Seven Swords, Michael E. Shea [readict TXT] 📗
- Author: Michael E. Shea
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A deep rumble awoke in the mountain, a shake that warped the ground under Jon’s feet. The Old One awakens, thought Jon. I called and he will awaken and scream and kill everyone in the world.
No. Adrin had collapsed his tunnel. Jon looked down the tunnel and saw the shadows of men approaching. He saw their white teeth shining. He saw the gleam of torchlight in their black eyes. He saw the shine of steel in their hands. Jon saw them and fired.
He fired his first two shots quickly and saw Vrenna strike right afterward. The tip of her skull-hilted broadsword burst from the chest of a huge Stick holding a warmaul. The blade withdrew and a spray of blood from another Stick gushed against the salt wall.
Jon holstered his guns and drew his rapier. The feeling of the wire woven hilt in his hand reassured him.
“No matter what you do in life,” his fencing instructor had told him. “Your hand will always want your sword again.”
Jon hid the rapier behind his back and the first Voth rushed in, a scimitar held high. Jon twisted and stabbed from behind his back. The rapier punched a hole in the man’s chest. Jon drew it out and stabbed again in the man’s throat.
Jon parried the next blade that came in and planted his offhand dagger into the man’s groin. As the man reeled, Jon slid his rapier across his throat.
More men attacked and Jon cut them down. One blade cut sharply across his armor scratching his bare back. He didn’t know how deep the wound was but figured he’d know soon one way or another. Jon impaled the attacker and kicked him down. More swarmed in.
“Vrenna, now!” Jon kicked the barrel and it broke open. Water rushed out and seeped into the ground around the support pillar.
“Vrenna!” shouted Jon. Three men rushed Jon. He stabbed one through the eye and kicked another with a powerful skull crushing round kick. The third caught Jon’s offhand dagger in the mouth.
The ground rumbled around him and trails of dust fell. Far back he saw a flash of black steel surrounded by the screams and howls of the demontouched Sticks. He could not call for her again. He had to go.
Jon ran as the tunnel collapsed behind him.
Eyes of sadness and suspicion met Jon when he entered the main chamber of the mine.
“We must speak,” said Gauve, standing with Odeem the elder. Jon had neither time nor patience for them. If they had hurt Susan, he would kill every one of them himself.
“Where’s Susan,” Jon asked Ca’daan. The man was silent but pointed. The family she had stayed with cared for her now. He rushed and knelt next to her.
Susan’s skin was clammy and yellow. Beads of sweat formed the moment her brow was wiped. Dark rings formed under her eyes and the eyes themselves nearly sent Jon into a panic. Her pupils took up nearly her entire iris, leaving only a thin ring of emerald. Her right eye had a ring of blood around the iris, thick and swollen. Her left hand was limp in his own like the hand of a corpse.
Adrin and San’doro arrived. Dust covered their bodies and faces. A long gash on San’doro’s chest dripped blood. Their eyes looked haunted. Jon could not imagine what they had faced in their own tunnel.
“Vrenna?” asked San’doro.
“She was in the tunnel when it collapsed,” said Jon. Adrin lowered his head.
The three men looked at Susan. Jon felt his heart throbbing in his chest. Her blood-filled eye turned to Jon.
“He knows what happened,” she whispered.
“Let go, Susan,” said Jon. Who knows what it was doing to her to touch Stark’s mind. She didn’t listen.
“He doesn’t care about coming in here to kill us. He is happy to bury us here. He thinks it justice,” she said. Jon’s skin grew cold. “He knows about the rear of the tunnel. He’s going there to collapse it.” Susan’s voice stopped and her eyes closed.
He stayed a moment, running the back of his hand on her forehead.
“We must go, Jon,” said San’doro, putting his hand on Jon’s shoulder. Jon stood, taking a last look at Susan, and left.
The three men, the last of the Seven Swords, walked through the mobs of villagers avoiding their looks of fear, confusion, doubt, and anger. Severn led them to the narrow tunnel of the rear mine and, feeling the mountain weighing down on them, they half-crawled, half-walked out and back into the night air.
Stark was waiting for them.
The sky had cleared and the blood moon hung overhead. The black orb of the demon moon crested below.
Stark sat on a brown stallion painted in stripes of red blood. He wore a simple leather breastplate with a single red glyph over the chest. A gold-hilted short sword hung on his hip. A band of red painted the lower half of his face from the nose down. Like Jon, his head was bare.
Around him stood the remainder of the Sticks. Just short of two dozen men, six on horseback and the remainder on foot.
“Why did you do it?” asked Stark. His voice was raspy but filled with power and confidence. “Why bother to sacrifice your lives for dirt farmers and slavers?”
Jon, Adrin, and San’doro said nothing.
“They buried us alive in there,” said Stark, pointing to the flank of the Old One. “We had no food and only the black water, the blood of the Old One, to survive. It took us twenty years to dig our way out of the mountains and the world we found out here was worse than the hell inside.” Stark pointed at the cave behind them. “They did this to us. They made us who we are. And now you are going to die to defend them. A pointless act.”
Before Jon could react, San’doro was on the move.
San’doro darted through the foot soldiers. Blood exploded from some. Others fell, grasping at their exposed organs. An arrow whistled past, planting in San’doro’s shoulder. It’s barbed tip pierced through. A spear followed but San’doro cut it out of the air easily.
San’doro leaped, both daggers high, but Stark was fast. Jon had seen very few with such speed and accuracy. Stark drew his golden short sword and impaled San’doro on it. San’doro remained motionless as Stark lifted the desert ghost one handed above him. San’doro’s blood ran over Stark’s blade and into Stark’s other cupped hand. He drank deep.
Then the knives came down. Each one planting itself in the sides of Stark’s neck. San’doro stabbed them deep, twisted, and then pulled apart in opposite directions. Both blades ripped through Stark’s throat and black blood gushed as the demon touched general’s head fell backward to the spine. Both men crashed to the ground dead.
Silence filled the clearing. The whimpers of San’doro’s wounded foes cried out in the night. A large man in iron armor pointed a spear at Jon and Adrin and roared a command to strike. Though not with the ferocity they once exhibited for Stark, the remainder of the Sticks charged.
The huge man’s cry ceased when a lead ball from Adrin’s pistol crashed through his skull.
Adrin and Jon stood, pistols in hand and swords at the ready as they faced the last of the Sticks.
Adrin ran his hand across the brill’s thick flank, feeling the heat underneath. The huge beast bellowed and farted.
“One more of those and we won’t have a problem,” said Adrin. Lummox was his first brill, a gift from Ca’daan, and he didn’t want to lose her. She had birthed three of Adrin’s five brill and, if this blockage didn’t kill her, would be ready to market at the next caravan north.
“Ade!” Adrin heard Selana’s voice from the back of their stone cabin. He looked past the brill’s enormous rump to the dark skinned beauty at the door. She smiled at him and he smiled back. He was lucky to have her and thought about it every time he saw her.
“Ca’daan’s here,” she said. Adrin smiled again.
“Great! Tell him I need some help back here,” said Adrin. Now I just have to figure out how to make it Ca’daan’s arm up to the shoulder in Lummox’s arse instead of my own, he thought.
“He says men are here.”
Adrin forgot about his impacted brill and thought instead of the leather cloak in his shed. He pulled off his gloves and placed them over the split log fence of his brill pen. Cara, his youngest female, belched at him as he left. She was the most vocal of all of them.
Ca’daan sat with a ceramic cup of coffee in his hand. His face was ashen. He looked up at Adrin and stood. They shook hands in the Dim style, fingers interlocked into a pair of cooperating fists.
“Three men from the north,” said Ca’daan. “They asked for you by name. Jon too.”
“They’re of the Eye?” asked Adrin. He was aware of Selana’s concern behind him. He turned and smiled at her, doing his best to hide his own concern.
“Yes,” said Ca’daan.
Adrin thought about the leather cloak in the shed wrapped around the rapier, dagger, and the two pistols. He considered getting them. Jon had shot his way out of situations like this. But he was not Jon. Jon had told him this might happen and Adrin had to trust him. Adrin had assumed after his first year here that they wouldn’t come. He never would have married Selana if he had known this was going to happen. Selana’s father was right to object.
“Did you do what Jon told you to do?” asked Adrin, Ca’daan nodded.
“Where are they?” asked Adrin.
“At my home. I gave them water and ale. They wait for you there.”
Adrin nodded. He stood and gave Selana’s hand a squeeze before he left. He put on his floppy hat over his shaved head and headed out onto the road.
It was late afternoon and the red sun hung behind the Old One. The beast’s shadow overtook Adrin and he whispered a prayer Gauve’s wife, Celeste, had taught him. He didn’t believe in it but it made him feel better.
Adrin saw the horses first, huge black stallions ill-suited for the desert. Then he saw the men standing outside of Ca’daan’s house.
They were huge men towering over the few villagers who walked past. Each wore a cloak of black and leather armor with high neck guards that went up past their chins. Black leather three-corner hats shaded their eyes. One held a massive scattergun over his shoulder with one hand, his other hand rested on the hilt of a wide-bladed greatsword that hung from his belt. A demon’s head, twisted and screaming, capped the leather-wrapped hilt of the sword.
The other, smaller, had a bandoleer of small flintlock pistols running across his chest with two more on each hip. A longsword gleamed from the sheath on his back. Each of the eight pistols was shaped like a tiger in attack.
The two men watched Adrin as he approached. Adrin kept his hands visible and out at his sides. When he got close he looked at the smaller man.
“I am Adrin,” he said.
“I know,” said the pistoleer. “Please go inside, sir.”
Adrin could see the dust of the months of travel on the leather boots and clothing of these two men. “They will never stop looking for her,” Jon had said. Only now did Adrin believe it. These
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