in unison, then opened. Blank.
He felt his own slide shut. There was nothing he could do to resist it. But he was better at shaking it off than most, and when it had gone, he felt steady. His pulse slowed in his throat.
“Voorkei,” he said calmly. “We need the door we came through reopened.”
No response. He looked that way, toward where his men should have been guarding the mage, and saw that they had done as he ordered; even the injured men were there, crowded three-deep around the door and the ogrekin. But like the others, they had frozen in the aftershock, and amid them Voorkei stared back at him with a strange, burning intensity.
“What?” Sarovy snapped, having run out of patience.
“Hyou cause this...thought-loss?” the ogrekin rumbled, passing his broad hand before one unresponsive soldier’s face. “Hyour Enfhire?”
Empire. “Yes."
The ogrekin snarled, his lips drawing back to show the full span of yellowed teeth and tusks. Then, with a guttural word like gargling rocks, Voorkei turned away and began scrawling his marks on the door.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 21
