Meek

Chapter 58: Unseen Hands in Darkness

Eli didn't answer, and he didn't step away.

Because the moment he dropped that spear, the bear could bite him in half. So he clung there with his head straining away from those deadly jaws and his arms outstretched as the bear roared and shook to dislodge him.

The numbness in his broken hip turned to agonized jabs as his body flung this way and that. The man bellowed again, charged forward, and hacked at the bear's other eye

The bear dodged and took the blow on the skull. The blade cleaved deeply but the beast only snapped at the man--and its teeth hit a mage-shield

That time, Eli moved.

He hefted himself sideways, releasing his left hand, swinging sideways with a one-handed grip. The shattered spear slid smoothly from the bear's neck and sent him careering to his right. He hit the ground and rolled behind the man, behind the shield, as the broken spear rapped against the stone roof.

Then he focused on his sparks.

His lip curled in disgust when he sent them at the bear, and then into the bear. Into the dark, rotted, fetid carcass of the blood-bear. Looking for a pocket of bright red, like the bubbles he'd seen in the stoat and kestrel. The blood blisters he'd popped to kill the 'pets': the lingering marks of the Witch's touch.

A weakness, a vulnerability. The only way to stop these things.

Or so he prayed.

As he burrowed his sparks deeper, the mage and the bloated bear exchanged blows.

"You see this ugly fellow, Riadn?" the man boomed. "Stinks worse than your feet after a month in the saltmarsh!"

The mage dodged and hacked, and the bear struck his shields ... and weakened them.

Each one shattered more quickly than the last, until the man darted past the bear and slashed though the hamstring of one of its rear legs.

The bear lashed backward with the same leg. It didn't need hamstrings. It kicked the man like a mule and send him flying.

That time he landed harder, and his delk-hide armor skewed across the rooftop. Sliding toward the edge like a coin pushed across a glossy tabletop--

At the last moment, the other rider, the archer, stopped him.

"My feet do not stink," she said, and vaulted over him onto the rooftop.

How she'd reached the roof, Eli didn't know. His sparks were too busy inside the slurry of putrid bearflesh, his mind reeling from a slaughterhouse onslaught. He managed to rise onto his left knee, though. He steadied himself with the shattered spear, four or five feet of hardwood with a one jagged end, his mind half-lost in the bloodbear's bowels.

Still, his eyes watched through a glaze of horror as the now-bowless archer danced across the rooftop like a performer on a stage, flowing and leaping avoid the bear. Her long, narrow sword darted and flicked, and pricking the beast without any effect.

"Talk to me, Payde," she said, twirling backward.

"Just a bruise," the man said, wincing as he clambered to his feet. "I've been hit harder by a nursing babe. Ha! That ought to teach me to try wooing a new mother, but--"

"Payde!" She dodged a swipe of the bear's claw. "How many more?"

"Shields?" He adjusted his half-helm as he headed back toward the fray. "I reckon I'm about done for a time. That, uh, didn't go entirely according to plan."

"Trap it," Lara told them. "These mounds are hollow, they used to be homes."

"Is there a way inside, lass?" Payde asked her. "Or is this stone closed up as tight as Riadn's heart?"

"Make a way," Lara snapped at him. "You're a mage."

"Not that kind, I despair to admit. What is this unfortunate creature?"

"The Bloodwitch's pet," Lara said.

"Bloodwitch is the lost mage?"

"Less talking, more fighting," the woman Riadn snapped.

Claws raked across her upper arm but didn't seem to draw blood--and using the broken spear as a walking stick, Eli managed to stand

"Not you," Riadn told him.

"You're done fighting!" Payde boomed in agreement. "You look like the mouse after the owl finished."

Eli barely heard them. Inside the bear, maggot-ridden meat sloshed and flowed. Darkness swirled with darkness. Cold wrapped coils around cold.

Yet there was brightness, too. A single bubble of heat.

Payde twirled his axe and slipped toward the bear from behind, his eyes alight with excitement. Riadn slashed and retreated, slashed and retreated, keeping the bear's attention, until the man sprang forward with a two-handed blow the caught the bear at the base of the spine.

"For the throne!" he yelled, and his axe cleaved through backbone.

For a moment the bear faltered.

And in that moment, Riadn lunged. She extended her sword fully, shockingly far, and as fast as a snake's tongue--and the tip flicked across the bear's good eye.

The bear roared and slashed at her with one great paw. She dove backwards somehow, twisting in the air, rolling like a tumbler onto her feet but the bear used the momentum of the slash to keep turning. It spun fully until it faced Payde, who sidestepped for distance--then it charged him.

"How the vale is it seeing you?" Riadn said.

"Animals are drawn to beauty," Payde called as he blocked a swiping claw, holding his axe in a broad grip like a quarterstaff.

The force drove him backwards, though. A flicker of surprise showed in his eyes and he blocked another blow, but that one drove him just a few feet from the edge of the rooftop.

"Join in, Ri," he yelled. "No need to give me the solo here."

A dagger seemed to materialize in the woman's free hand--not a dagger, a needle. She flicked her wrist as she ran forward, and sent the needle arrow-fast and arrow-straight into the bear's belly.

One of Eli's sparks felt the metal embed in the stew of rotting organs and decayed tissue. He pushed both of them through the carcass in widening spirals, his stomach souring in disgust, searching for a blood blister.

Payde dodged a killing snap of those terrible teeth but lost his balance, and the next swipe slammed him onto his arse. He shoved himself inelegantly backward along the smooth rooftop with his feet, and the bear pounced on him like a cat on a grasshopper.

The teeth snapped at his face, but closed on the axe head instead.

The edge sliced into the bloodbear's maw. It showed no sign of pain. Instead, it simply tore the weapon from Payde's grip and flung it across the roof with a shake of its head.

Then it turned back to Payde, its distended jaws stretching wider than his head, and snapped at his face.

A faint shimmer slowed the bite but the effort left Payde semi-conscious, limp and glassy-eyed.

The woman hissed a few swears in Rinican as she closed on the bear. The words snagged in Eli's divided, distracted mind. Of course! She looked coastal, with her pale skin and light hair that flowed behind her as she danced closer. Rinican. She was probably tattooed under her silken garb, and she certainly moved like one of those sure-footed sailors who swung across the rigging and strolled on wave-heaving decks and--

There!

One of his sparks felt the heat of a blood blister in the bear's slimy innards. The heat or the magic, he couldn't tell which. He'd felt something, though, and he sent the other spark burrowing through the muck.

Across the rooftop, Riadn's sword jabbed into the bear from behind, as fast as a woodpecker at a dead tree ... while Eli hobbled closer, as fast as caterpillar on a leaf.

He sent a spark slamming into the blood blister. If he punctured that, maybe this thing would fall like the ferret had. Except the blister didn't burst. And the attempt felt like pushing his tongue into uncooked liver. Felt worse than that but he slammed the blister again and again ... and couldn't pop it.

The bear crushed Payde's faint shield and Riadn made a piercing, ululating cry.

Loud enough that the carrion birds took flight again and the bear hunched one mighty, swollen shoulder before swiveling toward her.

She leaped backward, but not fast enough. Its haunch caught her in the side and sent her reeling, the first non-graceful steps she'd taken

The bear stalked closer to her, snapping and growling and dripping gore. She dodged and twirled and feinted, and kept the great beast away--until she didn't.

One mangled paw caught her a blow to the head that should've killed her.

She didn't die, though. Instead, Eli caught the faintest shimmer of a weak mage-shield fading as the impact threw her across the rooftop. She crashed onto her back beside a low hump of melted rock, and her sword landed a moment later, clattering across the rooftop near Lara.

The monstrous bear padded toward Riadn. It was in no rush now, like it knew it had won. Chunks of semi-liquified organs dripped from cuts on its belly and flecked the rooftop.

Riadn rolled onto her stomach with a grunt. Blood trickled from her nose and she gritted her teeth with the effort of trying to stand.

Eli half-closed his eyes. The sparks showed him nothing but darkness. Bitterness twisted his stomach at the taste, the stench. He saw nothing, but his core felt the sparks moving through the bear. His core tracked them the way his body tracked his own unseen hands in the dark.

He limped forward. He knew exactly where the sparks were: lodged inside the beast, tucked again that blister of warm red blood.

"Riadn," Payde said, his voice thick with exhaustion. "Move your bony arse."

She put her arms beneath her and pushed, but couldn't stand.

"It doesn't end like this," Payde said, almost pleading. "It doesn't end like this."

She pushed again, as the bear stood over her--but couldn't rise.

"No," Payde said. "No, no--"

The bear bellowed its triumph and Eli struck.