Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 77

When King Grieve’s ship collided with the Chaser, the impact threw Bannon against a crate on the deck so hard his head rang. He smashed his elbow, but managed to keep his grip on the ornate sword.

But he couldn’t react in time to save Nathan from being thrown overboard.

“No!” Bannon lunged, but the deck boards were slippery with spray and covered with a hard varnish of kraken slime. He sprawled on his back and rolled. Lila seized his wrist before he, too, fell overboard.

“The wizard can take care of himself.” Lila pushed his shoulder, turning him. “No time. Look!”

Bannon reeled backward as dozens of barbaric raiders leaped across the gap. The Norukai were a storm of bladed weapons, bulging muscles, and scarred faces. Their battle cries made them sound like hungry beasts.

“Hold together!” Jared yelled. With a hard, out-of-place laugh, the krakener captain wielded a long-handled hatchet designed for lopping off tentacles. With a sideways sweep, he caught one of the overconfident Norukai by surprise, proving that the hatchet could slice off a human head as easily as it severed kraken appendages.

Bannon braced himself with his sword, while Lila stood at his side with her sword in one hand, a dagger in the other. Her hungry grin looked more intimidating than any of the Norukai did.

King Grieve crashed onto the deck of the Chaser. His heavy boots thudded on the boards, and he swept his war axe back and forth with one hand as if it were a toy. Recognizing Bannon, he laughed aloud. His snort sounded like a loud belch. “Walking meat.” He strode forward. “Dead meat.” The blade of the war axe was as broad as the king’s head. The sharpened crescent edge gleamed like a silver smile.

The ugly and uncouth Atta thumped beside Grieve, and Lila hissed at her own nemesis.

The Chaser’s crew ran forward armed with boat hooks and clubs. They were strong from hard work and brave from wrestling kraken. The ten D’Haran soldiers aboard the ship also threw themselves into the fray.

Ignoring the other raiders on the deck, Bannon stepped up to face King Grieve with his fancy sword raised. “Of all these enemies, you’re the one I want to kill the most.”

Grieve charged like an Ildakaran bull, and the studs of his boots dug into the layers of hardened slime. He swung his axe with both hands, putting all of his effort into the blow.

The weapon would have shattered Bannon’s chest, but he twisted his body out of the way, calling upon instinctive training. He dodged the axe and twirled like a dancer, dropped, bent, and came up again. Keeping his sword low, he struck hard and sideways.

Grieve turned his thick torso so that the sharp steel clanged against the iron links of the chain around his waist, striking sparks rather than drawing blood.

Attacking him from the opposite side, Lila sprang upon the king with her dagger and short sword, slashing with a blur of sharp edges. “We’ll both kill him, boy.”

Then, like an avalanche, Atta slammed into her with crippling force, knocking her away from Grieve. Lila rolled on the deck and turned on her new foe, shifting focus without the slightest hesitation. While sprawled and scrambling to her feet, Lila swung at Atta’s lower legs and stabbed her dagger point deep into the woman’s meaty calf. Bellowing in pain, Atta smashed a hard fist down on Lila’s head, but Lila sprang to her feet and crouched, coiled to fight.

Grieve swung his war axe again with enough force to chop down a mast, and Bannon barely avoided evisceration. “Chalk talked with you. You twisted him. You tricked him. My Chalk!” He swung the axe again. This time Bannon met the blow with the sword. The steel was strong, but the vibration of impact shuddered all the way to the young man’s shoulder.

“Chalk was mad,” Bannon taunted. “You should have let the razorfish eat him down to his bones the first time.”

As expected, the comment sent the king into a blind rage. Bursting with sorrow and hungry for revenge, Grieve snapped his mouth open so that his face looked like a yawning, wet hole. “You will die for that!”

As he fought, Bannon felt a red haze rising around his vision. “A lot of people tried to kill me, and I am still here.” He became stronger, faster, every movement fueled by instinct and adrenaline. The deafening sounds of hand-to-hand combat all around him became more distinct.

Bannon hacked with the sword and carved a bright red furrow across Grieve’s chest. The king didn’t seem to realize he had been cut. He twirled the battle-axe and chopped down again, driving Bannon backward. The young man parried with the sword, slashed low, and nicked Grieve’s thigh, but the king continued pressing.

In the harbor around them, the gifted defenders maintained the turbulence, swamping or crushing serpent ships, slamming wooden hulls against one another. Even with the blockade, dozens of the serpent ships had broken through and headed for the inner harbor, where they smashed into the docks and disgorged wild Norukai. They swarmed into the city, which had already started to burn.

Bannon couldn’t help them, though. He had enough trouble just trying to survive here. He would have to leave the rest of Tanimura to Nicci, Zimmer, and the others.

As if trying to cut down an oak with a single blow, Grieve swung his huge axe again. Bannon lurched to the side and collided with Atta just as she brought down her curved sword at Lila. If he hadn’t dislodged her, she would have severed Lila’s arm. With a snarl, the Norukai woman spun to lash out at him, but Bannon blocked her blade with his own and turned back just as King Grieve followed through with his axe.

Using the moment of distraction, Lila threw herself upon Atta, hacking deep into the woman’s right arm. The Norukai clacked her teeth together as blood spouted from mangled muscle, but she effortlessly switched her blade to the other hand and attacked Lila again. The air around them was filled with a mist of blood.

Grieve struck at Bannon again and again, each blow powerful enough to cleave a man in two. The young man dodged and recovered his balance. He was not afraid of King Grieve, and he did not want to back away. He wanted to kill the awful man. He met each blow with Nathan’s fine sword, striking back as hard as he could.

By now, though, his muscles ached from the effort, and his bones rattled from the abuse. As the red haze crowded in and tunneled his vision, he breathed harder; his pulse accelerated, his muscles tightened. His throat went dry. Every fiber of muscle, every drop of blood, every bead of sweat, every strand of his long hair became consumed with defeating the Norukai king.

Bannon never knew what caused his blood rage. Maybe it was some angry flaw he had inherited from his brutal father. When the mindless fury consumed him, he became a killing machine with no thought or awareness other than his opponent. He couldn’t remember every blow or even every victim.

As he hacked at King Grieve and his vision blurred into that fugue of murderous energy, Bannon fought to hold on to himself and push back the haze. He wanted to remember this! He slashed hard and up, barely missing Grieve’s throat.

“Sweet Sea Mother!” Bannon said, grinding his teeth. “I’ll slay you, and I will remember every instant of this fight.”

The king flung his shoulders back to avoid the sword tip, then lunged toward Bannon. Grieve’s face turned ruddy. “You cannot kill me. I am the serpent god!”

Bannon made a scoffing noise. “I’ve already seen the serpent god killed.”

With a shout as loud and as violent as the king’s, he collided with Grieve, swung, chopped, stabbed. The king defended himself, using the metal cuff around his wrist to deflect a blow, turning to let his sharkskin vest catch the glancing blade.

Bannon did not relent. He thrust and swung and hacked at the big man’s shoulder, chopping loose an implanted bone spike. Grieve yowled as blood sprayed from the gouge, but the pain triggered additional energy. “I am King Grieve. I am the serpent god!” Bannon dodged another vicious sweep of the war axe. “You’ll all grieve!”

The explosive strength of his attack was unstoppable. The king drove Bannon backward, pressing him against a crate near the rail. Grieve raised his war axe over his head and brought it down with enough strength to split his victim from head to waist. Bannon evaded death by a hairsbreadth, and the axe embedded itself deep into the wood. The blade wedged into the rail and stuck in the thick layers of adhesive slime. King Grieve grasped the handle, tugged, twisted, tried to break the axe loose.

As King Grieve struggled to wrench his weapon free, Bannon seized the instant. Putting all the strength of his back and shoulders and arms behind his sword strike, he chopped down on King Grieve’s neck.

The sharp blade cut all the way through the king’s spine. Grieve’s head rolled off, held by just a scrap of skin. His jaw yawned open and his tongue dangled out as blood spouted. Stretched by the weight, the thin ribbon of tissue snapped, and Grieve’s head dropped over the side of the ship and into the churning water.

Bannon collapsed to his knees and felt a sudden indrawn breath of silence. He seemed to hear Chalk’s voice, the shaman calling out gibberish again and again. And now Bannon understood.

The axe cleaves the wood. The sword cleaves the bone.

A scream loud enough to shatter glass rolled out behind him. Atta looked as if her heart had just been torn beating from her chest. “My Grieve!” She thundered toward him with all the fury of a combat bear.

Grieve’s headless body collapsed to the deck. Some of the krakener crew cheered, then threw themselves on the other Norukai with redoubled force.

Atta came at Bannon like a rabid dog, and he raised his sword to block her. Everything seemed to move slowly, and his weary muscles were cold sludge. When Atta was one step from him, her sword raised for the killing blow, Lila appeared behind her and thrust her blade directly through the other woman’s back. She shoved hard with both hands, pushing the blade through Atta’s heart, and the point sprang out like a sharpened sapling between her breasts.

Dying, Atta flailed her arms, then let her curved sword fall with a clatter to the deck. She pawed at the steel point that had sprouted from her chest, slicing her palms. Though Atta was much heftier than her slender opponent, Lila held the big woman up with the sword. Dark blood flowed in puddles.

Finally, Atta slid down along the cutting blade, and Lila let the body fall onto the deck.