Ren of Atikala Page 33

  PEWDT’S DAGGER SLIPPED BACK INTO the hole in my arm and began rocking back and forth, slicing through my hide. He made a thin slit almost an inch long, working delicately, cutting a small section of my scales away, my golden blood mixing with Faala’s black ichor and splattering onto Pewdt’s delicate hands.

  My vision became blurry and grey, the pain overwhelming. Yet he continued to sing that soft haunting tune, the music compelling me to listen.

  “That’s beautiful,” came Khavi’s voice, “is that you—”

  The crossbow snapped again, firing another dart within the music of Pewdt’s song. It struck Khavi in the thigh; he slapped his claw out, brushing the tiny device away before all its poison could be injected.

  His face contorted and his claws twitched, but either Khavi’s strength and toughness, or his recent exposure to Six-Legs’ venom, gave him a resilience I didn’t have. He kept moving.

  The singing stopped, and Pewdt’s dagger left my flesh. “Impressive.”

  “Gnome!” hissed Jedra, her spear clutched in both hands. She moved to step in front of Khavi, but he held out his hand.

  “Give me that,” he said, his eyes burning with a bright fire I had not seen in many weeks. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Jedra handed over the spear without question. Khavi gave it a gentle bob, bouncing it in his hand, testing the weight. He shuffled his fingers, dropping into a combat stance, holding the spear out before him in perfect form.

  The racial memory of our kind again. Pewdt seemed impressed and dropped his crossbow. He drew a second dagger from his belt, another thin stiletto.

  Khavi shuffled forward, spear tip pointed at Pewdt’s body. “Come on then,” he hissed. “What are you, afraid?”

  Pewdt just smiled a cold, mocking smile, then extended his dagger into the drip of my blood. “My blade has the blood of two kobolds on it already—how quickly can I make it three?”

  “Save your breath,” Khavi snarled, slipping closer and lunging with the spear.

  The gnome deflected it easily, turning aside the spear’s edge with his dagger. Khavi made a series of jabs, short and controlled, but Pewdt avoided them with equal ease. Pewdt stepped into Khavi’s reach, slicing out wide to Khavi’s side. A thin line of blood appeared on Khavi’s forearm, the strike so quick I hardly saw it. Pewdt skipped away, laughing gaily. “Three!”

  Khavi was outmatched. Pewdt was playing with him. Jedra flexed her claws and began to move; I wanted to tell her no, to stay back, but my muscles still wouldn’t answer my call.

  Pewdt seemed surprised as Jedra moved in to engage him, but not discomforted. He continued to turn aside Khavi’s blows, skipping out of the way whenever it was inconvenient to block.

  “Coming at me without a weapon? You are as brave as you are foolish.” The fight became a three-way battle, Khavi’s spear on one side, each of Pewdt’s daggers in the middle, and Jedra’s claws and snapping jaw on the other. Pewdt happily moved between them, his arms outstretched in either direction, the awkward fighting posture hardly seeming to affect him. His wrists, deceptively thin and weak, confidently positioned his daggers to turn aside Khavi’s spear or to jab at Jedra’s encroaching claws.

  Faala’s body twitched and went limp, her dead limbs collapsing onto the stone. The pain in my veins receded. Moving was still impossible, but the pain was much less. I focused all my energy inward, trying to move just one of my fingers. Just the tip of my smallest finger. They needed my magic; Khavi and Jedra were going to die if I couldn’t help them.

  I looked at my finger with an eye that watered with pain from an unblinking stare, willing it into action. Move. Move!

  The faintest twitch. It was all I needed. Like a crack in a stone wall, the poison’s hold on me weakened, and in an explosion of movement, my limbs freed. Clumsy and painful, but I could move again.

  Dragonfire bubbled within, so hot and eager to kill it couldn’t be contained. I roared out the words of my spell, holding my finger out to guide the fire. The wave of flame crashed into the gnome. He pulled his hood down to protect his face. When the fire had passed, he threw off the burning fabric.

  I dare not cast again with Jedra and Khavi in so close, but I still had my steel. “You don’t have three arms, gnome,” I snarled, my weapon in hand as I advanced, looking for an opening.

  “Let’s even the odds. Playing with a spellcaster is hardly fair.” He laughed and, as though he could have done it at any time, jabbed a dagger at Jedra’s throat. The blade sank in up to its hilt again. “Four.”

  “Jedra!” shouted Khavi, attacking with the spear, striking Pewdt’s flank and deflecting off some unseen armour beneath his clothing.

  Jedra stumbled back, clutching her neck, gurgling as black blood trickled from the side of her mouth. She slumped against the wall, splashing in the water as she struggled to keep her lifeblood inside her body.

  I let my blade lead the way, stabbing wildly at Pewdt, my anger and fury guiding me. His dagger glanced my blade, but it was enough to turn the cut away from his body. I blocked his counter attack with my shield.

  “So you want to play with spells, do you?” Pewdt said, stabbing at Khavi, the blade missing by an inch. “Want to see a magic trick?”

  Pewdt tossed his daggers into the air. He began juggling them, tossing each weapon from hand to hand. I knew better than to attack, though. A warrior so skilled wouldn’t do such a thing without reason. I could only hope Khavi had the same feeling.

  I shifted so that I faced his flank. Pewdt reached for the belt pouch containing the eggs, snatching the two ovals within and adding them to the circle.

  Khavi roared and thrust his spear forward, but Pewdt caught one of his daggers just in time and deflected it.

  “Careful,” said Pewdt, “next time it might not be a blade.”

  Dagger, egg, dagger, egg. The circle spun too fast for me to follow it. Khavi and I stalked around him, trying to find a way through.

  A standoff. Pewdt juggled, and we waited for an opportunity.

  “Attack me,” he said, smiling. “I want to see you attack me.”

  “No.” I lowered my rapier. I wasn’t going to play his game.

  “As you wish.” He caught one of the eggs, the lighter-shelled one I knew to be Jedra’s, and squeezed it in his hand. I closed my eyes at the sound of breaking eggshell, but I couldn’t close my ears. Fluid and eggshells splattered onto the ground.

  “Is that five? Does it count if it doesn’t touch the dagger?”

  I had failed the unborn child, but I had to use my eyes to see. I forced them open, watching the egg fluid drip onto the floor as Pewdt stole the future of our bloodline away.

  “You monster!” I snarled and stabbed between the flying daggers, but Pewdt ducked out of the way.

  “Oh come now, I’m not the monster, you are. You and your dragon loving kind.” Khavi’s spear dug into Pewdt’s hip, finding flesh; the gnome grimaced in pain and skipped back.

  “One,” said Khavi, dangling the tip of his weapon before Pewdt, slick with red blood.

  “Quaint, but I’ve had scars before. You think you’re the first runty little bastard to wound me?”

  I hissed, baring my teeth at him, dragonfire rumbling within me. “Sounds like you’re getting angry.”

  “I don’t get angry, gold one, I’m above such base emotions.” He sneered at me, tossing the remaining egg with bloodstained hands. “Above you.”

  I lunged forward, but not at him. He was too quick, too skilled. Instead I thrust my rapier into the flying dagger, slapping it away to clink off the stone.

  “Clever little dog,” he said.

  “I’m full of tricks,” I said, hissing the last syllable, raising my claw again. Instead of flame, I summoned my magical darts; flying needles of force slammed into the gnome’s chest. “Suffer, monster!”

  I could smell his blood. I knew I’d hurt him.

  “Thank you for playing,” Pewdt said, “but I tire of this game.”

 
; He stopped juggling, catching his remaining dagger and egg in his left hand, gesturing intricately with his right. I knew the signs of a spellcaster when I saw one, but I also knew how to defeat them. We both did. Khavi jabbed his spear forward, and I stabbed with my rapier, both of us striking home; Khavi and I thought identically, both aiming for his unarmoured forearms, both striking wicked hits.

  But the gnome’s spell completed, and he vanished before our eyes.

  I stabbed in the vacant space but ringing, mocking laughter, and retreating footsteps were all I found.

  “Oh kobold?” came Pewdt’s disembodied voice. “This egg will make a fine gift for my master.”

  “I’ll kill you for this!”

  “No,” said the retreating voice of the gnome, “you won’t.”

  Then he was gone.

  “Shit of the dead Gods.” I sheathed my rapier and moved over to Jedra, crouching before her and reaching out for her neck.

  She was dead, her eyes glassy and empty. I followed where she had been looking. Right at where the gnome was standing before he had disappeared.

  The last thing Jedra had seen was the gnome crush her freshly laid egg.

  We were two kobolds again, and the killer of my kin, killer of unhatched eggs, was free. I howled to the ceiling, balling my hand into fists, screaming at the roof of my world. Why had this happened? Khavi, Jedra, and Faala had done their duty, Faala, in particular, had suffered through a difficult birth, and now her egg was lost.

  It was in the clutches of the gnome monster. Pewdt. He would pay with his life.

  I stood and straightened my back, wiping the tears from my face.

  “Khavi?”

  He stared at the corpses of the two females. “Yes?”

  “I want to kill this one.”

  We chased Pewdt for hours, knowing that his magic could not last forever, but it didn’t have to. He was bleeding and fairly badly; all we had to do was follow the drops of blood, the scent of his body tears, and his own body would betray him. I bandaged my wounds, Khavi bandaged his, and we stalked our prey.

  We were hunters playing the long game. I wanted that egg back more than anything, but I knew we couldn’t fight him unless we evened the odds. He was a dangerous opponent, and I didn’t think that the two of us could take him, so we aimed to wear him down, never getting close enough to fight, never getting so far away that he would think himself safe. We wanted him tired, weak, suffering.

  As the hours passed, Pewdt’s blood stopped flowing. Clearly he had staunched his wounds. That didn’t matter. I could smell his body tears, and I knew they were tainted with the scent of fear. His confidence was weakening, so he was climbing, making for the surface. I sensed the difference in altitude, the air growing thinner and thinner. Soon we were exhausted and had to rest.

  This was fine. Pewdt would be tired too, and from what I had seen of No-Kill and her sleeping habits, we would rest less than he. The longer we waited the worse he would fight when we caught him. Time favoured us.

  As we followed our quarry through the underworld tunnels, one thing became clear. Pewdt was making for the surface. Sanctuary would be found there, we knew, so we drew closer. His body tears stopped. He was resting, preparing himself.

  We would not give him that opportunity. As one, Khavi and I circled out around in front of his path, preparing an ambush. We laid in wait for him to arrive, to spring our trap, to destroy him utterly and save the egg he’d taken.

  Instead we ambushed his outerfeet.

  His outerfeet walked on their own, mindlessly strolling down the tunnel. I thought he might be invisible again, so stabbed with my weapon at air, even slicing right above where the ankle should be, but the outerfeet marched on.

  Khavi cut them to ribbons. Their magic drained out in a flurry of wild sparks, the items reduced to scraps.

  We knew, then, that he had gotten away.

  We backtracked, but it was hopeless. We had no trail left, no hint where we could go.

  “We should keep hunting,” I said. “He couldn’t have gotten too far.” I wanted to. I desperately wanted to, but I knew deep in my heart there was no point.

  “It’s been hours,” said Khavi, shrugging off his pack. “He’s probably at the surface by now or down any number of tunnels. We’ll never catch him.”

  “You give up too easily.” My body was tired, and I needed rest, but the thought of Faala and Jedra, and their two eggs spurred me on. We needed vengeance.

  He shrugged. “I know when I’m beaten.”

  I couldn’t believe he was so willing to let the egg go. So willing to let the child he’d sired fall to some terrible fate. “What if we did another pass, we could find where he split himself from his outerfeet?”

  “I’m sure he’d like that. He knows the area, clearly, and he’s full of tricks. He’d get endless amusement from watching us chase our own tails.”

  I knew it was true. “At least we have the map. It might have a list of other exits.” I snatched it off my belt. “Passages. Places where, places where...w-where...”

  Khavi glared at me. “Are you crying?”

  I was. Khavi’s frustration at my weakness pained me further, but I didn’t care. I mourned for Faala and Jedra, for their eggs, for my inability to save them all.

  “No.”

  Khavi sighed and sat down in the corridor. “We should camp here.”

  I shrugged off my haversack. We would never catch Pewdt. “Take first watch,” I said. “I’ll try to think of something.”

  Khavi put the spear, Jedra’s old spear, in his lap, and I prepared to sleep. I threw all my equipment into a pile, curled up in a ball, and tried to rest, but my mind was too active. Unable to stop myself, unable to keep the pain inside any longer, I continued to cry.

  “Are you done?” growled Khavi.

  I rubbed my snout with my claw, raising my head. “No.”

  Khavi gave a disgusted groan. “You’re six years old. You’re an adult, and more importantly, you’re a kobold. Stop acting like No-Kill, crying and thinking that’ll change anything. They’re dead. So are the eggs, both of them, probably. Mewing like a wyrmling won’t bring back the dead.”

  Did he have no empathy at all? To so coldly dismiss the two females he had mated with and the eggs he had produced rankled me. “That doesn’t mean I can’t mourn.”

  “Weeping is pointless. Vengeance accomplishes something.” He spoke through teeth pressed together. “We should throw away the map, find another gnome, or something else, and force them to tell us how to get to the surface. Cut off their arms, burn the stumps, weaken them through blood loss. Keep them alive as long as possible until they tell us.”

  “What makes you think whoever we dismember won’t just lie to get vengeance against us?”

  Khavi didn’t seem to have an answer to that. “Who cares,” he said. “It won’t matter. We'll find another.”

  “And even if we find Pewdt again, what will we do? He’s stronger than you. A better fighter.”

  His snout snapped around to me, baring his teeth. “Nobody’s a better fighter than me, especially not some juggling, half witted, sing-song-y fey.”

  “He is,” I said. “It’s just a fact. He’s better than me too.”

  “That’s glowbug shit.”

  I didn’t have the energy to argue. “Fine, if we catch him, prove it.” I curled back up again.

  “I still think we shouldn’t trust the map.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” I snapped.

  “Let me read it then,” said Khavi. “Maybe I can find something for us to kill.”

  I fumbled for the pouch with the map, unbuckled it, and threw it across the chamber to Khavi, then clapped my hands over my earholes. “Here! Study it well, don’t tear it, and wake me when it’s my shift.”

  I thought the anger would keep me awake, but I fell asleep almost immediately.

  I was awakened by the smell of smoke. For a moment I was stuck in the strange limbo between the
dreaming world and the real one, once again reliving my fiery rebirth in the furnaces of Atikala, but then my mind settled firmly back in Drathari, and I opened my eyes.

  Smoke filled our camp, stinging my eyes. A bright flame, tall and golden, burned nearby. I leapt to my feet, reaching for the rapier at my belt, but my scabbard was empty. It must have fallen out while I slept. I didn’t have time to find it, and instead thrust my hands out in front of me, ready to face whatever threatened us.

  Khavi moved out from the shadows, the golden light bathing his scales in a bright, lurid glow. He had my rapier in his claw.

  “It’s done.”

  My sleep-addled mind was unable to comprehend what I was seeing. “What is? Is it my shift?”

  The fire began to die out. He pointed down at it with my rapier, the edge close to the flames. “The map. I burned it. We’re safe now. No more monsters, no more surprises.”

  As the flames died out completely, I saw the charred remains of the strip of parchment, the very last edge of it consumed by a red line that wormed its way down to the corner, rendering it all to ash.

  The map was our guide to the surface and Ssarsdale beyond. Tyermumtican had given it to me, a gift, and now it was a smouldering pile of worthless nothing. I looked back to Khavi. “I wanted you to keep the map safe. You knew that. I ordered you to keep it safe!”

  He gave a mocking sneer. “Technically, you only told me not to tear it.”

  “You knew what I meant!” My tail twitched. “Why did you do that?”

  “Because I’m done following your orders.” Khavi stepped forward, deliberately stepping on the rectangular pile of ash that was our map, twisting and grinding his foot until it was unrecognisable. “You’re addled in the brain. Weak minded. Whatever power the elders used to hold your true nature in check died with them. You’re reverting to your true nature, goldling.”

  He spat the word with such hate, such venom and fire that I had never heard from him before. This was more than the playful teasing he’d given me in the past; this was anger—it was the rage that he used in battle turned into words.

  I narrowed my eyes. “I’m doing nothing of the sort. I’m following the best course of—”

  “It’s always words, words, words with you, isn’t it?” Khavi’s grip on my rapier tightened ever so slightly. He shifted his posture as he balanced himself on his toes, falling into a battle stance. “We find some gnomes—our enemies—and it’s words. We find a blind gnome alone in some tunnels, and your first instinct is to use words. We meet a dragon—a copper dragon—and once again, you try to talk to it. You say that it’s strategy, that it’s combat without fighting, but every single time we meet evil you just talk to it. You walked away from the dragon, and you did worse than let evil beat you. You befriended it.”

  “They’re not evil,” I said the words before I knew what I was doing. I thought of No-Kill, and how kindhearted she seemed. Of Tyermumtican and how he had helped me despite what I was. “It’s us. It’s us that are evil.”

  Khavi spat at me, a glob of his saliva splattering onto the jerkin covering my chain shirt. “You slander your own people. You’re not one of us, goldling. You’re one of them. You’re a gnome in kobold’s scales, a traitor to everything we are.”

  My claws trembled, and I fought to control myself. “This is because I wouldn’t breed with you, isn’t it? Because I want love?”

  “Love?” Khavi practically hissed as he said it. “That dribble Laughless blathered on about?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That. I want to have love before I breed. I want to be mare-reed, to be possessed by a ghost or devil, whatever the ritual requires. I want to set my friends on fire, to split my soul into two bodies and have two hearts beating at the same time. Laughless said that’s more powerful than any magic.”

  Khavi stared at me blankly for a moment. “You are completely insane!”

  He was the crazy one, not me. He was the violence prone, unthinking, map-destroying idiot who cut our only lifeline to safety and vengeance because of a petty feud. “I am not. Tyermumtican said—”

  “Laughless is a copper dragon! They’re monsters!”

  “He’s wise, and—”

  “He’s evil!” Khavi’s nose wrinkled, and he gave me a disgusted leer. “Actually I’ve changed my mind about you. I don’t fuck gnomes.”

  There was no greater insult. I snarled at him, baring my teeth. “You don’t mean that. I’m Ren. Your patrol leader. I’ve known you for your entire life.”

  “I mean it.” He snarled right back, his forked tongue flicking at me. “I don’t care how enticing your scent becomes, the lashes from a thousand orcs couldn’t convince me to lay my seed in your rotten belly. I’d rather watch our entire bloodline become extinct. You’re filthy. Mud and shit. You’re nothing to me but the next enemy I’ll drive my weapon through, the next heart I tear open. Your body is a gut locker for me to open and spill.”

  “Killing me with my own weapon,” I spat. “How thoughtful.”

  “It’s not yours. It was never yours. Neither is it mine. It’s ours. It belongs to us.” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “How could you fail to understand this basic tenant of our society? How could you forsake everything you are?”

  He’d been holding in these words for days, weeks. Ever since we’d left the city, even before. His discipline was great, as was his ability to suppress his own personality in favour of following orders and obeying his masters, but these thoughts, these doubts, had been eating at him.

  I had words eating at me too.

  “I’m Ren of Atikala,” I said, “and I forge my own destiny.”

  The quote from Tyermumtican pushed him over the edge. Khavi’s eyes widened, red and wild, and he slashed at me with the rapier. Not the best move for a warrior inexperienced with that kind of blade; rapiers were designed to stab. I hopped back, easily dodging the clumsy strike.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, but Khavi just screamed at me in response, swinging his arm, the blade swinging through the air.

  I dodged, I weaved, and I ducked. I skipped back across the stone, waiting for his rage to play itself out, but Khavi’s anger seemed limitless. He pressed further and further, swinging the rapier like one of his two-handed blades. It was an ineffective style, and I avoided his strikes easily.

  At least initially. Soon Khavi’s strokes became more measured, faster. He was becoming used to the weight, the swing of the weapon. It was lighter and faster than his old blade, and the spear, too. It was something I’d known for a long time. Flesh was tender, and the blade was razor sharp. Long, heavy swings were not required. Now his attacks came in shorter, sharper jabs. I gave more ground, but the tunnel behind me narrowed, and the stone underneath my feet grew treacherous. I slipped my shield over my arm.

  That action cost me. One of his slashes drew a line on my arm. Another thumped into my chest, deflected by my armour. Khavi was too good to be beaten by chainmail. I couldn’t hold out forever.

  I had to fight, or I would die.

  I drew the Feyeater and prepared to kill my friend.