The Wyrmling Horde

by David Farland

  Soon, a mountain began to loom in the distance, dark and forbidding, its coned peak looking blue at first, and then gaining definition as the heroes neared.

  From time to time, they continued to pass villages—all of the houses broken and destroyed.

  We’re near the town of Ravenspell, Talon realized, consulting a mental map.

  It was late morning when they reached it, crossing a fine stone bridge into a walled city. The walls here were not high, only twenty feet or so. The gates of the city had been broken down, and like the villages before, the houses had been demolished, their thatch roofs pulled off, their doors smashed.

  Talon had no desire to inspect the ruins. But as the three sprinted through the city streets, rushing at forty miles per hour, it was as if her mind was storing pictures—a burned hovel, a dead man sprawled on his belly while a buzzard flapped heavily into the air, a frightened dog rushing into the ruins to hide.

  Suddenly they rounded a corner in the market section of town, and there she was—a girl of five or six with long blond braided hair there at a market stall, hunched over a pile of cloth.

  She must have heard the noise, for she turned and shrieked, peering at them briefly in terror but not really seeing them.

  The girl leapt over the counter of the market stall to hide.

  The company came to a halt, and all of them stood for a moment, panting, each wondering what to do.

  “Looks like the wyrmlings missed one,” the emir said. He peered to Talon, then to the others. “What shall we do with the child.”

  The Cormar twins laughed mirthlessly at some private joke, then said in explanation, “We’re not carrying her into battle.”

  “We can’t leave her here,” Talon said. “She’ll starve, if the wyrmlings don’t find her first.”

  “Nor can we take her with us,” the emir said. He looked about helplessly. “All we can do is pick her up on the way back. If all goes well, we will be done with our business before dark.”

  “She has managed to hide from the wyrmlings for at least three days,” Daylan Hammer said. “She should manage well enough for a few hours more.”

  But Talon could not leave it at that. The girl was terrified. She had seen it in the child’s face. That kind of fear can turn a person into an animal. If nothing else, Talon needed to soothe the child’s mind.

  “Stay here,” Talon said.

  She approached the market stall quietly. The roof of the building was made from pine poles draped with red linen curtains. The curtains were ripped and bloody, flying like banners in the wind.

  Approaching cautiously, Talon called out, “Little girl? Little girl? Are you all right?”

  She went and looked over the plank counter. There was a pile of cloth. The girl was hiding there beneath the rumpled cloth, trembling, so that the whole pile shook.

  “Do you have a name?” Talon asked.

  The girl was shaking frightfully. Talon could only see a portion of her leg.

  “My name is Talon. I’m here to help you. I’m with friends, Runelords. We’re going to go kill the monsters that attacked the city.”

  “You’re monsters!” the girl cried. She pulled the wrinkled fabric away but merely sat there, in a fetal position, too frightened to do anything but look. Her eyes roved over Talon’s face.

  She sees the ridge bone on my face, and the nubs of my horns, Talon realized. I don’t look human to her anymore.

  “I’m not like those monsters. They’re called wyrmlings. They’re larger than me, and they’re very evil. If I’m a monster, I’m a good monster.”

  “How can I tell?”

  “If I was one of them,” Talon said easily, “I would have taken you already.”

  The girl thought about this, but kept trembling in fear.

  “Do you have a family? Is anyone else alive in this city?”

  The girl shook her head no both times. “Do you have a name?”

  The girl shook her head no again, and shrank back against the wall of her little cupboard.

  “I think you’re teasing me,” Talon said. “Everyone has a name.”

  The girl turned her face to the wall, and just stared at it.

  “I’m going to have to go fight the wyrmlings now,” Talon said. “I don’t want to leave you alone, but I have to. I’ll come for you when I get back. I’ll take you to safety. You can wait for me, can’t you? You can be brave until then?”

  The little girl did not answer.

  Talon turned to leave.

  I can track her by smell if I have to, Talon told herself. She hesitated, and whispered, “Be well,” then walked away.

  “No!” the girl shrieked. Talon turned as the child came leaping over the counter of the little market stall. Then the girl grabbed her by the leg and held on, terrified that Talon would leave.

  “Come here,” Talon said, reaching down and grabbing the child.

  “Don’t leave me!” the girl shouted. “Don’t ever leave!” She peered into Talon’s face, stricken. The girl’s eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, her face dirty. She smelled of dog hair and sweat. But she was a pretty thing, in a common sort of way.

  Daylan and the others came over, stood at their side. “You can’t take her with us,” Daylan said in the tongue of the warrior clans. “We go to save a world. We cannot wait upon this child.”

  Talon gave him a reproving look.

  “She can’t just leave the girl,” the emir said. “Her mothering instincts are too strong.” He grimaced and looked down. “Nor can I leave her. What kind of men would we be to do so?”

  “Wise men?” the Cormars said as one.

  Daylan grabbed the girl and gently pulled her from Talon’s arms. He set her on the ground. “We’ll be back for you,” he said sternly. “Go find a place to hide until then.”

  The girl lurched toward Talon, but Daylan reached down, grabbed her by the forehead, and pushed her onto her butt.

  “Stay there,” he warned. “I don’t have time to be nice about this.”

  The child looked at him, terrified, and while she was frozen with indecision Daylan said, “Let’s go.”

  The emir took Talon by the sleeve and whispered, “Hurry. Don’t look back.”

  Talon ran, but her heart grew heavy as her legs stretched, carrying her away from the town. They raced through empty streets, where elms lined the path, and they leaped over another quaint stone bridge. She could hear the child screaming behind her, “Come back! Come back!”

  What would I do if that were one of my own little sisters? Talon wondered. How would I want her treated?

  And then she knew. She would want the soldiers who were out to save the world to turn a cold shoulder to her little sister. She would want them to fight all the more valiantly to avenge her. She would want them to do their job.

  “Come back!” the girl called as they raced into the fields beyond the edge of town. Talon’s keen hearing let her detect the sound two miles away.

  I will, Talon promised. I will.

  * * *

  They had not gone ten miles when they spotted another Knight Eternal all dressed in red, flying from the south. They were walking along the road at the noon hour when they saw it coming over the treetops, not a mile behind.

  “Flee!” the emir hissed.

  But Daylan just stood for a second, gazing up at the Knight Eternal. It came hurtling toward them so swiftly that Talon almost didn’t have time to draw her weapon.

  “Fear not,” Daylan cried. “It is only our friend Rhianna.”

  The robed figure landed before him in a flutter of wings, and Rhianna pulled back her crimson hood, her red hair spilling out in a tide. She smiled at them, and the emir and the Cormar twins all stepped back and gasped.

  Much had changed. Rhianna shook her hair loose, and it seemed as if it was full of light. Her eyes gleamed like stars in a night sky, and seemed to beg for all to gaze upon their glory. Her skin had grown softer and more radiant than before. She was like some gre
at queen of legend, so beautiful that she would turn men’s knees weak with desire.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Rhianna said. “It’s only me.” Her voice was as pure as water, as mellow as a woodwind.

  Daylan peered at her angrily. “So, they’re wasting forcibles on endowments of glamour nowadays?”

  Rhianna looked down, embarrassed. “The horse-sisters gave them to me. It encourages others to do the same.”

  “How many?” Daylan asked. “How many of glamour, how many of voice?”

  “Perhaps twenty in all,” Rhianna said.

  “Or thirty or forty?” Daylan suggested.

  Rhianna shot him an angry look. She was obviously embarrassed. She had wasted forcibles taking beauty when she could have used them to boost her strength and stamina. “The people have been generous,” Rhianna argued. “They’ve granted me more than three hundred endowments in the past day. How many were you given?”

  “Did they give them,” Daylan demanded, “or did you steal them?”

  Rhianna glared at him but held her silence.

  “You know the law of the Ael. Taking another’s glamour is forbidden!”

  “I’m not Ael,” Rhianna shouted, “and I never shall be. Your grand folk in the netherworld wouldn’t even let me stay a season there. I’m a Runelord, and I’ll do as I please. I’ll do what I must!”

  Talon glanced from face to face. She knew what Daylan was afraid of. He was afraid that Rhianna’s beauty would corrupt her.

  And maybe it shall, Talon thought.

  “Let’s go kill wyrmlings,” Rhianna growled. She looked north. “I have a convoy of horse-sisters from Fleeds ahead. I saw them from the sky. They’re only three miles from here. They have a wyrmling with them, a girl who can lead us to the dungeons.”

  The moment of tension eased.

  “Why would she do that?” Daylan asked.

  “She wants to fight the wyrmlings,” Rhianna said. “In the binding, two of her shadow selves were bound—a wyrmling and an Inkarran. The Inkarran had been one of Gaborn’s chosen ones.”

  Talon wondered at that, wondered how many more Inkarrans might be bound into the wyrmling horde, wondered how many of them Gaborn might have tried to sway.

  “We saw your handiwork on the road a hundred miles back,” Talon said. “Good job, that. Did you get many forcibles?”

  “A few thousand. I couldn’t let them reach the wyrmling horde.”

  “Some got through anyway,” Daylan said. “We saw Knights Eternal flying north not an hour ago, carrying cargo. We must fear for the worst.”

  Rhianna bit her lip.

  “We’ll release the wyrmling girl,” she said, “a few miles from the fortress. She can go to the doors, beg for mercy. The wyrmlings will take her to their dungeon for torture. I can track their path by smell. I promised that I would go in for her in less than an hour.”

  It did not seem like much of a plan to Talon. She wanted things locked down better, more secure. But it was the first and only plan that had been introduced so far.

  Daylan Hammer said, “And once we get into the fortress, what next?”

  “We kill anyone who stands in our way,” Rhianna said, all business.

  Talon could not help but hear the ghost of the Bright One’s warnings. Erringale had told them to spare the enemy, be as lenient as possible, lest they stain their own souls.

  Almost Talon thought to object to the plan.

  But why should I bother? she wondered. The wyrmlings have been a scourge upon the earth for far too long. They’ve all but destroyed my people, and if left to their own ends, they will exterminate us. We are strong. The six of us could wipe out the whole wyrmling horde.

  She looked to the Cormars, saw that they grinned, their smiles obscenely identical. There was a glint of madness to their eyes.

  Yet Talon couldn’t imagine engaging in slaughter. There were innocents among the wyrmlings too, children and babes. There might be more wyrmling girls like the one that Rhianna had found, people who longed to be free and who were willing to fight for it, to die for it.

  “I go to Rugassa to free my friend,” the emir said, “not to wash in wyrmling blood.” He said it in Rofehavanish. His accent was thick, his words unsure, but he managed to say it. Talon was surprised that he could speak the tongue at all, given their short conversation. Then he switched to the tongue of the warrior clans. “Take a life if you must, but only if you must.” There was rage on his face, a temper barely under control. “We are in dire straits,” he said, “but I swear, if any of you take an innocent life, you will have me to deal with.”

  Daylan Hammer translated his words for Rhianna, then gave him an appreciative look and added, “And me.”

  Talon admired their courage. “And me.”

  The Cormar twins peered at them with glinting eyes, and Talon could read their thoughts. We could take them, they were thinking. We could kill them all, and then kill the wyrmlings.

  Suddenly they both laughed, each chuckle precisely synchronized. Daylan glanced at Talon, giving her a look of warning.

  They’ve lost themselves, Talon realized. Somehow in twinning their minds, they’ve lost themselves. We should go to battle now, before they go completely mad.

  “Let’s not argue,” she said. “We’ve got a job to do.”

  So they plotted their attack. Rhianna related what intelligence she could, telling of her bargain with the horse-sisters and her overthrow of Beldinook. She told of the dangers she had faced at the Courts of Tide, and her hopes that the warlords there might form a diversion. She repeated reports of reavers surfacing near Carris, and relayed how the horse-sisters’ scouts warned that they were marching in a northeasterly direction. She told how the wyrmlings at Caer Luciare had begun taking endowments, and described where she had hidden the forcibles that she’d stolen from the wyrmlings—news that was important, should she fall in battle.

  Talon related all that had happened to her, including Erringale’s vision of Borenson sailing to their aid upon a white ship.

  It seemed as if they spoke for an hour; but all of them had taken endowments of metabolism, so in truth not five minutes had passed before Rhianna leapt into the air and flew north to meet the horse-sisters.

  Then the company began their race again, sprinting down the broken road to Rugassa.

  Holding a blanket over her head to protect her bleary eyes, Kirissa scrambled down out of the forest and over the uneven black paving stones into Rugassa, a fortress built into a tall volcanic cone of black basalt, smoothed on its slopes so that one could see where hundreds of towers and walkways and air shafts had been carved.

  She had hoped never to see the fortress again, but the Earth King’s words resounded in her mind.

  The time was coming when the small folk of the world would have to stand up to the large.

  But he didn’t say that I’d live through it, Kirissa realized.

  She stumbled, her toe catching on an uneven stone, and fell to one knee, then climbed up carefully.

  The defenses of Rugassa were all underground. From the outside it looked as if you could just walk in. There were no tall walls with guards walking them, as you would see in a human castle. The wyrmlings didn’t like being so exposed. No, the defenses were all inside, underground, so well concealed that those who managed to breach them never got back outside to tell how far they had gone.

  So Kirissa walked across the dark stones with the sun blazing above her, a bit of sandalwood perfume upon her heel, until she reached the south tunnel.

  Deep within its recesses, fifty yards from the entrance, guards were waiting. A great iron door stood closed before her, and the guards peered out through a slit, so that she could see only their white eyes.

  They did not ask her questions. They only opened the door, winching it slowly, until the guards stood before her, great brutes in armor of bone.

  One guard lunged for her, grabbing her in a stranglehold, then threw his weight against her so that she fell to t
he floor. He landed on her ribs, forcing the air from her sharply, so that she could not breathe. Two other guards grabbed her from behind and began feeling through her clothes, ostensibly searching for weapons.

  One of them hissed, “I would have thought that you would be smart enough to stay gone.”

  “I came back,” Kirissa grunted, “to serve the Great Wyrm. I was wrong to leave. I know that now.”

  “Oh, she knows that now!” her strangler mocked. The others laughed harshly as his grip tightened on her throat. Kirissa gasped for air and struggled for all that she was worth for fifteen seconds.

  As her lungs began to burn, she went limp, feigning unconsciousness, but the guard kept strangling.

  Don’t let me die, she begged the Powers. Please don’t let them kill me now.

  Talon and the heroes waited on a pine-covered hill with the horse-sisters of Fleeds, a fearsome company of women upon blood mounts, red warhorses with red eyes, their flanks painted with mystic runes.

  Though the horse-sisters’ armor was light, consisting of boiled-leather cuirasses enameled in green and gold, their lances were sharp, and they wore fantastic enameled masks over their helmets—images of stags with antlers, and boars with tusks, and bears with long fangs, and the green man with leaves for hair—so that they looked more like fearsome beasts than humans.

  The forty women were four miles from Rugassa. The pines grew thick around them, but not so thick that the company couldn’t see the entrances to the fortress from here.

  They could not go to battle immediately. They needed to give the wyrmlings time to take their prisoner into the dungeons.

  If they take her to the dungeons, Talon thought.

  There were no guarantees. Rhianna had warned that the guards might kill her outright.

  Talon said, “That girl is showing great faith in us.”

  “Let us live worthy of it,” the emir agreed.

  It was early afternoon, a perfect time to strike.

  Talon took a few minutes to sharpen her sword, then her daggers. The others did the same. She got out her sunstones, and gave one to each of her companions. She had only five, and so the Cormar twins were forced to share.