From Across the Clouded Range (26 page)

The thought hit Dasen like a fist
between the eyes. His father had kept six guards with him plus
Elton, who was worth at least six men. Plus five hundred villagers.
At least a hundred of those were woodsmen in their prime, big men
who swung axes for a living. How many bandits were there? How did
they know they were here? How did they get past the forest master?
Obviously, Ipid would be worth a fortune in ransom, but why involve
the villagers? Why not attack the day before when they were on
rain-soaked roads riding through heavy forest, ideally positioned
for an ambush?

The piercing wail of a baby’s cry
echoed through the forest, sending Dasen from his skin and leaving
his questions unanswered. The sound was quickly muffled – cut short
by a mother’s hand – but it made Dasen's heart race, thundering
until he thought it might leap from his chest. Wrenched back from
his thoughts, he realized that the smoke was all around him,
leaving him on the edge of coughs and cutting his vision to a few
paces. That haze had made the forest seem desolate, had lulled him
into a false sense of solitude, but the wail had come from
immediately in front of him. He was desperately close to the
village and whatever dangers it held.

Having lost sight of Tethina, he was
running blind in what he hoped was the correct direction. He slowed
his pace, suddenly aware of the sound of his own shuffling feet.
Blood roared in his ears, but it was not enough to drown out the
stuttering cries of anguished women, the barely contained snuffles
of stoic men holding back their emotion through will alone, the
whimpering, breathless sobs of children who had long ago expended
their ability to cry. Taken together, it was the sound of people
pushed beyond their limits, of fear, and it reverberated through
Dasen like a cold wave.

He was so absorbed by those horrifying
sounds that he did not even notice when the trees came to a sudden
end, leaving him gawking at the village green and the great mass of
villagers gathered in its center. Only a strong arm around his
waist kept him from the villagers and the plain view of whatever
criminals were guarding them. Another hand wrapped around his mouth
to silence the yelp that nearly escaped his lips. A firm body
supported him to keep him from falling as his momentum changed. He
whirled on the attacker ready for anything then let out a sigh when
he saw Tethina’s eyes hammering him through the haze of
smoke.

When her eyes had taken their toll,
she signaled him to silence, turned, and crept to the remnants of
two trees that had fallen across one another in ages past. The long
forgotten logs were rotten and moss covered but had fallen in such
a way that someone could view most of the green with little chance
of being detected. Dasen followed her through a spindly bush that
guarded the logs, restraining outbursts as sharp thorns pulled at
his legs and arms.

They squatted behind the barricade and
watched through a space between the logs. The villagers were plain
enough, but the haze of smoke obscured Dasen’s vision and burned
his eyes. He suppressed coughs then covered his mouth with part of
his sweat-soaked shirt to keep the smoke from his lungs. A glance
at Tethina showed her doing the same with the hem of her silk
dress. She squinted against the caustic smoke, peering into the
haze like a mystic studying a crystal for the Order’s will. Rubbing
the smoke and water from his eyes, Dasen joined her, searching
hungrily for information, for his father, for Rynn, but the haze
was so thick that he could not discern individual figures. He saw
only a tight clump of bodies, holding one another protectively.
Fear emanated from them like heat from a fire. But fear of what?
Try as he might, Dasen could not see the source of the villagers’
distress. From what he could tell, they were simply standing in a
great, unguarded mass as their homes smoldered in the
distance.

The questions began to build again in
Dasen’s mind. How many attackers must there be to create this
crippling fear in five hundred proud villagers? Where were these
attackers? Had they already left with their prize? If so, why were
the villagers still so paralyzed?

Dasen could almost feel the rise in
emotions that provided the answers. The muffled whimpers of the
villagers grew in intensity if not volume and were followed by a
tight silence that was even more dreadful. His eyes snapped to the
source of the building fear and found a mounted man emerging from
the smoke, riding in a slow circle around the huddled mass. The
rider moved casually, but a steady wave of panic preceded him as
the villagers crushed together in anticipation of his arrival
before them. As if it were the very figure of death, they tried to
disappear in his presence and became all the more apparent as a
result.

For his part, the rider did not seem
to notice the villagers, concentrating instead on the leg of
chicken he was eating as he rode. As he became clearer, Dasen
realized that there was something strange about the silhouette the
rider cast through the smoke. At first, he thought it was a trick
of his watering eyes, but when the man was in full view, he decided
that it was no trick. The man and his mount were giants. The horse
was every bit as large as the beasts that had pulled Ipid’s coach,
and the man was a perfect fit for the creature. Compared to the
villagers in the background, he was a full head taller and
half-again as wide. His shoulders were thick. His arms, left bare
by the leather vest he wore, were heavily muscled and as big around
as Dasen’s head. Clutched in his hand, what Dasen had thought was a
chicken leg was that of a goose. His other balanced a massive sword
across the pommel of his saddle as if it were a fencing foil. Dasen
watched the man ride around the villagers but could not make any
sense of his appearance. The only men that came close to matching
him were Morgs, but everyone knew that Morgs did not ride horses or
shave their beards — the rider’s face had little more than careless
stubble.

As the rider faded from view, a breeze
appeared. The surprisingly cool breeze pushed some of the smoke
away from the village, and Dasen said a silent prayer of thanks for
the slight reprieve it afforded his burning eyes and lungs. The
prayer died as his watering eyes found the bodies. There were at
least ten scattered in his limited view, crumpled masses disfigured
and oozing red into the puddles that already surrounded them. Dasen
felt the bile rise in this throat and turned to be sick.

“
Don’t,” Tethina
whispered. “Fight it. They’ll know we’re here.”

Dasen pushed down the
bile, fought to keep it there, as fear overwhelmed him.
Who are these people? By the Order, what have
they done?
The bodies were mangled, but
some of them were too small to be men. Arrows stood in multitudes
from backs. Heads lay paces from bodies. Blood stained the grass
brown as it dried in the heat. The smell of burning pine was
replaced by the iron tinge of a slaughter house. Who could do this?
How could Ipid’s ransom be worth this?

Still, Dasen studied the bodies,
searched for familiar faces, clothes, or builds. He prayed that
they would remain anonymous, that his father, Rynn, his guards,
Elton would not be among the dead, that he would not have to see
their bodies shattered before him. When he had forced himself to
search each body, he turned to the villagers with hope mixing into
his fear. But the faces he found, though occasionally familiar,
were not known. His father, Rynn, Elton, his guards, even Pete
Magee and his gang were nowhere to be found in the sliver of the
green he could see from his sanctuary.

“
What do you make of
that?” Tethina whispered in his ear so softly he could barely make
out the words. She pointed to the side where a dozen riders had
formed a knot of conversation. To Dasen’s astonishment, all those
men were as large as the first one he had seen. It was
inconceivable. These were not Morgs, so how did this many men of
such incredible size manage to come together in one place? The
similarities between the men were considerable, he decided without
much relief. They all wore tight-fitting leather pants, loose
leather vests with open triangular necklines, and soft knee-high
boots made for riding. Their faces were hard with sharp features
that were often disrupted by gruesome scars. Their hair varied from
clean shaven to long but was always tightly corralled either by the
severity of the cut or with tight braids that were themselves
clasped together with leather thongs. Finally, every man, save one,
was huge, powerfully armed, and mounted on a horse that matched his
girth.

Confounded, Dasen turned his attention to the
aberration among them, hoping that the exception might explain the
rule. At the center of the gathered riders was one man of
approximately normal size. By Dasen’s estimation, he was about his
height and only slightly broader, but compared to his fellows, he
might have been a dwarf. Yet that man, by all appearances, was the
leader. The others directed their conversation to him, and when he
bothered to respond, they fell silent. Furthermore, the leader was
simply a smaller version of the men around him. His horse was, if
anything, the largest. He wore the same clothing, had the same
short-cropped blond hair, angular face, and brutal weaponry.
Despite the normalcy of his stature, he was every bit as strange as
his fellows.

A hard nudge in the arm pulled Dasen’s
attention from the scene. “So, do you know these gentlemen?”
Tethina whispered. Her scorn was clear even at a
whisper.

“
I don’t know wh . . .”
Dasen started too loudly. Tethina clamped a hand over his mouth and
shot him a look that might have killed him.

“
Are you incapable of
being quiet?” she whispered with all the force of a
scream.

Dasen held back a sudden wave of fury.
Struggling to restrain his frustration, he gathered himself and
spoke in the softest whisper he could manage. “I have no idea who
these men are. None of this makes any sense.”

Tethina puffed. Her eyes turned to the
fallen; clearly she would know them. Would they be her friends,
relatives, enemies? How could she be so strong? So unfazed? He did
not know any of these people yet he could barely keep his stomach
from revolting, could barely keep himself from curling into a
helpless ball. His emotions fought one another, disgust, anger,
sadness, fear. Tethina seemed only to feel the anger. Her mouth was
a line, her eyes slits. Her hands were clenched, entire body
taught. Then he saw her mouth moving ever so slightly. At first he
thought it was for curses, then he realized prayers. The prayer for
the dead, and she said it for each body, moving from one to the
next until they were all covered.

With a sigh, Dasen joined her,
mouthing the short prayer without a sound and felt it calm the
storm inside him. When they had finished, he took another breath
and turned to Tethina. “We should go,” he whispered. “There’s
nothing we can do. Our best hope is to find the forest masters.
They will know how to handle this.”

Tethina glared, her anger clear, but
she did not respond. She watched the village for a moment longer
then nodded. “When the smoke drifts back.”

As if controlled by her words, the
breeze faded and smoke slowly reclaimed the green. Dasen used those
last moments to scan the crowd a final time for his father or Rynn.
He did not find them. He could only guess that they had already
been sorted from the villagers. The kidnappers would not risk their
payoff, he told himself, but something still felt wrong. The
evidence didn’t fit the hypothesis, but logic dictated that the
simplest answer was usually the correct one, and he could think of
no other explanation that was not outlandish. In the end, he was
left wanting as the smoke boiled over him, and he turned to
leave.

#

“
Follow me, and try to be
quiet,” Tethina ordered as they emerged from the bush. She had her
teeth gnashed together and caressed her arms where the red was
punctuated by white scratches from the thorns. Her eyes searched
the forest, but the smoke had returned denser than before, and
Dasen could not imagine that she was finding much. Then, without so
much as a glance back, she ran silently from the village, perfectly
retracing their approach.

Dasen followed as quietly as he could
and was aided by Tethina’s slower pace. When the smoke had been
reduced to a few clinging wisps, she stopped and gave the forest a
long look. She thought for a moment while Dasen caught his breath.
Sweat dripped from his head and ran down his face. His shirt was
soaked and he cursed the jacket that he, for some reason, still
wore. His mouth still tasted like that horrible bark that Tethina
had made him chew, and his thirst was devastating. A look at the
sky showed that the sun had already dipped below the mountains to
the west. They only had another hour before twilight. Without the
village to return to, their situation was growing
desperate.

Returning to his full height, Dasen
was nearly toppled as Tethina threw her arms around him and held
him in a crushing embrace. Dasen was shocked but soon recovered
enough to wrap his arms around her. Her chin rested on his
shoulder. Her sweat dampened hair brushed his cheek. Her soft body
crushed against him through the silk of her dress. Her scent washed
over him, strangely metallic and musky with a hint of dellum sap
and pine. Dasen was overwhelmed by her presence, could barely find
the ability to breathe as every nerve in his body came to life
while a thousand emotions battled for control of his mind. In the
end, he could only hold her and stammer. He expected to feel her
crying on his shoulder and built himself to give her strength, but
she did not shed a tear.