by Rob Scott
Versen snapped a branch in two across his knee and tossed both bits onto the burgeoning pile of firewood. Brynne tended the horses, brushing their coats and leading them to the river for water. Fearing another Seron attack, Sallax told her to leave them saddled in case they were forced to leave in a hurry. Sallax himself had gone to scout a trail through the narrow canyon adjacent to Seer’s Peak.
Mark was trying inexpertly to catch fish from the river using Versen’s bow and arrows. Spotting what looked like a small trout shading itself beneath a rock outcropping, Mark took careful aim and let fly, far-fetched hopes of skewering dinner running through his mind. When he missed, which was always, he would leap into the river to retrieve his arrow before the current carried it away, in the process effectively frightening off any fish for several hundred paces along the river. He found himself waiting ever-longer intervals for his quarry to return.
Brynne teased him from the grove. ‘You’ll never hit one, Mark. Give it up.’
‘I’m sure I will, if I can just get the angle correct. I’m going too high,’ he motioned with one arm; ‘I need to aim lower.’
‘Perhaps it doesn’t have anything to do with the angle,’ Versen said, joining their conversation. ‘Perhaps you just don’t have any skill.’
Feigning indignation, Mark retorted, ‘I resent that. I’ve come quite close several times.’
‘How many times have you tried?’ Brynne asked.
‘Um. That one makes thirty-two.’
They all laughed and Versen joined him at the water’s edge and retrieved his bow. Shading his eyes, he squinted into the shadows along the far bank. ‘Watch this,’ he said, drawing three arrows from the quiver, jamming two in the ground at his feet and nocking one on his bowstring. ‘It’s really very simple.’ He took aim and fired three shots in rapid succession at different targets under water. Three large trout bobbed to the surface, each pierced cleanly.
Handing the longbow back to Mark, Versen said, ‘Keep practising.’
Dumbstruck, Mark accepted the weapon and stared out at the fish as they disappeared around a lazy bend, the arrows sticking up like little masts on toy boats. Versen clapped a hand on his shoulder and added in a sympathetic tone, ‘Our dinner is floating away. You might want to hurry along after it.’
Sallax returned before nightfall; he licked his lips at the smell of fresh fish grilling over their campfire. ‘Who caught these?’ he asked, accepting a wineskin from Versen.
‘I pulled these from the river myself,’ Mark told him proudly.
Brynne chuckled and Sallax understood. ‘Versen?’
‘Of course, Mark did fetch them from the water before they floated all the way to the Ravenian Sea,’ Brynne clarified. Sallax gave a rare grin and joined them around the fire.
Shrugging, Mark admitted grudgingly, ‘I’ll grant you my skills with a longbow aren’t quite honed to perfection. I think the person who coined the phrase “shooting fish in a barrel” must have been using a machine-gun.’
Sallax tossed him the wineskin. ‘You stick with the battle-axe and you’ll be fine.’
‘So will the fish, I’m sure,’ Versen commented dryly and everyone laughed again at Mark’s expense.
Like Garec, Steven and Gilmour far above them in the night, the Ronan freedom fighters ate bread, dried fruit and cheese as they huddled close to the fire. Passing the wineskin around frequently, they avoided discussing Welstar Palace, Nerak and the journey ahead, talking instead of their families and homes. Mark was saddened to hear that Sallax and Brynne’s parents had died so long ago, even though Brynne said she had been too young to remember them, but Sallax looked so grim that Mark did not pursue it further.
Versen reflected on growing up in a large family of hunters and woodsmen; he smiled proudly as he talked of learning to shoot better than his older brothers. ‘I still can’t shoot as well as Garec, though
… but never tell him I said that out loud!’
Brynne changed the subject again. ‘How far did you get through the canyon today, Sallax?’
Motioning towards the narrow breach in the rock, her brother replied, ‘I managed to get about halfway up the slope of that big mountain behind Seer’s Peak. There’s a pass between it and that crooked fellow to the east, I think, but I couldn’t see beyond those two.’ He broke off a piece of dry bread and scooped up the last piece of trout. ‘I found the Seer’s Peak trailhead as well. It’s about two hundred paces into the canyon, but it’s well hidden behind a stand of pines.’
Versen said, more as an affirmation than a question, ‘So the horses stay here.’
‘There are some high meadows with plenty of grass for cropping, but I can’t imagine we’ll get much further than this pass with the horses.’
Brynne inhaled sharply. ‘Garec will be crushed if he has to leave Renna behind.’
Versen nodded. ‘He’ll want to leave her down here where he knows she can get to water.’
‘I’m quite sure we’ll come home this way to look for her if he has anything to say about it,’ Sallax muttered.
Mark felt for Garec as well. He had only known his own horse, Wretch, for a few days and despite all the pain and agony, he wasn’t happy about leaving the beast to survive on its own in the wilderness. ‘Is there anything else we can do?’ He half-hoped the would come up with some creative means to bring the animals along.
Versen shook his head. ‘Not without doubling back to the nearest farm and paying to stable them there.’
‘But that puts us at risk of more Seron interference,’ Brynne added.
‘Or worse,’ Sallax confirmed. ‘They’ll be all right here. There is shelter in the canyon and plenty of water.’
Versen stood. ‘I’ll bury our saddles beneath that birch tree near the water.’ Motioning to Mark, he said, ‘C’mon, help me with this.’
The horses were tethered in a stand of trees just upstream from their campsite. Mark, enjoying the friendly conversation, hadn’t noticed the sunlight fading behind the Blackstone peaks in the west. He absentmindedly checked for his watch: the sudden onset of darkness was a striking contrast to the relative daylight near the fire. He wished, absurdly, that he knew what time it was in Colorado.
Unbuckling Renna’s saddle, he let it fall to the ground, pulled the soft wool blanket from the mare’s back and gave the horse a slap on the hindquarter. ‘Good luck, Renna. Garec will be down to say good-bye in the morning.’
Moving to Wretch, he grimaced. ‘You, on the other hand – I have half a mind to leave you tied to this tree.’ He glanced over at Versen before adding, ‘No, I’m just kidding. Maybe your next owner will be a true equestrian.’ Wretch gave him a dispassionate look, then bent to continue cropping the undergrowth.
Mark was still stroking the ungrateful animal when he noticed a strange tree across the grove, a large pine; he had not seen it there before. It captured his attention now because it looked dead, as if it had been ravaged by an extremely selective wildfire. He froze. Moving his hand as slowly as possible from Wretch’s neck, he tried frantically to get Versen’s attention without shouting or moving. He was not certain how an almor detected its prey.
The burly woodsman saw Mark waving over at him and called, ‘What’s the matter with you? Get that saddle off and let’s get busy. We have a hole to dig.’
It was too late to warn him. The demon exploded from the ground between them and Mark heard Versen scream as he fell backwards into the underbrush. For what felt like a lifetime, Mark watched as the almor reached out with one shapeless, glowing white arm to grab Brynne’s horse bodily from the ground. The animal gave a terrified scream, shrill, like a tortured child, before choking to a sickening silence as the creature sucked its life force dry. It took just seconds, Mark realised dully. The almor tossed the husk of skin and bones to the side; it glanced off a tree before shattering into pieces on the soft needle carpet.
Mark sprinted back through camp. ‘Run!’ he screamed. ‘The almor!’ For two or three heartbeats, Brynne looked
confused, until she saw Sallax grab his saddlebag and begin running towards the canyon. She reached for Mark’s outstretched hand and sprinted off behind her brother. Mark did not look back. He leaped over their campfire, half-dragging Brynne along behind.
Sallax paused once to check they were following. He couldn’t see Versen, or hear him either, but there wasn’t time to search. ‘Hurry!’ he called. ‘It can move very fast – and get away from the river!’ Then he was gone, disappearing up the narrow path towards the Seer’s Peak trailhead. Mark and Brynne followed on his heels. Mark didn’t want to run faster than Brynne for fear the beast might suddenly appear and take her, but she speeded up markedly when the demon gave an unholy cry from the canyon entrance behind them. It echoed about the rock walls of the narrow crevasse, sounding like the collective pain and suffering of generations of oppressed souls screaming at once.
‘Lords, what is that thing?’ Brynne called between shallow breaths.
They hurried after Sallax as he burst through a thickly overgrown stand of trees and began climbing the lowest slopes of Seer’s Peak. The mountain was dotted with trees and shrubs nearly all the way to its broad, flat apex and Mark realised the almor could easily find some fluid pathway to cut them off.
There was no way they would be able to maintain this pace until they reached the safety of the granite expanse above the tree line. Already he was slowing, his diaphragm cramping stiffly and his lungs feeling as if they were about to burst. Remembering the tremendous blast Gilmour had produced in Estrad to divert the almor, Mark wished he had thought to ask the old sorcerer what he had meant by explosions aren’t magic.
Mark searched the trail above in the fading sunlight. They needed to reach a safe place soon; having to flee from the almor in the dark would be disastrous. ‘Someplace dry,’ he panted, ‘where can we find someplace dry?’
They were still running at full speed when they rounded the trail’s first switchback. With darkness nearly upon them, Mark saw it, stretched out above like a titanic grey blanket thrown up against the side of the mountain: a rockslide. He shouted ahead, ‘Sallax, stop.’
‘Stop?’ he heard Brynne cry, ‘no! We have to keep going – that thing could be right behind us!’
Sallax slowed to a jog, then turned to face them. A look of disappointment flashed across his face, as if he had to accept that something might best him, that this demon, a nightmare creation of the most twisted god, might beat Sallax of Estrad. As quickly as it appeared, however, the look was gone.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘What do you suggest we do?’
Without slowing, Mark moved past him off the trail and up into the rockslide. ‘Come up here, now,’ he commanded. ‘It’s a more difficult path, but there are no plants or trees.’ Surveying the rocky field, he explained, ‘The almor: it travels through water, doesn’t it? So it might not be able to reach us out here.’
Sallax understood what Mark was planning before he finished speaking; he climbed onto the rockslide behind the nimble foreigner.
Brynne joined them, but said sceptically, ‘We can’t possibly climb this at night, Mark. It’s worse than scaling a building – we’ll be dead in half an aven.’
‘We’ll be dead in less than that out there,’ Sallax told her and pulled her up to balance beside him.
Mark, suddenly feeling more at home, caught his breath and explained some basic climbing rules. ‘This isn’t any more difficult in the dark than it would be at midday. Climbing a slope this steep means you have to get a feel for the mountain. Climb in a steady rhythm and you’ll grow less tired. Be sure to check every hand and foothold before you put all your weight on it. Most important, don’t panic. For every loose purchase that fails below you, there are up to three holding you fast. Keep your weight into the slope but not against it. Climb the mountain; don’t try to slither up it.’
He forced a smile back at Brynne, then went on, ‘I’ll find the easiest pathway. Stay behind me and use the light from the moons to see where I put my hands and feet. Don’t forget: if it supports your weight when you grab it, chances are it will support your weight when you step on it,’ and then, in a less confident tone, added, ‘but not always.’
Sallax seemed almost excited by the potentially deadly challenge. ‘Lead on, Mark Jenkins,’ he called, ‘we’ll be right behind you.’ He positively exuded enthusiasm where, just moments earlier, he had been convinced they were lost, that the almor would suck them dry like the stray dog he had watched disintegrate to a leathery shell. Mark had renewed Sallax’s confidence; now he was almost willing to fight the demon beast hand-to-hand.
There were plenty of solid handholds at the base of the steep, rocky slope and their initial ascent went smoothly. Brynne found the rhythmic pace of Mark’s climb hypnotic and she moved almost without thinking. It didn’t take long for the trio to get several hundred paces up the side of the mountain.
‘You are skilled at this, Mark,’ she called softly.
‘Would you believe Steven and I do this for fun as often as possible?’ he asked. ‘We’re actually disappointed weekends we can’t risk life and limb. Of course, we try to limit our climbing to daylight avens.’
‘What is a weekend?’ Sallax interrupted.
Mark chuckled. ‘A weekend is a glorious concept I will introduce to all Eldarn if we manage to live until morning.’ His right hand slipped and several stones dropped on the others below. ‘Sorry,’ he called, ‘we’re coming into a difficult section here, lots of small, loose stones. Be careful.’
Neither Brynne nor Sallax answered; they were struggling to make out the cliff face, trying desperately to get some sort of visual confirmation that their handholds were solid.
Their progress slowed as Mark clawed his way up towards the switchback trail above. The next hundred feet would be arduous and he knew his friends needed a break. Through the dark, he could see neither trees nor shrubs; no complex root systems growing along the path, but even if there had been water flowing there in abundance, the trio would have to stop, risking attack, just to gain a momentary respite from the difficult ascent. He was an experienced climber and his shoulders and thighs ached: he was impressed with the fortitude Brynne and Sallax were showing as novices on a difficult hill in the dark.
When the demon creature burst from the trail above, Mark’s heart sank. Towering over the rocky hillside, a glowing, formless wall of undulating fluid, the almor screamed down at them. Mark thought he could see into its eyes, vacant pools of suffering and death.
‘Wait!’ Sallax cried. ‘Stop here.’
Laughing – a response to abject terror – Mark replied, ‘I hadn’t planned on going much further, Sallax.’
‘No, I mean it can’t reach us here.’
‘How do you know that?’ Brynne asked, her voice trembling.
Mark realised what Sallax meant. ‘Because it would have already,’ he told her quietly. ‘We need to stay put, to hang on here as long as possible.’
‘And hope it doesn’t rain,’ Sallax added under his breath.
For the first time since he fell through the far portal in Idaho Springs, Mark was glad days in Eldarn were four hours shorter. Clinging to the side of Seer’s Peak, his arms and legs numb, he could do little more than pray, and trust that by remaining completely still he would not fall to his death – or, worse, drag the Ronan siblings with him. He guessed it had been three hours since they had last seen the almor. He called to Brynne to find out what time his watch read.
‘I don’t know, Mark.’ She sounded desperate. He ached to be able to whisk her to safety.
‘Well, now Brynne, I’m disappointed,’ he teased, hoping to lighten the mood. ‘After all those lessons, you can’t tell me what time it is.’
‘I can describe it,’ she said. ‘Will that help? The long arm is straight up and the small arm is just next to it.’
‘To the right or the left?’
‘Left. On the rune you called… um… levelen.’
‘Eleven,’ he cor
rected. ‘Great, the news is on. I wonder what the headlines are tonight.’ Straining his eyes to see below her, he called to Sallax, ‘How are you doing down there?’
‘I will be all right.’ He did not sound convinced. ‘But I’m not sure how much longer we can hang on this slope.’
‘I know,’ Mark answered, ‘but try this, both of you: put your weight on your feet and shake your arms, one at a time. It’ll loosen the muscles and alleviate some of the pain.’
‘I can’t do it, Mark,’ Brynne told him plaintively. ‘I’ll fall.’
‘Yes, you can,’ he encouraged, ‘that’s the easy part. The hard part is the next bit: hanging on with your arms and shaking out your legs.’
‘No,’ she cried again, ‘I just can’t.’
Mark considered his options, swallowing a curse as he called back to Sallax, ‘Don’t let her fall, Sallax. I’ll be right back.’
‘Very well,’ the big Ronan answered. Though he sounded defeated, Mark knew Sallax would fight on to the last ounce of his strength.
‘Brynne, I’ll be back before the long arm reaches the three.’
‘I don’t remember the three.’ She sounded anxious.
‘It’s the one that looks like breasts on a sleeping woman.’
Sallax grunted in ironic amusement. ‘I must learn this system of runes, Mark.’
‘Just hang on until the arm reaches the three and I’ll be back.’ He shook the stiffness from his arms and legs and then, worried he might lose his grip and fall backwards down the slope himself, began hurrying, as fast as he dared, towards the path in the distance. After five minutes of hard climbing, he discovered there was about fifty feet of difficult loose rock before the terrain became more manageable and he could ascend again with some certainty.
By the time he reached the trail, he had worked out how he could rescue the others. Ignoring the potential threat of the almor, he jogged back along the slope until he reached a thin evergreen tree growing along the path. Its growth was stunted by strong winds that raked the sides of Seer’s Peak. Although it had shallow roots, there were sturdy branches along its trunk. He wasn’t positive it would be long enough to reach Brynne across the expanse of loose stones, but if he wasted too much time questioning his strategy, both she and Sallax would fall. He set about trying to push the tree over.
