Duel At Grimwood Creek (Book 2) Read online

  Obviously the forms of his training. But something about the way he moved reminded her of someone else.

  Keeping her eyes firmly focussed on his feet, she tentatively tried the door handle next to her, hoping it would open into a room with more space.

  Locked.

  And the time it would take to break it would be the time it would take for him to split her down the middle.

  He grinned. “Ain’t no way out for you, raghead.” He made a beckoning motion with the axe. “Come on. I’m feeling generous today. Give it your best shot.”

  Her mind raced and she tightened her grip on the blade as a memory floated out of the ether like the whisper of a ghost. “Ain’t many who know how to use an axe like that these days.”

  “I like to learn from the best.”

  “Big ass ork axe like that? Hard fucking work. Beros teach you?”

  He raised an eyebrow, but his body was still wary. “You know Beros?”

  “Sure I knew Beros. Yeah.” She felt a trickle of hope squeeze into her spine as she began to spread out her cards. Prepare her play. “We met. Once or twice. Always loved the big toys. Axes. Greatswords. Ate too much garlic, though. If he hadn’t lost his arm, he’d have taken Talek’s place as Jutta’s bodyguard, I hear.”

  “Don’t surprise me you knew him,” the large elf sneered. “Beros likes a good whore. Bet he left quite an impression. He was always rough with them.”

  “Didn’t leave me with any dents.” The elf shrugged casually. “Bet you’re a lot like him, though.”

  “Oh yeah? How’s that?”

  “Mostly armless.”

  He didn’t move, but his eyes burned brighter. He shifted his feet. Angled himself and prepared to move. “I’m gonna chop you into so many pieces, they won’t know what you were.”

  She took her chance.

  Blurring forward, she ducked the angled blow and made to charge into his chest. His eyes widened in delight and he spun the axe in his strong hands to bring the thick shaft up, intending to crush her ribs with it. Then the blade would whip around in a half-moon and cleave into her flesh. It was a deft manoeuvre. One he’d spent years practising.

  It took a great deal of speed to pull off. Even more strength. And he had it. In spades. It was the kind of move which had killed dozens before. Men who figured an axe was a fool’s weapon. That it lacked finesse. Who figured the axehead was the only dangerous part. That he’d be too slow to counter any move. Figured an axe was just for cutting wood.

  Triumph lit his face and he roared with glee. Already, he was counting another notch in his axe’s blade. Another fool falling for his trick.

  She felt the scream build in the back of her throat at thought of the heavy axehead chomping through her torso. Could see light flash off the blade as he twisted his body to finish his move.

  But she’d known Beros, too.

  Twisted on her heel in the final splintered moment and kicked sideways. Her body moved like a cracked whip. Her foot bounced against the side of the wall and she coiled in the air like a snake. The wound in her back howled sharply as she wrenched herself around his swing, feeling the handle blast past her ribs. Sucked her gut in.

  And lay out her final card.

  A Flaw in the Glass plunged like a wyrm’s fang into his bicep with a splash. She didn’t have to use much force as she’d timed it so his arm was moving toward the savage blade anyway. It burst out the back of his arm with a gush of blood.

  The knife sheared muscle and tendons, forcing the axe from his hands with a scream of horror and agony. Tubal staggered back, her knife still embedded in his arm to the hilt. Tripped over his own feet and pitched back, landing on his ass. Pressed against the wall.

  Nysta stood over him as he stared in disbelief at the handle jutting from his arm.

  His other hand hovered over the handle while his confused brain tried to figure out if he should pluck it free or not. “You fucking stabbed me,” he said in a voice so small it didn’t seem to belong to him. “In my arm.”

  He glanced up.

  Then gasped as she pressed Entrance Exam to his cheek. Realising he was going to die, his eyes lost all sparkle.

  There was no humour in her own frozen gaze as she smiled at him. “Like I told you,” she said, taking hold of A Flaw in the Glass and enjoying the roar of pain he let loose. Swatted his awkward attempt at a punch away. “I knew Beros. Before he lost his arm.”

  And ripped the blade free with a savage twist that made him wail.

  But not for long.

  Functioning purely on spite, A Flaw in the Glass flared brightly as it plunged into his mouth. It clipped teeth and tongue and tore through the back of his skull to pin him to the wall. The big elf thrashed, one arm flapping uselessly against her chest. The other clawing at her, desperately trying to push her away.

  She laughed in his face as he died, his teeth clamping down on the enchanted blade. Laughed even as her heart was breaking at the thought that though she was getting the revenge she’d craved, nothing she was doing was bringing Talek back to her.

  He was still back on their homestead, lying in the frozen ground.

  And that only served to reignite the anger she’d been feeling before her fear of the large elf’s axe had swallowed it. Vengeance, she told herself, wasn’t over yet.

  Blinded with rage, she spun away. “Raste!”

  A quick search of the other rooms yielded nothing, and the elf felt her frustration filling her to the brim as she found what was obviously Raste’s room. But the red-haired elf was nowhere to be seen.

  Her shoulder was beginning to throb to the sullen drumbeat of agony, and she realised she was leaving a steady red trail behind her. She winced, willing the blood to stop flowing. Couldn’t count on any miracle of healing she may have been infected with. So guessed it wouldn’t stop until she managed to do something about it.

  But she didn’t have time.

  Footsteps outside made her spin on her heels.

  “Raste!” she howled. “Where the fuck are you, you motherfucking son of a bitch?”

  The door to the inn downstairs banged as she dashed to the top of the stairs. Saw more Grey Jackets pouring into the inn, shouting to each other. One grey-clad soldier looked up the stairs. Saw her standing with her shoulder hanging low. Pointed at her with his hatchet. “Up here!”

  They piled toward the stairs and a few arrows thudded into the bannister near her hand.

  Angrily, she flung herself back into Raste’s room. Kicked the door shut and bolted it. Rubbed her side where blood was seeping from the wound in her back. Her fingers, wet and glistening red.

  Wiped the blood on the wall, leaving a swift line of spidery elf runes.

  Heard Chukshene’s voice screaming wildly outside the inn. She tossed a small chair through the window, shattering glass, and stuck her head out. He was running down the street toward the inn, robes flapping behind him. His fists glowed with arcane fire and he sent a fireball screaming out behind him to take out a small clutter of pursuing Grey Jackets.

  They didn’t die pleasantly.

  But there were many more behind them, sprinting down the street on a tide of grey. These ones were a better equipped than those who’d guarded the gates. Their mail armour glinted and swords flashing eagerly as they roared toward the fleeing warlock. A few archers knelt behind, notching arrows to their bows.

  “Nysta!” he shrieked, running past. He was breathing fast and his face was red. Streams of sweat down his cheeks. “A fucking cleric! There’s a fucking cleric on the loose! Get your skinny ragged ass out here!”

  “Shit.” She launched herself through the broken window as the Grey Jackets kicked the door down behind her. Fell hard to the street below and rolled painfully. Her ankle nearly gave way as she sprinted behind him, leaving an orchestra of shouts in her wake. Together, they he
aded for the still-abandoned gates.

  A blast of white light beamed past as the cleric tried to bring them down.

  “Lucky his aim’s worse than mine,” the warlock spat. “He might be fucking useless, but he managed to dismiss my fucking demon before it could fuck his head off. Bastard! I was starting to enjoy myself. You get them all?”

  “Nope. Missed one. The important one.”

  “Fuck!” He shielded his face with his arm as a nearby wall was hit by the cleric’s blast and exploded. Chips of wood and stone spat at them. An arrow splashed into the ground between her feet.

  They made the gate and powered out toward the relative shelter of the forest of fossilised trees. She figured they’d be able to lose the Grey Jackets if they kept going. The soldiers had been shocked too hard by the demon.

  She paused only once, looking over her shoulder at the town as the soldiers charged from the gates, weapons high.

  She couldn’t see Raste among them.

  “Come on,” the warlock hissed, tugging at her jacket. “What happened to you, anyway?”

  “Raste wasn’t in there,” she said as they dodged between the first line of brittle trees.

  “Fuck him, then. We can’t go back,” he said firmly. “Not now.”

  “Ain’t planning to,” she told him.

  He ducked under a low branch only at the last second before it would have broken his face. “You’ve given up then? On killing him?” He sounded surprised.

  “Nope.”

  “Then I don’t get it.”

  Her arm felt heavy. Everything felt heavy. Blood ran slick down her back. But the air was crisp and cold. So, despite the pain dragging at her, she felt fresh. And alive.

  She pushed the warlock toward the hill, heading back to where they’d rested for the night. As they ran, she told him what she’d written on the wall. In her blood.

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you sure about this? I mean, are you sure he’ll read it? And even if he does, why would he bother coming? He could just walk away. Head south and sing fuck you, Nysta. Or send soldiers. Lots of soldiers. What’d you do to convince him? Piss on his pillow? And you wrote in blood? What’s with that? Couldn’t find ink?”

  “Seemed the right thing to use,” she said. Her head felt light and she needed rest. Wanted to sleep. It felt like an army of worms was crawling all over her skin. “And he’ll read it. Then he’ll come. Might not want to, but he will. On account of when you see a message like that on your wall, you can’t help but feel a thirst to do something about it. After all, blood’s thicker than water.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The elf called Nysta sat on a large stone beside the old tree hollow and looked down at the wreckage of the landscape leaking into the horizon. Outwardly she appeared to be relaxed and at ease. Inwardly, however, she was an adder waiting to strike. Prepared at all times to counter violence with the same callous disregard for life she’d shown so many times before.

  She thought about this as she waited.

  There must have been, she reasoned, a time when she wasn’t so dead inside. When she might have seen the world through innocent eyes. But though she pressed her memory, she couldn’t remember such a time.

  Her earliest memories were foul. Ribboned with fear.

  The looming echo of her father’s cruelty tugged at her mind. As though her life had begun in that moment when he’d tossed her onto the street.

  Perhaps it had.

  She looked down at her hands. Remembered the taste of rotten food rescued from the garbage. Haunting food stalls in hope of stealing leftover mouthfuls of soup from discarded bowls. Drinking water from the gutters.

  All the time, the pressure inside was brewing.

  Growing like a virus. Spreading through veins and into her teeth.

  That feeling. That flash of rage and joy as the shiv splashed into flesh for the very first time. Her fist squeezed around the rag-wrapped handle. Finally. Some sense of control in the shadows of chaos.

  Her fingers twitched as the memory sluiced through her.

  She’d met a courtesan, once. A woman who performed many of the same acts she herself had given away for a copper or two. The only difference being the location and quantity of perfume. Staring at the courtesan’s hands, she’d wondered if her own fingers had ever been so soft.

  So gentle. And clean.

  The elf blinked the memories loose and her jaw tightened. She let her hands drop to her knees.

  Looked instead at the small circle of snow clutching her boots. Glittering crystals of ice smothering a pale green weed. Some kind of grass which grew only on the outskirts of the Deadlands. She frowned. Did it ever flower?

  She couldn’t remember. And, in that moment, the thought bothered her.

  The sharp wind crawling up the hill carried the dusty smell of more snow. It had been a frozen Winter so far. The kind of Winter which promised to get worse. It was as though the bitter northern land was sending its frozen breath in vengeance of its fallen god.

  As though Grim’s spirit wailed at the edges of his brother’s land.

  She heard him coming before he stepped into the small clearing. His boots making more noise than necessary as he allowed her to hear his approach.

  So, when he emerged from behind a wall of dead trees, she didn’t look up.

  Knew already the look of hate which would be on his youthful face. And, underneath it, the guilt.

  “You alone?” he asked.

  She nodded, letting a sigh squeeze out in front of her reply. “You?”

  He shrugged, eyes sliding away. “You look like shit, Nysta.”

  “So do you.”

  He grunted at the loosely veiled insult, but let it pass. “What happened to the spellslinger?”

  “The warlock? He’s gone. He wanted to warn his emperor or something. Let them know Rule was moving north. I let him go. Didn’t need him for this.”

  “Warlock, huh?” His eyes skimmed the surrounding forest, lips twitching as he slowly convinced himself she was alone. “Explains that nasty piece of shit he summoned, I guess. Made Storr’s cleric shit his pants. Sure he ain’t just hiding in the trees? Gonna jump me soon as I kill you?”

  She shook her head. “Only just met him. He wanted a way out of the Deadlands. Useless fucker’s got a gift for getting lost. But he ain’t much for fighting and your cleric made him piss, too. Spellslingers, yeah? You didn’t bring your cleric, Raste?”

  “You think I need one? To kill you?” He gave a snort. “Whatever the fuck you think you are, you ain’t nothing to me. Doket, he wasn’t much more than a kid. And Tubal? I guess you got lucky there. Fuck him. He was a psycho, anyway. I mean, who uses an axe? Sure, they had their uses. But you did me a favour. They were getting on my nerves anyway.”

  “You always were a good friend, Raste,” she murmured. Tried not to think of the sharp pain in her shoulder which was making her arm feel like it wanted to cramp. Her face, too, was numb and it was beginning to hurt just talking.

  “Fuck that. Friends are for children.”

  “Your mother teach you that?”

  He opened his mouth to say something, then grabbed his rage tightly and buried it. His expression loosened up, but his fingers flexed as they moved closer to the jutting handle of a large knife at his hip. It was the only weapon he carried. “Well. Alright. You brought me here. How you wanna do this?”

  She looked up.

  He was just as she’d remembered. Red hair and pale skin. Sharp blue eyes.

  She worked her jaw before answering; “What’s your hurry?”

  “I got better things to do,” he snapped.

  “Like what?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Guess I wouldn’t give a shit, either,” she allowed.

  â�
�œFuck you, then. Why’d you ask?”

  She let the silence stretch for a few heartbeats, her violet eyes clinging to his. To his credit, he held her gaze and refused to look away. “You know, I met you once,” she told him at last.

  “I remember. A fucking market. You spat on me and then ran away.”

  “That weren’t a meeting, Raste. That was two flies passing over shit. No. I met you after that.”

  His curiosity got the better of him and he squatted down opposite her, his arms resting over his knees. Squinted at her. “Bullshit. I’d remember. I ain’t in the habit of talking to whores. Especially ones who pretend to be ragheads.”

  “Six years ago. You were fucking some kid in the Merchant Quarter. You remember her? Blonde thing.”

  “Tastra,” he said with an impish grin. His eyes glazed over cheerfully. “Remember her alright. She was a fucking animal. Nearly fucked my cock off.”

  “You’d meet her every other night. Follow the same street to the same shitty inn. You remember that? Each time. I watched you for weeks.” His face tightened and a shudder rippled down his spine as she spoke. “You remember that alley, Raste? You had to go down it to get into the back entrance? Brave of you, I figured. All alone without your bodyguards. Had to be, though, didn’t you? No one could know you were fucking the Minister of Trade’s own daughter. Fuck who you are, he’d have had your balls on a fucking plate under your fucking head. So you had to sneak around. And I found you. Remember that? The knife at your throat? Remember how you begged, Raste? Even pissed yourself. Bet you never told anyone about that.”

  “That was you?” He smothered his fear with a flush of anger.

  “Should’ve cut your throat right there, Raste. Wanted to. Believe me, I wanted to. But I didn’t.”

  His voice sounded hollow. “Why didn’t you?”

  “You had everything I never had. While I was on the streets, you were in your bed. All tucked up and warm. You had servants. I had men. Disgusting men. Men who’d pay a few cheap coins to do anything they wanted to me. The fucked up shit I saw, Raste. Yeah, you were right to call me whore. I was.” She rubbed at the scar, keeping one hand drifting over the butt of Go With My Blessing. Felt her heart pound in her chest as her emotions skittered over each other like glass fragments. They fought for dominance. A frozen sense of determination won, mirroring the determination which had driven her to drag herself through the Deadlands in search of the man in front of her. “And I survived it. Ain’t ashamed of what I did, no matter what you call me. Not anymore. Figured I did what I had to. So, when I had you, your neck in my hands and my knife right up against your throat, I was ready to spill your blood all over that shit-stained alley. An alley I grew up in. An alley you had no right to be in with your fancy fucking clothes and your purse full of gold. Well. Seemed the right thing to do at the time. Bleed you out like I was bled out. But then I realised something, Raste. Wasn’t you I was pissed at. I was pissed at him. And her. But my father most of all. Because he had his mind set on his ambition instead of his own fucking blood. Because he most probably murdered my mother just to make way for yours. But I told myself that weren’t your fault. I figured you were like me. A victim. Caught between two wyrms. So, I let you live. A moment of weakness a long time ago. And now, here we are, brother. Correcting a mistake.”