The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (54 page)

“
Are you feeling all right, Zebulon?” Heggenauer asked after a while.

“
Brother, it is a beautiful day to die,” Zeb answered.

Zeb changed his mind an hour later, when they found the bodies.

*

There were a half-dozen of them at least, though it was hard to be sure. They were lying in the street and in the first room through an open doorway to a tall building, an unremarkable location apart from the fact that it had been the scene of terrible butchery the night before. They had been men, as near as could be determined, swordsmen in plate and chain mail of good quality that had been battered and hacked open like shells. Pieces of armor, helmets, broken swords, emptied packs, and body parts lay all around. The copious blood shone against the black cobblestones and walls. The smell was unspeakable.

Tilda and the rest of the party mostly kept their distance, but John Deskata approached near enough to squat beside a torso.

“
Most of the wounds are claws and fangs,” he called back to the particular pleasure of no one. “The cutting was done with weapons, though. Cleavers or axes. Maybe pole-arms.”

“
We should bury them,” Heggenauer said, loud enough for John to hear. The party was mostly standing in the street but the priest had gone to one knee.

John stood and walked back, slapping a sandal against the street.

“
We aren’t burying anyone without a pick-axe,“ he said. “Besides, they weren’t Codians.”

“
How can he tell?” Tilda asked no one. She had turned her back on the scene, ostensibly to keep her eyes and ready bow on windows and rooflines, but she had looked long enough to feel very queasy.

Heggenauer had heard her and he tapped a finger against the inside of his shield. Tilda glanced over and saw a stenciled insignia in an upper corner, the shape of a shield with a triangular bottom and a stylized “S” within it.

“
Shanatar?” she asked, and Heggenauer nodded.

“
All shields crafted in the Empire are inscribed by the priests of the Protector. The Shield Maiden’s blessing gives them added strength.”

“
Makes them lighter, too,” John said, easily hoisting his own tower shield, the standard issue of the Legions.

Heggenauer rose to meet him.

“
The origins of these people do not matter. Their remains should not be allowed to lie in the street.”

“
Not in a perfect world, no,” John said. “But in a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter how long we left the Duchess of Chengdea to the mercies of three legionnaires either, now would it? Pretty girl, that one. What kind of trip do you suppose she’s having, Brother Heggenauer?”

Tilda glared at Deskata but he never looked at her, only marched up to stare directly into Heggenauer’s eyes while color rose in the Jobian’s face.

“
We are moving too slow,” John said, loud enough that it was clearly meant for everyone.

“
Then why are we standing here?” Tilda said. She moved past John and Heggenauer back to the front of the line, and set off at a trot around the worst of the carnage.

Tilda set a steady pace, but the next few hours were marred by more frustration than threat. In an area of great buildings with pillars and domes, each set on tall foundations with horseshoe staircases in front, there was a long section of street and sidewalk glowing dully with a sickly green sheen. After a quick conference it was decided not to walk through the stuff, and the party had to backtrack a good distance before hitting another cross street around the area. It was a while before they found another street heading southerly, for Tilda was beginning to appreciate that the layout of Vod’Adia was wholly chaotic. The day-to-day convenience of the people who had lived here long ago had seemingly had no part in the design.

Before noon the party came upon a tall black wall built athwart their intended direction. The street running in front and parallel to it was lined with small buildings that had been shops, judging by the fact that each had a stone post extending out from the front facade above the main doorway, though the signs and chains they had hung from were long gone. The party headed east until they reached an impassable intersection where the street had collapsed, leaving a huge crater full of murky gray water that gave off a sulfurous smell. They doubled-back again and headed west parallel to the wall.

After another half an hour, Tilda quickened her pace as the great wall on the left-hand side seemed to end up ahead. She and Amatesu reached a circular plaza with a standing obelisk on a dais in the center, broken off about thirty feet above the ground. Several streets connected there and the wall ended at a round tower with no visible point of entry on this side, but then it continued to the south as far as could be seen owing to the misty atmosphere and more tall buildings.

Before the rest of the party now strung-out behind them reached the plaza, Tilda turned to Amatesu.

“
You may want to keep a little distance from me,” Tilda said between deep breaths. Amatesu, who was not breathing hard at all, only gave her a curious glance.

“
I stopped looking for traps hours ago,” Tilda admitted. “If I hit something, you may want to be back a ways.”

“
Do not worry,“ Amatesu said. “I am still looking for both of us.”

Deskata, Uriako Shikashe, and Nesha-tari arrived and looked around. Zeb and Heggenauer clanged up behind them, both perspiring in their heavy ring mail and plate armor and looking flushed.

“
I have decided,” Zeb breathed, bending to put his hands on his knees. “Not to buy…a summer home here. Architect…was an idjit.”

Tilda did not smile, for she was mildly annoyed with Zeb. She felt guilty that she had been enjoying talking, and perhaps even flirting with him earlier, and had not been thinking about Claudja and what she might be going through right now.

Heggenauer caught his breath and shook his head. “These streets are not an accident,” the priest of the Builder said with some authority. “This place was designed to keep movement between neighborhoods inconvenient.”

“
Why would someone design a city like that?” Tilda asked.

“
To keep people in their place.”

Deskata whistled sharply and everyone looked at him, then followed his gaze to the broken obelisk.

“
Company,” John said as he drew his sword behind his shield.

Standing in front of the dais beneath the broken column were six figures in hooded white robes, each holding across its body a stout weapon with almost as much blade as shaft, something like shortened halberds or glaives. Tilda was sure they had not been there a moment before.

“
Archers,” John said as an order, quietly but with the tone he would have used as a Legion Centurion. Tilda pulled an arrow from the open quiver on her back and nocked it to the string, while Zeb stepped up beside her with his ready crossbow. John moved a bit to the left of them, shield raised and his sword still behind it, while Shikashe stepped out to the right with his hands near the matching pommels of his swords.

For several moments no one moved. Not much detail could be perceived at the distance, which was beyond Tilda’s range of anything but a high arcing shot, but if any of the shrouded figures did so much as twitch it went unnoticed.

“
Perhaps they are a party of adventurers?” Heggenauer asked without sounding very hopeful. The acolyte was keeping protectively close to Amatesu and Nesha-tari.

“
They are not human,” the shukenja said with some authority. Tilda glanced back at her and saw that Amatesu had slid a
tonfa
from her sleeve into her hand, a peasant weapon of the Far West based on the cranking handle of a mill stone. It was a heavy square club not so different than a Miilarkian buksu, but iron-shod on one side and with a pin through the end as a handle.

“
Does anybody want to talk to these guys?” Zeb asked.

Uriako Shikashe abruptly barked at the figures, startling the party but getting no response from the strangers. He drew his katana with one hand, and made a beckoning gesture with the other.

“
There are moments when I hate that man,” Tilda heard Zeb mutter.

There was movement then, though still not from the shrouded figures. On the dais above and behind them a seventh shape appeared, strolling out from behind the broken obelisk. This one was not in white but instead seemed to be wearing some sort of suit of dark, charcoal gray, complete with a waistcoat. His head was uncovered and he had jet-black hair, and a forked beard. His skin was a pale, ashy gray and his eyes smoldered red, even from across the distance.

He looked toward the party as he rounded the front of the obelisk, and Tilda thought she heard a clop like a hoof as he moved. He stopped, leaned his back against the obelisk, and crossed his arms. His teeth showed white against his gray countenance as he grinned broadly, and there was another spot of white at his lapel as though he were wearing a flower as a boutonnière.

Then a bit of hell broke loose.

The six figures on the ground exploded forward, leaving their robes behind to settle to the ground. Each was revealed as a roughly man-like figure, lithe almost to the point of emaciation with scaly skin of dark red and sickly green. They had claws, horns, thick tails, and their devilish faces grinned within bristling beards of what looked like steel wire. They bounded forward on bent legs, waving their weapons and chattering some sort of language. Tilda realized with a start that though their words were utterly alien she could almost understand them, as if their meaning went somehow directly into her mind. Their words were all of blood and carnage.

“
Shoot for effect,” Deskata said calmly, and Tilda and Zeb raised their bows. The creatures had closed about half the distance when both released their shots. Zeb’s went wide but Tilda’s arrow hit the foremost creature in the chest and staggered it, though the arrow shattered on impact without piercing.

“
They are immune to non-magic!” Amatesu shouted, and Tilda had a cold feeling of total helplessness. If any of the numerous weapons she carried were magic, she reckoned she would have noticed it before now.

Uriako Shikashe however rushed forward to meet the creatures with the white blade of his katana humming in the air. The first of them snarled at the samurai, but with a great bound it leaped easily over him and bore down on John Deskata with a saw-toothed glaive mounted on a four-foot shaft, barbed hooks curling at the bottom of the long blade. John sheathed his sword and crouched behind his tower shield. Tilda drew another arrow despite thinking it would do no good, but then the veteran of the Legions did something rather remarkable. John timed the creature’s charge and when it raised its glaive above its head he pulled down on the top rim of his tower shield, swinging up the bottom around the pivot of his bent left arm. The creature’s beady yellow eyes widened, and the base of the blessed shield took it full across the mouth. Blood sprayed out in a fountain and teeth rattled down the face of the shield like hail. John drew his sword and hacked across the thing’s belly with the same motion as it fell to its back, but his blade rebounded as though it had hit iron.

Shikashe’s did not. The next creature in line tried to engage the samurai who with a lightning-fast series of blows severed its weapon, a leg, and an arm, then twisted past to skewer it through the chest from behind. For a moment its yellow eyes were focused on Tilda, then with a sound like a wet
pop!
the impaled thing simply disappeared, only the two halves of its broken weapon clattering to the street. Shikashe blinked in surprise above the leather half-mask of his kabuto helmet, then turned to confront the next creature charging him.

Two each were bearing down on the samurai and the legionnaire, while the one that John had felled was still blinking groggily on the ground and hacking up blood. Tilda shook her quiver off her shoulder and let several arrows spill loose on the ground. She went to a knee, held her bow sideways across her body, and began nocking and shooting as rapidly as she could. Her first shot hit a creature running at John in the knee, not piercing but staggering it to the side. She kept shooting it, keeping the thing at bay with each impact even if doing no serious damage. John had dropped his sword and engaged the other with both hands on the straps of his shield, deflecting the blows of a glaive and whomping or body-slamming the creature when he could.

The one behind him with the bloody mouth began to regain its feet, and before Tilda could shout a warning a searing sizzle filled the air. Tilda felt every hair on her head stand up as a blue bolt of lightning zipped past her and struck the creature, flinging it limp and smoking away into the plaza. Tilda snapped her head around and saw Nesha-tari looking nothing short of magnificent, sparks dancing in her hands and the flashes illuminating her sky-blue eyes, and a wicked grin. Beside her Zeb was blinking at Heggenauer, as the priest held his mace in one hand but had the other gripping the haft of the double-headed axe in the Minauan’s hands. The acolyte’s head was bent and he was murmuring with his eyes closed. When he opened them Zeb shivered, and both the mace and axe took on a faint glow of soft white light.

“
Let’s go,” Heggenauer said, running forward past Tilda even as he raised his shield. Zeb looked at his axe, smiled faintly, and went after the priest.

Tilda did not shoot again as the melee grew crowded. John kept driving one of the creatures back with his shield and Heggenauer bore down on the one Tilda had thus far slowed. Shikashe opened the chest cavity of another with such violence that a red mist spattered the samurai’s armor before it disappeared, along with the falling corpse. The odds were three on three until Zeb tipped them. John saw him coming and sent his hissing opponent staggering back with a final blow of his shield, and the Minauan buried his axe between its shoulder blades. Heggenauer fended off an attack with his shield and landed a sideways blow on the creature’s ear with his mace, breaking off a horn and sending the monster reeling to the ground. Shikashe’s sole remaining antagonist was back-peddling, but the samurai lunged to stab it shallowly in the chest. When it dropped its weapon and clapped both hands to the wound the samurai took off its head at the shoulders. The spinning head winked out of existence in midair.