James Clemens: Hinterland

“Now!” Kyllan yelled.

A torch rose among his men and set to blaze a single pike, dripping with tar. Kyllan accepted the fiery weapon by its haft.

Tylar reached his side. “Hold your-”

Too late.

Kyllan twisted at the waist, and drove the pike’s flaming tip through the beast’s belly.

Where it touched, skin sizzled and blackened. The beast yowled, neck stretched back. A coiling curl of flame flicked from its lips. Still, it tried to escape its death, stumbling toward the icy canal.

Kyllan kept hold of the pike’s butt end. Pinned by the fiery spear, the creature could not reach the waters. Flames spread, more skin blackened, as if some tinder had been ignited deep within the ilk-beast. With one last scream, it writhed, then collapsed, still smoking, to the planks of the dock.

Death seemed to add solidity to its watery form, as if whatever Grace had imbued its fluidity evaporated with the smoke, leaving only twisted flesh.

Tylar joined Kyllan. “There are more beasts about,” he warned the sergeant. “One took wing a moment ago. Keep your pikes high.”

Kyllan searched the dark skies. “Aye, another one lies over here. It was dispatched quick enough.”

The sergeant led Tylar to a tumbled pile of boulders. Once closer, Tylar discerned that stone was actually flesh, a rocky monstrosity of calcified plates and pebbled skin.

“A skilled thrust by your Wyr-mistress,” Kyllan said, nodding to Eylan, who stood off a step, sword in hand. “Nicked through a weak spot and pierced something vital. But before we could appreciate her skill, we were attacked from behind, from the canal. That skaggin’ beast was harder to kill. Figured what steel couldn’t kill, fire might.”

Tylar nodded. But something still nagged him. He glanced back to the smoldering ruin of the other ilk-beast. Something…

Kyllan continued, “We must have stumbled on a nest of ilk-beasts roosting here in the Blight. Left over from the last battle. We’d best gather everyone and get clear.”

The pikemen closed around them, wary, spears held at the ready.

“I’ll send a full squad in the morning to flush out this skaggin’ place.”

Tylar had stopped listening. He drew closer to the smoking body of the other beast. He remembered shouting out against the slaying of the creature. It had been reflexive. What had he sensed?

He returned again to the dock. He studied the pale flesh. Something familiar about-then it struck him.

Gods above…no…

He knelt to the planks and reached out.

“Ser,” Kyllan warned him. “Best to be away from there.”

Ignoring him, Tylar gripped the misshapen jaw and turned the head. He searched the throat, running a gloved finger across the flesh. Flaps of tissue fluttered under his touch, revealing the pink beneath.

Gill flaps.

Tylar stared into the dead eyes, knowing who lay before him.

“Kreel…”

He shoved up and searched the ice-choked canal. A dark hummock lay seven steps upriver. He hurried toward it, followed by Kyllan and his guards.

Beached against the canal wall, lolling on its side, was the watercraft used to transport Rogger here. The tall fin was broken, its keel sundered as if something had shattered out, like a newborn chick from an egg.

Tylar glanced at the body on the dock. Kreel. It was the pilot, the head of Fyla’s Hunters. Realization iced through him. This was no nest of old ilk-beasts. These were freshly cursed men and women, ilked just now and sent against them.

Proving this, a screech again rose from the sky. The winged creature had not fled. It attacked once again, diving upon a pair of guards near the shipwright’s shop. But the men were prepared this time. Pikes staved off the beast, slicing through wings.

More guards closed to do battle, including Eylan, a sword in one hand, an ax in the other.

Kyllan shouted orders but remained at Tylar’s side. “Stay back, ser. My men can handle the creature.”

A claw lashed out and razed to bone the side of one guard’s face. He fell back with a scream. The creature moved with the swiftness of the wind.

Then it struck him.

With the swiftness of the wind.

Tylar lunged forward, dragging Kyllan with him.

“Ser!”

Tylar hurried, certain of the truth. He ticked off each in his head: the woman’s wings, Kreel’s flowing form, the first beast’s stony armor. Each of the beasts bore one aspect of Grace: Air, Water, and Loam.

But one was missing.

Fire.

As he ran, he heard a new scream, a woman’s cry, muffled from within the shipwright’s shop.

Delia.

Tylar had not been the target of the attack. None of the beasts had set upon him directly. They were after the talisman, the cursed god skull. Even now, the winged creature fought at the entrance, struggling to get inside the shipwright’s shop.

But something was already there.

Skirting the battle at the front door, Tylar entered through a broken window. Kyllan followed him into what must have once been an old kitchen, judging from the collapsed stone hearth, now a nest to a pack of rats, and the broken pottery underfoot. Though sheltered from the wind, the room was far colder than the outside.

Tylar knew why.

The ilk-beast, cursed with fire, must be drawing to itself what little warmth there was in the space. Tylar silently signaled Kyllan. He had already instructed the sergeant on his duty. Though reluctant, Kyllan headed out the back door to the kitchen, aiming for the rear.

Tylar stepped toward the other door, one that led to the center hallway.

As he leaned out, a dagger flew past the tip of his nose. He ducked back-but the blade had never been aimed at him. The dagger flew down the hall and struck a black shape crouched at the threshold to the rear workspace. It stood limned against the campfire back there, bathed in its glow.

The fourth ilk-beast.

Rogger’s dagger flew true and struck the figure square in the chest, but the hilt instantly burst into flame. No blood flowed; flesh seared instantly. The steel blade dripped in molten rivulets from the wound.

Tylar retreated to the other end of the hallway, where Rogger guarded Delia.

Delia moved closer to him, seeking shelter. “It burnt right through the back of the shop and came at us.”

Drawn by the campfire, Tylar thought.

The beast growled, flames licking from black lips, its eyes aglow with an inner fire. It stalked toward the trio.

Tylar raised his sword against it. Though probably as innocent as Kreel, forged unwillingly, the beast had to die. At their back, the screeching battle with the winged beast continued. Any retreat that way was blocked.

Rogger took up Tylar’s other side. “Ruined four good daggers. I’m not sure any blade can stop it-not even your Godsword.”

Tylar had no choice but to risk it-but that didn’t mean he couldn’t better his odds.

He lunged toward the approaching beast and shouted, “Now, Kyllan!”

Beyond the creature’s shoulder, he spotted the sergeant racing to the campfire in the back room. He flung out a scrap of sailcloth and swept it over the fire.

Tylar reached the beast as the sergeant smothered the flames and stamped them out. As Tylar had hoped, the beast had been drawing strength from the flames, siphoning heat and power from the pyre. With the sudden interruption of this fiery font, the beast was momentarily lost.

In that moment of confusion, Tylar stabbed his blade into the neck of the beast. A backwash of feverish heat struck him, along with the gagging reek of brimstone and burnt flesh. Tylar twisted the blade and drove the sword to its hilt.

He felt no satisfaction from the kill, picturing Kreel.

The ilk-beast fell from his sword, toppling back with the last sigh of its corrupted Grace. Like Kreel’s, the body that struck the floor seemed smaller, drained of power, mere flesh again.