The Grand Crusade (37 page)

But that was as far as it drove him. He gasped and hunched that shoulder forward, but did not fall. While their masks hid much of their expressions, the openmouthed gaping of the Hawkriders clearly expressed their surprise at Dranae’s survival.

Trusher backed off, letting blood drip from the blade to the ground. Dranae got up, then wavered for a moment or two before regaining his balance. Borell appeared and pressed the haft of the maul into his right hand, but didn’t steady him. Dranae nodded, then shifted his shoulders gingerly, and croaked, “My turn.”

Trusher nodded.

Dranae brought the club back in one hand, then whipped it forward in a cross-body blow that caught the Hawkrider square in the chest. Mail pinged as it broke, and Trusheroofedas the strike lifted him from the ground and dropped him back into the line of his supporters. Several staggered from their feet, and Trusher’s helmet popped off. Temmer lay in the grasses at his side, and those who scrambled from beneath him could not revive him.

Byard, a blond man of medium build, scooped Temmer up and drove toward Dranae, who had again returned to his knees. Before he could reach him, however, Borell drew Eye and shielded Dranae. The Hawkrider cut low at his unar-mored foe, but Borell turned the stroke with ease. Again Byard attacked, but Borell parried. And when he did riposte, he let the blade skitter off mail, holing the man’s tabard, but nothing else.

Erlestoke frowned. “Call your man off.”

“No, to the first blood, these two, to decide things.”

“That was not our agreement.”

“It is now.”

“First blood, Borell.” Erlestoke saw Nay ride forward. “Your boy’s good.”

“He is. Others did the heavy work in the forge. Getting him learned in how to use what we made seemed wise.”

Oh, and how well he learned.

Byard clearly did not like being thwarted, especially by someone whose mask showed no sign of either nobility or military training. He feinted high, then switched his slash low, but Borell nimbly leaped above the attack. He ducked the return cut, then lunged and pinked Byard in the right knee.

Borell pulled back, having drawn first blood, but Byard lunged and slammed his right fist into Borell’s jaw. The youth’s head snapped around and his body followed, flopping all loose-jointed to the ground. Byard raised the sword, prepared to finish what Trusher had started.

Thunder clapped.

Byard pitched back and thrashed on the ground as blood fountained from his chest. Temmer spun in a lazy circle and plunged point first into the ground.

Wightman looked at Erlestoke and shrank back. “What did you do?”

“Your man cheated.” Erlestoke worked the cocking mechanism on the quadnel. The barrels rotated and a fresh one seated itself, ready to be triggered. “By the way, that’s not Temmer. Dranae, do you want to take care of it?”

The man nodded and slowly stood. He plucked the sword from the ground and grabbed it hilt and point. His muscles bunched and more mail pinged as rings parted and flew. As Dranae began to bend the blade, his body shifted and grew larger. While his face and head remained the same, his hands scaled over into talons.

The blade bent, then snapped.

Nay snorted. “Not even tempered well.”

Dranae tossed down the pieces of the blade, then knelt by Borell. “He’ll be fine, save for the bruise on his jaw.”

Wightman’s nostrils flared. “This was unfair from the start. I don’t know what he is, but he is not aman.”

“No, but heismy champion.” Erlestoke rested the quadnel across his thighs. “Now, I could have him change into his true form and your little army would be scattered. I don’t think you want that. Nor do you want me marching my army offtoHawkride.”

“No, I don’t want that.”

The prince pointed toward Wightman’s mask. “I don’t know what my father promised when he gave you the crown, but you don’t trust him, and you have no reason to. Regardless, you’ve lost whatever you thought you were going to get by not being able to stop me. So I have a choice for you.”

The count looked up. “What’s that?”

“You can return home now, and I will let everyone know that I consider anyone treating with you in any way to be guilty of treason. I will deal with them after I deal with you, and your best hope is that Chytrine kills me, because that’s the only thing that will stop me from returning to destroy you.”

The slender man shivered. “Or?”

“Or you and your people join my force. You know the Aurolani are here, most in the Midlands and Dales. If I’m defeated, your army isn’t going to be enough to stop them. But together we might, and I clearly will have time to revise my opinion of you.”

“You’d really let me leave?”

Erlestoke nodded. “You, yes. Your people, no. I need them too much. I suspect that showing them we have a dragon on our side, as well as appealing to their sense of obligation to a nation where we all wear masks because of our shared history, would bring them over to me pretty easily. What do you think?”

Wightman swallowed hard, then drew his sword, knelt, and offered it in

Erlestoke’s direction. “I think, Highness, I pledge myself to your noble cause, for the sake of Hawkride, Oriosa, and the world.”

“The ordering of your priorities needs some work, but we have time for that.” Erlestoke raised his voice so it might even carry to some of the sharper ears in the Hawkrider formation. “I accept your fealty, Count Wightman. Your forces married to mine will guarantee victory. To the north and our destiny.”

Wightman’s close advisors likewise took a knee, and seeing that prompted cheers from both armies. Wightman looked up as the soldiers’ voices filled the valley. “What are the chances we survive this?”

Erlestoke shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, does it? We are off to acquit our duty to the world. If we fail, there will be no reason to survive.”

y T ight had fallen and the sense of unease Kerrigan had felt entering Loquellyn V had built to where he could not sleep. The trek to that point had been full of .. 1 paradoxes and false starts, and had proceeded far more slowly than pleased Resolute. He’d wanted to crest the mountains quickly, then move down into the Assariennia River valley and follow it to Rellaence. He assumed they would find transport to the capital there, which would speed their trek along.

But from the start it was apparent even to Kerrigan that any plans Resolute had formulated would not survive contact with the Grey Misters. And Kerrigan had found himself in the unusual position of being far more prepared for a long trek through forest and mountain and marsh than most of the people with him. The trip began with a day’s march through fetid swamps, where the party had broken up into smaller groups to camp. Kerrigan had been charged with the duty of moving from place to place, using magick to start fires since the Grey Misters had no inkling of how to do it. He also showed them how to pack moss into boots to ease blisters and a half-dozen other things he’d learned from Lombo and Resolute.

It struck him as paradoxical having these Vorquelves looking at him with astonishment, much as the younger apprentices on Vilwan might regard him. Here they were, all older than he by well over a century, but they were completely out of their element in the countryside. More than one grumbled about the trip. Muscles that ached from rowing had gotten no respite dragging boots free of sucking mud, and the closeness of the mountains did nothing to hint that further travel might get at all easier.

Qwc acted, as he had before, as morale officer for the expedition. He took to finding little things in the forest, from flowers to bones, teeth, claws, and feathers, and bestowed each on a Grey Mister. With great solemnity, he gave each one of them a warrior name like Bite or Scratch or Stab. His vocabulary kept him mainly to short words, packed with as much violence as he could muster, which pleased the Vorquelves no end. But also it focused them on what was coming and they did their best to find extravagant boasts about how they would earn

their names.

At night the Spritha shared a tent with Kerrigan. The little creature would stab his spear into the ground, then flop down too exhausted to flutter a wing. “Finding words harder than finding things.”

Kerrigan always laughed. “You’ve not found me my war name, Qwc.”

The Spritha would look at him and smile as his eyes slowly closed. “Your name will find you.”

As difficult as it had been to get out of Saporicia, things changed for the worse once they entered Loquellyn. Something about the place felt wrong. While the sun would shine during the day, the colors appeared muted. It almost seemed to Kerrigan that spring had not yet come. He saw no buds on trees, no flowers struggling to raise their heads. What new growth he did see were poison ivies that wrapped around trees, or the sort of quickly flowering plants that, in a summer, could come to take over a whole meadow. None of it felt right, and evidence of that kind of invasion increased as they moved deeper into the mountains.

The Grey Misters also continued to be a problem. They lacked discipline and did not take well to Resolute’s instructions on how they should comport themselves in camp. Had he had his way, they would have had cold camps, with no fire, and round-the-clock-guards. They would have been silent and blended into the surrounding area, but the Grey Misters had no better chance of doing that than Kerrigan did of breathing at the bottom of the Crescent Sea.

So Resolute took to making a second smaller camp away from the main one. Everyone in his original group took shelter there, with Resolute, Banausic, Bok, and Kerrigan sharing the watches. Kerrigan usually got the dawn watch, letting him sleep uninterrupted—Bok usually got the first watch for the same reason— so the company’s two magickers would be well rested if their abilities were ever needed.

But now something brought Kerrigan to full consciousness. He’d not fully fallen asleep, but had just begun to drift into dreams that had grown darker by the minute. He felt as if he were wandering in a cavern so vast and lightless that he could see nothing. When he finally made a light, he discovered he had wandered into the throat of some mighty beast that began to chew him up and swallow.

He sat up and threw off his blankets, then shivered as the cooler night air hit his sweaty flesh. He quickly pulled on some clothes and left Qwc sleeping soundly. Slipping from the tent, he drifted toward the guard station and found Resolute sitting there, his eyes focused into the darkness.

The Vorquelf held a hand up and Kerrigan halted. He looked in the direction Resolute was looking, but he could see nothing. It would have been simple for him to invoke a spell to allow him to see in the dark, but if there was something out there—something working for Chytrine—the chances that it could detect his magick were good.

Kerrigan moved to a small boulder and pressed his stomach to it. He still stared in the direction Resolute had been watching, but nothing registered. Their camp had been built on a small wooded rise, which gave him a view of roughly half the slope. When there was still light he could see a small stream, and at night he could hear it gurgling, but he caught no splashes to indicate anything approaching now.

Then he heard it, off to his right. He raised his left hand to catch Resolute’s attention as he pointed with his right toward the sound. Then he heard a second sound and turned to sight down the line of his arm. It had sounded so close, he was certain he could see it.

And see it he did as it leaped onto the rock and lunged, engulfing his right arm to the elbow. Its jaws shut hard, triple rows of needlelike teeth piercing his sleeve, then clacking hard on the dragonbone armor. The creature’s dark eyes widened, then it shook its head, trying to shear his arm off. When that failed, hindquarters bunched and the creature jumped back off the rock, yanking Kerrigan from his feet and dragging him off into the woods.

The dragonbone armor saved the mage’s stomach from being sliced open by the rock, but did nothing to stop brambles and branches from whipping his face as the creature bore him away. Thorny vines lashed his face and hands, tearing at his clothes. The creature whipped its head again side to side, and Kerrigan’s shoulder ground in the socket. His left knee smashed into a tree. He rolled onto his back, increasing the pressure on his shoulder, then rolled back in time for another bramble to slash him above the left eye.

Kerrigan panicked for a second, utterly lost until an absurd awareness somehow broke through. As he was being hauled behind this creature, his belt buckle gouged the earth and scraped it up, filling his trousers. It was undignified. And for Kerrigan, who had always been fastidious and precise on Vilwan, this was an outrage and that eclipsed the pain long enough for him to kill the panic and act. At one time Kerrigan’s spell of choice—his reflexive choice—would have been the telekinesis spell that had served him so very well. Of late, however, there was another spell he had been using so often it had become second nature. Within the wet confines of the creature’s maw, his right hand tightened into a fist. His hand opened again, his fingertips tickling the beast’s soft palate, and he cast his spell.

With enthusiasm.

For several days he had been doing little but making fires. The gout that erupted from his hand shot straight down the creature’s gullet, ejecting a golden flare from its cloaca that burned off its thick tail. The beast’s entire body

spasmed, giving his arm one last strong jerk, then detached. The creature’s mouth remained open, flames guttering from between its teeth.

Kerrigan gathered his feet beneath him and stood, despite the pain in his knee. He jumped up and down twice, letting the dirt fall from his pant legs, then swiped his left sleeve over his forehead. It came away stained with blood. That surprised him, but didn’t make his knees quiver as it might once have done.

That was the old Kerrigan. The old, fat, slow, terrified Kerrigan. He worked his right arm up and around in a circle, feeling the rising stiffness, but certain nothing was broken or torn. Back the way he’d come, he heard shouts, screams, and the sounds of fighting from the Grey Mister camp.No, no more dying. Not if I can help it.