Tom and Karen both dropped to the ground and copied Colin, listening to the grumbling sound of an unfathomable amount of water roaring through an underground chamber, more water moving faster than Colin could imagine. Walter looked as if he wanted to hear it as well, but he refused to dismount from his horse, sitting up straight in the saddle, towering over all of them. Both his and Jackson’s horse were fidgeting, feet dancing as they tried to shy away from the trembling ground.
“Do you think it travels underground from here to the Falls?” Arten asked.
Tom had climbed back to his feet. “Remember how it shot out of the Bluff? And we haven’t seen any significant water sources on the upper plains at all, mostly streams and small creeks and runoff from the storms.” He stared down at the ground, hands on his hips, then turned to Arten. “If all the major water sources are underground, we’re going to have one hell of a time finding a place to settle Haven.”
Aeren stepped into the grim silence that followed and motioned toward the east. His expression was grim as well, although he couldn’t have understood what Tom had said. Eraeth kept close to Aeren’s side as they followed him through the thicket of trees, wider than Colin had expected, the river rumbling beneath them, the trees marking its edges. As they moved, a few more of Aeren’s guard appeared, startling Karen and Walter both as they emerged from the thicket as if from thin air, their steps silent, their forms fading into the background when they stood still. Colin listened to Walter cursing as the branches of the trees dragged at him, but he still refused to dismount, choosing to duck beneath them, leaning forward, almost hugging his mount’s neck.
The trees thinned. Colin pushed through the last of the branches, into scrub brush, and found himself staring out across another expanse of plains, almost exactly like those on the other side of the trees.
He sighed in disappointment. He’d hoped for something different.
Aeren pointed toward something just to the east, a small group of dark objects sitting in the grass near the verge of trees.
Everyone shifted forward, a few with eyes shaded. Colin squinted, felt Karen moving up beside him. He could see five distinct shapes in the grass, rectangular, blackened, low to the ground. He frowned, not recognizing them—
And then Karen gasped under her breath, “They’re wagons!” And suddenly the shapes came into focus, harsh and visceral. A cold fear seeped into his chest, spreading out to his arms, down into his gut.
“What is it?” Walter asked.
“It’s one of the previous expeditions,” Tom said, his voice strangely flat and remote. “It’s what’s left of their wagons.”
Shock settled over everyone as they stared out at the abandoned wagons, the words sinking in slowly.
And then Walter spun his horse toward Aeren, who was suddenly surrounded by Eraeth and the other Alvritshai who had emerged from the forest as they approached. Their bows were strung and pulled, arrows steady, although Colin didn’t know when they’d strung them. They were pointed toward his father, toward Arten and Walter, the commander’s hand already on his sword. But when he saw the arrows trained on him, he froze, eyes blazing.
“Who did this?” Walter spat, not in a roar but in a hiss. He kicked his horse forward a menacing step, completely ignoring Aeren’s guards. “Who did this?” he demanded again. “Did you do this? Did you?”
“Don’t be stupid, Walter.”
Colin felt a hot surge of satisfaction pierce the coldness of the fear in his chest at his father’s voice, flat and even.
Walter spun on Tom. “What did you say to me?”
“I said, don’t be stupid. They wouldn’t have led us here to see this if they’d done it themselves. They would have killed us back where we met. So sit down and keep quiet, before you get us all killed.”
“Yes, Walter,” Jackson added, looking pointedly toward Aeren’s guards. “Sit down and shut up.”
Walter stiffened, his glare never leaving Tom’s face, but he sat back in the saddle. The muscles in his jaw flexed. “I’m the Proprietor here,” he insisted, his tone sullen.
Tom’s eyes darkened. “Then act like it.” Without waiting for a response, he turned to Arten. “We need to check out those wagons, see if we can determine what happened.”
“What about them?” Arten asked, nodding toward the Alvritshai. Aeren stood in their midst, his bow the only one not strung. He watched everyone in the group carefully, all trace of the smiling man they’d spent the day traveling and trading languages with gone. His guardsmen had not relaxed, not even when Walter backed down, and Arten’s hand had not shifted from his sword hilt.
“I don’t think we have to worry about them.” Tom turned his attention on Aeren. “We’re going down there,” he said, motioning toward the wagons.
Aeren nodded, said something in his own language. His guards relaxed, their bows dropping, some of the tension in their strings easing. But they did not remove the arrows; they kept them pointed toward the ground, ready for use.
Arten waited until everyone else had headed toward the wagons, Walter making a point of riding out in front first, before easing away from the Alvritshai and following.
The first thing Colin noticed as he and Karen approached the wagons was that they were nothing but burned out husks. Charred wood stood out against the green and yellow of the grasses, pieces torn from the sides of the wagon completely overgrown by the grass itself. Karen’s hand found his as they came up on the first wagon, the rest of the group spreading out, Arten and Tom heading toward the center of the grouping, Walter and Jackson circling around to the other side. The wagons were spaced as if they’d been hit while traveling.
“What do you think happened?” Karen said, as she reached out a tentative hand toward the side of the wagon, brushed her fingers against the charred wood. Her hand came away black with soot, cinders crumbling off and falling to the ground, flakes catching in the breeze and drifting away.
“They were hit while moving,” Colin said. “It looks like they were trying to run away. Look at the wheel. It’s shattered, like when the horses bolted on the lower plains and Paul’s wagon hit the stone and flipped.” He pointed toward the broken wheel, the wagon canted in that direction. The smell of char and soot was strong, even though the wagons had been sitting out exposed for what must have been months.
Colin stood, glanced into the back of the wagon as Karen drifted away, noticed that most of the supplies were still inside, although charred almost beyond recognition. Something might be salvageable though. The hide cover was gone, although a few of the supports that had held it still remained, also blackened by fire.
“Oh, Diermani help us,” Karen gasped, her breath choked.
He circled around toward the front of the wagon, toward Karen. “What is it?” he asked as he approached and saw Karen looking at the ground. Her hand covered her mouth as she took shallow breaths.
And then the breeze shifted and he caught the rancid smell of rotten meat. He gagged, even though it wasn’t that strong, one hand covering his own mouth.
“The horses,” Karen said, voice thin.
The team of horses that had pulled the wagon lay in the grass, hidden by its stalks. They were still tied to the tongue, their bodies half cooked by the fire. The blackened skin had pulled away, exposing their yellowed teeth, and holes gaped in their sides where animals had gnawed at their hides, chunks of flesh torn free. But they’d been on the plains for a while, the rancid smell more a lingering memory, the bodies themselves more gruesome than anything else.
Colin sucked in a breath to steady himself, then crouched down close to the dead horse to look it over closely. “Get me a stick,” he said.
“From where?” Karen said, moving away.
“The line of trees over the river if you have to.”
Karen snorted. He heard her rooting through the back of the wagon, then return.
“What about this?”
She held out the end of a hoe, the metal and part of the ha
ndle still intact. The top of the handle had been burned to ash.
He grunted, grabbed the end of the handle, greasy soot coating his hand, then used the metal part of the hoe to prod something from the flaking hide of the horse. It took a moment to work it free, but once it fell out, he pulled it toward him, then reached down to pick it up.
Karen leaned forward as he brought it up into the sunlight. “It’s the head of a spear,” Colin said.
Karen stood up. “So they were attacked, and they tried to run, but—”
“They didn’t make it.”
They considered this in silence, broken a moment later by Karen. “So who attacked them?”
They both turned toward Aeren and the Alvritshai. Uneasiness settled into Colin’s stomach, roiled there.
“Let’s show this to my father,” he said, standing.
They moved toward where his father and Arten were inspecting one of the other wagons. Within twenty steps, he felt something soft give beneath his foot and glanced down.
Karen shrieked and leaped back, but Colin only stared, withdrawing his foot hastily.
He’d stepped on an arm, the impression of his shoe clear in what remained of the man’s flesh. The man’s body was mercifully facedown, a ragged hole in his back where a spear had killed him, then been jerked free. The body was shrunken, the flesh collapsed in upon itself, and like the bodies of the horses, the predators of the plains had been at it. One of the man’s legs was completely missing, torn free and dragged off somewhere to be eaten.
The man had clearly been running from the wagon—abandoned after it had caught fire or when it had hit the stone and the wheel had shattered—and had been killed as he fled.
Colin shuddered, then grabbed Karen’s arm and led her away, although she’d already recovered from the initial shock. They jogged up to where his father and Arten were kneeling down at the back of a second wagon.
“We found a body,” Colin said.
His father looked up. “So have we.” Then he reached down and turned the body on the ground beneath the wagon over.
It wasn’t one of the people from the wagon train. It wasn’t even Andovan. The body was short, perhaps a hand or two shorter than Colin. It would have been stocky—broad of shoulder and chest, with short legs and arms—except that it was as mauled and decomposed as the body Colin and Karen had found. The fact that the face was caved in on one side, crushed by a heavy, blunt object, didn’t help matters. But even so they could see that the man’s skin had been a dusky brown shade, like dirt, and that he’d worn a closely shaven beard, trimmed on the edges, the length bound and twisted into small braids and tied off with beads. His hair was a tawny brown, a few locks braided and tied with beads and small feathers. He wore a shirt of woven cloth, soft where it wasn’t stiff with caked dirt and blood and soot, but his breeches were made of a different material, something tougher than the shirt. He didn’t wear shoes.
In one hand, he held the end of a spear, the haft splintered where it had been broken. Numerous pouches were belted to his waist, along with a sheathed knife, the blade small, in proportion with the rest of his body. His nose was pierced, as well as one ear, a thin silver chain running from one to the other so that it draped down across his cheek.
“I think he tried to climb up into the back of the wagon and got clubbed by someone inside,” Tom said.
Arten nodded. “These must be the people that Beth saw looking down from the upper plains. They’re shorter than the Alvritshai.”
“And they look more vicious,” Karen said, frowning down at the man’s face. “Look at the scars on his face.”
“Definitely a fighter,” Arten agreed. “A warrior.”
“Did you find one of them as well?” Colin’s father asked.
Colin shook his head. “No. We found one of the people from Andover. He’d taken a spear in the back.” He handed over the burned spear point. “They killed the horses with spears as well. I got this from the horse’s body.”
“They ambushed them,” Arten said, glancing up, looking out over the rest of the wagons they could see. One of the blackened hulks was flipped onto its side, its contents strewn about and hidden by the grass. “They forced them to run, but there were others waiting.”
Walter’s horse came charging around the end of the wagon, and he pulled it up short, turning back. “We found the rest of the group,” he growled, “the rest of the wagon train. They’ve been slaughtered.”
The bodies—men, women, and children—were all lying in a heap in front of the lead wagon, along with the bodies of a few horses, two cows, and three dogs. Arten stared down at them, his expression blank. Walter and Jackson were pacing their horses behind him.
“It was a massacre,” Tom said, and for the first time since they’d come down to the wagons, Colin heard anger in his voice.
Arten nodded, then reached down and retrieved an arrow from one of the corpses, working the arrowhead free from the body with care. He held it up to the sunlight, inspected the fletching, the point. “They rounded them up and then killed them with arrows. But it wasn’t the Alvritshai. The arrows are too short for their bows, and the fletching and arrowheads are different.” He lowered the arrow and turned to Tom. “I think Aeren is trying to warn us about these other people. He’s trying to warn us away from them.”
Walter scowled. “Then where are they, these other people? Who are they?”
“Dwarren.”
Everyone turned from the bodies back toward the wagons, where Aeren and the other Alvritshai were standing beside the lead wagon, watching them. Their arrows had been put away, although Colin noticed their bows were still strung.
None of them had heard the group of Alvritshai approach. “They call themselves the dwarren?” Walter demanded. “They did this? Why? Why would they attack our people?”
Aeren’s brow creased in confusion. He motioned toward the wagons, toward the bodies at their feet, toward the arrow that Arten still held, and said again, “Dwarren.”
“And where are these dwarren?” Arten asked, voice tight. “Where do they live? How come we haven’t seen any of them yet?”
Aeren stared at him solemnly for a long moment, and Colin noticed that his men weren’t watching Walter or Arten or anyone else in the group. They were watching the plains.
Then Aeren motioned toward the surrounding grassland, his arm circling, fingers pointing in all directions. “Dwarren.”
“I don’t understand,” Walter said sharply, frustrated.
Arten’s gaze had shot toward the plains, his eyes squinted, face intent.
“I think he means,” Tom said softly, also turning toward the plains, “that the dwarren are everywhere.”
And before anyone could react, they heard screams coming from the direction of their own wagons.
9
OM TORE THROUGH THE BRANCHES of the line of trees over the river, his heart thundering in his chest, his breath harsh, his lungs aching. Something raked across his face, slicing open his cheek, the pain stinging; but he didn’t stop, didn’t even stumble. All he could think about was Ana.
And the corpses of the previous expedition, lying discarded on the plains, forgotten.
He leaped over a bent sapling, heard Arten and the rest plowing through the trees on either side. As soon as they’d heard the scream, Arten and Tom had bolted for the tree line, Aeren and the Alvritshai spinning in that direction, their arrows suddenly nocked and raised. Colin and Karen had stood stunned, Walter and Jackson as well, but then both the Proprietor and the Company man had kicked their horses into motion, surging toward the trees, outdistancing Tom and Arten in a heartbeat. Tom had heard Colin shout, knew that he and Karen were charging after them and silently willed Colin to stay with the burned out wagons. But he knew Colin wouldn’t, knew Karen wouldn’t stay behind either. Part of him cursed them for their youth, but another part surged with pride.
He crashed through the edge of the trees and stumbled out into the brush and grass at its
edge, his breath tearing at his lungs. Arten spilled from the trees to the right, his sword already drawn, the Alvritshai emerging smoothly farther away. Clutching the sudden sharp pain in his side, Tom swallowed and spun to the left.
Walter and Jackson were galloping toward their wagons, their horses’ hooves throwing up clods of dirt in their wake. And beyond them—
Tom’s heart faltered in his chest. From fear, but also from startled shock.
The wagon train was under attack. A group of the short, vicious-looking men that Aeren had called the dwarren launched a rain of arrows and spears toward where the wagons had tried to circle for protection, maybe twenty of the dwarren in all. But it took a moment for Tom to grasp what was actually happening, for him to sort out the chaos.
Because the dwarren weren’t attacking on foot. They were riding the gaezels. As if they were horses.
He turned to see Arten gazing toward the scene with wild eyes. Before either of them shook themselves out of it, Colin and Karen burst from the tree line.
“What’s happening?” Colin shouted. “What’s going on?”
“The dwarren are attacking the wagon train,” Arten said, Colin’s appearance snapping him out of his shock. He strode toward Tom, reached down and drew a knife from a sheath in his boot and handed it to him. “Here. I don’t have another one for you, Colin.”
Colin—breath rasping in his chest, eyes fixed on the group of dwarren astride their gaezels—fumbled in a pocket, drawing out the tightly wound sling Tom had given him what seemed like an eternity ago. “That’s all right,” he said. “I have this.”
“And I have this,” Karen said, opening her hand to reveal a small but sharp knife used for eating.
Behind them all, the Alvritshai had halted, were hesitating, Aeren watching Tom, Arten, and Colin, waiting to see what they would do. Aeren’s escort kept their eyes on the fight at the wagons, faces taut. Their bodies strained forward, but they held themselves in check.
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