The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (12 page)

They did as he ordered, although some hesitated to leave their place in front of the door of the great hall. Redegg slammed those doors shut and threw the bar, for all the good that would do against a creature strong enough to batter open the heavy southern gates.
 

“If you are not a soldier,” Tejohn called, “clear the yard! Give your defenders room to maneuver!”
 

Ordinary citizens began to move back toward the caravans, and those that would not move were dragged away.
 

There were still soldiers by the broken gate, some facing outward in case a second grunt came through, some guarding the first group’s back. “You! Form a double line beneath the archers’ position. Quick now!”

In the center of the yard, the grunt shoved its snout under the bloody bared rib cage of its victim. Still, it looked up often as the soldiers organized.
 

It doesn’t fear us.
That’s why it fed directly in the middle of the yard. It was taunting them.
 

A tiny, ruthless part of him urged him to slip away.
These
 
poorly trained spears would be the perfect distraction, and I have more important tasks ahead
.
 

No. Song would know what he did today, and he was not going to shame himself in front of the gods. Besides, he needed this pass to be in human hands when he returned. He
needed
it.
 

The grunt kicked the little corpse away from it, finished with that meal. It started scanning the courtyard for more victims, and Tejohn knew that if the creature’s hunger was slaked, it would start biting as many people as it could to spread its curse. There was no more time to muster the troops.
 

“VOLLEY!”
 

The grunt reacted to his call faster than the archers did. At the moment he shouted that word, the creature bounded to the side, leaping out of the path of the sheet of arrows. Only two archers, who were so slow their arrows did not loose with the others, came close--one stuck lightly into the creature’s hip and the other struck the ground between its feet.
 

It roared, and everyone in the courtyard fell back a step, even Tejohn. The Fire-taken thing had understood him. Could it speak the Peradaini language, or had it understood that one word the way a dog understood “fetch” or “stay”?
 

“Form up!” Tejohn shouted. The line of spears between the grunt and the town stretched all the way across the courtyard--a ten-year-old child couldn’t have slipped through--but many were still stepping backward. “Form up and ready for a pincer! Archers, loose in a sheet when I call ‘another’!”

The grunt turned toward Tejohn, and the terrible way it looked at him made him long for a spear. Glancing at the archers, he could see that they were only now readying their next shot. “Bend! Another!”

A second volley of arrows flew from the top of the wall, and this time the grunt did not have a chance to dodge them. It howled in agony, its back and left side bristling with arrows.
 

At least he knew the beast could not speak Peradaini. “Loose another when I say go! Spears! Stamp advance, with a pincer!”
 

The grunt turned toward the archers and roared at them. A small, shameful part of Tejohn was grateful that the creature had turned its attention elsewhere, but that only made him shout his next order all the louder: “Points! Shock line!”
 

The creature bounded toward the wall. The spears managed to brace their weapons against the ground but it did them no good.
Just like Third Splashtown. I should have remembered that a shock line was a failed tactic.
The grunt reached them in two great leaps. With a sweep of one claw, it batted six spearpoints aside, then lunged in to grab hold of a man.
 

It lifted him, screaming, and hurled him at the other spears who were bringing their weapons to bear. Then it leaped in among them, bowling them over with its tremendous size and speed. The line was broken and men fled in every direction. The archers on the walls fell out of ranks as well, sprinting along the top of the wall to the towers on either side. One or two tried to get off a last shot, but it was no use.
 

The grunt lifted up another soldier and swung him like a club at his fellows, and that impact of armored body against armored body made a sickening noise. “Stamp--” Tejohn began to yell, but his voice was drowned out by a chorus of war cries.

Three young men broke from the advancing stamp line and charged, screaming, toward the grunt’s back. The fellow in the middle had the lead on the others, and they made good speed for all their heavy shields, spears and cuirasses.
 

“Form up!” Tejohn shouted at them.
Never give an order you know will not be followed.
But he did it anyway, as futile as it was, because he wasn’t ready to give up on anything, ever. “Form up!”
 

The youths kept charging as if they couldn’t hear him. The grunt knocked down a pair of men and raked their backs with its claws, then it lifted one and threw it at the would-be heroes.
 

The body bowled over two of the men, scattering them and their spears. The third man rushed forward and hurled his spear; the grunt sidestepped it easily, then charged out into the middle of the yard again toward its new enemies.
 

“Stamp line! Pincer!” Tejohn shouted again, hoping the noise would distract the grunt from the three men it was about to tear apart. The soldiers were not stamping their feet--had not stamped even once, in fact--and the ends of the line were not closing in on the beast. Did they not know the most basic maneuvers?

He was about to shout orders for the archers to re-form, but they had vanished. They’d run into the towers at the end of the wall and had not re-emerged.
 

The spear-thrower did not even bother to draw his short sword. He turned and ran back toward the line. The grunt leaped onto him, bearing him to the ground and biting him hard on the shoulder. Dead. Whatever else the beast might do to him, that man was dead.
 

Then it turned back to the two it had knocked over. The man it had thrown at them lay broken on the gravel; the other two struggled to get to their feet. One man cried out as he shifted his leg; even from where he stood, Tejohn could see it was broken.

The grunt leaped onto the man with the broken leg, sank its jaws into his shoulder, then clubbed him aside. The last one, the youth who had led the charge, held up his shield and short sword defiantly.
 

The grunt leaped onto him, knocking him hard to the stony ground and pinning the shield low against his body. After it sank its teeth into him, it lifted him and worried him like a dog with a rag. The boy’s scream was shaken out of him, and he was thrown to the ground.
 

In Finstel lands, Tejohn had seen a much smaller blue grunt single-handedly defeat five spears with its uncanny speed and strength. What’s more, it had been content to bite its victims lightly. A small nip was enough to spread the curse, after all, so there was no need to be vicious.
 

But this creature, one of the grunts that had come through the portal in Peradain, fought with a viciousness that chilled him. It tore off limbs, broke bodies, ripped flesh. It wasn’t enough for it to simply defeat and infect humans with its curse. It had to break them, too. What’s more, the arrows sticking out of its body didn’t seem to slow it at all.
 

Tejohn was helpless. The archers had fled. The spears could not form a line and hold it, and neither could they do the most basic maneuvers. He watched as the massive grunt turned its attention to the line of spears and the people behind it. It didn’t roar. It didn’t have to. The soldiers’ courage had faltered, and their line came apart like wheat stalks before a flood.
 

The grunt crouched low to bound after them.
 

“Blessing!” Tejohn shouted. There was no point in shouting orders to the Twofin spears and bows, so he might as well try the enemy. “BLESSING! BLESSING!”
 

The grunt turned its attention toward him suddenly, its eyes wide. He had gotten its attention. He shouted the word again as he drew Snowfall’s sword. It turned toward him as he advanced across the yard away from the steps of the holdfast.
 

When it bared its long teeth, he thought of Laoni. He had not, in truth, ever really expected to succeed in his quest, nor to see his children again.
 

No matter. If this is my death, I welcome it.

The grunt, a creature that had just killed more than a dozen fighting men, charged at him.

Chapter 7

At almost the last moment, he thought again about how that final soldier had fallen.
His shield pinned to his hip.
The man been unprepared for the way the beast would leap up on him.
 

Tejohn had no time to think clearly or formulate a strategy. The grunt was nearly upon him.
I can not throw my strength against a grunt’s.
He lifted his shield high and, as the creature leaped on him, fell backwards.
 

He shrank himself as much as he could to protect his head and shoulders. When the beast hit him mid-fall, the momentum it added was astonishing. His shield slammed against his ribs at the same time the sharp gravel dug deep into his bare, lacerated back.
 

His vision went cloudy for a moment, but the pain kept him focused and he didn’t hesitate. He stabbed upward with his short sword, feeling feathered shafts scrape against his wrist. Great Way, but he needed all his strength to force the blade into the beast’s flesh. It was like trying to stab someone with a spoon.
 

The grunt shuddered and slid sideways just a bit. Tejohn gasped at the pain the beast’s shifting weight caused him, but it sharpened his senses, too. The metal rim of the shield where it pinned against his helmet blocked his vision, the beast reeked of offal, and he heard the grunt’s painful rattle. He couldn’t see it reach for his sword arm, but he felt it moving on top of him. Tejohn lowered his weapon and struck higher, directly into the grunt’s armpit.
 

The point ground against bone, and this time, the beast actually screamed. Song would remember that Tejohn actually laughed aloud to hear it. Then he felt the grunt pull his shield away from his face with irresistible power, exposing his head.
 

The thing’s hot breath blew through the eye and mouth slots in his helm; it smelled like iron, blood, and goat piss--then he felt its mouth on him. The ridiculous red comb twisted, rotating the helmet and covering his eyes. Stupid, Fire-taken ornamentation.
I should have stayed on my feet and died like a spear of the empire.
Not that he could see with the shield over his face anyway. Tejohn stabbed blindly again and again, but it was no use. The grunt’s jaws slowly, inexorably crumpled Snowfall’s oversized iron helm, and Tejohn had to squirm free of it or have his skull crushed.

He rammed the sword home one more time and, to his surprise, the grunt threw back its head and bellowed with pain and grief. Tejohn pushed against the blade with all his strength; the creature shifted away. He barely managed to keep hold of his sword.
 

The grunt rolled onto its side, back to him. Its breath was quick and shallow. When it tried to roll onto its stomach, he could see that its left foreleg--left arm?--hung useless behind it. Still, it managed to get up onto three trembling limbs and slowly shuffle away from him. Gray blood soaked the lilac-colored fur on its left side.
 

Fire and Fury, what would it take to kill this thing? Tejohn forced himself to sit up
Monument give me strength to endure the awful pain in my side and back.
He pushed the point of his sword into the gravel to help get to his knees, then he was on his feet, somehow. His shield hung on his left arm in two pieces. The grunt had cracked it down the middle. He let it fall away.
 

The thing was just a few paces away, crawling toward the village. It had a stubby little tail as long as his hand; he hadn’t noticed that before. Tejohn lifted the sword and looked at the bloody point. The creature was terrifying even on the verge of death. He didn’t want to get any closer.
 

Unfortunately, his short sword was the only weapon he had. Where was his spear? He never went into battle without one; had it shivered? He flicked the sword, spraying the creature’s awful gray blood onto the ground. No matter. He had to use the tool he had.
 

Tejohn glanced at the grunt’s rib cage and froze. Were those wounds closing? They were. The ragged edges of the cuts in the beast’s side were slowly, slowly closing.
 

Rocks crunched beneath his boots as he rushed toward the creature. It growled and, with what might have been its last burst of strength, spun toward him, jaws gaping. The move was so sudden that Tejohn struck with a last panicky rush of will and muscle, stabbing the point directly into the creature’s throat. The iron burst through the fur at the back of its neck and it fell away from him, yanking his weapon from his hand.