| |
The dense canopy blocked the scant moonlight and starlight. In the past, when she couldn’t sleep, she had wandered to the meadow across from her hermit’s hut, her steps lit by the cold silvery light of night. Here in deep forest, Desora saw very little except shapeless dark masses beside other shapeless dark masses. The tiniest light gleamed warmly and pushed back the amorphous blackness.
Whoever looked for them would see the campfire, centered on the trail, and know exactly where they were. They could plan their attack.
Gobbers never planned. Trolls didn’t plan. But gobbers and trolls weren’t the only dangers in this Wilding.
The monster was ahead of them. Would it track back to find who followed?
She had no idea where the sorcerer and his decimated pack were. Lord Horst had agreed to track them. He didn’t want them venturing into the Weorth Mountains.
The impassable Weorth Mountains. But Brax had claimed that nothing was impassable, not with time and patience. And Horst had hinted that something valuable was hidden in the Weorth. Valuable to a Fae, even a Dark Fae like Horst, meant magical.
A breeze blew past, wrapping her skirts around her, touching whispery tendrils into her curly hair, tugging before moving on. She shivered.
“You should be back at the fire.”
Desora jerked and whirled. “Brax. You startled me.”
He was a black mass among other black masses, one that moved and separated from the other shapes. Silvery moonlight penetrated the canopy to flash on his armor. “How is Dunstan?”
“Walking wounded. Granny Riding should see him. He will fight when we need him.”
“He’s a good archer, and he doesn’t hesitate.” A gleam of a lighter grey, and she realized he had held his hand for silence.
She listened, too. Beyond the scratching in bushes, the rustle of summer-dry leaves stirred by the wind, she heard nothing. “What is it?” she hissed.
“Caution, that’s what. We’re too exposed.”
“Nowhere else to go.”
“There’s that. Go back, Desora. Eat. Sleep.”
“Not until you do.”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll wait.”
“You don’t have to. You don’t remember, but—.” He stopped abruptly. She thought at first that he had heard something, then she realized he had stopped because he didn’t want to push a memory on her, an unwelcome memory.
Their past together was like delving into a mine without torches and without a map. Her flashes of memories were often frustrating, not illuminating.
But she had remembered one thing. Or rather, not remembered, but understood, comprehended deeply, somehow, someway. He had loved her. That hadn’t stopped. And her few returned memories of him embraced that love.
“I haven’t remembered everything, not even most things. Every memory may not return to me.” She kept her voice hushed, so quiet that she didn’t even disturb the little mammal scratching along the side of the trail. “I’m grateful for the memories that have returned, even the ones that I don’t understand, not yet. I pray more will return. I have remembered the most important thing.”
She paused, and he snapped at the lure. “What’s that?”
“We loved each other.”
She felt the heavy weight of his stare. He’d always seen more at night than she. Owl eyes, she had teased. She was a grey shadow to him, like a sooty ghost haunting a keep’s corridors. He was blackness to her.
No. His breathing had sped up. “Adalse—. Dammit. Desora, this is not the time—.”
“When is the time? When we’ve lost Challoch, too? When I’ve lost you, again? I no longer feel empty, Brax. I have for five years, empty and alone and aching for what I’ve lost. I’ve discovered, though, that the ache, that wasn’t for my lost wizardry. That was for you.”
He stepped close, so close. His head bent. She felt his breath on her face. “You choose your moments. This isn’t a good one.”
“Five years, Brax. We will never recover them. We can only move forward.”
Desora thought he would kiss her, hoped he would. She rose on tiptoes, swayed toward him. He touched her face. His hand slid to her neck, coasted to her nape—then a shout came from the camp.
They both whirled. Firelight illuminated the trail behind them and the five men fighting with orange-glinting blades. Small bodies ducked, rushed in and jumped back, circled and feinted. Two leaped and landed on a ranger.
Gobbers. Again.
Green light flashed as Desora evoked Earth power. She didn’t bother with any viny life potential. She shaped two spheres, rock-heavy, small and tightly whorling.
The Earth power glinted off Brax’s sword. “Ready?”
She ran.
He matched her speed.
And gobbers heard them coming. Five turned from the attack around the campfire. Twice that number remained to fight the men.
Green light reflected off stubby claws, off pointed teeth—and glowed strangely in rounded eyes. The gobbers sprang toward them.
Desora threw her spheres at the two creatures before her. The rock-filled spheres caught them in the torso, stopped their forward impetus. They dropped to the ground. She quickly shaped two more spheres.
Brax swung his sword. The tip clipped one gobber. It yowled and clutched its stomach. It crumpled to the ground and rolled into a ball around its wound. The other two landed and tumbled away from the lethal steel. They didn’t retreat. One had a rope. The other snatched up the knife that the wounded one had dropped.
It didn’t hold the knife long. Desora’s next orb struck its arm. The knife flew into the bushes. The gobber yelped and grabbed its arm. Those strangely glowing eyes turned to her. A yellowy green, sickly in color.
She’d seen that color recently. The mysts veiling the monster. Mysts of sorcery.
Like the power that had opened a portal at the Wind Arch.
The sorcerer had infected these gobbers.
She didn’t have time to parse everything that meant. Her mind flashed on sorcery, on the Dark Fae Horst tracking the sorcerer—then she was throwing her second orb at the first two gobbers, helping each other climb to their feet.
The sphere struck one in the chest. It screeched as the Earth power flashed over it. The strange light in its eyes faded. It dashed into the forest, crashing through the tangle of the verge.
The second gobber turned toward her and leaped.
She didn’t have time to shape another sphere. She struck out ... and elemental Earth burst from her hands, like a tidal wave of power. It roared over the second gobber, caught another gobber, and blasted them backward. Feet away, they fell to the ground, sliding on their backs.
The sorcered light vanished from their eyes. She flicked more Earth power at them, and they scrabbled up and ran.
A rope sailed out, trying to snare Brax. He bent and let the loop fall on his back. Then he thrust, and the sword closed the distance between him and the gobber. When he pulled the blade back, blood blossomed on the gobber’s chest. It toppled beside the one still writhing on the ground.
That left ten gobbers attacking the five men.
Fewer gobbers now, but two men were on their knees. Little bodies climbed over them. Another noose had dropped over one man’s head. Ivhart. He tried to get his fingers under the tightening rope.
Desora flung an orb at the gobber choking Ivhart. The sphere struck the little creature’s head. It dropped its grip and fell backward.
But another gobber caught the rope and pulled it tight.
She couldn’t risk another wave of power. She didn’t know what it would do to the ranger. Brax ran past her as she shaped two more spheres. His steel sliced through the rope and took out the gobber clinging to Ivhart’s back. Brax sprang past him, going for the gobber that clung to Dunstan’s back.
Two gobbers leaped in front of Challoch’s twin knives, keeping their distance as he feinted and parried swipes from their claws. Serre and Ferrac stood back to back, each using a single knife as defense against two gobbers.
She flung one orb then a second. The rock-filled spheres struck a gobber for each man. The remaining gobbers looked shocked at their fellow’s loss. The rangers’ knives flickered, then the little creatures toppled, dead before they hit the ground.
They looked around, searching for more enemies. The gobbers struck by her orbs, the ones not injured, scrambled up and ran. She didn’t think they would return. The greeny Earth element had dissipated the sorcerer’s spell had driven them to attack.
The first gobber Brax had clipped with his sword still writhed on the trail. Ivhart went to him, and Desora didn’t look to see what he did. The yowling stopped.
While two men saddled their horses, the others hauled little bodies with dangerous fangs and claws into the tangled brush. Challoch prepared three torches to light the trail.
Desora felt pity for the gobbers. Fifteen had attacked; most had died. Gobbers were usually scavengers or scrabbled what they could gather from the forest, nuts and berries, roots and greens. They feared men, taller, with arrows or swords. A herd was dangerous, but they did not habitually live in large groups, only when things became desperate at the end of winter. Fifteen had attacked. All had that sickly yellow-green gilding their eyes. They would not have attacked without sorcery driving them. Those deaths she blamed on the sorcerer.
Dunstan rode in the van with Challoch, carrying a torch. Brax rode in the rear. Serre flanked him with another torch.
Ferrac carried the torch in the center of the column, Ivhart before him, Desora trailing him.
They rode far from the campsite, until the torches flickered. Desora drooped in the saddle. More than once she lost time and knew she had dozed off.
Serre’s torch guttered out first. He tossed it onto the dusty trail behind him. Then he pressed his horse up beside Desora, past Ferrac and Ivhart, to Challoch and Dunstan, whose torch was also flickering.
They stopped then. They had no campfire. They unsaddled the horses, gave them water and oats, and tethered them to a rope strung across the trail.
Dunstan’s torch flickered out. He shoved it into the dirt, ensuring all sparks died. Then he came to sit beside Desora.
“How is your leg?” she whispered.
“Throbbing.”
“I have more balm.”
“In the morning.”
She didn’t have heart to tell him that morning was a scant nap away.
Brax and Challoch took watch. The other rangers collapsed to the ground, not unrolling any blankets, just stretching out. Knives glinted beside them.
Desora didn’t think anyone slept, not then and not after Serre and Ivhart took the second watch.
When grey light seeped through the black night, heralding dawn, then they slept.
