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Dart
Dart
Dart
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Dart

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Award Winner - Readers' Favorite Book Awards 2020 - Fiction - Action.

"A fast-paced, thrill-a-minute sci-fi adventure. A FINALIST and highly recommended." - The Wishing Shelf Book Awards

"Fast-paced, extremely well-plotted and loaded with fun and surprises, Renton has created a story that keeps readers right in step with the colorful characters and well-crafted settings. Not a boring moment in this storyline... a fresh and original story in a very crowded genre." - Publishers Weekly's The BookLife Prize

"...a refreshing new hero for the 21st century. I highly recommend Dart." - Scott Cahan for Readers' Favorite

"This high-octane, highly entertaining sci-fi novel is best read in one go... Renton expertly mixes humor with science fiction and delivers a thrilling book." - The Prairies Book Review

LanguageEnglish
PublisherDale Renton
Release dateMar 11, 2019
ISBN9780463614136
Dart

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    Dart - Dale Renton

    DART

    Dale Renton

    Dart, Dale Renton

    Copyright John Dale Renton 2019

    The right of John Dale Renton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendments ( Moral Rights ) Act 2000.

    All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. Apart from use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior written permission from the publisher.

    This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

    Please support the author’s rights by purchasing only authorized electronic editions and not participating in or encouraging electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

    DART

    1

    Don’t look down!

    Isn’t that what they say? If you don’t have a head for heights. If the sight makes your head spin, or worse, tugs at you, makes you feel like you can fly…

    Dart kept his eyes shut and pressed his cheek against the crumbling rock. Above him, on the edge of the cliff, the hovart bellowed and stamped its feet. Dust and pebbles showered Dart’s head and shoulders.

    Don’t look!

    The hovart fell silent. Waves broke against rocks, a long way beneath Dart’s feet. A gull cried, startlingly close, answered by a chorus of its kin. The air smelled of the sea, tainted by a faint, rancid wisp of hovart.

    The thin ledge under Dart’s right foot gave way and his knee banged against the cliff face. He scrambled for purchase and the remainder of the ledge sheared off with a sound like a snapping twig. Dart held on by his finger tips.

    A scraping noise came from above and more debris rained on him. Dart tilted his head back and opened his eyes. The sharp edge of the cliff severed a bright blue arc of sky. No sign of the hovart. The scraping resumed and directly above, the cliff edge changed shape, bulged outward…

    Oh, crap!

    Dart let go with his right hand and twisted to his left. A jagged rock fell past, missed him by a finger’s width. His left hand slipped as his wrist turned. He bent his knees, scraped the heels of his boots down the steeply sloped rock face. His right leg straightened but his left boot caught on something solid. Held. Dart pushed back against the rock, stared at the sky, gasping while his heart tried to punch a hole in his chest.

    A white pebble bounced off his head and disappeared towards the waves. He fought the temptation to follow it. A second pebble struck him. Dart looked up. The hovart stared down at him, eyes black ellipses set in circles of gold. It bared an impressive row of pointed brown teeth.

    Had enough, yet? Dart asked.

    The ellipses narrowed, widened again and the hovart grunted. The tip of a pointed blade slid out between its teeth, followed by a gout of blood. Warm droplets spattered Dart’s face and he turned away, blinking. When he looked up again, the hovart’s eyes were closed and the blade had disappeared. A coil of rope flew out over the cliff’s edge, straightened and fell, struck Dart’s shoulder.

    Who’s there? he called.

    Gulls squealed in the distance and waves rumbled at the foot of the cliff but no one answered. Dart caught the rope and tugged. It held.

    I’m coming up.

    He looped the cable-vine rope around his wrist, held tight with both hands as he swung around to face the rock. The climb was no more than fifteen feet but by the time his head came level with the hovart’s, his knees were shaking and drops of sweat hung from his nose and chin. He reached over the edge, grabbed a handful of thick, yellow hovart pelt, dragged himself up and rolled onto his back beside the massive, stinking carcass.

    He took a few moments to catch his breath before he propped himself up on his elbows. Knee-high blue moss grew to within a few feet of the bare rock at the cliff’s edge. A scar-line of broken, black soil led through the moss to a cluster of boulders—probably where the hovart found the rock to drop on him. A few paces beyond the boulders a dense growth of tall dapplewoods marked the beginning of the forest. Dart stood up and turned a full circle. He was alone with the dead hovart.

    Dart knelt beside the corpse, breathing through his mouth to lessen the stench. One end of the rope he’d climbed was bound to the hovart’s leg, the knot a double hitch that would have taken only a few seconds to tie. Something caught his eye and he bent closer, heart pounding again. The strands of cable-vine were cleverly woven, leaf shapes worked into the surface of the rope every few inches along its length. His hand slid to the empty scabbard at his hip and he cursed under his breath. The urge to look around him was overwhelming, but he forced himself to stare at the ground.

    Dart freed the rope, looped it and slung it over his shoulder. He stood and walked past the hovart. A leather strap lay half-buried in black soil and crushed moss—part of the travel bag he'd thrown at the hovart as it rushed him, bought himself the moments he needed to scramble a few feet down the face of the cliff. Several minutes searching among thick blue tendrils of moss were rewarded when he recovered his water flask and his throwing knife. He slid the knife inside his boot, all the while careful to avoid looking at the forest.

    Dart stood for a time, staring out over the ocean but concentrating on the sounds of the breeze rustling leaves behind him. His mind worked through a tangle of contradictions. Sylthen rope. Surely that meant his rescuer was Sylth—but that made no sense. He drank from the flask. The water was warm from lying in the sun but Dart hardly noticed. He tied the flask to his belt and turned. Eyes fixed on the ground, he walked towards the forest.

    ~

    You can run a long way with a hovart chasing you. Two of them can really make you travel…

    Dapplewood shadows stretched in front of Dart when he stopped at the edge of the clearing.

    The sun climbs high,

    in the western sky.

    In the east sets the sun,

    when the day is done.

    His lips moved to the childhood rhyme but the words sounded only in his head. He remembered dashing across the same clearing a couple of hours before, the raging hovart close behind him. Bright sunlight had flooded the area and he’d ignored the whipper-weeds. Now, wherever shadows touched, waist-high plants waved from side to side. A pandionfly, silver-veined wings larger than Dart’s hands, flapped into the air from the carpet of dapplewood seeds at the forest’s edge. The nearest whipper-weed straightened, black petals parted on its single flower and a barbed, golden whip lanced from within, tore through the pandionfly’s bloated thorax. The whipper-weed bent to feed.

    If he still had his sword, Dart could have made it to the other side. Most likely. Whipper-weeds were damnably quick. But his sword was a few hundred yards beyond the clearing, jammed in the throat of a dead hovart, one of the pair that had attacked him. The knife tucked in his boot was too short to deal with the weeds safely. He’d have to go around. Dart moved off to his left.

    A hint of movement between patterned tree trunks in front made him stop mid-stride. He turned and headed in the opposite direction. A few steps, a whisper of sound to his right, then something flitted behind hanging branches, straight ahead. Dart cursed. Keeping his eyes on the ground, he returned to the spot where he’d started.

    Sylth or whipper-weeds?

    He glanced up at the darkening sky then looked at the clearing again. It was the best part of fifty yards across and the whipper-weeds grew in clusters all over. The shadows seemed to lengthen as he watched, already close to the trunks of the dapplewoods on the far side. He bent and pulled the throwing knife from his boot, spun it into the air and caught it in a cutting grip.

    Better than nothing.

    Dart stepped between the bole of a dapplewood and the snagging leaves of a tanglethorn bush. A few paces to either side of him, black flowers swiveled to face him. He leapt forward, rolled as he landed, came up with the knife arcing past his face. Two lashing, golden whips parted as the blade caught them mid-strike. Dart was already gone, dashing past the cluster of weeds. He slowed, turned, stepped sideways between two larger growths of the deadly plants, flinching as the barbed whips from dozens of straining black flowers straightened and cracked, inches from his legs.

    Half way.

    Ahead of him, weeds barred his path, spread across the whole of the clearing. Black flowers burst open, spitting poison-tipped coils. The air filled with a continuous death-rattle of cracking whips. Dart stood still. A few steps to his right, fading sunlight fell on an area about four or five feet wide but extending to the trees on the far side of the clearing. The weeds within were stirring but their flowers were still closed. Dart ran through the sunlit path at a dead sprint. A large cluster of weeds to his right erupted, launching golden coils as he passed. He lashed out with the blade, felt pain as a barb tore the back of his hand.

    One! One won’t kill me…

    Five paces short of the trees, Dart slipped, stumbled sideways, felt two more stings, this time on his leg. He staggered under the branches and fell on his knees.

    Three.

    There were stories about people who’d taken one, maybe two whipper-weed stings and lived. Dart looked at his calf. Two red-stained puncture marks on his trouser leg where the weeds had got him. The back of his hand wasn’t bleeding but there was purpling around a red sting-hole, just above his knuckle. It was beginning to swell.

    Congratulations Dart! Two nine foot hovarts, a thousand foot cliff and the damned Sylth can’t manage it—then you get yourself killed by vegetation!

    His forehead burned and the back of his throat felt parched. Dart took a swig from his flask, leaned his head back and passed out.

    ~

    If you think a live hovart smells bad, try killing one and leaving it out in the sun for a while…

    The stench brought Dart back to his senses. He was still alive; the smell was real, and close. His shoulders and thighs were sending messages of pain, over and over, to a mind that received them with increasing awareness. Dart’s head hung forward, his chin resting on his chest. He couldn’t feel his hands or his feet. Gray light filtered past his lashes when he opened his eyes. It took a few moments for things to come into focus. He was looking down on the corpse of a hovart. Cause of death wasn’t hard to work out. The familiar hilt of Dart’s sword jutted from the hovart’s throat.

    Why am I above it?

    Dart turned his head, the movement surprisingly difficult until he understood what had been done to him. Cable-vine rope stretched from his wrists and ankles to trees on either side. He was suspended, spread-eagled and more or less upright, about three feet above the ground. He looked down again.

    Naked, too.

    Surprised to be alive, hovart-slayer?

    The voice was scarcely louder than a whisper, directly behind. Impossible to tell whether it was male or female.

    Dart licked his lips. Life’s full of surprises.

    The poison from the weeds was enough to kill you. I healed you, hovart-slayer.

    Much obliged. Now, if you’ll cut me down and give me back my clothes, I’ll be on my way.

    Dart felt something cold touch his scrotum. He looked down and saw a gleaming, silver blade, its face worked with a pattern of leaves, jutting between his legs.

    Tell me your name. The voice had hardened.

    Darthanil Black. My friends call me Dart.

    You have no friends here, Darthanil Black. The blade moved up and down, lifting his balls in cadence with the words. Dart strained against the ropes binding his wrists, tried to lift himself higher. His balls made a similar effort, all by themselves.

    Why don’t you tell me what you want? This isn’t doing it for me.

    The blade disappeared. Dart tensed, half expecting its point to burst through his chest. Moments turned to minutes. Flies buzzed around the dead hovart’s eyes and a clinger slap-slapped along a branch somewhere above Dart’s head. The adrenalin buzz the blade had caused started to fade and most of his world centered on the pain in his limbs.

    Are you brave—or foolish?

    Dart would have jumped, if he could have. The voice was closer, clearer. He was certain now that it was female.

    I’m naked and I’m hurting. Cut me down.

    What makes you think I will do that?

    You could have let the hovart get me at the cliff. You could have let the weed stings finish me. If you wanted me dead, I’d be dead. You want something from me.

    Dart heard footsteps, sensed movement to his right. He snapped his eyes shut. The voice came again, this time from in front of him.

    You may look at me, Darthanil Black.

    He shook his head. "You’re Sylth. I’m a Former. If I look at you, you will kill me."

    As you pointed out—if I wanted you dead, you would be.

    Hard to see how things can get much worse.

    Dart opened his eyes.

    2

    You spend years learning how to stay alive. Then you see a pair of long, long legs, and let it all go out the window…

    Dart let out a low whistle.

    If you still plan on killing me, I just figured out my last request.

    The woman in front of him tossed her head and plaited brown hair fell across her shoulders. Her face was fine-featured with high cheek bones, lips that looked like they didn’t often smile. She wore a single, close-fitting garment that covered her from her throat to the tops of her cuffed boots, flowed with the contours of her breasts, followed the curve of her hips and the elegant lines of her legs. Leaves and vines were woven into the garment, blended together in a way that made Dart’s eyes slip out of focus. A little understanding crept into his mind.

    I healed the whipper-weed stings, said the Sylth woman. She stared at him, emerald eyes intense, and Dart dragged most of his thoughts back up into his head.

    You’re not what I expected, he said. Not that I knew what to expect. I never met anyone who’d seen a Sylth and lived.

    I healed the whipper-weed stings, she repeated, eyes never leaving his. Then I poisoned you.

    Dart felt ice-water trickle down his spine, but he kept his voice steady. She’d sheathed her sword, and he wasn’t dead. Not yet. You don’t see the irony in that?

    Dart barely had time to flinch before her foot caught the side of his face. It rattled his teeth, set him bobbing up and down on the ropes again. He spat, and red flecks of blood speckled the dead hovart’s yellow fur. His head had to be close to nine feet off the ground and she’d tagged him from a standing start, faster than he could follow. The Sylth woman resumed her stance. Not even breathing hard. The pain in his shoulders and thighs grew worse. Behind him, the sun had cleared the trees and he could feel it burning the skin on his back.

    The poison is slower acting than weed venom, she said, but it will kill you within a week.

    If you don’t cut me down from here, I won’t last that long.

    You will feel very little for the first four or five days. Then it will begin to work on the pain centers in your brain. The last two days will be very unpleasant. Most people take their own lives.

    Cut me down and you can tell me all about it.

    You will not be able to identify the poison. It is native.

    Are we having the same conversation, here? Agony wracked Dart’s body and he wanted to scream at the woman. He saw her tense.

    Whoa! You don’t need to hit me again. Just tell me what you want.

    Her lips pouted a little, perhaps disappointed that he’d decided to co-operate. At any rate, she didn’t kick him.

    I have an antidote for the poison.

    I like a girl who comes prepared.

    Her eyes grew distant and after a moment, Dart got the feeling he was mostly alone. He wanted to yell at her, to beg her, anything to make her cut him down. But she was Sylth. He let her be.

    You killed this hovart.

    She was with him again. It wasn’t a question, so Dart didn’t answer. She didn’t look to be half hovart like some of the crazy Sylth stories suggested, but no point antagonizing her if this was cousin Floyd lying between them.

    I’ve never seen one of your kind defeat a hovart before, she said. You fought two and killed one.

    I skipped diplomacy in fifth grade and took extra fencing.

    Are you trying to be amusing?

    I’ve been giving you some of my best lines. It’s the naked-rope-suspension thing. This is a tough room.

    She folded her arms beneath her breasts, tilted her head to one side and her eyes narrowed.

    Have you killed others of your kind?

    If the body language hadn’t told him, the eagerness in her voice would have.

    This is the question we’ve been headed for from the start. Fifty-fifty chance of getting it right.

    Yes.

    The Sylth woman’s hand moved to her waist and she slid the leaf-patterned blade from its sheath.

    Wrong…

    She sprang over the hovart corpse towards him and Dart jerked uselessly against the ropes. The Sylth woman stopped close in front of him, slipped a hand into a pocket on her leaf-and-vine leotard. She withdrew a battered photograph, stuck it on the tip of her sword and held it up in front of him.

    I want you to kill this one, she said. When you have done this, I will give you the antidote.

    The face in the photograph was almost as familiar to Dart as his own. Receding gray hair, angular jaw, steady, dark blue eyes that said ‘trust me’. Abram Wills. The most powerful man on Sylas’s World. Dart nodded.

    No problem.

    She moved past, not even looking at Dart. A moment later, the ropes binding his wrists snapped free and Dart pitched forward. His arms flapped uselessly as he fell, but he managed to cushion the impact on the hovart carcass with his face.

    ~

    Waking up with a mouthful of dead hovart isn’t pleasant. But it wasn’t the taste, or even the stench that brought Dart to his senses. Blood was finding its way back into his feet and hands, marking its progress by reactivating nerve endings with messages of pain. Dart pushed himself up with his elbows.

    His sword still protruded from the hovart’s throat. He looked around the small clearing. The Sylth woman was gone. A few yards from the hovart, his shirt and trousers lay on the ground, neatly folded with his boots and throwing knife on top. His flask was beside them, drops of water on the outside suggesting it had recently been filled. Dart crawled over on his knees and elbows, spent several moments cursing as he fumbled with the stopper. He gulped down about half the flask’s contents, splashed most of the rest on his face then dressed lying on his back. By the time he’d worked his boots onto feet that felt twice their normal size, the pain had eased. Dart clambered upright, took a couple of hesitant steps, stumbled and fell on his knees.

    How long before you can travel, Darthanil Black?

    Dart turned his head too quickly, sending fresh spasms of pain across his shoulders. She was standing at the edge of the clearing, but instead of looking at him, the Sylth woman appeared to be scanning the surrounding forest. Dart stood again, flexing his arms, curling his toes inside his boots.

    I'm good to go.

    We must move quietly. You lead the way.

    The way to where?

    She looked at him blankly for a moment, and Dart had the feeling again that her conversation with him was only part of what was going through her mind.

    Back the way you came.

    He shook his head. There are some people there who don’t like me.

    Her green eyes blazed and he was the focus of all her attention again. "There are some people here who do not like either of us."

    This is Sylth country. Who’d be crazy enough to come here? Present company excepted, of course.

    Something new appeared in her eyes. The same thing Dart had been trying to keep from his own since he first saw her. Fear.

    My people, she said. The Sylth.

    Didn’t see that coming.

    The woman walked around the edge of the small clearing, stopping every few steps to stare into the forest.

    Mind if I take my sword out of Ol’ Yeller? Dart asked.

    She waved at him absently.

    The sword pulled free with surprising ease considering how hard he’d jammed it in there. He wiped both sides of the weapon on one of the hovart’s massive legs then scratched at the stains on the blade with his thumb nail.

    We need to go now, she said.

    She looked nervous, which made Dart suspect he ought to be nervous, too. As long as we’re going to be traveling together, why don’t you tell me your name?

    The woman didn’t answer. She was staring into the forest again.

    Okay—I’ll call you ‘Thuvia’.

    She continued to ignore him.

    I guess you don’t read the classics…

    Dart was flat on his back, a hand clamped across his mouth before he had time to be startled. Her green eyes were close to his and she smelled of dapplewood oil and hizel berries. A long, supple leg stretched across his belly. She touched a finger to her lips and shook her head. Dart blinked his understanding and she uncovered his mouth.

    Somewhere nearby, a pair of clingers shrieked at each other. A pandionfly hummed around the dead hovart. Trees creaked and leaves rustled. He felt the muscles in the woman’s leg flex as she rose, motioning for him to follow. She moved swiftly into the forest and Dart hobbled after her.

    Within a dozen steps he lost her. The strange garment she wore was slippery to look at in the sunlit clearing. Within the shadowed undergrowth, it rendered the Sylth woman all but invisible. Dart felt his pulse pick up speed. The story about the poison might or might not be true but he couldn’t afford to lose her until he knew for sure. He thought about calling out but she’d been pretty clear on that.

    Dart held his sword out in front of him and started forward into the gloom. She had passed between two large tree trunks and vanished. He took the same path, letting the blade point the way, sliding his other hand across the waxy, ridged bark of the dapplewood. Beneath his boots, bright orange seeds sank into a carpet of dark green finemoss. He stared at the ground for a moment, looking for a trace of her passing. Nothing. When he looked up again, she was there.

    I think they have moved on, she said.

    Who?

    She didn’t answer. She grunted and pitched forward as the crimson-bright head of an arrow punched through her shoulder. Dart half-caught her with one hand, slowed her fall. His legs gave way and he collapsed with the Sylth woman sprawled on top of him.

    Stay here! she hissed in his ear. She rose to a half crouch, left arm hanging limply beneath her injured shoulder. Dart saw the glimmer of the leaf-patterned sword as she slid it free, then she was gone.

    He hesitated, passed his sword to his left hand and took the throwing knife from his boot. The sun was almost directly above and a gentle breeze swayed the uppermost branches. Shadows of broad dapplewood leaves covered the ground in a shifting mosaic of light and dark. Every sound transformed itself into the snap of a bowstring, the hiss of a descending blade. Sweat beaded on Dart’s forehead. He stared unblinking, concentrated on finding a discordant visual message among the patterns on the forest floor.

    Two dark shapes rose and converged, startlingly fast, at the edge of a clump of tanglethorns. Dart heard the beginning of a scream. One of the shapes fell and the other vanished behind the bushes. He stumbled forward, heart racing.

    What if she’s dead?

    The body had caught in tanglethorn branches, arched over backwards. A bloody hole gaped under the man’s chin where a sword had punched through on its way to his brain. His clothing looked a lot like the woman’s and a small crossbow hung from a strap tied to his wrist.

    Dart heard steel striking steel in a rapid series of clashes and ran towards the sound. He burst into a clearing, larger than the one where he’d faced the hovarts, saw two figures at the forest’s edge some thirty paces from him.

    She was down, a tall figure straddling her. Dart

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