He worked his shoulders under his tunic, then nocked an arrow and drew it back experimentally, the feathered shaft held easily in his knuckles. He slowly relaxed the tension on the bow.
"I'm ready," he said.
What next? There had to be some useful order to give, to remind everyone—particularly Jason—that Jason was in charge.
But nothing happened as Tennetty swam to shore, retrieved four paddles scattered across the rocks and sand, and threw them in the flat boat before launching it and paddling out to the Gazelle.
There was easily room enough for six people, even with weapons. He should go first, Jason decided, tying it fast as it scraped against the Gazelle's side.
"Okay," he said, "after me."
"Like hell," Tennetty said, half-dressed already. Her damp hair clung to her face like black vines. "We do this in two transfers. First Durine, the baron, and me establish a position on shore, and then I paddle back for you, Jane and Bothan Ver." She wiped her nose on her arm. "Kethol and the captain can stay—"
"We have your word!" Thivar Anjer hissed. "I will not send Bothan Ver ashore with you, and I'll not come with you myself."
The captain was right. Jason had given his word, and the word of a Cullinane wasn't to be taken lightly. "No, Tennetty. They stay here."
Tennetty shook her head vigorously, flinging drops of water. "That was before we—"
"No," he said, trying to speak with his father's voice. "No, Tennetty." She would have listened to his father; he tried for Karl Cullinane's command voice, speaking each word slowly, emphatically: "They stay here."
"Shit." She spat on the deck. "We don't have time to argue. Kethol, you stay on watch, and don't drink or eat anything. If there's trouble, send up a signal rocket and get out of here. Send up another one when you want a rendezvous."
"Understood, Tennetty." The redheaded man smiled, teeth starkly white against his red beard. "Although you'd think we don't trust our new friends here."
"Hey, guys?" Jane Slovotsky raised a hand. "If somebody's going to be left behind, I wouldn't mind if it's me. I can light a signal flare real good, and my Dad's explained to me that Slovotskys don't like to stick our faces in the way of the ax. Although I could have worked that out myself," she added.
Durine and Bren Adahan smiled at that.
Tennetty snorted. "I've been watching the way these two have been watching you, and I'd sort of like to be able to introduce you to Karl as at least one woman of our acquaintance who hasn't been raped. We do it my way."
* * *
Getting ashore was tense, but uneventful. In just a short while they were all on land, the boat carefully beached.
Nothing stirred around them. It was still, the silence more accented than interrupted by the gentle slap of the waves on the rocks and the crackling of the smoldering wood.
"Keep it quiet, people," Tennetty whispered. "Let's move out."
There was only one clear path off the shore: a wide dirt road leading up, into the woods.
With a quick hand signal, Tennetty had them spread out. She took the point herself, with Durine on the right side of the road, behind her, Bren Adahan on the left, his rifle slung, a two-pronged fishing spear in his hands.
While everyone carried an extra pistol or two, Durine practically bristled with weapons: his heavy saber dangled from the left side of his belt; he carried the big smoothbore shotgun in his hands, a short rifle slung over his left shoulder, a rucksack over his right. The wooden butt of a flintlock pistol stuck out of his boot, and there was another brace of them in his belt, on the right side, leaving room for him to reach across his belly for the saber on the left.
Jane Slovotsky, the most lightly armed of the party, was in the middle, carrying a flintlock rifle and a single pistol, while Jason brought up the rear, his own flintlock heavy in his hands.
The wind changed, bringing more smoke their way, stinging their nostrils, carrying distant sounds to them; the crackling of the fire and something else, a dull roar that Jason couldn't quite make out.
Ahead there was a break in the trees. "Should be a village there," Tennetty said as they gathered around her. "In this part of the world they tend to keep trees between themselves and the Cirric; helps to break up the wind. There was—"
A distant scream cut her off. It was high and ululating, a cry of agony.
"Slow and easy, people. Slow and easy," Tennetty said.
They crept around the bend.
Where the trees broke, there had been a village. It was now burning and smoldering; some of the wooden houses had been smashed, and that had probably set off cooking fires, the sparks leaping from house to house.
There was another scream and some more cries; their source was clearly further down the road.
"Easy, easy," Tennetty whispered as they rounded one of the few remaining houses.
"Oh, shit," she said.
The cleared area beyond had apparently been the center of the village, where folks came to talk and trade together. Now they were even closer together; in the very center of the clearing, a hundred men, women and children huddled tightly.
Except for one: a short, wizened man in gray tattered robes stood between the humans and the creature. His left arm hung limp and bloody by his side, but his right arm was thrust out in front of his body, as though supporting the mass of light that stood between him and the creature.
The light and the lightning pushed it back, but the creature launched itself in the air for the wizard, only to be knocked back again.
It was a huge black beast, its body covered by tight fur that gleamed blackly in the sunlight. It was easily twice the size of a horse, its flat, triangular head vaguely lupine.
It had been wounded, at some point; a dozen arrows stuck in its shoulders and flanks, like feathers in an almost-plucked goose. Dirt matted a raw wound on its right foreleg; something had managed to cut through its hide.
Again it lunged, and again light and lightning issued from the cloud, knocking it back.
It crouched and screamed its defiance while it gathered its breath.
Maybe he tripped, or perhaps he panicked, but one of the villagers stumbled away from the rest, and then started to run when he realized he was alone and exposed.
The creature leaped and growled as it snatched at the fleeing man, pinning him to the ground with one paw, then dipping its head to pick up its victim, shaking its head like a dog shaking a rat, then flinging the now-limp form into the air. Then the monster turned back to the wizard.
Screams and cries filled the air, along with the deep growl of the creature as it tried and failed to reach past the cloud of light and fire.
Still, with each bolt of lightning, each blast of light, the glow seemed to dim marginally, as though its power were being drained whenever the creature slammed into it.
Jason had never seen anything like the monster before; but he remembered rumors of strange things coming out of Faerie. Could this, whatever it was, be one?
It didn't matter. He couldn't let it kill a village full of people. He cocked the hammer of his rifle and brought it to his shoulder.
"No," Tennetty hissed. "It's not our fight."
"Yes," he snapped back. "Would my father run away?"
"You're not your—shit, shit, shit," she said. "Fucking Cullinanes never listen." She brought her rifle to her shoulder and fired, all in one smooth motion.
Perhaps the bullet hit, but all that Jason could see was the creature dropping to all fours, then turning to face the new threat.
He took careful aim, trying for the base of the creature's neck. A head shot was risky; if you got the angle wrong the bullet could just ricochet off the creature's skull.
But if you could tear open any of the arteries leading to the brain, if you could smash the trachea. . . .
A gun crashed to his right, and then one to his left.
One shot missed, but the other became a splash of blood over the creature's right eye and a bestial scream of pain as it
s huge mouth sagged open, and it turned to see where the sound and hurt had come from.
The bullet had torn a gouge across its skull, but the creature wasn't seriously injured. It turned and leaped, covering half the distance between itself and Jason, settling its hind claws into the ground as it braced itself to spring and rush.
As it pushed itself into the air, Durine's smoothbore went off with a bang and a cloud of smoke, smashing the creature's right eye into a bloody mess, leaving it half-blind and fully maddened.
It fell to the ground only a few meters from Tennetty, who calmly fired one of her pistols into its side, only to be batted aside by a massive paw as she dropped her hand to her waist to grab another pistol. She tumbled through the air, falling to the stones, battered, broken like a child's discarded toy.
Bren Adahan, his pistols empty, his fisherman's trident lying bent on the ground, held his saber out in front of him with both hands, as though that narrow needle of steel could deflect claws and teeth. The monster batted him to one side, then stooped to bite, stopping only when gunfire from somewhere to Jason's left shook its body.
It's up to me, Jason thought.
It was just like in Melawei. It was always up to him, and he wouldn't fail, he couldn't fail, not when it counted.
He placed the sights on the creature's throat as it raised its head to snarl at him, then squeezed the trigger slowly, carefully.
The creature's remaining eye glared balefully at him as it braced itself for another leap.
The hammer sparked down on the frizzen; the butt of the rifle slammed into his shoulder; and a gout of flame from the barrel of the gun tore blood and flesh from the side of the animal's neck.
But the animal didn't slow, didn't stop, didn't fall down and die like it was supposed to.
Jason dropped his rifle to one side and snatched at the pistol in his belt holster.
* * *
"It happens sometimes," Valeran had once told him, the old man's eyes glazed, his voice slurred with drink, "that when the whole world is going to shit around you, time does funny things. Freezes, like ice, and you've got from now until forever. Don't smile, boy. There's nothing good about it." The battered old warrior leaned back and took another long pull on his bottle. "Only trouble is, you're fastened into place, too, like a roach frozen in an ice chip. Won't do you any damn good. Doesn't ever do you any damn good."
* * *
The monster didn't stop; it leaped at him. Jason took it all in, sights, sounds, and smells: the woody scent of smoke in the air; the musky reek of the creature; the cries of the villagers; Jane's shrill shouts from behind him; the pop of a pair of pistols, and the blood and gore splattering the creature's side; the tight fur on the creature's muzzle, terminating in a wet, leathery snout.
His peripheral vision was clear as fine crystal and the light was heady as wine, taking on an almost golden glow. In that glow Bren Adahan was on his feet again, blood streaming from his mouth and nose, his saber in his hand, all skills and training forgotten as he raised the sword over his head, as though preparing to hack down on the huge beast.
Durine had his rifle up to his shoulder; his brow was furrowed in concentration, his bottom lip caught in his teeth.
Jason bent time, forced his slow right hand up and pulled the trigger, once.
Fire and smoke nipped off a corner of the creature's ear, that was all.
And then lightning spoke, once, from his right, and the world crashed down on him.
* * *
He wasn't sure if he'd been unconscious, but the world was a black pit of pain. He tried to breathe, but the black mass crushed him down against the ground, blinding him with the weight of the stinking fur, the immense burden grinding the mass of the pistol in his shoulder holster into his chest.
There was blood and grit in his mouth. He forced a little air into his lungs, feeling broken ribs grate, moving in his chest in sharp, agonizing counterpoint.
From a distance, he could hear them.
"Move it, move it, get it the fuck off him," Tennetty said. "You—use that spear as a lever. All of you there, push."
A single shot rang out, and Jane Slovotsky's clear contralto cut through the sound and pain. "Do it, now, please," she said.
The weight lifted, marginally, and he felt strong hands clawing at his ankles. When they pulled on his left leg the pain in his knee drew a scream from between his clenched teeth, but they didn't stop dragging him painfully across the rocky ground. Bones ground in his knee.
He tried to gasp for breath, but couldn't draw any in.
Somebody forced the mouth of a bottle between his lips, glass knocking hard against his teeth.
The too-sweet taste of Eareven healing draughts washed the taste of blood from his mouth, giving him enough strength to swallow.
He did, and as the liquid warmed his throat and chest the familiar miracle happened again: he healed.
One of his ribs had shattered, broken in half a dozen places, splinters of bone ripping into his flesh with every breath. The splinters became pieces and the pieces snapped into wholeness with a flurry of sound like corn popping.
He could breathe again and the air, even though it tasted of blood and dirt and shit, was sweeter and richer and tastier than a fine puff pastry.
Bruises unbruised; as he brought his right hand up before his face, a deep gash across his palm closed, ragged edges sealing themselves together until what had been slash became a red line that turned pink and vanished before his eyes. His broken right knee closed in on itself, blood vessels expelling tendons and bits of bone, ruined nerves reasserting themselves, while ruptured muscle, tendon and bone knitted and strengthened.
Dozens of villagers crowded around as he lay on the ground, next to the mountain of fur and flesh.
He could see Jane Slovotsky and Bren Adahan out of the corner of his eye; she stood arrogantly apart, one hand on her hip, another holding a cocked flintlock, while Bren Adahan leaned against the vast bulk of the dead creature, tilting back the bottle of healing draughts to drink from it.
"Durine. . . ." It felt as if he were shouting, but all he could hear was a thin croaking. Recovery was draining; there was a limit to what the healing potion could do.
The big man knelt at his side. "I'm right here, young sir," he said. Tennetty stood next to Durine, the left side of her face caked with blood.
"Ten? Are you—?"
She smiled through a mask of blood and dirt. "They got to me first with the healing draughts. I'm all right."
"She's fine," Durine said. "Everybody is fine, young sir."
"Your bullet?"
Durine nodded, as he rested the butt of his rifle on the ground, leaning on it. "Best shot I ever made. Cut right through the spine, killed it instantly."
"Luckiest shot you ever made," Tennetty said. "Or were you really aiming between the vertebrae?"
A sense of strength and power hummed in Jason's head, like strong whiskey; he rolled to his knees, waving off a score of helping hands.
He forced himself to his feet, but his new legs wouldn't support him; if Durine hadn't caught him, he would have fallen.
"Who . . . ?" he tried to say, he couldn't get the words out. "Are all of us okay?"
"We're just fine," Durine said.
Jason had failed, but they hadn't failed. "Bren?"
The baron was quickly at his side, smiling broadly, although the front of his tunic was bloodstained and he was mopping at his bloody face with a wet cloth that a villager had provided.
"We're all alive," he said, his voice quietly triumphant.
They were surrounded by a hundred smiling villagers, ranging in age from a scattered few infants to the old wizard who stood apart, watching them.
Something pulled at Jason's tunic. A barefoot, brown-haired little girl, five or six years old, dressed in a torn shift that had been made from a grain sack, held his pistol with one hand and tugged at his tunic with the other. "Is this yours?" she asked. "Sir?"
He
accepted it, and stored it away in his belt holster, patting once at his other gun. "Yes, it's mine."
She smiled up at him, quickly hugged his waist, then vanished into the crowd.
Something caught in his throat; he couldn't speak for a moment.
Tennetty snickered. "Very nice, very nice. But is it worth getting killed?"
"Shut up."
Other villagers had gathered together their gear and piled it on the grass, not far from the dead beast. What had terrorized the villagers was now just a pile of fur and flesh. Two boys, one maybe ten, another perhaps a year or two older, were poking at the body of the beast, one with a short wooden stick, another with the hilt of a broken sword.
Bren Adahan's scabbard was empty. Jason drew his own sword, rapped the flat of it smartly against his now-solid knee, hard enough to make the steel ring with the distant sound of bright bells.
"Borrow mine," he said, reversing his grip and holding it out to the baron, who gave a quick salute with it, then slipped it into his scabbard. It was a loose fit; Bren's preferred saber was longer and heavier than Jason's.
The gray-robed wizard stood apart from the rest of them, watching them with eyes that didn't seem to blink. "I am Dava Natye," he said slowly. "We are in your debt."
Tennetty snorted. "Bet your fucking ass you are." She gestured at the beast. "What was that?"
The wizard shook his head. "I do not know. Traders have brought rumors of strange things coming out of Faerie. The Warrior spoke of—"
"The Warrior?" Jason asked. "He was here?"
"Two tendays ago," the wizard said.
"Describe him," Tennetty hissed.
The wizard shook his head. "I only saw him for a moment, outlined against the flames of the burning shack of the slaver, Nosinan. A big man; I can say no more. He told me to be gone, that this was a matter between him and the guild.
"He left a message, and then he vanished." The wizard spread his hands. "I never saw his boat, nor his companions. But they were here; and now they are not."
"The message," Tennetty said, taking a step toward the wizard, then stopping herself. "He left a message for us?"
Guardians of the Flame - Legacy Page 43
