Chapter 10 – Hunters on the Trail #6
It was surely only the mercy of the stars that spared them as the thing struck again and again, pounding against this tree and then that one as if testing them for weaknesses.
Again and again its angry rumble sounded, circling below, and Lancer neighed, loud and angry.
But no one else fell, and finally the devils grew quiet, and the purring faded away.
Do you think it’s gone? one of Remin’s men mouthed, not daring to even whisper the question .
Remin see-sawed his hand, listening. Nothing in Ophele’s treatise had prepared them for this, but now he remembered all the questions she had asked that they still could not answer.
What was it that attracted devils to men?
The light of torches, the smoke of fires?
The smell of men and men’s things? The warmth of the blood in their veins? How could they find out?
He did not know why the purring devil had come. And so he could not guess why it went away.
No one slept that night.
Even after Auber persuaded him to go to his bedroll, Remin stared open-eyed at the sky, visualizing the maps of this part of the Andelin.
They could not risk another night like this one.
A weaker tree, a more precarious branch, a hook set wrong, and he might lose five men at a stroke.
The mountains were not yet snowy enough to provide the devils cover by day; was there some open area they could go to, far enough that the devils could not reach it in the space of the night?
Or perhaps an old fortress, where they might hope to stand the devils off?
It was as good an idea as any. Remin rolled onto his side, yanking his blanket over his shoulder. How could he defend when he didn’t know what he was defending against?
In the morning, they found a clue.
“Don’t touch it, you nit! Your Grace!” Among this small group of men, there was no one who feared to call for Remin himself if they thought it was warranted, and Auber was right on his heels as he headed for the shouts, only to find that something large had preceded him.
Something very large.
“Stars and ancestors,” breathed Auber, moving ahead of Remin with his sword drawn. “What did this?”
They were looking at the passage of something that had trampled the underbrush underfoot and knocked several small trees over on either side of its trail, the saplings splintered about three feet off the ground.
“That’s not all,” said one of the soldiers, waving them over. “Here, Your Grace.”
Buried in the trunk of one of the huge ancient trees was a half-dozen large spikes, black and gleaming like oil, somehow ugly to behold. They were lodged into the bark near a single large scrape that had gouged across two feet of root.
“They look like… quills,” Auber said uncertainly, bending warily to inspect them as if they might leap out of the tree and embed themselves in his face. He was very careful not to touch them. “Like from a porcupine.”
“Go grab a leather pouch and some gloves,” Remin told the nearest man, measuring the height of the quills against himself. “A six-foot porcupine?”
“That would be the best-case scenario,” Auber said, meeting his eyes with perfect understanding. And the thought of porcupine quills made Remin look at the remaining soldier, who was keeping one hand out of sight at his side.
“Did you touch it?” Remin asked sharply.
“Just a bit, Your Grace,” the man admitted, shamefaced. “I don’t think anything happened, though.”
“Let me see,” Remin ordered, frown lines deepening in his face.
The devils and everything to do with them were cursed, and he knew a dozen men who had been bitten by ghouls only to have the wound turn septic.
Even a scratch from a strangler often got infected.
It was probably just from accumulated filth, but he felt a deep revulsion at the thought of anyone touching those oily black barbs with their bare hands.
The man held out his hand, turning it over to show perfect, unbroken skin.
“Wash it. Now,” Remin said, jerking his chin toward the icy spring. He might be overreacting, but he didn’t like this. “If you notice anything, say something.”
The other soldier returned at a run with the requested gloves, pouch, and a pair of tongs, which was a good idea. Two of the quills broke off as they tried to extract them, and that only confirmed in Remin’s mind that they were cursed things, crooked and malicious.
“Keep them in one of the wagons,” he said, as the pouch was sealed shut, and drew his sword as he moved with Auber down the trail.
It was possible, in these deep woods, that there was some wild creature they had never encountered before.
The beasts of the Andelin tended to be big: the mountain lions, the silvertip bears, the roan stags with antlers five feet across.
There might be some shy, giant creature that had evaded the clash of marching armies these many years .
But the trail ended in a wide clearing some distance ahead, and Remin halted, gripping his sword in his hand.
“We’ll go to Crassege,” he said, glaring futilely at the empty wood. “It’s time we left the forest.”
“It’ll be a run if we want to make it by nightfall,” Auber observed, but no one argued when Remin ordered them to break camp.
Crassege was an old Vallethi hillfort that Remin had personally toppled, but even the memory of its broken mirror tower was not enough to make anyone wish for another night in the wood.
Scarcely an hour after sunset, they were marching double time northeast, eating up the miles as if devils were on their heels. And maybe Remin was the only one that noticed when they passed a wagon trace winding away to the north, the road that led to Nandre.
That was the way Rollon had gone.
If he and his men lived, they would be on their way back now. Coming through those maddened, vicious devils. Coming past that devil.
Was that why it had left? Because it sensed easier prey?
As the wagon trace disappeared behind them, Remin fought with himself, calculating the miles, weighing the cost in lives.
He had sent Rollon with only twelve men because the chance of success was so low.
He was only guessing that Rollon would be on his way back, much less where he might be; the forest was so vast and overgrown, they could pass within half a mile of each other and never know it.
And how many might die next year, if he failed in his quest now?
For an hour, he considered it in silence, and then Remin Grimjaw turned his back, facing resolutely to the north and east.
Toward Crassege.