Falconfar 03-Falconfar (12 page)

Iskarra was already spreadeagled in the air, but still tumbling. Dauntra seemed lost in spasms of pain.

Juskra screamed something else at them, but the words weren't half out of her mouth before the forest floor greeted the falling pair in a terrific crash of dead, snapping branches, bouncing arms and legs, and crackling, whirling leaves. "Flaming feldrouking dung!" Juskra cursed. "Hold on, fat man!"

She and her complaining burden flashed over the tangle of dead trees that had greeted Dauntra and Iskarra, going too fast to land in it, and the wounded Aumrarr flung herself desperately over onto her side to avoid slamming face-first into a huge old gallart-top.

Through its side-branches she tore, Garfist kicking and cursing fervently in her wake, and found herself headed straight for another.

Juskra veered desperately, pulling her wings in tight, and slammed into two branches too stout to break. They sent her spinning, Garfist's snarled oaths rising into a fearful shout—and then, quite suddenly, they found themselves uprooting a sapling as they slid down its length to the ground.

Or rather, onto a little ridge of sharp rock that left them both groaning.

"Wingbitch," Garfist growled, inevitably finding his feet and his breath before the sobbing Juskra could, "did ye never learn any gentler sort of landing?"

"Fat man," she gasped back at him, still writhing on the rocks in pain, "go glork yourself." She spat out a sob that turned into a hiss, rocking back and forth in pain.

"Get up," he growled. "If ye can curse me that glibly, complete sentences an' all, ye're not sore hurt."

Juskra gave him a murderous glare. "No, but you soon will be!"

Leaving a chuckle behind, Garfist turned on his heel and lurched away, heading back to where light lancing through the trees marked the tangle of deadfalls Isk and Dauntra had crashed through.

He found them sitting together against the moss green trunk of a large and ancient gallart-top, clutching at themselves and wincing. Whipping branches had sliced more than a few cuts across their faces and ears, but they were as small as they were many.

"Anything badly broke?" Garfist greeted them cheerfully.

Two bent heads moved in rather weary unison to tell him "no."

"Need... to rest..." Dauntra gasped, not looking up.

"Aye," Garfist agreed sourly, feeling his own bruises and wincing— those rocks had been sharp, and trust Lady Icycurses Wingwench to find them, in all this muddy forest. "But why heref"

"Because it's near a spring," Juskra said sourly from behind him.

When he turned, she tapped his shoulder and then pointed at a glimmer of water racing past nearby. "Water," she explained brightly, as if to an idiot child. "Water. That we can drink."

Then she turned to Iskarra, who was wobbling to her feet, wincing, and asked despairingly, "Doesn't he think of anything besides stealing, eating, and rutting?"

"No," Iskarra replied crisply. "In our modest little army, thinking's my job."

THESE WERE PASSAGES he'd never seen before.

They were halls he could barely see now, in the fitful glows of the skeletons bobbling along so silently beside him. Still deep enough to be carved out of bedrock, but rising. As he walked, ringed about by his eerie escort—his captors, Rod reminded himself—he was ascending. He must be moving up into the hollowed-out innards of the hill on the far side of Malragard.

Or rather, the hill beside and beyond the exposed roots of the place, now that the tower had been toppled and roofs torn off the wings and buttresses. He wondered if the greatfangs had gone, or were perched on broken walls and high places around the ruins, like so many buzzards in a dead tree.

Then he started to fervently hope the skeletons weren't marching him up to where he'd find out. Probably by promptly serving as a meal to the nearest greatfangs.

Or would they share him, all tugging and tearing at different limbs with their teeth? Pulling him apart, arms and legs and his head...

Rod shuddered, quelled a sudden urge to be sick, and told himself angrily to worry about whatever crises he was facing, not imagine new ones for himself. For one thing, this would be just the sort of time when his Shaping would work, for once—and he'd literally become the author of his own doom.

How large were these tunnels? It seemed to Rod that he'd been trudging for a long time, and it had certainly been long enough to have risen a level or two, and to get a little warmer, with the gentlest of breezes blowing in other scents than just mold and cold stone and damp dirt...

Cross-passages opened in the walls on either side of the hall the skeletons were moving along, and Rod could see that the hall opened out into an open space ahead. That was about all he could see, in the dim glows from the bobbing bones around him... and all of a sudden, he felt very weary.

Tired of it all. Tired of being always scared and lost and not knowing what he was doing. He'd been that way since being parted from Taeauna, and he was heartily sick of it. In all the stories—heck, in books he'd written—the hero moved steadily on toward completing the quest, saving the world, claiming the throne, winning the princess. Here, where fantasy was too damned real, they called him Lord Archwizard or Dark Lord and expected him to wave his hand and blast his foes to win all battles. And all he did was blunder along like some helpless child, too stupid to even know what the right thing was, let alone do it.

The floor under his feet rose more steeply, and the open space was just ahead, now. The dark mouths of side-passages grew more frequent, as if he was heading through a storage area.

Though it could just be a series of regular rooms separated by passages. It might be... well, anything.

Here he was, captured by a bunch of skeletons who couldn't even talk to him. They knew where they were going—they were certainly headed somewhere definite, and brooking no delays; when he'd tried to slow, feigning weakness, the swords jabbing him from behind had been neither gentle nor hesitant—but Rod didn't. As usual.

"Falcon take us all," he said wearily, more to hear his own voice than to make any of these silent skeletons answer him. "Off I'm being marched again. Now, where to, this time, and why?"

"To the place Malraun first bound us all," came a cold and sour voice from behind and to his right. "To unbind us, of course."

Rod whirled to face the speaker—and found himself staring at a floating head.

The head of a grim-looking, grizzled man whose rotting forehead bore a long white sword-scar, and whose neck had been crudely severed by axe-blows, ending in a ragged mess of flesh. A man who had died long ago, judging by the complete lack of blood and the shrunken, shriveled eyeballs.

It had drifted out of one of the side-passages and, as he stared at it, floated nearer to him.

"Well, man?" it asked irritably, sunken eyes flashing. "Have ye never seen a talking dead man before? Are ye sure ye're the Lord Archwizard?"

ANOTHER MAN OF Darswords stumbled, slammed into the passage wall with a curse, and came back to his feet a little unsteadily.

“Mind out!" the deep-voiced warrior said sharply, but before anyone could reply, the nearest man—the one who'd first menaced Daera with his sword, and was still doing so, trudging close behind her as she led the line of grim warriors deeper into the cold stone heart of the mountain—snapped, "Baerold, Laeveren's not clumsy. He's tired. We're all tired. Too weary to go on. If the wizard attacked us now, half of us'd be dead before we even knew what was happening. We must stop—and sleep."

There were emphatic nods of agreement, and some who nodded were yawning hugely as they did so. The deep-voiced warrior with the broad shoulders stared around at them all from under his bristling brows, then slowly nodded his head too.

"You're right, Roar. Back to that last cavern, then? Smooth stone there, underfoot." There were murmurs of agreement.

"Back," Taroarin agreed, his sword still close to Daera's neck. When he hefted it meaningfully at her and pointed back the way they'd come, she stood still for a moment, staring into his eyes, and breathed a kiss at him.

His habitual frown sharpened, but she kept her eyes on his as she turned, slowly, to obey him, following the shuffling warriors of Darswords back to the smooth-floored cavern.

Baerold was frowning at her, too. She met his narrowed eyes for the briefest of moments before bowing her head submissively, and was pleased to see some of that malice ebb before he turned away.

Only these two were wary of her; the rest kept stealing glances at her bared curves, when they looked her way at all.

She waited until he looked back a second time—a suspicious man indeed, our Baerold—saw nothing to alarm him, and returned his attention to trudging back to where he could rest.

Then Daera turned, nude and magnificent despite her graying skin, to whisper to Taroarin, "I know where rich treasures are hidden, man—but spells have been laid on me by the great wizard Narmarkoun. My tongue is bound, unless I speak to one who has mastered me. To him, and him alone, I am free to speak."

"One who has mastered you," Taroarin echoed, his whisper as ghostly quiet as hers, and gave her the merest crooked hint of a smile. Hint taken.

Men were already settling themselves as best they could on hard rock, with a chorus of sighs, muttered curses, and groans, by the time Taroarin led Daera to the back of the cavern, where it branched into three narrow fissures curving off into the darkness.

As Baerold watched wordlessly, he forced her to her knees on the sharp rocks there, took off his sword-belt, and used it to strap her arms together behind her back, winding it around and around them from elbows to wrists before buckling it tight. Then he did off his half-cloak, wound it around Daera's head, lowered her face-first onto the stones, and arranged stones on the trailing cloak-tails to pinion her head where she lay.

Two swift kicks spread her legs apart, and he growled, "Don't move. Or else." Half a dozen swipes of his boots raked loose stones away from all around her into a ring, so his captive lay on cleared stone but surrounded by a little wall of rock. Reclaiming his blade, Taroarin turned his back on her and returned to Baerold.

"I'll stand first watch," he said, but the deep-voiced man shook his head.

"Second," was his terse response. "I'm first. Wake Sargult to relieve you."

Taroarin shrugged, nodded, and sought the far side of the chamber, where he sat down and curled himself up against the wall.

He had barely begun to snore when Baerold went over to Daera, squatted down, and gave her trussed body a baleful glare.

"I want to trust you," he muttered quietly, "but I can't."

His hand closed over the solid, reassuring pommel of his dagger. "It'd be best if I just cut you apart right now. Though that just might mean severed arms and legs and a head all bouncing around, clawing at us and working mischief. We should burn you. Not that I've seen any wood since we got in here."

He drew his dagger, hefted it, and leaned closer.

"Well, dead woman? Wizard's monster? What if I started cutting you up right now?"

From inside the cloak enfolding her head came a soft snore.

The landings were heavy but precise, the two weary Aumrarr thumping down on a high mountain ledge half a breath behind their harnessed burdens.

It was a big ledge, but not so large that four sprawled, tired folk—two with wings—didn't feel crowded.

"We're in Galath," Juskra announced faintly.

Garfist Gulkoun looked up at the peak behind them, then the other way, down over the lip of the ledge.

It was a sheer drop, a long way down to many jagged rocks heaped below. This had been the smallest of the marching mountains, but more than large enough to be deadly.

A cold breeze whistled past. He gazed out at the dark treetops ahead, and smaller rock ridges beyond that, then turned to stare at his steed.

"I fail to see your promised inn," he growled, as the wind rose. "Or for that matter, any safe way down from here." He reached for Juskra's throat.

Rather than pulling away or snatching out her sword, she leaned forward to let him take hold of her, sinking into his ungentle grip as if welcoming oblivion.