Cob grimaced. He had hoped for enough tree- or brush-cover to send Rian out from under the cart, to circle around whatever official obstruction they found and meet them on the other side. The clearcutting extended from the Rift’s rocky edge to the towers, though, leaving no way for the goblin to remain unseen, and Morshoc drove on immediately as if deaf to Cob’s hiss.
As the cart approached, each tower disgorged a handful of soldiers from its main door, the Illanic side in green uniforms with a crimson sash, the Wyndish side in maroon with yellow. Morshoc navigated the cart deftly in between the two clusters, then reined the horse in.
“Climb down,” bellowed the lead Wynd.
Obligingly, Morshoc did so, and Cob swung himself over the cart-side as well.
Ten men, he counted—five from each side, with more lingering in the doorways of the towers. Mostly older men, their grey beards protruding beneath their scarves, plus a few boys barely old enough to shave. Not front-line fighters, but they were armored well enough with chainmail or heavy leather over thick goat-wool, and a few wore metal helmets jammed down over woolen caps. None of them looked like they wanted to be outside; one young man was still rubbing sleep from his eyes.
Still, they carried spears and crossbows, and moved to surround the cart like professionals.
In lieu of a weapon, the lead Wynd carried a logbook. Flanked by two spearmen, he halted before Morshoc and peered down, sneering through his thick blond beard. “Name and business,” he said as he drew a charcoal stick from behind his ear.
Morshoc stood straight, head slightly cocked, gloved hands clasped behind his back. “Tanrek en-Rhi of the Verosh-Rhi trading coster. I came through on the fifteenth of Sebryn—“
“And him?” the Wynd interrupted, nodding toward Cob.
“Aloyan Erosei, a pilgrim.”
“Papers.”
Morshoc produced two flattened scrolls from his coat. The Wynd snatched them away to glance over, then noted something down in his logbook. “Fifteenth Sebryn,” he mused, and flipped through the pages, frowning as he looked through his notes. “Ah. Furniture and incense. Bringing nothing back?”
“Nothing taxable.”
The Wyndish officer snapped the logbook shut. “You curst rust-heads get all uppity about taxes, I don’t know why you have honest merchants. Ain’t smuggling more your thing?”
“Is it?”
An unfriendly grin unfurled on the officer’s long face, and he waved his logbook at Morshoc and Cob and the cart. “Let’s see how honest you are. Check ‘em over, lads.”
Several men turned to approach Cob, and he focused on them, stepping away from the cart. A serpent of anxiety coiled in his gut. Up front, he heard the Wyndish officer say, “I’ll need to make sure you’re not smuggling anything on your person. Standard procedure.”
Morshoc answered, “Oh no, feel me up all you like.”
That nonchalant reply doubled Cob’s unease. Everyone knew Corvishfolk and Wynds hated each other; the Corvish considered all of Wyndon their ancestral territory and harried its ‘occupiers’ constantly, while the Wynds saw the Corvish as pestilential vermin. Add Morshoc’s reaction to being touched, and it seemed like a recipe for disaster. Cob shot a sidelong look at the sorcerer to see him calmly shedding his coat.
Next to Cob, an Illanite crossbowman cleared his throat and said, “Sir? We need to check you over too.”
Cob nodded his permission, and the man passed his crossbow to his comrade and stepped forward. Under the edge of his helm, his face was round, tan and youngish, and somehow familiar. Paol Cray? Cob wondered, and fingered the letter where it stuck out from the canteen cover.
The Illanite began patting him down, quick but thorough. “Can’t be too careful with the Corvish,” he commented in an apologetic undertone, and Cob nodded slightly and held the canteen away from his body to help. The other soldiers seemed more interested in watching Morshoc and the Wyndish officer, who had drawn away from the others to converse quietly while the officer rummaged through Morshoc’s coat. Near them, at the edge of the road, was an odd sort of distance-marker: a metal stake jammed into the earth with a glass sphere at its top. The sorcerer seemed to be subtly edging toward it.
“We get rashi, alcohol, scorpion venom, all sorts of stuff coming east,” the soldier continued absently as he patted along Cob’s sides and arms. “Even cult things, but mostly taxables they don’t want to—“
His hand stopped on the concealed shape of Jasper’s armband, and his tone switched back to professional. “Roll up your sleeve, sir.”
Cob’s heart lurched. “I’ll jus’ get it off,” he said quickly. The Illanite soldiers traded glances as he wiggled it through his sleeve. Should have expected that, he thought, cursing himself. No matter what they gleaned from the armband, he could not let them see his brand.
“Here,” he said, offering the band as it slid free.
The young soldier accepted it with raised eyebrows and turned it between his hands. “Got some kind of mark on it.”
“Yeah. Dunno what. Was a hand-me-down.”
The soldier gave Cob a narrow look, weighed the bronze band in his palm, then shrugged and held it out. Cob took it and wedged it up his arm again, relieved to find someone who knew less about cultish things than he did.
Unless…
His gaze flicked to the young soldier’s neck. Was there a braided cord there, hidden just under the collar of his uniform? Three strands of red and white?
Cob thought so.
“You’re all done. Can get back in the cart,” said the young soldier, reclaiming his crossbow from his fellow.
Cob nodded but did not move. His hand drifted to the letter again. He had scraped most of the blood off and torn away the stained bits that had no words. Hopefully he could pass the rest off as spilled sauce. “Listen, are you Paol Cray?”
The young soldier halted, then eyed him narrowly. “Who’re you to know?”
“Nobody,” Cob said, “jus’ I met Mistress Cray along the pilgrim road. She gave me this for you.” He drew the letter free, keeping his hand over the cord, and saw the young man’s gaze go immediately to the glimpse of threads between his fingers.
“Huh. She usually sends that stuff with the monthly courier,” Paol said, and held out his hand. Cob passed letter and cord over and Paol tucked it deftly away into his tabard. “So. You know my mother, then.”
Around them, the other soldiers leaned in, professionalism dropping at the hint of family drama. “Er…only briefly,” Cob said, feeling the start of a flush. Logically he knew he had nothing to be embarrassed about, but the image of Ammala Cray in her nightdress still clung to his mind. “She offered shelter. I did some work for her. Nothin’, um…”
“Nothing what?”
“Nothin’ nothin’. All was well.”
Someone snorted, and Cob knew his face must be red. Paol Cray stared at him flatly. Hunching his shoulders, he tried to wipe away the memory and the awkward sense of wrongdoing, but thinking about it just made it worse.
Stupid mouth. Stupid face. Why do you have to show everything so plainly?
“So you—“ Paol started.
Someone yelped on the other side of the cart, and Paol’s mouth snapped shut as he automatically brought his crossbow to bear. The other soldiers did the same. Startled, Cob raised his hands defensively and heard a soldier sputter, “There’s something under the cart!”
His stomach sank.
“Move away from the cart, sir,” Paol said, professional again. Cob obeyed reluctantly as several soldiers crouched to peer into the shadows. Up front, Morshoc and the officer broke off their conversation to watch; Morshoc had his back to that strange road-marker, almost concealing it, and was tugging absently at the fingers of his gloves.
What are you doing? he thought at the sorcerer, suddenly wishing Morshoc was a mentalist just so that they could communicate. Distract them, or…or…
“Nothing to worry about,” grunted one of the spearmen as he
prodded into the darkness under the cart. “Probably just a rock-crawler or a big grig or something. All over the Climb, them. Just gotta scrape it off.”
“If it’s jus’ an animal—“ Cob started.
“They’re a little bit clever, sir. Don’t worry, it’ll only take a moment.”
“Get at it from the sides,” said someone else, and in a collective creak of mail and leather, the soldiers fanned out around the cart and knelt to prod at their shadowed target. Cob gritted his teeth, agonized but unsure what to do. The odds were ten against three, with more in the tower and one of them Paol Cray…
Paol Cray, who was watching him sidelong from where he crouched, the crossbow held loosely in his practiced hands. Cob tried to master his expression. The young soldier might be a cultist through his mother but Cob doubted he sympathized with goblins.
And neither should I, he thought. What does it matter if they kill a Shadow Cult-aiding, people-eating Dark monster?
But he could not believe that. He had stood by once before while bad things happened, and could still taste the bitterness of that choice.
“It’s moving,” barked a soldier.
“Stab it if you can,” said another. A solid thunk came as someone buried their spear into the underside of the cart. Curses steamed out from all sides, and a squeal of pain made Cob flinch.
His hands fisted, but he had no options. If he attacked someone, the soldiers would turn on him, and he could think of no words that would help. Perhaps Paol Cray could be swayed, but he remembered Ammala saying that Paol had volunteered for the Army, and Cob doubted he would break ranks with his comrades.
“I think it’s coming out,” said a soldier near him. “I got it, I-- Shit!”
Cob backstepped quickly as a grey-and-black blur shot out from under the cart and latched onto the soldier’s chest and face. The man toppled backward, losing his spear and scrabbling at the goblin’s harness, where a bloody gash showed in the flesh beneath the tatters of black cloth and strapping. Rian hissed and raked for the man’s eyes with hard fingers, his prehensile tail and toes locked into the man’s chainmail.
Paol and another soldier immediately dropped their weapons to grapple with the goblin, shoving mailed arms between him and their comrade’s face. Mouth dry, Cob grabbed Rian by the harness, thinking, This is bad, as he yanked on it, fighting the goblin’s five-limbed grip. Tear him off, fling him toward the forest, hope he gets the idea…
Then the world went blue and black, as if submerged in deep water, and a chill sank through Cob’s skin to coil around his heart like bony hands. He froze in place, struck by dreamlike fear, and beneath him soldiers and goblin and victim did the same. Slowly, their heads turned toward the source of the strange new light.
Though he dreaded what it would be, Cob had to look.
The shivering midnight radiance encompassed all that he could see, banishing the faint warmth of the sun and leaching the landscape of all color. Around the cart, the soldiers had halted their tasks, their features drawn skeletal by the glow and their eyes reflecting its glitter. A palpable threat pervaded the area—not the galvanizing tang of danger but an oppressive, futile emptiness that spread like a stain poured from oblivion, a final obliterating light.
At its center was Morshoc.
The sorcerer stood with one bare hand unfurled like an incandescent spider against the Wyndish officer’s cheek, his other around the shattered chunks of the road-marker’s glass sphere. The officer seemed paralyzed with his sword half-drawn, face contorted in agony as white sparks leapt from his eyes and mouth to coil up Morshoc’s arm and join the shuddering corona. As Cob stared, the sparks became cords and the officer’s face collapsed on itself, the hollows of cheeks and eye sockets falling inward to the spasming skull beneath. Rivers of energy burned through the struggling flesh of his throat and chest, popping rings of chainmail away like buttons.
In the coruscating glare, Morshoc grinned humorlessly, his eyes like mirrors. The raging energy that spiraled up his arm and shoulder darkened as it enshrouded him, turning his whipping hair black and making the metal clasp of his cloak spit sparks. Through the weave of his clothes came flickers like lightning in clouds.
There should be noise, Cob thought dimly. Roaring thunder to go with the lightning.
But there was only the sizzle of current and a high, fading whine like a teakettle running out of steam. It sickened Cob to realize that it came from the officer’s throat.
Then the river of energy guttered out and the officer’s gaping mouth subsided to a burned hole. Morshoc withdrew his hand, letting the body crumple into a pile of seared mail and charcoal flesh. For a long, breathless moment he seemed to contemplate the corpse, sparks and streamers of cold fire still dancing over him. Then he turned his lambent eyes to the soldiers, and they shook themselves as if waking and raised their weapons.
Cob still had hold of the goblin’s harness, though the strength had gone from his limbs. Now he wrenched at Rian, and the goblin let go of his victim and scrambled up Cob’s arms to cling to his back like a trembling barnacle.
From the other side of the cart came the click of a crossbow. A bolt flicked through the air, straight and true, only to disintegrate on a blue pane of light an inch from Morshoc’s face. As if it had been a signal, the spearmen charged with ragged cries.
But Morshoc had not flinched. He raised his hand as they neared and energy crawled down from his shoulders to coalesce into a whip of midnight fire, its core a scintillating ribbon of white lightning. Cob saw it hit the first soldier and pass straight through, leaving the man to spasm as electricity arced madly among the links of his mail; the next in line took the whip in the face, and his helm lit up like one of the goblin-domes in the undercity. A third, fourth and fifth man went down from that single sweep, convulsing, before Morshoc drew the whip back.
All that remained at the cart were the crossbowman, the goblin-downed soldier, and Paol and the other who had tried to aid him.
Cob saw the sorcerer’s eyes fix on the soldiers near him, and opened his mouth to cry halt. Then the tower doors banged open and Morshoc looked away, the tip of the whip rising like a snake to dance in the roiling energy of his aura.
“Morshoc!“ he tried anyway, but the sorcerer paid him no heed.
Beside him, someone hissed a breath, then snapped, “Hoi!”
Cob turned to find himself looking down into the sights of a crossbow. Paol Cray’s eyes were wild in the strange glow, his face a bleak mask shadowed by his helm. Beside him, the other soldier was trying to staunch the wounds of the fallen one with the edge of his tabard, but bubbles of blood still emerged from the man’s torn neck.
“Do something,” said Paol, the crossbow wavering in his hands. “Make him stop.”
Rian’s long fingers tightened on Cob’s shoulders. He willed the goblin to stay put. “I can’t— I don’t—“ he started, gaze drawn back to the tower as the soldiers spilled from it only to meet Morshoc’s sizzling whip. Bursts of blue-white light hit his eyes like hammers, and he flinched away as screams filled the air, high and attenuated.
A heavy ache clamped across his brow, concentrating at two points, and a sensation like cold water welled up his throat. Something scaly and massive unfurled in his chest.
No, he thought, terror of the Dark momentarily blunting his fear of Morshoc. This was the beast he bore; the Guardian taking this opportunity to strain at its cage. Pain striated his vision in a white net, and he grasped the edge of the cart as the black ruins rose beneath him.
Then, suddenly, he could feel the battlefield around him. The frantic pulse of the men’s hearts, the dead emptiness of the cart-horse, Rian’s fear like a razor, and the intense currents of chill and scorching heat that circulated around Morshoc. The ground itself reviled the sorcerer, paving-stones cracking beneath his boots and moss shriveling away in a growing circle of devastation—as if he sucked all the life from his surroundings and rendered it to dust.
A second pair of
eyes opened behind Cob’s own. Another presence filled him, pressing against the white net, swelling his veins with darkness. He inhaled a breath of loam and sap and swamp so thick he felt buried alive.
Paol snarled something, but the crossbow no longer seemed a threat. Cob’s hand moved automatically to pluck it from his grip. The trigger clicked as Paol jerked, and the bolt spat away toward the cliff’s edge.
For a moment Cob looked at the weapon, and at his own fingers on its stock, darker than he remembered them. Then another shock of lightning flared by the tower and he dropped the crossbow and grabbed Paol by the arm, hauling the startled soldier behind him with barely an effort.
The new batch of spearmen were all down. At least, that was what Cob thought those blackened piles were. Morshoc stood among them, lightning-whip dancing erratically from one slumped body to the next as if feeling for life-signs, while the last few soldiers gathered at the towers’ doors and windows. Cob felt them there in their dubious shelters, each stone outlined in his mind’s eye and each man exposed by the weight of his step, by his heat in the winter’s chill. Twelve, all petrified with fear.
He tried to move, but the white net stopped him.
Let go of me, he thought at the dark presence, though he was not sure this was its doing. He did not feel controlled, and that little white room he had seen last time was not there, nor were the birds. Just the phantom ruins and this sense of the dying, like the Guardian was watching through him and letting him see what it saw.
Come on, you stupid Dark thing, live up to your name. You interceded in the tavern. Do it now!
But the presence shuddered in his head, and he realized that it was afraid.
With a wild cry, a few more men dared to cross the distance. Morshoc snapped his whip into readiness, but the soldiers—their faces washed pale in the amping light, their bared teeth and terrified eyes gleaming—never got close. Within a few yards of the sorcerer, their armor and spearpoints spat sparks, the cloth and wood beneath them combusting, and they staggered and stumbled, some collapsing in their tracks and some persisting just long enough to crumple at the sorcerer’s feet. With the hand that was not controlling the whip, Morshoc pointed at each in turn, his gestures negligent, almost disappointed. Small darts of cold blue fire flashed from his fingers, embedding in the fallen until they were still.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 34