Villains by Necessity (22 page)

There they would be cornered by the very impasse they had created, and his Wilderkin allies would be avenged.

An elegant poetic justice, he felt.

One afternoon on the trail a raven was sighted, swooping over the camp. Fenwick called to it in the language all the animals of Trois shared, but it ignored him. He watched as it flapped about, circling over the camp, and his eyes narrowed. Such a bird he had seen before, through Mizzamir's crying font, in the company of the dark sorceress. A young member of the company took a lazy potshot at the bird with his longbow; the raven dodged easily and then retreated to just out of bowshot range, then soared away to the west. Fenwick turned to one of his officers standing nearby.

"We have been spotted," he declared. "The enemy will turn tail now. We ride double time, in pursuit!"

Horns sounded, and the Company, a gallant pattern of green and gold and flashing steel ringing through the trees, rode to the hunt.

And thus it was, that as the Verdant Company, men, women, horses and hounds, slept peacefully beneath a sky full of stars in a glen near the rushing cold Silverwend River, a company of six dark shadows quickly but carefully splashed their way upstream through the shallows.

A young warrior in service to the company had awakened to a call of nature and ambled to the riverside to attend to it. As he stood in the idle preoccupation that accompanies such moments, his sleepy eyes saw large shapes moving up the river, the outlines of people on horseback clear in the moonlight. An exclamation came from them.

As he stumbled back, quickly trying to tie up his codpiece and grab his signaling horn at the same time, one of the riders detached itself and came charging toward him.

He turned to run, but the figure exploded into two shadows, the horse racing past him as the rider pounced on him with predatory silence, striking and pinning his arms back in a powerful grip while the other hand threw a gag around his mouth. The attack was so sudden he barely had time to breathe two breaths of forest air before his mouth and nostrils were filled with the reek of old sock.

"Good work, assassin," a cold female voice said, as the other figures came riding up. One detached itself from the others and caught the loose horse by the reins. In the moonlight, the warrior's eyes widened in surprise. The very villains they had been hunting had hunted him!

"A guard or a spy? Doesn't matter," said another female voice, with a faint accent. The warrior was too young to have been present at the great battle against the Nathauan, but still the voice chilled him, even as much as when it continued, "Kill him, dump him in the river, and let's be off." 

"You want him dead, you do it," retorted a voice by his ear. "I'm already hired."

"No! Don't kill him!" exclaimed a trembling tenor voice.

"The minstrel is right," said the first cold voice. "He may be useful. And I am sure his commander would know if he went missing. He can provide us with infor mation, if nothing else."

"Well enough," said a new voice, as a small shape dis mounted and bounded up to him. He felt a dagger prick his ribs, and the voice hissed in his ear, "Talk! Where's yer commander, where are you headed, where are yon guards, how much money are you carrying and do you have any of those little cheesy oatcakes in yer food sup plies? Och," the figure added, in a different tone, "and did you know as your codpiece are open?"

"He can't talk, Arcie, I've got him gagged," the voice by his ear said. The warrior tried to struggle, but his in visible captor's grip was like iron. "You could at least do something useful like get me some rope."

"We can't trust him for information," said the ac cented voice. "These bastard Verdants are totally loyal.

He'll cry for help as soon as you take your sock out of his mouth."

"It is not necessary that he speak," said the cold female voice. He saw a robed figure carrying a staff dismount and approach. The largest mounted figure stood nearby, eerily silent. A soft light flared, like a cluster of glow worms, in the approaching figure's hand as it kneeled by him. The light illuminated a female face, smooth and young and fair, framed by long hair. But it was the eyes that caught and held his gaze, eyes of pure emerald, deep and pure and ancient as the eldest forest...

The warrior felt his thoughts swimming in a sea of green, as a strange wind ruffled through his memories like autumn leaves, light and unstoppable. The voice, low and strong as oak roots, drifted through his mind. You will not remember. You came to the river, slipped on a stone, and bumped your head. But you are uninjured, and you will return to your Company to continue as you were.

And then he was falling, drifting away on a sea of green...

"Let him go," Kaylana commanded, and Sam let the limp warrior slip to the mossy ground. Arcie looked at Kaylana with respect. The Druid was rubbing the bridge of her nose and wincing as if in pain.

"By Baris and Bella!" exclaimed the Barigan. "I dinna know you could do that."

"It is not something I like to do," she retorted. "The minds of men are complex and strong, and it is difficult.

We must leave now. He will wake in a few minutes. When we are clear of this place I will tell you what I have learned."

They quickly remounted and splashed up the river at a brisk trot, the sounds of their movement concealed by the roaring of the river.

"So them will have run right past us?" exclaimed Arcie, when Kaylana had explained what she had read in the young Verdant's mind. "Spiffywell!"

"Saves us a lot of trouble, anyway," agreed Sam.

"And the path to Glinabar should be clear," said Valerie.

"Why are we going there anyway?" put in Robin, still trying to do his duty to the great Mizzamir.

"Don't concern yourself with it, centaur," said Valerie.

"Though I admit it would have been nice to go ashore and find that blasted Fenwick and murder him horribly, at least this way we are making good time and staying out of his way."

"At least until he figures us out and turns around,"

Sam put in gloomily. "And when he finds out what we've done..." "... He's going to be very put out," finished Arcie, sobering.

But they traveled uneventfully, and at last they crested a hill and saw below them a vast valley filled with thick woods: the Glina Forest, lusher and deeper and darker and greener than any they had yet seen. Far in the distance, nestled like a pile of jewels in the center of this was the twinkling of the lights of a city, the starlike streetlamps and shining windows of Glinabar, the city that lived in harmony with the forest and its ancient magics.

"We must be extremely cautious," warned Kaylana, as they started down to the woods. "The forces of good are afoot and likely no more so than here."

"Aye, it do have that sort of a look about it," commented Arcie. "But it's just about dawn now ... We should camp soon."

Sam looked around. "The ground here's pretty rough ..." Indeed it was, ragged with rocks and gravel that had fallen from the walls of the hills and rolled onto the sparse rabbit-chewed grass.

"And if Fenwick has discovered our move, he will have sent word back to Glinabar," added Valerie. "It will be safer, I think, if we camp in the shelter of the trees. You three," she indicated Sam, Arcie, and Robin, "make yourselves useful and hunt something." Nightshade croaked mockingly at them.

"I'm a sneakthief, not a woodsman, dammit," Arcie muttered under his breath. Sam looked resigned and took out a throwing knife.

"Fine. Kaylana and Valerie and Blackmail go set up camp, we'll catch up with you."

The party split in half, one half remaining on the shorn slopes while the other vanished into the trees. Robin soon proved himself useless as a rabbit-hunter, his hooves startling the animals down into their holes. When one of them, flushed out by Arcie, bolted straight toward his legs, he shied and stomped at it, missing completely and sending it shooting down another hole. Arcie, his hands smeared with dirt, looked up at the centaur in disgust.

"Thought you said you could fight," he scoffed. "You canna even stomp a bunny rabbit."

"I can fight!" insisted Robin. "I trained under Mercala the Mercenary himself."

"Trained! How many battles have ye been in? How many times have ye had to fight for yer life? How many times have ye killed anything larger than a horsefly?" 

"He's never killed anything," commented Sam, as he examined a rabbit he'd caught neatly and dispatched with a snap. "Obviously."

"All right, so I've not much experience in the field," snapped Robin defensively. "But killing isn't everything to me. How many people have you killed, assassin?" asked the centaur, his pale cheeks flushed, his ears laid back in nervousness.

"About a dozen," answered Sam shortly. "Permanents, anyway."

"Permanents?" inquired the centaur.

"Aye, see," broke in Arcie, "You know as powerful healers can bring the dead back to life ... yet only if the body's fairly intact. You want someone dead and stayin' I so, you must needs decapitate 'em, or burn the body, or sometimes cut out the heart, I've heard..."

"That's messy, though," muttered Sam.

"Assassinating someone that way's a 'permanent."

Baris only knows how many he's killed in other ways ...

Speaking of which," Arcie said, "I wonder whatever happened to Mizzamir?" Robin almost dropped the rabbit, but Arcie didn't notice.

"I'm working on it, you deposit-stealing feeb," retorted Sam. "Give it back, by the way."

"Here, I paid ye. It's not my fault if ye can't look after yer money."

"Be that way for now, but next time I need to buy something, I'll get it from you if I have to turn you upside down and shake it out of you."

"Hrmph. Such a rude attitude to yer employer. Last time I hire you," Arcie grumped.

"And last time I take an assignment from you, welsher," Sam retorted.

He lunged suddenly, and there was a soft crunching sound. Robin paled slightly. "Got another one, Arcie. I think this is enough. Let's go find the others," Sam said.

He looked over at Robin, who tried to smile. "You're looking a little woozy there, minstrel," Sam commented, handing him the rabbit. They found the rest of their party without difficulty, and after a tough but filling meal they rested on the outskirts of the ancient wood and pondered their next move.

"Well, Glina is certainly 'magic's heart,' and Trois is the southernmost of the Six. We figured that out before.

Does 'oldest wood' refer to Glina too?" Sam asked.

"I rather think it is more specific than that," answered Kaylana. "And I think I know what it means. In the memories of the young man you captured on the riverbank was a prominent vision of an important time in his life, his recent initiation into the Verdant Company. This ceremony took place in the woods, before a huge tree like none I have ever seen. Its bark was rust-colored and shaggy, and yet its leaves were like those of a conifer. It was so tall it seemed as though it could not exist, and wide enough at the base that five horses could have ridden through it. It must surely be the oldest tree in the woods, if not the world."

"Sounds like it would be important enough to merit the attention of gods," agreed Arcie. Kaylana nodded.

"From what I learned from that Verdant, it is where the Elven King who once ruled Trois gave the Crown of Oak to the Hero Fen-Alaran, charging that he and his descendants should rule the land forever, when the Elves had vanished from the world. It is a place of great importance.

The Elves named the tree the Fa'halee."

"That translates roughly into 'blood guardsman,'"

Valerie commented.

Robin listened intently. He wondered what they were talking about. Were the villains planning to cut down the tree? It would be a terrible act, but such things were not beyond these people. But why?

He was still wondering when he fell asleep, the others slumbering peacefully around him, except for the dark and silent knight, who kept watch, his hand resting on his great black sword.

About nine o'clock that evening, they wandered through the forest searching for the Fa'halee. The forest seemed oddly peaceful at night, Sam noticed. There were the occasional faint noises of animals, but the alert, intense goodness of the day was dispelled in the cool of night, as many of the noble creatures of the wood settled down to slumber. Fireflies startled the group at first, but the insects did nothing more than contribute to the unearthly beauty of the night forest. Tiny moths glimmered momentarily in the light of the fireflies, or stopped to land upon the dimly luminescent fungi that sprang in fairy shapes from fallen log and mosscover. The ferns whispered amongst themselves 'as the party's mounts walked past, and Arcie thought more than once he spotted strange tiny faces watching him from the cover of leaf or tree hollow. Overhead, the leaves riffled in the night breeze, making the too-bright stars flash and the moonlight dance in streaks through the branches and splash in rippling puddles across the forest floor.

As they moved through the thickest part of the woods, ducking to avoid low, moss-covered branches and easing their mounts around tangles of bramble, they entered a tiny clearing in which there appeared at first to be both fireflies and large toadstools growing in abundance. They were in the midst of them before they suddenly realized that the glowing points of light were not fireflies, but lights shining from tiny windows cut into the sides of the milking-stool-sized mushrooms. Little crooked chimneys emerged from the red and white tops of the strange fungus, and Arcie shivered with inexplicable emotion when he saw that in some of the tiny windows were hung tidy spotted curtains. The others looked about in surprise, stopping their horses to avoid crushing any of the tiny houses.

"Oh, no ..." groaned Sam in dread as he looked about him. "I don't like this... let's get out-"

"Eeeek!" squealed a little voice by Damazcus's hooves. "Humans!"

His horse snorted and stepped back in dismay ... and Kaylana winced as its hind hoof tore a large hunk out of a mushroom house with a crunkling sound, like someone biting into a hollow watermelon.