The two tents shared a canvas “porch;” it lacked a canvas floor and one wall, but gave protection to their fire. They gathered in the two tents on either side of the fire, with the flaps tied back. Regin called them for a conference as the light began to dim in the forest outside. Rain drummed down on the canvas, but Regin had pitched his voice to carry over it.
“We’re doing fine,” Regin decreed, as they sat, crowded into the two tents meant for a total of four, not eight; at least this way they all had space to get in out of the wet, even if it was not completely dry beneath the canvas. “We have nothing to worry about. Canvas still keeps out rain, wood still burns, and we still have the north-needle, which is, thank the gods, not magical. We’ve found the river, and it’s only a matter of time before we either run into the missing Silvers or one of the other parties does. If they do, they’ll try and notify us, realize what happened when they don’t get our teleson, and come fetch us. If we find them first, we’ll just backtrack along the river until we meet one of the other parties, then get back to the base camp. Not a problem.”
Skan was hardly in agreement with that sentiment, but Regin was the leader, and it was poor form to undermine confidence in your leader when it was most needed by others.
This is not a wartime situation. And now we know that the magic stealers are just some kind of strange wild animal, not an enemy force. If we’re just careful, we should get out of this intact and with the children. At least, that was what he was trying to tell himself.
“For tonight, I want a double watch set; four and four, split the night, a mage in each of the two watches.” Regin looked around for volunteers for the first watch, and got his four without Skan or Drake needing to put up a hand.
Skan did not intend to volunteer, but Filix seemed so eager to make up for the mistake that cost them all their magic, that it looked as if the younger mage had beaten the gryphon to volunteering. Skan wondered what the young man thought he was volunteering for; he was hardly a fighter, and the idea of throwing magic at something that ate magic did not appeal to the gryphon.
I am not lobbing a single spell around until we lose these menaces, “he resolved. If these things eat magic, it stands to reason that magic makes them stronger. And the stronger they are, the more likely they are to attack us physically.
Well, Filix could use a bow, at least, even if he didn’t possess a gryphon’s natural weaponry.
He might do all right at that—provided he thinks before he acts. He wanted to take Filix aside and caution him, but an earlier attempt had not been very successful. Filix clearly thought that Skan was overreacting to the situation. One of the biggest problems with the younger mages—youngsters who had come along after the Cataclysm—was that they thought magic could fix everything. They had yet to learn that magic was nothing more than another tool, and one that you could do without if you had to. Maybe things wouldn’t be as convenient without it, but so what? Snowstar ought to force them to spend a year not using magic.
Regin nodded with satisfaction at his volunteers. “Right. Close up the watch right around the camp; there’s no point in guarding a big perimeter tonight. If you get a clear shot, take it; maybe if we make things unpleasant enough for whatever is out there, it’ll get discouraged and leave us alone.”
And maybe you’ll provoke them into an attack! Skan reminded himself that he was not the leader and kept his beak clamped tightly shut on his own objections. But he resolved to sleep with himself between Drake and the tent wall, and to do so lightly.
Somehow he managed to invoke most of the old battle reflexes, get himself charged up to the point where nerves would do instead of sleep, and laid himself warily down to rest with one eye and ear open. In his opinion, Regin was taking this all far too casually, and was far too certain that they were “only” dealing with a peculiar form of wild animal. And he was so smug about the fact that he had brought nonmagical backups to virtually every magical piece of equipment except the teleson that Skan wanted to smack him into good sense again.
Bringing backups isn‘t the point! he seethed, as he positioned himself to best protect Drake in an attack. The fact that there is something out here that can eat magic and is clearly hostile—that’s the point! What good are our backups going to do if these things decide that they want more than just a taste of us from a distance?
The rains slowed, then stopped. The fire died, leaving them with nothing but glowing coals for a source of light. Just as the camp quieted down for the night, the “wild animals” proved that they were not intimidated by a party of eight.
Skan came awake all at once with the sound of someone falling to the ground, followed by cursing and a bowstring snapping practically in his ear. But it wasn’t Filix taking the shot—the mage was lying on the ground, just outside the canvas wall nearest Skan, gasping for breath.
The other three humans not on watch scrambled up, but Skan was already on his feet, ready for trouble. A moment later, Regin hauled the half-conscious mage into the tent. “What happened?” Skan asked harshly, as the other two fighters scrambled outside, leaving -himself, Regin, and Drake alone with the disabled mage. Amberdrake went to the young mage’s side immediately and began examining him.
The leader shook his head. “I don’t know,” the young man admitted, looking pale and confused in the light from the single lamp that Drake had lit. “He saw something out there, and I think he was going to work some magic on it—he muttered something about his shields—and then he just fell over. I took a shot at something moving, but I don’t think I hit it.”
“He’s been drained,” Amberdrake said flatly, looking up, with his hand still on Filix’s forehead. “I saw this once or twice in the war, when mages overextended themselves.”
I remember that; it was on the orders of an incompetent commander.
“The only difference is that this time, Filix didn’t overextend himself, he was drained to nothing by means of the spell he cast,” Drake continued. “My guess is that those creatures out there were able to use his previous magic to get into his shield-castings, and then just pulled everything he had out of him, the way they pulled the mage-energy out of the teleson. And probably Tadrith and Silverblade’s basket as well.”
“Stupid son of—” Regin bit off what he was going to say. “Is he going to be all right?”
“Maybe. Probably. As long as he doesn’t give whatever is out there another chance to drain him.” Drake looked angry and a little disgusted, and Skan didn’t blame him. “I’ll do what I can for him, but you should be aware that it isn’t much. Lady Cinnabar herself couldn’t do much for something like this. What he needs is rest, rest, and more rest. We’re going to have to carry him for the next few days. He probably won’t even regain consciousness until tomorrow, and his head will hurt worse than it ever has in his life for several days.”
“Well, we’ll go short one this shift.” Regin shook his head again. “Stupid—” He glanced at Skan, who drew himself up with dignity.
“I know better than to try anything magical,” he retorted to the unspoken rebuke. “I’ll use a more direct method of defending this camp, if I have to use anything.”
Stupid fool thought that if he cast shields, he’d be safe against this, Skan fumed. Never bothered to remember that magical shields are themselves magical, did he? And since shields are spun out from your own power, they are traceable directly back into your own mage-energies. He probably didn’t think it was necessary to cast anything more complicated, and figured his shields would block anything coming in. . . .
The result had clearly been immediate, and had certainly been predictable.
He pulled Drake back into the tent they had been trying to sleep in. “We’ll stay here,” he told Amberdrake. “Leave him in the other tent with Regin.”
“With just one man to watch him?” Amberdrake asked. Skan shook his head.
“Does it matter?” he replied. “There’s nothing you can do for him, and if something comes chargin
g in here, we’re going to have more important things to think about than defending an unconscious mage.”
There it was; hard, cruel, war-truths. This was a war, whether or not Regin realized it yet.
Evidently Drake did; he grimaced, but didn’t protest any further. He remembered. He knew that the two of them must make their priority that of finding the children. And he knew all about cutting losses.
Which was just as well, because a few moments later, the second attack came.
There was no warning. They hadn’t even blown out the lantern or tried to lie down again. The rain must have covered any sounds of approach, for there certainly was nothing outside the tent walls to indicate anything was wrong. All that Skan knew was that Bern shouted, then screamed, and something dark came ripping through the canvas of the tent, knocking over the lantern in the process, plunging them into darkness until the spilled oil flared up. He knocked Drake to the ground and stood over him, slashing at whatever came near in the darkness.
He ignored anything outside the tent to the point where it simply didn’t exist for him, concentrating fiercely on tiny currents of air, sounds, movement, and what little he could see reflecting from the burning spilled oil. His talons connected several times with something that felt like snakeskin, tearing through it to the flesh beneath, and he clenched any time he was able to, so that he might rend away a chunk of meat. But his opponents uttered nothing more than a hiss, and they dashed away through the double rents in the tent canvas as if his fierce opposition surprised them. The fight couldn’t have lasted for very long, for not only was he not tired, he hadn’t even warmed up to full fighting speed when the attacks ceased, and the attackers vanished, silent shadows sliding between the raindrops.
He stood over Drake a while longer; the kes’tra’chern had the good sense to stay put and not move the entire time. When Amberdrake finally moved, it was to pat the flame out with the edge of a bedroll and then right the lantern.
“Are they gone?” came the voice from between his feet.
“I think so,” Skan replied, shaking his head to refocus himself. Only then did he hear the moans of wounded, and the sound of Bern calling his name.
“We’re here!” Drake answered for him as he relit the lantern with a smoldering corner of the bedroll. “We’re all right, I think.”
“That’s more than the rest of us can say,” the scout replied grimly, wheezing and coughing. “Can you get out here and help me? If I let go of this rag around my leg, I’m going to bleed myself out.”
Drake swore, scrambled for the medical kit in the darkness, and pushed through the ruined tent wall. Skan followed slowly.
When the lantern had been relit so that Drake could see to treat wounds, and everyone had been accounted for, they discovered that Regin and Filix had been killed by more of the things. They had probably died instantly, or nearly so. Amberdrake reached for the bodies, and could only locate so many pieces. At the very least, they got the mercy of a quick death. There wasn’t much left of them. Blood was spattered everywhere, and it was difficult to tell what part belonged to whom.
He left the tent quickly, reminded all too forcefully of some of Hadanelith’s victims.
And of Ma’ar’s.
I’m supposed to be hardened to this sort of thing, but maybe I’ve just seen too much death, too much suffering. Maybe I am not as tough as I thought I was, or wish I could be, even after all this time. It was one thing to think about cutting losses — another thing to lose people like this. We were caught unprepared, despite my hoped-for lessons of experience.
Amberdrake remained for a few moments longer, and when he came out, he surprised Skan by the thoughtful look of concentration he wore. Finally, as the other men bundled the two bodies hastily in the remains of the tent, he drew Skan aside.
“Are these things animals, or not?” he asked.
Skan blinked. “They certainly fought like it,” he replied cautiously. “Extremely efficient predators. They didn’t have weapons, just talons and teeth, and . . . and speed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that fast since the last makaar died. Fierce predators; no wonder we haven’t seen much game, and all of it small. They must have emptied out the forest around here, of ground-based game at least.” He shook his head. “We should have figured that out, and assumed they’d attack us for food. They must be half-mad with hunger by now; they can’t live long on rabbits, snakes and bugs, not as big as they are.”
Drake nodded, as if he had expected Skan to say that. “In that case, tell me this; why didn’t they drag their prey off with them to eat? Why didn’t they try and kill more of us?”
Skan opened his beak to reply, and shut it with a click.
Why didn’t they, if they’re just big hunters with an incidental ability to eat mage-energy?
“Maybe we don’t taste good?” he suggested lamely.
“Maybe. But that hasn’t stopped lions from becoming maneaters when they’re famished. Shalaman showed us that, remember.” Amberdrake chewed on his lower lip a moment. “I have a feeling . . . that these things are planning something. And that they don’t intend to let us get away. Skan, they’re a lot worse than they seem.”
“They seem bad enough already to me,” Skan grumbled, “But I see your point.”
He didn’t have time to think much more about it, however, for Bern, as acting leader, decreed that there would be no more rest that night.
They spent the rest of the dark hours in the open, sitting in a circle with their backs together, facing the forest with weapons in hand.
It was a long, cold, and terrifying night. Every time a drop of water fell from a leaf, someone started. Every time a shadow seemed to move, they all got ready to defend their lives. Skan had never spent a night as frightening as this one, not even during the war, and he prayed no one else would ever have to, either. Stelvi Pass had been a summer day compared to this unending, wet, cold waiting. He didn’t know how Amberdrake was managing to bear up; it was bad enough to endure this knowing that he could, if there was no other choice, escape by flying into the treetops. Even in a fight, he could defend himself against fairly stiff odds. But Drake couldn’t escape and he wasn’t a fighter, and in his place, Skan knew he’d have been babbling with fear.
As soon as there was any light at all beneath the trees, Bern ordered them to move out, down to the river that they had heard all night long. The flood-swollen river, which roared at their feet, with nothing on the other side but a rocky cliff-face and a scrap of path.
“You two aren’t fighters, so you get across the river and hold it for us so we can cross,” he ordered Drake and Skan. Skan took one look at the swollen, raging waters, and seriously considered mutiny.
But Amberdrake just picked up a coil of rope from the wreckage of the camp, and gestured to him to follow down to the rocks at the edge. There he rigged a harness of rope for himself, while Bern and the rest stood nervously with their backs to the water, facing the forest, bows and swords ready. Soon enough, the fog would rise, and when the shadow-creatures came back, the besieged rescuers wouldn’t be able to see them until it was far too late.
Drake, the expert in ropes and knots, moved far more quickly than Skan would have thought possible under the circumstances. His fingers fairly flew as he put together a harness it would be impossible to get out of without undoing at least half of the knots. It must have seemed to the four injured fighters that he was taking a ridiculous amount of time, however. He was even making sure that it would fit over his pack—the precious pack that had what was left of their medical kit, and the oil and oil lamp.
“Hurry up!” Bern shouted, his voice pitched higher with strain and nerves.
Drake ignored them, and turned to Skan. “You can’t carry me over, but you can tow me through the water,” he pointed out. “There’s no way I’m going to slip out of this.”
He fastened the loose end of the rope to a tree at the water’s edge, without elaborating anything, but his plan was obvio
us to Skan. The harness was rigged so that Drake could swim freely, but could also be towed along easily, which is what he meant Skan to do, flying above the river. Once he got Drake to the other side, the kestra’chern could fasten his rope to a boulder or spike of rock, and the others could plunge in and drag themselves across.
Providing, of course, there weren’t more of those things on the other side, waiting somewhere.
If that last thought occurred to Amberdrake, he didn’t hesitate for a second; once he had the end of the rope tied off, he plunged immediately into the river, almost before Skan had hold of the end fastened to his harness. Caught off-balance for a moment, Skan held on against the tug of the current, then launched himself into the air.
Amberdrake sputtered and submerged once, then steadied. He called out, “It’s drier in here than in the forest!”
Once there, he was utterly grateful that Drake was a good swimmer, and he allowed himself a brief, tension-relieving smile at Amberdrake’s quip. His friend was able to keep his own head above water, so that Skan’s only task was to pull him onward.
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