The Wyrmling Horde

by David Farland

  Talon had traveled this same highway only two days before, with Rhianna, Jaz, and Fallion, after High King Urstone had rescued them from the wyrmlings. So much had changed.

  I’m a different person altogether, she thought. She had taken endowments from men and dogs, and felt so much power coursing through her, so much health and energy yearning to break free, she almost imagined that she was like a young robin in its nest, yearning to escape and take flight.

  The scents of dry grass and bitter weeds came so strongly it was as if she had never smelled before. The cheeping of birds, the bark of a distant squirrel, sounded so loud that it felt as if she’d gone through her entire life straining to hear anything at all.

  But she had taken endowments from more than dogs. She’d taken them from half a dozen good men and women from the warrior clans.

  She felt eager to run to Rugassa. But the Wizard Sisel and Lord Erringale would never be able to match the grueling pace that the others would set.

  “It is time to part,” Sisel said, as if reading her thoughts. “Erringale and I will go west, to commune with the One True Tree. But you must go north to rescue your friends. Any last words?”

  “Be well,” Daylan said. “May you find joy beneath the True Tree.”

  “There is little advice that I can give,” Erringale told them. “I have fought enemies much like your wyrmlings for far too long. I have only one final word of advice. Free your friends, but do as little harm as possible. It is better that you die than that you put a stain upon your soul.”

  “I would gladly give my soul if in so doing I might free my friend,” the emir said.

  Erringale gave him a harsh look, as if to rebuke him, but thought better of it. “Our enemy is devious,” he said. “Never trust such a trade. Let your conscience guide you.”

  Talon grunted as if in agreement, though she could hardly imagine how they would break free of Rugassa without letting flow a river of blood.

  Erringale bade them farewell, placing his right hand upon Daylan Hammer’s shoulder and then squeezing. He whispered, “You have ever been faithful to your vows as an Ael. By keeping them, you have kept your soul. Yet I fear for you now. The path before you is dark, and not even a sunstone can light your way.”

  Talon’s heart fell, for she felt certain as she looked into Erringale’s wise eyes that he knew that she and Daylan had conspired to steal the sunstones.

  Then Erringale grasped the emir upon the shoulder and squeezed, and Erringale’s eyes filled with light. For just a brief instant, there in the Bright One’s eyes she beheld a vision; Talon saw the emir wrapped in flames. Erringale backed off in surprise. “Often upon your hunts for the wyrmlings have you walked crooked roads,” he said softly, “but the road before you is glorious.”

  He grabbed the Cormar twins by the shoulder, holding each for a long second and peering into their eyes. At last he said, “Be well, my friends. Be well.”

  Last of all he took Talon by the shoulder and peered deep into her eyes for a moment, probing, as if to peer into her very heart. She saw only kindness in his eyes, and wisdom deep and profound. Erringale looked worn, as if he had been endlessly longing for peace.

  He didn’t see us steal the stones, Talon decided. He wasn’t watching. It’s just that now he sees through us.

  “You go in search of a brother,” Erringale whispered, “yet your heart is torn, for you fear for a father and mother, too. I see them. I see them. A white ship is setting sail from a distant shore.”

  The words were totally unexpected, and they brought tears to Talon’s eyes. She leapt forward and hugged Lord Erringale out of pure joy, then pulled back, embarrassed, for she did not know whether it was appropriate to treat a lord of his world so.

  Then she hugged the Wizard Sisel, and the two lords said, “Farewell,” and took off to the west, the Wizard Sisel striding through the bitter grasses with his staff swinging in long arcs while Lord Erringale marched grimly at his side, as if the entire world before him was repugnant.

  Daylan Hammer, invigorated by endowments of his own, said, “Let us be off!”

  He leapt away, and soon a race was on, with the Cormar twins taking the lead while Talon, the emir, and Daylan Hammer followed close on their trail.

  Talon loped along easily. She was bred to the warrior clans, and as such, it was expected that she be able to run eight miles in an hour, a hundred miles in a day.

  Now, with her endowment of metabolism, she could run twice that pace with ease. And with endowments of strength and stamina, even while running she did not weary.

  The landscape was much as it had been two days before. This was a desolate land. Farmsteads huddled here and there, spread out across the wilds—places where the small folk had lived before the binding of the worlds. But the cottages had been knocked down by wyrmling troops, their roofs thrown off and the inhabitants taken.

  The sight saddened Talon.

  After five miles, they stopped to kneel at a stream and drink, for even a Runelord needs food and water.

  “Milords,” the emir asked, “does anyone here have a plan for how we might break into the fortress at Rugassa without taking a few thousand lives?” Away from the prying ears of the Bright Ones, he apparently felt free to broach the dilemma for the first time.

  Daylan suggested, “We will enter by stealth, if we can. The wyrmling stronghold was not made to defend against Runelords. I suspect that we can find a way in, either by climbing walls or leaping over them. By day the wyrmlings sleep, and if we go in the middle of the day we may get far without being noticed.”

  “There is no night and day in Rugassa,” the emir argued. “In its depths there is only endless darkness. I have trod those roads before. Wyrmlings will be about.”

  “Then,” Daylan said, “we will do as little harm as we can.”

  There had been little in the way of planning so far, and this worried Talon. “When we get to Rugassa, how are we going to find the prisoners?”

  “We’ll learn when we get there,” Daylan said. “I have no plan. I don’t think any of us does. I have never been to the depths of Rugassa. None of us have. All that we can do is search for our friends until we find them, and that may take a very long time.”

  Talon scratched her cheek and sat there wondering and worrying.

  “Have no fear,” Daylan said, smiling at her befuddlement. “Our chances are better than you might think. Rugassa’s forces have been drawn thin. Tens of thousands of wyrmlings were required to take Caer Luciare. And if these broken cottages along the road are any indication, Rugassa must have sent troops scattering in every direction to probe their borders and welcome their new neighbors.” Daylan smiled at his own jest. “Thus, the military might of the fortress is less now than it has been in two dozen years.”

  “And not all wyrmlings are warriors,” the emir added. “Most of them have more humble professions—miners and craftsmen. Or course, most of them are but women and children. I cannot imagine that there will ever be a better time to break into Rugassa and free our friends than there is now.”

  They’re right, Talon thought. There won’t be a better time to probe the wyrmlings’ defenses. Yet she could not feel at ease.

  She peered up at the sky. “How do you think Rhianna has fared?”

  Daylan cupped a hand and drew water from the stream; he spattered it on his face and wiped his brow. “She should have found some help by now. When you’re giving away forcibles, it isn’t hard to find hands willing to take them.”

  “I worry about that,” the emir said. “What kinds of friends will she find in this world?”

  “People not much different from your own,” Daylan said. “I asked Rhianna to watch this road if she can. We may meet up with her soon.”

  Talon worried. She knew what small folk around here were like. The whole of Mystarria had been carved up by its enemies. Fallion Orden was the rightful king of this land, but his rivals had hunted him since childhood and driven him to the ends of the
earth. On his return, he should have had a kingly welcome. Instead he had found his lands beleaguered, his country embattled and torn, lorded over by brutish men.

  Where would Rhianna go for help?

  If she did offer these lords forcibles, surely they would take them. But like a rabid dog, they would then turn and rend her.

  Rhianna’s treasure might lead to her own demise.

  “Let’s go,” Talon said, eager to have some of her questions answered.

  Soon, Talon received more endowments. She felt a distinct slowing of time as her Dedicate was given an endowment of metabolism. The emir must have gotten similar endowments, for in a few minutes the race began to grow more furious.

  They charged over the broken road at thirty or forty miles an hour, going airborne when they topped a small rise. Around them, the world was revealed as never before. Though a slight wind was blowing, as evidenced by a bending of the grass, Talon could not feel it.

  Bumblebees that rose from the stubble seemed to hang in the air, and she could see their wings clacking together where there should have been only a blur. The sun seemed to hang as motionless as a shield upon the wall of some keep, and when a cottontail tried to race from the path ahead, Talon could easily have reached down and snatched it by the ears.

  The road itself was an odd thing, broken up in the great binding. Rough grasses, weeds, and the occasional gorse bush had sprung up during the change. So it was easy to see where travelers had passed recently.

  Wyrmling sign was heavy. Several handcarts had left their marks upon the trail.

  Talon shivered. She had been down this road before.

  All too quickly, the company reached an abandoned inn among some trees, where the folk of Caer Luciare had fought the wyrmlings only days before, when Talon and her friends had been rescued. The roof had been blown off of the building. The cloying scent of blood filled the glen. It had been a fierce struggle, but the forest showed little sign of violence. The squirrels still barked in the trees, and the mother robins still flew to their nests in the bushes. The sunlight was slanting brightly into the little clearing. It was as if already the forest was erasing all evidence of the battle, eager to forget.

  But flies lay thick upon the corpses of the few wyrmlings lying there by the inn, warriors whose fingers had gone black and whose bodies had bloated. The human men who had died so bravely here had been laid to rest in nearby graves.

  How much easier this battle would have gone, Talon realized, if even a few of my people had taken a handful of endowments.

  Talon and the men hurried on for several miles, racing over a long, low hill. They had not gone far when Daylan called for a halt. “It’s time to eat,” he said. “Listen to your stomach. A Runelord cannot choose to eat with the rising and the setting of the sun. It takes as much energy to run a dozen miles for a Runelord as it does for a common man. But with your endowments of stamina, it becomes easy to ignore your basic wants, such as hunger.

  “Your body needs sustenance, and you will need to eat often. The battles ahead are hard enough, without battling hunger at the same time.”

  Talon stopped, and the company got food from their packs. There was venison with onions and mushrooms cooked into pastries, and some sort of sweet roll with elderberries. The fare was hearty but light. For drink, Talon sampled from her skin. What came out was a remarkable beer, dark in color and hearty in taste. It seemed to renew her and take away small aches of the journey at the same time.

  The company wolfed down their fare and soon was off again.

  Endowments were being added quickly now, one every few minutes. At times Talon would feel renewed vigor, or her thoughts would feel more cogent or her senses would sharpen as various attributes were passed on through her vectors.

  Talon wondered at Daylan’s warning about the battle ahead. Right now, she felt so powerful that she could not imagine a skirmish that would be hard. She suspected that she could cut down wyrmlings all day, felling them like cordwood, without breaking a sweat.

  But the wyrmlings had begun to take endowments, too.

  And among them were fell sorcerers whose powers might dismay even a Runelord.

  For thirty miles they ran, following hard on the wyrmling trail. Twice they saw villages in the distance where the small folk had lived. But the roofs had been torn off of houses and the animals were gone, proof that the wyrmlings had already taken their toll.

  Still, after a bit, Daylan called another halt, and the company set a quick camp in such a village. They gathered chickens for lunch, raided vegetables from a garden, and made a quick stew in order to supplement their rations.

  Talon searched for any sign of survivors, but the wyrmlings had left none. She found evidence of children snatched from their rooms, babes robbed from their cradles. She found blood-smeared walls, and the bodies of a pair of young lovers whose heads had been taken so that the wyrmling harvesters could remove their glands to make foul elixirs.

  Anger seemed to harden in her stomach, and Talon longed for retribution.

  Erringale warned me not to strike in anger, she thought. But how can I not hate the wyrmlings who have robbed so many of so much?

  The party finished their meal and sprinted forward again, traveling a dozen more miles. They neared a small, heavily forested hill when suddenly Talon caught a familiar scent in the wind.

  “Halt!” she cried, and drew her blade. She stood warily at guard, and the Cormar twins drew their own weapons.

  “What’s wrong?” they asked.

  “I smell death,” Talon said. The endowment of scent that she’d taken from Alun’s dog was serving her well. “I smell fear, too. A battle happened here not long ago.”

  Talon cautiously led the others to the top of the hill, and in the morning sun began to find wyrmling corpses littering the woods. On the far side of the hill was a giant dead graak, still tied to an enormous pine.

  “There has been a battle here,” one of the Cormar twins said, stating the obvious. “But who fought, over what, I cannot tell.”

  There were no horse tracks. The wyrmlings were large, and some of them weighed as much as five hundred pounds. With such weight, their feet had left deep gouges in the dry forest floor as they skirmished. But their foes seemed to leave little sign. There were no heavy tracks from a warhorse, no tracks from men.

  In the depths of the trees they found a cave near the crest of the hill, its opening obscured by brush. A cooking fire had burned there recently. The ashes were still warm.

  “The wyrmlings camped here,” Daylan said. “But they were attacked last night. But by whom, I wonder?”

  “Perhaps the wyrmlings killed each other,” the emir hazarded. “The only sign that I see is from wyrmlings. See there?” He pointed to two bodies that had fallen near one another, as if they had slain each other in a duel. “It looks as if this was a robbery of some kind.”

  “Wyrmlings often fight one another,” Daylan confirmed. “But usually not on such a scale.”

  As they neared the giant graak, Talon caught a familiar scent.

  “Rhianna was here,” she said, astonished.

  “Are you certain?” the emir asked.

  “Yes,” Talon said, rejoicing to know that her foster sister was still alive. “I smell the jasmine perfume that she often wears. It is all through her clothes.”

  She studied the scene with new eyes. The wyrmlings lay scattered about in every direction. Rhianna had taken them on the wing. She would not have had to land in order to fight, and even if she did land for a moment, her smaller weight hadn’t left much in the way of tracks on the ground.

  The wyrmlings had not been dead long. Their stomachs had not grown distended; the blood on them was congealed but not crusted.

  “They fought only a few hours ago, it would seem,” Talon said.

  Talon detected something else—a coppery scent very much like blood, but subtly different. “There were forcibles here.”

  Like a bolt, understanding hit her.<
br />
  “Yes,” Daylan said. “The wyrmlings were shipping them to Rugassa on their foul graak. Rhianna must have wiped out the guards and stolen their treasure. Good girl, to keep it from Zul-torac’s troops!”

  “Rhianna must have taken a few endowments of her own,” Tun Cormar suggested. “She was not such a warrior when last we met.”

  Talon bit her lip, peered around. “If Rhianna won the wyrmlings’ forcibles, where did she take them? She could not have flown far with so much weight.”

  The emir suggested, “Ah, but if she had endowments, there is no telling how far she traveled. We could spend all day searching for them in these hills. I suggest that we ask her when she comes.”

  He peered up along the horizon, as if searching for Rhianna, and suddenly his face went pale and stricken. “Hide!” he shouted, and he grabbed Talon’s sleeve and pulled her back behind the dead flier.

  She looked up to the south, saw what he had feared. In the distance several miles away was a cloud, a gray haze hurtling toward them just above the tree line. Within the haze she could see wings flapping, and the crimson robes of Knights Eternal.

  The five of them scattered, racing to the giant black graak, crouching beneath an outstretched wing. Blades were drawn, and the five lay quietly.

  “Knights Eternal flying in daylight?” the emir whispered.

  “From Caer Luciare,” one of the Cormars added.

  “Their business must be urgent,” the other said.

  Talon’s heart was beating. She had not fared well against the creatures when last they had met.

  They might have seen us already, she thought. She hoped not. The sunlight was anathema to wyrmlings. It blinded them.

  But even if they haven’t spotted us, Talon realized, they’ll see the dead wyrmlings below them, the dead graak. They may come to investigate.

  The others were all breathing heavily, each of them filled with dread.

  “If it comes down to a fight,” Daylan Hammer whispered, “don’t hesitate to attack. The sunlight makes them more vulnerable. Take off their heads if you can.”

  No one spoke for a long minute. The only sound that Talon could hear was the beating of her heart, the rush of her breath as it filled her lungs.