They pressed on, exiting the ravine-maze to find themselves in a forest of tall, leafless trees. A mist rolled in, curling around their ankles as though it were a living thing. Clay could have sworn he felt it snag his foot, and found himself taking slow, deliberate steps, like a man treading through murky water. After a while the mist seemed to grow restless and prowled off.
At last the forest began to look familiar. They’d seen that fungus-decked tree before, they’d stepped over that acidic streamlet going the other way.
The skyship’s just ahead, Clay thought, relieved. We’re almost there.
A short while later they spotted a green-skinned, white-faced tribesman prowling through the forest alongside them. When they caught sight of another, this one carrying a crude shortbow, Matrick started to get nervous.
“Do you think he sent them after us?” he asked.
Moog frowned. “Who, Jeremy? Not at all. The Ferals are a very territorial people, you know. They’re probably just tracking us to make sure we stay well clear of the village.” He gestured to a painted warrior slipping between the trees nearby. “Consider this an escort. An honour guard, if you will.” Hardly a breath had passed when a stone-tipped arrow shattered the crystal orb on the top of his staff. The wizard’s face went pale. “Fuck me, they’re hunting us!”
“Run!” yelled Gabriel, as if it hadn’t occurred to each of them already. He had Vellichor in hand—the vibrant majesty of an ancient forest visible in the broad face of the blade. Ganelon slipped Syrinx from his back with a sinister grin, as if he’d been hoping the cannibals would attack and was gratified they’d given him provocation to start killing them. Clay could hear the axe muttering quietly to itself, or to Ganelon, or perhaps to those whose blood it was about to drink.
The southerner motioned for Clay to follow the others with a nod of his head. “Move it, Slowhand. I’ve got the rear.”
The savages came at them from everywhere at once, yipping like jackals and hurling a volley of shoddy spears as they stormed in. Gabriel blocked one missile with the flat of his blade and cut another in half before it impaled Matrick. A stone tip struck Clay square in the chest and splintered against the red links of the Warskin.
I like this armour, he thought, then shrugged his shield free as Ferals began dropping from the trees.
The first to do so landed near Matrick and got a dagger through the eye. The next fell on top of Moog. The wizard went down with a yelp, and his assailant lost hold of his spear. As he reached for it Larkspur stomped on the shaft, snapping it in half with her heavy black boot. She hit the cannibal with the serrated flare on the back side of one gauntlet, and with the other hand took up the pointed end of the broken spear and rammed it through the throat of another rushing Feral.
One hurled himself at Clay from the right and got batted aside by Blackheart. His head struck a tree and made a sound like a ceramic pot dropped on the floor. A second swung at Clay with a crude hammer. He met the weapon with his own and broke it apart, and another swing did the same to the poor man’s skull.
Gabriel was too far ahead to see, and Ganelon was lagging, beset from all sides by shrieking cannibals. Ferals had a funny (if ill-advised) habit of attacking the strong before the weak, likely an attempt to exhibit their valour on the battlefield. In this case it was costing them dearly, as the southerner was killing them by the score. The path behind him was littered with limbless dead.
Clay lingered until the warrior caught up, and together they waded through the Feral swarm. Ganelon’s axe, Syrinx, was a red mess, hacking off arms and slicing fatal gashes in guts, groins, necks—pretty much anywhere that bled a man out in a matter of seconds. Blackheart bore the bite of spear and arrow with the stoic fortitude of a seaward cliff. Occasionally Clay seized the opportunity to crack a skull or break a limb with his frigid hammer.
All at once the cannibals ceased their attack. They didn’t flee, and they kept their spears trained on Clay and Ganelon, but they no longer flung themselves at the warrior with reckless abandon. One of them began to chant, “DOOK, DOOK, DOOK” and the rest took it up, stamping their feet and weaving like flute-charmed serpents. “DOOK, DOOK, DOOK! DOOK, DOOK, DOOK!”
The southerner muttered over his shoulder at Clay. “Are they saying duke?”
Clay sure as hell hoped not. He searched the forest around them, half-expecting to see Lastleaf in his ravaged red longcoat striding through the trees like some smug, sylvan prince. Thankfully, what came crashing through the woods was not a druin at all—only the biggest, most fearsome-looking Feral Clay had ever seen.
Dook, I presume.
The new arrival wasn’t as broad shouldered as Clay, or as powerfully built as Ganelon, but what he gave up in bulk he made up for in height and reach. Each of his hands was the size of a small shield, and his loincloth, no doubt designed to fit a more modestly sized man, left little to the imagination. His bald head bobbed on a long neck and seemed altogether too small for his gargantuan body, which was curiously void of the green paint worn by others of his kind.
A sign of prowess, Clay guessed, since the green was a precaution against being eaten, and Dook didn’t strike him as a man who planned on being eaten today.
Weapon-wise, Dook was a simple man: He carried a very large bone, obviously taken from a very large monster, which the huge savage had probably killed with relative ease.
“DOOK, DOOK, DOOK, DOOK!”
The massive Feral paused to bask in the adoration of his peers, roaring and pummeling the earth with his ivory club.
Ganelon hefted his axe. “You mind if I take this one?”
Be my guest, Clay almost told him, except he’d been thinking since yesterday about what the warrior had said regarding the Quarry, and the resentment he’d fostered for everyone but Clay.
What kind of monster must I be, Ganelon had asked himself, that even Clay Cooper gave up on me?
What kind of monster …
“It wasn’t you.”
The warrior cocked an eyebrow at him. “Huh?”
“When they came for you. When they turned you to stone. We should have been there, but we were selfish. I was selfish. I thought you deserved it,” he admitted, and saw Ganelon’s face spasm in what might have been hurt and must have been anger. Clay spoke quickly, afraid the warrior would cut him off. “But I was wrong. I was scared. Any one of us could have done what you did.”
Ganelon sighed. “Slowhand …”
“Never again,” Clay said. “Where you stand, I stand.” He wanted to say more, to say how sorry he was for every solitary second his friend had spent down there in the dark, but Dook, as it turned out, wasn’t one for sentimental moments, and he chose this one to raise his club and charge.
Clay and Ganelon leapt in opposite directions as the bone came down like a felled tree between them. In keeping with cannibal tradition, Dook went after Ganelon first, using his absurd reach to snag the warrior’s ankle and then hurling him into a nearby trunk. Ganelon crashed into a heap at the bottom, dazed, and the Feral prepared another epic swing, tipping his grisly club behind his head so as to bring all his strength to bear.
Before he could, however, Clay rushed in from behind and brought Wraith chopping sideways, cracking against the club and throwing Dook off balance. The cannibal turned his flailing momentum into a spinning swing, and Clay barely had time to register that he—and not Ganelon—was its target before the breath blew out of his chest and Dook began shrinking rapidly.
Nope, he realized. I’m flying backward.
He crashed into a cluster of cheering Ferals, and they all went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs.
“DOOOOOOOK!” screamed the crowd of cannibals.