“Head down, Master,” Skurn hissed. Vansen narrowly avoided running face-first into a low branch. Thereafter he found the bird’s smell easier to bear.
Vansen gasped when Gyir abruptly stepped out of a copse of trees directly in front of them. The fairy-man’s sword was dripping black, his jerkin and gloved hands also spattered.
Gyir gestured toward the copse behind him. Vansen went to look, still unable to shake off a fear that the faceless creature might turn on them at any moment. Because he was looking back over his shoulder, trying to locate Gyir in the nighttime dark, he almost stepped on the first body. Hand trembling, he held the brand down close, trying to understand what he was seeing.
The body seemed all wrong, somehow—folded into angles normal bones did not allow. It had a long, bony head which stuck out before and behind, and hard, leathery skin which only made the inhuman shape more obvious. The dead creature’s arms were long and might have had an extra joint in them—it was hard to tell because of the darkness, but also because Gyir had made such a bloody mess of the thing. Still, it was the head that was most disturbing, especially the long, bony, beaklike snout, and although the dead creature’s forehead was nearly human, the deep-set eyes might have belonged to a lizard.
The clothes that it wore were disturbing, too. The fact that this monster wore anything at all, much less a full battle-rig, an oily leather jerkin under chain mail, was enough to make Vansen’s stomach squirm and a sour taste rise into the back of his mouth.
A second beak-faced corpse lay a few feet away, the bony head cut almost in half, the clawed, bloody hands still spread as if to ward off the deathblow.
“Perin’s hammer, what are these...things?” Vansen asked. “Were they after us?”
“Don’t know, but Gyir says they’re Longskulls,” Barrick said. “That’s one of the reasons he’s so angry. He’s still suffering from the wounds the Followers gave him, he says, or he would have had all three of them.”
“Longskulls,” wheezed Skurn. “And not ordinary roving Longskulls either, this lot. They belong to someone, they do —can tell it by their wearings.”
Gyir bent and turned the creature’s ugly head with his sword blade so that they could see a mark scorched onto its bony face—a brand, several overlapping, wedge-shaped marks like a scatter of thorns.
“Jikuyin,” Barrick said slowly. “I think that is how Gyir would say it.”
The raven gave a croak of dismay. “Jack Chain? Them do belong to Jack Chain?” He fluttered awkwardly up onto Vansen’s shoulder, almost overbalancing him. “We must run far and fast, Master. Far and fast!”
“The one you talked about?” Vansen looked from the silent Gyir to Barrick. “I thought we had left his territory behind!”
The prince did not answer for a moment. “Gyir says we will have to take turns sleeping and watching from now on,” he said at last. “And that we must keep our weapons close.”
The road was still overgrown, half-invisible most of the time beneath drifts of strange plants or the damage from roots and floods, but the trees were beginning to thin: ragged segments of gray sky appeared on the horizon, stretched between the trunks of trees like the world’s oldest, filthiest linens hung out to dry. Even the rain was lightening to a floating drizzle, but Barrick did not feel a corresponding relief.
What are we running from? he asked Gyir. Not those bony things?
Take care. The fairy reached out a pale hand, pointing at a spot just ahead where the way forward dissolved into tumbled stones and shrubbery. Barrick reined up and the weirdling horse named Dragonfly walked around the ruined section before resuming its trot. Gyir leaned forward over the horse’s long neck again, looking like the figurehead of a most peculiar ship.
What are we running from? Barrick asked again.
Death. Or worse. One of the Longskulls escaped. A wash of disgust moved underneath the fairy’s thought, as obvious as a strong odor.
But you killed two by yourself. Vansen is a soldier, and I can fight, too. Surely we don’t have anything to fear from the one that got away?
They do not hunt alone, or even in packs of three, sunlander. Gyir seemed to bite back a rage that, if freed, could not be captured again. They are cowardly. They like company.
Hunt?
In Jikuyin’s service they are slavers or harvesters. Either way, those three were out hunting. They were scouts for a larger troop—I know it as I know that the White Root is in the sky overhead. This last came to Barrick as no more than the idea of a bright light shining through fog. The more disturbed Gyir became, the less work he put into choosing concepts Barrick could easily understand. Would you rather be enslaved or eaten? It is not a good choice, is it?
And who is Jikuyin? You keep talking about him, but I still don’t know!
The one the bird calls Jack Chain. He is a power, an old power, and now that Qul-na-Qar has lost so much of its...—again an idea Barrick could not understand, something that came to him as “glow” but also “language” and perhaps even “music,” an impossible amalgamation.
Clearly Jikuyin is confident of his strength, if he dares to spread his song so far into free territory.
Barrick understood almost none of this. His arm was hurting him fiercely—the wet weather in these lands had done him no good at all—and the rib he had injured in a fall still pained him too. But it was rare to get Gyir to speak at any length. He was reluctant to give up the chance.
What kind of power is he? Is he another king, like the blind one you the talk about?
No. He is an old power. He is one of the gods’ bastards, as I told you. We defeated most of them back in the Years of Blood, but some were too clever or too strong and hid away in deep places or high places. Jikuyin is one of those.
Some kind of god? And he’s hunting...for us? Barrick suddenly felt as if he might fall out of his saddle—a swooning, light-headedness that for several heartbeats turned the forest around him into a meaningless rush of green. When the rushing ended, Gyir’s arm was gripping his belt, holding him upright.
“I’m well, I’m well...” Barrick said out loud, then realized Vansen and the raven were staring at him. They were riding almost beside him when he had been certain they were a dozen or more lengths behind, as though he had lost a few moments of time during his spell of dizziness.
Shouldn’t we turn back, if this...creature, this Jack Chain, is searching for us?
Not searching for us, I think. He would not send mere Longskulls to capture one like me. There was arrogance and pride in the thought, but also regret. He could not know I have been...damaged.
Damaged?
Now the regret felt more like shame. Barrick did not need to see Gyir’s face (which obviously never revealed much anyway) to understand the fairy’s grim mood. The Followers, when they attacked me—I fell. They struck my head several times and then I hit it again on a stone. I am...blind.
The word didn’t seem right, somehow, but Barrick still reacted with astonishment. What do you mean, blind? You can see!