Deathblade: A Tale of Malus Darkblade Page 6

  He knew this kind of enemy, Malus realised. He’d seen her like fight often enough in the arenas of Hag Graef. She belonged to the Sisters of Slaughter, foremost of Naggaroth’s gladiator guilds – female warriors who devoted themselves to the ruthless god Eldrazor of the Blades. The gladiatrixes didn’t master any technique or school of combat, instead honing their reflexes and plying their murderous trade on a savage, instinctual level. They were the most unpredictable of foes, constantly adapting and reacting to their enemy, existing only in the moment, devoid of the discipline and strategy of more refined warriors.

  Whoever had sent this elf to kill him had known it was just this kind of enemy that would cause Malus the most worry. His cunning brain could outthink a normal foe, discern the pattern behind his opponent’s training and plan his own strategy accordingly. Against a Sister of Slaughter, however, such ploys would be useless.

  The gladiatrix was already whirling back to the attack, diving at him like a rabid wolf. Her spin brought both whip and shield slashing at him. The hooked whip gouged a furrow in the bedframe while the razored shield sent sparks flying from the stone floor. Still spinning, the elf kicked out, her boot cracking against Malus’s cheek, spilling him onto his back.

  More glass exploded inwards as two more of the pit fighters came crashing into the chamber, swinging into the room on ropes. Malus could afford them only the briefest glance before his first attacker was diving down on him again. His fist slammed into her chest, bruising the flesh and driving the breath out of her. As she gasped, the flash of her whip was diverted, sweeping through the drachau’s hair instead of his skull. The gladiatrix’s instincts recovered enough to smash the boss of her shield into Malus’s face and dig the razors of its underside into his shoulder. Before she could work further harm, however, the invader was swept to the floor by Vincirix. The two she-elves rolled away, the knight’s legs locked about the killer’s torso, one hand trying to pry the hooked whip free while the other arm wrapped itself around the neck beneath the daemon-mask.

  Malus sprang across the damaged bed, diving for the sheathed length of the Warpsword of Khaine lying upon its ebony stand. Before he could reach his sword, the other gladiatrixes were charging him, whirling at him in their eerie dance of death. The drachau recoiled before the storm of slashing whips and shields, throwing pillows and blankets at the savage she-elves in a desperate bid to hold them back. His gambit bore some slight success when one of the killers found her whip coiled around an upflung fur. Before she could disentangle herself, Malus caught her knee with a brutal kick. He heard a grisly pop as the warrior crashed to the floor.

  Growling like a mother panther, the other gladiatrix lunged at him. Malus felt the murderous closeness of her whip as it snapped at his ribs. The elf’s shield flashed upwards to swat away a pillow he threw at her, then her entire body described an impossible pirouette as the whip came into play once more. Malus could feel Tz’arkan’s presence respond to the closeness of death to its host, the daemon’s agitation threatening to intrude into his thoughts just when he needed them at their sharpest.

  A shriek rose from his adversary as Malus drove his fingers into her mask. A wave of sadistic exultation swept through him as he felt the elf’s eye beneath his finger. The gladiatrix tumbled away from him, pawing at her mask as she landed on the floor. With a wrench, she broke the leather straps and threw the bloodied mask at Malus. The exposed face was beauteous, or would have been but for the jellied wreckage dripping from one eye socket.

  The bruising impact of the bronze mask against his bare flesh didn’t stop Malus from making another dive for the warpsword. Instead, it was the brutal kick of a booted foot that drove him back. The other gladiatrix had freed herself from the blanket and was leaping to intercept the drachau. Raw pain flared through him as he was knocked back by the blow. He tried to roll as he landed back on the bed, but the pain only grew more intense. The killer’s kick had fractured a rib, and blood streamed onto the sheets from the dozens of little wounds where the steel studs lining her boot had pricked his skin.

  Before he could react, the mutilated gladiatrix was diving at him again. He grunted in agony as he was driven face-first into the bedding, his broken rib grinding against its fellows. The she-elf pinned him beneath her body, her legs pressing down into the small of his back. Cackling a laugh that was equal parts rage and murderous jubilation, she took hold of his hair and jerked his head back. He could see the sheen of her shield as she brought its razored edge spinning down. Desperate, Malus snatched hold of the soft flesh of the elf’s thigh and gave her leg a vicious twist.

  The gladiatrix was accustomed to worse pain, but the unexpectedness of Malus’s assault caused her the briefest instant of surprise. Reflexively, she reared up and away from the drachau’s tormenting clutch. The moment he felt her weight shift, Malus bucked up from the bedding, clenching his teeth against the surge of pain that roared through his body. His assailant was sent tumbling forwards, her uncanny knack for adaptation turning her fall into a roll. His intention had been to throw her full into the face of the other gladiatrix, but she displayed the same automatic reaction as her sister, darting aside and spinning around in a murderous counter-attack.

  Malus reacted in the only way possible, doing the last thing his enemy would expect. Instead of diving back, he dived forwards. The gladiatrix adjusted the snap of her whip as he came at her; he felt the metal hook slice the skin along his shoulder. But he’d managed to slip beneath her guard, driving his head into her belly. The killer started to roll with the impact, twisting around so that she could drive her shield into Malus’s neck. The drachau, however, drove a fist into her throat, crushing her windpipe. The warrior crumpled in a gasping, gagging heap.

  From behind him, Malus heard a sharp cry. He turned around, putting his back to the wall and trying to keep both the choking gladiatrix and the one-eyed harridan in view. Across the room he could see Vincirix throw her enemy from her by bringing both legs up and under the killer’s body. As the gladiatrix spun away, the knight kept a firm hold on her left arm. There was a sickening sound as the limb was dislocated. The crippled fighter managed to slash at Vincirix with her shield, but the knight slithered under the razored edge with an almost boneless undulation. The warrior kicked out with one of her boots, the toe cracking against Vincirix’s jaw. It was a blow that would have stunned a less rugged combatant, but Vincirix had cut her teeth breaking the spirits of hydras and manticores. There was little punishment that could equal the pain of being splashed by the caustic venom of a kharibdyss. Grimly, Vincirix shrugged off the elf’s kick and fell upon her foe. Wrenching the gladiatrix’s knee about, she bent the killer’s leg back upon itself. Even the intruder’s mask couldn’t muffle the resultant scream of agony.

  Malus glared at the one-eyed gladiatrix, gesturing at the fighter Vincirix was dismantling piece by piece and the gagging wretch lying on the bed. ‘You should have brought more help before you tried to murder me!’ he snarled at her.

  One-eye smiled back at him. Keeping her place near the warpsword, too cautious to risk touching the enchanted blade, the gladiatrix raised her fingers to her mouth and blew a sharp whistle.

  Malus felt his insides turn sick when four more Sisters of Slaughter came rappelling down into the room through the shattered windows. He could almost hear Tz’arkan laughing at him. The daemon was right. He had asked for it.

  ‘I’m going to peel your eyes from your skull,’ One-eye promised. ‘Only when you forget how to scream will I let you die.’ She dived aside as Malus made a desperate lunge for his sword. The hand that reached out for the blade was smashed flat by One-eye’s shield. The hook of the elf’s whip cracked across his face, splitting his lip and knocking teeth from his mouth. ‘Slow, Darkblade,’ the murderess hissed. ‘You die slow!’

  The other invaders were rushing into the room now. Vincirix was crouched over the naked wreck of her own foe, trying to break the hold the ki
ller stubbornly maintained on her whip. One of the masked gladiatrixes danced towards the unarmed knight, lash and shield describing a gleaming skein of death as she advanced.

  At that moment, the door to the chamber burst inwards, blown back by a force that snapped the bolt and the heavy beam that had been set across it. A deafening roar raged through the room, like the titanic bellow of an angry volcano. Malus felt his head ring from the clamour, saw Vincirix and the gladiatrixes actually stagger before the auditory assault.

  Behind that monstrous din, warriors came rushing into the chamber, falling upon the stunned gladiatrixes before they could recover their wits. Silar Thornblood led the rush, cutting down a gladiatrix with a double-handed slash of his sword. Charging past him were Kunor and a pair of elves in the battered armour of Naggorite slave-soldiers. Their assault wasn’t quite as unopposed as Silar’s, the gladiatrixes warding away the initial impetus with their bladed bucklers.

  A howl of fury that nearly matched the deafening roar of the preceding moment struck Malus’s ears. Close beside him, One-eye twisted her body, snapping her whip at his throat. The arrival of the drachau’s warriors had cheated her of the opportunity to kill him slowly, but she was determined to kill him just the same.

  Malus hooked his feet around One-eye’s leg and threw his own body into a sidewise twist. The gladiatrix was forced to follow his motion, the whip falling lax as the two crashed against the wall. Before she could start to rise, Malus jammed the flat of his hand into her nose, crushing it into a pulpy mess. One-eye shrieked at him and raked the edge of her shield along his arm, ripping his flesh. The intense pain broke the hold Malus had gained on the killer’s throat. Slamming her knee into his groin, the gladiatrix pulled back and tried to bring her whip into play once more.

  Blinking through his own pain, Malus caught the butt of One-eye’s whip. His tenuous clutch arrested the lash’s motion, preventing the gladiatrix from drawing back for another murderous stroke. Spitting a mouthful of blood and the odd splinter of tooth into her last good eye, Malus surged upwards from the floor.

  Before he could rip the whip free from the blinded gladiatrix, Malus felt his foe’s entire body seized by a shivering convulsion. He could actually feel the warmth of life vanish beneath his touch. It was only the matter of a heartbeat, the pause between pulsations, and One-eye went from a living adversary to a mere carcass. He didn’t need the uncanny clamminess in the air around him to recognise the taint of sorcery. He’d been around such dark arts all his life, between his mother and his treacherous sister Yasmir; he could recognise the residue of magic only too well.

  Looking away from the dead gladiatrix, Malus was surprised to find Drusala standing in the doorway of his chamber. The explosive opening of the portal was now explained as well as the sudden demise of his own foe. Perhaps explained just a little too neatly.

  ‘Silar! Kunor!’ Malus shouted. ‘I want one of them alive!’ The drachau spared no more time for commands, but snatched up the warpsword. If Drusala didn’t want any of the killers taken intact, the magic blade would make a good argument against her.

  The conflict was winding down as Malus took up his sword. Two more of the gladiatrixes were dead, though they’d claimed one of Kunor’s Naggorites before they went down. The last intruder was beset by the combination of Silar and Vincirix. Armed with the shield and whip of the gladiatrix she’d already killed, the knight from Clar Karond dived in upon the pit fighter as she spun away from Silar’s blade. Vincirix’s whip coiled around the wrist of her adversary, imprisoning both the weapon and the hand that held it. The tension of the tautened whip caused the hook at the end of the lash to tear through the gladiatrix’s hand. Blood sprayed from a severed artery. Catching the masked warrior’s shield with her own buckler, Vincirix pressed her assault. Closing with the gladiatrix, she drove both knees into the elf’s midsection, driving the air from her body.

  The crippled killer collapsed in Vincirix’s arms. The knight shoved her foe away in disgust. ‘Kunor,’ she growled. ‘Bind this thing’s wound before she bleeds out.’ Turning her back on the slave-driver, she smiled at Malus. ‘You said alive, not whole.’

  The smile Malus returned to her was as warm as a cold one’s grin. ‘You need to find a god and start praying that arena-meat lives long enough to tell me what I want to know.’ His piece said, Malus turned away from his lover. He looked over at the gore-soaked bed. A final death rattle wheezed from the gladiatrix whose throat he’d crushed. He watched as the lithe body spasmed and fell still.

  ‘It is fortunate that we arrived when we did, your lordship,’ Drusala said, advancing into the room.

  ‘Excuse me, I’m not really in a mood to receive visitors at the moment,’ Malus told her. He directed a sharp look at Silar. The noble paused as he wiped blood off his blade.

  ‘The sorceress saw an omen in the waves…’ Silar started to explain.

  ‘A shark in the coils of an octopus,’ Drusala elaborated.

  Malus didn’t care for the amused twinkle in her eye as the sorceress strode towards him. Scowling, he reached for one of the sable-edged robes draped across a nearby divan. Irritated, he tried to shrug his way into the garment, his annoyance mounting when he found he’d grabbed Vincirix’s robe by mistake.

  ‘Which was I?’ Malus grumbled as he threw the first robe at Vincirix and made a grab for the other. ‘The shark or the octopus?’

  Drusala waved her hand at the dead gladiatrixes. ‘The shark ate the octopus, in the end, so you must have been the shark.’

  ‘What does that make you?’ Malus asked, not liking the superiority in Drusala’s tone. ‘One of the pilot fish?’ He didn’t give her a chance to reply. ‘Silar, I want to know everything, but we can start with why you brought so few warriors to aid me.’

  Silar couldn’t hold his master’s fierce gaze, staring instead at some imaginary fixture just over the drachau’s shoulder. ‘We… we weren’t sure that… we’d be in time. If… if something happened…’

  ‘You wanted only people who could keep their mouths shut,’ Malus finished for him. He spun around, directing his glare at Kunor as the slavemaster finished binding the prisoner’s wound. ‘Can your Naggorite be trusted to hold a secret?’

  Without hesitation, Kunor lunged and drove his dagger into the side of the surviving slave-soldier. The Naggorite cried out once, then wilted to the floor, his lifeblood spurting from the artery Kunor had severed.

  ‘He can now, my lord,’ Kunor said. The readiness of the slavemaster to indulge his blood-lust sometimes made Malus wonder if he wasn’t the spawn of a witch elf rather than a son of Hag Graef.

  ‘What of your captive?’ Drusala asked. ‘What secrets do you expect her to divulge?’ The sorceress knelt beside One-eye’s corpse, pulling down one of her boots and exposing a line of glyphs tattooed into her pale skin. At a glance, Malus could tell the glyphs represented various guilds, covens and noble houses. The uppermost, the most recently inked, was the glyph of Ezresor. ‘Her employers are recorded here already.’

  Malus smiled and shook his head. It was possible, of course, that Ezresor had made arrangements to murder Malus before his own doom claimed him in the Black Tower. It wouldn’t be the first time that a schemer’s designs for revenge outlived him. But such an answer would be too simple, too obvious. ‘And what if she only records the mark when her job is done? No, I think it would be too reckless to trust so simple a solution.’

  ‘Who else would want your death?’ Drusala smiled. The question was much too obvious as well.

  ‘Silar, take the prisoner to Lady Eldire,’ Malus said. ‘She can use her magic to wring what I want to know out of the wretch.’

  Drusala snapped her fingers, calling Malus’s attention back to her. ‘I was handmaiden to Lady Morathi. I am a powerful sorceress in my own right. My spells can drag the truth out of that harpy-bait as easily as your mother’s can.’

  A tw
inge of amusement flashed across Malus’s face as he noted the injured pride in Drusala’s voice. ‘Your spells are no doubt quite potent,’ he told her. ‘I have no doubt you could wrest the truth from this villainess. The only doubt I have is whether it would be the sort of truth I want to hear.’

  Looking around the shambles of his bedchamber, Malus snapped orders to Kunor and Vincirix. ‘Tell Fleetmaster Hadrith I will need a new apartment and get some of our people up here to clean this mess. Be discreet, we don’t want the wrong people finding out about this.’ He met Drusala’s cool gaze.

  ‘It might be dangerous if word got out before we knew who was responsible,’ Malus declared. The sound of the wind whistling through the shattered windows seemed to echo his concern. An echo that rustled the bedclothes and the curtains, but somehow couldn’t so much as ripple the thin silk gown that hugged Drusala’s slender body.

  FIVE

  The empty wine bottle crashed against the stone floor, exploding in a nimbus of shimmering glass. Malus ignored the servant who hurried to clear away the debris and instead beckoned his mother’s steward over to him. Korbus was a spindly, sour-faced druchii, with just a hint of yellow in his complexion that gave his skin a jaundiced look Malus typically associated with sickly human slaves. The expensive tunic and robe the steward wore always seemed to rest uneasily on him, like a snake not quite out of its old skin.

  Korbus was an old retainer, long in his mother’s service. She’d taken him on shortly after the vaulkhar’s death. Malus had heard rumours that Eldire favoured him as a consort. That didn’t trouble him particularly; he wasn’t so insecure about his own position as to forbid his mother a toy now and then. No, what nagged at him were the stories that Korbus wasn’t entirely without his own small talents in the black arts. It had been generations since Malekith, heeding some obscure prophecy about sorcerers and regicide, forbade any but she-elves to practise magic in Naggaroth. Certainly a number of sorcerers had remained, lurking in secret, but they existed under the pain of death not simply from Morathi and her convent, but from the tyranny of the Witch King himself. Why his mother, already an enemy of Morathi, should want to tempt Malekith as well by keeping a petty magician in her service was something Malus couldn’t understand. One day, he felt, he would have to arrange an accident for Korbus and eliminate the potential for problems from that quarter.