The Fall of Highwatch Page 11

  They crossed a slight rise—a thickly forested saddle between two hills—and Soran disappeared between the trees. Kadrigul reached for the amulet Argalath had given him and whispered the words to activate it. Through the cured leather of his glove, he felt the metal tingle.

  He followed the tracks through the snow and soon found Soran sitting on his horse, glaring at him. The Nar stopped their own horses well behind Kadrigul.

  Soran drew in a deep breath to speak. “She is close.”

  They set off again, and when they next left the trees, Kadrigul could see a thick column of smoke in the near distance. A mile away or less.

  Soran spurred his horse, and Kadrigul followed.

  Lendri finished bandaging Hweilan’s hand, then helped fit her glove back over it. The salve helped. The pain in her hand was already fading to a throbbing ache, but the pounding in her head was so bad that she thought she could feel her skull rattling.

  Scith’s pyre still burned, but the flames had lessened considerably, and the smoke had gone from thick white plumes to wisps of gray. With almost no breeze, the pyre had filled the little valley with an eye-burning haze.

  “The pain is very bad?” said Lendri. He was studying her intently.

  “My head worse than my hand. Where will we go?” Hweilan asked.

  “North for now.”

  “The people who killed my family are sitting in my home right now, at Highwatch. To the south.”

  Lendri looked at her with that unnerving gaze of his. The ice blue right eye reminded her of the strange Sossrim who occasionally came to Highwatch to trade. But the green left eye … there was something unnatural about it. “Our oaths bind us, yes, but we need help.”

  “What kind of help? Where?”

  “To answer that to your satisfaction will be a long tale. For now, we must run.”

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  “I will tell you!” Lendri’s lip curled over his teeth and she heard the beginning of a growl in his voice. She stepped back.

  Seeing her fear, Lendri’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I will tell you. I promise. I have … so much to tell you. But to explain everything will take time. Time we don’t have now. We are still too close to Highwatch. Now, let’s move.”

  Hweilan turned and went the other way.

  “Where are you going?”

  She stopped and glared at him. “I left my father’s bow up the hill. I’m not leaving without it.”

  Lendri thought a moment, then nodded. “Be quick.”

  She pushed through the brush and made her way up the hill, finding the bow with little problem. She retrieved it, stood, and looked down into the camp. Lendri was rummaging through the supplies of the dead Nar, discarding most of what he found, but pocketing an item here or there.

  I could go …

  The thought hit her. She could turn, keep going up the hill. Lendri wasn’t looking her way. She could be over the rise and be long gone before he suspected anything. Hweilan gripped her father’s bow in a tight fist and turned uphill—

  To come face to face with a wolf, standing on a ledge no more than a few paces away. Hechin. The huge gray wolf’s yellow eyes, unblinking, fixed on her. He didn’t snarl, didn’t growl, did nothing whatsoever to threaten her. But his very stillness spoke volumes.

  “Hweilan?” Lendri called from below.

  “Coming.”

  By the time Hweilan walked back into camp, Lendri had his supplies—two thick bundles, bound with leather cords—secured on his back. Ravens sat thick in the trees, and more were circling overhead, their cries a raucous counterpoint to the crackle of the pyre’s dying flames. Only a shell remained of the log. Everything within was gray ash and red coals. Nothing left of Scith but what the gods had taken.

  Lendri walked over to Hweilan and held out a thick bundle. “Here. You’ll need this in the coming days.”

  It was a thick Creel cloak, make of swiftstag hide and rimmed with fur. Her head fit through the middle of it, and it flared in the front, covering her when needed but easily thrown back in case she needed to free her hands. It even had deep pockets along the inside.

  “Did you … did you find this in their packs or take it off …” Off a dead man? She couldn’t speak the words. “Does it matter?” said Lendri.

  She shook her head and settled into the cloak. Hweilan looked at the Nar corpses. “What about them?”

  “A feast for the crows,” said Lendri. “Let’s leave them to it. Come.”

  He set off, setting a brisk pace through the woods, following frost-covered deer trails along the bottom of a steep escarpment.

  But they made it no more than a quarter mile out of the camp before Hechin barked from behind them.

  Lendri stopped and raised a hand to signal quiet.

  The wolf bounded out of the thick brush. Even Hweilan, who had studied wolves only from a distance, could see that he was agitated. His ears lay flat against his head, and his tail pointed straight out.

  “What’s wrong?” said Hweilan.

  “We’re being followed,” said Lendri. “Keep moving.” Lendri shrugged out of his pack and handed it to her. “Here.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “You keep going. I’m going back to see who it is.”

  She set the bow on the ground so she could settle the packs on her back. “Probably other Nar, coming to investigate the smoke. Why not keep moving?”

  “You will.”

  He fitted an arrow to his bowstring and headed back the way they’d come, Hechin at his heels. Hweilan watched them go, then watched a while longer. Finally, she turned her back and headed north, fast as she could. If the elf never came back … well, at least she had the supplies.

  Her trail led her away from the escarpment. The hills reared up into a wall before her, blocking the north, while the trail bent eastward. Hweilan knew of a pass several miles farther that way. With Lendri not there to tell her otherwise, she headed east.

  The ground soon smoothed out, becoming less rocky, and the tall woods gave way to a scrubland of thick brush and squat trees, their branches still winter bare.

  Hweilan fell into a steady jog, and her long legs ate up the ground. The pulse at the back of her head was still there, but it was no longer a hammering pain. More of a tingling just under her skin, an itch, a buzzing on the brain. Very much like the feeling of being watched she’d experienced on her way back to Highwatch the day before. But this feeling had an undertone of anger, sharp and hot. It didn’t make her want to look around to see who might be watching. And even though there was a hint of danger, it didn’t make her want to run or hide. It made her angry

  Hweilan suddenly found herself with the urge to hit something. To pound it again and again until it couldn’t move any more. Standing here in the cold afternoon, Hweilan felt positively hot with fury.

  A wolf howled behind her, the sound beginning low, rising high, then dropping again to fade into something just shy of a growl. Brief silence, then the same howl. Hweilan had learned enough from Scith to guess at what it meant. Wolves howled for a reason. Usually to communicate with the pack over vast distances, and sometimes just for fun when the pack was gathered. But when one pack encroached on another’s territory, the lead male would sometimes howl like the sound she’d just heard. It was meant to warn off the invaders.

  Hweilan stopped to listen, and she heard something else. At first she thought it was just her own heartbeat, but as she stood there in the path, taking deep, steady breaths, there was no mistaking it. Hoofbeats. Coming up behind her. That could only mean Nar.

  Her hand seemed to search for her knife of its own accord. The anger in her was seething to come out. But her rational mind forced that down. Had she been able to use the bow, had she even a few arrows … maybe. But on her own, with a knife, against mounted men … no.

  She looked around, searching for a place to hide. Squat trees and bushes everywhere. If she could take care not to leave any tracks … />
  The hoofbeats were getting closer. At least three horses. Perhaps more. And moving just shy of a gallop. The fools were risking breaking their mounts’ legs on the icy ground, which meant they were pursuing something.

  Hweilan leaped off the path, going from rock to rock or the thickest ice as best she could. Only once did her boot crack the frost. She passed the first bushes and trees, fearing they were too close to the path. When she had put at least a dozen yards between herself and the path, she threw her father’s bow under a large bank of scrub brush, then wriggled under it. With the thick Nar cloak and both packs still riding her back, it was no easy task.

  Lying on her belly under the bush, she pushed herself up just enough to bend back an outer branch and peer out on the path. Other foliage was in the way, but between them, she caught her first glimpse of the rider.

  A large horse—larger even than that of a Nar chieftain’s war mount. One of the huge Carmathan stallions that Damaran traders sometimes rode through the Gap in summer.

  Trees hid the rider a moment, and when he came back into view, he had slowed his horse to a canter as he cast his gaze about. Hweilan’s breath caught in her throat.

  “Soran!” she cried. “Uncle Soran!”

  Grabbing her father’s bow in one hand, she scrambled out of her hiding place as quickly as she could, heedless of the branches scraping her face. The rider reined in his horse with such ferocity that it screamed and skidded to a halt on the frosty ground.

  Hweilan ran to him, but the first good look at Soran stopped her in her tracks. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see on his face. A look of utter relief perhaps. Joy. Grief that they were the last of their family. Or maybe even anger that she was all the way out here while the good people of Highwatch and Kistrad were suffering. But there was nothing. Not even a sign of recognition. The look that he turned on her was completely blank, like …

  Just like Scith had looked after he took his last breath. Soran looked dead.

  Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or maybe only a sign of Hweilan’s exhaustion and frayed nerves, but as Soran turned his horse toward her, she thought she saw a flicker of red in his eyes.

  “Uncle Soran?”

  More riders came into view. All were Nar, save one. Kadrigul. One of Argalath’s lackeys—and Jatara’s brother.

  Kadrigul followed Soran’s gaze, saw Hweilan, and reined in his own mount. The Nar behind him did the same. The other riders urged their horses off the path, right for her. All were reaching for weapons.

  The tingling in Hweilan’s head suddenly spread through her body, like being woken from deep sleep by a splash of cold water. The anger was no longer just an emotion. It was a physical force, making her muscles tremble with a sudden irresistible urge to hurt all the men before her. The world around her became sharp and clear, perfectly focused, every sound sharp and distinct. Every sensation, every breath, every beat of her heart screamed at her to lash and rend and kill. So sharp were her senses that she thought she could hear the beating hearts of the horses and the men on them—though not Soran’s.

  A blur of gray ran among the Nar horses, barking and snapping at them. Hechin! The horses screamed and tried to scatter, but their riders reined them around and brought their weapons to bear against the wolf. But he was too quick, evading their spears and the swipes of their swords.

  Soran reached over his shoulder and drew a sword—a huge, ugly thing of black iron—then urged his mount forward. Hweilan could feel the ground shaking as the huge horse surged toward her.

  “Soran!” It was Kadrigul, calling out as he spurred his horse toward her. “Soran, no! We need her alive!”

  Hweilan couldn’t move.

  An arrow struck Soran in the back. He didn’t even flinch.

  “Run, you stupid girl!” It was Lendri, reaching for another arrow as he ran from cover on the far side of the trail.

  “Soran!” she shouted. “Uncle, please!”

  Still no recognition in his face, and then her mind caught up with what her instinct had known all along. This was not her uncle. She didn’t know why and could not fathom how, but this horror bearing down upon her was not her uncle.

  Hweilan screamed in defiance and charged.

  She heard Lendri scream, “No!” and another arrow hit Soran.

  Hweilan was less than five or six steps from the horse when it screamed and reared. Whatever it was about her that spooked horses—some effect of her Vil Adanrath heritage, she now suspected—it worked on Soran’s horse. The stallion’s eyes rolled back in its head as it fought to scramble away. In its panic, its hooves slipped on the uneven, icy ground, and the horse fell, smashing Soran’s leg. Even over the noise of Hechin’s barking and the screaming of men and horses, Hweilan heard a crunch of shattering bone.

  Soran’s mount fought its way to its feet, then bounded away. Soran tried to push himself to his feet, but his right leg folded beneath him.

  “Hweilan, run!”

  Lendri stood his ground just this side of the trail. He dodged a spear from one of the Nar, planted an arrow in his attacker, knocking the man from his horse, then reached for another arrow.

  Soran regained his feet, and he lumbered toward Hweilan, leaning on the sword like a cane and dragging his shattered leg.

  The breeze shifted, just for a moment, and the thing’s scent washed over her. Worse than a charnel house, it made Hweilan’s gorge rise to the back of her throat.

  Hweilan’s hand fumbled for the knife at her belt.

  “Run!” Lendri called. “These aren’t the only—!”

  Another arrow hit the Soran-thing, lodging in his good leg. A pure white arrow—shaft and fletching all white as snow, and smaller than Lendri’s arrows. Where had it—?

  Soran didn’t slow. Didn’t even seem to notice the arrows sprouting from his body. Only a few paces away now.

  Hweilan couldn’t get her knife free. The thick glove over the bandages robbed her fingers of all nimbleness. She stumbled backward, her heel struck a rock or root, and she fell.

  Soran stood over her. This close, she got her first good look at his eyes. Black eyes. Dark as polished stones. Not a fleck of white or color remained. And they seemed too wide, as if something mean and hungry were trapped in his skull, trying to press its way out. When those eyes looked down on her, it woke something deep inside Hweilan, like a spark catching in dry tinder. Her anger flared, and she had to push down a sudden urge to snarl.

  The Soran-thing lunged. Hweilan scrambled backward, but the uneven ground was slick, and pain shot up her injured arm. The creature’s iron-hard fist locked round her ankle.

  Hweilain’s uninjured hand found a rock and closed around it. She smashed it into the side of his face. He didn’t even flinch. She hit him again. And again. On the fourth strike, she gouged off a long strip of skin and heard bone crack.

  He released his hold on his sword and caught her next strike. Hweilan screamed and tried to pull free. She felt the cloth of her coat and shirt slipping under his grip, but then the fist tightened.

  “Let me go!” She planted her free leg and pulled with all her strength. The fabric between her arm and his hand slipped again, and for an instant, they touched, skin to skin.

  Something passed between them, sizzling, like cold water tossed on hot steel. The thing’s black eyes locked on her, and she could feel them penetrating skin, flesh, and bone, gazing upon something she had only felt in her dreams.

  Soran’s face twisted into a scowl. Pure malice.

  “I can smell him on you, girl.” It was a hollow voice. Nothing like Soran’s. All malice and hunger. His mouth opened wide, and he took in a deep breath, as if tasting the air. Dead lips pulled back over his teeth in mockery of a smile. “You reek of—”

  A black cloud washed over him. Hundreds of ravens hit the Soran-thing, cawing and screaming, burying him beneath flapping wings as their sharp beaks pecked at him. The wind of their wings buffeted Hweilan, and she felt their feathers brush her ch
eeks, but they passed over her to attack the Soran-thing. Soran released Hweilan and swiped at the birds with both hands, but for every one he hit, ten or more descended on him.

  Soran stood, his sword in one hand, his other continuing to swipe at the birds. But his eyes locked on Hweilan as he shambled toward her.

  A huge, shaggy shape hit the ground between Hweilan and her pursuers. Kadrigul’s horse screamed and reared, and then the roars filled the valley, one after another, pounding through the air like thunder off the mountains. The trees shook with the sound. Hweilan felt their force like a punch in the gut, and the marrow in her bones trembled.

  Tundra tigers. One swiped at Kadrigul’s horse, and two more ran among the Nar.

  Soran, still covered in ravens and hampered by his shattered leg, lurched toward her. Just beyond him, Kadrigul, upon his horse, was bearing down upon her. Beyond them, two tigers were pressing the attack against the Nar. Only the long spears of the Nar warriors held them at bay.

  Hweilan’s eyes widened, and she scrambled to her feet. One of those tigers carried a rider. Small as a ten-year-old child, clothed in furs and a snug blue material. She had no idea who or what it could be. Even as she watched, she saw more of the little people emerging from the trees, spears in their hands.

  Where was Lendri? Where—?

  Run, girl…

  Hweilan wasn’t sure where the voice came from. It seemed to pass her ears entirely and speak in her mind.

  Run! Run! Run!

  Hweilan ran.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BROKEN BRANCHES SNAGGED HWEILAN’S CLOAK AND scraped her face, roots beneath the carpet of snow tripping her. Again and again she fell, but each time she pushed herself up and kept going. Before long she could discern little but the lingering blue glow in the snow set amid the deeper black of the surrounding brush and heavy sky.

  The sound of the fighting grew fainter with each step, and bit by bit, reason began to return to Hweilan. She knew she was making an awful racket, blundering through the timber, her feet crunching through new snow and old frost. But she didn’t care. Every beat of her heart screamed at her to get away from the thing that wore Soran’s face. And the ravens …