DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (12 page)

That thought nearly dropped Pony to the ground, reminded her of Elbryan, of the moments before the disaster, of the kiss . . .

Then she cried. She walked straight ahead, kept her shoulders squared.

But she could not deny the tears, and the guilt and the pain.

She slept fitfully at the base of a tree, in open view right beside the road, shivering from the cold, from the nightmares that she feared would haunt her forever.

Those dreams were mercifully gone when she awoke, and no images could she conjure of the village, of her family and her friends. All that the girl knew was that she was out on the road somehow, somewhere.

She knew that she was in pain, physical and emotional, but the reason for the latter escaped her conscious memory.

She didn't even know her own name.

The giant was there, facedown in the blood and dirt, in the same place Elbryan had last seen it, just a few feet from where he had fainted. At that horrible moment, the monster had been lifting its club to squash Elbryan; now it was dead.

And so were a dozen other goblins, scattered all about the area.

Elbryan sat up and rubbed his face, noting the cut and dried blood on one of his hands. His thoughts careened suddenly back to Pony and the kiss at the twin pines atop the ridge. Then they came full force back to the present, through those minutes of horror — the goblins in the woods; poor Carley; the smoke from Dundalis; Jilseponie running, running for the town, screaming every step. It had all been so unreal, had all happened much too quickly. In the span of a few unbelievable minutes, Elbryan's entire world had been thrown down.

The young man knew all that, as he sat in the dirt, staring curiously at the somehow dead giant. He knew nothing would ever be as it had been.

He struggled to his feet and approached the fomorian tentatively, though he realized from the amount of blood and from the absolute stillness of the creature that it was certainly dead. He moved to the head and knelt, studying the many wounds.

Puncture wounds, as from arrows, only much smaller. Elbryan recalled the humming sound; he conjured an image of buzzing bees. He found the nerve to inspect more closely, even to put his thumb on the edge of one prominent wound and push the skin back.

"No bolt," he remarked aloud, trying to make sense of it all. Again he thought of bees — giant bees, perhaps, that stung and stung and flew away. He sat back again and began a quick count, then shook his head helplessly when he realized the giant had at least twenty such wounds on its exposed face alone and no doubt countless others all over its fifteen-foot frame.

The young man simply had no answers now. He had thought himself dead, and yet he was not. He had thought Dundalis doomed . . .

Elbryan scrambled to his feet, did a quick check of the dead goblins in the area. He was somewhat surprised, and a bit humbled, to find that even the two he had struggled against, even the one he had thought slain by his own sword, also showed many mysterious puncture wounds.

"Bees, bees, bees," Elbryan chanted, a litany of hope, as he dashed from the area, down the slope toward Dundalis. The words, the hopes, fell away in a stifled gasp as soon as the village, the charred rubble that had been the village, came into view.

He knew that they were dead, all dead. Even from this distance, fifty yards from the northernmost point of the village, Elbryan felt in his heart that no one could have survived such a disaster. His face ashen, his heart pounding -

- but offering no energy to arms that hung slack at his side or to legs that seemed suddenly as if they each weighed a hundred pounds — the young man, feeling very much a little lost boy, walked home.

He recognized every body that had not been caught by flames — the parents of his friends; the younger men, just a few years older than he; and the younger boys and girls who had been taken from patrol by their parents. On the charred threshold of one ruin, he saw a tiny corpse, a blackened ball. Carralee Ault, Pony's cousin, Elbryan realized, for she was the only baby in town. Carralee's mother lay facedown in the road, just a few feet from the threshold where lay the baby. She had been trying to get back to Carralee, Elbryan understood, and they had cut her down as she had watched the house, her house, burn down about her baby.

Elbryan forced himself to stay away from such vivid empathy, realizing that he could easily lose himself in utter despair. The task became all the harder as he approached one large group of slain goblins and giants on the road, as he walked past the area of heaviest fighting, as he walked past the body of Olwan, his father.

Elbryan could see his father had died bravely, and understanding. his father's stern and forceful way, he was not surprised. Olwan had died fighting.

But that mattered not at all to Elbryan.

The boy staggered on toward the ruin of his own house. He snorted, a crying chuckle, as he saw that the foundation, of which his father was so proud, was intact, though the walls and ceiling had collapsed. Elbryan picked his way into the still-smoldering ruin. One of the back corners had somehow escaped the flames, and when the roof had fallen in, it had angled down, leaving a clear space.

He pushed aside a timber gingerly, when he heard the remaining roof groan in protest and went down to his knees, peering in. He could make out two forms, lying against the very

back corner.

"Please, please," Elbryan whispered, picking a careful path to that spot.

The goblin, the closest form, was dead, its head bashed. Unreasonable hope pushing him on, Elbryan scrambled over the thing to the next body, sitting in the very corner.

It was his mother, dead as well — of smoke, Elbryan soon realized, for she had not a wound on her. In her hand she clutched her heavy wooden spoon.

Often had she waved that thing at the children, Elbryan and his friends, when they were bothering her, threatening to warm their bottoms.

She had never used it, Elbryan only then remembered. Not until this day, he silently added, looking at the slain goblin.

All the images of her in life waving that spoon, shaking her head at her impetuous son, teasing Olwan, and sharing a wink with Jilseponie as if they knew a secret about Elbryan came flooding back to the boy in an overwhelming jumble.

He moved in further and sat beside his mother, shifting her stiffening form that he might hug her one final time.

And he cried. He cried for his mother and father, for his friends and their parents, for all of Dundalis. He cried for Pony, not knowing that if he had rushed into town as soon as he had awakened, he would have spotted the battered girl stumbling down the south road.

And Elbryan cried for himself, his future bleak and uncertain.

He was in that corner of his house, that tiny link to what had been, cradling his mother, when the sun went down, and there he remained all through the cold night.

"The blood of Mather!" scoffed Tuntun, an elf maiden so slight of build that she could easily hide behind a third-year sapling. Tuntun's normally melodic voice turned squeaky whenever she got excited, and several of the others cringed and some even put their hands over their sensitive, pointed ears. Tuntun pretended not to notice. She batted her huge blue eyes and her translucent wings, and crossed her slender arms imperiously over her tiny, pointy breasts.

"Mather's nephew," replied Belli'mar Juraviel, never taking his gaze from Elbryan as the boy moved about the ruins of his house. Juraviel didn't have to look Tuntun's way to know her pose, for the obstinate elf struck it often.

"His father fought well," remarked a third of the gathering. "Were it not for the fomorian —"

"Mather would have slain the fomorian," Tuntun interrupted.

"Mather wielded Tempest," Juraviel said grimly. "The boy's father had nothing more than a simple club."

"Mather would have choked the fomorian with his bare —"

"Enough, Tuntun!" demanded Juraviel; even in a shout, the elf's voice rang like the clear chime of a bell:' It didn't bother Juraviel, or any of the others, how loud their conversation had become, for though Elbryan was barely fifteen yards away from them, they had erected a sound shield, and no human ear could have discerned anything more than a few chirps, squeaks, and whistles, sounds easily enough explained away by the natural creatures in the area. "Lady Dasslerond has declared this one a fitting choice," Juraviel finished, calming himself. "It is not your place to argue."

Tuntun knew she could not win this debate, so she held fast her defiant nose and began tapping her foot on the ground, all the while staring at young Elbryan and not liking what she saw. Tuntun had little fondness for the big, bumbling humans. Even Mather, a man she had trained and had known for more than four decades, had more often than not driven her away with his pretentious purpose and stoicism. Now, looking at Elbryan, this sniveling youngster, Tuntun could barely stand the thought of seven years of training!

Why did the world need rangers, anyway?

Belli'mar Juraviel suppressed a chuckle, for he liked seeing Tuntun flustered. He knew the maiden would make his life miserable if he embarrassed her now, though, so he leaped up high, his little wings beating hard, lifting him a dozen feet from the ground; he came to rest on a low branch, a better vantage point for watching the movements of this boy who would replace Mather.

Mercifully, Elbryan's grief had brought with it exhaustion, and the boy had found some sleep. He remained in the house, cradling his mother, gently stroking her hair even after the first waves of slumber had come over him. He awoke with the dawn — and with resolve.

He came out of the house, eyes still moist with tears, his mother's body in his arms. Now Elbryan steeled himself against the scene of devastation. He found strength in duty, and that duty lay in burying the dead. He put his sword in his belt, found a spade; and began to dig. He buried his parents first, side by side, though the task of filling the grave, of putting cold dirt on the bodies of those whom he had most loved, nearly destroyed him.

He found Thomas Ault and several other men next, and only then did the already weary youngster realize the scope of his task. Dundalis had been home to more than a hundred folk; how long would it take to bury them all? And what of those youngsters who had been slaughtered on the hill? And of the other patrol, who had battled in the wide pine valley among the caribou moss?

"One day," Elbryan decided, and even his own voice sounded strange to him in this surreal situation. He would spend just this one day gathering the bodies, collecting them for a mass grave. That would have to suffice.

But then what? Elbryan wondered. What might he do after the task was completed? Where might he go? He thought of Weedy Meadow, a day of hard marching. He thought of pursuing the goblins, if he could find any tracks.

Elbryan shook that away immediately, knowing the rage within him, the hunger for revenge, could cloud his judgment, could consume him. His next task was clear to him, for the moment at least, and though it pained him immeasurably to think of success, he knew he had to find the body of Jilseponie Ault, his dear Pony.

And so he searched, pulling corpses from the ruins of houses, collecting the fallen and laying the bodies side by side on the field that had been Bunker Crawyer's corral. Half the day slipped by, but Elbryan had no thoughts of food.

His search for Jilseponie grew more agitated as the hours slipped by. Soon he was bypassing the closest bodies, leaving them where they lay, focusing his search, though he realized that in his desperation, he was, perhaps, being inefficient and he had little time to waste. Such a scene of carnage would no doubt bring other scavengers — great cats and bears, perhaps — and Elbryan couldn't be sure that the goblins wouldn't return. So he ran on, hauling bodies, peeking under rubble, kicking aside piles of dead goblins to see who might be underneath. He tried to keep a mental note of his macabre collection, tried to match it against the people of Dundalis by sorting their names house by house.

The task overwhelmed him; he couldn't be sure, couldn't even be certain of the identity of so many of the charred bodies. One of them must have been Pony.

By mid-afternoon, Elbryan knew he was defeated, knew he could not hope to properly bury all the corpses. He had two score lined up in the field, and so he decided to bury them alone. The rest...

Elbryan sighed helplessly. He took the spade, went to the field, and began to dig. He transferred the grief, rising again within him, into rage, and went at the earth as if it, and not the goblins, had assaulted Dundalis, had stolen from him everything in the world that was familiar and comforting. Everything, everyone that he loved.

His muscles complained, but he didn't know it; his stomach groaned from lack of food, but he didn't hear it.