The Gypsy Morph (42 page)

Still, Simralin and her companions cannot reach the main body. They cannot even determine where it is. The shouts and cries of battle seem to come from all sides, and the trees hide the truth of what is happening.

“Chenowyn!” she calls finally to one of her scouts. “Climb higher into the rocks and try to see what is happening!”

The other woman is gone at once, and Simralin moves the rest into a position where the rocks narrow down into a space barely wide enough for two abreast to pass, and she chooses to defend there. Their attackers may find a way around them, may even cut them off, but for now it is the best they can do. The once-men are still streaming out of the trees, seemingly without order or leadership, consumed by their efforts to find their quarry, scattering this way and that like wild things.

Then, before Chenowyn can report back, a large body of Elves bursts clear of the trees into open ground below, colliding with the once-men that have gotten around behind them. Other once-men erupt from the forests, a massive force of attackers. The Elves try to stand and fight them off, but there are too many. They give ground quickly, retreating toward the rocks and the high ground that Simralin and her companions occupy.

She makes a quick head count and doesn’t get past a hundred.

Where are the rest?

She doesn’t like to think about the answer. Instead, in an effort to make a difference, she takes her own small force down out of the rocks in a counterattack that catches the nearest of the once-men by surprise and opens a path for the beleaguered Elves. She sees the King then, trying to rally his soldiers. He is bloodied and disheveled, and he fights with short swords in both hands. The once-men recognize that he is the leader and try to get at him. But Home Guards surround the King protectively and fight them off. Sporadic gunfire erupts from the trees, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect on the combatants.

“Home Guard!” the big Tracker Eliasson roars from just below her, throwing back the creatures that come at him. “To me, Elven! To the rocks!”

The Elves hear and see, and in a tangled body they begin to fight their way toward him. Simralin pulls her diminished force—now down to eight—into the shelter of the rocks, where they use longbows on the once-men in an effort to help. But it makes scant difference. The forest below is alive with others, masses of them pouring out of the trees, too many to count or stand against.

Arissen Belloruus is still trying to pull back, to fight his way free with his Home Guards.

Hurry, Arissen,
Simralin pleads silently.

Chenowyn is back beside her, as white as a wraith at the new moon. “What have you seen?” Simralin demands of her.

“There are thousands more.” Chenowyn has to shout to make herself heard. “So many they fill the forest at every turn. We cannot hope to stop them all.”

“Stay here.” Simralin is already moving. “Keep the way open.”

She is down out of the rocks in seconds and charging across the open spaces toward the Elves below. Dozens have gone down, their numbers diminished as if by magic. The trees continue to bleed once-men, an endless stream of bodies exploding out of the shadows in a cacophony of screams and waves of wild-eyed madness. More Elves go down, fighting to the end, dying on their feet. The Home Guard surrounding the King is reduced to less than a dozen, separated from the main body of Elves fleeing for the path she has opened for them.

Get out, Arrisen,
she wants to scream at him, but knows she will not be heard.

An instant later a burst of automatic weapons fire erupts from the edge of the trees and a creature only vaguely human pushes out of the woods with a huge double-barreled killing machine that spits fire and death everywhere. Most of the Home Guards collapse. The King goes down as well, dropping to one knee, head lowered. He is spitting blood.

“Arissen!” She screams his name aloud.

The creature has raised its arms in triumph and is howling with glee when the first arrow pierces it through its right eye and knocks it backward a step. It tears the arrow free, heedless of the pain, but a second arrow spits its throat and a third buries itself deep in the hairy chest. Eliasson is fitting another arrow to his bow when the creature staggers and sinks to the earth and does not move again.

Simralin is fighting to reach the King, but she is already too late. The last of the Home Guards are cut down, and the once-men fall on Arissen Belloruus like wolves. The King disappears beneath the swarm and does not reappear.

There is nothing Simralin can do. She backs away, calling the rest of the Elves to her, those she can still see amid the carnage, those who are still standing. Maybe half are able to reach her, breaking clear of their attackers. The rest are lost in seconds, buried in the monstrous swarm of bodies that converge on them and bear them to the earth.

She retreats into the rocks with those who remain alive, and they turn their weapons on their attackers. There are so many of them by now that it is virtually impossible not to hit something, and dozens collapse as they surge toward the defenders.

“What do we do?” Chenowyn shouts in her ear.

Indeed. What is there to do? The King is dead and with him almost the whole of his command. Kirisin is safely away, and there is nothing left for the Elves who remain but to fight to save their own lives. A reasonable choice, but flight seems the better option.

“Fall back!” she shouts.

She leads them up into the rocks, through the narrow defiles and rugged terrain, knowing the best ways to go to keep the enemy from massing in pursuit. They may come after the Elves—indeed, they almost certainly will—but they will have to do it in ones and twos. That gives the Elves a chance. There are fewer than fifty of them now, and once they manage to put some distance between themselves and their pursuers, they can go to ground, can find places to hide where they will never be found.

But first they must get clear of the fighting.

For a time, it appears they will. The passage they follow is riddled with dead ends and side trails that go back the way they have come, and if you didn’t know the way, as she did, you would become quickly lost. Their pursuit falls away and then disappears entirely. They continue to climb into the mountains, and she knows that when they reach the high desert beyond, they will be able to use the ravines and ridgelines to hide themselves as they make their way eastward. They will not turn south until they are safely clear of the roads that Kirisin and Logan will have taken. Those roads are too easily discovered, and they would be run down before they reached Redonnelin Deep. Better to fade into the barren landscape beyond, where trails are much harder to find and tracks may be more easily disguised.

“We’ve lost them,” Chenowyn declares with a grin after they have crested the mountains and can see the eastern slopes and the desert beyond.

Indeed, they have. But the demons that control the army have thought ahead to this and sent winged creatures to track them. The creatures swoop down in attack not a mile beyond the rim, when they are still descending the exposed rocky slopes of the higher elevations. They rip and tear at the Elves, who try in vain to protect themselves. The winged creatures are swift and their strikes precise. Several of the Elves are wounded and one is killed before their attackers fly back the way they have come.

Simralin knows what will happen next, and there is no defense against it if they stay together.

“We must separate into smaller groups,” she tells them. “No more than half a dozen each. Then we must fan out and go to ground. The winged things will guide the once-men to where we are, if we give them the chance. We do better by separating. Stay hidden until nightfall, then make your way north to the river. Track it east until you find the camp or signs of its passage. Track it from there to those who will be helping Kirisin.”

They embrace, all of them, before setting out. They do not know which of them will survive this. Some will not. Some will never be seen again.

Eliasson takes one group and is gone. Chenowyn chooses to stay with Simralin. She is not a leader and has no desire to start learning to be one now. With another three in tow, they head directly east into the badlands of the high desert, working their way quickly across a long stretch of flats to where fissures and upheavals have changed the terrain into a jumble of ridges and ravines. They travel through midday, and then Simralin takes them several miles down a dry wash strewn with small rocks. Before the wash ends, they climb out again and turn down a slide that leads to a carapace; here they find an overhang and take shelter.

They stay all night, peering into the darkness, listening to the silence. At one point, they hear screams, but the screams come from a long way off and it is impossible to determine their direction. They take turns standing watch. They wait to be discovered.

When morning dawns, though, they are still safe. Simralin goes out for a quick look and comes back right away. Smoke rises from several places west, closer to the mountains. The smell is of burning flesh. The winged creatures patrol the skies in ones and twos, visible in all directions, even east. They must stay where they are until it is dark again.

They pass the day in misery. The sun beats down on the empty terrain and turns it into a furnace. The air is so stiflingly hot and dust-filled that they choke on it when they breathe. They have almost nothing to eat or drink, but they share what they have. Simralin knows where to find water farther north, but it is a long journey. She knows, as well, where they can find another of the hot-air balloons the Trackers have stashed across the Cintra and north. But the balloon is slow and cumbersome, and it is no match for the winged creatures if they spy it.

She tells the others she has made a decision. When night comes, they must leave their hiding place. If they stay, they risk discovery. Hiding is no longer an option. The once-men are actively hunting them, using the flying creatures to ferret them out. Worse, they have almost no food or water left, and the circle of predators is tightening. They cannot risk staying where they are. Their choice is simple: they can try to reach water, or they can try to reach the hot-air balloon.

Her companions choose the balloon. Anything that will get them away from the Cintra quickly.

When it grows dark, she leads the others out from their hiding place and onto the flats. The sky is clear and filled with stars, but the moon hangs low and distant against the horizon, reduced to a tiny sliver. The balloon is perhaps three days off, if they travel steadily. She chooses a route that takes them east through the high desert and away from the larger body of their hunters. The flying creatures, if they sight them, will not be able to bring the once-men right away. But she knows, as well, that any sighting is probably the end of them. Once seen, they can be tracked from the air until help arrives, no matter how long it takes.

They travel single-file through the night. She stops them frequently to check for the flying creatures, but sees no sign of them. In the darkened sky, nothing moves. On the landscape about them, nothing moves. They are alone with their thoughts and one another.

Still, she is not comfortable that they are safely clear.

And she wonders about their companions, the ones from whom they separated, gone other ways, to other places.

T
HEY FIND NEW SHELTER
as the dawn nears and go to ground for another day. They have nothing to eat or drink. The heat is unbearable, and their thirst acute. They sit waiting for the day to pass, miserable and despairing. The journey to reach the balloon will take another two days, and they are already weak and exhausted. It is questionable if they will be able to finish the trek.

At midday, Simralin goes out to look around. The sky is clear, the land empty of life. There is no sign of the winged hunters. She settles on a fresh course of action. This is country she knows. She decides to leave the others long enough to hunt for water. If she is lucky, she will come upon food, as well. The greatest danger lies in not being able to find her way back. But she is a skilled Tracker, and she is certain she will be able to do so.

“Stay hidden through the day,” she tells them. “I will be back before dark with whatever I can find.”

She sets out determined not to return without at least finding water for them to drink. She slogs through the heat alone, a solitary figure in an unchanging landscape. She scans land and sky frequently for signs of pursuit, but sees nothing. She has a compass to chart her passage, and she measures the distances between changes of course. It is an endless, tiresome process, but she is careful to keep track of everything, knowing that if she gets lost, she will never find her way back to them.

She finds the water she seeks around midafternoon in a deep ravine walled away by steep banks formed of bedrock that feels entirely out of place with the desert. But the water is good, and she fills the containers she carries after drinking her fill, and starts back the way she has come.

It takes her the rest of the day to make the return. It is dusk by the time she arrives back, the shadows deep and layered. She has hurried, but she needn’t have. Her companions are dead. They lie scattered about the space in which they were hiding, torn apart by whatever found them. The tracks of something huge are visible in a patch of soft earth. Neither demon nor once-men made these tracks. This is something else entirely, a desert hunter come in search of food, in all probability a mutant beast born of the changes wrought by humans. Pieces of the Elves killed are missing; parts of them have been eaten.

Almost nothing of Chenowyn’s body remains. It appears from the marks on the rocks that the larger part of it was dragged away.