The Rite (18 page)

The same blast of fire that had burned him had felled several ogres. The spewer responsible crawled forward on its seething, semi-liquid base, jaws gaping to tear the life from the helpless giantkin.

Will sprang between the creature and its intended victims. His curved hornblade slashed back and forth, splitting the creature’s hide. It snapped at him, three heads striking at almost the same instant, and he dodged frantically.

“Help me, charlatan!” he cried.

Pavel scrambled forward, rattled off a prayer of healing, and his hand glowed red. He pressed it against the grimy, mole-studded, sour-smelling flesh of one of the fallen ogres, and the creature groaned and stirred.

“Get back in the fight!” Pavel told it.

He scuttled on to heal a second one, wasting precious moments before realizing the creature wasn’t just incapacitated but dead. He prayed over a third, a female, and waking, she cringed and threw her forearm over her eyes, as if the spewer’s fiery breath was even then leaping at her.

The ogres Pavel had healed started picking themselves up. He darted forward to stand beside Will and drove in, striking with his mace, and jerking himself out of the paths of the gnashing fangs that leaped at him from every angle. The spewer stretched one of its necks like dough, arching it up over his head, and Pavel never even realized it until its fangs pierced his back. He lunged forward, and though the abomination ripped away his manta ray cloak and part of his brigandine, perhaps it hadn’t savaged his shoulder too badly. •

He struck the spewer another blow, and it responded by spitting jets of pearly frost. The cold pierced him to the core, and he reeled. A dragon head reached for him, and he feared he couldn’t recover his balance in time to fend it off.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to. The female ogre he’d healed rushed the spewer and chopped at its extended neck with her flint axe. The blow nearly severed the head, and at last the foul thing hesitated.

“Now!” Will shouted. “Kill it now!”

He, Pavel, and the ogres lunged in, cutting, stabbing, and bashing. The spewer collapsed, seeming not to topple so much as dissolve.

Pavel pivoted toward the remaining guardian just in time to see it spit flares of crackling lightning at Yagoth and its other opponents.

“Now that one!” the human gasped. “Let’s finish this!”

He and his allies swarmed on the spewer. After a moment, it opened its jaws, and the cleric poised himself to dodge another blast of its breath weapon. What gushed out, though, was blood. The spewer shuddered, then slumped down as its fellow had done.

Pavel sighed, relaxing, momentarily dull-witted with relief. When Yagoth yanked the spear from the spewer’s corpse, hefted it, and cocked it back, he almost failed to register the significance.

Almost, but not quite.

“Will!” he bellowed.

The halfling had his back turned, but heeding Pavel’s warning, he tried to spin away from the spot where he was standing. But the long, heavy lance was already streaking through the air, and for once, Will’s agility wasn’t enough to snatch him out of harm’s way. The spear slammed him onto the floor.

Pavel sprang toward his friend.

Snarling, crimson eye blazing, Yagoth snatched a dead ogre’s war club from the floor and swung it in a horizontal arc.

Pavel tried to duck, but was too slow. The weapon smashed into his brow, and the world went black.

As the spear hurled Will off his feet, he was already angry with himself. He’d assumed the ogres meant to betray their civilized partners eventually, yet Yagoth had still caught hint by surprise. lie hadn’t expected the attack to come before Pavel identified the tablets containing the ancient elven secrets, or a second after they’d all finished fighting a difficult battle together, for that matter.

Which meant Yagoth had chosen his moment well. As a former outlaw, to whom duplicity had been a way of life, Will felt a certain grudging admiration.

Mostly, though, he was terrified. He twisted his head to see if the spear had dealt him a mortal wound. No, probably not, unless he simply bled out by and by. The weapon’s broad flint head had driven so deep into his shoulder that the tip was sticking out the other side, but it hadn’t pierced his heart or lung.

It had to come out, though, and right away—before the ogres came to finish him off. He couldn’t fight or maneuver with the long, heavy lance sticking out of his body, so he gripped the shaft with both hands, feeling how little strength remained in the one below his damaged shoulder, and pulled.

Until that moment, the injury hadn’t really hurt, but then the pain jolted him. He gasped and let go of the weapon. When he jerked his hands away, the spear bobbed slightly, producing a second flare of agony.

Footsteps slapped against the floor. The ogres were closing in.

He made himself take hold of the lance once more. Gritting his teeth, he dragged on it as hard as he could. An ogre with a face so studded with warts as to leave hardly any clear space between leered at him and raised its club.

The bludgeon hurtled down and the spear pulled free at the same instant. To avoid the giantkin’s attack, Will had to roll onto his crippled shoulder. It hurt so badly he blacked out for a moment. Yet his body must have kept moving even while his mind was absent, for when he came to his senses, he was on his feet.

Praying that Pavel was weaving some mighty ogre-slaughtering spell, he cast about for his friend. Alas, the human sprawled motionless in the pool of blood seeping from his head.

Will was on his own. His sword arm dangled uselessly, not that he was currently in possession of his hornblade

anyway. Filthy with gore, the blade lay out of reach where he’d dropped it when the spear pierced him.

He realized he had no hope of killing the surviving ogres, or of getting Pavel out of there. He’d need all his skill, and the blessing of every hailing god, just to escape by himself.

The ogres advanced, trying to encircle him. He drew his dagger with his off hand and faked a lunge to the right, then darted left instead. The trick caught the giantkin by surprise, and he slashed a hamstring as he sprang past one of his foes. The ogre fell down howling.

Will grinned, but knew that one lucky stroke meant little. Soon, his strength would start to fail. He had to be out the door before that happened. He drew a deep, steadying breath and advanced toward the ogres barring the way.

A giantkin aimed its spear to jab at him, and in that instant, Will sprang between its legs. That flummoxed his foes, and he was able to run another stride before two more ogres shambled into striking distance. He sidestepped so that one of his opponents was blocking the other, jumped above the low sweep of the greatclub that would otherwise have shattered his legs, and scrambled three steps nearer to the exit.

Yagoth snarled words of power, and magic filled the air with a carrion stink. Will’s muscles seized up. Caught in mid-stride, he pitched off balance and cracked his head against the floor.

He knew from watching Pavel cast similar spells that the paralysis was in his head. He could break free by exerting his will. Yet his struggle to do so produced only trembling.

An ogre loomed over him.

Brandobaris, help me! Will prayed.

Perhaps the Master of Stealth was listening. In any event, Will had control of his body once again. He flung himself down or the blade would have sheared off his head. The flint blade crashed and struck sparks against the floor.

Will scrambled up and on, zigzagging unpredictably, making the ogres flounder into one another’s way, using their hugeness against them. Yagoth snarled another incantation, and for an instant, Will’s stomach squirmed with nausea, and dizziness tilted the floor beneath his feet. But then the riirse lost its grip on him, and a second after that, he reached the door. He plunged through and ran down the corridor.

The ogres scrambled after him. What had been a kind of deadly dance became a race, and no doubt they expected to win. Their legs, though stunted in proportion to their height, were nonetheless longer than his.

But if he could stay ahead of them for long enough, he hoped to prove them mistaken. It depended on whether they, in their fury, had forgotten about the trap protecting the hallway. If so, they’d tread on the triggers, and suffer the consequences.

It seemed a good notion. Until the shadows closed in.

The only light in all the crypts shined from Pavel’s enchanted torch, which Will had set down to fight Sammaster’s abominations. With every stride, the glowing stick receded farther behind him. By the time he reached the trap, the corridor would be so dark that he wouldn’t be able to distinguish the safe tiles from the others.

He felt a surge of despair, and strained to stifle it. He still had a chance. He’d studied the trap already. The layout was in his memory. If he was as cunning a thief as he’d always reckoned himself to be, he should be able to set his feet properly whether he could see the marks on the tiles or not.

Just enough faint illumination remained to indicate where the black-and-white pattern began. He sprinted out onto the tiles without hesitation, springing from one spot to the next.

Rapidly narrowing his lead, the ogres followed.

A thrown knife whizzed past Will’s head. Then the corridor shook and groaned as counterweights dropped behind the walls, and hidden mechanisms lurched into operation. He ran on, and sensed more than saw something leaping to seal the space ahead of him. He didn’t think he’d stepped on a trigger. He hadn’t felt a tile hitch down beneath his weight. But one of the ogres had, and evidently, when anybody hit one, the whole enormous trap served up all the death it had to offer, all at once.

Somehow Will managed to run even faster. Metal clashed behind him. When he was certain he’d passed beyond the array of tiles, he risked a glance back.

It was so dark that it was hard to tell exactly what had happened at his back. But it seemed as if enormous blades had sprung from the hidden notches in the wall, to stab or slice through anything in their path. Ogres hung impaled, or lay maimed and dismembered beneath the sharp metal. The smell of their blood filled the air. Those who still clung to life whimpered and shrieked.

But one voice roared and cursed in rage instead of pain. Yagoth was apparently unharmed. Fortune had placed him at the rear of the pursuit, where he was able to stop short when the mantrap began the slaughter.

Will regretted the shaman’s survival, but at least the blades still blocked the corridor. That would give him the chance to complete his escape.

If he could stay upright a while longer. Unfortunately, he felt as if the strength was draining out of him.

He had a vial of healing elixir. He would have drunk it before, except that the giantkin hadn’t allowed him the opportunity. He fumbled the little pewter bottle out of his belt pouch and poured the lukewarm, tasteless liquid down his throat.

It helped a little; steadied him and made him more alert. It didn’t close the wound in his shoulder, though. In fact, with his mind clearer, the gaping, ragged puncture throbbed more painfully than before.

He crept onward, through absolute darkness. At least he’d deactivated all the other mantraps. He didn’t have to worry about setting them off, though getting lost was a different matter. If he blundered down the wrong hall…

No, he told himself firmly, he wouldn’t. He was a burglar, proficient at navigating in the dark and holding the floor plan of any building he explored fixed in his memory forever after. He’d find his way.

Footsteps shuffled, and deep, harsh voices growled from ahead of him. Apparently some of the ogres Yagoth had left aboveground had heard their chieftain shouting, and were coming to investigate.

Will was adept at hiding, but he wouldn’t be able to use his skill if, blind as he was, he couldn’t locate any cover. As the giantkin drew nearer, he groped along the wall, and finally found a shallow niche with some sort of many-armed statue in it.

He squeezed in beside the sculpture, and the ogres tramped by seconds later, close enough for him to smell the sour stink of them, though he still couldn’t make them out in the gloom.

Not that he cared. What mattered was that they strode past without noticing him.

Will skulked on, and spotted light shortly thereafter, though, if he hadn’t spent the past few minutes in utter blackness, he might not have recognized it as such. The feeble gleam spilled through abroad rectangular doorway and down the flight of stairs connecting the vaults and the temple above. A pair of ogres slouched silhouetted in the space, where Yagoth had evidently instructed them to stand watch.

Will placed one of his last remaining skiprocks in his warsling. He couldn’t use the weapon as adroitly with his off hand but he was going to have to try. He spun it and let the enchanted stone fly.

The missile cracked against the head of the hulking guard on the left, and the ogre fell backward. The skiprock should also have rebounded to strike the other giantkin, but it missed. The creature oriented on Will, hefted its axe, and charged down the stairs.

Will yelled and ran up toward his foe, stopped abruptly for just an instant, then raced on. The brief pause was supposed

to throw off the ogre’s aim and timing, and maybe it did, because the creature’s weapon whizzed past Will’s head. He threw himself against the ogre’s shins.

With only a halfling’s height and weight, he could never have knocked such a huge foe off balance if it weren’t in motion. But the ogre was, and its own momentum enabled him to trip it. It flipped over him and tumbled to the bottom of the stairs.

Unfortunately, the impact also blasted pain through his crippled shoulder. For a moment, black spots swam through his vision, and he felt consciousness slipping away. He fought to hold on, and succeeded somehow.

Below him, the ogre bellowed. He supposed that was better than if it was climbing up after him, but if the clamor summoned other members of the troupe, it might still be enough to put an end to him. He scurried on to the top of the stairs.

The temple proper was an enormous hall filled with grotesque demonic statues and altars equipped with fetters placed to hold a human-sized sacrifice. Except for the hulk the skiprock had felled, no other ogres were in view. They were still in awe of the place, and none had entered but those Yagoth had ordered inside.