Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) (53 page)

The animals attacked once more and I realized I could see them, dimly, as the day began to grow on the horizon. I expected the wolves to give up but they redoubled their efforts. Their red eyes gleamed, matching the red of their tongues and mouths and our dripping wounds. But the brush slowed them enough so spearmen could lunge with deadly accuracy and bowmen or crossbowmen had time to pick their shots with full skill.

The direwolves retreated across the stream. But they weren’t intending to give up this war. On the knoll were our packs and I counted five, no seven bodies. Now the wolves would savage our dead and rip into our rations, I thought. But they didn’t, seemingly having no interest in anything but the complete destruction of our party.

I saw Janela busy on her knees, her purse beside her, and was grateful she almost never let that carryall more than an arms-reach from her.

“Look at them,” Quatervals said. He finished knotting a cloth tie around his lower leg, where one of the wolves had ripped at him. “They’re like warriors, plottin’ their next move.”

And so they were, grouping in knots of five or ten beasts, packs I suppose. There was enough light to see clearly but I wish we had not that blessing for I saw almost fifty of the huge animals gathered on both sides of this river.

“What,” Pip said in mock-anger, “we’re th’ only bassids worth eatin’ in this whole bless’t desert? Th’ gods’re no dealin’ justice.”

“So what’s new about
that
, little man?” Otavi growled.

Quatervals and I looked at each other, sharing a common thought but not putting it into words. One pack or perhaps two should have been all that would have attacked us and they should have waited until we were moving and then tried to cut off any stragglers. Other packs would have gone on, looking for their own victims.

Both of us were wondering if these wasteland beasts were brighter than any we’ve heard of or and this was the unspoken thought, if they were
sent
, if they were
directed
against us. If Raveline could use direwolves for his watchmen, couldn’t Modin use them as well? Or, if not Modin, that still-unknown enemy that lay ahead?

If that were the case I hoped Janela could devise some strong sorcery, that being our only hope.

“Look yon,” Pip pointed. “Beyon’ th’ knoll, atop that rise.”

I saw where he was pointing. Beyond the ringing animals, on that low hillock, stood one single animal. There was enough light to distinguish color and I could see that he was old, his pelt was graying, turning toward white.

If these creatures were huge, he was the largest. Even allowing for our fear and the natural tendency to exaggerate the size of an enemy, I would make a blood-oath at the temple of any god wished this direwolf would have been over ten feet high at the head, taller than a man at the shoulders.

“Perhaps they were sent,” Quatervals said in a low voice, “as I’m thinkin’. But mayhap they’ve found leaders of their own.”

“Why not,” I agreed, hoping he was right, preferring any degree of animal cunning to magic. “Other beasts have leaders — elephants, lions.”

Quatervals didn’t answer but was measuring the distance with his fingers.

“Mmmph,” he grunted. “Beyond the reach of
my
bow. The bastard knows where he’s safe.”

“Maybe,” I said, “or maybe not. Janela.”

She looked up from her work, frowning. “Amalric, can you hold for a moment?”

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry... look. Over there.”

She was annoyed, but stood. I pointed. Janela understood, instantly, what might be done. She looked around, saw a longbow and picked it up. She drew her dagger and touched the two together, her lips moving. I heard just the end of her spell:

“...take hold, take change

Once live, now dead

Take strength, take power

Take hold, take change”

The bow changed as she chanted and instead of the live glow of yew, it took on the dull hue of metal. Next she touched her hair to the bowstring and cast another spell. This one I didn’t hear at all but the string changed to woven black, like the women’s tresses the greatest catapults use.

“Here’s your bow, Amalric. You must find the archer.”

But that was the easiest.

“Otavi. On your back. Quatervals, you help him aim.”

Otavi dropped onto his back and holding the bow level with the ground put both his bootheels on either side of the grip.

Janela had taken a handful of arrows and went to a direwolf’s corpse that sprawled half in and half out of the water. She pricked the body in the center of its chest, allowing a little blood to flow on the arrowpoint. Then she touched the arrowhead to her eyelid:

“See what I see

Hunt what I hunt

Kill what I kill

Fly fast

Fly true.”

She handed the arrows to Quatervals. “With luck that’ll serve better than your best aim. Now, let me go back to my own casting.” I saw she had some long strands of some kind of string and was dragging them over the sand. But our plan required my full attention.

Quatervals knelt beside Otavi. “Pull back, lad.”

Otavi grabbed the human-hair bowstring with both hands and heaved mightily, veins standing on his forehead. The steel bow drew slowly, coming back and back. Quatervals nocked an arrow.

“Can you turn a bit... right... aye, that’s it... now bring your legs down...” Otavi’s legs were beginning to shake with the strain of pulling the metal bow.

“Loose!”

The bowstring twanged and Otavi yelped as it thrummed against his ankles and the arrow shot away. I saw it climb then whip past the direwolves’ chieftain. We missed him by at least five feet.

I cursed, but the beast still stood, hesitating. Before he could realize he was within range, Otavi had the bow pulled back once more, there was an arrow ready, and Quatervals squinted again...

“There... down just a slack... arrow, take the damned spell to heart... LOOSE!” Once more the bowstring THWACKED and the arrow hurtled away.

This time it sped true, just as that monstrous direwolf was realizing his danger. But as he turned the bolt took him, full in the chest. He was dead before he realized he’d been shot, collapsing bonelessly where he stood.

A moment later a low moan came from the opposite bank. The moan grew into a long howl as one direwolf, then another saw their elder had been slain. The howl rose to the skies, crying sorrow and loss. Even I foolishly felt a note of sadness, as one must when a great leader, no matter if he is your enemy, is gone from this earth.

An instant later the howls of mourning became signals and once more the direwolves rushed us. If they had been human I would have said they had desperation and hatred on their side now. But we had daylight on ours and our archers could fire well and true.

Direwolves stumbled away, or fell, but there were still more of them coming on and then I realized we were doomed, because the earth itself was shaking. Maha was looking at me and if my face was as pale and frightened as his I was a poor war leader.

Then we saw what was making the ground shake.

A herd, perhaps thirty, perhaps a few more, of the great oxen came bellowing over the rise. Janela was beaming — her spell had worked. I took a moment to look at her casting. In the sand she’d drawn not figures or arcane symbology but a model of the river and the island we stood on. There were bits of fur around it, I guessed cut from one of the dead direwolves. Those strands she’d been running over the ground I realized were some of the ox-hair she’d plucked from a bush when we’d first encountered the beasts. Indeed it had become useful.

How she managed to devise a spell that would call those beasts I don’t know. But she had and they came. They saw their ancient enemy and for some reason, perhaps some more of Janela’s magic, ignored their traditional behavior of defense and attacked.

They rushed down on the wolves with their long horns lancing out. The direwolves tried to hold for a moment, tried to duck around, but three, then four of them were impaled, cast down and trampled by the herd and then the direwolves were fleeing as if they had a pack of demons at their heels. But I never doubted their courage. It was magic that was their undoing, not us.

The direwolves were over the far bank of the river, up over the rise and disappearing into the tall steppe grass. The oxen thundered across the river, then their pace slowed and they were walking, snorting, I swear like a pack of boasting warriors after their foe has fled the battleground.

Then they remembered they’d just crossed water and they were no longer warriors but cattle, lowing for the stream. One or two of them glared at us and WHUFFED, telling us they, by the gods, had taken this land and we were not welcome here.

We left them victorious on their field, went back across to the knoll. We bound up our wounds, gathered our dead and once more said a burial ceremony and laid them under. After that we were ready for the march once more.

I missed Quatervals and Otavi and looked about for them. I saw the brothers on that low rise, standing over the huge direwolf’s corpse. Their heads were bowed for a moment and I thought I saw Quatervals sprinkle a bit of sand over the corpse as if giving a burial so its ghost would rest.

They came back but said nothing and I respected their silence.

We continued our march.

At the top of the hill I looked back. Five killed at the Fist of the Gods, six more here...I prayed to the gods I no longer believed in that these would be the last.

Because now I knew we would, we must, engage Cligus and Modin before we reached Tyrenia.

* * * *

We were closing on the mountains and the steppe was rougher, corrugated with gullies and canyons. We were forced to detour so many times I feared we’d lose our bearings to the road and so Quatervals and I decided it was time to return and take our chances.

We turned due south and began keeping track of our paces. As the distance grew greater we began craning ahead, eager to be the first to sight the paved track.

I admit to another desire — to see whether our navigational skills were well-honed, since I’ve never actually believed in my abilities to do anything other than become thoroughly and completely lost. Each time my compass or map or reckoning abilities have proven true, I’ve been hard pressed to appear as if such achievements were commonplace.

How sea navigators are able to find a harbor dead on after days and weeks of seeing nothing but the sun and the stars and then pretending boredom when complimented is beyond me. If I’d been able to do such a thing one single time I would have cast aside my navigating tools, taken up the robes of a priest and spent the rest of my life on my knees thanking whatever deity I believed responsible.

So when the correct thousand thousand paces were made and we saw no sign of the road I was not alarmed at all, feeling it perfectly natural that we were lost once more.

Then the lead scout sighted something. Not the road but a settlement. Quatervals and I went forward on our bellies to look at it. It was a sprawling village that stretched straight across our course. It consisted of nearly a hundred low stone buildings of various sizes. The village looked long-abandoned and so we chanced moving forward, through it rather than around.

The closer we got the more eerie the village appeared. We were closer to it than we’d thought when we realized the houses were low, no more than five feet high. They were windowless with curved roofs and looked like various lengths of gray bread loaves positioned haphazardly on the sand.

Strangeness grew as we closed and saw the doorways. They were also low, less than two feet high but almost four feet wide. No human would ever build such a door for a shelter and I wondered what sort of beings had built and lived in this village.

Quatervals, who had stayed in front with the lead scout, motioned for a halt and beckoned me forward. He was no more than thirty feet or so from one of the huts.

I trotted up to him. He said nothing but pointed. I looked at the nearest hut. It and all the others were covered with bas-reliefs, cut into the stone walls. I went a bit closer trying to make out what the inscriptions were and a chill ran hard down my back.

I will not describe the creatures depicted on those walls. Suffice it to say they were not men nor of any earthly creature I have ever seen or heard described. Nor were they like any demon seen or described by any Evocator I’ve known but were rather liquid, flowing, plastic creatures like jellyfish, yet capable of holding strange weapons and fighting dark battles with other creatures equally fabulous.

My skin crawled as I looked at them and something told me it was unhealthy to stare too long at these murals. Nor did I dare creep through any of those eldritch doorways, fearing this village might not be dead, but sleeping. I told Quatervals to move the men through at the double and he merely nodded, not saying a word.

We left that village of the unknown hastily and none of us looked back until it was gone.

We found the road half a day’s journey later, and followed it east. We also learned why our navigation appeared to be in error — it wasn’t. The road — which I thought ran perfectly straight across the steppes — curved so it arced around the village as if even the Old Ones of Tyrenia feared it and wished no reminder of their existence.