Wolf Soldier, page 21
part #1 of Lightraider Academy Series
They’d only walked a few paces apart when Teegan hurried back to him and startled him with a hug. “I’m sorry we fought, but I do hope you’ll be careful.” She pressed her cheek against his and whispered, “Watch Kara.”
Connor pulled himself back to arm’s length. “You know I will.”
The high ridge afforded Connor’s party a view of the main road north, climbing out of a valley to their northeast. Kara pointed it out as they walked. “The next town on that road is Ashbarrow, and if Hal’s map is accurate, your waterfall lies somewhere in the woods due east of it, though I know of no rivers there.”
“Perhaps it’s part of a stream,” he said. “A small cataract.”
But Lee shook his head. “I know what I saw. The waterfall is big. And beautiful.”
“Whatever you say.” Kara ducked a dormant vine instead of brushing it aside.
Connor quickstepped around a tree to catch up and walk beside her. “I’m sorry about Teegan. She’s just cautious.”
“She doesn’t want me getting too close to you. I get it. A girl has to protect her own.”
“No. That’s not what I . . . What?”
Kara gave him a nose-wrinkled grin. “You should see your face. But don’t tell me about Teegan. I’d rather know about you.” They continued on, and she slipped between a pair of saplings, fur coat ghosting past without brushing so much as a flake of snow from their delicate branches. “How did you make your leap from the road? Some feat of lightraider sorcery?”
“There is no lightraider sorcery, only gifts from the Rescuer. But I learned to leap through boredom, jumping against the boulders in our family pasture to pass the time.”
“A pasture. So I take it you were a shepherd before you were a knight.”
Lee leaned out to look at her from the other side of Connor, frowning beneath his spectacles. “You couldn’t tell from the crook? What about you? I heard you speak of hunting, or was that only your brehnan’s work.”
The mention of Kara’s brehnan slowed her steps. “Yes. Liam and Keir, mostly, until the mocktree and Nesat and all the trouble.”
Connor flared his eyes at the scribe for bringing up her sorrows. “Forgive us, Kara. We didn’t mean to—”
“It’s all right. They’re gone. I’ll have to get used to it.”
Soon—too soon—they came within sight of the barkhide camps, where the westernmost tents stood on both sides of the road. The troll’s recruits had stopped a wagon, inspecting the driver’s wares.
Kara clutched the jewel at her neck. “They’ll take what they want. Liam told me this is how it goes in the north when a mocktree musters an army. His barkhides grow drunk with power and find fault with every journey writ.”
Connor gave her arm a gentle touch to keep her moving. “Then I’m glad we have you to guide us around such dangers. What can you tell us of wood trolls?”
She bit her lip as if he’d asked a difficult question. Didn’t she know her own land? “Wood trolls are brought to life by dragon sorcery,” she said. “They recruit armies to serve a dragon’s purpose, though I’ve heard the barkhides of two trolls may fight each other.”
Connor waited. “Is that all?”
“They’re . . . corky fellows?”
Perhaps the Aladoth didn’t learn about these creatures—just endured them. Connor hopped up on a fallen log, holding his arms out for balance. “Lee. Tell her.”
“Wood troll. Oaksquid. Known in the uplands as a mocktree. They travel on their roots like tentacled sea creatures—can also use them as whips. Mocktrees prey on the disaffected, promising power but making them mindless drones.” Lee screwed up his face in disgust. “And they spread this mind infection by filling the air with spores from their rotting innards.”
Connor hopped down at the log’s end and pulled a green rag from his kit. He tossed it to Kara and tugged at a similar rag tied about his neck. “If we see one, put this over your mouth and nose. For the spores.”
Kara shook her head. “What spores? Mocktrees use song sorcery.”
“The song is part of it,” Lee said. “But according to our studies, mocktrees are—”
“Studies.” Kara stepped ahead of them and paused in a narrow space between two large boulders, blocking the way. She pointed a finger at Lee but directed her glare at Connor. “Does all your knowledge come from books? What sort of knights are you? Have you never faced these creatures before?”
“We’ve faced goblins,” Lee told her. “And an orc. Two orcs, if you count Master Jairun’s—”
Connor kicked the scribe’s heel to quiet him. “We’re cadets, Kara.” From the cast of her brow, he saw she didn’t know that word. “It means we’re still in training.”
56
Kara tromped downhill through the snow. “I should go to Nesat right now.”
“Nesat?” Connor hurried after her.
“The granog.” She spoke as if the question exposed him as a complete idiot. “I should turn you in—all of you. I said to myself, ‘Kara, if you’re turning traitor against the dragons, at least you’ll be with a pack of legendary magic knights who can protect you.’ But you’re not knights. You’re . . .” She looked back at them both, teeth clenched. “I don’t know what you are.”
“Cadets,” Lee offered. “Think of it like a knight-to-be. A book-knight.”
He wasn’t helping. Connor caught up to her. “We are in the Lightraider Order. And we never said we were full knights.”
“You didn’t say you weren’t. You let me think it. And that makes you a liar.”
Was she right? She’d called them knights at the cottage, and he hadn’t corrected her. Even so, how could she think it? “Look at us, Kara. We’re a bit young to be seasoned warriors?”
She flung her arms at him. “Again, you show your ignorance. In Tanelethar, we have fighters and sorcerers who train from birth. Children of the Scarlet Moon have claimed rule over whole cantons before their fourteenth birthdays.”
She kept tromping onward, downhill, and Connor feared she might get too close to the road. “Please, stop,” he called after her. “I’m sorry.”
“You will be. Just wait until—”
Her threat ended in a sharp cry as a short creature in armor too large for its body sprang from a grouping of pines and knocked Kara to the ground. It dragged her several paces by the hair, then held its long knife to her throat to stop her from kicking. “Just wait until what, my dear? Wait until what? What, what?”
Connor’s heart stopped. A goblin. Where had he come from?
Lee’s hand went to his bow, but Connor signaled him to let it be. He gave his thigh a subtle pat, then advanced one step at a time, crook poised like a walking stick. “Leave her alone. We’ve troubled no one here.”
“Trouble, young shaggycap? Oh, you mean trouble. Trouble. Yes. We saw you sneaking.”
By the look in Kara’s eyes, Connor might as well have been the one holding the knife to her throat. To her, his falsehood had done this, making her likely to feel alone and lean on her own strength for escape. If she tried, the goblin would slit her throat.
“Sneaking. Sneaking,” the goblin went on. It wore a scarf around its neck, on top of its armor, and human boots with the toes cut out for its claws. The creature pinched its eyes half closed. “We see less in the day. See less. See less. But we saw you on the ridge with the sun behind. Foolish shaggycap. Sneaking in the woods, but sneaking poorly. Poorly. Poorly.” It bent its knobby head straight down to leer at Kara. “Now, now, little slenderstalk, I think you’ll be the first to paint the snow.”
At Connor’s signal, Lee’s hand flew from his hip. A double-bladed sikari entered the goblin’s forehead beneath its ridiculous helm. It fell over, jerking one booted foot, then lay still.
Lee scanned the woods. “It said we, Connor.”
“I know.” He kicked the body toward the scribe so he could recover the sikari. “More will come.”
When Connor tried to help Kara up, she shoved him away and stood up on her own. “Oh? Is that what your studies tell you?”
“Yes. But in this, I also have experience.” Connor remembered Tehpa’s eyes, tinted yellow by the goblin infection. He remembered his words too. “They hunt in packs.”
57
The spyglass confirmed Teegan’s fears about the most direct route to Maidenwood Grove. Too many camps. Too much risk.
A plateau of sparse pines and ash formed the last quarter league of the western approach. From the plateau’s eastern cliff, a series of wooden ramps and platforms climbed into the treetop village. The elamwoods’ giant trunks dropped out of sight into the valley below—a wondrous sight. But as much as she loved seeing ancient Sil Elamar still alive as a bustling town, everything else she saw through the spyglass filled her heart with dread. “We’ll never make it through. The trees are too thin for cover, and the camps are everywhere. Plus, the barkhides are checking writs and hassling travelers at the gate of that wooden road.”
Tiran, lying flat beside her, raised his chin from his forearms. “I could have told you as much without the glass.”
“Perhaps. But you’re not seeing everything.” Teegan settled her lens on a cluster of tents and cooking fires. Goblins hobbled and shuffled among the humans. Two of the fungal creatures tilted their heads with quick movements, enthralled while a young man drew a flaming brand from a fire and pressed it against his own neck. He clenched his teeth but made no visible cry. She winced and lowered the glass, unable to look any longer. “The barkhides are hurting themselves.”
“I read about this,” Dag said. “The guardian Master Carthia spent weeks hiding near the camps at Sil Belomar and rescued many victims of the mocktree Tegbat, called Oakwither. The recruits burn their skin to make it rough, like bark—thus, barkhides—and they drive stakes through their arms to make weapons, just as the mocktrees do.”
Tiran had taken the glass to look for himself. “Except a troll’s arm is formed of dragon-corrupted wood. A stake will do it little harm. Without treatment those barkhides will lose their limbs or die.” He rose to his knees. “We should find this Krokwode and kill him, before he does any more damage—release these Aladoth from its hold.”
“That’s not how it works,” Teegan said. “Didn’t you listen to our lessons? Killing a dark creature does nothing to restore its victims. That requires medicine and counsel. And our counsel falls on deaf ears if the patient doesn’t recognize the authority of its author, the Rescuer.”
“Why do you think Master Carthia spent so long in Sil Belomar?” Dag added. “He needed time to show the barkhides the Rescuer’s love. Once he destroyed the troll, a dragon came, forcing him to flee with those he’d rescued. Many who failed to listen were left behind.”
They backed down the plateau’s western slope into the thicker pines and huddled around the map, while Aethia looked on from the branches above. Teegan held the red glass over the parchment. “Look here. Hal drew a gully to the south in his hidden ink. It merges with the valley below Maidenwood Grove, where a stream feeds their giant roots.” The red lens did more than make the gully visible. It gave it depth and dimension. Teegan could see it rise with the higher terrain to the south, then fall sharply into the elamwood valley.
“You know something about the valley, don’t you,” Dag said. “You meant to go there all along.”
Tiran answered for her. “Our mehma told us the Rapha made a home in that valley to care for the elamwoods. They carved steps into the tree trunks so they could commune with the town above. But the Rapha are long gone, Teegs.”
“The steps aren’t, any more than Vy Asterlas was gone from Dayspring Forest. And if the lower route to Maidenwood Grove is just as forgotten, I’ll wager it’s unguarded.”
Hal proved a skilled mapmaker, and the three had no trouble finding the gully entrance. Though barely wide enough for Dag, and thick with brush and pines, the gully offered plenty of cover. But good cover meant slow going. When they pushed out through heavy thickets near the valley’s southern end, the day was mostly spent, and the sheer western wall blocked the late sun.
Dag swept dead leaves from his cloak and loosened its clasp. “At least it’s warmer down here.”
“A trick of the steep terrain,” Teegan said. “And this stream, perhaps. I think it’s warm like the Gathering.” Most streams they’d seen since Trader’s Knoll were crusted with ice, or completely frozen over. But the stream running down the center of this valley had no ice at all.
A stone path appeared from under the dark soil, and then a low wall grew beside it, and another to hem in the stream. Looking north, Teegan saw torches flaring to life high in the elamwoods. “We’re almost there. This must be the start of the irrigation system the Rapha built. Mehma said there were many plazas and chapels among the water channels—bridges formed from the giant roots. You’ll see.”
But they could see little in the failing light. And the closer they came to the great elamwood trunks, the less the valley looked like a place any Rapha might love.
Broken water channels had flooded the paths and courtyards, turning them into a mire of mud and black water. Crumbling statues overcome by yellow-green moss lingered among the willows and ferns like grave markers. And soon, the same moss covered every stone.
Aethia seemed ill at ease. She flitted among dead pines and ash dripping with goat’s beard, refusing to stay at any perch too long.
“Well this is cheery,” Dag said.
Teegan found a huge, brittle leaf lying on the wall beside the path. “This is an everleaf. Or was. But Mehma told me they never fall.” She looked up at the village, closer now but still far above them. “This mire is making the trees sick. Sil Elamar is dying.”
“The mire doesn’t concern me.” Tiran bent to examine a gray trail of dead moss. “Not as much as this.” He tore up a fistful, and the strands turned to powder in his fingers. Ahead, more ribbons of gray crossed one another and climbed the wall like snail trails, except far wider. “The moss turns to ash wherever they go.” He drew his sword. “I don’t like it.”
Dag and Teegan drew their weapons as well.
“We best keep moving,” Teegan said and quickened the pace. But they couldn’t keep at it for long. Within sight of the root bridges her mehma’s stories described, a toppled section of wall had let the mire overrun the path. If Teegan looked closely, she could see the mossy stone reappearing twenty paces or more away—gray trails and all. She tested the mud’s depth with the shaft of her trident. “The stone is solid underneath. I think we can wade across.”
As if in argument, Aethia swooped down and squawked at her.
“What is it, girl?”
The falcon perched among the goat’s beard of a bare pine and squawked again.
“Quiet your bird,” Tiran grumbled. “She’ll bring some evil down upon us.”
Teegan thought she saw the mire moving—perhaps a trick of the darkness, perhaps not. Then she heard a splash. “Her squawking doesn’t matter. I think some evil is already here.”
Moaning came next—like mournful wounded animals.
Tiran bent an ear toward the mire. “Woe . . . is me.”
“What did you say?”
“I hear it in their groans. Listen.” He mimicked the sorrowful cries. “Woe is me.”
With a splat, a drop landed on Teegan’s boot and sizzled. The scent of vinegar and bad cheese filled her nostrils. Not good. “Quick,” she said to Tiran. “Strike a lantern.”
He drew their largest from one of Dag’s satchels and struck the flame, then held it out over the mire.
As if offended by the light, a slug as big as a fox and covered in wriggling mud whiskers, reared up from the slime and screeched with rage.
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More slugs answered the first with piercing screeches, all rearing up from the mire.
“What are these things?” Tiran shouted, eyes wild.
In the glow of the lantern, Teegan saw the source of the sizzling and the foul smell. Spots of greenish-brown slime had struck her cloak and boot, sending up vapors and bleaching the leather and wool gray. What might such a substance do to unprotected flesh? She leveled her trident. “Arms! Destroy them!”
Dag swung an axe. The blade passed through his target as through a stream of water. The slug fell into the mire in two pieces. A second later, it rose up again, whole. Its strange whisker appendages rippled forward and flung a barrage of caustic mud. The miner’s glowing shield dissolved them all.
All but one.
A drop of slime flew past Dag’s shield and struck Tiran in the neck. He let out a cry and wiped the mud away with his sleeve, leaving behind a growing blister. “Their bodies are poison, and we can’t kill them. We’ll never survive this.”
The slugs closed in, echoing him with their moans. Woe is me. Woe is me.
Teegan stabbed one with her trident. The creature recoiled for only a moment, then kept coming. She stabbed it again with the same result. “We never studied these. What are they?”
“Mudslingers.” Dag chopped his foe in half once more. “Talin wrote of them in his chronicles. He called them muks, for short, and warned that you should never let them touch you.”
Teegan stabbed at two slugs in quick succession. “Yes. I think we figured that last bit out.”
With each passing moment, the slugs closed in, and the cadets drew tighter into their defensive formation. Caustic mud burned their clothing and dissolved against their shields. Tiran dropped his sword and clutched the lantern to his chest, cowering between the other two. “I can’t do this. I shouldn’t have come.”
Each time he spoke, the creatures replied with their mournful chorus. Woe is me. Woe is me.
“Woe is me,” Dag said out loud.
