The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1)

by Davis, H. Anthe

  Pain meant nothing to thralls, but impact still had an effect, and the man—already off-balance from the yanking and the swordsman’s attempt to shove him off—lurched backward, half-bowing over the spear. The other spearman stayed put, staring blankly at his truncated weapon, but the swordsman pushed forward and nearly caught Darilan in the face with his shield.

  Far shorter than the armored man, Darilan dropped into a slide instead, the edge of the shield skimming his forehead as the swordsman took another stride forward. In the instant that passed before the thrall registered his motion, the assassin slipped between his legs to the other side, cutting Serindas through an armored ankle along the way.

  The swordsman tried to turn, but his foot separated from his leg and he stumbled onto his new stump and nearly fell. Amazed that the man had retained any balance, Darilan sprang up and planted his soft-soled court boot to the side of the man’s helm, and the guard went down in a crash.

  A glance at the spearmen showed him that they were rallying, but with their half-spears he hardly considered them a threat. Ahead were Annia and her mages, and a few more thralls that had just started to look his way as if unsure whether or not they had heard a noise. Stepping forward slowly, Darilan eyed the layers of magic that circulated around the lagalaina, trying to decide if he should go for a mage or two or just try to hack straight through.

  In his peripheral vision he saw the spearmen converging upon him, and half-turned, planning to slice off another limb or two.

  Neither still carried their broken weapon. Eyes glazed, the guard he had stabbed with his own spear came at him bodily, and Darilan lashed Serindas at him automatically to cut a deep gouge through chestplate, sternum and lungs that did not stop him from clamping on with a bearhug. The other had the fallen swordsman’s blade, and as Darilan struggled in the grabby man’s grip, the other rammed that blade straight into his side.

  It scraped his spine and came out his back, and he choked in agony. Then the bracer’s strands took over and the anesthetics kicked in, and he switched his grip on Serindas and tore it up through the first man’s chest-cavity and shoulder, taking him apart.

  Even as that opponent fell away, the sword-wielder hooked a hand around the back of Darilan’s neck and wrenched the sword upward as if meaning to do the same to the assassin. But the guard’s sword was no akarriden blade, and though Darilan grimaced as the quillons hit his side and the length of steel jerked inside him, it did not stop him from carving Serindas through the thrall’s grabbing arm, sword-arm, and then the sword itself in quick succession. When the thrall came at him again a moment later, he put the blade through the man’s face.

  Blood-covered, with Serindas humming at the center of a crimson constellation, Darilan turned to the problem of the mages again and saw one blanch beneath his wards. All around, thralls had noticed the fray and were converging, some Corvish included. There was no more time to waste.

  Pike it, he thought, and lashed at Annia’s wards with Serindas. The blood-drunk blade carved through golden magic as easily as flesh, sending sparks and recoil in all directions, and as the mages flinched, not yet reacting, he bit the parchment off the tip of the crossbow bolt he still carried. The residue from its coating stung his lips like fire.

  With one step, he thrust the bolt deep into Annia’s back.

  She screamed, high and shrill and horribly multiplied, a chorus of buzzing shrieks all erupting from one throat. The vents on her back convulsed and blackened, and her hair lashed like a nest of maddened snakes as she twisted around to stare at him. Her honeycomb eyes were wide and betrayed, and in the depths of her mouth he saw the chelicerae twitching from hiding, unable to stay tucked away.

  Then she screamed again in rage more than pain, and the honey-scent turned acrid. Instantly Darilan’s eyes began to burn, and he stumbled back and covered his face, trying not to inhale the poison that she was expelling into the air. All around, he heard thralls collapse in their tracks, and the glow of the mages’ wards went out.

  He stumbled away to shelter behind the carriage, but her cacophonous shriek still drilled into his ears, equal parts agony and hate. He had not wanted her dead, just neutralized; they had been comrades too long for him to sacrifice her so easily.

  That might have been the wrong choice.

  Water poured from his eyes, and he struggled to focus them. On this side of the fight, he faced the Forest of Mists, and while a few Corvish lay stunned by the edge of the road, not yet recovered from their temporary thralling or their rolling brawls, nothing else moved.

  Nor did the Guardian’s heavy aura weigh on his nerves. Either it had subsided, or it—and Cob—had fled the field, to the Corvish woods or the Forest of Mists.

  As an Imperial servant, pursuing in either direction was suicide.

  Grimacing, Darilan pulled the remainder of the thralled guard’s sword from his side and tossed it away. The wounds immediately stopped bleeding, the bracer stitching them up ably now that Annia’s aura no longer distracted it. He breathed shallowly, tasting copper and ichor in the back of his throat, then flexed both hands and shifted carefully on his feet. Not the worst state he’d ever been in, though his left arm still teetered back and forth between numbness and pain.

  Fumbling with those tingling fingers, he drew the splintered sword from his belt and whispered a prayer to no one. Then he pushed off from the carriage and headed down into the forest.

  *****

  The darkness withdrew swiftly. On the upswing, Cob hit a spike of nausea and stopped in his tracks to lower his head, breathe, and spit the sweet-rancid taste from his mouth.

  He felt the weight of the antlers evaporating. For a moment, looking at the world was like looking through smoke, and he felt himself in two places at once: here in the snow and also knee-deep in dark water, among the ruins. Around him, trees rose like black lines against the pale backdrop of sky, and it took a moment for him to understand that this forest was real.

  I’m in the wraith woods.

  Not even the western fringe, but the Mist Forest proper. His skin prickled in the cold air, and he lifted his hand automatically to his throat but the arrowhead was not there. Instead, worryingly, his side had begun to ache—his right side, where the silvery circle of the arrow-scar lay hidden under his shirt.

  He looked around warily but saw no shapes among the trees, only snow and shadows and thorny brush. Still he could not help the sense that he was being watched. He closed his eyes, trying to remember what the Guardian had done at the towers—how he had felt all the life in the area—but the Guardian was gone. That feeling of black water was gone too, leaving him high and dry.

  Behind him, the caravan was a distant buzz of conflict.

  “Why’d you bring me here?” Cob mumbled. “Neither of us likes the wraiths.”

  No response.

  He turned around, meaning to head back to the road and cross it to the Corvish lands and the somewhat more-welcoming Forest of Night.

  Three soldiers stood behind him, swords and shields up, helms hiding their faces. Cob clenched his fists, but no surge of stony strength came.

  Wake up, he thought at the Guardian, but felt nothing. No thoughts from it, no pressing pain in his skull, not even enough to tell him that it was still there. He took a step back, thinking to run, aware now that his feet were bare in the half-melted slush.

  Too late. At his show of hesitation, the soldiers rushed. Cob stood his ground desperately; the last thing he wanted to do was flee headlong into the wraith woods. He did not think the men would kill him, and that might give him an edge--

  A grey blur slammed into the first soldier only a few steps from Cob, propelling him into the thorny brush. Cob jumped back, heart thundering, full of confusion.

  The other two soldiers rushed past their comrade and came for Cob, shields first. He dodged at the last moment, one shield clipping his shoulder as he flung himself behind a tree. It staggered him but the soldiers were slow to turn, and before they could, he c
ame around the other side and slammed his heel into the chainmailed back of one’s knee.

  That sent a shock of pain up his leg but the soldier stumbled a step, and Cob put his whole weight into a body-check. Off-balance, the soldier pitched into his comrade, and the combined mass of three men and two sets of heavy armor sent them all down.

  Cob rolled off the other side, panting. His arrow-scar was a cold blaze under his ribs, burning all the way through to the exit-mark on his back. It had never been this bad, not even in the Rift-edge woods when he had run from the army.

  He tried to grab one of the soldiers’ swords but could not break the man’s grip. The other got up and stepped over his comrade to hack at Cob, who backstepped straight into a thornbush and had to fall into it to avoid losing his head. A hundred frosted branches scraped through his shirt.

  The soldier sliced down at him and he wrenched aside and kicked the man in the chestplate. It did little, but gave him a moment to lurch up and grab the man’s arm before he could retract. With another heave and a propelling foot, Cob sent the armored man tumbling over him to crash into the denser thorn-brush.

  Cob struggled up, surprised by his success but still half-caught by the thorns twisted in his shirt. The third soldier had risen, stolid and silent, and as Cob tried to fight free, he wondered why none of the men were swearing. All soldiers swore. They were slow too, even for heavily-armored men.

  Before the man could bring his sword to bear, the big grey shape slid in between them, and Cob realized that it was a wolf, huge and bloody-mawed.

  It snarled horribly, then buried its teeth into the soldier’s sword-arm before he could strike. The soldier dropped his sword and wrenched back, trying to smack the wolf off with his shield, but the massive beast bore him to the ground and went for his throat.

  “Wait!” said Cob.

  The wolf paused, still growling. Cob yanked free of the thorns, tearing his shirt in a dozen places, and carefully got to his feet. Beneath the wolf, the soldier continued to struggle, but his truncated attempts to beat it with the shield barely budged it.

  “Don’t,” said Cob, thinking about Paol. “This isn’t their fault, they’re jus’ doin’ their jobs. Tryin’ to feed their families. I don’t want any more death because of me. Let’s jus’—“

  Keep running.

  The words caught in his throat. No. He could not continue like this. Running was what had sparked this monstrous ordeal, and it had gained him nothing—not freedom, not peace, and certainly not redemption. His presence had brought trouble to everyone he passed. While it would be foolish to turn around and trek back to the ruined caravan, it was just as foolish to think he could disappear into the wraith-woods and be forgotten.

  He looked back the way he had come. The road and caravan had vanished behind the trees long ago, leaving nothing to see but bare branches and broken snow, yet still he felt Darilan out there somewhere. Drawing closer, persistent as a curse.

  It had to end.

  “Leave ‘em alone and let’s go,” he said hollowly. “As long as they can’t interfere, they don’t matter.”

  The wolf dipped its head then stepped back, and as the soldier tried to push up, it grabbed his ankle in its massive jaws and bit down. Something crunched within the leather and steel. Undaunted, the soldier swept his shield at the wolf, but it danced away to Cob’s side, grinning its bloody grin.

  Cob grimaced, but it was done. Shifting on bruised feet, he eyed the deeper forest and wished he could force the trees to part and show him the terrain ahead. To reveal something he could use to his advantage, a river his pursuers could not cross or a cave they would not enter. Or, barring that—

  The wolf leapt past him suddenly and Cob whirled to see it slam the last soldier back into the thorn-brush. Feet kicking, the man fought unsuccessfully to get up, and the wolf jumped back to Cob’s side and looked up at him with an inordinately pleased expression. Its tail fanned slowly through the damp snow.

  “Uh…good boy,” Cob said, unnerved. The wolf lolled its tongue out cheerfully.

  Shaking his head, Cob turned away from his enemies and picked a direction at random, the wolf at his heels as he struck out for the deeper woods. The rocky, tangled terrain gave him a wealth of options, but no clear path.

  But that was fine. Barring escape, he would accept a good battleground.

  *****

  Darilan found the tracks easily. A part of him feared to pursue, but the sight of boot-prints following the marks of hooves dispelled his hesitation. This was what he had been working toward. He would not flee.

  He chased along the path, swift but unsteady. Battered by successive exposure to the Guardian aura and to Annia’s, his bracer’s hold on this body was weakening, and with all the fighting he had done recently, the network of threads that stitched up his wounds had begun to outnumber the actual healthy muscle-fibers. Almost everything ached, and what did not was more problematic than what did. As he began to sweat the chemicals out, his left hand progressed from tingling to mostly numb, and holding the broken sword became difficult.

  I should have taken a new body, he thought as he ran. Pike Cob’s reaction, I’m here to kill him.

  But that was a lie. He knew it now. It had to be done—Cob was too naïve, too Imperial to not end up on the altar—but he doubted he could do it. He had watched that life nearly drain away once. To cause it himself…

  In his mind’s eye he saw them walking away, together. Into an unknown but brighter future. But that was impossible too.

  Cursing silently, he ran on. At some point, the hooves became bare footprints, and he forced himself faster. The forest strained his nerves; faintly he felt the enchantment upon it, and though it did not pain him, it was like a constant background murmur. Distracting and threatening. Why Cob would run to here…

  But then they’re not his enemies, he thought. The grey wraiths could have finished him off like the rest of his logging team, but they left him to the Guardian.

  He shook it away. This was not the time to ponder other people’s allegiances.

  Something metallic flashed among the trees ahead, and he slowed.

  One figure on the ground, unmoving. One standing, trying to pull a third to his feet. Darilan sniffed the air and caught blood, bile, the bowel-stink of death. Traces of Annia’s thralling. And Cob-scent, and a whiff of wolf.

  Serindas pulsed in his hand, and he nodded slowly to himself. The two living soldiers had their backs to him, the injured one bleeding from several places under his armor, and Darilan was tired, and he ached, and he really needed a pick-me-up.

  How nice of Cob to leave him some snacks.

  He threw Serindas from a distance, not in the mood to engage, and the rescuer went down with the akarriden blade buried in his spine through the steel of his armor. The injured one sprawled with him, unable to stand alone. As Serindas fed, Darilan approached slowly, eyeing up the scene while the blade’s runes cast throbbing crimson light across the slush.

  On the ground, the injured soldier held up an arm defensively, looking back and forth from the dagger to Darilan in terror. Under his helm, his eyes were clear, the thrallwork fading from him. He might be his own man soon.

  “I should take you over,” Darilan told him, feeling the bracer’s hooks flex within his arm. “I could fix you up nice and quick. Except your leg would be my leg then, and your soul would be my feast. It’s been years now and I’ve run this one into the ground. What do you say?”

  Trembling, the man shook his head. Darilan smelled the fear roiling off of him, and a smile curved up the corner of his mouth. Leaning down, he planted his foot on the man’s breastplate and shoved his guarding arm aside. Through the numbness he felt the bracer’s hooks retract from his flesh and stretch out from under his sleeve. Fine, stiff threads extended from them like needles.

  “Are you sure?” he said, bending down low over the soldier. “You’ll live on in me, faintly. Not everything gets digested. But you won’t get to go to your god
, because I hate him.”

  The soldier only whimpered through clenched teeth, and Darilan sighed. Buried in the corpse’s back, Serindas’ glow ebbed to its usual sullen shade. “I thought so,” said Darilan, pulling the akarriden blade out. “It’s just as well. I should, but…”

  He trailed off and slit the soldier’s throat neatly. The man choked and shuddered, then his eyes glassed over.

  “I just don’t think I want to outlive ‘Darilan’,” said Darilan to no one as he rose. He guided Serindas’ hilt to the extended threads and they wrapped around it, and a rush of energy poured from the sated blade into his bracer, then into his damaged body. Dead nerves lit up again, muscle mended, and his head cleared a little, the last of Annia’s influence driven out. Serindas wriggled angrily in his grip but he drained it dry.

  “You can always drink more,” he told it huskily as he shook it free. “The Guardian is full of power, and now you’re famished. You’ll make sure I do it, won’t you.”

  The dagger seethed in his hand. The threads slid back under his skin, and he nodded.

  One way or another, it would be done.

  *****

  Lark glimpsed a flash of light from down below the rock ledge. She did not really register it the first time; she was busy aiming through the branches. The Corvish had mostly recovered from whatever that lagalaina had done, though a few lay still on the stone; the others had dealt swiftly and viciously with the soldiers that had followed Lark up here. The lagalaina herself had been hoisted into a carriage for safety just ahead of Lark’s best shot.

  Now she tried to concentrate on shooting the mages. They were in disarray after Darilan’s psychotic attack, but even more a danger for it; instead of guarding the abomination, they sent lances of golden light after the Corvish in the woods while the rain of arrows cracked on their wards. One spell had blown a chunk out of the rock ledge right in front of Lark, peppering her with grit, but the downed trees she hid behind made decent shelter even if she had a hard time shooting from among them. Overall, two mages had gone down so far--one dead and one wounded--but there were six more and they were beginning to coordinate in pairs, one shaping wards while the other blasted for the archers.