Infinity Blade: Awakening (11 page)

“A god wouldn’t have fallen to my blade,” Siris said. “Even if the death wasn’t permanent. If they were really gods, no mortal could have fought one of them and won.”

She didn’t reply, though he caught her giving him a measuring glance.

“Maybe,” he said, “there’s nothing special to them other than knowledge. They
know
things, like how to make the rings work, like how to manipulate others.”

“And how to stop aging?” she said skeptically. “And come back to life when killed?”

“In the next town over from ours,” Siris said, “there was a very learned doctor. He was trained by a doctor before him, and that doctor by another doctor. This man could bring a mother giving birth—and the child—back from what other healers thought was fatal. Maybe it’s like that. If you have the right information, you can do what everyone else thinks is a miracle.”

“No,” Isa said softly. “There’s more to it than that. Being Deathless is about more than knowledge. I—”

She was cut off by a scream. Both of them spun toward the sound. The shouting continued, and Siris caught what might have been a call for help.

“Is that—” Siris began.

“—The place where I said there might be an ambush?” Isa said. “Yeah. Looks like someone wasn’t smart enough to go around. I advise hanging back to watch, but I suppose you’re going to want to go rush and help the fool who . . .”

Siris didn’t hear the rest of what she said, as he was already charging toward the sound.

S
IRIS BURST OUT
onto the stony bank of the stream. He could hear splashing downriver.

There!
he thought, running toward a group of daerils with pale yellow skin and bony ridges. They hooted, surrounding a solitary figure who had fallen into the shallow water while trying to cross the stream. The traveler wore a brown robe; Siris couldn’t see much of him beyond that.

Four daerils. Could he handle four at once? There was no reason to think that feral daerils would obey the Aegis code of honor.
Not much choice now,
he thought.

Siris spun, sweeping outward with the Infinity Blade. Bamboo rattled against itself, clattering to the ground as he cut two dozen stalks free. The clamor brought the daerils up short, and they turned on him, one sniffing the air. The poor wayfarer crawled toward shelter beside some rocks.

The four daerils prowled toward Siris. One at the front grunted something, and the others split up, moving to surround Siris. Gripping his blade, he stepped into the shallow river, the water coming up only to his calves. If he got surrounded, the splashing of those trying to come at him from behind would give vital warning.

The daerils were all of the same species. These grunted and hooted rather than speaking, though they wore crude armor and carried swords. They had hollow-looking, almost skeletal faces. He couldn’t distinguish them by their features, though the leader wore armor stained the color of blood. This one stepped into the river directly in front of Siris, and for a moment, it looked as if he might follow the ancient ideal after all.

Then the leader waved, and the other three moved into the river to attack. Rustling and hooting came through the bamboo in the distance. More were coming.
Great.

Siris positioned himself, trying to watch—or at least listen for—all four. The cold mountain water was icy on his feet as it seeped through his boots. Something about his circumstances suddenly struck him as familiar.

I’ve never been in this situation before,
he thought, spinning on one of the daerils that tried to come at him. The beast moved back in the water, growling.

All of Siris’s training had been focused on single duels. And yet, there was a sense of familiarity to this larger fight . . . as there had been in the castle, when he’d faced the two golems. There was something there, something inside of him. If he could just reach it . . .

The daerils attacked, and he shook out of the reverie. Siris jumped forward and engaged the first one to gain a second or two breather from those coming up behind.

He slammed the daeril’s sword out of the way, then rammed his weapon into its chest. Splashes behind. Siris ripped the sword free and yelled, spinning, coming down on the arm of a daeril swinging for him. The daeril’s blood was red, just like that of a person.

Keep moving, keep moving.
Splashes and hoots, cries of rage and pain. A third daeril was coming at his side, where Siris had intentionally left himself open. The creature struck as Siris snapped his fingers together, summoning the God King’s shield in a flash of blue. The daeril’s eyes opened wide as its sword was blocked by the steel.

Siris shoved the beast’s weapon aside, then struck, sword through the neck.

That left Siris completely exposed from the back. There was no way to stop the fourth daeril in time. Siris spun, expecting to feel the blow at any moment.

Instead, he found the daeril splashing and flailing, a figure in a long black coat hanging onto its back, her arms around its neck in a choke hold. The daeril tried to stand, and Isa cursed, kicking at its leg and bringing them both down in a splash of water. The creature was wheezing.

“Wow,” Siris said.

“If . . . you’re done . . . admiring,” Isa said, straining, “could you
please stab this thing?
”

Siris leaped forward and rammed the blade down into the creature’s chest. Isa rolled free, water pouring over her as she puffed in and out. “Damn,” she said. “Those things are
strong
.”

Siris helped her to her feet, and she pulled off her coat—it was so wet that it flopped when she moved. She dropped it and let it float away, fishing out one of the daerils’ fallen swords. The hooting of other daerils was growing closer. A second later, eight of them broke out into the small clearing.

“Hell take us,” Siris whispered.

“I believe I
warned
you that this was a perfect place for an ambush,” Isa said, her teeth chattering as she raised her sword.

“You did.”

“And I believe I suggested restraint as you charged off like a fool.”

“You did.”

“Well, so long as I’m proven right, I guess I can die happy. And cursing your name, of course.”

Siris smiled wanly as the newcomers fanned out, looking at the corpses of the fallen, the blood coloring the river. One of the daerils—the one whose arm he’d cut off—had crawled to the bank. One of the newcomers killed him with a strike to the head, a sneer on his lips.

“If it turns out that guy yelling for help was just a means of drawing us in here,” Isa said, “I’m going to be
really
annoyed at you.”

“You aren’t now?”

“Too cold to be annoyed yet. Did we have to fight
in
the river?”

“Felt right at the time,” Siris said as the daerils closed in. Their hooting had grown agitated. They obviously didn’t like having lost so many members during a simple ambush. “I don’t think the guy we saved is with them. He seems terrified.” Siris couldn’t make out much of him, only a robed figure cowering behind the rocks.

“That’s something, at least. So . . . I’m not that handy with a sword. I can deal with one of these guys. Maybe. You can handle the other seven?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “No problem.”

“Good. For a moment, I thought we were in trouble. Maybe if someone hadn’t broken my crossbow . . .”

“Maybe if someone hadn’t tried to murder me in my sleep . . .”

“You keep coming back to that one little slip of mine,” she said. “You really need to stop holding grudges, whiskers. They aren’t healthy.”

He found himself smiling as the daerils came for them. That smile vanished quickly. The splashing of clawed feet, the hoots, the swinging of swords.

They bunch up when they attack with so many together,
Siris thought.
There’s something to that. . . . I can see it, in my head. Forms with the sword . . .

He threw himself into the fray, Isa guarding his back. He slammed swords aside, used his shield like a bludgeon, roared in rage to try to intimidate the daerils. But they were careful. They forced him back, and he could barely defend himself. He did get one lucky jab in, sending a single monster to his knees, holding his stomach and coughing blood. The others closed in.

Yes . . . I can see it . . . like a fragment of a memory . . .

Siris fell still. That seemed to make some of the daerils wary, for they drew back. Others still rampaged toward him, fighting.

Isa fell. He could hear her grunt, could see new blood in the stream, could feel the splash of water against his legs as she collapsed.

The daerils closed on him.

He shut his eyes.

There.

His arms moved, raising the sword as if by their own volition. In his youth, he’d trained his body to follow the instincts of a soldier, performing practice attacks, jabs, and stances until they were second nature. He was familiar with fighting by instinct.

He just had no idea where
these
particular instincts came from.

He snapped his eyes open and spun in a complex sword kata, feet moving quietly in the water. He seemed to dance with the river itself. His blade struck seven times in rapid succession, each blow precise, each move exact. When he stopped, he held the Infinity Blade before him in a calm, two-handed grip. The river flowed at his feet.

Seven daerilic corpses floated away.

He took a deep breath, as if coming awake after a long sleep, then turned—absently noting his shield, which he’d dropped sometime during the process.

What had
that
been? The rhythm of the attacks seemed so familiar. The seven strikes had come as if this particular fight—with each daeril in its place—was something he’d practiced time and time again.

The Infinity Blade?
he wondered.
Did those reflexes come from the sword?

Isa.

He cursed, dropping the weapon, grabbing her from the nearby water. She had a gut wound, a bad one, and the chill water washed the blood from it. Her eyes were still open, still moving, but her skin was pale, her lips trembling.

“I didn’t . . .” she said, “. . . when I said you had to fight seven, I didn’t actually expect you to
do
it. . . .”

“Here,” Siris said, pulling the ring off his finger and shoving it onto hers. “Use the ring. Heal yourself.”

“I can’t . . .”

“You
can
. It’s easy. You can sense it. See? Use it. You don’t even have to worry about growing a beard.”

“How can you not know?” she whispered.

“Know what?”

“I can’t use this, Siris. It doesn’t work that way. It—”

“Oh my, oh my, oh
my
,” a voice said.

Siris looked up. The robed figure who had been cowering behind the rocks had un-cowered his way up the bank to inspect his saviors. His hood had fallen back, and there wasn’t a face in there.

Or . . . well, not a human face. Not even a
living
face. Two eyes like blue gemstones regarded him from their place set in a head carved from wood. There was no mouth, though the spindly thing spoke. “That is not good, not good, not good.”

“Can you help?” Siris asked desperately.

“Must I?”

“Yes!”

“Bring her over then, out of the water, out of the water. Yes, yes. Something metal, let us see, and thread I should imagine . . .”

Siris lifted Isa and splashed through the water to the bank, watered-down blood seeping out of the wound. He set her on the rocky bank as the creature—a golem of some sort—shucked its robe, revealing a puppetlike body of thin wood.

Bamboo,
Siris thought.
It’s made of bamboo
.

“Yes, yes,” the golem said, inspecting the wound with thin fingers. “Your shield. I need your shield.”

Siris fetched it. What else could he do? It didn’t seem the time to ask questions. When he returned with the wet shield, the creature was absently reaching out to touch its fallen robe. Its hand, then arm, unraveled.

Siris froze. The creature’s body was turning to thread, the transformation running up its arm.

“Excellent, excellent,” the creature said, waving with the hand that was still wooden. “Bring it, please. Please, yes.”

Siris knelt, setting the shield beside Isa. She was still breathing, but had her eyes closed. She looked so pale.

The creature touched the shield with its wooden hand, and that hand fused to the steel, transforming and becoming metal. This transformation ran up its other arm, turning half of its body to metal.

Then the creature
broke
its arm free, splintering its entire body. The fracture was precise, and from the heap of metal emerged a smaller version of the creature, perhaps one foot tall, with one half of its body made of bunched up thread and the other half made of slender, silvery steel.

It walked up and prodded Isa’s wound with fingers that were now very fine, like needles. It cut away the clothing near the gash—its fingers were sharp on one side.

“Clean wound,” it said, the voice now much softer. “Cut very sharply. Good, but yes, much work to do. Must be quick! Lots of blood. Not good, not good.”

The creature pushed its way into the wound, burying its arms—one of silvery metal, the other a pile of thread that moved like muscles—into her abdomen. The creature began to hum, using one spindly finger like a needle, threading part of its own body through and beginning to sew on the wound.

“It’s going to be all right,” Siris said to Isa.
I think. I hope.

“Too much of a coincidence,” she whispered.

“Hush,” he said. “Don’t—”

She opened her eyes. “It was following us. That thing, whatever it . . .” She grimaced in pain and took a few panting breaths. “It must have been followed us, Siris. That’s why it fell into the ambush. It didn’t catch that we’d split off to go the long way around.”

Siris looked at the creature, which was working quickly, humming to itself. In just a few minutes, it finished with its work on Isa’s innards and moved to sewing up her outer gash. Its fingers were a blur, and the stitches it made incredibly tight and small. It pulled the final stitch tight, then tied it off and snipped.