The Children of Urdis (Grimwold and Lethos Book 2) (7 page)

"But you are the only one I know who can help."

"What about your other friends, the woman and the man?" Magnor was already cleaning his blade again, washing away Grimwold's blood.

"They had to leave us for a while, and I don't know how to find them. I'm not sure they would know what to do. He needs a surgeon to remove this arrow."

Magnor stared at him and the onlookers bowed their heads. "I don't know what to tell you. The war chief is not dead, nor is he alive. We can wait a few days to see what happens, but a new leader must be chosen if he does not improve. In times like these, the people need a strong leader."

"Just try to pull the arrow out." Lethos stepped closer, and half the men and all the women stepped back. He paused, surprised at their fear, but then remembering what they must have witnessed him doing. He raised his hands in peace. "Please, I do not trust my own hands to guide the arrow correctly. You have the most experience."

The crowd waited on Magnor, who tucked his chin down in thought. At last he wiped his hands and gripped the arrow with one and braced the other beside it on Grimwold's chest. "If this snaps, I'm not going to be responsible for it."

"Just do your best. I know of no other to help, and I fear the longer that arrowhead stays in him the worse he will become."

Magnor started to pull slowly. Grimwold's flesh sucked at the arrow as it withdrew. Heads leaned in to watch. More of the arrow slid from the wound, sticky with blood. Lethos felt the pain in his chest grow sharper. Sweat beaded on Magnor's forehead and his arm trembled from the slow but forceful pace.

Lethos saw the stone arrowhead begin to emerge.

Then Magnor leapt back with a yelp. Yellow fire and heat flared where the arrow had been, and with a dull pop the stone arrowhead sucked back into Grimwold's flesh. Lethos felt again as if he had been struck with a spike in his chest, and he too fell aside clutching the spot. Everyone else shouted and scattered. Grimwold lay motionless, unchanged.

"It burned my palm!" Magnor held up his hand, revealing a red line that had already begun to blister. Lethos recovered and rushed to Grimwold. The wound had healed over, but the arrowhead was still sealed inside his flesh. He could feel the shadow of it in his own chest.

"It jumped back into his body," said the man with the bandaged head. "It was like a fish desperate to jump back into the sea. It just popped back into the wound."

"This is sorcery," Magnor said. "The war chief is cursed. And you ..."

Lethos felt every eye turn to him. He had let the bull rule him, and without even asking he knew he had turned on his own. The story was written in the eyes of the men accusing him. He nodded.

"Take War Chief Grimwold with you wherever you go," Magnor said. "But you can't stay with us. Leave. Find help elsewhere. We will find a new leader among our own kind."

Lethos knew to argue was futile. He looked down at Grimwold's stillness and envied him for it. He had to find help in this land of strangers or Grimwold and he both were as good as dead.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lethos had hoped for at least a night's rest before being packed off, but he had underestimated both his status and the fear he generated. Magnor, acting like the new war chief, ordered men to ensure he left with Grimwold. The men assigned to him blanched at their assignment but did not protest. Lethos had never seen warriors act so sheepishly around him. They stayed out of arm's reach as if ready to flee in an instant, but followed him everywhere as he packed his meager belongings.

He stood now at the center of Greenvik, which was still wrapped in silence with a sea of stars overhead. His escorts huddled together with their spears readied. Grimwold was laid out in a cart and piled with gray wolf pelts against the cold. Lethos tossed four leather bags into the cart, and one of Grimwold's former men brought war gear to load along with it, a sword, shield, and helmet.

"No pony to pull it?" Lethos asked. His voice was small in the quiet of the night. Only crickets chirped. The warriors looked at each other, then shook their heads.

Taking up the cart as if he were a common pack animal, he began rolling it toward the edge of the village. Halfway across he wondered if having him pull the cart was a pun on his bull form, but when he turned back his guards had vanished. It was just him, the cold night, and a frightened village pretending to sleep.

"None of you are smart enough for that," he mumbled. "Come on, Grimwold, let's take our toys and go home."

Grimwold had nothing to say, and apparently would say nothing ever again. Lethos now wished to hear Grimwold's rough, blustery voice. Certainly he tended to brag more than was seemly and his stories were usually some dull barbarian tale of burning down a village and taking all the young women. Yet leadership came naturally to him, and he knew what to do when few others did. Yes, Lethos could make some predictions about his immediate future, but he did not know strategy. He had been in training to become a spy, not a good one either, if he remembered his lessons correctly. He was never going to make decisions, just gather information. He never wanted to make decisions. Those were for someone else to handle.

Right now his only decision was where to point the cart, and he could handle that much. He wanted to shout back to the village, "You know this is an island, right? I can't go far." However, he kept his mouth pressed in a thin line and trudged north until he was far enough away to build a small fire and settle in for a night of fitful sleep. He rested on his side, letting his face bathe in the warmth. He had backed up the cart to let Grimwold's feet at least face the fire. No telling what he felt in his current state or if he needed to be kept warm at all. Lethos began to drift off, hating his loneliness and wishing Kafara and Turo would return. As he fell asleep, he had a gnawing feeling they were not coming back soon.

He awoke with the first stains of dawn, still in the same position, but the campfire burned down to embers. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, then remembered Grimwold and leapt to his feet. He had not changed, nor had he stirred all night. He remained with his eyes closed, a waxen figure of his former self. Lethos shared the dull ache in his chest that marked the spot of Grimwold's wound. He pulled back the furs, feeling the body heat escape, and examined the wound. But for some crusted blood left over, the flesh was unmarred. The area seemed a bit discolored, but he could not be sure what it was like originally. Lethos pressed the hard muscle as if expecting to find the stone just below the surface, but he knew it had gone back to its original position. He could feel it deep in his own chest. Flipping the skins back over Grimwold, he reached out with his mind to find the same blankness from the day before.

Lethos's stomach growled, and he went to a sack of provisions and extracted a wedge of cheese. He had been given salted meats and fish along with some grains and a small cooking pot. The people of Greenvik had not wanted him to die of starvation, but just wanted him to be gone. He could not blame them, after likely killing so many of their sons in a pointless battle. If the damn raiders hadn't attacked.

"Well, there's a thought," he said, biting into the cheese. It was salty and dry, but he was hungry enough to ignore it. He leaned against the cart and talked out his plan with Grimwold.

"A fair number of the raiders were killed, and they must have been in a panic seeing me charging at them and their weapons breaking on my flesh. Would they have grabbed all their ships? Probably not. I might be able to get us into one and find a crew to take us north. What do you think?"

Grimwold's hair stirred in the morning breeze and somewhere from Greenvik a rooster crowed. He hadn't gone as far as he had thought he had.

"Well, you're agreeable this morning. I think it's a fine idea as well. It's better than anything else I've considered. Walking to the end of the island and then crying wasn't much of a plan, was it."

Lethos felt better about himself now. He had come up with his own plan. No one on Reifell would know what to do with Grimwold. Yet High King Eldegris had a magic sword and was himself at least as unusual as he and Grimwold were. Eldegris had nearly died in the defense of Norddalr, but recovered from his wounds with the same ease as a Manifested. If anyone would know what to do, it would be him. So he needed a ship to carry them north.

Then he remembered the ghost ship. The enormous white ship with five masts and three banks of oars. It had preceded the raiders, hiding them in its wake. Whatever it had been, his power wanted him to know it was dangerous. The ship had also been heading north.

"It still doesn't change my choice," Lethos said, finishing the last bite of cheese before fishing out a skin of mead from the cart. "North is where I can get help now."

He set out with the earliest light, rolling across fields of brown grass and waves of dead leaves. The cart bounced and shuddered, never meant for more than pulling hay from one field to the next, but it delivered Grimwold to the shore where a raider ship sat abandoned on the surf. Lethos smiled, glanced back up the slope to see shadows of gulls and sunbirds still circling the carnage. Sometimes a flock of them burst into the air, likely spooked by another scavenger.

Pushing the cart across the beach was a challenge. Were it not for his magical strength, he might not have succeeded. At last he loaded Grimwold and their meager possessions into the ship. Last night it had seemed the villagers had been generous with him, but now loaded into a ship his four sacks and wine skin seemed a paltry offering. He shoved the ship into the sea and then waded out to throw himself over the rails. He laughed as the ship bobbed on the waves and began drifting out to sea.

Of course, he had no idea what he was doing, but how hard could it be? He was not going to take to the open sea, but just fumble along the coast and enlist the aid of a few men to crew the ship. He would probably only need five, with himself included in that number. In the meantime, most sailors he had seen did precious little real work except for running around on deck and tugging on ropes and whatnot. It was the man at the tiller who did anything at all, and with his own superior strength working the tiller would present no difficulty.

Once in the water, a number of things became clearer to Lethos. First, sailors did more than run around and pull ropes to guide the ship. The tide beached his ship again farther down strand, and he had to relaunch it. The sail had been taken in, and he spent close to an hour figuring out how to unfurl it. When it finally cracked open and grabbed the wind, he shouted and jumped around the deck, pumping his arm in the air like a conquering warrior. He felt extremely smart as he navigated away from the beach and into deeper waters. Except he continued into deeper waters long past the point where he wanted to turn. He had to tie down the sail to aid his steering, and this worked in getting him closer to land until the ropes broke free. He did not know how to tie the correct knots.

The futility of his plan became clearest after he had sailed north for an hour and realized the hull was leaking. Enough water to cover up to his ankles had leaked into the center of the ship. So those buckets he had seen were for bailing. That was going to be challenging. Grimwold lay flat in the prow, silently judging him despite his comatose state. Lethos held the tiller steady, but the ship seemed to have a mind of its own. It kept a general course, but if he took his eye off his goal for even a moment the ship would turn to another direction.

The entire escapade shuddered to a halt as something heavy dragged along the hull, setting all the boards to clattering. The sail was full and the mast strained, but the ship listed to the right and halted. Grimwold slid toward the gunwales along with the sea water and the miscellany on the deck. Lethos looked over the side. He had driven the ship onto a sandbar.

"So, this is definitely not what I had planned. Of course, I deserve this. I take back all the bad things I've said about sailors." His contrition, however, was of little avail. The ship remained wedged onto the sandbar, and after a few prods with an oar he realized he could not shove off on his own. Despite his great strength, the oar was not enough to dislodge the ship. He ended up cracking the oar before anything else. He flung the broken wood out to sea.

Then he noticed the other ship. Of course there would be another ship so close to shore. It was a small dark rectangle on the horizon, but it was closing on him. Unless he was mistaken, it was a local fishing vessel. He did not see any square sails on it and knew Grimwold's so-called fleet were all docked at a lake with river access. So help was on the way. Only he was clearly in a raiding ship. If he were the captain of a fishing ship in the same situation, he would turn and flee.

Lethos jumped in the prow, waving both hands overhead, shouting, "Help!"

CHAPTER NINE

"There is no way to sail into the bay without being swarmed by Avadurian ships. We've already been lucky thus far." The captain of this ship, a wiry man with a left arm shriveled from a former wound, spit over the railing. Syrus stood beside him, with Thorgis opposite. The cold wind sliced off the sparkling waters and made him wrap his black cloak tighter around his neck. Syrus scanned the shoreline, seeing no easy place to go ashore. All of Avadur was ensconced in high cliffs and thick, foreboding pine forests. It had all appeared the same to him as they had sailed around its eastern coast for the last three days. Everything smelled of sea air and distant pine scents.

"You'll have to make the rest of this journey on foot," the captain said. He seemed resigned, his back hunched and his eyes averted to the distance. Thorgis's own piercing blue eyes were lost in an uncertain squint, and he stroked his thin beard as he considered the captain's suggestions. Thorgis had not spoken much during the journey, and Syrus could not tell if he was either frightened or aloof. Perhaps he was both. Thorgis was the king's oldest child and only son. Syrus wondered what pressures a young prince at the cusp of adulthood might experience. He had to act like a man without the experiences of one. Thorgis's hesitation made more sense in that light.