Chronicles of Gilderam: Book One: Sunset (20 page)

When he stopped in his tracks, a hand on his shoulder told him to keep moving. He begrudgingly complied, marching sullenly toward the sound of combat.

After only a moment the skirmish was over and the cave was quiet again. But Havlah was tense, worried that a raiding party could be lurking anywhere, invisible in the absolute blackness, waiting to ambush them. They could even be right beside him, and he wouldn’t know it until….

Fear got the better of him, and Havlah lunged sideways away from an imaginary attacker, yelping inadvertently as he did so. There were no hands this time. Havlah felt his feet run into something immobile on the ground and he went spilling over it. He landed on rocky, sloping ground, and scraped his side and hands. Before he could pick himself up, two or three pairs of hands lifted him back to his feet.

Havlah was ashamed. Even though he couldn’t see the look on anyone’s face, he knew they must all know precisely what happened. No one said a word, mercifully, and Havlah was ushered onward, left alone again in the dark with his shame.

Not long after, there was another clash with the horde. They screamed and cursed, their guttural tones amplified by the cave. Judging by the sound there was only a handful of them, and after a few clangs of steel-on-steel and the fleshy, pulpy hits of killing blows, there was nothing.

Hands told Havlah the Disciples were moving on.

From deep within in the heart of the cave, Havlah heard the anguished squeals of more Geldr. Their low roar was distinctive, and it could have carried for
itthum
through the winding tunnels of the Tomb. He couldn’t quite tell, though, what was causing them to scream. It didn’t sound at all like a battle, nor did it sound like the frustrated cries of a lost platoon. A shudder ran down Havlah’s spine when he realized that their wails sounded more like they were being…
tortured
, than anything else.

He wanted to run. He wanted desperately to grab one of the Disciples out of the dark and demand to know what was going on in this evil place. He felt his limbs begin to shake uncontrollably. His hands trembled, and tightening the grip on his shamshir was no help. For all his effort, he couldn’t keep the thing still.

Without warning, an extremely low, grumbling bass note shook the cave like the yawn of a gigantic monster. Havlah started hyperventilating. He dropped his sword. Without remembering the fall, Havlah realized he was on his knees. Then he felt an arm around his shoulders, and he heard the voice of his father speaking softly in his ear:

“Havlah…” his father’s voice said. “Havlah… be calm. Feel Votoc give you strength. Be strong, my son. I am here with you.”

The words were tremendously reassuring. It was more the sound of a familiar voice that soothed, rather than the meaning behind the words. Havlah started drinking in big, fat breaths, one after another. His father remained at his side, and slowly he began to regain himself. He felt a strength pouring into him through his father’s hands.

He blinked continuously, and swallowed. Then he recited, in his head, a prayer his father had taught him when he was a young boy:

Lord Votoc, teacher of the wise and giver of all gifts,

let your wisdom guide me and your strength lift me,

may your blessings favor me and your favors bless me.

Watch over me today, and my kin forever after.

He said it again, internally, as he stood up with Jerahd’s help. His father led him on through the darkness, and he continued to recite it over and over again.

Havlah dedicated himself to that prayer for the remainder of their journey through the caves. He had no idea how many times he had repeated it when once again light appeared ahead.

In the burgeoning half-light, he could see the Disciples moving around him. They didn’t walk upright like he did. Instead they flitted from crevice to crevice, stalagmite to stalagmite, like phantoms hopping in noiseless saccades. He couldn’t believe the smoothness of their movement, the fluidity of their advancement, as they stalked toward the light. They were more like hunting panthers than people.

The light was coming from a huge chamber at the end of the subterranean corridor. Havlah could see it was crafted like the anteroom, black stone cut into smooth walls with neat, square corners. It was lit with torches as well, only many, many more of them – hundreds upon hundreds. This room, he could already see, was far, far larger than the anteroom. Far larger, in fact, than any room he remembered seeing before. Great stone columns held the ceiling aloft twenty
entilum
overhead. The other end of the room was so far away he could scarcely see it at all in the flickering torchlight.

The Disciples fanned out, spilling into the open space en masse. In the center, the sandy floor fell away into a wide, circular pit. A dangerously narrow set of stone steps spiraled around the inside of the pit, leading downward to the bottom. The sound of hundreds of voices chanting in unison arose from the pit’s depths. The words were foreign and indecipherable, but spiced with the harsh plosives of the language of Geldr’thal. The cadence was slow and steady, rising and falling with a simple rhythm. Havlah remembered it from the Crater.

Without discussion the Disciples tiptoed to the pit and started slinking down the steps single file. Havlah arrived and peered over its edge. At least five
entilum
down, the pit widened out near the base above a shadowy landing. Light from below illuminated the floor, supplied by the horde’s torches, though he still couldn’t see them.

Havlah got in line behind his father and they crept down the helix-shaped staircase together, forming part of a long chain of sneaking desert warriors. Where the bottom of the shaft widened, the wall of the chute slanted inwards over the steps, slowly forcing the passenger to bend away and incrementally assume a more precarious position. Half an
entil
from the sandy bottom, and no human could hope to continue along the steps due to the angle of the wall. They were forced to jump the rest of the way down.

Havlah and the Disciples spilled out onto on a ledge inside a vast, round cavern. The ledge continued around the room, spiraling like the steps of the pit, and led to the bottom where a shallow pool of water filled the floor.

Wading in the water was what remained of the horde. They moved in time with their chant, bowing to the center. They’d left their torches strewn along the ramp leading down, effectively filling the chamber with an eerie twilight.

Havlah watched the Disciples fly down the naturally hewn ramp, darting noiselessly through dancing shadows. The Geldr at the bottom had no idea what was coming.

Havlah scampered in the wake of the Disciples and noticed that one Geld appeared to be leading the ceremony in the pool. This one was much lankier than the others, and taller. He looked older, too, like an elder, and was dressed not in armor, but in a primitive, ornamented tunic. Every so often he would raise his arms and rattle something shiny in his hands. The object gleamed like a stubby scepter.

A dozen Geldr dropped dead, cleanly assassinated, before the rest even noticed they had visitors. War cries rang out, echoing madly in the confines of the earthen vault. Swords flew and bones splintered. The horde might as well have been fighting in slow motion, for the Disciples were unnaturally quick.

A Geld could scarcely swing his weapon before his own blood was already spilling down his chest. The Disciples juked and maneuvered within and around their enemies’ blows, easily dodging strikes and ducking swings. Their blades arced like tiny bursts of lightning, slashing and slicing through the air almost too fast to see.

The Geldr still had superior numbers, and they pushed back into the Disciples with an imposing mass of bodies, grey and blubbery. Their charge went up the winding ledge, bowling Disciples aside before they could hack their way through the line. A few Disciples were shoved right off, falling onto the sharp stalagmites below, or into an awaiting throng of Geldr to be dismembered by clawing hands. All the while, the elder in the pool kept the chant going, serenely oblivious to the chaos around him.

When the juggernaut of grey flesh reached Havlah and Jerahd, they had passed by enough Disciples to trim down their inertia and it was coming to a halt. Havlah positioned himself to meet them head-on, but Jerahd leapt ahead of him at the last moment, placing himself between his son and the enemy.

Then his sword flew.

Havlah forgot to fight as he watched his father. In that moment, in fact, he forgot he was near a battle at all. Jerahd’s movement was like a gymnast – bending and whirling in ways that belied his age. He diced and carved grey flesh like a dancing sculptor might craft a masterwork.

He dodged spears and swords with immaculate efficiency, combining each evasion with a thrust or slash, so that his offense and defense were not separate, but indistinguishable. As a result his enemies appeared to miss by pure accident rather than by his calculation.

He spun and twirled incessantly, dizzying Havlah. His sword capitalized on every opportunity without hesitation, from the unprotected throat of an open stance, to ribs brandished between plates of armor. No gap was too small, and no chink too strong to repel him. As Jerahd cavorted down the ledge like a steel-edged blur of robes, he left a heap of gore and bodies in his wake.

One of the bodies stirred, left not quite dead. Havlah saw him reel back his arm, preparing to throw a dagger at his father’s back. Without thinking, Havlah leapt forward and the shamshir in his hands slashed down of its own accord.

He cleft the Geld’s hand cleanly off. It and the dagger fell to the ground. The dying monster howled one last time, then lay still. When Havlah looked up, he met his father’s eyes. The expression in them, stern at first, gave way to gratitude and, Havlah was sure, pride. The feeling of elation that arose in the boy’s chest was incommunicable. Singularly, it made all the tribulation he had suffered up till this point somehow worth it.

A group of Disciples leapt from the ledge right into the thick of the horde on the floor, diving headfirst. They were quick enough to hack apart the spears waiting to skewer them as they descended, and landed feet-first on Geldran faces.

Even in the closest quarters imaginable the Disciples were untouchable. A single sword managed to protect them from blows from every angle, while simultaneously providing ferocious offensive strikes as well. Each was a self-contained war machine, with no limit to their murderous capabilities.

Back on the ledge, Jerahd led a team of Disciples on a charge of their own, headed down the ramp. They plowed through grey skin and red muscle like a razor-clad steamroller, indiscriminately mincing everything in their path. Those who weren’t hacked to pieces were tossed over the side, left to gravity and the fatal drop onto the stony floor below. What had been a formidable force of half-orcs was quickly diminishing. Now the bulk of them were backing towards the elder, forming a protective circle around him as he, alone, continued the chant.

The Disciples were ruthless. They closed in around the mass of Geldr and pushed inward from every side, cutting down the orcish resistance with little effort. They batted away blades and chopped spearheads clean from their shafts, thwarting every attempt by the Geldr to spill another drop of Valan blood.

All the while, the Disciples carefully placed their blows like the incisions of a surgeon, hitting only on point, and only at the right moment. When a grey arm was exposed, it was hacked clean off. When a shield dropped too low, its bearer lost the crown of their skull. When a weapon flew off target, a throat was sliced in the split-second of advantage.

Havlah watched in amazement as the Disciples tidied up the rest of their enemies. The silence that followed was so shocking it took him a moment to register it. There was only one Geld left: the elder.

He stopped chanting, and dourly faced the ring of Disciples standing atop the corpses of his fallen compatriots. For a long second, the chamber was completely still. The Disciples stared at the last remaining grey-skinned half-orc, and he at them.

The elder then held aloft the shiny metal object in his hand. He said something in his native language, and with his other hand pulled the object in two. It was some sort of dagger and sheath – but as soon as it was pulled apart the elder was beheaded, swiftly killed from behind by one of the Disciples. His body fell to its knees, then slumped over into the pool with a little splash.

Havlah was stunned. The Disciples seemed to be somewhat beside themselves as well, standing around pensively and unmoving. They were, like him, incapable of fully comprehending where they were or what had just happened. They looked around at one another. Were they proud? Were they relieved? Havlah couldn’t know. Neither, he suspected.

Jerahd was the first to move.

He walked right up to Havlah, who was still on the ledge, and embraced him. The rest of the Disciples stirred to life and headed sluggishly back up the ramp. Fahi stopped to retrieve the shiny dagger and sheath from the murky water. He observed them somberly in his hands before stowing them within his robes.

“Father…” stammered Havlah. “Did we…?”