Of Bone and Thunder (15 page)

The release of energy as the metal bow sprang forward coupled with the sharp whip of the string sounded terribly loud. The bolt vanished from his sight, but he could hear its progress through the jungle as it ripped through leaves and fronds.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Sinte counted bolts—any soldier with less than twenty-four in his quiver had to have a damn good reason for it. Vooford considered walking into the jungle to search for the bolt but gave that up right away. He'd grab one from someone else's quiver. They were cowards anyway for not standing up to Sinte, so let them deal with him and his fucking rules.

With his anger bleeding away, Vooford found the jungle had grown darker. He blinked and realized that no, it wasn't darker, just quieter. He didn't like it. He hated the jungle with all its noise, but there was something worse about hearing it like this. Suddenly, he wanted very much to be back among the protection of the shield.

He bent over and placed his left foot in the metal stirrup at the end of his crossbow while cradling the bow between his knees. He took the end of his belt with its curved metal flange and hooked it under the crossbow string. Grunting, he stood up, taking the strain across his lower back and his thighs as he pulled the bow back to its full draw. When he heard the reassuring click of the trigger cam catching the string, he stopped pulling and bent his knees to unhook his belt and straighten up. Using his foot, he lifted the crossbow up to his hands and grabbed it, cradling it in his left arm while simultaneously reaching around his back to pull a bolt from his quiver.

A shadow appeared out of the jungle and moved onto the path five yards away from where he stood. Vooford froze, his right hand gripping a bolt while his left still held the crossbow. The shadow was between him and the ocean. He could slide the bolt into the firing groove and take the shot, or run back to the shield.

The idea of running back to Sinte infuriated him, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself by reloading, so he remained perfectly still. The shadow hadn't moved since it appeared. Vooford squinted, trying to make it out, but it was too dark.

Fuck it
, he said to himself, whipping his right hand around and slamming the bolt into the groove. He swung the crossbow up to chest height, shouldered the stock in one practiced move, and took aim.

The shadow was gone.

He blinked, dipping his crossbow down so he could scan the path.

He heard the flight of the bolt as a high, thin sound as it sped through the dark. The vibration of the bowstring reached his ears a flick later, but by then the arrow had punched a hole in the iron plate covering his heart. Its metal tip tore flesh, ripped muscle, and shattered a rib before drilling straight through the lower left corner of his heart and on through his chest, tenting his aketon as it came to a halt sticking several inches out his back.

Vooford sank slowly to his knees, the crossbow slipping from his hands. He tried to hold on to it, but his hands no longer worked. His knees dug into the dirt, but if there was pain he couldn't tell. His entire existence now burned with white-hot focus on the shaft in his chest. He swayed, fighting the pull of the ground. If he fell, he'd never get back up.

He tried taking a breath, but though his mouth opened and closed, he couldn't draw in any air. His lungs burned; his mind reeled. A second bolt glanced off his left shoulder and clipped his left ear, lodging itself in his skull.

Shards of pain lanced Vooford's head. He tipped to the right, corrected, and then began to fall to the left. His mouth opened wider, but his scream remained silent as the ground raced up toward him. When his head hit the ground, it would drive the bolt through his—

CARNY WOKE UP
slowly, struggling to hold on to a dream already slipping through his fingers. He was back in Timston Falls, the smell of his mother's pottage bubbling away in the large cast-iron pot hung from a steel hook over a bright orange bed of coals. It was the Day of Trees, the day when workers laid down the hoe and the hammer and gloried in the shade of the Sacred Tree, its protection symbolized by the green tablecloth of pressed cotton his mother brought out to cover their battered wooden table once a week.

Even though he knew there would be an hour of reading from the LOKAM that morning, and another at nightfall, he didn't care. Today was a special day. He walked over to the pot slowly, pausing with each step to sniff the aromas rising into the air.

“Opossum?” he asked, hoping it wasn't. He didn't mind the taste, but he hated the look of the animal. It struck him as far too intelligent. He
couldn't shake the feeling that when one opossum was killed, the others gathered in the trees plotting their revenge.

“I didn't see any of them whispering in the eaves,” his mother said. He'd confessed his concerns about the creatures to her a month ago. Despite their abundance in the village forest, they hadn't had opossum since.

He took a step closer and another sniff. “Porcupine?”

“We don't have enough ink nor paper for the quills we have,” she said, bustling about their small one-room cottage.

“Rabbit,” he guessed next, stepping right up to the pot. He peered inside, but the brown, bubbling mass gave nothing away.

“That's a jump in the right direction, but you'll have to think bigger.”

He leaned over and tried to make out a piece of meat among the vegetable mulch that made up the pottage six days of seven. “Dog?” he said, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice.

His mother stopped her chores long enough to give him a long, hard look. Her face was thin and creased with wrinkles, and her red hair lay flat and dull on her head, but her eyes were bright and her smile warm. “That was a long, cold winter, Carnan, and we did what we had to do to make it to spring. Guess again.”

Tiring of the game, he threw out the one animal he knew would never be in their pot. “Deer.”

He expected his mother to laugh, or at least cluck her tongue at his foolishness, but she did neither. Instead, she walked over to him, bent down to the pot, and ladled out a portion of the pottage. She pointed at a piece of meat floating on the top. “Try it.”

He looked from the ladle to her, and then back at the ladle. Gingerly, he reached forward and plucked the meat from the pottage, quickly popping it into his mouth. He first noticed the tang. Sharp, but with a smooth, rich flavor. It was lean and soft, tearing apart like good, fresh bread. He looked up at his mother in surprise. “Is it
really
deer?”

She smiled and drew him into her embrace with one arm. “You are my love, my light, my tree in the storm.”

Carny absently brushed away tears from his eyes as he woke all the way and remembered where he was.

Something was different. It was still dark, his head was fuzzy, and his
mouth felt like an old bird nest. He desperately wanted a drink of water, but he kept still. He opened his eyes wider. The jungle offered him nothing new to see.

He looked to the right, hoping to pick out the shape of Big Hog. Even the sight of rustling leaves would be welcome at this point. Fear gripped Carny, sheathing his heart in ice.
What the hell is wrong?

A twig snapped somewhere off to his left. It echoed in the stillness and Carny understood. The jungle had gone silent.

When they'd first landed in Luitox and made their way past the tree line, Carny was terrified. The sounds were more oppressive than the heat. What made it worse was not knowing the sounds' origins. It took him a month to discover that the source of a high, shrieking cackle belonged not to a deranged monster but to a small bird no bigger than a sparrow back home. Now he longed to hear that maniacal little bastard.

A shadow materialized out of the jungle and came straight at him. Carny reached for his crossbow and scooped it up with his shaking right hand. He pointed it at the shadow as his fingers fumbled for the trigger and squeezed as the shadow reached him.

The crossbow didn't fire.

Fucking safety latch!

LC Listowk reached down and gently pushed the crossbow to the side so that it no longer pointed at his chest.

Every muscle in Carny's body melted and he sank back into the dirt. “Holy—” was all he managed to say before Listowk's other hand covered his mouth and he whispered in Carny's ear.

“Slyts.”

Carny froze again. He looked at Listowk's face to see if this was some kind of mad joke, but there wasn't a hint of mirth to be found.

Listowk took his hand away and wiped it on his tunic. He put a finger to his lips, then motioned for Carny to stay put. Carny nodded, thankful he wasn't being asked to do anything.

The LC moved farther down the rut and a few moments later returned with Big Hog in tow. The farmer was wide-eyed. They stopped in front of Carny.

“What's going on?” Carny mouthed.

Before Listowk could answer, the Weasel appeared, shaking. “Slyts, dozens of them,” he hissed.

Listowk pointed a finger at the Weasel and mouthed the words
Shut up
.

“Wraith?” Carny mouthed.

Listowk motioned with his thumb over his shoulder and then pointed at his eyes, meaning Wraith remained on watch. He then pointed to the ground and had them all squeeze in tight. Despite the heat, Carny shivered.
Dozens of them!
He was going to die, he just knew it.

“Slyts all over the mountain. Above and below,” Listowk said, his voice quiet and tight and hoarse.

Oh, fuck, that's it
, Carny thought, shaking his head.
We're completely surrounded.

Listowk must have figured out what he was thinking, because he reached out and rapped his knuckles on Carny's forehead. “Our way to the beach is cut off. Anyone makes a run for it, and they're dead. Understand?”

Carny nodded. The others did, too.

“Then we go back to the shield,” the Weasel said, starting to get up.

Listowk grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back down. “They're above us and below us. We try moving now and we'll be skewered.”

“How do we warn the shield?” Big Hog asked.

For an answer, Listowk removed the bolt from his crossbow and put it in his quiver, then drew out another bolt and slotted it in place. It was thick and dull white at one end and lacked an iron tip. A signal-star bolt.

“Every slyt will know we're here if you fire that off,” Carny said.

Before Listowk could respond a rustle of leaves sounded and Lingletti appeared on the edge of their circle. “They're coming down the ravine.”

Listowk got up into a crouch. “Stay low, keep your backs to the embankment, and remember to breathe. Weasel and Big Hog, cover the right flank. Wraith and I will cover the left. Carny, watch the center,” Listowk ordered. “And everybody stay as quiet as you can.” He stood up, aimed his crossbow into the sky, and squeezed the trigger.

The twang of the metal bow releasing and the hum of the string were drowned out by the hissing sound of the flare bolt as it sped skyward. It
punched through a couple of leaves and then soared above the canopy, where it blazed a bright red. The jungle came alive with arcing shadows.

“There!” Listowk shouted.

Carny looked to the left. A cluster of shadowy figures stood ten yards away staring up at the flare. It was difficult to make them out clearly through the leaves, but there was just enough light if he squinted.

He raised his crossbow up and drove the butt into the padding of his aketon at his shoulder. He forgot to control his breathing. He also forgot to brace his stance and didn't come close to getting his eye level with the sight before he jerked the lever and fired. The bolt leaped from the crossbow and immediately disappeared.

Bowstrings hummed and metal arms twanged and creaked as bolts streaked through the jungle. Slyts were screaming and shouting, making Carny's skin crawl. He couldn't understand a single word, but his imagination came up with terrifying possibilities. Leaves shook and branches snapped and cracked as slyts now ran all over the mountainside.

“To the right! To the right!” the LC shouted.

Carny looked but couldn't see a damn thing. He tore his eyes away from the jungle and began reloading his crossbow, totally vulnerable as he bent over and pulled the string back, completely forgetting to use the hook on his belt. His hands were shaking so much that he released the string before the latch caught and the bow arms sprung back down. The bowstring tore out of his fingers, ripping into the flesh of two fingertips. He screamed in pain.

“Carny's hit!” Big Hog shouted.

The LC was over him in a flash. “Where are you hit?”

“Fuck, I'm fine—I just skinned some fingers,” he said, his cheeks flushing.

Listowk reached down and quickly patted Carny all over, then pulled away. “Next time you scream like that, you'd better have an arrow sticking out of your skull.”

“I got one. Nailed that slyt right in the gut!” the Weasel shouted.

“Shut the fuck up!” Listowk hissed in the Weasel's direction. “You want every slyt on this mountain to know where we are?”

“I think it's too late for that, LC,” said Carny.

Screams and shouts mixed with cries all around them. The sound of running feet and thrashing vegetation crisscrossed the mountainside in every direction. Carny gripped his bowstring again and pulled, gritting his teeth at the pain. He felt the latch catch this time and quickly pulled his fingers away.

“Qow nela mranona waw! Qow nela mranona sirn waw!”

“That's a woman,” Carny muttered, fumbling for a bolt from his quiver. He was getting blood over everything.

“They can still shoot a bow,” Listowk said, turning and training his crossbow on the jungle directly in front of them.

Carny grabbed a bolt and slotted it into his bow. His helm had slid down his forehead and was covering his eyes. He reached up a hand to push it back in place as the leaves of the plants began to shake. Carny heard someone breathing heavily.