Darksiders: The Abomination Vault (12 page)

So, no necromancy. He had to cross the battlefield. Death knew the sorts of powers the Crowfather could bring to bear, here in his own home. The pair of them standing side by side could easily repulse an army thrice this size.

He scowled behind the mask as he casually parried the first attack to come his way, ignoring the sparks that rained over him as brass blades skittered over Harvester. Yes, they could repulse the attack with relative ease, but only if he could get over there! Fighting isolated, as they were now … Well, the Rider had the utmost faith in his abilities, but it did him no good if the Crowfather fell before he reached the Old One’s side. Such a thing
probably
wouldn’t happen, but Death disliked even taking the chance. So, how …?

Ah.

Death backpedaled, drawing the back rank of construct soldiers after him in loose formation. They weren’t utterly mindless, these things; they approached slowly, carefully, wary of some trap or trick.

Harvester rippled in his hands, becoming a thin spear more than twice Death’s own height. He took a few sharp jabs at the advancing enemy, as though determined to keep them at length.

And then he flipped the spear to an underhand grip, hefted it, and hurled the massive projectile as if it were the lightest of javelins.

Up and out it flew, arcing over half the assembled constructs, until it plunged straight down. It struck none of the enemy—its parabolic flight allowed more than sufficient opportunity for the speedy automatons to dodge aside, even on the crowded platform—and sank its tip deep into the floor, not merely through ice but through rock. It quivered briefly before it settled, jutting upward like some wayward sapling.

Even before that quivering had fully ceased, Death was sprinting straight at the nearest construct. His first bound carried
him over the thrusting blades to the thing’s shoulders, where the head ought to have been. From there he kicked off again, with more than enough force to send it staggering.

Like his weapon before him, Death soared over the enemy, beyond their reach. The Horseman knew, before he began his leap, that even his prodigious strength and dexterity weren’t sufficient to carry him across the entire cavern; that if he tried, he’d come down smack in the middle of the enemy, and find himself more hemmed in than he’d been before.

But then, he wasn’t
trying
to cross the entire platform. Not in a single bound, anyway.

Had it been any weapon less mystical, less potent, than Harvester, it could never have pierced the stone deeply enough to remain stable. Had it been any creature less agile than Death, he could never have targeted so minuscule a surface.

The Horseman’s bound carried him perfectly into the center of the chamber, directly atop the waiting weapon. With his left foot only, he kicked off the end of the shaft, setting it once more to wobbling violently, tucking into a forward roll as he jumped. It wasn’t nearly as high or as graceful an arc as the first—couldn’t have been, what with the precarious launching point—but it was more than enough to carry him the rest of the way.

He landed awkwardly, slightly off balance, his feet at two different levels on what looked to be yet another staircase, but he recovered well before the startled constructs could even begin to react. An outstretched hand, a mental call, and Harvester jumped free of the stone and hurtled back to its master. It was once more a scythe by the time Death’s fingers closed.

“Well, now that you’re here,” the Crowfather grumbled, “I suppose you might as well do something useful.”

“Your gratitude and geniality make it all worthwhile,” Death said, taking just an instant to absorb the new situation.

The Crowfather, perhaps the most ancient of the Old Ones and Creation’s most notorious recluse, seemed unchanged from the last time Death had seen him, nearly five centuries gone by. The same wrinkled, bearded face he’d seen in his earlier vision peered out from a thick mantle of onyxblack feathers. He was clad, otherwise, in a drab robe, its hue so faded that it fell somewhere in the gritty overlap between brown and gray. The wrists of his spindly, age-spotted arms were chafed raw without apparent cause.

In one hand, he clutched a twisted walking stick that apparently served double duty as a cudgel. The other was raised toward the enemy, gnarled fingers and ragged nails curled into veritable talons. As he moved, Death could see that he wore
something
on a chain around his neck, but the robe and the mantle of feathers prevented closer examination.

He stood upon a raised dais in the shadow of the orrery. Behind him rose a great throne, carved from the living rock and adorned with uncountable effigies of …

“I see you’re still going with crows,” Death observed aloud. “Bold choice.”

“Your sarcasm is unwelcome here, Horseman,” the Crowfather rasped at him.

“Pity. It seems determined to follow me everywhere.”

The old hermit opened his colorless lips, but whatever comment he might have made would have to wait. The animated soldiers surged forward once more.

They were clever enough not to advance in a single mass, where the sheer press of numbers would hinder their movements. They came, instead, in small squads of three or four, each group approaching the dais, and its defenders, from different angles. The bulk of the constructs waited at the base of the dais’s steps, ready to plug the gap should any of their brethren fall. They came at Death and the Crowfather from every
direction but directly behind, attacking on multiple fronts at once, their every strike orchestrated to leave their enemies open to a blow from some other quarter.

Against any normal foe, they’d likely have succeeded.

The Crowfather lashed out at the oncoming soldiers, and the world lashed out with him. A stab of a finger brought an icy gale from on high. It froze a trio of constructs solid, shredded a handful of others with razor-edged hail. Static, building in the swirling particles, gleefully arced from construct to construct, attracted to their metallic carapaces, searing holes through brass and blackening stone. A vicious slash was matched by the talons of a thousand crows; the clench of a fist summoned the permafrost and stones to wrap around a target and squeeze it into a shapeless lump. Every so often, one of the constructs drew uncomfortably near, having made it up the steps largely unscathed. At such times, the Old One swung his gnarled cudgel, striking with a force more than sufficient to crush metal and end their artificial lives.

He grumbled and groused under his breath throughout it all, as though engaged in some onerous but largely mundane chore that he’d much rather have shirked.

Given the constructs’ speed and inhuman tenacity, it seemed just conceivable—not likely, but
possible
—that, had the Crowfather been alone, a few might have slipped past his defenses, both mystical and martial, to pose a true threat to his life.

Each time one of them so much as drew near, however, Death was there to block its path. Harvester spun in short, vicious arcs, blurring back and forth between one weapon and two. So violently did some of the constructs burst apart beneath the Horseman’s assault that several other automatons were destroyed, not by any direct action of Death himself, but by the flying shrapnel that had once been their compatriots.

It was laborious, time-consuming work. It was painful, as even the Rider’s astounding prowess couldn’t shield him from
every
attack. Here and there, an edge sliced his skin, revealing only pale and mottled tissue below, without so much as a dribble of blood.

They never so much as slowed him down, and the outcome could never have been in doubt.

A final gust of chilling wind from above, a final cut of Harvester’s ever-sharp blade, and the last of the brass legion lay scattered across the platform. The crows, screeching and fluttering, rose in a thick mass toward the vast temple ceiling. There they continued to circle, but the sounds of their passage were less cacophonic, less deafening.

The Crowfather shuffled to his throne and sank into it with a contented sigh. Death studied his every move, and only as the hermit settled did his guest spot the heavy chains bracketed to the floor just behind the throne, and the blocky manacles fastened at their other end. He turned his head, pointedly staring first at those, and then at the Crowfather’s abraded wrists.

“None of your concern,” the Old One snapped at him.

The Horseman nodded. The orange gleam of his eyes flickered briefly, passing from the Crowfather’s wrists to the small bulge where he wore
something
on a chain beneath his robes. “I suppose you’re entitled to your secrets.”

“Oh, how
generous
of you. What are you doing here, Horseman? If I’d wanted guests, I would have—well, actually, I
never
want guests.”

“
You
called me here, old man. Or at least, your little servant did.”

“I? I’ve not the vaguest idea what you’re—”

Death raised his arm and whistled. The sound pierced the crying of the crows, seeming to shatter their own screeching
like a rock through stained glass. A moment, a flurry of feathers, and one particular bird swooped from the others to land on the outstretched wrist.

Dust squawked once, clearly adamant about making some point or other, and then began idly pecking at the loose flaps of skin around Death’s nearest open wound.

“Ah,” the Crowfather said.

Death took the few intervening steps at a methodical, inexorable pace, until he loomed over the Old One in his throne.

“When I came to you,” the Horseman said, his voice dangerously soft, “and offered you the prize you so desired …” Again his eyes flickered toward whatever it was the hermit wore beside his heart. “… you told me that, to break its link to me and take it upon yourself, you would have to create a new bond, a symbolic tie between my soul and your own. Hence …” He raised Dust to eye level. The bird squawked again, dancing sideways to maintain his balance.

“Yes, I recall,” the Crowfather said blandly. “I was there at the time.”

“Apparently, you neglected to tell me that Dust also
remained
bound to you! I do not like being spied on, Crowfather. I’m inclined to take it personally.”

“Oh, do get over yourself, Death. I’ve not been spying on you.”

“No? How do I—?”

“Of course Dust remains bound to me.” The hermit’s lip curled as he spoke the name. He seemed unimpressed, ill amused with Death’s choice—or even that the Horseman had felt the need to bestow a moniker upon the bird at all. “He’s a crow. I am the Crowfather. Thus we are linked, until the one or the other of us is dead. I can observe the world through his eyes, feel what he feels, know what he knows. Such is the natural order.

“But,” he continued as Death seemed about to speak, “I have not, and will not, take advantage of that link. Not with Dust.”

“And I’m to believe this why, exactly?” Death’s tone remained faint, but Harvester actually creaked beneath the pressure of his tightening fist.

“Because you are here, Horseman.”

Silence, for a moment—or at least, silence between the two of them. The symphony of crows above sang as stridently as ever.

At last, the Crowfather coughed angrily, dragged his over-long nails on the arm of his throne with a high-pitched grating, and spoke once more. “Have you even the faintest glimmer of a suspicion that I desired your presence here, Death?”

“You made it fairly clear that you didn’t.”

“And yet, here you are. The only way you could have known something was amiss is through Dust.”

The Horseman nodded brusquely.

“I did not make contact with him deliberately. He must have sensed, through our lingering bond, that I was engaged in most violent pursuits, that his brethren in my domain were afraid. And due to your link with him, you became aware of the situation soon after.

“Do you truly suppose, then, that you would not be equally aware if I were to make
deliberate
contact with Dust? The bond he shares with you is far stronger than that he and I still possess. I could not use him to spy on you without your knowledge. And as you would most assuredly never again leave me alone, I have not the slightest interest in making an enemy of you.”

For long moments, Death studied the Old One, eyes blazing through the slits in his mask. And then, eventually, he gave a third and final nod.

“Very well, Crowfather. I’ll accept that—for now, anyway.”

“I’m
so
very delighted. Now, regarding that
leaving me alone
concept—”

“Not so fast.” Death strode to the edge of the dais, then knelt to examine one of the deceased constructs. “We share an enemy, old man. I need to know what you know of them.”

“I know that they are composed of stone and metal, and are very irritating.”

Death turned back to his host. “You really want to be left alone? Your best way to accomplish that is for me to find out who’s sending these soldiers, and cut them in half. To say nothing of the fact that you really don’t want
me
to have reason to keep pestering you, do you?”

“Hrmp. Fine.” The Old One drew himself up in his chair. “I truly do not yet know who sent them, Horseman, or how they even knew where to find my home! One of them told me—”

“They
spoke
to you?”

“Oh, yes. The first of them came as emissaries, not invaders. They wished to consult me on lore that nobody else had proved able to share with them.”

Death felt a chill, colder even than his own dark soul, flutter like one of the hermit’s crowfeathers against the back of his neck.

“I, of course, instructed them to depart immediately,” the Crowfather continued. “With results that you have just witnessed for yourself. I imagine they intended to force me to speak, or to abscond with what information they could once I was dead. How little they knew me …”

“I’ve never before known these things to communicate,” Death mused. “Could they have had a leader present? A sentient creature or a more advanced construct, giving orders? Speaking through them?”

“It’s … possible.” The Crowfather shifted, his robes and his mantle of feathers rustling. Had Death not known better, he’d almost have thought the Old One
embarrassed
. “I have not yet assimilated all the details of the intrusion. I see and know all that my crows do, and they observed far more of the battlefield than I. But they are many, and they are unaccustomed to violence of this magnitude. It may take me some time and concentration to sift through all their memories and impressions before I have all the facts in hand.”