The Grieving Tree: The Dragon Below Book II

by Don Bassingthwaite

  The muscles of the half-orc’s heavy jaw tightened. “I meant that I avoided it whenever I could.”

  “But if you can say that the feeling of something watching and waiting is everywhere in Droaam,” said Singe casually, “that must mean you’ve traveled the country fairly extensively.”

  “Not that much really,” Natrac said. His voice was strained. “Enough to know I don’t like Droaam.”

  “What about Graywall?” Singe asked. “Have you ever been to Graywall?”

  Natrac looked at the wizard sharply, his eyes bright and hard, then turned around and stared at the marching ogres ahead of them. “Bava,” he said after a few moments. “Bava told you.”

  There was a darkness in his voice, a sort of anger that Geth had never heard from the half-orc before, even when they’d sworn to take vengeance on Vennet for what he’d done. Blustering merchant, grim warrior—abruptly Geth felt like he was seeing a glimpse of a third side of Natrac, something deep and raw. “She didn’t tell us much,” he said. “Only that you’d been born in Graywall and that she’d met you in Sharn. We tried to get her to tell us more but she wouldn’t.”

  “She’d already told you too much,” Natrac snarled at him. “Lords of the Host, she promised me—” He shut his mouth tight and rode in silence.

  Geth and Singe exchanged glances, then Geth nudged his horse a little closer to the half-orc.

  “Natrac,” he said quietly. “We’ve all done things we don’t want to talk about—”

  “Like Narath?” asked Natrac.

  Hot anger and cold dread mixed in Geth’s gut. “Who told you—?” he began, then caught himself. Natrac stared at him with flat, cool eyes.

  “Nobody told me,” the half-orc said. “All I had to do was listen. I remember hearing about the Massacre at Narath. You—and Singe—would have been on the losing side. If you don’t want to talk about something you did there, it must have been bad.”

  “It’s nothing that’s going to affect us now,” Geth told him. “It’s over. It’s in the past.”

  “So is what I did. You don’t need to worry about it.” Natrac fixed his eyes on a distant grove of trees. “I was born in Graywall, yes. I left it for Sharn—and then I left Sharn for Zarash’ak and a new life. I was gone from Graywall long before Breland abandoned the barrens and I haven’t returned to Droaam since. Does that answer your questions?”

  “You said that you’d spent time in an arena, but you weren’t a gladiator,” said Geth. “Does that have anything to do with this?”

  Natrac’s eyes flickered, but his lips just pressed together until they were almost white around his protruding tusks. He said nothing more.

  Geth let his horse drop back to where Singe rode. “What did he say?” the wizard asked.

  “It’s nothing we need to worry about,” said Geth.

  “Did I hear him mention Narath?”

  “It’s nothing we need to worry about,” Geth repeated harshly. He shifted his mount away again, ignoring the flash of anger that crossed Singe’s face.

  They rode in uncomfortable silence through the rest of the morning. Around midday, orders rang out, calling a break. The column stopped and the ogres fell out of formation. They sprawled out across the road and onto the firm land on either side of it, gnawing at chunks of unidentifiable meat, resting, and relieving themselves. Geth and the others dismounted as well. In addition to horses, the General had provided water and trail rations suitable for human consumption. They stuck close together as they ate. Disciplined or not, some of Tzaryan’s troops were looking at them with an unpleasant interest.

  At the head of the column, a hastily erected pavilion gave shelter from the sun to the General and Dandra. Geth could catch glimpses of the pair through the shifting mass of ogres. Their manners toward each other seemed distant, yet polite. “I wonder how they’re doing?” he said.

  Singe stood up from where he had been sitting. “Why don’t we go see?” he suggested. He looked to Orshok, Natrac, and Ashi. “Wait here.”

  Chuut, however, stepped out of the crowd and stopped them before they had taken ten paces. “The General says you’re to hold position.”

  “We just want to pay our respects to our host,” said Singe, but the ogre was unmoved. Up ahead, Geth saw Dandra glance at them, then lean a little closer to the General. The man seemed to listen to her, then shake his scarf-shrouded head. Dandra looked frustrated, but she turned back to him and Singe, smiled, and gave them a wave.

  “I think she’s fine,” the shifter murmured to Singe. He took the wizard’s arm and tugged him back to the others. Chuut followed them for a few paces, escorting them, then left them with a final warning to stay in their place within the column. Singe’s eyes were still on the pavilion, however.

  “Twelve bloody moons,” he said. “Is the General going to talk to us at all during this journey?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want too many of us around him at one time?” suggested Ashi. “He might be afraid we would try to overpower him.”

  “Maybe,” said Singe, but to Geth’s ears he sounded doubtful.

  In the afternoon, the land began to rise until they were riding through rolling hills sparsely covered in tangled trees. The woods were thickets compared to the great forests of the Eldeen, where the growth was sometimes so dense it was impossible to see more than a few feet beyond the edges of a narrow path, but somehow Geth found the open woodlands more unnerving. They had the same feeling of ancient desolation as the lowland bogs, intensified by the shifting shadows among the branches and trunks. The woods were silent as well, probably because the noise of the ogres’ passage along the road hushed any birds or animals nearby, but Geth couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the woods were always quiet, holding the secrets of ages behind tight-sealed lips. When they came around the side of a hill and the sweeping vista of a valley opened before them, he spotted the rounded longhouse and huts of an orc camp on its far side—but couldn’t have guessed at how old the camp was. Nothing moved around the huts and no smoke rose from the longhouse. Its inhabitants might have been in hiding or they might have left a few days previously, or they might have abandoned the camp months or even years before. He asked Orshok what he thought, but by the time the druid had turned to look, the camp had been hidden by leaves once more.

  “Like there’s something watching and waiting for its chance to reach out of the past and grab for you,” Natrac had said. Geth understood exactly what the half-orc meant. He flexed his right arm, listening to the soft creak of his great gauntlet. The armored sleeve was no use against imagined mysteries, but its weight was comforting.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Ashi twisting around and staring at the road behind them. He leaned over to her. “What is it?”

  “We’re being followed.”

  Geth raised a shaggy eyebrow. It was tempting to suggest that the feeling was in the hunter’s mind, an effect of the eerie atmosphere, but he’d been around Ashi for weeks now. Her instincts were solid. He glanced over his shoulder as well. The road behind them was empty. “Where?”

  Ashi shook her head. “Nowhere in particular. Sometimes in the woods, sometimes right on the edge of the road. A dark figure. Human-shaped, big as a large man. On foot.”

  “If they’re on foot, they can’t have been following us very long. Who in their right mind would follow a column of ogres—”

  He was turning back to Ashi when the figure appeared for just an instant, darting through the woods from one tree to another on the north side of the road about sixty paces back from the end of the column. Geth got only the most fleeting glimpse of it, but as Ashi had said, it was human in shape and big as a large man. The clothing it wore was dark and close-fitted, probably leather. Its head seemed curiously smooth and rounded. He didn’t get a good look at its face, but there was something vaguely familiar about the figure, though he couldn’t place it.

  “Rat!” Geth hissed. He scanned the faces of the few ogres that marched behind them
at the very rear of the column, but there was no indication that they had seen anything. Their big ugly faces were slack, eyes glazed with the monotony of a long march. Geth gestured for Singe to join him.

  The wizard, as well as Natrac and Orshok, listened to him and Ashi describe what they had seen. His eyes narrowed. “Following the column—or following us?”

  “Geth,” asked Orshok, “when you say the figure had a smooth head could it have been shaved bald?”

  “I suppose so,” said the shifter. “But I don’t see—”

  “It’s Chain,” Orshok said tightly.

  Geth—as well as the others—stared at him. “Chain’s in the hold of Lightning on Water on his way to Sharn,” Geth said after a moment.

  “What if he’s not?” asked Orshok. The young orc’s face was flushed. “I know I saw something fall off Lightning on Water yesterday. What if Chain escaped? Singe says he swore he’d be coming for us!”

  Geth looked at Singe. The wizard shook his head. “It can’t be him. I checked his chains before we left the ship.”

  “Chain or not, someone is back there,” said Geth. “I don’t like it.” He pulled his horse around and out of the line of march, trotting up the column toward Chuut. He called the ogre’s name and Chuut swung around. Rage crossed his face.

  “The General said hold your position!”

  “I know,” Geth said. “But there’s something you should know.”

  Chuut pulled a massive mace from his belt and raised it threateningly. “Return to your place.”

  Geth paused in the act of pointing to the woods behind the column. His eyes narrowed. “Chuut, we’re being—” he began, but the ogre just stepped forward and bellowed in his face.

  “I said you gets back to your spot now!”

  His breath stank. Saliva spattered Geth’s face—and anger surged in his belly. The last time anyone had yelled in his face like that, he had been a recruit to the Frostbrand company and a trainer had been drilling orders into him. If that was how Chuut was going to think, he needed a taste of real Blademarks command! Geth’s lips peeled back, baring his teeth. He sat tall in his saddle and roared right back at the ogre. “Master Chuut, stand respect!”

  The ogre’s face went from rage to shock in an instant, but his body responded to the command even faster, taking two fast steps back and standing rigid, head up, weapon at his side. The nearest ogres stared in shock, stumbling as they tried to watch the confrontation and keep marching at the same time.

  Swept up in his anger, Geth turned on them. “Tzaryan company, about and alert!”

  The sudden order was more than the ogre troops could handle. Some stopped and turned out away from the column, hands on their weapons, ready for trouble. More tripped over their own feet. A few kept marching until they ran into—or stepped on—their comrades. In only moments, Tzaryan Rrac’s troops were in complete disarray.

  Geth rounded on Chuut once more. “Go to the General and tell him the column is being trailed by one enemy scout on the north side of the road. Bring back his reply.” He leaned close and growled in Chuut’s face. “I’ll be waiting in my position.”

  Chuut trembled but didn’t move. “Go!” Geth barked at him.

  The ogre’s head snapped down in acknowledgement and he raced off toward the front of the collapsed column. Geth dug his heels into his horse’s side and trotted back to the others. Ashi, Natrac, and Orshok looked at him in amazement, but Singe wore a troubled expression.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Geth said. “I had to make him listen and I didn’t feel like fighting him.”

  “It’s not that,” said Singe. His eyebrows drew down into a knot. “Those were Blademarks commands you used.”

  “I know.” Geth bared his teeth again, this time in a smile. “Did you see those ogres jump?”

  “Geth—Blademarks commands.”

  The shifter stared at him for a moment before the words sank in. Tzaryan Rrac’s troops had been trained with Blademarks commands—by the General. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, Boar’s whiskers.”

  Ashi looked from him to Singe and back. “I don’t understand.”

  “The General is selling House Deneith training to Tzaryan Rrac,” Singe said grimly. “The Blademarks and House Deneith use their own commands in training. The commands aren’t anything special, but if the General is using them, it means he’s also using Deneith techniques to train Tzaryan’s ogres.”

  “Maybe Tzaryan hired House Deneith,” Natrac suggested.

  Singe shook his head. “Then why is the General concealing his identity? I’m not even talking about the scarves—a member of House Deneith conducting legitimate business would use his name openly.” He frowned. “And I’m reasonably certain the lords of Deneith wouldn’t consent to training ogres. When they took on hobgoblin mercenaries during the Last War, the hobgoblins rebelled and carved Darguun out of Cyre.”

  A stirring among the ogres brought Geth’s attention back to them—Tzaryan’s troops were shifting into new positions as their leaders moved among them, quietly issuing new orders. Chuut was heading back along the column as well. Geth slapped Singe’s arm and jerked his head toward the approaching ogre. Singe fell silent and turned to meet him.

  Chuut carried a piece of folded paper. He stopped before Geth and Singe as if momentarily uncertain who was supposed to be in charge, then extended the parchment to Singe. “The General has orders,” he said.

  Singe took the parchment and unfolded it, quickly scanning the writing on it. His eyes narrowed. Geth stretched his neck and read over his shoulder.

  Master Timin, send the shifter and the savage to locate our pursuer. Capture if possible. Tzaryan company will provide a distraction when you’re ready. Move quickly.

  “That sounds like a good plan,” said Geth. He could see the General’s intention immediately. If they were going to turn the tables on whoever was following the column, swift and stealthy action was needed. Ogres would crash through the woods like a herd of cattle, but the General had clearly recognized his and Ashi’s wilderness experience. Geth swung a leg over his saddle and jumped down to the ground. “Ashi, we’re going hunting.”

  Ashi’s lips spread in a thin smile and she dismounted as well. Singe grabbed Geth’s arm, though. “A good plan,” he agreed, but held the paper down in front of Geth, “except that this is Dandra’s writing.”

  “Maybe he had her write it for him.” Geth held a hand up in imitation of the General’s clenched fingers. “He probably can’t do it very well himself.”

  “Then why is he carrying paper and ink at all? Something’s not right.”

  Geth growled. The hours of riding through the haunted landscape of Droaam dragged on him. He wanted to be off after their stalking enemy. “Save your conspiracies, Singe. The General isn’t the one sneaking through the woods behind us.” He slipped free of the wizard’s grasp and glanced at Ashi. The hunter slid the bright blade of her sword from its sheath. Geth turned back to Chuut. “We’re ready.”

  The possibility of action clearly appealed to the ogre as well. His troubled face lit up and he spun to face the waiting troops. “Red squad, move!” he shouted, raising his mace and pointing back along the road. “Search south!”

  About a third off the column split away and—with an enthusiastic roar—thundered back the way they had come, plunging off the road and into the woods with no attempt at stealth. A number of smaller trees came crashing down as ogres blundered into them. A blind and deaf man couldn’t have missed the commotion.

  Whoever had been following the column was guaranteed to be watching the ogres. Geth gestured for Ashi to take to the woods on the north of the road. Singe, however, drew a sharp breath. “Geth—”

  The shifter shook his head. “Ashi and I will be fine. You look after yourselves. We’ll worry about the General later.”

  He darted for the trees.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Ashi was waiting for him, crouched down in the thick under
growth that grew among the trees. Geth squatted beside her and took a glance back onto the road. Singe didn’t look especially pleased, but he seldom did. Sometimes, Geth thought, the wizard was too busy being clever to know when he needed to act.

  At least Orshok and Natrac were doing something—they’d dismounted and were holding their horses on short reins close to his and Ashi’s, trying to disguise that there were now two horses on the road without riders. Geth twisted back to Ashi and murmured, “Follow me.”

  Before plunging into the woods, he’d looked back and fixed in his mind the spot where he had seen the mysterious figure. He didn’t head that way immediately, though. Instead, he rose and slid deeper into the woods. He was counting on their stalker keeping his eyes on the column and holding his distance from the ogres. The dark-clad figure might be well-hidden from the road, but Geth was fairly certain he’d be much easier to spot from behind.

  The shifter dodged from tree to tree and bush to bush, staying low and moving quickly. Ashi’s passage through the woods was smoother and more flowing—the hunter slid from one patch of cover to the next with the lethal grace of a snake. Neither of them made any sound, though if they had, Geth thought the woods might simply have swallowed it up. The silent, ancient eeriness of the land didn’t diminish away from the road. If anything, it seemed to have an even greater presence. The chaotic thrashing of the ogres seemed like little more than a distant rustling, even though Geth could still see the creatures if he looked. He gestured for Ashi to stop before they got too far into the woods. He had a feeling in his gut that he didn’t want to lose sight of the road.

  “Grandmother Wolf,” he said under his breath. “I really don’t like this place.”

  “Che bo gri lanano ani teith,” Ashi murmured in response. “This land remembers its blood.” Her eyes swept the trees and brush around them, then came back to him for a moment. “Geth,” she said, “tell me why House Deneith should be so worried at someone spreading its training.”