“Looks like we finally had some luck,” Markal said.
“If by luck, you mean they’re fighting my spell, then yes, I suppose,” Nathaliey said. “I bent your spell at the end. Turns out you can both open the way ahead and close it behind you at the same time.”
“How did you do that?”
“You tell me. You’re the wizard, and I’m a mere apprentice.”
A few bolts sped toward them across the ravine, and though they fell short, it was a reminder not to linger. The magic wouldn’t last forever, but the scent of it would cling to them for a good long time. They set off along the ridge to find a way up and over the next set of obstacles, and the ones after that.
Their pace was laborious now that the road was gone, the horses were abandoned to the enemy, and they were forced to carry what remained of their supplies. Markal removed his belt and fashioned it into a sling to hold the sword. He thought about unwrapping some of the dirty linen covering it to use instead, but he didn’t like handling the weapon, and even well wrapped and positioned on his back, he could hear it whispering whenever he stopped to catch his breath.
They were in the mountains finally, albeit only the lower stretches, and Markal stopped about an hour later to study the rocky spires that rose above them like the jagged scales on a dragon’s back. He indicated two of the peaks and said he thought that was above where the hermit lived. Two mountains further south they would find the road that would carry them through to Eriscoba. Or maybe it was the third mountain down, which wasn’t currently in view; they’d have to investigate the various canyons along the way until they found it.
“Unless you want to continue north and try to slip through the mountain pass where King Toth is building his highway.”
“Didn’t we already discuss this?” she asked.
“I’m laying it out as an option one last time before it’s too late. It would be quicker, but more dangerous.”
Nathaliey rubbed a dirty hand at the back of her neck, which was sweating from the exertion. “I like quicker. I don’t like more dangerous. We aren’t without resources, but now that the marauders know we’re trying to cross, they’ll be watching every step of the high passes.”
“They could easily search the old road, too,” he pointed out.
“But without a Veyrian army and five thousand slaves to help them look.”
“We rescued maybe two days’ worth of food,” he said. “Three if we stretch it. It might take us twice that long to reach the southern road. That means foraging, which is harder than it sounds.”
“I know how to forage. I once survived three weeks in the desert on nothing but lizard eggs and roasted bugs. Here’s a tip—pull off a scorpion’s stinger before you pop it in your mouth.”
“The south road it is!”
They continued doggedly, and seemed to have lost their pursuers, at least for the moment. The marauders had apparently decided against abandoning their horses, and were probably riding along the lowlands, looking for another way up. Or maybe they’d already decided that there were only two ways through the mountains, and had sent riders north and south to guard them.
The marauders wanted the sword, wanted the two members of the Crimson Path who carried it, and Markal wasn’t so deluded as to think that the pursuit wouldn’t continue until those objectives were obtained in the most brutal manner possible.
Still, he allowed himself to relax into the journey, enjoying Nathaliey’s company while the food held up, but missing their four-legged companions at the same time. It was easy before setting out on a journey to think solely of the human portion of an expedition, with horses being along to carry the bulk of the weight, and the heavy sword was reminder enough of that aspect as his back was already sore.
But animals provided companionship, as well, and brought along their personalities. Donkeys, patient and plodding, and willing to eat anything put in their way. Camels, cranky and irritable, but with endless stamina. And finally, horses, with their lively curiosity, their ability to be helpful or stubborn depending on mood. More than a little naughty, too—Markal’s mare had never missed the opportunity to trot off in search of good grass or a roll in the dust. If she was carrying goods that you didn’t want wet, you’d better shift them to the other horse when crossing a stream, because the mare was liable to throw herself down for a good wallow.
The blasted marauders had his horse now. If the mare thought Markal had been too much of a taskmaster, she was in for a cruel awakening.
“Find cover!” Nathaliey said suddenly, breaking him from his thoughts.
They were hiking through a stretch of mixed pine and grass, and he hurried to one of the trees and flattened himself against the trunk, with the sword swung around to clench against his chest. Nathaliey pressed herself in next to him.
A shadow darkened the sky, flickering as it hit the tree branches and turning into a solid shape when it passed away from the trees. He risked a look and caught sight of a huge animal, as big as a warhorse, with the tawny back legs and paws of a lion, and the front talons, wings, feathers, and beak of a white eagle. It swooped overhead, beating its wings with such power that the branches of the pine tree shook as if caught in a gale. The griffin was already out of sight when it let out a piercing cry that rolled over the hills.
“Did it have a rider?” Nathaliey asked when they finally shook off their fear and stepped away from the tree.
“I couldn’t see.”
“And were we spotted?”
“We’d better hope not.” Markal propped the sword against the tree and picked off bits of sap from his palms. “I was wishing for our horses a minute ago, but maybe it’s a good thing we left them behind. They’d have been spooked, and the griffin would have gone after them. Maybe us, too.”
“We’ve got magic for controlling animals, though. Cast it at the griffin, scare it off . . .” She shrugged.
He gave her a look. “Really? You think that would have worked?”
“Hmm, maybe not. Without Narud here, we’d be lucky to dissuade an angry badger. That monster would have torn us apart.”
“Like a pair of juicy rabbits,” Markal agreed.
They’d been studying the land below them as they climbed, more worried about marauders than anything they’d find in the mountains, but their near encounter with a griffin had altered that worry, and they turned their attention to the sky and the higher peaks as they set off again. A few hours later, they spotted a trio of distant shapes that might have been only hawks or eagles—the scale of things against the sky at a distance being difficult to determine—but were more likely griffins given how they were flying together. The animals spent a half hour or so soaring in front of the mountain. They eventually vanished to the south, moving with purpose and speed.
“Hopefully far, far to the south,” Markal said. “We don’t want them lingering by the old road.”
And yet the trio had returned within an hour, and with two more companions. No question now that they were griffins, not simple birds of prey. Markal and Nathaliey were closer now, and the five animals were circling about more methodically in an east-west direction, and though they were still several miles away, drew near enough for the companions to spot riders on their backs.
Markal and Nathaliey shortly approached another difficult ravine to cross, and by nightfall they would reach a set of higher, forest-covered hills, which Markal had determined would be a good place to cut south toward their goal, but he debated whether to stop here for the day or to forge on.
Continuing would mean crossing the ravine, but he was afraid to leave the shelter of the trees to study it while griffins were still wheeling about in the air.
“What are they doing, hunting?” Nathaliey asked.
“With five griffins?” Markal said. “If they are, it must be something big. A moose maybe?”
“I was more thinking people. Specifically, hunting us.”
He hadn’t considered this before, but it was a worrying th
ought. Nobody quite knew why the griffins and giants had migrated from the north country, but he’d assumed that it had nothing to do with King Toth, or at least that they weren’t his allies.
But what if the griffins had been warned, and were watching for intruders? There was so much open cover between here and the barbarian’s southern road that it was hard to see how they would cross it all with griffins hunting them from above and marauders searching from below.
“Send out a seeker,” Markal said.
“And look for what?”
“Find whatever they’re hunting. Five griffins—that’s a lot for a moose. It must be humans, so if you don’t find anyone, that will mean we’re the humans in question.”
“A seeker will leave a magic trail. If the marauders are still following . . .”
“If they’re still following, they’ve got plenty of physical signs to track already,” he said. “As well as the remnant of the magic you were tossing about in the ravine. That’s still hanging onto you.”
“Is it?” She sniffed at the air as if it were an actual physical scent, rather than something to be detected through her magical perception. “I can’t smell it.”
“We always smell worse to others than to ourselves. Which is both a metaphor for your magic and to be taken literally—neither of us has bathed in a week. We’ll be lucky if the griffins don’t track us by the stench of our body odor.”
“All right, enough with that. I’ll send a seeker. Help me follow it.”
They sat on a bed of pine needles, and Nathaliey called it up. They needed it to range at a distance, and so Markal strengthened it as much as he was able. He trailed along, and the two of them followed the seeker toward the mountains. It wandered up and down precipitous terrain that they would soon need to cross, and then came upon what wasn’t precisely a plateau, but had straightened into a meadow. Markal recognized the spot.
“Go to the left. No, more to the left.”
Nathaliey sent the seeker where he instructed, and they found the stone circle he’d once visited with Memnet and Narud. The stones were splotches of shadow through the dim vision of the seeker, more visible from the ancient magic they contained than anything else. The old hermit’s home used to be nearby, and Markal wondered if Memnet’s former companion still lived there, or if he’d transformed once and for all into a bear or mountain goat.
Nathaliey stopped the seeker suddenly. There was a giant sitting in the circle of stones, with his back against one of them for support as it gnawed at a deer carcass. That must be what had the griffin riders worked up; it made sense that they’d want a small flock to drive it off. Nathaliey moved the seeker north again, and it sped over the terrain.
“Slow down,” he told her. “It’s all a blur—I can’t see anything.”
“The seeker detected something. I’m only giving it its lead.”
It soon slowed, hovering above the trees and moving back and forth as Nathaliey tried to find whatever had alerted her magical eye. And then the seeker entered a clearing on the hillside, where a group of men had gathered, not more than a mile and a half from Markal and Nathaliey’s position.
The men were on foot—no way to get horses through this terrain—but heavily armed and wearing hooded cloaks. It was a look that was all too familiar. Seen only through the dim vision of the seeker, the leader’s features weren’t clear, but Markal thought this a different group of enemies than the ones who’d chased them out of the ruined watchtower. They were too high in the hills and too far south to be the same ones.
Nathaliey shifted the seeker and turned its vision skyward to the peak of a fir tree with a trunk at least twelve feet in diameter. A griffin perched in its heights, with a rider on its back, held in place with a complex arrangement of tethers and harnesses. He held a slender sword in hand. The tree swayed from their weight.
The griffin flapped its wings, as if anxious in the company of so many strangers. One of the men on the ground pointed south in roughly the direction of Markal and Nathaliey. In turn, the rider gestured at the sky with his sword.
The seeker dissolved, and the vision disappeared with it. Markal and Nathaliey exchanged glances.
“A company of marauders below,” Markal said, “and another above. With griffins to hunt us from the sky.”
“What do we do?”
Their options had narrowed into a handful of bad outcomes: hide, run, or fight. All of them destined to end in disaster. Only one thing gave Markal any hope, and it was barely a pinprick of light against an otherwise bleak landscape of possibilities.
“We’ll run for the standing stones.”
Chapter Eight
“There is a problem with your plan,” Nathaliey said in a low voice as they cowered in yet another clump of trees while a pair of griffins circled overhead.
“You only see one?” Markal said. “I stopped counting at five.”
“Apart from the griffins, the two companies of marauders, the red sword calling to the marauders—I’ll bet you forgot that one, didn’t you?”
“Forgot the sword? My throbbing back muscles remind me every step of the way.”
“It’s the small problem of a giant sitting in the stone circle, casually gnawing on a deer carcass.”
“That’s not a problem, that’s our hope.”
One of the griffins screamed, and the other answered. Markal thought they were a little farther away, and to the east. Nathaliey shifted the saddlebag with their provisions from one shoulder to the other.
“Our hope is that there’s a giant?” she said.
“Yes. We find the giant, we cast a little magic to hide ourselves, and we hope its presence dissuades griffins.”
“It won’t scare off a company of marauders, though. They have the numbers to drive it off or kill it.”
“The giant will give them a good fight, and we’ll slip away while they’re otherwise engaged.”
“That’s a crazy plan, Markal.”
“You have a better one?”
“I was hoping the old wizard would help us.”
“He’s not an old wizard, he’s a crazy hermit. I don’t know if he’s turned himself permanently into an animal or even if he’s still alive, but even if he’s still there, he’s obviously disinterested in these things, or he wouldn’t have let a giant take up residence under his nose.”
“Admittedly, that’s a good point,” she said.
“You’re not entirely wrong, though. The stones are a place of power, and we’ll be stronger there. Possibly, the marauders will be, too—I’m not sure. But there’s a giant, and maybe a hermit, and old magic in the stones, and almost anything could happen.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I am not remotely convinced, no. Most likely we die and the enemy carries Soultrup back to King Toth.”
“If they’re going to get the sword anyway,” she said, “we could always ditch it, see if it draws them, and make our escape while they’re looking for it.”
“And when a marauder enters the gardens with Soultrup in hand, I’m sure the master will tell us, ‘thank the Brothers you threw it away to save your own skins!’”
“I didn’t say we should do it,” she said defensively. “I’m only pointing out that if you think it’s so hopeless, why aren’t you suggesting we get rid of the thing that’s got them hunting us in the first place?”
“All right then, so we’re agreed. We stay alive as long as possible with as little cowardice as we can manage.” Markal listened for the sound of griffins and heard nothing. “Let’s keep moving.”
It would soon be night, which seemed encouraging on the surface. No need to keep to cover in the darkness, and Markal and Nathaliey had good enough eyesight to travel by starlight. But it wouldn’t stop the marauders, who had the senses of a wizard, with the ability to raise wights to hunt them.
The two companions had been going up and down hills since their initial flight from the ruined watchtower. They’d rested little and eat
en less. The casting of the seeker had drawn blood and left them weaker still. Markal shifted the sword, which seemed to weigh a hundred pounds, and he swore the air was getting thinner the more they climbed.
He caught a glimpse of Nathaliey in the twilight gray as they emerged from a copse of mixed pine and hardwood, and her face was slack with exhaustion. She met his gaze and shook her head.
“We’re almost there,” he encouraged.
“Wonderful,” she said, tone sarcastic. “Let’s hope the giant’s belly is full and he’s sleeping off his meal.”
They were crossing a bare, rocky stretch of ground, when motion in the sky caught their attention. There was nothing to do but freeze in place and wait in terror as the griffin swooped overhead. To their relief, neither animal nor rider seemed to spot them, but instead flew higher into the mountains, apparently abandoning the hunt with nightfall. Markal felt a stirring of hope.
“Look, a trail,” Nathaliey said.
It was little more than a deer path, but it was an improvement over the struggles of the last few hours, and they picked up the pace. Minutes later they came upon a single standing stone squatting toad-like next to it. Heavily eroded lines spiraled around the stone from the top to the ground, and when Markal bent to scrape the dirt around the base, he discovered that the stone wasn’t short, so much as buried by an accumulation of leaves and sticks turned to soil over the centuries. He rested a hand on the crown, curious as to what magic it held. A tingle on his fingertips, and then it was gone.
“Feel anything?” Nathaliey asked, sounding hopeful.
“There’s magic there, but it’s too eroded. We’d never raise it.”
“It must be very old.”
“It was already ancient when Memnet was a boy,” he said.
“Someday they’ll stumble over the ruins of our gardens and call it something out of antiquity.”
“I never thought of it, but yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“So what was this place?” she asked. “It must have been something important.”
Markal studied his surroundings with fresh attention, and noted something artificial about the landscape. Could it be that what he’d taken for rows of trees and brush were the edges of ancient retaining walls, and the entire hillside had been terraced at one point?
The Black Shield (The Red Sword Book 2) Page 8
