Halthak swallowed hard, hesitating a bare moment longer as he summoned his courage. Then he raced from the viewing chamber and down the stone steps, bathed in the brilliance of the surging Essence Fount.
Amric ducked under sweeping talons and came up in a whirl of steel. The corrupted Wyrgen’s lunge carried it a pace further before it faltered and crashed to the cold stone, its fiery amethyst eyes wide and unseeing. The swordsman wheeled around to help the others, but found it unnecessary. The last of the attackers was down.
Valkarr strode over a floor slick with crimson and littered with corpses to peer through the splintered glass wall. He gave Amric a quick shake of the head; no more approaching at the moment. Amric flicked the blood from his swords and sheathed them, looking next to Syth.
The thief was wending his way between heaps of wooly forms, and though he was breathing heavily, Amric judged it to be more from emotion than exertion. The man had not overstated his martial skills, for he was indeed a formidable fighter. Syth fought without any weapons other than those wicked black gauntlets encasing his hands. He moved like the storm wind itself, sudden, unpredictable and impossible to contain. He delivered blinding strikes with feet as well as hands, but the blows dealt with the gauntlets carried shattering force, and Amric suspected the objects were ensorcelled somehow. For all his evident prowess, however, Syth fought with a reckless frenzy that was altogether unsettling. Amric had taken pains not to expose his back to the man during the battle, in light of both the continued tension between them and the berserker rage that seized the man when they engaged the Wyrgens. Amric recalled the wild-eyed expression, and wondered if the fellow had even been able to distinguish friend from foe in the heat of the moment.
“You fought well, swordsman,” Syth called to him.
“And you as well, Syth,” Amric returned.
“I did not give you enough credit before. You are as good as your lizard friend there.”
Amric inclined his head and said, “A fine compliment, thank you.”
He swayed slightly and caught himself, hoping no one noticed. The nearness of the Essence Fount continued to plague him, and more than once a fleeting, ill-timed instant of weakness had almost been his undoing during the battle.
“Were I a lesser fighter, or capable of fear, I would be having second thoughts about facing you,” Syth continued in a distracted, conversational tone as he walked, his gaze directed downward. “But of course I am neither of these things. Perhaps we should have a bard present to chronicle our fight. What do you think?”
Amric shook his head in disbelief. Syth stopped, still looking down. A low moan issued from the figure sprawled at his feet. Dropping to one knee, he dealt the Wyrgen a thunderous blow with one gauntleted fist, dispatching the creature in an instant. His eyes were hard as granite as he stood and continued to prowl the room, checking the motionless forms of their assailants.
Amric turned and found Bellimar. The old man stood tall and straight amidst the carnage, like a slender, stately tree somehow untouched in the wake of a hurricane. His pale face was flushed and his eyes shone strangely above a tight smile, but he appeared unharmed. At one point during the battle, Amric was certain he had seen one of the beasts turn its attention to Bellimar, lurking in the corner; it had leapt toward him, powerful arms flung wide to engulf the old man. Amric had started toward him, but a multitude of Wyrgens swarmed at him just then, blocking his view and path to the old man. Even as a desperate shout to the others had gathered in his throat, however, he caught movement from the corner of his eye and found Bellimar on the other side of the room, away from the press of conflict once more. For an instant Amric had doubted his own sight, but as a Sil’ath warrior and warmaster he had developed an innate sense of what transpired in battle around him at all times. No, it was another of the old man’s mysterious tricks, then, and well timed at that.
Bellimar picked his way across the room, managing to avoid even a drop of blood on his grey robes.
“What next, warrior?” he asked.
“Onward to the next room,” Amric replied. “Grelthus, blast his conniving hide, must be hiding in one of these chambers.”
“We were fortunate this time,” Syth said. “Stronghold is vast, and it will take days to search just the chambers bordering the Essence Fount. We may not be so lucky in our next brush with the Wyrgens.”
“Leave if you wish,” Amric growled. “I will not abandon Halthak in this pit of demons, even if I have to turn over every stone in the place.”
“Perhaps we need not go to such lengths after all,” Valkarr said from his position at the ruined glass wall. He stood before a jagged aperture large enough to walk through, and he leveled one muscular arm to point at something in the amphitheater. Amric and the others joined him and peered in the direction he indicated.
Partway around the circular chamber, on the terraced balcony level just below them, was Halthak.
Made small by the distance, the healer was running for all he was worth. Amric slid his gaze along the path he had traversed and discovered the reason for his haste: the brutish figure of Grelthus surged along on all fours less than a hundred yards behind. The Wyrgen’s gait was weaving and unsteady for some reason, but he was nevertheless closing on his prey with frightening ease.
Movement on the immense amphitheater floor drew the swordsman’s eye still further down to reveal another new threat. Score upon score of corrupted Wyrgens were flooding into the chamber, their burning gazes upturned and questing. Even as he watched, their dark forms began to swarm up the stairs leading to the next level. As the stairways clogged with the heaving mass of bodies, the enraged creatures clambered over balustrades and over the backs of their own fellows in their frenzy. Halthak and Grelthus were many levels above the floor, but he judged it would take the swelling horde no more than a handful of minutes to reach that height, given the speed of the Wyrgens.
Amric plunged through the breach and into the Fount chamber, bounding down the steps that would take him to the terrace level below even as his swords flashed into his hands.
CHAPTER 12
Halthak sprinted along the terrace, his desperate gaze fixed upon the next ramp of stairs. They were too far away yet to see if they offered any egress, but he had little choice except to try. The damnable Wyrgen had shaken off his imparted injuries with alarming speed, and now the panting snarls of pursuit grew louder with every step. Halthak heard the rasp of claws on stone almost at his heels, and he went cold as he realized he would never make it to those bleak steps before rending talons found his flesh and he was dragged down from behind.
His jaw clenched. He had been passive in the face of violence for all of his life, accepting it as inevitable, and seeking afterward with meek resolve to repair it if the fates allowed. Not this time. No, if death sought to claim him now in the guise of this evil creature, it would find him facing his attacker and fighting on the way down. He wished for the familiar comfort of his stout, gnarled staff, but he knew as well that even were it here now in his hands, it would do little to improve his chances against such a powerful killing machine.
He skidded to a halt and spun to meet Grelthus. Facing back the way he had come, he cursed at just how little distance he had covered since his escape. There was only a fleeting instant for self-reproach, however, before the furious mass of muscle and fur was upon him.
The Wyrgen launched itself at him, grasping claws outstretched. Surprise momentarily displaced rage on the wolf-like visage, however, as the Half-Ork fell backward and Grelthus hurtled through the empty space above him. Lying on his back, the healer lashed out with both feet to send the Wyrgen tumbling past. Halthak could never say afterward with any certainty whether the maneuver was tactical inspiration on his part, or if instead he had fallen backward in abject terror; if he lived to retell the moment, it would doubtless depend on his audience. It bought him precious seconds, however, even if it put his pursuer between him and the stairs he sought to reach.