Saeya made more fog in her hands and the four young masters swim-walked in the deepest part of the channel. Their heads bobbed and they could see nothing of their surroundings as their line-of-sight was now obscured by the bushy riverbanks. They floated in the current and listened to the fog-shrouded world above like frightened muskrats, ready to dive at the first sign of trouble.
Clop, clop, clop. Animal hooves played percussion on the planks of the bridge ahead. Mounted forms took faint shape in the mist. There were wildkin goat riders on the overpass.
One skirmisher pointed down at the brook and shouted an alert. They'd spotted something ahead in the water. The young masters slowed their swim as more wildkin approached from the fields. More cries were heard and the mounted force split-up out to comb the tall grass and shrubs that lined both sides of the stream.
Lon felt Val's hand on his back. It was a signal to submerge and together they disappeared under the surface. They'd hold an underwater conference.
Saeya and Melcart sank to the bottom. Two smilkripples told him they'd both made air pockets. Lon wanted to contribute but it hurt his head to even check his empty smulcrum. His mind-mantle throbbed, and he knew from experience that he was bone dry and he'd be quite useless until after he'd eaten something and slept for six hours. He slowly dropped down into the waiting air-sphere. Val had burned off her tainted smilk earlier that morning and so she was likely also running thin. Lon followed her example and inhaled the breathable air the others had made for them.
Smilkfog hid their position but it would slowly dissipate without Saeya's attention. All the same, Lon reckoned they'd be safe hidden below the surface. The waterway was only seven feet deep yet the creek was rather wide and still carried lots of sand. The goat riders loomed large on both banks but they weren't staring straight down into the channel.
"We could rise-up and strike 'em down." Melcart proposed once they'd all settled into the sphere. "Scatter 'em"
"That would bring the shafeigors..." Saeya said. Her back was likely still sore from yesterday.
"They can't see us," Valari studied the dark shapes. She always seemed to know when she was being watched.
"We'll just lie low..." Saeya said.
"If we run up the road. They'll open the gates for us." Mel continued outlining the old plan as if the sudden appearance of the wildkin had not occurred.
"No. They won't." Saeya dashed his hope. "We're on our own til they sort it out."
"Not even the small door?" Lon asked. She shook her head no.
"We have to get back inside." Valari said.
"You could use your many-sleep?" Melcart questioned Lon with a hopeful look.
"I'm empty," the white-haired lad massaged his cranium. "I can barely think straight."
Saeya bit her bottom lip as she studied him.
"Chase Kluth," Mel swore. "What a disaster. We're so unprepared. Look how we're dressed." He was the best outfitted for the occasion. Only Lon was insufficiently garbed. "Chase..."
"Quit saying that! Both of you." Saeya spoke in firm whispers, "Atar says times like this is when Kluth sees whose fire burns brightest".
"Oh really? Is that what he says?" The rogue said mockingly. "I just pray I can keep my fire lit."
"Pray then." Saeya retorted, "Don't cuss. You neither." She glared at them both.
"Oh, alright," Lon gulped. Message received. He vowed to cease his profane habit.
"We'll go up the Westmont." Saeya pointed and her fingers breached the bubble and water dripped down her arm.
"To where?" Valari asked.
"We can easily get back through Atar's Pond. We'll slip-in through the top," Saeya answered succinctly. She must have worked this out during the swim here.
"If we could get to Westmont," Melcart considered her new plan, "we could run the quarry road north. The treeline is.. that way."
"Or we could easily fade into the bog and use the boats..." Val offered a second option. "We'd get away clean to..."
"No. We shall light the signal fire in the Wolfspire." Saeya stated firmly. "That will show the skal we're alive and it may bring allies. Lon can still climb."
"What? How now?" Lon asked. "I left the Toll Stones at the ooo..." He groaned and remembered how he'd simply left the deadly artifacts on shore inside the walls of the busy settlement. Who knows what happened to them during the flood. It's possible the warders protected the townspeople, but it was equally possible his carelessness had taken local lives. He gulped.
"There are yellow stones in the fire point of the Wolfspire," Saeya said. "Older stones."
"Do they have chain slings?" Val asked.
"No." Saeya admitted, "but they still have holes. We can get a length of rope from the quarry which is on our way."'
The group surfaced in the damp shadows under the south bridge. Lon listened. There were voices in the fields but nobody on the wooden planks overhead. Saeya went back to work making fog over the riverbed. She spoke a rumbling rune and made a thick chowder that blanketed both sides of the overpass. They waited and listened. The dense smog didn't follow the river bend south; it floated away west over the potato field and everyone had the same idea. They could hide in that soup all the way to the pines in the western treeline.
Lon crawled up to scout the road above, and found the coast was clear. Melcart led the way and ducked low to stay hidden behind shoreline scrub and gorse until they reached the elbow bend where the watercourse turned south around a knoll. Now they each lay flat on the bellies and wormed their way west in single file. They crouched low and went slow through countless hills of potatoes. Saeya brought up the rear and smudged the trail behind.
Once they reached the timberland the group lay concealed in the orchard grass at the margins of the field. The blond huntress continued to smog the air downwind. Back on the roadway Lon could see how the riders had now clued-in that the strange fog had hidden some slippery prey that had successfully gotten away.
Crolean bugles sounded on the far side of the vale and the invaders cheered and began to assail the east walls in earnest. The young masters took in the scene from the bottom of the hill, on the other side of the town; they couldn't see anything past the waterspout, but the settlement's white walls looked so imposing and strong they appeared unbreakable. Lon knew the barrier was only twelve feet tall, but from where they sat Atarskal looked impregnable.
The Crols had four different means of gaining the heights. They could use ladders and wooden poles to vault the distance. Or they could use grapnel irons with ropes to make the climb. Or they could push wagons into the walls and align ramps. Lon knew he watched Round One. These bold warriors would try to take and hold a section. If this first attempt failed, they'd build siege towers and wooden belfries. More Crols would arrive here until eventually, and then inevitably the settlement would fall.
"There are toll stones at the base of the fire pit on the Wolfspire," Saeya interrupted the spectacle.
"The Wolfspire?" Lon asked.
"That's Wolfspire," Saeya turned and pointed north toward a stone pinnacle that towered beside the waterfall. It must loom over the plunge pool. It was barely visible at the end of the shelf that lay between Atar's Falls and the northwest corner of Atarskal.
Lon had seen the rocky prominence before, when it was first referenced in the grotto, but he'd never imagined that it was accessible from the western ridge. Now he wondered if it could be part of the Pilgrim's journey up to Ephram's shrine. The spire blended into the cliff when viewed from inside the settlement. But from down here, from this angle he could see a thin stone leash tied the ledge to the neck of the rocky precipice, like a rope around a wolf's neck.
"Then let's go." Lon said, "Let's get the sacred stones and light the fire and I will climb."
"So, you are going through with it? You're running away?" Melcart said. The rogue was suddenly annoyed again, even though this had been the plan from the beginning.
"Shhh, Melcart. I agree. I've seen it in my dreams." Saeya came close to Lon and looked into his eyes, "This is the right way, no matter how uncertain it seems."
"To be able to move the elements..." Lon tried to explain. "To make the apodictic strike he cannot block."
"As if it were that easy." Melcart was not convinced. "You think that with one touch from the mighty Ephram that you'll somehow be raised-up and enlightened?" Nobody spoke. Melcart continued, but he stared at Saeya as if he could make her see his logic. "You expect him to turn around and come down again straight away and save us all?" He turned back to Lon, "See if you can do it before midnight Sea Drover. The mad priest is probably going to crack the walls at dawn."
"Mel. To move the elements..." Lon knew he was not wrong, but the rogue interrupted to shout.
"Fireballs is all you ever talk about."
"Don't countenance a coward's ..." Saeya started, but Makin snapped.
"Shut up with that!"
"Saeya," Valari began, "No master has come down in years. What makes you think Lon can do it in just a few hours?" She asked.
"If anyone can, it's Lon," Saeya said.
Lon gulped. He knew that wasn't true. He was the feigor who failed at everything the first time. It took him two or three times to get anything to work right. He was a fumbler wrought from a rodent. He could think quick, and he had better ideas, but he still lacked the wisdom to see the right answer straightaway.
"And what about us?" Melcart asked Saeya.
"We'll be fine," the blond said. "We'll sneak around and swim-in Atar's Pond and slip-in under the North bridgewall."
Valari nodded, satisfied. Melcart grumbled but agreed.
"We must light the signal fire before nightfall," Saeya added, and then she turned and led everyone away into the trees.
The group traversed through shabby conifers ever higher up-slope until they came to start of the Westmont proper. Here were old stone foundations and a crumbling fence and Lon got the sense this was an early mining operation as the land wasn't suitable for crops. The ruins were overgrown with old trees, so he knew the place hadn't been used in centuries. A stable's crumbled walls and horse stalls were now just stone piles. The rubble dotted the terrain and smothered the shrubs to make openings on the hillside. The base was loose gravel, but higher up-slope were taller boulders where it was possible to stand and survey the land they'd left behind. Lon scaled the heights and then turned around to the run his eyes back over the river bend and the potato crop in the fertile lot beyond the brier they'd just crossed.
Saeya had made thick clouds of fog that caught the breeze and moved through the trees below and now she looked back approvingly over the mist. The others also watched the forest and it was Val's keen eyes that spotted the lone rider that lingered in the spuds. The tracker had dismounted to check the ground in the potato field. He bent to inspect clues in the shape of their shoes and then peered uphill and seemed to stare right at them. He couldn't see them of course, as they were so well hidden behind the misty conifers, but everyone felt exposed. They'd been discovered.
"He doesn't see us. But he knows..." Val said.
"He's found fresh tracks," Saeya said.
"Get ready," Melcart rolled up the shirt sleeve on his right arm to expose his bare wrist. "Lon can you do one?" "
"No. I can't," the sea drover checked his smulcrum. Only a thin-smilk coating had formed since the incident in the pond where he'd tried to communicate with the somgor.
"Val. Give him smilk." Saeya said, "A smilkiss. We'll all do it." She turned again to check the enemy. It didn't seem like she'd requested anything out of the ordinary or given her command a second thought. She just expected everyone would do as she sought. Mel's eyes went wide in horror and Valari frowned at the idea.
"What's a smilkiss?" Lon asked.
"We can give you some of our surface smilk," Saeya said. "It should be enough for one, maybe two rods." She pointed. "There's a lot of them."
"Relax," Melcart nodded toward the lone tracker. The sleuth chose not to enter the woods and follow their tracks, and instead he'd turned his back to ride away through the potato patch. "I think the furrykin's given up.'
"No. He's gone to get his friends." Saeya said. "Lon make room." Without any warning she slithered close and brought her freckled face a few inches from his nose. She sank both hands in his moist hair and then stared deep into his eyes. She kissed him on the lips, confidently, passionately for three whole seconds. The tip of her tongue touched his teeth and he felt a wonderful refreshing sensation course through his body. She pulled away and smiled. "Your first smilkiss." She grinned at him.
Lon breathed heavy in recovery. Saeya beamed at the impact she'd had on him. She might have laughed aloud if the circumstances weren't so dire. Melcart was also wide-eyed at the development and Valari didn't look at all comfortable with the idea of going next.
"Did it work?" Saeya asked.
"Yeah." Lon checked his smulcrum. "Yeah. I can do one now," by which he meant he could make one air rod.
"Of course, you're going to say that," Mel scoffed.
"One is not enough." Saeya ignored the rogue and turned to the other female in the group, "Valari."
"One is enough." Val said.
"Ah. Chase... They're coming back." Mel pointed at the wildkin riders that had regrouped and now came-on in strength. There were eight of them, and the leader picked his way up through the bramble right toward their hiding spot in the first tall boulders of the dilapidated stone fence. Saeya glared at Valari.
"Oh fine." Valari rolled to lie beside Lon. "Pucker up Clean Path." She put her hand on his neck and kissed the sea drover square on the mouth. She did not look into his eyes like Saeya had done, and so it wasn't nearly as intimate, but it was likely just as effective. Lon felt less awkward with Valari, despite her beauty, and the same uplifting sensation occurred a second time. Then with a sudden twinkle in her eye the seductress gave him a glance afterwards that he'd never forget.
Melcart watched, intrigued, but said nothing. Saeya studied the enemy. She wasn't at all concerned with how Valari had kissed Lon or the outcome, but rather she watched transfixed as six marauders picked their way through the trees towards them. Four furry fighters on black mountain goats advanced with their sabers drawn and there were two more behind them. They came in two rows and to launch back-to-back blows from which their victims usually didn't recover. They'd have a different experience today.
The sea drover fought to catch his breath and discretely readjusted himself and his body on the rocks. Valari straightened her clothes and cleared her mind for the fight ahead.
"I hope everyone's ready." Melcart whispered. "Here they come."
The galloping goats bleated and babbled, and their bare hooves drummed the loose gravel as they steadily climbed the slope. But when they got to the bigger rocks they slowed and searched for a better path. The raiders cursed their mounts and spurred them over the crumbled stone chaff. The capricious creatures who carried these rustlers brayed fresh complaints as their hooves slipped on the rubble.
That's when Melcart pounced. He couldn't wait for Saeya's signal. She'd held up her hand to unite them in a group-attack, but Mel sprang the ambush early. There was some heat in his voice which added to the drama of his unexpected bush-whack.
"Geibor!" the rogue shouted. The word snapped and blue fire spat from his arm. The bolt sizzled and flew at the foremost rider who ducked but was irregardless struck head-on. He died instantly and the blast set his animal ablaze. His black mountain goat bleated and reared in pain. The animal must have sprang-up to shake off the burning brute but the weight of the big galoot pulled it over and they tumbled backwards and scattered the other riders. Both lifeforms were consumed in an eerie blue pyre which obliterated the other wildkins' bravery.
"That's it. No more." Saeya said. "We don't want to draw the shafeigors here again."
Valari drew her nine-inch blade and left the group to hustle down to quiet the mountain goat which continued to smoke and bleat in pain as it burned. She put her wet boot on the beast's head and deftly inserted her steel blade into its skull. Then she she wiped the knife clean on her pant leg and jogged back up to the rocks again. Saeya nodded thanks at her sister-in-arms.
An unsettling calm descended over the hillside. The sounds of battle still emanated from the east wall of Atarskal beyond the trees and over the fields in the distance.
Higher up they heard a voice. "Ssaeya? Ssaeya Tasshafaryian?" a reptilian called down from pine saplings above. The figure could be heard trudging down the hillside breaking sticks as he plowed through underbrush. Someone rustled the scenery; branches moved, and Hosni appeared in greenery. "Dashabonissius," he waved and Saeya ran to him and hugged him.
Lon couldn't understand what they said, but it bugged him that he spoke down to her like a child. He kissed the top of her head and the young lad had to shift his eyes to the trees; he couldn't stomach the sight of their intimacy. For some reason they stood inches apart and spoke in whispers while everyone else looked away to give them privacy.
"He says we should follow him," Saeya pointed uphill. "We don't need to visit the quarry."
"But the yellow stones need rope," Val said. Saeya nodded; she had it covered.
"They're back," Melcart pointed down slope at new enemy riders who streamed out the woods just beyond the gravel ruins.
The enemy goat-cavalry had returned. Forty paces below, the first of the buckaroos formed a line and made ready charge-up at them in the boulders above the misty pines.
"This is the best place to face them," Melcart reasoned. "We'll go all at once this time." He conceded. But the blond girl looked unconvinced.
"No. We follow Hosni." Saeya pushed the herdsfeigor ahead to signal him to lead the way and then grabbed a hold of Val and Mel to follow.
Melcart grumbled and reluctantly complied and Lon fell in behind .
"Whooop whoop whowiieeee," the goat riders charged. The first bandits rode up the hill through the smudge of their burnt comrade.
Lon looked over his shoulder as he climbed and to his surprise, he saw the leader had hoisted a kite- shield that completely covered his whole body and most of his goat. This was of course entirely the wrong-sized implement for a cavalryfeigor, and especially one in the woods. It was hopelessly unwieldy and would get caught in the vines, but it was a rather brilliant innovation against them. This shield bearer hoped to get in close and soak up their blue flame bolts while his companions ferried in behind. It was a clever tactic.
"Stay on the stones," Saeya shouted and scrambled ever higher behind the nimble herdsfeigor. The pack grappled-up the rubble as best they could and scaled higher before Lon could no longer ignore the huffing and puffing, he heard behind him. It sounded like the animal was breathing down his neck.
The white-haired lad was the rearguard now and had just enough smilk for one air rod. The shield-rider who'd picked him was ten feet away and coming-on strong through tangled bushes. But just as Lon turned to face the raider, he heard a rockslide and the ground gave way and the gaucho fell into a hidden hole in the gorse. The shaft was so deep the lad couldn't hear his fate, but both rider and goat must have died. No wonder Saeya had insisted they all stay on the crumbled fence line.
The other riders reigned their mounts at the brink and swerved to avoid the deep holes or anywhere the bramble could hide more such chasms.
Hosni stood on the stones above and hastily strung his bow.
Their wildkin charge had slowed after the lead gaucho fell screaming down the hidden hole. The indecision made them easy targets for the veteran herdsfeigor, a very dexterous archer. Hosni let the first arrow fly and it found a rider's neck. His aim was fantastic. But even then, these hairy desperadoes didn't lose hope. More goat warriors appeared below on the sparsely forested slope and these new riders made the whole force courageous again as their numbers continued to swell.
"Geibor!" Melcart shouted and the intonation echoed off the trees and boulders. His air rod scorched a bandit whose fur flamed as he spilled from his saddle blanket. His boot caught in the cloth and he was dragged away down through his friends.
"Geibor," Valari's strike thumped like an axe on a dead tree in the wintertime. A crisp sapphire-coloured bolt spat forth and sizzled through the air to punch a gaucho's metal chest and ricochet away to flame another's furry face. It didn't end there. Her blue needle sewed terror and scorched another rider's hair in the rearguard . The last two casualties screamed and died loud deaths, but the first goat rider recovered and bravely rallied his companions.
"Geibor," Saeya's command crackled like a rockslide and a tight loaf sped from her arm. She caught the same brave soldier Valari had not harmed, but this time the blast smacked home and didn't bounce. Her powder-blue quarrel trounced the dog-faced rider who rolled on the ground and set fire to the dead grass on the gravel slope.
Yet more foolhardy jockeys elected to press-on despite the spectacular casualties already suffered on their squad. They steered the mounts straight at Lon and aimed to come-up between the brambles and the crumbled fence again. The lead rider brandished his saber at what he likely believed was an easy target, alone on the rocks.
The sea drover brought the pattern to his brain and the shape took-up the smilk. He pumped everything he had into the glyph and saw it glow and felt its weight and power.
"Geibor" Lon spoke, and the word cracked. He saw the azure smudge cloud over his arm. He pushed it with his mind and a shapeless blue porridge sloshed forth. The sight of this snapping shapeless sprite frightened the enemy away. It was a hot mess and both pursuers wheeled and tried to outrun the sizzling blue gas. They gambled on a free pass through the brambles and while there was no hidden hole in the ground the underbrush was stiffer than expected. Both goats got tied in the brier and neither rider couldn't escape Lon's deadly haze. The sapphire coloured malaise he'd made burned their backs and set the shrubs ablaze around them. The sudden bonfire sent the rest of the wildkin back into the treeline.
"Come on Lon." Mel tugged Lon's arm and then scrambled higher up the decrepit fence row. "They'll thicken-up down there and come at us even harder now."
Hosni barked orders at Saeya and then pointed to a cliff that loomed a quarter mile ahead. Lon recognized the rocky protuberance as the landmass most visible from his bedroom window. The outcrop was the only view his room in Winterhouse provided.
"We go this way," the blond summarized the herdsfeigor's instructions, "everyone will see us, but none shall follow."
The escarpment loomed overhead when the handsome shepherd stopped their hike near dead thorn bushes at its base of the steep granite face. Lon watched in surprise as Hosni pulled the dead bushes to one side and in this way, he cleared a route towards a diagonal shelf in the stone. Here was two-foot wide goat-path that snaked up the side of the rock toward whatever lay above.
The goat trail was an escalator that rose-up the entire side of the cliff, but it was only two feet wide and one wrong step could bring injury or death. Hosni pulled the dead bushes back into place before he came up behind the young masters. He encouraged them all to go quicker with fierce whispers. Up and up they climbed, and the panorama was exceptional but there really wasn't time to take in the scenery.
Saeya led the mountain climbers and Val was behind her and then Melcart and Lon. When the blond reached an obtuse shingle in the trail, Hosni whistled and more herdsfeigor appeared above this shale and reached down with their long arms to help the voyagers over the hump and up to a grassy halfway point One by one the husky Calbians hoisted up the refugees. Above the trail Lon could see a lovely grass patch no bigger than Zed's grotto nestled into the cliff side. Five herdsfeigor welcomed the young masters to their mid-level perch.
A young female smiled at Lon and he recognized her from the group's picnic visit. She passed him a weighty animal skin filled with delicious fruit drink which he found incredibly refreshing. The juice was very likely infused with smilk because it tickled his smulcrum and left him feeling a little lightheaded. Equally intoxicating was the view.
Down below, the Battle of Atarskal raged in brilliant detail and the first thing Lon noticed was how it wasn't a proper siege. The enemy had come west along the port road and they still hadn't fanned-out to block the bottom entrance, although some Crols had moved that way now. They also didn't seem too concerned with the north, the cow gate atop the ridge. Instead they focused on making a breach in the east curtain wall and they attacked between the towers from hilltop to bridge. But the sturdy walls still held and their assualt had waned. The young lad could see the Crolean baggage train was now being sorted in the distance and so he knew the enemy prepared to encamp.
The storm had calmed, and the metal clad masses drifted back out of bow shot. The fields just beyond the battlements were entirely denuded of grass and trees. Dead bodies lay like pin cushions stuck with arrows across the field-of-fire. There were similar furry lumps in the southern crops where some of wildkin ventured too close.
Crolean besiegers moved to occupy the south now, and the savages were nowhere to be seen. Lon reckoned they'd simply melted back into the swamp. He stood on the brink with Val and Mel and the others herdsfeigors while Saeya and Hosni held another conversation at the back of the ledge. Here were bundles and packs and the tracker showed the girl something on a map. The white-haired lad kept an eye on them of course and he watched as the dashing hustler cut twelve feet of rope from a lengthy coil. He also gave the blond huntress a small cloth sack and Lon smiled because he knew it contained the cheese and hard tack that he'd seen them all pack two days ago. Now he wondered if this perch was somewhere, they regularly took their meals? He remembered how he'd hoped to share one. But then it became clear they weren't sticking around. Hosni's crew shouldered their bags and made their way down on the same secret path.
"Where are they going?" Lon asked Saeya when she came to stand with them again at the edge. She didn't answer right away.
"There's not really too much they can do," Melcart sighed.
"They can track them," Val said.
"We're not staying here either," Saeya pointed due north. "We're going there." She fingered the Wolfspire and Lon nodded. The towering mass of stone was even closer now. "Which of us is the best climber?" she asked.
Lon checked the others and noticed all eyes had settled on him. He looked down at his flimsy sandals, "it's me likely," he admitted. Melcart nodded to indicate he agreed.
"Okay then you'll come-up last and help anyone who needs," Saeya winked at him and then turned to Mel. "You follow me."
The blond girl began the ascent and moved slow because the slender trail was much narrower than before; it was just a few inches wide and required both hands and both feet to perform a constant sideways-shuffle up a diagonal track. It was tedious and terrifying and after a few minutes Lon realized they were visible to all parties on the ground. Saeya had translated Hosni's wisdom at the base of this cliff, everyone will see us but none shall follow.
The white-haired lad went last and kept an eye on Valar. She was not a natural climber. She had trouble finding handholds and must have found it scary to look down, even when necessary. Lon could see she was petrified but still tried to keep calm and carry- on and not look at the ground and not add the group's plight by having a nervous breakdown.
"You're doing great Val, not much farther now." Lon pointed-out the next grip.
Craaawww! A huge blue bird with an orange beak and floppy legs flew past their heads. The white-haired lad and the brunette both studied the majestic creature as it floated on the wind. It had the same cerulean shade and similar wingspan as the shafeigor's taxidermy. Both young masters shared a glance. Could it be? As they contemplated the fantastic augury, and just before Lon could speculate on it what it could foreshadow, a queer noise reached their ears from the battlefield.