The Outcast (Summoner #4)(78)

Arcturus riposted with a clumsy swing of his axe, but the blow was parried easily, slapped aside with the flat of the rebel’s blade. Before he could recover the swordsman jabbed, and now Arcturus felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder.

“Hah!” the swordsman laughed.

Arcturus could feel the warm wetness seeping into the cloth of his shoulder, and the arm fell uselessly to his side. The sword whirled, and Arcturus could do little more than jump back, leaving Sacharissa vulnerable, still struggling with the other rebel in the small space between them.

The demon was oblivious, but now Arcturus saw the glint of his opponent’s sword as it was raised above Sacharissa.

“No,” he yelled.

Mana roiled within him, and he blasted wyrdlight in a solid beam of blue light. He winced as the sudden glare blinded him, but in his seared vision, he saw the rebel reeling, clutching his eyes.

He swung his axe again, but the man had fallen toward him, tripping over the struggling combatants beneath them. The wooden haft thudded harmlessly into the swordsman’s shoulder as the blow passed above his head, and then Arcturus was in his own wrestling bout on the floor, the axe clattering free as he grasped at the hilt of the enemy blade.

But the rebel was too strong. Arcturus was forced onto his back, and the man straddled his chest, the weight of him driving the breath in a great gust from Arcturus’s lungs.

“I’m gonna gut you slow-like,” the man rasped, and Arcturus could smell the fetid waft of the man’s breath as he heaved at the sword clutched between them.

It was all Arcturus could do to ease the blade as it pressed vertically against his chest, the tip slicing into the soft underside of his chin.

Spittle sprayed from the man’s lips as he heaved once more. Arcturus craned his neck in desperation, and his arms seized in effort, yet still the blade sank deeper. Fresh blood spurted from the wound, and Arcturus knew he was going to die.

Then the man stiffened. Arcturus moaned with effort and suddenly the sword was his, and he pushed it up toward the man. His effort did little more than graze the rebel’s face, but in that moment the rebel coughed, and Arcturus’s face was sprayed with crimson. It was only then that he saw a second blade glittering above, and he could finally breathe again as the man’s body keeled over.

For a moment he lay there, gulping great gasps of air, ignoring his rescuer. Beside him, he sensed Sacharissa’s triumph as she finished her opponent off with a final, savage bite, and the sudden concern as she processed the terror and desperation from her master. She had been oblivious, too focused on the man beneath her, but now she came, her rough tongue bathing his face as he choked his way back to breathing easy once more.

“You’re a fool,” said a gruff voice.

Ulfr. The dwarf stood above Arcturus, his legs akimbo, hands on his hips. He clutched a long knife, the blade red with blood.

“I had … to try,” Arcturus managed.

“You should have killed them with a lightning spell,” Ulfr grunted, grasping Arcturus’s hand and lifting him to his feet.

Arcturus steadied himself on Sacharissa, his legs wavering like jelly, and Ulfr kneeled, wiping his blade on the dead swordsman’s cloak. He had been too low on mana for more than a few, weak spells, but Arcturus didn’t have the energy to tell him that.

“Thank you,” Arcturus said instead, “for helping me. You didn’t have to do that.”

Ulfr didn’t respond. He simply shook his head and began to drag the swordsman’s corpse down the corridor.

“What do we do now?” Arcturus asked.

“Grab hold of a body, get that mutt to do the same, and follow me,” Ulfr snapped, stopping to blow out the torches on the walls. “If we’re lucky they won’t see the blood.”

The dwarf stopped to grab his tray and balanced it on the man’s crimson-soaked belly. Then he continued on, grunting with effort.

Arcturus sent Sacharissa back to the stocky man he had killed with the crossbow, and tried not to look at the bloodied remains of the rebel beneath him. He could see now that the man had worn chain mail beneath his cloak. It was not a pretty sight.

He looked up the corridor, where Ulfr had already disappeared into impenetrable darkness.

“Hellfire,” Arcturus breathed. “That was close.”

And followed him.





CHAPTER

45

IT FELT LIKE AN age dragging the body through pitch black, and as Arcturus focused, he could still hear the conversations of the men on the floors beneath them. They swirled around him like the whispers of dead men, but he heard no alarm in them, even if the sound itself sent shivers up his spine.

Then there was a stark voice among the crowd, chiming as an off-key note in the conversation’s melody. A bellow of pain, like a boar being speared on a hunt. Arcturus stopped, but it was gone as soon as it came, and he was forced to shuffle on once more.

He had never felt in more danger. It was only the thin light of the moon in the near distance that drove him on, for without it he might have stopped and buried his face in Sacharissa’s fur.

With every heartbeat, the wound in his neck throbbed with pain, and he could feel the blood that had pooled on his chest congealing. He only wished he had enough mana to heal it, but he had used the last of it in that final blast of wyrdlight.

Finally, he reached a small pool of light, where Ulfr had already levered open a dust-covered window.