Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 59

e air she danced through was soaked in death. The ground she danced over was littered with fighters and horses, their emptied bowels and bladders sludging the earth and the soaked, crushed brown grasses. Their eyes were dead, they stared at nothing.

Bajadek Warlock’s living eye saw her. He held an axe in one hand and a sword in the other, they were smeared crimson from blade-point to hilt. He was wounded, his own blood mingled with the blood he had spilled from Jenkin’s warhost. He stood up straight and laughed to see her.

She challenged him again, dancing like sunlight across the crowded plain. So many fighters she had killed already, she could not count them. He would be one more.

“ Bajadek Warlock! You must face me !”

“Face you ? A child ?” jeered Bajadek. He hefted his axe and brandished his sword. He stood there waiting, he was unafraid. An ugly man, and stupid, also.

Fiona smiled and opened herself to the Labyrinth lord. The Labyrinth lord’s power filled her, it set her on fire, if Bajadek cut her she would bleed out its fury. Every one of his fighters she had danced with was left weeping scarlet tears as they died. A few of them had kissed her, she was cut in this place, bruised in that. Pain was a sacrifice to the Labyrinth lord, she gloried in it, how else could she worship but with her blood?

She danced with Bajadek, whose Labyrinth lordbells were silenced.

The Warlock was a mighty man, and with his sword and axe was mightier still. He swung at her, he slashed at her, he roared his rage and screamed his hate. He could not touch her, she was in the Labyrinth lord’s eye, and its grim power was her blood, her heart, it was her solace and her strength.

Where Bajadek reached for her she was gone, twisting sideways or upwards or around him like smoke. Where he was, her snakeblade kissed him, it bled him like a black lamb on the Labyrinth lord’s altar. She danced on sand, on a clean-swept street, he stumbled through entrails and staggered over splintered bones. Her hotas flowed like honey, sweet in her fingers, sweet in her toes. She was the sandcat, the lizard, the falcon dancing over the meadow. Her snakeblade was keen as mercy from the Labyrinth lord. Inside her was stillness, death whispered in her ear.

Lost in the knife-dance, feeling Jenkin’s hot gaze on her, she smote Bajadek for him and for the Labyrinth lord, a terrible ecstasy welling inside.

I am Fiona, I know what I am. I am the Labyrinth lord’s snakeblade, dancing in its eye.

Bajadek Warlock was ugly, and dying. His axe was fallen from his hand and Fiona had severed his wrist’s taut tendons so his fingers could no longer make a fist. His own great sword was shattered, his stolen sword not long enough to reach her. She had cut off his breastplate with two swift knife-strokes and laid him open to the bone. His arms were slashed like lamb for roasting, his legs were shredded scarlet ribbons. His heart’s blood pumped with each shuddering beat, there was more outside him than within. He breathed like a camel at the end of endurance.

She stood before him on the balls of her feet, looking up into his blood-slicked face. “Bajadek Warlock, it is over. You displeased the Labyrinth lord, the Labyrinth lord has punished you.”

Pain and fear dulled his bright blue eye. “Who are you? What are you?”

“She is Fiona,” said Jenkin’s pale, satisfied voice. “She is a warrior, Labyrinth lordtouched

and mine.”

Bajadek’s fading gaze shifted to look past her. His slack face twisted with hate. “Jenkin Warlock. With seed like water, and a blunted spear.”

Fiona killed him. Drew her snakeblade across his throat and watched without comment as the last of his red blood spurted from the wound. Bajadek stayed standing one moment, two moments. Then his dead knees buckled and he crashed to the ground.

“Fiona,” said Jenkin, and put his hand on her shoulder.

She turned to him slowly, emptied of the Labyrinth lord, emptied of power. Jenkin, standing now, was hurt and b****y, he favored one leg and breathed as though the air was poisoned.

She smiled at him, though she was hurting. “You watched me, Warlock. You saw me dance.”

“I watched you, Fiona.” He smiled back at her, a grimacing effort. “I saw you dance. You have slain my enemy. I am pleased with you.”

Her hollowed heart lifted. The Warlock of Shellhad seen her, and was pleased. She is Fiona. Labyrinth lordtouched and mine . She was precious to him now, she had slain his enemy, she had saved his life. Her home was the barracks, for ever and ever. “I danced for you, Warlock. I danced for the Labyrinth lord.”

“I know,” he whispered, and bent to kiss her brow. “The Labyrinth lord thanks you, Fiona, and so do I.”

“The battle is over?”

His gaze swept across the almost silent plain. “It is over. We have won.”

“No, Warlock,” she told him, even as the sun was blotted from the sky and a dark veil fell before her face. “The Labyrinth lord has won. It gives us the victory. Kill a bull-calf and drink in its honor.”

“Fiona!” he shouted.

She barely heard him. The last thing she felt was his strong hand, reaching for her, as she crumpled witless at his feet.

Standing in the midst of c*****e Jenkin grunted as Wyngra Labyrinth lordspeaker healed his sluggishly bleeding wounds. He had resisted Labyrinth lordspeaker attentions as long as he could, his hurts were not mortal. Other fighters needed Wyngra’s Labyrinth lordstone far more urgently than he.

But he was the Warlock and Wyngra had at last insisted, using the might of his office as leverage. He capitulated. To shout at Wyngra was to invite censure from Geroud, once they were returned to ProJenkin.

It was two fingers past highsun, and Bajadek’s death. An unsteady hush mantled the b****y Plain of Drokar. The last of the dying had been sent to hell or to the Labyrinth lord, a sharp knife in the throat their final gift. Bajadek’s fighters who’d survived their Warlock’s folly sat defeated on the reddened ground, watched over by fighters of victorious ProJenkin. Each warhost’s dead had been separated and laid in rows, awaiting the Labyrinth lordspeakers’ attentions. The horses too badly injured to save were killed and skinned, their hides bundled for curing, their harnesses saved for living horses. Crows argued over their n***d carcasses even now, quick to feast on such generous bounty. The sky was rotten with black wings, wheeling.