Into the West, page 31
In the chaos of the river, Rose was nowhere to be seen. There was hate, knives, water, mud, pieces of hull, horrible sounds of destruction and primal combat, but no valiant Doll.
The old man crumpled up, and Howler closed the distance to his side in his own desperate burst of speed. The dog reached him and, despite its own panting, licked at him as if dog saliva was a healing salve. It could be said that in this case, it truly was. The old man expressed a moment of rapturous joy, clasping the dog’s head to himself, then murmured something to him and got to his feet, though not steadily by any means.
Totally stunned for the moment from taking in and processing far too much, Kordas couldn’t even move to bring up his crossbow and shoot the damned boar. It was all so fast, it made him feel slow. And he hated it. He hated that he couldn’t reason this out. He hated that he hated.
But Arial saved him. She gave an involuntary buck and kick. Not enough to throw him, but enough to break the spell the forest had put on him.
Just as one of the Red Forest’s branches steadily reached toward him.
With a squeal, she danced out of the way, getting him out of reach of those branches with a turn and a leap worthy of an expert dancer. The old man and Howler scrambled for distance.
A dozen bizarrely flexible branches lashed out like whips at the oblivious boar, who only realized too late that it was in danger.
The branches whipped around each of the boar’s legs, and around its neck.
The tree seized the boar, hauling it up into the air as it squealed in mingled terror and agony. One narrow branch ripped off an ear, and all the branches tightened, splaying the pig out in midair among the branches of the canopy. More branches whipped out to seize the boar, and those round things on the branches seemed to attach themselves to the pig’s skin somehow, preventing it from kicking free.
The hideous squeals jolted Kordas into action, and he shot the stupid beast through the heart to end its suffering. Just as well, because the next thing that got ripped off was a leg, in an uncanny echo of one of the Emperor’s favorite sentences for a criminal, being pulled to pieces by five horses.
The screams stopped when the boar died, but the trees were just getting started. Kordas watched in horror as the limb that had ripped off the ear stuffed the bloody morsel in one of those “mouths.” Two more limbs tore long bloody swaths of muscle and skin off the body, and stuffed them in other “mouths.” And more of the trees moved, reaching toward the bloody mess that had been a pig, trying to get a bit for themselves.
Something else made a momentary dome of water in the river. With the explosive sound of storm-driven ocean surf slapping a mountainside, it burst upward. Arcs of deep riverbed mud flew as high as any two barges were long. The air shook.
That was more water-weight than all the barges in the string could even displace. What could heave so much water, so quickly? What could do that?
Whatever was in the water lunged forward three—steps?—to the shore, and it was—
Kordas couldn’t completely comprehend what he was seeing. Well past a barge-length tall, it was like a water spider—made of water spiders—made of more water spiders—and all made of black and yellow knives. Each leg was striped in ocher and black, and each stripe was a cluster of legs, all too horribly long, with bright yellow stripes, and each of them had more legs and more black knifelike spikes. Mud and river water poured off of its back and legs, no doubt how it had stayed disguised while every vessel of the flotilla had passed over it. The taps and scrapes on the hulls this whole time had been . . . it. Them. The thing, its body easily the size of a barge itself, seemed to split into three narrower versions of itself side by side, each dashing into the Red Forest to attack the trees’ branches. Where one leg struck, the smaller clusters—only man-sized—tore off branches.
No, wait—they weren’t only branches now. There were also something more. Like boneless limbs.
That’s what we were missing. That’s how it gets even worse.
The yellow-and-black blurs advanced and retreated. Stabbing attacks by the water-monsters seemed to strobe, so quickly did they dart in and leap back. And when every writhing limb-lash came their way—and before long there were hundreds—the water-monsters slashed the limbs, sectioned them, and devoured them.
And each set of knife-spiders has its own mouth. Right. Or, maybe it’s a colony of thousands, and it’ll turn into a whole wave of death-knife-spiders next. That’d be just perfect.
Around the perimeter of the sudden spray of muddy water and sap-blood, the dragonflies deployed, now buzzing extremely loudly. Much closer, and the noise would have been disorienting to Kordas and the rest trying to flee. One group of thirty or more dragonflies clustered between one of the spiders’ leg clusters, and came away with severed spider bits, only to carry them away into the Red Forest. Dragonflies batted from the air by the spiders were replaced, as more of their kind converged from, presumably, deeper in the Red Forest. At the periphery of the rapidly escalating battle, other dragonflies gathered up, then flew into the Forest with—for some reason—pieces of barge.
The last three barges were now sinking, the fourth was groaning, and all forward motion had stopped. Kordas desperately wanted to fight right now, but rescue was more important. He wasn’t going to lose Rose. It didn’t feel like she was dead, and he knew she didn’t need to breathe, but cargo was still shifting and bucking from the battle raging far too closely to them, and she could certainly be killed by crushing.
From beneath the tangle of the Gate uprights—now planted in the riverbed—and the sawmill hardware, gushes and sprays of muddy water flew in every direction.
Rose!
Amidst a pile of fractured hull strips, belaying bars, and splintered crates, a figure slowly stood up.
Two sawblades protruded from its side. Centering pins pierced it. A riving knife as big as a forearm went through its neck.
Thick mud sluiced off the pale figure, revealing unblemished white canvas and gashes of soggy brown tufts of ripped-out stuffing.
“Rose!” Kordas shouted. He dismounted, much to Arial’s relief, and ran toward the river in what was, even for him, an extraordinarily heedless display of terrible judgment.
Rose, her movement impaired by a smithy’s worth of hardware through her body, limp-twitched to the shore, to be intercepted by Kordas, while the battle of monsters only escalated behind them.
“I will make a note to speak with the loadmasters about better securing cargo for transit,” Rose replied. He didn’t know if a Doll could be dazed, but it’s how she sounded. “I see you are all healthy. Good.” Kordas ducked under Rose’s most-damaged shoulder and helped her along. Rose, who could probably have carried both of them, let him, and instead turned her attention to protecting their retreat. Kordas felt a sudden jerk from Rose, and a whunk sound, and shrapnel of spar laminate flew past them. No doubt it had threatened them. Despite chunks of stuffing and ironworks sticking out in most every direction, Rose sounded as pleasant as ever. “This is a very good axe,” she added.
“Keep it!” Kordas replied, half-running toward the remaining barges while ducking pieces of hull, loom, and sawmill.
Kordas didn’t have much time to think. He’d held off from using magic to either defend or rescue the old man, for fear that both of the monstrosities would turn their way, but now they had some distance. He did the quickest math he knew, searched his feelings, and determined the truth in an instant.
Now was the correct time to kill everything, in the immediate upriver direction, with fire.
You want me to hate, hells-forest? Oh, I can hate. I’ve got years of hate to spend on you. He paused in helping Rose as another Doll took her up from him, and another came alongside him to help him escape, too. Kordas knew well that fire spells were enhanced by hot emotions, so he let it boil up in him. The ground below him began to steam.
You have no idea what I’ve been through, no idea what kind of daily horror I’ve been forced into. Hate? I hate being in charge! I hate my future being forced! I hate feeling like everything I do is a salvage! I hate being a hero to people! I hate putting up a false face! I hate picking who lives and dies, defending against fuckery like you! Now you dare come after us? After all this? You want me to hate? I’ll sear you with my hate! You can scream in Nightmare Hell that there’s more of it for all of you, if you piss me off again!
He paused long enough to yell in rage at the Red Forest and the Yellow-Black-Hell-River-Spider-Whirling-Knives-Of-Death-Creatures, and flung his hands in their direction so violently his sleeves ripped. A tracking streak flew out an instant before two ragged-edged, jetting spheres of sunlight followed them, to detonate on contact. A percussive sound like sharp, muffled thunder sent a shockwave from the monsters, followed by a shower of small—and wet—debris. The battling creatures may not have started the day as flammable, but they were now. The escape on foot was now backlit by gouts of flame and smoke.
Downriver, the horses hauling the barges were not having any of this. The guards pulled the shore escapees onto the first three barges, the two Dolls leapt back to the aft timberheads of the fourth barge, levered, and released the pins that held the sinking barges. The half-string accelerated away. The Tow-Beasts somehow found the strength to lunge against their harness, sweating and foaming, to pull their load at a faster pace, and their panic somehow communicated itself all the way up the line, because everyone moved faster, first at a much faster walk, then at a trot, and finally at a near-canter. It was enough speed that, unchecked, would ram one string into another end to end, forty deep. Arial, despite her exhaustion, appeared to be renewed by the company of other horses, and was right with them. As they all broke out of the forest, he looked back over his shoulder to see that the burning trees behind them were a seething mass of writhing limbs, each trying to score a hit on the spider-creatures, or stretching yearningly toward Kordas, the old man, and Howler, while burning black and yellow spikes struck as fast as lightning, advancing into the Red Forest, severing limbs into fiery gobs.
As they got past the last tree, Kordas got hit by such a cold wind that his sweat-soaked clothing froze instantly. His blistered hands crackled inside his gloves, and new burns steamed.
One last surging flail of flaming tree-limb tentacle whipped toward the fourth barge, and was cut off in midair by a yellow-and-black flash of spider leg. It thunked atop cases of Poomers, Spitters, and their magazine of ammunition as it sank, drawn deeper by the wreckage it was attached to.
They were free.
Kordas heaved breaths in and out, from amidships on the last barge, and raised both smoking, steaming arms. He made two rude gestures at the fire-and-monster melee behind them.
Don’t ever dare me to hate you. I’ve got plenty built up, ready to hurt you.
“It’s a wonder you didn’t catch something,” Isla said, as he stood in front of the stove, sponging his sweat-stinking body with one of Sai’s magical towels.
Kordas’s gloves were ruined, having been carefully trimmed off of his burned hands by Isla and a set of thread trimmers. Despite the throbbing pain, Kordas wasn’t ready to Heal his hands fully just yet. Sometimes, it was best to let the body carry on with its instinctive processes, so the Healer wasn’t fighting them. He just tamped down the pain for now. “It’s a wonder I wasn’t caught,” he replied.
The boys sat on the bed, solemn-eyed, and not at all interested in hearing the story—at least, not at the moment. It wasn’t every day they saw Arial using the last of her strength to get him safely “home,” to the point where she staggered as she finally arrived at their mooring spot. Odds seemed good that they were more bothered by that than seeing their father’s nicks, cuts, and burns—they’d seen that before. They were more sensitive than he had given them credit for, actually. Maybe it was all those years of knowing how careful they had to be about what they said and who they spoke to.
Rose—as Kordas had figured she would—had relayed what was happening to all the other Dolls, even while being carted off to her repair. The entire caravan now knew that the forest had been just as dangerous as they had been warned it might be. The consensus, as relayed back from Ivy after the wild ride, was that any animal that lost its charm and wandered off was to be shot if it could not be recaptured and re-tagged within eyeshot of the expedition. No one wanted to lose an animal, but they understood it was foolishness bordering on neglect for them to attract the attention of random monsters with animals that couldn’t stay where they belonged—or to let them be used as bait to lure out would-be rescuers. Or, for that matter, to take the animals back; they could return with—hells only knew what. Parasites that gave people extra heads. It could be anything. The entire expedition was learning: count on nothing they encountered to be what it seemed to be.
We’re just lucky they were trees, planted in place. And that the—
“Of course,” Kordas blurted. He’d have snapped his fingers if he could. “The water-spider-things. I think there were three. Big ones, anyway. Everything passed right over their backs like leaves on the river, but the last string was overloaded, and drafting low because it was taking on water from a hull crack. Every other vessel in the fleet glided right over them, but when the tail actually hit the things, they must have reacted to it as an attack.” He shuddered. “Oh gods, we had no idea.”
Kordas’s eldest boy glared at him with a look that read, Don’t you know any happy stories, father? We’re children here.
Kordas bit back saying any more of his thoughts out loud. Just those three could have shredded every boat in the fleet and all aboard, by the way it looked. Just incomprehensible speed and strength. Oh gods, how many are under us right now? Why did they carve up the hulls, even in mid-battle? Why did the Red Forest only attack the pig once it went in deeper? When it reached out during the battle, it was clear, it could have snatched any of our animals close to the water with its limbs. But the water was where the spiders were, and the spiders weren’t interested in easy-to-reach livestock. They went after and ate tree limbs. Gods, were they vegetarian monster spiders? This is what this place can do to you. Once you start questioning and fearing, you’re never sure when to stop.
“I’m very glad that our people decided to deal with stray animals themselves, instead of waiting for you to make an edict,” Isla continued, smoothly filling the moment. Then she turned and looked at the bed, where Sydney-You-Asshole was lounging with the boys. “You hear that, Sydney? No losing your collar. There are some people around here that wouldn’t think twice about shooting you.”
“Mama!” little Hakkon objected. “No one is going to shoot Sydney! He’s a good cat!”
Kordas bit his lip, because while he could be a reckless, bossy bruiser to other cats and most dogs, at least with the children, Sydney actually was a good cat. He put up with all manner of mauling from them, including being stuffed into doll clothes. They could tote him like a rag doll. But let an adult touch his Sacred Belly Fur, and said adult would draw back a bloody stump where his hand used to be.
Sydney looked at Isla with an expression that Kordas interpreted as “contempt,” but meowed something that sounded exactly like, “All right.”
So we have talking cats now?
Of course we have talking cats. We’re lucky we don’t have talking horses, with what we’ve put them all through. I should just be grateful that they aren’t dictating orders.
The scouts sat in silence and listened carefully to what Amethyst had to say. “Well,” said Sai, as Amethyst finished her calm, almost expressionless recitation of what was happening in the strange forest, “Now we know we can’t go back.”
“We know we can’t go back that way,” Jonaton corrected him. “What’s more important is what’s going to happen to any Impies that manage to follow us that far.”
Endars’s left brow shot up toward his hairline. “Impies?”
Jonaton shrugged, and reached for the salt. “Impies. It’s scornful and demeaning. They made me wear square-cut woolen trousers with no pockets for years, and I don’t forgive things like that. The point isn’t what I call our former Lords and Masters. My point is that if there is one thing that Impies cannot do, it’s keep their hands to themselves. If they lay eyes on that forest, they’re going to want to fell some of it, just out of purest curiosity. They’re going to want to uproot saplings. They’re probably even going to want to catch some of those dragonflies. And that’s before the trees fight back. Once they do that, the Impies will want to figure out how they can tame those trees, or use them for weapons. And then the spiders in the river?” He just let that hang there.
It was, in Jonaton’s words, “Officially too damn cold to sit around a fire at night,” so Sai was using the tiny stove in the equally tiny barge kitchen to make what he could, and he had Delia and Amethyst helping him. Delia was still able to catch geese, ducks, and the odd rabbit and squirrel, and Ivar hunted as he scouted ahead, but now the meals were very different. Cabbage leaves were used to wrap bits of food until the leaves were too hard to pry off the core, at which point the core got chopped very fine and added to a soup kettle that was always kept full of all the odds and ends and leftovers. Sai did make a fire on land, right near the barge when they stopped for the day, but no one was sitting around it at night. Instead, the initial flames were used to quickly broil whatever meat they had cut into strips, the bones went into the soup pot, and Sai would make up hand food for the following noonday meal with the meat and pickled onions. Supper was the soup: bones cooked until they were so soft you could actually eat them—Bay got those—chopped root vegetables, chopped squash, cabbage, dried beans. Breakfast was cooked overnight in the coals of the fire, an enormous pot of oat porridge with dried apples in it. Sai tried to vary the herbs and spices he put in. Sometimes he added a precious bit of honey. Bay got the leftovers of that, too, and ate it with a gusto that seemed odd to Delia. After all, there was no meat in it. She wondered why Sai didn’t put dried grapes or currants in it, but it seemed such things were bad for dogs. But he did have a sack of dried grapes they could dip into if they wanted something sweet. There was no more flatbread; it got tough and unappetizing when it was cold, and it was too cold to sit there next to the fire and cook it, so instead of that, they had some sort of hard biscuit that the Fairweathers called “field rations” to dip in the soup.
