A biannual hunt had eliminated the drakken from the lands around Ashwell, but in the wild they were prevalent. Watching for them heightened Edeard’s senses as they passed through the endless undulating countryside. On the third day out of Witham they reached the fringes of the foothills and entered one of the massive forests there, parts of which reached across to the base of the Sardoks themselves.
Edeard had never been in a forest this size before; according to Melzar, it predated the arrival of humans on Querencia two thousand years before. The sheer size of the trees seemed to back up his claim; they were tall and tightly clustered, their trunks dark and lifeless for the first fifty feet until they burst into a thick interlaced canopy where branches and leaves struggled against one another for light. Little grew on the floor beneath, and in summer when the leaves were in full bloom, not much rain dripped through. A huge blanket of dead crisped leaves covered the ground, hiding hollows from sight, requiring the humans to use their farsight to guide the ge-horses safely around cervices and snags.
It was quiet in the gloom underneath the verdant living awning, the still air amplifying the mildest whisper to a shout that reverberated the length of the plodding caravan. The apprentices slowly abandoned their banter, becoming silent and nervous.
“We’ll make camp in a valley I know,” Melzar announced after midday. “It’s an hour away, and the forest isn’t as wretched as it is here. There’s a river as well. We’re well past the trilan egg season, so we can swim.”
“We’re stopping there?” Genril asked. “Isn’t that early?”
“Don’t get your hopes up, my lad. This afternoon you’re going galby hunting.”
The apprentices immediately brightened. They had been promised hunting experience but had not expected it to be galbys, which were large canine equivalents. Edeard often had heard experienced adults tell of how they thought they’d gotten a galby cornered only to have it jump to freedom. A galby’s hind limb was oversized and extremely powerful, sometimes propelling the animal as much as fifteen feet in the air.
True to Melzar’s word, the forest began to change as they reached a gentle downhill slope. The trees were spread out and shorter, allowing pillars of sunlight to swarm down. Grass grew again, swiftly becoming an unbroken stratum. Bushes grew in the long gaps between trees, their leaves ranging from vivid green to dark amethyst. Edeard could not name more than a handful of the berries he could see; there must have been dozens of varieties.
As the light and humidity increased, the yiflies and bitewings began to appear; soon they were swirling overhead in huge clumps before zooming down to nip all the available human skin. Edeard constantly was using his third hand to ward them off.
They stopped the carts by a small river and corralled the genistars. That was when Melzar finally distributed the five revolvers and two rifles he had been carrying. The majority belonged to the village, though Genril had his own revolver, which he said had been in his family since the arrival. Its barrel was longer than that of the others and made of a whitish metal that was a lot lighter than the sturdy gun-grade steel produced by the Weapons Guild in Makkathran.
“Carved from the ship itself,” Genril said proudly as he checked the mechanism. Even that snicked and whirred with a smoothness that the city-made pistols lacked. “My first ancestor salvaged some of the hull before the tides took the ship down into the belly of the sea. It’s been in our family ever since.”
“Crap,” Obron snorted. “That would mean it’s over two thousand years old.”
“So?” Genril challenged as he squeezed some oil out of a small can, rubbing it onto the components with a soft linen cloth. “The ship builders knew how to make really strong metal. Think about it, you morons. They had to have strong metal; the ship fell out of the sky and still survived, and in the universe they came from ships flew between planets.”
Edeard did not say anything. He’d always been skeptical about the whole ship legend, though he had to admit it was a great legend.
Melzar slung one of the rifles over his shoulder and came around with a box of ammunition. He handed out six of the brass bullets to each of the apprentices who had been given a revolver. “That’s quite enough,” he told them when there were complaints about needing more. “If you can’t hit a galby after six shots, it’s either jumped back out of range or it’s happily eating your liver. Either way, that’s all you get.”
Only five apprentices had been given a gun, including Genril. Edeard was not one of them. He looked on enviously as they slid the bullets into the revolving chamber.
Melzar crouched and began to draw lines in the earth. “Gather around,” he told them. “We’re going to split into two groups. The shooters will be lined up along the ridge back there.” His hand waved into the forest where the land rose sharply. “The rest of us will act as the flushers. We form a long line with one end there, which will move forward in a big curve until we’re level with the first shooter. That should force anything bigger than a drakken out in front of us and hopefully into the firing line. Under no circumstances does anyone go past the first shooter. I don’t care if you’re best friends and using longtalk, you do not walk in front of the guns. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” they all chorused.
“Okay, then; after the first sweep we’ll change over the guns and move to a new location.” He glanced up at the sky, which was starting to cloud over. “There’ll be enough light to do this three times this afternoon, which will give everyone a chance to use a pistol.”
“Sir, my father said only I can use our pistol,” Genril said.
“I know,” Melzar said. “You get to hang on to it but not the ammunition when you’re in the flusher line. Now, if you’re a part of the flusher line, you must keep within farsight perception of the people on either side. So in reality that means I want you spaced no more than seventy yards apart. Orders to start, stop, and group together will be issued vocally and in longtalk; you will relay both along the line. You will obey them at all times. The flusher line will use three ge-wolves to help encourage the galbys to run. This time, Edeard and Alcie will control one each and I will take the third. No one else is to order them; I don’t want them confused. Any questions? No? Good. Let’s go, and the Lady smile on us.”
Edeard called one of the ge-wolves over and set off in the group following Melzar. Toran, one of the farmers, led the pistol carriers up toward the stony ridge.
“I don’t see the point of this,” Fahin complained grimly as he hiked beside Edeard. “We’ve all done pistol shooting at the targets outside the walls, and galbys aren’t edible.”
“Don’t you listen to anything?” Janene said. “This is all about experience. There’s a world of difference between firing at a target and being out here in the woods with dangerous animals charging. The elder council needs to know they can rely on us to defend the village in an emergency.”
Except Melzar told us the nomad families aren’t threatening, Edeard thought. So what is the village wall actually for? I must ask Akeem when I get back.
“What if the galbys don’t go toward the shooting line?” Fahin asked. “What if they come at us?” He gripped his satchel tighter, as if it could shield him from the forest’s animals.
“They won’t,” Edeard said. “They’ll try to avoid us because we’re a group.”
“Yeah, in theory,” Fahin grumbled.
“Quit whining, for the Lady’s sake,” Obron said. “Melzar knows what he’s doing; he’s done this with every caravan for the last fifty years. Besides, galbys aren’t all that dangerous. They just look bad. If one comes at you, use your third hand to shield yourself.”
“What if we flush out a fastfox?”
The apprentices groaned.
“Fastfoxes live down on the plains,” an exasperated Alcie said.
“They’re not mountain animals. You’re more likely to get one in Ashwell than here.”
Fahin pulled a face, not convinced.
As th
ey approached the edge of the forest again, Melzar used his longtalk to tell them: “Start to spread out. Remember, keep the people on both sides within your farsight. If you lose contact, longtalk them.”
Edeard had Obron on one side and Fahin on the other. He was not too happy about that; if anyone was going to screw up, it would be Fahin—the lanky boy really wasn’t an outdoors type—and Obron wasn’t likely to help either of them. But the worst thing Fahin can do is fall behind; it’s not like he’s got a pistol. And he’ll yell hard enough if he can’t see us. He sent the ge-wolf ranging from side to side. The mood of excitement was filling his farsight, the minds of everyone in the flusher line twinkling with anticipation.
They moved forward, slowly spreading out as Melzar directed until they had formed the line. The trees were growing tall again, their dark green canopy insulating the apprentices from the cloudy sky.
“Move forward,” Obron ordered. Edeard smiled and repeated the instruction to Fahin, who grimaced.
Edeard was pleased that he had kept his new boots on. The forest floor was littered with sticks among rotting clumps of grass, uneven ground with plenty of sharp stones. His ankles were sore where the new leather pinched, yet the boots protected his feet well enough.
With his farsight scouring the land ahead, he kept a slow pace, making sure the line stayed straight. Melzar told them to start making a racket. Obron was shouting loudly, and Fahin let out piercing whistles. For himself, Edeard picked up a thick stick and thwacked it against the tree trunks as he passed by.
There were more bushes in this part of the forest: big zebrathorns with their monochrome patterned leaves and oozing, highly poisonous white berries and coaleafs that were like impenetrable black clouds squatting on the earth. Small creatures were exposed to his farsight, zipping out of the way of the humans: nothing big enough to be a drakken, let alone a galby. The ground became soft under his feet, wet loam that leaked water from every footprint. The scent of moldering leaf was strong in his nose. He was sure he could smell fungus spores.
Obron was out of eyesight now, somewhere behind the bushes. Edeard’s farsight picked him up on the other side of dense trunks.
“Close up a little,” he longtalked.
“Sure, sure,” Obron replied casually.
A ripple of excitement went down the line. Somewhere up toward Melzar’s end a galby sped away, not quite in the direction of the shooting line. Edeard’s heart started to beat quickly. He knew he was smiling and didn’t care. This was the kind of thing he had wanted ever since he had learned he was going on the caravan. There were galbys here! He would get a chance to flush one and, if he was really lucky, maybe take a shot later on.
Something squawked above him. Edeard flicked his farsight focus upward in time to see a couple of birds dart up through the canopy. There was a thicket up ahead, a dense patch of zebrathorn, just the kind of place for a galby to nest in. His farsight swept through it, but there were dark zones and steep little gullies he could not be sure about. He sent the ge-wolf slinking in through the bushes as he skirted the outside. Now he couldn’t see Fahin either, but his farsight registered the boy’s mind.
Apprehension hit him like a solid force, the mental equivalent of being doused in icy water. Suddenly all his delight deserted him. His fingers actually lost their grip on the stick as his legs seized up. Something terrible was happening. He knew it.
“What?” he gasped. He was frightened and, worse, frightened that he was frightened. This makes no sense.
In the middle of the thicket, the ge-wolf he was directing lifted its head and snarled, responding to the turmoil bubbling along his tenuous longtalk contact.
“Edeard,” Fahin called. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t …” Edeard pulled his arms in by his sides as his knees bent, lowering him to a crouch. He instinctively closed his third hand around himself to form the strongest shield he was capable of. Lady, what’s the matter with me? He pushed his farsight out as far as he could and swept around as if it were some kind of illuminating beam. The tree trunks were too dense to get any kind of decent picture of anything beyond his immediate vicinity.
“What is the matter with you?” Obron asked; his mental tone was scathing.
Edeard could sense both apprentices hesitating. The ge-wolf was wriggling around, trying to get out of the thicket and back to him. Dry leaves rustled, and he whirled around, raising the stick protectively. “I think someone’s here.” He directed his farsight where he thought the sound had come from, pushing its focus as hard as he could. There were a few tiny rodent creatures scuttling along the forest floor. They could have made the noise.
“What do you mean, someone?” Fahin demanded. “Who?”
Edeard was gritting his teeth with the effort of extending his farsight to the limit. “I don’t know. I can’t sense them.”
“Hey, we’re falling behind,” Obron longtalked impatiently. “Come on, get moving.”
Edeard stared back into the forest. This is stupid. But he could not get rid of his dread. He took a last look at the forest behind, then turned. The arrow came out of the empty trees on his left, moving so fast that he never saw it; only his farsight caught the slightest ripple of motion. His shield tightened as he gasped, his mind clamoring its shock.
The arrow hit his left pectoral muscle. His telekinetic shield held, but the force of impact was sufficient to knock him backward. He landed on his ass. The arrow tumbled down in the loam and weeds beside him, a long blackened shaft with dark green needlehawk feathers and a wicked barbed metal tip dripping a thick violet liquid. Edeard stared at it in horror.
“Edeard?”
His mind was swamped by the telepathic voices. It seemed as if the entire flusher line was shouting mentally at him, demanding an answer.
“Arrow!” he broadcast back at them as forcefully as he could. His eyes did not move from the arrow lying beside him, showing everyone. “Poison arrow!”
A mind materialized thirty yards away, sparkling vivid sapphire amid the cluttered gray shadows that comprised Edeard’s ethereal vision of the forest.
“Huh?” Edeard jerked his head around. A man stepped out from behind a tree, dressed in a ragged cloak that was almost the same color as the tree trunks. His hair was wild, long and braided, filthy with dark red mud. More mud was smeared across his face and caked his beard. He was snarling, anger and puzzlement leaking out of his mind. One hand reached over his shoulder and pulled another arrow from his quiver. He notched it smoothly into the biggest bow Edeard had ever seen, leveling it as his arm pulled back.
Edeard screamed with voice and mind, a sound he could hear replicated along the flusher line. Even his assailant winced as he let fly.
Edeard thrust his hands out, a motion he followed with his third hand, using his full strength. The arrow burst into splinters before it had covered half the distance between them.
This time it was the forest man who radiated shock into the ether.
“Bandits.” Melzar’s call echoed faintly around Edeard, spoken and telepathic. “It’s an ambush. Group together, everyone; combine your strength. Shield yourselves. Toran, help us!”
Edeard was scrambling to his feet, vaguely aware of other shouts and adrenaline-boosted emotional pulses reverberating across the forest. More bandits were emerging from concealment. Arrows were being fired. His mind reached for the ge-wolf, directing it with frenzied urgency. There was not going to be time. The forest man had slung his bow to the ground and was charging. A knife glinted in his hand.
A telekinetic shove nearly knocked Edeard back to the ground. He countered it easily, feeling the force slither over his skin like icy fingers. The bandit was trying for a heartsqueeze, an attack method that apprentices talked about in nervous awe when they gathered in Ashwell. Using telekinesis inside someone else’s body was the ultimate taboo. Anyone found to have committed the act was exiled forever.
Now a bandit was thundering toward Edeard, knife ready and death lust
fevering his mind. His third hand was scrabbling to assail vulnerable organs.
His earlier fear had left Edeard. He wasn’t even thinking about the others. A maniac was seriously trying to kill him. That was the whole universe. And as Akeem had explained during their all-too-brief sessions on defensive telekinetic techniques, there was no such thing as a disabling blow.
Edeard stood up and let his arms drop to his side, closing his eyes. He shaped his third hand. Waiting. The pounding of the bandit’s bare feet on the forest floor reached his ears. Waiting. The man’s berserker cry began. The knife rose, gripped by white knuckles. Wait … judge the moment. Edeard’s farsight revealed the man in perfect profile; he even perceived the leg muscles exerting themselves to the limit as they began the leap. Any second—
The attempted heartsqueeze ended; telekinesis was channeled to assist the attack leap, to strengthen the knife thrust.
—now.
The bandit left the ground. Edeard pushed his third hand underneath the airborne figure and shoved, the effort forcing a wild roar from his throat. He’d never exerted himself so much before, not even when Obron’s torment was at its worst.
In an instant the bandit’s semitriumphant scream turned to pure horror. Edeard opened his eyes to see a pair of mud-encrusted feet sail over his head. “FUCK YOU!” he bellowed, and added the slightest corrective sideways shove to the trajectory. The bandit’s head smashed into a bulky tree four yards above the ground. It made a horrible thud. Edeard withdrew his third hand. The man dropped like a small boulder, emitting a slight moan as he struck the ground. The ge-wolf pounced.
Edeard turned away. All his emotions returned with tidal-wave power as the ge-wolf began tearing and clawing at the inert flesh. He had forgotten just how fierce the creatures were. His legs were threatening to collapse under him, they were shaking so bad, while his stomach heaved.
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