If she hurried, there was plenty of time to slip from the enemy camp and warn Wolfram before he mounted a disastrous attack. Hopefully she wouldn’t need any more magic; she’d exhausted her strength.
Nathaliey turned around and came face-to-face with a dark acolyte. His face was gaunt, eyes sunken in their sockets. His mouth turned up at the corners in a cruel smile.
The dark acolyte held up his hands, and a fountain of sorcery flowed from his palms. Nathaliey barely had time to brace herself before it struck.
Chapter Four
When Markal first parted ways with Nathaliey, he’d hoped that in three weeks he’d be in his cottage on the woodland path. Sleeping in his own bed, his belly filled with bread and stew, and warmed with wine from the vineyards. All the problems of the war, the king’s highway, and the missing red sword would still be out there to confront him, but he’d be in the company of Memnet the Great, Narud, Chantmer, and the rest, with the stout magical fortress of the gardens to protect him.
That first day after Nathaliey left him had been challenging, traveling as he was on an empty stomach, but then he met some of Wolfram’s reserve force in the mountains, who gave him travel cakes and hard cheese. Strengthened by the food, he’d hoped to get through the Spine in two days, descend from the foothills to the plains in four or five more days, and then take another week to get home if he could secure a horse, and in two weeks if not. Either way, he’d be in the gardens before the rising of the twin dragon constellations marked the solstice.
Instead, it was the afternoon of the twentieth day of his return journey, and he was still in the mountains, picking his way slowly, laboriously north. He’d tried to descend three different times, only to be spotted and hunted by griffin riders. The only good thing about the griffins was that their relentless patrols seemed to have confined the Veyrians to the lowlands; whenever he got a view of the eastern plains, he could see villages burning and armies on the march, kicking up clouds of dust from the drought-choked khalifates.
Markal was attempting another descent when griffin riders spotted him from above and chased him into the deepest part of the mountain forest. Soon, a dozen or more griffins were screaming above the trees, waiting for him to poke his head out so they could tear it off.
The Harvester take them. He had to figure out a way down. But how?
Thanks to their relentless pursuit, he’d spent far too long either taking or sticking to cover. Casting concealing magic helped, but it drained his strength and slowed his pace. Meanwhile, he was at least a hundred miles from home, his feet never stopped aching, and his clothes hung so loose that he figured he must have lost a full stone since leaving the gardens in late spring. He had a scratch from a near miss with griffins that was turning into a knotted scar on his back, and a bundled forearm from when he’d slipped while crossing a ravine and torn up his skin trying to stop from plunging over a waterfall to his death.
He pressed himself against a tree trunk as the griffins blasted overhead and made the limbs shake. They clearly knew he was down here, could probably smell him, even, and the only question was whether they’d keep him pinned until nightfall or if they’d find a way in to attack him. The riders had swords, after all, and might be tempted to fight on the ground if they thought he was alone and helpless.
If they did, he swore he’d teach them a lesson they wouldn’t forget. He’d eaten a rabbit that morning taken from one of his traps, found a berry bush in the afternoon, and had been conserving his power all day. Let them try; he’d singe their feathers.
The griffins kept up their diving and screaming for another twenty minutes before vanishing. Still wary, Markal continued on his way. He needed to get lower, and hoped that the griffins would be less numerous as soon as he reached the foothills—they seemed to dislike hot, dry weather for one—but the trees gave way just below him. There was no way down from here without exposing his position.
The next best option was to press north. Eventually, he’d reach the Tothian Way, and surely the griffin riders wouldn’t dare attack the king’s road, with its armies, its archers, and the ballistae that could blast their mounts from the sky. Markal wasn’t exactly welcome on the high king’s highway either, but a little magic might ease his passage.
Even maintaining his elevation, he began to run out of forest by late afternoon. The trees thinned across a series of rocky promontories, with slashing, impassable gorges above him, and grassy, naked ridges below. By carefully scouting the terrain, he managed to keep going for another half hour or so, then ran into a large meadow-like hilltop that lay exposed for several hundred feet. Beyond that, more woods, but he’d need to cross open terrain to reach them.
Craggy peaks loomed ominously to the left. Inaccessible from the ground, their heights were ideal for griffin aeries, and unless his memory was faulty, he’d spotted them flying about up there when he’d come this way with the Blackshields several weeks earlier. If the griffin riders were watching for him, they wouldn’t even need to leave their aeries until he attempted to cross. Then they could swoop down and finish him.
He thought about waiting until dark, but there were still a couple of hours of daylight left, and he hated to waste them. Markal stood impatiently on the edge of the woods and stared across the hillside, thinking. The grass and wildflowers were high enough that if he’d only been hiding from marauders, he might have crawled across on his belly. And there were some strategically placed boulders. What if he ran from rock to rock, taking cover until he was sure he hadn’t been spotted?
Yes, but if he were spotted, what then? Griffins preferred to attack from above, but that didn’t mean they were confined to aerial combat. And the riders certainly weren’t, armed as they were with spears and swords. Those boulders might make good hiding places; it was the crossing part that was the problem.
Discouraged at the thought of either backtracking to search for another way through or of passing the rest of the afternoon here, Markal settled with his back against a tree to give thought to food and how to acquire it. Maybe if he weren’t so hungry, the other problem would resolve itself as well.
A familiar scream pierced the air. Markal remained frozen against the tree, ready to scramble into denser cover, even as he looked up the mountainside. An enormous griffin spread its wings, soared from the heights, and flew above the meadow. Markal couldn’t see the rider from this vantage, only the underside of the beast, with its front talons and back paws tucked against its body. The griffin had scarcely crossed the hillside when it came swooping back around.
To Markal’s shock, a man appeared on the ground next to one of the huge boulders dotting the hillside and sprinted toward another boulder, as if to take cover there. He wore a gray cloak, like a marauder, but he didn’t have the gray skin or dead look of one of Toth’s champions. Was he a regular Veyrian soldier, or someone else?
The griffin veered toward the man, and Markal caught a glimpse of the rider on its back, a woman with a long black ponytail streaming behind her in the wind. Her sword was sheathed, both hands on the tether, and she angled her beast at a precise angle to reach the man before he escaped. The griffin’s talons stretched out, grasping, the tips like curved daggers.
Markal was on his feet before he could think, and he brought his power to the surface, ready to cast an incantation. He didn’t know who the man was, but felt an immediate kinship with him. He, too, had been hunted relentlessly by these beasts and their riders. Save the man first, worry if he was an enemy later.
The man was still thirty paces from the boulder when three other men rose up ahead of him, armed with crossbows. The first man threw himself to his belly, and the three in front lifted their crossbows even as the griffin stretched to snatch its prey from the ground. The animal was fully exposed, and the men with the bows could hardly miss as they let fly their bolts. They struck it in the shoulder, breast, and wing.
Everything about the scene suddenly shifted in Markal’s mind—who was the hunter, and who was th
e hunted—and he strangled the incantation before it crossed his lips. His power remained beneath the surface, the skin of his forearms and hands dry and free of blood.
The griffin screamed, this time in pain, and thrashed its wings, trying to get higher. It flipped onto its side and crashed into a treetop not far from Markal. Branches shook, and the animal cried out again.
The first man rose to his feet and followed the other three in charging toward the forest. They cheered and slapped each other on the back as they ran, and paid no attention to anything but the violent swaying of the tree and the shower of leaves from where the wounded beast had landed in its heights. Curious about the men, still holding onto his power, Markal slipped in behind them as they approached the base of the tree, making sure to whisper a quick concealing spell to hide his presence in case they turned his way.
The griffin had lodged itself in the branches of a massive oak tree, tangled in its tether and hanging upside down. The slender rider dangled, half-wedged in the branches, a tether around one ankle and another wrapped around her thigh. The woman was twisted about, the tethers that had preserved her life while aloft now keeping her pinned. She didn’t have her sword; perhaps it was tied to the beast above her.
The men below stopped their cheering and eyed the situation warily. They’d treed the beast, but both it and its rider were still alive. Three held crossbows and the fourth, the one who’d played the role of bait on the hillside, gripped a curved Veyrian sword.
“I can’t get a shot,” one of the men said.
“Shoot the woman,” another said. “Kill her and let the monster bleed to death.”
“I can’t get her, neither. And I ain’t got so many bolts that I can just shoot up there and hit branches.”
They were Veyrians, that much was clear from their gray cloaks, their weapons, and their manner of speech. Markal guessed they’d been sent into the mountains with the order to hunt and kill griffins—the riders seemed to attack both sides of this war indiscriminately—and might have been lurking on that hillside all day waiting for their opportunity.
In fact, it occurred to Markal that he might have inadvertently drawn their prey for them. The griffin rider, searching for Markal, had put herself in perfect position for the Veyrian hunters to catch her in an ambush.
The Veyrians were wary, but enjoyed the advantage of having their quarry trapped. The griffin was wounded, unable to fly, and the rider couldn’t get to her foot around the tethers and branches. She was hanging upside down, but now lifted herself up with seemingly nothing more than her stomach muscles, and at last she got her hands on her sword and drew it from its sheath. Returning to her hanging position, she hacked at a tree limb in an attempt to clear it so she could get to the tether holding her in place, but the weapon was not made for chopping, and it was slow work. The men circled below.
“Hold on, I got a shot from here,” one of them said. “Soon as she gets that branch out of the way.”
“Me, too,” another said.
The man with the sword nodded. “Hold your shot until it’s gone. Then steady yourselves and make sure you aim true. You’ll have plenty of time.”
Meanwhile, the woman continued to hack at the branch, either oblivious to the fact that removing the obstacle would give the men clear shots, or so desperate to free herself that she was willing to take her chances. She’d seemed so fluid and natural in the sky—they all did, mounted on their griffins—but now that she was lodged in the tree, she reminded Markal of the rabbits caught in his snares each morning, and their desperate, panicked thrashing.
The woman almost had the branch hacked off, and then she could bend and twist to get at the cords holding her to the griffin. Once those were cut, no doubt her intention was to come down and fight all four of the men on the ground. Markal doubted she’d make it down before they filled her with crossbow bolts, but even if she did, these were trained warriors who outnumbered her four to one, and her expertise was in the sky, not on the ground.
This was not Markal’s fight. No, even better than that, it was one enemy fighting another. Why not just walk away and count that there would be one less griffin and rider to hunt and harass him?
Except that one enemy wanted to destroy the gardens, enslave Aristonia, and subdue the entire world. The other enemy was just a harassing pest.
You have an incantation. Take them out.
Yes, he did, didn’t he? He could save the rider and her mount. And probably should, as annoying as that realization was. Markal would have sighed loudly if not for the necessity to remain silent. He turned his hands over and drew blood to the surface. He spoke the incantation, directed not toward the Veyrians, but at their crossbows. One of the men glanced down at his weapon, as if noticing a subtle change, something moving or bending. From above, the rider finally got her sword through the branch, and it crashed down.
The three with the crossbows lifted their weapons and aimed into the tree, even as the woman squirmed around to cut loose her tethers. “Now!” the final man said.
Markal’s magic took hold at the last moment. The men lowered their crossbows from aiming at the heights and pointed them at a companion instead. Three levers pulled at once, three bolts blasted forth, and eyes widened in surprise and horror as each of the three men took a bolt to the chest or stomach. They fell, groaning and writhing.
The final Veyrian, the one holding a sword, cursed. He whirled around, as if realizing that whatever had gone awry must have been magic. The griffin rider cut the last of her tethers, and came swinging agilely from branch to branch, dropping at a rapid rate toward the ground.
The Veyrian took a fighting stance against her. The woman was still three branches up, a good twenty feet off the ground, when she launched herself through the air, sword in hand.
Chapter Five
The griffin rider twisted as she came down, almost birdlike in flight, but there was force in her as she struck the Veyrian with her legs and knocked him to the ground, and yet somehow broke her own fall at the same time. The woman rolled to her feet and came at him with her sword drawn, and would have cut him down immediately if she’d moved a little more quickly.
But she was slow to advance, and Markal saw her heavily favoring her right leg. Her trousers on that side were torn open to the knee, with a bloody gash in the thigh, something she must have suffered when her griffin crashed into the trees. By the time she reached the soldier, he’d risen to a knee and lifted his sword. He blocked her strike, got to his feet, and pressed the attack.
Now that he was back on his feet, the woman’s slender build and acrobatic style didn’t seem much help, and it was all she could do to fight him off. She retreated, limping heavily, until her back was at the tree, where she cast a desperate look up, as if wanting to return to the heights. But there was no way to reach the branches, not with the Veyrian eagerly pressing the attack.
Markal faced a second dilemma, but this scarcely lasted a moment. He’d intervened already; now was not the time to step aside and let matters follow their natural course. If nothing else, the Veyrian would kill the woman and then figure out who had turned his men on each other.
Markal raised a bit of magic, bent for a handful of leaves and dirt, and flung them at the Veyrian. They gathered more debris as they flew, and the soldier was struck with a small bombardment of sticks, leaves, rocks, and dirt.
The man raised a forearm to protect his eyes and face, and the woman, spotting her opportunity, ducked beneath his sword and slashed at his belly. The soldier went down with a cry, and the woman finished him off with two quick strikes.
She immediately fixed Markal with a hostile gaze. “I see you. That’s right, I know that shadow is you, trying to hide with your sorcery. Don’t take a step toward me or you’ll be next.”
Her griffin was still screaming and thrashing about above, and the woman cast an anxious glance into the upper branches of the oak tree. Still facing Markal, who had not spoken or moved, she moved to one of the men wit
h a crossbow bolt sticking out of his belly. Alone among his companions, he was still writhing and groaning, and very much alive.
Markal wondered briefly if she intended to help the man, or maybe to demand information, but her motives were much simpler. She took her sword, already dripping with Veyrian blood, and hacked twice at the back of the man’s neck. It was as quick and brutal as an execution, and Markal stared at the violence of it, stunned, even though he’d been the one to put the man down with a crossbow bolt to the gut in the first place.
“Walk away, sorcerer,” she said. “You have until I’m ready to fly, and then we’ll be after you. If you value your life, you’ll use your time wisely, and leave these mountains.”
Markal’s concealing spell was already slipping, and it only took a wave of the hand to make it dissolve altogether. He kept his distance from the woman, who was obviously in a good deal of pain, and not in any condition to come running after him, but still had a sword in hand, and had just killed two men. He had no doubt she’d do the same to him if given the opportunity.
She had an unusual appearance, like nobody he’d ever seen. Her hair was as black as a Marrabatti’s, but her skin was pale like an Eriscoban’s—perhaps paler, in fact—and there was something penetrating and almost hawk-like about her dark eyes, which had a curve at the edges. She was slender, yet muscular, and had been almost feline in her grace while twisting about up there and dropping from branch to branch.
The woman wore a silver chain around her brow that seemed to be woven into her hair. A small green stone sat at the center, gleaming in the late-afternoon sun.
The rider studied him in turn. “So you’re the one we’ve been hunting.”
“I did you no harm.”
“You invaded our lands. That is the definition of harm.”
“I was only passing through.”
“And how would you take it if I showed up with Ageel, landing in your home country? Would ‘only passing through,’ count as an excuse?”
The Red Sword- The Complete Trilogy Page 59