by William King
A glance over his shoulder showed that the dire wolf was still there. Horns in the distance spoke of pursuing elves. Briefly he wondered whether the beast was Shadow-tainted and tracking him for Weaver’s people. He barely hoped it might prove to be an ally.
Shadowy shapes became visible in the trees to his right and left. He was surprised that they had got so close without sounding their horns and then he saw the trap he had fallen into. He had grown accustomed to judging the distance between himself and the pursuit by their blaring. In his weariness he had discounted the possibility of the elves simply closing silently. Now they were there. Ghostwing fluttered back towards him, circled his head and moved on, encouraging him to keep running. He lengthened his stride and did so, even though it felt like he was lifting a mountain every time he raised his foot.
The elves started whooping now they had seen him. A few raced closer and lobbed spears at him. He ducked his head and ploughed straight on. He no longer had the energy or the time to weave.
Spears began to fall near him, clattering down amid tree branches and trunks, quivering upright in the ground. These elves did not care whether they hit him or not or whether they were disarming themselves. There were scores of them and it sounded like more were arriving the whole time. It really did look like Weaver had decided he was not going to escape this time.
Some of the swifter moving elves were almost upon him. Two of them angled forwards from ahead of him, more were coming up fast behind. They were shouting and whooping, keen hunters in pursuit of tricky prey. Excitement glittered in their eyes, and maniacal determination was engraved on their lean features.
Groups of spiders were with them. And he saw there was something new— a group of lean elves were mounted on armoured spiders. Their mounts were not as swift as the packs but they seemed to move over the rough terrain with a speed at least the equal of a horse. Kormak wondered how he was ever going to escape those. Perhaps the best thing he could do was turn at bay and defy them.
Even as that thought occurred to him Ghostwing swept down on the nearest of the elves and rose just as swiftly leaving deep claw marks graven on his cheek. The owl flashed towards another elf and attacked him just as he was raising his bow to take a shot at Kormak.
Kormak raced on until he found the riverbank looming out of the trees ahead of him. The owl had guided him true. There was a ford ahead of him. Kormak raced towards it. Out of the undergrowth the dire wolf bounded coming between the Guardian and the way across the water.
Kormak came to a halt, hackles rising. The dire wolf stalked forward, its gaze never leaving his. It growled ferociously as it walked. Kormak’s hand went to his blade as it came within springing distance.
The dire wolf’s muscles tensed. It bounded forwards. Its leap carried it past Kormak and in among the pursuing elves. Its roars and their screams spoke of conflict. Kormak did not waste time in turning. He ran towards the ford, leapt in and pulled himself across as quickly as he could through cold, clear water that rose as high as his chest. He emerged dripping from the other side, the dire wolf was still bounding among the hunting elves, slashing with its claws and biting with its mighty fangs. It moved among them like an avalanche of brown-furred death, dodging spear thrusts, avoiding arrows and darts, clawing and killing almost too fast for the human eye to see.
Dripping wet Kormak pushed on into the woods. Ghostwing fluttered overhead and arrowed down a long narrow corridor between the trees. Kormak glanced back. The dire wolf had disappeared as if he were a ghost. The elves came on again, racing forward to the river bank, getting themselves into the water and beginning to splash across. Kormak realised that there were indeed scores of them, perhaps hundreds. Among the men were a few human faces he recognised. Jaethro was one of them. It was clear that none of those hunting him were ever going to let him go.
They were coming on through the water now, implacable and determined not to give up while he was still alive. The first one was almost at the river bank now. Kormak considered making a stand. He was too weary to run on and there was no chance of getting away from the tireless elves. He could await them here while he still had the strength to kill a few and sell his life dearly.
The leading elves were almost within striking distance. A wave of arrows emerged from the trees all around them. Suddenly there were a number of white-haired elves there, on the banks, in the trees, firing their bows directly as the pursuers. Clouds of arrows scythed through the foe and they were cut down. Their blood stained the water. Their spears dropped from their hands. From all around him now, more and more arrows struck.
The Lost elves screamed as they were mowed down. One of them made it to the bank, but before Kormak could strike him, a green-fletched arrow slammed into his eye and sent him tumbling, screaming, back into the water again to disappear in a cloud of bubbles and blood.
Soon the Weaver’s people were in flight, clambering back onto the far bank, taking cover behind trees, trying to get away as fast and as far as they could. Kormak felt a sense of relief flood through him. For the moment at least, he was free of pursuit.
He turned and found himself facing four elves all with drawn bows, green fletched arrows pointed right at him. One of them was Gilean.
“I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to drop your sword,” she said. “You are our prisoner.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
KORMAK STARED AT the elves. They met his gaze. The arrows pointed directly at him.
“I would prefer not to hurt you,” Gilean said. “But I can assure you my spear-kin are capable of pinning your limbs with their arrows. We can take you down without killing you but take you down we will… if we must.”
Kormak could tell that she was not bluffing. Thinking of the walking dead man he had seen pinned to the tree when he was on route to Green Oak, he did not doubt they were capable of carrying out their threat.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“You have destroyed the spirit of a Great Tree. That is a crime on a scale I do not think you understand.”
“Mayasha himself told me to do this.”
“I believe you but it is not me you need to convince.”
“Who is it that I do?”
“His kindred among the Conclave of the Green. Ghostwing carried word of your deed beyond the Blight. This warband came to find you.”
“You can commune with the Green. Do they not see through your eyes, can they not speak with your voice?”
A faint glow entered all the elves eyes. “Yes, we can,” they all said simultaneously, their voices forming a chorus, almost as if they were singing in harmony. At that moment, Kormak felt he was being regarded by something vast and alien, a being to whom he was nothing more than a short lived gnat. “But we must see you when you are not within the shadow of the Blight. We must see that nothing is concealed.”
“Very well then,” Kormak said. “I will accompany you, but I will not surrender my sword. It is a sacred trust I bear.”
“We have your word on this?”
“Yes.” All of the eyes continued to regard him, steadily and unblinking.
“If you are of the Shadow, you will break your word,” the elves said.
“And you will thus learn what you wish to know,” said Kormak.
“In part, man, in part. Still, it would be a shame to harm you if you do not bear the taint. In a thousand years we have not seen such a warrior. You will accompany my people to their village and you will submit yourself to our questioning. You will harm no one.”
Kormak nodded. He was making his own calculations. He needed to bring word of what was going on here to the Order and time was at a premium. At the same time, he could not bring word to anyone if they riddled him full of arrows and carried him to wherever it was they wanted him to go. Also, the People of the Green would be useful allies in the war against the Blight. It would do no harm to try and get them on his side.
“I will go but it must be done quickly. I need to take word of what
happens here to my people. The Weaver and the slaves of the Blight must be opposed.”
“If you prove free of taint you will lose little time going with my people. They will set your down on the boundaries of our domain and make sure you get there quickly and securely. But be warned, until we have spoken with you as we wish, you are under suspicion. Dozens of our children watch you, and they are not so careless as the Lost ones who follow the Shadow.”
Looking at the steady hands that held the bows, and the strange eyes that aimed the arrows, Kormak believed that. “Let us be away then,” he said. “There is no time to waste.”
Gilean fell into place at his side. She handed him a flask of elfdraft. “You look as if you need this,” she said.
“Is that you talking or Kayoga?”
“It is me,” she said. “Cannot you tell?”
There was no glow in her eyes and her movements and glances were not synchronised with her kin, but he was not sure whether that meant anything. “No,” he said. “I don’t know enough about your people.”
“Are you going to take the elfdraft or not?”
“You warned me against overuse of it once.”
“True but you look weary unto death, unless I misread the signs and we have long leagues to cover before we reach Tristane.”
“What or who is that?”
“It is the nearest grove.”
“One of your holy places?”
“I suppose it would seem that place to you. It is a place where the Elder Trees grow and those who tend to them and their children live.”
“What crime am I supposed to have committed?”
“The one you confessed to.”
“Destroying Mayasha?”
“Yes.”
“Help me understand what I have done.”
“I do not know if I can. I know little of your faith.”
“Please try.”
“Very well. You killed a living god. If someone did that to your deity, what would you do?”
“It would depend on whether my god had instructed me to destroy the vessel or not,” said Kormak.
“That also raises various theological issues,” she said. “Why would he instruct an unbeliever to carry out his will and not one of his people?”
“You would have to ask him that. He did not tell me. My guess would be that all of his people who were at the right spot had fallen into heresy.”
They fell into silence for a long time after that. As they marched through the woods, a faint, familiar stench reached Kormak’s nostrils. “We are getting close to the Blight again,” he said.
“We are passing along its edge. We should remain outside its influence. Our only worry would be if its creatures sally forth.”
“I doubt that will happen. They all seem to be in the Settlements.”
“The Blight always births new children, so does the Spider Mother. They are both endlessly fecund.”
“Why is that?”
“Shadowblights always grow out of control. They are like tumours in the living body of the Green, a sickness where the body turns against itself. They have all the strength of life running out of control, life in the service of death.”
Kormak thought about that. He had been taught that the Shadow was the enemy of the Sun, eternally hungry for the souls of men and that blights were its curse upon the land, a physical manifestation of the evil spirit that was the enemy of all. She tilted her head to one side. “You disagree.”
“I am not sure I do,” he said, surprised to find this was true. A lot of what she was saying made sense. Certainly the blights did seem like a sickness. Perhaps viewing them as a physical manifestation of the sickness of the world’s soul was just a different way of looking at the same thing.
“You see the Blight as an enemy.”
“Don’t you?”
“It is not a sentient thing. It is part of nature. It does what it does because of what it is.”
“I have heard philosophers argue that good and evil are both integral parts of the world, both necessary to the workings of things.”
“You cannot have Shadow without light,” Gilean said.
“You can have light without Shadow?” Kormak asked.
“Sometimes, rarely,” Gilean said. “You never have shadow without light.”
“That is like blaming good for evil,” Kormak said.
“I am not apportioning blame,” she said. “I am stating a fact.”
“There comes a point in any argument where metaphors break down and are no longer useful,” said Kormak. She shrugged. The dire wolf came padding out of the gloom and rubbed itself against her side. “Another friend of yours?”
“Zlith is an old comrade.”
“A child of the Green?”
“Of course.”
“Thank him for saving me.”
The dire wolf seemed to yawn. “He preserved you because your presence is required by the Conclave. Otherwise he would have eaten you.” She said it with a faint smile. Kormak wondered whether she was joking.
The wolf walked along beside them. Occasionally it looked at Kormak sideways and licked its lips with its long coarse tongue. Kormak gave it a hard stare back and touched his hand to the hilt of his sword. The dire wolf closed one eye, almost as if it were winking. He wondered whether it was the wolf that had the sense of humour.
The air tasted fresh and clean again and it seemed to Kormak that they had at last started to put the Shadowblight behind them. The trees were taller and straighter. Their leaves were green and healthy. Occasionally a blotched and twisted mushroom grew in their shadows but there were times when Kormak could almost forget the presence of the Blight. The elfdraft continued to lend him strength and energy, he found the walking easy and the talking pleasurable, and he told himself to be wary of the side-effects the drug might have on humans. He needed all of his wits about him.
Ghostwing fluttered overhead, circled the elvish warband and settled down on a branch near Gilean. All of the elves turned to look at the owl simultaneously and all of them began to nod their heads at the same time as if each and every one of them agreed with some silent message from the great hunting bird.
Seeing Kormak’s look, Gilean turned to him and said, “He says we are being followed by a mixed band of Lost elves and humans. It seems that the Weaver really wants you badly.”
“Maybe she wants all of us. We can all be turned to the Shadow.”
“In any case we had best make sure her people don’t catch up with us. There are too many of them to fight and I doubt they will fall into the same trap twice.”
“I wonder how the people of Silas Springs are doing?”
“Ghostwing watched. They fought. Most of them died. Some were taken prisoner. They are being marched towards the Stump of Mayasha now.”
“There is a difference between a disease and the minions of Shadow,” Kormak said at last.
“What is that?”
“The servants of Shadow have intelligence.” She looked away.
“Does it make a difference?”
“It makes them more dangerous.”
She offered Kormak more elfdraft. “Take it,” she said. “We need to run.”
“It seems like a very long time since I did anything else.”
“You have killed recently and you will most likely kill again. You are very good at that. Perhaps the deadliest man we have ever seen.”
Kormak slugged down the elfdraft and felt new energy filling him. It seemed less than he had previously received from the drink. He suspected his body was already becoming accustomed to it. He drank again and felt a little better. Already he was starting to need it more.
Once again the horns started to sound behind them. Once again, Kormak felt his heart rate accelerate. He would have liked to have put it down to the elfdraft but he knew it was being hunted. The elves, Zlith and Ghostwing loped along tireless as winter wolves. He kept moving, not wanting to slow them down. There were risks in being judged by the
Elder Trees, he thought but he preferred them to falling back into Weaver’s hands.
Watching the elves he noticed how well they moved as a unit. Without ever needing to speak, they seemed to know instinctively what to do. Some of them had already dropped behind to form a rearguard. Others had moved ahead to scout and groups were moving along the flanks. Zlith peeled off and disappeared back into the distance. A short time later a roar sounded behind them and one of the horns abruptly stopped sounding.
Gilean stayed close to him at all times, racing along lithely at his side, keeping an eye on him, making sure he was not having any trouble. He was starting to resent that. He was used to being considered competent by all those around him. He did not like being looked down upon as the weak link. He realised it was pointless resenting these ageless beings. They had far more experience than he and they had the advantage of being able to communicate wordlessly with each other and the beasts with which they were allied, at least as long as they stayed close.
Suddenly an image came to him. Each of these elves was part of the intelligence of the forest, of the Green. Each was a node in it. Each was a partial store of memory and thought. They were not just part of the forest, they were the forest’s spirit and its mind. Did this mean the Shadowblight was part of it too, a mad part, like an insane split personality of the sort he had sometimes encountered on his travels?
A shadow passed overhead. He heard a clacking sound above him. Looking up he saw spiders moving through the branches. They had not been there before. They seemed to have overhauled the fleeing Kayoga. Web ropes were already dropping toward him. He sprang to one side, pushing Gilean with him. Both of them narrowly avoided being hit. Spiders began to drop from above. Hungry green eyes glittered in the gloom. Mandibles clicked together. Kormak raised his blade and speared one of the spiders. Gilean put a green-fletched arrow between the eyes of one and shot another two as they dropped. Kormak slew another and then they returned to running.