Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 (10 page)

Sugar carefully moved forward, peered around the bend, but found nothing. Had the grunt come from one of the apartments? Ahead on her left stood a secret door to the grand apartment. She could feel people there, but her sense wasn’t exact. Stone blocked it to a great degree. So she moved forward and found a peephole, which she ever so slowly opened. Behind it lay a room lit with lamps. The fat Skir Master and another man sat in chairs before the hearth. Two guards flanked the inside of the door. Another man sat at a table. All three wore dreadmen weaves.

She moved to the side to see if there were others in the room, but there were only five here at the moment. Other dreadmen probably stood guard outside the main door to the apartment. She scanned the large room once again, then slowly closed the peephole. She moved her mouth to Argoth’s ear and whispered the layout of the room. He in turn whispered her report to the man behind him, who whispered it down the line. When they were ready, Sugar guided Argoth’s hand to the latch, then stepped past the door. A moment later she sensed something farther down the secret passage approaching.

Argoth drew his long knife with one hand, then gently pulled the lever and swung the hidden door into the secret passage, but found the opening was blocked. Argoth put his hand forward and felt. It looked like the back of a chest or wardrobe, but Sugar couldn’t tell because she was focused on the passageway. She could feel something coming. Something large.

And then two howlers, the creatures that looked like whippets with thorns and spikes for hair, came around the bend followed by something in the rough shape of a man. It was jagged and horned all over. Its head was a slash of spikes. Its hide was a mottled red that ran to ochre and bone at the points of the horns and spikes.

It turned its head and revealed its face, and Sugar took a step back—it was the face of a nightmare, like something had eaten the soul of a man and was wearing it about. But then she perceived that the horned hide was not part of the body. The rough exterior was armor, fashioned like plate or scale, but instead of being smooth, this armor was jagged like the skin of a horned toad or the exterior of a rough crab. The spikes on its head were simply part of some kind of helmet. The man in the armor carried a weapon in his hand—a smoky red blade. This was one of the Mokaddian Walkers!

“We’ve been spotted,” Sugar hissed.

Someone shouted a warning in the grand apartment.

Argoth threw himself against the obstruction. It scraped a few inches across the floor. Two of the other dreadmen men joined him, pushing whatever it was out of the way.

The Walker yelled and the black angular howlers shot forward, growling.

Sugar pulled her soul back into her body and slammed her doors shut. The passage was suddenly dark, lit only by the lamplight spilling in from the secret doorway. Moments later she felt a chill run through her.

Argoth charged through the door followed by three of his dreadmen. Sugar’s job was not to fight. They needed her eyes, and so she waited as the others poured into the room. Then she felt the chill of the howlers again as they pressed about her and tried to bite through to get to her soul. She squeezed her doors as tightly as they would go.

Inside the room, one of the Skir Master’s guards raced forward to meet the attack. The other flung open the door to the fortress hallway and shouted for help. The Skir Master turned and backed up, his black eyes glittering in the lamplight. Three more guards rushed into the room.

The guard sitting slumped at the table suddenly raised his head and looked straight at Sugar.

The Walker
, she thought. That’s his body.

Shouts rose in the hallway outside the grand apartment. Right now it was Argoth and his nine against the Skir Master and his seven. But most of Argoth’s men, although battle-hardened, were new dreadmen, which meant that if someone didn’t bar the door to the hallway, more of Mokad’s dreadmen would pour into the room, and this fight would turn ugly very quickly.

One of the red clad Mokaddian guards swung a short sword, cutting one of Shim’s men across the face. Shim’s man fell to the floor. Argoth swung his axe at the man who’d been sitting at the fire with the Skir Master. The man parried with a fire poker. Another of the Skir Master’s guards chopped down spider-quick with his sword and sliced the gloved fingers off the hand of one of Shim’s men. The man cried out and fell back, but another Shimsman pressed the attack in his place.

The battle in the room surged to one side, clearing a path to the door. Sugar shot into the room and ran straight for it.

The guard who was the Walker stood and charged her. Like all of the Skir Master’s men, the Walker wore mail, but it didn’t seem to slow him down. The Walker moved lightning quick, thrusting at her with the point of his axe.

She twisted away and dodged past him.

He turned, cocked his arm.

Sugar grabbed the door, saw half a dozen men round the corner at the far end of the lamplit hallway, then slammed the door shut.

The Walker hurled his axe.

Sugar lunged to the side, and the axe buried itself in the wood where her head had been. She wrenched it out, grabbed the crossbar, and shoved it down tight. When she turned, the Walker smashed her in the face with a fist that felt like a stone. Her nose broke. Pain shot across the bridge of her brow. She reeled to the side, dazed.

He struck her in the gut, knocking the breath out of her, and took her axe.

The Walker raised the axe to brain her.

Sugar kicked his knee, blood pouring out of her nose, and turned him so the blow missed.

He swung again to finish her, but Oaks slammed into the red-clad Walker from the side, grabbing his weapon hand, and knocking him up against the door. He slammed the guard’s hand hard against the wood.

The man lost his grip on the axe, and it fell to the floor. But he struck Oaks in the face with a forearm, pulled a knife and slashed at him, forcing him back.

Outside, men shouted and pounded on the door.

Sugar was dizzy, her hearing muffled. At her feet lay the Walker’s axe. She snatched it up and turned.

Across the room, Argoth fought with the Skir Master’s guard. In front of her, Oaks took another step back, blood running down a wound along his ear, and stumbled over a chair.

The Walker rushed forward and fell upon Oaks, but Sugar charged him. She took two steps, raised the axe high, then brought it down with all her multiplied might upon his back. It bit partway through the mail. The Walker jerked, faltered, turned to meet the new attack.

Oaks, who was one of the more mature dreadmen, struck him like an anvil on the jaw. He struck him again, and the Walker’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he slumped to the floor.

Another guard charged Oaks from behind, but Sugar stepped forward and swung the axe, stopping his blow. Then one of Argoth’s men stabbed this new attacker with a short sword.

Sugar turned. Another red-clad guard fell, and suddenly the only fight in the room was with the Skir Master’s personal guard by the doors to a balcony. The Skir Master stood behind the man, looking on with anger and disdain.

Two of Argoth’s dreadmen closed on the last guard. One of them threw a chair. When the guard tried to bat it away, the second dreadman lunged. The guard was exceedingly quick, parrying the strike, but he could not parry the blow from the first Shimsman to his head and fell to his knees.

Argoth turned on the Skir Master.

Blood poured out of Sugar’s nose, over her lips to her chin. She plugged her nose, trying to stop the bleeding. Outside the room, the door thudded under the cut of an axe.

The Skir Master said, “You will be disemboweled. I will see to that personally.”

Outside a wind gusted and whistled along the eaves. The pitch of the wind rose until it sounded like a faint scream. The fire in the hearth flared. The Skir Master sneered. “You are worms,” he said with disdain.

Argoth lunged with his long knife, but the Skir Master batted it away, then slapped Argoth open-handed to the ground.

“Pathetic,” he said. Outside, the wind surged, full of fury. The balcony doors behind the Skir Master suddenly flew inward banging against the walls on either side, tearing from their hinges. On the balcony, half the wooden railing ripped away and was thrown to the open bailey below. The wind howled into the room, guttering the lamps, whipping the tapestries.

The Skir Master took a step back. “You and your ridiculous Groves. You are all meat. Pathetic meat.”

Argoth growled, rose like a snake, long knife glinting. The Skir Master turned, but Argoth was too quick and slid the knife deep into the Skir Master’s side, pressing him out onto the balcony and broken railing. The Skir Master’s cry of pain mixed with the howl of the wind.

The wind blasted Argoth, making him stagger, but he surged forward and shoved his knife in deeper. “Take that to your masters!” he roared over the wind. “Tell them it’s a gift from their pathetic meat!”

The Skir Master took a step back. The wind rose in full fury, banging the balcony doors, tearing a tapestry from the wall, whipping debris about the room.

Argoth stepped forward to stab the Skir Master again, but wind blasted into him, and he brought his arm up to protect his eyes and was forced a few steps back into the room.

Then the Skir Master stumbled backward off the balcony, but he did not drop to the bailey below—the wind caught him and carried him aloft.

Debris slammed into Sugar’s eye, blinding her.

For a moment the wind howled, filling the room with its screams until Sugar thought it would drag them all out.

“Back!” Argoth roared into the gale. “Back!”

Then the wind lessened, the pitch of its rage fell to a whistle, and then it was gone.

Outside the room, men still hacked at the thick door.

Sugar blinked the tears out of her eyes and rushed to the secret panel. Argoth paused by the three Shimsmen that had fallen. Each wore a braid on his belt. Argoth knelt, cut the braids, then shoved them in his pocket and hurried to the door. He was the last man out.

The blade of an axe broke through the door to the hallway just as they closed the secret panel.

“No running,” hissed Argoth in the passageway. “Quickly, quietly. Let’s not reveal our positions.” Sugar’s nose was still bleeding. She pinched it and breathed out of her mouth. Behind her, the dreadman who’d lost three of his fingers held onto her shoulder with the two he still had.

Sugar knew the passageway and could feel her way back without entering the yellow world. But it would do no good to flee if a Walker simply followed them out and reported their location. Sugar did not feel the howlers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t close by. She had to look.

She quickened the weave and risked a peek. They were not there. Relief flooded her, and she began to walk forward, following the passage as quickly as she could. They turned the corner, passed the stairway, and hurried back to the tower. Despite Argoth’s warning, they rushed, and Sugar was sure some in the apartments heard their passing.

They ran into the tower room, past the dead woman on the bed, to the doorway leading down to the slope. As they ran through the room, howls rose from the passageway behind them.

“Close the door behind you!” she said as they filed into the passage leading out. The door wouldn’t stop the Walker and his beasts. But it might slow them. However, she knew slowing this new Walker wouldn’t be enough. As long as he was alive, he would simply follow them in soul and guide the defenders and those awful dogmen to their position.

There was only one way to stop him, but she needed to get everyone through the door to the slope first.

Sugar and the others rushed down the stairs. Somebody stumbled behind her, knocking the whole line forward.

“Calm!” said Argoth. “Calm.”

They exited the base of the staircase, and then each man dropped through the doorway in the floor. When it was her turn, she stepped aside. “I will catch up,” she said.

In the yellow world, the howling behind them grew, and then it changed its tone, became louder, and she knew the wicked beasts were pressing through the secret door in Lord Hash’s room above.

The last of Argoth’s men disappeared through the floor just as the howlers and the Walker reached the top of the stairs above. The howlers surged forward grunting and rattling.

Sugar jumped through the hole, then swung the door shut. She knew the wood wouldn’t stop them, but she hoped it would give her enough time.

She sat down and stepped out of her body. Above her, the howlers reached the door and began to force their way through. She hastily removed the blackspine from its bindings, then turned. The first howler pushed its hideous head through the door, gnashing at her. She waited until it was about to break free, then shoved the blackspine into its thorny side. The howler hissed and fell to the floor. She stabbed it again, and again. The second howler pushed through, and she stabbed it in the head. It fell next to her body of flesh and writhed in pain. She realized the doors of her flesh were open, and she closed them, not wanting it to find a way inside.

She waited, blackspine in hand, for the Walker to show himself, but nothing else pushed through the wood. She wondered if the Walker could sense her presence. Having seen what she’d done to his howlers, he’d probably hold back until she was gone.

Sugar walked back to her body, laid down the blackspine, merged, and scrambled out of the passage onto the slope. A sliver of moon had risen, allowing her to make out the barest shapes of the slope about her. A small rock tumbled below in the darkness. Argoth and the others must already be descending.

“Looks like it’s me and you again.”

Sugar turned and found Oaks.

“Every time I’m with you,” he said, “we’re running for our lives.”

“We still have a Walker on our tail,” she said.

“What do you want me to do?”

She could cover the hole with the rock, preventing the Walker from coming this way. But then he would simply return the way he’d come and reappear on the parapet, watching their every move in the darkness and reporting it to those chasing them. She had to kill him as he exited the hole. “We can’t leave yet,” she said.