Avahn made her way down through the vaulted crystal halls and curling, sunlit turrets of the Courts of Tide, lifting her skirts to run as quickly as she could. She skipped down flight after flight of graceful steps, until she emerged in the dimly lit Chamber of Pools, which lay below the surface of the surrounding gulf and enclosed the Well of the Worlds. There, a dozen freshwater pools, artesian fountains, burbled up from the ground.
She spotted one of her father’s counselors, tall Horvath, the water wizard, standing across the chamber. He towered over an iron cage that lay on the stone between pools, and Avahn surged toward him.
Horvath raised his head as she stopped short before the cage. He regarded her through silver fishlike eyes grown farther apart and less human through the years. They no longer had lids, just membranes that flicked instead of blinking. His skin held a bluish cast, and his long mustache hung down in tendrils like a catfish’s whiskers.
“Stay back, milady,” he cautioned as she crouched to study the sand-gray eggs. Even Horvath’s voice sounded fishlike, she thought, as if it bubbled up through water like one of the warm springs around them.
One egg, almost as large as her head, shifted and grated against the others. It shifted again, and a crack appeared in its side. With a scrabbling sound, the crack lengthened.
The scuff of a step drew Avahn’s eyes up from the egg. Her father had come. He didn’t draw close. He hovered behind the water wizard instead, and peered around his shoulder.
For several minutes they watched as fissures spread across the egg. Then the creature inside thrust its head through, twisted and shook itself, and slithered onto the bottom of the iron cage. It looks like a misshapen spider, she thought with distaste as she scrutinized its six legs, its oversized, elongated head full of teeth, its philia waving and rippling along the edge of its headplate.
She heard a horrified gasp, and looked up once more. Her father quivered in terror. Avahn bit her lip. My father was once the bravest man I knew, but in the past months he’s become a . . . coward. A mad coward.
A breaking, crushing noise wrenched her attention back to the eggs in the iron cage. The hatchling Toth had scooped a rock from the chamber floor, between the iron bars. Gripping it with its two clawed front legs, it scrabbled over the mound of eggs and began to smash them open. Struggling embryos raised awkward, heavy heads through veils of slime, and opened their toothy mouths. They seemed to peer about, though they had no eyes.
The first hatchling pushed its way through the nest, moving as if searching among the broken eggs. As Avahn watched, it fixed its stare upon three more hatchlings, one at a time. The most aggressive ones, Avahn observed. Each stared back at it for several moments. Then, as one, they joined it in shattering the remaining eggs. Clawed front feet tore the shells open, and razor teeth dismembered and consumed the embryos still inside.
Avahn shuddered. “Did we find all of the eggs that were laid upon the coast, do you think?”
The wizard Horvath only frowned in alarm.
Sergeant Goreich stepped into the arena and watched the youths at their sparring, burly young men gamely dancing into thrust hammers, sometimes swinging, often leaning away from attacks. They grunted with effort and cried as blows struck.
He shouted, “Attention!”
All thirty boys shouldered their warhammers, winded and fatigued, and trudged across the rumpled sand to form a half-circle in front of him.
“The king has issued orders,” he said. He surveyed them, standing still and waiting, a burly group with faces bruised and grimy from mock combat, their dark hair tousled and matted with sweat and dust.
He hesitated to deliver his news. The king’s orders were ranting and imprecise. But they were still the king’s orders.
“The Toth have laid eggs in our coasts,” he announced, “and they are beginning to hatch. We made sweeps before, but the king fears that there may be young ones at large. It becomes your duty to scour our countryside for hatchling Toths and make certain that none survive.” He paused, squinted briefly at his boots, cleared his throat. “And it is also your duty to hunt for . . . Gestankin giants.”
The young men exchanged questioning glances, furrowing their brows, then muttered to one another.
Someone called out, “What is a Gestankin? Is that even a word?”
“They come from the north,” Goreich said, “very tall giants and stinking of fish.”
Goreich could tell them nothing else; the red-haired messenger who had come had no more information than that. Goreich had seen the young man’s reluctance on the matter and guessed at the truth, but he would not shame his liege.
He knew that there were still hill giants in the country of Toom, not six hundred miles to the north. So he gritted his teeth and said forcefully. “You will depart in the morning. You have this night to prepare.”
He sent the boys home, returned to his wife for supper, and then strode back to the young soldier’s barracks in the evening. Most of the boys were gone out drinking for the night, and Dval had not yet gone out to scavenge for food.
The sergeant dropped a black bundle on the trestle table. “Dval,” he said. “Come here.”
The Woguld left off cleaning his warhammer and crossed to the training master, his features determinedly unscrutable. The other youths stopped their own labors to watch, and Goreich passed his warning glower across them. “You’ll need these,” he said to Dval, and nodded toward the bundle. “Open it.”
The boy did, unfolding it on the table, and his pale eyes widened. Hilde had produced the required black cloak with a deep hood, but on her own thought had added trim along the front edges, woven from tiny silver wires. Goreich had wrapped the cloak around a pair of new boots in the finest black leather.
The boy swallowed before he met Goreich’s eyes. “I am . . . deeply grateful, sir,” he said in a solemn tone.
The finest clothing I have ever owned, Dval thought. Far better than anything my uncle gave me after father’s death.
He saw the scowls that darkened the other boys’ faces when the training master left, and heard grumbles. He forced himself not to smile. Who is wearing piss boots now?
In the morning, Dval stood at one end of the half-circle as Sergeant Goreich presented the soldier apprentices to their guide, a wiry man with penetrating eyes in a weathered face, and raven hair richly streaked with gray. He stood only to Dval’s ear, but Dval took note of shoulders like a bull’s and thighs as thick as old trees.
“He is a Despatcher,” Sergeant Goreich said, “and as such his name is not known to the world. He is partly a scout, partly a spy, and partly an assassin. It is his task to discover the movements of enemy forces and then disrupt them. This he does by poisoning their draft horses and the livestock they keep for provisions. Or he may burn bridges or cause avalanches in mountain passes to stop the enemy’s advance. Sometimes he is sent to slay enemy kings.
“It is a rare honor to serve with this man,” Sergeant Goreich added, “for he prefers to work alone. There is much you can learn from him, for he is a legend in our kingdom. This is the man who slew one of the Karfin.”
Like the other boys, Dval’s eyes widened in amazement. His people knew about the Karfin, the giants from the hills of Toom who stood nine feet tall and had two rows of teeth, said to be capable of biting off a man’s hand.
The Despatcher gave them an unexpected grin, and mischief lit his eyes. “Do not be over-awed. That giant looked like a fat baker I once knew,” he said, “only with a lumpy face. I once had a horse that was meaner.”
Untested boys, thought Gustafas, for that was the Despatcher’s secret name. The boys ranged ahead of him along the coastal track, a lonely road through dense trees, joking and pushing at each other as they swung along. No stealth, no attention to the task. One Toth could devour half of them before they even knew it was there.
“If we find an army of Toth,” one boy’s voice carried back, “I would gladly let Dval, that wurm, fight them on his own, a
nd then piss on his corpse when he is dead!”
The other boys laughed. All but the tall one in the black cloak, the pale, serious youth with colorless eyes who hung back from the others.
The boy was Inkarran, Gustafas knew, a creature of the night. Worse yet, of the Woguld. Yet he alone appeared to appreciate the gravity of their errand. His cloak’s hood constantly swept left and right as he scanned the terrain on either side of their track. He kept his silence, strode without a sound, and occasionally stopped to face into the light wind to inhale deeply.
Ah, yes. His people hunt as much by smell as by sight. He will be blind now in the day, but by starlight . . .
The party reached their appointed area in early afternoon. Here the woods spilled down the mountains almost to the coastal beach.
Gustafas sent the boys off in pairs, pointing them in different directions. Then he beckoned the Woguld boy with a twist of his head. “You come with me.”
The boy followed only until they were beyond hearing of the others. Then he said, “Sir, we are looking in the wrong place. The nest found by the king’s men was near the mountains. The Toth went inland and laid her eggs on a sandbar in a river, where the sun could warm them. We must search in places like that.”
Gustafas arched a wiry black brow. He wasn’t accustomed to following counsel from others. But wise counsel is hard to come by. “Very good,” he said. “That is where we will go.”
That night as the party made camp, Gustafas called the youths together. “I have a mission I must accomplish for the king this night,” he said. He scowled across the half-circle. “If I do not return by dawn, you will finish scouring this area. Be thorough. Toth’s eggs are gray and rough, and about the size of your heads.”
He left before the moon rose. Ember light from the dying fire revealed the youths asleep in their blankets.
All but the Woguld boy. Gustafas watched him creep up from his spot on the fringes and survey the camp as he tucked his obsidian knife into his loincloth’s belt.
When their eyes locked, the pale youth froze, and Gustafas crossed to him in a single, soundless bound. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Going hunting,” the boy replied. “I need meat.”
“Then bring your warhammer,” Gustafas said, “and run with me.”
They set off through the woods at a lope. Stars lit the night sky like distant torches, providing all they needed to see by, until the moon filtered up through the trees and cast a soft silver net over them. Night winds carried the crisp leaf-scents of late summer and the musk of forest animals. Night creatures did not fall silent as they passed, for the Woguld boy moved as stealthily as Gustafas, and for the first time the boy appeared fully alive, at home.
When they came to a road that wound north, Gustafas took it. They followed it for twenty miles, until it opened onto another beach.
Most men would have been gasping, ready to faint at that point, but the Woguld still jogged on heavy legs, his breathing controlled. The young man’s strength . . . was frightening.
The moon cast a rippling path across open water and made blue shadows of deep footprints in the muddy banks. Huge four-toed footprints—months old.
Gustafas motioned the youth to follow.
Even his Mystarrian nose, not as keen as the Woguld’s, detected the dead Toths before his eyes did. They lay on their backs where they’d been slain, their legs curled in like great spiders by the late summer heat. The boy examined them, smelling each one without grimacing.
Gustafas watched him. He knows the Toth, this one.
“There’s a river farther on,” Gustafas said, and pointed. They found it after another hour’s easy running, a small river so late in the year, trickling among rounded rocks.
“This way,” Gustafas said, and started upstream.
A range of small mountains rose, barely visible, above the treetops. Gustafas took his bearings from the highest one. Alert for movement and changes of night noises in the enclosing woods, he scoured the damp soil along the water’s edge.
Starlight illuminated what he sought. Spiky four-toed prints milled about in the firm mud. These prints were small and new—three or four days old, he estimated.
Within seconds he found the shell from which a Toth had burst, half-concealed among rounded stones. Mere feet away, nearer the bank, he discovered the crushed remnants of the Toth’s clutch. Dismembered embryos lay scattered among smashed shell fragments.
He motioned, and as the boy dropped to a crouch beside him, he pointed. “The king’s men missed an egg. Looks like it rolled from the nest and was mistaken for a stone. These prints were made three days ago, perhaps four. It will have grown a great deal in that time. Stay here while I hunt it down.”
A shadow of indignation crossed the boy’s pale face. “Sir, I have killed a Toth mother. A baby will be much less a challenge.”
Gustafas quirked an eyebrow and allowed himself a half-smile. “Very well,” he said. “Take the lead.”
The hatchling’s tracks led up the riverbank, away from the water, and into thick undergrowth. Gustafas studied the boy as he pressed forward, noting his concentration, his disregard for the brambles that raked his bare legs, the way he bent to sniff the tracks and listen to the wind’s sighs through swaying boughs. He knows what he’s about, this one.
Two hours on, the boy stopped and twisted to face him. “There is blood ahead,” he said, and touched his nose. “It has made its first kill.”
“Move with care then, boy,” Gustafas said.
Three more paces revealed a dark, heaped shape in a stand of trees. Two legs that ended in cloven feet pointed stiffly at the sky. A wild pig, most likely, Gustafas thought.
A shift of the breeze brought its stench full into their faces. The boy winced, but Gustafas said, “Let’s see what we can learn here.”
They slipped nearer, soundless through the brush, eyes and ears and noses searching.
The creature erupted without warning from the soil beneath the carcass, shooting to a height of fifteen feet. For an instant its many limbs seemed part of the tangle of ancient branches, but its shriek silenced the forest.
Moonlight flashed on swinging warhammers. Not Gustafas’s alone; the boy’s whistled through the dark. They struck at the same moment, cleaving the monster as it fell. It crumpled over the pig’s torn carcass and didn’t twitch.
“Well met.” Gustafas grinned at the boy. “Well met indeed! We share this kill.” He peered about through the rattling trees. “Go back to the river and wait for me. I’m going to scout this area a bit more.”
The Woguld boy nodded, shouldered his bloodied warhammer, and disappeared into the woods the way they had come.
Dval returned to the river’s edge, content but very hungry. A patch of white sand near the water invited him, aglow in starlight. He huddled there, arms wrapped around his knees, to think.
The Despatcher had praised him, had even shared credit for the kill. But he hadn’t eaten yet. His stomach grumbled, and he felt weak from the night’s exertions.
At home he’d always had enough to eat, stout meat that gave him strength. He hadn’t been forced to fight under the glaring sun that burned his skin and blinded his eyes. His uncle had insulted and belittled him, but it seemed nothing now, compared to the way that the barbarians treated him. He ached for the close dimness of his people’s burrows, the scent of tallow candles dipped in cinnamon, the clean carpets of fur in his room.
Distant, careful footsteps drew his gaze from a quiet eddy in the river. They followed the same path by which he and the Despatcher had come here, not the way the Despatcher had gone to scout. It wasn’t him.
One of the boys followed us, Dval thought. Probably the one who burned my cloak, coming to play another trick. He slipped from open starlight on the sand into the brush on the bank and crouched to wait and watch.
The figure who rounded the slight bend downstream was not one of the boys. The man stood almost seven feet tall. Like Dval’s
, his pale skin seemed to glow against the darkness, but a mesh of fine blue tattoos encased his body like spiderwebs.
Dval swallowed a gasp of recognition. Goru, my uncle’s chief warrior.
He was like a Despatcher for Dval’s uncle. Once before Dval’s uncle had sought to murder him, to end his brother’s bloodline. By leaving the city, Dval was giving him a second chance.
Goru stopped in the open where the river lay wide and shallow. Dval kept still and watched him test the breeze with deliberate sniffs.
“I smell you,” Goru said, his voice barely louder than the water’s ripples. “You have been among our enemies for so long that you stink like them.”
Dval emerged warily from his cover in the brush. “I am not one of them,” he said. “They are barbarians. I can never be one of them.” He saw the tall warrior’s lip curl and asked, “Why have you come? Do you bring a message from my uncle?”
“Yes,” Goru said, and smiled. Dval glimpsed the flick of a dagger in his hand an instant before Goru lunged.
Only the fact that he had been training for ten hours per day all summer saved him.
Dval sprang clear of the blade, but he felt the smart as it slid across his ribs. He seized his own dagger from his belt and dropped into the fighting stance that had become natural during the long, searing days in the grand arena.
Goru laughed. “You crouch like a barbarian to fight. Why do you not stand straight like a true man?” He thrust again, a swift, piercing blow.
Dval blocked it with his dagger, and turned it. But Goru, with his great height, had a much longer reach. His arms are like warhammers, Dval thought.
My warhammer! He had left it on the bank, in the brush. If he could reach it . . .
He allowed Goru to push him back one step at a time, though he parried each thrust and cut, and countered with jabs of his own. Hot blood coursed down his side from the cut along his ribs; he felt it streaming the length of his leg. Blood soon flowed from other gashes, too, across his upper arms, and one down his thigh.
Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy Page 21
