“No sign,” Edmund said, giving his scrying crystal a cursory look. “I’d have felt it if something changed.”
“Maybe Harold and the others managed to get a message out,” Alice said. “They might even have escaped the jungles by now.”
“If they haven’t been captured or worse,” Edmund said. “For all we know, the rebels could have taken over Hominum already.”
“There’s nothing to be gained by thinking about that now,” Arcturus said. “The best we can do is concentrate on getting out of this hellish jungle.”
“So, where are we, then?” Edmund asked, pressing his back against the boulder’s edge. “Were we at least running in the right direction?”
“Roughly,” Rotter said, staring up at the canopy.
“How do you know?” Alice asked. “We could have been running in circles.”
“The stars,” Rotter said. “The Elven Arrow always points north. Here, look.”
He used his fingers to trace three bright stars in the sky, and if Arcturus squinted he could make out a cluster shaped not unlike an arrowhead at one end.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Edmund said. “With any luck we should reach the southern border of Hominum tomorrow afternoon.”
“Aye,” Rotter said, lying on his back. “And not a moment too soon. The orcs will know we’re in the jungles by now if that shaman has any sense; they’ll be sending search parties out soon enough. We should get some rest.”
Arcturus shuddered at the thought of the orcs hunting for them in the dark. He couldn’t help but stare into the surroundings, focusing to use Sacharissa’s night vision. All he saw were the scurrying of jungle rodents and the swooping shapes of fruit bats. Somehow, the animal noises comforted him, even as they grew louder in the ever-growing gloom. He felt they would be silent if orcs were approaching. Or so he hoped, anyway.
Turning away from the surroundings, Arcturus summoned Sacharissa in a flash of white light, and wrapped himself around her. She whimpered as his hand pressed against her wounded side, and he hushed the Canid with an apologetic kiss on the nose.
Even in their haste to escape, Arcturus had found time to infuse her—she would never have been able to keep up with them after her injuries. He knew she would heal faster while within him, but he could not help but summon her, for he had felt her battering his consciousness in her desire to be physically close to him. It was a slightly selfish decision, but he had no regrets as he cuddled her.
“You did well to survive the battle with the Phantaur,” Alice whispered from the darkness. “In case you didn’t know, I can’t heal Sacharissa. It’s a bone injury … it has to heal naturally. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, that’s why I didn’t ask,” Arcturus said. “But … I do have a question for you.”
In the background, Arcturus could hear Rotter and Edmund snoring, and could make out the forms of the two propped against the boulder.
“What is it?” Alice asked.
“I haven’t been taught proper spellcraft. If I had known some, I might have been able to use it against the shaman or his demon.”
“That’s true,” Alice replied. “Although, spells don’t work as well against demons, just so you know, the shield spell in particular. That’s why Sacharissa was able to break through the shaman’s shield during your battle.”
“Even so, I’d like to learn,” Arcturus said. “I know the symbols for the four main spells—Lieutenant Cavendish taught me, but never showed me how to use them.”
“Well, there’s not much to it,” Alice whispered back. “You simply channel mana to your finger, until the tip glows. Then you draw the symbol in the air and hold your finger in its center until the spell ‘fixes’ itself in place, moving in tandem with your hand as you move it around. Finally, you maintain the flow of mana both to and through your finger at the same time, and as the mana pushes through the symbol, it will perform the spell.”
“That simple, huh?” Arcturus muttered semisarcastically, trying to keep her instructions in his head.
“Of course, then you can control the direction of your spell with your mind, in the same way that you can control a wyrdlight. That’s how you shape a shield, or decide if you want to send out a stream of fire or simply a ball of it.”
“Right,” Arcturus said. “I’ll just try it, shall I? You can tell me if I do something wrong.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Alice whispered, patting him on the shoulder. “Whatever spell you use, it will make light and noise—better not to signal our presence to any orcs out there.”
“Of course,” Arcturus said, feeling a hint of disappointment.
Still, now that he knew the basics of spellcraft, he could teach himself. He just hoped that he wouldn’t need to use it before the morning.
CHAPTER
35
THEY SMELLED IT BEFORE they saw it. Or at least, Arcturus did. It was metallic, so strong he could almost taste it on his tongue as they pushed through the trees, blinking in the dawn light as the vegetation thinned.
Sacharissa noticed it first. Arcturus almost fell as her consciousness was suffused with a sudden horror. Then he saw it too. The bodies. Scattered like rag dolls on a nursery floor, their dead eyes staring through him and into oblivion beyond.
Rebels. At least a hundred of them, their corpses adorned with gaping wounds, or their bones caved in by enormous force. The team stood frozen, and Arcturus heard Elaine retching as she emptied their meager breakfast of wild berries onto the blood-soaked ground.
That was what the smell was—blood. Only now it was tinged by the barest hint of putrefaction, and the air hummed with the buzz of a thousand flies, and the croak of carrion birds as they hopped among the feast lain out before them.
Arcturus’s gorge rose, but he forced it down, eyes watering as he staggered against a tree.
“Orc handiwork,” Rotter growled, and Arcturus heard the rasp of the soldier’s sword being drawn. “There.”
He jabbed his blade, and Arcturus followed its point to see the body of an orc among the humans, its gray skin stark against the damp soil, a ragged wound to its throat showing the reason for its demise. Now that Arcturus looked, there were half a dozen others, though their corpses were surrounded by the scores of humans they had taken down with them.
“How many could have done this?” Edmund said, his voice uneven in his distress.
“Twenty, maybe less,” Rotter replied, edging forward. “However many, they won.”
The field of battle was in a clearing of sorts, scattered with the occasional sapling and tree stump. Beyond, Arcturus could just make out what looked like green fields of long grass—where the jungles ended and Hominum’s territory began. He tried to resist the urge to run for it. The area was still, with nary a breeze to stir the leaves.
“They don’t leave their dead if they can help it,” Rotter said, turning his head and body slowly as he walked farther into the battlefield. “They’ll be back for them soon enough. Must’ve looted the weapons first. We’d best be on our way, quickly now.”
Arcturus didn’t need telling twice. He took a moment to grab Elaine’s hand, and then he was pulling her along, wending a path through where the bodies were thinnest on the ground.
“It tells a story, this,” Rotter said, walking backward now as he watched the forest behind them. “They came from the back, took the rebels by surprise. Some others…”
He turned and stared into fields beyond. The bodies were thickest along its edge.
“They came from that way too,” he said. “Must’ve been tracking them. Set up an ambush, hid in the long grass. Hit ’em from both sides.”
“It’s a good thing, right?” Elaine said, her voice still weak from throwing up. “They’re not hunting us anymore.”
“There’s nothing good about this,” Arcturus whispered. He tried not to look at the eyes. Somehow there was accusation in their gaze.
“Do you think this was the group who were following us, or were they following Prince Harold and the others?” Alice asked.