Jon Wilson - The Obsidian Man

by Jon Wilson

  She spun out from behind the tree with a kick, catching the stonediver squarely in the stomach. He gasped and doubled over her leg as she brought her right fist up under his head, smashing his face and throwing him backward through the air. As he landed heavily in the snow, she found herself confronted by Holt. He was staring at her in disbelief. The look left her feeling somehow stricken, betrayed, but then Sihr’s staff was swinging toward her head and she was forced to catch it or suffer a terrific bruise over her left eye. She yanked the startled girl forward and gave her a strong blow to the side of the neck. Just enough to render her helpless without inflicting undue harm.

  As Sihr crumpled limply to the ground, Keone regained his feet and charged her. His flaming hands caught up her vest and slammed her backward against the tree she had used to conceal herself. Face to face, she was pleased to see blood trailing from both his nostrils and the right side of his mouth. Her smile was subdued only by his hapless expression and the threat of his glowing hands.

  “Is this what you want?” he screamed at her. She gave into her smile—feeling her lips twist eerily over her clinched teeth. Yes, this was what she wanted. She had broken him; he was fighting her. Her elbow swung up, connecting with his chin. In the same movement—as his head snapped up—she brought her fist back across his face. He spun up, off his feet and face down in the snow. She moved around to stand at his side, waiting as he worked his way slowly up onto his hands and knees. His movements were sluggish, barely movements at all. She raised her clenched fists over the back of his head.

  Holt’s body angled between them. She stared down into the boy’s defiant face. He met her eyes and held them. She smiled again,silly child, and reached out to pull him aside. But he fought her. He reached up and grabbed her still hovering right fist with both of his hands.

  She pulled abruptly, angrily away from him, her smile vanquished once more. How dare he protect the stonediver? Didn’t he know she was only trying to rescue him? Keone would have gotten them all killed.

  Behind Holt, the stonediver rose up onto his knees and sat heavily atop the backs of his ankles. His head twisted drunkenly around in search of Ardee—his face soaked with blood splattered from ruptured skin above and below the right eye. He found her, seemed to note with confusion her own bewilderment, and then searched further until he located Sihr. He got slowly to his feet, took two steps toward his ward and fainted.

  Chapter 9 Holt stood somewhat back from the others. Sihr, through her tears, was refusing to give Ardee the information the ranger demanded. Finally the woman drew her knife and pointed it at Keone’s chest.

  The stonediver, having regained consciousness, eyed the blade with little interest. He sat with his back to a tree, his arms bound behind him and around the trunk. Ardee had filled his mouth with a piece of cloth and bound the gag in place with another leather strap.

  “I know it has to be touching his flesh. I can strip him if you like. It’s rather cold.”

  “You’ll be the one stripped,” Sihr told her. “They’ll take your patrol and your rooms. You won’t have anything!”

  Ardee seemed to leap across the snow, somehow maintaining her crouch. She grabbed Sihr by the arm, still brandishing her knife. “Tell me where he keeps it!”

  “No!”

  Keone began to thrash about wildly when Ardee took hold of his ward. The ranger looked back over her shoulder and kicked him brutally in the belly. The girl groaned, louder even than her paradigm, and began once again trying to fight Ardee. The ranger quickly twisted Sihr around and pinned the girl to her chest. She leveled her knife at Sihr’s throat, turning to face the stonediver.

  Keone was whimpering and nodding his head. Clearly, Holt thought, he wants Sihr to submit. The girl went on crying another moment, bowing her head, but finally whispered, “His arm. His right arm.”

  Ardee lowered her knife slowly, and then suddenly gave Sihr a vicious shove toward Keone. “Get it.”

  Sihr was thrown nearly on top of the stonediver, and struggled to rise onto her knees as her hands fumbled over him and she whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He was shaking his head. His eyes closed—the right swollen shut by purple, gnarled flesh—he seemed to be trying to tell her she needn’t be. It wasn’t her fault.

  Sihr opened Keone’s shirt wider at the neck, slipping her hand beneath the fabric and down across his right shoulder. Her fingers, manipulating something, bulged his sleeve around the biceps. After a moment, she withdrew her hand, holding another black stone. Holt’s eyes widened.

  Ardee rose and stepped toward Sihr. The girl handed the stone up to her. “Is this the only one?” the ranger demanded.

  Keone looked down, studying the toes of his own boots. Holt said nothing. “Yes, of course,” Sihr said viciously.

  Ardee sat suddenly in the snow, facing Keone. “What sort of an idiot do you take me for?” She grabbed his right boot, tearing deftly at the bindings. “You took a stone from the boy. Did you think I would forget?”

  Holt thrust his hand into his pocket, reassuring himself that the black stone was still safe there. Ardee, finished with the ties, planted her own foot unsympathetically in Keone’s crotch and tugged the boot off. Holt’s eyes widened when another stone fell out onto the snow.

  Smiling triumphantly, Ardee rose to her feet. She scooped up the second stone and cast both off into the woods.

  “Are you mad?” Sihr, too, regained her feet. “Do you realize you’ve left us defenseless?”

  “I realize that I need no longer fear being roasted alive.”

  The girl knelt once more at her paradigm’s side. “Can I untie him now?”

  “No. He will immediately remove his gag and I may be forced to cut out his tongue.” The ranger turned, noted Holt’s expression and lost her smile. “It will do him no harm to spend the night tied to that tree. In the morning we can decide what to do with him.”

  She directed her words to Holt, but Sihr responded. “You’re a monster!”

  Ardee sighed, but did not turn around. “There are many more trees in the forest, girl.”

  Ignoring her, Sihr reclaimed Keone’s boot. She set to work returning it to his foot as Ardee addressed Holt again. “We can make camp now.”

  He continued to regard her, his hand in his pocket—touching but refusing to finger the stone. The responsibility was too much for him, and made worse by his suspicion that somehow Keone had foreseen even this.But am I being used or trusted?Ardee was his protector, but Keone wished only to avenge Kawika’s death. And the ranger’s eyes were on him, asking for more than just his cooperation; the stonediver’s were closed, his head bowed.

  Holt yanked his hand furiously from his pocket and extended it toward Ardee. Noting the confusion in her eyes, he took the knife from her hand. He crossed around behind Keone, aware without seeing that the ranger made no move to intercept him—in fact she did nothing but watch in stricken disbelief. He knelt and severed the bonds joining Keone’s wrists.

  The stonediver’s arms fell to his sides, his knuckles plowing the snow. He did not immediately reach up to remove the obstruction from his mouth. Holt maneuvered himself around beside the man and, with a quick glance up at Ardee, tossed her the knife. He then lifted Keone’s right arm and reached across for the left. He lay the stonediver’s wrists one atop the other. Choosing the longest strand of the cords that had held the arms behind the tree, he twined it once around the wrists. He looked up at the ranger again. “Show me the best way.”

  Sihr leveled her wickedest gaze at him. “Fiend.”

  Ardee sheathed her blade and dropped to one knee. She bound the wrists quickly and securely, Holt taking special care to memorize the method. He did not look up at the stonediver’s eyes; he knew they were closed. He waited for Ardee to stand, and then reached up and untied the leather securing the gag. He pulled the bundled cloth slowly out of Keone’s mouth.

  The man took a breath, flexed his jaw and spoke without opening his eyes. “Two days. Three at most.
Then it will be moving eastward for good. It will be lost to us.”

  Holt rose, proud of his equanimity. “We can make camp now.”

  Ardee held his gaze a moment and then nodded once. They set to work.

  Chapter 10 Even in the company of the stonediver, the boy had furthered his craft. Night had fallen, and Ardee could neither see nor hear him. She, having caught and killed her own rabbit, knew only he was somewhere nearby. The knowledge proved eerily comforting. Perhaps it had not been a mistake after all. Perhaps her freedom, the duty she had devoted her life to, whatever standing she had earned at the VaSaad, had not been risked for nothing. Despite his feelings for poor Kawika’s da’an, Holt would be a ranger —a fine, wilderness-attuned ranger. One his paradigm’s both could be proud of.

  She paused, poised near the base of an ancient oak, and directed all her senses to locating him. Faintly she detected his scent, but Keone and his ward were too heavy in the air. There, off to her right—not a human footfall, but the rustle of some small creature lured from its nest. Hesitant steps, a pause to survey its surroundings, a few quick hops, a sudden flurry as it realized death swooping down to claim it and then nothing more.

  She moved toward the clearing from which they had launched their hunt. He was not long in joining her, a fine rabbit dangling from his hand. Even his kill had been expert— little pain and panic. The creature had been spared excessive suffering.

  He offered the animal to her, but she only smiled and started back toward camp. He fell in behind her as she gained momentum. They were miles from the others, and she did not take a direct route. The land sped beneath their silent feet, up a rise and down into the gully along a creek. Always they lit in the places with the least snow— often the only places in entire areas with no snow. Inspired by his ability to match her she turned further north, further from the others. Dinner could wait. She wished him to see the Girjir valley. How beautiful it would be two thousand feet below them, blanketed in the blue-white snow and moonlight.

  Even climbing he did her proud. Twice he snapped twigs, but he was only thirteen. She had been a clumsy girl at thirteen, and cared little for anything but ogling other clumsy girls and dreaming of one day becoming an adult. In five years she would sweat to keep up with him—in ten he would need to carry her up the inclines or sit and wait for her at the top.In twenty years he will visit me at the VaSaad, coming to my rooms when his season is done and telling me of the wild places he has explored.

  As always, he sensed her slowing almost as if he anticipated it. They rushed headlong to the very lip of the cliff and stopped inches from the edge. Below, the valley lay dreaming beneath its speckled, icy quilt. They could see for miles, even in the darkness, across the great bowl and up into the reaches beyond.

  “Will they really punish you?” His words were like another spear in the back, but of course he was concerned. She would need to explain. “Who knows? They will decide if he risked your life and the life of his ward. If that is found, then I will have done nothing for which I need explain.” She lowered her gaze to his face—found him staring out across the treetops far below. “I do not think I would actually have killed him.”

  His vision did not waver. “You would have.”

  She shivered, torn between the chill of his words and the dread of their meaning. For the first time in many years, she forced a smile. “Then I am lucky you were here to save me.”

  He looked up, bewildered. “To save him.”

  She nodded, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulders. She had noted his reaction to the gesture in the past. “This is the Girjir valley—a holy place to alljirran. It is said that their god once dwelt among those great peaks in the distance.”

  “What are those mountains called?”

  “I don’t know the Huerunan name for them. They extend through the lands of the Yul, who call themFarnarrysh-Jamak.On the other side lie massive valleys that remain mostly unexplored. The breeders call all this land the reaches. They think of it as untamable, but their eyes are on the fertile lands beyond.”

  “That is where the Belfayne built their town?”

  “That is many mountain ranges further. Even you and I might run an entire season to reach it.”

  He seemed to weigh that idea, clearly skeptical. He was staring at the far peaks. “I could take you to where the demon is hiding. We would reach it tomorrow.”

  “You think I should fight the demon?” “He would have fought it.”

  She made a disgusted sound. “And been killed. Look how he fared against me. If Kawika failed to kill the demon, what chance did his da’an stand?”

  He lifted his face once more, a faint smile bending his lips. “You sound like a ranger.”

  The awful folds ruffled her brow again. “What does that mean?”

  Shrugging, he looked off. “I think he would have won.”

  She shook her head. “Well, no matter. His locus stone lost, he is little better than a circus magician.” Without replying, the boy shifted the rabbit to the other hand and shoved his free hand into his pocket. “Are you cold?” she asked.

  “No.” He looked down suddenly. “Hungry.”

  She said nothing, it was bad enough to be constantly fighting smiles in his presence, she would not turn into a chatterbox. They jogged down the slight slope, back into the forest and toward camp. Something caught her ear before they had covered three hundred yards. When she looked down at Holt, it was to find the boy staring back. He reached up to take her rabbit even before she signaled. She left him, moving north as he returned to the others.

  She sped nearly a mile before stopping to reconnoiter. Silently she waited, tallying their numbers as they moved nearly as silently five hundred feet to the east.

  Eight.Two full Huerunan guards. They were traveling for stealth not speed, but would discover the others shortly.

  It pleased her to find Keone still bound when she returned to the camp. She had not doubted Holt himself, only his ability to withstand the combined arguments of the other two. Without a word, she dowsed the fire. Holt immediately began to assist in erasing the camp. The stonediver struggled to his feet. “How many?”

  “Eight.”

  He thrust his arms out toward her. “Untie me. I can still fight.”

  Continuing her work, she repeated her earlier cluck of contempt. “These are not renegades or starving gypsies. These are Huerunan huntresses.” Two more cords were procured and Sihr bound. Before anyone could annoy her with arguments she explained, “We’ll try outrunning them. I will carry you.”

  While Holt finished with the camp, Ardee looped the end of the final cord and slipped it over Keone’s head. “And this is just to make it plain I still do not trust you.” She turned to the boy and offered him the other end of the cord. He did not hesitate to step forward and claim it. “Hold tight. Even if he starts to fall behind.”

  She turned suddenly and took Sihr in her arms. As she began to run, she heard the other two fall in behind her. After a moment, both found their rhythm and the sound of their footfalls subsided. Ardee adjusted the girl’s weight, balancing more onto her shoulder. Sihr was as pliant as could be desired. That meant she was not a complete fool; she recognized their danger.

  The ground rolled out beneath them, wild and trailless. The ranger struggled to avoid the trees and the brush and still be soundless. Her fatigue was beginning to wear on her. Sweat coursed down her brow. Days of running. A good ranger knows her limits, Essie used to tell her. But a great ranger is not constrained by them.

  Holt and Keone were to her left, some yards distant, but nearly in line with her. Amazing, the child, but more surprising, the stonediver. Where had he mastered his wildernesscraft? She spared a glance, noted the similar expressions of determination on their faces. Perhaps Kawika had trained them both. Perhaps Keone and his da’an had left the VaSaad on occasion and traveled together.Dot would never have left the great city, even for me.

  After a quarter of an hour, she stopped, l
owered the girl to the ground and doubled back. The trolls had picked up their trail. Abandoning stealth, they were giving chase. Alone, or perhaps with just the boy, she might have outrun them. She returned to the others, took up Sihr once more and began jogging, slower, with an eye out for a defensible position.

  Finally she had to settle for a fallen tree. Its massive trunk, lying on its side, was nearly as high as the boy’s head. It would have to do; the trolls were gaining. “Get the stonediver’s knife,” she instructed Holt. As he complied she cut Sihr’s bonds. “I’ll go back and thin their numbers. I’ll try to return before they reach here, but you must be ready.” She cleared a patch of snow with the toe of her shoe, stooped and muddied her fingers. She darkened her face, shoulders and arms, before rising to leave them.

  Keone put his body in her path. “Cut me loose! You can’t leave them in danger.”

  “I left them in danger too long.” She gave him her coldest stare, but he would not step down. Losing patience, she stepped around him. “Stay close to the tree and silent. They may pass by.”

  She sped once more into the night, her knife clenched tightly in her hand. She had said to thin their numbers, but she hoped to catch them early enough that she might finish them all.

  They were less than a mile behind and maintaining a rapid pace. She concealed herself, letting them pass. Only two seemed to sense any danger at all, and she marked those. When the eighth was between her and her party, she rose, closing the distance. Without conscious thought her left hand slipped the garrote from the seam of her trousers. She dropped it deftly over the last troll’s head, pulling it sharply as she reached around and sliced her foe’s belly from side to side. Steaming innards spilled out onto the frosty ground before the troll had time to sound an alarm. Those ahead would never know.

  Only seven more.

  Chapter 11

  Holt heard the first scream. Inhuman as

  it was, a sharp constriction seized his chest. Keone said quietly, “A half mile. They’ll

  scatter. She can’t catch them all. Be ready.” “Untie him, Holt,” Sihr said.