The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (23 page)

He was so drained that he could barely float, let alone swim. The air was full of oaths and curses as more arcs of the sinister green cut through the whipping winds to find their targets. Alan had the impression of fierce
conflict close to the bank—then an armored figure plunged into the water not twenty feet away from him.

“Blasphemer’s brat!” He heard the hate-filled growl. “The Master would relish your impious heart.”

Alan searched for a small reserve of strength. Still clinging to Mo, he attempted to get her away from the bank into deeper water. But within moments an armored fist gripped his hair. A brutal strength was plunging him back under the surface. Gasping to rise up from under the water, Alan saw the soldier’s other hand reach to his submerged waist and extract a dagger. Alan’s head was dragged clear of the surface—he reeled from the blow of the dagger’s pommel. But even as he struggled to fight unconsciousness, the soldier’s own head parted company with his body and fell, trailing blood, spinning and dancing into the current before Alan’s failing vision.

Struggling to find his legs, Alan’s hand never relinquished his hold on Mo. Bloodied, exhausted, his head still reeling from the blow of the dagger’s pommel, he lifted her face once more above the surface.

They were tumbling over a millrace of smaller boulders, descending through the jarring impacts into a white-frothed basin. His body was numb. For a moment or two, he thought he was suffocating again, his face below the deluge. Then, suddenly, the chaos was over. The water, beyond the cauldron of mist and spume, was fast-running, but there were no longer any rocks.

He felt the weight of his burden increase but then realized that his feet were touching the bottom of the river. He willed his exhausted legs to stagger toward the bank, though his numbed feet could barely register the hard surface beneath him.

Shoving Mo out of the water onto a gravelly shelf by the river’s edge, he was too weary to climb out himself. He remained submerged up to chest level, holding on to the shelf, which sloped gently up to the forest floor. His ears were filled by the sounds of continuing attack. His vision caught the flickering green light of the Storm Wolves’ weaponry. In moments chain-mailed arms grabbed hold of him and he was dragged out of the water and onto the sloping shingle. A sharp crack at the back of his head was followed by darkness.

Captured

When Alan recovered consciousness, Mo was gone. The Storm Wolves must have dragged her away. Breathless and bewildered, he was aware of hoarse shouts and curses from nearby.

Those guttural commands, accompanied by jabs of weapons and kicks, were coming from faces hidden behind fur-covered masks that made the Storm Wolves seem more animal than human. Their helmets were constructed of a metal alloy that resembled matte steel. Black bearskin coats covered their trunks and limbs over chainmail bodices of the same black alloy. Their black-booted feet were also fur-wrapped and their hands were protected by leathery mittens that seemed like extensions of the fur tunic, designed for combat in the extreme cold.

Rescuing Mo had exhausted him so he couldn’t resist them as they dragged him up the bank of gravel. At the top, they beat him again until he was almost unconscious. As he fell onto his hands and knees, he caught their derogatory reference to him, “beardless cur.”

A single thought remained, and that was Mo. Where was she? Where had they taken her?

A group of Storm Wolves came running back out of the trees. They carried two sinewy poles covered by bark. Ripping off his Olhyiu coat and boots, they made a cross by tying together the springy poles at their centers and bending each pole into a bow, then lashed his wrists and ankles to their extremities with leather thongs. The effect was to stretch all four of his limbs on a rack, the tension in the bowed poles tearing at every joint in his body. A gag of filthy leather was rammed between his teeth before they threw him, face upward, onto the trampled snow and shingle.

A huge soldier—the legionary rank of a centurion entered Alan’s mind—leaned over him to test his bonds. The fur-mittened hands also carried sharp metal spikes, sharpened to claws at the finger tips, so the probing left him scratched and bleeding. The pain in his joints was agonizing. As minutes passed, the pain grew steadily worse. It made it almost impossible for Alan to think. Yet he had to try to think clearly. He had to focus his mind on the fact that some kind of battle was taking place nearby. Who was fighting the Storm Wolves? Had the Olhyiu stopped and come out onto the banks to fight? If
they had, they would surely be beaten in hand-to-hand fighting with these professional killers. And what then would happen to Kate?

Alan couldn’t bear to think of them harming Kate.

If he could just focus on that, on the sounds of battle; if he could sense through the triangle in his brow what was happening and where.

Fight against it! Use the pain!

He heard the calm contralto voice again in his head—surely some kind of communication, mind-to-mind. But who was attempting to communicate with him? Alan concentrated on his tormented joints, accepting the agony, bringing it into focus in his mind.

Then, through the curtain of his pain, came the memory of that soldier’s head falling into the water. A sword had done that. But the Olhyiu had no swords. Who could it be that was wielding that sword? Whoever it was, he must be part of some bigger group of fighters, an army of a different kind, and that army was fighting the Storm Wolves in this battle that raged around him.

He heard the sounds of heavy feet approaching, then six or seven Storm Wolves burst out of the undergrowth to join the group holding him prisoner. One was carrying a body over one of his shoulders, and now he cast it down like a sack of firewood onto the trampled snow next to him. Alan struggled to see who his fellow prisoner might be, hoping it was Mo.

“Snakoil Kawkaw!” he hissed, inside his gag.

It was with difficulty that he recognized the Olhyiu traitor. Kawkaw’s weasel-thin face was bloodied and swollen. His gray-furred neck was encircled by a leather strap that was tethered to his shackled feet so it arched his body backward. Alan assumed that Kawkaw’s overlords had punished him for leading them into the trap on the ice-bound lake. Even now, the guard who had thrown Kawkaw onto the frozen ground gave his body a bone-crunching kick. Alan heard the slobbering sound that came from the traitor’s split lips.

“Kawkaw!” he hissed again, trying to force some sort of communication through the triangle.

The shock of hearing his name caused the figure to stop moaning. He twisted his neck in Alan’s direction, his eyes wildly staring.

“Huloima!” Even in his mind the evil man snarled. “How is it I hear you in my mind? Are you a demon?”

Alan shook his head, and his eyes turned upward, toward his brow, where the triangle must be visibly pulsating, judging from the throbbing he felt.

Kawkaw jerked his eyes to the triangle. A cough sounded deep in his throat, and his tongue forced a gobbet of blood from his lips. His senses, from what Alan could make of them through the triangle, were overwhelmed with fear—yet still he was full of the spite and cunning of old. As if fallen back upon the very dregs of his soul, hatred had become an inspiration for this depraved creature. And in the traitor’s mind Alan confirmed the fate that lay in store for them both.

They were to be ritually sacrificed.

Torture and death was the way of life in the brutal existence of these legionaries. Cruelty was their pleasure, the reward they coveted for their work of oppression and killing.

The centurion had returned. Kawkaw knocked his foot against Alan to make him aware of something, though he couldn’t read what it was on that face, contorted as it was with pain.

He spoke to Kawkaw through the triangle, “What is it? What are you trying to say?”

“I am accursed,” he wheedled. “A renegade from my own kind.”

“Through your own greed and betrayal!”

“So it may be. Yet I spit upon it!” That ravaged face twisted into a snarl again as he twisted around his constrained neck, so he was squinting at Alan from the corners of his eyes. “Siam, the stupid! Who could make such a man leader in place of me? I had the guile of a true leader. As to that shambling hogsturd, Lapeep! What shaman would shackle the soul of his people into such servility and bondage? If I betrayed them, it was out of contempt because they had betrayed themselves. What was left for me but to gather the crumbs before even they were taken from them?”

One of the guards noticed the looks they were exchanging and he ran at Alan and kicked him viciously in the ribs. The pain, when he was forced to breathe, was agony. It was several minutes before he could focus
his thoughts. He kept his head averted from Kawkaw as he attempted communication again.

“What are they waiting for?”

“The service of their god.” Kawkaw’s lips parted in a broken cackle.

Alan glimpsed horrible scenes in the memories lodged in Kawkaw’s mind. The traitor had seen the Storm Wolves at play.

“What god?”

“The slime of offal that is their leader.”

This made Alan forget his caution of just moments before. “Help me, Kawkaw. Now you have a chance for redemption—atonement!”

Hatred contorted the face of the traitor, even the muscles of his neck. “I shit on your atonement. Those miserable rabble who thought themselves my people! Ah, but I relish their doom, as they forced my own upon me. Hah! These abominations of flesh-spoilers will exterminate them, just as they will see you and me off, and soon enough, this I promise you. But I don’t give a damn that they will kill me. I have had enough of suffering. But you—if you can but live—might be the tool of my vengeance on these abominations.”

Alan wasn’t so stupid he couldn’t see the calculating intelligence in Kawkaw’s mind. “But how? When I’m as doomed as you are!”

“Hearken to the battle! Who do you think attacks these excremental scum with such deadly earnest? Not those fish-gutters.”

Alan did his best to probe what Kawkaw was talking about. He had to force his mind to think against the agony in his limbs. “Who, then?”

“Those self-abasing witches!”

Witches?
In Kawkaw’s mind the derogatory term was accompanied by a vision of fierce-looking women. But there was no time to question him about this because the centurion was back. He stamped down hard on the crossed poles, causing a new agony to rack Alan’s spine. Then, abruptly, Alan found an unexpected respite. Kawkaw kicked out with all of the strength of both tethered feet at the crutch of their tormentor. In spite of the tightening this caused in the leather noose around his own throat, the Olhyiu was distracting attention from Alan to himself.

Kawkaw’s diversion saved Alan further torment. But he had no time to feel gratitude. He needed that moment to return to his previous thought.

The fierce women that Kawkaw called witches—who were they? In Kawkaw’s mind they clearly evoked fear. Could it have been one of their weapons that had decapitated the Storm Wolf while Alan was being forced under the icy water? The calm contralto voice that had made contact during his struggle in the river . . .

Swim!

That communication had been authoritative. Think, he urged himself through the distraction of his pain—
think!
It had not been a voice. Or, rather, the authority who spoke it had known how to communicate
mind-to-mind. Somebody who understood the triangle in his brow? Yet it had been a female voice, of that he was sure, a very deep and calm female voice, and definitely not the voice of Granny Dew. If this female warrior was still nearby, there was a chance he could communicate back with her. Alan didn’t waste any more time. The call burst from his tormented mind, cutting through the surrounding shadows of forest.

In that same moment a scream from Kawkaw brought him back to the reality of his position.

With horror he watched the centurion tighten the noose about Kawkaw’s throat as he writhed on the ground. The other legionaries gathered to enjoy the spectacle. Kawkaw’s face went purple and his nose began to bleed, yet still his eyes stared with a savage intensity in Alan’s direction, and his thoughts were still focused on him.

“Beware . . . Isscan.” His words came in gasps. “If you but live . . . beware the treachery of the flesh-spoilers.”

A Storm Wolf grabbed hold of Alan’s hair to lift his face and inspect the triangle. He read his mind: more curses, declaiming the sorcery of witches. Through a new storm of pain in his spine and limbs, Alan kept his concentration on what was happening to Kawkaw. Two soldiers had taken hold of the traitor’s upper arms, while two more brought up a leash attached to the Leloo that pulled their sleds. Seen from close quarters, the beasts were even more dreadful than Alan remembered, with jaws slavering at the prospect of blood.
The centurion shoved Kawkaw’s face into the snow to restore full consciousness. Urgently, Alan projected his thoughts, “I will tell your people of your final courage, if I survive to meet them again!”

“Spare me . . . such sentimental slobbering!”

“Tell me—what have they done with the girl?”

For a long moment, as they forced the spitting and snarling man into a kneeling posture, there was no reply in Kawkaw’s mind. But hatred so dominated the soul of the traitor that it revived in him the dregs of a final defiance. “Nature’s abominations . . . Ah, such pain!” Two of the legionaries had cut his bonds and were stretching out his arms to the right and left of him, forcing his head forward so it was no more than a foot above the frozen ground. The centurion braced his legs wide to steady himself as he wielded his sword.

Even then the traitor’s eyes squirmed Alan’s way, to snarl, “The girl . . . they fear her . . . dare not kill her . . . sorceress!”

Those were Kawkaw’s last conscious thoughts as the centurion brought the blade down, not upon his neck but upon his right arm, cleaving it midway between the elbow and the wrist. Arterial blood spurted out over the snow.

The legionaries threw back their heads and howled, in a ritual parody of the wolves their company was named after. Then the snarling beasts were unleashed, taking up the howling from their masters as they fought one another over the bloodied hand and lower arm.

Disgusted, Alan turned his attentions away and used what force was left in the triangle to probe the surrounding forest. Horrifying as the spectacle he had just witnessed appeared, his concern was not for the traitor, Kawkaw, but all the more for his friend Mo, who was also a prisoner of these same brutal soldiers. Along the river, northward, he picked up the cries and the fury of battle, but there was no impression of anybody responding to his earlier call for help. The respite was brief. Kawkaw’s stump of arm was bound with a thong, presumably just to keep him alive for more torture. Now it appeared to be Alan’s turn. The legionaries dragged him across the blood-spattered snow until he lay stretched out in the center of the small clearing. One of them pulled his head back to expose his neck. The circle of helmeted heads gathered about him, the soldiers’ eyes closed as they intoned some propitiation of their foul god and leader. The centurion lifted his sword, still scarlet with Kawkaw’s blood.

But the strike was averted as a new figure materialized from the shadows close by Alan.

The newcomer lifted his hand to stop the centurion. Alan squinted up at a small man with a pockmarked face under a black cowl, a face so emaciated it resembled a skull, and from which two sunken eyes now examined him. Alan could smell rank breath as the man bent close enough to inspect the triangle. Curiosity, and
even a little fear, contorted those emaciated features as from his side he slipped out a dagger with a steely-black blade. Alan sensed power emanating from the blade, which wasn’t straight like a normal dagger but rather twisted into a spiral, like the coil of a serpent, ending in a needle-sharp tip.

A ritual weapon.

From the common minds of the Storm Wolves he also sensed a fearful respect for the emaciated man: they called him “Preceptor.”

The Preceptor laid the dagger over the fingers of his outstretched hands, holding it out lovingly before him, then bringing it to his lips, so he could kiss its handle in prayer. Alan caught a glimpse of something silvery embossed into the handle. Then his heart faltered. It was a triple infinity. He recognized the sigil Mark had described on Grimstone’s dagger, the same sigil he had seen for himself on the helm of Feimhin’s sword entombed in Padraig’s woods—the blade on which the insects had burned. And now, as the Preceptor gripped the handle in both his hands and turned its point so it was touching the triangle in Alan’s brow, his heartbeat weakened to an irregular spidery pattering. It felt as if his life energy was leaking away from him through the triangle. The will of that cowled figure was so powerful that Alan felt closer to drowning in its darkness than he had felt in the turmoil of the river.