The gray snake of the trunk encircled his neck and lifted him. He kicked his legs as it tightened, and suddenly he was staring into the orc shaman’s eyes, bloodshot and black in the dark pools of the skull-paint’s eye sockets.
The orc grinned a saber-toothed grin, and the trunk brought Arcturus closer until the yellow tusks scraped his ears, and he could smell the shaman’s fetid breath.
Pain. He saw Sacharissa pulling herself toward him, dragging her injured body over the dead leaves. But the trunk gripped tighter, and he could feel the veins throbbing in his temples.
The shaman laughed as Arcturus’s boots struck the thick skin on the Phantaur’s skull. It was like kicking a rock. He lifted his hands and scraped at the leathery surface of the trunk. It did nothing. He didn’t have the strength.
The orc lifted a black-nailed finger and brushed hair from Arcturus’s face, the gesture unnervingly intimate. He stared deeply into Arcturus’s eyes as the grip slowly tightened. He wanted to see the life drain from him.
Arcturus choked breathlessly, desperate to pull some air into his lungs. He could feel himself letting go, his chest burning, the corners of his vision darkening.
He was going to die.
“Stop!”
The relief was almost immediate, the trunk loosening just enough to allow him one ragged breath. The orc cackled and Arcturus spun dizzily as the Phantaur turned his body to face the speaker. His heart dropped when he saw her.
Elaine. She had made her way back.
In one hand she held his crossbow, fallen from his back in the mad scramble within the tree trunk. Its tip wavered in the air, for her other hand still clutched the baby orc to her chest.
The Phantaur’s grip continued to loosen, and suddenly he was falling. He collapsed to the ground and groaned, gasping much-needed breaths through his swollen throat.
He rolled onto his back and saw the shaman staring at Elaine. His skull-painted visage was a picture of surprise, as if the sight of her was the biggest shock of his life.
Arcturus didn’t care. All he could focus on was dragging breath after gulping breath into his lungs, and he pushed out with his heels, trying to get away from the demon.
The orc’s staff fell, landing beside him in a spatter of soil. Above, the orc had spread his hands wide, palms open. And strangest of all, he looked afraid. Terrified even.
Arcturus managed to struggle to his knees, twisting his body and crawling toward his erstwhile savior. When he reached her, he took the crossbow from her hand and fell onto his back once more, aiming the bolt directly at the orc’s face.
Now the orc had the same opaque barrier hovering in front of his body in a concave oval. Cursing, Arcturus turned his sights onto the Phantaur’s face instead, aiming at the small watery eyes on either side of the demon’s trunk.
“Sacha, get into the trees,” Arcturus yelled. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the injured Canid still dragging herself toward him. She ignored him and continued on, whining through the pain.
“Arcturus, are you all right?” a voice shouted from behind him.
It was Alice. Arcturus breathed a sigh of thanks—the others had arrived. The odds of winning the battle were still very much stacked against them, but it was no longer suicide.
“I’m fine,” he wheezed, not daring to look back and break his aim. “Just get Sacharissa to safety.”
There was the patter of paws along the ground, and Arcturus caught a flash of white at the edge of his vision, dragging Sacharissa into the bushes. The pain of it made his vision swim, but he kept his weapon steady, the tip hovering just above the Phantaur’s eyes.
But the orc seemed to hardly notice. Stranger still, he was not looking at Arcturus or his crossbow. The shaman’s eyes were firmly fixed on Elaine, and his hands were still held high in the air.
He spoke. Not in any language Arcturus could understand, but it seemed like a question. Almost as if the orc was beseeching them. Begging them.
“What’s it saying?” Edmund’s voice came from the bushes behind.
“Hell if I know,” Rotter growled. “Just back away slowly and then we can run like the clappers.”
Arcturus slowly got to his feet. The orc repeated himself, more insistently this time. What did he want? Arcturus didn’t care, he just wanted to get to Sacharissa. He could feel her pain, a dull ache that flared every few seconds.
He took a slow step back. Now he could see Elaine, shaking as the orc yelled at her again.
“Elaine, move into the trees,” Arcturus hissed. “More orcs could arrive any minute.”
With a trembling foot, she took a step back. Immediately, the orc broke into a tirade of guttural ululations, and now his finger, glowing with blue light, was pointed at her. She whimpered with fear and stood still once more.
“Wait,” Arcturus said. He took another step back. Then another. The orc did nothing.
The orc pointed at her again, jabbing at her chest with his finger. The baby. He wanted the baby. Of course.
“Elaine … I want you to very, very slowly leave the baby on the ground,” Arcturus whispered. “Then I’m going to take your hand and we’re going to walk into the jungle. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Elaine whispered in a small voice.
“Okay. Easy does it,” Arcturus replied, watching as Elaine lowered herself into a crouch. She laid the baby in among the leaves. It gurgled its annoyance at being left on the cold, wet ground, its little face screwing up to cry.
“All right,” Arcturus said, hurrying forward and taking Elaine’s hand. It was clammy, and she trembled as he pulled her back with him.
The orc ignored them completely, his only acknowledgment of their existence being the shield that floated in front of his face. Instead, his Phantaur knelt in the dirt, and the orc stepped down from its shoulders and into the grass, absorbing the shield into his finger as he did so.
For a moment Arcturus felt the urge to fire—but thought better of it as the orc fell to his knees and prostrated himself on the ground, his arms extended palms down in supplication. Then Arcturus’s view was obscured by the vegetation.
And they ran.
CHAPTER
34
IT WAS ONLY AN hour later, when light had almost faded, that they allowed themselves to stop running, collapsing together in unanimous exhaustion in the shadow of a moss-laden boulder.
For a few sickening minutes they panted, gasped and gulped water from their flasks, catching their breaths. Arcturus had never felt so tired, or so hungry. His stomach cramped and gurgled as he lay there, and even the water he drank did little to assuage its ravening.
“What the hell was all that about?” Edmund groaned, the first to speak. “It was like the beastly thing was worshipping the baby.”
“I don’t care,” Arcturus replied. “We’re alive and it’s not our responsibility anymore.”
Silence reigned for a few moments longer; then Elaine spoke up in a small voice.
“I’m sorry. I thought I was helping … I didn’t want you guys to argue.”
Arcturus felt the strange dual sensation of wanting to harangue her and hug her at the same time.
“It was an extremely foolish thing to do. We could have all died. Never do that to us again, all right?” he said, his voice angry.
She lowered her head and hugged Valens close to her chest.
“I know,” she whispered, a slow tear rolling down her face. “I just wanted to do something brave. You’re all so brave all the time … I wanted to be too.”
Arcturus shook his head. It was hard to stay angry at her. Still, he forced himself to let her stew for a few more seconds before he gave her a tight hug. She sobbed once and then pulled away, rolling over as if going to sleep.
“Any news from Athena?” Rotter asked, tugging off a boot and turning it upside down. A stream of pebbles and twigs trickled from it, and Rotter groaned with relief.
“No sign,” Edmund said, giving his scrying crystal a curs
ory look. “I’d have felt it if something changed.”
“Maybe Harold and the others managed to get a message out,” Alice said. “They might even have escaped the jungles by now.”
“If they haven’t been captured or worse,” Edmund said. “For all we know, the rebels could have taken over Hominum already.”
“There’s nothing to be gained by thinking about that now,” Arcturus said. “The best we can do is concentrate on getting out of this hellish jungle.”
“So, where are we, then?” Edmund asked, pressing his back against the boulder’s edge. “Were we at least running in the right direction?”
“Roughly,” Rotter said, staring up at the canopy.
“How do you know?” Alice asked. “We could have been running in circles.”
“The stars,” Rotter said. “The Elven Arrow always points north. Here, look.”
He used his fingers to trace three bright stars in the sky, and if Arcturus squinted he could make out a cluster shaped not unlike an arrowhead at one end.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Edmund said. “With any luck we should reach the southern border of Hominum tomorrow afternoon.”
“Aye,” Rotter said, lying on his back. “And not a moment too soon. The orcs will know we’re in the jungles by now if that shaman has any sense; they’ll be sending search parties out soon enough. We should get some rest.”
Arcturus shuddered at the thought of the orcs hunting for them in the dark. He couldn’t help but stare into the surroundings, focusing to use Sacharissa’s night vision. All he saw were the scurrying of jungle rodents and the swooping shapes of fruit bats. Somehow, the animal noises comforted him, even as they grew louder in the ever-growing gloom. He felt they would be silent if orcs were approaching. Or so he hoped, anyway.
Turning away from the surroundings, Arcturus summoned Sacharissa in a flash of white light, and wrapped himself around her. She whimpered as his hand pressed against her wounded side, and he hushed the Canid with an apologetic kiss on the nose.
Even in their haste to escape, Arcturus had found time to infuse her—she would never have been able to keep up with them after her injuries. He knew she would heal faster while within him, but he could not help but summon her, for he had felt her battering his consciousness in her desire to be physically close to him. It was a slightly selfish decision, but he had no regrets as he cuddled her.
“You did well to survive the battle with the Phantaur,” Alice whispered from the darkness. “In case you didn’t know, I can’t heal Sacharissa. It’s a bone injury … it has to heal naturally. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, that’s why I didn’t ask,” Arcturus said. “But … I do have a question for you.”
In the background, Arcturus could hear Rotter and Edmund snoring, and could make out the forms of the two propped against the boulder.
“What is it?” Alice asked.
“I haven’t been taught proper spellcraft. If I had known some, I might have been able to use it against the shaman or his demon.”
“That’s true,” Alice replied. “Although, spells don’t work as well against demons, just so you know, the shield spell in particular. That’s why Sacharissa was able to break through the shaman’s shield during your battle.”
“Even so, I’d like to learn,” Arcturus said. “I know the symbols for the four main spells—Lieutenant Cavendish taught me, but never showed me how to use them.”
“Well, there’s not much to it,” Alice whispered back. “You simply channel mana to your finger, until the tip glows. Then you draw the symbol in the air and hold your finger in its center until the spell ‘fixes’ itself in place, moving in tandem with your hand as you move it around. Finally, you maintain the flow of mana both to and through your finger at the same time, and as the mana pushes through the symbol, it will perform the spell.”
“That simple, huh?” Arcturus muttered semisarcastically, trying to keep her instructions in his head.
“Of course, then you can control the direction of your spell with your mind, in the same way that you can control a wyrdlight. That’s how you shape a shield, or decide if you want to send out a stream of fire or simply a ball of it.”
“Right,” Arcturus said. “I’ll just try it, shall I? You can tell me if I do something wrong.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Alice whispered, patting him on the shoulder. “Whatever spell you use, it will make light and noise—better not to signal our presence to any orcs out there.”
“Of course,” Arcturus said, feeling a hint of disappointment.
Still, now that he knew the basics of spellcraft, he could teach himself. He just hoped that he wouldn’t need to use it before the morning.
CHAPTER
35
THEY SMELLED IT BEFORE they saw it. Or at least, Arcturus did. It was metallic, so strong he could almost taste it on his tongue as they pushed through the trees, blinking in the dawn light as the vegetation thinned.
Sacharissa noticed it first. Arcturus almost fell as her consciousness was suffused with a sudden horror. Then he saw it too. The bodies. Scattered like rag dolls on a nursery floor, their dead eyes staring through him and into oblivion beyond.
Rebels. At least a hundred of them, their corpses adorned with gaping wounds, or their bones caved in by enormous force. The team stood frozen, and Arcturus heard Elaine retching as she emptied their meager breakfast of wild berries onto the blood-soaked ground.
That was what the smell was—blood. Only now it was tinged by the barest hint of putrefaction, and the air hummed with the buzz of a thousand flies, and the croak of carrion birds as they hopped among the feast lain out before them.
Arcturus’s gorge rose, but he forced it down, eyes watering as he staggered against a tree.
“Orc handiwork,” Rotter growled, and Arcturus heard the rasp of the soldier’s sword being drawn. “There.”
He jabbed his blade, and Arcturus followed its point to see the body of an orc among the humans, its gray skin stark against the damp soil, a ragged wound to its throat showing the reason for its demise. Now that Arcturus looked, there were half a dozen others, though their corpses were surrounded by the scores of humans they had taken down with them.
“How many could have done this?” Edmund said, his voice uneven in his distress.
“Twenty, maybe less,” Rotter replied, edging forward. “However many, they won.”
The field of battle was in a clearing of sorts, scattered with the occasional sapling and tree stump. Beyond, Arcturus could just make out what looked like green fields of long grass—where the jungles ended and Hominum’s territory began. He tried to resist the urge to run for it. The area was still, with nary a breeze to stir the leaves.
“They don’t leave their dead if they can help it,” Rotter said, turning his head and body slowly as he walked farther into the battlefield. “They’ll be back for them soon enough. Must’ve looted the weapons first. We’d best be on our way, quickly now.”
Arcturus didn’t need telling twice. He took a moment to grab Elaine’s hand, and then he was pulling her along, wending a path through where the bodies were thinnest on the ground.
“It tells a story, this,” Rotter said, walking backward now as he watched the forest behind them. “They came from the back, took the rebels by surprise. Some others…”
He turned and stared into fields beyond. The bodies were thickest along its edge.
“They came from that way too,” he said. “Must’ve been tracking them. Set up an ambush, hid in the long grass. Hit ’em from both sides.”
“It’s a good thing, right?” Elaine said, her voice still weak from throwing up. “They’re not hunting us anymore.”
“There’s nothing good about this,” Arcturus whispered. He tried not to look at the eyes. Somehow there was accusation in their gaze.
“Do you think this was the group who were following us, or were they following Prince Harold and the others?” Alice asked.
Her quest
ion went unanswered. Because Rotter had frozen, his eyes bulging from his head as he looked into the trees beyond him.
“Don’t look behind you,” Rotter growled, walking backward once again. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. But when I say run, you run like the dickens, understand?”
Elaine whimpered, and Arcturus gripped her hand, if not for her comfort then for his own. Sacharissa growled beside him, and it took all his control to keep the demon from turning around to look behind them. Instead, she looked into his eyes … and suddenly he could smell them. Orcs, yes, but something new too. Something animal, with breath that stank of rotting meat.
“What … is it?” he managed to say, the words catching in his throat, breaths coming in short bursts.
“Orc scouts,” Rotter replied. “There’s three of ’em. But they’ve got hyenas with ’em. Big buggers, chests like cart horses. Easy now, they’re just watching us at the moment. ’Tis a good thing you and Alice have your demons out—they’ll know you’re summoners. Might spook ’em.”
Arcturus could almost feel the orcs’ eyes on the back of his neck, and he pulled Elaine closer to him as they staggered over the bodies on the edge of the grasslands.
“Run!” Rotter yelled, turning and sprinting into the fields.
They ran. Sacharissa flattened a path through the grass ahead and it was all he could do but follow her, dragging Elaine stumbling behind him.
They were a stone’s throw into the grasslands now, and ahead, Rotter had turned, his sword extended at whatever followed them. Pushing Elaine behind him, Arcturus stood alongside Rotter, tugging frantically on the crank of his crossbow in his haste to load it.
“Hide in the grass,” Arcturus snarled to Elaine over his shoulder. “And don’t you dare come out.”
He heard the telltale click as the string fell into position and he fumbled a bolt into place from the rattling quiver at his back. It was only then that he allowed his eyes to dart up toward the jungle’s edge, and the horrors running at them.