Bryan cursed himself repeatedly as he straightened his clothes and gathered up his other belongings. It was his fault, he believed, for he had stung Rhiannon profoundly with his words about the diminishing power of magic.
Now, if anything happened to her, he knew that he would never be able to forgive himself.
The young warrior found the witch’s trail easily enough in the fresh covering of light snow. She was moving north-not surprisingly-out of the Baerendils, to the wider fields where talons were still thick for the fighting.
Bryan made fine progress that morning, running as often as walking, for there were few options along the rocky and broken terrain. Rhiannon was obviously traveling north, to the foothills, at least, and there were no more than a handful of trails she might follow that way, and the light snow, so revealing of even the young witch’s light step, kept Bryan running fast and true. Still, he knew that he was not appreciably gaining on her, and that fact worried him greatly. For as they came to the lower foothills, and to the fields beyond that, Rhiannon’s direction options would widen, and as they moved from the rock walls sheltering the lower mountain trails, the wind would erase the footprints. By the end of that day, Bryan was out of the mountains, following the one main road crossing this region to the west, the direction indicated by the last signs he had seen of Rhiannon. He trotted along, glancing side to side often and hoping that if the witch did leave the road, she would not be so far away that he could not see her, or that she could not see him.
The sun was setting in his face, and silhouetted against the pink background, the half-elf spotted a wagon, rolling along slowly. Bryan ducked low in a crouch but continued on, settling his shield comfortably on his arm and drawing forth his sword. These dark days, any wagons in the western fields meant talons, and only talons. Bryan wondered if Rhiannon had passed this band, or if, perhaps, she was off to the side of the road even then, scrutinizing the passing monsters, devising plans to destroy them.
Or, perhaps, on a darker note, if she had already encountered them, if she had met a foe beyond her diminished capabilities…
Spurred by that last thought, the half-elf put his head down and charged off in a dead run. Fortunately for the desperate Bryan, the two talons outside the wagon were experiencing more than a little difficulty with their burdened beasts, for a pair of great and huge lizards, and not horses or oxen, pulled the wagon, a task for which the reptiles were obviously not overly fond.
The wagon was covered, its back open, so Bryan, not too concerned that either of the obviously busy drivers would turn about to regard him, veered out to the side instead of approaching from directly behind. Quiet as death, the stealthy Bryan slipped up to the back corner, took a deep and steadying breath, then leaped to the footboard on the wagon’s tail and, in the same fluid motion, hauled himself in.
He tumbled into the midst of three very surprised talons.
Bryan’s sword flashed out to the right, slashing one talon across the chest. He punched out with his shield to the left, staggering the brute on that side, then, with a quick turn of his wrist, brought his sword thrusting ahead, impaling the middle of the group. A second swipe to the right, a bit higher this time, throat level to the sitting, lurching talon, finished the creature, and then a second slam with the shield dropped the last of the three to the floor, dazed.
“What is you fighting ’bout now?” one of the drivers growled, and the talon finished with an even louder roar, one of sheer agony, as Bryan’s sword came through the material of the wagon cover, slipped through a crease in the back of the seat, and then deep into the talon’s spine.
The wagon lurched as that driver slumped and its companion, whooping in fright, let go the reins and leaped from the seat, stumbling and scrambling in the wet mud and snow.
Bryan was already exiting the back of the wagon by then, moving methodically, casually, leaping to the ground and landing in a trot, stringing his bow as he went. When he came around the corner, he spotted the talon, twenty feet away and running, and foolishly moving in a straight line. An easy shot, one that Bryan gladly took, and the talon lay facedown, the snow turning red about its squirming form.
Bryan didn’t bother to go over and finish the task quickly. He went back into the wagon, to the shield-slammed beast, and propped the still-groggy creature up against the sideboard. He slapped it lightly across the face, even splashed it with water, prompting it back to lucidity.
“I seek a friend,” the half-elf growled into the talon’s face. “Have you seen her?”
The creature looked at him incredulously; impatient, Bryan promptly smacked it across the face. “Have you seen her?” he asked again, more forcefully. A movement to the side caught his attention, and he couldn’t have asked for a better chance to accentuate his point, to show the level of his hatred to this ugly, wretched thing. A quick maneuver put him over the squirming talon, the one he had swiped twice in the initial fight, and he promptly shifted his sword tip to the thing’s temple, pinning its head.
“Have you seen my friend?” the half-elf asked calmly, slowly, emphasizing each word.
“Duh?”
With a snarl, Bryan drove his sword through the squirming talon’s skull.
The last of the bunch breathed hard, in terrified gasps, when the half-elf moved again right in front of it. “I’ll not belabor the point,” Bryan said evenly. “I seek a friend, a very powerful friend, and if you do not help me, I shall surely make your death slow and painful.”
“It go to Corning,” the talon blurted suddenly. “The great beast moves to Corning, so travelers say.”
“It?”
“Great beast,” stammered the talon. “Much fear.”
Bryan nodded; it made sense that the dim-witted creatures would view mighty Rhiannon in such a way, and that description was likely to be the best this talon would offer. With a sudden jolt, the half-elf’s shield arm came forward again, smashing the talon’s face, and when it didn’t lose consciousness, Bryan, who showed no mercy to talons, finished the beast with a single sword thrust. He retracted the blade and wiped it on the dying creature’s clothing, then moved back outside the wagon. He entertained the thought of using the cart for a moment, but just for a moment, figuring that he would be far too obvious and vulnerable rolling along the open road, and also far from secure with the temperament of the giant and fierce lizard team. He didn’t dare go near to the dangerous things, even though they appeared securely harnessed. Rather, he stepped back and drew out his bow and shot each of them through the head until they lay dead upon the ground. Then he retrieved his arrows, finished off the one remaining talon, the one he had shot as it fled, and started his run again, this time with a specific destination in mind, a place that Bryan of Corning knew all too well.
She had been here only once, and on that occasion, Corning had been in desperate preparation for an imminent and overwhelming invasion. Yet even that frenzied scene of screaming folk and frightened children seemed far more pleasant to the young witch than the blasted image of Corning now, for even the grip of winter could not begin to erase the visual memory the place revealed: the wake of Morgan Thalasi’s devastating passage. Nearly every building was no more than a burned-out shell, with only its stone walls standing, peaked on two ends, skeletons like the picked bones of the thousands of dead who littered the fields outside of Corning, who littered the streets and the parapets of those few sections of the city wall that had not been flattened. The visual stain of the blood was gone, covered by the snow, but the smell remained, sickly sweet, conjuring images of a massacre.
The predominance of elongated skulls, the sloped foreheads of talons, showed the witch that more talons by far had fallen in the desperate battle for Corning than human-or elven, the witch reminded herself, thinking of Meriwindle-defenders, but if that number had been a hundred to one, a thousand to one, the loss of beautiful Corning would not have been worth it. Corning had once been the second city of Calva, behind only glorious Pallendara itself. It was a place birthed in war and built for the defense of the western fields, but in the centuries of peace the region had known before the return of Thalasi, Corning had grown beyond its pragmatic roots, expanding into something far more wonderful, an expression of artisans and craftsmen, a place of wonderful sprawling gardens and decorated houses.