Dangerous Games (23 page)

He made a quick check for weapons and found Harvester still home in its back scabbard, Dorlas’s warhammer still holstered—he was glad he’d taken the time to stitch them so well—and Knucklebones still had her elven knife. Two blades would keep them alive.

Sunbright hoisted her in one brawny arm. As an afterthought, he wrenched loose a hunk of tubing laced with delicate wires. He could already think of many uses for it. Little else comprised the flyer, and that was smashed to flinders, so he climbed down the tree. Knucklebones was hardly a burden. Sunbright judged she weighed about as much as a lynx. She was certainly as feisty.

Clutching her rag doll limpness, holding overhead with a scratched arm, he crabwalked along a branch, reached the trunk, and picked his way down one-handed. Finally he jumped the last five feet, and felt an unexpected jolt of joy at feeling the earth—the real Earthmother—under his feet. The rush was so exhilarating he wanted to shout with pleasure.

Instead, he scanned his surroundings, looking and listening, then trotted away with Knucklebones across his shoulder.

He’d gone about two miles, mostly uphill and away from watercourses, toward a knot of pines that topped the next hill, when she began to stir, then fuss and struggle to be put down. Sunbright only cooed, “Rest. I’ll carry you to safety. We must keep moving.”

But she objected, pushing and shoving feebly, squirming so much he finally set her down. She promptly collapsed, but caught herself before tasting turf. Sunbright waited patiently for her to orient, meanwhile he honed Harvester, though it was already razor sharp.

“Where … are we?” she groaned, shook her head, and scraped at blood from scratches around her eye.

“A forest.” he answered casually. “I’m taking us to cover while scouting for materials.”

“Cover? Why? Enemies? Materials?”

Even though her body was weak, her brain fought to defend itself by asking questions, gathering information.

Sunbright didn’t argue, just sheathed Harvester, plucked her up across both shoulders like a gutted deer, and trotted quicker uphill. The trees here were maples, their rustling leaves heavier on the south facing side. By jogging from trunk to trunk and slipping behind to the side with fewer branches, he could zigzag quickly.

“I don’t know what kind of enemies to expect,” he whispered as he puffed along. “But once the forest settles back from that disruption, everything from shrews to vultures will come scavenging. I’d rather learn what’s about from a distance.”

“What… materials?”

“Flint, a likely spear, moss, alder or willow or ash—”

“Flint?” her groggy voice came to his left ear. Despite the rough trip, her head was comfortably pillowed on her hand. “Start fires? What’s… moss?”

“No, to make spearheads. Gray flint will do to start. It’s easier to flake. White or yellow is better, but I doubt we’ll find any this high. We need a streambed for that. Moss is for wounds, to keep down infection, and to disguise the smell. But I dislike these woods. The signs are odd.”

“Odd … ?” But she lapsed out again.

Panting, but glad to run freely for miles without limit, Sunbright reached the knot of pines atop the hill. Crouching, he wove his head back and forth until he found what he wanted: a blowdown. One of the taller trees had toppled in a strong storm. Circling the crater left when the roots ripped out, Sunbright tracked along the high trunk until he found a slot they could slide under. Laying Knucklebones gently on fallen brown needles—how he loved their smell!—he plied the warhammer to break off brittle branches, then laid them butt up against the trunk. In minutes he’d cleared a space big enough to prop Knucklebones against the tree. Turning outside, he broke and laid more branches, and heaped pine needles across the top, but carefully, so as not to dig up deeper needles with their darker color.

He slipped inside, found that the lean-to let him sit up. He piled more needles around Knucklebones for warmth, for she was still groggy. A strut-shaped lump had formed across her forehead, turning a livid purple.

“Stay here and keep quiet,” he instructed. “I’ll fetch us food.” The handful of rations he’d picked from Candlemas’s tray had been lost when his haversack was torn in the tree.

Knucklebones started to protest, but slipped into unconsciousness again. When she awoke, Sunbright was hunkered close. Sun slanted through the brown roof at a low angle. She’d slept most of the afternoon away. In the meantime, Sunbright had been busy. He had a brace of dead rabbits and a porcupine, an ingeniously folded box of birch bark that held water, two long, slim staves, and various rocks of different colors. He was industriously slicing a rabbit with his belt knife against a slab of bark, eating every other slice.

The barbarian extended a red hand with a thin strip. Wordlessly the thief took it, though she made a face.

“Can you eat it raw?” he asked.

“I’ve eaten sewer rats,” she replied. “But we always cooked them.”

“I won’t risk a fire yet. I don’t like the looks of these woods.”

“What about them?”

Knucklebones was uneasy. She’d never been on the ground in her life, never even known anyone who’d been there—except Sunbright. The earth felt curiously alive under her rump, and the wind hissed incessantly in the trees overhead, talking in its own secret language, speeches alien to her city bred ways. And though she’d been unconscious, she knew they’d come miles. Back in Karsus, she’d known every inch of open space, both above and below the streets, had visited the insides of hundreds of buildings, illicitly or not. But this world was so wide. How much farther could they go? How could any one person ever know it all?

“I’m glad—” she stopped as he looked up, “glad I’m with someone who knows the forest.”

The barbarian worked off the rabbit’s skin, began to gently scrape the inside.

“I don’t know the forest well,” he told her. “The taiga and the high sierra, those are the places my tribe visits on our yearly round. This forest is similar to one I knew up north. Though many things are different, I think we can win through.”

“How did you catch those animals?”

“Snares. I used wire from the wreckage across a rabbit trail, then set them again. The porcupine I knocked down with a stick and clubbed. They’re so easy to catch my tribe considers it unsporting. But they’re good eating when you need it, and we can use the quills later. I’ve got materials for a simple bow, but I’ll need a few hours to assemble one. The arrows will only be good for short range. There are fish in a stream farther down we can gig, or else drop snakeroot in the water to bring them to the surface. But I can’t decide if we should stay on the ground or move into a tree for the night. There’s bear scat around, but I think it’s black bear, not brown. Black bears are harmless, while browns will attack if provoked. No sign of panthers, but this forest is … troubled.”

“Troubled?”

She remembered his muttering about signs, reflected that for someone who claimed to not know the forest, he knew quite a bit.

“Look,” he said and inverted the rabbit skin to show her the eyeless head. The ears looked long and silky and normal, until she noticed a second smaller pair. He showed her a beetle an inch long. When he parted the carapace, the wings were crumpled. “I’ve never seen or heard of a four-eared rabbit. And beetles are the harbingers of the earth. They’re so common, any corruption suggests dangers or sickness hereabouts.”

Knucklebones muttered, “It’s not the Dire Woods, is it?”

“What?” Sunbright froze. “What’s that?”

The thief shook her head as if in dismissal, said, “An old story. Karsus, when he was first fooling with his heavy magic, conjured up such a huge amount that it began, I don’t know … sucking all the magic from the city, so much the whole enclave tilted in the sky and was in danger of falling. This was years ago.

“Karsus levitated the heavy magic and sent a Tolodine’s gust of wind to blow it off the city. It fell, and the city came upright, saved, but after that Huntsmen warned that a reach of High Forest had been struck by the magic. It rolled downhill, scattered all over, and poisoned the place. They called it the Dire Woods after that. Wulgreth, a renegade wizard living there, was turned undead because the magic … did something. I don’t know what.”

“It severed his link to life,” Sunbright judged. “These mages extend their lives unnaturally with magic. A dash of corrupt magic like that could remove the life, yet leave the body living—undead.”

He shuddered with a barbarian’s fear of zombies and liches. But logic prevailed. “True,” he mumbled, nodding. “It could be true. It explains the signs. We’re not in the Dire Woods, but they’re not far. These corrupted animals have strayed from it, or else the bad magic leaked out. How’s your head?”

“What? Oh.”

Knucklebones touched her forehead, swollen far out by a bruise. She flinched at the pain, tried to rise, but fell back, dizzy. “I wouldn’t have this,” she accused, “if you hadn’t let go of those damaged wings. But we should move.”

“I know,” he said, smiling, “and I’m sorry, but we won’t move yet. Rest.”

Darkness had fallen. Sunbright worked by feel to wrap the game in their skins and lay everything where he could find it in the darkness. “Sleep,” he whispered, “I’ll guard.”

She didn’t argue, only laid down gratefully as he slid the curtaining branch up and scooted out. Lapsing into glorious sleep, she reflected that, even if she were trapped on the ground, it was nice to have someone watch over her for a change.

They camped in that spot for several days, Sunbright catching game and fish, repairing their meager possessions, explaining the way of the forest to Knucklebones. Everything was new to her, and frightening, but they were content to relax and not be hunted.

Too good to last.

Knucklebones came wide awake in their lean-to when, late at night, something smashed its head into her sanctuary.

Knife in hand, the thief rolled out of danger even before she knew what was attacking. Something with a long neck and clashing jaws crashed through the lean-to, scattering pine needles and breaking branches. A pointed snout full of dagger teeth nipped at her heels as she dived like a rabbit for the end of the shelter. Where Sunbright had stopped breaking branches, some were snapped off against the ground while others stuck out whole. Into this tangle of jackstraws the young thief vaulted, until she’d left the raspy-voiced monster behind.

What was it? And where was Sunbright?

She heard him shout, the mad, barbaric hollering he made in battle. Was he fighting the toothy beast, or something else? His voice came from the wrong direction, so there were more fiends. Or worse. Flickers of torchlight came and went, so people attacked too.

Wriggling on elbows and knees, Knucklebones followed the tree trunk until she came to a hollow and slithered under. A canopy of brown branches hid her. Readying her knife for a quick thrust, keeping a branch as a screen, she peeked up and out.

The scene was like nothing she’d ever seen in Karsus.

Hunched and brutal men in ragged skins encircled Sunbright. With them were—Knucklebones didn’t know what. The beasts were lizards, clearly, with black eyes and shining white teeth like a shark’s, and hairless, dappled hides. They were taller than a man, like giant birds without feathers. Saddles with high cantles were strapped about them and they had reins around their snouts. She noted the men wore the hairless skins of the same beasts, seeing clearly by the light of torches held in tall brackets on the rear of the saddles, raised high to tower over the riders’ heads. The light wobbled and danced across the forest floor and tree trunks as the lizard mounts tried to kill Sunbright.

The raiders had been four men on four mounts, but Harvester’s flashing blade had already killed one lizard and two riders. It was the riderless lizard that had hunted Knucklebones. Perched atop the fallen trunk, Sunbright was surrounded by survivors. The lizards snapped their teeth, threatened to snatch him with long claws and rend him. Just as dangerous, the two ugly men plied short two part spears. A long handle like a throwing stick had a ring around one end, and the stabbing half of the spear slid in and out of this ring. By craning backward, the men could fling the throwing stick at incredible speed, yet yank it back in a second to fling again. Sunbright was already nicked in half a dozen spots, bleeding freely. It wouldn’t take much more to weaken and topple him—unless Knucklebones helped.

She couldn’t see how, though. In the city, she would circle under cover, get in close to stab from behind, then retreat to safety before being caught. As it was …

Sunbright held Harvester in his right hand and kept his left hand outthrust for balance and defense. He had the tree trunk to himself, a tall and solid platform, but he was clearly surrounded with nowhere to retreat. Hurled by a mounted rider, a spear shaft flew, and he sidestepped. The mounted men had the range now, were accustomed to the torchlight, and worked together. As Sunbright sidestepped one thrust, the other rider stabbed from behind. Sunbright caught the flicker at the corner of his eye and slung Harvester backward to bat the thrust away, but the move netted him little, for the rider simply tried again.

The barbarian changed tactics. As the first man thrust, Sunbright swiped and grabbed the shank. Surprised, the man held on, and Sunbright pulled for all he was worth. He flew forward into the face of the lizard thing, which flinched instinctively. In that second, he whipped Harvester up and over. The heavy tip chopped the rider on the shoulder, cutting to the bone so the man dropped his two part spear with a grunt.

Sunbright crowded the lizard beast so it couldn’t pull its head down to bite. He snaked Harvester alongside and sawed into its neck, but as he struggled, he realized a fatal error.

Unlike the others, this beast had two heads.

A searing jolt jarred his left arm as he was bitten hard. Teeth like fishhooks ripped his flesh, tore muscle, jerked, and twisted savagely to open a vein. Sunbright grit his teeth to keep from screaming and backed toward the other head to drag the cut. Harvester came with him, and he hauled the pommel back into his gut to twist and slam the beast’s neck. But the first head undid him, snapping shut on his wrist. At this rate, he thought, he’d be torn in half.