The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (13 page)

He kept his balance, barely, and as his hog tried to headbutt him in adoration, he swung onto its back and scrambled along its plated hide.  It gave a sad bellow as he jumped off its rump, but did not back up; perhaps without him right under its nose, it finally noticed the food.

Shaking with nerves, Cob looked up to see caravaners staring at him from every corner, their faces a mix of amazement and horror.  He blushed deeply, realizing how insane he must have seemed, one arm still tucked to his side to hold the sleeping hare in place under his coat.

Fortunately, the townspeople were arrayed on the outside of the caravan, so had not seen.  When he moved to exit the circle, the caravaners withdrew from him like he was plagued.

He kept his distance as the trading commenced, avoiding the camp-kitchen the women were setting up by the road to stand on the embankment and watch the town instead.  It did not take long for Arik to find him, and his anxiety about the wolf and hare evaporated as the wolf gave a sniff in the hare's direction then sat down to rest his head on Cob’s leg.  Cob dug his fingers into the thick ruff and sighed from the bottom of his heart.

It was near dark when a woman from the kitchen finally approached him.  She carried a bowl and a piece of bread, and looked him over frankly; by that point he had yielded to weariness and sat down in the dead wet grass, the hare in his lap and the wolf coiled around his back.  The chill and the damp did not bother him, evidently due to the Guardian; likewise, the hare seemed content to lay within the wolf's reach and be scratched between the ears, as if there was no danger.

“
Your dinner,” the woman said, offering the food.  He took it with a wary smile, recognizing her as one of the caravaners who had consistently spied on him.  She was curvy and round-faced in the Amandic way, her dark hair falling in curls over her shoulders, and he remembered her bodice being rather more laced-up the last time he had seen her.

“
Uh, thanks,” he said.

She leaned in slightly, examining his face, and he stared over her shoulder to avoid looking down her cleavage.  “You know you're welcome at the fire,” she said.

“I don't...  Um.  Seems like it'd be awkward.  With the hogs and all.”

“
No harm came of it.”  There was a peculiar warmth in her voice, almost a purr.  It sent a tingle up his spine.  “Rickent thinks your talent might be useful, whatever it is.  If it works on hogs and birds and adorable little—”

A horrific shriek came from his lap and he nearly pissed himself.  At the same time, the caravan-woman leapt back with a shriek of her own, clutching her suddenly-bloody hand.  The hare recoiled against his belly, and he realized that the woman had tried to pet it.

“Oh pikes, I'm sorry, it's wild—” he started, but she gave him a horrified look and bolted for the fire.

Behind him, the wolf rumbled with suspiciously human-sounding laughter.

“Shut up,” Cob said through his teeth.  He had jostled the bowl in his startlement, and half of the soup was now up his sleeve.  He drank the rest of it as he watched the cook-fire crowd cluster and whisper, then crammed the bread in his mouth before someone could come up and take it away.

He slept on the embankment that night, and woke chilled and stiff to the feeling of the wolf nibbling his fingers.  The hare was gone, but Arik gave him a wounded look when accused, then stuck his muzzle up Cob's sleeve to search for more congealed soup.

They stayed there until the caravan started packing up, then Cob reluctantly descended.  Rickent ordered him to stand back until all of the hogs had been reharnessed, and in the lull he looked around and realized that no one would meet his gaze.

Within the first few miles of the new day's trek, six birds tried to perch on him, and Arik barely avoided a brawl with a badger that poked up from its burrow to take in Cob's passing.  As much as he hated to do it, Cob opened himself up to that sense-of-others just so he could know when to expect another wildlife ambush, and nearly had a heart attack when he sensed a bear.  It stayed at the very fringe of his perception, though, and finally wandered away.

Just as its trace was fading, another animal moved into range, coming down the road from Cantorin at an aggressive pace.  He felt the hogs react to it as it reached them, swaying aside in their traces.  Two people rode it.

Tasgard horse
, he thought, and glanced that way at the sound of hooves.

The big tan horse had slowed to pass the caravan, sharp scavenger-teeth bared at the draft-hogs.  Its two riders were cloaked, but the one up front wore a tabard of Amandic purple with a crest of crossed grain and scroll: a kingdom courier.  The other rider was scanning the caravan with urgency, and when her hood turned toward him, he felt her relief.

“Hoi!” she cried.  “Here, let me off.”

The courier hauled on the reins, and the horse came to an unhappy halt alongside Cob’s wagon.  It champed its bit, eyes rolling toward the wary hogs as the woman rider dropped from the saddle.  Chainmail jingled under her cloak and winter dress.

“That’s all?” said the courier.

“
Yes.  I thank you in the name of the Trifold,” said the cloaked woman.  She raised a hand in benediction, and the courier inclined his head, then tapped heels to the flanks of his horse.  It trotted cautiously past the hogs then picked up speed, kicking clods of icy mud from the road as it resumed its run.

Cob eyed at the woman as she smoothed her dress and straightened her cloak.  She sounded familiar.  “Fiora?”

“You remember!” she said brightly, then strode toward him, pulling back her hood.  As she passed into view of the hog, it flinched and started to lunge at her, but Cob lunged first—hooking one arm over the massive beast’s snout and shielding its eye with his other hand.  He was not nearly strong enough to turn it, but it turned itself, digging its cheek against his chest and making a rumbling sound of anxiety.  Fiora backed up, white-faced.

“
It’s fine.  It’s fine,” Cob said, more to the hog than the girl.  On the carter’s bench, Handler Rickent looked just as stressed, but said nothing as Cob sidled around to stand between the hog and Fiora.  With his hand on its ear, it calmed enough to resume its plodding.

“
Oh goddess, I’m sorry,” said Fiora beside him.  He glanced at her, annoyed.  Her curly dark hair was bound back in tight braids, a chainmail coif tucked under the collar of her cloak, and the rucksack she wore did not fully disguise the shape of the small shield beneath it, just as her plain dress could not hide the outline of her sword.

“
What d’you want?” he said.  “Other than t’ get bitten in half.”

An angry flush colored her cheeks, but she shook her head briskly.  “There’s a problem.  Someone in the Temple sold you out to the Golds.”

“What?  Who?”

“
I don’t know.  I overheard it and ran.  There’s probably not much time.  We should get away from the caravan while we can.”

“
Wait,” said Cob, trying to ignore the sink of his heart.  He was not surprised, but it stung.  “Jus’ because they know I’m on the road doesn’t mean they can find me in a snap.  You sure they didn’t let it slip so they could follow you?”

Fiora looked stricken and glanced back the way she had come.  Cob did too, but saw only the caravan and the snowy, tree-clad hills, and felt nothing—his Guardian senses had faded with his concentration on them.

“No, it’s worse than that,” said Fiora, looking back to him.  “They mentioned a watchtower.  That means mages, Guardian.  They don’t need to follow on foot.  They can just—“

She broke off, her gaze flicking past him.  He followed her eyes to something glimmering in a melting snowbank up ahead: a crystalline sphere on a short metal pole embedded in the earth beside the road.  A beacon, one of many he had passed since leaving Cantorin.

Unlike those, this one was active.

An unnatural tingle ran up his spine, a weird sense of disjunction.  He looked back to see a line of light draw down the air beside one wagon, then open like a doorway.  Beyond was a chamber crowded with yellow tabards, yellow robes—Gold soldiers and mages.  A second disjunction and he saw another doorway open beside the lead wagon.

“Crap,” said Fiora, and shrugged her pack off in a practiced motion.

For a paralyzed moment, Cob simply stood there with the useless switch, his other hand on the hog.  Yellow-robed figures stepped through the doorways and flung ropes of shimmering power toward him, but he could not move, could not think.  He had been in too many fights to count, but had never faced magic head-on.  He had no way to react.

Then Fiora stepped in front of him, shield raised, and the golden energy slammed into it with a sizzling sound, shoving her against him with such force that they both slid backward.  The hog squealed in dismay.  Cob dug his heels in the mud to brace her, and she shouted “
Breana!
” and lowered her shoulder against the force.  Instead of coiling inward, the golden tendrils peeled away from the hot aura that suddenly surrounded her.

Cob put his back to hers and faced the tendrils coming from the rear, but the panic still gripped him.  He could not remember how he had touched the Guardian’s power in Thynbell, or even how it felt to wear the black armor.  It was all blotted out by the golden light.

His head twinged.  Two points on his brow.  He closed his eyes.

It was like plunging into a lake, digging fingers into the silt and sand below.  For a moment he saw the trees around him, the figures among them, black and white—the clearing in the Mist Forest where he had brought the broken blade down upon his friend.  Then he felt the connection through his fingertips and realized he had crouched down to bury his hand in the cold mud.

Black water flowed up his arm, through his veins.  Fur and bark and stone raced over his skin.  The Guardian’s great scaled shape swelled within him, its strength steadying his nerves, its fury steeling his shoulders as it made ready for the energy that threatened him.

His senses opened up, and he felt the life that surrounded him again.  Clearer.  Sharper.

Arik, halfway up the embankment, stumbled in mid-stride then shifted with startling fluidity.  No stretching, no crackle of sinew and pop of joints reshaping, just a swift and smooth transition from wolf to wolfbeast, bipedal and massive and wickedly clawed.  Cob sensed his surprise and glee, the thunder of his heart—

—
and the hearts of all the others, all around him.  The hogs, the carters, their wives and children in the wagons, the mages and soldiers pouring through the portals and the massed life in the chambers beyond.  The tiny and distant lives—burrowing birds, hares, a prowling fox.  The shivering dog at the fringe of his perception.

Fiora at his back, burning like a candle-flame.

The golden tendrils lanced in, and he planted his hooves in the cold road and bent his head at them as if they were the antlers of a rival stag.  Beneath him was that sea of draining darkness, the place where the magic went to die, but he was rooted like a tree above it and the Guardian held him firm in its coils.  He would not fall.

Something hit him on the side of the head.

It was not a hard strike—he knew that even as he reeled from it—but the metal of the object sent vibrations through his skull and down his spine that shook off the armor as if it had been made of glass.  The ground reeled under his feet, and he saw the object hit the mud next to him: one of the carters’ wheel-wrenches.  He took a half-step forward to keep his balance.

His tether to the earth broke as he moved.  The black sea fell away.

Instantly, the golden ropes were upon him, ripping him further off-balance.  From the other side of the wagon, Arik roared in anger, but Cob could not turn to look.  There were ropes in his antlers, pulling his head up; ropes around his shoulders, behind his knees, twisting and wrenching at him from a dozen angles.  He felt the Guardian attempting to anchor itself and tried to brace his own feet, but they were both thwarted by the thin shivs of magic that slipped under him with every step.  In moments he found himself forced onto tiptoe, the Guardian’s essence draining from him as if he was a broken bottle.

He heard Fiora shout, felt her hand on his belt trying to keep him down, but the magic was too strong.  His feet left the ground.

Then the draft-hog was beneath him, thrusting its great plated head under his kicking legs, and as his boots hit its hide, the Guardian linked to it desperately.  It was a stalwart creature of the earth, belligerently protective, bred over ages to hunker down against threats from above, and it yielded eagerly to needs of the Great Spirit.  Raw, aggressive hoggishness surged into Cob, so fiercely happy that he loosed a mad laugh as he clamped his hands on his entangled antlers.

They bent backward at his touch, melding into hog-like armor plates that formed along his scalp and shoulders as the ropes that had bound them fell loose.  His knees hit the hog’s flanks, and those arcane ropes fizzed away too, compressed and drowned in the flood of their common pulse.  For a moment before he slid to the ground, Cob had two hearts, but the bigger beat in time with the smaller and he knew instinctively that the hog was suffering.

He hit the mud on one knee, both hands in it, the last of the ropes shredding as his armor returned in full.  Beside him, the hog slumped to the ground.