CH 8
A thin plume of smoke rose from the east. John decided to stop for a minute or two and shoot an azimuth. He rested the cool brass of the Follower against his cheek and looked into the distance.
“I don’t like that one bit Errol.” He said as he returned the device to its pouch.
“That smoke is right at the edge of those marshes.” Errol was not happy to think that his boss might be in the middle of whatever heathen fire had been set by the elves of the Catarian wetlands. “I don’t like it myself.”
They spurred their horses and cantered on towards the lowlands as the sun sank behind them.
***
“OK.” Max was still connected, if only obliquely, to the vast memory of the dragon. He shook his head as her words resonated in the chamber along with the dreamlike flashes of her remembrances in his mind. “Honestly, your maidens, those thin, supple, fair skinned-”
“Lithe.” Nigel posited.
“Yes, these lithe, warrior goddesses who brought us here, they... couple with these tentacled, squid like things?” Max winced at the notion as it was met in his mind by momentary images he could have done without.
“Yes, well, not my warriors, they remain maidens.” The dragon almost purred as she watched another squid swim by, she let him go by, satisfied for the time. “It keeps them scrappy.”
“Thank the gods for that...” Nigel mused as he considered his friend’s rapid metamorphosis.
“Seriously, those women out there.. and these...” Max shuddered as he looked down at Bill. He’d been holding Bill’s quickly changing form under the water so that he would neither sink nor choke to death on the air. At this point, the Bill Heartles Max had known looked more like a slick, lumpy cone. His arms had been completely absorbed and his legs were continuing to split into a myriad array of tentacled arms. “Males... I guess, they mate en masse once every seven years.”
“Exactly.”
“And because Bill is one quarter elfin, he, like any other male elf who swam in that pool above your graveyard...” Max continued.
“The Chapel of The Fallen, most of the tribe’s men died in the first Great War, as you humans call it.” The dragon let her eyes slit with the memory. “Those boys decided that the Heliotic zealots who were cutting down the forests to make farmland and knocking over our teleportation stones needed to be met in battle.”
“Oh, right...” Nigel looked down into the water.
“Yes, those men would not listen to me, their protector.” She raised an eyebrow at her choice. “So they went off to their deaths and the church pushed us back into this swamp, which had been the seat of our civilization. Once the Church decided that coming in here meant death for any army foolish enough to attempt an assault, we were safe. I decided that we didn’t need any more men around here mucking things up. That was when I instituted the breeding protocol.”
“That was over two hundred years ago.” Max looked at Ann’ akurra. “Why do you still do... this?”
“I enjoy calamari, as do my daughters.” She smiled suggestively.
“Uggh, so Bill is turning into a many legged, breeding cephalopod, without any hope of returning to normal?” Max was horrified, of all of the consequences that his decisions had led to, he was appalled at the part he had played in what was happening to his friend.
“Well those aren’t all legs.” The dragon pointed out as she wagged a taloned finger over Bill’s tentacled lower half while Max still cradled him under the surface of the water.
There was a momentary pause before Max let go of Bill and threw his hands in the air as though his classmate were a piece of hot iron.
“Oh! Yeachh... why did you tell me that?” Max felt his stomach roll as Bill swam away into the glowing water.
“Oh wow...” Nigel muttered, going pale with sick for the third time since they had arrived in the marsh.
“He seems happy enough.” Ann’ akurra grinned as they watched Bill slide out of sight into the lake. “And I never eat my boys until they have had a chance to breed. It would defeat the purpose if I did. So don’t worry about your friend right now. There are four more days left in the mating time.”
“Four days?” Max was crestfallen. “We have to get to Pickettstown, which is a three day’s ride from here. How are Nigel and I going to make it to Gynneth Mawr and back in that time, much less defeat the giants and retrieve the Noostone before Bill ends up as an appetizer?”
“That is taken care of.” Ann’ akurra tipped her chin up to the pair of lovely warriors standing behind the men. Both of the ladies were holding lengths of silken cord.
Once the men had been under the siphon that passed into the cave a second time, Salet and her companion let them have a minute to regain their breath. She realized that unlike the elves of the Catarian marshes, humans could not breathe through their skin underwater. There was a boat waiting for them already loaded with their coats, Max’s rucksack and the Heartspar as well as their two bags full of greyvesdust. Salet motioned for them to climb in. Once in the boat, she pushed both of them to the sides so that they could work the oars with their backs to the bow of the large canoe. For the first little while the three of them sat in silence as they fumbled at getting the craft under control and responding to Salet’s pointing directions.
“Well Max, I’m happy to see that this nice lady, well, girl really, well she’s nearly a lady...” Nigel considered the nubile form of the woman glowering at him as he let his eyes move over her shape. “Anyhow, I’m comforted by the fact that she’s in charge of things at the moment.”
Max said nothing, he felt the same. He’d fouled his unexpected responsibility as the ad hoc leader of their hair-brained quest. No matter what sort of abuse Nigel might fling at him, he was morose enough to keep paddling and agree with his weaker classmate.
“Bill is going to be eaten by a dragon, who, amiable as she might be, is still a dragon. We are prisoners, Tyro Billingsgate had his brain split by an arrow and I’d have to say, worst of all, Bill won’t even be Bill when he’s eaten.” Nigel continued his tirade as Max let out a long sigh and paddled on. “We watched him turn into a.. well a squirming, mucosal...”
“Nigel, I did not tell Bill to go take a look around. I told him to stick to the carriage because I knew we were being watched.” Max had finally reached a point where the ballad of woe his friend was directing at him needed to stop.
“You said you thought we were being watched-” Nigel began.
“Yeah, you’re right Nigel. But did either of us tell him to wander off and take a dip?” Max bared his teeth through a tight grin. “No we did not. It doesn’t make me feel any better about what’s... happening right now, but do not blame that on me.”
“How did we end up here, Max?” Nigel continued sarcastically. “Weren’t you the one who fell asleep at the reins?”
“You little f**k! How did we get on that carriage anyway? Who decided to steal a priceless piece of unadulterated evil, stroll off with a cart and kidnap a rock star? Because I didn’t get that ball rolling.” Max whispered through his clenched teeth. “I’d also like to point out that it was Bill and I who got us past those two guards at the gate!”
It was Nigel’s turn to say nothing and paddle.
“So thank you Nigel, for landing us in this mess.” Max finished as his anger ebbed and gave way to shame for snapping at his friend while they were in the middle of a serious set of problems. He knew full well that griping at one another would do little good.
“Well it isn’t like you two had a plan anyway.” Nigel shrugged as they swept out of the dense foliage into an open fen peppered with huge trees. “I mean I’m impressed that you managed to score all that dust, but what did you plan to do next? Eh? Where were you going from there?”
The two went silent as a very large bird, a fen osprey Max noted, dove into the deeper waters around them and splashed back up into the air with a carp as big as a grown man. Its wings stretched nearly fifty feet across as it gained altitude and drifted in a wide spiral down to a nest in one of the massive trees that stood in the great marsh. It was an unnerving sight for Nigel, such a huge bird hunting overhead. He could plainly tell that it had to be one of many around them as he counted the nests in the treetops. Max, conversely, felt a jolt of familiarity and nostalgia at the sight of the grand raptor. He was hit with memories of his tourneys with the Cloudivers. He felt, for the first time in months, with regret as he watched the majestic bird return to its nest. It reminded him of his original plan.
“Nigel, I’d already figured that I could convince... or bribe anyway, a rider from work to give us a lift to Pickettstown, which is where he delivers on a daily basis.” Max frowned at the notion that his plan was soundly thrashed. “That fellow from work, Brock Zadora, was the one who’d told me that business had really picked up there. That little hamlet is having a real boom as adventures and the mule teams that haul the ale stop there and refresh themselves before heading up to Gynneth Mawr.”
“Yeah, and now here we are, paddling along, days from our destination, and Bill...” Nigel sghed at Max for effect. “Poor Bill-”
“Yeah... poor Bill...” Salet smirked at the men who gawked as she spoke in accented Failish. “If you sweethearts are done with you’re little spat, could you tell me if either of you has ever flown before?”
***
The steel rims of what had been Tyro Billingsgate’s spectacular touring coach stood or tipped sideways in the charred planks and axles of the smoldering fire the twins had seen from afar. They kicked through the ashes knowing they wouldn’t find anything anyway. The needle on their Follower still pointed due east, straight into the marsh looming darkly in front of them. John kicked over a set of planks and uncovered the blackened remains of Tyro Billingsgate. He turned them over with the toe of his boot and bent down to get a better look.
“Hmmm.” He mused as he probed the set of holes left in Tyro’s skull with his bone handled pick. “Clean through...”
“Ballista?” Errol asked.
“The wounds are too small.” John twisted his face into a thoughtful but worried frown. “No, I’d say just an arrow.”
“Catarian.”
“I’d imagine so.” John agreed as they both looked at the wetlands that stretched far into the east.
At the edge of their sight, the twins noticed a pair of large birds, obviously falcons of some sort, rise into the air and fly to the north until they vanished on the horizon. Errol watched the needle follow the birds until it too pointed north.
“He’s a devious s**te our boy.” They looked at each other with some small relief as Errol considered the birds.
“And resourceful.” John raised an eyebrow as he got back onto his horse.. “Never thought he’d be up to leading us on such a merry chase.” The pair of them turned north as the sun began to set.
***
“I’m curious, do all of you Catarians, not including your drones of course, speak Falish, or just you.” Max asked Salet as their osprey pushed up into the faster wind about one quarter of a mile up.
‘Just me and a few sisters.” Salet answered as she leaned forward on the bird. “But none of the rest know about our study group.”
“I imagine your matron wouldn’t like the thought of you speaking the tongue of men.” Max offered. He was happy to be back on a falcon, even if he was riding behind a girl. “Which brings me to my next question, was it you who saw us first in the lily marsh?”
“Yes.” Salet tuned to Max and and gave him a sly smile.
“I thought so...” Max ground his teeth. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” Salet’s accent was thick enough that she was still self conscious about talking to the man behind her. In her tribe, she was expected to be a leader, a heroine to her sisters. And here, in the wind with Hix, the prince of the Osprey people, the only falcon to choose her as his rider, she usually felt confidant and safe. Yet the man behind her leaned back easily, as though lounging on the sand of a fine shoal.
“Why didn’t you tell your... matron... that I had been driving?” Max asked before he added what he felt was the more important point about their arrival. “I wasn’t driving really, I was asleep... we all very tired...”
“And you have these... drugs.” Salet patted the heavy bag behind her, quite proud for remembering the word for narcotics. “And you brought that demon into our holy place, and all of you are men...”
“I know, I know, we’re awful.” Max was sorry, he had never been the type to blunder about vandalizing and ruining things... except that he always had, when he thought about it. Never on purpose. He just broke things, all of the time. “Which is exactly what I don’t understand. With all of our sins, and me at the reins, why did you lie?”
“Because I knew you were a hero the moment I saw you.” Salet was nervous offering the answer, but she tried to sound angry about the question, as though he had no right to ask her mind. She knew from her lessons in Falish that human men were asses. “You gave me your thanks, now shut up and hold on. Stupid man, you act like you won’t die if you fall from this height.”
They passed the next hour quietly. As they dropped altitude in order to keep to the slipstream currents between the tall hills of a pass, Max made note of Salet’s skill on her falcon. She was quite a rider, she had a feel for how her bird found the currents of the air and she knew to let it make their way without fighting for control. As the sun sank and kept the world in a grey dusk and they passed the close hills, Max saw Nigel and the elf who was at the reins of her mount. He had his eyes closed and looked to be bobbling between fright and drowsing sleep. The back of a bird was an easy place to fall asleep on a long trip. The beating of their wings rocked one into a dreamlike state. He had known many riders who tied themselves to their saddles in case they fell asleep and slipped off. He realized that he had been an ass, perhaps it was fatigue or simply the stress of the last three days, but he hadn’t even asked his savior her name.
“I know you told me to shut up.” He leaned in. “But I haven’t gotten your name.”
“You should call me Salet.” She realized that his oversight had been mutual. “What do people call you/”
“Max.”
“That’s a stupid name for a hero.” Salet taunted him.
“I’m not a hero.” Max shook his head and cracked his back by crossing his legs and twisting. “I’m an idiot who is most likely going to get himself and his friends killed.”
“You should stay shut up, Max.” Salet had little patience for her hero. She had found him so he was hers, plain and simple. “And why can’t you sit still?”
“Sorry, I’m just not used to being in the back.” Max mentioned, trying not to sound proud and failing entirely. “I just know... used to know how to ride pretty well. Very well actually.”
“Oh. That’s why you’re stupid.” Salet decided that he needed a reminder. She dug in and let Hix know she need him to bank to the right. Hix shrugged and tilted in a slight sweep toward the earth below.
“There you go!” Max popped up from his leaning position onto his feet, keeping his center of gravity set perfectly with the pull and drop of the falcon. It was nice to feel a bird under him do something more than stroke forward through the sky.
“Now you’re standing?” Salet had never stood on Hix’s back, nor would she be bold enough to try it. He was either very lucky, very talented, or suicidal. Max was, in fact, a mixture of all three of those things. “Sit down! Idiot! I saved you from an arrow through your stupid skull, I suggested you speak with Ann’ akurra! If you die now I will not feel bad for you, I’ll be mad with myself for keeping you alive!”
“Sorry, I just like a bit of fun.” Max felt his familiar depression ripple with her reprimand. “If I am such an idiot, and I do not disagee with your opinion on that, then why did you call me a hero?”
“Because you are a hero, it’s obvious, don’t be modest.” Salet felt a combination of heart pounding surprise and confusion at the man. It was uncomfortable and exciting, she wasn’t sure about it. “And now you owe me. I wanted a hero in my debt, now I have you.”
“Supposing I am a hero, what do you need a favor for?” Max smiled at the irony of her opinion.
“I need a hero because come next breeding time I will be expected to bear a child.” Salet did not like explaining her motives to anyone. She only answered to the Lari’ neso and Ann’ akurra, his questions continued to make her stomach squirm.
“But your dragon told us that her warriors remain maidens.” It was max’s turn to be confused.
“Except the matron.” Salet closed her eyes at the thought. “And I am to become the next matron once I have born a daughter. The leader must be mother and warrior in order to know her sisters.”
“There is a logic to that...” Max’s mind recoiled at the thought of the girl in front of him, of her extraordinary beauty being tangled underwater with a torpedo shaped mass of tentacles and lust... He felt himself grow somewhat sick for the first time on the back of a bird. “Logic and duty aside... I don’t mean to insult your traditions, but, yuck.”
“That is why I will need a hero, Max.” Salet realized, a little dizzily, that she thought Max was quite handsome, and warm at her back, and... well he had a ridiculous name. It sounded like a belch. “I’ll not lose my maidenhood to anything with that many arms. You are right, yuck.”
“Let me get this straight.” Max shook his head and grinned at the further irony of his situation. “You’re a maiden, and you saved me, a hero - by you’re description- from a dragon. That way I owe you you my life so that I can save you when you disavow your birthright and most likely enrage a dragon?”
“Exactly.” Salet was satisfied with his explanation. He seemed to understand, finally. “So don’t get killed when you get to Gynneth Mawr, I expect to collect before the next mating time.”
***
As the night took hold in the hills, a viper made its way out from under a large rock seated below a cliff in the pass south of the village of Chathan. It tasted the air with its tonge and found the first scents of prey obscured by that of nearby men. It turned with lightning speed and struck at the huge figure behind it. A knife passed into its head and pinned it to the rocky grass behind it. The serpent writhed it its death throes as Errol took it just behind the head and carefully removed the venom sacks and pulled the skin off in a series of tugs. The skin peeled away form the meat like an eight foot sock.
“Got both the sacs out before he could spit at me.” Errol said proudly as he made his way back to the small camp he and his brother had set. “I do love the taste of whiskey and asps poison.”
“That is a nice treat, Errol.” John grinned warmly at his brother. His remark was the last thing the brothers said to one another for the rest of the night.
They neither cooked nor boned the snake once Errol had cleaned out the viscera. Raw adder’s meat had always sufficed for them. After a few sips of water, they picked their teeth and lounged against the still warm rocks. After an hour or so, they unscrewed the caps of their flasks and poured themselves fat jiggers of whiskey. Each man then dropped in one of the pair of poison sacs, pierced it with a finger, and took the whole thing down in a single gulp.
They were quite content, and neither of them could stand feeling that way for long. They gave each of their mounts a little water, and climbed into their saddles. The twins carried on to the north as the morning crossed the surface of the world and lessened the dark.
***
Nigel was exhausted. He was hungry, his face was throbbing and he did not enjoy their final, swooping descent. The sun had tipped its brow over the horizon as Pickettstown came into view. Salet and her following rider made a wide, banking turn into a lazy spiral toward the ground. Had he not been clinging to the back of a woman, he might have whinged some about the way the pounding of his heartbeat in his face had moved into the back of his head. He wasn’t quite proud, but he felt a certain satisfaction at maintaining some small bit of his dignity by keeping his mouth shut.
“How many of your sisters can ride?” Max asked Salet as his sleep deprived thoughts finally turned over a reasonably sound plan.
“All of our warriors are paired with osprey.” Salet had a feeling she knew where her hero was going with his inquiry. She felt a pang of mirth knowing how she would answer him.
“Well, that’s about thirty of you.” Max continued with his thought. “If the whole of your contingent, even half, actually, were to fly to Gynneth Mawr, I imagine we could take the lot of those giants without too much fuss.”
“Ann’ akurra is well aware that we could end the problems of that village.” Salet looke back at Max and laughed. “However, you men murdered one of her kin, as well as our own. That brought the giants. We have no interest or reason to help you.”
“Ah. Again, I apologize.” Max felt that he had just committed precisely the sort of crime all of his fellow humans engaged in. “It was a very, very stupid question. I know my race has a habit of taking what we want from the world as though we were owed it.”
“That, my friend Max, is the smartest thing I’ve heard you say.” Salet was genuinely encouraged by her hero’s grasp of the flaw men never see in themselves. Pickettstown was ten miles off and on the far side of a crinkle of low ridges. It was as close as she or her sister would get to such a collection of humans. Hix beat the air in slow, powerful strokes that surged against them in the saddle as he touched down in the tall grass.
“Max.” Salet looked down at the odd choice fate had made in delivering him to her. “It would be better if you could come back to us without being maimed.” It was as close as she could get to voicing her concern.
“Thank you, Salet.” Max nodded as he hefted the hard weight of the duffel bag onto his shoulder. “And, I agree. It would be better. Enjoy your trip back, if you’ve a mind to, the morning thermals over the fields to the west could be quite a bit of fun.” She nodded curtly and took off into the dawn sky.
Nigel slung the duffel bag across his back so he could manage the weight of it with the increasingly unhappy lute as a meek counterbalance. He staggered a few steps and readjusted things.
“The dust is divvied out in separate parcels, I could take five or six of them off you and put them in my kit.” Max offered. He wanted to at least try to mend things between he and his unwitting cohort. They had left the fen still sore with one another.
“No. I’ll manage.” Nigel had reached the moment in his life where he realized that the sum of his cautious decisions and boring choices were behind him. He was no longer concerned about his discomfort or the feeling that he was likely marching over the hills towards a certain death. In short, he had finally grown a pair.
They struggled under the weight of their loads, Max less than Nigel of course. His staff was a great help, and he didn’t have his face smashed in. Watching Nigel keep up, even if just barely, brought Max a mix of respect for his friend’s newfound strength and the relief of not having to listen to him whine. By the time they could see the southern edge of the town, they were totally knackered. They had light paths to follow through the grass, and the march had become easier as they dragged themselves along. However, when they were still a half mile from their destination, they found themselves in a field of freshly built mounds. Each rough pile of turned sod was topped with the crude eye and points sigil of the sun god. Max stopped and looked around and made a quick estimate of how many of the stick and circle markers they were in the middle of.
“Well, I’d say there’s about two hundred morons who had the same idea as us buried out here.” Max sat heavily and looked toward Pickettstown. He noted that the place was practically frantic with activity. Dozens of fires burned from chimneys and pits. A string of horses and oxen were traveling to and from the village that had spilled well over its original line of trench and pickets.
“I don’t know Max.” Nigel almost dropped to the ground as he smiled grimly and caught his breath. “Looks more like three hundred to me.”
“Seems all the hullabaloo is a real boon for the merchants.” Max looked at the bustling village. He had a feeling that the place was going to be dangerously packed with jugglers. “I can’t wait to join with that crowd of morons.”
“Yeah.” Nigel agreed. “It looks like a s**thole.”
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