Trail of the Black Wyrm - Chris Pierson Read online

  He set to work then, grinding and mixing a poultice. With a few words in Elvish—which he had to repeat so she could understand his accent—he gave a bowl of leaves and powdered roots to Shedara, who soaked them in water and took them to the fire to make a tea. She moved with the same confidence as Eldako, knowing exactly what she was doing. Hult watched the elves, feeling helpless—his own training at this sort of thing consisted of birthing foals and knowing where to cut to give a wounded man a quick death—then sat down and began to speak.

  He told of Chovuk’s madness, in the moments after the great wave devoured his people, robbing him of victory in one terrible moment. He told how his master, having changed his skin into that of a steppe-tiger, abandoned the fight to seek the commander of the enemy. They had found him—Forlo—in a broken stub of a tower overlooking the battlefield. The enemies had faced off, and in that moment Chovuk’s magic failed him, leaving him naked and weak before his foe. He fought anyway, and Forlo killed him in the end. Hult told how he and Forlo had formed their strange partnership, rather than crossing swords themselves.

  “Why did you join with him?” Eldako asked, not looking up. “Is it the way of your people that the servants of a slain lord belong to his slayer?”

  Hult shook his head. “No. I should have killed him. It would have been the honorable thing.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  Hult gave no answer. Eldako’s eyes flicked up, took in the troubled look on the young barbarian’s face, then returned to his work.

  “And so you came here and found her,” he finished. “You were leaving when the shadows attacked.”

  “Yes. And we would have died, without your aid.”

  Eldako kept grinding and mashing and mixing. “You still may.”

  Shedara brought the tea, poured it in cups, took one for herself. Hult took another, drank … and nearly spat it out again. It was the sourest thing he’d ever tasted. It made his cheeks hurt when he swallowed.

  “What’s in this?” he sputtered.

  “Dragonwort,” Eldako said. “Crone’s Cowl. Dew of Morgash. It will fight the poison, keep it from moving deeper into your blood … if it hasn’t already gone too far. Drink.”

  Shedara sipped hers and, after steeling himself, Hult took another drink. After a few swallows, his tongue started to go numb—certainly Jijin’s mercy at work—and his fingertips began to tingle. Eldako continued to make the poultice, pausing now and then to inspect Forlo’s wounds. The injuries were worsening, black threads spreading outward, under his skin. A high, reedy note cut through the sound of the man’s breathing. Hult knew that sound: it was the noise the elders made just before they departed for the halls of the ancestors.

  “And you?” Hult asked. “I thought you’d drowned in the Run. How did you survive?”

  “I felt the wave coming,” Eldako replied. “I sensed magic and the rumbling beneath my feet. So I climbed as fast as I could. Even then, I almost didn’t make it. The wave came, and when I looked down … all I saw was foam and flotsam, and men and horses drowning, just below my feet. It was one of the most terrible sights I have ever beheld … that much life destroyed in an instant.…”

  He stopped, his eyes far away, lost in grim memory. Then he shook his head and got back to work. “I climbed and climbed, fleeing into the woods. I watched the end of the battle, saw the soldiers burn the Uigan bodies. I searched for survivors, as I have told you … but there was no one. His men”—he nodded at Forlo—“combed the woods and killed them, one by one. They tried to take me, too, but my woodcraft and my bow saved me.

  “After a few nights, I spied on the soldiers’ camp and heard them say their commander had ridden east, to this place … and that one of your people had gone with them. I chose to follow and see who it was. I thought it might be one of the Tegins. I did not expect it to be you.”

  “You know their tongue as well?” Hult asked.

  Eldako’s eyes glinted. “I know many tongues, son of Holar. I know the speech of the Snow-folk of Panak, the Abaqua ogres, and the Glass Sailors of the Shining Lands. We elves live long, and have much time to study such things. Lady Shedara, I am sure, can speak many languages of the south.” He reached to his medicine pouch, pulled out a cracked leather strap, and handed it to Hult. “Put this between his teeth, then hold him down. What I am about to do will hurt him very much.”

  Hult took the strap, eyeing Eldako. The wild elf had barely spoken three words to him in their long ride to battle at the Run. Now he never seemed to stop talking. There were many questions he still wanted to ask, but now was not the time. Turning back to Forlo, he eased the man’s jaw open and slid the strap into his mouth. Forlo coughed twice, trying to spit the leather back out, then his breathing settled. Hult looked up at Eldako, who was scooping two fingers’ worth of reddish-brown paste out of the mortar. Their eyes met, and the wild elf nodded. Hult grabbed Forlo’s shoulders. Eldako spoke a few words to Shedara, and she held Forlo’s ankles.

  Licking his lips, Eldako reached down and spread the paste onto Forlo’s wounded thigh. At once, Forlo made a bestial, howling sound, muted by the strap as his teeth ground into it. His back arched. He fought and bucked like a stallion near a mare in heat. One of his feet got loose and kicked at the air several times before Shedara caught hold of it.

  “Hold him!” Eldako snapped. “I have to do that again!”

  Hult and Shedara held on. It was all they could do to keep Forlo in place: he fought them like a madman. He scratched and clawed at Hult’s arms, even drew blood, but Hult held on while Eldako took a second handful of salve and spread it on the gash in his belly. Forlo roared, flecks of spit flying. Then, with a final whimper, he fell still again. Hult and Shedara let go, panting. Forlo’s chest rose and fell, very slightly: it was the only sign that he was still alive.

  Eldako put a pad of moss over the wound then bound it with linen. He leaned close, listening to Forlo’s breathing. He laid a hand on Forlo’s throat, checking his life-beat.

  “He will live, I think,” he said with a sigh. “He will sleep for a while. The bandages should be changed, at dawn and at dusk. If his fever worsens, we must make him drink the dragonwort tea.”

  He repeated the instructions to Shedara in Elvish. She nodded.

  Eldako eased the strap from between Forlo’s teeth. “Now,” he said, scooping more salve from the mortar, “come here, both of you. It is your turn.”

  The pain was incredible, like a thousand wasps had burrowed into his side and all started stinging at once. Hult bit down so hard on the strap, he thought his teeth would crack. He screamed and raged; he shoved Eldako away; he grabbed a chair and smashed it against the wall. But as long as the poultice clung to his wound, the burning continued. Finally he sat down on a bench, put his head between his knees, and let the pain wash over him. In what seemed like a hundred years, the agony began to fade.

  Shedara bore her suffering a little better because her wound wasn’t as great. When the salve was in, she drew a dagger and focused on stabbing the table, again and again. Splinters flew. Tears leaked down her cheeks. Finally she, too, grew still again.

  “I will … never … let them hurt me … again,” Hult gasped, tasting bile.

  Eldako bandaged them both. “Wise,” was all he said.

  They told him the rest of the tale, and with the wild elf to translate, learned a bit about each other. Shedara spoke of the statue, the Hooded One, and the sorcerer’s spirit trapped within. She told of Forlo’s wife, Essana, and the child she carried. She explained about the shadows, the black dragon, and the scale it had left behind—their one clue to where the dragon had gone.

  “I’ve tried all my spells,” she said. “I can learn nothing more.”

  Eldako rubbed his chin. “Hmmm,” he said. “Might I see this scale?”

  Shedara looked at Hult, who shrugged. Eldako was trustworthy, as far as he knew. She reached into her pouch and produced the scale. It glistened in the pale daylight that streamed
through the greatroom’s high windows. Eldako took it, turning it over in his hands, slowly.

  “Do you know it?” Hult asked.

  Eldako shook his head. “I have only seen a few dragons in my life, and this does not come from any of them. I cannot tell you anything about it.”

  Shedara’s shoulders slumped. She took the scale back.

  “But there is one who might. The Wyrm-namer.”

  Shedara started, looking at Eldako in amazement. Hult glanced from one to the other, confused. After a moment, Shedara began to laugh.

  “The Namer is a myth,” she scoffed. “My people have searched for him since the Great Destruction, but never found him.”

  “Then they did not look in the right places,” Eldako replied.

  “Are you saying you’ve seen him?”

  “No. But I know those who have.”

  “Please!” Hult cried, holding up a hand. The conversation was confusing, with Eldako saying everything twice—once for Shedara, and once for him. Hult looked at both of them, imploring. “Just who is this Wyrm-namer?”

  “A bedtime story,” Shedara muttered.

  “An ancient dragon,” Eldako corrected. “A silver. He dwells far to the north, hidden in the wastes of Panak. It is said he knows the name of every dragon alive. If anyone can tell us where the scale came from, it will be him.”

  Shedara snorted, rolling her eyes.

  Eldako turned a cold eye on her. “I would be pleased to hear your alternative, my lady.”

  There was a silence. Hult coughed. “Who knows where this Wyrm-namer dwells, then?” he asked.

  “The Snow-folk,” Eldako declared. “I lived among them for a time, during the Godless Night, and they often spoke of him. They call him Ukamiak, the silver sage. They could show—”

  He stopped then, eyes widening and nostrils flaring. His whole body grew taut and tense. He reached across his body and drew his long, slender sword. Shedara was on her feet a heartbeat later, a dagger dropping from her sleeve into her uninjured hand. Hult rose and drew his shuk as well. His side blazed as he pulled the blade from its scabbard.

  “What is it?” he hissed.

  “Trouble,” Eldako replied. “Many men, in the courtyard. No—not men. Minotaurs.”

  Shedara swore under her breath. Hult did the same. There could be only one answer to who these newcomers were: soldiers of the Imperial League. They would not take kindly to finding a Uigan and two elves here in Coldhope. Hult could hear, now, what the elves’ keen ears had detected before him: the tromp of feet outside, the rattle of mail, voices calling to one another in the bull-men’s guttural tongue. He cast about, trying to think what to do.

  Then the door slammed open, and the minotaurs came charging in.

  Chapter

  3

  COLDHOPE, THE IMPERIAL LEAGUE

  Forlo roused from dreams of slithering scales and rushing wind, to the crash of splintering wood and pounding feet. Someone shouted something in a deep and booming voice, but he was still too groggy to make out words. Pain and nausea gripped him, though not as strongly as when the shadows brought him down. He opened his eyes. Gray light burned his sight, and it was a struggle to focus.

  He was in Coldhope again. The greathall—lying, it seemed, on the banquet table. Shapes moved around him, three of them. Shedara and Hult, and a third. A strange-looking elf with long, braided hair and the garb of a savage—a merkitsa of the northern woods, beyond the steppes. They were not looking at him; their eyes were turned toward the door.

  Groaning, Forlo lifted his head and saw the minotaurs.

  There were eight of them: none shorter than seven and a half feet tall, massively built, encased in steel armor and bristling with axes and swords and huge, flanged maces. Their long horns gleamed wickedly, banded with bronze and ivory rings. Their lips pulled back into fang-filled snarls. Their eyes were yellow and red, cruel. Forlo had had a minotaur friend, Grath. Grath had been jovial, warm-tempered. These bull-men, however, were clearly killers, born and bred. They were the League’s shock troops and craved only battle. He knew—he’d commanded minotaurs like this in battle, against the undead hordes of Thenol.

  They will kill us, he thought. They’ll gut us and stake our heads for the crows. If they carried crossbows, we’d be dead already.

  “Easy, now,” he murmured in Elvish, not daring to take his eyes of the bull-men. “No rash moves. We can’t handle this many—not in the state we’re in.”

  The others heard him and looked down, surprised. Forlo struggled to sit up, the pain in his belly running through him like sheets of fire. Hult grabbed him, helped him rise. The strange elf—he must have been the archer who’d saved their lives—said something, reaching out to stop him, but Hult warned him away with a word in the Uigan tongue. Forlo almost blacked out, but struggled to his feet. He looked at the minotaurs, glaring at them from across the room. They watched him, their red eyes narrow.

  “Shedara. Weapons away,” he said. “Tell the others.”

  Slowly, carefully, Shedara sheathed her dagger then showed her empty hands. The merkitsa did the same, saying something in Uigan to Hult, who frowned and followed suit. Forlo looked down to inspect the bandages on his leg and stomach. Whatever treated his wounds, it felt like it was working: his injuries throbbed but also tingled a little. Magic? Probably. He wondered who had tended him. He suspected the wild elf.

  Warily, Forlo faced the minotaurs. His hand went to his side, found his scabbard empty. He glanced at Hult, whose eyes flicked back to the table. Looking, Forlo saw his sword resting near where he’d lain. Forlo met the boy’s gaze: while they didn’t understand each other’s speech, they were both warriors, and he knew Hult understood. If things go wrong, his look said, I’ll need that blade quickly. Hult nodded.

  All right.

  Forlo stepped forward, limping on his injured leg. “All is well, friends,” he said. “We do not wish for trouble. All we want is to be left in peace.”

  One of the minotaurs moved ahead of the others. His breastplate was etched with crossed spears, marking him as an officer. He raised a huge, spiked hammer, then brought it down on an ornately carved, teak chair. It shattered, sending pieces flying every which way. Forlo gritted his teeth, remembering how he and Essana had searched for just such a chair, haggled over the price, and proudly brought it home to this room, but he held his temper.

  “We are the Fourth Legion,” rumbled the bull-man. His fur was a deep, rust color, patched with cream on the snout and forearms. He hefted his maul like it was a willow-switch. “We will say how we will leave you … if we leave you at all.”

  Forlo knew this act well enough. He’d lived among minotaurs most of his life. They tried to act as fearsome as possible, as early as possible in any encounter, to intimidate those they spoke to. If you backed down, if you let them scare you, they won the upper hand. These ones did scare him a little, but he refused to show fear. He nudged a broken chair leg with his foot, kicked it away.

  “I know you’re the Fourth, soldier,” he said. “I recognize your colors. And you should know that I am Barreth Forlo, lord of this manor, and a marshal of the Sixth Legion. I don’t think it will go over well with your captain if he learns you broke down my door, then started smashing furniture and threatening me and my guests.”

  The minotaur blinked. He hadn’t expected to be spoken to this way, clearly. After a few moments, though, his eyes narrowed, and one corner of his lip curled into a sneer. He hawked and spat at Forlo’s feet.

  “That to you, and the Sixth!” he barked. Behind him, the other minotaurs chuckled. “Your threats are empty. Our captain would laugh to hear them! We are glad to make your acquaintance, Barreth Forlo, lord of the manor—for we have come here not to honor you, but to bring you to Kristophan in chains!”

  “What?” Shedara blurted.

  Forlo risked a glance at the others. Hult and Shedara were confused, but his third companion seemed to understand. The wild elf’s fingers twitched near t
he hilt of his sword. He wanted a fight but held back. For now. Forlo could tell he would draw steel and leap to battle in an instant, when the need came.

  He turned back to the minotaurs. “In irons? That’s preposterous! Who are you? Who is your commander?”

  “I am Brosh, lieutenant of the Blood Horn Company,” declared the bull-man with an arrogant toss of his huge, horned head. “I report to Marshal Omat of the Fourth. And I place you under arrest, lord, for deserting your post after the Battle of the Lost Road.”

  “I didn’t desert,” Forlo replied. He didn’t have time for this, not from minotaurs such as those he’d led in the wars. “I left my men under the command of Captain Culos. You can ask him. I came back here to find my wife.”

  “Enough!” thundered Brosh, pointing his hammer at Hult and the wild elf. “If you are no traitor, why do you keep company with Uigan and elven scum?”

  The merkitsa drew his sword again.

  “No man speaks to me that way,” the wild elf snapped. “Much less cattle.”

  Forlo shut his eyes, blowing a long breath out his nose. Great.

  A couple of the minotaurs barked approving laughs at the elf’s brazenness, but Brosh silenced them with a look. He stepped forward; against all better judgment, Forlo didn’t edge back. He knew better than to show weakness now.

  “What pretty hair you have, elf,” the bull-man sneered. “Your scalp will look fine, hanging from my battle-standard.”

  “And wine will taste all the sweeter when I drink it from your horn,” Eldako snapped back.

  “Shut up, damn it,” Shedara muttered.

  It was too late, though: Brosh’s nostrils flared wide with rage. He pawed the ground, his hands twisting around the thick haft of his hammer. The wild elf held his sword firmly in reply, shifting onto the balls of his feet. It was said the merkitsa fought like dancers, even more graceful then the civilized elves of Armach. But graceful or not, he’d be just as dead if the mallet found his skull. Snorting, Brosh strode forward.

  Forlo had tried reasoning. That hadn’t worked. So there wasn’t much else to do. He shouted to Hult, who grabbed up his sword and tossed it into Forlo’s waiting hand. Shedara was even quicker, though: as he was bringing his blade around, she reached to her belt, plucked a throwing knife from its sheath, and side-armed it at Brosh.