The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [31]
Stephen, who was nearest the man, reached his hand out. “Give me your sword,” he said. “Give it to me now.”
“Give it, Ional,” the other solider snapped. He looked at Stephen. “I’m not ready to die. I’ll go up this way. You’ll take the other?”
“Yes,” Stephen agreed.
Aspar gave Stephen and the Hornladher a quick glance as they moved out farther. If they could isolate the main branch they were on, they might have a chance.
Winna was looking at him, though, and he felt something sink down through his guts. Winna was the best and the most unexpected thing that had come into his life in a long time. She was young, yes, so young that sometimes she seemed as if she might be from a different country across some distant sea. But most of the time she seemed to know him, know him in a way that was unlikely—and sometimes was more unsettling than comfortable. He’d been alone for a long time.
The past few days she hadn’t talked to him much, not since she’d found him keeping watch by the wounded Leshya. In that, at least, she didn’t know him as well as she might. What he felt for Leshya wasn’t love or even lust. It was something else, something even he had a hard time naming. But it resembled, he imagined, kinship. The Sefry woman was like him in a way that Winna could never be.
But maybe Winna did understand that. Maybe that was the problem.
It’s all moot if the slinders get us, he reckoned, and he nearly chuckled. It sounded like one of those sayings. As well stretch your neck for the Raver as marry. A good day is the one you live through. It’s all moot if the slinders come…
Sceat, he was starting to think like Stephen.
He shot another slinder.
Three arrows left.
It wasn’t as easy cutting through branches as Stephen might have wished or imagined. The sword had an edge, but it wasn’t that sharp, and he’d never really done much wood chopping, so he wasn’t certain about the best way to go about the task.
A glance showed him that the outer branches were nearly low enough for the slinders to reach; that meant he had to hurry.
He reared back for a more powerful swing and nearly fell. He was straddling a limb, clutching it with his inner thighs the way one did a horse. But like a horse, the branch refused to be still, and it seemed a dizzying long way to the ground.
He renewed his balance and made a more modest cut, feeling the living wood shiver under the blow and watching a smallish chip fly. Maybe if he cut straight, then at an angle…
He did, and that worked better.
He couldn’t stop paying attention to the slinder song. There was a language there; he felt the cadence, the flow of meaning. But he couldn’t understand it, not a single word, and given his saint-blessed memory and knowledge of languages, that was astonishing. In his mind he compared it to everything from Old Vadhiian to what little he knew of the language of Hadam, but nothing fit. Nevertheless, he felt as if the meaning was incredibly close, resting on his nose, too near to his eyes to quite see.
Aspar thought the slinders had changed. What did that mean?
“Slinder” was an Oostish word that just meant “eater” or “devouring one.” But what were they really? The short answer was that they had once been people who lived near or in the King’s Forest, before the Briar King awoke. Since his awakening, entire tribes had abandoned their villages to follow the king, whatever he was.
There were legends of such things, of course. There was a detail in the Tale of Galas, the only remaining text from the ancient vanished kingdom of Tirz Eqqon. The great bull of the Ferigolz had been stolen by Vhomar giants, and Galas had been sent to retrieve it. In his quest he had met a giant named Koerwidz who had a magic cauldron, a drink from which transformed men into beasts of various kinds.
Saint Fufluns was said to possess a pipe whose music filled men with madness and turned them cannibal.