by Lawrence, J.
Lars took the blade and sliced him from his groin to his neck. Blood, intestines, bile, and whatever he had in his stomach spilled out of the man while he was still arcing through the air. Lars swept the offal away with a wave of his hand, sending it spraying across the last man’s face.
The soldier’s eyes went wide. He could see Lars’ weapons now. They were formed of air, but the hardened surfaces were slick with blood and the gore of his fellows. His eyes narrowed. Enraged, the man screamed a fierce battle cry. Lars answered it with an attempt to slice the man’s head off. The warrior, his senses now realigned with reality, blocked it with a thunderous slap from the flat of one his axes. Nearly simultaneously, in a move that Gabril would admire, he threw the second axe right for Lars’ chest.
The grim smile the man wore told Lars that he had used this move before. It had obviously never failed because the man was still here to use it again.
Lars Telazno forgot he was old. For an instant he was a young man in service to the Order again, fighting for the things he believed in with his whole heart. Once again, he moved with the flowing grace of a man accustomed to the threat of death.
Lars timed the throw perfectly. With the precision of a surgeon he slapped the side of the blade, sending its force and momentum in an entirely different direction. He knew every strand of air the tumbling blade would eddy through before it stuck in a barrel.
Lars Telazno never took his eyes off the huge soldier. The warrior had thrown one of his axes. He still had another. However, the huge battleaxe was still rebounding upward from blocking Lars’ first attempt at relieving him of his head. So, Lars struck low. He took the man’s legs off with one swipe of the blade.
The man toppled forward. Blood spurted out from both of his stumps in lethal amounts. In seconds, Lars knew the man would be dead.
“What do you want with Thaniel?” Lars asked, pressing the tip of his blade up against the man’s thick neck.
“To the hells with you.”
“You are going to tell me what I want to know.”
“Ask the Ontar.” The man smiled up at Lars right before he pushed his own neck onto the blade. He shoved himself into it so hard that he severed both of his arteries and his windpipe. A fountain of blood erupted from the man’s neck.
“Anwarian savages.” Lars straightened his robes with a stiff jerk.
Chapter 55
Oblivion
A song for the children known affectionately as,
‘The Death Song’ from the halls of Oryk,
Where the Circles start their fourteen years and a day training.
Let them come.
My blades are the nine hells.
Let them come.
See how death tastes like steel.
Let them come
Let them come
Let them die.
Gabril felt movement before he saw it. He flowed back, already spinning defensively as he ripped both swords out of the ramphyr just in time to see a workman leap in out of the spray onto the platform. He continued the spin instinctively, giving the newcomer fleeting targets for his attack. Gabril saw the wooden mallet flying for the last place the man had seen his head. He completed the defensive spin as he watched the thick wooden mallet whistle by, missing him by only a hair's-breadth.
Gabril felt his eyes go even wider as he noticed the workman was carrying a second man with his other arm. The workman casually tossed the beaten and half conscious man back behind him. Straight for the ramphyr. The monster skittered for the man without hesitation and plunged his hand into the man’s side.
A look passed between the beast and the workman. Gabril was sure they communicated on some level but as far as he could see through the spray neither of their mouths moved to do so. This close to the wheel and the roar of the twin columns of water, Gabril wouldn’t have been able to hear them anyway, but when the man turned back around he got the gist of what they were thinking. The workman’s lips upturned into a smile. A grin so filled with sly intent that Gabril had to fight back the chill it sent tingling up his spine.
The man used his free hand to pull back one side of his slicker.
There, sticking out of his ribcage was the cleanly cut off stub of the ramphyr’s hand. Gabril swore under his breath even as he moved further back. While he was busy getting answers, the creature’s new minion had enough time to transform, and grab something for its master to feed on.
A second workman landed on the scaffold, his eyes hungrily pinned on Gabril.
The two of them lunged, closing the distance with inhuman speed. At the last instant, Gabril spun around the closest ramphyr, removing those evil hands with a downward cut. Gabril kept spinning, letting the first ramphyr’s momentum carry him past. The second ramphyr’s eyes went wide with shock. One moment it was right behind another of its kind, and the next Gabril appeared directly in front of him, blades flashing. His eyes were still wide as his head left his massive shoulders and spun in bloody circles through the wet spray. Before the first even turned around and the second toppled lifelessly to one side, Gabril brought his blades around and cut the first one’s head in two.
Then, before either of their bodies even hit the scaffold, a giant mallet spun through the spray with deadly accuracy. It struck and shattered the wooden struts above him into oblivion.
As Gabril scanned in vain for anything near him to hold on to, the whole platform he was standing on fell away.
Chapter 56
Catwalk
Nobody in Ontar Hold ran faster than Thaniel. He’d won the gate race four years in a row. The race started on top of the main wall of Ontar Keep, went all the way down through the village to the lower gate. That was the easy part. From there you had to run all the way back where you started. It was that uphill climb that got most people. They just didn’t have the legs for it.
Yet, with every step the two freakish soldiers were gaining on him.
Thaniel ripped through the tannery as fast as his legs would carry him. With reckless speed he ducked under heavy hand-hewn beams and clambered through a tangle of strange apparatus. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to him if the machinery he was climbing through came alive. Truth was, he didn’t have time to be concerned about it. He could hear the men behind him. Their bulk was working against them in the tight quarters, but they were still managing to slowly catch up on him. Thaniel concentrated on the next hand hold, the next place to set his foot, and just kept moving forward. He made it out of the machinery and dumped over a barrel of metal hooks. Ten feet past that mess, he flung over another barrel. This one was full of short dowels.
Jorel was going to… would have liked… the thought of those big oafs falling in a pile of sharp barbs or breaking their neck as they tripped up on the treacherous pile of smooth dowels.
He sped around a corner, into what would have been a dead end, if someone hadn’t propped open a heavy door with a wooden stool. Thaniel immediately headed for it and stopped dead in his tracks half way there. An odor coming from whatever was on the other side of that door nearly swept his breath away. He literally didn’t want to breathe.
Thaniel heard the men crashing through whatever he’d thrown in their path. There wasn’t any time for anything else. He held his breath and dove through the door. With mortal hesitation he slid the bolt home on the lock and turned to look at the room.
His eyes watered as fumes from the wretched place seeped into every one of his orifices. It was putrefaction so rank that Thaniel was sure it was poison. With no choice, he buried his face in the folds of his shirt and ran, trying to get as far away from the door as possible.
If they were smart they’d decide the smell was too much to bear and he wasn’t worth the trouble. He imagined them going back to the Ontar and telling her that he was the one who fell into the gorge, instead of Jorel.
Thaniel stared in awe at the vast room. The entire place was actually one giant nasty steamy vat that was separated into sections by panels of
wood planking. One set of stairs offered him his only route to anywhere. Thaniel didn’t hesitate. He bolted for them and tore up the stairs as fast as he could. Every step seemed to have way too much give to it. As if the stairs were part wood and part sponge. Every time he put a foot down it creaked, crunched, or popped as something gave way. There wasn’t a choice. Stay at the foot of the stairs and wait for the First to take him back to Ontar, or run for it on a rickety catwalk. Thaniel noticed how old and dilapidated the wood looked as he pressed forward. The old catwalk was at best haphazard. Most of it was cobbled together with various pieces of lumber.
Thaniel felt like his lungs were going to burst. Every step was one more reason to suck in air.
As he made his way along the rotting catwalk, dark viscous pools, covered in rank foamy bubbles, reflected his image back at him. Thaniel didn’t want to know how deep those vats were below him.
Just then, light flooded into the room from behind him as the door he’d slipped through exploded inward in a wet crash. The two men leaped through. Steamy vapors billowed out into the light behind them.
Thaniel froze, trying to hide behind a rotting panel, where some worker’s slickers hung on pegs. He watched from between the slats as the men scanned the room. Neither of them looked even winded. His lungs spasmed for air. His head was swimming.
As he watched, one of the men pointed at his footprints. Wet from splashing through the ankle deep water outside, they led right up the stairs.
Thaniel’s heart raced. Every beat was an ache for air. He couldn’t stand it another second. Helplessly, in a gasping rush he sucked it in. Yet, instead of the sweet mountain air his lungs demanded, harsh fumes infused him with what could only be described as the wafting of a year old stew of vomit seasoned with the nightmarish excrement of an army of trolls for good measure.
The cough that shot from him came from the very bottom of his lungs. It was a desperate attempt to rid himself of the fetid fumes. Thaniel watched in horror as their eyes locked onto where he was hiding.
As the men started up the stairs one of the treads gave way. Both men fell backwards. Thaniel took advantage of the opportunity to get a good look at the place. The precarious catwalk led to various pieces of lifting apparatus platforms that were set over the vats.
Thaniel took another breath, this one shallow, not wanting to send himself into another coughing fit. He fought back the urge to puke and started moving. The next breath came a little easier.
Even though he really had no idea how the process worked, it was obvious that for some reason hides were soaking below him in the filthy vats. Those platforms, combined with their hoisting gear and long handled hooks, made it easier for the workers to fish them out.
Jorel would have said the whole thing smelled like one giant chamber pot.
At least he was having an easier time of negotiating the catwalks than the soldiers were. Thaniel figured they didn’t have a choice but to press forward. They had come all this way to bring him back. He definitely wasn’t just going to walk over there and give himself up. Not if he had a chance at escaping. Thaniel ran a little further down the way. The entire section was swaying and groaning under just his weight.
The soldiers removed their armor and weapons, reluctantly tossing them on the ground. They gingerly made their way back up the stairs, one at a time. They were trying to spread the load of their massive bulk by leaning heavily on the guard railing while they crept on the outskirts of the suspended walkway, where the structure was strongest. Even then, their size was a problem. One had to stay way in front of the other. The weight of the two of them together would surely bring the whole thing right down.
Thaniel looked at the long pieces of lumber that held up the catwalk and grinned.
Chapter 57
Ripple
The pain came from everywhere, threatening his consciousness with blurry obscurity as Gabril’s back slammed into something hard.
His mind dove back through the years to the day he was brought as a child to train as a Circle. He couldn’t draw a breath to speak the words, but he forced himself to at least go through the litany of pain in his mind.
Pain is the Circle’s mistress.
Her sting is sweet.
I will smile at her caress.
Her whispers lead me.
To my next breath.
Gabril felt the ice cold spray, thrown by the great water wheel paddles, splash across his face.
His eyes sprang open and he vaulted his feet.
The scaffold he was on was a nexus, leading to a myriad of others. High above him, the ramphyr was propped up on two good hands staring at him with a hunger that reminded Gabril of a rabid snake. It was just a matter of luck that the one direct path to him had been swept away when his own catwalk fell. Otherwise, the beast would have had him.
Movement caught both of their attention simultaneously. Men ran from a deck above him and off to the right. They took the first ladder up.
A scream, the kind red-hot steel makes when the smith drops it into grease, ripped through his skull. The world instantly went silent, if by comparison alone. Gabril feared he might never hear again.
In a shower of glowing sparks and hot metal, the great water wheel tore away from its moorings. It rolled forward away from the columns of water that were spewing out of the dam wall until it leaned heavily up against a number of horizontal beams.
Sections of platform, giant mechanical cogs, and apparatus careened downward, smashing away a few of the heavy crisscrossing supports that held the giant wall up. Fear coursed through him as he watched the dam wall above him ripple.
Gabril ran.
He hoped the boy was worth it.
Chapter 58
Pray
Lars stared at the maze of machinery and knew he’d never catch up with Thaniel and two of those ultra soldiers through that. To his left was a ladder. Maybe he could get a better idea of where Thaniel might be heading from there. Better yet, he might actually spot the boy.
When he placed a hand on the first rung, he flinched a bit at the sensation. The entire structure was trembling. There had to always be a little vibration to a working dam like this, yet there was something about the way it felt that sent a shock of alarm up his hand.
Lars remembered how the old man looked at him and the words of the girl as she hurried along. The girl said that it would fall tomorrow, but she was in a hurry nonetheless. Obviously she had her doubts as to the prediction, and didn’t want to be taking any more chances on top of the thing than she had to.
He needed to see this for himself. Lars clambered up the ladder, scrambled his way up over the top of a parapet onto a slightly pitched roof.
The tannery was built right atop the dam wall. From this spot he could see everything. Behind him the mountain pass opened up into the beautiful grasslands that blanketed picturesque hills. In the distance the storm he couldn’t afford to think about raged. The town, a smattering of poorly built structures, a few crude shops, and housing meant mainly for the tannery workers and their families was off to the left. Harkanin’s wagon sat perched on the opposite side of the gorge. None of that was what he came to see.
Lars Telazno gripped the edge of the parapet and looked out over the dam wall. He’d hoped he would see a peaceful reservoir on the other side of the dam. Instead he stared at a churning sea of mud, jutting ice, and debris. All that water had to go somewhere. He said it himself. He knew he was looking at just a sample of what was to come. Yet after only a week of warmer weather in the Anwarian Range, the water in this gorge had risen so high that it was already coming over the top of the dam.
It boiled with the force of mountains of pressure behind it. Entire trees were no match for the churn of the water. They cracked violently as huge boles were snapped in half. Vast sheets of ice thrust up out of the soup, only to eventually break under their own weight and come crashing back down. Anything and everything was being ground to pieces out there.
Lars’
head snapped at motion off to his right. Buildings everywhere shimmied and buckled. Roofs caved in. A building near the town side of the gorge fell, one section at a time, as if a great hand slowly pushed it over in one dusty eruption after another. Before any of the dust and debris billowing into the air even made it to him, Lars had to cover his nose as a horrible stench rolled over him. It was ten times worse than anything else he’d smelled in the nasty tannery so far. His eyes watered as he watched the last of the structure lean precariously before it collapsed over.
Lars stared at the path back to the other side, back the way Thaniel must have gone. It was falling down like a house of cards. People were running, getting crushed under beams and shifting apparatus. A wave of water and grease sloshed through the wreckage. Then, in one swift surge of brown water, every single structure on the far side of the dam just slid away. It slammed into the down-stream side of the wall, paused at the few remaining structures there, and then in a crunch, everything tumbled over the back of the dam. Flailing people, screaming horses, splintered pieces of wood, and countless leather hides, all coated in a heavy layer of greasy mud simply and without mercy just swept away. It was all gone.
Lars felt the structure beneath his feet shimmy.
He didn’t think. He just bolted. Before he knew it he was running faster than he could ever remember, and when he was a young man, he’d been pretty fast.
A section of buildings shivered and fell right ahead of him. Lars grit his teeth, shifted his step, taking the top of a roof that moved more like a raft than a solid structure. To his right the churning mass had pushed over the top of the wall and was sweeping through a forest of apparatus with incredible speed.
Instinctively Lars veered left, giving himself every last second he could to run to the other side. Something crunched and buckled beneath him.
All he could do was run.
