by Eve Forward
“The only thing lacking is trust and perhaps friendship,” mused Sam, sheathing his dagger.
“We don’t need those,” said Valerie, “if we have the solid knowledge that we all need each other to survive.”
Perhaps, she thought, it was not a wise idea to attempt to gain control of the party, despite it being what would please her the most... it would be very foolish, for not only would her position be constantly in danger, but she could not rely upon getting the full effort that the party only put out when working unfettered. “We do need each other to survive,” Sam decided, looking around. “We need Kaylana for healing, for a voice of reason, for her magic. We need Valerie for her knowledge, her power. We need Arcie, as I needed him in the past, to go where we cannot and use his talents to help us survive. We need Blackmail, for he has demonstrated his strength to us, and his loyalty ... a valuable asset.” The knight drew himself up and sheathed his sword. Sam looked around for Robin, didn’t see him, and left him out. “And I think you need me, because one of our main enemies, I feel, is the wizard Mizzamir ... and I will wager I’m the only one here who can kill him when we meet him.”
The others digested this and nodded. The fate of the world, now that their minds were cleared of anger, was as clear as it had ever been, their goals as destined as ever. It has been said that it would take circumstances that were drastic and strange in the extreme to ever allow a group of people of darkness to work together ... but perhaps the otherwise inevitable destruction of the entire world was just enough.
As the rain slowly drizzled off, there could be seen through the mist in the moonlight a string of figures making its way to higher ground, walking in each other’s footsteps.
“I’m sorry about your horse,” Sam said quietly to Blackmail, who nodded in silent thanks.
When Robin returned early the next morning, he trotted to where he expected to find a pile of broken bodies. Instead, there was nothing but the remains of the failed fire, and what might have been footprints heading east.
He at last caught up with them on top of a rocky tor.
The rain had vanished, replaced by a bright sun scattering clouds. They were sitting about on the sparsely grassed flat top of the plateau, with a small fire of twigs and grass burning off to one side. They looked up as he trotted up to them.
“Ho hi, Robin,” greeted Sam. His clothes were dry, his hair flipped a little in the faint breeze. “We figured you’d catch up sooner or later.” He had a look of calm complacency that seemed somewhat familiar to the centaur. The assassin’s collar was loose, and a faint brown mark showed in a star-shape against pale skin near his shoulder.
“You... you didn’t fight?” asked the centaur, looking around at the members of the company.
“Nay,” said Arcie, warming his toes in front of the fire.
“Just a tad o’ grouchiness was all.”
“There is some rushroot soup in that pot over there,”
Kaylana said. “Help yourself. Since you have just arrived, I think you should take the first watch.”
“Um, all right.” Robin folded his legs up under himself and lay down by the fire as the others drifted into slumber one by one. He got the impression that Valerie’s raven was watching him from its perch on a stone. With extreme puzzlement, he ate his soup and set his beloved harp out to dry in front of the fire.
“I say, Arcie, do you get the impression we’re being followed?”
The Barigan looked over his shoulder. It was night now, and in the dimness he looked out over the Fens, back the way they had come, to the moonlit glisten of the sea in the distance. They had slept through the day, breakfasted that sunset, and had been marching on through the darkening twilight. The mist was thin and low, and in the odd half-light of the new night you could see quite far. At the outlet of one of the slow rivers that emptied into the channel was the faint flicker of campfires.
The others had noticed it too.
“Looks as it,” said Arcie. Kaylana shook her head in annoyance.
“Of course. Who would venture into this forsaken place but to follow us?”
“They seem to have camped for the night,” wavered Robin uncertainly.
“Naturally,” replied Valerie. “Only a bunch of lunatics would try to cross the Fens of Friat in darkness.”
There was silence a moment, broken only by the soft whispers of the night wind.
“Let’s get moving then,” said Sam at last, with a sigh.
The company turned and slogged off through the boggy, festering land.
“I don’t see campfires, sir,” said Jeffries, the young scout posted at watch in the Verdant Company. They had crossed the water when it had fallen to manageable level that evening, and now were pausing to dry clothes and equipment. Fenwick thought for a moment.
“They must be moving by night,” he decided at length.
“Trying to put distance between us as best they can without horses. We’ll have to go after them.”
“Into the Fens, sir?” quavered Jeffries. “B-but...”
“Teams of three, with horses and hounds,” decided Fenwick. “We’ll spread out, keep in contact with horns. Just like the old chases, eh, Jeffries?” Fenwick flashed his white teeth and clapped the young scout on the back.
Jeffries still looked doubtful.
“But sir... what about the barrow-beasts?”
“All defunct now, my friend,” answered Fenwick cheerfully, whistling for his horse-captain. “The Light has driven those creatures of shadow into nonexistence.”
“And the Orthamotch?” asked Jeffries, nervously.
Fenwick laughed. “The Orthamotch! Don’t tell me you’re jumping at children’s stories now! Come! You shall ride with me.” The young hero sprang down from his post and began dividing men into teams, still chuckling.
“I’ll protect you from the nasty Orthamotch.”
Soon the night was torn by the drumming of hooves.
“I don’t think I like this very much,” decided Robin. His hooves sloshed in the mud, and he had to pick them up like a hacking pony to keep from getting them tangled in the swamp-weeds. “Well, it’s no picnic, that’s certain,” agreed Sam.
“Why don’t you give us a jangle on that harp-thingy of yours, if no one objects?”
The others made various noises of non-objection, as they stumbled their way through the mud. Robin shivered, conscious of Mizzamir’s words that a single false note might earn him a dagger in his neck, but took out his harp, and tuning it as he walked along. The darkness and danger seemed to fall away as he worked, the carved dolphin on its head gleaming in the moonlight, the notes of the strings sounding first dull, discordant, then slowly adjusting to perfection as he tuned them with the silver key. Ears pricked as he bent over the instrument, feet left to find their own way, until at last every note sang true.
He rested the instrument in the crook of his shoulder, resting against his human side so that it was not shifted by the motion of his walking. He had built the instrument himself, as the son of one of the finest woodcarvers in the Commots and with the aid of a genuine minstrel. It fitted his form and style of playing perfectly. He watched the renegades walk for a moment, running mentally through his repertoire, and finally decided upon
“The Ballad of Tirsat Lam” as being of good cheer and with a nice sort of marching rhythm. With calloused fingers striking notes from the strings, he began to sing:
Long ago in the land of Phrin Roamed the Seeker, Tirsat Lam, His heart was light though his boots were thin The wandering warrior, Tirsat Lam.
The others seemed to cheer up a bit, lifting their feet with more enthusiasm. “Not bad, centaur,” acknowledged Kaylana. “You might possibly have made a bard, back in the old days.”
“What’s a bard?” asked Robin, pausing in his singing while his fingers carried on through the refrain. Kaylana looked a little surprised and sad, and shook her head.
“Perhaps I shall tell you later. In the meantime, please continue
.”
“Aye, do that,” added Arcie, hopping from tussock to tussock in an effort to keep out of the deeper puddles.
Robin blushed a little, and went on.
He had come from the War at Galor At the ancient Hippogryph’s lair When the trumpets sang of valor Tirsat Lam was surely there.
“That’s very interesting how you did that,” interrupted Sam. “One can almost hear the trumpets blowing in the distance.”
“I ...” began Robin, but abruptly the party froze.
Robin’s fingers fumbled and the last notes of the harp died away, replaced by a distant sound-the call of a hunting horn drifting softly across the Fens, answered a moment later by another, closer.
“Fight or flight?” asked Kaylana, tersely. “I make it about three horses and some dogs, going to be here in a few minutes. The dogs have our scent. And I cannot do anything with the dogs ... they sound to me like Feyhounds, creatures of Elven-bred stock immune to my powers.”
“Fight,” opted Sam, flipping out a pair of daggers.
“Well enough,” muttered Arcie, climbing out of a pothole and unhooking his morning star.
“There isn’t much choice,” decided Valerie. Blackmail silently unsheathed his sword, and stood ready. A moment later a crash of hurtling figures broke out of the misty shadows, and the renegades had to fight for their lives.
Sam dodged a whistling sword blow that would have separated his head from his shoulders and looked up at a figure in warrior’s gear, wearing a green and gold tabard over his chain mail and under his fringed vest. The fellow grunted as his sword missed and jerked a curved hunting horn to his lips. Sam flickered, and the form fell with a slow gurgle, a pair of vertical slits in his neck.
Kaylana had lost her wooden shield in the flood, and was now almost the unfortunate recipient of a hefty whack to the side of the head with a mace from what looked to be an enthusiastic woodsman-priest of some sort, followers of the hunters’ deity Artelis. She jumped back, the mace barely missing, and fell with a splash into a pool. A cry of
“I got one!” rang out. Kaylana shook her head in the water, then noticed something squirming underneath her fingertips. She could feel her staff channeling natural energy safely away from her as it touched her. With a grip of her staff and a faint whispered word, her hand closed on it.
Arcie danced around another fellow trying to hit him, sending the man’s horse spinning in circles. The armored warrior cursed. Arcie abruptly yelped and leaped away as three white, red-eared hounds lunged at him. The warrior turned and found himself confronting a huge, darkarmored figure wielding a massive sword. The sword whistled through the air, and he fell off his horse in avoiding the blow.
Valerie looked over to where the Barigan stood at bay.
Her eyes narrowed in anger. She remembered Feyhounds, the vicious white tracking and hunting dogs of the people who had destroyed her life. Her dark-clawed hand lashed out with a crackle of power, her voice hissing words of magic. Arcie whopped one of the dogs on the side of the head with his morning star, and then stared in shock as all three burst into brilliant flame, yelping and running about.
Meanwhile, in a lightning motion Kaylana threw the large, smooth shock-worm she had found at her attacker, who was dismounting, preparing to come finish her off. It wrapped around his neck like a wriggling scarf, discharging several thousand volts of sky-fire into his body. He gave a gurgling shriek and fell, twitching, purple sparks flashing over his chain mail.
Sam saw the last warrior faced off with Blackmail, the two circling each other, blades clashing and clanging. He whipped out a dagger, and as he threw it a large dog, somewhat on fire, crashed into the back of his knees, spoiling his aim. He fell face first into the mud and had to contend with snarling, snapping jaws as the maddened beast tore at him.
“Ha!” cried the last man, as the silent knight closed on him. “You may kill me, but you’ll all perish in the firestorm I shall unleash with my magical crystal ...” He grabbed for the rune-inscribed pouch that had held it, and scrabbled at where it should have been. As the great black sword descended, his last sight was of a grinning Barigan sitting on a tuffet behind the dark knight, holding the pouch aloft and waving it slightly.
There was a snap and hiss and Sam shoved the hound into a puddle, breaking its neck as he did so, and then tense silence reigned, broken only by the drum of horses’ hooves retreating. Three men and three hounds lay scattered about. Sam saw Blackmail wiping off his sword, Kaylana emerging from a pool, rubbing her head, Valerie dusting her hands off with a faint smile, Arcie tucking a pouch into his belt... and Robin standing stricken, some distance off, stock still and white as a snowbank in the moonlight. Sam coughed.
“All right... does anyone have a seven-inch piece of steel inside them that doesn’t belong there?” he asked apologetically.
There was a chorus of confused no’s, except for Robin.
“You just killed all those people...” the minstrel quavered.
Sam walked up to him, beckoning Kaylana to follow.
He looked up at the centaur with a tolerant smile. “Never seen battle before, have you?”
The centaur shook his head.
“I thought not ... well, if you’d been in here doing your share, I don’t think you’d have caught this so easily ... and you might have noticed if you had.”
Robin looked down to where the assassin was gently tapping his equine chest. An ebony-hilted dagger set with a piece of camelian was stuck sideways in the thick muscle there, letting a slow trickle of blood slide down his foreleg. Robin trembled all over, his ears pinned back, and then his large brown eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed into a dead faint. His heavy body fell with a soggy noise into the muddy marsh.
Kaylana rushed to remove the dagger and pack the wound with healing herbs. “Poison?” she asked tersely.
“No ...” replied Sam softly. “Just scared of his own blood, I think.”
“You knew you’d hit one of us?” Valerie asked, coming up and inspecting the fallen centaur. Sam nodded and looked away. He thought he saw torches in the distance.
“I never miss.”
“Aye come on,” scoffed Arcie. “That’s just yer advertizmints.”
“Really,” said Sam. “I may not always hit what I aim at, when I fire or throw a weapon ... but I always hit something. Always.”
“Inborn magic, perhaps,” commented Valerie, her voice still showing disbelief. “Were your parents magically talented?” Sam shook his head slightly, not answering, as old wounds stung. He coughed roughly.
Robin’s eyes fluttered, and he tried to roll to his feet.
He got to his knees and shook his head. Sam looked down at him.
“Sorry,” the assassin said. Robin goggled at him. Sam walked away, saying, “We’d better get a move on ... these people’s friends will be here soon, I think ... I can hear the horns.” He coughed again. His jerkin was torn, scorched, and bloodstained by his grapple with the hound.
Kaylana looked around the party; wounded from battle, still sore from the bruising in the Ford, coming on sickening from the air of the Fens.
“We may not survive another attack,” she said slowly.
“We must move away from here, quietly and without trace. Valerie, if you can summon a magical fog, I can hide our tracks from their hounds.”
The searching men of the Verdant Company looked at each other in puzzlement as a slow, oily fog began to drift through the night. The hounds wandered in circles, confused, and the calls of the horns grew fainter and fewer as the strange fog muffled the noise.
In the fog, a battered string of renegades headed northeast.
The men of the Verdant Company lit lanterns and held them aloft so that they could see the way, not wishing to stumble into a ditch or bog or pool. It was this that proved their undoing, however.
The three men in group D were becoming uneasy.
“This place is creepy,” said the healer of Artelis, whose fellow brothers
had served the Verdant Company as long as it had existed. Though his faith in his goddess was strong, the Fens seemed literally godsforsaken, and his eyes darted about nervously. The woodsman in the group nodded.
“Yes it is ... Fenwick didn’t take this fog into account when he sent us out... I think we’d better find some of the others and form larger groups.”
“Good idea,” said the warrior, and raised his horn to his lips. The sound pealed out and then died away. There was no reply. The light of the lanterns attracted flickering, midge-like insects, and all was quiet but for the snuffling of the hounds and the soggy sounds of the horses’ hooves in the mud.
“Ho! Look there!” exclaimed the woodsman in delight, pointing to their left. The others turned, and saw three dim, flickering lights, softly yellow, close together but far away, surely the lanterns of three of their companions in another group.
“What a relief,” sighed the warrior, and they turned their horses toward the distant lights, riding at a brisk trot to reach the safety and security of companionship.
The dogs whimpered slightly, and the horses seemed less willing to follow the lights, but the riders ignored them.
They barely had time to gasp in terror as the ground suddenly fell away beneath them, plunging them into an inky morass of quicksand, kin to the quick-mud but much worse, for in the liquid muddy sand one could feel slimy things moving against one’s skin. As they floundered, a clawed hand lunged up from the muck, gripping a man’s face and pulling it down. There was the flash of crocodile teeth. The lights, hovering and dancing over the pool, flashed down like large, eerie fireflies to feed.
They drained away the fading life essences of the dying men, leaving them shriveled and pale, stricken faces wide in frozen terror.
All across the marsh, lights real and imagined flickered, and death once more stalked the Fens.
“What’s that?” asked Arcie, peering at a dim light bobbing in the distance. Valerie looked up and turned away quickly.
“Ignore it, Barigan.”