Extraordinary Zoology (18 page)

The wurm writhed, pushing back against them, but they dug their feet in and held firm. Lynus was amazed.

The ground shook again, and the wurm’s tail pulled up and out of the ground. The monster was easily twenty paces long, maw to tail. There was no way four poles on one side of its head were going to keep it in place.

Pendrake saw the same thing. “Spars to the other side!” he shouted in Molgur, loosing an arrow into the open mouth of the wurm to no visible effect. The two remaining spar-bearers grabbed their spars and ran, crossing in front of the beast.

It whipped its head away from the poles pinning it, however, and the moment was lost. It rolled, twisted, slammed against a home, and then its head shot forward to swallow the two running spar-bearers whole. Their spars, too long to fit sideways into the monstrous maw, splintered as the jaws snapped shut.

The ground rumbled again, rattling Lynus, who shivered with fear. He’d been afraid before, but this was different, coming through the ground like a damp chill, reaching up through his feet to ice his soul. He wanted more than anything else to throw his sword to the ground and flee.

Kinik’s spar-carrying team threw their poles and bolted, and Kinik ran away from the wurm as well, though she kept a hold her war cleaver as she did.

“The fear is not your own, Lynus! It’s from the beast!” shouted Pendrake, loosing another arrow. “You can best it. Keep your sword and your wits.”

Lynus shook his head back and forth like a dog drying itself, as if fear were water that could be shed. It helped a little.

“What do we do?” he asked. The wurm was nearly parallel to them now, advancing into the center of the village.

“The spars would have worked,” said Pendrake, “if we had more of them, and seasoned troops who could swallow terror like so much cold stew.” He looked at the fallen spars and the scattering trollkin. “But we can’t pin it anymore. We need to figure out how to hurt it.”

A gunshot sounded from behind Lynus, to his right.

Edrea looked through the smoke along the sights of her rifle. There were definitely gaps in the armor plating, but she’d missed. Her round had spalled against the gorgandur’s scales.

“When it extends, the flesh beneath the armor is exposed,” she shouted over the rumbling. “I haven’t figured out the timing yet!”

“Don’t bother,” said Pendrake as he loosed an arrow against the beast’s flank. It bounced from the gorgandur’s carapace like a pebble thrown against a cliff face. The great wurm rolled, slamming into a stone home. Dust shook from among the stones, but the house stood.

“They overlap in a constant direction,” Lynus said. “You’ll need to shoot between them, from behind.”

Edrea nodded. Lynus was right. She reloaded by feel, her eyes tracking the gorgandur as it rippled through the village.

A female trollkin, barefoot, with an axe in hand and an old shield strapped to her back, charged the beast’s flank.

“I doubt anything vital lies an arrow’s length in,” said Pendrake.

“War cleaver can reach vital,” Kinik said.

Edrea was pleased to see the ogrun had collected her wits, even if her recovered courage was ill-placed.

Horgash rode up on Greta. “I’d curse, but I don’t think invoking The Wurm amid our current company is wise,” he said.

Pendrake drew his sword, that ancient Orgoth blade that always stayed sharp. Sharp enough to cut . . .

“Lynus, Edrea . . . make sure to update the gorgandur entry in the next edition. Get Kinik admitted to the university. Horgash, you get these three and everybody from this side of the village through the Tharn.”

“Professor,” Edrea began. “You—”

“Won’t live forever? No, I won’t.” He pointed at the gorgandur’s flank, where the axe-wielding female currently hacked away, chipping flecks of scale. “That monster is going to feast on trollkin who don’t know well enough to flee.”

“Muthgar Preymaker didn’t know well enough to flee,” said Lynus.

“Well, maybe we didn’t get his whole story,” Pendrake said. “Now go! Punch a hole for us, and I’ll either be along shortly with rest of the evacuating kriel, or I won’t.”

Pendrake slung a satchel over his shoulder, adjusted his grip on his sword, and ran farther into the village, moving parallel to the wurm. Edrea watched him go. She remembered Lynus saying, just three hours ago, that he’d follow Pendrake anywhere in Immoren. He’d spoken for both of them in that moment, but here they were, not following.

“He told us not to follow him,” said Lynus, as if reading her mind. “I still meant what I said.”

“I know,” she answered.

“Enough tears!” said Horgash with an ugly yell. “Edrea, cast that seeing-spell and find us the holes in the Tharn lines.”

Edrea spun
vossyl liumyn,
closed her eyes—which were tearless, she had half a mind to say to Horgash—and when she opened them, the waning afternoon light and long shadows gave way to crisp details in grey.

The tree line, three hundred paces away, was spotted with amber outlines. Edrea concentrated and focused.

“There must be four dozen bloodtrackers there.” She turned a full circle. “I can’t say where they’re thinnest, but they’re thickest in the copse of trees on that knoll.”

“Then we know where
not
to run,” said Horgash.

“No!” said Lynus. “We know
exactly
where to run.” He pointed at the knoll. “If somebody is controlling this beast, they’re right there, surrounded by bodyguards while casting beast magic, or Wurm-will, or some such.”

“That’s not an escape, that’s an assault.”

“And a fell caller doesn’t run from a fight,” Lynus said. “You’re a warrior, a leader of warriors.”

“I used to be.”

“You can’t sing, and you can’t shout, but these trollkin can still hear you. Lead them! Get us onto that knoll, and we will save this village.”

Edrea was stirred by Lynus’ speech. Chronicler indeed.

“They are going to rain spears and arrows on us before we’re halfway there,” Horgash said.

“Then we need thicker skin,” said Edrea, weaving
fheyissa
, the fortress sigils, with both hands. She clenched a fist and swept the resulting ring of runes into a girdle about her waist.

“Stay within about eight paces,” she said.

“How many does skin-spell work on?” asked Kinik.

Edrea thought about that and reached into the weave to test it. “As many of my friends who stay within about eight paces.”

Horgash began shouting in Molgur-Trul. Edrea winced. It sounded like he was hurting himself.

“We take the fight to the hill! I need axes and shields at my side! Warriors of the kriel, to me!”

Were there any warriors here? Edrea had watched with despair as the spar-bearers fell and fled. The kriel was in disarray, and the wurm wrought a winding path of destruction through it.

But several older trollkin came running, battered shields and ancient axes in hand.

“Grindar requires Gelfas’ aid!” Horgash shouted.

Edrea thought she recognized the two names from Trollkin history.

“But in this tale,” Horgash continued, “Gelfas has no full-bloods, no warbeasts at his side. He does not need them, because he marches with the Grey Champions!”

Edrea had never heard of the Grey Champions. Horgash was improvising, spinning a new tale around an old one.

Horgash pointed across the glade at the knoll. “The enemy commander hides in those trees. We go to cut him to the ground, and the trees with him if they stand in our way!”

Edrea was startled by the full-throated, robust cheer that followed. These old trollkin, decades past their prime, were ready to live up to the legend, and write a new one.

Horgash pointed forward with his right sword and shouted, “For Grindar, for Gelfas, for Jata and the Glade!” and spurred Greta into a slow run. The trollkin formed a phalanx around and behind him. They all began to lope across the clearing.

Horgash shouted back over his shoulder at Edrea. “Keep up with us, lass! I like what you do for my old hide!”

Edrea sprinted into the midst of the trollkin phalanx, slowed to catch her breath, and smiled to see Lynus at her left and Kinik at her right. Then arrows began to drop into the group, and she bent her smile into a determined grimace.

She leaned into her stride and focused on her breathing. Simultaneously maintaining
vossyl liumyn
and
fheyissa
was difficult, and doing so while running was even harder. Her pulse pounded in her ears, audible over the cacophony of a dozen pairs of feet, Greta’s hoofbeats, and the rumbling progress of the gorgandur through the village to the rear.

The hail of arrows intensified around her. The Tharn archers had decided she was a threat, the spinning runes of her weave no doubt calling attention to her. Kinik, running to Edrea’s right, moved closer and raised her arms. What was she doing? Edrea couldn’t see through the ogrun, could only make out the clump of amber outlines on the knoll.

Kinik grunted, and her coat seemed to sprout half a dozen arrows. The ogrun faltered for half a pace, but then steadied back into her position. Edrea felt the weave flutter, the fortress of
fheyissa
rippling in response to the volley. It began to slip away from her. Her lungs were hot, her heart hammered in her chest, and the weave itself developed a pulse, a rhythm.

Edrea stutter-stepped, adjusting her pace to run in time to that pulse. Kinik shot her a concerned glance, and then looked back to the battlefield.

The pulse of the weave, the pounding of her heart, and the pace of her feet were all in sync. Not the unison of marching soldiers, though. This was a rhythmic counterpoint, like a drum circle, and with each bar, with each measure of contrapuntal hammering, she grew stronger. With each refrain she felt greater ease in the exertion. What had been painful cacophony was now exhilarating. Edrea reveled in power fueled by the glorious music of the weave.

But Kinik was still taking arrows on her behalf. Edrea wove again, swiftly.
Alyshh rhya
, occlusion and self. A third ring of runes spun into the air around her.

Lynus saw a third ring of runes appear around Edrea, and then all the runes shimmered and vanished. Edrea herself almost vanished with them. She wasn’t invisible—not quite—but he couldn’t focus on her, as if the new magic she was spinning forced his eyes to look away.