Bloodstone (6 page)

Doubtless the Rillyti knew numerous other pathways through Kranor-Rill. But Kane had learned of only one trail open to creatures not of amphibian stature and habits--and in places it seemed that even this one was beyond human capacity to follow. Alorri-Zrokros had written of a causeway built by the Krelran to span the inland sea, a bridge between their island citadel and the surrounding mainland. It was an earthen causeway, capped with reddish stone of curious texture. A hint of its construction lay in Alorri-Zrokros's suggestion that the inland sea was not a natural bay, rather an excavation blasted into the Southern Lands by the might of Krelran science. Kane had noted that the region's geology tended to support such a hypothesis.

But the causeway yet stood, outlasting the ages that had seen the ancient sea give way to tangled swampland. Following the vague description given in the Book of the Elders, Kane had discovered the vine-hidden entrance to the roadway at nightfall of the day previous. With dawn he had warily led his detachment of mercenaries into Kranor-Rill. Two men remained with the horses.

The swamp had almost overwhelmed the causeway, eating into its bank, burrowing beneath its bed, lapping across its surface, so that each slime-coated pool had to be probed to determine its depth. Often a seeming puddle proved to be a deep hole or bottomless quicksand. Such had to be carefully skirted, and twice logs were laid to bridge a gap where the swamp had rotted a full swath of roadway. Only in a few places could the original paving stones be trod upon. Long stretches of pavement lay buried under the thick mold of decay, and elsewhere thrusting trees and tenacious vines had erupted through the stones to form impenetrable masses of masonry and vegetation. Wherever their roots could cling grew knife-edged swamp grass and rubbery reeds high as a man's waist; and the space above was interlaced with tough lianas that dulled the intruders' swords and clawed back with grasping thorns. The boundary between swampland and causeway became a point that often defied conjecture, and only the adherence to straight-line design by the centuries-dead Krelran engineers made the decision one of reasonable certainty.

Progress was hideously slow, and the pitiless harassment of swarming insects and leeches made the march a torture. But Kane had chosen his men well, and though vitriolic, their curses did not become mutinous, even when another of their number met with mishap. He thrust his hand through the web of, a gorgeous brown-and-yellow spider, whose bite left his sword arm swollen in scarlet agony.

At length the victim of the spider's fangs cried out incoherently and dropped to his knees. Delirious from the venom, he struck out at his solicitous companions, cradling his swollen arm and moaning in pain. With an eye toward the declining sun, Kane hurried to the man's side. An effort had already been made to draw out the venom--evidently without striking success--and Kane professionally estimated the soldier's chances as barely worth the effort of carrying him. The spider was of a species unknown to him, but evidently it shared the deadly antipathy that was Kranor-Rill's soul. Deeming it improvident to appear callous to his men, Kane ordered a short rest, privately wishing the victim might expire before it became necessary to transport him.

The pause was well timed.

One of the men who had moved somewhat ahead gave a sudden yell. "Damn! Here's one of them ugly things now! Hiding inside that mess of vines!" With a howl he retreated as a spear streaked past his chest.

Rising from the swamp itself, a band of Rillyti menaced them from the trail ahead--more than a dozen of the batrachian creatures. Over a head taller than a man they stood, with squat body far broader than any human trunk. Long spindly arms and thick bandy legs ended alike in splayed, webbed appendages--black claws arming the lengthy phalanges. A mottled hide of wart and scale, hued an unwholesome yellow, brown and green after the swamp slime, covered their hairless bodies. Gnarled plates like armor spread across bowed back and barrel chest, stretched a sickly yellow over gross belly. A toad's head rose from wide shoulders, wattles and throat pouch, obscuring whatever neck supported it. They had lidless slit-pupiled eyes, gaping nostril pits, outsize lipless jaws rimmed with yellow vomerine fangs. These were grotesque, hideous creatures whose powerful, twisted forms echoed the malignant deadliness of Kranor-Rill. As they rose from hiding, black swamp water and gobbets of scum dripped from their hide and rubbery neck crests and glistened evilly on the long blades of bronze alloy that gleamed from webbed hands.

The Rillyti held their position, amphibian faces twisted in a fierce mask, yellow eyes clouded by a flashing nictitating membrane. A low grating rumble issued through bared fangs as their throat pouches puffed and slackened fitfully. Some carried short stabbing spears, to whose serrated tips a vomit-brown tarry substance clung. All were armed with the strange Rillyti sword--a finely curved blade as long as a two-handed broadsword, forged of tough bronze alloy that held a keener edge than steel--a lost alloy scavenged from the Krelran ruins, Kane recalled, and a deadly weapon in their huge hands. The gummy matter adhering to their spears was a rapidly lethal poison of their preparation--corrosive, or it would be smeared on swordblades as well.

Kane considered it most fortunate that the batrachians had no more effective projectiles to dab with this venom--their webbed hands were too large and clumsy to be skillful with a bow, nor were their bony jaws suited to use of the blowgun. However, the dense, almost impenetrable snarl of undergrowth made hand-to-hand combat the only feasible means of attack. Even now the soldiers could not use their bows effectively--too much cover for the enemy, too many tangled vines and branches for undeflected aim.

"They're not moving--looks like they're maybe interested in just guarding the trail" Banlid urged at Kane's side. "Let's get out of here before they rush us!"

"They're blocking the road because it leads to Arellarti. We must be close to!" growled Kane in excitement. "They're guarding just what I've come to find, and I'll gut any bastard who turns back on me now! We can take these slime-blooded toads easy enough! They're putting on a bluff, or they'd have attacked despite their aborted ambush! Turn tail now, and they'll run us down with ten times their number as night catches us on the trail!

"Come on, you swamp rats!" he roared, swinging his sword in a short flourish. "I'll show you how to gig toads!"

Kane rushed forward and almost was split in half by the first Rillyti to meet him. The instantaneous lunge of its thick legs launched the creature straight against Kane's charge, golden blade swinging downward as it bounded over the mud in a twelve-foot arc. Twisting desperately on the slippery footing, Kane evaded the impetus of its attack by a hairbreadth, and his blade of Carsultyal steel shivered against the bronze. The sword shrieked with a shock that numbed his shoulder, echoed through clenched teeth, but the power of his arm turned aside the onrushing blade. The Rillyti staggered as its lunge was checked, and before it could recover, Kane's weapon caught it across fist-sized eyes, topping the crested skull. With hoarse shouts his men leaped past the convulsing corpse.

"Their blood's red enough! Come on!" yelled Kane, a wild peal of laughter rising in his throat. And the swamp-strangled causeway writhed in chaotic, inhuman battle.

Evading the flailing death agony of the Rillyti, Kane turned to meet a second attack. A leaf-tipped spear jabbed for his belly, as the bufanoid feinted with its sword. Kane twisted away with feral grace, guarding the creature's blade with his own, and snatched at the spearshaft with his right hand. He meant to tear the weapon from his opponent's grip, but to Kane's dismay this stratagem had been foreseen. The shaft was coated with grease, and as the Rillyti jerked back, Kane's hand slid toward the poison-smeared head, missing contact with the serrated edge by the barest margin, when Kane hastily flicked his fingers free. Determinedly the batrachian thrust again with its spear, this time following through with its blade. Kane parried grimly and without breaking the flow of his attack dropped in a crouch to elude the spear. Straightening with a snap, his right arm uncoiled with the precision of a cracking whip, and the dagger that he had drawn from his boot sank beyond the hilt in a slit-pupiled eye. Croaking in pain, the Rillyti dropped its spear to tear the needle from its eyesocket in a spray of ichor, its convulsive gesture ripping a jagged wound through the orbit. His adversary mortally wounded, Kane relaxed a fraction and nearly joined the swamp creature in, hell. Toppling onto the mud, the Rillyti lashed out its sword with the last controlled effort of its dimming brain, and the swordtip sheared through the top of Kane's boot as he hurriedly danced aside.

The batrachians were as slow to die as their primeval ancestors, and Kane saw at least one soldier spitted on the blade of a Rillyti as it tripped over its own dangling entrails. It was an ugly, vicious battle, as violent and deadly as the rotting land that surrounded the combatants. There was no open ground to speak of--only patches of clearing in a tangle of vines and undergrowth, ground made treacherous with leaning paving blocks, pools of muck and scum-hooded water. More than one mercenary ended his life forced into a slimy pool or quicksand mire. The Rillyti were stronger than their human opponents and fought on terrain familiar to them. But the swamp-dwellers were clumsy in their shambling movements, their webbed splay feet and bowlegs not equal to the deft footwork required for careful swordplay. Nonetheless, the slippery mud and chaotic swamp growth made footing unpredictable, which in large part offset the human beings' advantage in agility, while the Rillyti's hurtling rushes were a razor-edged terror, once the creatures had room to move. Only the raiders' superior numbers were keeping them in the battle.

Feeling a sticky warmth in his boot that he knew was not brackish water, Kane met the attack of another Rillyti. Again and again gray steel clashed against alien bronze, blades screeching like a woman's scream of ecstasy. The long dead Carsultyal swordsmith had forged the temper well, for Kane's sword traded notches with the Krelran alloy, while several other steel blades snapped under the amphibians' powerful strokes. Kane had drawn a long-bladed knife from his belt, which he wielded with his right fist, although his new adversary fought with no weapon other than his sword.

But the Rillyti had other unexpected tactics, as he quickly discovered. As Kane lunged close to use the knife, the swamp creature gaped its jaws and lashed out with a sticky tongue of startling length. The maneuver sprayed Kane's face with a clinging stream of foul saliva. Kane choked and in reflex sought to wipe the acrid spittle from his eyes with his right arm. A second's inattention, and the hissing bronze blade all but struck home--Kane's last-instant parry deflected the other's weapon to block it against the swordhilt. The hilt stood up to the shock, but the force of impact all but wrenched Kane's weapon from his nerveless grasp. The blow benumbed the Rillyti's arm, as well, and Kane thought to finish the creature by quickly stabbing with his knife. The batrachian slithered away from the blade, taking a shallow gash through its tough hide, and its webbed hand struck Kane a solid blow.

Raking talons caught in Kane's mail shirt. On treacherous footing and already off balance, he was spun to the mud. A hanging vine tangled about his sword as he strove in vain to keep his feet, and Kane's numbed fingers relinquished their grip on its hilt. Gasping as his back crashed against an askew paving stone, Kane, swordless, saw the Rillyti raise its blade for a slash his knife could never parry. No chance to scramble for his fallen weapon. But beside him lay... a fallen spear! As he rolled desperately, Kane's left hand closed over the Rillyti spear. The swamp-dweller was upon him, its fanged mouth agape in a bass roar of triumph. The sword was beginning its descent. Twisting on the ground, Kane hurled the spear straight into the yellowed maw. From his semi-prone position it was a desperate, wobbly cast, with little force behind it--but the distance was point-blank, the target lunging toward him...

Three items impinged on his hypersensitive consciousness, moving with dreamlike slowness before his adrenalin-charged mind... The spear streaking into the Rillyti's mouth, burying its poisoned fang deep into the back of its throat like a second tongue... The gleaming sword descending like a golden rainbow as he made a final effort to writhe from under its path... The bloodstone ring, loose on his finger, sailing away from his hand as he cast the spear, arcing over the embattled swampland...

With infinitesimal slowness these resolved into... A choking Rillyti, its attack forgotten, tearing at the shaft, trying to swallow, writhing a bizarre death dance, crumpling to the mud in agony' becoming still with uncanny suddenness... A bronze sword, deflected in its downward arc, grazing his shoulder as he twisted, exploding into glittering shards as it struck stone... A ring glinting in the late sun, falling through eternity, striking a pool of slime with a thick splash--each droplet seen as it takes form and falls back--sinking into darkness.

With an insane bellow, Kane scrambled to his feet, eyes fixed upon the spot where the bloodstone ring had disappeared. Automatically he scooped up his sword in passing, but no further notice did he take of the battle. At the poolside where the ring had vanished he flung himself down and thrust his arms into the slime. Drawn white, his lips worked in soundless curses; his blue eyes were set in wild concentration. Blood dripped from a deep cut on his cheek--kissed by a fragment of the shattered sword--but he ignored it, even though the taste of blood was drawing a crawling horde of hungry leeches. Determinedly Kane raked his fingers through the fetid swamp muck, pulling up reeking fists full of wriggling mud and scum whenever it seemed he felt something hard. The pool was only a few feet deep here... if only the ring had sunk in a straight path as it hit...

"Kane! Holy shit! Have you gone stark staring mad!" Banlid shouted in his ear, shook his shoulder, interrupted his concentration. "Kane! Damn your ass, Kane! Snap out of it! We're up to our ears in battle!"