The Crosser's Maze

by Dorian Hart

  “Here’s what I propose then,” said Grey Wolf. “We give Abernathy and his friends until tomorrow sundown to show up. We spend the rest of tonight, and all day tomorrow, working out the details of our plan, and packing for a long trip. If the archmagi haven’t come back, we’ll just have to do without their inestimable wisdom.”

  Morningstar nodded her agreement, and not even Dranko objected.

  “Just had a thought,” said Kibi. “Aravia, can’t you teleport us right next to the damned thing? Then we just gotta hop through, you do your random version, and we’re good?”

  Aravia shook her head. “Possible, but I don’t like it. I’m stronger and more practiced than when we met, but teleporting, random or not, is still exhausting. Trying it twice inside five minutes will greatly increase the odds of a catastrophic failure. We’re better off arriving somewhere as out of the way as possible, where I can recover while others do some scouting. Unfortunately, every place I remember well enough to risk teleporting to will probably be within sight of enemy soldiers.”

  Morningstar offered silent thanks to Ell and her avatar. “I think I can help with that.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tor wrinkled his nose at the Kivian soldier’s garlic-laden breath, hot against his cheek. He pegged the man as battle-tested since he had a long bulging scar down the right side of his face, a scar that ended with a little curve by his chin. At least eight soldiers were still awake that he could see from where he stood without even turning his head, and judging by the number of canvas tents, there were dozens, maybe hundreds more they’d have to deal with if a ruckus started up.

  Morningstar’s magic invisibility thing had better hold.

  Not that it would matter if the garlic warrior so much as leaned forward.

  * * *

  They had waited until just after midnight.

  Aravia, brilliant as always, had decided to aim for the one patch of farmland she remembered, since she hadn’t known during their previous visit to study any particular place in great detail. The town would be occupied and the arch itself heavily guarded. She had reminded the company that her lack of familiarity with the landing spot would increase the chances of being off by a few yards or a few hundred, or winding up in a different cabbage field a hundred miles away, or (worst case but unlikely) embedded in a hillside where they’d quickly suffocate. Tor had asked her if maybe she could mess up on purpose in just the right way, so they’d end up in a cabbage field in Kivia and not have to risk the arch at all, but she had told him that wasn’t how it worked.

  Tor still hadn’t quite understood Morningstar’s holy invisibility cloak, and Morningstar herself had seemed a bit dazed regarding it. But wasn’t that thrilling? That Morningstar had been granted powers by an Ellish angel? Some kind of ancient prohibition prevented the gods from reaching down and granting powers to mortals, but who was he to question the goddess Ell?

  Everyone had been hoping Abernathy and the other archmagi would reappear, sparing them from their desperate gambit, but they hadn’t come back from whatever emergency had yanked them away in the first place. The plan that Horn’s Company had devised was desperate but exciting to think about. Grey Wolf had worn a trench across the carpet with his pacing, and Ernie had looked as if he might be ill, and sure, if looked at objectively, their prospects hadn’t been exactly rosy, but Tor had maintained a feeling that everything would turn out well.

  After dinner, Ernie had gone out back to say goodbye to Emergency Rations, their trusty mule. Eddings had built a little shed for her, but she spent most of her time wandering the yard and quietly cropping the grass. “You can’t come with us this time,” Ernie had said, feeding her a carrot. “But that’s good news for you, since it’s likely we’ll all be dead before the sun rises.”

  Tor’s pack bulged with food, clothes, and a dozen books that Aravia had asked him to carry. (Well, truth was, she had asked him to carry about eight, and he had volunteered to stuff a few extra down near the bottom since he didn’t mind the weight. That had earned him her grateful, dazzling smile, which had only made him sad that he had lacked room for more books.)

  The bells of Tal Hae had rung midnight, and when the last peal had faded into the midsummer air, Aravia had herded everyone out the front door. Teleporting, she had said, wouldn’t work from inside the Greenhouse; the house was proofed against that sort of magic in both directions. Eddings had stayed up to wish them luck, and then Grey Wolf had reviewed the first stage of the plan one final time.

  “If Aravia’s on target, and we get lucky, we should find ourselves alone in a field of cabbages. If not, we’ll need to move off quickly and quietly until we can find somewhere isolated. We don’t know how long Morningstar’s invisibility will last.”

  Morningstar had closed her eyes and murmured prayers to her goddess. Tor had imagined he felt the air grow cooler against his cheeks, and in the sky above, the stars had grown brighter, the moon more luminous.

  “It is done,” she had said after a time, and slumped against Kibi, holding herself up by gripping his shoulder.

  Tor had looked around at his friends. “Nothing happened. I can still see all of you.”

  Morningstar’s voice had been little more than a whisper. “We can still see one another. But Ell will hide us from the eyes of enemies.”

  “Um…are you sure?” Ernie had asked.

  Morningstar had nodded. “Have faith.”

  “Time to go,” Grey Wolf had said. “Aravia?”

  They had drawn together, each making sure to be in physical contact with at least one other. Tor had placed one hand on Aravia’s arm and given her a thumbs-up with the other. Pewter had lain around her neck like a gray fur stole. Her hands had moved in their complex dance, hands delicate but strong and nimble, and she had mouthed arcane syllables that slipped right off his mind, and her lips, her beautiful lips—well, that probably hadn’t been the best time to be thinking about those. He had better focus instead on the possibility he’d need to draw steel in her defense.

  In his reverie he had lost track of how long she had been casting; she could finish any second! His free hand flexed, he swallowed, he…smelled garlic, along with a whiff of something like rye, and the tall man with a thick scar stood so close that their noses nearly touched. Tor could have counted the individual stubbly whiskers on the soldier’s chin, but instead he flicked his eyes around to see where the others were, since his hand no longer rested on Aravia’s arm. A sigh came to his lips when he spotted Aravia only a few yards away, but he choked it back; if he could smell the enemy soldier’s breath, the same would be true in reverse. He tilted his neck back and turned his head ever so slowly and emptied his lungs as quietly as he could.

  The light—from the stars, from the gibbous moon, from a few scattered campfires throwing red light from beds of coals—was enough to show Tor what a dire predicament they were in. Either the Kivian army had spread out enough to sprawl across Aravia’s cabbage field, or the teleport spell had landed them off target, but Horn’s Company was now sprinkled in a rough circle right in the midst of a Kivian encampment. The enemy tents were not clustered particularly close together or arrayed in any obvious pattern, and a rumbling snore came from one nearby. Between the snores Tor heard cricket song, the lazy crackle of low fires, occasional whispers from the few soldiers awake, and the sleepy whicker of horses not too far off.

  Tor could see everyone but Ernie and Kibi from where he stood, but it was likely that Ernie was on the far side of one of the tents. Morningstar’s eyes were nearly closed; she barely stood, and—oh, there was Kibi, probably late as usual after a teleport. The stonecutter had appeared directly in front of a tent flap, which meant that if someone came out of it there’d be an unavoidable collision. But everyone except Morningstar stared not at Kibi but at Tor himself, with expressions of horrified anticipation, which refocused his attention on how slender was the thread on which their whole mission hung.

  Morningstar hadn’t been certain if her divin
e cloak would hedge out sounds or smells, but she doubted it. That meant that if Tor coughed or shuffled his feet or the soldier took even half a step forward, they’d be discovered and the whole mission would be scuttled before it even got started.

  The fellow stared disconcertingly at Tor’s mouth, as though Tor had something distracting lodged in his teeth, but of course the guard merely gazed out across the forest of tents, and how did that work, exactly? Tor tried to recall his tutor’s lessons about light and color, something about prisms and light bouncing off of things. He’d have to ask Aravia; she’d know.

  The soldier idly lifted one arm to scratch his cheek, and Tor reflexively leaned back from the waist, lest the man’s hand brush against him, and what would he think if they actually made contact? Would the soldier deduce that an invisible spy lurked in their midst? Or would he simply think he had imagined it? Grey Wolf had exhorted them to avoid alerting the Kivians to their presence because even if they slipped away afterward, the enemy would probably take extra precautions to guard the arch if they thought they were under some kind of magical assault. Tor cast a quick glance at the ground behind him, to make sure he wasn’t going to step on a dry twig or trip over a tent stake, and then took a long, careful stride backward. The ground was mostly dirt, with a thin uneven carpet of matted vegetation; it made a faint crunch beneath his boot, but the soldier didn’t seem to hear it, possibly because of the loud snoring. He finished scratching his face, sighed, and turned sideways such that his shoulder passed through the space where Tor had just been standing.

  Having put himself at greater than arm’s reach, Tor decided not to move again until they had a plan for how to extricate themselves from this mess. He looked instinctively at Grey Wolf who still didn’t look pleased about the situation, even now that Tor wasn’t in such immediate danger of being discovered. Grey Wolf waved his hands until he had everyone’s attention, then pointed and counted on his fingers. Kibi was “one,” Aravia was “two,” Tor was “three,” and so on—and he ended by pointing to himself and then holding up six fingers.

  Next he gestured to Aravia and made circles with his wrist—a “your turn” gesture—and Aravia did the same as Grey Wolf, counting up everyone she could see, and ended with herself at “six.” Kibi (who had carefully stepped away from the mouth of the tent) only counted five, but that was because he couldn’t see Morningstar; a tent stood directly between them. Tor went next, then Morningstar, and finally Dranko, and none of them reached seven. Grey Wolf frowned, then exaggeratedly mouthed “Ernie?” with a shrug of his shoulders. The rest of the company shook their heads.

  Grey Wolf’s face contorted in frustration. They had discussed this the previous day: They all had to stay close to Morningstar to retain the benefits of her divine cloak, so if Ernie was more than about thirty feet away, he’d be fully visible, and if the rest of them crept away without him, the result would be the same. One of the enemy soldiers, the one closest to Dranko, poked at a dwindling fire; the wood must have been wet, as it popped loudly and sent up a little spray of sparks. He took a swig from a water skin, and a second soldier, a short bald fellow, gestured to the closest tent.

  “By Nifi’s fiery beard,” said the bald solider, “Orvik snores like a thunderstorm.”

  Both soldiers shared a quiet chuckle. Tor choked back a laugh and then realized that he understood the soldier’s language even though he had never heard it spoken before, which meant Ozella’s ear-cuffs must be working, and that was neat, but it wasn’t going to help them out of their predicament.

  So there they stood, six statues in a garden of tents, frozen and with no good choices, and Tor looked imploringly at Aravia—surely she would think of something clever to get them out of this mess. Her brows were knitted together and her lips moved slightly, as if she was working out a brilliant plan, but then a whisper of sound came from nearby. Tor turned his head just in time to see a flap of the tent near Kibi peel itself back, and he held his breath as a figure emerged. It was Ernie! Even in the poor light his friend looked terrified, taking an exaggerated slow-motion step out into the night, stopping just short of Kibi and looking around, clearly assessing the situation.

  “Did you see that?”

  The bald soldier pointed at the tent flap, looking confused. Tor would have gone right over to investigate; it must have looked quite strange to see a tent flap opening and dropping closed again with no breeze to explain its movement. What luck that Baldy seemed a lazy sort!

  The second soldier, the one by the fire, looked up and shook his head. “See what?”

  “The canvas of Eikna’s tent just moved by itself.”

  “Or you nodded off and dreamt it. It’s not moving now.”

  The garlic soldier had also taken notice. “I saw it too. Eikna, if you need to come out and piss, don’t be shy.”

  Ernie looked pleadingly at Tor, but what was there to do? Garlic-breath and Baldy exchanged puzzled looks and moved toward Ernie’s tent, with Garlic-breath coming within a hair’s breadth of brushing Tor’s shirt as he passed. Ernie and Kibi both pivoted their heads rapidly, looks of increasing panic on their faces, as the two Kivian soldiers approached. His two friends were bracketed, effectively pinned against the tent with no good avenue of escape, and if they bolted, their movement and noise would surely be noticed, and now Tor’s heart crashed in his chest so loudly he worried that maybe the soldiers would hear him. Any second things would go sideways, and he reached up to grip the handle of his sword, and the soldiers drew closer and closer to Kibi and Ernie, ten feet, five feet—

  An orange flash burst up from the ground to his left. Tor turned. The soldiers stopped and turned. Dranko—two steps closer now—must have kicked one of the campfires, sending a shower of coals into the closest tent (and a few into the body of the soldier sitting at hand), and now the tent was smoking. Brilliant! In seconds the air filled with shouting, confusion, and noise, and sleep-addled heads poked out of other nearby tents. Grey Wolf pointed frantically and walked briskly away, urging the rest of Horn’s Company to follow. Their footsteps wouldn’t be heard above the sounds of the frantic alarm, which was another great stroke of luck; the only dangers were being bumped and discovered, or stretching their line too thin and someone getting too far away from Morningstar. Grey Wolf propped her up, his shoulder under her arm, since she still hadn’t recovered from the strain of working the Ellish trick that kept them all hidden.

  Some of the Kivians had emerged from their tents only to stand befuddled, doubtless wondering exactly what all the middle-of-the-night commotion was about, but a few dashed about and shouted (mostly “Fire! Fire!”) and one of them cut horizontally across their line, right in front of Kibi and behind Ernie, taking no notice of the strangers in their midst. Thanks be to Ell!

  More tents—dozens, hundreds, the encampment was vast—but if they kept moving they should come to the edge of it and hit open countryside surely, though Tor had lost track of the direction. Ahead of him Grey Wolf steered Morningstar around a young man who had been jogging straight for him; the whole thing was like a game of blindfold tag where if you got tagged, an army of thousands would know they had invisible intruders sneaking around. Did they have wizards of their own who could unravel Morningstar’s cloak? Did magic work that way? Could wizards counter the inspirations of deities? Aravia would know.

  Tor leapt to the side as a tall, overweight soldier lurched from the shadows, and his feet kicked up some dirt and made what sounded in his own ears like a loud scraping noise, but that was all lost in the general din. The whole camp was coming awake, and at least Horn’s Company moved away from Dranko’s fire while the enemy moved towards it, which made it unlikely someone would run into them from behind, but he figured he should check anyway and looked behind him. Aravia walked only a few steps back, and she looked at him with those beautiful eyes, green as a forest and also wide with alarm as she frantically motioned for him to turn around. He turned around. Two more soldiers were jogging directly at him ju
st as he passed next to a tent, and everything slowed down as Tor realized too late that he would collide with the one on the left.

  Then: an idea! Instead of smacking directly into one, he adjusted his trajectory so that he’d walk between them even though there wasn’t enough room to squeeze through. He clipped the right shoulder of the one on the left and the left shoulder of the one on the right, and they both stumbled and turned to each other and one called the other one a clumsy oaf, and they kept on moving. Tor risked another look back; Aravia and Dranko weaved off to the side to avoid the bickering pair, and Aravia shook her head at him, but smiled, and then motioned that Tor should keep facing forward and follow Ernie and Kibi.

  Gods, that smile!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It had been half an hour, and Ernie still felt as though he was going to throw up.

  He looked up through one of the many ragged holes in the barn roof—really it was more hole than roof—and took a long, deliberate breath.

  You’re alive. You escaped, at least for now. You’re alive, and maybe we haven’t messed things up too much. And it could be worse. It could be the Ventifact Colossus’s nose.

  He had appeared in near-total darkness, his head bumping up against a canvas ceiling. How many heartbeats had it taken for him to understand where he was? When he had realized he was in a tent, and that someone outside of it might notice a protruding head-shaped bulge, he had thought to throw himself to the ground. That disaster had been averted when, having dropped to a crouch, he had heard the snores coming from directly below him. That had been the scariest moment of all, squatting over the sleeping soldier in the darkness, knowing that the slightest noise or bump would wake him up.

  The minute that had followed was in some ways worse—when he had considered what would happen if the man did wake up, and the horrible answer was that he, Ernie, might have to kill him, right there in the tent, before he could cry out. Could he do it? Grey Wolf and Dranko certainly could. Morningstar might even have killed him before he woke up, just to make certain. Should he? Did he owe that to the company, to his kingdom?