The Wyrmling Horde Page 5

  Now Cullossax would wait, and as he waited, he vacillated. He wanted to see this girl’s dream world. But he did not want to get caught. Perhaps it would be better to kill her after all. He could not be sure. With every passing minute, he worried that soldiers would be sent to apprehend him.

  Cullossax stood with the guards for hours, gleaning the latest news from outside while the sun hit its zenith and then began to fall. Last night the battle had been won against the men of Caer Luciare, they all assured him, and rumor said that the warrior clans had been be wiped off the face of the earth.

  Such news contradicted Cullossax’s own sources, and the guards had heard nothing about the Great Wyrm taking a new form, demonstrating marvelous powers.

  They were only lowly guards, after all, and so knew little of import. But they talked of things that they did know. They spoke at length of how small folk had been discovered in every direction. They’d heard reports from the scouts themselves, and had seen small folk brought through their gate in chains.

  Huge cities had been found only a hundred miles to the east, and over the past two nights, troops had been sent out to wreak havoc upon the small folk, with the aim of enslaving their men, while eating the women and children.

  The small folks’ rune lore was not helping them, the guards assured Cullossax. Already the emperor had mastered their lore and exceeded it, and was sending out his own wyrmling Runelords to do battle.

  The fortress was emptying, so many warriors had left.

  And in their wake, in the high keeps, strange new creatures were taking the wyrmling’s place.

  For a brief moment, Cullossax worried about this. The fortress was emptying?

  He dared wonder how many people he might meet out in the wilds. There would be roving patrols of wyrmlings—and perhaps just as dangerously, there might be bands of angry humans, out for vengeance.

  “It is a great time to be alive,” the guards all said. “Surely this is history in the making.”

  “Yes,” Cullossax exulted, voicing full agreement. Yet he wondered, why then does it feel like the end of the world?

  Because I know that soon my masters will miss me, and learn what I’ve done. Probably, they already have. They will be searching the labyrinth, suspecting foul play. They will find the girl’s knife with blood on it, and might even think me dead.

  Up here is the last place they will look, he thought.

  But they will look here all the same.

  2

  * * *

  THE GATE

  Put no trust in your fellow men no matter how fair their looks, for every man’s face is a mask that hides terrible malice.

  —From the Wyrmling Catechism

  As Cullossax awaited his fate, far away upon the plains, the humans of the warrior clans fled their fortress at Caer Luciare, nearly forty thousand people racing through the morning light, heading east through fields of oats that had been burned white by the summer sun, past black-eyed Susans that towered above the straw, their golden petals circling their dark eyes, through thickets of thistles with wilted liver-colored leaves and heads of purple.

  The people kept away from the alders and pines along the mountain’s skirts, where wyrmlings might lurk in the shadows. Instead, they blazed a path through fields so dazzlingly bright that the wyrmlings could not follow.

  The folk of Caer Luciare could not move swiftly, burdened as they were. Some women carried babes at their breasts or hoisted toddlers on their shoulders. Older children walked, struggling through the tall grass, while the oldest of the folks hobbled about with staffs to keep them upright.

  Many warriors were wounded, and these had to be borne by their comrades, while everyone who could do so had brought something—food, water, a little clothing. The inhabitants of the castle had long known that they might have to flee, and so were prepared.

  But where are we going? Talon wondered, as she stopped to shift a keg of ale that she carried upon her back. She walked beside her aged mother, at least the woman who had raised Talon among the warrior clans, a woman named Gatunyea. Talon’s father had been much the same man in both worlds, a mighty protector of his people. Talon had known him as Sir Borenson among the small folk on one world and as Aaath Ulber among these warriors. And on each world, Borenson had taken a different woman to wife. Gatunyea of the warrior clan was nothing like Myrrima, the gentle wizardess. Gatunyea was a stern woman, heavy-boned and arthritic, with a blunt face and no tolerance for weakness. She had borne her husband two strong sons with features much like his own. They walked beside Talon now, her brothers, age nine and eleven.

  But unlike Talon and Borenson, the rest of the family had not merged with their shadow selves when the worlds were bound.

  That can mean only one thing, Talon reasoned: they had no shadow selves to merge with. Their counterparts somehow died or were killed before the worlds combined.

  But how could that be? she wondered. How can I, the daughter of Borenson and Myrrima on one world, have different parents on another?

  Only one answer sufficed. Gatunyea is not my birth mother, Talon realized.

  She looked over at the woman. Gatunyea had wide cheekbones and a wrinkled brow. So did her sons. Talon had always felt grateful not to have inherited those features, for they would have made her appear more brutish.

  “Gatunyea,” Talon asked, “when were you going to tell me that you were not my birth mother?”

  The aging woman faltered in her step and cast a sideways glance at Talon. She seemed to age three years in the space of a heartbeat.

  “Never,” Gatunyea said. She fell silent a moment, and then explained. “You are my daughter. I took you to my breast when your mother died. I nursed you as my own. That is all that matters.”

  “What happened to my birth mother?”

  Gatunyea shook her head sadly. “She went to hunt for hazelnuts one morning when the clouds were lowering. A wyrmling harvester caught her in the forest. You were a month old. My own husband had been killed in a raid on the wyrmling supply lines months before, a raid that was led by Aaath Ulber. So your father felt . . . responsible for me. I was expecting a child, a son came two days after your mother disappeared, but his cord was wrapped three times around his neck. We managed to free him, but he did not last a day. So your father took me to wife. I am from good stock. He knew that I could bear him the strong sons that our people would need to fight, and I was happy for the chance. It seemed a prudent union.”

  Talon’s half-brothers peered up at their mother, their faces a study in surprise.

  “Do you love my father?”

  “More than life or breath,” Gatunyea said. “That is the way of it. You cannot sleep with a good man for all those years and not grow into one. But I wonder,” she said, glancing off to the horizon, “if he will still love me?”

  Talon knew that her father faced a dilemma. His two shadow selves had merged, and on each world he’d had a different wife, a different family. Others in the city were facing similar problems. Which wife would he choose now?

  Myrrima, Talon decided. Sir Borenson had more children with Myrrima than Aaath Ulber had with Gatunyea, and their bond was closer. They had fought side by side at war, and thus their relationship was probably deeper than the one that Aaath Ulber had with Gatunyea.

  But now that his two selves had bound into one, what would Myrrima and their children think of him? He would be a giant in size, with a bony ridge upon his brow, and overlarge incisors. He would seem a monster.

  “He will come to you,” Talon decided. “Father will look more like one of the warrior clan than the small folk. He’ll come to you.”

  Talon’s mother let out a small sob, a strange sound. Talon had never heard the stern woman cry. Talon hadn’t known that Gatunyea was even capable of it.

  Yet Talon feared that she had guessed wrong and thus given Gatunyea false hope.

  Talon wondered if her two mothers might share her husband, as women in Indhopal did. But Talon doubted that
they could manage it.

  The company forged ahead. With each step full heads of grain scattered at Talon’s feet, and the occasional grasshopper rose up on buzzing wings.

  So how far can we run with all of these children? Talon wondered.

  The wyrmlings had taken Caer Luciare, and they also held the fortress at Cantular. The River Dyll-Tandor had flooded after the change, and was all but impassable. And by destroying the bridge at Cantular during last night’s battle, Warlord Madoc had been able to forestall some of the wyrmling invaders, but now it seemed that his heroic deed had also blocked his own people’s escape.

  I’m glad that Madoc’s dead, Talon thought. I only wish that I could claim a part in his killing.

  But now, by all accounts, Talon’s people were on something of an island, with waters rushing all around, and only the mountains of the Great Spine to the south.

  South, Talon thought, we will have to flee south.

  But with women and wounded and old folks and children to slow them, the wyrmlings would harry their retreat.

  Perhaps, she considered, there are some narrow mountain passes we can escape through. Certainly, the High King had plotted just such a retreat many times. He and his counselors had huddled over ancient maps for hours, considering what trails to use, where water and shelter might be found, and how best to defend themselves in just such an event. They’d spent months choosing the safest course, and planning for every contingency.

  Just as surely, the wyrmlings had plotted how to defeat them.

  But now everything was changed. Two “shadow” worlds had combined. Mountains had shifted position. Some had risen and others fallen as the two worlds merged into one. The old maps, the old escape plans, were all but useless.

  Still, we have to try, Talon considered.

  Talon’s mother and brothers carried food, bundled in blankets. But there were no spare clothes for winter, no food to last them even through a week. Still the refugees trudged through the fields, heading north.

  But why? Talon wondered. There was no escape that way.

  At midmorning, the Emir Tuul Ra called a halt in a huge meadow. A stream ran through it, and willows sprouted along its banks, so that some could stand in the shade.

  Soldiers guarded the bank, lest any wyrmlings be hiding in the trees.

  A young man of this world named Alun had been trudging beside Talon all day. Alun was the Master of the Hounds at Caer Luciare. He had but fourteen war dogs left to his credit, and on this morning he let them run. The dogs wagged their stubby tails and raced about in the fields, startling yellow butterflies and winged grasshoppers into flight, woofing at all of the excitement. In their lacquered armor and spiked collars, they looked fierce.

  Now Alun sent some dogs east to scout for scents in the brushy thickets along the creek, and others to the west. If a wyrmling hid there, the dogs’ barking would give ample warning.

  After a brief halt, Talon spotted the Wizard Sisel, Daylan Hammer, and the Emir Tuul Ra off from the main body of the company. The emir’s daughter, Siyaddah, a dark-skinned girl with a doe’s soft eyes, was talking to her father.

  Talon could not help but notice that Alun was gazing at her longingly.

  Alun was not a huge man. He was a gangrel, thin in the ribs with a misshapen nose, spindly arms, and oversized hands.

  Talon had hardly noticed him before. She had been born to the warrior caste, and so he, a mere slave, had not merited attention.

  But now that the worlds had merged, a part of Talon suddenly recognized that he was another human being, a person who by birthright should have been treasured and treated with honor. She tried to imagine what his life was like.

  Until recently, he had lived a life of hopelessness, never dreaming that he might be allowed to bear children. He had not even hoped that he would be free to buy a home, or to marry.

  I was born with riches, Talon thought, but Alun had to work for what little he’s got.

  Only recently had he been accepted into the warrior clan, and rumor said that he had fought like a badger when the clans took the wyrmling fortress at Cantular.

  I should give him his due, Talon decided.

  “Why don’t you go speak to her?” Talon asked.

  “Oh,” he said, “she wouldn’t go for the likes of me.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself,” Talon said. “Siyaddah has a way of seeing through people, gauging their worth. You fought against wyrmlings yesterday, and you acquitted yourself well. Surely saying ‘hello’ to her would require less courage.”

  Alun just looked at Talon helplessly, as if she had asked too much of him.

  Suddenly Daylan waved into the air, and Talon’s foster sister Rhianna came swooping to the ground in front of him, her bright magical wings flashing like rubies in the morning sun. She landed with a jar. Rhianna spoke to Daylan and the emir.

  She’d been scouting the trail from the sky, using the wings that she had won last night by defeating a Knight Eternal in single combat.

  Rhianna was pretty in her way. She had cinnamon-colored hair and eyes more fiercely blue than any rain-washed sky. Her red hair nearly matched the color of her wings. The tunic and pants that she wore were made of doeskin, the hue of summer fields. But right now her face looked wan and careworn.

  She did not have Talon’s great size or blunt features.

  Talon whispered to Alun, “Come with me. Now’s your chance.”

  Talon went to hear Rhianna’s report, while Alun followed in a nervous daze, but before Talon reached the spot, Rhianna rose up from the ground and flew east, flapping furiously.

  Talon reached the party, and Alun stood beside Siyaddah shyly, as if wondering what to say. After a moment, he mumbled a greeting, and Siyaddah answered more boldly.

  Talon left the two to their own conversation, and asked Daylan, “Where is Rhianna going?”

  “To warn the small folk of the world,” Daylan replied. “If we can get them to unite against the wyrmlings, we might stand a chance.”

  “She’ll never reach help in time,” Talon said. “The wyrmlings will be on our trail by nightfall.”

  “There are trails that the wyrmlings cannot follow,” Daylan said mysteriously, and went trundling away.

  The emir stood watching Rhianna fly off, and then turned to Talon and asked, “Tholna, is it not—daughter of Aaath Ulber?”

  “I go by the name Talon, now.”

  The emir smiled at that, an odd smile full of concern. “Why go by that name?”

  Talon had to think before answering. The emir came near, standing just a bit above her. He was not tall. He did not tower above her. Yet his presence was imposing. He was a legend among her people, one of the great heroes of all time. Frequently he had led raids against the wyrmling harvesters that hunted her people, or had raided wyrmling supply trains or destroyed enemy outposts. In his youth, he had led the last of his people on a daring assault on Rugassa itself—and had returned wounded and beaten, the sole survivor.

  Most important, Talon’s own father, Aaath Ulber, credited the emir with saving his life in two separate raids.

  So he was a legend, and Talon felt both honored and intimidated by his presence. By training, Talon’s shadow self Tholna had been raised to hope to wed such a man, to bear him warrior sons. The hope had been drilled into her from the time she was born, and she found herself excited to be near him.

  Or maybe, she thought, it is just his animal magnetism that excites me.

  The emir was handsome. His dark hair was cropped short and brushed back. His eyes were a brown so deep that they were almost black, and they had a fire in them that smoldered.

  So Talon found that she struggled for words as she tried to frame an answer to his question. “I suppose that I wish to be called Talon because . . . I am not at all like the Tholna that my friends knew.”

  The emir seemed intrigued. “Interesting. And how have you changed, my little Talon?”

  Talon had never spoken to the emir,
not above a casual greeting when she had met him while in the company of her father.

  “I . . . Tholna was a nothing. She was a breeder, meant only to bear sons to some warrior. Talon is a warrior.”

  The emir smiled, obviously amused. “There are women warriors among the small folk?”

  “It is not common,” Talon admitted, “but among the Runelords, a person’s gender does not matter much. Forcibles tend to be great equalizers. Besides, my father was the king’s personal bodyguard, and at times we were in great danger, so he taught me everything that he knew.”

  The emir nodded appreciatively at that. “The better to protect you. Very well, I shall call you Talon from now on. What does the name mean, in the tongue of the small folk?”

  “It is a claw, like that found on a hawk,” Talon said.

  “Interesting,” the emir said. “Do you know what the name Tholna means?”

  Tholna was a common name among girls. “It is an ancient weapon, I’ve heard.”

  “Not so ancient. It was often used in Dalharristan, when I was a lad. It had a handle that one could grasp in the hand, with two long hooks attached to it—hooks that protruded on either side of the middle finger. Thus, in ancient Dalharristan, the weapon was called a ‘talon.’

  “It is odd, don’t you think,” the emir continued, “that your father would give you the same name on both worlds? It makes me wonder how many other similarities there might be.”

  The news was indeed intriguing. Talon had been trained in many weapons, but had never even seen a tholna. “Why would I want to pull a foe in close, where he might strike within my kill zone?”

  The emir seemed mildly surprised by the question, and appreciative of it. “In the close combat of a large battle it was surprisingly effective. It was used only as an off-hand weapon, usually with a parry blade. The tholna could be hooked into the shoulder or leg of an opponent, to throw him off balance. Originally, it was developed by the wyrmlings—used to grasp fleeing humans.”