River sucked at the slash the dreadman had given her and spat. When she’d done it a third time, he shouted into the wind, asking her what she was doing.
“I can’t feel my toes!” she called back.
“What?”
“Poison,” she said, her lips smudged with her own blood. “The dreadman’s blade was poisoned.”
26
Beyond Land’s Edge
TALEN GLANCED BACK. The dreadmen were nowhere to be seen. “We need to get you to Matiga and Argoth,” he said. “We need to take the coast road back to Rogum’s Defense.”
River slowed Scruff into a trot. But this wasn’t the trot of a regular horse because the length of each of Scruff’s strides was much longer. A normal trotting horse might average eight to twelve miles an hour. They had to be going at least half that again or more. The gait, however, was not the glide of Scruff’s gallop, and Talen had to work not to be bounced to pieces.
“You didn’t answer me,” said Talen.
“We’re a half day’s ride from Rogum’s Defense. More importantly, this is twice someone there ratted you out. I’m not taking you to the fortress.”
“Then where?”
“We’re going into the Wilds.”
“The Wilds?” Why in the world was she taking him there?
Then it came to him.
“It’s not going to do us much good to escape dreadmen only to die at the hands of some crazed, abominable half-beast.”
“Harnock’s not a beast.”
“He tries to kill all males that come into his territory.”
“Harnock was bred for killing, but he knows healing. He learned arcane parts of the lore trying to reverse what Lumen had done to him. It’s where you should have gone to begin with. Besides, I might not make it if we try for Rogum’s Defense.”
Lords, the tales he’d heard of Harnock from Ke!
“Are you sure?”
“Talen,” she said.
He sighed. If River needed Harnock’s lore, then she needed his lore.
“He’s close?” Talen asked.
She sucked at her wound again. “Closer than our other options.”
Talen took in a big bracing breath. “Forget Rogum’s Defense, then.”
“I knew you’d see sense.”
“If he kills me, don’t you let him eat me.”
“He’s not going to eat you.”
“My bones go back next to Da’s.”
“He’s not going to eat you,” River said again.
* * *
After another few miles, they came to a small stream. Talen’s pants were soaked with Scruff’s sweat and smelling like twenty horses.
“I think we all need a drink,” River said.
“How long can he keep this pace?”
“I don’t know. We’re going to have to get off and walk a bit alongside,” she said.
“We were flying,” Talen said. “Lords, almighty.” He slid off, happy to give his sore legs a rest, but even happier to break contact, for his cravings were back. “I’m going to train a firesteed when we get back. I don’t care if I never use him in war. The thrill alone is worth the years of Fire that it will cost.”
River dismounted. “Maybe, but you’ve got to be careful, Talen. It doesn’t seem like much. But a few years here, a few years there, and suddenly your life is spent.”
Talen bent to the stream and drank straight from the flow. When he finished, he said, “I say use the years up when you’re young and lively and can enjoy them. Who’s going to miss a few extra years hobbling around as an old man?”
River checked Scruff’s legs for injuries. “It’s not the hobbling that you’ll miss,” she said. “It’s your children and grandchildren. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be like Mother and find you need that Fire to be a blessing to someone you love who’s in need.”
“And yet none of that prevented you from getting yourself a Fire-gobbling mount,” Talen said.
She ignored him and bent over and pinched the tendons above one of Scruff’s hind legs. Scruff raised his hoof to be inspected.
“You don’t have an answer to that, do you?” he said. “So much for prudence. I’m training me a firesteed.”
“Yours will probably be an ass,” she said.
He saw himself charging into battle on the small animal, zipping about the other steeds’ legs. “I’d be murder on the belly straps.”
She laughed, but it was weak.
“How bad is the poison?”
“I’m fighting it,” she said.
Talen opened one of the saddlebags and retrieved a number of large pellets made of oats, honey, and salt. Just as with humans, horses that were multiplied needed rich feed. He held the pellets out to Scruff while she checked the rest of the hooves. When she lifted the right front hoof, she sighed in frustration. “He’s knocked the front caulkin completely off.”
The force and speed of a firesteeds’ stride created such a stress that normal horseshoes couldn’t handle it. Firesteeds required a special shoe of thick steel or iron that made a complete oval instead of opening at the rear. It also required three small knobs called caulkins, one front and two in the back, to provide more traction. “Can he still be ridden?”
“It’s not as bad as knocking a caulkin off one of the hind shoes,” she said. “But it’s going to need to be fixed. I don’t want the uneven traction to make him lame or cause him to slip. We certainly won’t be able to—” She groaned and fell to her knee.
Talen rushed to her. “River?”
“It was just a bit of dizziness.”
“Don’t you go dying on me.”
“We need to get to Harnock.”
“You’re going to get up on Scruff,” he said. “I can run alongside.”
“Let’s let him walk for a bit,” she said. “He needs a breather.”
“He’s just fine.” Talen picked her up and helped her back onto Scruff.
When she was in the saddle, she said, “We need to go west. Harnock’s home is in the mountains.”
The wind hissed through the trees, sending a gust of leaves fluttering across the road and into the stream. The storm clouds were blowing in from the sea.
“I never got the full story on Harnock,” he said.
“He was a Koramite captain,” River replied. “After the war with Koram, Mokad sent Lumen to take charge of the New Lands. Harnock refused to bow. He and a group of outlaws fought against Mokad. They lost. Lumen captured them, sacrificed their families. Then he took Harnock and the other rebels into his dungeon. All thought he’d executed them, but he kept them alive and experimented on them. The Divines have always tried to create a new type of warrior by blending soul.”
Talen shook his head. He picked up Scruff’s reins. The horse resisted Talen, wanting more water. Talen let him drink more, then gently pulled on the reins. A few slurps later Scruff complied and started to walk.
“How far is it?” Talen asked.
“Seven or eight miles past the border.”
Talen nodded. It was a relief to be off the horse, away from both of them and his maddening longing. “I don’t ever want you to teach me how to take Fire,” he said.
She didn’t respond.
“I don’t know if I can be trusted,” he said.
“Your longing will pass,” she said.
“That’s what you keep saying, but it’s only intensified. Before, it came and went. Now, it’s always gnawing at me.”
“Always?”
The wind in the trees masked the sound around them. He glanced back to make sure their pursuers weren’t catching up.
“More or less,” he said. “And it’s worse when I touch something living.” He paused, then said, “River, I don’t want to be someone’s tool.”
“You are what you cho
ose to be,” said River. “Just because you feel an urge doesn’t mean you must act upon it. We are, all of us, full of urges.”
“This isn’t an urge,” he said. “And I’m not like other men.”
“How do you know what other men feel? For some, the desire for drink or sinnis rides them like a beast. And yet they choose to resist. Some men have a disposition for a neighbor’s wife or daughter. Some are full of anger. But they refuse it. Are you telling me you think you’re a special exception?”
“No,” Talen said, “which is precisely why I don’t want to tempt myself. If you teach me how to take Fire, I might lose control.”
“There’s your fallacy,” she said. “You already know how to take Fire.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You tried to take my Fire when we were fighting in the stable. I don’t know how you did it, but that’s what it was.”
“I wasn’t trying to take your Fire,” he said, but, actually, he didn’t know what he’d been trying to do; it had all happened so fast.
“Let me tell you how it’s done.”
“No!” he said. “I just said I didn’t want to hear it.”
“You also just said there’s no use running from the truth.”
He didn’t want to know this. Once you knew a skill, it was only a matter of time before you used it. If it was a mystery, if the possibility was hidden, then it couldn’t be used.
She said, “You need to know how others will try to take from you so you can defend against such attacks. Mokad’s chasing us. You need to be ready should we fail to escape.”
“I’ll kill myself before I fall into their hands,” he said. “I’m not going to be enthralled. I’ve felt that power in the cave, and it’s irresistible. You heard what Uncle Argoth said about the thrall the Skir Master put upon him. You know what the Bone Faces do to those they enslave and how they use one finger to twist a man’s heart. So don’t tell me all urges can be resisted. It’s simply not true.”
River said, “Are you enthralled right now? Look, if you put a drop of honey on your tongue, it’s almost impossible not to swallow. You can feed a desire until it’s so large you don’t want to control it anymore. You need to know when you’re trying to take someone’s Fire, so you can stop yourself from putting that honey on your tongue.”
“I don’t want to know,” he said stubbornly.
The wind gusted in the trees.
“I believe it’s a good thing we’re going to Harnock,” she said. “I think he has a few things to teach you.”
“If he doesn’t kill me first,” said Talen.
“You’re so scrawny, I don’t know if he’ll think it’s worth the effort.”
High above them the two hooded crows dived and circled in the winds. “Those birds are starting to irritate me,” he said, but they were too high up in the winds for any accurate bowshot.
River shaded her eyes and watched the birds. “There’s a Vargon farmer who taught a raven to eat food from his finger tips. Then he taught it to talk. It followed him around everywhere. He soon died, and the people said he befriended it because the raven could see in both the world of the flesh and the world of the soul and saw his death coming. And he wanted a guide.”
“What kind of morbid talk is that? You’re not dying.”
“I’m not talking about dying,” she said. “I’m just saying that if I were to enthrall an animal, I think it would be handy to have one that could see in both worlds.”
“Well, let’s hope they get close enough for us to make a crow pie. And we’ll see if they taste as good in this world as they do in the next.”
They walked Scruff for another quarter mile, and then River said, “I think we can pick up the pace again. We can both ride. When we go down any large hills, we can get off and spare him the extra load. We’ll make good time that way.”
“You stay on the horse,” he said. He was multiplied and could run, and before she could protest, he set off at a jog, Scruff trotting behind. The wind picked up, knocking small branches out of the trees. A few miles later, they moved into the foothills. An hour after that, they reached the borders of the land where the slope of a mountain rose before them.
The actual border of the New Lands was marked by a line of obelisks spaced a mile or two apart. The obelisks ran the length of the mountains. Each had a base made of mortared stones and a column made of wood. They were built tall enough to rise above the trees.
“I think I’ve realized something,” Talen said.
“What is that?” River said weakly.
He fed Scruff one of his large honey pellets. All his life he’d heard that one must never go beyond the giant obelisks because that was woodikin territory. The Wilds lay behind the western mountains. As the name suggested, they were not tamed lands. They were full of wurms and other dangers. There were men who hunted in those parts and sometimes brought back wonders. But none of them ventured far. Those that did eventually failed to return. “I just realized, the border and these tales—they’re there to keep the herd from straying. Maybe the Wilds are exactly where we should be heading.”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” said River.
“All this time we’ve been penning ourselves in.”
A beat passed.
He said, “It seems odd to me that Harnock can live there for all these years and not be discovered. Doesn’t he need to trade every once in a while?”
“The laws keep most folks inside the bounds of the land,” she said. “And when he needs something, he has contacts.”
Talen knew she meant the members of the Order. “But he’s not wanted contact for some time. That’s what Uncle Argoth said. Maybe he’s found other sources of supply.”
“He’s one man,” said River. “He doesn’t need much. He keeps to himself. And this vale is not exactly easy to reach.”
“I think we should trot again,” said Talen. “I don’t know how far behind the slayers are, but I don’t want to lose our advantage.”
Talen fed Scruff another pellet. “Where do we go?”
“Do you see those broken cliffs?” she asked, pointing at a protrusion of rock columns and chutes at the top of the slope. “There’s a chute on the right that will take us up to the top. When we get over to the other side, we’ll follow a ridge for a few miles. It will end in a vale with a lazy river. From there we pick our way carefully over hill and through hollow. Harnock’s vale is a number of miles farther in. When we get to the ridge that looks down upon his vale, we need to stand in a certain place and call out for him.”
“And none of that takes us through woodikin territory?” The last thing he wanted was a poison dart in his neck, or worse: a nest of their wasps filling him with venom.
“If we keep to the ridge, we’ll be okay. I’ve traveled it before.”
“I hope you’re right. At least the dreadmen won’t feed us to the wurms.”
“The woodikin wouldn’t feed you to the wurms. They would eat you themselves to demonstrate their power.”
“Well, that makes me feel much better,” he said.
“I’d rather be devoured by a troop of little hairy men who can’t touch the soul than what was down in the stone-wight caves.”
“Aye,” Talen said. “That’s the truth.”
Above them one of the hooded crows streaked across the sky above the trees. It fought against the wind to circle back.
To the east thick and dark clouds had formed. It was going to rain hard. It would probably freeze him and River, but a good strong rain would drive those blasted crows to ground, which meant if they could just keep themselves ahead of the dreadmen, they might lose them in the storm.
He hadn’t seen any sign of the dreadmen, although he didn’t doubt they were close. “How are you feeling?” he asked River.
“Not well,” she said.
He looked up at her on the horse. Her face was pale and moist with sweat.
“Listen to me carefully,” she said. “When we get to Harnock’s vale, he must know you’re one of the Order.”
“Won’t he recognize you?”
“That’s not enough. Besides, I don’t know what state I’ll be in when we get there. So make sure you’re magnified. Don’t use the weave because if he’s in one of his moods, you need to be ready to flee with all your powers. You’ll make the sign of the Order when he approaches. And you’ll ask him to respect the blood of Hogan that runs through your veins.”
She sagged in the saddle.
“River?”
“Get moving,” she said. “I don’t want to be caught on the face of this mountain when the rain comes.”
Talen stroked Scruff’s broad jaw as he finished chewing the pellet. “Come on, boy,” he said. “We’ve got to get her up and over.” Then he tugged on the reins and set off at a faster pace, Scruff breaking into a canter behind.
* * *
By the time they’d climbed most of the way to the cliffs, Talen’s legs were burning, and both his and Scruff’s lungs were working like bellows. He took a break and looked back at where they’d come. The cursed crows had followed them up the hill and perched in a stand of tall pines some distance away. Talen tied Scruff to a branch and scrambled up a large protrusion of rock, hoping to get a better view of their back trail. The wind buffeted him, swayed the boughs of the trees around him.
Below the land stretched for miles. Only the approaching dark storm clouds prevented him from seeing all the way to the sea. At the foot of the mountain, their pursuers stopped where he and River had left the road. One of them looked up the mountain and pointed up the slope. It seemed he was pointing right at Talen. Then the group of slayers left the road, urging their horses into a canter.
Talen cursed and scrambled back down to Scruff, praying to the Six that the storm would overtake them.
27
Pursuit
ARGOTH GALLOPED AROUND A BEND in the wagon trail that led to the house of Len and Tinker. His mount was slick with sweat, soaping around the saddle and straps. Next to him rode Oaks, captain of a hammer of dreadmen. Behind them thundered a full terror—ninety-seven men, all of them new dreadmen.
Curse: The Dark God Book 2 Page 26