Nightlord: Sunset (112 page)

Tobias paid them no attention whatever, aside from the one that leaped in his direction.  This one he pointed at with the knife, thrusting.  Even though the Thing was several yards too far away to even be touched, it wailed; it looked as though it had been skewered completely through.  A moment later, it collapsed into a bubbling pool of ichor.  The ichor evaporated and the vapors wafted back out across the edge.  I made a mental note to not let him have time to aim that knife in my direction.

The rest of the Things, meanwhile, charged me.

Things don’t have any sense of teamwork.  They also don’t have much in the way of tactics, aside from an all-out, hell-for-leather charge, claws swinging, teeth snapping, tails lashing.  They didn’t try to stay together and they certainly didn’t try to defend themselves.  Their only concern was putting holes in my skin.

The one in the lead was one of the extremely fast, spiny, all-angular-lines sort.  I grabbed it by a wrist—careful to avoid the sharp bits of bone along its arms—and sidestepped.  I braced, turned, and pulled, swinging it around and adding to its already-considerable momentum.  Its feet went out from under it and it wailed, thrashing momentarily as I carried it on through a tight arc and released it back at the rest of the pack.  Most went down in a multi-limbed pileup.  The rest kept coming, bounding onto and over the squirming pile of upset monsters.

I carved into them with a combination of homicidal straight razor and blowtorch. 

If I had stopped moving for even an instant, they would have eaten me.  As it was, whipping members scored my arms and chest with light cuts—one even marked me along the left cheek.  None of these were the venomous Things that had given me such trouble outside the
gata
camp, so I kept going, circling and spinning, moving, moving, moving, never holding still long enough for them to surround me.  Venom or no, if they could hold me still long enough to grapple, they could weigh me down and carve me apart.  Even an animated corpse doesn’t do so well when it’s rendered bite-sized.

The first few went down quickly; I’m much quicker than these Things and somewhat stronger.  Even more important, I have better reach, because my ancestors were tool-users.  Firebrand howled in glee as black-blooded monsters charred and crisped all along its edge.  For once, the fact that Firebrand is a bloodthirsty killing machine didn’t bother me a bit.  It seemed appropriate—the bloodthirsty killing machine dancing around in the hand of the other bloodthirsty killing machine. 

I could feel the throbbing of my blood, faintly.  These Things were not enough to warrant my rage; they were merely in my way.

But it was like avoiding raindrops by running in circles; they were piling into me from more directions and I kept getting cut after cut—never anything serious, but never anything that would close up and heal quickly, either.  A dozen, two dozen, thirty or forty slashes… again, nothing that would slow me down or even be more than superficial in a normal human… but there were a lot of them, and they were coming from almost all sides.

Rather than be surrounded, I broke off the attack and ran.  They followed as quickly as they could, and they weren’t smart enough to stay together.  When I stopped, the fastest and most agile caught up first.  Firebrand and I killed it.  I ran some more, waited on the next few to catch up, killed them.  And so on down the line.  One by one, the monsters died, as they had to if I wanted to live.  But it took time, minutes of it, and I grudged every second.

The remains of the Things—swirling vapors—blew straight out over the edge of the world, billowing Tobias’ robes.  Beyond him, I caught sight of a larger-than-usual Thing.  Something vaguely man-shaped, directly in front of Tobias, just at the edge.  It mirrored and mimicked every movement, every gesture, aping Tobias perfectly.

Something about the eyes seemed familiar.

I headed for Tobias again.  Whatever he did to breach the barrier, it didn’t seem to be a trick he could repeat.  He turned to face me.  His eyes were wide and staring, his face white and covered in a mask of sweat.  His hands trembled, white-knuckled about the tools he bore—a black-glass knife and a heavy, two-tined stabbing fork.

He spoke, and as he spoke, the Thing behind him spoke; I heard them both perfectly and in perfect unison.

“I must kill the nightlord,” Tobias and the Thing said.

Tobias moved away from the altar—I could see it more clearly as he moved to meet me; it had blood grooves in its surface and stone bowls set to catch it—and lunged at me with the glass knife.

I tried to parry it and twist aside at the same time; I’d already seen what that knife could do at a distance.  But even as he thrust at me, I realized something was wrong.  He was fast—far too fast.  Faster than I, certainly.  How that could be possible, I had no idea.  It was simply a stark fact, as surprising as finding a diamond in an apple—and about as welcome as finding half a worm.  The power I saw in him at the Duke’s party was still there, pulsing with his heartbeat, even brighter than I remembered.  It was an intensity of energy I had never before seen in a human being, and I can only assume it pushed his body beyond all human limits.

The knife drove into my right arm, sinking through flesh as though it were water.  Right in through the skin and muscle, scoring a line across even the unnatural bone of my kind.  The point came out the far side and Tobias twisted it.  With that wound, I felt a hideous weakening, as though I were mortal again and all my blood were being drawn from my body.  Or, perhaps, as though something cold was flowing into my flesh and numbing it.  The throbbing of rage diminished markedly, and the whispers of the ghosts suddenly sounded much louder, much more angry and afraid.

It only lasted for a fraction of an instant, hardly the blink of an eye, because the parry I had begun I now finished.  Firebrand met Tobias’ forearm edge-on.  The heavy blade sliced and seared through human flesh and bone as easily as the glass knife cut me.  This tore the knife out the wound, the dead fingers of Tobias’ hand still clutching the hilt as it fell to the ground.  Tobias, for his part, staggered back, the stump of his arm smoking and reeking of burned muscle, bone, and blood.  My right arm hung at my side—it felt like it was burned with cold, but that was better by far than the touch of the black blade!

I normally held Firebrand in a two-handed grip, but my right hand let go of the hilt when Tobias twisted the knife.  I kept my grip on Firebrand with my left hand and swung it around toward Tobias.  But before I could take any advantage of Tobias’ injury, he attacked.  Nothing human could have done so; the flaming agony of such a burn, the shock of the loss of a hand—he should have been down on the ground and writhing in pain.

He stabbed at me with the two-pronged thing—it reminded me of a miniature pitchfork.  I danced back, waving Firebrand between us.  My right arm was not working well; the glassy blade had inflicted a wound worse than any demonic cut so far.  I could feel it, even move it a little, but it felt cold and dead. 

Fortunately, Firebrand was four times the length of Tobias’ weapon and I was keeping the point toward my adversary.  Faster or not, he was going to have trouble getting close enough to do me any damage.  I thought.

Tobias kept coming at me, sweeping at Firebrand with the metal haft of his weapon to give himself an opening, then closing to try a thrust at me.  The action kept exposing his good hand to heat from Firebrand, but he ignored the blisters.  I just kept backing away and counter-cutting to keep him and his stabbing fork away from me.  I played for time, as much as I could get, because my right arm was slowly beginning to recover usefulness.

He did not give me time.  Catching Firebrand between the tines of the fork, he pushed with an inhuman strength and forced both weapons out of line.  I felt Firebrand grunt at the impact and the fires died suddenly.  I wondered what sort of weapon could give a flaming sword a hard time—and decided I really didn’t want to experiment with it.  I wish I’d just torched Tobias instead of trying to slice him apart; I regretted the missed opportunity.  I doubted that Firebrand would be up to a flame job anytime soon.

These thoughts flickered across my consciousness in no time at all.  My hand moved, circling Firebrand away and outward, freeing the blade from the tines.  Tobias surged forward, getting inside my guard, and brought his weapon up in a short, vicious stroke.

If I’d been able to use both hands, he couldn’t have done it.  As it was…

He scored a hit.  It was only a shallow gash, not a deep, penetrating wound.  The reasons for this are twofold: first, I kicked him in the groin as soon as he lunged for me.  This lifted him a good two feet into the air and helped spoil his aim.  I’m tempted to say that rupturing one or both of his testicles might have hurt him a little too, but I don’t think pain or shock were factors at that point.

The second reason:  after I kicked him, I fell backward and attempted to roll away.  It worked in that I didn’t get a solid hit from his mini-pitchfork, but it slowed me down enough that he stayed right on me.  I was on my back, continuing my backward roll, when he was
there
, around me and in my way, fork in hand, stabbing.  Nothing human moves that fast—hell,
I
don’t move that fast, have
never
moved that fast.  I doubted anything human, under any sort of spell, could do it.

I managed to bring Firebrand up in time to present Tobias with the point.  Tobias didn’t care.  He let the blade run through his abdomen and out his back.  He shoved himself
farther down the blade, toppling off-balance to land on me and nail me with that magical fork.

It wasn’t pleasant.  I recall the feeling of Sasha feeding on me.  When it was a mutual thing, it was quite pleasurable.  This, however, was all one way, and it was painful to boot.  Whatever the thing was, it drained people like a nightlord would—and I could see the flow of that power surging into an amulet or pendant hidden under his robes.  In use, it glowed like condensed lightning to my night-eyes.  It was linked to Tobias, pouring power into and energizing flesh that should have been dead already.  Whatever it was, it was powerful enough
that it would not
allow
him to die.

Great.  Just great.

I twisted Firebrand in his body.  It didn’t help.  I pushed him up by my grip on Firebrand, lifted both legs, planted my feet against his chest, and
shoved
.  Firebrand was torn from my grasp as Tobias went sailing through the air—he might be stronger, but he was also a lot lighter and had no leverage.  He was also less coordinated; he bounced a couple of times on the stones before he stopped and picked himself up.

He had left his vampire-sticker in me when I launched him.  I jerked it out quickly and threw it down; the thing had gone on mindlessly draining me even when it wasn’t being held.  The drain was minor compared to when Tobias wielded it, but
any
drain was going to be bad for me.  I was feeling the effects of this fight already; my right arm would still barely move, I had dozens of small scratches, and now a deep double-hole in my left ribs.  Worse, I was now disarmed and tired.  Tobias may have taken more actual damage, but he was obviously pumped up a lot higher than I was to begin with.

Tobias pulled Firebrand out of his own guts.  Of all the things I’d seen in the fight so far,
that
impressed me.  Firebrand didn’t like this; Tobias’ hand was wreathed in flame.  He still came after me, blade high, sprinting all-out.  He seemed a little slower than before; I think his wounds were finally beginning to be serious, despite the magic in him.  I rolled to the side and his momentum carried him on for a few paces.  That was fine by me; I just wanted to lay my hands on his dismembered one.  The one that had the knife.

Given a choice, I went for the knife.  True, the fork was closer, but it didn’t seem to be feeding him like the vampire-fang-fork thing.  I didn’t want to risk handling it if I had a choice.  I grabbed the knife.

It was evil.  It was hungry.  And it was quite willing to serve me as long as it got planted in someone’s flesh.  Amoral to the extreme.  Whoever created this thing had no sense of personal scruple.  And
whatever
had been put in this blade, it was more sinister, evil, and ugly than a dragon.  By far.

I got to my feet in time to be ready for his next charge.  He swung at me with Firebrand—my sword was still trying to burn his hand off, but that hit from the fork must have been exhausting—and I ducked.  Now months of patient practice made themselves felt.  While Tobias was still faster than I, he had
no
experience with a sword; I went under his clumsy swing and straight for him.  I got inside his guard before he could check the swing—there are disadvantages to a big sword!—and grappled him with my bad arm.  There, body-to-body, I shoved his own knife up under his ribs and into his heart.

We stood there, very still, for a long moment.  He looked at me as though I’d committed some unpardonable breach of manners, like farting in church or belching at the dinner-table.  It was an expression of wide-eyed surprise, frozen for a stretched and timeless instant, while we stared at each other.  Then the moment snapped and time came flooding back.  His fingers opened and Firebrand fell ringingly to the stone.  Tobias took a staggering step back, looked down at the knife-hilt projecting from his body, then slipped to his knees.

The knife started to pulse, blackly.