“We can laugh at my foolishness later,” Rathe growled. “For now, I need to know if you can get me out of this cage?”
“Us,” Erryn growled.
Loro patted an axe’s wooden haft protruding from under his blanket roll. “Aye. I also have your sword and dagger. Treon was so excited to catch you up to no good, he missed me collecting your weapons. I suppose I must ask if you are sure you want to take the road of a lawbreaker? As you once told me, to do so is to be a man hunted all his remaining days.”
“Seems I have no choice,” Rathe said. “Besides, a deeper treachery is stirring in the north than we have been told.” At Loro’s questioning look, Rathe explained all that Erryn had told him about the former brigand Mitros, and his odd pact with Lord Sanouk.
“I can understand Sanouk’s idea to use brigands to keep the peace,” Loro said slowly, “but not his need for taking prisoners. There are no mines in Hilan, and he has servants enough from the village. And, far as I can see, most of the prisoners he’s getting are mad. What use are they?”
Rathe shook his head, brow furrowed.
“He needs food and rest,” Erryn said to Loro. “Once we are freed, we can sort out these matters.”
Loro warned, “Be ready, for tonight you will become a lawbreaker in truth. For now, get some sleep, brother.”
Loro kicked his mount into a quicker pace, and Rathe let Erryn guide his head back to her lap. She pulled a loaf of bread and a wineskin from under a pile of straw in one corner.
“You can thank your friend for this,” she said, careful not to let any of the other soldiers see her feeding him. The wine tasted sour on his tongue, but he gulped it down, along with the bread. Erryn took some for herself, but not much.
After the meal, he began to drowse. Just before he dropped off, he murmured, “Where are the others who were with you?”
“Your captain put them in the other wagon. Seems he thought it amusing to leave the ‘lovers’ together.”
“Perish the thought,” Rathe grumbled.
Erryn smacked his head a stinging blow. “I may not be as tempting as one of those perfumed slatterns you are used to in Onareth,” she growled, “but neither are you as fetching as the stories say.”
Wincing, Rathe rubbed his head where she had hit him. “Don’t let my present untidiness deceive you. I clean up nicely.”
“As do I,” Erryn assured him.
Rathe cracked an eyelid, imagined her without a grimy face and matted hair, and decided she just might be telling the truth.
“Wake me if there’s trouble,” he said without disclosing his opinion, earning another smack and the shocking suggestion that his lineage ran to various beasts of the field. Despite castigating him, Erryn did not move his head from her lap.
The day passed with Rathe sleeping and waking by turns. The leaden skies darkened further, and began spitting a cold drizzle. When the company halted to make camp, Rathe woke feeling refreshed, if still bruised and battered. Most importantly, his sword hand felt better-stiff, but better.
Beyond the rusted bars of the wagon, Rathe observed Treon posting guards, while the other men hauled dead wood out of the forest to build fires. Someone had taken a stag during the day, and now a group of soldiers skinned the animal, cut it into large pieces, and began roasting the meat over a cookfire.
Treon saw Rathe watching the goings-on, and sauntered over to the wagon. Before he came close enough to speak, a blood-curdling cry washed over the camp. Treon jerked his head around, palm slapping his sword hilt. Before the weapon was half-drawn, a blurring shape slammed him into a spinning tumble, and vanished back into the dark forest. Shapes covered in hairless, wrinkly yellow hides raced through camp, knocking men aside.
Rathe gripped the bars, looking beyond the shouting soldiers. The forest, indifferent to the plight of men, gazed back. The strange creatures that had rushed through camp had vanished.
Treon bounded to his feet, ordered the bewildered soldiers to take up their spears and form a defensive circle around camp. It was not lost on Rathe that the captain stood in the middle of the that circle, braced on two sides by a pair of men, and on a third by a roaring fire. Neither did he miss that the prisoner wagons sat outside that border, undefended.
“Death stalks us,” Erryn said in a flat tone.
Rathe moved to the other side of the wagon, putting the camp and its firelight to his back. As moments stretched, his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Picketed horses snorted and stamped their hooves. Men murmured, indifferent to Treon’s demand for quiet. From the other prisoner wagon, a woman’s reedy voice cackled, “How the shadows dance … how they hunger!”
“Be still!” Treon hissed.
“Soon we will all be still!” the woman screamed in demented mirth, then began whispering a cradle song, rocking simple Karmath in her arms, as if a nursing babe.
“You see it, just there?” Erryn breathed.
“Yes,” Rathe answered. The hair on his neck prickled and gooseflesh wandered over his skin at the sight of a milky figure ghosting through the forest, just at the edge of the firelight. It vanished around a tree, then reappeared, closer than before. Rathe struggled to track its approach as it flickered from one place to the next.
“Captain Treon,” he called. “Let me help defend the camp.”
“Bugger yourself bloody,” Treon shouted.
“So be it,” Rathe answered. “But the best I can tell, I am completely safe in here.”
Within two heartbeats of that assertion, someone cried, “We need all the swords we can get!”
“Shut your poxy mouth, and hold the line!”
The argument washed over Rathe, as he searched for the creature in the forest. He found it climbing in the trees, its snaky limbs bending with revolting suppleness. Reddish hair streamed down its naked back. The creature paused again, small hanging breasts heaving as it breathed. Its head turned slowly, revealing a long, feminine face. Rathe’s heart shuddered.
“ ‘Tis a Shadenmok,” Erryn gasped. Her breath wheezed into her chest, then she screamed, “A Shadenmok hunts!”
Turmoil erupted in the camp, but Rathe could not turn from the creature. From a face white as cream, protuberant black eyes rimmed in crimson regarded the panicking men. The nostrils of its blade-thin nose flared, as if catching a pleasing scent. Its lipless mouth split impossibly wide, a hole ringed by tiny, spiked teeth. The Shadenmok flung back its head, producing a keening wail that drove a spike of terror through Rathe’s heart. He threw himself backward, clawing for his absent sword.
“She summons the Hilyoth!” a soldier warned, an instant before his words proved true.
Chapter 23
The Shadenmok’s devil-hounds, the Hilyoth, swarmed out of the forest, dogs in form save for rounded, apelike heads with massive, underslung jaws bristling with slanting teeth. Some few impaled themselves on thrusting spears. Most broke through, mouths snapping shut over arms and legs, grinding muscle and bone.
The line of soldiers disintegrated under the onslaught, becoming a confusion of screams and howls, stabbing spears and slashing swords. More soldiers fled into the forest. The Hilyoth gave chase, sundering hamstrings with taloned paws, then falling on their prey like starved wolves.
“Fight, you stoneless whoresons!” Loro raged amid the teeming throng of men and beasts. The company continued to scatter in all directions, abandoning weapons to the mud. The Hilyoth flooded over the soldiers, a writhing tide of destruction.
“FIGHT!” Loro roared, charging through the fray, one hand wielding a sword, the other a woodsman’s axe, both weapons drenched in gore.
“Free me!” Rathe called to Aeden, who turned this way and that, mouth hanging, eyes glassy. Aeden found Rathe, blinked stupidly, then dropped his spear and shambled toward the wagons, heedless of the surrounding carnage. He managed two steps before a Hilyoth abandoned the savaged leg of a screaming soldier and bounded toward Aeden.