Parasite Soul (19 page)

“With a bit of luck,” Simon whispered, “They’ll kill one another.”

“I do not share your view,” Niu returned tersely. “I do not
think she means us harm.”

“Maybe.” Simon strained his ears for any unusual sound, but the
thunder of the rain muffled all else. Nerves fraying, he pressed his back
to the wall and waited for something to happen.

A flash startled him; distant lightning. The gods were angry,
then. Was he involved in their displeasure? No, despite the deadly
miracle at the swamp, Simon couldn’t expect Vanyon or Lesquann to take
continued interest in him. He was just a mortal, after all, and not a
very significant one.

But what about the dragon? Did the Wyrm of Cannevish not also
die of a heart attack in my presence? Have the gods been watching out for
me all along?

Familiar as he was with scripture, he knew such a thing was not
entirely without precedent. The fireside legend of Tallion told of a
young man who rose from peasant to prince, Vanyon guiding his arm every step of
the way. Was he, Simon, a modern Tallion? Could Vanyon have some
destiny in mind for him? He thought back to that first moment he’d first
decided to try his luck with the dragon. Had the divine touched his mind
in that instant, no matter how fleeting?
Had the sword itself been
placed for him to find?

Niu interrupted his thoughts. “We can not just leave her to
contend with these adversaries,” she remonstrated, gripping his arm.

Who?
Simon almost said as he
snapped back to the present.
Oh. Sasha
.

“I’m not leaving cover,” he replied. “We’d be lambs to a
slaughter.”

“While in here, we are another of your sayings, ‘fish in a barrel’.”

“At least we have cover.”

“We have nowhere to go.”

Simon shook his head vehemently. “They’re trying to flush us
out.”

“I do not think so. That arrow was meant to kill Sasha, not to
draw her out. It pierced her heart. She is simply fortunate that
her heart does not function.”

“I… suppose,” he returned reluctantly. “But we can’t fight
them in this. They have a huge advantage. We may be able to get
away while Sasha distracts them.”

“You would just leave her?”

“She’s a bruxa. She can take care of herself. Better
than we could, in any event.”

Niu considered this and nodded. “Lead on.”

He dropped his voice to a whisper. “We’ll head straight into the
trees, toward the mountains. If we’re lucky we’ll find shelter - a cave,
or something - before we catch our death.” It didn’t seem like a very solid
plan, but it was all he could come up with. “I’m sure Sasha will find us,
if she…” He bit his tongue before Niu could revisit her argument about
helping the bruxa. “Come on.”

Ducking past the window, he made for a rift in the wall. If
the gods meant for him to survive this encounter, then he would. They’d
shown their support thus far; surely it would be somewhat inglorious to allow
him to take an arrow through the throat at this juncture. Knowing that
they likely had his back gave him the confidence to slip out into the storm.

He instantly regretted his decision. Soaked within seconds, forced
to shield his eyes against the barrage of stinging liquid missiles, he
struggled across sodden and slippery turf. He could discern little in the
gloom. There was no sight of Sasha nor anyone else, for which he was
grateful; there was no way he could fight in these conditions. No doubt
their phantom assailants had also made that determination.

Just how many enemies do I have?
Simon
wondered as he nervously scanned the trees.

“This way,” he hissed, snatching Niu’s wrist and tugging her back
around behind the cabin. At any moment, he expected to feel the thud of
an arrow between his shoulder blades. Keeping low, he scurried along the
wall, the handmaiden crouching in his wake.

A woman’s terrified scream shivered through the forest, muted by the
storm yet bloodcurdling enough to raise gooseflesh on the back of Simon’s
neck. Whether the voice belonged to Sasha, or more likely one of her
victims, Simon could not say. He shuddered and doubled his pace.

The space behind the cabin was a graveyard of belongings. An
old rocking chair, covered in lichen but essentially intact; gardening
implements collected into rotting wooden crates; a tiny figurine of Lesquann
hanging from a hook; a scarecrow slumped against the wall, head spilling and
black with mold. These remnants of a life left behind saddened Simon, who
could only imagine that the owner of this secluded little refuge had perished.
With more pressing matters to attend to, however, he wound through the
detritus of a forgotten life and made for the relative safety of the
undergrowth.

Another yell, this time of anger, reverberated amongst the
trees. Simon flinched. This voice belonged to a man; a man who sounded
very much like he meant vengeance for the fate of the woman whose screams had
dissolved into a strangled gasping that was swallowed by the storm.

In a spray of droplets, a looming shadow sprang from the
foliage. Yelping, Simon threw himself backward as an enormous axe clove a
gnarled root in two, spattering him with sodden clumps of moss. With
frighteningly little effort, the hulking fur-draped form hefted his oversized
weapon for a second swing; Simon would have died there, struggling to regain
his feet, had Niu not launched herself forward and plunged both her daggers
into the man’s stomach.

Roaring, their brawny assailant dropped his axe and made a grab for
Niu, who dodged the clumsy attempt but slipped on the treacherous ground and
landed on her knees and one elbow. Simon, who had let his paltry blade
fall, snatched up the axe. It felt good in his hands, heavy but familiar,
like the maul he’d used to split wood for his father. He swung at the
large man’s legs with all his might, unnerved by the ensuing howl of pain as
the weapon bit through leather and parted flesh, shattering bone.

Screaming in agony the bandit - if that’s what he was - dropped, his
ruined leg folding unnaturally beneath him. In the unlikely event he
managed to survive his perforated gut, he would be crippled for life.
Simon wanted to vomit as he retreated from the man, who glared venom back at
him with bloodshot, hawklike eyes. Incapacitated though he was, the man
was still too dangerous, Simon judged, to approach. There was little
chance Niu would be able to retrieve her daggers.

“Who are you?” he shouted, hefting the axe as though to swing
again. Clutching his midriff, the man just sneered, rain pouring down his
predator’s visage, directly across unblinking eyeballs. Streaked with mud
and leafy detritus, Niu tugged at Simon’s arm.

“We must go,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her arm but
succeeding only in smearing the mess around.

Drenched and shivering, Simon grunted acquiescence, following her
into the trees. If their persecutors didn’t manage to finish them off, he
worried, the weather would. His grandmother had died in the aftermath of
being caught in a torrential downpour. He recalled her shaking for days under a
blanket by the fire, and eventually being told by his father that she had
passed. Ever since, Simon had harbored what might not be considered fear,
exactly, but a healthy respect for rain.

The forest felt oppressively close; Simon started at grey shadows
and flinched at the creaking of branches. The weight of the axe in his
hands served as a slight balm for his anxiety. He stuck close to Niu, who
led them in the direction Simon had previously indicated, toward mountains
indistinct in the gloom. Wet leaves battered his face; branches clutched
greedily at his tunic. More and more, the ground beneath his feet was
becoming a treacherous mire, but he struggled onward into the torrential
onslaught.

Just as he was beginning to feel like he and Niu might escape their
assailant’s attention, something whistled past his cheek and thudded into a
nearby trunk. Simon gazed at it with some surprise. A throwing
dagger, he noted resignedly, and joined less than a second later by a second
missile, this one scoring his arm, dividing cloth and drawing blood.

“Down!” Niu yelled, as Simon blankly contemplated his near
demise. She’d dropped into a crouch, putting a vast and ancient trunk
between herself and the hunter. Simon followed her example, wondering
what good his oversized axe would do against a volley of flying blades.

“Show yourselves, hellspawn!” their assailant yelled, a female
voice. “Are the undead so cowardly? Are you afraid to face me?”

Simon and Niu exchanged puzzled glances.

“We’re not undead!” Simon returned hoarsely. “We’re human!”

A moment of silence followed this proclamation. Then, “Ha!”
came an answering shout. This time, the voice belonged to a man.
“What manner of human keeps company with
bloodsuckers
?”

Simon groaned. Sasha. These people were after
Sasha
.
He remembered the bruxa musing that her ‘mother’ was likely to have her hunted
in order to secure her secrets. These were likely her hirelings.
Were they amateurs or professional demon hunters? Simon had heard
tell of the latter, organizations which scoured the land keeping the undead
population in check. Battle-hardened and fierce, these were not opponents
the unskilled wanted to contend with.

“Look,” he called, “We mean no trouble…”

“You’ve found it all the same,” the man called back. “Drop
your weapons and step into view, that we may test your claims of humanity.”

“They’ll kill us anyway,” Niu hissed. Simon was inclined to
agree. If this was about preserving the
Nameless Nymph’s
secrets,
then simply keeping Sasha’s company would be a death sentence. Simon wondered what
had befallen the amiable Jock.

“Don’t want a dagger in the throat, thanks,” he called back.
Truthfully, however, he wasn’t sure what alternative they had. How many
hunters were there? Where was Sasha? Was there any reasonable
chance of resistance or retreat?

“That’s a shame,” the man returned. “Perhaps you’d prefer a
blade in the bowels, then.” Beneath the bravado, was there a slight tremor of
apprehension in his voice? No doubt Sasha had cost this company already,
while he and Niu had also felled a man. Perhaps they had anticipated a
simple operation with no losses. But shouldn’t they have known better
than to try to kill a bruxa by shooting her in the heart?

Amateurs, then
.

Suddenly hopeful, Simon nudged Niu and pointed toward a thickening in
the underbrush several paces away, where the trees were grouped more closely
and the dripping ferns grew in even greater profusion. The density of the
foliage probably indicated a water source. This wall of trunks and leaves
would serve to protect them against projectiles; perhaps help to level the
playing field. Niu returned his gaze skeptically but shrugged. He
took that as assent for his plan, even if the handmaiden wasn’t entirely
impressed by it, and braced himself for a dash through a gap in the trees which
would momentarily expose them to the hunters.

“Now!” he hissed, launching himself toward the thicket. His
sprint ended as abruptly as it had begun as the sopping moss gave way beneath
his feet and he pitched sideways onto the forest floor. Losing his grip
on his axe, he fought desperately for purchase on slick, bare stone. The
hunters’ mocking laughter ringing in his ears, he’d almost managed to right
himself when Niu, close behind him, stumbled over the axe and went down cursing
in her own tongue.

Wiping rainwater from his eyes, Simon looked up in despair to see
three figures framed amongst the trees, shadows against the storm.

“Very well done,” the closest of the three, a wiry, mop-headed
youth, sneered from behind his drawn bow. Simon stared at the head of an
arrow which was pointed directly between his eyes.

“Brilliant footwork,” the woman added. “Ah… stay down.” Her wrist
flicked and a dagger buried itself in the moss not half an inch from Simon’s
knee.

“Are we even getting paid to finish these two off?” the third hunter
mused, scratching his ridiculously long beard with the hand which wasn’t
holding an enormous, broken-tipped broadsword. “It’s the dead bitch we
want.”

“Let’s end ‘em anywise,” the youth growled with a thick northern accent.
“We’re gonna have to put Torren down after what they did t’him, and the damn
bruxa killed two’a us afore she bolted.”

Simon groaned. “She… the bruxa,” he said, spreading his hands
slowly in surrender, attempting to block the hunter’s clear shot at Niu with
his body. “She’s not our friend, she just sort of…” He struggled
momentarily. “…attached herself to us.”

The bearded man raised an eyebrow. “She just decided ‘there’s
a pair of fools I could go on walkabout with instead of eating’, did she?
Likely story. The old lady said no witnesses. Finish them off.”

“Heh,” said the archer, approving. Then to Simon, “Goodbye,
mate.”

“No…” Simon began desperately, a jolt of fear crackling through his
bones. At that moment, he bore astonished witness to Vanyon’s
intervention once again as the archer’s eyes bugged, a sudden look of terror
rearranging his smug face. He dropped his bow, clutching at his chest,
while his companions also staggered. Behind Simon, Niu also let out a
soft gasp. Before Simon could absorb this latest improbable rescue, a
pale, skinny shape launched itself from the depths of the forest, colliding
with the woman and bringing her down in a flailing tangle of limbs.