Curse: The Dark God Book 2 (26 page)

Argoth slowly drew back around behind the corner of the house, his heart pounding. He had no idea what this Bone Face abomination was doing, but he did know he and his men had to kill him. They had to kill him now.

He turned to his men and signaled the numbers of the enemy, their armament, and placement and waited while his men passed the signal to the other two hammers. He raised his crossbow, checking to make sure the bolt was properly placed. He’d have one good shot, and it needed to sink deep into that wizard’s wicked heart.

Oaks signaled back that the message had been received. Argoth prepared to give the order to charge.

Then a small group of Bone Face warriors with more prisoners marched around a corner and saw his hammers. One of them shouted a warning. Two others drew their bows.

“Charge!” Argoth bellowed and stepped around the corner of the workshop.

The Kragow turned to look at him. Argoth leveled the crossbow, blew out a breath, squared the man in its sights, and pulled the trigger. The crossbow thocked, the bolt shot out and sped like lightning across the crossroad at the Kragow.

The Kragow twisted, snake-quick, and the bolt flew into the inside of his forearm and out the other side, blood shooting out in an arc.

Argoth tossed the crossbow to the side, drew his axe, and charged with a bellow. He was multiplied, his Fire raging.

The Kragow raised his good hand, holding his ragged stone aloft.

Argoth’s men charged past the house. The Bone Face warriors picked up their weapons, but Argoth’s men released a volley of arrows, which streaked across the short distance and pin-cushioned five or six of them.

The Kragow did not flee or draw a weapon, merely looked at Argoth with disgust, the blood running down his one arm and mixing with the yellow paint. The Kragow shouted a command.

Argoth raced across the road, raised his axe for a killing blow, but one of the wraiths shot down and struck at his face. Argoth reeled back. Another wrapped about his arm.

The faint murmuring he’d heard before turned into a wailing of anguish. The first wraith tried to push into his mouth and down his throat. Then the one around his arm bit in, trying to enter his flesh.

He slammed shut his doors, but the dark creature that writhed at his wrist, pushed its way partially through. It clawed and bit its way in further. It was crazed, maddened. Argoth recoiled then realized it was the tattoo—somehow it was giving the thing ingress.

He yelled in anger and focused. The thing was full of menace, but Argoth pushed it out and closed the doors at his wrists. Immediately, the wailing receded.

All around him the wraiths fell upon his men who cried out in terror and dismay. One dreadman slumped to his knees, tearing at his chest. Another stumbled backward.

Many of the Bone Faces had been killed or injured, but the dozen or so that remained raised their weapons. One shot a dreadmen from a pace away with an arrow into his throat. Another charged a dreadman and thrust him through with a spear. One man with a long knife charged Oaks, who was down on one knee, struggling with a wraith wrapped about his arm.

Argoth yelled and hurled his axe. It flew with massive velocity and sank deep into the side of the man rushing Oaks. Argoth turned back to the Kragow who was holding his wounded arm.

But another gray tatter attacked Argoth, and he was forced to stop and fight to keep it from entering him and taking possession. A few more wraiths and Argoth would be immobilized.

The Kragow backed away and shouted out another command. More of the wraiths broke away from the mist.

Argoth glanced about him. All but four of the men in his hammer were clutching at their throats or arms, staggering and fighting the things. The second hammer was reeling in the same way.

It was their weaves, he realized. The weaves opened a door! And even though his dreadmen had practiced closing the paths to the soul, the weaves would prevent a complete closure.

“Take off your weaves!” Argoth roared. “Remove them!”

Some of the dreadmen complied. Others seemed to take no notice, lost in the fight to retain possession of their own bodies.

Argoth ran over to one of them and ripped off his weave. He tore off the weave of another. But the Bone Face warriors were wading in with their weapons. One hacked into one of his men’s neck, then stabbed another in the back.

Two more wraiths fell upon Argoth. Their cries reverberated in his mind, and he staggered and yelled in frustration, struggling to keep them out.

And he realized this fight was lost. They needed to flee.

“Fall back!” Argoth shouted. “Fall back!” He picked up the bow of a fallen dreadmen, nocked an arrow, and shot at the closest Bone Face. Nocked and shot another.

Many of the dreadmen began to fall back, a number of them dragging fallen comrades with them. Most of the third hammer were moving. They’d had been farther back when the attack began and had been able to remove their weaves.

“Give us cover!” he shouted to them.

A volley of arrows sped past him at the Bone Faces. A few struck targets. The rest sent the Bone Faces diving for cover, and that gave Argoth and his men a chance to escape. “Run!” he shouted. “Run!”

The third hammer continued to fire at the Bone Faces, and then the wraiths found them, and they too fled back past the dark silent houses, past the dead animals, down the main road and away from the horrors of that crossroad.

The wraiths attacked Argoth and his fleeing men the whole way. More of his men fell, tangled in the horrible coils, before the remnants of the hammers reached the edge of the village and staggered out of the thinning mists into the sunlight.

They fled another fifty yards, but the wraiths did not follow them into the full sunlight.

“Look,” Oaks said.

The wraiths roiled at the edges of the mist, some darting out, then immediately racing back in.

“It contains them,” Oaks said.

“I don’t want to test that theory,” Argoth said. “And I don’t want to wait for that Kragow to realize he made a mistake. He should have sent his men to chase us.”

Argoth looked at the number of men that had made it out, and his heart sank. Not even half were with him.

Shouts rose above them at the top of the hill followed by the sound of many horses. An army of horses. Probably the rest of these Bone Face whoresons. He ordered the men to flee to the woods, but a horn sounded the Shoka call to battle.

That was not an army of Bone Faces.

Argoth rushed to the hill road and looked up its length. At the top he saw two columns of riders wearing the blue and white of freedom. Shim led them on his stallion, which meant the messengers the villagers sent must have made it to Rogum’s Defense.

Shim kicked his horse into a gallop, and he and the column behind him descended the hill, bringing the horses for Argoth and his men with them. Argoth did not wait for them, but raced up to meet them.

“What is that?” asked Shim.

“Bone Faces,” Argoth said. “The mists are full of wraiths fashioned by a wicked lore.”

Shim furrowed his brows. “How many are they?”

“It’s not men you need to worry about.”

“Lord,” one of Shim’s riders said and pointed toward the village.

On the far side of the village, the Kragow and the dozen or so of his remaining men sped away from the village on their horses. They raced their mounts up a small hill and paused.The Kragow turned his horse around, raised a lance with three human heads tied to it with cords, and drove it into the ground. It was a Bone Face gesture of warning, a boast of what they would do.

“I don’t see any wraiths about that maggot,” said Shim.

“If we take him, it has to be from a distance,” Argoth said. He took his horse from one of the riders and mounted it.

Shim ordered two hammers to wait and watch the mists, and then he dug his heels into the flanks of his mount. “Do not close with him,” Argoth shouted and put his heels into his own horse. The riders galloped across the field outside the village, then raced up the hill and swarmed past the lance with its Bone Face script and gory heads.

In front of Argoth and the other riders the fields and meadows stretched out toward the sea. Off to the right the Short Falls River ran through them. The Bone Faces had split up. The Kragow’s men followed the road back to the bay. However, the Kragow himself had broken off from the main group and galloped across a rolling meadow toward the river.

Shim and his dreadmen charged down the hill. They followed the road for about a quarter mile, then fifty chased the Bone Face warriors. The rest followed Shim off the road after the Kragow.

The Kragow reached the rivers’ edge and slid off his horse, disappearing down the river’s bank. A few minutes later, Shim and his men approached the spot where the Kragow had been. The Kragow’s horse stood munching grass. It looked up at the riders as they approached.

Shim motioned for his riders to fan out so more could shoot their arrows at once. He rode forward with his own short recurved horse bow in hand. They closed the distance until they were only a few dozen yards from the Kragow’s mount.

“Show yourself like a man!” Shim shouted.

The grass waved in the wind. The river flowed past. There was no response.

They continued forward. The Kragow’s horse, seeing the line of men closing on it, trotted a few paces away, its reins trailing along the ground.

Argoth waited for the Kragow to rise and summon his wraiths out of the air, but nothing happened. Shim urged his horse forward to the bank of the river. The land here was flat, the banks of the river short and gentle.

“Look at that,” said Shim, pointing at the bank of the river.

From the river’s edge up to where Argoth sat on his horse, the wild grass was pressed down and wet. Argoth walked his horse over to the water’s edge. A fifteen foot wide swath of the river bank and bottom had been churned.

Shim pointed at a huge swale of mud that had been thrown up. “No ships’ hull would make that.”

“No,” said Argoth. “There’s no keel or hull mark. No footprints. And why is the grass wet a dozen yards up the bank?”

“Something came out of the river,” said Oaks.

As soon as Oaks said it, Argoth knew it was true. The Short Falls River was maybe thirty yards wide at this location, but it was deep and slow.

Argoth said, “I think we should back away from the water, Lord.”

“I was just going to suggest a swim, Captain.”

“Lord,” said Argoth in warning.

Shim said, “If there’s something in the river, let it show itself. We have three hundred arrows waiting.” But nothing showed itself. A few minutes later, Shim ordered a hammer of men to cross. They did so without incident. He sent more to follow, ordering men to scout up and down both banks of the river.

After an hour of thorough searching, they returned, having found nothing. The Kragow had not been hiding in the grass or willows, hadn’t left a wet spot in the grass or footprints in the mud as he climbed out of the water. The man had simply disappeared.

Those who had chased the Bone Face warriors did not bring back anyone Shim could question either. The warriors had raced to the coast and rowed out to a raiding ship waiting off shore.

Shim said, “They might have rowed another smaller ship up the river.”

“You saw as far down the river as I,” said Argoth. “There was no ship. And the scouts would have caught up to any small boat in these slow waters.”

“Then where did he go?”

Argoth had no good answer.

* * *

After the failed search for the Kragow, Argoth and Shim returned to Fishing. The mists had dissipated. The wraiths, as far as Argoth could see, were gone, leaving behind the bodies of the villagers and his men. Sixty-three villagers and forty-seven of his new dreadmen.

They were good men. He knew each one of them well. With each body they found, the images of the men’s loved ones rose in his mind. A whole multitude of wives and children, mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and grandparents to whom he’d have to tell the awful news. It grieved him to the core. They had been
good
men who had been wasted because of his ignorance.

For each fallen soldier, Argoth and the others built a litter that could be dragged behind a horse. Then they placed the bodies of the dreadmen upon them. For the people of Fishing they dug graves. They did the same for those in Woolsom and Larkin. With every spadeful Argoth’s grief hardened until it was cold as stone.

By the time they’d finished all the graves, the sun had dropped into the western sky. Argoth rode next to Shim. Behind them came the riders dragging the litters which carried the bodies of the brave Shoka sons, fathers, and brothers.

As they rode, Argoth thought through the implications of this new threat. The dark and smoky mists at Fishing had not quite covered the whole village, but what if the Kragow could extend those mists to cover a wider area? He’d be able to destroy a huge army with only a handful of men. Of course, anyone who saw the mists could flee. But what if the Kragows attacked at night when the black mists couldn’t be seen and avoided? That thought chilled him.

“I think the Bone Faces might pose a greater threat than Mokad,” Argoth said to Shim.

“Are you sure they’re not allied with them?”

“No. But I do know our weaves will be useless against them in an attack. Our men need to grow in their ability to withstand those that would ride their souls. Although that probably won’t be enough. I myself almost succumbed, and I’ve had years to grow into my strength.”

Shim nodded. “There is one good thing in this bitter brew. Can you imagine what would have happened if we’d met this for the first time in a major battle?”

It was clear that if that Kragow had been with a few more men, they would have slaughtered Argoth and all those that had been with him. In fact, the only reason any had survived was because the third hammer had been standing farther back when the wraiths attacked.

Shim said, “It was not all a waste. We now know what those mists are. Maybe our Kish friend has a way to fight it.”