Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Animals
Griff was sealing up the last of their packs and securing it to Prancer the renamed mule when Alys returned to camp just before noon as promised, frustrated from combing through weeds and puddles and finding nothing of interest. She still had the orc’s head with her, which was unfortunate, but thankfully the troll was back where it belonged, taking a nap in its cave after being sung more than a few lullabies.
“You’re a good mom, Alys,” Griff told her as she handed him a full water canteen to pack. She must have revisited the creek in her wanderings.
She blushed and shook her head, but she was smiling.
“A better knight than Rhun too,” Mal said firmly, which wiped away the traces of that smile, replacing it with something more thoughtful.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself about the search,” he added as he pulled out his flask.
“Maybe he ran out of personal effects to give you. At least he’s looking out for us. ”
Griff wished he could do something that would help Mal reach for that thing less, but he had already guessed the reason why he’d just done so. He was searching for whatever he suspected Rhun had appeared to warn them about, and there was nothing Mal hated more than a threat he couldn’t see coming.
“Wonder if Rhun and his friends fought more than just the troll out here too.” Mal chased the words with a sip.
“They should have marked the rest of that shit on the map for us, if so.” Raising the flask, he glanced at his companions and said, “Still, here’s to Rhun, the man of the hour, for bringing us all back together. ”
“To Rhun,” Griff echoed. He had to use his maul out here more often than he would have liked, but he would do anything for the memory of the man who’d raised them. He hoped Rhun’s spirit was lingering nearby for the toast, being reminded of their enduring love.
“To Papa,” Alys joined in, taking the flask when Mal offered.
Leaving it with her for a moment, Mal strode over to Griff and pulled the black scarf from around his neck.
He didn’t say a word as he wrapped it around Griff’s shoulders instead despite the afternoon’s warmth, kissing his cheek and flooding him with a different heat as he did so, the old scarf once again passing between them like a promise.
Then they were off again, pressing deeper into the Mire, where there were fewer patches of sunlight breaking through and more ominously glowing flowers thriving in the gloom.
All that remained of the camp where everything had changed was an empty blue glass bottle, the troll’s heavy club, and an uprooted blackberry bush.
Griff tried to settle his nerves by answering various birdcalls as they picked up the path at a vicious pace, but the longer they marched, the less sure he was what sort of animals were making the sounds that seemed to echo from the bracken.
He had heard rumors of the Shadow Queen keeping giant spiders out here, large as dogs and twice as motivated to hunt.
After he fell quiet, the loudest sound any of them made was the slush of the mule’s hooves as the beast trudged through puddles of muddy water alongside him, Griff having insisted on testing his leg while the daylight held.
Every so often, he stopped to pull a small knife from his belt and cut some herbs to use in their next hot meal, whenever that might be. He found comfrey for his healing kit. Wild onions for flavoring and a few withered morels.
He took mental stock of the supplies in their packs and the mule’s saddlebags rather than thinking too long on the unanswerable questions spinning in the back of his mind, ones he was too nervous to ask Mal yet, like where he was going to put the biggest bed this side of the Teeth, or that new stove.
Were they moving in together? Where? What were they going to tell people back in Linden they were—together?
Mal didn’t seem to care much for titles, from what he had told Griff back in Mayfair, and Griff knew better than to push him.
On anything. Which was why he also wasn’t going to ask again about Mal’s punishing timeline to reach the treasure that seemed completely self-imposed.
A few brisk steps ahead, the blond man paused to pull out his flask as he gazed into the shadows that only seemed to be growing longer, pressing closer from all sides.
The warm kiss of whiskey was apparently all Mal needed on his lips right now, and Griff left him to it, though he was itching to throw that flask far off into the Mire.
He knew how hard it was to want to get sober, let alone stay that way.
Mal was apparently so unsettled even with the aid of the whiskey that when a raven shot out of the bracken, he grabbed one of his knives from his belt and flung it into the trunk of a gnarled, leafless tree some yards ahead of them with a wordless snarl.
Griff winced, not at the loudness of Mal’s frustration but at a certain unwelcome pain from his scar as he stared at the knife protruding from that tree. As the burning intensified, he resisted the urge to make sure the wound was still closed while the others might see. Barely.
“Your knife skills could use improvement. You missed that bird by a mile,” Alys teased Mal, trying to snap him out of his mood as she took Prancer’s lead from Griff.
Something off the path had caught Griff’s eye, and he wanted to get a closer look.
Kneeling, he examined a cluster of wilted white flowers for usefulness while attempting to calm his racing heart.
Yet he startled when a rabbit darted from beneath a nearby bush, scampering to its next hidey-hole as if being pursued by unseen forces.
He couldn’t shake the sense that they were caged animals in here themselves, allowed to go about their errands only while the dark queen’s servants toyed with them like predators playing with an easy supper, even if they had made fairly quick work of the revenants and tamed a damn troll.
Their luck would run out at some point, and he could hardly blame Mal for wanting to get in and out of here as quickly as possible when he thought about it that way.
Off to his right, the man in question took another swig of whiskey before he finally retrieved his knife and started rummaging in the mule’s saddlebags in search of something.
Apparently, the mule didn’t like Mal’s attitude much either. The beast’s ears perked forward as if sensing danger, and he took a single step back that narrowly missed smashing Mal’s toes.
“Ever heard of personal space?” Griff heard him grumble to the beast as something deeper off in the semidark caught his eye—truffles.
The thing he was certain Mal would love if he made them into a rich, velvety sauce.
Maybe the delicacy would earn a smile the next time Mal deemed it safe enough to have a fire going.
Another true smile, the kind that made the swamp water glisten as if each shallow pool held gold dust.
Griff made his way carefully between the trees toward the low cluster of mushrooms half hidden by grass, his boot print falling neatly into the enormous muddy claw marks left by the passing of another creature.
Still, that was nothing unusual. There were tracks running all through this place.
“Found us something tasty,” he called to the others over the mule’s continued noises of distress.
“Something that won’t give anyone any strange visions—I’ll be right back! ”
“Shit,” Mal called from behind him. “Wait, Griff—let’s go together!”
Griff intended to stop there, to turn around and pause for the others to catch up.
But before he could turn away, ahead in the dense tangle of vegetation he saw a tall, broad silhouette of a man with shoulder-length hair, straight but jagged at the ends.
He couldn’t make out any of his features, but even his solid shadow was familiar despite Griff not having seen him since he was maybe twelve.
Rhun.
Finally, he was showing himself—and not to Mal or Alys, but to him.
Rhun must have something to show him, some message to share, wisdom to impart.
Griff quickened his pace as best he could on his hobbled leg, but where he should have caught up to the man and found him standing over some plump mushrooms that looked rather like porous potatoes, he met a pair of strange violet eyes a few feet away instead.
Eyes that narrowed as they watched him while an unseen mouth hissed.
A wyvern, Griff realized in the heartbeat before she broke from her cover. Female, judging by the color of her eyes and the higher pitch of her vocalization.
Griff had half a second to wonder if it was her nest from which Alys had gotten the strange blue-shelled eggs they’d fixed for breakfast before the sleek, scaled creature lunged forward with a soft patter of claws against earth, branches cracking beneath its weight as it leapt from its place of concealment, dark as a shadow and larger than a direwolf.
“Mal, over here!” he managed to shout just before he was thrashed by a whiplike tail, knocked off-balance by a beast with claws that might as well have been daggers, before he even had a chance to draw his sword.