“Why mention it at all?”
Aedran shrugged helplessly. “Our queen should know our destination.”
One Eye Thal rubbed his face. When his hand fell away, he had put on a belated grin. “Just so, lad, just so.”
Erryn looked between them, disliking the idea that they had kept secrets from her—something far more important than a mere surprise, by One Eye Thal’s reaction. I’ll deal with them and their secrets later, she silently promised, anger overriding her fear.
She raised herself up, prepared to issue a formal command before either man could attempt to talk her out of it, but a warning cry from atop the wall stilled her tongue. A second later, a piercing whistle echoed through the forest.
“Ready the men,” Aedran said to the captain.
One Eye Thal nodded and spun away. A moment later, everything had become a chaos of movement. Shouting men sprinted up the ramps, doubling the number of warriors on each section of the wall. Others moved to guard the narrow openings on either side of the bonfires, each bearing hastily made spears. Above the racket, the iceworms’ shrilling cries came closer.
“They’re all around us,” Erryn said, sword held before her.
“If we survive this,” Aedran said, eyeing her wavering blade, “remind me to show you how to use that damned thing. For now, just remember to poke at their eyes and underbellies.” Between him and the captains, that was the best strategy they had come up with.
“If we survive?”
“Gold and glory demand their own price, and that fee is usually wet and red.”
Blood, Erryn thought with a shudder. A sudden half-mad chortle bubbled past her lips. “If we survive this, I expect—” she paused to shake her head briskly “—no, I demand that you put aside all the adoring nonsense you heap upon Prythian queens, and treat me as a woman.”
His gaze flickered uncertainly. “What you want is forbidden.”
Erryn ground her teeth in frustration. “I care not about what is forbidden.”
“Nor do I,” Aedran admitted softly. “It is wrong that I can so easily imagine putting aside my duty and destiny … but for you, in this matter, I would.”
Her heartbeat increased. “So, you will do as I ask?” The grave way the words came out, she might have been asking him to die for her, instead of sharing her bed.
Aedran swallowed. “It would be my greatest privilege and, doubtless, my greatest pleasure.”
Erryn’s cheeks burned under his steady blue gaze. “We’ll see about that.”
“Indeed,” he said, and barked sudden laughter.
Her insides fluttering, Erryn looked away before he could take anything back and deny her again. They stood unspeaking for a long while. The camp grew silent, save for crackling bonfires.
“I want to go up on the wall,” Erryn said.
Aedran shook his head. “This is the safest place.”
Erryn scanned the camp. “You know as well as I that bonfires and walls of snow offer little safety.” They also needed more weapons—namely bows, of which there were only four or five among her men, and far too few arrows. “Take me to the wall, general,” she said. Then, to soften the order, she added, “If anything happens, you have my permission to drag me back here.”
Aedran rubbed his chin, brushing frost from his beard. “Very well. But if anything happens, do not think to resist me.”
“Of course not.”
He gave her a doubtful look, then led her across camp to the nearest ramp of packed snow. He stayed no more than two strides ahead as they climbed. Atop the wall, some of the soldiers gave her uneasy glances.
Aedran pointed off to one side. “There! Two of them, winding around that split tree. Do you see them?”
When Erryn saw the iceworms, she wished she had stayed put at the center of camp. The two Joraxa moved with the ease of serpents swimming across a still pond. Unlike serpents, the iceworms used dozens of legs to drive them along at twice the speed of a running man, their segmented bellies hissing over the crusty snow. As she had guessed before, they were not the color of bronze, but rather the hue of dusty bones, save for their black eyes and pincers.
Then they were gone, vanished back into the gloom.
She kept a sharp eye, and it was not long before she caught more glimpses of the creatures circling the camp. Always they appeared briefly, before fading beyond the firelight, as if they only wanted a quick peek to satisfy some curiosity. As far as she could tell, more and more of them were growing curious.
Erryn was not the only one to take notice of the behavior. Her Prythians took stock and stood tense, their swords, axes, and mauls ready.
After watching the circling creatures for a time, Erryn noted something else. “They get closer each time around.”
“Aye,” Aedran said. “They grow bolder the longer we wait.”
“Perhaps we should attack them before they attack us?”
Aedran thought about it. “I could send a few men out to meet them, but Joraxa will have the advantage in deep snow. Better to stand fast and let them come to us, where we have fire, walls, and hard-frozen ground underfoot.”
Erryn had no counter to his counsel, so she remained silent. The longer she stayed so, the tenser she became. Until a man screamed, she hadn’t known she was waiting for the worst. She whirled a blink faster than Aedran.
Across the camp, high up on another parapet, a Prythian was struggling to pull his foot out of the snow. A muffled crunching noise swept around the camp. The man cried out again and fell to his backside. Using his sword, he stabbed at the snow around his buried foot, and then abruptly dropped his weapon to grab his leg. Those nearby moved closer to the thrashing man, but warily.
“Kormak!” Aedran shouted. “Go see what he’s on about.”
Captain Kormak obeyed with a brisk nod, but his stride slowed when that crunching noise came again. The struggling man wailed and redoubled his efforts to escape. When his leg came free of the hole, a spurting stump had taken the place of his boot. He began scooting backward, the shredded stub of leg leaving a bloody trail. “Help me, you craven shits!”
The shock clutching his companions broke. They rushed forward, caught hold of the man’s arms, and began pulling him down the ramp toward the center of camp. Kormak pushed by them and sprinted to the place the man had lost his foot. Despite the distance, Erryn saw the tightness around his eyes.
“What is it?” Aedran called.
“A deep hole, general … and blood.”
“Gods,” Erryn said, feeling caught in a whirlwind in which the passage of time had increased tenfold, “they’re burrowing through the walls. We need to get everyone down.”
“Aye,” Aedran said, but his attention had turned to the wounded man.
The soldier’s cries had become a string of oaths directed at those hauling him to safety. They made it no farther than halfway down the ramp, when pair of black pincers burst out of the packed snow and snapped around the man’s good leg. He reared back, mouth gaping around silence, his body convulsing between the Joraxa fighting to drag him under, and the men trying to pull him loose. Erryn heard leather ripping, bone crunching, and then the soldier lost most of his second leg to the iceworm. He fell back and went still, his shortened legs pumping scarlet streams.
“Get him down!” Erryn shrieked.
Captain Kormak had just turned to help, when another Joraxa surged out of the hole behind him, its spindly legs waving and clattering together like bones. The worm caught the captain about the waist and raised him up on his tiptoes. Eyes bulging and mouth working, Kormak made a feeble strike with his sword, managing to cut off a claw-tipped leg. Before he could swing his blade again, the belly of his armor bulged. Kormak thrashed weakly, a horrid gargling noise issuing from his throat.
Erryn’s skin flashed cold when a pair of the worm’s forelegs punched through Kormak’s middle. The captain’s choking squeal cut off when those legs ripped him in half. Erryn turned away, shaking, retching.
&n
bsp; Aedran pulled her near. Ordering a retreat to the center of camp, he jerked her off her feet and hauled her down the ramp. She didn’t resist or try to stand. Instead, she hung limp.
With a series of violent tugs, the worm that had killed Captain Kormak now yanked his torso down into its burrow. Soldiers began slashing and stabbing at the snow. Erryn’s few remaining Queensguard rushed to defend her.
Aedran deposited her near the central bonfire, and she watched in a daze as One Eye Thal raced across the camp, batting men aside in his haste to reach the warrior who’d lost his legs. By the time he reached the fellow, a Joraxa had crawled several feet out of its hole. Its bloodied head swung toward the captain, its dead black eyes focusing on him. As its flattened head reared to strike, its pincers snapped together with a resounding clack!
With his sword out and swinging, One Eye Thal dropped into a slide that took him under the Joraxa’s lunging attack. His blade sliced across the creature’s middle with a ringing screech. Uttering a whistling shriek, the worm twisted around, following its attacker. One Eye Thal slid to a halt, ran the tip of his sword deep between a pair of bony plates, and wrenched the blade to the side. Cut nearly in two, the thrashing iceworm folded over, its dying shrieks making Erryn’s hair stand on end.
Coated in the worm’s greenish blood and viscera, One Eye Thal stood up to deliver an overhand strike that smashed through the front part of the worm’s skull. Half the creature’s head, along with it snapping pincers, tumbled away.
Staggering clear of the Joraxa’s spasming legs, One Eye Thal thrust his gore-streaked sword overhead and roared a battle cry. With that, he rushed to help a trio of men battling another great iceworm that had burst through the base of a rampart.
“More are coming!” warned the last soldier atop the wall. “They’re everywhere! Scores of them! Hundreds!”
“You must stand up, Erryn,” Aedran said urgently.
Hearing him speak her name cleared some of the shock from her mind, but she could not seem to make herself move.
Trying to look everywhere at once, Aedran reached out. His gloved hand swayed before her staring eyes. “Get up!”
Erryn barely heard. She quailed at the bloody chaos spreading all around. Iceworms exploded from the packed snow, catching hold of her men, ripping them asunder. Slashing steel rang against bony plates. Blood of worm and man flowed and splashed.
“On your goddamned feet, girl!” Aedran bellowed.
His harsh tone struck Erryn like a blow. With a curse, she shoved his hand away and clambered to her feet. “Where’s my sword?” Erryn snapped, dismayed to find that she had dropped it.
Before he could answer, the ground underfoot cracked and gave way. Erryn tumbled to her arse, and Aedran sank to his knees. A Joraxa surged out of the loose rubble of frozen dirt and packed snow. Aedran took a stab at the worm, and in answer, a clawed foot slashed his face, driving him back.
“Run!” he screamed at Erryn, floundering toward her. He sank to his waist, then to his chest. The Joraxa rose behind him, neck arched, pincers spread wide.
Ignoring his command, Erryn struggled to her feet and moved to help him, only to sink to her knees in the broken ground. She ducked a slashing leg, but the clawed foot ripped a tuft of dark hair from her head. Her pained cry became a grunt when she toppled face first into the crumbly mire.
Aedran’s shouts filled her ears. She didn’t waste a moment looking his way, but flung herself onto firmer ground. At the edges of her vision, men were clashing with too many iceworms to count. She saw other men fall, torn and bloody. She saw nothing to give her hope.
Another warning sent her into a rolling dive, and the Joraxa slammed its pincers down where she had been. Then she was on her knees, fighting to rise. The worm swung its head, knocking her aside.
She flew a short span and bowled over one of her soldiers. He fell on her, crushing the breath from her chest. His weight vanished a second later, and a steaming drizzle spattered across her cheeks and brow. More of it flooded her eyes, stinging, turning everything red. When she opened her mouth to scream, that scarlet rain flooded her tongue with a taste of salted rust. Blood! It’s his—The frantic thought cut off when shredded bits of armor and meat began pelting her.
Aedran called out again, off to her left.
Scrabbling madly through a forest of stout legs, Erryn’s fingers touched something familiar, and they wrapped convulsively around the hilt of the dead man’s sword. The blade was far longer and heavier than hers, but in her terror, the weapon felt light as a feather.
Swiping at her eyes, Erryn hastened toward Aedran’s voice. Through a crimson fog, she saw a serpentine shape swaying above him.
“Stay back!” Aedran roared.
Erryn lurched forward until the Joraxa’s girth filled her vision. Imitating a Prythian battle cry, she stabbed at the iceworm’s flank. The tip of the blade scraped over a smooth plate before slipping deep between two segments. The creature spasmed, jerking the sword out of her hand. She dropped to her knees and tried to crawl out of reach. The iceworm’s attack went wide, but its stone-hard belly cracked against the back of her head, knocking her flat.
Stunned, chest hitching, she rolled over to see the Joraxa soaring above her. Clustered obsidian eyes regarded her over snapping pincers. Erryn had a moment to wish her vision had remained fuzzy, before the iceworm lanced down. She flinched to the side just before the Joraxa crashed into the ground.
Flopping to her belly, she made to wriggle away, but her hands had become a pair of gloved fools. Beyond her clutching fingers, the torn snow went on and on, dotted with pieces of what had once been whole men and savaged iceworms. Behind her, Aedran screamed. Below her, the ground trembled.
A crushing pressure closed around her waist, and the iceworm lifted her high, titling her back until she saw only the night sky overhead, the depthless black expanse filled with coldly glittering stars. Something like a blunt spear jabbed brutally against her spine. Erryn heard her wolfskin cloak tearing, felt icy points digging into her skin. Searing trickles of blood began to flow, and she envisioned Captain Kormak dying. Erryn ground her teeth together, making them into an impassable bulwark. She didn’t want to die screaming. If she trapped her pain inside, the last of her army would keep fighting. And, after they had won the night and tended their wounds, they would sing a lament for their good, strong queen.
All at once, the iceworm shook beneath her, whipped her back and then forward, and she felt herself hurtling through the air without a whit of grace, her arms and legs stretched out as if held by invisible ropes.
Weightless, Erryn soared over the rampart and thumped into a deep drift of snow. A swirling white cloud engulfed her, filled her nose with icy powder. Too dazed to think, she lay there looking up at the stars, listening to the clamor of battle, and waiting for a breath to fill her chest. When it did, she gulped the bitter air, relishing the painful ache it put into her lungs. Then, for a long time, she lost herself in a cold stupor.
When the first trumpeting beast charged past, Erryn mistook it for a new kind of murdering horror. When the second went by, she sat up with a wince. Men on horses were galloping in every direction across the meadow. Men bearing torches and wielding lances, all wearing armor and strange uniforms—true uniforms, not like the wolfskin cloaks and leathers her Prythians wore. Red-and-white quartered shields emblazoned their snowy tabards, and upon each shield soared a jet-black raven. Where these men rode, iceworms died.
Her confusion deepened when rivers of Prythians began charging out of the forest and converging on the makeshift camp. There were many hundreds of them, far more than had marched with her across the Gyntors.
The battle raged on, oblivious to her.
While the Prythians herded the great iceworms with fire and steel, riders used their lances to impale the creatures before they could escape. Where that failed, they ran their warhorses over the top of the worms, letting steel-shod hooves crush the Joraxa.
Far sooner than s
he could have hoped, the fighting began to slack off. A familiar voice turned her head. She saw her general pushing through teeming hordes of Prythian newcomers. His cloak was tattered, blood speckled his face, and greenish ooze befouled his sword.
“Aedran!” Erryn called, but it came out as a hoarse croak. He couldn’t have heard, but his roaming gaze halted on her. Aedran came on at a run.
Erryn began digging herself out of the snow, the length of her spine filled with a throbbing ache. The longer it took, the harder she fought, until each breath burned in her raw throat. She didn’t care. She had to get to her general. To Aedran.
She had pulled herself free and was stepping clumsily to meet him, when a loud fluttering gave her a fright. She spun, hands raised in defense, but there was no danger, so far as she could see.
Erryn stared in openmouthed wonder at the scrawny little man standing next to her. She was sure he had not been there a moment earlier.
He reached out, but hesitated to touch her arm. “By the grace of Lady Mylene of House Akarlen, and by the strong arms of the Wardens of Tanglewood, you’re quite safe. Of course, if your Captain Murgan hadn’t found one of Ravenhold’s patrols, things might have taken an unfortunate turn for you and your men.” Despite the fine cut of the little man’s bulky woolen cloak, he looked ratty and rumpled, and his black hair hung in lank strands about his thin face. “But then, we’re all the safer for the arrival of Lord Lofgrem and his army of Prythians.”
Why would there be another army of Prythians here besides my own? Erryn decided that could wait. “Who are you?”
He beamed. “I’m Horge, kennelmaster of Ravenhold.” His shoulders gave a fidgety twitch. “Truth told, I’m also the master of horse and, too, I mind chickens and geese, swine and sheep, and….” He trailed off with a helpless shrug. “As it concerns Lady Mylene’s stock, I tend them all. I understand them, you see, more than most.”
There was something curious about the way he said that last, but then Aedran was at Erryn’s side, looking suspiciously at the ratty fellow.
Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion) Page 23
