Seeking shelter, they rode along the north slope of the slot, for there the wind seemed a bit less strong. Even so, it pummelled and battered at them and at their steeds, seeking to hammer them into oblivion, or to freeze them where they stood. And so Tip and Auly sought refuge from the wind, needing to find it quickly ere darkness fell, ere the blast could wrench away life. They were some twelve miles west of the army and nigh the outlet of the pass, and in those twelve miles they had seen no sign of the enemy, but for a scramble of tracks running away. Yet neither friend nor foe were on their minds, but finding safe haven instead.
Of a sudden Auly in the lead veered leftward, angling across the pass, Tip following, and in among high boulders they rode. How Auly had seen them through the hurling white, had seen them through the oncoming night, Tip could not say, yet he was relieved that they had found a shelter of sorts. Still the wind shrieked among the stones, less fierce than out in the open. Auly dismounted and called something back to Tip, but the howling air shredded Auly's words and flung them away on the wind. Yet Tip guessed at what Auly had perhaps called and dismounted as well -just as a huge black form hurtled through the shrieking white and over Tip's head and crashed into the pony, slamming the steed sideways and to the ground.
"Waugh!" shrilled Tip, only to hear Auly's scream and a horrid yowl. Tip's floundering pony squealed in terror, a terror chopped off in mid scream as the black creature atop tore out the little steed's throat. Tip jerked an arrow from his quiver as, slavering blood, the dark creature whirled toward the buccan and leaped. The Warrow only had time to shove the arrow out before himself as the beast smashed into Tipperton and knocked him backwards, Tip's upflung arm to be caught in the creature's jaws, as together they crashed to the ground, the monster slamming down atop the buccan, knocking the wind from his lungs. Stunned, unable to breathe, Tip feebly pushed at the beast, but it crushed down on him, its fangs locked on Tip's limb.
Oh lor', what a way to Ghuuhhh!
Tip managed to inhale.
In the shrieking white, the creature atop him did not move, its crushing weight pinning the buccan.
Ripping his forearm free of the fang-filled jaws, blood flowing unchecked through the shredded cloth of his jacket sleeve, desperately Tip kicked and shoved at the beast, finally struggling out from under the dark creature.
Floundering to his feet, Tip looked down to see-Vulg! It's a Vulg!-the buccan's arrow driven deeply into the beast's chest. But Tip did not pause to wonder at this turn of fortune. Instead Auly!
Now Tip snatched his bow from the scabbard on his dead pony and set an arrow to string and whirled toward where Auly had been, though there was little he could see. With the wind screaming and whiteness hurtling all 'round, Tip pressed through the blizzard to find Oh, Auly.
Where the scout's throat had been there was nought but a gaping ruin, spewn red blood staining crimson the snow. Auly's dead eyes stared wide with fright, locked on the hurtling ice and snow of the blizzard shrieking above. Lying next to him was a dead Vulg, a dagger embedded to the hilt in its baleful left eye. Of Auly's horse there was no sign.
Tip fell to his knees in the snow beside the grizzled man and gently closed his eyes.
Auly, Auly, with force of arms you slew your murderer, whereas mine was slain by chance.
Overlaid on the yowling wind came a howl of a different sort.
Tip leapt to his feet-Vulgs! More Vulgs!-his bow at the ready. Oh lor', the blood, the scent of the blood, it will bring them running. But wait, the wind, they might not- Never mind, bucco, you've got to get out of here, out of the pass altogether.
Darting back to his dead pony, Tip unlashed his bedroll and saddlebags and lute from the rear cantle and shouldered all. He turned toward Auly's body. Oh, Auly, I cannot leave you here for the Vulgs to Another howl cut through the wind, this one louder.
Faced with little or no choice, Tipperton turned in the yowling blizzard and the falling dark and began scrambling through pummelling wind and shrieking white and up the canted slope, the snow cascading down the slant behind.
Higher he climbed and higher, air and ice screaming all 'round, the wind stealing his heat even as he sought safe haven. He came to the face of a bluff, a bluff he hadn't the strength to climb even were there no blizzard plucking his life away. Leftward he turned, away from the hammering blast and back toward the army miles hence, though it was not the army he sought but shelter instead-boulders, a cave, a fold in the stone-anything out of the wind.
Pushed by the yawling blast at his back, across the slope and alongside the bluff he struggled, the deep snow grasping at his trembling shanks, the buccan growing weaker with every stride, a fever seeming to rage through his veins. Ahead through the racing whiteness, he saw what appeared to be a darkness on the stone of the bluff. A shadow, but wait, night is at hand, so how-?
Slammed from behind by the blizzard, Tip was smashed to his knees, but when he tried to stand again, he had not the strength. Crawling, floundering, creeping through snow, Tipperton made for the dark place ahead… to come to a low opening in the stone, a hollow out of the wind.
Scrabbling, struggling, back among the rubble he crept, as far from the blizzard as he could get, ten or twelve feet at most. Panting, he dropped his saddlebags and lute-his bedroll had been lost or abandoned somewhere along the way-and he hitched about and faced the opening, sweat runnelling down his forehead and cheeks in spite of the cold.
And he was burning up.
Blearily, Tip felt along his ripped sleeve to find his arm bleeding beneath. Oh lor', I've been bitten by a Vulg.
Captain Brud's ominous words echoed in Tip's mind: "Vulg's black bite slays at night… slays at night… at night… night."
As darkness clasped the land, searing with fever Tip leaned back against the fissured, crack-raddled rock, Vulg poison raging in his veins, while outside on the shrieking wind there yawled a juddering howl.
Chapter 20
In the Dendorian prison, Beau languished abed, too weak, too enervated to rise. Even though his pustulant boils and dark buboes continued to recede, he recovered but slowly, his fever-wasted flesh stubbornly refusing to fill out on his bones no matter how much he ate, though to say fair, his appetite seemed to languish as well. That he had been ill was patently clear, for to the edge of death he had been borne by the plague, to the edge and nearly beyond. Yet the blending of silverroot and gwynthyme in a single tisane had drawn him back, had rescued him, along with some five hundred others, though it had come too late for nearly three thousand more.
People came to the prison to see the wee healer, for surely he was Adon-blessed-how else could you explain the miracle he had brought to the city? But the wee one was entirely too weak to accept public accolades, and so many who sought audience were turned away at the prison gates.
Even so, over the next weeks, Beau had a number of visitors, particularly healers who came to praise him, and those who came to worship: patients yet in the prison who had been saved by the remarkable grace of his cure. And in the early days of these visits, he would tire quickly, and often a caller who came to see him would find the wee buccan asleep. Many left him small gifts; many simply knelt and kissed his hand, and if Beau was awake at the time, he was deeply embarrassed by such adulation.
Lor', but this must be how Tip felt, the Hero of Dendor and all; the Hero of Mineholt North, too, though there the Dwarves were a deal more level-headed than the Humans here seem to be.
Ten days after Tip and Bekki and Phais and Loric and even King Agron had said farewell, Beau was allowed to rise. And though his legs quivered and it seemed as if he would faint, still he vowed never again would he lie a prisoner abed, even if he had to crawl to the privy, never again. With help he tottered to the toilet at the end of the hall, and when he returned to collapse on his cot exhausted, he first set his bedpan outside the cell and muttered, "Never again," again.