Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion) (23 page)

“We’ll need to keep a watch, in case these foul creatures return,” she said. “But now that we know how they swarm, we ought to be able to knock them back before they can grow in number—hopefully without having to set everything afire. Bring the rest of the men here, but before they come into the corridor, make sure they have none of those damnable caterpillars crawling on them—”

“That means we’ll have to strip,” Aedran cut in.

“Modesty will do us more harm than good,” she said, and received reluctant nods all around. Listening to the rising commotion in the great hall, she added, “I suggest you make all haste, or my army will flee Stormhold.”

When Aedran and the others hesitated, Erryn took a deep breath, drew off her cloak, and shook it out. Next off was her coat, then her first of three tunics. Her general and captains followed suit.

Her talk about modesty came back to haunt her when she stood as naked as her men. As far as she could tell, they were not looking at her as they would a goddess-queen, but as men who see a desirable woman.

Not to be outdone, she boldly returned their scrutiny. When she looked on Aedran, she felt the same eagerness and regret in her heart that she saw in his eyes. Both emotions she pushed down, strangling the life out of them.

After ensuring no caterpillars had taken refuge in her clothing, Erryn got dressed again, as did her men. While no one had set fire to the worms in the great hall, the tiny creatures had begun to disperse. Neither Erryn nor Aedran thought it wise to count on the creatures not returning.

A few shouts got the army moving toward the corridor. A few more shouts had the men in front stripping out of their caterpillar-infested clothing and armor, shaking it all out, and then moving into their narrow sanctuary.

Erryn oversaw everything. Some of the Prythians looked askance at her, but she only bid them entry with a curt gesture after Aedran or one of her captains had ensured they weren’t bringing any of the worms with them. Most of the men bore welts and swollen bite marks.

Erryn recoiled when Zander tottered into the torchlight, his curly black hair matted with sweat and blood. He had removed his cloak and trousers, but still wore his scaled jerkin. His eyes, red and puffy, rolled feverishly.

“Are you daft, lad?” One Eye Thal asked. “The queen’s order was to take everything off.”

Zander wobbled where he stood, and began pissing on the floor. “Gobble my arse, you ugly, one-eyed whoreson,” Zander mumbled, as if his tongue had grown too thick for his mouth.

One Eye Thal’s fists clenched, but Aedran stopped him from disciplining the man. The general leaned closer to Zander. Erryn suddenly wanted to scream at him to keep his distance, but the words stuck in her throat.

“He’s sick,” Aedran said.

“Is it venom?” Erryn asked.

“Mayhap,” Aedran said, brow furrowed. He spoke quietly to Erryn and the other captains, but all of them denied seeing anyone else showing the signs of fever or delirium.

“Make sure he’s free of worms,” Aedran said then, “but put him away from the others. If there’s sickness here, we don’t need it running through the rest of us.”

“Be hard to keep it at bay, packed in as we are,” One Eye Thal said.

“There’s nothing for it,” Aedran said, then called over a pair of soldiers to lead a muttering Zander away.

Erryn watched the soldier scratching at a rash of pustules ranging from his fingers to the back of his hand. Earlier, that same hand had been full of caterpillar spines. If venom afflicted him, she hoped it was nothing deadly.
If it is
, she thought, troubled that such a cold calculation would enter her mind,
then I may lose half my army … or more
.

Chapter 18

Time to dance for your master, puppet-boy!
came his mother’s drunken cackle.

Algar tried to ignore her, but she was right. Brother Jathen needed to hear what was afoot. Yet, Algar still hesitated to use the seeing glass to contact the monk, because, truth told, he was not sure
what
was afoot.

Cloaked in shadows born of the Spirit Stone, he had been watching Edrik and his fellows since they arrived atop the place they named Ruan Breach. Far below, the River Sedge churned through the gorge’s throat. Once past those dark waters, the river spread wide and was frozen over. There were several slender boats lining the southern riverbank, which Edrik’s men had taken from the snow-laden brush. Those boats seemed too delicate for navigating the River Sedge, but apparently Edrik and his fellows had used them before. Two men had remained with the boats. One was still there, staring across the river, and the other had headed downstream.

Algar wanted to move closer to Edrik and Danlin, who were gazing down into the stony breach, but stopped himself. Dark clouds had been building throughout the day, but the gloomy light was still strong enough to break the Spirit Stone’s spell and make him visible. He could step into the Zanar-Sariit, but each time he did, it seemed as if the spirits of the dead were drawn to him more strongly than before. With that in mind, he chose to huddle out of sight within a dense stand of firs.

As soon as they had arrived, Edrik ordered most of his fellows to begin cutting down slender trees with short swords barely suited to the task. Afterward, they cut the logs into posts the length of a man’s leg, and then sharpened one end. When they had gathered a sizable stack, he ordered them to make several shorter posts, these without a sharpened end.

Now the men were using the short posts as hammers to drive the sharpened posts into a crack running along the top edge of the gorge.

Algar tried to envision some kind of weaponry, but no matter how he looked at it, that didn’t make any sense. His next thought was that they were building a shelter, but that made even less sense. Setting up camp would not help them capture Rathe.

Your master might know, puppet-boy.

Deep in concentration, his mother’s nattering voice didn’t trouble Algar as much as it normally would, and he even found himself agreeing with her. Brother Jathen, after all, followed the Path of War.

Stealing deeper into the trees, Algar pulled the seeing glass from the sack at his belt, and used the tip of his finger to trace a rune over its milky white surface.

~ ~ ~

The faint chime sounded continually, stabbing into his dream. Grumbling, Brother Jathen dragged a coarse woolen blanket over his head, blocking the noise and blotting out the thin light within the tent….

And then he was with Fira again, her fiery hair spread in a fan around her head. She smiled, her green eyes languid in the candle light as he caressed her breasts, rolled her nipples between his thumb and forefinger.

“Take me,” she said, a breathless command.

“Those are a whore’s words,” he chided, though not minding at all.

“Then make me your whore.”

His fingers abandoned her breasts and walked a path down her flat belly. As they ventured lower, she arched her back, lifting her slender hips. His fingers explored the damp heat between her legs.

“Now,” she moaned.

He grinned. “All in good time—”

The chiming came again, and the vision of Fira broke completely apart, only to reform into the sneering face of Algar.

Snarling, Jathen jerked the blanket off his head and flung it aside. “Goddamned fool refuses to obey me until now?” he asked the empty tent, a mean affair for one of his station. He sat up on the edge of his cot, fingering the healed but still tender scar on his brow. The uneven flesh was cold to the touch. He glanced to the side and saw that the coals in the iron brazier, set beside a wooden stand holding his armor, had gone to ash.

A young monk of his order hesitantly poked his head through the tent flap. Instead of customary robes, the youth wore a boiled leather breastplate emblazoned with a fiery sun that represented the illuminating light of the Way of Knowing. “General, did you call?”

General
. Jathen savored the title. No brothers of the Way of Knowing had used military rank in long years, not even his order. It had been five centuries since any monk of Skalos had actually lifted a sword or spear with the intention of drawing blood. All that was about to change, thanks to the supporter who had joined him the day before, and who had graciously offered him the eventual rule of the Iron Marches in exchange for Rathe Lahkurin.

The sergeant shifted nervously. “Sir?”

Jathen looked up. “No, you babbling fool, I didn’t call for you.”

“Very well, sir,” the sergeant said uneasily, ducking back out of the tent.

“Wait!” Jathen snarled, halting the youth. “Bring coals for the brazier. I’m freezing my stones off.”

“Of course, general. At once, sir.” He ducked out of sight before the last word had passed his lips.

The chime sounded again.

With an oath, Jathen reached for a felt-lined box he kept the seeing glass in while traveling. After opening the lid, he drew a rune over the face of the pale orb. The milky surface swirled, revealing Algar’s pinched features. He looked as impatient and angry as usual.

“You’re late in joining me,” Jathen said, foregoing false pleasantries. More than begin late, the man was an insolent oaf. Yet, he still had his uses.
For how long, though?
“I trust there’s a reason for your delay?”

“The bounty hunters are still after Rathe,” Algar said.

“Bounty hunters?” Jathen thought a moment, but Fira’s face and lush body were still parading through his mind. With some reluctance, he pushed her aside in order to concentrate.
Bounty hunters?
When he remembered what the insolent fool had told him before, his anger flared anew. “Ah, yes, the outlanders who you said looked like Prythians, but were not?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you still troubling yourself with them?”

Algar ground his teeth together. “I told you before, monk, they’re after Rathe. Now I have reason to fear they mean to take him before the
Lamprey
can sail through Ruan Breach.”

Jathen frowned. “Why would you think that?”

Algar spoke for a time, and Jathen listened. He suddenly sat bolt upright.
Can they be so foolish?
Considering what Algar had just told him, he supposed they could.

“You must stop them,” Jathen blurted, interrupting Algar’s report.

“Why, monk?”

“Do as I say!”

Not waiting for a response, Jathen ran his finger over the seeing glass, making Algar’s face vanish. After tucking the orb into its box, he began pulling on his armor. When the sergeant returned with a bucket of coals, Jathen was just finishing with the last buckle. He sent the youth off with a new set of orders.

Within minutes the large encampment, which lay a league west of Ruan Breach, had become a bedlam of activity.

Chapter 19

As day faltered toward dusk, the River Sedge carried the
Lamprey
along at the pace of a galloping horse over rolling waves and through sucking eddies.
A wallowing tub like this shouldn’t go so fast
, Rathe thought, standing amidships and listening to the ship’s timbers creak and groan. More disconcerting was the sight of the helmsman using a member of the crew to help him keep the rudder steady.

Captain Ostre had mentioned that the river would get rougher as it narrowed to no more than a hundred strides, but had also assured Rathe all would be well. “I’ve passed through Ruan Breach more times than I remember. Even in high summer, when the Sedge is at its lowest flow, it’s plenty deep enough for the
Lamprey’s
draft.”

Rathe hoped that was true, for if the ship ran aground now, the current would quickly dash it to bits. He and everyone aboard the ship might survive that, but the cold black waters of the Sedge spoke of death with a cold and watery tongue.

“Crew says a storm is coming,” Loro said, joining Rathe’s side. Dark clouds had been building throughout the day, and were now spitting occasional showers of snow. The wind had picked up, making the rigging sing.

“Captain Ostre has said the same since we left Iceford,” Rathe allowed, “but we’ve yet to suffer anything worthy of being named a storm.”

Loro shrugged. “We’re not from these lands, so how can we know?”

“What else does the crew say?”

“That these early storms oft bury the land to the height of a man sitting astride a horse.” The cuts on Loro’s face had scabbed over, but the rest was a mottled confusion of swollen and bruised flesh. Still, he looked better than Liamas, who had joined the crew an hour earlier. Battered though the Prythian was, it didn’t keep him from barking orders and making threats. So far, he and Loro had avoided talking, but they had gone so far as to share amicable nods.

Rathe looked for Edrik’s company along the southern cliff, but by now the day had grown too old and dark to make out anything besides overhanging trees. “I’m more concerned about the outlanders, and whatever they have planned for us.”

“Bah!” Loro said, flapping a dismissive hand. “The worst those fools can do is lob a few fire arrows our way. With night almost on us, they’ll have a hard time hitting anything.”