Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 (13 page)

“You’re turning, or you’re choosing?”

“I can’t just wish this blend away.”

“I never said you could.”

Talen shook his head. Nobody knew what this was like. Even Harnock wasn’t dealing with the same thing.

“Maybe you should put a thrall on me,” Talen said. “That way we can be sure—”

“No,” Harnock said. “You fool. You might as well give yourself over to Mokad. And who would hold your thrall? Your sister? Think what it would do to her. A thrall is not something that only grows just into the slave.”

“But what if I lose control?”

“You can always die. But you can’t always be free. Put on a thrall, and you hand over your freedom. Every day you wear a thrall, it eats at your will until one day you find you have no will whatsoever.”

“My blend is not like yours.”

“You have no idea what my blend is. Stand up and fight, Hogan’s son. Be a man like your father.”

Talen’s anger rose. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“Whining,” Harnock said.

Talen bristled.

“You pick plenty massal,” Harnock said. “I’m going to go catch us some fish.” Then he walked off toward the stream.

Talen had not been whining. That rotted halfbeast whoreson. That pus brain. That—

“Don’t say it,” River said.

“He—”

“He saved my life. Saved yours. You’ve got a mountain in front of you, Talen. I think he wants to see that you’re committed to climbing it.”

“Committed?” Talen grumbled. “What does he know about commitment?”

River smiled wryly and said, “Chot’s going to be back soon. Let’s get these berries picked.” Then she brought up the hem of her own tunic and grabbed a cluster of massal.

Talen sighed and joined her, and as he picked, he calmed down and thought about Da. Thought about Da teaching him to shoot a bow. He’d made many mistakes in the beginning. He supposed it was unreasonable to expect he wouldn’t make mistakes now. It was just that the mistakes he made now had tremendous consequences.

“You might fail in the end,” River said. “But Harnock is right: you won’t have a chance to succeed if you don’t stand back up to fight every time you’re knocked down.”

“I hate the Divines,” Talen said.

“Maybe they are blends as well,” River said.

“Then I hate their masters.”

* * *

Harnock came back with a load of fish that made Talen salivate, and the meal might have been delicious, but Harnock made a point to sit right next to Talen. And that wouldn’t have been such a problem, but Harnock liked to suck the eyes out of his raw fish and chomp them. He sucked yet another eye out, gave it a chomp, and let out a sigh of satisfaction. He pointed at the head of Talen’s fish. “Are you going to eat that?”

Talen said, “I’ll give it to you if you promise to move about twenty yards away.”

Harnock plucked the head up, put it in his mouth, and began to munch. “The brain is the best part.”

Talen groaned.

Across the way, the wasp lord sat next to the basket that housed his wasps and laid out an array of pouches. He chewed something, spat it out, then rolled it in some powder he poured out of one pouch. He masticated something from another pouch and added it to his mixture.

Chot noticed Talen watching. “Hala,” Chot said.

The wasp lord said something to Chot. The other woodikin grunted their laughter. Chot turned to Talen. “He wants to know if the skinman wants a taste.”

Talen didn’t know if this was a joke or a real offer. He looked at Harnock who was grinning at him. River shook her head.

“No thank you,” said Talen. “But tell him I’m honored he asked.”

Chot said something, supposedly a translation of Talen’s words, and the other woodikin laughed again. The wasp lord carefully opened the side of the basket, revealing a large wasp comb inside with hundreds of little cells and wasps crawling over them. A number of wasps clung to the open basket door.

He’d expected the wasps to be the big orange slayers, but these wasps were long and thin and moved in a jerky way. The wasp lord made a clicking sound, then rolled a pea-sized ball of his mixture and stuck it on the point of a tiny stick built into the inside of the basket. A few wasps buzzed over to the mixture. One moved to the outside of the basket, flexed its amber wings. The wasp lord made another sound and herded it back into the interior with one finger. Then he rolled two more peas and stuck them on other sticks.

The wasps began to flit to the meal. One clung to the lord’s finger. The wasp lord held his finger up and watched as the insect ate the residue of the meal that was there.

“They feed them different things depending on the need,” said Harnock.

“What do you mean?”

Chot spoke. “War, heal, pleasure—all are hala.”

“You use wasps for medicine?”

“These are not small browns,” Chot said. He pointed at the long-bodied wasps in the basket. “These are huk. These are for war. One sting. Skinman dies.”

“Hardly,” said Harnock.

“You want a sting? You want to try?”

“Not today,” said Harnock.

Chot shook his head in disgust. He held up his hand. “Thirty-three stings, I did not die. Come try, Skinman.”

“To become warriors,” said Harnock, “woodikin youths subject themselves to stings. They smear some paste on their hands and stick them into a basket of wasps. I’ve seen it. Their hands swell up and turn black. But they don’t do it with these huk. Not those that have eaten war hala.”

Chot motioned for Talen to try.

Talen wasn’t going to prove anything to that little hairy man. But he was curious. “How do the wasps know who to sting? How do they know enemy?”

“Wasp lord knows enemy,” said Chot. “The wasps will obey.”

Talen turned to Harnock. “Do they use a thrall?”

Harnock shrugged. “Probably, but only the woodikin know that lore. And their control is amazing. I was trading once. A huge commotion arose. A woodikin thief had been discovered. The woodikin soldiers chased after him, but one of the wasp lords was also there. He opened his basket, coaxed three insects onto his fingers and sent them after the thief. The enemy woodikin was already many yards away and running fast, running into the wind because he knew what was coming. The wasps sped past all the other warriors. Ignored them. They caught the thief and began to sting him in the face. The distraction was all the warriors needed to catch him.”

Talen shook his head. “That’s amazing. How can you fight that? It makes me want to bundle up in thick clothing.”

“No good,” said Chot. “Wasps will get you when you pee.” He laughed and told his joke to the others. This time even the wasp lord chuckled.

“Funny,” Talen said and remembered that all of these little men had sworn to eat his liver. “But there still must be some defense.”

Harnock said, “Some wasps fight other wasps. And there are birds. The tanglewoods maintain what’s called a queen’s flock. They’re pale red birds with blue heads and long black beaks. They’re murder on insects.”

“Bee-eaters,” said River.

“Exactly,” said Harnock.

“Birds to eat birds,” said Chot.

Talen thought about that. A bird to attack the birds that ate the wasps. He wondered: were there yet other animals to attack those attacking birds?

Chot gave Talen a sly look, then went back to his eating.

When they finished, Talen looped his quiver over his back, then took his knife and bowstave and went down to the stream to wash his hands. The breeze coming off the sparkling water was cool. Talen plunged his hands in the water, grabbed up a handful of sandy dirt, and began to scrub his hands and lower arms. Harnock followed him and washed his hands as well, but he also licked a spot on his upper arm with his great tongue.

“Your sister,” Harnock said. “The lion wants her.”

Talen’s brain stuttered for a moment. “Right,” he said.

“She’s a fine woman, your sister.”

“Yes, well, she’s also got a war going on, and a woodikin queen she has to teach. Tell the lion she’s going to be very busy for some time.”

“The turn of her ankles and her naked feet are very attractive,” Harnock said.

“Will you stop it,” Talen said. “If this is what goes for humor with hermits, I can tell you—”

Harnock raised a hand to silence Talen and snapped his attention at something downstream.

Talen followed Harnock’s gaze but couldn’t see or hear anything. “What?” he whispered.

Harnock motioned for him to shush and listened, his eyes bright. A few moments later he pitched his voice to a whisper. “Come with me, Hogan’s son. And keep quiet.” Then he moved back away from the shore, away from the thick brush at the tree line, and began to head downstream, slipping through the trees.

Talen followed, watching the shadows play along Harnock’s brindled fur. They crept a few dozen yards, and then Harnock suddenly stopped, his muscles bunching like a cat preparing to pounce on something. “In the tree down by the bend,” Harnock whispered. “Do you see it?”

Talen searched and did indeed see something move. A dark shadow.

“Woodikin,” Harnock whispered. “Send your eels out.”

“Roamlings,” Talen corrected.

“Go,” Harnock said.

Talen realized that while his twisted blend was a curse, it also had its advantages. He sent his roamlings forth over the moving face of the water, down to the bend, watching for skir as he went. When he was close, he rose and peered at the woodikin. But it wasn’t just the one in the tree. There were four more down below. Talen had noticed that his Spiderhawk escort all wore necklaces. There was a variety to them, but they all had at their center a wooden carving of a five pointed flower. None of these five woodikin carried that. “They’re not ours,” he said. “The carving on their necklaces is a fang.”

“Orange Slayers,” Harnock said.

“Do you think they’re hunting us?”

“I don’t know. We’re deep in Spiderhawk territory. I don’t think raiding parties would come this far. Can you fly high, get a birds-eye view and see if there are others?”

Talen sent his roamlings up until the canopy of the forest lay below him like a rolling carpet. He was uneasy up here and checked every direction for the pale orange skir. There weren’t any about. There were a couple of larger dark skir flying high up in the distance. And there were other small creatures flitting here and there like insects. One long swarm of them looked like bits of spider web hovering over a tree.

He turned his attention to the forest below him. From this height he could see River and the woodikin escort. He could see two of the woodikin sentries Chot had sent out to watch while the rest ate. Beyond them a river wound around a hill. Some distance downstream, a large number of woodikin forded the river.

Talen said, “There are at least fifty woodikin downstream. More in the woods behind them.”

“Same colors as these?”

“Colors are different here,” Talen said. “But the head feathers and garb all look the same.”

“This isn’t a raiding party,” Harnock hissed. “This is a hunt. They picked up our trail.”

“How is that possible?”

“They can smell. They can see the signs. The queen slipped us out at night, but they must have had scouts watching. Regret’s stones, they might have had their own eyes and ears in the tanglewood. I bet Mokad has offered a very large reward.”

Below Talen’s roamling, the Orange Slayer woodikin in the tree made hand signs to the woodikin on the ground. All of them looked in the direction of one of Chot’s sentries. Three began to carefully move forward.

“I think they just spotted Chot’s sentry up ahead,” Talen said.

Harnock rumbled deep in his throat.

“Three of the Orange Slayers are advancing. Another is running away, down a path toward the main body.”

“He’s going to alert the others,” said Harnock. “Bring reinforcements. Do you see any others close by?”

“Just the one in the tree and the four below.”

Harnock bared his teeth. “Good. That’s going to make this easier.”

Talen began to build his Fire. “Should I go back and warn the others.”

“No,” said Harnock. “No time. And I’m going to need your eyes. Which direction is the one running to report?”

Talen pointed out the line that would intercept the woodikin.

“Get your bow strung,” said Harnock, “and keep up. Then he raced up the slope of the hill through the trees.

Talen strung his bow and chased after, but he found he could not keep up. He increased his Fire. Increased it again. He increased his Fire even more, felt the vigor seep into his limbs, and sped forth.

Directly on the other side of the hill ran the lone Orange Slayer. To the right, by the stream, the others continued to sneak up on the Spiderhawk sentry.

Harnock moved with huge powerful strides. He topped the hill in a very short time, then stopped and waited for Talen to catch up.

“Where?” Harnock asked.

Talen pointed in the direction of the fleeing Orange Slayer. He was only one or two hundred yards ahead. Harnock raced down the hill. Talen’s body sang with Fire. He was more than doubled. But he could not match Harnock’s speed nor his twenty-foot strides down the slope. But Talen didn’t want to match those long strides; he was having a hard enough time keeping himself from smacking into a tree at his own pace.

They covered the first hundred yards quickly, leaves crunching under each step. The Orange Slayer scout heard the noise, glanced back, then put on more speed, using his long arms to run in a sort of lope. He reached the bottom of a shallow dale and began to run up another hill. With his roamling, Talen could see Harnock about to close in on the woodikin. It was an odd sensation, seeing himself, Harnock, and the woodikin from above.

The woodikin scout nocked an arrow to his bow, drew the string back to his cheek, and spun around. But he was too late. Harnock was upon him. He hurled his long knife, which cut through the woodikin’s wooden armor and buried itself deep in its chest. The woodikin jerked, released his arrow that flew wide. Then Harnock was upon him, another long knife in hand, and slashed the woodikin’s throat.

The creature staggered back, then fell to the leaves below.