The Way Into Chaos (32 page)

He leaped into the room, sensing the downward stroke of the man on his right before he could see it. The man shouted to give power to his blow, but his hammer struck nothing but the granite floor.
 

Tejohn swung backhanded at him, biting deep at the spot where his neck and skull met. The man’s war shout ended abruptly and he crumpled to the floor.
 

But Tejohn didn’t wait to see what became of him, because there were two more men behind the dying man. They each held their weapons high, and Tejohn made note of the stone axes they held, their body language, the half-drunken wildness in their eyes.
 

His body already knew what to do: he charged at the man on the right, sidestepped his downward stroke, and buried the point of his sword in the man’s guts. The man on the left was stepping forward, but Tejohn knew the enemy’s stroke would come too late.
 

Everyone was too late, as far as Tejohn was concerned. Everyone moved slower than he did and they always had, in every fight he’d ever been in. His years of training--and of teaching--in the gym had kept him sharp, but his speed and strength were something he had been born with. The Durdric had been wise to attack from his shieldless side, but it would not be enough.

Tejohn raised his shield to catch the stroke of the axe before it reached its full power. The blade cut through the metal rim, splitting the shield down the center. Tejohn pivoted, nearly wrenching the weapon from the man’s grip.
 

It was wedged tight. The man released it--he had an odd little round shield on his left, little larger than his head--but Tejohn was already well into his downward stroke. His too-long sword struck deep into the side of the Durdric’s neck, cutting down into his chest.
 

The man made a terrible gurgling noise as the blood ran into his lungs. Tejohn wrenched his sword free and pivoted to face the rest of the room. A fourth Durdric with a short spear retreated from the other side of the door, keeping Reglis at bay with quick, short thrusts. He backed toward the stairs, but his terrified expression made it clear he did not expect to survive.
 

Reglis lunged toward him then stepped back. Arla rushed into the center of the room and shot him in the chest. As the arrow went in, the spearman froze, as warriors always did, a grimace of pain and despair coming over his face. Reglis did not know enough to press his advantage, but it was only a few more breaths before he knocked the man down with his shield and slipped the point of his sword between his ribs. The Durdric died screaming.
 

Arla had another arrow nocked by then, but the enemies were all dead or dying. She and Reglis looked at Tejohn with a new sort of respect.
 

Tejohn didn’t like it. Yes, he was skilled at killing. He was a weapons instructor to the king, Song knew. What did they expect? What’s more, the thrill of taking had turned sour and chilled beneath the weight of so many corpses. “Check the upper floor and the roof.”

The third man he’d killed had died on his side, facing the fire. Tejohn knelt beside him. He wore a leather vest with wooden plates sewn into it. His axe head had been made of flint. It was sharp enough but too brittle for a long battle.
 

And there, on the man’s beard, was a seashell. Tejohn lifted it with bloody fingers. The Durdric were mountain people, traveling from their lands through the high, narrow valleys of the Southern Barrier. Where did they trade for shells? And why? Stories said they used the shells as coin...in fact, they hated all metal and mining, for some reason. Tejohn had never understood why.

Footsteps on the stair behind him made him turn. “There’s no one up there,” Arla announced. She and Reglis seemed almost disappointed.

“Arla, take a burning brand from the fire and get up on that wall. We need to signal the king to come down. Reglis, go with her in case we missed someone. Bar the gate once the king is inside.”

They left. Tejohn retrieved his spear and headed for the room with the sleepstone. He dragged the scholar into the yard and went inside.
 

There was something about this room that wasn’t right. Setting aside his spear and shield, he laid his hand against the burbling pipe, feeling the cold mountain water running through it. It disappeared into the floor behind some baskets.
 

Undisturbed baskets, in fact. The chests along two walls had been broken apart, their contents strewn everywhere--blankets, leggings, underclothes, anything. But directly behind the sleepstone was a stack of woven baskets that had been opened but not otherwise disturbed.
 

They were empty, of course, but had the Durdric found them this way? He tried to lift the nearest one and discovered it was pegged to the wooden floor.
 

Of course! The water, the scholar’s corpse, the false baskets... Tejohn searched the floor until he found a board with a metal ring attached. He lifted it, and a hidden trap door opened, revealing a deep pit carved into the stone below.
 

They were called “treasure rooms,” but they weren’t meant for gold or jewels. Treasure rooms hid people, especially children and spouses of tyrs, wealthy merchants, and other nobles. The scholar had been killed while fleeing to a hiding place where he could wait for the invaders to gather what they wanted to steal and move on.
 

This one was nearly twenty feet deep, and the water that trickled through drained out of a hole in the floor, probably emerging farther downslope. A folding ladder hung off the near side.

Reglis and Arla rushed through the doorway, carrying Lar between them. “Get his cuirass off,” Tejohn ordered. They worked at the straps of the king’s armor as Tejohn eased the young man’s helmet off.
 

Lar’s face was swollen and distorted, and he was panting like a dog. His shoulders were slumped forward, his hands frozen like a bird’s talons. Tejohn suddenly couldn’t breathe for a couple of moments. Great Way, keep him on the path. We need him.
 

While Reglis fumbled with the straps of the king’s cuirass, Lar grabbed Tejohn’s hand in both of his own. He couldn’t move his fingers, but he managed to press something small, like a pebble, into Tejohn’s palm.
 

Then the cuirass finally came off. Blood had soaked through the king’s padded flannel underarmor shirt, but before Tejohn could find the source, more began to pour from both nostrils. Fire and Fury, the boy was dying in front of his eyes. Tejohn shoved Lar back onto the bed of the sleepstone. The king cried out, blood foaming out of his mouth.

The young man sprawled on the slab, and Tejohn stepped back. Reglis stared wide-eyed, his fists clenched protectively under his big square chin. Arla stood in the doorway looking as though she was ready to run a race. Just behind her, Wimnel stared ashen-faced at the spreading flow of blood.
 

Tejohn turned back to Lar. He’d known this young man since he was old enough to swing a stick.
Great Way, please let this Gift heal my king.
 

Instead, he watched his king die.
 

The flesh around Lar’s face burst open, pushed outward by another skull growing beneath it. The king grabbed hold of his own skin and hair and pulled it downward like a cloth mask, revealing bloody blue fur beneath. Then he devoured it.
 

Then the creature jammed its fingers in its mouth and bit down, scraping the flesh off its own knuckles like moss from a stone.
 

“Great Way,” Wimnel said. “Great Way Great Way Great Way protect him. Protect our king.”
 

I failed him. I was sure the sleepstone would work but I failed.
The creature did not fall into a slumber, the way human patients did, but it was still helpless in mid-transformation. The grunt was helpless.
 

Tejohn didn’t touch his weapons. He couldn’t use his sword or knife against Lar. He just couldn’t. He took up his shield.
 

The creature tore Lar’s bloody shirt in two, exposing skin split over bloody fur. Great Way, the thing was
huge.

“No!” Tejohn shouted. He didn’t even know what he was refusing, or why he was saying it, but the word would not be denied. “NO!”

He jammed the bottom of the shield under Lar’s…
the creature’s
body, then lifted and shoved. Reglis leaped forward to join him in the final push, rolling the thing’s surprising bulk off the sleepstone.
 

The grunt’s hip struck the edge of the pit, then it tumbled out of sight.
 

Tejohn raced around the edge of the sleepstone and grabbed at the ladder, throwing it across the room.
 

Down below, the creature seemed groggy. It had landed awkwardly and now lay stretched on the stone floor, its leg twisted under it. It groaned, rolled over, and trembled as its leg slowly untwisted itself. In the space of six or seven breaths, the beast shook its broken leg as though it was a rumpled wet blanket, then stood upright upon it. The grunt stared up at Tejohn, its leg already fully healed. It roared and leaped upward.
 

Too deep. The grunt tried to gouge its claws into the wall but unlike in Peradain, there were no joins between blocks where it could find purchase, and the pit was too deep for it to catch the lip.
 

This was not the king. This was not Lar Italga. Not anymore. “Fire and Fury,” Tejohn whispered. “What are we facing here?”
 

It leaped again, then again, its dark eyes wild with hunger. It came close enough to the top that Tejohn could have lain flat on the floor and caught it by the wrist, but that distance was enough. It was trapped.
 

When the grunt jumped again, Lar’s torn robes fell away from it, revealing the last of the king’s bloody flesh lying among the cloth. The last of the Italga line was gone. Destroyed. Tejohn had been the king’s bodyguard, weapons master, and shield bearer, but he had been powerless to prevent it.
 

He was overwhelmed at once by his abject failure and by the knowledge that his life’s path had brought him to a place that no one could have expected. “Grateful am I to be permitted to travel The Way.”
 

After a few more moments, the beast stopped leaping at him. It crouched at the bottom of the pit, staring upward, as it plucked the king’s the bloody flesh from the ground and ate it greedily.
 

Lar had made jokes at Tejohn’s expense at every opportunity, had shirked every exercise, had rolled his eyes at every correction. The king had been right; Tejohn hadn’t liked him--he certainly hadn’t loved him--but he’d sworn to serve him. Had sworn to be his shield bearer. And now this.
 

Tejohn felt as empty as a the air outside. The world was blowing through him, but he held no thought, no will. If he had faded into nothingness in that moment, it would have seemed a perfectly logical consequence of his failure. Instead, he persisted, for no reason at all except that the gods could not trouble themselves to burn him from the path.
 

The beast roared at Tejohn again. There was something odd about the way it was looking at him. Did it remember the man it had once been? Could it recognize its old teacher?
 

Tejohn reached into his pocket and touched the little blue translation stone Cazia Freewell had made for him.
 

The beast opened its mouth, but this time Tejohn heard it say, “Blessing! BLESS YOU! Blessing!”
 

Fire and Fury. The king had not been turned into a wild beast; he had become something else. Something insane and vicious.
 

But he was still the king. If the creature in that pit had wits enough to speak at all, then there might still be a bit of Lar Italga within it. And Tejohn could not give up on him. Not now or ever.

Tejohn turned away from the pit and stalked through the door. Arla stood just outside, an arrow half drawn from the quiver on her hip. “My tyr, should I...?”

“No,” he said. Reglis and Wimnel both looked at him uncertainly. He turned away and marched across the darkness toward the dying fire.
 

The nearest corpse looked a little thin, so he grabbed hold of the fatter one nearby and dragged him across the yard. The body was still warm but Tejohn pushed that thought away; he was a servant of the Throne of Skulls. Surely, someone somewhere had done worse than this.
 

He ignored the others’ astonished expressions as he dragged the corpse into the lit room. He peeled off the dead man’s leather vest, then his boots, then his belt. There were a half-full pouch, a string of shells around one wrist, and a lump of amber on a leather thong around his neck. Tejohn cast them all into the corner.

“My tyr...” Reglis said from behind him.
 

Something in that voice made Tejohn’s hair stand on end. He stood and turned in one motion, his hand on his sword. “What is it, Captain?” He wished he had his shield, but he’d seen Reglis fight and didn’t think it would be necessary.

Reglis had to raise his voice to be heard over Lar’s roaring. “My tyr, these men are our fallen enemies. We should treat them the way we’d hope to be treated. I hope you don’t plan to—”

“Hold out your hand.” Reglis hesitated a moment, but he did it. “Don’t drop this,” Tejohn said, then placed the stone into the man’s palm.

Reglis cried out in shock and horror; he recoiled so violently he would have dropped the stone if Tejohn hadn’t held onto him.
 

“Scout!” Tejohn shouted. “Come in here!” Tejohn took the enchanted stone away from him as Reglis staggered back. Arla entered warily. Tejohn held up the blue stone. “This is a translation stone. Do you know how it works?”
 

Arla shook her head. Tejohn took her wrist and held the stone against her palm. Her eyes went wide with surprise.
 

“Do you understand?” Tejohn said. “He says the same thing over and over, but
he is speaking
. Lar Italga’s mind may have been overthrown but he still exists. Our king is not dead.”