“Oarly must have shit,” he called to Hyden and Brady ahead of him.
“What?” Hyden chuckled back over his shoulder.
“The flies have gone,” Phen giggled. “Oarly must have shit his britches again and fogged them away.”
“I heard that,” the dwarf said behind them. “It’s more likely that your foul breath grounded them.”
Phen, and a couple of the seamen laughed, but they were all startled to silence when Brady shushed them.
“Can you hear that?” Brady whispered at Hyden.
A deep buzzing sound was resonating up ahead of them. It sounded like a swarm of something far larger than the yellow flies. Talon leapt from Hyden’s shoulder and flew ahead. All eyes watched Hyden’s concentrated expression, searching for a hint of alarm or fear.
Hyden saw the same thick jungle flora ahead of them: huge heart-shaped leaves, long dangling vines, and clusters of bright blue flowers that grew out of patches of thorny brambles. Talon followed the sound, fluttering from branch to branch as he went, taking it all in. Subtle alarms were going off in the hawkling’s mind, the instinctual warnings that all creatures seem to have built into their consciousness, but so far curiosity was dominant. Hyden felt the alarms too, like tiny voices saying, “Not good. Fly away. Go around.” The hawkling ignored them bravely, and eased forward as Hyden bade. Then from a stone’s throw away they saw the source of the sound. Talon perched on a limb and froze in place just long enough for Hyden to see what it was. Then he fled back to the group, as quickly as he could fly through the dense jungle.
It was a nest of hornets, Hyden saw in that moment. Not ordinary flower-buzzing bugs, but huge red hornets the size of cucumbers, with finger-long venomous stingers sticking out of them. The nest was the size of a pavilion tent, and thousands of the creatures buzzed here and there through the trees. The skeleton of something lay near the hive. Another hump of something even larger seemed to undulate with the wasps as they swarmed over, feeding on its flesh. Hyden hadn’t been able to make out any more. Talon’s instincts had thankfully taken over and forced him to fly away.
Trying not to alarm the others, Hyden pointed to the left of the line they had been traveling, and spoke in a near whisper. “Let’s go that way for a while,” he suggested. He ignored the barrage of hissed questions from the others. He didn’t want to tell them that no bow or sword would save them if those things set upon them. He doubted there was even a spell that might let them escape so many poisonous flying things. There was no other choice but to skirt well around the nest. Later, he might tell them exactly what he’d seen.
After a long while, he had Brady circle them back around toward their original course. He kept Talon ahead of them, searching for signs of anything that might be a danger.
“Look,” Phen exclaimed, pointing off into the trees. When Hyden saw it, his heart nearly stopped. A lime-green snake, as big around as a man, and easily thirty paces long, slithered away through the lower branches just beside their trail. When it was about a hundred strides away, it startled something in the undergrowth. Whatever it was growled fiercely and rattled shrubs and leaves as it darted away from the snake directly toward them. Phen stood open-mouthed and wide-eyed as a dark shadowy form bounded straight at him. He raised his dagger feebly when the cougar-like creature revealed itself. Teeth bared, it leapt at him. It was covered in quills like a porcupine, and Phen could do nothing as it pounced. Just before tooth and claw found Phen’s flesh, the creature sprouted two more quills, each with fletching on the ends. The alert seaman behind the boy booted him to the ground just in time to avoid disaster. Both Hyden and Deck Master Biggs had loosed arrows at the creature. In the leafy shrub where it crashed down, a wicked-looking spiked tail thrashed about a moment before stilling.
“Well theres be fresh smeat for sssupper,” Oarly said cheerily. The slur of his speech betrayed the fact that he had taken more than a sip or two of Biggs’s brandy during the day.
“It’s a blasted overgrown lyna,” one of the seamen said as he looked closer at the kill.
“Could be,” Master Biggs nodded.
“I’m not sure we want the smell of fresh meat close to us in this place,” said Hyden as he helped Phen to his feet.
“ ’Tis true, Hyden Hawk,” Oarly replied robustly. It was obvious that he had overcome his seasickness. “These Island creatures won’t be smelling fresh meat around this dwarf, lad. They’ll be a smelling scorched meat, from a raging fire, and they’ll fear the smell of it too.”
Hyden had to agree that the smell of scorched flesh and a huge fire would most likely dissuade anything from snooping too close to the camp. It would probably keep the bugs away too. The thought of the huge hornets swarming them in the dark made him shudder.
With speed, and precise skill, that seemed as out of place as it was surprising, Oarly beheaded, gutted, and skinned the creature. Within moments the feline thing was tied by its legs to a limb that the dwarf cleaved from a tree with his axe. Phen took it upon himself to put one end of the spit on his shoulder while Oarly took up the other. It was an awkward looking rig, as the dwarf was easily a head shorter than the boy.
“You’ll want to pick a campsite well before dark, lad.” Oarly told Hyden. “We’ll need plenty of time to find wood and set up alarms.”
Alarms? Hyden asked himself as they started back under way. He found himself wondering, not for the first time, how Oarly had earned the title of master, and what he might be a master of. He was finding himself glad to have the dwarf along, though. He would never have thought of setting up alarms around the camp, and if he had, he wouldn’t have had the first idea of how to go about it.
Later, when Oarly suggested they stop, Hyden didn‘t argue. It wasn’t a clearing by any means, just a place where the trees were farther apart than elsewhere. The group was surprised when Oarly shrugged out of his packs and went to work.
“Stand back,” he said. He sipped from a flask, put it away, and wiggled his brows cheerily at Phen. With his axe held out he began spinning around and around in counterbalanced lurches of speed. Teetering and tottering as he went, he used his sharp blade to mow down the undergrowth to a manageable level. When he was done, he leaned on the haft of his weapon and stumbled in place for a moment. When his eyes rolled back out of his head he pulled a small shovel from his belt and threw it three feet wide of Hyden. “Dig us a fire pit. I’d let Brady do the honors, but he’s wore from swing’n that machete all day. You two come on,” he barked at a couple of the seamen, and off they went into the jungle. The two men took turns carrying back armfuls of dead fall that Oarly was chopping into manageable chunks. After a fire was going, and the meat was spitted over it, Oarly took out a pack that contained a sizable ball of twine and what might have been a dozen little bells.
“Come on, Phen,” Oarly ordered. “You’ll have to get up on my shoulders to help me get our web strung over some of these branches. I learned this trick from the Spiderton Tinks and it has to be done just so.”
“Who are the Spiderton Tinks?” Phen asked and Oarly obliged him with the tale as they went about stringing twine.
“Amazing,” Brady commented to Hyden as they watched the dwarf show Phen how to make a silent approach on them next to impossible. When his tale, and the rigging, was done, Oarly took a piece of sizzling meat from the thing roasting on the fire, sniffed at it, then wolfed it down.
“Mmmm, that’s tasty,” he said as he cut another piece. “Master Biggs, pass me that flask.” Then to Hyden, “You’ll want three two-man watches tonight. Me and the boy done did our part.” Oarly swigged deeply from the tin container a few times, and passed it back to the Deck Master, who passed it on to his men. No sooner had the dwarf lain back on his bedroll, than he started to snore.
“That right there,” Brady said. “That sound alone will keep the fiercest of creatures away from us.”
Hyden nodded his agreement with a distant smile, remembering Mikahl and Vaegon making almost the exact same co
mment about the sounds Loudin of the Reyhall used to make while he slept. He couldn’t help but remember the fine times they’d spent around a fire very much like this one. Neither could he forget that most of them never made it out of the Giant Mountains.
Chapter Twenty-Three
At the last possible moment Mikahl rolled into the direct path of the lead geka. The creature was moving too fast to snap at him with its needle-sharp teeth. Neither it, nor its riders expected anyone from the party on the roadside to intervene in their chase. The cold-blooded beast leapt over Mikahl intending to avoid the glowing blue blade he carried. As Mikahl hoped, it hadn’t leapt very high. With an upward heave of such force that it made Mikahl go to his knees he thrust his sword into the creature.
The geka shrieked in pain as its own momentum dragged its body across the razor sharp steel. It churned at the end of its leap, knocking Mikahl farther into the road, but the beast was dead before it found the earth again. The force of its limp impact with the rutted dirt threw the two zard-men riding its back over its head. They landed badly and before they were done tumbling Grommen was hacking into them with his heavy sword.
Mikahl didn’t get the chance to regain his feet before one of the zard-men riding the second geka leapt from its back down onto him. The geka’s driver reined the creature headlong into the camp and let its gnashing jaws go to work. Two of the Highwander soldiers were caught off guard by the attack. One of them was bitten almost in two. The other, who had been attempting to shove his companion out of the way, had his arm chomped off at the elbow.
The horses picketed at the forest’s edge brayed and bucked wildly. Maxrell Tyne charged toward the road to help Mikahl, drawing his blade, and cursing their sudden involvement in a battle with the skeeks as he went. It was only then that he realized one of the men who was being chased was the one they were seeking. One of the fleeing riders, brandishing nothing more than a carved walking stick for a weapon, was now charging his horse back toward the road. With a violent swing, he clouted the zard-man that had tackled Mikahl in the side of its green-scaled head.
In the middle of the camp, the other two zard-men were dismounting their geka; one with a short sword raised high, the other with a long barbed pike in its clawed hands. The geka driver stayed on his mount and fired a crossbow at Grommen. The bolt struck the big fighter, leaving the wicked missile protruding from his shoulder.
Tyne saw that Mikahl had found his feet and started toward the unprotected flank of the thrashing geka. The remaining Highwander soldier put a serious gash across the big lizard’s snout and was now ducked behind a tree near the horses, waiting for help. The geka lunged and snapped at him with futile effort. Finally, it screeched and hissed, and latched onto the nearest horse. It shook its head violently back and forth. As big as the geka was, it couldn’t sling the horse around, but it did lift the screaming steed off of its hooves, snap its tether, and tear a huge chunk of flesh away. The horse half bucked, half fell sideways into the trees with a loud crash, thrashing and whinnying pitifully. The geka, after several jerking chomps on the horsemeat, raised its head high and chugged the substantial morsel down its gullet.
Unable to keep the big lizard from exposing itself, the geka rider hissed a curse and leapt from its back. The Highwander soldier charged from the trees aiming his sword at the geka’s chest just as Maxrell Tyne ran a sword into the creature’s gut. Both blades struck deeply. The geka reared in pain and twisted its tail around, knocking Tyne to the ground. The Highwander man barely got his sword free and dove out of the way. The zard who had been riding the creature had no intention of continuing the battle and broke into a tail-slinging run back up the road the way they’d come.
“Stop him!” Grommen yelled to whoever was listening. He wasn’t close to his horse, and he was in terrible pain, or he’d have chased the zard down himself. Tyne heard him, and stumbled from the trees to get mounted, but when he started to climb on a horse, a fierce grinding in his knee dropped him.
The zard-man before Mikahl looked at him with its blank black orbs and hissed menacingly. Then it glanced at Ironspike’s glowing blade. It started toward Mikahl, feigned a claw one way then rolled around twisting to rake its claws from the other. Ironspike whistled as it cut through the air. Mikahl dropped to knee level and the zard-man tried to leap back, but it was no use. A deep furrow across its scaly upper thighs opened up. Mikahl stepped out of range of its thrashing claws and tail and glanced up the road at Lord Gregory. Beyond his friend he could see the fleeing zard. The other pair of Highwander soldiers were engaged with the remaining zard-men in the camp. Tyne was trying to get there to help them, but limping badly.
Mikahl pulled Lord Gregory’s sword from his hip and hurled it at him with a grin. “Lose something?” he yelled. He didn’t even look to see where the thing ended up. Instead, he started off toward the Highwander men who were fighting desperately to defend themselves.
Mikahl held out Ironspike’s tip, and in the symphony it sent coursing through him, he found the single melody he was after. Sharp red darts of magical force shot from the weapon into the zard wielding the pike. The thumping impacts sent the lizard-man sprawling across the roadside.
“Clear out!” Mikahl yelled. The Highwander men wasted no time falling to the ground and rolling away. A streaking blast of lightning consumed the remaining zard. Before it could register what happened it was charred to a husk.
Seeing his own sword twisting through the air toward him filled Lord Gregory with a surge of uplifting energy. He spurred his mount to meet the blade, and with effortless grace snatched it out of the air by its hilt. As if it knew what he intended, the horse under him turned and lurched forward after the fleeing zard. Lord Gregory knew that, if they let it get away, a hundred more would be on their trail. There was no telling what sort of system the skeeks used to deliver messages, but all it would take was a single bird to Southport and half of Queen Shaella’s army would be looking for them. He gained on the fleeing creature, but had to rein his horse toward the side of the road to avoid a whizzing crossbow bolt. After it loosed at Lord Gregory, the zard-man tore off into the forest. Lord Gregory drove his mount headlong into the trees after it. He ducked and twisted in the saddle, narrowly missing a low hanging branch and took a whipping snap across his face from a smaller limb, but he didn’t slow his pursuit. His horse leapt a chunk of dead fall then darted around a gnarled old stump. Just as he caught up to the zard, it looked back with fear showing in its black eyes. Lord Gregory’s horse stepped on the zard’s tail just as the Lion Lord’s blade swept down. The result was the lower half of the zard-man being trampled under the horse while the upper half rolled away into a tree trunk where it smashed to a halt with a wet crunch.
Lord Gregory trotted back out onto the road rubbing the welt on his face. He was bloody from the branches he’d ridden through, but he didn’t care. He was hefting the familiar weight of his father’s blade in his hand and feeling more hope than he had in ages. Lady Trella had escaped the invasion of Westland with little Zasha, and Mikahl had found him and returned his treasured heirloom. The Lion Lord of Westland couldn’t help but let out a roar. To his delight, his primal call was answered by the roar of another young lion. Mikahl was feeling it too.
The Highwander soldier who had lost his arm was so near to death that Maxrell Tyne pushed his blade quickly into the man’s throat and walked away. The man had been semi-conscious at best, and they were in no position to give proper aid. Mikahl saw the deed and swallowed his anger. Tyne had done what he couldn’t have, and it was probably for the best. They pulled the barbed bolt from Grommen’s shoulder and patched the wound as best as they could, then the five of them rolled the big geka carcasses to the forest’s edge and dragged them out of sight. It wasn’t easy. They were as big as three horses each, but it had to be done. After that they dragged the rest of the dead into the forest too. This part of the road wasn’t heavily traveled, but all it would take was one passerby to raise an alarm they couldn�
�t outrun.
As soon as the road was cleared they started back toward Midway. The first ship out of Westland might get them out before queen Shaella learned of the mess Lord Gregory had left back at Lake Bottom Stronghold, but if they lingered they were done. There was no time for reminiscing. In spite of everything Mikahl wanted to say to his one-time lord and mentor, he held his tongue. Lord Gregory did the same. There was plenty he wanted to learn about the state of affairs abroad. Neither could suppress the joy of being reunited, though, especially since the last time Mikahl had seen Lord Gregory, the man had been one heartbeat away from death, and Mikahl had been nothing more than a frightened squire.
Lord Gregory, before Queen Shaella’s invasion, had been the liege lord over most of Southeast Westland. With his hood down he might be recognized in Midway, but in his defiant mood he didn’t care. The people of Westland had always loved him and he knew they wouldn’t betray him to the zard. He hoped to use his status to get a fishing captain or a small cargo ship to sail them away from Westland as quickly as possible. They could easily find a ship if they rode through Midway and continued on to Southport, but the extra day on the road would put the group, and more importantly High King Mikahl, at great risk. Lord Gregory had taken the knee before Mikahl just before the hellcat had attacked them in the Giant Mountains. He had known all along that Mikahl was King Balton’s intended heir. His duty to protect his king overrode all other thoughts in his mind, save for those of getting to his lady wife.
He told Mikahl his thoughts as they galloped into the outskirts of Midway. Neither of the two sell-swords, nor the Highwander soldier could offer a better plan, so Mikahl agreed.
The people of Midway were wary of the travelers. The road suddenly cleared as the bloodied group came passing through. Lord Gregory and Mikahl both looked on in sorrow at the emptiness and gloom that hung over the once lively town. The people were still there, they were just hiding. The smell of cook fires was in the air. The fall of peaked curtains was seen as they made their way toward the wharf. Fresh laundry hung in the late morning sun and a few older men labored away with their heads down and eyes averted.
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