From the amount of blood I saw splattered in the snow, I was prepared for the worst. Five men had been wounded—savaged and mauled by the wolves, but not killed. Four horses were down, and two of these were dead, their throats ripped; eight more had fled into the forest. The wolves would run them until they dropped. We would not see them again.
The king surveyed the damage without expression. Tegid hastened to meet us. “We have lost twelve horses,” he reported. Even as he spoke, the two wounded horses were relieved of their misery; a quick spearthrust behind the ear and they ceased their thrashing.
When Prince Meldron and his warriors returned, the five wounded warriors were having their wounds washed with snow and bound with strips of cloth by some of the women. The prince glanced quickly at the wounded men and strode to where we were standing.
“We have driven them off,” he declared proudly, wiping sweat from his brow. His warriors came to stand behind him. In the fluttering torchlight the fog from their breath shimmered like silver as it hung above their heads. “They will trouble us no more!” The prince was expansive in his judgment. “We have put fear in their craven hearts.”
“How many did you kill?” asked Tegid sharply. I heard the anger in his voice, cold and quick.
Those gathered close behind the prince heard it, too, and murmured ominously. Meldron smiled and held up his hand to them, however. “Siawn killed one, as you well know,” he replied amiably.
“Yes,” replied Tegid. “And how many more? How many more wolves did you kill?”
“None,” the prince said, his tone going flat. “We killed no others. Neither did we suffer defeat.”
“No defeat?” snapped Tegid. “Twelve horses lost and five men wounded—you deem that a victory?”
The prince looked to his father, who stood glaring at his son. “But we drove them away,” Meldron insisted. “They will not dare attack us again.”
“They have already done so! The moment you broke ranks they doubled back and attacked the place where you should have been.”
“No one was killed. We have shown them we will fight.” He raised his spear, and the warriors muttered agreement.
“You have shown them, Prince Meldron, that it is well worth coming back: twelve horses, and only one of theirs killed. They will not even notice the loss,” Tegid said, his voice thick with fury. “I can assure you they will return. They will harry us from this night forth until we reach Findargad, for you have shown them most wonderfully that the gain is great and the risk is light. They are already laughing at the ease with which they have outsmarted us. The wolves will return, Prince Meldron. Stake your life on it.”
The prince glowered at Tegid, his eyes narrowed to hate-filled slits. “You have no authority over me,” Meldron growled. “You are nothing to me.”
“I am the bard of the people,” Tegid said. “You have defied the king’s command. Owing to your disobedience, five men are wounded and we have lost twelve horses.”
Meldron returned a haughty stare. “I have not heard the king say that he is angry. If my father is displeased, let him tell me so himself.”
The prince looked to his father. King Meldryn glared at his son but did not open his mouth to speak. “You see?” the prince sneered. “It is as I thought. The king is well satisfied. Go your way, Tegid Tathal, and do not trouble me with trifles. If not for me, we would still be fighting the wolves. I have driven them away. You will thank me yet.”
Tegid’s face was livid in the torchglare. “Thanks to you, O Headstrong Prince, we will fight the wolves again. Thanks to you, twelve who might have ridden must walk in the snow. Thanks to you, five whose bodies were whole must now endure suffering, and perhaps death.”
I thought Prince Meldron would burst. His neck swelled and his eyes narrowed still further. “No one speaks to me like this,” he hissed. “I am a prince, and the leader of men. If you value your life, say no more.”
“And I am the bard of the people,” Tegid replied, once more reminding the prince of his authority. “I will speak as I deem best. No man—prince or king, least of all—makes bold to stop my tongue. You would do well to remember this.”
The prince fairly writhed with rage and frustration. He appealed silently to his father, turning angry, imploring eyes upon him. But the king merely stared back in stone-cold silence. The prince, humiliated by his father’s lack of support, turned abruptly and stomped away. Those men who deemed themselves the prince’s own followed him. And Paladyr, the king’s champion, was among them.
30
THE BATTLE
OF DUN NA PORTH
Tegid spoke the cruel truth when he said that we had not seen the last of the wolves. Emboldened by their victory, they followed us— slipping silently through the snow-laden forest by day and skulking just outside the firelight by night. They did not attack us as they had that first night. But neither did they abandon the trail.
“They have eaten well,” Tegid said. “They are content for now, but we must remain wary.” He pointed to the sharp peaks rising steeply before us, and close. “Soon we will leave the forest behind. When they see that we are making for the high trails, they will strike again.”
“But they will not follow us into the mountains,” I said optimistically. It did not seem likely that wolves would pursue us once we left the cover of the trees.
“Would you care to make a wager?” the bard inquired slyly. He grew suddenly grave. “I am not lying when I say I have never known wolves like this.”
“This determined?”
“This cunning.”
I knew what he meant. In the days since the attack, I had felt the eyes of unseen watchers upon us. Time and again, I found myself looking back over my shoulder, or darting a glance to this side or that as we traversed the forest trail. Only occasionally did I see the gliding, ghostly shape of a wolf flickering in the deep-shadowed dimness.
For safety’s sake we kept close to the river. And, though the waterway narrowed as the path grew steeper, the high rock bank offered some protection and the swift-moving water did not freeze. At night we banked the fires high and warriors maintained vigil from dusk until dawn. I took my turn at watch on those endless nights: huddled in my cloak, stamping my feet to keep warm, slapping myself to stay awake and alert, peering into the void of darkness for the phantom glint of a feral eye, and then shuffling back to camp and collapsing into a dull, exhausted sleep until the sun rose once more.
Not that we ever saw the sun. So cloud-wrapped and snow-bound had the world become that we lived in a world bereft of light and warmth. It was as if Sollen now ruled in Albion and had banished the other seasons to eternal exile. Each dark day that I awakened, I heard again Tegid’s words, The Season of Snows will not end until Lord Nudd is defeated.
The trail narrowed to little more than a rock-strewn path. The forest grew gradually more sparse, the trees smaller, stunted and deformed by the constantly battering wind, and the distance between them greater, as if in their misery they shunned one another. The ice-hard sky drew nearer as we climbed toward it. Torn shreds of cloud and tattered squalls of snow obscured the uncertain path ahead. And, when we looked behind, it was into a snow-hazed bleakness of white, relieved by gray slabs of rock and boulders the size of houses. We climbed above the tree line, slowly nearing the mountain pass leading into the rockbound heart of Cethness.
Each day the way grew steeper; each day the wind blew ever colder; each day the snow flew ever faster. Each day we traveled less far than the day before. And each night my shins and ankles ached from the upward strain of the trail, my face and hands burned from the wind blast, and it took longer to massage warmth back into stiff, half-frozen limbs.
We brought as much firewood from the forest as we could carry; the horses were laden with it. But the nights were bitterly cold up among the bare peaks where the wind wails and moans without surcease, and we burned great quantities of precious fuel each night in a futile effort to keep warm.
If I h
ad thought leaving the forest meant leaving behind the wolves, I was sharply disappointed. The second night above the tree line, as we set about making camp, we heard them once more—high up in the rocks around us, raising their eerie howls. The next day we could see them on the trail behind us. They no longer troubled to conceal themselves. All the same, the wolves did not attack. Neither did they abandon the pursuit, although they were careful to keep their distance.
I began to think that they would not attack again. Why should they? All they had to do was simply wait until, one by one, we began falling by the way. They would take the stragglers, kill and devour any who lagged behind, slaughter those too cold and too weak to go on. So that this would not happen, the king commanded the warriors to walk last in order to aid anyone falling too far behind, as well as to prevent the wolves from drawing too close.
We struggled through the snow, higher and higher, climbing steadily into the fierce, frigid air. Cold, hunger, and exhaustion united against us. Despite the king’s precautions, people began to fall away. We found the stiff, gray, frozen bodies each morning as we broke camp. Sometimes we would see someone laboring on the trail ahead; they would suddenly fall, never to rise again. Or sometimes they would simply sink into the snow at the side of the trail and no one would see them again. The bodies we saw, we buried under mounds of rocks beside the trail. Those we did not find were left for the wolves.
We lost fifty before reaching the pass called the Gap of Rhon, a narrow slash between two mountains where the trail clings precariously to the sheer mountainside far above the crashing white-water cataract of a river known as Afon Abwy. The swollen river thrashed its way to the mountain glens, sending up a fine white mist which coated the rocks and froze on them. The whole gorge was encased in ice.
On the day we came through the Gap of Rhon, we lost five to the yawning gorge. The wind gusted and the hapless climbers lost their footing on the ice and were swept to their deaths upon the rocks of the Afon Abwy. I saw this happen but once, and it is a sight I hope never to see again: the broken body falling, raglike, striking the sides of the gorge, tumbling, spinning, glancing off the ice-covered rocks, disappearing into the mists and churning water.
I saw it only once. Yet each time it happened, I heard the short, splintered cries pierce the thin air. The mountains echoed with the scream long after the victim had died. There was nothing to be done. We moved on.
The mountain trail was treachery itself. Sheer, slim, dangerous, twisting unexpectedly. Ice-choked and snow-filled, torturous, winding through the naked peaks with the guile of a serpent. Now we were passing under massive slabs of stone; now clinging to a sheer face of smooth rock; laboring step-by-step up an endless incline one moment, speeding headlong down a precipitous decline the next.
Our sole consolation lay in the fact that if the journey was difficult for us—and it was agony—it was no less harsh for our pursuers. Each day we could see them: sometimes far, far behind us; sometimes near enough to hit with a well-aimed stone. Behind their black leader, they paced our every movement, never tiring, never abandoning their relentless pursuit.
I grew used to seeing them, and I no longer feared them as before. But even as I grew inured to their predatory presence, Tegid became more and more wary and fearful. Time and again, Tegid would suddenly halt in the trail and spin around quickly, as if trying to catch sight of something elusive and unseen.
“What are you doing?” I asked him, when he had done this several times without explanation. I also scanned the trail below us and the ragged line of travelers on it.
Eyes narrowed and shielded from the snow with his cupped hands, he replied, “There is something back there.”
“Wolves—as you well know,” I replied. “Or had you forgotten?”
He gave his head a sharp jerk. “Not wolves. Something else.”
“What else?”
He did not answer but kept his eyes trained on the trail for a time. Then he turned around and began walking once more. I fell into step behind him, but now I, too, felt an uncanny sensation of deepening dread. I told myself that with a determined wolf pack dogging our every step I need look no further for the source of my foreboding— it was as close as the nearest wolf. I told Tegid as much, but the bard was not so easily persuaded. He still scanned the trail at intervals, and I looked too; but we did not see anything except the flickering shapes of the wolves.
Our food supply came to its end. Firewood dwindled dangerously. It became a matter of speculation which would kill us first: starvation, the freezing cold, or wolves. For three days we staggered, weary and half-frozen, before hunger drove us to kill and eat the first of the horses. We stripped the still-warm flesh from the bones and ate it raw. The hides we scraped and gave to cover the children. Little Twrch greedily gobbled unlikely scraps of offal; I saved a bone for him to gnaw later and assigned him to the care of the young girl who, with her mother, rode my horse. The woman had lost her husband to the treachery of a mountain precipice, and in her grief was grateful for some small diversion for her child. Twrch could not have had a better keeper and companion.
Always the king led the way, walking; he would not ride. Sometimes he walked with Tegid, but more often he traveled alone. Each casualty cut him like a knife; he bore the pain of each loss as his own. Yet he could not sacrifice the living for the dead. So he led on, striding stiffly, leaning into the slope, shoulders bowed, as if bearing on his own broad back the weight of suffering his decision to flee into the mountains to Findargad had brought about. As to that decision, King Meldryn remained resolute, despite the grumbling against him. And there was no lack of that. We might have exhausted our meal grain, but we possessed the bread of dissent in perpetual supply. When the last of the grain went, people reached for those ready loaves.
Loudest in reproach was Prince Meldron. He, who should have been foremost in support, filled himself and those around him with complaint and quarrel. I know I got a bellyful of his snide mockery. “Whither now, Great King?” he would call out, whenever he stopped for a moment’s rest on the trail. “Speak, Great King! Tell us again why we must hie to Findargad.” His taunts were cowardly; Meldron knew his father would make no reply. His geas kept him under vow: the king would not speak—even to defend himself against the unjust charges of his son.
Though it shames me to admit it, much as I trusted the king, I, too, began to doubt the wisdom of his decision. Were there no graves in Sycharth? It is not easy to keep the flame of hope burning in the cold, empty heart of Sollen. The Season of Snows is not the time to make bright plans for the future. One slow foot in front of the other—that was all the future I knew. Just one more step, and then one more . . . I cared about nothing else.
On the day we finally came in sight of Findargad—an immense, many-towered fortress, a magnificent stony crown on an enormous granite head lifted high on the shoulders of Cethness—we also caught sight of our true pursuers at last. I say that it was day, but the sky was dark as dusk and the snow swirled around our frozen faces. I saw Tegid stop abruptly and whirl round, as if to catch a thief creeping behind him. I had seen him do this countless times. But this time, I saw his mouth writhe and his dark eyes widen in alarm.
I hurried to his side. “What is it, brother?”
He did not answer but slowly raised the oaken staff in his hand and pointed behind us on the trail. I turned to look where he was looking. I saw what he saw. My heart seized in my chest; it felt as if a giant hand had thrust down my throat to clench my stomach and squeeze my bowels in a steely grip.
“What . . . ?” I gasped.
Tegid remained rigid and silent beside me.
There is no describing what I saw. Words were never meant to serve such a purpose. For lumbering into view was an enormous, yellow, splay-footed abomination dragging a tremendous blubbery gut between its obscenely bowed legs; its splotched, ravaged hide sprouted scraggly tufts of black bristles, and its narrow eyes burned with dull-witted malignance. The thing’s mouth ga
ped froglike, toothless, and slick, and its long tongue lolled, drooling spittle and green putrid matter; its long arms, wasted thin, dangled; its crabbed hands clutched, tearing at the rocks and flinging them as it scrambled frantically over the rough terrain.
Behind this squat monstrosity surged a swarming legion of grotesques. Scores of insanely freakish creatures! Hundreds! Each one as repulsive as the next. I saw skeletal members thrusting, bloated torsos squirming, lurid faces leering, frenzied feet rushing toward us at frightful speed. I marveled at their pace, for the deep snow did not seem to slow them at all. Long-limbed or short, fat-bodied or slat-ribbed and thin, huge and hideous or small and abhorrent, they skittered across the snow, racing toward us in a vile, vomitous mass.
They rushed upon us, driven by a gale blast of hate. Their shocking appearance was only part of their paralyzing power—I could feel malice streaming out from them, a potent poison, blighting all it touched. They drove the wolves before them, lashing them to rage. Over the snow, fast and sure as death they came—wolves and demons. Who could stand against such a formidable onslaught?
“It is the Host of the Pit,” said Tegid, his words a murmured understatement. “The Coranyid.”
It was the Demon Horde of Uffern, whose coming Tegid had silently anticipated for many days. Demons they were, and ghastly beyond belief. Yet to say that I saw the vile Coranyid is tantamount to saying nothing. To look upon them was to behold the face of wickedness and strong evil. I saw abhorrence embodied, malevolence incarnate, putrescence clothed in mouldering flesh. I saw the death beyond death.
My hands grew weak; the strength left my legs. The will to flee deserted me. I wanted only to sink to the ground and cover myself with my cloak. This, of course, is what the demons desired. They hoped to stop us before we reached the king’s stronghold—though why they had waited so long, when they might have taken us at any time since leaving Sycharth, I cannot say.
The Paradise War Page 34