Dark King Of The North (Book 3) (27 page)

There were questions to be asked, explanations to be sought, though the young man feared he knew most of the answers.

Regardless, he had to face his father, likely for a final time. At least in this life.

He shivered again. His father was near. Their meeting would be soon.

***

The first Kobalan to charge forward died on the point of Kron’s sword, impaled as he ran into his foe. The hall was wide, but it nullified the soldiers’ numbers, as did the unconscious Captain Lendo and the other guards strewn upon the floor. Still, the swarm of the armored warriors managed to form themselves into a crescent around the front of the doorway, enclosing Kron and Adara and Belgad.

The swordswoman flashed out with her rapier, but found the light blade nearly useless against her opponents’ heavy plating. Belgad shouldered her aside then swept out with his powerful two-handed weapon, keeping the Kobalans at bay.

Kron parried a blow with his sword and kicked out, snapping a boot against a shin. The kick did not kill, but it hurt enough to drop a soldier to his knees, keeping back a pair of his companions.

“We can’t keep this up forever!” Adara yelled, easing behind Kron and Belgad to stand in the doorway.

The big Dartague cracked out a fist, denting a helmet and sending its wearer sprawling. “Only long enough to kill them all!”

The remaining soldiers regrouped toward their master. Despite being of hardy stock, they were more familiar confronting weaponless slaves or weakened peasants. They faced experienced fighters and needed a moment to take stock.

“Need help?” a voice asked.

Adara glanced back to find Fortisquo in the bedroom, standing in the inner doorway across the room from her.

“You live!” the swordsman shouted.

“I keep hearing that,” Adara said.

“Don’t trust him!” Belgad shouted.

Verkain saw a moment to strike. “Finish them!”

The remaining Kobalans charged up the hallway, this time in pairs with the odd man bringing up the rear.

Two men swung heavy blades at Kron, who knocked aside one weapon and spun out of reach of the other.

Two more soldiers ran at Belgad, but the barbarian would not wait for their arrival. He jumped over unconscious men while wielding his big sword like a staff, jabbing one attacker in the stomach and smashing the other’s chin with his pommel. Adara darted in and finished off a downed foe with a thrust to his throat.

Kron spun, his cloak swinging around him to distract his two opponents, keeping them temporarily at bay. As he came around to face the men, he dropped to one knee, allowing his enemies’ blows to flash overhead, then slashed up, cutting into one man’s groin. The other fellow scooted back to avoid the spray of gore and paid for his temerity with a black dart to his throat. The darted fellow was not dead, but his blood spilled to join that of his companions. Kron launched himself off the floor and slashed out, finishing one of his immediate opponents, then launched another dart into an eye of the other man, dropping him with screams and howls.

Belgad grabbed a Kobalan by the throat and shoved the man back where he fell and tripped up two more soldiers.

Tired of watching his men die, Verkain raised a finger and pointed at his enemy in black. Words older than the race of man passed the wizard’s lips.

Oblivious to the magic worked against him, Kron kept fighting, kicking another Kobalan in the ribs.

When his spell seemed to have no effect, Verkain stared in disbelief, then he cast again.

Once more, nothing happened. Kron fought on.

The king roared his displeasure, turned and fled.

With his side of the hall clear, and Belgad and Adara holding their own against the last three Kobalans, Kron saw an opportunity.

He bound after Verkain.

***

The mage king fled, twisting and turning around and around the quiet stairwells and halls of his castle.

The one called Darkbow followed. There seemed no escaping the man, Verkain believed as he scaled another flight of stairs and rounded another corner.

The lord’s breathing  became shallow and drops of sweat formed on his brow. Physically he was in prime condition, but his nerves were getting the best of him. Fear was not unknown to Verkain, but it was a sensation he had not known in hundreds of years.

He did not fear Kron Darkbow, nor did he fear the possibility of death at the man’s hands. Like most of humanity, Verkain feared the unknown. And this night he had come face to face with the unknown. Kron and Adara lived, and Verkain himself had witnessed Darkbow’s defeat of a war demon, a task impossible for a mortal being.

Questions nagged at the lord as he ran. Could Markwood be alive? Worse for his plans, could his son Kerwin be alive?

Verkain came to the end of a hall, a cul-de-sac. He grinned. There were no doors here and no windows, only a single torch hanging in a sconce.

The sounds of boots stomping the floor told him his foe was not far behind.

He reached for the torch.

***

Kron scuffed the soles of his boots as he skidded to a stop.

The hall was a dead end.

His eyes moved along the stone walls, but there was no sign of an exit. He glanced behind himself, back around the turn, but no doors were near. He was positive he had seen Verkain dart in this direction, and he would have sworn he had heard the man’s trodden steps this way.

A solitary torch flickered above head level at the end of the run.

Kron lifted an edge of his cloak to wipe away Kobalan blood congealing on the edges of his sword, giving himself time to think, to ponder. He sheathed the weapon.

This was delicate work.

He moved to the wall on the left and squatted, running gloved fingers along the trails of mortar between bricks and stone. He shuffled to the right and did the same. To anyone watching, he would have appeared a mad man trying to read invisible text in the walls.

He stood in the center of the narrow walkway, his eyes moving up and down, following every line and crack in the stones.

After several minutes, a smile appeared on his face.

He stepped forward and reached up, lifting the torch from its bracket.

With a metal creak and stoney rumble, a section of the wall in front of him shifted back several inches and slid to one side.

Kron’s grin grew wider as he stared beyond the secret door into darkness. The torch in his hand revealed the bottom of a stairwell that curved higher into the castle.

He returned the torch to its spot then launched himself into the ebon opening.

The stone door slid back into place, leaving no clue of its recent use.

***

The fight ended swiftly. Belgad slashed left, cutting across a soldier’s throat, then cleaved right, nearly decapitating another man.

Adara faced the last opponent standing. She whirled around him, seeking an opening in his plates and chains for insertion of her thin sword. The soldier’s inexperience with such an agile fighter proved his undoing. After several moments of her twisting and turning, he grew impatient and charged, hoping his weight and brute strength would smash her against a wall. Instead, Adara spun to one side and shoved the man. He lost his balance, stumbled near the sleeping Captain Lendo and slammed head-first into a stone wall. After that, he no longer moved.

“Verkain’s soldiers need training,” Adara said after catching her breath.

“
Verkain
!” Belgad glared down the hall Kron and the king had fled. “Randall is waiting for him!”

“Don’t worry,” Adara said. “Kron will catch up to him.”

“It might be best for us if Kron does not,” Belgad said.

“What?”

Belgad gave the woman a glance with a raised eyebrow, then stared down the hall again. “I must go after them.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Belgad looked to the open doorway. “Stay here and watch Fortisquo.”

Adara’s eyes narrowed in anger. “What? Why?”

“He is not trustworthy.”

Adara’s face screwed up into a look of confusion.

Belgad bound down the hall. “Just watch him!”

Then the big Dartague disappeared around a corner.

The woman sighed and stared down the hall as if she expected the barbarian to reappear. After several seconds, when Belgad did not return, she used an unconscious guard’s tunic to wipe her rapier free of blood.

“So, it’s just the two of us?” Fortisquo asked.

Adara looked over her shoulder to see the master assassin standing just inside the outer room of Belgad’s quarters. In his hands was a sword taken from one of the Kobalans.

***

Knowing his way, Verkain moved confidently up the stairs in complete darkness.

His plans were unraveling. Still, there was time. He only had to kill Darkbow and Belgad and the woman, and this time he would make sure they remained dead. He knew magics that would leave their mortal forms nothing but ash and dust. No soul could return to such.

Even if by some miracle his son Kerwin lived, the lad would not be able to stop the lord of Kobalos unleashing the might of his army at dawn. The healer would not be able to stop the thundering power of the East’s armies, nor the reaction of the West.

Verkain grinned in the darkness, then chided himself. He should have known better than to fear.

The steps came to an abrupt end and Verkain halted, stretching out a hand to feel a rough wall. He reached to his left, rubbing his hand along the stones he could not see until he felt a brick protruding. He pushed.

A creaking sound filled the lord’s ears and abruptly waves of moonlight splintered his eyes as an opening was revealed, a roughhewn door of stone sliding to one side.

Still smiling, assured of his victory, Verkain moved into the chamber beyond.

***

The tip of Fortisquo’s sword pointed at the woman. “We don’t have to do this.”

Adara eased a step further from her former teacher and made sure to keep her rapier aimed on him. “Belgad says you are with Verkain now.”

Fortisquo provided a smile that had charmed Adara once not so long ago. “One way or another, I am leaving,” he said. “You could come with me.”

“I don’t think so.”

Fortisquo’s grin widened, showing teeth. “That is a shame,” he said, waving with his sword’s blade for her to move aside, “but I’m still going to need you to move out of my way.”

Adara went into a defensive stance, blocking the doorway. "Not on your black, pathetic life.”

He chuckled. “Mad at me for trying to kill you?”

Adara kept her face stoic and her focus on her foe.

“This is silly, Adara,” he said. “Let the past be the past. We do not need to fight. Just allow me to be on my way and we never need see one another again.”

“You’re only stalling because you’re afraid.”

Fortisquo’s smile disappeared.

“I’ve trained under Kron these last months,” she said. “You’re afraid of what he’s taught me.”

Fortisquo’s lone eye turned cold, nearly as black as the patch shielding where the other orb had once been at home. “Move away from the exit.”

“No.”

The swordsman came forward, just out of striking distance of the woman. His grin returned. “This will be fun.”

“I promise you won’t enjoy it,” she said.

Fortisquo plunged with his blade.

Her instincts were all that saved Adara as her rapier knocked away the tip of the man’s heavier sword. She had almost forgotten how fast he could be.

The assassin’s sword flashed in again, this time faster than before. Adara blocked the blow but was forced back a step.

Trying to turn the fight, she lunged, aiming directly for his center, but the quillons of his sword caught her blade and pinned it briefly.

With a twist of his wrist, Fortisquo’s weapon dove in for attack.

Adara dropped to one knee, allowing his steel to hit the empty space her face had occupied a moment before. She shot up off her crouched leg and kicked out with the other foot.

Fortisquo spun out of range of the kick, all the while holding his blade over his head and keeping its point aimed at his enemy.

Adara caught her breath. She knew this would be a tough fight, perhaps the toughest of her life. Fortisquo was stronger and taller with a reach almost a foot longer than her own. He was also older and more experienced.

He towered over her as his sword flashed right. With his long reach, it was safer for Adara to roll with her steps to the left than to attempt a block of his blow.

Again, the sword master struck to Adara’s right. Again she skipped left.

Upon the third strike to her right, Adara realized what he was doing. Instead of forcing her back into the wall, he was working her to his left, away from the doorway she blocked.

Adara screamed and lunged. With a flash, Fortisquo’s sword caught her rapier in the space between them. Again with a flick of his wrist and his sword darted for her face.

Adara raised a gloved hand as a shield.

She was almost too late. Her hand gripping the blade of his sword, the tip of his weapon pressed the cheek beneath her right eye.

“Ooooo, close,” Fortisquo said.

“Not close enough!”

She brought up her rapier for a stab, but he was too fast, launching himself back out of her reach. His sword slid out of her hand, splitting cowhide but not flesh.

Adara jumped away and raised the back of her sword hand to rub her face beneath the right eye. Her leather-clad knuckles came away wet.

“First blood is mine.” Fortisquo’s smile emoted as much acid as his words.

“So it is.”

““This is almost like old times,” the swordmaster said as they circled around one another, “you and I alone together.”

Adara lowered her weapon slightly and tilted her head to one side. “You know,” she said, “you were a lousy lover.”

For the first time real anger entered the assassin’s eyes. “Damn you, woman!” He thrust his weapon again.

Adara’s blade jerked up to thwart the strike.

A dagger appeared in Fortisquo's other hand and he stabbed.