Blood in the Valley Read online

  “A dozen.” The answer came, not from Danelle but in the gruff tones of Tev. Jayce turned to regard the First Mate. He spat over the side. “Cowards. I’ll remember each and make certain to tell...well...whoever is left to care.”

  “How long will the rest hold out?”

  Tev puffed out his chest. “The ones who care about what I think and what each other thinks will hold on until they’re crammed to the bilge. I’ve spread the word myself.”

  Jayce grinned at the stocky man, reflecting that Vohl had chosen those he kept close to him well. The smile faded a degree as he regarded the swelling goblin fleet. “Will we be able to get through that mess?”

  Tev snorted. “Mess is right, Master Zerron. We’ll smash through that like dried parchment. Goblins don’t belong on the water. We’ll teach ‘em why.”

  That the creatures were so emboldened as to try a nautical course was testament to the overriding will of the dark power behind the horde, Jayce observed grimly. Whatever the Thing is, it has to be stretched thin. For a moment, the thought shined out of the gloom of his fatigue like a lantern. Maybe in that there lies Its weakness.

  The racket echoing above the city, carrying from beyond its walls, took on a sudden, unified note. The furious rumble of drums fell into a regular cadence, accompanied by horns and a mighty roar that seemed to enclose Eredynn in an embrace of sound. Jayce turned his gaze to the heights of the city above.

  The glow enveloping the walls flickered and grew. The faint, tinny notes of Legionnaire bugles answered the chorus of the attackers. Moments later, a low babble began filling the streets. Torches flared to life, glimmering through the city like beads of jewels cascading down to the docks. Lit by their glow came the city’s population, surprisingly ordered, but beginning to shiver, the tenor of the mobs taking on a hard, frenzied note as the avenues crowded and panic began to sink its claws into the masses.

  “It has begun,” Jayce said softly. He felt Danelle’s hand on his sleeve.

  “I must ask, Master Zerron,” Tev said, voice dropping, “what are our instructions, as far as how long we wait?”

  Jayce stiffened and pivoted to face the man. “How long do you think?”

  Tev looked down. He reached into a pouch and drew forth a wad of some vile substance Jayce had seen him gnawing before and packed it into his lower lip. Apparently fortified, he offered a filthy grin and raised his voice. “As far as I’m concerned, we can wait for Master Rhenn until Hell itself arrives!”

  Along the length of the craft, the crew bawled their approval.

  “Very good, First Mate.” Jayce’s grin returned, though tempered by dark reality. Hell, itself, may very well arrive.

  GOBIN SHORTBOW ARROWS clattered against the merlons and arched overhead, the air a constant whir with their passing. Human longbowmen had scant moments to aim and loose before ducking for cover to knock fresh shafts. Others chanced the danger to hurl rocks or sizzling pots of oil over. Everywhere Vohl looked, men and women were down with wounds and the line crouching behind the walls to receive the attackers’ escalade thinned.

  A ladder clacked against the battlements before Vohl. He dropped his sword and rushed forward to grip the top rung. With a bark of fury, he thrust outward, sent the ladder and the half-dozen goblins already scaling it wobbling away from the wall to crash into the horde’s midst. Another ladder slapped against stone to his left, fitted neatly into a crenel left undefended when the man guarding it flinched away with shortbow arrows in his chest. A goblin had already reached the top, shrieking in triumph and ready to leap down amongst the defenders.

  Scooping up his sword, Vohl charged. The goblin had a foot on the battlements and turned just before Vohl reached it, beady eyes widening to reflect the glimmer of his steel. Vohl slashed low, parting the brute’s crude leather jerkin and opening up its bowels. Squealing, the creature dropped its tulwar to fumble to hold its entrails in. Vohl gave it a half-hearted shove and sent it toppling from sight.

  A second goblin dodged its plummeting comrade to scurry to the top. Vohl thrust between the rungs and sent his Thyrrian blade grating into its ribs. It stiffened and hung for an instant before falling, knocking a third goblin loose on its way down.

  “Muddle!” Vohl bellowed, setting aside his sword to clutch the ladder. Shuddering and fully loaded with attackers, its weight was beyond Vohl’s capacity. Out of the corner of his eye he saw yet another goblin reach the top rungs with an arm cocked back to swing its spiked cudgel at Vohl’s head.

  Muddle arrived with a roar, thrusting his axe head-first. The spiked helve punched through the bridge of the goblin’s nose and sent it pinwheeling from the top. Releasing the haft with his left hand, Muddle grabbed the other side of the ladder and together he and Vohl shoved. A dozen more goblins hurtled to their deaths.

  Vohl paused to catch his breath. In the streets behind them crowds surged from their homes down to the harbor. Ships were already leaving the piers and beginning their perilous slog out through the swarm of goblinoid craft. Vohl could only guess at the chaos as panicked masses fought to gain berths. He thought of the River Imp and hoped there’d still be a spot for its master.

  The wall shook with some unseen, heavy impact. Vohl looked at Muddle only to feel the bottom drop out of his stomach. Behind the half-breed, further down, a huge shape lumbered to the battlements, massive, misshapen shoulders towering over the crenelations. The shudder of the giant’s approach had been lost in the general anarchy but its bellow of challenge hit like a physical thing, lashing across the defenders in a gale of half-digested meat stench and droplets of clinging spittle.

  The beast gripped the top of the battlements with its left hand and raised its right, clenching a club that appear to be the trunk of a tree with the boughs split off, leaving stumps for spikes. It roared again and swung, the club crashed across the top of the crenels, blasting away hunks of masonry and splashed a block of defenders across the sky to land in broken pieces on the rooftops of Eredynn. The giant cackled, exposing gaped teeth, its jaundiced eyes rolling in their sockets, tufts of air playing wildly over a bald, scarred scalp.

  Muddle vaulted to the top of the battlements and leapt one crenel at a time toward the monstrosity. The giant hooked its club-bearing arm over the top of the wall and began to heave its bulk over. It had just gotten a knee onto the battlements when Muddle reached it. The half-hobgoblin raised his axe two-handed and brought it down, parting two fingers from the giant’s left hand.

  The giant shrieked and dropped back from the battlements, retracting its mauled digits and sending spurts of blood in bucket-fulls cascading upon the horde. Longbowmen saw the obvious target and swarms of their arrows converged on the beast. The giant staggered backwards, arrows speckled its chest, its neck, pinning one flabby nostril flat, lacerating an eye. It took another step back to steady itself, gave itself a shake and glowered with its good eye at the wall.

  Muddle stood alone, axe held at his side in one hand, waving his free arm for another go, taunting the giant. The beast screamed and stomped towards the wall, raising its club.

  “You idiot!” Vohl sprinted through defenders caught up in their own personal struggles to reach his partner. He saw the club hurtling across the sky and knew he could not hope to be in time.

  With reflexes stunning for his mass, Muddle leapt back from the stroke at the last moment. The club split stonework with a crash that toppled attacker and defender alike from their feet, sent Vohl stumbling to his knees. Muddle staggered back a step, regained his balance and leapt atop the jagged remnants of the crenels, his axe already blurring into a chop. Notched steel cleaved giant-flesh, passed deep into sinew and bone as the giant bleated, its weapon caught in the stone and its wrist caught on metal.

  Vohl regained his feet and hurtled to Muddle’s side with a scream of nerves dulled beyond fear or rationality. The half-hobgoblin fought the giant’s quivering flesh to free his axe. Vohl dove past him, driving his sword halfway up its length into the pressure point w
here the back of the hand met the wrist. He sawed back, put his whole weight into dragging the steel free. A jet of blood spurt across his chest. He felt the resistance ease, the metal grinding free of the wound. A fountain of gore blasted into his face, sent him tumbling back across the walkway of the battlements, blinded.

  A long groan of agony ended with the impact of the giant’s fall. Masonry shuddered beneath Vohl, jolted him an inch into the air, sent him crashing back to the stones. Dazed, he couldn’t even manage the sense to give himself a shake for a moment. Suddenly, a huge hand was gripping the breast of his corslet and dragging him to his feet. Vohl wiped his face clear of the giant’s blood, wobbled as Muddle helped him regain balance.

  Beyond the wall, the giant lay on its back, writhing from side to side as its life-blood left it, pulping goblins under its weight with every motion. Its fall had effectively cleared a section of the wall of threat. Vohl and Muddle met each other’s gaze and chortled, irrational with the realization that they were both somehow still alive.

  Thunder pulsed through the wall, a quiver under the boots like a minor earthquake. Vohl turned, risked leaning out over the jagged wreck of the battlements. Through columns of smoke and swirling clouds of arrows he saw the hobgoblin formation had ground down from the knolls, through the horde, leaving in their wake a trail of their slain lesser kin, and brought their mass to the gatehouse. Locked shields gave them the likeness of a scaled beast scuttling to the base of the wall, shivering under a rain of projectiles.

  Within that body, a team of hobgoblins moved together, back and...Boom! Again, the wall shivered to heavy impact and Vohl saw the massive, steel-banded double-doors of the main gate ripple, planks shivering, metal rivets spalling loose. Boom!

  Muddle grunted. Vohl glanced at him, lips pinched to a thin line.

  All along the walls of Eredynn the defenses were fraying, knots of goblinoids forcing entry onto the battlements, giants clambering over the tops, fires beginning to spread behind the walls as marauders got loose within to pillage and burn. With the citizenry fleeing to the docks, they found most of the houses empty. Most, but not all.

  The hobgoblin battering ram struck the gate again. Metal screamed as a cross-band tore loose of wooden beams and folded back in a twist of warped steel.

  It’s over.

  Vohl stepped past Muddle to put a hand on the shoulder of the cobbler from the Watch. The older man leaned against the battlements, gasping for air, blood drooling down the side of his face from a nasty gash in his scalp. He blinked at the contact and met Vohl’s gaze, his eyes cloudy in shock for a moment, then crystallizing into a hard light.

  “Let’s go,” Vohl said.

  The cobbler nodded and stiffened his back. He waved down the line to a man with a Legionnaire’s bugle. The man set the instrument to his lips and unleashed a surprisingly clear series of notes, an old cavalry call that was replied by similar calls along the line. Like a dam collapsing before the floods, the defenders began crumbling from their positions.

  It’ll be nothing but anarchy from here out...every man for himself...

  Vohl cast a look to the high center of the city, to the untouched, white-washed towers of the Imperial Palace. He met Muddle’s eye with a harsh grin. The half-breed responded with borne fangs and eyes simmering with murder.

  “Let’s you and I get going, too.”

  ILLAH SWAYED WITH NAUSEA as she watched the horde breach Eredynn and the sack begin. Pulses of rage drove sickness back. Her instability passed, was replaced by lightness in her stance, a singing in her nerves as senses crystallized to preternatural clarity. She turned to Lonadiel and Satayebeb, noting out of the corners of her eyes the distraction of the hobgoblin guards left behind in a ring around the three of them as a bodyguard.

  Lonadiel saw the look and stiffened.

  What if I didn’t stop you?

  Illah pivoted on her right heel, arm blurring into a sideways chop. Her hand slashed into the throat of the hobgoblin at her side, collapsing the trachea with a crackle of pulped cartilage. The brute staggered backwards, stiffened, hands fumbling for the ruin of its throat. Illah swept its tulwar from under its belt and spun as the next hobgoblin in the ring began to react, thrusting its weapon for her kidneys. She parried the blade with a slash before her, then reversed, drove the tulwar into the attacker’s belly.

  The rest of the bodyguards shook themselves out of their stupor, eyes torn away from the glory of the victory they were missing out on to behold the terror unleashed in their midst. Illah yanked the appropriated weapon free of the dying hobgoblin and grabbed the belt buckle of her first victim, dragging the gasping brute into a whirl that sent it toppling across the path of two of its comrades rushing to get to her. A hole opened in the ring to her right; a way out.

  But Illah didn’t want out. She raised the clumsy goblinoid weapon even as the rest of the circle closed in on her and threw.

  Adrenaline-charged nerves offered Illah a perfect vision of the moment: the wheeling blade, catching scintillas of brilliance from the distant fires, the look of surprise on Lonadiel’s face, tiny details of armor and weapons as hobgoblins surged towards her—too late—and the lazy, almost dreamy smirk of Satayebeb as she stared at the sword pinwheeling towards her.

  In that instant, Illah saw the end of all the horror.

  A hobgoblin rushing to the attack instead interposed itself between its mistress and the hurtling death. The tulwar slammed into its face, cleaving the bridge of its nose and forehead with a clang as the impact knocked its helmet free. It folded backwards, held upright by taut muscles for a heartbeat as its eyes widened and then clouded over. Nervelessly, it flopped to the ground, its helm bouncing once before landing at Satayebeb’s feet.

  The bodyguards swarmed for her and Illah knew she had failed, saw her doom coming in their frenzied eyes.

  “Stop!”

  The bark from the demon-goddess froze the hobgoblins only inches from converging on Illah, one so close it held its sword over her head, quivering as a groan of thrwarted fury escaped clenched fangs.

  “If she wants the chance to slay me,” Satayebeb said with composure that had no place amongst these crazed killers, “she will have it.” The demonness undid the buckle to her belt and held out the sword that had dangled at her hip.

  Illah’s Yntuil saber.

  Satayebeb tossed the weapon to the dirt at Illah’s feet. The hobgoblins lowered their weapons and backed away, one dealing a mortal blow to the still-wheezing brute Illah had throat-chopped—mercy or more likely frustration. Illah knelt and touched the jeweled hilt. She chanced a glance up.

  Lonadiel watched her through a mask of clenched muscles, his eyes hard under folded brows beaded with sweat. Conflict blazed in his stare. A hand hovered near the handle of his sword, clenching and unchlenching. He blinked and turned his head slightly, obviously watching his mistress from the corner of his eye.

  Satayebeb waited, arms folded before her. The smirk remained, but had tensed into a thin curve, lips going colorless.

  Illah unsheathed her saber and stood. Around her, the hobgoblins glanced back and forth amongst one another, growling their displeasure but unwilling to defy their goddess. Illah raised the weapon into a two-handed grip and eased into a fighting stance. She could not repeat the trick of before; Satayebeb would be ready for that. She had to close with the demonness. She stepped forward.

  Lonadiel moved into her path.

  Illah paused, then shifted her stance, raising her saber to a high guard. She met his gaze, putting all the love she had felt—still felt—into her stare. Her voice didn’t shake. “We can end this now.”

  “Yes, we can,” Satayebeb said over Lonadiel’s shoulder. “You can join us.”

  “You know my answer to that, Vile One,” Illah spat.

  “I do.” Satayebeb grinned, teeth borne like bloody fangs as her eyes took on their customary glow. “And so does he.”

  “You don’t have to be part of this, Lonadiel,” Illah said,
forcing him to look at her with her glare. “You can undo all that you have done.”

  Lonadiel opened his mouth to say something. He looked over his shoulder at Satayebeb then back at Illah. His features chilled and, when his eyes met Illah’s again, they blazed with the crimson shared by the demonness. He unsheathed his blade.

  “I cannot undo what I am, Illah.”

  A fist of loathing and horror clenched within Illah’s chest, crushing the organs into a pulp of despair that spread to her arms and legs. She lowered her saber, vision blurring as tears cascaded down her face to speckle the dirt. She nodded, the motion hollow, shaking the limp tatters of her body. She recalled something said to her during her novitiate in the Order—maybe spoken by Lonadiel.

  There is no death more painful than the death of hope.

  She dropped her weapon.

  Satayebeb’s face twisted into ribbons of quivering fury. “Little bitch, what are you doing? Don’t you want to kill me?”

  Illah wiped the tears away and chuckled hoarsely, the humor of the gallows. “Your doom is sealed, Creature.” She met the Thing’s hellish gaze. “And I’ll not be part of your games anymore.” She nodded at Lonadiel. “I will not give him to you—” she turned her eyes upon her former comrade, lover, and so much more “—and I will not give myself to you.”

  Lonadiel stepped back from her, his jowls shuddering as if he’d just been struck. Satayebeb shouldered past him to stand before Illah. The glare in her eyes became unbeareable, the skin of her face going transluscent as though the hellfires roaring within her would burst through the thin veneer of her feigned humanity to burn Illah, Lonadiel, and the whole world around them down.

  Finally, the light dimmed, fluttered from her gaze like candles blown out. The face that remained seemed old and infinitely weary. “Shackle her,” Satayebeb ordered the hobgoblins. A snarl warped her features. “No need to be gentle.”

  The hobgoblins fell upon Illah while Lonadiel watched without doing a thing.