Forged in Blood II (37 page)

The location behind the boulders would hide the evidence of extraction from the trail Amaranthe and the others were on. The hint of a large, dark form, too bulky and square to be a pile of earth—or belong to a lurking makarovi—hunkered beside one of the piles of fresh earth.

Sicarius jogged toward it. Another dark shape in the snow to the side made him hesitate. Another body. The light would help with investigating those, so he’d leave it for Basilard.

A few more steps, and he was close enough to make out more details. It was a vehicle. It lacked the conical front of the tunnel-boring machine, possessing instead the stub nose of a lorry with a large cargo bed ideal for moving earth. Two more battered bodies awaited in the snow, their arms akimbo. One’s neck had broken upon landing. It was as if he’d been torn from the cab of the vehicle and hurled at a huge velocity. Sicarius checked the lorry’s furnace. Heat radiated from the metal, and red embers burned inside. The gauge had fallen below ready, so some time had passed, but the vehicle had been in operation earlier that evening.

Lights came into view, lanterns bobbing and weaving with the steps of men. Basilard stood and waved.

Relieved nothing untoward had happened to the group, Sicarius jogged in that direction.

“Are we there yet?” came Maldynado’s moan from the trees. “This canister is
heavy
. Does anybody else think we should have been given an armored attack vehicle for carrying our equipment and for infiltrating a highly secured imperial building?”

“Are you whining again?” Yara asked.

When Sicarius joined the group, his silent appearance cut off whatever response Maldynado might have made. Good.

“It would be unwise to linger in the area,” he said without preamble. “Makarovi have been about, no more than two hours ago.”

One hour
, Basilard signed, joining them.
That soldier’s body is fresh.

“Bodies? Makarovi?” Amaranthe spoke with admirable calm, but Sicarius didn’t miss her darting glances toward the trees and the boulders. After nearly dying to makarovi claws last spring, she had more reason than any of them to fear the creatures. And he had more reason than ever to keep her from coming up with schemes to thwart them.

“The tunnel-boring team is dead,” Sicarius said. “Four men. At least.”

Basilard glanced at him.
Tunnel boring?

“Their earth hauler is behind those rocks.”

“So… the makarovi came out of the mountains and rushed into the tunnel, mauling everyone on the way?” Amaranthe asked. “That could work to our advantage, if we can avoid them. I wouldn’t wish that pain—and death—on anyone, but if fate has delivered it… we
were
looking for a good distraction.”

“The type of distraction where my older brother gets skewered by claws and turned into a makarovi appetizer?” Maldynado dropped his end of the canister, causing Books, who had been walking backward, carrying the opposite side to jerk in surprise and lose his grip. He glowered at Maldynado.

“Eww,” Akstyr said. “I hate those things. Aren’t they the ones that eat women’s… lady parts?”

“Yes,” Amaranthe said.

Yara, who’d been trailing the party with Sespian, grimaced. “I hate those things too.”

“If they’ve found a way into the Barracks,” Sespian said, “and the building and courtyard gates are locked down, whoever’s in there will be trapped.”

“They didn’t go inside the tunnel,” Sicarius said.

Silence fell as the team considered his words. He took advantage, listening to the night forest around them. More plops of snow fell, but he didn’t hear anything else, no further screams, nor the moist snuffles of those creatures advancing through the trees.

“They killed the tunnel team and moved on?” Amaranthe asked.

“No,” Sicarius said. “They came
out
of the tunnel and moved on.”

Basilard shook his head.
That doesn’t make sense. You must have read the tracks incorrectly.

“I did not,” Sicarius said.

Amaranthe patted Basilard on the arm. “Now, now, you know you insult him when you say things like that.”

She kept her teasing tone light, though Sicarius sensed that her jocularity was not sincere. As she so often did, she was trying to remain strong, insouciant even, so the others would not worry. Indeed, Yara had turned to face the shadowy trees to the rear, the rifle in her hands clenched tightly, her shoulders tense. Working as an enforcer sergeant, she too had been up near that dam, and she too had seen what the makarovi could do.

Perhaps the creatures traveled into it, used it as a den, and came back out again,
Basilard signed.

“Makarovi came out,” Sicarius said. “They did not enter.”

I do not wish to belittle your tracking skills,
Basilard signed,
but…
He faced the others.
Sicarius did not see the tracks by the light of a lantern.

“He’s right,” Sespian said. “It must be a mistake. Having makarovi come from inside the Barracks doesn’t make any sense. We don’t grow them in the garden.”

Sicarius said nothing, though having his skills doubted by his son stung slightly. Sespian was right to question, he told himself. It
didn’t
make sense.

“Here’s an idea,” Maldynado said. “Why don’t we take the lights over there and all have a looksie?”

“Would you be comfortable dying if those were your last words?” Yara asked.

“I can’t imagine any circumstance where I’d be comfortable dying, unless it were in bed, after being heart-stoppingly overworked by a lush, beautiful, and terribly athletic woman.”

“More likely you’d be killed in bed, by a dagger from the woman’s husband,” Yara said.

Maldynado removed his hat and crushed it to his chest, a forlorn expression on his face. “I meant
you
, my lady.”

Yara blinked. “Oh.”

“Let’s take a look at these makarovi prints,” Amaranthe said before the conversation could veer farther off track.

“This way.” Pointedly not taking one of the lanterns, Sicarius led the way to the tunnel mouth.

“Nice… body,” Akstyr said. “At least it’s not a girl. It’s only deheaded, not de…organed.”

“Decapitated,” Books corrected.

“Whatever.”

“Is there a better word for de-organed?” Amaranthe asked bleakly, her voice devoid of the humor that might have accompanied her words under other circumstances.

“Not that references the specific organs those creatures target,” Books said.

“Pity,” Yara muttered, still eyeing the forest warily. “I’d hate for there not to be a word for how we’ll be killed.”

“I’m sure Books can make one up for you,” Maldynado said.

Sicarius waited while Basilard investigated the tracks with the help of his lantern. Amaranthe stepped into the tunnel, holding her own light aloft. The flame did little to push back the darkness, illuminating only a few feet into the earthen passage. It was enough, however, to see the round walls and regular cuts made by a boring machine.

“Do you think they made it through to the Barracks?” she asked.

“It’s over a mile from here to there,” Sicarius said, “via a linear route. This is farther out than the secret entrance to which I intended to lead the group.”

“The one labeled sewer access point?” Amaranthe asked. “I’ve visited that one before.”

“Yes.” Reminded of their first couple of meetings, Sicarius remembered how callously he’d sent her to see Hollowcrest and how unmoved he’d been when he found her dying on that park bench. It chilled him now to think of how close he’d come to losing her before he understood her worth to him. “It’s approximately one fourth of a mile away.”

“With a shaman booby trap at the end.”

“Ward,” Akstyr said.

“We don’t know
what
will be there,” Books said. “After you fiddled with the last one, that shaman may have tinkered around and improved the security.”

“That’s… actually a good point,” Akstyr said.

“I make them occasionally.”

Basilard stood, a displeased wrinkle creasing his forehead. Sicarius waited for him to pronounce the correctness of his findings.

“Basilard?” Sespian asked. He’d been watching the investigation, puzzled, no doubt, as to how makarovi might have originated inside the Barracks.

It does appear that they came out this way. There are no tracks leading inside the tunnel.
Basilard tugged off his cap to scratch his scarred pate.
There could be an intersecting tunnel ahead somewhere, allowing entrance from another outside point.

Sicarius did not disagree with this supposition.

“Shall we check?” Amaranthe pointed into the tunnel. “If the boring team
did
breach the Barracks grounds before this happened—” she tilted her head toward the corpse in view, “—it may be an unguarded way in. I’d prefer not to alert the shaman of our entrance, and if I’m understanding the wards correctly, that could happen even if we find a way to bypass the alarm.”

“It could,” Akstyr admitted.

“What if
this
entrance is guarded by makarovi?” Yara asked. “That’s worse than a shaman.”

“First Marblecrest’s troops and now makarovi.” Sespian sighed. “My poor cat hasn’t got a chance.”

Amaranthe looked around at everyone, holding Sicarius’s gaze a little longer. He nodded. Neither option was amazingly better than the other, and they needed to get on with their mission. The only unfortunate bit would be if this involved walking a mile to a dead end and having to backtrack, but it was worth the risk if it offered them a chance to learn more of the makarovi—such as if these beasts wore shamanic control collars like the ones in the dam had. If one of the contenders for the throne controlled such creatures, Starcrest would want that information. Sicarius had picked up five distinctly different prints from five different creatures before he’d stopped counting. As powerful as the makarovi were, even a force that small could have an impact in a wartime situation.

“We’ll try it.” Amaranthe took a step to lead the way into the tunnel.

Sicarius cut her off, gliding into the point position. Under many circumstances, he’d accept her going first, but
not
when dealing with monsters that preferred the taste of human women. She didn’t object to his usurpation of the lead spot, and he trotted ahead, wanting to feel and smell the tunnel with senses that were superior to sight in such poor lighting. If makarovi raced down the passage toward him, he’d be the first to know it.

• • •

Amaranthe judged they’d walked about a half mile when she caught up to Sicarius. He’d stopped in the middle of the passage, his back rigid, his eyes forward, as if he were a statue. The rest of the team had been walking behind her, their lights bobbing on the dirt-and-rock walls, and they too halted.

“What is it?” she whispered, though she knew there was no point. He’d tell her when he’d fully processed whatever he’d heard or smelled.

“Nothing new,” Sicarius said without turning around, “but the scent is growing alarmingly strong.”

Basilard stepped up to Amaranthe’s shoulder.
I concur. We may run into their den before we reach the end of the tunnel. Perhaps discovering it is what caused the excavation to stop.

Amaranthe detected the musky scent now, too, and memories shivered through her, excruciating memories. We beat them last time, she reminded herself. Of course the layout of the dam had given them time to enact a plan. Meeting them head on in the tunnel would not offer that same time.

“I will continue,” Sicarius said. “Wait here.”

“Sicarius, wait—” she started, but he was already jogging away.
Running
away.

Amaranthe was tempted to run after him. To lose him now, when they were so close to… having a full-on, grownup
real
people’s relationship… She sighed.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Sespian said, stepping up to her other side. “I’ve seen him run. He’s quite the sprinter. He should have been an athlete in the Imperial Games instead of an assassin.”

We already have a competition-winning athlete in the group
, Basilard signed.

“Yes, we do.” Amaranthe patted him on the shoulder, though she didn’t take her gaze from the tunnel ahead. “Let’s keep going. We’ll walk while he runs. He’ll still see whatever there is to see first.”

“As if there were… another option… than walking,” Maldynado grunted. “Anyone else want to take a turn at carrying this thing?”

“Sorry,” Amaranthe said, “but I couldn’t lift it when I tried. Alas, I’m not as brawny as you and Books.”

Books looked mollified at being called “brawny,” though his face had an unhealthy turnip-like hue. Amaranthe was glad when Sespian said, “I’ll take a turn.”

Maldynado smiled brightly, though it faded when Sespian replaced Books instead of himself. “Hmmph,” he announced loudly.

“What are we going to do with this big can anyway?” Maldynado added a few steps later.

“It’s full of… I don’t remember what exactly Mahliki called it,” Amaranthe said, “but it’s a liquid compound she derived from the venom sacs of… I forget that too. Some kind of spider. I remember that she was relieved that the city’s main bug farmer had the correct specimens in suitable numbers, due to most bugs dying or hibernating in the winter.” Amaranthe was lucky to remember that much of the explanation she’d received, as the young woman had spoken rapidly, sometimes slipping into Kyattese and sometimes into technical bug-babble that Amaranthe had followed even less than the foreign language. “The venom sacs contain a poison that paralyzes insects, so the spider can easily snack on them.”

“I hope the plan isn’t for us to go around shooting my brother’s men full of poison and then eating them, because I had some of Basilard’s chicken dumplings before we left, and I’m not in the mood to snack.”

Amaranthe met Yara’s eyes. “Did you want to smack him, or should I?”

“That’s most likely my duty,” Yara said, “though I wouldn’t want him to drop that barrel, especially now that I know it’s full of paralyzing poison.”

“Actually, that’s not quite it,” Amaranthe said. “Mahliki and her cousin performed some fancy alchemy to turn it into an anesthesia of sorts. We’re to pour it onto the coals in the basement furnace that warms the air that flows into the ducts of the building. It’ll waft out of the vents as a colorless gas, supposedly without much of an odor either. We’ll wait a few minutes, and when we come up, most of the resistance should be groggy or outright unconscious. Those on the inside of the building anyway. We’ll still have to deal with the guards in the courtyard and on the walls.”