The Golden Key (Book 3) (30 page)

17

For the first time in years, Typhus was caught completely off
guard. Once the guardsman and Karas were gone, he hadn’t expected there to be
any threats. Angus was unconscious, and even if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t have
mattered. Angus simply wasn’t vicious enough to be a real threat.

Iscara? She was always a threat, but she never worked openly
unless she had a distinct advantage, like having a man chained to a wall while
she tormented him with her hook. She always smiled so sweetly as she started….
She looked a bit like that now, but the smile was uncertain, playing at the
edge of her mouth but not quite reaching her eyes, and he couldn’t see any
reason for it. He kept his eyes on her as he picked up his breeches and scowled
at them. They smelled disgusting, like a three-day corpse, and they would need
a thorough cleaning before he could use them again.

He was still shaking them when Sardach struck. He hadn’t expected
Sardach to be there; there was no reason for him to be there. Argyle had sent
him—

Typhus’s eyes widened as Sardach enveloped him and solidified
enough to hold him in place. He
should have
realized—

It is incomplete,
Sardach thought to him as he
carried him over to Angus’s side.
I must finish it. He must be healed.

Typhus screamed as Sardach began ripping him apart again….

18

It felt good to be in the saddle again, but Hobart struggled
to keep his balance. His thighs were sluggish in their movements, and Leslie
didn’t like that. She kept looking back at him and snuffling as his peculiar
instructions confused her. He tried to console her, but they had been together
so long that every little movement he made that didn’t make sense caused her to
shudder in confusion. It was worse when he tried to control the movements, and
the effort sapped his strength even more quickly than the exertion of riding.
At least it would be over soon, if what Angus had told Ortis was right—and so
far it had been. Still, another week or two of sluggish muscles was going to be
tough to tolerate. And dangerous. If they were attacked.…

At least he wasn’t sleeping all the time anymore. After four
days, the tiredness had left him, and he had woken up refreshed and alert. It
had only lasted an hour before he drooped in the saddle with his armor hanging
heavily from his shoulders as if he had just finished a day-long skirmish with
a horde of fishmen. It had happened to one of his patrols once, and they had chopped
down wave after wave of fishmen as they retreated back to the main force. Six of
his men had died by the time they reached them, and three more succumbed to
their wounds later in the day. It had been an ugly encounter, and when they
finally routed the fiends, he couldn’t even lift his sword anymore. If only he
could have the satisfaction of knowing he had slain a dozen fishmen! But he
didn’t even have that; all he had was the embarrassment of being poisoned by
tainted yiffrim meat. Why hadn’t he spat it out sooner? It
had
tasted
funny….

Hobart frowned; this was no time for recriminations. They
were approaching the clearing where they had killed the giant snake, and Ortis
had said there was something eating it. If it was still there—and why wouldn’t
it be? The snake was
huge
—they might have to fight their way past it.
They were already going around the clearing, but they couldn’t go too far
astray or they might have trouble finding the way down the cliff. He snorted,
scolding himself for not having the strength to draw his sword. He was barely
able to keep his fingers wrapped around the reins dangling loosely in his grip,
and he felt half-naked going into a potential battle with it still in its
sheath.

The slush was horrendous. The cold that had pelted them when
they first crossed the plateau was long gone, and the warmth of the sun was relentlessly
melting the snow during the day. The past few days had been well above
freezing, and it hadn’t gotten cold enough for the slush to freeze last night.
Leslie slipped frequently as they plodded slowly, noisily through the growing
mire. At least they would be at the edge by evening, as long as they didn’t die
first.

They rode north a half mile or so, skirting the edge of the
clearing by a good margin, but they had only gone a short distance when Ortis
came to a stop and faced south. His eyes narrowed and he tilted his ear toward
the clearing.

“What is it?” Hobart asked as he slumped forward in his
saddle and turned his gaze in that direction.

“Don’t you hear it?” Ortis half-whispered. “A sort of
crackling, like grain stalks being twisted around each other to make them burn
longer.”

Hobart listened until he heard something in the distance,
but he couldn’t tell what it was. He wasn’t surprised, though; Ortis’s ears
were much more acute than his own. “So?” Hobart asked, his breath a low rumble
in his throat. “What of it?”

Ortis looked at him and raised his eyebrows, but there was
no humor in his voice as he said, “It’s coming this way.”

Hobart frowned and looked toward the clearing. Was it his
imagination that the sound—chittering?—was louder, closer? No. Ortis was right;
the sounds—there were
several
distinct rhythms in the clatter, like a
small army banging their swords against the edge of their shields—were getting
closer. What could be making them?

“Can you ride quickly?” Ortis asked, his tone urgent as he
snapped his head back toward the clearing and lowered his gaze. Then, not
waiting for an answer, he said, “I hope so,” and turned to spur his horse into
a dangerously fast walk. The other Ortis lingered until Hobart and the rest of
the horses were in line, and then took up a rear guard position not far behind
him.

As Hobart urged Leslie into a faster pace, he took a long,
lingering look to the south, blinking as he imagined he saw the snow was
rippling like the first wind-blown wave on an otherwise still lake. He watched
it for only a few seconds, but it was long enough to see the wave turn toward
them as they rode. The chitinous sound—
chitinous?
Bugs! That was where
he had heard the sound before! It was after a battle with the fishmen. It had
been a long skirmish, and a lot of men—and a lot more fishmen— had died near a
fetid copse. The dead had gotten bogged down in the muck, and by the time they had
retrieved the last man for burial, the bugs had already come. They were small
bugs—barely the size of his thumb—but their shells clattered against each other
as they scrambled over the bodies, ripping away bits of flesh. They had looked
a lot like a wave as they fled as one from the torches. There had been
hundreds
of them.

Hobart turned his attention away from the rippling wave that
was gaining on them and urged Leslie into a reckless jog, trusting in her
surefootedness to get them away. He glanced back only once, but it was long
enough to see a few black shield-like shells pop up out of the snow a few dozen
feet behind them.

They were gaining on them.

19

By the time the Guardsman returned, it was over. Typhus was
lying on the floor near Angus, and as far as Iscara could see, nothing had
happened to him. But he was panting and holding his head as if something
had
happened.

“Put that down,” she said as the Lieutenant barged in with
his sword drawn. She shook her head and hurried over to Typhus’s side. When the
guardsman didn’t sheathe his sword, she frowned at him and said, “He has spells
like this. It’s a symptom of his disease. He’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

“Why is he beside Angus?” the Lieutenant demanded.

Iscara shrugged. “That’s where he landed when he fell.” She
helped Typhus unsteadily to his feet and glared at the guardsman. “You have
already intruded upon my time and patience, and I will not have you brandishing
that sword at my patients.
You
are the one acting suspiciously, not
him
.”
Then she led Typhus out of the room, wondering what in the world Sardach had
done to him. It didn’t really matter, though; it hadn’t been nearly as bloody
as she had expected. Still, Sardach had done
something
to him, and she
really wanted to know what it was.

“I thought you wanted him to clean that up?” the Lieutenant
sneered.

Iscara paused, looked at Typhus sagging against her, and
smiled at the guardsman. “If you want to clean it up for him, I’m sure he
wouldn’t mind.” Then she was half-carrying him back down the stair.

She led him to her bed and helped him sit down on it. Then
she knelt to look into his eyes and asked, “What’s wrong?” She wasn’t
concerned, really; she was never really concerned about anyone except herself. But
she could feign concern when she wanted to, and that was what she did. She was
curious about what Sardach had done that had hurt Typhus so much. It might be
useful….

“It’s gone,” Typhus said in a grief-stricken tone that was
so unlike him that it almost unnerved her. But it didn’t; it excited her, and
she began removing Typhus’s bandages. But he didn’t respond to her; he just
wobbled back and forth and muttered, “It’s gone.”

She had already unwrapped the bandages from his face before
she realized Typhus wasn’t glowing anymore. She frowned and stopped unwrapping
him. It had been so
exhilarating
when he was glowing like a man being
burned alive in blue fire, but now? He was pitiful, not at all like the vicious
assassin she knew him to be, and it wasn’t at all like her to coddle someone in
need. She couldn’t really fake that because she very much preferred to make it
worse. She smiled, stood up, and left the room. She
could
make it worse,
couldn’t she? He wanted those breeches for a reason. What would he do if she threw
them out?

She was almost giddy when she reached the infirmary, but her
giddiness left her almost immediately when she saw that Angus was awake.

20

Sam saved them. He slid on the slush and came up lame. Ortis
barely hesitated in cutting his lead rope. Sam tried to keep up, but he
couldn’t. He lagged behind them and a half minute later, his desperate, frantic
whinnies echoed through the sparse tangle of trees.

Hobart gritted his teeth and kept riding. Sam was a good
beast, but there was nothing they could do. Sam was on his own, and if he
couldn’t outrun or fight off the bugs, it was over for him. If Hobart stopped
to help, it would be over for him, too, and there was no sense in risking his
life for a horse. Besides, the bugs would have to stop to deal with Sam, and
the delay might make it possible for the rest of them to escape. Hobart nodded
and silently thanked the beast for its sacrifice, unintended though it was, and
listened to his furious, pain-wracked, frantic whinnies until they fell silent.

They kept up their dangerous pace for another mile, and then
the slush turned to mud and they had to slow down. It was then that Hobart
looked back and saw that their pursuers were too far behind them to be seen. He
listened intently, but couldn’t hear anything but the sloughing of their
passage through the mud as it sucked on their horses’ hooves.

A half mile later, they emerged from the trees and the mud
turned into a shallow pool that stretched across the horizon between themselves
and the edge of the cliff. Ortis splashed to a stop and Hobart came up beside
him. “Which way?” he asked, the muscles in his arms shaking as he eased his
grip on the reins. The intensity of the rush of battle-readiness still surged
through him, but he wasn’t sure how long it would last or what would happen
afterward. Usually, there was a sudden lull, but with the poison still working
through him, it could magnify his lethargy, perhaps even to a dangerous level.
They needed to start down as soon as possible.

Ortis shrugged and didn’t look at him. “I’m not sure,” he
admitted. “I think it will be better to start north and work our way down the
edge. See?” he pointed to the north, where a bit of bare stone could be seen near
the edge. “The water is shallower there. It isn’t going over the side.”

Hobart nodded and nudged Leslie in that direction. But Ortis
didn’t follow, so he stopped and turned back to him. “What is it?” he demanded.

“Don’t you hear it?” Ortis asked.

Hobart listened intently, wondering how water trickling in
the distance could be a problem. Then, quite suddenly, he remembered what Ned
had said. They had come up the cliff face by following a streambed, and the
stream had been little more than a trickle at the time. But Ned had said it
became a raging river when the spring thaw came and the runoff cascaded down
the cliff face. Hobart looked at the water and back at the mud. There was a
slight but noticeable current heading toward the cliff, and all of the snow
nearby had melted.

“We may be too late,” Ortis said. “We may have to find
another way down.”

“There isn’t one,” Hobart said, his voice grim. He was
already feeling the first inkling of the rush dissipating. He turned and rode
through the water at an easy walk. There could be things in the water, like
that fish that had attacked Giorge, and there was no telling how deep it was.
He gave Leslie her head to let her decide where to step and how fast to go,
only nudging her a little here or there to keep her heading toward the cliff.
As they neared the edge, the current became more apparent, and the sound of trickling
water escalated until the gushing waterfall was so loud that it was difficult
to hear anything else. When he reached the dry spot, a strip of nearly flat
rock about fifteen feet wide, he stopped and slid from the saddle. He clung to
the reins and leaned against Leslie for a long moment as his legs wobbled, and
then finally gave in and sat down.

Ortis ignored him, dismounted, and moved to the edge of the
cliff. When he came back, he shouted, “We need to go a little further north,
but I’m not sure if we can make it down this way. We’ll be able to reach that
ledge with the pond, but from there on….” He shrugged and shook his head.

Hobart nodded and tried to get to his feet, but his legs
were too weak. He gave up pretty quickly and called up to Ortis, “I’m going to
have to rest for a while.”

Ortis turned back at the plateau, frowned, and shouted, “Not
too long. They’ll be finished with Sam by now.”

Hobart nodded. If the bugs came after them, it would be a
problem. The bugs he’d seen eating that corpses in The Borderlands could swim. What
about these? He looked at the edge, wondering if it would do any good to make
it down to that ledge with the pond on it. The trail down was narrow enough for
them to set up a defense, but what if the bugs could climb down the cliff face?

It didn’t matter. They couldn’t fight off all those bugs up
here; that was a certainty. At least in the tighter quarters, they would have a
chance. He grabbed the reins and tried to lift himself up with his arms, but
they had little energy left. He looked at Ortis and shouted, “Help me up. I can
make it down to that pond, and we’ll fight them off there if they come.”

Ortis stared at the plateau for a few more seconds before
dismounting and helping Hobart to his feet. Then both Ortises helped him into
the saddle and one took hold of Leslie’s halter to lead her toward the cliff.
By the time they reached the pool, which covered almost the whole ledge, Hobart
was clinging weakly to Leslie’s neck, barely able to stay in the saddle. Ortis helped
him to the ground and then half-carried him to the cliff face and set him down.

Hobart tried to reach for his sword, but he couldn’t lift
his arms high enough. Ortis noticed, took the sword from its sheath and set it
on his lap. Hobart smiled weakly up at him, and nodded his thanks before
closing his eyes. There was no point in trying to talk; the crashing of the
water in the pool drowned out everything. Then Hobart closed his eyes and
promptly fell asleep, wondering if he would be able to wake up again if the
bugs attacked and not really carrying if he did. This time, the dwarves had
shields wrought from the hollow husks of giant water beetles….