Distant Worlds Volume 1 Read online

  That same severe weather was also the only thing that prevented those who were yet trapped inside Osric from tearing one another apart. The city had swelled with chaos after the Kurnite army that protected it was defeated on the field of battle three days ago. Though it had once been the greatest fighting force in the known world, the Kurnite army was many centuries removed from its days of glory. Lacking the discipline, training, and resolve of their forefathers, the Kurnites quickly lost what little semblance of order had when the battle began and were cut down by the knights of Nemeria as they swept across the field of battle. The bulk of the Kurnite force, however, had been comprised of mercenaries of questionable repute, most of which broke ranks and fled for their lives when the Nemerians charged. The scoundrels flooded into Osric, hoping to take all that they could before the siege began. Now they were trapped along with everyone else.

  Andron shivered and his eyes darted to his children fearfully.

  “What chance do we have?” he asked.

  Serafima shrugged.

  “If the rain holds through the night and we can reach the walls without being caught by any scavengers, we may be able to slip past the Nemerians without being noticed. But that depends.”

  “On?”

  “On what stretch of the siege line we stumble across. There is no way of knowing from here where the bulk of their strength lies.”

  Andron frowned.

  “An opportunity is sure to present itself,” Serafima said. She wasn’t so optimistic herself, but she could see that it would be hard to motivate the merchant if he felt there was no chance of escape. It was hard to believe that he had survived as long as he had.

  The sound of irregular splashing somewhere below them drew Serafima’s attention. She motioned for the others to be silent as she moved closer to the stairs. The splashing sounds multiplied and then she heard several voices whispering back and forth.

  Someone, it seemed, had followed them.

  Serfima had noticed no signs of pursuit, but it was very dark and the pouring rain masked both scents and sounds. In any event, she had no desire to wait for the newcomers to find them.

  Quickly and quietly, Serafima got her charges to their feet and directed them towards the open window on the east side of the room. It looked out over the roof of a house standing only a few feet away and was close enough to jump down to. Without a word she got them through the window just as the stairs below started to creak. Guimar leapt down first and caught his wife and nieces as they followed. By the time Andron and Renart went through, Serafima could see a helmed head poking up from the stairway.

  “Go!”

  Serafima flung herself out the window before the sellsword could react to seeing her. She landed lightly on the flat roof and herded the others forward. When she glanced back, she saw the mercenary leaning out the window as if he meant to follow them, but then he turned his head up to the falling rain and seemed to think better of it, turning back inside to the dry room.

  They slowed their pace somewhat after that, but Serafima kept them moving steadily. She knew that if they were to have any chance, they would have to get outside the walls before sunrise. For all their progress, they were still near the core of the city.

  Most of the houses in that section of Osric were built close together and had relatively flat roofs so they were able to avoid the broken, flooded streets. After a good ten minutes of travel, however, the rooftops became steeper. Guimar’s wife informed him that she could go much farther without rest and he likewise refused to go on if they could not stop soon. Serafima thought it was foolish to waste any more time, but Andron supported his brother so she found herself seeking shelter once again.

  “Your brother had best learn to keep that wife of his in her place,” Serafima said to Andron as she scanned the area for a suitable resting place. “She’s putting all of us at risk with these demands of hers.”

  Andron glared at her.

  “And you would do well to remember that you would not have a chance of escaping this chaos had I not released you from your cell,” he said.

  “Perhaps I would have chosen to stay there had I known that you and yours were more concerned with your comfort than your survival!”

  “She is…difficult,” Andron said. “But she is family. Surely even you can understand that?”

  Before Serafima could answer, the younger of Andron’s girls, Aaline, cried out as she lost her footing on the steep rooftop. Renart tried to catch her, but he moved too slowly to prevent the child from tumbling down the roof and plunging into the water below.

  Andron nearly threw himself down after her before Serafima caught him by the shirt.

  “You’ll do her no good by breaking your neck, you fool!”

  “I can’t see her, Father!” Renart said. “I can’t even see down to the street!”

  Serafima’s eyes were far sharper than Renart’s, but even she had difficulty seeing anything more than the quivering blackness of the floodwaters. Then she heard a splash that was followed by coughing and she spotted the dim shape of little Aaline, who could not have been older than five or six winters, floundering about in the water.

  Before she could scramble down after her, Serafima noticed something else moving nearby. Several large, man-sized figures slipped through the windows and doors of the houses along the street and began closing in on the girl. While they were shaped like men, they walked with a peculiar hunch and their movements seemed nervous and erratic.

  They reminded her of nothing so much as large rats.

  Without another thought, Serafima drew her sword and slid down the side of the roof. She splashed into the street with her blade at the ready and the momentum of her first blow split one of the hunched figures from shoulder to groin. It died without further struggle and its hewn body collapsed with a splash that drew the attention of its companions.

  Now that she was closer to them, Serafima could finally see their features more clearly. While they were vaguely manlike, such a description was now questionable at best. Their stooped bodies were covered with coarse, mottled hair that concealed a variety of open sores and scabs. Large, pointed ears stuck out prominently from their hairy heads and their eyes were several times larger than a normal man’s. Sharp, crooked teeth poked out from their scurvy ridden jaws as they chattered and cackled to one another excitedly.

  If the creatures had once been men, generations of life in some foul darkness had wrought a terrible change upon them, robbing them of the tenuous state of humanity. There was no hint of dignity or reason in their bulging eyes, only the crude, simple urges of a common animal.

  The creatures were more nimble than their hunched appearance suggested and Serafima was quickly mounting a furious defense to keep them at bay. She cleaved through the arm of one creature and wounded another in the gut before she had to give ground before them. They came at her like a pack of rabid animals, each one tearing and biting at her ferociously as they tried to swarm over her and bring her down.

  But for all their speed, Serafima managed to stay just out of their reach save for a few minor cuts and scrapes. When her blade felled three more of the creatures, their courage faltered. One by one the beasts scattered back into the ruined buildings while sounding a foul chorus of chattering shrieks. By the time she finished off one of the stragglers, they had vanished from sight. She could still feel their hungry eyes watching her from the shadows.

  Serafima turned then to find that Aaline had also disappeared from the flooded street.

  “Aaline?” she called out, hoping that the twisted creatures had not carried her off to feast on her tender flesh.

  She scarcely heard the little girl’s voice calling out over the dull roar of rainfall.

  “Here!”

  The girl had tucked herself amidst the wreckage of an overturned wagon nearby. She peeked out cautiously, but was careful not to leave her hiding place until Serafima came much closer.

  “Are you hurt?” Serafima asked as she look
ed over her body for injuries.

  Aaline shook her head. Aside from being completely drenched, she was unharmed. She pointed to the cuts on Serafima’s arm.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  Serafima was impressed by Aaline’s composure. The girl was clearly frightened, but not paralyzed with fear as she would have expected. She glanced at her arm. The cuts were not deep and barely bleeding. She hoped that the rain would wash away anything that might otherwise infect the wounds. There was no telling what manner of filth and disease those subterranean creatures carried.

  “Scratches,” she said, smiling. “They’ll heal.”

  She glanced up at the rooftops but found no sign of Andron and the others. It was still difficult to spot anything that far away in the darkness and rain.

  Before she could hail them, there came a sound not unlike a high pitched cackle from somewhere behind them. Serafima spun around, sword in hand. At the outer reach of her vision the shadows appeared to move, dancing across the wreckage like withered leaves in a cold autumn breeze. The degenerate man-things had been frightened off easily, but they were returning in greater numbers. It was impossible to know how many of them were gathering in the watery darkness.

  Serafima sheathed her sword and hoisted Aaline onto her back. The girl clung to her tightly as she clambered back up to the rooftops. Down in the streets, the creatures howled and clawed impotently for a few moments before wilting into the darkness.

  They would surely find more accessible prey elsewhere.

  When she returned to the group, Serafima was dismayed to find the number their party reduced by two. Andron was still there with Renart and Letice, but there was no sign of Guimar or his wife.

  “They’ve gone!” Andron said. “I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen, the young fools!”

  “What’s happened?” Serafima asked. She directed the question to Renart; his father appeared too wrapped up in woe to be of much immediate use.

  “It was Lenna,” he said. “She started crying that you weren’t coming back and then she ran off. Uncle Guimar went after her.”

  “They’re on their own, then,” Serafima said as she mustered the others to their feet. “We have to keep moving.”

  “No!” Andron said. “You must find them! We’re not leaving them to die here in this hellish place!”

  Serafima grasped the merchant by the collar of his soaked shirt and pulled him closer to her.

  “Think of your family, you fool! Do you have any idea what will happen to these children if they are still here when the Nemerians sweep through with fire and steel?”

  Andron’s face darkened.

  “My brother and his wife are as much family as they. How can you expect me to abandon them to such a fate? How could I ever live with myself knowing that I left them behind?”

  Serafima looked at Andron’s children and guessed that one of them would die for every hour their flight was delayed. Brave little Aaline had already come close to death and Serafima knew that she would not always be in a position to save them from danger. She thought it would be wise to tell their father that his shortsighted decision would likely cost him one of his children. That Guimar and his wife would probably be dead by the time they found them. That he was remarkably ignorant of the danger his family was already in. That she could not be expected to spare them the horrors of war merely with her presence.

  That his demands might well kill them all.

  She looked back to Andron’s pleading eyes and realized that there was no sense in wasting her words.

  “Very well,” she said.

  Renart indicated the direction in which Guimar and Lenna had fled and they followed. Their path led them to a cluster of buildings that had been reduced to rubble, forcing them down from the low rooftops and back into the flooded streets. Just as Serafima had expected, it was impossible to track their lost companions. She instead kept watch for anything that could provide shelter from the downpour, hoping to find the couple huddled together somewhere instead of floating dead in the water. There were no signs of the mutant creatures, but Serafima knew they were most likely watching them from the shadows. The heaps of rubble and wrecked woodworks strewn through the street provided ample opportunities for an ambush.

  But the sound that brought her to a sudden stop was not the shrieks of the creatures, but something far more familiar: the clash of steel and the screams of dying men. She signaled the others to wait and crept farther ahead in hope of getting a view of the commotion.

  The distinctive steel armor of a Nemerian soldier was the first thing to catch her eye. It was a heavy suit of plate that covered him completely but for the narrow, T shaped face of his helm. His right pauldron was unmarked, which indicated that he was not of noble rank but most likely an infantry commander of some sort. There were at least a dozen men with him, most of which were engaged with a ragged gang of armed thugs. The Nemerians were far better equipped than their opponents; each one carried either an axe or a short sword and were protected by thick leather armor.

  Serafima ducked out of sight and cursed. The Nemerians, it seemed, had not been so idle during the downpour after all. If they were sending men this deep into the city, she guessed that at least part of the army had already breached the walls. Suddenly, their chances of escaping with their lives and freedom appeared much worse.

  As the Nemerians finished off the last of the gang, their steel-clad commander stood apart from his men and surveyed the ruin of the city. His mountainous figure might have easily been mistaken in the darkness for a statue of some legendary hero, so grand and arrogant was his bearing. Serafima did not have to see his face to know that he approved of Osric’s current state.

  “Form ranks, brothers!” he called out in the gruff Nemerian language, which Serafima had learned to speak in her travels. His deep, rough voice snapped the men to attention and they quickly reformed their column, leaving the broken, bloodied bodies of their enemies in their wake. Then they began to march down the street, each man peering into the windows and doors of the ruined buildings they passed.

  “Here, sir!” one of the men shouted. The column halted and the commander looked back as the soldier reached under a pile of rubble and pulled a thin, haggard looking man out from his hiding place.

  “No! Please!” the man said, writhing free of the soldier’s grasp and throwing himself at the feet of the Nemerian commander. The titan’s armored head bent down to regard the pathetic wretch clinging to his legs.

  “Please, have mercy!”

  With a sudden kick, the commander flung the street urchin away from him as easily as if he were made from straw. Serafima heard the poor fellow’s bones crack even over the droning of the rain when he crashed into a heap of rubble.

  “Kurnite scum,” the commander said. “Bleed him.”

  The nearest soldier stepped forward and drove the point of his sword into the man’s heart without hesitation.

  “We will cleanse this rotting city of filth yet, my brothers.” The commander’s voice was tinged with the zeal of a true fanatic. His men cheered at his words.

  Serafima had seen enough. She backed away slowly and when she was far enough away to not be heard, she turned and ran through the flooded streets back to where she had left Andron and his children.

  But they were not waiting where she had left them. The watery street was empty and she could find no sign of their passage.

  “Andron, you fool.”

  She caught a hint of movement nearby and her keen eyes focused in to see the merchant’s children huddled beneath the remains of some wooden structure. She hurried over and motioned them to leave their hiding place.

  “We can’t stay here,” she said before turned to Renart. “Where is your father?”

  “He thought he saw our uncle. He told us to wait here out of sight until he came back.”

  Serafima heard the splashing footsteps of the marching Nemerians some distance behind her and she hoisted little Aaline out of
the water.

  “This way,” she said. “Now!”

  “But what about father?” Renart asked.

  “Do as I say, boy!”

  Serafima led them away from the main street and down a flooded alleyway just as the Nemerians came into her sight. She hoped that their vision was not so sharp as her own. They darted through the wreckage of Osric seemingly at random, but Serafima remained keenly aware of their position relative to the Nemerian killing squad. When they finally stopped running, she handed Aaline down to Renart and examined their surroundings carefully.

  Renart set Aaline down on a pile of rock that protruded from the water and went to comfort Letice, who had begun to cry. Serafima glared at the girl as her sobbing grew louder.

  “Why did he leave us? Why?”

  Serafima clamped a hand over the girl’s mouth and Letice’s eyes widened.

  “Be quiet, curse you! Do you mean to bring the things lurking in these shadows down upon us?”

  Letice shook her head feebly. Serafima nodded and slowly removed her hand. The children stared at her anxiously and she realized then that they would die if she left them alone for but a moment. She cursed their father for not coming to the same realization.

  “Are…are we going to look for father?” Renart asked.

  Serafima wanted to say that they would not. She knew it was the wise answer, the right answer. Andron would not survive an hour without her protection and guidance, of that she was certain. It was likely that he had already stumbled upon the Nemerians or the loathsome rat-things. To waste their time searching for him was foolish, if not suicidal.

  If they were forced into a fight, at least one of the children would probably die. The likely deaths of Andron, Guimar, and the Armanorian woman did not weigh heavily upon her conscience. They had refused to heed her warnings and had brought their fate upon themselves, but the children were a different matter. They had been abandoned, left to fend for themselves in a place that held nothing but terror, pain, and death. She found herself unable to consider the thought of leaving them. They deserved better than the doom to which their erstwhile protectors had left them.