The Witch's Daughter (13 page)

Most of the sounds receded, but Lennard’s sense of dread followed him vividly. He splashed into a mountain stream and cut around a huge boulder, looking back over his shoulder for the expected pursuit.

And in his haste, slammed blindly into the chest of a waiting talon.

Lennard bounced back against the stone, glancing up just in time to see doom, in the form of a talon sword, descending upon his head.

He screamed and closed his eyes, and hardly heard the clang as the blade met an intercepting shield and was deflected harmlessly aside.

And then Bryan was between Lennard and his attacker, slashing his elven sword in a quick cut across and then back. The talon dropped its weapon, choosing instead in the last fleeting moments of its life to clutch its spilling guts. Without so much as a grunt, it slipped to its knees in the cold stream.

Bryan spun and threw Lennard to the ground, out of the way of a thrusting spear. Lennard came up spitting water and
watching in horrified amazement as Bryan and the newest attacker squared off.

Bryan’s father had schooled him well in the crude attack methods of these beasts. Savagery replaced finesse in talon fighters, and the trick to defeating them was to turn their own aggressiveness against them.

Bryan’s chance came in the very first seconds of battle, as the fire-eyed talon dove at him recklessly, spear leading the way.

Bryan launched a backhand parry with his sword, dipping the spear to the ground. The talon, unable to break its momentum—and not wanting to, anyway—lurched forward, where Bryan’s shield connected heavily with its face. The monster staggered backward and Bryan threw his shield out wide, following quickly with a perfectly angled slice of his blade, lopping the creature’s head from its shoulders.

“By the Colonnae,” gasped Lennard. “Bryan?”

But the young half-elf had no time to consider the events. “Where is Tinothy?” he asked.

“Dead,” Lennard muttered.

Bryan hardly flinched at the news. “Quickly,” he instructed, grabbing Lennard by the elbow. “We have only minutes to get back to the walk.”

    “Hold your shots,” Bryan whispered as the trudging column of talons approached. Behind the wooden barricades, the friends twitched nervously, eager to let loose the first shots and be on with it. But Bryan wanted the monsters to spring the first trap or two before he set his friends into action.

The talons came on, more wary than before, but hardly expecting to find the ground beneath their feet laced with cunning traps. The leading rank stepped out across a long, flat rock.

Bryan and his friends pulled back on their bowstrings. They could only hope the rock would tumble as planned.

As the front talons crossed to the front edge—the section that had been dug out—the stone rolled and pivoted, dipping the leading talons into a crevice and sending those behind them into a slide down the now sloping trail. Several of the creatures had the life crushed out of them as the stone settled down at its new angle.

Bryan’s arrow went first, knocking deep into the chest of one of the unfortunate beasts splayed across the stone facing. Hoots and howls erupted as the talons recognized the ambush for what it was and came charging over the raised tip of the stone. Arrow after arrow soared in, most finding their mark.

But talons, for all of their other weaknesses, were not cowardly creatures, and they came on fearlessly, leaping down from the stone and rushing toward the copse. A trip wire sent one slamming down; loosened rocks gave way on the edge of the trail, spilling several others on a bouncing ride down the steep descent on the side of Doerning’s Walk.

And more arrows thudded home.

“Run!” cried Lennard when the leading edge of the charge neared the copse. Bryan held his position, not so quick to give up such easy kills.

But then one of the group, Damon, standing right beside the half-elf, caught a spear in the chest, and the talon followed its shot closely, springing atop the barricade.

Bryan wheeled and fired, point-blank, blowing the thing back. He realized, though, that the position was lost. Five others of the group had already fled, following Lennard’s lead, but the remaining six waited bravely, looking to Bryan for direction. In his rage, Bryan would have stayed on until the talon tide buried him, willingly giving up his own life in exchange for the talons he would surely slay.

But he could not be responsible for the deaths of more of his friends. Like Tinothy, and now Damon.

He fired a final shot and broke back from the wall, slinging his bow and drawing his gleaming sword. “Go! Go!” he cried to the others.

Connie, a girl with shining blue eyes and an innocent smile, lost her head to a talon sword.

And then they were running, one group to the west behind Lennard, and Bryan wisely taking the others to the east. The enraged talons forgot all about their mission and took off in hot pursuit, hungry for the blood of the young ambushers.

Siana led the way, with Bryan taking up the rear guard. Several talons got close to them in their wild flight, but each time, Bryan, possessed of a fury beyond anything he could ever have imagined, cut them down with vicious chops and perfect maneuvers. A short while later the five turned around a rocky outcropping and, confident that no pursuit was close behind, stopped to catch their breath.

    Lennard and the others had less luck.

Though they had started with more ground between them and the talons, the group had no organization to their flight. They split apart around boulders or crevices, and lost time trying to find each other. Directionless, and with no clear destination in mind, they soon heard the flopping stamp of talon feet all about them.

An agonized scream told Lennard that their number was down to five. He stopped and looked about, searching for some way he could help. A talon spear found his leg.

Lennard dropped heavily to the ground, clutching his wound. Then the talon was above him, its sword up for the kill.

A heavy rock smashed the ugly creature’s head apart.

Blackness, from pain and fear, swirled over Lennard, and he hardly noticed when he was lifted from the ground in the strong arms of Jolsen Smithyson and borne away.

    “Come on,” Bryan prodded after the others had regained their breath. They gathered their belongings, thinking Bryan to be leading them farther away. But to their astonishment, the half-elf started back around the outcropping toward the talons.

“Where are you going?” Siana demanded.

Bryan cast them all a look over his shoulder. “The talons are scattered,” he explained. “We can find small groups of them to hit.”

“You are crazy!” the girl retorted. “We cannot go back there!”

“We have no choice!” Bryan shot back.

“Think of Connie, and Damon!” said another.

“Think of the line of people we saw on the road,” Bryan countered. “Our people, helpless unless we can keep the talons tied up in the mountains.” His visage softened then as he looked upon the sorrow-filled, weary faces. Perhaps he was pushing the others too hard.

“You go and find a safer spot to rest,” he conceded quietly. “I’ll go after the talons. I can move faster alone anyway.”

But when Bryan started away, he heard the sound of the other four following at his back.

They played hit-and-run with bands of talons for the remainder of that day, striking from a distance with their bows, or rising from cover suddenly in front of a talon group and cutting the monsters down before they even knew they were being attacked.

Bryan and his friends knew the odds, and realized that sooner or later they would get themselves into a situation where they would find no escape. But whenever fear
threatened to take the fight out of them, they remembered the cloud of dust from the refugees on the road and the cloud of smoke over Corning, and remembered their duty.

Disaster struck near sunset. The group surprised a band of four talons and quickly dispatched them. But another, larger band was close by, and got into the fight before the young warriors could escape. Bryan and his friends won out, but when the last talon fell at Bryan’s feet, he looked around to find that he and Siana were the only two left alive.

Their spirits fell with the fall of day, and they walked slowly away, seeking a safe haven. Siana leaned on Bryan for support, but the tears ran as freely down the cheeks of the halfelf as on her own.

All told, they had killed more than four dozen talons that day and wounded several score more. More important, they had halted the march. It would take the scattered bands of talons the rest of the night to get back together, and the people on the road would get through.

But to Bryan and Siana, the victory brought little consolation.

“At least seven,” Bryan noted grimly. “Tinothy first, then Damon and Connie on the walk, and—”

Siana held up her hand to stop him, for she needed no recounting. She had witnessed six of the seven deaths Bryan spoke of. “Do you think Lennard and the others got away?” she asked him hopefully.

“Lennard is a smart one,” Bryan replied. “And they had a better lead.” But if his words held conviction, it was feigned. Despair flowed over him fully that dark night. In a single day he had witnessed the burning of his city and, later, the deaths of seven of his closest friends.

Siana sensed his turmoil and put her own aside. She moved to him and snuggled close, lending him some of her strength. “We did a fine job,” she reminded him. “They won’t
be getting back to their march anytime soon, and more than a few talons died this day. Our traps worked pretty well, I would say!”

Bryan looked down at her smiling face and was comforted. He kissed her then, and hugged her close.

But when the exhausted young warriors drifted into the solitude of slumber, the black despair came rushing back at them in their dreams, vivid recollections of the horrors they had witnessed that day.

B
ELEXUS AWOKE JUST
before dawn. As the light grew around him, so too did the scene of carnage. He and the remaining cavalry contingent had camped just beyond the stench of the battlefield, too weary to continue that day and wanting to watch for any return of the talon forces that had fled.

But the night had been quiet, except for the occasional cry from the south.

From the road.

Movement from one figure caught Belexus’ eye, the one he had been most concerned about. Rhiannon walked slowly across the field, head down, toward the legacy of her display of power. Belexus forced himself to his feet and rushed after her. He felt his spirits sag when he moved next to her. So frail she seemed, only a hollowed shell of the confident and carefree woman he had escorted along the road these past couple of months.

When dawn fully broke just a moment later, the two friends saw the enormity of Rhiannon’s accomplishments. She had cut a gorge nearly a half mile long and fully twenty feet across, and deep beyond sight. More than three hundred talons had fallen to their deaths along the chasm, most in the
final battle when Rhiannon had bottled them up. No guilt for those talon dead brought a tear to Rhiannon’s eye this morning, but when she looked upon her handiwork, she did indeed cry. She had scarred the land, had loosed a terrible strength that was beyond her control or comprehension. The power had consumed her and forced itself through her, leaving profound questions hanging unanswered. Questions of her very identity.

“Suren ye saved our lives,” Belexus remarked to her, seeing the moistness rolling across her fair face. “And more important, ye kept the beasts running to the north. Ye kept them away from the road.”

Rhiannon only shrugged helplessly, finding no words that could slip past the lump that had welled in her throat.

Belexus felt her pain as he studied the deep torment on her face. He understood that Rhiannon’s distress was far too deep for simple words to dispel. He looked to the south, where the dusty trail of rushing refugees continued to line the horizon, and to where a larger, more ominous cloud swelled in the early light.

“Come,” he said. “We must away to the south in all speed. The talon army is in pursuit.”

They were all tired, and most were wounded, but not one of the brave cavalrymen issued a word of complaint when the command came to break camp and ride with all their speed. They knew their duty, and knew, too, the suffering their kinfolk along the road would endure if they could not slow the talon rush.

Rhiannon cast a final glance at the destruction, at the black and white gelding the power—she—had destroyed. She accepted Belexus’ hand and rode in front of the ranger, needing his support just to hold her seat.

*   *   *

There had been no rest for Andovar that night, and no more stops along his road. Like the wind itself, the enchanted steed flew across the southern fields, merely a blur to onlookers. The horse did not tire; it gained momentum with each mighty stride, and Andovar, grim-faced, spurred it on, refusing to let any weariness defeat his mission.

The road connecting Corning and Pallendara was normally a week of hard riding. Andovar and his horse, flying under the power of the young witch, found the great city soon after the dawn of the second day.