Etherwalker (5 page)

“Your mother begged me to take you and run. To hide my swords and mix with the crowd while she led them away. I was to bring you to this unwatched land and raise you to manhood.”

Enoch was still.

“It was the hardest order I ever took. To spurn the clean deaths of my guard and
run
.”

The woods were quiet. A small animal shuffled through the leaves near their feet.

“I was on the street below when she threw herself from the . . .” He looked away. “When she died.”

Master Gershom cleared his throat, moving quickly from this memory. There was a tenderness in his voice when he spoke of Enoch’s mother.

Tenderness or something else?

Enoch shook his head. Who was he to speculate? He knew nothing of these things.

“Our escape wasn’t clean, you should know. My swords were not hidden, nor were they dry by the time I carried you through the Pauper’s Gate and down to the burning plains beyond. It took me three long years to arrive here, and I imagine it will take an even longer stretch to return.”

Enoch shook his head in astonishment.

“We’re going back? But what about the mobs? The Hunt?”

“We are going to return in shadow. I can train any man to wield a sword and dance the
pensa spada
. I can train any man to stalk a foe and take his blood. But I do not know how to train a boy in the Pensanden way—and I will not create another Worldbreaker.”

Now Master Gershom was talking to himself, and Enoch could barely make out his words. “This is a cup I cannot drink, but I know of others who can.” He looked up into the sky and frowned. “And of those who can, I know a paltry few who should. First we will have to stop in Garron. The Gray Wastes hold the keys we will need . . .” He considered his words, then shook his head. “No, the guardian still hunts the dunes for all I know. We’ll have to hope for allies in Tenocht.”

Master Gershom began walking again, and Enoch hurried to keep pace beside him.

“But Master, what does this word mean—
Pensanden
? Why do we need keys to enter a city?”

“Some keys are used to open, Enoch. Others are used to awaken.”

With that, Master Gershom was finished talking. His mouth was set in a grim line, and Enoch knew that no amount of coaxing would open it. They walked on in tense silence again after that.

*  *  *  *

The moonlight slanting down through gaps in the canopy overhead created living pools of light amid the deep emerald-black of the forest floor. It was still strangely quiet; apparently the rockfinches had returned to their mountain nests for the night. They had been walking for hours, weary after a long day of work and no sleep. The forest grew deep and thick. Finally, Master Gershom tapped his shoulder.

“We should be well enough away by now. Even with the full moon out, this tree cover should be impenetrable from above. We’ll rest now.”

Enoch stumbled over to the base of a tall pine and collapsed to the ground, ignoring the dull pricks of fallen pine needles as exhaustion overtook him. Master Gershom sat down with his back against the rough trunk and opened the sack, pulling out the Unit. There was a creak as the big man pried a template from the back of the now defunct machine with his short sword. Enoch couldn’t help smiling as he drifted off to sleep.

Well, he finally found a use for that thing.

Enoch dreamt of flying—he flew up through the trees and into the warm summer air. As he reached the lowest clouds, he turned north and rode the wind until he had left the valley. Beneath him the forest thinned and became a rolling plain. He could see Master Gershom far below, a newborn lamb across his shoulders. His master waved at him but then pointed backwards—he seemed to think that Enoch was going the wrong way. Enoch laughed and flew onwards. Nobody could tell him what to do when he was this high in the air!

Up ahead, the bland smoothness of the plain was interrupted by a giant tree—a tree so tall that it pierced the clouds. Beneath the tree, huddled in the shade, a beautiful city sprawled—Enoch had never seen a city, but this broad expanse of buildings and crowds of people could only be that. He waved to the people below and was surprised to see terror on their faces. They were running everywhere, scattering to get out of his sight!

It was then that Enoch noticed his hands. They were hideous! Gnarled and segmented and ending in yellow claws. With a shout he looked down the length of his body only to discover that he was one of those monstrous winged creatures that had destroyed his house! No wonder the people were screaming.

Enoch looked back at the milling people, tried to speak to them. To apologize. Flame erupted from his mouth. Men, women, children; all were caught in the fiery blaze. Their screams mixed with the smoke and ash in the air and stained the city walls in violent tones of black and red. Enoch wept brimstone as the city burned.

His violent dreams evaporated as he awoke to his master’s nudging.

“You were calling out in your sleep, boy. Besides, it’s been two hours—we’d best get a read at what’s happening around us. Climb that big pine and look around.”

Shambling, his head still fuzzy with sleep, Enoch approached the pine and began to climb the prickly, spoke-like branches. After twenty feet, the wood began to bend under his weight, so he stopped and glanced out over the forest.

They had gone far. Most of his view was obscured by other trees, but he could tell by the thin line of moonlit gray smoke where the house had been, and it was now distant. There was only dark, waving green gilded with moon silver as far as the eye could see. He had barely begun to descend when the humming began.

Looking up, he was just in time to glimpse the giant beast as it roared over the tree. He struggled to hang on as his perch thrashed violently in the backwash of wind.

It was going far too fast to see me.

I hope.

Master Gershom called from below, asking if he was all right. Firmly placing his feet on the branch below him, Enoch strained to watch the retreating form of the beast. Something was strapped to its abdomen—a long, curiously worked saddle from the look of it. Enoch counted ten seats, two of them occupied by men in that strange black armor.

Meaning eight on the ground.

Enoch cast a fearful glance down to the forest floor and then southward. Master Gershom called to him again, concern in his voice.

In a clearing back by the stream, Enoch spied them. Two armored men were guiding hounds—or something like hounds—through the trees. The animals had their snouts to the ground and pulled the leashes taut, the men running and all but being dragged behind them.

“Master!” He shouted, “Master, they hunt us!”

“Yes, Enoch,” came Master Gershom’s reply, flat and unfeeling. He was deep in
pensa spada
. “They are already here.”

Enoch froze, his hands locking around the branch. Looking down, he saw another raider come into view, closely on the heels of another pair of hounds.

Those are not hounds.

The beasts looked like some horrible combination of a giant spider and a dog. Eight jointed legs rustled through last year’s fallen leaves, connecting at a scaly, bulbous torso. The torso ended in a small gray head, topped with a cluster of glittering black eyes. A blunt canine snout jutted from the head, grinning with crooked yellow teeth, and two pairs of antennae whipped through the air—conspicuously graceful on these obscene creatures.

The creatures surged forward, pulling their driver into a pool of moonlight. Enoch gasped. That was no man in armor—it was a monster more twisted than his pets! An oblong, seemingly overlarge head balanced on a spindly, segmented neck. Oily black skin, chitinous and splotched with red markings, covered the creature from head to foot. The legs were oddly bent, angling backwards like those of a cricket.

It looked altogether unnatural. Awkward.
Wrong.
Yet the smooth assurance with which it glided into the clearing spoke of predatory grace and lethal swiftness. A wickedly curved axe swung loosely in one of its segmented hands.

Master Gershom already had his swords unsheathed, the dissembled Unit lying in a heap at his feet. Cold light ran along the curved blade in his left hand and glinted off the point of the short sword in his right. The monstrous raider took a surprised step backwards to assess the threat—obviously it had met little resistance that night and did not expect to come face-to-face with a giant man bristling with swords. It cocked its head, tiny orange eyes glinting curiously. Then it unleashed the hounds.

They surged forward, voiceless except for the dry clattering of fangs. Master Gershom smoothly stepped into guard position, knees bent and swords crossed in front of him. One slash from the curved blade separated the first hound from its head; the straight sword buried itself to the hilt in the leathery thorax of the second. Enoch felt cold ichor splatter his feet. His hands were frozen around the branch.

Move, coward! Climb down and help!

He couldn’t move. All of the training in the world meant nothing in front of this terror.

Master Gershom had already leapt over the corpses and moved on toward the driver. It wielded the axe as though the weapon were another appendage, taking advantage of the lethal weight to parry his opponent’s slashing attacks. Swinging the axe in wide arcs, the raider seemed to cavort in a gamboling dance punctuated by flashes of iron. It moved like a nightmare, whirling toward its prey with hungry certainty.

Devilishly quick and strong as the raider was, Master Gershom was quicker. Within seconds, it became obvious what the outcome would be—the big man moved with a liquid grace, countering each attack and pressing the creature into defensive postures again and again. His swords clove air like lightning, weaving a thread of reflected steel moonlight between the wafts of the shadowed trees.

As metal rang against metal, the monster was illuminated in a shower of yellow sparks; Enoch could see saliva frothing at toothy mandibles. The movements of the axe were becoming frantic. Backed against a tree, it swung wildly in a fierce attempt to decapitate his foe, and for a fraction of a second it left itself unguarded. Crouching low and knocking the axe wide with his curved blade, Master Gershom stabbed upwards with the straight blade.

With a horrifying silence, the creature fell over backwards, red, strangely human blood oozing from a hole under the shattered chin. It continued thrashing until Master Gershom stepped on an arm and chopped the head off with his curved blade.

Levi Gershom looked up to call for Enoch as four more of these armored warriors stepped into the moonlight, seeming to condense from the shadows. A hungry clicking sound filled the air. Master Gershom turned and let out a low whistle.

“Enoch, stay in the tree until I’ve dispatched them all. These coldmen are quick, but they don’t know our style.”

“But Master,” called Enoch, voice trembling. “There are more of them!”

Master Gershom shifted into
semprelisto
and turned his back to Enoch’s tree.

“They don’t know who they are facing,” he called. “My order—the Nahuati—was originally founded as a defense against them.”

Here he held up his contrasting swords, the straight and curved blades that Enoch knew like his own hands.

Suddenly, two shadows moved in from each side. The clash of swords, the dull thump of bodies colliding, and an undercurrent of wet inhuman chattering—the strange percussive dialect of these
coldmen
. Master Gershom had pushed the fight into the trees, seeking to gain advantage amidst the shadowed trunks. Another clicking snarl trailed into moist gasping and went quiet as the straight blade found its mark. But his master was horribly outnumbered, and Enoch caught a glimpse of three more shadowy forms swiftly approaching through the trees to his left, led by a pair of spider-hounds.

Master doesn’t know their number. He’ll be overwhelmed! Get down there, damn you! Move!

Still, fear rooted him in place. He tried to grasp at
afilia nubla
, mumbling the
litania eteria
over and over again. Below, a pair of coldmen had spied him and began to move toward his tree. Enoch shut his eyes and let the words of the incantation wash over his mind.

The mind is a world, the consciousness its light. As day turns to night, so shall my mind; afila lumin setting as the nubla rises, and my mindworld revolves.

Something inside of him gave, and he felt his mind turn over. The darkness around him was now clear, each sound from below as distinct as a pearl. With the powerful focus of
afilia nubla
, Enoch sent the commands.

Descend. Distract. Divide.

Releasing the limb, he fell ten feet before landing nimbly on a lower branch. It bent almost to the snapping point before whipping him upwards in time with his leap. Lancing through the air, he curled into a ball. The air was a cold whistle against his skin.

With a crunch, his knees smashed into the face of an approaching raider. It toppled backwards into its comrade, and the hounds hissed as they were yanked short on their leashes.

Rolling free, Enoch bent and scooped a handful of rocks from the ground as the coldmen scrambled to their feet in a skein of jointed legs, spears, and axes. The hounds strained against their bindings, snapping at their masters in frustration.