Александр Алексеевич Алексеенко
Chilled exorcist
Chapter 8: "Spear and Crossbow"
Many hunters of the higher undead piled up near the stables, causing the land to be full of rumors. The local servants were scattered around the castle in terror and recounted the news that the stableman had a terrible illness and now the hunters, acting alone as usual, had come to kill him all together. And the local garrison officer is issuing the killers with cooled ammunition, since the young man is about to turn into a creepy monster, and that's why they need so many weapons.
Here was another local commoner, stopping in the corridor, and wishing to impress, interrupting himself with his voice, whispered to the maid he had met another version of this unprecedented sight. The maid froze in front of him and covered her mouth with her hand, hiding her fear. I just waved away – I'd rather stay near this unfortunate man than walk around the castle listening to all this "folk art". But to be honest, there was nothing to do there while the local quartermaster went for weapons.
Clinging to the parapet, I climbed to the roof. A light breeze filled my cloak, and then a gust blew downward, where the cook boys were whispering, peering out from under the cook's hem. She herself, too, was wary of such a cluster of hunters in one place from behind the kitchen door. One of them spotted me on the roof almost immediately and spat on the ground, complaining about the speed of the weapons.
Castle life moved at its own rhythm. Guards were taking off and taking up their posts, servants were going somewhere. Five noblemen were chatting on the balcony about the past tournament, and in the garden walked the one for whom everything was planned. And she was really beautiful. She was tearing red roses in a lush dress and putting them into a huge bouquet. I stopped, mesmerized by this sight, and she raised her eyes to me. Her eyelashes fluttered. The girl was staring into the deep shadows, and I met her gaze. Flawless in her beauty and young years.
The instant the earl's youngest daughter saw the monster killer, she pricked her finger on a rose thorn. Licking the snow-white skin, the heiress of Theanotus gave a quiet yelp, but when she looked for the mysterious hunter again, she no longer saw his silhouette in the shadow of one of the columns. I am sure she will long remember the massive figure propped up on the marble pillar with his shoulders, and the strange gleaming, even in the gloom, glasses. She looked for him, standing upright and lifting her flower basket. But he disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. The hunter left no trace.
I was back in time. One of the hunters was fixing a saddle by the stalls. And the stableman was unconscious in the mud for some reason. The castle quartermaster had just finished distributing weapons. When he saw me, he handed me a bundle of forty black arrows.
"Here, just as you ordered. Here, this one too." The officer went to the wooden side of the weapon stand near the stalls and took a spear with an iron point from it.
I accepted the weapon and unwound it in my hand. Perfect balance, a little tilted toward the tip so I could comfortably grip it and throw it if I needed to.
"I need a horse," I reminded the supply officer of my needs.
"Come into the stalls and choose for yourself. The stableman has already had enough advice for today," the man assigned to us told me, checking the pulse of the young man lying in the mud.
"And who did he advise?" I grinned.
"This mare," the hunter pointed to the horse, who had hesitated with the saddle and was now watching me with interest.
I walked around the wooden stalls near the stone wall of the courtyard. There were still a couple of stunted horses here. It looked like someone had taken offense at being advised against a stallion. This horse looked much better against the others. I'm not proud.
"I'll take this mare," I pointed to the horse.
"Take the horse," sighed the anxious quartermaster, lifting the young man carefully out of the mud. With his other hand he called several servants, who, however, keeping order, surrounded the boy on all sides.
The hunter who had pointed her out laughed and rode out of the courtyard. Out of the shadows came a girl, unnoticed by me, the one who had been sitting in the meeting opposite. She winked at me approvingly and jumped on her horse, following the hunter. I decided that it was all foolishness and that the boy had been hurt for nothing, and then I sped up to keep up.
The long and piercing gaze of Count Mirtel from a small elevated terrace did not escape me. Now Pheanoth might even have regretted hiring us. He hardly cared about the fate of the stable boy; rather, he wanted to see who had snuck into the enclosed garden to see his youngest daughter. And this young man's story is just another stone in our garden.
Chapter 9: "The castle by the road"
As I walked away, the hag put a bag of food in my bag. The water in the flask was splashing again, "Take it, my dear – you need it more," she said kindly. We broke through the forest predators, and I wielded with dexterity the new carga's spear. My companion led me to the edge of the forest.
"We can't go any farther, there's the castle," she pointed ahead. Her bluish-black cat walked along the edge of the forest from side to side. The cat hissed and lost all patience when she saw the gray earth. Covering her nose with her paws and getting angry.
"Good." I stepped forward, and the ash-gray dust that had engulfed the plants near the forest crumbled to ashes under my boots, as did the grass itself, devoid of life. The girl looked at me again, probably wanting to say something. But she changed her mind, then ducked down and, beckoning the panther, disappeared into the forest.
I walked straight toward a barely discernible target, which for a moment appeared in the haze. The disease-ravaged brushwood crumbled to dust as soon as I touched it with my boot. The skulls of small animals that had been exposed to the sulfur that had forced them out of the forest crunched beneath my feet. Here, on the border, one could feel the struggle of the last guardian of the Darkwoods and the eerie gray earth pulling the life out of the entire forest.
"Yes, this was the castle to which the waystone pointed. There, at the crossroads, I made a note to the other hunters that I was leading the work here for them to move on. But it felt like there was no one behind me. How many of us were there? Fourteen? Fifteen if you count the hunter who took part in the tournament itself? This is definitely the place the forest villagers were talking about. Nearby, near it, there must be a village, what did they call it? Sgulli… Sgugli? I don't remember." The headwind gutted the remains and ashes, and even through the mask my throat choked and I coughed. I had to cover myself additionally with the edge of my cloak. The fine particles floated like mist, so I didn't see the charred hulk of the village building right away.
I wandered around the ashes. It was all that remained of what had once been a fairly large settlement. I saw an anvil among the ruins of one of the houses, and an unpleasant feeling came over me. With bitterness I remarked to myself, "There was even a smithy here long ago, but despite its size, the settlement still perished." My face was covered by the mask of a milchemist, so I wasn't afraid to breathe. But the air in this small depression in front of the castle where the village was located still felt stifling. Burnt houses and huts. What had happened here? The dust storm had intensified, but the Titan Jodkheim was at the zenith of its power, shining through everything for twenty meters around. A premonition visited me, and I raised my green lantern higher. Ahead, the silhouette of a stray dead man emerged from the shadows of the haze around him. He took a couple more steps forward, then jerked sharply and turned toward me. He saw me.
"Wheeewurrrgh!" came the shroud of mischief from all directions. The dead man ran when he saw his prey, and another and another followed him out of the mist with his hands out in front of him.
I stood in the protective stance of an aspid, lowering the sting of my spear downward. As soon as the enemy approached, I sliced him open with a swift thrust of my spear. Another swing followed, and then another. One blow, one corpse. All the dead came at me from the same direction. It was as if all the former inhabitants of the village had gathered in one place for some reason. I took step after step back under their onslaught, chopping up the mindless bodies.
My foot caught some pebbles, and they tumbled down into a small ravine. "So this is where we'll stand," I thought as I fought back and kicked another foe down the cliff.
At last the stream of cold ones dried up. The wind died down, and the dust settled lifelessly almost immediately. It looked like this village used to be frequented by zombies, but now all that remained was a crushing silence. I walked forward along the recent traces of the battle. I needed to know what had caused them to gather in one place.
Small rats with red and black eyes jumped out of the ground now and then. They were strange, small and white. They were looking for the green mushrooms that shimmered with dim lights and covered the bodies of those I had recently laid to rest. They were looking for the mushrooms with glowing green caps that grew on the ashes. Why were they rats and not mice? Rats are the only animals I know that can laugh. The inexperienced mouse grabbed the overripe mushroom and it exploded in its paws, emitting thousands of spores. She sneezed and jumped aside. The other two, more mature ones, squeaked and laughed. Except they didn't point their paws at her. They didn't know how to do that, though.
The mushrooms shimmered here and there from the dust in the air. It was as if they'd stuck to the face of one of the zombies I'd killed. They looked more like fireflies on a thick stalk. I'd heard they'd been bred long ago by the Milchemists to counteract the Canopy with their light. The action of the mushrooms is similar to the crystal I carry with me. However, they were useless against Tlekorz the Apprentice's sulfur. Except for the fact that they sucked the remaining life out of the cooled ones, growing on them abundantly. I felt the urge to spit, but I overcame it. The concentration of sulfur in the air was the highest.
Ahead on the road lay the corpse of a knight, and in the distance I could see a naked horse. The warrior had cut down at least a hundred mushroom zombies with his two-handed sword before the wave slammed into him. A gruesome death. The mangled plates of the armored steel of his shattered cuirass lay in various places, looking like he had literally been torn to pieces. I lifted a piece of shoulder armor to see who was in front of me.
The herald in my mind announced, "Ser Letrius of the Valley of the Singing Birds!" He could hardly be taken so easily. At the tournament, he had proved himself a great swordsman, slaying his opponent, a peasant with a pitchfork, dressed all in black and pretending to be a monster hunter. But here the zombies surrounded the knight and ripped off the milhimic's breathing bag. After which the fight was a foregone conclusion.
After examining my find carefully, I drove down the edge of the ravine to the dried up floodplain of the river. I think I understood what the hag was up to. The fortress on the hill is there for a reason, there is a key that comes from under the ground. It's advantageous to the defenses, it's much harder to take a fortress like this. I'm sure the witch of the Dark Forest wants to restore the spring to its former strength, so she can limit the sulfur from this side as well. That way she can close the south completely and clear it of the gray earth.
I climbed higher up the hill where the fortifications were located. Turning around and looking around, I pointed the toes of my boots toward the fortress. From here I could already get a good view of the surrounding area. The village on the other side of the dried up riverbed had already been deserted after the hilltop fortress had fallen. The settlement is not the source of the contamination. What ruined the local region is inside the castle. "The fish rots from the head," my faithful companion K'Yoevghan would remind my old saying. I caught myself feeling that I missed him and his crude way of speaking.
Chapter 10: "Priest of Rukh Fortress"
A fanfare resembling the ancient composition "The Enchantments of the Thunderbird Lands" sounded. It was traditionally played before the army of Rukh Fortress marched out, so everyone's attention was focused on the dueling arena.
"Priest Abramius Tul of Fortress Rukh!" announced the herald. The crowd shouted furiously. "A priest?" I could not believe my own eyes. It looked like one of Titan Yodkem's servants had come out to see what was going on in the outside world.
"I have come to cleanse these lands of ossery! I am Abramius Tul, the Unrevealed Fist of Titan Yodkem, and I will crush any evil that comes my way!" shouted the priest to the cheering crowd. And the crowd applauded. Shaking his club and shield, Yodkeim's devotee roused the crowd.
Dressed in bright red and white robes, the priest immediately attracted everyone's attention. Therefore, the presence of the second contestant was not immediately noticed, even the herald, accustomed to his work, missed his appearance in the dueling arena. In gray and blue robes, lean and lean, he took a seat opposite. It was only then that he was announced, "Lkad of the Northern Tribes!" shouted the name of the second contestant to the herald.
"I, Lkad of the Northern Tribes, child of the warg and the wolf! Fear my fangs!" the archer shouted hoarsely and grinned, showing his teeth.
It was not necessary to shout, but it seemed that the northerner wanted to repeat the success of his rival, so he raised his bow and shook it in the air. But the crowd had little or no reaction to Lkad. There was liquid clapping. It was clear to everyone, except for the northerner himself. "I guess they set up the tournament grid so that the favorite always wins," I wondered. "Or maybe they just don't want any trouble from Fortress Rukh, the priest of Hotta after all." I took a closer look at the archer, a strange wolf, long-range. Weapons like bows were not common to the Wolf and Warg clan. This tribe of northerners was known for their skillful melee warriors. Each arrow attached by a fan behind the skinny back had a bone tip. "They must be warg fangs or something like that," I couldn't say with accuracy from this distance.
"Let the duel begin!" exclaimed the herald, and the combatants began their duel.
Lkad tried to get around Abramius Tulus and flank him the way a wolf guesses the direction for a throw. He cackled and wheezed in a hoarse voice, trying to mimic the growl of a predator. The priest, unlike the child of Varg and Wolf, bowed his head and closed his eyes, lowering his weapon. His rival even hesitated, looking at the herald, who announced the beginning of the battle, and turned around perplexed and asked, "Is he surrendering?" Lkad shouted in a hoarse voice in the almost complete silence possible in the arena.
In response, the herald shook his head and raised his palms to the sky, drawing the attention of the assembled crowd, and announced, "It seems that the priest has decided to use combat meditation to swiftly slay his opponent!" The crowd hooted happily, finally everyone understood everything. "The priest is just saving up his strength for a powerful dash."
A venomous grin ran across Lkad's face. He drew the bowstring, and it rattled melodically, like the first note of a battle rhythm. The hall gasped, and with good reason! The child of the Warg and the Wolf had hit the floor of the Hott priest's robe! Even the Hott priest seemed surprised. He opened his eyes in surprise and looked down at his clothes, lifting the pierced fabric of the cloak. Yes, the clothes were securely pinned to the ground by the arrow that had bound them. And I knew why it had happened. Lkad hadn't intended to kill his opponent, he hadn't even thought of injuring him, so the Titan's Unsheathed Fist defense hadn't worked. I hid a smile as I watched the priest's eyes widen, either from surprise or fear. It looked like he was now reviewing his duel with his opponent. His idea of reflecting the aimed arrow hadn't worked. Apparently, he wanted to summon the faith of those gathered to turn them to the Light of Yodkeim. But it didn't work. I hid my smile in my sleeve again.
After snatching the arrow, the priest unsheathed a massive mace and struck his shield twice. Apparently, this was just what Lkad had been waiting for. He began to aim his arrow. The first arrow flew and should have been reflected by the shield of light, but… the arena marveled again. The arrow slammed into the shield and slowly, one centimeter at a time, continued to move forward. I looked at the child of the Wolf and Varg. It looked like he was indeed of their clan, despite his strange weapon. Lkad, with the help of the rune rings and bracelet, was pushing his plumed fang forward, through the barrier, giving it extra power.
The priest finally recovered from his first impression and raged. He swung his mace carelessly away from the arrow, shattering the rune on its warg fang tip. The more I watched the fight, the more details I noticed.
"Stubborn heathen! You will be crushed!" shrieked Abramius Tull.
О! Now I do not envy Lkad. The full might of the Priest of Jodkheim is about to fall upon him!
The Undisclosed Titan Fist had completed its martial meditation, and its actions were now blurring in the cold morning air. In a few moments, the Priest of Hotta approached his opponent and with a ringing blow of his shield, sent the lean foe flying with a powerful lunge, followed by a swift leg kick to the side that pushed the northerner away. Lkad flew sideways and flipped twice, hitting the ground and letting go of his bow. The duelist raised his hammer and shield to the sky, and the audience cheered again! "If the priest had wanted to end the duel, he should have struck with his weapon and is still coloring," I rubbed my chin as I pondered.
Lkad lifted himself off the ground. Spitting up blood, he roared, melting the morning hoarfrost on the sparse grass with his breath and… began his transformation. "Oh! He seems to be the talent of his clan!" The clothes on him burst, and thick wool began to cover the northern man's white body. Shaking his thick, disheveled mane of hair like a dog shakes off water, the grinning werewolf warg appeared before them all. The Priest of Hotta twirled his weapon in his hands and got into a fighting stance. "It looks like the duel will now go to the victor."
The warg roared, generating a sound wave. Some of the spectators covered their ears with their hands. Those who were closer were bleeding from their ears. I cringed. The hearing valves of my glasses prevented any damage to my eardrums. The Priest of Hotta stayed on his feet, but I saw that his figure was slowly being blown backward. It had already shifted half a meter. The mages had finally placed a barrier over the arena, and a life-giving wave of healing washed across the grandstand.
Varg leapt forward and tried to strike his opponent. But instead, he hugged the light shield on both sides. He jumped backward, dodging the mace, and tried to attack again with a ranged attack. From the side, it looked like arrows were separating from the warg's body, right from behind its scruff. "I'm amazed at his idea," I laughed.
The Titan Fist was smashing projectiles stuck in the protective sphere with its mace and moving forward, fending off claw attacks with its shield. The predator that the Northman had turned into was slower and slower to strike, tiring quickly. Finally, the warg was completely exhausted and froze.
Hott's sweaty follower didn't realize it right away. Now, however, a wave of light swept across the arena, dispelling the illusion. The illusion fell, and the gaunt Lkad of the Wolf and Warg tribe reappeared before the crowd, with his quiver empty and his daggers shattered against his shield.
The priest, glowering to the cheers of the crowd, approached, hanging his mace from his belt. As he came close to the archer, he raised him above his head with his free hand. This signaled a clear victory for the priest. The tribunes applauded.
"Do you wish to turn to the Light of Titan, child of men?" The Priest of Hotta called out to the lost soul in a mentor-like tone.
The warrior roared and placed his hand on the amulet, causing the sound wave of the banshee's cry to travel around the arena again. The chilling, terrifying scream echoed repeatedly off the walls of the dome. The other duelist released his shield and slammed his fist into his opponent's chest, where the amulet hung. The resounding blow crunched the object against the ribs of the child of the Wolf and Warg, then threw the archer's body several meters away. Lkad fell, rolled over, kicked up dust, and rolled on the ground, motionless. He didn't seem to be breathing at all. Spreading his arms wide, he hugged the dirt of the arena. He was no longer moving.
The stands, which had been holding their breath until then, shrieked. It was a knockout!
The undisclosed Titan Fist raised both of his hands up, shaking them. He clenched and unclenched them, celebrating his victory.
"The Priest of Hotta has won!" shouted the herald, trying to shout over the cheering people.
