The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

Half of the soldiers escaped, blundering back the way they had come, thrashing through the woodland cover until the noise of their flight ceased. Half lay on the ground, bodies contorted and twisted as though their last moments had been agony, yet no blood marked their bodies where the elfshot had pierced their skin. Shades flowed away into the forest in pursuit, but a fox-faced man and a vulture-headed woman turned to stare right at Ivar. Both were stripped to the waist, wearing nothing more than loincloths across their hips, leather greaves and arm-guards decorated with shells and feathers, and stripes of chalky paint that delineated the contours of their chests. She was young; that seemed obvious enough by the pertness of her breasts, but whatever lust Ivar would otherwise have felt to see so much nakedness was killed by the cruel curve of the vulture’s beak that was her face and the blank hollow behind its eyes.

They are masks, he thought, waiting as they raised their short bows and sighted on him. Instinctively, he raised a hand, although it would afford no protection against their poisoned darts. The lapis lazuli ring Baldwin had slipped on his finger winked blue.

They lowered their bows, glanced each at the other, and faded away into the forest.

He stood there shaking so hard he couldn’t move as the jolt of adrenaline coursed through him. It paralyzed him as efficiently as Sister Nanthild’s concoction had mimicked death.

But after a long while it, too, faded, and the night noises of the forest returned piecemeal, first an owl’s plaintive hoot, then a whisper of wind and the wrangle of branches, and finally the clear and loud snap of a breaking tree limb.

He leaped sideways and crashed into the stone wall, bruising his shoulder, but it was Erkanwulf returning with four horses on a string, two saddled and two laden with traveling packs filled with grain. Ivar could smell the oats even from this distance. The young soldier carried a lantern, and he stopped in confusion and fear as the light crept over the dead men.

“I-Ivar?”

“I’m here.” He stepped out of the chapel, shaking again, shoulder on fire and tears in his eyes. “Where were you?”

“I hid the horses. What happened? How did they find us? Did you kill them?”

“No. I don’t know. Shades came out of the trees. Ai; God! They’re probably still wandering nearby! Let’s get out of here!”

Erkanwulf’s eyes got very round, and his mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. “Here.” He thrust one lead into Ivar’s trembling hands. “I’ve heard they come back to eat their kills. We’ll take the Carter’s track until light. They can’t abide human-made roads.”

“A-are you sure?”

“I’m sure that elfshot kills.” He, too, started to shake with fear, making the lantern light jig across the corpses. The lack of blood made the scene more gruesome. The corpses had already begun to stiffen.

Erkanwulf snuffed the lantern, hoping that the moon would give enough light to guide them. They fled east along the track, walking until dawn with the nervous horses on leads behind them, but they were too afraid to stop. When dawn came after an eternity of walking, they found a deer trail that wandered east, and they kept going at a steady walking pace because, after all, fear prodded them on, so it was only when they reached a stream and had to stop the horses from drinking too much cold water while overheated that they remembered that while they might march on they had to rest and graze the horses.

“Why didn’t they kill you?” Erkanwulf asked after they had watered and rubbed down the horses and turned them out to graze.

Ivar washed his face and drank from the rushing stream before he answered. “I don’t know.” He touched the ring, but its polished surface told him nothing. “I just don’t know.”

3

HE lay winded and gasping, recovering from the panic that had seized him just before the last of his air gave out. For a long time he sprawled in blackness, his only reference points the touch of water on his toes and the grind of pebbles and sand against his skin where he had dragged himself out of the flooded tunnel. The ground sloped gently upward until, at the limit of his reach, it humped up into a curved shelf of rock. The air swelled thickly in his chest; it seemed as heavy as the darkness surrounding him. He could see nothing, not his hand, not the floor, not even the armband that had before this faithfully lit his way in the depths.

After a longer while he shouted, but the caverns swallowed his voice. He heard no answering reply nor the scuffle of curious scouts.

Again he called out.

Again, silence answered.

Buried deep under the ground one heard silence in an entirely new way. No sound but that of his own breathing disturbed the air. If he shifted, then his knee might scrape rocks; his toe might lift out of the cold bath of water and cause a droplet to splash. That was all.

of the soldiers escaped, blundering back the way they had come, thrashing through the woodland cover until the noise of their flight ceased. Half lay on the ground, bodies contorted and twisted as though their last moments had been agony, yet no blood marked their bodies where the elfshot had pierced their skin. Shades flowed away into the forest in pursuit, but a fox-faced man and a vulture-headed woman turned to stare right at Ivar. Both were stripped to the waist, wearing nothing more than loincloths across their hips, leather greaves and arm-guards decorated with shells and feathers, and stripes of chalky paint that delineated the contours of their chests. She was young; that seemed obvious enough by the pertness of her breasts, but whatever lust Ivar would otherwise have felt to see so much nakedness was killed by the cruel curve of the vulture’s beak that was her face and the blank hollow behind its eyes.

They are masks, he thought, waiting as they raised their short bows and sighted on him. Instinctively, he raised a hand, although it would afford no protection against their poisoned darts. The lapis lazuli ring Baldwin had slipped on his finger winked blue.

They lowered their bows, glanced each at the other, and faded away into the forest.

He stood there shaking so hard he couldn’t move as the jolt of adrenaline coursed through him. It paralyzed him as efficiently as Sister Nanthild’s concoction had mimicked death.

But after a long while it, too, faded, and the night noises of the forest returned piecemeal, first an owl’s plaintive hoot, then a whisper of wind and the wrangle of branches, and finally the clear and loud snap of a breaking tree limb.

He leaped sideways and crashed into the stone wall, bruising his shoulder, but it was Erkanwulf returning with four horses on a string, two saddled and two laden with traveling packs filled with grain. Ivar could smell the oats even from this distance. The young soldier carried a lantern, and he stopped in confusion and fear as the light crept over the dead men.

“I-Ivar?”

“I’m here.” He stepped out of the chapel, shaking again, shoulder on fire and tears in his eyes. “Where were you?”