The Shattered Land

CHAPTER 31

Daine swore silently. He’d seen worse in the war, but those were times he’d done his best to forget. At first it seemed that the corpse had been cleaved in two, but the truth was far more disturbing. Only half of the body was intact. As for the rest-what Daine had taken for bloodstains were actually the pulped remnants of flesh and bone. It seemed that the man’s body had been caught beneath a wheel of razor-sharp spikes, and from the pattern of the spray the wheel was spinning at a tremendous speed. Daine knelt next to the corpse. The snow hid any distinguishing features that were left to him and obscured his clothing. Daine was reaching out to brush away the concealing snow when Pierce gave a sharp gesture.

Enemy. Holding position-possible ambush. He pointed toward the beached boat.

Lei had come up from the shore, and she was stopped short by the sight of the devastated body. “Claws of the Keeper,” she whispered. “What could do something like this?”

“Whatever it is, it’s long gone,” Daine said. “This boat’s probably been here for days. Weeks, even.” As he spoke, he signaled with his fingers, drawing Lei’s attention to their hidden foe. Moving in. Give ranged support-nonlethal if possible.

“Good,” Lei said. “We’ve got enough to worry about with the cold, but I would like to take a moment to study … this, if you don’t mind. I’d like to know what’s out there.”

She knelt beside the corpse and drew a crystal and a short wooden wand from her pouch. Doing her best to ignore the grisly spectacle and focus on her work, she ran the carved stick around the edge of the crystal and concentrated on infusing the shard with the energies she needed.

Daine could hear Lakashtai and Gerrion emerging from the river, but there was no time to explain, and in any case neither of them was familiar with Cyran military signals. Best to move quickly and hope they were smart enough to recognize the situation on their own. Under optimal circumstances Daine could have crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, but the deep snow slowed his movement. Moving calmly and carefully, he made his way to the hull of the opposing vessel. He took a deep breath, the chill air sharp in his lungs, and dove around the bow.

Nothing. Just shadows and blowing snow.

Pierce himself had disappeared. Daine hoped that he had drawn any enemy’s attention away from the warforged, allowing him to do what he did best. Daine put his back to the boat, studying the ground for any signs of tracks or recent motion, then he saw it-a small figure almost hidden in the falling snow and the shadows of night, a gnome or perhaps a human child. Daine couldn’t see a weapon in the silhouette, though in this age of magic the enemy without a weapon could be the most dangerous foe of all. This might be the child of the dead sailor, but Daine couldn’t take any chances.

“You! Step forward, hands where they can be seen.” Daine had his blade leveled at the shadow in the snow, and he was tensed to leap into the darkness. “Come forward slowly. If you engage in any sort of hostile action, you’ll have three arrows in your chest before you have time to blink.”

“I never blink.” The sound was like hissing steam in a kettle of tal-a warforged voice. The stranger slowly moved into the pool of light that emanated from the glowing coin.

Behind Daine, Lei drew in a sharp breath. It was all Daine could do to restrain himself from lashing out, striking the construct before it could come closer.

Beneath the layer of shimmering frost, the plates of the ’forged were blackened metal, engraved with strange patterns and words in a language Daine didn’t know. While its hands were empty, dozens of two-inch blades were folded back against its arms and torso, and Daine knew from experience that these could rise up and lock into place to serve as deadly weapons. Its arms were long and spindly, out of proportion with its childlike torso, and its head was the narrow wedge of a rat or weasel, complete with a mouth full of steel teeth. It was not the strange appearance of the construct that caused Daine’s fingers to whiten against the hilt of his sword. He’d seen a warforged like this before. He’d destroyed one, maybe more than one.

At Keldan Ridge.

“Where did you come from?” Daine snarled. Every instinct urged him to strike before the creature could act. Memories rose in his mind, fresh from recent nightmares-this rat-like construct leaping the barricade, only to be shot down by Lei. It couldn’t be the same one. They’d left it in pieces, but he’d never seen any warforged like this anywhere else-and it sure didn’t look like the work of House Cannith. “What are you doing here?”

The warforged had a slightly hunched posture, and its neck was just a little too long and too flexible. It turned its head to the right, scanning the landscape.

Daine lashed out with his sword. The scout had kept its distance, but Daine wasn’t trying for a solid blow; he just tapped the point of his blade against the edge of the creature’s head. It jerked back, its blades snapping into attack position.

“Answer my questions. Now.”

“You are no threat.”

“That’s why I have friends. Pierce? Two.”

Nothing happened.

Then there was a blur of motion, as two long arrows came out of the snow to strike the strange warforged, catching it in the lightly armored cavity just below its right arm. The warforged hissed so loudly that Daine thought Pierce had struck some sort of reservoir of steam trapped within its body.

It was a perfect shot-but Pierce had hesitated. Why? “I’m waiting for an answer, as is my threatening friend.”

“You cannot destroy me.” Even with the arrows half-buried in its torso, the warforged spoke with eerie confidence. Daine was used to dealing with warforged. Pierce was his friend-and he was far from the only warforged Daine had served with during the war, but most warforged were designed to resemble humans. This thing-it violated those principles. Its posture, its proportions, its teeth-it was all wrong, and Daine found it unsettling on a level he couldn’t really explain.

“Maybe not, but I’m really looking forward to trying,” he said. “I’ll ask you one more time. Why are you here? What did you do to him?” Daine gestured at the frozen corpse with the point of his sword.

“I serve my purpose, breather.” It brought its arm down sharply, snapping off the shafts of the arrows embedded it its right armpit. “Nothing you do matters.”

“I … I don’t like the thought of it, but if we subdue it, I might be able to torture it,” Lei whispered, just behind him. Daine kept his eyes on the stranger, but from Lei’s tone, he could tell that she was disturbed by its presence. “Warforged don’t feel pain in exactly the same way that we do, but if I slowly damage its lifeweb-it certainly won’t enjoy it.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Lakashtai had arrived as soundlessly as always. “It may be a creature of metal, but it is still driven by thought and emotion. Let me see what I can draw from this shell.”

Daine kept his sword as Lakashtai stepped forward, the point in line with one of the creature’s crystalline eyes. She moved with catlike grace through the deep snow, and the thick flakes slid off of her cloak; swathed in pure black, she seemed to be a sliver carved from the night itself.

The warforged shifted its weight slightly. The pale light glittered on its bladed arms. “Pierce, Lei-if it moves, kill it,” Daine said.

“Be still, little one,” Lakashtai said softly, her eyes gleaming in the depths of her hood. “Stone and steel were not meant to move.”

The blades snapped down against the scout’s arms, and it did not move as she stepped closer.

“Your thoughts-they extend far beyond this one form,” Lakashtai murmured. “It seems we have something in common, you and I. Let us follow that path and see where it leads.”

The blades of the warforged fluttered in place, rising slightly only to snap back down again.

Snap.

Snap.

Snap.

Lakashtai’s eyes were closed. She seemed peaceful, at rest, but after spending a week in her company, Daine could see the strain-the faint furrow of her brow, the occasional twitching of her lips. She doesn’t want us to know her limits, Daine realized. It might be pride; it might be a cultural tradition, but he knew so little about what she could do or how the psychic attack had affected her. Was there danger here? What was this battle he couldn’t even see?

Snap.

A chill gust of wind blew snow in his face, and Daine blinked.

Snap.

Wood sang through the air as Pierce and Gerrion loosed arrow and bolt. Any one of these shafts would have dropped a normal man but not the warforged. Its arms spread wide as it charged toward the kalashtar, and the impact of Pierce’s bolts barely broke its stride.

Lakashtai must have sensed its hostile intent in her last moments in its mind, and she tried to throw herself to the side, but she wasn’t fast enough. Too late, Daine realized the purpose of the creature’s disproportionately long limbs. It wrapped its arms around Lakashtai and twisted to face them, using the kalashtar as a shield

“I do not die after all,” the warforged hissed, “and you see no more. Drop weapons. I leave.”

The blades on the creature’s arms were digging into Lakashtai’s flesh, and blood dripped on the snow. Her mouth was twisted in pain, but she made no sound.

“Do it.” It was Lei. She stepped forward from behind Daine, her hands held out in front of her. “All of you. Throw away your weapons.”

Keldan Ridge. Daine nodded and tossed his blades aside.

“You’re hurting her,” Lei said, slowly walking toward the warforged. “Let me take her and ease her pain.”

Crystal eyes watched her, peering out from around Lakashtai’s waist. “No. We leave. Perhaps she survives, returns. Perhaps not.”

“You can’t take her with you.”

“You are mistaken.”

“No,” Lei said.

She reached out, and her fingers barely brushed the back of a mithral forearm. There was no burst of flame, no flash of light. The warforged simply fell apart. Connective cords snapped. Razor-sharp blades scattered across the snow like fallen leaves, leaving spatters of blood in their wake. In an instant, all that was left were chunks of wood and stone scattered around a bloody kalashtar. Lei didn’t even look at Lakashtai; she was watching the light fade from the crystal eyes of the warforged.

“I’m afraid I’m not,” she whispered.