by Kevin Hearne
Tip and Yar and the trader boy whose name I am ashamed to admit I could not recall were all dead. I wanted to sing the songs and give them back to the roots but knew we wouldn’t have time to do it properly. Our clash surely had been heard by others, and they would be coming soon, or else they would when the patrol did not report in. Pen’s chest was heaving and tears streamed down her face as she saw Yar and his horse lying downhill. I felt the pricking of tears in the corners of my eyes, too, but they would have to wait.
“We have to keep going,” I said. “The Canopy must know as soon as possible that the Hathrim have a military presence here.”
“What?” ben Kor said. “What about our people?”
“We have to leave them. We still have a mountain to climb and can’t be sure we’ll make it without a significant lead—you saw how fast they moved. If we don’t make it back, then that gives the Hathrim more time to dig in, more time to plot an invasion of our shores.”
“We can’t simply leave!” Pak protested. “Tip was my friend!”
“And Yar was my clansman!” I yelled at him, refraining from pointing out that he had not fought at all to save the friend he cared so much about now. “And Pen’s brother! But it’s Canopy first, benman; you know that! We have to get back to Forn and let them all know through root and stem that we have been attacked by houndsmen, and what’s more, there’s a whole host of Hathrim just a few hours away from our border. Imagine the damage a few firelords could do to the northern hardwoods before we’d have time to muster a response.”
He spluttered, “They would never attack us.”
“I’m sure you thought they would never settle north of the Godsteeth either. And now they have this incident that they can use as an excuse to retaliate. Because of course they won’t say that they attacked us; they’re going to say we attacked them! What if this isn’t just Gorin Mogen, ben Kor? What if this is a plot among all the Hearthfires to wrest the Fifth Kenning from us to fuel the First?” Both Pen and Kam gasped at the thought. It was an ancient fear among us all. The Black Jaguar squinted at me. “You’re saying this was planned?”
“Yes.” It galled me to have to fertilize his ego, but prudence dictated that it was the only way to get the harvest I wanted. “You’re good at this kind of thinking. What would the plan be?”
His eyes fell to the back of his horse’s neck as he thought about it. “Wait for Thayil to erupt and move to Ghurana Nent as refugees, harass our northern border and draw our forces there, and then the rest of the Hearthfires strike massively in the south.”
“Or some variation on that theme, yes! Our strategists can run scenarios and plan countermeasures. But only if they know about it, right? So we have to go.”
“All right,” he said, all his anger gone as he nodded. “We will go and report together. But if we can risk the time and bring the fallen back to their roots,” he said, jerking his chin downhill, “it would not only be proper but galvanizing for the Canopy. You see that, yes?”
Fine. A compromise. He would argue away any time I thought we’d save—he already had. It was a terrible risk, but he was right about the effect it would have: Tip’s death would motivate the Blue Moths for sure. Since we were outside Forn and leadership consisted of we two, no silverbark except that which grew on our limbs, I extended my left arm, moss up, simulating the sway. “I see and agree. Accord?”
He paused, looking down with surprise at the offer to proceed as suggested. He was used to arguing for days before achieving anything in the sway. But perhaps, like me, he was realizing that we would no longer have the luxury of days to argue. He touched his right arm to mine. “Accord.”
“You get ben Lot, I’ll get my cousin, and Kam, will you get our clansman? Quickly.”
“I should help,” Pen said, her voice rough and filtered through a sob as she took in the body of her brother.
“No, we need your eyes and ears for approaching Hathrim,” I said. I dreaded every second of returning downhill, knowing that if any other houndsmen appeared, we’d be every bit as dead as Yar Tup Min and the others. Net launchers only had the single shot, and I had no arrows left.
I had plenty of tears for Yar, though, like Pen, and a forest of regrets that I hadn’t saved him. If I had said something to the Hathrim, would that have stopped them? Not sure what good it would have done unless they spoke Fornish. I didn’t speak their language.
Getting him on the horse was not all that difficult, but lashing him so that he wouldn’t fall off took more time than I thought we could afford. My horse snorted in outrage at the extra burden, but she wanted to leave the scene as much as I did, and soon enough we were clambering uphill again with no signs of obvious pursuit. Pak was able to recover only the top half of Tip because the dead man’s horse was still running uphill with his lower half bouncing in the saddle.
We spoke little on the trek back to Forn, our voices failing along with the light. The horses picked their way through the needles and rocks with little guidance from us, and it wasn’t until we were nearly at the pass again that we heard them coming.
It was a single bark in the darkness, followed by another, that alerted us that we were followed.
“Go!” I shouted. “Quickly as you can!” We spurred our horses onward, but they were already tired; their breath sprayed wetly out of their nostrils, and they managed only a labored trot, whereas Pen’s horse, not burdened down, leapt into a full gallop. Good. Perhaps she would make it if we did not. At first I felt like I might be able to run faster than the horses, but they soon realized what those barks behind us meant and sped up. After a few minutes of panicked flight, we crested onto the bare shale of the pass, and had we sufficient light to see it, the Canopy would have been there, welcoming us. Pen and the surviving clansman were far ahead, perhaps already safe; it was only Kam, ben Kor, and myself who lagged behind.
The barks were closer now, though; the houndsmen were gaining much too fast, and I doubted we would make it. But perhaps this close to the Canopy I could do something about slowing them down. Except I would have to dismount to do anything; the vegetation could hardly help me if I was floating above the earth on a horse’s back. The others didn’t even see me rein in and hop off my horse since I was the rear guard. Time to make that duty mean something.
Slapping the horse on the flank to send it and Yar’s body after the others, I ran alongside it for a short distance until it outpaced me. I kept churning after it, starlight and sound guiding me, hoping that soon I would find a patch of ground that wasn’t solid stone, a layer of topsoil through which I could call on the powers of my kenning.
The clatter of the horses’ hooves on the shale kept me from hearing anything of the hounds beyond their barking; I couldn’t tell how close behind us they actually were. But then the sound of the hooves changed as they hit the high mountain turf, and I knew that the soil I needed wasn’t far ahead. The collected thumping of their gait matched the hammering of my heart, and I took big heaving gulps of air to give myself as much energy as possible, straining against muscles that had tightened up after hours on horseback.
Reaching into my vest for a sealed inner pocket, I remember thinking years ago that I’d never have occasion to use the dormant seed waiting there inside a slim wooden box. It was given to me by Mat Som ben Sah once I’d adapted to my silverbark; every greensleeve got them from an elder of his or her clan. I remember feeling awed at its appearance as he placed it in my palm; even as a seed, the carnivorous bantil plant looks hungry and vicious, having a scalloped red hook and thorn to it. Animals that were too strong for the vines to take down took seeds with them, snared into their fur or flesh, and soon the seeds burrowed in and bloomed, consuming the animal from within and taking root in the soil where it died and then consuming any scavengers that came to feast on the corpse. It grew very quickly that way, converting blood and tissue into its own and growing more thorny vines tipped with toothy blooms that were really mouths.
“Plant it shallow, Nel,�
�� Mat told me, words issuing from behind the impenetrable thicket of his gray beard. “Cut a finger and give it a single drop to get it started. More if you need it to grow big quickly.”
I would definitely need it to grow big quickly, and I would have to channel a huge amount of energy from the Canopy to do it. It would cost me a year or so of my life to accelerate the bantil’s growth to the extent that it would even stand a chance of stopping the houndsmen. But if it would save Pen and the others and guarantee alerting the Canopy before Gorin Mogen’s plan could take root? That would be worth it.
The jarring shock of stone ended, and spongy loam cushioned my feet. It was an island of soil in the rock, or more like a pool, blown into a water-carved depression and then rooted there by lichens and eventually grasses, and I could feel that it connected to the soil of the Canopy. I remembered seeing these areas trace up the hillside from Forn, hollows of vegetation streaming between ridges of shale.
The horses’ hooves faded in and out like the staccato barks of treetop apes, sometimes falling on stone and sometimes on turf. They were getting close to the Canopy. But the houndsmen were gaining. The barks were louder, and I heard massive claws scrabbling on the rock and the clanking of armor. Was I already too late?
Whipping the box out of my vest, I spun in the turf and knelt, poked a small depression with my finger, and upended the box over it, careful lest the hook of the seed get caught on my own flesh. I tossed the box away and pulled out my knife, slicing the tip of my left middle finger and holding it over the seed. Six drops and I pulled away, getting to my feet and stepping backward as the seed exploded into ravenous life, a small feral red mouth springing up a couple of fingerlengths even as roots shot into the earth. Hungry, the bloom of teeth searched for more blood, more meat, but that was not how the bantil plant would grow now. It would be fed from the Canopy itself at my direction.
Silverbark shoots dipped down from my legs and sank into the earth as I walked, picking up again before they tore as my movement demanded, pale tendrils that moved like the spokes of a wheel, communicated to the Canopy, requested energy, received it, and delivered it again to the roots of the bantil plant.
Mat Som ben Sah had told me what it was supposed to feel like, and he had been told by his elders, and they by theirs, because no greensleeve of the White Gossamer Clan had done this for generations. But the lore was clear: “If you’re directing the energy properly, you will feel as if you’re burning from the inside,” he told me.
He was right, but it wasn’t burning like the Hathrim burn or like any fire I have known. It was the day’s sunlight channeled through my core, and although I did heat up and break into a sweat, it was not painful but enervating, as if I had not eaten for days—a strange sensation to feel such exhaustion when I was funneling weeks of growth through my cells.
Yes, it was weeks, for the bantil plant grew eight, perhaps nine feet high, a seething mass of thick, murderous vines, and its mouths faced north naturally, for it could sense the oncoming meat of the houndsmen, a far greater meal than I could ever provide; it would never eat me anyway since I enjoyed the protection of the Fifth Kenning. Seed hooks flashed in the starlight as vines snaked along the ground, hoping to snare a passing animal. They would have their greatest hopes realized soon enough.
Hounds do not track plants. They track animals like me, focus on their prey, and never think about vegetation as being dangerous or edible. So even if they smelled the bantil plant growing in front of them, they had no reason to be wary. And at the speed they were climbing over that saddle in the mountains, the houndsmen wouldn’t see it in time. But maybe they would hear ben Kor shouting from behind me, no doubt already safe under the leaves of the Canopy: “Ben Sah! What are you doing?”
Four mounted houndsmen bounded over the pass into Forn, and unable to see well, one of them ran directly into the bantil and went down howling in a tangle of snapping vines, its rider soon enough adding his screams to the hound’s as the blooms fed on them both. The other three passed by but brushed against the trailing seed vines.
I broke my connection with the Canopy, withdrew the silverbark roots into my legs, and staggered as the energy left my body. One of the hounds either saw or smelled me and pivoted to charge, allowed to seek a target by his rider. I knew I wouldn’t be able to dodge, much less fight such a beast on foot with only my hunting knife. I was too tired even to try. All I could do was collapse, and I did, the hot breath of the hound blowing my hair and its stench filling my lungs as it snapped its jaws above me, missing by inches as its trunklike legs passed me on either side.
The houndsman yanked his ride around to try again, and I thought perhaps I could manage a feeble roll, but I doubted it. The two other houndsmen were circling about, taking in their dying counterpart and realizing that I probably had something to do with the bantil plant.
A couple of steps more from each, and then their hounds yelped in unison. One sat to chew on one of its feet, and the other two spun in a circle at some irritation, bewildering their riders. I knew precisely what the irritation was: bantil seeds burrowing into their flesh and eating them. Only one of the giants had the sense to dismount and get clear. The others tried to hang on and get control of their hounds, but that didn’t work out well for them. The hounds flopped onto their sides, desperate to get at their feet, and that trapped their riders underneath them. The bantil seeds were young plants now, growing and eating fast, and soon enough they’d send roots into the ground, lash their prey to the earth, and feed until they could feed no more. I was not quite trapped in a circle of four bantil plants, but very nearly so. They might not burrow in and finish me, but those toothy blossoms might take a bite of me before they realized I was off limits.
The single giant that had avoided the bantils retreated and watched his feet as he ran. When he got close to the first monstrous bantil I had planted and its trailing vines blocked his path, he shouted a curse and pointed his axe, and flame traveled up the handle to the head and sent a gout from the blade, lighting the vines on fire. He was lavaborn—and he alone, since none of the others had set anything alight. And it was precisely that ability that was so dangerous to the Canopy. The bantil vines blackened and shriveled, and he stepped across them into safety before stoking the flames higher and making sure the entire bantil plant would be consumed—along with his erstwhile companion, who had stopped screaming but was still being eaten. I lost sight of the giant after that; he was hidden behind a wall of flame and writhing vines. He left the others to die, I noted, but perhaps he realized there was nothing he could do to save them now. A strategic retreat was his only option, and it was mine as well.
My muscles wouldn’t obey me, though. I couldn’t get up; channeling all that energy had wiped me out, and the fire most likely would move faster than I could. No matter; the others had escaped and would warn the Canopy of the danger, and I had served the Canopy above myself as a greensleeve should.
I lost some time in the darkness, a blissful time when the screams and the flames all faded, and woke up as someone grunted and tried—unsuccessfully—to lift me onto a horse. It wasn’t Kam Set Sah or Pak Sey ben Kor. It was my cousin Pen Yas ben Min.
“What’re you doing?” I mumbled.
“What needs doing,” she replied. “Pak was saying you shouldn’t have sprouted the bantil plants and Kam was telling him he has the brains of a puffweed, and neither of them was saving you. Can you just help a little bit? Get yourself draped across the horse and I’ll walk you down.”
She gave me an undignified push on the rear, and I scrabbled weakly across the saddle, draping across it much like a sack of barleycorn. There were no sounds of dying now from the hounds or their houndsmen, only the sound of the fire behind me and the three other young bantil plants feeding on their kills and growing at their natural rate.
“Have you seen the last Hathrim?”
“The lavaborn? You mean he got away?” Pen asked.
“Unless one of you killed him, ye
s.”
“We didn’t see him come our way. We just saw him briefly as a silhouette and assumed you must have gotten him after that since he didn’t start any more fires.”
“No, he didn’t need to,” I said. “I think he just wanted to get away, like us.”
“I’m glad he did.” She took the horse’s lead to guide us downhill, watching out carefully for any scattered bantil seeds or vines that might have slithered across her path since she had passed. She had a bright yellow glow bulb in one hand to help her see, brighter than the ones I was used to.
“Where’d you get that glow bulb?”
“Jak had it with him.”
“Who?”
“Jak Bur Vel. The boy who wants to be a mushroom farmer?”
“Oh. Sorry, I think it’s me who has the brains of a puffweed.”
“He’s really into fungus like this. Told me all about the Silver Carp Clan that harvests these in the caves near the Raelech border.”
She was talking fast, obviously nervous, and I listened to her talk about Jak and his strange fungus collection so that I wouldn’t have to listen to the bantil plants eating. Pen might have been talking for the same reason. I grunted in appropriate places as we picked our way downhill to the Canopy, where the others waited. Jak and Kam were relieved to see me and heaped praise on Pen for rescuing me. Pak Sey ben Kor, I noticed, said nothing as they helped me off the horse and braced me between them. I met his eyes and asked him a question.
“Did you report what happened already through root and stem?”
“Not yet.”
“Then let’s do so now, together, as agreed.”
“Let’s talk first about what you just did,” the Black Jaguar said, pointing at the fire. “You used your bantil seed, and now there are hundreds more of them up there. You’ve effectively turned the pass into a major hazard.”
“The lavaborn are a major hazard to the Canopy,” I replied. “And thanks to the bantil plant, the one they brought with them never got this far.”