David Chandler - A thief in the night

The stump it left looked burnt around the edges, but in the middle the cut was clean. After a moment sap started to ooze from the sundered tree.

“In Sadu’s name,” Malden breathed.

Croy coughed politely. The swords were consecrated to the Lady, after all, and not to the Bloodgod.

“Croy,” Malden said, “I can see you mean this as an act of great friendship. I have to admit I’m… touched.” The thief stared at the ground. “I worry I don’t deserve it, though. There have been times I’ve not been as-faithful-a friend as I might. There have been times I’ve proven I don’t deserve this gift.” Malden’s arm shook as he spoke, as if great emotion were flowing through him. The tremor made flecks of acid rain on the carpet of pine needles below their feet. “There’s something I must tell you. Something you don’t want to hear-”

Croy held up one hand for silence. “Let the past be forgotten now,” he said. This was a sacred moment. The passing on of an Ancient Blade was a holy rite. “Prove to me, from now on, that you deserve to call me brother.”

“If you do not want the blade, little man,” Morget said, “I will be glad to take it from you. By force, if necessary.”

Malden laughed, but Croy nodded sagely. “It’s one of our vows,” he said. “If a wielder of the sword proves unworthy, he must be challenged and killed on the spot.”

“I suppose,” Malden said, “in that case I’d better hold on to it. For now.”

There was still plenty of daylight left, so the companions loaded up their gear and got on their horses. Morget and Croy were old hands at riding, of course, and Cythera knew how it was done. Slag needed some help getting on his pony but once on its back he seemed stable enough. They all had to wait while Malden tried to mount his jennet. He was nimble enough to jump up into the saddle, but once seated he found himself too far off the ground and started to grow dizzy and had to climb back down. It was ridiculous. How many times had he hung from finger grips off the spire of the Ladychapel in Ness, a hundred feet above the cobblestones? Yet the way the horse refused to stand still gave him vertigo. Morget offered to strap him in with leather lashings, as was sometimes done for invalids and the very ill who nonetheless had to ride. Malden refused. He would do this. He had to. He could not turn around now. Half the country was after his blood-not to mention Prestwicke.

Eventually he managed to keep his seat and hold the reins as he was shown. The jennet had already proved herself a patient beast, and now she started walking with no compulsion, following the other horses. It was just like Croy had said, she did all the work. Malden clutched to the cantle of his saddle and tried to not fall off.

There were no roads, nor even any trails through the forest. No one lived there-the place was as deserted by human industry as the farmlands had been full of it. The riders had to pick their way around thick copses of gnarled trees and boulders overgrown with bright green moss. Croy led the way. He had an uncanny knack for knowing where the best route could be found. The others followed in single file. Slag rode his colt just in front of Malden, but the dwarf seemed as poor a horseman as the thief, because the colt kept stepping off the chosen path, its short legs finding better purchase elsewhere as they climbed over a fallen log or down into a defile. Then Malden’s horse would follow the colt, and everyone would have to stop while all the horses were brought back in line.

It made for slow going. Malden had plenty of time to listen to the sounds of the forest, which constantly startled him in a way that the shouts of soldiers or the crash of thunder never could. Each bird sang with a song he’d never heard, every frog’s croak was the roar of some massive beast. At least the endless maze of trees felt enough like the walls of a city’s houses that he did not feel so exposed, as he had out in the fields of wheat.

Yet so preoccupied with the sounds of the forest was he that he did not notice in time when his jennet decided it had found a better path and led him deep into a stand of trees. He suddenly looked up and realized he could not see Slag ahead of him.

He was lost.

Well, the others couldn’t be too far away, he decided. He shouted “Halloo!” and called Croy by name, and pulled up on the reins as he’d been shown to make the jennet stop. The horse, which clearly had decided she knew better than her rider, kept plodding onward, picking her way through a rank of ferns tall enough to brush Malden’s knees.

“No, no, I said stop,” Malden told the horse. There was a proper word to use, wasn’t there? He’d heard drovers in the city use it, to command their teams. “Whoa,” he said, and the jennet stopped instantly.

Malden didn’t. He wasn’t braced for the halt, and though he managed not to be thrown, he was pitched forward across the jennet’s neck and one foot came loose from its stirrup. Clutching hard to the horse’s mane, he cursed himself and tried to get back into the saddle.

That was when Malden heard the buzzing.

He froze, every sense tuned to that strange noise.

It had not sounded friendly.

Morning light streamed down through the trees, dancing around the shimmering leaves to dapple patches of undergrowth with sudden, blazing color. The wind that shook the branches never let up, and carried no sound but its own rising and falling susurration. Malden turned around as far as he could in the saddle to see what was behind him. Nothing but rocks and trees and briars.

“Did you hear that?” Malden asked the horse.

She had. Her ears stood straight up and she pawed nervously at the ground. From her demeanor he could guess her feelings: she very much wanted to run away, but her rider had given the command to halt.

“That’s the problem with having a foolish master,” Malden sympathized. “Perhaps I should take your counsel.” He wore no spurs, but when he touched his heels to the jennet’s flanks, she walked forward readily. Malden craned his neck to peer around him, looking for the source of the buzzing noise, and It came again, even louder, very close now. He nearly jumped off the horse’s back so he could go running and screaming through the woods. But no. Surely he was safer on horseback. He reached down to touch the hilt of his bodkin. Then cursed himself as he remembered he had Acidtongue tied up behind the saddle. Surely the magic sword was the match for anything short of a fire-breathing dragon.

To his left, something crashed through the foliage. Malden wheeled around to that side and the jennet did likewise, snorting in panic.

The thing that came out of the woods was as big as a cow, and it gleamed with iridescent colors when the sunlight struck its back. Two stunted, cloudy eyes stood on either side of a curved black beak, below which spiky mandibles clicked together. The beast’s massive oblong body stood supported on six slender legs that bent in all the wrong directions. Coarse black fur covered those legs, though the rest of the animal was smooth and covered in plates of armor.

The thing reared up and snapped at the jennet with its compound jaw.

Malden reached back to grab the hilt of Acidtongue and slapped the jennet’s rump instead, because he could not see what he was doing. He couldn’t take his eyes off the monster that bore down on him.

The horse, perhaps thinking her master had finally come to his senses, did a very horselike thing and bolted. Unfortunately Malden was leaning backward at that precise moment to reach the sword. He had to slip his feet out of the stirrups to get it.

The horse went forward. The thief went backward, head over ankles. He crashed to the leaf-strewn forest floor with a thump that took his wind.