Wildling

by Curtis, Greg

  Unless they could stop them first. A mere hundred and twenty shifters.

  “And we've also found the fault where the bank was broken. A steep narrow gorge running through the western bank. But it looks like there was a slip recently and fresh rock has started filling it raising the lake level behind it.”

  Which was exactly as Dorn had expected. That was good news. It meant that he was right, and that in turn meant that there was a way to fix things. But it was bad news as well since it meant that the enemy would know how to destroy the lake.

  But the worst news was that first, before they could do anything else with the lake, they had to defeat an army so large that it defied belief.

  As Dorn lay there recovering from the day’s travel, for the first time he knew a sense of despair. A feeling that despite everything they'd done, all that they'd achieved, it still wasn't enough. The Dicans were going to beat them. They'd burn him and his companions alive, and then they'd destroy the lake completely and consign the world to ruin. It just wasn't fair.

  And as he whispered his prayers to the ancient gods he'd never really cared about, he knew that if there was any hope they would need their help. But he also knew that they were on their side. Eleven of them anyway. Maybe that would help.

  Chapter Forty Four.

  Dorn was nervous as he waited for the soldiers to march past his position. Not so much that they would find him and kill him, as he was about how the white wrath would work on them. There were so many soldiers and he had only so much with him. But then he had never expected to face two hundred thousand soldiers. He'd thought of something in the thousands or maybe the tens of thousands. Not this. It was an army that simply defied belief for its sheer scale.

  It was also an army that had crushed many of the wastes' most deadly predators. Snap dragons had taken their toll but had in the end fallen to their superior numbers. The rocs had picked off a few soldiers at the edges of the army but they weren't game to actually attack the army head on. The blood flies had played their part too and many of the soldiers were sick. But it wasn't enough. As for the trolls, they were in hiding. Even they weren't stupid enough to attack a force that large.

  Now it was his turn.

  Dorn wasn't happy at using the white wrath against the soldiers as they marched. He would have much preferred to have waited until they were camped for the night as he had before. But there was no time. If they waited for that the army would be on the top terrace and the mountains would be a straight seven or eight league march for them. They had to stop them before that happened.

  But it was tricky. If the soldiers marched too quickly they might escape the spores before they'd had a chance to affect them. Too slowly and only a few would be in the affected area. And in truth they were barely crawling. The army was simply too large to move quickly, especially when they had to pull the thousands upon thousands of huge war machines with them. At a guess the enemy were also finding the air too lacking. Breathing for them would be difficult, just as it had been for the shifters. Many of them were using staffs to help them walk, and a lot of them looked ill.

  Still Garren was right; this was the best chance they had to stop them with the white wrath. The southern pass leading up to the terrace and the mountains beyond was the natural channel through which they would have to walk. A channel only a hundred paces wide. If he could stop them here before they made the terrace, the army would falter. Maybe it would even be turned back.

  All they needed was enough men to lose their reason to fear, to start screaming and running back through the rest of the army, and panic could set in. After all the men were sick. They were tired. They had lost unknown numbers of their comrades to the snap dragons, disease and bad air. Morale had to be low. And the only thing keeping them going was the gold the Dicans were offering them and the fear they had of failing the black priests.

  There was hope. He had to keep telling himself that.

  Dorn had set up his little fire pits in a long two hundred pace line alongside the channel through which the soldiers would have to pass to reach the mountains, concealed behind some fallen trees. This part of the wastes for some reason had a forest of withered and stunted trees that had fallen over and died. Perhaps a wind storm had struck the area recently. Whatever the reason though the fallen trees provided good cover for him to work in and he was grateful for that.

  He'd thought that two hundred paces would be enough to make sure that every man got a good few lungfuls of the spores as he marched by. Maybe more than a few lungfuls. They weren't really marching after all. They were almost crawling. These men were exhausted.

  As the first of them finally reached the top terrace Dorn started work. He'd had to let a few get through because they were only the vanguard. There were less of them, and he wanted to get as many men as he could. Just behind the van the column of marchers grew broader, and it wasn't just scores who would be in range. It was hundreds.

  So after perhaps the first hundred men had reached the terrace, he began his work. Lighting the little fires one by one, and muttering his prayers to the gods. All of them. Whoever answered them he didn't care. Just as long as someone did. And maybe they did. The wind was perfect. Gentle enough to carry the spores to the soldiers without blowing them everywhere, but still strong enough to make sure the spores reached them.

  And then he waited.

  As always it was a long wait. The nervous seconds became minutes, and the minutes seemed like hours. But still he knew from experience that it would work. It would just take time.

  Soon he could see the pods at the nearer fires swelling as they always did, and then he watched them burst open one by one. After that it was just a matter of time. Too much time really as more and more soldiers spilled out onto the terrace. But eventually, just when he was beginning to fear that it wasn't going to happen, that maybe something to do with the poor air had rendered the white wrath powerless, he saw the first signs.

  Dorn's heart beat a little quicker as he saw the first of the men starting to look around nervously. Jumping at shadows. Startled by things only they could see. He could see the alarm growing on their faces. The fear in their eyes. The white wrath was working as it always did.

  Then the first man screamed and Dorn knew a surge of pure joy. He would have laughed out loud if he hadn't been trying to stay hidden. The man screamed, an ear piercing shriek of terror that stopped everyone in their tracks, and then bolted. Running in panic, fleeing whatever demons were chasing him in his nightmares. Meanwhile all around him others were staring at him in dread. Maybe they guessed what was coming.

  Soon, others started screaming and running as the powder got to them, while more were trying to get away from the first few panicking men just in case what they had was catching. But they were too late. More soldiers started screaming, running and hiding, some of them on their hands and knees begging for mercy, and the panic had begun.

  Behind them the soldiers that had been following them up the pass started to retreat, not wanting to be anywhere near the havoc in front of them, and Dorn knew that they would be safe. From the white wrath at least. They hadn't yet entered the spore filled region. He'd expected that. But they weren't safe from their terrified comrades in arms.

  Most of them were running blindly, sprinting in all directions as fast as they could, and a lot of them were chasing the retreating soldiers down the pass, hopefully spreading alarm and despair among them.

  Then something unexpected happened. The wildly panicking men started falling down.

  At first Dorn didn't understand that. The soldiers were screaming and running around in blind panic as normal. Things were going well. He was almost beginning to feel hopeful. Then they just started falling down in their scores. Hitting the ground and not moving. A few moments later he realised the shocking truth. They had bolts in them. And since he knew it wasn't his people shooting at them, that left only one answer. The other soldiers were shooting them. The retreating soldiers had stopped, turned and
formed a defensive line at the bottom of the pass, from which they were simply firing into the panicking men as they ran towards them. They were killing their own.

  That shocked Dorn. It defied everything he had ever believed in. And yet he understood it. The Dicans had a mission to complete. It was more important to them than anything else. And having hundreds or even a thousand or more crazed soldiers running around in complete terror causing havoc was not acceptable. Not when the soldiers were already sick, exhausted and morale was low. They had decided that it was better to kill them quickly. So that was what they were doing.

  As he sat there watching, Dorn saw the terrified soldiers being shot down in their scores and hundreds, and all by their own comrades in arms. Most of them never even realised they were running into danger. They were too busy fleeing their invisible terrors, and it would never have occurred to them that their own comrades would murder them.

  It was over soon enough. The best part of a thousand soldiers lay dead in front of him, and Dorn knew his plan had failed. There would be no mass panic, chaos and confusion. No retreat. No one else would rush in to try and help their crazed comrades in arms and so become affected themselves. The soldiers would just march on over the bodies of their fallen and then take the other pass. It was a brutal solution, cold and criminal, but effective.

  Then, even as he stood there watching in disbelief, bad became worse.

  The first he knew of it was when the world exploded only fifty paces from him. Flame and smoke erupted into the air while burning shards flew in all directions. The actual explosion was deafening. Dorn didn't know what had happened. Then he looked to the sky behind the soldiers in their defensive lines shooting down their own people, and saw the flaming balls of fire flying. It was then that he understood. They were using the war machines against their own soldiers. Bombarding the pass with burning rocks.

  The Dicans had obviously prepared a plan for this very attack. They'd expected it. And while they didn't know what had caused it they suspected an enemy. So the moment it had happened they had got their war machines in position, and were now hoping to kill him. They didn't know who he was or where he was. They didn't even know what he was. So their strategy was simply to destroy everything and hope he was caught up in it. And they were doing a pretty thorough job of it.

  The missiles they fired exploded on impact, sending burning shards of rock flying in all directions. And while they might be aiming for their unknown enemy the fire balls were doing a good job of striking down the army’s own soldiers. Even those that hadn't run backwards into the murderous arms of their own comrades in arms. Everywhere he could see there were bodies. Bodies with holes in them, bodies that were on fire. There were soldiers with missing body parts. And there was blood everywhere. So much blood. The smoke and the fire was everywhere as their weapons set the entire forest ablaze.

  Suddenly a burning shard grazed Dorn's shoulder and he knew it was time to leave. Fast. They might not know who he was or where he was but that wouldn't stop them from killing him.

  As he sprinted away from the growing pile of corpses behind him, Dorn knew that his main weapon had been blunted. It was a bitter understanding. He'd hoped for it to completely devastate the army, leaving them in disarray as it had before. Instead while he had done a little damage, maybe even scratched them, the enemy was more determined than before. The soldiers would be more frightened of their Dican masters than they were of any enemy. Now it seemed that he had to find another weapon. Or hope that his fellow shifters' other ideas would work better.

  Because they didn't have a lot of time left.

  Chapter Forty Five.

  “I don't get it.”

  And he didn't. As he sat with the others in the lee of the mountains and stared at the approaching army Dorn couldn't see anything different about them than before. They were still camped out about seven leagues from them, just at the top of the pass from the lower terrace, and things looked orderly to his mind. They'd made it up through the pass to the burnt out part of the terrace the night before, once they'd established that they weren't going to be driven out of their minds with fear. Scouts left to keep watch at the top of the pass had made sure of that. And after the bombardment there wasn't a lot of cover left for him to hide behind and start work again.

  Since then though it seemed that not a lot had happened. He'd hoped for smoke and fire. Maybe an army in pieces with some of them running away. Especially after the crowing the others had done. But whatever his companions had done during the night, whatever they'd dropped on them, it didn't seem to have done a lot.

  Of course, seven leagues was a huge distance and it was impossible to make them out as anything more than a dark smudge of ants in the distance. Even to a shifter's eyes. Maybe close up he would see something different.

  Brin and the other fliers seemed happy though. They were grinning merrily at one another, occasionally letting out a few small laughs, and generally seemed to be enjoying themselves. And the one thing that all birds of prey had was very sharp vision. He guessed that they could see what he couldn't. Just as he guessed that they weren't in a hurry to tell them what they'd done. They were enjoying themselves far too much.

  Still, as the sun rose higher in the sky Dorn did notice one thing about the distant army that surprised him. They hadn't started marching. He asked again as did the others and finally Nelalas took pity on them.

  “Western ragwort powder.”

  It was just three words but it was enough to tell Dorn what he wanted to know. And to set the fliers once again off into fits of laughter. But it was an ingenious plan. Any ragwort was murder on the skin and eyes. It set people to scratching and sneezing. It made their eyes weep copiously and afflicted the sufferers with rashes. But the ragwort from the western provinces, particularly the White Plains was ten times worse.

  The chances were that large numbers of soldiers down there were now scratching their skin off, and were covered from head to foot in boils. They were likely nearly blind as the watering of their eyes robbed them of sight. And some if they rubbed at their eyes too much would actually go blind. They would be tired too if the scratching had kept them up all night as it surely had. In the coming days there would be illness as well. The open wounds the soldiers created by their ceaseless scratching would become infected and the demons of fever and disease would invade their bodies. But most important of all the chances that the army would travel for a few days were small.

  The ragwort had been an effective weapon whereas his white wrath had failed miserably. Best of all they had only dropped half a dozen paper bags of the ragwort powder. They still had plenty more they could use. With Eldas' blessings upon them they could keep the army pinned down for a week or more which was critical. It would give them time to prepare their defences while at the same time the soldiers would be starting to run low on provisions. There was no food here for them so they had to rely on what they were carrying with them. And as they said an army ran on its stomach. Hungry soldiers would quickly become a problem for the Dicans to command. Of course they were hungry too, having to supplement their rations with whatever they could hunt. But there weren't two hundred thousand mouths to feed.

  Dorn congratulated them on their attack as did the others. At least someone was having more luck than him.

  On the other hand if they were camped out, scratching themselves half to death and heavily distracted, it might be a good time to try another attack with the white wrath. This time he would return to his familiar method and attack at night while they were trying to sleep. They would be unprepared for it. And with a little more of Eldas' good fortune, they would be unable to kill all of their own so easily. Not if those who were affected weren't at the van of a long column of marching soldiers but rather right in their midst.

  But that would be when the moon was high. For the moment though he and the others had work to do. A lot of work. They had to survey the dry lake bed around the puddle as they were calling it. They had to fin
d where it leaked and if possible seal up those leaks. Those that they could. The others behind them would do most of that work of course. The Lady had told him that they were bringing stonewrights and waterwrights with them.

  But Dorn and the others were anxious that before they arrived in however many weeks, as much had been done to find those leaks and block them as could be done. Their thought was that the more water that filled the new born lake, even if it was only a few more hairs breadth in height, the stronger the connection of the world to the gods would be and that in turn might grant the eleven more power. In the battle ahead they would be their strongest weapon.

  Of course the main breach, the narrow river gorge that had torn its way loose through the side of the hill dam was just too big for them to do anything about. That would have to wait until the others came.

  Whether repairing that would fix all the problems of the world Dorn didn't know. He didn't even know how long it would take. But what he did know was that it would help. Or maybe it would at least stop things getting any worse. Everyone else thought the same.

  The trouble was that they had little idea what to look for when it came to the smaller leaks. Some they could spot easily enough, simply by the sprays of water bursting forth from the hill dams. But even finding them didn't tell them where the water entered the fissures; only where it exited. In any case the leaks were already under water. So the best they could do was to wade through the slowly refilling lake, sometimes swimming where the water was deep enough, and look for water currents heading down into the dirt. And where they found one, to start filling it with rocks and more dirt, and hope that that would hold.

  The real worry though was the gorge. It was the key to the lake's refilling. The slip that had blocked it a little had brought the eleven back to the world and restored a little bit of the gods' might to the world. But the rocks that had come down in the slip and blocked the water's escape could just as easily be washed away by the force of the water behind them as the lake slowly refilled. They needed wrights. Stonewrights and waterwrights. Those who could understand the solidity of the land and feel the movement of the water through it. Those who could shape these things. And of course they had none. They were all shifters.