Curse: The Dark God Book 2 (23 page)

“Can you enthrall birds?” he asked.

“Anything with soul can be enthralled,” she said.

Talen looked back up at the birds. “There are two crows keeping pace with us. I think they’re the same ones that were at the farm.”

River glanced up. “And they call us sleth,” she said in disgust. “First chance you get, you shoot them.”

Talen strung his bow, but there were too many branches between him and the birds for the bow to do much good. They traveled on, Talen watching the tree line. Scruff passed a lone white birch, its leaves a column of blazing yellow. Not much later the edge of the wood appeared through the trees ahead, the sun shining down on the meadow grass beyond. Once they reached that open ground, they could give Scruff his lead, let him run with Fire, and leave these whoresons to chew on his sod.

Something moved off to Talen’s left. He turned. Through the trees a dark-clad rider angled his bay horse on an intercept course.

“On our left!” Talen said. He ducked to miss another branch.

River saw the threat and turned Scruff away from it and urged him faster. Scruff’s pace quickened, but it wasn’t the full gallop of a firesteed. It couldn’t be.

Then the dreadman leapt from his mount and begin to run on foot, easily outpacing his horse.

“He’s coming!” Talen said.

River kicked Scruff who broke into a canter. The tree line was so close, the meadow shining in the sun, but the man was faster. He charged from the side.

Talen nocked an arrow, but River suddenly rose from the saddle. She swung her leg over and jumped to the ground. She took two strides, keeping pace with the horse. “Ride!” she shouted at Talen. Then she drew her two knives and turned to face the dreadman.

Talen bumped along behind the saddle. He wasn’t going to ride. Hadn’t she been the one to say the first thing you did in any fight was try to outnumber the enemy? He hopped forward into the saddle, shoved his feet into the stirrups, and grabbed the reins. Then he pulled Scruff into a halt and turned him around. Talen scanned the woods. He didn’t see any other slayers, but that could change in a moment.

The dark-clad slayer charged River. She stepped aside, slashed at him. He parried her blow, forced her back.

“Gee!” Talen yelled and put his heels into Scruff’s flanks. Scruff had been trained as a warhorse. That word and heel pressure together were the command to charge. Scruff shot forth. If nothing else, Talen would ride that dreadman down.

Talen still held his bow. There were too many branches in the way, but he needed to distract the slayer. He dropped the reins, gripped with his thighs, aimed, and released. The arrow missed, flying just past the man, but the slayer glanced in Talen’s direction. It was enough: River lunged and thrust her knife into the dreadman’s thigh.

He grimaced.

River pulled back, but she wasn’t quite fast enough, and the dreadman sliced down, cutting her forearm.

Talen and Scruff thundered down upon them. Talen picked up the reins. “Faw!” he shouted, and Scruff surged forward.

The dreadman rolled to the right.

River stepped to the left, but as Talen and Scruff charged past, she leapt, grabbing the saddle with her good hand, and swung a leg up and over. A moment later she sat behind the saddle. “I told you to ride!” she shouted.

“What do you think I’m doing?” he shouted back.

Behind them the slayer tried to hobble after them, but the thigh wound had done its job.

Talen turned Scruff, dug in his heels, and headed at a different angle for the wide meadow. Scruff surged forward, and they raced toward the tree line and the sunlit grass. Talen wondered why River had gone for the dreadman’s thigh, but now he saw the foresight of that move. That dreadman would have expected a mortal blow to the chest and might have slipped her attack. As it was, River hadn’t killed him, but she’d certainly taken him out of the fight.

A rock glanced off a tree just to Talen’s left. Talen looked back to see the injured dreadman pick up another rock. Maybe he wasn’t out of the fight just yet. Talen urged Scruff faster.

“Riders!” River yelled.

Out in the meadow two dreadman raced along the tree line to intercept them.

Talen kicked Scruff again. He leapt over a small pine and thundered toward the tree line and the meadow beyond, but there was no way he and River would beat the dreadmen at this pace.

“You’ve got to multiply him!” Talen shouted.

“Give me the reins!” she said.

He held them up to her, bent low and to the side, then slid out of the saddle and stirrups. River used a bounce from Scruff’s gate, leapfrogged over Talen, and landed in the saddle. She slid her feet into the stirrups. “Hold on!” she said.

Talen gripped Scruff with his thighs.

The riders drew their swords.

River leaned forward. Talen pressed himself into her back, bracing for what was to come.

“Grab the front of the saddle!” she said.

Talen reached around her waist with both arms and grasped the saddle barely a scond before Scruff shot forth.

River gave him her heels, and he accelerated even faster. This was only the third time Talen had ridden Scruff. His power was frightening, and Talen clutched the front of the saddle for all he was worth.

The dreadmen’s horses were stretched out at a full gallop, but Scruff’s stride was so quick, so long, that he covered the remaining few yards to the tree line in a blink. Scruff charged through the brush, another branch whipped Talen’s hat right off his head. Then they burst from the wood into the sunlit meadow only a pace in front of the dreadmen.

The lead dreadman raised his sword and slashed at Scruff’s rump as he passed. Talen cringed, expecting Scruff to falter or stumble, but Scruff was running so fast the dreadman’s sword connected with nothing but air.

Scruff, impossibly, surged forward even faster. Talen leaned into River and gripped the front of the saddle tighter. He squeezed Scruff’s flanks with his thighs. Truly, they were flying. They were the wind itself. If he was careless for one moment, he would tumble off and break upon the ground.

He glanced back. Scruff’s hind hooves threw clumps of turf in huge arcs twenty feet high. Back by the trees, the dreadmen turned their horses to give chase.

River aimed Scruff for the road.

The dreadmen who had been chasing Talen and River through the woods broke from the trees into the meadow. He expected them to multiply their mounts, but as he watched, the distance between Scruff and their lead horses lengthened.

Talen didn’t know how far Scruff could run at this pace. River had said firesteeds could easily be run to death, which was why River hadn’t multiplied him until it had been absolutely necessary. Furthermore, firesteeds, like any horse, were not immune to stumbling, slipping, or stepping into the hole of a groundhog and breaking a leg. Talen didn’t want to think about Scruff taking a tumble at this speed.

Scruff hurdled something and Talen found himself nearly flying over River’s head. He clutched at the saddle, then slammed back down behind her and righted himself, trying with all his might to stick to Scruff like a tick on a dog.

The trees lining the meadow flew past. River shouted, “Hold tight!”

Scruff slowed, and Talen strained not to lose his seat. Then they turned on the road and Scruff shot forward again. The road was hard, perfect for speed. Scruff surged forward. In half a dozen strides they were flying over it, literally. His gallop was a thrump, thrump, thrump, the trees along the road speeding by impossibly fast. They raced through brightly colored leaves fluttering in the breeze. The thrill of the ride rose in him, and Talen couldn’t contain himself. He whooped for joy, turned to watch their pursuers fall behind, and whooped again.

Above the tops of the trees a crow cawed, but Talen didn’t dare let go to use his bow.

They kept the same blinding pace for two, maybe three miles. And it
was
blinding. The rushing of the wind from their speed made Talen weep and squint. Firesteed riders sometimes wore goggles. He’d thought it silly. Now he knew it wasn’t silly at all.

River sucked at the slash the dreadman had given her and spat. When she’d done it a third time, he shouted into the wind, asking her what she was doing.

“I can’t feel my toes!” she called back.

“What?”

“Poison,” she said, her lips smudged with her own blood. “The dreadman’s blade was poisoned.”

26

Beyond Land’s Edge

TALEN GLANCED BACK. The dreadmen were nowhere to be seen. “We need to get you to Matiga and Argoth,” he said. “We need to take the coast road back to Rogum’s Defense.”

River slowed Scruff into a trot. But this wasn’t the trot of a regular horse because the length of each of Scruff’s strides was much longer. A normal trotting horse might average eight to twelve miles an hour. They had to be going at least half that again or more. The gait, however, was not the glide of Scruff’s gallop, and Talen had to work not to be bounced to pieces.

“You didn’t answer me,” said Talen.

“We’re a half day’s ride from Rogum’s Defense. More importantly, this is twice someone there ratted you out. I’m not taking you to the fortress.”

“Then where?”

“We’re going into the Wilds.”

“The Wilds?” Why in the world was she taking him there?

Then it came to him.

“It’s not going to do us much good to escape dreadmen only to die at the hands of some crazed, abominable half-beast.”

“Harnock’s not a beast.”

“He tries to kill all males that come into his territory.”

“Harnock was bred for killing, but he knows healing. He learned arcane parts of the lore trying to reverse what Lumen had done to him. It’s where you should have gone to begin with. Besides, I might not make it if we try for Rogum’s Defense.”

Lords, the tales he’d heard of Harnock from Ke!

“Are you sure?”

“Talen,” she said.

He sighed. If River needed Harnock’s lore, then she needed his lore.

“He’s close?” Talen asked.

She sucked at her wound again. “Closer than our other options.”

Talen took in a big bracing breath. “Forget Rogum’s Defense, then.”

“I knew you’d see sense.”

“If he kills me, don’t you let him eat me.”

“He’s not going to eat you.”

“My bones go back next to Da’s.”

“He’s not going to eat you,” River said again.

* * *

After another few miles, they came to a small stream. Talen’s pants were soaked with Scruff’s sweat and smelling like twenty horses.

“I think we all need a drink,” River said.

“How long can he keep this pace?”

“I don’t know. We’re going to have to get off and walk a bit alongside,” she said.

“We were flying,” Talen said. “Lords, almighty.” He slid off, happy to give his sore legs a rest, but even happier to break contact, for his cravings were back. “I’m going to train a firesteed when we get back. I don’t care if I never use him in war. The thrill alone is worth the years of Fire that it will cost.”

River dismounted. “Maybe, but you’ve got to be careful, Talen. It doesn’t seem like much. But a few years here, a few years there, and suddenly your life is spent.”

Talen bent to the stream and drank straight from the flow. When he finished, he said, “I say use the years up when you’re young and lively and can enjoy them. Who’s going to miss a few extra years hobbling around as an old man?”

River checked Scruff’s legs for injuries. “It’s not the hobbling that you’ll miss,” she said. “It’s your children and grandchildren. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be like Mother and find you need that Fire to be a blessing to someone you love who’s in need.”

“And yet none of that prevented you from getting yourself a Fire-gobbling mount,” Talen said.

She ignored him and bent over and pinched the tendons above one of Scruff’s hind legs. Scruff raised his hoof to be inspected.

“You don’t have an answer to that, do you?” he said. “So much for prudence. I’m training me a firesteed.”

“Yours will probably be an ass,” she said.

He saw himself charging into battle on the small animal, zipping about the other steeds’ legs. “I’d be murder on the belly straps.”

She laughed, but it was weak.

“How bad is the poison?”

“I’m fighting it,” she said.

Talen opened one of the saddlebags and retrieved a number of large pellets made of oats, honey, and salt. Just as with humans, horses that were multiplied needed rich feed. He held the pellets out to Scruff while she checked the rest of the hooves. When she lifted the right front hoof, she sighed in frustration. “He’s knocked the front caulkin completely off.”

The force and speed of a firesteeds’ stride created such a stress that normal horseshoes couldn’t handle it. Firesteeds required a special shoe of thick steel or iron that made a complete oval instead of opening at the rear. It also required three small knobs called caulkins, one front and two in the back, to provide more traction. “Can he still be ridden?”

“It’s not as bad as knocking a caulkin off one of the hind shoes,” she said. “But it’s going to need to be fixed. I don’t want the uneven traction to make him lame or cause him to slip. We certainly won’t be able to—” She groaned and fell to her knee.

Talen rushed to her. “River?”

“It was just a bit of dizziness.”

“Don’t you go dying on me.”

“We need to get to Harnock.”

“You’re going to get up on Scruff,” he said. “I can run alongside.”

“Let’s let him walk for a bit,” she said. “He needs a breather.”

“He’s just fine.” Talen picked her up and helped her back onto Scruff.

When she was in the saddle, she said, “We need to go west. Harnock’s home is in the mountains.”

The wind hissed through the trees, sending a gust of leaves fluttering across the road and into the stream. The storm clouds were blowing in from the sea.

“I never got the full story on Harnock,” he said.

“He was a Koramite captain,” River replied. “After the war with Koram, Mokad sent Lumen to take charge of the New Lands. Harnock refused to bow. He and a group of outlaws fought against Mokad. They lost. Lumen captured them, sacrificed their families. Then he took Harnock and the other rebels into his dungeon. All thought he’d executed them, but he kept them alive and experimented on them. The Divines have always tried to create a new type of warrior by blending soul.”

Talen shook his head. He picked up Scruff’s reins. The horse resisted Talen, wanting more water. Talen let him drink more, then gently pulled on the reins. A few slurps later Scruff complied and started to walk.

“How far is it?” Talen asked.

“Seven or eight miles past the border.”

Talen nodded. It was a relief to be off the horse, away from both of them and his maddening longing. “I don’t ever want you to teach me how to take Fire,” he said.

She didn’t respond.

“I don’t know if I can be trusted,” he said.

“Your longing will pass,” she said.

“That’s what you keep saying, but it’s only intensified. Before, it came and went. Now, it’s always gnawing at me.”

“Always?”

The wind in the trees masked the sound around them. He glanced back to make sure their pursuers weren’t catching up.

“More or less,” he said. “And it’s worse when I touch something living.” He paused, then said, “River, I don’t want to be someone’s tool.”

“You are what you choose to be,” said River. “Just because you feel an urge doesn’t mean you must act upon it. We are, all of us, full of urges.”

“This isn’t an urge,” he said. “And I’m not like other men.”

“How do you know what other men feel? For some, the desire for drink or sinnis rides them like a beast. And yet they choose to resist. Some men have a disposition for a neighbor’s wife or daughter. Some are full of anger. But they refuse it. Are you telling me you think you’re a special exception?”

“No,” Talen said, “which is precisely why I don’t want to tempt myself. If you teach me how to take Fire, I might lose control.”

“There’s your fallacy,” she said. “You already know how to take Fire.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You tried to take my Fire when we were fighting in the stable. I don’t know how you did it, but that’s what it was.”

“I wasn’t trying to take your Fire,” he said, but, actually, he didn’t know what he’d been trying to do; it had all happened so fast.

“Let me tell you how it’s done.”

“No!” he said. “I just said I didn’t want to hear it.”

“You also just said there’s no use running from the truth.”

He didn’t want to know this. Once you knew a skill, it was only a matter of time before you used it. If it was a mystery, if the possibility was hidden, then it couldn’t be used.

She said, “You need to know how others will try to take from you so you can defend against such attacks. Mokad’s chasing us. You need to be ready should we fail to escape.”

“I’ll kill myself before I fall into their hands,” he said. “I’m not going to be enthralled. I’ve felt that power in the cave, and it’s irresistible. You heard what Uncle Argoth said about the thrall the Skir Master put upon him. You know what the Bone Faces do to those they enslave and how they use one finger to twist a man’s heart. So don’t tell me all urges can be resisted. It’s simply not true.”

River said, “Are you enthralled right now? Look, if you put a drop of honey on your tongue, it’s almost impossible not to swallow. You can feed a desire until it’s so large you don’t want to control it anymore. You need to know when you’re trying to take someone’s Fire, so you can stop yourself from putting that honey on your tongue.”

“I don’t want to know,” he said stubbornly.

The wind gusted in the trees.

“I believe it’s a good thing we’re going to Harnock,” she said. “I think he has a few things to teach you.”

“If he doesn’t kill me first,” said Talen.

“You’re so scrawny, I don’t know if he’ll think it’s worth the effort.”

High above them the two hooded crows dived and circled in the winds. “Those birds are starting to irritate me,” he said, but they were too high up in the winds for any accurate bowshot.

River shaded her eyes and watched the birds. “There’s a Vargon farmer who taught a raven to eat food from his finger tips. Then he taught it to talk. It followed him around everywhere. He soon died, and the people said he befriended it because the raven could see in both the world of the flesh and the world of the soul and saw his death coming. And he wanted a guide.”

“What kind of morbid talk is that? You’re not dying.”

“I’m not talking about dying,” she said. “I’m just saying that if I were to enthrall an animal, I think it would be handy to have one that could see in both worlds.”

“Well, let’s hope they get close enough for us to make a crow pie. And we’ll see if they taste as good in this world as they do in the next.”

They walked Scruff for another quarter mile, and then River said, “I think we can pick up the pace again. We can both ride. When we go down any large hills, we can get off and spare him the extra load. We’ll make good time that way.”

“You stay on the horse,” he said. He was multiplied and could run, and before she could protest, he set off at a jog, Scruff trotting behind. The wind picked up, knocking small branches out of the trees. A few miles later, they moved into the foothills. An hour after that, they reached the borders of the land where the slope of a mountain rose before them.

The actual border of the New Lands was marked by a line of obelisks spaced a mile or two apart. The obelisks ran the length of the mountains. Each had a base made of mortared stones and a column made of wood. They were built tall enough to rise above the trees.

“I think I’ve realized something,” Talen said.

“What is that?” River said weakly.

He fed Scruff one of his large honey pellets. All his life he’d heard that one must never go beyond the giant obelisks because that was woodikin territory. The Wilds lay behind the western mountains. As the name suggested, they were not tamed lands. They were full of wurms and other dangers. There were men who hunted in those parts and sometimes brought back wonders. But none of them ventured far. Those that did eventually failed to return. “I just realized, the border and these tales—they’re there to keep the herd from straying. Maybe the Wilds are exactly where we should be heading.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” said River.

“All this time we’ve been penning ourselves in.”

A beat passed.

He said, “It seems odd to me that Harnock can live there for all these years and not be discovered. Doesn’t he need to trade every once in a while?”

“The laws keep most folks inside the bounds of the land,” she said. “And when he needs something, he has contacts.”

Talen knew she meant the members of the Order. “But he’s not wanted contact for some time. That’s what Uncle Argoth said. Maybe he’s found other sources of supply.”

“He’s one man,” said River. “He doesn’t need much. He keeps to himself. And this vale is not exactly easy to reach.”

“I think we should trot again,” said Talen. “I don’t know how far behind the slayers are, but I don’t want to lose our advantage.”

Talen fed Scruff another pellet. “Where do we go?”

“Do you see those broken cliffs?” she asked, pointing at a protrusion of rock columns and chutes at the top of the slope. “There’s a chute on the right that will take us up to the top. When we get over to the other side, we’ll follow a ridge for a few miles. It will end in a vale with a lazy river. From there we pick our way carefully over hill and through hollow. Harnock’s vale is a number of miles farther in. When we get to the ridge that looks down upon his vale, we need to stand in a certain place and call out for him.”

“And none of that takes us through woodikin territory?” The last thing he wanted was a poison dart in his neck, or worse: a nest of their wasps filling him with venom.

“If we keep to the ridge, we’ll be okay. I’ve traveled it before.”

“I hope you’re right. At least the dreadmen won’t feed us to the wurms.”

“The woodikin wouldn’t feed you to the wurms. They would eat you themselves to demonstrate their power.”

“Well, that makes me feel much better,” he said.

“I’d rather be devoured by a troop of little hairy men who can’t touch the soul than what was down in the stone-wight caves.”

“Aye,” Talen said. “That’s the truth.”

Above them one of the hooded crows streaked across the sky above the trees. It fought against the wind to circle back.