The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (20 page)

Morfind looked over her shoulder as she did what looked like a dance-step with her hands at her waist at the base of the tree. She gave him a grin for an instant before she turned, leapt and ran
up
the trunk nearly as fast as she’d been dashing through the undergrowth, only the motion of her cloak visible at all. Before they passed her chosen redwood she was out of sight in the crown.

The dance had been unlatching and swinging out the climbing spurs
on her elf-boots—you could do that with the toe of the opposite foot, with practice—and putting on her climbing gloves. You couldn’t wear them all the time because the claws on the palms meant you couldn’t carry anything else. Malfind gave a panting whoop of joy and relief as they passed the tree.

“Go, Sis!”

Faramir reached over his shoulder. Just beside the quiver was the haft of a short folding grapnel, and reeved through the loop at the end of the shaft was the end of a long rope of thin strong cord, knotted every yard. The blades of the grapnel were spring-loaded, rather like a fancy umbrella’s ribs, though there were only three and they were short and stout.

He’d use the grapnel because redwood bark was up to a couple of feet thick, soft and dry and fibrous. That made it marvelous for everything from insulation to fishing floats, but it tore away far too easily for him to trust himself to a spur-and-claw climb like Morfind’s, not at speed, not when he couldn’t take the time to test each grip and foothold. She was lighter than he was; even so it had been odds-on a foot or hand would come loose fifty feet up, and big redwoods didn’t have branches to grab until just below their tops. Trying to do the same would be insanely risky for him, and outright impossible for Malfind.

The tines of the grapnel came out with a sharp metallic
click
. Faramir began whirling the instrument on the end of its rope as he ran, paying out to increase the speed. Ahead a redwood had fallen in some storm well before he was born, possibly before the Change. The great trunk lay moldering, but the nutrients it had released and the water around it meant that it was thickly grown with moss and ferns and the shoots of larger vegetation clawing for the light the giant’s fall had let penetrate. Beyond it was his goal, a living tree, but it had taken a scar from the same storm or perhaps a later fire. The opening in the bark had let fungus penetrate to the vulnerable sapwood, and a cavity grew. Eventually it might heal over, but right now there was a dark slit twenty feet up.

He leapt to the six-foot height of the log and cast with a looping overarm throw as soon as his feet planted solidly. The line paid out across the palm of his right hand, twisting behind the head of the grapnel like a
coil of smoke. One of the tines of the instrument clunked against the lip of the scar and Faramir’s throat clenched for the precious seconds already lost, but it spun into the hole and locked solidly in place when he slung his bow and gave it a two-handed tug.

“Clip and brace the line!” he called over his shoulder to Malfind as he ran towards the tree taking the rope in hand-over-hand to keep the tension on.

The other Ranger grabbed the end and snapped the fastener there to a loop on his belt. When Faramir reached the base Malfind was right behind him, and he knelt and braced the rope so that it didn’t fall flat against the trunk of the tree either. Faramir leapt, caught the line by a knot twelve feet from the ground and went up it in a writhing scramble, arm-over-arm lift and driven by the quick inchworm thrust of his legs. It bit at his callused palms, but each knot provided a good lifting point to be clamped between his boots. Though the rope was strong he didn’t want to test the set of the tines in wood against the combined weight of himself and his cousin and their gear. Having two men going up the rope would also make it sway enough that it would be slower than having each climb in succession.

He tumbled into the hollow and instantly turned, bracing a boot-sole against the grapnel to make sure it didn’t tear free. Malfind weighed nearly thirty pounds more than he did to start with, and there was the spear besides.

“Go!” he said, tossing aside his cloak and shield and unlimbering his bow.

The little cavity had contained human bones when the Dúnedain came, apparently some luckless victim of the Change who’d climbed there and then died of injuries or sickness or thirst. The Rangers had buried them, though without much ceremony; even then after nearly four decades there had still been too many to do otherwise, especially the resistant skulls, and you found them in the most astonishing places. Then they’d smoothed the interior, and left a few essentials like sealed glass and metal containers of water and hardtack and raisins, a bucket and so forth, checked and renewed regularly. If he could just get Malfind up here,
they’d be cramped but safe while the enemy ran for it. However long that took. Or until the gathering Dúnedain caught the Eaters.

He could hear the other Ranger wheezing as he climbed; the spear was over his back to free his hands, with the shaft thrust beneath the bandolier that held his quiver. Looking north Faramir could also see the thick column of black smoke rising from the woodshed at
Estolad Rhudaur.
It would be visible over half of Ithilien by now.

Just a moment more . . .

“Shit!”

A flicker of movement. He drew and shot, but half a dozen arrows came back; one thunked into the wood near the entrance to the hollow as he ducked back, the soot-darkened feathers brushing against his cheek. It would be like standing up against the bull’s-eye in a little kid’s target range. He stepped back into the opening, shot, ducked . . . he could see half a dozen Eaters and this time an arrow came right through the slit and chunked into the soft wood at the back of the little cave. He thought he’d hit one of the
yrch
, but that left far too many.

Aragorn son of Arathorn couldn’t have
fought
his way out of this situation, not with an elf-lord thrown in.

Malfind gave a bitten-off cry and the tension came off the rope. Instants later there was a muffled thud below as he struck the ground.

“Shit!”

Faramir dropped his bow—he’d need his hands for this—stepped out of the crack, turned in the air and caught the line. That jerked him to a halt, and nearly jerked his arm out of its socket, but it stabilized him long enough to get the rope between his crossed ankles. He wasn’t going to do his cousin any good with broken legs; he probably wasn’t going to do much good anyway, but . . .

The knots bumped between his boots as he came down in a controlled fall, getting out of the way of arrows as fast as he could. One went into the redwood above his head with a muffled thump, but that was the closest. Malfind was down at the bottom of the rope with one right through his thigh. The point came out just above his knee, with the fletching pointing down on the other side. It was bleeding badly; he
clutched it with his left hand and waved his knife with his right. It wobbled.

Faramir let go ten feet up and landed with a grunt at the impact that drove him into a crouch. As he steadied he’d already stripped the spear free of Malfind’s harness; his cousin gave a hoarse cry of pain at the way it wrenched him around, but there wasn’t time to be gentle. The
yrch
were charging, four of them with blades out. Behind them the big one, the Cut-Nose leader with the slight hitch in his stride, waved a double-bitted axe back the way he’d come and yelled in a thick gobbling dialect:

“Na! Ufukinrun, a’ puzzis! Na, na,
ufukinrun
!”

The four rushing at the two Rangers ignored him, squealing in their eagerness. Something else curved through the air; it was Morfind, swinging down from somewhere near at the end of her own climbing line, cutting a long arc and doing what his folk called a
flâd ’lân
.

“Lacho calad!
Drego morn!”
rang out in a hawk-shriek from above.

One of the Eaters whipped his head back to look over his shoulder as she let go of the rope and landed in a crouch. That gave Faramir time to snatch up Malfind’s shield and jerk the point of the spear up with the butt braced beneath the instep of his foot. One of the Eaters ran right on to it with a smack that vibrated all the way down the shaft and the Ranger’s hand and boot. The broad point ripped his body from above the navel and came out his back, carving a palm-broad slice through several major organs and veins and arteries as it went. He looked down at the shaft, goggling, then shrieked and grabbed at it with both hands and collapsed backward.

Faramir was already whipping out his brush-sword as he let the spear go and bounced up. He blocked one blow with the shield, another with the sword, a flat cracking sound and an unmusical crash. Something else ripped along his ribs, hard enough to make him gasp, but the mail lining of the jerkin stopped the edge reaching for his guts. Morfind was dancing about another
orch
with a long knife in one hand and her tomahawk in the other. . . .

The Cut-Nose leader came bounding forward, screaming in rage—at his own followers, probably. He wasn’t very tall but broad enough to look
squat, with thick scarred arms and a network of white tissue on his face that lifted a corner of his mouth even when he wasn’t shouting. Morfind spun and slashed at his leg; he hopped over it and cut with impossible speed for the heavy weapon he bore. She flew backward, a plume of blood lifting from her face like an arch of red feathers. The backswing came down and hit Faramir’s borrowed shield so hard that it spun out of his hand with the frame cracked across and a section hanging loose. He tried to stab at the ridged belly of the
orch
, and this time something hit his helmet.

The ground hit him next. There was a sound like thunder through the earth. Blackness.

•   •   •

Are these the Halls?
Faramir Kovalevsky thought.

That would be interesting.

I could talk with
Hiril
Astrid, and maybe they’ll let me do some sightseeing in Valinor before I move on to wherever it is Mortal Men go.

Then he stifled a scream; mostly stifled it, and the rest came out as a dry croak. He
hurt
too much to be dead, unless his people were extremely wrong about the afterlife. Though it was very dark indeed.

His eyes fluttered open. There was a tube down his nose and throat; he coughed and choked as it was withdrawn.

Right. My eyes were
closed
. That’s why there wasn’t any light.

It wasn’t dark, though it was after sunset and the soft yellow-blue glow of the lamp still pained his eyes. Faramir recognized where he was, as much by the cool, somehow bright scent as anything else. It was the infirmary at the Eryn Muir. Like most buildings and all dwellings in that station it was well up in one of the great trees, built in a circle round the trunk. His head hurt, with a throbbing that went in from his temples in time to his pulse. His neck hurt too, and his ribs.

There was nothing that
didn’t
hurt; some parts just hurt
more
.

A hand reached gently under the back of his head and he whimpered. He hadn’t been conscious of anyone else’s presence until now, which showed how out of it he was. It was Ioreth, the senior Ranger medic here, a woman of about his mother’s age with close-cut graying brown hair and a ready smile, though she was grave now.

“Here,” she said, examining his pupils for an instant and then holding a cup to his lips. “You’ve been out for more than two days.”

He drank a little, coughed—which hurt too—and then took some more. It was rainwater collected as it dripped through the boughs above and tasted faintly of them. Presumably water had been going down that tube, but his mouth and throat seemed to drink the water like dust in an ancient tomb.

It also seemed to start his mind up again.
Is there anything missing?
he thought, with rising panic.
Am I crippled? Is that why it hurts so bad?

“You’re all right, Man of the West,” Ioreth said. “You had a concussion, and your neck was sprained, and there are contusions and cuts and bruises. You’re very lucky there wasn’t neurological damage.”

Something in her expression suggested an unspoken codicil:
as far as I can tell. So far
.

“The others got there just in time, a mounted party. Most of the
yrch
got away, though.”

He turned his head, very slowly and carefully. The bed to his left was empty, blankets tight and brown linen sheet neatly folded above. The one to his right was occupied. Most of Morfind’s face was covered in bandages, but he recognized her anyway. Her mother Mary sat on the other side of the bed, holding her hand and talking softly. She and his mother Ritva had been identical twins, until Mary lost her left eye fighting a magus of the CUT on the Quest; the black eyepatch on its silk cord had been familiar all his life.

The single bright blue eye looked at him for an instant. He rolled his head back and looked up at the whitewashed beams and planks of the ceiling.

“Malfind?” he said; his throat felt a little more like working.

Ioreth shook her head. Faramir winced again when he heard a stool clatter on the planks beside his bed. A hand gripped his, long and hard and careful in its strength.

“Faramir.”

He looked up into the beautiful, damaged face of his mother’s sister. Wisps of sun-faded blond hair haloed it, too fair for the first gray threads to show.

“So sorry—” he began.

“Faramir, I know everything that happened. There was absolutely nothing more you could have done. Vairë weaves all threads.”

Something relaxed a little in the back of his head, and that let the pain wash over him again. It wasn’t that which made his eyes fill and slowly drip tears, though.

“
Ú-belin cuina . . .
I may not live while the slayer of my kinsman walks beneath the stars,” he whispered.

Lips touched his forehead. “Ritva is coming, but you should sleep now,” she said. “You’re going to need all your strength. We all will.”

Ioreth was back. A sting in his arm. Soft black washed over the world, life falling very slowly.