Blood? Was that it?
He felt the back of his head. It was sore, but there was no blood back there, only sweat. Well, the blood wasn’t his own. But was it Calliande’s? Or the children’s?
Ridmark looked around, but he saw no sign of any other living creature.
For a moment, the unreality of the situation threatened to overwhelm him. One moment he had been in the great hall of the Citadel, and the next he was…here, wherever here was. Was this a dream? No, that didn’t make sense. If this was a dream, his head and his shoulders wouldn’t hurt so damned much.
“Calliande?” shouted Ridmark, turning in a circle. “Gareth? Joachim?”
Only the echoes of his voice answered him.
“Rhodruthain?” Ridmark shouted. “Show yourself!”
The echoes of his voice faded away.
Ridmark’s hand curled into a fist, and he forced himself to stop and think. It was entirely possible that Calliande and his sons were in danger. Before he had fallen unconscious, Ridmark had seen those ribbons of blue light strike Calliande and Joachim and Gareth. Whatever had happened to Ridmark had likely also happened to them.
So. What had happened to Ridmark?
The most probable explanation was that Rhodruthain had transported him somewhere through magic. Ardrhythain and Tymandain Shadowbearer had been able to travel instantly from place to place through magic, though the Warden had told him that humans could not travel that way without losing their sanity.
Ridmark didn’t feel insane. He felt worried, confused, and very angry. Come to think of it, he knew that soulstones blocked magical travel, and he had been holding Oathshield when Rhodruthain had cast his spell…
He blinked. The sword wasn’t in his hand now, and the scabbard at his hip was empty. He looked around but saw no trace of the weapon on the ground.
“Damn it,” muttered Ridmark.
Had he dropped his soulblade? Finding himself in a strange land was bad enough. Finding himself in a strange land with no weapon other than the dwarven dagger at his belt was much worse. Ridmark reached for his bond with the soulblade, concentrating through his headache. His link with Oathshield meant he could sense the weapon wherever it was. Perhaps Rhodruthain had brought it with him, or stolen the sword.
Ridmark blinked.
To his surprise, Oathshield was not that far away. Maybe two or three miles away to the north? Ridmark looked in that direction and saw nothing but more rocky, scrubby hills.
No. Wait.
A few plumes of smoke rose against the blue sky in that direction, stark and black. Likely that was the source of the smoke Ridmark had smelled. And the blood, maybe?
Ridmark took a deep breath. For the next few moments, at least, his path was clear. He needed to retrieve Oathshield, and he needed to find Calliande and Gareth and Joachim. Ridmark had to assume that they had been brought here with him. Rhodruthain had said he had come to speak with the Shield Knight and the Keeper, and he had said he wanted to protect the children from this “New God” of his, whatever the hell that was.
Though Calliande and the children might be safer than Ridmark was. Calliande could find Gareth and Joachim anywhere. They were her flesh and blood, and the Sight meant she could locate them whenever she wished. She also still carried that dagger Ridmark had given her all those years ago at Dun Licinia, and she could use that to find him. It was possible that Calliande had already found the children and was looking for him even now.
A flicker of fresh unease went through Ridmark.
Calliande was not herself. She had not been herself since Joanna had died. Would she be able to pull herself together in a crisis? A year ago, Ridmark would have been utterly certain of it. Now, with the grief choking her mind like poison, he was not sure how Calliande would react to this.
That just meant Ridmark had to find Oathshield and his wife and children all the faster. Once that was accomplished, he could figure out where the hell he was, why Rhodruthain had brought him here, and what to do about it.
Ridmark turned north, looking at the distant smoke. Oathshield was in the direction of that smoke. Was he about to walk into a battle?
He supposed it was time to find out.
Ridmark took a deep breath and set off, walking with rapid strides over the rocky ground. He was surprised at how quickly the old reflexes of the Wilderland returned to him, the old habits of wariness and stealth. Ridmark had not gone alone into the wilderness since the defeat of the Frostborn, but the skills had not left him. He walked in silence, his boots making no sound against the ground, his eyes sweeping the hills for signs of enemies or tracks. Ridmark descended into one of the shallow valleys and saw a narrow stream flowing towards the ocean. That was good – they would need water if they were to survive here. Food could be found later. Ridmark did not recognize most of the plants, but if he located a bow he could hunt, and they could always try fishing in the ocean.
The smell of blood grew sharper, and as Ridmark climbed up the other side of the valley, he saw the first corpse.
A human man lay motionless next to a boulder, his blood seeping into the dirt. Ridmark took his dagger in his hand and drew closer to the corpse, watching for enemies, but nothing moved. The dead man looked a few years older than Ridmark, his body tough and lean. He was wearing nothing but a loincloth, and it looked as if he had been killed by an arrow through the chest.
Someone had pulled out the arrow.
Someone had also stolen the dead man’s possessions. Ridmark saw the faint red marks of straps on the dead man’s forearms and shoulders and shins. Unless Ridmark missed his guess, the dead man had been wearing armor, along with bracers and greaves and a helmet, and whoever had killed him had taken his armor and weapons.
The man could not have been dead for long. The wound in his chest leaked blood, and in this sun, a dead body would start putrefying after a few hours. Ridmark stepped back, scanning the ground, his alarm growing. If Calliande and Gareth and Joachim had landed in the middle of a battle…
Ridmark spotted the tracks in the dust. It looked as if the wounded man had staggered here and died, and his pursuers had come here to finish him off and steal his armor. And his pursuers…
He frowned.
The dead man’s pursuers had not been human.
The tracks looked vaguely like the paws of rats, albeit rats the size of men. Ridmark had seen tracks like that before a long time ago when he had traveled in the Qazaluuskan Forest far to the east of Andomhaim. Had Rhodruthain’s spell brought him to the lands beyond the Range of the manetaurs?
Ridmark put aside the thought and followed the paw tracks. He could worry about his location later, once he had found his family and his soulblade.
He followed the tracks and reached the top of the hill, and found himself looking at a battlefield.
A road wound its way along the hill’s broad, flat top, heading to the north. The smoke came from a dozen wagons scattered along the road. A half-dozen of them had been torched, and though the flames had burned out, black smoke still billowed from the charred timbers. Dead human and orcish men lay scattered across the road, and all of them had been killed by sword blows or arrows.
Ridmark paused, surveying the scene.
The first odd thing he noticed was the animals.
The carts were big and heavy, and should have been pulled by draft horses or perhaps oxen. Instead, the animals in the traces looked like enormous, squat lizards with gray hides and stumpy legs. They had sharp black beaks for mouths, and bony shields that rose over their thick, short necks. The bony shields had not saved them, and all the animals had been killed by arrows or javelins. Ridmark had never seen creatures like them. They vaguely resembled the murrag lizards that populated the caverns of the Deeps, but Ridmark had never seen a murrag that large.
The second odd thing he noticed was the armor of the dead men.
Their armor had been fashioned of bronze.
Ridmark went to one knee next to a dead human. The man
had been armored in a gleaming bronze cuirass, with bronze greaves and bronze bracers. A shield of wood and hide lay next to his left arm, and a bronze sword rested in the dust next to his hand.
Why use bronze for armor and swords? Steel was much stronger and could hold a sharper edge. Perhaps this man had been a ceremonial guard of some kind, the way the richer lords and knights of Andomhaim sometimes adorned their armor and swords with gold and gems. Yet their ceremonial armor and weapons were still made of steel.
Ridmark looked at few more of the corpses. All the humans wore bronze armor. Some of the orcs did, but many wore leather instead, thought they had axes with bronze heads and maces with stone heads. To judge from the position of the corpses, the orcs had attacked the humans. The orcs all had a strange tattoo on their faces, an inverted blue sword that covered the right cheek and jaw. Ridmark had a brand of a broken sword on the left side of his face, but he doubted the orcs’ tattoos meant the same thing.
Ridmark needed a better weapon until he could find Oathshield. He disliked taking the weapons of the slain soldiers, but he needed a sword, and they no longer had any need of weapons. Ridmark lifted a bronze sword and tested the weight and grip. It was shorter than he would have liked, the balance different from his usual weapons, and he would have to make sure he didn’t damage the softer metal against a cuirass of steel.
Then something caught his eye.
One of the carts had overturned, the dead lizard slumped in its traces. The cart’s cargo of dozens of wooden poles had spilled across the road. Ridmark returned the bronze sword to its slain owner’s hand, walked to the overturned cart, and picked up one of the poles.
He had never seen any wood quite like it. For one thing, the pole was hollow, and it looked as if it had grown that way rather than fashioned by a tool. For another, there were a series of ridges down the length of the pole, ridges that encircled it entirely. Ridmark found that the circular ridges made it easy to keep a grip on the pole.
How strong was it? Ridmark gave the pole an experimental swing against the side of the wagon. It landed with a crack, and while the pole flexed, it did not break. For all its lightness, it was much stronger than it looked.
The pole would make an admirable quarterstaff.
With his new staff in hand, Ridmark picked his way past the burning carts and the slain men, his eyes scanning the ground. As he moved forward, he saw more dead men and more dead orcs. It looked as if a running battle had taken place here. To judge from the tracks, a column of human soldiers had been escorting wagons. The human soldiers had given a good accounting of themselves, and Ridmark saw at least three times as many dead orcs as humans. But in the end, the greater number of orcs had gained the victory, and the survivors had fled to the east.
All this had likely happened while Rhodruthain had thrown open the gates of the great hall.
But who were the humans? Ridmark had traveled the length and breadth of Andomhaim, and much of the Wilderland, but he had never encountered humans who fought with bronze weapons. For that matter, he had seen dozens of tribes and nations of orcs in the Wilderland, and he had never seen an orcish nation that tattooed blue swords down the left sides of their faces.
Just where the devil had Rhodruthain sent him?
A flicker of motion caught Ridmark’s eye, and he nodded to himself and kept walking, his hand tightening on the ridged surface of the staff. He might be in a strange land among strange people, but wars and battles were the same everywhere. Men fought and bled and died in battle.
And after the battle, there were always vultures looting the dead.
Ridmark took three quick steps to the left, the staff in his right hand, and a dark figure appeared from behind one of the wagons.
The creature stood about five and a half feet tall and looked like a gaunt black rat walking on its hind legs. Its black, beady eyes regarded Ridmark, and its front teeth looked like massive yellow chisels. Whiskers twitched next to its nose, and it had two ragged ears adorned with bronze and copper earrings. Its hands looked like a cross between a rat’s paws and human hands, the fingers topped with long claws and thumbs that allowed the creature to grasp weapons and use tools. The creature wore leather armor, and it had a bronze sword in its right hand. A pink tail twitched back and forth behind it, as long and thick as Ridmark’s arm. The smell of the creature, a mixture of greasy musk and rotting meat, flooded Ridmark’s nostrils.
Ridmark had encountered creatures like this, long ago. It was called a muridach, and the muridachs dwelled in the Deeps, waging war on the kobolds and the deep orcs and the other kindreds that lived in the dark caverns. Few ever came to Andomhaim, but Ridmark had heard that the muridachs ruled vast cities in the Deeps, cities that seethed with muridachs the way a rat warren seethed with the rodents.
The creature almost certainly would not be alone, and it almost certainly would try to kill him and loot his corpse. And then eat it.
“Do you speak Latin?” said Ridmark.
The ratman tilted its head to the side and let out a chittering, squeaking laugh.
“Human tongue?” it said, its voice shockingly deep after the chittering laugh. “Few words. Not many. Orc-speak?”
“I do speak orcish,” said Ridmark, switching to the language.
“The Sovereign’s old tongue,” said the muridach. “That is better.” The Sovereign? “Are you a hoplite of King Hektor and the realm of Owyllain, human?”
“I am not,” said Ridmark. “I know neither this King Hektor nor his realm of Owyllain.”
The ratman let out that chittering laugh again. “Then you are indeed a renegade! Owyllain is not King Hektor’s realm, but the realm of his brother. But the Master of the Arcanii murdered and killed the High King, and now the bearers of the Seven wage war against each other.”
“I see,” said Ridmark. He had no idea what the muridach was talking about, but he could guess what it was doing here. “And while the Seven fight each other, the muridachs grow fat upon the carrion of the battlefield?”
The muridach’s whiskers twitched, and it laughed again. “Indeed! Indeed! Perhaps you think the same way, human?” It took a step closer. “That is very fine armor you wear.”
Ridmark smiled and took a step to the right. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”
“It is fine armor of the dark elves,” said the muridach. Ridmark glanced at the shadows on the road and noticed them shifting. “Very fine. Worthy of the Confessor himself, or one of his knights. Maybe even worthy of the old Sovereign himself! Perhaps you should give me that armor as a gift, yes? Since we are such good friends.”
“I’m merely traveling,” said Ridmark. “I don’t suppose you have seen a woman and two children? The woman would have yellow hair and wear a green garment, and the two children would resemble her a great deal.”
“No,” said the muridach. “We have not seen any human females nor human whelps. Do you seek them? Perhaps you shall be reunited with them in the realm of death!”
The ratman’s voice rose to roar at the final word, but Ridmark was ready.
He whirled, sweeping the strange staff before him, and as he had expected, the rest of the muridach scavengers had crept up behind him. There were three more of the creatures, all lean and gaunt and covered in greasy black fur. Like the first muridach, they all wore leather armor and carried short swords fashioned of bronze. They rushed at Ridmark, swords drawn back to stab. Likely they thought him unarmed. He was only carrying a wooden stick, after all, and a man with a stick was no threat to anyone.
Ridmark had thought the same way once. One of his father’s common-born men-at-arms had taught him otherwise in a lesson that had broken no bones but left a great many bruises. Later, he had wandered the Wilderland as the Gray Knight, seeking atonement through death for his failure at Castra Marcaine. Stripped of the soulblade Heartwarden, he had used a wooden staff with an iron core as his main weapon for years.
In many ways, holding the strange staff felt like reuniting with an old
friend.
Ridmark sidestepped, beat aside the stabs of the short bronze swords with a sweep of his staff, and swung again. His blow knocked the muridach on his right from its feet, and the creature went down with a shriek. Before it could recover, Ridmark drove the end of his staff into its throat with a crunch. The blow didn’t kill the ratman, but it started thrashing as it tried to draw breath, and it would die before much longer.
Stunned by his sudden attack, the remaining two muridachs fell back, while the one behind him screeched in outrage and sprang forward, jaws yawning wide. Those nasty teeth were blunt, but no doubt the muridach could drive them with enough force to punch through flesh, and even if Ridmark survived the bite, he would likely die when the wound putrefied.
Best not to let it bite him, then.
Ridmark whirled again, both arms driving the blow of his staff. The blow caught the muridach in the chest as it tried to spring upon him, and the shock of the impact shot up Ridmark’s arms and into his aching shoulders. But the muridach had the worse of the exchange, and the creature fell to the ground, wheezing as it tried to catch its breath. Ridmark jumped over the prone muridach and turned to face the other two ratmen.
Concern for their stunned leader did not slow them in the least, and the creatures came right at him. While concern didn’t slow them, the stunned muridach’s thrashing legs did, and the muridach on the left tripped. That gave Ridmark the opening he needed, and he slammed the end of his staff into the muridach’s stomach. The muridach’s mouth exploded open in a wheeze as the breath ripped from its lungs, and the stench of rotting meat flooded Ridmark’s nostrils. He landed two sharp blows against the side of the muridach’s head and heard something crack, and the ratman fell limp to the ground.
The last muridach on its feet stabbed at Ridmark, and he had no time to dodge. Instead, he stepped into the blow, trusting in his dark elven armor to protect him. The bronze blade of the muridach’s sword was no match for the steel of the dark elves, and the blade rebounded from the armor without leaving a scratch. The muridach overbalanced, and Ridmark hit it in the face with the staff. The creature fell backward, and Ridmark drove the end of his staff into its throat.
Sevenfold Sword: Champion Page 4
