[Darkblade 01] - The Daemon's Curse

  “Forward!” Malus roared into the din, his blade hacking left and right at the frenzied horde. Spite tossed his head and snapped at his attackers, biting rotting corpses in two and scattering their remains in a wide arc. The highborn spurred the beast forward and the cold one charged into another knot of shrieking wights, bearing down on them with a sound like splintering wood.

  The nauglir let out a furious bellow as one or more of the foe’s weapons bit deep into his scaly hide. A corroded spear point glanced off Malus’ left pauldron and scored a bloody track across the back of his neck. Hands scrabbled at the smooth armour enclosing his arms and legs, struggling to pull him from the saddle. With a roar he brought his sword down and smashed through wrists and forearms; rusty mail burst in glittering clouds of split links.

  And then the prince was upon Malus, his gleaming blade flickering at him like the tongue of a viper.

  Malus twisted in the saddle and brought his sword around in a desperate block that caused the prince’s thrust to glance across the highborn’s armoured thigh. The highborn chopped down at the prince’s sword arm, but the wight blocked the stroke with supernatural speed. The enchanted ithilmar blade licked out again and Malus cried out as its point sliced a line of icy pain across his cheek. Blood trickled down his face and steamed from the frozen edges of the wound.

  Malus could hear other screams around him now as the impetus of the warband’s charge was spent and the warriors were surrounded by the tide of hungry dead. He leaned forward, slashing at the prince’s eyes, but the wight no longer feared the thought of blindness. Instead of flinching back, the skeletal warrior ducked low enough to take the blow on his helm and slashed at the highborn’s calf. The enchanted blade carved a neat line through the steel plate, and Malus gasped as his lower leg went numb.

  Think the highborn’s mind raged. You can’t best him sword to sword! Think of something quickly or you’re dead!

  The highborn cried out in defiance and slashed again at the prince’s face. The wight leaned back fractionally, just beyond the limit of Malus’ stroke, then leapt forward, swinging his blade in a brutal arc for the knee joint of the highborn’s armour.

  But Malus’ attack was only a feint; anticipating the prince’s blow, he jerked his boot from its stirrup and caught the wight’s sword wrist with his heel. With a blood curdling howl, Malus brought his sword down on the crown of the prince’s helm, splitting the ithilmar armour in two.

  The prince reeled back, his skull wreathed in leaping blue flames and his skeletal jaw gaping in fury.

  Malus snarled in reply and hauled on his reins, dragging Spite hard to the left. The nauglir’s thickly muscled tail whipped around like a battering ram and smashed into the prince’s chest. The wight’s body exploded in a cloud of dust and shattered armour, his rune-carved sword spinning end-over-end through the air.

  The highborn had barely a heartbeat to savour his triumph before a wight drove his spear deep into Spite’s shoulder and the cold one jerked sharply away from the blow. The sudden change in motion caught Malus by surprise. For a dizzying second his numbed leg flailed for the empty stirrup, then clawing hands seized his shoulders and dragged him from the saddle. He landed on his back on the stones of the roadway with a frenzied mob of wights standing over him.

  Blows rained down on his armour like a clatter of hail. A spear point found a gap in his left vambrace and gouged deep, causing Malus to hiss in pain. The blow of an axe smashed against his left knee; the armour held, but the joint beneath was wrenched by the impact. The tip of a notched sword sliced across his forehead, spilling a curtain of blood down the sides of his temples.

  Malus roared like a man possessed, smashing his sword at the legs of his foes. Armoured foes toppled onto him, their cold hands clawing for his face and throat. Spite roared, and the crowd around him was knocked momentarily back as the cold one smashed them aside with a sweep of his armoured head.

  The highborn threw his foes off him with a convulsive heave, shattering the skull of one determined wight with a short, chopping stroke of his sword. He leapt to his feet, propelled by battle-frenzy even as his mind fought a rising tide of panic. Without warning, his wrenched knee gave way and he fell forward against Spite’s bloody flank. His free hand closed on one of his saddlebags for support, but the worn leather parted beneath his weight.

  He fell, and a blazing skull tumbled into his grasp.

  Malus’ hand closed reflexively on the wire-wrapped relic despite the sizzling lines of blue fire that arced and snapped along its length. The skull’s hollow eye sockets, formerly black pits of shadow, now seethed with globes of fiery light. When the relic settled into the highborn’s hand a jolt shot through him, shooting down his arm and causing his heart to clench painfully. His whole body jerked — and words came bubbling up his throat and boiling from his mouth.

  He couldn’t understand what he was saying — he couldn’t even hear the words, just a savage buzzing sound that sawed at the air. But he could feel the phrases tumbling from his mouth, taking shapes that were jagged and hard. He tasted blood in his mouth and felt the skin of his lips split from the pressure. With a terrible moan, the wights fled from him, falling back upon one another and clapping their shrivelled hands to their skulls.

  As the wights fell back, the sizzling energy of the skull began to wane, but Malus lurched to his feet and willed the fire to blaze brightly again, focusing his anger at the incandescent relic. The terrible words twisted and writhed in his brain like a living thing, resisting his command. Burn brightly, wretched thing, Malus raged. Burn or I’ll break you to pieces!

  At that, the words surged through him again like a torrent, savaging his throat with their sharp edges and searing heat. The wights retreated still further, fleeing the sound of his voice. The din of the battle subsided, stunned into silence by the highborn’s raging tongue.

  Malus threw himself back into the saddle. His chest ached. It was as if a hot coal had been put in the place where his heart had been, and his lungs were shrivelling in the heat. The highborn held the relic high and swept his merciless gaze across the horde of the damned. Malus stood in the saddle and roared at the wights. “Our blood is not for the likes of you! Raise a hand against us and I will scourge the spirit from your worthless bones and hurl you into the Outer Dark! Flee before my wrath, wretched sons of Aenarion! The Dark Mother waits, and if you press me I shall offer your souls up to her!”

  The wights howled in fear and pain, their clawed hands raised in supplication. Malus looked back along the roadway and caught sight of the Shades, who’d dared to linger and watch the city-dwellers’ demise. The highborn locked eyes with Urhan Beg and savoured the expression of terror on the chieftain’s face.

  Malus pointed his sword at the three Autarii. “Slake your thirst on them, foul wights — they who thought to cheat you of your due.”

  Beg screamed, and the heads of the malevolent wights turned at the sound. Then the air was rent with eerie howls as the Autarii turned to run and the skeletal warriors took up the chase.

  The fire was ebbing again. Malus sought to stoke it once more, but found his fury wanting. His insides felt twisted and torn. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth and spattered on his thigh. His sword drooped in his hand.

  Around him, the druchii of his warband drooped wearily in their saddles or leaned against the heaving flanks of their mounts. The gore that streaked their faces and stained their armour was their own. Two knights lay near the corpses of their cold ones, one pierced with spears and hacked by swords and the other lying in bloody twisted pieces, his guts shrivelled and blackened with frost.

  Spite shuddered beneath him. The nauglir sported a score of wounds from head to tail. None of those who had survived had escaped unscathed.

  The druchii looked to their leader, their faces gaunt and pale. Around them stretched a panorama of shattered bones and crumpled armour, broken spears and splintered shields. All of them, even Lhunara, looked upon their lord with an express
ion of utter fear.

  A scream tore through the murky air, then another. The voices of the damned howled in reply.

  Malus sheathed his sword and grasped Spite’s reins. “We ride,” he growled, each word a brilliant spike of pain. “Leave the dead to their feast.”

  With that, he turned his cold one north and set off along the road, bones crunching beneath Spite’s feet.

  Malus awoke to the hollow moaning of the wind. Slowly, achingly, he opened his eyes. He lay on his back beneath an iron-grey sky, his arms spread wide. The wind rustled through the tall grass in which he lay.

  Something large stirred behind him. The highborn rose to one elbow, his whole body leaden and throbbing. Only a few feet away, Spite shifted on his haunches, regarding his master with one blood-red eye. The cold one’s flanks were streaked with grave-dust and splashes of ichor.

  He lay on a grassy hill, facing a line of weathered mountains perhaps a mile away. Malus could see the mouth of a valley winding between two craggy peaks. Was that the end of the Wighthallows? The highborn frowned, trying to think. How did we come to be here? Memories eluded him, slipping away like shadows into the recesses of his mind. It seemed as though he’d ridden for an eternity, always in darkness, hounded by the voices of the dead. When dawn finally came he remembered falling from the saddle and a deeper darkness rushing up to meet him.

  Malus tried to stand and bit back a hiss of pain as he put his weight on his wrenched knee. Like Spite, his dark armour was nearly white with grave-dust, darkened in places with splotches of old blood. There were cuts on his face, neck and forehead, and his cheeks were stiff with dried blood. The wound in his arm throbbed painfully, aggravated by a bent piece of metal forced into his skin by the wight’s spear point. The cut in his right calf ached, but he was grateful to be able to feel the pain.

  The skull was still in his left hand. His fingers were locked in a death-grip around the braincase. Its shadowed eye sockets seemed to be taking stock of him.

  After a moment, the highborn noticed other furtive sounds of movement amid the waving grasses. Groans and whispers carried on the wind. A cold one let out a pained cry as someone pulled the point of an enemy weapon free and threw it across the hill, the thin steel ringing as it spun through the air.

  Lhunara limped into view, the wind twisting loose strands of her braided hair. Her face was a mask of dust and blood, and the dark lines of fresh cuts marked her cheek and chin. Her eyes were haunted and sunken, ringed with dark circles of fatigue. She held a waterskin in one hand and a naked sword in the other, her gaze sweeping the surroundings with the practiced ease of a long-time veteran. She walked over to Malus and settled on her haunches, wincing at the loud popping of her knees. “Are you hurt, my lord?” the retainer asked, a little out of breath.

  “My damned knee—” the words came out in a horrid croak, dissolving into a string of wracking coughs. The inside of his mouth and throat felt scabby and dry, and his lips were cracked and stiff. Lhunara passed him the waterskin and he drank greedily in spite of the pain it caused. “My damned knee,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “That’s the worst of it, I think.”

  The retainer took the waterskin back and stoppered it. There was a wariness to her movements that Malus hadn’t seen her use around him before. She eyed the relic. “Still holding on to that?”

  Malus looked down at the skull. With an effort, he forced his hand open. The metal creaked, and the relic fell onto the grass. At once, his knuckles began to throb and ache.

  Lhunara seemed to relax a little. “How did you do that, back there in the valley? What were the words you spoke?”

  The highborn shook his head. “I don’t know. It… it was the skull. It put the words in my head somehow.” Unbidden, his sister’s words echoed in his head: It is not, in fact, a source of power — at least, not in any sense you would understand. “I don’t know why.”

  “Well, it saved us. I suppose that’s all that matters,” Lhunara said. “But we lost Hularc and Savann to the wights. That just leaves Vanhir and myself out of the six you brought from your household. The remainder are your sister’s men.” She lowered her voice. “And there’s talk of turning back.”

  Malus sat up, his hurts forgotten. “Turn back? We’ve barely begun.”

  Lhunara shook her head. “I’d be wary about saying such things, my lord. That ride last night shook the men to their core. If you push them too hard, they’ll break, and we can’t afford to lose anyone.” She looked wearily to the south, at the mountains they’d only just departed. “Like you said, we’ve barely begun.”

  The highborn bit back his anger. Part of him wanted the names of the men who questioned his authority, but Lhunara was right. What could he do? He needed every sword he could muster. All he could do was lead them, and deal with a mutiny when it finally reared its head. “Dalvar and Vanhir charged along with the rest, back in the valley?”

  Lhunara nodded. “They did.”

  Malus grunted. The news puzzled him. “They weren’t going to get a better opportunity for treachery than that,” he muttered. “Strange.”

  Lhunara shrugged. “You’re assuming Dalvar is plotting against you. Why should he? I’d think it more likely he’d wait until you’d discovered the temple, then slip the knife between your ribs.”

  “Unless he knows that we aren’t going to reach the temple, and his orders are simply to ensure my demise.”

  The retainer eyed him sharply. “Why do you say that?”

  Because I’m starting to think my sister tricked me, Malus started to say, then thought better of it. “Never mind. I’m being overly suspicious,” he answered instead.

  With an effort, he climbed slowly to his feet. Every part of him hurt in some way, like the day after a great battle. Malus limped over to Spite and slipped the skull into his other surviving saddlebag. As he did, he peered over the cold one’s back and saw miles of rolling plains, covered in a rippling sea of brown grass.

  Beyond them lay a band of dark green forest, and past that, rising high on the northern horizon, the dark, triangular bulk of a great mountain, its peak wreathed in snow and cloud. A sharp cleft, like the mark of an enormous axe, split the mountain at a shallow angle, stretching two-thirds of its length from tip to broad base. The highborn leaned against his saddle, trying to gauge the distance. It seems so close, he thought. A few days, perhaps? Then we’ll see just how much Nagaira really knew.

  Malus rested his forehead against the leather saddle for a moment, gathering his strength. Then, with a deep breath, he climbed painfully into the saddle. Spite barked in aggravation, but obediently rose to his haunches. “Tell the men to mount up,” the highborn said, studying the sky. “The day is nearly half-done. I want to cover a few more miles before dark.”

  Lhunara stared at him. “But, my lord, the men are tired and injured—”

  “We aren’t camping here,” Malus interjected. “Better to reach the edge of those woods, where we can gather some wood for a fire.” And give the men something else to think about instead of plotting a mutiny, he thought. Bad morale was like an infection. It couldn’t be allowed to sit and fester.

  The retainer started to protest, but quickly regained her self-discipline. “Yes, my lord,” she replied, and started barking orders to the rest of the warband.

  As the warband checked their mounts and got back into their saddles, Malus kneed Spite around until he could face the mountain directly. He surveyed the plains and the dark woods carefully. So this is the Chaos Waste, he thought. Not so greatly different from home. I had expected much worse.

  The wind shifted and moaned across the plains, stirring the sea of dead grass. He could not see what would cause such a hollow, funereal sound.

  They were no closer to the distant line of trees by the time night fell. The cloud cover remained heavy, but the auroras leaking from the northern horizon played across the underside of the clouds somehow in an eerie display of blue, green and yellow light. The shifting colours set a rio
t of shadows dancing among the windblown grasses, playing tricks on the eyes as the members of the warband kept watch for nocturnal predators. As long as there was enough light to ride by, Malus urged the column on. From time to time he caught himself nodding, his chin drooping to his chest. Fatigue and hunger were starting to take their toll.

  There was a sound from up ahead. Malus tensed, his ears straining to hear over the incessant wind. Just when he thought he’d imagined it, he heard the sound again, like a faint scream of rage or pain. The highborn reached back and unhooked the crossbow from his saddle.

  Moments later he heard the sound again. Definitely an angry cry, like a druchii war-scream. It was coming their way, but all he could see were dancing shadows and rippling waves of grass silhouetted against the dark horizon. He raised a gauntleted hand, waving his warband forward.

  The warriors fanned out to either side of him, their weary faces tense. “Arm yourselves,” Malus said. “Something’s coming.”

  Lhunara pulled alongside him. “What—”

  Then the scream came again. This time it was joined by two others. The sound brought the nauglirs’ heads up.

  Malus worked the arming mechanism on his crossbow. He was halfway done when the monsters burst from the grasses into the warband’s midst.

  They looked like great Lustrian lions, but their sleek flanks were soaked in crimson and their faces were broad and almost human. The cold ones roared a challenge and the cats responded with their eerie scream, like a man with a hot iron against his skin. Crossbows thumped and black fletchings sprouted from the lions’ flanks, but it only enraged them further. One of the beasts gathered itself and leapt at Spite, crashing into the nauglir’s shoulder and knocking the great beast onto its side. Malus tried to leap from the saddle as the lion’s wide jaws clamped around the cold one’s neck, but his left foot got caught in its stirrup and the nauglir rolled atop his leg.

  The lion’s face was less than a foot away, its strange green eyes studying Malus even as the creature’s jaws clamped down on Spite’s scaly hide. The highborn frantically tried to kick his way loose with his one free leg, to no avail. Only the armour encasing his trapped leg had prevented it from being crushed; if the nauglir rolled again, however, nothing would save him.