Angelslayer: The Winnowing War (19 page)

“Yes, indeed, I should.”

“Had they sold you and some merchant discovered your private organs, he might have had them removed, God help you—or worse he might have preferred them.” Lamachus slapped Aeson hard on the back. “You have done well! Outran slavers!”

“Yes—thank God.”

“Let us for home, son. We have both had trial this day! Those damned brainless animals were all over the face of the sweet Earth! If they could have acquired a ship, they would have set off in search of a new world!” Lamachus turned the horse and started south. Aeson fell in behind.

R
hywder could smell the flesh burning before he even saw the black smoke. Flesh had a smell not easily forgotten. Once his patrol had ridden into a village where there were bodies burning in a huge pile, and though the smell of the burning pitch was strong, the smell of flesh was stronger.

“Burning ahead,” the axeman observed, noting the thin stream of black smoke as it came into view.

Rhywder pulled up on the reins. The Galaglean drew alongside. “You see there,” Agapenor said, “something burning.”

Rhywder nodded. He searched the trees that lay to either side of them. Something here was not right—Rhywder felt a shiver run though him, a familiar shiver, something he had not felt in a long time.

They were in the Vale of Tears, the valley that lay before the mountain of Hericlon, the highest of Parminion's peaks. Hericlon held a narrow passage. North were the city-states of the Daath and the tribes of Dannu—homeland. South, beyond Hericlon's gate, were the jungles of Unchuria. Rhywder had been south but once or twice and never had he gone far. Unchuria, it was said, was a land ruled by the rogue angel lord Azazel. It was the home of things unknown, things such as the Uttuku.

Rhywder's grandmother had first told him of the Uttuku when he was a young boy. He enjoyed her tales of how the dead of the Nephilim, and of giants, were cursed to become wraiths, shadows that wandered always hungry but unable to eat, ever thirsty but unable to drink. Rarely, the stronger of them, the fallen of firstborn and pure-bloods, were powerful enough to take a mortal body, trapping the soul inside, and walk in its skin for years. He would stare wide-eyed whenever she spoke of them. But she explained that by far, most of them were weaker Uttuku, and were unable to inhabit bodies for long. After but a short time, a degree or so of the sun, human flesh would reject them so violently, it would begin to decompose.

Rhywder believed many of his grandmother's stories outright. But he always thought the tales of the Uttuku were for his amusement, stories she made up and told him at night when he had trouble sleeping. That was until the time, when he was south of the gate of Hericlon, in the jungles of Unchuria, where he witnessed an entire patrol of warriors, a cohort of Daathan shieldbearers, taken by Uttuku. At first the warriors turned upon each other in deadly battle. Rhywder had been far enough away that he felt safe, and though the others with him fled, he remained to watch, amazed. For a time they battled, but just as his grandmother had told him, eventually their flesh began to violently reject the Uttuku inside them. He watched as parts of men, arms and legs, swelled until they burst. He watched skin peel away in bloodied strips. They died screaming, twisting. Some cried in tongues and curses. The noblest managed to fall on their swords. The entire cohort had been lost, and they had been good men, hard men.

After that, Rhywder had journeyed south to an Unchurian town just to find a witch. They were said to carry warders against the Uttuku, and he found one that carried hers on a silver chain at her waist, a talisman of onyx with the bone of a white owl in its center, shaped as a mandrake. The Uttuku, the witch told him, would be drawn to the mandrake, and the onyx would deflect them into the night. Rhywder had killed the witch, for the witches of Unchuria did much evil among men. He had washed the talisman in the old hag's blood, making it even more powerful. After that he always carried it hitched against the inside of his sword belt, and he seldom gave it much thought. But it had suddenly begun to burn against his skin.

“What is it?” the axeman queried, growing impatient. “What is this? We praying? I am telling you that something is burning ahead.”

“It is flesh,” Rhywder said, keeping his eyes on the forest. It was getting dark, and the shadows were thickening.

“Aye, this I already know. What I am wondering is if we are going to investigate or just wait here, sniffing the air?”

“We are being watched,” Rhywder said. “The trees, west.”

Agapenor squinted. “How many?”

“Unknown.”

“Since we are out here in open grass like fatted calves, what would you say we should do, Little Fox—you being the captain and a ranger and all?”

“Keep moving south as we have been, but with careful watch on our western flank.”

Rhywder eased his horse forward, toward the smoke. He knew it was bait, but this far out in the open he figured he might just as well spring the trap.

Agapenor purposely kept back for a moment, letting the captain gain distance before he started forward slowly, weaving, keeping an eye on both the little red-haired bastard and the shadows to the west, as well. He had yet to form any certain opinion of this Shadow Walker captain who was a human. No human he had ever met had worn the armband of a Shadow Walker; he was not even aware the Daath allowed it. It meant this was no ordinary captain, but from the look of him, this Little Fox, as he let himself be called, might just as easily have been a drunkard or a homeless wanderer. The Daath were always composed, armored, straight in the saddle, their dreaded darkened swords and silvery cloaks marking them as high bloods. But this ranger, he seemed to care less how he looked, or smelled for that matter.

Still, he was right, something was watching. Agapenor sensed it creeping under his skin. Whatever it was, it was not natural, and the burning ahead of them was most surely a trap. Yet the captain rode straight into it, seemingly without a care. He knew things, this Little Fox, knew a lot of things he was not talking about. And by his manner alone, Agapenor guessed him to know witchery. From the moment they had met in the agora of Terith-Aire, Agapenor knew this to be a bad assignment. There were things ahead he could live his life out never knowing of and that would be just fine. But he had orders to keep this captain alive, and that was what he intended to do, though he knew from the start it was not going to be easy. As they closed on the stream of smoke, Agapenor loosened the tie of his axe, lifted it from the saddle thong, and laid the dark haft across his thigh. He sensed there would be cutting soon.

As they came over the rise, Rhywder noticed the smoke had nearly extinguished itself. It looked to be coming from an oddly shaped fire in the middle of grass that was still green. When they reached the spot, Rhywder circled his horse and looked down. The perfect impression of a man was seared into the grass, the grassy edges around it untouched, the flesh of the withered corpse within the impression nothing but black ash. White teeth mocked a rectus grin. Rhywder scanned the southern ridge. Beyond the tips of conifers, he could see the high, jutting peak of Hericlon, white against a gray sky. Hericlon's peak was always iced spires of black rock.

Agapenor joined him and stared down at the remains.

“He is just a plodder,” Rhywder said.

“How is it you know that since all I see is ash and teeth?”

“Up there to the south, plow horse wandering alone.”

Agapenor spotted it. “Ah.”

“This plodder was spellbound.”

“How do you mean that?”

“He has been seared into the ground by a spell that turned him to ash—not a simple spell. Somewhere not far must be a spell binder with considerable talent.”

“And why do you think this spell binder went to all that trouble, since this is nothing more than a mere plodder?”

“The intent, my guess, was on luring us up here to have a look.” “Then you already figured out it was a trap?” “You thought otherwise?”

“No, but I have been wondering why you chose to simply ride into it.” “The binder that baited this trap and whatever else has been watching us from those western trees had us the moment we entered the vale. Only choice I saw worthwhile was to engage them. See how clever they are.”

Rhywder didn't hear the approach of the wolf. It crossed the grass soundlessly, and he didn't even sense it coming until the last moment when there was a soft-throated growl as it leapt from the ground. Uttuku. Rhywder fed the teeth his leather wristband, but it hit him so hard he was knocked from the saddle. He took hold of the muzzle as they fell, pulling the head back, but it was stronger than he expected. They rolled, struggling until the wolf was suddenly wrenched upward by the skin of its neck. Agapenor shook it so hard Rhywder heard the neck snap. The big man cast the body aside, looking irritated.

“Wolves have something against you, Captain?”

“No. Wolves have always been my friends.”

“You have many friends of this sort for us to meet?”

Rhywder came to a crouch. “Looks like there are at least a few more,” he answered.

They were coming quick; dark, swift shapes, darting silent through the tall grass.

“Quite a few,” Agapenor said.

Rhywder swiftly grabbed a bladder of naphtha from his saddle, used his short sword to slit it open, and quickly spilled it in a line before them. From his belt he grabbed a sulfur bag. Pelegasians made them and Rhywder had found them useful more than once. They were laced with flint and when ripped open, the sparks ignited anything flammable. When it hit the line of naphtha, it erupted into a wall of fire. Wolves would have run from it, but these were Uttuku. Still, it was going to slow them down.

The boldest leapt through the thick flame without hesitation. Rhywder caught the first and rolled onto his back, sinking his short sword into the thorax, and heaved the body over his head.

Agapenor took a stance in front of Rhywder, both hands on his axe, and there he began to slay them. The axe hummed as it split heads, chests, anything that came near enough to cut. Agapenor made a sizable target, but not a single wolf got past his axe. For a big man he was amazingly swift, wielding the axe as agile as a sword. Rhywder began to understand why Eryian had chosen him. It left him with nothing to do but watch, propped on his elbows. One of the wolves tumbled over Rhywder's head, halved down its center in a cut so clean, the guts didn't spill until it hit the ground.

More reached them, but by this time the wolves were beginning to scream in pain. The Uttuku had been in the bodies too long. They had been lying in wait, and the fact that Rhywder and Agapenor had taken their time to slowly ride up the vale to the smoking body was now working to their advantage. Most of the Uttuku fell to ground, writhing in spasms as flesh and fur began to violently decay. Rhywder noticed one actually spinning on its hind legs, a macabre dance of pain as fur peeled off its sides and belly.

Agapenor watched them die, amazed at what he saw. One of them wailed like a woman as the fur shriveled off its face, leaving bloodied bone. When it was over, the big man turned to Rhywder and lowered one brow, a deeply troubled look on his face.

“What was that we just fought?” he asked incredulously.

“They were Uttuku.”

“Explain Uttuku to me.”

“Souls of slain giants. Some are strong; some weak. These were weaker. They were unable to hold the flesh on the bodies that long. Once an Uttuku is inside a body, the flesh tends to dry and decompose. There are stronger ones. I have heard some can possess a body for years, even decades.”

“A sweet thought. I always believed souls left for heaven as my mother taught us when we were young.”

“These are souls that have no heaven. The angels that gave them birth severed their bond with the light of Elyon. They were able to birth children and grant them eternal souls, but the curse of their death is to be bound to the Earth to plague mankind until the end of days.”