Shattered Shields Page 2

  “Milord,” he called. “A few miles ahead—we’ve been attacked!”

  Here? Avahn wondered. Why would anyone attack Moss End?

  * * *

  Dval rode from under the ancient trees after sunset, just as stars had begun to come alive in the dying day, lanterns swinging in the rafters of heaven. Beneath the shadow of the old forest, they came upon the site of a massacre.

  Cottages lay in ruins beside the road, roofs ripped off as if by a tornado. Stone walls from fine hostels had been shoved inward, and a bit of smoke still wound up from the rubble of hearths.

  Of the fortress, an ancient tower, only a pile of rubble remained.

  In the courtyard lay a woman, her belly ripped open and guts strewn all about. A child was not far away from her, and she reached toward its corpse. Nearby, Dval spotted the head of a knight, still in its helm with visor down, staring blankly from the roadside.

  All had been murdered, as senselessly as his father had been murdered.

  Seven red hens raced from the courtyard at the approach of the troops.

  Dval had never seen such destruction. Last night, he’d witnessed the fires burning from the mountains and had wondered if the folk of Mystarria were at war. But this was like nothing he had ever imagined.

  “Kommen hier!” a soldier shouted at the backside of the ruins, and other soldiers raced toward him across the green, past more bodies. Behind the fortress, Dval came upon one of the king’s champions, the hill giant Bandolan. The giant stared down at a monster.

  “Toth!” the savages whispered in hushed tones, some of them aiming war lances down to a dead creature at their feet. “Toth.”

  Dval stared, amazed. The beast looked to be two times taller than a man, but it was nothing like a man. It had an exoskeleton covered in thick gray hide, much like that of a reaver, but it was thinner than a reaver. It had four legs and two long arms, each of which ended with three talons and a thumb-like claw.

  Its head was large, with a bony plate fanning out from the skull. On the end of the plate were wormlike philia, with which it tasted. In life, the philia could stand up and move, much like snakes rising to peer about. But now that the creature was dead, they hung limp.

  The creature’s long jaw had dozens of fangs, and a purple tongue filled its mouth, but did not extend to the teeth. It had nine air-holes on each side of its snout.

  In many ways, it resembled a reaver’s head, but there was one amazing difference: reavers have no eyes. This creature had four. They were nothing like human eyes. One pair was as large as Dval’s fist, its surface a bloody red. A smaller eye just beneath it was purple-black.

  There were few plants or animals that had adapted to living both in the underworld and the outer world. Obviously, this was a creature of darkness that could still somehow see in the light.

  The Mystarrians backed away from the monster in terror, like children, but Dval had lived most of his young life in the underworld among his people’s burrows.

  He was familiar with the plants and animals that grew deep underground, where heat from thermal vents allowed life. There were huge wormlike glue-mums there, and strange spider-like creatures, and cruelest of all, the reavers.

  But this was something new. “Toth,” he repeated aloud.

  He crouched down near the creature’s abdomen. It had been crudely hacked with axes, and the air vents there were broken and fouled.

  He sniffed at its rectum, trying to catch the creature’s “death scent,” and smelled something very much like lavender and rotten garlic.

  The Mystarrians sniggered.

  * * *

  “He’s a butt sniffer,” Sir Pwyrthen jested. “I’ve got a hound that does that to me.”

  Avahn stiffened in embarrassment for the Woguld, but said nothing.

  Dval stood up straight, strolled around the creature. He reached toward a soldier who held a spear, gave a hand-it-hither gesture. The soldier smiled dubiously, gave the Woguld his spear.

  Dval took the spear, went to the creature’s thorax, leapt in the air, and tried mightily to plunge the spear into the monster’s exoskeleton. But even with three tries, putting all of his weight behind the blow, he could not break the beast’s skin.

  The men laughed. Captain Adelheim joked, “It’s dead enough, boy. Give it up!”

  Most of her father’s men were runelords with endowments of strength. Perhaps they would have not had such a tough time piercing the monster’s hide, and so they mocked Dval’s efforts.

  But Avahn’s father leaned forward on his mount, peering into the gloom. The boy took his spear, stood back, and plunged it beneath the creature’s forearm, into its armpit, and this time the spear entered a good foot.

  “The boy is testing its defenses.” The king’s tone was curious, but not convinced. “Watch him, lads. We might learn something.”

  Now Dval went to its head, stabbed at the eyes, and once again the spear was rebuffed. But he sought out a point between the eyes, where three prominent points met, and once again threw all of his weight behind a blow.

  The spear pierced the dead Toth’s skull, its tip driving six inches into its brain, and then snapped.

  “Huzzah!” the men cheered.

  Dval looked up triumphantly. The lesson was learned. The men who had killed this creature had hacked at its thorax ineffectively and had barely managed to slay it. But Dval had just discovered two points where a man might strike and make a quick kill.

  King Harrill’s eyes narrowed, and he peered about the dead town. “Why here?” he wondered. “What are they up to? This place has little strategic merit.”

  Sir Adelheim suggested, “We’re at the edge of the forest. Maybe the Toth are creatures of the wood.”

  “Right,” Sir Pwyrthen agreed. “The Toth could be like dogs, marking the edge of their new territory.”

  “Or the mountains.” King Harrill sounded uneasy, as if he did not want to assert motives quite yet. “We’re at the feet of the mountains here.”

  Off in the trees, a soldier called out, “Milord, there are tracks leading into the woods. Two more of the monsters came this way.”

  The king smiled. “Light some torches, men. We’ll run them down!”

  He peered at Avahn. “You’ll stay here with your . . . the wurm. Sir Bandolan will watch over you.”

  He nodded toward the hill giant, who puffed out his chest and brandished his war staff. The troops raced off toward the forest’s edge.

  * * *

  Dismissed from the action, Dval did not concern himself with the monster any longer. The giant and Avahn climbed up into the remains of the old stone fortress, found a corner of standing walls perhaps twenty feet off the ground, and crouched there. Night was coming quickly, and bats danced overhead, taking gnats on the wing.

  Dval had not eaten for a day and a half.

  He remembered the red hens, decided to eat one. They would be sluggish with the coming night, trying to settle on their roosts. The stars were coming out, but the waxing moon had not yet risen.

  He walked through the town, and found many dead villagers. He eyed the bodies, searching for gold or silver, but King Harrill’s soldiers had already claimed everything of value.

  Yet Dval noticed something odd, a mystery. The men had all been clubbed to death, but he found three women, and each had been gutted, as if a single talon had pierced her beneath the navel and ripped upward. Then her entrails were flung about.

  This was not the kind of work performed by reavers. Reavers went mad from time to time and committed terrible atrocities. But there was a surgical precision to this attack.

  But why had the monsters defiled the women?

  Dval spotted the remains of a henhouse behind the ruins of a cottage, a few cages still standing on stilts. He drew close to one, smelled warmth and feathers. A hen was inside.

  He reached in gently, hoping to ease her from the roost, but the hen squawked and leapt out, flapping her wings as she took to the air.

&nb
sp; To his surprise, Dval missed grabbing her.

  All he got for his trouble was . . . an egg, lying warm in his palm. He’d seen hens crap eggs in fear before, but he’d never had one lay an egg in his hand.

  He laughed, cracked it, and swallowed the fluid.

  Dval checked two other boxes, but they were empty.

  Still hungry, he went to the dead Toth. He’d smelled the creature’s death, and instinct warned that the others would return. There was a secret known among the Woguld about reavers. Their death cries were carried in their scent.

  The smell of a dead reaver confused its fellows, made them cower in fear.

  He hoped that the same was true of the Toth.

  So he took his hand and wiped it on the wormlike philia hanging down at the back of its abdomen, then spread the scent in a bar across his forehead, painted stripes on his cheeks, and one on his chin. Thus he wore a war mask that only a Toth might discern.

  When he finished, he climbed up into the old fortress, stood in the shadow of the giant Bandolan, and peered across the horizon.

  To the west were plains, with fields aplenty. They’d been burned, and the ground lay blackened under a net of stars. In some places, where brush was heavy or logs lay in the grass, little fires still sputtered, so that the stars seemed to light the ground in the distance.

  The Toth burned the fields. He wondered why, and could think of only one reason. The Toth didn’t come to conquer this people, but to supplant them completely. That’s why they tear the wombs from women.

  King Harrill’s men charged along in the night, over fields of dry ash black under the starlight, crossing a shallow river several times, sluggish from summer and never rising higher than his mount’s withers.

  He was so weary, so weary, and he struggled in vain to remain awake.

  In the soft sand at the water’s edge, his men stopped to study some Toth’s footprints, like those of a giant bird. In the darkness, the starlight shining on the sand left an impression, something like a human face.

  King Harrill suddenly imagined his dead wife again, lying beside the wreck of the royal carriage, her beautiful features torn by wolves, leaving only a mouth of perfect teeth surrounded by bloody meat.

  The image overwhelmed him, a whirlwind bowling him over. He hunched in his saddle as if he’d taken a blow.

  “Damn the heavens,” he wailed. “Blot out the stars! Let rot cull the tender seeds from our ground!”

  He was dazed by fatigue, and his head spun. He clenched his legs tightly against his horse’s ribs, trying to hold on.

  He blacked out from the emotional pain, and roused moments later to find Sir Adelheim at his side, holding his elbow to keep him from falling from his mount.

  King Harrill was keening uncontrollably, a low whine emanating from his throat. He bared his teeth, struggled to regain some control, but continued to sob.

  “Are you better, milord?” Sir Adelheim asked.

  He fought for control, reeling.

  “Hold me, my friend,” King Harrill begged. “Hold on to me.”

  “I’m here, milord,” Sir Adelheim whispered. He leaned close, his forehead almost touching the king’s, and held him firmly, as if to lend him strength.

  “Do you know where we are?” Sir Adelheim asked.

  The world was spinning, night and darkness and stars turning above. Thought came slowly.

  “I forget,” King Harrill whispered, and he struggled to hold on to a thought, but sleep was like a quicksand, pulling him under.

  “Toth,” Adelheim whispered. “We’re tracking them. Remember?”

  “Yes,” King Harrill whispered, clinging to the thought. Two Toths had survived. It was terrible to think that such creatures could be so powerful that they could take out a garrison of twenty good troops, and kill a hundred villagers, with only one casualty.

  He hoped that the Toth had suffered for it; he looked at the ground, hoping for signs of blood, but saw none. One of the monsters had three toes on each foot. A much larger Toth had four.

  The tracks were very fresh, their sides crisp.

  “They seem to be wandering,” Sir Adelheim said. “They’ve moved around tonight, but never moved more than about five miles from the fortress.”

  King Harrill seemed to struggle free from his stupor.

  They’re aimless, King Harrill thought. Maybe dazed or wounded. Perhaps my men have pushed them beyond their endurance.

  The Toth had circled back toward the fortress twice now, and he’d managed to send lancers ahead to cut them off. But what could they want there?

  The only thing at the fortress was his daughter.

  The thought unmanned him. He’d lost his wife to these monsters already.

  Now he recalled the women he’d seen in town. He’d only seen one up close, a couple of others from a distance. All had had their organs ripped out.

  My daughter? he wondered.

  A gentle breeze had begun blowing in from the sea for the evening.

  “Send the men ahead to chase those bastards,” King Harrill suggested. “But let’s keep a few men back. I think they’ll try to head for the fortress again. We’ll go to the far side of that stand of pine over there and wait under the trees.”

  Sir Adelheim nodded, cut three lancers from the group, and sent the rest ahead.

  King Harrill smiled. His madness earlier today could be forgiven. King Harrill the Cunning was back.

  * * *

  Avahn, Dval, and Sir Bandolan sat in the rocks atop the keep, and peered about. Sir Bandolan said in a grumbling voice, in the way of such giants,

  “The stars grow tired,

  “Night runs deep.

  “’Tis time for a child

  “To go to sleep.”

  Avahn smiled up at him. Sir Bandolan shook his head, the rat skulls in his beard rattling together.

  “Is that an order?” she asked.

  Sir Bandolan grumbled and pointed with his heavy oaken staff toward the ground. His was a weapon favored of giants, bound as it was with iron rings and tipped with a brass point. It could be used as either a spear or a cudgel—and, in a pinch, a walking stick.

  “All right,” Avahn said, and she crept to the corner and lay down. The stones here still carried the heat of the day.

  She pulled part of a tapestry over herself.

  Avahn lay in the starlight, eyes gritty and tired. She and Dval had been trapped by wolves the night before, and she found that she could not sleep, she was so worried.

  She opened her eyes and saw Dval crouched on a stone. A rising moon had turned his skin to silver. Somewhere he had managed to scavenge a spear, and now he peered down at her gravely—a silver gargoyle with death shining from his eyes.

  “Ashoo. Ashoo,” he whispered softly. Sleep. Sleep, and she obeyed his command.

  * * *

  Above her, Dval watched and waited. There was a clearing around the fortress. The land had been burnt off each year, kept free of brush. Nothing could reach them without being seen.

  Yet he worried. If the Toths’ sense of smell was as strong as he believed, they would come for Avahn.

  His heart hammered, and he watched the fields.

  There was a villager lying askew at the edge of the woods, a knight in ringmail, his cape twisted around him.

  Dval’s own father had been found like that, dead at the food of a crevasse.

  Most in the burrows thought that he had taken a fall by accident while on guard duty, but Dval did not believe that. His father had been a warrior, honored as a Supreme Man. He was not careless or blind.

  He was so much better than me, Dval thought. I have not even earned a title beyond my family name. I suppose now that I never will.

  Dval had been convinced that his father had been murdered, but the elders of the clan had not investigated.

  Who would want to kill Dval Kartinga, hero that he was?

  Suddenly, Dval recalled his uncle, with his crimson bow and silver elk mask, taking aim.


  Never had he imagined such a thing. His uncle, Dval Oormas, had shared a womb with Dval’s father.

  Could Dval Oormas have killed his father?

  The pieces fit together like the scales on a fish.

  Of course. Dval’s father, as the Supreme, had been the chief elder to the clan, next in line to become its leader. If he died, it left an opening for those who might want to take his place.

  Dval’s uncle might harbor such hopes. As an uncle, it was Oormas’s responsibility to raise Dval to be a warrior, like one of his own. But it was a responsibility that Oormas had hated.

  Dval remembered the constant sneer in his uncle’s tone, the insults and belittling.

  His uncle had sent Dval over the mountains into enemy territory to find his blood mare, and Dval had seen moccasin prints while following her trail. He’d imagined that one of his cousins had driven the horse over the mountains, playing a cruel trick.

  But what if it was his uncle who had done it?

  Of course, Dval thought. Why else had he shown up at just the right time?

  Dval was a strong young man. As his mother had put it, “Your father’s blood runs strong in you. You shall be Supreme someday.”

  That was reason enough for someone to try to kill me.

  Perhaps when I entered the carriage, Dval reasoned, my uncle hoped that the wolves would finish me, so that my blood would not be on his hands. Or perhaps when the Mystarrians showed up, he imagined that they would kill me.

  But neither had happened. The Princess Avahn had begged her father for mercy.

  So Oormas had taken matters into his own hand, and had shot an arrow at Dval.

  Suddenly, it all fit together in Dval’s mind, and he was so excited, so eager to take the idea back to the burrows and tell the clan, that he almost did not see the two Toth emerge from under the trees.

  Before he knew it, they were halfway across the clearing, racing soundlessly, four arms folded tight against their chests. One of them was small and fast, about twelve feet tall. The other was much heavier, a large female, and ran sluggishly.