The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  She didn’t use her belt to climb back down; it was quicker to slide down the vines that wrapped up the boggrove’s trunks. The ground rushed at her as quickly as if she was free-falling, but she tightened her grip and pushed her feet against the bark to slow herself, and when she was close enough, dropped the last few yards and landed in a crouch.

  She was already signing as she turned. The plan has changed, Verik. We need to—

  But it wasn’t Verik’s face she was looking at.

  It was close. The same silver hair and sharp jaw, but broader, and more serious. His hand was clapped over Josen’s mouth.

  Hello, Korv, Zerill signed.

  Zerill. Korv nodded at her. He was no more than ten yards away, his heavy club resting against a stone at his feet. With one hand, he held Josen in place while a Heartspear warrior tied his wrists.

  There were others, too, a half-dozen or more, though they hadn’t closed in to take her yet. Two hunters held Verik at spearpoint, his hands and feet bound; a third woman—tall and thin with no weapon of her own—watched over him with a scowl. A stained hide flask hung at her hip. Zerill knew her, then. The Makers were not so many that she couldn’t remember their faces. Skala was her name, a stern woman who often travelled with Korv’s band. Of course he brought a Maker. That makes things more complicated.

  And there, just behind her father, stood Azra.

  The girl didn’t speak, just watched with tight lips and deep lines of shadow across her brow, looking every bit Azlin’s daughter. She was old enough now, but Zerill had never thought for a moment that she would ask to be part of this hunt. Would ask to hunt her. She wanted to explain herself, to make Azra understand, but she didn’t have the words, any more than she had back at the Kinhome.

  She didn’t have the time, either. Three warriors moved to surround her, weapons at the ready.

  Zerill shrugged her spear off her back and brought it to bear, though she knew it was a pointless gesture. She was too outnumbered to fight her way clear, and she was the only one still free. Still, the Heartspears halted their advance, and looked to Korv.

  So did she. I assume you’ve seen the highlanders, she signed, holding her spear one-handed. They’ll hear it if I struggle. He couldn’t have missed the lanterns—slivers of dim orange light flickered through the trees even at this distance.

  Korv released Josen—now bound and gagged—and signed, I have hunters following Castar’s force from the trees. They’ll provide a distraction, if we need it. I hope you will not make that necessary. He motioned to the hunters surrounding Zerill, and they started to close in again, more cautiously now.

  Zerill hadn’t seen anyone else in the canopy, but she didn’t doubt that they’d been there. It wasn’t Korv’s way to lie, and the Abandoned knew how to be invisible. So you expect me to surrender, she signed. Even knowing what’s at stake. This could stop so many needless deaths, Korv. Brandishing her spear to keep them at bay, she retreated from the approaching warriors, but two steps pressed her back against the tree behind her. There was nowhere to go.

  She could see the sadness written in the lines of Korv’s face—he hadn’t wanted this, had tried his best to warn her away from it. That may be, he signed, but it is a decision for the Kinmeet, not you alone. It’s over, Zerill. If you come willingly, I may be able to convince the Kinmeet that your intentions were good. I asked to lead this hunt because no one else would give you that chance.

  She didn’t want to make it harder on him, she truly didn’t. And a part of her wished she could surrender. Wished she didn’t have to do what she knew she was about to. Not to Korv, and not in front of Azra.

  But she had made a promise to her sister, and to herself. I’m sorry, she signed. Her eyes flicked back to Azra. I hope you’ll understand someday.

  And then Zerill took a deep breath, tilted back her head, and screamed.

  Shona

  Shona peered upward at the sound of leaves rustling overhead. A high-pitched chittering carried down from the treetops, and gooseflesh prickled across her body. She’d never been in the Swamp for so long, but she knew there were more dangerous things than safe ones below the mist, and any noise she didn’t recognize could be one of them. The sphere of lantern-light around the wagon barely reached the canopy, but she thought she saw something pale moving there, high in the mist and darkness. Even with a force thousands strong marching all around her, she felt exposed, like she was being watched by someone she couldn’t see.

  “W—what was that?” Her mother voiced Shona’s question for her, trembling as she spoke, and Shona reached down to squeeze her hand.

  “Just boggards, Duchess Vera,” Eian said gently, to Shona’s relief as much as her mother’s. He sat on the opposite side of the wagon, supporting her father’s sleeping head on his shoulder. “Startled by our passing, I imagine. Harmless, like much of what lives down here. I’ve seen creatures above the mist more dangerous than any below.” He glanced at Castar, sitting beside the driver at the front of the wagon.

  Shona had never seen a boggard, but she’d heard stories—creatures shaped like little old men, white-furred with long limbs and wrinkled faces and big black eyes. Some said they were ancient swamplings, preserved and corrupted by their deepcraft until they’d become like animals. She didn’t believe it, but still the thought made her shiver more than she already was in the icy damp of the Swamp.

  Castar had mustered his forces and loaded Shona and her family into a wagon just a few days after Rudol had left Goldstone. That had been nearly a turn ago now. Far too long beneath the mist already, and there were days yet left. It would be very near to Orin’s Rest by the time they reached Greenwall.

  Neither of her parents had taken well to the long journey. Her father seemed to age a year for every day in the darkness, nodding away into sleep ever more frequently and barely aware of what was happening when he was awake. Her mother was as nervous and easily startled as a bird, all but leaping into flight at the slightest sound.

  And Shona wasn’t doing much better. If not for Eian, those boggards would have had me hiding under my seat.

  Selfish as it was, she was glad that Eian was there with her—she was trying, for her parents’ sake, but her sanity would have crumbled days before without the foundation he provided. She was fairly certain that it was an act for him as much as it was for her, but if so, his was the better one. There was no trace there of the slump-shouldered old man of a few short turns ago, so diminished by Josen’s death. Instead, he held himself proud and tall like the lord general he was, unafraid of Castar or the Swamp, and when Shona needed it, he always found some way to reassure her.

  And she needed it more often than she didn’t. Not just because of the dark, and the damp, and the cold; not because of all the dangerous creatures she knew lurked just beyond the reach of the lanterns. No, the worst thing for Shona was the old man with no eyes.

  He and Eroh sat facing backward at the head of the wagon, just behind Castar and the driver; the little eagle called Goldeyes perched on the boy’s shoulder, occasionally flaring his wings at some noise or other, but never making a sound. Auren—that was the name Castar called the old man—wore his blindfold, but Shona knew what lay beneath: those empty hollows that had seemed to see so much when he’d turned them on her at the High Eyrie.

  The old man rarely spoke—and he silenced Eroh with a hand on the arm whenever the boy tried to—but he said enough, even without words. The way his head always seemed to tilt in her direction just when she was looking at him, the shadow of a smile that played across his lips—everything he did made Shona feel certain that he recognized her, though he couldn’t have seen her face. And that terrified her.

  It’s my imagination. I saw the holes where his eyes used to be—he couldn’t have seen me. And why would he toy with me even if he had? But no matter how she tried to reason with herself, the sense of unease remained. Even after a turn sharing a wagon with the man, she was no more comfortable under his blind gaze than sh
e had been that first time in Skysreach.

  As if he could sense her attention, the old man turned his face in her direction at that moment. She jerked her eyes away, only to find Castar twisted in his seat to look back at her.

  “You might show a bit of excitement, Shona,” he said. The shifting lantern-shadows around his mouth made his grin more ominous than smug. “You’re nearly home.”

  Tell me, what should I be most excited about? The troops marching on my duchy, or the wedding that will no doubt follow on the heels of our arrival? Shona had no illusions about Castar’s purpose—Rudol had proven more difficult to control than he had predicted, and now he needed to secure Greenwall’s fields in case it came to war. She wanted to shout, or run, or spit in his face; instead, she crossed her arms and gave him nothing. It was the best she could do.

  She had to cooperate with him, if not enthusiastically. Not for her own safety, or Eian’s, or even her parents’, but for her duchy. There was still a giant hole in the wall to march attacking troops through, and whatever defending force could be raised without warning would rely too heavily on a Stormhall already partially loyal to Castar. Shona wasn’t going to let hundreds of her people die in a fight they would only lose. No, she and Castar would arrive in Greenwall peacefully as a newly betrothed couple, bringing the stone needed to help repair the broken wall and men to protect the duchy until the work was done.

  It was, Shona hated to admit, a cleverly conceived plan. The stone was too important to send through the Swamp without escort, and bringing so many soldiers—and overseeing the effort personally—would make Castar look more thorough than threatening. He would march an occupying force into Greenwall without a fight and no one would even realize he’d done it until it was too late. Lord of Eagles, if there is a way out of this, show it to me and I will take it. I don’t know what else to do.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll feel better when we get there,” Castar said after the silence had stretched as long as he cared to let it. With a shrug, he turned his back on her once more. She’d found that he quickly grew bored when she gave him no reaction at all. Which was, sometimes, almost impossible.

  But she managed it this time, and kept her silence as the wagon bumped its way along the rough road. No one else spoke either. Not that she’d expected them to. The only voices she could hear for miles came from snippets of conversation among the soldiers, incomprehensible over the sound of marching feet and creaking wood.

  After a quarter hour of that silence, though, Eroh’s grandfather cocked his head suddenly. He held it that way for a moment, and then pointed up at the canopy. “We’re being followed. In the trees.”

  Castar glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “I don’t see any—”

  A woman’s scream cut his sentence in half.

  Shona half-rose in her seat, looking north toward the sound. She couldn’t see anything in the dark between the boggrove trees.

  At the same moment, Castar shouted, “Swamplings in the trees! Keep the wagons safe!” The scream, apparently, had been enough to convince him. He vaulted down from the moving wagon and drew his sword, waving his free hand at the wagon’s passengers. “All of you, underneath the wagon. Quickly!”

  Eian’s hand went to his hip for a saber that wasn’t there, and then he vaulted over the side of the wagon and helped her father down. Shona did the same for her mother, her heart hammering as Eian ushered them into cover.

  Shona was still helping her mother down onto her belly to crawl beneath the wagon when the first spear took a soldier in the chest nearby. He gripped the shaft and then fell heavily in the mud. Eian was at his side in a moment, checking for breath before taking up the man’s saber and round wooden shield.

  “Shona!” Eian shouted, and leapt in front of her.

  A stone-headed arrow deflected off his shield; it bit into the dirt road no more than a yard to Shona’s left. Staring dully at the wobbling shaft, she touched a hand to her midsection, where its arc should have ended. Her feet felt cold and heavy, and for a panicked instant, she couldn’t move as spears and arrows began to rain from the treetops.

  And then Eian shouted again—“Hide!”—and instinct took over. Shona dropped to her knees, and scrambled out of sight.

  Wingbow strings thrummed nearby between shouts of alarm and anger, and then Castar’s voice again: “Attackers in the trees! Sound the alert!” From somewhere nearby, a horn sounded, and another. “Baille, Thurman! Take your men north, find where that scream came from. This has the feel of a distraction.”

  On her belly beneath the wagon, there wasn’t much space for Shona to look around, but she craned her neck to see her father beside her, and her mother trembling farther down. Auren was shimmying into cover at the far end.

  Eroh wasn’t with him.

  Where… She saw him before she could finish the thought, a small figure slipping unnoticed through the turmoil. Small enough that from this angle she could see the top of his head and the bird perched on his shoulder, where the men around him were cut off at the chest by the wagon’s edge.

  As she watched, Goldeyes spread his wings and leapt from the boy’s shoulder, struggling to stay aloft in the still air, moving north in a series of awkward jumps. Eroh hurried after, away from the road and into the dark. Toward the scream.

  Why Shona moved then, she didn’t quite know. The boy might have been the only evidence of Castar’s lies; he was among the last people to see Josen alive; she still felt some guilt about leaving him at the eyrie. It could have been any of those things, but mostly it was instinct. She was clambering out from beneath the wagon before she realized what she was doing.

  Her mother gripped her leg, trying to pull her back to safety. At the same moment, Eian stepped in front of her, shielding her with his own body, and barked, “Stay down!”

  Shona pulled herself free of her mother’s grip, ducked around Eian, and ran. “Keep them safe,” she yelled over her shoulder. Whether Eian decided to obey or to chase after her, she didn’t know—she didn’t look back again.

  She couldn’t see Eroh anymore—too many soldiers, and not enough light. But in the darkness and chaos, it was easy enough to avoid attention as she moved north, dodging between knights and wingbowmen. Some of them were going in the same direction, at Castar’s command; others were throwing together defensive positions, or still shooting into the canopy. She thought about calling Eroh’s name, but too many voices were already shouting over one another all around her—hers would never be heard over the noise.

  Firelight gave way to witchlight as she moved north, from orange to dim green, and farther ahead to little more than green-tinged blackness. There were still men around her, but they were spaced farther apart, split up to search for the source of the scream; their lanterns were hooded or funnelled into spot-lights, illuminating focused circles that were of no use to Shona. But by luck or providence, she glanced at a patch of witchmoss on a distant tree just as something moved in front of it, backlit by green luminescence—something short and slender enough to be Eroh.

  She threw herself into a sprint. If I lose him now, I won’t find him again. She was all too aware that it might not be a little boy waiting for her, but any of a thousand nightmares she’d had as a child. Some hungry creature of the Swamp, waiting in the dark.

  She collided with something and nearly fell; a scream of her own welled up in her throat. It was only his voice that stopped her. “Shona?” A boy’s voice, not a monster’s. She’d found Eroh after all.

  “How did you know—” Only then did it occur to her that he was a swampling. He could see in the dark; he was born to it. It’s probably safer here for him than for me. “Yes, Eroh, it’s me.” She reached down and felt around for him; obediently, he placed his hand in her palm. She heard a rustling of feathers, and a small shadow came to rest on Eroh’s shoulder.

  “Goldeyes wanted to see what that noise was. Is that why you came too?”

  She shook her head. “No, I came to find
you. I was… worried.”

  “Oh.” He pulled at her hand. “Do you want to come with us? I still want to see.”

  “Eroh, it’s not safe. We have to go back.” Do we? God Above, this is where he comes from. Why am I trying to bring him back to Castar? But it was all she could think to do. The two of them wouldn’t make it very far, alone in the Swamp, and she didn’t know what would happen if the swamplings found them. From their perspective, Eroh would be a traitor, or at least his grandfather would be.

  “Why isn’t it safe?”

  “We… we don’t know what’s out here. Come on, follow me.” She turned back the way she’d come, toward the lanterns along the road.

  They weren’t there.

  Nothing was there. Between one blink and the next, the Swamp was enveloped in a grey fog too thick to see through. Shona squeezed Eroh’s hand tighter, and wished she’d learned more about the weather in the Swamp. If this was normal, she’d never heard of it before. She had heard countless tales of swampling deepcraft, most of which ended with Deeplings eating everyone. Her throat felt suddenly dry.

  A sudden belching sound nearby made her jump, and she let out a frightened yelp; a moment later a rotten odor assaulted her nose, like she imagined the compost she used in her garden might smell if it was set on fire. Not a Deepling, just a gas vent. The realization did absolutely nothing stop the wild pulse of her heart.

  Stop it, she told herself. You’re not a child, and this isn’t a scary story. You can’t sit here waiting for an ending. She swallowed, gripped Eroh’s hand tight, and moved as quickly as she dared in what she hoped was the right direction. She could hear the shouts of confused knights through the mist, and a part of her wanted to call out to them for help, but fear held her tongue. There could be anything out here. I still don’t know what that scream was. So she kept walking, holding Eroh close and trying to keep her footsteps quiet.