by J. C. Staudt
“Should we tell our hosts who we really are?”
“No. There’s no telling how they’ll react. Especially that Farius fellow. Also, I would rather our throats not be opened while we sleep.”
“I would rather that, too.”
“If not our throats, they may take a liking to our purses. Sleep with your nose in the air, falconer. And keep that bird unhooded tonight. She’ll warn us if there’s roguery afoot, won’t she?”
Jeebo nodded. “Seeing is what Hyrana does best.”
Chapter 23
The night was thick with fog when Giya Elara and her Dathiri Pathfinders galloped into Westenreach, bearing a downcast Alynor and her frightened son on separate horses. Ristocule had followed the riders and their two captives for days down the west road as it folded and slouched along the edge of a thousand square leagues of rolling downs. Within the bird’s mind, Sir Jalleth was barely keeping control. But he’d made Alynor a promise, and he intended to keep it.
There was a dark, caustic smell on the air, and Ristocule became aware of a dense veil hanging over the village, not comprised of fog alone, but also of the unnatural black smoke of burning tar and oiled wood and charred flesh. He dove through a knot of cloud and spread his wings to glide on the fell wind. All around him, lazy billows trailed into that thickening band of smog, rising from the scorched remains of half a hundred buildings.
Ristocule alit on the blackened edge of a wooden beam jutting from one such structure. The wood was still warm to the touch; it made a soft foamy sound as shreds of ash broke off in his talons. Commander Elara and her Pathfinders slowed their horses to a walk as they entered the town. The hounds began to bark and whimper until their masters quieted them with shouts and curses. Alynor sat behind a burly man on a brown roan, while Draithon was saddled in front of a long-haired woman on a white mare.
All was quiet for a time. The Pathfinders advanced with caution, until a scream echoed from somewhere off in the night. Through the layers of fog Ristocule glimpsed a figure emerging from the gloom; a woman, moving slow and walking with a limp. More figures appeared, some hobbling along as slow as the first, others rushing forward in a sort of loping jog.
“Buggers,” Commander Elara shouted, drawing her blade. “Stay on your horses. Keep your helmets on. Don’t let them get close.”
“We don’t have helmets,” Alynor said, gesturing toward her son.
“Best not let your hair down, then.”
The Pathfinders formed a line, then drew their bows and fitted arrows to strings.
“You’re not going to kill them, are you?” Alynor cried.
Elara eased up on her bow string and looked over. “Have you some objection?”
“These are innocent people.”
“They are dead people. If we don’t get them, the bugs will.”
“Is there no way to help them?”
“There is only one way I am aware of.” Elara turned front again, drawing the bow and resting her cheek against her thumb. She raised her voice. “Steady.”
All was silent.
Ristocule saw Alynor open her mouth to call out again—to stop the Commander and her Pathfinders from making what she knew to be a mistake—but she could not seem to find the words.
One of the shambling villagers screamed, high-pitched and wavering, the scream of a person who does not know why they are screaming—or, perhaps, that they are even screaming at all. The scream fell to a moan, then died in a whimper.
Elara tracked her target. “And… loose.”
Arrows whispered, striking home with damp thuds. Those who took an arrow through the eye or the heart, and who would’ve fallen anyway if not for the influence of the burrowing mites, did so. The rest trudged on, braving the iron bodkins in their arms and legs and guts as though nothing worthy of pain could hinder them. Their screams continued; not screams of pain, but wailing cries, chilling and uncontrolled.
“Draw,” Commander Elara shouted.
A dozen arrows left quivers to strain under a dozen bent bows.
“Loose.”
The second volley yielded a lesser impact than the first. A gust of wind shifted a braid of latent fog, giving Ristocule a clearer look down the adjacent lane, where a hundred villagers limped and hobbled through the ruins of homes and shops like drunken shadows. Commander Elara and her Pathfinders were facing the other way; unless they turned to look past the burnt husk of the building obstructing their view, they would never see this new wave until the villagers were mere fathoms away.
I’ve got to warn them, Ristocule thought. But how?
He threw himself off his perch and dove toward the riders, crying out as he flapped through a maze of knees and ankles. His emblematic gyrfalcon screech, so full of majesty on the open plains, died in the hairy thickness of that cluster of horses like a coronet blast into a feather-down pillow. When he came out the other side, he bolted toward the new wave of attackers, praying only that he might draw the eye of one single soldier who would alert the rest.
It was not a soldier at all, but Alynor Mirrowell who looked in Ristocule’s direction first. She hesitated a moment, as if weighing whether to alert Commander Elara. Ristocule landed on the obstructing building and squawked again, a hollow sound in this shrouded place so engorged with death.
“Behind you,” Alynor screamed, finally regaining her senses.
Elara’s head whipped around. “Turn about,” she called. “Turn about.”
The riders pivoted their horses. Villagers stumbled over ruined blocks, scrambling in the mud as if hungry for a taste of their visitors. They weren’t hungry, Sir Jalleth knew from within the mind of the bird. They were driven; impelled by a nefarious will.
Giya Elara’s soldiers nocked their arrows and loosed. She gave them free reign to stretch their bowstrings, but the villager offensive was only beginning.
The latest victims of the burrowing mite infestation came first. Theirs was a full, madcap dash; they moved with an animalistic twitch that made Ristocule ill at ease. When the villagers careened around the corner of the building and lurched into the avenue to block their retreat, Commander Elara wasted no time.
“Fall back. Fall back. This way,” she shouted, yanking her reins and spurring her steed deeper into Westenreach.
The Pathfinders followed, dodging shamblers as they galloped across the rolling terrain past homes still smoldering with live embers. Ristocule pursued them as they veered north toward a section of town where a few buildings remained unburned. Commander Elara rounded up her host beneath a tall wooden watchtower and repeated her previous order that they were to loose at will.
Ristocule landed on the tower roof, from which vantage point he could see a short distance through the moon-shrouded fog in every direction. He remembered another tower a long time ago, where an army surrounded by an insurmountable foe had fought to the last. His presence there had been similarly benign, though it had mattered a great deal in the end. This was a memory shared by both man and bird—one of the few they shared from before they merged into one.
“For Dathrond, and to the last,” Giya Elara shouted as the villagers of Westenreach converged upon them.
“For Dathrond,” cried her Pathfinders.
Alynor’s keeper was having trouble using his bow with her behind him in the saddle. Draithon’s did not shoot at all; she simply held the boy around the chest and hung back behind the line where it was safer. The villagers staggered toward them. The dogs barked and yowled, working the horses into a frenzy.
Ristocule looked on with equal parts dread and regret. He may have been hindered in his spellcasting if he were a man right now, but at least he would’ve been able to fight. With the scroll in the Dathiri Commander’s possession, it was unlikely he’d get another chance to change back any time soon, if ever. He was beginning to wish they’d stayed at Tenleague Deep. If only he’d been able to remember that blasted finding spell, perhaps they could’ve reunited with Kestrel. They would’ve put up a better d
efense against the Dathiri, that much was certain.
“Up into the tower,” Elara was yelling.
Ristocule would’ve given anything for the ability to speak just then. He’d seen this coming, only he’d hoped Commander Elara was clever enough not to fall for it. Don’t climb the tower, he wanted to scream. Ride. Ride out of here, and never return. From where he was perched, he knew there was no easy route through those streets thick with fog and choked with villagers. But this… this was almost certain death.
The Pathfinders hoisted sword, bow, and saddlebag, dismounted their horses, and began climbing the ribcage of wooden crossbeams on each of the watchtower’s four sides. Alynor’s keeper drew a dagger and slashed the ropes around her wrists before following his peers. The rider holding Draithon looked from boy to tower, then grabbed her gear and started to climb, leaving the lad alone in the saddle. The tower shook with the weight of so many armored soldiers. At the bottom, the dogs were still tethered to the horses, making tangles of their leashes as they darted around in agitation.
The villagers rushed in.
Still in the saddle, Alynor slid forward and began to cast. She gathered the reins and spurred the animal through the crowd of anxious horses, headed for the one on which Draithon was seated. Along the way she botched the spell and had to start over. By the time she reached her son and snatched him off his horse, a globe of mage-song was swirling to life in front of her.
There was only one problem now. The scroll was in Giya Elara’s saddlebags, and Giya Elara was halfway up the tower. Alynor cast a long, forlorn glance at the Dathiri Commander. There was no getting that scroll now. Not while the Commander lived. She took the mage-song in hand and tossed it at the ground before giving the horse her heels. Purple lights twirled upward from the animal’s hooves as it dug in and bolted.
The next instant, it was gone.
To the untrained observer—or, really, to anyone without an understanding of the mage-song—Alynor appeared to have vanished in a flash of bright light and a puff of purple steam, horse and all.
Ristocule knew better.
It was the shadow-walking spell. The final spell Alynor had mastered before their life was interrupted. When Ristocule heard hoofbeats pounding on the dirt road to the east, his heart leapt. She’s escaped Westenreach.
Giya Elara and her Dathiri Pathfinders huddled together on the platform of the rickety watchtower, launching downward arrows from a dwindling supply. Below them, hundreds of infected villagers swarmed their horses and crowded around the base of the tower. The dogs attacked and were quickly outmanned, their barks and growls turning to yelps and whimpers. Soon horse and dog alike would catch the infection and go mad—the ones who survived, anyway.
Ristocule dove from the tower as the press of villagers scrabbled against it with bloody fingernails, uttering their demented screams. He spread his wings and made a grab for the scroll case protruding from Giya Elara’s saddlebags, but she batted him away and shielded the precious item before he could get close. Ristocule tumbled to the earth in a tailspin, landing hard just beyond the throng.
In his daze he heard Elara crying out to Flaigus. “There he is. That bird. He’s the old Warcaster. Put an arrow in him.”
Ristocule threw himself to his feet as a shaft punctured the ground beside him. He hopped a few steps and flapped his wings to be sure nothing was broken, then took flight, following the sounds of the retreating hoofbeats until he was soaring above Alynor and Draithon. They raced down the east road together, bound for Trebelow.
Back at the tower, the infected villagers began to climb.
Chapter 24
Someone was rummaging through Darion’s pack.
He became aware of this at some point during the small hours between midnight and dawn, while the whole camp was asleep—or should’ve been. Lying on his back with his hands folded on his stomach, Darion resisted the urge to draw in the loud, deep breath of one first waking. Instead he slipped his eyes open for a look and snapped them shut again.
It was the elf. Not the druid, Elduin, but the noble’s son, Farius. The elf who would one day own half of Falcon Falls—or so he claimed. He was on his haunches, holding Darion’s saddlebag open with one hand while picking through its contents with the other. Why would a rich lad like him steal from a lowly traveler like me? Darion wondered. The more pertinent question is, how am I going to catch him out on it without causing an uproar?
Darion hazarded another look, this time toward Jeebo. Their watchful guardian Hyrana had fled her post and was hopping around in the brush, pecking at interesting things in the dirt while Jeebo snored in his bedroll. No sense prolonging the charade, Darion decided, regardless of the outcome. He sat up.
Farius fell backward with a jerk, flinging Darion’s wooden drinking mug across the camp. The mug clattered to rest beside the dying embers of the campfire with a hollow sound. “By the gods, you startled me. I thought I heard you waking up.”
“Then you’ve better hearing than sense. What are you doing?”
“I was—I… was just looking.”
“Looking for this?” Darion reached down the front of his trousers and produced the pouch of coins he kept between his legs while he slept. “A pouch deserves a safe place. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“What’s all the commotion?” asked Velden as he stumbled over, bleary-eyed. The others were stirring, but none had risen so quickly as the priest.
Darion stood. “I woke to find this fellow stealing from me.”
Farius gave him a scornful grunt. “Stealing? I come from a wealthy, upstanding family. What would I need to steal for?”
“I was hoping you might answer me that.”
“Now listen here. I’ll eat a bull’s bollocks before I let you slander me like this.”
“Alright, then. Let me try it a different way. Why is my drinking cup there by the fire? Why is my bag in disarray?”
“How should I know? I’m not your bedservant.”
“Yet you were out of your bedroll, were you not?”
“I was having a piss, if you must know.”
“I hope you weren’t pissing in my saddlebags while you were looking through them.”
“Are you sure you know what you saw?” Velden asked as the other three members of their party came to stand beside him.
“Of course I know what I saw. Do you think me blind?”
“You did just wake up. Perhaps the darkness was playing tricks on your eyes.”
“The only trick is the one this elf is playing on all of you.”
“You’re out of your mind, old man,” said Farius. “Go back to sleep and save us all the trouble of your delusions.”
“Delusions, are they?” Darion said, trudging over to swipe his wooden cup and brush it off. “Then I suppose if I asked you to empty your pockets, you wouldn’t be opposed to the idea.”
Farius scoffed. “You offend me, sir.”
“I intend to. Empty your pockets, thief.”
“I am no thief. And furthermore, no one tells me what to do. You mind your pockets, and I’ll do the same.”
“Meaning you’ll mind mine as well? You seem to have no trouble doing that.”
“Why I—”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Velden. “Surely there has been some a misunderstanding here.”
Darion picked up his saddlebag, tossed the cup inside, and gave it a quick check to see if anything was missing. It was too dark to tell. “Would you not agree it might clear up this misunderstanding if we all saw the contents of his pockets? If naught else, it’ll put my mind at ease to know I haven’t fallen in with a band of highway robbers.”
Farius cocked his head. “It isn’t my burden to see you’re put at ease. We’re all on the road, and this happens to be the border to the wildest kingdom in the realms. Misfortune is like to befall the unsuspecting at any time.” He smirked.
“The suspecting as well, it would seem,” Darion said, returning a smirk of his own.
&nb
sp; Behind him, Jeebo was no longer snoring. “What’s going on?” he asked groggily.
“Nothing you need concern yourself with. Go back to sleep.”
Jeebo yawned. “I hope you’re not causing a stir again, Sir Darion.”
“Say, what did you just call him?” asked Velden, frowning.
“Eh, nothing,” Darion said. “It’s only a byname he calls me sometimes.”
“No, I could swear he said Sir Darion.”
“Surely he doesn’t mean Sir Darion Ulther, whom Orynn King named Trollslayer of the Sparleaf?” said Elduin.
Darion began to furl his bedroll. He gave Jeebo a gentle nudge with his foot. “Forget sleep. Get up.”
“Where are you going? Are you truly Sir Darion Ulther?”
“I think it’s time we parted ways, good sirs. I do thank you for your hospitality.”
“What now?” Jeebo asked, sitting up with hair askew.
“Get up, I said. We’re leaving.”
“But it isn’t yet dawn.”
“Nonetheless, the time for our departure is now.”
“Don’t go,” said Jyrr. “I’ll hear you out. What’s your side of the story?”
Darion stopped. His bedroll was tucked under one arm, his saddlebags hanging from his opposite shoulder. “What story?”
“Did you fight for the Korengadi, like they say?”
It was the first time since Darion’s return to the realms that anyone had asked him for his perspective on the accusations against him. Even Jeebo hadn’t asked, though he had taken Darion’s side without question. When kings and nobles alike had called Darion hero in the days of his youth, everyone from the lowliest commoner to the highest lord had treated him as such. Now that he was an outlaw, the reverse was true. Or so he’d assumed. That assumption had led him to spend weeks hiding in plain sight, believing anyone who noticed him would alert the local lord straightaway. The possibility that a complete stranger might want to hear the truth hadn’t crossed his mind.
Was there a way to explain his actions without convicting himself of treason? Darion did not think so. “Olyvard King gave me a choice for which there were but two options, both equally difficult.”
