To Ride Hell's Chasm
Whatever abomination wore the dog’s flesh, it locked instantly on to his movement. Yapping with canine excitement, it raced in, tongue lolling, and white-tipped tail flagging welcome.
Mykkael held. The drawn bow etched a stilled line in the air. The arrow’s tip seemed a nail fixed in time, pinning the moment in hesitation.
And the hound came. Barrelling through the gulch, leaping pooled spray and wet boulders, she bore down on the bunched horses. Closer, one saw the foam dashed from her muzzle. Closer still, one noted her eyes were vacant and utterly mad.
Vashni whuffed a hackled snort. Anja clamped back a whimper of terror, while the unnatural hound bounded nearer, a slavering parody of Benj’s beloved Dalshie.
And still Mykkael held. He might have been stone, devoid of lifeblood and reaction.
Anja cried out, her fear overwhelming. As the ensorcelled creature raced towards her, she had no means to know whether her defender had been just as dangerously beguiled. Stilled as though ensnared by a spell, Mykkael held his drawn bow, but did not release.
‘Blinding glory, Captain!’
He still did not loose.
The hound scrabbled nearer. Her hurtling rush was now almost on top of them. She coiled her hindquarters and sprang on to the ledge not five strides from Mykkael’s set stance.
The warding invoked by the viziers’ tattoo exploded. A blue ring of light sliced through the senses like the cut of a tempered blade. The eruption signalled Mykkael’s chosen moment. His aimed arrow flew, then vanished across the raised line of active power.
The shaft struck its mark. Beyond that dazzling shower of light, something shrieked. The quavering cry raised the hair at the nape, and wrung the shocked mind into nightmare.
Then the bright curtain of wardings ripped out, doused like a gale-blown candle. The shot hound writhed on the rocks in her death throes, piteously whimpering, the shaft struck clean through her heart.
‘Don’t move,’ Mykkael whispered. ‘Your Grace, I implore you, stand strong.’
Shaking, her clammy hands clenched to the rein to restrain Kasminna’s pawing unease, Anja ached with pity. Though she shut her eyes, no effort could silence the sound of the hound’s dreadful torment.
‘Captain! Show mercy, I beg you.’ Her compassionate instinct cried out to dismount. She had taken game in the hunt too many times to condone the needless suffering of any wounded creature.
‘That’s no dog!’ Mykkael lashed in reprimand.
His sword had not quieted. His adamance enforced the hideous fact, that the death which should follow his fatally placed shaft was taking abnormally long.
Warned of a danger beyond their far border, the shamans employed by the emperor’s Grand Vizier immersed themselves into scrying. Their circle held trance with unbroken vigilance, from breaking dawn until dusk. Vision showed them a hound, no red-blooded creature, but a sorcerer’s construct, unveiled as a monster as it was stunned on the point of a copper-tipped arrow. Warrior, they named the man with the bow. He whose presence they could not discern through the warding that masked him. The adversary stalking his flight through Hell’s Chasm stood unveiled for one moment, as the spun continuity of cold-struck forces succumbed to the conductive matrix of copper. The vizier must receive the ill news at once: the pattern invoked was a shape-changer’s line, outside the known reach of their wisdom…
XXXIII. Chasm
MYKKAEL DID NOT TAKE HIS EYES OFF THE WRITHING HOUND, STRUGGLING WITH DESPERATE, MORTAL PAIN THAT DID NOT BRING THE surcease of death. To Anja, without turning, he said, ‘Dismount, Princess, now. Change horses. Quickly!’
He tracked each sound to ensure she obeyed him: the chafe of her clothing as she slid from her saddle, then the tap as her soles touched on to firm ground. Her shuffling step bespoke her sore muscles, a setback that must disadvantage the speed of her reflexes.
‘Can you do nothing to ease that hound’s suffering?’ she pleaded, as her tired hands fumbled with girth buckles.
Mykkael jerked his head, no. ‘Much too dangerous.’ He would have to cut out the hound’s heart, if he could, to ensure the long curse that burned through its corrupt flesh would stay stunned and captive to copper. Yet the near threat of danger did not relent. The shaman’s mark in his sword hilt stayed active. Its keening note razed through his bones, a clear warning the hound just dispatched was no more than the precursor blazing the trail. Something far worse would be following.
‘Ready a fresh horse for me to ride,’ Mykkael said, thankful his voice kept the semblance of calm. ‘Choose carefully, Princess. Also, tie the bundles Fouzette’s bearing on to Kasminna.’
The hound’s piteous agony did not subside. Her whimpering cries drove Anja to shivering fury. ‘Why can’t you serve her the mercy stroke, Captain? I have to know!’
‘Princess!’ Mykkael snapped, his urgency knife-edged. ‘Change mounts. Do it now!‘
He dared not look aside to insist that she hear him. Bow in hand, arrows ready, he watched like a hawk down their back trail. The redoubled pressure of his viziers’ tattoo tightened the skin at his nape. He put aside grief, every harrowing memory. His run through Efandi left too many hard lessons. Time did not permit speech. The forces that now used the hound for a beacon had no word in their language for mercy.
Quivering on the held edge of release, immersed in barqui’ino awareness, Mykkael stood guard. He chafed through each moment, as Anja transferred the surcingle and bundles, then saddled and mounted Covette. Her selection was wise. The little chestnut had the surest feet. Endurance was bred into the mare’s desert lineage, making her the least likely to fail under stress and privation.
‘I’ve tied your reins on to Stormfront’s headstall,’ the princess stated, subdued. ‘He’s ready to go when you are.’
‘Now.’ Mykkael spun with clipped haste. He accepted her cherished black gelding who was, yet again, the best choice. Stormfront had the strength to carry two riders, matched by the fire and heart of a fighter. The affray at the falls had well tested his mettle. He could be forced to stand his ground through the bloodshed and fury of battle.
Bow still in hand, Mykkael settled astride. He heard Anja’s hissed intake of breath, and said, very softly, ‘I know.’
He had seen them already: a swarm of black specks peppered the sky beyond the gap. Winged creatures of any kind must spell trouble. Large eagles avoided the Widow’s Gauntlet, and kerries by their contentious nature did not flock. ‘We have to run, Princess. This site is too open and can’t be defended.’
Anja wheeled Covette, all her arguments silenced. She dug in her heels, pitched the chestnut to a canter over slippery rock, while Mykkael dispatched hurried instructions. ‘Fouzette can’t withstand this. She’ll fall behind. There can be mercy for her, but if so, you have to speak now.’
Anja turned her head. Her eyes showed stark horror. ‘An arrow?’
Mykkael nodded. No kindness could lighten unbending necessity. ‘One treated with copper into the heart.’ He still carried dart poison. ‘I can make the shot painless. She will drop fast, and no sorcery I know of will raise her.’
The tears spilled, whipped down Anja’s cheeks by the breeze of the chestnut mare’s passage. ‘I can’t hold her head?’
‘No.’ Mykkael saw no margin for compromise. ‘Stop here, we die with her.’ He must act, regardless. Yet the trust he preferred at all costs to preserve now relied on her willing consent. ‘Don’t look, Anja!’ as she twisted in her saddle for a desperate glance back.
Fouzette was already trailing, and the wards’ ringing pressure informed well enough: the sorcerer’s airborne sortie would be gaining.
Mykkael balanced Stormfront to effect intervention, but in the end, required no breach of integrity. Those slim, girlish shoulders quivered just once. The reply, when it came, was bravely regal, and delivered with clarity through the tumult as the horses thundered headlong down the narrows. ‘Very well, Captain. If Fouzette must die, I would have you spare her from suffering.’
r />
‘Don’t watch, Anja.’ The captain’s remonstrance this time came gentle, as he undertook the ugly task at grim speed, and treated the requisite arrow.
Mykkael dropped Stormfront back, chose his shot and his moment. The bow sang just once. The arrow arched out at point-blank range. The sturdy bay whose steadfast nature had thrice spared them, and whose bravery had stood down a kerrie’s assault, missed her stride. She pitched out of balance as her forelegs buckled, but not on to cruel stone. Mykkael had not missed his timing. Fouzette crumpled into the foaming race of the flume, a more kindly embrace in fatality. Her sweated, dark coat melded into the spray. A rolled eye sought the bank in heartbreaking reproach. Then the current swallowed her under.
Vashni now ran bereft of his teammate. Mykkael slapped his grey rump. He used force as he must, and drove the flightier gelding ahead, while the animal’s repeated, desolate neighs cast echoes between the rock cliffs.
His distress caused Anja to break discipline and glance back. Yet by then, there was no sign of trauma to see. The chasm was empty, her stout mare no more than a memory.
The narrows closed down to a chill, windy slit, overhung by the dirtied, aqua ice squeezed aside by the Howduin glaciers. Enormous blocks had sheared away, sometimes wedged between the walls of the cleft, where melt and weather carved hanging arches fringed with icicles, and dulled light scattered through glazings of pane ice. In these narrows, the flume rumbled and splashed, fouled with stones and mud as fragments upslope gave way and tumbled more substantial debris into avalanche.
Along with the hazards of slick stone and boulders, the horses now contended with frozen ground. They picked through splintered deadfalls, and the granular patches of snow that lingered in the deep recesses where sun did not penetrate. With night falling, the frigid air bit to the bone. Lathered coats were going to bring lethal chill, if impasse forced them to stop. Lacking fodder, the animals could not stay warm.
Already, Anja was starting to shiver. The wardings still hazed Mykkael to dire tension, incessantly warning the sorcerer’s pursuit pressed ever nearer to closure. Whether the hound’s copper-poisoned demise might delay them, or if such unnatural creatures must take pause to battle the territorial instincts of kerries, Mykkael had no way to guess. He distrusted blind luck. Their winded mounts could not hold the pace. Pushed to the crux, the captain knew he must make a stand, or forfeit his defence altogether.
‘There!’ He pointed towards a jumble of ice that had formed a crude buttress against the stone wall. ‘Ride Covette on. Yes! Take her inside. Bunch the rest of the horses around you, and for the love of your sire, stay mounted!’
Harrying Vashni’s reluctant trot, Mykkael drove the herd from behind. He pushed at their heels until they were crammed shoulder to shoulder inside the precarious shelter. The hollow was scarcely secure, formed as it was of unstable rime, undercut by the sluice of spring rains. Yet no better option existed, with his wardings pitched to the overriding, shrill urgency of a pursuit coming hard at their heels. Barqui’ino awareness heightened his senses to almost hurtful acuity. Tight though it was, the nook in the ice would forestall a strike on his flanks, and prevent an assault from behind.
Mykkael slid off Stormfront’s back. He left the reins looped on the gelding’s neck as he chivvied him in with his teammate. ‘Stay astride,’ he told Anja. ‘Keep the horses as calm as you can. If they bolt, I can’t hope to save them.’
He spared a fast glance, but could not read how she fared. Her face was a pale blur, lost in the gloaming.
When she spoke, her voice was too tired to show fear. ‘Kerries can’t fly here. The walls are too close for their wingspread.’
‘I know.’ Mykkael limped two short steps and snapped a dry bough from a nearby deadfall. He broke the wood into arm lengths, then jabbed each splinter upright in the ice. ‘We’re not hunting kerries, your Grace, a fine point upon which I have some experience.’ Using torn strips from his surcoat, he wound the ends of each billet in rag, which he struck alight with the flint and tinder from his scrip. Under the flickering, wind-rippled flames, he readied his arrows in rows. The copper-marked ones he set to the left, with the untreated shafts opposed, on the right. Last, he tested the tension of the strung bow.
His final instructions were terse. ‘Princess, hold fast. Not everything that you see will be real. Some things that move might seem like illusion. They’re not. You may hear voices. Trust nothing they say. The wards in my presence are your only protection. Hide your eyes. Block your ears. Do whatever you must. Let me attend to your safety. Your sole task will be to stand without breaking.’
‘Be seit shan’jien, Mykkael,’ bade Anja. ‘The target with teeth that bites back.’ Cold, weary, terrified, Sessalie’s princess gave him fierce words, where her Efandi counterpart in the same straits had muffled her sobs behind the torn silk of her headcloth.
Mykkael selected an arrow. Grim as struck bronze in the spill of the flames, he kicked away the loose gravel and set his feet. Then he notched the first shaft to the bowstring, aware he must be no less than deit’jien tah, ‘the target that kills without quarter’.
Then the wave of the sorcerer’s winged minions descended, and barqui’ino awareness left space for no thought at all.
They threaded the narrows in a whistle of sliced air, sinuous and agile and deadly. One saw the eyes, first, red as punched ruby, or orange as live coals, or yellow as fire in opal. They glinted out of the falling dark, lit to sparks as the torchlight caught them. The bodies were reptilian and scaled, and possessed by a murderous need to sate upon blood and slaughter. Where the size of a kerrie made its gliding strength ponderous, these creatures darted like swallows. They hurtled down the chasm in steeply banked flight at a speed that left a man breathless.
Mykkael aimed and shot. His arrow flew straight to the mark. The horror in front kited out of the air with a shriek. Wings flapping, it tumbled. The harrowing cry choked off as it splashed headlong into the flume. The bow sang again. Another shaft hissed skywards. A second abomination folded and slammed into the rock wall, to a rattling shower of gravel. More came behind. Mykkael shot them down, another, then another, nock, draw and release, a flow of continuous motion. His next kills ploughed the ledge a scant stone’s throw away. Like the hound, each casualty writhed and thrashed, squalling in bone-chilling agony. Copper could stun them. That stroke of fortune raised Mykkael’s hope, and also awakened sore grief. His accurate marksmanship would serve no mercy. As apparitions bound by the grip of spelled forces, these wrought minions could never receive the grace of a natural death.
Another bowshot, and another monstrosity plummeted out of flight. The distance had closed enough now to discern the unpleasant details. No two of the creatures seemed formed the same way. Some had fangs and claws, others insectile tails with needle-sharp stings. Some hissed or bellowed. Others swooped down in a silence Mykkael found all the more unnerving. The only consistency to their attack was their single-minded ferocity.
Arrow struck, another corruption cartwheeled downwards. This one’s cry raised the hair, piteous as the wail of a hurt child. Mykkael stood unshaken. He had heard far worse. As he drew the next shaft in unbroken succession, aimed and let fly, he sensed the range, knowing: the incoming pack approached the far edge of the viziers’ protections raised by his tattoo. Next second, the lead creature slammed into contact. Its horned head unravelled into a lick of queer flame, and a burst of maniacal laughter. The sound raised the skin into visceral revolt, and the breeze reeked of sulphur and burning. Mykkael watched, prepared, should the grace of his wardings fail to deflect. He listened to the strained note from his sword hilt. Yet the spurting flares of uncanny energies flowed into themselves and yanked back. In recoil, he watched, horrified, as the monster’s fanged maw re-materialized into animate flesh.
No sorcerer’s work he had encountered before could enact such a seamless recovery.
Mykkael noted the creature’s snarling retreat, first warning he might face a stal
emate. If the sorcerer’s fell sending could not cross the barrier and maintain its form, neither did the viziers’ geometry possess the commanding power to effect any lasting banishment. When his arrows ran short, he could be trapped in a stand-off. No way to tell, now, if the shaman’s mark sung into his sword hilt held the lines to break through cold-struck bindings and compensate. He risked far worse danger, once he had to make closure, not any welcome development. For not all of the creatures that now wove and snapped in testing rage at the wardings would be the long-spelled design of an embodied apparition.
Several planted among them could be bone and blood shape-changers, beyond his known scope of experience.
Mykkael loosed his next shaft at near point-blank range. The sorcerous construct crashed through the warding and erupted into a fire burst. Cackling voices reviled his ancestry in three tongues he knew, and spat guttural curses clearly not human in origin. The next shaft he launched brought down something solid that struck earth at his feet, still raging with wounded fight. The bow was now useless. Mykkael ripped sword from scabbard, aware of the bright sting as the warded metal sang in his hand. He parried a clawed fist, sheared off the limb that swiped a rip at his ankle.
Contact raised smoke and spattering, hot blood that seared his cloth breeches like acid. Cut, parry, stab, parry, stab again. The brute horror grew back sheared limbs, and altered form twice before it finally gave way and collapsed. Its spasms fanned up a wind storm as its leathery wings walloped at the crevice, showering Mykkael’s shoulders with dirt and ice. He ducked the debris, swung his sword upwards and severed the head, then kicked aside the snapping, downed jaws. Blade in hand, breathless but poised, he measured the next pair of eyes that advanced behind the hulked corpse just dispatched.
‘Baeyat’ji’in, monster!’ he shouted. ‘I am ready’
The inbound thing howled. Its ranging cry roused primal terror in the mind of any human-born creature. Mykkael fought the sickening clench of his gut. Streaming sweat, he heard Anja’s gasped whimper. The sword in his hand seemed to shudder and wail, until he feared the stress of the warding might cause tempered metal to crack.