Chapter Twenty-Seven
Amteira Hammerhand came to a grim, panting halt atop a mossy boulder somewhere deep in the Raurklor, and admitted to herself at last that her father's murderer had gotten away.
Cauldreth Jaklar, Lord Leaf of Ironthorn until this morning, and priest of the Forestmother, could be anywhere in this forest, this deep green wilderness of soaring trees and endless gloom and damp, moldering leaves underfoot. Anywhere at all, and it stretched away from her in all directions larger than any kingdom.
He'd escaped, Falcon curse him, and she knew of no way to find him. After all, he was a priest of the Forestmother, and he was deep in the greatest for-
Wait. That was it. That, or nothing…
Jaklar himself had told her to always pray to the goddess in the forest and in her own bare skin-except for the little bit of it she covered with a mix of a little of her blood, some drops of dew or water from a forest pool, the same amount of tree-sap, and a pinch of forest earth.
Well, so she would. Find the sap and the water, bring it right here to this rock, strip, and kneel here to pray.
She would pray to the Forestmother to deliver Cauldreth Jaklar into her hands, so she could slay him for killing her father and betraying the House of Hammerhand-for that serpent must long have been slyly scheming to weaken Hammerhold and deliver its rule into his hands…
Amteira laid down her sword and reached for the first and easiest buckles of her armor.
"Do this," she told the air around her fiercely, "and I'll believe in you and serve you more fervently than he has ever done!"
Her words seemed to echo away across vast distances, in a sudden, deep silence.
All around her, the forest seemed to be listening.
The Executive Vice President of Holdoncorp flung himself desperately down and sideways, reacting faster to a situation than he'd done for some time.
However, he kept his life at that moment not because of that shrewd strategy, but only because Rusty Carroll-who'd just ducked under the hard-swung blade of the third Dark Helm, and sprinted through the closing Inner Sanctum door-delivered a hearty kick to the backside of the Dark Helm seeking to decapitate Quillroque, as he passed.
In Rusty's wake, all of the Dark Helms leaped after him, the fallen vice president forgotten. They were now intent only on getting through that door before it could be closed in their faces.
The security chief had already ducked past the other two vice presidents, but the Dark Helms dodged no foe. Viciously they hacked aside the large and florid form of Vice President Hollinshed-who was already toppling, arms windmilling wildly, over the fallen form of the Vice President Legal. Yet that obstacle, and their own collisions with each other as they converged on the diminishing opening at the open end of the door, delayed them long enough that only one managed to thrust his sword past the door-edge to keep it open.
And that was the man Rusty Carroll promptly emptied the roaring contents of a handy fire extinguisher up under the helm of.
The Dark Helm convulsed and roared, trying to claw off his helm as his sword fell clattering to the floor-and Rusty launched a roundhouse kick to the man's throat that slammed him into the other two Dark Helms beside him.
Then, stepping on the fallen sword and kicking it back behind him into the Inner Sanctum, Rusty dragged the door closed, threw its heavy bolt-and lunged at the nearest fire alarm. The firefighters would probably end up butchered as ruthlessly as Mase's and Sam's men, but cops would come with them, and-
"Carroll," the President of Holdoncorp snapped, from where he stood frowning in the door to his office, golf putter in hand, "kindly enlighten all of us as to what's going on."
Rusty scooped up the sword, hefted it in his hand, and glanced from it up at the supreme boss. The look on his face made many of the white-faced secretaries standing at the doors of the various offices of the exalted flinch back from him. He brandished the sword.
"See this, sir? It's real, right? Well, there are six very real Dark Helms on the other side of that door, right now. They've killed a lot of our people."
"You're joking, surely-where are you going?"
Rusty burst past the President, heading for the back stairs as fast as he could run. "Back to my post, in Security. You might want to come with me, all of you who want to stay alive."
The President sputtered his utter disbelief. "This-this sounds like a bad movie!"
"Or one of our games," Rusty couldn't keep himself from replying. However, he muttered those words at the full run, and the metal-shod stiletto heels of dozens of secretaries sprinting frantically after him made quite a din. It was possible, just this once, that the all-knowing, all-hearing President of Holdoncorp hadn't heard.
Rusty couldn't do anything about the "all-suspecting" part of the President's character. Not without letting the ready arm and sharp sword of a Dark Helm reach the man.
It was a tempting thought, but…
Good security men, he reminded himself more than once before he reached the stairs, rise above temptation.
As FLEET AS any frightened rabbit, Iskarra dwindled into the night, bounding along the dark and deserted lanes of Harlhoh. "Run!" she called back over her shoulder.
"That's all we ever do, it seems," Garfist grumbled mournfully in reply, as he turned, lowered his head, and burst into a sprint that started to close the gap between them rapidly.
He doubted that whatever the emerging-from-the-earth beast of Malraun back there was, it would have expected him to able to run this fast.
But then, he doubted that it cared. It might be nigh-mindless, or might be as cunning as a wolf, but the wizard's orders would have its wits in an iron-hard, unbreakable grip. It would probably come after them, never tiring, for as long as it could. Which might well be forever.
"So we're doomed," he told himself aloud, overtaking Isk steadily. "Again."
That last growled word seemed more a wry jest than a comforting reminder of all the times he and Isk had managed to escape grim fates in the past.
Just ahead, Iskarra spat a brief, startled shriek into the night-and was plucked up off her feet into the sky. Garfist stared at her, and found himself gazing into the grinning face of one of the Aumrarr they'd last seen in Ironthorn, heading for the foregate of Lyraunt Castle.
The beautiful one, Dauntra. Then she'd stopped looking at him over her shoulder to turn and hurl herself into flapping hard, now, lifting Isk up into the sky.
"Come back, Falcon take ye!" he roared, shaking and stumbling as his lungs told him that they'd needed that wind to keep running, not to shout at sleeping Harlhoh. "Come-"
"Would you mind being quiet?" a rapidly-approaching voice snapped in his ear, an instant before two strong hands took him under the armpits and snatched his staggering feet off the ground. "Some folk hereabouts will have bows and some skill at using them, look you! And you're rather a large target!"
Garfist quelled his shouting in mid-word, and clawed at his wits to try to remember the name of the Aumrarr now beating her wings hard to get him up and over the low and swaybacked roof of a shed.
"Uh… Juskra?"
"The same," that voice said from above him, sounding pleased. "At your service. At least until we can get you out of this hold.
Forgive me, but you're too heavy for me to carry all the way back to Ironthorn."
"I'm not sure I want to go back to Ironthorn," Garfist growled.
"Good, because we have other plans for you," the winged woman replied sweetly, as they soared up over the rooftops of Harlhoh.