The Guardian

by Angus Wells

  He moved across the steering deck and a man darted around to deny him access to the short ladder that ran down to the rowing platform. Nassim spun, blades thrust out, moving in threatening circles. He knew that he could slay one, but doubted he could defeat all three, and they blocked his avenues of escape. He knew them then for assassins, well trained and deadly.

  But he was no innocent; he’d lived too long on the river, and fought too many battles, to be easy prey. He feinted an attack, pretending panic, and smiled grimly as he heard a man laugh, contemplating easy victory. That one he cut across the belly, spinning even as the man cried out to drive his second blade through the descending hand of the one to his left. There was a grunt of pain and the knife fell from the assassin’s fingers. Nassim twisted his own blade, feeling the steel grate on bone as it was torn from his grip as the man stumbled away.

  Abruptly he felt fire lance his back and knew that he was stabbed. He flung himself forward, hacking his remaining knife at a cursing face. The man jumped back, and Nassim kicked him, his foot landing hard against a knee so that the man whimpered and fell down.

  Nassim felt fresh fire scorch his ribs and turned, barely deflecting a thrust that would have pierced his midriff. He stepped backward and felt a hand clutch at his ankle. He drove his free foot into a yielding belly and stamped over the fallen man. He heard pained cries, and felt a savage enjoyment. He faced two now—one dripping blood over the formerly pristine deck, but still holding a long blade in his good hand; the other unharmed and grinning wickedly as he advanced.

  Nassim eased a little way back. He felt a sticky warmth running into his breeches, and a curious exhaustion. His feet were leaden, and he saw that he left bloody footsteps across the deck. His eyes were hard to focus—the two men seemed to shimmer in the moonlight; it danced over their blades, and he knew that he could not defeat them. He must escape or die.

  He waved a blade that had become suddenly heavy and mouthed a riverman’s foul curse. And summoned all his waning energy and propelled himself backward to the taffrail and fell over it into the Durrakym.

  The water engulfed him. He could not decide whether it was warm or cold, for his body experienced both sensations, feverish as his movements. He felt his limbs chill and his heart race hot. He let go his weapons and thrust his head above the surface, gasping in a deep breath before he dived again, forcing himself to swim. For an instant he heard shouting, then all was silent as he struck out beneath the surface, making for what he hoped was the shoreward direction. Hoping he’d not emerge to find Talan’s killers waiting. Hoping he could survive to warn Kerid that assassins were sent.

  The hunters paused, staring down the long slope at Cu-na’Lhair. The creatures did not know the name of the place, only that it was the first habitation of any size they had seen in days, and that the town bustled with activity. They hunkered down amidst a stand of windblown pine and began to chew the meat they had stolen from the last farmhouse along their path. The occupants, an elderly couple, had objected to the creatures’ depredations, and the hunters had slain them. They had been hungry, and the farmers’ shouting had irritated them. Now they felt only a mild frustration: their psychic senses told them the quarry had come here, but there were so many life-scents drifting on the breeze that they knew finding them would be difficult, and had they taken to the river, perhaps impossible. They must, they decided, enter the town and find some human that had spoken with the quarry, but not yet. The sun was still high and mortal men would likely take objection to the hunters’ distorted forms. When night fell, they thought, they would enter and see where the trail led.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I did not like this place. It was aptly named, and its desolation seemed to creep into our souls. Some, I knew, would call the Highlands bleak—and surely they were wild and lonely—but there was a great beauty in the hills and moors, and here there was none that I could see. The land was all stony and empty, as if drained of life. What little vegetation grew was sparse, the grass more grey than green, and the trees no better—all twisted by the constant wind, gnarled as the fingers of old arthritic men whose blood ran dark and sulfurous as the miserable rivers. We rode swathed in the warm gear Mattich had gifted us, thankful for the food he’d supplied—for surely there was none to be found here. Mostly, we rode in silence. Ellyn continued in her dark, morose mood, and Shara seemed contemplative, lost in her own thoughts. For my part, I rode wary, scanning the dismal landscape for sign of danger, recalling the tales of my youth, of the weirdling creatures that were supposed to inhabit this strange and empty place.

  That night we sat about a sorry fire that sputtered and sparked in the gusting wind. The tents I’d set up provided some little protection, and I’d tethered the horses on a pitiful sward where they might take what sustenance they could from the grass and the few thorny bushes. Our own provisions were not that much better, but at least we had hot tea, and a flask or two of brose.

  “I’d heard the Barrens are filled with strange creatures,” I said.

  Shara nodded. “So the stories go, but I think there are not so many.” She chuckled, gesturing at the vista. “What is there for anything to eat here?”

  “Us,” Ellyn grunted.

  I glanced at her, for her tone was surly, as if she sought argument.

  “You’ve my magic to protect you,” Shara said.

  “Which you say you cannot use for fear of these hunters,” Ellyn returned. “Or was that a lie?”

  “No lie,” Shara answered equably. “The less magic I employ, the better for now. But is it truly necessary …”

  Ellyn snorted.

  “And my sword is at your command,” I said.

  “My command?” Ellyn pouted, refusing to meet my eyes, hers flickering a moment in Shara’s direction.

  “I am your appointed guardian,” I said, “and while I live, no harm shall come to you.”

  She snorted again, and tossed her plate aside, drained her cup, and rose. “I shall retire,” she announced, with the hurt dignity of a troubled child.

  Shara and I sat silent as she entered her tent. Then Shara said, “She’s much to learn.”

  I said, “Not the least, manners.”

  Shara shrugged. “She’s young and afraid. She’s lost so much, and faces so much. Would you not be afraid?”

  I looked around. Dark clouds sailed the sky, driven streamered on the wind, obscuring the moon. It was so dark I could not see far beyond the fire’s glow, and I felt the horrible emptiness of the Barrens deep in my soul. I nodded and answered, “I am. I do not like this place.”

  “None do,” Shara said. “Save those lonely souls that live here.”

  “Like you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ve no more liking for this place than you.” She shuddered, staring about awhile so that I must resist an impulse to put an arm around her shoulders. “I feel what made it … Old wars, bloodily fought in ways we cannot imagine. I dream here, Gailard, and they are unpleasant dreams.”

  “Wars?” I asked, confused. “Who’s ever fought a war in the Barrens?”

  “The Old Folk,” she replied, her voice soft, as if she feared to arouse ancient spirits. “Those who inhabited this world before we came. They owned powers we can only dream of—which I do.”

  She laughed then, but it was a quiet, nervous laugh, as if she feared to wake sleeping monsters.

  “Here.” I poured brose into her cup. “This shall help you sleep.”

  She smiled her thanks and sipped the liquor. I said, “And what lonely souls do live here?”

  “Ellyn’s not entirely wrong to fear them,” she answered me, sending a chill up my spine. “I doubt they’ll attack us, but even so … There are creatures in this place that resent humankind. Things made by an older world that know only hatred.”

  I laughed, seeking to cheer her. “So there’s not so much difference between that world and this, eh?”

  “Likely not.” She sighed. “Perhaps we never learn
from our mistakes, but only perpetuate them by different means.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Surely each mistake—do we recognize it—is a lesson learned.”

  She smiled at me then, fondly. “Perhaps for you; perhaps for individuals. But for humankind, for all of us? Listen—the Barrens were created by war, by weapons beyond our imagining. This land is sere because it was scorched, as if the gods poured fire and poison on the earth. Men rode the skies then, and they did not fight with swords or spears or bows, but with the power of the sun itself, and things that might slay a man a mile away.”

  “No arrow travels that far,” I said, softly, awed.

  “They did not use arrows,” she said. “Their strength was beyond our ken. But is the strength of the Vachyn sorcerers not beyond the ken of ordinary men? Did Chaldor know magefire before Nestor came? Do you not see? Talan would conquer—he’d own Chaldor, and with Nestor whispering in his ear, he’ll look to Serian and Naban—and all the old mistakes come again. Does Talan employ more Vachyn, then they might transform your Highlands with their magicks, and make them like the Barrens. Their power is different, but the end might be the same—surely their intent is not so different than the Old Folk’s.”

  “Save we halt them,” I said, thinking that I had heard more than my mind could properly encompass.

  “Yes: save we halt them.” Shara yawned and rose. “And now I’d find my bed.”

  I watched her go, my mind all atumble. I considered myself only a simple soldier, but it seemed I had become enmeshed in a web of massive intrigue that should take more than plain steel to cut. I drank another cup of brose and went to check the horses.

  They were restive—they liked this place no better than I—and I spent awhile gentling them. Then I found my tent and settled into troubled sleep.

  The next morning, as we traversed a pan of ground that seemed a combination of sour earth and salt, I saw strange tracks. There were three lines, one smaller than the two that crisscrossed the silvery-grey soil. The first was clawed and went on two legs, the others far larger and running on four. They crossed our path from east to west and there was no dung, so I trusted that they’d passed us and gone on, and offered no threat; but still I strung my bow and rode with an arrow held ready to nock.

  Then, around noonday—as the sun shone reluctantly from a louring sky that was a combination of grey and red like blood on old, faded cloth—we came to a wood.

  It was no such wood as I’d ever seen. The trees were black and hung with spiked boughs, and none higher than the head of a mounted man. The thorns that stabbed from the thickets were crimson—the brightest color I’d seen in days—and long as my thumb. They rattled in the wind as if they clutched toward us, and I felt a great reluctance to enter. I would have found a way around, but the wood stretched out before us and Shara pointed to a path and bade Ellyn and me follow. So I drew my sword and set my buckler on my left arm and did as I was told.

  I swear that the branches parted as Shara rode through, then thrust toward Ellyn and drew back, and clutched at me. I supposed that the women’s magic protected them; I had only my sword and shield. And I knew that I felt thorns rattle against my buckler, and that my pretty mare snorted in protest of the pricks that stung her. I felt stings on my flesh, and slashed at limbs that shifted and moved and sought to entwine me before Shara called back, “Offer no offense. Don’t hurt them.”

  Them? Sad, sorry thornbushes were them? I rode into mysteries I could not understand.

  I felt a spike prick my thigh, another my sword arm, and I felt a great desire to strike out, to cut my way through this mad wood, but I obeyed, and the questing boughs drew back as if leashed by Shara’s magic. They granted me passage and we followed a winding trail that delivered us onto a wide plain that ran out all grey as the withered flesh of long-dead corpses to the great cliffs of the Styge.

  I thought that it should take us no more than a day to reach those peaks, and could not understand how we had reached our goal so swiftly—save that it was as Shara had said—that time was different in the Barrens. Surely we had crossed them sooner than the time I understood allowed.

  And surely our path was barred.

  I thought they were likely the creators of the tracks we’d seen. Their paws certainly fit, for they were huge and clawed, descending from massive legs of scabrous flesh that rose to groins kilted with orange hair, so that it was impossible to determine their sex. Their anger, however, was clear, for they waved taloned hands toward us and roared a challenge that overcame the howling of the wind. Their upper bodies were bare as their legs, nor less muscled, nor any less scabrous. Indeed, as I studied them, I saw that their worst deformities lay above. Sores decorated their torsos and faces, which resembled those of the simians I’d seen carried by Nabanese sailors. The jaws thrust forward beneath wide nostrils, the eyes small and red and glaring from under overhanging brows tufted with the same red hair as hid their midriffs. Their arms were long as their legs, and they seemed undecided whether to stand or settle on all fours—save as they beat their clawed fists against their oozing chests to challenge our intrusion.

  The wind carried their scent to us, and it was foul. My horse snorted and began to kick. Ellyn cried out, struggling to retain her seat. Shara waved us back.

  “I’ll deal with these.”

  I forced my anxious mount past Ellyn’s curvetting black

  “How? With magic?”

  Shara nodded, staring at the creatures that blocked our way.

  “And leave that trail you spoke of? I thought you had better not leave such spoor.”

  “What other choice have we?”

  “Are they mortal or magic?” I asked.

  She answered, “Both.”

  “Are they mortal, they can be slain.”

  I sheathed my sword and slid my bow from the quiver. Strung the curved wood and nocked a shaft. I took another and set it between my teeth. Then I slammed my heels into the bay’s ribs and—willing as she was, for all her fear—we went charging toward the monsters.

  I loosed my first arrow as we closed on them. I saw the shaft drive deep into a bare, greyish-red chest, the creature stumbling back, pawing at the fletchings. I snatched the second from my mouth and fired within a few hoofbeats of the other. I was proud of that shot, for it took the thing in the right eye, and it fell down screaming, the bloody arrowhead protruding from the back of its skull.

  I was on them then, and I drew my sword and cut down at the first I saw—which was the one pierced through the eye—even as I wondered how either could still fight, still live. I clove its skull and heeled my horse around to swipe a blow across the other’s back as it rose, snarling, its paws reaching for my horse’s belly. I cut it from massive shoulders to hairy ribs, then took a blow on my shield that near unseated me. Instinctively, I reined back, so that the mare reared and plunged and drove her forehooves down against the creature, which roared and pawed at her even as it was knocked away. I turned her and swung my blade against the monster’s face, then cut deep into its neck. It fell onto all fours and I reached from the saddle to stab it in the spine. It slumped, whimpering, onto the bare ground.

  Blood red as mine came from its back, and in a while it ceased its twitching and lay still. I waited until I was sure both were truly dead, then beckoned the women on. Shara approached with troubled eyes; Ellyn’s contained that mixture I’d seen before, of admiration and resentment. Both skirted around the corpses, which gave off a most foul odor.

  “Best we leave these fast behind,” Shara said, “for their deaths are likely to call other things.”

  “I thought there were not so many.” I wiped my blade as I spoke; I feared the blood of such beings should corrupt the honest steel.

  “There aren’t,” she replied. “But even so …”

  I glanced at the bodies—and saw that little tendrils extended from the ground where their blood pooled. Small shoots, like plants rising to the spring sun, but black and withered as
mummified flesh until they touched the blood, whereupon they became crimson, thickening and moving with much greater unnatural vigor. I gaped, caught in horrified fascination, and saw thorny leaves sprout even as I watched, reaching toward the sundered flesh, grasping like taloned hands, fresh tendrils growing to drive deep into the wounds. I spat, for it seemed my mouth was filled with the foulness of this land, and heeled my horse away.

  Shara lifted her black to a gallop and we set out toward the ravine. I looked back once, and saw that both bodies were hidden beneath a mass of writhing foliage, from which rose prickly bushes akin to that black wood we’d traversed. I mouthed a near-forgotten prayer to those gods I was no longer sure I believed in—and wondered if we had not been wiser to go with the Dur.

  But I was committed now, and so I rode northward, trusting in Shara. Even had I not come to believe in her, I had no other choice now.

  We came to the ravine and she turned her mount east a ways until we came to a precipitously descending trail. The stone of this deep gully was black, and the trail was smooth as glass, falling sheer away on the open side. Our horses’ hooves slithered on the uncertain surface and after a while, Shara reined in and dismounted, proceeding on foot. Ellyn and I followed suit, she cursing and I nervous, fearing that one animal or another might fall and drag its owner over the brink. But we reached the foot safely and found ourselves facing a wide stretch of gritty soil, like dark sand. I wondered if once a river had run here, for things protruded from the bottom that seemed to me like the bones of huge fishes. Indeed, I thought I saw a vast and many-fanged skull thrusting up, but I had no chance to question Shara, for she urged us on and mounted and took her black horse across the shaley bed at a fast canter to the trail that rose on the far side.

  There, we dismounted again and climbed a winding traverse no easier than the descent. Ellyn gave up her cursing in favor of a labored panting that was broken only by her requests that we halt and rest. Shara would have none of that, but called back that we must reach the summit before night fell.