Before anyone could react, he sprinted ahead, vanishing quickly into the darkness.
Chapter 41
“Damn!” Azuri swore, and wrenched Ellonlef’s shackles off her wrists. The game was up, and there was no use keeping her bound. “We must catch him, or we will never find Kian.”
The trio ran after the fleeing guard, and moments later they halted in another circular chamber, their eyes wide with confused revulsion. Ellonlef recoiled as wasted men scrabbled, like misshapen spiders, away from the torchlight, throwing hands over sunken eyes, crying out against the glare. Most were naked, their bones pushing grotesquely against thin skin covered in running sores. Their bony feet waded through swarms of rats. Amid the living dead, the guard hid in plain sight, only the glint of a long dagger giving him away.
“You cannot have him!” the guard shouted, cowering behind two gaunt men with eyes afire with madness. “I’ll see you dead before-”
Hazad bowled aside the two prisoners and struck the guard, knocking him senseless with a huge, knotted fist. Those around Hazad and the fallen guard scattered, their overlarge eyes bulging, as Hazad took the man’s keys. The fearful prisoners muttered among themselves, creating an unpleasant droning noise.
“Quiet!” Azuri roared. Silence fell immediately, and he stood with his head cocked.
Ellonlef imitated him, even as she kept a sharp eye on the prisoners. From far away, the echoing sounds of an argument came to her. Hearing it too, Hazad plunged down another passage, with Ellonlef and Azuri hard on his heels. The passage soon led to a open chamber. Two prisoners, more robust than the others they had yet seen, were hunched over an unmoving figure. One held what looked like an blood-crusted arm in his boney hands, the posture of someone about to eat a goose leg.
“Gods good and wise!” Azuri breathed.
The second prisoner lurched to his feet, wielding a crude weapon. It took only a moment for Ellonlef to see that the weapon was a sharpened leg bone.
Hazad lunged forward, roaring like a lion. His sword swept up and down in a blurring arc, shattering the leg bone and splitting the fellow’s head like a withered gourd. With a screech of bone on metal, Hazad wrenched his sword free. The other prisoner scuttled out of range, making strange mewling noises low in his throat.
Kian lay on the floor, the few visible patches of his pale skin surrounded by layers of dried blood and caked dirt. He looked dead, but Ellonlef would not let herself believe it. Nearly overwhelmed with grief, she went to him. Gingerly, she placed a palm against his chest. His flesh was still warm, his heartbeat weak, erratic.
Joy, tempered as it was by his appearance, filled her heart. “We must leave here now,” she urged.
Kian groaned at the sound of her voice and rolled his head toward her. A flicker of recognition lit his slitted gaze and his mouth moved, but Ellonlef hushed him with a gentle finger to his lips. Tears she had not know were there fell from her eyes, dripping over the ruin of his body.
A sharp curse drew her attention, and she twisted to see a gathering of prisoners crouched at the edge of the torchlight. The prisoner who had been about to taste Kian’s arm squinted, his cracked lips twisted into a feral curve. He murmured hungrily, his eyes black slits above a crooked nose. Slaver dribbled over his chin. As if of the same mind, other prisoners crept forward. It was impossible to discern how many there were, for they seemed to be twined about one another, all arms and legs and distended bellies. Glints from their bulging eyes reflected a madness of hunger and incomprehensible suffering. These few men were the strong, Ellonlef realized, while those in the last chamber were the weak … the prey.
“We will take our friend,” Azuri said firmly. “Should any of you follow, you will find that you have plenty to eat.”
The prisoners stared blankly, as if Azuri had spoken in a foreign tongue. Then, with no warning, the hunters of the Pit surged forward.
Azuri swung the torch and struck the first man to reach him full in the face, a shower of sparks engulfing his head. The reek of seared flesh and burning hair suddenly filled the chamber. Another prisoner saw only a chance to fill his gut. He fell on Kian’s leg with his mouth agape, and began worrying it like a starved jackal. Kian sat up wheezing in pain. Ellonlef threw herself protectively over him, trying to drive the ravenous prisoner away, but he resisted, growling and snapping at her.
Hazad’s sword slammed into the prisoner’s spine, withdrew, and fell again, higher up. The crown of the man’s hairless skull soared away like a crude bowl and hit the ground with a rattling thud.
Azuri, torch in one hand and dagger in the other, waded into those blinded by thoughts of fresh meat. Bellowing an unbroken stream of oaths, he beat one man to the ground, wheeled, and slashed another across the face. Even as he sought another foe, a fist-sized stone struck his cheek with a sickening thud. Azuri staggered, but did not fall. With a brutal calm, he attacked, dagger and torch finding all likely targets, burning or cutting, by turn.
Hazad focused his rage on those now scampering away. Despite his great size, he moved with the precision of a master painter, no stroke wasted or hedged. Blood flew in delicate drops from the slashing edge of his sword, splashing the dusty walls. A skeletal man reeled backward, screeching, attempting to hold his cleaved groin in one piece, even as his guts boiled out from another gash across his middle. Another deranged fool laughed aloud, thinking he had jumped free of Hazad’s blade, but the laugh became a bubbling hiss when the back of his head tottered back on a slashed neck and kissed his spine. His quivering corpse pitched over and hit the ground.
As suddenly as it had begun, the assault ended. All that remained were the silent dead and the dying, their clutching fingernails digging grooves in the dust. Most of the prisoners had simply fled. Ellonlef could still hear their aggrieved voices fading away into the bowels of the Pit. Azuri coaxed the smoldering torch back into life and looked upon Kian, his despair mirroring that of both Ellonlef and Hazad.
“Gods good and wise,” Hazad whispered. Where a moment before his eyes blazed with fury, now they were wide and filled with sorrow.
With the grisly tableau spread out around him, Kian looked like a fallen king brought low by lesser men, despite his valiant effort to win through. Ellonlef’s heart broke anew at the sight of him, knowing he would not long survive Varis’s tortures … and without Kian, Varis would rise to heights of power never dreamed of by a mortal man.
“What did they do to him?” Hazad muttered.
“Not they,” Azuri corrected, his voice filled with an anguish that did not seem possible for such a warrior. “Others might have participated, but it was Varis who commanded this. And for this, he will die.”
Ellonlef dried her eyes, set her mouth. There might still be a chance, but it would not be had here. “We need to get him to Hya. She will have the means to help, and more skill than mine.”
With the gentleness of a father cradling a sickly child to his chest, Hazad lifted Kian. Ellonlef led the way, while Azuri took the rear, watching their trail for any prisoners who had missed the lesson learned by their peers. When they reached the second door, Ellonlef took the keys Hazad had taken off the now vanished guard. Ellonlef unlocked the door and stepped through. Hazad bustled through next, followed by Azuri, who closed the door at his back. Ellonlef relocked and the trio hurried along.
To Ellonlef, it felt like they were on a leisurely stroll, but by Hazad’s sweaty brow and gulping breaths, they were moving as fast as possible. In short order, Kian’s wounds had reopened, slicking his skin with fresh blood. Despite this, Hazad’s grip never failed, and soon they came to the bottom of the stair and climbed up, urgency driving them.