Dockalfar (7 page)

Things dropped out of the trees at her.

Missing her miraculously, clawing at her as they passed. She closed her eyes. If only she could close her ears to the sounds and her body to the feel. Then she would be safe and content.

But blessedly the screams and the solid sounds of blades breaking flesh and bone receded, lost to the thunder of horse’s hooves in soft earth, the whimpering mewing of the cub, and her own ragged breath. She was as thoughtless as the animal she rode, panic overwhelming rational. She was so new to this game of violence and flight. Hunter and prey. Victim and victimizer. She was the archetypal underdog, the helpless female who neither understood the iron fist of man and violence or how to deal with it. She had always been the sheltered one.

Father, brother, Alex. There was no room in her for initiating her own defense.

She let the horse have its head. There was no other choice.

Her mount slowed. She crept up, hesitantly, terrified of what might meet her eyes. There was only forest. Green and dappled and dimming with the retreat of sun. The path was dark ahead, shadows more intense than they had been on other nights in this place. The heaving animals walked for some time. Silence. Even the cub had quit its complaining and lay quietly against her. Absently she stroked its fur. The spriggan rode in front of her, head constantly turning to glare at one forest noise or another. After a long while she gathered the courage to break the silence.

“Alex? Where is he?”

“How should I know?” the little man snapped. “Dead. Goblin dinner. We’ll be the same if you don’t shut up.”

She shuddered, lowering her head to breath into gulun fur. There was the faint pounding of hooves from behind them.

Heavy sound of labored horse breath.

Bashru twisted in his saddle to watch down the path. The great tan form of the ogre’s mount came into view. The slumped mass that was the ogre itself astride. She looked behind him for more riders. None came. No goblins, no Alex.

“Might be gnomes on the northern side,” the ogre snarled. “Damned Ciagenii assassin! Hope his hide’s used as a gnome footmat.”

The ogre and the spriggan exchanged a long meaningful gaze.

“Master’s going ta be vexed, for sure,” Bashru predicted. “Skin our hides maybe.”

The ogre’s face creased into a network of valleys and crevices. The small, bovine eyes turned on Victoria.

“Still have her.”

“Pah! A female. Worthless. It was the male he wanted. She’s just a tasty snack.”

Zakknr pondered this, as far as an ogre pondered anything, then shrugged. The leather of his harness creaked.

“All we have. Man went down with the assassin. If Dusk is any use at all, maybe he’ll bring him back.”

Victoria wanted very much to scream at them. To demand to know what they were talking about. To know who the ‘Master’ was and most importantly to know what had happened to Alex. The desire went no further than her mind. Her mouth refused to cooperate. All she could do was stare wordlessly.

“What about the insects?” the spriggan inquired.

“Gnome food,” Zakknr replied.

Bashru chuckled. “Serves ‘em right.”

She could not stand it. Could not deal with the horror. She blocked them out. Just ceased to hear their banter and stared at the forest, and melted with the rhythm of her mount. Cricket sounds and night birds and some things that her foreign mind could not identify. Those were her companions. The purrs of the cub sleeping in her lap. She stoked it gently. She watched the lights of fireflies blink off and on within the deepest shadow of the forest. Beautiful. There was a rainbow of colors in those brief and brilliant lights. A symphonic method to the madness, like a very quiet, but well thought out fireworks display. It was the most wonderful thing. It was a serenade of sorts for harassed nerves. It made her forget. The lights drifted closer, retaining their glow for longer, then winking out. She smiled to see it. At the size of the fireflies. One flared right beside her and she gasped, momentarily blinded. Then her eyes adjusted and she found herself staring bemusedly into the glow. The firefly waved at her. Only it was not a firefly. It was a miniature, sexless child, all smooth and limber and orange skinned. Its limbs were the thickness of toothpicks, its head the size of a pea. It was beautiful. It winked out suddenly and she almost cried in dismay, but another appeared over her head to the right, then another in front of her. They all smiled at her, waving gentle arms. She relaxed, returning the smile. She glanced back once to see if Bashru or Zakknr were as delighted with the sprites as she was, but their expressions were closed and brooding. Not even a flicker of attention to the hovering auroras.

There was a snap and rustle of something heavy moving through the forest.

The ogre growled and ordered the spriggan to see what it was. Bashru complained and grouched, but under threat of bodily harm veered his horse off the path to investigate. She rode on with the ogre. The lights were more intense. She blinked at how many and how bright they were. How could Zakknr not be awed by them? When she turned to ask, he was swatting at something that buzzed incessantly around his face. Not one of the tiny sprites. He was paying her very little heed. The lights were moving away from her, into the wood at the right side of the path. She frowned, sad at the departure. A dozen tiny arms beckoned her to follow if she wished. It seemed the natural thing to do. To urge her mount off the path, after the glowing lights. Zakknr did not notice at all, so consumed with swatting the flying pests that plagued him was he. And soon the enfolding arms of the forest cut him off from sight of her.

A path that was no game trail opened before her. It was as if trees had grown to one side and limbs and vines had allowed for her passage. The leaves and the branches were whispers on her skin.

Caresses. Imperceptibly they closed behind her. She breathed in air laden with forest scents, pollen and dew. It was cool, a blessing that made her lids heavy. She drowsed.

The strains of music awakened her. It was faint, and almost familiar. Lilting and exotic and melding so smoothly with the sounds of the wood as to be part of it. She blinked in wonderment, found herself softly humming along. So sweet it was. So heavenly in its purity. The lights were coalesced before her, swarming behind the veil of foliage. The music came from there. Strings that could have been reeds, and voices that might belong to angles themselves. No words. Just a melodic humming that surpassed all lyrical calling.

The horse stopped, uncertain, its ears twitching nervously. She climbed down, sat Phoebe on the ground to fend for herself and walked towards the curtain of leaves and ferns that hid the forest orchestra.

Her mind had no description for what she saw, but it embraced it all the same.

Creatures cavorted in a clearing.

Creatures of varying size, from the tiny sprites to slender limbed beings that stood her own height. They were lovely beyond description. Naked and almost androgynous in sex. Almost. They danced in a spinning, gyrating circle, singing, touching as they passed, laughing in high humor. Wild spirits, she thought, staring wide-eyed. Beautiful wild spirits, whose voices were like honey and whose movements like water over silken rocks.

They were pale as night, as a whole, with hair that flowed and tossed about their shoulders and backs. Their eyes were huge and luminous, like moonlight. Their faces rapt and smooth. Some saw her in passing, smiling. They beckoned her with eyes. Some danced close to her, whipping past, trailing a nebulous hand across her arm, her cheek, her hip. She hardly flinched. The music sang within her.

Joyful and eager to match the chorus that echoed around her.

She wanted to cry. It felt so right.

Like her sometime dreams of visual poetry and haunting melodies. The sprites buzzed her gleefully. The dancers caressed her, urging her to join in their celebration. The music in her swelled and she stepped forward. Into the circle and the dance. Her soul cried with the unmatched joy of something long bound being set free.

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The forest was not quite as tropical as those he remembered from his term in the Pacific, but it still brought back memories of trudging through a hostile jungle that housed an enemy that knew it considerably better than himself. He felt uneasy, even in the company of the dark assassin, who moved like shadow itself and only stayed visible to Alex to keep him from blundering blindly through a forest he had no sense of direction within.

It was an unexpected consideration.

The climb up the cliff had been hard.

Dusk found an easy route that was still steep enough to have Alex sweating and gasping by the time they reached topside.

They were far enough from the bridge to be unobserved.

Alex was all for rushing back and finding Victoria. Dusk just shook his head, still unhooded and still a little pale and started for the edge of forest. Alex had no choice but to follow. They avoided gnomes. When they did not, he either dropped to the forest floor when Dusk so signaled and waited for the creatures to pass, or waited while Dusk disappeared to silently and efficiently dispose of the enemy. Dusk was appallingly concise.

Dusk wasted nothing, be it words, movement or chance.

Once, Alex was a tad too slow in taking cover and a band of gnomes had roared outrage and attacked. The assassin had merely melted away from Alex and appeared in the midst of the gnomes.

Before they suspected he was among them, half their number had fallen, and when the others realized what had descended upon them, no blade or blow even came close to threatening the dark assassin. Alex watched in awe. He had time for all of five breaths before it was over and he was being beckoned to follow. He ran to catch up, skirting gnomish bodies. All neatly dead. No gaping wounds, no severed limbs. Hardly wounds at all that he could see. He took a few backwards steps, gaping.

Like he had never seen a body twisted in death before.

Like his dreams were not full of them.

But not bodies like this. And not killed with such efficiency.

“How do you do that?” he could not help gasping. Dusk had his hood up, his features hidden within its depths.

“It’s what I am.”

Alex continued to stare at him, feeling a bit pale in the memory that he had thought to subdue this. This creature that thought it was death. “Sorry,” he muttered.

The hood swiveled and the eyes, fathomless and inky with night stared out at him. “Why?”

“It sounds… hard. If this is what you are. I got tired of killing real fast. It hurts too much.”

Very slowly the eyes blinked, then turned back to survey the wood. The night birds cried. The wind whispered in the leaves.

“You have a soul.” It was coldly said and final. Alex shivered. He did not know if it was a comment on his state of morality or a comparison of something he possessed that Dusk did not. He did not feel inclined to speak further.

Dusk disappeared on several occasions, while Alex waited impatiently, returning without word to motion him forward in another direction. They went like this for much of the night. Alex was beginning to feel the non-stop travel in his muscles and bones. It was becoming hard to lightly step over snaking roots in his path, to catch limbs that his companion pushed past before they smacked him in the face. He thought, deep down in the sensible part of his mind, that it would be wise to sit down for while, to close his eyes for just a bit and let his body rest. He would never ever ask it. Not from Dusk who did not seem to tire. Pride would keep him on his feet and worry for Victoria.

They did stop momentarily, by a small glade with a pool no bigger than manhole, to drink. Or for Alex to drink.

Dusk stood and scanned the forest.

There was not exactly impatience in his stance, but there was some stiffening of the fluid lines of him that hinted at tenseness. On his knees by the pool, Alex looked into the blackness of the wood and saw nothing.

“Is there something out there?” he whispered.

“No,” the assassin said.

After a long while of travel the assassin very matter-of-factly stated that there were nighthorses ahead. A few steps more and Alex could hear the low guttural tones of an angry conversation. And then the night black bulks of two horses and the mismatched forms of their riders on the ground before them. It was Alex that made the noise that alerted them. Ax and knife were out and threatening before he had taken a step into the clearing. Coal black eyes blinked warily at him, then the ogre was lumbering across the small clearing towards him with something akin to murder in its beady orbs. Alex had a none too gentle hand laid on his arm and he was jerked closer to the ogre than olfactory senses found comfortable.

“Where you been?” Zakknr demanded, looking past him uncertainly.

His gaze registered nothing, so Dusk was still playing at chameleon in the wood.

Alex tried to disengage his arm. The ogre was having nothing of it. He dragged Alex towards the horses and the bowlegged figure of the spriggan. There were no other figures to be seen.

“Where’s Victoria?” He was shaken and starting to develop a nausea born of premonition. He repeated the question, shriller, desperate.

Zakknr and Bashru exchanged quick looks. Almost guilt. Most certainly relief.

With a frantic twist, Alex was free of the ogre. He glared about the clearing wildly.

No goblins. No girl. No damned assassin either, for that matter.

“What’s happened to her?” he yelled loud enough to momentarily quiet the night birds.

Zakknr waved a fist at him. “Gone.”

Simple. To the point. Devastating.

“Gone where?”

The spriggan shrugged. “Wandered off. Lost her. Not my fault.”

The ogre nodded assent. “Didn’t need female anyway.”

Alex gaped at him, past him to the spriggan. Neither looked particularly sympathetic. Where was the cursed assassin?

“Dusk, God damn it! Get out here!”

He was in no mood for shadow games. If these two idiots had lost Victoria, he damn sure trusted the assassin’s ability to find her. Surprisingly obedient, Dusk stepped into the clearing. Alex stabbed a finger at him.