Tome of the Undergates - Sam Sykes

Beautiful, Gariath thought.

The dragonman snorted. The wound felt good in his back. He would not be walking away from this fight, he knew. All that remained was to make certain that he got there before nothing was left to kill.

‘Wait!’

His eyelid twitched at the shrill protest. He scowled at Asper over his shoulder, meeting her objecting befuddlement with abject annoyance.

‘What about the others? Lenk, Kataria, Denaos-’

‘Dead, dead, dead quickly,’ he replied. ‘Honour them. Give them company in the afterlife.’

‘But I. .’ she whimpered, ‘I can’t fight.’

‘So die.’

‘I left my staff behind.’ Her excuse was as meek and sheepish as her smile. ‘I’m not much use. I. . could remain here and tend to you, though. You are bleeding quite badly and I-’

‘Moron!’ he roared, turning on her. ‘There will be nothing for you to tend to here. Nothing will survive if I can help it.’ He stomped towards her, scowling through his mask of gore. ‘You cried about wanting to fight.’ He thrust the jagged blade into her hands, staining her robes red. ‘Now prove if you’re worthy of life.’

‘I. . no, it’s not that.’ She tried to return the blade, her grasp trembling. ‘I don’t want to. . I mean, I can’t. My arm, you see, it-’

‘I don’t care,’ he snarled in reply. ‘No one will ever care what you did while you’re still alive.’ He snorted, spraying a cloud of red into her face. ‘Your life will be nowhere near as great as your death, if you manage to do it right.’

Her eyes were those of an animal: frightened, weak, quivering. But she held on to the blade, he thought, and more importantly, she stopped talking. For the moment, that was enough for him; if she managed to do something worthwhile in the time she still breathed, it would be a pleasant surprise.

She disappeared from his thoughts and his sight as he turned his back to her, stalking towards the throng. He ignored her cries of protest, ignored the boy who had already disappeared into the battle, ignored the thought of the other dead humans. He would mourn for Lenk later, laugh at the rest of them with his last breath.

The wound in his back felt good, the chill that filled him refreshing. The sound of his life spattering onto the ground was a macabre reassurance that he would not be walking away from this fight, that he would be seeing his ancestors before the day was done.

And he would not be going alone, he resolved.

When the first of the longfaces looked up at him, pulling her spike out of a pale corpse and loosing a war cry, it was not death that he smelled, nor sea, nor salt, nor fear. There was only the scent of rivers as she charged him.

Rivers and rocks.

Twenty-Seven

‘ Kat?’

That was her name, wasn’t it? No shict had ever called her that, of course; shicts had full, proud names that all meant something. Kat meant nothing, Kat was not a name, Kat was not a word.

‘Kat!’

Kat was her name, she remembered. Not her true name, not her shict name. Kat was a name that some silver-haired little girl had called her. No, she remembered, he had been a man. A human.

‘Kataria!’

She remembered him now. Skinny fellow, not at all impressive to look at; but she looked at him often, didn’t she? She followed him out of a forest, a year ago. Where was he now?

His voice was hard to hear. Her ears twitched against her head. They felt disembodied, hanging from her head and heavy with lead. Too deaf to hear her own breath, much less some weak little human girl. . man.

But she heard him, still crying out her name, still shrieking, still screaming as if in pain. He had a lot of pain, she remembered.

What was his name again?

‘Lenk.’ Her lips remembered. ‘Don’t be dead.’ The words came unbidden. They were not shict words. ‘I’m coming.’

‘Well, that’s just delightful. I’m sure if he wasn’t already dead, he’d be thrilled to hear it.’

Another voice: grating, simpering, unpleasant. She frowned immediately, her eyelids flittering open. The face she recognised: angular and narrow, like a rat’s, except more obnoxious. His wasn’t entirely concerned, his frown not particularly sympathetic.

‘Denaos,’ she hissed. Her voice was a croak on dry lips.

‘Oh, good. You remember my name. Everything else upstairs working?’ He tapped her temple with a finger. ‘Nothing feel loose? Leaking?’ He waved a hand in front of her. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘However many as will fit up your nose if you don’t get away from me,’ she snarled, slapping at his appendage. She rose from the stones beneath her, head pounding with the blood that rushed to it. ‘What happened?’

‘So, you are whole in the mind, right? That question was just your natural stupidity?’ He sneered and gestured down a dark, drowned hall. ‘Just listen, nit.’

She didn’t have to strain her ears; even weakened as they were, the distant furore sounded violently close. There was the sound of weapons clattering to the floor, harsh and croaking war cries mingling. Mostly, there was the screaming: loud and sporadic, flowing into a continuous river of agony that flooded into her ears and filled her mind like a bubbling pot.

She winced, folded her ears over themselves. They ached terribly; why did they hurt so bad? With a pained expression, she reached up and rubbed them gently. Her horror only grew at the flecks of dried crimson that crumbled out into her palms.

‘Ah, yes,’ she muttered, remembering. ‘Screaming.’

‘Plenty of it,’ Denaos confirmed. ‘So, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to do this nice and quietly.’

‘Do. . what?’

Denaos rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘I’d like to get out of here without having anything stuffed inside me that I didn’t put there.’ He eyed her warily. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? Because I’m starting to think this might be easier if you were dead.’

‘Get out of here?’

Kataria looked over her shoulder. The great stone slab loomed at the end of the hall, the cracks in its grey face made haughty, shadowy grins against the emerald torchlight. It was mocking her, she realised, as she recalled what had happened. As she recalled who lay beyond it.

‘We aren’t going anywhere,’ she muttered, rising to her feet. Her bones groaned in protest. She ignored them, as she did the throbbing of her ears, the agony of her body. ‘Not without Lenk.’

‘I’m sure he appreciates the sentiment.’ Denaos crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. ‘However, given the fact that he’s behind Silf knows how much solid stone and we’re out here and. . you know, alive, he probably wouldn’t hold it against us.’

She ignored him, collected her bow and quiver from puddles of salt and slung them over her shoulder. With equal contempt for the limp she walked with, she trudged to the stone and ran her fingers down it.

‘It’s rather large, if you hadn’t noticed,’ Denaos muttered. ‘And thick. I checked.’

She looked over her shoulder at him with an even stare.

‘Admittedly, with not much care.’ He sighed. ‘There was the issue of the half-dead shict to attend to.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘But you’re up. You’re moving about. Whatever else is down here is distracted, thus leaving us a fairly good opportunity to do that activity I enjoy so much where I don’t get my head chewed off.’

‘You could have run already,’ she replied, turning back to the stone.

‘I stand a better chance with you watching my back.’

‘And we’ll stand an even better chance with Lenk watching both our backs. Help me look for it.’

‘For what?’

‘A switch. . a lever. . something that moves this thing, I don’t know. You’re supposed to be good with these things, aren’t you?’

‘With hopeless situations?’ He shook his head. ‘Only by virtue of experience. If there was anything that could move that thing, I’d have found it. The only chance you have at this point is to bash it down with your ugly face.’ He sneered. ‘Granted, while it seems tempting. .’

His voice faded into another babbling tangent, easily ignored as she pressed her ear against the rock. The noises were faint: scuffling, splashing, something loud and violent. Through it, though, there was a familiar, if fleeting, sound.

He’s alive.

At least, he sounded alive to her. It was difficult to tell; what she heard was but a fragment of his voice. It was a weak and dying noise, there and gone in an instant. Perhaps, she wondered, she imagined it?

A trick of her mind or her bloodied ears? Or maybe, in her heart if not her mind, she knew he was already dead and heard the last traces of his breath escaping this world before he followed it. Either way, it was a flimsy, weak excuse to linger in a forsaken fortress filled with demons.

Still, she thought as she cracked her knuckles, I’ve gone off less before.

‘Hurry it up,’ she growled as she leaned down to inspect the bottom of the slab. ‘He’s not well.’

‘Compared to you?’ She heard Denaos’s long sigh. ‘Good luck.’

She turned at the sounds of boots scraping across the stones. Denaos, with no particular rush or hesitation, stalked down the hall towards the drowned section. She quirked a brow.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Let’s not belabour this, please. We all knew there was going to have to be a parting of ways, eventually.’ He threw his hands up in resignation. ‘I did what I could. Let Silf bear witness.’

‘You did nothing!’ she spat at his back, as though her words were arrows. ‘I know your petty round-ear God rewards cowardice, but I don’t. Now get back here and help.’

He could feel her eyes boring into him, that emerald stare that he had seen even Lenk flinch at. But he was not Lenk. He was not Gariath. He was not Kataria. He was a reasonable man. He was a cautious man. He was a man who knew when to run.

Keep telling yourself that, he thought. Eventually, you’ll believe it. He stooped, making certain that the shict wouldn’t see his bitter frown, hear his sigh. Don’t turn around, he reminded himself, don’t turn around. She doesn’t deserve a second look from you. None of them do. You told them. You warned them. They didn’t listen and this is what happened.

It’s not your fault.

He paused at the edge of the water, blanched at its blackness and noted that it wasn’t nearly black enough to hide the frowning face that looked back up at him.

No. . still don’t believe it.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a bowstring drawn. He couldn’t say that the sight of her eyes, narrowed to venomous slits over a glistening arrowhead, was particularly unexpected.