The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (33 page)

“
They’re
stories
,” Loren said exasperatedly.  “Who wants to listen to tales of needlework projects and recipe collections?”

“
Bah,” she snorted ineloquently.

The venison was delectable, spicy and soft, utterly delicious after the weeks of smoked fish they
’d picked up in Merrani, but it could have been shoe leather for all Ari noticed.

“
Do you know where they took it?” Melkin asked urgently.  They all looked at the Cyrrhidean, who was slowly shaking his head.  Ari saw that he had a scar on his temple.  In fact, if you looked closely, his face was rather thoroughly used, with that noticeable aplomb that comes from a vast and varied range of life experiences.  Or, in some, the complete lack thereof.

“
Fox,” he said in his quiet voice.  Ari looked up, sweeping the forest with a faint interest—they were rarely seen on the eastern side of the Dragonspine.  But Traive wasn’t commenting on the sly critter with the bushy tail, and Ari about jumped out of his skin when he turned back to find a strange man squatting mere inches from him.  He was bare-chested and in obviously good physical condition, just casually kneeling in his indeterminate-colored clothing with his eyes on Traive’s face.

“
Run north,” Traive told him, low and thoughtful, while they all tried to figure out where he’d come from.  “Scout out the Wise Ones.  I want to know where they are at all times for the next couple months.”

The strange man may have secretly acknowledged this, but all the Northerners saw was him rise and disappear
, quick and soundless, into the surrounding forest. 

“
Break camp,” Traive said into the stillness, barely any louder, so that it was a little startling when the stagriders leaped to their feet like he’d screamed it.  They swept the picnic into saddlepacks in a record amount of time—a prompt kind of people, apparently—and before the Northerners had hardly time to get to their feet, their stags were being led over to them.

As they started off again, Rhuq
attempted to answer the barrage of questions from a demanding Cerise, who was showing every sign of spending her time in Cyrrh perpetually peeved.

“
So, they’re a branch of the Sentinels,” she summarized impatiently.

“
No, no.  The Silver Fox are an entire different branch of the Cyrrhidean tree of forces,” he disclaimed, riding close to her as the party picked up a fast walk.

“
Like the gryphon riders,” Loren cut in happily.

“
Taloners,” Rhuq corrected amiably.

Ahead of them, Traive briefly raised his hand, and as a herd they picked up the pace.  Almost immediately, they turned down one of the trails to the west, wide and well-used despite its steepness,
and began to head down off the side of the Dragonspine.

Right away,
Cyrrh became noticeably closer and thicker around them, underbrush growing into an almost solid wall, vines starting to dangle frequently into the trail and to wind in and out among the trees.  Cerise, probably remembering Little Blue now, kept glancing up apprehensively.  All she saw was birdlife—tons of it, most in gaudy plumage and with such raucous cries that Rodge started wincing at the steadily increasing cacophony.

Ari began to be a little glad for the high-pommeled saddles, even if they chafed.  His legs ached from gripping the narrow
, uncomfortable stag, they were going so unrelentingly downhill; he was sure Rodge would never have been able to hang on.

Within that first
day in Cyrrh, however, those stags made their value known.  The warm, golden light of afternoon had turned the heat and ratcheting humidity into an oven.  No cool breezes could penetrate the dense vegetation where they were now and they were all getting more and more uncomfortable the lower they dropped.  Then, over the vibrating, 360º blanket of insect and bird song, they heard a strange, barking cry.  The Northerners probably wouldn’t even have noticed it, except that it made the stags lift their heads alertly, flicking back their big ears.

It was followed quickly by another, and though this one was fainter, the great
, antlered heads swung up, searching for the source.

“
What was that?” Rodge, Loren, and Cerise all said at once.

The sound came again and every Cyrrhidean-born creature there glanced over their shoulder in its direction.

“Sounds like Redfangs,” Rhuq said, after what seemed an interminable span filled with growing apprehension and several more cries.  The Sentinels all seemed composed and calm, but Ari was learning that was not necessarily a good indicator of threat level.  And the stags were definitely uneasy. 

“
What are—” Cerise began, when another of the cries, much closer, cut her off.  The Sentinels didn’t even look this time, they just loosed the stag’s reins and the animals bounded into a lope.  The Northerners’ beasts, firmly entrenched in herd instinct and probably not interested in being left behind anyway, went right with them, so quickly that Rodge barely had time to yelp and grab for his saddle horn. 

They ran.  And ran.  The lack of shock absorption that Ari had noticed earlier quickly became glaringly manifest,
rather painfully accentuated by the steep decline.  They jolted and jounced and jarred downhill, Rodge stuttering in choppy protest.  Worse, a lot of the background noise had gone quiet, which made the strange cries much more clear.  They were more urgent, too, drawing closer and reminding Ari so much of hounds baying after their prey that he felt the hair on the back of his neck come up.

T
he stags were tireless, keeping up their lope as the minutes dragged edgily on, managing the steep, uneven ground without a stumble.  Sometimes overcome by a spasm of instinct, they would swerve and dart through each other, as if eluding a predator, before being drawn sharply back in line.  It was still a remarkably disciplined group, to Ari’s mind, with the Northerners firmly in the middle of the whole leaping dance of flying hooves and swinging antlers, racing downhill.

Anxiety and adrenaline
began to mount, though, keeping pace with that unshakable, barking clamor.  It was the ominous tenacity that was so chilling, and as dusk deepened and the gloom of the jungle became a pressing, living thing, the sound swelled behind them in a sinister wave.  It drowned out the sound of smacking leaves and vines, the drumming of sharp hooves into the soft, rich soil, the clack of agitated antlers, and the sounds of Ari’s harsh breathing.  He and Loren were both glancing back behind them to see if they could catch a glimpse of their pursuers, but they had to stop as another chilling crescendo sent the stags into a burst of inspired speed.  It took all their concentration just to hang on as the animals hurtled downhill, intent on outracing gravity as well as the looming specters behind them; he was beginning to see the reasoning behind the leg straps.

When he next had a chance to throw a glance over his shoulder, he was rewarded with a sight that chilled him to the bone.  Shadows…a score, it seemed to him, filling the jungle behind them, bigger and taller than a ma
n, with long arms and misshapen legs, flitting almost faster than the eye could follow—in the
trees
.  Whatever Redfangs were, they didn’t walk on the ground like men.  The building pandemonium of dreadful screams and strange, vicious barks only added to the horror.   Eyes wide, mouth dry, he jerked his head back around, hunching instinctively low in the saddle, wondering in frantic panic what they were, how they could keep up with stags…what they would do to them if they caught them…

The Sentinels around were not at all reassuring—to the man they now rode with their reins secured to their pommels and hands full of axe and knife.  Their compact bodies clung so easily to the lunging stags that Ari was tempted to draw his own sword, pretty sure he
’d feel safer with steel at hand.  Preferably
in
hand.  But then a vine slashed across his face, his nerves almost snapped from the terrified tension, and so close behind them that he could hear the whuffling grunt that followed it, a bestial, snarling cry rent the thick air.  Cerise screamed and adrenaline jetted through him even as his blood curdled.

The stags leapt forward in lightning-fast response, digging in with their haunches just as one of the phantom man-things—creatures—airborne monsters—whatever they were, gave an inhuman scream.  It echoed, a paean of terror, through the almost utter darkness, the embodiment of every nightmare ever had, the essence of the unknown night that man has feared from his creation.

Cerise screamed again at the sound, choking it down in a sob, then more of the spine-shuddering, demonic cries sounded out.  But, they were different from the previous ones, as if pain was wrapped up in the malice.  One, then another, then a third and fourth, in quick succession over the rising background din that Ari was sure was drawing even with them.  After the last, his overwrought senses were sure they heard, or felt, or half-sensed, a thump behind them.  He jerked his head around, unable to stop it, deathly afraid one of the things had taken to the ground in pursuit.  As if that would somehow be worse.

Outside the jungle,
there was a full moon, and in a sudden break of the thick canopy of tree tops, the ghostly half-light illuminated for a second a puzzling, shocking scene: a black, mannish shadow shape lying unmoving in the middle of the trail.  In that momentary glimpse, Ari was sure he’d seen a short, feathered shaft protruding from the creature’s breast.

Fragile as a flower in a black gale, hope blossomed in his own chest.  Aid?  Was someone helping them?  His adrenaline-jacked brain flew to the memory of the mysterious archer on the
other side of the Dragonspine—what he wouldn’t give to be running from a nice, normal, bloodthirsty thug right now.

Things were moving so fast, his senses could barely register them; the cries were becoming so constant it was like a sheer wall of bedlam
rising behind them, but he was sure that there was a note of desperation, of frustrated fury in the predatory wails.  And then, suddenly, there was the impression, the flickering sense, of solid walls rising around them in the darkness, the muting of the horrid screams.  So fast it was akin to a slap in the face, the stags flashed through that dimly sensed passage of solidity and came to a shuddering, jolting, milling halt.

The Northerners, still panting with terror, gasped at the
abruptness.  There was torchlight.  People.  Eyes wide, they stared around them at relative calm, at a murmur of soothing voices, at hands moving to unstrap their legs and still the restless, blowing stags.  Cerise, crying openly, dropped her face into her hands.

Traive himself helped her dismount and held her for a few moments
, unembarrassed and speaking softly into her rather alarming hair.  Rodge just sat there, eyes bulging, breath racking his chest, but Ari and Loren, staring at each other in confusion, began to laugh.  Relief flooded through them in a great wave.  They were alive.  They were safe.

CHAPTER 16

They headed south into a dry and desiccated land.  The landscape, wavering with heat, was as parched as an old bone, empty as a wasteland, and smelled of nothing but hot.  They were a large party and the dust kicked up by the delicate hooves of all those horses hung in the motionless air like a screen.  It choked off their air.  It almost completely obstructed vision.  It stuck to her clammy skin like flour to a wet roast.

Sable couldn
’t remember when she’d been happier.

There were several reasons to explain this curious state of being.  First off, she
’d persuaded the Queensknight, who had ultimate charge of her security, to ditch Sneed.  Her parade horse didn’t have nearly the interest in forward motion necessary to keep up with the feisty Aerachs everyone else rode.  Delightfully, along with Sneed’s stately plod she’d managed to leave behind the vast majority of the cloying entourage that she’d been saddled with en route to the Kingsmeet.  Her entire party now consisted of her maid Evara, a very nervous Queensknight, and one Lieutenant Waylan, Androssan’s military attaché; she was positively heady with the unfettered freedom.  Sugar on the melon was the springy little piebald mare she’d been loaned, bright white coat covered with rich, reddish-brown blotches, so energetic compared to Sneed’s narcoleptic pace that she was almost skipping under her saddle.

There were other reasons for her lightheartedness, but she hadn
’t quite been able to articulate them yet.  They had to do, somehow, with the Rach.  It took about a minute and a half to understand Merranics.  They had a constitutional monarchy, laws, rules, regulations, charters, infrastructure, and an economy.  The Rach had nothing even remotely similar.  The Merranics were comfortably familiar, their incompetence taken for granted—they were unorganized, easily distracted, often unreasonable, and loud.  Not so the Rach.  Merrani was viewed tolerantly from the other side of the Ethammers as a struggling, undisciplined child, but at least a human child.

The Rach…well, the Rach were something else altogether.  Most of it incomprehensible.

A bloodthirsty, simple- and single-minded autocracy, they lived to fight.  They had no discernible culture or societal structure, no government, not a lick of financial sense, and an unacknowledged trade deficit several centuries old.  Their ways were so alien, they were almost considered blasphemous, and in the northern Empire, no one even spoke of them.  As if they were some sort of hopelessly embarrassing blight on the Realms.  Their centuries of protecting the North were not usually mentioned, and were treated to a sort of sniffing condescension when they were.

But Sable had grown up in the south, where the Rach wore the burnished glow of Legend.  Closer to the oozing danger of the Sheel, southerners tended to
have a better memory of their neighbors; what were tales and tidbits of insight to the rest of the Realms were day-to-day doings in the backyard of the Empire.  The stories and songs of valiant Heroes and noble deeds were still trotted out at the fairs and fests, and Sable could well remember the flush of excitement when real Rach showed up to dance or enter the Northern contests.  Even from her home, she had sometimes seen them far across the Daroe, riding so effortlessly they looked like part of their horses in the distant, hazy heat.

She was an adult
now, of course, inured to handsome smiles and a comely physique...but perhaps there was a little nostalgia.  And the bottom line was that even in the harsh and cynical light of maturity…they were impossible to simply dismiss.

As soon as they were across the Daroe, the huge honor guard—fully the size of her own Northern retinue without any of its self-important dignity—visibly and audibly relaxed.  Laughter, uninhibited talk,
voluble jesting began to punctuate the air, so unexpectedly that Sable turned in her saddle at the front to see what had happened. 
One
thing that had happened was that most of the warriors had slipped out of their loose white blouses and were now riding along in their vests or naked to the waist.  She quickly resumed face-front, glad her cheeks were already red from the heat. 

Kore grinned next to her. 
“We always feel a little constrained north of the Daroe,” he admitted ruefully—with so much familiarity that Rorig, the Queensknight, bristled at him from the other side of his Queen.  Kore, Shagreen of the Wing of the Hilt, cousin to the Rach, and the same impassioned Council that had sat at his elbow the last few days, was in charge.  Sable had refused to be disappointed when Rach Kyr reluctantly said his goodbyes earlier.  He, the Iryx and Ishtan Shagreens, and a small group of Hilt riders had galloped off over the horizon like Merranics late to a brawl, obviously fretting about the neglected Enemy.

It was good, she told herself.  He would be a distraction and she was on business.  She had weeks to pick the mind of the friendly Shagreen next to her; her knowledge of the Rach would be almost complete by the time they reached the Ramparts.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kore slip out of his blouse, which were apparently a great burden to these people.

Well.  Perhaps she
’d start her interview later.

The commotion behind her was picking up alarmingly, the heat and dust apparently not dampening any of the pleasures of being out of Crossing.  She had to stop herself from looking back so often in the next few moments that Kore (probably thinking himself perceptive) said,
“You must forgive our wildness.  I know it’s not your way.”

She smiled at him wordlessly, not wanting to open her mouth for the dust and not about to start a conversation that would entail eye-contact.  She saw him beckon to someone behind him and a rider rode up with a square of soft cloth, which he hospitably held out to her. 

“Once we reach the River Idon, the road will pack and the dust die down, but until then, this will help protect your nose and mouth,” he explained at her blank look, courteously showing her how to tie it around her lower face.

Rorig was positively glowering by the time he
’d finished.  No Northerner would ever have dared to approach her Royal personage so intimately, especially without a shirt on.  Sable found it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected.  It was a very well-formed torso, after all.

The Idon
finally separated itself from the more energetic Daroe and came to join them in flaccid tranquility off to their right, bringing with it an occasional, slightly cool breeze and every once in a while a great cottonwood or clump of willows.  Sable, lowering her kerchief in relief, saw that the land wasn’t really the featureless waste that it seemed when seen through a film of Imperial dust.  On either side of them, stretching to the horizon, were the vast cotton fields that clothed the Realms.  They were spent now, harvest greedily gathered in and only a few forlorn tufts of white left on all those leagues of stunty dark bushes.

E
mboldened by her own newly naked face and feeling like she could handle what was apparently an innocent cultural immodesty, she finally turned around for a closer look at her escort.  They were traveling in a troupe of what looked like entire moving households.  Wives scolded, children shouted and played, dogs barked and chased the children, horses loaded down with heaps of cloth and cooking utensils trudged along, carefully avoiding tripping on either.  In the now clear, searing air, she could see there was cheerful, clamorous activity and smiling brown faces everywhere she looked.  Next to them, the few Northerners looked pasty, sour, and shriveled, their comparably taller, heftier horses making it seem like they were looking down on their traveling companions.  Most of them
were
looking down on their traveling companions. 

A
child not more than three or four came up and passed them just then, carelessly bareback on a prancing stallion.  Glancing at Kore, who didn’t seem to notice that the entire formation was frisking around doing whatever it wanted, she said, “He was awfully young to be riding alone, wasn’t he?”

Kore smiled, warm brown eyes looking disconcertingly right into hers. 
“Aerach children learn to ride almost before they learn to walk.  By the time they’re adults,” he said drolly, “some are so bad that they’ll mount up to walk over to the next tent.”

This was a novel experience, to have conversation with no ulterior motive, like she was just your run-of-the-mill human off the street.  Smiling faintly, she patted the glossy neck of her mare. 
“If we had horses like this in the North, we’d probably be more inclined to the saddle, too.  Alas, they don’t fare so well in the snow.”  Were all Rach so informal?  Or were they just too primitive to really understand rank? 

“
Word is,” Kore said conspiratorially, eyes glowing as they rested on her face, “that the snow lies so thick in the northern Empire that it covers a man’s head, standing.”

“
Depends on the man,” she said, feeling a little playful in her role as casual fellow Realmsman.    “It usually doesn’t make it past King Kane’s shoulders.”  He grinned artlessly at her and she grinned back.  Rorig frowned suspiciously.

It wasn
’t just Kore.  All Rach seemed to come with this casual, rather endearing familiarity.  There wasn’t an ounce of either disrespect or presumption in it—it was more like rulers were considered…part of the family.  By the time they stopped for lunch, the Queensknight was almost apoplectic.

Several young warriors (they all seemed young to her—where were the grizzled veterans you saw in Northern units?)
leapt off their mounts as the party drew up, rushing to the Idon and wading in with their daggers drawn.  Immediately, they began spearing fish.  Sable hadn’t even brought the mare to a complete halt, yet.  She held off dismounting, watching them with a smile tugging at her lips. You’d think you were surrounded by Drae, at a casual glance.  Corded muscles rippled in the sun, black hair thatched lean, handsome, intent faces, and they were blindingly fast, agile as dancers.  But then others joined the fishermen, and the vision vanished.  You’d never see such rakish smiles on a Dra, never hear such gusts of jollity or such relentless teasing.

In fact, within moments, the two fishermen
right in front of her seemed to have lost interest in their task and became more concerned with the sense of competition that had apparently been fueling it.  Laughing, they lunged at each other, and almost immediately were hidden by a strongly supportive and steadily increasing crowd.  A tremendous amount of noise began to emanate from the sparkling water, a sort of instant exhibition, jeers, cheers, raucous catcalls punctuating the air, and several side-dunkings going on, since everyone was in the spirit.

And Sable,
dismounting on the almost deserted bank, paused, poised on the edge of her stirrup, held captive by a sudden cessation of time.  The sun glinted off the bronzed bodies and white teeth of the Rach, haloing them in glowing radiance.  The disturbed crests of the Idon flashed in blinding reflection and every drop of water turned into a brilliant diamond, making the air thick with sparkling light.  The sound of pure, carefree enjoyment seemed to echo through her, fading as if she was standing a long, long way away, and the sense of camaraderie, of togetherness, of vibrant, vivid life washed over her like a physical wave.  Something inside her gave a funny lurch.

They didn
’t take long for lunch, the fish seemingly grilled before she’d finished washing her face, and before long, the road was in front of them again.  The short break, however, was compensated for by the complimentary traveling entertainment.

Sable had never seen grown men with so much energy.  After about the fifth pair of riders spurted away from the column, bent low and lithe over horses running like their tails were on fire, she realized that
they were racing.  They were magnificent riders, mounting and dismounting their horses with the ease most people climbed stairs.  They sat and rode them as effortlessly as Northerners sat in chairs.  She’d never seen such horsemanship.  They clambered all over them, too, hanging halfway off their backs, standing up, leaping from one to another—a ceaseless and inexplicable buffoonery.  They would unhook the horses from the great flat sledges hauling hay back to the desert and bind themselves in the traces, pulling against each other amidst a din of supportive shouts.  There was endless jesting.  And everything was a competition.

It was no surprise that the Rach made an, er, active camp come dusk.  They rode long hours, probably not finding it particularly onerous to do so
(the Royal entourage from Archemounte had to stop by late afternoon in order to get the elaborate travelling court in working order) and had the entire camp set up in thirty minutes.  Tents were staked, livestock tethered, fires started, a steer butchered and steaks on the grill, and a loose guard posted.

While everyone trotted purposefully and efficiently around, Rorig escorted the Northern ladies down to the Idon to wash up a little. 
In a matter of minutes, Evara, taking the none-too-subtle hint from his smoldering eyes, moved obediently out of earshot.  Which left her Majesty to bear the full brunt of his uninhibited conversation when she looked up from washing her face. 

“
They’re barbarians,” Rorig hissed hotly.  “Riding bareback, naked, with no sense of discipline or control or courtesy to your Majesty.  There’s no safety here—your security and well-being are a joke to them!”