The Shadow of Ararat (29 page)

The nearest one was looking over his shoulder at the doorway. His eyes widened as she rushed in. Her short-sword speared through his half-open mouth, cracked its point through the back of his skull, and then whipped back out like a bloody snake. He was still sliding sideways out of his chair, his spinal cord cut neatly in half and his mouth in ruins, when she ran past the man seated on the right side of the table and rotated her torso. The blade, spattering blood and white bits of bone across the room, rotated with her and sheared through the throat of the second man, carrying him and his chair over backward to sprawl across the floor with a clatter of wood.

The third man had sprung up out of his campstool and had lunged toward the spears on a wooden rack next to the rear door of the guardroom. Thyatis, nearly turned all the way to her right by the follow-through of her swordstroke, plucked a throwing knife from the bandoleer at her belt with her free right hand, cocked and threw in one smooth, effortless motion. The heavy-tipped blade sank into his back below his right shoulder, hilt deep, even as two black-fletched arrows, fired through the doorway, punched into the side of his chest from the opposite angle. He crashed into the wooden frame holding the spears and other gear. It collapsed with a great clatter of wood and metal.

Thyatis leapt over the body at her feet and to the far door. It was bolted on her side, which gave her pause for a thousandth of a second, and then she slammed the bolt open and rolled out into the passageway beyond. It was dark, and broad, with a musty smell. She glanced each direction and saw and heard nothing. The two Turks scuttled through the doorway behind her and took up positions facing each direction. Thyatis stepped back inside the guardroom.

Anagathios and one of the Greeks were dragging the bodies of the dead guardsmen out of the room as she entered. Nikos had cleaned off his strangling loop and had slid the copper tube back into the holder slung over his back.

Anything?
he signed.

No,
she answered, also in finger-talk,
a crossways corridor, empty and dark. We must be in the cellars of the building. Take your team and find the roof or a window. Alert the Imperials and then head for the fighting. I'll take my team into the main part of the building and find the Persian agent.

Nikos nodded and then gathered the three Greeks, Anagathios, and Ulfgar to him. After a moment of silent discussion they faded off into the corridor outside and headed off to the left. Thyatis took stock of the room and then joined her team, comprised of the two Turks, a Yueh-Chu exile named Timur, and a hulking Goth named Fredric.

Can you smell a kitchen?
she signed at Jochi.

The Turk smiled broadly, revealing a mouth filled with snaggly yellow teeth under a lank black mustache. He pointed to the right and up.

Let's go,
she gestured. The two Turks led off, their bows out and arrows on the string. Thyatis followed, with Timur behind her and Fredric at the rear. They trotted up the corridor.

This time, when Khiron dragged the foul-smelling leather bag off Dwyrin's head, they were not in the study. Instead they stood on a raised wooden deck that overlooked a garden of pale-white flowers and dark bushes with long narrow leaves. Above them arched a roof of iron slats with mottled glass between each support. A huge yellow-green moon wavered down through the glass. A heady scent filled the air. Dwyrin knelt on a thick rug. Sitting in wicker-backed chairs were the Bygar, the whiskered man, and the dark thing in flesh. Again, Khiron stood just behind Dwyrin and to one side, the fingers of one hand resting lightly on the boy's shoulder.

The remains of a meal lay between the Bygar and Whiskers. Lord Dahak had only a partially full glass of wine in front of him. The smell of roast lamb, chickpeas, fresh bread, and resinated wine tickled at Dwyrin's nose. His hunger began to wake up, clawing at his stomach. It grumbled, loudly, and Whiskers laughed at the sound.

The Easterner turned to the Bygar. "Ai, friend, do not deliver merchandise in such poor condition! At least a scrap of bread for the boy. He is thin enough already."

The Bygar smiled and made a little half bow in his chair.

"I fear that my servant may have forgotten his charge," said the Walach.

Khiron knelt on one knee, his head low. "Forgive me, master, I did forget. Shall I call for the servants to bring him a meal?"

The Bygar glanced at Dahak, who was observing Dwyrin with lidded eyes. The Eastern sorcerer looked back and shrugged. It was of little import to him. The Valach nodded to Khiron, saying, "Yes, the boy should eat before he leaves my house for his new home."

Dwyrin quailed at the implication and sank lower on the rug. Fear filled his mind at the thought of departing from even the minimal sanctuary of Khiron's chambers to be with this... Creature. Dahak smoothed back his long hair and stood, pacing over to the Hibernian. Khiron slunk away at the approach of the Easterner and then went off through the moonflowers and bushes to find a servant. The sorcerer ran his hand just over Dwyrin's head, and the closeness of his touch was like standing in a frost-gale. Dwyrin shuddered and collapsed into a tightly curled ball on the floor.

Dahak laughed, and the moonflowers wilted and closed at the sound of his voice. "Your pardon, Bygar. I did not mean to spoil the display of your flowers."

The Easterner bowed to his host. While he did so, there was a sudden fall of light through the windows in the roof. White and orange sparkled in the sky for a moment, and the shadows danced across the deck. The Bygar looked up with puzzlement, but Whiskers stood quickly and dragged his cape, hat, and a longsword encased in battered leather wrapping from behind his chair.

"An Imperial signal rocket," Whiskers rasped as he jammed the hat onto his head. "It is time to leave, my lords."

Dahak spun slowly around on his heel, his brow furrowed in mild concentration. Dwyrin was forgotten at his feet.

"There is nothing outside..." he began, then he rocked back as a black-fletched arrow sunk into his chest with a meaty
thwack
. For just an instant the Easterner stared down in puzzlement at the long shaft of the bolt, his hand raised to touch it. Then two more feathered into him, and he fell backward with a grunting sound.

Dwyrin rolled away from the falling sorcerer and off the decking. He fell heavily into a moonflower bush by the side of the deck, crying out as thorns in the underbrush tore at him. There was a sound of running feet as a group of men charged out of the dimness. The Bygar shouted an alarm and then vaulted over the back of the deck and into the darkness of the garden. Whiskers, on the other hand, snatched up his cloak and spun it around his left arm. His right held a gleaming three-foot blade that had seemingly materialized there. He too shouted and sprang down the steps of the deck and into the midst of the charging men.

To Whiskers' great surprise, his lopping overhand stroke was parried by a flicker-bright length of steel in the hands of the lead attacker. He danced back as the assailant, dressed from head to toe in black, lashed out at him, nearly catching the elbow of his left arm. He lunged back in and for a moment the air was a flutter of steel in the moonlight and the spark of clanging arms. The other two attackers split off, the largest bounding up onto the deck itself, while the other dashed left into the brush of the garden.

Dwyrin rolled over and clawed at the thin metal chain around his neck. It flashed cold and seemed to constrict around his throat, but this time he knew what would happen and fought to open his mind to the othersight. Then, suddenly, there was a huge booming sound and the assailant who had charged up onto the deck was blown backward by a gout of white-hot lightning. The attacker sailed back across the garden and smashed into a wooden wall, breaking the timbers even as every bone in the man's body was crushed to a pulp of blood and bone meal. The nimbus of the lightning stroke hung in the air, etching a blast that arced across the great chamber.

On the deck, Dahak staggered to his feet, a halo of blue-white sparks leaping from his flesh and the remains of his clothing. The wooden shafts of the three arrows caught fire and smoked as they were consumed. Thunder boomed and echoed through the enclosed space like the rampage of the gods. High above, the glass panes shattered as the shock wave of the blast struck them and they came raining down in a thousand fragments.

Dwyrin had been blown back as well, but the rush of power in the garden had torn at the ban around his neck as well and now he ripped it from his neck. His othersight flooded in and the great space of the room was a maelstrom of unleashed energies. The creature Dahak stood at the center of a vortex of rippling lighting and fire. The lines of force that crisscrossed the great city began to give up their power to the Easterner and a wall of lightning suddenly rushed out from him.

To Thyatis, the world suddenly went pure white and there was a sound so large that it smashed into her like a wave. Her sword fight with the whiskered man was forgotten as she was flung backward into the ornamental pool of the garden. The foreigner was blown forward too, and he tumbled into the shallow water beside her. Distantly, part of Thyatis' brain was screaming
sorcerer, sorcerer!
Still stunned, she stared at the ceiling above her in amazement as the thousands of glass fragments that had been raining down into the garden were thrown back into the sky like tiny comets. The wooden walls of the garden chamber caught fire.

Dwyrin staggered up, the pearly white of a Shield of Athena glittering in the air around him. The powers uncorked in the room were flooding into him as well, for he had no training to hold them out. Instinctively his mind grasped at the flames and the burning red torrent that surged in the earth under his feet. Fire lit from his hands and he turned sideways to throw it. Like a live thing, it leapt from his hands to tear at the flickering sphere of lightning around the creature hiding in human flesh.

Dahak staggered as a white-hot bolt of flame savaged the lightning wall he had raised around himself. He whirled and saw through the inferno that the fire-bringing power in the boy was running wild. Desperately the Easterner drew down the latent energy in the stormclouds hanging over the city and wove a tighter wall of defense before him. The building was fully aflame now, and choking smoke was filling the garden. In the distance, there were more screams and the sound of fighting. Dahak cursed and cast around for his companion. The Boar was crawling away from the firestorm, his sopping-wet cloak thrown over his body.

Three arrows suddenly flared into ash in front of Dahak, burned to a crisp by the flames raging against the lightning wall. More of the attackers were coming and trying to bring him down.
Enough,
he swore at himself,
we must leave.
He summoned wind and suddenly rose into the air.

Thyatis, who had scrambled out of the pool even as the wash of flames from the maelstrom around the deck swept across it, bolted for the doorway to the kitchens. Jochi and the other Turk were there, firing their bows as quickly as they could into the raging fire and lightning storm behind her.

"Save it," she barked at them as she dashed through the door. "No arrow will get through that."

The roof above them groaned and Thyatis realized that the entire building was now afire.

"Out! Out!" she shouted at the two Turks. "Get everybody out of here."

Behind her, there was a terrible roar and the roof above the garden collapsed in a gout of flame, coming down with a crash. Dust and smoke billowed out of the door, and Thyatis and the remainder of her men fled into the hallway.

Dahak soared through the storm clouds, ringed by thunder and the ghosts of lightning. Power burned in him, his body failing, ravaged by the forces it conducted. The Boar, clutched close in his wiry arms, screamed as the electrical surges that coursed through Dahak's body tore at his nervous system. Below them the house of the Bygar collapsed in a great pyre of flame. Smoke and soot billowed up hundreds of feet to lick at the low clouds. The streets around the old brick building were swarming with Imperial guardsmen, firemen, and the citizens of the neighborhood. Rain had begun to fall, but bucket brigades were in full force, trying to save the warehouses on either side of the old mansion.

Dahak cared nothing for this, bending all of his will to reaching safety on the far side of the Propontis. They hurtled low over the wavetops of the waterway. The sorcerer could barely make out the far shore. The last spark of static electricity fled him, and for a moment the two of them rushed through the night air, then the dark waters suddenly snatched up at them, catching Dahak's trailing foot. The water was icy cold and a sharp shock as it smashed into them, then swallowed them up. The sorcerer straggled in the surging water for a moment, then consciousness left him and there was only the weight of the Boar, dragging him down.

Dwyrin sat on a narrow stone bench in a narrow little hallway, fidgeting. He picked at the scabs on the side of his face and his lower arms. The rosebush had torn him up pretty badly when he fell off the decking in the garden room. The Illyrian, Nikos, who was sitting on his left, nudged him to keep still. To his right, Timur, who seemed to be Turkish or Sarmatian, was sleeping, or pretending to sleep. The hallway was hot and filled with clerks, soldiers, and couriers, who pushed past the three sitting on the bench. Dwyrin tugged at the bandage over his right ear. It itched.

The last thing Dwyrin had seen in the house of the Bygar had been the blossoming flame of his own fire-cast raging against the swirling blue-white wall of lightning. The voice of the Eastern sorcerer had been huge, like a thunderstorm filling the sky, but then there had been fire and smoke. Strong arms, wiry and corded with muscle, had scooped him up and dragged him out of the burning building. Dwyrin had passed out, his throat filled with the bite of woodsmoke. He had woken in a crowded barracks, lying on a thin pallet of straw behind a great heap of barrels. Overhead, a series of stone ribs held up a soot-stained brick ceiling. An evil face with sallow skin, pinched eyes, and long, greasy, mustaches had been crouched over him. Dwyrin had stared back in astonishment, but the man had smiled and given him bread, cheese, and weak wine.