as he reached for the red-haired head, until that moment, he had never wondered if demons felt fear. Nor did he care as he raised the sword, ready to add another head to his tally.
His arm was jarred as the entire chamber shook. The shark rammed its snout into the rocky wall, causing Lenk’s swing to go wide. He snarled, swept his blade up to carve a gaping gash into the beast’s hide. It groaned, thrashed suddenly and sent him flying to crash against the wall.
He peeled himself from the stone, winded, but still with his wits about him as he hit the water. His sword was up, its silver bright in the water’s gloom as he prepared to finish the demon off.
Through the water, though, Lenk spied the Deepshriek, thrashing madly, its heads screeching. He watched it, squirming about like a wounded animal before it turned to the bottom. He watched it as it passed through the floor, staring in curiosity as its tail vanished into a gaping, black hole, its screaming echoing off the water as it disappeared.
He stared at the hole, waiting for it to return. When moments had passed, he surfaced. His breath was heavy as he hoisted himself onto the outcropping once again. Heavy, but clean.
He stared at the waters for ages, sword clenched tightly as he waited for the demon to return. The surface would yield no signs from its blackness, though, and, with a great sigh, he allowed his sword to fall and himself to collapse onto his back.
His head felt like lead, but through his hair he could feel something resting under his skull. He remembered then: leather, unadorned and black, in the satchel. What he had come all this way for . . .
‘The tome,’ he whispered, smiling.
And under his head, it smiled back.
Twenty-Nine
BURN
A blade was a peculiar thing to feel, Asper thought.
She had never held one before, only stared at them with envy as they danced to a tune played by more capable hands. Now that she did feel one, it was heavy in her grip, like an iron burden wrought with jagged teeth.
Dripping with blood, she added mentally, Gariath’s blood. The thought of holding such a thing had occasionally crossed her mind, in her darkest anger against the dragonman.
But now that she held it . . .
‘I can’t do this,’ she gasped, ‘I can’t do this, can’t do this, can’t ...’
Reassuring denial was lost in an errant roar from the distant hall.
The battle, as Denaos might say in his cruder moments, had long since spent its best affections and now slid into sluggish, sleepy, blood-glutted cuddling.
The precise strikes from the longfaces’ iron spikes had become vicious, slovenly chops as their purple kindred lay beside their feet. The endless stream of frogmen had choked to narrow trickles, the pale creatures glancing around with dark eyes to seek out their emaciated Shepherds. The demons themselves had either fled or lay in smoking husks that still sighed white plumes of steam as they sank into the salt.
And even the water seemed disgusted, sliding out of the great wound in Irontide’s hide in an effort to escape the battle. Water shunned the place, she thought, and begged her to go with it. Neither of them belonged here.
They were healers. She was a healer. She served the Healer. What place did she have in this slaughter?
She did not desire an answer, but received one, anyway, at the end of her left arm. It twitched now, throbbing angrily. It did not doubt, it snarled. It did not beg, it demanded. And with each moment, it grew harder to ignore.
‘Not now,’ she whispered to her appendage. ‘Not now. I can fight this. I can resist this.’ Only remotely aware of how much of a squealing whisper her voice was, she felt the tears slide down her cheek to land upon her sleeve. ‘Not . . . now.’
‘Then when?’
Asper’s head snapped towards the longface standing over her. For a woman bludgeoned and cut, she looked remarkably calm, regarding the priestess from behind a circular iron shield. The unpleasant grin that split her face, however, left no motive unclear.
‘You look lost, pinky,’ the longface said. She raised her iron spike, slammed it against her shield. ‘Need some help?’
‘S-stay back.’ Asper retreated a step, raising her left hand, then forcing it down against her side and holding up the blade. ‘I’ve got a weapon.’
‘One of our own gnawblades.’ The longface tilted her head to note the gore dripping down