Saint Elm's Deep (The Legend of Vanx Malic) (9 page)

It was still early in the day, and with each moment that passed waiting for something to take the bait, the group grew more tense.

Sir Poopsalot was beside himself with disappointment. Every now and again, Vanx could hear his howling on the wind. The dog was leashed to one of the three haulkat sleds Smythe was guarding back near the forest’s edge. When the moment of truth finally came and the shrew showed itself, Vanx didn’t want the young, aggressive dog in the way. It had taken them a good while to find him when he bolted after the snow leaper earlier. No one had voiced a complaint yet, but the annoyed look on the faces of Chelda, Skog and Endell as they searched for him spoke volumes.

Poops wasn’t the only miserable creature Vanx could hear. The poor leaper was whining and bleeding, as if it knew what fate awaited. What was worse was the wound it had opened when it reached the end of its tether. It hadn’t pulled the cord all the way through, but it ripped open a gash a handspan long, and hot blood was easing from it, sending up a small pillar of steam. The leaper’s snowy white fur was matted, and the wound looked bright scarlet against it. The frightened animal had trampled a circle of bloody pink snow ten paces across around the stake that held it in place. At first, it had tried to leap away, but the pain of its wounds and the tether worrying inside it caused it to cease. Now, it just hobbled and mewled like a young goat separated from its nanny.

Vanx now fully understood Brody’s reluctance to bait the shrew in this manner. He glanced at the old archer, who was huddled with his great-bow a good distance away.

Brody was doing his best to ignore the pitiful animal, but his displeasure was showing plainly on his face. Vanx just hoped the leaper didn’t bleed out while they were waiting.

Darbon had stayed back at the base camp. He was watching over the supplies and the other haulkats. The rest of the group, save for Smythe, was spread in a wide circle around the bait, waiting anxiously for their prey to come for its meal.

The wind wasn’t as bad here as it was farther away from the pine forest. The trees and terrain diverted the gale force gusts just enough for the area to be bearable and for visibility to remain fairly clear.

Poops’s insistent howling rode to Vanx’s ears again. He was glad the others couldn’t hear the dog. The silly mutt sounded almost as pitiful as the dying bait, and all because he was left behind with Smythe and the haulkats.

Skog was across from Vanx, his long-bladed pike shaft jutting up from the boulder-like huddle into which he had formed himself. A few dozen paces to either side of him were the twin Skmoes. They had powerful but compact horn bows, similar in design to the broken one they’d found by the ancient corpse. Apparently, they were a favorite hunting weapon of the natives.

Chelda had the old sword she’d found strapped to her waist, but still carried a heavy longbow in her hands. As brave and proud as she was, Vanx was sure she was smart enough not to try to stab a saber shrew with a short sword. At least he hoped she was.

Endell was off to Vanx’s left and was a bit more practical than the rest of them. He had a loaded crossbow in his arms and was standing there sipping his flask. He had three other crossbows laid out, loaded and ready to pick up and fire. As if he sensed Vanx’s eyes on him, he held up the flask in toast, grinned, and took a long pull.

The bundle of dark fur a few paces behind Endell was Xavian. The wizard had chosen the old tracker to be his protector while the killing went on. Vanx had offered to protect him personally, but Xavian had refused after seeing the thin-staved, plain-looking longbow Vanx planned to use. If Xavian wanted to trust his life to a man half drunk, then so be it.

Poops’s howling was becoming more insistent, or maybe the wind was picking up, better carrying the sound to Vanx’s ears. Or maybe, Vanx suddenly realized, it was because the snow leaper had ceased its mewling and was standing stock-still with wide, terrified eyes.

“It comes!” one of the twins half-shouted, half-whispered.

Vanx heard a thick, breaking sound, like an old tree trunk being bent over until it snapped. It was a terrifying noise, and for a fleeting moment Vanx looked down and felt as prone and helpless as the snow leaper. Then he saw it coming and had to swallow back his fear and surprise, for it was far bigger than he’d imagined.

A ridge of snow was being forced up—a swiftly approaching ridge at least as high as two grown men were tall. It was like seeing huge fish swimming just beneath the surface, or a flesh worm crawling under someone’s skin. He couldn’t see the shrew yet, but by the goddess, he knew it had to be huge to displace so much ice and snow.

“Be ready to loose,” Brody called out in his curt fashion.

The mound curved toward one of the twins, then lowered in height until its movements were no longer detectable.

“It dove! Damn the gods!” Chelda yelled as she danced around looking at the ground.

Seeing her, the others were suddenly concerned with their own immediate areas. If someone had approached at that very moment and seen them, it would have looked like some strange, primitive ritual, complete with a sacrificial animal and a frantic dance, was taking place.

“We’re all bait now,” Brody called with a sort of smug satisfaction in his voice. “How the hell is the shrew supposed to know which one of us is the bait?”

Vanx gave the ground a sharp look as he tried to think of what they could do to protect themselves. Then, cutting through the air like a ghostly howl, he heard one of the haulkats cry out. Poops’s stream of barks ended abruptly with the crunching of wood and Smythe’s horrible scream.

“It hit the sleds!” Vanx yelled. He was halfway there before the others even started in the right direction. He stopped when the shrew reared up. He pulled and let an arrow fly, but knew it was a feeble gesture. Then he saw Poops barking at the thing’s feet and started running again to save his tethered friend, for the beast was coming down on the dog and looked to be turning back into its hole.

A mortally wounded haulkat, dragging long loops of its own steamy innards and the tattered remains of one of the sleds, met Vanx and then tried to veer away from him. Vanx caught it by the restraining line and yanked it to a halt. His heart fell. It was the sled he’d tied Poops to, the one in which Smythe had been bundled. There wasn’t much left of the thing; just a few of the hitching boards and one bent iron skid.

Without another thought, Vanx charged to where the attack had occurred. It was a good thing, too, for no sooner had he taken ten steps away from the dying haulkat than the snow below it erupted in a terrible roaring explosion of claws and teeth. Vanx didn’t stop to look back for long, but in that fleeting glimpse he saw that the haulkat was gone from the surface now, and that only a gaping blood-spattered hole and the swiftly trailing line of its harness rig was left to show that it ever existed.

Vanx saw one of the other sleds stuck between two trees. The haulkatten hooked to it was pulling frantically, trying to flee, but was making no headway. The sled was wedged in tightly.

The third sled was bounding steadily away down the tree line, and out of the corner of his eye, Vanx saw one of the Skmoes and Endell redirecting their course to chase after it.

Pieces of the other sled littered the snow around the huge, gaping hole where the shrew had attacked it. Vanx nearly dove in to look for Poops, or some sign of him. He found part of Smythe’s leg near a bloody gouge at the tunnel’s edge. The amount of blood and gore in the smear that trailed away from the leg left no reason to hope that Smythe had survived.

Vanx’s heart clenched, and he had to fight back his anxiety. He’d left Poops tied off to the sled like bait. If his little companion had died because of it, he would never forgive himself.

Throwing caution into the wind, he jumped over the crest of broken ice and snow and went tumbling down into the shaft the shrew had left.

He didn’t find Poops, but he found the seat brackets to which he’d tied Poops’s tether. The leather line had been snapped. He frantically looked for paw prints down in the tunnel, where it leveled out. The bloody trail left by Smythe’s body was plain, but there was no sign of the dog.

He back-scrabbled up out of the hole, startling one of the Skmoes when he came up.

“Help me find Poops,” Vanx said in a harsh, panicked voice.

The Skmoe nodded and began making a fairly wide circle around the hole. He studied the ground as he went.

Vanx did the same, thankful for the simple order and thoroughness of the ever-widening circle search. It wasn’t long before he found Poops’s trail. The tracks were bloody, but not anything like Smythe’s deathly stain had been.

Vanx was starting to follow the trail into the forest when they heard another roaring eruption of snow in the distance. Chelda’s angry voice and Brody’s insistent orders followed the noise; then they were all drowned out by a growling hiss.

“I go,” the Skmoe said. “Shrew take bait. Skog need help.”

Vanx looked at him as if he were crazy. Poops was missing. Who cared about the damn shrew?

He took a deep breath to clear his head and sought out a mental place he had found in his youth. It was a place where the stress and panic of reality could be shed and clear decisions could be rendered. He understood then that the Skmoe was worried about his companion, too. Neither Skog, Chelda or Brody had left the baited area. Xavian was probably still there, as well. They were now fighting the shrew.

“Go,” Vanx said. He made the easy choice to go after Poops, instead of going to help the others. It was a decision based on loyalty and responsibility. Unlike the others, Poops was just a pup. The others were grown people being paid to be here. They could defend themselves, if need be. Vanx just hoped it was a decision that he wouldn’t regret, for the farther he went away from the battle, the more it sounded like they needed him.

Chapter Ten

I’m off to make a fool of a fool,
and a fool of a kingdom too.
I might lose my head to the kingsman’s ax,
but I’ll try to fool him too.
-- The King of Fools

Chelda’s first arrow struck the shrew before it had even fully breached the surface. Her shaft was only a splinter in the beast’s thickly furred skin, though. The shrew crunched the staked-out leaper and a wagon-load’s worth of bloody snow in its powerful, toothy jaws, then turned toward her and roared. Seeing this, Brody loosed immediately.

Brody’s first shaft thumped deeply into the shrew’s neck, causing the huge beast to come completely out of its hole. It thrashed and clawed at the arrow to no avail, but only for a moment.

Easily fifteen paces in length, not counting a tail half again as long, it looked like some grotesquely malformed prairie dog. Its teeth were fanged on top and bottom: the bottom two jutting up and coming back around its snout, the top two coming down as gently curving spikes. Its eyes were the size of dinner plates but looked small on its massive, rodent head. They were jaundiced, but with an ember glow in their depths. Brody saw that the beast was keeping its pink lids squinted, as if the daylight were a great discomfort.

Its fur was gray and damp, and streaked with traces of gold, red and brown. Its forepaws were small in comparison with the rest of it, but the four shovel-like claws splayed off of each of them were as big as a man’s forearm and sharp enough to tunnel through eons’ worth of compacted glacial ice. The long, hairless tail was flicking and flitting behind it, kicking up puffs of loose snow.

It let out a breathy roar that clouded its head in steam, then moved impossibly fast.

Brody nearly fumbled his great-bow when the shrew spun around to face him. It raised up and lunged on its haunches, stretching its seemingly compact body out to a surprising length, like a mongoose striking a snake. Brody managed to loose an arrow at its taut midsection before its head and claws came down just three paces before him, but he hadn’t had a full draw on his bow when he’d let it fly. He doubted the shaft had gotten any sort of penetration at all. He didn’t have time to fret about it, though, for he had to turn and run to avoid the shrew’s raking claws.