Paul Kemp: The Hammer and the Blade

Rakon heard it, for he spun around, looked up and back, eyes wide, and saw Nix plummeting toward him. Nix thought the sorcerer shouted something at the sylph or the devil. The sylph tried to veer right but too late.

Egil and Nix plummeted into the sylph's form and the winds of the creature, like an undulating pillow, absorbed some of their speed, but not enough. They slammed into the devil and Rakon in a tangle of limbs and shouts and chaos.

Nix crashed hard into the devil's back, the impact knocking the air from his lungs, slamming his jaw forcefully on the creature's scaled back, and sending them both tumbling. The devil roared, his arms flailing.

Nix saw sparks, his vision blurred, faded to black, but he deliberately bit down hard on his tongue before he lost consciousness. Warm blood filled his mouth, but the sharpness of the pain brought back his senses.

The sylph keened, the alarmed sound in the wind all around them, and the air bearing them all swirled chaotically, as if the sylph had lost control of its own body. Nix separated from the devil, and the pillow of air below seemed to give way. He was falling, buffeted by ordinary winds, tumbling, shouting, the rapid spins of his descent ruining his perception.

Shouts sounded all around him, mixed with the alarmed high-pitched keening of the sylph. Emptiness all around him. A disorienting, heart-pounding fall. He thought he caught sight of Rusilla and Merelda floating free of the devil's grasp. Perhaps the devil had released them when Nix had crashed into the creature, but he couldn't be sure. At the moment, he couldn't sort up from down, could not fix on any one thing for longer than a heartbeat. Sky, devil, moon, the manse below. Sky, devil, moon, the ground rushing up to meet him.

He tensed in anticipation of impact but it did little to prepare him for it. His legs clipped the edge of the roof of the manse, flipping him head over heels as he fell the remaining distance to the hard floor of the unroofed, exposed room below. He landed on his back and the impact sent spikes of pain through his spine, chest, arms, and legs. Other loud thumps sounded near him, groans, the sound of wood cracking, the devil's snarl. Winds buffeted him, the agitated swirl of the sylph.

"You are safely arrived at the manse, master," the sylph said, its voice like the breeze. "My duty is performed and I go. Pray do not call me again for another decade."

The winds ebbed and all was silent. Nix tried to move his hands, his legs. They protested with pain but they moved. He hadn't heard anything break. The sylph must have slowed the fall enough to let him survive it, at least for the moment. He turned his head to the side and spit the blood he'd earned from biting his tongue.

If Nix had survived, then so had Rakon, and so had the devil.

Nix had no time to evaluate himself more thoroughly. He lifted himself to all fours, to his knees, blinking, his vision swirling for a moment. He'd landed in the center of a summoning circle, the lead of its lines inlaid into the wood. The nonsense thought struck him that he'd been summoned out of the sky. He would've laughed aloud but his body hurt too much. There were other symbols carved or scribed or inlaid into the wood in other areas of the floor — an elemental circle, a thaumaturgic triangle, a binding diamond. They'd landed in a summoning chamber. Rakon's summoning chamber, which was open to the sky, to the vault of night, to Minnear, which shone full in the velvet of night.

A metal staircase stood in the center of the open room, supported by cracked scaffolds. The stairway — thirteen steps, Nix noted — ended in an elevated platform. There Abrak-Thyss lay, his huge body and serpentine arms flowing over the sides. Ichor dripped from the sphincters that ended his thick arms. The small eyes at the end of the arms were closed.

Nix shook his head to clear it, looked around. Rakon lay across the room, lifting himself off the floor with his hands, his face dazed, bloody, his skullcap askew, hair for the first time mussed. Egil was already on his feet, kneeling over Rusilla and Merelda, who lay near one another on the floor. The priest turned them over, put his ear to their mouth.

"Egil?" Nix called.

"They're alive," Egil answered, relief in his tone. "And untouched by the fiend, near as I can tell."

Rusilla groaned; her forefinger curled.

"And stirring!" Egil said. "Their eyes are open, Nix!"

"Get away from them!" Rakon said, his voice a hiss.

Egil rose slowly, turned to look at the sorcerer. His heavy brows darkened, vowing violence.

Nix, too, rose. He wobbled, swayed, but stayed upright.

"Kill them both, Abrak-Thyss," Rakon said. He coughed, spit blood. "Then honor the Pact."

"Your devil is dead, sorcerer," Nix said, and drew his falchion. "There'll be no rapes in this house tonight. Just an execution."

Rakon chuckled, the sound broken and wet.

Wood creaked and cracked above Nix. He looked up, saw the eyes at the end of the devil's arms open, staring at him with menace.

"Shite," he whispered.

Rakon laughed louder.

"Egil…" Nix said.

"I see it," the priest answered. He put hafts in his hands, fixed his eyes on the devil. "Just something else I need to kill, then."

Behind the priest, the lone door that led back into the house flew open and a bent crone in the faded garb of a noblewoman tumbled through. Her gray hair stuck out from her head in wild tufts. Her crazed eyes, one of them marred to a half-open droop by a scar, took in the devil, Rakon, Rusilla and Merelda, Egil and Nix.

"Rakon!" she shrieked.

"Back inside, Mother," the sorcerer snapped.

But she didn't go back inside. She charged Egil, her thin hands bent like claws, a snarl revealing rotted teeth. Egil caught her up in his grasp while she clawed bloody furrows into his face. He lifted her from her feet and set her down firmly on the ground near the door.

"Sit, grandma!" Egil said, and stuck the head of his hammer in her face. "Do not move."

She snarled at him, hissed like a serpent, but stayed put as if planted there.

Above Nix, the wood platform at the top of the infernally numbered stairs cracked as the devil shifted his bulk, twisted and stood. His arms flailed, muscles rippled under the scaled form, and the mouth in his chest opened in a roar of triumph.

Nix backed off, treading on arcana, and the devil coiled himself and leaped from the top of the platform. His huge misshapen form landed with a thud that shook the floor.

Dry, reptilian stink filled Nix's nostrils. One of the devil's larger arms snaked sidewise to eye Egil, who stood over Rusilla and Merelda. The other jutted forward and eyed Nix, the mouth open and dripping ichor. The two smaller arms flexed and bent near the devil's mouth, a reflexive motion like those of an insect's mandibles.

Nix eyed the partially engorged member dangling between the trunks of the creature's legs.

"Been a while for you, yeah? Gonna be a bit of a wait yet, fakker."

The devil tensed and roared, his exhalation the stink of a charnel house. The eyes in both arms fixed on Nix and it charged, his tread shaking the floor.

While backpedaling, Nix drew and threw his throwing daggers at the brute's torso, but the creature's hide turned them as well as plate armor. Nix pulled his hand axe as the creature lurched toward him. An arm lashed at him, toothy maw snapping, but he ducked under it, hacked at the arm with his axe. The axe's edge rang off the devil's hide, sending a shock up Nix's arm. He lunged forward and stabbed with his falchion but it, too, bounced off the creature's hide. He lurched backward as the devil tried to stomp him with one of the tree trunks of his legs. The impact vibrated the floor, caused Nix to stumble. The devil lumbered after him, his huge bulk pushing him back toward the edge of the room, which overlooked a fall down the escarpment.