The Sorcerer's Vengeance: Book 4 of the Sorcerer's Path (20 page)

“Get back here, you cowardly wizard—shaman—necro-whatever the hells you call yourself!” Modi shouted after the retreating mist. “Bah, damn spell hurlers are slipperier than slug eels.”

“Let us be sure that we do what we can to prevent him from returning and wreaking more havoc once we leave,” Toron suggested.

Modi nodded, slapping away the hands of his warriors that were trying to tie bandages around some of his wounds and led the men deeper into the cave. They came upon a narrow passage with sturdy wooden doors attached to iron hinges driven into the stone. The prison guard, if there was one, was nowhere to be found, but a closer inspection of the doors showed that they were all secured with a simple drop bar on the outside.

Out of the nearly dozen small chambers carved into the stone, only four of them were locked. Modi lifted the bar off the first one and threw the door open. Huddled in the corner, his knees pulled up to his chest, was young Matt. He looked up with red-rimmed eyes that had not yet lost all of their defiance though they clearly showed the stress and fear he had been feeling for the past few days.

“Toron, is that you?” Matt asked, shielding his eyes from the light cast by the torch that Toron had grabbed from a crevice into which it had been shoved.

“It’s me and Zeb and the others,” Toron rumbled over the Eislander’s shoulder.

“I knew you would all come! Gods, they have Ruben! They took him somewhere, wherever they make the monsters I think!”

“Calm down, lad, we’ll find him,” Zeb called to him past the bulk of the large warriors.

“Let’s see who else is in here,” Modi said and went to another door.

The next chamber had a corpse in it that apparently died from wounds he sustained during his capture before he could be turned into one of the ragmen. The foul necromancer probably would have still found a use for the body given time, Modi thought as they moved to the other secured door. The next chamber held another corpse, this one a woman who had used a length of cord to strangle herself before she could be taken and her living body desecrated. She must have been brought in with the dead man in the other cell, perhaps a husband or brother whose death helped her decide on another way out.

Modi barely had the timber removed from the last door when a blur of flesh and feathers burst out and sank long talons into and through the chain links and leather of his hauberk. The big warrior grabbed the creature’s wrists, pulled them away from his body before they could reach a vital organ, and ran back into the cell with the strange winged creature held aloft by his upraised arms.

Hati shrieked in rage and pain as her back and wings were shoved brutally into the unyielding stone. She struggled furiously against whomever or whatever held her. Modi struggled to keep his grip on the cursing, spitting creature. Despite its slight size and light-weight, it was as strong as most any of his warriors and it was an effort to keep from losing his grip.

Toron bolted into the room with his torch, illuminating the room and the being’s features. Modi gasped in surprise when he saw the tan face of the young woman whose arms he held pinned against the wall.

“Hati? Oh gods, girl, what have they done to ya?”

“Modi?” Hati asked in surprise then burst into tears when she recognized the battle jarl.

Modi released the woman’s wrists and she crumpled against his gore-spattered chest and wept. Several of the Eislanders made a hexing sign as the battle jarl walked Hati out of the cell, still clutching his hauberk.

“Are you all right, girl,—in your head I mean?” Modi asked.

“I’m not a zombie or anything if that’s what you mean. He—he wanted my mind left intact. Oh gods, we have to get out of here! I heard him call back the others, the ones he sent on the raid. They’ll be here soon!”

Zeb stepped near the winged woman. “Do you know where they took another man, a southerner like me?”

Hati nodded her head. “The horror chamber; where he does his mutilations. I saw him strapped to a table near the one I was on.”

“Can you show us where it is? I need to find him. I have to know before we just leave him behind.”

“I—I don’t know. I was unconscious when I was taken from—that place. Maybe, if we can find the passage I was brought down when I was first brought to this place,” Hati answered unsurely.

The rescuers and former prisoners moved swiftly down the dimly lit passages. They encountered a few more ragmen, but they were alone or in small groups without any cohesive actions or directions from their master and easily dispatched. The cavern system was not exceptionally large and had few branches leading off large enough to have been used by the occupants. It did not take long for them to find the shaman’s laboratory.

They found Ruben strapped to a stone slab inside the blood-spattered chamber. He turned his head to look at them as they entered.

“Toron, Zeb, is that you?” he croaked in a dry, raspy voice.

“It’s us, Ruben,” Zeb assured his brave oarsman. “We’ve come to get you out of here.”

“Did ya kill that filthy bastard of a hobbi?”

“Not quite, lad, but we whipped him pretty good,” Zeb replied.

Hati’s eyes widened in horror. “He’s not dead?”

“He’s gone, Hati, you don’t have to be afraid of him anymore. He ain’t comin’ back,” Modi assured her as she trembled in his arms.

“No, he’s in my head! He can control me; make me do whatever he wants. You have to bind me, quickly.”

Modi looked at the young woman worriedly but pulled out some cords from his bag as his men went about smashing everything in the laboratory. The smell of rotted blood mixed with the caustic odors of the strange liquids contained in the glass jars, beakers, and barrels burned the eyes and sickened the stomach. Zeb found a few books stacked upon a shelf and began packing them into his rucksack.

Modi looked over at him as he finished binding Hati’s hands. “What in the world do you want with those vile tomes?”

“I have a friend that might just be interested in them. The best way to defeat an enemy is to learn as much about them as you can. I figure these books contain a great deal of information on what that necromancer was doing here. Besides, if that creature is in the young lady’s head, my friends may just need them to get him out.”

“You think they can fix me?” Hati asked hopefully.

“Might be. If anyone can, I’d place my money on them,” Zeb replied.

“I never took you to be a man that associated himself with wizards,” Modi grumbled warily.

Toron replied to the battle jarl’s concern. “I have no love for spell casters, the same as most of my people, but the one in question has proven himself an honorable warrior and has earned the trust and respect of many of us here.”

“If they know someone who could help me, Modi, I must take the chance,” Hati pleaded.

“We will discuss this later,” Modi replied somberly. “We need to get out of here. We are too few and too wounded to try to take on that group that left out of here this morning.”

No one argued the battle jarl’s point and hastily left the cavern behind. They made their way as swiftly across the snow-covered ground as they were able. Their travel was slowed by the number of warriors that needed help walking or were carried on quickly improvised litters made of stripped saplings and wool blankets.

Many of the brave warriors begged to be left behind so they would not slow the others but their demands were immediately refused by Zeb, Modi, and the other men.

“We’ve lost too many men to these beasts and that depraved hobbi. I’ll not lose anymore without a fight. Either we all get out or none of us will. Either way, you’ll die with an axe in your hand so don’t look so glum,” Modi said, his way of cheering up his men.

The battered party force-marched the whole day before they spotted the first of their pursuers. It was the four-legged ragers they saw first, but they did not race ahead to engage the band, only getting close enough to keep an eye on their prey.

“I wonder what they’re waitin’ for,” Zeb asked, “for us to drop dead of exhaustion first?”

“Zagrat does not want to lose anymore of his creations,” Hati replied, almost trancelike. “He knows your ship is a few days travel from here and his zombies will be able to catch you before you reach it. We have to rest eventually, they don’t.”

“You can hear him?” Modi asked.

“Yes, in my head. I think he has forgotten about me, but it will only be a matter of time before he remembers. He will order me to resist, to fight, and I will not be able to refuse. I will be a puppet with him as the puppet master. He is hurt, tired, and afraid. Not just of you and your warriors but for what his master will do to him when he learns of this setback.”

“Gods, he was bad enough. Who is his master?”

“I do not know but he is terrified and in awe of him. He is a creature of great power—dark power.”

“We’ll need to keep moving,” Zeb said. “I know your men are strong, Modi, and so are mine. We won’t stop nor rest and just hope we can make it to my ship before they catch us.”

The band of fighters forced themselves beyond the point of exhaustion, marching through the night without pause. Their bodies ceased aching hours ago, replaced by a feeling of total numbness. The sun was well over the horizon by the time many of them even realized it had risen. Even if they could continue at this rate and not stop to rest, they were still a full day from the bay and the waiting ship.

“We aren’t gonna make it, Zeb,” Modi said, his voice heavy with exhaustion.

“We gotta keep pushing on. It’s our only chance no matter how slight it might be,” Zeb replied, his head in a daze.

“No, look behind us. It’s over. Get your men ready to defend themselves and send some of these abominations to the abyss where they belong.”

Zeb slowly turned around and saw that the host of ragmen where just a few hundred yard behind them and gaining. The ragers were stamping their feet in agitation as the zombies marched relentlessly just behind them.

Zeb let out a whoosh of breath. “Get ready to fight, men! This is our last battle and it’ll be our finest hour!”

The men with the litters set them down and slid their weapons out, facing the approaching army. There must have been nearly a hundred of them coming over a slight rise, ready to charge into the humans and the lone minotaur who waited for their deaths at the bottom of the slight depression. The wounded warriors that had been borne upon the litters rolled off and stood, several holding themselves up only by using their weapon or a litter pole as a crutch. They would get one good swing in before they toppled over and the ragmen cut them down.

The ragers began to speed up into a trot, unable to restrain their fury any longer, wanting desperately to kill these men who mocked their own lives with their unaltered perfection. The men set themselves for the charge, lifting their weapons a little higher as the monstrosities bore down upon them.

Thick quarrels suddenly sprouted from the charging ragers’ bodies, a few dropping heavily into the snow, headshot by the stout, steel broadheads.

Zeb and the others glanced over their shoulders at the sound of screaming men and pounding feet coming over the top of the rise behind them. Zeb’s eyes widened and a grin split his face as he saw Balor leading the charge of what must have been nearly every man aboard the
Shark
.

The exhausted men fell in behind Balor’s unexpected relief force as they charged past and crashed into the ranks of the leading ragmen. The initial clash stopped the ragmen’s charge in its tracks, but the humans were horribly outnumbered and many of the men were quickly succumbing to their exhaustion. The ragmen began driving them back and inflicting a heavy toll.

Zeb’s previous excitement turned dour as he realized that Balor’s appearance only meant that they would not die quite as quickly and nearly his entire crew would be lost. The screams of wounded and dying men filled the air as steel met flesh and flesh and bone crushed the life out of the humans.

Another thrumming filled the air, deeper than that made by their heavy crossbows. Long black shafts began sprouting from the bodies of the ragmen. Green fire flared inside the wounds caused by the black shafts as the creatures instantly underwent some kind of spontaneous combustion.

Zeb and some of the other warriors looked toward the source of the noise that was repeating so fast it almost sounded like a band of minstrels strumming a rapid staccato on huge lutes. A dozen cloaked and hooded figures stood atop the ridge of the shallow bowl where man battled unnatural beasts, firing longbows nearly as tall as the wielders at a rate that defied possibility.

Every arrow found its mark and where it struck green fire jetted out from the wound as the creature was consumed by the internal flames. Several constructs fell and died under the rain of arrows every second. In less than a minute, their numbers were cut in half. The ragmen became disoriented and seemed to lack guidance, making it easier for the warriors to defend themselves and slay the abominable creations with their axes and swords.

The few remaining ragers tried to flee, but even as they sped away, an arrow found its way into the creatures’ backs, dropping them instantly. Some of the stag-based ragers made it nearly three hundred yards, certain to have reached safety before a lethal shaft unerringly found its mark, slaying it just as quickly and easily as the others.

The humans bandaged their wounded as best they could as the strange figures walked lightly across the surface of the snow down to them. As they drew near, Zeb swore they were a bunch of youngsters, fare of skin, slight of build, none over five and a half feet tall. Their huge longbows topped some of their heads when unstrung. How the fragile-looking people managed to draw the powerful weapons at all, much less with the inhuman speed and accuracy that they did, was beyond him.

What he could make out under the heavy hoods were sharp, angular faces, bereft of any trace of facial hair with bright, almond-shaped eyes that were just a little too large for their long, slender faces.

He was further surprised when the apparent speaker or leader of the small band approached Toron first.