Unable to nod off, Stryke wandered down to the Inlet. For a while he sat on the bank, throwing pebbles into the water. With the rush of the flow he didn’t hear Coilla coming up behind him. The first he knew she was there was when she plumped down beside him, arms around her knees. “So what now, Stryke?” she asked. “Do we push on to Drogan and seek Keppatawn’s hospitality again?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know.”
“Don’t see where else we can go with Jennesta plaguing this end of the inlet.”
“Then again,” Stryke suggested, “that might be the first place she’d come looking for us. Gods! I haven’t a clue what we do now.”
Coilla threw a pebble of her own. It splashed into the Inlet. “What’s most important to you?”
“Just staying alive, I think.”
“What about the stars? Don’t they matter any more?”
“Who knows? I wish we’d never started this.” He leaned back on a mossy boulder.
Twin pebbles splashed into the water. After a time Coilla turned to him. “So what were you and Krista saying to each other back there while I was in the temple?”
“Nothing.”
“You stood there talking for half an hour without actually saying anything? I don’t believe it.”
“The Priestess told me I might be a sport,” he admitted reluctantly.
“A
what?
”
“In my case it’s an orc who can feel magic.” He took the stars out of his belt and flipped them between his hands as Coilla stared at him.
“That’s not natural. Sorry, forget I said that. Did you tell her about the dreams?”
“I didn’t have to. She seemed to think that was one of the . . . symptoms, whatever.”
“Have you ever considered that pellucid might be responsible for them?”
“The crystal? Course I have. For a while I kind of half believed it was. Now I’m sure it isn’t.”
She changed tack. “What are we going to do?” she repeated.
“Beats me.”
Stryke fussed with the stars, three in one fused piece and two still independent. Then he wearied of it and pushed them morosely across the grass.
For a time the two orcs peered through the moonlight at the puzzle. Neither of them could see how the instrumentalities were joined. The spikes melded them seamlessly together in a way that seemed to defy the laws of nature. There was something strange about the spidery mass, something that seemed to disappear into infinity.
Stryke took to fiddling with them again. Almost immediately the Ruffetts View star joined to the others with a dull click.
Coilla was impressed. “How did you do that?”
“I’ve no idea.” He tried the last, the green, five-spiked one they’d lifted from Hobrow’s settlement at Trinity.
“Here, give me that,” Coilla finally said, and snatched it from him. She had no more luck than he did.
At last Stryke gave it up. He put the stars back into his pouch. “I guess we’d better be getting back. The others will be worried about us.”
They hadn’t taken a dozen steps when two figures stepped out from their hiding place and blocked their path.
Micah Lekmann and Greever Aulay.
“You’re starting to make a habit of this,” Coilla told them.
“Very nice,” Lekmann said, his sword already naked in his hand. “Couple of lovers on a secret tryst.”
“Shut up, Micah,” Aulay snapped. “Why talk when we can kill?” He had his blade up too, its tip circling, as the orcs drew their swords.
On the banks of the Calyparr Inlet, two duels began.
Lekmann feinted at Stryke and slammed in a low hit. But the orc jumped his blade and spun to kick the bounty hunter in the knee. Lekmann swayed aside, almost overbalancing. Stryke’s backhand stroke scored along his curving back, but Lekmann brought up his blade. It slithered along the edge of the orc’s weapon, knocking it aside in a shower of sparks.
Meantime Coilla sprang back as Aulay drew something from under his coat. Then she watched, almost bemused, as he twisted his stump-cup free and plugged in a wicked knife. She leaped in at him but Aulay caught her blade on the long dagger he suddenly whipped out of his other sleeve.
“Gonna kill you, bitch.”
“Is that with or without your other eye?” she returned, the tip of her sword just missing his cheek.
With a snarl of fury he lunged. His foot landed badly on the uneven turf and as he fell, his blade caught against a buried rock. It snapped off near the hilt.
Coilla slashed down at his overextended arm. Blood gushed out. Not even the cloth of his coat could stem the flow.
Again he roared. Scrambling to his feet and backing off, he pulled the knife-blade out of his stump and snapped a vicious, two-sided hook in its place. It looked like something a butcher would use to hang a carcass.
“This is for Blaan!” he yelled, slicing the hook towards her.
She let it swing past then jumped in to seize his forearm. Taken by surprise, Aulay couldn’t resist as she turned the hook in on his guts and disembowelled him. She gave the hook another twist. “And this is for you, scumpouch.”
His face was a picture of stunned disbelief as his lifeblood trickled away.
All this time Stryke had been trying to drive Lekmann down towards the river. The rough ground was proving more of a hindrance than a help, and the orc was too tired for dancing. Once on a better surface, Stryke let rip. His blade a blur of icy moonlight, he cut the stocky man’s defence to shreds.
Lekmann disengaged, gasping for breath. But Stryke had had enough. He sprang forward, his free hand slapping his thigh. The sound distracted his opponent for a brief second but it was enough. Stryke’s sword plunged between Lekmann’s ribs.
The orc put his foot on the bounty hunter’s chest and pushed. Stryke’s blade slid free of flesh and Lekmann hit the water with a splash. His greasy black hair fanned out around him as he lay face down in the wavelets.
The last Stryke saw of him, Lekmann was drifting along with the current, a deeper darkness spreading from his body.
Arms around each other’s shoulders, the two orcs staggered back to their companions.
“I’ve had enough of quiet moments,” Coilla muttered.
They were about to approach the cold, dark camp when Stryke suddenly pulled Coilla into the bushes. With the rising wind she couldn’t hear a thing. But she was beginning to trust Stryke’s hunches.
Moments later, a band of riders thundered to a halt on every side of the half-asleep orcs. There wasn’t a thing the sentries could do about it. Stryke thought his band was getting sloppy, but that was hardly the point now.
From their hiding place Stryke and Coilla watched as Krista Galby stared down at the Wolverines. “Where is it?” she demanded bluntly.
“Where’s what?” Haskeer blustered.
“Don’t give us that!” the leader of Krista’s temple guard said. He dismounted, never taking his sword’s point from a line with Haskeer’s throat.
“Jarno,” the High Priestess warned. “These orcs were our allies. They fought alongside us. That old man there saved my son’s life.” She held her hands out to her sides, then dropped them in a weary gesture. “I don’t want to hurt you. But you took something that belongs to us. It’s important to us, a cornerstone of our faith.”
Nobody said anything. The wind blew its uncanny chill across the clearing. In the bushes Coilla and Stryke felt their own brand of guilt.
“We
need
it,” Krista added.
The uncomfortable silence stretched out.
Rellston’s patience snapped. He had caught up with his Priestess’s band several hours ago, and now a hundred men stirred restlessly around the Wolverines. The tension in the air was palpable. He dismounted and strode forward to stand over Jup and Haskeer.
Behind the screen of frost-browned leaves, Stryke whispered, “I knew we shouldn’t have stopped.”
Coilla nodded at the scene before them. “So why isn’t your girlfriend keeping Rellston on a tight rein?”
“Maybe that’s as tight as it gets. Come on,” he said. “If they’d wanted to kill anybody they would have started by now. Let’s go and talk to her before Rellston gets out of control.”
They pushed their way out of the tangled leaves.
When Krista saw them, she said coldly, “You’ve done me two favours. Now I’ll do you one. Give me the instrumentality and the Commander here won’t exact a penalty for its theft.”
“What if I need them?” Stryke said, and instantly could have cut his own tongue out.
“Them?”
Krista returned. “You have more than one?”
“That’s why we needed yours, don’t you see?” He looked up at her, trying to read her face in the misty moonlight.
“No, I don’t see.” It wasn’t Krista who spoke but Rellston. He stepped in close, staring down into Stryke’s eyes. “If you’ve got another, you don’t need ours. Give it back now.” The tip of his sword came up to rest against Stryke’s windpipe. “I knew I should never have trusted you. Orc trash.”
“Calm down!” Krista insisted. She reached over and gently pulled Rellston’s sword point clear of Stryke’s flesh. “I’m sure we can solve this amicably.”
“I’m not,” Rellston growled, his anger barely in check.
All around them the Wolverines heard the restless sounds of men unsheathing weapons and climbing down from their horses. The orcs found themselves ringed by hostile townsmen. They began easing out their own weapons.
“Don’t be more stupid than you have to be, Stryke,” the Commander said. “You can’t win. You’re outnumbered. Just hand the thing over. That or I’ll make you.”
“Yeah?” snapped Haskeer. “You and whose army?”
“
This
one, lamebrain,” a man called out from behind him.
One of the grunts suddenly cried out as someone shoved into him. The grunt shoved back. All around the camp scuffles were beginning to break out.
“Stop it!” Krista shouted.
“Stop it!”
“Calm down!” Stryke yelled, trying to cool the situation. A swift clash of blades almost drowned his words. Louder he said, “You know us! We’ve fought alongside you. Do you really think a bunch like you can take us all?”
Rellston cursed, earning himself a hurt look from his Priestess. Then he said, “At ease, lads. Let them go for now.”
“Wolverines, fall back,” Stryke ordered. His blade hung loosely in his grasp, ready to attack at any moment as he covered his band’s withdrawal.
Almost all of them had faded back into the night when one of Rellston’s men suddenly called, “We can’t let ’em get away! After ’em!”
Instantly, all was chaos.
“Don’t kill anybody you don’t have to!” Stryke shouted.
Their band’s horses were out of reach, beyond the Mani force. Stryke yelled, “Let’s get out of here!”
He plunged into the bushes at his back once more, ducking overhanging branches and trying not to step on any rotten twigs. It helped that the ground was so waterlogged; the thick layer of mud deadened any sound. Straining his senses to the utmost, he tracked his warband by intuition.
It scared him. But it worked. Soon he’d passed through the thin screen of trees.
He found himself facing an open meadow and, in the faint light that came before the dawn, he saw the darker lines of footsteps painted on the rain-silvered grass. Sprinting along in their wake, he crested a slight rise and saw yet another thicket, with the last of the Wolverines just disappearing into its protection.
He raced up the shallow slope and into the trees. “Should be safe here for a while,” he panted.
“Oh yeah?” Haskeer grumbled from the dappled shadows not an arm’s length away. “Take a look at that, then.”
That
was the far side of the copse. And beyond it lay Calyparr Inlet, dull grey beneath the cloudy morning.
Stryke spun around. On every side but one the waters rushed past the little headland on which they stood. And the Manis were streaming up across the meadow at them, Rellston in the lead.
“What we supposed to do now?” Haskeer shouted in frustration. “Swim?”
Jup snarled, “Just open your big mouth and drink it.”
Oblivious of the Ruffetts View contingent bearing down on them, dwarf and orc glared at each other.
Coilla’s temper snapped. “This is you and your bloody stars!” she yelled at Stryke, slashing her knife through the pouch at his belt.
The pouch fell apart. Almost in slow motion Stryke watched the single, five-spiked instrumentality spinning through the air. One hand belatedly trying to hold the pouch shut, he threw himself forward. But it was too late. The four joined pieces also tumbled out. His fingertips just touched it, sending it cartwheeling across a narrow clearing beneath the trees.
As the Manis burst into the woodland, Stryke saw the single green piece seem to leap upwards as it bounced off the stony turf.
Neither he nor the other orcs were aware of a sodden figure crawling out of the water and into the fringes of the wood.
As Stryke’s scrabbling hands reached out to scoop up the single star, he knocked it flying straight at the rolling meshed pieces. Pouncing on his hoard, he scooped them up against his chest.
He felt more than heard them click together. The puzzle was complete.
Then reality took a step to the left.
Blackness.
There was a feeling of intense cold and Stryke’s stomach clenched as though he were falling. His ears were ringing too much for him to hear anything. He reached out to save himself but there was nothing to grasp.
Nothing beneath his feet.
Nothing at all.
Then abruptly he landed.
He tumbled forward, his hands plunging into something icy and dazzling. The shock brought him to himself.
Snow
.
Snow, under a blanket of cloud so light it was almost as pale as the whiteness beneath him. Where it had been night just heartbeats before, now it was broad daylight. Low on the southern horizon hung a bleached disc that must have been the sun.
Panic threatened to overwhelm him.
He called out but he couldn’t hear himself shout. For a moment he was terrified he’d gone deaf. Then sound came roaring back. An arctic wind was shrieking around him, tearing at his clothing. Squinting, he could just make out the huddled dark shapes that were the other Wolverines.