04 - Rise of the Lycans (21 page)

Amidst the pandemonium, Raze rushed back to rescue their trapped comrades.
“Stay strong!” he exhorted them. “I am coming!” Lucian was impressed by the
man’s courage and loyalty but refused to let him throw away his life in a
hopeless cause. He tugged on Raze’s shoulder. A silver bolt barely missed the
slave’s bald dome. A desperate lycan, whom Lucian recognized as one of the other
slaves from the caravan, reached through the harpoon shafts.

“Help me!” the man pleaded. “Don’t leave me here!”

Raze wavered, uncertain where his duty lay.

“There is nothing you can do!” Lucian shouted over the screams of the dying.
He physically dragged Raze away from the barricades, while shouting back at the
comrades they were forced to abandon. “My brothers, I will be back for you!”

Reaching the exit at the far end of the gallery, Xristo yanked open the doors
and beckoned frantically for Lucian and the others to join them. Sabas snatched
a flying arrow from the air and hurled it angrily to the floor. Glancing around quickly, Lucian saw that maybe ten additional lycans
had survived the massacre. “Up the stairs!” he commanded. Clearly there was no
way they could cross the courtyard without being cut down by the archers upon
the ramparts. A stairway ahead offered the only way out. “Move!”

He glanced back over his shoulder at the grisly array of impaled lycans
filling the gallery. In death, the skewered casualties served as a grisly shield
between the surviving lycans and the Death Dealers, but this temporary benefit
came at a terrible cost. Lucian felt a stab of guilt for leading these poor
slaves to their doom; he promised their souls that their awful sacrifice would
not be in vain.

The vampires will pay for this,
he vowed.
I swear it on my life!

He turned and fled the gallery.

Viktor was meditating in the crypt when a Death Dealer barged in unannounced.
Snarling at the interruption, the Elder rose angrily from his throne. How dare
this lowly foot soldier disturb his privacy?

“Milord!” the guard blurted, before Viktor could discipline him for his
effrontery. “Lucian is escaping!”

A rooster crowed in the courtyard. The warning bell sounded again. Lucian
sensed the sun rising as he and the other fugitives raced down a corridor on the
second floor of the keep, which was mostly given over to storerooms and larders.
A shuttered window called out to him from the end of the hall. Daylight leaked through the wooden slats. A tight smile crossed his face. Freedom was so
close he could taste it.

We’re going to make it….

Then a pair of Death Dealers rushed from a stairwell, barring their way.
“Halt, dogs!” they ordered. “Surrender your weapons!”

Lucian didn’t even slow down. Without breaking his stride, he hit the
soldiers like a battering ram, driving them backward through the shuttered
window. Timber splintered with the impact of the three men’s bodies as they
tumbled into the open air outside. The dawn’s rosy glow hurt Lucian’s eyes, but
that was nothing compared to the devastating effect the unfiltered sunlight had
upon the falling vampires. Their pale flesh burst into flames. Smoke gushed from
the creases of their armor. The soldiers wailed like fallen angels as they were
cremated inside their metal suits. They fell like comets toward the rocky slopes
below.

Unharmed by the daylight, Lucian touched down nimbly on a rugged ledge just
beyond the castle walls. A cloud of chalky white ash, which was all that
remained of the incinerated Death Dealers, descended upon his head and
shoulders. Scorched pieces of armor bounced off the rocks. Lucian spit out a
mouthful of gritty ash. He wiped the powdered remains from his face.

Two more vampires dead!

Glancing up at the castle, he saw the other lycans leap from the shattered
window. Raze brushed himself off and nodded at Lucian. He gripped the hilt of
his sword as the rest of the lycans dropped beside them.

Lucian was glad to see that more than a dozen of his comrades had survived so
far, although a few had been wounded by silver arrows during the slaughter in
the gallery. A hairy-chested lycan named Rainar grimaced in pain as he yanked a
bloody bolt from his shoulder. Smoke rose from his seared flesh. Lucian
sympathized with the man’s pain, having endured the excruciating sting of
Kosta’s arrows that night at the crossroads. Still, the injury didn’t seem
life-threatening….

There will be time enough to tend to our wounded later,
he decided.
First
we need to reach the safety of the forest.

Turning his back on the castle walls, he eyed the mountain slope before them.
At the foot of the mountain, a barren plain stretched between them and the
sheltering wilderness. He knew they would not be truly free until they reached
the forest.

But at least they had the dawn on their side. Even now, the sun was cresting
the horizon, heralding the first day of the rest of their immortality. The warm
glow of the sun felt like a benediction as the lycans scrambled down the
mountainside toward freedom.

The guardhouse atop the front gate offered a commanding view of the
mountainous terrain below the castle. Flanked by an elite regiment of Death
Dealers, Viktor strode through the gatehouse toward the battlements beyond. The
fortified garrison, which was wedged in between two flanking towers, held room
enough for an entire company of defenders. Crude cots and tables provided a few
creature comforts for the guards stationed above the gate. An iron winch stood by to raise or lower the portcullis as needed. The ominous red glow on the
horizon gave Victor pause, however, and he hesitated before the doorway leading
out onto the ramparts. Daylight had been his enemy for centuries now and he had
not survived so long by tempting fate unnecessarily. He lingered prudently in
the shadow of the doorway.

Until he spied Lucian leading an entire pack of lycans away from the castle.

Fury erupted inside him. “Get them!” he roared at the nearest Death Dealer,
who looked uncertainly at the sunlit palisade. The soldier’s cowardice enraged
Viktor. Lucian and his traitorous followers were getting away. They had to be
stopped… now!

He shoved the recalcitrant guard out the doorway, hoping there was still time
to halt Lucian’s escape with a well-aimed crossbow bolt. But the sun’s
relentless advance reduced such hopes to ashes, along with the unlucky guard.
The soldier ignited like a human torch. Shrieking and flailing about in his
death throes, he tumbled between two weathered stone merlons and plummeted over
the side of the wall. Smoke and flames trailed behind him as he crashed to earth
many feet below.

Damnation!
Viktor cursed. The knight’s death upset him less than the fact
that the man had failed to kill Lucian first.
The fates themselves are
conspiring against me!

The Death Dealer’s fiery descent caught Lucian’s attention. Viktor watched in
frustration as the fleeing lycan looked back over his shoulder at the smoldering
remains of the soldier. A worried expression on his face, Lucian peered up at the guardhouse atop the gates.

“Go!” he shouted to his men. “Now!”

Viktor’s eyes met Lucian’s. They glared at each other across the distance. No
more than a hundred yards separated them, yet, thanks to the rising sun, it
might as well have been leagues for all Viktor could do to stop the fugitives.
The accursed daylight crept inexorably across the ramparts toward the entrance
of the guardhouse, shielding the rebels from Viktor’s dreadful wrath. The
Elder’s guards retreated from the doorway, but Viktor remained frozen in place,
not yet willing to concede this battle to Lucian and his seditious rabble.
“Milord!” a soldier entreated him, urging him to seek safety from the sun’s
deadly rays. She tugged nervously on Viktor’s arm.

He shook off the Death Dealer’s hand. His rage rooted him to the spot. His
gnashed his fangs. His fists were clenched at his sides, his sharpened nails
digging into his palms. He stood frozen in the doorway, glowering at the
escaping rebels, even as a golden beam swept over his hand. Smoke rose from his
ancient flesh, which sizzled and blackened at the sun’s pernicious touch. He
hissed through his teeth.

Ignoring the pain, he refused to unlock his gaze from Lucian’s. The arrogant
blacksmith glared back at him, equally determined not to give ground. An
infuriating smirk came over Lucian’s face as the sun fought his battle for him.
He stepped forward boldly, taunting Viktor, and shook his fist in defiance.

Turncoat! Betrayer!
Viktor fumed silently.
I should have killed you
along with the bitch that bore you!

The lycan’s blatant ingratitude stung more fiercely than the sunlight, which
was even now creeping toward his face, but at last Viktor could ignore the
agonizing glare no longer. Nursing his burnt hand, he withdrew into the
comforting gloom of the guardhouse, where he seethed in impotent frustration. As
long as the sun remained in the sky, there was nothing he could do to prevent
Lucian and his filthy allies from making good their escape. They had thwarted
him… for now.

This is not over,
he vowed.
Lucian will pay for his audacity even
if I have to hunt down every werewolf on the continent. He’ll plead for death
before I’m through with him!

But first he had to find out just how this inexcusable travesty had come to
pass.

Lucian savored the sight of Viktor retreating into the shadows. It was a
small victory but a victory nonetheless. And probably the first time an Elder
had been humbled by a lycan since the days of William.

With luck, it would not be the last.

He basked in the sunlight, feeling the warmth of the morning upon his face.
Their escape had been fraught with danger and cost the lives of many innocent
lycans, but they had succeeded in the end. Now all that remained was for Sonja
to join them, three nights hence.

For the first time in two centuries, Lucian faced a future of unlimited
possibilities. No doubt Viktor would attempt to hunt them down, but first the
vengeful Elder had to find them. Lucian felt confident in his abilities to elude
the Death Dealers; if the werewolves of the wild had managed to thrive for centuries despite the vampires’ best
efforts, surely he and his fellow lycans could fight back against Viktor’s
troops as well. A new era dawned, for both himself and all lycans. He couldn’t
wait to see what tomorrow held in store.

Turning his back on the castle, perhaps forever, he led them all toward the
distant forest.

A new day dawned.

Viktor’s hand had already healed by the time he reached the dungeons, but the
memory of Lucian’s escape still rankled him. He gazed down at Kosta’s headless
body while his men disposed of the two dead guards they’d found in the corridor
leading to Lucian’s cell. Cracked skulls and slashed throats testified to the
manner of their demise, while the nature of Kosta’s murderer was equally
apparent; Viktor had seen enough mauled corpses over the centuries to recognize
the victim of a werewolf when he saw one. The fang marks on the overseers’
skull, as well as a few shed tufts of thick black fur, allowed the scowling
Elder to easily reconstruct the attack in his mind. A discarded moon shackle,
lying in the corner of the cell, left little doubt as to the identity of the
beast that had savaged Kosta.

Lucian,
Viktor fumed.
Free of his collar once again.

He cursed himself for not having the seditious blacksmith put to death
instead of flogged the night of the mortal nobles’ visit. He had delayed in
doing what was necessary, and Kosta had paid the price. Viktor resolved not to
make that mistake again. But how had Lucian managed to remove his collar in the
first place?

“Tanis!” he snarled.
“Tanis!”

A trio of unsmiling Death Dealers escorted the nervous-looking scribe into
the cell. Disheveled hair and garments suggested that he had been abruptly
roused from slumber. Viktor had immediately dispatched the soldiers to fetch
Tanis upon Lucian’s escape. Now he angrily plucked the open collar from the
floor and waved it in the scribe’s face.

“Where is the key I gave you for this?”

Tanis swallowed hard. He wrung his hands together anxiously. “I… I locked
that up in the armory myself.”

“Then how was this opened?” Viktor demanded. The scribes obvious anxiety
seemed to him a sure sign of guilt.

Tanis stammered in response. “I… I have no idea.”

“I do,” Viktor stated. There was only one obvious conclusion. “You gave him
the key.” He turned to the captain of the guard, his mind made up. Someone had
to pay for this morning’s catastrophe. “Kill him.”

“No!”
Tanis yelped, even as the knight drew his sword. The scribe dropped
to his knees amidst the bloody straw. He clasped his hands as he shrilly pleaded
his innocence. “No, milord! Check the armory! There has to be some explanation!”

Viktor pondered the other vampire’s words. Could it be that he was being too
hasty in his judgment? The guard raised his sword above his head, taking aim at
Tanis’ throat, but Viktor held up his hand to forestall the fatal blow. The
knight lowered the sword and stepped away.

“Show me,” Viktor said.

The forest clearing felt like paradise compared to the stinking dungeons of
Castle Corvinus. Interlaced tree branches offered shade from the sun. Soft green
moss carpeted the boulders and fallen logs upon which the weary fugitives
rested. A spongy layer of fallen leaves and other detritus muffled their tread.
A babbling stream quenched their thirst. Birdsong filled the air. A cool breeze
rustled through the trees and bushes. Nature had blessed the lycans’ first day
of freedom with a clear blue sky. It felt good to be alive.