Dark Vengeance (34 page)

The oldest merchant stared at him with cold, suspicious eyes for a long, long time before turning to glare at the Consecrated who'd spoken.

When he replied to her, every word was cold and hard and flat, like a stone dropped to earth.

“Cast your spell.”

 

Orivon Firefist was ducking and twisting in the heart of a clanging, thrusting storm of deadly steel—and he was happier than he'd been in a long time.

Slaying anyone or anything didn't please or excite him, but harming Niflghar, and thwarting their causes and their arrogant rule over anywhere,
that
pleased him deeply.

Though he hated Talonnorn and all its ways with a burning, unfailing passion, he was enough of a Talonar to hate rival Ouvahlor, too—and here were Ouvahlan warblades within reach of the blades he'd forged, and standing up to him. Earlier it had seemed as if they were on the verge of fleeing, disheartened by the ruthless yet merry efficiency of the handful of attacking Ravagers, but now something—probably something magical—was making every last one of them glare with eyes that burned with zeal, and attack with an alacrity and a ferocity Orivon had never seen anywhere before.

Ravagers were dying, now, and though it seemed to the forge-fist as if he'd felled far too many Ouvahlans for any still to be standing, he was beset on three sides and being forced back, step by step, toward the heaped corpses of the slaves who'd died still in their chains.

A warblade almost as tall as Orivon—now
there
was a rarity!—came leaping in at him, heedless of other darting Nifl blades, and Orivon managed to set the blade in his right hand ready against his own thigh
just
in time.

As Orivon parried the tall Ouvahlan's sword with the sword in his left hand, the charging Nifl impaled himself on the ready sword, shrieked in astonished pain, and clawed at the forgefist in
agony as he started to writhe and fall. To keep at least one blade aloft to defend himself with, Orivon kicked out with his leg and twisted, swinging the dying Nifl around in front of him as a barrier whose thrashings forced the other Ouvahlans pressing Orivon into stepping back or stumbling and falling themselves.

Orivon shed the tall Ouvahlan—who was now struggling to gurgle up blood and scream at the same time, and was managing a horrible wet choking sound—from his blade with a jerk, and stepped back forcefully, to gain himself some room.

His hip bumped solidly against someone else's, and as he twisted to hack at whoever it was, his sword was caught right at the guards by another blade, and Orivon found himself staring into the face of—Taerune Evendoom.

He faltered for a moment in astonishment, during which her fierce grin at him turned to a look of alarm directed over his shoulder. Then she flung the blade in her hand, and Orivon whirled around in time to see the Nifl she'd flung it into the face of staggering backward and jostling the Ouvahlan beside him off-balance, too. Which left just the one on Orivon's extreme left to deal with in an instant, so he did.

When he turned back to Taerune, she was two or three paces away, fencing with the blade he'd made and affixed to the stump of her left forearm, a seeming lifetime ago, and snatching opportunities to peer back in his direction.

Their eyes met.

“You seem astonished to see me,” she called cheerfully. “Is it so surprising to see a Nifl in the very cavern of her city?”

Orivon lunged forward, ducking under the sweeping sword of an Ouvahlan, and drove the tip of his own blade into that warblade's throat. Even before the blood started to fountain, he'd thrust his other blade into the throat of the Ouvahlan who'd fallen underfoot. Snatching up Taerune's fallen sword, he turned and tossed it back to her, flipping it so that it spun through the air and bit deeply into the back of an Ouvahlan corpse lying right in front of her, quivering upright for her to easily snatch.

“I . . .” He groped for words, not making the mistake of stopping fighting this time. Still burning-eyed, the Ouvahlans were beginning to falter; was the magic that was driving them starting to fade?

“I did not think I would see you again,” Orivon finally said, between clanging sword blows. “Alive.”

Taerune did not seem pleased.

“Such confidence,” she called scornfully. “And after so many Nifl died so that you could return to your precious Blindingbright, you stand here in Talonnorn
again?
Have Hairy Ones taken to raiding Nifl cities, now?”

“Something like that,” Orivon snapped as a wave of Ouvahlans charged forward from behind the ones he was killing. “Something like that.”

Then the Ouvahlans were surging forward on all sides, in a wave of murderous Nifl, and Orivon and Taerune were too busy frantically hacking, ducking, parrying, and dancing about to say anything at all.

The forgefist thought hazily that if he could get back to Taerune and they could make a stand back to back, that would be one less direction he'd have to defend in, so that was the direction he tried to wade in, slipping and sliding on bodies as Ouvahlans raged around him, seeking to turn him into one more corpse underfoot.

He wasn't going to make it.

There were just too many blades coming at him, too many—

The bracer on his arm quivered, and six or seven bright tongues of flame lashed out, at as many Ouvahlan faces. Their owners cried out in startled pain, blades going wide or pulling back entirely—and the bracer quivered again.

For Talonnorn!
Yathla Evendoom cried, in Orivon's head.
For Evendoom! Get to her, man! Get to her!

More fire lashed out in front of Orivon, and there was room for him to run. Run he did, barely noticing when the bracer quivered again and fire arced around behind him, to immolate a Nifl who was racing after him, and gathering for a spring and pounce.
That Ouvahlan dropped his dagger and fell, howling—and Orivon raced on, bursting through a ring of Ouvahlans who'd just slain two Ravagers and were pressing in around Taerune. Flames snarled and spat from the forgefist's bracer as he came, fire that hurled back startled Ouvahlans and gave Orivon the moments and space he needed to reach Taerune's side.

As he did so, sliding on fallen blades and blood, the bracer on his arm sighed and started to crumble.

Make me proud, human! Orivon Firefist, be my champion! Fight for Yathla Evendoom!

A sudden ring of fire encircled Orivon's arm, blackened metal falling away from him like dust, and then roared away into the heart of the Ouvahlans—and burst, hurling burning bodies in all directions.

Orivon flung himself between Taerune and the blast, to shield her, and for a moment it seemed like she might collapse against him. She sighed, hunched down—and then shook her head, flung it up briskly, and announced, “We're not done yet. There are plenty of Ouvahlans left still, to—”

“Is someone going to tell me,” Bloodblade shouted to them then, across the fray, “why we seem to be defending Talonnorn against Ouvahlor? Surely we can just fight our way to the side and let them swarm the city?”

Orivon frowned as he met the blade of the foremost advancing Ouvahlan, struck it aside, and then booted the Nifl, sending him staggering into the sharp embrace of Taerune's blade. Reaching for the next Ouvahlan as the outcast Nifl lady beside him slew the first, he called back, “You're right, Ravager. As usual. Shall we take ourselves yonder, toward the cavern wall?”

“Yes!” Bloodblade roared enthusiastically, and waved his hands at the Ravagers around him, to signal such a retreat.

Trying to do the same with the slaves, Orivon caught sight of a slender Nifl-she at the rear of the Ouvahlans—a she who strode about with the air of command, and who was, just now, glaring at Taerune as if her eyes could deal painful and immediate death.

“Is that their commander?”

Taerune thrust the blade he'd fashioned to replace her hand into another Ouvahlan throat, peered at the glaring Ouvahlan, and replied, “Could well be. That's a priestess, or I'm a sleeth!”

Yet the Ouvahlans were already scrambling away from the Hairy Ones and Ravagers who were slaughtering them with such ease, and shouting in relief and triumph. Bursting past the Ravagers and freed human slaves as if they feared this sudden path to Talonnorn would be snatched away from them if they tarried, they started running across the cavern toward the burning city.

The glaring female hesitated, and then trotted with them, as if reluctantly deciding she dared not tarry to fight the Ravagers and humans alone.

“Spread out,” Bloodblade commanded hurriedly, eyeing the Ouvahlan as she turned to glare at them all again. “That one can hurl spells! Spread out, so she has no clear foe to smite!”

“Gethkyl,” Taerune snapped at a nearby Ravager Nifl, “watch yon priestess, and call out if you see her turn back, or use magic to disappear. We don't want her back on that ledge—or anywhere else—readying magic against us!”

“She has disappeared already,” Gethkyl replied grimly.

 

The cellar rocked and shuddered a second time, a deep, rolling boom that sent ceiling slabs tumbling, dust showering down, and Nifl staggering.

“What traitor of a spellrobe is hurling blasting spells?” Jalandral snapped, eyes blazing. “Is any part of the Eventowers still standing?”

The first priestess to finish a spell looked up at him with eyes that were spilling tears, and hissed, “This is no traitor spellrobe of Talonnorn, but a stranger—just one!—who is blasting down the towers that hold any Talonar spellrobe who dares to cast spells at him!
He
is the source of the flames!”

Jalandral sneered. “Come, come!
One
spellrobe is doing all this?”

There came another thunderous tremor then, followed by a crash that drowned out the tearful “Yes, but we know not who” replies of several Consecrated.

“Yes,”
one of the Araed merchants said firmly to Jalandral, pointing to the fading, sinking scrying eye one of the priestesses had conjured, “one spellrobe—and I know him. I have been on many caravans faring to and from Ouvahlor, and that is Klarandarr. Said by many to be the most powerful spellrobe ever.”

“We are doomed,” the old merchant Ondrar decreed, and there was general grim agreement—except from the caravan merchant, who took a step toward Jalandral.

“Unless our High Lord has hidden away any clever and ready stratagems, or magical tricks of the much-vaunted Houses of Talonnorn? You have another Hunt lurking up your backside, perhaps?”

“No,” Jalandral snarled at him, “just magic items dozens of us would have to give our lives wielding. Klarandarr can slay most of us as we run to just try to get to the right places to blast him—while he uses magic to take himself from here to there to here again, at will. We . . .”

Then his face changed. “Another Hunt!” he repeated fiercely.

“You have
another
Hunt?” Ondrar asked, in disbelief. “
How
long were you preparing to seize pow—”

Jalandral sprang across the room, took him by the arms, and shook him. “The dung-worms! We can do as Ouvahlor did; that much the crones and priestesses
can
do for us! We can bury him in dung-worms!”

He waved at the merchants, and then pointed at the priestesses. “Free them, and bring them!”

Wary eyebrows arched. “Where?”

“To find the crone Klaerra Evendoom,” Jalandral snapped. “The spell that masters many worms at once requires the caster's life—and she owes me hers, thrice over and more!”

Suddenly, everyone was on the move, and the cellar emptied in the space of two swift breaths—except for Ondrar, the eldest merchant of the Araed, who stared at the High Lord's back as it dwindled in Jalandral's haste to be elsewhere, and murmured, “Does she feel that way? I wonder. And who considers that you owe them
your
life, Jalandral O Most High Lord Evendoom? Thrice over and more?”

So I said to him
Do it if you must
And I will be there with my sword
For we are nothing
If we have no principles
And no one lives forever.

—
legendary Talonar saying,
attributed to Sandral Evendoom

T
hey stood watching Talonnorn burn.

A short, slender tower somewhere in the holdings of House Oszrim shivered and then collapsed, slumping suddenly out of view, and hurling up a storm of sparks and embers. Nifl were running, now, across the open cavern floor, heading away from the city in any direction except the one where they were standing. The one from which the ragged remnants of an Ouvahlan army were charging.

“So,” Bloodblade asked the outcast Nifl lady beside him softly, the flickering flames painting his face with bright reflections, “dare we go in to seek plunder, or tarry here and wait for a lot more Nifl to slay each other?”