The Dreaming Hunt (64 page)

Eben crept within a dozen steps of the fire, pausing only to spot Sha'Li and Rynn in position across from him. A nod from Rynn, and he charged. As inclined as he was to scream in rage and vengeance, these beasts did not deserve the courtesy of a warning. He and the others charged fast and silent, plowing into the party of gobrats with deadly results.

He decapitated the first one he reached. Hot blood spewed everywhere, and he was glad. They should all bleed like that family had bled. He took a mighty swing at the gobrat just rising from his seat on the right.

“Look out!” Raina shouted just as something heavy slammed into him, staggering him. He turned to face a much larger gobrat who had come out of nowhere.

Ambush
.

The bastards had set up a few of their number as bait at that fire while the rest hid in the woods. All of a sudden, it was he and his friends with their backs to the fire fighting the furious attackers raging out of the woods.

“I'm hit!” Rynn called out behind him. No time to turn and check on him because three gobrats were attacking him viciously, swinging claws and biting at him with long, yellow teeth. Nearly as big as humans, they were strong and fast. They tag teamed well, also. One would go low for his ankles while the other two swung at his head. Were it not for the light, quick mace, which he could whip from side to side much faster than a regular iron-headed one, he'd have been in serious trouble.

As it was, one of the creatures got in a good swipe at his arm that severed the major muscles from his shoulder down to his elbow. The pain was incredible, and blood spouted everywhere. He fell back, shouting, “Healing!”

A hot blast of magic slammed into his back. There was a moment of even more searing pain as his wounded arm knit itself back together, and then he was able to lift and swing his mace once more.

Will swung his staff like a scythe, mowing down gobrats as they came at him. The weapon did not kill, however, and Eben jumped to the side again and again, using his sword in his off hand to finish off the creatures that Will dropped, temporarily stunned. The combination of sword and staff was actually quite effective.

But then something hit him lightly in the chest, and he heard the sound of breaking glass. “Alchem—” It was all he got out before he pitched forward and saw the ground coming up to meet him fast.

More heat. More pain. He blinked awake. No idea what had hit him before. No time to care. A gobrat was on top of him, long front teeth reaching for his face. Eben gave a mighty shove, and as he knocked the gobrat off him, he rolled to his hands and knees. Something heavy jumped on his back, but there was a shout from Will, and the weight disappeared. Eben scrambled to his feet fast, closing in on Will's right side.

“Alchemist in the woods!” he shouted. And the attacker would be cursed dangerous if he was allowed to lurk out there unseen and unchallenged, moving around the fight, lobbing deadly gases at him and his friends.

“Follow me, Raina!” Rynn cried from the other side of the fire. The pair worked its way left to close in on Will's other flank. Where was Sha'Li? Please let her be going after that cursed alchemist.

Another wave of gobrats came screaming out of the woods, claws high, and Eben, Will, and Rynn, standing tightly bunched, absorbed the brunt of the onslaught grimly. They protected one another's flanks with brutal efficiency. The gobrat attack broke, and the dozen or so standing creatures turned and ran for the woods.

“For the children!” Eben shouted, giving chase. Will picked up the cry and charged, as well. Rynn was quieter but also rushed forward. There was no time to check on the healers. He had to assume that they would come along, covering their backs. Indeed, he heard Rosana incant something behind him, and Raina called out some sort of congratulations to the gypsy.

The gobrats darted through the trees, and it was a mad dash to catch them, hacking them in the back one at a time as they scattered.

Will grunted somewhere off to his right and went down. Eben would have circled back to him, but a big gobrat was right in front of him. Eben took a swing with his mace, reaching as far forward as he could while he ran. Something sharp came down across his arm, all but severing it in two.
Not again
. The big gobrat turned, snarling, as blood poured out of Eben's arm in a hot gush down his side and right leg.

He stumbled. Took a few steps backward. “Healing,” he tried to shout. It came out a whisper.

Smiling viciously, the gobrat raised abnormally long claws and took a swipe at his face. Eben grabbed the mace out of his numb right hand with his left and threw it up desperately. The fine weapon deflected the blow, directing it harmlessly at a sapling to his right.

He began to feel light-headed, and the forest spun around him, tilting crazily. Something big and shiny crashed past him and slammed into the big gobrat. Rynn. Fists flying almost too fast to see, the paxan pounded the gobrat's face into ground meat and yelled something.

Eben fell. The wet ground felt cool against his cheek. Darkness raced forward, and he embraced it …

“Oww!” he complained. Gads, that healing had hurt. His whole right side felt on fire. He could barely feel his right hand.

“Get up,” a male voice bit out. “I could use a little help.”

Right. Battle. Rynn stood over him, frantically blocking the attacks of three gobrats who were almost on top of both of them. Eben scrambled to his feet, and fighting side by side he and Rynn were eventually able to dispatch the gobrats. Man, that paxan was deadly with his feet. Those crystal greaves of his made short work of everyone Rynn kicked with them.

“Alligators!” Will shouted from somewhere behind them.

Great. He and Rynn moved toward Will's voice, back-to-back and moving sideways. They crashed through the underbrush and stumbled into a knee-deep mudflat. They slogged through it before spying Will and Rosana, trapped against a tree and under attack from a pair of the reptiles.

Eben and Rynn charged forward. Rynn shocked Eben by actually landing on the back of the nearest alligator and grabbing its massive jaws in his hands. The creature twisted and rolled violently, but Rynn wrapped his legs around the beast and clung tenaciously to it as it thrashed.

Eben took a downward swing at the second alligator. His mace hit the tough hide and bit in; however, the flanges stuck in the base of the beast's spine. The alligator gave a violent swing of his tail, and Eben all but lost his grip on his mace before the weapon finally came free. Will whacked the alligator's jaw with his staff as Eben swung again. This time the mace caught the softer flesh of the alligator's belly, and the beast roared in rage. Will jumped forward, and using his belt dagger, he thrust it down with both hands into a spot just behind the big reptile's skull.

The alligator went still. Eben spun to help Rynn, but the paxan lay prone on the ground, bleeding out from a terrible gash in his side. His intestines were visible, and he was clearly mortally wounded.

“Raina!” Eben shouted at the top of his lungs.

She came running through the trees, her hands lit up like torches, her white tabard glowing in the night. She fell to her knees beside Rynn and laid her hands directly on the terrible wound. Huge amounts of magical energy flowed outward from her hands into the paxan, and Eben looked away in distaste as the fleshed knitted before his eyes.

Sha'Li materialized out of the dark, breathing hard. “That way they've fled, and the alchemist with them. Wounded him I did, but killed him I did not.”

“C'mon,” Eben called to the others. Will took off after him, but Rynn was a little slower to rise. Raina was still healing him as the paxan climbed to his feet and regained his bearings. Eben saw no more of the paxan then, for he was off and running through the trees again, following Sha'Li as she flew through the undergrowth, leaped over rivulets, and circled wide around mudflats, clearly at home in this terrain.

Without her, they'd never have moved fast enough to catch up to the fleeing gobrats. But all of a sudden, they emerged into an open area under the canopy of trees. On the far side of the clearing, a thicket of vines and brambles formed a wall. Against it, six gobrats huddled in a tight phalanx, snapping and snarling. Behind them stood a human with an oddly glowing left eye.

As Eben looked on, the man's features shifted and transformed, his nose lengthening to a sharp point and long, yellow teeth emerging from his lips. His body deformed and hunched over, and long claws emerged from his fists. Humans did
not
have claws like that.

“Were-rat,” Rynn called from behind them. “Beware of poison in his bite!”

Hopefully, Raina had come with them and was not still back at the fire, singing camp songs and healing all the gobrats they'd just dropped. No time to think on that now. The last of the vile creatures who'd murdered that family stood just across the clearing.

“For the children,” Will snarled their rallying cry, advancing at a determined walk toward the clustered rats.

For the children, indeed. Eben gripped his mace firmly and moved forward, coldly gauging which gobrat he would gut first on his way to killing that were-rat. These gobrats were eminently more disciplined than the previous ones they'd fought. Or maybe it was something about being cornered that made them fight with such ferocity and focus.

Eben figured that he, Will, Rynn, and Sha'Li were about evenly matched with the six gobrats before them. Thankfully, Raina moved in behind them just as the alchemist began throwing gas globes at them. As quickly as he could injure them, she was able to heal them. It was not a comfortable fight, being struck by damage from the front and painfully sharp healing from behind, but it worked.

One gobrat fell, and then another. A third fell, and Eben and his companions abruptly had the upper hand in the fight as they gained a numerical advantage. They pressed forward, starting to swing for the alchemist. Eben nicked the fellow's cheek with the tip of his sword, and Will got in a good blow on the were-rat's casting shoulder. But then a strange thing happened. The were-rat stepped back against the wall of vines, brambles, and brush … and disappeared.

Confused, Eben had to yank his mace up to block a vicious swing he'd nearly missed seeing in his distraction wondering where the were-rat had gone. Focusing again on the foe at hand, he made short work of the wounded gobrat, using both sword and mace to crowd the creature against the wall of thorns while thrusting and chopping with both weapons.

“Where'd he go?” Will demanded.

Eben glanced around, and all the gobrats lay dead at their feet. Rynn was examining the barrier before them, and Eben followed suit, poking it experimentally with his sword. Thicker than the length of his mace, the wall was at least ten feet high and looked woven of living materials.

Will closed his eyes, concentrating on who knew what. Communing with that tree lord in his head, most likely. Mayhap Bloodroot would know how to pass through the barrier. Raina reached down toward one of the gobrats, hand glowing, and Rynn put a restraining hand on her arm.

“Justice has been served, White Heart. Do not undo it,” the paxan said formally.

“You don't have the right to make that call,” Raina snapped at Rynn.

“Actually, I do.”

Eben frowned. What did that mean? Raina looked equally startled. By what right did the paxan administer high justice? Such a thing was reserved for high-ranking nobles.

Rynn turned away from Raina as if he did not wish to discuss it anymore and instead moved over beside Eben to ask, “Is your sword silvered?”

“Yes. It is.” At Aurelius's urging, Eben had had his weapon coated in the expensive metal the last time he'd returned to Dupree. The solinari had been good enough to pay for it, too.

“Good. It typically takes silver to hurt were-creatures.”

Eben shifted the mace to his off hand and gripped his long sword, with its shining silvered blade, tightly in his right hand.

“Tracks leading away from yon thorn wall,” Sha'Li murmured, squatting on her haunches to examine the ground. She must have picked up the were-rat's footprints.

“Where did he go?” Eben asked.

“They,” the lizardman girl corrected. “Three humans and an animal. Clawed feet it has.”

“The were-rat?” Eben asked, surprised. How could the creature have slipped past them without them seeing it?

“Nay. Not the were-rat. A reptile,” she corrected.

Frowning, Eben stared around the large clearing under the trees. Here and there, he spied small flashes of light. “What are those?”

Rynn looked up sharply. “What are what?”

“Those bits of light. There. And there.” He pointed at them.

“I see nothing,” Rynn replied.

Eben strode toward one of the lights. Glowing a faint reddish color, he leaned down to pick up its source, a narrow shard of stone lying on the ground. As his fist closed around it, shock rolled through him. He knew what this was. What on Urth was it doing here? He moved toward another light, this time picking up a silvery gray crystal.

“What are you doing?” Rynn asked.

Eben held out his open palm. “Do these appear to glow to you?”

“No, Eben. They are just bits of rock. Are you feeling all right?”

“They're elemental shards. They're scattered all over this area.”

“What would something like that be doing here?”

“No idea. But I know what I see and feel.”

“Let's go back to the others and show them.” On their way back to the others, Rynn fished two potions out of his pouch and passed one to him. “Drink this. It will protect you against an alchemical attack.”

Eben downed the potion as he followed the paxan back to where the others were gathered before the impenetrable wall. He held out the stones to Raina. “Do you see magic on these stones?” he demanded.

She stared at the rocks and then at him. “I see nothing.”