13

AMBUSH ON THE BRIDGE

If I run…” Wood splintered as Jordam’s grip tightened around the shovel’s handle. “rrMordafey will find me.”

A ring of silver afternoon sunlight outlined the massive stone that sealed him alone in the den. Worry gnawed at him. Mordafey was gone, and he had taken his brascle for help on a hunt. That did not surprise him. But Goreth was missing too, and Goreth never left Jordam behind.

Jordam hoisted another shovelful of lizard bones and carrion into the old bone cart. The stench filled the den, oozing from the rotting remains, maddening the frenzied flesh-flies. Mordafey usually bullied Jorn into clearing the den, but Jorn was gone.

“Like being in another snare,” he said.

Jordam had never been so frightened by Mordafey’s temper. Mordafey had no patience left, no capacity to listen. He was growing desperate—they all were. If they did not go to the Core for Essence soon, they would lose their wits and turn against each other. But there was more to Mordafey’s rage than thirst. Jordam suspected it had something to do with the plot to move against the Abascar survivors.

Jordam gave the bone cart a shove, and the wheel began to turn. He stopped halfway up the ramp, set the cart down, and shook out his mane. His wits were still half-asleep in the fog of the Bel Amican slumberseed oil. He wondered if the woman had gone back to look for it. Or to look for him. He wondered if she would ever find him there waiting for her.

Reaching the entrance, he shoved the boulder aside. Cold sunlight blasted in. He pushed the cart out under the high dome of the entry cave. Something shifted against the wall, and he jumped with a bark.

Wrapped in a woodscloak, Goreth sat in the shadow, rocking and staring at an object cradled in his hands.

“Goreth, you hurt? rrMordafey beat you?”

“Turtle.” Goreth choked. Forlorn, he pawed at the object. “Turtle.”

Jordam dropped to all fours. “Show me.”

Goreth held two pieces of a turtle shell that had been torn open and cleaned out. “I tried to follow Older Brother. He got angry.”

Jordam reached for the shell halves, but Goreth snarled and jerked them back. “My turtle!”

“rrMordafey. Where is he?”

Goreth scratched at his side with his hind foot. “Brothers are leaving me. Young Brother, gone. Dead maybe. Older Brother gone too. Same Brother…” Goreth cast Jordam a suspicious glance. “Where do you go now?”

“Dumping bones.” Jordam thrust the cart through the maze of egg-shaped stones, out into the daylight to the edge of the chasm. He dumped the remains over the edge and heard them clatter in the dry creek bed far below. Goreth had followed him. “Where’s Mordafey?”

“Gone. Angry.” Goreth slumped down and stared through the brightening rock formations across the chasm. “Told me to watch you.”

Jordam knelt beside him. “rrWhat did he say?”

Goreth swatted at invisible pests and grabbed his shoulders as if wrestling with himself.

“rrWhere’s Mordafey? rrTell me, or I go find him myself.”

Goreth’s whimper twisted. Quick as a snake strike, he pounced on Jordam. The back of Jordam’s head hit the ground and rang like a bell. He opened his eyes and stared into Goreth’s crooked fangs and felt pressure on both sides of his skull as his brother sought to smash it between his hands.

“Essence!” Goreth screamed, foam flying from his lips. “Thirsty!”

Jordam jerked his knees back to his chest and, splaying the claws on his feet, launched Goreth skyward. Limbs flung wide in surprise, Goreth plunged past, and his fingers caught the cliff’s edge.

Leaping to the precipice, Jordam broke a bulge of stone free and raised it high. He saw his own threatening silhouette reflected in Goreth’s wild eyes. “Never fight me,” he roared. “rrRemember? Never fight Same Brother, or he’ll clean out your skull.” Like…Jordam glanced to the halves of turtle shell at the edge of the precipice. He cursed the slumberseed oil for deluding him and slammed the stone down on the edge beside Goreth’s grip. “Where’s Mordafey?”

“Gone. To break Young Brother free.”

“Jorn? Mordafey says brothers must fight together. Not go off alone.” He bent to clasp Goreth’s wrists and pulled him back up to the edge.

Goreth fell at his feet and folded like a frightened cub, holding his head. “Older Brother says we make too much trouble. Jordam keeps secrets. I forget too much.”

“Secrets?” Jordam pointed out into the canyon. “Mordafey runs off. Mordafey leaves you and me alone.” He took Goreth by the ears and pulled him to his feet. Leaning in, he knocked his broken browbone against his brother’s. “Think, Goreth. Same Brothers stay together. Same Brothers don’t hurt each other. We help each other. But Jorn hates us. And Mordafey keeps secrets.”

“Older Brother is strong,” Goreth whispered. “Older Brother hurts us.”

A ruckus rose from the canyon below—a riot of scissorjaws fighting over the carrion that Jordam had dumped into the gorge.

“Want Mordafey to stop hurting us?” Jordam gestured to the wire lines crisscrossing his arms and chest. “Bel Amicans have bad traps. All around their fort. rrMordafey doesn’t know. If he goes to get Jorn, bad traps will catch him. No more plans. No more Essence. But if Same Brothers help him, then no more angry Mordafey. No more beatings.” Jordam shook his twin by the shoulders. “Think, Goreth. After we save Mordafey from traps, then what happens?”

“Older Brother takes us to chieftain.”

“Essence. So much strength.”

Goreth forced a smile. “Rockbeetles.”

Jordam eyed the pallet of loot near the entryway. Bundles of spears, blue-edged cloaks, firestarters, harnesses. Prizes from the ruins of Abascar. Brass breastplates and battered helmets stripped from the slaughtered Bel Amicans. Deuneroi. Jordam cringed at the thought of Mordafey creeping into the glen where the woman would be waiting.

“We run. Together.” Jordam strapped a bundle of Bel Amican cast-arrows to his leg. “rrFaster than any Cent Regus.”

Shoving his arms through the sleeves of the largest soldier’s cloak, he stretched and tore the seams. The brothers, unlike many beastmen, boasted in the uniforms of their kills, wearing them as trophies while never daring to admit any pleasure taken in the warmth, the protection, the concealment. He tightened a length of rope as a belt.

“Are you fast, Goreth?” Jordam looked at the empty bone cart. “Ready?” He seized the cart and flung it aside as easily as if it were a bone from a meal. It exploded into wreckage against the wall, and the wooden wheel fell and rolled in widening, wild circles until it toppled and spun on its hub.

Goreth lifted the halves of turtle shell and examined them, face contorted somewhere between rage and revulsion. Then he threw them hard at the wall, roaring as they shattered. “Ready now.” He crouched, muzzle wrinkling in gleeful anticipation. “I’m faster than Same Brother.”

Jordam grinned. “Try to keep up.”

Goreth’s tail slapped the stones behind him. “But we stop if I smell honey.”

Mordafey’s tracks were obvious and careless. But Jordam’s concern turned to amazement when he and Goreth stumbled across a patch of disturbed ground.

“Many Cent Regus.” Goreth’s brows bunched in bewilderment, the blue scar on his cheek squirming. “Moving together.”

The power of so many Cent Regus working together with Mordafey among them terrified Jordam. Mordafey has more than brothers. He said so. No signs here of a fight. He’s gathering an army. Without us. He traced the jumbled tracks further, then stopped at an unfamiliar print. Or someone else gathers them. Someone tells Mordafey what to do. That explains his frustration.

“Did Older Brother go with them?” Goreth stared off to the southeast.

“rrNo. Here. Mordafey goes north. See? Tracks. We ask him. When we catch him.”

“When I catch him. You’re too slow.”

They were off again, lumbering along like weary bulls, following a faint scent that came clearer as they left the trampled ground behind. As they moved into thick brush, Goreth found tufts of Mordafey’s brindled fur in the bushes.

Soon the smell of a river—a thin tributary of the distant Throanscall—drew them off course in pursuit of a drink. Silent and deep, the river moved through a time-smoothed gully. They were near an old bridge where travelers who still risked this territory often crossed.

Twirl-bugs descended from overhanging boughs, spinning as they dangled beneath netlike wings that sifted the air for prey. Eight-legged clutchers, hairy and black, huddled under fallen trees and waited to pounce on unsuspecting birds. Jordam had always admired such stealthy hunting. He prowled along the bank, hungry for prey.

While Goreth drank, Jordam looked up to the top of the gully, to the dead trees swaying in slow circles on the steep banks, their needled boughs intertwined. As though holding each other up.

Beyond the trees he saw Mordafey’s brascle hovering, high enough to be only a speck. But Jordam knew brascles could see a flea on a mouse at that height—perhaps even smell that flea as well. The bird had stopped in the air to mark a target for Mordafey. A strike would ensue. “Mordafey’s close, Goreth.”

A tailtwitcher, fat in its winter coat, clung upside down to a branch and lashed its bushy tail in code to another nearby. Snowbirds sang garbled tales to each other, keeping their distance. Ice cracked in the shadows.

Jordam lowered his head to drink and spotted a fat-bodied eel writhing along the riverbed. It was not what he would have preferred to hunt, but his belly demanded he catch whatever came along. He braced himself for a dive.

“Better?” asked Goreth. “Taste better than well water?”

“What?”

“Well water in a bucket. Blue flowers. A Bel Amican woman.” Goreth lowered his voice in caution. “You talked in your sleep. Older Brother got angry.” Jordam’s heartbeat broke into a run. “rrWhat else did I say?”

“You shouted. Tetherwings.”

Jordam’s grip tightened on a stem of shoreweed, and he slowly uprooted it. “Dreams, Goreth,” he whispered. “I was dreaming.”

A breeze, brumal and swift, wrinkled the surface of the water as it swept upriver, bearing the aroma of bread, spices, strange perfumes, the sweat of horses.

Goreth and Jordam drew back into the brambles. An eel was food, but horses could be a feast.

Jordam moved forward stealthily, the hunter awakening. Only wealthy travelers moved in carriages built for rugged roads. And those who did knew better than to drive horses across dangerous lands. These were fools, an easy catch. Maybe deranged survivors from Abascar. Or thieves.

Caught in the horizontal beams of evening—two wagons hitched together, drawn by five horses, had come to the edge of the bridge. The wagons, covered with stretched canvases of sun-bleached skins, appeared unguarded. The massive, muscular horses were desert mounts, built like boulders, the sort of animal that could withstand the sandstorms of the south.

Goreth arched his back like a predatory cat. He fingered the hilt of the Abascar sword. The kill-fever was setting in, fueled by a trace of Essence still in the blood. Jordam touched the hilt of the knife strapped at his calf. “Might be many blades inside. rrMight be archers. And scouts.” He unsheathed the knife and licked the blade clean. “I’m hungry.”

The hooves of the foremost horse clopped onto the bridge, and the first set of wheels creaked along behind.

“Who drives the horses?” Jordam whispered.

“Can’t see. Maybe nobody.”

Just as Jordam tensed to spring, a shadow fell across him. He turned, whimpering, to stare up at the looming woods. The tremor in his heart was as familiar as it was frightening. He had felt it when that massive monster rushed up to him as he stood over O-raya. But this time he did not see the Keeper. The shadow was only a cloud of sailbats taking flight from the trees, moving as if directed by a single mind until they scattered in chase of duskflies.

Jordam looked back toward the bridge and blinked, his thoughts divided. His appetite surged, just as it had when the Bel Amican woman stepped into the glen. But his thoughts fought against that impulse. A sense that something was watching him lingered.

As the second cart’s wheels touched the stone span, the brothers watched a shadow come loose from underneath the bridge, gripping one of the stones along its lower arch. Mordafey swung himself up onto the span.

One of the horses tried to bolt, slipped, and went down with a scream.

Goreth bounded to the bridge in seven strides, sword in his hand.

Jordam hesitated and then, afraid to be seen holding back, joined the charge. With every stride he gave himself to his fiery instinct. His knife in one hand, he unsheathed a cast-arrow with the other.

Mordafey attacked from the front, killing the lead horse to stall the parade. Goreth attacked from the rear, leaping into the second wagon.

A woman with long yellow braids clambered out from the front of that wagon. She took one look at Mordafey, screamed, jumped to the bridge, and dove into the water. When she surfaced, caught in the river’s freezing grip, she was still, head bloodied, limbs splayed, borne away without resistance.

Jordam lunged at the canvas drape on the front carriage and slashed through to get at the cargo within. He found no cargo. Instead, he found himself standing between two passengers.

A giant of a man, bundled in white strips of cloth, regarded Jordam from where he sat. His pale head was wrapped in a green headdress. He held a bloodied rider’s whip in one hand, and a long, polished walking stick in the other. Seated with unnatural calm, the passenger regarded Jordam as if annoyed.

Across from him a man wearing a plain brown sack, with bloodstained yellow braids and crimson stripes whipped across his tattooed arms, lay slumped on the floor of the wagon, gagged and bound. When he saw Jordam, he struggled to his knees and tried to stand.

“You see,” the giant sneered to the man, “you’ve scorned those who showed you the way to safety. And now the beastmen have come.”

The smell of blood scattered Jordam’s thoughts. Only impulse remained. He leaned in close, as he had so many times before, to let the hostage see his teeth. With a swipe so swift the man never saw it coming, Jordam neatly carved a line from one ear to the other, breaking both joints of the man’s jaw. Then Jordam hooked him between the ribs with his knife, lifted him, and cast him out through the torn canvas. The man hit the bridge wall and bounced back between the wagon wheels as the horses lurched forward.

Jordam turned, and the giant struck him directly in his forehead’s shield bone with the gleaming silver ferrule on the end of the walking stick. The rod looked dull as a tree branch, but something flared from its tip. The jolt of it splintered through Jordam’s bones like lightning. He fell through the canvas, struck the bridge wall, and rolled back underneath the wagon. His knife scudded out of reach.

The giant jumped out of the wagon, his boots landing near Jordam’s head. He thrust the walking stick through the spokes of the rear wagon wheels. The horses struggled to pull their cargo. Jordam crawled out from behind the wagons and saw Mordafey battle-ax another blond-braided man who must have climbed from the second carriage. This one was muscular, shirtless, and covered in tattoos. But he was already dead as Mordafey drove him back against the wall. He fell over and down to the river in pieces. Somewhere high above, the brascle shrieked in delight.

Mordafey grabbed Jordam by the throat, his face contorted with rage. “Fool! Why follow? Mordafey needs no help!”

“You said brothers can’t go off alone,” Jordam snarled back. “Too dangerous, you said. Stronger, better if four brothers stand together!”

As the horses strained, the carriages began to edge forward.

“Jordam failed Mordafey. And Jorn failed Mordafey. And Goreth, he forgets everything. Mordafey is finished with brothers. Mordafey will make his plan alone.”

“Alone?” Jordam sucked in a breath, then took a gamble. “We saw them, Mordafey. Many Cent Regus. Helping you.”

Mordafey’s eyes flashed.

“But I am strong, Mordafey. rrFastest Cent Regus alive. And Goreth—nothing stops Goreth when he has a blade. Jorn? Jorn frightens everything. Four brothers cannot lose.”

Mordafey hesitated, considering. “You still want to be part of Mordafey’s plan?”

“rrYes. Four brothers stay together,” said Jordam.

“Go get Jorn. Bring Jorn back. Fast. Or Mordafey goes to Skell Wra for Essence and leaves Jordam and Jorn behind.”

“Me? Go get Jorn? Alone?”

A quake rocked Mordafey’s body, and Jordam felt a spark pass through them both. Mordafey’s eyes rolled backward, his head fell forward, and his browbone collided with Jordam’s. The giant had struck him in the back of his head.

Mordafey shook himself to his senses, eyes wild and wide, and scrambled backward along the bridge.

Like a crab, Jordam thought, lying still. He had never seen this expression on Mordafey’s face. Surprise. Terror.

Mordafey addressed his attacker, much to Jordam’s surprise, in the language of the weakerfolk. “You,” said Mordafey. “You.”

The smiling giant raised a small wooden box in his hand, shaking it like a rattle. “You should find out who you are hunting before you decide to strike.”

“Mordafey made mistake.” Mordafey held up his hands in surrender. “Mordafey…not recognize—”

“Cent Regus fool. So zealous.” Sneering, the man struck again, and tremors racked Mordafey’s frame until he lay limp against the stones. “You wanted power so badly. Look what it did to you when you found it.”

Jordam had felt the lightning from that walking stick. It shook him to see his unbreakable older brother reduced to whimpers. He lunged, struck the giant in the side, and toppled him into a storm of white strips. The wooden box skidded to the base of the wall, spilling a crystalline dust. The man scrambled after it.

Jordam rose, hoisted Mordafey’s body over his head, then staggered to the bridge wall and dropped him into the water, knowing the shock would revive him. Mordafey surfaced, thrashing and cursing.

The giant found his feet and spun toward Jordam, eyes lodged sideways in his head, teeth of his blaring grin falling loose in his mouth. Jordam sprinted to the horses, and the icy spear of the giant’s voice ran right through him, a shriek unlike the voice of any man or beast.

He heard a crash and glanced back. Goreth had unlatched the second wagon and turned it on its side. This distracted the giant. Jordam shouted to warn his twin, and Goreth yelped and dove off the bridge. In the water he helped his stunned, splashing older brother reach the shore.

Go get Jorn. Bring Jorn back. Jordam seized on Mordafey’s order and turned north and east toward a vast region of trees that cowered beneath a mountainous, imminent storm. He had no time to test the horses’ tolerance for a Cent Regus rider. He had one hope. He was fast.

The giant came for Jordam.

But Jordam ran.

Unleashed, he could not be caught or slowed by anything but his own thoughts. So it was that while he left the bridge, the gully, the territory behind, bounding into the Cragavar forest, questions gave chase like wolves. Questions about Mordafey’s tracks among those of a Cent Regus mob; about the dangers of breaking into the bastion for Jorn; about the white giant, that specter made of pieces that did not quite fit; about Mordafey’s astonished recognition of that very stranger.

He felt as if he were slipping between shifting plates of stone. Above, the storm’s swift clouds sealed off all sight of stars, the heavens readying winter’s final assault. Below, the ground began to quake with a new season’s burgeoning life. He was caught in the tension, swept along like a fallen leaf, lost and vulnerable. The woods would be full of dangers—traps, soldiers, arrows, and, most dangerous of all, a quiet distraction.

Go in fast, he told himself. Find Jorn.