Oathkeeper (14 page)

“Why haven't we seen any other Root Guard?” Kholburran muttered.

“Looking for a rescue party?” Faulina asked. “They'll divide to reinforce the other Root Cities. If we run into anyone, it will be Vael creating a fire break, but Tran picked a spot so far from the others. . . .”

“They've counted us lost,” Malli said matter-of-factly.

“I haven't counted any of us as lost yet, Molls,” Seizal said with a harrumph.

“Good to know, Say-Say.” Malli laughed. “Remind me to hug you when I can do it without cracking in half.”

“Don't I get a hug, too?” Faulina asked. “I'm carrying the bulk of the weight.”

“If you can't handle the irkanth, don't prick its flank,” Seizal murmured.

“Irkanth?!” Malli balked. “Are you saying I'm as heavy as an irkanth?”

“Now that you mention it . . .” Faulina teased.

Kholburran tried to let the banter reassure him, but it didn't. Girl-type persons could joke around and act tough even at the brink of doom. Of some solace, however, was the knowledge that somewhere, a little farther back than Seizal, Mavyn was silently keeping pace up in the trees. None of the other Root Guard could summon up enough air spirit assistance to fly them all home, but Mavyn had no trouble convincing them to give her a little boost when she needed it. He snuck another peek back, but he couldn't spot her.

Maybe I could be doing the same thing if most of my survival training hadn't amounted to “Stay near the girl-type persons so they can keep you safe.”

He tamped down the thought with a grunt, and the procession came to a halt so abruptly Kholburran had to do a little jump-skip sideways to keep from bulling into Lara. Arri's left hand was on him next, touching his face. His shoulders.

What in all that was green and growing did she think she was doing?
Then it hit him.

“Get off.” Kholburran pushed her away. “I'm a little scorched and wilted, but it's nothing.”

“That grunt wasn't nothing,” Arri said. “Tell me wher—”

She was talking . . .

Then she wasn't . . .

And then she was falling, hands clutched at a crossbow bolt in her throat.

A scaled shadow, the first of the Zaur dropped out of the trees, it membranous flaps flaring wide, catching the air. Lara loosed two arrows from her heartbow. One struck home in its upper thigh. It growled, pain contracting the webbed flaps and dropping the Zaur to the forest floor in a crush of wet grass, Lara's second arrow arcing wide.

Lara never misses
, Kholburran thought, eyes shifting from Arri to Malli, then back to the trees for more Zaur.
There should be others. Why don't I see them?
Kholburran reached back, feeling the familiar smoothness of his warpick. Even as he unslung the weapon, he blinked in shock as Seizal and Faulina dropped Malli. Cushioned a little by the soft moss of the improvised stretcher, Malli still hissed in pain.

“What are you doing?” Kholburran shouted. Faulina drew her sword, darting to the Zaur Lara had wounded. It came up with a Skreel blade, but she thrust past its guard in one smooth motion, dropping into a wary defensive stance even as it flailed behind her in its death throes.

“Watch Molls,” Seizal shouted, heartbow now in her hand. “I'm sorry, Snapdragon, but if there are more than a handful of Zau—”

Evasive action cut off her words.

Seizal flipped to the left, narrowly avoiding a crossbow bolt. Halfway through her rotation, she let her heartbow drop. By the time her feet hit the ground her sword was drawn. Swatting one bolt out of the air (by miraculous accident from the look on her face) Seizal swung at a black-scaled Zaur that had lunged from behind the cover of a nearby tree.

Parry.

Riposte.

Appearing to overextend herself, Seizal rolled under the Zaur as it leapt to take advantage and bisected it cleanly.

Two more Gliders vaulted from the trees, both of them loosing bolts at Seizal. The projectiles stuck out of her chest at odd angles. They hadn't hit anything immediately vital, but then it was hard to kill a Vael without doing a certain amount of chopping. A headshot could do it or a shot to the central pump, but that was about it.
We tend to die lingering deaths.

Triggered by the thought, Kholburran remembered standing with his mother, Queen Kari, at the side of his father Warrune. Hashan had always been the healthier of the two trees, while Warrune tended toward areas that rotted for reasons none of the Arborists could determine or cure.

Kholburran thought Yavi knew more about it than either she or their mother, Queen Kari, would tell him. They'd hid it from him completely for as long they could, but it was hard not to notice something was wrong when occasionally a door came apart when you opened it or a piece of furniture collapsed under its own weight, the once hard wood turned soft.

His father was dying, had been for over a hundred years, with Arborists cutting the rot away and applying poultices, even trying antifungal agents. Whatever they could think of. Every so often he would convince them to let him help tend Warrune, and arborism being something apparently far more acceptable for a young Vael prince to study than warfare, he'd learned more than his mother or sister, even his Root Guards, suspected he did about healing beings and objects of living wood.

Which, in and of itself, was why he was so worried about Malli. It was possible for her to recover all on her own, but the opposite was, without her bonding with him, so much more likely. If they didn't start applying nutrients to her bark soon, given how her wound would have disrupted the natural flow of sap, her outer layers would begin to dry out and die. Once that happened, blight was bound to set in, and if not blight any number of other fungal infections could seize the opportunity and start to take over her air bladder. . . .

Treatable, yes, but for something like fungal infection, the healing ingredients required could be so hard to come by. Blue flower bloomed in veins of copper, but only where the air was dry and it couldn't dissolve away over time. Other types of treatment had to be ordered from the gnomes and imported from Rurnia.

What if she won't marry me and she needs something we can't get for her? What if—
“Fight, Prince,” Arri croaked as she pulled herself off of the ground. The bolt in her throat made it hard to talk, but she was up and moving to Faulina's defense.

“This isn't fair!” Kholburran shouted. Ashamed of himself for saying it even as the breath passed his dental ridges.

“Of course it isn't fair,” growled a voice from the smoke. “Fair is for the god of Hunter and Hunted, but we do not serve him.” Kholburran caught a brief glimpse of red scales and the gleam of bright eyes through the billowing gray, but they vanished in a swirl of soot and ash. “I serve His secret purpose. I serve one who is cloaked in shadow.”

Four more Zaur charged out of the smoke from the direction of the voice.

“I serve one who thrives in secret.”

Another four Zaur appeared from the trees to Kholburran's left.

“I serve one who shall rise once more.”

Four additional Zaur burst into view to Kholburran's right. Fanning out, Skreel blades flashing when they caught moonlight, nigh invisible in the dark of night otherwise, two of the four in each group headed for him, coming in low on all fours, tails leaving brief trails in the fallen leaves.

Their susurrant battle cry froze him.

“We have the advantage, noble Vael,” the voice called from the smoke. “Surrender. Let us take one of you prisoner and the rest may—”

“We can handle them,” Malli assured him, still prone.

“Yes,” Arri croaked, stepping over her, sword in hand.

The Zaur kept coming.

“You know how to do this.” Trying to keep her heartwood as still as possible, Malli drew the sword free of the sheath at her side, smoke from the approaching clouds stinging her eyes. “I didn't spend all that time training you just because you're pretty and fun to play with.”

Fun to play with? Really?
Whorls of amber spiraled open in the center of Kholburran's solid red eyes. Kholburran knew that he caused the rot. Had begun to suspect after the times he had to scrape invasive lichen from walls within the Root Tree or treat infection with a mixture of lye and blue flower. He may not have been able to see spirits like girl-type persons, but he could still tell. Warrune was tired of living and growing. Tired of all the little sproutlings running through him. He was ready to go. What Kholburran didn't understand was why.

“I'm not ready.” Everything narrowed down to Malli and him. Whether Arri could take care of herself or not didn't figure in to his equations. Two living beings had to leave this place and make it to the Twins. Everyone else could die if needed, because they were not Malli and were therefore expendable.

In his mind, the fear of the Zaur fell away. They were no longer enemies, merely impediments threatening his home, his love. Boy-type person or not, Kholburran could not allow such impediments. Cornered, he felt a rage he'd never before experienced. How dare they threaten Malli?!

“You take the ones on the left.” Bark thickened on Kholburran's forearms as he twisted to intercept the two Zaur headed in on his side. Some part of him tracked the others. Two Zaur each on him, Malli, and Arri.

Six.

Faulina and Seizal were dealing with two Gliders, with two more from the left and front peeling off to join in.

Six.

Two of the four on the right held back, readying their crossbows.

Fourteen total.

Just worry about the Zaur closest to you
, Kholburran thought.
Don't worry about—
Hildi's pinioned body prostrate in the kitchen at Tranduvallu appeared in his mind, but he blinked it away. Enough bolts or a bolt to the right place and—

“Gah!” he willed the image away. Layers of bark thickened into a layer of rough armor on the rest of his body, coarse and hard along the smooth areas, and thicker than normal—yet still softer and more malleable—formed at his joints.

War drums sounded, their percussive roar inside his head rather than without. He bared his teeth in a wolfish grin, dental thorns exposed. He caught the first Zaur with a downward two-handed swing of his warpick, arm jolted numb, hands hurting at the impact as the wicked point sank into the Zaur's scaly hide, finding bone and breaking it, the tip emerging from the slain Zaur's chest. A killing blow.

Triumph short-lived by the lack of movement when he pulled back on the warpick. Stuck.

Warm air kissed Kholburran's belly in a hot line opened by the blade in the Zaur's right forepaw. A second Skreel knife in his left paw slashed up, stopping short of Kholburran's groin with a clang as Malli's sword thrust out between his legs parrying the blow.

“Not that bit,” she joked, dental ridges gritted from the strain of the arm-fully-extended parry. “Takes too long to regrow.”

Kholburran used the momentary respite to elbow the Zaur in the muzzle and grab for one of its dead companion's discarded Skreel blades. His fingertips missed the weapon by a space no larger than a hummingbird's kiss. Resisting the urge to turn back and try again, Kholburran stayed fluid as he'd been trained in those private times with Malli, when she'd humored him with a lesson.
Never stay in one place unless it is to your advantage to be rooted there
, Malli repeated in his memory even as she muttered, “Good boy” in the now.

More blades bit into his bark as he charged the Zaur that had been on the left, catching one and sinking his thorns into its arm. He pulled back, dental ridges edged with blood. He caught up a Skreel blade as it fell from the Zaur's numbed claw, its forepaw and arm dropping limp. Killing the Zaur with its own blade, Kholburran turned on the other Zaur as it chopped at the back of his legs.

Pain! Kholburran dropped to one knee as the Zaur cut into the more pliant bark covering the joint.

*

<> General Tsan ordered. <>

<> Kuort tapped on the general's shoulder.

The simple touch set off a muscle spasm so strong, Tsan feared she would scream. Finding out that six little Weeds had escaped had come quickly. Realizing one of them would be a Root Tree had taken far too long. Sleepless nights, forging ahead of the fires had been bad enough, but there had been no time to talk to Brazz. Lurking in the smoke as much as possible had disguised the scent, but the moment they were in a tunnel for any length of time, any Zaur or Sri'Zaur who got a whiff of Tsan's scent would know the gender switch was nearly complete.

I should have grabbed a flask when I had the chance
, Tsan cursed inwardly.
Now it is all over but the molting.

At least when he . . . she . . . shed her skin the pain would stop.

<> Tsan tapped back.

<>

<> Tsan tapped. <>

But Kuort was scarcely paying attention to the vibrations of his message, staring instead at the patch of bright crimson where Tsan's ruddy male scales had begun to slough away. Their eyes met in silence, and Kuort wordlessly reached down into the forest floor, clawed up a mass of dirt, drooling saliva into his forepaw before smearing it over the revealing patch of scales.

“Yes, General,” Kuort hissed softly, spotting two more patches and obscuring them as well.

<> Gratitude in her heart, General Tsan mounted her deep walker, riding it clear of the smoke.
I knew there was a reason I didn't let Kuort's brothers eat him.