Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,15
up on bolts, including the assault quarrels with their looped ends, as well as bundles of thick cables. The walk back to the ladder was slow and awkward, with all the blood, corpses, and gore cluttering the passageways. By the time they strode out into the main chamber, Dullbreath was waiting for them. He nodded to a small figure pinned by a tiny sword to the floor in the center of the room.
“Still breathing?”
“Hard to say. Hard to kill for real, those things.”
“All right. Good work, Dullbreath. Let’s get ready then.”
The girl who walked in through the keep’s doors clutched a bundle of plucked flowers, her blond hair drifting like seed fluff. Her large eyes settled on the tiny figure of the imp nailed to the floor, and she edged closer.
Her expression fell as she looked down on her dead child. Kneeling, she set aside her flowers and reached out to brush that tiny, cold forehead.
Then, as she straightened, five soldiers stepped out from behind pillars, each bearing loaded arbalests.
The girl raised her scrawny arms and vanished inside a blurry haze. Spice-laden clouds rolled from where she stood, and the soldiers stared as she awakened to her true form, burgeoning, towering at almost twice the height of an average man, and easily twice as wide. Fangs as long as short swords, a mass of muscles like bundles of rope, hands that could crush armored soldiers as if they were frail eggs.
Huggs snorted. “A demon, huh? That’s not just a demon, Captain. That’s a fucking Harridan!”
“Commander of a legion,” added Dullbreath. “What were they thinking?”
The demon opened its maw and howled.
The sound deafened them, shook plaster loose from ceiling and walls.
The soldiers lifted their weapons. And fired.
The bolts pounded deep into the giant beast, and each dart snaked cables behind it—cables bound around the base of a pillar. The hinged barbs on the heads snagged deep in the demon’s flesh. Shrieking, it sought to pull away, but the thick ropes snapped taut—to tear loose of any one of the quarrels would break bones and spill out organs and who knew what else.
“Reload,” growled Skint.
And so they did.
Dawn’s light slowly stole in through the entrance, crept across the floor of the main chamber.
“Last crate,” said Flapp in a ragged, exhausted voice.
He went around, passing out the last of the bolts. Cranks clanked, but slowly.
Wither stepped up to squint at the pin-cushioned heap of mangled flesh huddled in the center of the chamber, and then shrugged and returned to her arbalest.
Five weapons clanged. Five bolts sank into the body.
“Quivered some,” observed Flapp.
“So would you,” said Huggs. “No whimpers though. Those stopped some time ago.” She turned to the captain. “Could be it’s finally dead.”
“Prod it with your sword,” Skint commanded.
“Me and my big mouth.” But Huggs drew her weapon and edged closer. She gave the thing a poke. “Nothing.” She poked harder. Still no response. So she stabbed. “Hah! It’s dead all right.”
Arbalests dropped from exhausted arms.
“Saddle us up, Withy. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“You got it, Captain.”
Graves had been up all night. No amount of beeswax could have stoppered up that seemingly endless chorus of screams and howls from the keep. It had never been so bad. Ever. Those soldiers, they’d died hard. Damned hard.
He rigged up his mule and cart and led the procession—a quiet bunch this morning, for sure—up to collect the remains and whatever loot came out with it. Work was work, wasn’t it just. People did what they did to get by, and what else was life all about? Nothing. That was it. It and nothing more. But, dammit, he didn’t want the boy to spend his whole cursed life here in Glory, didn’t want him taking over when Graves gave it up, not stepping in when Slim finally swallowed her ring and choked to death—the gods knew she wasn’t going to die naturally. Didn’t want any of that, not for the boy.
After sending a few scowls at the bleary-eyed but ever-greedy faces arrayed behind him, he tugged the reluctant mule up to the first of the hillside’s switchbacks.
And then stopped.
As the first clump of horse hoofs sounded up ahead.
The captain was in the lead. The others followed. Every one of them. Five, aye, five one by one by one by one by one.
Graves stared.
As she passed him, Skint flung a bloody mass of something at him. Reflexively, he caught it and looked down at the wilted remnants of flowers. Dripping red.