‘Where is the Kadoshim?’ Sig growled, standing back to back with Cullen as they turned slowly, searching for the Kadoshim in the guttering red-flicker of light and shadow.
‘There!’ Cullen yelled, as the Kadoshim swooped down from the murk of the chamber’s roof, chopping at one of Elgin’s men, lifting another one bodily into the air and burying its sword in his belly, hurling the dying warrior back down into the chaos.
Without a word the two of them left the dais, forging a way towards the Kadoshim.
A man leaped at them, axe raised over his head, Cullen’s spear darting out and punching through his open mouth, dragged free in a burst of blood and teeth. Cullen shrugged his shield from his back, caught a sword-blow aimed for Sig, slammed the iron rim into the sword-wielder’s throat and sent him gasping and choking to the ground. Sig stamped on the fallen man as they pushed on, bones cracking beneath her iron-shod boots.
Then the Kadoshim was only a handful of paces before them, hovering above the conflict as its wings beat up a storm of dust.
‘FALLEN ONE,’ Sig bellowed, her cry ringing through the chamber, a momentary lull as both sides paused. The Kadoshim stared at Sig, saw Cullen beside her raise his shield, the bright star of their order upon it, and hissed at them, spraying spittle. Then it was flying at them, a dark blur. Sig hefted her blade and swung two-handed, the Kadoshim’s wings tucking tight together and somehow it was spinning, Sig’s sword slicing wide by a handspan. A crack as Sig turned, Cullen grunting as the Kadoshim swooped over him, raining down a flurry of blows, Cullen bending beneath them in a burst of incandescent sparks as the Kadoshim’s blade crashed into the iron rim of his shield, shearing through it.
Cullen yelled in fury and stabbed up with his spear, the blade grating along the Kadoshim’s mail shirt, links twisting and snapping. The Kadoshim just laughed and grabbed the shaft of Cullen’s spear, ripping it from his hands.
Sig charged in, her sword slicing an overhead arc at the Kadoshim, who somehow saw the giant coming and with a beat of its wings swept higher, Sig’s sword-tip cutting through the leather of its boot. Blood dripped a spatter of red rain from the wound as it hovered above them.
‘You’re a long way from Dun Seren,’ the Kadoshim snarled down at them, its guttural voice cutting through the din of battle.
‘We’d travel twice as far to carve some pain into your stinking hide,’ Cullen yelled back.
The Kadoshim hissed at them.
‘Who are you?’ Sig shouted. ‘Gulla?’
The Kadoshim laughed, the sound of nails scrapping across chalk. ‘Over a hundred years, and yet you know nothing of us.’
‘Gulla is chief of your kind, I have heard,’ Sig said, eyes fixed on the Kadoshim, circling to her right. ‘If not Gulla, who are you, then?’
‘I am Rimmon,’ the Kadoshim snarled. ‘I am your death.’
‘Like to see you try,’ Cullen snapped back, grinning.
Rimmon screeched and swooped down at them, hacking, chopping, stabbing.
Sig leaped away and the Kadoshim turned in mid-air, blade slashing at Cullen as he rushed in, sending the young warrior staggering away with a gash across his forehead. He disappeared amongst the press and heave of battle.
Sig bellowed a battle-cry and stabbed, but Rimmon twisted and Sig’s lunge sliced only air. Battle raged about them as she held her ground against the creature.
Enough of this.
Sig leaped close and the Kadoshim’s blade met hers in a shower of sparks before he fell back before her.
Rimmon’s wings beat hard; the Kadoshim grabbed a fallen spear as he swept back into the air. Sig reached a hand to her belt, felt the mesh of her weighted net, unhooked it and with a flick of her wrist snapped it open.
She raised the net, whirled it about her head as the Kadoshim drew a hand back and hurled the spear down at her. Sig twisted, a figure leaping in front of her and fouling her net throw. It was Cullen, his battered shield taking the force of the Kadoshim’s spear. Sig stumbled as Cullen’s weight slammed into her. He fell to the ground, Rimmon crowing in victory, before speeding away across the room. Sig took a step after him and then heard a groan.
Cullen.
The young warrior was pale as milk, red hair sweat-soaked and plastered to his head. The spear had burst through his half-splintered shield and pinned his arm to his body. He tried to say something but his breath was a wheezing hiss. Sig had no way of telling what the wound behind the shield was like, but from the look of him she feared the worst.
Waiting won’t make it better.
She put one big boot onto the remains of the shield, gripped the spear shaft and pulled it free.
Cullen grunted, face twisting with pain, and Sig knelt beside him. She breathed a sigh of relief as she lifted the shattered shield away. The spear had pierced his bicep, punching clean through and out the other side, but Cullen’s chainmail shirt had slowed it there, done enough to save the lad. A few rings were shattered, the spear-point cutting through the wool and linen beneath, a bloom of blood, but it was only a shallow wound.
Not that the fool boy will be doing much more leaping around for a ten-night or two.
‘I can fight on,’ Cullen mumbled, trying to stand. His eyes rolled white and he slipped back to the ground with a groan.
‘No, you can’t,’ Sig said.
‘Will I die, then?’ Cullen whispered, struggling for breath.
‘Of old age, most like, but not this day, laddie,’ Sig said and stood, raising the spear in her hand. She saw the shadowed streak of Rimmon as he sped towards an exit from the chamber, hefted the spear a moment, finding its balance and judging its weight, and then she threw. It flew straight as an arrow, punching through one of the Kadoshim’s wings, low, where it thickened and joined the shoulder. There was a scream, Rimmon plummeting to the ground.
‘Got to leave you awhile,’ Sig grunted down at Cullen.
‘Bring me its head,’ Cullen mumbled.
Sig ploughed through the chamber, smashing any before her out of her way. In heartbeats she was at the spot where the Kadoshim had fallen, saw the spear she’d cast at the Kadoshim lying on the ground, its blade dark with blood. Darkness thick as smoke filled the tunnel, so Sig grabbed the weapon, tore a dead man’s cloak from his back, wrapped it around the spear shaft and stabbed it into a fire-filled brazier. Soon flames were crackling and she lifted the torch and glanced back.
There were knots of combat still raging about the chamber, but to Sig’s eye Elgin and his men had the measure of it, far more of them still standing than their frenzied enemy.
They can finish here. I’ve got a Kadoshim to kill.
Sig gritted her teeth and ran into the tunnel, no time for care or caution.