Worldbinder (25 page)

Kan-hazur crouched in the corner, pondering his words. Daylan had never expected to have to try to convince her to leave. But the wyrm that fed upon her soul was a contrary thing. It shunned reason, trust, and compassion.

He suddenly realized that perhaps he needed to manipulate her in ways that she understood—fear, greed, shame. But to do so would violate every principle of the order that he lived by. Gentleness, loving kindness, gentle persuasion—those were the means that he was allowed to use in such circumstances.

He chose gentle persuasion. “I have a question, princess. You say that the purpose of life is to master humility. But once that is done, what have you gained?”

She glared at him. “Once you realize that the universe is a cold, uncaring bitch, it means that you have only one choice in life—to fight for what you want. It forces you to live by self-determination, and that is the mother of all virtues.”

Daylan nodded. “I, too, value self-determination, and see it as a fertile ground from which virtues may grow. So, I have to wonder: If you are resolved to lead a self-determined life, how is that to be done here in this cell? Are you going to sit here and die where King Urstone’s men have placed you? That doesn’t sound like self-determination to me. It sounds as if you are their pawn. Or would you choose instead to go back and claim your empire, even if it means that you must fight your own father for it?”

She glared at him. At last she climbed to her feet. Daylan offered her his hand, but she rejected it.

“I will not take my empire because you give it to me,” she growled. “I will take it because I
can.
You have
arranged my release for your own reasons, and I will owe you nothing.”

Daylan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me which evil wyrmling rules the earth. You’re all much the same.”

Still, she followed him out of the cell.

In the torture chamber, Daylan found a ragged tunic beside a rack. Someone had torn it off a prisoner before flogging him. The tunic was overlarge, but it would have to do.

They climbed the stairs stealthily and found a single guard on duty. He was sitting at a table, snoring loudly. In one hand he clutched a finely gilded wine bottle as if it were a lover. Obviously, the bottle was a gift from the king.

Daylan Hammer and Princess Kan-hazur unlocked the prison door, and were unleashed upon the world.

    25    

They’re going to kill you, Alun thought as he ran in the dawn light. Watch your back in this battle.

Alun raced along the uneven highway to Cantular, hulking warriors both ahead and behind. The road had become a ruin since the change. The once-smooth highway, paved with stones four feet thick, was now broken and uneven. The roots of great oaks had thrust up through the stone, and old streambeds cut through it.

So Alun watched his feet as he jogged. There was little else to see. A summer’s fog left the vale gauzed in white. Trees came out of the mist as he passed.

There was only the heavy pad of the warrior’s feet, the clink of bone armor, and the wheezing of breath.

Alun’s legs still ached from yesterday’s run. But he covered the uneven ground well enough. Only so often would someone shove him from behind, shouting, “Move along, maggot!” or some other such insult.

He could not hear well with his helm. It was made for a bigger man, and fit him ill. As a child, Alun had played soldier and worn wooden buckets on his head that fit him better. The armorer had passed the bone mail and weapons out at dawn. The armor had been brought here ahead of the war party, secreted in a cave. The bone armor that Alun wore was carved from a world wyrm. The older it got, the lighter it became, but it was supposed to be tougher than a bear’s hide.

Alun bore an ax into battle. Once again, it was too large to feel right in his hand. But it had a big spike on one side, and another at the end, and he imagined that he could pound a spike into a wyrmling’s knee if he had to.

Alun peered ahead and behind, searching for Connor or Drewish. They were the ones who would most likely put a spear in his back. But he caught no sight of them.

So he ran, grateful that he only had to run. The troops had been cut into two divisions. Three hundred men had set out upriver at the crack of dawn to swim across the flood. They would take the fortress on the far side.

Six hundred ran with him now, hearts pumping, each of the warriors seemingly lost in private thoughts.

“Don’t look so down,” a soldier said at Alun’s left.

He glanced over, saw a large soldier, an older man, perhaps in his forties. Alun recognized him. He’d come to the kennels at times to bring the dogs in after a hunt. Alun couldn’t recall his name.

“First battle?” the soldier asked.

“Yeah,” Alun said. He’d wanted to nod, but he didn’t want to look all out of breath.

“Just remember, they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

“Really?” Alun said. He couldn’t imagine it.

“Nah,” another soldier behind them laughed. “He’s having you on. They’re wyrmlings, damn it, and you’re just the scrapings on their boots.”

Greeves—that was the man’s name. Greeves laughed too, and Alun found himself laughing just a bit. It felt good to laugh, knowing that you might die.

“Just remember, keep yourself hunched low,” Greeves said. “Don’t come at the enemy head-on. Veer to the right or the left. And when you lunge in for a stab, don’t aim high. Pick a low target—a kidney or their knees. Then leap back. Got it?”

They raced on through the thick fog.

There was sudden shouting up ahead, troops jostling. Alun was in the rearmost third of the division. Suddenly he saw the High King and a dozen warlords off to the side of the road, peering ahead. Connor and Drewish stood at the king’s back, and Alun peered at them fearfully, afraid that they would follow him, that they would slide a blade between his ribs in the heat of the battle.

He stumbled, tripping on the heel of one of the soldiers in front, and then he realized that a gray shadow loomed above them all. They had reached the fortress. They had seemingly reached it in an instant.

The ring of metal, the cries of dying men suddenly came loud, echoing down from the stone walls. Alun was startled to find the battlefront so close ahead. He pounded along the road, and the soldiers beside him broke into song:

Suddenly they were in a seeming canyon, walls rearing high above them on either side—the fortress. A heavy war dart came hurtling from the tower above, clanked against a man’s helmet, and bounced away. Alun glanced up at the crenellated tower, tried to see the wyrmling that had thrown it, but archers along the street sent up a rain of arrows and the wyrmling dove for cover.

And then he saw his first bodies, human bodies, men of the Warrior Clan littering the roadside—spears and arrows in them. And then he was rushing beneath an arch, and there were huge doors that had been battered down, and Alun raced into a courtyard.

Everyone but him seemed to know where to go. Soldiers to the left fanned out to the left, those to the right went right. Alun couldn’t see any sign of battle, but he heard cries in the mist all around him.

He hesitated.

“Out of the way!” a soldier shouted, shoving him aside.

A black arrow whizzed out of the fog, plunked into the neck of a fellow behind. Alun whirled, saw the man stagger back in shock, pull the arrow free. Blood gushed from the wound, but it wasn’t much, and he looked at Alun and laughed, “I’ll be all right.” A second arrow plunged into the man’s chest.

Alun decided that it was safer to be anywhere but here.

A huge warrior went charging past him, shouting a battle cry and bearing an ax in either hand, and Alun decided: I want to be behind that monster!

He gave chase, and soon he saw the warrior, tearing through a dark doorway ahead, his arms swinging like mad. A pair of wyrmlings blocked his way. They were larger than the human warrior, but they fell back before the onslaught, and Alun went racing into the building.

His warrior was ahead, across the room, doing battle at another doorway.

The dead littered the floor all around, both human and wyrmling. Apparently the wyrmlings had fought to secure the doorway, and the battle had gone back and
forth. Alun glanced behind him, afraid that Connor or Drewish might have followed.

Someone cried, “Help!” and Alun peered into the shadows. A man was down, blood gushing from a wound to his chest. Alun moved to give aid.

He heard a growl, saw a wyrmling commander trying groggily to rise up from the heap on hands and knees, his black armor slick with blood. He was reaching for a small pouch tied to his war belt. His helm was cracked, and he had a deep wound to the scalp.

Not deep enough, Alun thought, and buried the pick end of his ax in it.

The wyrmling collapsed, still clutching his pouch.

Curious, Alun reached down, drew the pouch from the wyrmling’s dead hand.

Perhaps there is some treasure here, he thought, imagining golden rings or amulets.

But when he opened the pouch, he saw only three crude iron spikes, rusty and bent, each about four inches in length.

Alun stared at them in wonder, for they were a treasure greater than gold. They were harvester’s spikes—iron nails encrusted with glandular extracts drawn from those that the wyrmlings had killed. The extracts granted a man tremendous strength and threw him into a bloodlust, at least for awhile.

A warrior came rushing in behind. He must have seen Alun finish off the wyrmling, for he shouted to Alun, “That’s the way lad!” then stopped and peered at the spikes. “A harvester! You killed yourself a harvester. Use ’em up, lad. Good men died to make those.”

The fellow snatched one of the spikes from Alun’s hand, and Alun thought that he was stealing it. He protested, “Hey!” and turned to confront the fellow, just as the man shoved the spike into Alun’s neck, piercing the carotid artery.

And the dried fruit of the harvested glands surged through Alun’s veins.

His first reaction was that his heart began to pump so violently that he feared it would burst. Then his mouth went dry and he felt nauseous as blood was diverted from his stomach to his extremities.

And then the rage came, a rage so hot that it drove all thoughts from his mind. Blood pounded in his ears like the surging of the sea.

He let out a blood-curdling cry, grabbed an extra ax from a fallen comrade, and suddenly found himself charging through a mist of red, leaping over fallen foes, lunging past warriors of the clan.

A wyrmling suddenly appeared before him in a doorway, a huge creature with an ax, his face covered with beastly tattoos, his oversized canines hanging out like fangs. He wore thick armor and wielded a battle-ax and a shield. Alun felt no fear.

Somehow, in the haze of war, Alun saw a flash, and for an instant it was Drewish that stood before him.

Alun went mad with blood rage.

I am immortal and invincible, Alun thought in a haze, and he leapt high in the air. The wyrmling raised its shield defensively, but the harvester’s spike in Alun’s neck had given him super-human strength. He swung an ax, cleaving the shield in two, striking through, and burying his ax into the wyrmling’s skull.

As Alun’s weight hit the falling monster, Alun saw three more wyrmlings in the shadows behind it.

Good, there are more! he thought, laughing in glee.

And so he fought in a haze of red. The battle was like a dance, him leaping and twisting in the air, swinging his ax.

Some conscious part of his mind warned: Watch your back. They still want you dead!

But that was the last conscious thought that he had.

Sometime later, an hour, two perhaps, he came out of the haze. He was in a room, a barracks, where only the tiniest crack of light shone through a single door.