It was going far too fast to see me.
I hope.
Master Gershom called from below, asking if he was all right. Firmly placing his feet on the branch below him, Enoch strained to watch the retreating form of the beast. Something was strapped to its abdomen—a long, curiously worked saddle from the look of it. Enoch counted ten seats, two of them occupied by men in that strange black armor.
Meaning eight on the ground.
Enoch cast a fearful glance down to the forest floor and then southward. Master Gershom called to him again, concern in his voice.
In a clearing back by the stream, Enoch spied them. Two armored men were guiding hounds—or something like hounds—through the trees. The animals had their snouts to the ground and pulled the leashes taut, the men running and all but being dragged behind them.
“Master!” He shouted, “Master, they hunt us!”
“Yes, Enoch,” came Master Gershom’s reply, flat and unfeeling. He was deep in pensa spada. “They are already here.”
Enoch froze, his hands locking around the branch. Looking down, he saw another raider come into view, closely on the heels of another pair of hounds.
Those are not hounds.
The beasts looked like some horrible combination of a giant spider and a dog. Eight jointed legs rustled through last year’s fallen leaves, connecting at a scaly, bulbous torso. The torso ended in a small gray head, topped with a cluster of glittering black eyes. A blunt canine snout jutted from the head, grinning with crooked yellow teeth, and two pairs of antennae whipped through the air—conspicuously graceful on these obscene creatures.
The creatures surged forward, pulling their driver into a pool of moonlight. Enoch gasped. That was no man in armor—it was a monster more twisted than his pets! An oblong, seemingly overlarge head balanced on a spindly, segmented neck. Oily black skin, chitinous and splotched with red markings, covered the creature from head to foot. The legs were oddly bent, angling backwards like those of a cricket.
It looked altogether unnatural. Awkward. Wrong. Yet the smooth assurance with which it glided into the clearing spoke of predatory grace and lethal swiftness. A wickedly curved axe swung loosely in one of its segmented hands.
Master Gershom already had his swords unsheathed, the dissembled Unit lying in a heap at his feet. Cold light ran along the curved blade in his left hand and glinted off the point of the short sword in his right. The monstrous raider took a surprised step backwards to assess the threat—obviously it had met little resistance that night and did not expect to come face-to-face with a giant man bristling with swords. It cocked its head, tiny orange eyes glinting curiously. Then it unleashed the hounds.
They surged forward, voiceless except for the dry clattering of fangs. Master Gershom smoothly stepped into guard position, knees bent and swords crossed in front of him. One slash from the curved blade separated the first hound from its head; the straight sword buried itself to the hilt in the leathery thorax of the second. Enoch felt cold ichor splatter his feet. His hands were frozen around the branch.
Move, coward! Climb down and help!
He couldn’t move. All of the training in the world meant nothing in front of this terror.
Master Gershom had already leapt over the corpses and moved on toward the driver. It wielded the axe as though the weapon were another appendage, taking advantage of the lethal weight to parry his opponent’s slashing attacks. Swinging the axe in wide arcs, the raider seemed to cavort in a gamboling dance punctuated by flashes of iron. It moved like a nightmare, whirling toward its prey with hungry certainty.
Devilishly quick and strong as the raider was, Master Gershom was quicker. Within seconds, it became obvious what the outcome would be—the big man moved with a liquid grace, countering each attack and pressing the creature into defensive postures again and again. His swords clove air like lightning, weaving a thread of reflected steel moonlight between the wafts of the shadowed trees.
As metal rang against metal, the monster was illuminated in a shower of yellow sparks; Enoch could see saliva frothing at toothy mandibles. The movements of the axe were becoming frantic. Backed against a tree, it swung wildly in a fierce attempt to decapitate his foe, and for a fraction of a second it left itself unguarded. Crouching low and knocking the axe wide with his curved blade, Master Gershom stabbed upwards with the straight blade.
With a horrifying silence, the creature fell over backwards, red, strangely human blood oozing from a hole under the shattered chin. It continued thrashing until Master Gershom stepped on an arm and chopped the head off with his curved blade.
Levi Gershom looked up to call for Enoch as four more of these armored warriors stepped into the moonlight, seeming to condense from the shadows. A hungry clicking sound filled the air. Master Gershom turned and let out a low whistle.
“Enoch, stay in the tree until I’ve dispatched them all. These coldmen are quick, but they don’t know our style.”
“But Master,” called Enoch, voice trembling. “There are more of them!”
Master Gershom shifted into semprelisto and turned his back to Enoch’s tree.
“They don’t know who they are facing,” he called. “My order—the Nahuati—was originally founded as a defense against them.”
Here he held up his contrasting swords, the straight and curved blades that Enoch knew like his own hands.
Suddenly, two shadows moved in from each side. The clash of swords, the dull thump of bodies colliding, and an undercurrent of wet inhuman chattering—the strange percussive dialect of these coldmen. Master Gershom had pushed the fight into the trees, seeking to gain advantage amidst the shadowed trunks. Another clicking snarl trailed into moist gasping and went quiet as the straight blade found its mark. But his master was horribly outnumbered, and Enoch caught a glimpse of three more shadowy forms swiftly approaching through the trees to his left, led by a pair of spider-hounds.
Master doesn’t know their number. He’ll be overwhelmed! Get down there, damn you! Move!
Still, fear rooted him in place. He tried to grasp at afilia nubla, mumbling the litania eteria over and over again. Below, a pair of coldmen had spied him and began to move toward his tree. Enoch shut his eyes and let the words of the incantation wash over his mind.
The mind is a world, the consciousness its light. As day turns to night, so shall my mind; afila lumin setting as the nubla rises, and my mindworld revolves.
Something inside of him gave, and he felt his mind turn over. The darkness around him was now clear, each sound from below as distinct as a pearl. With the powerful focus of afilia nubla, Enoch sent the commands.
Descend. Distract. Divide.
Releasing the limb, he fell ten feet before landing nimbly on a lower branch. It bent almost to the snapping point before whipping him upwards in time with his leap. Lancing through the air, he curled into a ball. The air was a cold whistle against his skin.
With a crunch, his knees smashed into the face of an approaching raider. It toppled backwards into its comrade, and the hounds hissed as they were yanked short on their leashes.
Rolling free, Enoch bent and scooped a handful of rocks from the ground as the coldmen scrambled to their feet in a skein of jointed legs, spears, and axes. The hounds strained against their bindings, snapping at their masters in frustration.
They are armored, but move quickly. Six seconds until they regain footing.
Distract. Divide. Defeat.
Thin muscles rippled with a taut accuracy as the sling hummed through the air once, twice, in two fluid arcs. The hounds crumpled to the ground, each bleeding from a small dent in the middle of its head.
Enoch dropped and rolled to his right as a spear whistled over his shoulder. One of the raiders was up, an oily silhouette in the shadows of the forest.
They move like insects. Adjust timing patterns.
Still moving, Enoch found himself in front of a large fern bush. The other two coldmen had regained their feet now, and they circ
led around each side of the bush while the spear wielder collected his weapon and stalked closer.
Enoch stood and slipped another stone into the sling. The spear wielder stopped, tilting its head in a monstrous parody of amusement. It lowered the spear to the level of Enoch’s gut and took a step forward. Out of the corner of his eye, Enoch could see the raider to his right raise its axe. This was going to happen fast. Spinning around, Enoch found himself trapped by a third—it raised a strange, tube-like device to its shoulder.
The unexpected route.
Instead of dodging, Enoch leapt forwards towards the spear. Too late to raise its point, the spear wielder had only time to see the boy run up the grounded shaft and deliver a sharp kick to its head. Moments too late, the axe slammed down on the spear shaft, snapping it in two as a loud blast of fire erupted from the third creature’s weapon. The metal tube spat a swarm of molten steel balls and electricity that stripped the bush of leaves and ripped an arm from the axe wielder. With frustrated clicks, the grounded spear wielder struggled to stand, but the death throes of his bleeding companion knocked him back.
Enoch ran, the calm of pensa spada leaving him as worry for Master Gershom welled up in his throat. The sounds of battle had ceased, and only the thrashing of the wounded creature behind him was audible.
The monsters won’t find us so quickly without their hounds.
His head buzzed with these thoughts as he stumbled into the clearing, nearly falling over the twitching corpse of a disemboweled coldman. He cast his eyes around the scattered bodies, all glistening black wetness in the moonlight.
“Enoch—”
Master Gershom lay on his side, a thick spear shaft passing through the muscled flesh of his inner thigh. His clothing was torn, and Enoch could see countless smaller cuts through the tatters.
“Master!”
“Don’t fret, boy. This is not all my blood. The spear is the only serious wound of the bunch. A good warrior protects his vitals. Remember that.”
Master Gershom winced as Enoch tried to staunch the flow of blood at his leg with a handful of leaves.
“Quite a skirmish, eh? I’ve been in plenty of battles but never at five-to-one odds. And every one of them more skilled than the other, why that last beast with the spear, I only barely—boy, those leaves will do no good. Go tear some cloth from the sack over there under the tree. That ought to do it.”
Enoch stumbled over to the sack, his face a mask of misery.
I might as well have thrown that spear myself. Leaving him to fight alone and outnumbered. Coward! Coward!
The now silent woods echoed back his shame and rage. Master Gershom read the boy’s thoughts as he returned with the bandage.
“Not your fault, Enoch. There are forces bigger than the two of us, stronger than the Edrei themselves. We cannot blame ourselves when destiny turns sour. That’s right—not too tight now.”
He grimaced as Enoch wrapped the tattered cloth around his wound. Blood soaked through the bandage and ran down Enoch’s arms.
“No . . . no . . . I can’t stop the blood! I need some more . . .”
Master Gershom pulled the boy’s hands away from the mess and held them up to the moonlight. He looked intently into Enoch’s eyes. He knew. They both did.
Master Gershom’s eyes turned to his charge’s hands, and then widened with surprise. He gave a shallow laugh and shook his head.
“These . . . these scars on your wrists, Enoch.”
Enoch looked down at his hands. The serpentine scar which spiraled from the base of his left hand almost to the elbow caught the moonlight, seeming to ripple as he watched. On his right hand, the scar resembled an inverted wave, two arcs cresting at his knuckles and coming to a point at the back of his wrist. His master’s laugh turned into a wet cough.
“I’m such a fool. How did I miss these? You have been marked, Enoch. Only a rare few of the Pensanden ever received the marks. They are gifts to you, boy—gifts and an ancient lesson.” Master Gershom’s hands, perpetual sources of strength and comfort, now shook as they traced the pale tracks on his charge’s arms.
“The Serpent and the Hawk,” murmured Master Gershom, his voice growing steadily weaker. “The two forms which destiny takes, avatars of fear and hope.”
He pulled Enoch closer, his voice a whisper. His eyes were closed.
“Feather and Scale.”
Master Gershom reached into his bloody tunic and pulled out the silvery memory spool he had taken from the Unit.
“Take this, boy. Take it and go north. Go to Tenocht. There are those who will hide you there. Show them this. Take my . . . my swords. Speak to no one. Hide your marks.”
Two coldmen crashed through the underbrush into the clearing. One held an axe, the other a smoking metal tube.
“Run, Enoch, run!”
“No, Master. I won’t leave you!”
“Fool, boy! Leave me and run! These are coldmen, bred to kill your kind!”
The creature has now raised its weapon to its shoulder. Enoch paused.
There!
There were the lines of force, the motes of energy. He felt the hammer pivot back, the charge building power, the trigger slowly pulled . . .
“No.”
With a blasting roar, the tube exploded on itself, filling the air with white-hot metal, smoke, and steaming pieces of flesh. The first creature spun to see the mangled torso of its companion fall to the ground, and then turned and charged, axe raised murderously high above its head. It erupted from the smoke like a demon, orange eyes hot blisters of rage.
Enoch struggled to his feet, pulling his master’s curved blade from the ground. The monster was almost upon them, axe thundering through the air. Grinding his teeth, fatigued muscles screaming in protest, Enoch gripped the weapon and swung.
The axe spun end over end and thunked into a tree twelve feet away—two segmented hands still wrapped tightly around the haft. The coldman had time to lift the bleeding stumps up to its uncomprehending eyes before Enoch’s second stroke took him in the gut.
Exhausted, Enoch dropped the sword to the ground and fell to his knees. The sky beyond the mountains diffused into gray-blue as the dark liquid of night bled away into the west.
Chapter 4
“And was not this their greatest folly? For they lay with that which was of metal in a corrupted union, trading their souls for empty immortality, a life without life.”
—Abuk 4:15, The Book of Sins
From his stony niche, Rictus watched the thieves return from their raid on the caravan. Apparently it hadn’t gone well—two of them wore bloody bindings and all wore scowls. Some slunk off to their bedrolls while others gathered around the fire, grunting and cursing as they sat on the pitted headstones. Night had fallen, and a cold wind whistled through the ruins, causing a few of the rough men to shiver with more than just the chill. One of the men produced a wineskin from somewhere under his cloak and passed it around. As a gust of wind fanned the flames, they began to speak of the failed raid.
“Kingsmen! A damned caravan of the king’s own trained dogs and two of them on murback to boot—was a damned fool idea to jump that ship, I tell you.”
“Who scouted it, anyhow?”
“Gil!” came several replies. “Gil spied ‘em.”
The accused man protested. “How was I to know that they was Kingsmen? They wasn’t wearin’ no livery and the murs looked rangy enough!”
“Anyone catch a look at what was under the rag?”
“Nah—those kingboys kept us from gettin’ in close, as Scrape will tell.” One of the wounded men nodded his head and cursed.
“Looked like a cage to me.”
“Yeah—a damned cage. That’s what it was. Probably one of His Majesty’s new pets—perhaps we didn’t want to open the damned thing anyways.”
The conversation soon simmered down into drunken threats, mumbled vagaries, and tired boasting of the day’s exploits.
Rictus stifled a yawn, more a force o
f habit than a biological urge, and crawled back into his tomb. He wrestled with the idea of moving on and letting the highwaymen have their fill of this lonely place, but then he remembered why he was here and what was chasing him.
Room enough for everyone, I guess. Just as long as they help out with the rent.
* * * *
Enoch awoke to the smell of wet earth and leaves. He rolled his aching body from a cocoon of forest debris and felt the first cold drops of rain, signaling an early morning storm. It had been raining periodically for the last couple . . . what? Days? Weeks? Enoch had lost track a long time ago. He rolled back under the low branches of the blue pine, trying to ignore the hunger gnawing at his stomach.
He tried to escape into the numbing world of sleep. Sleep did not come—only the nightmares that stirred his mind like a flock of noisy birds.
Enoch couldn’t clear his thoughts. He saw Master Gershom’s face growing pale and cold as the last few drops of blood crawled from his wounds. He felt the forest, weeping and quiet.
He shivered.
Those monsters—those coldmen—laughing with their rattle voices.
Eyes closed, Enoch saw the shallow grave he’d carved from the muddy forest floor. Levi Gershom now rested between the roots of the very tree which had sheltered his cowardly charge. Such a pitiful monument.
Thunder boomed from the heavy clouds, pounding across the dark sky and seeming to shake the heavens. Underneath the dripping boughs of a scrawny tree, Enoch’s hands slowly curled into fists. He struck the ground once, twice. His frustration was lost in the storm.
Hours later, the rain had turned into a wet haze, which hung motionless in the dreary air. Enoch crawled from underneath the boughs and stood for a moment, swaying on his feet, as if waiting for some errant breeze to pull him along. Mud streaked his bare arms, and his light summer trousers were torn and spotted with dead leaves. Master Gershom’s leather boots were strapped tightly around Enoch’s feet with leather bindings, long strips cut from the soldier’s belt to make sure that the durable footwear wouldn’t chafe in the journey ahead.
He rubbed at his swollen eyes and walked around the tree to where he had stashed his master’s swords. The Unit disc hung from a cord at his neck, and it jounced against his chest as he walked. Brushing aside a mound of leaves, his fingers trembled for a moment and then grasped firmly onto the dry, worn leather scabbards. He strapped them around his shoulder and hip with the ease of familiarity and began to walk.
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