Cob put his back to hers and faced the tendrils coming from the rear, but the panic still gripped him. He could not remember how he had touched the Guardian’s power in Thynbell, or even how it felt to wear the black armor. It was all blotted out by the golden light.
His head twinged. Two points on his brow. He closed his eyes.
It was like plunging into a lake, digging fingers into the silt and sand below. For a moment he saw the trees around him, the figures among them, black and white—the clearing in the Mist Forest where he had brought the broken blade down upon his friend. Then he felt the connection through his fingertips and realized he had crouched down to bury his hand in the cold mud.
Black water flowed up his arm, through his veins. Fur and bark and stone raced over his skin. The Guardian’s great scaled shape swelled within him, its strength steadying his nerves, its fury steeling his shoulders as it made ready for the energy that threatened him.
His senses opened up, and he felt the life that surrounded him again. Clearer. Sharper.
Arik, halfway up the embankment, stumbled in mid-stride then shifted with startling fluidity. No stretching, no crackle of sinew and pop of joints reshaping, just a swift and smooth transition from wolf to wolfbeast, bipedal and massive and wickedly clawed. Cob sensed his surprise and glee, the thunder of his heart—
—and the hearts of all the others, all around him. The hogs, the carters, their wives and children in the wagons, the mages and soldiers pouring through the portals and the massed life in the chambers beyond. The tiny and distant lives—burrowing birds, hares, a prowling fox. The shivering dog at the fringe of his perception.
Fiora at his back, burning like a candle-flame.
The golden tendrils lanced in, and he planted his hooves in the cold road and bent his head at them as if they were the antlers of a rival stag. Beneath him was that sea of draining darkness, the place where the magic went to die, but he was rooted like a tree above it and the Guardian held him firm in its coils. He would not fall.
Something hit him on the side of the head.
It was not a hard strike—he knew that even as he reeled from it—but the metal of the object sent vibrations through his skull and down his spine that shook off the armor as if it had been made of glass. The ground reeled under his feet, and he saw the object hit the mud next to him: one of the carters’ wheel-wrenches. He took a half-step forward to keep his balance.
His tether to the earth broke as he moved. The black sea fell away.
Instantly, the golden ropes were upon him, ripping him further off-balance. From the other side of the wagon, Arik roared in anger, but Cob could not turn to look. There were ropes in his antlers, pulling his head up; ropes around his shoulders, behind his knees, twisting and wrenching at him from a dozen angles. He felt the Guardian attempting to anchor itself and tried to brace his own feet, but they were both thwarted by the thin shivs of magic that slipped under him with every step. In moments he found himself forced onto tiptoe, the Guardian’s essence draining from him as if he was a broken bottle.
He heard Fiora shout, felt her hand on his belt trying to keep him down, but the magic was too strong. His feet left the ground.
Then the draft-hog was beneath him, thrusting its great plated head under his kicking legs, and as his boots hit its hide, the Guardian linked to it desperately. It was a stalwart creature of the earth, belligerently protective, bred over ages to hunker down against threats from above, and it yielded eagerly to needs of the Great Spirit. Raw, aggressive hoggishness surged into Cob, so fiercely happy that he loosed a mad laugh as he clamped his hands on his entangled antlers.
They bent backward at his touch, melding into hog-like armor plates that formed along his scalp and shoulders as the ropes that had bound them fell loose. His knees hit the hog’s flanks, and those arcane ropes fizzed away too, compressed and drowned in the flood of their common pulse. For a moment before he slid to the ground, Cob had two hearts, but the bigger beat in time with the smaller and he knew instinctively that the hog was suffering.
He hit the mud on one knee, both hands in it, the last of the ropes shredding as his armor returned in full. Beside him, the hog slumped to the ground.
Around him, all was chaos.
On the carter’s bench, Arik stood in wolfbeast form, slamming Handler Rickent repeatedly against the door-frame. The man’s head lolled on his shoulders but he still clutched at the skinchanger’s arms weakly. Around them, the other wagons were being thrust about by their thrashing hogs, some of them backed up to the river and some half-turned as if every hog in the caravan had tried to come to Cob’s aid. They blocked the advance of the rearward soldiers, who struggled awkwardly through the wet snow, their swords drawn. No mages were in view. Men and women hollered and hauled at harnesses and lashed switches at sensitive hog-ears, only heightening the frenzy.
The Guardian put down roots, and Cob rose slowly, setting a hand to the side of the draft-hog that had saved him. As he touched it, the emotions of all the other hogs surged in: pain, anger, fear, concern, a maelstrom contained in massive, dangerous bodies ready to attack anything he desired. The one he touched tried to heave its great self up, and he thought calmness at it, unnerved by their ferocity. Acknowledgment rippled through them, and in moments the whole caravan of struggling beasts relaxed, sagging stolidly in their traces.
Above, Arik perked his ears as if he had heard Cob’s thought, then dropped the semi-conscious handler and leapt to the road to crouch low, almost onto his belly, tail tucked tight. Cob eyed him, still off-balance from everything that had just happened. Even obsequious, the wolfbeast was terrifyingly large, with a thick silver mane and bristly fur studded with quills; his face was bestial, his hands savagely clawed, his jaws studded with two-inch fangs. But though his eyes were those of a predator, they still showed chagrin, concern, relief.
“I’m fine,” Cob told him. “We have to get away.”
Arik glanced toward the river, then looked over his shoulder as a group of soldiers came around the end of a jackknifed wagon. They had crossbows, and before Cob could react, the wolfbeast whipped around and darted toward them with an unnerving four-legged gait. They fired on him as he closed the distance, but he reared up on his hind legs to crash among them with a roar, knocking several down as crossbow bolts flicked in all directions. A moment later, he was up again, one hapless soldier in his grip as he started laying about with him like a truncheon.
Cob stared, open-mouthed, then looked for Fiora.
She was a few strides away, just past the slumped draft-hog where the end of the next wagon made a choke-point of the road. With her sword and shield, she fended off two Gold soldiers there, but more were crowding up behind them with pikes, and past them Cob saw a mage at the forward portal weaving a new spell. As he stepped toward her, three more mages caught sight of him and raised their hands to cast.
This is insane, Cob thought. We have to go.
Yellow cloth flickered in his peripheral vision, and he scented a familiar wrongness in the air. Then pain impaled him like a huge needle through the ribs.
For an instant, he was in another place: a tight white coffin riddled with spikes of ice and silver, piercing in from every angle but none more painful than the icicle through his chest, so cold that it burned. He could not move, could not scream—like when the wraiths had shot him, only worse, because that arrow had not hated him.
This weapon was aware. Spiteful, resentful of his heat. Delighted to tear it away.
He struck out blindly and hit something solid, felt the weapon slide free. Heat clenched in his side and chest, thawing him, and for a moment he tasted blood as the pain of awakened nerves made him gag. Then the Guardian enwrapped him like a cloak of warm scales, and he managed to stumble a few steps away as the muscles and veins began to knit.
Slow footfalls followed him. He looked up to see his opponent: a plain-looking man in a Gold uniform with a long black rapier in hand, its blade covered in pale runes and
frozen blood. There was something eye-avoidant about the man’s face, as if it resisted being remembered, but when he squinted hard, Cob saw the filaments under the skin.
His mouth went dry. Another Darilan.
As if awaiting that acknowledgment, the abomination rushed him, leading with the rapier. In his other hand he held a wicked-looking dagger, but it had none of the hateful aura of the black blade, so Cob barely noticed it; all his concentration was on avoiding the rapier, fleeing it, escaping the memory it brought.
—the red runes flaring in the dark—
His heels hit the dirt-thick edge of the snowbank. He was trapped.
The abomination lunged for his throat.
Reflexes from fighting fist-to-knife kicked in. Dropping sideways under the blade, Cob lashed his heel toward the abomination’s bent knee, and the man sprang back, striking down with his long dagger. It scraped uselessly over Cob’s armor. Taking advantage of the abomination’s brief retreat, Cob scuttled backward in the slush toward Fiora, his shoulder skimming the snowbank until it fetched up against something hard.
The abomination pursued. Cob saw his gaze flick to Fiora’s back, saw the rapier rise, and reached for the thing that had stopped his shoulder—some sort of tingling metal rod. Gripping it in both hands, he levered it from the earth and swung it up at the abomination.
White and gold sparks rained down as the rapier and the shaft of the beacon clashed.
The abomination leapt back in surprise. Cob lurched to his feet and hefted his makeshift club. It had a three-foot steel shaft etched with arcane runes, with a swirling glass sphere cupped in a clawed setting at the top. Shivers of energy coursed through it, and as he raised it, the clouds within the sphere seemed to focus on him. Watching.
“Pike you all,” he snarled at it, and swung at the abomination.
The abomination dodged, then gamely caught the next swipe on his rapier’s quillons. A new shower of sparks poured out as he tried to force the beacon up and away, but even with the Guardian concentrating on stitching his wound, Cob was stronger and kept their weapons clinched at chest-level. Out of frustration, the abomination stabbed him several times with the dagger but it could not pierce his armor.
Changing tactics, the abomination shifted its grip to squeeze the rapier’s quillons hard against Cob’s knuckles. Frigid pain lanced along his hand, and the wavering hallucination of the ice coffin threatened to close on him. Gritting his teeth, Cob tried to grip further up the beacon-shaft with his offhand for leverage but the abomination battered his fingers with the dagger, and he actually felt it, as if being threatened by the rapier was enough to weaken the armor. He recoiled.
Fiora’s back bumped his. He heard her breathing hard. Over the abomination’s shoulder, he saw the wolfbeast skittering away from lances of bright magic, leaving a mess of soldiers groaning in the snowbank, but there were more coming through the portal. More soldiers, more mages, more everything.
In desperation, he snarled at the abomination and shoved forward, putting all his weight into it. The dagger cut past his ear and drew a shallow line through his scalp but he overbore the startled man, his hooves firm in the slush as the abomination’s boots slid. With a last push, he sent the abomination stumbling and flung the beacon hard at him, then grabbed Fiora by the shoulder and dragged.
She came with him at a run, and he heard a pike scrape on her shield as he hauled her between the draft-hog and the next wagon and onto the embankment beyond.
The draft-hog twisted as he passed. Soldiers pursued in a thunder of armor, but then came a shriek, and he glanced back to see the hog’s massive jaws clamped around the first pursuer’s legs. It bore the man to the ground and shook him like a rag doll, and as it heaved its great bulk about, its wagon pitching sideways toward the other soldiers. Shouts filled the air.
Cob did not see Arik. Cursing mentally, he shouted, “To the river!” then started down the slope himself. Fiora shook off his grip to slide on her own.
Cob hit the half-frozen river and staggered out a few yards, trying to catch his breath, his injured side burning. Fiora followed more slowly, wary of the ice. The black current of the river thrummed through Cob’s hooves like a constant tremor, too close beneath him. If the soldiers tried to follow, they were all doomed, but considering their mage back-up, he doubted his enemies were out of options.
Beyond the river were more snowy hills, rolling slowly westward into the faint fur of the Mist Forest. Too far to run.
Hoi. Help me, he thought at the Guardian, but though he felt it at work in him, it did not respond. The Gold magic, the evil blade—both had weakened it, and though he knew it had dragged him out of worse situations before, it had been in complete control then. With him conscious, it had limited resources.
A grey shape skidded down the slope then scrambled along the ice: Arik in wolf-form, pelt streaked with red, paws skittering awkwardly as he tried to balance with the lumpy leather pack in his teeth. Beyond him, the Golds emerged from behind the wagons, first five and then ten and then more than Cob could swiftly count. Mages, pikemen, crossbowmen and the abomination, and on the wagons the civilians peeking from cart-benches and through lifted shutters.
Cob’s hands fisted. He envisioned the river rising, ice cracking above the great tide of black water that would reach out to drag all the wagons down. All the soldiers, all the treacherous carters, everyone who dared strike at him. More than enough strength dwelt in the water, if only he knew how to harness it.
Then a tepid mist rolled over his shoulders to eclipse everything around him.
Cob stiffened, every nerve on edge. A hand clutched his arm and he grabbed its owner and dragged it fighting into a headlock, where it scraped his face with a plated glove and kicked his shins and swore in a high voice until he realized that it was Fiora. He also discovered that his own armor had failed, and her boots had hobnailed heels. She told him in no uncertain terms that he deserved it.
Moments later, a large furry thing pressed itself against his aching legs, and he barely managed not to kick it. He set a hand on the bristled neck instead and felt the wolf shudder. Through the mist, he could barely see his companions, and the ground beneath them felt blank. Not ice, not stone. The river and the caravan were gone, leaving them alone in nothingness.
Except—
A light. Tiny, pale in the gloom, it seemed to be approaching them, and Cob squinted but saw nothing beyond it. Felt nothing, as if the Guardian’s senses had no worth here. As it came closer, he tried not to imagine what it was, tried not to give in to the stories and his own memories of the mist. He dared not let go of either of his companions now, not even to fight.
After endless moments, he glimpsed the shadow of a cord attached to the light. Then a hand, an arm. The suggestion of a body.
Another body. A third.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
The last shape moved forward, resolving slightly. Tall, dark. Familiar.
“Hoi,” said Lark, then looked past him searchingly. “I brought help. Are you alone?”
Cob stared at her, utterly confused. “No,” he managed after a moment. “Two others. Girl and a wolf. They’re right with me.”
Lark squinted, then nodded. “I see them. All right. Can we get them?” She directed the question toward one of the other figures—cloaked and hooded, vague in the mist but holding the glowing object. It nodded slowly.
“Great,” said Lark, then fixed her gaze on Cob again. Her smile looked like a razor. “And where is Rian?”
Cold sweat sprang up on his skin. He had not thought of the goblin since his escape into the forest, and he suddenly realized he had no idea what had happened after he was dragged away. “He’s… He’s not here. He’s all right though. Can we talk about it later?”
Her dark eyes narrowed, and he knew she saw right through him. But she stuck out her hand nevertheless. “Grab me. We all need to keep in contact or Ilshenrir might lose us.”
Cob nudged Fiora forward, try
ing not to feel like he was hiding behind her. “Uh, Fiora, meet Lark,” he said. The Trifolder girl gave him an odd look, but Lark smiled tightly and nodded in greeting, so Fiora clasped her hand. Cob kept his grip on Fiora’s other arm and knotted his fingers in Arik’s ruff, the wolf pressed so tight to his leg that he could have been glued there.
“All right then,” said Lark. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”
With that, they moved forward into the mist.
Chapter 5 – The Grey Wraiths
Twice before, Cob had been swallowed by the mist. Both times were by surprise: first the attack on the loggers that had put him in the infirmary and given him his silver scar, and second the visitation he had received while stumbling delirious through the woods, trying to escape his Imperial pursuit.
Now, with the mist all around him, he prayed that this was more like the second encounter. The ambush at the logging line had been many wraiths—at least a dozen. This, like the time by the stream, was just one or maybe two, if that third person was also a wraith.
He burned to know what it meant, but he could neither hear the others nor see them, only feel them: Fiora’s arm in his grip, Arik’s big hairy hand locked over his. The other three were invisible. For all he knew, they were gone.
Even the Guardian had all but vanished. Cob’s wounds were down to dull aches now, a testament to its diligent mending, but he sensed it like a baby snake curled in the pit of his stomach instead of the great serpent it normally was. It felt tired, and so did he.
Something tall and narrow moved through the mist beside him.
He shied away, heart thundering, sweat springing up on his skin, but it was already gone. The skinchanger’s hand gripped tighter and he glanced back as Arik leaned in, close enough to part the veil of mist; his eyes were still feral blue, his hair a brindled mass, but his face was mostly human and his frown concerned. Blood freckled his hairy shoulders.
“Something wrong?” he said in a low voice.
The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) Page 11
