Deadhouse Gates

'With that eye you might escape it.'

Icarium's gaze narrowed as he scanned the rubble-strewn sweep of desert below. They'd climbed a tel the better to see the way ahead. 'Your memories always, fascinate me, since I seem to have so few of my own, and more so since you have always been so reluctant to share them.'

'I was recalling my clan,' Mappo said, shrugging. 'It is astonishing the trivial things one comes to miss. Birthing season for the herds, the way we winnowed the weak in unspoken agreement with the plains' wolves.' He smiled. 'The glory I earned when I'd snuck into a raiding party's camp and broken the tips of every warrior's knife, then sneaked back out with no-one awakening.' He sighed. 'I carried those points in a bag for years, tied to my war belt.'

'What happened to them?'

'Stolen back by a cleverer raider.' Mappo's smile broadened. 'Imagine her glory!'

'Was that all she stole?'

'Ah, leave me some secrets, friend.' The Trell rose, brushing sand and dust from his leather leggings. 'If anything,' he said after a pause, 'that sandstorm has grown a third in size since we stopped.'

Hands on his hips, Icarium studied the dark wall bisecting the plain. 'I believe it has marched closer, as well,' he said. 'Born of sorcery, perhaps the very breath of a goddess, its strength still grows. I can feel it reaching out to us.'

'Aye.' Mappo nodded, repressing a shiver. 'Surprising, assuming that Sha'ik is indeed dead.'

'Her death may have been necessary,' Icarium said. 'After all, can mortal flesh command this power? Can a living being stay alive being the gateway between Dryjhna and this realm?'

'You're thinking she's become Ascendant? And in doing so left her flesh and bones behind?'

'It's possible.'

Mappo fell silent. The possibilities multiplied each time they discussed Sha'ik, the Whirlwind and the prophecies. Together, he and Icarium were sowing their own confusion. And whom might that serve? Iskaral Pust's grinning face appeared in his mind. Breath hissed through his teeth. 'We're being manipulated,' he growled. 'I can feel it. Smell it.'

'I've noted your raised hackles,' Icarium said with a grim smile. 'For myself, I've become numb to such notions — I have felt manipulated all my life.'

The Trell shook himself to disguise his flinch. 'And,' he asked softly, 'who would be doing that?'

The Jhag shrugged, glanced down with a raised eyebrow. 'I stopped asking that question long ago, friend. Shall we eat? The lesson needed here is that mutton stew is a taste superior to that of sweet curiosity.'

Mappo studied Icarium's back as the warrior strode down into camp. But what of sweet vengeance, friend?

They rode down the ancient road, harried by banshee gusts of sand-filled wind. Even the Gral gelding was stumbling with exhaustion, but Fiddler had run out of options. He had no answer to what was happening.

Somewhere in the impenetrable sweeps of sand to their right a running battle was under way. It was close — it sounded close, but of the combatants they could see no sign, nor was Fiddler of a mind to ride to investigate. In his fear and exhaustion, he'd arrived at a fevered, panicky conviction that staying on the road was all that kept them alive. If they left it they would be torn apart.

The battle sounds were not clashing steel, nor the death cries of men. The sounds were of beasts — roars, snaps, snarls, keening songs of terror and pain and savage fury. Nothing human. There might have been wolves in the unseen struggle, but other, wholly different throats voiced their own frantic participation. The nasal groans of bears, the hiss of large cats, and other sounds — reptilian, avian, simian. And demons. Mustn't forget those demonic barks — Hood's own nightmares couldn't be worse.

He rode without reins. Both hands gripped the sand-pitted stock of his crossbow. It was cocked, a flamer quarrel nocked in place, and had been since the scrap began, ten hours ago. The gut- wound cord was weary by now, he well knew. The wider than usual spread of the steel ribs told him as much. The quarrel would not fly far, and its flight would be soft. But he needed neither accuracy nor range for the flamer to be effective. The knowledge that to drop the weapon would result in their being engulfed — he and his horse both — in raging fire, kept reminding him of that efficacy each time his aching, sweat-slick hands let the weapon slip slightly in his grip.

He could not go on much longer. A single glance back over his shoulder showed Apsalar and Crokus still with him, their horses past the point of recovery and now running until life fled their bodies. Not long now.

The Gral gelding screamed and slewed sideways. Fiddler was suddenly awash in hot liquid. Blinking and cursing, he shook the fluid from his eyes. Blood. A Fener-born Hood-damned gushing fountain of blood. It had shot out from the impenetrable air-borne sand. Something got close. Something else stopped it from getting any closer. Queen's blessing, what in the Abyss is going on?

Crokus shouted. Fiddler looked back in time to see him leap clear of his collapsing mount. The animal's front legs folded under it. He watched the horse's chin strike hard on the cobbles, leaving a smear of blood and froth. It jerked its head clear in one last effort to recover, then rolled, legs kicking in the air a moment before sagging and falling still.

The sapper pried a hand loose from the crossbow, gathered the reins and drew his gelding to a halt. He swung the stumbling beast around. 'Dump the tents!' he shouted to Crokus, who had regained his feet. 'That's the freshest of the spare mounts. Quickly, damn you!'

Slumped in her saddle, Apsalar rode close. 'It's no use,' she said through cracked lips. 'We have to stop.'

Snarling, Fiddler glared out into the biting sheets of sand. The battle was getting closer. Whatever was holding them back was giving ground. He saw a massive shape loom into view, then vanish again as quickly. It seemed to have leopards riding its shoulders. Off to one side four hulking shapes appeared, low to the ground and rolling forward black and silent.

Fiddler swung the crossbow around and fired. The bolt struck the ground a half-dozen paces from the four beasts. Sheets of flame washed over them. The creatures shrieked.

He spared no time to watch, pulling at random another quarrel from the hardened case strapped to the saddle. He'd only a dozen quarrel-mounted Moranth munitions to start with. He was now down to nine, and of those only one more cusser. He spared a glance as he loaded the quarrel — another flamer — then resumed scanning the wall of heaving sand, leaving his hands to work by memory.

Shapes were showing, flashing like grainy ghosts. A dozen dog-sized winged reptiles shuddered into view twenty feet up, rising on a column of air. Esanthan'el — Hood's breath, these are D'ivers and Soletaken! A huge cape-shape swept over the esanthan'el, engulfing them.

Crokus was frantically rummaging in a pack for the short sword he'd purchased in Ehrlitan. Apsalar crouched beside him, daggers glinting in her hands as she faced down the road.

Fiddler was about to shout that the enemy was to her left, when he saw what she'd seen. Three Gral hunters rode shoulder to shoulder in full charge, less than a dozen horse-strides from their position. Their lances lowered.

The range was too close for a safe shot. The sapper could only watch as the warriors closed in. Time seemed to slow down as Fiddler stared, helpless to intervene. A massive bear bolted up from the side of the road, colliding with the Gral rider on the left. The Soletaken was as big as the horse it pulled down. Its jaws closed sideways around the warrior's waist, between ribs and hips, the canines sinking in almost past the far side. The jaws squeezed seemingly without effort. Bile and blood sprayed from the warrior's mouth.

Apsalar sprang at the other two men, flashing beneath the lanceheads, both knives thrusting up and out as she slipped between the horses. Neither Gral had time to parry. As if in mirror reflection, each blade vanished up and under the ribcage, the one on the left finding a heart, the one on the right rupturing a lung.

Then she was past, leaving both weapons behind. A dive and a shoulder roll avoided the lance of a fourth rider Fiddler hadn't seen earlier. In a single, fluid motion, Apsalar regained her feet and sprang in an astonishing surge of strength, and was suddenly sitting behind the Gral, her right arm closing around his throat, her left reaching down over the man's head, two fingers sinking deep into each eye, then yanking back in time for the small knife that suddenly appeared in her right hand to slide back across the warrior's exposed throat.