“If you’ll take charge of my horse, I’ll be happy to try.”
“Do you want light?”
“Let’s not lean too hard on that luck you mentioned.” Wishing it were later in the year, alternately standing straight and stooping low, he started examining the tree limbs, shrubs, and roots in their vicinity.
“So what now?” Jhesrhi asked abruptly.
He glanced back at her. “I thought you just requested a late supper.”
“I mean tomorrow.”
“We flee back to Soolabax, I suppose.”
“What about our mission?”
He thought he glimpsed the round pale caps of mushrooms, took a step closer, and saw they were actually toadstools. Damn it. “Our mission is considerably more dangerous now that Jaxanaedegor knows about it.”
“He didn’t seem to think it likely that the dragon in the Sky Riders really is Tchazzar. And he may not think we’re reckless enough to still go there.”
Gaedynn smiled, not because of anything she’d said, but because he spotted helmthorn vines. He took another pace and, as he’d hoped, saw berries. They were still in the process of ripening from green to indigo, but in a pinch a person could eat the tart fruit anyway.
Trying not to prick himself on the long black thorns-he already had one gash on his hand!-he started picking them and putting them in the pouch on the orc guard’s sword belt. “Then our former host is right on both counts. The dragon, if there even is one, isn’t Tchazzar, and I’m not foolhardy enough to keep looking for it.”
“Let’s assume the worst.”
“By all means, since it’s what keeps happening.”
As usual, the interruption annoyed her-he could hear it in her voice. “Jaxanaedegor will go look for the dragon or send someone to do it. But he never got around to asking us exactly where in the Sky Riders it is. That means we can find out the truth and get away before anyone else shows up.”
As he finished picking the berries, he spotted something else interesting and headed for it. “That’s insanely optimistic, but let’s continue in the same spirit and see where it leads us. Say we do find Tchazzar. Say he is still interested in protecting Chessenta. Do you really think Lord Nicos or anyone else will be able to free an ancient wyrm from whatever it is that’s strong enough to hold him?”
“I don’t know. I just know Aoth entrusted us with a task.”
“Are you sure you aren’t just bent on testing yourself against Threskel? On proving you’re a courageous, capable person here or anywhere? Because you already did that, in Mourktar and again inside the volcano.”
Jhesrhi kept silent for several heartbeats. When she spoke again, her voice was ice. “That has nothing to do with it.”
He sighed. “Of course it doesn’t. And we’ll go to the Sky Riders if you think it best.” He straightened up and, keeping one hand behind him, walked back to her. “I’ve got helmthorn berries. And these.” He bowed and held out the violets he’d found. “I’m not entirely sure how long we were chained up in the dark, but I think it may be Greengrass night.”
Making sure her hand didn’t come into contact with his, she took the flowers. “You never stop striking poses.”
Gaedynn grinned. “Well, as you pointed out yourself, it serves me better than sincerity.”
The giants had raided deep into Tymanther, burning villages and fields to raise the smoke Khouryn and his companions had noticed on their way to Djerad Thymar. But-so far at least-the marauders kept retreating back to the Black Ash Plain, and so the vanquisher’s warriors had gone to seek them there.
Which was to say, to a gray wasteland where only sparse grass and twisted shrubs grew and smoke rose from cracks in the ground. The air stank of combustion, and drifting flecks of ash stung the eye. To either side towered freestanding columns of solidified ash. Though as a dwarf, Khouryn had a reasonable knowledge of earth, stone, and fire, he couldn’t imagine what natural process created the things. Or set a couple of the more distant ones sliding like tokens on a game board without toppling over or breaking apart. It couldn’t be the wind. They were moving in opposite directions.
Riding on Khouryn’s left, Balasar turned his head and smiled. “Like the scenery?”
“I’ve seen it before,” Khouryn answered, and that was more or less true. He’d traveled the Dustroad. But it had become clear that if a person kept to the highway, he never quite found out just how strange and unwelcoming these particular badlands actually were.
The Lance Defenders were on the road or near it, where they hoped to engage the largest horde of ash giants. Like most of the companies fielded by one clan or another, the thirty Daardendrien warriors and their one dwarf ally were ranging through the heart of the barrens to intercept smaller bands of enemy raiders before they reached the dragonborn lands beyond.
Riding on the other side of Balasar, his black surcoat marked with the six white circles of Daardendrien but his heater shield bearing the right-hand gauntlet emblem of Torm, Medrash asked, “Are you sorry you came?”
Khouryn assumed some note of glumness or sourness in his voice had prompted the question. “I won’t be if our side defeats the giants fast enough for me to pay a visit home.”
But he suspected that was unlikely. And as for the notion that he might penetrate sinister secrets opaque to everyone else, well, that had seemed a little plausible back in Djerad Thymar, when he was a little drunk. But now that he’d sobered up it seemed ridiculous, and not just because a fellow wasn’t apt to learn much about schemes and conspiracies while stuck in the middle of a godscursed wasteland.
Khouryn knew he was far from stupid. He understood warfare and siegecraft better than almost anyone he’d ever met. And he could concoct a clever battlefield ruse when the situation called for it. But in the main, he thought in a straightforward manner ill suited to unraveling intrigues.
To the Abyss with it, he thought. I’ll stick with Medrash and Balasar for the length of this patrol. But then, unless I’ve found a better reason to stay, I’m heading back to Chessenta.
Balasar pointed. “Look.”
A speck moved across the hazy sky. Khouryn squinted and could just make out that it was a Lance Defender riding one of the giant bats. A scout or messenger, he assumed. The sight gave him a fresh pang of sadness for the loss of his own winged mount.
The Lance Defender plunged earthward.
“Is he diving?” Balasar asked
“No,” Khouryn said. A bat didn’t fly exactly the same as a griffon, but he was still sure he knew how to interpret what he was seeing. “His mount is hurt. Shot from below, I imagine. It isn’t dead, at least not yet, but it can’t stay in the air. He’s trying to put it on the ground before its strength gives out.”
And maybe the rider succeeded. It appeared to Khouryn that the bat wasn’t quite plummeting when it vanished behind a low rise.
“We have to get to him.” Medrash kicked his horse into a canter, and everyone else followed his lead.
They rode most of the way to the rise, then dismounted. Leaving a couple of warriors behind to guard the horses, they stalked up the slope on foot. Khouryn had learned that given a choice, dragonborn rarely fought on horseback, and maybe his companions hoped a quieter approach would catch any enemies by surprise.
Whatever they were thinking, he was glad to be on his own two feet again. He could manage his enormous mare under normal circumstances, but if he tried to do so in the midst of battle, he might well get the both of them killed.
He peered over the top of the rise. The bat lay crumpled a stone’s throw beyond the base of the shallow descent on the other side. An arrow the size of a javelin protruded from the animal’s flank. Neither it nor the dragonborn slumped on its back were moving. Nor were the three pillars of ash looming in a semicircle behind them.