had said that the Captain’s Table, the quarterly meeting of chosen ships’ captains in Westmarch, had suggested Raithen as a possible candidate for the guilty party in the matter of the pirate raids. It was good to know, but staying alive to relate the news might prove difficult.
“Stand back, Orphik,” Lon growled. “You keep abuzzing around me like a bee, and I’m gonna stick you myself.”
“Shove off, Lon. I’ll do for him.” The little man’s voice tittered with naked excitement.
“Damn you,” Lon cursed. “Get out of the way.”
Quick as a fox in a henhouse, Orphik ducked under his companion’s outstretched free arm and dashed at Darrick with long-bladed knives that were almost short swords in their own right. He laughed. “I’ve got him, Lon. I’ve got him. Just sit you back and watch. I bet he screams the whole way down.”
Keeping his weight distributed as evenly as possible, going with the renewed strength that flowed through his body from the adrenaline surge, Darrick swung from hand to hand, dodging the chopping blows Orphik delivered. Still, one of the pirate’s attempts slashed across the knuckle of his left hand’s little finger. Pain shot up Darrick’s arm, but he was more afraid of how the blood flow would turn his grip slippery.
“Damn you!” Orphik swore, striking sparks from the stone again. “Just stay still, and this will be over with in a trice.”
Lon reeled back away from the smaller man. “Look out, Orphik! Someone down there has a bow!” The bigger pirate held up a sleeve and displayed the arrow that had caught on its fletchings and still hung there.
Distracted by the presence of the arrow and aware that another could be joining it at any moment, Orphik stepped back a little. He drew up a boot and lashed out at his intended victim’s head.
Darrick swung to one side and grabbed for the little man’s leg with his bloody hand, not wanting to trade it for the certain grip of his right. He knotted his fingers in the pirate’s breeches. Even though the breeches were tucked into the hobnailed boots, there was plenty of slack to seize. Balancing his weight from one hand on the cliff, Darrick yanked hard with the other.
“Damn him! Lon, give me your hand before this bilge rat yanks me off the cliff!” Orphik reached for the other man, who caught his hand in his own. Another arrow fired from below clattered against the cliff wall behind them and caused them both to duck.
Taking advantage of the confusion, knowing he’d never get a better chance, Darrick swung his weight to the side and up. He pushed his feet ahead of him, throwing his body behind, hoping to clear the cliff’s edge or he would fall. Maybe the rope tied around his loins would hold him, or maybe Mat and the other men below had forgotten it in the mad rush of events.
Arching his body and rolling toward the ledge, Darrick hit hard. He started to fall, then threw an arm forward in desperation, praying it would be enough. For a gut-wrenching moment, he teetered on the edge, then the point of balance shifted, and he sprawled facedown on the ledge.
THREE
Buyard Cholik followed Nullat down through the twisting bowels of Tauruk’s Port into the pockets of pestilence that remained of Ransim. Enclosed in the rock and strata that were the younger city’s foundation, the harbor seemed a million miles away, but the chill that had followed the fog into the valley remained with the old priest. Aches and pains he’d managed to keep warm in his rooms now returned with a vengeance as he made his way through the tunnels.
The acolyte carried an oil torch, and the ceiling was so low that the writhing flames left immediate traces of lampblack along the granite surfaces. Filled with nervous anxiety, Nullat glanced from left to right, his head moving like a fast metronome.
Cholik ignored the acolyte’s apprehensions. In the beginning, when the digging had begun in earnest all those months ago, Tauruk’s Port had been plagued with rats. Captain Raithen had suggested that the rats had infested the place while trailing after the camp lines of the barbarians who came down out of the frozen north. During hard winters, and last year’s was just such a one, the barbarians found warmer climes farther south.
But there was something else the rats had fed on as well after they’d reached Tauruk’s Port. It wasn’t until after the excavation had begun that Cholik realized the horrible truth of it.
During the Sin War, when Vheran constructed the mighty gate and let Kabraxis back into the worlds of men, spells had been cast over Tauruk’s Port to protect it and hide it from the war to the east. Or maybe the city had been called Ransim at that time. Cholik hadn’t yet found a solid indication of which city had been ensorcelled.
The spells that had been cast over the city had raised the dead, giving them a semblance of life to carry out the orders of the demons who had raised them. Necromancy was not unknown to most practitioners of the Arts, but few did more than dabble in them. Most people believed necromancy often linked the users to the demons such as Diablo, Baal, and Mephisto, collectively called the Prime Evils. However, necromancers from the cult of Rathma in the eastern jungles fought for the balance between the Light and the Burning Hells. They were warriors pure of heart even though most feared and hated them.
The first party of excavators to punch down through the bottom layer of Tauruk’s Port had discovered the undead creatures that yet lurked in the ruins of the city below. Cholik guessed that whatever demon had razed Ransim had been sloppy with its spellwork or had been in a hurry. Ransim had been invaded, the burned husks of buildings and carnage left behind offered mute testimony to that, and all among them had been slain. Then someone with considerable power had come into the city and raised the dead.
Zombies rose from where fresh corpses lay, and even skeletons in the graveyards had clawed their way free of their earthen tombs. But not all of them had made the recovery to unlife in time to go with whatever master had summoned them. Perhaps, Cholik had thought on occasion, it had taken years or decades for the rest of the populace to rise.
But those dead had risen, their flesh frozen somehow in a nether point short of death. Their limbs had atrophied, but their flesh had only withered without returning to the earth. And when the rats had come, they’d funneled down through the cracks and the crevices of Tauruk’s Port to get to the city below. Since that day, the rats had feasted, and their population had reached prodigious numbers.
Of course, when presented with prey that could still fight even though a limb was gnawed off or a human with fresh blood that would lie down and die if dealt enough injury, the rats had chosen to stalk the excavation parties. For a time, the attrition rate among the diggers had been staggering. The rats had proven a resilient and resourceful enemy over the long months.
Captain Raithen had been kept busy raiding Westmarch ships, then buying slaves with Cholik’s share of the gold. More gold had gone to the mercenaries whom the priest employed to keep the slaves in line.
“Step carefully, master,” Nullat said, raising the torch so the light showed the yawning black pit ahead. “There’s an abyss here.”
“There was an abyss there the last time I came this way,” Cholik snapped.
“Of course, master. I just thought perhaps you’d forgotten because it has been so long since you were down here.”
Cholik made his voice cold and hard. “I don’t forget.”
Nullat’s face blanched, and he cut his eyes away from the priest’s. “Of course you don’t, master. I only—”
“Quiet, Nullat. Your voice echoes in these chambers, and it wearies me.” Cholik walked on, watching as Nullat flinched from a sudden advance of a red-eyed rat pack streaming along the pile of broken boulders to their left.
As long as a man’s arm from elbow to fingertips, the rats raced over the boulders and one another as they fought to get a closer view of the two travelers. They chattered and squeaked, creating an undercurrent