Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 34

As the three serpent ships prepared to drop anchor for the night, Bannon continued scrubbing the boards with a stiff-bristled brush, though he had long since removed any visible remnants of catfish blood and slime. With his ankle shackled to a pin in the deck, he had been on his knees for hours, and his hands were raw and bleeding. Several other slaves, including morose Erik, were tied on deck nearby, forced to watch him.

Bannon knew that if he could get free for only a moment, he would fling himself over the side of the ship. He could stroke across the river and hide in the thickets—if he made it to the bank. The Norukai were skilled with their bone-tipped spears, and one of the jagged weapons might skewer him before he made it halfway to the shore.

Then he wouldn’t be able to help Erik and the other captives either. He had to find a better way.

In the thickening dusk, he saw a bright bonfire ahead. He heard a pounding drumbeat and loud voice as someone stood out on a spit of land, challenging the serpent ships. A lone woman stood silhouetted by the flames, lean and clad in black leather wraps. A morazeth!

At first he thought, he hoped, it was Lila, but he recognized the voice of Adessa, the cruel morazeth leader from the combat pits of Ildakar. Adessa had taken his best friend Ian as her lover and then killed him in front of Bannon. He would never forgive her for that.

But here she was, calling out a challenge to King Grieve. He hated Adessa, but she was certainly no worse than the Norukai.

Her challenge amused the scarred raiders, but Bannon knew they were fools to underestimate her. When the two raiders rowed a landing boat out to fetch her from the shore, others checked the bindings of the slaves on deck. Shipwright Gara grabbed Bannon by the hair and dragged him to the side rail. “Enough scrubbing for now. You can spend tomorrow scouring the deck. Again.” Gara lashed Bannon’s wrists together and checked the chain around his ankle, but she kept looking toward the serpent ship’s bow, where King Grieve waited for his morazeth challenger to climb aboard.

Chalk pranced back down the deck, squatting next to Bannon. “She challenges King Grieve! She will grieve.” He whispered close to Bannon’s ear, “Blood on the deck, scrub, scrub! You’ll see.” Then he scuttled back to the bow, where Adessa faced the Norukai king.

She revealed the rotting head and set the hideous trophy on a barrel. Although decay had distorted the features, Bannon recognized Wizard Commander Maxim. “Sweet Sea Mother.”

Ugly raiders crowded at the rails to watch the duel as Adessa and Grieve faced off in the flickering lamplight. The king let out an explosive laugh and lifted his heavy war axe while Adessa drew her short sword.

With their backs to him, the crowded raiders blocked Bannon’s view, so he could see only glimpses of the combat. All the Norukai were focused on the unexpected amusement of the battle. Meanwhile, the slaves remained silent, huddled and trying to stay unnoticed at the stern.

Against the jeering, laughter, and catcalls from the rowdy Norukai, Bannon heard a stirring from the river, a furtive splash along the hull. He heard a soft thump, and realized that someone was climbing up onto the ship!

He turned away to see a lithe figure clamber over the rail and quietly roll onto the deck—another morazeth, her skin covered with branded runes, her short brown hair plastered to her head. Lila! A surge of hope set his pulse racing. He nearly leaped to his feet, despite the chain, but her gaze swung over him like the lash of a whip. She held up a hand to silence him.

At the front of the ship, the Norukai let out a loud cheer, and the clash of blades rang out.

“What are you doing here?” Bannon whispered. Optimism flared inside him.

“Don’t be a fool, boy. I’m here to save you.”

Adessa confronted the Norukai king, who looked even uglier than many of the combat beasts she had fought in the Ildakar arena. Maybe Grieve thought his slashed cheeks and implanted bone spurs made him more fearsome. Adessa just found them all the more reason to kill him, which was what she had promised to do. It would give Lila a diversion to free the young swordsman, and Adessa enjoyed the task. Throwing herself upon the Norukai king, she swung her sword, letting out an explosive breath with the effort.

King Grieve was an ox of a man with a broad chest, swollen muscles, and a sharkskin vest. He had the strength to wield his heavy war axe as if it were no more than a dagger. Despite his size, he showed surprising agility as he arched himself backward to avoid the point of Adessa’s sword. The Norukai spectators whooped at the near miss.

Adessa put so much effort into her swing that she overbalanced herself when the weapon struck only air. As she caught her balance, the king smashed the side of her head with his iron-augmented fist. Her skull rang, but she managed to dance out of the way while he swung his axe at her.

Judging by their howls and laughter, the Norukai were convinced she would lose.

On top of the barrel, Maxim regarded her with jellied eyes. She could hear his malicious taunting in her mind, but the rotting head did not speak aloud so that others could hear. He was too devious for that, but she heard him laughing inside her head, louder than the rowdy Norukai. She shook her head fiercely, as if to drive away annoying gnats.

She blocked Grieve’s axe with her sword, and even though her blade was much smaller, the blow deflected the king’s weapon. After his big axe swept past, Adessa lunged with her right foot and kicked him in the abdomen hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

Enraged, Grieve swung his axe like a bludgeon, without finesse, but with enough strength that she barely avoided it.

Hooting and whistling, the Norukai taunted her by throwing slimy objects that splattered her skin. Fish guts. It was a common trick from desperate fighters in the combat arena, and she refused to let herself be distracted. She had faced altered bears, spiny wolves, and sand panthers without flinching, and Grieve was a monster just like the others.

She and the king smashed together again, attacking, neither managing to land a mortal wound.

The albino shaman darted in among the spectators, then flitted out of view again. The simpering man made her skin crawl, but she concentrated on Grieve while keeping her peripheral vision alert for treachery. She did not trust the Norukai to fight by honorable rules.

The king grunted again, straining with the weight of his heavy axe. His studded boot stepped on a pile of slippery fish guts, and he stumbled. The disorientation lasted no more than a heartbeat, but Adessa seized her chance. She raised the sword in her right hand, forcing him to defend himself, and with her left hand she snatched the small engraved wooden handle from her hip. The agile knife—the specific morazeth weapon used to cause intense pain in their victims.

Grieve regained his balance as she plunged in. He twisted his axe to block her short sword, exactly as Adessa had expected him to do. He wasn’t watching the insignificant object she held in her other hand.

Adessa struck with the agile knife like a stinging bee and pierced him. The tiny blade was needle-thin, no longer than a knucklebone, but that was not where its power lay. She doubted he even felt the puncture through his sharkskin vest. Until she slid her thumb over the rune and activated the magic.

An overwhelming thunderclap of pain rocked through the Norukai king. Grieve snapped back, all of his muscles contracting with seemingly enough force to crack his spine. His scarred jaw dropped open in a yawning scream that was horrifying enough to shock the Norukai observers. They gasped in disbelief.

Adessa twisted the agile knife and continued to release the litany of pain. With this tiny weapon, she had made her bravest, strongest warrior trainees fall to their knees and sob for release. She pressed harder.

Then Maxim’s head began to laugh. With the soft neck stump squished on the barrelhead, the hideous jaws stretched and the hollow, mocking voice slithered out. “You won’t beat him. Come, join me in death, dear Adessa! That is where you belong!”

The voice was shocking, jarring. The Norukai were shouting, howling, demanding blood. Their king writhed under the pulse of the agile knife, and Adessa drove it in harder.

“You are weak, Adessa!” Maxim taunted. “You know it!”

She flinched, flung a poisonous glare at him. “Be quiet!”

In the instant she was distracted, somehow, even with the needle of the agile knife still inside him, Grieve grabbed her left hand. He squeezed her wrist with unbelievable strength, a vise enhanced by the desperation of pain, and crushed the bones, turning Adessa’s hand and forearm to pulp.

A black thunder of unbelievable pain swirled behind her vision.

Somewhere in the background clamor, Maxim was laughing again.

Grieve grabbed her broken hand, snatched the agile knife from her mangled wrist, and shoved her backward.

Adessa tried to lift her short sword, but the big man knocked her flat to the deck. Her head struck the wooden boards, and more pain rang through her skull. She raised her knee to push him away, but Grieve had the agile knife now. He could not unleash the pain spell, and as a weapon it was no more than a cobbler’s awl, but he stabbed her throat, then stabbed again, puncturing her jugular. He viciously dragged the small blade across her neck.

Adessa felt warm blood splashing out. In a distant part of her mind, she realized that her struggles were growing weaker.

He hammered the tiny blade down, pounding and pounding like a butcher tenderizing meat. With a constant wordless roar, Grieve stabbed her countless times in a fury. Hundreds of puncture wounds mangled her face, throat, and chest into a horror of ripped flesh. He kept stabbing long after she was dead.

The Norukai howled with victory.

As soon as Lila dropped onto the deck, Bannon realized that he had always expected her to come. Optimism hadn’t failed him. While Adessa and Grieve fought at the front of the ship, Lila darted over to him. Then Bannon saw that she had a familiar sword strapped to her back—Sturdy! For the first time in many days, genuine joy filled him.

Lila used her knife to slash the rope around his wrists. He twisted until the cord snapped, and she set to work on the manacle around his ankle. Bannon whispered to her, “You have to free the others too. They are my friends.”

The slaves groaned. Some were panicked, others distraught. Erik pulled against his chains.

Lila turned her hard gaze up to Bannon. Sweat ran down the side of her face, mixed with the drying river water. “I don’t have time, boy. I did not swear to protect these others. I came to rescue you.”

Inspecting the cuff around his ankle, Lila followed the chain to the pin screwed into the deck boards. With Sturdy still strapped to her back, she dug into the wood with the point of her dagger, trying to uproot the pin.

At the bow, the Norukai roared louder than before, and Bannon saw Adessa fall. King Grieve was upon her, stabbing and stabbing. Blood flew everywhere, spraying high.

Bannon groaned. “Sweet Sea Mother, he just killed her!”

A flicker of shock and disbelief crossed Lila’s expression. She hesitated only a moment, then she worked harder at the chain. “I thought I would have more time.” She did not look up as Grieve continued mutilating the fallen morazeth. She was breathing harder.

Bannon reached out. “Give me Sturdy! Please, I can help.”

The raucous Norukai were still celebrating Grieve’s victory, but a pale figure scampered down the deck toward them. Bannon looked up as Chalk saw him, then spotted Lila as well. The shaman suddenly jumped up and waved his arms, shouting, “Another fish! We caught another fish.”

Even with their shouts of victory, some of the Norukai heard Chalk’s shrill outcry and turned to see what had excited him.

Lila yanked at Bannon’s chain, tugging as she tried to rip the anchor bolt loose. Giving up all attempt to remain quiet, she hacked at the deck board. Trying to help, Bannon strained against the manacle, gritting his teeth.

Chalk capered up to them, shouting for the Norukai to come. “Here! Here! Another fish! Come quick!”

Lunging up, Lila punched the shaman hard in the face, doing anything to silence him. Her blow knocked him backward as if he’d been thrown from a catapult. Chalk crashed to the deck, squealing in pain and disbelief, pressing a palm to his split lip. He curled up into a ball and wailed. Bannon felt an unexpected guilt at seeing the albino hurt, but he pushed it away. They had no time!

At the front of the ship, under the lantern light, the rotting head of Wizard Commander Maxim began to shine with a sickly greenish glow. Its jaws moved and the gelatinous eyes gleamed, as if rejoicing in the death of Adessa. The dead man let out a chilling nauseating laugh, mocking them all and horrifying them.

Even Bannon heard it, and the sound made his skin crawl. The Norukai backed away, breathless and uncertain. They stared at the head. When Maxim finished laughing, his remaining skin liquefied and slid down the skull, oozing into a puddle on the barrelhead. Then even the bones crumbled into fragments.

But while Chalk kept screaming, the Norukai ran down the deck, saw Lila, and roared in alarm. Many scarred raiders thundered toward them, their weapons raised.

Lila drew Sturdy from its lashings on her back and held the blade in front of her. She crouched as if facing arena monsters, ready to defend him with her life. Bannon kept straining on the chain, planting his feet, but he couldn’t rip the bolt free.

Erik and the other slaves also pulled against their bonds, shouting, desperate to get away. Bannon thought that if they all fought back at once, some of them might even break free. But his hope dwindled as the howling Norukai closed in.

King Grieve stormed forward, his boots crashing on the deck, his skin and sharkskin vest splashed with Adessa’s blood. When he saw Chalk sprawled on the deck, nursing his bruised face and whimpering, he let out a roar of rage.

For an instant Lila was ready to face all the Norukai, refusing to admit failure, but Bannon groaned. “You’ll die, Lila. You can’t save me.” He knew it was the right thing to do.

Lila struggled with the impossibility, but when her expression changed, Bannon realized that she knew he was right. She growled, “Not this time.” As the Norukai charged in to kill her, she vowed, “I will be back for you, boy.” She flipped herself over the side of the ship, and Bannon heard the splash as she plunged into the river.

Ignoring the bound slaves, the Norukai snatched up spears and raced to the rail, looking for the ripples as she swam away. Some hurled their weapons into the water as if Lila were a channel catfish. They missed.

Seething, Bannon knew they wouldn’t kill her. Lila would get away, and she would return for him.

Miserable and shaken, King Grieve bent next to a whimpering Chalk, rocking his gangly friend back and forth. The shaman poked at where blood dripped from his split lip and swollen cheek. Though covered with gore, the king tenderly touched the albino’s smashed face. “So sorry, Chalk. I should have protected you. I should have known Adessa was part of a plan. They tried to trick us.”

Grieve rose ominously to his feet and glared at Bannon, whose hands were free though the chain still pinned him to the deck. The king stalked forward. “That woman hurt my Chalk. Now I repay the favor.”

Grieve swung his iron-plated fist like a boulder into Bannon’s face, nearly dislocating his jaw. Stars erupted through his mind as he crashed against the side of the ship and slumped to the deck, stunned.

“You deserve to die,” the king growled. “But I will give you pain instead.”