He studied the ground for a moment, then bent down and picked up a rock. It was flat, Damien noted, very thin, and about the size of his hand. With a flick of his wrist he launched it out toward the water. It hit the surface hard near the shore and then skipped several times, and was swallowed by the fog before they could see it sink.
“Very neat,” Damien said. “But I don’t see how—”
The water erupted. From beneath the spot where the stone first struck the surface something burst upward in a spurt of foam. It was green, and glistening, and it whipped about wildly in search of the cause of the commotion. Damien saw green leaves and slender tendrils, with something sharp and white at their center. Hungry. God. He could feel the hunger, could feel it freezing his limbs, making him unable to fight, unable to struggle....
He shook his head violently and forced himself to turn away. It wasn’t easy. After a moment the noise subsided. After another moment the feeling of helplessness did also. He turned back to the water, saw nothing but smooth ripples on its surface.
“Good God,” he whispered. “What was that?”
“Our sorcerer’s last gambit, I assume. What will happen when this one goes out of control is anyone’s guess. Fortunately, the next creation will probably be a river creature also. It should mean easier traveling for a while.”
“If you’re right,” Hesseth said, “if this is all the work of humans ... then how far are we from them? Can you guess that?”
“Pretty close, I would imagine. How many more steps in the food chain ladder are possible before something decides it likes the taste of human flesh? I think we should be very careful from now on,” he warned. “These things are getting larger each time, and far more dangerous. In the end it may not be the humans here who are the greatest threat, but these creations.”
“You still can’t Know anything about the humans here?” Damien asked.
The Hunter turned cold eyes on him. “I can’t. I’ve tried. It’s as if they disappeared.”
“Or were eaten?” Hesseth offered.
“I’d have sensed that,” he responded shortly.
Be careful. That was what Damien thought as they rode along the shoreline and looked for a place to camp. Be careful. As if they hadn’t been before. As if the Hunter had to tell them a thing like that.
He’s worried, he thought. Possibly even frightened. Has anyone ever defied his power before, in quite this way?
And if he’s frightened ... where the hell does that leave us?
They searched for a safer campsite along the rocky shore.
“Damien. Damien. Get up.”
The whisper invaded his dreams. It took him a minute to realize whose it was, and why it sounded so urgent.
“Damien. Wake up. Please.”
Then he understood. The dream shattered into a thousand fragments. Sleep was gone in an instant.
“What is it?” he croaked, sitting up. His throat was dry. “What?”
He saw that Hesseth was armed. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered. Her ears were flattened against her head and her fur was bristling. “I can smell them.”
As he quickly got to his feet, he looked for cover, someplace safe to shoot from. But they had chosen this spot because it was out of the forest but far enough from the river, and not for its martial features. He damned himself—and Tarrant—for that shortsightedness.
“Where?” he whispered.
She nodded toward the south. And hesitated.
“Many,” she breathed at last.
Damn. Damn. Damn. He chose an outcropping behind them which offered limited cover. No way to hide the horses. No time to obliterate the camp. He motioned for her to crouch down beside him, behind the low ridge.
He could hear them now. Rustling. Voices. An odd mixture of caution and carelessness, low voices and heavy footfall. And damn, there were a lot of them. You couldn’t make that kind of noise with only a handful.
They came closer, moving from up the south, and then their direction shifted. West. That meant they were encircling the camp. The voices were silent now, wary of being heard by their quarry.
So they knew where the camp was, and most likely knew what they were hunting. Damn. In another few minutes he and Hesseth would be surrounded, and then there would be no way out but through the river. Could they sneak away quickly enough, going far enough north that they escaped the deadly circle ... but no, that meant leaving the horses behind along with all their supplies. And there was no way they could travel all the miles they had to with neither mounts nor gear.
He felt desperation grab hold of him—that, and a cold calculation, as he realized where their only chance lay. He reached out for Hesseth, met her eyes, nodded toward the horses. We grab them, his expression said, and run for it. North. They could stay by the river—but not too close—where the terrain would allow a horse to gallop, and maybe they could just break out of this. They’d make noise all right, lots of it, but no human feet could outrun a horse. It was a long shot, to be sure .. but he figured it was the only chance they had.
But as he sprinted forward toward his mount the vines at the edge of the forest parted, and he knew that it was too late; if they were coming into the open, it meant that the camp was already surrounded. There was no time to get back behind the ridge now, for what little shelter it provided. And besides, if he did that, he’d be revealing Hesseth’s position. Let her have a chance.
Heart pounding, he braced his weapon against his shoulder and waited for the enemy to reveal itself.
The first thing he saw was a face. A horrible visage, with slashes of red above and below distorted human features. He was so on edge that it took him a minute to realize what it was. Beside it another appeared, equally grotesque, crudely painted. They were the faces of his childhood nightmares, the masks that his unconscious mind had assigned to demons of the night long before he had actually seen anyone. And masks they were, in a very real sense. He watched in amazement as more and more armed figures came out of the woods, until the campsite was surrounded. They were fierce, these warriors who wore the demon-masks; their dirty bodies were painted with the colors of blood and death, and bones were tied to their weapons. Their wooden spears and crude arrows were all stained brown or black about the tip, and Damien had no doubt that it was blood of many kills which had seeped down into the wood.
He should have moved before they were in position. Or gone back to Hesseth. He should have done something.
But he couldn’t. He just stared.
They were children.
More then twenty of them surrounded the camp now; he didn’t dare turn his head to count. Few stood higher than his chest. At least a handful were small enough that they couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old at the most, and the rest seemed little older. Though it was hard to make out their shapes between the grotesque masks they wore and the leather vests and breeches which had been similarly painted, Damien would have wagered that not more than one or two of them had reached their teens yet.
How bizarre. How utterly, horribly bizarre.
They were all armed, and though their weapons were crudely made they were undoubtedly effective. As they came slowly into the clearing, Damien realized that he had only two choices. He could try to cut them down, using his size, his strength, and his experience as an advantage to counteract their numbers. Or he could surrender, bide his time until Tarrant returned. The latter went against his every instinct, and he found himself bracing for battle, calculating just how and when he should move against so many ... but they were children. Children! How would it feel, to cut down those tiny bodies? Could he do it? Suddenly he wasn’t so sure. His hands, clasped about the weapon, trembled slightly.
Prodded from her hiding place, Hesseth joined him. He heard her growling low in her throat as she scanned the crowd surrounding them, as unhappy as he was about the choices.
“Who are you?” he demanded of them. “What do you want?”
It was a lean b
oy—one of the tallest—who responded. “You come with us. Now. Put down your weapons and come—”
“Or we kill you,” another one interrupted. She was a tiny thing, with bedraggled bits of blonde hair hanging down about her shoulders.
“Do it fast,” the lean boy commanded.
Damien looked at Hesseth, and saw in her eyes a reflection of his own inner turmoil. Perhaps a moment ago he could have pretended that they weren’t human, could have managed to close his eyes and mow them down with sword and with sorcery ... but not now. Not now that they’d spoken. All his human instinct cried out against it. Children were to be protected, not murdered.
If they had moved against him, he could have fought. If they had threatened his life. If they had seemed so angry or irrational that he thought they might kill him outright rather than take him prisoner. If ... anything.
But they didn’t. And they weren’t.
He lowered his weapon. The children waited. He looked at Hesseth—her ears were still flat against her head and she was hissing softly, but she nodded—and he laid the weapon down. And stepped back. It was little more than a gesture; between his strength and Hesseth’s claws they were far from helpless in this crowd. But it seemed to be what the masked children wanted.
He watched while they moved into the clearing, gathering up the supplies and taking hold of the horses’ reins. They didn’t move like children, Damien thought. Too awkward. Too stiff. It was hard to watch them closely, he discovered. Hard to focus on one for any length of time. Was that the remnants of an Obscuring? It was an odd sensation.
At last the camp had been gathered up, except for those few items the children didn’t value. Damien’s weapon had been taken up, along with Hesseth’s. A slender girl with a predatory mask carried his sword in its harness; it was taller than she was.
“Who are they?” Hesseth whispered. “What are they?”
The tall boy heard her. As the children drew close about them, preparing to herd Hesseth and Damien back into the forest and to God knows where, he took a stance opposite them with his feet spread wide and his spear planted firmly in the ground by his side. A challenging stance. A triumphal stance.
“Terata,” he told them. And though a mask obscured his features, Damien had the distinct impression that he was grinning. “We’re the Terata.”
Twenty-three
They tied his hands behind his back. It went against his grain to allow it, but he saw no other option. He had already surrendered, after all. As they bound the coarse rope tightly about his wrists he did what he could to tense his arms, to thicken his wrists, and they seemed not to notice. That should net him some slack later. When they left him to work on Hesseth, he pulled at his bonds in several directions, testing the sophistication of the arrangement. He was pleased to feel it give slightly, which meant that although he had been tied tightly, he had not been tied well; between that and the small slack he had earned, he should be able to work himself free later.
When they were satisfied that their prisoners were bound, the Terata led them into the forest. Spears prodding their backs to keep them moving, they forced Damien and Hesseth through the thick brush that flanked the river, then into the shadowy realm beyond. Once Damien fell, and the sharp point of a weapon stabbed between his shoulder blades; he had to bite his lip to keep from cursing them aloud.
They’re children, he reminded himself. Struggling to his feet without benefit of his hands. He could feel blood trickling down between his shoulder blades, adhering his woolen shirt to his back. Self-indulgent by nature, not yet sophisticated enough to value self-control ... you anger them now, and there’s no telling what they’ll do. Be careful, Vryce.
Where had they come from, these painted infants? What chain of circumstances had brought them to this place? He could only wonder as he stumbled through the shadowy forest, trying to keep his footing for fear that some fledgling warrior might run him through if he didn’t. Hesseth seemed to be doing well enough, though the set of her ears and the soft hiss of her breathing made it clear she was far from happy about the turn their travels had taken.
Yeah, he thought darkly. That makes two of us.
The Terata led them south. Through a forest that had been stripped of its lower leaves by some gnawing creature—another sorcerous creation? —and past trees that had been girdled by toothmarks, robbed of their sap so that the upper limbs dried out and died. Long bark fingers scraped down from the heights above them, brushing their hair as they passed. Now that Tarrant had pointed out the pattern of life here, Damien could see it clearly. And if the Neocount had wondered what type of mind would create such creatures, now Damien understood. Limited minds. Untested, untrained. Minds that could not yet encompass the awesome complexity of Nature, nor make allowances for her excesses.
Children.
That meant at least one of them was a sorcerer, he reminded himself. If not more than one. And the power required to Work an entire species was no small thing; these Terata might lack adult sophistication, but in raw power they could probably hold their own with any mature sorceror. A sobering thought to consider as he fought his way across beds of dead twigs, pulling loose from the thorns that snagged his clothing as he passed.
Then something loomed ahead of him that brought him to a stop. For once no spear-point prodded him onward. He gazed at the wall of tangled brush before him and wondered how they meant to hack their way through it with nothing more than spears and arrows and a few short knives. Had the children traveled this route before? It seemed unlikely—
Light flared brightly to one side of him. He turned and saw one boy holding a torch, whose smoky flame illuminated the woods and the mist surrounding them. Then he reached down and tore up some grasses, which he thrust into the flame; black smoke coiled upward, thick and choking. He then passed the torch to the lean boy at the front of the pack, the one who had spoken to Damien. With a quick glance at the prisoners the boy moved to where the barrier-brush began, and for a moment stood still, studying it. The light of the torch glinted on the tips of vast thorns, as long as a man’s hand and as thick about the base as a finger. Liquid glistened on the needle-sharp tips, and something about the way it gleamed made Damien very uneasy about coming in contact with it. It seemed to him that the brush seemed to rustle slightly as the boy drew near—or was that his imagination working overtime?—and then the lean Terata thrust the torch forward so that smoke billowed into the brush, obscuring the nearer branches—
The brush shuddered. Thorns twitched. Damien watched in horrified amazement as branches which had seemed dry and brittle drew back like arms, their glistening thorns trembling as if in rage. The boy thrust the torch even farther forward, and tangled limbs whipped back as if trying to escape him. There was a hole in the tangled wall now, and the boy worked at it—moving the torch from one side to the other, threatening back whatever branches seemed to be returning to their place—until the opening was nearly as wide as a man. Then another child, a small girl, came forward with a second torch and lit it from his; with her help he managed to enlarge the opening until it formed a crude tunnel perhaps six feet in height, and wide enough for a horse to pass through.
“Go!” he ordered. The Terata moved quickly. The nearer limbs of the thornbush shook as they passed, and Damien had no doubt that if the smoke thinned for a moment the branches would close in upon the travelers. But the girl and the lean boy held the thorns at bay with practiced skill, and even enlarged the opening enough that when the horses passed through their manes hardly brushed the nearest branches. Damien dared to work a Knowing as he entered the thorny tunnel, and what he learned nearly caused him to stumble. But then a number of small hands pushed him and he was through, falling to his knees on the rocky earth a safe distance from the grasping branches.
When they all were through, the girl and boy followed. With them gone, the smoke cleared in an instant. The branches which had drawn back snapped toward them with sound like a whip cracking, but the children ha
d gauged their distance well; the longest thorns fell inches short of their target, and all the convulsions of branches which followed were incapable of getting them any closer.
As he watched the vast plant writhe in frustrated hunger, Damien wished that Tarrant were with them. And not just because his power would have been so welcome.
You were wrong, Hunter. They didn’t put their killer in the river at first. They didn’t have that much foresight. They rooted their creation in the ground and let it grow, until the animals it fed on had learned to avoid it and the only prey left to it were the Terata.
He could hear the branches twitching as he got to his feet. Struggling for food. Starving, in the midst of plenty.
But these children do learn from their mistakes, he thought grimly. Watching as the Terata extinguished their smoking torches. Something to remember.
The miles fell behind them with painful slowness. It was hard for Damien to match his stride to that of the children; for all of their youthful energy, their legs were so much shorter than his own that every step was a struggle to match their pace. When he moved too quickly a spear-point in his back or a knife-point in his side reminded him to slow down; he didn’t look down to check but would have bet that his body was spotted with blood from the treatment. Hesseth seemed to hold her own, moving with feline grace among the children, like a sleek predator among awkward browsers.
And their movement was all wrong, he thought. Watching the three leaders of the group ahead of him, the others out of the corners of his eyes. For all that they were children, for all that their bodies were still growing and therefore awkward, there was a wrongness to their motion that went beyond that. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was—when he tried to focus on them his vision grew hazy, until he had to focus his attention straight ahead to bring his eyes under control once more—but some deep-set instinct warned him that it was wrong, that something about these children was even more strange than it appeared, and that he’d damned well figure out what it was before his life depended on that understanding.