Miles Cameron - The Dread Wyrm

Father Arnaud smiled at them both. And then they sensed his attention leaving them, and they both turned.

A flight of faeries emerged out of the morning mist. They flitted about the clearing, moving rapidly from point to point like cats sniffing out a new house.

Eventually they gathered into a cloud of colours, a ball of darting and moving shapes. The ball moved cohesively across the clearing.

No one moved.

Bad Tom was standing while his squire-Danald Beartooth-laced his byrnie.

The faerie swarm floated to a stop in front of Bad Tom.

“ We were Hector ,” they said. “We remember. We do not forget. ”

Tom flinched. “Hector?” he asked.

Just for a moment, the swarm took the shape of the dead Drover, Hector Lachlan. “We remember , ” they said.

Bad Tom watched them. “I remember, too,” he said.

“We wait for you,” they said. “ We remember. You are the sword.”

Tom drew the great sword by his side with a ferocious fluidity, but as quick as he was, the whole cloud of faerie folk was faster.

His sword glowed in red and green and blue like the shimmer of a peacock. “I’ll be right here waiting for you,” he said. “Come and try me.”

The faeries seemed to sigh. “ The day cometh, man. You are the sword. We remember.”

And then they flitted away, each one going in a different direction, exploding outwards into the new day.

One faery, bolder than the others, circled close. But, alone, its voice was so quiet that only Tom could hear it.

“ We will be there for you,” he said, and flitted away.

Mag looked at Sauce. “I used to love them, as a child. I cried when I realized what they are.”

Sauce was still locked in an embrace with her lover. “What, then?” she asked.

“The soul vultures,” Mag said grimly.

The captain had to ride out and direct the turn-over of the camp-guards to the outriders himself-too many new officers and too many new people. He, too, missed Gelfred.

A league farther on the road, they passed Gilson’s Hole, a break in the road. The road here had once crossed the wetlands of a large marsh on a causeway, with the upper waters of the Albin to the east, out of sight and farther down. Years and years ago, something had blown a forty-foot hole in the fabric of the road, and a combination of ill luck and botched maintenance attempts had created a hole that filled with water and wouldn’t drain, surrounded by forty bad paths around it through what was increasingly a rank and fetid swamp, not a freshwater marsh-and a settlement had grown on the high ground just to the west and south, where a low ridge offered good air and good grazing, and a higher ridge offered safety. The settlers had specialized in getting cargoes across the hole. There’d been talk of building a bridge. They’d built a small fort on the higher ridge.

Last year, the Sossag had come and burned the settlement and killed most of the folk. The fort had held through the troubles and some families had survived, but only one family had returned. The goodwife came out of her little stockade to watch the first outriders negotiate the paths around the hole, and she’d sent her eldest boy to guide them. The captain spoke to the boy and gave him six golden ducats to guide the whole column, and it still took them almost the rest of the day to get all the wagons and the drove around it.

They camped in the clearing, and because they’d had a short day, the captain ordered Oak Pew to gather a work party and clear the burned steads. A hundred men and women made short work of it, stacking the un-ruined boards and heavy house timbers and building bonfires of the rest.

The goodwife curtsied her thanks. “It’s hard to look at,” she said. “We got away, but others didn’t. And with the-wreck-gone, mayhap other folk’ll settle back.”

“Do you have a man, Goodwife Gilson?” the captain asked. He was sitting on her firewood porch, drinking his own wine. He’d brought her some. She had twelve children, the oldest daughter old enough and more to be wed, and the youngest son barely out of diapers.

“He’s hunting,” she said. Only her eyes betrayed her worry. “He’ll be back. Winter was hard.” She eyed the six gold ducats-two years’ income. “I reckon you saved us.”

The captain waved off her thanks, and after hearing everything she knew about traffic on the road and creatures in the woods, he went back to his own pavilion. The quarter guard was forming, and there were six great bonfires burning, fed from the remnants of twenty houses and twenty firewood piles.

His brother was sharing his pavilion, and he was standing in front of it in conversation with Ser Danved, who was in full harness, leading the night watch. The captain came up and nodded, intent on his bed.

Gavin pointed out over the swamp. “This position is nigh impregnable from the north and east,” he said. Out in the swamp, faeries flitted and smaller night insects pulsed with colour. The swamp spread almost a mile north and south, which was why no one had driven a new road around it.

The sky in the west was still coloured rose, and silhouetted the stockade of the small fort behind them-currently sheltering the baggage and part of the quarter guard, on alert.

Gabriel looked around in the dusk light, as if seeing it for the first time.

Ser Danved, who always had a comment for every situation, laughed. “It’s fine if you don’t mind having both of your flanks in the air,” he said. Indeed, at their feet, a small stream-the captain had stepped over it on his way to his tent-ran down from the higher ridge into the swamp, and provided the only cover for the ridge’s northward face on its burbling way to the Albin, miles to the east. “Jesus saviour, this must be the only place in the world with a swamp halfway up a mountain.”

Bored and tired, the captain shrugged. “If I ever have to fight Morea, I’ll keep it in mind,” he said. He passed into his tent, and caught Danved and Gavin exchanging a look of amusement.

He ignored them, intent on bed.

They had two alarms in the night. Both found the captain fully armoured and ready, but there were no attacks and no engagements.

In the morning, the captain found a splay-footed track just south of the horse lines, and a heavy war arrow. He brought it to Cully, who eyed it and nodded.

“Canny said he hit something. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, it seems.” Canny was a barracks lawyer and a liar and scarcely the best archer, but the bloody fletches told their own story.

The captain tossed the arrow in the air and snapped his fingers. The arrow paused-and hung there. The captain passed his hand over the length of the broken arrow and the head flared green.

Slowly, as if a vat filling with water, something began to form in glittering green and gold, starting from the ground. Soldiers began to gather in the dawn, and there was muttering. The captain seldom used his hermetics in public.

Mag came and watched him work.

He was in deep concentration, so she

found him in his palace. As they had once been bonded-however briefly-she could enter his palace at will. He smiled to see her.

“A pretty working,” Mag said.

“Gelfred’s,” he said. “A sort of forensic spell. All the huntsmen have variants of it.”

She watched him as he manipulated his ops in four dimensions and cast, his use of power sparing and efficient.

The thing continued to fill with light.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he said.

It had an elongated head and far too many teeth. The head seemed to speak more of fish than of animal-streamlined and armoured. The neck was draconian-long and flexible. The body seemed armoured in heavy shell, at odds with the elegant neck.