Worldbinder (18 page)

Kryssidia hissed in protest, but Vulgnash went racing down the hill, heading west, using all of his skill to run silently over the forest floor, sometimes leaping into the air and taking wing when the brush grew thick or rocks covered the ground.

Thul raced ahead, loping along, stooping every dozen feet to test the ground for a scent. They glided down a long slope, into a forest of oaks that opened up, inviting more light.

Slanting rays of morning sunlight beat through the trees, cutting Vulgnash’s flesh like a lash. He drew his cowl tightly over his face and bent the light to his will, surrounding himself in shadows.

All too soon, they stopped at the edge of a wood. Before them lay a broad expanse of golden field, the morning sun shining full upon it in the distance, so that a line of light cut hard across his vision.

Kryssidia hissed and turned away, but Vulgnash squinted, even though the light pierced his eyes like nails.

There in the distance, perhaps only a quarter of a mile away, he could see four figures racing through the endless open fields of summer straw. Bright yellow flowers grew tall in the field, with dark centers. They bobbed in the soft morning breeze.

So close, he thought. So close.

The humans could not have known that he was on their trail. Vulgnash and his men had moved as softly as shadows. And though the humans were running, they were not running in their speed. Instead they jogged, conserving their strength as if for a longer race.

Vulgnash peered at the bent grass they left in their wake. In the starlight, the trail would look as dark as a road.

“Tonight,” he said, “we will take our hunt on the wing. Though they run all day, we will be upon them within an hour.”

    16    

The sun was riding low in the sky, drifting down into a yellow haze by the time that Fallion’s group reached the ruins of Cantular.

They had followed the river for miles, keeping to the edge of the woods, where deer trails and rabbit trails would hide their track, and suddenly they rounded a bend, and saw the city sprawling there in its ruin. A vast
stone fortress made up the bulk of it, hundreds of feet long and a full forty feet tall.

Whether it had been deserted for five years or five thousand, Fallion thought that it would look much the same. The massive sandstone slabs that made up the walls of the city were monolithic, and looked as if they might stand for eternity. Here, holes had been dug, and the slabs had been made to stand up like pillars. Then enormous stone slabs were laid atop them, forming massive roofs.

A thousand wyrmling troops could be hidden inside, and they’d have taken up only a corner of the fortress.

There were no fields for crops or pens for animals. Those had been razed long ago. But even from a distance he could see the remains of orchards, the larger trees standing in even rows, their fruit having gone wild, while saplings grew in their shadows.

“It looks deserted,” Jaz said hopefully.

“Looks are often deceiving,” Talon said.

A great bridge still spanned the river. Colossal stones served as bastions against the raging flow, and though trees and wreckage battered them, the foundations of the bridge still held. The waterline was high, though. If it rose even another two feet, it would swamp the bridge. Beyond the bridge, out in the lowlands, the waters had flooded an area that was miles wide. Fallion suspected that he might be witnessing the birth of a new sea.

At each end of the mile-long bridge squatted another massive stone fortress with a drawbridge, guard houses, and crenellated towers.

“The majority of the garrison will be on the far side of the river,” Talon hazarded. “In fact, I’m not sure how well-guarded it will be here on the north. There might be only a few. There might be no guards at all.”

“So we might be able to fight our way through the north tower,” Fallion said, “but even if we do, we have to deal with the fact that there is another drawbridge at the far end.”

“True,” Talon said, “but say that we fight our way through the tower on this side. We can run a mile before we hit the far side. From there, we can jump into the water and swim. It might be a distance of only thirty yards, rather than a swim of a mile.”

Fallion didn’t care for the plan. Even if they did swim to shore on the far side, they could find themselves trying to swim though a hail of arrows.

And then what? If they made it to shore, the wyrmlings would be on their trail at nightfall.

“Right, then,” Rhianna said. “Let’s get to it.”

“In the morning,” Fallion said. He wasn’t the kind to hesitate, but the more he studied the situation, the less he liked it.

“In the morning?” Jaz asked. “Why not now?”

“It’s too close to nightfall,” Fallion said. “The wyrmling troops are waking. If we attack now, we’ll attack them in their strength. And even if we break through to the far side of the river, we’ll have to worry about them dogging our trail for the rest of the night. We should wait until morning, hit them in the light of day.”

Talon nodded her assent.

“Where will we stay then?” Jaz asked.

Fallion didn’t like the idea of camping in the open. The trees along the river had been fairly thick, but in the flood, many had washed away. The scrub that was left could hardly hide a pair of rabbits.

“We’ll sleep in there,” Fallion said, nodding toward the ruins.

“Among the wyrmlings?” Jaz asked.

Fallion liked the idea. He was certain that the wyrmlings were hunting him, as Talon feared, and tonight they would be scouring the fields and forests. But the last place they would look would be here, in the heart of a wyrmling fortress.

“Like I said,” Rhianna said, “let’s get to it.”

And so in the failing sun, they crept along the river-bank, keeping low.

There in the shadows, they found a vine thick with light-berries and picked a few. The vine had begun to wilt, and Fallion guessed that in a day it would be dead.

So they made their way to the edge of the ruined city. A great wall had once surrounded it, but the wyrmlings had knocked it down in a dozen places. Enormous battering rams, huge logs with iron heads shaped like foul beasts, still lay abandoned outside the gates. Evil symbols had been scrawled on the broken walls. Fallion could see the glyph of Lady Despair.

It was in the final approach, when they ran across an open field and leapt through a gap in the broken wall that they were most exposed.

But at the most, they were only visible for a few seconds.

They ran up to the side of a building and hunched, waiting to see if an alarm sounded. If they were attacked, Fallion wanted it to be there in the open, in the failing light, rather than in the corner of some dark building.

When no alarm sounded, they crept down an empty street, keeping close to the walls.

Fresh tracks in the dirt showed that wyrmlings walked down the street often.

They were in an old merchant quarter. Stalls lined both sides of the streets, and in some places the merchandise still moldered. Bolts of cotton and flax sat rotting in one stall, broken chairs and a baby crib in another, clay pots in a third.

Down the street, a gruff laugh sounded, almost a snarl. The wyrmlings were awake.

Fallion did not dare venture farther into the city. Fallion spotted a likely place and dove into an abandoned smithy with a circular forge, a bellows, and an overturned anvil.

In the back, a leather curtain formed a door, separating the smithy from the living quarters.

They raced inside.

“Up or down?” Talon asked while Fallion’s eyes were
still adjusting to the gloom. He realized that in the change, she must have improved her night vision. When he could finally see, he made out a wooden ladder leading up to a loft. Another went down to a pantry.

A partial skeleton lay sprawled upon the floor, a few scattered bones wrapped in a rotten dress. The skull had been taken.

The ladder was rotting, too. Fallion imagined that a giant would have to worry about breaking a rung as he climbed. So Fallion decided to go up it. Besides, if the group was attacked, Fallion would rather defend from above than beneath.

“Up,” he said, racing quietly up the ladder.

He reached the top, found a bedroom. A child’s bed, with a mattress made of straw over some wooden slats, rested near the chimney, and a wooden horse lay on the floor. Otherwise the room was bare. A window stood closed, the last of the sunlight gleaming yellow through a pane made of scraped hide.

The dust on the floor had not been disturbed in years.

“This will do,” Fallion said.

He peered about the room. The walls were formed from sandstone and looked to be a good two feet thick. The roof itself was a great slab of stone.

He felt safe here, protected, like a mouse in its burrow.

Everyone climbed into the room, and Fallion considered pulling up the ladder. But he suspected that if anyone was familiar with this place, they would notice what he’d done. Better to leave everything undisturbed.

    17    

At the feast in the great hall in Caer Luciare that night, Alun threw the remains of a greasy swan’s leg over his back, food for the dogs. The king’s mastiffs were quick to lunge from their beds by the fire to scuffle for it, and as the growls died down, Alun could not help but turn just a bit, to see which dog had won.

It was a pup of nine months, young enough to be fast and hungry, big enough to hold his own.

Much like me, Alun thought with a satisfied grin. He was half drunk on the king’s wine, though the meal had hardly begun.

It would be a feast tonight. The warriors would need their strength tomorrow as they ran north for the attack. The big men would keep a grueling pace. A warrior was expected to run ten miles in an hour, a hundred miles in a day, and the run would last from first light to full night.