Heirs of the Fallen: Book 03 - Shadow and Steel (21 page)

“Where is Belina?” Leitos demanded, thinking to distract the crazed girl with what must be a familiar name.

“Safe,” she said in a clipped tone.

Fury burned in her eyes as she advanced, her whirling strikes coming faster and wilder. In moments, despite his best efforts, her steel had marked him with a dozen shallow scratches. Having failed to cut him down, or even wound him gravely, her anger grew hotter.

“If you wanted an easy kill,” he taunted, knowing it might well prove deadly to do so, “you should have set yourself before a bush, and chopped at its branches.”

With an inarticulate scream, she attacked in an unrelenting flurry, the blade blurring before his eyes, nicking him here, slicing him there. Leitos dodged and danced and darted like a serpent, ever a hair’s breadth from death. He knew he could not keep it up for long. He had to end this.

She abruptly lunged, emerald eyes burning like matching portals of hate. Leitos twisted, and the sword tore through his robes, skimming his ribs. Before she could draw back, he stepped close, wincing as the keen edge sliced deeper. That sacrifice was his only defense.

His fist pistoned forward in a short, brutal hook, and slammed against the point of her chin. His unexpected attack caught her off guard, snapping her head to the side. Eyes fluttering, she fell. Leitos grunted harshly as the sword, still clutched firmly in her hand, reversed its track along his ribs. By the slow trickle of blood down his side, he guessed the wound was not deep, and so not deadly.

Behind him, the sounds of the Mahk’lar grew louder. He tugged the sword from her now limp fingers, and thrust it into his belt. He debated whether or not he should leave her behind, then decided that was no option. He caught hold of one arm, and heaved her over his shoulder. She was slight but solid, and while he had grown stronger in the last year, he still bowed under her weight.

Leitos shambled toward the corridor, his footing more sure with each step. Soon he began trotting, then running. The girl bounced on his shoulder. Doubtless she would awake to aching ribs—not to mention a bruised chin and splitting head—all of which, to his mind, was more than fair trade for the wounds she had inflicted upon him.

As the cries of the Mahk’lar increased, he slipped through the tingly veil, and then into the archway’s welcome glow. He had not traveled far when he caught a glimpse of his hand and arm wrapped around the back of the girl’s knees. A revolted groan slipped past his teeth. His skin was welted and inflamed under a wriggling mass of gray, spiny worms with large heads and sharp, pinching jaws.

Reining in his disgust, he gently placed the girl on the floor. Only then did he tear off his belt and outer robe, and set to scrubbing away the squirming grubs, a horror-stricken moan lodged in his throat. The creatures made plopping sounds when they fell to the opal floor tiles, and quickly dissolved into thin air, leaving behind greasy smudges. He shook out his hair so forcefully that his teeth rattled, then went still, waiting to feel if any more of the worms remained. If they did, they had stopped moving.

The girl mumbled and raised a shaking hand to her chin. Leitos debated pummeling her again, but decided against it. He donned his robe and stuck her sword in his belt. The girl grunted when he slung her over his shoulder again, but did not struggle. He had not taken a first step when a low hissing sound alerted him to something rushing up from behind.

Leitos spun, drawing the sword. A seething mass of Mahk’lar filled the corridor, some driving toward him on misty limbs tipped in cracked yellow claws, other coming on webbed feet, or pulling with thrashing tentacles covered in weeping boils. Scores of eyes pinned him, orbs dead-white and dusky amber, or sunken pits filled with glints of baleful scarlet. Beneath all those hues flashed glimmers of dull silver.

Leitos turned and ran, the girl’s weight forgotten. For every pace his legs took him, the demons gained ten. He ran harder. Their rank odor, like acrid smoke and decay, poured over him. His lungs revolted, refusing to draw in that taint. His chest ached for breath, his vision darkened at the edges. If they caught him, so much as touched him, he would—

Frigid, crackling fire raced over his neck and down his spine. The held breath gusted from his lungs, as a waving tentacle thrust through his neck, as if his flesh were no more substantial than vapor. The ebon tendril waved before his face, dividing even as he sprinted along, became a hand crossed with raw fissures.
Things
moved within those red-rimmed folds, much like the worms that had savaged his skin. As that hand dropped onto his face, the darkness of the Mahk’lar’s essence was blasted away by surging veins of blinding silver, as if lightning were flashing within his skull. The host of Mahk’lar overtook him in a blinding rush, enveloping him, making him part of their whole. An involuntary shout erupted from his throat, and a high-pitched shriek sounded from the girl.

And then the demonic spirits were past him, rushing down the passage. His head cleared quickly, and the tingling cold faded. Chest heaving like a bellows, he ran on.

The girl shifted on his shoulder, but whatever she had suffered at the touch of the Mahk’lar kept her docile. Distantly, he hoped she had not been driven mad … unless that madness kept her from wanting to slice him to ribbons.

Not much farther along, Leitos stumbled to a halt before a handful of Yatoans strewn across the shimmering floor. Some had curled into tight balls, weeping softly, or were babbling gibberish. Some stared straight ahead, jaws slack, strings of drool wetting their lips.

Damoc, looking stricken but not incapacitated, leaned over a girl propped against the wall. Leitos swallowed dryly when he recognized Belina.

“Let the visions pass from your mind,” Damoc murmured, using the corner of his cloak to wipes sweat from her brow.

Belina’s eyes flickered to her father’s face and away. Her gaze skipped over Leitos, then swung back, widening. Her mouth worked. A rattling came from her throat, and she tried again. “Leitos?”

“Forget him,” Damoc said irritably.

“He is alive,” Belina gasped. “He brought Nola back to us.”

It took a moment for Leitos to comprehend that the girl on his shoulder was Nola, the same girl who had battered him unconscious the night he met Belina.

By then, Damoc had turned to glare at him.

“What have you done to my daughter?” he demanded, drawing his sword. Before Leitos could answer, he commanded, “Put her down, and move away.”

More than happy to be rid of his burden, Leitos did as bidden, and saw that Nola suffered from the same shock as her fellows.

When he turned back, Damoc had closed the distance. Rage shone in his eyes.

“I am not your enemy,” Leitos said, hesitant to use Nola’s blade to cut down her father. Damoc did not suffer the same hesitancy. His sword whickered through the blue light, and Leitos threw himself out of reach. “Can none of you see that I am your ally?” Leitos shouted, backing away.

“I see only a walking corpse,” Damoc growled, slashing his blade at Leitos’s face.

With no other choice, Leitos caught the elder’s blade against his own. The clang of steel rang through the corridor, and Belina screamed. Damoc pressed the attack, forcing Leitos to fight for his life.

In moments, one or the other of them would fall, and Leitos did not intend to lose any more blood.

Chapter 30

Leitos settled into the hammering rhythm, thinking to lure in Damoc as he had Nola, and dispatch him in the same way. “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said, offering a taunting grin.

Damoc refused to answer, driving Leitos back with every vicious sword stroke. Leitos parried a sudden thrust, twisted hard to one side, and slammed his forearm into the elder’s jaw. The Yatoan staggered, even as he swung a backhand slash at Leitos’s belly. Keen steel whispered by, parting fabric an inch above his belt.

Leitos danced back, his concern growing.

“Cease this madness,” he said, wasting precious breath.

Damoc answered with another thrust, his blade shrieking down Leitos’s, until it collided with the cross-guard.

Leitos pressed in hard, twisting his blade in a tight circle around Damoc’s. When the elder’s sword swung high, Leitos drove his boot into the man’s chest. Damoc floundered back and crashed against the wall. Leitos rapped the flat of his blade against the man’s wrist, and Damoc cried out and the sword flew from his numbed fingers. Before the blade struck the floor, he had drawn his dagger, and stabbed it at Leitos’s throat. Had Leitos not expected the tactic, he would have died.

“You cannot win this,” Leitos warned, giving Damoc room enough to realize that he did not mean to kill him.

Damoc refused to accept the chance to reconsider, and came on in a rush. He lunged and slashed, parried and thrust, always seeking to bury his blade in a part of Leitos that would mean certain death.

Leitos avoided the strikes, ceaselessly looking for an opening to put the man down without taking his life. He scored a few blows—a fist to the temple, one to the nose, and a chopping blow to the man’s neck—but Damoc, bloody and dazed, failed to yield.

Sensing that he was growing too weary to take any more chances, Leitos reversed the momentum of the struggle and went on the attack.

Belina had come to her feet, and Nola stood at her side. “Father, stop!”

“Stand away, girl,” Damoc answered, narrowly missing an opportunity to sever Leitos’s neck.

Leitos scampered back. “One chance more I give you,” he snarled, as much for himself as for Damoc.

The elder laughed. “I will gut you where you stand!”

“Your daughter made the same threat,” Leitos said, feinting a thrust at Damoc’s unprotected middle.

The elder’s dagger swept down, blocking a strike that never came. Before he could right himself, Leitos abruptly whirled his blade down and around. What had been a thrust toward the belly, became an overhand attack against a bowed and undefended neck.

“No!” Belina screamed.

Somehow Leitos checked his strike, but could not avoid crashing against Damoc, one of his knees crunching against the elder’s cheekbone. With a stunned grunt, Damoc collapsed to his back, his dagger skittering across the opal floor. Leitos came up at once and, chest heaving, poked the tip of his sword against the elder’s throat.

The rest of the Yatoans, who had shaken off the horror of the Mahk’lar, stood ready to attack. Belina jumped between her people and Leitos, beckoning for calm with upraised hands. Neither Leitos nor the Yatoans relented, and the rising tension became oppressive.

“Should an arrow pierce me,” Leitos warned, “I will end your leader—I do not wish it, but I will.”

“Lower your weapons,” Belina ordered, her voice cracking.

Damoc blinked, clearing the glazed look in his eyes. “Do as she says.”

One by one, the archers lowered their bows, but all seemed ready to raise them again at a moment’s notice.

“Throw them aside,” Leitos commanded.

Only after Damoc nodded did they acquiesce, if reluctantly.

Feeling somewhat safer, Leitos withdrew his sword, thought about how many times mercy had gotten him into trouble, then offered Damoc a hand. “If I had wanted to kill you, I would have. But—and I hope you finally believe me—that was never my intention.”

Damoc gazed at the proffered hand, covered with dried blood and angry welts from the biting worms, and grudgingly accepted. Leitos hauled him up, but took the precaution of putting a few feet between them.

“He … he could have left me,” Nola said, her previous fury replaced by bemused wonder. “Had our positions been reversed, I would have left him. But even after I tried to cut him down, he carried me from that awful place and … and away from the Faceless One and his hordes.”

Leitos held his breath a moment, certain she would mention that the only way he had been able to take her away from danger had been to strike her. Even knowing there had been no other way, it troubled him to have struck the girl who looked like Zera.

She is not Zera
, he told himself forcefully, still finding it difficult to separate the image of the woman he had loved, from the girl who now stood in his defense.

“I cannot trust you, not yet,” Damoc said slowly, “but I do trust my daughters. On their word alone, I grant you peace. But know this, outlander, it is not finished between us.”

“It
is
over,” Belina said with a exasperated snort, “or there is no reason not to let you two start chopping at one another again.” She eyed Leitos. “He may be young, but you are a fool if you believe he could not have killed you a dozen times over—had he wished to.”

That seemed to sting Damoc’s pride, but he abruptly laughed it off. “As well, I could have gutted him where he stood, more than once.”

Belina favored Leitos with an imploring look. After brief consideration, he decided no good could come from humiliating Damoc in front of his daughters and his clan.

Leitos fingered the cut in his robes, and put on a humble grin. “This one did come very close.” It was the best he could offer, and that seemed enough. The Yatoans began chuckling, as if they found brushes with death amusing—in that, they reminded him of the Brothers.