The Way Into Chaos (19 page)

“Yes,” Tejohn said without hesitation. “If it gets close enough to hit the heart on your first try, please do.”

But it stayed well out of range, then turned away and glided back toward the waterfalls and the lower lake.
 

Doctor Eelhook breathed a sigh of relief. “Grateful am I be permitted to remain on The Way.”

“Watch for more,” Tejohn snapped. “And watch for shadows to see if they’re above us.”

“Arla,” Lar said, while everyone looked about them, “you’ve truly never seen one before? Never even heard rumors?”

“No, my king. There are all sorts of stories about the Southern Barrier, and even more about the Northern. Merfolk, living shadows, three-eyed goats who talk like men. Giants made of avalanche rock. Trees with roots that grab you and pull you underground. Most are fancies prospectors say to amuse and outdo each other. Some of it is even true. But giant birds? Never.”
 

No one spoke much after that.
 

At midday, Doctor Eelhook passed out jerky and sour rice cake, then filled a pitcher with water for them. It tasted, as ever, of metal, but Tejohn had drunk enough of it to know there was no danger.
 

The sun was getting low over the peaks ahead when Tejohn called out. “How much farther until we camp?”
 

“Not far,” Arla answered. “We need to be clear of the slow-moving water, and the pass is close. This route should shave at day off our journey, at least.”

Night falls early and quickly in the mountains. The sun dipped below a peak ahead of them and the valley was shadowed beneath a twilight sky. Arla pointed toward the northern cliffs. There was a break between them, a place where the sheer walls had fallen outward. A long slope of scree lay before them, and beyond it the still-sunlit expanse of the Sweeps.
 

Arla pointed to a flattish stretch of solid rock. “There, driver. Do you see? No mud.”

Wimnel’s voice was tired and grateful. “I do, thank you.” While the passengers untethered themselves, he settled gently onto it.

After a long day of sitting, Tejohn wasn’t spry enough to spring over the rail, but he did manage to stand and walk about without any embarrassing groaning. The stony ground sloped down to the stream, which was shallow over broken rocks. That meant no merfolk, he hoped. To the left was a stand of thin pines, including two that had fallen.
 

He turned around and surveyed the slope behind him. The Sweeps, far below, were an undifferentiated blur of fading yellow. Beyond that, he knew, was the Northern Barrier, which he couldn’t even make out as colored blurs in the dimming light.
 

Technically, all the land on this side of the Northern Barrier and west of Fort Piskatook was part of the Peradaini Empire, but it was what Amlian used to call “lightly held.” The king’s spears occasionally swept through, collecting taxes and reenergizing the spells on the sleepstones up here, but it was unlikely that the nomadic peoples of the Sweeps considered themselves imperial citizens.

Reglis and Arla scanned all around them but, judging by their expressions, they saw nothing worrying. Good.
 

Lar took the spare hatchet and went into the pines with Reglis. Tejohn caught up to them and plucked the tall red plume from the king’s helm. “Your shield bearer would never take such liberties, my king, but your weapons master insists.”

Lar smiled crookedly. “And it made me feel so jaunty, too.”

Tejohn returned to the campsite to find Wimnel inspecting the cart in the dying light, checking the pegs and knotted ropes to make sure they were still tight. Doctor Eelhook had refilled the pitcher to wash their cups, and Arla was building a fire pit down in a shallow depression near the base of a hill, where the flames could not be seen from the Sweeps below. Whether by design or happenstance, the cart rested at the top of the depression, acting as a windbreak.

Tejohn took his spear out of the cart and walked a circuit around the campsite. All he could find was a snake resting among the rocks at the bottom of the steep slope. He decapitated it with his spear point and carried it over to the fire pit. There were pigeons near the waterline but he could not get close enough to stick them.
 

Reglis returned alone with the firewood, saying that the king had asked for solitude. While Doctor Eelhook lit the kindling, Tejohn stalked through the darkness toward the trees. Great Way, night had fallen quickly. Little Spinner played like a whirling top in the mountains.

Lar’s voice came out of the darkness. “I wanted to be alone.”

“Every man needs time to grieve, but this is a wish I can not grant, my king. In the wilderness, anything might come upon us in the darkness. My oath—”

“Bless your oath,” the king said sharply, seeming to mean it as a rebuke. He strode back up the hill toward the camping ground. Tejohn followed.

Their meal was eaten in darkness and in silence. Tejohn knew it was bad for morale to let them sulk through the end of the day, but the king’s mood had turned sour, and both scholar and driver were clearly exhausted. The two soldiers allowed their mood to be dictated by the others. No one volunteered to play music, and Tejohn did not dare to broach the subject, for fear they would ask to hear that song.

The stars came out and the wind howled and groaned above them. Arla had chosen their shelter well. After everyone had eaten, they sorted the watches for the night. Reglis claimed he never slept the night through and volunteered for the middle watch. Lar claimed the first, saying he would not be able to rest for some hours yet. When Arla offered to sit up in his place, or to sit with him, he snapped at her, saying he would not be coddled. She volunteered for the final watch and Tejohn resolved to take one the next night.
 

They began to arrange their blankets around the fire. Wimnel had already fallen asleep, his food half eaten in his lap. Apparently, flying a cart was more of a strain than it appeared.

From somewhere off in the distance there was a loud noise. Everyone but Wimnel stood, weapons drawn. For a moment, Tejohn thought it might have been an avalanche, and he stood tense beside the hill, wondering which way to run.

Nothing came. As he strained to listen, he thought the wind sounded faintly like a beating heart.
 

“What was that?” Doctor Eelhook asked.
 

Arla answered. “It sounded like a tree falling.”

“No talking,” Tejohn said gently. But the scout was right. It had sounded like breaking wood. Now the question was whether it had fallen naturally or if there was something out there had kicked it over.
 

He gripped his spear and unslung his shield. Fire take that scout and her stories of avalanche giants. What were the odds they’d come across such a creature on their first night? Tejohn forced himself to take slow breaths. No, there was almost certainly nothing out there.
 

“The stars are flickering,” Reglis said.
 

They all looked up. The stars weren’t just flickering, they were winking in and out, as though--
 

“Away!” Tejohn called. “Away from the fire!”

He grabbed the king’s arm and pulled him up the southern slope of the hollow out of the firelight. Thankfully, Lar had kept his helmet on, but where was his shield?
 

The wind suddenly became loud, as though a sudden storm was rushing at them through a forest. Then there was a loud crash like a holdfast gate giving way.
 

He spun around. The campfire was bright enough to show the smashed cart behind them, all but hidden beneath the piney branches of the tree that had fallen on it.
 

No, not fallen. Dropped. The raptors had dropped it and destroyed their flying cart.
 

“My king, stay close.”

Lar stood close at Tejohn’s right shoulder, and Reglis took up a defensive position on the other side. Arla stood behind them, hurriedly bending her bow to string it.
 

He scanned the sky above, watching for signs of shapes moving against the stars, but he couldn’t see anything. A tiny voice in his head whispered that the stars had only flickered, and that the tree had simply fallen from the slope above. They were only birds. How could they carry and drop something so heavy? Birds did not work in teams.
 

Doctor Eelhook’s robe flapped as she ran down toward the stream, into the darkness. Wimnel Farrabell was nowhere to be seen. Had he stayed by the cart or been crushed with it?

Tejohn looked upward again, but he couldn’t see any shadows against the starlight. He didn’t believe they would retreat. Animals didn’t strike and flee without capturing prey first.
 

Doctor Eelhook’s scream echoed from out of the darkness of the valley. Fire and Fury, the creatures were flying low across the river toward them. “Shock line.” Tejohn said to Reglis. Both men braced their spears.
 

“Stay close to me,” Lar said, as though he was their bodyguard.
 

Out of the corner of his eye, Tejohn saw the king’s hands moving, but before he could see which spell the king was casting, something rushed out of the darkness toward them.
 

It was so fast, Tejohn barely had time to yank his spear head upward and to the right. The raptor, moving at him as fast as a stone from a catapult, took the point directly in the center of its outstretched foot.
 

The spear shivered. The raptor, already angling upwards, slammed hard into Tejohn’s shield with its hind claw.
 

He fell back onto the loose stone, hard. Stones gouged his back and bare arms as he slid sideways down the slope. Tejohn scrambled onto his knees. The king. He had to protect the king.

At the top of the rise before him, Reglis knelt before the king, his spear braced and his shield high. Tejohn shouted a warning at them, but he couldn’t be heard over the cries of the bird he’d wounded. Then the king’s spell finished, and a plume of fire blasted outward, lighting up the whole hillside.
 

Another raptor, its wings spread and its claws reaching, fluttered directly into the blue-white core of the flames. It swerved away from the king, and flapped desperately, trying to gain altitude. It swept around in a wide circle, tail feathers burning.

A third raptor swooped in, then a fourth, the plumes of fire making them turn away before they got close. Then a fifth, a sixth, Great Way, how many of these beasts would they have to kill?
 

There was no seventh. Tejohn scrambled toward the king, letting the shattered spear shaft fall from his hand. He drew his sword, knowing he’d have to use the point against something moving that fast, and knowing that it would probably cost his life.
Everything is dangerous.
He took up position beside Lar... The top of his shield had been broken off and he hadn’t even noticed.
 

Arla came up beside him, an arrow nocked. Fire-taken archers were even slower to join the fight than spellcasters, but Tejohn swallowed that thought unspoken. “Watch behind in case they come at us from the north.”

She did as she was told. Tejohn knew how little use a single arrow would be against so many foes, but they were soldiers, and soldiers fought with the weapons they had.
 

“I have an idea,” the king said. “When I say to shut your eyes, do it.”

“My king,” Arla said. “If they fall upon us while—”
 

“Here they come,” Reglis said.
 

Lar began a spell. “At my word,” he said. Tejohn stepped forward, raised his shield, and extended the point of his sword.
 

Away from the fire, Tejohn’s eyes had begun to adjust to the starlight; he could just barely make out blurry shapes moving against the black shadows of the valley wall.

“From the north, too!” Arla shouted. Tejohn heard her bowstring thrum. He pivoted to put his shield at the king’s back. Yes, there were several coming from this side, and they were spread out so they could strike from different angles in quick succession.
 

This was it. “Grateful am I,” Tejohn said, “to be permitted—”

“Now!” Lar shouted, and Tejohn squeezed his eyes shut.
...to travel The Way.

Laoni.

There was a sound like a sudden wind, and for an instant, Tejohn could see the veins in his eyelids, red against his pink flesh. The king had cast a bright blinding light. A light spell. A modified Fourteenth Gift.

Arla cried out and so did the raptors. The beasts screamed in rage and dismay, and Tejohn heard them as they swept overhead, wings flapping.
 

The light faded. He opened his eyes but a pink glare obscured the starlight and the dark shapes around him. Almost immediately, he heard a heavy wet smack. Great Way, that was an ugly sound, whatever it was.
 

The raptors squawked as they flapped away, heading west down the length of the valley. Tejohn stared into the darkness after them, barely able to make out their shapes. They didn’t seem to be circling around, but he kept his broken shield high just the same.

“Fire and Fury,” Arla said, dropping to one knee. “I’ve been struck blind, and the last thing I saw was one of those birds swooping at me. Have they gone? Because if that was the last thing I’ll ever see, I don’t even want another dawn.”

Lar laid a hand on her shoulder. “They’re gone. But next time I give you a command, you would do well to follow it.”

Arla lowered her head. “I’m sorry, my king. My training—”

“Is no excuse. Your training is a blessing, to be sure, but it’s not sufficient.”

Someone cried out. They started at the sound, then rushed toward the campfire. Wimnel Farrabell had still been lying by the cart when the pine tree had been dropped on it, and was now pinned beneath a pair of broken branches. They hadn’t punctured his skin, but his arm was clearly broken.
 

Reglis took a hatchet to the branches, clearing them enough so the driver could be dragged free. Tejohn helped Arla sit by the fire and left her there, rubbing at her wide, bright eyes. If her vision didn’t clear by morning, they’d have two burdens. A driver with no cart--or even two working arms to carry gear--was useless, as was a blind guide.