Darkwell - Douglas Niles [48]
"Rest assured, sire, that if harm comes to me it will not be your responsibility to bear! I have control of my own destiny; I have chosen this mission for myself. If I suffer because of that, so be it. The responsibility is mine."
"Very well," said the king quietly. "But will you let me help you?"
"Yes," replied the druid, equally softly. She turned and looked into the night surrounding their camp. "I wonder where Daryth is…"
* * * * *
Taggar, shaman of Norland, threw down his ash-streaked deerskin and paced angrily around the smoky lodge. The signs, he was forced to admit to himself, were all bad.
First, the king should have returned by now. Grunnarch the Red, of course, always pressed his raids late into the season, but winter was about to begin and there were still no signs of the Red King's longships.
Second, the storms had roared into Norland from the Trackless Sea every other day for a fortnight. Every shaman new that seven storms in fourteen days bespoke great ill.
And thirdly, most awful of all, was the news brought by the abject farmer who even now stood outside the leather-bound shaman's lodge. The wretch had lost nine sheep in one night!
Each of these omens, in its own right, would have forced Taggar to call a prophecy of ill will for the coming winter.
But all three together… it was too much to conceive!
Indeed, Tempus was mightily displeased. And Taggar thought that he knew why. Tempus, brawny god of war and the deity worshiped by most of the northmen, relished the clash of battle, the shedding of blood, and the triumph of routing the enemy from the field. In normal circumstances, the northmen were the perfect tools for furthering the aims of Tempus. They had chosen him as their god, and he favored them with his blessing.
But during the last war, the northmen had crusaded under the auspices of a different god, though the warriors themselves had been ignorant of that fact. Tempus must have been angered by the slight, and the men of the north had done nothing since to gain his favor.
Taggar was now convinced, in the absence of his king and of any plunder of battle, that Tempus would call down his anger upon his people when they were most vulnerable, during the cruel months of winter.
For the god of war was not a patient deity.
VII
Tiger's-Tooth and Cat's-Claw
For a long lime, Daryth did nothing except meet the cold gaze of the predator with his own unblinking stare. Neither the monster nor the man moved a muscle, though the Calishite strained to keep his eyes open. He felt it would be disastrous to blink.
He wondered how the creature had climbed to the top of the cliff. It had appeared off to one side, not directly behind him, so he deduced that it had gone up or down the gorge for a distance until it found a place where the sides were not so steep. Then it must have climbed the slope and come along the crest to find him.
Suddenly the creature moved. Daryth saw the eyes disappear behind the bole of a tree, then appear again, still boring into him. The thing slipped sideways through the woods, marking a semicircle around him but not moving any closer.
"Why don't you attack, beast?" hissed Daryth, feeling a bit giddy from the strain. "Are you afraid? Yes, you know my cat's-tooth has a sharp bite!"
The creature did slink a little closer at his words, and Daryth found himself wishing it would leap at him or do anything but this patient stalk. The beast was, he sensed, playing games with him, the way a cat plays with a wounded mouse. The analogy struck him as decidedly unpleasant, if accurate.
Gradually the man became aware of a dull grayness diffusing through the air. It could not yet be called light. It seemed more a slight lifting of the total darkness that had blinded him for so long. A smoky haze drifted among the gaunt tree trunks, reminding him of the scene after a devastating fire.
As the light gradually increased, Daryth witnessed the