Reality's Plaything 2: Neath Odin's Eye, page 14
He flailed his arms at the townsfolk screaming at them to get away. They didn’t understand his language, but he hoped the urgency of his screams communicated enough. Behind them, Bannor saw in the light what attacked them. Huge black-skinned giants with fiery embers for eyes and flaming hair stomped out of the trees in pursuit. Plate-armor that glowed red from heat covered their broad bodies.
He turned his attention back to finding cover. He and Sarai weren’t the only ones making for the rocks, a dozen men led by one smaller one were also charging to that position. They were the mercenaries from the bar.
The mercenaries reached the rocks ahead of them, the smallest of them dressed in silver armor leaped up the rocks like a hopping bug, surmounting head high boulders as if they were level ground.
By the time Bannor reached the boulders, the leader had taken position at the summit of the highest rock. The light from the sun reflected off the mirror polish of his mail and Bannor made out that the figure was limbering a bow. The rest of the fighters spread out, preparing bows, crossbows, and spears.
Sarai thundered into a crevice behind Bannor, depositing the two Draconians in a safe spot shielded by the rocks.
“Hey, runt! You ain’t grown, but yer girl sure has! Need some help with those nasties?”
Bannor found the source of the Maac’s gravelly barrel drum voice. The huge mercenary had his helmet on, a spear in the crook of his arm, and a triangular battle shield on his arm.
“Hope you guys know what you’re getting into!”
“The minions of Surtur,” Maac yelled back. “Hope you’re ready to be enemies with the king of the fire giants!”
After placing the Draconians in the rocks Sarai leaped back out to stand by Bannor, as she did so, she dwindled until she was his size. Her body crackled and her skin took on a metallic sheen.
“Stay where I can see and hear you,” she said to him. “You don’t want me stumbling on you. I can’t feel anything when I’m like this.”
Above them the silver warrior let out a yell. The accent was unusual and the timbre of the voice sufficient to be heard across the largest of battlefields. “Bows! First rank! Spears! Second rank.”
Sarai squinted in the bright light to look at the person atop the rocks.
The mercenaries prepared their weapons. Sarai tossed Bannor her bow and quiver, narrowing her eyes that turned from lavender to white. She raised her hands the way a knife thrower prepared for battle.
Bannor took a handful of arrows from the quiver and thrust them in the ground and his feet. He grabbed one, licked the key fletching, notched the arrow and drew the string to his cheek.
There had been more of the creatures than Bannor initially saw. A score of the giants charged their position, each three times the height of a normal man, their bodies on fire, their weapons flashing in the daylight.
“Draw shaft!” The silver armored man yelled from the top of the rocks. “Horse squad, select laming targets! Foot squad, shoot for the vitals! Ready!”
Bannor barely felt the pull of the bow. He remembered thinking that the powerful war bow that Sarai had created was too much weapon even for him. He held his breath, centering the barbed phalanx arrow on the throat of the lead creature charging toward them shield raised.
“Wait… Wait… Shoot!”
A half dozen arrows and crossbow bolts hissed out, some finding their marks on knees and insteps, others high in the chest and throat. Bannor’s own arrow thudded past the fletchings above the collar of the first giant. The creature stumbled, but kept stride. Two white-feathered arrows shrieked out, each one thudding home into an eye socket. The monster hit face down with a boom.
Sarai made chopping motions. Waves of dirt and loam tore the feet from under a couple creatures. She finished them with pounding gestures that slammed bloody craters where they fell.
Bannor let fly twice more hitting lead creatures, and slowing the ones behind them. The silver armored archer continued his steady assault, slotted arrows whistling as they hurtled into ears, eyes, and temples of the front runners.
Seven of the monsters fell before the first of the fireballs burst toward them. The mercenaries dove for cover as the first blast shattered rock and fused dirt. At least one man died with a brief scream.
Sarai swung her arms up and a wall of soil thrust into the path of two more bolts of fire. The concussion knocked Bannor down and he scrambled back to his feet. With her skin hardened like steel, Sarai stood unaffected in the center of a storm of smoke, smoldering sand, and burning vegetation. Diving to get out of the burning conflagration moved him closer to the creatures. With the gap narrowed, it forced him to drop the bow and take up the axe as one of the giants bore on him.
He dodged the massive hammer that boomed down, then dove in, bringing his own axe whistling into the creature’s shin. Urged by the strength given to him by Thor’s gauntlets, the axe chopped the leg out from under the massive being.
As it went down, two more white arrows sprouted from the vitals of another giant swinging up to strike him. He leaped aside as the monster fell on its comrade pinning it down. He looked back to the silver archer, but was still unable to make out details in the glare.
Two more giants died in the exchange and two more mercenaries died. Having lost half their number, the creatures broke ranks and retreated.
They pounded off in the direction they came.
Hands on knees, Bannor panted. He was covered with milky-colored blood. The stuff burned and he clawed his tunic off and wiped at the fetid smelling goo.
Sarai pressed her hands together, closed her eyes, and her flesh lost that metallic shine. She hurried to Bannor. “My One, what’s …???”
“Get the stuff off! It burns!”
“Jackdar!” They heard yelled from the rocks. “Douse him!”
One of the mercenaries rushed up with a water-skin and squirted him with liquid. The water took the burning away. By the time it was finished, half his clothing was eaten through with smoking holes.
“Gad, that’s foul,” Bannor waved his hand and stepped away.
Sarai hugged him. “You scared me.”
“I scared me.” He gave her a quick kiss. The taste and feel of her helped his hands to stop shaking.
Sarai turned to the mercenaries. “Thanks for helping us.”
The commander leaped down from the rocks. As he landed at the bottom, it was apparent that his skin was pale and his hair long and silver colored.
“That’s what fathers do, isn’t it? Chase after their children and fight their wars for them, right?”
Sarai’s eyes went wide.
Bannor’s stomach knotted. The silver armored warrior was King Jhaann T’Evagduran of Malan—Sarai’s father.
* * *
Sarai is headstrong child. She has always been driven to excel, and she is accomplished in many things, especially in raising my ire. Still, she is the child I feel closest too. She is the child who in her constant defiance, ended up most like me. That is a irony that I never have quite understood.
—Jhaan T’Evagduran
King of Malan
Chapter 15
The Lord of Malan
« ^ »
Sarai froze, staring at the pale-haired king, his fine mail shining like a mirror in the bright light. The gray elven ruler’s narrow face with its slash of a nose, smooth cheeks, and sharp chin reminded Bannor of an arrow point; metal hard and deadly. In the stark light, Sarai’s resemblance to the King was as plain as a tree in the desert.
“Father?” Her expression went from incredulity to surprise. “Father!” Like a shot from crossbow, she pounced on T’Evagduran, giving him a fierce hug. “You’re here!”
“Mi’Ika I’m so—whoa!” His air rushed out in a blast as she squeezed, apparently forgetting her strength. A little stunned, he drew a breath and looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. “My little one is not so any more, and hale enough to break ribs. Seeing you is—” He hugged her again. Bannor saw his fists white knuckled behind her back. For a moment, it looked like the steely elf might weep. A couple of the mercenaries walked over. The sound of their armor made him stiffen. He straightened and visibly mastered himself. He took her hands in his. “It has been so long, I feared all of you dead!”
“How did you get here!?” Sarai vibrated, shaking the elder with her exuberance.
“How do you think, Child?” he answered. “I was tracking your mother and yourself. The rift collapsed and pulled us in.” He stopped as the clangor of alarms started in the town. Village people were scrambling to prevent their houses from burning. Parties were forming to combat the fire. The smoke from the burning trees had become a giant black column rising into the sky. Already it was growing difficult to breathe. The Elven leader frowned as he looked toward the flame crowned trees. “We can speak after we lend ourselves to the enterprise of fighting the fire.”
The fire. Bannor looked at Thor’s black iron gauntlets. He’d almost killed himself trying to use the Garmtur against the Thunder-god in his weakened state. Did the gauntlets actually cure him, or did magical devices simply mask his lack of strength? Even organized, the town couldn’t dowse that fire. It started in too many places and grew too fast.
He calmed himself and allowed himself to see with the Garmtur’s perception. The flames appeared as a complex interplay of lashing threads. The flames themselves had no threads, but seemed to grow out of the clash. Moments like this made him wish he’d gone with Wren that first day, he and Sarai would be safe and he’d have learned so much more than he knew now. His use of the Garmtur was so clumsy, yanking on threads of reality, breaking and severing them in order to get a desired affect. Breaking threads now would make things worse.
“Bannor?” Sarai asked. “You’ve fought fires before, what do we do?”
He looked around at the group of mercenaries then at the townsfolk already using buckets and shovels to toss sand and dirt on the hot embers settling on roofs.
“There aren’t enough people,” he said. “I thought maybe to use the Garmtur, but I looked at the fire and don’t know how to quench it.”
Maac walked over and leaned on his spear. “Garmtur? What’s that?”
“Big magic,” Bannor said. “Scary magic.”
The huge mercenary snorted.
“The Garmtur?” King T’Evagduran frowned. “Your mother never explained why she sided with you and this—” he stopped, but Bannor knew the unspoken word was ‘peasant’. “Is that why she got involved in that fool’s endeavor—because you acknowledged a bloody wilder!?”
Sarai pushed back from him. “She got into this fool’s endeavor because she’s my mother and she loves me. We couldn’t hide our heads from Hecate. We needed to do something. We did it.”
The King growled. “What you did was dismember the entire royal house—your eldest sister is all that’s left! All for a—” He glared at Bannor. “Principle.”
Sarai stared at her father for long heartbeats, her face stiff and eyes wide. Bannor felt certain she would explode. She drew a breath. Her voice, when she spoke came out measured with restraint. “Father, I’m too glad to see you to get angry.” Sarai turned to Bannor. “We can get that fire out together.” She pressed a hand to her chest that began to glow. Her fingers seemed to pass through her flesh as she pulled something out, and held it up. “This will help us.”
Bannor eyed the black gem with a feeling of unease. He didn’t know why, but Idun’s gift, the flux-stone, made him nervous. Kegari’s warning about the gifts of gods, and his recent experience with the gauntlet only made his unease more acute.
Sarai took Bannor by the shoulder and made him look into the wavering tongues of yellow, orange, and red. This hiss and crack of burning wood already sounded loud as streamers of hot embers and smoke billowed skyward. She pulled out his gauntleted hand, placed the stone in his palm and closed his fingers around it. She gripped his fist with both of her hands.
“Let me see the threads through your eyes, my One.”
“Star, there are too many …!”
“Let me worry about that.”
Feeling uncomfortable, but trusting Sarai, Bannor let himself see the maelstrom of energies writhing above the burning forest. The snap of atmospheric turbulence, the interplay of heat splitting threads and joining others. He watched as heat transformed living wood into char, vapors, and moisture.
He didn’t sense what Sarai was doing until that moment. As he grasped the transforming nature of the fire, she seized on the concept. Through some twisting of magic in the flux stone, she made him filter out everything except the blue and crimson threads of the moisture and heat.
Her hand tightened around his. She stomped on the ground. A tremor rumbled underfoot. Dust and ashes sprung up in the trees and formed a grayish geyser spewing into the sky. Like a fine musician playing a harp, Sarai plucked at the threads of moisture in the sky and in the ground. She reached out to the channels of heat, drawing on their radiant energy. Sarai’s body grew hot as the flame’s non-life filled her. She used that energy to reach further into the sky. Through him she found a few threads in the sky and twisted them together with the heat, moisture, and ash. Dark clouds formed, the wind picked up.
In ones and twos, raindrops hit the ground, growing steadily more frequent. In the space of moments, it became a downpour.
Sarai laughed and shook both fists. “Yes!” She danced around him, and bounced in front of her father, making splashes in the forming puddles. “Impressive, no?”
All of the mercenaries were staring up into the storm that had boiled into existence overhead. They all wore fearful expressions.
The King looked up as sheets of rain pelted down, dousing the forest fire. The droplets ran on his pale skin and clung to his thick silver hair. He raised his voice to be heard in the pounding rain. “Impressive, yes.”
Sarai put her arms around Bannor’s neck and grinned up at him. “We’re good together, aren’t we?”
Bannor’s chest tightened. Even soaked in the rain she was too beautiful for words. He kissed her for an answer. He held out the flux stone to her. Why did she have to love the magic as much as him?
“Thank you.” She kissed him on the nose, and plucked the gem from his palm. She turned toward the rocks and started toward them. “Now, we better look to Kegari and Tymoril. Father, we—oooh.” She staggered and clutched her stomach. She gritted her teeth and straightened herself with a jerk.
“Sarai?” Bannor put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
She covered his hand with hers. Her voice trembled. “I was dizzy for a moment. It’s passed.”
It didn’t look like dizziness to him. She acted hurt.
The King seemed to notice it too. “Mi’Ika…”
“Father,” she said in flat tone. “I’m fine. It was big magic. Simply a little backlash.”
“Damn right,” murmured Maac, still staring at her in awe.
The other mercenaries rumbled agreement.
“Bannor,” Sarai said in a voice that sounded forced. “Help me with Tymoril and Kegari.”
He followed as she moved into the rocks. Her movements looked fluid and certain, with nothing to indicate anything wrong.
He bent by Kegari. The rain was washing away the black ash covering the scales of the two dragons. The pale green tissues beneath looked like metal. When he touched the smooth surface, it was warm and pliable. The Draconian’s heartbeat was still strong and her breathing shallow. He knew so little about these creatures.
“No change, as far as I can tell.”
Sarai shook her head. “None here either. We need someplace dry to work on them. Can you move her?”
He nodded.
She pursed her lips. “What’ll happen when you take those gauntlets off?”
The question made a tremble go through him. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure why Thor sent them to me.”
Sighing, she nodded. “Come on, let’s get them out of here.” He drew a breath as she bent and hefted the huge dragon. When she first demonstrated elemental strength, it scared him. Even now, it still made him uneasy.
He wrapped his arms around Kegari and hoisted her to his shoulder. Together, he and Sarai trudged out of the rocks with their weighty burdens. The mercenaries and the King looked at them with wide eyes.
“Father, is there a place we can hole up and examine our friends?”
T’Evagduran looked from her to Bannor. He nodded. “There’s a place in the village. How long will the rain last?”
“Not sure,” Sarai answered. “Getting the rain started wasn’t hard. Keeping it from going out of control, that was difficult.”
The stiff expression came over the Elven ruler’s face. Bannor wasn’t sure what emotion might be going through him right now. He must be glad to find his daughter alive. Elves didn’t like change, and the Sarai standing here little resembled the daughter that snuck out of Malan three summers ago.
The King looked around at the mercenaries. “Later, when the rain stops, each of us will say some words over our comrades fallen in battle.” His gaze went to the scorched places where the battle hardened mercenaries once braced to fight the giants. The rain wore away at the scorched spots where they’d been standing. Nothing remained but slag metal and charred bone.
“It is well for their spirits that they died serving not the coin, but helping protect those who could not protect themselves. Their end was swift, and now their ashes mingle with the soil of this faraway place. I knew Klegarn, Talbot, and Rowe, they had started to grow fond of this new land.” He bowed his head. “Now, they shall dwell here forever.”
The other men also bowed their heads.
“Come,” T’Evagduran ordered, and headed toward the heart of the village.
Sarai looked to Bannor. The expression on her face showed that she wasn’t the only one who changed. Her father had been in this place since Maac had arrived. At least three summers. As Bannor well knew, much could change in that time—even human-hating fathers.
