Warautumn (33 page)

The commotion had attracted Myx and Riff by then, as well as Krynneth, the former two of whom moved casually to flank Bingg. “You know,” Myx drawled, taking the boy by the arm, “if I’m not mistaken, being ticklish is inherited—and since young Bingg here is Lykkon’s brother—”

“Half
brother!” Bingg corrected, as he tried to bolt.

Too late.

Riff’s hand shot out like a whip—and suddenly the boy was prisoned upright between them. And though strong for thirteen, Bingg had not yet had his adolescent growth spurt, while Myx and Riff were full-grown, well-trained soldiers ten years his senior. It was therefore no real contest.

“Pull his shirte up.” Myx laughed, yanking at the garment’s thigh-length tail with his free hand. Riff added his own efforts, deftly avoiding any number of failed shin-kicks and foot-stomps, so that barely a breath later they had Bingg’s torso exposed from waistband to armpits. “I think a … comparison of sensitivity is in order,” Myx continued. “Who wants to do the honors? Strynn, do you still have that feather?”

Strynn flourished the object in question fiendishly. “On whom should I begin—and where?”

Div came charging up, flush-faced, with a sweaty Merryn in tow. “What The Eight? We thought someone was being murdered!”

“Someone will be,” Lykkon growled. “Probably several someones.”

Strynn advanced with the feather. “Ah, but you’re a gentleman, Lyk; and I know you’d never hurt an expectant mother.”

“Not while she’s expecting,” Lykkon gritted back, risking an experimental twist, which failed utterly. “But pregnancy is a temporary condition—and I have an excellent memory.”

“I do, too,” Bingg added indignantly, daring a twist of his own.

Div regarded Merryn smugly. “I wonder,” she asked Merryn casually, “if they’ve noticed that the groundcover on their wrestling yard is mostly itching ivy.”

Five sets of gazes immediately sought the earth—six, if one counted Lykkon, who was still pinned by the shoulders with a face full of hair.

“Oh Eight!” Myx spat, disgusted. And thrust Bingg playfully away.

Avall likewise noted that the hands pinning Lykkon’s shoulders were knuckle deep in a patch of the irritating herb, and released his grip at once, scrambling awkwardly aside to avoid the rest of the patch, while Rann gave Lykkon an arm up.

Lykkon—who did tend to take himself too seriously—scowled at them in triumph. “I
do
keep score,” he huffed. “And I know where everyone sleeps.”

“So do I,” Avall chuckled. “No hard feelings?”

Lykkon shot him a dirty look, but shrugged and stalked away, yanking his shirtetail down from where it had become wadded in his armpits.

Avall couldn’t resist one final prank. Shooting Rann a conspiratory wink, he ran up behind Lykkon, yanked the waistband of his cousin’s hose out far enough to show cleavage, and emptied the handful of itching ivy leaves he was for some inane reason still clutching down the garment, then let the waistband go and ducked for cover.

Lykkon continued on, airily unconcerned, though he was certainly walking funny. Bingg, behind them, burst out laughing like a crazy man.

“Evil!” Rann chided, as he jogged up to join Avall.

Avall reached over to wipe his hand along the angle of Rann’s jaw. “Could be worse,” He smirked. “I could have dropped ’em down the front.”

The three women—who had all been observing the proceedings with tolerant restraint—rolled their eyes at one another. “And now they’ll have to bathe,” Merryn snorted. “And wash clothes, probably, which means—”

“There’s no way we’re going to get away before noon,” Div finished for her.

Strynn sniffed in cheerful disgust and regarded the chaotic camp. “And you know what? If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they contrived that just to get out of working.”

Div grinned back. “Fine with me, besides which,
I
control the medicine kit, and it’s going to take a lot more than river water to wash all that itch-juice away.”

Kylin chose that moment to poke his head out of his tent: victim, it seemed, of very sound slumber indeed—or possibly of too much drink the previous night, given his tendency to overindulge in spirits. He cocked his head, listening. Counting breaths, Merryn decided. “Where is everybody?” the harper asked eventually, followed by a truly impressive yawn.

“The sane ones are here,” Merryn snorted. “The rest—Listen hard and you’ll hear them being silly down by the river. I’d suggest you join them. I don’t want to see another man until noon.”

Kylin took a deep breath and ducked his head underwater, then rose again in place: there where he was
just
managing to keep his feet in the deepest part of the river in which standing remained an option. Behind him, the stream widened into a pool twenty spans across and deep enough for honest swimming, its farther shore consisting of a long, steep bank of ivy-covered stone thrice as high as a man and running, nearly level—so his companions told him—as far as they could see to north and south. A narrow beach twenty spans to the north on the nearer side offered the only real access through a fine growth of laurel that otherwise grew down to the water’s edge. Their clothes blotched the strand now: blots of faded color
against a duller brown. Newly scoured with soldier-soap mixed with river sand, the rest of the wrestling party was paddling about behind him, indulging in what Rann said might well be their last good chance for a casual bath in what could easily be eights.

Kylin didn’t like to swim, but he did like being clean—and good, simple camaraderie—for which reason he was lingering there, as he often did, on the edge between two worlds.

Which was why he heard it.

Something …

A heavy, cautious tread and a hiss of breath, where there ought to have been nothing but the whispery silence of forest. And along with those sounds came a sudden rustle of small animals disturbed and fleeing through the leaf mold, followed by a succession of tiny splashes as what he presumed was a phalanx of frogs leapt into the water.

“Something’s wrong,” he announced. And by that time his gaze had turned toward the forest trail by which they had reached this place. A blur of light was all he could make out, of course: sky above the darker mass of land. Yet even that much was comforting—usually, but certainly not now.

Riff, who happened to be closest, heard him when the others—apparently—did not and promptly swam nearer, breasting the water with long, clean strokes. “What?” he gasped, when he reached speaking range.

“Too much noise and then too quiet—all at once,” Kylin muttered, suddenly feeling as vulnerable as he ever had in his life.

“I’ll trust you on that,” Riff replied as he found footing and waded a span beyond Kylin. “No, you’re right. Can you tell—?”

“Quiet,” Kylin hissed, turning his head in a steady arc from right to left, then pausing just when he could twist no more without moving his whole body. “Footsteps,” he whispered, as a chill raced down his bare skin. “Heavy tread. Geens—I think. At least one; possibly more.”

“Oh Eight,” Riff groaned. “And us bare naked without a weapon in sight.”

“Can geens swim?”

“When they have to. They don’t like the cold, though—and this water is pretty damned chilly. But more to the point,” Riff continued, “their advantage lies in speed as much as size—and water ought to slow them down. They can’t use their talons to slash if they’re using them to swim, and—”

“Hold,” Kylin cautioned. “They’re coming closer.”

“We have to back up,” Riff rasped in his ear. “We have to warn the others. They probably couldn’t hear you because of the sound of the rapids farther down.”

“And then?”

“We look for another way out and try to get back to camp.”

“If the geens haven’t been there already.”

“They haven’t. Any attack would have brought out the Lightning Sword, and we’d have known if that was being used.”

“Is
there another way out?” Kylin dared, even as he began easing backward, careful of his footing.

“Maybe. There’s a fairly heavy growth of vines on the bank behind us. Maybe we can climb out there. I—”

He said no more for the footsteps had intensified, and this time Kylin knew, by the way Riff’s breath caught, that he had heard them, too.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way we could reach our weapons?”

Riff shook his head. “The geens would be on us before we were out of the water. And we’re fools to have left them there.”

More sounds, then: a soft
thud, thud, thud
that suddenly intensified into the dreadful steady patter of running geens.

“Now,” Riff snapped. “No, relax, I’ll help you—” as Kylin felt a strong arm slide around his chest and sweep him backward into deeper water. In spite of that, his head went under briefly, and when he broke surface again it was to hear Riff
shouting at the top of his lungs, “Geens! Geens! Geens! Get to the other side and grab those vines.”

It was the worst experience of Kylin’s life: being utterly helpless in the face of one of nature’s most painfully lethal threats. For he could truly think of no worse fate than being eviscerated alive, while simultaneously having the flesh ripped from his bones and, quite possibly, drowning. They were in open water now, the bottom having long since dropped away, and Riff was swimming strongly toward what Kylin knew, by their cries, was the rest of the party. As for the geens—Well, it was all poor Riff could do to keep them both afloat without him trying to provide complex descriptions.

The others clearly knew about the threat, however, to judge by the shouts now mingling with a sharp intensification of splashes, as their comrades headed for the possible safety of the bank and the vines there. He doubted that this was a good time to inquire whether geens could climb.

And then he sensed solidity near him, and Riff was steering his hand to a hold on something hard and dry that he recognized as a good-sized vine. “Hold that and don’t let go,” Riff said tersely, his voice the only clarity amid a cacophony of splashes and shouts. Kylin found no call to argue.

For once, Riff envied Kylin his blindness.

Dying was one thing, but to see that death approaching and be unable to do anything about it—Well, that was another thing entirely.

At least he would not die alone.

Or without a fight, he told himself, as that timeless moment of personal fear dissolved into the chaos around him. He had done his duty: taken care of the weakest of their number for the nonce. Now it was time to address his own survival.

Which—to his amazement—they were all doing quietly. Or perhaps they, too, had seen their own deaths approaching and were pondering them in silence.

The geens were in plain sight now. A fourfold pack of them had just stepped out of the cover of the woods, apparently from the north. (Some comfort there: The camp was to the west, and the way the wind was blowing, they might have missed the scents of men and horses.) They were moving warily, too, their heads held low to the ground, but there was an air of unconcern about them as well.

“Probably come for a drink,” Myx advised to Riff’s other side. “Maybe they won’t notice us.”

“What about our clothes?” Lykkon challenged from farther up. “They have to smell like—”

“They’ll smell horse first if the wind shifts,” Myx gave back. “And that’ll lead them straight back to camp.”

“And give us a chance to retrieve our weapons, right?” Bingg added nervously.

“Have they seen us, do you reckon?” That from Rann.

“Hard to say,” Myx retorted. “As much noise as we were making, they’d be hard-pressed not to know
something
was over here.”

“Thank The Eight for these vines,” Riff panted, shifting his grip on the one he held, even as he noticed that the river had undercut the bank there and was trying, none too gently, to drag his feet beneath some hidden overhang. “We can climb out—eventually.”

“I’m not worried about eventually,” Avall grumbled. “I’m worried about now.”

Unfortunately, at that very moment the vine to which Bingg was clinging, and had indeed started to climb, broke, precipitating vine and boy alike into the water with a loud splash.

Four geen heads shot up immediately. One scaled head stared straight toward them.

An instant later, eight taloned legs attached to four lithe bodies stepped, as though possessed of one mind, into the river.

And a moment after that, the first of them was swimming
—straight toward the bathers, its tail describing zigzag arcs in the water.

The bathers, however, wasted no time. Unable to swim north because of the current, or south because of the rapids, they had no choice but to climb—which they did—awkwardly, but with reasonable dexterity (though Lykkon had to help his brother find a stronger purchase, and Riff found himself seeking handholds for Kylin as well as himself). Which might give them respite, but only for a moment.

The first and largest geen had reached midstream now, and was swimming strongly. Focused as he was on his next—and hopefully higher purchase—Riff nevertheless could not resist twisting around now and then to check—and every time he did, he got a closer look at those fierce eyes and deadly teeth, and those terrible claws that now cut water as effectively as they could cut his flesh. And suddenly he had no doubts whatever that these geens, should they so choose, could climb. Weight might be against them; then again, weight was doing him no favors either, as the stone in which the vines were anchored was proving so porous and powdery half of his would-be holds ripped free as soon as he put more than minimal weight upon them.

One just had—

He grabbed for another as he felt his remaining hold start to rip free as well.

A hand slipped, then a foot. Stone raked blood from his thigh and shin, and a toenail caught and tore. He scrabbled for a hold furiously, but Fate had claimed him by then, and he fell.

Fortunately, he had sense enough to kick free of the vine, but all he could think of as he entered open air was what waited below.

And then he was actually on top of it—and then
below
it as he dived for the bottom, thinking that perhaps geens could not hold their breaths.