The Hammer and the Blade

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nix caught motion in the dark crannies of the ruins that loomed around them.

"I saw something," Nix said, pointing with his sword at a pile of rectangular blocks that formed a makeshift post and lintel. "There."

"Keep moving," Rakon called. "Do not stop."

Nix spotted more movement, a lithe form dashing through the shadows.

"There!" he said.

"I saw it, too," said Derg.

"Faster!" Rakon shouted. "Everyone, faster!"

"Is it the Vwynn?" Baras asked. "Is it?"

Rakon didn't answer, the driver whipped the reins and the exhausted, wounded draft horses whinnied and picked up their pace. The men followed suit, almost running. There was no way they could keep it up for long.

Nix's eyes darted right and left, following motion, trying to discern the details of the creatures. A small stone fell from atop a megalith, disturbed by the motion of something. He saw more movement on the other side, a lot of it, a mass of forms. Over the sound of his own labored breathing, he heard growls, snarls, a growing chorus of them.

"We should find a defensible spot, Baras!" Egil said, rattling his dice in one hand, holding a hammer in the other. "We're going to get caught in the open!"

"No," Rakon countered from the carriage. "Faster. We must make the ruins."

"My lord has spoken," Baras said, breathing heavily, his mail jingling as he ran. "Move it!"

The sun shot its last, hopeless rays into a sky being overrun by night. As darkness stretched over the land, the Vwynn emerged from the shadows, hundreds of them.

"Here they come!" Nix said.

"Onto the carriage!" Egil ordered. "Now, now!"

"Wait," Baras said. "We should-"

"Go!" Egil said. "Now, Baras, or we're all dead."

The Vwynn charged out of the ruins, seething from all sides, the stonescape vomiting up their muscular, clawed forms.

"Onto the carriage," Baras said, echoing Egil. He bounded onto the driver's bench and took station beside the driver, already cocking his crossbow.

Egil, Nix, Jyme, and the rest of the guards leaped onto the step rail of the carriage and grabbed hold where they could. Rakon leaned halfway out the open window of the carriage and shouted at the driver.

"Go, man! Go!"

The driver shouted at the already straining horses, snapped the reins. The animals laid back their ears, snorted, and ran as best they could. They weren't chargers, and with the weight of the additional men to pull, they moved alarmingly slow.

"Faster!" Baras called, and the driver snapped the reins again and again. The draft horses snorted, lowered their heads, whinnied, pulled.

Behind them, before them, and to their left and right, Vwynn poured out of the night, loping over the ruined terrain on their long legs. They moved with an odd jerky stride, more leap than run, and their clawed feet threw up clods of earth behind them at every stride. Muscles rippled in their thin, scaled frames as they moved. Their claws flexed open and closed as they ran, as if in anticipation of rending flesh.

The carriage wasn't going fast enough. The driver beat at the horses mercilessly and the beasts picked up speed.

"Crossbows!" Baras shouted. "Clear the road!"

"Do not stop for anything!" Rakon ordered the driver.

Baras took aim and fired. His quarrel slammed into the chest of a Vwynn ahead and to the right, sent the creature tumbling head over heels to the earth. The Vwynn's fellows ran over and past him without slowing.

The horses picked up more speed, but not enough. Guards cursed as they tried to load, the bumpy ride making it difficult to lay quarrels into cocked crossbows. Nix held his falchion in one hand and held onto a rail on the top of the carriage with the other. Beside him, Egil held a hammer in one hand and held on with the other. His dice had vanished back into his pocket.

The guards got their ammunition set and crossbows sang, the bolts sizzling into the moonlit darkness before the wagon. Two Vwynn fell, a third, all of them screaming as they tumbled into the rockscape. The rest closed from all sides, fangs bared, claws flexed, their muscular bodies lurid against the stone.

The road behind them closed like a drawn curtain as the Vwynn coming from either side met up in a churning mass and ran frenziedly after the carriage, which was now careening wildly over the road.

"Don't overturn us!" Nix shouted at the driver, and the older man nodded.

"Don't let them get the horses!" Baras shouted over his shoulder. "Crossbows! Crossbows!"

Jyme, loading his weapon, lost his balance and would have fallen if Nix hadn't grabbed him by the collar and steadied him. He didn't bother with thanks, just loaded his crossbow as fast as the situation allowed.

Vwynn poured forth from the sides, before them, a mob of claws, teeth, and violence. One of them leaped onto the driver's bench, its claws scrabbling on the wood. Baras stabbed it through the midsection with his blade.

"Keep driving!" he shouted to the driver. "Keep driving!"

Blood spurted from the Vwynn's gut and it screamed. Baras kicked it off the carriage, wary of its slashing claws and snapping teeth. Another Vwynn leaped onto the bench from the other side, wrapped arms and legs around the old driver. The guards on the side near the driver cursed, swung their blades at the Vwynn, but it did little good. Baras spun on his seat, reached for the driver, but too late.

A chaotic swirl of limbs, claws, screams, shrieks, and blood ended with the Vwynn toppling over the side and into the road with the driver still in hand. The wagon continued on, the horses whinnying in terror. Baras grabbed the reins and whipped the creatures onward.

Behind them, half a dozen Vwynn fell upon the writhing, screaming driver, devouring him in the road.

Meanwhile another Vwynn closed from the side and leaped at Jyme, Egil, and Nix. Nix impaled it through the chest on his blade and a backhand from Egil's hammer crushed its skull and sprayed gore.

"Shite!" Baras cursed, and Nix saw why.

Perhaps a dozen Vwynn had reached the road ahead of them and now charged directly toward the wagons.

Emotions churned around her, a lightning storm of fear, anger, and dread. Rusilla perceived them only thickly, the drugs her brother had given her attenuating her perception. She fought through the fog, swam up through the roiling emotional ocean, seeking acuity.

She could not focus.

She could discern nothing but the inchoate mass of feeling, a mash of indistinct emotions. No individuation. Her mind drifted and she sank, falling back into somnolent quiescence.

A voice sounded in her mind, roused her from lassitude. Merelda's voice.

Rose!

Mere's mental call was unfocused, a blind flailing in the midst of the emotional churn. Rusilla felt the terror in it.

Rose, where are you? I'm alone.

Mere's fear, the desperate hopelessness of it, brought Rusilla renewed focus. She waded through feelings, seeking the thread of her sister's thoughts, but could not pinpoint them. Instead, she projected soothing thoughts with as much power as she could muster.

I'm here and all is well, Mere. Go back to sleep. All is well.

In truth Rusilla had no idea if all was well, if her plan was working. She was blind, trapped by her brother's drugs in the cage of her own mind. The world outside her mental space was blurry, sensed as if through thick glass.

Her frustration spiked and she felt her body, felt a moment's control over her flesh, just a flash of feeling. She might have clenched her fist, or perhaps just lifted a finger.

She was bouncing, moving fast. There were sounds all around her, shouts, the rattle of carriage wheels.

Feeling her body allowed her renewed mental focus. She snatched at the emotions around her, taking the measure of each until she perceived a familiar thread, an emotional resonance she'd felt before her brother had increased her dosage and drowned her in drugs — Nix Fall.

She held on to Nix's emotional thread, climbed up it and settled into his consciousness.

"Run them down!" Rakon shouted, leaning out the window to see ahead. He sat back and Nix peeked into the carriage through the window.

Rakon had his thin blade drawn, fingers white around the hilt, his expression tense and nervous. The implacable eunuch sat beside him, knife in hand, an empty smile on his slack face. Across from them sat the sisters, their bodies bouncing here and there from the rough ride of the carriage.

Nix glanced ahead. The carriage was bearing down on the Vwynn before them. Nix looked back into the carriage. Rusilla's head was tilted to the side, her body bouncing, but her eyes were fixed on him. A shooting pain rooted in his skull, behind his eye. He winced, looked away, but too late. He tasted pepper, and Rusilla's mental voice penetrated his head, displaced his thoughts with two words uttered with such rage and hate that they nearly caused him to lose his grip on the wagon.

Kill Rakon! she said.

The words bounced around in his brain, drowned out the sound of everything else around him. His hand tightened on the grip of his falchion. He brought it up toward the window. He could jam it through, stab Rakon in the chest.

The violent thoughts against Rakon triggered the spellworm. Nix's stomach cramped. His muscles seized and he held on to the bouncing carriage only because his spasming hand closed over the rail he was holding on to.

Kill him!

A sharp pain started in Nix's chest and radiated toward his left arm. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't hold on.

I am Nix Fall of Dur Follin. Nix Fall…

It was no good. He felt as if he'd been stabbed in the chest. His legs went weak under him and still his hand slowly, incrementally raised his falchion for a killing strike that would surely result in his death. He forced his teeth apart and shouted, spitting as he spoke.

"Stop it! You're killing me!"

Rakon looked at him sharply, at Rusilla. He cursed and fumbled for his bag. He withdrew a metal vial and popped the wax seal with his thumb.

Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!

Rakon leaned across the carriage's interior, roughly took his sister's face in his hand, and dumped the contents of the vial into her mouth, spilling some in the process.

Almost immediately the drumbeat of violence in Nix's head ceased.

Rakon shoved his sister back into her place, glared at Nix, and slid the wood window panel back into place. Nix could hardly breathe.

"You all right?" Egil asked him.

"All right," Nix said.

"Good. Because here we go."

Ahead, a dozen Vwynn loped down the road toward the wagon.

"Hold on!" Baras said, and whipped the reins with one hand while holding his blade in the other. Nix put the episode with Rusilla from his mind and gripped his sword.

The wagon closed on the Vwynn. Ten strides. Five.

Baras pulled the reins slightly to steer the terrified horses into the Vwynn as the groups met. The huge draft animals trampled two of the creatures, who died in a spray of blood and screams. Another leaped high, over the horses, and landed on the roof of the carriage, claws scrabbling for purchase. Egil's hammer and the swords of two other guards bloodied it and sent it careening off the back. The other Vwynn parted around the carriage and leaped at the passengers from the side as they passed.

A Vwynn bounded at Nix, claws outstretched. Nix slashed wildly and his blade opened the creature's shoulder in a spray of blood. It snarled, clawed at him as it fell away to the road. Egil's hammer caught another Vwynn in mid-leap, slammed into its head, and sent it spinning away with a shriek of pain.

The guards on the other side of the wagon chopped and slashed and screamed. A Vwynn tore one of them off the rail and onto the road. He was swarmed, screaming with pain and fear as claws and teeth ripped flesh.

The guard beside Egil, Derg, lashed out with his blade at a Vwynn that loped beside the wagon, an awkward swing made still more awkward by the fact that his foot slipped as he swung. He lost his balance and the Vwynn coiled and pounced on him. One of the creature's claws sank into the wood of the carriage's top, with which it pulled itself up onto the rail, and the other tore bloody furrows in the man's face. Before Derg could ply his blade, the creature sank its teeth into his shoulder and tried to use its weight to pull him off the carriage.

Egil snatched at Derg's shirt, held him precariously on the hurtling wagon. The Vwynn clambered over Derg and clawed Egil's arm, tried to bite it. The priest endured the attack and held on to Derg, whose one leg was dangling free, hanging in space.

"Nix!"

Nix stabbed at the face of the creature, once, twice, and it lurched back, lost its balance, swayed. Derg shoved at it, but almost dislodged himself in the process. A blow from Egil's hammer to its face finally ended it, sending bits of fangs flying and knocking the creature back onto the road.

"We're clear in front!" Baras said.

Behind them, Vwynn thronged the road. Egil assisted Derg back onto his perch.

"My thanks," Derg said to the priest.

Egil thumped him on the shoulder, eliciting a wince of pain from Derg.

"Two wounded on this side," Nix said.

"We're all right over here," the guard called from the other side.

"My lord?" Baras called over his shoulder into the carriage.

"We're all fine, Baras. Don't stop until we reach the ruins."

"Yes, my lord."

Nix sagged against the carriage, blew out a sigh. "You all right?" he asked Egil.

Egil winced with pain but nodded. "I'm all right."

Derg, however, was not. He did the best he could to stanch the blood flowing from the bite in his shoulder, but he was already pale. Yet the carriage could not risk a stop for fear of another Vwynn attack.

In time they could no longer see the mass of Vwynn behind them. Minnear rose as they rode onward, casting the landscape in sickly, pale green. The ruins thickened, towering, monumental blocks looming out of the darkness, the stone ghosts of a lost world.

It looked as though an entire city had been torn from the ground, jumbled in the air, and cast back to earth in a heap. Tumbles of stone suggested pillars, statuary, monolithic building blocks that dwarfed everything in Dur Follin save the Archbridge and Ool's clock.

"They say Ool had the building secrets of the ancients," Nix said, as they rolled past a bygone age.

"Seeing this," Egil said, grimacing at the pain of one wound or other, "I believe it. What do you say, Derg?"

Derg glanced at him, glassy-eyed, pale, and started to fall back. Jyme and Egil grabbed him simultaneously. Derg's eyes rolled. His head flopped back.

"Stop the carriage, Baras," Nix called. "Now."

"Don't stop," Rakon said.

"Derg needs attention. Stop the damned carriage!"

Baras looked over his shoulder, saw Derg, and pulled the reins. The horses pulled up, sweating, steaming. Egil and Jyme quickly lowered Derg to the road. Baras hopped off the driver's bench and came to his man's side.

"Derg!" Baras said. Everyone gathered around as Baras rolled him over. Rakon looked on from the carriage.

"What is it, man?" Baras asked, tapping Derg's cheeks. "Derg? Derg?"

Derg's eyes rolled and his mouth fell open, moved, but no sound emerged. Flecks of foam rimed his mouth. Nix kneeled beside him, touched Derg's face.

"Is it blood loss?" Baras asked.

"No," Nix said. "He's burning up."

"We cannot stay here," Rakon said from the carriage. "The Vwynn will be coming."

All eyes looked back down the moonlit road. Nix saw no Vwynn.

"Watch the ruins and the road," Baras said to his men. "Stay sharp."

"Check his wounds," Egil said, nodding at Derg. "The bite especial."

Baras hurriedly cut off Derg's tunic and pulled the man's makeshift bandage away from his shoulder wound. Gasps sounded from the men. The ragged, bloody oval of the deep bite wound was surrounded by skin that looked purple and gangrenous.

"The bite's poisoned," Baras said. "Shite! What do we do?"

"Get his mouth open," Nix said, and started rifling through his satchel. He soon found what he sought, a smooth, crimson-colored pebble of enspelled jasper, etched with a rune puissant against poison.

"I said we cannot remain here," Rakon repeated.

"We heard you the first time," Egil snapped.

Nix held the jasper pebble between forefinger and thumb. He'd been given it by a priestess of Orella after he'd performed a service for her church.

"What is that?" Baras asked.

"It should help," Nix said. He spoke a word in the Language of Creation and the jasper glowed with a faint light.

"Is there no end to the contents of that bag?" Jyme asked, and thumped him on the back.

"Oh, there's an end, and it's getting light in there," Nix said.

In truth, he had nothing magical left in it save his the crystal eye. He looked over to Egil, who watched intently. "No comment on gewgaws?"

"Is that the only one you have?" Egil asked.

"Yes," Nix said. "Why?"

Egil ran his hand over Ebenor's eye. "No reason. Go on. Give it to him."

Nix nodded, placed the jasper under Derg's tongue, and pushed his jaw closed over it. The gem flared, the flash lighting Derg's face from the inside out.

"I see movement," one of the guards watching the road behind called out. He crouched and peered off into the darkness.

"Me, too," said another. "There. I think."

"Shite," Baras said. Then to Nix, "Did it work?"

Nix frowned, opened Derg's jaw, looked under his tongue. The jasper was gone, consumed by the magic. "I… think it did."

"You think?" Baras asked.

"Sometimes it's hard to tell…"

"Look at the wound," Egil said, pointing.

At first Nix thought it was a play of the light, but it wasn't. The black and purple skin around the wound faded to pink as they watched.

"And sometimes it's not as hard to tell," Nix said to Baras, and winked.

"Orella be praised," one of the guards said.

"I also accept praises," Nix said, standing.

"Well done," Baras said.

"Agreed," Egil said, gripping Nix by the shoulder. "Now let's get out of here."

Egil slung Derg over his shoulder, mail and all, and they all climbed back onto the carriage. The horses, shaking from being overstrained, nevertheless lowered their ears, threw their heads, and started moving.

Minnear shone fat and gibbous over the landscape. With Kulven now new, the Mages' Moon ruled the sky alone. The mountainous wall of rubble loomed before them, growing taller as they closed the distance, stretching off into the darkness.

The road cut through the wall of stones, the rubble rising high to either side. The walls were thick, more than a hundred paces, and for a time it was as if they walked through a tunnel. No one spoke and the clop of the horses' hooves sounded loud, bouncing off the ancient stone wall. When they emerged from the tunnel of ruins, Nix gasped in awe for the second time that day.

The walls of rubble formed a circle, ringing a circular expanse several acres in diameter. A shimmering sea of dark glass covered the expanse, its smooth finish reflecting the night sky. The vault of night was at their feet.

For a long while no one spoke. Everyone stared at the shimmering, glittering spectacle before them. Jyme broke the spell of silence with a whisper.

"Gods."

"What is this place?" Nix asked.

Rakon threw open the carriage door and stepped onto the rock.

"It's a holy place," Rakon said. "The Vwynn will not come here. That's enough for now. Set camp, Baras. We'll remain here only a short time before continuing to Afirion."

"A word, lord Adjunct," Nix said to Rakon.

Rakon eyed him coolly, nodded. They moved to the side.

"What in the Pits happened back there?" Nix said. "With your sister? With you?"

Rakon's hooded eyes narrowed, the thoughts visibly turning behind them. "Did you… hear her? What did she say?"

"She said to kill you."

Rakon was quiet for a time, then said, "She won't do that again."

"What was that you gave her? Drugs?"

"My sisters are dangerous," Rakon said. "I told you that. You have nothing more to fear. Leave me now. I have work I must see to."

With that, he left Nix. As the guards set up the camp and tended the horses, Rakon walked out onto the glass sea, striding among the stars.

"I think I'd like to do that," Nix said, watching Rakon.

They started a fire, placed Derg near it for warmth, ate a meal of cheese, bread, and dried meat, and washed it down with bitter coffee. Baras toasted the men they'd lost, spoke their names, told Egil and Nix of their lives. Rakon remained on the glass throughout. After they'd eaten and honored the fallen, Nix made up his mind.

"I'm going to go walk on it," Nix said.

"I'll come," Egil said, grunting as he rose.

"Is that… wise?" Baras asked.

"Probably not," Nix said with a smile. "But even so."

He and Egil walked the short distance to the edge of the glass sea, shared a glance, and stepped onto it. Nix's feet tingled and the hairs on his body rose and stood on end.

"It's enspelled," he said.

"I didn't need you to tell me that," Egil said.

They walked gingerly across the glass, treading on stars, noting constellations and planets in reflection. Nix found it surreal.

"Maybe this is what it would be like to travel night's vault," he said.

Egil only grunted.

The glass covered acres. They ranged far on it, though always keeping a good distance between themselves and Rakon. They discovered that other roads like the one they'd traveled cut through the ring of ruins and reached the glass from other directions.

"Like the cardinal points," Egil said. The priest seemed winded.

"Aye. And all leading here. Curious." Nix looked over at his friend. "You all right?"

"I'm all right. Just winded."

"Had enough, then?" Nix asked.

"Aye," Egil said. The priest stumbled and nearly fell as they walked back.

"Mind the smooth surface there," Nix chided with a chuckle.

They returned to the fire, and enjoyed more coffee with Baras, Jyme, and the other guards. The eunuch emerged from the carriage and took station outside its door, arms crossed over his chest.

Rakon remained on the glass, and as the night deepened, the sorcerer's voice carried across the mirror of stars, incanting in the Language of Creation. Flashes of green light accompanied his spellcasting. The guards seemed untroubled by the sorcery and fell asleep in their tents, while the eunuch stood forebodingly outside the carriage. Egil and Nix sat around the fire while Rakon continued his exploration of the glass sea.

"What do you think he's doing?" Nix asked.

"I don't care," Egil said, worrying at his arm.

"I do," Nix said, and stood. "Let's go see."

Egil considered, sighed, stood, and joined his friend.

They picked their way through the moonlit ruins until they reached one of the highest parts that ringed the glass expanse. Both of them were skilled climbers, and even without gear they reached the peak.

Nix spotted Rakon out on the glass, walking among the reflected moon and stars. The sorcerer incanted a spell, touched a hand to the glass, and thin veins of green light snaked out from his touch and wormed deeply into the translucent surface of the glass before fading out.

"Look like feelers almost," Egil said. He was still breathing heavily.

Rakon rose, moved off twenty paces, and repeated the process. Again jagged lines of sickly green lit up the subsurface of the glass sea.

"He's searching for something," Nix said. "Something under the glass."

"Gods," Egil said. His voice sounded tense.

"I know, it's-"

"Not that," Egil said, putting a hand on Nix's shoulder and turning him around. " That."

Behind them, lit eerily in the green light of the Mages' Moon, the ruins-dotted ground outside the ring that bordered the sea of glass crawled with so many Vwynn it looked as if the landscape itself was undulating. They prowled through the ruins, lithe, inhuman forms picking their way through the megaliths, their slit eyes always on the circular border of ruins that encircled the mirror. There were thousands of them, a horde of fangs and teeth and scales.

"Gods," Nix echoed.

"Indeed," Egil said. "Why do they wait, I wonder?"

"Rakon said this was a holy place," Nix said. "Maybe they fear it?"

"They don't seem the religious type."

Nix chuckled. "Neither do you, and yet your head wears the eye of a god."

"A dead god," Egil said.

"Your words, not mine. I'll not blaspheme in this place. That many Vwynn is going to make leaving here a complicated affair."

"Aye. I need to get down, Nix."

"Well enough."

They picked their way back down the mountain of stones, Egil struggling far more than Nix would have expected.

"What's wrong with you?" Nix asked, when they reached the bottom. "Egil?"

He took his friend by the arm and recoiled at the febrile heat he felt.

Egil opened his mouth to speak, but instead sagged to the ground.

"Egil!" Nix said.

The priest's eyes rolled in his head and he sagged. Nix caught him to prevent a hard fall, and lowered the priest's limp weight to the ground.

"Baras!" he called. "Up! Everyone up!"