From Across the Clouded Range (42 page)

#

Gurney Bluff was a small village –
about half the size of Randor's Pass – but it was at the
intersection of two backcountry roads, and that made it wealthy
relative to its neighbors. One of those roads ran north to Rycroft
where the cobblestone highway began its track to Thoren. The other
angled to the south connecting a series of small villages and towns
to another major highway that continued to Wildern on Orm, the
capitol of the Kingdoms. In a succession of betrayals that had
followed his first, Ipid had explained all of this to Arin. He
justified the betrayals by telling himself that such information
did not matter. Arin would learn it all soon enough or gather it
from someone else. Such petty knowledge was a small price to pay
for his life.

Though miserable and terrified to the
edge of sanity, the betrayal likely saved Ipid. Without the
reprieve it bought him – Arin did not hit him once after that – he
would have never made it to Gurney Bluff. He’d have given up,
fallen from his horse, and been trampled into the dust. As it was,
that may have been a mercy.

When the crested that last hill and
saw the twilit village in the valley below, Ipid’s heart jumped
with guilty joy. He knew what their arrival meant for the people of
Gurney Bluff, but he also knew that the long day was at an end,
that he could get off of the accursed horse, sit on solid ground,
eventually sleep. As part of their, now friendlier, lessons, Arin
had given him a few tips on riding, but it was not close to enough.
He was not certain he would ever walk correctly again, his mind was
a shattered husk, and he could barely keep his eyes
open.

Thus it was that Ipid realized only
slowly that something was wrong in the village below. He expected
that the men who had been sent ahead would have secured the
village, that the villagers would be huddled together, that they
would be whimpering and scared, controlled but not comatose. He did
not expect a panic but neither did he expect dreadful tranquility.
Where were the riders? The villagers? By the Order, the dogs and
cats? There was nothing. Silence. Stillness.

Even so, it was only when they passed
the first buildings that the truth penetrated Ipid’s daze. The
first of the bodies lay in the shadow the village’s first house. A
man cut nearly in two. Others followed. Men, women, children.
Trampled, mutilated, butchered nearly beyond recognition. A coward,
Ipid turned his eyes, tried not to see the bodies, the blood-soaked
streets, but there was no escape, nowhere for his gaze to hide. No
mercy had been spared. Children barely old enough to walk had been
trampled. An elderly man and woman lay together, mangled limbs
still holding one another for protection. Another man with a rusty
ax had a dozen arrows sticking from him like a pincushion. A girl
of no more than eight had been decapitated, blond curls dyed brown
by her drying blood. On and on the destruction went until they
turned a corner and looked upon the village green.

Ipid did not make it off of his horse
before his stomach sent what little contents it held spewing to the
side of his mount. When his stomach was empty, he sat in his saddle
heaving and crying. He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, held
his arms over them, but that was not enough to dispel the piled
bodies of the villagers who had been herded together and
slaughtered from his vision.

Ipid cursed himself as the cause. If
not for him, the invaders would not have needed to proceed with
such haste, would not have committed this atrocity. Yet, even as he
cursed himself, he knew that the Darthur would have done this
without him. If he had not told Arin about Holstead, one of the
village boys would have. And how many of them would have been
killed before they did? Even then, the Darthur would not have
needed more than twenty men to guard the villagers. These people
had been no more than an inconvenience, but Arin did not consider
the lives of three hundred men, women, and children to be worth an
inconvenience.

That realization shook Ipid to the
core. He had known that the Darthur were brutal, that the villagers
meant nothing to them, but such disregard for life was
inconceivable. It smacked of a want for destruction, of disdain for
the Order, of chaos, unbridled and riding free.

Ipid looked up to where Arin’s horse
stood at his side, looked for signs of the glee that he must feel
at such devastation. It was not there. For a flash, Ipid thought he
saw regret in the young man’s eyes, but it was gone just as fast,
replaced with steel, hard, unforgiving. There was no sign of
pleasure, no joy in him or among his men. Ipid’s eyes bounced from
soldier to soldier, but each face showed the same grim indifference
that was, if anything, more frightening than smiles would have
been.

In the end, Arin did not say or do
anything. He leapt from his horse and strode to the door of the inn
that bordered the green. Before he disappeared inside, he yelled
over his shoulder in Darthur, “Clean that up!”

Chapter 20

Dasen recovered slowly from the shock
of what he had just seen. At the shelter, he had not believed or
understood what Teth was saying. It was too much to comprehend: an
army from the west where there were only impassible mountains,
monsters from a children’s stories, someone searching for him. He
could not hope to explain, but the sight of the creature in the sky
ended his need for explanation. It was real. That was enough for
now.

Enough that was, except for his
concern for his father and Rynn. He could not keep his thoughts
from them. Teth had said that the man at the stream wanted him, but
the only reason anyone would have any interest in him was something
to do with his father. If the men in the village were not bandits
looking for ransom, if they were associated with the men at the
stream – or the creature from that morning – then his father was
very much in danger. The thought sent a tremor through
him.

“
Hurry up!” pulled him
from the darkness of his imagination. “I want to be across the
river before those things get anywhere close to us.” The words had
come from well ahead where Teth was scarcely visible through the
darkening trees.

Cursing, Dasen pushed his musing aside
and concentrated on the hike. He even made a competition of it. He
dreamed of catching Teth, planned what he would say, imagined her
surprise, her admiration. The sight of her drawing closer spurred
him on, and soon the challenge was so strong that all he could see
was her back through the trees. Her stride was smooth and easy. Her
bounding steps were unaffected by the rough ground. She flowed
around obstructions like a ghost, but Dasen told himself that he
could catch her.

He was not disappointed. After a long,
strenuous effort, he drew within a few strides of her. His breath
was rattling in his lungs, his legs were aching, and a stitch was
starting in his side, but he had caught her. He was drawing the
ragged breath to crow his triumph when she glanced over her
shoulder. “Good. You finally caught up. Now stay with me. There’s a
trail up here that should make the going easier.”

The pace was even faster after that.
Dasen somehow kept it, but he was not sure how. His legs trembled.
The cramp in his side was a dagger. The expanding darkness made it
impossible to find his footing. And the pack seemed to get heavier
with each step, the belt biting on his hips like pincers. He was
just thinking that he was finished when they arrived at Teth’s
trail.

Mercifully, she called a stop. Dasen
wanted to kiss her but consigned himself to leaning against a large
stone to catch his breath. While he panted, Teth paced or watched
the sky. If she was the slightest bit tired, it did not show and
her feet would not believe it. They never stopped moving as she
circled like a cat in a cage.

“
Are you ready?” She gave
in to her impatience when his hands rose from his knees.

“
How much farther is it to
this bridge of yours?” Dasen finally had enough breath to ask. “I
don’t think I can keep this pace all night, at least not with this
pack. And won’t the . . .” he searched for an appropriate word “. .
. things just follow us across the river?”

“
From here, it’s about
three miles to the bridge. It is a rope bridge, so we can cut the
ropes if we get there before your friends. Once that bridge is
down, they’ll have to go all the way to Randor’s Pass to cross.”
Dasen opened his mouth for another question, but Teth answered it
before he could start. “Believe me, not even a fish could cross the
White River anywhere within a mile of that bridge.

“
As for the flying things,
whatever they are . . . .” Teth gave the sky a pensive look. “The
forest on the other side of the bridge is dense. If we’re careful,
they won’t be able to follow us. Of course, all that depends on us
making it to the bridge before they do.”

That ended the discussion. Teth held
up a hand, turned to the trail, and resumed her breakneck pace.
Dasen moaned as the weight of the pack came back onto his hips but
followed as quickly as his wobbling legs could manage.

#

Dasen put all of his thought and
effort into walking after that. He did not think about his father,
Rynn, or the inexplicable things that had happened over the past
three days. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the
next, making sure that those strides came as quickly as possible,
and that they did not falter. The effort had brought the cramp back
to his side, but it had also kept Teth within view. He even thought
that he might be gaining some ground when she inexplicably darted
into the trees at the side of the trail.

Dasen did not understand but followed
her lead. He stepped under a pine just in time to hear a whoosh of
air from above. The sound was incredible. He could feel the air
moving even through the trees but could not see its source. Another
gust sent needles raining down on them. The trees rattled. One more
limb-shaking gust and the source of the disturbance appeared
through the canopy above.

The creature was smaller than Dasen
had expected given the sound of its approach, but its humanoid body
was well larger than a man, and its bat wings were each as long as
its body. Though its cone-shaped head resembled that of a man, it
had huge eyes like an insect, a thick beak for a mouth, and large
recessed ears. Its body tapered from the head into slumped
shoulders, under-developed arms with clawed hands, and a tail
capped by a curved spike that glinted in the light of the rising
moon. It had no legs that Dasen could see. The creature followed
the trail away to the east then wheeled in the air and turned back
to the north. As it turned, it gave a screech like a hawk or
falcon, but the sound was unnatural as if made by a horn designed
to sound like a bird. At the same time, its tail snapped in the air
and struck a great pine. The whack of metal on wood resonated
through the forest and was punctuated by the crash of the tree’s
top five feet toppling to the ground.

When the creature was out of sight,
Dasen started breathing again. He had not even realized that he was
holding his breath but gasped to recover the lost air. He looked up
the path toward Teth. She was watching the sky with an arrow
already notched. Her eyes turned to him. The fear there added to
his own. "We need to be at that bridge right now. Can you
run?"

Dasen's heart was already thundering.
He could only imagine what running would do to it, but he nodded
and adjusted the pack.

Teth took one more look at the sky.
“I'm going to run ahead, so I can keep an eye on the skies. You
just keep running, but remember, give everything you’ve got. We
don’t have much time.” Then she bolted down the trail before he
could even nod.

Dasen watched her go, took
a deep breath, and loped behind. He thought about what she had
said,
give everything you have.
He felt his legs strain under the weight of the
pack, the stitch in his side flare to life, the air rattle in his
lungs and wondered if his everything would be anywhere close to
enough.

#

Dasen fell into a steady rhythm. He
ran until he was doubled over in pain, until he thought he would
collapse, then he would clutch his side and gasp until he had
recovered enough to start again. He saw Teth only rarely, so he had
only his thoughts – most of which centered around how much it hurt
to run – to distract him. When Teth did appear, she would dart
toward him, offer a few words of encouragement, then fly off again.
She never seemed to tire and did not even appear to be
winded.

Still, Dasen wondered if she would be
as spry carrying the pack rather than the satchel that she had
saved for herself. The pack had become the bane of his existence,
catching branches and weighing on his overburdened legs. He thought
about leaving it but knew that Teth would probably send him back
for it, so he kept plodding along, wishing that the thing would get
lighter rather than heavier as it seemed to be doing.

He had just started running again when
he saw a familiar streak appear through the shadows of the trail in
front of him. Teth waved him to the side and ducked into the trees
herself. He was happy to comply. He darted under a tall fir and
immediately bent in half, panting.