The Last Dark (63 page)

Rime Coldspray stopped her. “Withhold, Giantfriend! Assail more distant threats. We will oppose those that come near!”

While Coldspray shouted, Latebirth and Bluntfist rushed toward the residue of the blazing tree.

Linden knew that the Ironhand was right. Still she lost herself in a moment of visceral terror. That monster was
close
. It could tear any Giant apart with one bite.

Jeremiah called out to her, but his voice seemed to come from the far side of the world. Roaring heat and viciousness muffled every human sound.

Yelling the Seven Words like curses, Linden flung the outrage of her heart at other
skurj
.

At least ten now howled beyond the river. Pustules in the dirt promised more. Joining the creature which Latebirth and Bluntfist faced, four had eaten their way underground to burst upward between the company and the watercourse. Linden started to hurt those four. Then she realized that they were not coming toward her. Instead they swarmed around the first monster which she had slain.

They were feeding. Eating their dead.

Just for an instant, she believed that she and the Swordmainnir had been granted a respite. But she was wrong. These monsters reproduced by devouring their dead, absorbing the energies of the fallen. Then they split. With sufficient nourishment, one became two. Two might become four—four might become eight—if one dead
skurj
supplied enough brimstone sorcery.

Horror rattled in Linden’s skull. It stung her whole body as if she had been caught in a rain of pebbles. While the monsters arrived faster than she and her companions could kill them, they could not be beaten.

They were arriving much faster.

She needed wild magic; needed a dozen staffs like hers; needed help.

There was no help.

And she did not have time to drop her Staff so that she could invoke her ring. Nor did she have the
krill
or any other catalyst which might ease her access to wild magic. Nor had she learned how to summon silver havoc instantly without aid. If she could have cleared her mind, concentrated her health-sense—

She was already foundering. Any pause now might be her last mistake.

Latebirth and Halewhole Bluntfist closed on the nearest creature from opposite sides. They endured the heat only because they were Giants. Latebirth lunged a thrust straight into the monster’s side. But her thrust was a feint. As the jaws of the
skurj
reached for her, she jumped back—and Bluntfist rushed in. Raging like the monster, Bluntfist swung a two-handed cut at its neck with all of her mass and her prodigious strength.

Unable to stop itself, the
skurj
fell onto a second lunge from Latebirth. Her longsword drove between rows of tearing fangs into the back of the creature’s throat; into the monster’s brain. It collapsed in convulsions.

Linden and Coldspray shouted a warning simultaneously, and Frostheart Grueburn charged; but they were too late.

Another
skurj
erupted from the ground almost directly beneath Latebirth’s feet. As if it had detected her scent while it chewed through the dirt, it knew exactly where to strike. She was hauling on her sword, pulling it free, when the monster emerged. In one fluid motion, it surged upward and
bit
—

Bluntfist sprang to Latebirth’s aid. Grueburn was only three strides away. As if he had forgotten that he was helpless against such foes, Stave followed Grueburn.

The monster’s jaws caught Latebirth below her arms, front and back. Fangs dug into her armor.

Latebirth!

The hardened stone might have preserved her, at least for a moment; long enough for Bluntfist and Grueburn to arrive. But her cataphract was broken on one side, damaged in battle on the way to Andelain. The monster ripped through it as if it were sandstone; tore her open from chest to spine.

Oh, Latebirth—

Her killer was still swallowing blood and organs when Bluntfist and Grueburn hacked its throat to shreds. Fresh gangrene stained the earth around them.

“Ware, Swordmainnir!” the Ironhand roared at the dismay of her comrades. “The
skurj
must not feed!”

They were Giants, familiar with cruel storms and bitter fighting. They knew how to set their griefs and fears aside.

Linden did not. Sick with distress, she sent a raving blast into the first creature that snagged her attention.

It had begun a leap over the Defiles Course. Half of its length was in the air as Linden’s fire poured between its jaws, ran down its gullet. With Earthpower and fury, she ignited an explosion inside the long body.

Then she had to hope that most of the monster would fall into the Defiles Course; that the river would prevent other
skurj
from feeding. She did not have time to watch. More and more of the horrific serpents had reached the near side of the valley, or had appeared there. Grueburn and Bluntfist whirled away to face another creature. Onyx Stonemage and Stormpast Galesend left their places with Jeremiah, pounded down the slope to challenge a new foe. Stave picked up Latebirth’s longsword. Wielding a weapon as tall as himself lightly, as if he had trained in its use for decades, he rejoined Rime Coldspray in front of Linden.

Behind the
skurj
, a torrent of Sandgorgons raced into the valley, speeding with the single-mindedness of spears toward Covenant and Branl.

Faint amid the tumult, Jeremiah cried, “Mom,
run
!
We have to run!
”

At every moment, more
skurj
and Sandgorgons arrived, an inundating wave of monsters. Perhaps Linden would have fled—perhaps the Giants would have—if any of them had believed for an instant that they could outrun the monsters. If any of them had been willing to forsake Covenant and Branl.

From the bottom of her heart, Linden brought up a howl of flame:

“Thomas!”

He and Branl had come a third of the way up the valley. There they stopped. Apparently they had decided to stand their ground. Branl moved somewhat apart to accommodate the reach of his sword. Covenant held the
krill
ready. “Hellfire,” he panted at the whimpering Feroce. “Hellfire.”

Deliberately he shifted his left hand so that his ring touched Loric’s gem. Then he uttered a shout of wild magic that halted the leading Sandgorgons as if he had
forbidden
them. A dozen paces away, they paused to study him.

Once long ago he had fought Nom to a standstill. He had not tried to kill the creature; but he had defeated it, forced it to submit—and to listen. He could do more. Yet his power then had not harmed Nom. It did not harm the Sandgorgons now. Their hides had some virtue against wild magic. They could withstand much of his ire. Against so many of them, he would have to unleash far more wrath, more than he could hope to control—

He might shatter the cliff above the Defiles Course, sealing his only way into the mountain.

With argent bright in his eyes and silver burning on his scarred forehead as if his mind had become white fire, he ordered the monsters away. In Nom’s name, and in his own, he commanded them to depart with their lives.

They did not acknowledge his authority. They were done with old respect and gratitude. Perhaps they now considered such emotions to be subservience. Instead they heeded
samadhi
—or
moksha
Raver speaking to them through
samadhi
’s remnants.

While more monsters sped down the valley, those watching Covenant and Branl changed their tactics. Rather than obeying their instincts, trying to batter or crush any obstacle, they showed that they could think.

First one of them crouched: then four more: then a score. One by one, they began hammering the ground with their forearms.

One was strong enough to cause vibrations that Covenant felt in spite of his numbness. Five made the earth under him shake, dislodged small stones, raised spouts from the dirt. A score—

He staggered as if he had been taken by vertigo. Flailing to stay on his feet, he had to yank his left hand away from the
krill
. For one heartbeat, two, three, Branl seemed untroubled, as immovable as the roots of a mountain. Then he was compelled to shift his feet, correcting his stance against the tremors.

As more Sandgorgons arrived, they seemed to understand what the nearer creatures were doing. Without hesitation, they grasped their advantage. Hurtling forward, they struck like albino lightning at Covenant and Branl.

Oh, they could
think
—

Yet they remained bestial.
Samadhi
’s mind was not natural to them, and it endured only in scraps of malevolence. Focusing on their foes, the Sandgorgons did not see a tentacle as thick as an ironwood unfurl itself from the Defiles Course; or they did not regard their peril.

In spite of his uncertain footing and Covenant’s imbalance, Branl wrenched his companion out of the way as the tentacle swept like a scythe at the charging creatures.

The Sandgorgons were mighty. The lurker was mightier. It roared as if the tumult of fog had been given voice. With one heavy arm, Horrim Carabal blocked the charge. Swift as a spasm, the tentacle coiled around several of the monsters. Then it heaved them into the air.

Howling and savage, the lurker snatched those Sandgorgons to the river and slammed them down; held them under the fouled water.

At the same time, a second tentacle stretched upward. Guided by the invocations of the Feroce, or by its own instincts, the lurker’s arm crashed like a felled tree onto the crouching Sandgorgons.

That blow scattered the monsters. It stopped the tremors.

In an instant, Branl recovered. He righted Covenant. Then he rushed into the confusion of the Sandgorgons, delivering cuts like a whirlwind of blades. Some of the creatures lost arms, or forearms. One lost a leg. Two fell dead before the others rallied against the sorcery of Lostson Longwrath’s flamberge.

Covenant heard Linden’s call then, but he had no chance to answer it. A screech from the lurker warned him. Turning, he saw the torn stump of the lurker’s first tentacle writhe above the water, lashing the air with gore. He saw Sandgorgons spring, unharmed, out of the Defiles Course.

Ah, hell.

“
Don’t stop!
” he yelled at the Feroce. “I know he’s hurt! Hurt is better than
dead
!”

Summoning himself, he wrapped both hands around the
krill
once more. Then he moved toward the river. With every step, he mustered more of his power. In his grasp, the dagger seemed to grow longer, brighter, keener. The physical blade remained unchanged, but his wild magic became a longsword implied by Loric’s theurgy.

He remembered the Seven Words. They were of no use to him. They bespoke Earthpower and Law. His force was of another kind altogether. He focused it with curses as familiar as leprosy.

Facing a group of Sandgorgons, with more on the way, he did not hesitate.

He had slashed one and pierced another before they appeared to realize that he had become dangerous. Suddenly chary, they retreated from the cut of wild magic.

Covenant’s world contracted until it contained only Sandgorgons. Somewhere at the edges of his marred vision, innominate shapes swirled in and out of the fog; but he had no time to recognize them. Praying that they were some manifestation of the lurker’s magicks—that Branl had not fallen—that Linden could contrive to preserve herself and Jeremiah and the Giants—he anchored himself on his argent blade and assailed the creatures in front of him.

His wife had cried out to him, but he had not answered. He had only one answer left: one answer—and no opportunity to try it. No way of knowing whether it would suffice.

The lurker’s remaining arm pounded at the Sandgorgons again. Again. Some lurched, apparently hurt. One crumpled and did not rise again. Most withstood the blows as if they lived for such tests of their puissance.

Impassive and lethal, Branl fought on. But his foes had changed their tactics again. He could no longer spin hacking and thrusting among them. Instead they backed away, gained a little distance. Then they spread out to surround him.

And from the mountainsides still more Sandgorgons plunged downward. They seemed numberless: a horde of havoc.

Higher up in the valley, Linden flung Earthpower like screams at the
skurj
. Her Staff sent out an unremitting barrage of flame, as black as death in the Lost Deep, and as extravagant as her struggle against Roger and the
croyel
under
Melenkurion
Skyweir. Theurgy that might have carved gutrock blasted monsters on all sides. Many she hurt, delayed, enraged. Some she slew. But they were creatures of lava, spawned in magma. They could shrug aside appalling quantities of her fire. And more came: so many that her every gasp filled her lungs with brimstone and putrescence.
Moksha
Jehannum must have brought every living
skurj
here from their former prison in the far north.

Her horror was gone. She had sweated it out in heat and fury. Spots of anoxia danced across her vision like burgeoning infections. The wood of her Staff bucked and recoiled as though it might break into splinters at any moment. Her pulse had become an undifferentiated stutter in her veins, too ragged and urgent for individual beats. Even Jeremiah’s sporadic shouts and warnings did not reach her. There was no room left in her for anything except Earthpower and
skurj
.

She was failing. For all her frenzy and desperation, her exertions did not suffice. The monsters far outnumbered her abilities. Even if she had been galvanized by the EarthBlood, as she had been under
Melenkurion
Skyweir, she would have been no match for the host surging against her.

Around her, her friends strove like demons against impossible odds. They fought in pairs, supporting each other: Stonemage and Galesend, Grueburn and Bluntfist. Cabledarm also had left Jeremiah. With Stave like a Giant at her side, she committed all of her strength to the fray. Exchanging feints and cuts, they wrought bloodshed among the monsters. Only Rime Coldspray stayed to ward Linden. Only maimed Cirrus Kindwind watched over Jeremiah.