Edrea moved closer to Lynus traced fheyissa, the sigils for “fortress,” in the air. She drew in as much power as she could and clenched her fist around the symbols. A circle of runes appeared, flat on the ground with Edrea at their center.
“We’ve only just met,” Rorsh said, “but I accept.”
“Accept what?” asked Pendrake.
“I’m weaving for protection,” Edrea said. “It reaches everybody. I didn’t know Rorsh had a choice.”
Rorsh snorted. “I brought my own. You’ll see.”
“Found ’em!” Lynus announced. “No big arteries in front. Two two-chambered hearts, one inside each lung, left and right of a heavy sternum. Massive artery and vein pair running up the ventral face of the spinal column. You’d have to break its back to sever that.”
“Or go in deep through the false mouth,” Pendrake said. “I really had hoped to have forgotten something more convenient.”
“What’s this note here?” Lynus asked, half to himself. “Smudged it in the lab.”
Edrea thumbed back the hammer on her rifle with a click.
Rorsh snapped a glance at her. “You fire, they pounce,” he grunted, waving his gun. After his comment about feeding their horses to Brine, Edrea felt pretty good about dubbing it pig iron.
“Good point,” said Pendrake. “Together, then. On three. One . . .”
A spine ripper bounded into the firelight from the north, leaping wide of Kinik and charging Rorsh on the east. Rorsh fired, and the beast flinched, then leaped past him over the edge of the bluff. Edrea hoped Brine waited ready, but it was abruptly too loud to listen for that.
Two more leaped, snarling, into full view, one at Kinik and one atop the corpse of the young farrow, which it dragged out of the firelight.
Kinik, roaring with exertion, swept her polearm toward it. The creature veered from the blade, shifting its charge just to her right, toward Pendrake.
For just a moment, Edrea had a clear shot. She fired, sure she hit, but for all the spine ripper noticed she might as well have thrown an apple at it. It leaped, pouncing on Pendrake, who ducked under it, sweeping up with his sword as he did. The spine ripper kept moving, streaking blood. Pendrake rose, his coat torn, but appearing otherwise unharmed.
“Save your shots,” he snapped. “Lynus is still reading!”
Edrea broke the breech and pulled a reload from her pocket.
“Oh, I get it,” Horgash said. “We cover the boy while he looks at pictures. Very tactical!”
Edrea chambered the round and snapped the breech shut.
“Fluid-filled sheath,” Lynus muttered. “Strongly alkaline . . .” His eyes went wide. “Professor! They’re not immune to their own poison!”
Four spine rippers leaped into the light at once, again skirting those facing them in an attempt to blindside other defenders.
Edrea felt a pulse of magic wash over her as a rune-circle in farrow script burst to life around Rorsh. He did bring his own. Edrea felt fheyissa drift loose of Rorsh, pushed aside by the new spell.
All four rippers stumbled and slowed, as if mired in mud. “Stab the forefeet!” Pendrake shouted. “Pierce the glands and we can dose them with their own poison.”
Horgash parried a blow with his left blade and stabbed at a foreleg with his right, missing entirely.
“That won’t work!” Lynus yelled. “The gland sheath neutralizes the poison, like emergency antivenin!”
“Also,” Horgash said, parrying another blow and stabbing at the ripper’s face, “the forefeet are hard to hit.”
Rorsh fired, and one of the rippers roared in pain. He slipped his pig iron into a holster and drew a heavy, square-bladed cleaver. Farrow-scrawl symbols spun to life about his weapon hand, and Rorsh charged the wounded ripper.
Lynus dropped the sheaf of papers and picked up his sword. “How are we doing?”
Rorsh’s victim shrieked in desperate agony, the noise punctuated by heavy, wet thunks which called to mind the back of a meat market.
“We might be winning,” Edrea said as a chunk of something sailed past her, trailing red.
Kinik held a ripper at bay. The beast seemed leery of her blade and intimidated by her stature, which exceeded its own. Pendrake squared off with another, lunging with his sword, inflicting small, deep wounds.
Horgash’s blades dripped with blood. The ripper he faced retreated from the firelight. “That’s right,” Horgash bellowed hoarsely into the darkness. “Lick those up, and think long and hard about—oh Wurm scat!”
A pair of spine rippers charged him, but just before reaching him they veered right, rushing Rorsh and his butchery.
“Rorsh! Behind you!” Edrea shouted.
Rorsh spun just in time to be tackled and pinned by the first of the pair. Edrea fired into its flank, then stared in horror as the beast’s belly spines, the spears rimming that long, false mouth, snapped shut on Rorsh, tearing into the farrow, puncturing and ripping.
Rorsh pulsed with magic, powerful magic, but there was no telltale flare of rune light. For just an instant, however, Edrea faintly felt rage, pain, and furious hatred all bound up together, streaking away.
And then Rorsh was free of the ripper’s maw, his wounds were gone with no trace, and Brine squealed in agony below the bluff. Rorsh was still pinned, but the belly spines were now folded closed above him.
The second ripper jumped from the bluff, probably to attack Brine, and Edrea gaped as Lynus charged the first ripper, the one still pinning Rorsh.
Rorsh lay flat on his back, both legs and one arm trapped. With his free hand he pulled a reddish stick from his pocket and touched it to the cigar that continued to burn, jutting from his mouth.
“Keep the bacon,” he said. Then he reached up and wedged the stick among the spines on the ripper’s flank.
Edrea recognized the red stick as an explosive a half second before it went off.
A wall of sound and heat knocked her flat, smashing the breath out of her. She shut her eyes tight, and her vision blazed with a white-hot afterimage. Everything was silent—not the peaceful silence of an evening in the woods of Ios, but the terrifying silence of deafness.
The protection of fheyissa escaped her as she struggled to inhale, her diaphragm spasming. Eyes shut tight, she reached for both magic and breath, and found neither.
There was a sound, like a distant rushing of water. It grew louder, into a roar like a waterfall, a waterfall in a tempest. Her diaphragm spasmed again, and then air rushed into her lungs.
“ . . . ease! Get up! I hear them coming back!”
Someone was shouting, a plaintive scream that barely reached her over the din in her ears.
“Edrea, PLEASE!”
She opened her eyes. Spots swam in her vision, and the waterfall in her head gave way to ringing. Lynus stood above her, great sword in hand.
“You’re alive!” he said. “Professor! She’s okay!”
Edrea stood and steadied herself. “How long was I down?”
“I was counting arms and legs, not time,” Lynus said.
“Seconds, not minutes, my girl,” said Pendrake.
Edrea scanned the campsite. Two spine rippers lay dead where Rorsh had been—one butchered with a blade, the other blackened and shattered by the explosion. That left three out there in the dark. Where was Rorsh? She wove vossyl for sight, and a stabbing pain shot through her eyes.
“Are you okay?” Lynus reached out to steady her.
“I tried to see in the dark. Can’t.”
“There’s a third one dead down by the creek,” Pendrake said. “It appears to have been pounded into a bristling pulp.”
“Rorsh and Brine ran that way after the explosion,” Lynus said. “Edrea, your magic . . . it saved my life. I felt that blast slam hard into me, but I was made of iron.” He grinned enthusiastically.
Edrea smiled back, but her head was still swimming with pain. “Five of us, two of them now? Those aren’t bad odds.”
“Three
of us,” said Pendrake. He pointed at Horgash and Kinik, both staggering weakly. “Poisoned. They’ll live, but they’re out for this fight. Lynus, keep that point up.”
Lynus’ sword point bobbed up, then drooped again. “Professor, in my dissection notes I detailed the technique for removing spines. The beasts can flex them, pointing them every which way. The ligaments are sturdy, but if you twist the spine hard and bend it back, it comes free.”
“Oh, tha’s useful,” said Horgash, his speech slurred. “Soon as this wears off, I’ll just pluck ’em to death.”
“Excellent,” said Pendrake, but Edrea wasn’t sure if he was talking to Horgash or Lynus. Before she could ask, a spine ripper bounded into the firelight, stared right at Lynus’ sword, and pounced.
Scyrah’s rest, Edrea cursed to herself. Lynus’ point was too low, so it came for him.
Lynus took a step backward, bumping into Edrea. She stumbled and fell, while Lynus crouched in a sloppy approximation of a cat stance and raised his blade. The leaping spine ripper impaled itself, but the blade stopped just inches in, shoving Lynus backward and down onto Edrea. He rolled as he fell, and planted the hilt of his great sword in the ground.
The blade penetrated with a splintering crunch, parting ribs and tearing flesh. The spine ripper screamed. It lay atop Lynus and Edrea, its hot, rancid breath blowing in both their faces as it writhed. The belly claws were still spread wide, stabbing the ground instead of them.
“I think I got an artery,” Lynus said through gritted teeth. “Not as effective as I wanted.”
The ripper planted a clawed paw barely a hand span from Edrea’s face. It was trying to lever itself back up so it could close that belly maw on both of them at once.
Pendrake jumped into view, both hands empty. He grabbed the beast’s right forepaw by the thumb spine, gave it a wicked twist, and pulled it back. There was a tearing sound, a snap, and the spine ripper shrieked again.
Pendrake adjusted his grip on the eight-inch spine, then lunged forward and stabbed the spine ripper with it. Edrea felt the beast shudder and then go limp. Their poison was fast-acting, even on them.
Pendrake turned just as the last remaining ripper came bounding into the firelight. It pounced. Pendrake dodged, stabbed, and the beast shrieked and fell. The professor tossed the claw aside and drew both sword and dagger. The spine ripper stumbled backward, then limped clumsily back into the dark.
Pendrake charged after it.
“Morrow, this is heavy,” Lynus said. “Edrea, can you help me push?”
Edrea pushed, and the weight shifted slightly. She felt around for better leverage, but there were spines everywhere. The beast twitched, and she wondered whether it would die before the poison wore off, or whether the horrible spines surrounding her and Lynus would suddenly snap shut.
“Friend Lynus, be very still.” Kinik slid her war cleaver between Lynus and the ripper and levered it off them with a grunt. The ogrun sat heavily, turned, and retched into the fire pit.
Pendrake strode back into the camp wearing a mixture of triumph and fury on his face. “It’s dead,” he said.
He dropped to his knees and looked Edrea squarely in the eyes. “I’m so sorry. Aeshnyrr is dead.”
Oh, Aeshnyrr . . . Edrea felt unsteady, even though she was already sitting down.
“Professor, what happened?” Lynus asked.
“It would appear that Rorsh, may the Wurm take him and his indiscriminate pyrotechnics, goaded Brine into eating before they left.”
Edrea nursed both headache and heartache as she walked that morning. The forest seemed darker than it had yesterday. Maybe there was cloud cover overhead. Under the canopy of the Widower’s Wood, it was impossible to tell. Clouds would be fitting, though.
Oathammer walked ahead of her, now laden with a triple share of the supplies. The poor gelding looked lonely, even with Lynus walking beside him. Edrea recalled how Oathammer always sought to walk alongside Aeshnyrr, and how Aeshnyrr loved the attention.
Could Edrea have saved her? Would better aim, or better spellcasting have kept Rorsh to his word? Perhaps the filthy, duplicitous half-boar brigand planned to steal a horse regardless. If the fight had gone differently, could Edrea have prevented Rorsh from . . . from butchering poor Aeshnyrr?
She had seen what was left. It didn’t bear thinking about, but walking these dark woods in silence left little else but this sad spiral, always circling back to the mangled remains of—
“Edrea,” Lynus said, “I think Rorsh used magic to save his life.”
Here was something else to think about. Not very far from the sad spiral, but maybe it would spin differently. Thank you, Lynus.
Edrea took a moment to collect her thoughts.
“He used a lot of magic, and very quickly,” she said. “All of it unfamiliar to me. Arcane practices vary rather widely. But I don’t think it was magic, exactly.”
“Magic always has those runes, though, right? I mean, I always see those when you cast spells.”
“In my experience, yes.”
“Well, that’s weird then. Right? His belly was ripped right open, and then it wasn’t. No flash of magic, nothing.” Then Lynus lowered his voice. “But at the moment his wound vanished, the big pig, Brine, screamed in pain.”
“Oh, I heard that too. Didn’t that other ripper jump down there?”
“That happened just after. I was chasing that one, and I saw Brine below, in the lantern light—that big belly was all torn up, just like a spine ripper would do. Like a bigger version of Rorsh’s wound.”
Horgash grunted and turned to face Edrea and Lynus from high atop Greta. “I’ve heard tales of trollkin shamans who could bond to a beast so tight, they couldn’t be killed until the beast itself was slain.”
And Rorsh had said he didn’t need to see what was beyond the bluff. That farrow butcher had a bond to Brine, something that let him control his pet monster without even needing see it.
Edrea spoke, somewhat hesitantly. “I have seen something similar with blackclads before. I thought it unique to them and their control over wilderness beasts. So many of their ways are mysterious.”
Pendrake spoke from the head of their meandering line. “The blackclads of the Circle are indeed notoriously reluctant to reveal their secrets. If such a thing is possible—using a beast bond to heal oneself—well, I can understand why they might keep it to themselves.”
“Military advantage,” Horgash said. “Kind of like you Cygnarans and your cortex secrets.”
Pendrake shrugged. “Perhaps there is something fundamental shared between these practices, but we have too little data to say for certain. There are so many differences between farrow and trollkin, let alone the enigmatic blackclads, that I hesitate to draw firm parallels in this matter. Not without more information.” He pointed to a sunlit clearing ahead. “And on the subject of information, I think I know what that young farrow was begging Rorsh for help with.”
The woods opened up into a wide glade. The thicket had been cut away, trees felled to provide lumber for building.
The village was in splinters, the ground throughout the clearing torn in a rippling pattern.
Edrea’s heart sank.
Lynus pointed into the mess. “Those berms look like the ones in Bednar. Like a giant snake or worm pushed the ground around as it crushed people.”
“My people,” came a voice from the edge of the woods. An old farrow stepped into the sunlight. He wore furs over armor fashioned of reptile skin. The white hair on the ridge of his back was braided and festooned with colored beads, countless bits of bone, and rune-inscribed chips of metal, wood, and stone. “Viktor Pendrake, you have come too late.”
“Groth!” Pendrake strode forward. “Dear friend! When did this happen? We have been tracking this beast and its masters, but lost their trail at least two day’s travel west of here.”
“Yesterday afternoon,” the farrow said sadly. “My . . . how do you say, skill-suckler?”
; “Apprentice?” Pendrake said.
“I like skill-suckler,” said Horgash.
“My apprentice and I, we gathered herbs, and heard the thundering, distant screaming. I sent him for help, sent him after the wanderer Rorsh, who studded our sows and left with yesterday’s dawn.”
Pendrake nodded sorrowfully and put his hand on Groth’s shoulder. “Your apprentice reached our camp early this morning, badly wounded. He spoke just a few words to Rorsh, and then his injuries claimed him.”
Groth held up a tiny tuft of hair that had been bound with string and thrust through a bead. “I know. I used the . . .” he scratched his head, “far-seeking, deep-tasting.”
“I don’t know enough about the arcane to help you with the word you’re looking for,” said Pendrake.
Edrea’s jaw dropped. There was an Iosan practice involving such magic, a powerful scrying that allowed one to find people or things. It required one to be familiar with who or what they sought, and in possession of something that had been close to them. Edrea had left Ios with only the barest knowledge of the sigils. Her instructors were unwilling to let young students like herself reach deeply enough to tap this power.
That it could be wielded by a farrow hermit shaman, and over such a great distance, came as a shock.
“That’s some of your apprentice’s hair?” Lynus asked.
Groth nodded sadly.
“That’s brilliant!” Lynus continued. “You cut it before he left, and then your magic could tell you how he fared!”
Tears welled in Groth’s eyes. He turned to the ruined farrow village, reached into a pouch at his waist, and withdrew a fuzzy, beaded cord. Dozens of tiny clumps of hair, each with a different colored or shaped bead affixed, were strung along this cord, at least two paces’ worth of tiny tokens.
“My children. Litters I tended. Sucklers I fed.” He drew a pattern in the air in front of him, paused to wipe his snout with a hairy knuckle, and continued. Runes appeared before him. Edrea did not recognize the shapes, but she felt finely honed power pulse outward from Groth.
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