Nathan swung his sword loosely, ready to keep fighting. “Perhaps we should be frightened as well, my boy.”
“Not frightened,” Nicci said, holding up her two daggers. “Prepared.” She stood her ground and waited for the ominous strangers to arrive.
CHAPTER 4
The approaching strangers did not try to hide. Rather, they talked in loud, raucous voices as they came through the woods; one of them let out a rude laugh. They rustled leaves, pushed branches aside, and made their way toward the sooty remnants of the forest fire. Nicci realized they must have seen the cyclone of flames that had roared up into the sky before being snuffed out.
Three colorfully dressed figures came through the thicket—slender, aloof young men who looked poorly prepared for the wilderness.
Nathan actually laughed when he saw them. “They are just youths!”
The strangers looked to be about twenty, no older than Bannon. As if on a casual outing, they strolled through the underbrush dressed in exotic, old-fashioned clothes: billowing shirts with loose front laces that showed off their chests; silk pantaloons dyed dark green, bound at the waist with wide sashes of contrasting colors, red, blue, or purple. Dangling from their shoulders were short half capes lined with exotic spotted furs—utterly impractical for a warrior, or even hard travel, Nicci observed. Each of the newcomers carried a long, wooden cudgel tipped with an iron ball. Such cudgels could be effective weapons, but the youths held them like swagger sticks.
Nicci, Nathan, and Bannon faced them in the clearing near the smoldering ashes and the bloody carcass of the bear monster. The young men paused, surprised to see the bedraggled, blood-encrusted companions.
The first youth, obviously the leader, sniffed. “By the Keeper’s crotch, who are you?” He stepped forward, self-consciously straightening his fur-lined cape. He had blue-black hair, dusky skin, and deep brown eyes. His generous lips were curved in a confused frown. “We didn’t expect to see anyone else out here.” He wore a loose red shirt with a wide purple sash. Casually, he rested the iron tip of his cudgel on the ground.
“Nevertheless we are here,” Nicci said, still trying to assess whether these out-of-place strangers might be a threat. He spoke with an odd and archaic accent, but his words were still understandable.
More conciliatory, Nathan spoke up. “We are travelers from afar. We’ve come over Kol Adair, and before that, we crossed the desolation, the mountains, the valleys, and even the sea itself.” He paused a moment, drawing out the suspense. “We come from the New World.”
“That’s far away,” said the second young man, who had reddish-brown hair and a smear of similar color on his cheeks, where wisps of thin whiskers made a halfhearted attempt at a beard. “I thought you just came from one of the mountain towns to the north.”
The third young man had a squarish face and dark hair shorn close to his head. He showed no more interest than the other two. “Where are you going? What are your names?”
Nicci interrupted before either of her companions could answer, not wanting to give away too much. “Our destination is wherever our travels take us. We are exploring the Old World. My name is Nicci. My companions are Nathan and Bannon.”
The first young man tapped his swagger stick on the ground, stirring forest detritus. “I’m Amos.” He showed little warmth or welcome—not suspicion, as Nicci might have expected, but simply distance, as if they were of no importance to him. He indicated his two friends. “This is Jed and Brock. Last time the shroud came down, we decided to spend some time outside, and now we have to wait again.”
Brock, the young man with close-cropped dark hair, looked curiously at the mangled mess of the bear carcass, its gouged-out eye, the glistening entrails draped over its abdominal cavity. “Another combat bear got loose.”
Amos snorted. “Chief Handler Ivan is an idiot. My mother and father both say so—one of the only things they’ve ever agreed on.”
Jed scratched the wispy red hair on his cheeks. “We heard it hunting in the hills last night, so we stayed away.” He glanced at the blood-spattered travelers. “You took care of the brute for us.”
“Rather messy,” Brock added.
“Dear spirits, you know what this creature is?” Nathan asked. “You’ve seen such a monstrosity before? You know where it comes from?”
Amos frowned. “Of course. Didn’t you hear what Brock said? It’s a combat bear.”
Nicci struggled to keep the edge from her voice. “And we have never seen a combat bear.”
“Of course you haven’t,” the young man answered in a flippant voice. “And our fleshmancers have created far worse than this thing.”
Jed rubbed a fingertip down the cracked, sooty trunk of one of the blackened trees. “We saw the spreading flames and were worried there might be a wildfire on the hills. We could have been trapped out here, but then we saw the cyclone that extinguished it.”
“Someone has an excellent mastery of magic,” Amos said, looking intently at the three of them. “Who was responsible for that?”
“Nicci did it,” Bannon offered, apparently trying to impress the strangers. “She’s a sorceress, and Nathan is a wizard too … or at least he usually is.”
Now Amos looked at the travelers with a different measure, his aloofness fading. “You’re gifted, then?” He turned to Bannon. “And what about yourself?”
Bannon held up his blood-encrusted sword. “I am a swordsman, and an adventurer.”
“Good to know,” said Brock with a thread of sarcasm.
Bored with the conversation, Amos strolled over to the five statue warriors, who were now smeared with soot from the fire that had washed over them. “Jed thought there might be an encampment up here in the trees. Scouts and spies.”
After taking the measure of the nearest fire-blackened statue, Amos stepped back and with a vicious grimace swung his iron-tipped cudgel. With all his might, he smashed the metal end into the statue’s helmeted face. The loud, ringing crack rang out in the forest. Part of the stone helmet and chiseled nose broke away, leaving a scar of bright, fresh marble.
Nicci was startled by the unexpected violence and readied herself in case they attacked her or her companions. Bannon yelped in surprise.
But Jed and Brock chuckled along with their friend, raised their clubs, and battered the faces of the five stone warriors. Ornate, swooped helmets splintered and broke; aquiline noses, heavy brows, and close-pressed lips burst into sprays of rock powder.
Nathan gasped in confusion, uncertain whether he should stop them. “Dear spirits!” The youths did not rest until they had ruined the faces of all five statues. They laughed and congratulated one another over their risk-free bravado.
Nicci felt the bear’s blood drying on her cheeks, and where it had soaked her black travel dress. “Why would you do that?” she asked in a cold voice.
“Keeper’s crotch, because they deserve it!” Amos said. “We hate them. General Utros’s army. They’ve been here for fifteen hundred years, back when Emperor Kurgan meant to conquer the world, bring everyone under his control. We all know the history. So, when our protective shroud went down, my friends and I came out to have fun … to make our point.”
Brock added, “We’ve been roaming for days, doing what we can against the stone army—just in case.”
Nathan gave them a look of clear disapproval. Nicci added in a sharp tone, “You can vandalize stone soldiers, but that does not mean you are great fighters.”
Amos sniffed. “But this is the only chance we have, and we’re not going to pass up the opportunity for revenge. We’ve all been waiting so long.”
The three young men looked at one another. Brock said, “Should we make our way back across the plain? Plenty more statue soldiers along the way.”