Flaeros swept up his stool and smashed the steel aside-and as Raulin reluctantly drew his own sword and the snarling man tried to claw his way along the desk toward it, Flaeros swung the stool again, as hard as he could, into the man's head.
There was a dull crack, and the guard crashed down face-first onto the heaps of proclamations, riding them bloodily to the floor and trailing the pair of grimly clinging fellow guards.
The bard and the king stared at each other and then down at the lifeless man at their feet. Then they lifted gazes to stare at each other again, helplessly.
"I wish the Four were back here with us," King Raulin whispered. "They'll know what to do."
13
Too Many Monsters
Tshamarra sighed as carrion-birds napped heavily away from something sprawled in the muddy trail ahead, and slowed her nervous mount. "I knew Glarond was a populous barony, but-gods-this many corpses? Is there anyone left?"
"Yes," Craer told her brightly, turning in his saddle. "The survivors!"
"And the worst of it all is," Embra murmured from beside the Lady Talasorn, "he thinks himself funny."
"He is," Blackgult said from behind them both, "so long as we're speaking purely of looks. 'Tis his words and deeds that swiftly stray from amusing to annoying. Yet the Three must love him dearly-what other procurer takes such care to be memorable and ever noticed? Most skulk through life in hopes of going unnoticed and living longer. Yet this mad Delnbone…"
Tshamarra nodded. "Truth, bluntly put. So can my Beloved-of-the-gods see us all safely through this Blood Plague, do you think?" She waved a small and slender hand at carrion-birds pecking busily at several motionless lumps in a field, and added quietly, "Or repopulate Glarond?"
Craer turned in his saddle, growing a broad grin, and without sparing a glance from his ceaseless peering at their surroundings, Hawkril growled, "Lady, encourage him not! D'you know what you said? 'Repopulate' hath but one means, remember?"
Tshamarra rolled her eyes. "Spare us your comments and gestures," she told her beaming man firmly, as he opened his mouth to say something clever. "Just-spare us."
"Shields up," Hawkril snapped. "Folk watching us, in the trees."
The two sorceresses hauled at the unaccustomed weight of the shields the armaragor had insisted on strapping to their saddlebags ere leaving Stornbridge, and looked at the trees ahead. The road plunged into their midst, and the two women exchanged wary glances, remembering arrows hissing… and thudding home…
Tshamarra caught sight of fearful eyes and cowering bodies. "By the Forefather, Hawk, they're just… frightened folk, staring at us!"
"Aye," Hawkril agreed, waving his drawn sword so that everyone could see it and standing tall in his saddle to peer farther into the treegloom ahead. "The problem with this plague is-"
Someone in the trees suddenly snarled and pounced on the man beside him. An unfortunate head was jerked back by a cruel tug on hair, a throat was cut, and in its wake that same someone howled and lashed out in all directions, steel flashing under the boughs amid wild screams and the crashings of fleeing folk.
"-this sudden falling into madness," the armaragor added grimly. "Prudence is swept away, threats and good sense mean nothing, and so 'tis wise to keep your shields up!"
His last few words were snapped back over his shoulder as he spurred forward to meet a wild-eyed man running out of the trees fumbling with a loaded crossbow. Shaking hands checked the quarrel, a ceaselessly murmuring mouth spoke reassurances to itself as the weapon was aimed-and Hawkril's warsword slashed the bow aside in a whirl of sliced strings, tumbling quarrel, and severed fingers.
The man screamed and ran, shaking his gory ruin of a hand and staring at nothing.
Embra winced, even as Blackgult snapped, "Craer! Guard the ladies!" and spurred past them to join Hawkril. Many folk were coining along the winding road ahead-fast. Eyes wild and unseeing, running hard, too winded for their screams to be much more than endless, raw groaning…
"What're they running from?" Embra muttered, clutching the Dwaer in one hand and trying to manage reins and shield in the other.
Hawkril looked back, guiding his nervously sidestepping horse, and the Lady Silvertree saw that he and her father were carefully positioning themselves to shield Tash and herself. She looked to the other sorceress, and found Tshamarra's eyes already on her. Tshamarra's face held the same helpless sadness she knew must be written across her own.
"Easy, now," Craer said from behind them. "Just don't go blasting things if it bids fair to involve trees toppling on us, hey?"
Embra risked a withering glance back at the procurer, and saw that the slender little man had a dagger ready in one hand to throw, and a fistful of glittering replacement fangs in the other.
And then the panting, stumbling tide of Aglirtans was upon them, Hawkril grunting under the battering of so many men impaling themselves on his lowered swords at full run. Blackgult was using a broken length of banner-pole he'd found at the stables like a quarterstaff, leaning low in his saddle to thrust and fend off. All the overduchal horses were rearing, Craer cursing as he fought to hold the lead reins of the riderless spare mounts. Tshamarra turned to help him, Embra gathered herself to try to quell equine minds with the Dwaer in despair at her own ignorance of how to properly do such a thing, and-
The running people were gone, crashing on through the brush and down the road behind the overdukes. Several of the stragglers howled and fell as the five riders watched, only to rise sprouting claws and snouts, limbs shifting and twisting sickeningly under their skins.
Hawkril grimly kicked a dead but still gurgling man off his warsword and told the Vale around him, "This is the worst foulness the Serpents have worked yet-making war on all Aglirtans, war-trained or not."
"Perhaps they've wearied of failing to conquer the realm," Tshamarra said a little wearily, "and have decided to just destroy it. The wolves'll dine well this year."
"Aye," Craer agreed from behind her, somber for once, "but I wonder if, having done so, they'll remain wolves?"
"Three forfend!" Embra gasped. "If birds and beasts can carry this plague, the land will never be cleansed of it!"
"We could just keep riding," the Lady Talasorn suggested in a small voice, "to other lands, and…"
"Aye," Hawkril snapped, "and do what? Wait for the plague to reach us there? Leaving Aglirta torn and laid waste? We've got to stop this, even if it means begging and promising every last mage in Darsar whatever they want to aid us in breaking this magic!"
"Father," Embra asked quietly, "are they all dead? Or is there someone down but alive and likely to remain so until, say, dusk, that you could bring me?"
"Quite likely," the Golden Griffon replied, swinging out of his saddle and tossing her the reins to hold.
"Lady Embra," Craer snapped, "I thought we Band of Four were leaving the 'Obey me, fools, for I am a great and mysterious mage' act behind us! We trust you, yes, but I do expect you to tell us why? Why d'you need some poor wounded idiot?"
"Well, I could say we have an immediate and pressing need to learn what lies ahead of us, mat drove all these folk to flight, but the truth is, Craer, I can't learn anything more about this plague-magic unless I can probe an afflicted mind with this" Embra hefted the Dwaer, and added bitterly, "Whereupon I'll probably learn more about my own ignorance than anything else."
"You'll be sharing their wound-pain, if you probe someone who's hurt," Tshamarra murmured, struggling to keep her horse quiet. "That much I do know, from my own mind-touch magics."
Embra nodded grimly. " 'Tis all right. I won't get lost in agony-I'll have the remarks of an overclever procurer to anchor and goad me."