Mask of Dragons (13 page)

“Just as you would have killed all the Jutai?” said Adalar. 

Earnachar shrugged. “I would have killed the Jutai to defend my people, but only if necessary. Sigaldra would kill me and all the Tervingi out of hatred. Even if she was the very last of the Jutai, she would still kill us all, and wander the earth alone with her hatred until the end of her days.” 

Adalar snorted. “You are indulging in poetry.” 

“The poetry of the Tervingi loresingers is the finest poetry ever produced by the mind of man,” announced Earnachar. “But this what you should do, if we are victorious. Go home and seek a wife among your own people. Who is your hrould?”

“Gerald, Lord of Knightcastle and liege lord of Knightreach,” said Adalar. 

“He will help you find a proper wife for a nobleman, one with good hips and a kindly heart,” said Earnachar. For a moment there was something almost like pity on his blunt features, and it was shockingly out of place, like finding a gold coin upon the dust of a tavern floor. “I have seen such men as you before, men who have seen too much battle and too much death. Go home and have as many children as your wife has the strength to bear, and in time the battles shall be only a memory.”

Adalar laughed a little. 

“Did I say something funny?” said Earnachar.

“Only unintentionally,” said Adalar. “I have no home, lord headman. My father was my only family, and his bones now rest in the crypt below Greatheart Keep. I won wide lands around Castle Dominus in Mastaria, but the runedead slaughtered most of their inhabitants. Just as the Malrags did to the Tervingi homeland, so too did the runedead do to the lands of Mastaria. It is now a land of ruins and ghosts and silence.” 

His voice trailed off.

“Ah,” said Earnachar. “It is our ill fortune to live to see such days. If we live through this, come to Banner Hill, and we shall get properly drunk. I shall introduce you to my nieces and nephews. Some of my nieces have both wide hips and fair faces, and would make excellent wives.” 

Adalar blinked at him in astonishment, and then looked toward Sigaldra again. To his surprise, she was looking back at him. Had she been able to overhear them? No, she was too far away for that.

Sigaldra was simply looking at him. 

She was beautiful, but as Earnachar had said, there was something cold and brittle about her. There had been more truth in Earnachar’s words than Adalar would have liked, damn him. 

“My lord,” said Timothy, his voice sharp. “Something’s wrong.” 

Adalar blinked, tearing his thoughts back to the present, and he rebuked himself. They were riding into danger, and he was daydreaming about women. By the gods, what was wrong with him? Lord Mazael had half-jokingly offered to hire Adalar a whore when they were in Cravenlock Town, and maybe that hadn’t been a bad idea…

He shoved the entire tangle out of his mind and looked around.

A shrine stone rose at the edge of the road twenty yards ahead, nearly twice the height of the ones Adalar had seen in the pass. The artistry was also better, and the carved spider atop the monolith looked so lifelike that for an instant he feared that it was a living creature. Rows of soliphage glyphs climbed down all four sides of the shrine stone, and some of them flickered with tongues of harsh purple fire. 

“There is a spell on that stone,” said Romaria, staring at it. “Not sure what kind. Timothy?” 

Timothy cast a spell of his own with his free hand, a flicker of hazy gray light appearing around his fingers. Earnachar looked uneasy at the sight. Just as well he had never met Lucan Mandragon, who had wielded fell power with the ease of a scholar wielding a pen. On the other hand, Earnachar might have bashed in Lucan’s skull with a mace, and therefore saved the world much pain. 

“It’s a binding spell,” said Timothy. “It’s calling something…my lord! Something approaches! The woods from the south!”

No sooner had the wizard spoken when rustling sounds came from the pine trees. 

“Defend yourselves!” said Mazael, drawing his curved sword of dragon claw. 

A moment later the spiders burst from the trees. 

They were the same kind of spiders that the Skuldari warriors had ridden into battle at Greatheart Keep, long and sleek with low-hanging bodies, their carapaces covered in bristly black hairs. They were not as large as the spiders the Skuldari had ridden into battle, but were still the size of hunting hounds, and their mandibles looked just as sharp. Additionally, the spiders’ smaller size meant they were faster, and they surged forward. 

Around Adalar the others exploded into motion. Romaria stood up in her saddle and began loosing arrows, one after another. Sigaldra turned her horse and began shooting, even if her shots were not quite as accurate as Romaria’s. Mazael charged forward, Talon flashing with golden light in his fist, and Earnachar bellowed a line from a Tervingi battle hymn and charged, yanking his mace from his belt. Timothy began casting a spell, pulling something that looked like a misshapen fork from his coat and making rapid gestures with it. 

Adalar leapt from the saddle, his boots crunching against the road. In the same motion he yanked his greatsword from its sheath, the heavy blade rasping against the leather. One of the spiders came at him, and Adalar swept his blade down. The sword sank between the spider’s mandibles, ripping into its head, yellow slime spurting from the wound. Adalar yanked the weapon free as another spider came at him, and he swung again. The spider started to dodge, but the long blade sheared through the spider’s right four legs, cutting them off with loud snapping sounds. The spider’s body hit the ground with a thud, and its remaining four legs scrabbled at the dirt, driving it towards Adalar. 

He struck again, putting the thing out of its misery, and rushed to defend the others.

The battle fell into a predictable pattern. Mazael and Earnachar charged into the spiders, trampling them beneath the hooves of their mounts and striking with sword and mace. For a man who had never seen a horse until he had come to the Grim Marches, Earnachar had become a capable horseman, steering his mount with his knees as he hammered down with his mace. Mazael tore through the spiders like a thunderbolt, his arm swinging Talon faster than a man of his age should have been able to move.

Yet even with Earnachar’s help, Mazael could not stop all the spiders, and some of them rushed towards Sigaldra and Romaria as they loosed arrows. Adalar planted himself before the women and fought, his greatsword sweeping back and forth. His father had told him that the greatsword had been designed to fight ranks of massed spearmen, but it also proved a marvelous weapon against the spiders, cracking through their armored carapaces before their mandibles could reach him. Timothy finished his spell, and a peculiar thumping sound filled Adalar’s ears. An instant later a half-dozen spiders went tumbling into the air, landing upon their backs, and Adalar killed three of them before they could right themselves, while Romaria and Sigaldra shot down the other three.

He spun, breathing hard as he looked for more foes, but none remained. 

“Timothy?” said Mazael, spinning his curved sword as he turned his horse in a circle. “Any more of those damned things?” 

Timothy gestured with his wire-wrapped crystal once more. “Ah…none that I can sense, my lord. It seems the spell upon the shrine stone has gone dormant as well.”

“It has,” said Romaria, gazing at the menhir. “I think it summoned them.”

Mazael frowned. “Why would it do that?” 

“Perhaps this is a hunter’s trap, yes?” said Earnachar. “Lady Romaria said the soliphages use the spiders as a Tervingi hunter uses his hounds. Perhaps the spiders hunt prey for a soliphage.” 

“A grim thought,” said Timothy, “but a likely one, I fear.” 

“Then we had best move on,” said Sigaldra. 

“At least we left no spiders to report back to whatever soliphage controls them,” said Adalar.

“True, true,” said Earnachar. “Nonetheless, a diligent hunter checks his traps regularly. As the holdmistress said, best to be gone before this huntress comes to check upon her slain hounds.” He gave one of the dead spiders a tap with his mace.

Sigaldra scowled at him, but didn’t say anything. Adalar supposed it was hard to argue with a man who was agreeing with you. 

“Very well,” said Mazael. “Was anyone wounded?” No one had taken any hurts in the fighting. The spiders were dangerous, but they were not terribly clever. “Then let us be gone.”

“Lead my horse, if you would,” said Romaria, dropping down from her saddle. “I want to have a look around.” 

Timothy frowned. “It will be soon too dark to see anything, even for you, my lady.”

Mazael snorted. “She wasn’t planning on using her eyes.”

Romaria took a step forward, and her body seemed to…melt, flowing into itself as her form thickened and lengthened. She disappeared, and an instant later a huge black wolf stood in her place, a wolf with thick black fur the color of her hair and eyes like gleaming disks of blue ice. The wolf loped away, sniffing at the ground, and vanished into the pine trees. 

“She’ll be back,” said Mazael, taking the reins of her horse. “Come. I want to make another few miles before sundown, and we need to find a decent site for a campsite.”

“By Tervingar’s sword,” muttered Earnachar, staring at the forest where Romaria had vanished. “I will never get used to that. By all the ancestors and all the gods, I will never get used to that.”

Adalar smiled a little as he swung into his saddle. “Not quite a wife with wide hips and a kindly nature.”

“Indeed not,” said Earnachar. “She is fair enough to look upon, true, but…gods! I would not wed such a woman for all the lands in the Grim Marches. Though Lord Mazael is a madman, so it seems reasonable that his only proper wife would be a madwoman.” 

“A madman?” said Adalar. 

Earnachar shrugged. “What else would you call such a man? Some men are born to war, and he is one of them. That is his madness. Perhaps such a woman as the she-wolf of Castle Cravenlock is the only woman who can satisfy him.” A speculative look came over his face. “I wonder if she ever transforms while they…”

“Dear gods!” said Adalar. “I do not even want to think of such a thing. Have we not seen enough horrors in our lives?”

He urged his horse forward, ignoring Earnachar’s laugh, and settled next to Sigaldra.

She gave him a speculative look. “What were you discussing with Earnachar?”

“Believe me,” said Adalar, “you are better off not knowing.” 

Chapter 7: Image

Five miles later, as the last rays of the sun vanished behind the mountains to the west, Mazael called a halt. 

He had taken them off the road, into a patch of pine trees that looked healthier than the ones to the east, and stopped in the hollow of a rocky hill. The trees here did not have as many webs as elsewhere in the forest of Weaver’s Vale, and the air seemed fresher. Mazael doubted that anywhere within Skuldar would be truly safe, but this seemed as defensible of a location as they wound find. If any Skuldari stumbled across them, they would have to trust to Romaria’s masquerade as a priestess of Marazadra to scare them away.

And if the Skuldari wanted to fight…well, he could do that, too. 

“Will Lady Romaria be gone for a long time?” said Sigaldra, dropping down from her saddle. She wobbled a little, unused to long days upon horseback, and Adalar caught her elbow. She nodded her thanks to him, and for just a moment, looked less harsh than usual. 

Gods. Apparently Romaria was right about those two.

“She’ll be gone as long as she needs to be,” said Mazael. “Don’t start a fire just yet. If she comes running into the camp at full speed, we’ll need to leave at…”

Pine needles crunched, and Romaria strode out of the gloom, back in her human form once more. Her face was twisted up as if she had just tasted something unpleasant.

“This forest,” she announced, “smells terrible.” 

Sigaldra hesitated. “It…is a bit musty.”

“It’s the webs,” said Romaria, rolling her shoulders. “And all the dead things caught in them. But your noses aren’t sensitive enough to detect the smell of the spiders, and you should be grateful for that. Gah! They smell almost as bad as the San-keth.” 

“Any nearby?” said Mazael. 

“Probably,” said Romaria. “But not recently. I think the last group of spiders passed through here about three or four hours ago, and they were likely the band that attacked us at the shrine stone. Other than that…I don’t think there’s anyone else around, whether human, soliphage, valgast, or spider.” 

“Could the soliphages use their dark magic to cloak themselves from your…ah, powers of scent?” said Timothy.

“Maybe,” said Romaria. “Probably.”

“Anything is possible,” said Mazael. “We need to rest somewhere, and this is as good a spot as any. We’ll take turns keeping watch through the night. Earnachar, give me a hand. We’ll need a fire.”

There were enough loose branches scattered around the forest to make cutting down any trees unnecessary, and soon Mazael and Earnachar had gathered enough to make a fire, dumping in them in the shallow fire pit that Adalar dug. Timothy ignited the branches with a quick spell, and soon they took flame, the smell of burning sap filling Mazael’s nostrils. 

“I will take the first watch,” said Sigaldra. “I have done nothing useful today…”

“You shot several of the spiders,” said Adalar at once.

Romaria raised her eyebrows, just enough for Mazael to notice.

“I will not be able to sleep in any event,” said Sigaldra. “There is too much on my mind.”

“Very well,” said Mazael. “If you volunteer, I will not argue with you.” 

###

Sigaldra sat at the edge of the firelight, her back to the flames, her bow laid across her lap. Behind her the others slept wrapped in their cloaks, the fire dying down to sullen coals. Sigaldra had made sure to sit on the opposite side of the fire from Earnachar, with all the others between her and the Tervingi headman.

The temptation to creep to his side and cut his lying throat as he slept would have been hard to resist otherwise.