“
I have no magic.”
Zephyr nodded. “So you say. I must make preparations of my own.”
Kevin sat still for some minutes, bobbing along with the motion of the X’gäthi, who had perceptibly picked up the pace. What help could he offer the proud Unicorn? It was frustrating in one sense, but comforting in another. There would be no undue expectations of him, no dangerous reliance on one of such little worth. He would inevitably fail, anyhow, just as they had failed to bring that warrior to Feynard.
He had just been acclimatising to Thaharria-brin-Tomal when that beastly Unicorn had forced him into this trip! Fancy taking his suggestion to investigate Elliadora’s Well at face value? Comfortable bedrooms, lectures
, and running water he could handle. The great outdoors was an entirely different kettle of fish. Perhaps he should make an effort to read that alleged ‘tome of wizardry’–it was the least he could do in response to Zephyr’s request, and he was missing his daily reading. He looked across to Alliathiune, whose petite legs were fairly jogging along to match the X’gäthi strides. But her face was composed, not straining.
The party made good progress all that afternoon, and by evening had broken out of the dense brush to
find themselves upon a grassy lowland several miles shy of Mistral Bog. Here Zephyr deemed it safe to make camp. He chose a spot backing up against a stand of tall, straight trees, and the X’gäthi swiftly set about preparing a cold meal–no fire due to the danger–and setting up a defensive perimeter. Kevin, whose nose had been buried in his book all day, made a few vague sounds of annoyance as the light began to fade. Zephyr, smiling, ignited a tiny ball of light with the point of his horn, which hovered just over the yellowed pages to provide illumination. Even this small demonstration of magic made the outlander very uncomfortable, but before ten minutes had passed he was already speculating as to the globe’s probable source of power and prodding it with his forefinger.
Alliathiune disappeared somewhere just after dinner. She
seemed withdrawn and troubled. Hardly a word had she spoken, though the Unicorn tried on several occasions to bring her some cheer. Kevin was now convinced he understood women not one whit, and Dryads even less–she had been alternately friendly and terrifying before, but now that had all changed. Not a week before, could he have imagined travelling in a new world, beneath a stand of alibutha trees, with their stinking crop of large, papaya-like fruit that only the X’gäthi enjoyed, wrapped up in a blanket reading a volume on wizardry? With a Unicorn, a Dryad, and a dozen trained killers for company? He chuckled softly, making Zephyr’s ears prick at the sound. How strange life was–if this was life.
“Are
n’t you going to sleep, good Kevin?” Zephyr asked.
“I’ll just finish this page.”
Sometime towards morning, when the light of false dawn was brightening the clear sky, Kevin awoke with his nose pressed awkwardly against the spine of his book. There was a small puddle of drool under the corner of his mouth. He had dreamed of Father. He dreamed of the heavy leather belt slashing across his shoulders and back–but when his eyes cracked open to see Zephyr standing over him, the sickness in his stomach subsided.
“Softly,” whispered the Unicorn. “Gather your belongings, as quietly as you can.”
Kevin scrambled to his knees, flipped the volume closed, and gathered up his blanket. A pair of dark hands materialised next to him to hastily pop them into a backpack. His heart thrashed about madly. Blast this splinted leg. Double-blast his ineffectual efforts due to panic. Two X’gäthi warriors raised him bodily to his feet. Somewhere in the darkness, there was a low growl, and an answering hiss of steel shearing the chill air. Then the night exploded.
Padded feet rushed out of the bushes and amongst the short grassy hillocks. There was a snapping and crackling of stakes and spears, ropes and arrows
, as dozens of traps set by the X’gäthi were sprung, followed by the yelping and howling of wounded animals. Yellow eyes gleamed out there, dozens of slit yellow eyes. Kevin began to make out lean shapes slinking low to the ground, blending with the shadows, and X’gäthi weaving graceful dances of death amongst them. Then his helpers jammed their shoulders into his armpits, locked their arms around his torso, and dragged him off backward at a dead run. Lead the retreat, Jenkins!
He saw wolves falling upon the X’gäthi, the chorus of their snarling rising like a baying tribute to the unknown gods of the sky, and the silvery dust of Zephyr’s magic
settled across the battlefield like the blazing of faraway stars, cold and beautiful and untouchable, for it flared as fire wherever it touched the Black Wolves. The warriors whirled and leaped, their flashing swords wreaking terrible devastation amongst the wolves; Kevin saw atop a small mound Alliathiune had taken her stance, facing this fracas with a stony frown of concentration masking her features.
Leaping lizards, so much blood and gore!
The wolves were everywhere, nipping and tearing, teeth snapping like steel traps in the air where the peerless X’gäthi had been just an instant before, in sheer numbers and mindless ferocity beginning to press the warriors back. Kevin saw one of the protectors fall, swamped by six or seven great, hairy bodies, ripped apart before he hit the ground. Then Alliathiune gave a piercing whistle, audible even above the din of the battlefield, and as the X’gäthi broke and fled, she plunged her hands down into the soil to the elbows. There came a deafening clap as though of thunder groaning within the earth, anxious to be released, and the ground shook. The wolves howled and spun about in confusion. Kevin stumbled, but his bearers simply swung him up and kept running. When next he risked a glance, it was to see thick vines bursting out of the crumbling dirt, writhing and waving in a carnivorous madness, like a sea of animated ropes tripping and snaring and binding the Black Wolves beneath their sapid coils. Alliathiune picked up her feet and fled as though pursued by the blackest fiends of Hell itself, her long hair whipping out like a sail behind her, in fleetness comparable even to the X’gäthi. His jaw hung open in awe.
They fled
parallel to Mistral Bog until the Black Wolves were but a fading nightmare, and the warm sunlight burned away the early mists. Only then did they pause for a hasty repast, eyes flickering nervously all the while, to the trail behind them and any signs of the expected pursuit. They had lost three X’gäthi. Alliathiune’s features were haggard, tired beyond ordinary fatigue, and her pallor so concerned Zephyr that he harangued her into taking a sparing swig of Aïssändraught from his silver flask, whereupon a pinch of colour returned to her cheeks.
She smiled wanly at
Kevin. “Learned any wizardry yet?”
“I must be thick or something,” he muttered, crossing his arms defensively. “I’m really not ge
tting very far. It all sounds so
natural
and straightforward!”
“But it is, good outlander!”
“Says you, a creature of magic.”
Alliathiune considered this with her head askance, then leaned forward and said amiably, “And it scares you
silly, good outlander.”
The words hung between them,
an orison of truth. Kevin was appalled at how transparent his thoughts and feelings must be to her. He had no reply, no defence, nothing that could shield him against such perception, and what tiny measure of confidence had begun to bud within him, shrivelled. Alliathiune was like the Forest–mysterious, unexplored, and potent–ostensibly vulnerable on the one hand and yet proficient and skilful on the other, and capable of depths of passion and anger he had never plumbed.
His gaze turned from the grey, indistinct depth
s of Mistral Bog, to the heavily-wooded hills around them. Evergreen tree tops vied with huge sprays of a purple-flowering vine, that in places had entirely overtaken its host hardwood trees and turned it into a towering purple heap. Myriad birds flitted and swooped through the dense undergrowth, and there was a profusion of mammal species he had no names for–mice and weasels and badgers, he surmised, and wildcats and voles and more.
The Forest was alive. And how!
He had never been in such a place.
But
Kevin’s neck jerked painfully as a faraway, excited yipping and howling came to his ears. Strike hurtled down from above, conveying further intelligence, and after a brief consultation, the Unicorn turned to Kevin and Alliathiune.
“
Ill tidings!” he whinnied. “The wolves lie behind us and before, in great numbers. We must strike north for Mistral Bog, or return south and try to lose them in the woodlands.”
“Not south,” grunted one of the X’gäthi, his accent guttural and hard to follow. “We would be cornered there, helpless to the slaughter.”
“The Bog is a death trap.”
“They may lose our scent there; the
Black Wolves will not soon follow. We shall not penetrate the depths of the Bog. That would be too dangerous.”
“
Is a Dark Wizard abroad, good Zephyr?”
Kevin
might as well have slapped both the Unicorn and the Dryad with his question. “Say it not!” they chorused.
The reduced party
moved off again, bearing east of north, for the Unicorn still hoped to skirt the fringes of Mistral Bog. But the afternoon grew swiftly clearer and brighter, save for the vapours drifting above the swamp itself, which lay yet several miles ahead and to the side. The gently rolling terrain was carpeted in short, bright green grass, the low hillocks tufted in contrast with spiky brown marsh grass, and in the runnels of streams they began to see taller reeds or the occasional, defiant hardwood tree. Kevin, his litter abandoned in the confusion surrounding that early morning attack, was again hauled along like a sack of grain between two X’gäthi, leaving the remaining seven to surround the party.
He saw now, angling in with frightening rapidity, two–no, five, seven, more–
Black Wolves, tall as the Irish wolfhounds Father affected in his lordly living, all whipcord muscle and shaggy black coats as dark as patches of night against the viridian grass. Lithe and sure were their paws upon the trail, their movement having a sinuous quality that ghosted them across the ground with great speed. Zephyr and three of the X’gäthi broke off at once, heading off the Black Wolves, and the grim warriors sprang forward with swords held high. In battle their movements had the graceful fluidity of dancers, beauty and fatality juxtaposed. The Unicorn reared and lashed out with his sharp hooves, cleaving wolves left and right, and his head dipped to spear a wriggling, yelping form upon the point of his horn. And then as suddenly as it had appeared, the attack dissolved and one lone wolf streaked for cover. Zephyr and the X’gäthi came trotting back, warily scanning their surrounds. Kevin tried to ignore the gore matting the Unicorn’s forelegs, as those hooves had undoubtedly splattered wolf brains all over Driadorn.
“That was well done!” Alliathiune said stoutly.
Zephyr tossed his mane proudly. “Praise indeed, good Dryad. Have you seen Strike?”
“Above, there.”
His eyes followed the hawk’s arcing flight for several heartbeats. “Swiftly now, we have little time.”
“Why?”
“The Black Wolves are on our trail.”
Kevin
scowled. “And that was–”
“A paltry few scouting ahead of the main body.”
The X’gäthi helping Kevin broke into a loping run. With his good leg hopping every so often to take the burden off his carriers and the bad one dragging, their progress resembled a crazy three-legged race. “Surely wolves don’t behave like this!” he called to Zephyr.
“These are far from your ordinary wolves!”
Kevin made the mistake of looking back. His hopes had been raised by their progress so far and the relatively easy work their X’gäthi protectors had made of the latest attack–but now his courage scarpered for the hills. “Oh … good Lord no …
Zeeeeeeephyyrrrrr!
”
Pouring down the gentle slopes and over the mounds and grassy hillocks, streaming out of the woodlands, from south and east and west, came a torrent of wolves so thick and black it resembled a tidal wave of oily night washing across the earth. Shoulder to shoulder they leaped in their hundreds and thousands, mouths agape in fanged smiles of anticipation, and the sound of their feet was like the low tremor of an incipient earthquake.
Sighting the travellers, they raised a dreadful yipping and snarling chorus. Their animal hunger was overwhelming. Kevin’s bowels turned to liquid. It was too much! He groaned in shame as his bladder voided itself and a familiar, repugnant warmth spread in his trousers.
For an illusory instant
, the sinister wave paused like a breaker upon the brow of the grassland, and then it streamed ahead, gathering momentum. The wolves gave tongue now, scenting their prey on the breeze. The swamp was too far, and the Black Wolves too quick. The outlander’s red mop jerked about frantically, trying to discover some hidden salvation–but there was none, save Mistral Bog. And would it stop the wolves? He feared not.
The Unicorn too glanced back, with grim mien. “Be not dismayed, good outlander!”
“What will you do?”
“We shall see how little wolves love fire!” And he whirled about.
“No!”