Henry Neff - The Maelstrom

The other joined him, leaping down from his saddle and racing at Max with his spear. The gae bolga fell silent as they closed the gap, leaping over scattered stones and converging like a pair of hounds closing on a wounded quarry.

The spear struck first, a screeching blow aimed right at the heart. Max turned the point aside, but the blunt force of the collision cracked his collarbone and sent him staggering back against the well. Turning, he evaded another thrust and just managed to duck as the other clone came leaping after him, brandishing his knives.

As Max battled the clones, the remaining malakhim cut off any escape. The fighting was the most frenzied and brutal Max had ever experienced, skills and strategy devolving into a desperate, savage contest of wills.

At last Max saw an opening. With a roar, he downed the knife-wielding clone, striking him a blow to the temple with the gae bolga ’s pommel. But when he made to finish him, the other clone darted in, dropping his spear and seizing hold of Max from behind. Before he could counter, Max’s feet were wrenched off the flagstones.

With appalling strength, the clone squeezed tighter and tighter, driving the steel rings of Max’s hauberk clear through the tunic to bite the flesh beneath. Max nearly lost consciousness. He was only dimly aware of his captor’s voice shouting above Yuga’s incessant moan and the din of the distant armies: “You fought well. But your time has come.”

Rising on unsteady legs, the other clone pushed his long hair back from his face. One eye was swollen shut and his jaw appeared broken. Spitting blood through a jigsaw of shattered teeth, he nevertheless grinned at Max and offered a soldier’s salute. The grisly smile remained, but the clone’s eyes went as cold and dead as a shark’s. Stepping forward, he raised the knife high and brought it screaming down.

But no blade struck Max.

Instead of a dagger, the clone now held a wriggling asp by the tail. Its body thrashed wildly about, but its fangs were sunk deep into the other clone’s cheek. Howling with pain, he released Max and scrabbled at his face, prying the venomous snake free and flinging it away. For a surreal instant, the three looked from one to the other in stunned confusion. Across the courtyard, Max glimpsed a small figure on horseback steadying his frail form against the keep’s great archway.

David!

Rowan’s sorcerer was trembling with anger. The night grew colder as he rode from the keep, the atmosphere twitching and crackling with an electric charge. As David approached, Max felt energies emanating from him, sluggish ripples of Old Magic that seemed to warp and buckle the air. The remaining malakhim and even Max’s clones backed away from the boy as if he were radioactive.

Crack!

The masks of the malakhim shattered.

They fell in a tinkling shower of obsidian shards, revealing the ghastly faces beneath. In the moonlight, they were milky and translucent, a swirl of features that bubbled like melted wax, ever seeking to assume a beautiful visage. But as soon as one was formed, it instantly liquefied and curdled into something grotesque. The spirits turned away, covering their naked faces as though each held some secret of their shame and fall.

The sorcerer’s attention locked onto the clones. They were rooted in place, but every muscle and vein now shone as though they each were straining furiously against some invisible binding. Trembling uncontrollably, the larger one managed to raise his spear. Glowering, he spoke through clenched teeth.

“You’re not strong en—”

With a backhanded gesture, David blasted the clones off their feet. They flew as if they’d been shot from a cannon, somersaulting through the air like rag dolls until they struck the courtyard wall in an explosion of stone and debris that knocked the malakhim from their horses. From the palace wall, there was a groan. A moment later, a vast section collapsed inward, sending a cloud of dust rolling across the dark courtyard. The clones were entombed.

David turned to Max, his face weary and spent.

“Can you ride?”

When Max nodded, David called out for Madam Petra. The smuggler emerged cautiously from the keep, leading the other horse by its bridle. Katarina was ashen-faced, clutching the reins as she stared at the broken malakhim. Slumping against his saddle’s pommel, the sorcerer gestured toward the eastern sky. He struggled to make himself heard over the coming storm.

“Max and I are hurt—we have to make for Bholevna. Yuga is getting closer; it might be very dangerous. Do you understand? You can come with us or go your own way.”

Mother and daughter gazed into the east, at the consuming blackness that blotted out the stars. Then they looked at each other and reached a silent agreement. Handing the smee back to Max, the smuggler swung up into the saddle behind her daughter.

“We’re wasting time.”

The group fled northeast beneath the moon, cutting across sparse forests and empty homesteads as they raced toward Bholevna. Max rode with David, holding the reins as the exhausted sorcerer struggled to remain conscious. He slumped back against Max, holding his injured shoulder and wincing whenever the horse jumped over a ditch or clambered up a hill. Max tried to keep his friend awake, but he was having difficulty himself. He was badly wounded, and despite his remarkable powers of recovery, he’d lost a tremendous amount of blood.

“Don’t nod off!” cried Toby, nestled once again in Max’s hood. “You’ve got to keep riding, boy. There’s medicine and good food and soft beds at Rowan. We’ve got to get that pinlegs to the Director! We’ve come all this way and now we’re going home, so stay with me. Both of you!”

Max was dangerously dizzy by the time they glimpsed Bholevna. The demon city was a sprawl of Gothic buildings and small palaces that straddled a wide river and was knit together by a series of bridges and causeways. In the moonlight, the river looked like polished silver, but the city itself was dark. No lights peered from windows; no smoke trickled from chimneys. In the path of Yuga, Bholevna had been utterly abandoned.

Riding down a series of shallow hills, they merged with the main road that fed into the city. There were no guards posted at the western wall. They galloped through the open gates and onto cobbled streets where freezing gusts whipped papers and debris about in little windstorms. The main avenue through the city led directly east toward where Yuga filled the sky like a spreading pool of ink. Her moaning was deafening now; it filled the air and shook the very earth. Max shouted to David, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice. A flock of birds sped past, fleeing the ravenous demon.

Riding out the opposite gate, they veered off the road, galloping over snowy wheat fields and open country toward several farms that bordered a fir wood. In the east, the landscape had become a churning vortex of dust, soil, and trees that swirled about in gargantuan funnel clouds that rose thousands of feet before disappearing into the demon’s roiling bulk.

When viewed from a safe distance, Yuga was truly frightening. Up close, her presence simply overwhelmed all sense and sanity. Max had never experienced such terror. Every instinct screamed frantically at him to turn around, to flee, to hide, to pray, to beg, to do anything that might spare him from such a monster.

It was far too much for the horses. They shied at the same instant, as if they’d crossed some invisible threshold that broke the poor creatures’ minds. Max managed to roll from the saddle, pulling David with him before their mount sidestepped and collapsed. It stared dully ahead, steam rising from its flanks as it lay in the snow. From what Max could tell, the animal wasn’t injured; some insidious force or perhaps sheer horror had compelled the horse to succumb, to lie still and wait for the demon to devour it.