by H. A. Harvey
“Women only sound like that ‘roun you, rock-head.” The first man chuckled, “Your trouble is yer from tha city. There’s lots o’ things can sound like a lil’ girl cryin’ or a woman screamin’ in tha mountains. Most do it on purpose t’ lure a dolt like you close ‘nuff fer a snack.”
“Say wotcha want, Miggs.” His companion returned sourly, “I knows what I heard, an’ tha captain wouldn’ta sent nobody out here for no rabbit.”
Miggs scoffed, but paced about at least pretending to look for a bit. Suddenly he cried out, “There she is!” and darted down the road several strides. Nian nearly panicked and his hand went down to the hilt of his sword, but Riona’s covered his, giving him pause. A rabbit darted from the roadside brush and back up the road between the two soldiers, leaving Miggs laughing at his somber compatriot.
“C’mon Ordin. It’s freezin’ out here.” Miggs said as he walked back to his companion, “And there aint no women lyin’ hurt out here.”
Wrong twice in one breath, Nian thought to himself. Under the wool gully cloak, it had grown almost uncomfortably warm with the two of them huddled together. Yet, the soldiers were doing damage without knowing it, for there were still four more needing to cross the road, and the minutes were slipping away before the approach of dawn.
“Arright,” Ordin sighed, “Maybe it were a woman caught by a drake. Any rate, she’s gone now, an that looks like tha mornin’ supply comin’ wit breakfast. Let’s git back t’ tha fire.”
Nian made a silent face in frustration, waiting for the soldiers to pass him before venturing to raise his head a bit higher to look Gateward. The first glimmer of dim, grey light shone over the jagged mountain horizon. In the next few minutes, light would start to brighten the ground about them. Worse, he saw the supply train Ordin had mentioned, as men on foot carried torches before and beside three great wagons pulled by teams of oxen. Ellia apparently found another opening once the guards had moved a few yards down the road and either Mitchell or David darted across, Nian couldn’t be sure which, landing in the embankment a few yards from where he and Riona lay.
By the time the third man was settled, the wagons were too close to risk another crossing. Nian fiddled at his belt until he found the strip of shimmerine cloth tucked into Ourei’s purse. He carefully lifted it up and folded it over several times before pressing it lightly at Riona’s lips. She seemed to understand his meaning and opened her mouth, biting down on the impervious cloth. He then eased one arm under her neck and shoulders to brace himself and grip her collar bone. His other hand gripped her arm just above the elbow. Riona buried her face in Nian’s neck and gave a nod. Nian yanked hard on the girl’s arm, both feeling and hearing it click back into socket. Riona exhaled sharply, bathing Nian’s neck in her hot breath, but even as close as he was, he didn’t hear so much as a muffled scream. At length, she relaxed her head back into the sand and pulled the cloth from her mouth.
The wagon train began to rumble slowly past Nian’s hiding spot. He sat listening to the carts and feeling the steady rumble of the earth beneath his hands and legs. Despite the darkness, he could feel Riona looking at him.
“Nian?” She finally whispered.
“Shh.” Nian cautioned, though he was fairly certain no one could hear her through the wool cloak and over the din of the wagons.
Riona continued undaunted, “Do I really disgust you?”
“This is not the time for that.” Nian whispered back.
“I think it is.” Riona answered simply, “You can’t shout at me, or leave. You have to talk.”
“No I don’t.” He hissed back, then pointedly turned his head to watch the wagons roll by.
“If you ignore me, I’ll have to occupy myself somehow.” She whispered directly over his ear. Then she laughed softly and blew.
“Stop it.” Nian pleaded.
“Then talk to me.”
“Alright,” Nian inhaled, trying to collect his thoughts. She’d done a decent enough job of scrambling his brain. “I shouldn’t have said that about you. I told you before that I was sorry.”
“But was it true?” Riona pressed quietly, “I forgave you for lashing out. I just need to know if I’m really so repulsive.”
“It . . . was kinda,” Nian cringed inwardly. That wasn’t what he meant at all. “I mean at the time, it was true only because everything digusted me. The slavers, what they did to . . . to her, how everyone around me was so adept at killing, and at the same time that I was all but useless in the whole thing. There’s more, but what I mean is, I hated everything just then . . . you just got it out loud.”
“What about now?”
“I’m still . . . trying to get my head right. It’s not working, but I can at least beat it to the back of my mind.” Nian sighed, “But no, it’s not you. You’re not disgusting. If anything, having you around helps. I’m not a part of this world, I’m an innkeeper. You pour drinks and dance in taverns. You have to be the only other person around me that sees how insane this all is, and when I see you adapt and press on through this madness it makes me believe there’s a chance I can too.”
Riona didn’t respond. He couldn’t see her face in the shadows of the cloak, though more light was visible through his small viewing crack. The second wagon was rolling slowly past. One more and they could venture a look, though it was already too light to cross the road as they had been. Then Riona leaned up and kissed him softly on the lips until she had to relax back and draw breath. At that, Nian forgot about the wagons.
“Ah,” Nian paused, “That’s not what I meant.”
“You don’t want me?” Riona asked, not sounding convinced.
“What? Here, are you crazy?”
“No, I meant when there’s time of course.” She pressed her mouth against his leather-bound shoulder to stifle a giggle.
“No, I mean,” Nian scrambled to find the right words to explain what he meant without ending up with a dagger in the gut. The task was doubly difficult as he was rather sure his brain was not getting much blood at the moment. “It’s not that you aren’t . . . ah, wantable. You are, very wantable. It’s just-“
“You already have someone.” Riona whispered with a note of disappointment.
“Not exactly,” Nian admitted, “But I’m hoping to-“
“Then think about this, Nian.” Riona whispered into his ear again, cutting off his train of thought, “You said we’re from the same world, not me. You also said you didn’t know what to do with me after this is over. A quiet little tavern somewhere sounds really nice to me.”
“Riona, I-“ Nian started but never got to finish his whispered reply as Riona kissed him again briefly.
“I promise I won’t do that again until you tell me to. Just think about it.” She whispered, then turned to look at the lighted gap between the hood of their cloak and the earth. “The wagons are gone.”
Nian stared at Riona for another moment as the growing light outside silhouetted her face. She kept her head turned to the side as though to gaze out the hole, though he caught her eye dart back toward him briefly. Why did she have to go and complicate things? He took another deep breath and lifted the hood to see how the others across the road had fared.
Rowan’s green face peered back at him from where he had last seen Ellia. His friend was leaning to one side, so Nian could see him but the cloak still shielded him from the eyes of the Baedites. Once the Desaid could tell Nian had seen him, he pointed Gateward along the road. Watching carefully, Nian was able to see two spots where the ground slowly shifted itself along the side of the road. Nian nodded to Rowan before ducking back under his own cloak.
“They’re moving down the road,” He whispered to Riona, “We’ll have to continue and meet them further Gateward. What?”
Riona chuckled softly, “You know my head is like an inch from yours, right?”
“Well,” Nian paused,
dredging up some plausible excuse, “I was just making sure you got what I did. I’ll check for a good moment to slide off of you so you can get your cloak straight. Can you keep going with your shoulder?”
“I’ll have to. I may be happy on my back with just you, but I’m not interested in finding out what that army will do if they catch me.” Riona whispered back playfully in his ear, “I’d say we should lay here a bit longer, but I think I landed on a rock and I’m . . . I guess we’re getting a little stiff.”
Nian peered at the army and tried to ignore her innuendo. Curiously, the wagons were drawn off to one side of the road behind the main force, rolling to the foot of the mountain. The Baedite forces had parted their ranks to either side of the road, and he could make out the approach of another group of soldiers coming along the road from the city. As they drew closer, Nian could see that they were unarmed, but most wore armor and livery of green, white, and gold that marked them as Tyrian troops.
When the Tyrian column drew closer, he was able to pick out Autumn’s red-and-gold hair near the front of the irregular troops. He watched their approach in silence before his eye was drawn to motion behind the Baedite ranks. Shielded from view of the Tyrians by several ranks of pikemen, rows of archers four-ranks deep crouched and notched arrows to their bows.
“Nian?” Riona obviously read in his features, if not the sudden tension in his body, that something was wrong. “I can’t lift my head that high, what’s going on?”
“No . . . “ Nian whispered as he realized what was unfolding before him. As if in defiance of his statement, a horn sounded from somewhere far off. In a readied response to the signal, the ranks of the spearmen closest to him closed ranks over the road as the archers stood, aimed and loosed their shafts in a lethal torrent of steel rain. Nian exploded from the sand with a desperate cry. He drew the shield from his back and sword from his hip as he ran. Somewhere behind him, he heard Riona scream after him, followed by more voices, but he was not stopping or slowing. The shouts of surprise followed by those of agony from the Tyrian ranks kept the soldiers from hearing, or even noting Nian’s approach until it was too late.
Barely two heartbeats before Nian reached the backs of the first rank of soldiers, a quarrel sang over his head and lodged into the neck of the soldier to his left; Xain had not been dozing from his vantage point on the cliff. Nian ducked his shoulder behind his shield and rammed into the legs of the soldier directly before him. Driving forward and standing, he scooped the man over his own shoulders and deposited him neck-first onto the hard cobblestone road. As he rose, he drove the point of his blade up under the chin guard of the man to his right. The men in the next rank were turning to face him, but Nian didn’t pause to think of defense. He drove his heel into the side of the next man’s knee and as he fell, Nian swept the rim of his shield into the man’s throat, catapulting the crumpling soldier backward as it drug Nian forward to drive his blade into the ribs of a man in the third rank.
The soldiers to Nian’s right and left let their long spears fall and went to draw the short stabbing blades at their belts, but to his left Kolel’s silvery blade darted in and out of his enemy’s heart while the man to his right sprouted an arrow carrying Ellia’s bright green fletching from his chest. Another of Xain’s bolts drove through the helm of the last man between Nian and the open stretch of road to the falling Tyrian troops.
As he burst through, Nian ventured a glance over his shoulder, he saw Rowan and David fighting back to back in the hole he and puched into the Baedite line. Ellia stood back just over a pace and whipped arrows left and right in a desperate attempt to keep soldiers from flanking them. Riona and Mitchell were closer, the slight blonde girl clambering over the corpses a few strides behind him, her vision fixed on him. She held Kolel’s fencing blade in one hand and her dagger in the other, both drenched in blood, though she only seemed to bother attacking what stepped between her and Nian. Mitchell swung his heavy longblade back and forth in powerful arcs over alternating shoulders of Riona, beating back spears and men with swords as they tried to pour in around them.
Nian shuddered with realization that his brash charge had doomed the lot of them. Between surprise and the sheer skill of his companions, their initial burst of success had felled nearly three times their number. However, to either side of their little trench of carnage lay hundreds of soldiers, a tidal wave of flesh and steel that would crush the loyal friends with weight alone as it crashed back together. Nian set his jaw in determination, he had to reach Autumn.
Then, as Nian turned back to face the Tyrian column, a brilliant flash of white light erupted far off to his left. At nearly the same time, a cry went up near the quarry and chaos began to stir at the back ranks of the lion’s share of the Baedite forces. More than half of the Tyrian column lay wounded or slain, but those few who survived the initial onslaught rushed madly at their murderers. Most were cut down quickly, but some few managed to force their way past the enemy’s spears and grapple away spears or short blades.
Nian cast about desperately for sign of Autumn. At first, he saw nothing. Then he saw a slender white arm protruding from beneath Adair. The Longstrider Alpha’s form was limp and a half-dozen shafts stood out from his back at varying angles. Autumn seemed to be trying to lift Adair but, receiving no assistance from the burly Human, she was having little luck. Nian dashed over, sheathing his sword and dropping his shield to one side to lift Adair off the little Dryad. She blinked up at him in dazed confusion.
“Nian!” Riona’s cry came from behind as she bowled into him, knocking the boy on top of Autumn. Nian turned to shout angrily at her, but the words caught in his throat. She was already turning away to scoop up his shield, and over her shoulder rose a flight of small streaks that were quickly lost in the clouds. Riona crouched over Nian and held the shield aloft, smiling at him. “A little tavern really did sound nice.”
In the next moment, arrows rained down around them in a glinting torrent. Most bit into bodies of the dead and dying with a sickening wet sound. Others could be heard thudding heavily into the thick wood of the shield. Riona gave a yelp as one slammed hard into her injured shoulder, sending a spray of hot blood onto Nian’s face. Then, the rain around them stopped, as a fierce whirlwind rose from nowhere around them.
Nian looked up to see Riona looking at him, or more accurately, through him with a strained expression on her face. Beyond her, the raging wind whipped and arced bits of arrow and dust particles in an unnatural dome roughly a spear’s length around them. The trailing wave of arrows were flung aside as they reached the dome like they had been batted away by a shield.
“What are you doing?” Nian shouted over the wind as he stood and took the shield from Riona.
“I d-don’t know.” She replied with some difficulty, “B-but it hurts.”
Nian pulled Autumn to her feet, only to have her sink to her knees next to Adair. He looked back to see how the others fared. They had drawn into a clump on the near side of the path. Ellia, abandoning her bow, now fought with her twin swords next to Rowan and David, while Mitchell stood a yard or so closer to them completing the small box the companions had formed. Their killing had ceased, as the Baedites kept well out of sword reach and harassed them incessantly with their long infantry spears. The hole had also closed behind them, and they were completely within the killing ring of the enemy.
The spears started to become too many to defend against. One caught Mitchell in the side, another tore a nasty gash in Rowan’s thigh, causing him to stumble backward to the ground and out of position. At that moment, a horrendous, bestial roar sounded from the wood near the quarry. Nian turned to see a great mass of brown-grey fur hurtling through the rear of the Baedites. Shortly, the body of an unfortunate archer hurtled through the front rank of spearmen, bowling men over like pins. Through the cleared path charged a raging hampan, barreling toward the four surrounded companions.
As the ranks closed
behind Tombo’s charge, a streak of white drew up behind the soldiers, and Gatefyre hurtled over two full ranks of men, landing nimbly next to the line commander. As the ember stallion landed, Nian made out the shadow draped across his back had a long white feather trailing from the top of it. Kolel leaned out and used the momentum of the leap to drive his sword to the hilt through the commander’s mail armor, leaving the weapon lodged as he steered toward the small windstorm.
“It seems someone became bored with waiting for us, my friend.” Kolel grinned down as he drew his horse to a stop in front of Nian, extending a hand down. “Come, let us take our leave, this party is getting uncouth.”
Nian nodded, taking Autumn by the arm. She snatched it back and shook her head. “He’s still breathing. I won’t leave him.”
“Fine,” Nian answered quickly, stooping to pull Adair’s arm over his shoulder and stand again, “Then he’s coming too.”
“Gatefyre is a fine steed,” Kolel replied, “But he can’t take us all. It has to be you, Nian. You should know why.”
Across the field, Tombo reached the soldiers surrounding Rowan and his allies. The infantry was trained and equipped to stop a charging beast, but not one who had arms and a simian brain. The enraged hampan batted their spear-tips aside and was on top of two of them before they could react further. He grasped another by the legs and whipped him to and fro through his allies like a human mace. The raging beast shook the morale of the Baedites and they faded back. Tombo scooped Rowan to his chest and started to dash Gateward as Ellia and David leapt onto his back, clinging to the beast’s shoulders desperately.
At that moment, the wind faltered briefly, and an arrow zipped through to strike Kolel in the gut. As he doubled briefly in pain, Nian looked at Riona. Blood was starting to flow from her nose and she looked ready to collapse. He set his jaw and slid Adair across the horse’s shoulders. He then pulled Riona over, passing her hand to the Sattal.