James West - Lady Of Regret

Rathe was trying to decide if they should retreat or attack, when he noticed a man trussed in a far corner. The scrawny fellow noticed him at the same instant, and immediately started thrashing about, mewling behind the rag stuffed into his gaping mouth. Rathe gestured for the man to be still, but his eyes widened in panic, and he redoubled his efforts.

All the shadowkin stopped what they were doing and looked to the bound man. All, that was, save the head cook. She followed the captive’s gaze, and Rathe ducked behind cover.

“What is it?” Loro asked again. His face went stony when he saw Rathe’s hand tighten on the hilt of his sword. “Battle? Well, let’s be about it.”

With a fierce cry, Rathe rushed into the kitchen. The gawping spit-boy whirled, his screech spraying half-chewed flesh. Rathe ended him, a single cut splitting his skull to the hollow of his throat. Rathe kicked the jittering corpse off his blade, set his feet.

Shock held but a moment, then all shifted into leaping, shrieking chaos.

Loro lumbered past, sword swinging like an axe to take off a shadowkin’s raised hand. The reverse stroke cleaved the howling shadowkin from groin to sternum. The man dropped into his own splashing vitals. With a bearlike roar, Loro pivoted to deliver a flat chop into the chest of another twisted man, shredding meat and ribs, leaving him to bumble away clutching at the viscera slithering from the gaping wound. Loro swung round again, blade slicing down the side of a shadowkin’s face and into the joining of neck and shoulder, ripping through flesh and bone. The screaming man tumbled away. Where he had stood, an ear attached to a flap of cheek joined a spasming arm on the blood-slicked floor.

Some few shadowkin continued to dare Loro and his murderous blade. The bulk of them sought Rathe, seeming to think he would make easier prey.

He caught the greasy hair of one, sawed his sword through the man’s belly, shoved him howling away. Rathe spun, his sword a flash of silver-red death tearing through a face, a neck, bowels. More shadowkin darted close. Rathe stove in the skull of one with the pommel of his sword, then gouged the tip deep through the eye of another. Yet another he spitted to the hilt, crossguard slapping against his squalling foe’s belly.

Powerful hands tugged at Rathe’s legs, cloak, and arms. He fought clear, once and again, face and neck running with the blood of enemies. His boots slid in the accumulating gore underfoot, and he went to one knee. Growling, he lunged up and pierced the skinny, naked cheeks of a bent-backed horror. Rathe saw only a monster that meant to devour him this night.

The dirty creature slashed with its clawed fingers, trying to tug the steel thorn from its flesh. With its arse poked through, its legs buckled at the knees. Rathe brutally levered his sword free, giving the bent-one four cheeks.

A handful of shadowkin landed on him at once, climbing him like blood-hungry squirrels. He slashed wildly with his sword, and lashed out with his fist. He felt mouths on him, then teeth, gnawing through the sleeves of his cloak, more at his belly, gnashing through his leather jerkin. Cloth ripped, skin ripped. Rough fingernails tore at his eyes and hair. More wrenched his sword away.

Rathe rolled to his belly, curled into a ball to protect his neck and face, and reached for his dagger. He bit back a scream when a rude hand clutched greedily at his groin, as if at a handful of sweetmeats. Risking castration, he stabbed his dagger into the hand, and the ripping pressure eased. But only a moment. More hands followed, more claws, all seeking to tear him apart one bloody piece at a time.

Loro roared somewhere beyond the frenzied mass piling on Rathe, and a great weight added to that of the writhing shadowkin, crushing Rathe against the tiles.

Hot breath gusted into his face, a lapping tongue followed, swabbing his chin and lips, leaving a trail of stinking spit. Teeth snapped together where his nose had been an instant before. A hungry babbling voice filled one ear. The other was jammed against the floor, and in it his blood pounded like a kettle drum. More spittle dribbled over his cheek, into one bulging eye.

Loro roared again, and the pile shifted, lessened just enough for Rathe to tuck his chin to his chest. Teeth flashed and nipped, and Rathe rammed his head sideways. The crunch of a breaking nose gave him joy. The ensuing patter of hot blood that washed over his face, into his mouth, and across his tongue stole that pleasure.

Loro cut loose with another bellow, and the weight pressing Rathe down let up a bit more, enough so he could move. By inches, he dragged the dagger closer to his face, meaning to stick it into the next mouth that thought to taste him.

Through the shifting mass of bodies and filthy limbs, he saw a naked foot, the toenails long and yellowed. He stabbed the arch of that foot, digging the blade deep. A ragged scream ripped through the kitchen, and the foot jerked out of sight. Rathe saw a straining tendon above the heel of another foot. He slashed it. Steel cleaved skin and gristle, grated over bone. Blood splashed, and the second foot leaped away.

He continued to stab and slash whatever target presented itself. Fists and kicks rained down, but he absorbed the punishment with a grim smile, for where his enemies bruised him, he crippled them. He kept on striking toes and heels and calves where he could, moment by moment gaining more freedom, moment by moment more convinced that no historian would dare jot down an account of such bloody, brutal fuckery, for fear of tainting the glory of war and victory.

The weight pinning him down suddenly lifted. A flapping shadowkin soared across the kitchen to land headfirst in the huge kettle hung above the hearth. Scalding broth splashed over the coals, steam billowed thick and foul. The scalded shadowkin reared back with a face blistered and red. As the wailing figure thrashed, Loro ended his cries with a ruthless slash to the back of the neck. Head bobbling loosely, the last foe fell.

“Gods damn me!” Loro raged, spinning in search of enemies who no longer stood.

Rathe clambered to his feet, spitting blood. Spread across the kitchen floor, some few shadowkin still clung to life, their cleaved appendages and spilled innards swimming though a spreading scarlet tide. They showed no signs of rejoining the fight, or living into the next minute.

“What do we do with him ?” Loro asked, pointing his bloody sword at the bound fellow.

“Cut him loose,” Rathe ordered, using his sleeve to scrub his face clean. All he managed was to smear the sticky red mess around. “He might be able to lead us out of here.”

“What if he’s one of them?”

Rathe paused in his search for another way out of the kitchen. The man’s patchwork tunic was at least as tattered as anything worn by the shadowkin, his black hair hung lank and oily around a slender, bladelike face. But his straight limbs set him apart from the shadowkin. That, and being tied up. All he lacked was a pinch of seasoning sprinkled over his sweat-damp skin.

After pointing that out to Loro, Rathe said, “I expect he’s a luckless traveler, much the same as us. Cut him loose.”

Loro grumbled under his breath about the ills sure to befall warriors-turned-nursemaid, but he severed the man’s bindings. “Up with you,” he said, hauling the man to his feet.

“What’s your name, friend?” Rathe asked, trying to put the ratlike fellow at ease with a kind tone.

“H-Horge.” The man’s whiny voice matched his short, spindly stature. “Gods be blessed, thank you! Thank you!”

Before Horge could start blubbering in earnest, Rathe stopped him. “Master Horge, can you lead us out?”

Horge bobbed his head. “Aye, I think so.”