Captain's Fury

Chapter 28

The rain, Amara decided, was a mixed blessing. While the moderate, steady downpour helped to hide their trail and cut down on visibility, reducing their chances of being seen, after three days it had begun to gall. Here at the southernmost reaches of the Realm, rainfall such as this was not unusual this time of year, but Amara had never had to contend with such a relentless downpour.

The nights were uncomfortable, especially because there was no dry wood to be had for a fire. Bernard told Amara that he could have used his crafting to shape the trees into a more effective shelter, or to open a dry hole in a rock shelf, but that he didn't dare risk it, for fear enemy woodsmen might recognize it.

Despite that, Amara's husband was as resourceful as ever about practical matters. He always managed to find some means by which to keep at least some of the water away from them, but none of them were resting very well. If the rain didn't let up soon and allow them something other than a cold meal of traveling biscuits, they were going to run out of them and be forced to eat only whatever Bernard could forage or hunt as they traveled. Amara was not looking forward to raw rabbit.

She glowered up at the sky and wished that she had more practice with crafting the weather instead of flying.

"I know precisely how you feel," Gaius murmured, limping steadily along. "I can't stop thinking about how nice a warm fire and a hot cup of tea would be."

Amara smiled. "Is it that obvious?"

"We're all thinking the same thing," Gaius replied. He squinted up at the clouds. "This is mostly my fault, you know."

Amara glanced aside at him. "Why do you say that?"

"Because it was my mistake. The wind that brought us here was from the far north, cold and dry. I bade it fly south with us, and it met the warm, humid skies over the sea. Rain is the result."

Amara shook her head. "Not a terrible mistake. The rain has probably helped us a great deal."

Gaius smiled, teeth gleaming. "Just between the two of us? I've had all the help I can stand."

Amara laughed, and her eye alighted upon the nearest tree trunk. Perhaps seven feet up, the bark had been roughly gouged and scored to the inner skin with thick, crude furrows.

"Bernard?" Amara called quietly.

"I saw them," he said.

"What are they?"

"Territorial markings," Bernard replied.

"Territorial markings…? Of what?"

"A predator," Bernard said. "Maybe some kind of hunting cat. Maybe one of those big lizards." He stopped and held up a hand, his head tilted slightly to one side.

"They're called garim," Gaius supplied quietly. "They make marvelous cloaks when-"

The underbrush ten feet to the First Lord's left erupted in sudden motion, and something massive and leathery and low shot across the forest floor, its head turning sideways, its jaws gaping to snap at Gaius's legs.

It was an enormous lizard-a garim.

The First Lord saw it coming, and he reacted with admirable speed. He managed to turn and thrust his heavy walking staff into the beast's jaws. The garim snapped them shut, neatly clipping off the end of the staff. Then it spat the wood aside and pressed in on Gaius.

Gaius's maneuver, though, had given Amara precious seconds to act. The Cursor called upon Cirrus, borrowing of the wind fury's swiftness, and the world slowed down to a lazy, syrup-thick dance.

Amara's hand dipped to her belt, and her fingers found the hilt of the knife there. She drew, even as she turned toward the menacing garim, shifting her weight with maddening slowness, and flung the knife at what, to her own perceptions, was almost normal speed.

The knife tumbled precisely one and a half times, struck the creature's scaled hide, and sank several inches into the garim's flank, just behind its forward leg.

The garim reacted more slowly than any animal she had ever seen would have, and Amara had taken most of a step before it suddenly wrenched itself to one side, falling into a slow tumble as it snapped its jaws at the knife, tearing it free.

Amara drew her sword and flung herself at the beast, gripping the short weapon in both hands. The extra speed lent her by her fury would allow her to deal out a powerful blow-and she would need it to cut through its hide if the lack of penetration from her knife throw was any indication.

The steps between her and the garim drifted by slowly, and she had time to appreciate another mixed blessing: Though the gift of speed granted by her fury made her swift enough to intervene on the First Lord's behalf, it also left her with entirely too much time to realize the danger in her course of action.

The beast was much larger than she had thought at first. Though it stood very low to the ground, no more than two feet at the highest point of its back, the garim was built broad and flat, with powerful legs that spread out widely from an overly broad body made from gristle and sinew. It probably weighed at least twice what Amara did, and quite possibly more. Its feet were tipped with heavy claws, its head was solid and blocky, distended with the size of the muscles that powered its vicious jaws. It had eyes like beads of black glass, small and vicious and stupid, and its tail, stretching out in length nearly equal to its body, thrashed about with entirely too much power and speed. Its hide was dark grey-green, and rippled with stripes of darker coloration, giving it ideal camouflage in the rain-drenched forest, and the scales looked tough and thick.

If the garim seized her, it would remove her limbs every bit as easily as it had snapped through Gaius's walking staff. She could evade it easily, of course, if she had been on her own-but she wasn't. The creature had deliberately rushed Gaius, and if she did not force it to deal with her, it would only return to its attack on the First Lord. She had to fight, which meant that she had to deal out a decisive, crippling stroke on the first blow or risk being overwhelmed by the beast's power and speed.

She would have aimed for the throat, had this been a thanadent, or a grass lion, or one of the Marat's herdbanes. The garim's neck, though, was covered in great folds of heavily scaled skin, and she doubted her ability to strike through it.

Unlike the garim, which could snap through her neck without any particular effort.

Amara was terrified.

The eyes, she decided. A small target, true, but Cirrus's speed would help with that. A true enough strike had the potential to kill the beast-and even if she only wounded it, that might disable the garim badly enough to prevent it from pursuing Gaius. Though if it came to that, she supposed, killing Amara, dragging her body off into the forest, and devouring her might prevent the garim from pursuing Gaius as well.

Looking at it from that perspective, Amara thought, she couldn't lose.

The garim's broad, vicious head swiveled toward her, and its wide mouth opened, revealing what seemed like hundreds of curved, vicious teeth.

Amara screamed and thrust the blade down, putting all the speed and power she could muster into the blow. The tip of her sword struck just above the garim's beady eye, pierced a thin layer of skin, and scraped along the thick bone of its skull. Her forward momentum carried her on, over the low-slung garim, and she realized with a sick sensation of panic that she was about to fall.

Amara tried to turn the fall into a diving roll, so that she would be able to come up on her feet and running-but halfway through, something struck her in the shoulder and sent her into an uncontrolled tumble. She hit the ground hard, first on one knee, then slammed into the ground with one shoulder, and fetched up against a tree with stunning force. She dropped to the ground, the world rolling back into normal motion again, as she lost concentration on maintaining the link with Cirrus.

The wounded garim lashed its heavily muscled tail, with which it had just struck her, and doubled back on itself with sinuous, liquid speed. It rushed her, fangs bared. Amara fumbled dazedly for her sword, knowing, even as she did, that the weapon would be of little use. She thrust out as the garim closed on her, and the sword skittered off the hide of its chest. She screamed.

And then a length of wood came out of nowhere and landed with crushing force on the creature's muzzle, slamming its jaws closed and into the ground. Its head rebounded from the earth, and the wood landed again, and again, the blows precisely timed and savage.

The First Lord of Alera flung himself onto the garim, slipping his damaged staff across the beast's throat, and with a snarl of effort and a wrench of his entire body, twisted away, taking the garim with him, rolling the lizard belly-up.

"His underside!" Gaius cried. "Countess, where the scales are thin!"

Amara seized her sword, lurched to her knees, and struck down, through the garim's exposed throat, just beneath where Gaius's staff still held back the creature's head. To her surprise, the sword swept cleanly through the finer, smoother scales there, and blood rushed out in a scarlet fountain.

The garim thrashed wildly, but the First Lord had the creature pinned. Though it flung him back and forth, it could not escape Gaius's hold. Amara struck again and again, until the garim's thrashing slowed, and the First Lord rolled clear of the dying animal.

"My lord!" Amara gasped.

"I'm all right," Gaius panted. "The Count."

Amara rose, looked around wildly, and realized that there was something else about the deadly lizards she had not known.

They ran in packs.

One garim hung thrashing fifteen feet above the forest floor in a willow tree, where dozens of the slender branches had seemingly reached down and wrapped around it. Another thrashed and contorted wildly on the forest floor, bounding up as high as five or six feet above the ground. A woodsman's axe protruded from the dying garim's head, where a powerful blow had sunk the weapon to its eye in the lizard's skull.

And the bloodied Count of Calderon himself was locked in combat with a third garim-unarmed. Like the First Lord, he had managed to gain a position on the beast's back, but he had locked his arms around the creature's throat. Amara could see that blood covered one side of his face, his throat, and half of his upper torso, but he was conscious, his face locked into a rictus snarl.

The garim thrashed wildly, rolling over several times, and its tail whipped about with savage energy, hammering Bernard on his legs and lower back. He let out a howl of rage and pain.

Amara cried out and rushed toward her husband, sword in hand.

Bernard's head turned to one side, and he released the garim with one arm, seizing its tail. The beast rolled wildly, twisting free of Bernard's grip, and scrambled at the forest floor with its powerful legs, to rise and sink its teeth into Amara's husband.

Bernard, though, had found his feet first, and hauled at the garim's tail before it could regain its balance. It scrambled toward him as best it could, and Bernard shuffled away from the jaws, still hauling hard on the tail.

At first, Amara thought he was simply trying to buy time-but by the second circle, the garim began to pick up speed. The beast was the largest of any Amara had seen, and must have weighed five hundred pounds if it weighed an ounce, but the Count of Calderon whirled it up off the ground as if it were a child's toy.

Pivoting in a great circle, Bernard roared in rage and triumph, and slammed the garim's skull against the thick trunk of a tree. It broke with a wet, hollow thunk, like the sound of a melon being smashed open, and the lizard fell to the earth, abruptly and totally limp.

The garim trapped in the willow snarled and tore its way free of the grasp-ing limbs and fell to the ground behind Bernard. Amara cried out in a wordless warning.

He looked up at her, and then his head whipped around. He flung out his hand, and cried, "Brutus!"

The earth beneath the garim suddenly shuddered and erupted into motion. The shape of a hound the size of a small horse rose from the earth, its shoulders and chest made of flint and loam, its eyes of glittering green gems, its jaws of granite. Bernard's earth fury seized the garim in its stony maw, and the lizard hissed and thrashed wildly as Brutus lifted the lizard entirely off the ground. The great hound continued rising from the ground, like a dog emerging from the waters of a lake, and shook the garim as a terrier would a rat. Amara thought she heard the lizard's neck snap, but Brutus was not satisfied until he had slammed the garim against two trees, and repeatedly hammered it into the ground. By the time the earth fury was finished, the garim was a bloody mass of pulped flesh and shattered bone.

Amara slowed and came to a halt a few feet away from her husband. Bernard watched until Brutus was finished, then nodded, and said, "Thank you." The stone hound champed its jaws twice, shook its head, sending pebbles and bits of mud flying, and sank down into the earth again, turning circles like a dog about to lie down as it went.

Bernard sagged and dropped to one knee.

Amara rushed to his side. "Bernard!"

"It's nothing, I'm fine," Bernard slurred, still breathing heavily. "Gaius?"

"He's alive," Amara said. "Let me see your head."

"Looks worse than it is," Bernard said. "Scalp wounds bleed a lot. Flesh wound."

"I know that," Amara said, "but you've got a lump the size of an egg to go with the cut. Concussions are not flesh wounds."

Bernard reached up and caught her hand. He met her eyes, and said in a quiet, firm tone, "See to the First Lord, Countess."

She stiffened with anger. "Bernard."

"I have a duty to my lord. So do you."

"I also have a duty to my husband," she whispered back.

Bernard released her hand, and growled, "See to Gaius." His tone became gentler, and very tired. "You know I'm right."

She put a hand to her face for a moment, took a deep breath, then touched his head gently. Then she turned and went back to the First Lord.

Gaius lay on the ground with his eyes closed. He opened them as Amara approached, and said, "I haven't done that in a while."

"Sire?"

"Hunted garim. Not since I was about seventeen." He exhaled heavily. "It was considerably less strenuous back then."

His voice was tight with pain, the way it had been at the beginning of their journey. "You're hurt."

"It's my leg," he said quietly. "The good one." He nodded at the still-twitching garim. "I'm afraid this fellow managed to trap it between his hide and a stone. I'm fairly sure it's broken."

Amara bent to examine the First Lord's leg. It was swollen, and his foot rested at an utterly inappropriate angle to the rest of the leg. It had been a twisting break, not a clean snap of the bone. Amara knew that they could be very ugly. "I can't see any bone poking out," she said quietly. "You aren't bleeding. How bad is it?"

"It's only pain," Gaius said, but his voice trembled as he did. "I see that Bernard gave rather a good accounting of himself."

Amara would need to set the leg as soon as possible. They would have to splint it as well. "He killed three of them."

"For killing men, metalcrafters stand supreme," Gaius murmured. "But beasts don't fight like men. Primal. Savage. For them, nothing replaces raw strength. And I think one really couldn't fault my choice in companions on this particular journey." He shook his head and blinked his eyes several times. "I'm babbling. Please excuse me. The mind tends to wander a bit when one is my age-or in excruciating pain."

"We'll do what we can, sire," Amara said.

"The pain won't kill me. Bernard is bleeding. See to him. I believe I'll faint now, if it isn't too inconven…"

The First Lord fell silent, and Amara bent to him for a panicked instant. He continued breathing steadily, though, and his pulse was strong. She bit her lip in sympathy, and was just as glad that he had lost consciousness. His injury had to be pure torment.

She took off her cloak, damp as it was, rolled it up, and used it to support his broken leg. Then she rose and went back to Bernard. He had taken off his pack and was fumbling through it rather dazedly. Amara took it from his hands and removed the box of bandages, ointments, and healing salves he carried in it. She cleaned his wound as best she could, but it kept bleeding, as such injuries tended to.

"This will need stitches to close properly," she said quietly. "That means we'll need boiling water. A fire."

"Dangerous," Bernard mumbled. "Too easy to spot."

"We've little choice," she replied. "He's unconscious. His leg is broken.

We have to warm him up, then set the leg. Can you have Brutus make a shelter for us?"

He looked at her dully for a moment, and then back at Gaius. "Dangerous."

She put her hands on either side of his face. "Bernard, you've been hit in the head. You're having trouble speaking clearly, much less thinking clearly. I need you to trust me. This is necessary."

He exhaled heavily and closed his eyes. Then he nodded. He opened his eyes again and peered blearily around them, through the rain. Then he nodded at a hillock, and muttered under his breath. "Garim had a den there. Brutus is widening it. Shoring it up. Drag wood in first thing. Let it start to dry. Then we'll move Gaius in."

"Very well," Amara said. She covered his wound with a pad of folded cloth and wound a bandage around his head to hold it closed as best it could until she could see to the injury more thoroughly. "Bernard. It's his good leg that's broken."

Bernard frowned for a moment, then said, "Crows. He won't be able to walk."

"No," Amara said.

"That's bad," he said.

"Yes."

"But there is good news," he said.

She frowned at him.

His nostrils flared as he inhaled. "Smell that?"

Amara frowned and sniffed at the air. There was an overripe smell to it, a vegetable reek.

"Only one thing smells like that," Bernard said. "Swamps. We made it. Once we get in there, don't have to worry about our back trail."

"No," Amara murmured. "Only disease. Injury. Lack of food. And more of those garim."

Bernard grunted. "Well," he mused, "we never did get that honeymoon."

Amara blinked at him for a moment, then burst out in a laugh that surprised her with its depth and strength.

He gave her a weary grin, and for a moment his eyes shone with warmth. "That's better. Love it when you smile." Then he took a deep breath and pushed himself slowly to his feet. He touched the bandages and hissed in discomfort.

"Don't do that," Amara said absently. She rose, wincing at a flare of pain in her back. She had almost forgotten the blow from the garim's tail and the tumble afterward. Her muscles and bones, however, had not. "He can't walk," she said quietly. "What are we going to do?"

"We'll handle it, Countess. One thing at a time."

She touched her face, and then the bandages. "I love you very much, you know."

He lifted her fingers from his head and kissed them gently, eyes sparkling. "Who could blame you?"

Amara laughed again.