The sound that tore from the construct’s throat was not singular. It was the shriek of ten men dying at once, braided with the groan of splitting wood and the grinding of rock. Deep within the cacophony, a single voice fought for dominance—a ghost of the arrogant bark Conan remembered from the barracks yard. Valerius.
The creature recognized him. Not with mind or memory, but with the twisted residue of a dead man’s senses. It saw the Cimmerian’s silhouette, the familiar shape of the barbarian who had walked into camp smelling of the wild, and its amalgamated rage surged. It lunged. Not up the tree, but *at* it. Its ten-foot frame crashed forward, the fused mass of Aquilonian swords leading the charge like the iron prow of some nightmare galley.
There was no room to dodge, no time to leap. Conan stood braced on the thick bough, his world narrowed to the incoming point of impact. He met the charge with a desperate, two-handed parry, his broadsword catching the welded knot of blades in a screaming shower of sparks. The impact was titanic. It was not the clean shock of steel on steel, but a dead, crushing weight that felt like parrying a falling monolith. The sound was a jarring, grinding shriek.
Conan’s arms, corded with the muscle of a thousand fights, screamed in protest. The force travelled down the blade, through his body, and into the tree itself. The mighty bough beneath his feet groaned, buckled, and then cracked with a sound like a gunshot. Wood splinters exploded into the air. He was thrown off balance, his moccasins skidding on the splintered bark, his entire body a fulcrum against the monster’s impossible strength.
He used the momentum. Even as he felt himself tipping backward into empty air, Conan pushed off the breaking branch, turning his fall into a controlled leap. He twisted his body, landing with a cat-like roll on the damp earth below, his sword never leaving his hand. He came up into a low crouch, his eyes blazing with feral light, mud and leaf-mould clinging to his back.
The construct, its attack thwarted, pulled its horrific weapon from the mangled tree. It turned its faceless head, a swirling vortex of root and shadow, toward him. Conan didn’t hesitate. He surged forward, his blade a blur, aimed at the creature’s knee. The sword struck true. It clove through thick, woody vines and packed grave-dirt, sinking almost a foot deep into the limb. A mortal wound, for any living thing.
But this was not living. Black, viscous fluid, thicker than blood, welled up. For a second, the creature staggered. Then, as Conan wrenched his blade free, the wound began to close. Tendrils of shadow-stuff stitched the gash together from the inside out. New, pale roots writhed like worms, knitting the leg whole in a matter of heartbeats. As the last of the wound sealed, the spiral symbol on the central monolith pulsed with a faint, nauseating purple light. The wound was not just healed; it was unmade.
This thing was not a beast to be slain. It was a symptom of the stone’s disease.
As if in answer to his realization, the clearing changed. The darkness of the surrounding forest ignited once more. A hundred yellow eyes snapped back into existence, but their behaviour was different. They were no longer scanning, no longer searching. They arranged themselves in a high, perfect circle enclosing the glade, a glowing corona of silent observation. No longer were they scouts. They were bars on a cage. A cold, psychic pressure descended with their light, a palpable weight that seemed to thicken the air and press upon Conan’s mind, warning him away from the perimeter.
The construct took a shambling step toward him, its newly healed leg leaving a deep print in the earth. It was slow, clumsy. But it was relentless. And his sword was useless against it.
A grim dance began. Conan was the faster by far, a phantom of coiled muscle and cold steel, weaving between the trees at the edge of the clearing. The construct was a juggernaut of destruction, each swing of its ten-bladed club pulverizing the ground, shattering tree trunks, and tearing deep furrows in the earth. Conan did not meet its attacks. He flowed around them, his barbarian senses screaming warnings split seconds before each blow landed.
He was not just dodging. He was learning.
He watched the creature’s movements. They were crude, brutal, yet within the lumbering chaos, he saw echoes. A sudden shift in balance, a clumsy attempt to pivot on its heel, was a phantom of a legionary drill motion. Once, the root-and-vine hand that was not holding the swords twitched, its twig-like fingers curling into a gesture that was a grotesque parody of an Aquilonian salute. These were not the monster’s actions. They were the muscle-memory of the dead men whose shadows gave it animation, twitching on the sorcerer’s unseen strings. It was a puppet show performed with stolen souls.
An idea sparked in Conan’s mind, cold and desperate. He saw the monolith pulse again as the construct regenerated a shallow cut on its arm. The stone was its heart. The farther he was from his heart, the weaker a man became. Perhaps the same was true of this abomination.
He feinted left, drawing a wild swing that demolished a cluster of ferns. As the construct recovered, Conan bolted, not for the center, but straight for the edge of the clearing, toward the shimmering wall of yellow eyes. He ran twenty paces, then thirty.
It was working. The construct pursued, but its steps grew heavier, more sluggish. The fluid grace of its unnatural regeneration seemed to clot. Conan risked a quick backhand slash as he ran, nicking one of its arms. The gash oozed black ichor, but the writhing roots were slow to respond this time, the healing visibly laboured. The link to the monolith was its strength, but also its leash.
He had it. A weakness. A path to—
He hit the wall. It was not a physical barrier, but a wave of pure psychic force emanating from the ring of watching eyes. Nausea clawed at his gut. The world spun, the trees and the monster and the monolith tilting at a sickening angle. An iron band tightened around his skull. The pressure was designed to disorient, to drive him back into the center of the glade, back toward the killing floor.
He was a wolf trapped between the shepherd’s dogs and an electrified fence. Progress had cost him his freedom of movement. He now knew a secret of his foe, but that knowledge had only served to reveal the true dimensions of his cage.
The construct, sensing his hesitation and his distress, let out another layered roar of rage. It seemed to understand his strategy. It charged, no longer lumbering but with a desperate, ground-eating speed, swinging its fused blades in a great, horizontal arc meant to cut him in half.
Conan threw himself backward, breaking through the psychic pressure with a grunt of pain. He dodged the spray of sharpened steel by a hand’s breadth. But his heel caught on a thick, exposed root he hadn't seen. His balance, already compromised, was lost. He fell, landing hard on his back. The air was driven from his lungs in a sharp gasp.
His head cracked against the damp soil, and the world swam. He found himself lying within the grisly star of corpses, his legs entangled with the body of a legionary. He pushed himself up on his elbows, shaking his head to clear it. His gaze fell on a pale, waxy face mere inches from his own. Valerius. The captain’s eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the canopy. His hand, stiff with rigor mortis, still clutched the small leather pouch of silver coins. Conan’s pay.
A vast shadow fell over him. The construct stood above, its ten-foot frame blocking the sickly yellow light of the watching eyes. It raised its weapon high, the ten fused swords a jagged crown of butchery against the gloom. The blades caught the light, reflecting it downward.
For a single, soul-freezing heartbeat, the swirling chaos of the monster's face resolved. In the reflection on the swords, in the vortex of shadow and vine, Conan saw the face of Valerius. The jaw was slack, the eyes wide with horror, the mouth open in a silent, eternal scream.
The weight of his debt settled on him, colder and heavier than any sorcerer’s spell. It was not a debt of silver. He was fighting the ghosts of the men he had failed to warn, a monster built from their stolen valour and animated by their final agony. And it was about to pay him his wages in steel.