by Bruce Blake
The smooth-faced man yelled and swung his club at one of the creature’s legs, hitting it with a sharp crack. The monster jerked, the leg hung limply at its side.
“Aim for its legs,” Athryn cried.
Khirro looked at the legs—fifty or more on his side alone. If removing its legs was the way to kill it, there was a lot of work ahead.
The Mourning Sword glowed red as Khirro set to the task, alternately hacking legs and dodging attacks. Its mandibles gnashed and sliced the air, first at Khirro, then Athryn, then the youth. Sweat flowed down Khirro’s forehead onto his cheeks.
Four legs gone. Six. His world narrowed to hack and slash, dodge and dance, keeping himself between the monster and the underground-dwellers, his sword between himself and the monster. Another leg came off, he avoided another attack; a commotion rose behind him.
Concerned, Khirro flashed a look over his shoulder and saw the other four underground-dwellers thrashing in the pool, screaming, running for the edge, their legs churning the water into a froth. An indistinct shape leaped out of the water and attached itself to a man’s chest, knocking him into the pool and prompting from him a high-pitched wail that drowned out everything else. Khirro took one more swipe at the insect-thing, removing another leg, and turned toward the water.
“Athryn! The centipede is yours.”
Khirro pushed past the woman and two men who’d climbed out of the pool, hovering uncertainly, not sure whether they should face their deaths in the mandibles of the insect, or give their lives to the lurker in the water. He hesitated briefly at the water’s edge, observing the gelatinous thing attached to the fallen man’s chest as he convulsed in the shallow pool.
“Hold still,” Khirro commanded, forgetting the fellow didn’t understand his words.
The tip of the Mourning Sword hovered in a circle as he followed the movement of man and thing, looking for the right moment.
Be still.
He clamped his teeth tight and lunged, hoping not to impale the creature's victim. The sword sunk into soft flesh and dark fluid oozed out of the thing on his chest. Khirro knew it was the man’s blood the leech-creature had sucked out of him. He struck again, this time slicing instead of stabbing. A flap of the leech’s back swung free and it slid off its victim and into the water. The man jerked, blood bubbling from a hole in his chest, then went still. Khirro dropped to his knee beside him, leg splashing in the water, and looked into his eyes.
“Athryn! This man is going to die.”
Khirro’s stomach knotted at his words. He should be helping him, not feeling thankful that his death would give them an opportunity to survive.
I didn’t kill him.
A wave ripple across the pool and in it, Khirro’s mind saw a vision of Callan’s face flickering in the worm-torch light. He rose and stepped away from the body, allowing the leech that slithered up the man’s leg to finish the job begun by the first.
“Now, Athryn.”
Each blow the magician struck defending himself punctuated syllables of the incantation he spoke. A rumble filled the cavern. Khirro turned from the blood-sucker and grabbed the closest underground-dwellers, pulling them away from the centipede as rocks tumbled from above. Khirro wondered if Athryn’s magic created the stones or simply loosened them.
Small stones rattled off the insect's tough shell, ineffective. It writhed and snapped its mandibles catching the smooth-faced youth’s arm and severing it at the elbow before a rock the size of a pony crashed onto its mid-section. He screamed and stumbled away, blood pumping from his wound. Thick black ooze seeped out of the centipede’s split side. It struggled to reach its attackers, legs thrashing, but the heavy stone held it in place. Athryn grabbed the young man by the shoulders, directing him away from the thing and toward the pool.
“Not the water,” Khirro said; that much blood in the water would attract every leech-thing in the cave.
“Which way, then?”
Khirro scanned the area, stretching to see over the heads of the three underground-dwellers pressed close to him for protection. The tunnel behind them was blocked by the writhing centipede’s death throes while the cavern’s distant darkness was only reached by entering the dangerous pool stretching out before them.
“I don’t know.”
Something brushed his foot beneath the water’s surface. He stepped back and looked down at a long and ribbon-like shape sliding by under the water before disappearing deeper into the pool.
What other creatures does this place hold?
The smooth-faced fellow whimpered and patted Athryn on the arm, then pointed toward the thin light spilling from above. Somewhere overhead, an opening allowed light into the cave.
“Do you see any way up?” Khirro asked and took a step away from the edge of the pool, pushing his charges as close to the thrashing centipede as he dared. They pressed closer against him.
Their savior. Their God.
The thought made him feel disgusted with himself.
“No,” Athryn replied scanning the smooth rock walls. “I could get us there, but you know what that would require.”
Khirro regarded the man lying motionless in the pool, the gorged leech pulsing on his thigh. He felt the three warm bodies pressed close to him and quickly chastised himself for allowing his mind to wander to such a place.
Then an idea occurred to him.
“What about the centipede? Would that work?”
Athryn shook his head. “I do not know. We can only try.”
Khirro separated himself from the three underground-dwellers, shedding them like removing a tunic, and stood in front of the creature, carefully out of range of its gnashing mandibles and struggling legs. He prodded it with the tip of his sword, looking for a reaction to show he’d found a weak spot in the insect’s hard shell. Steel clicked on hard shell once, twice, three times before finding a soft spot where it sunk in an inch. The monster jerked, threatening to wrench the blade from Khirro’s aching hand.
“Found a spot.”
Khirro looked at Athryn; the magician was bare-chested, having removed what remained of his shirt and wrapped it around the young man’s stump. The tattoos scrawled across his chest were visible against his pale flesh; the pulsing dim light of the torch gave the illusion that they crawled along his skin like tiny snakes. With one hand on the injured youth to comfort him, Athryn searched across the scrollwork words, looking for the right spell.
“I am ready.”
Khirro breathed deep and waited for the insect’s thrashing to calm. He coiled his arms back, muscles tight, then launched the Mourning Sword forward. It sunk into what must have been the thing’s eye, the runes on the blade glowing deep red. Two feet of blade sank into the thing before it jerked away, pulling the sword out of Khirro’s hands.
Athryn chanted as the creature thrashed, black goo spattering out of the wound. Its struggle slowed until it lay on the ground spasming occasionally. When it was mostly still, Khirro put his foot on its head and pulled the Mourning Sword free, coaxing with it a flood of the thick black fluid.
He braced himself. Seconds passed. A minute. He looked around and up. The light was no closer, his feet remained planted firmly on the cave floor.
“Athryn?”
The magician shook his head.
“It seems I need the blood of a human.”
The death of a human, he means.
Khirro heard sadness in his voice; Athryn didn’t want to kill any more than Khirro did.
He held his sword out toward the water using its bloodthirsty glow to get a glimpse into the darkness before the runes faded. The red light reflected on dark water as far as he could see. In the distance, a creature broke the surface, shiny gray skin showing above the water before it disappeared beneath again.
“I guess we have no choice.”
The smooth-faced youth, on one knee beside Athryn, pulled himself up. He tapped Khirro on the shoulder to get his attention then spoke in the his people's guttural tongue.
“I don’t understand.”
He began speaking again, then stopped, frustrated and aware he wouldn’t be understood. After a few seconds, he began to gesture. He pointed at Athryn, then at the sliver of light hanging above them, and finally drew his thumb across his own throat.
He knows. I can’t understand anything he says, yet he knows what we need to escape.
Khirro and Athryn looked at each other a second, an unspoken conversation passing between them, then the magician put his hand on the young man’s shoulders.
“No.” He shook his head so the youth would understand. “We will not do that.”
The smooth-faced fellow looked as though he’d been slapped, his expression stunned at first, but it quickly became sadness. He pointed to Athryn, then the light, then gestured across his throat again, his movements more firm and insistent this time. Athryn dissented again. The man’s lips moved, his throat worked to make sounds it was unfamiliar with making.
“You... go...for...Sol.” He pointed at Khirro’s hands.
Khirro looked at the blood soaked strips of cloth covering his hands and chewed his bottom lip. He must still consider the fate of the kingdom. Lives had already been lost to ensure King Braymon, his soul now living inside Khirro, would return to lead Erechania to victory over the Kanosee.
Does one more life matter?
Khirro thought of Maes, and Shyn, and Elyea.
It does.
“No. We won’t kill you to save ourselves.” He spoke firmly, knowing he wouldn’t be understood, but hoping the man would grasp the meaning from his tone. “You’ve done much to help us, but we’ll take our chances.” He pointed across the murky pool.
The young man’s face went stony but Khirro turned away, ready to take his first step into the dangerous water. The youth yelled and Khirro felt a hand at his belt. He reached to stop it, but the bloody bandages made him clumsy, gave him no chance to stop the woman from grabbing the knife from its sheath and plunging it into the smooth-faced youth’s chest.
He staggered back a step; Athryn caught him, lowered him to the cave floor. Khirro pushed past the other men and knelt by the magician’s side. The smooth-faced man blinked, a rapturous expression removing the tension from his face. Khirro pulled the blade free and slapped his hand over the wound. He felt blood pulse against his hand, seep between his fingers.
“Why?” Khirro asked. “Why sacrifice yourself for us?”
The youth’s eyes flickered to Khirro’s hands, then back to meet his gaze.
“For... Sol,” he gasped.
Khirro shook his head. Beside him, Athryn spoke foreign words in a whisper of breath passing between his lips. Khirro hung his head, closed his eyes. He didn’t move when Athryn’s arm encircled his waist and only opened his eyes when he felt the hard ground fall away beneath his knees, his hand come away from the dying man’s chest.
The smooth-faced man stared up at them, eyes glassy. The other underground-dwellers were on their knees, faces raised to watch Khirro and Athryn rise toward the slim slice of light. For the first time, Khirro realized that, with the light of Sol shining down from above, the chamber must have been a sacred place to them, a church of sorts. And now a life had been sacrificed upon its altar, a miracle performed before them in the name of the God they could only glimpse and never hope to truly see or feel.
The man’s sacrifice filled Khirro’s thoughts. It could easily have been Maes, Shyn or Elyea lying dead on the ground below them, or Gendred, Rudric or the Shaman. So many lives had passed in keeping Khirro and the king’s spirit safe.
Too many.
Warmth bathed Khirro’s face and he looked away from the dying youth, turned his eyes toward the light of Sol. The crack in the ceiling of the cavern was bigger than he’d thought from the ground—big enough to fit a man through without difficulty.
“Why did he do that?”
Athryn didn’t answer as he concentrated on the incantation murmuring through his lips. Another minute and they passed through the crack. Athryn’s chant ended as they came to rest on yellowed grass on the bank of a modest river. Khirro blinked against the light of the sun until his eyes grew accustomed.
A rolling plain dotted with occasional stands of cottonwood and oak trees spread out from the river, racing toward the forest marking the horizon. To the west, the smoke of a multitude of fires spiraled toward the sky, melding into one thicker column. He tapped Athryn on the shoulder and gestured. The magician nodded, then searched the sky and their surroundings with his gaze.
“We should go there for supplies,” he said.
“But where are we?”
“That is the first city. The city of Poltghasa.”
A chill crawled up Khirro’s spine.
Chapter Twenty-Two
He’s coming. I couldn’t feel him before, but I can now. For a week, nothing but the stink of the city and its men to kill have occupied my senses. He wasn’t here before, now he is, or he’s close.
“Get out.”
The man lying naked in my bed regards me with a startled look but quickly jumps from under the covers. I watch his thing bounce and jiggle, slack from the sex we’ve just had, and wonder if I should kill him. He’s done nothing to warrant it, but no one’s been left alive in my wake to this point, so why should he be the only one to survive? I stand, the blanket tumbling off my body, and the cold air envelopes my flesh. The man shrinks away as I take a step toward him. I’m naked and he’s afraid of me—rightfully so. Already I have a reputation in this city of killers, thieves and rapists.
I have no choice but to kill him.
“Please,” he says as I take another step.
“‘Please’ what?”
“Please don’t kill me.”
I run my fingers down his bare chest and he flinches. Does he think it loving gesture or threat?
“Why would I kill you? Didn’t we bring each other pleasure?”
He nods, eyes wide, and his gaze flickers to his sword belt then back to me like he hopes I haven’t seen the transgression. I have. A small excuse is as good as any.
“Do you think me some kind of monster?”
The brief pause before he shakes his head tells me volumes. I smile and put my hand on his cheek. He turns his head away.
“If you fear me, why did you lay with me?”
He abandons all pretense, thinking the truth will save him.
“I...my friends said I wasn’t brave enough to.”
I nod. “Will they give you money because you did?”
He shrugs and I lean close.
“Doesn’t that make you a whore? Taking money in exchange for fucking?”
Nostrils flaring, he draws a deep breath, unsure how to answer. It doesn’t matter what he says, I’ll kill him anyway; I only have to decide how. He shakes his head, hoping to change my mind.
“It’s not like that.”
“I’m no man’s toy.”
I grab between his legs with my left hand and one of his balls bulges then explodes in my grip. His scream is high-pitched and he tries to push me away, hands buffeting my breasts and shoulders. I thrust my forehead against his nose and mouth, shattering teeth and spilling blood. His scream becomes a strained gurgle. He reaches for my throat and I twist his arm, breaking it below the elbow, sending him to his knees, then I press his blood-streaked face into my cunt, smothering him with my womanhood and his own cum. My thumb finds his eye. I push hard until his eyeball pops and is forced into his brain, killing him.
He tumbles to the floor, limp and lifeless, and I wonder who has won the bet as I wipe his blood and semen from between my legs. I look up to see the black-cloaked woman standing before me. We stand for a long moment as I resist the urge to cover my nakedness. She surprises me by pulling the cowl back from her head and revealing her face to me for the first time.
She is beautiful.
Blond hair disappears down the back of her cloak. Long lashes flutter and red lips smile. My loins tingle at the
sight of her and my breath shortens; I wonder what’s hidden beneath the cloak, then attempt to dispel the thought. I wouldn’t be the one surviving that encounter, not if she didn’t want me to.
“The time for practice and distraction is done,” she says, the music of her voice gracing the space between us.
Oh, that there wasn’t so much space.
I shake my head. Focus. “He approaches.”
She nods. I hear the gentle sound of her hair caressing the fabric of her cloak and imagine it doing the same to my breasts, my thighs.
What’s wrong with me?
I blink and she’s directly in front of me, close enough I feel her breath caress my cheek. Did she hear my heart longing for her? My hand twitches, wanting to reach out and pull her cloak aside, to reveal the wonder of her body beneath it, but I keep myself in check. Not the time or place.
“He will be here within the day.” She steps closer still and her lips brush mine, tantalizing, as she speaks again. “Do not fail me.”
Her mouth presses against mine and pleasure explodes through me, squirming in my chest and between my legs, tingling my arms and hands. I reach up wanting to twist her golden locks through my fingers, to pull them hard and bend her to my will, but I’m stopped by the feel of her taking the breath from my lungs. This kiss wasn’t for pleasure, but a promise of my fate if I don’t accomplish what she’s brought me back for. I don’t struggle, accepting whatever she intends for me as my lungs shrink, but she pulls away and I gasp air into my chest; to fill my lungs, yes, but also to occupy the emptiness left when her lips leave mine.
She smiles at me, several strides away now.
“Next time I see you, Khirro will be dead.” She pulls the front of her cloak aside revealing her perfect naked body, her alabaster skin. “And then you shall be rewarded.”
And she’s gone.
A deep breath shudders down my throat and finds thankful lungs. I stand awhile naked, alone, oblivious to anything but the sensation of desire draining from my body, leaving me empty. Until the time comes that it’s filled again, there’s but one thing to quench the thirst she’s left in me.
