Just the birds, feeding on the bodies of her fallen friends.
That horrid thought set Pony into violent motion. She set her legs again and pushed with every ounce of strength she had, groaning but too angry to consider the implications of her noise should the goblins still be around.
The beam lifted an inch and shifted to the side, but Pony could not maintain its weight and it came down heavily, with a decidedly final thud. Pony knew that she could not move it again from this new angle, and so she didn't even try. Now she squirmed and squeezed. She got her arm through, then her head and one shoulder, and held there for a moment, trying to catch her breath, so relieved to have her face, at least, out in the open sunlight once again.
That relief lasted only until the girl glanced around. This was Dundalis - she knew that logically - but it was no place Pony had ever seen before. All that remained of Elbryan's house was a few beams and the stone foundation; all that remained of Dundalis was a few beams and a few stones.
And bodies. Pony only saw a couple from this angle, a goblin and an older woman, but the stench of death hung as thickly in the air as the smoke from the fires. A substantial voice within Pony's head told her to crawl back into the hole, to curl up and cry, perhaps even to die, for death - be it heaven, be it empty blackness - had to be preferable to this.
She spent a long while halfway in and halfway out, teetering on the edge of hysteria, of hopelessness. She made up her mind simply to crawl back in, but something, some inner resolve the young woman did not yet understand, would not let her.
Again came the wriggling, the tearing of clothes and scraping of skin, the frantic pull and twist that, at last, freed her from the hole. And then came the next long pause, lying on the ground on her back, her thoughts swirling down a multitude of paths, every one of which seemed to lead to no place but despair.
With great effort, Pony pulled herself up from the ground and walked from between the piles of rubble that had been the houses of Olwan Wyndon and Shane McMichael. The main road remained, crushed stones and packed dirt carefully edged for drainage, and that alone confirmed to Pony that she was indeed in Dundalis, in the remains of what had been her home. Not a single structure stood. Not a single person or even a horse remained alive. Nor were there any living goblins or giants, Pony, realized, with small relief. Only the vultures, dozens and dozens, some circling overhead, most on the ground feasting, tearing at skin that had been warm to Pony's touch just the day before, pecking at eyes that had locked with her own, shared gaze and shared thought.
Pony turned with a start, visualizing the fight on the road, the last she had seen of her father. There were the bodies; she saw Olwan, crumpled and broken in the same spot where she had seen him fall. And then she could look no more, fearing that she would find Thomas Ault, her father dear, among the dead. Of course he was dead, Pony told herself, and so was her mother, and so was Elbryan, and so was everyone.
The girl, feeling so helpless and so little, nearly fell to the ground, but again that stubborn instinct kept her upright. She noted the great numbers of dead goblins, even a couple of giants. One group in particular, a pile of many monstrous corpses together in the road, posed a curious riddle. They had fallen as if they had formed a defensive ring, yet there were no human bodies near them. Just the goblins and a lone giant, slumped together, soaked in blood from the many small wounds on each corpse. Pony thought she should go closer to investigate, but she hadn't the stomach.
She stood and stared, and a numbness came over her, stealing her emotions. The riddle was lost, for Pony was too exhausted to pause and ponder it, to pause and think of anything - too defeated and bedraggled to do anything except stagger out of the village, moving south along the road, then turning west at the first fork, moving toward the dying sun.
Subconscious instinct alone guided her. Weedy Meadow was the closest village, but Pony really didn't think that the place would be any different. Surely all the world had fallen to ruin; surely all the people were dead, were being pecked and torn by vultures.
Sometime later, as dusk descended, Pony's senses warned her that she was not alone. To the right, she saw a slight shiver of one small bush. It could have been a ground squirrel, the girl reasoned, but she knew in her heart that it was not.
To the left came a titter, a tiny voice whispering softly.
Pony kept moving straight ahead. She cursed herself for not having had the wisdom to collect a weapon before leaving Dundalis. It wouldn't matter, she quickly reminded herself, and perhaps this way, defenseless, the end would come more quickly.
So she went on, stubbornly, looking straight ahead, ignoring any signals that she might not be alone, that goblins might be behind every tree, watching her, laughing at her, taking good measure of her, perhaps even arguing among themselves over which one would be given the pleasure of the kill - and the pleasures that might come before the kill.
That thought nearly dropped Pony to the ground, reminded her of Elbryan, of the moments before the disaster, of the kiss . . .
Then she cried. She walked straight ahead, kept her shoulders squared.
But she could not deny the tears, and the guilt and the pain.
She slept fitfully at the base of a tree, in open view right beside the road, shivering from the cold, from the nightmares that she feared would haunt her forever.
Those dreams were mercifully gone when she awoke, and no images could she conjure of the village, of her family and her friends. All that the girl knew was that she was out on the road somehow, somewhere.
She knew that she was in pain, physical and emotional, but the reason for the latter escaped her conscious memory.
She didn't even know her own name.
The giant was there, facedown in the blood and dirt, in the same place Elbryan had last seen it, just a few feet from where he had fainted. At that horrible moment, the monster had been lifting its club to squash Elbryan; now it was dead.
And so were a dozen other goblins, scattered all about the area.
Elbryan sat up and rubbed his face, noting the cut and dried blood on one of his hands. His thoughts careened suddenly back to Pony and the kiss at the twin pines atop the ridge. Then they came full force back to the present, through those minutes of horror - the goblins in the woods; poor Carley; the smoke from Dundalis; Jilseponie running, running for the town, screaming every step. It had all been so unreal, had all happened much too quickly. In the span of a few unbelievable minutes, Elbryan's entire world had been thrown down.
The young man knew all that, as he sat in the dirt, staring curiously at the somehow dead giant. He knew nothing would ever be as it had been.
He struggled to his feet and approached the fomorian tentatively, though he realized from the amount of blood and from the absolute stillness of the creature that it was certainly dead. He moved to the head and knelt, studying the many wounds.
Puncture wounds, as from arrows, only much smaller. Elbryan recalled the humming sound; he conjured an image of buzzing bees. He found the nerve to inspect more closely, even to put his thumb on the edge of one prominent wound and push the skin back.
"No bolt," he remarked aloud, trying to make sense of it all. Again he thought of bees - giant bees, perhaps, that stung and stung and flew away. He sat back again and began a quick count, then shook his head helplessly when he realized the giant had at least twenty such wounds on its exposed face alone and no doubt countless others all over its fifteen-foot frame.
The young man simply had no answers now. He had thought himself dead, and yet he was not. He had thought Dundalis doomed . . .
Elbryan scrambled to his feet, did a quick check of the dead goblins in the area. He was somewhat surprised, and a bit humbled, to find that even the two he had struggled against, even the one he had thought slain by his own sword, also showed many mysterious puncture wounds.
"Bees, bees, bees," Elbryan chanted, a litany of hope, as he dashed from the area, down the slope toward Dundalis. The words, th
e hopes, fell away in a stifled gasp as soon as the village, the charred rubble that had been the village, came into view.
He knew that they were dead, all dead. Even from this distance, fifty yards from the northernmost point of the village, Elbryan felt in his heart that no one could have survived such a disaster. His face ashen, his heart pounding - but offering no energy to arms that hung slack at his side or to legs that seemed suddenly as if they each weighed a hundred pounds - the young man, feeling very much a little lost boy, walked home.
He recognized every body that had not been caught by flames - the parents of his friends; the younger men, just a few years older than he; and the younger boys and girls who had been taken from patrol by their parents. On the charred threshold of one ruin, he saw a tiny corpse, a blackened ball. Carralee Ault, Pony's cousin, Elbryan realized, for she was the only baby in town. Carralee's mother lay facedown in the road, just a few feet from the threshold where lay the baby. She had been trying to get back to Carralee, Elbryan understood, and they had cut her down as she had watched the house, her house, burn down about her baby.
Elbryan forced himself to stay away from such vivid empathy, realizing that he could easily lose himself in utter despair. The task became all the harder as he approached one large group of slain goblins and giants on the road, as he walked past the area of heaviest fighting, as he walked past the body of Olwan, his father.
Elbryan could see his father had died bravely, and understanding his father's stern and forceful way, he was not surprised. Olwan had died fighting.
But that mattered not at all to Elbryan.
The boy staggered on toward the ruin of his own house. He snorted, a crying chuckle, as he saw that the foundation, of which his father was so proud, was intact, though the walls and ceiling had collapsed. Elbryan picked his way into the still-smoldering ruin. One of the back corners had somehow escaped the flames, and when the roof had fallen in, it had angled down, leaving a clear space.
He pushed aside a timber gingerly, when he heard the remaining roof groan in protest and went down to his knees, peering in. He could make out two forms, lying against the very back corner.
"Please, please," Elbryan whispered, picking a careful path to that spot.
The goblin, the closest form, was dead, its head bashed. Unreasonable hope pushing him on, Elbryan scrambled over the thing to the next body, sitting in the very corner.
It was his mother, dead as well - of smoke, Elbryan soon realized, for she had not a wound on her. In her hand she clutched her heavy wooden spoon. Often had she waved that thing at the children, Elbryan and his friends, when they were bothering her, threatening to warm their bottoms.
She had never used it, Elbryan only then remembered. Not until this day, he silently added, looking at the slain goblin.
All the images of her in life waving that spoon, shaking her head at her impetuous son, teasing Olwan, and sharing a wink with Jilseponie as if they knew a secret about Elbryan came flooding back to the boy in an overwhelming jumble. He moved in further and sat beside his mother, shifting her stiffening form that he might hug her one final time.
And he cried. He cried for his mother and father, for his friends and their parents, for all of Dundalis. He cried for Pony, not knowing that if he had rushed into town as soon as he had awakened, he would have spotted the battered girl stumbling down the south road.
And Elbryan cried for himself, his future bleak and uncertain.
He was in that corner of his house, that tiny link to what had been, cradling his mother, when the sun went down, and there he remained all through the cold night.
CHAPTER 7
The Blood of Mather
"The blood of Mather!" scoffed Tuntun, an elf maiden so slight of build that she could easily hide behind a third-year sapling. Tuntun's normally melodic voice turned squeaky whenever she got excited, and several of the others cringed and some even put their hands over their sensitive, pointed ears. Tuntun pretended not to notice. She batted her huge blue eyes and her translucent wings, and crossed her slender arms imperiously over her tiny, pointy breasts.
"Mather's nephew," replied Belli'mar Juraviel, never taking his gaze from Elbryan as the boy moved about the ruins of his house. Juraviel didn't have to look Tuntun's way to know her pose, for the obstinate elf struck it often.
"His father fought well," remarked a third of the gathering. "Were it not for the fomorian-"
"Mather would have slain the fomorian," Tuntun interrupted.
"Mather wielded Tempest," Juraviel said grimly. "The boy's father had nothing more than a simple club."
"Mather would have choked the fomorian with his bare-"
"Enough, Tuntun!" demanded Juraviel; even in a shout, the elf's voice rang like the clear chime of a bell. It didn't bother Juraviel, or any of the others, how loud their conversation had become, for though Elbryan was barely fifteen yards away from them, they had erected a sound shield, and no human ear could have discerned anything more than a few chirps, squeaks, and whistles, sounds easily enough explained away by the natural creatures in the area. "Lady Dasslerond has declared this one a fitting choice," Juraviel finished, calming himself. "It is not your place to argue."
Tuntun knew she could not win this debate, so she held fast her defiant nose and began tapping her foot on the ground, all the while staring at young Elbryan and not liking what she saw. Tuntun had little fondness for the big, bumbling humans. Even Mather, a man she had trained and had known for more than four decades, had more often than not driven her away with his pretentious purpose and stoicism. Now, looking at Elbryan, this sniveling youngster, Tuntun could barely stand the thought of seven years of training!
Why did the world need rangers, anyway?
Belli'mar Juraviel suppressed a chuckle, for he liked seeing Tuntun flustered. He knew the maiden would make his life miserable if he embarrassed her now, though, so he leaped up high, his little wings beating hard, lifting him a dozen feet from the ground; he came to rest on a low branch, a better vantage point for watching the movements of this boy who would replace Mather.
Mercifully, Elbryan's grief had brought with it exhaustion, and the boy had found some sleep. He remained in the house, cradling his mother, gently stroking her hair even after the first waves of slumber had come over him. He awoke with the dawn - and with resolve.
He came out of the house, eyes still moist with tears, his mother's body in his arms. Now Elbryan steeled himself against the scene of devastation. He found strength in duty, and that duty lay in burying the dead. He put his sword in his belt, found a spade; and began to dig. He buried his parents first, side by side, though the task of filling the grave, of putting cold dirt on the bodies of those whom he had most loved, nearly destroyed him.
He found Thomas Ault and several other men next, and only then did the already weary youngster realize the scope of his task. Dundalis had been home to more than a hundred folk; how long would it take to bury them all? And what of those youngsters who had been slaughtered on the hill? And of the other patrol, who had battled in the wide pine valley among the caribou moss?
"One day," Elbryan decided, and even his own voice sounded strange to him in this surreal situation. He would spend just this one day gathering the bodies, collecting them for a mass grave. That would have to suffice.
But then what? Elbryan wondered. What might he do after the task was completed? Where might he go? He thought of Weedy Meadow, a day of hard marching. He thought of pursuing the goblins, if he could find any tracks. Elbryan shook that away immediately, knowing the rage within him, the hunger for revenge, could cloud his judgment, could consume him. His next task was clear to him, for the moment at least, and though it pained him immeasurably to think of success, he knew he had to find the body of Jilseponie Ault, his dear Pony.
And so he searched, pulling corpses from the ruins of houses, collecting the fallen and laying the bodies side by side on the field that had been Bunker Crawyer's corral. Half the day slipped
by, but Elbryan had no thoughts of food. His search for Jilseponie grew more agitated as the hours slipped by. Soon he was bypassing the closest bodies, leaving them where they lay, focusing his search, though he realized that in his desperation, he was, perhaps, being inefficient and he had little time to waste. Such a scene of carnage would no doubt bring other scavengers - great cats and bears, perhaps - and Elbryan couldn't be sure that the goblins wouldn't return. So he ran on, hauling bodies, peeking under rubble, kicking aside piles of dead goblins to see who might be underneath. He tried to keep a mental note of his macabre collection, tried to match it against the people of Dundalis by sorting their names house by house.
The task overwhelmed him; he couldn't be sure, couldn't even be certain of the identity of so many of the charred bodies. One of them must have been Pony.
By mid-afternoon, Elbryan knew he was defeated, knew he could not hope to properly bury all the corpses. He had two score lined up in the field, and so he decided to bury them alone. The rest...
Elbryan sighed helplessly. He took the spade, went to the field, and began to dig. He transferred the grief, rising again within him, into rage, and went at the earth as if it, and not the goblins, had assaulted Dundalis, had stolen from him everything in the world that was familiar and comforting. Everything, everyone that he loved.
His muscles complained, but he didn't know it; his stomach groaned from lack of food, but he didn't hear it.
Even Tuntun was impressed by his stamina.
Elbryan lay down to sleep at the base of the ridge that night, outside Dundalis. "Pony," he said aloud, needing to hear a voice, any voice, even his own.
The elves quietly encircling him paused and cocked curious ears. Tuntun thought the boy might be calling to his mount, but Juraviel, who had been more attentive to the boy and his relationships, knew the truth.
Demon Wars 01 - The Demon Awakens Page 8
