Darkwalker on Moonshae - Douglas Niles [98]
“It’ll be a few days before I want to play my harp again,” he admitted.
“Thank you,” said Robyn as the bard finally dismounted. She stepped to his side and kissed him on the cheek. “Without your harp, I would now be a permanent resident of Synnoria.”
“I agree,” said Daryth, while Pawldo nodded. Gavin grunted, noncommittally, and turned to look back, toward Synnoria.
“Let’s camp here,” suggested Brigit. “It’s all downhill to Corwell. With luck, we’ll make it in two more days.”
The captain of the sisters turned to Keren. “That,” she said with a rare smile, “was a very impressive performance.”
Exhausted, the prince collapsed into his bedroll, delighted, for a change, to leave their safety to someone else. He quickly fell into a deep sleep, and dreamed of trees that sang a vulgar song about a tavern wench.
*****
The army camp sprawled along the shore of a formerly clear mountain lake. The green fields along the lake had been churned into a sea of mud by the tread of thousands of booted feet. The waters had turned brown and dirty.
Grunnarch looked over his camp with ill-concealed unease. It had taken the force more than two days to cross through Dynloch Pass, and he knew that he had fallen behind schedule. Near the summit of the pass, a sudden rockslide had claimed the lives of a hundred of his men. To lose a hundred with a single blow was a bitter pill. And finally, the army of Firbolgs that was supposed to meet him here was nowhere to be seen.
At least his men, famished and exhausted from the grueling passage, would be able to rest for a few hours and eat a hot meal at this camp. The druid Trahern had assured him that the passage back into Corwell presented far less of an obstacle than did the pass they had just crossed.
Thoughts of sustenance reminded him of another cause of unease, the Bloodriders. They seemed to suffer from the fatigue of the march as much as any of the other men, but they showed no inclination, at the end of the march, to eat, drink, rest, or any of the other activities that insured recuperation. Instead they stood or squatted in their own area of the camp, waiting with barely concealed impatience to strike out on the trail again.
“Perhaps,” thought the Red King grimly, “they now survive on blood!” He avoided entering the Bloodriders’ camp, preferring to remain near his own tent. Accompanied by Trahern, the druid, he watched his army slowly recover its spirit.
A commotion at the edge of camp attracted his attention. With Trahern at his side, Grunnarch hurried toward it. A young warrior ran up to him, pointing toward the forest.
“Firbolgs, my lord! They’re coming this way!”
Grunnarch saw a band of perhaps five dozen Firbolgs trudging toward him. They moved listlessly, as if they were the remnants of an army. Indeed, many of them wore stained bandages over moist wounds. The Red King was not prepared for the filthy appearance of the Firbolgs, nor for their smell. The odor preceded them by several hundred yards, carried by an unfortunate breeze, and was offensive even by the northmen’s uncritical standards.
“This is the army?” Grunnarch muttered in disgust, looking at Trahern. The druid, too, seemed puzzled.
“I expected a much larger band,” he admitted. “Though they do look formidable, those that there are.”
Indeed, the Firbolgs, even in this condition, looked like fierce fighters, with powerful legs and arms. Their low, sloping brows made them look very stupid, which was a quality Grunnarch praised in his soldiers. But they looked decidedly useful.
The largest of the creatures gestured the others to halt, and approached Grunnarch and Trahern. He stopped