Reaper Of Sorrows (Book 1) (20 page)

“The Scorpion!” Remon bellowed. “The Scorpion and the Reavers! Stand with me, here and—”

A foot of sharp steel ripped through Remon’s sternum, ending his defiant shout. Before anyone fully registered what had happened, Treon gave his sword a brutal twist, cracking bone, forcing Remon up on his tiptoes. The soldier shuddered, and his eyes rolled to show the whites.

A reckless fury burst to life in Rathe’s chest at the cowardly, senseless murder, and his fist clenched hard on the hilt of his sword, and he made to step forward.

Loro dropped a restraining hand on his arm. “That might have been his undoing,” he advised, but Rathe did not believe it.

Treon shoved Remon away, wrenching his blade free as the man toppled into the mud. “The rest of you gabbling idiots can join Remon,” he announced, bloody sword held before his eyes, inspecting its edge, “or you can bind this traitor. The choice is yours.”

Unspoken words seemed to pass between the Hilan men.
A dozen against one
. Rathe could almost hear them weighing the odds, but he knew their decision, and the why of it, before the first man drew his sword. As he had surmised before, these men had used up their chances through whatever crimes had sent them to Hilan. To stand against Treon would earn them a hunted, miserable life.

Twelve men edged toward Rathe and Loro, all refusing to lock eyes with their quarry, mouths turned down in regret. Rathe sighed. Unless fortune favored him, he would never get to Treon, let alone kill him.
I will make my own luck,
he thought.

From the corner of his mouth, Rathe said, “I have to distract these fellows so Erryn can flee deeper in to the forest.”

“Were I you, I’d worry less about Erryn,” Loro muttered, “and more about myself. End up back in that cage, and you are lost.”

“Do what I tell you, and there will be no cage to ride in,” Rathe said. “If I live, I expect you to free me between here and Hilan.”

“How am I supposed to manage that?” Loro sputtered.

“You will,” Rathe said, “or mine will be a crow-picked head on a spike above Hilan’s walls.”

“But—”

“Before you go, fire the wagons, and scatter as many horses as you can. Treon will not want to recapture the prisoners without a means to get them back to Hilan.”

“You witless fool,” Loro said, as Rathe dashed forward.

Taken off guard by his unexpected charge, the Hilan men stared as he swept around them, bearing down on a gawking Treon. Rathe struggled to free his sword from its scabbard, and his movements told him he had miscalculated his ability to fight. He had lost much blood, and with it his strength. The sword weighed down his arm, his feet clumped rather than danced. Gritting his teeth, opening himself to blind rage fueled by the need to see Erryn safely away, he pressed on, swinging the sword in a sidearm strike at Treon’s throat.

The captain scampered back, just deflecting the blow. Steel rang out as Rathe stumbled past. He whirled, nearly lost his footing, and parried Treon’s deft thrust. Then another, and another, until he was in full retreat.

Rathe stumbled away from Treon’s attacks, worried more than ever. Coward though he was, Captain Treon knew swordplay. At his best, Rathe judged that he might have held his own against Treon, but it would have been a close thing. Now, his back torn, shoulder and neck ravaged by the Hilyoth, weakened from his beating in Valdar a few days before, the odds were stacked against him.

“You expected an easy kill?” Treon taunted, circling to Rathe’s left. His sword darted, flashing under Rathe’s nose almost playfully.

Behind Treon and the gawking Hilan men, Loro caught up a flaming brand from the campfire and dashed to the first wagon. He swept the flames over tallow used to grease the axle, setting it alight—there was not much to burn, but enough. He cast fleeting glance at Rathe and the others, then went to the next wagon. In moments, both wagons were burning. Rathe did not have to ensure the wagons burned to ash, only that the fires rendered them useless.

“No more than you,” Rathe lied, making a half-hearted stab at Treon’s belly. His real intention was to keep Treon focused on him, instead of the wagons.

The captain swatted the attack aside with a contemptuous sneer. “I have no intention of killing you, Scorpion. I will give you into Lord Sanouk’s hands … at least,
most
of you. I dare say, he will have an exceptional form of torture in mind for you.”

“Will it be the rack,” Rathe said, struggling not to gasp, “or perhaps hot pincers?”

Treon lunged, the tip of his sword slicing Rathe’s cheek. The attack could have easily sunk into his throat. Rathe stumbled away, certain Treon was toying with him.

“What you will suffer,” Treon chuckled, “is unlike anything you can imagine—and your pain will never end.”

Disregarding such meaningless drivel, Rathe launched a wild assault. Treon blocked the blows without surrendering an inch of ground, even as he delivered a half dozen slices and pricks to Rathe’s flesh.

Feigning exhaustion that was as real as the blood trickling over his skin, Rathe lured Treon close, then feinted with a slash at the captain’s neck. Treon’s sword deflected the attack, and Rathe sunk his fist into the man’s belly. Treon’s breath whistled as he lurched back. Rathe swung his blade as if chopping cordwood. Treon fell to one knee, reflexively bringing up his sword. Rathe’s weapon missed splitting the captain’s head by an inch. His sword slammed into Treon’s, and then both blades crashed against the captain’s brow. Rathe swung again, but Treon pivoted on his knee, his opposite foot sweeping Rathe off his feet.

Rathe landed hard, rolled, and came up sucking precious air. Treon jumped to a defensive crouch at the same instant. Blood oozed from a cut on his forehead, but otherwise he seemed unhurt. They took measure of one another, waiting, tensing—

“Fire!” a soldier yelled.

Treon shot a quick glance that way, and Rathe attacked, his only goal to keep everyone focused on the fight. Blades flickered and crashed together in a blurring silver whirlwind, rebounded and fell again. Every breath burned like a poison vapor in Rathe’s chest as he fought. Treon moved much like his namesake, darting and striking, a deadly viper playing with its prey, wearing it down. The murderous heat in his gaze did not soften, and the longer the struggle went on, the more it seemed he might forget his desire to see Rathe into Sanouk’s hands.

Through it all, no one moved to put out the blazing wagons, and the sound of horse’s neighing in alarm grew louder. Loro stood between the wagons, trapped between helping Rathe and obeying him. Rathe kicked a glop of mud into Treon’s face, distracting him long enough to motion for Loro to leave. The fat man hesitated a moment longer, then vanished into the forest behind a trio of horses.

Rathe barely caught a sword blow aimed for his neck. Steel shrieked as the edge of Treon’s sword slid down Rathe’s, jarring to a stop at the cross-guard. Pressed chest to chest, Rathe slammed his knee into the captain’s groin, then he flung him away with the last of his dwindling strength.

Staggering, sweat pouring into his eyes, Rathe tottered back. The tip of his sword dragged through the mud, his stumbling feet struggled to hold him upright. He could not last much longer. Without a chance of defeating Treon, he must surrender to keep the man from killing him, and hope that Loro would find a way to set him free before reaching Hilan.

Treon charged, white hair flying, screaming like a scalded woman. Rathe brought his dagger to bear, using it to parry strikes he missed with his sword. A debilitating ache grew in his shoulders, his guard became a series of flinches. Treon pressed the attack, but could not sneak or batter through Rathe’s defenses. At last, he stumbled back, panting every bit as much as Rathe.

“Enough! Take this fool, and cage him!”

For a moment, everyone froze in place.

“There are no cages,” Carul said.

“And no horses,” a soldier added.

Treon put another two paces between himself and Rathe, and glanced at the burning wagons. “You dirty, cheating cur!” he screeched, points of red blooming on his cheeks. “You planned this. You and that corpulent heap of shite!”

Rathe had no breath for words, so he put on a mocking grin.

“Three of you, bind this fool,” Treon snarled. “The rest, fetch the horses. Do it, or I will cut the beating hearts from every one of you mother-buggering idiots!”

Had the men challenged his threat, Treon would have died. Instead, they obeyed the order and came for Rathe.

Having accomplished what he set out to do, Rathe offered no resistance as the Hilan men bound him. Erryn had escaped with the others from Valdar, but Rathe must give them all the extra time he could, and that meant becoming a prisoner again. Doubtless, Loro watched from the forest.
Come for me, brother
, Rathe thought, scanning the motionless woods.
Come for me, or I am a dead man.

Chapter 25

H
aving ordered all the torches and braziers extinguished, Lord Sanouk ghosted along the crenelated battlements in utter darkness. He halted behind a lichen-crusted merlon and peeked around the edge. Lit by roaring bonfires, the terraced village shone like a tawdry jewel in the night. Where he had commanded the fortress made dark, he ordered the village to burn brightly. Something stalked within the brooding forest. He knew not the face it wore, man or beast, but he wanted its gaze drawn to the village, not the now vulnerable keep.

Two patrols lost….
It was not the first time the thought had assailed him, nor the hundredth. The first patrol set out at dawn three days past, but had not returned. Initially, Sanouk dismissed their absence. His soldiers often rode into the forest, passing the time drinking, hunting, and getting up to all manner of mischief. By the second evening, he had grown apprehensive that something was amiss. The next dawn, he was certain trouble had befallen his men.

He sent more soldiers to seek the missing patrol, having decided that if a rogue band of bandits had attacked his men—perhaps a group not in his service—then they would reap the rewards of such foolishness. That decision, along with Captain Treon’s absence, greatly weakened the garrison, but Sanouk had carried no fear in his heart.

Another day and now half a night had passed, and he had heard nothing, seen not one wounded survivor. The villagers, having lost many of their own in recent days to Sanouk’s secretive hunts, thought sure they guarded against a Shadenmok and her devil-hounds. But Shadenmok only attacked well-armed and -armored companies when desperate to feed. Other devilish creatures haunted the deepest reaches of the Gyntors, as well, but like the Shadenmok, such beasts usually sought the weakest and most vulnerable.

If not a Shadenmok or some other fell creature, then what had dispatched over thirty hardened soldiers? Surely no marauding party of witless brigands. With Captain Treon late returning, Sanouk had no choice but to consider that Mitros, scoundrel that he was, had grown weary of his role as a servant, and decided to rejoin his life as a brigand leader. Hard as it was to believe, the possibility existed that the brutish drunkard was making a bid on taking the north for himself….

The thought turned Sanouk’s bowels to water. His concern was not for Treon, or any threat Mitros might pose, but rather that without prisoners from Valdar to offer Gathul, the god’s insatiable hunger would turn on him.
“… unless you would rather slake my hungers with the meat of your own soul?”
so Gathul had asked of him.

It had been no question, rather a threat of a fate worse than any endured by his sacrifices, who lived on in their tombs under the fortress, suffering the pangs of various deaths, but undying. In his heart, Sanouk understood that Gathul would destroy his body, but that his soul would linger in eternal agony, a toy for the cruel god.

He glanced at a passing soldier carrying a spear slanted across his chest.
Any sacrifice would do.
Sanouk shook the thought away. He could not very well offer up his men … at least not yet. There was still some small time, a day, perhaps two, before Gathul grew restless. In truth, he did not know.
I must hurry.

Sanouk scanned the village, filled with slovenly wretches with no real purpose in existing save to serve him. For now, he needed but one.
But who would garner the least resistance?

A long thin face bearing the ravages of a childhood pox showed itself in his mind, dull muddy eyes, hanks of greasy gray hair.
The master of hounds
…
Zarik
. Yes, he would do.

An accusation of treason or thievery would suffice to place him in Sanouk’s custody without worry of protest. No one, even among the villagers, loved Zarik. The man’s sacrifice would purchase Sanouk another few days to find more offerings … unless, that was, Gathul once again changed their agreement. Already, what had been a month between sacrifices had become a fortnight, had become a meager handful of days.
And what if it comes to pass that the demon demands multiple sacrifices in a single day?

Sanouk told himself that would never happen, for such a demand would lead to his inability to provide the sustenance the god desired. Another question rose up, one that had started him from a deep sleep some nights past.
Needs aside, what of Gathul’s
deeper
cravings?

When first considered, he had convinced himself that Gathul wanted nothing more than the occasional offering in return for his rewards. Since then, the idea had begun to trouble Sanouk that Gathul considered the sacrifices appetizing morsels, but actually desired to glut upon the flesh of just one soul—that of his servant and conjurer—even if that feeding locked the god within his realm for another long age.

Sanouk swallowed, his mouth and throat dry as bones bleached white under the desert sun. The unholy words he had used to summon the god, also bound him to Gathul. Agreements could be met between the god and the summoner, Undai had told Sanouk, but never coerced.
And I agreed to every word Gathul has suggested.