“Come with me, Damicos. Pledge yourself, your blade and your men to my cause. We will wrest the riches we seek away from the snares that hold them, and we will carry them to the coast. Then you and I will be like gods. We will command anything and everyone—all will bow and kiss our hands.”
Damicos gazed back at the woman, clearing his mind of conflicting thought and honing in on the objectives he held closest.
“I will come with you tomorrow.”
He heard an intake of breath behind him, but ignored Jamson for the moment.
“You will guide half my men and yours to this great lode, and we will see what can be gained. But know this, oh queen. The half that stay behind are more than enough to sack your city in a day. And that is what they will do if you betray me in this. Even I could not stop them from it, were I of a mind to, if they were betrayed.”
Leisha smiled widely and waved a dismissive hand at the city below. “I tell you, all this means nothing to me now. But you will have my word, my bond, and my life in your hands to hold as collateral against any betrayal. We will be partners from now on, and we will come to trust one another.”
She stepped forward and took the captain’s hands in hers. Her entire face seemed alight now, with a strange fire that Damicos was not sure he fully appreciated.
“You have chosen an eminent destiny for yourself, Damicos. You will be my first general, and you will share in my own destiny. From this day forward, we are tied by the three fates.
“We will leave here at dawn, and all the world will shake at our coming when we return this way again. The gods will it so, and we dare not defy them.”
CHAPTER 28: SUMMONER
The two lone horsewomen reined to a halt and dismounted. Their horses were streaked with foam and stood on trembling legs. A day and a half had passed since leaving the fort.
They stood on a low ridge, strewn with lichen-crusted boulders and ferns. The wind stirred some nearby pines, causing the trunks to creak and croak. Perian drew a stray strand of hair from her mouth, grimacing, and took a quick drink of water.
They’d barely stopped all day, and the horses wouldn’t last much longer at this pace. But time grew short, and even now she had pressed the limit. The Silverpath would not take long to assemble and march on the lake fort, and once they arrived there the battle could not last more than a day.
The archer next to her looked grateful for the respite, stretching and gingerly rubbing her backside as she tied the horses to one of the pines. Both women’s inner thighs and rears, unused to the saddle, were chafed raw. But Perian did not pause to tend to her body.
It was time for the ritual that would summon the mekkilak to her. Now that she had one of its eggs, she needed only to connect with the creature’s mind, and it would follow them to the lake whether it could smell their trail or not.
Perian felt Harnwe’s eyes on her as she laid out her things, and glanced up to see an expression of superstitious fear on the skirmisher’s young face.
Perian, for her part, was just as nervous. She knew the words, the ingredients, the motions by heart. But it was quite another matter to actually engage in a summoning for the first time, especially one involving a mekkilak. These things took years of study beyond the initiation a young shaman underwent at twelve years. Even if all went well, Perian would be helpless for some time, perhaps hours.
All that stood between her and death at the hands of whatever came across her inert form in the woods would be the poor girl she’d dragged into this mad scheme. But her trepidation at the disastrous consequences of failure—particularly for the captain—outweighed all else.
Perian chose a smooth boulder to serve as a table and went to work. After crushing some of the dried bracken in her shaman’s pouch and laying it gently on a slab of tree bark, Perian took some powdered red dye from another, smaller pouch and wet it using the last drops from her waterskin to form a paste. This she applied in an arc over her brow and down the sides of her nose; as she did so, she breathed deeply to inhale the paste’s vapor. The stolen centipede egg, hidden in its wraps, she set reeking in the ferns at her feet.
Next she kindled a small fire in the lee of the boulder, sheltered from the wind, and sprinkled the crushed bracken into the flame. Instantly, fragrant incense choked her lungs. Controlling her impulse to cough or gag, she continued breathing deeply. Her vision faded into darkness.
She reached out a hand. “Harnwe, are you still there?”
“What do you need?”
“Wait until I am completely still. Then put this skull on my tongue.” She held out a bird’s skull, light and delicate as gossamer. It was painted with tiny symbols and packed with certain rare herbs.
Perian felt Harnwe take the tiny object gingerly. “It seems strange, but you must obey me. Our lives depend on it. My mouth will not be hard to open. Just pull my jaw open, set the skull on my tongue, and gently close my mouth again. Do not break the skull!”
“All right.”
“I will be lying still, as if asleep. Wait until the flames from the fire are gone but embers remain, and pour this on the coals.” Perian held out a final object, a small vial fashioned from a gourd, with a root wedged in the spout to seal in its contents. “Then wait, and guard me with your bow. I will come out of my trance eventually. Do you understand?”
“This is black sorcery. I do not—”
Perian cut her off. “My gods are not your gods, and yours cannot fault you for what I do. Already I am blind. I must complete the ritual now, or I am lost. Only keep me safe, for the sake of our friends.”
“I will.”
“Good.” Perian sank to her knees. Reaching down into the grass, clutching at the earth, she gripped fistfuls of soil with both hands, knowing it might be the last physical sensation she would ever experience.
And then she relaxed.
It came on very quickly this time. In past years she had to struggle to put her body in a state to receive the images and sensory impulses she was searching for. But now, perhaps because she was so serious about the need, or perhaps because she was simply a few years older, it wasn’t hard at all. She felt a thrill of excitement as her mind slipped into its deepest state, and she began looking outward from where she was toward what she wanted to see.
Perian’s world of earth-sense was a swirling tangle of airborne scents and pollen waves, root structures that ran along for leagues underground, and the vibrations of waterfall, paw tread, and distant thunder. It was overwhelming at first, but with a few moments of concentration she knew she could look through it all and find what interested her.
It was more a matter of putting things aside, of clearing her path, than of drawing things to her. Once she had eliminated all that was irrelevant, that which remained would give her answers. And then…
It was there.
Everything else trembled and was swept aside. All the glowing, pulsating, breathing things of the natural world around her died away into darkness instantly.
One thing loomed above all others, and it was a fiery red mass the size of a mountain, as long as the wind’s path, as angry as a mother cave-bear. It was sharp as volcanic glass, segmented with a thousand legs, all in a blur of motion.
And it was coming right at her. It could smell her, taste her flesh, feel the soft curve of the egg she carried. The last of its eggs.
There was murder in its heart, blood in its mind. There was nothing else.
I will consume you, it said. I will rend you into nothingness, like you have rent my seed. I will take away your ability to have seed of your own, and leave you in oblivion. That is your fate, and it is upon you now.
Not in so many words, but the animalistic instinctual drive of the thing—as close to emotion as an insect could come—was clear enough. It did strike fear into Perian’s heart, but she was no wilting lily herself and she shot back at the creature a mind full of defiance.
Come and deliver it then, kalvach pettfikt. You can only kill me and retrieve you
r egg if you can catch me.
It raged at her and doubled its speed. Oh, I come. I come. My cutting pincers are nearly upon you. I will cut and cut and cut.
How far, Perian wondered. How far was it from her hilltop? She measured the trees and hills and streams the thing would have to cross before arriving.
Half a league at most. It would be there in minutes!
The thing must have reached the fort shortly after the two women had had left, raged through its ruined nest, and torn the fort apart in its fury. Now it was following the scent-path toward them. The egg was calling out to its mother.
And she was coming.
Perian let out a scream, long and loud, and came to with her head throbbing, facing the sky.
It took a moment to gather herself. Harnwe loomed over her, patting her face, trying frantically to calm her. But she could not be calmed.
“Get up,” she croaked, retching and gasping for air. “Get on your horse!”
Harnwe backed away, fear in her eyes.
“It is almost here,” Perian cried. “We must ride. Ride for your life! Go, and do not wait for me. It will kill us both, and we will fail our people if we die here.”
Harnwe hauled her to her feet, and Perian had to clutch at the boulder next to her from dizziness. She grabbed the egg in its wrappings and lurched toward the horses. Harnwe readied the mounts and Perian lunged into the saddle before it was even untethered from the nearby tree branch.
“Leave it all,” she shouted at Harnwe, who was trying to gather her spell-things back into the shaman’s pouch. “We must fly!”
Harnwe’s face was pale. “The horses are too weary. They need rest. Let us hide somewhere.”
“We cannot hide from it. Not with this!” Perian croaked, holding up the egg sack. “Ride!”
Harnwe scrambled into the saddle and they galloped from the hilltop at break-neck speed, never looking back.
But already the horses were faltering in their pace.
CHAPTER 29: SILVERPATH UNLEASHED
The Silverpath came in the dark before the dawn, five days after Uthek’s escape. A cold wind moaned in from the west, laden with the smell of pine needles and damp loam. High above a waxing half-moon gave some light, down near the horizon. An owl called from a leaning spruce, unheeded by those who passed below.
Dark shapes sped through the trees, two hundred of them, intent upon bloodshed and rapine. They slowed and stopped just inside the tree-line, submerging into the ferns and undergrowth with just enough rustle to seem wind-tossed.
Two figures stood apart at the edge of the trees, eyes intent on the walls of the fort-town before them on the rim of the lake. One was the young prince, Uthek son of Kultan, the thrill of impending vengeance shining in his eyes. The other was much older: Ghormonga, the aging war chief of the Silverpath clan and the prince’s advisor.
Despite his greater years, the grizzled older man boasted muscles that would have put to shame many a warrior half his age. Though Uthek was the tacit commander of the warpack at the wish of his father, he had been strictly admonished to heed the wily old killer.
“Ghormonga’s killed more Kerathis in his time than you could possible imagine,” were old Kultan’s words upon parting. “Heed him well.”
Uthek had nodded his acquiescence, but it wasn’t enough. His father’s great beard had bristled.
“Heed him, I say! No false courage, no foolish assaults that waste good men for naught. You command, but by the Red Tusk, you listen to him! A wise leader accepts advice.”
“I will, father. Vengeance will be taken.”
Now, masked by the forest’s protective shadows, both men stared at their objective for several minutes. There had been some question, during their journey, of whether or not anyone would still be left in the fort when the warpack arrived. Uthek had overheard his pawtoon guards talking and knew that the mercenaries’ orders were to escort the fugitive settlers back to Kerathi lands. Now, however, the scent of wood smoke was strong on the breeze. Uthek’s eyes shone.
A call had gone out to the Northfire clan, sister-tribe of the Silverpath, to raise an additional detachment of warriors. These would be young men, warriors yet unblooded against the pawtoon, who sought a chance to earn their war-feathers alongside Uthek’s loyal fighters.
But they required too much time to travel over the unfamiliar territory of the Silverpath, and Uthek did not know if they would send ten men or a hundred. He had been unwilling to wait, and now he grinned at the thought of his cousins arriving at a fort already laid bare, heaped with corpses and looted to the last scrap of bronze.
Ghormonga was silent, chewing on his lower lip, eyes narrowed. Finally he spoke, soft as the breeze. “This fort is too silent. They smell an attack.”
“No,” whispered the prince. “You don’t know them as I do. Half within are woodcutters, not warriors. None of them shall live to see the dawn.” He shivered with eagerness.
“You see the barricades?”
Strewn in the open area next to the fort wall were several large barricades fashioned of smaller logs, each the thickness of a man’s forearm. They were spiked with sharpened stakes, fresh white tips gleaming in the moonlight. There was no apparent order or plan to their placement, and indeed they appeared to have been left standing where they had been constructed—the ground beneath them was littered with wood chips.
“I see them. Fresh made. The fools forgot to arrange them against attack. Too late now.”
Ghormonga nodded, but his eyes were troubled.
Uthek barreled on, determined to quench any delay. Ghormonga had drawn criticism in the past for missing opportunities for quick victory from too much deliberation, and he saw why. “They’re still here—why else make such things? We can end it all this very night!”
“We should scout first. I mislike these barricades.”
Uthek’s impatience entered his voice now. “Now is the moment, now, while they sleep! There isn’t a sentry on the wall. The longer we wait, the greater chance a dozing guard might hear something. And dawn is not far off. Daylight will double our casualties, while if we attack now we might not lose a single man.”
“No sentries on the walls, aye, yet they may still be watching,” Ghormonga said. “The mercenaries you describe aren’t that careless, pawtoon though they be. It might be a trap to lure us close.”
The prince breathed deeply, trying to honor his father’s instructions. By the Red Tusk! Was it the fate of all men to lose their courage with age? Yet he knew Ghormonga was his greatest asset in this raid; the old fox knew all the tricks.
“Hearken, Ghormonga. I will take half the men and climb the walls now. You remain here in the trees with the other half. Even if I am discovered and repulsed, we preserve half our force with you, more than enough to break through and win the day. And think: if I can gain the gate, and open it, we’ll sweep them without heavy losses.”
It was a tempting thought. But Ghormonga’s caution persisted. “It’s risky. And your father entrusted me with your safety. I will go with you.”
“No! I need you here with the remainder of the men,” Uthek answered. “I can protect myself, Ghormonga. My father has other sons, should I fall. You are absolved of responsibility.”
Left unsaid by the young warrior was the thought, growing in urgency, that a solo victory risking only half his force would please his father and go a long way to repairing his damaged pride and reputation.
Ghormonga watched the silent walls, the moonlight on the lake beyond. No doubt the old tactician had Kultan’s words echoing in his own mind, Uthek thought. Further instructions that had made Uthek’s cheeks burn when he heard them.
“Let my cub learn, Ghormonga, but don’t let his eagerness cost us too dearly.” The Silverpath chief had rumbled with laughter. “I would have given much to see you trussed like a quail, Uthek! These pawtoon will pay for their trespasses with rivers of blood, but I will remember them with this one grain of thanks: that they knocked your fooli
sh pride in the mud and set you on the path to a truer form of chieftainship!”
Finally Ghormonga raised his hand and turned it palm up. “It is your raid, my prince. Go, if you will, and be quick and fearless.”
Uthek grinned in answer. Flawlessly he mimicked the call of an owl, and in moments scores of dark shapes converged on his position. Uthek gave a series of whispered commands, and then shed his outer garments and joined the course of sinewy killers in naught but a wolf-skin loincloth. Like a silent flood they pooled at the very edge of the trees, their prince among them, gripping his prized war axe of chipped obsidian.
Uthek stood in the shadows with a heart bursting with pride. It was the greatest moment of his life thus far, and he felt invincible. The spirits of the wild were smiling on him. They’d punished him for his carelessness in letting the hunting party be ambushed—a memory that still cut deeply—but he had paid for his mistake, and now the spirits were showing their mercy and forgiveness, letting him avenge his fallen tribesmen and make things right.
Now men clustered around him, both grizzled veterans and un-blooded youths he’d grown to manhood with, all waiting on his word. He would personally lead them to triumph. He would bathe his axe in blood, washing away his former error, proving to his father and all his people that he was a worthy chieftain.
It was the hour of destiny… and Uthek believed in destiny.
The warriors waited in silence for their prince to give the word. Flint axes and razor-tipped spears bristled along the line. First arrows were nocked to string. One hulking warrior, Revek by name, clenched a pair of obsidian knives in his teeth to free his hands for climbing. Many of the men held woven ropes ready to throw upwards and snag the pointed tips of the palisade logs.
It was the last of the night, the cold void when sleep was deepest.
It was the time of blood and death.
Uthek gave the call of the nighthawk, once, twice.
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