The wall of hide was almost upon them. Makos was flying, armor jostling, mouth open. Keltos reached out with one arm and grabbed his friend as he went by, swinging him around to crash into the trunk next to him.
A split second later, the behemoth hit the tree.
As large, as ancient, as rooted and settled and immoveable as the forest titan was, it shuddered so violently as the beast collided with it that the vibration sent the three humans in its lee flying. They landed a few paces away, stunned.
The great tree creaked and groaned. Keltos heard one of the giant roots under the ground actually snap with a loud pop under the impact stress. A shower of needles was accompanied by whole branches shaken loose that fell down all around them.
But the tree held. Nothing of flesh and blood could topple it. It awaited its decreed doom of fire, lightning, rot, or gale implacably, and until that doom arrived it would not yield. Kel resolved not to make fun of the tree-worshipers in Kerath ever again.
The behemoth had hit the trunk head-first and now lay stunned on the far side of the tree, breath heaving in and out in great puffs that blew pine needles into the air. The three humans scrambled to their feet and circled the trunk warily, staying out of reach. There was no way to tell how incapacitated the thing was, or if it would be able to regain its feet soon.
“Keep it here,” Perian shouted. “I’ll bring the horsemen!” She darted into the trees.
Makos and Keltos stared at each other, lances pointed at the stunned beast.
“Keep it here?” Keltos muttered shakily. “How?”
“We have to disable it while we can,” Makos said, moving sideways to get around the creature’s massive head. “It’ll be up in a moment and trample us.”
Keltos considered running in with his lance, but although he knew his arms were strong, he doubted whether he possessed the raw power to drive his lance deep enough to hit something vital. The creature was just too massive. “Shall I go for its eye? Blind the thing?”
“No, you’ll only get the one before it goes berserk.” The behemoth was lying twisted sideways, with a single cloudy eye exposed. Makos climbed up on a nearby boulder and poised for a leap with his lance held high, but he hesitated, seeing no way to avoid the deadly reflex action once he speared the thing.
“Well, Rukhal’s guts.” Keltos dropped his lance and drew his saber. “It should have an artery in the neck, right? About… there?” He advanced to within a yard of the creature and pointed with the tip of his bronze blade.
The saber was sharp enough, he supposed; bronze held the edge it was cast with fairly well, but that edge had limits even when recently sharpened. His saber was designed to chop through human skin and bone, ideally with the weight and momentum of a running horse to give added impetus. The neck he had to cut through now was as thick as two or three oxen bundled together. But he might be able to shear through the leathery hide where the jugular ran close to the surface.
Makos kept his lance ready. “Do it. Then I’ll pin it with my lance.”
Keltos’ mouth was dry and puffy like someone had stuffed raw wool into it, and he was soaked with sweat. He edged closer, seeking his target, but a layer of wiry gray hair obscured the skin beneath.
Suddenly the great eye blinked and cleared. The behemoth’s huge clawed paw came forward and plunged into the dirt near Makos’ boulder, preparatory to heaving its great body off the ground.
Makos yelled. Keltos mouthed a prayer to Mishtan and brought his saber down with all his might, two-handed.
“Whruuurrooooof!”
Keltos found himself flying through the air, breath knocked from his lungs instantly. He wind-milled his arms and legs. Blue sky was all he could see, the air whistled his ears, and his bronze helmet rang.
He hit branches, hard, flopping and turning like a landed fish. Green needles, long and rough-edged whipped at his face. Wildly he clutched, grasping nothing that he could hold, just more needles. Then a jarring impact shook him, folded him in half, and he found himself hanging from the waist, draped over a large branch with his head and legs dangling in space.
He slapped away a branch that was prickling his face, and the slap made him slip. He clutched the branch he was draped over in a panic, reacting to the pull of gravity with white knuckles and fingers that dug and thrust into every crevice in the tree bark he could reach.
Makos was below him. Far below. His friend was whirling around in circles, breastplate, face, and legs a brilliant red. “Keltos!” he screamed. “Kel! Where are you? I can’t see you!”
Why was Mak suddenly acting like a painted mummer down there? So far below. Nothing made sense. Kel’s fingers ached from clutching the tree branch. His ribs hurt and the blood was pooling in his head, making him dizzy.
“Uh…” he croaked. In a sudden panic, he realized he might be dying. Didn’t they say that a man ascended heavenward when he died? Was that why he was so high above Makos? By the gods, I can’t die now!
Keltos began to struggle and found that he could move his limbs freely. He managed to move himself into a better position on the branch, straddling it. The blood slowly left his head, clearing his brain a little. He was thirty feet up in a pine tree, the same giant tree they’d taken refuge behind. How he’d gotten there, though, was a mystery.
There was a clatter and a shout below, hooves clopping and scraping up onto the granite shelf. Lancers had arrived, Captain Pelekarr among them. There were gasps, and cheers. They were interrupted by a surprised shriek, and he looked desperately around for the behemoth. Was the barbarian girl in trouble?
“Go for the eye, Mak,” he croaked. “Finish it, quickly!”
Now soldiers were swarming around Makos and trying to tear his armor off. The muscular horseman was pushing them away and pointing up at Keltos, who he’d finally spotted. That meant Keltos wasn’t dying. Good.
Men were yelling battle-cries and swarming over something big and gray. Was it the behemoth? He couldn’t see clearly enough to tell. Mishtan burn all pine needles!
Others were now staring up at him like he’d sprouted horns and a feathered tail. Some were beginning to laugh.
“How in Mishtan’s name? What did he do to get up there?”
Keltos nearly slipped, his stiff bronze breastplate making it hard to hold to the tree limb. He ground his teeth in helpless fury as further guffaws echoed up at him. He saw Makos staring at him and shouted down at his friend. “This is all your fault, Makos! Do it, you said!”
Makos slowly grinned along with the chortling soldiers around him. He held up his hands. “You found the artery, Kel!”
“Look what good it did me!” Keltos shouted back. He looked around at the tree he was in. There weren’t nearly enough branches to help him climb anywhere. He was stuck in a tree far above the ground and no one cared—they were too busy laughing, braying like mules. Even the captain was lying across his horse’s neck, shaking with mirth. Only the barbarian guide remained unamused, staring up at him with a pale face.
She’s the best of them, he thought. I’ll break Mak’s nose for this.
Sergeant Bivar tied a sturdy piece of wood to one end of a long horsehair rope, swung it in a tight circle, and let it fly upward to loop around one of the tree’s lower branches. It fell back without catching, and he let others try their luck. Keltos removed his armor piece by piece and dropped it to the ground, then climbed down to the lowest branch to try to catch the rope. It hit Keltos on the next throw, making him curse and nearly fall, to the undying amusement of the men watching.
Finally he caught the rope on a solid throw from Makos himself, and he tied it around the lowest branch. Then he shimmied down, swaying and cursing with every spin and twist of the rope as more laughter echoed up from the spectators.
Back on the ground, Makos thrust a cold water-skin into his hand, and all was forgiven as Keltos drank deep. The other lancer had just finished rinsing the thick, hot blood of the behemoth from his face and arms. Other men crowded around t
o slap Keltos on the back and cheer him, half in mockery but half also in genuine praise of his strong sword-arm.
It seemed that his saber had bitten deep enough to sever the primary artery in the behemoth’s neck, and after a convulsive spasm which sent Keltos flying upward into the tree and sprayed Makos from head to toe, it had settled to the ground and bled out in under a minute. When the rest of the soldiers arrived, led by a breathless Perian, they feared Keltos was crushed under the dying beast and Makos was covered in the blood of his own mortal wound. It took almost as long for them to sort the thing out as it took Keltos to come to his senses up in the tree.
The men were in a downright celebratory mood now that the second behemoth had been slain. As the rest of the company gathered on the promontory overlooking the river, the captain offered the monster’s heart on a hastily constructed stone altar, a burnt offering thanking Mishtan for their good fortune.
“Truthfully, I had anticipated several casualties during the hunt,” Pelekarr declared. “To gain both beasts dead with not a man lost is a miraculous event that counts our earlier defeat wonderfully. It would not do to neglect the gods.”
Men with sharp swords were assigned the unenviable task of cutting the beast open and retrieving what they could from its stomachs. The grisly job proved Makos’ hunch correct, to the further delight of the captain and everyone looking on. The multi-chambered stomachs were packed full of only partially-digested bodies, mostly apes with several horses and a few dead men.
“Sometimes my people find great vomited piles of animal parts in the forest, during rut years,” Perian said. “Kayeha always said they were cast up by the gods, left to warn us. But I suppose this would have become such in a few more days’ time.”
The scalp getters, for a small additional cut of pay, spent the afternoon stained crimson to the elbows, pulling the stinking mess out and sorting it, taking ape scalps to the river to wash clean, then dragging the offal into the woods. It was difficult, nasty work, and there were two huge carcasses to go through. But they finally finished as the sun was sinking into the conifers across the river, lighting up the sky in a crimson display that clearly showed the gods’ approval for their days’ work. The company had taken over two-hundred scalps, more than enough to prove to the baroness that the ape problem was abated for the foreseeable future.
As evening fell the company camped by the river side, cutting great steaks and roasts from the fresh behemoth carcass and cooking them whole on spits, washing down the smoky feast with great draughts of ice-cold water. The meat was far from succulent, but it felt like solid victory going down.
Keltos sat at his troop’s fire and listened with smiles to the boisterous cheer and restored spirits of the company, toasting each other with river water in little gourd cups. They laughed and dreamed big dreams as the stars came out one by one and the night air cooled and the sound of cold water rushing over granite soothed them all.
Good times for the Tooth and Blade.
CHAPTER 33: A DARK FATE AVERTED
It was twice as dark in the trees, and Cormoran’s eyes nearly failed him. The oldest veteran in the Tooth and Blade, he was still decades off from his dotage but he had to admit his eyes weren’t what they had once been.
He sped too quickly through the brush and came up suddenly against the outstretched hand of the strangest-looking man he’d ever seen.
The lean, dirt-streaked face stared back at him with mouth agape, and Cormoran saw that the barbarian’s teeth were filed to sharp points like a wolf. The man moved like an animal, too, hunched over slightly and panting as if he were on his last legs. He was bare-chested, but both torso and arms had snaking tattoos in swirling patterns that made him seem one with the undergrowth behind him.
The clawed hand did nothing to the old hoplite’s breastplate, fortunately, and Cormoran had his sword handy. He easily kept the man at bay as he struggled to see the threat and learn if others were in dangerous proximity.
But suddenly a spray of black soil was flung in his face. Corm coughed and retched, eyes stinging, and though he swung his blade out, the barbarian got away.
“Here!” Corm shouted. “There’s one of them here, just a few paces on!”
Fieron appeared next to him. The younger soldier had left his spear behind when he plunged into the trees, and now had his sword out and ready as well.
“Go!” Corm told him, wiping at his burning eyes. “Can’t get far, he seems too weakened to run.”
And so it proved. Moments later, Fieron and another soldier came back the way they’d come, dragging the barbarian by the arms.
“Got him. How many others?”
“Don’t know. Couldn’t have been more than a handful. The rest seem to have vanished.”
“Well, we have this one. Let’s dump him in front of the captain and make him talk.”
Back on the road, they threw the hideous raff man to the ground in the moonlight. He lay there in front of Captain Damicos, breathing hard and moaning. Locks of twisted, matted hair fell across the man’s face, but he did nothing to move them.
“What of the rest?” Damicos asked.
“Still being chased,” Fieron replied. “But I doubt our boys will find anything. They vanished before us in the night, like they were made of fog or smoke.”
Damicos leaned down to examine the captive.
“What are you? And why were you watching us?”
There was no reply. Leon rolled the barbarian over and stepped on his leg.
“Speak! Are you a spy, a scout? What?”
The raff’s body shook as he drew breath, then coughed dark blood on the ground.
“I don’t know what befell you,” the captain said, “but you are lucky my men didn’t cut you in half. Are you aware there was a battle here, with much bloodshed and treachery?”
The barbarian shook his head. “Not enough. Not nearly enough.” His pupils were dilated, and he coughed so hard they almost didn’t hear his words.
Damicos, Cormoran, and the lieutenant eyed each other.
“He speaks our tongue.”
“And he’s no friend. Let’s kill him.”
“Not yet.”
The barbarian coughed again. “All will die. Not today, yes. Soon!”
Damicos narrowed his eyes. “What is this you speak of? Your people mean to attack my company? Is that it?”
“Not you alone. All. Kerathi pawtoon, weak clans. All will die. Old gods wish it.”
“That’s what you’re skulking in the trees for? To threaten us?”
“Drive you into the sea!” the barbarian wheezed with startling intensity. He was spitting his last words out in malice and warning. Blood was leaking from the sides of his mouth now.
Damicos wasn’t impressed. “Your kind have been attempting that for many years. Will you tell us where you came from, what your business is here?”
The barbarian writhed, his back arching suddenly. His face became bloated and strained.
“He’s not breathing,” Leon pointed out.
No one touched the raff man, and a few seconds later he rolled over on his face and lay still. Fieron ducked down next to him and then stood.
“Dead.”
The men all let out long sighs.
“That was unexpected,” Leon stated flatly. “What do you make of it, Captain? Why were they here, watching from the edges of a battleground?”
Damicos slowly shook his head, lost in thought. Then he spoke.
“I cannot say. The ways of these raff are strange indeed. And yet, despite this wretch’s dark words, I suddenly feel lighter. I think we’re going to make out all right, no matter what challenges are arrayed against us. Be it the raff, or the darkest Ostora has to offer, or barons and enemy soldiers.”
He looked around at his men.
“We’re poor, yes. But we’re strong,” he told them. “Gold will come in time. For today, we’ve shown ourselves as bold fighters, warriors worthy of hire and reputation. If that’s all we a
ttained with this battle, so be it. Another step on our road to fortune!”
The next morning they took to the road again. The Deep Shields had passed them up in the night, quickly disappearing down the road in a rumble of marching feet. With the sun came Rovos and the Red Lancers. Kallida had but three chariots left, and Damicos watched her ride south, red hair flowing from beneath her helmet. He wondered what her next move would be.
Damicos marched his men after the cavalry, misliking the thought of sharing the road too closely with the companies that had fought for Lord Vocke. They made good time and didn’t run into any other troops along the way.
A dark suggestion came up from among the men when they passed the crossroads leading to Telros’ home fortress. The baron couldn’t have many guards left in his fortress, and he owed them anyway. But Damicos put a swift stop to that talk, and they got past it without much grumbling.
“We acquitted ourselves well against the Sun Swords,” he called out to those that could hear as they marched onward. “And all that Vocke could throw at us. We outsmarted the worms, and escaped with our skins intact. That was no defeat, though it may feel like one. We’ll hold our heads high when we reach Dura. We gained honor, which the gods reward!”
“I can’t eat honor,” someone called out from the back of the nearest troop. Damicos thought it was Mast.
“Remember that we are part of a larger company,” he continued, ignoring the man. “Captain Pelekarr’s men will be returning from their campaign as well, hopefully with money for the coffer that we’ll all share. And we still have a sizable stockpile from what we captured at the bandit’s camp, awaiting us in the ruins by Dura.
“Fortune swings this way and that, and the Fates weave as they will. But I vow to all of you that the lows will not tear us apart, and the highs will not break us up from within. Not as long as I am captain, and as long as there is willing strength in you all.”
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