* * * * *
Whatever Alinder had expected to see when they reached the fortified outpost, this was not it. The wooden gates were not broken, they were splintered. And the dead before the walls . . .
Not just bodies. Body parts. These soldiers had been torn apart.
The captain surveyed the carnage. “All ours,” he said.
For a moment, Alinder thought he was claiming the victims’ possessions for himself, but then she could see it, too. Every tunic, shield, and fallen banner bore the Holvos black and green. Either the enemy had carried away their dead, or the attack had been a one-sided slaughter.
“And here!” a soldier cried, much too loudly. Alinder and the captain turned toward the river and looked behind them. A wooden walkway led down the slope to a small pier. Two high-backed little canoes were tied off there. In the grass were the mutilated bodies of Holvos scouts.
“This was no battle,” she said.
The captain said, “Take your children south.”
A soldier gasped, and they turned toward the outpost. There, strolling through the gateway like a well-fed mountain bear at its leisure, came a creature like nothing Alinder had ever seen before.
It was huge, and it went on all fours, with its hindquarters low on crouching legs. Its shoulders and head resembled a bear’s, but its torso was broad and flat, and all four of its legs ended in hands. Strangest of all, the fur that covered it was the same delicate pale color as the purple nightshade Alinder’s grandmother had grown in her garden.
It turned away then, looking north. Alinder noted that its head came halfway up the wall. This thing was half-again as tall as the captain; they were all like children beside it.
“One moment, Captain.” Alinder said as he was about to shout an order. She slid the sword from Elz’s scabbard and ran behind the okshim. With all her might, she stabbed the tip deep into the haunch of the beast on the left.
It did not kick immediately—an okshim had flat, horned feet, which could have torn her leg off—but it did let out a high-pitched cry that gave Alinder goose bumps. She scrambled back, and the beast’s kick missed her.
The cry of pain and fear startled the other okshim into motion, driving it forward. Both beasts went together—okshim always pressed flank against flank, if they could—jolting the cart so severely that a cask rolled off the back.
The captain waved the spears back, and they cleared a path. The huge creature that had emerged through the broken gateway turned toward them, alerted by the okshim’s cry.
Alinder turned toward her two children. Their bodyguards stood behind them—behind them—gaping in surprise.
“To Rivershelf. Now.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, a tremendous roar sounded from behind her. The guards began dragging Shawa and Shoaw down the road. Elz took back his weapon.
Alinder spun toward the sound of that terrible roar. Fire and Fury, it was like nothing she’d ever heard before. A grass lion might roar this way, if it were burning with rage and hunger.
The okshim balked, their forward flight from Elz’s blade halted by the sudden threat from the front. The captain had already withdrawn his spears, putting the animals in the vanguard, and though the okshim lowered their great curved horns, they did not charge.
At that moment, a second creature leaped onto the wall from inside the station. Then a third. A fourth followed the first though the shattered gateway. All stared at the assembled soldiers like starving men before an unguarded feast.
With his spear, the captain jabbed at the wounded okshim again. It mewled and jolted forward. Both beasts, encumbered by their cart, charged toward the gigantic creatures.
The captain had understood her plan. Let these creatures feast on injured prey, while the troops—and the tyr’s family—withdrew. Alinder’s skin crawled when she looked at them. There was something supernatural to them, she was sure of it. One of those Fire-taken Peradaini scholars must have gone hollow and, in their madness, created these things. Song knew it wouldn’t be the first time.
The first of the creatures grunted as the okshim charged, but barely glanced at them. Its gaze, and the gaze of its fellows, remained fixed on the humans. The limping okshim and their cart rumbled by them unmolested. The animals continued north, fleeing up the road.
The first of the great creatures—Alinder thought they needed a name but she could think of nothing to call them except nightshade-bears, and her grandmother wouldn’t approve—stepped toward them, moving almost tentatively, as though worried it might spook its prey.
“Sprint line!” the captain called, and Alinder moved to the edge of the road so the spears could form up. These were a contingent from Fifth Rivershelf, and the tyr her brother had outfitted them with steel helms and the latest long spears. They drilled all through the day, shouting and sprinting in full armor through the streets and courtyards of the city.
And it showed. They came together effortlessly, five wide and eight deep, then ran toward their enemy with shields high and close, their points steadily aligned.
It did them no good. One of the enemy grabbed a corpse by the ankle and flung it, gore spraying from a crushed skull, into the line. The body knocked spears down like a stone from a catapult, and then the thing was among them, swatting aside spear points and slamming soldiers into the ranks behind.
Other creatures leaped down into the marshy borders of the road, coming up on the soldiers’ flanks even before the captain could call for a defensive redeployment. Spears found their mark—many of them—shedding the monster’s awful gray blood and eliciting roars of pain, but none of the wounds seemed to be mortal, no matter where they struck.
A cold shiver ran through Alinder. These soldiers were going to die. The entire column could not have killed two of these creatures, let alone four.
She glanced back along the road. Shoaw and Shawa were making good time, but the outpost had been built on a high point of the ridge road. They would be visible for miles.
The okshim had been no distraction at all, and Fifth Rivershelf would not be enough of one. Not to save her children.
“We must withdraw,” Elz commanded, seizing her elbow. “We should have—”
“No!” Alinder yanked her arm free. “The tyr’s heirs need time. Nothing else matters.”
He looked into her eyes, his expression going blank with surprise. She intended to die here, for her children. It occurred to her that he might abandon her.
“I will guard you,” he said, his expression going flat, “as best I can.”
They turned just as the last half-dozen spears lost their will to fight. As their fellows lay broken and moaning around them, the last rank threw down their shields and spears and fled toward Alinder, and Rivershelf beyond.
It did them no good. One of the creatures pounced on them, slamming them to the ground, then lowered its head and bit.
“They aren’t killing them,” Elz said. It was true. Most of the spears were grievously injured but still conscious. The creatures moved among the fallen soldiers, biting each as though tasting them.
“Perhaps they have already eaten their lunch,” Alinder said.
Glancing back at the road behind them, she saw her children and their guards. Fire and Fury, couldn’t they run any faster than that?
One of the creatures raised its head and looked at her.
“It’s time.”
Alinder knew they could do little against the creatures themselves—every wound Fifth Rivershelf inflicted had already healed—but maybe she could move them off this high vantage point before they saw her children.
She ran down the wooden walkway toward the pier. He followed, backing up with his shield high and his spear point low.
“Hoh-wa!” Alinder shouted. “Follow us! Come down among the tall grasses!”
Elz immediately began to shout similar remarks, although of course the creatures couldn’t understand. Alinder took hold of his sword belt, steering him along the walkway s
o he wouldn’t step off and fall into the mud.
It took a moment before a grunt appeared at the top of the walkway—perhaps they wanted to taste every spear before they went after new prey—but when they did, they seemed hesitant. Two more appeared together, staring hungrily at Alinder and her guard, then warily at the river.
The fourth creature bounded partway down the hill, then scrambled for the wooden planks when it slipped in the mud. Alinder and Elz reached the thick salt grass at the bank of the river. Great Way, they were big.
Were they afraid of water? It seemed so. Every sane person knew to fear what lurked in the deeps, but—
Alinder’s thought was cut short when the nearest creature leaped—splintering the planks beneath its tremendous weight—and struck Elz with its massive claw.
The bodyguard took the blow with a grunt and flew back into Alinder, colliding very hard with the left side of her body. She spun as she fell from the pier onto the nearest canoe, its hard wooden edges digging painfully into her ribs. The cold, briny water of the Red Salt River splashed into her eyes and mouth.
Elz hit the canoe, too, rolling it sideways and crushing it beneath their combined weight. Alinder thought she could hear, under the cracking wood, bones breaking. Great Way, she hoped they weren’t hers.
The current pulled her from the riverbank. Fighting to the surface, she clutched at the shattered bow of the canoe. Her ribs hurt, but she didn’t think anything was broken.
Elz lay still in the water, face down. Alinder had gotten him killed. She felt a twinge of regret, but she would have sacrificed ten thousand just like him for her children.
The creatures had retreated up the slope toward the road. The one that had leaped at her was frantically scraping wet mud from its strange, long-toed hind foot.
As she floated downstream, they followed her, running along the bank to grunt and roar their frustration. Fire and Fury, they were beautiful and terrible.
Alinder was all too aware that she was leading them toward Rivershelf and her children. She kicked toward the sucking mud and thick grasses at the bank, hoping to slow her progress and lure the things to come after her again. Was the river shark nearby? Perhaps it would strike one of the creatures if she could lure them into the shallows.
It didn’t work. The creatures would not approach the water, and soon they were distracted by something on the road to the south.
Alinder knew what they’d seen. It would have been a comfort to lie to herself, to hope that an old paddy farmer had wandered into the road, or a pack of Redmudd raiders were nearby, or something.
The beasts raced southward, and she floated along after them, clinging to the broken bow of that canoe. She knew what she would find.
Her son was first, lying on the slope beside the ridge road. She didn’t need a second glance to see that he was dead; no living body could be so twisted and so still.
She saw Shawa moments later, kneeling at the edge of the road. Her left shoulder was bloody, but she did not seem badly hurt. Beside her were the two bodyguards. Both were injured; neither was dead.
Shoaw’s bodyguard saw Alinder in the water. The man had the decency to look ashamed, but not to fall upon his sword.
The creatures were also there, of course. They stood over the injured as though guarding a meal. Alinder knew the creatures had faced scores of well-trained soldiers and that every injury had closed without so much as a suture. Still, Elz’s “good soldiers” ought to die in the effort, if only for form’s sake.
Alinder kicked toward the muddy riverbank. If those guards ought to die in the effort of saving her child, so should she. She didn’t even have a weapon, but she knew the emptiness inside her was going to turn into grief and rage soon, and she would rather be dead than endure it. Besides, a distraction might give Shawa a chance to leap into the river—
Her daughter—so frail-looking—noticed her, then shook her head. Stay away.
That look froze Alinder. Was Shawa telling her not to throw her life away, or that an attempted rescue would only make things worse for her? Alinder did not care a tin speck for the former, but the latter? It seemed that there was something here she did not understand, and if she blundered and made things worse for her little girl . . .
Hesitation made the choice for her; the current carried her slowly away. The creatures roared at her but didn’t leave their victims unguarded. In fact, they prodded Shawa and the guards northward, toward the outpost—
Alinder thought this was the time she would weep, but tears wouldn’t come. Her little daughter, so slender and fragile, had accepted death. Her son, the rangy, serious, restless boy that she’d once believed would become tyr over these lands, lay twisted in the mud like a heap of laundry.
Fire had taken her son from The Great Way. She could have tried to comfort herself with a trite saying about the Little Spinner and how she never slows. She could have cursed Fire for the death it had brought, or called to Fury for aid. She could have prayed to Monument for the strength to endure. She could have begged Song to remember, as Song always did.
In the end, she did nothing. She was nothing. The world conspires to take everything from us in the end. She had been reduced to a lump of meat floating toward the ocean. Something there would devour her and it would mean nothing. Her son was dead. Her daughter would soon be dead. Alinder had, by mischance, saved her own life and failed her children.
* * * * *
The Red Salt River picked up speed as the land gently sloped downward toward the sea. Night fell shortly after Shawa receded from sight, and Alinder clung to her broken piece of canoe through the long hours, dozing sometimes, staring up into the starless darkness when she woke. Dawn brought a chilly gray light. There would be no patches of blue sky today.
Rivershelf appeared suddenly, when Alinder passed around a bend and the ridge road no longer blocked her view. The pink granite walls stood an astonishing four stories high, almost as tall as the walls of Peradain itself. It was the Holvos’s loyalty during the last rebellion that had earned them such an engineering marvel: King Ellifer had sent his own team of building scholars to cast the spells that created it.
Alinder thought it was an ugly thing, but there was no denying its power.
Once, she’d thought her son would stand atop those walls. Once, she’d thought they would be his.
She did nothing to catch the attention of the fisherfolk preparing to spike giant eels at the shallow river’s end—she wouldn’t even look at them—but they pulled her from the water anyway. They recognized her immediately, and she was so cold and weary she had to be carried in a blanket.
The guards atop the walls said the tyr her brother was near the ocean gate, so the fisherfolk carried her along the plankways that surrounded the city wall on the east and south. Here, the scholar-made pink granite walls came right to the stony edge of the bay.
Then they passed the southeastern corner of the city.
Alinder had been to the southern edge of Rivershelf, of course, but never outside the wall. The waters of the Red Salt swirled and eddied here, flowing through the rocks, over the cliffs, and into the perilous ocean below. She looked at the bay stones, seeing the blood-red salt encrusted on those rocks.
Her father had told her the cliff was slowly crumbling. The waves below and the water running overtop had the continent in a slow retreat. One day, he’d said, the foundations of the southern wall would collapse, and it would topple fifty feet into the ocean below, leaving the entire city exposed. Then the great beasts of the sea would be able to reach up with their long tentacles and pluck the Holvos people from the streets.
Alinder could picture it in her mind: the colossal noise of tumbling stone, the screams, the futile prayers for Fire to pass them by. The deaths. So many deaths.
She shut her eyes. Her son had been killed. Her daughter had been stolen. The Holvos heirs . . .
The images returned. The screams. The falling granite. The shocked faces of the citizens, all of whom thou
ght there would be at least another decade of life and happiness, another year, another hour.
Alinder knew her thoughts were a slender shield against her private grief. Soon, the tears would flow. To stop them, all she had to do was roll out of this blanket into the swirling waters below. She would be swept over the cliff, and die from the impact at the bottom or be swallowed alive like a grain of rice by one of the great beasts.
But she didn’t. Her daughter was injured but still alive. A single square couldn’t best those four creatures, but Rivershelf had long held more than a single square. Even if her daughter couldn’t be saved, she might be avenged.
The ocean gate was barely larger than a door; no carts or wagons needed access to a cliff top that faced the open sea, nor could they travel the plankways. Fisherfolk called to the guards as they approached. Explanations were made, messengers sent, blankets laid across her. Something stank like an open chamber pot. So much activity, but Alinder shut her eyes against the city. She imagined the voices around her screaming, the footfalls fleeing in terror.
The tyr her brother would be coming soon, and so would Eslind, the wife of her younger brother Ilinder. When they arrived, she would have to explain what had happened. The truth would become undeniable. There was no return to her old life—she knew it—but to speak her losses aloud would be like declaring allegiance to grief.
Alinder opened her eyes at the sound of Eslind’s voice. She had arrived first, her baby boy in her arms. The new heir, now that Ilinder and Shoaw were both dead. There was no ambition in her expression. Of course not. Only concern.
Behind her was a great curving wall of timber the like of which Alinder had never seen before, and that could have no use at all.
Finally, Alinder began to cry.
Not long after, her face still wet with tears, she stood before the Holvos court and the great stone chair.
The tyr her brother did not believe her.
Unbound Page 17
