Servant of the Serpent (Serpent's War Book 1) (2 page)

He summoned up the last bit of strength he had and clutched the squirming bundle under his arm. Gildor lurched forward, ignoring the fire in his lungs for fear of the fire all around him. He staggered forward, shielding his face with his left arm while clutching the child with his right. His legs pumped, all his focus on making them work while he steered towards the dark spot in the wall of reds, yellows, oranges, and whites.

He burst out of the burning house, forgetting about the burning corpse in the doorway and tripping on it again. Gildor fell, twisting to keep the child on top of him as he slammed into the ground. His back and side ached and it took him a moment to gasp in a breath. The air reeked of burnt meat, wood, and everything else in the village but to him it seemed as sweet as tea with honey.

The crack of timber and rush of fresh flames jerked his head to the side. The roof on the house he’d been in was sagging. Gildor rolled and lurched to his feet before clutching the bundle that still squirmed tight against him.

He heard a shout but knew better than to turn. Whoever it was hadn’t spoken in a language he understood. Even worse, it was the splisskin’s native tongue. Gildor lurched around the corner of the burning house and stumbled towards the river when the roof creaked and cracked a final time. It collapsed in, blowing flaming brands and superheated air out and sending Gildor tumbling again.

When he oriented himself, he checked on the baby he’d rescued. He pulled back the blanket, marveling that it still felt damp. He revealed the child’s face and was treated to fresh screaming and coughing, followed by the baby spitting up and coughing some more.

Gildor cursed and rolled back to his knees. Something bit him in the side and then the leg. He spun, afraid the splisskin had caught up to him already, but didn’t see anyone nearby. He glanced down and realized he was on fire.

He swatted at the patches of burning leather and then snatched his hand back and shook it. The river! He turned and ran, limping as the flames bit deeper into his flesh. Gildor splashed into the river and fell forward as his boots got stuck in the mud. He twisted and thrust the baby into the air as the water swallowed him.

He rose up, spitting and sputtering and bootless a moment later. The child howled louder than ever now that there was fresh air to be had. Gildor lurched to his feet and held the baby close. “Hush, little one,” he pleaded with the child. “You’ll give us away.”

The baby screamed on.

Gildor lurched through the river and kept close to the docks. The splisskin were shouting to each other now and from the sounds, they were coming closer. Gildor pushed on, making for the furthest docks were the large rafts used to ferry people across the river were kept. As he neared, he saw the barge on the eastern side of the river had been broken apart and scuttled.

A splash to his left, in the open water, drew his attention. He saw nothing and looked back. Splisskin were running to the docks and stopping long enough to throw spears, rocks, pieces of broken wood, or whatever else they had at hand.

Gildor dropped into the water so that only his head and shoulders were above the surface. He clutched the bundled infant as high as he could but the cool river water soaked the blanket and added to the child’s cries. Gildor took the only option he could and ducked under the dock and came out on the far side of it before pushing ahead and using it as cover.

He hesitated when he reached the end of the dock. He didn’t need to crouch to stay low in the water anymore; the bottom had fallen far enough he was going to have to swim soon. With a baby. He cursed and struck out, rolling onto his back and clutching the child to his chest while he kicked as hard as he could.

Less than a minute passed before his sore chest was aching for air. His legs were numb and the muscles throughout his body were waiting to seize the chance to cramp him as soon as he rested. He floundered on until he saw the silhouettes of splisskin running to the edge of the dock he’d left behind. They were outlined by the burning buildings and looked every bit like fire-breathing demons.

A soft whistle through the air was followed by a wet thud. One of the splisskin stumbled back and fell to the dock before rolling off and sliding into the river. The other flinched and ducked, but an arrow found him a moment later and ripped through his thigh and slammed into a barrel. The splisskin dropped the rest of the way to the dock and grabbed at his leg while hissing and spitting in his own language.

Gildor wanted to laugh but he didn’t have the air or the energy for it. He struggled on, fighting the sluggish current and the weight of his armor and weapons. More splisskin were coming but the arrows Bucknar launched at them forced them to take cover.

Gildor reached back with his hand and felt the gritty mud of the bottom. He collapsed, dropping his legs and trying to gather them under him. He splashed and rolled, almost drowning the child in the process, and finally managed to crawl out of the river and up onto the bank. He lay still for a moment, gasping for breath and wondering if he’d ever walk again. The baby continued to cry.

A splash made him jerk his head up to see the shaft of a spear sticking out of the water a few feet away from him. He bit off a curse, knowing he couldn’t spare the energy, and gathered the wet and miserable bundle from the shore. He limped into the scrub, wincing and staggering as his bare feet found rocks and roots.

“Gildor! Hold up!” Bucknar cried out to his left.

Gildor stopped and bent over, holding the baby and gasping for breath.

“Saint’s alive, son! What were you thinking?” Bucknar asked as he jogged up to him with the horses trailing behind him. The man held a bow in one hand and the reins in his other. “How many of them snake men were there?”

Gildor shook his head. “Don’t know. Many. Too many. Couldn’t count.”

“Get your breath, son. Saints, shut that girl up, would you? You’ll have every hungry critter in a mile’s radius on us.”

“Girl?” Gildor asked. He turned to look at the baby and offered the red-faced infant a smile. She cried on.

“Check for yourself,” his father said. “She’s cold and wet and a babe that young can’t handle that. She needs to get quiet but if she does, it means you’ve wasted your time and risked your life for nothing.”

“What?”

“She’s freezing! Kids that young can’t handle such things,” Bucknar snapped. He scowled and turned back to his horse. He started digging through his pack before glancing back. “Damn you, boy, get her out of them wet rags!”

Gildor jumped and then started to unwrap the child from the sheet and then her own rags she’d been dressed in. He grimaced when he saw and smelled the mess she’d left behind in them. Bucknar winced and took her from him so he could wrap her in the fresh blanket from his pack.

Gildor took her back and held her in the crook of his arm. He took the reins to his horse in the other and then swung up into the saddle. Bucknar gasped as he fumbled and nearly dropped the child, but it made the girl’s eyes widen and then she broke into her first smile.

“Come on,” Bucknar said. “They’ve no easy way to cross the river; we should be safe. Maybe we can make it back in time to salvage some of our wages too.”

“What about the baby?” Gildor asked.

Bucknar glanced at him and shook his head. “You should have thought about that before risking your fool neck to save her.”

“What? Wait! I don’t know anything about children!”

“You was one once,” Bucknar said. “Start there. She’ll need milk and clothes, at least until she starts cutting teeth.”

“But—”

“Give her a name,” Bucknar suggested. “Makes it easier to yell at her when she’s got a name.”

Gildor stared down at the child who had grown quiet at his side. Her eyelids grew heavy with each swaying step of his horse. He frowned and tilted his head. “Allisandra,” he whispered. “We’ll call you Allisandra.”

Bucknar harrumphed. “I’ll call her a bad idea,” he said. “You call her what you like. You owe me a half dozen arrows too, by the way.”

Gildor rolled his eyes and rode on, glancing often at the sleeping babe he’d unwittingly adopted.

Chapter 1

Corian leaned around the trunk of the tree and raised his bow. He braced himself to draw back on the string and then paused. The four splisskin he’d been tracking were joining another group. Reinforcements?

He hesitated and then slipped away to try to find a better vantage point. He’d stumbled across the trail of the snake men and immediately turned to give chase. His journey to the elven mountain city of Fylandria was forgotten. Splisskin had no right being this far inside the forest. There was no law or treaty expressly forbidding them; it was simply something that never happened. They weren’t welcomed.

Corian leapt up into another tree and held his bow with one hand and held the knocked arrow tight against it with his finger. He swung up and landed on a thick limb, crouching to remain hidden. He had to inch out along the branch until he had a line of sight to the splisskin. They were gathered together in a tight group, obscuring their numbers. Corian frowned and tried to figure out if there were seven or eight of the reptilian men. They kept moving, including crouching down and standing up.

“What are you snake lovers doing?” he muttered as he watched.

They shifted apart enough for his keen elven eyes to pick out a body on the ground. A body wearing the green and gray cloak of the royal house in Fylandria. Corian froze for a moment, his throat blocking the passage of his breath to save him from crying out in alarm. One of the splisskin held a spear in his hand, a spear that had a blade darkened with blood.

The young elf rose up and stretched his bow back. He took aim at the snake man with the bloody spear and loosed his arrow. He drew a second and had it fitted to the string before the first struck the unsuspecting splisskin.

Corian fired four arrows before the murdering splisskin were aware of the threat. Two of them were down and two others staggering and seeking cover with arrows impaling their scaly hides. Sibilant cries filled the forest as they searched for the archer. Corian fired his fifth arrow and leapt down from the tree limb, catching it with his free hand to soften the fall.

A spear sailed through the air to his left. He’d been seen. Corian leapt away and slid a fresh arrow into his bow while he moved between trees. He moved forward, cutting between ridges of dirt and roots and rocks that dotted the forest floor.

A splisskin came at him from the right, leaping off a berm and brandishing his curved sword. Corian twisted and released his arrow, and then kept spinning and reached for another arrow in the quiver on his back. The splisskin hissed and crashed to the ground, rolling and breaking the arrow in his side even as the impact drove it deeper.

The sound of another of the scaled invaders forced Corian to turn back. He snapped his bow around, slapping the splisskin in the side of the head and driving his spear out to the side. Corian gave up his search for a fresh arrow and drew the long knife at his side instead. He ducked under the snake man’s returning spear and buried his knife in the scales on the inside of the lizard man’s thigh.

The splisskin fell back and grabbed for his thigh with one hand while he used the other to launch a wild swing with his spear at Corian. The elf knocked it aside with his bow and slashed across with his knife, opening a gash across his chest and severing the straps of the leather harness he wore.

Corian leapt back and turned to see two more splisskin rushing between tree trunks on his right. On his left, beside the invader he’d stabbed and cut, another of the scale-covered men stepped out from the moss-covered rocks he’d run around instead of over. The three splisskin slowed and looked to one another to coordinate their attack.

Corian twisted back and forth, keeping an eye on the splisskin and trying to stop them from flanking him. The invader on his far right hissed something Corian didn’t understand. All three of them advanced, closing faster on him. He wondered if they were afraid he’d put enough distance he could risk shooting his bow again, even though he had less than a handful of arrows remaining.

Instead of waiting for them to overwhelm him, Corian dug his left foot into the ground when he stepped back and then ran forward. He drove one foot into the back of the splisskin he’d shot in the side and leapt off it at the openmouthed snake men. He slapped his bow against the arm of the splisskin on his right to keep his sword away and used his knife to deflect a thrust from the other splisskin’s sword.

Corian danced on his feet and spun when he landed, circling left and forcing the snake man to overextend himself as he spun and tried to stab him again. He slashed out, cutting through scale and muscle on the extended arm and forcing the splisskin to drop his sword from his numb hand.

Corian used the momentum from his slashing attack to twist around and bring his bow in for a backhanded blow to the head of his target. The splisskin staggered off balance, letting Corian finish his twist by jamming his long knife in until the guard slammed into scales. He pushed the dying snake man back away from him and took a single step to gain some room while the splisskin fumbled up his partner.

Corian dropped his knife point first into the ground at his side and loaded a fresh arrow to his bow. The splisskin that had originally tried to flank him froze as he saw Corian draw back the string and stare down the arrow at him. He started to turn so he could dive away but Corian’s arrow slammed into his neck and ripped through it, feathers and all, before bouncing off a rock and shooting into the forest.

The remaining splisskin freed his legs from the weight of the dying snake man and lifted his sword and head. Corian was pulling one of his final arrows from his quiver. The invader jerked his hand back and then forward, throwing his sword before he turned and made a run for it.

Corian ducked the sword and gave chase, his light feet dancing across ground and rock until he came to stop on top of a fallen tree. He drew back his string and fired, striking the splisskin in the back just below his ribs.

The splisskin jerked forward and staggered to a halt, both hands going to the exit wound in his belly that spurted blood and dribbled torn tissue. He staggered a few more steps and turned to look back as Corian’s next arrow slammed into the side of his head and dropped him like a stone.

The elven man spun around and reached for another arrow. His quiver was spent, the last of his shafts used to kill the fleeing snake man. He frowned and glanced back to his knife. He had another, in his boot, but it was small and of little use against an armed and dangerous opponent. Another sweep of his gaze through the forest confirmed that he’d run out of enemies. He let out a short laugh of relief and hurried to gather his knife and check to see if any of his arrows could be reclaimed.

The splisskin’s steel was cheap and their spears barely more than sticks with crude short steel blades driven onto them. He managed to recover a single arrow before moving to the road that ran through the forest. Three splisskin lay on or near the road. Only one of his arrows was fit to use; the others were cracked, broken, or missing feathers. Content with his findings, he moved to the fallen elf and moved to flip the man over.

His breath hissed when he saw it was no man at all. A woman then. A young elf maid too, he reasoned. Maybe even younger than he was. He frowned and studied the supple leather that hugged her lithe figure. It was stained with dirt and blood. Her face was scraped and her lips split, but they bore dirt instead of blood on them. Injuries after she’d been killed? He scowled and was about to rise up when he noticed that one of her hands was clutched tight around a pack at her hip.

Even in death, Corian had to pry her fingers apart. He released the clasp and opened the small pack to find a wooden tube inside with the royal seal on it. He breathed out a sigh of relief at his discovery. She was a messenger, not a member of the Fathaladyll royal blood line.

He frowned and pulled the wooden tube out. What was the message, and why did she die trying to deliver it? The splisskin were a crude and stupid people, but were they dumb enough to risk war with the elves over this? He’d heard rumors that sought to confirm their relation to dragons, or at least their subservience to them. Dragons held little to do with the elves. There were two that laired in the mountains, but they were to the northeast and northwest of Fylandria.

Corian scowled again and reached to crack the seal on the end of it. He hesitated, his hand twitching. Was it a crime to read a royal missive that wasn’t intended for him? He didn’t know who it belonged to, only where it came from.

“Damn splisskin,” he mumbled before studying the sealed wooden tube again. One end held the embossed seal of Fathaladyll on it, the other had the four-pointed leaf of a callowill tree pressed into the soft metal seal. Callowill trees made up the bulk of the southern reaches of the forest, where Corian grew up.

He rose to his feet and looked north and south along the road. He was the only living soul in sight, though the sounds of the forest were returning now that the battle had ended. He looked down at the slain messenger a final time before tucking the tube in his pack and turning to the south. His hopes of finding work in the royal house of Fathaladyll were dashed.

“Rest easy, sister,” he said to the body at his feet. “I will see this missive delivered. If it was important enough to pay with your life, then I will risk mine for it as well.”

Corian adjusted his leathers and began walking south. Each step brought concerns about the splisskin he’d left behind. They were dead, but if a group of eight of them could penetrate this far, wouldn’t there be more? There was no way they could know where the messenger was at. For that matter, were they even after her, or was she simply a casualty of war?

Corian frowned and glanced back. The road was shadowed by the trees, save for the few spots where sunlight broke through. The corpses remained, proof of what had happened. Would animals find them and dispose of them or would someone else come along? The road was used often enough; he expected someone would find them. He had, except he’d taken to the woods to surprise them.

Corian stumbled on a root in the road. He caught himself and scowled that he hadn’t been watching where he was going. Strange tidings were afoot and he might be in a position to make a difference. That’s what he wanted, to make a difference. To do something that would bring his family’s bloodline back into prominence since his sister’s indiscretion so many years past.

The young elf sighed and stretched his arms. Glennduril was many miles distant and the longer he spent lost in thought, the less chance he had of setting things right. With that thought in mind, Corian launched into a jog and found an easy lope for his long legs to make the miles disappear.