Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (94 page)

Colbey took a strangely eager posture while he
asserted this knowledge.  Marik puzzled at this change in the otherwise
despondent man.  He asked, “Surrill?  I know that name, I think.  It’s a
village off to the southeast, isn’t it?  Right near the shore of the Southern
Sea and the Rovasii both.”

“Yes.”  The reply was terse.  “I know these woods
well.  I worked as a hunter-guide.”  He refocused on Sloan.  “Moving keeps the
forest from noticing you, unless you are moving deeper in.  I can lead us to
the Stoneseams, and then north to…to rejoin our shieldmates.”

Kineta had wandered close enough to overhear.  She
demanded, “To the west?  The enemy soldiers were deploying in that direction,
and took all the land between us and the mountains while they chased us into
the trees, I’ll wager!”

Sloan kept silent.  Colbey glared at Kineta with his
cold gaze.  Marik ventured, “That’s a lot of land, sergeant.  There weren’t
that many black soldiers at the battle.”

“They were flowing around the outpost like water!  For
all we know there could have been thousands.  The units chasing us might have
only been forerunners.”  She shook her head curtly, addressing Sloan next.  “We
need to stay in the trees and head east for five or six miles.  That should put
us beyond the beast force, if it’s still waiting where we entered the trees,
and behind our patrol line.  We can work our way north, especially if we find
an army patrol to join.”

“A fine plan,” Colbey casually dismissed, “if the
eastern woods were not already swarming with these black soldiers and
beast-creatures both.”

“What?”  Kineta sounded shocked.  Sloan looked
interested.

“During my scouting I have located no less than five
enemy forces, numbering over a hundred men each.  I estimate the creatures at
fifty or so.  They have set camps to the north where we entered.  Our paths
north and east are blocked,” Colbey announced, “and we cannot risk angering the
forest by pushing deeper in to the south.  This only leaves west, to the
mountains.”

Kineta set to stripping Colbey’s skin off for not
telling her sooner, a losing prospect since Colbey cared not in the slightest
how angry the sergeant might be.  Sloan interrupted to ask Marik, “You can see
people, right?  And sense things?  Tell me about the forest.”

A good idea,
Marik thought, though Colbey grew angry.  No doubt the insinuation that his
report was untrustworthy touched a sensitive nerve in the scout.  Marik
remembered that from before against the Noliers.

He opened his magesight.  The three people before him
shifted from ordinary bodies to glowing auras, their features only visible
under their colored illumination as men standing in the moonlight.  Kineta
shone a yellowish-orange that fit Marik’s image of her.  She had a temper,
despite refusing to allow it to rule her thinking.

Sloan, as always, shone the mossy green that the
scout’s once had.  Colbey’s aura had worsened since the last time Marik studied
him.  The deep green had bled into a dull, earthy red like rust or blood
flaking off a days-old corpse…and the black nothingness had spread in a fungal
growth, large patches floating within his energies as they fluctuated.  He
wished he had remembered to ask Tollaf what that might mean!  Colbey appeared
healthy.  His attitude was somewhat changed, but everyone was under pressure
and he had scarcely possessed an outgoing personality in the first place.

Marik pushed away the unanswerable questions to
concentrate on Sloan’s order.  He spoke as he peered into the forest.  “I don’t
see anybody, only deer and other animals.”  After a moment spent drifting
through the trees at dizzying speeds, he flew south, toward the deeper forest. 
“I don’t see or sense anything unusual about the forest, either.  I’m not sure
I would.  I don’t know about haunts and the like.”

He reentered his physical shell in time to hear Kineta
question Colbey’s report.  The scout replied through grinding teeth, asserting,
“I found foreign soldiers and beast-creatures in the woods!  Do you question my
honesty?”

Marik leapt in before Kineta and Colbey could go for
each other’s throat.  “How close were they?  Three miles?  I can see up to
three miles away with my…my sight, and four if I really push my limits.”

Colbey straightened and relaxed, if only slightly.  “I
would say about five miles from this clearing.”  He glanced at Kineta.  “Five
miles…yes…that is why I did not tell you immediately.  There are not close
enough to be an immediate threat.”

“Even so—”

“Stop,” commanded Sloan.  He studied the men sitting
around the clearing.  “I do not bow to wives’ tales nor drunkards’ fantasies.  Still,
perhaps it is time we move from this place.  Colbey, you will scout ahead for
enemies or…other hazards.”

Kineta might have disagreed except Sloan shouted
loudly for all the men to hear.  The few who still remained motionless groaned,
then forced their aching bodies through the mud to the water.

With nothing else to do, Marik and Dietrik filled
their water skins and checked their packs.  Marik thought he felt Colbey’s eyes
locked on him the entire time.

*        *        *        *        *

:A few more days.  With these idiot outlanders
believing that enemies hound them, we can be in place in only a few more days.:

Yes
, Colbey
agreed.  That damnable mage had nearly upset the cart.  He had not known the
mage could see into the distance in such a fashion.  Fortunately the fool had
revealed his limitations before the sergeants could grow suspicious.  In the
Green Reaches, the mage had insisted that he needed to be very close in order
to see into the Nolier camp with his weirdling sight.  Another deceit, meant to
lull others into underestimating him.  Colbey added the lie to the mage’s
ledger, a heavy total that grew weightier with every selfish scheme the man
employed.  When the mage’s time of reparation came, he would pay in blood.

As long as these mercenary outlanders thought the
invaders had penetrated the forest, then they would move according to his
direction.  Colbey could almost wish the invaders actually had.  Black-armored
figures dashing through the trees would have the outlanders jumping to obey his
commands without question.

:The Dead Man will come to the forest, following
behind his men,:
Liam whispered. 
:He
has come to claim it at last, after failing before.:

Yes
.  When
he had slipped away during the battle at the pass, he’d crept through the
steeper reaches.  The Taur forces were shock-troops, used by the invaders to
break enemy defenses.  Behind them came the soldiers to finish whatever
fighting the Taurs left.  From the higher slopes, Colbey had witnessed the
gathering.

A sizable army, nearly three-thousand strong at a
loose estimate.  They had waited to flow through the pass from a mesa cradled
within the mountains.  The monsters they controlled warred below.  At the
massive force’s head traveled a colorful procession that
must
be this
army’s leader.  He certainly issued commands from his heavy mount with the
imperiousness of one who expected nothing short of total obedience.

Visible, but outside my reach!
  It had angered him terribly, a temple-throbbing
pulse, and it still angered him as he wraithed through the forest.  Far too
many others had surrounded the Dead Man.
  But he likes to ride at the head. 
He
enjoys
being close enough to see the destruction his orders wrought.

That would be his downfall.  Surely, he would come to
the Rovasii.  It was what he had returned for, after all.  Must be!  He lusted
after the power they protected, exactly as Councilor Orlan had surmised!

:But he will play it safely,:
Sylvia predicted. 
:He is not the blind fool. His
men will deploy to hold the surrounding land so he need not worry about an
outlander attack.  He will come to the forest while they protect his flanks.:

:And then we will kill him!:
Liam thundered. 
:Just when he thinks he has
arrived safely, he will find us waiting!:

Yes.
  Then
Colbey would deliver a suffering upon him equal to all that his people had
endured.  That man, who was the walking dead, would feel the pain of death not
once, but hundreds of times over while he relived each life ended!  The black
mist clouded the forest trees while Colbey walked, enveloping him in a cool,
comforting blanket. 
Strip his flesh off, grind his bones with my dagger
tip, burn his skin with glowing coals.  Then I’ll make a Healer restore him so
he may suffer it all over.  We’ll cut off his fingers a thin sliver at a time,
a hundred cuts for every knuckle, salting the blade between each slice, then—

:Against…:

Colbey paused. 
Against?
  He waited.  Liam made
no response.  Neither did Sylvia.  The voice did not repeat, nor, as he
listened over in his memory, had it truly sounded like either. 
Who are
you?  Councilor Orlan?  Councilor Farr?
  No reply to his silent inquiry. 
Celine? 
Alli?  Boran?

Still the voice kept quite.  It must have been a
villager he’d hardly known.  Close enough to make his voice heard.  Too weak to
speak for long.  Or, perhaps…the voice of all the villagers, combined into a
whole.

Reminding him to proceed as he had been taught.  Yes,
of course that was it.  They were telling him he must move
against
these
murderers before he could exact their revenge.  One step at a time.

After the battle, Colbey had meant to return to the
pass immediately with the mage.  When he’d arrived at the outpost, the mage had
already been asleep between tents.  Rest would probably increase his
effectiveness, so Colbey chose to leave the next morning instead.  The return,
as planned by the outpost captain, had made it unnecessary to fight the mage to
his purpose, and had seemed a blessing.

Perhaps it truly had been.  He had cursed long while
they were pursued…until they had come home.  Here.  To the Rovasii.  Where the
soul strength of his fellow villagers would surely be at their peek.  And, too,
with a full half-squad at his disposal, rather than the mage alone.  The Lady
Goddess Fate surely favored his quest.

One step at a time had brought him additional tools to
use against the murderers.  Tools enough to allow final justice at last.  His
people, beyond the veil, could see the outcome.  They urged him to at last
bring his wrath against their vial assassins.  He finally possessed the
strength he needed.

Noises foreign to the forest quickly caught his
attention.  The birds had long since grown silent from the outland fools
trampling through the trees a mile behind him.  This new silence came from the
north.

Colbey ghosted through the foliage with less noise
than the breeze.  He quickly discovered the intruders.  Twenty black-armored
soldiers fought their way free of a briar patch that two in their number had
fallen among.

Rage set his blood to boiling. 
How
dare
these butchers desecrate the Rovasii with their presence!  These men with
bloodstained hands deserve a slow death!

:No,:
Liam
ordered, halting Colbey when he stepped forward. 
:Their path will cross the
outlanders.  Let
them
see these men in the trees.  They will follow our
orders unfailingly then.:

But…
Colbey
wavered.  These killers loose in the forest!  Colbey would ensure that the Dead
Man would die before ever crossing into the Rovasii again.  These,
his
men, in the forest was an obscenity!

Liam made a sound argument, though.  The outlanders
would stop questioning his words and follow him west to the Stoneseams, then
north into what they thought would be safety.  In the pass, Colbey had seen the
Dead Man start south at a much slower pace, hugging the mountain range.  He
would likely continue to do so until he reached the Rovasii.  When Colbey
dropped the outland mercenaries atop the Dead Man’s retinue, they should draw
off enough of his private forces that Colbey could slip in close. 
Then, at
last, he will be mine.

But first they needed to learn not to doubt his word
when he warned them of danger.  Colbey climbed a tree to find a good perch near
where the two groups would meet.  He watched, and waited, and felt Sylvia’s
caressing fingers massaging away his tension.

*        *        *        *        *

Distracted is the man who juggles multiple thoughts at
once, and Marik blamed his not noticing the men who attacked their party on
this simple fact.  While he walked he worried about the forest, sifting his
memories for any stories about the Rovasii he might have forgotten, stories
containing important knowledge.  He also analyzed his battles to find any
method to inflict greater damage when they next encountered the hell-beasts,
and furthermore he pondered Colbey.  The scout troubled him, especially after
that morning’s brief meeting.

In Kingshome he had shrugged off the concern since
Colbey appeared in relative good heath.  His attitude might be harsher, but the
scout’s actions were basically the same.  Still, those black patches, and the
total shift in his aura’s color…how could those be positive signs?  Tollaf once
mentioned that auras never changed color unless the person, animal or plant
generating it had taken sick.