Fortress Draconis (10 page)

Resolute strode strongly from the cavern. “Mount up, boy, we have to ride.”

Will hauled himself into the saddle. “Did Oracle say good-bye?”

“Something like that.” Resolute swung up into his saddle. “She said to ride east to the Rivenrock, then south. If we hurry… Well, we best hurry.”

Riding quickly through mountain forests was not an easy task. The route they chose consisted of narrow trails that meandered across hillsides, followed bare-rock streambeds, and otherwise flowed with the landscape. Based on what Will had learned heading into the mountains, he assumed their current path had started as a game trail, and the minimal amount of blazing suggested very few people used it at all.

They rode as hard as they could, pausing only to water their horses and switch mounts. During one of the switches, Resolute tossed a heavy, quilted leather surcoat to Will, nearly knocking him down. Iron studs dotted the buckskin garment. Will held it up to his shoulders, with the hem falling to his knees, and knew he could have pitched it as a tent for himself and still had room to stable his horse.

“Yes, it’s big, but it’s the best we’ve got.” Resolute slipped a rustling coat of ringmail over a padded leather surcoat. “Put it on, boy, belt it tight at the middle, and use some leather straps to tie it off at your wrists.”

The black tone of Resolute’s words made Will comply without complaint. The surcoat hung on him very loosely but still managed to trap much of the midday heat. He tied it off at wrists and waist as instructed, which left the sleeves billowing over his forearms and a flaccid flap of leather hanging down to his groin over the belt.

Resolute secured bracers on his own forearms, then tossed Will a gibberer longknife in a scabbard. “Slide it in your belt, across the back. Now try drawing it.”

The weapon’s hilt projected just past his right side at waist level. Will grabbed the hilt and slid his hand wide. The blade came out cleanly and easily. The thief whipped the blade’s point up and found the longknife’s weight was perfect for a quick slash.

“He draws it well, Resolute, but chances are that’s the biggest knife he’s ever brought to hand.” Crow strung his silverwood bow. “He’s better at throwing. Give him some of your bladestars.”

Resolute opened a saddlebag and tossed Will a leather pouch that landed heavily and clanked when he caught it. The elf pulled out another and tied it to his belt, at his right hip. From it he drew a four-pointed metal star that had been forged from broken tips of gibberer longknives. He held it between fingers and thumb, pulled his hand back, then whipped it forward.

The spinning silver weapon thunked into the bole of a sapling thirty feet away.

Will blinked. “That throw. You could have killed a rabbit without your snare.”

“I’m not of a mind to be eating what I kill with these.” The Vorquelf snorted. “Mind, boy, they’re sharp, and the red stain in the blood-groove, that’s a nasty poison. Cut yourself and start tingling, well, sing outfast”

All three remounted horses and headed out. Crow, at the back, kept his bow in hand, but his arrows remained in the saddle quiver in front of his right leg. The packhorses trailed him. Resolute, riding point, opened a twenty-yard lead on the other two, but held up so they constantly remained in sight of each other. Despite the caution he was taking, they did set something of a quick pace, with the sun only just beginning its descent toward night when Rivenrock came into view on a distant hill.

The morning’s ride had been quiet and easy, but since arming themselves, tension had risen. Every birdsong Will heard got matched up against what he could remember from the trip into the mountains.Was that really a berrysparrow, or a signal? Worse were the times when all they could hear“ was the sound of their own progress. He didn’t know what had scared the local creatures away, but he was finding it easy to imagine some huge Aurolani army slinking its way through the next valley over, led by a twisted goat-thing.

At Rivenrock Resolute dismounted. In the shadow of a huge dolmen, he studied tracks on the ground, then pointed south, along the line of the slab that had been sliced off the standing stone. “Gibberers, close. We have to move fast, but be careful.”

The southern trail took them down a mountain meadow and toward a dark wood. Will strained his ears, listening for anything like the sound of battle. He watched their destination, looking for any sign that they were riding into an ambush. The jingle of tack and the pounding thunder of horses’ hooves made listening difficult, and the woods’ darkness remained impenetrable to his sight. His heart began to race and he wiped his hand off on the thigh of his armor.

The woods blotted out the sun, and Will’s eyes took a couple of seconds to adjust to the gloom. By then his horse, swiftly following Resolute’s mount, had crested a little hillock and started a quick descent into a wooded bowl with a stream crossing the path.

In an instant Will knew this place would be perfect for an ambush. The stream’s running red with blood confirmed this conclusion, as did the growls of the gibberers who tore at the bodies and scattered baggage on either side of the stream. Snarls and snaps, quick yips and pitiless, guttural laughter filled the bowl.

As one of them turned, bloodied muzzle baring gore-stained teeth, an arrow flew past and took the creature in the shoulder, spinning it around. Somehow the gibberer remained upright, then Resolute’s horse hit it with a shoulder. The gibberer careened all loose-jointed into a knot of its fellows, dumping them into the swollen vein at the bowl’s heart.

Will fumbled with the flap of the bladestar pouch, then looked over to see a gibberer on a hillside aiming a crossbow at him. Will pulled back, tugging the reins. The bolt hit hard, yanking him from the saddle. He crashed down on the far side of the path, crushing a bush beneath him. Dust rose to choke him and he wanted to vomit.

He was fairly certain that if he did, the bolt would be the first thing he expelled.

Will lay there for a second, waiting for the agony sure to come from a quarrel coring him like an apple. His short life passed before his eyes, and he found pitifully little that was memorable. Only the recent events seemed worth clinging to, but they mocked him.Perhaps this is what Oracle didn’t want me to see.

He waited for the pain, but it didn’t come. All he felt were the stings and scratches of the bush. It didn’t make any sense to him, but if he wasn’t dead yet, he was determined that Will the Nimble would do more than die.

He rolled off the bush, letting it spring up behind him, giving him some cover, and came up into a crouch. The bolt hung leechlike from his leather surcoat. It had missed his flesh, but tangled in the excess material, pulling him off his horse’s back. Will tugged it free with his left hand and cast it aside. Then he shifted his feet, bringing his right flank back, and fingered open the bladestar pouch. One of the cool metal weapons came easily to hand.

Will rose, and saw the gibberer who had shot at him still bent over reloading its crossbow. The thief whipped his hand forward. The poisoned metal star whirred through the air and stuck the gibberer full in the thigh.

It looked up at him for a heartbeat, then its body convulsed and it flopped to the ground.

Another arrow from Crow’s bow split the spine of a gibberer rushing at Resolute. The Vorquelf had dismounted and fought with a longknife in each hand. He parried one stab low with his left, then thrust through the gibberer’s throat with his right. Ripping the blade free, he spattered blood across another gibberer’s face. A lunge made the most of the temporary blindness that resulted, then a rush by three gibberers drove Resolute back.

Will boiled into this fray. None of his training, either with Resolute or before, had formally addressed fighting. But Will’s very existence in the Dimandowns had demanded fighting—perhaps not on a daily basis, but commonly enough that he’d learned what he could and could not do. Throwing rocks, keeping the enemy at a distance, this he did best, but when forced in close, he knew there were no rules, no honor.

The first gibberer noticed him when Will splashed into the stream, his longknife raised for a slash. The gibberer started to turn, bringing its own blade around for a cut, but Will got there first. His blade hacked open the back of the creature’s right thigh. Blood coated his knife—the stark contrast of the blade’s cold silver edged by a red ribbon exploded in his mind.

Then something hit him hard across the shoulder blades. It pitched him forward, launching him into the air. Will’s blade went flying. The thief tucked his shoulder as he started to come down, thinking to roll to his feet, but he bumped up hard against something that stopped him. His head and shoulders on the ground, and his feet in the air, Will saw a limping gibberer start toward him.

Worse yet, an arrow flew past the gibberer, barely nipping the tuft of hair from one of its ears.

Will twisted around and came down on his knees. He grabbed a stone with his right hand and threw it at the gibberer. The beast cackled as it batted the rock aside with an open paw. Will shuffled back, in the shadow of the corpse that had stopped his roll and pitched another stone at the gibberer.

The Aurolani creature slapped that missile out of the air, giggling hideously as Will retreated again. It waved its longknife at him, then jabbed the air twice, punctuating each motion with a ringing laugh.

A third time Will threw. The gibberer flicked its paw at the missile, then shrieked. The bladestar had stuck it all the way through, with the sharp silver point spiking out the back. The gibberer dropped its longknife to pluck the star out, but before it could, the poison took hold. The creature dropped to the ground and thrashed its life out in the bloody stream.

Will started forward, intending to scoop up the gibberer’s knife and help Resolute, but saw almost immediately that wasn’t necessary. One gibberer spun away, hands futilely attempting to stop blood spurting from a slashed neck. The other staggered as Resolute stabbed his left longknife deep into its thigh. His other blade came up, over, and down in a crushing blow that pulped the gibberer’s skull. The creature melted into a boneless pile of mottled fur.

The fact that he wasn’t needed was not what stopped Will from moving forward. Something tugging at his left ankle accomplished that. He turned and tried to jump back, but caught his heels on a rock and went down hard. A bloodied hand kept grasping at his boot as the body attached to it slowly emerged from a pile of animal skins, like a caterpillar undulating from a cocoon.

Wide white eyes stared at him from a face that was a mask of blood. The jaw worked, but no sound came out of the mouth. Then Will realized he could see the person’s teeth, all of them, and that what he had taken as a blood-clotted beard …By the gods, they peeled his face off, left it hanging…

The youth reeled away and vomited. On his hands and knees he tried to crawl away, but shudders shook him violently. He could hear the faceless man inching toward him, through the sand. He could feel fingers scrabbling against his boot, clutching him by the heel. He moved away a foot or two, shying from a dead gibberer in the stream.

Suddenly death lay everywhere around him, choking him. He heaved again, his vomit annihilating the dark bloodstain in the sand. He shoveled a handful of sand over it, then let another handful drift down from his hand, breathing deeply of the dust. It made him sneeze, clearing his nose of the scent of blood and sickness.

But I can still smell death.

Someone crouched in front of him. “It’s over, Will, all over.

Will slumped onto his right hip, but refused to look back toward his feet. “The man back there.”

Crow shook his head. “He’s gone now. He might have been in a lot of pain, but at least he lived long enough to see his torturers die.”

“But, what they did to him.” Will shivered. “They peeled his face off.”

“Crow, get over here!” Resolute, on one knee beside a different bundle of skins, pointed his left hand at the hillside. “Will,metholanth, now!”

The order pumped steel into his limbs and coursed fire into his muscles. Will scrambled to his feet and ascended the hillside quickly, on hands and feet. Grabbing tree roots and bushes he pulled himself up, anxious to be away from the carnage. He found themetholanth bush and stripped off several branches, then laid hold of the main stem. Letting his anger and fury course through him, he tugged and twisted, yanked and pulled. He ripped the bush from the ground in a shower of earth, unbalancing himself. He crashed onto his back and rolled down the hill, bouncing off trees, bumping over logs.

Reaching the floor of the bowl, Will leaped the corpse that had grabbed at him and skidded to a stop beside the body Resolute and Crow worked on. They’d stripped away the young woman’s furs. She had several cuts that he could see on her legs and arms, one across her belly, and another on her forehead, but none seemed deep. Crow used a damp piece of cloth to wash away the blood.

Resolute stripped leaves off the bush and started to chew them. He glanced at the uprooted bush, then at Will, and shook his head. “You have a mouth, boy. Chew.”

Will nodded and started chewing leaves into a green pulp. Themetholanth’s aroma managed to clear his head a bit, then he spat the pulp into Resolute’s left hand. The Vorquelf smeared the paste across the girl’s belly.

As Crow turned her head and started cleaning up her face, Will recognized her. “That’s Sephi.”

Crow nodded. “It is. The faceless one over there is probably Distalus. The other two are probably local trappers hired on as guides.”

Will blinked. “But they were going to Yslin. What are they doing here?”

“Good question, boy. If we save her, we might get an answer.” Resolute snorted and jerked his head back toward the stream. “A better question is, ‘What are gibberers doing here?’ If you have an answer for that, I’m more than glad to listen.”

They sent Will to collect their horses, which he was able to do in short order. He did find tracks that indicated Sephi and the others had ridden into the area, and found one dead horse that had been shot with a crossbow. Of the others—and he assumed there were at least four more—he saw little sign. When he returned with the horses, he reported what he’d seen.