Storm Surge, page 2
He froze as he made out movement in the shadows ahead of him. The clouds parted overhead, allowing enough moonlight to stream down for Jonmarc to make out the form of whatever was watching him. It was big, too big for a dog, and too large even for a wolf. The shape was wrong for a big cat.
The shadow shifted, and a pair of glowing red eyes fixed their gaze on Jonmarc in the instant before the darkness moved.
Jonmarc's sword cut an arc through the night, but met only air. He heard the beast snarl, heard the snick of teeth, and felt claws tear through the sleeve of his coat. He dropped and rolled, coming up with his sword poised defensively, ready to gut the beast if it came at him.
The red eyes regarded him for a moment, then the beast sprang forward and a massive paw swiped for his throat. Jonmarc ducked, throwing up his left arm defensively, and bit back a cry as claws raked across his skin. He could smell the beast's breath, a mixture of an old grave and a kill left too long in the sun. Footsteps sounded, and Jonmarc heard Trent calling his name.
"Over here! Watch yourself--there's a wild animal!" Jonmarc warned.
In the moonlight, Jonmarc could make out the beast clearly. It had the build of a wolf, but much larger, with powerful front shoulders and a massive head with strong jaws, unlike any creature Jonmarc had seen. Baleful red eyes stared at Jonmarc, and the snarl became a deep rumble.
The beast advanced, and Jonmarc swung again. To his horror, the blade sliced through the beast without meeting solid bone or flesh.
A howl echoed in the night air, more chilling than anything Jonmarc had ever heard. Jonmarc held his sword defiantly, knowing that if the blade couldn’t slow the beast, there was nothing to keep it from attacking again. His arm throbbed from the gashes, pulsing with his heartbeat.
Trent rounded the corner of the barn, and the beast's huge head swung to stare at him in the instant before Trent opened the shutters on his lantern, flooding the side of the barn with light.
The beast vanished.
Jonmarc did not move, staring into the darkness where the beast had been just an instant before, holding his sword like a pike, his wounded arm clutched close against his body.
"What in the name of the Crone was that?" Trent asked, shaken. He took in Jonmarc's bloody sleeve. "Sweet Chenne, are you hurt?"
"What's going on out here?" Linton stomped up, splashing mud with every footstep, and behind him were Corbin and two of the wagon drivers, each carrying sturdy wooden poles.
Jonmarc struggled to his feet, still breathing hard. "We heard a growl, and saw something moving in the shadows," he said, still scanning the darkness for threat. "Trent and I split up to circle the barn."
"Did you see anything?" Linton demanded.
"I saw movement, but I never got a look at whatever was out there," Trent said.
Jonmarc hesitated, wondering if they would believe him. "Whatever it was came after a piece of you, m'boy," Linton said, eyeing Jonmarc's wounded arm. "You must have seen something."
"It was big, and dark," Jonmarc said. "Like a wolf, but more powerful. And it had red eyes."
"Red eyes?" Linton mused. He looked down at Jonmarc's sword. "It got close enough to do that to you, and you didn't get in a good strike with your sword?"
Jonmarc met Linton's gaze. "My blade went right through it, like shadow."
"He needs to see a healer," Trent said, stepping up beside Jonmarc. "Whatever it was is gone now."
Linton stared a moment longer at the bloody gashes on Jonmarc's arm, and nodded. "Aye. Let's get that treated before it goes bad." He turned to Corbin and the other men.
"I want four men out here until morning. Two teams of two. Each pair stays together. Open the shutters on your lanterns. I don't care who sees us here. I'll answer to an angry farmer, but I don't want whatever did that," he said with a nod toward Jonmarc, "coming around again and bringing its pack."
Trent steered Jonmarc into the barn and fended off the press of curious gawkers. It seemed as if everyone was awake now, and a buzz of nervous excitement hummed through the crowd.
They picked their way across the crowded floor toward where the healers had set up a place to treat the injured from their sodden trek through the storm.
"What do we have here?" The woman was in her middle years, young enough that most of her hair was still dark and old enough for it to be liberally flecked with gray. Her green robe meant she was a trained healer, not just a hedge witch with a talent for herbs and potions.
"Something attacked him while we were on watch," Trent said, nudging Jonmarc to have a seat on a large piece of firewood.
The healer bent over Jonmarc and tore his ripped sleeve open to expose four ragged cuts. "You're lucky whatever it was only got your arm," she said, frowning as he looked at Jonmarc's bloody sleeve.
"Can you help him, Ada?" Trent asked. "It's bad, but I've shown up looking worse."
Ada chuckled. "That you have, and we've put you right. Give me a moment to put an ointment together. That should keep it from going bad, and take away some of the pain."
The healer bustled off, rummaging in her packs. She withdrew several packs of dried herbs, a few seedpods, and a cruet of oil, as well as a morter and pestle. "Go fetch me some water, Trent," she said in a tone that implied she was old friends with the blacksmith. "Something clean enough to drink, if you please. We'll not want the cuts to go sour."
Jonmarc felt flushed, and his heart pounded in his ears. Before he had taken his turn at watch, he would have said that the inside of the drafty barn was only somewhat warmer than outside, despite the press of bodies. Now, he was sweating as if it were summer. His throat was dry, and he felt lightheaded. The gashes in his arm sent stabbing pain up into his shoulder and chest, and it was getting harder to breathe.
He saw Ada turn toward him, and saw her lips move as if she were speaking, but he heard nothing. The world spun, and he toppled to the floor.
Nightmare images seized Jonmarc as he descended into unconsciousness. Flames surrounded him, and the stench of burning flesh filled the air. The memories took him, like they did most nights. He glimpsed faces in the smoke, the images of those he loved, and those who took them from him. His father, lying dead in the street with the other village men and the gloating raiders who had killed them. The first raider he killed--the first man he had ever killed--and the sound of the man's dying rasp: May you lose everyone you love to the flames and the Dark Lady take your soul!
The smoke shifted, and newer memories, fresher pain, replaced what had gone before. He saw the corpse-pale face of a vayash moru mage, heard his voice offering gold for a simple errand, and shivered, knowing what came next. Flames and death, streets littered with the bodies of his friends and neighbors, and glimpses of the gray-skinned monsters that killed them. He saw Shanna lying in a pool of blood, felt the dead weight as he turned her over in his arms, and in her unfocused eyes, he saw the acknowledgement of the raider's curse. Then the darkness and the monsters closed in around him, and he fought to free himself ...
"Easy now!" Someone caught his wrists in a strong grip, keeping him from landing a punch. Jonmarc struggled to awaken, dragged back toward the nightmares from the potions that dulled the pain.
"Does he wake like this often?" A woman's voice sounded close at hand. Not his mother. Not Shanna. But someone familiar, maybe even safe.
"More times than you'd want to know," a man replied. "He's woken up fighting so many times that he's thrashed most of the other apprentices before he comes back to himself. That's why he's got a tent to himself, with the supplies. No one fancies getting a black eye or bruises just for sharing a tent." Jonmarc recognized Trent's voice, and focused on slowing his breathing, letting go of the panic that always remained after the dreams had gone.
"Do you know what he sees in his dreams?" the woman asked, a note of concern in her voice. Ada, Jonmarc thought, grasping the name from his feverish memories.
"I don't ask, and he won't say," Trent said. "Linton might know, but Linton keeps a lot of secrets. Whatever happened must have been pretty bad."
Ada sighed. "A mind-healer might help, but you won't find one of those--a real one--outside a palace or one of the big manors."
"He's still young," Trent said. "Time heals a lot of wounds."
"Unless they're poisoned," Ada said. "Poison lingers."
They might have said more, but the potions pulled Jonmarc back into the darkness. This time, the nightmares stayed at bay, though Jonmarc could sense the dreams were there, beyond the threshold, ready to overwhelm him.
"Don’t move." Trent's voice cut through the fog in Jonmarc's mind. Jonmarc still felt feverish, but the stabbing pain was gone. It hurt to breathe, as if he had taken in great lungfuls of frigid air, and his whole body felt leaden.
"You're lucky that Linton hires good healers," Ada said. "If he didn't, you'd be dead."
"Cuts ... weren't that deep," Jonmarc managed through parched lips.
"Don't have to be deep when they're poisoned," Ada replied.
"Why would they be poisoned?" Jonmarc paused as Trent lifted him up enough to sip water from a cup.
Ada came over to check on Jonmarc's bandages. He realized that he was lying on a cot, and that daylight glowed from between the boards in the barn's walls.
"Whatever got you wasn't natural," she said, spreading more ointment on his wounds. The mixture smelled like licorice and rotted fruit. Jonmarc caught a glimpse of his skin beneath the ointment, and saw that the gashes were closing into raised, pink scars.
"What do you mean, "natural?""
Ada met his gaze matter-of-factly. "That thing in the darkness, it was magic. A rather nasty piece of work."
Immediately, Jonmarc thought of the red-robed mage who had hired him to find a cursed talisman, a bargain he had failed to keep, but one that had cost him everything he held dear. That mage was out there somewhere, and likely to be quite unhappy with him.
"Magic?"
Ada nodded. "If it hadn't been for the poison, I would have accepted the idea that it was a wolf or a cat and that the darkness played a trick on your eyes. But the men have been over the land outside the barn since sunup, and there aren't any tracks, none at all."
Her eyes narrowed. "Something tore up your arm with poisoned claws. Linton said you told him that your sword went through it like a shadow. The beast didn't leave tracks." She shook her head. "Sounds like magic to me."
"Why would anyone send magic like that against the caravan?" Trent asked, sitting back on his heels.
Ada shrugged. "Might not be about us. Could be a curse on this barn, or on the farmer who owns it. We might have just blundered into it."
Jonmarc looked away, sure his guilt was clear in his face. Or it could be an angry undead mage with a score to settle, he thought. By the Dark Lady! I don't want to put the rest of the caravan in danger for my mistake.
"What kind of a mage would it take to summon a beast like that?" Trent asked.
Ada considered his question for a moment. "I don't think it would take someone with a lot of power, or even a lot of knowledge. With magic, often it's not the difficulty that stops a mage from doing a working. It's the mage's honor--or lack of it."
"Why send that kind of beast against the guards?"
Ada grimaced. "If the intention was to cause panic, maybe whoever it was didn't expect us to post a guard. I doubt either of you were the target." She looked out across the caravan workers who were gathering up their belongings from the night before so they could get back on the road.
"Can Jonmarc travel?" Trent asked with a worried glance.
"I've cleared a spot for him in one of the wagons," Ada replied. She interpreted the look on Jonmarc's face and smiled. "Just for a while, until I'm sure the poultice took care of the poison. By tomorrow, you'll be good as new."
By late morning, Jonmarc insisted on walking. His arm was still sore, but nothing like the pain right after the attack. Within a candlemark of rejoining Trent, so many of his curious companions had asked Jonmarc to tell his story that Trent finally pulled him to a different part of the line and silenced inquiries with a dark glance.
A steady rain fell, though without the wind that had made the previous day's journey so treacherous. "We're coming to a fork in the road up ahead," Trent told Jonmarc. "Linton says we can get back on the road toward Huntwood, maybe even make up lost time if this damned rain lets up."
Abruptly, the procession stopped. Jonmarc and Trent were in the middle of the long line of caravan workers, too far from the front to see what had brought them to a halt. The wet and miserable travelers exchanged questioning glances, then began to speculate on the cause for their sudden stop.
"Stay here," Trent said, and began to slip up through the line. After a while, he returned with a worried look on his face.
"Trees are down across the route Linton wanted to take," Trent said. "We're going to have to go a different way. Linton sent scouts to take a look ahead."
"I don't like this," Jonmarc said quietly, with a glance over his shoulder to assure he would not be overheard. "First, unusually bad weather. Then what happened last night, and now this?"
"I don't like it either, but Linton's got to get us off the road, and if the route's blocked, we'll have to find another way," Trent said. He signaled for Jonmarc to stay where he was, and wove through the procession once more, but this time, Jonmarc saw Trent stop to talk with Corbin, Russ and several other men. They were too far away for Jonmarc to make out what they said, but the other men nodded, their expressions serious. Trent wound his way back, pausing to exchange a few words with Ada, who turned to make a comment to the other healers.
"What's going on?" Jonmarc asked.
"Nothing--yet. But we're all agreed that there are too many coincidences. We won't be the only ones keeping our eyes open."
They slogged on, eating a cold lunch from rations that had been distributed before they left the barn: dried sausage, a hunk of cheese, a piece of hard bread. Jonmarc forced himself to eat, finding that he had little appetite. He could not shake a sense of foreboding, and from the grim look on Trent's face and Corbin's terse manner, Jonmarc guessed that at least some of the others found cause for concern.
"There's a bridge up ahead, over the creek," Trent said as they hiked along the muddy, rutted road. The rain had stopped, but a cold dampness hung in the air, and the ground was slick and covered with puddles deep enough to challenge all but the highest boots.
"Then what?" Jonmarc asked. He had seen maps of Margolan once or twice, but he remembered few of the details, save that the Borderlands where he grew up was quite a distance from the palace, and even further from the border with Principality.
Trent looked around them, taking in the low rolling hills and the lengthening shadows. "On the other side of the creek, the land flattens out. There should be a town where we can resupply, and then Linton still means to make for Huntwood to set up the festival for the lord of the manor."
The group gathered along the banks of the creek, a swollen, rushing body of water Jonmarc would have called a small river. Given how badly their last attempt at fording a stream had gone, he was grateful for the security of a sturdy log bridge.
"If we're quick about crossing, we should reach Colshott before nightfall," Linton said. "We can replace what we lost in the flood, stock up on provisions, and get back on the road to Huntwood."
Jonmarc thought Linton looked ill at ease. The road they had traveled from the barn forked just ahead. One branch crossed the creek; the other headed into a stretch of forest. Many of the caravaners eyed the forest with suspicion. Thus far, the route Linton had chosen skirted the deep woods. While that meant they traveled in the open, it also made for wider roads, handy for the wagons and livestock. Open land also meant they could see if there were travelers or animals coming toward them. The forest might shelter them from the rain, but it also gave an advantage to wolves and other predators.
Linton called for the men who were not handling carts or livestock to go first across the bridge, and Jonmarc wondered if the caravan master was thinking of the attack the night before, hoping to secure the far bank before the wagons, women and animals crossed. Out of the corner of his eye, Jonmarc saw that Trent and Corbin had drawn back their cloaks to make it easier to draw their knives, and he did the same.
The bridge was as wide as the road, made of thick planks hewn from the trees at the forest's edge. The wood was gray with time and the bed of the bridge was worn with the passage of many travelers. Jonmarc's sense of foreboding grew as he stepped onto the bridge. Beneath them, the creek swirled past the bridge supports, carrying with it flotsam from the headwaters.
He took one cautious step and then another, but the bridge held. He and Trent and Corbin were in the rear of the group of nearly a dozen men selected to go first. Jonmarc glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the caravan that were awaiting their signal from the other side.
The bridge looked sturdy enough, but the men fanned out, spreading their weight equally across the span. Jonmarc paused, then chided himself when the others did not seem to hesitate.
With every step, the bridge felt more unsteady. He was almost a third of the way across when a loud snap reverberated in the air. He heard the wood groan as the planks underfoot began to buckle. Nails popped from the planks, and the timber railing broke off and tumbled down into the creek. Two men, and then three more, ran across to safety.
"It's gonna go!" Corbin yelled. Jonmarc, Trent and Corbin were closer to the caravan than to the other side of the bridge, and Jonmarc could see Linton shouting at them, fear clear in his expression.
"Run!" Trent shouted.
Some of the remaining men ran forward, intent on reaching the other side of the creek. The bridge twisted in the middle, wrenching the planks loose, and as the center fell, men fell screaming into the water below.
