Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) (15 page)

The call of a hawk.

Silent forms crested the top of the wall behind him, loosing a volley of arrows before leaping down into the mayhem below. Six rangers, the bulk of their force. They landed nimbly and charged forward, quiet as death; Mudlo joined them with a silent laugh on his lips. The shock of seeing their comrades riddled with feathered shafts broke the M’tant line almost as much as the charge. The nymphs broke and fled, ignoring the Tannarch’s guttural roars as he tried to rally them.

“
Oops,” Mudlo chuckled as the nymphs retreated into the grass and trees, “Ah, wrong way.”

Deep metallic
pings
sounded, and several more of the fleeing nymphs fell in spurts of blood. Crossbows. Mudlo didn’t consider that sporting… but there wasn’t much of a choice, was there? Laughing aloud now, the grim joy of battle fueling his charge, the ranger hurdled the broken stump of a pillar, a long sturdy dirk in each hand. The battlefield was a boiling mess of fleeing ravens and ravaging hawks. The five crossbow-bearing rangers rose out of the grass where they lay hidden, drawing swords and axes and maces to cut down the nymphs that fled in their direction.

One of the nymphs Mudlo chased went down with a slash across his spine. Another turned and fought, and got his neck pinned to a tree for his trouble. That lost Mudlo one of his dirks- blast it!- and there was no time to get it back, for suddenly the Tannarch was there, bulling into him with all the strength of a Westren Elephant. Mudlo was slight for a ranger, but far from defenseless. The Tannarch was weaponless, but his hand gripped Mudlo’s wrist too hard for him to stab with. Grunting, the ranger twisted ‘round, ducking and pulling the nymph king forward with all his strength.

The Tannarch stumbled, off balance, and was flipped clean over Mudlo’s head. He landed on his back with a
whump
, and Mudlo leaped to straddle him, dirk pressed hard to the nymph’s throat.

“
Don’t move,” he snarled. The Tannarch just smiled. Mudlo winced; the nymph’s teeth were sharpened to points.

Then everything began to go wrong.

Something hard and thick coiled around Mudlo’s neck, yanking him off the Tannarch and slamming him ten feet backwards into the trunk of a tree. No- the
tree
had grabbed him… the very tree where he’d stuck the M’tant mere seconds before! Everywhere trees and grass were attacking the rangers and leaving the nymphs untouched. Branches reached out, stabbing at Mudlo’s green-cloaked fellows, and the ground sucked in one of them waist-deep.

“
Eave Striders!” Mudlo cursed, struggling, but it was too late. More and more vines wrapped around him. Branches curled unnaturally across his body and limbs and neck, holding him to the tree, trussing him up better than a rabbit in a trap. All at once he realized how faint the rangers’ hope was. There were twelve of them, and at least forty nymphs still living, some of them Striders.

He could barely move now, struggle as he might. The flock of ravens had become a murder of crows, mobbing each of the rangers one by one, battling them with spears and curved swords and scythes, until one by one they fell and were killed or captured. A stone exploded when one of the rangers leaped atop it to make his stand; the man’s legs were torn to shards and he fell screaming.

“
No! Bloody Blaze,
Arlin
!” Mudlo writhed, and felt some of his bonds begin to slip. Perhaps…

One of the black-robed nymphs with a scythe suddenly appeared in front of him in a shower of earth and rock. Had the blasted things been
underground
? Mudlo cursed again and again, realizing how stupid it had been to think the M’tant would just walk into his trap.

Arlin and more are dead for my mistake, blast it… what a ranger I am.

The hideous nymph raised his scythe. Mudlo struggled, feeling some of the vines snap.

Arlin was our leader. He listened to me!

The scythe swung, and Mudlo ripped himself away from the tree enough to duck and fall out of the way. He
felt
the black metal brush his coat as he tumbled. In a flash he was up again, but the clever nymph followed through, spinning his weapon and cracking Mudlo across the side of the head with it. Stars burst in front of his eyes, the colors looked all wrong, his head felt like it had split open, there was a storm lashing through the Lost Walls all around him…

No. Wait. He was on the ground, gasping for air, but the nymph with the scythe was nowhere nearby. The stars and colors were fading a little… but that storm… that storm was
real!

Mudlo felt sick.
Another blow to the head… wonderful. As if I needed MORE insanity.
He tried to crawl away from the flashing lightning and thundering gale that was sweeping the grass and rocks and trees, but it was difficult to move. The wind pinned him down, kept him from… from
what?

Suddenly Mudlo’s vision cleared, and he saw the battlefield for what it was. A massacre. The rangers like him, those that still lived, were pressed down to the ground just as inexplicably as he, but the M’tant were running and falling and screaming and dying as clouds boiled overhead. Jagged lightning streaked down again and again, burning a nymph to ash at every strike.

CRASH! CRACKLE! CRASH!
Mudlo’s ears felt overwhelmed, and he couldn’t hear his own cursing. What in Vast was happening?

A booted foot pressed down on his back, pinning him further. A wild shrieking laugh reached his ears over the howling wind and deafening storm: the voice of the Tannarch.

“
I’ll skin you yet, bloody hawk! Ahahaha!”
Mudlo twisted and kicked, but spikes on the heel of the Tannarch’s boot dug into his shoulder blades and forced his face into the dirt. It was hopeless.

Then a broken, burning body slammed into the Tannarch, knocking him off Mudlo. The ranger scrambled away, twisting around under that unnatural wind pressure, to see what had happened.
How many close scrapes can I have in one fight?
The body was of the nymph with the scythe.

The Tannarch quickly rose, hurling the corpse off and standing, brandishing one of the curious M’tant spear-swords in each hand, a wordless snarl on his face… But he wasn’t looking at Mudlo.

Lauro Vale crouched not ten feet away, looking haggard and deathly pale, wind whipping the ground to shreds beneath his left hand as he dug his fingers into the soil. His right hand was raised to the heavens, and lightning crackled in the sky whenever he moved.

Red Aura’s Forge!
Mudlo thought,
did he just come out of the sky?
But wherever the boy had come from, he was beating the M’tant at their own game. Sky was trumping Stone, Wind was beating Earth, and Lightning was massacring every nymph in the area. It was power such as was only whispered about in legends. How was the bloody boy so blasted powerful? He could probably rival King Larion himself!

The Tannarch whirled his long-handled blades, cursing and blaspheming, but most of the words were ripped away on the wind. He moved as if to charge Lauro, then thought better of it. With a shriek even Mudlo could hear, he plunged both blades into the ground. The ranger was picked up and hurled several yards as the ground heaved and rippled, rolling towards Lauro in a churning wave of rock and earth. The Sky Strider looked even sicklier, but calmly rose and jumped
through
the attack, violent shards of air blasting a hole in the earthwave to let him land safely past it.

Mudlo twisted and scrambled to see again. The Tannarch was screaming something into the wind he couldn’t hear. The M’tant king pulled his weapons free of the earth and charged. Lauro moved his mouth, words lost in the storm, but Mudlo could’ve sworn he’d said
my turn.

Lauro shoved a fist to the sky. Lightning crackled. Then he ducked under the Tannarch’s wild swing and punched him full in the face.

The world flashed white. Everything seemed to
SHIFT.

When Mudlo could see again, the Tannarch was a smoking husk, breaking apart in the wind that grew louder and stronger and fiercer with every second. He felt himself being lifted from the ground. Meters away, Lauro was kneeling, head in his hands.

“
Lauro! LAURO!” Mudlo screamed. The boy was going to tear them all apart, from sickness or rage… and he couldn’t shout over the blasted wind!
“LAURO!”

Nothing. The world was going to end, right here and now.

“
LAURO!” Another voice yelled this time, and somehow the sound cut across the destruction to Mudlo’s ears… and Lauro’s. The young Sky Strider looked up…

…
and the storm ended, all at once.

Mudlo scrambled to his feet. The clouds that had funneled down from above were retreating and growing lighter. He was able to move freely again, and the lightning-blessedly!- had stopped, too. Out of the corner of his eye Mudlo saw two rangers dragging Arlin away hurriedly. Thank the Creator! The leader was still alive. Another ranger- Gando, Mudlo thought likely- was beating the pulp out of one of the black-robed nymph Striders. The slim, violent ranger had cut off the nymph’s hands to stop him from Striding. Ugh.

But the silence was what disturbed Mudlo the most. His ears rang with it, after the overload of noise and sights and sensations that the storm had brought. In a stunned sort of stupor he looked to see who had managed to call through the wind.

The red-headed half-nymph girl, the one who seemed so attracted to Lauro, was limping through a hole in the wall. She looked ready to cry, and her face was deathly white.
She
had called out?
She
had stopped him?

So much for taking care of those nymphs on our own,
Mudlo thought, and was surprised at how exhausted he felt.
I should just quit the rangers and let those youths take my bloody place!

The next morning Lauro awoke with the biggest bloody headache he’d ever had. That, plus the utter havoc of the day and night before, was bad enough. Battles, death… chasing down the surviving nymphs… But worse, Avarine was now ignoring him. After calling to him through the madness… stopping him from destroying his friends as well as enemies in the hopeless rage that had burned through him… she wouldn’t even
speak
to him! Well, he murder-blasted deserved that, didn’t he? He’d killed her father.

Her
father
. The Tannarch didn’t deserve to be the sire of such a beautiful creature as she… but he was. Had been.
Why couldn’t I have stopped myself??? Why couldn’t I have just captured him, instead of killing? I had no bloody right to…
He stopped himself. Cursing would get him nowhere. He didn’t know why he’d picked up the habit so quickly. The thing to do… was to confront her, and apologize, no matter how hard it was.

Clambering stiffly out of the hide roll the rangers had given him to sleep in, the prince managed with difficulty to dress in breeches, boots, shirt, vest, and coat, all provided by the ranger… without cursing once. His body ached and groaned with a thousand various pains, but he counted himself lucky. Unlike Arlin, the rangers’ leader, he still had all his limbs. In fact, he hadn’t even broken a bone. Lucky as anything, considering that he’d summoned a wind tunnel to get himself to the rangers’ aid in time. First time he’d done that since Mythigrad.

Before he left the tent, Lauro strapped two of the strange M’tant blade weapons across his back;
Severs
, Avarine had called them. It was a cruel joke to him that he should be so fascinated with his enemies’ weapons… but the rangers rarely bore swords, and had none to spare. The dead nymphs, however, had been only too obliging…

Ignoring more than a few bodily aches, Lauro pushed the flap of the tent aside and stepped out into the open. Outside, the world around the ranger camp gave little indication of the carnage of the day before. The clouds had broken completely for the first time since they’d begun creeping over Vast, and though they were threatening to return, for the moment the sun was washing the Lost Walls in its light. Lauro had the strangest feeling… as if it was
because
of the battle that the world had decided to make a kind morning. It was in sharp contrast to the glumness he felt.

The tents of the rangers were spread around a grassy clearing between two of the larger walls, part of the fabled Lost Walls themselves. Rubble was piled strategically on either end to form a readily defensible position that could be held by a few, being at the same time almost undetectable from its surroundings.

Lauro’s tent had belonged to one of the rangers who had died. Avarine was in another, Mudlo in a third, and Arlin rested in a fourth. Besides them, six rangers still lived: Raenin, Gando, and Armir; Daslite, Magnin, and Morr. They were as different a lot of warriors as Lauro had ever seen, and two of them, Raenin and Daslite, were women. Daslite was Arlin’s wife, apparently. The ties between the rangers confused Lauro to no end.