Wildling (29 page)

Chapter Forty Two.

Trolls were ugly creatures. In their own way they were perhaps even uglier than goblins. And with hides of dark grey leather, standing as tall as two men, and huge mouths filled with yellow daggers pointing in all directions, they were deadly too. But luckily they were slow. Like manticores they were ambush hunters. They didn't swarm like goblins or hunt like cats. They simply stood very still, their thick leather hides concealing them quite well against rocks, and waited for their prey to come to them. Then they jumped out on them. It was a good system, unless the prey could spot them, and the shifters had good eyesight. Certainly Dorn could see the creature quite easily.

Dorn sighted the troll carefully, took a calming breath and then released the arrow. It flew straight, landing in the creature's chest and the rock glass tip pierced the troll's thick hide and punctured its heart.

The troll gave a strangled half cry and stared at him, its wrinkled, vicious face a study in confusion. Then it fell down dead, probably still not understanding what had happened. That brought a relieved smile to Dorn's face. He was getting good at killing the beasts. A full score of them had fallen to his bow at least. But he was also tired. They all were.

They were two days into the wastes and they were already running out of strength. The six days climbing up and up through the Eteris Ranges had exhausted them. Though their numbers had increased until there were now seventy shifters in the party, they had paid a price for their advance. Three were dead and a dozen had been seriously injured when one goblin den had not been as completely dead as they'd thought. Though their gift allowed them to heal the injuries quickly, the cost was exhaustion and none of those dozen were up to much yet. They walked, they ate and they slept. But it would be a while before they could fight.

Meanwhile they were making slow progress across the central plateau. After six long days they had made it through the mountains. A score of goblin dens had been destroyed, and he had no idea at all how many trolls and rocs had been killed. But they had made it through. It also seemed from the moment they'd hit the plateau that things had settled a bit. Or maybe they'd just hoped they had. At least there were no goblins there. There were no caves for them to live in.

But there was no winning either. Not for them. The goblins had gone but their place had been taken by blood flies. Swarms of little biting insects that arrived out of nowhere to suck their blood and bring them sickness. They could deal with the illness by shifting forms regularly. It fixed sickness as well as poison and injury, but it was taking a toll on them.

And then the land itself had started conspiring against them. They were high up in the plateau, and the land was cold. Even in summer it felt like winter and here and there they could still see patches of ice and snow. They were spending most of their time in their beast shapes, fur and feathers keeping them warmer than clothes.

To make matters worse the air itself seemed to be lacking in something. They were all finding it hard to breathe and were lacking in strength. They couldn't run and fight as they once had. To add to their troubles the ground was soft under foot and the tough alpine grass was full of barbs and tended to tangle around their feet, holding them back. Nor had they found anything that looked like it was edible. They would have to rely on what they were carrying with them.

In Dorn's case that wasn't much. He had a good fifty pounds of white wrath in his pack and another fifty pounds of rock glass and steel tipped arrows. With his clothes and his longbow added to that there hadn't been a lot of additional weight he could carry. He suspected the others were in the same situation. Their packs were loaded with what they would need to fight with. Not food.

Progress was understandably slow. In two days he estimated that they'd covered a dozen leagues at best, and they still had the best part of a hundred to go. But maybe that would give them a chance to adjust to the thin air.

“Good shot.”

Garren praised his archery even as he gave the others the word that they could continue. Maybe it was his age – Garren was a man of middling years and greying hair – or maybe it was his knowledge, or perhaps his natural easy manner as he told people what to do, but the wolf had assumed the unofficial role of leader of their group.

He was a good choice for the position as far as Dorn was concerned. He always seemed to know what to do, and they needed someone who did. Every army needed a general, and though they hadn't started out as an army – just a collection of wildlings who knew what needed to be done and had joined up – they had become one.

“
We should probably make camp on that rise.”

It was a good idea Dorn thought. The evening was upon them and they were all tired. But why that particular patch of ground and not another, he didn't know. They were all the same. In fact even calling it a rise was a stretch. It was at best a few feet higher than the land they were on. But maybe those few feet would give those keeping watch a little bit more distance to look out over. Before night fell. At least it had a few trees to give them shelter from the wind if it picked up.

No one objected and they all slowly started making their way to the camp site.

That slowness was probably the thing that worried him most. Dorn had not expected the trip to be so slow. He had thought to cross the hundred leagues in a week at most. Even loaded down. But now he knew that wasn't possible. This land was simply too harsh for that. His only hope was that the Dicans would be even slower. After all, they couldn't shift and in so doing rid themselves of the blood fly illness. The air had to be just as hard on them. And they had only two legs to walk on, and war machines to bring with them. They had to be almost crawling.

Movement caught Dorn's eye, something to his right and instinctively he turned to see it, his doubts forgotten. But when he did there was nothing there. No creature coming toward them, nothing even blowing in the wind. Just the trees. Thin, sickly looking things. They were what passed for trees in this place. Maybe with better soil and more sunshine they would have been willows. Here they were their half dead cousins struggling to survive. This was not a pretty place.

So he turned back and continued following the others to the camp, hoping that a little rest would help to restore his strength for the morning.

It moved again.

This time he stopped dead, and turned to face the bush, determined to see what kept moving. There was something. He knew it. Something in the bush. But nothing moved when he stared. Whatever it was it was hiding. A goblin maybe?

“What is it?” One of the others had noticed that he wasn't moving.

“
Don't know. But something keeps moving when we walk and stopping when I turn to look.” He wished he could tell the man more, but that was as much as he knew. But as he kept staring he knew he was right. There was something out there.

The long seconds and then the minutes kept dragging by as he stared, and others joined him in searching the distant bush. And some of them he knew had sharper eyes than him. But nothing moved. Which could only mean that it was very determined not to be seen. And from that there was only one question that mattered. Was it predator or prey? Was it stalking them or hoping they weren't stalking it? That was the reality of life in this bleak place. Everything was always hunting everything else.

“Did you see that?”

A woman asked the question, not of him he hoped since he hadn't seen anything at all. But the fact that she had seen something surely meant he wasn't alone in seeing things.

“What?”

“
The branches in that tree. They moved. Shivered.”

“
It's the wind.” But even as the man answered her Dorn was thinking that that couldn't be right. There was no wind. Others were surely thinking the same thing. But at least as they stared they suddenly had something to look for.

And she was right. A few seconds later Dorn noticed the thin branches of the trees moving, shaking a little. Not a lot, but enough to tell them that something was moving in them. A monkey perhaps in the tree. Shaking the branches as it walked. Except that he could see no monkey.

Then the branches moved again, and this time it was much more obvious. A larger movement and not just a few of the branches but all of them. Whatever it was it was quite large.

“
Alyssia.” Garren called to one of the other shifters and Dorn knew immediately why. As part of her equipment Alyssia had brought fire arrows. Rods of perfectly straight hardwood covered with a solidified oil that caught fire as they flew and exploded into flame when they hit something. Whoever had enchanted them had done a good job. And whatever was in the tree would move when it caught fire.

Instantly he heard the sounds of the bow being drawn, the string being pulled back, and then the twang as the arrow was released. And then he watched as the arrow given flight burst into light, a glowing hot point of light streaking through the air for the distant tree.

It hit the trunk of the tree perfectly and instantly released a ball of flames that engulfed most of it.

For a split second Dorn thought they'd won. That they'd exposed whatever was lurking in the tree. But then the tree shook again and he suddenly understood the terrible truth. There was nothing in the tree at all. It was the tree itself. And all the trees around it.

“Snap dragon!” Dorn gave the warning as quickly as he could, but he couldn't believe he was yelling it. He'd read the stories and heard the tales, but he'd never really believed that snap dragons existed. Yet others saw the same thing as he did and he was far from alone in giving the cry. The tree was no tree. They knew it. It proved that a heartbeat later as it started lifting itself out of the ground. The tree was in fact just the creature's head. Its body was an entire forest of trees and tangled branches behind it, shaped into the form of a huge lizard. A body that was slowly uprooting itself. The creature had eaten its fill of soil and water, drunk enough of the sunlight. Now it wanted food. It wanted them.

Instantly there were arrows flying at it from all directions as everyone knew the danger. They had to kill the thing quickly. Before it managed to get clear of the soil. Dorn was launching arrows as well, but he had no thought as to whether his rock glass tipped arrows would have any effect on the snap dragon. They might pierce the hide of a troll but he wasn't sure about bark. The chances were that even if they didn't shatter they'd just annoy it. And in any case it wasn't really solid. His arrows might actually pass right through it.

Luckily others had better arrows, and someone had brought ones with an enchantment of ice on them. He knew that when he saw one of the creature's feet – if you could call a pile of tangled roots a foot – freeze. And while freezing might not hurt it, at least it stopped the snap dragon from moving that foot. That slowed it down and gave them more time. But to do what?

The snap dragon didn't like having its foot frozen though, and it let out an angry rustle, a warning sound, something like the rattle of a snake but with a lot more danger behind it. And as it tried to shake the ice out of its foot some of its smaller branches fell off. That just made it angry and it rustled some more as it pulled more of its long lizard like body out of the ground.

Soon it was on fire with at least a dozen fire arrows having hit it, and all four of its legs had been frozen making it difficult for the creature to move. But difficult was not impossible and it was straining mightily against the stiffness of its own frozen flesh. As for the fire the snap dragon didn't seem to notice that it was burning. Maybe it didn't feel pain? Or maybe it just didn't care. The only thing on its mind apparently was them. It was hungry.

So as it alternately burnt and froze it kept coming for them, putting one collection of twisted roots that acted as a foot in front of the other. Slamming each foot into the dirt with a thump that shook the entire plateau. It was winning the fight. A creature that large and powerful would not be stopped by a few arrows and a bit of fire. No matter what enchantments had been laid on them.

Dorn's heart started thumping a little harder in his chest as it charged them slowly. It was getting closer. Dorn knew it; they all did. And nothing they could do was stopping it. The three or four hundred paces between them had become half that in far too short a time, and while it was well and truly on fire it didn't seem to care. And while it didn't seem to be moving that fast, it was so large that every step it took was thirty paces or more.

They were going to have to run before it got close enough to strike. To use those huge feet of tangled roots as the weapons they truly were. But at least it would be a quick death. He hoped. The snap dragon killed by smashing its feet down on its prey with a terrible snapping sound and crushing them into a paste. Then it simply lapped up the remains like a cat drinking milk. Even if its tongue was simply another twisted pile of tangled branches inside the crater of tangled trees that passed for a mouth.

“On my mark people, we break and run five hundred paces.”

Garren used all the power of his howl to make himself heard above their panic, and Dorn was infinitely glad he did. He needed for someone to know what to do before the walking forest was on them.

“Mark.”

Immediately he heard him Dorn slung his bow, shifted, turned tail and ran as ordered, unbelievably glad that he was able to. The others did the same. The snap dragon had been getting far too close. To both sides of him he could see the others running with him, all of them stretched out in full sprint and he knew that they were faster than the snap dragon. But he also knew that the creature would not give up. It would keep coming for them until they were all dead.