The Destruction of the Books (49 page)

Outside, the fog continued to fill the streets. The chill had grown stronger, leeching into Juhg’s flesh and clinging like barbed fishhooks. Rigging pinged against the masts out in the harbor.

Juhg pulled his traveling cloak more tightly about him and shivered with the cold. He peered out at the harbor, wondering when the last time was that he had seen the fog so thick.

“The Gran’magister did really good in there,” Raisho said. “Really gave them halfers what for, didn’t he?”

Juhg just looked at his friend.

Raisho stopped grinning. “Oh. Well, what I need to mention is that I don’t exactly dislike all halfers. Why, some of me best friends is halfers. One of them, anyway.”

Glancing around, Juhg saw that the street was packed with travelers, despite the inclement weather. So many residents had come to the meeting hall to find out what was going to happen.
How many,
he wondered,
were shocked by the turn of events?

He glanced up toward the Knucklebones Mountains. With the layers of fog as thick as they were, he couldn’t see the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Despite that, though, he knew what it looked like: broken and jumbled.

Will it be fixed the next time I see it?
Juhg wondered.
Or will I never see it again?

And what is it the Grandmagister is keeping under his hat?

Without warning, Raisho stepped in front of Juhg and drew his blade. “Look out!” the young sailor yelled, whipping the cutlass forward.

Mind whirling as the excitement of the moment briefly spun his senses, Juhg tracked the whipping movement in front of him. Something had flown through the air only a short distance above Raisho’s head. The fog swirled behind it.

Then the sound of metal against stone rasped and filled Juhg’s ears just before the first screams cut loose along the street. Spinning, staying close to Raisho’s sheltering bulk, Juhg glanced along the street as he saw improbable shapes drop through the fog.

Some of the shapes landed in the street, where they stood on splayed legs. Others gripped the eaves of buildings and hung upside down, tucking themselves up under to take advantage of the cover offered by the structures.

There were, Juhg noticed in immediate horror, dozens of them. An army had silently invaded Greydawn Moors and now stood poised to attack.

22

The Battle for Greydawn Moors

“Guards! Guards!”
someone yelled, sounding nearly panicked.

It took Juhg a moment to recognize his own voice with all the raw emotion in it. Although he had never seen the creatures scattered around the street before him in the flesh, he knew what they were.

When the Unity armies of dwarves, humans, and elves had finally started to turn the tide against the hordes of goblinkin, Lord Kharrion had used the darkest arts of magick to call forth a new army. As the goblinkin had been forced back over battlefields where they had left their dead strewn behind them, sometimes half-eaten by those goblinkin armies, the Goblin Lord had resurrected the bodies of those dead goblins.

In most cases, those dead goblins were nothing more than skeletal remains, either through time or the bones having been scraped for meat into a goblinkin stewpot. When Lord Kharrion used those freshly killed, he’d commanded the goblins to carve the flesh from them. Using the dark eldritch energies he called to his power, he forged the remains of the goblins with the echoes of the raw pain and suffering and fear of the humans, dwarves, and elves who had died in those places as well. Although, possessing no real identity, the Boneblights were far more than mere automatons.

They stood tall and gaunt as elves, with dark gray flesh sculpted from the bloody soil of battlefields and mixed with the ash of hardwood trees and iron slivers. Deep-set ruby eyes looked as though they’d been punched with an awl into the blunt-featured face covering the squared-off head. A piggish snout thrust out above a wide mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. Rusty mud clung to the Boneblights. Most carried scythes and axes for weapons, but every single one of them had long claws at the ends of skinny, powerful fingers and two tusks that curled up from the lower jaw almost to the eyebrow. Like a snake, Boneblights could unhinge their jaws to devour huge bites.

Without hesitation, Raisho stepped forward and struck the Boneblight facing them between the eyes with his cutlass. The blade scraped away a patch of magically hardened flesh and batted the creature’s head back, but didn’t even serve to knock the Boneblight from its long, narrow feet with toes splayed like a chicken’s.

The Boneblight laughed, a hissing sound that came from atrophied vocal cords. “Foolssss! You sssshall be punissssshed! You sssshall die!”

Quick as a wink, the Boneblight struck with its rusty, pitted scythe, aiming at Raisho’s neck and no doubt intending to cleave the young sailor’s head from his shoulders. Raisho barely got the cutlass up to block the attack. He disengaged his blade and struck again and again, driving his opponent back with his blows but achieving no real success in harming it. He blocked the scythe again, then put a booted foot into the middle of the dead flesh-and-bone face and shoved the Boneblight backward into a crumpled mass on the street.

Raisho cursed as the Boneblight hauled itself to its feet again. The creature unfurled the leathery wings kept close and tight to its back. Although Boneblights couldn’t fly under their own power, the creatures could glide for long distances when the wind was right.

Where did they glide from?
Juhg wondered as he peered at the dozens of Boneblights that had filled the streets of Greydawn Moors. For a moment, he stopped being afraid as he considered the problem of the presence of the creatures—where they had come from and who had brought them there, but he quickly remembered the danger he was in when the Boneblight launched itself at Raisho and him.

Moving gracefully to one side, Raisho slashed the cutlass down across the Boneblight’s outstretched arms. Off balance, the creature dropped to the street. Immediately, though, it pushed itself to its feet again.

“What are these things?” Raisho demanded.

“Boneblights.” Juhg glanced around, spotting the public stables across the street. “They’re something old. Something from the days of the Cataclysm.”

Raisho backed away warily. “Mayhap not so old an’ not so far away today.”

“No,” Juhg agreed. “Not at all.”

Ahead of them, a Boneblight released its hold on the underside of an eave, spread its wings, and glided down to pounce on an unsuspecting dweller woman. She screamed and fought, but her efforts were to no avail because in the end the Boneblight snapped her neck like kindling. The creature dumped her body and immediately scouted around for more prey.

“Can they be killed, then?” Raisho asked, fending off the creature that confronted them. His cutlass blade rattled harmlessly against the Boneblight’s arms. The hardened soil that served as flesh, as well as the ridge of bone that stood out against the gaunt frame, made the thing nearly impervious to even a keen blade’s edge.

“Yes.” Juhg hurled himself forward, racing across the cobblestone street. “You’ll have a hard time killing them with blades. Follow me.”

Raisho feinted with his cutlass, then lifted a boot into his opponent’s face, driving the Boneblight back. He turned and raced after Juhg.

Senses alive, keeping track of as many things as possible, Juhg ran. A wagon rolled toward him, out of control as the horses panicked and the driver fought with the Boneblight that had landed in the bed behind him.

Catching a glimpse of a shadow slicing through the foggy air above him, Juhg reached back and caught the sleeve of Raisho’s cloak. “Here!” Pulling the young sailor after him, Juhg dove under the wagon, rolling and pulling his arms and legs in, barely missing the heavy, ironbound wheels as they clattered across the cobblestones.

The wagon shuddered, though, when the Boneblight that had glided down in pursuit of them crashed against the wagon’s bed. So great was the creature’s speed that it shattered against the wooden surface and rained down on Juhg in splintered bones bound together by frayed clothing as the wagon kept rolling forward.

Almost immediately, another Boneblight landed in the street in front of Juhg while the out-of-control wagon thundered away.

“Get up!” Juhg told Raisho. Quicker and smaller than the Boneblight, Juhg sidestepped the thing’s attack, got so close he smelled the moldy odor of death clinging to it, and stamped his right foot down on the side of the Boneblight’s right knee.

Bone snapped as the vulnerable joint gave way. Still, the Boneblight distended its massive jaws wide enough to envelop his head as it lunged at him. Juhg ducked again, knowing he would only barely escape—if at all. Then Raisho stepped in, caught the Boneblight behind the neck with his empty hand, and kicked the creature’s good leg out from under it.

The Boneblight crashed to the ground amid the clutter of the other attacker.

“Are ye all right?” Raisho asked with grim concern. He grabbed Juhg roughly by the hair on his head and tilted his head up so that he could better look at him.

Juhg yelped in pain at the coarse treatment. He didn’t have a choice about tilting his head back. “I’m fine.”

“Ye were lucky. I thought that thing done went an’ carved yer face off, I did. ’Twere a near thing, I’ll warrant.”

The Boneblight struggled to get to its one good leg.

Trapped by Raisho’s strength, Juhg stared up at his friend’s worried face, then above him to the foggy sky. For the first time, he realized that the heavy fog wasn’t a natural occurrence. The fog had easily masked the Boneblights’ approach.

But where have they come from? They can’t have flown across the Blood-Soaked Sea.

On the night the crew of
One-Eyed Peggie
had shanghaied Grandmagister Lamplighter, three Boneblights had arrived in Greydawn Moors stalking the human warder and the package Grandmagister Frollo had sent to the Customs House. Juhg had read about the events in the Grandmagister’s personal journals, and he’d heard the stories—grown much larger over the years in the telling—several times while in town or at the Yondering Docks.

If Grandmagister Lamplighter had ever learned what was in the package the human warder had carried away that night, he had never revealed it in his journals or to Juhg. The incident had remained in Juhg’s mind, but the Grandmagister had a tendency to ignore questions he didn’t want to answer.

Watching the cottony swirls of fog, Juhg became even more convinced that the fogbank that had rolled in across the outgoing tide to fill the town was an unnatural thing. And only a wizard could bring forth such a big change in the weather.

Fear plowed through Juhg’s heart in that moment, galvanized by the shapes of the winged Boneblights soaring through the sky. The creatures plopped in the middle of the streets, on victims running for their lives, or on the tops of buildings so they could better plan their next move. They were predators hunting those who lived in Greydawn Moors, and they were merciless in their pursuit.

“Juhg,” Raisho called.

Overcome by the stunned fascination that filled him, trying to accept the fact that Greydawn Moors—the most secret place in the whole world—was now a battlefield again in only a matter of weeks, Juhg couldn’t answer at first.

Growling impatiently, Raisho grabbed Juhg’s shoulder and pulled him away from the crippled Boneblight limping steadily toward them.

“You will be punisssshed,” the thing threatened in a loud, hoarse cry. Its ruby eyes glowed like liquid fire. “I will ssssuck the marrow from your bonessss.”

Raisho stood and whirled his cutlass, hacking at the thing brutally. The sword blows rocked the thing’s head but only served to slow it rather than stop it.

“How do ye kill these blasted things?” Raisho snarled as he pushed Juhg into motion.

“The heads,” Juhg yelped as he sprinted forward again. Another Boneblight dropped to the cobblestone street only a short distance away. “You have to smash the heads. You can break the body into pieces, but as long as the head is intact it will come after you.”

“The head, then.” Raisho assumed an attack position, then went at the Boneblight with all his skill and strength.

Juhg made for the stables, conscious of all the battles going on around him. Greydawn Moors was overrun with Boneblights now. The creatures raced through the streets, swooped through the air, and sat like gargoyles on rooftops while they picked out victims.

Dwarves boiled out of the meeting hall. Thankfully, quite a number of them had shown up there to stand in support of the Grandmagister as he faced the dweller committee. They broke into axe and anvil formations, taking the offensive, then going on the defensive, breaking their magical foes down. But the cost was high. Even as skilled at warfare as the dwarves were, the Boneblights were fearsome opponents.

Elven warders took up positions in the street as well. Most of them had magical weapons that had been handed down throughout families for generations, and they had limited spellcraft for defensive or offensive measures. As a general rule, the warders—elven and the few humans who had undertaken the training—fought alone. They weren’t in their native forests and open lands and the town was a foreign battlefield for them, but they stood up to the Boneblights as fiercely as the dwarven warriors and human sailors.

Many of the warders had animal companions, bound together by magic and the nature of the forest that surrounded Greydawn Moors. Since the whole island had been raised by magic and possibly made from the bodies of monsters, the magic that bound the creatures of the island was rumored to be stronger than that in many other places. Over on the mainland, where Lord Kharrion’s foul magicks still played havoc with the land, Juhg had heard that many animals no longer bonded with warders and that the Old Ways of the elves were fast disappearing.

Even as he reached the wide-open area of the public stables under the deep eaves where the wagons and horses were kept, Juhg saw a large brown bear rear up on its hind legs and snap its jaws over a Boneblight’s head. The creature’s skull went to pieces and the rest of its body shook loose and scattered across the cobblestone street. The bear roared, bleeding from three or four different wounds it had received from the Boneblight. An elf dressed in warder’s leathers lay in a crumpled heap between the bear’s feet.