Hot agony rippled through his gut. Wetness oozed down his belly and into his groin, warm slickness turning cold. Eresken groped beneath the heavy links of his hauberk to feel the hilt of a dagger driven up into his belly in the harlot’s first assault. He fell to his knees as sickening pain flooded him, every pulse of his heart striking fresh torment from the wound.
“Save me!” Eresken poured every scrap of heart and will into a despairing appeal, reaching up and out and beyond the woods, past the gray crags of the stony heights, beyond the windswept expanse of the plains and out across the vast, trackless ocean. With a suddenness that made him gasp more than any shock of pain, another mind seized his. As he was lifted bodily away, consciousness crushed beneath a pitiless grip, Eresken welcomed oblivion rather than face his father’s wrath.
He came to himself in a leafy hollow, so similar to the one he had left that he jumped to his feet, looking in all directions for the murderous trollop with her assassin’s daggers. The knife that had stabbed him rattled to the ground.
“Calm yourself.” The voice within his head rang with contempt, a stinging slap behind his eyes an added rebuke.
Eresken clutched at his belly. His trews and shirt were torn and damp with blood but the skin beneath was whole. His fingers traced the cicatrices of a new scar with dismay.
“You can carry those marks as a reminder of your folly,” the voice told him curtly. “Be grateful I was minded to let you off so lightly.”
“You are indeed merciful,” replied Eresken wordlessly with a sinking dread. “Where am I?” He snatched up the dagger.
“Just far enough away to keep you from being gutted like a seal pup.” There was amusement in the voice now. Eresken breathed more easily; better to be the target of mockery than rage. “Get down to the road and head east,” ordered the voice.
“Yes, Father.” Eresken obeyed hastily, slipping and adding fresh scratches to hands and face. Reaching the road, he ran, armor heavy on his shoulders and rattling with every step. Sweating freely, his pace did not falter until he rounded a bend to see bodies strewn across the bloodstained track.
He skidded to a halt, clutching at his head with clumsy hands. Dark brown eyes looked out at the carnage and grim satisfaction curved Eresken’s mouth in a smile not his own.
“Not what we hoped for but something can be made of it.” The lips shaped words echoing and far distant. “Use this and if you impress me your earlier failure may be overlooked.” The voice turned cold. “Disappoint and it will go hard with you.”
Eresken staggered beneath a blow to the very center of his being, senses reeling. Then the presence in his mind was gone, leaving only an echoing memory of helpless blindness. To be used as another’s eyes was bad enough when it was expected, he raged silently; to be taken like that unheralded was infinitely worse. Hastily stifling disloyal anger, Eresken took a deep breath and brought his hands together in front of him, palm to palm and fingers matched and spread. In a soft voice, he recited the incantations to center his mind afresh. That should satisfy any spies lurking to steal his thoughts, he thought in that one secret part of his mind he hoped was still inviolate.
Teiriol’s troop lay all around, some hacked with swords but more struck down by magic. Three were burned beyond recognition by foul, creeping fire. Others lay unmarked but abnormal angles showed bones broken by the hammer blow of unnatural winds. One corpse was still smoking, a black score traced down from head to the shattered ruin of a foot, white bones stark in the charred flesh. Another lay with jaw shattered and hanging limp, the bones of the face broken like an eggshell with fragments driven deep into the brain, which showed gray and gelid in the depths of the wounds.
“How do they do this?” muttered Eresken aloud.
A feeble croak sought to answer him. Eresken looked around, startled. The sound came again and he followed it to the ditch beside the road. Distraught blue eyes looked up from a mire of leaves and blood. “Teiriol?”
“I ran away,” sobbed the younger man. “I ran away. I was trying to bring them all back, trying to get them to rally, but once the lightning started, once I saw Seja hit—” He broke off with a cry of pain and Eresken saw his sword hand was useless, naked spikes of shattered bone sticking out of the wrist, the fingers hanging bloodless and limp, thumb all but severed. Teiriol cradled the ruin of his arm helplessly, weeping like a child.
“What happened?” Eresken shook him furiously but Teiriol was incoherent with pain and distress. Eresken seized his chin and forced it up; Teiriol’s eyes widened at the shock of the sudden assault.
So that was the way of it, Eresken thought grimly as he stripped out memories, heedless of the pain he was inflicting. The mages had hit Teiriol’s men with foulest sorcery, the swordsmen going on to hack down remaining resistance. The Mountain Men had died unable to defend themselves against double assault of spell and blade. The Soluran mage had sprung the woman from the empty air and they had run, the black-haired man slinging the wounded wizard over one shoulder, the traitors to the ancient blood on either side.
Eresken let go his grip on Teiriol and the younger man collapsed. Eresken walked rapidly down the length of road, checking every body, even those unrecognizable lumps of charred flesh. Some lingered, clinging desperately to life despite their injuries. Eresken ruthlessly snuffed any vital spark he found; there were wounds enough to explain the deaths. No one would suspect his hand in so thorough a slaughter and most would have died anyway, without rapid aid at least.
But he still needed Teiriol, for the present. Eresken walked back to the weeping man hunched over his agony. “I must summon help,” he said breathlessly. “I must call Aritane, to bring Sheltya to save those not yet dead.”
“Not yet—” Teiriol lifted his face, incredulous hope shining through the muck and blood. Eresken seized the boy’s surge of longing, seeing Aritane pictured within his mind. He wove that pitiable yearning for home and healing into his own tight-focused appeal, masking his intent with Teiriol’s piercing need.
“You must come, my love. Come to me. We have been betrayed, murdered, slaughtered. You must come.”
Eresken tore himself away from Aritane’s frantic appeals for explanation and direction. Her talents were notable for her race, he thought, but no match for any of his clan. Still, he didn’t have much time. “What is that?” Eresken looked down the road, mouth open.
Teiriol turned his head and Eresken plunged the bitch assassin’s dagger into the base of his skull, twisting the blade to leave the young man twitching helplessly, blindly for an instant of horror before death.
Pursing his lips for a moment, Eresken released the hilt of the dagger. It could stay in the wound for someone else to remark on, another pennyweight in the scales demanding vengeance. He scrambled rapidly up the hillside to the dell where he had been attacked. That whore would pay with her own blood for the shedding of his, he promised grimly. Eresken rummaged among the crisp leaves, peering at the dart he retrieved. There was still a faint smear glistening on it, rainbow mockery as he tilted it to the sunlight. Good enough.
Eresken drove the point into the back of his hand and let himself fall gracelessly to the ground. He seized the dizziness of the drug and nurtured it, forbidding the instinct to drive it from his blood. He heard movement on the road beneath but forced himself to stay motionless. If it were passers-by, no matter. They could hardly remove the bodies before Aritane arrived and no one was going to know any truth beyond what he chose to tell them.