The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel) (18 page)

“Great discipline on this one,” said Temley, marveling.

“Some kenku are gifted with that quality,” said Erak. “Most others, though, simply wait for a sign of weakness to surround and overwhelm their enemies. The kenku are crafty warriors. And brutal to the weak.” Erak indicated the flap to the largest tent. “Here,” he said. He reached into the pouch at his side, and rubbed a little sage on both sides of
his neck. “The kenku’s chief and his warmage are waiting for us here.”

Inside, the two crow men stood over a poorly crafted table, looking at an equally poorly drawn map of the area and the village of Haven. Erak greeted the two with a gesture. They returned the greeting with a quiet
squawk
. Erak made additional gestures, which the kenku appeared to understand. One, who wore what looked to be a garland of long, silver hair—human or elf, perhaps—beckoned Temley closer and pointed to what Temley assumed was Haven. He passed his hand over it and then held a finger up before the pious human. With a deliberate movement, he twirled the finger down—like a bird circling down to catch a hare—and dropped it on a building at the edge of the village farthest from the kenku camp. It was round and above what looked to be a ridge line. “This is the old man’s home,” said Erak. “An observatory. Its roof is flat and open, allowing him to watch the movements of the stars.”

The garlanded kenku—Temley assumed him to be the chief—turned to the other and trilled. The crow man had two mirrored scars under his eyes, and they were painted white to stand out against his black skin. He raised his arms and crossed them over his head. Then with his left hand he pulled a feather from his right arm. He rubbed his right fingers together, and
an orange glow sparked. He kept rubbing and the glow got brighter. He dipped the end of the feather into the glow, and held it as a scribe holds a quill dipped in ink. In the air in front of him, he drew a face. The orange glow floated before him, the face of an old man hovered there. The kenku lowered his quill and blew at his drawing. It went from flat to three dimensions as the breath passed through and floated over to Temley. It seemed to come alive, its eyes moving, its mouth parting slightly. “This is the Old Stargazer,” said Erak. “This is the man you must send to the Raven Queen.”

“A lucky man,” said Temley. “Would that our roles were reversed.”

“Seems blasphemous to say, Temley,” said Erak. “You must not fail, you know. Your time is not now.”

“Of course not,” said Temley, bristling. “I was suggesting nothing of the kind.” Temley, at the suggestion he might fail, had become irritated with Erak and hard with resolve. Temley was a powerful man, a dangerous man. But he had never betrayed that danger until that moment, when Erak had suggested he saw something other than perfect faith from him. Something in his aspect changed, and changed in an instant. The kenku, too, noticed it, and ever so slightly retreated from Temley. The four creatures in the tent were, without question, the four most formidable
warriors in the camp. But Temley, with a mere change in posture, had intimidated them all. Had shown each that he was the greatest threat.

Something else: When Temley tensed at Erak’s words, it seemed that his face changed. His eyes narrowed and darkened. His face sharpened at the nose and his mouth sunk. Striations appeared in his skin. In other words, in very subtle ways, he looked a little like a bird.

There were implications in his transformation. The Raven Queen had favored the man with a bit of her great power. He was revealed as hers. He was the sharpened tip of her talon. The old man would fall easily before him.

A
fter the first day of climbing up out of the foothills and onto the mountains, it was obvious to Sten why he had never heard of the village of Haven. Already remote, it had also been carefully hidden from discovery, with warding circles and illusions masking the path upward from any who were not already from Haven. Nergei and the other villagers could see through them, and pass through the various wards without fail—they did not even seem to be able to see the illusions, even when pointed out—but the others were not so lucky. Once Spundwand had gotten caught in a slowing ward that reduced his movements to a crawl for a half an hour, necessitating a break from climbing in which the dwarf slurred curses at everyone else, especially those who found it as funny as Sten had, considering how little harm was being done. Another time Imony
had failed to believe that the path forward led across the air over a seemingly empty gorge, even after the villagers had turned to encourage her from the halfway point, their feet only appearing to be walking on air. Eventually, she closed her eyes and walked across, displaying a monk’s resolve outwardly even as she muttered her doubts under her breath.

Sten had not been immune, either. For a mile of switchbacks the only thought in his head had been to turn back, to flee, to forget every desire to climb to Haven, even to forget Haven ever existed. Only concentration on the most mundane of details could keep him moving forward, distracting him from the traitorous thoughts between his ears.

There was a rock, and a rock, and a bigger rock, and a smaller rock, and a wetter rock, and a colder rock, and a rock you had to climb over, and a rock you had to duck under.

There was a tree, and a tree, and a tree, and a bird, and a stream winding beside the path, and then there was no path, and there were pine needles, and fallen leaves, and the spoor of an animal Sten could not identify and did not want to meet.

There was ice, and there was snow, so much snow, falling from the sky in bigger, thicker flakes as he walked higher and higher, until he felt the need to try to quantify, to try and count each one, and if he
made a mistake, then what was there to do but to retreat, to start over from the bottom of the mountain, an urge that persisted until he found himself turning around, walking downward until Spundwand or one of the others caught him and pushed him forward.

On and on like that for an hour, and then the feeling was gone, control restored with no lasting effects, except the laughter in Spundwand’s voice when he told Sten that not only had he been cataloging the forest, he’d been doing so aloud.

Magla and Mikal suffered less than the others, perhaps due to their elf blood, and so Mikal walked up front with the villagers while Magla guarded their rear, ensuring that the dwarf and the two human warriors would remain relatively safe, even as new illusions and magical roadblocks presented themselves. As for the villagers, they were completely unaffected by the magic, and even their roan pony did not seem to notice anything untoward, not even when it was seemingly suspended above the gorge. Only the outsiders felt the aggression of the mountain toward them, or rather, the aggression of the old man who sat atop it, high in his observatory.

Sten wondered: Why send the villagers for help, only to set them at odds with the path to the village? What if the mountain wiped out the five of them before they reached Haven? Was it a test, meant to
prove his strength, the strength of the people he had gathered on their behalf?

Perhaps it is, he thought. Or perhaps these wards have been here so long that the old man who put them here has forgotten them altogether.

Or—and this was a thought Sten did not like, although he knew it might be closest to the truth—perhaps the old man, this Old Stargazer, no longer possessed the strength to undo these impressive wards. Perhaps he was as failed as the teenagers’ stories seemed to suggest, all their stories except Nergei’s, the boy who wanted to believe in the lasting strength of his master above all else.

Sten stopped in the path, took his eyes off from his boots and put them to the sky. The village was not yet visible, and the peak was still another mile of sheer switchbacks, at least. Still, they would be there soon enough, and then there would be some answers, he was sure. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but walk and walk, one foot in front of the other. He pulled his cloak around himself and trudged forward, as he always had, as he always would, as if there were any other way to go.

How long had they walked in silence before they realized there was no sound besides the wind, the falling
snow? And then, at the top of the next switchback, a screaming voice, cutting over the sheering gusts and the dampening wet.

Or rather, not a scream, but a howl; not fear, but anger.

And then Sten and Imony were running, pushing through the teenagers, with the others following quickly behind. At the top of the switchback was at last a flatness, a more gentle slope than the side of the mountains had provided, and on that flatness was a copse of trees, dense at the edge but opening into a rock-stubbled clearing. Before Sten got that far—while he was still crashing through the trees, drawing his sword from his scabbard—he had already heard the
screech
of birds surrounding the howling, had already seen the ravens flapping overhead, following their path toward the sounds of birds much bigger than those flying through the sky.

Amid all the squawking and cawing, Sten was still able to hear one of the bird voices squeal and stop, and then another, and then another, and then he was out into the clearing, where there was a flock of the strange winged kenku advancing toward a lone figure, perched atop the central boulder in the clearing.

A gray-skinned woman of at least eight feet, swinging a hammer with a head the size of Sten’s own high into the air, crashing it down until it split
the beak of the closest kenku. They recognized her as a goliath, a mountain race of great size and physical strength, of deep connection to the primal world, and of indomitable will.

The other bird men backed away, but only temporarily, and as they advanced the goliath warden howled again, beckoning them forward with her free hand, ready for the fight.

Imony moved to step forward to help, but Sten reached out an arm to stop her. “No,” he said. “We watch and we wait.”

“But she needs our help, Sten.”

“No,” he said, sliding his own sword back into its scabbard. “No, she doesn’t.”

Outnumbered over a dozen to one, the woman nonetheless kept the high ground atop the rock field’s central boulder, forcing the kenku to scrabble up the rocks, where her hammer or booted foot made short work of them, or else taunted them into taking the air, where without the leverage of the ground they could not swing their own weapons as powerfully. Dressed in simple leather armor, the goliath woman moved quickly around the surface of her chosen rock, kicking and striking as necessary, but still the kenku advanced even as their numbers dwindled.

The rest of Sten and Imony’s companions had gathered around them, and again it was up to Sten to urge them to stay back, to watch rather than act. He tried to explain. “The goliaths are great warriors, and resilient foes. The kenku will not find her an easy kill, as you can see. From the few I have met, down in the cities below, as a race they are eager to prove themselves and sensitive to their failures to do so. If you rush in to help her, you may save her life only to injure her pride. So we will wait, and only if it seems she cannot hope to win will we intervene.”

The others stood ready, weapons out, spells and prayers on the tips of tongues, wanting to join the fray but willing to follow Sten’s orders, as they had agreed to before setting out upon the mission. And for a time, their patience seemed rewarded. The gray-skinned goliath appeared inexhaustible, swinging the stone fist of her hammer to break beak and wing on all sides. When the kenku climbed too close, she seemed to draw strength from the rocks themselves, hardening her already thick skin from their arrows and blades. Then when they tried to retreat she called thorn-stuck vines up from the rocks to encircle the fleeing enemy, holding them still while she swung down upon them.

There were only half the number of attackers standing as there were when the party reached the
fight, but for the first time they seemed to be pressing in on the goliath with enough strategy to cause her problems. She roared her battle cry again, but that time the kenku only cackled their strange laughter, continuing to climb closer or else to fly onto the long boulder upon which the goliath still stood.