Chapter 277: Bit of a Tangle

James crossed the summit in five strides, boots skidding on the swept flags while the silk-cotton roots caught at his heels. Zephy had walked her way around the slab as she cut, and now her bent back faced the edge, with the green ropes sliding over it behind her.

He planted himself between them with his back to her, boots wide, [Verdict] up.

Half a dozen vines, each as thick as a wrist, came over the stone and swayed, while the torch bent nearly flat in their direction. Behind him, the ankle bells chimed and the chant went on, low, steady, and wet.

The first lash came low, cracking across the flags for Zephy’s ankles, and James stepped across its path and brought [Verdict] down, the blade biting deep before the vine could curl around her legs.

He watched the severed end slap the stones and spray milky sap.

Then the next lash came high for her head, forcing him to catch it on his blade and beat it aside, but he turned the parry into a cut of his own, rolling his wrists and drawing [Verdict] back through the thick green stem before it could retreat.

Sap burst across the flags and washed black where it pooled, while the severed ends writhed and twisted like eels in a bucket.

Some of it spattered Zephy’s shoulder, but her chant never faltered.

James pitched his voice for the pyramid, for the dead below, for the whole jungle to hear. "Who laid you, eh? Some blind bampot in a hurricane? Och, there’s more kinks in those than a bloody brothel."

He was a wall, and Zephy was behind it.

"Keep at it, lass. Don’t worry yourself, I’ve the watch."

Another vine surged over the edge of the pyramid, its green skin paling like old bone as it drew itself tight. The tip pulled back, then snapped forward with enough force to flatten the leaves around it, and James saw the strike coming too late.

The vine slammed into his forearm hard enough to jar his teeth, punched through the black wool, and wrapped itself around him before he could wrench free, making three tight rounds until it had his sword arm bound firmly.

Then it yanked him hard enough to wrench his arm out and back, his shoulder cracking in its socket as his boots skidded across the flags. The vine attempted to drag him toward the edge, scraping over the stone as it hauled itself backward, pulling with steady merciless strength.

The words came out through clenched teeth, ragged with every scrape of his boots, but the grin was still there, cracked and stubborn.

"Och, you’ve a grip on you, I’ll give you that, you slimy..."

His boots slid, and he cursed it.

"... Judas!"

James dug in his heels but the vine kept dragging him backward, one stumbling stride and then another toward the edge. Beyond his heels the pyramid dropped into blackness, where grey shadows climbed the steps, their faces turning up toward him as they came.

Another lash rose over the stone behind him and came whipping across the flags toward Zephy’s back, while the vine around his arm kept hauling him toward the edge, forcing James to fight the pull even as he twisted to get himself between her and the incoming strike.

His heel struck the ground roots, and James threw his left arm around it as the vine hauled him onward, catching the thick root and locking himself between the two pulls like a warp caught between two capstans.

The root bent under his weight, alive and flexing against his arm, but it held, stopping him just short of the drop.

Even then, the crisis was far from over. The lash was almost on Zephy when James stamped down on its base, pinning the thick green length beneath his boot as its tail whipped savagely around his shin.

Then one more lash came high behind it, and with no room to turn he twisted his body into its path, taking the blow across his back.

It cracked like a musket shot, skidded off the black wool, and drove him hard into the root, knocking the breath from his lungs and rattling his teeth.

What came next was in scraps, a few words to every wheeze.

"Hold... hold, you grand, glorious, root bastard..."

He dragged in breath like swallowing a nail.

"Hold fast, and I swear on my mother’s grave, no axe of mine’ll ever touch you."

James gave with the pull, letting the vine drag his bound arm toward the edge while the root braced his body against it. The tension eased by a hair, just enough for him to turn his wrist and bring the edge of [Verdict] against the taut vine, no more than a hand’s breadth from his own skin.

He drew the blade hard across it.

The vine parted with a crack like a backstay, and the severed end whipped over the edge as the tension vanished, the recoil throwing James backward across the flags and onto his shoulders. He lay there for a heartbeat before tearing the slack coils from his forearm with his left hand, his skin raw and burning from wrist to elbow.

"Come on, then! I’ve had worse nights than this, and a hell of a lot worse company!"

The edge erupted again, four vines spilling over the stone, then five, then six, their bodies sliding after one another. Two came together in alternating sweeps, one low and one high, forcing James to jump the first and knock the second aside with [Verdict], only for another pair to come at him before he had both feet down.

He kept moving, hopping the low lash and beating the high one away until, on the third exchange, he stepped inside the bend where one vine came over the stone and drove [Verdict] through it, severing it before it could straighten.

One of the vines suddenly paled, its green flesh whitening as the tip hardened to bone. He stepped aside as the vine drove into the place where his chest had been a moment before, then turned [Verdict] and hacked through the vine just behind its hardened tip.

"Och, it’s embarrassin’ to watch."

Two more vines went pale together, one snapping toward his arm while the other whipped low for his ankle. James caught the high one on the strong part of [Verdict] and knocked it aside, but the low vine curled around his boot before he could recover and yanked his leg out from under him, dragging him onto one knee and a full stride toward the edge.

He chopped down through the coil, kicked himself free, and barely had time to rise before another snare lunged for his neck. James threw himself backward, the bone-white tip passing a finger’s breadth from his face, then came forward with a hard cut that severed it behind the hardened head.

Left with a short window of time, James tore one torch from its bracket and swept it through the mass of vines crowding the edge, the flame passing so close that the whole cluster recoiled over the stone, but one was too slow and caught the torch across its side.

Fire spread across the vines in a sudden orange line, blackening the flesh as it writhed and snapped back over the edge.

"Aye, there’s a bosun’s argument for you, hot end and a firm hand."

The severed stumps sagged over the stone, milky sap running from them to pool and smoke in the torchlight.

He stood there with his breath sawing in him and looked over his shoulder.

Zephy knelt where he had left her, crimson to the shoulders, her hands deep in what remained of the hatchling.

There wasn’t much left.

The legs were gone, the wing bones were gone, and the ribs lay in the channels in a brown heap. Only the skull remained, beak gaped, with the dark mass pulsing behind its thin membrane.

The basin brimmed, and her chant had dropped lower and slowed.

Near the end, then. It had to be.

He went to the edge and held the torch out over the drop.

The undead swarmed up all four walls like ants up a sugar loaf, through the broken perimeter and over the steps, and the lower half of the stairs had vanished beneath them.

Mary and Bonnet had been driven a third of the way up it, her forearm laid open in a shallow red, his reforged blade dripping with sap and his knuckles bleeding. Dunk backed up the left steps with blood spreading from his scalp into his neck, while Pike limped on the right with a gash across his cheek.

On the far face, just below James’s boots, Nub bled from a scrape down one side of his neck and retreated one step at a time.

Four walls. They couldn’t hold four walls, and the sibyl wanted time.

He drew breath until the black wool strained across his chest, the full, bottomless breath.

Then he let it go over the drop.

"Mark! Bonnet! Dunk! Pike! Nub! Fall back! Up top the top, every last one of you, now!"

The names went out like chain-shot over the rattle of bone.

"Backs to the summit, shoulder to shoulder, and hold the damned pyramid!"