There might still be a way out of this, he told himself, you don’t have to kill her. Yet, as his fingers brushed the weapon’s hilt, it seemed to add: But just in case . . .
‘Lenk’s . . . not like you,’ she muttered without much conviction.
‘Fair enough. What would he suggest you do, then?’ The rogue shrugged. ‘Sit here? Wait for whatever’s happening out there to find its way in here?’ He shook his head. ‘No, Lenk might not be like me. He’s reasonable. He’s cautious.’ He levelled an even stare at her. ‘He would run . . . but he would want you with him.’
I can’t really afford to make that kind of choice right now, he added mentally. I’m sorry, Kat. The dagger slipped into his palm. This isn’t my fault.
He didn’t believe it then, either.
Something heavy slammed against the stone, water erupted behind him.
He whirled about, springing backwards at the sight of the great, white-eyed shadow barrelling out of the darkness. The Abysmyth clawed its way into the corridor, dripping water and black ichor from a number of festering emerald wounds that criss-crossed its body.
Denaos held the dagger high, ready to throw as the beast stretched out a claw. Yet, as vacant as the creature’s stare was, there was no mistaking its direction. The Abysmyth looked past Denaos, past Kataria, to the great, stone slab. Its mouth dropped open.
‘Prophet . . .’ it gurgled, ‘why . . . won’t you help—’
Its question ended in a violent sputter and a blossom of iron. Faster than Denaos could even gasp, a great wedge of metal burst out from between the thing’s jaws. It spasmed as green-tinged froth spilled out of its maw to splatter on the floor, twitched as something pulled on the metal and ripped the weapon free from the back of the demon’s skull. It toppled forwards and Denaos immediately forgot how close he had been to killing his companion.
The appearance of the newcomer demanded far more attention.
The woman, or what appeared to be a woman, swung her massive weapon over her shoulder, heedless of the black liquid dribbling down its length. With equally callous casualness, she stepped atop the creature, iron boots crunching upon spine and ribs.
Kataria met her gaze. It occurred to her that the stare, milky white, was not unlike the slain Abysmyth’s. Where the demon’s was vacant and unfeeling, however, this . . . woman’s stare leaked hunger and scorn as though they were tears.
Her purple flesh was as lean and hard as her black armour. Even her face was long and thin like a spear. The fact that her metal was still slick with the Abysmyth’s essence did not encourage the shict to lower her weapon. She had cut down a demon with such cruel callousness and now regarded the rogue and shict with an angry ivory scowl. Any idiot could tell she was no ally.
And, as if on cue, Denaos rushed up to meet her.
‘Well done!’ He slid about the female, seeming to place her between himself and Kataria. ‘Quite a fine blow there.’
You can’t be serious, Kataria thought. Was the woman’s malice not apparent to him? Did she strike him as another lusty tramp eager for his seduction? She would have put an arrow through the woman in that breath, but white eyes held her in check, daring her and warning her at the same time.
‘Any lady that is a foe to any Abysmyth is a friend of ours,’ he said, smiling broadly to compensate for the cold scowl she shot him.
‘Abys . . . myth?’ Her voice was a knife, raspy and cold. ‘Is that what they are called? Master Sheraptus refers to them as “underscum”.’
‘A fine term.’ Denaos’s laugh was a bit strained. ‘What does he call us humans?’
‘Overscum.’
‘Clever. And what do we call you?’
The woman regarded him cautiously for a moment, then turned her gaze back to Kataria. Her eyes narrowed, she forced the word into a sharpened blade aimed at the shict’s head.
‘Xhai.’ She swept that scornful gaze about the corridor. ‘Semnein Xhai.’ She waved a hand. ‘Unimportant. Where is the leader of this weak gathering? Where is the Deepshriek?’
‘We’re not entirely certain,’ Denaos replied. ‘Our friend slipped into that room there, see, and—’
‘Useless.’
His jaw became a gong of bone and blood, her gauntlet the hammer that sent it ringing through the hall. His whimper was somewhat less impressive as he crumpled to the floor in a whisper. She spared a derisive glob of saliva for his body before turning to the shict.
There was no time for Kataria to wonder whether her companion still drew breath. Her bow was up and levelled. All that stayed her arrow was the odious malice that oozed from every inch of the female’s skin.
‘Your males,’ the purple woman muttered, ‘have a great love of hearing themselves speak.’
‘Stay back, longface,’ Kataria hissed in reply.
‘Longface?’ The female arched a white brow. ‘We’ve been called that before.’
‘It’s slightly less of a mouthful than “white-haired, narrow-jawed, purple-skinned man-woman”.’
‘We are netherling, overscum,’ the woman snarled. ‘You would do well to shove the proper respect in your mouth when addressing the First of Arkklan Kaharn’s Carnassials.’
‘Whatever you like to be called, you’re not needed here.’
‘We go where we please.’ The netherling tapped her sword against her shoulder. ‘I have come for . . .’ Her long face twisted in thought. ‘A book, is it called?’
‘The . . . tome?’
‘Ah. That does sound more impressive.’
‘That isn’t yours to take.’
‘Ours is the right to take.’ Xhai levelled a metal finger at the shict. ‘Your fortune is to stay out of our way when we choose to allow you to. Now . . . embrace your luck and get out of my way. I have much killing to do.’
‘So have I.’ Kataria drew back the arrow to her lips. ‘And I was here first. Get out.’
‘Or?’
Her bow sang a melancholy tune and, as Kataria witnessed wide-eyed the woman stagger back only half a step as the arrow sank into her ribcage, she couldn’t help but wonder if her weapon sang her own dirge. The Carnassial glanced down at the shaft quivering in her flesh and grinned broadly.
‘Weak.’
Stone groaned, metal shrieked, the netherling was rushing. Her long blade dragged behind her, spewing emerald-tinted sparks. Kataria fired again, hastily, clumsily, and the arrow lodged itself in the netherling’s biceps. Her grin broadened as she hefted the blade in both hands.
Stop, Kataria told herself. Breathe. The arrow slid into her fingers eagerly. Focus. She drew back the missile. Steady. She narrowed her eyes as the netherling raised the weapon above her head and shrieked.
Shoot.
The arrow howled, found its mark in a splitting squeal and bit deeply into a purple armpit. Iron clattered, the Carnassial shrieked and pressed a hand against the red blossoming under her arm.
Kataria smiled. All humans, purple or pink, never saw that one coming. The victory was as brief as the Xhai’s pause, and Kataria’s smile died and withered into a terrified gape.
She’s not stopping.
Another arrow flew, ricocheted off an armoured shoulder that collided with her chest. The shict felt something shift inside her violently. Her bow was torn from her grasp as she was torn from the floor, sent skidding across the salt and stone.
She could barely clamber to her knees, barely muster the energy to cough and send a thick liquid spattering onto the floor. Not good, she realised, not good, not good. Sounds were distant, sights varying shades of grey.
‘That’s it, is it?’
The netherling’s voice echoed against her skull. She looked up just in time to see a pair of milky orbs, a broad, jagged smile to match the shimmering sword held high above her head.
Move.
It was more of a lurch than a roll, but the sudden movement served well enough to place Kataria out of the way of the crashing blade. It devoured the stone in a shower of fragments, embedding itself hungrily in the floor. Xhai snarled, tugging violently at the weapon’s handle. She didn’t even bother to look up at the sound of boots crashing on the stone.
‘Surprise!’ Kataria roared.
She leapt, took the woman about the waist and sent them both tumbling to the ground. Xhai tossed her off as though she were an overenthused puppy, leaping atop her opponent.
But Kataria’s instincts were swift as her legs. Boots were up and planted into the Carnassial’s belly with a ferocity the shict was not even aware of. Even less aware of the roar tearing itself from her lips, she drove her feet against her foe’s stomach again. The netherling was hoisted up and over her to sprawl upon the floor in a crash of iron.
She should have run then. Some part of Kataria knew that was a good idea. But that part was far away now, bleating impotently against the howling within her.
Kataria could feel the roar, rather than hear it. Something forced undiluted rage from her heart, through her veins and out of her mouth. Something bit her muscles with sharp, angry teeth. She went taut, hard, her blood straining to feed her fury as her ears folded against her head in a feral display.
And through her bared teeth, her flashing canines, she could only say one thing.
‘No clansman is left behind,’ she snarled. ‘EVER!’
Xhai didn’t seem to notice, far more concerned with the foot that crashed down upon her face as she tried to rise. Kataria swept upon her, straddling her waist and seizing her by the jaw.
The sound of bone cracking upon the stone did not cause her to relent, could not drown out the roar. What dwelt within her screamed long and loud, sent its victorious, unpleasant laughter rushing into her ears and past her teeth. She brought her fist up and down, pumping with feral rhythm against the Carnassial’s bony cheek.
So loud and proud did it call, so fierce and feral did it roar, that she never even noticed that her foe was growling instead of flinching. She did not see that the netherling barely bled from her wounds. She did not see the metal-clad fist rising.
‘ENOUGH,’ Xhai shrieked.
The iron was a blur, crashing against Kataria’s jaw and sending her reeling to the floor. Her foot was a spear, kicking the shict hard against the ribs and sending her curling, her howl abandoning her in an agonised cacophony.
Where is it, she asked herself, where is the howling? I can’t hear it any more . . . I can’t . . .
There were many things that she could not.
She could not feel a heavy weight straddling her back, cold iron wrapping about her wrist and twisting her hand behind her back. She could not even roar in pain any more. When her arm was wrenched up so that her wrist pressed against her shoulder blades, it was a weak, meagre whimper that came out of her lips.
‘Stop.’ A second hand seized her by her braid and pressed her face forwards against the stone. ‘Do not taint the fight with weakness.’ She could feel Xhai’s smile bore into the back of her head. ‘I knew somewhere in this stupid horde of weakness, someone could fight. Naturally, I found it in a female.’
How, Kataria asked herself, how am I supposed to kill her? What was I supposed to do? The howling within her was silent, offering no answers. WHAT?
‘Don’t misunderstand, of course,’ Xhai continued, ‘I’m still going to kill you, but I’ll . . . regret it. That is the word for it, yes? But not yet. I need you to speak.’ She rubbed the shict’s face in the salt water. ‘Your brains have yet to leak out onto the floor, so use them. Tell me what I want to know or I’ll wrench your arm off.’
‘Then do it.’ Kataria’s voice, weak and foreign to her own ears, did nothing to convince herself, let alone her captor.
The Carnassial’s derisive snicker confirmed as much. ‘Obey and I leave you whole. I understand whatever weak deities you overscum worship frown on followers in pieces.’ She pulled her prisoner’s face up that she might better hear the snickering spike being driven into her ear. ‘That’s all up to you, though.’ She pressed the shict’s face back to the stone. ‘Where is the book?’
‘I . . . we don’t know.’
‘There are more of you, are there?’ The Carnassial snorted. ‘Odd that so many weaklings would congregate in one place. Were you all drawn here by some stink?’ The woman snarled, twisting the shict’s arm further. ‘Or were you sent?’
Kataria could hear her own bones creaking, feel her own fingers grazing the nape of her neck.
‘G-Greenhair,’ she half-growled, half-whined, a wounded beast. ‘S-siren—’
‘The screamer?’
Xhai’s recognition should have alarmed Kataria, would have alarmed Kataria if not for the fact that there was no room for panic or fear left in her. Nor was there any room left in the netherling for mercy, for as Kataria pounded the stones for mercy with her free hand, her captor merely let out a contemplative hum.
‘She is too loose with her allies,’ the white-haired woman muttered.
Whether out of mercy or out of boredom, she released Kataria’s arm and rose up and off her. Kataria gasped, biting back the scream in her throat. Her arm felt weak and useless, freedom a sudden unbearable agony. Straining to keep from shrieking, straining to keep her breath, she struggled to rise. Even her free arm ached, groped about with blind fingers.
It was by pure chance that she felt a handle amidst the salt water. It was with pure fury that she wrapped trembling fingers about it. It hurt to grin, but she couldn’t help it. Apparently, she thought as she looked into the blade of Denaos’s fallen dagger, he’s good for something.
‘After all, she chose you two weaklings rather poorly.’ The woman’s voice was only slightly harsher than the sound of her blade being jerked free from the stone. ‘I must admit, I was surprised.’ Kataria heard the whisper of air as the blade was raised. ‘Still, for a female, you are weak. Are all your kind?’
‘No.’
Xhai whirled, the great wedge of metal slicing off the scantest of hairs atop Kataria’s head as she drove the knife forwards. It found flesh and drove deep into the netherling’s hip. Kataria’s cry of joy was as short as her foe’s cry of anger.
Run.
She did, but the effort was hindered by a desperate limp. Still, she reasoned, if her pain was only a little less than that of having a dagger driven through a hip, she should be able to get away.
Unfortunately, she realised as a gauntleted hand clasped upon her shoulder, things rarely went as they should.
Stone struck her back, air was struck from her lungs as Xhai shoved her against the wall. With scarcely any breath left to scream, much less to marvel at the ease with which the netherling hefted the great chunk of metal, Kataria gritted her teeth, folded her ears against her head and hissed as she raked the woman’s metal-clad wrist.
She wasn’t quite sure what she hoped to accomplish. The unstable twitch that consumed the woman’s eyelid suggested she was as far beyond intimidation as she was beyond mercy.
‘Clever, clever little runt,’ the netherling snarled. ‘Cleverness never prevails against the strong. The netherlings are strong.’ She slammed Kataria against the wall again. ‘Semnein Xhai is strong.’
There was no room left for fear or pain within Kataria. She had done her part, she told herself, fought as best she could. The knife and arrows jutting from the woman testified to that. The netherling would remember her, long after she killed her. She tried to take comfort in that, but found it difficult. As difficult as she found it to keep a defiant face directed at the Carnassial. Her neck jerked involuntarily, drawing her attention back to the stone slab that loomed with granite smugness at the end of the hall.
‘Lenk,’ she whispered, though she could no longer hear her own voice, ‘I’m sorry.’
She expected the blow to come then: a quick, sudden sever that she would never feel, perhaps swift enough to allow her to stare up at her own neck as the rest of her rolled across the floor. The blow did not come, though. Reluctantly, perhaps afraid that the netherling was simply waiting for her to watch it come, Kataria turned back to face the woman.
What she saw was a black hilt jutting from the Carnassial’s collarbone, her face contorted in a sudden agony, iron rattling in her trembling arm. A sudden splitting of flesh drew Kataria’s eyes down to the gloved hand wedging a second blade into her flank. The woman staggered backwards as a pink face marred by a black eye and split with an unpleasant grin rose over her shoulder.
‘What was that about cleverness?’ Denaos hissed, twisting the knife further.
The female shrieked, whirling about to bring her sword up in a frenzied circle. The rogue was already out of reach, retreating nimbly as another dagger leapt to his fingers.
Xhai roared, hefting her sword as she stepped towards her new foe. Like a sparrow, the dagger danced off his fingers, tumbling lazily through the air to impale itself in the netherling’s knee. Her foot collapsed under her, she fell to one knee.
She seemed shattered in that moment, swaying precariously as a hand pressed against her as though straining to keep pieces of her from falling apart. Her wounds seemed to bloom all at once, life coagulating in the contours of her muscles. The mask of fury slipped off her face, exposing a slack-jawed, incredulous mockery of a warrior.
‘What . . . I’m . . .’ She touched her knee, eyes widening at the sight of red smearing her fingers. ‘I . . . you can’t . . .’ She tried to rise, her voice caught in her throat as she winced. ‘It hurts.’ As though this were something alien to her, she looked to Denaos. ‘You hurt me.’ ‘It’s what I do,’ he replied casually.
‘Impossible. I am . . . unscarred.’ She rose to shaky feet. ‘I could kill you . . . both of you!’ She jerked a dagger free from her side, hurling it to the floor. ‘I will kill you! All of you!’
Xhai hefted the sword and buckled under its weight, choked by an agonised whimper. The Carnassial, so strong and relentless, became a weak and meagre thing, Kataria thought. The fact that she still held a massive wedge of iron, however, kept the shict from savouring her pain. Instead, she retreated cautiously, eyeing her bow.
‘Stay back!’ Xhai roared, holding up a hand as she trembled to her feet again. ‘Stay away from me!’ Her eyes darted between them, crazed, before settling upon Denaos. ‘I will . . . kill you.’
Her voice hanging in the air, her blood pooling beneath iron soles, she spat a curse in a harsh, hissing language. Her sword groaned as she dragged it behind her, Denaos’s dagger still lodged in her collarbone. She limped over the fallen Abysmyth into the watery passage and vanished into the gloom.