Dockalfar (6 page)

Bashru was muttering in disgust and some amazement. Most of his disgruntlement seemed to be that a worthless gulun cub was worthy of such a delicious tidbit when a loyal spriggan rated nothing but dried strips of meat. He glowered into the woods for some time muttering about the lack of charity in assassins.

The next morning brought them to a game trail wide enough to allow riding.

The spriggan absolutely refused to ride with the gulun and put up such an irate argument that even Zakknr gave up bellows and treats in favor of an easier solution. He made the goblins ride together and gave the humans and the gulun a mount of their own. Not that he trusted them that far. The reins were secured to his own saddle in case they might take it in mind to bolt. That was perfectly all right. Alex was delighted to ride with Victoria over Zakknr, even with the gulun as excess baggage.

They rode for hours through landscape awash with color and sound. It was always changing, always wonderfully bright and new. Hours into the day they paused to relieve themselves and stretch cramped muscles.

Dusk appeared out of nowhere with a small furry sacrifice for Phoebe. Victoria beamed and mouthed thanks. Alex found himself glaring. He could think of no good cause for the animosity, other than the fact that Dusk had a face that had made him stop and stare, much less what it might do to a woman. And the assassin was going out of his way to accommodate a cubling that the rest of his party would happily carve up for stew. Alex could not help thinking that maybe it was the woman and not the animal that the courtesy was being extended to. Victoria certainly responded.

She even went so far as to comment to Alex when they were back in the saddle and making their way down the trail again that Dusk, (she had little liking for forming assassin on her lips) was the most humane of their captors. Alex kept his tongue, looked straight over her head and secretly dreaded making camp that night. For most certainly the assassin would repeat the cub’s feeding and gain even more of Victoria’s gratitude.

They reached the gorge a hour before sunset. It was a narrow ravine cut deeply into the sprawling forest. A rocky river snaked some two hundred feet below. The forest stopped twenty feet from the gorge, leaving the land naked and scattered with sandstone and dead branches and restarted almost immediately on the other side of the span, nearly a hundred feet away.

There was a bridge that crossed it. It was constructed of twisted vines, as thick as a man’s arm and lashed together with time weathered planks of rough hewn wood. It seemed solid and well built. Wide enough for the horses.

The company paused for some while, scanning the far side. The goblins muttered amongst themselves, whispering of gnomes and gnomish traps, and how one would very badly not like to be turning on a gnomish spit.

Bashru commented that gnomes were fonder of goblin meat that any other.

Swarn rebutted that no self-respecting creature of any sort would lower itself to taste of spriggan. Zakknr ceased the debate with a rap across the back of the goblin’s knobby head and the order to take the horses across first. The goblins scurried to do his bidding, taking reins in hand and leading the nervous animals across the bridge.

It creaked and swayed under their weight. But held. The ogre followed with his own outsized mount. There was a mighty protest of wood and vine, but the bridge held fast, which relieved the mind of it ever falling if it could support that combined weight.

Only Alex, Victoria, the spriggan and the sandstone colored form of the assassin were left. The spriggan urged them forward, taking Victoria’s arm and pulling her onto the bridge. Alex glanced back at the assassin, who, against the backdrop of sky and clearing was not difficult to discern. Dusk had paused and was staring across the gorge into the forest. There was no expression on what Alex could see of the face, but there was something in the body that tensed. Alex stopped, three steps out onto the bridge, following the assassin’s stare. He could see nothing but foliage and undergrowth. The horses milled quietly on the far side, the goblins were arguing again, or plotting amongst themselves.

Victoria and the spriggan were almost across. There was a sudden, hard hand in his back and a level whispered.

“Go.” The first word the assassin had actually spoken to him.

He turned questioningly. “What?”

“Go.” More urgent. Something hit the wood at his feet. Something fletched in green feathers. An arrow. Then suddenly there were a shower of them and he was flinging himself down in reflex, being half way across a bridge with no hope of cover. There were screams from the other side, and when he looked up a sudden swarm of black bodies erupted from the wood, wielding axes and daggers. The ogre bellowed and rushed forward. He had arrows in his leathery hide. He ignored them.

Alex searched for Victoria. Found her pale form between the horses. He started to go to his knees, but Dusk was scrambling over him, light and graceful, no doubt discomforted that the bridge offered him little in the way of camouflage.

The bridge shuddered. There were gnomes at the far end. Evil, grinning mouths and small heads on misshapen bodies. The canines in those gaping mouths were sharp and no doubt used to tearing flesh. The bridge shuddered again, more violently, and cables that were attached to stone supports let loose, almost as if they had been designed to be released easily and upon need.

Alex might have kept his hold, half lying down as he was, but the jar of the bridge slamming against the far wall of the ravine and the impact of the assassin who had not been holding on, tore him free and sent him spinning past featureless rock towards a too narrow span of river.

He hit water, barely missing a rocky outcropping. He went under with too much violence and lost what breath he had. He gasped water and struggled hysterically when it filled his lungs.

Drowning. Drowning. He drowned in his nightmares, in an ocean that was no less turbulent that this unearthly river. He spasmed and kicked for the surface, hit a rock and scraped flesh raw on it, but clung to it and pulled himself up. Gasping air, spitting out fluid, he had barely found relief when he was ripped away from his buoy and cast into the rapids. He fought to keep the surface. He was a good swimmer, even though he had developed somewhat of a phobia for water. But this river was meant for nothing so much as a means of breaking and reducing debris that dared its realm into meaningless matter.

Alex went under again. He clawed frantically and found softness and fabric.

He pulled it up with him, heavy, lifeless and limp. Recognizable as nothing but dark, soaked layers of material. But he knew what was under it. He contemplated releasing it back to the arms of the river.

Maybe the sacrifice would be enough to win his own freedom if lady river was feeling kind. He thought about working to end a jealousy that had been building all day. He was not a stranger to killing, not unlike what he held afloat in his arms. He had deaths on his conscience in the name of war. And this one was probably already gone. Drowned or hit upon rocks Alex had barely avoided. One less foe for him to contend with in a friendless world.

He could not let go. He held on and let the river carry him and his burden and finally came up hard against an outcropping of rock on the northern side.

The breath left him again, and he hugged the rock in relief as it returned. Then hauled his battered body up onto a rocky, narrow shelf, pulled the assassin up after him and collapsed, tangled with cloth and limbs that were not his own. He breathed deep, eyes closed and finally sat up as it occurred to him to check and see if what he had fished out of the river was actually alive. He struggled to pull the assassin the rest of the way onto the shelf, turned him over and peeled wet cloth off of a face that was still and ashen. Skin color was not so far from his own, and great, long tendrils of hair that could have been any color, wet as it was, covered slack features. Drenched and unconscious, Dusk seemed to have little ability to camouflage himself. Alex leaned an ear close and listened for breath. There was none. There was a rivulet of blood that crept along one temple. It began at the hair line, deep red paling as it spread, diluted with water.

“All right,” he murmured to himself, garnering courage and hefted Dusk over onto his stomach.

Without the burden of wet clothes he might have been surprisingly light. Alex went about trying to force water from lungs, hard pushes that pumped a good deal of river from between the assassin’s lips. Satisfied with his efforts he flipped him back over and checked for breath, found none and with a great sigh for his own efforts to revive an enemy, proceeded to force some of his own breath into uncooperative lungs. That received better results. With a sputtering cough, Dusk threw out an arm, attempting weakly to push Alex off of him. Alex caught the wrist and after a bit of searching through folds of wet cloak imprisoned the other. The bones were narrow and the hands long and fine. He flung a leg over Dusk’s waist and straddled him, not inclined to give away what advantage he had over a half-drowned assassin. The eyes that blinked up at him were gray specked with green, wide and bewildered. That was fine, he hoped the knock on the head had totally addled the assassin’s wits.

“I want some answers,” he ground out. “And I want them now. Understand?”

The eyes continued to stare. The ragged breath became a little stronger.

“What the hell is going on? Why did you bring us here?”

Some color had returned to Dusk’s face, some reflexive attempt to blend with the stone under him. His body was placid under Alex. No resistance, just labored breaths that were becoming steadier and quieter. And no answer. Alex shook him in frustration.

“God damn it, tell me!” He suddenly found himself off balance and flying into the jumble of rocks in front of him. He hit, cursed and awkwardly tried to regain his balance before the assassin could gain his.

He need not have bothered. Dusk was doing nothing more than crouching in the spot where he had lain, eyeing Alex warily. His hair hung in tendrils over his face, falling almost to the ground in his kneeling position. He reminded Alex of a wild animal, of the damned gulun cub when it was roused. A cornered wild beast that was in no wise safe to trifle with. Alex rubbed his shoulder where he had hit the rock, glaring at Dusk.

“Fine,” he spat. “Don’t tell me. See if I save your life again.”

The assassin glanced back at the river, then once more returned his gaze to Alex. Slowly he lifted a hand to his head, brought it away stained with his blood.

There was the whisper of a tremor in the slim fingers. The lids lowered, black lashes trembling on pale cheeks. If he passed out, Alex thought, he’d truss him hand and foot then see how sharp his claws were. But the eyes opened after a moment, and the body relaxed. The assassin sat down, with his arms resting on his knees. He stared at Alex disconcertingly, almost uneasily. Finally he said, in that low silk on silk voice of his, “I am in your debt.”

Alex stared at him for a moment, then threw out one hand in exasperation.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I owe you my life.” Carefully spoken, like a man walking across glass.

“What you choose to take in return is your choice.”

“All right. I can deal with that. Answer my questions. “

The assassin shook his head. “Those questions are not mine to answer. I cannot betray my master in repayment to you.”

“Then I can’t think of a damn thing for you to do, since I’ve the feeling your master and me are at cross purposes.”

The assassin nodded, looked up and around at the cliff wall towering over them. He ran his hand though his mane of wet hair which might have been golden, or red or umber. He gathered the mass of it and pulled it over one shoulder, again reminding Alex of an animal that was totally unaware of just how striking it was. It merely was.

“I’ll tell you what you can do for me,” Alex said in a fit of petulance. “You can keep far away from Victoria.”

Dusk turned his eyes, gray now with centers of brown, upon him with mild curiosity. He shrugged. “As you wish.”

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Ten razor sharp pins were impaling Victoria’s chest and shoulders, yet she hardly noticed the pain. The screams of combat, inhuman screams that pierced the air around her, held all of her attention.

She huddled between the horses, clutching a hissing gulun cub, pressing her face against slick horse fur and slicker saddle leather.

The screaming was too much. She had never heard its like. Never heard screams of pain, or seen contest of such bloody mayhem in all her sheltered life.

None of the filtered stories she had watched of the war had ever seemed so horrible or so real. Nothing Alex had ever told her of his experiences had the shocking brutality of a battle ax cleaving through flesh. She wanted to cry, to huddle amongst the mulling, terrified horses and wish it all away. She wanted Alex with his arms around her, shielding her from the world, like he always did. But he was lost to her in the melee. So were the spriggan and the goblins, dubious sources of support at best. All she could see from her vantage was the ogre clearing the area about him with a war ax every bit as tall as she was.

Limbs flew, blood coated the earth.

Her virgin eyes wide and horrified at the carnage, yet she could not get away.

Phoebe squirmed in her arms and fought for freedom. Victoria clamped her close like a shield.

Then there were hands on her from behind, rough and hurtful. She screamed and twisted, kicking out, hair all but blinding her. A horrible, gnarled face thrust itself into her vision. The hands shook her. The twisted mouth was calling her names, yelling at her to shut up. In utmost shock, she realized she was in the clutches of the spriggan. Her screams reduced to whimpers.

“Get up,” he snarled. He was bloody.

His dagger had seen use. He urged her at the horse, hands on embarrassing places.

One handed she pulled herself up, holding desperately to Phoebe. The spriggan hit the horse hard and it bolted. He was after her on the other, screeching at the top of his lungs. A goblin darted in her path. The horse trampled it, hardly pausing in its flight. The forest encompassed her. She bent low over her mount’s neck, not having the least bit of control over it.