“See you at the top,” he declared, and began climbing the tower as if he were a squirrel going up a tree. His gloves gripped the rock face effortlessly, finding purchase even on the most vertical of surfaces. Using his booted feet for leverage and balance, he shimmied his way to the top—something close to a hundred feet—in a matter of minutes.
“Now what?” he called down to Khyber.
She shook her head in amusement. “Do you see any mountains?”
He took a moment to look around. “I don’t see much of anything but clouds and mist and the tips of these rock pillars. There’s a big body of water to our right—I can see bits and pieces of that.”
He stopped talking, continuing to look. The other members of the expedition waited expectantly. Khyber was already thinking of which direction they should take if no mountains appeared.
“Wait!” Railing called out suddenly. “I see them. A cluster of big, narrow peaks, off to our left. The mist was hiding them. A few miles off, over there.” He pointed.
The Ard Rhys took note. “Good work. You can come down now.”
Railing engaged in a controlled slide that brought him back to the ground. He took off the boots and gloves and started to stuff them back into his pack, then noticed the way Skint was eyeing them and handed them over. “Here. You take them. Redden and I have another pair.”
Skint accepted the grippers, nodded his thanks, and immediately began to examine them.
They set out again on a course for the mountains. Their march took them west and north along the fringes of the marsh over terrain sufficiently level that climbing hills was no longer required but dodging quicksand and sinkholes was. The mix of rock formations and heavy brush and trees continued to plague their progress, and Khyber was aware that the members of the expedition were again spreading out to find passage, getting farther away from one another. She called them in twice, but the problem persisted.
She was just about to call them in a third time when the party was attacked.
At first, Redden didn’t see their attackers but only heard them. Growls and snarls and something that approached screaming shattered the quiet, and then the creatures were charging the expedition from everywhere at once. The Druids, positioned on the four sides of the company, struck back, fire lancing from fingers and staffs and slamming into the attackers. They moved like dancers as they shifted their attacks from one creature to the next, never staying in one place for more than a few seconds. The fire was resilient and sharp-edged, and it both cut and shredded when it struck its targets. But the creatures attacking were too many, and the Druids could stop only a few. The rest got past them and went for those at the center of the group.
Redden, standing back-to-back with his brother once more, summoned the wishsong, singing the magic to life, modulating his voice to shape it, creating out of particles in the air hundreds of sharpened bits of metal that whizzed about like tiny hornets and cut at the attackers as they launched themselves at the pair, either stopping them altogether or causing them to veer away. Redden caught only brief glimpses of what they were up against—small, hunched over versions of Spider Gnomes covered in bristling hair. Hideous to look at, faces twisted and misshapen, they darted in and away again with terrifying ferocity, little more than swift and agile blurs possessed of teeth and claws.
Brief images of the struggle flashed through his mind as he fought to protect himself. He saw one of the Trolls stagger and fall, the creatures all over him, teeth buried in his thick hide. At the forefront of the advance, Khyber Elessedil and Garroneck fought to protect themselves, as well as Farshaun and the Speakman. Carrick went down, the little monsters tearing and ripping at his body. But blue fire exploded from the pile in a massive burst that threw the attackers off, and abruptly the Druid was on his feet again.
Then Redden caught sight of the girl Pleysia had brought with her, the one no one knew anything about. There was only just enough of her left to recognize: she had transformed into something else entirely. Grown suddenly larger and leaner, she ripped through the creatures that came at her like a huge moor cat, tearing them apart as they sought to bring her down. She flung them away with fingers suddenly become wicked claws, and her snarls were more dreadful than those of her attackers. The boy got only a quick look before he was back to fighting for his own life, but it was enough to tell him there was a great deal more to this girl than what had appeared on the surface.
Finally the creatures fell back, disappearing into the undergrowth as swiftly as they had come. The members of the company pulled themselves together, ripped and bloodied and exhausted. But everyone was still standing and ready to fight again, something that Redden was certain was going to be necessary.
The Ard Rhys pointed ahead. “There’s an escarpment at the lower end of those peaks!” She was breathing hard, gasping out her words. “If we make it that far and find a way up, they won’t be able to get at us so easily! Now run!”
The members of the company charged forward in a tangled knot, ignoring wounds and weariness, eyes fixed on their goal. It became visible in moments, a broad shelf stretching for several hundred yards. They saw, as well, a trail leading up. All they needed was five minutes.
They didn’t get it. The creatures came at them again, hordes of them, intent on trying to drag down their quarry from behind. Trailing as rearguard and closest to the pursuit, Seersha wheeled back and used her magic to throw up a wall of fire between themselves and their pursuers, igniting everything from stone to water to bare earth with crackling flames. But the creatures shifted their angle of attack and began coming at them from the flanks. A running battle ensued, terrible and vicious. Another of the Trolls went down and disappeared, then another. Javelins and clubs flew into their midst as the attackers tried to cripple the defenders. Screams and howls rose from all around, omnipresent and pervasive. So quick and elusive were their assailants that Redden found himself experiencing the strange sensation of fighting against things that could appear and disappear at will.
They had almost reached the base of the escarpment and the narrow trail that wound to its top when a club thrown from the left caught Railing just below the knee and sent him sprawling with a scream of pain. Redden was next to him at once, standing over him protectively, using the wishsong to whisk stones from the rocky ground in a whirlwind that sent the deadly missiles flying out in all directions to ward off the claws and teeth that would tear both his brother and himself apart. His attackers kept coming at them anyway, but he would not leave Railing. No matter what, he would not leave his brother.
Panicked and overwhelmed by superior numbers, he could not manage to stop them all. He fought back with everything he could muster, but his strength was beginning to fail him. Abruptly the creatures were on him, knocking him backward, flattening him against the earth.
It would have been the end of him if not for Crace Coram. The burly Dwarf Chieftain appeared out of nowhere, flinging the creatures aside, swings of his huge mace breaking heads and shattering bones in a furious counterattack. The voracious creatures scattered in the face of such fury, and for a second the entire assault collapsed. Without pausing, Coram scooped up Railing, threw him over his shoulder as if he weighed nothing, and charged after the others, with Redden close on his heels.
The members of the company scrambled up the winding pathway, hunching their shoulders as darts, javelins, and clubs flew all around them. Some of their attackers gave pursuit, daring to follow them up the pathway, heedless of the withering Druid Fire launched by Khyber Elessedil and Carrick from the escarpment. But when the last members of the company were safely off the trail and onto the heights, the creatures quickly turned back, skittering down the slope and disappearing into the brush and grasses.