Beyond the Bulwarks Read online

  Cries of pain filled the air. Foot falls thundered. Furniture and utensils crashed. Another horn blared, was joined by more, their mournful call spreading through the keep and out across Caerigoth. Bawled orders were met by the squall of steel and yelps of pain.

  Anzo remembered the cloaked figure that he had taken for Varya whisking over the battlements. “Oh, shit...”

  With a cry joyful for its frenzy, Heathen stormed out the door and down the corridor. Hissing, Anzo dashed after him with Varya scrambling at his heels.

  ***

  Smoke and screams filled the corridor. Hamrak ladies appeared from their chambers only to leap back in at Heathen’s charging passage. Following behind, Anzo could hear locking bolts running home. The hall turned ahead to the left, branching back towards the central keep and the entrance to the upper levels of the main hall. The yellowy-red glimmer of flames danced faintly against the walls and cast Heathen’s form as a massive, flowing shadow.

  “Heathen!” Anzo labored to keep up with the youth. “Wait!”

  The boy reached the intersection with a yelp of surprise. His feet shot out from under him and he crashed to the floor in a tangle, his axe spinning free to clang off the walls. A pool of black fluid oozed around the corner. Dancing firelight lit the substance its true bright red, illuminated its source, as well: a throat-slashed corpse Anzo recognized as the Hamrak fire watch he’d passed earlier.

  Heathen flailed to get up, one hand seeking his axe, just out of reach. A shadow spread over him, became a figure in black velvety tunic, hose, and a cape spread like the wings of carrion come to feast. Steel flashed in a gloved fist and a hood jerked Anzo’s way as he careened around the corner.

  Time slowed, as it does when adrenaline washes fear from the system and leaves only the instant where reflexes will either be fast enough—or they won’t. A diamond of reflected light winked on the point of Anzo’s out thrust sword, matched a flick of fear in eyes deep within the other’s hood. The black-clad attacker was pivoting away from the unexpected threat, a move fluid, almost dance-like as he turned on the ball of a foot and brought his forearm-length dagger slashing around for Anzo’s neck.

  The saber of Enu Mbawa had more than an arm’s distance over the killer’s knife and found flesh first, parting the soft tunic, piercing leather underneath. The brief grating of bone traveled up the blade into Anzo’s clenched fist as steel punched through ribs and chest cavity to erupt out the lithe man’s back and bury itself in the wall behind him. The man twitched once and died, pegged to a wooden bulkhead.

  The air fluttered. Varya screamed.

  Something gripped Anzo’s ankles and yanked, sent him whipsawing to the floor. He landed facedown, impact blasting sparks across his vision and wind from his lungs. But the thrown knife he’d barely had time to register fluttering towards him passed overhead to clang harmlessly off the end of the adjoining corridor. Ahead of him, through spots of pain, he saw a cloaked shape retreat around the corner into the main hall.

  “Thank me later.” Heathen released Anzo’s legs, got up, and leapt over him, stomping down the hall with a roar and his axe in both hands.

  Damned kid. Floundering to his feet and rasping still for air, Anzo turned to yank his sword free of the dead killer. Wood squeaked and released the steel but the corpse was more stubbornThe man’s hood fell away from a lolling head and Anzo had a moment to be shocked at tanned, blocky features. Aurridian?

  “What?” Varya pushed at Anzo from behind. Heathen had passed from sight, his lusty bellows shivering over a building cacophony. “Anzo, we’ve got to go!”

  Aurridians here? Anzo shook himself and started down the corridor. Can’t be Imperial Courier Service...they wouldn’t...not yet. Would they? Weapons crashed in the main hall and Anzo shot ahead of Varya, driven by new urgency. Rounding the corner, he emerged into the upper tiers of the fire hall and a view of utter anarchy.

  Something had struck the table of honor, blasted through the raised platform beneath it, and scooped a crater from the floor. Wicked pricks of cyan flickered at the edges of the jagged hole, dancing about the statue of Orkall, one of the Warrior God’s legs ripped away, the other splintered and bowing precariously. Flames spread everywhere, creeping up support columns, feeding greedily on overturned tables and benches, fluttering across torn shapes that had been men and their women.

  Heat and smoke and ozone bite wafted into Anzo’s face, the gagging odor of charred flesh following. Wails of agony and shock ground in his ears. Some folk were fighting fires. Others thrashed in the ruin of their own bodies while others yet were trying to drag them to safety. Shadowy shapes flitted around the periphery of the carnage with the glimmer of naked blades, concentrating towards the far side of the hall.

  The main doors flung open to reveal Eyeloth and his entourage, come to help and finding, instead, a rush of assassins.

  Anzo opened his mouth to holler a warning. But Heathen’s cry for help stalled the words before they formed. Spinning right, Anzo found the giant whirling through a complicated pattern of axe strokes that a pair of assassins had yet to pierce. But Anzo could see the youth tiring already. One of the assassins feinted for Heathen’s right and the young man committed, his patterns razoring down in a lightning hack. The assassin’s cleverness proved fatal as the stroke took him in the collarbone, opened sternum in a gush of gore. But the second lunged in from the left at Heathen’s exposed flank.

  Anzo charged with a shout, the challenge meant more as distraction than bravado. He slashed from right to left with the aim of raking the attacker’s shoulder, but the man proved faster and twisted into a parry that cleared his side and redirected Anzo’s sword into the balcony railing. The assassin didn’t follow up on Anzo’s momentary helplessness, choosing retreat instead. His flight carried him away from Heathen’s overhand slash, which missed the darting form and punching clean through the railing. The impact allowed Anzo to wrench the saber clear but left him and Heathen watching the dark-clad form dash away down the length of the balcony.

  “No, you don’t!” Heathen raised the axe in both hands and threw. The weapon pin-wheeled the length of the hall to connect with the killer, just as he paused to descend a ladder to the main floor. Impact flung him backwards to glance wetly off a support column and land with the broad blade shivering in his torso.

  “Heathen, damn it, wait!” Anzo struggled for breath as the youth pounded down the balcony to retrieve his weapon. Smoke was bunching in the high, groined buttresses of the hall, bit in Anzo’s lungs. Heat shimmering from growing blazes, settled on his flesh as ash that clotted with beads of sweat.

  “Look out!” Varya barked.

  Anzo started to turn to her but an azure flash caught in his eyes. Across the hall, atop the opposite balcony, a black-clad man weaved his hands about in the air. In the space between his strange motions, a globe of unearthly fire grew. Anzo looked fully at Varya, saw her standing straight-backed and hands held out, parallel with her hips. Fires below lit her features to a demonic cast while lips moved silently.

  The assassin’s hands twitched and the witch fire globe leapt forth, streaking across the hall in a shaft of snarling energy. Anzo threw up a hand to shield his eyes a moment too late, was dazzled as a purplish nimbus fluttered into being before Varya and accepted the sorcerous strike. The careening globe shattered on impact, scintillas of eye-gouging brilliance spraying away to rattle the hall with a chain of secondary explosions wherever they touched. Splinters, bits of masonry, and wails of fear and pain filled the hall.

  “Go, Anzo Severnus,” Varya said in a voice calm and seemingly too soft to be heard over the chaos. One hand remained up, the semi-opaque barrier of magic throbbing before her, while a shivering spark built in the other, an agitated wasp of purple fire. “I will deal with this amateur.”

  Hairs beginning to stand across his flesh like the instant before a lightning strike, Anzo needed little encouragement. By the ladder on the far end of the balcony, Heathen was waving for him.
He raced to join the youth, who pointed frantically to the main entrance of the hall.

  Eyeloth and his immediate entourage outnumbered the half dozen ebon-cloaked killers who’d swarmed them at their arrival. But they were losing. Four Hamrak sprawled in blood at the assassins’ feet. Endus and the remaining guards formed something of a wall before their chieftain, flailing with increased desperation against the onslaught as they were driven back through the door and out into whirling show.

  Pretty clear who the target is.

  Anzo sheathed his sword and started down the ladder, taking two rungs at a time. Halfway down, the hall shuddered with a thunderclap that stunned the senses. Sweat-slick hands fumbled, lost their grip, and Anzo tumbled the rest of the way to the floor, landing on his heels hard enough to drive impact up through his spine and drop him stiffly to buckling floor boards. He had a blinking, teary second to see Heathen’s falling body, his axe spinning straight for his face. Reflex and a quick roll saved him the ignominy of his skull split by his friend’s weapon and his body pulped under his fall.

  Unsurprisingly, the boy was up first, the axe back in his grasp. Above him, the air seethed with wild traceries of purple hell. Varya’s fire wasp darted about the assassin-sorcerer, leaping inward at frantic angles to batter a protective barrier like the one she’d erected. Repeated strikes bent the shimmering wards inward until they quivered around his body. Within that shivering cyan cocoon, Anzo could barely make out the man’s desperate gesticulations. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t enough. Varya’s wasp paused in its maniacal motions above him, seemed almost to ponder, and jolted down. The assassin’s barrier crumpled and a globe of fire blasted him into tags of bone and meat that rained down on the survivors below.

  “Come on, Weasel!” Heathen leaped past Anzo and headed for the main door.

  Winter wind lashed them as they followed the running fight out into the parade ground. All of the Caerigoth was stirring now, torches glimmering to life amongst huts and houses, lanterns tracing the palisades, bouncing as their bearers rushed to the sign of the disturbance, shouts, horns, and the clangor of readied weapons echoing to the gray skies.

  Clearly sensing the turn of time against them, the pack of assassins flung themselves on Eyeloth’s remaining entourage, cruel short swords darting in past lumbering Hamrak slashes, daggers flicking exposed forearms and thighs. Half of Eyeloth’s men fell in a flurry. Endus and the rest tightened about their lord, but the chieftain had bloodied his sword already and would not be kept from the press. Noting this in a brief lull in the melee, the assassins bunched together and launched all their efforts against him.

  Anzo and Heathen crashed into their rear at that moment. Heathen’s axe burst one’s brains onto the snow. A second whipped around with a tight slash across the boy’s ribs. Oblivious, Heathen used the motion of ripping his weapon free of the first killer’s pulped skull to drive the flat of his blade into the second’s face, smashing him senselessly to the snow. Anzo finished the man with a thrust between the shoulder blades.

  The remaining four assassins now found themselves surrounded, Eyeloth’s men pressing in, stabbing and pummeling. One went down, scissored between three Hamrak blades. The survivors formed up back-to-back-to-back and kept fighting.

  “Take one alive!” Anzo bellowed. “We need to know! Take one!”

  But howling, the Hamrak wouldn’t hear of it. They drove in on the killers, shields grinding, pinning them in tight as weapons rose and fell and the gore began to spout. Another assassin crumpled with a wavering scream, stomped into blood-drenched snow and gutted repeatedly.

  Eyeloth tried to break in on the tangle, pull the men off before the slaughter was complete. Yellowed teeth flashed within silvered whiskers. The air whickered and danced with a fleck of steely light. Eyeloth jerked backed, stiffened as brows creased in surprise. He looked down. The handle of a dagger buried to the hilt in his chest quivered.

  “Eyeloth!” Anzo jumped to the man’s side, caught him before he fell and lowered him to the snow. The rest of the Hamrak, fixated on the butchery of the assassins, had not yet noticed. “Hamrak,” Anzo screamed, “your chieftain is down!”

  Silence overrode the last rush of violence. Endus and the survivors of Eyeloth’s entourage turned numbly towards Anzo, back lit by fires and smoke boiling through the door to the hall. Endus started forward, gasped, and fell to his knees at his chieftain’s feet. Heathen cursed softly. Shock slackened Hamrak features. Tears and shaken heads began. From around the parade grounds, others were converging, rushing at first then slowing as cries of outrage and sorrow began to spread.

  Eyeloth shuddered in Anzo’s arms. “Weasel...”

  “Let him go—” Endus snarled, lurched forward to pry the fallen man from Anzo.

  The chieftain shook his head, grimacing with the effort. “It’s...all right.” He held out his hand to the henchman. “Loyal Endus...you believed when others didn’t.” Eyeloth coughed softly. “But it’s all right.” His eyes fogged, wandered, and settled on Anzo. “Weasel, remember what I told you...for Durrim...”

  “I will, for your son, lord.”

  It took Anzo a moment to realize the chieftain of the Hamrak couldn’t hear him anymore.

  From the far side of the parade ground came the groan of the main gate opening. Shouts echoed. Murmurs spread from the rear of the crowd forward. Men and women parted, let a rushing figure pass. A cloak of Vaethinian white trailed behind it, was unclasped and released to flutter discarded on the snow. Durrim sprinted the last couple dozen feet through the throng, the bauble of his new god bouncing at his chest. Wild gaze met Anzo’s before settling on the form slumped in his arms. Durrim skidded to a halt, mouth dangling open. Snowflakes caught in his beard, in his eyelashes, caused him to blink free the first tears.

  “Father?”

  Anzo forced himself to look at the younger man, his heart thumping with sickened torrents as he read the anguish on Durrim’s face. “I’m sorry.”

  Durrim shrieked, a gutted animal’s last bellow to an uncaring wilderness. He launched at his father’s body, tore it from Anzo’s grasp and cradled in his own, rocking the bloodied form while their people crowded close. His wails sharpened, burst out in time to ragged sobs. He shook and crushed Eyeloth closer, as though he might wrestle some of the soul back into the estranged father’s corpse.

  Anzo rose and staggered back from the pair. A hand came to rest on his arm. Heathen tried to steady him but Anzo tore away and stalked off to one side, near one of the fallen assassins. A sideways glance showed him Varya emerging from the hall main doorway, face losing some of the demonic luster of before, beginning to register the tragedy outside.

  The fallen assassin sprawled on his face, blood pooling on his back, sloshing into the snow as Anzo kicked him over. He knelt at the dead man’s side, pulled the hood back and was surprised again. The dead features, still locked in a hateful grimace, had a dusky shade, blue-black bristles along a tight, chiseled jowl, and a hooked nose. Not Aurridian, this one...Yrenerian, maybe? Who were these bastards? Mouth going suddenly dry, he grabbed a slack hand, yanked off the glove, hardened with leather warsaps studded at the knuckles with iron rivets. The back of the scarred fist bore a small tattoo, an outstretched hand of linked iron. Anzo sucked in a breath. Gods...the Steel Fist Guild. Former gladiators banded together as slayers for hire. Hire for a high price.

  “Anzo.” Theregond towered over him.

  “Where have you been?” Anzo dropped the dead fingers back into the snow.

  The king grimaced uncomfortably. “I think you know that.” He glanced towards Durrim and Eyeloth. “Gods, man, what happened?”

  Anzo snorted and pulled to his feet. “What does that matter now?”

  “It matters,” he said. “Look around you. It won’t be long before the question is asked.” He crossed his arms and regarded Anzo. “Don’t you think it would be better to have an answer for the suspicious?” Theregond’s religious cloak was gone, Anzo noticed, as was
his Vaethin idol.

  Anzo nodded and kicked the slain assassin. “I think they thought they’d find Eyeloth with his warriors in the hall. When they didn’t, they must have figured a large enough disturbance would draw him into their trap.”

  “Who are they?”

  Anzo drew in a breath, savored the wintry sting in his lungs over the roiling disgust at the evening’s blood. “Paid killers, probably from Aurid.” He kicked the dead assassin again and spat. “But paid by whom?” He met Theregond’s gaze.

  “Someone who wanted the alliance broken,” Theregond growled. “Grondomagnus.”

  Anzo nodded. “So, what happens now?”

  “Now,” Theregond blew out a frosty purl and looked again at Durrim, “the Hamrak must have a new Chieftain.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Midwinter

  Among the Vhurrs, the bodies of commoners, farmers, children, women, were consigned to the ground, often in mass graves hardly distinguishable from trash pits or, in the case of the relatively more prosperous, in crude barrows unlikely to weather the elements long. Only a warrior merited the passage of fire into the Beyond, a blazing pyre and a column of smoke to carry his soul to the embrace of Orkall.

  So it was with Eyeloth of the Hamrak, a procession of family and retainers leading a column outside the walls of Caerigoth to a pile of oiled lumber while the skies churned and snow cascaded in heavy, blinding sheets. Eyeloth reclined on a wooden pallet draped in a purple velvet shroud—barbarian pretension towards the Imperial ceremonies of the Aurid west—with his sword, the Blade of the Hamrak, on his chest. Durrim led his father’s bearers, Endus among them, Straedus, too, the henchmen having put aside their squabbles for the moment. The idol of Vaethin was missing from the Prince’s neck, a full warrior’s regalia and a carved wooden fist of Orkall in its place.

  Anzo and Heathen trailed far behind the mourning Hamrak, lingering near Theregond, who kept a respectful distance with a small knot of his Erevulans. Eyeloth’s people struggled through drifting snow that soaked and chilled the legs to the knees. Winds stirred snowflakes into miniature cyclones that lashed into bowed faces, but they made no sign of noticing, enduring the slap of cloaks and skirts about their bodies with stoic respect for the slain chieftain.