Justyn bowed his head in a momentary nod.
Then, with no warning, the entire bridge and everything on it vanished into a sheet of flame.
Darian screamed, but his cry of horror and dismay was lost in the sound of the explosion. The concussion of the blast knocked Darian off his feet and stunned him for a moment; when he scrambled back up, there was no sign of Justyn or even of the bridge, just a roaring torrent of fire stretching over the river that reached from one bank to the other.
Darian didn’t think, couldn’t think - but his body wanted to live, and knew that the only way to make sure that he lived was to run. So it did, and it carried Darian along with it, even though his heart cried to join Justyn in the flames.
He jumped a hedge-row and before he’d hit the ground, the hedge disintegrated and blew past him in pieces. He tumbled onto his left side and cried out, but he couldn’t hear himself. Darian’s vision narrowed to what was before him, losing his peripheral awareness, his mind obsessed only with being on his feet again and running for all he could gain.
He ran as he had never run before, hardly conscious of anything but picking the path in front of him. Bits of flaming debris from the bridge flew through the air and landed in his path, in the thatch of intact cottages, setting them afire. He scattered a flock of chickens before him, as tongues of flame licked at him and smoke blew into his eyes confusing him and making it hard to see as he choked and coughed. He didn’t rightly seem to be in control of his body at all; he was carried along, a stunned passenger in a vehicle that had its own ideas about what it was going to do. It wasn’t as easy running through the village as it usually was - there were fires everywhere now, and debris and more of the things that the villagers had dropped as they escaped littering the usually orderly pathways. He had to double back and circle around obstacles, so that his path through the village to the safety of the forest took on the twisted quality of a nightmare.
There was a lot of noise behind him, shouting and splashing, and as soon as he broke free of the houses, he turned for an instant and discovered that the enemy had found the ford that the bridge had replaced. They had come up along either side of the burning bridge, flanking the village, and were already running up the riverbank, cutting him off from the woods.
But there weren’t many of them yet, they were all human, and they were spaced quite far apart. He was most of the way across a field of waist-high wheat when the first one spotted him and shouted.
The shout acted as an added incentive, not that he had needed one. But somehow he managed to put on another burst of speed and shot past the two men nearest him, bursting through the underbrush and into the woods.
Here he was at an advantage, for he knew the paths, and they did not. It wasn’t possible to shoot at anything moving as fast as he was, for the paths twisted and turned, with foliage making it difficult to get off a clear shot. He heard men floundering through the undergrowth for a while, but after a bit, they gave up their pursuit of him.
He continued to run through the thick green Forest, pelting headlong down the path, his feet thudding in the dirt. By now his initial burst of energy had worn off; his lungs and legs burned, and he had no choice but to slow his mindless dash. Once he lost his momentum, he woke out of his trance. Strength just ran out of him, he had to slow, and then, finally, to stop.
He bent over double in the middle of the path, hands braced on both his knees to keep them from collapsing, panting and sobbing at one and the same time. He wanted to scream, to weep and never stop, to run until he came to the edge of the world, to run back to the village and fling himself against the entire army.
He hadn’t the strength to do anything but take huge, gasping breaths that burned his lungs and brought a stitch to his side.
He could not believe what he had just seen, and yet the scene was etched into his memory as indelibly as if the fires Justyn had called up had scorched the image there.
He still couldn’t think clearly; conflicting emotions warred in his mind for the upper hand. Rage grappled with heart-shattering grief and kept him from breaking into helpless tears. Fears warred with confusion and kept him from going on, despair battled with determination and urged him to crawl into the nearest hole to hide. Where was he to go? What was he to do? How was he to get away from these madmen? For madmen they must be; why would anyone in his right mind want to attack an impoverished, dying backwater like Errold’s Grove, a place where so few people had even a single copper coin to their names that most of the village transactions were run on barter and tally-sticks?
A single small, sane voice spoke up amidst the confused babble of thoughts in his head. Get off the path, stupid! If they’re still following you, that’s how they’ll come!
He straightened up with difficulty, trotted a few, stiff paces farther along the wall of underbrush, and wriggled through a set of vines whose springy tendrils would snap back behind him, rather than breaking, leaving no trace of his passage.
Unless, of course, they have some sort of tracking beast, the voice reminded him. This is no place to hide. Collect your thoughts, and think of something better.
He wriggled underneath some bushes and huddled there, breathing hard, each breath stabbing the bottom of his lungs like a red-hot poker, and listening. There was plenty of noise behind him, but nothing immediately around him.
Where did I get into the woods? Through the wheat-field; that was on the back side of the village, next to the corn and away from the bluff. So I won’t be striking the river if I keep on this way, but I also won’t have to climb. Will these people have a tracking-beast? Do armies have such things with them? He hadn’t seen any dogs, but that didn’t meant they weren’t there. He tried to remember what, if anything, Justyn had said about the armies he had been with, but he couldn’t recollect enough. Now he regretted not listening to the old man’s stories; they’d seemed so irrelevant at the time, but now - !
Now I only hope I have more time to regret not listening to him!
His next thought was to climb a tree, but he dismissed it immediately as a bad idea. If the enemy had a tracker, he’d be trapped. No, he had to get as far away from the village as possible.
And then what?
One thing at a time; get away first, worry about what comes next after you’ve gotten away.
He stayed where he was until his sides and legs didn’t hurt as much, listening cautiously for sounds that meant pursuit. That didn’t just mean the sounds of someone coming down the path behind him; it meant the lack of normal sounds from the small birds and animals nearby, and the warning calls of birds that had been disturbed by intruders, cries that would come from higher up in the trees.
There was nothing immediately around him but silence broken only by a few faint rustles and mutters, and he decided with some reluctance that he ought to go back to the path. It was true that anyone hunting him would have to use it, but it was equally true that he would make much better time if he didn’t have to fight his way through the undergrowth. His passage would be quieter, too.
I can wait until I’m deeper into the Forest before I get off the path. A bit farther on, the undergrowth thins, and I can move through the trees a great deal easier.
That would make for another danger, though. Thinner undergrowth would mean a better chance of being spotted if the enemy had also gone off the path. Just because he knew the Forest, it didn’t follow that the enemy was ignorant of it.
Nevertheless, sitting here only made being caught more likely. He shook off his doubts, wriggled out of his cover as branches and twigs caught at his hair and clothing, and found his way back to the path he had abandoned, trying to make a minimum of disturbance to the underbrush.
His tough, bare feet made no more sound on the path than the falling of a leaf, and he trotted along with an arrow nocked to his bow, all senses alert, for what seemed like an eternity. His nerves strained to the breaking point, so much that he shivered, like a nervous hare, and started each time a birdcall
broke the silence. Every deeper shadow seemed to hide an enemy, and every cracking twig might be the sound of a heavy foot.
What’s ahead of me in this direction? He thought about the path for a while, and decided that one of his storm-shelters was - a pile of rock slabs in the middle of a rock-strewn clearing, with enough room under three of them piled together for him to squeeze himself and a small fire beneath. According to the villagers, at some point - farther than any of them had ever cared to go and farther than he had been able to penetrate - it became Hawkbrother territory. Well, weren’t they supposed to be Valdemar’s allies? Shouldn’t they do something about these invaders? If he could get away, maybe he ought to try to find them.
If he could get away from the invaders in the first place. A posthumous revenge was not going to be very satisfactory from his point of view.
The undergrowth thinned, as he knew from past explorations that it would, and he put his arrow back in the quiver, fastened the cover over it, and unstrung his bow, slinging it over his shoulder. Now that he could see for some distance, he knew that he no longer had much of an advantage with his bow - if he saw an enemy now, it would not be a case of surprise at short range, and the enemies were armored. He might be the best shot in the village, but a small-game bow had no chance against armor. His only chance of felling one of these men would lie in a lucky shot through the helm-slit, and today did not seem a good day to trust his luck.
He picked up his pace into the lope his father had taught him for covering the greatest amount of ground with the least effort. Now it was possible to see for some distance under the trees; what growth there was here was composed of thin, delicate bushes with slender leaves, a few sparsely-leaved vines with stems as thick as his leg, and some pale-green weeds liberally festooned with prickles. There wasn’t a great deal of cover, and it was the huge tree trunks themselves that blocked vision. He got off the path, and under the trees, hoping that he would be able to see trouble before it saw him.
A few furlongs farther on, he ran into the enemy’s second line. He literally ran into it; a patrol of three mounted men - he rounded a huge tree trunk and suddenly there they were, their horses shying away from the unexpected intruder.
That was all that allowed him to escape them. As they fought their startled horses, he dodged between two of them, and ran, darting in and around the trees, feeling the place between his shoulder blades crawl as he expected an arrow to hit there at any moment.
After the initial surprise, they seemed to treat his appearance as something of a joke. He couldn’t understand their language, but their laughter was plain enough - cruel though it sounded. Evidently they thought that hunting him was going to be an entertaining way to pass the time. As he ran and dodged, hoping to get to his rockpile and hide, they pursued him without putting their horses into a lather, and before too many moments had passed, it was obvious to him that they were making a game out of herding him before them.
He glanced back once or twice and saw that they’d taken off their helms and gorgets and both were dangling from the pommels of their saddles by the straps. That only allowed him to see their faces more clearly, and what he saw in those brief glances chilled him. These were cold and hardened men, who were getting a great deal of cruel amusement from playing with him as a cat plays with a terrified mouse. They clearly thought he was as soft as one of the villagers and wouldn’t last long before tiring - and they had every reason to believe that. He was skinny and looked younger than he was, and they were on horseback. If they could get him running in a straight line, they could easily tire him out and run him down.
So he wouldn’t run in a straight line, and he would try to get to his rock pile, where horses couldn’t go without breaking an ankle. Once he got wedged into his hole, he could draw his knife and keep them at bay.
And then what?
Well, maybe they’d get tired of trying to pry him out. At the moment, this was his only hope, faint though it was.
He dodged around a tree, waited until they thundered past him with his back pressed against the bark, and then made a dash for another temporary obstacle in the form of a patch of vines. He dove into those, rolled beneath them and came out the other side while they were still hacking their way through the stems with their swords. Now he saw the sign that he was nearer his goal than he’d thought - a tall, standing stone, shaped like a finger pointing straight upward. He dashed for that, ducked around it, dove and scrambled beneath a bush as one of the men charged him with an incomprehensible shout. He made it through to the other side of the bush, and scrabbled to his feet again to make the last dash for the rock pile.
The men bellowed laughter as they chased him; he threw himself flat as they charged down at him, then picked himself up and made a scramble over the last couple of furlongs. They overshot him and had to pull their horses around in a wide circle to avoid riding them into the treacherous footing of the rocks. His heart was pounding so hard it rivaled the sound of the horses’ hooves, and all he could think about was that narrow triangle of dark that meant his hiding place. If he could get in there, he’d be hard to get out -
He scuttled over the rocks, the stones shifting under his feet and making him slip and fall, bruising palms and knees. The crevice was close, almost within reach -
A shadow fell over him as his hand actually touched the first of the great stone slabs that formed his shelter. He flinched away, tried to throw himself to the side, but it was too late.
His heart literally stopped, and a dark film passed over his vision.
A hand seized the collar of his shirt and hauled him upright, dangling him in the air in front of the crudest face he had ever seen in his life. The man’s greasy hair was braided back in a tail and bound around the forehead with a dirty, red scarf. He had cold, flat brown eyes, like dead pebbles, his right eyebrow was split by a scar that continued on down his cheek. His teeth were broken and discolored, his beard untrimmed and full of tiny bits of straw. He held Darian up and shook him, roaring laughter.
Darian stopped breathing.
He was the biggest man Darian had ever seen, bigger than Kyle, and every muscle of his arms and legs under the sweat-damp, dirty skin was rock hard. And a great deal of those arms and legs showed beneath the metal corselet and thigh guards - the armor was very nearly too small to protect him adequately. He said something to his two companions, and chortled, shaking Darian again. He smelled, too; bad breath and rank sweat, and rancid grease all combined to make him stink like a sick and unclean animal.
Darian’s mind went blank. He hung limply in the man’s grasp, waiting for whatever the men was going to do to him. Whatever it was, it would probably be very bad.
The other two remained on the horses at the edge of the rockfield, shouting encouragement to their fellow. Whatever he planned to do, they obviously approved of.
Darian wondered if it would hurt for very long.
Please, he pleaded silently, hoping some god would listen. Let it be over quickly.
At that instant, the shaft of a white-feathered arrow appeared in the man’s throat, as if conjured up by his prayer. The man’s eyes bulged, blood sputtered from his lips, and his hand came up to claw at the arrow that Darian hadn’t even heard pass over his own shoulder.
Three
Snowfire k’Vala, a Hawkbrother of the k’Vala clan, had only twice or three times before this mission ever been inside the border of the land called Valdemar. He considered himself only passably, and imperfectly, acquainted with the customs of these Valdemarans. He thought of himself as a good scout, an excellent hunter, and an indifferent mage of no better than Master level, but not any kind of an expert on their affable foreign allies.
But he did know this much: law-abiding mounted Valdemaran fighters of whatever ilk did not chase young boys afoot without a very good reason. They certainly did not chase such boys in the manner of a cruel game, taking pleasure from the child’s obvious fear, nor would they do so with clear intent to harm him.
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Therefore, when Hweel, his bondbird, came flying silently out of the treetops, projecting urgent images of just that into his mind, Snowfire did not need to ponder diplomatic contingencies to make a decision.
Hweel made one of his rare calls, warning him that he was coming down. The bird’s call was a long, profound bass note like a thunderous breath, deeper by far than that of a more common hoot of an owl of normal size and breeding. Snowfire held up his arm with the heavy, wrist-to-shoulder leather gauntlet on it, and prepared for Hweel’s landing. As Hweel dropped out of the canopy with his wings spread wide to slow his glide, Snowfire braced himself. He had to; Hweel was easily three or four times the size and mass of most bondbirds, and twice the size and mass of a normal eagle-owl. Even with no intent to harm, simply landing came as something of a shock to the one Hweel was landing on.
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