“Ena bruer,” Aedan called: I tire. He was losing strength faster than Rork. He had hoped to wear the man down, but he could see that it was not going to work. They needed to do something else, and quickly.
“Nega ra loyi. Ena lok,” she said: Make him stand. I throw.
Aedan knew that this would leave her defenceless if she missed. But he could think of nothing better. He stopped retreating, braced his feet and took his guard. To his right, Liru stood. He knew she was estimating the turn of the dagger and measuring the distance to her target. He had seen her practicing. She could hit a small tree from that distance eight or nine times out of ten. Getting the turns right was always the tricky part. The first throw could sometimes strike on the handle or the length of the blade. As well as getting this rotation right on the first throw, she would need aim for neck or head – small targets. She was not strong enough to pierce armour.
Aedan glanced down to his left. The parapet was low – barely over his knee – and beyond that, air. Deep air. A long free, uninterrupted drop to the ground.
Rork approached, keeping to the edge. He could not afford to let Liru circle him again. He prodded fast and hard. Aedan parried, weakly, dropping to one knee. Rork grinned and drew back, preparing to run Aedan through.
Liru’s action was quick, no swaying or lurching, just a sliding back of her arm and an even throw. The dagger sang as the blade flashed in the late sun, sliced through the air and cut Rork across the back of the neck.
The turn had been a fraction too slow and where he should have received the point, it was the edge that struck his skin, leaving no more than a shallow gash. The dagger glanced off. Aedan saw it spinning away over the edge, growing smaller and smaller until he lost it against the distant grass.
He staggered to his feet and braced himself. He did not see a way through this, but he would not cringe again.
“It was a good throw. You did well,” he said to Liru, not caring now that Rork understood.
Liru was moving around on the platform, but Aedan could not afford to look. His eyes were fixed on the swishing longsword.
“It was a pig of a throw!” she yelled. “But this one won’t miss.”
Aedan and Rork both turned to glimpse something streaking towards Rork’s head. He raised his hands to ward it off, stepped backwards, and caught his heel on the low parapet. With a mounting scream and swinging arms, he tipped slowly away and dropped into the emptiness beyond the platform, twisting and tumbling through the air. The cries faded, faded, and then ended abruptly.
Aedan could find little pity for this soldier who would have murdered children, though, he decided, he was feeling a lot less like a child.
Liru came up and guided him away from the edge.
“How did you find another weapon?” Aedan mumbled, remembering now that he still had a knife he could have given her.
“Hush, Aedan. You have lost too much blood. I need to get help to bring you down those stairs or you will fall.”
She made him lie down, then bound the wounds with strips cut from his shirt.
“Don’t attempt the stairs, you hear me?” she said.
Aedan looked at her.
“Promise me Aedan.”
“Promise,” he said.
She knelt down and put her hand on his good shoulder, looking at him with uncharacteristic softness. “Because if you do, I really will mix poison into the salve.” She smiled in the simple, direct way he knew so well, the rare smile he had missed for so long.
He smiled back.
Then she squeezed his shoulder and left.
Aedan felt happy tears slipping down his cheeks as her footsteps receded. If his chest had not ached so, he might have laughed.
The late summer air was warm on his skin. He closed his eyes. Time passed, and he began to drift.
But before he could find sleep, something disturbed him – a sound that did not accord with Liru’s return or wind in the ivy. It was a soft, drawn-out scraping, and with every breath he took, it grew louder.
Long shadows stretched over the grass. They were the shadows of giant statues, silent watchmen that were even more imposing for their silence – a soldier with a spear, a robed and hooded man clutching a twisted knife, a strange lizard-like being with terrible claws and a tail, a giant with a club hidden behind his back, and many more that encircled the fortress. But it was the giant that broke the stillness. At first it might have seemed a shadow, a trick of the light, but a closer look would have revealed that a shape was moving, flowing like a dark stream of liquid rock over the statue’s back. Flowing upward.
Aedan’s dreamy thoughts vanished and he propped himself up on his elbows. The sound was growing louder, drawing nearer. He could almost feel it in the stone now. He decided that, in spite of Liru’s warning, he had no choice but to attempt the stairs.
The numbing battle-fire had cooled, and his wounds ached as he turned over – and froze. The trapdoor was only a few feet away, yet it was too far. He would not make it.
Each lemon-sized eye glittered like a gem in the sunlight, even more radiant for the setting of leathery scales which were still coated in the museum’s dust.
Aedan held his breath.
The snake glided swiftly around him, more and more of its long body being pulled up onto the platform until he was surrounded.
As slowly as he could, he rolled to his side and drew his knife – Liru had taken the sword. Then, by gradual inches, he pushed his weight up onto one knee and slid a foot out and forward. That would provide the balance he would need. The snake had stopped coiling. It was facing away, but turned and watched him now.
He remembered how Osric had aimed for the eye. This would be a much easier throw – a half turn. He rotated the knife in his fingers until he was holding it by the blade. If the snake held still during the movement of his arm he would be unlikely to miss, and the eye would be ruined.
But the snake did not hold still.
It rose up, solid as a tree trunk, and looked down at him. The knife shook in Aedan’s hand, but he held onto it and fixed his attention within a ridged and featured iris, concentrating on the large, round pupil in which he and all of Kultûhm were clearly reflected. The way the head faced, the right side presented the most direct target. But as he took aim, the strangest feeling of reluctance came over him.
It was in those eyes. This was not the mere calculation of a predator. The look of intelligence he had seen or imagined in the face of the great fox – it was the same here. These creatures were not just bigger. There was more that was changed in them than size.
But while that colossal serpentine monster had chilled him with its air of ancient cunning, this animal had the look of a child – full of questions, full of awe, drinking in the world around it, gulping as fast as it can and still being flooded. And the way it was looking at him was almost the way a child … but that was impossible.
Relaxing his throwing arm, he let his eyes travel over the creature before him. This was the snake he had woken. The marks of his hands still lingered on the dusty sides of its magnificent head. Frog indeed!
How long had it slept? For dust to gather like this, it must have been years well beyond his lifetime, or many lifetimes. What was it thinking while holding his gaze?
And that was when he had the most overwhelming impression that the snake was not only thinking but speaking, or trying to speak, though it had no words.
It lowered its head, one tentative inch at a time, and approached his. Every master in the academy would have condemned what Aedan now did. He loosened his grip on the blade until it had almost dropped, and then reached out the other hand. The snake blinked, watched for some time, and began to lean forward.
It was the growing racket of footsteps from the stairs that broke the spell. The snake swung across and peered down through the trapdoor in a movement so fast that there was no doubting its strength. It turned back to Aedan, this time pausing only inches before him, then darted over the edge, its
long body whisking around the platform and slipping over the parapet. Aedan crawled to where it had disappeared. He looked over to see a dark trunk gliding along the body of the giant, around its club, and down towards the plain.
“Aedan! What are you doing over there? Come back here!” It was Liru using her angry-nurse voice, one that normally produced instant obedience. But this time Aedan beckoned for her to join him. She, Senbert and Holt approached the parapet at a crouch and looked down where Aedan was pointing. From this height it looked like an earthworm or a centipede slipping through grass towards the fortress. When it reached the stone walls, it rose up, pressed itself into a corner between wall and turret, and threaded its way up as easily as a man would climb a ladder.
“What made you look for it?” Liru asked.
There was no reply. Aedan had lost consciousness.
It was the restful sounds of a camp that awoke him – crackling fire, wind-shaken leaves, quiet talk. When he smelled stew, he tried to sit up, only to groan and flop back down again. There was another fire in the camp – it was located in his shoulder. And his head felt like it had been boiled. In fact, his whole body seemed to have been subjected to some horrible torture and drained of strength.
Liru rushed over and put a hand to his forehead.
“The food is not ready yet. I’ll give you a bowl when it’s done. You rest now. Are you thirsty?”
“As sand,” he croaked.
Liru handed him a waterskin and Aedan drank until he had to break for air. When he passed the skin back it was empty.
“Chew this,” Liru said, putting something that tasted like a stick into his mouth.
“What is it?”
“Willow bark. Might help with the pain.”
“By distracting me with the taste?”
Tyne came over and sat down, but did not attempt to nurse him. She appeared almost to defer to Liru. Aedan looked puzzled at this and Tyne read his expression.
“Liru knows more about the physician’s arts than I do,” she said. “I expect she knows more than her instructors at the academy.”
“I can believe that,” said Aedan, talking around the half-chewed bark and noting with amusement how Liru refused to show any bashfulness at being the subject of the discussion.
“Liru told us what you did, Aedan. Rork was a well-known fighter, and a ruthless one. None of us would have enjoyed facing him. Except Osric perhaps. We are all very impressed with you. You overcame your fear. When Osric heard what happened he looked as proud as a father.”
“It was Liru who knocked Rork off the platform.”
“We can all see by the injuries where his attention was focussed. Liru would never have had her chance had he not been completely fixed on you, and that could not have happened unless you were a threat to him. It was your courage that gave Liru the opportunity she needed. Both of you have earned great respect.”
Aedan had lost too much blood to colour with the praise, but he did feel Tyne’s words warming him. “Where are we?” he asked after a brief silence.
“About seven or eight miles from the fortress,” she replied. “Osric, despite his injuries, wanted to cover more ground, but Liru has been protecting you with some ferocity. She did not think you were fit to travel any further with your loss of blood. She said that if we carried on she would remain here with you. She’s a very stubborn girl.”
Aedan smiled.
“It was amusing to see them glaring at each other,” Tyne continued. “I don’t think Osric has experienced that in a while.”
“I did not wish to be insubordinate,” said Liru, “but the general, he was worried about uncertainties, and it was a certainty that Aedan would not last long being bounced around on a horse’s back. Among my people, it is the doctor who makes these decisions.”
“Don’t worry,” said Tyne, “Osric is not angry. He suspected it was the right call from your first objection. If he had really believed you wrong he would have tied you to your horse and led it himself – for your own good.” She rose and sniffed her coat. “I’m going to wash this reeking slime off. Don’t want it spoiling the taste of supper.”
“No!” said Aedan, sitting up and collapsing again with another groan. “Don’t wash it off. Nobody must wash it off. The wolves – last time it was the smell that kept them at a distance. Maybe they are afraid of it.”
“But it stinks!”
“So does the belly of a wolf. And after the belly it only gets worse.”
“Aedan!”
“Could the slime draw the serpent?” Liru asked.
“It didn’t follow us last time. But the wolves did.”
Tyne sat back down again, wrinkling her nose.
“Tell me,” Aedan said, trying to ignore the pounding in his head. “What happened in the staging room? How did you get past the soldiers?”
“They didn’t give much trouble,” Tyne mumbled.
“Oh yes they did,” said Liru, interrupting as she might do to an older sister. “Fergal told me what really happened. When he and Tyne got Osric to the bottom of the stairway, they stopped at the tips of those two soldiers’ swords – they’d armed themselves again, though the one had to use his left hand. Osric was barely able to stay on his feet, and when they tried to stab him, Fergal said it was as if someone had slapped a wasp nest. Tyne was everywhere at once. By the time Fergal had found a weapon there was nobody left to fight.”
Tyne was far less comfortable with being discussed; she was studying some arbitrary point in the dark canopy of leaves.
“Osric was in danger you say?” Aedan asked. “Then I’m not really surprised.”
Liru grinned.
Tyne glanced at them and blushed. “Ooh, you two are merciless brats!” she said.
Later, Aedan finished three helpings of a stew that tasted of beans and barley, and drained a second waterskin. Liru was delighted, saying an appetite like that was good news to any doctor.
During the second watch, Aedan’s sleep became shallow. Something was disturbing him, a sound that did not belong in his dreams. His fingers closed around the knife handle. He opened his eyes without moving and listened. There it was again, a soft metallic scrape. He turned his head as quietly as he could. Tyne was on watch. Her tall outline moved gracefully on the far side of the camp. But the noise he had heard was nearer. He glanced towards the fireplace. Something seemed to be in front of the embers, a dark silhouette, but he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it.
It moved.
Aedan jolted with such violence he almost lost his knife, but he did not lose his voice and shouted for all he was worth. He tried to jump to his feet and, instead, collapsed in a spasm of aches. The rest of the party was up in no time, weapons in hand, converging on the fireplace as Aedan pointed and continued shouting.
The creature stayed where it was, either unaware or supremely confident.
Aedan was prepared for a horrifying attack – an explosion of fangs and claws and a wild, thrashing escape, or a whirr of blades and screams – but he was not prepared for the voice that now spoke from within the crouching shape.
“Is there any more stew?” it asked. The voice was familiar, yet it could not be.
“Merter?” Tyne’s voice trembled.
“Sorry for sneaking in. I didn’t want to wake anyone after –”
That was as far as she let him get before smothering him with a weepy hug. Poor Merter was crushed with embraces, handshakes and back-claps until he looked almost panicked with claustrophobia.
The fire was rebuilt and everyone settled down to hear the explanation.
“After that cage dropped away – Oh, and thank you Tyne for getting me out, else I’d be done – I fell in stages until the structure jammed just long enough for me to catch onto the wall. It was just at the roof of the cave and I could see those giant coils directly beneath me – that creature is even bigger than I’d thought. I heard you calling but I decided that if I yelled back I’d be as likely to get the beast’s attention a
s yours, so I moved into a corner of the rock channel and started climbing up. The walls were rough and the holds were good. The corner also made things a lot easier, but it still took most of the afternoon.
“By the time I got out, it was late and the fortress was still as a crypt. I decided not to follow the highway of prints you’d left through the dust and debris because I was afraid you might reset the locks on the entrance and I have no idea how to open them from the inside. I headed west instead, the main gate. I knew wolves would be about, and seeing as I’d lost my sword in the cave, I broke into a large house and took two bronze display swords – the steel swords were all rusted to nothing, and these are really fine weapons.”
Aedan looked at the short, falchion-like blades still covered in their thin layer of pale corrosion.
“It was dark by the time I found my way out the main gate. Locating you took a while.”
“How did you do it?” asked Tyne.
“Strong breeze off the mountain. I stayed downwind, ran until I smelled fire and stew, headed upwind.”
Osric laughed and cut off abruptly, clutching his ribs with a grimace. “I thought you’d be peering at bent blades of grass and listening to their complaints about hooves,” he said.
“Too hungry. And I’m still hungry. Will someone please –”
Osric tossed him a saddlebag. Merter dug inside until he found something edible and set to work. After a few mouthfuls he sent everyone to bed and took the watch. Tyne objected but he told her to shut up and sleep because he owed her his life. That earned him another hug after which he melted away into the surrounding darkness without even the snap of a twig or the crunch of gravel.
“I wish I could move like that,” Tyne complained.
“Even mice envy him,” said Osric, “I think you were right about him being part cat. Frankly, I’m not actually that surprised to see him alive and well. Probably still has several lives to go. At least with him snooping around out there we can afford some deep sleep. And we’ll need it. Tomorrow we must cover a good thirty miles, injuries or not. I won’t risk another night this close to the fortress.”
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 65
