Son of the Hero (18 page)

Now there was also Annick. After a day of concentrated thought, I still didn’t know what to make of her. The flaming hatred she made no effort to conceal disturbed me as much as it did Harkane. I glanced her way in the dark but couldn’t see her. When I first spotted her on the battlements of Castle Arrowroot, I noticed how good-looking she was, but the hatred and anger she wore turned me off faster than an icy shower. God help the man who tries to rape her, I thought.

I got up and stretched after a while, then walked around a little, being careful to avoid getting disoriented in the dark. After the first flurry of sounds, the forest got unnaturally quiet. The animal noises got rare and farther away, except when our horses moved around. When one moved, they all did, since they were tied together on the picket line. There was no way to gauge time. When I figured that two hours had passed, I took a couple of steps toward Annick and whispered her name. She came awake at once, or she was already awake, and answered. She stood and moved close enough for me to make out her silhouette.

“I’m going to bed,” I told her, still whispering. When I got wrapped up in my thermal blanket, sleep was a long time coming.

Sleep. I’ve always had trouble getting to sleep, even when I was a little kid, but once I do get to sleep, I can be almost as hard to wake as the dead. That’s what it was like in my world. In my apartment in Evanston, I used two alarm clocks and a clock-radio to make sure that I wouldn’t oversleep and miss classes, and
that
wasn’t always enough. Things had been different in Varay, generally. I still had trouble getting to sleep most nights, but I woke fast—except for the evening after the vigil for my father. I had gone so long without sleep before that that I was just out of it. Slight noises could wake me now, like this night. I woke when Annick called Lesh and when he woke Harkane, and a couple of other times. But it wasn’t until sometime after Harkane took the watch that my danger sense started screaming and I woke already jumping to my feet and drawing my sword.

“Up!” I shouted. Annick was on her feet almost as quickly as I was. Lesh wasn’t much slower despite his age and size.

“What is it?”Harkane asked, startled by the way I’d sprung up. The night was almost gone. There was the feeblest gray light, enough to let me see my companions and our horses, but not much more.

“Listen.” I heard something new, a crashing through leaves and small branches. “In the trees.” We all heard a brief crunching noise then, closer, louder. I got my bow, then bent over to pull an arrow from my quiver. Annick had to string her bow first.

The next crashing sounds were almost directly overhead. I barely got my bow up in time before the thing dropped on us.
On me
. I pulled back the string and let fly. The creature dove right into my arrow. Annick’s shaft caught it from the side. The thing veered and pulled up, climbing back through the trees. But it didn’t leave. I turned, looking into the dark of the tree foliage, trying to home in on the creature, whatever it was. All I knew then was that it was damn big for a bird.

It came in low for the second attack, bulleting along head-high, weaving around tree trunks. I let go a hurried arrow that missed, then dropped my bow and drew my sword. I scarcely had time to set my feet and get a good grip on my sword. Again, the beast came straight at me. I held my blow as long as I could, then hacked at the beast’s neck as I ducked under its wing. Maybe that wasn’t the smartest way to do it. My blade bit in. I was holding on too tightly for the sword to be yanked from my grip, so I went over backward. My butt hit the ground and then my head. The creature nosed into the dirt just behind me and I ended up flipping before I finally figured out that I had to let go of the sword. Before the beast came to rest, Annick’s blade and two spears pierced it. The lances pinned the creature to the ground despite its continuing struggles. I got to my feet and retrieved my sword.

“Finish cutting off its head,” Annick said. I didn’t ask questions. I was short on air already. I kept hacking until the head rolled forward and came to rest a foot from the neck.

“What is it?” I asked as soon as I could. The wings were still flapping weakly, the body twisting. I wiped my blade on the moss and grass.

“Some creature of Fairy,” Lesh said—as if that were all that mattered. No one rushed to be more specific, so maybe that
was
all that mattered.

I got out my flashlight. Looking at the creature in light didn’t help me identify it. The face was a grotesque parody of a human face. Thick, wiry hair reminded me of a picture of the gorgon Medusa. The wings were leathery and ended in distinct hands—long, six-fingered hands with claws that were four inches long. The chest and shoulders were thick and heavily developed, but the body tapered off quickly behind the wings. Annick spitted the head on her sword and held it up. The jaw fell open to disclose a herd of pointed teeth. Annick studied the face for a moment, then used her sword to flip the head off into the forest.

“Best to get that as far from the body as possible,” she said, bending to clean her blade. “Some of these creatures can put themselves back together if they’re given the chance.” I looked at the still-twitching body and fought back a rush of nausea. I turned off my flashlight and put it away. I had seen enough … too much.

“We’ll leave as soon as it’s light,” I said. I backed away from the body just as its nearer hand made a weak grab for my ankle. I hopped farther away, in a hurry.

“What do we have to do, burn the son of a bitch?” I asked. My voice may have been a little shaky.

“That might help, or it might just rise whole from the ashes,” Annick said “There’s no way to know for certain.”

“Leave it to me, lord,” Lesh said. He went back to his stuff and got his battle-axe. He chopped at the creature, and I was glad to leave it to him. I turned away and started getting ready to leave. The sounds of Lesh’s butchery kept my stomach on edge. I guess the others felt queasy too. Nobody suggested breakfast before we got back on the road.

It was a day for strangeness. The forest turned weird early on. Crazily deformed trees first showed up as an occasional oddity, then became more common until most of them were bent in strange shapes. Some were knotted like pretzels. Others rose a few feet, then bent parallel to the ground, with most of the greenery on the top half and squat branches below supporting the weight. The leaves and needles became gray-green. A bird with a call like a mocking laugh followed us through much of the day but stayed out of sight. The laugh was perhaps the eeriest sound I’ve ever heard. The trees and the birds—those weren’t the only problems. The streams were far apart and never more than a trickle. Our horses wouldn’t drink from the first three we came to. They sniffed at the fourth for minutes before they decided to chance it, and they had to be awfully thirsty by then.

Twice that day we left the road to hide from approaching soldiers, coming down from the north. The second band had nearly two hundred riders. We were close enough to hear talking but not what they said.

“Baron Resler’s in for a rough go,” Lesh said as we mounted up again after the second group of riders were out of sight. “A lot of new soldiers heading his way.”

“My uncle won’t have the rough time,” Annick said. “It’s the men he’ll send out to fight.
He
hasn’t left Arrowroot in years except to attend banquets at Basil, and then somebody always opens a passage for him.”

For our second bivouac in Fairy, we found a place near the stream the horses were willing to drink from. A horizontal tree with heavy foliage was between us and the road. There were enough other trees around to shelter us from the eyes of anyone riding by or flying overhead. Sleep was harder to come by that night. Memories of our visitor of the previous night intruded. We kept the same rotation on our watches. Annick was on guard when I finally dozed off, but the last thing I remember thinking was that it must be about time for her to wake Lesh.

When my danger sense flared, I didn’t leap straight up. There was nothing so compelling propelling me this time. The extra sense was more discriminating than a burglar alarm. I woke, listened for a moment, then got up on one knee. “Lesh? Harkane? Annick?” Lesh and Harkane answered right away. Annick didn’t.

“Annick?” I whispered, a little louder. There was still no answer.

“Who was on watch?” I asked.

“She was, I guess,” Lesh said. “She never woke me.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Harkane added.

I was sure that more than a few minutes had passed since I fell asleep. I had been dreaming, though I didn’t recall the substance of my dreams, simply that they had been there, plural, apparently extending over some time. I felt rested, as if it were time to get up for the day.

“Annick?” I called, louder still. I got to my feet with my sword drawn. The feeling of danger was persistent but not immediate.

“Her horse is here,” Harkane said.

“We can’t look for her in the dark,” Lesh grumbled. “Pardon my stubbornness, lord, but I did say you should have sent her back at the start.”

I got out my flashlight and used it within the little nook where we had set up our bedrolls. Annick’s bedding, saddle, and pack were there, but her weapons were gone.

“Maybe she heard something and went to investigate,” I whispered—without any great conviction. “If anything had dragged her from camp, we would have heard the commotion.” And, I would have known if anything like that had happened so close … at least, I
thought
I would have.

Lesh grunted. We waited in silence, for perhaps an hour, before we heard anything. My danger sense picked up a bit, but I had my sword in my hand, so there was nothing to do but wait—until Annick crept back into camp.

“Where the hell have you been?” I asked when I was sure it was her. My flashlight showed blood on her tunic, but there was no hole in the fabric.

“There’s a patrol camped nearby,” she whispered. “I became aware of it after you fell asleep.” She bared her teeth. “They never heard me. I killed two of them and got away without waking the rest.”

“The rest? How many others?” I asked.

“Three. I’d have done them too, but one was stirring.” She cackled softly. “I wanted to kill all but one, let him wake to find himself the lone survivor. That would have boiled his brains down to molasses.”

“We’ll have the elflord down on us for sure now,” Lesh said. He didn’t have to add another “I told you so” for my benefit.

The elflord or somebody. “You pull another stunt like this while you’re with me and I’ll throttle you myself,” I told Annick. I meant it, though I didn’t fully realize that until the words were already out. “Lesh, Harkane. We can’t leave survivors to spread the news. Annick, you’ll have to lead us back.”

“They left a fire burning. You only need to go fifty paces north to see it.” But she turned and started walking that way.

I snagged up my bow and quiver, and we all followed her. I shoved the flashlight in a pocket and concentrated on staying right behind Annick. She picked out the trail without difficulty. Baron Resler had said that creatures of Fairy wouldn’t be hindered by the dark. Apparently his halfelven niece had inherited that eyesight. The rest of us stumbled now and again. Things got easier once we spotted the campfire. As we got closer, we could see the ground more clearly, as much because of the approach of dawn as for the puny fire.

“They’re all human, after a fashion,” Annick whispered. “Renegades from the seven kingdoms, mostly from Varay, no doubt. Traitors.”

It was easy to see which were already dead. The bloodstains looked black in the dim predawn light and fire glow.

“Lesh, Harkane, work as close as you can to the nearest man. I’ll take the farthest and Annick the one in the middle. With your bow,” I added in an aside to her.

The job was necessary but not pleasant. I had never aimed a weapon at a human before. The bow wavered in my hands for a moment. It wasn’t until Annick loosed her arrow that I was able to shoot my man. Then Lesh got the third. It was over in seconds. This time, I
did
puke.

12
The Swamp

My rage had a life of its own. For a time, the fury was so consuming that a part of my mind could only stand back and watch in astonishment. For the rest, I had to fight to hold back my temper—a rage far beyond anything I had ever experienced before. We got back to our camp without trouble and hurried to get packed and to saddle our horses. By the time the sky was light enough for us to guide our horses to the road safely, I had been stewing for a half hour. Standing on the road, ready to mount, I finally felt—almost—confident that I could speak my mind without losing control completely.

“I want you to know,” I told Annick very quietly, “that I meant exactly what I said about what I’ll do if you pull another stunt like that. Either do things my way or get the hell out of here right now.” I had to bite off the next sentence that wanted to come out:
I’ve got no use for mad dogs
. Annick and I stared at each other for a full minute or more before she replied.

“I won’t do anything like that again without your approval.” There was nothing meek or repentant about her promise. I couldn’t even be sure that I could trust it. I could only hope that my danger sense would warn me before she did anything else rash. But as the morning wore on, I noticed that Annick seemed much less tense than she had been during our first days on the road, as if the killings had satisfied some deep addiction—at least for the moment.

It was a little different for me. No, make that a
lot
different. No matter what else happened—ever—I would never be the same. I had killed another human being, intentionally, “with malice aforethought.” I had stood there in the dark and killed. Simple as that. And blaming Annick for the need didn’t get me off the hook. It was my choice, my decision. I had killed and I had ordered my companions to kill.

You
can’t
turn back from that.

There was fog that morning. It started patchy, not far north of our camp. At times, our heads were above it, making it look as if our horses were swimming through the clouds. As we moved on, the fog got thicker, totally enclosing us finally, until we could scarcely see fifty feet. For a couple of hours, the road—trail—was particularly rough and hilly as it skirted the line of hills that defined the isthmus. On the high ground, we sometimes rose above the fog. Then the road would drop almost to sea level again, plunging us back into the damp fog. The map at Castle Basil had been woefully shy of detail for the parts of the isthmus it showed. The swamp came as a complete surprise. We reined to a halt as a road dwindled to an uncertain track through the first bogs.