Chapter 17: Dismissal

 

Dismissal: Chapter 17

“It’s no use, Skinner!” Danalaka laughed triumphantly. “We have you now!”

“You have us?” Skinner shot back. “It seems you once again misunderstand your position, my old Mentor.”

“Six-hundred to—what? Thirty?” Danalaka mocked. “Put your arms down now and we might find mercy for you.”

Skinner gazed around at the high promontory. A line of seventeen stones separated the remnant of Vurkhatan’s vanguard from the Diahl army. He knew from Breena that he had only a day or two more to hold out before two companies of reinforcements would arrive. For nearly three days now, he and the vanguard had fought an orderly campaign, falling steadily back toward the western edge of the Vurhk. Now they had come to the end of that orderly retreat, sixty feet above a stone-floored canyon on a sliver of rock that seemed to defy gravity as it stuck out at precarious angles from a kulu trail.

“Surrender now and we can all go home,” Skinner checked the sky, feeling the air grow heavier. He needed to stall only a few more minutes.

“Kill them all!” Danalaka waved his staff toward thirty tired, filthy Vurkhatans. The Diahlarite soldiers advanced.

“Hold on!” Skinner bellowed in his drill-sergeant bass. “Too much weight and this little finger of the Vurhk will snap. You really want to chance that?”

The soldiers in front came up short, causing those behind them to halt and crashing the force into a mob. Danalaka cursed them, insulting their intelligence as well as parentage, and then strode boldly past the line of stones toward Skinner’s small force.

“I thought you had a plan,” Orexmor whispered harshly, his tension palpable but only as much so as his tenacity.

“I do,” Skinner smiled wickedly. “And it seems to be working.”

“You’re a fool, Skinner,” Danalaka was saying. “You always were. You’re a gambler of inconsistent mind. I should have taken care of you before you left my office that day you took the book.”

“Stop there, Danny!” Skinner warned. Kandor. His staff appeared in his hands. He had discarded, with much hesitation, the kulu bow when his supply of arrows ran out that morning. Though he had gotten quite good with the reaper Klem had given him, he had broken that an hour ago. Weapon breakage had led them here earlier than Skinner had wanted. A storm was brewing over the foothills now, but it was still a reach for his powers.

“How did you banish Sgian Gorm?” Danalaka stopped, resting his staff at the ready.

“He decided he likes me,” Skinner shrugged, smiling broadly.

“Perhaps he was weakened by the melding,” Danalaka smiled, suddenly smarmy.

“I taught you that,” Skinner said.

“No,” Danalaka’s eyes flashed. “You know nothing of melding. If you did, you would more greatly appreciate Dun’s legacy.”

“I know enough,” Skinner grunted. “Besides, I meant the part about negotiating until you can assume more power and be a greater threat to an enemy. It’s straight out of my Philosophy of Conflict course you audited my last term—”

“The same course that gave us the glorious Urgatha we have!” Danalaka crowed. “She disguised herself as a guardsman’s daughter and sat the class alongside me. It is why she banished you.”

“Figured that one on my own,” Skinner lied brazenly.

“The time for words has passed,” Danalaka raised his staff threateningly.

“No!” Skinner stalled him. “This is simply stupid and destructive to no good end!”

“Are you going to fight me,” Danalaka slashed his staff downward and a bolt of orange force smashed into Skinner’s staff. “Or stand there and be slaughtered like a lamb?”

“Fine!” Skinner swore, flicking a small rock with the butt of his staff at Danalaka. It struck an invisible barrier and dropped to the ground between them. The signature grin and maniacal gleam in his eye made Skinner appear far gone in either drink or bloodlust.

“Let’s determine this here and now—once and for all. Just you and me, Danny. Winner takes all!”

“Loser inherits the dust!” Danalaka sprang forward and slashed at him with the staff.

The two dueled with staffs in the marshal way for several minutes, seemingly a perfect match. Neither rushed. Both lunged and twirled and dodged and swung in broad arcs. Each met the other’s attacks with practiced defenses, experienced strategies. Wood met wood several times, but neither drew blood as the first rumbles of thunder began to thrum through the rocks of the Vurhk.

Taking advantage of the duel, Orexmor formed lines with his remaining forces and whispered instructions for their final stand. They were united in their determination to stand to the end, despite that half the force was down to a knife, having broken or lost swords, axes, maces and spears. Klem, injured nearly beyond his capacity to stand, leaned heavily on his final tsuda, a gift from the Vurhk for his efforts in previous battles. Koryn clung desperately to the remains of his volfang, exhausted from days of battle and miles of helping Klem amble along.

“Break!” Skinner held a hand up to stop the duel, but Danalaka swept his staff in to take Skinner’s knees out. Bellowing curses in ragged breaths, Skinner rolled with his fall and regained his feet, swinging a wide double arc to fend off further attack.

“Break!” Skinner barked again. When Danalaka did not relent, Skinner grinned a predatory grin and methodically drove the other back toward the line of rocks. He wove a net of wood and danger so tightly around Danalaka now that he appeared to be on the defensive for the first time in their fight.

“Dun was a beast with a staff back in his biped days,” Skinner sneered, working Danalaka to the ends of his talent now. “And Wae-Zhoun is about the best I’ve seen. He’s been polite enough to spar with me over my tenure here in the foothills of hell.”

Danalaka could not spare his concentration to reply. Sweat rolled down his high forehead. He cursed as Skinner raised a welt on his thigh with a sharp jab of the staff’s butt. The muscle spasmed, throwing Danalaka off balance. Skinner pursued the advantage, driving him to his knees and standing over him.

“Break!” Danalaka cried desperately.

“Remember that the next time you try bullying anyone around,” Skinner spun his staff with lightning speed and struck Danalaka’s knuckles, then stepped back to let the two of them catch their breath.

“Kill them all!” Danalaka turned and raced back to his army, motioning them to attack.

Spitting and cursing, Skinner looked skyward as something flashed from above him in the deepening gloom of a summer storm. Two staff heads peeked out over a ledge nearly a hundred feet above his narrow jut of rock.

“BRING DOWN THE SKY. Melltennu! Melltennu,” Skinner bellowed, holding his staff up as though to stab the heavens.

Lightning erupted from the dark clouds in several strikes. Streams of white energy lanced down into the two staffs above them, then down to the huge gem of Kandor’s headstone and then out again to the iron-rich stones lined up where the jut separated itself from the cliff.

Skinner screamed in horror as his trap exploded with greater effect than he could have imagined. The lightning struck the stones. They exploded, sending a barrage of sharp fragments into the swarming forces of Diahl. The lightning also forked out to run roughshod among the links and plates of metal armor. Searing heat and electricity took an enormous toll. The smell of singed hair and scorched flesh filled the summer air, easily overpowering the sharp tang of ozone.

Everyone stood where they were, shocked and appalled at the carnage. Impossible for less than one breath’s time. Danalaka sprinted forward, face blistered with rage and heat. The vanguard was silent behind him. The Diahlarites not killed or incapacitated stood in shock. The thunder seemed to rumble impossibly long.

And then the earth moved. Skinner’s jut broke off in plaintive thunder from the cliff wall and slipped down the steep slope toward the canyon floor below. Skinner continued to chant incantations, slowing the fall of the stone as though he had intended to turn it into a sliding stairway.

Consumed in his own casting, Skinner had no chance to defend himself from Danalaka. In the place he called the metaconscious, he observed what happened while the totality of his conscious mind, and much of his unconscious, channeled druidic and sorcerous energies to forgive gravity—if only briefly. The staffs above them, now leveled out and visible along with their Vurhk owners, continued to channel lightning from the clouds in bolts like a web beneath the falling jut.

Something long and slender shot past Skinner’s shoulder. Danalaka seemed to trip as he sprang forward, jabbing his staff into Skinner’s solar plexus. Skinner felt suddenly far away. The last thing he registered was the passing of light from Danalaka’s eyes, a tsuda protruding awkwardly from his chest just below the left collarbone.

Stretching out with his dying breath, Danalaka reached out desperately: “Skinner, be gone!”

This time, Skinner felt himself falling through the ether. He reached out, panicked, trying to capture Danalaka’s soul. Wanting only to save him. Wishing it didn’t always have to come to death or oblivion.

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[TLK]

It seems a bit Indiana Jones.