Except it wasn’t a single large creature. What came out of the mists were five or six figures with round, helmeted heads and long spears. They were only silhouettes, but she was vaguely disappointed. She was honestly hoping to see a real dragon, or perhaps one of the one-eyed beasts.
As the warriors came closer, she realized they weren’t wearing helmets after all. Their heads were just strangely shaped because they weren’t human. They were as small as Ivy and even more slender. That awful acrid smell came off them in waves, and as one shifted its spear, she saw that its arm was as thin as a broomstick.
She leaned back out of view, hoping they hadn’t seen her, and threw three of the disgusting gray teeth out into the mists in the opposite direction. One struck a tree trunk, making a sound like a snapping twig, and the other two rustled some unseen bushes. Behind her, she heard a pair of sharp taps and smelled a new level of awful stink; it occurred to her that they were talking to each other through their taps and scents. If only she’d thought to touch her translation stone...
It was too late for that now. She was already doing the hand motions to cast her fire spell. Great Way, but it felt good to do magic again after so many days. She had barely started the spell before the power behind it opened in a way she had never felt before.
The figures passed her hiding spot just as she finished. As she rolled to her feet, she saw the creatures clearly for the first time.
They were insects. Upright insects with segmented bodies wearing red sashes and ribbons over their dark red shells. They had tiny eyes like buttons, and claws over their mouths. Their attention was focused ahead of them, toward the part of the woods where she’d thrown the teeth. Cazia turned to her left--moving away from Ivy and Kinz’s hiding space--and splayed her fingers.
Fire poured out of her with an intensity she’d never felt before. It wasn’t like casting a spell; it felt very much like cracking open a forge and releasing the heat within. The flames touched the nearest creature just as it began to turn around, striking its chest, and the thing burst apart like a wheat berry in a campfire.
Cazia’s old self would have been horrified by the gore, but now it was little more than a curious surprise as she ran forward toward the next warrior in the line. It had time to turn before the flames reached it, and the chemicals that sprayed out of the bottom of its skull caught fire. It, too, broke apart and sprayed gore across the grass.
Beyond that one were two more. Both tried to leap away, demonstrating startling strength in their legs. Cazia swept her spell to one side, catching the nearest one’s lower body. It landed somewhere outside of her field of vision, but she didn’t think it had survived. Her spell faded and the opening inside her, the one that had funneled so much magic, seemed to fall closed like a sleeping eye.
Cazia hadn’t anticipated that her fire spell would be hot enough to burn away so much fog. She turned hard to the right just as something heavy struck the ground behind her--a spear? She didn’t look back to see. There were more warriors back there, and she wanted to lead them farther into the valley away from her friends.
She changed direction several more times as she ran, but if she was dodging weapons, she couldn’t hear them. The mists closed over her again and she kept moving, wondering about the odds of running into something even dangerous ahead of her.
She stumbled through a shallow stony stream, making a splash so loud that Mahz herself might have heard it. On the far bank, she stopped running and stamped among the tall grasses, mimicking as best she could the sound of her own running. It didn’t seem likely that she could fool them with the same trick twice, but how smart could they be? They were bugs.
The translation stone was still lying at the bottom of her pocket, but when she touched it, she heard nothing. The warriors might have been talking to each other, but they were out of her range.
Then: “Hunt! Hunt!” She lifted her finger from the stone. It was the tapping noise. When she touched the stone again she heard “War! Hunt! Prey!”
Not exactly eloquent. She crouched low on the side of the tree; the stream was just barely in sight but the sounds were coming from downstream, to the east. She drew out one of her darts.
A whiff of that acrid scent returned, and on impulse, she touched the translation stone. Immediately, the complex scents became words.
“We will curl it for the lives it has taken.”
“It crossed the stream and ran on.”
“No! Hunt! Prey! It lay in wait for us once and may try once plus one.”
“There it is!”
Cazia rolled to the side as a short, copper-tipped spear plunged into the tree trunk beside her.
They were flanking her the way any intelligent warriors would. She wished she knew how many there were, but the translation wasn’t giving her different voices. Fury guide me, she thought, trying to keep her emotional detachment from stealing the urgency from her movements.
She took hold of her iron dart and, after a moment’s consideration, took out three more. The spell she was planning was going to be just as strong as her flame spell--odd that her translation stone didn’t feel boosted in a similar way--and she felt a connection to it that she hadn’t experienced before. She recognized that she could alter the spell slightly to fire more than one dart, and she knew she would not miss.
Was this how the Gifts of the Evening People had been changed by scholars through the ages? Not just that they studied and thought about them, but that they Cursed themselves--destroyed their own personalities--to feel a closer connection to magic?
She’d consider that later, if she somehow managed to survive. Cazia started the mental and physical preparations for her spell; the space inside her began to open again, but it wasn’t heat that was about to pass through her. It was kinetic force.
She leaped out from behind the tree, spell still unfinished, then dodged to the side as the warriors flung their weapons at her--smooth, dark stones this time. They threw them with great force, but they weren’t close enough to hit her.
Then her spell finished, and a terrible force raced out of her. The iron darts shot from her hand, and each one struck a target full in the center of its body.
The darts did not plunge into the warriors like arrows so much as blast through them, blowing terrible holes in the far sides of their bodies. Cazia felt a slight pang of loss as her darts flew into the woods; iron was valuable.
Two more warriors charged at her from the other direction. These were the ones who had made the tapping noises while the others flanked her. One held a spear over its head, and in its other clawed hand, in place of a shield, it held a tall staff. Cazia dug into her quiver for an iron dart, but she knew it was too late already. They were too close for her to cast another spell, and what good was a dart--barely as long as a dagger--against a monster with a spear?
An arrow struck the side of the creature’s head. It sounded like a cracking nut--which Cazia thought was extremely interesting--and the warrior collapsed into the grass.
Kinz ran down the bank across the stream, screaming, spear in hand. The insect creature turned to meet her, weapon ready.
“NO!” Cazia shouted. Kinz stopped on the near bank, her booted feet sinking into the mud. Ivy already had another arrow nocked and drawn. The insect warrior held staff and spear high. The warrior looked down the hill at Kinz, then at Ivy, then at Cazia. “I want this one to surrender.”
She pointed her dart at the weapon in his hand, then pointed at the ground. She did it again with the staff.
The insect shifted its position and Cazia was sure it understood. Whether it would obey was another matter. It glanced around again uncertainly, and Cazia repeated her gesture.
It cast its staff away behind it, splashing into the water. The spear it threw in the other direction, directly into the trunk of a tree. Then it splayed its limbs wide.
“Inzu preserve us,” Kinz said, wrinkling her nose. “Why does it stink like that?”
Cazia took the translati
on stone from her pocket. “We can only make this mistake once,” the creature was saying to itself. “Once plus—” She didn’t hear the rest, because she tossed the stone lightly at the creature’s feet, then pointed at it with the dart.
After a moment’s hesitation, the insect creature stooped and picked it up.
“Now you can understand what we say,” Cazia said.
The creature collapsed in the grass as if dead.
Chapter 24
King Ellifer had made Tejohn a tyr by his own hand, an honor no one in history had ever received before, and on that day, he’d sworn to serve Peradain as well as the royal family. Whatever treachery Coml Finstel planned, Tejohn couldn’t bring himself to withhold help from spears and bows of the empire--not to mention the citizens and servants they protected.
So, he sought out the commander at the barricade site to describe the grunts’ ability to climb. Coml received the warning with gratitude, then offered Tejohn a few loaves from his storeroom.
The fort’s supplies would soon be stretched thin, but Tejohn accepted. Coml’s second fetched a handful of small, stale loaves--plain bread, not meatbread—and offered it to Arla as they came onto the dock.
The Wayward flowed out of the Southern Barrier as a tall, narrow freshwater waterfall. There was a clear pool at the base of the cliff, then a second smaller fall, and from there the Wayward began.
It had gotten its name because it flowed through mostly flat lands and had a habit of changing course every few years. What was fertile floodland one generation became a fishery the next. But no matter what changes it went through, it ended in the lowlands of Deep Stone Lake and it started alongside the mountain spur that stabbed down into Finstel lands.
Fort Caarilit stood on the eastern side of that waterway and, if the commander could be believed, protected the last bridge across the Wayward. If the grunts truly could not cross the it, Coml was the only human who could keep them out of the lands of Tejohn’s forefathers. The thought made him despair.
At the docks, a grinning old man shuffled toward them. His greasy hair blew about in the wind and he moved with some difficulty, but he was clearly excited to see Tejohn.
“My Tyr Treygar!” he said with enthusiasm, shouting to be heard over the falling water. “It is my great pleasure to see you again after such a long time.”
He bowed--no small feat with his hunched spine--and Tejohn took his elbow to urge him upright. “Stand tall, fellow. When did we last meet?”
“Toram Halmajil,” the man said happily, a name Tejohn didn’t recognize at all. “Folks nowadays try to say it was Banderfy Finstel who turned the tide of that battle, but no sir, I says to them. I was there. I saw Tejohn Treygar push right through the Bendertuk shield wall. Cut those boys up with their own knives, didn’t you?”
Tejohn smiled at him. “I lost mine, and I had a better use for their little blades than they did.”
“Indeed you did! So young and quick you were on that day! I was behind you when their square split apart, and I followed you into the flanks of Willim Bendertuk’s own square. What a day! Too bad I couldn’t join you at Pinch Hall itself,” the old man looked wistful. “Them Bendertuks edged their shield with bronze in those days. On of them slammed down on my foot. Shattered so many bones, I couldn’t sleep for the pain.” His eyes went to the shield Tejohn carried. “Of course, everyone puts metal around their shields now.”
“I took a Bendertuk shield with me to Pinch Hall,” Tejohn said in a low voice.
“You did? I had no idea. Not with that lion of theirs, I hope.”
“Song knows I scraped it clean,” Tejohn said. “It was the ugliest shield I ever carried, but I loved that bronze rim.”
“I wish I could have followed you,” the old man said. “But there were others who needed the sleepstones more, and by the time I got my turn, it was all over. Of course, we were fighting mostly with Gerrit colors by then. The Finstels had already fought so many battles.”
“Too many good men were lost.”
“Song knows what they did.” The old man held up a long pole, and Arla took it from him. “Heading down to Ussmajil?” he asked. This time, Tejohn was expecting it; the name meant Splashtown in the original Finshto. But the old fellow didn’t wait for a response. “I didn’t want to give you a little rowboat. They’re too easy for an inexperienced man to tip, no offense, my tyr.”
“None taken.”
“Thank you kindly, my tyr. I have this little barge here. It’s sized for one and a small cargo, that cargo being you and your packs. Just stay toward the center and keep near the western bank and it’ll do you just fine.”
Coml’s second had already slipped away, heading back over the bridge toward the pink walls of Caarilit. The dockhand helped Tejohn and Arla position themselves properly, then he set their packs and Tejohn’s shield in the center of the barge.
“Thank you, soldier,” Tejohn said. “Tell me, what’s your name?”
“Uls Ulstrik,” the old fellow answered, touching his hand to his heart.
“Not the Ulstriks who grew apricot trees at the south end of Sunset Ridge?”
Uls’s face became grave. “Them’s cousins of mine, my Tyr. They was killed in the first days, along with so many others.”
Tejohn felt a flush of shame. “Fire and Fury, what a fool I am to say such a thing.” Of course the Ulstriks had been killed. Everyone at that end of the valley had been murdered, including Tejohn’s own.
“My tyr,” Uls answered, “if you’re a fool, I hope we have ten thousand more fools just like you. The man who made Willim Bendertuk break his own spear across his knee will never seem a fool to me. Safe journey, my tyr. Keep to the west bank, and mind those Finstels.”
Tejohn could not conceal his surprise. Was the fellow warning him against his own people? Those were dangerous words to say, and the fact that he’d risked them said much about his character.
Arla pushed them both away from the dock, and Uls turned and walked back beneath the bridge to his duties. Soon, he was too far away for Tejohn to see.
“My tyr,” Arla said quietly, “How far do you think we should go?”
“Out of sight of the fort, I think. Coml might be arrogant, but he’s not stupid enough to murder us where his soldiers might see.”
Arla cleared her throat. “One thing I have learned, my tyr, is that it’s never wise to bet on the intelligence of a tyr’s relations. I’d be able to concentrate much better on keeping my balance if you would sling your shield on your back, just in case the commander back there gave his men Witt arrows.”
That hadn’t occurred to Tejohn. He slung the shield just as she suggested.
The Wayward turned eastward, then westward again. Tejohn thought the fort would be out of sight by now, but Arla did not think the cover along the banks was thick enough, and he had no choice but to trust her judgment.
After another wide turning, she pointed to a spot where the trees bent far over the water. “Over there, perhaps?”
“Western bank, scout. I’m not going to leave a barge--even one with a hole in the bottom--on the... What is that?”
He pointed ahead to a pale purple blur on the far eastern shore ahead of them. Arla immediately laid the pole across the barge and began to string her bow.
“Save your arrows,” Tejohn said quietly, “unless it comes for us.”
She nodded and finished stringing her bow. Tejohn quietly used the blunt end of his spear to keep them close to the western bank.
As they continued downstream, slowly, the lilac blur came into view. It was, just as he thought, a grunt. Not a dark blue one with a ridged back, this was one of the original invaders. He was startled once again by the size of it.
Water lapped noisily against the barge hull, catching the beast’s attention. It looked up at them and roared, charging a step or two into the muddy river’s edge.
Arla drew back her bow. “My tyr?”
“Not yet,” Tejohn said.
The
grunt splashed about in the water, then climbed back onto the shore. It couldn’t float, Tejohn realized. It wanted to spread its curse, but it was not so single-minded that it could be tricked into drowning itself. It glanced around frantically, trying to find a way to get to them.
It raced downstream along the bank toward a large tree that leaned over the water, then leaped into the branches. The canopy trembled under its weight; it could not safely climb more than a few paces over the river.
The grunt stared at them, its expression intent and... Fire and Fury, it looked almost as though it was memorizing their faces.
It did not follow them around the next bend in the river.
“Put away your arrow,” Tejohn said. “Are we far enough from the fort?”
The scout glanced behind her, then slid the arrow into the quiver at her hip. “Yes, my Tyr.”
Tejohn poled them onto a marshy bank in the shelter of a pair of trees. They carried their supplies onto dry ground, then flipped the barge. It was heavier than Tejohn expected. He found a heavy rock with a narrow edge, broke through the bottom, then dropped stones into it until it sank.
For a brief, odd moment, Tejohn felt the urge to apologize to Uls. A month ago, he wouldn’t have given a thought to the feelings of an old servant who was responsible for a little boat but didn’t own it. “Scout, do you see a trail in the hills above?”
She scanned the rocky hill to the west. They would have to walk over or around it, but Tejohn wasn’t farsighted enough to pick a path.
He relied on her, just as he relied on the fort stewards, the miners like Passlar Breakrock, the old soldiers with nowhere to turn like Uls Ulstrik. Tejohn had lived too long in the palace. He’d gotten used to living high up and, like the Italgas and landed tyrs, had stopped thinking about those he stood on.
“This way, my tyr.” After a brief but difficult climb, they came upon a deer path and followed it along the rim of the spur.
The Way Into Chaos: Book One of the Great Way Page 37
