David Farland - Sons of the Oak

There, among the trees, stood an ancient fortress, a high tower used as a graakerie.

These were all sea graaks, white in color, the kind with the widest wingspan. They could fly from island to island out here in the Mariners, and if a storm came, they would sometimes ride its front for hundreds of miles inland.

The group was rounding the bay, still a mile from the Gwardeen Wood, when trouble struck.

Fallion heard a buzzing noise just overhead, almost a loud clacking, and a giant dragonfly, as long as a child’s arm, flew past. In the shadows it had been invisible, but then it lunged into a slant of sunlight, and Fallion saw it-a vibrant green with mottled yellow on the carapace, the color of forest leaves in the sun.

It buzzed into the air and grabbed a cinnamon-colored day-bat that was no larger than a sparrow; the day-bat screeched in terror.

As Fallion’s eyes followed the creature, he became aware of the dim clanging of bells. A deep-pitched warhorn sounded, as if the very earth groaned in pain.

The call was almost too distant for him to discern. He barely picked it up, buffered as it was by the trees and the sounds of the sea.

But instantly he knew: Garion’s Port was under attack.

When he held his breath, he could discern distant cries. Not all of the cries were human. Some were the deep tones of golaths.

Fallion had passed the last house trees nearly half a mile back. From here forward, there was nothing but the catwalk.

“Run,” Fallion told the children. “Run to the outpost and don’t look back.”

The children all peered up at him with wide eyes. “What’s wrong?” the youngest girl asked.

“Shadoath is coming,” Fallion hazarded.

So the children ran.

Fallion followed at the rear, where a young boy named Hador tried in vain to keep up with the older children.

For several minutes, no one pursued.

Fallion heard footsteps slapping behind and turned to see Valya racing toward them for all that she was worth.

Fallion sent the little ones ahead. They were only half a mile from the fort when he caught sight of the first of the golaths. The gray-skinned creatures came rushing from the city on their knuckles, thumping along the catwalk, curved reaping hooks and strange clubs in their hands.

The children heard their grunts, so they screamed and redoubled their pace. A pair of young Gwardeen skyriders came flying along on graaks, their course bringing them near the catwalk. Fallion could see fear on their faces.

“Pirates!” one of them shouted needlessly. “Pirates are coming. There’s a worldship just off the coast!”

A worldship? Fallion wondered. Eight hundred years past, Fallion the Bold had created huge rafts to bear his army across the oceans to fight the toth. Those strange rafts had been dubbed worldships. But none of their kind had been seen in centuries.

Now he recalled the denuded forests on Syndyllian, and he realized what Shadoath had been up to. She had been building vessels to carry armies to Mystarria.

Valya reached him, and with her longer legs could well have raced ahead. Instead she pulled even with him.

He could hear the golaths coming, glanced back to see a dozen of them only a couple hundred yards back.

The Ends of the Earth are not far enough.

“Go,” Fallion told her. “Get on a graak and head inland to safety. The Gwardeen can protect you.”

“What about you?” Valya asked.

“I’ll hold them back.”

Valya stood there a moment, obviously fighting her desire. She didn’t want him to stand alone.

“You go,” Valya said. “You’re the one Shadoath is after. If she gets you now, all of our efforts will have been wasted!”

Fallion knew that she was right, but he wasn’t prepared to let Valya die in his place.

Fallion peered up the catwalk the last quarter of a mile. Ahead he could see the graakerie, huge white graaks nesting in trees devoid of leaves. Here, even the trees were white, stained by guano.

A high stone wall surrounded the Gwardeen Wood itself. The only easy way into the fort was over the catwalk.

As the children raced ahead, Fallion saw a young man run out from a small wooden gate, Denorra. He was watching them, waiting. He had a hatchet in hand and looked as if he’d cut the rope that held the last little span of bridge.

“Hurry!” Denorra shouted.

Fallion heard an animal cry, excited grunts and shouts. He glanced back. A golath with tremendous endowments of speed and brawn was rushing toward them, taking fifteen feet to a stride. He made as if to pass a pair of his slower kin, and merely leapt ten feet in the air.

Valya drew a boot dagger, but Fallion knew that it would be useless.

“Cut the ropes!” he shouted to Denorra even as he suddenly hit a span of bridge held only by rope.

He raced for all that he was worth, stretching each stride to its fullest, his lungs pumping. Valya matched him stride for stride. They were in the shadow of the fortress now. He heard the thump of heavy feet rushing behind him, became aware of two large graaks rising up from the tower. A few arrows and stones came flying over his head, thudding onto the deck.

The children were fighting back!

The golath warrior grunted and wheezed, its iron boots pounding the walkway only paces behind.

An arrow whipped over Fallion’s head, and thwacked its iron tip into golath hide. But a golath with endowments wasn’t likely to be stopped by a single arrow.

“Jump!” Fallion shouted to Valya just as Denorra swung the ax down on a rope.

They hit the ground together, and the left half of the bridge dropped from under them. Fallion grabbed on to the rope that held the right half of the bridge up. Valya got only a single hand on it.

The golath cursed, just feet behind, and grasped onto the rope.

Fallion held there for a second, swung up so that his feet hit the landing near Denorra, even as the young boy swung wildly, trying to cut the second rope.

The golath cursed, and a pair of children rushed out of the fortress with long spears. The oldest, a girl of eleven, blurred past Fallion and stabbed at the golath, hindering its progress.

Fallion grabbed Valya and pulled her to safety just as Denorra swung one last time, severing the rope.

The golath cried out in rage as it fell into the sea.

Valya turned and caught her breath, stared in shock for half a second. On the far side of the causeway, golaths growled and cursed. Some threw double-sided blades that spun in the air like whirligigs falling from a maple tree. One blade spun just overhead, then Fallion, Valya, and the rest of the children raced into the fortress.

It wasn’t much of a fortress. The stone walls would keep a determined force warrior out for only a few minutes; inside there were only a couple of small rooms to give shelter from the weather.

A dozen young Gwardeen boys and girls cared for the graaks. The oldest of them, besides Fallion, was only twelve. These were children of mixed Inkarran blood, with skin as white as bone and hair of pale silver or cinnabar. Fallion was the closest thing to an adult.

The Gwardeen were hastily throwing bridles onto the graaks. Most of the children were already mounted. Indeed, Draken had saddled a beast, and a young recruit was clinging to it tightly. Her name was Nix, and she was only five years old.

“But how do I steer?” Nix was crying.

“Just lean the direction that you want to go,” Draken said, “and gouge with your heels. The mounts will head that way.”

“But what if I fall?”

“You won’t fall if you don’t lean too far,” Draken replied.

Fallion wondered why the children hadn’t left yet, but then realized that they had been waiting for him.

“Draken,” Fallion shouted. “Go inland. Take a message to Marshal Bellantine at Stillwater. Warn him what we’re up against. Tell him that we’ll await his command at the Toth Queen’s Hideout. Afterward…go home.”