She watched them drown.
When they stopped moving, she opened her eyes and stared at the four remaining, the horror written plain on their faces bringing a smile to her own. She’d trapped the two unnamed ones up to their armpits already, the one with the scratchy voice ineffectually beating the stonelike earth with his sword.
Donnel and Tanner she’d left free from their hips up.
“Quiet,” she commanded. “Quiet or be tugged under like the buried two.”
They instantly obeyed, though Tanner opened his mouth as if to say something.
“Quiet!”
Mudwort waited until she heard birds singing again. Her broken fingers still throbbed, and her twisted leg hurt too. She felt some pain in her stomach, where she’d been punched. She wanted to prod herself with her good hand, to see how serious her injuries were. She wouldn’t die from her wounds, she suspected, but she worried that she might not make it back to Direfang’s city on her own.
“The knights …” she began. “All the other knights. Where are they? The knights with the one called Isaam and the commander?”
The four stared at her, Donnel red-faced and eyes aiming daggers at her.
“Don’t tell that rat anything.” That came from one of the unnamed knights. He’d said it to Tanner, so she guessed that Tanner was in charge of the group. “Don’t tell that thing-”
His words ended in a gurgling sound, his mouth full of mud, choking.
Mudwort liquefied another clump of dirt. The size of an apple, it rolled away from her and slowly toward the knights. It rolled between Donnel and Tanner, the latter trying to grab at it. Mudwort kept it just beyond the reach of his questing fingers. Then the clump of dirt turned into a snake and oozed up the leg of the knight who’d just swallowed the first ball of mud.
“The knights,” Mudwort said again. “Where are they?”
When there was still no answer, the mud snake oozed up the man’s chest then his neck. He struggled so hard, she feared he would either break free or snap his back from all his gyrations.
“Tanner!” he sputtered. “Tanner, do something. By all the dark gods-”
She directed the mud snake into his mouth, filling it, a tendril of it reaching up and plugging his nose. The knight’s gyrations increased, his face turning scarlet, his eyes expanding so wide that she wondered if they might pop out onto his cheeks. He managed a whimpering noise right before he died; then he crumpled over as much as his earthen prison allowed.
“Cramer’s dead!” Donnel shouted, twisting around to stare at his fallen comrade. “The rat’ll kill us all. Foul sorcery!”
Mudwort bared her teeth, eyes boring into Tanner’s, which had lost some of their intensity.
“The knights,” she said. “I’ll ask again. Where are all the knights?”
“I don’t know where they are.” Tanner’s voice was edged with defiance, though it lacked the scorn she’d noted before. “And that’s the truth. We left them on the beach when were told to scout inland. We’ve been gone from them for days and days.”
Mudwort drew her face together until she knew it must look pinched and angry. Why send a scouting party into a forest to lose itself? How were they expected to find their main group again?
Unless the main group was tracking the scouts. Clever. Yes, Dark Knights could be clever and resourceful.
A shiver passed down her spine. Would more knights be there soon?
“How many knights?” she asked angrily.
“Three of us left,” he shot back. “You killed the other three.”
“Knights on the beach.” Mud rippled out from her embedded arm again, surging toward Tanner and stopping just in front of him. Donnel had turned back around and was gesturing futilely at the sloshing wave. “How many knights on the beach?”
Tanner shook his head. “No, never.”
“It’ll kill us, Tanner. Don’t tell that damnable rat anything.”
“Donnel.” Mudwort shifted her gaze to him. Another wave of mud washed away from her and toward him.
“Damnable rat!” Donnel cursed. “You’ll learn nothing from us. We’ll see you in the Abyss!”
She stopped the wave just short of him, the mud moving forward and back like water lapping at the shore. Maybe if she shut Donnel up, then Tanner would talk. Or maybe … with a twitch of her thumb, she directed the mud flow between Tanner and Donnel and around to the other knight stuck behind them.
Maybe that lowly Dark Knight knew something and would talk, she thought. She directed the mud to ooze upward until it covered the human’s shoulders and neck. Then it slowly crept up his chin.
“Tanner?” The word came out as a squeak.
“How many knights?” Mudwort practically shouted the question. “How many on the beach?”
He shook his head, droplets of mud flying away from his frantic motions. “Never.”
“How many days and days away?” Mudwort closed her eyes and thought back to Steel Town, savoring her hatred of Dark Knights.
“Submit or die,” she heard the Dark Knights say over and over there. “Obey the will of our superiors and put all personal goals behind the aims of the Order. Submit or die.”
She’d wend her way up the mountain each day for her overlong shift in the mine, and often she would pause before the entrance and stare down into the mining camp to see the Dark Knights standing before their commander. In perfect lines and wearing full armor that glinted in the early-morning sun, they knelt in unison, bowed their heads in unison, and shared a moment of silence. Then their voices would rise up the side of the mountain in a sonorous hum that sounded like a swarm of cicadas. They joined in what they called their Blood Oath, and they repeated it five times, followed by something she learned was called “The Code.” Then she considered it a horrible squandering of words, an insipid chant that wasted time and saliva. At that moment it was something useful to remember and say to the doomed one.
“Submit or die,” she said to the knight covered in mud.
He glared at her.
“Then die.” Mudwort gestured with her mangled hand, the mud doing her bidding and covering the knight as if he were a piece of fruit being dipped in chocolate, dipped and covered.
He struggled for only a moment; then she forced the mud to harden like stone. Donnel twisted around to see his companion struggle briefly and die. After a moment he turned back to Tanner, looking for guidance. Tanner was trying in vain to wrest free.
“Submit or die,” she repeated to Donnel.
“Never,” he said again.
She looked to Tanner; his head was pointed at the ground as he bucked and thrashed about, trying to pull himself out of his earthen prison. He didn’t see her snarl at him or hear her curse in a language he couldn’t fathom. And he didn’t see her close her eyes.
She peered into the earth again. The spell she wove sent her mind through the ground as if she were a burrowing animal. She felt the earth resting lightly on her, though she knew she was aboveground. It was a comforting feeling. She smelled the richness of it and the sickly sweet scent of the dead insects and tiny animals that had died and been covered over by time. She headed toward the knights again, feeling small, smooth rocks and finding the sensation of passing over them pleasant. It made the pain in her fingers and leg ease just a bit. A moment more and she felt Tanner’s boots, once so polished and fine, marred and soiled. Higher and she felt his metal leg plates.
His armor was insignificant compared to her magic. She made a fist and watched as the metal caved and twisted, the earth pressing in so very hard and relentless. She heard the ground rumble, and faintly, she heard Tanner cry out in anguish.
Submit or die, she mouthed.
The ground pressed in harder, the metal crumpling like a piece of parchment. She heard the groan of the buckling leg plates, and she heard Tanner’s bones snap.