Iron and Blood (15 page)

The keep was in total disarray as Hool passed through it. She saw dead and dying men all over the place, and even more fighting for their lives. Doors were bashed in, tapestries were on fire, and she even saw several Dellorans frozen stiff, their skin white with frost. These smelled like magic. Slaves and miserable humans filled with poisons screamed and stumbled around, getting in the way, dying, fleeing, and adding to the chaos.

Shutting it all out, Hool darted across contested corridors and edged around desperate hand-­to-­hand battles, her nose leading her deeper and deeper into the aging keep. Finally, when she knew she was beneath the earth, in the dank, cobweb-­strewn dungeons and all sounds of battle had faded, she heard Hendrieux speak.

“Hurry,” he said, his voice breathless. No one answered.

The smell of magic was so overpowering, Hool could scarcely get a whiff of Hendrieux, let alone who he was talking to. Crouching in the darkness and letting her ears guide her, she crept closer, her padded hands and feet scarcely disturbing the dust that lay in thick layers around her.

“Why are you stopping?” Hendrieux asked his companion. “They could be just behind us! Come on!”

Hool slipped around a corner and saw him, his blade-­thin silhouette clearly ilLumenated by the flickering red light of an oil lantern he held in his left hand, a slender rapier in his right. Next to Hendrieux, resting on the floor, was a chest, its lid partially open. The gold inside produced an orange glow in the lamplight.

Hendrieux ignored the chest and spun around on his heel, searching the dark recesses of the cellar. “Where are you?”

Hool let her growl escape, rumbling up from the depths of her broad chest until it seemed to shake the walls. The color drained from Hendrieux's face, and his whole body trembled as he looked frantically left and right, waving the guttering lamp before him like a holy symbol. “Oh gods! She's here! She's coming for me! Help! Gallo!”

Hool pounced, aiming to knock Hendrieux on his back. He glimpsed her for a brief second, illuminated by his lamp, and screamed. In that instant, she saw the terror in his eyes and her heart leapt at her victory. She would make his skull a trophy, and wear his fingers in a necklace as a warning. His wicked blood would be sweet.

. . . And then Gallo rammed her in the side with an armored shoulder. The force of the blow was enough to knock the air out of Hool's lungs and send her spinning across the room to smash into a wall. Others might have lain there, stunned, but Hool's instincts told her to roll to her feet and draw her axe. Her lungs screamed for air, and she took several, gulping breaths, but didn't take her eyes off the huge armored form of Gallo.

He drew out a heavy bladed falchion with a wickedly spiked hilt, his dead black eyes fixed on the gnoll. “Go,” he said to Hendrieux, “Take your gold and flee.” His voice betrayed no evidence of emotion.

Hendrieux nodded. “Right. Be careful.”

Hool moved to intercept Hendrieux as he hoisted the chest on his shoulder, but Gallo was there to meet her. He slashed his falchion at her in a savage arc, causing her to leap back. He recovered his swing quickly, his armor seeming to have no effect on the smoothness of his movement. More magic, she thought, sourly. It was from Gallo that some of the heavy magic stink was emanating, she was sure.

Hool tried twice more to evade the huge warrior, but there was nothing for it—­she would have to go through him to get to Hendrieux. It was dark now, and her sensitive eyes could make out the gleam of his armor. He couldn't see as much—­probably only her eyes, which would glow in the distant torchlight.

So Hool closed her eyes. She could hear Gallo's demeanor change as he lost sight of her. He became still, so his armor would not give away his position, but she could still hear his labored breaths, each of which was like a flare in the dark. Silently, she moved to hit him in the flank, aiming to put the iron spike at the back of the battle-­axe straight through his breast plate. Then she charged, opening her eyes only at the last moment. Gallo spun to face her but it was too late. Her strike with the axe was perfect—­the armor-­piercing spike punched straight through the center of his armored chest, no doubt puncturing his heart beneath.

Gallo, though, did not fall. His scarred, masklike face registered no injury. He merely looked at the gnoll before him, clenched his left gauntlet so that some mechanism caused a short, stabbing blade to thrust out from his knuckles, and drove it into her stomach.

Hool lurched away before Gallo could twist the blade, and a hot, searing pain contorted her abdominal muscles. Before she could recover, Gallo followed up his attack with a brutal kick to her wounded midsection, sending the gnoll rolling to one corner of the room. As she panted for breath, whimpering against the pain, the huge warrior yanked the axe out of his chest and broke its thick, oaken handle over one knee like a piece of kindling. “Now you die, dog.”

Hool gathered herself and backed away from him, her growls mixing with wheezes of pain. He was wrong. No human was going to kill her. No human was her equal.

The troubling thing, though, was that she wasn't sure that Gallo was entirely human—­not anymore anyway.

T
yvian could see that the Dellorans didn't have much hope of holding out against the onslaught he had arranged against them, but he knew it had very little to do with the average Defender. Certainly, a dozen mageglass-­armored men with firepikes helped, but it was the Mage Defender in their midst that was the tipping point.

Mage Defenders were not primarily trained to use magic as an offensive weapon, but Saldor's involvement in the Illini Wars had showed them the worth of giving all of their magi—­Defenders especially—­certain basic instruction in the more martial aspects of sorcery. Myreon, it seemed, was living proof of how a little training could go a long way.

As Tyvian made his way behind the main body of those storming the keep, he saw numerous examples of Myreon's handiwork. Lode-­bolts that had frozen Dellorans solid were only the most obvious signs; there were also a number of Defenders who were untouchable behind numerous blade-­ and bow-­wards, making them into human siege engines behind which their fellows could shelter from the better-­trained Dellorans, or all the barred and locked doors that had been casually blasted apart from Myreon's liberal use of The Shattering, which shook the whole keep with its every invocation. Tyvian caught a glimpse of her once, charging with a pair of Defenders at yet another Delloran strong point, her hair wild and her hands steaming from the power she was channeling, yelling battle cries that would have been more fitting in the mouths of historical characters like Finn Cadogan or Conrad Varner.

Tyvian shook his head as he watched Myreon break through the Delloran barricade without missing a stride.
Say what you will about the woman, but don't question her patriotism.

The ring throbbed with the kind of steady, uncomfortable pain that usually indicated he was being irresponsible and shallow but not precisely evil. Tyvian shut it out as he went deeper into the keep, in the exact opposite direction from the fighting. If he were Hendrieux, he thought, that was exactly where he would go to make his escape. The anygate Hendrieux had been using was down there, for one thing. Anygates weren't the kind of thing you would put in the living room of a castle—­dungeons and other internally defensible positions were usually the best.

Tyvian knew he was on the right track when he heard Hendrieux scream in terror. He doubled his pace into the dungeon, pulling out the illumite shard and hanging it on a lanyard around his neck to light his way. Hool, he guessed, had beaten him to the prey. He only hoped he could get there before she finished torturing him to death.

He met Hool as she stumbled backward through a door. Her lips were foaming pink with blood and she had numerous vicious wounds on her shoulders and arms, plus a serious gut wound that was pouring blood down her hind legs. She spared him barely a glance as she backed away from where she had come from. Tyvian, likewise, backed up—­whatever was doing that to Hool was not something he wanted to tackle without some strategic forethought.

Emerging from the doorway came Gallo, clad in the same dirty plate mail, blood likewise pooling at his feet from several wounds, most obviously a massive puncture in his chest that
should
have killed him already, were it not for the incredible life-­warding the man had evidently been . . . given? Afflicted with? Tyvian wasn't entirely sure if living with those kinds of injuries forever qualified as a boon. Gallo, an arahk-­style falchion in his hand, was apparently unperturbed by his injuries, and his black, flinty eyes never strayed from the gnoll. If he noticed Tyvian, he gave no sign.

“Reldamar!” Hool managed, her voice rough with pain and exhaustion. “Get Hendrieux!”

The ring twinged, making Tyvian pause. “You need help, don't you?”

Hool, growling, dodged a pair of two-­handed swings from the giant man, waved him off. “No time! He's running!”

Tyvian's feet tried moving away, but every step led the ring to squeeze tighter on his hand. “Dammit!” he shouted, and produced his two throwing knives. They were long thin blades, and razor sharp—­perfect for armor. The first he put through Gallo's sword hand, which was enough to make the beast drop the falchion. The second he slid across the floor to Hool, who snatched it up. “I want those back!” he yelled, and disappeared through the door from which the two combatants had come. The ring complained, but not as strongly as it might have.

Beyond, a long, winding stair led him even more deeply into the old keep's dungeons. He choked on the dust that had been kicked up by Hool's desperate battle with the Delloran giant and followed their trail of destruction until he found what he assumed to be its point of inception. It was an old wine cellar appended to the dungeon, with only a few empty casks remaining. Beyond that, Tyvian could see the reflection of lamplight on the walls of an adjoining room: Hendrieux.

Straightening his tattered shirt and wishing he'd had the forethought to ask Carlo to bring a clean set of clothes with him tonight, Tyvian pulled himself to his full height and walked through the door. Hendrieux was crouching against the far wall, rapier across his knees. His eyes were glazed with a kind of sleepy calm—­ink, no doubt—­and he grinned faintly as Tyvian entered. “Ah,” he said, “I thought this was your doing.”

On the wall stood what had to be an anygate, judging from the Astral script etched around the door. Tyvian snorted. “Can't remember the right combination of runes to link to where you want to, can you? I keep telling you, Zaz—­ink will rot your brain.”

Hendrieux stood up, rapier out, and assumed the en garde position. “The idiots didn't listen to me. They didn't know just how dangerous you are, and they didn't listen.”

Tyvian drew
Chance
and mirrored Hendrieux's stance. “You stabbed me in the back, Zazlar. I'm here to return the favor.”

“You won't get to see my back, Tyvian! When Gallo finishes with your pet, he'll come back here and the two of us will see you dead, once and for all.”

“What makes you think you'll live that long?” Tyvian countered, advancing a pace.

Hendrieux circled away from the wall, changing his blade position, shifting smoothly through a number of Akrallian fencing styles. Tyvian had to remind himself that Hendrieux was no slouch with a blade—­it was so easy to underestimate someone as underwhelming as Hendrieux. Tyvian matched him, style for style. “What's the matter, Zaz, can't decide?”

“What about this?” Hendrieux opened with a feint that Tyvian saw coming, but only barely. He batted away a thrust at the last second that would have pierced his liver. The Cool Blue Hendrieux had in his system was dulling the Akrallian's facial expressions, making him hard to read.

Taking note of this, Tyvian pressed back with a series of feints and aggressive beats to knock Hendrieux off-­balance. It worked well enough to cause him to stumble back two paces until his back was almost against the anygate. He recovered his defense and grinned. “Barrister? I didn't think you liked Eddonish styles.”

Tyvian permitted himself a shrug. “Usually too thuggish for my tastes, but since I'm fencing a thug—­”

Hendrieux lunged, Tyvian parried and riposted, injuring the Akrallian in the shoulder. Snarling, Hendrieux locked blades and closed into corps à corps. Instinctively, Tyvian reached for a knife, only to remember too late he had given it to Hool. Grinning with only his teeth, Hendrieux swept Tyvian's forward leg, knocking the smuggler to his knees. Their blades still locked together, Hendrieux pressed down with all his weight, crushing Tyvian to the floor. “What,” he hissed. “No knife, Tyvian?”

“What, no sword, Hendieux?” Tyvian countered, and with a twist of his wrist, the unyielding mageglass blade of
Chance
cut straight through Hendrieux's rapier, leaving him with a broken end.

Eyes wide with shock, Hendrieux fell backward. Tyvian hopped to his feet and lunged, but Hendrieux had already turned his back and fled straight to the anygate. Before Tyvian could intercept him, the Akrallian vanished through the magical doorway.

“Kroth's teeth!” Tyvian swore, and dove through the door after him.

 

H
ool spat blood and tried to keep her tongue from lolling out as she backed away from Gallo. The slender stiletto Tyvian had given her was dark with the giant warrior's blood, but nothing she did to him seemed to have an effect. She had pierced his body a dozen times—­in the armpit, the knees, the abdomen, and the face—­and Gallo was just as strong as when the fight began, an eternity before. With every lunge and attack came a price. Gallo's falchion was gone, but his gauntlet-­blade was still there, and his fists and feet were each armored bludgeons that had broken her bones and bruised her body.

The bloody, scarred mask of Gallo's face regarded her like a death specter, his hooded, lifeless eyes boring into her. His breath came evenly, if ragged, as though the deadly battle were all part of his ghoulish routine. Hool, meanwhile, was gasping for air, every dodge and step agony on her exhausted body.

She knew now that she could not win. She could not kill this man. She needed only to keep him busy until Tyvian could win. She needed to last a bit longer.

Gallo charged, swinging his blade-­hand in an arc intended to cut above Hool's eyes. She ducked low and thrust the stiletto in another chink in his armor. She struck flesh and drew blood, but again there was no benefit for her. Gallo kneed her in the jaw and she fell backward.

Exhausted, her roll back to her feet was too slow, and Gallo's mail-­clad boot slammed down on her chest. He leaned his mountainous weight down on her, pushing all the air from her lungs as he drove his gauntlet blade toward her face. Hool caught it with her hands and pushed it away. Gallo, expressionless, went at her again, steadily and inexorably, like a machine pressing grapes. Hool's arms quivered and the blade grew closer and closer to slamming home in her throat.

In a last, desperate ruse, she released his arm, letting the blade slam forward, but twisted her head away at the last instant. It cut along her jowl but hit the stone floor with such force that it shattered. Gallo lost his balance, and Hool placed both of her hind legs against his chest and pushed him off. This time she rolled to her feet quickly, but afterward was dizzy from the exertion.

By then Gallo was up again and met Hool's desperate lunge with a straight arm jab that broke her nose. He put another two uppercuts into her already broken ribs and, grabbing her by the ear, threw her headlong into a musty storage closet. “No more time for you.” he announced, and slammed the door closed before she could get back out.

Hool heard the door barred against her as she battered it in the dark, but she was too tired. She sank back against the sacks, bags, and blankets in the closet. Her broken nose twitched at the musty odor that assaulted her, and then, recognizing the scent, she sat bolt upright.

Frantically, she dug through the piles of cloaks and clothing until she found it, her fingers trembling with horror. The world fell away from her and she began to howl with a pain far deeper than any blade of Gallo's could have inflicted.

T
yvian tripped on his way out of the anygate. He was in a woodcutter's yard, probably near the South Inn District, near the edge of Freegate along the road south. The snow had built up to shin-­deep, and he hadn't been ready for the shift as he rushed through the door.

Hendrieux was on him in an instant, knocking
Chance
away with a frozen log and leaping on his chest. Pressing his thumbs into Tyvian's windpipe, he giggled, the cold winter air puffing out his nostrils like smoke. “Got you! Got you! Ha!”

Tyvian grabbed a heavy handful of the wet snow and stuffed it in Hendrieux's nose and mouth. The Akrallian inhaled some of it and, coughing, loosened his grip long enough for the smuggler to slug him in the solar plexus and roll out from under him.

Casting around for
Chance,
Tyvian suddenly realized an unusual drawback of mageglass weapons—­their icelike appearance blended perfectly with the snow on a winter night. “Kroth's bloody goddamned teeth!”

Roaring, Hendrieux bull-­charged him, but Tyvian met the attack with a right cross to the jaw that spun the Akrallian around and dumped him on his face.

He took the second he had to recover to scan for a weapon. There, across the yard and half smothered in snow, he saw the unmistakable outline of an axe buried in a chunk of wood. He ran toward it, snow churning around his legs, and wrenched the weapon free. Spinning around, he expected to see Hendrieux right behind him, but he wasn't.

“Look what
I
found.” Hendrieux giggled. He had
Chance.

“Of all the bloody . . .” Tyvian groaned and took a step closer.

Hendrieux twirled the mageglass blade and tossed it from hand to hand. “My goodness, I knew the balance on a blade like this was good, but I never dreamed it was like this! Tyvian, how thoughtful of you to bring me a souvenir to remember your demise by.”

Tyvian grimaced and considered tactics. Hendrieux's footwork would be slowed by the snow, but the same went for him.
Chance
would make toothpicks out of the top-­heavy wood axe without even trying, and the odds that he could cut past Hendrieux's guard with it were slim to none. This was bad . . . very bad.

Hendrieux advanced,
Chance
at full extension. It was a lure, and Tyvian wasn't stupid enough to take the bait. “You never did tell me why you did it, Hendrieux. Was the money that good?”

Hendrieux performed a lightning quick cut that beheaded Tyvian's axe. “Oh, Sahand pays well, don't you worry. That isn't why I did it, though. I would have done you for half what he offered. Want to know why?”

“Not especially.” Tyvian circled Hendrieux and vice versa. The Akrallian could take him at any moment, and they both knew it. They were postponing the inevitable.

“You think you're so smart! You think you're Hann's gift to the human race, with your superior attitude and your fancy education and your refined tastes. That bothered me, but what bothered me more is that everybody else buys it! Next to you, I was the dull sidekick, the fool, the monkey you send on errands! Sahand made me a captain! He gave me respect! When I walk down a street wearing his coat of arms, ­people back away.”

“Are you sure it isn't in disgust?” Tyvian offered. He had an idea. A long shot, but worth a try. He advanced on Hendrieux as though about to strike.

Hendrieux held
Chance
against Tyvian's throat, stopping him cold. “I'm disgusting, am I? Not so disgusting as you'll be when they find you come thaw. Good-­bye, Tyvian Reldamar.”

Tyvian shrugged.
“Bon chance!”

The triggering enchantment on the hilt heard the activation words and the blade of the mageglass rapier vanished. Hendrieux's ink-­laden expression opened up into genuine shock an instant before Tyvian slammed the heavy axe-­handle into the side of his head. He dropped to the ground, spitting teeth and blood.

Tyvian fished
Chance
's hilt from the snow, reconjured the blade, and pressed it against Hendrieux's chest. “Funny thing just occurred to me—­conjurations from a trigger item require the owner to be touching the item in question to make and unmake it. Nothing specifies what
end
you need to be touching. Isn't that fascinating, Zazlar?”

Hendrieux's lips quivered. “Tyvian . . . Tyvian, please, don't do it! Don't kill me, please!”

“What, and miss my one chance to show the world what a captain's post in the Delloran military gets you?” Tyvian grinned and pressed a little harder against Hendrieux's chest.

Hendrieux scrambled backward through the snow. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I . . . I'm an idiot! I didn't mean what I said back there . . . about . . .”

“You don't need to tell me you're a liar, Zaz. I'm the fellow you betrayed, remember?”

Tears welled up in the Akrallian's eyes. “I just wanted to make good for myself! I . . . I . . . I didn't mean to betray you. It was the only way! You gotta understand! Please! I'm begging!”

“I know exactly what you're doing. It is quite amusing—­please continue.” Tyvian raised
Chance
's tip to his throat. One flick of the wrist and Zazlar would end his days bleeding out in a dirty snowbank in some Freegate slum. Very fitting, Tyvian thought.

Hendrieux began to weep then, shaking his head and mouthing the word “no” over and over, his hands held up in surrender.

“Well,” Tyvian sighed, “this is just embarrassing. Good-­bye, Zaz.”

Tyvian willed his hand to draw the tip of the lethal mageglass blade along Zazlar's throat, but instead a white-­hot pain seared his whole sword arm. Screaming, he dropped
Chance,
clutching his arm to his chest. “NOOO! NOT NOW!”

The ring had passed its verdict, and the punishment was severe.

Hendrieux lay on his back for a brief moment, a stunned look on his face. He got up slowly as Tyvian writhed against the ring, expecting a trap. When none came, he laughed.

Picking up
Chance,
he thrust it through Tyvian's thigh, putting the smuggler on his back and in even more pain.

Standing over Tyvian, Hendrieux spat in the smuggler's face. “My lucky day, eh, Tyv?”

Then he was gone, leaving Tyvian to scream in agony and anger both.

M
yreon was all alone. She didn't know where the rest of the Defenders had gone, but she knew that most of them had been injured or killed. The warriors of Dellor were rightly feared—­their defense had been organized and fierce, even when caught by surprise. Were it not for her own talents with the High Arts, they likely wouldn't have won. As it stood, she hadn't seen another living Delloran for some minutes, but she was performing a room-­by-­room search, working her way from the roof down. Her body ached and her skull was throbbing from channeling so much energy that she doubted she had the concentration or stamina to invoke another lode-­bolt; she resolved to cross that bridge when she came to it.

She had found her way into the basements and subbasements of the old ink-­den when she heard the sound—­a slow, keening wail, muffled somehow into a barely audible moan. Holding her staff in two hands, Myreon sought out the source of the noise. Was it a Delloran? Was it one of the slaves who hadn't run away? She hoped, whatever it was, her basic grasp of staff fighting would be sufficient to defend herself, if necessary.

She entered a storage cellar that had been ravaged by an intense brawl. Shelves were smashed, chests thrown about, and blood covered the floor, forming a thick red paste with the ever-­present dust. The sound was coming from what was probably a closet, barred from the outside. The wailing, Myreon could tell, was in no way from a human throat.

Hool! She was injured and locked in a closet. Would it be safe to open it? The gnoll had never liked or trusted her. The feeling was certainly mutual, and she had no real desire to surprise an injured monster.

Before she could decide, she heard a crash above her and the organized, heavy tread of what were either more Dellorans or . . .

Myreon backed away from the stairs she had come down just before a trio of Defenders, looking grim and exhausted, tromped into the room. They were led by none other than Tyvian.

“Magus! Come on!” His voice was strangely high-­pitched, and he wore an open, honest expression that didn't suit him. Of course—­the Shrouding spell.

“Artus?” Myreon made a snap decision and unlocked the closet door, then followed the boy down the stairs. “What are you doing here? You men, why are you following him?”

“Well, Tyvian sent me to guard the back door. Thing is, though, there ain't no back door—­just a dirty river—­so's I figured that he was just trying to keep me outta trouble, right?” Artus explained as he ran, his adolescent lungs somehow able to breathe while chattering. “Then, I figured, I can help nab Hendrieux. Then I ran into these fellows, and well, once I convinced 'em that I'm not Reldamar—­”

“That's all very well, but why are you coming with us?”

Artus shot her an incredulous look. “I wanna see how this turns out, don't you?”

They charged deeper and deeper into the winding, dark dungeon, their every step moving them closer to their goal. Artus began to lose them, the Defenders and Myreon too exhausted to match the boy's boundless energy. Still, Myreon and her men could follow his footprints in the dust, which eventually brought them to the anygate.

The first thing Myreon noticed was a giant, horrifying monster of a man who could be none other than Sahand's infamous agent, Gallo, easily recognized because of the various warrants the Defenders had issued for him. He was facing the anygate, prodding the runes around the edges in a complex code pattern. Behind him was the comparatively diminutive figure of Zazlar Hendrieux, his face a ruin of bruises and blood. Between the two men she saw a chest of gold coins, half open.

Gallo reacted to the arrival of the Defenders as though he had expected their appearance all along. A quick flick of his wrist saw a tiny, glasslike sphere of antispell strike the first man on the chest. Even as his mageglass armor disappeared, Gallo kicked the chest of gold across the floor so it hit the man in the knees, toppling him.

Gallo was stopped by a blazing firepike blast to the chest by one of the other Defenders. The hit rendered his breastplate concave and smashed him against the far wall of the chamber but, impossibly, Gallo seemed otherwise unfazed by the attack. His ruined voice could be heard over the roar of churning air kicked up by the magic blast. “Hendrieux, get through!”

Hendrieux, though, found himself flanked by the two other Defenders. He immediately dropped the mageglass rapier in his hand and raised his arms over his head. “I surrender! Mercy! Mercy!”

Gallo was not so docile. Recovered from the blow he received, he darted for the anygate, snagging Hendrieux by the arm as he ran past.