City of Scars (The Skullborn Trilogy, Book 1)

by Steven Montano

  Kruje stood in awe of the place, as did they all. Was the giant’s home anything like this? It had occurred to Dane that Kruje might have been an outcast of sorts, for it was generally believed the Voss rarely stirred from their behemoth city of Meledrakkar unless they were sent on some special mission, or else were driven out. Even though Dane felt he had something of an unspoken understanding with the giant he decided he’d better keep an even closer eye on him now that they were in the city.

  Maddox waved Dane over to take a look at something.

  At least he finally learned to keep his idiot voice down, Dane thought.

  He moved quietly towards the lumbrous slaver, and he was halfway there when a grinding metallic scream tore through the air. Something metal splattered Cavus’s body against a nearby column in a spray of sparks and gore. Dane saw an enormous X-shaped blade embedded in the stone, dripping the henchman’s remains. Maddox screamed.

  They heard movement in the darkness. Gulg pointed to a space between two of the stone towers and drew his sword, but a crossbow bolt struck him in the forearm and made him drop both his weapon and torch as he cried out in pain. Kruje charged into the shadows with his massive axe ready.

  Dane ducked behind the nearest column and carefully circled around with the stone at his back. Something big – very big – had thrown the weapon that had killed Cavus, and Dane didn’t intend to be the next target.

  A pair of black-clad men with longswords came at him. Steel clanged against the stone just over Dane’s head. More lights were in the distance, which meant more men. Dane turned and swung his vra’taar. Headless bodies fell to the ground behind him as he ran for cover.

  Silhouettes closed in fast, shouting to each other. Dane heard crossbows being fired, and Maddox and Gulg shouted closeby. He focused his thoughts and extinguished the light on his vrat’taar. The crystals and torches provided enough illumination now, so he moved fast and low through the stone forest, staying close to the columns.

  Who did the soldiers belong to? It seemed someone not associated with the Voss had taken control of the siege city, and they weren’t too keen on visitors.

  Light shone from around a corner. Dane sprang forward and severed an arm holding a torch, then cut the man’s throat with the short blade of his vra’taar. A second soldier thrust at Dane with a long spear, but Dane sliced the shaft in two and drove his sword deep into his attacker’s thigh. Blood oozed from the wound. The young man screamed and tried to fight him off, but Dane was bigger and stronger, and he forced the blade all the way through and grabbed the boy’s hair with his free hand.

  “Who are you?” Dane growled. “What are you doing here?”

  “Please!” the boy shouted. He was eighteen if he was a day. “Please…” Dane twisted the blade, and the boy screamed louder.

  “Quick,” Dane said. “Or you’ll never walk again.”

  “I’m Marus…”

  Dane pulled the boy’s face close. “Who do you work for? Where’s the way out?”

  Marus pointed back the way he’d came, towards the city. “The main…halls…that’s where we’re stationed, where we were waiting…”

  Dane heard something big approaching. “Waiting for who? Who sent you?”

  “Goddess…please…” Dane turned his blade, slowly. He heard sinew rip, and blood spurted. “Kleiderhorn, all right!” Marus screamed. “Bordrec Kleiderhorn!”

  The sound of massive footsteps shook the ground. A great shadow fell over Dane. He pulled his blade free and dove backwards. Marus didn’t have time to move before a massive broadsword smashed his skull down into his torso with a sickening crunch.

  Dane hid in the shadows. The severed arm on the ground still held the torch. The sword-bearer stepped into view.

  At first Dane thoughts it was Kruje – the creature was roughly the same height and size and was similarly clothed in black, but there the similarities ended. This giant’s armor was thick iron mail soaked with Marus’s blood, and the creature’s red fingers tightly gripped the hilt of an enormous black blade. Its flesh was crimson, and its misshapen skull was set with a sloped forehead and large and pointed ears. Two of its tall and sharpened teeth were larger than the rest and protruded from its mouth like tusks. Strange tattoos of serpents and blades covered the beast’s ungainly face and well-muscled arms, and its black pinprick eyes gazed wildly into the dark.

  The creature sniffed the air with its snout. Dane pushed himself closer against the column, just out of the torchlight. The creature paused, sniffed the air again, and swung its blade right at Dane. He ducked and rolled away and the sword sliced through the air just over his head and smashed against the stone.

  Dane dove at the beast and sank his vra’taar into the creature’s side. The brute howled and lashed out with a backhanded blow that painfully struck Dane in the chest and threw him off his feet. Everything spun. He hit the ground hard, and the air blasted from his lungs. Dane distantly heard his sword clatter to the ground, and he rolled onto his back just in time to see the creature step over him with its blade held high.

  Kruje came out of nowhere and rushed at the red-skinned beast. The Voss tackled it, and they both went down with a thunderous boom. Dane slowly rose to his feet, every muscle aching, his chest heaving with pain. The giants rose and charged at each other. Kruje’s axe clanged noisily against the red beast’s sword. Sparks fell to the ground.

  Dane hastily picked up his vra’taar. Frenzied shouts sounded behind him, and dozens of feet were closing in fast. He looked around, desperate. A shadowy figure moved into an open doorway in a nearby tower.

  He reached out to the dead chill of the Veil. Dane’s vision honed in on the red creature. The space between them seemed to vanish. He sensed the heart, felt its putrid black blood pump through leathery veins.

  Dane’s blood turned to ice. A bright flash of light exploded inside the creature. It howled and threw its hands over its face as bolts of lightning burst from its skull. The stench of burning flesh was nauseating. Its eyes exploded.

  Kruje didn’t hesitate, and his axe shattered the creature’s hands and head with a loud crack.

  Dane collapsed. He was so disoriented he couldn’t stand, and his vision had blurred to a haze of red and black. The sound of men grew louder.

  “Kruje!” he shouted. He pointed to where he thought he’d seen the open tower door. Kruje lifted him up and practically threw him through the doorway. Dane fell hard on his hands and knees. He heard Kruje’s axe, heard muffled shouts and cries of pain, and then the giant was there in the tower with him. They threw themselves against the stone door to seal it shut.

  Dane’s vision bled back into focus. The tower was tall and hollow, with a narrow spiral staircase winding its way up.

  “No!” Maddox shouted. “They saw you!”

  “Help us hold the damn door!” Dane shouted.

  Maddox reluctantly came to their aid, and together the three of them pushed against the portal. There was no question it had been knocked open earlier by Kruje or the red giant, because it must have weighed a ton, and there was no way Maddox could have opened it on his own. Kruje was doing all of the work as they tried to push it closed, even though Dane heaved with all his strength. His muscles burned and his face was layered with sweat.

  The stone groaned and scraped across the ground inch at a time. They heard shouts just on the other side. Dane’s heart pounded furiously in his chest. If Kleiderhorn had more of those red brutes they were as good as dead.

  The stone portal sealed shut. Kruje slid an iron bar across the door with a defeaning clang. Maddox shouted and fell back against the wall, while Kruje hefted his axe and looked up the stairs.

  Dane collapsed. He floated at the edge of consciousness, his strength sapped away. He could barely keep his eyes open. Weapons pounded against the door. Dane heard an inhuman roar, the clarion call of another of those crimson marauders.

  “You idiots!” Maddox shouted. “The stairs don’t lead anywhere! It’s a dead end!
”

  Goddess, Dane thought. We’re trapped.

  Forty

  Jorias Targo looked around the warehouse. It had once been a lumber storage facility, but for the past several months he’d used it as a sorting station for contraband goods he smuggled in and out of the city. Now it was a temporary refuge, a place where he could gather himself before he had to leave Ebonmark, possibly forever.

  The Black Guild had been destroying Targo’s city inch by inch with their wars against the Jlantrians and the Phage, and now they’d destroyed him, as well. First they’d unleashed their magic diseases with utter disregard for the effects they might have on the city, and then they’d had the audacity to deploy some Vossian nightmare into his arena and ruin the biggest fight of the year. Half of his men and even more of his regular clientele were gone, killed in a blaze of light.

  Without the fights and the arena Targo had next to nothing left. He could carry on with business, but his profits would be abysmally low until he could attract new spectators and build another arena, and that wouldn’t be easy. Nobody wanted to go to an event where they might lose their own life.

  Everything had gone so wrong. It had taken him years to build Knuckle-Night up to its level of popularity and success, to organize the betting stations and spread word of mouth about the bouts, to build the hidden arena and contract slave traders to provide the bizarre and exotic fighters his customers paid to see.

  Years of work, all gone in a single blast. The arena had been constructed by specially purchased slaves over the course of an entire year, and he’d had to acquire all manner of false identities and forged documents to purchase the warehouse and paid numerous bribes to keep the city Watch away while the work was being done. Now, after less than six months of operation, it was gone, blown to bits at the Guild’s behest.

  He’d make them pay. But how?

  Targo stood at the center of the crate-filled building, a tall figure with thick biceps and a broad frame. His clothes were black, and his skin was well tanned from decades spent in the Scorpion Isles, where he’d smuggled exotic oils and whores. It was there he’d first discovered his affinity for mixing potions, and just a year before coming to Ebonmark he’d created the formula which would forever make him different. He’d once been a fighter, a soldier in the White Dragon Army who’d patrolled the distant borders of the Skull outside the fortress city of Tarek Non, but that felt like an entirely different life, back when he’d been young and foolish and as poor as a street urchin…before he’d built up his small niche in the smuggling world, and later a larger niche there in Ebonmark.

  He was one of the few criminals in the city who’d refused to sell out to the Black Guild or the Phage, and he was proud of the fact he’d been able to maintain his operations in spite of numerous attempts made by his rivals to shut him down.

  Until now.

  They’d ruined him that night. His Knuckle-Night business was as good as done, and it was unlikely he’d ever be able to restore it. He’d never really made back the money he’d poured into constructing the arena in the first place. He should’ve been more careful – the Guild’s device never should have gotten through the door, and Targo knew he only had himself to blame. He’d grown overconfident from his success, and that had spilled over to his men, as well. He only had a handful of people left with him now, all specially treated by his formula to be like himself.

  The warehouse windows were darkly orange in the dawn’s early light. He and his soldiers had lingered too long. It was a dangerous to move around during the day, when they were at their weakest, but Targo had no time to lose – he wasn’t safe in Ebonmark anymore.

  A large backpack sat open on the floor, filled with odd trinkets and supplies he’d pilfered from his home and his various hideouts. He’d gathered notes and documents, money and gems, maps and forgeries, and a healthy supply of his formula, more than enough to last until he could get to a safe location and set up a new lab. Kleiderhorn could help him – Bordrec wouldn’t turn him away, not after all they’d been through together. Targo had bent over backwards to support Kleiderhorn in the past, so the least the Drage could do was help Targo get out of the city in one piece. Despite what he’d told Azander Dane, Targo and Kleiderhorn had a good professional relationship. Targo never intended to give Dane Bordrec’s location – had the knight not been killed in the explosion, Kleiderhorn already had something special planned for the troublesome mercenary.

  Targo rummaged through the last few crates in search of anything else useful. He was taken by an absence of feeling. Jorias remembered the notion of fear, but he couldn’t remember what it actually felt like. It was just one of the many emotions purged from his mind ever since he’d started taking his own serum. Fear, remorse, sadness – the concepts still existed, but they no longer held any meaning. The colorless narcotic made Targo cold and calculating, just as it made him take on the form of a humanoid wolf. What few arcane texts he’d found on the illegal topic claimed it couldn’t be done, but Targo hadn’t given up. If the Voss could blend living matter with machines then he could certainly mesh man and wolf to create werewolves, which prior to his intervention had been little more than a myth.

  And he’d done it – he’d made those fairy tale beasts a reality. It didn’t matter that two of every four of the early test subjects had died, or that an even a larger number went insane. Even in those cases the damned thing had still worked. Unfortunately, now that Knuckle-Night had fallen apart, Targo’s dreams of having enough money to fund a full-scale trade based on his special elixir seemed impossible. It was just another shattered dream for which he’d exact full payment from the Black Guild.

  Targo’s powerful hands pulled the crates apart; even in his human form he was twice as strong as any normal man. Most of the containers were filled with various bits of unimportant contraband – bottles of stolen wine, ivory statuettes of forbidden deities, bags of illegal herbs and spices sealed in cloth bags, dice made from human bones. His sharp senses were almost overwhelmed by the blend of powerful odors in the crates, and his eyes watered from the presence of dried peppers and spices he sometimes used to mask the scent of particularly foul-smelling drugs. He eventually decided there wasn’t anything more he needed in the warehouse, so he grabbed his pack to leave.

  He froze. Something wasn’t right.

  Targo’s nostrils flared as he took in the smells from nearby. Jorias pinpointed the pungent aroma of his soldiers stationed outside the doors, and the fresh smell of blood.

  He drew his short curved axe as he sifted through the scents, picking them apart and identifying them. He located Verrix and Molson and Rhuneglaive, but there were more, nearly a dozen normal humans he didn’t know. One of the intruders was covered in sweet oils and perfume; the rest were covered with sweat. All of them moved fast, closing in on the warehouse from different directions.

  He was nearly to the doors. He heard whispered voices and boots on stone, the flow of the river and the distant creak of the old wooden docks, the whoosh of arrows and bolts and the ringing of blades.

  Targo came to the doors and stopped. He didn’t have many henchmen left, and it was a shame to punish their loyalty by abandoning them, but he wasn’t about to let himself be captured. Without another thought Jorias bolted back towards the far end of the warehouse, where a small door led to the network of alleys next to the docks. His chest pounded as he raced across the room.

  The doors flew open behind him. Rhuneglaive burst through in her lupine form, a white-furred and wolf-headed humanoid with black claws wrapped around the haft of a long axe. Her leather armor was stained with blood. She wrapped one arm around her wounded chest and let out a pitiful howl.

  Targo ran. He was a few paces short of the back door when he smelled something on the other side. He was trapped. He had no choice now, no other way out. His blood ran like fire. Pain shot through his mouth and hands as his bones and muscles twisted and realigned. His teeth warped into canine fangs. Claws ripped from the en
ds of his fingers. Sharp needles of fur pushed out through his flesh, and his vision blurred.

  The wolf inside him took control.

  Cloaked men with blades run at him. Twisted silhouettes around beating hearts, meat-sack shells pulsing with warm blood. He smells their fear. His gums ache with hunger.

  He dives into them. Skin rips and bones crunch between his claws. He swims in a sea of brittle bodies. Fur soaked with salt blood and bits of wet flesh. He bites down around a face and breaks it like fruit. Warm fluid gushes through his teeth.

  Pain flashes across his back. Skin dangles from his mouth as he wheels about. Everything is spinning. He feels bolts in his hide.

  A thin man and a long-haired warrior aim crossbows at him. He feels their hearts, smells their fear.

  An axe-blade sinks into his side. Intestines dangle from his stomach like dripping vines. He lashes through bodies, tears away limbs, howls with glee. Men are crushed beneath his immense weight. Blood splashes his eyes.

  Blades hack at him from every side, a storm of edges. His strength is failing. Darkness creeps across his vision. He hears his prey’s heartbeat, feels the pulsing motion through what’s left of the ruined chest, but he’ll never reach it.

  His life drains away. The room dissolves.

  Targo hadn’t realized he’d fallen onto his back until a weight pressed down on his chest. He heard someone screaming in pain, but the sound seemed to come from far away.

  “Targo…” It was a woman’s voice. An angel? Surely he deserved no angels. “You’re going to pay for that, Jorias,” she said. Her voice was cold and angry.

  No angel, then.

  The small part of Targo’s mind still clinging to reason realized he’d have been better off if they’d killed him.

  Forty-One

  Vellexa cursed the Iron Count and his frozen heart. She cursed everyone.

  Targo was alive, but barely, so they’d taken him to Vellexa’s small manor on Ice Street. The seldom-used two-story house was located in a relatively quiet residential district on the east side of town, where thriving merchants and scholars lived in small estates separated by thick walls of trees.