The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  Lenoden felt the blood leave his face. “What can you…”

  “I think you know.”

  Horror and practicality skirmished in Lenoden’s thoughts. Witchcraft. Can I go down that path? It could solve so many problems. “What else?” he asked cautiously. “I need more. The Convocation can shield me against the accusations of some escaped knight or another, maybe even against Shona, but it won’t be enough if Josen and Eroh reach the Plateaus.”

  “I can help you take the Plateaus, if it comes to that. One battle, not a drawn out war.”

  Lenoden shook his head. “Impossible. There is only one way up the mountain, and three fortified walls along it. With their crops and livestock, they could survive a siege for years. And by the time I have a force mustered and armed, they’ll be more than ready for me.”

  “You could march in a day or two with whatever men you can gather by then. Walls fall. You have proof of that very near by.”

  “The Greenwall.” It took Lenoden a moment to understand fully—it wasn’t something that would ever have occurred to him as a possibility. “You would… use the Deeplings?” Deeplings in the Plateaus. It was an appalling thought; Lenoden imagined the monsters tearing through fields that fed hundreds of thousands of people, and his stomach tightened. But how many more lives would a war cost? Between that and giving himself up to the Aryllias, he could hardly see a choice at all. I will not die at another man’s order. “Can you… can it be done?”

  “It can. But there would be a price.”

  This time, Lenoden hardly hesitated. “Name it.”

  The old man’s smirk grew into a smile that showed every one of his teeth. “Tell me, am I wrong to believe that Duke Falloway has Windwalker blood in his veins?”

  35. A Hard Landing

  Zerill

  Zerill didn’t know where she was when she woke, but the air was cold and still and it smelled like home.

  Her body ached everywhere, and something warm and sticky trickled down her chest beneath her clothes—her wound had reopened in the fall. She tried to open her eyes, but one lid stuck, swollen and painful, and then she remembered why, and where she’d been, and what had happened. Castar. The basket. We fell. That last loomed large in her memory. She’d taken Castar’s torture without a sound, but nothing had ever scared her like the basket beginning to fall. Perhaps highlanders were used to leaving solid earth behind them, but she wasn’t, and if she had her way, she never would be.

  Except she wasn’t on solid earth even now. She could feel the surface beneath her swaying gently back and forth, and as her senses slowly returned, she realized she was still in the basket. It was suspended in midair, tipped on its side; she lay against the low-hanging edge, and the floor was a vertical wall at her feet. The fall through the mist had extinguished most of the flames, but there wasn’t much left of the balloon, just smoldering scraps of luminescent silk tangled in the vines that draped down from the boggrove canopy above. Spots of pale light in the dark, like the spiritmoss that speckled the tree-trunks.

  There was no one in the basket with her. She craned her head over the side; it was about a ten foot drop to the ground below. Some of the others were down there, but none of them were moving. Whether they were unconscious or dead, she didn’t know. Her spear was there too, stabbed into the mud between two figures that had to be Shona and Eian Gryston, by her slim figure and his white hair. And there was something more—a dark, alluring whisper somewhere beneath her pain and her fear. Somewhere down there, a Deepling was waiting, and the highlanders were in no condition to defend themselves.

  She would have to do it for them.

  The robe the highlanders had given her had caught on something and tangled her legs; she drew her knife, and slashed the cloth away at knee-length. Once she was free, she turned onto her belly and lowered herself over the edge of the basket until she was hanging by her forearms over the side. The movement pulled at the open gash across her collarbone, and she gritted her teeth against the pain. She couldn’t hold on long—besides the open wound, the muscles in her arms and abdomen were too stiff and sore, and her broken fingers offered little grip—so she just let herself drop from there. She landed in a clumsy crouch, and then collapsed on to her rear as pain lanced through her bruised ribs.

  She forced herself onto her knees, crawled toward her spear where it stood upright in the mud, and grabbed hold of it. Despite everything, it was good to feel it in her hand again. Hand over hand, she pulled herself up the haft until she was standing on her feet, and then leaned against it to steady herself.

  Josen. Where is he? Where is Eroh? Shona and Gryston lay on either side of her, and they both appeared to be breathing, but there was no sign of the prince or the boy. She needed them to be alive; that was the only thing that mattered.

  She heard something behind her. A wet ripping sound. Even before she turned she knew what it was; she’d felt its presence at the back of her thoughts since she’d awoken.

  Something large was bent over a body a dozen yards from her, on the other side of the hanging basket. A shapeless mass in the dark, tearing at the flesh in front of it. It lacked the coherent form of the other Deeplings, which was enough to identify it even though her one good eye couldn’t yet fully discern a shape from this distance. A rotborn. It was big, too, which meant it was old, and dangerous. Zerill’s heart stopped beating as she strained to identify the body it was feasting on. Not Josen or the boy. Anyone but them.

  And then she saw Josen, standing with his back against a boggrove trunk to the creature’s right side. His hands were on Eroh’s shoulders, and they were both utterly silent, staring as if mesmerized at the feeding rotborn. She hoped they were only trying to avoid attention; she feared it was something more than that.

  But they were alive.

  Relief surged through Zerill’s veins like cool water—it was all that kept her from fainting on her feet. She looked back to the feeding creature, and then she understood what she was seeing. The aviator. Travin. He’d been struck by a wingbow bolt, and the blood must have attracted the rotborn. There wasn’t much left of the man now but stray bones and scraps of meat. Even a highlander didn’t deserve that, and particularly not one who had died trying to help her, but there was no time to lament his fate. Deeplings fed quickly; soon it would be looking for its next meal.

  Run, she signed at Josen and Eroh, trying not to draw the rotborn’s attention. Neither responded. They weren’t looking at her. They were both staring at the Deepling, under its spell. The creature crunched through the aviator’s last shin-bone, straightened, and turned toward them.

  It was taller than either of them, more than six feet in height. Not man-shaped—just a huge mass of earth and bone and decaying animal flesh accrued over the years, the way the oldest rotborn always were. A half-dozen limbs harvested from beasts of the Swamp held it upright, and other parts jutted out seemingly at random: razor-clawed mistcat feet and hooved mire-goat legs, snapping longmouth jaws and lanky boggard arms. All were broken or rotting away; some were little more than scraps of muscle hanging from splinters of yellowed bone.

  The thing shambled almost leisurely toward its transfixed prey, and still Josen and Eroh were frozen, watching it come. Zerill hurled herself toward them with strength she didn’t have left, fighting collapse with every step.

  “Run!” she shouted in the loudspeech. “Look away and run!”

  Josen didn’t turn, but Eroh looked at the sound of her voice. “Zerill?”

  She reached them before the boy could move, put herself between them and the rotborn. It was still coming, but her voice had startled it into haste; now it raced forward on six mismatched legs, closing the distance faster than Zerill would have thought possible.

  “Run!” she shouted again.

  She didn’t have time to check if they’d listened; the rotborn was nearly on her. There was no point in aiming at any particular spot—she couldn’t see any vulnerability in the avalanche of meat and earth bearing
down on her. Rotborn could be killed, and somewhere in this creature was the same black ichor that ran inside all Deeplings, but she was too exhausted to find it. She just pointed her spear and braced her feet for impact.

  It never came.

  For only the second time in her life, she heard an eagle’s cry beneath the mist, and the bird Eroh called Goldeyes soared by overhead. Screeching, the little eagle dipped low over the rotborn, scraped talons across the top of its featureless body, and then banked away.

  The rotborn convulsed at the sound as if caught in the grip of a sudden seizure. It half-spun where it was, lashing blindly at the air. Overbalanced by its own momentum, it toppled forward and crashed to the ground in a heap at her feet.

  Zerill had never seen a Deepling do anything like that, but she couldn’t wonder at whys or hows just then. It could rise again at any moment, and she didn’t mean to let it. She leapt up the rotborn’s back, dodging flailing limbs, and dropped to her knees on top of it. Things crawled in the rotten mound of its body: eyeless white worms writhed out from under her legs, and a centipede as long and thick as her thumb crawled over the bare skin of her thigh where her cut-off robe had rucked up. Zerill ignored them, and lifted her spear with both hands. The bones in her broken fingers grated against each other when she closed her fists, but she gritted her teeth against the pain, and thrust downward with all the power she could still muster.

  The bladed head sunk deep. Black blood welled out from somewhere inside the Deepling’s body. It thrashed violently beneath her. Zerill braced all her weight against the haft of her spear. With a final heave, she levered a chunk of greasy mud and spoiled flesh from the core of the thing like she was shovelling dirt.

  It gave one last titanic heave, and went limp.

  Eroh’s golden eyes were fixed on her as she stumbled, weary and aching, from the rotborn’s back. Goldeyes landed on the boy’s shoulder and tilted his head, watching her with eyes that were the perfect twins of his master’s. Behind them, Josen blinked and shook his head, as if coming out of a trance.

  “You saved us,” said Eroh, and there was such serene certainty to his words that she almost believed him, though she’d had nothing to do with the Deepling’s strange seizing fit. “Are you hurt?”

  Zerill meant to answer, but she didn’t get that far. She just smiled down at him, dropped her spear, and fainted.

  Josen

  Josen came back to himself just in time to watch Zerill fall.

  He’d experienced the pull of the Deeplings before, but it had never hit him so strongly. He’d only just awoken after the crash, just managed to pull himself back to his feet against a nearby boggrove tree, and then it was there. The rotborn. Huge and horrible and mesmerizing, lit in pale green by the smoldering scraps of the lightworm silk balloon hanging in the canopy above.

  Still weak and disoriented, Josen hadn’t even been able to focus on the tricks they’d taught him at the Stormhall—as soon as he’d seen the rotborn, he’d been transfixed by the seductive whispers at the back of his skull, unable to look away as it bit into Travin’s body with a half-dozen different maws, ripping and tearing. Hazily, he remembered Eroh stepping in front of him to stop him from moving closer, Zerill’s voice shouting something, an eagle’s cry, and then…

  And then Zerill, falling.

  He was too slow to catch her. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed in a heap on the ground beside the great hulk of the rotborn’s corpse.

  “It’s bleeding,” he said dumbly, staring at the mound of earth and flesh that would have killed him—or worse—if not for Zerill. Black ooze flowed from the hole in the center of it, spreading into a thick pool around the creature. Spreading towards Zerill. And there was blood on her already, staining the chest of her torn chastor’s robe. He couldn’t tell by the dim green light what was red and what was black, but he knew she’d been badly hurt by Castar. If any one of those wounds is still open… “We… we have to move her. Quickly.”

  He slid his arms beneath Zerill’s, taking care not to let any of the blood touch his skin, and struggled to drag her back toward the others. She was heavier than he would have guessed, and his bad arm wasn’t much help. Eroh picked up her spear, and then bent down to ball his free hand in her robe—if it could still be called a robe. She’d cut it off at the knees, but it was still cinched at her waist, like a too-short skirt of rough-spun wool. The boy’s frail arms strained as he pulled. It helped. Spirit of All, do I really need a child to help me move her a few feet? I’m even weaker than I thought.

  Shona and Eian were already stirring as Josen and Eroh drew near, roused by some combination of the shouting and the fighting and the sharp sound of Goldeyes’ cry.

  “What…” Shona trailed off, half-risen on her hands and knees, and stared at the Deepling’s motionless body. “Is it dead? How?”

  Josen pointed with his chin at Zerill. “Her.”

  “She killed it,” said Eroh. “She was amazing.” He didn’t look away from Zerill’s face, even as Goldeyes descended to land on his shoulder.

  Josen laid Zerill down near Shona and wiped the sweat away from his brow. “I don’t know if any of its blood got in her wounds. Will you check?” He didn’t feel right looking under the robe himself; the way she’d torn it off gave him an altogether too thorough view of her thighs already. He tried not to look.

  Shona scrambled to Zerill’s side, and then hesitated. “I can’t tell red from black in this light. What am I looking for?”

  “You’ll know,” Eian said as he got to his feet. “Look for lumps moving under the skin. If she’s… this soon after, you’ll see them.” He didn’t move any closer; his eyes were fixed on Zerill. His face had always had a sad cast to it, but Josen didn’t think it had ever been so strong as it was now.

  Shona must have noticed too, because she gave Josen a pointed look, and tipped her head slightly toward Eian. “I’ll… see what I can find,” she said. “Give us some room.”

  Josen put a hand on Eroh’s back and drew him aside. “Come with me, Eroh.” He led the boy to Eian’s side, and all three of them looked away so that Shona could do what she had to.

  Eroh started to glance over his shoulder, and caught himself. “She’ll get better, won’t she?”

  “I think so,” Josen said. “I hope so. I don’t know how we find our way through this without her.” He gestured out into the Swamp. Beyond the glow of the balloon hanging from the canopy, he couldn’t see anything but darkness broken by pinpoints of distant green witchlight.

  Eian was silent, his eyes downcast. He hardly seemed like the same man who’d spoken of his faith with such certainty just two cycles before. Josen didn’t know exactly what had happened since he’d been gone—there hadn’t been time yet for a full accounting—but whatever it was, it had ended with Eian cutting Ulman Benedern’s throat. What do I say to that?

  Hesitantly, he put his hand on the old knight’s shoulder. “Eian, I… I’m glad you’re here. If I have to do this, I want you beside me.”

  Eian flinched at his touch. “I’m not the man you think I am, lad,” he said quietly. “After what I’ve done, I think having me beside you will do more harm than good.”

  “You mean Benedern? If he was aiding Castar—”

  “Not only him. I have far more on my conscience than that. Lord of Eagles, I… I’ve killed so many. That woman saved your life, and all I’ve ever done is murder her people. How can I look her in the eye?”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “But I did. I had doubts, at least. I had doubts, and I ignored them, for… for so many years. And even after I finally left, in time I convinced myself to believe again. I went back. No excuse will erase that.”

  Josen gripped his shoulder tighter. “It wasn’t just you. We’ve been told the same thing for hundreds of years, and in all that time, how many have questioned it? You made the same mistake everyone did.”

  Eian looked at Josen then, with a fierce intensity in his eyes.
“No. Not everyone. Not you.”

  “It wasn’t as simple as that,” Josen protested, thinking of a sudden weight against his sword and blood dripping over pale lips. “I’m not the hero here.”

  “You tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen. You tried to help them.”

  “I didn’t do anything! I had doubts and I let myself ignore them, the same as you. It was only when I saw Eroh that I even tried to do something, and you’d have done the same if you’d been in my place. The difference is, you might have succeeded. All I did was get a dagger stuck in my side.”

  “Put there by a man I said would protect you. I should never have let you go.” Eian shrugged himself free of Josen’s hand and shifted away a step. “I’m sorry, lad. I… I failed you.”

  “You didn’t!” Josen couldn’t keep the frustration out of his voice. “You’re a good man, Eian, but you can’t see the future.”

  Eian only hung his head, and said nothing.

  Josen had no answer for that. Words, he could refute easily enough, but there was no argument he could make against that silent insistence of shame.

  Eventually, Shona’s voice broke the silence. “She’s clean, I think. You can look now.”

  Eroh turned on his heel and was at Zerill’s side again in an instant. Josen looked at Eian a moment longer, and then followed the boy.

  “We can’t stay here,” Shona said as he drew near. “Castar will be sending men to search for us, and that balloon is too easy to spot in the dark. We need to… to move her somewhere.”

  “Where?” Josen asked, spreading his hands helplessly. “I don’t know which way is which anymore, and it’s black as the Deep in every direction. She’s the one who knows where to hide, where to hunt, where to get clean water.”

  “She’ll show us the way,” Eroh said with absolute confidence. “She’ll wake up.”

  Josen couldn’t bring himself to contradict the boy. “Of course she will. But until then, where are we supposed to go?”