Darkwalker on Moonshae - Douglas Niles [82]
And they understood.
BOOK III
XI
GAVIN
A BLACK TENTACLE SLITHERED toward Robyn, wrapping tightly around her calf, searing her skin with venomous suckers. Screaming, she tried to crawl away, but the tentacle dragged her along the stony ground.
Another grasping tendril reached around her waist, squeezing the breath from her lungs in a painful vise. The ground shifted and cracked, as a great fissure opened beside her. It seemed bottomless – within its bowels seethed an orange tumult, rumbling slowly.
She turned and grabbed at the ground, uprooting small plants as the tentacles dragged her toward the abyss. Suddenly, from the black smoke that seemed to swirl everywhere, a pair of white slender arms emerged. Even in that foul setting, the arms were wrapped in the whitest satin, with soft hands that promised comfort and safety.
But then the tentacles pulled, and the arms, and finally the hands, vanished into the black smoke.
With a low moan, Robyn awakened, drenched with perspiration. Sitting up, she held a hand to her mouth as if to stifle any further sounds, and looked around.
The camp was quiet. Tristan and Daryth slept quietly by the fire, while Pawldo snored under a mound of furs in the shadows. The fire had died so that only an occasionally deep red flicker showed among the coals.
Canthus, lying next to the prince, kicked and whimpered in his sleep, Twitching, he rolled almost into the coals.
Then Robyn saw Keren, standing alone in the shadow of a great rock. The bard faced her, the light of the half moon casting his face into eerie shadows.
Still, the shock and pain written across his features were plainly visible.
“What is it?” Robyn asked, getting to her feet. “I’m frightened.”
“I do not know. Never have I had such a nightmare! This is a portent of something dire, indeed.”
“I had a nightmare, too.” She shuddered. “It was the most frightening thing I could imagine!”
The bard put a comforting arm around Robyn, and they sat before the coals. She threw several small sticks into the embers, and they quickly crackled into light.
Suddenly Canthus leaped to his feet, growling nervously into the darkness. Stiff-legged, he walked about the camp, finally settling nervously behind Robyn and Keren, alertly studying the woods to their backs.
“He senses it, too,” Robyn said.
“I can only guess, but I think the goddess has been struck a cruel blow. Perhaps, even, the loss of one of her children.”
“Kamerynn! The unicorn!” For a moment, Robyn felt truly forlorn, as she imagined that magnificent creature killed.
“Perhaps, or the leviathan – there is no telling.”
“Look!” cried the woman, as her gaze crossed the sky.
Above them, a hundred streaks of light flashed briefly between the stars, and then blinked away. Still other flashes followed, thousands and thousands of tiny blinking lines in the sky, as if the moon herself wept.
Keren’s arm was warm around her shoulders, and Robyn drew some hope from her friend’s presence. The two of them remained thus through the long hours until morning.
*****
The men of the cantrev spread across the field before the Red King’s northmen, and Grunnarch smiled at the thought of the approaching combat.
“To the kill!” cried the king, and the fine of northmen surged forward. A deep bellow rumbled from the raiders, and the men of the Ffolk wavered.
Nonetheless, these farmers and craftsmen stood hard against the charge. Outnumbered four to one by the bearded, howling attackers, the cantrev men fought for time to allow their women and children to escape.
Grunnarch cut open the chest of a farmer, casually stepping on the dying man as he sought another victim. Around him, his men took a bloody toll of the Ffolk. While some of the raiders closed in to wipe out the last pockets of resisting fighters, Grunnarch led the bulk of his force into the cantrev.
Most of the inhabitants had left, but some still emerged from their cottages, terror-stricken,