Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion)

by James A. West

  They darted from the chamber into the corridor, and there halted, the earlier cry forgotten in their amazement. The walls, ceiling, and floor of the passage were crawling with the small caterpillars, filling the air with a misty light.

  Aedran waved his hand near one wall. The insects recoiled, but didn’t fade. “These don’t seem to mind our presence.”

  “They must’ve been here all along,” Erryn said. “Maybe they’re getting used to having us about.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Another shout got them moving again.

  Erryn trotted after Aedran, wincing every time the leather soles of her boots burst a caterpillar with a crunching pop.

  By the time they rounded the corner and came into a much broader corridor than the first, the guards’ shouts had become dismayed laughter. They found the two men, Zander and Coran, standing one before the other. Like all Prythians, they were tall and broad, and made bulkier by their fur cloaks and thick leather-and-scale armor.

  “They tickle,” Zander said with a grimace. He was holding a torch aloft with one hand, and using the other to keep his curly black hair off his neck so Coran could flick off the caterpillars inching over his skin.

  “You’re bleeding,” Erryn said, seeing crimson pinpricks dotting Zander’s pale skin.

  “Aye,” Zander said, turning a bit. When his eye found her, they filled with a measure of deferential awe that she had grown to hate. She had liked her men better in Valdar, where they had scarcely paid her any mind. Zander added, “Those spines are tickly, but sharp. One false move, and you’re pricked.”

  “Be still,” Coran growled, sending the last caterpillar soaring. Satisfied that he was done, he stepped back and ruffled his golden hair, which was shorn close to his scalp like Aedran’s. He was bleeding also, giving his head a patchwork look.

  Aedran glanced at the ceiling. “There are more than ever.”

  “They come out of the cracks,” Zander said, following the general’s gaze. “Started about an hour ago—at least, that’s when we noticed them. At first, they winked on and off whenever we moved around, like they were scared of us. After that, they became friendlier, and started dropping down to see what we were about.” He spoke as if they were pets; a little troublesome, perhaps, but harmless. Erryn shared no such appreciation for the wriggling creatures.

  “You didn’t think it important enough to raise the alarm?” Aedran demanded, sidestepping one of the worms as it fell. It hit the floor and bounced on its spines, its light flickering briefly, then growing steady again. It joined a trio hunching over the flagstones toward Aedran’s closest boot.

  Zander gingerly rubbed the back of his neck. He winced when he brought his blood-smeared hand before his face. “Didn’t see much need,” he admitted. “They’re just caterpillars—come spring, they’ll likely turn into moths. If we raised the alarm every time we saw a spider or beetle, what would Queen Erryn think of her warriors?”

  One of the creatures plopped onto Erryn’s shoulder, and she went very still. Up close, its eyes were black and faceted, like a cut gemstone—a black, soulless stone, with points of pale, shimmery light caught in each angular surface. She also saw its mouth, a pair of oversized pincers guarded by a nest of spines that looked like glass needles. It began inching its way toward her face, those pincers gnashing together. Just at the edge of hearing, she could make out a scraping noise, like grinding teeth. She let out a disgusted oath.

  Aedran caught her before she touched the worm, and Zander swept it off her shoulder. Cursing, he raised his hand. There were several spines lodged in the edge of his small finger. They still glowed, but the light was fading fast, sinking like some ghostly ink into his skin.

  “Burns,” he hissed, plucking out the glassy barbs.

  Aedran let go of Erryn and took Zander’s torch. He swept it over the worms creeping over the floor. Their spines crisped and curled in the heat. The general leaned over, pressed the torch closer. The creatures tried to retreat, but didn’t get far before curling up on themselves, their light dying as they went still.

  “They die easy enough,” he said, straightening.

  “We don’t have enough torches to cook them all,” Coran advised.

  Aedran scanned the ceiling. “Not if we’re spread out. But if we can clear out the great hall, we can keep watch for more.”

  “They’re just caterpillars,” Zander repeated, as a flurry of cries echoed along the dim, cold ways of Stormhold.

  “Just so,” Aedran agreed. “But I’m not about to let them use us as pincushions.”

  More shouts followed the first, and Erryn imagined the wriggling caterpillars swarming her army, burying them alive. “I suggest we hurry.”

  Her general and the two guards offered no argument.

  ~ ~ ~

  By the time Erryn, Aedran, Coran, and Zander reached the hall, half of her army had already gathered there to escape the caterpillars. But the small creatures were here too, by the thousands, and their faint light washed over the soldiers, making them seem more like ghosts than men.

  At Aedran’s order, a hundred torches were soon alight, and the Prythians began roasting the squirmy host.

  “Seems like they’re coming after us,” One Eye Thal snarled, stomping a few spiny creatures underfoot. They crunched like nuts under a mallet. He had rushed to join Erryn and Aedran as soon as he saw them, along with her other three captains.

  “I think mayhap our heat draws them,” Kormak said, trying to glance everywhere at once and making his thick black braid whip like an angry serpent. He looked very close to bolting.

  Erryn wanted to flee as well, and leave Stormhold to its true masters. The caterpillars disgusted her beyond words. Crushing and burning them by the score did nothing to ease her revulsion. If their efforts to eradicate the creatures had shown any progress, she might’ve felt differently, but right now, they were fighting a losing battle.

  Somewhere off to her right, Aedran began shouting orders, but his was just one of many voices. The great hall overflowed with the dull thunder of men cursing loudly when pincers of spines pierced them.

  Erryn shuddered at the sight of her army flailing about in the dusty torchlight, flapping their arms, or vigorously brushing their hands through bloody hair. Where the men stood on the brink of overwhelming dread, the packhorses had crossed the threshold. Snorts and whinnies filled the hall, and their stomping hooves rang loudly against the flagstones, beating out a hectic rhythm.

  Still the worms came, a slow, unending horde.

  They’re everywhere! Erryn imagined she could feel them crawling over her, sticky and sharp … yet whenever she searched herself, she was free of the caterpillars. Maybe they’re under my clothes, sneaking over my arms and chest, inching up my legs, seeking—

  Another wave of disgusted fright threatened to send Erryn running out of the fortress, but the memory of the howling storm held her fast. How long will the fear of freezing to death outweigh the fear of being chewed to death? Neither choice suited her. She wanted to live.

  “We must clear out a smaller area,” Erryn shouted at One Eye Thal.

  “Aye,” the grizzled captain said, grunting as he used a gloved hand to sweep half a dozen caterpillars off one arm, then doing the same to the other. More writhed in his hair, like spiky fish in a net. He turned his good eye on her, wide and questioning. “Where do we make our stand?”

  Erryn’s mind raced, but produced nothing of worth. The other captains had left her side, caught up in the unruly tide of men slapping and swatting at themselves. Curses and cries had risen to a thundering commotion. Close by, a horse reared up, bowling men over.

  “Fire kills them,” Erryn said, holding up her oil lamp, the heat of which sent a caterpillar squirming off her arm. So far, she had avoided getting poked or bitten, and she meant to keep it that way.

  “What good does that do—Agh!” One Eye Thal cut off with an appalled grunt when a worm tumbled out of his hair and landed
on his nose. He shook his head like a bee-stung bear, and sent the insect flying. “Gods! The bastards are everywhere!” He touched his nose, but there was no blood.

  Erryn grasped his arm, thick and hard as an old oak branch, and jerked him around. “We burn them.” That had been Aedran’s plan from the start, but he had chosen the wrong battleground. “The great hall is too large, too high, and has too many nooks and crannies. We must retreat.”

  “There’s nowhere to go!”

  Erryn cast about. “Gather a dozen men,” she ordered, “and all the lamps they can carry.”

  “For what?” Aedran asked, breathless after pushing through a wall of thrashing Prythians.

  She raised herself up, shedding her terror and revulsion. “Do as I command!” She was sure arguments would follow. Instead, One Eye Thal grinned at her, and a strange glimmer came into Aedran’s gaze. Pride? she wondered, hardly able to believe it. Or is it satisfaction?

  The general turned away to call soldiers to his side. The response was almost as overwhelming as the swarm of caterpillars. It seemed as if the men had been waiting for someone to give a command, no matter what that command was. It took but a few seconds for Aedran to gather a score of Prythians around himself and their queen. It took less time for those same men to collect a hundred oil lamps, some alight, but most cold.

  “We have what you wanted,” Aedran said.

  “Follow me!” Erryn set off toward the corridor they had used to reach the great hall. She was stopped cold by a surging wall of soldiers, all beating at themselves and one another, smashing worms, cursing the glassy spikes hung in their skin, bellowing when any of those creatures sank pincers into unprotected skin.

  Aedran stepped ahead of her, with One Eye Thal and the other three captains serving as a defensive ring between her and her frenzied army. Together they pushed through—Aedran was not alone in knocking a few heads of anyone given completely over to terror—and ended up in the long corridor, now aglow with tens of thousands of marching caterpillars. They squirmed over every surface, seeking the heat of men.

  Or, maybe, they’re drawn to the scent of fresh blood? Erryn thought, horrified by the prospect.

  Aedran faced her. “What do we do?”

  He wants me to lead, she realized, knowing intuitively that was true, but not understanding why.

  Instead of answering, she took a cold lamp from his hand, unstopped the oil reservoir, and hurled it down the corridor. A long tail of oil droplets followed after the unlit lamp, sparkling like silver raindrops in the ghostlight cast by the worms. The lamp hit the floor with a clang and wobbled out of sight.

  One Eye Thal looked at her as if she had gone mad. “That was a perfectly good lamp!”

  Erryn snatched a torch from Kormak’s hands and flung it after the lamp. When the torch hit the floor, its flames guttered and spit, then set alight the trail of oil with a muffled whoosh!

  Erryn retreated, her feet crunching through a dense carpet of caterpillars. Flames raced down the corridor, blackening a host of worms. They began to swell like tiny sausages. Soon after, they burst, their jellied insides threatening to put out the fire.

  “More lamps,” Erryn ordered.

  Before she had finished speaking, the corridor was filled with soaring lamps. The sharp smell of drizzling oil mingled with the reek of roasting caterpillars. In seconds, intense heat and rising flames filled the corridor, driving back the light of the worms. A hot, soot-filled wind drove Erryn and her party backward.

  After the flames and the heat faded, she saw that blobs of ash had replaced most of the caterpillars, but those still alive were crawling for the safety of cracks in the stone walls. A rowdy cheer went up from her captains, as if they had singlehandedly pushed back an invading army.

  “We’re not finished,” Erryn said. “We’ll have to burn them all before we can shelter here.”

  Now that they had seen what to do, her companions set off down the corridor, dousing the floor with lamp oil, splashing it high up on the walls. Once they reached the far end, they set it all alight again. It burned hotter and brighter than before, the flames scaling the walls to reach the ceiling, searing everything left alive.

  When the last flames guttered out, and only the flickering light of a few lamps stood against the usual darkness of Stormhold, Erryn surveyed what they had done. The long corridor would make for a tight fit with all the men and horses, but she was confident there was enough room.

  Erryn felt the weight of the men’s gazes on her. Aedran and the captains ringed her about, as if waiting for something more. Erryn locked eyes with the general and frowned. As they had before when she guessed he had wanted her to take command, his blue eyes shone and an expectant smile played over his lips.

  “What would you have us do, my queen?” he asked.

  He truly wants me to lead, Erryn thought, but more than that, he wants the men to see me leading, a queen at the head of her army. In that moment, she could almost forgive him for spurning her. Almost.

  “We’ll need to keep a watch, in case these foul creatures return,” she said. “But now that we know how they swarm, we ought to be able to knock them back before they can grow in number—hopefully without having to set everything afire. Bring the rest of the men here, but before they come into the corridor, make sure they have none of those damnable caterpillars crawling on them—”

  “That means we’ll have to strip,” Aedran cut in.

  “Modesty will do us more harm than good,” she said, and received reluctant nods all around. Listening to the rising commotion in the great hall, she added, “I suggest you make all haste, or my army will flee Stormhold.”

  When Aedran and the others hesitated, Erryn took a deep breath, drew off her cloak, and shook it out. Next off was her coat, then her first of three tunics. Her general and captains followed suit.

  Her talk about modesty came back to haunt her when she stood as naked as her men. As far as she could tell, they were not looking at her as they would a goddess-queen, but as men who see a desirable woman.

  Not to be outdone, she boldly returned their scrutiny. When she looked on Aedran, she felt the same eagerness and regret in her heart that she saw in his eyes. Both emotions she pushed down, strangling the life out of them.

  After ensuring no caterpillars had taken refuge in her clothing, Erryn got dressed again, as did her men. While no one had set fire to the worms in the great hall, the tiny creatures had begun to disperse. Neither Erryn nor Aedran thought it wise to count on the creatures not returning.

  A few shouts got the army moving toward the corridor. A few more shouts had the men in front stripping out of their caterpillar-infested clothing and armor, shaking it all out, and then moving into their narrow sanctuary.

  Erryn oversaw everything. Some of the Prythians looked askance at her, but she only bid them entry with a curt gesture after Aedran or one of her captains had ensured they weren’t bringing any of the worms with them. Most of the men bore welts and swollen bite marks.

  Erryn recoiled when Zander tottered into the torchlight, his curly black hair matted with sweat and blood. He had removed his cloak and trousers, but still wore his scaled jerkin. His eyes, red and puffy, rolled feverishly.

  “Are you daft, lad?” One Eye Thal asked. “The queen’s order was to take everything off.”

  Zander wobbled where he stood, and began pissing on the floor. “Gobble my arse, you ugly, one-eyed whoreson,” Zander mumbled, as if his tongue had grown too thick for his mouth.

  One Eye Thal’s fists clenched, but Aedran stopped him from disciplining the man. The general leaned closer to Zander. Erryn suddenly wanted to scream at him to keep his distance, but the words stuck in her throat.

  “He’s sick,” Aedran said.

  “Is it venom?” Erryn asked.

  “Mayhap,” Aedran said, brow furrowed. He spoke quietly to Erryn and the other captains, but all of them denied seeing anyone else showing the signs of fever or delirium.

 
“Make sure he’s free of worms,” Aedran said then, “but put him away from the others. If there’s sickness here, we don’t need it running through the rest of us.”

  “Be hard to keep it at bay, packed in as we are,” One Eye Thal said.

  “There’s nothing for it,” Aedran said, then called over a pair of soldiers to lead a muttering Zander away.

  Erryn watched the soldier scratching at a rash of pustules ranging from his fingers to the back of his hand. Earlier, that same hand had been full of caterpillar spines. If venom afflicted him, she hoped it was nothing deadly. If it is, she thought, troubled that such a cold calculation would enter her mind, then I may lose half my army … or more.

  Chapter 18

  Time to dance for your master, puppet-boy! came his mother’s drunken cackle.

  Algar tried to ignore her, but she was right. Brother Jathen needed to hear what was afoot. Yet, Algar still hesitated to use the seeing glass to contact the monk, because, truth told, he was not sure what was afoot.

  Cloaked in shadows born of the Spirit Stone, he had been watching Edrik and his fellows since they arrived atop the place they named Ruan Breach. Far below, the River Sedge churned through the gorge’s throat. Once past those dark waters, the river spread wide and was frozen over. There were several slender boats lining the southern riverbank, which Edrik’s men had taken from the snow-laden brush. Those boats seemed too delicate for navigating the River Sedge, but apparently Edrik and his fellows had used them before. Two men had remained with the boats. One was still there, staring across the river, and the other had headed downstream.

  Algar wanted to move closer to Edrik and Danlin, who were gazing down into the stony breach, but stopped himself. Dark clouds had been building throughout the day, but the gloomy light was still strong enough to break the Spirit Stone’s spell and make him visible. He could step into the Zanar-Sariit, but each time he did, it seemed as if the spirits of the dead were drawn to him more strongly than before. With that in mind, he chose to huddle out of sight within a dense stand of firs.