“Probably,” said River.
“Maybe we should go it alone,” Talen suggested.
“Get moving,” she said and gave him a shove.
* * *
They had to run to keep up with Harnock, and it was tricky watching both the trail ahead and keeping an eye on Nashrud, but he soon realized that problem was also a blessing because focusing on it kept his mind off his hunger and the smell of River’s and Harnock’s souls.
They sped through the woods. However, their pace was evidently too slow, for after a few miles, Nashrud began to gain on them. Talen reported this to Harnock who only growled and lengthened his stride. Talen tried to reach for his Fire again, and this time was able to nudge it, but only just a little. However, he wasn’t the one to hold them back. River was the first to flag. Even though she could multiply, she was still weak from her poisonous brush with death, and she called for a stop. She bent over panting, resting her hands on her knees. Talen wiped his brow and put his hands on his hips, happy for the breather.
Harnock doubled back. “We can’t rest,” he said.
“She’s doing the best she can,” Talen said.
“It’s not good enough,” Harnock said. He turned to River. “Give him your pack.”
When she didn’t comply quickly enough, he pulled it from her and handed it to Talen.
“Raise one arm,” he said to her.
River raised her arm. Harnock grabbed her wrist and leg, then picked her up and laid her across his broad shoulders like she was a beam. He sniffed. “You’re in heat,” he said.
“I . . .” River said, a bit taken aback. “I don’t know. I guess it could be that time.”
“It’s that time,” he said and growled, then set off at a lope.
In heat? Talen thought. Lords. Then he realized Harnock was disappearing fast. Talen reached out for his Fire, despairing that he was truly damaged, but this time his Fire responded. It didn’t leap to his command, but something was much better than nothing at all. Vigor slowly began to trickle into his limbs. He shouldered River’s pack and struck out after the two of them.
Up to this point, he had trusted weaves to keep him safe. To limit him. But Nashrud had all of them now, so Talen was going to have to watch himself. He let his Fire slowly build and increased his pace to keep up with Harnock.
All the while, he watched behind them with his roamling. It was so strange, and yet it felt natural. He experimented with this new part of himself—swimming, flying high and then diving back down. He moved through the tops of the trees, watched Nashrud and his men, and observed that the small flock of pale orange skir in the distance had moved closer.
He ran up hill and down dale, the two packs bouncing on his shoulders, crossed a number of streams. And as he ran, his physical thirst grew. He told himself he’d drink at the next stream, but they didn’t come to a stream. They came to a valley with a large meadow instead. One that stretched for hundreds of yards in all directions. This was another wurm field, a massive one, crisscrossed with worn trails.
Talen immediately stopped. Harnock continued with River on his shoulders.
“Hey,” Talen hissed.
“Keep up,” Harnock growled.
Talen followed him down to the edge of the meadow, then pitched his voice low. “What are we doing here?”
“We’re losing our tail,” Harnock replied. Then he set River down and sniffed the air.
“Och,” River said, putting her hands to the small of her back. “That’s a rough way to travel.”
Harnock said, “If we’re quick, there’s a way through.”
Talen thought back on his narrow escape from the previous wurm field. He thought of the creatures tearing into the dreadmen and their horses. He thought of their terrible speed. “I’m sure that’s what all the animals think.”
“Where are our visitors?” Harnock asked.
Talen had been resting his roamling in the crook of a tree. He sent it higher and looked down. A moment later, he saw Nashrud. “About a mile back.” The sickly orange skir were also closer, striking at something in another tree a few hundred yards away.
“Perfect,” Harnock said.
“You’re really sure we want to go in there?” Talen asked.
Harnock said, “Sometimes I come out here to steal their eggs. Moon was very good at it. The woodikin think they’re a delicacy. Maybe later I can show you how. Take you wurm hunting myself.”
Feed him to the wurms was more like it. “Actually,” Talen said, “I’m happy with chickens, potatoes—things that don’t try to drag you down and devour you in their holes.”
Harnock just grinned. “You’re going to go to the other side and up that slope. When you get to the top, you’ll see a white ridge a short distance to the southwest. That’s the border of the Orange Slayer woodikin tribe. I’ll meet you there. Now follow me exactly.” He turned and moved into the tall grass.
River grabbed a bowstave and one of the packs from Talen and followed Harnock into the grass.
Talen imagined the wurms below, but knew he didn’t have a choice and walked into the meadow after her. After a bit of winding, they came to a fork in the wurm trail and found a hole big enough for a horse. Harnock motioned for them to wait while he walked a bit farther down the trail.
All Talen could do was stare into the dark depths of the huge hole. He swore he saw something move down there and knew some beast was going to shoot forth at any second and grab them in its maw.
Harnock listened, sniffed the air. Then he motioned them forward. Talen was more than happy to move away from that hole until he saw that Harnock had brought them to a nest of three more holes just as large. His heart began pumping. They were deep into the meadow now.
Harnock leaned in close. “When I say run, you sprint with all the speed you can muster for the far side.”
Talen and River nodded, and then Harnock moved forward, silent as a cat, and led them down a narrow path. A short distance later, he followed a branch to the left. And then they crisscrossed over another. How Harnock knew which forks and paths to take, Talen could not guess. About them the wind hissed through the belly-high grass. A wurm sounded down in one of the holes.
Harnock led them past a disgusting mass of half-decomposed bones and fur. At first, Talen couldn’t figure out what it was, then realized it must be wurm excrement. Mixed in with the fur were teeth that looked like they came from a bear. He was still thinking on that when they came up on a hole that was making a popping sound.
Harnock raised his hand for them to stop and motioned them to step back. They waited for a moment, and then Harnock led them in another direction. Not long after that, some distance down the meadow, a thin wurm shot up into the air, trying to catch a bird that had landed in a tree. The bird fled in a storm of flapping wings, but it was too slow, and the wurm caught it midair and fell back to the ground.
The trail led them through a spot of chest-high grass. Then Talen took a step and felt the ground give way a little underneath him. He let out a small yelp of surprise and jumped to the side, rustling the dry grass loudly.
A beat passed, and then a moaning wind rose from their left, but it was not wind making the sound. Talen’s heart beat faster in his chest. Then the moaning stopped, and Talen breathed out in relief.
“Run!” Harnock shouted and pointed to the far side. “That way!”
Talen jolted with alarm, and he and River shot out along a wurm trail. Harnock bounded off along another path, yelling like a madman.
Talen glanced to see where Harnock was going and almost fell into a wurm hole, but he caught himself at the last moment and focused on keeping up with River who was running for all she was worth.
They sprinted for a hundred yards, following a winding trail. The edge of the field drew closer. And then they were out of the grass. But Talen knew they weren’t out of danger, and he urge
d River to keep running until they were well up the slope in front of them.
Behind them, the moaning in the field grew louder. Talen glanced back to see what was happening. Harnock ran with incredible speed at an angle away from the course they’d taken, drawing the wurms after him. He was all grace and muscle, his fur shining in the sun. A wurm chased through the grass toward him, but Harnock moved faster.
Another wurm rose up in front of him. Harnock drew his sword. The steel flashed, and the wurm fell into two pieces. Another wurm rose. Harnock whooped and flew straight into it, his lord’s sword glinting in the sun.
“By the Goat King’s hairy hind,” Talen said. “He truly is mad.”
River pulled on Talen. “Come on,” she said.
When they reached the top, they paused. Talen looked down with his roamling. The whole meadow hissed and moaned and roiled with wurms. Harnock was at one end shouting down a hole. He was like someone poking a wasp nest with a stick. “Should we wait for him?” Talen asked.
“He said to keep moving. And from that cacophony below, I don’t think we’ll be safe until we’re miles away from here. Let’s get to that ridge.” Then she began to jog down a well-worn animal trail.
Talen was about to follow her when an orange skir broke from its pack and swooped low over his roamling. Talen startled, darted his roamling away. But the orange skir just flew past. It was as long as a horse, and undulated, moving like a leech. Talen looked for the other skir and found them in a group a short distance off.
That had been a bit of a scare. He determined to keep his eye on the skir, blew out a breath, and headed after River. In the blue world, he kept his eyes on the trail. In the yellow world, he watched the the orange skir. It danced in the air, swooped in circles, and made a hideous odd clacking. Talen wondered if it was trying to communicate, like dolphins sometimes did with sailors. He tentatively moved his roamling toward it.
Suddenly, he felt another presence behind his roamling. He turned. Two other sickly orange skir dove at him. He thought of hawks diving at pigeons. Fear shot through him, and he turned and tried to flee, but they were moving too fast.
One of the orange skir caught him. Bit into the roamling.
Pain tore through him, and Talen gasped.
River turned. “What’s wrong?”
Talen desperately tried to break free, to escape, but the second skir fell upon him. Then the third. It felt like they were stabbing him with a dozen knives!
He cried out, and instinctively sent his other roamlings to help, to fight back. But his roamling was too far back on the trail.
He fought, yanked. The skir bit and slashed and tore. And then there was an unimaginable burning, and the whole roamling was torn away from him.
He cried out and stumbled to his knees. The pale orange skir fought over the pieces of his roamling. Then he realized his other roamlings were exposed, and he didn’t know where the other skir were. His panic swelled, and he swam his parts back down the trail for the safety of his flesh. He knew at any moment another one of the skir would rip into him, but he made it back to his body and slipped in.
Behind him, one of the large orange skir flew after his roamlings, but he was safe. He took one last look at the creature, then closed his doors and shut the yellow world out. His multiple visions focused into one view of the dirt before him. He was on his hands and knees, panting.
“Talen,” River said.
“A moment,” he said. It felt like someone had carved a huge piece out of him, leaving nothing but a screaming wound. He took a few breaths, then pushed himself up on his haunches. “We need to get away from this place.”
3
Hungers
THEY RAN DOWN the slope, their waterskins, arrow sheaves, and packs bouncing. Talen’s wound was raw with pain, and he wondered if soul bled, and if such wounds could be fatal. He thought about wolves, about one member of the pack distracting the prey while the other members sneaked up behind. Those orange skir had been working together with intelligence.
He shook his head and ran down the trail, ran beyond the sounds of the wurms in the vale and headed toward the white ridge in the distance. Every step jarred him, but as he and River ran, the tearing pain receded into a ragged ache, and he thought that maybe he wouldn’t die.
They followed animal trails and pushed through brush until they eventually worked their way up the last slope to the ridge and took shelter in a copse of trees. Talen dropped his pack and quivers and sat down. He unstopped his waterskin, and took a long drink. He still felt like someone had cut him with a knife.
River scanned the sky for crows, then turned to him. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I hope so,” he said.
“What happened?”
He told her about the skir attack. She listened, and when he was done, she said, “A person can lose part of their soul and survive.”
Talen thought about his cousin. Poor Nettle—had this been what he felt when Uncle Argoth had taken his Fire?
River continued, “But was this part of your soul or part of the soul that you’re blended with?”
“It sure felt like my soul,” he said.
She shook her head. “Maybe Harnock will know.”
They drank more water and rooted through their packs for some food. He found nothing in his, but River retrieved a cloth sack from hers. She opened the sack’s mouth. “Ah,” she said and pulled out a fat thing the size of her thumb. It looked like some small brown root with a dark bead on one end.
River held the bag out to him. He picked one of the roots up. It smelled as if it had been fried in pig fat. “Smells good,” he said. “What is it?”
“It’s the larva of a large weevil,” River said. Then she bit the whole root part off hers and tossed the bead away.
“Larva?” Talen asked.
“Harnock gets them from the woodikin. They have . . . a different texture, but they’re good.”
Talen looked down at the one he held in his hand. He saw that the dark bead was the larva’s head and that it bore powerful jaws. He was hungry, but the thought of the fat body of the larva put a damper on it.
“You need to eat it,” River said. “With all the Fire you’ve been using today, you will begin to waste. Besides, Harnock swears they are the best food for someone who is multiplied.” She picked up another larva and bit it in half, chewing with relish. She was making a show of it, obviously trying to take his mind off his wound. Off his utterly freakish nature.
He sniffed his larva and tried to think only of pig fat. “It’s a bug,” he said. “No big deal.”
And he was a blend, something not entirely human. He tried not to let that crack his composure, told himself that it was not such a big deal, and bit into the cooked grub.
The larva was crunchy and then soft. But not squishy. Harnock had fried it in herbs. The herbs were familiar, but there was another odd flavor he couldn’t place. Still, on the whole it tasted surprisingly like . . . beef marrow.
“Lovely,” he said and tossed the grub head away and took another. Then an odd flavor welled up in his mouth and for one second his stomach almost revolted, but he told himself it was beef marrow and crunched on.
“If you like this, you’ll love it when Harnock feeds us properly.”
“I can’t wait,” he said and quickly washed the grub down with water.
River gave him another, and he found that eating these things did take his mind off his pain and the unsettling fact of what had happened back on the hill. He ended up eating two handfuls of the big weevils, then River pulled two dried apricot halves from another sack. She gave one to him and kept the other for herself. The dried apricot was tangy and sweet, and Talen made sure to take tiny bites so he could savor it. When they finished, he felt, oddly enough, quite satisfied. His pain was still there, but it wasn’t as bad.
They w
aited, became restless, hiked up a bit on the ridge to see if they could get a view of where they’d come, then went back down to the copse.
“Do you think he made it out?” Talen asked. “Do you think the Divine took him?”
“Harnock knows what he’s doing,” she said.
“I hope.”
Something moved through the leaves on the forest floor just down the slope from the two of them, and Talen remembered yet again that these were not like the woods back home. He peered into the trees. Anything at all could be hiding out there in the shadows of the wood. Harnock had said this ridge was at the border of woodikin lands, so it might be a woodikin, maybe even a patrol.
They waited in silence, and whatever it was moved on.
“One of us should be scouting,” River said, “keeping an eye out.”
“Traipsing about would just draw unwanted attention,” Talen replied.
“Can you still look with your other roamlings?” she asked.
He didn’t want to. He didn’t want a repeat with those orange skir. But the two of them were just sitting here like ducks in a pond. “I’ll look,” he said.
He peeked his roamlings out of his wrists. The yellow world opened before him. He looked about for the orange skir, but there were none, so he rose to the tops of the trees in the copse. In the distance, above the wurm vale, the flock of orange skir dove and fought over things they were picking up from the vale below. The souls of dead wurms, Talen thought. Maybe those of dead dreadmen as well.
He realized he had learned firsthand why they called the yellow world perilous. He’d been a fool not to be on guard. And so now, as he rose higher into the sky, he made sure to keep one roamling turning, watching for danger in all directions.
Talen looked down and saw the shapes of what must be birds and squirrels in the blue world. He saw a family of spotted boar rooting about a tree. He did not see any woodikin, nor did he see Harnock. His wound still hurt, and the pain mixed in with his hunger for soul. He thought of Harnock’s earlier comment about smelling River in heat. Talen thought himself not much different, for he could smell River’s soul.
Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 Page 3
