Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (62 page)

She freed him from his fastenings. Thankfully these were thick ropes, not chains. He rubbed his hands together furiously to restore the circulation while she rubbed his feet. When he could move everything, he nodded. They slithered back out of the tent and crawled slowly to the trees. When another flash of lightning lit the sky, he saw the two horses standing right in front of him.

He suppressed the almost overwhelming urge to cry out in delight at seeing his two beloved animals, rubbing each warmly on the neck. Each responded by nodding their heads up and down as if to say, “Let’s get moving. We don’t have a lot of time here.”

Daria helped him mount up and they silently stole away.

They pushed hard for the rest of the night. The storm, which had started out as a severe thunderstorm, now turned into a hurricane, with vicious winds that drove sheet upon sheet of blinding rain in their faces as they worked their way farther and farther away from the Troll encampment. They soon lost all sense of direction, depending entirely on that of the horses to guide them. By sunrise, they had made it about halfway to the Slova River. Daria, with her thick Troll fur, was holding up all right, but Erik was now in a state of hypothermia as he clung tenaciously to the neck of Cloud, drawing what little warmth he could from the back of his faithful horse.

Coming up beside him, she said softly, “We must seek shelter.”

Too cold to answer, finding his mouth would not work, he shook his head as best he could from side to side. He knew their only hope was to cross the river. Only then would they be safe from the Trolls that they both knew would be after them as soon as their absence was discovered.

On they pushed, mile after mile, while Erik gradually slipped into a semiconscious state.

They made it to the river as the sun was slipping down towards the horizon. Erik was now completely unresponsive. Daria tried several times to shake him awake with no success.

“We have no choice,” she said aloud. She motioned for Cloud to go first. Gingerly, he walked in, being careful to not stumble. He knew that if he did, Erik would fall off and drown. Once he started swimming, Daria mounted up and followed on Spirit, who strained mightily under her weight. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. She knew if she lost her seat she would die, but they had no choice. So she gritted her teeth, hung on, and they kept going. All went well until they reached the far shore, for as Cloud struggled up towards the riverbank in the soft bottom he lost his footing and Erik slid from his back. Without hesitating, Daria vaulted from the back of Spirit into the river.

Fortunately, she found there was enough water that she could stand. She hauled Erik roughly out and up onto the back of Cloud, where he straddled the horse’s back like a boneless cat. With nothing to bind him in place, she walked alongside of him, rearranging him to keep him from sliding off every dozen or so steps. It was frustrating, but the simple task of keeping him atop of his horse kept her mind from some of the more urgent and vexing problems before them, now that they had crossed over into Ravenwild. She was, after all, unmistakably, a Troll and would be killed instantly if they happened to run into any Ravenwild soldiers, a risk that would increase exponentially as they made their way deeper and deeper into the land of Humans, Dwarves and Elves. Added to that, she walked in the company of the heir apparent, and she knew that no amount of explaining, if he remained unconscious, would ever convince potential captors that he was her friend and she his guardian du jour. No. Anyone of right mind would conclude that he was her prisoner and, again, she would most likely die.

But none of that mattered now. What he needed was warmth, or all of her efforts to deliver him from the clutches of Malance Venomisis would be meaningless.

They continued on, she pausing every once in a while to drop to her knees and get a drink from one of the many puddles that dotted the trail on which they walked.

Then, she smelled it. Smoke. Coming from up ahead. Smoke meant fire, and fire meant warmth, and warmth meant a chance that she could bring the Prince back from the dead, with whom he was most assuredly right now cavorting. She stopped, moved several paces off of the trail into some bramble, and eased Erik off Cloud and onto the forest floor. Hastily, she gathered some fallen pine boughs, cleared a spot, and rolled him onto them, trying to keep him as dry as possible. Then she covered him from head to toe with more pine branches, leaves, and some sticks, as best she could. She noticed he was breathing, and his respirations appeared unlabored, but they were decidedly shallow. There was not a lot of time. “Stay with him, both of you,” she ordered the horses. Each gave her quizzical looks as if to ask, “What can
we
possibly do to help him?” They remained behind as she worked her way out of the thicket and back onto the main trail.

Silent as the grass grows she moved along, all of her senses directed at detecting the danger she knew might lie ahead. She came to a small creek, and a clearing beyond that. On the far side of the clearing was a small hunter’s cabin, a one-room affair. She spied nobody out and about, but the smoke rising lazily from the chimney spoke clearly to the fact that it was occupied. Ordinarily she would have waited the requisite amount of time, no matter the wait, to determine if it was safe to approach it. But time was not a luxury she had. Erik was dying and every minute counted. So she forded the shallow creek, Herculean for a Troll, and started across the clearing, bold as polished brass. Somewhat surprised that she made it to the door of the cabin undetected, she entered without announcing herself. It was empty!

The interior was as rustic as the exterior, appointed with only a small bed for one, a cook stove, a rough-sawn table and bench seat, and the fireplace, in which the remains of a fire smoldered. It looked to have been generously stoked earlier so as to have a good supply of coals still burning for whoever tended it when they returned.

She went back outside, retraced her steps, and gathered Erik into her arms. In a few minutes he was resting in the bed, stripped of his wet garments and covered with a quilt; she had built up a hearty fire, and gone out to look for an outside cold-cellar. They needed food and water, and if it was on the small property, she knew she would find it. It didn’t take her long, and soon she had returned with an assortment of smoked meats, a basket full of dried vegetables, some dried tea, and a large waterskin that she had filled from the nearby creek. She checked on Erik. He remained unconscious, but his skin was warm and dry.

She offered silent thanks to the Old One, and asked that He deliver Erik back to her.

Leopold Malance Venomisis raised his head from the pillow in response to the healer’s supplication that he drink from the ornate mug she handed him. Not that this was an easy thing to do, because he was weak, weak as could be, and still drastically ill. His face was grotesquely swollen and flushed, his eyes, small slits. Uncutus Twit intercepted the drink, turned slightly, and dumped the poison from the vial that he had lashed to his wrist under his long sleeve. He swirled it in.

“Uncutus,” said the emperor, the room spinning wildly, “old friend. Help me to sit up.”

“Of course, Your Excellency. Are you feeling any better since the staff cleaned you up?”

“A little. Yes, that’s it. I can’t be expected to drink while I’m lying down, now can I? I would almost surely make another mess.”

He sat up, grunting with the effort, aided by Uncutus. He propped him up with several pillows, all the while holding onto the mug. Malance took it from the hand of his Minister of the Interior and positioned it on his lap. The hint of a smile flashed briefly across the features of the Minister. “I’m not sure I need this right now,” he mumbled. “What I need is a clear head. This illness has left me as weak as a lamb and my mind as befuddled as a scrambled egg.”

“Of course, My Lord,” said Uncutus. “Shall I take it from you, then?” He reached out from the bedside towards the mug.

“No, no,” said Malance. “Thank you. I’ll hold it for the moment whilst you and I talk about some things. May I ask you a question?”

“Of course, My Lord.”

“When did you first begin to think that you could outsmart me?”

All of the color drained from the face of the Minister as he struggled to maintain his composure. “My Lord?”

“Well, you see, I’m curious. The most interesting thing to me here is the
timing
of your attempt. The actual attempt itself was crude and boorish. Do you think I have never used cyanomin to eliminate problem Trolls before? Do you think that I am a novice in the way of poisonings? Poor stupid Uncutus Twit.” He called out to the guards. “Bring him in!”

The guards brought in Furnier Gangra. He had obviously been beaten badly and was unable to stand on legs that had been hideously mangled, so they dragged him to Malance’s bedside, where they held him up to face his Emperor.

“Furnier,” said Malance. “I must say, I have seen you looking better. You look like you could use some rest. Here, this will help.” He held out the mug he had been holding, and Furnier took it with trembling hands. He took a drink. Within seconds he was dead.

“Poor soul,” said Malance. “It looks as though that did not agree with him at all.”

“Why that treasonous dog … ” began Uncutus.

Malance held up a hand and said, “Spare me. You will not be given the luxury of such a quick death. No, I will personally see to it that you beg for it over, and over, and over again.” Then, to the guards, “Take him from my sight!”

“My Lord,” he begged in a pitiful voice.

“When you get to the dungeons, remove his tongue. Do not let him bleed to death over it. Make sure you cauterize the wound with a hot iron. That will do.”

Seth Queslian, former member of the Palace Elite under Turman Pandieth, had traveled from Elsie’s place at Round Lake to King’s Port in record time. He was awaiting the arrival of Mandel Ott and Ettan Cooke, and waiting was not something he was good at. Holed up for several days, he was in a foul mood. The smallness of the shack in which he had been staying, an outbuilding of one of the farmhouses a few miles to the east of the city, and the fact that he had not eaten in a couple of days, were doing nothing to improve it. He had sharpened all of his weapons to a razor’s edge, organized, and then reorganized his gear, trying to pass the time, and now had nothing whatsoever to do. So he waited, and his mood grew darker with the passage of every minute.

Late in the morning of his third day in hiding, the knock finally happened, and he cautiously cracked the door. Saviar Murlis, acting Emperor of the Gnome nation of Vultura, poked his head in and entered. Closing the door behind him, Seth growled, “Where have you
been?
”

“Sorry about that,” he said. “It was all I could do to get here.” He plopped a sack on the table in front of them. “I brought you some food. I suspect you haven’t eaten in a while.”

Seth reached into it and pulled out some dried meat on which he began to chew immediately. He washed it down with several pulls from one of the two bottles of wine that Saviar had brought along. “Eat,” he said, in between chews, pointing at the food on the table.

Saviar ate with him, and for a while the only sound was that of two very hungry Gnomes taking care of the most basic need of all. “Thanks for this,” Seth grunted.

“You’re welcome,” returned Saviar. “How do you like your accommodations?”

Seth smiled. “Not the worst,” he said, “but the service is less than stellar.”