“Careful now,” whispered Greg.
“Don’t worry,” said Alan. “I’ve got them.”
A couple of hundred paces from the vorgs, Alan spurred his horse into a dead run down the slope, his ax held at the ready.
Hearing the clamor of hooves, one of the vorgs brought a horn to his lips, sending out a low warbling honk. Alan’s ax cut the sound short, the force of the blow cleaving the vorg’s head from his shoulders, sending it and the horn bounding away down the slope.
Suddenly the sound of an answering horn echoed through the hills. Fierce howling behind him told Alan all he needed to know. A group of vorgs riding werebeasts topped the rise, bearing down on the rangers at a dead run. Alan had little time to contemplate his error as the remaining vorg before him charged, swinging a spiked ball at the end of a three-foot chain.
Alan whirled his mount to the side, but the chain struck the animal’s rear leg, breaking it and sending both him and his horse tumbling down the slope. Greg rode forward, driving his sword through the vorg’s back.
Alan rolled to his feet, having somehow managed to maintain his grip on his battle-ax. His horse floundered, trying to rise despite its broken left rear leg, but he brought the effort to a sudden end, a sweep of his blade putting the animal out of its misery. Looking up the slope, he could see more than a dozen vorgs closing fast.
“Get out of here!” he yelled at the two rangers. “You can’t save me.”
They ignored his command, leaping off their mounts and fitting arrows to their bows. In an instant, twin shafts arced outward toward the charging vorgs, sending two of them rolling across the rocks.
“What in the deep are you doing?” Alan yelled. “I ordered you to go on.”
“Oh?” Greg said. “I must have misunderstood.”
Kelly nocked another arrow.
At this point, an argument was moot. Alan lifted his ax and stepped forward, putting his whole weight into the swing. The curved blade split the head of the lead werebeast, launching its rider out in a high arc, the termination of which crushed his skull against a jagged boulder beside the trail.
The charge faltered as two of the vorgs sprouted arrows and tumbled from the backs of the beasts they rode. Alan raced forward, accelerating toward them at a ground-eating run, a familiar red film coloring his vision as he felt his heart thrum in his chest. He collided head-on with a huge werebeast and its vorg rider, Alan’s ax accelerated by the impact. The vorg threw up his shield and attempted a counterswing, but the ax split the shield, driving its way through metal armor and the bony sternum of the warrior, stopping only when it lodged in the thick skull of the werebeast.
Alan rolled to his feet as he hit the ground, having pulled the ax free of the dying beast as he twisted and fell. Three more vorgs charged toward him, although one of them suddenly rolled to the ground as his mount was shot from under him.
As the unseated vorg got to his feet, Alan removed the warrior’s head with his ax, sending a great red fountain spurting into the air before the body tumbled to the ground. A werebeast hit him, knocking him down and sending his ax flying away. He scrambled to his feet, pulling his sword as the next werebeast-vorg pair rushed at him.
Feinting to his right, Alan rammed his shoulder into the charging beast, driving the sword up through its neck as its jaws closed around his left arm. The rider drove his curved sword downward, but was suddenly thrust aside as Greg struck the vorg full force across the face with his battle hammer. The werebeast struggled backward, attempting to drag Alan off his feet for the kill, but he held firm to the haft of his sword, twisting with all his might, dragging the blade through bone and cartilage until it struck and severed the principal artery in the beast’s neck. The light faded from its eyes, and it released its grip on his arm.
As Alan turned, Kelly’s body flopped to the ground not five feet away, impaled on the end of a pike. Greg rushed the last vorg, but the clawed paw of the werebeast he rode knocked the ranger aside. Caught up in a bloody rage, Alan leapt onto the back of the beast, his arm encircling the waist of its rider, dragging the vorg to the ground as Greg attacked the werebeast with his sword.
The vorg was strong and wrapped his arms around Alan’s neck, attempting to break it. But Alan had his own arms around the neck of the vorg. The two strained, the sinews within their limbs knotting so tightly that it seemed that they would pop through the skin.
With a sudden loud crack, the vorg’s neck snapped. He dropped limply to the ground as Alan released the body.
Alan gasped for air, his lungs burning from exertion.
“Greg,” he panted, “where are you?”
And then he saw. Greg lay bleeding a few feet from the body of the werebeast, blood spurting from the great wound in his neck. Alan ran to staunch the bleeding, tearing off his shirt and pressing it into the wound, but he could see immediately that the effort was futile. Greg opened his eyes and tried to speak but could only manage a gurgle. Then, after one last gasp, his eyes lost their focus, freezing into a distant stare. Tears dripped down Alan’s nose to splash onto the face of the dead ranger in his arms.
Another horn echoed in the still air of the day as another group of vorgs crested the hill. Suddenly a wild yell from the ridgeline to the east brought the vorgs to a momentary stop as they spun to face in that direction. Ty shot down the ridge atop his stallion, the sun’s light shimmering off the curved blade of his great ax.
The vorgs had barely begun their charge toward him when he struck, the force of the first blow sending a vorg rocketing off his mount into one of his comrades, both of their bodies tumbling to the ground to be trampled under the feet of the werebeasts.
Alan raced up the hill toward the fight, but it seemed as if he were walking through a tar pit, so rapidly did the action unfold above him. The barbarian was laughing now, the sound ringing out above the cries of his victims, for suddenly the vorg hunters found themselves the hunted.
With no saddle or bridle to control it, the stallion that bore Ty seemed an extension of the warrior himself. As the horse darted in and out of the milling vorgs and their hideous mounts, the Kanjari whirled his ax so fast that it sang through the air, barely slowed by the flesh it rent.
Alan stumbled to a stop as he arrived at the scene, panting heavily. The fight was over. Eight vorgs and six of their werebeast mounts lay dead atop the ridge, the two other werebeasts having run off into the canyon on the far side.
Ty rode up beside him. “You all right?”
“Fine. I am fine,” Alan said, his gaze directed back down the hill where the two men under his command lay dead.
A wave of depression assaulted him, sapping his strength far more effectively than the brief battle and run up the hillside had done. Two fine young rangers lay dead because he could not wait to fully assess the situation. His foolhardiness had ended their lives. It would have been better if Ty had not arrived, if Alan, too, had fallen in battle alongside his comrades.
The thought of his father’s stern words replayed themselves in Alan’s mind.
Alan walked back down the hill to where the rangers’ bodies lay sprawled across the rocky ground. Ty trailed along, leaving him to his silent misery. The rangers’ horses had stayed close, and Ty retrieved them. Alan removed a blanket from each of the dead men’s bedrolls, carefully wrapping them around the bodies. Then he and Ty slung their corpses across one of the horses, tying them firmly to the saddle.
As they readied to depart, Ty tore strips of cloth from Alan’s blood-soaked shirt, binding the deep werebeast gashes across his chest and left arm. Then with Alan mounted on Greg’s horse, they turned back to the east, leading the horse carrying the two bodies behind them. It was not the most direct route back to the ranger base camp, but Alan wanted to make certain that no one would be able to track them back. Thus, they splashed several leagues up the streambed, eliminating the risk of leaving a trail.
Having committed one foolish act that had cost lives, Alan could not bear the thoug
ht of making another. It seemed that Ty could sense what he was thinking, although Alan caught no hint of a reproachful stare from the warrior. Instead, he rode in silence alongside Alan’s horse, satisfied to let the young man judge himself.
Though no snow appeared at this altitude, the day was chilly. As the afternoon wore on, the sky turned a dingy gray, and a biting breeze picked up. Still, Alan felt hot. He touched his arm and found it already burning with fever.
Ty called a halt to examine Alan’s wound. Finding it feverish, he set about washing the injury in the cold stream. Pain burned through the young lord’s arm as the Kanjari scrubbed the scabs away, opening the wounds and flushing them with cold, clear water. Then he rinsed out the makeshift bandages, scraped some moss from the shady side of a cottonwood tree, and pressed it into the wound, securing the bandages once more.
The jerky, which Alan forced himself to eat, tasted like leather in his mouth and made his stomach roil when he swallowed. Even the water in his waterskin tasted bad, though his mouth was dry and he had just refilled it from the stream. Alan forced his head to clear and concentrated on the surrounding country. Even though he was using the streambed, he was determined to ensure that he was not being followed. Ty disappeared for lengthy stretches to clear the back trail.
Afternoon gave way to night, but the two men pushed onward. The fever in Alan’s arm worsened. He worried that if he stopped, the wound would continue to fester. Alan dozed in the saddle as they continued to the east, steadily working their way toward the high country.
Toward morning they paused in a grassy meadow and, after lifting the dead rangers to the ground, tied the horses to graze. This time Alan opened the wound and washed it in the cold stream. He saw no sign of the telltale greenish-blue striations that indicated blood poisoning had set in, but if he didn’t take more drastic action, that would happen soon.
At low elevation, the temperature remained warm enough for flies to hatch given the right breeding environment. He began searching the grassy meadow, knowing that the abundance of food would attract large animals, and where large animals ate, they crapped.
It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for: a good-size pile of excrement. Dipping his hand into the pile, he found it still damp in the deep center, the foul odor making it obvious that one or more wild pigs had been there. As he spread the excrement pile open, a flood of relief washed over Alan. The inside of the dung pile was full of writhing white maggots.
Alan carefully scooped them out into a scrap of cloth. Then, scraping the wound open once again, he carefully spooned the maggots into the foul-smelling pus pocket. Once it had reached the limit of maggots that it could hold, he very gently wrapped a layer of cloth around the wound, ensuring that it was loose enough to preserve the larvae’s air supply.
He just wanted to keep the wound warm and wet, a nice safe place for the bugs to feed. The hungry little things would eat many times their weight in rotting flesh as they matured. It was not the most palatable of treatments but had saved many a limb when no better medical treatment was available. And right now, Alan’s need was desperate.
The remainder of the afternoon, Ty let Alan sleep, although his fevered dreams let him have little of what could be regarded as rest. Alan awoke deep into the night. Resaddling the horses and tying their burdens back in place, the two riders once again headed east, climbing steadily.
For Alan, time lost its meaning. There was only the feel of the saddle beneath him, the fire in his arm, and the terrible itching.
Before long he found that he could no longer eat, certain that if he did, it would not stay down. Water he drank by the skinful. Ty had retrieved the waterskins of the rangers, filling all of them, and whenever they stopped, it was because of Alan’s thirst.
Night came again. Ty no longer checked the arm, since to open it up and look would potentially kill the maggots, which were Alan’s only hope. Judging by the infernal itching, the squirming white larvae were at work.
At some point, the two men reached the snow line. In one of his brief lucid periods, Alan saw that the snow was over a foot deep. He checked his direction and found that they were indeed still headed east. Perhaps even now he was in some part of the valley that led eventually to the Great Forest and then to the vale. Alan slumped forward once more as dizziness drove conscious thought into retreat.
The feel of strong hands dragging him from the saddle fought to intrude upon his dreams. They were accompanied by vaguely familiar voices that urgently asked him something. Someone stripped the wrap from his arm, and then there was that voice again.
“You used the maggots. Good lad.”
And then the voice was gone, lost in the dreamworld within which he now strode.
In that dream, Alan ran through the hills, strong and fast, feeling as though he could run forever. Ahead of him, his father rode his black warhorse, trotting along at an easy pace. High Lord Rafel turned, smiling back at Alan and waving for him to come forward.
Alan redoubled his efforts, sprinting ahead so that his sinews stretched taut like the strings on a lute, the ground blazing past him as he sped forward. When he looked up again, though, his father was no closer. He strained harder and harder still, but could not gain Rafel’s side. If anything, he may have lost another step.
Suddenly Carol’s face swam into his dream—such a sweet and caring face. Worry creased her brow as she looked at him, and he smiled at her so that she would know that everything was all right. Then she was with him, almost as if he could feel her thoughts, analyzing the truth of what he was telling her and finding it wanting. Seeing her look of horror, Alan grinned broadly, spreading his arms wide.
“I am fine, big sister. ’Tis nothing but a scratch.”
Her image wavered and disappeared. The dream faded into nothingness.
38
Misty Hollow
YOR 414, Early Winter
The weeks following their arrival in Misty Hollow, as Carol had named it, had been wondrous in every sense of the word.
Sunrise and sunset, her favorite times of the day, took on a completely new ambiance in the hollow. When the morning sky glowed pink, the mists picked up the color, refracting it in a variety of rich hues so that Carol almost felt like she could breathe in color. The same was true of the dark reds and purples of the evening sky. Pure bliss. Exercise, good food, and her love at her side restored Carol’s health.
The ground in the hollow always stayed above freezing throughout the bottom of the hollow so that even heavy snows melted off within a day. She looked up the cliff walls to see where the frost line began, a wandering band of icicles and snow that emerged almost a hundred paces above the floor.
Carol had completed the last part of her transcription of the contents of the ancient wielder’s tome two weeks ago, having organized the manuscript in reverse order from the way it had originally been written. The first katas in her version started with the two on meditation technique. She originally thought that both were so similar to her own form of centering that she would skip the exercises. However, upon closer examination, she had discovered subtle differences that were potentially important.
The practitioner was to form a globe of indifference around herself that bled away all sensation. She certainly did a variation of this in her attainment of the meditative states she was accustomed to, the practice being critical in separating a wielder’s consciousness from her own sensations.
She and Arn agreed that any time she tried an exercise from the manuscript, no matter how simple, he would sit nearby and observe, only shaking her from her meditation if he thought she was in danger. For weeks he had done this whenever she had performed a kata and had not interrupted her thus far. In that time, she had mastered the two meditations and the third exercise. In that kata, she modified the visualized globe around herself so that it solidified, blocking all external sensations.
The kata also involved the somewhat complicated mental trick of sending herself a feeling to block
. This had required her to center, create the globe, and make it solid.
This exercise had taken her several attempts to accomplish, but upon achieving success, she felt exhilarated. The clear, hard surface of the visualized sphere pulsed with color when it absorbed the transmitted sensation, but her centered self felt nothing. Sensing that this technique was a crucial foundation for the work that followed, she had practiced it repeatedly.
The fourth kata made her slightly more nervous. Although much simpler than the vast visualization of the kata she had attempted in the vale, the similarity was undeniable.
This involved the visualization of only one tiny source, very small and very near to her, just beyond the clear shield that surrounded her form in the darkness. She had talked the exercise over with Arn, and he seemed comfortable with her ability to handle the process. They had both agreed that it was likely that she would be trying to establish some sort of mental awareness of the closest being open to that sort of connection. Her target had no chance of being Arn, since he wore Slaken.
She slipped into the meditation, quickly establishing the orb shield around the vision of herself floating in the void. Turning her attention just beyond the protective sphere, she looked around, spotting a small pinprick in the darkness upon which she now turned her full attention. It gradually became more distinct, giving off clear little spheres of its own that pulsed and spread in waves.
When these hit the surface of her shield, they imparted a pulsating sequence of colors that quickly died out. Readying herself, Carol weakened the shield. She weakened the shield further until she began to pick up faint sensations as if from a great distance, something she could almost believe was only in her imagination.
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