The Golden Griffin (Book 3) Page 3

  “I’m not a child, Markal. If you’ve got information, give it to me.”

  “The truth is, I don’t know yet, but it isn’t a good sign. For now I’d rather not speculate.”

  “Speculating is what you do best.”

  “Yes, and it gets me into trouble. I’ll investigate. If I turn up something, I promise I’ll share. Meanwhile, there’s danger on the Old Road. The Knights Temperate are riding to clear it of bandits, and they’re unprepared for what they’re going to find. That’s why Narud and I were traveling. And why I’m so happy to see you here.”

  “Is Darik in trouble?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” Markal chewed his lower lip. “No, I think not. He’s with a company of twenty Knights Temperate. So long as he stays with the other men . . . but never mind that. Now that you’re here, you’ll save me time. Narud flew off and who knows when he’ll reappear. He’s an owl now and will likely forget his duties while he swoops around hunting voles and field mice. Who are you riding?”

  “Joffa. He’s bedded down for the night.”

  “But once he’s rested, can he carry two?”

  “Of course.” Daria had nearly forgotten the purpose that had brought her so far north, to investigate the fighting dragons. “Let’s find Darik. If he’s in trouble, we can help.”

  #

  Daria and her griffin slept in the upper branches while Markal made a bed of pine boughs in a thick branch below, maybe ten feet off the ground. It was warm beneath Joffa’s wing, and she nestled into the comfort of fur and feathers.

  She woke a few hours later to a strange blue light. She looked down to see something glowing within Markal’s robes. His eyes were closed and he muttered softly, speaking first to someone named Memnet, then arguing with another wizard. Markal said something about a dragon made of mud and sticks. The bone gurgolet.

  The light faded and Markal quieted. He’d never awakened, so far as she could tell. After a few minutes, the rumble from Joffa’s chest soothed Daria back toward sleep. She thought of Darik, riding behind her, his arms tight around her waist. He would be breathing hard, thrilled by the flight. She couldn’t wait to see him again.

  Remember. Flatlanders don’t simply blurt their feelings. When you see him it’s better to say nothing at all than say something foolish.

  Chapter Three

  Darik gave up the chase when his horse began to stumble and the magic trail grew difficult to follow in the darkness. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t overtaken the thief and his brother by now. They must have known he was following, must have even changed horses.

  He found an abandoned barn on the edge of a ruined farmstead and bedded down for the night. He was back on the hunt by the first hint of dawn. When the sun crept up behind the peaks of the Dragon’s Spine to his east, he’d picked up the trail again. It led across the field to a gutted crofter’s shack, and there he stopped.

  The ground was torn by horse hooves. The fence had been broken, and blood dripped from one of the split rails. The thief’s plow horse lay dead a few yards away, hacked to death with vicious blows from a sword or ax. A brown crofter’s cap lay next to it in the dirt, cleaved nearly in two. It was damp with blood. The thief had worn a hat like that.

  Darik sighed. Someone had beat him to it. In fact, it might have even been Roderick and the others. Darik had ridden in pursuit until he lay well north of where he’d left the knights the previous afternoon. Maybe something had turned them from the road and they’d chanced upon the two outlaws. That would explain why the bodies were missing. Justice administered, Roderick might have sent them back to the village as proof. Hard to explain the dead horse, though.

  Something shimmered on the edge of Darik’s vision and a scent caught his nostrils. There, to the right. The remnant of the magic he’d used when shaking the thief’s hand. It was faint, but still there. He was wrong. The young man was still alive.

  Some other strangeness hung in the air. More wizardry beyond his little spell, though he was too inexperienced to identify it properly. Like a burned flavor, almost. Something about it reminded him of Balsalom. Nothing to do with the Knights Temperate, he decided. Magic from the khalifates. A Veyrian torturer perhaps. If only Markal were with him.

  Wary now, Darik mounted his horse and followed the trail across the fields. It led east, then came onto the King’s Road, where it was weaker still. Whoever had the young man was moving quickly. Darik picked up the pace, traveling north on the highway. The trail was easy enough to follow.

  Fields gave way to marsh, with the road maintaining a solid path through the waterlogged stretches. Castle Crestwell appeared to the right, rising on a hill, but Darik continued. The knights were probably on the road already, and he suddenly began to wonder what would happen when they encountered the band of riders who had carried off the two outlaws. There might be trouble.

  The Old Road threaded a gap between two of the higher peaks in the northern range. It was a vital route between Eriscoba and the khalifates now that the castles of the Tothian Way had closed off that road. Armies could still march along the Way, but merchants and smaller companies of men had to pay heavy tolls to the greedy mountain lords.

  Unfortunately, the brigands, highwaymen, and Veyrian deserters had so infested the Old Road that it would soon be closed as well. Now that he was finally here, Darik could see why. The north country was nearly empty of people. There were a few villages, closed tightly behind walls or huddled for protection atop easily defended hills, but people had withdrawn from the outlying farms and fields.

  A small keep guarded the intersection of the King’s Highway with the Old Road as the latter cut east toward the mountains, but it was abandoned. The massive oak doors hung from their hinges and fire blackened the stone walls. No bodies.

  The magic trail continued up the Old Road toward the mountains. Darik followed it, his unsettled feeling growing. He passed through another marsh, then the peat bogs gave way to thickets of brambles as he gained elevation, and soon a dense hardwood forest encroached to the edge of the road. More than once he heard bird calls that sounded suspiciously like men calling warnings. It was dangerous riding alone through thick cover. Branches overhung the road; any one of them might hold a cutthroat who waited to fall on him.

  Only stubbornness kept him following the magic trail as long as he did. Even so, he was about to turn around when he heard a distant shout. Metal clanked on metal. Another shout. It was a battle. A riderless horse pounded down the road and past him. Its head was armored with a steel shaffron marked with a bloody red hand. The mount of a Knight Temperate. Darik dug his heels into his horse and galloped up the road.

  He came around the bend to see dozens of men on horse and foot locked in a death struggle. They bashed each other with swords and maces. Several men lay face down on the road or crawled, bleeding from the combat.

  But at first glance Darik couldn’t tell which side was which. It looked like two companies of knights had met on the highway and inexplicably fallen to blows. Then he spotted Roderick. The captain bore down on two men who traded blows with maces. Roderick lifted his sword, leaned from the saddle and delivered a punishing strike across one man’s head. The blow shattered the man’s helmet, and he collapsed.

  The two sides came into focus. There were only eight or ten enemies, and twice their number of knights. Darik drew his sword and shouted as he charged into the fray.

  The knights cried to each other: warnings, encouragement, pleas to regroup or fall back. In contrast, the enemy fought in silence. It was eerie the way they hacked and cut, came together or fell apart without uttering a sound.

  “To the captain!” Brannock roared.

  The big knight tossed aside one foe and hacked another out of the way. Roderick had been unhorsed and was now beset by three enemies. One of them, unbelievably, was the man with the shattered helm. Somehow, Roderick’s crushing blow hadn’t killed him. Instead, the enemy had regained his feet and rejoined the attack.

&
nbsp; “To the captain!” Brannock repeated and all around knights picked up the cry.

  “No!” Roderick shouted. “Pull back! All of you, back.”

  “We can take them,” Brannock said. He spotted Darik. “You! To the captain!”

  The huge knight had a sword in one hand and an ax in the other. He used his ax to pin the sword of the man with the broken helm, then swung his sword around in a wide arc. The enemy crumpled silently.

  “We have to pull back,” Roderick insisted. He still hadn’t fought his way free. “Look.”

  A dozen more enemies came down the road. Their horses snorted and tossed their heads nervously, but the men didn’t speak, only stared grimly from behind visors. The two sides were now evenly matched in numbers. That didn’t explain why Roderick was so anxious to retreat. In the past, the captain had eagerly taken on forces twice their size. Twenty Knights Temperate could fight with the discipline and strength to drive a wedge through any foe.

  “To your right!” a knight warned, and Darik turned to see the man with the shattered helmet grabbing for his boot to drag him from the saddle.

  Darik kicked him away while he brought his sword to bear. One of the man’s arms hung limp and useless, almost severed by Brannock’s sweeping blow. His head lay split open from Roderick’s earlier attack. Yet no pain or emotion showed in his eyes.

  By the Hand, what sorcery was this?

  As Darik got loose he looked at the wounded and dead men on the road. Only one of them was an enemy, and this one had a spear shoved right through his chest. He must have fallen in the initial charge.

  Brannock jumped from his horse to land next to the captain. He had lost his sword, but gripped his ax in two hands. He swung it at the head of one of his foes and nearly severed the man’s head. This one went down and stayed down.

  “Retreat!” Roderick bellowed. “By the Brothers, do what I say!”

  But their captain was still trapped in the battle, and the knights refused to obey, even though the enemy had begun to overwhelm them. Then two foes jumped on Roderick and he disappeared beneath a flurry of swords.

  Suddenly, there was a flash of light and a boom. An invisible fist punched Darik from his feet. Heat rolled over him, sucked the air from his lungs. A shadow blocked the sun. Then a scream like an eagle’s, only more piercing. His heart lifted at the sound.

  The griffin swooped in as one of the enemy fighters came at Darik with a sword. Claws seized the man’s sword arm, and a beak darted in to tear at his throat. A rider on the griffin’s back was swinging two swords. A woman with a black pony tail and blazing eyes.

  Daria.

  A second figure dropped to the ground as her mount lifted away to avoid a sword thrust. It was Markal. New hope blazed in Darik’s breast, but one of the wizard’s hands was a pink fist, barely healing, and the other lay blackened from the fireball he’d called from the sky. There would be no more magical aid.

  “Where’s the captain?” Markal asked. “Where is the king’s brother?”

  Darik turned. Roderick lay on his back several feet away. His helmet carried a deep dent and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. Blood flowed from a gash across his forehead. He bled from several other wounds, and if he was alive, he wasn’t moving. Two enemy knights grabbed him and dragged him back from the fight. Darik went after them, but a man on horseback blocked his path and swung his sword. Darik lifted his weapon. The weapons clanged when they hit.

  “They have the captain,” Markal said. “Stop them.”

  Darik took up the cry. The enemy was falling back now, fighting their way clear. They jumped on horses and closed ranks to protect a retreat. Darik joined Brannock and several other Knights Temperate to fight their way to the men who’d taken Roderick, but the enemy drove them back. The two men threw the captain’s body over the back of a riderless horse.

  Daria swooped from the sky and knocked a man from his horse, but one of their foes notched an arrow and she pulled away. The arrow shot toward her and for a heart-stopping moment looked like it would pierce the griffin’s breast. But the animal spotted the attack and banked. The arrow zipped past inches away and disappeared into the canopy.

  Without a word, the enemy pulled into a full retreat, pounding up the road toward the mountains. The knights prepared to give chase, but they were too few and had suffered too many injuries. Markal called them back. Daria flew above the enemy, tracking them as the road disappeared into the woods. The enemy escaped around the next bend and moments later Daria was out of sight as well.

  The surviving knights gathered in a grim knot in the center of the road and argued about whether or not to give chase. Markal commanded them to hold their position.

  “If you ride after them, you will die. There’s nothing you can do for the captain now. But you can help the wounded.”

  Several injured men lay on the ground, crying for water. Markal grabbed Darik and they helped staunch the bleeding. The wizard coaxed a little more magic to ease pain. Then he let his sleeves fall over his withered hands and gave a grim shake of the head.

  “I have nothing more. I need Narud, but that fool is off talking to animals.”

  Three enemy fighters lay dead on the ground against three Knights Temperate, with three more missing, including Roderick. These three dead enemies had all suffered horrific wounds: a spear straight through the heart, a head with a shattered helm, a man with a sword shoved through the belly and up under the rib cage.

  Darik bandaged cut knuckles on his sword hand, then made his way to Markal’s side. The wizard squatted above the body of the man with the broken helm.

  “The captain did that,” Darik said. “Split his helm and knocked him flat. Somehow he got back up. Then Brannock struck another killing blow. Don’t know why the first didn’t do the job.”

  “Who is second in command?”

  “Brannock.” Darik nodded to the big knight who had dismounted and was tying his horse to a tree on the side of the road.

  “No, that won’t do. I need you to take charge. Get these men out of here. The enemy will be back, and stronger than before. I’m going ahead to find Daria. I’ll meet you later.”

  “Where?”

  “Do you know the keep where the King’s Highway meets the Old Road?”

  “It was overrun. There’s no garrison.”

  “Yes, I know. Fortify the doors. Wait for me there.”

  “Can you explain?” Darik asked. He gestured at the dead man’s ruined forehead. “Roderick’s sword did that. But the man kept fighting anyway. How was he not dead?”

  “Darik,” Brannock called before the wizard could answer. “Look at this.”

  Darik and Markal made their way to the huge knight, who propped one of the dead enemy fighters against an oak tree on the side of the road. It was the one with the spear through his chest. Brannock had pulled off the man’s helmet and now another knight retrieved the spear.

  Darik took a step back, surprised. The dead man was the thief from the village.

  “Wasn’t he a peasant?” Brannock asked. “He’s wearing armor like the rest of them.”

  Markal took the spear from the second knight and held it out to Darik. “Look, no blood.”

  There had been plenty of blood where Darik had spotted the dead horse earlier that morning. And signs of a battle. He turned the man’s head. The throat had been cut and there was dried blood around the wound. But no blood on the spear.

  “You asked me a question,” Markal said. “And I have an answer. Roderick’s blow didn’t kill the man, because he was already dead.”

  Brannock’s eyes bulged. “The dead are rising from the grave. That’s what he meant.”

  “We freed this man from Eorl Crestwell’s steward,” Darik explained to Markal. “Corvis said something about the dead rising. We thought he meant wights.”

  “It’s the magic of the dark wizard,” Markal said. “Something I haven’t seen since the Tothian Wars. Ravagers.”

  Knights had been gat
hering around and mutters passed through their ranks. Darik didn’t know what that meant, and doubted anyone else did, either, but the word hung in the air, dark and forbidding. Ravagers.

  “Take the dead with you,” Markal said. “All of them. Dismember and burn them.”

  Chapter Four

  Darik didn’t want to lead the surviving knights down from the hills to the abandoned keep. He wanted to wait with Markal until Daria returned from scouting the enemy’s retreat. And he was not in any way capable of leading men, but Markal had given Darik command, and the knights deferred to the wizard. For now, at least, Darik found himself in charge.

  The knights rode in silence. Nobody spoke of their fallen captain, but shock showed on their hardened faces. Darik himself could hardly believe that Whelan’s brother was gone. Surely, he hadn’t been killed in a simple ambush. No. He supposed that by now Daria had scouted the enemy camp and flown back to tell Markal. The wizard would infiltrate, rescue the injured man, and bring him to the keep for healing.

  It was late afternoon before they arrived at the keep. The stone fortress was roughly sixty feet by forty feet of cut stone. There were stronger castles along the Old Road—now in ruins—and this building had been intended more to collect tolls and taxes than to hold the highway against attack. It had no parapet atop the walls, and no moat below, but plenty of arrow slits to fight off an enemy trying to gain entrance. The strongest point was a squat stone tower at the gate made of a thicker, darker, and more roughly cut stone than the rest of the keep, as if it had been rebuilt at some point.

  Darik led them cautiously through the broken doors, then, when he was satisfied the keep was empty, ordered half the men to repair and fortify the entrance. Others he sent to keep watch from the tower or to make the injured comfortable. It wouldn’t be easy; the keep had no furnishings or supplies, except for a well and a small wood pile. Before it grew too dark to venture safely outside, he had the dead knights and ravagers dismembered and burned in a pyre next to the road. It took most of the keep’s firewood to do the job.