The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [30]
“The ram-headed serpent and the greffyn are both symbols associated with the Briar King,” Stephen said. “We’ve been assuming that the Briar King drove these people mad somehow, took away their human intelligence. But what if…”
“What?” Winna said. “You think they chose this? They can’t even speak!”
“I’ll need you to start passing down arrows soon,” Aspar said, shooting again. “I’ve only six left. The rest are on Ogre.”
“The horses!” Winna exclaimed.
“They can take care of themselves,” Aspar said. “Or they can’t. Nothing we can do about it.”
“But Ogre—”
“Yah.” He thrust away the pain. Ogre and Angel had been with him a long time.
But everything died eventually.
Slinders continued to arrive from the forest, with no end of them in sight. So many teemed below, he couldn’t see the forest floor for a hundred kingsyards.
“What do we do when we run out of arrows?” Winna asked.
“I’ll kick ’em down,” Aspar said.
“I thought you were on friendly terms with the Briar King and his friends,” Stephen said. “Last time they let you live.”
“Last time I had the king at the tip of an arrow,” Aspar said. “The one the Church gave us.”
“You still have it?”
“Yah. But unless the king himself shows his face, I don’t reckon to use it until it’s the only one I have left.”
It also occurred to him that the Sefry woman Leshya had been with him then. Maybe that had been the difference; Leshya’s true allegiance was—had always been—something of a mystery.
“That won’t be too long,” Winna said.
Aspar nodded and cast his gaze about. Maybe they could get to another tree, one with a straighter, higher bole, then cut the branch that got them there.
He was looking for such an escape route when he heard the singing. It was a weird rising and falling melody that caught at something in his bones. He was sure he had heard the song before, could almost imagine its singer, but the true memory eluded him.
The source of this song was visible, however.
“Saints,” Stephen said, for he had seen it, too.
The singing came from a short, bandy-legged man and a slender, pale-skinned girl whose green eyes blazed even at this distance, which was about fifty kingsyards. The girl looked to be only about ten or eleven, the youngest slinder Aspar had ever seen. She held a snake in each hand—from this distance they looked to be rattling vipers—and the man held a crooked staff with a single drooping pinecone attached to it.
Both had the tattoos. Otherwise, they were as naked as the day they were born. They directed their song upward, but it took only an instant to understand that they weren’t singing to the sky.
Ironoaks, the very ancient ones, had boughs so huge and heavy that they often sagged to the ground. The one Aspar and his companions were perched in wasn’t that old; only two branches were low enough even to jump up and grab. But as the holter watched, the tips of the farthest branches quivered earthward, then began to bend, as if they were the fingers of a giant reaching down to pick something from the ground.
“Raver,” Aspar swore.
Ignoring the next slinder clambering up the tree, he took aim at the singing man and sent his shaft flying. His aim was true, but another slinder somehow danced in the way of the arrow, taking the point in the shoulder. The same happened with his next shot.
“This is bad,” Stephen said.
The whole tree shuddered now as the thicker boughs began straining toward the pair. The slinders around them were beginning to leap at the descending branches, and though the branches weren’t low enough to catch yet, they soon would be. Then the entire tree would swarm with them.
Aspar looked up at the men-at-arms. “You two,” he said. “Start cutting branches. Anything that leads here. Move out to where they’re thinner so they’ll be easier to cut.”
“This is our doom,” one of the men said. “Our lord was evil, and now we pay the price of serving him.”
“You don’t serve him now,” Winna snapped. “You serve Anne, the rightful queen of Crotheny. Gather your manhood and do as Aspar says. Or give me your sword and let me do it.”
“I heard what