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Chapter Four
Kian stood in the darkness, the weight of Bloodbane comfortable at his back. Near him, his great lion Cyrayalayeth feasted upon the remains of a large stag he'd killed only ten minutes earlier. He reached down and plucked a fine sheaf arrow from the body. He mused a moment at the silver fletching and straight black shaft made of ironwood and wondered how much it would cost to get cibrian arrowheads like Fiver had obviously done. Then Kian placed it in a beautiful leather quiver next to his feet. The wind picked up and tossed the tree limbs of the ancient aspen around him so that they rattled in the cold. Through the helmet, he smelt snow. It left a kind of bitter taste on his tongue, but he wasn't sure why.
"Eat up, old boy," Kian said to his gargantuan lion, and affectionately slapped its flank. He grabbed the quiver in his left hand; the ornate silver and black saddle he used to ride Cyrayalayeth in his right. Then he set them both just inside the entrance to his modest tent.
Kian stood for a moment to appreciate the stars above the canopy. A smooth black appeared here and there through thick clouds that rolled in off the coast. In those small spots not lit by lightning or disturbed by the roll of thunder, a handful of white sparks hung in the frigid air. A thousand feet to the east, the sound of forks striking pewter plates, the crackle of logs in stoves, and Ephram rutting away atop his ginger-haired paramour floated into Kian's sensitive ears.
"I swear those two fuck like rabbits," he uttered under his breath before stretching his limbs. A small pop in his spine brought waves of relief. That's when the first snowflakes started pelting his armor, and he caught two in the palm of his gauntlet to examine their shapes.
"I beg your pardon?" Fiver asked.
Kian, startled, whipped his head to the right. How is it I didn't hear him?
"Sorry," the hare-foot said, raising his paws. "I make no sound in the woods. It's a gift of Rhya...I didn't mean to surprise you." To demonstrate, Fiver put his full weight on a stick, snapping it underfoot. But no sound resulted.
"You didn't surprise me," Kian lied. "I knew you were there."
"Of course you did. You'd be the first then." He perked up his ears and gazed toward the camp. "Ah, you meant them. It's them that fucks like rabbits. Valion knights...sexy devils...or so they say."
"I wouldn't know anything about that," Kian replied, crouching with ease upon a large rock.
"Hunter's not your real name, is it?" Fiver asked.
"No."
"And you're not going to tell me what it is are you?"
Kian just remained silent.
"In your line of work it probably pays to be guarded. Still, you got anyone? Anyone that cares about you?"
Again, Kian said nothing.
"I've got a wife and a dozen kits. It all happened so suddenly. They live in my home that I call `The Warren.' If you do have someone, stranger, and I hope you do, it'll help to think about them when things get at their darkest."
"I don't need anyone," Kian replied.
Silence followed his statement.
I guess the coney's run out of things to say. Who's he to advise me anyway? For once, Kian took joy in the fact that no one could see his face. Just thinking of his boyfriend Talen in some far away land brought tears to his eyes. I haven't seen him in a year...
"Everyone needs someone," Fiver said. "I'd imagine that's true for a hare-foot as well as...an elf?"
Kian shook his head. "Nice try, but no."
"Human then, but what kind of human? Amserran? Noremarian? Thularumite?"
Kian remained silent.
"Sometimes, it's nice to let our walls down a bit, you know? We've been traveling companions for six months now," Fiver said. "Does it matter if I know your race? You know mine."
"Six months and five days," Kian corrected him.
"You're here exclusively because you were commanded to be here by your church, aren't you?" Fiver asked, whiskers twitching.
Kian didn't answer, but cocked his head to the right. On the heads-up display inside his helmet, he caught a flicker of heat. It showed as a flash of red amidst the blue black of the tree trunks. He used his nose pad to enlarge his field of vision, and that's when he saw them: several large figures shambling between the trunks. He could hear them too, bones clacking as they scraped against one another, joints held together by strong sinew that looked like gristle. As the resolution improved, he realized he stared at giant skeletons in armor...as many as twenty. And behind them rode the two Timeron knights he'd identified not even twelve hours earlier.
Kian's mind raced. How did they find us? Could they have tracked me?
"What is it?" Fiver asked, staring back toward the camp. "Your body language is tense as a yew tree."
"Tethyr's teeth," Kian swore. He decided he didn't have time for a reply and vanished into the night.
Kian reappeared next to a colossal spruce and ducked under the branches, moving as silent as the wind itself. Coming down from the ridge on a game trail and only a hundred feet or so from their camp lumbered the first of the hulking skeletons in piecemeal bronze plate. The wind and the snow picked up, rattling the tree limbs. He placed his palm on Bloodbane's hilt and tightened his fingers; in response the grip of his sword writhed like a handful of living worms. A second later, transparent veins detached and grew toward his wrist. As strong as steel, they inserted themselves into his right vambrace, accessing small holes in Kian's armor hidden behind silver filigree.
The tubes punctured his delicate skin like sharp needles; the pinch that followed settled down into a burning pressure after a moment or two. Kian gritted his teeth and watched as his blood pumped through the clear tubes and into the grip of the sword. He slid Bloodbane from its sheath, and the cibrian blade glowed a pale red in the darkness.
Then the sword exulted in his hand; filled his mind with images of carnage, broken bones, and mutilated flesh.
Stop it, he commanded. It lashed out against him for a moment, and the psychic assault left him with a nosebleed. Then the bloodthirst retreated into a frothy hunger that took root at the edge of conscious thought.
Head throbbing, Kian whirled and smote the massive trunk at a sharp angle, cleaving it in two. Then he ran at it with all his strength, shoulder first, digging in with his heels and attempting to shove the massive tree from off its base. Sticky with sap, it slid forward, and then began its long descent, taking with it other trees that had grown entangled with its limbs until it collided into the lead skeleton. Its upper branches rained needles and snow clumps over an acre; a thunderous crash shook the very ground on which the tents had been pitched.
Two of the giant skeleton warriors lay pinned under the massive tree and now the nearby camp erupted in pandemonium.
A Kandaleyan bard by the name of Dallin Christopher grabbed hold of a horn with a golden mouthpiece and blew upon it. "We're under attack!"
The giant skeletons surged forward, slowed by the presence of the huge fallen trees. Two of them got their ribcages tangled up in stray branches. Kian leapt upward and landed on a mammoth boulder whose crest put him ten feet above the path. Even then he managed only to stand head to shoulder with a fourth skeleton warrior that turned upon him in unbridled fury.
In its skeletal hands, the monster held the most massive bardiche Kian had ever seen. In fact, all of them did. But this monster thrust its weapon directly at Kian with intent to kill. The assassin parried the rusty blade with Bloodbane's edge; a thousand sparks flew into the night sky. Tapping on the inside of his helmet with his tongue, he caused the twin cibrian wrist blades to pop out of a sheath on his left vambrace. He used that to deflect another blow coming from a second warrior that slid down the path and collided into the rock face beneath Kian's feet.
More sparks flew as he defended twice more. Then he slammed Bloodbane through the eye socket of one skeleton; blood and gray matter spewed forth and the thing fell into the mud.
"Stab them through the eye!" Kian yelled out.
In the brush to Kian's right and about fifty paces from where he stood, an ursuul warrior named Zalgun emerged. He wore battered ursuuli plate mail and fought with two claymores that he held in a considerable monkey grip. Kian frowned as he busied himself with incoming attacks because he could not provide aid to this soldier.
Zalgun screamed and ran at a fresh skeleton swinging his dual great swords at the massive bone tibias of the undead warrior. Both blades struck with enough strength to shatter rock, but the bones didn't even chip. The skeleton raised its foot and kicked Zalgun back into a tree where a sharp limb impaled him instantly, feet dangling over the snow, and blood spouting from his lips.
"Stupid," Kian uttered.
Kian invoked his quantum sidestep. To the outside world, he vanished in a microsecond and reappeared from out of thin air ten feet above the giant. From Kian's perspective, he took a trip through a strange umbral realm in which the real world faded into an eerie shadowy reflection of itself. Then he plummeted with sword moaning and pointed straight at the monster's skull. Bloodbane slid through the skeleton's thick helmet with no resistance. Only one breath later, a cone of old coagulated blood and gray matter sprayed forth, pelting the fresh white powder at the thing's feet.
Kian smelt something fouler than shit, and it almost made him retch.
As the thing collapsed under him, Kian briefly touched the skeleton's shoulders with the balls of his feet before somersaulting backward and into the middle of three huge bone titans circling a pair of elven Valkyries wearing battered plate and carrying shiny scimitars. He'd come to know the women as Salina and Shae, and they fought back to back, blades whistling as they deflected blows from incoming bardiches. Despite being elvish, these ladies had normal-sized eyes unlike those belonging to Henna.
"Ladies," Kian said, giving them a salute with two fingers to the dome of his helmet.
Then cibrian cleats sprung from his boots, he leapt six feet off the ground and side kicked the patella of one giant skeleton while simultaneously lashing out with Bloodbane on an identical foe to his right. Kian's attack shot out with so much speed that the force generated by just his feet shattered the bronze plates over the knee cap. With bone unprotected, the cibrian cleats made quick work of the giant's joints. Kian's athletic and graceful move cut the skeleton's leg off at the knee, bones snapping and shattering into a hundred pale white chips. Meanwhile, Bloodbane cut through the bronze cuirass of the other skeleton, hewing it into two pieces. As the armor fell, Kian's sword managed to cut so deep that it cleaved the spinal column in half. The giant fell in two pieces, its legs and chest still animated but much less dangerous. Kian landed with the elegance of a cat, and the two girls rammed their scimitars into the sockets of the giant whose head now stood within reach.
But a third skeleton barreled down on them with savage purpose.
This fresh foe would have skewered both girls through the middle, but Kian flickered and reappeared in front of the blade taking the full force of it in the chest. Rusty bronze met a corobidian metal killsuit, and the entire bardiche shattered under the force. Even with his heels dug in, the blow threw Kian twenty feet. Just before he struck ground, he teleported again and came to a skidding stand in inch-deep snow only a few steps from the two girls.
That's gonna leave a fuckin' mark, he thought, a throbbing ache starting in his chest.
The skeleton tossed the ruin of its weapon into the muddy brush and swung at Kian with a fist two feet wide. In a single flash of lightning, Kian blocked its blow, swung his blade up and severed the arm at the shoulder. He rolled between the giant's bony legs, dropped the arm, and then leapt twelve feet into the air to land on its vast bronze pauldrons. The undead monster, unable to follow Kian's unearthly speed, didn't see the death blow coming; Bloodbane emerged from its mouth, driving old blood and brains before its ruddy blade.
As it collapsed, Kian rolled to his feet. "Go back to the camp," he said to Shae and Salina.
They nodded and fled.
Kian looked around. He spotted Fiver shooting arrows at one. On the fifth such attempt, the hare-foot ranger finally brought one down. Akagi raced here and there swinging his kanabo and avoiding the blows from one giant that just refused to go under.
"Akagi! You've got to destroy the skull!" Kian shouted.
Akagi continued to swing at ribcage, leg, foot, and everywhere in-between.
"Idiot," Kian said, shaking his head in frustration.
And then Ser Ephram appeared in full plate, crimson cloak streaming behind him. He slammed his gauntleted fist into the armored chest of one of the creatures while raining down blows with his sword held high in the other hand. Tomoluk, grunting, felled one with his axe only to get hamstrung by a bardiche, causing the minotaur to fall into the ground howling in pain. Two ursuul warriors from camp bull-rushed that skeleton and drove it back into a ditch where it fell low enough that they could smash its head to smithereens using two massive mauls.
Up the trail, more of the skeletons emerged in the snowy night. The druid Henna slowed them by casting a spell. Green light whorled around her fingers and extended outward in curling streamers of fine mist. These glowing tendrils sprouted vines with thick glossy leaves and luminescent thorns. As they struck the ground, it's like the earth itself rose up to attack the bone titans; three such giants got completely entangled to the point that they couldn't move.
I love magic, Kian thought.
But the show wasn't over. Two more bone giants rose up near Henna. Kian watched as she reached into a pouch and then threw a handful of rocks at them. As they struck, each warrior turned to stone, arms and armor petrifying alongside bone.
"Tethyr's teeth," Kian gulped, feeling sweat trickle into his eyes.
A whistle caught Kian's attention.
The Timeron knights appeared and they gestured wildly at Ephram who, as a Valion knight, was considered a mortal enemy. On their way to the dashing Crimson Guard, they cut down two of Ephram's men, literally cutting them in half with a swish of their razor capes. Each also held a longsword in one arm, darting it in and out like a viper. Another man fell screaming, his armor pierced in three places and blood squirting from his neck.
Kian vanished and appeared in front of one of the knights. It whirled its razor cape and Kian blocked with Bloodbane. Red sparks erupted from the edge of his weapon. The knight angled it slightly up, but Kian moved too fast for him. It felt like liquid quick flowed through his veins, and Kian rolled under the cape and came up into the knight's groin with his dual cibrian wrist blades. But, the cibrian scraped along the outside of the corobidian armor, harmlessly deflected.
"Fuck," Kian cursed.
"The shadow thinks he can fight!" The Timeron knight said behind his helmet. "Don't you know shadows always get swallowed by the darkness?"
"You try to swallow me, you just might choke," Kian taunted. He parried the punch coming at him; blocked the kick.
On their left, two female cyclotitan legionnaires from Ephram's camp joined the fray to help Kian fight the Timeron knight.
"Get back!" Kian yelled. "You don't have the training!"
The tall soldiers laughed and swung their halberds at the Timeron knight who knocked them aside with his shield. Then he decapitated both women with one giant cleave of his broadsword. Fountains of blood gushed into the air as their bodies fell toward the ditch.
In the next instant, the one on Kian lunged at him with tip pointed at his heart.
The edge was razor sharp and anointed with the bitter poison of contempt. However, the lithe assassin dodged the Timeron's expert remise. Kian's boots skirted the edge of that ditch, which now served to split their battlefield into two halves. The entire time he dodged and weaved (on just a couple inches of crumbling real estate) Hunter demonstrated an unearthly balance and range that shattered any ideas of human flexibility.
A swoosh of the knight's sword had Kian sidestepping. A downward strike made Kian parry. A massive sideswipe and Kian ducked under the blade, his entire bodyweight balanced on just ten long toes.
The evil knight called upon some inner strength and thrust blow after blow against Kian's defenses. They sliced the air with such power that the vacuum created by his movement created an audible snap. Somehow, the assassin was able to dodge, deflect, parry, and retaliate with his own carefully orchestrated punches, kicks, and slices with the wrist blade.
Every riposte he made against the assassin of the silver rose ended in failure.
And then the knight made a miscalculation and overstepped.
Kian instantly kicked the knight's blade with the sole of his cleated boot and sparks showered the ground around them. He landed a punch in the Timeron knight's chest, caving in the armor around his knuckles. Lightning fast, Kian struck again across the helmet with his other gauntleted fist.
This dropped the Timeron knight almost into the mud.
Hunter flickered away in the next instant because he knew that the knight was still dangerous. Blood dripped from the Timeron's helmet; Hunter balanced on one foot and popped his knees one at a time to get himself more limber.
The Timeron knight lifted his visor up, blood trailed from his right eye and a bruise spread across the skin. His helmet drew tight as second skin where Kian had struck him. He was never getting that thing off, not without cutting. The strength Kian wielded bordered on supernatural.
"No one can dent corobidian armor," the knight spat. "But you managed and with one blow. How? Who the fuck are you?"
"Living Death," Kian said, voice calm. He hopped up and down lightly upon his toes, fists held out defensively in front of him, sword held tight, and he stood just out of reach.
To his right, the other Timeron knight clashed with Ephram in a titanic struggle. The sweaty Crimson Guard slammed blow after blow upon the armor of the cape-dancing Timeron knight, ducking and weaving under the razor cloak of his adversary, and somehow surviving powerful strokes that would have killed a normal man.
Obviously, both of these men were anything but normal.
Then Ephram took a terrible blow as the Timeron knight drove his sword through a chink in Ephram's armor. It emerged out Ephram's left side, and dropped him to one knee.
"Unnnggghhh!" Ephram cried out, spitting bloody foam between his teeth.
Then Akagi appeared, wielding the kanabo, and launched himself from a boulder arcing the kanabo down in a killing blow. His target? The Timeron knight's skull.
Thinking he had the assassin temporarily distracted, Kian's opponent jumped to his feet and struck forth with his blade—a mistake that would prove fatal.
Hunter, black dragon assassin of the silver rose, countered with astonishing speed and fell back upon his scapula. Using all his strength, he struck the knight in the chin with the bottom of his left foot. It hit with such force it lifted the Timeron knight off his feet. Hunter teleported and kicked again from the air before the Timeron knight even landed and it hurled him into the ditch. In the next instant, Kian beheaded him with a single stroke.
"So much for asking me to the dance," Kian stated.
Hunter spun to witness Akagi's victory only to see the Timeron knight choking Akagi by the throat. The kanabo lay discarded in the muddy snow, and Akagi's face had started turning blue.
That went arse over tit faster than a whore on discount night.
Wasting no time, Kian flew at the Timeron knight and executed a flying scissor heel hook. In one fell motion and twist of his exceptionally muscular body, Kian took the much bigger knight down. As they slammed into the mud and snow, Akagi fell free of the knight's grasp.
"You fuckin' coward! You come at me while I'm distracted?" The Timeron knight managed to squeeze out of his mouth as Kian locked him up with his limbs. "I'll—aah—arrrgghhh!"
He screamed helplessly as Kian adjusted his hold to bend the knight's knee to places it was not meant to go. Finally, the assassin snapped the leg in half. Afterward, he let go and got to his feet over the Timeron knight that now writhed painfully in the snow. Kian drove his twin wrist blades down over his helmet, pinning the guy's head in place.
Next he surveyed the battlefield. Snow flurries could not hide the dead and broken men of Ephram's camp. Nor could they obscure the bones of huge skeletons, which covered an entire acre of forest. However, shadows moving here and there told Kian that they'd won even if it came at great cost.
"Don't kill him," Ser Ephram ordered, blood spewing from his armor. Still, the young knight managed to stand despite his heinous wounds. "He has questions to answer."
The Timeron knight tried to reach for his sword again and Kian flicked it away with his armored toes. Then he punched him once in the head—a pressure point—and the Timeron knight lost consciousness.
Ephram stared at the assassin of the silver rose, bloody sword hanging limp from a hand with two broken fingers. The tall knight regarded the scene with an awestruck expression. He glanced once at the Timeron that Kian had killed and then back onto this one that lay unconscious on the snow at Hunter's feet.
"What are you?" Ephram asked.
But Kian didn't answer.
The next part is available on my website at http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/discussion-board-for.html under the label "Chapter Three" if you care to read ahead.