“Or her brood.” Kormak fought down the concept of there being more than one of those giant arachnids.
“She needed webs to support her when I fought her.”
Gilean stopped, and stood stock still for a moment then turned her head to look at him. “You fought a Brood Mother?”
Kormak nodded.
“And you are still alive?”
“Apparently.”
“Truly you are a Champion of the Sun.”
Kormak shrugged.
“And how did you encounter the creature?”
Kormak decided that there was nothing to be gained from keeping her in the dark. “I was sent there by the ghost of Mayasha.”
“What?”
He told her what had happened. By the end he was surprised to see that tears were dribbling down her cheeks. “You destroyed an Elder Tree,” she said. Wonder and horror warred in her voice.
“I did what I was sent to do.”
“You performed the greatest act of sacrilege against the Green I have ever heard of.”
He wondered whether she was going to attack him. He seemed to have outraged one of her religious sensibilities. She stared long and hard at him.
“I don’t think you understand what you have done,” she said.
“Perhaps you could explain it to me.”
“You have destroyed an immortal, a being who would have lived forever.”
“I’ve done that before,” Kormak said. “Many times.”
“I do not care about the Old Ones. I care about the Elders.”
“It was the Elder that instructed me to do it. Otherwise he would have become a slave to the Shadow. He would have corrupted all of your forest or so he believed.”
“Perhaps the Tree could have been purified.”
“I doubt the Elder thought so or it would not have told me what to do?”
“Are you certain it was the Elder and not the Shadow that sent you to that place?”
“I know what I saw and the place where the Tree’s heart lay was tainted by its power.”
She took a deep breath and seemed to get a grip on herself. “This is too great a matter for me. I am but a Speardancer. You should be taken before the Council of Elders.”
He wondered if she was going to try and take him there right now. Somehow she seemed to think that what he had done outweighed even the invasion of her land by the Shadow. Perhaps it did. He had no idea of how elves weighed the value of these things. He resolved he had better keep a close eye on her. She was looking at him coldly now.
“Do you intend to take me before them now?” he asked. He kept his voice calm, and put no challenge into it. Her muscles tensed. Her knuckles went white on the wood of her bow. He wondered if she was going to point it at him.
“No. Not now. I cannot judge you. We go on.” He could not help but feel that in that moment her whole attitude had changed towards him, perhaps her whole attitude towards humanity in general.
Ahead of him now he could hear horns sound, and men shouting and the sound of something crashing through the woods. Gilean held up her hand as an indicator that he should stay where he was and then moved forward, swift and silent and beckoned for him to follow cautiously. He did so with as much stealth as he could muster and did not make any more sound than she.
He could see why she indicated caution now. They were overtaking a huge force of elves. Most of them were on the ground, bows and spears in their hands. Some of them rode on the back of spiders the size of mastodons. Their carapaces were armoured and their legs were reinforced with chitin and seemed much larger and thicker than those of the Brood Mother. They stalked forward like great living war-machines.
He tried to make as assessment of the military impact of such monsters. On a battlefield they would terrify men and horses. Against a castle they would have less effect unless they could scale walls like their smaller kindred which he very much doubted. Against the spiked log palisades that surrounded the woodland villages, they would be terrifying. By rearing up they could pull themselves over the walls. He wondered how you could stop them— pikes, hacking away their legs with a battle-axe. Normal arrows would most likely have no effect unless they struck a vulnerable point.
“We need to try and circle round them, off the path,” Gilean said. “We can never make it through such a force.”
They moved off the path and, crouching low, scrambled through the underbrush. As they moved, Kormak became aware of shadows around them and he knew that there were elves there. Whether they were pickets, scouts or simply folk wanting to move away from the crowded paths he did not know. It did not matter much either, if one of them spotted him and gave the alarm; things would get very dangerous, very quickly. There were too many enemies around for him to be comfortable with the thought, and too much rested on them getting through in time to warn the inhabitants of the Settlements.
At last they seemed to reach an area clear of potential enemies and speeded up even though there were webs all around them, and the sounds of large animals moving through the undergrowth. Kormak wondered whether they had merely swapped one type of danger for another and whether some huge predator would spring on him any second.
He felt sweat running down his back. He felt his mouth go dry and his heart beat strongly against his ribs. He pushed aside a thick, black leaf, large as a dinner plate on which sat a glistening insect with strange blister marks on its side and he stepped forward. Mulch sucked at his feet. They emerged on the river bank. Gilean stopped short and glanced back along the watercourse. A large body of troops and gigantic spiders were fording the river downstream.
“This is it,” she said. “Across there are your Settlements.”
“Thanks for your help,” Kormak said. “I would never have made it this far without you.”
“This is not farewell, Champion of the Sun. I am coming with you. I wish to see the outcome of this.”
Kormak nodded and considered. The river was broad and swift flowing at this point and the current was likely to carry them away if they were not careful. He moved down the bank to see what the elves were doing. The great spiders spat rope-like webs across the river and smaller spiders wove an aerial bridge between the cables thus created. Soon there was a walkway across the river for Weaver’s troops. The gigantic spiders then plunged into the river and waded across.
“We could wait and take the bridge ourselves,” Gilean said.
“That would put us behind and they will most likely leave guards anyway. We need to cross now if we are going to bring warning to the villagers.”
“Then we swim.” Kormak stripped off his armour, wrapped it in his jerkin, and bound it with his belt.
As he did so Gilean emerged from the undergrowth pulling a rotting blighted log. “It will float. Put your gear on this and we can paddle it across.”
Kormak nodded understanding but left his blade strapped to his back. He could not take any risk of losing it. They plunged into the cold, fast-moving water and clinging to the log pushed their way across. Kormak emerged shivering on the far side and tried to dry himself with his hands. He put on his soaking jerkin once more and put his mail coat on top of it. Gilean watched him amused.
“We go now.” They set off into the woods, moving as fast as they could.
Only a few days ago Kormak would have considered this a blighted land. Now after his experiences across the river he was relieved to be back in it. The air felt cleaner and the trees looked much more natural. There were even normal looking birds and beasts to be disturbed by their passage.
Ahead of them was a clearing, a small cottage with a wooden roof and a small verandah, Elder Signs cut into the wood. “Wait here,” Kormak said. “I don’t know how they will react to the sight of an elf.”
Gilean nodded and Kormak raced up and began to bang on the door. “Wake up! The elves are across the river. We will soon be under attack.”
He heard voices within and saw light as a lantern was lit. A man came to the door with a spear in his hand. “What you say?”
“The Settlements have been invaded. Take your family and flee. Now!”
The man looked at him suspiciously as if suspecting a trick. “The elves have crossed the river in force. They mean to kill or enslave every man and woman they find. Your children they will feed to their spiders.” Kormak was far from certain that the last was true but it certainly gave a sense of urgency.
He saw a woman’s face peering over the man’s shoulder and a couple of frightened tousle-headed children looking at him. “In the name of the Holy Sun take your family and go. There is not much time.”
Kormak turned to leave and that seemed to convince the man that he was not a robber. “We should muster at Green Oak,” he said. Kormak shook his head. “Green Oak will soon be overwhelmed. Take the Forest Road to Eastbridge. Warn your neighbours. Tell the sheriff there what is coming. Tell him to send word to the Baron of Enderby.”
The man looked at him, his wits still slow from sleep. It was all too much for him to take in. “The elves are here and they serve the Shadow,” Kormak repeated. “There is nothing to be done here now except take what you can carry and run.”
The man continued to stand there but the woman was in motion. “Listen to the man, Standa,” she said. “Green Oak was already attacked. Grogan and the Rangers are missing. Bertram has sent the war-arrow around.”
“Why should I listen to this stranger?” said Standa.
“Because I am a Guardian of the Order of the Dawn,” Kormak said. He did something he would not normally have done and slid his blade partially from the sheath. The runes along its length glowed before he covered them once more. “The Shadow is closer than you think,” he said. “Go now!”
Something in his tone convinced the man to move. He began to load his few belongings onto a handcart, set his wife and children to pulling it and walked along ahead carrying a bow in his hand.
“Rouse your neighbours,” Kormak told him and when he saw the man’s indifferent look, added, “There is safety in numbers.”
He did not think there was any safety if the encountered the full body of Weaver’s force but there might be from stragglers or scouts. He returned to the forest. Gilean was waiting. Ghostwing fluttered overhead.
“What now?” the elf woman asked.
“We need to get to Green Oaks and warn them, if there is still time.” She nodded. “You’d best keep out of sight. I don’t think they will be particular about shooting an elf tonight, and they don’t have any reason to know you are different from Weaver’s people.”
“I understand.”
“Men do not have your ability to tell a follower of the Green from a follower of the Shadow at a glance,” he said, unable to keep a note of bantering irony from his voice.
“I have already seen that,” she said. They moved on through the forest, heading towards Green Oaks by the road. Kormak realised that at some point they must have passed the point where he had first met the elf woman, but felt no need to point this out to her.
When they reached Green Oaks, the Gates were open and the village was ominously silent. There were signs that a massive force had moved through the clearing around the village but no sign of a fight.
“What happened here?” he asked Gilean. She shrugged.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“Cover me, I am going to go in and take a look.”
“Let Ghostwing scout first,” she said. He nodded. The great owl took to the air above the village, circled and then moved on. It returned many minutes later, landed in front of Gilean. She ruffled its feathers with one hand, picking out a large parasite and tossing it away. They looked at each other for a score of heartbeats.
“The village is empty except for a few stragglers,” he says. “Weaver’s army is already moving along the road. It looks like a small force has already returned across the river with the slaves taken here.”
“Let’s take a look,” Kormak said. “I want to find out what happened here.” She nodded and they moved cautiously towards the open gates.
In the watchtower the sentries’ throats had been cut. In the street they found men with knives buried in their chests. Those knives were not elvish blades but the sort carried by hunters. Propped up against a wall, outside his inn, he found Bertram. The man had a hunting knife between his ribs. He was very pale and blood trickled from his wounds. He was clearly not long for this world.
“What happened here?” Kormak asked.
“Are you one of the Shadow-worshipping bastards too now?” Bertram asked. Kormak shook his head. He went to the water barrel and brought a scoop for the dying man.
“What happened?” he repeated gently.
“Grogan came back with our missing people,” Bertram said. “Claimed they had ambushed the elves and got them back, that you were slain in the fighting. We let him in-- of course we did.”
A sick feeling gathered in the pit of Kormak’s stomach. He knew what Bertram was going to say next. “They turned on you once they were through the gates.”
“They must have done. I did not see it all. I just heard a scream from the gates and when I tried to get out and see what was happening, Grogan and Jaethro stopped me. There was something weird about them, spooky. I told them I was going, tried to push past and Jaethro put a knife in me. I tried to wrestle with him, but he stabbed me again and again. By the Holy Sun, it hurts.”
“They must have opened the gates and let the elves in because the next thing I knew the place was swarming with them, and spiders big as bloody houses. One of them checked me and saw I was too weak to move. They knew I was a goner so they just left me here. One of their bloody spiders stung me with something. I thought I was poisoned but I actually started feeling a bit better after that. At least it did not hurt so much.”
Kormak did not have the heart to tell him that his body was most likely riddled with spider eggs which would hatch and devour his corpse. “Where did they go?”
“The next village I guess. Silas Springs. They seemed to want prisoners and lots of them. Never heard of elves taking slaves before.”
Gilean came into view and the innkeeper cursed. “Bloody elf. Guess you’re one of those Shadow-cursed changelings after all, Guardian.”