A Stone's Throw (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 3) (2 page)

“They fought,” Myrie’s sister picked up the thread, her voice falling into the cadence of a story repeated until it became as much habit as memory. “Back and forth, each matched well to the other. Apparently lightening cracked in the sky, but I’m not sure I believe it. The ground shook, though. And just when it seemed our great granddad had the upper hand, the whole ruins caved right in and a torrent of water washed the combatants down into caverns so deep no one dared venture after their remains.”

“So the sword was lost, eh?” Drake rubbed at the dark stubble on his chin, a keen light glinting in his heavy-lidded eyes.

“Sure was. The whole hill sunk right down. Now it’s a pit a hundred feet deep with foul dark caverns running below the hills. If Rucao’s body, gods rest him, is there, so will the sword be, I guess. Unless something has taken it. I think that’s why granmama started the challenge. Hoping that someday the sword would turn up.”

I sipped my wine and smiled. These poor women had no idea what they had just done.

“Interesting,” Drake said. “Now, where exactly is this sunken hill?”

* * *

Unlike the muggy swamps that infested the southern portion of the Barrows, the land around Stonebarrow was mostly open grasslands with numerous clear brooks and clumps of willows, wax-leafed tulip poplars, and red maples providing welcome shade from the summer sun. We paused in one of these little groves to get our bearings.

Unfortunately, the pause also gave Rahiel space to lodge more complaints.

“Do you even know where you are going? Directions from some wench who got them from her long-dead relative are hardly confirmation this place exists.” Rahiel’s wings fanned hard enough to create their own breeze.

“Your stupid pearl was little more than a legend and I went along for that,” Drake pointed out.

“That was different.” Rahiel touched her fingers to the black pearl that hadn’t left its place around her neck since we’d found it in some ruins at the bottom of a very nasty dry lakebed.

“Both of you, hush,” Azyrin cut in. “You give me headache. We agreed to go look for sword. Enough, now.”

Fade, my mist-lynx companion, leapt up to his feet, his tufted black-and-silver ears perking up. A low growl rumbled in his throat as he turned to the east, his lips peeling back from sharp teeth as long as my fingers.

I gripped my bow, drawing an arrow as I moved around the bole of the tulip poplar we’d stopped beneath and squinted in the morning sunlight glinting off the creek below us. Movement, something dark crouched low in the long grasses. No, multiple somethings.

“What is it?” Makha came up behind me, and I heard the scrape of her sword coming free of its scabbard.

I glanced over my shoulder at Drake, and he caught my eye. I had a feeling about what these creatures were, though I hadn’t yet caught a solid look at one, only a hint of dark fur and a glint of predatory eyes. They were still too far off, but closing in quickly and with as much stealth as the long grass could afford them.

“There might have been somethin’ I forgot to mention,” Drake muttered as he drew his own sword. “Myrie and her sis mentioned a pack of warakin roamed around here somewhere.”

“Somewhere? Or right there?” Rahiel squeaked.

“What’s a warawhatever?” Makha asked, though her tone said she really meant
how do I kill these
?

“Warakin. They are kind of like wolves, I guess.”

I wished I could laugh. Warakin were like wolves in the way that a bobtailed cat is like a tiger. Both are hunters. Both can hurt you. One is a tree-damned lot more scary than the other.

“More,” Azyrin said softly. “To the south.”

The warakin must have sensed they had been spotted, that or heard Fade’s warning growls. A wave of dark brown and yellow bodies lifted from the grass in a wide arc from east to south, forming a half-moon around our position in the copse. They were larger than most lowland wolves, their heads probably coming up to my hip, with blunt noses, tiny ears, and a ridge of hair running down backs that were thick and hunched like a boar’s.

I winced as the warakin started to howl, the sound high and grating in my ears. I shot an arrow at the closest one, but it fell short by a few feet. The creature slunk forward and sniffed at the shaft, then raised yellow eyes and resumed its terrible cry.

“Those don’ look like mangy wolves to me,” Makha said.

“They’re hemming us in,” Drake said. “Got to be twenty at least.”

“Stay under trees. Rahiel, can you break their line?”

“Sure, Azy,” Rahiel said. She and Bill flew past me, moving high into the air.

“Don’t set the grass on fire!” Makha yelled.

The pixie-goblin sent a crackling bolt of blue flame into the warakin I’d tried to shoot. The creature yelped in pain and collapsed as blood spurted from a deep wound in its side and meaty smelling smoke wafted on the breeze toward us.

The rest of the warakin charged, their long legs eating up the open ground between us with stunning speed. Rahiel threw more bolts, each one finding a target with hissing, wet smacks and terrible screams of pain. A handful of warakin turned and tried to leap for her, but she and the mini unicorn were far out of reach even from their powerful leaps and each creature came smashing back to ground, smoke rising from charred and wounded hides.

I took one out with an arrow through its open mouth. Another of my arrows gouged a deep furrow in the thick hide of a second warakin, but the creature didn’t slow. I moved back behind Makha, putting her armored body between me and the onslaught, and my back to the trunk of a poplar. I shot another arrow crunching through the eye and into the brain of a leaping beast, and then they were upon us.

Makha threw one warakin down with a mighty bash of her shield. She sliced through its throat with a quick jab of her sword and shifted in time to catch the teeth of another on her armored thigh. The thick yellowed teeth were no match for the blue-black scales of Makha’s Saliidruin maille and they splintered with a wet gust of red blood, the warakin falling prey to Makha’s sword even as it tried to back away.

Fade leapt into the fray, his body larger and stronger than any of the warakin and his knife-like claws gouged huge swaths of flesh from any that dared close in on him. The mist-lynx sprang away from my side, landing on a warakin that shrieked and twisted even as Fade’s huge jaws closed down on its neck, snapping its spine with a bone-shuddering crunch.

One of my arrows found a warakin’s throat in mid-leap as it came over the fallen bodies of its packmates, snapping for Makha’s head. Another monster came around the side of the tree and struck at my leg. I sprang to the side, nearly colliding with Drake as he fended off another with his dancing, needle-sharp rapier. Having no space to draw I jabbed an arrow into the warakin’s face again and again, not doing more than superficial damage but causing it enough pain that the creature slunk backward, hissing.

It moved back just far enough that I had time to draw my bow and send my arrow crunching through its gouged and bleeding skull. The warakin crumpled to the ground and another leapt in, snapping its teeth on the empty air where I had stood just before. Makha’s shield bashed its brains out in a sickly, salty-sweet gush.

Azyrin shifted toward us, covering Drake’s right side and the gap between a tulip poplar and a red maple, creating a choke point through which he funneled the warakin. His falchion’s heavy blade cracked through their broad skulls with brutal force.

Makha whipped her sword around in time to sever a leg of another beast as it jumped the bodies of its fallen kin and nearly bit a chunk out of my elven scale hauberk. Its jaws came close enough that I caught a faceful of its foul breath as I deflected the snapping teeth with my bow. Hot blood sprayed my arm from its hemorrhaging leg and the creature fell back, limping and yowling. Fade sprang onto it and tore its head from its body, sending a gleaming crimson spray misting over us.

A different cry, deeper and longer, rose up from the side and I dragged another arrow out of my quiver, expecting a new adversary or renewed attack. Instead, the remaining few warakin pulled back, turning as soon as they felt it was safe to do so and fleeing back into the long grasses. Turning my head, I saw a larger, darker warakin watching us from out of bow range. The odd cry had come from it, I guessed. With one last long look at us, the warakin leader turned and followed the remains of his pack.

The assault had to have lasted only scant minutes, judging by the angle of the sun, but my arms felt blood-pumped and heavy as relief hit me. A pile of dead bodies smoked beneath Rahiel and Bill. Azyrin plunged his falchion into a still-twitching corpse.

“Looks like they are actually moving away,” Rahiel called from her higher vantage.

“For now,” Azyrin said.

“Showed those furlumps what’s what.” Makha smiled wearily. She hadn’t even had a chance to pull her armored hood up for the battle. She brushed at some blood on her maille. “Glad this stuff does its job.”

“Look,” Drake said. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention this. Seemed unlikely with such a big territory that we’d even run into them.”

“They are very territorial, moron.” Rahiel flew closer. “You ever pull something like this again, I will turn you into a rabbit. And then sell you as a pet to some spoiled merchanter’s wife.”

“Again,” Drake said with a tiny, apologetic smile. “Don’t you mean ‘I’ll turn you into a rabbit, again’?”

“Yes!”

I finished pulling what arrows I could find out of the dead beasts and moved down to the stream to clean the worst of the blood off. Fade followed and plunged his head into the shallow, cold water, shaking droplets everywhere afterward. He licked my hand and I risked a wave of nausea to stroke his ears.

“The point is,” Drake was saying when I moved back up the little hill to them, “I don’t think they’ll bug us again. And if we follow that stream north, we’ll reach the bigger stream that flows by the sunken hill.”

“Let us go on, then,” Azyrin said.

“Fine,” Rahiel muttered. She smoothed her skirts out over Bill’s back and they took off into the air again.

Bending down, I ran my fingers through the fur covering one of the dead warakin. It was coarse but thick. Pity there wasn’t enough time to skin the bodies. They would stay out here and rot, slowly torn apart by insects and scavengers. Flies were already circling the drying blood. So wasteful. There had been a hint of intelligence in that big warakin’s eyes. I could only hope he or she would learn from this encounter and steer the pack clear of people in armor in the future. So much killing over what? Territorial instinct?

“Come on, Killer.” Makha rolled her shoulders as she turned to her husband. “Nice warm-up. I feel much more awake now.”

Chuckling, Azyrin slung his arm over her shoulders and kissed her cheek. Makha blushed, shoved him away, and set out after Drake. I smiled at the look they shared. They might pretend nonchalance, but after an intense fight like that, I knew they were glad to see each other uninjured and still standing. Much the same way that Fade often bumped my hand or hip with his huge fuzzy head after a fight. It was the reassurance of touch, the gesture that said “hey, still here, still okay”. Some communication even a curse can’t stand in the way of.

* * *

“Sunken hill?” Rahiel yelled over the roar of the waterfall. “More like sinkhole.”

It was nearly midday before we found the ruins. The large stream that ran into them fell away in a waterfall down into a pit that was at least a hundred feet deep and twice that in width. Orange and green algae coated the striated grey stone walls of the sinkhole. Standing across from the plunging stream and blinking cold spray from the waterfall out of my eyes, I could just make out the pool of water and a wide stone area shadowed by an outcropping of rocks far below me. The stones had a smooth look to them, but from this distance it was impossible to tell if they were rounded from the water and weathering or if they had been worked by tools.

“Fly down and have a look around,” Drake suggested, glaring at the pixie-goblin.

“What if there is a monster down there?”

“Then scream like a little girl and fireball it,” Makha said with a wide smile.

“You know, your usual reaction to things,” Drake added.

“I hate you guys. Except Killer.” Rahiel gave me a suffering look, her silvery eyes wide with mock-vulnerability.

Only because I can’t talk, lady. The things I would say to you at times, like what is with your impractical princess dresses? Or your hairstyles?
I sighed.

“Why do you hate me?” Azyrin asked. “I do not tease.”

“You married the muscle mountain there. You are guilty by association.”

Rahiel, getting no quarter from any of us, turned Bill, and they flew down into the pit. I kept an arrow ready, just in case there really was a monster down there. My keen eyes detected no movement but the rushing waterfall overpowered my hearing and all I could smell was damp stone. The pixie-goblin, looking like an exotic insect at this distance with her green-and-purple coloring and the unicorn’s pink and gold, flew around the bottom of the falls and then they rose back into the air and returned.

“There is a good-sized opening to some kind of cave system. No way to tell how deep it goes. I saw no signs of any life.” She almost sounded disappointed at that last part.

“Then we’ll go in,” Drake said. He slipped a double-banded steel ring from his finger and separated the rings with his thumbnail. “Here, pull on this end.” He held it out to Makha.

She took the steel ring and pulled. The rings came apart in a linked chain, growing and spreading and lengthening. “Saar’s balls,” Makha said.

“That is a chain ring.” Rahiel moved closer as Drake walked the original link back to the nearest tree, a great spreading oak that had probably been a sapling when duels were still fought in this place. “Where did you get that?”

“Remember that bastard in Magerill? The one who was cheating at cards?”

“I remember man who won all your share from shipwreck we explored,” Azyrin said, his pale blue eyes narrowing.